This is an archive and may contain old or out-of-date content. Check the date; things may have changed since the time of the original posting. Conversation is allowed on older posts, but be aware that they will not come to my attention as easily.
This is so frustrating, trying to find scholarships. This is why I gave up last semester and look where it’s gotten me. Nowhere.
I’m stuck in scholarship limbo. I graduated last spring, so I can’t apply for any scholarships targeted at high school seniors. I’m enrolled in college, so I can check the “undergraduate” box on all of these databases, but I haven’t started taking classes yet, so I can’t tell them what my college GPA is yet!
To top it off, these scholarship searches stink. I go through a half hour of filling out this ridiculous form, asking me if there’s a Papa John’s within delivery range, if I’m left handed, if I know the number of the closest Walmart, and if I’m over five feet ten… a half hour of this, only to get scholarship results that don’t match me one bit. Like, scholarships that only apply if my great grandfather on my mothers side was in a world war, or if I had an uncle who was blind, or if I submit forty-eight pages of poetry for a measly hundred dollar drawing.
I don’t understand this.
I had quite a mind-boggling dream last night. It took place in Ann’s classroom… it was Ann, Becky, Lisa, Jynnika, Jessyca and I… and we were practicing “The Watchman” (opening night dance from Chandler Sukkot last week). Strange because there was six of us and there’s only five in the main section of the dance. I left B’nai (in real life) in the middle of the choreography process, and so for just me dancing it, I choreographed the rest until I can see what they actually did with it. In this dream, everyone was doing my version, and I kept telling Ann, Becky, and Lisa, “No! Show me the way you guys choreographed it!” And they kept on doing it my way. Pretty frustrating. Oh, and Jessyca knew it better than I did. That was frustrating too.
I spent a lot of my day in my room… working on scholarship applications and such, and also putting my BED together. I’m getting quite good at putting together beds. I mean, I can actually tell you the name of the tools I used instead of saying “the twisty grogger-y thing” and “the nails with *makes hand motions* twirly things”… I can now say “rachet” and “screw.” I’m even more tool inept than I am kitchen inept. It’s so bad. I still don’t know the real names for the plus and minus screwdrivers.
But I have a real bed now. Yay.
Pray for both of my adopted brothers. One is off in la-la-land, not thinking straight because the love-bug bit him… and the other is in the depths of despair (and I’m NOT exaggerating) because the love bug bit him too hard and now he can’t decide.
It’s all Becky’s fault, it really is. Around Yom Kippur, she decided that she was going to burn all of her old journals because she didn’t want to read them any more. And of course, I thought why?? I keep mine around because then I am sure that I remember the stupid mistakes I’ve made and I’ll never make them again. But I guess she doesn’t want to be reminded of other stuff, so I can respect that.
I’ve been keeping a journal regularly since eighth grade (though I somehow lost that very first one in the last move), and just within the last couple weeks, going through one or two of them kept me from making a very big mistake, and when, just a few days ago, the bottom fell out of that situation, I didn’t freak out. It was no big deal. At all.
But on the other hand… I was bored out of my brains right before Sukkot, and ended up pulling a couple of notebooks off my bookshelf. I had been rearranging a few things (I’m becoming this crazy organizational person…) and these four notebooks caught my eyes.
A thick yellow notebook with all kinds of fading graffiti on the front. “Stuffbook” and more plus one symbols than I care to think about. A “secret code” in the back and a section written in bright orange.
A smaller, fifty cent notebook with a coke bear on the front and Plus One autographs from the one concert we went to. Oh, and the pages started falling out long ago, so now it’s in a tattered teal binder.
A little blue sketchbook with no lines and various marker-ed up pages and so forth. Oh, and in the back, there are pages partially torn out because of a game of Mastermind.
And a red notebook with the little sign taken off of the front that proclaimed “Purple Three.” It’s half filled with shallowness and whining… at least on my part. And then it just fizzled out.
Translation for those of you that are lucky enough to have not lived through that part of my life with me, it’s basically my non-journal writings from eighth and ninth grade. Basically what kind of person I was as a friend back then, what I was to other people and not to myself. And since I lost my eighth grade journal, sort of a replacement journal.
