There have been many times in the past three weeks in which I have felt the urge, the need, to write. To purge my wondering, wistful, sometimes hateful mind onto something solid -- something that can make me accountable to my own emotions, something that can serve to remind me of my own history, and something that can allow me to sort through what I am. And yet, everytime, I stopped. Dial up was too slow. My mom was using the computer. I was tired. I didn't want my parents to "catch" me writing in my blog, giving them reason to think there was something wrong. Or maybe I'm just lazy and paranoid. In any case, all of those moments of insight/frustration/joy will forever be deprived their right to an entry and instead will be trivialized into what this tired brain can remember now, days, hours, and smiles later.

The beginning of my time at home was characterized by fraying relations with my parents. Prior to returning to wonderful Hallandale Beach (City motto: "The City of Choice"), I was looking forward to spending lots of my time with my older genetic donors; instead, I spent the majority of my time by myself doing family things -- I put up the tree, decorated it, and decorated the rest of the house by myself. This made me especially depressed because never in my life have we ever not done the tree together, as a family. I tried and tried to orchestrate family time (I even helped clean just so we could all hang out in the same room! :) ), but my dad had to work and my mom had to...well, I don't really know. Play computer games, maybe?

My dad is really unhealthy. Whenever I'm home, I try to get him to exercise with me, but then after he does (I got him to go bike riding for a whopping 5 minutes) he complains and complains about aching, and always uses his excuse of "my back/feet/shoulders hurt too much" to get out of helping my mom with cleaning, dishes, cooking, walking the dog. It's ridiculous -- he doesn't do anything! It's not fair to my mom, but she doesn't seem to mind. I know that I definitely don't ever want to be with someone like that. My mom got on my nerves, too, though...sitting around so much by myself gave me lots of time to think, though, which was a good thing (mostly).

I thought about the future, and the possibility of a future with someone else in it. Sandi (my 11-year-old yellow lab that I've had since she was 6 weeks old) made me think that I'll never need anyone else to make me happy. With an object to pour my unconditional love into at all hours of the day, who needs a human partner? I love my dog so much, and now I miss her so much. I'm really scared that this was my last Christmas with her (since she's so old and is already on lots of medication). My grandma is also sick. I wonder if this is my last Christmas with her too...whenever I leave someone who's wedged in my heart for an extended period time, I always think very morbid and disturbing thoughts, playing the whatif game -- that's exactly what happened with my other grandma, when I left for fall semester 2002, little did I know that I would never again see her until she was cold in a sealed casket preparing to join my grandfather in a mausoleum. Everything must come to an end; live life with no regrets and all, but .... are my parents happy? I want to be happy, not just settled. I want ... I don't know where I'm going with this anymore, or that I was ever going anywhere with this... this paragraph has to end, just like days months and lives.

My dad and I talked about religion (and my still newly-found religious beliefs), as did my uncle and I. Neither of them believe in God (a God of any kind), and both questioned me for a long time. It was strange. I can't even think what to say about it. It's hard to defend yourself to a person who has always been the epitome of truth and the rock of answers; someone whose judging eyes can burn holes in you.

Why is it that emotions can seem so real, so overwhelming clear in your head and yet you have no way to comprehend them, roll them over with your tongue to taste their meaning? Anyway, enough of this nonsensical post.

I like school. I'm happy with what the semester holds in the academic department for me. I love learning about mechanical engineering, but I know in my heart of hearts that I'm never going to be a mechanical engineer. I've slowly been parting from the image of myself as little Susie engineer, and moved towards accepting the fact that I really can't get this whole love for the environment and zoology out of my heart and mind. It's about time I start making decisions with my heart I guess.

As the famous (or at least, should be, in my mind :) ) Alex Ortiz once said to me in one of our great conversations from Homestead, "What's your greatest passion in life? What are you doing to follow it?"

Well Alex, you're right. I know I need to just go be a zoologist in a zoo, make friends with smelly rhinos and lorakeets, and keep my B.S. M.E. where it should be: in a frame on a wall in my house.

Goodnight world, from a bleary-eyed little girl still finding her place in your great expanse.