The G's

My Florida Grandma and Grandpa can be super funny. My Grandpa will say the funniest things and not even realize what he said. One of our favorites is when he wanted someone to pass him the pitcher of water and said, "I need some water up my end." On our Florida vacation this year, Grandpa had some other memorable things to say. My grandma can be really funny too. We went to Joe's Crap Shack one night and she got some crap legs. The waiter came and tied a bib on her. On our way over to the Arabian Nights dinner/show, my grandma forgot her purse so my Grandpa ran back to get it and carried it all the way over. Then, during the pre-show, there was a belly dancer instructing everyone to follow along and of course Grandpa tried to follow along. They can sure be a sight.

Get Away

We flew away from Minnesota really early in the morning. It sure feels nice to be flying away from all the gray and cold. We had reserved a regular car for renting while we are here in Florida but someone at the rental place messed something up that we ended up with a Mustang convertible. We decided that as long as we had this car we might as well make it worth it and drive down to Daytona Beach for the day. On Tuesday of our vacation we took the trip to drive along the beach. We got out of the car and ran along the beach. While we were staying at Grandma and Grandpa's house, the brothers and I went on a walk along the highway. We came across a house with a pitbull looking dog outside. At first he looked mean but he ran up to us and wanted to play. He sure was nice and he followed us down the road back to Grandma's trying to get us to throw pine cones for him. He came right up to the house and chewed up pine cones and sticks and took a nap on the porch when we went inside. We went outside again and ran around the house with him. He was so happy to have someone to play with and he ran after the car for a while when we drove away. He had a real big beefy head so we called him Beef. Everytime we go to Grandma's house, we always play our favorite game that she has. It is a really old game called Booby Trap. You set up the wooden pieces in a spring loaded board and pull the pieces out kind of like Jenga. When you make the board move when you pull out a piece, the next person plays. It isn't quite the vacation that I have been picturing for the last six months, but it has been a pretty good time. It is really nice just to be in nice weather with nothing to worry about.

A Wish and a Prayer

My whole life I never asked for much. I haven't asked for something specific for Christmas or my birthday more than once or twice. Ever. I guess I have always figured I could be patient and accept what I was given until there was something I really, really wanted. The only things I remember ever wanting so bad were a dog and just for everything to turn out alright. Countless times I have wished and wished for absolutely nothing more than for everything to turn out in a good way. Every day for two straight months I have been wishing for something. Something that I just want so much that I can't think of one more thing that I want more. I just want everything to turn out alright. Andrew came in my room last night when I was in my bed. He sat down and played me some songs on his guitar about believing and creating and celebrating great things. It just made me feel like everything was going to be ok. It is almost Christmas, and I have never wished for or wanted anything more. Just for a friend.

I never got to show you

I spent 4 years of high school taking art classes. I spend 1 year at St. Cloud State University taking art classes. I took 2 years of school at MSB taking art and graphic design classes. I remember kind of liking it... but never loving it. All that I really have to show for it I feel, is my diploma and this website which I never got to show anyone but some of the MSB instructors and the 2 other people graduating with me in the Interactive Media and Graphic Design program. Oh... and my parents. I almost hope to some how use my degree in some way because otherwise I just feel like I wasted 3 years of my life doing something I didn't really like and was pretty mediocre at. If I never find a way to use it, I suppose I can always just stick to painting and making homemade Valentines.

http://webspace.globeuniversity.edu/grace.orvick/portfolio/index2.html

Now I lay me down to....

