Thursday, February 27, 2014

Smells Like Rain

The darkness of the world I feel
the world I am a part of
Has closed out the way to my soul
It's harder and harder to feel real love

The height of the mountains,
the depth of the oceans
all contribute to the fact that
people fear sincere devotion

When it comes to being one
with the one you truly love
they see it as coming from here below OR
coming from Him above

While it is neither
and both all the same
The fear is what drives them
it drives them all insane

They lose grip on reality
they begin to go blind
they don't know what love is
Making it that much harder to find.

"I don't know if I love you anymore"
they say "If you are close to me,
I admire you, and adore you
But 'love' is too strong for me."

It hurts to hear the one you love
tell you they don't love you anymore
then tell you sometime down the road
it may be more than just "adore"

To smile and move on
is something we all must learn
for when we do not move on
we will surely burn

It may not be long
it may not be short at all
but either way it will hurt
and nothing we can do... but fall

I fear the future,
as I look out life's window pane
I stare into the grey-toned sky
.... it smells like rain.

Rain that stops progress
that I worked so hard to achieve
work that others close
seem to not believe

Rain that washes away pain
washes away fear,
rain that makes way for truth
as I stand looking here

it floods the very place I stand
my socks begin to soak
filling up my pails
and weighing down my yoke

I look into the sky
as the rain drops hit my face
finally i begin to wonder
have i found my place?

the fear that I am feeling
is it all from pain?
Search for an answer in the grey toned sky
..... it smells like rain.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Snowboarding

Snowboarding is not something I am talented at. I’ve only gone twice as of today. The first time was on a mountain in Utah. I went with my husband and two friends, all of which are experienced. By the time we got there it was snowing pretty hard, but it wasn’t the storm that bothered me the most about this particular trip. What bothered me was that there was no bunny slope for me to learn on. It was an all or nothing sort of day, and I immediately regretted tagging along. Over the next couple hours I managed to make it all the way down the slope maybe 4 times with only 1 major fall, as in completely head over heels. It was then that I was thankful for the fluffy, fresh fallen snow.

My second trip was at an indoor place in Germany. It was so crowded we just sat there in the ice for about an hour unable to really move. I have never seen so many skiers in all my life. Most of them were just standing there talking, taking up space for the hell of it. The fake snow was solid ice in some patches making a fall pretty painful. Once you got to the bottom of the 30 second slope, there was easily a 15 minute line to catch a long ride back to the top. We spent more time waiting in line and waiting for the crowd to move than we did snowboarding.

So here I am, now looking forward to our next trip which will be Valentine’s Day weekend. I can’t wait to be on an actual mountain again after our last experience. I still pretty much suck at snowboarding, it’s like my feet just don’t get it. I honestly don’t mind falling ever few seconds because it’s something my husband and I can laugh at together. I remember I was so nervous at first that I didn’t even want to go. My husband had to push me out of the house, telling me how I can’t learn if I don’t try. In the end, I’m glad I did go and try something new, and I’m glad that it’s something that I can now share with my husband.

This was originally posted as a comment under Welcome: Brooke CotyFebruary 8, 2014 at 9:38 AM

Saturday, February 15, 2014

The grass isn't always greener...

     I am having quite a difficult time writing this health argumentative essay.  I have a few topics chosen, with corresponding articles.  I cannot, without great effort and pain, provide an argument for the opposing side of the author's opinion without siding with him/her, myself.  I have written a few drafts that have been scrapped due to the flippity-floppitiness of my argument; not to mention the lack of a solid thesis.  Being able to see both sides of the argument can be a good thing in settling disputes, however it does not work that way when trying to argue your point.

     I plan on having a set opposing view of the topic.  I am currently attempting a dietitian's approach for the topic of a specific type of diet and how it does not work as advertised, along with supporting works provided by nutritionists and doctors.  I need to work on certain writing techniques for this essay:  shortened paragraphs, summarization, and order of statements.  When writing about my own topic, about something that has me distraught, I am well-off and able to provide accurate responses and arguments; I am a decent author.  When provided with a set subject and given timelines, then I run into problems.

     I read the chapters as assigned from our textbook -- this isn't the problem.  The problem is applying something I have read if it is not scientific, algebraic, or technological.  I focus too much on minor details and cannot "summarize" as well as many others instinctively can.  This not only affects my writing ability, it affects the way I "skim" through articles to get the main idea; my focus begins shifting to points that I deem "important."  I also don't like reading anything that isn't "interesting" to me, which is anything not scientific, algebraic, or technological.  These topics are very specific on items and require much focus on minor details, so I excel at them.

     I feel that through this class, even having a hard time, myself, keeping-up with the class, I have already learned a lot about writing techniques.  I found myself prone to over-utilizing commas, misusing semicolons, and mainly bringing-out the foreigner in me by creating unnecessarily long sentences.  I have, however, stopped switching tense while writing like I did in High School.  Not everything is bad; there are many good points.

     I feel that I have been a foreigner learning English my whole life, and have been very bad at it, but really good at learning other languages.  I understand the struggles incorporated with learning this terribly difficult language.  I hope that by the end of this class, I will be able to, without researching how-tos, write a decent enough essay to pass pertinent information along in a mature, proper manner, with minimal mistakes.

     What are some of the problems others have found within themselves through this course?  What are some of them that were fixed?