Thursday, January 8, 2015

Coffee, Tea, & 2015!


My friends and readers, it has been too long! Life has just calmed down enough for me to stop in and say some words before I must go be busy again! It seemed to me that the time to update you all would certainly be now. And update I shall!

Seeing as my last post was September, I shall start there and work my way through the months that follow!

September, 2014://

I was still working, enjoying myself in the salon. Went to an amusement park for my little brother's birthday, which was a joy after insanely busy back-to-school weekends in the salon. I was still taking my four business classes in college, tackling an insane amount of homework and often times sitting down for ten hours a day simply to get all of it done. It was exhausting, but fantastic at the same time. 

October, 2014://

With the pressure of group projects and presentations bearing down on me, I found it necessary to quit my job in the salon so I could focus all of my energy on school. In my situation, my GPA is important to me, and I am thankful to live in an environment that allows me to do such. With the money I saved up from working, I paid for coming spring semester classes. During my second to last week, I designed t-shirts for my salon's breast cancer awareness promotion, and afterwards went on to help my family participate in hosting a Halloween event with our church.Tons of homework, not a lot of free time. Little sister got bronchitis in the last week of the month.

November, 2014://

Pine tree fell on the 1st, falling over our goat yard and barely missing our front deck. No animals or structures were harmed, but we lost our gorgeous peach tree. One of my main photography loves became firewood in a matter of seconds, but thankfully the tree had sprout beneath the main trunk, so we now have a sturdy little tree growing in the exact same spot. Another peach tree is on the way! My mom and other sister caught the bronchitis and spent the month coughing. My hypersensitive lungs were glad that I spent almost all of my time in my room working on presentations and studying for finals. Spent Thanksgiving break with a family sick now suffering from walking pneumonia. Groups suddenly clammed up and left me completely in charge of projects during the last weeks of the month. I think I lost my mind somewhere, but I may have never had my mind to begin with. I quickly found out just how well someone who turns in everything on time can cope with cramming. It is amazing. Thank goodness I did not have coffee then, oi!

December, 2014://

Finished all my finals and presentations, saving the rear ends of all my team members who thought it cool to wait until the night before to start thinking of what they were going to present. All went well, and I found that I didn't even care who got the credit for my work. I got a great grade, and I was going to leave happy. Family was still sick, with coughs lingering in my mom and the oldest of my younger sisters. Had a wonderful Christmas, enjoyed having my first paychecks to fund Christmas shopping! Saw extended family, then spent the rest of the week resting and coming to grips with holiday weight gain. Ha!

And now, eight days into January, I have gotten all my books for this new semester, will be driving my sister and self to classes, bought my very own laptop with my own money (which I am typing on right this moment), and finally found the bedroom floor that has been missing for the past two years. That last task, however, was only accomplished after inhaling two cups of coffee. While I am normally a strict tea-drinker, my sister found herself without a coffee buddy when my mom began taking medication for shingles, so I stepped up to the plate and quickly found that I favored the hot cups of bitter liquid. I jumped into this pool too quickly, however, and found out first hand that drinking two to three cups of coffee in a row with no food along with it leads to some serious anxiety and jitters. After spending two whole days worrying about things I never even glanced at before, I have restricted myself to one SMALL mug of coffee in the morning or during the day when my sister makes it. I know what my go-to drink will be, though, when finals come in April and May.... And its not going to be tea! I could write a whole research paper in an hour on coffee, methinks! Thank goodness I have also grown fond of green tea (something I have been wanting to accomplish for some time now!), so now I can alternate between it and chai when I refuse to drink coffee. Yes, I know about decaf, but I have heard horror stories as to the flavor of such from my mother and sister. I shall stick with tea before drinking such.

School starts on the 12th, this coming Monday, and I have five classes ahead of me.... One of which being college algebra. Oh, please pray for me. I don't see that being a pretty experience, but I have decided to do well or drive myself crazy trying, so here's hoping that those numbers make sense!

