180ish days (aka 6 months)

I no longer hate Bryan-f'ing-College-Station! I don't LOVE College Station, but I no longer hate it.  The last two and a half months here have made all the difference.  I haven't been home since New Year's.  I made the decision to stay here until my birthday and it's been hard, really hard especially in January with a three day weekend and especially when my mother started teasing Isaac about my whereabouts (not cool mama).  I wanted to go home a lot in January.  But I made the decision to stay here and try to figure out a life here that I could be happy with and I've definitely made a good start.

In January I auditioned for a musical, the first musical I'd auditioned for since Beauty and the Beast at SAC a hundred years ago.  To say I was out of practice would be a huge understatement.  So on January 27th I auditioned for Sunset Boulevard, at the community theatre in Bryan, TX (the audition process totally needs its own blog post, but because I'm putting this out there I'll get to it eventually).  I got an ensemble part and spend the next month practicing pretty much daily for the show.  We had a couple random days off here and there but seriously for the most part it was daily rehearsals with Sundays off.  I did it to meet people, to step out of my comfort zone and to see if Bryan-College Station was actually live-able and I can say it did all those things.  I met some wonderful people, people I want to keep in touch with, people I want to stay friends with and people I can see being a part of my life here.  Mission accomplished! There are more than just students here and people with real jobs and people with lives away from the university! I was amazed.  Anyways I could write too much about SSB and it all but I'll leave it with it was a wonderful experience and I'm so glad I did it- even if at times I was too exhausted to do shave my legs or too tired to mind that my legs and feet were covered with scratches and bruises.

The first week of February, besides being the first week of rehearsal, also marked the first non-family visitor I had up to BCS.  My good Matt came and stayed with me for a long weekend and I got to show him a little bit of what my new life was like here.  It was good in many ways, but the best way was that it was a friend from my SA life who wanted to see me be successful in my new life here, he wanted to meet my friends and see what I was interested in here.  It was a very therapeutic visit and of course he introduced me to a new guilty pleasure in the form of Trailer Park Boys, but again that's info for another day.

February was also the time where my work life started to pick up too, things at work started to get really busy and every day something new and exciting happened. Everyday I left totally satisfied with what I had accomplished and while I frequently left tired, just to go to rehearsal to get more tired, I was still excited every day to go to work.  I was so tired I even lost my voice for the first time since college, I'm blaming allergies which have finally reared their ugly head in my life, after not being present for 27 years.

The first weekend of January was opening weekend and after the first Sunday show I had to figure out what to do with myself now that rehearsals were over.  Mama had come down for the weekend and we just sort of hung out at the apartment watching movies and relaxing.  When she left I had 4 days of nothing to get through.  I decided it was time to pick up my guitar and start playing again, my poor Taylor was very neglected the last 6 months.  I made plans with one of the girls from the cast to hang out and then it was time for the next weekend of shows.  On Sunday after strike I was driving home to get my dishes for the cast party and I started crying.  I was so sad the show was over.  I enjoyed everything about it and while I was physically glad it was over, I was not emotionally glad it was over.

It's only Tuesday now so I don't really know how things are going to be now that the shows over.  But I feel really good.  I feel good about my life here and feel like I've found some things to hold on to, to make it more than just bearable, but to actually enjoy myself here.

Review: Shine Shine Shine

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



What a great surprise. The first 50 pages in I really wasn't feeling this book. I was confused to why there were robots in it and why everything was in the 3rd person. 150 pages in I was hooked and didn't want to put it down. This book is a love story, a bizarre, twisted love story about how to love others but most importantly yourself. While that may sound ridiculously cheesy in execution it really wasn't.

The mechanical husband Maxom is going to the moon with robots to help prepare for human colonization, he's leaving his pregnant bald wife Sunny at home with their autistic son Bubber. Nothing is going according to plan. Sunny is trying to fit in with her wigs and being the perfect mother. Maxon is unable to express his feelings and lives by science and Sunny as the only things in his life that make sense. Without giving away spoilers this is the story of their past and future. And I want more! I want to know what happens next, I'm not invested in this relationship and want to know what goes on next.

