As Ashlea pointed out to me, I haven’t blogged in a while. That’s because I have nothing to blog about! That comes as a result of my somewhat empty life right now. My days consist of sitting around on my bed, watching movies on my laptop and the occasional meeting with the stove. I thought that was the ideal summer for the college student….I was wrong.

Something interesting happened today, however. My sister left for college. Mom is driving her down to Louisiana, and my little brother went with them. My grandparents are away for the week in Mexico for my cousin’s wedding. That leaves me. With an empty house. I think I’m in heaven. And no, not because I’m going to have amazing parties that get the cops called on me (you have to know people to have parties), but because I’m alone. There’s just something about being alone that motivates me to do something. Remember spring break? On the bright side, I have my dogs to talk to this time!

So what’s my plan for my week of freedom? Not too clear on that one. I will, however, be cleaning (again). Lots and lots of cleaning. Now that my sister has vacated what used to be our room but turned into her room and is now my room again (for another 2 weeks), I can finally clean up her mess. I would have done it earlier, but like I said, being alone motivates me. My only responsibilities this week include going to my job (fortunately, I still have the tutoring gig) and taking care of my dogs (I REALLY hope I don’t forget to feed them!). Hopefully, the week (and the rest of the summer) will be interesting enough (in a boring sort of way) for me to have something to blog about

Siblings have a special bond–one that involves lots of teasing. Me and my sister’s relationship is based entirely on teasing, I’m sure. Now that Christopher is old enough, he and I sort of gang up on her. But apparently, I’ve taught him too well…

My little brother pulled a trick on me today that I’ve been pulling on my sister for years. She finally lost some of her gullibility and it doesn’t work anymore, but it looks like my level of gullibility has increased. Mom was telling us today that we need to let the dogs out. She let one out, and when he was ready to come in, Christopher yelled to me, “Jana, mom said let the dog in!” I waited a minute (pushing my luck, as daughters like to do), and waited until Christopher said, “Fine I’ll do it!” I told him not to, that I would do it, so I went downstairs and let the dog in. When I came back upstairs, Mom said, “You know, I told him to do that.” I was dumbstruck. This little 11 year old just tricked me into doing something he was supposed to do! I couldn’t believe it. I never get tricked by my younger siblings. I do the tricking.  I’m the oldest; I’m supposed to know all the tricks! I guess being at college all year without them has made me a little rusty.

So Amber is officially graduated! The entire family is very proud of her.

As luck would have it, she sat on one side of the stadium while we were in the fourth row of the other side of the stadium. My mom spent the entire graduation standing on her side of the stadium just so she could get pictures of Amber walking.

Poor Christopher was so bored (well, to tell the truth, so was I, but I have more practice at acting interested. I wonder how differently I’ll look at a graduation when it’s my kids graduating…). He doodled throughout most of the ceremony to keep himself occupied.

He even tried to lay down and take a nap. And apparently he wasn’t the only one. Some of the graduates were napping in their seats, too, according to Amber. As exciting as actually, finally, graduating from high school is, the ceremony is always unbelievably boring. I remember at my graduation, I was fidgeting constantly. And I was in the front row, right behind the speakers. When the tape of graduation was played on local tv, everyone could see me moving my fingers constantly!

But anyway, I found one of the speakers to be very interesting. The mayor of Worcester spoke, and she compared the graduates to turtles: awkward and slow. No, I’m just kidding. She said that, like turtles, the graduates need to learn to stick their heads out to meet the challenges in life. They can’t hide in their shells. Another speaker accidentally called the ceremony a “commendment” rather than “commencement.” I caught the mistake, but thought it was appropriate nonetheless. The graduates deserve to be commended for making it out of high school. I was surprised to hear no one say “We did it!” or “You did it!” I was glad, though. I think it’s an overused and cliched phrase when it comes to graduations.

Congratulations to all of the graduates of 2008 and good luck in the future!

