The night before life goes on.

Errands. Doctors appointments. Roadtrips. Job interviews. Packing my room. In between it all, it never really sunk in that I'm leaving. That everything I've been rushing around doing for the past two weeks has been a preparation for me to LEAVE. I'm moving away. Literally, awayaway, not just a few cities down the road. OH MY GOSH. I don't know how to pinpoint what I'm feeling right now. I'm ECSTATIC, nervous, lonely, giddy, hopeful, and just sooooo excited. All in one Mary. It's an interesting experience, lemme tell ya. All in all, I am just trying to focus on looking forward to the weeks ahead and not dwell on the sadness of leaving my family and friends. EAST COAST, here I come :]
My parents gave me a spankin' new camera for my graduation present. I wasn't even expecting ANYTHING, much less something so awesome! I needed one badly, the last one I owned [and still own] is one I bought in the seventh grade. It is chunky and slow. I paid for it in cash. It was over $200. Ohhh how the times have changed... In any case, I'm super excited about that. Yay!
I had such a good summer. SUCH. a good one. For the books, completely. Here's a recap:
- POP Camp. Exhausting, cold, wet, hilarious and amazing as usual.
- GRADUATION. That one speaks for itself.
- DC for orientation. I met so many awesome people who I get to see again soon!
- I got to go fishin!
- Indy/Valpal's house for the Fourth of July. Can I even begiiin to tell you about the shenanigans? Better not, we'd be here all day. Bottom line, it rocked.
- Pensacola Beach in Florida. Best beach trip I can remember... so much epic bonding with my cousins. The whole trip was just focused on CHILLIN. Can't get much bettahh.
- Valerie's for a week with 5 other AMAZING girls. That was the best week of my life, for serious. You should legitimately be jealous. INTERJECTION: If yall don't know Valerie Marie Carnevale, then you should prolly work on that. Because knowing Valerie is like having a bucket fulla sunshine on one of your shoulders and a chinese wiseman on the other. She is the perfect mixture of happy, carefree, lifeloving, caring soul and wise. She is wise because she loves in ACTIONS and not just words. Get to know her, you'll be a better person. Okay, back to my summer.. :]
- Beach trips with my best friends. It rocks living near lake michigan.
- Roadtrip with Roger down to Purdue to get Renee and then down to IUPUI to crash at Katie Anne's apartment and have bonding time before we all are at our separate schools. That was the best, I'm in love with those people.
- Annnnd now we are at the present. I'm sitting in my room, on my bed, surrounded by a whole lot of nothing because everything is packed in the car for the trip in the morning. I waited so long to "leave for college" and now that it's happening, I can't help but be a little disappointed at how surreal this all still feels. In any case, in about 8 hours I will be en route to a crazy, unknown, amazing future and I'm embracing it. Bring it on, life.

Countin' Down

Wahhh! Insanity. I just realized that IIIII'm leaving town in 4 and a half days. AHH! So excited! I also haven't started packing... hahaha but that can wait, yes? Procrastinating is so much more fun. My friend Roger and I are roadtripping down to Indianapolis to visit my other friend Katie who's been in her apartment alone for a week because her roommates haven't moved in yet. She's lonely. We are going to cheer her up. I can't wait!
I cleaned out my drawers and closet today and basically threw everything I haven't worn in the past nine months into garbage bags to give away. I feel like I lost about 30 pounds. There's actually SPACE in my drawers now. Who knew?
Here are some things I've discovered I want to accomplish in the next year or so [hahah don't you love my random spurts of inspiration I suddenly decide to share? I swear, I'm only just now thinking of these...]
-Go to a foreign country. I don't care where. But Canada doesn't count.
-keep a journal.
-run a half marathon. or a full one.
-take more pictures. photojournal my life [because its soooooo exciting and all..]
-learn how to love people better. not easy.

That was a really obscure list. I'm just realizing how cool life is. Like... we are so lucky! People LOVE us and want to be around us and take care of us and help us and ahh. So loved. We are SO LOVED. God is awesome. This sounds so random. Well prolly cause it is random... but I felt the need to say it. I'm loving life because I can love and I am loved. I was driving with my mom the other night and we were kind of in the middle of nowhere, farmland, cornfields, etc and the stars were UNREAL. like... the sky was actually exploding with stars. She told me to pull to the side of the road into a field. I did. And we stargazed on the hood of the car. I saw the biggest shooting star I've ever seen in my life. That's love. Incredible, impossible love. Moments like that just take me off guard, but it was one of those rare moments when you're looking up and you feel like you're being swallowed by something so much bigger and more mysterious than anything you've ever experienced. That big, mysterious amazing feeling is LOVE. The bigness and the impossibly profound beauty of the love that God has for us. You can't look up at a sky like that and not feel completely humbled. The vast sky, the hugeness of what I was feeling literally took my breath away and put tears in my eyes. I am so, so small compared to God, yet I get to experience THIS because He, HE, Jesus Christ loves ME. askdjkdjkflmds! That's un.be.liev.able. So in times like this when I'm starting to panic about moving away and start to fear the unknown, I remember that I am soo ignorant of the fullness of the plans He has for me. Jeremiah 29:11. He KNOWS the plans He has for me. Plans for me to prosper and not be harmed, plans to give me hope and a future. My God is an awesome God.

