Just a quick little post to say that it looks like, god willing, I will be graduating in December. There are no words to describe how happy this makes me - I've got a ridiculous grin spreading over my face just typing this. Obviously, I'm very exciting to be closing this chapter in my life and starting a new one, but I'm also a little terrified.

For the past year, I've been dying to get out of college. It was not a good choice for me, but so far I've stuck it out. I might not be a straight A student, but I get by. So naturally, since I've so desperately wanted to be done with this, I've contemplated all the things I would want to do after I graduate.

Well, now that this milestone is in the foreseeable future, it is a lot scarier to think about. I am drawing a lot of blanks concerning my future and realizing that getting things to be the way I want them to could be a lot more difficult than formerly anticipated.

The biggest issue in my mind is: Where am I going to live? I don't want to spend any more time in Charleston than I absolutely have to, and I also don't want to return home to rural Pennsylvania. So where do I go? I have no idea. New York was always in my mind as where I wanted to be, but with real life and bills and all, I just don't think I can do it right now. so hopefully the next several months will hold many weeks of traveling for me. I'd love to be able to take a month or two or four and just see the entire country. And Canada. But...it's just not going to happen.

Anyway, I will spare you all the excited ramblings. Just know that I am looking forward to being very happy. :)

Since I last checked in, not a whole lot has occurred. The weather has been as crazy as ever. On the 12th, we had a couple of inches of snow here in Charleston. And today it's in the mid-60s. Although the snow was fun, I'm ready for summer!

Valentine's Day was fairly uneventful. I didn't really do a whole lot, just worked on some stuff around the house. My dad sent me roses to "brighten my day" - thank you, Dad, for reminding me that I am hopelessly single! :) He meant well and I appreciate them. They're very pretty and I've been snapping pictures of them as they bloom.

It seems February is going to come to a close, and quite frankly, I'm glad. It was kind of a month that I feel like never really arrived anyway, so why not. Bring on March! Next month is full of exciting things for me, but I don't want to spoil all the fun now.

As far as the ordinary day-to-day stuff goes, I'm trying to find the perfect fabric to make curtains for my living room/dining room. I have one set of two windows attached (if that makes sense) and then one window alone in the dining room, with my front door in between to keep them from fighting. I would love to have different curtains for living room and dining room instead of all the same. But...as it were, I live in the apartment with the dumbest floor plan known to man. An 11' x 18' living room, which also serves as a hallways and entryway. Really. It's idiotic. And my dining room will never be separate enough from my living room to have its own color scheme. See?

Dining room is where it says "750 sq. ft."

Speaking of the dining room, since I don't dine there, I figured I should make it useful for something. So for right now, it's the makeshift arts/crafts/sewing/correspondence/printing and copy center area. I spent much of last evening trying to reorganize it so that I can implement some sort of system for storing all of this stuff. Still not done...

In other news, this weekend I made the best $10 investment of my entire life. That is, a man's razor. I don't know why, but it appears to be true that men's razors work better than women's. My legs are smooth and happy. :) Not that anybody cares, but it's a slow news day and honestly, I was really excited.

I'm off to a meeting shortly and then home to do more homework. I hope something exciting happens this week, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

It's getting close to Valentine's Day. I always think of these at this time of year:

Image borrowed from here.

Just a random thought...

There comes a time when a person must admit that they have a problem. Some people have this problem with things like alcohol or drugs, some people have this problem with actions like shopping or stealing. I have this problem with having pets.

I have always loved animals, ever since I was a child. When I was very young, I thought this would lead me someday to be a veterinarian, but as I grew up I realized that seeing animals suffer is something I will never be able to deal with. I moved on from that phase and spent some time volunteering in animal shelters. This exacerbated the problem, because at the end of the day, I'd always want to bring all of the little homeless animals home to live with me.

I think my attitude towards animals stems a little bit from growing up on a small farm where my father raised sheep and my brother raised chickens. My grandfather also kept ring-necked pheasants for awhile. I just love having animals around and helping them to live happy lives.

When I first moved to Charleston, I adopted 3 rabbits. One, we had to send to a breeder because he was too angsty. He was looking for a nice female bunny to court. But the other two lived with my boyfriend and I, and my yorkie, until the relationship ended and I had to go. One bunny (Julian - a gray dwarf rabbit) stayed with me, and the other (Rory - a gigantic 15 pound rabbit we got when she was a pregnant, mistreated young thing) stayed with the ex. I don't know what the ex did with Rory, and I miss her dearly, but I'd hope she's in a good home. Julian stayed with me until my studies lead me to New York City, at which time he found a new home in Pennsylvania with my mother. I hope one day to have him living with me again, but traveling is very stressful on rabbits and I don't want to move him here only to move him again when I graduate college.

So currently I live here with my dog and my cat. We have a fairly balanced household, and a fairly noisy one. Recently I've been really thinking about animals a lot. I feel like I need to have another critter in my house. It's a weird thing. I don't see myself ever being one of those crazy people who lives with 47 cats in complete squalor. Let's face it, I'm far too much of a neat freak for that. But also, I refuse to have animals in my life if they won't be well taken care of or if I can't guarantee that they will be healthy.

That being said, I have no space to adopt a huge dog or even another cat. But I've been thinking about an anole. They live indigenously here in South Carolina, so I know it wouldn't be a harsh environment for him. Also, they don't like to be held much, which works out for me because lizards are something I'm still working on being okay with as far as touching goes. So I've been contemplating inviting a little green anole into my house and it may be a change I make in the next few months.

The point was though, that every so often I do wish I could live in a bigger home so that I would have the opportunity to foster some animals looking for new homes, or to do some wildlife rehabilitation work. But unfortunately, apartment life is where I'm at right now.

I wanted to share something that I saw via Apartment Therapy today. It was this fun little (well, not really little) aviary that a woman built from a wardrobe. I think it's absolutely gorgeous and would make a wonderful home for a few little birds. But, I'm definitely not ready for birds in my life yet! Maybe someday...

Here's the picture from AT:

Dear Weather, Please Stop That

So when I posted last week, I had tentative plans of going to the beach, making a big day out of it, etc. But...it got cold here. And windy too. And while I'm up for some fun in bad weather, having sand blown into my face for a few hours is just not at the top of my list. Hopefully this week. And hopefully Sullivan's Island. I haven't been there in a long time - at least 2 years - and I kind of forget what it's like.

I had another good mail day in the middle of last week, on which I received my first ever fabric postcard. I may want to dabble in making some of these in the future. I have such a long list of sewing projects that I want to do and not enough time or a big enough fabric budget to do them.

This week, though, I will be starting a wee little project that I can work in along with my schoolwork. It'll be something I do when I have time, and I've got no deadline for it. When I was maybe 14 years old, I moved into a different room in the house. Upon cleaning out the closet in that room, I found an old, battered briefcase that happened to be filled with old photos, some of which were tintypes, and also a diploma or college degree for a woman named Helen Keller (not THAT Helen Keller). The briefcase has been sitting under my bed in the spare room at my grandparents' house, just collecting dust. And so I thought now would be as good a time as any to dig through them, sort them a little bit, and try to learn more. Also, it's just fun to see the pictures and speculate things about the people's lives. So far, I've not got much information. I went through a small stack yesterday and saw that some of the pictures were labeled as being taken in Chicago and Wisconsin. If I find anything that I particularly like, I'll probably share it here. But for now, here's a picture of the jumbled mess that is currently living in a large priority mail box: