Stories from my college days.

Giveaways: Five I-Caught-Santa-Photos!!! (Ends Friday)

My Memories Digital Scrapbooking Suite (Ends Monday)

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Linking up with  Mama Kat's Losin' It for Thursday's Writer's Prompt.

Now, usually, as soon as I read the prompts, I know exactly what I want to write about. But this time, it was hard....er....I thought about writing about our Christmas Nativity, because I think it's kind of cool...but then that seemed flat. And then I wanted to write about what I wanted but didn't get for Christmas, if only because, for just about everything I didn't get, my dad (ahem: Santa) left notes with really creative and quite reasonable reasons that Santa would never be able to bring such a thing to me. 

And then I saw the one about stories from collegehood. And I just couldn't resist. 

Of course, this subject comes with a few problems. 1- Which story?! There is no shortage of awesome stories from my college days. The problem is in picking just one. 2- My mom reads my blog...so, I also have to decide what, exactly, I want to admit to. ;)

I think, personally, it's better idea for me to simply summarize several of my experiences in list fashion. You'll get a better, rounder view of my life as a co-ed, and I get the satisfaction of bragging about how awesome my  wild days were. 

1. I won a game of Twister that involved painted grass and over 200 people at starting. 

2. I am a "true wildcat" - which means I got kissed on Homecoming night at the bell tower. 

3. Once, it snowed 4 and half feet in one day, and when the plows were done shoving it off the Union Building driveway, there was a mountain of it 8 feet tall. Of course, my friends Jon, Ray and I climbed into Jon's truck, and drove over it. Despite the seatbelt I DID buckle, my head still hit the ceiling on the way down the other side. 

4. Several of my friends were night managers over the Union Building. They found out that there were under ground tunnels that went all over campus. Through some study, they found out where the cadaver lab was, and we all went exploring late one night. When we got there, one of the boys whispered my name in my ear, it freaked me out and I took off running the other way. We ended up lost in the tunnels for another hour before we found our way back. 

5. I got attacked by an owl  while walking on the sidewalk on my way home from a night class. Luckily she only dived at me once, and only smacked me with her wings. 

6. My boyfriend's cousin came to visit once, and stayed at the dorms. While my boyfriend was at work (at the Union Building) the cousin and I went to test drive a Volvo...because on tv, they advertised that every test drive would earn a free Shrek video. We got the video...and didn't buy the car. 

7. I worked my way through college at a place called Galaxy Diner- where we wore poodle skirts and danced the hand jive. Though, back in the kitchen, we didn't hand jive, we skanked to Ska music whenever there weren't enough customers to keep us busy. (And don't worry mom- Skanking isn't nearly as slutty as it sounds.)

8. My second year, two of my best friends spent the weekend with me in my dorm. One of them had dark brown hair, the other (my sister in law now) had almost white hair. We bought a jar of fuschia pink hair dye from Hot Topic. I dyed both their hair with it. Nyssa (dark hair) came out with deep purple, and Stephanie (my sis-in-law) was, of course, FLORESCENT pink. It was awesome. My hands, though, turned pink too, because we couldn't find gloves. So I just didn't use any. They were stained for 6 weeks. 

9. I went to a Student Housing Convention in Colorado called IACRH (Eye-a-curr) - it was pretty fun, but kind of embarrassing, because while other school's representatives shouted all kinds of cool cheers, the only thing my group knew was "Weber, Weber STATE! Weber, Weber STATE!!!" -well, we KNEW more cheers, but the group had issues with communication and team work. So instead of discussing, they just automatically shouted. A boy there from Arizona State gave me his sombrero. 

I'm sure there are more- but college was full of moments as much as it was full of actual events. So there's a little peek into me a decade ago. 

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"The Best Way Out is Always Through"

Giveaway coming soon!!!

I am SO excited to announce this! I have never done any reviews or giveaways other than my own home made items, and I am ready to jump in head first!

