The website for the new blog is actually http://dreamweaving-mel.blogspot.com

Thanks :)

Hi all.

It's been fun here at onsugar, but i've decided to switch domains and start a new blog for a fresh start.

Feel free to follow me at http://dreamweaver-mel.blogspot.com

Thanks everyone :)

~Mel 

I got home from wegmans a little while ago and now I'm just chillin on the couch til it's time to go to Perkins. I drank a fruit smoothie, ate a nice, big green salad and took my vitamins... however I ended up skipping the gym today. The last two days of workouts included adding some strength training into the mix. Dan told me that its best to work out every muscle every day for a while, rather than doing one muscle group every few days... I think it's called muscle confusion. I think I've heard of it before... anyway the point i'm making is that now instead of just my legs hurting, or just my arms, or whatever, my whole body hurts today. I think I might have overdone it, so I want to take a day off.

I don't plan on intense strenght training everyday as a typical workout plan, but I read in a magazine recently that its good to do it for about a week straight once, maybe twice a year, because it confuses... your muscles? To keep you from plateuing? Lol i dunno i'm no expert on excercise. I'm just trying different things and hoping for results. Anyway i'm already cheating coz you're suppose to do it everyday for a week. Maybe I'll swing by the gym for a quick cardio workout, but muscles will have to wait til tomorrow.

Well this is all I have time for for now - gotta get ready for work. I have a feeling that tonight at perkins will be all the workout I need anyway... just a feeling that it will be one of those nights... Peace all. <3   

It is the 9th of January already. In just a couple short weeks i'll be back in school again and I must admit that I am very dissapointed with myself. I told myself that once school was over I would write, and I haven't written so much as a paragraph yet. :( I suppose there is still time, but I wonder if instead of torturing myself with guilt I should just resign myself to the fact that I probably won't write at all this winter break... shame on me. 

Atleast I am still working hard to acheive my new years resolution (losing weight and getting fit, naturally). I've been doing really good at staying motivated and since new years have been in the gym nearly every day - but there is a problem that never fails to go away, and that is perkins. Unfortunately 98.9% of the meal options there counter whatever I do in the gym, being fried or slathered in butter or oil. I'd like to start bringing my own food but from what i've heard they're 'cracking down' on people who bring their own lunches. Apparently it's a health code violation or whatever - not really sure why, it's not like I'll be eating my food on the cooks line but whatever. Either way perkins is a problem. Nights there have been slow lately, so when I get bored, I get hungry, and I order something along the lines of an app sampler, or french dip or my fav, buffalo chicken anything (buff sauce is my achilles heal when it comes to food). that and cheese, I put both on absolutely everything... haha so anyway thats the problem. The good news is due to 30 to 45 minutes on the eliptical i'm already seeing definition in my legs and I know that the rest of me will catch up - The plan is to keep with cardio for a while, even a couple months if that's what it takes, to lose weight. Then I'll add strenght training to the workout agenda. What's happening as of now due to my lack of willpower at work is that my legs are already looking good, but my stomach isn't going anywhere. I think if I can curb my intake of restaurant food i'll do alot better and see results faster - plus be healthier for it. Common knowledge about restaurant food - not only is it fattening but it is also very unhealthy.

School is looming on the horizon - while I usually look forward to going back, I'm not so much this time, because of the commute, really; being almost a full hour away from Brockport. Wintery roads will not be fun. However, I did switch my concentration from literature to creative writing, and this I am looking forward to. If I don't end up writing over break, I will for sure once I'm back in school. :)  

Merry Christmas everyone!

