When I Fall...

Nine-point-eight straight down, I can't stop my knees...

My style of blog writing has changed dramatically since I first started this blog. It went from emotional writing to posting songs to religiosity to poetry to pictures to philosophical musings to insignificant babble to updates on my day.

Can't look below me or something might throw me...

Lately I have been all about snapshots of the happy times in my life and brief expressions of the upcoming excitement in my life. It has come to this because this is how I want people to see me. Honesty is overrated in the blogging world. In fact, you can invent a personality online. No one needs to know if its true or not, if the smiling faces are just an early Halloween mask. Even closest friends and family can't tell. It sounds like Laura, it looks like Laura, it must be Laura.

Look straight in the mirror, watch it come clearer...

This is not to say that I've been lying. The smiles have been and are real. The good times have happened, and they are continuing to go on. The internet is a strange vortex of information that sucks everything into it and never lets it out. What I write here will be accessible years to come. When I become Prime Minister, cheap journalists will reach back into the Internet Archives to retrieve what I said on October 30, 2006. And what did I say? What do I say? What do I write when what I say makes people believe they know my innermost thoughts? How do I portray who I am through a few words and snapshots?

Curse at the windstorms that October brings...

What do I have to say to be worthy? What is it I have to write to be respected and loved and taken seriously? What do I have to write to stop being a disappointment? I can't stop assumptions people will have. I can't help it if someone looks at a snapshot from my life and jumps to conclusions. This is why my blog has become somewhat vague.

I wish I could step from this
scaffold onto soft green pastures shopping malls or bed with my family
and my pastor and my grandfather who's dead...

I want to be known for my smile. I want to be remembered for the laughs.

I wish could fly

From this building, From this wall...

What would I do if I could fly? Where would I go? Would I escape this?

The painting's creating, and I'm just erasing. A crystal-clear canvas is my masterpiece....

I'm not four years old anymore. I don't have the pigtails or the innocence. I don't play with dolls or preach to teddy bears. I am not a six year old girl anymore. I don't have the mushroom cut or the buck teeth that were just too darn adorable. I do not wear underwear that corresponds to the days of the week anymore. I am twenty. I am twenty. I am twenty and yet still a child? Who am I? Do I know yet? Do I have the choice? Am I free to take responsibility, am I free to be Laura?

They're frightened of jumping in case they survive...

I don't want to write about the elephant in the room. The beauty and tears and the sweat and the pain are sitting in some pit waiting to be told in a story. Will I tell it? Will it be adopted? Why can I not tell the story I am yearning to tell? Who do you want me to be? Tell me and I will invent someone that you can be happy with. You can come and read about her every day. She'll be happy. She'll have wonderful relationships. She'll talk about the things you want her to so that you can believe that she is really and truly who she says she is. Do you believe her? Will you believe her? Will you stop assuming?

And if I should try
Would you catch me
If I fall?

What are the words I need to say for you to believe that I am she? What pictures do I need to post? What stories do you want me to tell? When will love finally mean respect and support and trust and belief. I need to be believed in. Because without being believed in, I become just a fictional girl whose story is told on some fictitious blog. Believe in me. This is me; Halloween costumes removed. This is me, naked and aching and ever so tired.

When I Fall...

HELP!!!

Its Thursday, and on Saturday night, there is a Halloween Party at Dan and Matty's place (if you're in Halifax, get in touch, I'd love for you to come!) Since I have been delegated to do most of the planning for this thing, I can promise that it is going to be one Spook-a-licious Shindig, complete with Halloween pingpong apparently.

The problem is - I don't have a Halloween costume!! I have to wear a Halloween costume because I could dress silly every day of the year, but on Halloween I have an excuse! Granted, I still have the dress that has seen me through at least two or three past Halloweens (including my grade twelve year, the last time I went Trick-or-Treating.) Although dressing as an '80s Prom Queen' has served me well, all the way up to the last time I dressed up in first year university, I think it is slightly redundant, and so I need a new idea. Remember, I only have two days to figure it out.

So, although it may seem like a cheap way to up my comments, if you read this, please give ANY ideas for Halloween costumes! (And for bonus points, think of a costume that can be 'coupled' since I think I am in charge of thinking of something for Dan too!)

