Pets.

When I was little, and I mean back before memories have any substance and most things I recall are from frequent re-tellings rather than the original experience, I wanted a pet. Many kids want a pet. Girls usually want cats and occasionally ponies, and boys want dogs or something like that. Anyways, my family decided that we would get a dog. I was absolutely terrified of any dogs. The sight of one sent me into frequent hysterics. I had also recently been bitten by a cat and wasn't too fond of them either. I was a rather jumpy kid.

My parents decided not to bring me to the dog search until they had narrowed the contestants down to a few finalists. The summer after first grade, when I was six, they brought me to the pound to see this little, white, fluffy thing. I was terrified of him, but figured I might as well live with him as much as any other dog. We were fairly certain we wanted this guy, but on our way out of the pound, Dustin saw a puppy who was black and brown, mostly resembling a beagle, and adorable in every way. Rex became our new family dog.

On the way home, we had him in the back of the van in a pet carrier. Dustin, Trish and I were gathered around the cage peering at him thoughtfully. The dog let out a half-bark half-whimper noise. I jumped backwards and burst into tears, screaming, "He barked at me!" The next few weeks were no different--I commonly had to jump on the nearest table, counter, or other accessible furniture to escape the reach of this tiny, friendly little puppy. Thankfully, Dad finally convinced me that, even if he did bite me for fun, his teeth in no way hurt. And I was never again afraid of Rex.

Rex used to sleep on Dustin's bed every night. As Dustin got older and bigger, he would tell us stories of how Rex would lie spread out from the head to the foot of Dustin's bed, and Dustin would cram himself between Rex and the wall. We also laughed at Rex the time he ran into the sliding glass door after Mom had cleaned it. It was less funny when I repeated the act a few weeks later. Dustin and I, as kids, also tried to teach Rex to sit. He actually did learn to sit, but it's the only trick he ever learned, and only when you hold up a piece of food he wants.

Once he got bitten by a snake, and we thought he wouldn't make it. The vet said that we could pay a couple thousand for an anti-venom or give him some Benedryl and water and hope he lasted the night. We didn't have a few thousand dollars lying around, so we went with the latter and decided to see how he fared. Dad told us the next morning how he had gone to check on Rex in the middle of the night and Rex looked terrible. Dad thought we had lost him for a minute, but he was just sleeping and in pain. To be nice, Dad went to the fridge to bring Rex a piece of bologna. It took a few seconds to open the package, but he took a piece and shut the fridge door--only to see Rex standing there expectantly. Not even snakes could keep that dog from food.

Rex was diagnosed with bone cancer earlier today, and my parents made the choice to put him down. He was in pain, and there was nothing that could be done to help him. He was 15 years old. It's going to be strange; we moved into that house 17 years ago, and got Rex two years after that. The majority of the time I spent there, Rex was there. He was the first pet I ever had, and certainly the only one that I've ever loved so much.

I'm going to miss him.

Adult.

Yesterday, I looked in the mirror and noticed I was an adult.

I was a kid and a teenager for a good 18-20 years of my life. I've just turned 22. In the past few years, I still frequently refer to myself as a "girl" or some other term that implies that I'm an adolescent of some sorts. But yesterday, I looked in a mirror and saw a full-grown adult looking back. I'm no longer that awkward, teenage girl trying to figure herself out, wondering how my features will change as I grow. I am done and grown.

I sometimes wish I could meet myself as a child just to let myself see what I'll look like. When I was a child, I remember after seeing pictures of my parents as kids, I wondered what I'd look like when I grew up. I wonder if I'd be happy or sad with the results.

I need to sleep more on this vacation. Things aren't making sense properly. I'm in Virginia with Mike for spring break. Maybe I'm noticing my adulthood because I'm meeting his childhood friends for the first time, and I'm not meeting them as a student or a kid. We are all adults with jobs (or a math teaching internship for me) and I'm not viewed as a child by them. Strange.

A Gaping Hole.

Recently, I have been referring to the upcoming months as "The gaping hole that is my future."

I do not like being uncertain of my future. From kindergarten to my senior year of high school, my plans were decided. In middle school, I said that I would be a math teacher, and I am now seven weeks away from receiving my bachelor's in mathematics education. My senior year of high school, I decided very early that I was attending FSU. I applied, was accepted, and never once considered attending, or even applying to, another college. Any time there was uncertainty in my future, I immediately filled it: I've worked at the same summer job for four years, attended college regularly, and made decisions early enough to plan accordingly.

Now, however, I'm about to graduate, and I'm not sure what will happen. I don't know if I can find a job. I don't know if I'll have to attend grad school. I don't know if Leon County will hire me, or what I can do if no teachers are being hired here, and I can't even plan ahead at this time. My future is a gaping hole of uncertainty, and I do not know what's going to happen or what I'm going to do. And that thought terrifies me.

I wonder, sometimes, where the time has gone. Time is a constantly perplexing thing; we are constantly changing, growing, moving, proceeding, spinning day by day, month by month, year by year. But the speed never makes sense to me. I feel like this semester is the longest of my life; I wait anxiously for graduation, but it feels like the end is no closer to arriving than it was a year ago. Every day passes so slowly that the weekend takes a small eternity to arrive. And at the same time, I wonder what happened to my teenage years. Where did the past four years go? I remember high school, and college, and I'm certain they happened, but I'm not sure how it flew by so quickly; just the other day I was moving into a dormitory, away from home for the first time, and here I am, about to graduate. I feel like every day is dragging by, holding me back from the future, while the months are flying by me before I have a chance to realize that they have passed me by, forever.

