All's Well That Ends...

Summer's been good to me.

It's interesting to look back over all those weeks, now that I am literally on the cusp of fall. I exceeded expectations in many things, overcame problems, survived traumas and clashes, and... didn't accomplish some things (namely, perfecting--or even working on--scales and arpeggios. Oh well).

Would I be the same person I am now if I hadn't worked at camp? I don't know. I'm going into the new school year with a very different perspective than the one I had a year ago. I know what to expect, who to look for, who I'm thrilled to be seeing again. I know that I will be stretched in this coming year and I'm pumped to see how I can grow even more as a pianist, given the phenomenal amount I learned last year.

But camp taught me a lot about the person I am away from school--a teacher, leader, mentor.... things I just don't do that much during the school year. I learned that I can do them, though, and that has given me just enough courage to maybe try them this coming year. At some point I need to start teaching piano, and now seems as good a time as any.

Can I do it?

Yes.

If I hadn't worked at camp this summer, I don't think I would be able to say that.

Looking ahead, letting go of everything here isn't quite so traumatic as it was last fall. I've barely been here all summer anyway, so the last twenty days have given me just enough time to settle in a bit and get used to the routine before going back to the grindstone. I'm just going from one familiar place to another, so I'm not really having any "oh my God, I'm leaving them all behind" kind of panicky moments. I am realizing just how much crap I have, though.

Now I'm just rambling aimlessly. Time for bed.

Nnnggghhh...

I've had this cold for more than a week now, and the typical cold part is starting to go away--only occasionally having to blow my nose, and my throat is fine (not scratchy like at the beginning). Except now I've got a new symptom, which is a sinus headache that hit me out of the blue last night... a stabbing pain right on the left side of my forehead. Unfortunately we didn't have any Sudafed, so I had to suffer through it until my dad brought some home and I took a dose to get rid of the remaining pain. The odd thing was that the pain sort of migrated down to the left side of my upper jaw and back again.

I was fine then until about half an hour ago this morning, when the headache came back... this time more in the region of my left cheekbone. I took some more Sudafed, but it still hasn't had an effect, and now the pain has (if anything) intensified in the region of my upper and lower jaw on the left side... definitely NOT the sinuses. So what is it?

Oh, no... the thought just hit me.... is it my wisdom teeth, overdue to be pulled?

AAAAUUUUGGGHHHH.

One Man's Trash...

Treasures (and more) re-discovered while cleaning out my bedroom:

• One small silk-lined velvet bag full of old seashells and a few polished rocks. The opening was almost too small for my hand to fit through, but perfect for a kid's hand. I put the shells in a little cubical gift box that used to hold a candle and put it on my shelf. It looks very artsy now.


• Old handouts, homework papers, and tests from my Hiking, Physics 114, and Children's Lit classes at community college. It was crazy to look at all my math scribblings and remember how I was actually pretty good at that stuff, despite the occasional stressed times and all-nighters spent for that class. Physics was the most fun I ever had while doing math, I think. Fact: while surveying colleges (in particular U of I) I briefly entertained the notion of being a physics minor in addition to a music and English double major.


• A beaded necklace (plastic pony beads on plastic lanyard string) given to me by an odd man on a tourist steam train ride in Mossyrock, WA.


• Old 4-H record books and a plaque for one of them that never got hung up on my wall (I think because there wasn't enough room). Fact: The Kiwanis club that gave out record book awards since before I started 4-H decided, the year after I left 4-H, to stop giving out the awards because there weren't enough clubs participating. Our club was basically the only one that did record books anymore in our county.


• Flashcards from my German class at community college.


• Two prints of a sort of book cover I designed for a story I am still writing. The prints are from a couple of years ago.


• A 3-ring binder full of Beanie Baby collector's cards, c. 1999 (ages ago, right?). I actually still have a basket full of Beanie Babies. I never collected them because of the monetary value, though--just collected them because I was a kid and thought they were cute.


• Letters from past cabin-mates at summer camp when I was a camper 5 or 6 years ago.


• Half-finished scripts (written by me) of a Star Wars movie that me, my sister, and a few friends were going to make two or three years ago. We still have the costumes somewhere.


• Target "College 07" catalog. I remember looking through it and thinking I had to have at least half of the things in it in order to be fully prepared for school. I actually had a conversation with my dad along these lines, before I'd had a good look at my new room-to-be:

“What do you mean, ‘dorm shopping’?”

I stared at my dad, not having expected this question. “Well,” I started, “You know. To get stuff for my dorm.”

He gave me a funny look in return. “All you really need to get is a fridge.” By the tone of his voice, this should have been obvious, like a barren living space with a fridge was all anyone needed to create their own personal home away from home.

