In Loving Memory of my father

William Komornick

9-30-2003

I miss you daddy :*(

The last day I saw him

Today marks the last day I ever saw my father. Two years ago he was here for parents weekend. I showed him and my mom all the parks around Decorah, took them to Marty's and showed 'em the ugly architecture around campus. Dad took a nap in my roommate's foof while mom and I took a short walk to check out the football game. That would've been yesterday. Today we'd be waking up and dad would be in a hurry to get home. It was still early in the day and I wanted them to stay later, but dad insisted they get home because he "needed to get his work stuff ready for the next day." Knowing my dad, he always has his tools organized in a bucket or toolbox and all he has to do is throw it in his truck. This was b.s; he just didn't want to spend time with me anymore. I was pissed. I told him I wanted him to stay, even pleaded with him, but he said they had to go. I remember giving him an angry "fine" in there somewhere. The rest is blurry, I'm not even sure I said "I love you."
What I found out during the phone call 2 days later was that he went to Chicago, not to work that next day. He had been laid off, and decided to take that time to visit relatives. He didn't want me to know he had been laid off so I could focus on my schoolwork and not worry about him.
Freaking ironic statement of the century.

For daddy

In reference to the impending anniversary that's coming up this Friday, I thought I'd post this poem. I wrote it about a year ago, so the mom stuff at the bottom is a little outdated and it is yet unfinished. I just thought I'd post what I've got so far:

If I knew it would be my last goodbye
I would’ve said much more
How much I love you and
Appreciate all that you’ve been there for

(Refrain)
If I knew it would be the last time
That I’d see you standing there,
Looking proudly at me that Sunday,
Showing me how much you care,
I wouldn’t be so angry
That you had to leave so fast
If only I had known before
That forever wouldn’t last

I won’t get to see you
smiling at me graduation day,
or have you walk me down the aisle
to marry your daughter away
You’ll never get to hear “grampa”
From a grandson you’ve been waiting for
And I’ll never get to hug you tight
Or hear “I love you” anymore

(Refrain)

I’m having such a hard time
With the changes taking place
If I don’t get to see you again ‘til death,
Then life feels like such a waste
They say you’re smiling down on me
But you’re not really there
They say “God has a plan for all,”
This plan just isn’t fair

Mom promised us “at least a year”
Before she started dating
But in less than that, she found Jim B
And I couldn’t help but hating
His stupid jokes, looks towards my mom,
His ability to make her forget
The feelings of Christine and I,
Then remembers you with regret

Mom’s got a new boyfriend and
Never thought how we would feel
This new man, already in her life
With very little appeal
She closed off her feelings towards us
Won’t tell us how she is,
Never speaks of you with happiness,
Just raves about stories of his

Gimme a cold!

After sneezing a couple of times at work the other day, one of the nurses mentioned the fact that she heard of a new medicine that's out, and one of its side effects is that it gives women an orgasm every time you sneeze.

I've gotta get me some of that...

Bad Kitty

I've been an updating fiend lately, so keep reading below this entry if you haven't done so in a while and have some time to kill: I was reading through old entries in my http://kikat7.diaryland.com blog and came across this story and had to bring it back:

