Stress and Stars

It's been awhile, hasn't it?

2011-10-16T10:13:00.003-05:00

I don't know. I haven't been feelin' it too much lately, but the last couple of days have been lovely. I didn't get any pictures, since I hadn't realized how low my battery was until I tried to take the camera downtown with us Friday night and it gamely turned on, and just quickly turned off again. Sad little camera.

In any case, the following things have happened:

1. Jason bought a little old Ford truck to go back and forth to work in.
2. A week later, the truck wouldn't start. We spent a hilarious three or so days getting it towed to the dealership, taking it home running fine, and finding out the truck wouldn't start again the next morning. Everything's fixed now, but that truck needs to start earning its keep, s'all I'm sayin'.
3. I got a new job! I will be starting the 24th, Monday through Friday, first shift for training for a few weeks. As is my usual notion, I'm not really going to say WHERE I work, because that can get a bit shifty... employers tend not to like that. But I am excited for my new job, not in the least because the compensation is going to be worlds better than what I've been getting... I'm excited to get Jason and I 100% back in the black, finances-wise.

So that's the big stuff that's happened.

Tomorrow, I'm going to take a couple of pictures of the leaves as they're starting to turn here. And then I'm going to post those pictures here. I will make this happen.

I've been having a tendency to think about posting, then kind of shrugging or getting pulled outside for a walk or to watch a movie or any number of myriad other things. But I like writing here, keeping a record, keeping people up to date.

So let's get back into that, shall we?

... well then.

2011-09-22T15:28:00.000-05:00

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks.

Between working, carving out time together, and time spent with friends Jason and I haven't had a ton of time to sit back and relax... at our own house, at least. So I haven't had much time to sit and work on any of my photos or to get anything up here.

So I took a picture of my feet the other day, because these are some of my favorite shoes. So there you go. They're cheap little things I bought on clearance at Walmart something like two years ago. I think they've held up very well, considering.

So at least you know I'm doing something, even if that something is taking pictures of my own feet.

There was a week of temperatures that were delightfully lower and less-humid than I have been used to... fall is finally, finally, finally coming. I joyfully dug all my sweaters and winter clothing out of storage, all but singing to myself about it.

Of course, it's not really cold enough to justify my winter stuff, not just yet. But I have successfully worn at least one sweater in the last two weeks, and that makes me very happy indeed.

I am working hard to get back on track here. It's so hard to make myself sit down and really just write something out or work in Photoshop to get my pictures post-worthy. So many ways in which I need to get more disciplined.

Ah, well.

My goal for tomorrow is to post up another one of my Mindless Consumerism posts... this one may be fairly sweater-focused. It's a very sweater mood I've been in lately: I long for cooler temps all the time so I can bundle up in soft warm things throughout my whole day (or at least, the time I'm not at work).

I'm hoping to work on getting more photos ready, too, so I can have something to show you! I have photos from the Indie Craft Parade to get up on here, maybe a couple of things from when we went to visit Griz at Hagood Mill (Griz is who Jason apprenticed for back when he first got into blacksmithing).

I have so many things I want to do.

Now to just carve out some time in which to do them.

This is kind of rambling. And by kind of I mean really.

2011-09-09T12:21:00.000-05:00

This week I did the following:

I worked. I had delicious chili as made by my friend Shelly after work on Labor Day (oh yes, I worked on Labor Day. Holiday pay is a pretty good incentive). I inhaled pumpkin spice lattes all week long once they started on Tuesday. I met up with friends again for friend-time Wednesday night. Cue more working. I made some sort of strange southwestern chicken dish for Jason last night for dinner. We agreed we should probably get groceries soon. I did not work today. I went to the library and turned in books and got more books, I had coffee with my friend Sherrie while she was on her lunch break at work, I petted the cat.

I've done a bit of drawing, which feels fantastic.

Tonight, more friend-time. This has been a week of friend-time... really, the last couple of weeks have been. It's been pretty nice.

Jason has a job! I just realized I never updated here (although my facebook companions are well aware of it). He works day shifts, so we'll need to pick up a second car. We are excited to finally have gotten a lucky break. Crossing my fingers for more to come.

It has finally started to cool down a little bit. We've had some pretty nice, breezy days. I can't wait for fall, even if it does set in almost a month later than back up in Illinois. I dream about sweaters and my SmartWool socks and buying some new long pants for fall. I have lots of mundane dreams, really. Sometimes I dream about grocery shopping. Occasionally i have had dreams about hanging out with the cat. Seriously.

I'm going to settle in to some reading and working on the grocery list for now. Tomorrow, Jason and I are going downtown as is generally our usual plan for when I have Saturdays off... but tomorrow there is something called the Indie Craft Parade happening downtown and I would like to go see it! And maybe take pictures. And maybe blog about it later.

You can never tell with me. I'm all wild and crazy-like.

Maybe I won't even go read. Maybe I'll just go lay down in the sunlight like a cat. I'm pretty sure I could purr if I tried hard enough.

Today, while driving here, there and everywhere, I heard a really good interview on NPR with Friar Lyndon Harris, who was in charge of St. Paul's Episcopal Church (the tiny chapel across the street from the World Trade Center) on September 11th, 2001. The Cherokee County Arts and History Museum is doing an exhibit right now with all kinds of artifacts and stories about what happened with St. Paul's at the time.

He talked about 9/11, what it meant, what happened with St. Paul's. The podcast is here. I teared up while driving, I laughed along with him when he laughed. I recommend the podcast to anyone who has the time or inclination to listen to it: most of the interview is about what happened after the day itself, how St. Paul's dealt with being turned into an impromptu memorial site, a place to counsel, to rage, to grieve and to help.

By the end of the interview, I was really, really impressed with Fr. Harris.

And that's all I've got to say for now.

All I've Got, For Now

2011-08-31T13:41:00.000-05:00

a photo taken at Table Rock when Jason and I went hiking a couple of weeks ago. I'm not feeling very talkative lately; make of that what you will. Don't mistake it for inactivity, though; Jason's current status of job-seeking means that my time when I'm not working is often pretty well scheduled to keep us on the move, because he spends all day in the house and I know from my foray in joblessness last year while planning our move from Illinois to SC that sitting around the house gets pretty darn boring. Jason is much better at activities than I am.

This is good, in that it's meant a lot of friend-time and family-time, both of which I need and thoroughly enjoy. It also means that I'm doing a lot of things and am not exactly relaxed enough to blog about any of them terribly often.

I don't know. I've been pretty stressed out lately, which is always something that ends with me fairly scatterbrained. I was able to take a good long walk this morning, just me and my ipod, and get some thinking time in. I don't know that anything came of it, but any time I spend just kind of grooving to music I consider to be time to get my brain back in order, at least a little bit.

A coworker and I were discussing the idea of writing a tell-all memoir about working as baristas in a bookstore coffee-shop. We threw around the idea of titles like But This Is Exactly What You Ordered, Sir or Dispatches from the Espresso Machine. Or No, Ma'am, I Cannot Give You 20% Off Because You're Just So Nice.

Well, Jason has a lead on a job, so I'm pretty hopeful today. He is off taking care of that sort of thing, while the cat and I have staring contests and I try to talk myself into doing anything but playing the "oh I'm not at work I'm going to allow myself to rest" game, which is nice but doesn't actually accomplish anything.

Then again, relaxation in and of itself can be an accomplishment. I think I'm letting stress get to me again, which is never fun for anybody.

I'm stuck in a cycle of art block. I don't have inspiration, and hardly ever have the energy, to try and create anything. It never did just come on command; that's not how inspiration works... or at least it never has with me. It's part of the stress, too; the more I worry (about money, about our five-year plan, about my eroding list of things I had hoped to get done before I was 30, the next six months, the next ten years... it goes on like that), the more I stress out, the less likely it is to ever come back. It's easy to say "Well, just worry less," but it certainly is not nearly so easy to carry out that advice. I know I need to worry less, but that's not actually how worry works; I don't call that into being any more than I can simply pull inspiration out of thin air.

On the other hand, I got home from work last night and settled in to reading and watching some Netflix off and on, and when Jason got home from a meeting he was at we spent our whole night laughing like little kids at each other, which was fantastic. And evenings like that are always fantastic. I was essentially not anxious for a good few hours in a row.

I need to figure out how to let myself breathe, and not spend time trying to figure out which thing is going to go wrong next, how we're going to juggle adult life long enough to make it to what I can only hope is the next lucky break (we're due to get one eventually, right?)... you would be surprised the kinds of things my brain will come up with when it comes to finding stuff to worry about.

I can't just will myself cheerful. That's never been a talent of mine.

I can't just shrug it off. So I suppose I need to draw on the strength I know I've picked up from all the women who have been in my life, stand up a little taller, and hack my way through it 'til I get there.

I just kinda liked the mental image of myself taking a figurative machete to anxiety-trees. I mean, come on, picture me trying to hack my way through ANY kind of vegetation without somehow injuring myself. Even if it is metaphorical vegetation.

I don't want it to be assumed that I'm unhappy. About 80% of my life is pretty awesome. I'm happy with my husband, with my friends, with my family.

I am just an anxious little person, and late spring and summer this year have not been the uneventual type of seasons that allow me to put that anxiety somewhere else for a while.

I need to stop looking at all of this jumping from hope to hope as something wearying, and start looking at it the way little kids look at jumping from rock to rock across a creek without trying to touch the water. Sure, you don't want your feet to get wet and there's a constant chance that you'll fall in, but there's a reason little kids do that as a game.

Well.

That ended up a lot longer than I meant it to be.

But I suppose if I'm only going to update every 8 to 10 days or so, I might as well let myself ramble a bit, huh?

Besides, I wouldn't be me if I couldn't turn a "Well, I should post up a picture or something and show people I'm still around" update into three pages of where my brain is at right now.

I'm going to go watch Anthony Bourdain on Netflix now.

And snuggle my cat.

And it's going to be awesome.

Lazy Sunday

2011-08-21T13:34:00.000-05:00

After a pretty hard week of work, I have today off (and this coming Saturday off!) and I am trying to make the most of it. By "make the most of it", I mean watch documentaries on Netflix about the Lost City of Z, fitfully work on cleaning the living room, eventually cook dinner, and otherwise do as little as possible. Working on sketches for a painting, too, hopefully.

The best way to rediscover the inspiration and the energy to commit pencil (or brush) to paper, I suppose, is to just force myself to start and try to hide all the absolute piles of awful I produce until I can get myself back into it mentally, too.

The organizational effort is still in its early fits and starts. I took up the To-Do List idea, but it turns out I keep forgetting to take it with me and therefore forgetting what it was I had to do. I have a planner, but I've had some forgetting-to-take-it-places issues with that, too. But I'm getting better.

This is really just a what's-up-with-me quick little update. The answer, in the end, is not all that much.

Last week was not an energy-happy week in any way at all. I'm going to work on that this week.

One thing I definitely have succeeded at is sleeping more, getting the 7 to 8 hours all at once. So that's good. But I haven't noticed any definite uptick in energy from it. I'm as drained by long days as I ever was.

Today, though?

Today, if I want to sit down, I can sit. If I want to go sit on the couch and read about agate or flip through 1,001 Ways to Cook Southern or scribble little thoughts down on a piece of notebook paper, I can just do that.

And I'm not going to take that truth about days off for granted.

Which means I really need to get back to leisurely sipping my coffee.

Well, this got long.

2011-08-11T15:16:00.002-05:00

How completely and quintessentially me it is to buy a book on organization and then immediately get so disorganized I forget to start my new book on organization.

Which I must admit to you is what happened with my get-organized-week-by-week book. I thought about it, I ruminated on it, I decided I was going to start on this path to a clutter-free me right away.

And then I immediately began cluttering all over the place, quite happily piling books on the couch and letting them live there in blissful harmony with the cushions until I remembered why, exactly, those books were stacked there in the first place.

Those of you who know me fairly well cannot be anything remotely close to surprised by this development. I am the queen of forgetting this plan or that, getting so wrapped up in some new idea that I forget the other ones half-finished.

This week has been an energizing week for me, at least mentally... The kind of week that reminds me that there was something I was meant to be doing.

Oh yeah.

This.

organize now! by Jennifer Ford Berry had the looks of the kind of book I could use; it's broken down week by week, with tasks broken down into smaller ones. Organizing one's life can be overwhelming, even when you are 25, don't own a house, don't have children and have only a husband and a cat making faces at your messiness.

(okay, I don't actually know that's what the cat is making faces about... I just know she makes faces)

This week there were some hopeful developments when it came to our future financial stability and my own willingness to dig myself out of this awful lack-of-creativity rut and get working already; get painting, get drawing patterns for my coffee-bag purse, get working on ideas with a friend of mine for a project that could definitely be very cool.

As it stands, though, I am still at the series of steps on the way to figuring myself out where I'm mostly staring ahead at a large and seemingly never-ending canyon of stuff that needs to be done.

So.

We start at the very beginning.

(it's a very good place to start. I promise I won't start singing.)

Week 1 is, first and foremost, about getting one's head together. Deciding what you want out of your organized life. Deciding to be "cleaner" is all well and good, but if the reason you are full of clutter is because of a dissatisfaction with where your life is... you can empty out boxes and boxes of art supplies but that won't fix the reality that I haven't been working on the paintings I need to be paying attention to.

Er, forgive that sudden switch from second-person perspective to first. I'm writing very stream-of-consciousness right now.

So the very first step on the first week's goals it to answer a series of questions. I am keeping a small green notebook to jot down some of those answers.

Question 1 is actually a series of questions, based on your idea of a 'perfect life': where would you live, what would you do to earn an income, what would you do for fun.

The most important questions in Question 1 are the following:

"What would you do more of?"

My answers:

Paint. Draw. Create jewelry. Take photos. Time with Jason. Garden. Read. Time with family. Craft. Time with friends.

It lets you see what your goals for your free time are, which really is what I'm attempting the most to organize. My job is clear and well-defined, for the most part; it needs no organization on my part. My life outside of my job is what needs to be torn out of its current chaos.

The other important question:

"What would you do less of?"

My answers:

Computer time. TV. Staying in. Nothing. Procrastinating.

So I have my answers of what needs to change in my free time.

What I need to take up next week: Making a To Do list of what needs to get done that day, even things that don't seem like that big of a deal... anything that I really need to get done that day. I need to think about what the next year or so is going to look like, as I make each step. I need to consider what I have to change about my current mental state to allow myself to maintain any of the steps I'm about to take.

Not sure if I'm ready for week 2, but I came home from work today with an energy to my step that I haven't had, really, in weeks.

There are some things on my plate right now that could really get big, in wonderful ways, or could blow up in my face.

I am finding myself anticipating seeing which it is, doing everything in my power to make sure it's positive.

So my first steps are going to be to try to dial down all the anxiousness and chaos in my head, and then start applying that to my life outside of my brain.

I really hope this wasn't the most boring blog entry any of you have ever read... this was really me kind of talking out loud to you and to myself. I haven't been talking to my blog really lately. I was never great at the lengthy entries here... there's too much I try to keep at least semi-private. But I'm trying to open up more, and be more honest, as part of what I am trying to accomplish.

I feel like honesty's working for me so far.

In Which Your Narrator is Boring

2011-08-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

My latte from The Coffee Hound during my visit to Illinois

You may have noticed I did a small amount of not posting last week... in that I basically didn't post at all. Well, last Tuesday was my anniversary with Jason - our three-year-anniversary - and between work and attempting to get out and be active with Jason and yet more work, I haven't really had time to really think.

Except in those short bursts you get when out and about, when you think to yourself, "Oh, I know what a good blog entry would be about!" and by the time you get home you've completely forgotten all about it.

In any case, last week we had dinner at the Trappe Door for our anniversary when I got out of work; we split an appetizer and an entree, and had a beer and a dessert apiece. Our entree was moules and frites; mussels and fries. Oh man, that is a heavenly combination I had never actually tried before.