It has been a super low-key Christmas day here at the Bond house - not entirely normal when considering all of our past Christmas's, but it's been nice all the same. My family did not do presents this year because (alas) we are all broke as hell. So we all unamimously decided that Christmas would be alot more enjoyable for all of us if we skipped the gifts (aside from the littlest ones - my niece and nephews of course) and just have a family day. Christmas eve was spent at Kelly's with all of us there ( all of us meaning the parentals, sibs, niece and nephews) and today its just me, ma, jimmy and dad, hanging around the house and having a quiet day at home. Mom is making lasagna right now (a family favorite) and later we're going to watch House (also a fam fav). Dan is coming over tonight and and we will spend the rest of christmas together - I already saw him for the earliest part of the morning also. I went to his place and we spent the morning watching The Grinch and we exchanged gifts. I bought him some odds and ends, and the main gift was a new coat. I was so excited to see him open it, he really needed a coat and he had meantioned that he liked the pea coat style before. He worded it more like 'the coats the brothers from the Boondock Saints wear', but anyway... I found him one, and unless he's really good at masking dissapointment he loved it! It made me very happy.  

One downside to Christmas this year - my little brother Billy is over in Korea. This is the first Christmas any of us have spent without him and though it is christmas and we're all having a good day, it's a little sad too. My bro is going to be gone for a whole year, and so will Jimmy once he leaves for Iraq on the fifteenth. I know that it can't be avoided, but it sucks all the same. I will miss my bro's the whole time they are away.

Still, I am looking forward to the new year. I am completely expecting a year of changes. I have already forced myself back into the gym and even through the holidays have managed to eat better. I am finishing up school next semester (and two added courses over the summer) and am fully expecting to start interning at the Democrat & Chronicle in the fall. I'm not sure when I'll be leaving home - hopefully Dan and I will find a place of our own sometime soon - if not i'll probably have to go it alone again come summer - either way that is not my focus right now. my focus is to take it all one step at a time and progress from student/perkins and wegmans empoyee to finally graduating and maybe, just maybe, start my career as writer/journalist? Who knows. The skies' the limit, as they say. 2009 has not been my best year - full of unexpected goodbyes to good ol' friends, financial and emotional stress and just plain weird shit. I have high hopes for 2010 and I cannot wait to see what life will bring for the following year!      

Life has taken a strange and unexpected turn and I'm heading back home for a while. I'll spare you the details but something happened that made me realize the apartment I was living in wasn't the safest place so I'm leaving. After the rattling event took place I packed a bag, took off for home and I haven't been back there since. Life hasn't slowed down at all and it's hard to find the time to move everything back, but i'm hoping in the next couple days I can get everything out of there (or atleast my bedroom stuff, sleeping on the couch for a week straight has not been fun) get the place cleaned up and be done with it all. Naturally I'm breaking the lease by almost half a year and this might make it hard to find a new place but i'll cross that bridge when I get there. For now I'm going home til I figure all that out.

It's so weird being home; but good still. I feel bad coming back now coz my parents are fixing up the place and getting it ready to put on the market. It's a huge house and they can't keep up with it anymore - and now I come back moving stuff in while they're trying to clean out. I know they don't mind but I'm still gonna pay rent. I also wanna help them fix the place up while i'm here so really it's good for all of us I think.

Hopefully me and Dan will find a place soon - I thought about moving in with him but I think instead of rushing into that it's better for us both to take the time to get situated financially and whatnot then maybe find a new place to live together. I feel awful as far as Dan goes too... I think he's upset that I'm not gonna live with him - even though he hides it I can tell. But I guess I don't want to rush into a living situation with him because I got scared out of my place. I love Dan, but things feel fragile lately... I'd hate to make the wrong move now. We've both been stressed about a lot of things, and I just don't think that us living with eachother is the answer right now. I hope he understands, he needs a roommate now and think he's thinking along the lines of 'why can't you?' But I just feel like it would be bad for us right now.   

So anyway, here I am back at home. Home sights, home sounds, home smells... Home. I know I can't stay long and I don't plan on it, but for now theres no other place I'd rather be.