Calling in sick to work makes me uncomfortable. No matter how legitimate my excuse, I always get the feeling that my boss thinks I'm lying.On one recent occasion, I had a valid reason but lied anyway, because the truth was just too darned humiliating. I simply mentioned that I had sustained a head injury, and I hoped I would feel up to coming in the next day. By then, I reasoned, I could think up a doozy to explain the bandage on the top of my head.The accident occurred mainly because I had given in to my wife's wishes to adopt a cute little kitty. Initially, the new acquisition was no problem.Then one morning, I was taking my shower after breakfast when I heard my wife, Deb, call out to me from the kitchen."Honey! The garbage disposal is dead again. Please come reset it.""You know where the button is," I protested through the shower pitter-patter and steam. "Reset it yourself!""But I'm scared!" she persisted. "What if it starts going and sucks me in?" There was a meaningful pause and then,"C'mon, it'll only take you a second."So out I came, dripping wet and buck naked, hoping that my silent outraged nudity would make a statement about how I perceived her behavior as extremely cowardly. Sighing loudly, I squatted down and stuck my head under the sink to find t he button. It is the last action I remember performing.It struck without warning, and without any respect to my circumstances.No, it wasn't the hexed disposal, drawing me into its gnashing metal teeth. It was our new kitty, who discovered the fascinating dangling objects she spied hanging between my legs. She had been poised around the corner and stalked me as I reached under the sink. And, at the precise moment when I was most vulnerable, she leapt at the toys I unwittingly offered and snagged them with her needle-like claws.I lost all rational thought to control orderly bodily movements, blindly rising at a violent rate of speed, with the full weight of a kitten hanging from my masculine region.Wild animals are sometimes faced with a "fight or flight" syndrome. Men, in this predicament, choose only the "flight" option. I know this from experience. I was fleeing straight up into the air when the sink and cabinet bluntly and forcefully impeded my ascent.The impact knocked me out cold.When I awoke, my wife and the paramedics stood over me. Now there are not many things in this life worse than finding oneself lying on the kitchen floor buck naked in front of a group of "been-there, done-that"paramedics. Even worse, having been fully briefed by my wife, the paramedics were all snorting loudly as they tried to conduct their work, all the while trying to suppress their hysterical laughter.... . and not succeeding.Somehow I lived through it all. A few days later I finally made it back in to the office, where colleagues tried to coax an explanation out of me about my head injury. I kept silent, claiming it was too painful to talk about. Which it was."What's the matter?" They all asked, "Cat got your tongue?If they only knew!

Future...?

TJ and I talked last night a little bit about grad school and future stuff. I'm getting scared. What happens if we don't get into the same place? He had figured, depending who gets into what on our heierarchy of schools, we'd follow each other regardless of if/where we get in. This means if I get into dental school in, let's say Milwaukee, and he only gets into grad school in Iowa, he'd put it off and move in with me 'til I'm done at Marquette. Same goes the other way, if he gets into grad school in Iowa, and I get into hygiene school elsewhere, I follow him and put off hygiene. The thing is, I'm not so sure I want to do that. I do love him and am going to marry him, but I've grown up with my mom drilling it into my head "that taking time off of school is a bad thing"; I didn't even do it when my own dad died. So the idea of putting off my own career goals in order to take a crappy job, but get to be with TJ, leaves me a bit confused. We've been long distance for so long that I'm used to continuing with our own agendas wherever they may be, and that when we're done we'll get to be together, but when is the point that we get "done"? What if where we get job offers isn't the same place, should we stay apart and work 'til we save enough money to move to the same spot? I don't like that idea. And while I agree that it's nice to have someone there to support the relationship while each of us is in grad school, I have a harder time getting used to the idea of the first one being me. From a woman's point of view, if we want to have children by the time I'm 30, I want to be finished with all of the schooling I'm going to do by then, which at the rate I'm going means I can't take time off to be the supporter. Ideally, we'd both get into the same place or I'd get into dental school, finish that in 4 years, then we could maybe start a family while TJ's in grad school without my juggling pregnancy and classes. Maybe I'm just being selfish, I just never really thought of this before. The other thing is that if we're apart while we're both in separate grad schools...I don't know what will happen. I say it again, I love him and am going to marry him. We've been long distance most of our relationship through now, but how long is it too long for long distance? I don't want to have to spend 7 1/2 years of our then 9 year relationship apart. We're already 3 1/2 years absent of our 5 years together. Are we ready? Maybe I"m just worrying about nothing, but I'm not sure if we should start thinking about this now and come up with a plan, or wait until we know for sure and then scurry to figure out what to do as it's happening. I hate not knowing.

Off again...apparently for good!

Holy great mother of God, they did it again, only this time I think it was my mom's decision; Jimbo and my mother are no more, and from the sounds of her, it's for good!

