Insomnia

So I'm laying in bed in the dark and surprise surprise my brain is traveling 1000 mph and I need to be up in oh about 5 hours. Perfect. Always happens this way. 

But one of things I can't stop fussing over is how I suck at change. 

Lemme offer a quick back story...

Today I went with a friend to church. First time since I've been out here. I'm not a very churchy person and I'm sure I'm offending people by saying that but I'm not. After the spring break trip n as my very closest friend here goes I figured hey why not let's check it out. 

The service was different than what I had been used to but not bad. I enjoyed it, not gonna lie. And the pastor had some good points. One of which was how we responde when someone opposes us. He was relating it to a disciple, etc but it made me stop and think (imagine that) about what I do...

I fall apart. I get defensive. I take it as a personal attack even when it's not supposed to be. I don't like confrontation and avoid it. Or sometimes I create major issues out of pebble sized problems. 

And I wonder why I get stressed out all the time. 

But then it made me think about my most recent "opposers" if you will. And why I find them to be against me. 

Most of them aren't people they're events, situations, things out of my control. Like the weather, or getting internships, worrying about what other obstacles will come before they even get there and others are people but are they really opposing me or am I just taking it that way? 

I'm realizing more and more that I am terribly loyal and will transcend oceans for people who probably wouldn't jump a puddle for me. And then I get mad at them for not being a good friend. Is that fair though? They never said that by me helping them or whatever, would mean they'd reciprocate. But I push and I push and maybe it's because I'm out here and I miss my really good friends back home and I want to replace them. But it doesn't work that way. And I hate how the good ones I have found are most likely going to exit my life altogether because I'm only here 2 years and then maybe we'll text every now and then and stay Facebook friends but otherwise that relationship is done for good. And even the not so good ones will leave too. And I'm still upset about them! I have this weird, twisted notion that even when they suck they don't and that it's still worth it to me to keep them in my life. I care too much. What is wrong with me??

This coming and going of people is hard for me. I hate it. I want everyone who I have ever cared for even in the slightest to stay with me. Forever. I thought people I met had a reason for why we met and if they impacted my life they were meant to stay in it. 

And then that pastor's message of how we deal when we are opposed comes into play. We suck at opposition. We are all very sore losers and if we can prevent loss you can bet that we will do whatever it takes. But what I think he was trying to get at was accepting and learning from it. And for me that means letting those people who won't jump the puddle for me go. And even the ones I think would cross an ocean for me too. Because even though they aren't with me right here, right now, I carry them with me. All of them. Whether it's because they burned me and I have learned to guard myself better or because they helped me and I learned that people are genuine and good. And those memories are mine. They don't get to take them when they inevitably leave. And they all will. And I will leave too. And I have to be ok with it. I will be. It's just hard to fathom and even harder to accept. 

So if you're reading this, know that you did teach me something: good, bad or ugly, whatever it was, you did impact me and you are apart of who I am. I hope that for all those I do get to meet and share time with and then leave, think back with a positive thought or a laugh. I'm not going to make everyone feel that way but I can try, to an extent (maybe a pool instead of an ocean.) And if I can't stop change, and the people from comin and going, well I don't know what. Guess I'm still figuring that out. I really wish I could find my friend from the cafe and ask more about the weight of living. Until then, I'll just lie here in the dark and blog about it. :)

To be continued.  

One more post about Spring Break and then I'm done...

Ok. Last bit about Florida and my epic trip.

This has taken way longer than I expected. It's just when I get to typing I sometimes can't stop and the words just keep coming and coming. But I only have a few more days to talk about, promise!

Wednesday, March 12th, Day 5:

3rd and final day on the river. We're all used to be covered in sand and dirt at this point and we have awkward tan lines and we're pros at starting up a fire for our little camping stoves and I can make some pretty dang good scones and pancakes out in the wilderness. We have too many inside jokes and so many talks about our lives and this very eclectic group of people who would probably NEVER be together like this on our own or ever again, is now extremely close. We run into various other spring breakers and our old guy friends again. But early in the am we get to packing up and heading out, the nomad life is the life for us. Our last canoe trek is only a little over 13 miles which is good since I didn't sleep much with the storm raging about the night before. It was really cool to go through that and I have a new appreciation for thunder storms and nature. Mother nature is a fierce woman and you def do not want to be on her bad side. And I was a little sore from going to never canoeing/paddling to 30 miles in 2 days on a rolling river with a current of maybe 1.5mi/hr. You're supposed to use your core muscles more than your arms but my shoulders and back definitely were feeling tight.

