One week has passed since last I wrote here. Not much is new.

Hm. I've realized that my weekends have become sadly nonexistent. Friday afternoon comes with all its promise, but alas a restful, or even on-campus, weekend is not to be had. This weekend is already completely full with another kb reading and now apparently a performance on Sunday in the cities for the Musica Nova fest. And that's about all that will fit! Hmmm... how can this be? I'm not even coveting time to myself to laze about... no, I just want a fighting chance to get my studying done. Good grief.

I haven't blogged all week. Well, let's see... I guess I spent a lot of my time sick this week. I think I've finally battled it off, so that's a relief. I always feel guilty when I'm sick. I seem to fall ill more often than everyone else and for often very different reasons, so I start to second guess whether I am really sick enough to take time out to get better. I might feel horrible, but I feel like I must be fabricating it since everyone else is healthy most of the time. I think I should stop comparing myself to everyone else... I'm me, I might be a weakling, but I manage.

On a better and unrelated note, tomorrow is the Chaska Invite! As a returning alumna, I have several important tasks: 1) look gorgeous, 2) have an aura of intelligence, 3) seem mature, educated, composed, 4) oh yeah, and read questions. ;) I plan to do all these and then some. Some of you might think I'm just being weird, but honestly, the home invite is the time to show off what you've been doing with yourself and impress those you haven't seen. I can't wait to be back in the kb world, though... how I have missed it.

OOH! Today, there were giant monstro snowflakes! Big floppy ones that kept pouring from the sky! It was lovely. Well, that's all I can think of to update ya'll! Have a good weekend.

Lovely blog, here to happily listen to all my thoughts and ponderings, never complaining (even when I do). It's been a long weekend. Aren't they supposed to leave you with some tiny bit of repose? Although, when I think of all the stuff I accomplished (to use my Dad's pet word), I am damn proud, even if it hurts to move my head. This weekend I successfully: made a lovely valentine for Jimmy, read the majority of my ecology text, did my chemistry asst, completed my extravagently long French asst, ignored Great Con, ignored the need to practice, ignored my coming applications -- well, not quite, I did go to an RA/JC meeting and am thoroughly confused as to which I'd like to be next year --, ignored my sleep deficit, was wonderfully surprised by my boyfriend for Valentine's day, consumed: European chocolates, camembert cheese, Italian wine, stopped to smell the roses... all twelve of them, was at two concerts -- one of the the ST. OLAF BAND HOME CONCERT, BABY!, cried a tiny bit when I realized Mexico is finally done, played with my crabs, messied my room, ate one meal in the caf per day (and that's how I likes it), slept in some, saw friends from home (the Northfield residents at any rate), got a back massage WITH oils, helped someone else with their homework, and showered. Yeah. That's damn good! Next weekend is kb reading which means more monetary funds and my car. YAY! My Antonia, where have you been all my life? That's right, in the driveway.

Yahoo... Happy Valentine's Day? It's time to go to band in a little over an hour. Nothing is making me feel better today, not naps, not studying, not dressing nicely, not the prospect of doing something after the concert. What is wrong with me? Ugh. Oh well. I ought to not think about it and just chill. The problem is, I want to chill alone and it's the day of romance. Hm. Grant, you should get home ASAP!

Hmmmmm.... It's February, time of love and romance. While I am dating probably the most thoughtful and loving mortal yet to grace this planet, I'm just not feeling the love vibes. Maybe it's the snow, maybe it's the evil ice that seems to be all over on the sidewalks outside Larson that makes people nearly fall SMACK on their asses, or perhaps the start of a new term and a daunting course load? It could be any or all of these, but I think it's time I grew up. There's a beautiful, if slightly bedraggled, rose on my desk in an equally lovely Mexican vase. There's a card full of the mushiest things imaginable in my backpack. Really, everywhere I look, there are tokens of Earth's approval toward romance, like the way snow settles softly on pavement and trees. So maybe there's hope I'll be able to conjure up some of the Valentine's Day spirit yet.

Oh! Shoot! forgot to take my many, many dietary supplements! OOPS!

Well, I've waited good and long until my mood improved before posting another such horrid blog entry. I think I must be depressing the rest of the world along with me. No matter. There's nothing that can keep me down right now because St. Olaf is filling up with students again. Empty sidewalks, commons, dorms no more: people are moving back in and it's lovely -- people who haven't seen each other in far too long. Everyone has travelled or done something extraordinarily fun and it's great to hear about each and get hugs, hugs and more hugs. I remembered to pick up my chemistry books, though ecology will have to wait until tomorrow because the post office is closed. That's ok, better to have too few books in one's backpack than too many. I'm looking around my room and thinking "ah! what a mess!" I think it might be time to put in a good CD and kick back with some reorganizing. Indeed. Tonight will be dinner, trucking and then some work in the storage room. Nice to get back to all these. I'm looking out the window and realizing how lucky I am to be here! Snowy and cold (don't I know after walking into town last night with Jimmy) though very beautiful, but here I am typing away in my nice, toasty sauna. Mmm hmmm. Good for the crabbers, who are in a lovely new aquarium with many new shells, rocks, sponges, and bits of food. It's like a crabby palace, really. Old plastic fishtanks are good for such things. I think I am going to scrounge up some food and get creative with my desk. Come visit if you're on campus!