My little sister is graduating from high school tonight! My dad and stepmother flew here from England for the graduation, and my Mamaw and Aunt are here from Tennessee. Unfortunately, since her graduating class is so big, she only received six tickets. Three people will be sitting out. We tried to get more tickets, but those little suckers are scarce! We went to the school to beg for more, and I even asked a guy I work with at Kumon if he knew anyone with extras. He didn’t; apparently everyone is having the same problem as us. My mom, brother, dad, stepmom, Mamaw, and I will be watching her graduate while my grandparents and aunt wait at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards, we’ll probably all go out to dinner. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and even post a few. I’m still having a hard time believing that my little sister, the 5 feet tall brat, is actually graduating when she still gets kid’s menus at restaurants!

Starting in the fall, Amber will be going to Louisiana Tech in Ruston, Louisiana. We used to live in Bossier and she’s knows a lot of people who are going there for school. She can’t wait to be near her old friends again. She has orientation in July and school starts in August. She’s just planning on staying with a friend from July until school starts so that she doesn’t have to go back and forth.

If you’d like to know what we’re doing to prepare her for college or if you have any suggestions for us, please feel free to e-mail me: jfuson@email.lynn.edu. I’d love to hear from you!

Being home again is a lot different from being at school. For one thing, I have NOTHING to do! It’s a big change from school, where I’m busy constantly. Needless to say, I’m incredibly bored. It was great at first, but after a few days of it, I’ve had my fill of boredom. What makes it worse is that my body is still programmed to wake up early, so I get up before 9 in the morning, and I still have the whole day ahead of me. I am currently job-less, so I don’t have that to occupy my days. I don’t have any homework, so there’s nothing that I need to be doing. My sister is still in school, so I can’t hang out with her during the day (not that I’m sure we could hang out; we might kill each other). I don’t have any friends nearby, so still no one to hang out with. The highlight of my day is my exercise in the morning–which consists of jump rope and walking the dogs. By the end of the summer, I’m sure my dogs will lose all of the weight they gained over the winter, weight that they will just gain back again when I leave.

On the bright side, I do have my car, so that’s helpful. I visited Sam once; he lives about an hour away. That was an adventure! I had to mapquest the directions, and I didn’t print any out for the way back from his house, so he drew me a map….I still got lost. I had to stop at a gas station to ask where I was. Then today (Sunday) I realized around 4:00 that the day was barely half done.  I panicked because I had already run out of things to do after exercising, walking the dogs, and watching a movie. So I went to the mall to read a book that just came out (by Stephenie Meyer, the amazing author whose book I fell in love with in January) that I haven’t been able to buy yet because, like I said, job-less. I’ve gotten to chapter 8 and will probably go back soon so I can read some more.

Hopefully my days will miraculously be filled with something fun very soon so that I don’t go back to school in the habit of not doing anything. I’m sure it will all change when I get back, anyway!

I have a car!! It’s a 2001 Chevy Cavalier and I love it. Of course, I’m not very good at having a car yet. In fact, I’m pretty bad at it. I went grocery shopping with my sister the other night. We spent a good 10 to 15 minutes in the store before I was done shopping. I was standing in line, waiting to pay, and I realized I had left my lights on! I told my sister to run outside and turn them off (and prayed that I’d be able to start the car when I got out there). Then, last night, we held a birthday party for my grandmother at the Elks Lodge. I was in my car, ready to go home, and digging through my purse for my keys. I couldn’t find them, so I was going to run inside and look for them. When I got out of my car, an older gentleman told me that I had a pair of keys in the passenger side door….WOW! I left those keys in the door the entire 5 hours that I was inside. I am so lucky that my car wasn’t taken. I guess having a car takes some getting used to. Hopefully I get used to it really quickly….

So the most fortunate thing happened to me yesterday: My computer crashed. You’re probably wondering, how is that fortunate? Well, it didn’t happen over the past two weeks, in which case I would have lost my papers right in the middle of writing them, plus all my research. I mean, I did lose all of my music, my pictures, and my papers, but I’m glad it happened now rather than when classes were still in. Plus, most of my music is on cds (because I’m old fashioned and don’t have an ipod), most of my pictures are on facebook and myspace, and I have hard copies of all of my papers. So fortunately, I didn’t lose anything vital. I’ll have to re-save all of my pictures, re-copy all of my cds onto my computer, and re-type all of my poetry, but that’s better than not having any of it. The same night, my uncle called Dell and was able to get it all fixed, so I’m all good to go for next semester!

