Jenny Sue

....in the last 7 days.

Hanging out with the boys, spending....3.5 hours?...playing all the songs in Beatles Rock Band, and Justin telling me I'm a rock star.  I'm really gonna miss that guy.  (For people who don't know, Justin is a long-time friend of Patrick's and he's moving to San Jose this week.) 

Playing on a co-ed basketball team with friends.  0-2 so far (and let me tell you, the games weren't close), but mostly I'm happy that I have friends to play basketball with! 

My Mom and Erin cheering us on from the bleachers on Sunday even though the game oh-so-quickly became about "personal goals", as Sara would say ("Come on guys, double digits by half time, DOUBLE DIGITS BY HALF TIME!!")

Finally getting rid of the old couch and making $20.

My Mom.  She's a fantastic lady and should visit more often.

Making small batches of pickles and dilly beans with my Mom and Erin, even though two of the pickle jars didn't seal.

Having a ridiculously good natured cat who's always ready for a good head-butt.

I feel so boring today!  I've started writing this post with several different sentences and approaches and they all seem rather dull.  "Today my Mom is flying into Seattle to visit Erin and I."  "Notables:  A few weeks ago my friend Mike organized a service project."  These things are/were exciting to me!  And yet I feel like my dreery mood from being at work is seeping into the sentences and pulling all happiness and interest out of them.  Maybe it's just me.

When I was a kid people used to tell me to smile a lot.  People I knew, people I didn't know, it didn't seem to matter.  I've always been annoyed with these people.  What's it to you, anyway, whether I smile or not?  Don't you think maybe it's a little creepy for a grown-up to tell a child that they don't know to smile?  Do you think that the smile I give in return is at all genuine?  I mean if I felt like smiling I'd probably BE smiling.  That makes sense to me.  Thankfully, this doesn't happen to me much, if ever, now that I myself am a so called "grown up."  Probably because it's rude!  I think it's rude anyway, it's possible that I'm overly sensitive about it.  

Today I realized that I have four recurring themes to my dreams, (hey that's fun to say).   I don't mean that I only dream about these things, but so far as I can tell they are the only themes that I've experienced in my dreams multiple times.  Interesting?  Probably not, but I'm posting about it anyway. 

1. It's high school again and I can't remember my locker combination.  It's always the same set of lockers in the same school.  My real high school, but it is actually nothing like my school.  I'm usually walking up to the lockers with my girlfriends, they have lockers all around me.  I only remember that I don't remember my combination when I see the lockers.  I'm annoyed, and I try, and I try, and I try different combinations.  Last night, it ended up being 2-4-24, but I kept trying 4-2-24, and the dial kept changing so it was hard to tell where those numbers were, exactly.  I alway get it open in the end.  This is not a problem I remember ever having in real life.  Really, can my subconscious not come up with a more exciting dream-problem that I have to solve over and over again?

2. I am worried about not getting all of my pottery requirements done by the end of my high school pottery class.  This usually shows up in the same dream as the first theme.  I'm often excited to be going to pottery class again because in high school, at least, it was a class I really enjoyed.  But then I remember that it's been a long time since I've been to class and that all of my projects have probably dried up by now and I get stressed about it while walking to class.  This is something that DID kind of happen to me in my college pottery class, where I basically just bowed out of attempting to have any sort of motivation towards being a good student or human being, and got a C- only by begging that my teacher be merciful because I was going through a hard time. 

3.  Bears.  I've had a lot of dreams where there are bears trying to get me/me and my family and we have to escape somehow.  The situations are always wildy different.  I have to say I'm actually quite pleased with these dreams.  They are considerably more interesting than the school dreams and, while they DO feel quite serious while I'm having them, they don't usually have that "this is a terrifying and horrible world" feel to them like the vast majority of my dreams seem to have.  It's like I was the hero in an action film (cuz I'm usually the hero) and then I wake up to find that nobody actually almost died and that I generally live a pretty bear-free lifestyle.

