enough.

That's it, simply. Enough. There are hundreds of things I could say. Interpreting my feelings into words is my life, but this is all I can come up with:

I just want to be enough.

In the mean time.. Stephen Christian will be singing me to sleep.

Good night, moon.

اللغة, jezik, taal, language, la langue, γλώσσα, teanga, teanga, idioma,

Language.

It is the single greatest tool in human interaction, growth, education, and art.

Without it...

There would be no memoirs of the past

Art could be created, but never studied

No classic novels would line bookshelves

Education itself would cease to exist

My purpose, or what I have purposed of myself, would cease to exist.

Without language I could not write, speak or sing my mind, my emotions or my beliefs.

Despite all of this, and the beauty of language itself, I find myself wondering...

When did we begin to stray away from utilizing language it its simplest form of expression, to utilizing crude, insulting and damning* words?

It has even reached the point in which we now much come up with words to replace the crude, so that we do not actually "curse," but the potent force is still in the statement.

[See: dang, gosh darnit, freaking, crap, shoot]

You will all recognize these words and be able to match them with their explicit counterpart.

I am not and do not claim to be innocent of either cursing or using the above described surrogates, but I have recently come to recognize that I have the ability to express myself with the same forcefulness, the same ferocity and emotion in my language without these words.

I decided today to scroll through the most emotional and heartfelt of my blogs, not only of the posts on this one, but writing from the past. Not once did I utilize a curse as a method of expressing my anger, sorrow, disgust or passion.

My blogs, my writings, are a place where I focus on my given language, my education and my experiences to express myself, and I've always managed to do this, on paper so to speak, without any foul language.

I know I can't change others or make them understand the conclusion I've come to, but I will make a stand on my own.

I, Brittany Suzanne Conrad, will not consciously use any curse, or surrogate curse, to depict my emotional, physical or mental state at any given time, or to describe or denounce any belief of idea, no matter how strongly I may feel.

I say consciously, because I know that I am human and I will slip up. This is an inevitability which I cannot denounce, but I will try to the best of my ability to utilize my given language and my higher education to express myself through more appropriate means.

I'll keep the blogging world updated of my progress, and I'll always have this post to remind me of the promise I've made to myself and whoever may stumble upon my words.

*The use of the word 'damning' in this post I do not consider a curse, because I was using it in its literal and given definition. Go read your bible.

The Greatest Reunion

I'll initiate this post by revealing that 18 days ago, on September 1, my beloved cat Esme left my house in Katy to do some exploring. Generally she stays out for a few hours and then comes back home, but this time she didn't. My mom didn't tell me this because she didn't want to get me worked up for no reason, in case Esme came back home some time in the night. (As I said in my previous post, I am now living in an apartment downtown so I wasn't home when Esme was let out.) However, when I arrived at my mom's house two days later, I noticed two distinct problems: first, the garage door was not propped open as per the usual, which allows Esme to go in and out of the house, second, Esme did not run up to greet me when I got out of my car as she always does. I called my mom to inquire about Esme, and she told me that she hadn't come home since Wednesday morning.

Of course a thousand terrible thoughts filled my head as to what could have become of my little girl, so I drove around the neighborhood looking for her (or, heaven forbid, her body) and came up empty. I continued looking for her and asking my neighbors, but nobody saw her and she was certainly not roaming around. At that point I had to content myself with the idea that someone would find her and call me, seeing as she had a collar with my name and number on it. Though the days, and weeks, passed I refused to accept that my Esme was really gone, and, as it turns out, with good reason!

On Friday night, September 17, I was sitting in the gameroom at my mom's house in Katy when I got a phone call from my best friend Kristy. In the course of our conversation she asked me if I had found Esme yet, to which I reluctantly answered "no." Just then my phone beeped that I had a call on the other line. It was a number that I didn't recognize, so I let it go to voicemail. When I got off the phone with Kristy I saw that the mystery caller left a message, so I checked it. A male voice that I didn't recognize said that he had found my cat and left a number for me to call back. I jumped out of my chair and started yelling, "he found my kitty!" My mom and her friend Michelle looked at me like I was crazy until they realized what I was saying. I called the man back and he told me that he had Esme and he could hold her for me until I could come get her. Then came the truly miraculous part, he had found her in his neighborhood in Sugarland, TX. That's a 30 minute drive from my mom's house, how could Esme possibly have made it that far?!

My mom and I immediately hopped in the car to make the drive to Sugarland, and the entire way we kept marveling at how Esme could have made that entire trip on foot. When we picked her up she looked clean, healthy and had a mysterious flea collar on her which I know I hadn't put on her before she left. So, my mom and I came to this conclusion: someone found her, took her in to their home (presumably in Sugarland) and she either got out, or was let out, and she attempted to make her way back home. I'm just glad she managed to run into a very lovely couple who were more than happy to help reunite a lost kitty with her family.

The next day my mom and I took Esme into the vet to get her some Capstar in case she had gotten fleas during her journey, and while we were at Petsmart I just couldn't help myself, I had to buy her a new, clean collar and a nice pink sweater to match.

She's not a fan of the sweater, but she's just so adorbs!

I took the sweater off of her right after this picture, but I just had to take at least one. I'm just happy that my little girl is back home safe where she belongs, and I'll definitely be getting a microchip put in her soon. I can't risk losing my Esme again!

Life Wars: Return of the Blogger

I don't really know where to begin. It's been nearly two years since I posted an entry on this blog, which you can obviously tell from the date. I guess I'll simply be using this entry to give a short update on my life.
In December of 2008 I moved back to Houston to attend the University of Houston. I am now a Cougar. Rawr.Esme, the kitten seen in my last post, grew up to become a beautiful cat, and had three adorable kittens: Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and Luna Lovegood. Ron and Hermione were given to loving homes, and my boyfriend, Nava, took Luna, despite reminding me consistently throughout Esme's pregnancy that we couldn't keep any of the babies (he's a total pushover when it comes to kittens). We renamed Luna (Nava insisted he didn't want any pets named after movie/book characters) and she is now our 6 month old Little Bear. Oh, and there's my boyfriend, I didn't have him where I left off on the blog. A little over a year ago I decided that Justin Nava needed to be my boyfriend. Sounds ridiculous, and it was, but that's how it happened. Coincidentally, Nava didn't want to be my boyfriend, which was rather problematic. However, one night I stormed over to his house and demanded he date me, and that, ladies and gents, is how our relationship began. Despite the rocky beginning, things have been pretty wonderful, and Nava is pretty much amazing. I'll leave off on that note, so I don't start getting all sappy and annoying.

Behold: The Happy Brittany

In other news, I've moved out of my parents' home in Katy, Texas, to be closer to school. My new roommates are Michael Pushkin, aka "Push," and his adorable dog, Dr. Scientist, aka "Monster."

Push and Monster

They're pretty awesome roommates, I must say, and they certainly add a little excitement to my life.

So, all-in-all, things are going well. Hopefully I'll be able to spend more time blogging now, or at least I'll remember to update more regularly. Until next time, blogging world, and many happy returns.