Oh wow have these last two weeks been insane!! I have been so busy that I haven’t had time to breathe, much less blog (which is pretty high up on my list of things to do). First of all, I returned to work at Barnes and Noble only to find that my boss had scheduled me to work for as many days as possible….right at the time when I needed the most time off. In addition to so much work, I had a 2,500 word paper due, a 1,500 paper plus presentation due, a written take home final that hadn’t even been assigned yet, and finally, I had to create a hair salon with my group for entrepreneurship group, the hardest of all. I also had finals to study for finals. In the midst of all this, I had to find time to pack for my vacation! Well, my papers are  done, even if I did finish only 20 minutes before class, my finals are done, and I presented my hair salon business with my group with barely a hitch (after spending a good 5 hours on it in the library the day before). For the past week, I’ve been operating on an average of five hours of sleep every night; one night with only 4 hours of sleep because I decided to go out with some friends from work until 3:00 in the morning. Now, it’s over for a month!! I left Thursday afternoon for Illinois, where I’ll be for a couple of weeks before I meet Aly in California and go on the cruise that her family generously invited me on. Then, I’ll be spending the last week with Aly before flying with her to start the new semester! I’m going to read as much as possible, revel in the lack of work I have to do, and sleep until 12 noon at least once (I hope). Then, I’ll get back to school and start the cycle of stress all over!

Black Friday! It was also my grandparents 50th anniversary, but we weren’t celebrating until the next day. This year was the first time I ever went shopping on Black Friday. Aunt Laura drove me and Amber out to Knoxville to one of the malls there. We had to follow Aunt Cheryl because we didn’t know how to get there. The first thing we did was have lunch at a little Mexican place called Margaritas. It was so colorful! There were bright pictures of the sun and moon on the tables and chairs and there were huge fake parrots hanging from the ceiling. We wandered through the mall and I decided that I wanted to get a dress. I tried on about 8 or 9 different dresses at Dillard’s until I found one I wanted. Aunt Laura actually bought it for me. She also bought Amber a skirt at Hot Topic. After shopping for two or three hours (not nearly as long as we wanted to), Uncle Daryl called us because he and Laura were going shopping for the Secret Anniversary supplies that we needed for the next day. Me and Amber went with Dad, Jill, and Dad’s best friend Brian and his wife Betty to a restaurant called the Mellow Mushroom. We were there for a good 3 hours. Afterwawrds, we were supposed to go and decorate the room that we were going to hold the 50th anniversary celebration in, but we it was too late. Amber and I were dropped off at home and went to sleep!

Thanksgiving! I woke up really early on Thursday for some reason. Everyone came over pretty early: my dad, stepmom, two stepbrothers (who I was really happy to see), Uncle Daryl, and Aunt Laura (Aunt Cheryl had stayed overnight). For breakfast, we had my Mamaw’s biscuits and chocolate gravy!! MMMM! (Chocolate gravy is not gravy with chocolate in it–it’s basically homemade chocolate syrup, in case I grossed you out!) We started making Thanksgiving dinner around 11 or 12, not sure which.

The men cooked the turkey in some kind of pot outside.

My stepmom made fudge and sweet potato (casserole?) with pecans in it and the little marshmallows on top (yum to both!). Amber and I made the devilled eggs because that’s what we love best. We raced to see who could peel the most boiled eggs while they were still hot–I think she won. I peeled potatoes for mashed taters.

Amber sliced celery.

 

Papaw sliced onions for the stuffing.

Mamaw made the stuffing (probably the best food we had!). 

Amber made a green bean casserole. We didn’t have a table for all of us to sit down at, so we kind spread ourselves out in the living room. My Uncle came in with my Aunt sometime after dinner, so I got to see her, too. After dinner, we all sat around and watched football (I can’t remember which teams) until it was time for everyone to leave. That ended up being the only day I got to see my stepbrothers because they left the next morning. So we had pictures taken of the four of us. At some point, everyone else left (me, Amber, and Cheryl were the only ones who stayed with Mamaw and Papaw because of lack of space) and we all went to bed!