Fave Quote-
“There are three things that robots cannot do," wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot he wrote "Show preference without reason (LOVE)" and then "Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)" and finally "Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE).”





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4 months in BCS

How have I already been here four months? And what the hell do you mean it's only been four months it feels like a year.  I got back and forth daily between loving this place and hating it.

Going home for break was of course great but two weeks in SA was both too long and way too short.  I was looking forward to coming back but really only for work reasons.  I'm trying to stay here till my birthday and not go running home before then, but I don't know if I'll be able to make it.  I have visitors coming in February which is nice but I wish some of them were coming this month instead cause my apartment is cold and lonely.

The cats are crazy and super frisky with the cold weather.  They have ridiculous amounts of energy and I have a cold.

There have been more days...
123 days ago I picked up my life and moved to BCS
121 days ago I started my amazing new job at TAMU- love it.
68 days ago I went home for the first time to watch Isaac with mama
56 days ago I went home for Thanksgiving and spent 5 glorious days in SA
27 days ago I went home for 14 days
20 days ago my divorce was finalized
13 days ago I came back to BCS
12 days ago I went back to work- yay
8 days ago I moved into my permanent office- double yay
1 day ago the students returned
2 days from now daddy is coming up for a visit (well work but he'll visit too)
16 days from now I have my first visitor of the year
23 days from now mama is coming to visit
72 days from now I go home for the first time this year (hopefully I'll be strong and wait)

One day I'll stop counting days I'm sure...

Review: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I don't even know where to begin with this damn book. And it's impossible to review without pulling my own failed marriage into my thoughts and opinions of it. I started reading this book back in July when my marriage was flailing horribly. I had to put it down cause it was pissing me off. This book is a historical, anthropological, sociological and biographical look at marriage. This book is what Liz Gilbert wrote after Eat, Pray, Love that tells her journey of how she got married again to her brazilian man from Bali even though she had never wanted to get married again. This book shares her journey through travel and research about the history of western marriage. That being said, she does eventually convince herself to get married again, whereas this book has continued to support my idea that marriage is dumb and unnecessary (again ask me in 3 years how I feel and I'm sure it'll be different). This book also has a great story about women in relationships, women as wives and women with the choice to be mothers or not. I found the section about motherless women to be particularly moving because I go back and forth daily about ever wanting children and again this book makes me feel like it's totally okay not to.

Overall I wont say I liked this book at all, I found it very interesting and well researched, but I could have read this book without Liz Gilbert's story just as the research she provided, because I found it all so very interesting. I originally picked up the book because I loved Eat, Pray, Love, but this was no Eat, Pray, Love.



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Review: Sharp Objects

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I read it in one day that should say enough in itself. It took me a few chapters to warm up to this book, but then I couldn't put it down! I had to finish it. Screwed up mother daughter relationships are just so delicious sometimes. Women and girls can be so cruel and awful to one another. There is nothing scarier than a pissed off middle school girl- omg they could kill you just by looking at you.

The basic story a girl returns to her hometown after years of staying away. She has a strained relationship with her mother and no real relationship with her half-sister. Till she goes home to investigate/report on the disappearance and murder of two girls. While the murder story has some interesting twists and turns, the rest story is the relationship these three women have with each other. The daughter in her 30s, half-sister only 13 and the mother.

I like Gillian Flynn cause she doesn't try to make amazingly strong women into saints, or superheros, she portrays them as the crazy bitches they are. Strong and crazy and almost always severely screwed up. Like in Gone Girl, the mother and daughters are pretty awful people and yet you find yourself sympathizing and understanding so much of what they do and say. It's disturbing that think that so many women probably feel the same way all the time, but no one talks about it.

