i have been trying to write this entry for over 36 hours now. approached it from several different angles and never found my way past last friday. so i think i'm going to just hit the highlights, because if the only way to capture everything meaningful is to remember everything, this is *so* not going to get finished. sorry, shawn :)

my away message says i'm asleep, and with class in seven hours i really should be. apologies to shawn again, who would probably cite this as yet another reason why these diaries are evil incarnate. but it makes sense, really. because if i don't finish it now i'll work on it after lunch tomorrow, before my roommate gets back with the stats book at 2. and this entry will never be done before 2, and i'll continue to write it past two forsaking the stats. this way it will be done, i'll get my nap on from noon to 2 and cram for stats like it's my job. which, it sort of is.

so, here i go.

i went to my dad's house first last weekend, but i was disappointed to find out i couldn't spend as much time with him as i'd hoped. he picked steven and i up about 5:30 and told us he'd be taking us back to mom's at 11am the next day. i gathered later that this was because he and pam were going to pennsylvania saturday afternoon to scope out a glass factory or something. and i wasn't angry or anything, but it bothered me a little that he'd rather that than spend more than six waking hours with his daughter. not a big deal, just the jealous, scarred eight-year-old girl in me that realized before remarriage dad did things like take us to sea world and geauga lake literally every night the summer he had season passes, and after remarriage that all ended. i had a good, if uneventful, time anyway, discussing how school is going and taking his 85% understanding, 15% worried reaction to my decision to drop everything practical from my 4-year plan and do things that interest me. i don't know if anyone can understand it, but i'm not doing well in the classes i don't enjoy. even if i'll never make a living off a political science major/history minor, i'll have a blast doing it. and that's what's important - to me, at least.

speaking of which, that's my last major/minor decision. don't expect it to last. saturday night at borders i freaked out on my poor mother with my career woes, and she too didn't seem completely supportive of my decision to do what i enjoy at the expense of, basically, sensibility either. i was trying to immerse myself in nietsche when that obsessive-compulsive part of me wouldn't let me rest until i went back to the college/career corner and tried to find out if there was any future for a history major. i was really considering that switch. because the sort of career i would really enjoy is being a historian or researcher, which could be done with a poli sci major but history would really fit better. and i realized that i am so going to need a masters or phd for anything i want to do, which stressed me out even more because it doesn't seem feasible for that to be in my future. i guess it's best i give up my dreams of georgetown, american or gw; ohio u may be more possible than i think. so i returned to our table in the cafe and discussed my hopes and fears and as i talked to her i started to sink down into the realities of the world. depressed and stressed, there were times when i really thought i would cry. the thing that bothers me the most, i guess, is the thought that no matter what i do, my life will never be better than it will these four years in college. that thought destroys me... and it feels like it is the truth. but though my mom didn't have the answers to my career crisis, and couldn't even make me feel supported and confident in my decisions, she did calm me down, suggesting that i not insist on having all the answers right now as i am wont to do and instead visit the career center and talk to my advisor (if only i could settle on one!) when i get back to school. makes enough sense, but that would never have occurred to me alone. i would have been content to wallow in my pathetic misery. i love my mom :)

we never seem to know what to do with ourselves when i'm home. all we can think to do is go to borders, usually followed by a couple of hours watching the news and then sleep. thrilling, aren't we? this time on the way back from borders mom suggested we buy a board game. we spent half an hour selecting a game in walmart because anything affordable was kids games. steven and i wanted to get clue but mom kept saying she hated the game, since her family overplayed it when she was a child. seeing no better alternative, though, we finally wore her down. i convinced her to stop at blockbuster and get clue the movie too. i really wanted to see the whole thing, since i was in and out of consciousness the first time i tried to watch it. :) i don't think they found it half as amusing and brilliant as josh and i do, but they seemed to like it. for my part, i was excited to relive 'the flames,' the 'you know,' all the slapstick and subtle comedy and madeline kahn goodness. we played clue at least 30 times over the weekend. pretty sad, but we had fun :)

