Florida November 2008

Welcome home to me I guess, although i would much rather have stayed i know it is time to return to nashville, physically at the very least. It was an awesome trip (well the disney parks were as amazing as i remember at the very least) you would not believe the lack of lines, i was so happy :) i did not have to wait more than 20 minutes for anything and i actually won dream fastpasses. It was an awesome trip and i will tell you little cole (pictured) was so happy to see me back he hasn't left my side all week, isn't he precious :). Mostly i am a photographer at heart so i am posting a ton of pics from the trip. Moreover i can happily say that i am a lot more relaxed (maybe too much but that is not the point :)) and i am savoring the possiblities for the future. I have also decided to plan my own spring break, never done it before so that is mega exciting. After attending disney world and being enchanted by it for years i have realized the one thing i have been missing all along, Disneyland. And so for spring break i am planning a trip to the california park, and you can bet that i am so excited, it will be my first trip to the one that started it all and sort of a pilgramage of sorts. If i can make this work, i forsee alot of disney globe trotting in the future perhaps including a visit to the French park, with its radically different menu of offering. This year at Epcot introduced a facinating new exhibit with a scale model of the terra cotta army found at the tomb of the first emperior of china, even at their diminutive size, the sight was still the most amazing thing i had ever seen, I must see detour if i ever make it to HKDL. To me, and i know it seems silly, but this is my dream vacation, i want to visit all the world's disney destinations and see all of it for myself.

Still in shock

I am still in shock over the election day results from yesterday. Can you believe they actually let a communist indonesian citzen be president of the united states. I mean i thought there were laws about that kind of thing in this country and i am quite sure he will be the first president to not be a us citizen (not that that is a good thing). I am very scarid about the threat of imanent terrorist attacks starting in january not to mention that during these trying economic times, the last thing we need is keysian econmic theory which, historically, has been a failure. This election has also made race an issue like it hasn't been in the last 40 years or so, and it is truely amazing how far this divide has set us back as a country. I have been simply so scarid that i have been unable to sleep since results were announced. And lastly, all i want to say is Sarah Palin 2012 if we all survive the next 4 years.
In less incediary news, i am going out of town thursday and will be enjoying a little flordia repreve from all this coldness, even as i write this on the home computer i am shivering. Just in time i think because this whole week has worn my nerves practically raw.
Mom has booted me into facebook today against my wishes. I just "loved" seeing how all members of my graduating class have moved on with their lives and despite the fact that i enjoy being newly free, that is really all that has changed since i graduated. Pathetic, right? Not really the confidence booster it should be considering i really need to calm down a bit. I am so stressed out and worried that it feels like my senior year of high school, minus the out of control pluse rate and thyroid the size of a small bus. Never slept much then either. It is 2:30 in the morning or there abouts, not sure if this clock has been switched over and yet i still have not considered going to sleep, i am afraid that the only thing that changes as i get older is i get more nostalgic, and the only new things in my life since high school is i finally got up the courage to dump my abusive ex, my kitties, and minus 40 pounds, none of that replaces the exciting life i never had, not sure if i would want it if it were offered.

Remembering continued.

