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stargrrl74
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Name: Megan
Country: United States
State: Alabama
Metro: Huntsville
Birthday: 4/7/1983
Interests: I love NY (truly!), chocolate ice cream, reading, beaches, palm trees, Jesus (whose love is better than ice cream), music, Auburn, movies, directing, Chi Alpha, Lance, surprises, sunsets, photography, worship, writing, and Romans 8:38-39, which says that nothing can separate me from God's love.
Expertise: Theatre, Writing, Music, criticism (I am very good at this, unfortunately)
Occupation: Production Assistant
Industry: Entertainment
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  Ophelia144
Member Since:
12/13/2004
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| Changes come.... turn my world aroundWe're moving to DC at the end of the month. I'm so overwhelmed that that's about all I can say about it right now.
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| Christmas Tree TherapyChristmas is my absolute favorite time of the year. I love the entire holiday season. I love the chaos and the lights and the ridiculous Christmas jingles that get stuck in your head and the cold and the shopping and the eating and the presents and the decorations and especially getting to spend time with family. There really is a spark in the air that isn't there at any other time. In spite of this, I've heard that more suicides happen during the holidays than at any other time of the year, and I see why. I think this season has the potential for being the happiest, warmest, most fulfilling season of all. But if that is true, it must also be true that if one didn't have family or friends to share this time with, it has the potential to be the saddest, coldest, and loneliest season of all. I recently experienced a glimpse of what that might be like.
As I fell into the passenger seat of our car at 7:30 Thanksgiving night, shaking from sobs, the thought occurred to me that from this point on when I thought of this day, Thanksgiving of 2006, it would go down in my memory and all future conversations as "The Worst Thanksgiving Ever." It's a long, dramatic story, but the end result is that my family and I had a huge fight and all this shit hit the fan. Words came out of peoples mouths like vomit. Everyone was hurt: my grandparents, my parents, my siblings, my uncle and his girlfriend, Lance, and most of all me. I was, as you may have guessed, at the center of it all. It was like an old dry wall that's had a crack in it for years that no one takes care of, and it gets older and splits into more and more cracks until one day, someone bumps into it accidently and the whole thing crumbles helplessly, and in slow motion, before your very eyes. Before you know it there's a pile of mildewed wood and plaster and chips of paint at your feet, and the damage is completely irreparable. If you feel like starting over you can always build a new wall, but it's painful and time consuming and no one really wants to do it, because if they did, they would have fixed the crack in the first place.
I cried the whole three hour drive home. I cried when we got home. I cried when we climbed into bed. I cried when I woke up in the middle of the night. I cried the next morning, as soon as I opened my eyes. I cried some more when we were waiting for our table at Cracker Barrel, and I cried when we got our table. I continued to cry on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and that's when I insisted that we put up our Christmas tree. I was forging ahead, moving past the awfulness of the past holiday and on to the brighter, more hopeful one to come.
It was a little odd shopping for Christmas trees in t-shirts and jeans... (darn you, Alabama weather!) but in the end we picked out a nice, tall, expensive tree from Lowe's. I've discovered over the years that picking out the perfect Christmas tree is a little bit like picking out the perfect wedding dress. You can see a hundred to-your-eyes-Charlie-Brown Christmas trees before your eyes land on the perfect one that you will take home, light up, and decorate. Much to Lance's chagrin, my perfect tree was eight feet tall. Being the wonderful, supportive husband that he is, he only half-heartedly argued that the tree was much to big for our one bedroom apartment and that he was sure our ceiling itself was only eight feet tall and that we'd have to chop half the damn thing off just to fit it in the door. I brushed aside his concerns as I snatched the bar code off the tree and walked toward the check out.
Wouldn't you know, the tree looked like our very own version of the Griswald Family Christmas tree in our dinky living space. Lance climbed up on a chair and reached for his pocket knife to perform surgery on our poor tree, and I looked up in anguish as he cut off branch after branch. In the end, just as he had warned, half the tree lay sliced off on the floor before we could fit our Angel Tree Topper on it. My eyes have always been too big for my stomach. Oh well. As Christmas music played softly in the background, we took down our boxes of lights and ornaments and slowly and silently worked on the tree. When we finally finished and stood back to gaze at our masterpiece, I realized that most of the icy knot that had formed in my stomach was beginning to melt away. With a mug of hot chocolate in my hand and my arm around my husband, I basked in the soft glow of the tinkling colored lights.
It was a full five minutes of bliss before the cat jumped into the tree and the dog chased him around and around, and the sounds of mellow Christmas music was replaced by the sounds of cartoon like hissing and barking. The peacefulness erupted in yells and "NO!"s and sharp hand claps from us as we resumed our normal routine. But it didn't matter. The Christmas Tree Therapy had taken its toll.
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| Sobering Fact(Taken from Nov.-Dec. issue of Relevant Magazine)
If Christians had given the traditional 10 percent tithe of their income to their churches in 2004, instead of the 2.56 percent that they actually gave, there would have been an additional $164 billion available, according to a report released in October called "The State of Church Giving through 2004." If the churches chose to funnel just $70-$80 billion of that additional income to missions and humanitarian works, the basic needs of every person on the globe would be provided.
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| My name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Megan Garland
childhood ambition. . . . . . . . . . . . . to be an actress
fondest memory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the night I got engaged
soundtrack. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sarah McLachlan, Afterglow
retreat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a beach with no one around besides Lance and a waiter who serves us drinks with little umbrellas
wildest dream. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .to be on Broadway
proudest moment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . walking down the aisle
biggest challenge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .controlling my emotions
alarm clock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .my dog
perfect day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .sleeping in with Lance, strolling around and eating at an outdoor deli, lazily shopping, then going out for dinner and a movie
first job. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Taco Bell for about 2 weeks
indulgence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bath and Body Works
last purchase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . muffin and a latte
favorite movie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind & Amelie
inspiration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jesus
My life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is dramatic
My card. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is American Express. Ok, it's actually Visa.
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| Happy Halloween!About half an hour ago, the people in the library where I work and I went outside with 5 basket loads of candy on a rolling cart, and stood waiting, facing the hill by the road. Five minutes later, we heard distant squeals of excitement and several voices engaged in a high pitched sing-a-long. As the squeals and singing got louder, we spotted tiny heads bobbing up and down from the other side of the hill. When they came in full view, we were staring out at dozens of preschoolers, dressed up in a collection of getups ranging from a mermaid to a lion to Spiderman to a duck. You can't imagine how cute it is to watch 75 preschoolers dressed up for Halloween come closer and closer while singing silly songs about witches and pumpkins. We were more excited than they were. We quickly formed an assembly line with 2 or 3 mature adults per candy basket, impatiently grasping at handfuls of candy to drop into their wee little Halloween buckets.
When they reached us, still singing, they began traipsing through our assembly line. Those kids got more candy from us suckers than they ever will tonight. Fistful after fistful we dropped into their buckets. Their costumes were in disarray from the hike around campus, and they all looked semi-confused, as if they were just following their teachers and singing along because they found themselves somehow in this predicament and had no choice. They looked nervously or excitedly up, up, up into our faces and chimed "thaaank yooou" again and again. At last, the patrons surrounding my basket and I scooped up our final handfuls of sugary goodness and dropped them into the last trick-or-treater's bucket. We watched sadly as they walked along, off to another building on campus, beginning their happy song again. As they turned and waved goodbye, for some reason we burst into spontaneous applause.
It was over much too quickly. I personally wanted to squeeze every one of them before giving them each their pound of candy. We all turned and walked back inside, with considerably less excitement than we had going outside just minutes before. Someone sighed and muttered "...till next year..."
Till next year.
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