books and changes

Getting back to home felt good the first day, but now it's just back to the same old routine. I've got my collection of books that travels with me from room to room, and it's raining outside. Went shopping at the mall with my mom and sister, well actually went shopping all over the place with them today. First we went to Wits End which on the outside looks like a completely unassuming gift shop. When you enter the place though, it's like mom mania. There were well over one hundred moms there carousing around with their teen/ twenty-year old daughters or younger, still-being-appeased-moms dragging their young husbands around looking at expensive Pandora bracelet jewelry. Of course my mom likes to fit herself into both of these categories so we first went into the Vera Bradley madness and listened to one mom ask her daughter if she wanted basically one of everything in the whole selection... yea, and this Vera Bradley section is big enough to be a store in itself. Then it was on to the jewelry area with women whose faces were planted onto the glass. This section, too, is quite spacious and my mom had her good half hour of deliberation at the glass counters. I have to admit I walked away with a V.B. eye glasses case, but it's something that I can say is 'needed' cuz mine is falling apart. Mom got two Pandora charms and two wallets from V.B.'s husband's collection.

But enough about the shopping... it was interesting to me yesterday when I walked by my mom and said just off-hand how unexcited I am to go back to school. Normally she'd yell at me or tell me to stop saying things like 'that' abot not wanting to go back, but this time she just said 'well maybe you need to decide what you really want to do'. As if that's not mixed signals... when I told her I was signed up for classes in a new major she sort of flipped out. I guess I need to just go in this semester and see if I can do it again... see if I don't die from all the all-nighters, stress, embarassment, sadness, loneliness. I guess it's good Marissa is finally back for DD cuz I'm not sure I could make it through this class on my own. I'm really happy to be moving into the Yellow House, too. I'll be a short walk away from campus which means no driving on no sleep, and no risk of driving into other cars when it's super snowy out. I'm also not looking forward to having to wake James up everyday to come to Studio, but I guess for now I can only hope for the best. I know he'll be a good help with all of the computer work.

I still can't believe school is only a week away, or how much my mind has changed through the summer. This always happen. I begin every summer completely disillusioned and hurt from architecture and exit every vacation ready to go back and kill myself over it again... is this an addiciton? I hope I can get a job, too, maybe it'll force me to plant my mind in a real-world setting, even though I love Ta'ing it still never got me out of RPI, not even out of architecture.

One really positive thing about shopping today - that the show I'm watching on tv is reminding me of - was walking through the Pottery Barn with my mom. I can't wait to get my own place and furnish it and have my own plates and corner desk. I will most definitely be putting bookshelves throughout all my hallways and still have a library full of books, as well.  It felt so strange to walk through the place with her though, feeling like I'm finally getting to be old that I can walk through a furniture place with her and comment about the things I like and she's there telling me about what I could 'get for my place', one day in the future, of course. I wonder where I'll end up, and what I'll be doing.

- c

p.s. I also wanted to include my current reading list seeing as I haven't provided a book update lately. So here they are:

I couldn't find an image of the last book I've got in the traveling collection right now, but it's called 'The Pleasure of Archaeology' by Karl E. Meyer - it's looking like a real good read.

- c