February 6th, 2010

“Without your love I’d be no where at all, I’d be lost if not for you.”

Much like Mika thought to do, I’m going to post an update about my life right now beyond what I’m doing in all my classes. Being in so very many classes, they definitely take up a lot more time and energy than they did last semester, but I do still have SOME other things going on.

To begin with, Snowshoe was amazing. I was having a really rough week (as is somewhat indicated by the tone of my last entry) prior to the trip, what with all the stress about classes and apartments and life in general. Snowshoe was an absolutely perfect getaway though. It ended up being great that we left early to beat the storm- we got an extra night in the room and didn’t have to deal with check-in and all that mess in the morning, when we would have been rushed to get out on the slopes. We DID end up getting really lost for a little bit, due to various problems with our Google Maps directions, which caused a little bit of tension, but it ended up being more funny than upsetting. The thing was, Reed made the mistake of trying to call his parents and ask for their help navigating the situation (against my advice), and they totally freaked out. Mrs. Hornsby was literally on the phone with him crying, and Mr. Hornsby was just freaking out and going on rants about how this was “not what they needed right now”… finally, Reed just lied and said, “Ooh wait, we just figured out what to do, never mind, goodbye”, and hung up the phone. She called back about twenty minutes later (after we’d called MY parents and gotten back on the road in the right direction) and apologized for being so emotional, but then ended up just getting more emotional and started crying and talking about how “horrible things are happening” again. So that was that. As much as Reed and I were rolling our eyes through the whole conversation, it got me to thinking… this is why Reed is so good at dealing with my particular personality quirks… like, his parents are possibly the most emotional people I’ve ever encountered in life, and I’m well aware of the fact that I am also extremely emotional. Reed has basically been conditioned his whole life to know how to deal with that sort of excess and irrationalness. So I guess I have to be grateful for that.

Besides all that, the car trip was really fun… we talked for most of the way and then towards the end we listened to Aida. We got to the hotel late and basically watched a little television and then went to sleep. The next morning we partook of the complementary breakfast and then got all suited up to face the snow. I was so excited to get to wear my new gear, and I have to say, I looked like quite the fashionable skier! A word of advice- if you’re ever looking to buy clothes for skiing, do it in, like, September, because that’s when everything is the cheapest and basically the only time when poor college kids like ourselves could hope to buy the name-brand, designer stuff. Being the fashion conscious type that I am, I was very relieved to confirm that all the stuff Reed had helped me pick out was the nicest brand that all of the richest-looking people were wearing :P. At any rate, we drove up the mountain to the slope where Reed would be teaching me, and we rent in and I rented boots and skies and all that, and we were ready to go! The first run through was REALLY rough, like I was falling all the time and having a really hard time getting back up… Reed basically had to board a few feet ahead of me at all times and let me run into him in order to stop. The first run, on account of all the stopping and starting again, also took a really long time, so by the time we got off the ski lift and back to the start of the run, it was about time for lunch. We ate at a nice little café type place and then ventured back out into the cold. The second and third times down the run were MUCH better… I was really pleased that I was actually showing signs of improvement. In fact, the third time I only fell down once the whole time. And there was only one time the whole day that Reed was afraid I was going to die… coming off of the lift there was a relatively steep hill back to the start of the run and I sort of just went for it and ended up racing full-speed down the mountain, totally unable to stop myself. Thankfully, I kept standing until I got to a flat part and then I sat down and slid on my butt to a halt. So after three run-throughs I decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel so Reed could go a board some of the more advanced runs by himself. I chilled out watching television for a few hours and Reed came back in time to get ready to go out for dinner.

As a Christmas present to me and Reed, my parents said they’d pay for us to go out to eat at a fancy restaurant on this trip, so we had made reservations at this really classy sounding place called Ember. It definitely did not disappoint. It was all dimly-lit and swanky and we got really cool complimentary appetizers, like you know how at fancy places with, like, a famous chef, the chef will just randomly try out new recipes and serve those as appetizers? It was like that… so I have no idea what we were eating, but it was SO GOOD. And we got bread and all that… when you pay that much, they basically have to give you bread is my feeling. I ordered the steak and Reed got duck (he’d never had duck before I made him order it at the Thai food restaurant and now he’s obsessed with it), and of course those came with a bunch of fancy sides. Then for dessert we got the absolute richest chocolate cake I have ever eaten in my life… and they gave us free cotton candy at the end of it all to take back with us! So an awesome dining experience. Reed and I got back to the hotel and relaxed in the hot tub (actually, when we got in the hot tub, Reed realized that the women who was also in the hot tub was his Biology TA from last semester, which was highly weird and funny) and then got ready for bed and watched SNL and passed out. Sunday we had breakfast and packed up and hit the road, and had a thankfully smooth drive back. Overall, it was really just the best weekend ever… we felt so grown up, just doing all of that completely by ourselves. I’ve definitely been a much better frame of mind since we got back.

