Woo.

We had dinner with A's mom and his mom's boyfriend tonight. I met his brother (again), sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew last night. He is coming down here to spend New Year's Eve with me and to meet my family. His dog loves me. I can talk to him about anything. He really is one of the nicest people that I have ever met. EVER.

I feel more special when I am with him. He knows where I have come from in past relationships because he has been there too. We both have to keep pinching ourselves because we can't believe that we met. It's incredible.

I am excited and scared all at once. I have the warm fuzzies, the goofy giggles, the nervous laughter, all that stuff that I didn't really think I was going to find anytime soon. The last time I felt like this...well, we all know how that turned out.

Play the game smarter, Haze. Don't settle (although I don't see myself having to do that yet). But most of all, enjoy this.

Late Night Musings

1:18 AM....

I can't sleep. I feel wide awake for absolutely no reason. My mind is buzzing with a lot of new and exciting possibilities.

The good thing about having an active imagination like mine is that life can never really sneak up on you. I can envision hypothetical situations as if they were actually happening...and even if I don't always pay close attention to what my mind dreams up, few things have completely thrown me for a loop. Even things I've heard about C...I saw coming at one point. I just chose to ignore it.

Now what's been keeping me up rather than anger or sadness is pure, unadulterated excitement (and maybe a little fear). I have to play the game smarter this time around, and trust my instincts more.

L said she thinks that spending time with A is going to inspire me to write more. I think she's right...I can feel it coming already.

I feel proud of myself again--for my grades this semester, for maintaining and replenishing important relationships, for being the bigger person, for stepping up when everyone else walked away.

Looking through my archives, part of me misses the angst-ridden, sad entries I used to make. I was only inspired to write when I felt alone. I still think some of my best work came from those low moments. I haven't quite figured out how to write when I'm happy, in a way that doesn't come off as completely pretentious and overly optimistic.

Balance. Something to work on.

1:40 AM...drained and ready to sleep.

On Being Maternal.

Apparently, I have some mothering skills in me after all!!

Let me back up here...I've never been a big fan of small children. Babysitting never really worked out because small kids go off into their own different, little worlds that I couldn't tap into. So I've always joked that I have no maternal instinct whatsoever.

Flash forward to Christmas dinner at Grandma's. Most of my cousins are at the age where they are married and beginning to have kids. As one of the younger grandkids, it has been an interesting experience at the latest family gatherings --hearing the squeals and the cries and the laughter and watching the babies get passed around from aunt to aunt.

Last year my cousin C and his girlfriend F brought their three month old baby N to Grandma's for Christmas. My aunt (her grandmother) was holding her when some sort of crisis came up in the kitchen. Being the closest person standing to Aunt D at the time, I found myself with a crying, spitting baby shoved in my face. I was bouncing her and walking around the room, patting her back to get her to stop crying. Eventually she did, and she started making those cute baby groaning noises. This warmth grew inside me once I realized that I had actually calmed her down. ME! The happiness was short-lived, however. I looked down just in time to see her spit up all over my brand new Christmas sweater. Needless to say, N went back to her grandma ASAP. I remember thinking to myself: How the hell can moms deal with this?!

This Christmas, N is a little over a year old...a walking, sorta-talking, dancing machine. She doesn't even need to hear music, she'll rock out for anyone! Her half-brother D was there too. A few of us grandkids were sitting in the kitchen when N tried to climb into her big bro's lap. Well D (who is 6) wasn't having it, so he tried to shove her off the chair. I scooped her up just before she hit the floor and not knowing what else to do with her, put her in my lap. Next thing I know she's looking up at me with her face upside down laughing and giggling. I'll admit, my heart melted at that point. She had me hooked.

I went to sit down in the living room and N began to walk around the house, delivering random scraps of wrapping paper to me. I pretended to be really excited each time she came around with a new piece for me. After a while, she plopped right down in my lap. I had no idea what to entertain her with (she had a doll, but decided it was more fun to try to pull out her hair than pretend to be motherly) so I grabbed my grandma's basket of Christmas cards sitting on the floor and started showing N the pictures of baby Jesus and the snowy landscapes printed on the front. I've never seen a baby get such a kick out of Christmas cards. She screamed at each one after she pulled it out, showing me her little discoveries before crumpling them back into the basket with me warning her to "be gentle!"

