The 2 Months is Basically Over...

...Yeah...I was right...It's April 29th, and in one week from today I graduate from college...that two months went hella fast!

It's strange though, because I feel ready now. I never thought that time would come...starting the semester I felt like I was being drug to May...and now I think I'm ready to slowly pick up my feet and walk across that stage next weekend. Don't get me wrong...I won't be running (partly cause I'll be wearing my bargain $17 shoes I got at payless...hells yeah bitches!) but i think I'll be walking with a small (maybe a little nervous) but proud and excited smile on my face...

I've got some exciting things lined up.  Now when people ask me what I will be doing with my life I have an answer!! BIG RELIEF!

Q- "so kendall...what are you going to do after graduation"

Me- "well...I have a PR Internship with R/West"

...not a full time job...yet...but I have confidence that things will work out for me, and at least jump start me in the right direction...I know things are right when inside, even if I'm anxious about it, it feels good...I'm not nervous at all really...The storm has calmed and I'm ready to be all grown up.  I've leanred that if I just ease into something...things fall into place...you can't force it, you are most successfull when you reach for the things you want but take things that are waiting for you to grab.  I don't really know much, but I do know my gut and when I listen to my gut it always ends up being a good day :)

Let's do this! May 6th, here I come.

Trying Again...

Well it has been a while since I have blogged, but I figured I would start getting back into it.  Not that I have any extra time...Time is the last thing I have extra of...but once again giving it a go...

Not for any cool or fun reason...not getting ready to go to Europe again - though it is funny, I miss it more than ever! I will go back, someday when I get some $$! haha...

No I would say the latest thing that is front in center in my life is the fact that graduation is right around the corner. yeah...shit is right.  Today is March 2nd (I don't even know what happened to the first...all of a sudden I looked down and February was over and it was March)  Pretty much the story of the year! Can't blink cause i'll miss a day, can't sneeze i'll miss a week, and God forbid I take a nap...i'll miss the whole damn month!  Anxiety?...mmm not really, Im pretty relaxed about it, it's more the feeling of my nails ripping off my finger tips because no matter how hard I try I can't seem to be able to hold on to the last few seconds I have left here at UP. 

It is definitely a bitter sweet, the thought of graduation, getting a job (and having my own money and security for the first time in my life!), my OWN apartment...is so new and exciting! I can't wait to see where I am next year at this time.  However, getting these things means leaving a whole huge chunck of my world behind.  And to be quiet honest when i even start to think about it a whole huge lump forms in my gut and get sad about it.  May, not only means graduation, but it means my best friend is moving 3,000 miles away from me.  And i'm not going to lie or sugar coat it that pretty much sucks ass...I'm asking for a new lap top-apple kind with a web cam so we can talk to each other.  I keep telling myself thank God for cell phones and text messaging, but lets face it...my world will be different without my work out buddy, my dancing buddy, my going out on friday nights to happy hour and portland clubs buddy, my lets not do anything lay in sweat pants knit and watch movies buddy, pretty much she is my other half and we do everything together.  When life sucks, shes there, when life is perfect, she's there...and now that I am starting this whole next chapter of my life...she won't be there. I might be hating that day. 

I don't really know much of anything right now...everything feels like a big whirl wind and I'm standing in the eye watch it all circle around me...the only thing I do know is that this next two months will be over before I know it and thats crazy! I can't believe college is over!

Home…it IS where the heart is.

We finally pull away from the Black Butte Ranch after a week long family vaca and as I wave peace out to the wild fire burning in the distance we get onto the high way and begin our two and a half hour drive home.  It doesn’t take me long to finish the end of my book and then look at Allie to figure out what we are going to do for the next two hours.  She frantically starts making phone calls and I ask if she wants to put stuff in the old beeze’s coiffure (Grandma’s beehive..) like the old days. She laughs and says “ok hand me that water bottle.” As she is ripping off the label and crunching it up mom looks back while I place a trident rapper in the white wad and she asks “what are you guys doing..” Allie quickly snaps back. “PLAYING!” we both laugh and then take pictures of our art work…

A while later, I chill in the far back corner texting away when a hand swiftly latches on to my thigh covered by the fleece clown print blanket my sister and I, a while before, had decided was ugly because the clowns were creepy…and I hear “HEY! They are all on recess!” (in reference to all of the prisoners out in the yard of the women’s correctional institution off of highway 22).