Wednesday, with my day off sort of wide-open for adventure, we went back up to Table Rock. I still can't hike all the way to the top or even remotely close, but I definitely got twice as far this time as I did on my first try. It's a hike listed as "strenuous", and it is not kiddin' around. I have some pictures, but managed to misplace my cord for getting them into my computer. So more on that later.

A roasted garlic scone from the Coffee Hound

I spent this weekend working: closing shifts Friday, Saturday, and another closing shift tonight. While it's nice in that I get to sleep in, it also basically kills any chance of me doing anything especially fun this weekend that I get to tell you about. I could tell you about making lattes and coffee for people, but you already know the basics on that stuff, right?

However, I noticed I had these pictures from my trip to Illinois lurking about, ready to post, so I decided to go ahead and put them up here. Coffee and a scone from a little coffee shop in Bloomington-Normal, on a really nice morning when Mom and I went into town just the two of us and kind of meandered around. We have a very particular form of shopping we do; we wander, back and forth, looking at this or that, until we finally decide we can glean no more fascination from the same stuff in the same store. Only then do we buy.

It is a form of shopping that drives anyone who does not shop that way insane.

As I'm basically killin' time until my closing shift tonight, I haven't got any super-cool plans for today. My next day off is this coming Wednesday. I'll have to do laundry that day.

See, this is why I didn't update... my life is less than exciting. I plan to spend the afternoon working on the magazine version of the "Rule of One More"; taking the parts I like and want to keep for re-reading out of magazines so I can throw them out... making space for more magazines! Yay, more magazines!

Jason does not like my version of the Rule of One More.

Mine is an evil laugh.

Since we're on a roll of 'food-themed' pictures for this entirely not food-themed entry...

Here is one more than I have. It's pumpkin blossoms, sort of a regional thing I suppose; most people I meet since I moved out of the Midwest have never heard of eating pumpkin blossoms. I've noticed squash blossoms appearing in recipes more lately, and it's really the same concept.

Oh man, are they delicious. The taste of coming home in late summer is pumpkin blossoms. Yum.

Oh sure, they look fried and unhealthy and delicious and...

well, they are fried. Also unhealthy.

Also delicious.

Hopefully next time I'll have something a little more exciting than pumpkin blossoms and my work schedule, heh.

this face keeps me coming back to Illinois

2011-07-31T15:57:00.000-05:00

Well. That and all the other hilarious faces she makes.

And the stuff she says.

Oh, and the games she comes up with.

You know.

Basically everything about her.

This is what happens when your niece is incredible. It's hard not to take pictures, even when those pictures are of her making silly faces. I'm debating buying her a Viking hat so we can match. Oh wait. I stole that Viking hat from a friend for those pictures.

Okay, I'll buy us both Viking hats so we can match.

Of course, I go back for my family. To wake up in a house with my siblings and my parents in it, to make endless single cups of coffee in my parents' awesome Keurig thing, to watch TV shows geared towards toddlers and eat fried pumpkin blossoms (YES I got to eat some this year! Life is good) and talk to my sister, to my brother, to my parents.

To help my cousin Melissa celebrate her Independence Day in style.

So now I get to start counting down days until we go back for Christmas.

How tall do you think she'll be at Christmas?

Momentarily Distracted by Consumerism

2011-07-30T10:38:00.000-05:00

I am back in Greenville! My plane landed only a few minutes late yesterday, and I saw my brother off to his terminal for his flight back to Austin, Texas and then headed for baggage claim. Jason got backed up in traffic, but it didn't end up affecting that much as to when he got to the airport to come get me... just as rush hour starts in Atlanta, Georgia.

Where the airport is.

And we have to go straight through Georgia to come home.

We stopped at the Atlanta Bread Company place inside the airport, right outside baggage claim, and had a quick kind-of-dinner between 3:30 and 4-ish, figuring getting in any kind of hurry would be a bad plan. And it really would have been. Had we chosen not to eat first...

It took us about an hour to get out of the city. It usually takes us... maybe twenty minutes to a half an hour.

Rush hour traffic does not play around.

Had we chosen to leave before eating, we would have been considering cannibalism by the time we finally got out of Atlanta, let me tell you internet.

It took us forever to get home, but when we did, I was able to pet the cat and settle right back into things. This morning we went downtown to the Saturday market. We didn't buy anything (other than iced coffee) but we did walk much further down the West End of downtown than I have ever gone before, so that was fun. Now we're back and making sure to guzzle some water before we meet up with friends for some lunch at our favorite Saturday meetup place, Cafe Paulista, a restaurant everyone should go to, as often as fiscally possible.

I work late afternoon to close, so boo on that, but yay on getting back to work, really.

Tomorrow I start week 1 in earnest of my book on organizing your life that I picked up. I may keep you updated on the progress, but really, I may not. My current level of chaos is a little much to try and talk about.

I haven't been able to load pictures from my week in Illinois just yet, but I'll try and get a few up from the trip in the next few days. I had a great time being with my parents and my siblings each day again, and getting to see my extended family is always fantastic. We had a really busy week, not exactly a vacation in the strictest sense, but I had a pretty awesome time there. Still... I need some time to get the photos loaded and go through them.

In the meantime, some things I either own and love, or love and wish I owned and am scribbling mad little plans for once our financial stuff gets back on track:

Brazil Nut Body Scrub from the Body Shop. It's for dry skin, as is the body butter I have now that's about to follow, so I can't use it all the time... but it's great for when you've gotten out of the pool or been cleaning all day covered in dust, or spent your day on an airplane. The smell is great; a really light, faintly sweet smell, and while it exfoliates, it's made to moisturize at the same time so it doesn't leave my skin super dry and itchy afterward.

Cocoa Butter Body Butter, from the Body Shop as well. This is what I use after the scrub, and a little goes a really long way. It's also made for super dry skin. But let me tell you, after spending yesterday in airports, on a plane, and then trapped in a car in Atlanta's rush hour traffic... the body butter really does the trick to relax you. It's got a great not-quite-chocolate smell that lasts forever without being cloying or really obvious.

How badly do I want these boots. How very, very badly. Or at least boots that are similar to these boots. I may take up flouncy mid-length prairie skirts just to justify owning cowboy boots like this. Cowboy boots don't look ridiculous in the South, right?

Besides, the company is located in Austin, where Bryan lives! I'd be supporting local business! Well, somebody's local business, anyway.

Maybe I will find boots similar to this, in a price range that does not raise my eyebrows so high they nearly fall off my head.

Maybe.

Still want 'em, though.

A set of notecards and envelopes from Papyrus. I didn't know that store existed until I visited New York City with some of my in-laws and my friend Tea showed me all the awesome stationary. Maybe I'm getting too domesticated, drooling over stationary. I feel a sudden need to go listen to old punk music for a while or dye my hair bright red.

Vanilla Chai Lip Balm from Soothing Touch. I found it at the EarthFare grocery store Jason and I visit sometimes and it is the best lip balm ever... so far. Every single ingredient is something I recognize, which is something I'm striving for overall over time, it actually smells (and tastes) like Chai (due to actual chai tea and vanilla extract), and it's a HUGE bottle of balm, meaning it lasts for a long time.

So those are just some things I thought were pretty cool. Some I already have, some I would like to have. Hopefully I'll get at least a little bit of a tidbit about my trip up in the next couple of days. I don't work until evening tomorrow, so I've got some free time.

The cat conked out right next to me last night, so it's nice to know she missed me. Or, you know, is a cat and therefore just wanted to see if I'd pet her if she laid right there.

She was right.

Illinois

2011-07-23T07:14:00.004-05:00

Clearly, I live.

Plane took off exactly on time and landed a few minutes before we were officially scheduled to. I panicked during takeoff, as per usual, and panicked less during landing, which was nice. You would think with the serious amount of flying I've done in the past twelve months that I'd be able to handle takeoff by now, but... no.

So I'm here in flatland, corn and soybeans all around, and it feels... nice. It's too hot here for people to be outside much during the day; I told my dad it feels like home, only less humid.

I have watched my niece scamper, and scheme, and probably a bunch of other actions that start with the letter S. She's hilarious and I keep thinking how different she is every time I'm here.

Last night my niece stayed up later than I did, although she got a nap in the evening so she had the advantage there. I got to wander out right before sleep and see her drawing with glow in the dark sidewalk chalk, which was pretty cool. I didn't even know that existed.

My brother-in-law made a gigantic circle of bread - I mean seriously enormous. We had the bread for dinner last night - there were burgers and hot dogs and fried pumpkin blossoms (YES I got to have some!) which I have pictures of but can't post just yet. I had JW's bread with this sort of meat spread he had brought and delicious goat cheese. So last night's dinner was pretty much awesome.

Right now, we're preparing to meet up with my cousins and aunt for a day of shopping. The downside here is that, with the three of us in the house again, we fall into an old, old pattern. Because I am the youngest, I get up first.

So here I am, typing away, listening to the creaks of the upstairs as my sister moves around, counting down time.

I miss my husband, but it's only a week. We can handle a week.

More later. For now, I am going to think about coffee, but try to hold back from actually getting any, in the hopes that there will be coffee later. Sometimes there's coffee later.

Sorry this was a little bit random - now I can hear my sister making coffee on our parents' Keurig thingie and I think I might have to give in and have some.

Sigh.

I have no self-control.

Overturned

2011-07-19T18:24:00.004-05:00

It is raining like a wild creature outside, like the sky just fell open and let all the rain out at once. It was a humid, hot day, so I wasn't surprised to get rain, but... our drive home from the grocery store was kind of exciting. Also full of water spraying up from the tires in perfect waves, which while kind of pretty, is also a little unnerving.

We came in from the rain looking like drowned cats, which our cat did not really at all appreciate. She's currently hiding from the bad bad thunder noises.

I leave for Illinois Friday (!!!!) morning, so it has occurred to me I should probably look into that whole, y'know, 'packing' thing. And then it occurs to me that I really like playing video games a lot more than I like packing. So we'll see what happens.

My plans for tonight consist mostly of fruit, my favorite sarsaparilla soda, and curling up with my husband to either watch TV, play video games, or just be so cute we actually annoy people who cannot even see us.

I'm going to miss him while I'm gone.

But I'll get to see so many people I've been missing for months, and my head and my heart both sing about how it's almost time to leave, almost time for me to be there, almost that moment I'll see my mom and my dad, my brother and my sister and my whole family again. Maybe the bright blue upturned bowl that is the sky in the Midwest on a sunny day.

I don't have a lot photographs lately, just a picture here or there of a fun angle or some close-up of my porch... heh. A pile of photos from my friend's daughter's fifth birthday party that I have yet to get anything done with.

I need to decide what clothes to wear for a week, what shoes to take, if I need any jewelry but my wedding ring. The only time I get truly girly, I suppose, is when I'm packing or if a spider appears somewhere in my house. Of course, what is going to take the longest when packing is going to be the Battle of Books, wherein I try to decide how to limit myself to just one or two books for my trip, because I can't possibly need more than three for just one week, but you know... you never know. What I want to read the fourth book I vetoed at the last second?

Clearly, this is a conundrum.

In any case, dinner is almost ready, it is still raining like some kind of mythical battle is happening outside, and I think that's about all I had to say for today.

If you don't mind, I think I'll go hide from the thunder with the cat, under the bed.

there are days when I need the reminder

2011-07-14T11:40:00.006-05:00

photograph is mine, taken in downtown greenville

p.s. yes, I am working on blog layout. It's going to be kinda wonky for a couple of days.

Farmer's Markets and Hope

2011-07-11T11:51:00.001-05:00

There are a lot of people in Greenville. Or at least more than I am used to there being in places. Greenville is a sprawling kind of place, which makes it the perfect sort of city for me; full of grass and trees and space to move around in. So I kind of forget that there are so many people here.

Until we go to the farmer's market downtown on Saturday. We arrived about half an hour after it even opened for the morning, so there weren't that many people yet - although there was already a line at an heirloom tomato booth.

The photo above was taken around ten in the morning, when the crowd started to get pretty serious. I think almost everyone with their face towards my camera is wearing sunglasses, because they are smart people who own sunglasses and I should really look into that.

The booths are awesome and varied; a ton of vegetables and fruit, of course, but a homemade pasta booth as well, some local meats, a guy who makes these incredible benches, seats, and bowls out of these slabs of wood he gets to a high shine.

Yarn, in the most beautiful colors.

Jason and I got ourselves a hunk of habanero jack cheese from Happy Cow, a bag of roasted Cajun peanuts, Pepper Jelly, and a pint of blueberries. We settled down to make a snack of the blueberries and the cheese, since we were meeting friends for lunch later.

Downtown is beautiful, and I never get tired of it, really. I could wander there all afternoon, as long as I got to occasionally duck into an air-conditioned store to recover from the constant, unrelenting humidity. I turn into a soggy Yankee after very little time outside right now.

Which Jason thinks is just sooooo funny.

It's been a good couple of weeks, on every front but financially. Financially we're still dealing with a few things (my brand spanking new medical bills being part of it), but frankly, I've been able to spend some time lounging by the pool at my in-laws', eating great (and healthy) food because Jason is a great cook when he's home all the time (and even when he isn't - he's just cooking a lot right now), all kinds of things.

Less than two weeks until I visit Illinois! I can't wait. I'm already deciding what clothes to take in my head and what books I might want on the plane, that kind of thing. I'm actually going to be on the same flight my brother is (he's flying from Texas to the Atlanta airport that I fly out of to go back to Illinois, then we're hopping on the same flight) and there has been some discussion as to whether or not that might help my fear of flying, to have a family member with me.

My husband and his best friend, who still remember my fingernails digging into their arms on the way back from Colorado, may beg to differ on that. But I'm hopeful.

Also, as a side note: Greenville has the most polite graffiti ever downtown. There were just little thought-provoking notes like this:

or one in front of an unoccupied storefront that simply said, "Empty? Empty." Or someone drew a giant pile of Harry Potter symbols on the path by the Reedy River.

There was a dinosaur hugging a duck on the wall under the bridge where we were eating.

I'm not saying there isn't horrible graffiti elsewhere or anything, or stuff I just didn't see. But honestly, cuddly dinosaur hugging a duck beats all that.

Wish us luck on the financial front! We've signed a lease with our apartment complex for another year, so it's nice to not have to pack up all my stuff for the first year since I first went to college. Maybe that's why I hate the month of July so much; it's been my moving month every year for nearly seven years.

But not this year.

Woo hoo!

11 days 'til Illinois.

I'm tappin' my feet and counting the moments.

Placeholder

2011-07-10T15:01:00.003-05:00

Working on words, but having a hard time with them, recently. It's not that I'm not doing things, but rather that I'm having a hard time sitting down to write about them. I'd rather stick my nose in a book or make food or go to a farmer's market on a Saturday morning.

Which I will get around to talking about, a little bit, in the morning.

For now, I'm going to let myself settle down and finish out this quiet, lazy Sunday off work with my husband.

I neglect you

2011-06-28T18:39:00.002-05:00

For that, I'm sorry.

I need to get back on the bloggin' horse, so to speak.

But I'm a little surrounded right now. We've had another blow happen, this time a financial one and not an emotional or physical one, so my husband and I are a little busy scrambling around trying to figure out what we're doing this time.

Add that to the seemingly unending pile of troubles happening to my loved ones, and everything just feels so weighted.

I count down the days to Illinois. Until July 22nd. Not even a full month. Soon soon soon.

I need a week where my mind isn't lost in trying to think four steps ahead of fate. It's an impossible proposition but I can't seem to stop trying.

So instead I'm going to make a promise to myself.

I'm going to buckle down and focus more on this blog, on writing, on myself, on the things I need to do to make me feel better, physically and emotionally. And let everything else sort of scatter where it may, for now.

We'll be okay.

This sweltering South Carolina summer isn't going to stop and wait for me to get my head together, so I'd best go outside and get on with enjoyin' it when I get the chance.

Cloudburst

2011-06-16T15:16:00.000-05:00

It rained last night.

I say it rained, but that's not entirely accurate.

