Hello,

It is now Sunday night, and my busy-lazy-recovery weekend is about done.  I think I needed this weekend.  It gave me a chance to relax while also getting some stuff done (how does that work ;D). 


At the beginning of the weekend, I made myself a to-do list of everything that needed to be done, and here's my progress: 

✔ Write the letter for the last person's story in my Fiction Writing group.
✔ Clean our bathroom: it's my turn
✔ Write a critique for a girl's paper in Queer Studies.
-- ALMOST done!  I can feel it!  Just have to muscle up enough motivation to spit out the last paragraph or so.

✔ I think we're also supposed to read a few short stories for that class, but I can't remember which ones..?  
-- Still not sure about that one.  I'll ask one of my classmates in Fiction Writing, who's also in Queer Studies with me, about it tomorrow.

✔ Finish the video quiz for my online  Psychology of Gender class.


I have the girl's paper for Queer Studies right by me and as soon as I finish this blog post, I intend on finishing her critique!  Yes, in between emailing Mom and scrolling through Tumblr... but I will finish it!  But overall, I'd say that was a pretty productive weekend.

Besides working on assignments for school and dorm chores, there's been a bit of a change to our floor...:

I couldn't believe it.  I came back to the floor after having dinner at the dining hall and spending some time in the computer lab, and I come out of the elevator to see this.  It is INSANE.  The pictures really don't do it justice compared to actually walking through this in person.  The coolest thing is the lights.  It just adds to the spooky ambiance.  My room's down the red-lit hallway.  It was really great, too, because I had just had a pretty bad night before seeing this: dwelling on things that happened years ago that I still feel guilty about and wish for anything that I could go back and change things, a bit of crying, posting sad statuses on Facebook and Tumblr.  And then I come up here and I see this spectacular set-up and I'm just in complete awe, and as I'm walking down the hallway to my room, one of the girls who had helped decorate it asked, "What do you think!" and I just said, "This is insane."  In a weird way, it sort of reminded me that life is okay at times, that there will always be people around who will make you feel included and remind you of your presence.  It was a terrible night that suddenly turned into a pretty great night. 

Then today I looked out the window this morning, at the sunshiny fall day with the blustery wind blowing through the trees, and I decided it was a good day to go for a walk.  I also had this idea of collecting some leaves to tape onto my desk, to give it a true autumn theme.  I went outside and sure enough the wind blew everything around, but it was actually wonderful.  It felt liberating and free.  I walked down the sidewalk lined with all of the lovely fall trees, and I was listening to I Wanna Get Better by Bleachers as a gust of wind blew my hair around and sent all of the leaves up into the air in a flurry, and I passed a guy and a girl running around among the leaves, trying to catch some in midair, both happy as can be.  In that moment, I felt so light and happy. I don't want to say that, just for a split second, it felt like my own movie, but... No, but really.  Even though you could very well say "It's just the weather," sometimes I wonder if there's someone up there who gives you good days sometimes in order to remind you that life is good. 

Anyway, back to my autumn desk makeover, here's the end result:



I still have a ton more leaves left, but I think I have another idea for what to do with those.  It was a bit tricky, actually, trying to get the leaves to look just so.  A lot of them were too big to hang from my desk, and a lot of them had really long stems that needed to be cut, and I was debating on whether to layer leaves to fill in the spaces or to just have a single line of leaves going across.  And then tape... ahh, fresh leaves don't like tape very much.  But overall, I think it added a really nice touch to my desk! :)

Looking back, this weekend was definitely a surprise.  Friday night started off terrible and I found myself in a really bad place.  But somehow as the weekend went on, it turned out better.  It's like, between coming up to my floor at the end of the night to see that it's been totally Halloween decked out, and going outside today to be greeted with a perfect autumn moment, sometimes it makes me wonder if someone up there was trying to make it up to me for the bad part of last night and remind me that life still has its good moments to live for.

Well, that's enough sappiness for one blog post.  I will end it here.
Goodnight,
x Danielle

P.S.
Oh!  In case you were wondering, my gigantic zit is improving!  Well, sort of.  Being me, of course, I ripped off my zit, which then turned into a scab, which I then proceeded to heal this weekend, and it's slowly diminishing!  Argh, hopefully it will heal quickly and not leave any marks.  Leave it to me to pick at my skin when I shouldn't.