The men characters aren't so good, Richard, John and Alan are just kinda boring whispy guys, they're there cause men have to be somewhere in the story but they aren't fully developed and don't add too terribly much to the picture. The one guy that has the most effort put into him is the 18 year old John, suspect and sister to one of the deceased girls.

Overall I really liked this book, I'll be thinking about it for a few days to come for sure. I will be thinking about all the crazy women I know about how crazy middle school age girls are and if I was one of them.



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Sunday morning

I'm surrounded by my kitties.  Sookie on the couch next to me begging for attention.  Sookie above me on the back on the couch resting from her surgery.  Neither cat is leaving me alone this morning.  They both want to be in whatever room I'm in and they're being extra needy- for cats.  For my cats, my cats are usually independent unless they want food, water or petting.

It rained for a good part of last night, this morning around 6AM there was a good thunderstorm.  I wished it had been later in the day, I enjoy reading during a thunderstorm, it reminds me of camp.  THunderstorms in winter are kinda weird.  Granted this isn't real winter it's 70 some odd degrees out side but it's December- so I'll rephrase and say Thunderstorms in December are weird.  I opened the blinds to the balcony to led the dull light in and the cats and I have been enjoying the view ever since.

I watched a couple of episodes of Downton Abbey (love) and have been readying a Gillian Flynn book since I liked the first one I read of her's so much.  It isn't as captivating as Gone Girl, but it'll do.  The apartment is the perfect temperature, I can lounge in pajamas without being too hot or cold.  From this angle I can see over the apartment complex and both my cats safely inside it.  It's comforting.  One of the first times since I've been here that I feel at home, relaxed.  The cats are happy, I'm at least comfortable and things are going to be alright.

It's my last Sunday in Bryan before I head home for Christmas.  I wont be back till the new year.  I'm hoping several things will be different then.  Least of all that I'll come back divorced.  I like starting things new and fresh.  I like making big changes in my life that are irreversible,  I think they kinda force you to move forward.

Do you ever feel like music is stalking you?

Music has been a apart of my life for as long as I remember.  I can't read without music in the background, I can't be in my car without my iPod, I have lots of exercise playlists and there is music I love to listen to while I sleep.  I like to theme my life and music is one of those ways I help carry out that theme.  There are certain bands I only listen to in the summer, there are certain songs I can't stand to listen to if it's sunny out.  I'm weird about music, it's okay cause I know it.  But music is something, like the books I ready, that I think guides me.  Music helps me let go of things and music most definitely reminds me of other things.

Whenever I hear Hard Candy I'm transported back to the summer before my senior year.  I can't listen to Hard Candy in the winter or fall, it just seems wrong.  There are other Counting Crows albums that perfectly fit the cooler weather.  Monte Montgomery only makes sense to me in the fall.  The first time I heard him play was at Krost Symposium at TLU in 2003, so I will always associate him with the fall.  Drive By Truckers should be listened to in the Spring and Summer, they're all wrong for December.  Muse, Radiohead and No Doubt are seasonless and can be listend to year round. 

I remember where I was the first time I heard a song.  I can remember what I was wearing and who I was with.  I can remember the lyrics to songs I was exposed to as a child and maybe only listen to once a year now.  Cat Stevens Ruins will forever remind me of waiting for my dad to pick me up on Wednesday nights in Middle School and while I haven't heard the song in years I still know every word.

Some songs follow you around, they stalk you.  Like that Fun song.  Seriously I couldn't eat lunch at Chili's at UTSA without that song coming on at least once, if not twice.  I don't listen to the radio so songs have to go extra out of their way to stalk me.

Then there are certain songs when you hear them you start looking around to see if a certain person is nearby, cause you could never hear that song without them being close.  Some songs immediately transport you from your body to a completely different time and place.

Some songs just take over your life, you emotions, everything that you're going through and claim you. Songs that so completely capture what you're going through it seems impossible.  Songs. Lyrics. Music. Just one chord.  All I have to head is one chord of one of those songs and immediately my world stops.