What happened was that after a pretty nice day, we looked outside the door of our friend's apartment to realize that the clouds coming in on the sudden uptick of wind weren't just regular gray clouds, they were all but black with the rain that was coming. The kind of clouds that hang low enough that you could almost touch them.

When it rained, it poured.

It dumped buckets of rain on us, all at once. A friend of mine who was driving home at the time was blown into another lane of traffic by the gusts of wind. At our friend's apartment, we all stared out the back sliding doors to his little patio as the wind threw leaves, sticks, and debris all over the place.

A tree fell down, right behind his apartment. Just gave up and fell over, just like that. We didn't even really hear a crash.

The area behind Justin's apartment rapidly became some kind of small lake, full of red clay mud and sediment washing around, like tiny little rapids. Awful, dirty tiny little rapids.

The area in front of Justin's apartment was soon coated in red, fast-moving water as well. It was a little bit like having our own little moat, only it wasn't deep enough to stop any raving Viking hordes and also nobody we know lives in a castle.

... yet.

Give it time.

My in-laws briefly lost power. My aunt-in-law, so to speak, had most of a tree come down in her driveway. A tree blocked the road I use to get to work in the mornings last night, but it was cut apart and lying sedately in the ditches by the time I was on my way to make coffee drinks for the disgruntled cranky masses this morning.

Of which I was one, having woken up at 3 A.M. for no good reason, sat awake for a while staring into nothing, and finally getting back to sleep around 4 A.M. At least the cat was happy to see I was awake.

I received my E.R. bill in the mail today, which was mercifully so much less than I thought it would be. Seeing as we are currently uninsured (we should both be eligible come August!), I was more than a little it worried. Also less worried at the same time, since we were only in the E.R. for six hours or so, and didn't need too many tests.

I may or may not have done a small dance of happiness around my living room. I attempted to do so quietly, since I'm trying to let Jason sleep.

Goals for tonight: 5 pages of writing stuff (working on character outlines/sketches as per the book I'm currently reading) and some work on outlines. Put away the laundry I did yesterday. Clean the dishes out of the sink, stick 'em in the dishwasher.

Goals for tomorrow: Work, dinner with in-laws. 5 pages of writing stuff.

Goals for Saturday: Work, hang out with a friend of mine to plan things. Plot, really. Well, it's a little bit like scheming when the two of us are together. We have been known to break into peals of laughter that make others suspicious. 5 pages of writing stuff. Maybe.

Or maybe I'll just go to sleep instead of writing.

Hmmn.

Sleep sounds nice.

Like a Bee

2011-06-15T06:07:00.000-05:00

I'm just going to share a few things and links I'm really liking. My life is not the most exciting of lives right now; I'm working as much as I can. My hours at work jumped up partially thanks to some availability changes from the rest of the staff, partly due to one of our cafe workers heading off into the wild blue yonder (or, you know, one hour north to a different city).

So last week consisted almost entirely of I go to work, I come home, I sleep. Wake up the next morning and repeat. This week looks to be much the same, at least so far.

I still have plans to win the lottery one day. Of course, I would have to play the lottery in order to have a chance of winning it, but let's not dwell on those minor little details, okay?

In any case, a few things:

This photo of a little girl from Benoit Paille's photography, taken at a Rainbow Gathering. Jason and I watched a special on Mesolithic people in Europe living in Doggerland, the land bridge that used to connect the UK to the rest of Europe on National Geographic the other night, and the sort of gravity and seriousness on this little girl's face reminded me of the images they were showing of what they thought the Doggerland people lived like.

I think if I could go back and do college again, I'd major in anthropology or archeology. I might not have any better chance at getting a job, but the history of human life on this planet is incredibly rich and fascinating.

This jewelry display by Shannon Eileen at Happiness Is...

This is pretty much exactly the kind of jewelry tree I need, since I overwhelmingly own necklaces (and just a few bracelets). I look at traditional jewelry boxes, but I'm just not that interested. I like the idea of jewelry trees hung on the wall, and I especially like the idea of ones that I make myself.

I have so many crafty impulses, but I am just so lazy.

It's a terrible conundrum.

My friend Sarah just started up her own blog, A Kitchen Full of Flours. Sarah is the master of "Glance idly at the recipe, toss a bunch of stuff together, magic happens" cooking. She makes desserts a lot. It's probably good for me that I don't live next door and therefore smell those desserts while she's baking them. It's good for them,too!

Every time she put something in the oven, she'd turn around to find me at the table. "What? I've always been here. Is that some kind of fruit crisp thingie?"

Speaking of food, this site shows a variety of photographs including the kinds of food and the weekly cost of food for families around the world. What is so staggering isn't really the cost differences, to me, but the kind of and amount of food people are eating in a week. The photo above is a Mongolian family and their weekly food intake.

It's just interesting to see the differences in what kinds of food people are buying and where.

I'm going to end it here, just for the sake of getting something up on the screen. It took me two days to get this post up, that tells you how busy I am right now, doesn't it?

I'm working today, then doing laundry at a friend's house while working on writing. I picked up a book, Plot Vs. Character. Between that and The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing, I feel like I'm fairly settled on the writing-books front right now. You never know with me, though.

The cat is lying on Jason's chair next to me. She is the happiest napping cat in the world.

I wish I could nap.

Oh well. Just have to get through four hours of work, and then I can nap as I please.

Watch me count down the hours.

That Could Have Been Better

2011-06-05T15:07:00.000-05:00

So, I had a bad week.

I'm not going to go into too much detail; it's not the kind of story you pull out for everyone and anyone's edification.

Suffice to say, I ended up in the Emergency Room Wednesday night, with my husband and my mother-in-law helping me.

Click 'Read More' to see the rest. This gets pretty long.

I am, or rather I was, sick. To be honest, I've been feeling ill for a couple of weeks now, ignoring the slow build-up of fatigue and all my other symptoms because it was easier to tell myself I was exaggerating. Instead, I let things slide, told myself I'd give it a few more days. And then a couple more.

I'd complain to my boss at work about being a little tired, to a coworker about not feeling well overall. I'd come home and curl up on the couch and tell Jason I didn't have dinner in me tonight, it would take too much effort.

I continued to tell myself that I'd surely go to the doctor eventually, if things didn't get better.

I told myself that if I didn't feel better by then - 'then' being this imaginary concept that I never seemed to have a concrete definition for - well...

I would see a doctor at that time, that nebulous and constantly shifting then.

Well, last Wednesday night, my body decided that it had had enough waiting, thank you. And then showed up and knocked me over and I ended up in the E.R. Which, by the way, is definitely not an experience one wants to repeat in any fashion.

On the one hand, E.R. visits are always horrible by their very nature. There is something very, very wrong and you need it fixed right away and the doctor would like you to stop crying now, please, so they are always very abrupt and to the point. Which is a comfort, but it's also just as much not a comfort, too.

My mother-in-law kept up a constant running stream of conversation, which distracted me enough to help me cut down on the tears. I texted my sister and my mother, something I am not proud of, but if I had called either of them I would have burst into hysterical tears and probably just started telling everyone in my general vicinity about how much I wanted my mommy now - which I luckily managed to keep only to a single wailing cry to Jason in the car on the way to the hospital.

There is something very surreal about looking back and telling yourself, "Katie, you are 25 years old and you were crying for your mommy."

In any case, I am definitely not going to win worst daughter award - I did ask my mother-in-law to give my mom a call at one point, and I kept my sister and mother as up-to-date on all the information we were getting as often as I could. Eventually, though, 9 P.M. Eastern Time turned into midnight, and then into 2 A.M.

We left the E.R., with some information and not exactly any certainty, at almost 3:30 in the morning. We had been in the E.R. for almost six hours.

On the other hand, I went to the E.R. Wednesday night and walked out, of my own power, able to go to Steak 'n Shake with Jason. So that was a good thing. I ate part of a plate of cheese fries and half of a cup of chili. Jason, who normally would have been working overnight and who was an hour and a half past his usual "lunch" time, absolutely demolished a burger, his fries, the rest of our shared fries, and the rest of my chili.

Then we went home and collapsed into bed at 4 AM, because I had to get up at 8:30 to make a doctor's appointment. Which I ended up having at 2 P.M. on Thursday. So sleep was a rare commodity on Thursday.

At the doctor's, we made it through out appointment and then left knowing, with about 80% certainty, what had just happened to me, and that I would be fine. Which is always a good thing to hear, let me tell you.

So I went to work, showed them my hospital papers to show why I had called in sick (not that any of them begrudged me for a moment; it's not that kind of workplace. I just felt guilty for calling in on short-ish notice). I apologized to the coworker I was meant to be working with today, and then Jason and I went home. At one point, he asked me if I wanted gelato, one of my favorite things in the world.

So we had two of my favorite things for dinner; gelato and sushi. We ate the gelato first.

Friday, I got up and tried to go to work after a quick and of course exciting time at the doctor's giving them my blood. Going into work was a terrible idea and I have had no less than three people lovingly scold me for that decision since. I made it about halfway through. One of my friends, who I work with, called to ask how I was doing. After talking to me for a few minutes, she asked to be transferred to management.

At which point she showed up to work the last part of my shift and I went home and cried because I didn't feel much better yet and I had all these wonderful friends and I wanted to feel less terrible so I could thank them properly and there is just a cycle of tears here, people.

I had been texting a friend of mine off and on about how I was feeling all day. When she made an offhand comment about my 'present' having not shown up yet when I told her I was going home, I didn't really think about it.

However, when I was home taking it easy and trying to think heal-y thoughts... the flowers showed up.

My friend Sarah and her husband Josh sent me flowers. Which I cried about, only this was happy crying, which I explained to Jason probably several times more than was necessary for him to grasp the point.

We cleaned up the living room a little, which was something I at least felt up to doing. I made us some chicken, pea, and pasta soup because there is nothing like chicken noodle soup when you feel bad, and I love peas. So there.

I went to bed early and woke up for work Saturday morning feeling like, finally, I could do this. And I made it through my shift mainly due to my friend and coworker Sherrie's boundless and constant cheer. It is hard to be cranky when she just keeps being cheerful all day, is all I'm sayin'.

Managed dinner with some of my in-laws, though I had started to fade quickly by that point. Didn't manage to even make an appearance at a friend-time get-together that night, though I got to hang out with Sarah for a little bit when she came up to visit me. Then I watched terrible television, listened to the soundtrack to the Lion King three times in a row, and went to bed to read.

Today has been the first day I have felt really and truly better.

I have had energy to go out. I haven't been forcing myself. We took a walk today and I was fine. I feel pretty good, actually.

So hopefully I can pull myself together and get back on track here. I hope this whole long story was not the most boring thing you've ever heard. If it was, well. I'm sorry? But really, if you read this far, something must have kept you interested, right?

Maybe it was just the pictures of flowers. They are incredible, and Sarah did have the amazing knack of picking out flowers that look almost exactly like the flowers I had for my wedding day almost three years before, before I knew her, before she and I had met in any real way.

I love Gerbera Daisies.

I love my husband, and my mother-in-law for their enduring patience with me in the hospital. I love my friends for their support and kindness. I love the whole of my family and friends for their concern, their worry, that happiness that I was okay.

I don't really love the awesome nurse we had at the E.R., but I certainly like him well enough. That has to count for something.

So... that was the last week or so in a nutshell.

That's all I have to say, for now.

Have some flowers.

And please forgive the quality of the photos, I have terrible lighting in my apartment.

Also I had to put them high up enough that the cat wouldn't get curious and then I'd come home and discover her soaking wet with petals stuck to her fur.

The end.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-06-01T16:00:00.001-05:00

Just This

2011-05-24T13:37:00.000-05:00

Not much to say, today.

And that's a good thing.

Just a planning kind of day. I'm laying out goals for myself, for Jason and I, for this whole living-in-the-South enterprise we've got going. So far I've decided that listening to two elderly Southern women talk in a coffee shop while reading a book was pretty much the most relaxing hour ever, and that tells me I need to develop that accent, because I don't even know how someone can be stressed when they've got that lilting soft-consonant thing going for them.

I am scrolling through real estate sites looking at little houses, trying to find the one that sticks out at me, has a little bit of personality, is in our price range, as low as that price range is.

I am still on my nonfiction kick. Right now I'm reading Unprotected Texts and a book on
Saturday Night Live.
I am wearing a T-shirt I bought when I saw The Lion King in New York City and a pair of shorts and thinking, after having gone outside to run some errands, that I love central air conditioning more than I even begin to say.

It's a calm day. Yesterday I cleaned the bathroom, as the opening shot of my epic war against my own apartment. We have a friend coming to visit us in the next few weeks, and I have declared this war in the hopes that my apartment may even look remotely livable by the time he shows up. It's a dream I have, you see.

I have a couple of paintings I need to start working on. Inspiration has been a little lacking these last couple of days, but I think last night I finally hit upon my ideas. Now to sketch out to see how I'll need to plan this and then get started.

Also...

it's time for lunch.

So away I go!

Retail, Retail, Retail (Also Goslings!)

2011-05-21T11:13:00.000-05:00

picture is in no way related... but baby goose! Look at his cute little face!

So my sister reminded me that I hadn't posted since last Wednesday. I thought to myself, that can't be right... tried to do math in my head, finally just brought up the blog to check, and wow. Okay. So it actually has been since the 11th.

So.

That's quite a while. I really dislike going more than a week. Mostly it's been a combination of my days being full of reading, which is not exactly exciting to write about, or work, which I try not to write about if I don't have to. What I can tell you about work, though, is that if ever you send your 11-year-old daughter up with a 20-dollar-bill and give her your order and then tell her "order whatever you want" while you sit out-of-earshot...

don't seek to blame us when your daughter orders a Frappucino with three different 50-cent add-ons. Turns out that those things are expensive, and also clearly marked on the menu. Please do not act as though we're trying to be deceptive and trick your daughter into buying costly things. She came up with that order all on her lonesome.

Also, saying, "Well, this time I suppose I'll accept this," doesn't actually mean anything. I understand people who get worried, anxious, or defensive when we actually accidentally overcharge, make the wrong drink, make the right drink the wrong way or any number of problems we are actually responsible for. I will go out of my way to make someone a new drink that is exactly to their specifications. That's on us, and it's on us to fix our mistakes.

But seriously, we made the right drink, as it was ordered. We made it the right way. Your daughter read the menu before she ordered; she knew the add-ons cost money. Either discuss ordering cheaper drinks with your daughter or come up with her to the register next time.

Picture still not related. But look at their cute little feathers!

So that's work.

Well, it's not all work. There's a lot of good things.

But that woman's little hissy fit, and the hissy fits I have seen since I started in retail to begin with, continue to bother me.

In Old Navy the other day I witnessed a woman drive the poor lady working the register close to tears just picking at her about how she didn't seem cheerful enough. The cashier looked a little out of sorts to begin with, and by the time this lady got done with her, she had to step back and ask someone else to take over so she could just sit down, out of sight somewhere. In the end, the woman used the line that has most made me grit my teeth in all my time in retail...

"I used to work in a clothing store, you know! I know how you're supposed to be acting!"

I seriously don't get people sometimes.

When I'm a shopper? I'm a very understanding shopper. If my cashier is a little down or, you know what, even if they appear to be a listless, emotionless robot? Doesn't bother me. I don't really need them to smile their brightest and wish me the bestest day. It's nice, and I do appreciate the effort, but I'm not personally offended if they don't.

I know what it's like to have to come to work when you got three and a half hours of sleep the night before for no good reason, when you're on the verge of tears due to illness or worry or fear, when you're so sick you can barely stand. I know how hard it is to continue to grasp onto the tiniest handhold to get through your day... how time crawls or eventually slows to an absolute standstill.

I like when cashiers are happy, because it means they're probably having a pretty good day. And I like to see that. I try to be courteous, and kind, no matter what. I don't go into any store within a half-hour of their closing time unless dragged by well-meaning friends or relatives (who then take it upon themselves to explain to the sales associates in JoAnn Fabrics about how uncomfortable I am... Mom).

I don't even know anymore. I have like fifty pictures of baby geese.