This time I was partnered up with the other guide, we'll call her Cassie. She works not only with outdoor pursuits but with the facilities department within the Rec as well. She was the one other person I kinda sort of knew before the trip. But she was also my tent partner and we were in meal groups together as well. Once again, I had some really good, deep talks about life both past and present and future. Something about the water, the sun, and no civilization or modern material things to make you reflect and open up to almost complete strangers. It just seems right to start talking and really listening to not only the other person but yourself and your thoughts while out on that river or in a tent on the banks. It offers a different perspective and now I don't see any of these people as complete strangers anymore.

It's hard not to become close when it's just 10 of you relying on each other to help with packing, setting up your mobile home day in and day out, cooking, cleaning, etc. We were a team and we all played our parts. I often would cook the baked goods, the pancakes, scones for breakfast and the bread with dinner. But not the main meals, instead that went to my partners and instead I would clean the pot and pan we used to cook everything, sometimes 3 times over to get a meal finished. Together we all got water, pitched tents, etc. I probably cleaned that same pot and pan over 50times. Some would haul the bigger bags and tubs from the canoes to the camp and others would make sure the canoes were tethered and safe for the night. And we would chat by the camp fire and around our little stoves talking about everything and nothing, little silly stories, or serious ones too. On the river we would play bumper canoes and string our canoes together to make a 'party barge' but most of the time it was just to be all together and if you were lucky to be in the middle of the canoes you could catch a cat nap in the sun.

But soon enough our time on the river ended. We got out at our ending destination, the Suwanee National Forest and our outfitter came and drove us back to our first camp site, Stephen Foster camp grounds. It was so bizarre to get back in a car and go so much faster than our 5mile/hr pace on a canoe. That night we went out on the town of White Springs. Mind you this town was little little. No stop lights, just a blinking one used instead of a stop on the one major intersection.

We went to the best place in town for dinner, a little ma'and'pop kind of style burger joint, Fat Belly's. BBQ, meat and fried anything you want was on the menu. We ate our fill of cheap american beer, and tons of meat and onion rings and chicken wings. It was delicious and I asked for sweet tea, in attempt to taste real southern 'sweet tay' as they pronounce it. It's not THAT bad. It's not syrup with ice. It is sweet though. Lots of sugar n I'm pretty sure if I hadn't drank some water with it I would have gotten a cavity almost instantly. We definitely all left with Fat Bellies, promising to never eat again we were so full. Or at least until about an hour later when we would get hungry again.

We took a walk around the town and saw the cute picket fences and read about the historical significance of the town. We walked by Sharon's Eatery and met the owner, he was just about to have his grand reopening since the store closed after his step mom, Sharon, died. We chatted for awhile and wished him luck and then went back for a night of smores and campfire games.

Thursday, March 13th, Day 6:

We got up super early and hit the road for a 9hour trek up to Kentucky. We watched all of the same billboards go by and I nodded off after stopping at a few sketchy gas stations again. We got back into the hills and mountains of eastern tennessee and kentucky and soon we saw snow on the ground.

Snow?!? We'd be living in tents, snow is not ideal for tents!!

Yep. We were thrust back into the reality of the north and the cold that came with it. The whole reason we were there though was to check out Cumberland Falls. It's one of 2 places in the entire world that has a moon bow.

What's a moon bow? A rainbow that is created by the light of the moon. The MOON.

The way the moon reflects off of the mist from the water falls sometimes makes a moon bow, but only right around the full moon time and it has to be a clear night, obviously. The other place that you can see one is somewhere in Central Africa.

