So I few months back I wrote about my new-found interest in Public Relations. I was so excited to have finally found something that interested me that also had the possibility of a stable future. And being that I'm an English Literature major, the stable interests seem to be few and far between, which made PR all the more appealing.
Wanting to know anything and everything I could about the field, I dove in head-first; taking Q&A interviews left and right and applying for as many internships as I could find. Not a bad approach, I have to admit. If nothing else, it provided me the opportunity to really research the topic and see if it would be the right fit.
Alas, it was not. I learned that, as much as I enjoy having a blog and using social media sites, I do not want the list of sites I regularly visit to be a part of my resume. Sharing them with a group of strangers during a recent interview left me feeling over-exposed and vulnerable in a way that I did not care for. That incident - among a few others - showed me, in no uncertain terms, that PR is not right for me.
So I continue to search. There are few topics of interest that I'm pursuing - and none of them require the list of social media sites I regulate to be part of my resume.
June 20, 2010
March 25, 2010
March 23, 2010
Another Internship
A few months ago I did an internship with Paradigm Communications Group - the people who bring you Alaska Air and Horizon Air Magazines. Today I received a phone call from Email Broadcast - a company that does PR work for other companies. They have an internship opening that I applied for last week and they've asked me to come in and interview.
I'm nervous and excited!
I'm nervous and excited!
March 22, 2010
Can You Believe It?
I had my second Q&A interview today with a Public Relations rep today. I'm trying to meet as many people in the field as I can in an effort to learn more about it and, of course, make contacts that might lead to a future job.
Ever since my Communications and Media class introduced me to the importance of writing in the PR industry, I've sought out to learn more about it. You know, being an English major, I often get asked, "what do you plan on doing with your degree?" I just never expected my answer to be PR. But the more I learn about it, the more I get excited about my future in the field.
My first interview was with someone in the cruise industry. Today's was with someone in insurance. As different as their tasks seem to be, there were a lot of similarities too. For instance, both companies are starting to focus on social media. The second, is that both people mentioned how fast-paced, challenging and how varied the work is. Both of those excite me.
Because I've been inspired by these interviews and found their advice relevant and helpful, I have decided to pick back up with my blog. If my goal is to work in PR and focus on social media, I should practice what I preach and focus more time on the social media that I'm already a part of.
Is it possible that I've found my career? All signs point to yes. My next step is to continue to meet as many people in PR as possible to ask questions and network. I've never had the desire to do so much work for a potential job/career. I must really want this!
Ever since my Communications and Media class introduced me to the importance of writing in the PR industry, I've sought out to learn more about it. You know, being an English major, I often get asked, "what do you plan on doing with your degree?" I just never expected my answer to be PR. But the more I learn about it, the more I get excited about my future in the field.
My first interview was with someone in the cruise industry. Today's was with someone in insurance. As different as their tasks seem to be, there were a lot of similarities too. For instance, both companies are starting to focus on social media. The second, is that both people mentioned how fast-paced, challenging and how varied the work is. Both of those excite me.
Because I've been inspired by these interviews and found their advice relevant and helpful, I have decided to pick back up with my blog. If my goal is to work in PR and focus on social media, I should practice what I preach and focus more time on the social media that I'm already a part of.
Is it possible that I've found my career? All signs point to yes. My next step is to continue to meet as many people in PR as possible to ask questions and network. I've never had the desire to do so much work for a potential job/career. I must really want this!
August 25, 2009
Did You Know?
I recently wrote a research paper for my Politics and Culture class on the influence that Marijuana has on current California politics and I came across this interesting time-line. Thought I'd share:
Cannabis Chronology [Edited]
• 2737 BC: Cannabis referred to as a "superior" herb in the world's first medical text, or pharmacopoeia, Shen Nung's Pen Ts'ao, in China
• 1400 BC : Cultural and religious use of ganga or cannabis, and charas or hashish (resin) recorded used by Hindus in India.
• 300 BC : Carthage and Rome struggle for political and commercial power over hemp and spice trade routes in the Mediterranean.
