Maybe I am looking too into things, but even if I am I thought it would be fun to note why even numbered years have tended to be better for me than odd ones. Shall we?
Even Numbered Positive Happenings:
- Born 1988
- Won an essay contest 2000
- Graduated from the 8th grade 2002
- (I can’t really remember much before 8th grade in terms of what year is which)
- Came out to Coreen 2002
- Attained drivers license 2004
- Started dating the love of my life (thus far) 2004
- Became captain of the volleyball team 2004
- Got into Northeastern 2006
- Became friends with Sarah 2006
- Read My Sister’s Keeper 2006
- Graduated high school 2006
- Started playing the guitar 2006
- Started college 2006
Actually, when I think about it, the positive and negatives haven’t fluctuated all that drastically year to year. I, like so many of us, just hope that it’s another good year. Who knows, maybe something really off the charts will happen.
2008

How do you like being back? What do you think being home? Are you looking forward to heading back to Boston? These are all several combinations of the same thing that are frequently asked of me whenever I return.
I have had a couple of conversations with a couple of different people here about what it is like to be home, one of my favorite responses or descriptions was what my friend Coreen said: “It’s like I imagined the whole thing.” Which we laughed about, but in a way it’s pretty true. Towards the end of the semester I couldn’t wait to get back to Cleveland, mainly because I missed my friends and family but I also had this idea that everything would be just how I left it. I guess it still is. Home doesn’t really change, but it’s not exactly the same either. It’s just this place where you go and your past is washed over you, at least that’s how it is for me. Everywhere I go, I can easily think of a memory I have there, and unfortunately for me half of those memories are with someone who as of a year ago, I have broken up with. Oh how nostalgia tugs on my heart strings – corny but true. I thought with time things of that nature got easier?
I read a couple of good quotes about nostalgia in Love In the Time of Cholera which I’ll conclude with:
“He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
That’s definitely true to my heart, for whatever reason I have a hard time remembering the bad times. Am I still too young to realize this?
 
“… only then did he understand to what extent he had been an easy victim to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Nostalgia, so it seems, has an imagination of its own.

I was walking through the Christian Science Center on Sunday. Walking through in the winter is still as beautiful as it is during the warmer months. It was late afternoon and darkness was already setting in, and I just was looking down watching my polka dot boots cut through the grey snow. What is grey snow really? Just slush, snow slushy, not to be confused with Slushies (tasty drinks that one can buy at annual carnivals or the circus or at convenient stores). I was watching my feet move through snow slush on a Sunday, by myself. And then it dawned on me, what a perfect opportunity for alliteration. Solitary Snow Slushies on Sunday.
At times it helps to have visuals. And at that particular time, I felt like taking some visuals.

Snow slushies aren’t bad, they are a part of winter, they just exist. Sure, they aren’t very fun if you are wearing loafers or Birkenstock clogs, but if you have polka dot boots with thick socks then it’s fun to slush on through to the other side. If you are prepared you can handle any form of slush any day.
Quote:
” Walking through puddles is my favorite metaphor for life.” -Jessi Lane Adams