did you ever have one of those days, weekends, months, when you just needed to be alone and wallow in whatever mood you were in? i am so having one of those... which i have realised are so much harder to enjoy when you live with someone, like your fiance. thankfully, mine has been a wee bit understanding and has let me spend my saturday evening watching chick flicks and my sunday morning procrastisurfing. now all i need is a claw footed tub!

meeting my biannual blog quota

so i was re-reading a post below about how i thought i was bad at things i am not inherently talented at and i realised i am slowly coming to terms with this. i know i am because all my professional energy right now is being put towards becoming a teacher. there is no other job out there where you are constantly being reminded of how much you don't know what you are doing than when you work with children. they have this amazing ability to bring you back to reality with how they are all entirely different and always present you with a new problem or question you have never encountered before. and though i struggle through some days with my current bunch of students, i am not giving up, which is my usual defense mechanism. even though i have no idea how to respond, or what to do in some instances, i am enjoying the not-knowing, the not-being-good-at for the first time in my life. well, maybe not enjoying it, but at least i am not quitting. AND i am spending oodles of imaginary loan money going back to school to become a teacher, a job i will never be 100% amazing at just because no one can. and i am ok with this. actually, i think the best way to be approach teaching is to own that you will never know everything and that actually the one thing that will make you better at your job is to never stop learning.

missing

i have this thing when i travel. i had it the whole time i lived in england and the whole time i lived in scotland. there are quite a few people who can attest to this routine behaviour. i wait till the absolute last minute to pack. then i end up staying awake all night, even after i have finished packing, doing random things. like writing in my travel journal, or emailing friends, or staring out the window at the london skyline. or like writing an entry in my blog which has been covered in cobwebs since christmas.

i am heading to germany this weekend for the wedding of a very good friend of mine from college. it is completely impracticle for me to go. i have no money and my fiance and i are attempting to save for our own wedding but it is one of my bestest and i can't not be there. i will not even have much time to spend with him, what with all the folks there, but it is important to us both that i be there. it is also important for me to be there because i will be meeting up with another soulpal from living abroad. oh my some girl, i miss you so. and thinking about missing you, and needing you in my life more reminds me off all those folks i miss.

i guess this longing is really apparent right now because the boy and i are on the point of not even having a wedding since they are too damn expensive per guest-head. but my friends are me and i can't imagine not having them there with me. why do people have to equal money? why is the wedding industry such a sham? it's a real struggle. and i know it sounds kind of petty. i know there are people out there with bigger problems than this. (i watched the constant gardener tonight so the irony was way obvious.) but not being able to have a wedding for me is a huge symbol of a much bigger aspect of my life.

when i was a little girl, i promised myself that i would do 'better' than my parents. i wouldn't have the thrown together family bbq that was their wedding. it worked for them, but it wasn't a choice in my mind. i wanted my people there, from near and far. and yet, here i am, back in the same area i grew up in, feeling so less further evolved than them. about to have an even more white trash wedding. thank god i am in grad school or i would really be feeling depressed about my lack of forward motion. at least this weekend in germany will remind me of all i had, and chose not to have now. it will be good to meet up with old friends, including my insomniac world travelling former self.

go conts!

so i just posted a comment on a myspace board about my alma mater and i thought to prove just how much i l-o-v-e hamilton i would post it here too- enjoy!

i was sad to see all these comments bashing hamilton, but i totally respect it's not for everyone.

to give you a different opinion- i think the place is amazing!

of course some people are shut off, but that happens everywhere. just look at life, most people won't give you a glance when you walk down the street (hello, we do live in new england!) but that is just life. we live in little circles. i loved my circle at hamilton.

hamilton is where i made the most amazing life long friends. they are people that i know i can count on for whatever, whenever and they will be there. ok, so yeah, that sounds cheezy, but it is oh so true. and i am not talking two people. there are quite a few hamiltonians spread around the world who will always have a couch for me to crash on.

plus the campus is amazing! you can't beat the glen covered in snow or beinecke lit up at night.

so clinton doesn't have a lot of places to go out at night, but the convos i have had on the adk porch at lunch or whispered in the library at 2am are some of the most life changing i think i will ever have. actually, now that i have been out for almost four years (ack, is it really that long?) i find myself missing that unique hamilton college experience of having my closest pals always within walking distance for a chat or a cuppa.

what i will remember most from college aren't the late nights drinking or the walks of shame (and i've had my share), it is those rare moments when i really connected with someone else- whether chatting about how our majors sculpt where we are headed next in life or over which is better- mc ewan or commons.

i don't care what you say, i love hamilton and i will continue to send them the $50 a year i can afford till i can afford more! :-)

excuses excuses

so the main reason i have not been writing is that i am focusing on my novel. did i tell you that i am going to be a famous american novelist?

carrie's word of the day

i like to think i have my own language. i make up words all the time. my friends can definitely attest to this. strangers have a hard time understanding me (so does my own mom, but i don't know if she counts because she's so far behind on the lexigon, ie, i heard her try and use the word bling the other day and i almost lost a lung laughing so hard). to try and rid the world of misunderstanding me (or not understanding me at all) i have decided to also use my blog to define the words in my wonky language*. here's the newest:

pro-cras-ti-surf-ing: the act of viewing various arbitrary websites as a means of avoiding what you really should be doing. eg: Carrie found the cutest shoes while she was procrastisurfing at work yesterday. Grant writing? What grant writing?