• 70 BC : Roman Emperor Nero's surgeon, Dioscorides, praises cannabis for making the stoutest cords and for its medicinal properties.
• 100 AD : Roman surgeon Dioscorides names the plant cannabis sativa and describes various medicinal uses. Pliny reported of industrial uses and wrote a manual on farming hemp.
• 400 AD : Cannabis cultivated for the first time in the UK at Old Buckenham Mere
• 800 AD : Mohammed allows cannabis but forbids the use of alcohol.
• 1000 AD : The English word "hempe" first listed in a dictionary. Moslems produce hashish medicine and social use.
• 1150 AD : Moslems use hemp to start Europe's first paper mill. Most of the paper is made from hemp for the next 750 years, including Bibles.
• 1563 AD : English Queen Elizabeth I decrees that land owners with more than 60 acres must grow hemp or be fined 5 pounds.
• 1611 AD : The British start growing cannabis in Virginia.
• 1621 AD : Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy claims cannabis is a treatment for depression.
• 1631 AD : Hemp used as money throughout American colonies.
• 1632 AD : The Pilgrims take cannabis to New England.
• 1763 AD : New English Dictionary says cannabis root applied to skin eases inflammation.
• 1776 AD : Declaration of Independence drafted on hemp paper.
• 1839 AD : Homeopathy journal 'American Provers' Union' publishes first report on effects of cannabis.
• 1845 AD : Psychologist and inventor of modern psychopharmacology and psychotomimetric drug treatment, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours documents physical and mental benefits of cannabis.
• 1860 AD : First governmental commission study of cannabis and hashish conducted by Ohio State Medical Society. It catalogues the conditions for which cannabis is beneficial: neuralgia, nervous rheumatism, mania, whooping cough, asthma, chronic bronchitis, muscular spasms, epilepsy, infantile convulsions, palsy, uterine haemorrhage, dysmenorrhea, hysteria, alcohol withdrawal and loss of appetite.
• 1870 AD : Cannabis listed in US Pharmacopoeia as a medicine.
• 1894 AD : British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission studies social use of cannabis and comes out firmly against its prohibition.
• 1910 AD : African-American "reefer" use reported in Jazz Clubs in New Orleans, said to be influencing white people. Mexicans smoking marijuana in Texas. South Africa prohibits cannabis.
• 1912 AD : "Essay on Hasheesh" by Victor Rolson. Possibilities of putting controls on cannabis use is first raised.
• 1912 AD : Hague Conference; second international meeting on drugs. 46 nations discuss opium, morphine, cocaine, heroin and cannabis. The Hague Convention for the Suppression of Opium and Other Drugs, was drawn up, requiring parties to confine to medical and legitimate purposes the manufacture, sale and use of opium, heroin, morphine and cocaine; Cannabis was not included. (From Mandeson, D. From Mr Sin to Mr Big, A history of Australian Drug Laws, Oxford University Press Melbourne 1995)
• 1919 AD : Texas outlaws cannabis. Alcohol is prohibited throughout the USA. Cannabis is still legal in most States.
• 1928 AD : UK Dangerous Drugs Act (September 28th) 1925 becomes law and makes cannabis illegal.
• 1929 AD : The Panama Canal Zone Report concludes that there is no evidence that cannabis use is habit-forming or deleterious, recommending no action be taken against cannabis use or sale.
• 1930 AD : Henry Ford makes his motor cars out of hemp with hemp paint and hemp fuel. New machines invented to break hemp, process the fibre and convert the pulp or hurds into paper, plastics etc. 1200 hash bars in New York City. Racist fears of Mexicans, Asians and African-Americans lead the cry for cannabis to be outlawed.
• 1937 AD : Marijuana Tax Act forbids hemp farming. The Act was based on the Machine Gun Transfer Act which made it illegal to pass on machine guns without a government stamp - there being no such stamps available. By applying this strategy to marijuana, Anslinger was able to effectively ban hemp without contravening constitutional rights.