I have this phoebia, have ever since i can remember of death. It extends to anything related (execpting food i guess) and I just get this feeling in the pit of my stomach of fear, unrelenting indescribable fear. It is the reason i never wanted to be an archaeologist despite the fact that i love archaeology because i couldn't force myself near the bones. It even extends to dinosaur bones, which i won't approach willingly. That is perhaps the single thing which inhibits my ablity to say good bye, that fear of the casket and what lies inside has always terrified me. The way my mom tells it, she blames it on my grandpa wilson. Long time ago, which i don't remember because i appear to have blocked it out, when my wilson grandparents lived in nashville i was apparently staying with my grandma at the time and she had a heart attack or something (like i said i blocked it out a long time ago) apparently i held her hand and said "Grandma don't die" over and over (i wished i could have done that last year) and that grandpa blamed me for the whole thing later, saying it was my fault that she almost died. And that that created this Phoebia. The way grandma used to tell it (and this is one of the things I loved about her) it was my saying "Grandma don't die" (remember i was very little at the time) that saved her. It was a cute story and i can't remember the event although i wish i could and i can't prove it actually happened but it is what i was told. Both of my grandpas were always sort of cold to me, although i always tried to be a good grandaughter. Nevertheless, this is where my mom thinks i got it and i blocked it out so long ago that i couldn't remember what really happened now any way because unfortunately i spent so many of my formative years with grandma and recently those images have began to fade. What was once so vivid that i thrived on the recitation has now become so lost in the mist that i hear snipits of her voice and remember remembering and often times what i hear is myself telling a story of what she used to tell me. As far as grandpa hoff goes, i have completely lost the sound of his voice, he could speak to me now from wherever it is that spirits go and i would not know him. I forgot every time we ever spent together and i only remember myself telling my original recollections. and each time i realize that i forgot something i swear i remembered before it feels like i lost them all over again and it is so hard to feel it over and over and remember that i am forgetting them, it does not help the coping as you might expect, instead causing a whole new pain, this time it is of a different loss, like a whole has formed where a person used to be and nothing i could do would fill it. Used to be whenever i could not sleep I would remember grandma reading to me and hear her soothing voice in my head and now i struggle to remember the look of her face when she smiled and the sound of a little gospel drifting softly soothingly and i can't anymore and it hurts. Even now as type this it feels like i am loosing something again and you don't know quite what it is and yet it still is there and it haunts and you dwell on it . And as far as a better place goes, if there was such a place and i did happen to make it up there, would I remember them even there or would they just be a dead stranger to me? It is scary to forget and almost impossible remember the events which made people so special to me and it doesn't help to forget, it doesn't make it easier to move on and it scares me (probably because that is what killed my grandma Wilson, the forgetting disease, when one day the body forgot how to work and that was it). I wish i could remember any event a special moments instead of remembering myself remembering. And i wish i could never forget how special each and every moment is and to loose them is absolutely the worst side effect to my life and how strange it seems that mathematical theorems should push away those voices. How long will it be before i forget aunt caroline, the sound of her voice, which even now, even 7 months since i last heard it sounds as if it were so far away, or through some sort of fabric, muffled and distant and it will heart renchingly,be gone soon enough. And where there were sounds of joy and happiness will be empty voids as it has been twice before.

Saying good bye

The hardest thing i have ever been asked to do is to say goodbye. It seems like it would be such a simple thing and yet i can't bring myself to do it. This weekend prior i buried my aunt caroline and i could only bring myself to go up to the casket once, after the funeral service and that simple action made sure that i sobbed my way to the car. I have only ever lost three people and you'd think I would be greatful for it. But each and every single one is just as painful as the preceeding one and it really doesn't get easier to say goodbye to people you love. What is particularly painful is that people always shrug it off, she's in a better place they say well it doesn't help matters and I personally believe there is no place better than to be here with your family. And all the problems that insue are part of living and there is no more precious gift than the abilty to simply live. I wish i could just say see you later instead of good bye knowing that we would see each other again but i can't shrug off such a loss so casually. So for today i am going to post pictures of the loved ones who I have lost and tell you why they were so special.

The first is My grandma wilson (pink sunday hat picture), a singular individual, she loved everyone and kindness was as much a part of her as sleeping and eating are to everyone else. Moreover she was the person i always felt safe with and trusted instinctively. There is no doubt in my mind that she loved me just as much if not more than i did her and i feel her loss more than any other as she meant everything to me. I keep a baby picture of myself that she always had near her bed, so she could see it every morning. On the back she wrote that she wanted me to have this and she could not love me more if i were her own daughter, it is my greatest treasure. I lost her in september of 2007.

Then we have my grandpa hoff. He was a interesting man, with a special sense of humor. He adored airplanes and old cars and was a fantastic chef, he made this incredible mac and cheese which was so think and gooey that the fork came away completely coated in cheese. He also gave the biggest bear hugs, conveying more love in one hug then most people have in their entire body. He was an artist at heart, his pieces displaying his trademark precision and exactness. He was incomperably intellegent and funny and very sweet and although not much of a people person was a wonderful person to know. I lost him in july of 2005.

