Wow…I’m actually doing it: Jumping.

So it is finally official…

I have bought the ticket and I am making Scotland my new home.

This is how I feel.


Imagine a parachutist right about to jump out of a plane. The only thing that he/she is hoping is that the bag on their back is full of a parachute and that it isn’t accidentally a rock sack. There is also a chance that the parachute could deploy well and then rip. Or that there might be a snag in the bag that might make it hard for the parachute to deploy…hopefully not too late so the parachutist doesn’t plunge to their death.

The Parachutist has very little control over what will happen after they jump, but they have tried to train and lay down as many precautions as possible to make their first jump enjoyable and anxiety free. They set rules up and they memorized the procedure on how to pull their parachute cord.

Yet they are still not sure how things will turn out.

Yet There is hope…

The parachutist isn’t alone on their decent…they have an instructor to guide them on the way down. Their instructor too holds a parachute and in case of an emergency their instructor has the tools to save or rescue the falling parachutist. The Instructor has done all they could to reassure the first time jumper that everything will be okay and that the jump through landing will go smoothly.

But the parachutist is afraid anyway because what if the bag that they pull does end up being a rock sack…and what if the instructors emergency parachute too doesn’t deploy. Then they both fall to their deaths. And if the instructor is able to get themselves floating towards land…and they must rescue their student, what if the extra weigh brings the instructors chute down too fast and becomes a dead weight that is dangerous rather then a good weight…has and should the instructor be planning for the worse? If something goes wrong two people fall to their deaths.

What if everything goes right? The woman jumps the parachute deploys and the instructor has to do no saving. What happens when they get on the ground? Once you’ve become someone whose skydived you can never not be someone whose skydived.

It is rather hard to return to the plane again once you’ve jump or landed. The plane must continue because it has other places to go and things to do before it runs out of gas.

Think about it…there is so much to be left unanswered.

This as you might know already is a metaphor to my decision to move to Scotland.

I am the parachutist

Craig is the instructor

The plane represents Life back here in Minnesota and life in general

and where I am landing is in a little part of the United Kingdom called Edinburgh Scotland.

My landing in Edinburgh is meant to be perminate and I feel that my making this decision is based on a leap of faith I am willing to commit to because I hear that the thrill is worth the problems and emotional rollercoaster you put yourself through before it…because everyone knows that a person can get pretty stressed out when they are making a decision that could change the course of the rest of their lives.

Craig as my instructor has been trying to tell me that if I were to have troubles that he’d always have my back. But I’m afraid that if something goes wrong while I’m moving that I’ll become a burden to him that is too much for him to handle. I don’t want to be a burden to anyone especially not Craig.

If I become a burden to Craig it may ruin our relationship…but so could my not leaping. I could simply remain on my plane of life here in Minnesota and watch Craig my instructor leapt and have my opportunity of joining him just pass me by forever…because once the cockpit door is shut the window of opportunity is closed for life change.

Change is what I’m afraid of because it is a crazy commitment to  move to another country…and I have no clue what will happen to me when I land in Scotland. All I can hope to do is plan ahead for as much as I can before I go…but, even then I feel that there are always so many ends that could be left open.

Where are Craig and I going with our relationship if I move there?

I can imagine to a commitment that is deeper than just boyfriend and girlfriend…but I can also see us “coexisting” for the first real time now (actually dating like traditional couples.) We won’t be living together right away that’s for sure.

I know that if I was skydiving that I’d take the opportunity and jump because I only would have one chance…that’s why I bought a plane ticket to Scotland tonight for me to leave on April 28th 2010.

gosh I hope I’m making the right decision.

Is it fine for me to be a little nervous, stressed and afraid?

Graveyard Shift

I decided to sneak into the Library once again right before I’ll have to head over to target for the graveyard shift.

I just started the shift and doing it means that from now on I’m going to be awake all night for the next few months. I get paid more for doing the overnight and I for sure need that boost when it comes to money right now. I owe a ton of people that I’d like to pay back and I have a lot of plans that I’d like to accomplish over the next few months…including a move.

So far I’ve been having a great time doing the overnight shift. Last night was my first night and It didn’t hit me that I’d been awake since 8am Monday morning till about 4am on Tuesday Morning. I didn’t actually get to sleep till about 7:56am meaning that I was awake 24 hours straight.

Today I was a lot wiser and I planned ahead and I actually got sleep, made food for lunch and now I’m at the Library till about 9:40 when I catch the bus to start the graveyard shift again.