4. Patrick is mean.  In real life, I am not a secure person.  I have jealousy issues that often get in the way of having a smooth-sailing relationship with Patrick.  In real life, he deals with these things mostly with care and affection, soothing words and love, and occasional and understandable frustration at my lack of being convinced.  But never, never, ever by being mean.  In the dreams he is ruthless and cruel, smirking and terrible to me.   I'm usually a puddle of tears begging him to reconsider, asking him why he's being so mean.  He's usually done something that I'm actually afraid of happening, that he would never actually do in real life, and he isn't sorry.  It's awful, really.  I wake up feeling so alone and so, so sad.  Usually wondering why he's there or why I'm there, until that beautiful moment that always comes after a terrible dream, when you realize it wasn't real.

So those are my dream themes.  I felt a little guilty even writing that last one, just on the off chance that anyone who doesn't know Patrick might end up wondering if it is in any way representative of his real nature.  Well rest assured, because the fact is, I'm much more likely to have to save my family from hunting-us-down bears than I am to have to deal with Patrick being cruel.  It's just not something that he is.

...we've been finding quite a few of these lately:






They're smaller that the XL eggs we buy at the store:





They come in brown, slightly lighter brown, slightly darker brown, and THIS COLOR.  Oh, and many are decorated with a lovely array of poop stains. 


Goooooood chickens.  And, if I do say so myself, quite a handsome looking flock:


(From L-R: Gidget (I think), Goose (lays the green eggs), Charlotte (talked ALL the time when she first began laying, got pretty old), and Scarlet (I think))

Here is the next installment from the poem lady who hangs out around my work selling poems for spare change.  I don't think this one has quite the same rhythm to it as The Cat did, but I still enjoyed it.  I give you, The Bug.

The Bug
By Diane Bradburn

Spray that bug but not a slug
For if you do I'll untie my shoe.
Kick it off. Sit in my chair.
I don't care if I comb my hair or not.
I put up with you.
You put up with me.
It's because we are in the same family tree.

"Don't dispair, I'm still here."
Come and see, "Hee Hee Hee."
The bug said "don't spray me."
"I'm not in your family tree."

"I'm your conscience reminding you to think
About your own family.
But there's still room for us all.
"Tee Tee Tee."

This is Number Six.  Aka: Six.  She's Patrick's cat, although now that Patrick and I are going steady I feel like I have a tiny claim to her as well.  I'm like her step-owner.  Anyway, if you can't tell by this picture, Six is an amazing cat.  She is the softest cat in the entire universe.  I know because I pet a lot of cats at the volunteer gig.  You just want to rub your face in her fur and never leave.  BUT, she won't let you.  Maybe for a tiny second, but after that, you could really lose an eye.  Six gets attention when she wants attention, and if she doesn't want attention (and this could be .01 seconds after she is loving the attention) she lets you know, and now you are bleeding.  Here's the kicker though: I wouldn't change a thing about her!  Well, okay, maybe I would change that she doesn't listen when you are yelling at her and squirting her with a squirt bottle to stop scratching the furniture...but that's pretty much it.  Her bitchy nature is part of her charm.  It's kind of like how a compliment coming from somebody who is barfing up compliments all the time about everything doesn't mean much compared to a compliment from somebody who you know really means what they are saying.  Six love us, and you can tell, but she doesn't hand out her love for free.  So when she does curl up on your lap and close her eyes to the scritches you're giving her little head...it's pretty awesome.  As opposed to Spot who would happily curl up and live on your face if you let him.  He's TOO cute and TOO cuddly to appreciate it ALL the time.  You see what I'm saying? 