My gosh. I don’t ever… EVER want to be that person again. I was shallow, I was obsessive, I was selfish, I whined and complained, I was always jealous and never happy with what I had, I over-reacted, I was moody, I was fakely hyper… basically I made a fool out of myself every time I opened my mouth.
How could I have not seen that back then?
I mean, it’s no wonder that people steered clear of me those years. Why every time Caleb Bone came by us he looked like he had spotted the plague. Why I never “had a chance” with any of them. And I can’t speak for anyone else involved, but thank God I am not that person anymore.
And now I’m going to burn them. I was thinking at first that I’d send them to the other girls, since I’m sure they have the missing pieces in their stacks of notebooks, rotting away in a closet somewhere, but then I thought, why? Why remind them of what we all were? A bunch of stupid kids. And so I’m going to burn them. Anyone care to join me?
I realized during Sukkot and soon after that I’m NOT that person anymore. Praise God! And I think it occurred to me when I was sitting in the Murphy’s van on Sunday out at sukkot. I don’t know what led up to this particular train of thought, but it ended up being, I’m genuinely happy for them. This is so different, because not too long ago, I’d be a little jealous and bitter and ‘why won’t this ever happen to me?’ But I was truly happy, and I realized, it could!! Someday! Besides, my time of tithing isn’t over yet… what I originally said was thirteen to nineteen, that’s seven years. It’s not over yet.
Daily life is a good thing, honest. Sukkot is awesome and all, but it’s also very good to be back at home in your own bed, back to your own routine.
Almost, anyhow. I have to get a job, like, NOW, and I have to get my car insured and down here somehow, and I need to re-enroll in classes and get SCHOLARSHIPS and such… my gosh, it’s so much that I’m going to start crying just thinking about it. Breathe, Mel, you can get through it. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t get kidnapped and taken to Texas a few days ago.
Also, Jynn and Jess and I were throwing around the idea of a dance website… I can set it up as a subdomain and totally have at it. I don’t know if they meant it seriously or not, but I had been thinking about it for a while and then when they said it, it was like “cool! let’s do it!” So I’ll start working on design this week and tell them to start sending me what they have.
There’s so, so much that’s going on that I can’t even say. Don’t you hate that?
Sukkot is drawing to a close… 
We’re technically “leaving” tomorrow afternoon sometime and going back home, but tonight and last night were spent at home because of how cold it got. We’re on, like, the side of the lake that gets all of the wind, we have lots of trees and therefore get no sun, and it went down to thirty degrees last night and will again tonight! And so we are just driving in during the day for today and tomorrow. So, I’m back from Sukkot, technically. Or not.
I just got off the phone with Lisa (oh, and Joel and Heather…) and the plan is that we’re going to try and meet up sometime tomorrow. Hopefully! But if not, oh well. And then this morning I got to talk to Becky, Lisa, Elizabeth Ladish, and Ben… and when I called Ann earlier this week, the entire green group of kids said hi to me. By the time Sukkot fully winds down, I will have said hello to the entire camp!
Over the weekend, Caity and her mom and her betrothed, Isaac, came up and camped with us. That was fun. It was so much more relaxing and laid back than last year, and plus I got to meet Isaac too. The funny thing is, mostly what we did was snooze in the van. Yet it was fun. Isn’t that crazy? I will say two things. Those two (Caity and Isaac) “fight like an old married couple but act like they’re five.” (So Isaac remembers that quote). The other? If I ever find someone half as cool as Isaac, I’ll die happy.
And I’m glad that I’m sure Caity actually likes me this year. Love you, girl!
I had a total and complete attitude adjustment… and it’s been happening for years and I didn’t even notice it until… well, in the middle of the Murphy van communal naptime, when I dozed off to sleep (before dreaming about a gigantic ice cube I swallowed, or something drug-induced to that effect). I won’t say it, because it’s kind of personal, but it’s a bad feeling I’ve been struggling since… well, the days of the stuff book… and I didn’t this weekend, and so it clicked. Hooray for me!
More tomorrow. I’m beat.
ps: I also found out that in the southern hemisphere, when you flush a toilet, the water spins the other direction.