Grandma continues to have speaking problems with flem as she yells in my mom’s cell phone to her friend Virginia…

Dad nervously rubs his upper lip with his index finger (a habit he has had for as long as I can remember) while he tries to go as fast as he can down the freeway without being constantly pestered by mom to slow down.

Allie stares out the window waiting for at least one of the twelve people she called to relieve her from the torments of boredom and return her messages.

Mom anxiously slams her foot into the floor knowing full well that her attempts to push the break from the passenger side will fail yet she continues to drive defensively.

Molly is peaced out on the floor…sleeping.

And as for me?...I can’t help but be thankful that I am finally back home, not stuck in London’s Heathrow airport…and back with my “one-of-a-kind” family that I would never trade in for the world. Nothing is like screaming moms when bats are swarming over head, over-loving fathers who want to talk about anything and everything when all you want to be is left alone to watch princess bride without interruptions, Grandma’s who say “cheese out” (aka peace out) make whip noises and are constantly driving you crazy with their nasty talons and everything in between, and loving sisters who are snatchy and snippy but you know that when they say “leave me the f*$@ alone!” they really are thankful you are home because they have been bored shitless all summer without you.

Killing Insomnia

 24 hours three drastic time changes…bound to cause disruption in sleeping patterns.

Before embarking on my trip back home my body clock had finally adjusted to London time. Eight hours ahead I had officially been functioning on opposite ends of the time spectrum.  After an eight hour flight I found myself sitting in Chicago O’Hare airport where the big hand sat on six and the little hand just hit thirty.  It was light outside so it all seemed quite normal however my eyes were starting to get pretty tired and I could definitely feel the energy from my body moving towards empty, perhaps the energy low could have had something to do with the fact that my body was telling me it was 12:30 in the morning.  Chicago-ers were running around fetching dinner so to integrate I decided to do the same and grab a late dinner before boarding on yet another plane to depart to yet another time zone. Grabbed the o-so-healthy grub from McDonalds and found myself eating at 9:30pm Chicago time (counting…that makes it…um…3:30am London time? Eek. Disgusting. Who eats nasty fries in the middle of the night?! Ugh…don’t think about it too much. I’m too tired) I board the plane an hour and a half later and pass out. Four hours later I wake up in Portland. (9:00am my time…my body telling me, you are tired but you need to get up to go to class…3:00am Chicago time…telling me that I should still be sleeping…1:00am Portland time…telling me to go home and go to bed...which to listen to?)

Four days later I have found that I am adjusted pretty well.  Especially in comparison to the insomnia of Salzburg…I did not even know it was possible to go 55 hours with no sleep! At any rate my sleeping patterns have now adjusted to that of a three-year-old Pacific North westerner passing out at 8:30 pm and waking up at 6 am.

**Only disruptions to my beauty sleep…Family vacation to Black Butte. Last night between the time I feel asleep and the time the rest of my family fell asleep I was awoken by enormous thunder and lightening, screams from my mom to my dad who attempts to chase the bat chillin’ in their bedroom out with a broom, and the incessant text message alert my sister has on her phone “OH MY GOSH…NEMOS SWIMMING OUT TO SEA!!” (quote from Finding Nemo)

Home Sweet Home.

Traveling.

Funny how tolerant you can be when you know you are home bound...finally!

8 hour flight next to stinky BO...serious if there is ever a time to shower...you would think before you got on to an airplane with 500 other people the least you can do is spare them of recycled BO air for 8 hours....seriously. But I did get to watch over the hedge 4 times...repeatedly, and I made it all the way home without diarrhea...so it could have been worse. Only we were in customs for 2 hours in Chicago and would have missed our plane to Portland but thankfully it was delayed 2.5 hours so we were able to make it, with time to spare to grab a people magazine and catch up on all the celebrity drama that went on while we were gone. Britney posed nude while prego...Lindsay was hospitalized again for partying too hard...Jen and Vince got engaged but broke it off...and Pam married Kid. 

We finally made it on the plane to Portland...I got to sit next to a sweet old man who told me he was 800...but then corrected himself and said 108...apparently he is the president of all the universities in Oregon and while I was sleeping Tara said he tried to steel my ipod, so I hid it...and as we were getting off the plane he grabbed my angle. I kicked his wrist and Tara and I booked it (literally running) to security...peace out EUROPE...freaking finally home!