Yeah, so we were going to take our chances and try to see a moon box in Corbin, KY.
And we got to see it! It was a frigid 30 degrees out but we went down to the falls and got to see the moon bow! It was a super clear night and the moon was bright and there definitely was a rainbow on the outer edge of the falls. It was very faint though, and a picture was totally not possible, not enough light to capture much of anything but we could see it. And it was so cool. SO COOL! We spent a few hours looking at the moonbow, star gazing and drinking hot tea that we dubbed 'moonbow tea' because we could and it was delicious and it was a prefect way to wrap up our splendid spring break trip.

Moonbow!

After a very restless and cold night we packed up for the last time and headed back to Carbondale. About 5 more hours with our new friends listening to country music, national public radio and talking about how badly we just wanted a real shower. And then we were back. Back to reality, back to the good ol town of Carbondale, my home, Salukiville.

And that is the story of my spring break! Sorry it took so long but I had a great time as you can tell and a lot happened :) But now I'm so far behind on my blog, promised my mom I would get caught up soon!
So to be continued!

Spring Break Tales

I left off with my first day on the Suwanee River with my new found friends.

So without further ado…

Day 3, Monday, March10th:

And we're off on our 43 mile canoeing adventure! 5 canoes, 10 people, 3 very large rubbermaid tubs of food, 20+ nalgene h2o bottles, a dozen backpacks and bags, and only 3 bottles of sunscreen packed into the canoes with us as our supplies for this trek. 

The first day we paddled 12 miles. It took us around 5 hours. "Paddled" is a lose term…we mostly floated, occasionally putting the paddle into the water to alter our course. The river was slow and rolling. Not many waves or much of a current. But we were ok with that. I was in front of the canoe, my partner was the outdoor pursuits GA and together we spent most of the time talking. More talk of everything and nothing all at the same time. We talked on the area, his crazy cool adventures he's been on and led, how we got into our fields, our pasts, our families, how he's getting married in a month, how I'm definitely not getting married anytime soon, etc.

We stopped for lunch along the banks of the river. They were sandy beaches and ridiculously white, fine sandy ones at that. The water was black. Not polluted, but definitely very dark it looked like we were canoeing in a river of coca-cola or iced tea. The bright, white sand beaches juxtaposed with the black water of the river made it very pretty. We got over the color of the water pretty quickly because it didn't smell, it was cool and refreshing and it made you realize that yeah, we're in a new place on a new adventure, and all those old country songs about the dark, black waters in the south totally make sense now. 

After our 12 miles was up we arrived at our first campground. No one really knew what to expect but we found that our reservations included a screened hut like cabin and a fire pit on beautiful white sand. So this is back country living in Florida, eh? And they had bathrooms and even a communal sink to wash your dishes. We set up camp and it was the one night we didn't have to pitch a tent. Glorious. At the camp we ran into a few groups we saw on the river as well, a group of gentlemen probably in their mid to late 50's and 60's who were just having a week out camping with the boys. We made small talk and they said how it was tradition for all the friends to meet up and spend the week floating on the river. Ah, the retired life. So cool. Many of them would volunteer their time at different camp grounds in exchange that they got to stay there for free and really just live for a few months at different camping areas up and down the east coast. One guy said he would go to Maine and canoe and kayak in the rivers in the summer and then would spend his winters in South Carolina sea kayaking. The dude is seriously living the dream. Later after spending some time setting up and cooking our food, the gentlemen came over with a big pot of chili and sautéed veggies. Claiming to be full and not wanting to waste it all they offered it to us and we got to sit around the campfire just chit chatting with them. Which was fine with me since the meal we chose to make was more on the level of the dog-food-esque style of dehydrated foods. Blek. We had eaten deliciously good meals but that one definitely was less than stellar. But the old guys were great. They explained how we were in the 'Real Florida'. The Orlando parks, Miami, PCB, key west etc didn't count as Florida. Those were tourist traps and dirty and not a good representation of Florida even though that's all I think about when I hear 'Florida'. We had a really good time with the guys though and loved to hear all of their stories.