My first weekly Friday Flash giveaway is starting TOMORROW- so check back for that! There will be one every Friday, so tune in for THAT! (I know, the anticipation is already killing you. LOL.)

But that's not all! A wonderful new review and giveaway is on the way! I can't say what it is yet, because it's still in the works, but it'll be settled soon! I'm excited! You should be too!

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Mama Kat's Writer's Prompts.

I chose prompt number 1:

What did you go through in order to get out?

"The best way out is always through." - Robert Frost

At first, when I saw this post, I thought hilariously about the Haunted Circus my girlfriends and I attended this past Halloween- the spinning rooms, the puffy tunnels, the chainsaws, the clown oven....- long story. The things I literally went THROUGH to get out of there.

And then, I noticed the complexity of the question.

When we say to someone who has had a hard time, "You've been through a lot," or "this situation is tough, but you'll get through it," we don't usually think about it as a physical thing.

Looking back, though, it does seem a bit more physical. Dark spots-tunnels, if you will- that eventually widened into caverns and then became bright again. I remember lots of them. I'm in one right now- a loooooooong, seemingly endless tunnel that gets narrower and narrower as the days go on. I'm sure that eventually, it'll make a great blog story about what I went "through" to get out of it. For now, you'll have to settle for a past experience.

You see, I sort of see my entire college career as "dark ages" in my life. The details of that are not really necessary- not terribly incriminating either, so don't jump to conclusions- but there was a heck of a lot of soul searching, getting to know myself and learning how to trust, and how discern when not to trust. A lot of culture shock.

And, not that I'm reminiscing at all, but I was involved with my first serious boyfriend. I dated him for two years, and we almost got married- but you see, it's obvious that we did not get married, which means that there was a breakup. It was absolutely the most distraught period of my life.

I worked as the early morning (read: 4am) baker at Smith's Bakery then. I drove an adorable little yellow Omni with band stickers plastered across the back window, I spent all day going to class, afternoons doing homework, and evenings hanging out with roommates who didn't really care about me, nor me them, and dodging "date nights" in our living room.

I cried- nay, I sobbed- while baking french bread and Mexican wedding cookies each morning, barely held it together while taking cake orders from customers, and was severely glad to just sit, staring at my teachers for 8 hours a day. Surely they thought I was deeply interested in what they had to say. In the Student Union Building, I often crashed beside the fireplace, curled up in one of the many love-sac beanbag chairs while trying to finish math homework, and snorted sarcastically when, during my Tai Chi final, my teacher expressed, with much gusto, how well she could feel my chi. I told her, without smiling, that I was just so incredibly happy. I still got the highest grade in the class.

My ex and I had all the same friends. We all met the first week of school. And when I broke up with him- yes, believe it or not, I must have had some kind of masochistic desire to have my heart ripped out of my chest, thrown on the floor, kicked through the dirt, and then stomped on until it stopped beating. I broke it off- I lost most of them too. Neither of us asked them to pick sides, but he threw parties a lot, and did "cool" stuff like rock climbing and sk8ing. There were few people I had left there, but one of them, Ryan- a boy I wasn't interested in at all, but who made me laugh, danced with me at Homecoming when I showed up stag, and let me bowl free because he worked at the alley and was captain(?) of the bowling team. I spent a night, once, sobbing so hard that I couldn't breathe in his dorm while he rented me a stack of chick-flicks, and brought me pizza.

Those days seemed to last forever. I truly loved him. But we didn't belong together. We wanted a million different things.

Of course, time took it's toll. I grew up a lot. Heartbreaks make cynics of us all. I came home from school a lot, and I started dating Brandon. You see, I'd made a really difficult decision, knowing it was the right one. My romantic belief that love always perseveres and that happy endings prevailed had been proven wrong. But I survived- and largely on my own.

Slowly, the tunnel lessened it's pressure on me, and let me escape. And I was still just fine, when it was all over.

The "through" is never as dark when you look over your shoulder as it is when you are surrounded by it.

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