Sorry it's taken me so long with this, the dramatic silence between this post and my last post was longer than I intended.  But behold!  Spot!  Spottlebot!  Cutie kitty extraordinaire!  He's 1 year old and has enough kitten still in him to keep us busy.  I got him about a week and a half ago and he felt right at home immediately and is just a sweet heart.  In fact, being a sweet heart might also be his downfall because he just wants to be right there with you all time.  He excels at head butting and cuddling.  Number Six (Patrick's cat) is getting used to him...slowly.  He was ready to be friends as soon as he saw her, but she takes a little longer to get used to things.  They are to the point where they can touch noses, and then Six gets a little overwhelmed and will swat him.  He's not giving up though, and she's coming along, if slowly. 

       

With what seems to be all* of my cousins announcing on their blogs that they are expecting babies, I feel inclined to make a little announcement of my own.  We will soon be welcoming a new member into the Wightman/Tewson (Tewson/Wightman) household!  No, NOT a baby, although I admit I was extremely tempted to trick you all into thinking that it was....for just a second.  Then I decided I didn't want to be responsible for the possible heart attack it would give my mother if a) I were pregnant, and more importantly b) she found out by reading it on my blog.  No, this addition will be of the furry and four-legged variety and correspond much better with my current level of maturity and responsible..ness.

More details and pictures as soon as he arrives, and as soon as I figure out who he is.  Expect great cuteness! 


*Actual number of cousins who have blog-announced pregnancies: 2

I haven't been able to figure out exactly why it takes me so long to post.  Perhaps because it takes me a long time to write anything, whether it be a couple simple sentences in a quick e-mail to my sister, or a several paragraph post to my blog - I read, and re-read, and re-read.  I send it and then I read it again.  I post it to private and read my posts the way they'll look to you all and then usually change this or that.  Realize that I left an 'e' out of spelld: edit, post, re-read.  (You're probably thinking..."really? and this is the finished product?"  Yeah, I think that too.)  Or perhaps because I get overwhelmed.  Anything remotely interesting that happens to me I think "I should post about this."  I even have pictures to go along with many of these not yet realized posts.  But then I don't.  I get backlogged with things I had wanted to post about and I post nothing.  Who knew posting would be so hard!?  Ideally I could just pop in here, jot down the not-so-exciting happenings of my life, drop in a few pictures and be on my way.  My brain just isn't working that way.  SO, I'm going to do that thing where I briefly touch on some of the things I've been meaning to post about as though it's interesting to anyone besides me and if I get around to it maybe post the pictures that go along with it. 




                     
The chickens are now easy.  They have their coop and their run (which was a lot of hard work!) and are hopefully happy.  The main chicken in the picture is Charlotte.  She's kind of the favorite and is obviously smarter than the others.  She likes to get up on the roosting pole (the only one to really use it so far) whenever you open the coop and watch everything you do very closely.  She's pretty much always looking at you like that...she seems very suspicious.  She also tries to escape sometimes.  Over this past weekend, we opened the door to the run for a few hours because ultimately I'd like to let them roam around the yard during daylight hours when we are around.  They didn't make it more that a few inches out the door, but they will come around.  It took them a week to really care about the run and they still seem to prefer to spend most of their time in the coop.   I thought they were pretty big until I saw some actually full grown chickens on Valentines day and now I'm worried that having to grow up during winter instead of during spring like nature intended has stinted their growth.  I'll never stop worrying, so get used to it!




                    
Patrick and I have taken to brewing our own beer.  It's largely his endeavor and I would never have been able to figure it out (or afford the equipment) on my own, but I try to be involved as much as I can, and as much as he will let me.  So far we have brewed something like 12 gallons and so far, so good.  We are big beer appreciators and it's pretty exciting, as he says, to make something at home that will actually get you buzzed.  It's a frightfully complicated (that picture above displays only part of the complicatedness) procedure involving lots of hot water that has to be maintained at various temperatures at various times, moving liquid from here to there to here and back to the beginning, adding this at exactly this time, and that at exactly that time, and so forth.  Then you have to let it sit for FOREVER (3-4 weeks).  Patrick is very much the brains behind the operation, and I'm something like an assistant.  Yay beer!