I feel that my motivation currently for work so hard and such sucky hours has most definitely been my wanting funds for my planned trip to Scotland and my wanting to pay people back I owe.

Outside of work I feel that I’ve become like an old lady, watching television on occasion, working out, and reading in my spare time.

I have begun to read the Bible because I want to grow spiritually because i know I’m going to have some struggles to face in a few months when I move, so far so good I’ve learned a lot about how God reacts to humans that I didn’t know before and I have a lot of questions that I’d like answered by someone wiser than me one of these days.

On a strange side note: for some reason since I woke up today i’ve been feeling rather sick and I’ve wanted to go somewhere and puke.

I know tmi and gross but there might be something wrong with my stomach currently and I might be sick…hopefully not.

Sad.

I feel that one of the hardest things for a person to deal with is death. We all have to come to a point in our lives where we accept that the time we have here doesn’t last forever…but when I hear about murders committed I feel that their has been a great light in the world that has been snuffed out like a candle too soon to really light the dim areas.

My little brother Eric is mourning the death of his friend Walter Lee Dolley. Walter was shot the other day randomly as he walked home from the store. I went to the same High School as Walter and I’d seen him around but I’d never really known him. I had no clue that my brother had been friends with him until I began to see the pain and torment that this death has put him through. I think this is my little brother Eric’s first experience with death and I wish I could make it his last. It hurts to see my little brother who acts so tough and independent weeping at the sight of a picture of the young man.

I believe that heaven is a place that welcomes all.

So, Walter Lee Dolley may you rest in the peace and warmth of God’s embrace forever.

Walter Lee Dolley

Walter Lee Dolley

Getting Behind the Wheel Again

Have you Ever had an experience so LIBERATING you could Scream?!Green Jetta

Years and Years ago I took drivers education when I was still in high school and right before I turned 16. When it came time for me to take my permit test I failed it the first time…why? Because half the questions on there are trick ones where you just have to “know”. So I left that first day and I decided that I’d try again another day that I had free and had more time to study and review.

That second time came a couple weeks later when I was hanging out with my friend Jimmy and we found ourselves at the Department of Motor Vehicles. That second time because of lack of review I failed the test, at the time the people who ran the tests informed me that after two tries and two fails I would be required to pay to take the test from then on. It wasn’t hard to pass the test…answer 40 simple questions with options a through D or E, The questions were read out loud and the screens were easily touch screened. The questions for the test were crooked though…extremely crooked. After that second attempt I felt like a major failure, how could I the girl who got 100% on all my drivers education tests fail the permit test twice?! I gave up on the thing all together…if I was failing it when I thought I knew everything then I’d be failing it when I didn’t know anything.

I found myself behind the wheel of my mothers vehicle over the next few months over and over again though. My mother wanted to give me a taste of what life would be like as a driver and I felt that it was the worst decision she could have ever made. No one wants to be the odd one out in High School being one of the only people with a truck who doesn’t drive it to school but no one wants to be a failure either. The words of the test narrator echoed constantly in my head when I thought of the driving test “You have failed this test”. When I got my truck taken away from me because my mother made me an ultimatum of completing the drivers permit test or losing my truck I completely gave up hope of learning to drive completely. I became used to getting rides and using public transportation. I would bum rides from classmates and teachers and I felt very little when it came to shame about my non driving ways. I was too busy to drive and I had no time for a job to pay for the gas anyway. I would make my mother’s insurance rates go through the roof, they’d said so in home economics class way back in seventh grade. I would constantly make up one excuse after the other.

When I graduated High school I told myself that I would learn to drive before I got to college. During the summer between my Senior and First Year at University not only did I take up a position at a summer camp that was miles away from home and traffic and didn’t require a car, but I also learned that during the first year at Hamline Freshmen weren’t able to get parking spots if they did have a car because they were reserved for the faculty and upperclassmen. so I concluded that I’d wait out another year to get behind the wheel. I learned the Saint Paul bus systems and even though I would have to plan out more time to make trips to new places I was able to get around just fine without a car. It was this last summer when my lack of independence that came from not driving really hit me. I’m an adult and when I wanted to go out with people my own age and in a different city I was expected to drive to the location that I wanted to go. When I was looking for a job I was expected to be able to DRIVE to work everyday and arrive at my destination on time. When I was moving to a suburb that was far away from Minneapolis I realized that a car or the ability to drive would make it a lot easier for me to get back home so I wouldn’t have to wait for a bus that only came once and hour on the hour. Driving and the need for it became one of the only things That was hindering me in doing what I wanted to do.

