To quote Billy Joel, I'm movin' out.

I'm having a really hard time moving on, I think.

I hate opening Facebook, and seeing pictures of my friends. Friends I went to high school with, in the same pictures as friends I didn't go to high school with. Friends that I miss, every day. Friends that I leaned on through some of the hardest moments of my life. I feel, in many ways, that I let them down, or abandoned our friendship, because I had to move. If I would have had a choice, at the time, I don't think I would have moved to St. Louis. I didn't have any options, though. There was no where for me to go. Does it make me a bad friend?

I'm not so great at making new friends, as some of you may know. I'm pretty reserved, but I'm also pretty honest. I have priorities, and I don't really slow down to let people in. I'm a bit of a hermit, a bit of a home body. I like to read in bed, and craft at home. I'm not a partier, I'm not a club-goer, at least not habitually. I've done that scene, and while it's fun to break the mold, it's not a daily occurrence.

Maybe this is life's way of telling me to move on. It's pushing me out the figurative door, to go to graduate school, to start my career. I'm supposed to be leaving, now, right?

I "left" for college, but now I'm really leaving. For good. And probably not coming back unless it's a holiday, and I've managed to finagle a plane ticket. That's a terrifying thought.

Based on past events, does that mean I lose the people here, too? Does that mean I lose the friends I've made, the relationships I've cultivated? I'm great at long distance. I love to send letters and packages and emails... but I never seem to get them.

I seem to be forgotten.

Scary Realizations Part I

As it turns out, the GRE is not nearly as scary as I was thinking. I was actually impressed with my scores (and the fact that I got them right away. Weird.)

What IS a little scary is the conversation Mom and I had after the test.

We were loading the dishwasher, baking cookies, doing typical Mom-and-Kate type things. We were complaining about our crappy house, and our crappy dishwasher... and it kind of hit us both at the same time.

I'm leaving.

Probably for good this time.

I left for college, but I came back. Grad school is different, it's big kid school. I will be moving away, with my stuff, and not coming back. She's on her own for real this time, and so am I.

Now, I'm perfectly capable of living on my own. I've done it before. She's lived without me before. But, Mom and I have this relationship that doesn't quite compare to others I've had. We are close, oh yes, but not the way most mothers and daughters are that say they are close. We can talk about anything, and I mean anything, without it being awkward. Sometimes, she will tell me to suck my own dick because she worked all day. Sometimes, we spray each other with the hose from the kitchen sink. Sometimes, we push each other down in the snow. Sometimes, she cries and I let her wipe her nose on my shirt. Sometimes, I cry, and she lets me wipe my nose on her shirt. I've had best friends in my lifetime, but very few. My mom, though... she's the real deal. I would go to her before I went to anyone else on the planet. It's going to be really hard to move away from her and start my big kid life. I didn't apply to any schools in Missouri. I wonder if that was my conscience telling me to break it off, get going. Maybe my academic brain is pushing me out of the nest, once and for all.

In any case, I guess I'd better get over it pretty quickly.

Missouri won't be my home much longer, and I'm not sure how I feel. I'm hoping to get into Northwestern, since it's only a few hours away. But what if I don't? What if I end up in Massachusetts with Joe? Would it be so bad? I'm not sure. I'm a little terrified.

More than anything, I'm worried about being lonely. I don't make friends very easily, because I'm always so busy with school, and work, and art, and sleeping. I don't date much, because my standards are ridiculous. I will have to leave behind the few people I've bonded with, many of them so recently, and start over. Sure, the ones that matter and are truly great people will still be there, but, I know that most won't. It happened in high school, it happened in college, a few times. It's happened at jobs. People get busy, and they forget the people that are not in their immediate bubbles. I remember everyone. I remember the kids I hung out with once or twice. I think of everyone as my friend, even if they don't reciprocate the feeling. It's because of this that I usually get my feelings hurt, and my heart broken.

...wow, this was meant to just be a nice little tribute to Mom and I's relationship, and it turned out to be confessional time. I guess sometimes it's neccessary.

If a picture is worth a thousand words... how much are we paying per word?

Ladies and Gentlemen...

