If I Could Just See You

… everything would be alright.

This is a great song by Lifehouse:

I find myself thinking … really thinking … about my mom less and less and the months pass by. Before I know it a year and a half will have gone by since the wretched phone call at 2:30 in the morning. I tend to bring her up nonchalantly in conversation on occasion, but I rarely spend much time making sure I don’t forget her anymore. It’s no less strange to wake up and her not be there today than it was when it happened. I guess it’s good that it’s not completely beating me up on the inside these days, although part of me wish it was (masochism?). I haven’t talked to my sister in months … I haven’t seen her since we went to see my mom’s grave on Mother’s Day. I wish I could say the same for my dad, but he just won’t accept the fact that I want nothing to do with his sorry self. He makes it easier to hate him as each day goes on. And as “un-Christian” I know it is, I like hating him. I like feeling like he’s epitome of what a father should not be and that he will have is own special level of hell to answer for all the pain and suffering he’s caused and continues to cause for all those around him.

Meh.

Finished setting up the server (for Guy) at Vanderbilt. Oh how I do not miss Pentium 3’s. Fedora installed pretty nicely on it … although I’m still partial to a Debian based Linux but there was some retarded backup program that Vandy required to be on there that they only provide in a rpm package, so everyone (but myself) thought Fedora was the only way to go … sigh. I still think rsync setup the right way would have been better, faster, and easier. But no one asked me, huh? (even though they really should have)

I’m really happy Apple released the 2.0.1 iPhone update. Before, I could be typing (or trying to type) on the keyboard and it would have like a 3 or more second delay. That wouldn’t be such a pain if it were real keyboard and you knew you were hitting the right keys. When you have to pretty much rely on the predictive spelling feature, having to wait for it to catch up and see the sentence you just wrote that is so illegible you want to shoot the person sitting next to you … yeah. It seems a little peppier all around now, although 1.1.4 (jailbroken at that) was a lot nicer in many ways minus a couple of the legitimate apps that are out now.

I’m considering redesigning the layout for TheSpiffyLife, but I pretty much loathe doing designs. I don’t mind the programming aspect of websites, but I really don’t have the creative touch that some people do. I’d be fine without any styles as long as it worked (I doubt the rest of the world feels the same :/ lol).

Looking forward to going to California for a week. I just hope I don’t cook like a french fry the first day :’( … sunburns are a real pain (hah) and I seem predisposed to becoming as red as a beet. Yay plane ride!

Not looking forward to the Fall Semester,
-josh

“Sweet People”

So I just found this amongst a heap of papers sitting on my kitchen counter. I must have been like 10 when I did this … I pray I wasn’t any older than that… lol …

Sometimes Hello’s and Good-Bye’s aren’t easy
Even so far this poem is pretty cheesy
I love my mom more than anything in the state
And this is not up for debate!

She is the main one in my life
And I don’t know what is the meaning of strife
She is a computer wizard
And I’m not in a blizzard
When she’s sick I feel as though I want to cry
And sometimes I kill myself just as I try
I don’t because it would hurt her even more
So if I want to cry I will go strait through the door!

Last but not least,
She’s as careful with me as you have to be with yeast
And another thing I wish I could copy her to a 3.5 floppy disk
So I can copy all her love with out the risk of missing her love!

I wish that was less lame and made more sense than it did. I got a little laugh out of reading and trying to figure out what in the world possessed me to not only write this, but type it and keep it for 10 years …

Well, I guess it’s good that I can laugh at myself … a lot.

(now you can too … and probably will )

Back to studying

Mother’s Day

So today was the everso popular Mother’s Day. A day meant to be grateful and cherish everything our mothers have done for us throughout the years. My sister and I decided to go to New Tazewell, TN to my grandma’s house (where my mom is buried) yesterday and come back today. I hadn’t been back there since the funeral, so I hadn’t even seen her grave yet. I had almost been avoiding it purposely for some time now. We went to church this morning (the graveyard is connected to the church) and saw the grave before we went in. It was really weird. As I looked down my mind just took me to the funeral when her coffin was being lowered into the ground. That’s all I could see. I lived most of today in my head, with my eyes wide open experiencing the past as if it were happening right then. We then go inside and sit down, and about five minutes after I sit down I realize that I’m sitting in the exact same spot I was during the funeral service. Everytime I look up, for a split second part of me sees her coffin sitting right where the alter is. If I wasn’t already close enough as it was this just got me crying like a baby. My grandma hadn’t even thought about it until it was obviously too late. I was afraid we’d have to leave but I managed to pull myself together and withstand a two hour service without going insane.

It was a hard, weird, awkward, out-of-body experience kind of day. Plus a three and a half hour drive home by myself left a lot of time for reflection and crying. I guess it was needed … I guess in the grand scheme of things it was time that I did it. Doesn’t make it any easier or more profound.

To keep my mind off it I took a few pictures while I was driving home. My grandma lives in the mountains … it takes about an hour to get back to the paved road… good times.

Breathing

Song of the day is “Work” by Jars of Clay (surprise surprise!)

yes, i realize he resembles Snape in this video, it is a bit odd

I have no fear of drowning
It’s the breathing that’s taking all this work.

Sometimes life really does feel that way (for me at least). There have been times when it seems like it’s harder to get out of bed and live the day than it would to …. well, the best way to phrase this is … not. I admit, I was a huge rut there for the longest time. There are moments (no longer days) where I feel that way. It of course, goes further than just getting out of bed, but that’s the least revealing metaphor I can come up with right now.

Do you know what I mean when I say, “I don’t want to be alone”?

There are many different ways a person can “feel alone.” Being alone spiritually, not being around your friends as much, being really distant with (nearly all) of your family, and not having that special person around to make you feel so very good inside. In some form, I’ve gone through (or still am) all of those to some degree. Lately it seems things are getting better for various reasons. Or maybe my outlook has just changed a little. For some reason the 1 year “anniversary” of my mom passing didn’t really hit me as hard as I had expected, but in some ways it seems like either she, God, or just myself in some way or another lifted a weight of my shoulders and allowed me to “move on” more so than I’d ever been able to for that entire year. It’s been nearly a month since that day, but looking back I can tell. She still comes into my mind at least every day, which is (really) good to me. But I’m no longer dwelling on it as much as I used to, at least in a bad way. Other people have come (or reappeared) into my life, helping me find happiness and bliss once again. In many ways I have to see all of this happening as a (really delayed…) answer to countless prayers. A lot of things, feelings, events, etc that have happened in the past month couldn’t have been put together by shear chance or circumstance. At least I sincerely doubt it could. Either way doesn’t change the present from being what it is; grand.