As of last week I am officially a volunteer at a Humane Society here in Seattle!  This is something that I should have been doing since I moved here, but I'm slow.  I'll be working one, three hour shift a week in the Cat Program.  Basically, I get to hang out and play with the cats that are not quite ready to go up for adoption.  My main objective is to socialize them (ie cuddle with them, play with them, brush them), with minor objectives being feeding and poop scooping.  I also have a personal objective to scope out possible male cats for me to adopt as my very own!  I don't want to go into too much detail right now because I'd really like to dedicate an entire post to it someday(I tried to last week but when I went to add a picture, all the words diappeared forever....ANNOYING!).  At some point I'd like to pick up another shift doing something with the dogs.  Preferably dog walking, because how awesome is that?  PLUS I heard that one lady lost something like 60lbs just by being a volunteer dog walker!  Sign me up! That is my kind of excersize.

A while back we moved the chickens from the big green bin into their fancy new coop.  Up until a week or so ago, the big green bin was still sitting on the table in the basement, void of chickens.  When we started work on the chicken run, Patrick asked if maybe I could find a better place for the big green bin since it was taking up about half of the work table.  I thought this was reasonable, so I took it out the door and placed it under the deck where it was sitting up until yesterday.  It should be noted that the big green bin still had poopy boards in it, plus pine shavings mixed with chicken poop.  Pine shavings are a miracle, and all that time in the basement this concoction did not produce any bad odors.  You could stick your head right into the big green bin and think you were deep in the forest somewhere instead of in a damp basement with your head in a big green bin full of shit.  As you may or may not know, it's been really rainy here in Seattle for the last week or so.  Also, as you may or may not know, under our deck is not where you want to be if you are looking to stay dry.  Long story short, it turns out that pine shavings + chicken poop = awesome, odor free addition to your composter.  Pine shavings + chicken poop + days and days of rain = the most horrible, putrid, disgusting, puke-like mixture that you will ever have the misfortune of knowing.  More pukey than puke.  What do you do with a big green bin full of this evil?  You scoop it into the yard waste bin with an empty cottage cheese container, sucking in deep breaths of clean air over your shoulder whenever you run out, and avoid getting a whiff of the devilish mixture at all costs.  Then you cover it with dead leaves, spray out the big green bin with the hose from as far back as you can get, and pretend it never happened.  After that, getting down on my hands and knees in the mud and the muck to clean the chicken coop was a total cake walk.  I marveled at the smell of the dried poop I was scraping off.  This is what happens when you hold on to your procrastinating ways like it's the apocalypse and you and Procrastination are the only two people left on earth.  

Also yesterday, in less horrid news, I hemmed a pair of pants successfully for the very first time. 

My mom will be proud. 

Photo updates of.....

Le Coop!  Custom built by my very own Mr. Patrick Tewson.  
 


Le Chickens!  No longer babies, this is them at almost six weeks (two weeks ago).  Yesterday I witnessed Charlotte making a chicken noise instead of a tiny cheap-cheap noise!  My babes are growing up FAST.  Two are still without names, how embarrassing .  The golden/blonde one is now officially named Goose.
 


Snow!!  This was last Thursday, Patrick and I both stayed home from work.  It was amazing, people just hanging out in the street.  It snowed all day yesterday as well and I am home yet again.  Patrick, unfortunately, had to make it in to work today.  It took us about an hour to dig out the driveway.
 





First Christmas in our new house!  I know you can't see much in this first picture, but isn't it cool anyway?  The white spots are all snow flakes lighted up by the flash, and you can just make out the lights on our house twinkling in the background.

Okay people.  What do you know about clementines?  I have access to a bunch of free ones that will probably be beyond use pretty soon.  I was thinking of making marmalade and here are my questions....

1. Will using less-than-awesome clementines make terrible marmalade?
2. Does anyone have a marmalade recipe or know how to make marmalade that isn't horribly complicated or requiring fancy equipment that I don't have and am unwilling to buy?
3. Is there something better/easier/more practical I should make instead of marmalade?
4. Should I forget that there are loads and loads of Whole Foods rejected clementines all over the place because, really, how great are clementines anyway?