I honestly don't remember an age that I didn't have so much trouble sleeping. It is 4:15 AM and I am tired... but I just cannot make myself sleep. When I was younger, I would sit up in my bed for hours unable to sleep. I would just think about things all night. I would think about dogs with no homes and no food. I would think about what things might be like when I got older. I thought about dying and how scary it was. Sometimes I would cry. I don't even remember why. My mom told me that she came in to my room one night when I was very young because I was crying. She told me that I told her that I saw Jesus standing at the foot of my bed. I used to get out of my bed in the middle of the night and walk around the house or go in my closet and look for something to play with. I would pull all of my stuffed animals out of the closet and tuck them all into my bed because I couldn't sleep thinking about them all cold and lonely in the closet. I once got up and read a whole book by a night light because I couldn't get myself to fall asleep. Sometimes I would get an idea for some kind of project and I would think about it until I just had to get up and work on it. When I got a little older I started to think about people and friends. Then I started to think about homework and tests. I used to think about what would happen if no one wanted to go to the prom with me. I started to think about graduating and never seeing my friends again. I started thinking about college and how I had no idea what I was ever going to do. Some days I feel like I have been awake my whole life. Sometimes I have to take pills just to get any sleep at all. Sometimes (like now) the pills don't work. I just think about things. Sometimes sad and sometimes happy. I feel like my lack of sleep would make me so unhealthy but I never get sick. Maybe I am a super human or something... Maybe something is internally wrong with me... maybe I am just some sort of a weirdo. A lot of times I just don't feel like going to sleep. Sometimes going into my cold, dark room feels so lonely. Especially on Sunday nights and I am not quite sure why. Sometimes I feel like going to sleep just makes me feel alone. Sometimes I hate having good dreams because waking up is so painful. Maybe sometimes I just don't want to miss something that I might miss while I am asleep. A lot of times I just can't do it as much as I really want to.

The bare necessities of life will come to you

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
That's why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life

And don't spend your time lookin' around
For something you want that can't be found
When you find out you can live without it
And go along not thinkin' about it
I'll tell you something true

The bare necessities of life will come to you

Some of my most Favorite stuff

Color: Green

Fruit: Apples (especially yellow)

Vegetable: Zucchini... also carrots.... and of COURSE the Potato!

Smells: Cut grass, bonfire, the airport, nice colognes, onions and butter on the stove.

Ice Cream: Maple nut, chocolate chip or anything with tracks

Snacks: Puffcorn (2 bags for $3 at Kwik Trip!), Dark chocolate with Sea salt, string cheese, Applesauce, frosted animal cookies, fruit snacks

Pudding: Pistachio
Yogurt: Apple Turnover
Animals: Dogs and Elephants

Dranks: Smirnoff Ice Wild Grape and Mike's Hard Spiced Apples

Song: Caught in the Rain by Revis

-Song for Dancing: Everybody Dance Now, Forever by Chris Brown and Yeah! by Usher

-Song for Walking: Singing in My Sleep by Semisonic

-Song for Running: Animals by Nickelback

-Song for Slow Dancing: Hero by Enrique and When You Say You Love Me by Josh Groben

-Song for Inspiration: Get Up by Mary Mary

-Song for Thinking: We Live by Superchic(k)

-Song for Driving: Girl on Fire by Rob Zombie

-Song for Smiling- Anything by Owl City

-Song for Rubik's Cube Solving: The Kids Are Alright by The Offspring

-Song for Remembering: I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing by Aerosmith

Perfumes: Lucky #6 and Chanel Mademoiselle

Colognes: Nautica Blue or even just Axe Pheonix

Pizza: Sausage and Mushrooms

Candies: Almond Joys, Kit Kats and Tootsie Roll Fruit Flavors

Show: Ace of Cakes

YouTube: Anything by Berats and Beretta

Flowers: Forget Me Nots and Gerbera Daisies

Other Things:

-Squeezing

-Pillows and Blankets and all things that make a bed cozy and warm

-Unexpected Texts

-Kite Flying

-Puzzles

-Playing with dogs

-Making soup

-Being carried

-Walks

-Painting

-Getting to know someone on a personal level

-The zoo

-Pasta of all shapes

-Writing and getting letters

-Lava Lamps

-Day naps

-Making Wishes

-Goodnight kisses

-Good dreams

Forget Me Not

I took my little bag of seeds and split it into 2 identical pots with the same bag of potting soil and give each one the exact same amount of water and sun and the seeds in one pot look so much different from the other. I wonder if one pot got better seeds than the other one. The weird thing is that the flower buds are on the plant that has smaller leaves. I am not sure what the leaves of Forget Me Nots are supposed to look like so I am not sure which one looks better. I just wish that the flowers would come out, even just for a day. Seeing some Forget Me Nots come out would just make me so happy. It would just give me some sort of sign that everything will turn out great again. They just make me feel like I am not forgotten and left behind. Sometimes things just don't go the way that I would have planned. I try to be happy and stay positive about things, but sometimes it slips. It is so hard to be positive and confident all the time. It is so easy to fall back into a state where you want to hate everything and never get out of bed. Sometimes you just feel like you need more than telling yourself that everything will be ok. You just want someone to come to you and hug you and tell you that everything will turn out just fine. Sometimes you just want to know some answers so you know what to do. Sometimes I can just go along with everything and it doesn't even matter what happens, but that is when I am happy where I am. When I don't like where I am, I just want to know. I just want some piece of information that will help me out. I want one little glimmer of hope to tell me that no matter what I do, I am going to be happy again.