saying goodbye to friends is completely UNfun.

Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens?

Life is such a whirlwind. This week, life sped up to a thousand miles per hour and I realized that in nine days, I won't LIVE here anymore. n nine days I'm going to pack everything in the car and drive 600 miles to where I'm going to spend the next four years of my life. Somehow I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this... everyone leaves for college, everyone moves, it's 1000000% normal. I am completely excited about it, but it's also terrifically hard for me. All of my close friends from high school are staying in-state and they will be more easily accessible to each other on small breaks, whereas I will probably only make it home for major holidays. Something feels empty about that and it scares me a little. I know I'm going to be completely fine once I get there, and I'm going to absolutely love it and probably have a hard time leaving there even for a short time but for now, sdfghjk. I feel like I'm leaving so much behind me, so many things that are unfinished. I feel like I didn't spend enough time with my best friends this summer, like I'm cheating myself out of tons of memories. I don't know. I shared this with my mom as I was sitting on my kitchen floor crisscross applesauce [my thinking spot] and this is why she's my hero: She took a bottle of bubbles from the kitchen counter and said "you just need to blow some bubbles, c'mon, let's go outside, blowing bubbles is going to help you." Hahaha and it totally did. She and I sat on my front porch popping eachother's bubbles and laughing and I felt like such a free little kid. Sometimes just sitting and shoving your worries out the window for a while is the total answer to any mysteries dangling in the back of your mind.

I'm realizing that in less than two weeks, I'm going to have a chance to be my complete, genuine, real, ridiculous, weird, Mary self to hundreds of people that I've never met. They have no idea who I am. They have no idea who my friends are that have helped me become who i am. But I can be the absolute most real, best me without the burden of past misunderstandings or screwed up first impressions. I mean, obviously it won't be perfect and obviously I probably will screw up. But the fact that I have a chance to be my complete self with a clean slate to so.many. new people is completely exciting! I can be who I want to be right from the start, clean slate, free and easy. It will be such an adventure and challenge, and I'm just praying that I can honor and glorify God by being who I truly want to be to everyone I will meet.
I've changed a lot in the past few months. I've had ridiculous learning curves and earthshattering realizations. I've come to know myself in a new way through amazing friendships I've discovered. I'm never alone, I always have someone to talk to or someone who will just listen. That is SO hard to come by. Like, how many people can say that they can;t even count on their fingers how many friends they know who are instantly, without a question THERE for them? WOAH. My life is so ridiculously cool, I love it.
I'm aware of the really random, tangential nature of this post, but I just had to get some of the things that have been swimming in my head out there. I have some goals for the next two weeks: No complaints--How completely blessed am I to have a life like this? No, complaints are totally out of the question. More control-- I can't let my apprehensions own me, I can do things about them. I'm going to run every day, like I've been doing, have prayer times and pace myself. No regrets-- I'm going to make the most out of the time I have left with my friends! It makes no sense to sit around and mope if I can do something about it.
Hope you enjoyed my little rant. Actually it wasn't little... Hopefully you didn't fall asleep. Just know that I really do absolutely, completely, without-a-hitch LOVE my intensely beautiful life because I am loved like crazy and God is always, always my listener and my friend.
I'm going to go find a neighbor's sprinkler to run through.

Girls Just Wanna... Laugh, Bond Eat, not Sleep, Have the Absolute Times of their LIVES. Yep. All that AND a bag of chips.