My Aunt Caroline (not pictured) passed last week, it was a tough blow especially considering that she was very young by comparison to my grandparents who had passed. I was quite fond of her and i do miss her very much. She has really been all I have thought about for the last week or so and I think i am still in shock. I was very brave and didn't cry until the visitation but i have not really stopped since. I will also never forget the image of Camilla (can't spell, not sure if that is right, sorry) just sobbing at the conclusion of the grave site services. No one moved for the longest time, just watching her and feeling that pain with her, i was trying not to sob with her because i know it was my instinct to. Aunt Caroline was such a special person, one of those people who were always heart-warming and kind and there was no one like her. There is no real way to describe her which doesn't refer to her strength and love and both qualities defined her so completely. Moreover the family is going to have to sell her home to pay the medical bills and i just know that the pain that will cause will be akin to that the family feels today, that stinging hurt that never really goes away. What i would give to be in the financial position to help i would give every dime to make sure Camilla did not have to sell her grandmother's home. The very concept that 3 tragic events chained together will so utterly demoralize them is a very heart-renching prospect. They lost the family dog, cricket, this morning if you can imagine such a thing, all those horrible things chained together will mean that Camilla in particular is going to have to use her trademark upbeatness to stay above water. I badly want to be up there helping in any way possible, I have been struck by an inane desire to help, somehow. I am not religious person but i would gladly pray every minute of every day if i thought it would help.

Sorry i haven't been blogging much but i have been pretty busy what with being FREE For the first time in 3 yrs (and loving it) and i now have 2 cats, leia, she is a diluted tortishell and sort of like a miniature cat has been so sick for the last month or so, i am really worried about her, she has been throwing up alot, and i went and asked some people who said it is normal (which i certainly don't think so) bottom line anyone who knows why a seven month old, 5 pound cat would be throwing up 10 times a day, must be like half her body weight

New computer troubles

Apparently the university has gotten a new computer system and it MESSED EVERYTHING UP!!!!! The registration for the new semester is totally screwed up. I have to take 7 more classes to graduate and i have no classes that i want to take this year, they cut the history classes down and it really irks me that they have fewer classes for the majors leaving me with history of us military (yuck boring boring)

Believe it or not.

OMG I have some awesome news (well to me anyway). Believe it or not I have started painting my kitchen. I am so proud of myself and it looks awesome. Also I have gotten back into comunication with an old friend whom i haven't spoken to in over 3 years and whom i have missed terribly. And i guess it is time to tell the story. Roll back the clock and lets return to first semester of senior year. One of my very good friends had a problem. (not sure if he does anymore though, since it has been so long) His mother had a drinking problem and he was getting into drugs. God help me i tried to reason with him, I was very sick and pretty soon i could not even attend school anymore, for the last few months of the first semester of senior year i was stuck at home, bored stupid and getting fatter by the day. Meanwhile my good friend was having a hard time. One of the girls at school had gotten pissed at him for some reason (she was crazy so i am not sure why) and she put some drug stuff in his locker and then told a teacher. He was expelled in his senior year. Granted i never heard the whole story from him. Get this. I got back to school in january and he wasn't in any of my classes. It went on for a few days before i started to worry and ask people if they had seen him. Someone eventually told me what happened while i was gone. It is a horrible thing for someone to disappear like that and truth be told i was upset at him for not telling me himself. Granted i was always afraid something horrible would become of this drug thing and i always told him that i wished he would do it. He had a hard life and often times a hard past can ruin a future. I never tried to pretend that i was anything more than upset with all this but it sort of hurt. Kind of like what happen with micheal and duncan and all the rest, all these people were great guys and better friends than anyone i have ever known and yet in an instant they are gone and often times you never really get to say good bye. god even cory whom i could not stand i still get into reticent moods where i really want to argue with him again and Christina she was my best friend and i trusted her and yet when when I graduated they were all gone, I have seen not a one and i miss them all terribly. I realize i am not the easist person to deal with sometimes i can be opinonated and bossy but i still believe that i deserve friends. Some of them i lost because of Chris. He was extremely jealous and truth be told i got stick of it fast. He has always been more trouble than he is worth and it never ceses to amaze me that he would be like that. I was never really interested in him and he knows that. Honestly if anyone else had asked then it would have been them and now i guess i am just so afraid of being alone now that i have no friends anymore. That is the real reason that i keep with an abusive jerk is that i am afraid to be alone. How can i do this to myself? Aren't i worth more than this? I just let him manipulate me and all because i don't want to be alone, I was practically alone for 17 years and in the three years since i have had someone. It is a sobering thought. Yes everytime he hurts me I try to get rid of him but secretly I am scarid that if i do i will be alone forever. think about it , he was really the first serious relationship i had ever had and even though i never really liked him i am terrified of being without him. The other day i took a walk through HFA and the very walls teemed with forgotten promise, of the better life i always dreamed of, of all the sacrifices i have made to get where i am today. Yes i have a good job but i have no friends and i go to a sub par school who wouldn't know historically significant if it tap danced on its face. And all of this so i wouldn't be alone. I am a fool, a stupid fool. Moreover i am so frightened of everything and i let the world walk all over me. Being in a relationship has made me weak willed and indecisive. I used to be so finiky about my hair and i had to wear alot of makeup. Now days i hardly ever remember to take care of my self because i am so focused on cleaning up after that self righteaus jerk. I need some kind of an intervention. I need my friends back. I need to ask them what i should do, i need some support and guidence. I need help. If even for one day things could be as they were and i could ask for help. I just know they would have the right answer and would know the right thing to do. They cannot hear me now and i probably will never see any of them again but i wish so much that i could ask for their help. that is the trouble with time, it never stops