Hee.

Working in retail taught me a lot about retail, and who I am as a customer, and what I expect both as an employee and as a shopper. I've never understood people who work retail and then are harder on the associates than they were before. You've been there. You know how five awful customers in a row can make you already defensive and worried when a sixth walks in.

You know what it's like to be so sick you really should be at home, but you can't afford to lose a day's pay, so you stand on your feet for eight hours anyway on concrete tiles and pray you make it long enough to go buy Nyquil after work. You know that the service industry is overworked, underpaid, trying to make a living on scraps of income that would have been unimaginable to our grandparents.

My experience in retail has made me easier on service industry employees...

Sometimes, I don't get people.

I finished reading Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture by Ellen Ruppel Shell. I think it should be required reading.

Between that and Malled, that I wrote about a couple of blog posts ago, it's giving me a lot to think about. I know that blogs, on the whole, try to write only positive things. I understand why that is a good draw, if one is looking for a large audience; your readers would rather laugh with you than worry with you, I think. But sometimes, I am not always thinking positively.

Trails of thought like the one above come and go pretty often for me, and have for a long time. I don't dwell on this, exactly, but it does pop into my head every time I am out trying on clothes in Old Navy or JCPenney's or any number of places and see someone giving the poor customer service rep hell for no reason other than to take out their own bad day on someone who is paid less than they are. Every time a customer talks to my coworkers or I like we are year-old illiterate monkeys.

Every time in six years I've witnessed a manager, a supervisor, a keyholder, anyone at all have to grit their teeth to be polite to someone who is clearly trying to see how far they can push before we explode and they can complain to corporate about the "rude employees" to try and get a free gift card for their 'troubles'...

These thoughts pop into my head.

Seriously. Their little beaks!

And they develop, over time, into this almost-cohesive thoughtful post.

Which I write, when I realize I haven't written in days.

And then I go make little cooing noises over adorable pictures of baby geese, or something.

Or what really happens, which is that the cat realizes I haven't petted her for a whole four hours now, and that is not acceptable.

Currently she is staring at me with her absolute saddest "nobody loves me" look.

Maybe she's just worried she can't compete with baby geese.

Their little running feet! Okay, I'll stop now.

I want to tell the cat not to worry; even I can't compete with the startling cuteness of baby geese.

I should have another post up for you tomorrow! Jason and I are headed to downtown today to hang out at the Greek Festival. Let me tell you how wonderful it is to live in a town where the words "Greek Festival" have absolutely nothing to do with fraternities or sororities or college.

Instead... FOOD.

Food and jingly coin-skirts. And Greek coffee, gritty and scalding hot, sweet and cooked over an open flame.

And I promise, absolutely no meditative ruminations on what it means to work in the service industry into your actual adult years. Not tomorrow.

Because I have a four-day weekend, Saturday through Tuesday, and I am not going to spend it thinking about work.

Boo.

Yah.

What the Hail

2011-05-11T12:30:00.001-05:00

Oh what, I can't like terrible puns when I'm making blog post titles?

I mean look at that up there.

That is a terrible pun.

In any case, just as Jason and I began to discuss taking the Lead-Lined Monster (our ridiculously heavy old TV, a hand-me-down from a former roommate, whose weight is frankly legendary among anyone who has ever attempted to pick it up) out to dispose of it, it began to rain. I mean, just as I was finishing up my dinner after getting home from work.

So we settled in.

It poured buckets and buckets of rain, but that's not so unusual. I noticed the sound of rain hitting our roof was getting weirdly loud. Then I looked at our front steps.

"Hey, honey? I think it's going to be a while before we can take the Lead-Lined Monster out."

The hail, for the moment, was small. Not-quite dime sized, really.

We could hear it banging into the roof, but in little sounds, more like taps than anything else.

That didn't last long.

One of my friends, who lives about ten minutes away from us, posted pictures on her facebook of hail cupped in her hand that was not quite the size of a golf ball, and some that really was the size of a golf ball.

Sure enough, the sounds of hail on the roof started quickly becoming something more akin to the sound of someone hitting something with a baseball bat and less like someone wearing tap shoes. So Jason and I stood outside and watched it, from the dubious protection of our front porch.

Turns out hail that big ricochets like crazy. Which you'd think common sense would have told me, but nope. I had to get nearly hit in the face with ricocheting hail three or four (or five) times before I ducked back inside like a smart person.

Only to duck outside every thirty seconds to take more photos.

(Note: Our car was under a large tree, which provided some protection from the hail apparently... although our poor little red sports car had to be hosed off after the hailstorm, since it was basically coated in fallen green leaves. My car looked like Christmas! Violent, hail-y Christmas.)

Our basil plants (the Thai basil and the spicy globe basil visible in this photo) were pretty protected where they were, but we did have to move the tomato plant back to safety against the screen doors, behind our chairs.

You can see the golf-ball size hail in a couple places in the photo just above.

Yeesh.

It ended soon enough, and I texted my mother-in-law to make sure they hadn't been caught outside somewhere in it or anything. She replied that they were sitting on their sun porch at the back of the house just watchin' the hail come down.

In her own words, "We are cheap to entertain."

So are we, Robin. I took like twenty photos of hail. I'm not sure what that says about me.

Actually, maybe it's not the taking photos of hail, but then taking the time to post those photos up here for the internet to see that says something about how easily I am entertained, huh?

This was actually meant to be a belated Mother's Day post, in which I discuss all those ways in which my mom is awesome. Instead, it's a post about hail, because I am easily distracted and I happened to look at the hail photos first.

My mom is awesome all year round, anyway.

I know she's awesome, because twenty-five years ago she made that adorable hair-bow'd jaundiced little creature above, and despite all my temper tantrums, complete lack of common sense, argumentative teenage years, repeated begging for blue hair (for four years), the spiked jewelry and Sex Pistols t-shirts and my high school boyfriends and tears... I think I came out pretty well.

I don't wear hair bows, though. I stopped wearing hair bows the moment I discovered how to take them off. Technically before that, since it turns out you can just yank those suckers off when you're two years old and don't have great motor control yet. Even if you have to pull some hair out with 'em.

That I am as delightful as I am speaks highly of her character, because seriously, I'm not sure that I could handle raising a kid like me.

Although I'm guessing just saying that means my kids are going to be terrifying monsters, and my mother will laugh, and laugh, and laugh when they are just like I was.

Hopefully that means she'll be full of really good advice for dealing with problem children after having dealt with her obstinate stubborn little third kid for the two decades it took me to move out of the house.

So. I guess this turned into a belated Mother's Day post after all.

Which means I accomplished my goals for today! Yay!

Cookies for everyone!*

*I do not actually have any cookies. Although if I did, I would totally share.

Flowers & Books

2011-05-06T10:04:00.000-05:00

These are all over the place along the boundary of our apartment complex, these beautiful wild white things. Honeysuckle is everywhere, in the air all the time. That reminds me of last year's spring in Illinois, where we lived near the countryside and honeysuckle was all I could smell for weeks.

The geese living in our pond have goslings. One set of goose-y parents have four little babies, one set has three. They are the fuzziest-feathered cutest things I have ever seen. The wood ducks who live there year-round just seem confused.

I have spent a lot of time in the last couple of days trying to think of what I really want to do for the next six months or so. Just... what do I want to spend my time on? I'm reading a lot, lately. I just finished Malled by Caitlin Kelly, about a fifty-something woman's sudden shift from her longtime journalism career to part-time retail work in a store for The North Face in a wealthy part of New York.

The book was occasionally infuriating, mostly due to Kelly's naivete and her strange way of writing about her coworkers with nothing short of surprise at every tattoo, less-than-stellar attitude and, a couple of times, the way her female coworkers, when pregnant, just kept working until the last second. I had to remind myself sometimes that some people haven't really worked retail or sales in their lives, haven't dealt with having to grit their teeth against a customer who has decided to take out all their personal pain on you, how issues with coworkers can taint your whole day. Occasionally she let herself fall into a kind of low-level not-quite-acknowledged judgment of their lifestyles and who they were; while Kelly herself had previously been living an upper class lifestyle, most of her coworkers are like me; they have worked these retail jobs for years, and are looking at continuing retail for the foreseeable future. Kelly seems... unable to grasp that, and to view their lives outside of work with some kind of strange "Look at the adorable lower-class people" mentality. It put my teeth on edge, but at the same time I have worked with women like Caitlin Kelly, more than once.

Then again, the book was really engaging. Caitlin Kelly is actually really likable and I actually, after giving it some thought, enjoyed how much of herself she did not edit out of the book. Her occasionally forays into statistics and reports were really interesting, although mostly they just proved to me what I had already known. Her manager, a well-meaning man who burns out trying to juggle everything corporate throws at him, reminded me of every good manager I've ever had.

In the end, I definitely give Malled a 3.5 out of 5 (didn't know I actually had a rating system, did you? Well that's because I didn't, I just made it up). I definitely don't regret spending money on it, and I want to start passing it around people I know to get their take on it, but it does have a lot of problems as well.

Next up?

I'm about a third of the way through College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Co-eds, Then and Now by Lynn Peril. It's actually a fun nonfiction look at the history of women in college in the U.S., from the first "girl's seminaries" in the 19th century to the start of women's-only and co-ed universities... right now I've hit the 1950's part of the timeline. It's often hilarious, full of tidbits about girls curling up in their "study slacks" because that was the only time wearing pants was considered appropriate or the interesting point that dating used to be about being seen with as many boys as possible, not dating a single boy and having a serious long-term relationship with him.

So both of those are really interesting. I should be done with College Girls soon, after that I'm moving on to Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. Yeah, apparently I'm on a nonfiction kick right now.

So my week, really, has been defined by what books I'm reading and thinking whether or not I really should be reading books, not writing them. Or looking into freelance writing. Or painting. Or... something financially viable.

I dream about seeing books with my name on them on a shelf in Barnes & Noble. Of course, I also dream about being the maid of honor for the wedding of a hunchbacked, but really nice queen in a palace the size of New York City.

So... I'm not sure my dreams are anything I should go by.

And So It Goes (Alabama/Illinois)

2011-05-01T14:10:00.000-05:00

It would be easy to post pictures of pretty spring flowers I have seen, and I'll get back to that.

But right now, I don't think those pretty spring flowers are important at all. You'll have to wait for those.

Southern Illinois is still flooding. Parts of it along the Mississippi are rapidly turning into little "islands". I was reading a news story about a man basically taking people back and forth in his boat between their houses and the nearest dry place that their cars are parked, so they can go to and from work. There are photos of people riding horses through the floodwater. The sandbags in Cairo, Illinois are starting to go. They've ordered "non-essential" people to evacuate the town.

The town I lived in for six years, Carbondale, has set up an area for evacuees to stay in. They already have people staying there. Murphysboro, less than ten minutes down the road from Carbondale, is looking at a possible loss of their wastewater treatment plant due to flooding. Sandbags have been airlifted in. The Big Muddy is expected to crest less than an inch from its previous record and roads have been closed all over Jackson, Massac, and Franklin counties to deal with the onslaught of water.

My friend in Cape Girardeau is still watching the Mississippi and its inexorable climb. Discussions are happening on whether or not to purposefully flood certain areas in order to relieve the strain on more-populated ones.

In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, help is on the ground. Volunteers are showing up to help in whatever ways they can. My throat closes up reading the opening line about a truck showing up with some Krispy Kreme donuts - sure, it's not any kind of permanent help there, but it's a start. It's something normal.

My friend who was living in Tuscaloosa is looking at complete uncertainty as to when power and water will come back. She and her husband are doing the best they can to figure out what to do. The National Guard/Red Cross took over the parking lot next to their apartment for the relief effort.

The whole state is looking at debris, picking through rubble to find what's left.

There is a lot of damage and destruction, and it's only been a couple of days. It's incredible how quickly devastation on this scale in our own country fades from the front page of the newspapers not in the immediate area, how easily these storms and floods became a tiny link below large pictures of William and Kate in England getting married on CNN.com.

I know it's hard to think about, I do. But please, please consider donating or helping in any way you can. We are talking about people who have lost everything, who are staring at five blocks of nothing but debris and flatness. We're talking about people desperately building sandbags to hold off a wall of water. We are talking about empty towns and people who need every ounce of clean water they can get.

I am going to repost, now, a post my friend Tea made about where to donate, places you can give money to, ways we can help.

Obviously, this particular post is focused harder on ways to send help to Alabama. It was the hardest hit state and is having the worst time dealing with the destruction. These tornadoes cut a swath across the lower half of this country, but the highest death-toll, by far, was in Alabama. The Red Cross will be on the ground wherever they are needed. There is a Mississippi Disaster Relief Fund set up for victims in MS.

----------------------

Originally posted here.

As you’ve probably noticed, one of my best friends in the whole world lives in Tuscaloosa. You can read about her experiences these past few days here.

Here are some ways you can help.

CBS42 has a list of ways to donate water, non-perishable food items, clothing, etc., for people who are within driving distance.

AL.com has more ways for people who are in the region to help.

If you want to volunteer, call the United Way at 211.

alephz took the time to put together a list of ways to donate money. I’m c/ping that here.

You can donate to the Alabama Red Cross. Or even the regular Red Cross. There’s also the Salvation Army and the Alabama Governer’s Emergency Relief Fund

There is also a link to many ways you can help here:

Stuff to send to Alabama.

A couple things you should know: They are looking most for money, bottled water, and non-perishable food items, flashlights, batteries, hand sanitizer, as well as gift cards to stores like Wal-Mart, Lowes, and other big chain stores that are located in the area.

Anyone who sends me confirmation of a donation of $10 or more (you can send me a photo of a text confirmation if you do the text to the Red Cross or Salvation Army thing) will get a black and white drawing of a single figure (person, animal or thing). If you send $50 or more, I will draw 2-3 figures for you.

Please re-post this anywhere you can.

----------------

Please don't look away from these hard moments.

These people need whatever help we can give, whatever items we can send.

This is Not Normal

2011-04-28T08:07:00.001-05:00

Growing up in the Midwest, the spring "tornado season" is taken pretty much for granted. We all know there will be thunderstorms, cracks of lightning whose thunder rattles the window frames, wind that blows all the new leaves back to the ground. Maybe hail that is big enough to dent cars or sit in little ice-balls in the yard, melting slowly while some of us hide in the basements and the rest run for the video camera, hoping to catch the funnel cloud or the particular color of ash-green the sky just turned.

I, by the way, am a basement-hider. Not that 90% of you didn't know that already.

Half my heart is in the Midwest year-round, with so much of my family there.

And what's going on the Midwest and parts of the South right now, when it comes to weather?

It's not normal.

Not that there really is a "normal".

I should say, instead, that it's scary.

We are looking at at least 173 dead in the most recent set of storms to rip across the United States, a huge number of them in Alabama, a state not entirely prepared for tornadoes and no one could ever be prepared for that many of them.

The Mississippi and Ohio rivers are flooding. There are photos of people in Cairo, Illinois building sandbags to try and hold off the worst of it. Cairo? Cairo was maybe an hour from where I was living last year, in Carbondale. My friends in Cape Girardeau, Missouri have been going to the basement more often this year than I can recall any of us having to go in the past six years, when I was in southern Illinois. My friends in Carbondale, still at Southern Illinois University, are talking about tornado sirens going off while they sit in class and their teacher continuing the lecture, since there aren't a lot of places safer than whatever classroom they're in at the time.

I've done that. I've been there, sitting in class tapping my foot wishing the teacher would let me go hide in the bathroom or something, just so I couldn't hear so much of the hail smacking into the ceiling and the walls.

My family in Central Illinois is getting rain after rain, pounded by it. Planting crops is getting a hugely late start this year thanks to the rain. When it's not raining, the ground is so wet they still can't do much. There's a chance that in the next week, the sun will out enough to help, but it's only a chance, and more rain is yet to come. Farmers get irritable, commiserating over endless cups of coffee at local diners, glaring outside at the gathering gray clouds. I know that sentiment pretty well; there are always seasons where the rain starts too early and lasts too long.

