a completely non-LotR related post for now...
i just opened a christmas card from a family back in van wert (one of the places i used to live). that's not unusual, we get one from the pearsons every year, and mom and ramona talk on the phone and write emails and stuff. they had a son, jason, that's rusty's age, a son, kelly, that was a year older than me, and a son, cody, who was a year younger than me. when we lived there, we all used to play. mom would drop us off at ramona's or vice versa (yeah i've pretty much always had more friends that were guys than girls). kelly and i were best buds. we were as tight as 2 little kids can be. i mean we were gonna get married! we had it all planned out. we knew where we were going to live, how many kids we were going to have, everything. then i moved away. we wrote a few letters to each other--i probly still have his somewhere cuz i'm a packrat like that--then we stopped writing. i almost forgot about him. then in jr. high, we went back to van wert cuz my mom's friend vickie was getting married. we did a lot of visiting that weekend, and one of the places that we went was the pearsons. it was a lot of fun to hang out with kelly and cody again, but they were so different from what they used to be. they were both into drinking and drugs (i think i was in 8th grade at the time, so kelly was a freshman and cody was in 7th). but nonetheless, it was awesome to just see them again. we didn't really keep in touch after that, either. i'm really bad at keeping in touch. so anyway. i opened the christmas card a bit ago. and it was so strange, and so very wrong, to see "Merry Christmas! Scott, Ramona, Jason, and Cody". i just sat down on the floor and cried. it's not right. he was too young. and there wasn't anything i could do. i didn't go to the funeral or anything, mostly cuz it was 5 hours away. he was so lucky a year or so ago: he was in a car accident--the car he was in was hit by a train. that was bad enough. he lived, but he suffered some major brain damage. ramona said that he was real quiet and calm and just kinda withdrawn after that. and then they found him dead awhile later (like last spring or summer?). drug overdose. it breaks my heart to think that my childhood best friend, my 'future husband', the kid that i spent countless hours playing 'duck hunt' with on their nintendo, the kid that i used to help plot against cody with, the kid who used to hide out in the huge garage/barn behind their house and attack me when i walked past... that kid is gone, forever. i lost touch with him, and now i'll never have the chance to get back in touch with him. what's done is done. i'll stop being morbid now. i just needed to get that outta my system.
i promise the next post will be a happy "tracey had an awesome day/night/morning today and yesterday" post. now its off to eat dinner, and then go to tim's band christmas concert.