And suddenly, here I am, 22 years old, caught up in the ever-spinning wheel of time, moving through life at some indiscernible speed. I am aware, for today, of the paradoxical speed that my life is taking, but who knows about tomorrow, or the day after, or any other day. All I know is that, in a few years, this gaping hole of uncertainty will be a blur in my memory; this will be just a small transitional phase from one stage of my life to something bigger and better.

Horoscopes.

I have never been one to believe in horoscopes, although I find them interesting. The day to day predictions are most intriguing to me. "Jupiter has taken a turn for the worse, causing Neptune to get angry. Friends in your life will try to steal your money, but be careful. Your lucky number is 3052, and on a scale of 1 to 10, your day will be a 2.4."

I'm not trying to bash on anyone's serious beliefs, but horoscopes just weren't ever something I could really buy into. I remember in middle school I had a friend that seriously believed in the power of horoscopes, and one morning hers said she would hear unexpected good news. She assumed it meant her crush would confess his undying love and they would live together in middle school bliss. I promptly forgot about this horoscope and later that day dropped a note into her locker (which was quite common,) except I left it unnamed, planning on her being like, "Oh, is this from Andy or Cate?" Wrong. She had that horoscope on her mind, and upon realizing the note was from me, she was rather upset. I felt terrible for the remainder of that day, having hurt my best friend by forgetting about her horoscope and, in her mind, making a mockery of it.

Anyways, back to horoscopes. My birthday is March 2nd, so most of my life I've been a Pisces (I'm not sure if I've recently switched to Aries or something.) A quick Google search revealed these personality traits:

Imaginative and sensitive
Compassionate and kind
Selfless and unworldly
Intuitive and sympathetic
On the dark side....Escapist and idealistic
Secretive and vague
Weak-willed and easily led

Wow! Look at all of those things that describe me perfectly! It's almost like looking at a biography! The problem with these words is that, upon seeing them, it's easy to be like, "Oh, I can see how I am that!" However, when I was 8, I found a serious flaw in this logic. My sister, four years older than me, has a very different personality. Where I am an introvert, she's an extrovert. Where I worry, she has confidence. My brother is also completely different. He's funny and outgoing, but very practical and logical. Trisha's birthday is February 27th, and Dustin's is March 1st. We all have the same horoscope. So, those words apparently describe all of our personalities perfectly! Even 8 year old me knew that something wasn't right with that.

However, like fortune cookies, I will still always enjoy reading my daily horoscope and thinking about any slight chance of coincidental "truth" in it.

Fallen by Lauren Kate.

And the sequel, Torment.

As many of you know, my family is really into the show Jeopardy. We watch it together whenever we can. We play even if not all the family members are present, which means that when Dad is working late, I actually have a chance to win. (He's so fast at answering! It's infuriating!)

Anyways, you may have seen in the news that, at the beginning of this week, Watson played Jeopardy. Watson is a computer. Watson is also a total cheater and a jerk, but that's not the point. If you haven't seen the two shows with Watson, I recommend you watch them immediately. You will laugh, you will cry, etc. Well, after the Watson series was Teen Jeopardy. This is also fun to watch because teenagers have easier questions than adult Jeopardy. So I decided to watch Teen Jeopardy. And one category, Teen Novels, had a question about some book by Lauren Kate, saying in it the girl is in love with this being, and the answer was, "What is an angel?"

So, based on that clue I decided to give the book a try. I love reading, have my whole life, and specifically have a soft spot for children and teenager literature. Anne of Green Gables, Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, and Harry Potter are just a few of the series that I love. Some are classics, some are new. Many of the recent teen novels are terrible (take Twilight, for example,) while others are incredible, such as Harry Potter or Pretties, Uglies, Specials, Extras. I knew going into the read that there was a good chance this book would be terrible; however, I decided to torrent the book online and go for it.

So, I read the first book, Fallen. And then I read the sequel, Torment. And this is my review.

From a storyline point of view, everything except the actual plot aside, the story was lacking.
From a writing point of view, the story was poorly written, and descriptive in all of the wrong ways. Stories shouldn't have to tell you exactly what everything looks like in two sentences; appearances should be revealed carefully within the events.
From a religious point of view, the story is atrocious and butchers everything ever.

Honestly, the first book made me think of Twilight: an unimportant girl who gets caught up in some crazy supernatural love triangle, unable to make up her mind between two guys and being completely oblivious to everything. I also felt like the author took many of the elements of the first book and created meanings for them in the second book that didn't follow, as a way of trying to create a more lasting storyline. The book is also in no way timeless: it is very much set in 2009, with the characters dressing like punk goth kids in 2009. The author also attempts to create intrigue and mystery by announcing unexplained events early in the story, like that the main character, Luce, is sentenced to some sort of prison and we don't know why. However, it's done gracelessly, leaving the reader knowing exactly what the author is trying to do. The love story is supposed to be one of the greatest in time, but there is nothing about either of the love interests that seems lovable. Both are completely unbelievable at every point of the book.

The second book went downhill. It's first flaw is that it is based on Fallen, which already was a storyline on the brink of crumbling. However, it seemed like it wanted to be esque; where the first book made the fallen angels seem like a few people here and there, the second revealed a whole community of Nephilim, part angel people. Luce gets sent to a boarding school of Nephilim where she realizes she is famous, though she never knew it, and wants to be treated normally. How original. She also gets caught up in an entirely new love triangle! Oh joy! The book ends abruptly, leaving the reader asking, "....What?"

The third sequel of the four part series comes out in June. I'll let you know how it is.