If someone told me at the beginning of college that I would have been spending my last quarter  and more at home , they would’ve gotten the full wrath of my “the world can’t touch me” attitude, courtesy of my first real taste of independence. Yay college! It’s ironic how that blissful independence which was once untouchable, remains untouchable but in a different light thanks to forced isolation called “social distancing” that has become our new norm.

While I am sad I missed out on my first hoo-rahs with my new sorority sisters, spring college sports games and the chance to finish out the year making incredible memories with my best friends, I am happy and grateful that myself and those I love are safe and healthy.

The events that have unfolded these past few months are surreal. Not a Zoom call or a Facetime call goes by where the words “I just can’t believe it” aren’t said. My loved ones and I have been very lucky because many people have not had the blessings of health, food and economic security that have been available to us. My heart goes out to the workers on the frontlines and the families affected by COVID-19.

As the semester comes to a close, I have been going through the thousands of pictures and videos that I have taken since starting college. I have met my absolute best friends. I have had experiences and made memories that will last lifetimes. My horizons have broadened more than I could ever imagine. I have felt love from those around me that I never knew could be so deep. It’s hard to be ripped from our glorious lifestyles of microwave mac-and-cheese, heavily caffeinated all-nighters, and dancing on elevated surfaces. I miss all of my friends and our shenanigans so very much.

However, i’d be lying if I said I hated being home. I have enjoyed the chance to have dinners with my family that will one day be rare as I grow up and move out. I have enjoyed not feeling the anxiety of having to go somewhere to rush out of the house to do things all the time. I have enjoyed the chance to take on more art projects with all my supplies at home and the garden endeavor with my family. Aside from the occasional quarrel over chores or who is being too loud on their Zoom calls, everything is good. My heart is full.

As a last update on Lambda Rho’s garden: We are slowly but surely filling up the garden beds with soil and the mulch order to finish covering the ground will be in soon. My dad also picked up outdoor paint so that I can paint sunflowers on all of the garden posts. Our seedlings are germinating nicely and we’re ready for the planting season. So much love has gone in, and so much love is going to come out of it!

No matter what the environment or circumstance, the habits of our hearts never cease to amaze me. We always find our way to love. I have found so much love in my new friendships, in being home with my family, and even in writing these little blurbs every week. It has been amazing taking the time to reflect on the habits of my heart, and I am glad that I could share it with you. Thanks for reading and keep loving. 🙂

xoxo

We are into Day-I-Don’t-Even-Know of quarantine and there has been a lull in exciting things happening. The seeds for our garden are germinating nicely, the weather has been half-sunny, half-rainy, and the majority of our days are spent with remote learning or remote working. Nothing new, just another day in the quarantine.

Social media trends have been quite interesting given that everyone is pretty bored out of their minds, but one that caught my eye was how many people have gotten puppies! The timing makes so much sense because everyone is home to give all the love and attention little puppers need. I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the new puppy Instagrams and posts of these cute floofs.

These new puppies prompted my thoughts on how important having a pet is during quarantine. I can’t imagine being in quarantine without my dog, Logan. Below is a picture of Logan (aka The Sock Bandit) with a sock he stole from one of us: He has been the real heart and star of Lambda Rho, always basking in the sun, stealing socks, running around with the zoomies (very crazy, erratic joy runs) or snuggling up with one of us. Anytime one of us takes a break, we always go to Logan to play with him or pet him.

My dad has a bed set up on a chair for Logan right next to his work station. My sister and I bring him outside with us when we sit on the lawn or the deck to do homework. My mom brings him out on her daily walks around the neighborhood.  Logan always sleeps at the foot of the bed of whichever family member he decides on each night.

He always provides love and comic relief while we are all stuck in the house. It would be really hard not having him to squeeze here and there when work gets stressful or quarantine gets boring.

While he may be a mere 7 pounds of fluff, he has a BIG heart and always shows us love!

xoxo

We’re headed into almost a month since social distancing has begun, and while its so hard not seeing friends and loved ones and having a general sense of normalcy, there are still ways to keep our hearts connected! The newest trend has been this beautiful Google Chrome extension, Netflix Party.

Netflix Party is a quick download that allows you to watch Netflix simultaneously with your friends and communicate through a chat bar on the side during the show. My friends and I absolutely love it and we have Netflix Parties at 8pm. Every. Single. Night. Our show of choice? Love Is Blind, a reality Netflix show where, “Singles try to find a match and fall in love — without ever seeing each other face-to-face, as emotional connection attempts to conquer physical attraction.”