Wahoo. Not. Silly me. Today has been yuck, yuck, yuck. I feel I've wasted another perfectly good day. Well, not entirely wasted... I took 8 of my 15 dietary supplements, what joy is mine. I know that I ought to feel happy and thankful to be at home, but the only things running through my mind are completely negative. I feel sick and really out of it, but what's worse is the depressiveness that always seems to set in when I'm home. It's so confusing! I'm not here all that often, so I ought to be happy or at least a little pleased to spend some time in the family homestead. Instead, I feel like a deflated balloon left in a dark corner. Every good and happy thought has long since left me and though it's finally sunny today, I feel like a worthless wreck of a person. I can't seem to keep my mind in the present; it keeps sliding back and forth from the past to the future in a dizzying blur and I can't make sense of anything. I try to remember that I have everything going for me and I'm sure this is true. However, I can't keep my mind on any of that. Instead it's replaced with thoughts of doubt and darkness. It's very sad. I think I need to get back to school and Jimmy sooner than expected, perhaps Thursday. I certainly can't keep going like this. Nothing is making me happy... not reading, not cleaning, not going through the things I picked up in Mexico, not even going through pictures. I feel unworthy of all the good things that have happened to me and like they're just some lovely dream I invented, so I shouldn't continue to look at them because I'm just teasing myself that they were ever real. I need to try to break myself out of this. Maybe I should call Jimmy a little earlier tonight... that might be my last hope. I'm going to go and sit in a chair now because typing is too tiring. How sad. I hope everyone else is doing better.

So I went to a "holistic chiropractor" today and it was definitely unlike any other doctor's appointment I've ever had. First of all, he tested the strength of my arms and legs pushing in various directions to see if there were any abnormally weak spots and what organs/parts of the body they might correspond to. Then he told me the reason I'm so weak is because I have parasites. PARASITES! Well, some of the caf food does sit out for a while and there are quite a few questionable things in our kitchen... So he would do these strength tests again to figure out "what my body wanted". When my arm suddenly got weak, that meant I "needed" some dietary supplement. However, they were things like calcium and magnesium and other homeopathic remedies. I kept asking how "now honestly, how can you expect my body to know what it wants????" and he just said "we don't know how this works, only that it does." It's really crazy, but at this point I am ready to try this. It's almost like an acupuncture approach to using the nervous system as connections to the rest of the body. But I'm still a bit skeptical. Now I'm taking more supplements and things than like an entire floor of a retirement home. It's really obnoxious and I have to keep it up and they taste horrible every time. Ugh. And now I'm feeling all dizzy and yucky and I ran into a wall upstairs in my house and spilled hot chocolate on our rug. I feel disgusting and stupid and uncoordinated and I'm snapping more than I should at my family, but they keep nagging me and that's really not what I need right now!!! AHHHHH! Stupid fish oils. Taste like fish every time I burp. That's really gross. :(

Mmmmmhmmmm... it's good to be home. But let me say, that was a damn fine tour. If the spark of humanity in me was starting to die out from stress and the hectic college pace, it has been amply rekindled. Mexico was, simply put, amazing. I travelled everywhere from Mexico City and Acapulco to tiny villages in the mountains that still spoke Nahuatl and all those lovely, guard rail-less winding mountain roads in between. I touched people in non-verbal ways that only music can. I swam in the ocean. I got tan and had my hair braided. I drank tequila. I bonded with my tour roommates and saw more boobs and vomit (from heat stroke and motion sickness, DUH!) than ever before in my life. I missed my boyfriend, my family and friends. I listened to track number four in the ROTK soundtrack while driving in high mountain passes and looking below the road to see a thousand feet of deep valley, tiny waterfalls, and mist everywhere. It was unbelieveable. I EVEN LEARNED SOME SPANISH! Sadly, I think I understand conversational Spanish as well as French just from hearing for so many weeks everywhere around me. My instrument got stuck at the border with the rest of the truck. I shared a local bass clarinet that tasted like old fish with Anna for the first concert. I went dancing! I stayed in Cortes' personal hacienda! I drank more tequila and margaritas. And some bacardi. Mmmm. I jumped on beds. I looked out over the Pacific, up to Minnesota and especially over to Italy. I played in some of the finest concert halls and the coldest large gym-like garages Mexico has to offer, BY GOD! And it was by God! All of it! Meeting people with less to their family's name than I have in my dorm room alone, yet they were as happy as I could hope Jimmy and I will be in our lifetime. Seeing couples hugging and kissing in the streets (sometimes more!) as well as mothers and children, older married husbands and wives, and wondering why we're so wary of affection in the US. I definitely going all out when I'm back on campus, so Jimmy boy, just you look out! :) I wore skirts and laughed and operated on Mexican time. I stayed with a Mexican family for a couple days. I ate all the pecante Mexico has to offer!!! Mwa hahaha... it was glorious! And then I flew home. And last night I got to see Jimmy! Just for a couple of hours, mind you, but it was wonderful. Beyond words. It was weird too, the things I noticed about him as we talked in the Borders books cafe, things like how his hair curls perfectly on his forehead, how dark his eyes are, and isn't his skin smooth and my hands feel perfect inside his, how his hand feels on my back. All these little nuances of being alive, things I hadn't let myself miss for fear that I would spend more time moping than drinking in Mexico, came rushing back to me and it was glorious!!! :) Our moms spent that time talking too, which was good... mwa hahaha. And so, I'm home relaxing and reading the end of "Caramelo" so I can write a paper on it and finish my Mexican adventure. :)