Tuesday, June 27, 2006

The Second Hardest Day Of My Life Is Finally Over

My father's funeral service was yesterday. Just as it was about to start, I told Daniel that I was leaving and that he should call me when it was over. But I didn't leave, of course. It was hard to sit there, but I think it really helped me. The flowers were beautiful. The chapel was small, and not intimidating. The place was packed. Alot of my friends showed up, not only to support me, but because they cared about my dad, too. The pastor was a friend of my dad's, and I was really glad that he could be there. When he started crying, I suddenly felt a strong bond with him. After the service, he kept hugging me and wouldn't let me go. I needed that. j

After spending the last week going through various stages of grief, sometimes all at the same time, I finally feel a little closure. I feel a little more at peace now.

The Best Time To Get Their Money Is When The Tears Are Still In Their Eyes

The title of this post is an actual quote from a funeral director that my uncle knew. I dislike funeral directors. Sure, they are trained to do anything for you and act really sincere and sympathetic. But anyone would do that if they were getting thousands of dollars from you. How can anyone with a heart sleep at night when during the day they are manipulating money out of the pockets of poor souls in the midst of mourning? Its ridiculous! You should have seen me when I left the building after we met with him. I was pissed! Everyone dies. Its inevitable. And when a loved one dies, those that remain are having their hearts ripped out of them and drowning in a sea of depression, and all the funeral home cares about is using it to their advantage so that they can get away with charging outrageous prices. It's sickening.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

How Cruel Is Fate?? Cruel Enough To Take My Father From Me Right Before Father's Day...

Standing by his hospital bed in his last few moments, I was shaking so uncontrollably. I hate the feeling you get when someone has passed on. I am no stranger to saddness. I cry alot; at least once a week, usually more. But the difference is that most of the things that plague my mind are reversable. Changable. Temporary. Death is one of those things that are so definate. With most things, my mind runs itself in circles trying to figure out what needs to be done to make things right, and how unlikely it is that I will ever do those things. I can usually peg my problems on myself, knowing that I brought the problems on myself, at least partially. Its depressing, but at the same time, I find comfort in knowing why it happened. But this - this wasn't my fault. This just happened. So I don't know what to think. And there is no way to change it. I felt - I feel - so helpless.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Update On Summer 2006

Sorry that I haven't been blogging lately. In fact, I'm not blogging right now. I cheated. I wrote a letter to one of my friends, and after realizing that it basically contained everything that I would want to blog about, I decided to just include an excerpt from it here. Ta-da!

I have been so busy lately! I've been working, studying for the PPST, and on top of that, I just got back from the Black Hills.

Work has been interesting. There is a while new crop of girls working there now, but the awesome thing is that I get along with them really well. Today was a little interesting, though. I went to go clean one of the rooms, and I knocked a few times, said "housekeeping" a few times, opened the door, and called out again to make sure there was no one in the room before barging in. No one said anything, but when I opened the door, there was a 50 year old man, naked in the hot tub! He was completely calm, and told me that he didn't need anything. I talked to the lady at the front desk, and she said that he is just weird like that. She said that he does that to every one of the housekeepers, and that when he does answer the door, he is usually naked. Why couldn't he be younger?? *pout* I was a little upset the other day, though. See, there are 3 vacuums on the 2nd floor, and last summer, I named one of them Collin. I didn't get to use Collin the last two times that I worked. Sad.

The PPST. Remember, that was the test that I needed to pass before I could be a Junior? Well I took it on Saturday, and it was uber easy. No problem!! I'm so relieved!! So now I just have to wait for the scores to be sent to the school so that I can register for the classes I need to take (they wouldn't let me register until I pass the test).

What else. Oh yes, the Black Hills. That was amazing. Daniel and i spent 4 days in a hotel in Keystone. Well, actually, we were hardly ever in the hotel except to sleep. We took over 100 pictures while we were on vacation. We saw Mt Rushmore, of course, but that wasn't all the exciting to me. My favorite part of the trip was Keystone itself. Our hotel was right around the corner from this cute little boardwalk and street with gift stores and little resteraunts on each side. It was so pretty! I loved the llittle cafes with outside dinning areas. And there were horse drawn carraiges and everyone else was walking. There was hardly any cars! And on each side of the street was the side of the hills. The trees and rocks were so beautiful. We went on Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road. Basically, its a scenic drive that takes a couple hours because you have to go so slowly. The road winds around in the mountains and takes you way up high. The turns are so tight that you have to go 10 miles per hour, and there are places with only enough room for one vehicle. There are so many places that you could just fall off! There are a bunch of tunnels through the rocks that we could barely fit the truck through! Near the end of Iron Mountain Road, we saw a huge herd of wild buffalo. There was easlily 100 of them, or maybe 200! They were just walking accross the road. And there were donkeys!!! (Donkeys = lurve). One of them just walked up to the truck and stuck its head in. It was like "Well, HI!!". *smile*

We went to alot of "tourist traps", too. There was a scenic chairlift thinger. It takes you way up high above the trees and gives you a great view. Too bad that I'm very afraid of heights. What else did we do? Hmm...We toured a cave. That was pretty, butI'm kind of claustrophobic, too. We went to Bear Country USA. That's this really pretty drive-thru wildlife park. There are bears, wolves, tigers, mountain goats, sheep, and lots of other animals just roaming around freely. You just pay to enter and drive on the path. There was a bear that kept pacing on the path. There was only enough time for one car to go in between each pace. Everyone got a good picture of him, though! Another really neat place was Cosmos. Its a place up in the hills that has a gravitational vortex inside of a cabin. All the trees bend in toward the cabin, and its hard as heck to walk around inside it. Our tour guide showed us a few neat demonstrations, such as a ball rolling uphill, standing on the wall, and two people changing their height while moving around on a level surface. The inside of the cabin made me feel so weird. Everyone had to stand crooked just to keep their balance. It was great. Oh! And we went to a blacklight mini golf course. It looked so cool! It was indoors and there were murals on all of the walls, one for the 1950's, the 1960's and so on.

Hmmm...well I think thats all I have to say right now.

Haha..

You know how sometimes, kids will see that there older brothers, sisters, or parents have cell phones, they will want one, too. So you give them a fake one, or an old one that doesnt work anymore, and let them pretend. Well, when the kid is 5 years old, its cute. When they're 15...it's freakin hilarius.