Long Overdue.

I must say, I'm pretty ashamed of my blogging these days. It's been weeks hasn't it? Sheesh.. What has gotten into me?

I will blame it on the ending of summer, that's my alibi and I'm sticking to it, haha. But really, I have been keeping myself quite busy. Rarely do I sleep in my own bed, solitude is becoming an occasion. Living it up is my ambition, and I've been refusing to let the remaining days of freedom just pass me by. During my absence I have gone a few hours away to Lake Champlain. Julie and her family brought me and we stayed with her cousins in the overhead story of their garage. It was a wonderful time :). When I'm with that group, I feel like a part of their family. I'm not just the awkward tag-a-long. I even got along great with the other 'non family', Will's friend Dustin, and his girlfriend Kelly. Us "kids" hung out talking about things, especially late in the evenings. Already we can tell that we're the next generation of "Sapperknackers", which I mentioned in my Fourth of July post, all of the ex and present hippies, who have kept close contact as the years pass them by. I know that several years from now, I'll be coming to their get togethers, and maybe hosting them, feeling more at home every time. It's nice being able to just talk with people about intelligent things. We decided that what we need to do is purchase our own island, away from the rest of the world, and just live on our own accord. I wish that was possible. Although I would miss blogging :(, that's the only downside, haha. But we discussed government conspiracies, the concept of marriage, religion, drugs, life, ect. We had some great conversations.

When we weren't being all philosophical, we played wii sports, hahaha, and pool in their basement. Julie's ferret waddled around, taking in the new enviornment. Another nice thing about the trip was the weather. It was actually warm enough to go swimming in the lake :). We swam out to their anchored , square dock. I would like living on a lake. So overall, I loved the visit, and now that I can drive, hopefully we can go up there again in the near future.

Also, another exciting outing was boating back at home with a teacher and her family. Nice people :). We walked around town, devoured some pizza, and got ourselves a little sun. On the boat Julie and I noticed that fetus cloud.. atleast we thought it oddly resembled a little baby. Another day was spent swimming at a different lake, but alas, no photographic evidence is available. Basically, we've gone lake-hopping this summer :).

One day we actually set out on a hike. That endeavor was shortlived, because it was a scorcher, and none of us ever go hiking. I felt like I could've continued onward, just because I've gotten used to long walks with my dog, but it was probably best we only went so far the first time. Next time though, we'll make some distance.

Julie at the end of the bridge we crossed the highway on :).

August is a month of birthdays for our family. Both my grandma and dad share ones only a day apart from eachother. Which is weird to think about, because my own mother gave birth to me a day after her fourthieth birthday. Huh. But anyways, we had little celebrations for each, including presents and cake. We're a simple family, it's nice. For my dad I bought two shirts and drew a card, and for my grandma I baked a cake, bought a card, and got her the latest edition to Jon Katz series she enjoys. He's a local author that writes about his dogs and his life on the farm. I think it was called "A Dog's Soul", or something of the like. I'll have to check his books out sometime.

Tom is finally nearing the completion of my bookcase :). It was my birthday present, but he's been building it in their greenhouse, so it's a little overwhelming trying to work on it in the summer heat, so I've cut him some slack. I came over the other day to watch him/help construct it, and I'm pretty impressed. Right now it's at the point where all the wood is cut and ready, complete with knotches for the shelves to slide into. All it needs is to be screwed/glued together, and it'll be good to go. Depending on how it looks, we might put a protective coat over it, but it's nice wood, so I don't think an actual paintjob will be necessary. I'm thinking of painting a mural as its backing, since it lacks one currently.. but I don't have much faith in my artistic skill. I was thinking of cutting a piece of plywood to the proper proportions, then painting a purplish sky, and orange sunset, a few dark, bare trees, and maybe some ravens randomly swooping. It looks fantastic in my head, but getting it to resemble any of the above is the challenge at hand. I mean it doesn't have to be perfection, seeing as alot of it will be obscured by my literature, but it'd still be nice to have a cool backing.

Just a walk in the park.

So fastforwarding to the present, I spent most of today with Jenna and Shayla. We harassed Jenna at work until she was released, then Shayla bought me Starbucks, which I swear I will repay her for, and we ate dinner at Panera's. It was nice sitting and talking with them, I hadn't seen either of them in quite awhile, so we had some catching up to do. Jenna had to get going afterwards, but I drove Shayla and myself to the local park to kill some time. And that we did, via photoshoot :P.


My failed attempt to be a tree :P, and the beautiful Shayla.

^Notice the creeper baby :P, I uploaded this one specifically for Natalie, hahaha.


So yes, I've been keeping myself busy, haha. Summer days are dwindling down and it's frightening. Class is already in session for alot of you. Yikes. My motto these days is just "Live it up", because I don't want to spend the few days remaining sitting around waiting for the boredom of school to fall upon me, haha. Okay, maybe I'm a bit dramatic. School isn't that bad. Senior year is definitely something worth looking forward to. Still, I can't help but to wish that this blissful season lingered a little bit longer.

Oh, and I decided to join soccer. I was pretty certain I'd end up doing it, and here I am, about to start the second week of practice tomorrow. It was rough getting myself accustomed to all of the running and stuff at first. I was definitely not in the prime physical shape I should have been, haha. But I think it will be a good season. I like just about, if not everyone on the team. Everyone pushes themselves, and encourages eachother. I have good feelings about it. Although, tomorrow might be less than a breeze, it's 1:05 and my practice begins at 7:30, haha. Oh man. I needed to update this though, I loathed how behind I was getting. Many things have been circling in my mind these days, I wish I had the time and ambition to write them all out. Eventually, haha. Just for now I needed to update you all on my little adventures, and prove that I'm in fact, still alive, and not in some vegetable state either. I'll save the philosophy for later.

Have a wonderful week everyone, I'll try my best to catch up with your posts.

Sincerely,

livia

PS. Natalie and Christina, I have not forgotten your prizes. Just give me time :).