• 1937 AD : DuPont files patents for nylon, plastics and a new bleaching process for paper. Anslinger testifies to congress that Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug known to man. The objections of the American Medical Association are ignored. The Marijuana Transfer Tax Bill (14th April) introduced to US House, Ways and Means Committee, passed December, prohibits industrial and medical uses and calls flowering tops a narcotic. Violations attract 200 dollar fines. Birdseed, rope and cordage are exempted from tax.
• 1937 AD : DuPont patents plastics, seizing the opportunity created by cannabis hemp prohibition
• 1941 AD : Cannabis dropped from USA Pharmacopoeia
• 1943 AD : Hemp for Victory program urges farmers to grow hemp to help war effort.
• 1943 AD : US Military Surgeon magazine declares that smoking cannabis is no more harmful than smoking tobacco.
• 1944 AD : Anslinger threatens doctors who carry out cannabis research with imprisonment.
• 1945 AD : USA 'Newsweek' reports over 100,000 Americans use cannabis.
• 1955 AD : Hemp farming outlawed again.
• 1970 AD : Social use of cannabis receives widespread acceptance despite illegality; policy of decriminalisation sweeps across USA and Britain.
• 1970 AD : LeDain Report (Canada) recommended that serious consideration be given to the legalisation of personal possession of marijuana. It finds that cannabis use increases self-confidence, feelings of creativity and sensual awareness, facilitates concentration and self-acceptance, reduces tension, hostility and aggression and may produce psychological but not physical dependence. The report recommends that possession laws be repealed
• 1970 AD : R. Keith Stroup founds NORML 'National Organisation for Reform of Marijuana Laws', in UDSA.
•1992 AD : USA Jim Montgomery, a paraplegic who smoked cannabis to relieve muscle spasm, busted for two ounces of marijuana in Oklahoma, arrested and sentenced to life plus 16 years.
•1993 AD : German High Court in Kruhe rules that cannabis prohibition is unconstitutional.
•1995 AD : November 11 : British journal of the medical profession, The Lancet, states that "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health".
• 1995 AD : Henrion Commission Report, the official French State Commission in charge of drug policy supports decriminalisation of cannabis and calls for a two-year trial period of regulated retail trade in cannabis. The French Government reject these proposals.
•1996 AD : Ireland announces their plans to use cannabis as fuel to replace the use of the dwindling supplies of peat
•1996 AD : California and Arizona pass Propositions allowing the use of cannabis in the treatment of certain illnesses, Clinton is re-elected and the FBI threaten Doctors with prosecution.
•1996 AD : A Swiss man, Zimmermann, is given a life sentence in the Maldives, for importing three cannabis seeds, found in his luggage as he flew in from India.
•1997 AD : An 8-year study at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine, concluded that long-term smokers of cannabis do not experience a greater annual decline in lung functions than non-smokers. Researchers said: "Findings from the present long-term follow-up study of heavy, habitual marijuana smokers argue against the concept that the continuing heavy use of marijuana is a significant factor for the development of [chronic lung disease]"."No difference were noted between even quite heavy marijuana smoking and non-smoking of marijuana." Volume 155 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Clinical Care Medicine 1997
•1997 AD : January16 : A court in Texas, USA, sentences medical marijuana user, William J. Foster to 93 years imprisonment for cultivation of one plant.
•1997 AD : After appeals for clemency from the Swiss Government and letters from CLCIA supporters, the Maldives releases Zimmermann, the man given life for three seeds.
•1997 AD : The Kaiser Permanente Study (USA) - "Marijuana Use and Mortality" April 1997 American Journal of Public Health concludes "Relatively few adverse clinical effects from the chronic use of marijuana have been documented in humans. However, the criminalization of marijuana use may itself be a health hazard, since it may expose the users to violence and criminal activity."
