About my life and the girl who entered it

Age: 19 years, 4 months, 13 days, 17 hours.

For most of my 19.3 years of life, I've believed without a doubt in my mind that there was no god. My parents forced my younger self to go to church every sunday for the first 8 to 10 years of my life. It was a chore and not one I enjoyed. My elder brother felt similarly, because before we drifted apart and started hating each other, we'd share how much we disliked having to go to church.

I was around 12 or 13 when I realized part of the reason I hated going to church so much was because not only did I disagree with the way my church preached, I didn't believe in the messages they tried to teach.

So I've spent more than a third of my life actively aware of my disbelief, and more than half of my life unaware, but still disagreeing with the religion forced upon my life.

Well, that is until last year. Last year was my first and last year of college. I attended Hope College, a Christian school on the opposite side of the state from me. I wasn't unnerved by the idea of attending a school focused on the Christian religion because religion wasn't forced upon me there. Attendance to worship was optional - which meant a no-go for me. I could go to my nursing classes and get a degree from one of the top three nursing schools in the nation without having to worry about being bugged and pestered by religious fanatics trying to convert everyone they see.

However, first semester happened and my classes were awful. I couldn't keep up very well and dropped two of them. I hated the feel of the school; I hated the classes and the professors. I hated studying. I was miserable. Winter break and I had a few weeks off at home with nothing but lots of food, video games, and books to read. Talk about pure bliss. Anyway, second semester started and I immediately hated my chem class. The professor was a dickbag and I couldn't stand him. Chem lab was even worse. I moved slowly and had to do everything twice for my partner who sprained her food or knee or something playing soccer and was on crutches. It's not that I hated helping her per se, just how long I took to do everything.

It was a week into the semester when I decided I couldn't stand it anymore. I made my decision not to come back to Hope and dropped chemistry, because I was not about to invest that much time and effort into a class that wouldn't even mean anything to me.

However, the first week wasn't all bad. In that week, I had German class. While I also immediately hated German, partly because I didn't like the professor, but because it involved real work too, but also teaching ourselves. German class included a nice surprise though. A cute girl from my dorm whom I had only every said "hi" to as we passed each other to and from classes. I mean, I didn't even know her name, just that she was pretty in the face and had a cute smile. Nothing would come of it, right?

Well, something did come of it. As the semester progressed, I forgot to cut my hair off as I had throughout the first semester. So after shaving my head again one day, she invited me to do homework with her in the basement. After that day, we started doing homework regularly together, and I started to like her. Soon the semester was half over and my second-half classes started. It turned out we had religion right after German together, too. So now, with two classes together and doing homework regularly; I was starting to like this girl a lot.

Now we've been dating for 7 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days. For the first time in my life, I've met someone who makes me want to change. I've liked girls who had religion in their lives before, but none of them ever made me want to be better than myself. Erika is the girl I found at school, who for the first time in my life on this planet has made me want to believe in a higher power. Never before had I found myself wondering if god was real, but with Erika, I want to believe he is. For a while now, I've found myself trying to believe.

I'm not sure if you'll read this tonight, Erika, but know that I love you, and that I am trying.

About: My cats

A little history of cats aside, it's time for my focus: my particular cats. Their names are Kit and Kat, though they haven't been called that since the week we got them. Instead, they've been known as Black and Grey, respective to their fur color.

Cats. They're a common household pet, right up there with dogs. Some people are absolutely fanatical about them (crazy cat ladies). In ancient times, they were worshiped by Egyptians as gods. Now, they live in your house; claw your furniture; sometimes attack you; and get pet.

To the right is my cats when they were mere kittens, sometime early 2009 if I had to guess.

The grey one is quite obvious, the black a little less so. Sisters of a litter; my mum picked them up from an animal shelter nearby where she worked shortly before Christmas of 2008 - since our old cat had died Halloween morning.

At first they started out friendly, but as they grew up - they didn't bond to either us our each other. That last time I can remember them being friendly was while they were still kittens and we had to take them in to the vet's office.

Pictured to the left is Grey on our last trip to the vet together. I couldn't tell you when that was, since I frankly don't remember.
And for viewing pleasure, I also dug up some pictures of the little rodents back when they were nice, and spent time with us; or maybe they were just curious about their new house.
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate trying to use images in blogger?

