Holidays

This Valentine's day I got a sweet half made half bought card from a friend of mine. It said:

Who's Awesome
ashley?
You Are

and then on the inside there was this picture and the words:

To the most beautiful, caring, courageous, wonderful woman I know. Happy Valentines day.

He also found me some of my favorite chocolate. MARS bars!! Yum.
But my second gift I received on Sunday, was delivered to me while I slept. Someone busted out my window in my living room. Normally this would be an easy fix, but with 3 inches of snow and a sick landlord, It's covered in plastic and sleeping under every blanket I own. Some joyful day.
I remember Valentines Days when in grade school we'd spend the better part of a week creating shoebox mailboxes for our individual desks. Each person in the class would decorate their box in whatever festive motif they desired as long as there was a slit on the top to place valentines through. We'd each give a valentine to everyone else in the class, or at least everyone who wasn't a glue-sniffing-booger-eater with cooties.That style of expected giving, threw me off Valentines Day for a while. Until my senior year of highschool.
My First time I bought someone flowers.
I decided to use the extra money I had saved up from January and buy my friends and others Roses for Valentines Day. I gave up my lunch hour to go into town and peruse the flower shops for my roses. I bought 3 long-long stem deep red roses, (one for each of my "loves"). I bought a dozen red roses, a dozen yellow roses, a dozen pink roses and two dozen white roses. These I passed out to my friends who I love, people I like and some times those who just looked like they needed the comfort of a beautiful flower from someone who cared. I got a HUGE HIGH from this giving. Not only did I get to break a few traditions about guys only giving girls flowers, but I'd like to think that I may have changed a few people's mind about Valentines Day.

I believe that while showing love through spending money can lead the motivation behind giving gifts. (the bigger/ more expensive the gift the more Love) I think that Valentines Day is a day where people can show, unashamedly kindness to those around them. It's a day when it's okay for mean and women alike to say... I love you.
And I've often taken to buying flowers for people. Sometimes on whim (I'll drive past a florist) maybe it's because they need to be cheered up from something (death, a bad breakup). I even buy them for myself. To brighten up my home, or because it's such a shame that on a shelf in a shop, they will only be thrown out, and not sniffed, and watered and treasured for being a wonderful creation of beauty.

I believe that many things, TRADITIONS, Holidays, Words, Actions...have lost their value and meaning. Here's a little parody of what Valentines Day could mean. After all, it was so long ago...Who really knows. And more to the point. If something has meaning for you (giving a gift) why worry about the meaning it could have had 200 years ago, when you and she/he knows what it means for the two of you.

Good Morning

Wak'ie Wak'ie Eggs and Bac'ie!
Wake up wake up there is eggs and bacon for breakfast.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to wake up to a plate full of delicious food every morning, without having to spend 20-45 minutes heating up the stove, mixing the ingredients and scraping off the fat to consume it? Not to mention the dishes left over.
I've heard this saying more than a few times, Wake-y Wake-y, Eggs and Bac-y. But with my spelling this version has a new meaning and a similar one. Waki waki eggs n baci...New meaning: Baci means (Italian) kiss. A treasured thought of mine, is to wake up to being kissed by someone who loves me.
Damn Disney if you must, but my thoughts of being awakened this way also stem from more than childhood fantasy. Forget the more than realistic fact that his breath will be morning rich with last nights meal and the evening's drool. I'd still prefer to open my eyes for the FIRST time each day, with him in my field of view.
Even with my love of food, breakfast would be a second thought. And thus the second meaning: similar to the first image of food right in front of you. There would be a feast. Our eyes on each other. This hunger for love diminishes others.

Just when I think I'm out...

They pull me back in.