But this?

This is not a normal year for weather.

Not that there is a "normal". But this is definitely unusual.

I am crossing my fingers for my friend Lynette and her husband in Alabama, for everyone in that state, for those people only beginning now to try to figure out how to rebuild the utterly demolished parts of their towns and cities. I'm crossing my fingers for our friends Stevie and Jason and their kiddo Nolan in Cape Girardeau, watching the Mississippi waters rise. Crossing my fingers for everyone dealing with the aftermath of tornadoes and these crazy storms.

And of course, I'm crossing my fingers for my dad, my grandpa, and my uncle, for them to be able to get the planting done as soon as possible. I cross my fingers for all farmers, every year.

But I'll learn how to cross my toes for this one.

Send out prayers, good vibes, whatever you can spare to the people walking around their flattened neighborhoods and trying to figure out what to do. Send out love and goodwill (and any help, if you can spare it) to those desperately building sandbags and flood barriers against the rivers.

If you don't mind, send out some hope to the people being affected by all this. Hope that things get back to "normal"... by which, hope that things calm down, that people can get back to the business of living, get on with rebuilding, and don't have to watch the skies anxiously to see if it's only going to come again.

I'll be over here, fingers and toes utterly crossed for them.

That is, if I ever figure out how to cross my toes.

Belated

2011-04-27T14:23:00.001-05:00

Or alternately, "In Which My Post is Delayed By Absolutely Nothing".

"Belated" just seemed so much more concise.

Things I have done in the past few days: baked what Clean Eating magazine called a "Peachy Dutch Pancake", which involved eggs, vanilla, a little flour, and thawed frozen peach slices. It was delicious. We ate it all. I went to work a couple of times. Bought a few groceries. Drank coffee. Made homemade baked fishsticks and a fresh strawberry version of the dutch pancake thing, thanks to a regular customer at work who brought me a huge bag of strawberries today (recipe coming soon).

So, you see, nothing particularly time-consuming. I even had yesterday off work. Did that inspire me to write anything about Saturday in Savannah?

No.

No it did not.

So instead, after going to work for a few hours, then coming home and cooking basically nonstop for two and a half hours, I have decided that now seemed like the best time. Not, y'know, yesterday. When I wasn't doing anything in particular.

I'm... I'm very special.

So... about Saturday. Right. Back on that.

We went to the Jepson Art Center right near the riverfront, part of the Telfair set of museums. Jepson is the modern art museum, but the reason it was picked as a place to go was because it had a whole set of rooms dedicated entirely to the kind of hands-on exploration and play that toddlers are best at... only it related everything to art.

Delainey immediately started playing with the wooden blocks, in various shapes and sizes.

Jason decided to play too, and made a sculpture on the magnetic sculpture wall.

Believe me, I don't judge him. That pile of stuff to the right? That's my sculpture... which I admittedly wasn't paying much attention to.

Jason and I are not what you would call modern art fans, but I still liked walking around and seeing everything. There is no way that a museum is a bad idea, on any vacation. In Colorado? We went to a skiing museum. Which I don't remember much about except for it being very warm when it was very cold outside. Which maybe says something about me.

In any case... I am decidedly pro-museum.

Delainey inside the adult parts of the museum was incredible. "It's a square!" She declared happily, while looking at an "optical illusion" piece of art meant to make you uneasy and force you to go over it in some detail. My brother-in-law JW decided she would be the best art student ever, absolutely pragmatic. I agree.

There was a heavily complicated, involved exhibit that had a sort of motorized chair with a video hookup. It was playing a series of lights and patterns across the walls, along with some music that seemed to change slightly as it played.

Delainey danced in rhythm with the music, changing her dance to match the colors.

Best art museum visit ever.

One last visit to the children's section to have hilarious fun with the 'writing' wall (where I discovered someone there prior to us really, really hated the Mets), and we walked down to the riverfront.

Which, by the way, is beautiful.

We went into some of the stores down there, sort of threading in and out at random. There was River Street Sweets, where they gave us free pecan praline samples as we walked in the door. There was a Life is Good store where I watched Christina calmly convince Delainey that she did not need a new stuffed horse by explaining to her that it was not "on sale".

Apparently, this works really well with young children... right up until they start pointing out when things don't have "sale stickers" on them even before they can read.

Didn't I tell y'all my niece is a genius?

And yes, Mom, I realize I said y'all. It's been showing up more and more often lately.

Delainey got a package of cotton candy, and I can't say we weren't all amused by Kiddo managing to pick out the one single kind of candy that the candystore didn't make right there themselves to be the one she absolutely needed to have.

I eyed the divinity. I thought about it. I may have made dramatic sighing sounds. But I did not buy it. I don't know why I didn't, now. Ah, such regrets have I.

At Bernie's Oyster House, we had lunch. Delainey fell asleep most of the way through her hot dog, in the awesome way babies, toddlers, and little kids have of being mid-action and just sort of... slumping... over... and then they're out.

Still... lunch!

The crowning achievement of lunch being JW buying, to split, a gigantic bucket of raw oysters. Those oysters up there?

We ate all of them, between Jason, JW, and I.

I had never shucked my own oysters before, and there's a trick to it; it took three or four tries for me to really grasp what I needed to do. Sometimes my hands shook a little from the effort at twisting out a tricky one. They're incredible when eaten raw... just by themselves with nothing at all, with horseradish, with a little hot sauce... my favorite was the oyster placed on a saltine cracker, with a little black pepper and Texas Pete.

It took us a while. But we conquered the mountain of oysters. I have pictures of the second bucket full of all the empty shells, but to be honest all of those pictures are kind of disgusting... because it turns out oysters shells that have just been shucked, but not cleaned, are sort of awful looking.

So no photos of that.

But trust me; I have records of all the oysters we ate. Records I am keeping to myself.

There was a little bit more walking, with Delainey zonked out the whole time.

At which point, when it was time to walk back up the stairs and head back towards our cars, that Jason and JW carried Delainey, in her stroller, up the stairs.

The things we do to placate napping children.

Who, the moment the two of them reached the top, immediately woke up.

Which was hilarious.

We had one more place to visit before we went back to the hotel to recharge, for Delainey to swim like a fish, and for us to eat dinner... we went to visit the ruins of Wormsloe Plantation, built in in the early-to-mid 1700's by one of the first settlers in the colony of Georgia, Noble Jones.

He built a house inside, essentially, a little fort right up against the marsh. The original house is long gone, leaving just the ruins of the fortifications, for the most part.

But entering the park, you have this:

Which is breathtaking.

Direct descendants of Noble Jones still live in a house that is off to the side of this beautiful avenue, but you're not allowed on the grounds, since they keep the house as a private residence.

Some of the ruins of the original fortifications. The neat thing to look at is how much of these walls were built with shells mixed into the mortar.

Off to the side you can go see the shell midden, where all the oyseter, mussel, and etc. shells were tossed after shucking. At some point, you realize that the midden is in fact that little hill you're standing on, and it's something like five feet of compressed shell and dirt. It's actually pretty cool.

Which goes to show you, I suppose, exactly how nerdy I really am.

The marshland just behind the ruins is absolutely gorgeous, especially on the sunny day we were having then. I wouldn't suggest trying to take a wade through it unless you're a really big fan of mosquitoes and, uh, whatever other gross things lives in swampy marshland... but still. It's pretty to look at.

And full of these gorgeous windy dead trees, lying all over the place.

After that... I don't have much in the way of photos. I can tell you this, though: the hotel has lovely air conditioning. Delainey drank orange juice from a coffee cup and thought she was supercool, just like a grownup.

At one point, in the morning, I had made some snarky comment about myself being a 'coffee snob' after working in a coffee shop.

"You're a coffee snob?" Delainey asked me. I said yes. She thought about that for a moment. "I'm not a coffee snob," She said to me. "I'm a milk snob. And a juice snob."

I thought to myself, Child, you are three years old. And died laughing.

I said goodbye to my sister and her family, since she was leavin' on a jet plane to fly back to Illinois at 8:30 Sunday morning and I wouldn't see her before they left. And there was sleep.

I slept like a log all weekend... I'm going to say that was a good sign.

There. Whew. Better late than never, I suppose.

I'm going to sit here and think about how awesome those oysters were, if you don't mind.

Or maybe eat a piece of the strawberry skillet-cake-thing I made.

Or think about eating it.

In any case, there is going to be sitting, and there is going to be thinking.

I'll get up some photos from Fort Pulaski later! I'm not going to say what day, because I might jinx myself.

Ooooh, maybe I'll go take a nap.

Also, it was my mom's birthday yesterday... so I suppose this is kind of a belated shout-out to her birthday, too!

Savannah

2011-04-25T17:46:00.000-05:00

So last Friday meant a surreal 60's-era restaurant called the Crab Shack out on Tybee Island, the very first place we went to. We met JW and Christina and Delainey there for lunch. It had live alligators out front around a little lagoon, sleepy things basking in the sunlight.

It was kitschy, and perfect. We sat next to a window and could look right out and see the water where at least some of our food likely came from. Jason and I split a huge Low Country Boil. We took this:

and made it this:

(with a little help from my brother-in-law JW)

It meant this little girl coated in sunscreen until her skin was almost pure white, running around on a beach for the first time, splashing in the ocean. It meant seeing JW and Christina out in the water with her, and telling her not to poke the jellyfish that washed up on shore.

Like that one.

It was this moment

but the best moment is still this one:

That little (but loud) voice yelling "It's the beach! It's the beach!" as she went running ahead of us.

Friday was seeing my sister and her family for the first time since Christmas, and seeing Jason see them for the first time since last July. The food was great (even the Pizza Hut pizza we ate at the hotel that night) and Delainey is so much taller than she was just at Christmas, and so very grown up.

This is only a couple of photos of Friday. I'll do Saturday and Sunday in a much bigger entry tomorrow, but I'm a bit sleepy, drinking my Sarsparilla from Maine Root. I'm still going through the 300-some photos I took over three days.

Tomorrow: raw oysters, an art museum, a pirate sword, heavy lifting.

There.

That's something to look forward to, right?

So this weekend

2011-04-21T16:03:00.000-05:00

IE, tomorrow

I am leaving with mischief in my eyes and my husband in tow, to go to Savannah, Georgia. My sister is visiting my brother-in-law (who has been living, not IN Savannah, but nearby) with my crazy-genius niece and they are enjoying all the wonderful that is there.

So tomorrow morning, I am leaving, still cranky with sleep. It's going to take a little over five hours to get there, but every single second is going to be worth it, because I am going to lay eyes on my sister and my niece for the first time since Christmas. Jason hasn't seen them since last July.

I won't see them again until this July, when I go back to Illinois to attend my cousin Melissa's wedding.

So we're going to make it count.

For now?

Well, I have a wine, cheese, and women party to attend tonight.

No, it's not that kind of party. Just a group of women drinkin' wine, eatin' cheese, bein' ladies.

You know, if any of us can actually be considered 'ladies' in any way.

And I think you know we can't.

Spring in the South

2011-04-16T09:54:00.001-05:00

So this first spring in Upstate Carolina, so far, has meant the following:

Spring starts a month earlier here. I was startled to see leaves beginning on trees before February was over, a humid warmth start to tinge the air in March. It's midway through April and the warm days are hot indeed, everything burst out in flowers a few weeks ago.

Which leads to my next point.

Spring in the South means pollen collects. This is a photo of a rivulet of pollen on the hood of my car, but that doesn't really get across to you just how it collects. It is a thin fuzz on the table on my in-laws' screened-in sunporch. It covers our chairs outside on our patio. It blows in the wind, rains down constantly.

People take to wiping off outside chairs before every time they can sit down at them.

When we looked at how much pollen had accumulated on my car in such a short time, I looked at it for a while, then gave a sigh and said, "Well, it doesn't matter how much I want my sister to move here, she can't. Well. She could but I kind of like it when she's not so sick she can't breathe after five minutes..."

Which, by the way, is why my sister never goes in my apartments.

I will direct you to our cat, who has the unfortunate problem of being covered in skin and fur my sister is deathly allergic to.

Actually, I think my brother is allergic to cats, too...

Moving on.

Spring is an explosion of flowers, in bushes and in trees. On vines making their crawling way up the trees. Everyone plants gardens in a seeming frenzy. Jason and I aren't immune; we spent more money than we probably should have at Lowe's buying a tomato plant and two kinds of basil for this year.

Anyone needs two kinds of basil? I have a feeling we'll be drowning in it.

Although we have a third kind now.

Well.

Hope I like basil as much as I think I do.

And, of course, spring means the kudzu comes back. The Plant That Ate the South begins its surprisingly fast, inexorable crawl back up out of the remains of last year's vines and leaves. I walk past a spot in our apartment complex constantly, watching the kudzu. It occurs to me if I stood still for a few hours, I'd probably see it grow.

Every time I see a pile of new kudzu, green and rising and looking for something to cling onto and cover, I hear the Jaws theme start up in my head.

Da dum... da dum... da dum da dum da dum...

Don't leave a car for longer than you must near any growing kudzu. Give it a month? The car will be totally covered. Driving down here in spring and summer turns into an interesting version of the cloud-game. You know, when you look at clouds and try to decide what the shapes resemble?

Well, you can do that with kudzu when it takes over trees.

You'll see a whole small clearing of little humps where kudzu has eaten trees and otherwise covered the ground in a flat blanket of vibrant green.

It's...

unsettling.

It's spring. I am surrounded by the sudden growth of things (although today I'm mostly surrounded by rain), and flowers, and sharklike plants whose only goal is to cover the world with their greenery. I'm surrounded by people in pretty spring dresses and the reappearance of linen, white cardigans and sandals and everyone pulling out their bright colors again.

Welcome to spring in upstate South Carolina...

year one.

Neat.

Installment 5: Getting Home Alive

2011-04-14T15:16:00.000-05:00

I just wanted the title to rhyme.

So when we last left off, I had finally managed to finish Saturday. FINALLY.

So Sunday!

We ate lunch here. This is Becco, an Italian restaurant a couple of blocks from our hotel that had been reccomended by one of Monica's friends. The place seemed very small at first glance; some tables, the bar in the middle... until we were taken to our tables and realized it was much larger in the back than we had assumed.

The food was incredible; they brought us bread to eat with olive oil, pepper, a white bean dip. A little dish of olives, both fresh green only-slightly-preserved olives as well as your usual green olives... it turns out no one else at the table liked green olives, so I may have gorged myself.

Only a little.

The other three ordered a special they had where you received essentially endless serving of three kinds of pasta, chose between a caesar salad and a seafood antipasto (Hunter chose the antipasto and definitely loved it). I chose peppers stuffed with meat. I don't remember what kind of pepper, or even what kind of meat. I just know that it was so good, and I couldn't stop eating, even when I didn't need to eat anymore.

My three companions really enjoyed their pasta, too; especially a baked fusili with four kinds of cheese.

How Monica felt after our entrees were done.

Really, that's a good illustration of how we all felt.

We still decided to get a piece of cheesecake to split. Which was also delicious.

At which point we waddled out the door to prepare for that afternoon's Epic Adventure: Central Park.

You can tell you've gotten to Central Park once you start seeing more than one tree at a time in the distance. That's when you know you're headed the right way.

Central Park is huge. I mean, I knew it was big, but I honestly had no conception of just much space inside the city is devoted to this single gigantic park. It's a great idea; it's a centralized location for people to come hang out in, get a little sun and a little nature, a little less constant concrete and steel. There are food carts everywhere, an area where street performers entertain the masses, ponds, a resevoir, a carousel.

Hunter and Monica posed on top of huge rocks for us in their running clothes. I'm still impressed that Hunter managed to do some serious running that soon after lunch, because heaven knows I was still full to bursting by the time we left Central Park. All I did was walk.

It's kind of fun to stare across the huge expanses of green and see the tall buildings telling you exactly where the park ends; they butt right up to it. You literally cross a street and suddenly trees, trees everywhere.