Okay...go!

There is a lady who often hangs out around my work selling her poems for spare change.  She's been around for a while, but only recently has she had hard copies of her poems for people to take.  I never bought one before because of my own fear of awkward situations, and a poor beggar reciting me poetry on the street is an almost unbearable thought for me (lame, I know, I'm not saying I'm proud of it).  I've been meaning to buy one ever since she's had copies, and today it finally happened.

THE CAT

Purr soft and sweet with low meow
Sit on a chair soft on a towel
Take a nap to sweet dreamland...
Pounce lightly to the floor, stroll around her leg
once more.

Purr softly so she'll pick you up
Tell you you're her buttercup.
Pet your coat softly from head to tail
And then set you down for just a spell.

You run away because you knew a way to play.
She might catch up with you just then
Pick you up and hug you then.
Purr softly as she falls asleep
Together, dream of counting sheep.

By Diane L. Bradburn

Is it a good sign or a bad one that this is easily the best part of my day so far?

Anyone who knows my brother knows that he is pretty freakin' awesome.  I mean right?  People?  He is.  I can't say enough good things about him and what he does for the world.  In June he is participating in the Seattle LIVESTRONG Challenge for The Lance Armstrong foundation and will be cycling 100 miles.  He started his fundraising yesterday with a personal goal of raising $5000 dollars.  He is also a member of a team that is looking to be 125 members strong with an overall goal of raising $125,000.  This is no small feat.  So far they have 52 members and have raised almost $2000 dollars.  They have a long way to go, and you can help!  You can go above and beyond and join their team, you can donate what you can, or you can just spread the word.  They also have goals of being the biggest team and collecting the most individual donations, so any small contribution really is going to help them achieve their goals.  $5.  REALLY!  Anyway, the links above will explain it better than I can, so at least check it out!

 

Okay so not exactly weekly, but here's what I've got!  I know it's hard to gauge growth with my sporadic zooming habits, but I've found that comparing them to the thermometer helps.  Patrick guesses they are about the size of a mango right now (they started at...let's say lemon.)

Patrick is going to be on the radio today!  He has had some of his songs played at a college station in Portland before, but this time he will be performing LIVE!  1pm Seattle time, 2pm if you are in Utah.  Here is the link that I am planning on following to listen live from the internet: http://kbcs.fm/site/PageServer?pagename=listenlive

He is playing with three other people that he knows from something he does called Song Circle.  It's basically a bunch of local songwriters/friends who get together once a month to play their new songs and get some constructive feedback.  He loves it.  This month they are having a public Song Circle on Friday at a bar in Georgetown called the Mix, and I believe these radio performances are a promotion for that event.

He's nervous, but I think all of you who can should tune in anyway!  Or, if you are unable to tune in live, you can always go to the stations website and listen to the archive. 

 

"The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.

It's that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual "marriage."- Orson Scott Card

This is the kind of thing that gets me really down.  I mean, really down.  This is what makes me wonder if human kind is worthy of living on this beautiful planet.  This is what makes me wish I lived far, far away from the rest of the world on a farm someplace, where I didn't ever have to read anything so full of fear and hate.  Somewhere where I could pretend that these sorts of opinions didn't exist.  The worst part is, I know there are people out there who will read that and think "I dunno, that seems pretty reasonable to me."  Where does he get off thinking he can say something so terrible as though it were a fact?  Has he personally interviewed homosexual people who have confessed to him that the reason they are gay is because they were raped as a child?  Fuck no, he hasn't.  Stop trying to mask your paranoia and ignorance as trying to save the "homosexual society" from themselves. 