please click here :) I hated her ... so ... much ... I-It-It--flame-flames ... on the side of my face ... breathing ... breathless--heaving breaths ... heaving- couldn't help myself :)

sunday i went out with mel and rachel to get my bridesmaid's dress altered. rachel's sister in law did the honors. they told me that none of the family likes this woman, and after a while i sort of saw why. she was nice enough, but the first thing she said to me was 'so, how do you know rachel?' she's sort of the ditzy type, who puts on a real good act of being educated and it all just comes of as intolerably pretentious. but she's altering the dress for free and all that good stuff, so... yeah, i'm sorry, she's just a really annoying person. afterward i went to lunch with them and to about fifteen different stores to look for something i can't even remember, and halfway through the trip i think they forgot too. :) i told them i didn't mind though, and i didn't; if i wasn't with them, i'd probably be grocery shopping with mom. i love spending time with them, though, because even though mel is six years older than me we have a lot in common now that i'm in college, and rachel is only a couple years older than me. so that was cool, and they are so adorable together... both my brother and sister found what i would call their soulmates if i still believed in that sort of thing - it's so not fair! ;) i find it really hilarious though that mel thinks we have so much in common, that i'm so much like him and every 'normal' college student, that he just assumes i party and drink and experiment and 'do stuff' with boys. when i try to protest that i do none of these things he gives me a knowing smile and says, 'riiiiiight, lauren.' it cracks me up, he really believes it. if it wasn't so amusing i could wonder tragically how no one in my family knows me at all.

the time at home was uneventful, but it flew by. before i knew it it was tuesday morning and mom and i were trying to enjoy breakfast at big boy before i had to go back. well, trying to enjoy breakfast at big boy is a whole other story, though i will say it is difficult to do. but the approach of the going back part, that was sort of bittersweet. a part of me couldn't wait to get back to school, awaiting all the fun times i knew we'd have. my mom picked up on that and i think it made her more sad. and there was the part that was sad to leave again so soon, the part i don't think she recognizes as well. she kept apologizing for the bad food and giving me sad glances, which sort of prevented enjoying the last few hours together. it wasn't long before dad was there to pick me up and i pulled away from her fierce hugs. i think the only thing that makes me homesick at all anymore is her, knowing how much she misses me and how, plainly, unbearable her life is without me in the house, alone with steven and asshole. she makes me so devastatingly sad sometimes... but i guess, somehow, the only thing i can do for her now is make sure i don't end up the same way she has, feeling regretful and hopeless.

so anyway, when i got back to school around noon josh was away, cheryl was on the road and lani was still at home. i used the time alone to shower and whatnot, and a little while later cheryl imed me and asked if i wanted to go to lunch with her and her mom at tampico's. the hungry side of me won out over the side that felt i might be intruding and i agreed. about ten minutes after we got there josh appeared, apparently reconsidering my suggestion to come and have a drink even if he already ate. i think we scared cheryl's mom a little as we threw inside jokes back and forth, but she put up with us :) cheryl's mom is awesome, and it made me long for the day we all move in next fall in a frenzy of meeting parents and reviving old jokes. we should have everyone and their parents go to dinner together that day - it would be great. :)

so then we went back and played a couple games of clue - a big change of pace for me! :) and a round of settlers of catan. about the time that game finished cheryl checked her im and we realized lani was back so we had her come over. another game of settlers followed and then we all retired to our respective rooms to pack. lani and i went to each other's rooms to see what our dresses were like for the 'swanky dinner,' and decided that if we were going to be overdressed and sparkly then damn it, we would be overdressed and sparkly together. :) we got pizza and began a movie marathon with shakespeare in love, one of my favorite movies, for both substance and colin firth yumminess. shawn showed up at some point during the movie which just confirmed that the trip would be perfect, since i still thought he was insisting on driving to dc. the five of us together in a van for six hours both ways? yeah, it was official. :) we watched spaceballs next - which i find incredibly inane but very quotable - and actually went to bed at a normal hour. we were planning on camping out in the lobby since no one else was in the building, but we ended up going back to our rooms and getting enough sleep to be prepared for the long couple of days ahead.

