Away

Forgive me for my absence. I'll be back soon enough; just give it some time.

The Beginning

Packing is stressful. I feel like I've over-packed so much, but I don't know what I could unpack because I need just about everything I am taking. I'm sure it won't seem like that much when it's all I have, but oh my gosh. This is mental. I have no idea how I'm going to pack if/when I move to London next year to study abroad. I have five days, have been packing all month and I'm still stressed out - to move 20 minutes away. This is ridiculous. I am a ridiculous human being.
Anyway, hello! Sorry it has been awhile. I'd fill you in on the exciting things I've done since last posting, but there, uh, aren't any. I've watched a lot of films on Netflix instant watch (Objectified being a favourite - but I'll have a video about that soonish, I think), taken advantage of the free food I have in my house and oh! Oh! I booked my ticket for London in December. That's exciting. I suppose it's not nearly as exciting to read the words "I booked my ticket for London" as it is to have actually booked them for yourself, but this is my blog, so I'm writing it for memories sake. I'm officially going to be back in London three months from now and that is wonderful. I'm going to decorate the Nericoollikeation with candy canes and tinsel and lights and drive them crazy with Christmas music. It'll be grand. (They don't know this yet, by the way. Sorry if this is how you're finding out my yuletide plans, Alex.)
It's really surreal to think of three months from now, actually. I think of all of the things that I will have done, thought of, planned and seen in the next three months. For instance, I will hopefully have gotten into the study abroad program and found a way to fund it, I'll have decided whether or not I want to move out into an apartment with Emily after my first quarter or remain in the residence halls all year, gotten my first real job on campus, met a lot of new friends and hopefully had a lot of friends come to visit me (KayleyConThanksgiving, plz), done a lot of reading and coursework and maybe even learned how to draw hands! (I hate drawing hands.) That's a lot of things and a lot of work and a lot major decisions. It's thrilling, but at the same time I'm sitting here on my childhood bed thinking that listening to the endless amount of Taylor Swift that Emily has sent me and eating Teddy Grahams is so much easier. But I suppose that life will be much more fulfilling and stuff if I actually...do something. So off to university in five days it is. By the way, I hope that uni will bring back my love for learning that most of high school stole from me. I use to adore school, but these last four years have been a special purple and green hell for me and have stolen my appreciate for learning things in a traditional academic setting. I have no idea what to expect. But that's when the best things usually happen, right? ...Right? Have a good evening, guys. xx

Lacking Symmetry

Due to the fact that I'm (reluctantly) beginning a drawing class in a few weeks, I've decided to break out my sketching pencils and see if I'm still as shit as I use to be. For the record, I am. I use to love drawing. It was something that I did in my downtime when I was younger, probably about middle school age. It was therapeutic. I mostly drew Disney characters, to be perfectly honest. I was pretty good at them, but that was probably because they were one dimensional and didn't require shading or anything fancy. I recall being rather proud of a drawing I did of the wicked witch in Snow White (upon reflection, it's not really that great.) When it came to actually drawing people, I was absolutely terrible. I'm not just saying that to be modest or anything, I mean I was so, so bad. I don't like drawing people for the exact opposite reason I love photographing them. Photographing a person is organic and natural (most of the time), whereas trying to press them out of graphite is so forced to me and I can never capture any element of them. This is why I'm really freaked out for my class next quarter. I'm not good at shading or making things look realistic. Nor can I draw straight lines without a ruler or posses any sense of symmetry. Can't I just draw cartoon characters and vague, intimate objects? Sigh. By the way, for someone who has never had an ounce of artistic ability, I sure do have a lot of art supplies. While looking for my set of pencils, I found acrylic paints, oil pastels and water colours. I'm thinking of finding ways of mixing mediums (the aforementioned, as well as photography, maybe) to fill my time for the rest of the summer. Any ideas on how I could do that? Links would be fun if you know of any fun art blogs. Do any of you do artsy things? Let me know. I'm going to go finish the relaxing playlist I'm creating on iTunes and do some painting or something. Night. xx

The Melancholy Elephant

So at about 4:30am this morning, I remembered that I had promised to go out with my mom in the morning and walk around my university to find places that I will be able to grocery shop, go out to eat, find cupcakes (serious business, people; cupcakes are essential to my diet), etc. This means that I fell asleep around 5am and woke up at 8:30am and then spent the next three hours walking! I honestly don't understand how I am awake right now. Let alone blogging. I'm pretty sure that articulation is not really my strong point at the time being, but here I am. The subject I wanted to briefly discuss before I watch my Netflix copy and The Reader and promptly pass out, is the zoo. My dad, ever the adolescent, begged me to go to the zoo this afternoon and I just couldn't say no. This means that you have to tack on another three hours of walking around on three and a half hours of sleep. So, cool.
The zoo is a place where most people look back fondly on and remember how thrilling and magical childhood was. My happy memories at the zoo began and ended in the gift shop, where the stuffed animals were fake and there was an endless supply of monkey-themed stationary for me to covet. Everything else about the zoo always made me very forlorn. Yes, I loved animals. No, none of them scared me. My issue with the zoo was that not only could I not touch the animals, but the reason I couldn't touch them was that they were locked away in stupid rooms and cages and not free to do as they pleased. I was a child under the firm belief that if I wanted to do something, I could do it and I would do it. This is something that, I'm sure, thrilled my parents. (That's only partially sarcastic, because they did quite like my enthusiasm for life.) So to me, the idea that I had the freedom to run about as I pleased and yet these WILD ANIMALS did not drove me absolutely mental.
The thing is though, I seem to suffer from acute zoo memory loss because I never remember how much I dislike the zoo till I'm there. In fact, I'm hoping that writing this post will really drill into my apparently forgetful brain just how unhappy it makes me. It's always the elephants that remind me. Those damn animals; they never forget anything. I'm sure they'd recall how sad it is to see humans standing around bored in a caged off area or a barn that they are clearly not enjoying. So why can't I give them the same courtesy? Sigh. The worst part is that birds make happy noises, the hippos can swim and even the wild cats have trees to climb. What do the elephants have? Nothing. At least at my local zoo. They just get to stand there and wait to be fed or for some asshole in coveralls to come spray the mud off their back. And they never smile. Have you ever seen an elephant (especially one in a zoo) smile?! I mean, sure, Elmer gives us a grin and even Dumbo manages a smile here and there, but outside of stories and Jungle Cruise, elephants are rather inexpressive and tend to leave me feeling troubled.
I'm not trying to play the activist card because I'm sure my zoo is wonderful to the animals and I really don't want the weight of all the local giraffes, grizzly bears and wild dogs on my shoulders. I'm just saying that the zoo is a melancholy place for Kayley Hyde. But I'm not going to lie, the snowy owl and I did share a moment, as per usual. Have a great labour day, everyone. xx

