Alright, that's it.

I had to post this picture. I forgot I'd taken it when we went to Maine.

SO....

It's been too long.

I feel like I've been up to my forehead in stuff to get done, and now that my speech is over, I'm finding myself with all this free time--well, not exactly, since I have a paper to write for Monday and a lot of reading to do (as always), but I believe this may be a psychological sense of "free time". Mainly because I make mountains out of molehills (I'm a champion...sometime I'll post a picture of the trophy...) and now that I have nothing insanely huge to worry about, I feel weird. And free.

So I'm finally blogging again.

I'm going to re-tell a story that I told in one of my personal blogs, because I think it's worthy of another post. Last Sunday, as I was worrying about my speech and my mother intervening and making me freak out, Simon literally sat me down on a bench to try and talk everything out. (He's so patient with me...I'm lucky to have him) He started with his usual flurry of questions to get me to figure out what exactly is bothering me and why I'm making such a huge deal of it to myself, and then his phone vibrated. We both felt it because it was in a pocket of his pants, grazing against my leg. He answered--it was our buddy Tim. He paused, turned around, turned his gaze slightly skyward, and hung up the phone.

"We're going to go see Tim."
"Where is he?"
"Over there."

Tim was reading Descartes in a tree because it was so warm outside. We approached the tree, and I dropped my backpack near the trunk, swinging myself up without another word. My weekend hadn't gone very well up until that point (I've been having some internal issues with my current circle of friends--I'll spare the details), so a tree-climb was just what I needed. Simon quickly followed, also ecstatic to join Tim in the tree, because he hadn't climbed a tree in years.

All three of us found comfortable sitting positions in this tree, and later, two more people briefly joined us and found even more comfortable sitting positions. Five people seated comfortably in one tree? It was amazing. After the other two left, Simon, Tim and I began taunting the people we knew as they passed--but we also taunted the people we didn't know.

Tim: "Oh look, he's shy. He just did the quick-glance-up-and-then-glance-away-so-they-won't-see-me look."

Simon: "Can I throw your book at him? Please?"

Me: (whisper) "I CAN SEE DOWN HER SHIRT!..."

Soon we began to spot more girls who were scantily clad (we had a discussion about how the warm weather brings a lot of them out), and then Simon interrupted with a very blatant statement of "Now THERE'S a shirt you can see down." Because of how blatant it was, the girl actually looked up and shot us all an angry glare. What made the entire situation even funnier was Simon's reply: "You shouldn't be wearing shirts that people in trees can see down if you're going to get mad about it."

Truly a sentiment we should all live by. ;-)

(Side note: I used to care if people could see down my shirt--not people in trees, specifically. I'm still working through self-esteem issues...but not so much anymore. I thought about that whole situation a lot as I went to sleep that night, and I came to the conclusion that if I were wearing a shirt that someone in a tree could see down, I wouldn't get angry about it. I'd laugh and wave at that someone in a tree. I considered this to be a huge advancement in my own process of identity formation. I am happy.) :-D

`A finally relaxed Miranda

P.S. I have a single in Holy Cross next year. Rock. On. :-P