i met up with everyone again at about 8:30 in the morning, intending to be the first ones to the van to get the best seats. around 8:45 i was starting to get little worried, but the van wasn't even there until 9 anyway. it all worked out and we took over the last two rows of seats in the back. i have to think we were either obnoxious or amusing (or both, alternately) to the rest of the van with our singing lobster sticks to magnet and bohemian rhapsody, throwing around old inside jokes about aardvarks and those people, and inventing new ones about staircases that go nowhere and other things i sadly cannot recall. the height of the van's annoyance was probably reached when we launched a rousing chorus of the song that never ends. happily enough, that lasted less than two verses. somewhere along the line shawn and i became engaged and planned our marriage in eighteen years, children in three, and casual sex in the intervening periods. three hours later we couldn't remember how or why we were engaged, but it was a beautiful two days of my life that ended when he found out about my husband bobert. but i will so get him back, don't worry :)

after circling alexandria three times we finally located the hotel, picked roommates, and unpacked. lani and i roomed together and we were quite pleased with the accommodations, aside from the abnormally low toilet, lack of a mint on the pillow, imprecise safety guidelines, etc that brought the hotel's 100% satisfaction guarantee down to about a 99.7%. don't worry, they totally heard about it from shawn. we decided to go to a thai restaurant for dinner, something i've never tried before. i couldn't tell you just what it is i ordered, but it was enjoyable.

later on when we found out the millers were going to the city to see some monuments we decided to join them, somehow incapable of amusing ourselves for once. as soon as i saw the washington monument again, i got *that feeling.* i'm not sure you could really understand what i mean by that, but if you can imagine the most precious thing in the world to you, something you don't see very often and hold the highest regard for, that may come close to the feeling dc gives me. the only other thing i can say is that something makes me feel like i belong there, like if there was something i was meant to do in this world i was meant to do it there. i remembered again why i'm a political science major, and there is now no doubt in my mind about it. whatever i end up doing with my life, i need to do it there. it's where i belong.

the vietnam memorial struck me this time in a way it never had before. i feel unfeeling and ignorant to admit this, but when i first went to dc and saw the memorial in 8th grade, i was confused as to why it made my friend becky burst into tears before we even reached the site. it meant more to me than it did even a year ago. this time, i must have spent an hour there, walking slowly down the length of it, taking it in. i felt that if i could read every name, i could somehow give meaning to each man's life and sacrifice. i kept realizing over and over again that these were more than names but real people, with lives, families and friends and stories to tell, and that many - too many - of them were no older than i. it seemed that if i could focus one one single name i could almost make sense of it, i could understand the death of one person. and then i would look up and let my eyes pan over the expanse of wall still ahead of me and what i had already seen, and i just couldn't wrap my mind around it. so many people... so many people, dead before their time, and for what, really? there is the feeling i get from dc, and i love my country and i have faith in my government, and then there is the feeling of this. incomprehensible. and utterly unjustifiable.

we also visited the lincoln monument and korean memorial, but neither quite brought me out of the the mood that the vietnam created. the lincoln memorial is just majestic, and i read the gettysburg address and emancipation proclaimation again, faith somewhat restored, idealism somewhat reignited. the korean memorial brought some of the somberness back again. the statues and faces on the wall make the sense that these men and women were real *people* even more real. i discovered something new about this memorial this time, that if you stand at the flagpole facing the garden of soldiers you are looking down a triangular shape straight at them all with the quote about saving a country they never knew and a people they never met at my feet. i could stand there and look at that for a long time... utterly haunting.