Trees and fountains, statues and bridges and big open areas for people to gather in. That picture up there? Is technically a photo of the angel fountain, but behind it is one of the waterways, with people boating on it. There's a boathouse right there, to the far right in the photo.

Close-up of the angel fountain... also some boats.

We walked through the park (with Hunter running ahead, then circling back to tell us which way she was going, then running ahead again) until we came to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Resevoir, a huge man-made lake of sorts. Looking it up, it covers 106 acres. That... is a lot of water.

It's also pretty breathtakingly gorgeous on a pretty New York day.

We took photos (which then had to be looked over to see how good they were), and walked in a huge circle all the way around the resevoir (Hunter, as before, would run ahead and occasionally come back to us... this time Monica got in on the game, too and they ran together). It's a little over a mile and a half to go all the way around. Although, to be honest, trying to keep track of the amount of miles I walked while in NYC was definitely the kind of game you lose... there was no telling. All I know is, multiple miles every day.

When we finished our circle, we started to head back until we were distracted by some street performers, acrobats who had gathered a crowd by the time we walked up. We stayed long enough to laugh at their jokes and watch one of them do a crazy flip over a boy from the audience, before having to head off in time to be ready for dinner and then Kelsey's Show!

By then, the sky was starting to cloud back up a little bit, although it went back and forth on whether it felt like being pretty all day.

After a sushi dinner across the street from Carnegie Hall (the shorter brown building in the foreground above), we went inside to wait for the doors to open! Actually, we all went inside, then Monica, Hunter and I decided to walk down to a nearby Starbucks, then come back a little bit closer to the opening time.

When we left, there were definitely some people standing around waiting.

When we came back, that amount had quadrupled.

Carnegie Hall is smaller than I expected it to be, but about as opulent nonetheless. The crowd was packed in, but Gena snagged us some great seats towards the front, where we would be able to see the singers pretty clearly.

Since photos and recordings were expressly forbidden and I was trying to be good, I don't have any photos of Kelsey singing, or of kids singing at all.

All I have is the piano.

We had a bit of a hilarious misunderstanding in that we didn't realize there were two different National Youth Choir groups that sang. When the first one came out, we all searched in vain for Kelsey, growing increasingly agitated and worried that we couldn't seem to find her face on the soprano side... then Monica noticed Kelsey was still sitting with some of the kids in the audience and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief.

There were two small single-school groups, as well as the two multi-school groups. We were surprised to learn later that Kelsey's school was the only one that was a private Christian school, since nearly all the music chosen was very religious in nature. Then again, some of the most beautiful and difficult music for singers that has ever been written has been religious music.

After the performances were finished, the ushers basically ran everyone out of the room as fast as they could with an absolute minimum of politeness (Gena was told she couldn't stand still long enough to take a photo of Kelsey near the stage, and essentially pushed out). We were able to get some photos of Kelsey, as well as photos of Gena and Kelsey and Gena, Monica, and Kelsey while we stood and bravely tried to fight against the push of the crowd heading for the exits.

We ended up in a diner, where I got hot chocolate with real whipped cream and there was pie, oh... oh how there was pie. And cheesecake. And spaghetti with meat sauce... of which Kelsey had two or three bites, Monica and I each ate a little, and Hunter ate about half of. Then Kelsey decided to try chicken fingers and fries, since the spaghetti hadn't worked for her. I'm pretty sure Hunter, Monica, and I helped her with quite a bit of that meal, too.

Which is awesome, since not a single one of us was remotely hungry.

but the food in New York is so good.

We dropped Kelsey off at her hotel room and went back to our own to pack our stuff up, snuggle into bed, and get ready to go home.

Except that Hunter stole my blanket during the night and I woke up with a thin white sheet, shivering. I looked over at her with my blurry no-glasses eyes and watched her snuggle harder into her perfect blanket burrito. Gena was already up and I looked over at her and just pointed at Hunter... at which point Gena helped me out by pulling the bottom of the blanket up to fix my issue. She is a very helpful lady.

There was a cab ride to the airport in which both Monica and I were carsick by the end of it thanks to the cab driver's relentless gas-brake-gas-brake-gas-brake even when it was not entirely necessary.

There was a flight home that got... bumpy, there, at the end... thanks to it being quite windy in Charlotte, North Carolina when we came in for landing.

You know you have problems with flying when, at the end of the flight, a complete stranger with sympathy in her eyes leans over, puts a hand on your arm, and asks if you're going to be okay from across the aisle.

I hate planes.

Then again, planes are the fastest and in most cases the safest way to get to a new place, to see new things, to experience different parts of the world. And the plane rides back, well...

They bring me home.

To warm air, humidity, to rolling hills and green leaves. To spring.

To South Carolina.

To home.

So that was New York. Oh how that was New York. And it's done, finally! I know this last installment went up something like two days late, but it turns out I am very lazy and only occasionally motivated...

but I'm done!

Yay!

I can only thank my mother-in-law and my aunt-in-law, so to speak, Gena too... for making my whole trip possible. And I got to see the Lion King! And eat delicious foods! And see Tea and Jess!

and...

yay!

NYC Installment 4: Chinatowntown & Little Italy

2011-04-11T19:33:00.001-05:00

When last we met, I had met up with my friends from online and the whole group of five of us were headed off on the next grand adventure... the subway. I had never been on the subway before, at any location. I was on a train once, when I was much younger. I don't remember much about it except getting asked to leave the dining car. Honestly, my memories are so fuzzy I can't remember the exact context of said train ride either.

Subways are different, in any case. I explained to Tea and Jess and the group at large that my previous experience with subways has been seeing them in the movies, such as when the bad guy gets his head cut off in the movie Speed. I was assured that those types of things only very rarely happen in real life.

I may have been told 'never', but you know, somewhere in the world there's probably a bad guy who got his head cut off in the subway, so I suppose it's very rare, instead.

This photo is off one of the little metal birds sculptured on to a railing. The subway in NYC is full of these little touches; fun or pretty things, meant to lighten up the reality of how harshly lit the florescents are and the fact that one is underground, away from the sun. It's great to be walking and have something catch your eye and realize there's a beautiful mosaic just to your left or those little birds to your right.

We took the subway to a whole different part of New York City, and that in and of itself was pretty cool. We spent a lot of time in the eight or so blocks surrounding our hotel, and it's easy to let that sort of let you start believing New York is not as big as it really is. The subway teaches you a lesson about that, as you look at your little tourist map and realize how far you've gone.

We came up right near the site where the World Trade Center towers used to stand. The first photo above is of the little church right across the street, a teeny old thing with an old graveyard out front. The WTC site, of course, is full of cranes and rubble and construction materials as they work on building the memorial. There was a little museum for 9/11 and the memorial across the street, and we stepped in to have a look.

After that, it was a walk of a few blocks to get to Chinatown! We passed a Maserati dealership, with those shiny sports cars lovingly tended inside two huge glass windows. We may have stared a little bit. To be honest, I don't know that I've ever actually seen anyone driving a Maserati. They seem like the kind of cars you keep in your garage, wax three times a week, and whisper sweet nothings to. I mean, for the amount you pay for 'em, you sure wouldn't want to get a scratch.

Wait. I got off topic. Masterati sports cars do that to you, I suppose.

The clouds came and went, but for the most part Saturday was a beautiful day. Chinatown was full of stores, little stalls pushed slightly out into the sidewalks. People called to you constantly to try and get you to purchase this or that. One lady tried to get Monica to buy a cheap knockoff Coach purse, which was kind of hilarious since Monica was actually carrying a real Coach purse at the time.

There was a constant glut of languages, accents, and regional diction going on around us. It was pretty fantastic. Tea pointed out how easy it was to tell when you've reached Chinatown, because it's almost instant; cross one street and suddenly all the signs are bilingual. There were fishmarkets, late in the day their smell was a little bit overpowering but some of the products looked pretty good!

We wandered, staring idly at this thing or that.

Eventually, we hit the end of Chinatown and ran smack dab into Little Italy. I hadn't known they were so close together, but Little Italy makes itself very distinctly obvious.

See what I mean?

There was a display in a window about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, one of the more tragic events in American labor history, in which a huge fire broke out in the factory and 146 workers, many of them first-generation immigrant women, were killed. Many of the deaths could have been prevented if the doors to exits had not been locked to prevent the women from leaving.

One of the women killed in the fire.

On the other hand, Little Italy had this:

Which I was informed I had to take a photo of for Jason, since he was definitely appreciate it. Frankly, I think we can all appreciate a happy dinosaur talking to a cloud.

It brings us together.

I'm going to go ahead and agree with this sign, right here. That should be everyone's life goal.

Little Italy was just as full of wonder and excitement. There were the stalls, still, the little stores. There were roadside cannoli carts now, a restaurant everywhere I looked. Pizzerias, trattorias, fancy or casual, you name a kind of Italian restaurant or food and Little Italy will strive to make sure you get to enjoy it.

Tea had a place in mind for us to eat, and we walked until we got there. It looks like a little hole-in-the-wall place from the outside, a little pizzeria doing the same thing they've been doing forever, with excellence and with style.

A little place called Lombardi's.

At Lombardi's, I explained to Tea that much of my knowledge of culinary must-sees in the country and really the world came entirely from watching the Food Network or the Travel Channel. I had heard of Carnegie Deli and Lombardi's from a Travel Channel special on New York City. The Food Network has done various little travel-based shows in NYC.

This was probably a little strange.

But I was optimistic! Sure, I'm from Illinois, but I'm not from Chicago, which means pizza doesn't have to be deep-dish to feel like the "real thing" for me. Our pizzas were delicious, too: the crust had just the slightest char on the bottom, the sauce was perfect. We ate in a room tucked away through the kitchen and up some stairs. We tried not to stuff ourselves, because dessert awaited us, and not just any dessert: there is a place down in Little Italy called From Rice to Riches, a itsy little place that did one thing, and it did that one thing very well; rice pudding.

It was like the Baskin Robbins of rice pudding, with a pile of flavors to choose from as well as toppings for an extra fee. We all purchased the smallest size of our particular flavors, and even so, it was hard to finish after having eaten dinner! Valiantly, we did our best.

I had cheesecake rice pudding with chocolate crumbles and strawberries. Oh it was so good. Oh... so very, very good. I have now decided to create rice pudding for any conceivable occasion I can come up with, because it made me want to either have huge vats of it at my disposal or open up a store like this here. I feel like a rice pudding place would go over pretty well here in Greenville, bastion of sweet tea, sun porches, and red dirt.

Oh how I love the red dirt.

But I'm distracting myself again. We'll get back to that sort of thing later.

Tea and Monica both had cheesecake rice pudding, too. Monica started off with no toppings and Tea got graham cracker crumbles, at which point we all sampled each other's (Hunter had... chocolate, as i recall, and at the moment I can't remember what Gena had. I'm sure it will come to me in the middle of the night). Monica realized how good the graham cracker crumbles were, walked back into the line and had some put on hers. And all was well.

So, stuffed full to waddling (are you noticing a pattern here? I could spend whole vacations in New York just learning about the food available there) we were back out on the street in Little Italy. We were able to get ahold of Kelsey and find out her school group was eating in a nearby restaurant, and Gena, Monica, and Hunter ducked in to speak with her while Tea, Jess and I hung around outside talking. I know I was somewhat of an excited puppy dog the whole day... they are patient, patient ladies.

Tea and Jess had to get back to Queens, so we four ladies were left to navigate the subway on our own. I am proud to state that we managed quite well. We also met a group of four locals on the subway who were deeply fascinated by the southern accents of Gena, Monica, and Hunter and who were willing to show off their own Staten Island accents to us. By the end of that particular subway ride, I definitely think we had new friends. At least Gena did, heh.

We found ourselves right next to a huge Macy's, the huge Macy's, with forty-five minutes 'til close and my party's shoppin' fingers gettin' itchy.

We went inside and managed to get through to see a few of the different floors and experience the wonder and magic that is the old-timey escalator they have there, sort of wooden and creaking. A tie was bought. Fun was had by all.

The Empire State Building was actually very nearby, and going up was debated by the other three. I assured them I would deeply enjoy sitting in the lobby on the ground floor should they choose to do so; only my mother can talk me up that many stories.

After realizing the amount it would cost, the ladies decided against it and I was able to bid the Empire State Building adieu without having to face the prospect of its elevators or, heaven forbid, its view.

When I get over my fear of heights, though? Me and tall buildings, we're going to see a lot more of each other.

If I get over my fear of heights.

In any case, what happens after this is a little bit of deciding whether or not it's unacceptable to go to a city like NYC and get tired before 11 P.M. Because we were tired, indeed we were, and it was definitely not even 11 yet.

Some wandering ensues, which I have no photos of. And back to the hotel.

Tomorrow, I'll put Sunday... Central Park! Hunter running! Some more of Hunter running, this time with Monica! Water! Carnegie Hall! No photos of Kelsey singing because Carnegie Hall gets very angry if you take photos while the performance is underway! A description of Kelsey singing!

Look at all those exclamation points. You can tell I'm excited.

I'll finish up the trip tomorrow, too, and that'll be it for New York City. And there will be much rejoicing. In any case, I've got some southern spring photos I'm aching to put up sometime soon... and it's only a couple of weeks until my sister and my niece will be in Georgia visiting my brother-in-law (who has been living there for his job) and Jason and I will get to visit them, too! It'll be the first time Jason has seen Delainey since July, and I haven't seen any of my family since Christmas, so I am going to hug my sister hard enough that breathing may become a problem.

In any case, that's it for tonight. This is all the words and enthusiasm I've got for you.

Have a good night, everyone!

NYC Installment 3: So Much Bacon

2011-04-10T13:24:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this just keeps going. I took something like 317 pictures? A lot of pictures, in any case.

Just keep this in mind: I can't even finish Saturday in this entry. There was just too much awesome.

In any case, the Trio wanted to see if they couldn't catch the live filming of the Today show, so we rolled out of bed super early, ate a nice, simple breakfast in the hotel, and hit the streets to walk over to Rockefeller Center, where the filming happens... It also happens to be one of the Big Tourist Places to Visit in NYC.

Being tourists, of course, we were happy to oblige.

The day started bright and sunny. It was great to see the sky bouncing off all the huge buildings, although I did feel a little bit closed in by all the tall.

The buildings were very Art Deco, with all kinds of relief etchings or outright carvings like this one. This one was definitely my favorite building decoration we saw that weekend, and we saw a lot of them.

Close-up shot of the carving above the door. Look at how imposing that is.

We made it there before they actually came out to talk to people, so we went around to the side where fewer people were standing, waiting for the hosts to come out so we could see them. When they did come out, the first person to exit the door was a guy named Lester Holt, who is apparently Monica's favorite person... after Brian Williams. Who, in her defense, is pretty cool.

Other people, who were not so lucky and did not get to pose with Lester. Also look at the building behind them! Maybe the Today show excitement was lost on me.

Hunter and Monica, however, were deeply excited. Gena was very excited too! I was busy trying to stave off a woman to my right who was convinced she could jab her elbows into my side and I would move whatever direction she wanted. She was also about a foot shorter than me, so it was more than she was jabbing me in the hip.

Monica and Hunter were able to finagle their way onto the Today show during the weather segment; if you watch the weather from April 2, you can definitely see Monica and Hunter behind the weather guy's head. I'm pretty sure Monica was prepared to knock down small children if she had to.

She's a very determined lady.

We had some time to kill before meeting a friend of mine I had not previously met face to face, so we wandered around Rockefeller Center for a bit, heading into the NBC store and grabbing coffee from a Starbucks in the basement. Starbucks was basically the beating heart of our visit; constant, dependable, everywhere we went.

Pretty much the only definite sign of spring I saw were daffodils blooming in special planters. Oh, and I think a couple of the trees had one or two leaves on them.

Walking down along the streets, we saw a gorgeous building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, a gigantic Catholic church whose doors formally opened in 1879. It has undergone lots of renovation and addition, and they're actually working on renovations right now... so there were some doors you couldn't go in and some places you weren't supposed to take pictures.