•1999 AD : February 23: UK: 55-year-old arthritis sufferer jailed for one year for using cannabis to relieve his pain
•1999 AD : March 4 : ALASKA: Medical Marijuana Law Starts
•2000 AD: December 22: CANADA: Legal Marijuana Operation Opens
•2002 AD: December: US Study Defies Gateway Theory That Cannabis Use Leads To Use Of Hard Drugs.
•2007 AD: April: Harvard university study shows that Delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana, cuts tumour growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread
•2008 AD: Medical marijuana vending machines take root in Los Angeles. The DEA is not amused.
•2008 AD: May : UK government announces cannabis will be upgraded from class C to Class B. Its scientific experts, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, recommend cannabis should remain class C.
•2009 AD: May : Marijuana in California is now "available as a medical treatment in California to almost anyone who tells a willing physician he would feel better if he smoked." (Washington Post)
(to be continued.....)
~http://www.cannabis.org.uk/marijuana-timeline.html
Cannabis Chronology [Edited]
• 2737 BC: Cannabis referred to as a "superior" herb in the world's first medical text, or pharmacopoeia, Shen Nung's Pen Ts'ao, in China
• 1400 BC : Cultural and religious use of ganga or cannabis, and charas or hashish (resin) recorded used by Hindus in India.
• 300 BC : Carthage and Rome struggle for political and commercial power over hemp and spice trade routes in the Mediterranean.
• 70 BC : Roman Emperor Nero's surgeon, Dioscorides, praises cannabis for making the stoutest cords and for its medicinal properties.
• 100 AD : Roman surgeon Dioscorides names the plant cannabis sativa and describes various medicinal uses. Pliny reported of industrial uses and wrote a manual on farming hemp.
• 400 AD : Cannabis cultivated for the first time in the UK at Old Buckenham Mere
• 800 AD : Mohammed allows cannabis but forbids the use of alcohol.
• 1000 AD : The English word "hempe" first listed in a dictionary. Moslems produce hashish medicine and social use.
• 1150 AD : Moslems use hemp to start Europe's first paper mill. Most of the paper is made from hemp for the next 750 years, including Bibles.
• 1563 AD : English Queen Elizabeth I decrees that land owners with more than 60 acres must grow hemp or be fined 5 pounds.
• 1611 AD : The British start growing cannabis in Virginia.
• 1621 AD : Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy claims cannabis is a treatment for depression.
• 1631 AD : Hemp used as money throughout American colonies.
• 1632 AD : The Pilgrims take cannabis to New England.
• 1763 AD : New English Dictionary says cannabis root applied to skin eases inflammation.
• 1776 AD : Declaration of Independence drafted on hemp paper.
• 1839 AD : Homeopathy journal 'American Provers' Union' publishes first report on effects of cannabis.
• 1845 AD : Psychologist and inventor of modern psychopharmacology and psychotomimetric drug treatment, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours documents physical and mental benefits of cannabis.
• 1860 AD : First governmental commission study of cannabis and hashish conducted by Ohio State Medical Society. It catalogues the conditions for which cannabis is beneficial: neuralgia, nervous rheumatism, mania, whooping cough, asthma, chronic bronchitis, muscular spasms, epilepsy, infantile convulsions, palsy, uterine haemorrhage, dysmenorrhea, hysteria, alcohol withdrawal and loss of appetite.
• 1870 AD : Cannabis listed in US Pharmacopoeia as a medicine.
• 1894 AD : British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission studies social use of cannabis and comes out firmly against its prohibition.
• 1910 AD : African-American "reefer" use reported in Jazz Clubs in New Orleans, said to be influencing white people. Mexicans smoking marijuana in Texas. South Africa prohibits cannabis.
• 1912 AD : "Essay on Hasheesh" by Victor Rolson. Possibilities of putting controls on cannabis use is first raised.