Ah! I just had the best week in the worrrrrld! I went to Indianapolis to stay at Val's house for a week along with 4 other girls. Never in my life have I eaten so much, laughed so often, and loved life more than I have when I was with these girls. Each of us was from a different ranch of the People of Praise-- coincidentally! I'm from South Bend, Mary Hannah's from Shreveport, Shannon's from new Orleans, Heidi's from Buffalo, Gracie's from NOVA and Val's from Indy. WOAH. Sooo wonderful.
To begin the week, we kicked it off by buying $90 worth of groceries. Can you saaaay ice cream, party pops, cocoa puffs and... guacamole? I can :]
I can't even express how grateful and blessed I am to have these girls in my life. Each one of them makes me a better Mary and I love every second I'm with them. It's crazy to think that I either hadn't met or seen 3 of these girls in yeaaars, and after ten minutes of being with them, I already felt like we were best friends. There's POP magic for ya!
I'm really going to miss Shannon's singing, Heidi's Greek accent, they way Mary Hannah finds a way to use y'all about 8 times in one sentence, Gracie's love, and my Valllyyypants. It was just such a good week, I'm so grateful.
In other news, we had our house appraised today because apparently we are trying to re-finance our mortgage? In any case, I've been hardcore cleaning for the past 24 hours. Its ridiculous how clean our house is. My poor mother works so hard and she's begging all of us kids to keep it this way. My bedroom is immaculate, I'm so excited. It took me like 8 hours to clean it out completely. wow. I sound like a disgusting little slob. It wasn't that bad.
Anyway, I have to shower nowwwww.
I love my friends, I love my family, I love summer, I love LIFE.
4 weeks and counting until I move away.
HOLY COWS.

moo.

Flip Flop Tans and Some White Sand

Dumdaduuumm!!! I'm in BEAUTIFUL Pensacola Beach, Florida!! The water is green and blue and wonderful and the sand is sugar white as always. It makes my soul so happy. I love to be here, I've come almost every summer since I can remember. So many memories! The Blue Angels did an airshow RIGHT over our beach house today! There is honestly not a more sexy, soul-shaking, amazing noise than an F/A-18 flyover. LOVE IT.
Last weekend [4th of Julyyy] I went to my Valerie's house in charming Cicero, Indiana where she has a beautiful home right on Morse Lake. It was a completely hilarious, wonderful, relaxing, shenanigan-filled weekend full of laughs and heart to hearts and adventures. I am so blessed to have Valerie in my liiiife!! And everyone else who lives in the Indianapolis area. Weekends with the Indy crew always promise to be unforgettable :]







Oh, I also spent some time in Washington DC and Arlington [my future homee!! weird] for Orientation. I saw the lovely Porter girls and Mike and lots of other pals. It was such a fun time! We went into the district late one night and walked around the national mall at midnight. it was SO pretty!! Hooray for summertime, adventures, wonderful people, and the metro running late hours on weekends!

Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Getting to College in One Piece

Hellooo world. I feel like I've been hibernating for the past few weeks. POP camp has come and gone, it was enlightening, humbling, and exhausting as always. I'm always grateful I go even though I usually dread it beforehand. I GRADUATED which is about at the top of my reasons-to-be-happy-about-life-right-now-list. I am ecstatic to be done with high school forever and am terrified and completely excited about opening a new chapter of my wild and precious life at Marymount University in the fall :) I have orientations coming up this weekend. My mom and I are driving down to Virginia a few days early so i can hang out with my sister and play in DC before I go to orientation. I am so excited. I keep hoping I feel better before I go... I've been sick for about a solid month now. Coughs, cold, sore throat, you name it. It's dumb BUT I think I'm getting better.
I had my graduation party on Saturday! It was a joint party with three of my friends, and I think it was a smashing success. There was a ton of food, there were tons of people and I think everyone had a good time. We had a keg ;) No underage drinking, obviously. My dad manned the beer. No shenanigans get past that man. I owe my parents big time. our power was out for a good 24 hours and our party just happened to be during that time. Despite all of the food-rescuing from powerless refrigerators and retrieving of generators, they were stellar hosts, I am so grateful.
At the moment, I am soaking up the peace and quiet. Four of my six siblings are out of town! It's just me and little William here, and I miss everyone a lot. Poor Will probably has been bored out of his mind. i took him to the library and Starbucks today to lighten the mood. I think it helped a little.
I'm reeeeeaallly in the mood for just driving. I don't care to where, I just want it to take a long time. There is a lot on my mind and I need to ease my thoughts somehow. I would run, but I rode my bike today for about 2.5 miles before I started shaking and had to stop. I hate being sick. Meanwhile I'm praying for all my anxieties and troubles to be lifted up-- God knows what he's doing, and he won't give me anything he knows I can't handle. I have two quotes of the day; One deals with not worrying, the other deals with not being discouraged with myself, which I tend to be.
"Do not worry over things that generate
preoccupation and anxiety. One thing only is necessary:
To lift up your spirit and love to God."
~Blessed Padre Pio

and

"Have patience with all things,
but chiefly have patience with yourself.
Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections,
but instantly set about remedying them -
every day begin the task anew."
~ St. Francis de Sales