Though I joined a gym a while back and started off hardcore, I got down to just a couple days a week, if that, with excercise, which is alright only I went back to eating like crap also (buffalo chicken wraps at perkins almost every day, haha). I gained some weight and couldn't help but notice that my stomach was pretty bloated, and it actually stayed bloated even when I was excercising everyday a while back. So I thought to myself, maybe I'm in need of a good detox.

I have been drinking TONS, and I mean tons of water. I have been eating strictly veggies, fruits, and oatmeal, and I eat either poached or boiled eggs for my protein, or chicken or turkey. No red meats or pork, and no dairy. Which is hard for me because I love milk and cheese. I also went on the slimquick seven day cleanse thing but cut the pill dosage in half, just coz I think I don't need the full dosage if I'm eating the right food.  

This is my fourth day and I feel awesome! My body feels so much better and the bloating in my stomach is going down a little more each day. I was afraid to try the detox, just coz anything new is kind of scary to me - especially detox coz, well, its detox. But I'm glad I did it just coz I know I needed it. I have been eating perkins food almost every day for the past two years - that being the case, and the fact that my stomach was constantly round and hard made me think that something had to be done, coz something was definately off.  

The hardest thing about the diet was that I thought that I couldn't drink coffee, coz the meal plan that came with the slimquick didn't say coffee was ok, but it didn't say that it wasn't either - so I looked into the slimquick website and ended up asking some people there if its ok to drink it, and most of them said yes, coffee is ok in moderation while detoxing. I have the first cup of coffee since I started the detox here with me and its heavenly.  

After I'm done with this (sunday is technically my last day, but I'm already feeling alright so I might cut it short) I will take up excercising again to tone up and try not to go straight back to the foods that have been my downfall - as is what usually happens after one completes a detox. People sometimes have a tendancy to go back and fill up again on the foods that threw their bodies off in the first place. But to tell the truth, I'm doing alright, I was at perkins last night and even though I wanted a buffalo chicken wrap, I felt so much better that I was like 'nah', don't wanna mess up a good thing. so I had Josh make me a wrap with boiled eggs, tomato, lettuce, and turkey. It was yummy - and not a bad option in place of the buff wrap. Sometimes. haha. I don't expect to get off this diet and eat perfectly all the time. Just most of the time. If i can. Making changes to your diet, especially when you work in a restaurant, is more than challenging, but it can be done. I just hope that when this is over feeling good will be enough to keep me on the right track.      

It is time for me to make a change.

I want, and always have wanted, to be a writer. I want to build myself up as a person who is capable of the demands placed upon a writer and who can make my name, sacrifice and start small in the hopes of building a career. Or to atleast add to my collection of part-time jobs. 

I always dreamed that it would be different somehow; that something brilliant would strike me. I would quit my jobs, sit down at my lap-top, and crank out a masterpiece in a matter of weeks. This book would go down in history as a phenomenon. Hollywood would make movies about it, Oprah would put it on her booklist, and it would be amazing. I have entertained dreams of fame, fortune, status, and a place among the greatest writers in the world.  

This is impossible. Or so close to impossible that I might as well admit that it is. And while I believe that dreams of wealth and celebrity are completely common, I know that that is what they are - dreams. Fantasy. Made up in my head not as a goal for myself but as a means of amusement. I can't expect myself to reach levels of greatness. I can't be J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. I can't expect to be the next pop-culture phenomenon like Stephanie Meyer or J.K Rowling. However fun it is to entertain these thoughts, I can't expect myself to be remembered for my writing. However, I can expect myself to use writing as a means, however small, to support myself and make some kind of money at it.  

Being a shameless dreamer and a persistent realist at the same time makes for a very complicated existance. But at times this can cause me to come to some reasonable conclusions. I know that while I am far from someone who will reach limitless sucess, I can still write. And now I have to use this to my advantage.

I promised myself that I wouldn't bring these matters into this blog, but lets face it. Like virtually every other american in this country right now, I am broke. I'm not making the money I use to waiting tables, because other people are broke too. They aren't going to restaurants to eat anymore. prices are going up and our tips are steadily going down. Wegmans isn't hiring full-time, so I can only make so much there. So, what to do?

