doha #2

“Tired”
Tired from moving and moving
Tired from using my head too much, and my muscles
Frustration tires the heart.
I will make this temporary house my home
I will sleep here, and feel alive in the morning
And fill this room with laughter. Make a house a home.

doha #1

Instructions from my Fiction Writing teacher: "Here are the rules for writing dohas: 1) Be present -- speak from the heart. 2) Speak your truth -- what is true for you at this moment. 3) No revising, no editing, no pre-writing. Just put your words down and let them go." We've been writing dohas almost every class and sharing them in groups, so I thought I would post some here as we do them, just to switch it up a bit. Here's one of the first ones I wrote, last week:

“Starbucks”
16 months today
Happy and happy, best friends
2 tall mochas to celebrate, take a break from life
Sit with me and love me
Read next to me
Taking life together, 2 heads are better than 1.

Weddings and lack thereof

These are from my beautiful friend Maria's wedding shower last month. As of yesterday, she is a married woman! Her and her husband, who is another friend of mine, got married on the beach in Costa Rica and are now bopping around there for another 3 weeks to celebrate. Jealous!

I'm at that age where friends of mine are starting to get married, which is bizarre and wonderful, but it is also serving to make me realize how little I want to be married at this point in my life. Someone asked me the other day if I wanted to get engaged soon, and I came back with a "Hell no!" without meaning to respond so strongly. I'm only 20! For some people, it is completely perfect and right to get married young (like my friend Maria and her husband), but sometimes I think young Christian couples feel like they need to rush to get married because that's what they're "supposed" to do, and one should never make such a decision because of applied pressure. I have alot to do, independently, before I get married, and I see that taking up the next several years.

walkin' in a winter wonderland

Snow over last week = beautiful and stressful. My life is one big juxtaposition.

Ghosts of Manhattan

I did some more practice shots over winter break with my boyfriend's current music project, called Ghosts of Manhattan. I've never taken band pictures before these, and it took me a while to get used to taking pictures of boys with such serious looks on their faces! Making music is serious business, I suppose. The boys liked the setting of the pictures I took of my sister (below post) so we went to the same place. I also tried out my new fisheye lens on some of them, and I was happy with how they turned out.

my little sister & portrait experimenting

While home for winter break, I took some pictures of my younger sister to get some practice with portraits. I don't consider myself a photographer by any means, but I do want to get better and perhaps do some of her friends' senior pictures in the spring. Not to mention, she likes the attention! I styled her, except she chose the tank top. All of the coats are mine, as well as the shoes. We took the pictures at about an hour before dusk, at a place called Howe Farm which is part dog park, part agricultural project, and part wetland. It was fun! Enjoy.

This is no way to treat royalty!

So, it's been a while. I would apologize for the break in posts, except that my life has been hectic and stressful for the last week so I don't feel for you - only for myself ;) My roommates and I came back to our apartment last Monday, ready to move back in after winter break, and found our nice, cute, lovely apartment had water damage from a frozen pipe that had burst and that we had to find another place to stay in about 5 minutes time. We thought it might be temporary, so we crammed ourselves into our friends' dormrooms, until the next day when we found out it would be six weeks until we could move back in, and our rental company wasn't offering any sort of living situation or compensation for us. So, to summarize, the last week has been spent trying to find a place to live, trying to communicate with our full-of-shit property management, trying to stay out of our hosts' ways, along with starting classes back up again. But! We have found a room to rent with an elderly couple (the rooms are so 70s - neon shag carpet and all) and I have a ton of photos that I need to post. So be ready! And remember that when life hands you lemons, if you have good friends and faith you can make lemon drops with 'em.

upon arrival, I found some of my clothes sitting soaking wet in the shower

a ton of our furniture stacked in our kitchen. so sad! everything was so cute when we left.