(An hour or so passed before I wrote this next bit....it's slightly less angry)

The truth is, I understand not understanding homosexuality (does that make sense?).  I don't think it's bad to not understand somebody or their actions.  However, I do think it's incredibly bad when fear or hate is the result.  Sexuality is so complex and so personal that it just seems stupid, disrespectful, and shortsighted to assume that you have the right to judge everyone else's sexuality based yours.  Anyway, I'm not seeing a great end to this post in sight.  This is an emotional and frustrating topic for me, obviously, only made more frustrating by the fact that I feel like I don't have the word power to express myself correctly.  So I'll just end it here.
 

Chicks in three weeks, (the bird kind, just in case you are like Patrick and you have to make a chicks=girls joke every time I mention them - love you babe!), and I'm worried.  I ordered them in the mail and I'm worried that I'm a horrible person for doing it that way.  I had a bad feeling about the whole baby-birds-in-the-mail thing, for good reason, I think, because it sounds like a bad idea!  But I emailed this site that I've been looking at a lot and who get a lot of great reviews and they said "oh, it's fine, they absorb the yolk and can live off it for 72 hours, we send them with a heat pack and some weird gel stuff that acts as nourishment and water.  We only lose about 1 in a 100, which isn't that different from the regular death rate if they stayed with their mama chicken."  And I thought, okay that makes sense...and I ordered them.  THEN I start reading all these articles about how it's terrible and how the USPS has pressured other places like FedEx , UPS and airlines to also send chicks in the mail, treating them as "mail" and not "cargo" like they would a cat or a dog.  The Humane Society of the United States is against it (the same organization who inspired me to own chickens in the first place!), and according to them it's more like 30-80% that die (though they never mentioned gels or heat packs.  They claim it's cruel because they don't have food and water, and because they are exposed to extreme hot and cold temperatures).  I don't want to add to the inhumane treatment of chickens, that defeats the purpose of getting chickens!  Why did I not think of adopting?  Why didn't I liken getting chickens to getting a cat or a dog?  I would never get a cat or a dog from a pet store or even a breeder, I would always, ALWAYS adopt one.  Is getting chickens from a hatchery like getting a puppy from a puppy mill?  Sure you save that one puppy,  but you are encouraging and financially supporting the total and complete evil that is a puppy mill.   I whole-heartedly want to believe in the goodness and honesty of people and their websites.  I want to believe that if they say they care about chickens, they care about chickens.  If they say it is not cruel to send them in the mail, then it is not cruel to send them in the mail.  If they seem like a good website, then they are a good website.  I'm gullible.   I STILL believe (I told you I'm gullible) that they at least think they are doing well by chickens, even if they are just being ignorant - like me. 

SIGH

I'm worried that one or more will die.  I'm worried than one or more will be sick and I won't be able to save them.  I'm worried that their heat lamp bulb will die or break while we're away at work and they will freeze or cut themselves on broken glass.  I'm worried that it'll be too drafty in the basement.  I'm worried that they'll be terrorized by mice or rats or that somehow some bigger animal will get in there.  I'm worried that if we keep them upstairs, no matter where we put them, Six (the cat) will get to them during the day and I'll come home to a massacre.  I'm worried that once they're big enough to move to the outside coop, something will get them.  I'm worried they'll be too cold in the winter.  I'm worried that I will be a bad chicken owner despite my honest-to-God good intentions and best efforts.

