Today was such a great day. Such a great day. I can't get over the fucking mountains. They have no beer selection here, but I drink it any ways. Some good news, I will share later assuming it goes through. I miss everyone terribly.

Walked up a mountain and stopped at the top to drink some beer and sing some songs and I was happy up there and now, coming down, everything seems to drop and all I can think is that  I want to say "I miss you," as if saying it more will make it less true, but it doesn't. I always think that maybe I cannot exist everywhere. I worry that might be true. I feel little.

Walkin' up a mountain, discussing the difference between trousers and pants.

So even though I know that when people say they are going to try and visit me, they probably won't make it, I still get excited any ways.

I sang to one of the Von Trapp children on the phone tonight. Orientation is really great.

I got a long lecture about the importance of "The Sound of Music today." Apparently the Austrians don't like to talk about the movie and it is our job as teaching assistants to inform them.

It's supposed to get down to freezing where I am going tonight. I am not prepared for this. Well, I have all my clothes with me, so I'm prepared in that sense, but mentally I'm not.

Things that makes me happy in Austria:
Meeting up with other Fulbright people to ride the train tomorrow! I am going to try and show how desperate I am to be friends with them without seeming desperate.
Messages from people in the states that I already miss way too much.
I am fine.

Actually managed to eat food and drink beer and talk with people. Why do American men get so creepy in Europe? Really PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH MY KNEE, thanks.

I remember the day I went to Siena, Italy, Justina, Laura, and I got on a bus and took the short trip to my favorite city in Italy. On the bus I talked about how proud I was about being able to buy the bus ticket with ease and take a daytrip in a foreign country. That was probably two months into my time in Italy. That night, returning back to Florence from Siena, I had one of the worst nights of my life. I don't know why I am thinking about this now.

Nope, not leaving. I'm too tired and hurt too much. I'm going to read in my room and eat some chocolate, which is a really excellent meal.

Oh geeze. It's looking iffy on whether or not I will make it out of my room for dinner. It's very loud downstairs and my body hurts all over. I want it to be the caf where I can bring a book and no one can bother me.

There was a point at which I was going to write about how pretty Salzburg is and how well everything went, but then I had to drag my suitcases for like half an hour to get to the hostel and then I sat down on the bed and cried, so things seem less cheery. I haven't actually cried in a while, not since I left Chicago as life has been really good. Whenever life is really good, I leave and go to a different life.

My mother is trying to explain to me how to ride on airplanes. The first time I rode on a plane by myself I was ten.

I like to listen to music and travel. Who doesn't like to listen to music and travel? I like to put my headphones in and feel like I'm all alone, but I don't like being alone at all. It doesn't really make any sense.

At some point I got this theory that the reason people leave is because I let them leave. So everytime I'm saying goodbye my body tells me, with no uncertainty, if I just never let go of this person, they cannot leave. This works well for five minutes until both of us realize that they have to leave and thus I let them and then I go back to my room wondering why I let them do that.

Haircut. Yes, I realize it looks exactly the same. I still feel the need to post a picture any ways.

I just had a long conversation with my cat about how I can't leave. His response was to purr and to kneed his nails into my chest.

I napped all afternoon. I just kind of shut down after any kind of activity now. -Oh, I went to Walsgreen and the bank, nap time. -Oh, I sat on the floor rolling up my clothes and putting them into a suitcae, nap time.

My mother and I are both freaking out. She is force feeding me and I am slightly hyperventilating.

I am trying to see how many posts in a row can involve the word "leaving."

More than anything I write about things that leave. Such as here. I haven't been the one to leave in a long time though.

I booked a hostel, called the credit card company. Somehow I still am in complete denial about leaving.

Leaving is going to be so hard.

I think I'm wisdom-tooth-teething.

My cat puked on the floor and my dog ate it. My pets are gross.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store and felt the avocados and the mangos, but was too scared to buy either one because I'm not sure what is the right amount of squishy.

Packing packing packing packing packing.

Hardcore hail. It sounds like my house is going to fall down.

I've spent a long time learning how to be an autonomous human being. I've realized over the past couple of weeks, I am rather tired of being an autonomous human being and would like to be a human being with someone else. This of course preceeding 10 months in a foreign country. It's really little things I like the most: an arm around the back, hand on the knee.

I love going out to breakfast.

I know I've posted this prose poem before, but I love it.

Remember when I decided that I wanted to have a fantastic time before I left? Life is pretty great right now. Thinking about leaving makes me feel sick.

"Goddamnit."

Things that happened while cleaning my kitty cat's litter box:
1. I put rubber gloves on everything, including my i-pod.
2. When I lifted up the bottom of the box, there were two spiders and a millipied, all of which scattered quickly.
3. When I set down the still-lined with dry and dark litter box on the ground, my kitty cat came over to smell it as if to inspect what he had done.
4. Outside I disposed of the garbage bag only to find the garbage bag from the last time I did the task still sitting there.
5. My kitty cat ripped a hole in his litter bag. Why he would do this, I have no idea.
6. I immediately went to the showered and scoured my skin of the whole experience.