• 1912 AD : Hague Conference; second international meeting on drugs. 46 nations discuss opium, morphine, cocaine, heroin and cannabis. The Hague Convention for the Suppression of Opium and Other Drugs, was drawn up, requiring parties to confine to medical and legitimate purposes the manufacture, sale and use of opium, heroin, morphine and cocaine; Cannabis was not included. (From Mandeson, D. From Mr Sin to Mr Big, A history of Australian Drug Laws, Oxford University Press Melbourne 1995)
• 1919 AD : Texas outlaws cannabis. Alcohol is prohibited throughout the USA. Cannabis is still legal in most States.
• 1928 AD : UK Dangerous Drugs Act (September 28th) 1925 becomes law and makes cannabis illegal.
• 1929 AD : The Panama Canal Zone Report concludes that there is no evidence that cannabis use is habit-forming or deleterious, recommending no action be taken against cannabis use or sale.
• 1930 AD : Henry Ford makes his motor cars out of hemp with hemp paint and hemp fuel. New machines invented to break hemp, process the fibre and convert the pulp or hurds into paper, plastics etc. 1200 hash bars in New York City. Racist fears of Mexicans, Asians and African-Americans lead the cry for cannabis to be outlawed.
• 1937 AD : Marijuana Tax Act forbids hemp farming. The Act was based on the Machine Gun Transfer Act which made it illegal to pass on machine guns without a government stamp - there being no such stamps available. By applying this strategy to marijuana, Anslinger was able to effectively ban hemp without contravening constitutional rights.
• 1937 AD : DuPont files patents for nylon, plastics and a new bleaching process for paper. Anslinger testifies to congress that Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug known to man. The objections of the American Medical Association are ignored. The Marijuana Transfer Tax Bill (14th April) introduced to US House, Ways and Means Committee, passed December, prohibits industrial and medical uses and calls flowering tops a narcotic. Violations attract 200 dollar fines. Birdseed, rope and cordage are exempted from tax.
• 1937 AD : DuPont patents plastics, seizing the opportunity created by cannabis hemp prohibition
• 1941 AD : Cannabis dropped from USA Pharmacopoeia
• 1943 AD : Hemp for Victory program urges farmers to grow hemp to help war effort.
• 1943 AD : US Military Surgeon magazine declares that smoking cannabis is no more harmful than smoking tobacco.
• 1944 AD : Anslinger threatens doctors who carry out cannabis research with imprisonment.
• 1945 AD : USA 'Newsweek' reports over 100,000 Americans use cannabis.
• 1955 AD : Hemp farming outlawed again.
• 1970 AD : Social use of cannabis receives widespread acceptance despite illegality; policy of decriminalisation sweeps across USA and Britain.
• 1970 AD : LeDain Report (Canada) recommended that serious consideration be given to the legalisation of personal possession of marijuana. It finds that cannabis use increases self-confidence, feelings of creativity and sensual awareness, facilitates concentration and self-acceptance, reduces tension, hostility and aggression and may produce psychological but not physical dependence. The report recommends that possession laws be repealed
• 1970 AD : R. Keith Stroup founds NORML 'National Organisation for Reform of Marijuana Laws', in UDSA.
•1992 AD : USA Jim Montgomery, a paraplegic who smoked cannabis to relieve muscle spasm, busted for two ounces of marijuana in Oklahoma, arrested and sentenced to life plus 16 years.
•1993 AD : German High Court in Kruhe rules that cannabis prohibition is unconstitutional.
•1995 AD : November 11 : British journal of the medical profession, The Lancet, states that "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health".
• 1995 AD : Henrion Commission Report, the official French State Commission in charge of drug policy supports decriminalisation of cannabis and calls for a two-year trial period of regulated retail trade in cannabis. The French Government reject these proposals.
•1996 AD : Ireland announces their plans to use cannabis as fuel to replace the use of the dwindling supplies of peat
•1996 AD : California and Arizona pass Propositions allowing the use of cannabis in the treatment of certain illnesses, Clinton is re-elected and the FBI threaten Doctors with prosecution.
•1996 AD : A Swiss man, Zimmermann, is given a life sentence in the Maldives, for importing three cannabis seeds, found in his luggage as he flew in from India.