Tuesday, March 11th, Day 4:

2nd day on the river. Today we had a much bigger trek to haul, a little over 18 miles to the next camp ground. And we had to beat the rain storm that was supposed to roll in that evening. We make breakfast (cheesy eggs, hash browns and pancakes. kid you not. yum!) clean up and pack up the canoes. We switched up partners for our canoes and I now was with a fitness instructor with our campus rec program, named Connor. 

Today was probably my favorite. From singing 'Just Around the River Bend' from Pocahontas and other tunes with my fellow canoe-ers to seeing an alligator it was splendid, just splendid.

Yes, real live alligator, it was sun bathing in the shallows near the bank of the river. He was a little guy, probably only like 5 ft long and not very ferocious looking at all. Kinda cute when they're just chilling out. But still SUPER COOL!

Connor and I had some really good talks too. Some got really deep and really personal, really fast. How is it that sometimes you're able to open up so much more so to someone you hardly know than sometimes someone you consider to be so incredibly close? Not sure how or why but it happened. We talked about school, our adventures abroad, family dynamics (the not so glamorous parts) and religion.

Yikes. Religion as a conversation topic? Most of the time I steer clear of that one. It usually leads to opinions, hurt feelings, arguments, etc. No just no no no no no.

But it all started with my silly game of 20 questions I like to play when the silence is too much and too awkward. I asked him what super power would he want, if he could have just one. He said flight, so he could travel anywhere and that led to where would you want to live if you could live anywhere and he said Carbondale.

I turned around so fast to stare at him that I almost flipped the canoe.

"Carbondale?!? Seriously?? I said anywhere, no money worries, nothing, you could live literally anywhere in the world and you would choose Carbondale????"

"Yeah. Well…no, yeah I would stay right where I am."

"Stop. Why? You're crazy! Theres so many beautiful places on this planet and you've seen some! You've traveled the world but you would choose the dale?"

"You laugh but yeah. I love it here."

"Why?"

"My church. If I could take them with me maybe then I would go somewhere else but if not I'd stay."

And that lead us into quite the conversation. In a canoe you end up facing the same way so I'd have to talk like over my shoulder or to the water before me and hope he heard me but then I gave up and stopped paddling so I could turn around because the conversation had gotten us so engrossed that we fell a good 400 yards behind the rest of the group. Oops.

But it was great. I won't get into major details or get preachy but it was eye-opening I think for both of us. To see the differences and to kind of just get the chance to talk, not argue or try to persuade just discuss was refreshing. Deep, and insightful and really just cool.

We did catch up with the rest of the group and got to our camp ground for the night. We didn't get the little hut cabins like the last place but we did get a HUGE thunder storm.

Like boom, crash, lightening, pouring rain the whole 9 yards. It felt like I was inside the storm trying to sleep in that tent with all the thrashing that was happening outside.
But we survived and no water got into our little pop-up home. If you haven't slept in a tent in the middle of a storm, I do suggest it. It's really insane and cool and scary but afterwards you're like ya, I survived. I can survive the elements!

And I'll talk about our last day on the river next time!
To be continued!

Back to the Grind

Spring break is over.

Sigh.

Back to IM sports, clubs,  finance homework, marketing and the 'real world'. Whatever that means.

But it's kinda ok because I had a FANTASTIC break.

I went to Florida.

Yep. Florida. When you think of Florida do you think white sandy beaches, margaritas, big cities, old people and alligators?

I do. I got the white sandy beaches. Kinda. No margaritas, just a few beers at a local dive bar. Definitely no large cities, the town had only one stop light and there wasn't really a reason for it. A few old people, but they were super cool and pretty funny in that cute they don't get kids these days way. Oh and yeah, I saw an alligator too. No big deal.

They're so cute when they're not trying to eat you.

I went to White Springs, FL to canoe and camp along the Suwanee River. I slept on the ground in a tent for an entire week, made my meals out of dehydrated food and didn't shower (bathed in the river) in a legit shower for an entire week. I only knew 2 other people going on the trip, the outdoor pursuit ga and a supervisor who works time to time in the rec. But I didn't know them that well. And I would be living basically with 9 other strangers out in the back country of Florida for a week. I was entering a world without cell phones, electricity, air conditioning, heat or even so much as a blow up mattress.

And I loved it.