I've never been drunk and on Amazon before. I suddenly have new music. More please.

I often think about what it would like to be a semi truck driver. Not because I want to be one, but because I think there is this bizarre culture of semi drivers. Also I don't understand how they make turns.

1: I have something to tell you.
2: Uhhhh
1: I'm kind of leaving the country for 10 months.
2: What?
1: Yeah, I have a Fulbright, it's kind of a big deal.
2: Oh.

Look I do write

Part of what I wrote about the summer, which I haven't worked on in forever.

At work, I reproduce. I look at a thing and say, yes this is a thing and this is what things look like. This is how you make things.
I have been teaching art for six years. When I was eighteen I was a cashier at a department store during winter break, an associate they are called. I had a nametag. It said my name, associate. We had to wear all black. Men came up to me and asked me to help find clothing for their wives, she was my size, maybe a little bigger. After three and a half weeks I went back to college. My associate badge sat in the bottom of my purse. I pulled it out months later, covered in gum.
People ask what I make and I say things that other people have made mostly. People ask what I teach and I say it’s all very technical really.
The only memory I have of my kindergarten teacher is how once she colored in a picture of Christopher Columbus with crayon and I wanted my Christopher Columbus to look exactly like hers and it didn’t. Later that year she slipped on ice and broke her back and we had another teacher, but I don’t remember her at all.
I wanted to be an artist for a little while because in second grade I drew a bird and thought that it looked good. My Uncle tells the same story, only about himself and he is an artist. He paints a lot of rocks.
These are not applicable skills. I look at a line and make it like another line. I put lines together and I make an arm, a back. Over here, there’s shadow because that’s where the muscle lies. Art teaches that the image has meaning. The symbolic expression. The way a person can look at another person’s face and understand what they are feeling, but this never works entirely. These are the lines that make up your face, together they make you whole.
Logically, off in the distance, things become bluer.

I have a stress hive in my lip. I leave the house in 55 minutes.

It occurred to me in the shower that if I were to lose lots of weight, my legs would be really skinny and it would make me less time to shave.

This idea that people can radically change and those on the bottom become those on the top is almost a complete lie. People continue to be who they are and when they change everyone else change to and things stay even. I don't know why I am surprised that those who were terribly awkward and made me feel uncomfortable continue to do so despite the fact that it has been six years since I attended Highland Park Senior Highschool.

My eyelashes keep getting tucked under my eyelid. Usually it's just one, but this morning there was a thick black line of lash at the corner of my eye.

People still in school are doing homework. Meanwhile I am napping with kitty cat.

All last week I woke up to find every muscle in my body sore from yoga. This week I wake up to find only my middle finger sore. What does this mean?

I have plural hives on my face. This has only happened once before in my entire life. I also vaccumed and made cookies. I must be really stressed.

I put the same amount of effort in getting ready to go to a coffee shop as I do when I'm going out with boys. I need more to do.

It's a trade-off. I feel happier this week than last week, but there are still things I'd rather be doing. I'm going to go to yoga and think upside down for awhile and then work out until my face is red and sweaty and then I'm going to try to write some poems even though I don't really have anything to say right now.

Danny said: I won't hate you if you stay here.

Like this is an option.

I'm dreading nothing and not nothing. I dread the long days of this week and next week and I desperately want them to go on forever. Secretly I decided to go to Austria while drunk and high in the Netherlands. I was somewhere very deep in my head and this desire revealed itself. Sober me is just so scared of everything.

Apparently I looked cute.

Suddenly I know why Blair wants me to dress her all the time. It's nice to have affirmation before going somewhere that you look good. I look cute, right? RIGHT?

I am going to wash all my clothes. Somehow having clean clothes makes everything seem more functional.

I once asked my dad where I was when the Berlin Wall fell and he said, "Probably the Children's Museum. We were always at the Children's Museum." That's what's weird about disasters. Everyone remember where they were and what they were doing at that moment. I was in homeroom, reading a book. I was 13 years olds. They announced over the loudspeaker that a plane had crashed into the Twin towers and fifteen minutes later they announced that another plane had crashed. We watched tv all day, even in the cafeteria. Jesse Ventura wanted to keep us in school. As I walked home military planes were flying over the golf course. I called my parents when I got home. I tried to watch tv, but the samething was on every channel. I cried a little.

I'm kind of drunk and need to leave the country immediately.

The avocado lavash wrap at Shish is super good. Avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles, lettuce, and cream cheese. I'm a fan.

I'm pretty sure my toes almost broke in yoga today. What the fuck?

I just read an article that states that females half an inch taller than me get the most sex.