•1997 AD : An 8-year study at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine, concluded that long-term smokers of cannabis do not experience a greater annual decline in lung functions than non-smokers. Researchers said: "Findings from the present long-term follow-up study of heavy, habitual marijuana smokers argue against the concept that the continuing heavy use of marijuana is a significant factor for the development of [chronic lung disease]"."No difference were noted between even quite heavy marijuana smoking and non-smoking of marijuana." Volume 155 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Clinical Care Medicine 1997
•1997 AD : January16 : A court in Texas, USA, sentences medical marijuana user, William J. Foster to 93 years imprisonment for cultivation of one plant.
•1997 AD : After appeals for clemency from the Swiss Government and letters from CLCIA supporters, the Maldives releases Zimmermann, the man given life for three seeds.
•1997 AD : The Kaiser Permanente Study (USA) - "Marijuana Use and Mortality" April 1997 American Journal of Public Health concludes "Relatively few adverse clinical effects from the chronic use of marijuana have been documented in humans. However, the criminalization of marijuana use may itself be a health hazard, since it may expose the users to violence and criminal activity."
•1999 AD : February 23: UK: 55-year-old arthritis sufferer jailed for one year for using cannabis to relieve his pain
•1999 AD : March 4 : ALASKA: Medical Marijuana Law Starts
•2000 AD: December 22: CANADA: Legal Marijuana Operation Opens
•2002 AD: December: US Study Defies Gateway Theory That Cannabis Use Leads To Use Of Hard Drugs.
•2007 AD: April: Harvard university study shows that Delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana, cuts tumour growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread
•2008 AD: Medical marijuana vending machines take root in Los Angeles. The DEA is not amused.
•2008 AD: May : UK government announces cannabis will be upgraded from class C to Class B. Its scientific experts, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, recommend cannabis should remain class C.
•2009 AD: May : Marijuana in California is now "available as a medical treatment in California to almost anyone who tells a willing physician he would feel better if he smoked." (Washington Post)
(to be continued.....)
~http://www.cannabis.org.uk/marijuana-timeline.html
June 19, 2009
Kinlie
When I was 12 I got a phone call that excused me from class. I walked back into the room 5 minutes later as an aunt. Soon after the phone call my family packed up the car and drove from Oregon to Idaho to see my sister and the new addition. A few years later I was invited to spend the summer with my sister so that I could help her with that addition plus a newer one. I eagerly packed up all the important things in my life (at age 14 that consisted of clothes and more clothes) and anxiously waved goodbye to my nagging, overbearing, and strict parents for the good life with my sister. The good life at that time meant freedom to watch MTV and stay up late. Unfortunately for my nieces, that did not make me the best babysitter. I am very sorry for that.
Despite the lack of quality time that I retrospectively spent with Kinlie and Hanna, I remember those summers fondly. My sister is 14 years my senior which made me closer in age to my nieces. Since I had desperately wanted a younger sibling, those girls answered the wish upon a star that I made as a little girl.
Until I graduated from High School, I spent every summer with them. Again, I neglected to take complete advantage of the opportunity, but I have forgiven myself for 'acting like a teenager' and see those times as irreplaceable. When I finally moved out on my own I truly missed the company of my 'little sisters'.
I pestered my oldest sister constantly to get permission for Kinlie and Hanna to come and spend a summer with me. She was hesitant for many relevant reasons: my pot smoking habit, my lack of concern over maintaining their innocence, my constant use of explitives, etc. So when she finally agreed to have Kinlie come visit me this summer, I was elated.
Despite her permission, I waited for something to fall through but it didn't. A few weeks ago my husband and I drove to Montana to witness Kinlie's graduation from high school and drove back to Seattle with her in tow. Over the next eight days we maximized usage of our time.
To summarize:
-Alki
-Greenlake
-Visiting Tom and introducing Kinlie to her cousin, Klaire
-Space Needle
-Monorail
-Downtown shopping
-UW Campus walk plus a trip to the Art Supply section of the bookstore
-Bainbridge Island and a Ferry Boat trip
-More shopping
-Pike's Place Market
-The Seattle Art Museum
-more shopping
-Kayaking on Lake Union
-tennis at Alki
-AND introducing Kin to 9 of our favorite movies.