It really hit home when I discovered that all the people I used to hangout in High School with were hanging out together every weekend. When I asked why I wasn’t invited to the outings I was told that it was because everyone knew I didn’t drive and no one wanted to pick my sorry ass up or have to spend the time dropping me off. (what great friends I have right?) It really hit me hard when the only friends who wanted to see me were the ones who had cars to drive over and visit me. It hit hard when I sat in the passenger seat of one of the people I took drivers education with and he told me stories of all the fun he’d had with his parents car when he’d first began driving…reckless and yet great life lessons learned.

So I needed to do something about this non driving problem. I used to blame my lack of interest in driving on a traumatizing experience I’d had as a child when my father had be driving around a parking lot during the winter. We’d been waiting for one of my siblings to get done with his or her piano lesson so we could go home it was snowing and I’d been sitting on my dad’s lap trying to reach the gas and the brake I remember he’d asked me if I wanted to park. Of Course I did and when I had the car perfectly lined up against a snow bank and I was going to press the final brake to stop the car after coasting into the perfect spot…I hit the gas instead and the van launched itself into the snow bank to get stuck…stuck in the snowbank in the middle of the snow which was starting to become a blizzard. I remember my father taking me off his lap and trying to work the car free from the bank. Then he tried digging it out and when that didn’t work he finally realized that with the amount of gas we’d wasted trying to get the car out that we’d have to get out of the car and find somewhere else to keep warm because the car’s energy wouldn’t last for long. I remember getting out of the car and walking to a community center that was a mile or so down the road. I remember everything along the way being closed and my father telling me that I’d done something terrible and that I’d never be able to drive like that with him again.

He never let me drive like that on his lap again and that story became his example of everything that could be done wrong when a child doesn’t listen to their parents when he was trying to teach my younger siblings a lesson. He never let it down and I still haven’t forgotten that moment till now. “We don’t want to repeat that snow bank accident” he would say.

I used that as an excuse for why I didn’t want to learn…I was terrible and I’d only screw it up!…that’s what I kept thinking to myself about my ability to drive. Whenever I was in the car with my mother I was afraid but She encouraged me and I always did well…but in the back of my mind I kept replaying the snow bank crashing into the car…the I kept feeling the jerk of my neck and the whiplash as we hit even though the pain was long gone.

It was something about my not being able to grow that made me want to do it one day. I had been at a job interview and after I was asked if I could drive I’d made up an excuse and half lied about my car needing to be fixed. There was a car that needed to be fixed alright, but it belonged to my mother and she’d been driving me around in it for years, being there when I called her and at my beck and call…she was getting tired of it and I was getting tired of it.

I was on her schedule and If she was running behind I was running behind. If I needed to get home and my siblings needed to get somewhere or picked up…I had to wait because “the world doesn’t revolve around little ol’ Corinne” Even though she really wants it to.

I remember after giving the woman at the interview the excuse she had turned to my application and checked off a box…then she made a strange face and dismissed me then and there. I was on Lake street and the international Market square Department of Motor Vehicles was right down the road. I decided that I’d go and take a chance at luck.

I hadn’t reviewed or seen the drivers manual in over five years. I thought to myself…if I don’t know it by now and some 15 or 16 year old or some foreign person trying to get their taxi license can pass it on their first try just bullshitting and using their common sense then I should be able to do it. If I fail now I told myself I don’t deserve to drive. The only positive of all the time I’d taken now between tests was that they didn’t recognize me and they assumed that I was coming to take the test for the first time and they didn’t charge me. There was only one rule that I’d remembered from the last time I’d taken the test…and that was the question I’d gotten wrong last to make me fail the test the previous time I’d taken it…something about how far a car should be from a biker on the side of the road I had never forgotten “3 feet” even though the illustrated picture clearly showed a car that is six or seven feet away from the biker…that question had haunted me 5 years.

I got to my booth and I started off alright…I winced at my first wrong answer…and again at my 2nd and 3rd…yet I kept going and I kept getting one after another correct. I got to my 32 out of 40th question and I got another question wrong. “You have failed this test” the computer narrator announced to me. ‘NOT AGAIN!’ I thought…why me? Why now?…I was SO CLOSE! I looked at the question and I realized that it was a complete trick question…when exiting a parking lot yes you should “look and listen” and yes you should “honk your horn” and yes you should “make a complete stop” and no you shouldn’t “close your eyes and hope your coast is clear” but the right answer was only one of those options and I knew it wasn’t the last one. I picked “look and listen” and the answer was “make a complete stop”…bogus.

