Whipping My Hair

It’s Christmas Eve in the year 2010.  My son turned 13 yesterday and I’m so happy that we made it to this point without him getting into any serious trouble.  I feel so blessed that I have a son like him.  He really is a good kid.  I know that mothers brag all the time about their children, but he truly is a blessing.  My brothers girlfriend and I decided that we would try to recreate our version of Willow Smith’s song “Whip My Hair.”  Needless to say, I woke up this morning with a screaming headache and was brought to the sudden realization that I’m not a teenager but an adult who shouldn’t be doing that.

Whipping my Hair

But we really had a great time.  It was the first time in a long time that I had fun without worrying about things that were going on outside of the house.
In other news…
I start school in a little over a week.  I’m getting more excited as the days pass and then I came to the realization that not only will I be a coed again, but I will be doing it remotely.  That is when I became extremely nervous.  I will also not be strapping on a backpack and walking through a University campus, but will be pulling up a chair to my computer to attend classes on Tuesday evenings.  Can you say nervous 3 times fast?  I can and I’m still scared.
So, in this little time that I have left, I’m going to try and catch up on the many books that I have checked out so I can get more in tune with what is popular with teens because from what I’m hearing, grad school is no joke.  Maybe I will have the chance to whip my hair again before I begin?

Grad School vs. Novel???

I got into grad school.  Now what? I know that I’m supposed to be ecstatic and I am.  Don’t get me wrong.  I just wish that I had done all of this immediately upon graduating instead of waiting for two years.  I forgot all of the stuff that you go through when registering.  Why do they need your life story anyway?

To top it off, I haven’t focused that much on my novel like I want to and have been silently kicking myself under the table.  It’s not like I don’t know how I want my story to go but its how the words appear on the paper.  Maybe I’m way too hard on myself.  Maybe I need to be.  I just wish that I were further along than I am right now.  And starting school in three weeks will not help me out that much.

I’ve vowed to myself that I will crank out at least three more chapters.  That’s a chapter a week for the next three weeks.  Maybe by then, I can focus on school and still be far enough into the novel that I don’t go slack brained.  Wish me luck.

Life...

Life is a bunch of you know what.  When it seems as if things are going fine, life smacks you right in the face.  This week, life has looked me straight in the eye and has said screw you.  I lost a little cousin on Thanksgiving Day.  Due to slick roads and the fast driving of another person, his life, along with that of his seventeen year-old girlfriend was taken forever.  Working with teenagers became that much harder.

As a teen library assistant, I work with teenagers on a daily basis.  And for this past week, I have been unable to deal with their happiness.  When they laugh, I wonder if Adrian and Maddie were laughing with each other when the accident occurred.  When the teens smiled at me this week or told me a joke, I wondered what the last joke the two of them (Adrian and Maddie) shared with one another.  It has been so hard to deal with.

His sisters and I grew up very close to one another and when he and his brother James came along, they added that little boy craziness to the mix.  It’s funny the things that you remember when you are forced to think about them.  I remember how cute he was growing up.  I also remember that he was quite a handful as well.  It’s these memories that make me smile when I think about him.  It’s going to take those memories now to get us through the holiday season now.

In 2002, we lost his grandmother right before Christmas, and now this.  It really makes you take a step back and look at the people you surround yourself with as well.  This kid fought the fight against cancer and he won.  And in a swift second, his life was taken away, just like that.  It really makes me stop and wonder,  what if?