As my blog is about habits of the heart, I figured it would be fitting to talk about my thoughts on this “experiment”, without of course, spoiling it, because I highly recommend watching it!

First, I think it is a really cool idea to explore that true love does not have to be related to physical appearance. However, I don’t think that is the case. I believe that emotional connection and physical connection are real and separate things, yet completely interdependent. Emotional connection can be enhanced by physical connection, and physical connection can be enhanced by emotional connection. On the other hand, emotional connection can be shattered by lack of a physical connection, and physical connection can die out due to lack of an emotional one.

After only establishing the emotional connection, some of the couples also find the physical connection, some don’t. Of course, it is sad when both are not established in these couples who are set to walk down the aisle just four weeks after getting engaged. I’ve already spoiled too much….but, all-in-all I believe that love is not blind. The habits of our hearts are both emotional and physical, and true love is a balance of both.

I’m going to do a quick change in gears here:

For those wanting updates on Lambda Rho and our new garden…..everything is going swimmingly! All of the raised bed boxes our built, half of the ground around them is covered in mulch (to be finished soon), and there is a huge dirt pile in front of our house waiting for its permanent home in the boxes. Our seedlings are being germinated in our house and we are in the process of ordering paint to decorate the garden fence posts with beautiful sunflowers. Our garden has become the talk of the neighborhood as well, everyone has taken walks to the trail behind our house to catch a glimpse of its beauty!

The Lambda Rho members are healthy and well. We are all quite busy with remotely working/schooling but we still have time to come together and help with the garden or to have dance parties together. Much love. 🙂

Stay safe, stay social distancing, and stay healthy!

xoxo

It is around week 3 of social distancing here at Lambda Rho…if you are new to this element of these blogs it is the fraternity I have established as being out of school means no more Greek Life. We have frat parties at 7:30pm where we blare music in the kitchen as we clean up after dinner and do many bonding activities as a “brotherhood” aka as a family. Quarantine does not mean we can’t have fun! I also miss my Greek Life at school so this will suffice for now. 🙁

The heart habits with Lambda Rho this week have ~grown~ with a new project: a garden! Self-sustaining lifestyle here we come. This past week I had some bonding time with my dad as we decided we wanted to start up our garden again as grocery store trips are becoming fewer. We have had a successful garden in the past, but it was small and the weeding was absolutely terrible.  This time we are going big, but not going home because, duh, we’re already here.

The setup for this year’s garden is intense. It is 18ft by 70ft of deer-proof fencing and will house almost 400 square feet of raised bed garden boxes. This means LOTS of room to grow and virtually no weeding! We already have heirloom seeds, the kind of seeds that can be used again to grow new plants the following season.

While the setup sounds intense, the planning was even more-so. Not being able to go out in the public means that everything has to be coordinated and delivered to our house. We had to first draw out and calculate our layout, figure out the materials we needed and then we hired workers to come build this massive structure!

They are still in the process of building it, its a team of around seven workmen. So, in case you were wondering why we weren’t building it ourselves, it has taken ALL seven of them MANY hours to get this thing going. Luckily, they have been having a fun time with it too. We had wood delivered on our driveway and these huge stakes are super heavy. In order to get these stakes down the hill, the workmen picked them up, tossed them and rolled them down almost 100ft of hill. It was a hilarious sight.

After the day is done, the Lambda Rho family walks down to our growing garden to check out the progress. We bring Logan (our dog whose initials make our fraternity name) and get very excited for what’s to come. Logan just enjoys trying to eat and play with the rocks that are laying around.

While quarantine has been high tension, I think that this garden will bring all of our hearts closer. It’s our shared sense of comfort in being able to provide for ourselves and simply something to do together. I will keep updating on Lambda Rho’s shenanigans and new garden.

xoxo

March 18, 2020: Remote learning is extended throughout the rest of the Spring 2020 semester. I was already coming up on having been stuck in my house for almost two weeks–just as a precaution with the threats of COVID-19–and this was another hit to my heart.

While I am grateful to be home and healthy with my family, my heart being physically home has not been quite the dream. It is hard being ripped away from my friends and independent life at college, and coming back to where my freedoms are far fewer. Just because you go away for a couple months, doesn’t mean that family quarrels won’t start back up again and old annoyances won’t still be there.

My sister had strep for the first couple days of me being home, so I moved into the basement. I took my desk, my art studio things, set myself up in the bed in our basement and made it my own little apartment. Now, it has been awhile since she has recovered and I still haven’t moved out…on purpose.