I've sat down to many a task. Papers, proposals, speeches and then some. I'll divest hours of time into projects I want to succeed. My final project here is to graduate. After four years, three advisers, switching majors, a Division I sport, sketch comedy group, a semi-professional musical, Army ROTC and no social life, I felt that the last spring of my degree would be a breeze. (haha pun!)
I was hopeful, the first few weeks I was greeted in each of my classes by interesting teachers who wanted to have as much fun in the class with the students as the information they were to teach. I sat back and started to enjoy my last first day of school.
Now, three weeks after the last day to add a class, I receive a call from my major department. The conversation goes something like this...them:"You are three credits short on your graduation requirements, and will not be graduating on time. Please come to our office or fill out the necessary forms online to switch your graduation to the Fall." Me: "But I followed the instructions from my adviser and I've been taking 15 credit hours minimum each semester." Them: "Keep us informed of your plan, you can walk in the spring but you won't graduate without the requirement. It cannot be waived."
WHAT!!!!!!!!

You are a language requirement short. But that can't be I took French and German in high school.
We don't have your transcripts on file here. Maybe we have them on paper somewhere, but instead of looking for them, we'll just pull your file and tell you that you can't graduate yet. Pay us more money first and then maybe we'll consider it.
Oh and by the way the 20 hrs of Theater classes you took don't count for a Arts and Humanities GenEd credits. So you owe us another class.
And you didn't have enough credits taking right now to graduate with 120, so if you CLEP out of the language you will still have to take 3 hrs to have 120 total.
But I'm taking 18 right now? and the last day to add classes was last week.
Keep us updated with your plan to graduate.

Skrew you.

Hey Adviser, can I see the file you've had for four years. Do you think that you have my transcripts in there?
OOh look there they are, notified and sent from my high school. Oh look there's my two years of German with a minimum grade of a C. Weird. Lets walk that over to the Records office. dee-de-dee
Here you go Ms lady-in-an-office who is controlling my future vicariously through paperwork that someone is trying to default. Yes I know that the papers are in my hand now and so it would suggest that it could be changed. However, for four years it has been in my advisers folder in a locked cabinet and here is a note she wrote (please call to verify) that it is authentic. If you wont accept it than at least copy it and put in on record so that I don't have to inform my school that a University has lost information that a high school can keep track of.
Oh and by the way, thank you for calling me my last semester here and asking me if I had a plan when for FOUR years I've been paying you over $3,000 a semester to do one thing. Give me a bachelors degree.
But I'll forgive you. When I'm walking across that stage, with my blank folder. And I receive my diploma in the mail. I'll make a copy and send it to you, that way we'll both have it on record.

Share the love not the Grade

Share your cookies at recess.
Play nice with the other kids.
If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
This attitude has morphed the development of my generation. Extra credit and bell curves have also added more space between action and responsibility.
If you think this is only a product of lower education schooling, check that idea at the door. Extra credit and group projects, with one grade for all individuals involved are a staple of higher learning classes.
While it's true that not all Universities use them, my particular one does.
Why should someone who doesn't do work get a better grade than the effort they produce. Why should a excellent worker suffer for the joint work another has failed to produce?
I'll tell you why, because that's how it works in the real work place. If you are a part of a board or committee that head a project. No matter the part you play, if your name is on the cover of the business plan, you are responsible for every part of that plan. If one part is messed up, and you still signed your name to it than WELCOME to the responsibility of your actions.
The problem I'm suggesting is not the group projects in idea, but the lack of motivation people in the groups give them.

Where were you?

These questions plague me.

Where were you when you heard the news... about the Oklahoma City Bombing ?
Where were you when Cassie Burnall was shot for saying she believed in God?
Where were you when the World Trade Center was hit?

One is just a paper I have to write for class.
Two, a song i sang in school for a talent show.
Last, I was being picked up from school by my friends' mom. I thought she must be joking.

Where were you?

Our lives are defined but what we do, but WHEN is decided by society. I don't remember these days because of something that someone else did, something else happened to someone else. I was just living my life. Or was I?

I honestly can't remember the FIRST time I realized that life should be treasured and lived REALLY LIVED each and every day to the fullest. But i remember the last.
I watched the movie Seven Pounds. I can't describe the way i felt because it was too personal to express. It had emotions and thoughts, memories both good and bad wrapped up in moral obligations, social expectations and unexpected events.
I just know that i don't want to have to wait for something to happen to me, I don't want to be another Where were you when...

I'm not going to let my best memories rely in what, when and who society says I must care.
My FIRST memory to treasure this year will not be " Did you see when ...." But instead will be "I did something"