*feel free to add my words to your vocabulary, just make sure you know you heard it here first. :-)

absence makes the heart grow fungus

i always have loved the above quote from a bnl song. and sometimes i think it can be true. for instance, i have not written on my blog in a very very long time (in cyber world). thus, perhaps most people have stopped checking it. it seems to be that iffin you don't write every day, then people wipe you off their favourites list. bummer. guess i will just have to start writing more. :-)

not impressed

so, i am not too happy with the map of where i have been in the world. i know it has to be big to be able to fit everything in it, but it is so hard to see where i have actually been. and even though, yes, i have been to australia, i only went to melbourne really. this map makes it look like i wrote the travel book on it instead of bill bryson.

and i totally haven't been to the wicked north of north america. i want to, but that will come one day. for now, the furthest i have been is ottawa.

however, on a seperate note- me posting this map on my blog involved my first ever interaction with html! yay! yahoo! wee! aren't you excited for me. yes, all i did was copy and paste, but i am at least learning what it looks like a little.

not to mention, putting the maps up messed with the sidebar of my blog. maybe if i write more and more and more, they will eventually right themselves. if not, somegirl heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

where i've been in the world

where i was bound, but then i went

below are the states i have been too. above are the countries i have been too. a little cheesy and the maps are not all that great design-wise, but i thought i would make myself feel better about all i've seen in the world.

where i've been in america

quote of the day (snap along)

"What is that feeling when you are driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?--it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies" -Jack Kerouac

how low can you go

i stooped (which some say is better than hitting your head). or rather, i sold out to the blogging demons.

it all started when somegirl mentioned she suprisingly found she loved the attention of comments. i thought i wouldn't mind them, but that i would much rather have fun as an anonymous entity in cyberspace.

however, after only a short time blogging, i was getting edgy for my fix of comments. sure, somegirl wrote back to me, but she doesn't count because she is required to comment by the friend pact we sealed with blood those many years ago.

some blog i looked at had 100+ comments a day. maybe i didn't want that much, but i wanted some. i wanted them bad.

so i did it. i emailed people i knew with my blog address. good bye anonymity. hello fame- here i come!

no, seriously. it's not like i censor myself in front of people i know. geez, who does that? isn't everyone supposed to know everything about you? tis always been my policy. and now, not only can i re-visit that habit, but i can also greatly aid my friends in their procrastisurfing. (dude, i think i totally just made up a word- dibs!)

so enjoy... and write me damnit!

i second that emotion

i was just bored at work and flicking through random blogs when i came across this great account of thunder and lightening storms in the midwest (find it at http://eyespyspyder.blogspot.com/). i l-o-v-e-d it! i am from the mountains in the northeast US and we get great summer storms too. except, instead of hectic energy you can see approach from far off, we get these brewing clouds that swirl over the mountain tops, illuminating everything with a misty, exciting light. when i moved away from these storms and lived in the UK, i missed thunder and lighting so much my body ached. there if it rains, it rains. i maybe heard thunder once in two years living there. now i know that if my body once again aches for the crackling renewed energy these storms bring, and the northeast has gotten dull, i can try living in the midwest instead! :-)

there is nothing i am worse at than being bad

and this statement totally takes on two meanings...

1- i am awful at breaking the rules. even little illegal things make me shudder with guilt. like smoking a joint in a club in london. when my friend pulled one out, i was sure i was soon to be deported. somehow it didn't click that all the people around me might be on far worse chemical yummies. but i did it (peer pressure!) and managed to somehow escape the radar of scotland yard. and they call themselves police!

i am always the first to be the voice of common sense, the parent if you will. i would never dream of driving even after only two beers. i feel really anxious every time i am standing even relatively close to private property signs (a sure sign i am an american, according to some of my british friends). in high school, when my friends would go hang out at night at the town pool, or skipped school, i was always the one they had to drag along kicking and screaming.