I don't know what's worse. The prospect of him not caring about repeat drinks with someone who is not him or the prospect of him caring. It's like, what's worse, a coffee date gone badly or a coffee date gone well? Either one has terrible repercussions.

When my cat lived at my dad's, he almost always sat in the living room. It didn't occur to me that he sat in there because he liked all the people, I just figured he sat there because living rooms are where people sit. He's been living at my mom's for a couple of months now and he follows me constantly. He paws at the bahtroom door when I pee. He's laying next to me right now. His head hanging off the side of the bed and his fat body covering my phone. If this isn't love, I don't know what is.

I am crash working out. My body hurts everywhere. I have embarrasing balancing problems during yoga. I have embarrasingly wide hips on the elliptical machine. I am reading an embarrassing book about a guy who's wife left him for his boss, but he can't stop thinking about fucking her and any other female he comes into contact with and his dad died (but his dad dying is a minor issue compared to his libido). This book makes me think of people I know.

Getting letters makes me so happy.

Cretin girls are walking by my house talking about draammmaaaa.

The movie "The Time Traveler's Wife" was brought up every flash workshop until it became a joke and people started bringing it up purposefully. I just watch it and cried my eyes out. It's the worst thing, knowing that somehow people are terrible, that they will always always always let you down, and somehow that doesn't matter. I don't even know what my head is clinging to anymore.

Something about the fall is just really great. Even though it's grey and the trees are shaking everywhere and my legs are shaking because I was at the gym for 3 hours.

I'm trying to figure out how to heal. I'm trying to figure out what I am healing from. It's not really about him is it?

The sleepy mind is so tricky. I set my alarm so I could wake up to do something I want to do and all I can think is that, no, I do not want to do this, I just want to sleep, like there is no time to sleep, but really there is all the time to sleep.

It's so weird how everything sort of shuts down for no reason. I had a good weekend. I saw a lot of people. I was happy and now I'm just not and I can't figure out what changed when I woke up on Sunday.

I'm going to get up and go to yoga tomorrow. Whenever I go to the gym I always want to go back more and work out everyday and become really hot. This usually lasts two or three days.

Somewhere out there, a letter I have sent is traveling. I have all these fears about my little letter. What if it never arrives? What if it gets terribly beat up? What if it is not appreciated? What if there is no response. My hope is by the time I realize no response is coming I will have forgotten about it.

Got this terrible desire to go back to Knox this morning. I rather hate waking up at noon, eating, doing nothing, and then eating again. I'm pretending that I am doing Austria study abroad and hopefully by the time I get back I will be over everything. I will be ready to become a person on my own. I will be able to have conversations with people and not talk about college. Just once I want to kiss a boy who did not attend Knox as this is not happened since last summer. How am I supposed to get over people if I have no one to kiss? I never actually like the beginning of school. It's always awkward trying to remember where I fit, who I am friends with. Everyone moving in makes it seem so appealing though. I almost wish I were leaving for Austria earlier even though I am terrified.

I just killed a mosquito in my room and it got blood on my sheets.

I feel down in a ridiculous manner tonight.

Good thing you took yourself out of my life (and I asked you to) so I don't have to worry about this.

Sometimes I feel like a bad feminist because I let boys pay for my drinks when they offer.

Geeze I feel like shit this morning. Not physically or whatever. My insides, which of course are not really things at all.

Blair and I bought trashy sunglasses for going out purposes.

My cat puked on the pretty hardwood floor in my room after his gagging body woke me up and I pushed him off my bed to puke and all of our cleaning supplies say not to use on a hardwood floor. What do I do? How am I supposed to live on my own?

My mummy and I.

My mother's psychiatrist told her she should try to reconcile her marriage with my father. They have been divorced for ten years. My father cannot stand to be around my mother. She asked me if she should go for it. I said no. She has decided it would probably be a good idea to do it any ways. No wonder I am terrible at dealing with my feelings towards boys.

I had a rough morning of panic. Only two things make me panic like that, boys and my mother. This time it was a boy crisis, but it's resolved as it's going to get and by resolved I mean I am sort of sad, but okay, and that's how it's been all summer any ways, but this time I was somewhat more upset. Seven hour drives are very calming and after the extremely upset first hour, I relaxed. I thought about Dylan Thomas a lot. This probably doesn't make sense to most people, but I have this fucked up connection with Dylan Thomas now. I thought about writing letters. I thought about who I want to send them to. Let me know if you want a letter, because I want to write them. Getting home was good. I love driving into St. Paul through 94W to 35E. I even liked getting to my house. I cleaned my room, talking with my mom, showed her pictures of Freistadt (where I'm living next year). My brother came over, we talked. We talked about legit things and his very practical advice was, "Why do you care? Just forget about it. That's what I do when something is bothering me." We are such different people.

If you want a letter send me your address.