Uniquities

• I have three best friends. They all live further than 2 hours away from me and none of them know each other.
• When I was born, my grandpa was dying from lung cancer. We would visit him in the hospital; which is consequently where I learned to walk, and I would cuddle with him on his lap. I was his 'angel sent from heaven to replace him.'
• I have 2 brothers and 4 sisters. None of them are biological. (I also have 3 other mothers.)
  
• My mother dropped me on my head when I was a baby.
• I have eight piercings and only 5 are immediately visible.
• I love cowboys and I think that a flannel button up shirt, nice fitting jeans and a cowboy hat are the sexiest things in the world.
• My family thought I was going to be a veterinarian when I was little because other than snakes, I have never found an animal I didn't love.
  

John 17: 13-16

"I could say," her mother went on, "that living among the hakujin has tainted you, made your soul impure, Hatsue. This lack of purity envelopes you- I see it everyday. You carry it with you always. It is like a mist surrounding your soul, and it haunts your face like a shadow at moments when you do not protect it well. I see it in your eagerness to leave here and walk in the woods in the afternoon. I cannot translate all of this easily, excepts as the impurity that comes with living each day among the white people. I am not asking you to shun them entirely- this you should not do. You must live in this world, of course you must, and this world is the world of the hakujin - you must learn to live in it, you must go to school. But don't allow living among the hakujin to become living intertwined with them. Your soul will decay. Something fundamental will rot and go sour. You are eighteen, you are grown now- I can't walk with you where you are going anymore. You walk alone soon, Hatsue. I hope you will carry your purity with you always and remember the truth of who you are."

- Snow falling on cedars.

The difference between 18 and 19

There's a whole lot more than one number inbetween 18 and 19...

• I enjoy it when my daddy calls me kiddo and my mommy calls me pumpkin. I'm proud to refer to my parents as 'daddy' and 'mommy'. Not everyone had as good of parents as I did, and I'm starting to realize that.
• My legs no longer bend quite as easily and in quite the angle that they used to.
• I have joined the four-eyed species.
• A boyfriend changed from an accessory to a life-time commitment.

And the biggest thing:

My little sister and I were watching Harry Potter the other day and this is how the conversation went.

Annie- "Ron is really cute. He might have to retire soon though, he's getting old, like you!"