SIGH    

Last Thursday, September 25th, I turned 24 years old.  This is astonishing to me.  I turned 21 a week before moving to Seattle and I feel like somebody is playing a prank on me, trying to make me believe it's been three years since leaving Utah.  It's absurd, really, and there is that part in my brain that refuses to believe it.  I remember certain aspects of that day very clearly.  The rest is a fuzz.  I remember driving away from my childhood home knowing I would never live there, never visit there, ever again.  I almost cried then.  I ate lunch with my parents and my big brother Chris before heading to the airport.  I had a cut on my arm that looked pretty nasty and I remember telling my family it was from the golf course where I worked - that I had shut the lid to the fridge/cart on it on accident (not true).  I don't remember saying goodbye at the airport or the flight to Seattle.  My sister's friend Cory's brother and girlfriend picked me up from the airport.  I had never met them or heard of them.  It was an awkward and weird ride to the apartment with them, even though they were both incredibly friendly and encouraging.  It was a Sunday afternoon and Erin was away to a college reunion, not to return until that evening.  They helped me get into the apartment, took a quick look around, and left me there alone.  Well, not alone.  There were two tiny cats there that I immediately turned to for comfort.  I think Oscar probably hid, though I don't actually remember.  Chloe met me at the door, tail curved back up over her body (she's a special girl).  I picked her up and she immediately released a ginormous sneeze right in my face, cat snot in all its glory.  (It took months for me to really love Chloe.  She's now one of my most favorite creatures of all time).  I looked around.  No TV.  No internet.  No bed.  No sister.  I curled up on Erin's bed and cried myself to sleep.  I don't remember her coming home.

I had a similarly emotional 24th birthday.  I'm not sure what it was about this birthday that made it so tough for me.  It didn't feel like a birthday, I think because I usually get excited for my birthdays.  I think about it for weeks before hand and anticipate that special day, just for me, that comes once a year.  This year was busy with moving and buying a house and I didn't think about my birthday as much.  I wasn't dreading it, I just didn't think about it.  I woke up that day feeling happy.  Patrick was sweet to me that morning.  I went to work excited and they day was manageable.  I got birthday wishes from everyone I expected to send them.  I drove home, becoming frustrated on the way because of traffic.  I was not in a good mood when I arrived.  Patrick wasn't home yet, but there was a box on the front porch - a birthday package from my parents.  It cheered me up some.  I got inside and didn't know what else to do, so I opened it.  That's when I felt it...that something in the back of my throat, in the pit of my stomach (I'm getting that feeling now, again, just typing about it).  I opened all the gifts (there were several things in the package, all wrapped separately because my mother knows I like to unwrap gifts) and totally lost it.  I didn't know what was going on, I was just crying.  I laid in our bed for a short time until I heard Patrick coming home and I quickly jumped in the shower, hoping to wash away the evidence of tears.  It worked, but when I got out of the shower he was upstairs playing guitar and while I waited for him to come down, I lost the battle for control of my emotions.  He found me on the bed.  I didn't know why I was crying and so couldn't explain it to him.  In between sobbing spells, we discussed possible reasons.  I felt depressed, but I couldn't name anything I was sad about.  We settled on me being homesick.  I'm turning 24 and my amazing, adorable, and incredibly loving parents sent me a great birthday package but are not there to celebrate with me.  I've just moved out of a house with my sister, quite likely the last time I will live with a family member.  I am suddenly an adult, I co-own a house.  I think I was just overwhelmed.  I'm still overwhelmed.  The next day was really tough, I had to make emergency trips to the bathroom to gain composure on several occasions (mostly any time I let my parents drift into my thoughts).  By Friday evening things were better.  I didn't have a heavy feeling hanging over me.  That feeling of  "God, I'm 24.  I want to be 8 again more than anything in the world."  Sometimes it makes Patrick nervous that I miss my childhood so much.  I think he's afraid it means that I'm not happy with my life now.  I keep telling him that, first of all, I'm a girl and sometimes I'm sad, sometimes I'm homesick, and sometimes those things make me cry.  Second of all, if he had known me in the Before Patrick (BP) time he would see that I get into these depressed states waaaaaaayyy less often than I used to. 

And that's my 24th Birthday Story.  I hope my 25th can be a little less sappy, though I appreciated this birthday for many reasons.  I'm so lucky to have my parents.  So.  Lucky.  Sometimes I don't think they realize how amazing they are.  I tell them I love them every time I talk to them, but sometimes I don't think they realize how much.  I've been mean to them at times.   Ive been short tempered, impatient, ungrateful and unfortunately the list goes on.  Every one of those moments makes me completely heartsick with guilt.  Of course my parents have always and will always forgive me, just as I will undoubtedly again say or do something that I regret.