The mental image of the lists I’d created after a perusal of the Target catalog disintegrated as I grasped for an explanation as to why I needed so much stuff just to go to college. “Dad, they don’t give you anything except for a bed, a desk, and a closet. I need…storage. You know, bins and things. And a shoe rack and towels.”

“Don’t they give you drawers, though?”

“No.”

“I thought…”

“No, Dad. There’s no bureau or dresser drawers or anything. Just a closet. That’s why I need the bins to put my things in.” I was getting horrific ideas of mounds of clothing, jewelry, books, shoes, and makeup all accumulating in a mass of disorganization not unlike the disaster scene that was the floor of my little sister’s room.

“Maybe you’re right,” he allowed reluctantly. “I guess we could get you some storage boxes.”

“And a laundry hamper,” I put in.

“We used garbage bags for everything. Throw your dirty clothes in, and when it gets full, use it to take them down to the washer.”

“Then they’ll get smelly!” I protested.

“That’s why you close them.”

“Dad!”

*****[/end flashback sequence]

• Scribbled sci-fi story idea/fragment written.... who knows when. It eventually morphed into a story submitted in my Intro to Fiction class last winter.


• Music from Vivaldi's Cum Sancto Spiritu from U-Choir last year... not one of my favorite songs, but a catchy one. I remember that the A2's were a bit of a train wreck on learning our parts for that piece, but you couldn't even tell because of how loudly everyone else was singing.


• A huge chunk of papers from my Intro to Fiction class... mostly printouts of the stories I submitted and had peer-reviewed. I am sorry to say that Intro to Fiction was one of the least enjoyable classes I have taken yet... not because I can't take criticism (peer reviewing was actually really cool and fairly helpful), but because I was genuinely unhappy with everything I wrote for that class. Short stories are just not the medium I work best in. Poetry and novels, on the other hand...


• Lots of letters and notes to me from when I was a SALT (like a counselor/wrangler-in-training) at camp. I never realized or appreciated it then, but I was so loved and noticed by people. I just felt invisible all the time because I was quiet.


• Driving Test Score Sheet from the DOL when I went in to get my license. I scored 96 on my first (and only) try. The examiner was pretty surly, though.


• Shellfish/seaweed license from when I went geoducking last summer. It was a lot of fun, but I never got to eat any of the geoducks we found because my mom thought they were too gross to touch, let alone prepare to eat.

You decide:

On Some of My More Unsavory Tendancies

I am a slob.

There, it's official: the first step to recovery is acknowledging your problem. Right?

The funny thing is that I don't actually like living in a super messy environment. I'm just too lazy to do anything about it, most of the time, until it gets so absolutely terrible that I can't even function anymore. My computer desk at school last year was a good example of that. My roommate was very tidy and usually had a good couple of square feet of cleared space on her desk, even with her laptop on it. Mine, in contrast, looked clean if it had more than four inches of cleared space. It was that cluttered. Once in a while I'd clear off the excess papers, textbooks, notebooks, et cetera and revel in all the open space... and it would get cluttered up again no more than a week later.

My bedroom at home is the same way now that I've sort of moved back into it. Part of the problem is that I have my college storage things (plastic drawers, tubs) and other unusual things taking up extra space in my already somewhat cramped room. So, since we've got an uncle coming to visit in a few days and my old roommate coming to visit right after that, I'm making a concerted effort to clean things up.

That's an undertaking in itself. Since I didn't have any room to put anything anywhere (part of the reason why things get cluttered in the first place), I started going through my piles (yes, plural) to see what I could throw out. There was a remarkable number of old papers that had no use anymore that I had kept for purely sentimental reasons, or had been thrown into the pile with this mindset: "Well, it's got some importance, so I shouldn't just throw it away now. I'll hang onto it." These end up being lots of old receipts, forms, and the ten-pound file folder (really) of promotional flyers, course catalogs, scholarship forms, and more from when I was doing my extensive college search/decision making process.

I have to say that I feel better now that I've thrown that out (technically, recycled it). I remember the college search being an arduous process wrought with worry, anticipation, and (a few times) tears. Now I'm settled and completely happy where I'm at, with all of those thoughts behind me. I haven't even really stopped to wonder what life would be like if I'd gone to PLU or University of Idaho (two serious contenders) instead.

But why did I hang onto those things for so long? In addition to being a slob, I'm also a bit of a packrat. It's very difficult for me to throw away or get rid of things that I've had for a while. I think I just get too emotionally attached, as silly as that sounds. For example, take the pile of T-shirts I had next to my bureau for the longest time because I didn't have room for them. I never really wore them, yet they sat there gathering dust because in the back of my mind, I thought "Oh, I'll wear those sometime..."

My sister finally went through my room and gave them all to Goodwill. She is a rock of... something in my life. I love her to pieces.

The funny thing is that her room used to be the disaster zone that mine now is, yet when you walk into it now, it's always very picked up and clean looking. What gives?