We’re not in Kansas anymore.

We went away for a week and our poor kitty thought we abandoned him! Our friend who fed him and our fish said that Simon was wigging out and yowling constantly. He had been abandoned by his previous owners, so he already has issues with that. But as of yesterday evening, we’re back from our spontaneous trip to Kansas to visit J’s side of the family. Our kitty finally calmed down.

Last Tuesday night we were on our way back from his Grandma’s house to his parents’ house (a 20 minute drive) and we found ourselves in the middle of a lightning storm. Jess told me to look around at the horizon as the lightning flashed to make sure there were no funnel clouds. I looked around and saw nothing, but the next day his mom told us that she DID see a funnel cloud that night. She didn’t say anything because she knew it was far enough away and we were driving away from it, and she didn’t want to scare me. If she wasn’t scared I wouldn’t be either, since she knows a lot more about this than I do. She had actually witnessed tornadoes first hand, I haven’t.

I tried to capture some of the more interesting views on our trip, and maybe not-so-interesting depending on what you think of expanses of flat, grassy plains.

We drove by St. Louis. The arch was shining in the morning sunlight.

I don’t know, I just thought this was lovely. We drove through over 100 miles of nothing. It made me think of the pioneers, cowboys and Native Americans hunting buffalo across the huge flat, plains. It was also a little scary, because at this point we were running low on gas, there wasn’t a town or even a passing car anywhere in sight, and we had absolutely no cell signal for a while. We made it to his parents’ town and a gas station right in time.

I start singing the opening song in The Lion King when we saw the sunrise on the way back to Ohio. We were getting pretty loopy from being stuck in the car all that time, with limited sleep (sleeping in the car at a rest stop isn’t exactly comfortable) and mass amounts of caffeine. Aiden dealt with the long car ride pretty well except for a little carsickness, getting more sleep than anyone. We’ll wash our car windows eventually.

What the last few months did to my hair.

Looks like Pinterest has been exploding lately, and I don’t mean in a fail whale sort of way. I think I even have my mom into it. Literally right after I told her about how cool and it is, she sees a quick mention on the news about it. I haven’t been on tumblr in a while now. I guess I got burned out on it and Pinterest took its place.

I ♥ my animal board.

I won’t go into the details of how much the last few months have sucked, but it’s why I haven’t been so blog-happy lately. There just wasn’t room in my brain, I guess. Too much anxiety. (I wrote a post a few months ago about all of it that I’ve since deleted.) Things are starting to look more hopeful now, but now I have way more gray hairs than I did before! Is it not-so-uncommon to have this much gray at 26?

I like to look at things like that in terms of battle scars even though they’re not scars, but sort of along those lines. I’m not gonna stress about them. I can only hope they form a Rogue (X-Men) streak.

The highs and lows in life

Last night I was thinking about a lot of stuff (more than usual, the asthma medicine I’m on right now is way too stimulating) and my mind drifted back to when I was four-years-old and my two pets, a cat and dog, had to go live with my Grandma because we found that I was allergic to them and they aggravated my asthma.

I woke up one morning and they were gone. They thought it would be less painful for me if they did it while I was sleeping and didn’t need to see them go. This was the first real low in my life that I can remember.

This led me along a timeline of other lows in my life, the nasty first grade teacher who always singled me out in class, the mean kids, gym class and other painful memories (I still have a strong aversion to volleyball).

I don’t know why my mind likes to remind me of these things (I realize many people have much worse memories than these and I should be grateful, but back then these things were hard to deal with and still knocked a dent in my mind). So I shifted my thoughts to the high points leading up to the present, winning awards in art contests, my best friends through the ages, my first kiss and meeting my husband (not my first kiss).

Since I’ve been thinking a lot about how real life so inspires fiction, (the people you know and their crazy-awesome stories) this reminded me of how a character is formed. Highs, lows, how they react to them and how they learn from them (character development) it all mirrors us.

One of the great thing about fiction though, is you need to make loveable characters and drag them through the mud, or watch as the worst things in life happen to them (feel sorry for them, and you can’t help but feel glad that it’s not you). These things had to happen for the sake of the story. If you want a great story, put your characters through hell and then lift them back up again. Whether or not you want a happy ending (I prefer them), you still better wreak havoc. It ultimately makes for a memorable story and a strong character.

This makes me feel a little better about the past issues, how they affected me and the work of whatever sadistic being is writing the story of my life.

New years resolutions, aka plans and life reform.

I’ve actually already started putting these things to practice, no need to wait until Jan 1st! Thinking ahead a lot lately because I find myself in a bit of a low point in my life.

Listen to my intuition. A few of the major errors I made this year were because I didn’t listen to my first gut instinct. Every time this happened, it was for the same reason — I was trying to make other people happy. I love making other people happy, but if the little voice in my head is screaming (or whispering) No, then it’s a NO.

Learn how to take good pictures of myself. My nice camera with the self timer and the flip screen broke, so right now I’m stuck taking pics with my phone. My phone takes decent pictures, as long as I’m not trying to turn it on myself. The flash makes my nose and mouth disappear and the lighting in my apartment is terrible. These are my excuses.

Believe in myself more. This has always been my biggest downfall and I just recently started to catch myself in it. A side-effect is talking myself out of doing things, or getting scared when I get the opportunity to do something outside of my comfort zone.

Finish revising my novel and work at getting it published. First I’ll try the traditional way and then go the e-book route.

Write, write and write some more.

Minor Goals
- Get my asthma under control.
- Learn how to shoot a bow and arrow! I’ve wanted to do that since I was a kid.
- Keep trying to get myself out of debt.
- Get back to my dream of being a tattooist. I’ve thought about this before but it’s hard to find an artist that will take on an apprentice.

Have any plans for 2012? Right now seems like a good time to look to the future.