hotel room hijinx followed, and i have to admit that the three nights are a blur in my mind now so i will record everything i can remember of them together. i taught lani and shawn to play what my brother's science teacher calls 'oh pshaw' and what i prefer to call 'oh holy fuck.' lani fell asleep without meaning to at least two of the nights. lani talks in her sleep, which amused me greatly. :) i taught shawn, lani and josh the 'ice game,' too, which i am too much of a wimp for. i knocked over the ice. lani and i constantly had to keep josh from doing homework and shawn from going to bed. :) i remember far less of this than i wish i did, but all three nights we went to bed much earlier than i expected us to. i envisioned being up until 4 or 5 am, laughing loudly into the night until miller came pounding on the door yelling at us to keep it down. but it was a blast, anyhow.

the next morning we went to the art gallery, and josh and i decided that some of those paintings are definitely on my list of things i don't believe in. too perfect. :) it was great because as we travelled from room to room we'd be summoned from painting to painting by one of us exclaiming 'look at this one!' or, in josh's case, 'wow! just wow!' then after lunch we went to the holocaust museum, which is more the kind of thing i want to see. again i appreciated this much more than either of the two other times i'd been there. it was a very draining experience, seeing the images and reading the truth for two and a half hours. i don't think i'll forget the video of the medical experimentation any time soon, and the video at the end of the exhibit, or what i saw of it, was by far the most touching part of the whole thing. it's hard to accept human beings could ever do this... impossible for me to even grasp, yet there it is.

we went back to the hotel to change then for the 'swanky dinner.' lani and i felt utterly ridiculous in our sparkly dresses and heels, which i'm sure shawn found pretty hilarious. he tried to calm us down as we ranted about other people's outfits and proclaimed we wouldn't be going at all. i felt silly in the dress, and i felt even sillier complaining about it as much as i did - it was just generally a bad thing. we embarrassedly showed our faces to the rest of the group, making it clear to the entire world that we were none too pleased, and got into the van again. this time most of us ended up sitting in the front, beside or directly behind dhs and hogúe. as we discussed that which we discus and shouted to josh in the back, i am quite sure we lost any respect we still clinged to in the eyes of our chaperones. but i can live with that. :) we stopped at the national cathedral before dinner, which was going to be my favorite site of the trip. it's one of the few things i haven't seen in the dc area, and it looks gorgeous and breathtaking in pictures and what i saw of it from the west wing season two finale. ('you get hoynes.' aaaah...) as it turns out the cathedral closes at 5:30, so we were only able to see it from the outside. nevertheless, it was everything i expected. i hope i can get back to it to see the inside sometime soon.

they didn't have a restaurant selected and reservations made as i thought, so we ended up walking up and down the streets of georgetown looking for a swanky place to eat. my poor high-heeled feet would tell you that it took about a half an hour of walking to decide. eventually we split into two groups, and lani, shawn, jessica and i joined the millers at a middle eastern restaurant. lani felt right at home there which was awesome to see. :) she taught us the proper etiquette for eating that sort of food. without her we would have been so lost! we were amazed to find out that the millers were fans of they might be giants, and particularly referred to minimum wage. for a beautiful, brief moment we inducted them into the ranks of those people. the best part was the tokin' the smokin' hoka, which i think is best left unexplained. ;) the food was excellent; i think one of the best things about the trip was actually trying so many kinds of food i never had before.

next we went to see the rest of the major monuments. i think i may have been the only person who had already seen the fdr memorial, and was so excited to see it again. it is by far my favorite. it is so expansive, symbolic in the waterfalls, and inspirational in the quotes. fdr is one of my most beloved presidents, and that monument perfectly captures the reasons why. the jefferson memorial is to me what the lincoln is; not as touching as the rest, but still properly awe-inspiring. miller refused to listen to shawn's explanation of why he thought jefferson was a weak man and ceased to be one of those people. i showed everyone how jefferson is supposedly keeping an eye on the white house and realized that i have no depth perception.

