Looking for Trouble

After dinner I decided to follow up on a tip someone gave in class about these really really large moths that seem to come out about dusk at the soccer field. I asked some of my male buddies if they would mind going with me, since the soccer field is a ways out and I didn't want to be walking around by myself after dark. Besides, more eyes means better chances of finding something, right?

So we make it out to the field carrying my butterfly net and jar-o-doom, and there's absolutely nothing there. Well, now the guys just want to see my killing jar in action, so we make our way to the tennis courts and I find a winged ant. I told them that the bugs just act really high and then pass out, end eventually die of an OD on the chemical. They thought my analogy was hilarious, and watched the ant very intently giving of-the-moment interpretative narrative. "Oh no! My legs! Ack ack, ahhh....." They were so amused that they walked around a whole section of campus with me from lit spot to lit spot looking for interesting things to kill. We found a mosquito hawk/crane fly (the giant mosquito kind, not the dragonfly kind), a huge beetle, a big cricket, and several moths. There also seemed to be another green stink bug every time we turned around. They seemed to be everywhere tonight.

We also found a big green grasshopper that I happened to know from personal experience has the most scary looking mandibles, so I picked it up and showed the guys, who agreed they don't want to be bit by that! So, we proceded to find a worthy-looking spider web and deposited the grasshopper there, hoping to get a death-match going, but the spider didn't look game. It was more along the lines of, "what are you doing to my web?"

Walking around having fun with my freinds: it's great and I wish I did it more often.

Good Old Friends

Fall Break just flew on by. But I did get to visit some of my old friends from my high school days, which is always fun. I got to love on their two cats cats and pretend they were mine (my daddy and husband are both allergic, which means that it's unlikely I'll ever be able to have some of my own).


I also got to see their kid again, who has grown so fast and can say quite a few words now, including "pimp pimp," which is the funniest thing ever. Yep, its great to just chill out their house for a few days like old times. Plus, they gave me this really beautiful candle they got us for our wedding but forgot about (haha, how many times have I also bought people things that are still laying around somewhere?).

The Beginning of the End

What wisdom a year can bestow on a person. The sequence of events leading up to our and others' current situations becomes more clear, and we can step back and begin to see how tiny, seemingly unimportant events in our lives can either nudge us to greatness or push us towards a cliff. How can a friend who you once aspired to be (smart, gorgeous, self confident, knowing where she wanted to go in life) just give up on the world after they had worked so hard before to get to where they wanted to go?

And now, looking back with my freshly opened eyes, I can see that everything played an intricate part in her downfall. I was a part of it, her parents were a part of it, her job was a part of it, her teachers were a part of it, her various failed relationships were a part it, and she herself was a part of it. All of the little things that just happen to a person, things so small that you don't even notice them until it's too late. But they eat at you bit by bit until you are left feeling worthless and hopeless.

What could have been done differently to have made it turn out different? These things are so tiny that it makes you wonder if you could have made any difference at all, because it was everything around her, not just you. It's the small things that weren't really preventable in the first place. Which small piece was the one that broke the camel's back? Which one was the point of no return, that made her decide that enough is enough, and that there is no point in trying anymore, that she should just give up because it isn't worth it. At what point do her friends know, too, that they can't do anything to stop her, because they also felt this moment coming for a long, long time, even if they were holding out a little hope that she would pull through?

So, what do you do now? Do you feel sorry for her? Do you feel that she is a failure, that she just wasn't strong enough to take life's challenges? Do you just shrug it off and keep living your own life, relieved to be done with such a negative influence? I don't know how or if I can fix it, and she doesn't seem like she would care anymore if I tried. What to do? What to do? All I can do at the moment is try to keep my own head above water as I feel another piece of my boat break off.