My relationship with my family is by no means, bad. We have family dinner, movie nights, and help each other out with chores. We have our funny moments together, but we also have our small fights. Differing opinions on the COVID-19 has been the main source of tension. I prefer to not get into it anymore, and my basement “apartment” has become my retreat when any sort of conflict arises.

My space downstairs has become my only little escape from the everyday craziness that unfolds. I’m not allowed to see my friends, nor am I allowed to go out to the store to get supplies or food.  My day consists of waking up and trying to follow a routine to keep me sane, and of course MANY Facetime calls to my friends. My heart hurts because I miss them so dearly; I miss my college routine and I miss the bliss of ignorance to real life. My heart may be home, but it yearns for the life and people I had to part with.

On a lighter note, I have brought some of my shenanigans home from college. At night I always get antsy around 7:30pm and I throw pseudo-fraternity parties in my house. We have a huge, and I mean HUGE, Bluetooth speaker and I BLAST my wild party music for my family and stand on a chair/elevated surface, reminiscing about the frat basement parties, formals and dated functions that have all been cancelled. Surprisingly, the family doesn’t hate it! I have declared our fraternity to be called “Lambda Rho” after my dog’s initials, and my dog is such a cutie because he gets the zoomies when all of us are dancing around.

Things aren’t all that bad here and my complaints absolutely first world problems. I know I am so blessed and fortunate to be in the situation I am. I am praying for those who are dealing with the plague of problems caused by the virus and the virus itself.

I foresee my next couple blogs will be regarding to life back at the homestead, or Lambda Rho 😉 and I will keep you updated.

xoxo

Today marks the last day of classes before our week long (or possibly longer!!) spring break! As excited as I am to go home to seeing my family, friends, my dog, and eating food other than gross dining hall meals, I am so sad to leave my friends.

This has been such an exciting semester of meeting new friends from my sorority and forming new bonds with them and strengthening my current relationships. I have gotten to spend more time with my two best friends (my roommate and another girl who lives in our building). While we were close last semester, we’ve gotten even closer because we scheduled all of our classes together and always meet up to get salads together or to help each other with homework.

I think I would fall apart without my best friends. I spend almost every waking moment with them and we all get MAJOR separation anxiety when we don’t see each other. Winter break was so hard! Luckily spring break is only supposed to be a week, but it might be more because of the corona virus! Yikes!

Speaking of illnesses, my friends and I share everything to include our sicknesses! It’s so funny when we are out together or in class and we’re all coughing at the same time or we are passing around the bottle of ibuprofen together or we’re all getting soup in the dining hall. Sharing is caring!

As unfortunate as that sounds to be sick, we’ve accepted that it is part of our beautiful friendship and will continue to be because we are going to be living together next semester. Our plan is to get a triple room in our residence hall and spend even more time together.

Our bond is so strong because we have been there for each other through all of the ups and downs since the beginning of college. I am so grateful to have such supportive girls that would do anything for me, and I also would do anything for them. I’ll be sad to be separated from them for this coming week, but we have already planned out our FaceTime dates.

This (hopefully) tiny break will be nice and will make coming back even more sweet! As i’ve said before, absence makes the heart grow fonder. 🙂

Going into college I was so nervous about how my relationships with my best friends from home were going to go. I remember crying so much about how much I was going to miss them and all of our sweet memories. We had just made one of our most memorable summers and I was not ready to let it all go. I knew that I would make friends at school, but I was also nervous about the balance between my new friends and the old.

Luckily for me, my relationships with my home besties are still amazing! We Facetime each other, Snapchat, call, text, you name it, ALL the time. They have each met my best friends at school on the phone and they all get along really well. It is so cool to see my worlds collide. My heart is always so full.

When I went back for break, it felt as if nothing had changed. Last semester was a rough one for me and when I came home
I was absolutely exhausted and didn’t really make any plans. Lo and behold, my best friends came to my house and surprised me and it was just like old times. We laid around on my bed catching up, talking about how the rest of our high school friends were doing and ate lots of food (our favorite past time).

When we had to leave to go back to school after break it was a definite harder goodbye because our relationship had went right back to where it started and our best friend bond was again, stronger than ever. I miss them so very much and I can’t wait to see them for Spring Break.

My friends that stayed in state have a later spring break than I do so I get to go and visit them at their colleges! I am super excited to see their new world and have fun with them in it. We’ve already started making plans for meeting up and we’ve even started buying concert tickets for this summer.

The habits of our hearts haven’t changed even though we are hundreds of miles apart. I am so happy that everything has stayed super strong and I can’t wait to see them again. 🙂