friday was our free day, and the five of us were the 'spontaneous group.' we had no idea what we were going to do, but shawn and i promised the chaperones that we were metro- and dc-savvy and wouldn't get ourselves killed or arrested. having seen how hyper the five of us can get, i don't think any of them had much faith in that. we all had to go to the air and space museum which none of us had any particular desire to see - even perpetually awestruck josh. we sat around a lot. took some pictures. and complained. it was all worth it, though, for the farmer in the dell / family of the sun sing-a-long. we were so into that song a couple girls video-recorded us and had us wave to the camera at the end of the song. we are such complete dorks, but i swear we have more fun than anyone. cheryl called curtis from the museum and planned to go to pentagon city for lunch. pentagon city is really nice and all, everything you could ever want out of a mall. but that's just the problem: it's a mall. none of us were really in the mood for the food court, and i was afraid we would end up spending some of the day shopping. so, dc-savvy as i am, i suggested we go to dupont circle instead. last year in close up they turned us loose in the neighborhood to eat wherever we wanted and i remembered the awesome array of delis and coffeehouses. it is one of my favorite areas of the city, and i convinced everyone. it turned out to be a great choice because eventually we settled on take-out from a deli and settled around a tree in the circle itself. the food was great and it was a beautiful summer-like day. it was so peaceful and relaxed; i lost all track of time, but we must have been there two or three hours. it was fantastic (tanfastic!) to lay there, sprawled out in a heap of friends, without a care in the world. none of us ever wanted that to end. and i almost wish we could have stayed there forever. but all good things.. you know.

we went back into the heart of the city to go to one of the smithsonian history museums. shawn and i stood back and let 'our children,' josh and lani, figure out the correct metro route back. they did it, and we were proud! :) the museum was something of a disappointment to josh, who was looking forward to the egyptian exhibits. it was neat to see the hope diamond and the rest of the gem and mineral collection they have. most of that is so on my list of things i just don't believe in. crazy beautiful stuff. we were surprised to find out it closed at 5:30 (does the whole city stop at 5:30? it's nuts.) and sat outside on the stairs for a while to figure out what next. josh started talking to an older couple about travelling and fishing for a while, which was adorable. they gave us great advice i wish i knew how to follow shamelessly: don't be too responsible, there are no adults...

we finally decided to eat back in alexandria and took the advice of the exceedingly nice man at the front desk to go to hard times, a burger place down the street. the food was good but not too much happened. we were all worn out by then. when we got back to the hotel josh went back to his room to study and shawn to his to sleep. lani and i were pretty much dispairing, seeing that it was only 9:30 and we could find no way to amuse ourselves. we were two sad girls for a little while there. but shawn came back eventually and relieved us. my hero, yet again :) we played oh holy fuck and i am so repeating myself now...

the next morning we couldn't believe the trip we had looked forward to for weeks was actually over. we were on the road by a little after nine o' clock, a mixture of exhausted, wistful and migraine headache (poor shawn). we all slept, or tried to, most of the way home. toward the end, though, we all seemed to perk up and rolled out with a bunch of new quotes and inside jokes which we wrote all over josh's body. put a tarp on it, no scenery for you! oh, he's stealing something, make him stop. dammit, josh washed the quotes off, i've forgotten most! but, oh, good times.

before i knew it, we were home. it was good to be back, because i was tired. but after all those memorable moments and so much more to explore, it was hard to believe it was over. this is what i mean when i worry that life will never be better than this. because i can't imagine it will. there is nothing i want more than to spend my days with you guys; josh, shawn, cheryl, lani, i truly love you more than i know how to say. i'm looking at it in a strange way that would lead me to say each great moment that ends is a little bit sad because it will never be that way again, but the bottom line is that i am so grateful for every moment i've spent with you, and for the simple gift of your friendship. well, enough depressing talk and enough sap.

much more happened saturday night and today, but i'll have to get back to that another day. it's now 4am and i am completely crazy and stupid. but at least this beast of an entry is finally over. that didn't end up being just highlights, did it? hehe.. well i got through it. i'm going to stop lying now and actually go to bed. night all, love you :)