Family reunion

As you may have guessed family is a very important part of my life. Last month we went to a family reunion. To say it was a difficult trip would be a gross understatement. It was horrible and emotional. To see the members of my family falling apart has hurt me more than you could imagine. Each and every year there are horrible tiding and whole branches sizzered off. To see some pictures of my rapidly crumbling family please copy and past the link below.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jchambliss/FamilyReunion
It links to my cousin juliette's pictures from the reunion.

addionally on her blog she has some rather touching videos of grandpa and aunt stephanie singing they make me so sad :( Reminds me of my grandmother, she always enjoyed singing a lovely little gospel, if i close my eyes i can picture her singing softly to me. They were all never very good at singing but you can see they put their heart into it, which makes it so special.
http://juwawa.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html

Tragic

This weekend my family and i went up to indiana to visit a very sick aunt. Meanwhile a group of 4 teenagers from my brother's high school were headed to Ohio to ride some roller coasters and simply celebrate the end of summer. The 4 Teens were friends of my brothers and had the situations been different there is a chance that he would have been there. They were driving in kentucky on their way back home when the car they were in swerved into oncoming traffic and all 4 were killed when a truck carring steel bars ran into them. It makes you think really, about how fragile things are, how a simple moment can change everything. We headed home the day after and the remains of the crash had been cleared from the road with no trace that something horrible had happened just the night before . You wonder often if there is a such thing as fate and it becomes only too clear what it is all about. Now really what stops it from being my brother rather than those poor kids what caused the situation, what makes this story the foreign trajedy instead of something all too close to home? It rattles round in my head and each and every second is precious and lasting. Family is a unique thing, you scream and yell and fight and yet you know that if you couldn't yell and scream and fight then life really wouldn't be the same. It really takes a shock to the system for one to realize what it all means. Does it matter that you fight all the time and haven't said a civil word to one another. That you complain about the fact that he left your car dirty and never bothers to ask how your day was despite the fact that you live down the hall from each other he pretends you don't exist. But even after everything family is family and it is really all that counts. So rest in peace Caitlin Currey, Jackson Harris, Caitlin Lee and Ryan Williams and know that this was not the fate that anyone would have wanted for you. In fact it is not a fate you should have had to face, and each and every day we face tough choices and every little choice could lead down a fatal path.

So tired...

I am so tired today, i was up until 2am washing laundry in the tenant's machines, I really hate not having my own washer, theirs is so tiny and the dryer never dries propertly. Our laundry room has the floor tiled but since it is a solid brick building they have not been able to cut a hole in either laundry room for the dryer vent (which may be why the machine never works right). Mickey is being punished right now, he can't come out of his cage for any reason. He actually peed on the couch while i was in the shower. Any tips on getting him to stop doing that would be greatly appreciated, since has now ruined the couch. He did the same thing with my waterbed matress (thank god it isn't a softsider). Apparently i am no good at potty training pets. My puppy Chance thinks that rugs were invented for him to pee on. Just something else I am much to tired to worry about.