We went inside, and the hush was a palpable thing. Most churches I have been in are this way... there's a sort of collective agreement to near-silence regardless of whether or not there are any signs suggesting it. People, when they speak, lower their voices.

The Cathedral had many shrines to various saints, with places to light candles in prayer if you wished.

They had a Pieta, as well, one of my favorite forms of art when it comes to sculpture and painting. The basic format is endlessly simple; the Virgin Mary and the dead body of Jesus... but it has been done in so many ways. I am a big fan of older subjects like this done over and over through the ages, to see the way stylization changes or the differences between individual artists. This was a very classic pieta.

We walked around for some time, but finally left. After a little bit, it was time to meet Tea! Tea and I have been friends with several years now, but have never previously met face-to-face... it just never worked for me to be able to get anywhere near her part of the country, let alone New York City. Well, I wasn't going to waste this opportunity!

We met up here, at Carnegie Deli, one of the more famous restaurants in NYC and arguably the nation. It was fantastic; they brought a little dish of pickles to the table for us, some of what Tea told me are called half-sours (still very green and cucumber-y, with just a little bit of obvious pickle-ness to them) and some regular pickles. I think I ate too many pickles, but I don't even regret it; they were so good.

Tea came in a few minutes after us, and there was much rejoicing.

Surrounded by photos of all the celebrities known to have visited the Deli, we had some of their food; I had a footlong frankfurter with hot sauerkraut. It was great! And probably too much of their coffee, considering I'd already had Starbucks. Monica, Hunter, and Gena got BLT's as I recall, although two of them shared one. There was much remarking on the hilarious amount of bacon that came on the BLT's.

SO. MUCH. BACON.

Tea had liverwurst, I believe, which she says is great but I did not have any of that day. I believe her.

So very, very full of food, we left to visit a store and then go back to the hotel for quick naptimes and for Tea and I to have a bit of sit-down-and-chat time while waiting for another friend of mine, Jess! I have known Jess for less time than Tea and had never been able to arrange a face-to-face meeting either, but today was a day for meeting people.

The three of us in the hotel. I have carefully cropped out the amount of clothes, toiletries, and other sundries that the four women sleeping there had been tossing carelessly around since we got there. Although really, the bed was mostly pretty neat.

And that is the first half of Saturday. I'm going to cut it out there, because I have already posted so many photos and so much text here. On the other hand, to make it for it I'm going to post the next installment tomorrow, and then the last one Tuesday! Which means it will only have taken me a little over a week to tell you about four days of my life.

So...

that sounds about right.

And once we're finally done with NYC, I have all sorts of rambling about pollen and heat and humidity, tomatoes and basil and sunlight and April and family in the south to tell you about!

Yay!

...

well, I'm enthusiastic about it.

Installment 2: The Circle of Life

2011-04-07T16:14:00.002-05:00

So, yesterday I got us all the way to Times Square, and then stopped there.

I forgot something very important, however:

My sister-in-law eating an apple.

I just needed to share that.

So I told you that it had been gray, and cloudy. It was like that all day from the moment we got there. Eventually, though, the clouds cleared... just as the sun was going down.

We went, for dinner, to a tiny little hole-in-the-wall French-Thai place called Breeze. I didn't get any pictures, because I forgot. However, I can say with absolute authority that should you go there, you have to get one of three things: Pad See Ewe, Pineapple Fried Rice with Chicken, or Seafood in a Bananleaf Cup.

I had the Seafood in a Bananaleaf Cup. It took a while to come to me, but when it did... it was like this incredible seafood bisque, almost a soup, but full of squid, shrimp, and scallops, a little red bell pepper. A lot of coconut and cilantro. Hunter and Monica declared, after trying bites, that it "tasted the way sunscreen smells... but in a good way!"

We decided this probably had something to do with the coconut or cilantro or both.

They also served an excellent Thai Iced Coffee, all full of sweetness and milk. It came in a larger portion than I'm used to at Thai places and I was able to enjoy it all the way through the meal. We had a mango mousse cake slice and a thick, rich chocolate cake with raspberry sauce and tiny Ferrero Rocher balls to eat for dessert. Monica promptly devoured one all by herself, which she claims was purely "on accident".

A likely story.

So, stuffed to the gills and kind of waddling out the door, we headed off to the main event of the evening. The important event of the evening.

The Lion King musical... on Broadway...

I saw it, readers.

I saw it with my eyes.

This is another thing that may be hard to explain. The Lion King, when it came out in 1994, was incredible to me. I saw Disney movies in theaters. I saw the Lion King. I have been, shall we say, A Fan of it ever since. I own two copies: VHS and DVD. I watch it when I'm sick, or sad, or in need of some kind of comfort. So to say I was excited to see the musical (which I own the soundtrack to, and had read up on extensively)... is a bit of an understatement.

The theater overlooked Times Square, as you can see in this photo. Times Square is almost always teeming with people, day or night.

The musical was... pretty awesome. Terrible words that don't do it justice. There was a LOT of fun stuff happening for general theatergoers, and a wealth of interesting things happening to my art-history-minor brain. I kept noticing little details or aspects that were clear calls back to traditional masks, puppetry, or storytelling that were very important in some of the African cultures historically. So that was wonderful.

It didn't disappoint. There were a few moments that took my breath away, and their handling of moments that seemed difficult to pull off onstage (the stampede, Pride Rock in general) was very skillful. The woman playing Rafiki was incredible.

I'm running out of words that mean "really awesome".

So I'll let Scar's mask do the talking.

In any case, we spilled out onto Times Square again afterwards. I was a T-shirt, charm bracelet, and little canvas bag richer... if less so monetarily. I'm wearing the T-shirt now. It's yellow and I love it. Also the bracelet. Because I am shameless.

Gena and Monica, bein' cute outside the theater.

I'm going to call it there. Because we spent some more time wandering around Times Square, shopping and looking and getting accosted by well-meaning poor comedians who really wanted us to go see their show. The poor guys; they worked so hard. If it had been just me there in Times Square by myself they probably would have talked me into it, too.

Eventually, of course, we had to collapse back at the hotel, to try and rest ourselves a little bit before Saturday... we had plans on Saturday. Monica, Hunter, and Gena wanted to see where they film the Today show, since they do some of it outside with a small crowd of onlookers who might get on camera. We had plans to meet with my friend Tea and later my friend Jess, two lovely women I've known for a while now but hadn't yet been able to meet face to face.

Friday turned out to be a lot more involved than I thought it was, heh. So Saturday, I think, will come... Saturday, oddly. I work all day tomorrow, and while I will try to get photos up Friday night, I can't promise it won't be Saturday morning before it happens...

Whew. I am off to finish my pimiento cheese on crackers (and it is wonderful why do we not eat this heavenly food in the north) and then Jason and I have things to do tonight.

Part 1 - Leavin' on a Jet Plane

2011-04-06T09:02:00.001-05:00

So I went to New York City and I returned in one piece!

Well, mostly.

I returned with a full digital camera, a bunch of souvenirs, a powerful need to hug my husband and an incredible relief to fall asleep in my own bed.

In any case, let's backtrack through this vaguely chronologically, shall we? I'm not going to promise complete accuracy; you know me, readers. You know accuracy isn't always my strong point.

But...

Pretty pictures!

Which I must warn you, there are going to be a lot of them.

Hence this being only the first installment.

So, let's start at the very beginning, and I promise not to start singing that song from The Sound of Music. I'm thinking about it, though.

I, of course, wore my good luck charm, a Christmas present from my sister... if you couldn't tell.

I was seated with my sister-in-law, Hunter, and my... aunt-in-law... Gena (I'm not sure how the naming system works with that stuff). Monica, Gena's oldest daughter, was going to meet us at La Guardia airport when we landed, since her plane was schedule to land roughly around the same time (she flew from Charleston, we flew from Charlotte-which, hey, now I've visited Charlotte! So that's something).

I sent two text messages in this time: one to my mom reminding her how much I hate planes (note: I hate them a lot) and one to a good friend of mine asking him to remind me just how safe planes are supposed to be (note: very safe).

It being April 1, we had a flight attendant who was a one-man comedy show, which was mostly amusing. It did not, however, amuse a woman across the aisle from me, a quintessential New Yorker who was pretty mad by the end of the flight and pretty vocal about it. We did end up a little delayed in landing, but not too bad.

Hunter took this photo for me when we first broke cloud cover.

and she took this one for me as we were coming into La Guardia.

Believe me, I do not take photos out of plane windows. I just don't.

I will spare you the story of my mild panic upon takeoff... because you're going to get the story of my much less mild panic upon landing back in Charlotte Monday later. And really, who needs more than one story about how much I don't like planes?

I could tell 'em all day, but that doesn't make them riveting story material.

We were promptly welcomed.

We snagged our luggage, and Monica, and went outside to grab a cab to our hotel. I have been in cabs previously, although granted not in a New York City cab. It can be an experience, sometimes.

Hunter and Monica were sure excited. I think Hunter smiled like that in her sleep over the course of the weekend, she was so excited.

The cabbie drove us fairly efficiently, and I wasn't especially rattled or perturbed by his driving style. Monica and Hunter and I pointed things out to each other and laughed and in general were terribly thrilled to be here, while Gena sat up front and chatted with the cab driver. It was kind of a drab, rainy day, with water everywhere and gray clouds.

That didn't bother us.

I took some photos of the drive, but very few of them came out. Mostly as I would go to click, the cab would lurch forward suddenly and I'd just get a blurry shot. I had the best luck taking photos out the front windshield.

New York City is very tall. And gray. And full of concrete.

Also, full of people.

We made it to our hotel, a Hampton down by Times Square. There were free cookies, which we may or may not have gorged ourselves upon, before heading up to our room. It wasn't even dinner-time on a Friday night, and we were in New York City! Our room was on the sixth floor of the hotel, which meant we had an interesting view.

The view out our hotel window. This is before the shirtless man came out to exercise in that little garden space in the bottom right. I didn't get a picture of him.

Sadly.

We took a few minutes to sort of get our brains in the we're in New York City place, and talk about what to eat for dinner. We came to no actual decision, but decided we'd rather decide while walking around Times Square.

My three lovely partners in crime; Hunter, Monica, and Gena.

Times Square, which is very bright, and very large, and very, very shiny.

So I've gotten you to our first sight of Times Square, and that's where I'm going to quit for today. Tomorrow I'll pick right back up where I left off and finish off what we did Friday night and Saturday morning, too. Right now that monotonous thing called 'real life' is calling me, with the need to go buy food and whatnot, do some laundry. Relax and try to adjust back into how things usually are.

Sigh.

Everyone have a good day!

2011-04-01T05:33:00.000-05:00

So I know it's been a bit quiet around here this week; a combo of rain, rain, and more rain making picture-taking a little unpleasant, my work schedule being quite full (and mostly of closing shifts), and trying to get friend-time and Jason-time in.

So I haven't had much to say.

However, in a few hours I'll board a plane to spend a long weekend in New York City. I'm going to see THE LION KING (which must be capitalized, and I cannot even explain how I feel about this adequately, all I can do is squeal), meet up with a friend I've known for years but never met face to face, and then I get to see my husband's little cousin sing at Carnegie Hall!

I'll have my camera with me, so you can bet I'll be taking pictures. I might post here over the weekend, maybe. I may be able to get photos posted before Tuesday, I don't know. We'll see.

Everybody be good this weekend while I'm gone!

The Truth About Driving in Greenville

2011-03-26T08:24:00.000-05:00

1. Don't look for left-turn lanes. There might be one, if you're lucky. There might not.

Just realize that left-turn lanes are considered highly optional, and most of the people here choose their incredible "sit in a regular lane because there's oncoming traffic until the light is yellow and make that left turn as fast as you can JUST BEFORE the light turns red, after the oncoming traffic has already stopped".

Sometimes, there is a left-turn lane! Hurray! But... then you realize there still isn't any left-turn light. The logic here is a little mystifying. But at least all the people trying to make that single last-minute high-speed swerve as the light turns red are all coralled into their own lane. However, if you get stuck behind a cautious, defensive driver who isn't willing to take the risk that they'll be hit by that single car that runs through the very tail of the yellow light... you could sit in that happy little left turn lane all day, waiting for the driver at the front to get brave and try to make it.

It's... exciting.

I feel like I'm cheering all the left-turn people on.

"Go little car go!"

Sometimes I want to get out of my car, go up to the car at the front of the lane, tap on their window, and politely ask them if they could just drive down to the next left-turn light and turn around and come back the other way, since this way isn't getting us anywhere at all.

2. A larger population (this is a city, really, a true city; not McLean's little sleepy streets or Carbondale's angry college students) means a larger population of people who cannot drive. Be aware of this at all times. Any time you start to relax, rest assured someone will just suddenly change lanes without signaling while running a red light and speeding... just to keep you on your toes.

(Name the movie I just quoted and you get... the knowledge that you know stuff about movies! Yay!)

Don't get me wrong, I don't think there are worse drivers here overall than in Carbondale. You have to keep in mind, in Carbondale we would routinely realize driving was a lot safer during the summer when nearly all of the living-on-campus students were gone. It was often bliss, to just drive along on a road full of townies. Then, come August, I'd be dodging side-swipes while the people in the other car are trying to text while driving, drinking a soda, painting a Picasso copy... you know. Doing a lot of things one should probably be careful about while behind the wheel of what I affectionately like to call "screaming metal deathtraps."

Really, drivers in Greenville are probably much better, overall.

There's really no 'probably' about it. They just are.

One of the main things I have noticed, both in cars and just in my interactions with people, is the fact that there is a niceness that permeates things that is a little unusual. Well, yes, of course at the bookstore cafe I still have customers who make me want to rip my hair out, that's a fact of life. There are days at work where customers come in looking for a fight, and we are the hapless service industry robots who get to have target signs painted on us.

Nonetheless, people overall seem to be nicer. Especially driving. I've never seen so many examples in my life of someone trying to pull out onto a road and the people stuck in traffic on that road stopping to let them get in. Every time I need to pull out of a gas station to go home during rush-hour and someone seriously stops their car so I can pull out going the other way without having to sit forever, I'm not sure if I really believe it. I give them a grateful wave, full of some vague surprise I can't explain, and try to figure out what I've done to deserve this kindness. I have to remind myself I am not driving in Bloomington-Normal, back in Illinois, which is legendarily full of angry people who don't want to let anyone get anywhere faster than they do... or in Carbondale, full of distracted (and distractable) college students trying to do six things at once because paying attention to one thing is boring.

Every time I get stuck dealing with a driver who is irrational or driving badly here, I realize that it's less rare that my road rage flares up since I got here.

That's definitely a good thing.

3. When we (finally) got our license plates switched over to SC, I noticed people no longer drove around me as though I might at any second just decide to go careening into a wall. Apparently people did not trust my Illinois plates.

Now that I am an official Driver of South Carolina, people are much less cautious.

I'm going to consider that positive.

4. This has nothing to do with driving, actually, but Jason pointed out to me that I have recently used both the word "ain't" and the contraction "y'all" in this blog within the last month. He seems to think this is amusing. I tried to point out that we use "ain't" back in Illinois, too, and he'd best save this laughing until I start rounding out my consonants all slow and soft like southerners do or calling everyone 'sweetheart'.

I will admit I have said "bless her heart" at least once since I got here that was not in jest.

Well, I mean, it was a little in jest.

I just didn't realize I was saying it 'til I had.

Don't judge me.

Sorry about no photos today... it just hasn't been a good picture week for me. I have taken photos, mostly of various friends of mine chatting, but I just don't have any really good ones to work with. We'll see what happens in the next couple of days. It's raining outside, but sometimes rain has netted me some pretty pretty things, so we'll see. Maybe I'll go for a walk while Jason sleeps.

5. This also has nothing to do with driving, but I want to end on this note:

A week from now I'll be waking up in New York City.

That is all.

State of the Katie Address

2011-03-22T14:06:00.000-05:00

I am warning you ahead of time: this is going to be really, really long... and pretty text-heavy.