Here is an excerpt from her email to me:
"Just thought it might be time to update you kids on what Jim and I are, and what I've finally decided that we're not."..."So I guess it is an attitude change on my part, that I will no longer think that we might ever be more than that."

NAH NAH NAH NAH,
NAH NAH NAH NAH
HEY HEY HEY
GOODBYE!!!!!!!!!

Who wants to party? I want to party, I know my sister wants to celebrate, come on!

rant

Ok other than the high school confessions below, I guess I have more I want to just get off my chest so I can sleep well tonight and not be thinking about it. I thought mom was being better about her not being a mom thing, but today I found that this is not the case. I wanted to talk to her about next weekend, as I am going home and wanted to have a clue of what is going on, so I called her multiple times throughout the day to find out. She has a friend of hers that she's known since high school visiting her this week, so I knew she probably wouldn't pick up the first time, but I figured she'd call me back within a couple of hours like she usually would when she was boning Jimbo. 10 p.m. rolled around and I still hadn't heard from her. What the hell? I tried calling my sister and she crankily told me she didn't know where she was (which I found out from mom later that she had spoken with her earlier that day), so that made me even more pissed off. When she finally DID call me tonight, I ignored her. If she wasn't going to bother giving me the time of day to answer her damn phone, I'd return the favor. Memories just came flooding back to me of this summer, when I invited mom out to Sheboygan to visit me, and even arranged for her to have car company and tried convincing her by pointing out the free room and board for the weekend. This was also not to mention seeing the daughter she hadn't seen in a month and a half; She said no. I'm sure she had a date with Jim that night and couldn't give up her precious 2 times a week of seeing him. Right now I'm to the point that it wouldn't surprise me if she set up a date for this coming weekend. Oh yeah that's right, for those of you who don't know yet, they're back together. He dumped her saying he didn't want to keep leading her on, what makes her think he's not doing so now? Either way, if she does disregard my rare home-visit and go on a date with him, I've decided that while she's on said date, I'll leave her a note simply saying "I went home" and leave for school again while she's gone. If that doesn't give her a clear, slap on the face kind of message, I don't know what will. God knows my cheek is permanently bruised.

Sweet and innocent?

PanamaJack recently said to me something to the effect that I do a good job at playing the sweet and innocent part, but I'm really not as innocent as I try to portray. After thinking about that for a little bit, I actually had to agree with him. Since then I've thought about it and I'm leaning towards the disagree department. I mean I'm not a horrible person, I certainly haven't done anything jail-worthy or completely heinous, and the biggest illegal thing I've ever done was smoked cigarettes and drank underage; I've never even smoked pot. But I have had my share of moments that if you add them up they'd be a pretty hefty list. I guess most of these have happened during my high school years though, so I really can be thought of as more sweet and innocent now than I was in high school. For instance, while in high school I managed to steal 2 men away from other girls. I'm marrying one of them. The other thing that I guess you could call "big" is that I would skip school and go to the beach sometimes and get away with it. I sound like my mom on the phone, so I would call myself in sick for the afternoon pretending to be on a cell phone in order to explain the caller ID number not matching that of my home phone number. I didn't do that too often, only when it was a really nice day outside. On the other hand, I was very involved with choir and all its related prudeness, and was a figure skater outside of school which I got my first job to help fund. And now, although I do drink occasionally and say things that an innocent mouth wouldn't say, I'm pretty harmless. So I guess I'm really not that devious as some out there. I get to keep considering myself as sweet and innocent, for the most part. O:o)

anti-motivated

Considering the fact that my Thursdays are my most open days of the week as I only have 1 class in the morning, work 2 hours over lunch, and just have a 2 hour practice at 5:15. The unfortunate part is that today I have absolutely no motivation to do anything. This has kind of been the case these past couple of days, as I haven't started my ochem homework yet. I'm not behind by any means; it's just not due 'til Tuesday. I'm just not one to usually put my homework off anymore. It's not just the homework today either. While I was at work I had no energy to do a single thing. I did what my job-description says to do: re-stocked the rooms, calibrated all the thermometers, put charts away, and I even stuffed condom bags (yes, that is in my job description). But as soon as work was done at 1 p.m., I came back, went straight to bed, and passed out cold until 4:00 which brings me here, 45 minutes later, doing absolutely nothing. I have frisbee practice in about 1/2 hour and should leave for it in about 15 min, but I lost the will to finish getting ready to the point that I'm sitting here in shorts and socks, 1/2 ready to go. I'm looking at my workout shirt and shoes, but the force has seemed to leave me today and they won't float over here to put themselves on me. Shit. I guess I'll have to actually move now. This will make for an interesting practice...I wonder if I'll start my homework tonight even.