I have this gift, and it is a meager gift for times such as these - if only I had a gift that could be implemented more in the working world; a gift for handling money, for math, for accounting, or a gift for understanding people and having the ability to make the small talk necessary to make the tips that I need. If only I was a brave person, like Dan or my brothers, maybe I would join the military and serve my country. If I had a gift with animals, I would be a vet, or raise horses or cows and have my own farm.

I am none of these things, and I certainly do not have the desire to continue on for too much longer at either of my jobs. I can finish school, but that will take time, and I still don't know what I want from it.   

I am at a crossroads, and I have decided that once and for all, it is time to take action.

I have decided to pursue freelance writing part-time. I spent all day yesterday trying to figure out the process, and it is hard. Most of the jobs available are for technical writing, and writing for business, and coorporate companies. It is ghost writing - writing books and stories for other people. Its writing for ads, blogs (not fun blogs, like this one. Boring blogs), and legal matters. It. Will. Be. Boring - Tedious! I'm sure that it will not be what I want to do for the rest of my life. But it is something that I can do. And it is a start. And maybe in the process I will come across something or someone that will help me along in my pursuits - no, not in fame or fortune or Oprah's booklist. But just in something that I want to do, and have some hope of using as a means to supprort myself.

I always told myself that no matter what I would write what I wanted, when I wanted and I would never write for someone other than myself. The idealist in me can't stop thinking of this thing I can do as a gift. But the realists' way of thinking has gotten the better of me these days, and having a gift for writing isn't getting me anywhere. It's time to recognize it as a skill, and to implement it, one way or another, as a means to survive in this crazy world.

I can't help but think of a story my high school art teacher, Mr. Erb, once told his class. He said when he was a young man, he did a painting that someone was willing to pay him for to paint over again. Mr. Erb turned down the offer. He said he  though 'No way'. That painting was an original - it was great and he wasn't going to copy it to make a little  money. He said maybe if he had been willing to copy it; to perhaps build a clientel and implement his work and his skill, he wouldn't have been teaching high school at that point. It didn't surprise me in the least. He was a great art teacher, but I and probably the rest of the students could tell that he really didn't like his job.      

No artist, no writer - no person with a creative flair wants to sell themselves for less than what they know they are capable of. None of us want to feel like we are cheapening our talents to work for someone else. Most of us are loners at heart. We don't like authority, and we believe in ourselves (or our abilities alteast) almost to a fault. But the truth is, only a select few writers and artists in the world go from zero to sucess. It takes time, and patience, and maybe some level of shit work, just like any other job. I have decided that I am willing to find out. Maybe it will work out, maybe it won't, who knows? Maybe once I work my way up I'll find some projects that I love and switch my career path from novelist to full-time freelancer. Whatever happens, I have to do something to atleast try to get out of place where I sit now.                             

I've never been much of a poet - even during my creative peaks my skill in verse is shabby at best. But in my high hopes to start writing again, i'm trying a little of this and a little of that to make something of the mushy, unexcercised blob that has become my hybernating creativity. I'm not expecting much from it, but here goes.

Flower City Summer

Of gloom and mist and pouring days,

Of a summer hid behind a sobbing gray,

I asked the heavens to  end the rain

That drowns my heart this year.

"Give back the sun!" I cried outloud,

Lift up this dark and dreary shroud,

Let the light loose through the clouds,

To smite the reign of tears.

Never has there been a summer so cold,

To match these hardships that I hold,

That choke and kill my very soul -

That traps me up in fear.

But then I look again today,

The clouds dispersed and gone away,

The storm has passed with its dismay

To unmask the sky so clear.

The sun shines down its light so pure,

Why today, I cannot be sure,

To lift the mood that i've endured

This entire summer here.