I was so upset I went to the man running the tests and I asked him if the test was wrong…I explain the questions and he told me that he got this complaint a lot and that the tests were terrible, that the pictures weren’t accurate and that the questions often had more than one right answer. He explained to me that most of the people who had common sense and actually read all the question options usually failed the test on the first try because they took too much time and didn’t go with their gut instincts. He told me that he often just told people to try to take the test again at another location on the same day at a different site. That would be the best because no one had to get discouraged and the information was still fresh in ones brain. Not cheating…just a second chance…and for me a fourth.

So I told myself because the test was rotten I’d give myself another chance. I got on a bus and went all the way to downtown Saint Paul to the Department of Motor Vehicles. I waited in line again with yet another number and I told the woman that I was taking my drivers test (with a excited smile so she would think it was my first time) It worked and I got into yet another drivers permit test without having to pay a dime for a retake. when I sat at the computer I realized that I’d forgotten everything from the test I’d taken earlier that morning. Mainly because I’d decided that I didn’t even care anymore and because the snow outside the bus on the way to Saint Paul had been so beautiful and liberating that It had become like a white blanket or a dry erase board eraser wiping my brains slate clean…I started once again on the driving test and I answered every single question correct until the computer chirped…”You have completed 85% of this test correct you do not have the finish the rest of this test you have passed your test”…I was so excited that right away I hopped up and I asked to use a nearby phone…I called every number I could think of and I left messages telling everyone That I’d passed my permit test.

twenty years old and I’d finally passed something that I thought I’d never complete. My own younger brother Tyler had passed his test the first time he’d taken it and he would mock me and show off by asking my mother to drive and saying things like “when you begin to drive I will believe you are older and wiser than me” and by making me feel bad by saying “You haven’t done anything with your life, you quit school and you can’t even drive yet, you’re a failure.” In my brain I’d always known he was wrong but I’d taken that crap because I felt I deserved it.

After I completed that test I felt that I could do anything I set my mind to. I was their only 100% that whole day!

I filled out the paperwork and I paid my 12 dollars for my permit…I took my picture even though I looked terrible that day and I was smiling for cheek to cheek.

My brothers were shocked the next time they insulted me about how I couldn’t drive when my mother said “no, she can drive…just as well as you.”

Not long after that my mother’s car broke down…what bad timing right because I was hoping that I could learn to drive as soon as I possibly could…I had been dreaming to get behind the wheel again, a stick shift or not.

I was so excited tonight when once again I was able to drive my mother home. This time in a new automatic 2000 Green Volkswagen Jetta…the perfect sized car for me to learn and drive in.

I was so excited when I parked and I hit the brake instead of the gas when I parked. And I am so excited that when Craig comes I can show off my skills as a driver.

The funny thing about all this is…that in Scotland people don’t drive anywhere, they walk…and Craig and his sister have yet to get their license. He is among the majority of students my age and younger who has yet to get his license because he’s learned to live without one and he hasn’t needed one.

What a backwards mixed up world I live in…

I’ll be moving to Scotland in May.

So there’s this famous news reporter sitting at the next table

Some people say he’s hot but I think he’s short…so far he’s only met with other handsome men and I’m feeling that he’s a party boy outside of his good guy work image.

I think I’m going to try to get a picture of him. Apparently he’s just got back from Hawaii.

He’s wearing short sleeves during winter and he’s paying no attention to the CNN playing behind him that is showing the terrible sights of Haiti. For all I know he might be gay.

Something about pretty boys messes with me a bit. He seems nice enough though…I’m going to try to sneak a picture of my mom to get a picture of him to add to my blog…he keeps looking over here, I wonder if he thinks I’m cute lol.

Maybe he’s not gay after all…
Picture to come.

_______ update____ I was just watching the news and I remembered the reporters name when I saw him.

omg…it was Sven Sundgaard and I think he is Gay… his picture was in Lavender magazine (a famous homosexual and lesbian magazine)

pretty boy? Short but nice.

pretty boy? Short but nice.

Lavender Magazine – Minnesota’s GLBT Magazine – Gay, Lesbian

KARE 11 meteorologist Sven Sundgaard, who served as the event’s poster boy and Lavender cover celeb last year, is back this year in both roles.

Read the article…lol that’s funny.

Distance No Object II: Blogging

Blog.

Blog.

Yay it is finally up after monthes!

Distance No Object II