What a great day!

I don't know what it is about this day but it is great! It just feels so good today! The weather is undoubtedly pretty horrible but who even cares :) I just woke up feeling happy. Got on the elliptical machine and just kept feeling happy!

This dog's name is Oliver and he is super adorable :) Today I got to feed him and walk him and play with him. He was just so happy! He bounced up and down and licked my face and spun in circles. Oliver is from the humane society because no one wanted him but he is still so happy just to be loved! A dog will love in the purest form. A dog will never tell a lie and always just wants to make you happy. Oliver is such a positive little dog. Just look at that face! You can't help but smile and feel happy when you see a face like that :)

Fear of Life

You know, I can't remember the last thing I did that someone didn't think was wrong. My whole life I never really wanted to tell anyone what I really wanted because I knew that someone I told would think that I was stupid for it. I never had any real goals or dreams and if I had even the tiniest little thought, I really never shared it with anyone.
Sometimes you feel like you are fearless. You think that nothing scares you. Not bugs or snakes or small spaces. I got over my fear of death, but then I think I started my fear of life. In kindergarten, I was terrified to speak to my teacher for no reason at all. I was afraid of getting on the wrong bus and not being able to get home from school. In 6th grade I was so afraid of going to junior high. In junior high I was afraid of going to high school. Every year I wanted to stay right where I was instead of moving on. Every year I forgot that the place that I was, was the place that I was afraid of the year before.
In high school I was afraid that no one would ever want to go to the prom with me and that even more than being embarrassed of no one wanting to go with me and not being able to go, that I would have to think about no one in the whole school wanting to go with me, and how much that would hurt.
In high school I never wanted to even think about college. I wanted to stay young and I didn't want to have to deal with it. Everyone else seemed to know what they wanted to do and the thought of college was so exciting to them. It was never exciting to me. I always thought that going away to school, growing up, leaving all my friends and my house, paying for things with money that I didn't have, would be horrible. I went away to school after picking a major at the last minute and I honestly didn't like it very much at all. Even though I had friends, I still seemed to feel like I had no one. My brother was the only person to ever come and visit me and I hated it when he left the one time that he visited me.
After that year was over, I thought for sure that I would be going back for 3 more years but things changed. I had new opportunities and I had to weigh my options. I was supposed to be a CA at the school that I went to, which I signed up for because the job comes with a free room and a free meal plan. I needed all the help that I could get because I really didn't have any money. But now I had the opportunity to go to school for free, but live at home and leave all of the friends that I had made. I had to think about it long and hard, and when it came down to it, I had to make the smarter choice. I knew that I could keep up with my friends as much as I could and that if any of them were true friends, they would do the same for me.
While I went to school, even for free I knew it was the wrong choice for me. I wasn't happy and this time I knew that it wasn't the money that was making me unhappy because I wasn't paying any. I knew that I had made the wrong choice in the program I was in and that I had to change it. After I quit my job because I was under so much stress, I suddenly had a lot of time to spend with myself. I needed to just relax and think about what I really wanted. I couldn't really tell anyone what I wanted because I knew that someone would think I was being stupid. I decided that I was going to just write out everything that I wanted without lying to myself so I wrote everything down. It turned out that there were a lot of things that I wanted that I wasn't doing. I wrote out a rough plan that I thought would be ideal and make me the most happy and tried to figure out how I could tackle just the first step. I stopped trying to figure out every little piece of the puzzle all in one sitting and just looked at the very first step.

Sure enough, I felt so much happier just knowing that I could be in control again. For the first time, I felt like I had a plan. Sometimes you just need to write everything out in tiny little steps and work on them one by one. On the way, if you need to scribble out a step, there won't be a big gap in your plan because the steps are so small. As long as you are happy about your progress, it doesn't matter how long it takes.