It was so much fun and it was so good to get away from everything. I turned my phone off and didn't turn it on but on the second to last day just to tell my parents I was alive.

It was 7 days filled with sun, canoes, new friends, new adventures, new states, self exploration, perspective, random talks of religion, school, past events, politics, power ball lottos, billboard signs, road trips, block-rockin-beats, cheese blocks and southern accents.

I'll give you a short version of a play by play because I could probably write a full on novel about my trip. But I'll save you from that much reading.

Day 1, Saturday, March 8th:
Travel day. After meeting at the Rec to pack up gear at 5am we head off on our adventure. We spent 8 hours in a van headed south, we traveled through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. I was co-pilot and listened to some rad 90's rock music and talked about beer brewing and life after SIU with we'll call him Mick the outdoor GA. He's super tall and lanky and when he talks his voice just commands attention. If the whole outdoor/guide deal doesn't work out, preacher or politician would definitely be an option for this guy. It was really cool to see all of the states that I had never ever been to before. We drove through Nashville and Atlanta, traffic was crazy bad in Atlanta so the rumors are true, Atlanta SUCKS with traffic. But I was excited to see it because of The Walking Dead. Not gonna explain, if you don't know the show, you're missing out.
The billboard signs were hilarious. Georgia has a ton. Like every 200ft there's a new sign. And some are weird and now that I'm in business and learning about marketing I couldn't help but comment on a few…like the "trucker friendly spa" or "Mary's sausage festival" or "Strippers. Need we say more?" (personally my favorite). Pecans and peaches are king in Georgia that's for sure. Every exit had a pecan farm or stand and you hadn't had a peach til you had a Georgia peach. And honey jam is a thing. No clue what it is or how to make honey jam but it's only real honey jam in Georgia. Don't get it twisted with Honey jelly either.

They're serious about their peaches and pecans. Pronounced 'pee-can' and not 'pee-khan'. I made that mistake. Sure fire way to prove you're a 'northerner'.

We spent that night in a campsite in a town called High Falls. Yes, they had a water fall. No it wasn't that high. Cool to see and we went exploring for a bit but the name did not live up to the actual falls. We learned how to make our dinner using a little gas burner stove and dehydrated food. Before you start to gag it was actually really good. Like gourmet of the dehydrated packaged foods. We ate spaghetti with red sauce, cheesy garlic bread and chocolate pudding pie for dessert. And it was delicious. All we had to do was boil some water and stir.

I ate better on that trip than I do at home.

We set up our tents and the only 3 girls spent the first of many nights together. Turns out…we all snore. Loudly. And not very lady-like at all. I guess I'm the worst. I woke up to a few zzz's myself but was so tired and uncomfortable trying to sleep on the ground for the first night that I didn't care much.

Day 2, Sunday, March 9th:
We woke up a little late. It was daylight savings AND we went to eastern time. So we lost out on 2 hours. We planned on waking up at 6ish. We woke up at 9:15. oops. As we still had a 4 hour drive to get into Florida, breakfast was a quick meal of scrambled eggs and hash browns. (dehydrated, mind you and they could rival denney's scrambled hash.) We packed up the tent and moved on out. We learned pretty quickly that you don't wear shoes in the tent and the faster you can get it up and down, the easier life becomes.

Not an actual photo from the trip but this is the gist of what our camp looked like. Gear every where and a bunch of tents staked about. Our mobile homes that served as bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms for the entire week. Dump it all in a spot only to pick it all back up in the morning and move again. Ah, the life of a nomad. Fun for about a week and then you really start to appreciate not having to pack up your entire house every flipping morning.

More driving. So far I've seen mostly roads and cars and sketchy gas stations with people trying to push us to buy pirated dvd's. No thanks I do not want to see a fake Bruce Willis in Die Hard from the view point of a cell phone in a movie theater. But some of the guys got some power ball tickets. It started as this inside joke thing because of all the billboards about it and then imagine that the marketing strategy worked and they bought a ticket.