"I'm bloggerific!" she said

Well, I just finished my final assignment/essay that is due this crazy week that Satan built. Seriously, I had at least one major thing due each day this week. It is 11:15 pm and I can claim that I made it through this week alive. I just need to make it to French class tomorrow to hand in this composition at 1:00 and then I'm on the weekend stretch. The weird thing for me is knowing what to do with myself right about now. Needless to say, I am exhausted. The past two nights I have been awake since 3am working, and this morning I woke up earlier than usual so that I could meet Dan at his apartment before he left for work (I don't have my inkless printer hooked up, mainly because it is inkless, so I just use Dan's). I should just have my own key to his apartment I think. Anyway, Murphy seemed to have it out for me this morning as I realized after I got to Dan's house that I had e*mailed myself the wrong paper that needed to be printed. Instead of sending the paper, I sent the oral presentation that was prepared for another class today. I kept my wits about me until the presentation (which apparently went really well!) was over, and then I crashed. I think I lost everything that was remotely intelligent in me during my final class of the day, which I passively stared my way through. But its all done now. And I can't believe it is almost midnight. I am not used to going to bed this early anymore.

---

In my last post, I mentioned that I was looking forward to the football game between Mount Allison (who WON their game two weekends ago against StFX!!!!) and Saint Mary's that was meant to occur last Friday night. Unfortunately the Norwalk virus (Norwalk virus??... and it isn't just Mount A anymore...) hit campus, forcing the university to close and extracurricular activities, including Friday Night's football game to be canceled. This mean the highlight of my weekend became Dan and Matthew's Ping Pong Palooza party, where I engaged in making much-to-strong-for-everyone-but-Matty jello shots (or "jelly shooters" in Welsh), combining all sorts of deserts to make a super-delicious-and-not-at-all-nutritious blended ice cream drink, and losing at Ping Pong to someone who shares my name. All in all, the huge, ugly, in-the-way ping pong table seemed to be of some use after all.

So, for your viewing pleasure, and for that purpose only, here are the atrocious six pictures that were taken with my camera during the night.

Watching people try to do the solid jello shots from the iddy-biddy plastic communion cups really was hilarious. Somehow the women were quite efficient at the entire process, but the guys ended up spooning it. (One distinction of note was that one of the guys was as good at using his tongue as the girls, but I can't remember if it was Cole or Igor.)

Notice that Kennedy came to spread his love and the Norwalk virus.




We L-named Brunettes need to stick together to find a cure for the species known only as the "DAN" who preys on such innocents.




In which we show our best "Seeing Matty's incredibly hairy chest" faces.

Alright littlings. Its time I hit the hay, for the sake of my health. I have this weird, unknown (only because I haven't gone to a doctor about it) eye condition that seemes to flair up when I don't get enough sleep of when I am stressed. Right about now its about swollen shut (what a lovely image, eh? For those with a weak stomach: I'm exaggerating). I think my body is telling me to get off the computer and go to bed. Alright body, you win.

Saint Halifax Sea Moose

Apparently I have a hard time calming down and getting to sleep at night. I just finally basically finished unpacking after living in Halifax already a month and a half - my room looks decently livable and hopefully I can finish it all by tomorrow. There will be a few big
plastic boxes that I moved in sitting in the middle of the floor that have nowhere to go for the time being, but at least it looks livable and homey. I now only need to figure out how I will arrange my frames with my posters on the wall, and fix the broken framed picture that fell when I first moved.

On Wednesday as I was finishing up a short essay due that afternoon, Keltie called to invite me to a Mooseheads hockey game that night. She got cheap tickets, so Matty and I (Dan was sick and had other plans) doubled with Keltie and Charles. It was a wonderful game. I was sure that the Mooseheads would destroy their opponents, the Saint John Sea Dogs, as their most recent meeting was a shut out. The first period looked like it would go that way; Halifax got two goals and made some wonderful saves. Saint John turned it around however, and the score was tied 4-4 after three periods had passed. After five minutes of overtime there had been no goals scored. The match came down to a shootout in which Saint John came out one shot ahead of Halifax. Luckily, I could still claim some pride from the win, even though I was rooting for Halifax.

The game was spectacular and so exciting, and it was so much fun to be out with Keltie and Charles and Matty.

Next up: MtA football game at SMU tonight!

Now maybe will I go to bed?

Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving! I am back to my cute little rodent infested Halifax apartment after a Thanksgiving weekend back home. Every family has quirks, but it is wonderful spending time with the people I love.

I meant to do schoolwork this weekend. I also meant to get a bunch of pictures from this weekend. Neither of these seemed to happen. Even though things have been so great since coming to Halifax, I haven't even got one snapshot of Dan and I or of Matty or of my roommates or of my cute little apartment. I was going to get the pictures this weekend during the thousands of turkey dinners and the family outings and the evenings cuddles with my snookums. Alas, the camera only came out once when we had our annual Brace family Thanksgiving Dinner- the one time a year when the greatest majority of our family comes together within one household. Although this even was still lacking some members of the family, we figured it was time for a long overdue group photo.