One more thing...

GO MAVS!!!

Shining.

You can’t let others’ negativity get you down. You can’t let their crappy attitude or their jealousy or their unkindness affect you. Fuck them. Let it roll right off your shoulders. Flip it away with your gorgeous hair. Be better than them, be more fabulous than they are, enjoy life more than they do. Smile, laugh, and love always, regardless of people’s shitty manners.

I personally can not stand ugly people. As much as I want to slap the repulsive out of them, I find it better to simply shine in their faces. Shine, shine away.

Life has given me a great reason to shine and glow and flow, but being accepted into vet school also gives me reason to stress. I really need to start saving money, but I also need to spend money. I need a bike to get around town on. I need to spend hundreds on getting vaccinated before the semester begins. I’m going to have to buy a water filter because tap water in College Station, TX is damn near disgusting. I need school supplies. I need to buy textbooks. I need to pay off my balance at work. I need to stock up on pet supplies for my beloved babies. I need to pay a pet deposit so that my beloved babies can go with me. I need to find a place to pay a pet deposit to! Where am I going to live? I need a place close to campus so that I can check on my beloved babies during my lunch breaks. I need a place close to a decent grocery store so that I can ride to it on my bicycle, the one that I have yet to purchase. How am I going to pay for groceries? I’m going to be so broke! How am I going to be able to hold a job while taking eighteen credit hours a semester?! When will I have time to study? When will I have time to relax?

And how am I supposed to live away from my Dustin and be okay? L

Still, I remind myself of the fact that this is my dream coming true. I’ve wanted to be a veterinarian since I was seven years old… That’s almost twenty years. I have worked my ass off since high school, making the grades, getting the experience, earning the respect, never losing sight of how badly I’ve wanted this. This is it for me. This is me reaching my ultimate goal, finally! How can I not be happy?

Charlie Sheen may be winning, but Daisy Martinez is shining. Duh.

Dang.

I wish I could write that I haven't cried since the last time I wrote, and had I posted this just an hour ago, I would have actually been able to, but now? I am, once again, bawling my eyes out.

No matter how good life is to me -and it has been good, what with my vacation from work this week and the news that I've been accepted into vet school- I always manage to fuck things up somehow. I always end up in tears and down, way down, from my high. I always end up questioning why I can't simply enjoy life.

Then I feel much too dramatic and stupid. Life isn't perfect. At twenty-six, I should know that by now.

Daisy Downer

I have cried way too much this year already. Talk about feeling drained. Still, people see me as a happy person, and generally I am. I just can't count the number of times I've wished I could take my animals and go far, far away.

Oh well.

Overcome with gratitude.

"This is probably why many young children have such a natural attachment to animals, seeing things fresh without the years to retract all the miraculous new images coming at them, all these remarkable animate beings racing and barking and panting and chirping in their midst." -Matthew Scully

I still marvel. I could spend my days off locked up at home, watching my four critters of three different species interact with one another for hours. My patience at red lights is not tested if there is a squirrel hurrying along off the street or birds flying into open spots on power lines overhead. Bad days at work become better if I stop to look out the window and watch the dogs jump in and out of the pool or stretch out on the grass to soak up the sun.

Thank goodness I still marvel. Thank goodness I never grew out of that. Thank goodness my life now revolves and will continue to revolve around these miraculous beings. Thank you, thank you, thank you.