Picture is of me and the little kitty monster, looks sweet right?

In other news the electrican never came back to the house, my bathroom light fixure is still sitting on the kitchen countertop, not only did the idiot hang the wrong fixture the first time, he also never came back to fix the problem. Also he has not switch out the light fixture in that back bedroom, and since mom has already paid him, it would appear that it is not going to get fixed.

The new tile guy who did the new shower was so sloppy, not to mention that his bid included materials and i still had to buy all my own stuff. The tiles are all wopperjawed and the hole he cut for the drain is deep, and large and SQUARE. I have never seen a shower with a square drain, and of course when he installed the drain he installed a standard sized circle drain, everytime I take a shower I have to avoid the drain because i am liable to twist my ankle with it.

It is so hard to live in what is essentially a construction site. I love the working on the houses part, i don't love living there while i work on it. The kitchen being so small is probably the worst adjustment i am having to make, we are all used to pantry cabinents bigger than we are and since the downstairs kitchen hasn't even began to be worked on, it is all of us in my kitchen which makes this horrible little diet (mom's idea not mine) and it just makes it so difficult to stay on when all the boys little sweet treats are everywhere in the kitchen. That probably has alot to do with the fact that I am not so good with diet, the only one which ever really worked was atkins and mom couldn't do it because she missed chocolate too much (seriously)

Chris' Birthday is next week and i am so broke that i can't get him anything. This will be the first birthday in two years that i have not been able to get him a present. It makes me feel bad because i want to get him something nice (god knows he could use some more attractive clothes). The best thing about moving is finding all the awesomely cool things that you forgot you still had, like this art project i did years ago, it is so cute. It's like a lost pet poster for a giant panda. It is amazing how creative you are when you are little. I often wonder what happen to that creative spark i had, did it just die or did i simply out grow the need to be creative. Nowdays I never paint or draw and I haven't made anything out of clay in ten years. Moreover you sort of forget what it was like to have inspiration, to get fixated on an idea and make something beautiful with it. Oddly enough that is more common than you think to get trapped by a concept, nowdays it becomes the mundane things that smutther that creative impluse, the need to get that file completed and did we get those disclosures and when are they doing their inspection and no I thought the buyers agent ordered that and $450 to treat those termites and did we scedule that closing yet and Mr. Investor is having a melt down. And then the ridiculous stuff, the buyer is walking because the home inspector tried to get all the painted shut windows to open and try to make ancient fireplaces work. It seems like no one uses the TAR contracts and what's worse they never read what they sign. Trying to hold agents liable for rickey floors and a mouse in the kitchen after they read the disclaimer notice is insane. A buyer wanting to walk from the contract because HIS lender said they would not be able to close until tomorrow. All the insane things that go on in realestate, not to mention that agents are the most ego centric people on the planet, you can't keep a team together long enough to develope a system because someone always gets it into their head that they don't need a team and can do it on their own and eventually they are too poor to pay rent or buy food. The worst agent are the ones that don't know what they are doing and their pride forgives them from asking for help, unfortunatly i can think of 12 of those that i have met over the years, one would hope they have the brains to have left the business by now. The way the market has been in the last year or so has hopefully thinned the ranks. As by broker always says, quality of agents is much more important than quantity of agents.

I sometimes think about how funny life can become sometimes. When your little the world holds so much promise, anyone can be a famous actress or singer or president or even impossible things like super heros. It is part of growing up to realize that you will never be what you wanted to be when you were little and it is time to grow up. That is probably why I love Disney World so much, it is the one place in the world where you can still have impossible dreams and see impossible things, where any little girl no matter how old can still be a princess. Sometime late at night before you go to sleep you can revist that simple, peaceful time when it was still possible to dream of impossible things. Even as i sit here at my desk, a pile of files and several undelightful phone calls wait for me but for just a moment I am revising that lost world of dreams and letting all the promise of childhood fill my mind. For just a second the world holds magic, real tangible magic.