I've fallen for another...

Ok so I was studying while looking online at wedding stuff and I decided to look around at other wedding dresses. I picked out one I absolutely love a few months ago, but since then I've been thinking about the price tag on a dress I'm only going to wear once. Plus the lady at the shop where I found it was really bitchy and is every time I go in there. So I was browsing tonight and I think I've found a different dress. I ran it by my friend Kristine and she noted that it had really clean lines and looks really nice. Of course, I'd try it on first before thinking of buying it, but it's got several perks:
1. It's at David's Bridal. For those of you unaware of the locations of these, the closest ones are in Minnesota, which means NO sales tax on clothing. Let's do the math: let's say it's $900 for the WI dress at the bitchy lady place. Take that times I think it might be a 7% (?) sales tax which makes it $63 for tax alone. That's a hair-do on the wedding day or part of a plane ticket for the honeymoon!
2. The cost of the David's Bridal dress is less than half of the down payment of the bitchy woman-place dress.
3. It still abides by my "simple elegance" ideal picture for the wedding, so I wouldn't be compromising my own picture of the event just for cost's sake.
I can't wait to get up to either Rochester or the cities to look at it, and maybe even pick this puppy up! I'd post a picture, but for the sake of TJ seeing my blog and it, I refuse to do so. Besides, I want the people who come to first see it as I'm walking down the aisle anyway :o)
That's all for now, goodnight!

Blah

This year seems to be going pretty good so far. I'm an officer for the Health Science Club and am involved in Chemistry Club, Habitat for Humanity, and am on the women's ultimate frisbee team this year. I didn't realize how much I missed having regular practices and being a part of a team until I started up with this group. On the other hand, this has been an adjustment year for me too. This being the month of September, I'm having a lot of memories come flooding back to me from when my dad died and I realized that ever since then, I have never been alone. I have always had friends and, for a brief part, family surrounding me and being there for me in the almost 2 years since he's been gone that it's been a long time since I've experienced this kind of solitude. I do have good friends here this year again and I'm enjoying getting to know them better, but having a single room just feels weird to me in that I don't have a roommate there to chat with almost any time of the day, or the same friends out in the cluster to just walk out and see. I feel like in the movie Jerry Maguire where they're playing that video at his bachelor party and it keeps saying "You can't be alone."
To all of you, I want to just say that this month will be a little hard for me, so if I seem off-kilter a bit, kinda like my rant above, don't worry. Just give it time and I'll come back around like I always do. I went for a walmart run earlier tonight with a friend of mine and now thinking back on the car ride, I just sounded depressing. I apologize if I'm not my usual ray of sunshine, bear with me. Don't try to offer solutions or try to fix me, 'cause that really doesn't help much, and don't look at me like I'm broken or damaged either. I do like hugs and will take those anytime though ;o) Ok I have to get to bed or I'm going to be a zombie tomorrow. G'night.

Here's your sign...

Yesterday I got off the elevator and saw a sign that read,
"Are you having problems with your phone? Call LIS at x1000"
Let's think about this one for a sec...