We finally get into Florida. Still lots of billboards. But it's really green. And flat. The first thing I noticed in all of the states are the trees. Logger's daughter problems. They are so much different than the big pines we have back home in the mountains of California. They're little and skinny and there's a lot of spanish moss. Which makes them look eerie and like you're in a scooby-doo episode. That became their name, scooby-doo trees, thanks to one of the guys on the trip, who just blurted out on the drive, "Oooh look at those scooby-doo trees!" and thus they were dubbed such.

We got into White Springs, Florida. Finally. Here we would start our 43 mile canoe trip down the Suwanee river. (Tons of Native American names for places and things, Chatanooga, Chatahoochee, Okeefanokee, etc.) The town is super small. One little burger place that also doubles as the towns only bar. It only has 3 taps so don't plan on getting wild and crazy. An outfitter for camping, canoeing. And a few cute little southern houses. Oh and don't forget Sharon's Eatery. A little breakfast/sandwhich shop.
We stayed at Stephen Foster's Camp grounds. Stephen Foster was this composer back in the good ol' days of the 1800's and he wrote about the Suwanee river. Turns out he's not even from Florida and never even saw the river he just liked the name and it rhymed. But hey whatever floats your boat.

The campgrounds were beautiful. Cyprus trees and marshy, not swampy but marshy. And they had bathrooms. So we didn't have to rough it so bad. We had running water. What a luxury. It was warm too. A beautiful 70plus degrees. I was basking in the sun, it felt so incredibly good.
After checking out the area and the river we spent the evening chatting with a group of retirees on a couple retreat style trip. People in the south just are automatically nicer if only for their accents and how they call even us silly and loud kids 'sweet heart' and 'honey'. They were cute and so excited to hear we were from Illinois and enjoying the fact that we were no longer in the snow. They told us about the "Real Florida" and how they were basically all not originally from Florida (imagine that). But still really cool to talk to them.

Rad pink flamingo board shorts, bro.

One of our group was running around and ended up running on top of this hill by the water and posing only to find he had stepped on a fire ant hill and was covered in fire ants. One minute he was posing like super man, the next he screams "OUCH! Something is biting me!!" and scurried off the hill. Hilarious but his ankle was swollen. Sucks to suck.

We had to hit the river pretty early in the am, so it was an early night for us. I slept a lot better than the first night, my body slowly getting used to sleeping on the ground. And that it was a cool 50degrees all night definitely helped too.

Day 3, Monday, March 10th:

River Day!

We met up with outfitter and put all our gear in dry bags, got the kodak cameras out, put on the sunscreen and started to paddle. 10 people, 5 canoes all headed down the Suwanee River for a 12 mile paddle for the first day.

And here I'll stop and continue with my next post later. Pics will also be posted later, still got to get the camera developed. #oldschool

To be continued!

Peace Out Brahhh!

SPRING BREAK BABAYYYYY

I've finished the schedules, set up a concession stand, sent out a ton of emails, got all the IM games rescheduled and rescheduled again and again, finished calling countless people, got 2 apps in, met with my advisor, worked on homework, researched my projects, and am so incredibly ready for break.

Like. So. Ready.

I'm done. I'm so tired of my email and my cell phone. I hate them. I can't live without them and I hate it. 

But now it's spring break and this chic is going to…

 FLORIDA!!! So it's not going to be the ocean beach or this kind of Spring Break…

But more along the lines of this...
 

I'm trekking it with 9 other strangers as we backpack, camp, canoe, float, hike, eat s'mores, tell campfire stories and enjoy the great outdoors.

I am so excited!!!

And I may get to see this!

Manatees! The cows of the sea!!

Or one of these!! 

Look at those teeth!! AH!!!

And I'm gonna get to soak up the sun and forget about the snow and everything else that is So. Ill.
YESSSSSS

We're leaving tomorrow and I'm still not fully packed! I have this crazy big backpack that is way intense and a sleeping bag that's my bed for the next week. Everything I'll own will fit in that bad boy or else it don't go.

Talk about stepping out of my comfort zone. I've hardly camped for a weekend, let alone a full week. First time for everything though and I've been waiting for this day for over a month so no turning back now!

