Psycho exercise

For my creative writing homework, we were supposed to write a frightening scene. Not sure I'm happy with this result.

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Rich shouldn’t be home yet. I massaged the shampoo into my hair, waiting for him to come tell me he was back. Nothing happened, though I could swear I heard something scrape against the wall. I turned the water off, standing a moment to listen. The house was silent. I stepped out onto the bathmat and wrapped a towel around me. Opening the door, I peered down the hall.

“Hey, Rich.”

Nothing. I couldn’t see into the kitchen from here. As I stepped out into the hall, I called out again.

“Hey, Rich, is that you?”

A thin bent shadow darted across the wall. That wasn’t Rich. Something was in the kitchen.

I froze paralyzed. I took a step backwards, never moving my eyes from where I had seen the shadow.

It appeared around the corner. The figure was black as if clothed in a robe. It leaned against the wall, fingers scraping as it moved. Its wide staring eyes filled my vision. The scream would not escape my throat. I threw myself into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I tried three times before I could get my trembling fingers to lock the door. I pressed my body up against the wall. I could feel sobs welling in my throat, and behind my eyes.

The scraping came closer, and closer, and closer. Then silence. I tried to hold my breath.

The doorknob rattled.

Erasers

They may technically be toys, but I think these things are amazing.

IWAKO

The erasers are just too cute. There is something I find irresistible about little, cute, brightly colored animals. I bought my self a blue elephant... and now I want a white one. :)

Oh, and a hedgehog!

A Teacher Makes all the Difference

Everyone has teachers they remember, for good or bad reasons. Being home schooled until my junior year of high school, I didn't really have any interaction with teachers beyond my mother. In about Eighth Grade, I started watching taped lessons, but I still could not interact with these teachers. So, it wasn't until my junior year of high school, when I started dual enrollment in the local community college, that I really experienced being in a class and interacting with a teacher.

I'm not complaining about my earlier education. In fact, I believe I benefited greatly from home schooling, and I would not go back and change it. Now that I’m in college, I found some professors that think highly of me, and have high expectations of me. One professor in particular has high expectations for me. I'm amazed at how much more I am willing to work when I care, not just about my grade, but about what the teacher thinks. Since high school, with a few exceptions, I’ve been able to get good grades by not putting forth too much effort. Just by having a professor that believes in me, I’m pushing myself 3x as hard when I don’t have to. I've raised my stress level 10x, but at the same time, I'm happy to work harder. I'm afraid of failing, and in this case, failing would be not living up to the high expectations that are placed on me.

I'm pushing myself. I’m growing. I'm working at least 3x harder than I am for my other classes, and though I'm stressed, I'm learning 3x more. Everyone should have a professor that inspires her to work this hard at some point during the college, or high school, career. I almost don’t want to graduate in May.

Origami

I'm not sure this is the best idea I've ever had. I want something different for my wedding centerpieces, but I still like flowers. I think I've decided to fold, what will probably end up being several dozen, origami flowers. Vintage looking sheet music would make romantic flowers...

The plan is to make these flowers, then, somehow, attach them to branches. Then I'll arrange them in pretty vases with rocks. It will be beautiful. And cheap! Now, I need to find out how many pairs of hands I can get to help.

Too bad I didn't see these flowers before I put a down payment of my fabric flowers. I could have made my own bouquet! I could have used red, white and black paper, and then painted the edges of some of the flowers with silver paint.... That would have made me a DIY diva!

For Laughs

This made my day.

Wake!

Tosca Lee's second novel tells the story of Eve, the first woman. Lee's lyrical prose tells of the first man and women in the Garden, their temptation, and fall. Lee then goes on to tell their story as they wander from the Garden and struggle to live in the fallen world. Through Havah's (Eve's) eyes, the reader learns about the beginning of mankind as a family is begun, and multiplies. Then the reader weeps with Havah and Adam as they witness the first death.

This is a story that at first we think we know well, until we read Lee's story and realize we hardly know it at all. Tosca Lee left me weeping and laughing, and wondering what it would have been like to live in a world such as Adam and Havah lived in. I could hardly keep myself from reading the book all at once. I could not pry my fingers from the pages, and the beautiful story occupied my thoughts long after.

Just as Tosca Lee's first novel, Demon, changed the way I thought about the fall of angels, Havah has changed, forever, the way I will think about the fall of man, and the story that followed. This is the kind of book I dream of writing - it kept me up reading, made me think, weep, and laugh. Someday, I will write something like this, but I can only dream of writing it as well as Tosca Lee does.

Wake!

Photography

Before it got all cold and snowy here, my fiancé and I made one last trip up to the mountains. I convinced him to stop and let me take photos of a graveyard on our way back down the mountain. Maybe it's weird - I don't know - but I think the shapes and colors of the older gravestones are interesting. Plus, sometimes one finds interesting things on the stones.

I thought this design was beautiful - especially with the varying shades of gray. :)

I like the curving lines in this photo. And the stones in the background.

This next photo I did not take for its aesthetic interest, because it is not interesting at all in that sense. It was a plain headstone, a different color from all the others - light tan instead of gray. The only thing written on it were the initials S.L. I am very intrigued by this stone. Who is S.L.? Why are there no dates, and only initials on the stone? Why is it a different material than all the others? I'm so intrigued, I may just write a story about it.