How do people who write signs like this get into college? This makes me worried about the integrity of our admissions people.

falling into place

I FINALLY got into the health class I need to get my degree. All it took was me dropping microbiology for the 2nd time in my college career and picking up weight training (which should be interesting considering I can't do a pushup). I can always pick up micro next summer if I have to take it for hygiene school, and this drops my credit load down from four-4 credit classes to a mix version that adds up to 12 credits. It's gonna be a nice one and a heck of a lot easier to get A's in all of them considering I'm currently under a microscope by dental schools, specifically Marquette. I went to the writing center today and finally got a better conclusion put together, as well as some good tweaking done to the body of my personal statement. I sent it out to a couple of people for one last look-over and if they like it, I'm sending out all of my dental school apps tomorrow! That will be a HUGE load off my back! It will also be about $500 out of my wallet considering the cost of AADSAS for the 5 schools I'm applying to, but hopefully one of them will make it worth it. I still have to work out the details of the DAT, but I'm planning on making some calls and getting that all figured out tomorrow too.

Truth or Dare

I have come to the conclusion that it's been too long since I've played truth or dare. It would be fun the next time there is a dorm-style celebration to bring that game back and play it with some friends, college-style. I'm usually careful of what I share generally, but sometimes I hit that state of intoxication where I question whether I've taken truth serum. I really have nothing to hide, so it would be fun and a good way to get to know my friends here a little better too (I'm a bigger fan of the "truth" portion obviously.) I would make it clear to everyone that the "dare" portion for me would have to be appropriate things for an engaged woman to do, and while this usually wouldn't come into question, PanamaJack is shameless and therefore the reason for this rule ;o) Otherwise I think it would be pretty entertaining to bring it back. That is my 1:30 am random, useless insight of the evening. Goodnight.

random mind-splurge

Over the past 2 years my life has been changed in a way I can't reverse. I've had people tell me I don't seem as happy as I used to be, that I don't try to find the good out of everything like I used to. I even pretty much lost someone who was a good friend of mine through high school and most of college because of what I'll call "differences of opinion," and just now I all but ripped TJ a new one for little piddly things. I don't know whether it's because it's September and it'll be 2 years since my dad died come the 30th, or if I'm just getting the pre-wedding jitters, but since coming back to school I've become more critical of our relationship. I feel like a horrible person because of that. I love TJ, we're getting married and there has never been a doubt in my mind of that. I'm just gonna end this entry, I'm tired, way off kilter after a night of drinking last night, and in dire need of sleep right now before I say stuff I don't mean. Goodnight.

pet peeves

There aren't many things that truly aggravate me to the point of being pissed off, especially after dealing with what I'll call the "junior year from hell", but there are 3 big things that do:
1. People ignoring the fact that I'm speaking and then interrupt with something about themself completely unrelated (although I'm guilty of interruping on occasion myself)
2. Being told what to do with my life and actions (unless I ask), and
3. Being stood up for meetings arranged by the other person.
The latter of these just happened to me. I was supposed to meet with a prof at 1:30. He teaches the last class I need to get my degree. I showed up 10 min early, like I usually do for meetings, thinking he might already be there anyway. It was freezing so I figured I'd get myself a cappucino. What I didn't realize was that at Oneota cafe, "small" meant dixie cup. I got my shot-glass of french vanilla and sat down to wait. And wait. And wait. Question: how long is it proper to wait for someone for a meeting? I pulled out some homework to pass the time, got 4 questions done, then noticed it was then 1:43. I had been sitting there for 23 min. I figured if he was just running a little bit late, he'd have been there by now, and wondered if he had emailed to reschedule. I went downstairs to check my email; nothing. I had been stood up. Keep in mind that this class already met yesterday, so I was one day behind, and still not registered for the thing because the damn prof doesn't have his act together. ARGH!
Tonight will be better though. A friend who graduated last year is coming to visit and there will be a liquid celebration to mark this event tonight after watching a hypnotist show (which is quite entertaining).
Another nice thing that happened today is that the air vent in my room is currently being fixed. It used to rattle like someone dropped pennies in it at one point in time and would keep me up all night, even on the low setting. I've been using the Polish air conditioning method, i.e. opening the window and letting the wind do the cooling, and so far the weather's been perfect enough to pull it off. Now I guess I'll work on what I can, maybe try to figure out my personal statement (if anyone is willing to help me with a conclusion I will be forever indebted to you) and watch some TV before the festivites begin tonight.