StickAid

I'm sorry for another cop-out. I have literally no excuse for not writing anything more thoughtful except that I've been up since 4:30am watching StickAid. I plan on sticking it out because I've made it this far. ADMIRE MY DETERMINATION, DAMMIT. I've witnessed some pretty weird stuff while sitting here. The most strange thing being Charlie wearing make-up and looking way too much like me to be comfortable. Other great moments include the Single Ladies dance, Sons of Admirals playing, a charming reenactment of Twilight and now they're about to play quidditch, so I'll cut this short. The image above was taken from Danielle's tumblr and it made me smile, so I decided to share it :) Keep smiling, my friends. Hope you're having a great weekend and that you're a little less spacey than I am. I love me some sleep deprivation xx

Ambition

Me: I really want to be the love interest in a music video. I feel like that’d be really fun. Preferably if it’s a particularly artsy music video. New life goal, right there.
Joseph Birdsong: this makes me want to write a song about falling in love with you but being gay. you can totes play you in it! we can film it in a boat.

Putting this on my blog, rather than on my tumblr where it was originally posted, makes it...more official. Or something. Right? Regardless, this has to happen. Joe is such a lovely person; it would be an honour. :) Emily tells me that I'm really ambitious and I'd definitely have to agree. Aaaand that's all I'm blogging today because I have nothing worthy to share. Have an awesome weekend xx

Cubicle Thoughts

Although I'm not sure why I don't recall seeing this photo before, I quite like it. I just found it while sifting through photos on my computer. I've been sitting at my mom's office since 7:30am because I came to work with her so we could go out to lunch and I could walk around downtown later. The only thing these past few hours have given me is the reassurance that I will never allow myself to work in a cubicle. Ever. And apparently this is a more lively office than most. One benefit, however, is this office is on Lake Union (like, they have a balcony suspended over the water) and it's a beautifully sunny day, so it's absolutely gorgeous. That and the machine that makes Milky Way lattes have been the only real highlights of my morning. It's just nice to get out of the house, though, so I'm not really complaining. You guys thought you'd seen the last of me after BEDA, didn't you? I've decided to try and keep up the blogging everyday. You could say I'm participating in BEWBIE. I love me some Liam.

On Being Human

Do you ever do things just to remind yourself that you are human and not just some vapid being? At the risk of that sounding like something you'd see in helvetica an image with of a girl smoking on tumblr, let me explain. I've spent a lot of time recently not doing much. What with my lack of job, lack of car to go places, most of my friends being working or at school and the rain that prevents me from wanting to walk anywhere, my room as been my world as of late. I've watched a lot of good films, done a lot of research, attempted to read my summer assignment and failed, etc. But last night, I realised how unhappy I was with all of the nothingness. There wasn't much that I could to alter it my situation because it was fairly late, raining and cold outside and my parents were well asleep. So I decided to do something that I haven't done in a while: not sleep. There wasn't anything preventing me from not sleeping because I am normally the type of person who can get to sleep if I just lay there and do nothing for awhile, but I didn't want to give into it. I wanted to feel something. And, clearly, the only thing that made sense to feel was that terrible sense of sleep deprivation that usually hits at about 4 or 5 in the morning of an all-nighter. It turned out to be a pretty good idea. For the first time in weeks, I felt something strong enough to take my mind off things that have been driving me crazy. Sure, that something was not all together pleasant, but in some masochistic way, I really enjoyed it. There's something thrilling about knowing you'll be there when the sun finally comes up.
Once I finished watching Spice World with Adam on skype (he earned like, 50 man points for lasting as long as he did into the film before turning it off), I sat on my window seat and just stared out the window. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I collect quotations. They are some of my favourite things in the world and I've spent most of my life filling books with the words of others. So I took out my current quotation journal of choice, an amazing leather owl one that Alex bought me in Camden, and got caught up on filling it with words I've read recently in books, online and heard in films. It was a bit like my own form of therapy.
After a brief nap from about 6-8am, I got up and ready and walked down to Starbucks to get my first pumpkin spiced latte of the autumn. There's little I love more than the first pumpkin spiced latte of the year; it's such a familiar drink and has so many wonderful memories for me. Needless to say, today has been a better day. I'm still as unmoving as ever now that I'm home, but at least I feel a little more human than I have recently. Welcome, September xxx