It's time to test my photographic skillz. Yes, with a Z. I'm going to finally put my work out there for the world, and hope that someone, somewhere, think it's good. Someone OTHER than my mom. While it's great that she loves my work, I feel that in many ways she's obligated to.

My first major endeavor, other than the portraits I shot for my aunt and uncle, is a tarot deck. Yup, tarot. Occult practices, divination, all that evil-magick stuff that's so fun to work with. I have a willing and ready model, which I thought would be the hard part. She comes pre-installed with acting skills and a wardrobe, which is tres exciting. The hard part is deciding the interpretation I'm going to use. Part of me wants to go contemporary, part of me wants to go traditional. Part of me wants to make a two-sided deck to incorporate both, but the part of me that used to practice tarot thinks that's a stupid idea, because one side is supposed to be void of images so the questioner can pull at random....

There are a lot of parts of me saying a lot of different things, basically. I need to sketch it out, list some ideas and major themes I want to cover. Do I want to get symbolic? Allegorical? Metaphorical? Representational? I'm not sure.

This weekend is for planning, Monday is for shooting.

Dear brain: please work. Kthx. Love, Kate.

House of Mouse

No, this will not be a post about Disney. Sorry, friends. This is a post about the scritching and scratching going on in my walls.

I work retail. This week has been hell. I got home Thursday night [[read: Thanksgiving]] after working until 11. I got into bed, warm and snuggly. I started hearing... things... in my wall. I tried to ignore it, afterall, I was exhausted, and trying to prepare for Black Friday. It got progressively louder, and I gave up and slept on the couch.

Mom, in all of her glory, offered to check the walls and under my bed for critters. She didn't find anything... so I thought I was just insane.

I slept peacefully Friday and Saturday. Comfortably, actually.

Fast forward to Sunday, 11:45 pm. I change into PJs, ready to settle in and work on the homework I'd been putting off all week (oops...). I stop by the bathroom, and hear scratching. Again. I calm myself down, reminding myself that Mom and the dogs (and cat!) didn't find anything.

Then, I see a tail.

Then furry ears.

Above my head. Standing on exposed piping in the ceiling of my basement bathroom.

I immediately ran upstairs to tell mom (i.e., wake her up).

She's agreed to call the landlord and have an exterminator come out, but until then, I'm going to have nightmares about mice crawling on me in my sleep.

I'm cruelly forcing my dog to have a slumber party with me in the basement so he can catch anything that wiggles out of the wall.

The only thing consoling me at this point is the fact that... if there are mice... there are no snakes.

Grad School Nightmares

I realized that, for one reason or another, I have been neglecting my poor blogspot. I've chosen the more traditional route of physical writing. With a pen. And a "journal." Yes, they still exist. Truth be told, readers, there are sometimes things I don't want to share with the world.

I also realized that I was posting links to things I found interesting, with a few comments thrown in. The "internaute" version of plagiarism. Boring. So, I guess I'll have to cut that out. Not completely, of course, because sometimes I find things that are worth mentioning. For the most part, my aim is to be a little more personable.

I'm facing the issue of writing a "statement of purpose." I don't know how to write about myself, let alone my accomplishments.

"Dear Grad School: Please let me in. Thx."

I don't think it will work. I don't know how to be witty and intellectual at the same time. I don't want to be factual and boring, but I don't want to lose my sense of academic integrity. I mean, hell, I'm applying to Ivy League schools, I need to sound like I'm worth the risk. But, I want to stand out. I want to be remembered. I want to prove that I'm not just some girl who fucked up her first chance at college when she was given enough scholarships to not only pay for 4 years, housing, and food, but enough to PAY HER to go to college. This will follow me for the rest of my academic career, and I hate it. I screwed up for a boy, yes. It's true. I thought getting married was more important than education at the time. But I was also 19, alone, and afraid. Now, I'm a bit wiser, and a bit older. I'm ready to take on both academic and romantic challenges, but I will never pit one against the other, ever again. I hope my past mistakes won't prevent me from getting the education I want and deserve. I think, deep down, I hope that I actually deserve it. Some days... I'm not so sure.