My Mama Bear

My mom does this thing sometime every year where she will get me a stuffed animal of some sorts. Sometimes it's on my birthday, sometimes it's just on her way back from a teacher conference, but once a year I will come home to a stuffed puppy or a pretty Hedwig duplicate.

Today was a rough day. I was faced with a decision that was incredibly difficult for me and I was put in a position where I possibly had to let my friends down and give up something I really wanted for a prior commitment.

In a moment of complete hysterics, I called my mom sobbing. She listened as I choked out my dilemma and provided me with not just one solution, but several in which she was completely calm and willing to help.

Mom and daughters fight. It definitely is no different in my household.

However, my mom is the strongest, smartest, woman I know and there is no one else in this world I would trust with a crisis than her.

So as I cuddle the little brown puppy from the Seattle Airport and plan my saved SoCal trip I revel in how thankful I am for my Mama. <3

Valentine's Day Cynics

The internet is a place of memes and gifs and gafs and "awww"'s. Social media, in particular, is a place where people have no shame in publishing their opinions about, well, anything.

Valentine's day is tomorrow and I have seen everything from Claire the Disneyland Skeptic memes to videos of boys giving their girls candy and flowers and elephants and the world. I notice people say that they "don't care about Valentine's Day" it's dumb.

Let's be honest, we all care.

Maybe we aren't drowning our loneliness in The Notebook and a pint of Ben and Jerry's, but we are all thinking, even in a fleeting moment as that boy down the hall brings in his 17th rose for his girlfriend, that it would be kind of nice if we had something, even the smallest of things to look forward too on this much too pink and red day.

It's nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn't make you pathetic. Valentine's Day is a thing, and at the end of the day it's a pretty damn cute thing, even in all of its schmultsiness.

So even if you just go and grab a Kit Kat for that boy or girl across the hall, or wave and smile at someone who deserves it, go for it because everyone wants to be wanted; Valentine's Day or not.

The talent of the internet people never fails to astound me.

Finding Fortitude

There is a time when you want to call upon fortitude, you want it to be at your disposal, you want to be able to grasp it, to seize it, to blanket it around you. I have always found my perseverance in writing and in pictures and music and art. Here, I hope you can find your fortitude too.