It's adventure time! I'm going in the back woods to get it away from it all and that's just what's going to happen. No cell. No email. No internet. No im sports. No work. No school. No interaction with the 'real world'. And I can't wait. CAN. NOT. WAIT. I hope it goes well. I hope I don't get the case of the city girl stuck in the back country. That'll ruin my week. No, only positive thoughts and even if it rains, I'll be in Florida for the first time, doing things I've never ever done before and getting away from everything just like I wanted. So bam! Automatically a win! And I don't get those often so I'll take it.

So if you don't hear from me for 7 days, that's how I want it to be, sorry I'm not sorry.

Later Gator! I'm out!

Good bye February

And just like that February is gone.

WHAT THE HECK JUST HAPPENED???

I could've sworn that yesterday was Valentine's Day! Now it's March?!?

Hey, Father Time, SLOW THE FUQ DOWN!

But really though, this was probably the craziest month ever in the history of all my months. And it was a short one at that.

Work has been a dead sprint. Basketball, indoor soccer, officials, billiards, snow flag football, table tennis. And that's just the IM side. Add on sport clubs, all 41 of them…and a tornado warning.

I so got this.

Long story short- I spent a lot of my days like this…

And most days I would go from 6:30/7am to 1am. 

If anyone reading this who know me personally knows that Marissa doesn't do mornings, or lack of sleep very well. At all. I'm like Oscar the Grouch, "SCRAM GO AWAY" and then someone hands me coffee and then I'm like Elmo, "HI I'M ELMO! LET'S DANCE!"

Without coffee it just ain't pretty

And 1 cup later and everything is ok. And I'm dancing with NPH. 

My caffeine intake has exploded, I literally cannot function without it. Oh well. Panera and Starbucks baristas know me by name now and I'm not that upset about it. It is very weird how shaky I get though with it and without it. No caffeine and I get headaches and shaky. Caffeine I don't have headaches but I get too hyper and shake. It kinda frightened me at first but now I just like to think that I'll be used to it so that when I'm 95 I'll be like, ha, I've got this down.

To say that just lack of sleep was my only issue this month would be a DRASTIC lie. 

I'm still learning. And a lot is trial by error. And it was full of errors. Like chalk full of errors. Fake it til you make it? More like let's learn the hard way and try to reinvent the wheel because we're working harder not smarter. Face palm, Cali… From misplacing important documents, scheduling mishaps, miscommunication, misinterpretations, miscalculating, misinformation, misbehavior, misperceptions, just lots of MIStakes. I am asking more questions though. And offering lots of apologies first. And swallowing a lot of pride. And if the only silver lining from this is that I'm learning what not to do, that's better than nothing. Learn something new everyday. That's the goal and I'm pretty sure I've learned 1000 and 1 ways not to do things. 

So here's to a new month! With less mistakes and more wins. That'd be great.

We are finally in our last week of some IM sports and will start off new sports. And we're supposed to have another ice storm come through. With snow. And frigid temps. The fun never stops!

More ice? And snow??? Perfect. So incredibly over this winter. 

When you work in a field that heavily relies on the weather to be nice in order to do anything this is the worst. Mother Nature is really getting on my bad side. I just want it to not be 20 or less so that IM Softball can start! Is that so much to ask, huh??

Apparently it is. We've pushed back the start date by 2 weeks because the weather has just sucked. And when we have those fleeting moments of sunshine and a day above 40 it lasts just that, very fleetingly and we go between doom and gloom and cold cold to sunshine, happy happy, only wearing 1 layer not 4 and back to doom and gloom again.

Sucks to suck.

But I'm not going to worry about it. Letting it go. I have work to get to tomorrow but that's tomorrow. And who wants to waste my time fretting over what's over and done. So here's to February and learning everyday but now it's time to-

And it's Kaylee's birthday so I'm in charge of showing her a good time. 

Kaylee is not allowed to be sober on her birthday. That's no fun. And what type of friend would I be if I didn't partake too? So watch out Salukiville, Kentucky and Cali are headed out!

P.S. Apparently some of my staff reads this but they can't get very far past the title, they say it's too long and boring. Psh, please, my life and blog are both equally hilarious and fabulous. Let's be honest. #sarcasm

To Be Continued!