The Flower City hardly shines,

The warmth of summer, it declines

More and more til the skies run dry,

A few blessed days per year.

The sun will hide its face again,

My heart will sink to the mundain

and iced in cold it will remain,

Til the warmth again appears.

~MHB~

I had a dream the other night that has stayed with me almost every hour since I woke from it. It was very real, very sad and very detailed. I haven't dreamed like this in a very long time. I suppose because of an odd and random sleeping pattern due to an odd and random schedule, I can't really dream the way I use to, my body doesn't allow itself to rest the way it did before. I don't know what was different about the other night, but it was one of those dreams when you wake up and think - 'woah'....

I had a dream that I had a daughter. It began with me holding her all wrapped up in a little pink blanket, and in the dream, I felt completely and undeniably afraid, and trapped. I had to get away and I handed her to my sister-in-law Shayne. "I'll be back later." I told her. And I took off. this is where the dream got all random and strange but I think I was traveling. The country, the world? I don't know what I was doing, but the general feeling I had was of trying to get away.

When I came back - back was actually in my parents backyard - I saw Shayne at the top of the hill. "Shayne!" I called out, panicking suddenly with my baby girl nowhere to be found. "Where's Aleasha?" 

"Eliza." Shayne said to me. She sneered at me. In real life I don't think Shayne has ever 'sneered' at anyone.

"What?" I said.

"You named her Eliza, remember? She's over there."

I looked over to where Shayne was pointing and someone peaking out at me from behind the willow branches. She stepped out and I couldn't believe my eyes. She wasn't a baby anymore, she was a little girl. In the dream I thought I was gone for just a couple days. Strange considering that I seem to remember traveling, but you know how dreams are.

I remember everything about her. She looked to be about seven or eight years old. She was barefoot and she had on a pink tee-shirt and jeans. She was tan and had brown hair - she was like a little me, except her eyes. They were green - and very, very sad. I remember I tried talking to her, and I started crying because I knew I missed so many years and so many things and I didn't even know it. I told her I missed her, and I was sorry and I loved her. She looked at me blankly. She said nothing. And then I woke up.

Yup - it was definately a 'woah' moment.

I tend to believe that dreams, every dream, means something - especially one like that. Of course, being dreams and having alot to do with the subconcious mind, I very rarely take them literally. This dream (I hope) doesn't mean that I will someday be a horrible mother who goes gallavanting the globe for years and selfishly leaves her child behind because she's afraid to face the responsibilty.

I feel I can only guess what dreams like this really mean. Does it speak the obvious in that I don't feel ready for children - my minds way of reiterating what I already know? Does it have to do with motherhood at all? I wondered if it had to do with my mom and myself? My mother never abandond me, but I think that regardless, daughters tend to be very unforgiving of thier mothers no matter what they do. Though I love my mother dearly, our relationship is no exception to the rule. Eliza looked like me in every way, except her eyes, which were green - my moms eyes are green. Was my subconcious, figuratively, allowing me to see mom looking at things from my perspective and I from hers?

It really gave me something to think about - and really it was a gift in a way, however horrible the dream felt to me. I hope I never made my mom feel that way, with the cold silence I would often give her when I was mad at her. I wondered if she ever deserved that feeling - I don't think she ever did. Still, whether the way she made me feel sometimes was warranted or not, I wonder if she ever had an experience like this. Of something the might have forced her into mine or my siblings shoes?

I'm not sure what it really means, if it has to do with any of this at all. Either way, I was glad for it. It truely was one of those rare and meaningful dreams - not like a dream at all, but like an experience, like a defining moment in life. I won't ever forget it, I won't forget Eliza - true if I ever have a daughter I might not name her that. It would be kind of cool - but kind of starting off on the wrong foot, I think. If she ever asked me why I picked that name it would be kind of weird to tell her 'I had a dream I abandoned you long before you were even born.' Lol. That was a bad joke.