We have this on video. My cousin J made me watch it. I made a ridiculous fool of myself, cooing at this baby and racing RC cars with her brother, who was convinced that I was 14 years old instead of 20. My mom just sat there watching me with the kids laughing, probably out of surprise at the fact that they were so drawn to me.

And you know what the best part is? I had a fuckin' blast!

Holidays, huzzah!

Christmas is almost here, and I couldn't be more excited. Last night I curled up under the Christmas tree and looked up at the lights through the branches. I used to do it as a kid and I forgot how much cooler it looks to see a Christmas tree from that angle.

We had a bonfire at K's place last night...me, K, M, and D. It was nice to sit around the fire with a few drinks, catching up on lost time. M and D are such awesome friends, always looking out for me. I've really come to see them as my overprotective big brothers, but I love that about them.

There is something different about the holidays this year. I'm thinking that maybe I just have a greater sense of security than I have had in the past. I've been riding pretty high for the past couple of weeks, and the excitement of spending time with my family for Christmas is getting me even more amped up. I hope that this wave lasts...it's a nice change of pace from the roller coaster.

C is seeing someone new, and as much as I tried to prepare myself for that, I am happy to say that there was no need. I felt nothing more than apathy about the whole situation. I had people IMing and calling me all day expressing protest, but I didn't get riled up about it. Who cares, honestly. It's strange now. People are still mad at him, but I just don't see the point in it anymore. You'd think that I would be the one still upset and everyone else would have gotten over it by now.

I think part of that lack of interest may come from the fact that I have a new prospect as well. A is 22, a college graduate, and an aspiring novelist. We've hung out a few times since we met through a mutual friend and this is the first time in a long time that I've genuinely been excited about getting to know someone. I don't want to say a whole lot more, because I'm really trying not to get too hopeful, but things have been going well so far. So we'll see how that ends up.

Happy Holidays, ya'll!

100th Post. Hooray.

Every so often, I look up old childhood friends on Facebook and Myspace, just to see what they're up to. Today I searched for one of my neighbors, one who I haven't seen in six or seven years now. She moved out when I was in third or fourth grade, but would come back to visit her grandparents fairly often. At some point in ninth or tenth grade, I know that she got pregnant, married, and moved to Texas. And she's my age...two kids (that got taken away because she was doing drugs), two marriages, and she is in PA now, with another baby on the way, trying to work her way towards getting her two daughters back. Her daughters are adorable--I remember meeting them back in high school when they were both just toddlers.

But I think the most powerful thing I got from seeing her profile was the memory of a conversation we had during her last visit before she went to jail. She said that just spending time with me again, being in a normal environment, allowed her to forget about all the bad things that had happened to her over the past eight years. She told me that she wished me the best of luck in life, and said that she would always be rooting for me to do big things...the type of things that she was never able and will never be able to do.

I'm not sure that there's a point or moral lesson in that story. But I hope somehow she knows that I'm thinking about her.

Ch-Ch-Check It Out

Au revoir, semester from hell. And good riddance to you.

I can't believe I did it. I kept my focus and I just plowed right through despite all the bullshit. I feel like a completely different person now--a little wiser, with a fuller awareness of myself. I can't help but feel like everything that has happened has brought me to the better place I am at now. I have better relationships with the people who matter the most to me and I'm on the cusp of what could possibly be the next big thing in my life. And even if it's not, I have so much more to be thankful for and people to be appreciative of.

I am proud of myself for not letting my own stupidity and insecurities ruin my goals for the semester.

"She remembers when she first got her wings
And how she opened up that day
she learned to sing
Then the colors came, erased the
black and white
And her whole world changed
when she realized

She's a butterfly, pretty as the crimson sky
Nothing's ever gonna bring her down
And everywhere she goes
Everybody knows she's so glad to be alive
She's a butterfly..."

I can't help seeing how happy he is and wondering when, along the way, he decided that he didn't love me anymore. Because clearly, he had checked out of this long before he did anything about it.