 

Now at almost 5 years of age, I've got some weird cats on my hands. They're not the most friendly; Grey really only likes you when you're in the bathroom - she loves to jump up on the counter and nuzzle your arm with her nose. Or, if you'll throw water for her in the shower and/or bathtub.

And for some reason, Grey has a fascination with sinks.

One thing both of my cats have in common though, is chirping. Both will unexpectedly make chirping noises at you when surprised.

Black in particular has an obsession with the shower. She'll scratch and claw at the door if you're using the bathroom and the door is shut; then when that doesn't work she'll cry and meow at it until you let her in. Once in the bathroom, she'll go and sit in the shower; sometimes just staring at the wall and other times at you waiting for water to splash in.

 

The only logical thing...

When on a sleep schedule as screwed up as mine, it's  not unusual to still be awake come 6 am, having not slept all night. But what's there to do at 6 am? Normal people are still sleeping and video games have become so mind-numbingly boring, that staring at the wall is more fun. Obviously, the only logical thing is to go to Netflix and watch Charlotte's Web.

Who doesn't want to watch a young Dakota Fanning play the naive little farm-girl trying to save the runt of a pig from his destiny of bacon? And this same tiny little pig running around and playing in mud - eventually befriending an admittedly nice, but nonetheless hideous spider that made me cringe every time I saw her face. The spider who then writes words in her web to save silly little Wilbur from being turned into a Christmas-stuffed pig.

And now, at 8:30, I've sat on the stairs with my old pup, scratching her sides and petting her ears while she gets overly excited and sneezes all over my feet. Quite unwelcome sneezes, I might add. From the sneezing and scratches downstairs we went; where Echo was graced with a delicious doggy snack. I let her outside for her morning relief, where she ran around nosing the ground after peeing.

At that point it was close to 8 and I'd yet to eat since around 2 am, so a sandwich was in order. Sliced honey turkey bread put on a gargantuan whole wheat hamburger bun, topped with a small personal bag of Doritos. Decadent, if I do say so myself.

And of course, having had an eventful morning, who wouldn't blog about it? I mean, it's the only logical thing...

A Skewed Sense of Breakfast

Through my awful sleeping patterns, I am often awake at the early hours of morning. When you're up at 7 or 8 AM and haven't eaten anything for 6-12 hours, it's not unusual to be hungry. Several days ago, I found myself in exactly this position. It was probably closer to 7 am, I'd had dinner around 12 hours previously, and I was absolutely famished. My stomach gurgled and groaned; making noises not unlike that of a dying whale.

So from my throne upon which I sat, I rose and left the warm comforts of my room and ventured through the early morning light - navigating through the rec room to the stairwell where I could creep forth to look for present parents. Having seen that none where home - both having left for work - I stole to the kitchen to look for food. Leftovers! I found garlic bread to reheat in our bread basket, and frozen chicken patties in the freezer. I popped both into the toaster oven to heat and went venturing into the pantry to look for a snack to hold me over for 15 more minutes. Lo behold, I found a Chewy granola bar, dipped in chocolate. I of course then dunked it in the peanut butter jar; because everyone knows chocolate is better with peanut butter.

So now, I've got 2 slices of garlic bread and a chicken sandwich, plus a granola bar. But I was still hungry after my granola bar, so I opened a thing of Easy Mac and tossed it in the microwave. While it was cooking, I wanted something else. Applesauce was the obvious choice here. Drinking my applesauce from the jar made perfect sense to me, while my easy mac was cooking.

Finally, I never knew 3 minutes could take so long. My microwave doesn't work for the instructions on the container - water boiled over the edge and made a mess everywhere inside the microwave - ew. I had to clean that up while attempting to shovel fake macaroni and cheese down my throat. Between these two adventures, I'd forgotten about my garlic bread (sad) and it was overcooked. I ate like half of it, but it tasted like char plus a little bit of butter. Plus it was hard, so into the trash it went.

Finishing my mac, my chicken had finished. So I popped it onto a bun, smothered it with ketchup and took a massive bite. Too much; so I run to the fridge, grab the gallon of skim milk and take a nice gulp - once again too much, as it overflows from my mouth and drips down my chin, off my neck, and onto the floor. Oops, I forgot to clean that up.

And so ends my first skewed breakfast. The next morning, I was in the same situation. So of course, the logical choice was to rewarm leftover pizza, have more granola bars, additional applesauce, but also an ice cream sandwich and a twin Popsicle. I feel as though I ate something else the second morning, but at the moment, I can't recall.

The end.