I have missed you all and hate that I cannot post as often as I should like. I do not even have many pictures from the 2014 year! I have not written an official list of resolutions for this new year, but I know I want to write more, take more pictures, and beginning taking a chunk out of all the reading material I have accumulated over the past three years. Finished one book out of I don't know how many this month! I think that is a victory enough!

Happy Thursday, all! ♥
Have a wonderful 2015!

Friday, September 19, 2014

The Blossoms of Autumn









These are the faces of the changing season, peeking out at me from very many places. Summer has yet to release her grasp fully, sending her flecks of color out into Autumn's still-green territory. 

I do not know what type of flowers the littlest pink ones are, but they are certainly lovely and perhaps my favorite wild flowers in this transitional time.

The shadows play in the meantime, and the figs and muskedine grapes find new life between the dance between light and simple darkness.

I feel different today. In a good way. Almost as if it is not just the season changing, by myself as well. I'm having a personal season change that I cannot yet see the colors of. 

Off to work now. Have a wonderful Friday, all! Go out and enjoy the earth a bit before heading out into routine! ♥

Sunday, September 14, 2014

These Are the Last Days of Summer











Dearest Readers:

Many, many apologies for not posting here in such a long time, but life has gotten to be quite busy once more! Between work, four online classes, and now teaching a choir, my free time is spent sleeping or eating at designated times. It has been a wonderful -- albeit exhausting -- experience that I am still a part of!

Today, though, I am resting. Homework is done, I don't work this Sunday, and the family is planning out the day for my little brother's birthday. After this week, I am quite ready for some time to relax... even if it is for but a day.

I did manage to get some pictures not too long ago, and just this morning decided to take some time and touch them up so they were pretty enough to post here. I went out in search of the traces of autumn, and let me tell you that there are certainly more today than there were when these pictures were taken. It is rainy most days now, here in the South, and the days have just suddenly stopped heating up. The wind is rustling the trees almost constantly, and the clouds race across the skies forever. The sunlight is dancing. I have come to find that sunlight in particular shows the first signs of fall coming, for it turns more of a white than it is in the summer, and it seems to be cooler than normal. It is refreshing to the skin, and I often love to sit and just stand in the path of a stream of this particular light. Summer light is exhausting and the creamiest yellow, but fall sunlight is a creature of its own, most certainly.

Fall has pretty much gotten into my veins and I pine for the mountains now. I speak of going there almost every day because I miss the places there so greatly. Beaches are beautiful, but I am a mountain girl through and through. I crave the trees and the winds and the rocks. I have been telling my family to go up to one of the mountains I love to visit in particular and then just leave me there. "I shall become a wild person!" I'll tell them. They don't quite seem to get the same amusement out of it that I do, though.

But, alas, I am not in the mountains. I am at my computer among a cluttered desk. I find myself utilizing weekly planners and calendars now more than ever, and I have moved a small table my grandmother gave to me beside my desk simply to hold all of my school books. I really need to take some time in between homework and tidy up this room of mine. It looks like a college student lives here! ...Wait.

I miss posting here so badly! I don't know when I'll be able to really get a chance to sit down and write here again, seeing as I am running two presentation groups in my classes, working on three different projects alongside weekly work, working in the salon (I have color stains on my arms! Haha!), and just spending a few short moments here and there mentally recuperating. It's exhausting, my friends! I thought this semester was going to be less stressful than my last one, which I am sure you remember, but it has not been so far. The only nice thing is I don't have to sit in a classroom all day. I sit at my computer all day, which, in truth, is nothing new to me. I just do it far more often now. Hah.

I'll continue collecting material to share here! Even if I don't post, I am always thinking about things to share with you all. I shall have quite the collection of pictures and writings to share with you all soon, if not some stories from my ever-changing life in general.

Thank you for being loyal readers and wait-ers. 

Have a blessed -- AND COOL -- week! ♥