Those eight days flew by.
We had such a great time hanging out and re-learning about each other. I spent some time showing her how to cook pad thai, edimame, poached chicken, clean and prepare shrimp, and to make "The Freeman Special" (mac and cheese with a side salad for nutritional value). She tried sushi for the first time, confronted her fear of heights at the Space Needle, and got artistic with canvases and a new pair of Converse shoes. We ganged up on my husband, sang in the car, and laughed a lot.
I expected Kinlie to sleep in until noon everyday, but she was up and ready to seize the day when the sun rose. It gave us a chance to fit everything in, but it was sure exhausting! By the time I guided her through airport security and said goodbye to her I was ready to have some "Amaya-Time". So I was a little surprised to find myself tearing up.
As I mentioned earlier, I had always wished for a little sister and found two in my nieces. Having wasted most of my previous time with them watching MTV, I had hoped to get a second chance and some quality time with one of my girls - and I finally did! I thought about that as I hugged Kinlie at the airport and tears swelled in my eyes. I finally got to acknowledge how important she is to me by clearing my schedule and devoting eight full days to her. And it was over: She was going home.
Despite the lack of quality time that I retrospectively spent with Kinlie and Hanna, I remember those summers fondly. My sister is 14 years my senior which made me closer in age to my nieces. Since I had desperately wanted a younger sibling, those girls answered the wish upon a star that I made as a little girl.
Until I graduated from High School, I spent every summer with them. Again, I neglected to take complete advantage of the opportunity, but I have forgiven myself for 'acting like a teenager' and see those times as irreplaceable. When I finally moved out on my own I truly missed the company of my 'little sisters'.
I pestered my oldest sister constantly to get permission for Kinlie and Hanna to come and spend a summer with me. She was hesitant for many relevant reasons: my pot smoking habit, my lack of concern over maintaining their innocence, my constant use of explitives, etc. So when she finally agreed to have Kinlie come visit me this summer, I was elated.
Despite her permission, I waited for something to fall through but it didn't. A few weeks ago my husband and I drove to Montana to witness Kinlie's graduation from high school and drove back to Seattle with her in tow. Over the next eight days we maximized usage of our time.
To summarize:
-Alki
-Greenlake
-Visiting Tom and introducing Kinlie to her cousin, Klaire
-Space Needle
-Monorail
-Downtown shopping
-UW Campus walk plus a trip to the Art Supply section of the bookstore
-Bainbridge Island and a Ferry Boat trip
-More shopping
-Pike's Place Market
-The Seattle Art Museum
-more shopping
-Kayaking on Lake Union
-tennis at Alki
-AND introducing Kin to 9 of our favorite movies.
Those eight days flew by.
We had such a great time hanging out and re-learning about each other. I spent some time showing her how to cook pad thai, edimame, poached chicken, clean and prepare shrimp, and to make "The Freeman Special" (mac and cheese with a side salad for nutritional value). She tried sushi for the first time, confronted her fear of heights at the Space Needle, and got artistic with canvases and a new pair of Converse shoes. We ganged up on my husband, sang in the car, and laughed a lot.
I expected Kinlie to sleep in until noon everyday, but she was up and ready to seize the day when the sun rose. It gave us a chance to fit everything in, but it was sure exhausting! By the time I guided her through airport security and said goodbye to her I was ready to have some "Amaya-Time". So I was a little surprised to find myself tearing up.
As I mentioned earlier, I had always wished for a little sister and found two in my nieces. Having wasted most of my previous time with them watching MTV, I had hoped to get a second chance and some quality time with one of my girls - and I finally did! I thought about that as I hugged Kinlie at the airport and tears swelled in my eyes. I finally got to acknowledge how important she is to me by clearing my schedule and devoting eight full days to her. And it was over: She was going home.
June 17, 2009
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