not only do my friends balk at my goody two shoes nature, but so does my boyfriend. let me paint the scene... we live in a tres small mountain town in new york state. we had super floods this year and they wiped out the bridge that leads from our house into town. when the bridge is open, it is a simple 5 minute walk to all the bare necessities. when they recently closed it to (presumably) fix it, the walk turned into a 20 minute hike to reach the second bridge, at the other end of town. now, when i say they closed the bridge, i use the term 'close' loosely. what they really did (at first) was just park an extra large construction vehicle across the entrance. you could easily still get across, so, naturally, everyone still did. seeing that the behemoth electrical truck did nothing to deter the mighty mountain townsfolk, the county workers then brought out the big guns and put one of those concrete barriers across (the kind they use to divide highways). unfortunately, someone in the shop didn't quite measure right (or didn't quite care to) and the barrier was a good two feet short of the width of the bridge. just the perfect size for a human to walk through. the saga continued when they also erected a nice big "bridge closed" sign. they must have figured that now people would get the picture. if only they were so lucky. while i, dutiful town citizen that i am, long ago gave up crossing (to be honest, even the big scary truck made me feel not wanted), my boyfriend (he's a rebel and i love him so) felt he couldn't be stopped by any silly county workers. it took him till they finally broke down and put up an additional "sidewalk closed sign" to be slightly wary. but even that didn't completely stop him. what did eventually was some big dude in a neon orange shirt yelling at him to "get the %$#! off the bridge".

now, this is probably what it would take to stop most people from using their beloved bridge (indeed, even the timid fishermen folk were not scared away from their trout by such signs). but not me. in my law abiding logic, all it took to change my running route was a slight hint they might not want us on the bridge anymore.

i am a law makers dream.

i am a wuss.

2-the other way in which i am not good at being bad is that i suck at not doing things well. the minute i realize i don't have enough know-how, skill, talent, panache, strength, etc. to get the job done i want to give up.

this lack luster performance has been pretty steady in all aspects of my life. in college, when my english double major started getting me B-'s instead of A's, i dropped it faster than Speedy G. runs. when i didn't make the chorus for the school musical, i never auditioned again. my lack of patience with my ineptitude goes on and on.

take this summer for instance: i was supposed to organize a summer camp program for the not-for-profit at which i work. due to lots of things (bad timing, lack of support, not enough publicity, procrastination...) it hasn't been working out. the main reason being that we don't have enough kids signed up. the minute i saw this project going wonky (i love me the scottish language!) i wanted to abandon ship. i majored in drama at school because i loved it, because i was good at it. now that i am not anymore (well, at least not at the recruiting aspect), i want to find another career path, something i can really excel at.

now, i could look at this two ways. the "glass half full way" says that of course i don't want to follow through now because i am the kind of hard worker that likes to prepare all the facets of a task in advance and i don't think a job is worth doing if it is half ass. the other way to look at it is that i am perfectionist and unless i deem (only i can make this call) that i am extraordinary at something, i don't want to do it.

i am a boss's nightmare.

i am a giver upper.

but at least i follow the rules...

shout out to nancy griffith

okay, so i know folk isn't the 'coolest' music genre out there but i can't help loving it. (maybe this is what happens when you are raised by hippies.) whenever i hear the cover nancy griffith does of this song ("can't help but wonder where i'm bound") i just have to sit back and smile. especially the part that goes something like this (excuse the butchering nancy) "it's a long and dusty road and a hot and heavy load, the folks i meet ain't always kind. some are bad and some are good, some have done the best they could to help me ease my troubling mind". speaking of nancy, there is another song on that same album (or maybe it's the same song- too tired to figure it out) that also rings so true for me, especially at this point in my life where i have moved back home to small town america soley to be with my love. this songs helps me remember that there are other good things about living in small towns. "the sidewalks gleam with neon dreams that call from time to time. and when my childrens' children ask me why i didn't go, i'll say the heart of any town is the people that you know. and they'll always call you home"

introducing, live from the mountains of upstate new york...

caz!

welcome to my blog!

i know it won't be nearly as interesting as some (shameless plug for laughing all the way) but i can only aspire.

i haven't decided exactly what shape this adventure will take yet... we will see.

but i did want to tell a story about my day today. it started with two (yes, count them, two!) incredibly deep conversations about life. i rarely average one a week, let alone two in one day, so you can imagine the catch up my brain was doing all day. the first convo was with a good friend i have known since i was a little girl. the second with a woman i've only recently met, yet both conversations had similar themes coursing throughout.

we talked about choices. something i am faced with a lot lately. who should i be dating? is he the absolute right one for me? what should i do with my life? should i take this job? my one friend pointed out that we only have issues with the grass being greener option because we have free choice. all those people in arranged marriages, they just take what they get and learn to work with it. i only question if i am with the right person or taking the right career path because i recognize that there are endless possibilities. and i have a right to check out all of them. my questions weren't resolved today but i gained a lot more insight about them.

like, i need to get me some blinders. or an arranged marriage!

so on my drive home, after mulling over these convos for the better part of a day, i sensed a great wave of feeling wash over me. it was an odd sensation. one i knew i had experienced before, but not in a long time. i spent the majority of my 45 minute commute trying to recognize the calm inside me. as i crested a hill on the four lane strip mall road that eventually leads to the mountains in which i live, it hit me. this feeling, the one i hadn't had since living in edinburgh and london, since summers at camp, was one of belongingness. i suddenly realized how happy and comfortable i was/am to be in the place where i stand.

what better an epiphany to start a blog with, yeah?

i could delve more, but my eyes are rapidly objecting by slowly closing.