This week, in terms of extra curricular activities, I’ve been relatively busy! We have Young Dems on Tuesday, of course, and then on Wednesday they were showing “Precious” free at the student center, so we went to that. It was good! Like, not the kind of movie anyone loves, I feel like, but it was touching and sad and sometimes funny. I’ve also started going to the gym just out of shear needing to get out of the dorm… I was complaining to Bailey and Katie, I feel like every time I overhear another girl’s conversation these days she’s talking about “getting a Spring Break ready body”. Seriously? I mean, I think my body is freaking hot, so I’m not so concerned with that… but it’s something to do, and I always use the machines near the TV that’s turned to Fox News, which is hilarious in that it’s so, so stupid.

As for this weekend, Reed and I were supposed to go to Roanoke to go shopping today, but the snow made that impossible, and then we were going to go see Dear John in Christiansburg, but the movie theater was closed, so we ended up just watching A Walk To Remember and The Notebook here in the room. I was bawling the whole time, and Reed might have shed a few tears too :P. You know, watching those kinds of movies is just another thing that convinces me that I have absolutely found my soul mate in Reed. I look at these epic romances, and I feel like people look at those sorts of relationships in movies like that and think “That’s so sweet and amazing, but so unrealistic, like no one is really like that. It’s unreasonable to expect that love is really going to be like that.” But for me, love really is like that. What I have with Reed has all of the passion and intensity of the love stories in the movies… and what girl wants anything more than that in her life, really? It’s odd for me, not believing in a higher power, but the only word I can think of to describe my circumstance is “blessed”. I am blessed to be so totally in love with someone, someone who loves me with just as much fervor as I do him. It’s like… the other day I was feeling really down, like just in one of those moods where I felt trapped and bored with my life, and Reed says “Well let’s just run away together tomorrow. We don’t have to be here anymore… I know you think I’m saying this flippantly, but I really would. I would run away with you and never think twice about it.” And I, being in a bad mood, was like “No, that’s stupid. I don’t want to leave behind all my family and friends.” And so he was like “Okay… well then let’s go get married tomorrow. Let’s just go to the courthouse and get married.” It was the most romantic thing… and of course I was like “No… I want to wait to get married until your parents would be okay with it, you know that”, but it was just such a sweet idea. Not like, dramatic and spontaneous, because that’s not Reed’s style, but just… sweet and sincere. It’s wonderful and terrifying, knowing that someone is so devoted to you, and you to them. I just… you know, Jack and Rose, Edward and Bella, Noah and Allie… that kind of love is real. As silly as it sounds, it CAN be that perfect, that breathtaking, that orchestral crescendo inducing (haha), so don’t stop looking until you’ve found that for yourself.

One last thing: in my Freshman Honors Seminar we did another little activity that I thought was kind of interesting. We took the following and had to rank them, 1-5, in order from most to least important to us:

Emotional Wellbeing

Spiritual Growth

Physical Health

Social Relationships

Rewarding Career

I ranked them: Emotional Wellbeing, Social Relationships, Physical Health, Spiritual Growth, Rewarding Career. We had to share our lists and also explain to the group why we ranked the first one first and the last one last. It was actually really awkward for me, because everyone else ranked “Rewarding Career” like first or second (including my teacher :S) and I was just like “Uhh… no.” I explained that basically I’ve always really known that I want children and really been conscientious of the fact that I don’t want a career that’s going to get in the way of me spending all the time I want to with my kids and being there for them growing up… so that kind of rules out ever being a career-oriented person. One of the other girls was like “So… does that mean the idea of being, like, a homemaker appeals to you?” and I was like “Well… yeahh, it does. I mean, if that was financially possible.” Everyone else in the group started talking about how their parents had always both worked and they’d had babysitters and been in day care all the time and didn’t think that’d worked out badly for them… and I’m sure that’s true. But that’s not what I had growing up and that’s definitely not what I want for my kids and for myself as a mother. I know I valued having my mom as a stay-at-home mother and I know that she always says that’s the best experience she’s had in her life. I just thought it was kind of weird that no one else really felt that way. At any rate, how would you all rank those things?

That’s all for now… text me lots this weekend, I’ll be snowed in and bored!

-Lizz