Feel free to skim through and just look at the photos. I won't blame you if you do.

My mother-in-law continues to do well up in Boston. My regular updates from Jason's aunt Gena have been pretty positive, and today I got a facebook message from the lady herself! I am excited to see her recovering quickly, or at least I hope being on facebook is a good sign for one's recovery.

Today is a day of morning shifts, which is nice in that I am at work while Jason sleeps, so we don't have the usual blink-and-you-miss-it interaction between me leaving, him going, or him leaving and me going... we actually get evenings together. Today we may even go for a walk. I know, I know, it's a pretty exciting plan... but I think we're capable of it.

Next week is basically a week of closing shifts, one after another, three days in a row... then an opening shift... then a day off... and then I leave for New York City! It'll be a new experience for me. I've never been to NYC before, or really the Northeast at all. It'll be a quick, long-weekend whirlwind trip, but I think it'll be a lot of fun.

In any case, I get to watch my sister-in-law, the aforementioned Gena and her daughter Monica be all silly in the big city. I will probably be quietly taking pictures in the background, an abject and unashamed tourist in all my tourist-y glory.

I might even talk loudly about farming or something, just to make sure everyone knows how out of place I am.

I have to admit something here, be really honest; I'm not "over" whatever this weird mental place I've been in lately has been... That place where I start wondering where 25 years went so fast and whether or not I'm going to be able to get to where I wanted to be in time for all my big important goals. I've been waffling in and out of a strange melancholy about it for several months now. Sometimes it's just homesickness, I think, that reality of being just that far away from the first, oh, 23-and-a-half years of my life.

I put a lot of stock in landscape, in the setting I surround myself with. In school assignments way back when to write about myself, the place I was living always came up as part of who I was. And that place was, always, roughly the same. It's changed, and I think the notion of uprooting myself and making the huge adjustment to something entirely new has its occasional "but I just want to go back" effects, even though I really, really don't.

I'm happy here... but I am still affected by that odd sense that time is starting to get away from me.

This is kind of silly, I know, coming from someone as young as I am. I am very aware of my youth, and extremely aware of how ridiculous this probably sounds when my age is taken into account. Nonetheless, I keep wondering if I have the time to get myself together. My mind often tells me that by this point in her own life, my mother had one child and by the end of November had two. My own goals originally had me having a baby when I was 25 (which I can promise you all ain't going to happen, heh).

Granted, at one point I thought I'd be a famous writer by now. Or artist. Or artist-writer.

Writer-artist.

Whatever.

Despite all that, I've been having a feeling creeping up on me the past few weeks, some kind of sweet almost-contentment. Maybe it's just the way my brain wasn't real sure if it wanted to accept this move start to fade out, let me enjoy it once and for all without whispering in the back of my conscious mind that I am missing so much to be here.

The thing is, I was missing so much before, and I knew it then; Jason's family's holidays, really getting to know my in-laws, trips to the beach, his perfectly crazy-awesome sister Hunter and the growing-up-stages of his sweet little twin cousins, who are about a year older than my niece.

Life is good here, and it's nice to finally see my mind beginning to let me enjoy that.

The weekends have been great; full of friends, or family. I've had the ability to relax, laugh with people I already loved or newer friends I am rapidly growing to love. Although it's not even quite April, I am going into this late spring and summer with the knowledge that while last year was deeply lean, and Jason and I fought for every scrap of income we were able to keep... those worries won't be quite so bad this year. I'm actually really looking forward to the rest of 2011... 2012, too.

In the end, I suppose, this was just a really long-winded way of saying "Well, things are pretty good, actually."

I suppose I could have just written that one sentence and saved us all about three pages of ramblin', though, couldn't I?

Ah well.

Anyone reading this blog for any length of time already knew I'm a big fan of rambling. Really, anyone who has the vaguest knowledge of me in general already knew I'm a big fan of rambling.

I like to think of it as one of my many charms.

Pumpkin Sunflower Scones

2011-03-19T10:55:00.001-05:00

Last night, Jason and I did indeed go downtown.

I told you I was determined.

We walked all over the place, from one end to the other. We had hot dogs at Hot Dog King, finally granting Jason the wish he makes every single time we can come down here. We walked all around Falls Park, back up and around through the crowd who had shown up for a music show that was being put on for free.

We walked past just as they were playing "Ball of Confusion", which is my number 2 "greatest political song ever written" on my own personal list. So of course I had to jam. And by jam, I mean "nod my head along with the beat because to dance would probably mean someone would think I was having a seizure."

Once we had walked until my legs ached, thanks to having taken a long walk around the apartment complex myself in the morning and having done my full hour in the fitness center in the early afternoon, we stopped at Coffee Underground and just relaxed for a little while. I think I am becoming a one-woman ad campaign for Coffee Underground at this point... I've probably brought it up here something like five times at this point.

But- and this is important- at Coffee Underground... they have pumpkin syrup. So I had an iced pumpkin latte and I cannot even explain how much I miss pumpkin syrup when I cannot have it.

However, that got my mind a-whirlin' about pumpkins, and the various things one can do with them. We've had a can of pumpkin languishing in the cupboard for some time, the victim of me deciding I would absolutely make smoothies with it, and then not doing that at all.

So I went hunting for recipes, and found a recipe for Pumpkin Pecan scones that looked really promising. There was just one problem: I didn't have pecans, I didn't have buttermilk, and my canned pumpkin? Turned out to be the canned pumpkin pie stuff.

Oh yeah. We're experts at this stuff, clearly.

So I sat, and stared at the recipe for a while. A friend on facebook helpfully told me you can substitute milk and a touch of vinegar for buttermilk, so that solved that problem. I could still use the pumpkin pie stuff; I just wouldn't need the same level of seasonings.

And we have sunflower seeds.

There was indeed a light bulb over the head moment for me.

So I made absolutely certain I had everything else, and went to bed knowing what I would do first thing in the morning.

"First thing" being, oh, 10 A.M. when I crawled out of bed. Don't give me that look... I didn't go to bed until 1:30 A.M.! There was reading to be done!

In any case, when I finally got up this morning, I did indeed make the scones.

And there are indeed delicious.

Pumpkin Sunflower Scones

What You Need:

2 cups whole wheat flour (or any flour, really)

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Two quick shakes of allspice (seriously, I did not measure this)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter at room temperature, cubed

1/2 cup sunflower seeds (unsalted, they must be unsalted)

1/3 cup buttermilk (or since I was out, I used 1/3 cup milk with 1 teaspoon vinegar)

1/2 cup pumpkin pie puree (or pumpkin puree if you want to do this the right way)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg, beaten

Turbinado (or raw) sugar for sprinkling, optional

Onto Creation!

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Farenheit. Combine flour, brown sugar, your cinnamon and allspice, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a mixing bowl. Add your butter and combine until you have a crumb-like texture. You can do this with a fork, but the blogger I adapted this recipe from and I agree; using your hands is much faster, if a little messier. Once you've got your crumb-y stuff going, add in the sunflower seeds, mix around.

Combine pumpkin pie puree, vanilla, and buttermilk (or buttermilk substitute) in a bowl and whisk together. Add your mixture to the dry ingredients and combine until everything is just moistened.

Dust your work surface with a little flour and pour your dough out, working it with your hands until you have a slightly flattened disk of scone.

Take your beaten egg and just brush it across the top of the scone and kind of around the edges a little bit. Make sure it is evenly coated in the egg. Sprinkle the raw sugar on top, as evenly as possible.

Cut the disk into wedges; try to cut evenly. I am bad at cutting evenly so I had a few normal scones, some REALLY BIG scones, and a couple itsy bitty ones. I'm calling that my artistic license.

Place on a nonstick or sprayed with nonstick-spray baking sheet.

Bake for roughly 20 minutes, or until golden and firm.

Allow to cool before eating.

Try not to eat all of them.

Also, please don't ask me for nutritional facts. These particular scones? It's probably better for all of us if we never know what the nutritional facts are...

Pumpkins are good for you, though!

...

So...

that means it has to be good...

right?

Couple of Things

2011-03-18T14:27:00.001-05:00

1. So March in South Carolina is officially kind of amazing. It's 83 degrees out today, there's a good breeze. I've already taken a walk around the apartment complex in the sun. It's actually conceivable I may get a tan this year... or at least become a color that is not similar to fresh paper.

This is great for me, but terrible for everyone I know who has allergies. All I can do is make sympathetic faces, really. I'm not saying I won't develop allergies later, but for the moment, I can roll around in hay and flower petals all I want. I'm taking advantage of that.

Uhm. Not by actually rolling around in hay or flower petals, though.

2. My mother-in-law's surgery was yesterday. Jason's aunt Gena was there, as well as his dad, and they kept Jason and I up to date on everything that was going on. Everything seems to have gone fairly well, Robin is in a hospital room recovering, so cross your fingers for the quickest recovery possible for us, okay?

One of my friends just got his wisdom teeth out; he's a little older than I am. He seems to be sleeping away the days just like anyone recovering from this kind of thing should. I have some pretty terrible memories of the actual act of getting my own wisdom teeth out, so I am no help in matters like these. All I can say is, "Well... milkshakes are awesome, and you can have all you want!"

And then everyone stares at me.

And I go back to my coffee.

3. BEES. There are BEES EVERYWHERE. No one told me about this part of southern springs. The bees and wasps are flying all over our apartment complex, now that the trees are all starting to bloom. I stare at them like a country under attack, desperately trying to marshal my best defenses.

So far my defenses are to stay inside, or to swear at them.

You can see why I'm leaning toward staying inside.

4. I had yesterday off. I have today off, and I have tomorrow off. Of course I open the coffeeshop on Sunday, so that'll be exciting, but nonetheless... I have three days off in a row, and come hell or high water I am going out with my husband tonight.

You know what, I'll be honest here.

If hell actually rained down upon the earth I would probably not make Jason take me out on a date.

I feel like we'd have bigger issues to worry about at that point.

But it made me sound pretty determined, didn't it?

...

Well... I'm impressed by how determined I sounded.

5. So there.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-03-16T11:43:00.000-05:00

Grace

2011-03-15T15:00:00.001-05:00

Rain is grace;

rain is the sky condescending to the earth.

Without rain,

there would be no life.

-John Updike

My mother-in-law is having surgery in Boston. The date it was meant to happen was not really this soon, but they moved it up twice and my in-laws left this morning. My fingers are crossed for her. We'd appreciate it if y'all would cross your fingers, too.

Maybe your toes, if you can.

The Truth Is

2011-03-13T07:34:00.000-05:00

The truth is...

I could learn a lot about peace from this cat.

Or at least, I could learn a lot about napping.

Which is probably a skill I need to learn all over again.

Sorry for the shortness of the update; I've been stressed out and came down with the Cold From Hell this week, and have been taking some time to heal and sort of center myself. I've been off-balance.

So...

we're working on that.

Apparently, taking photos of the cat sleeping counts as 'working on that'.

It certainly counts for something.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

2011-03-09T08:31:00.000-06:00

The beautiful table spread at my birthday party Saturday, as viewed through glass.

25

2011-03-06T07:57:00.002-06:00

I am 25 now.

So that's something.

I'll try not to question whether or not it counts as an accomplishment of any kind. Although some of my family members might find it amazing I haven't managed to get myself killed yet, since my lack of common sense means I make a lot of dubious decisions.

In any case, I'm 25.

So...

That's something.

For twenty-five years, I have had the most incredible family. I had the luck of being born into knowledge that no matter what, my family will stand behind me.

More recently, I married into another amazing group of people, who raised up the pragmatic, plain-spoken, endlessly supportive man I married.

I have known Jason since August of 2004. We started dating in January 2005. Well... January-ish. I'm not real clear on that.

So that's seven birthdays with Jason, since we started dating.

Best seven birthdays ever.

2004

Something like... 2006?

2008

2009

2010

March 6th, 2011

Yeah...

that seems right.

Now, that's something.

*Note: these are not all photos from birthdays.

Just the last one. I just... really like all these

pictures and will use any excuse to put them

where people see them. So there.

A Very Merry Unbirthday to Me

2011-03-05T08:05:00.000-06:00

Although it's exactly one day away, so...

Actually, if I get exact on this, I'm pretty sure I turn 25 sometime around... 4:30 in the afternoon on Sunday? I know Mom told me once.

I don't really remember. I was a wee bit busy being a newborn infant.

This newborn infant, to be exact.

Oh, preemie-Katie. You just swim in your cute little infant clothes, don't you?

Anyway...

Thursday, I received something in the mail.

The cat was also very curious.

It was a large something, so far as packages go. It was covered in brown paper, addressed to me from my whole family in Illinois (and Texas!), and it had decorations on it.

Stickers, and random marker markings, and...

And this. Now I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that 'happy birthday' was written by my niece, because that's definitely my sister's handwriting, but... but look at the faces.

I couldn't even take the brown paper off before I took way too many photos of them.

Inside...

A coffee calendar! Which, if you've been paying any attention at all to me or this blog, you will know is so incredibly appropriate as a present.

Note: I do not do my happy dance with a full coffee cup in my hand. That seems dangerous. Let's leave that to the gigantic coffee mug with legs, shall we?

Although this technically wasn't a birthday present, I just wanted to show you the newest addition to my rapidly growing childrens' library (I suppose eventually I shall have to have children in order to justify all these kids' books...) and when I was taking the photo, some of the evidence of the truth of that title decided to come sit with me.

There was also, snuggled within the gift bag, this.

This being a tiny, blue ipod shuffle. It's sort of oddly delicate looking. I adore it. It's the perfect color (actually a lot lighter than it looks in this photo), and it clips onto my shirt for working out. They gave me a gift card to iTunes as well, and now I have the new Adele album, the new Cage the Elephant album, and have been eyeballing the one Brand New I don't have and a couple of others, too.

I can only thank my whole family with every fiber for my awesome presents.

Of course, I have been saving what I think is the most incredible of my presents for last.

No offense to the ipod shuffle, but it cannot compete with this.

Yes thank you, cat. I'm glad you wanted to see, too.

You see that little paper heart? With little heart stamps?

My niece did that.

My 3-year-old niece, full of fire and light and imagination and "I do it myself!", made this for me. You can see the dotted lines where my sister gave her the shapes with work with.But that shaky red marker writing is all her. She's 3. I remember meeting her for the first time and this itsy tiny bundle being placed in my arms.

When I pulled this out of the box I started to cry, in the best possible way. I'm actually tearing up quite a bit now just looking at the photo. It's a twist of homesickness, to be sure, an awareness of just how far away I am (733 miles away from the city my sister and niece live in) but also this fantastic pride of that smart, brash, hilarious little girl.

I took the heart and I placed it on the bookshelf next to the TV, in a little Longaberger basket my mother bought for me years back, next to a tiny fairy-doll I got from a farmer's market in Bloomington-Normal, IL when I was visiting my family one time. Those three things are a pretty important reminder.

I may be turning 25, but I was three once. I was brash and entirely without common sense (hey, some things start early), loud and insistent, the youngest in a family of five and willing to throw as much noise around as I had to if I could make sure everyone was looking at me. My family looked at me once in a way similar to how I look at Delainey.

Sometimes I am so homesick it hurts. Sometimes it's horrible and sometimes it's actually kind of wonderful.

Today I have a Nominally Birthday Lunch (really, it's an excuse to eat at the best place ever, this little Brazilian restaurant that is fantastic. Then we have the Birthday Party. Then sleep. Then tomorrow a birthday lunch with Jason's family! His Nana and I share the same birthday.

I will have Monday to recover from all gaiety.

I'm going to need it.

because my sister reminded me I haven't posted

2011-03-03T13:57:00.000-06:00

I'm going to post this:

Guess which one is me.

C'mon, just guess.

I'll give you a hint: this photo was taken in 1986.

I'll wait for you to think about it.

...

...

did you guess the screaming pink thing in a frilly dress?

You win!

I like to believe that even as an infant I was making sure I got my relationship with my siblings off on the right foot: I flail around and screech, they calmly keep smiling and try not to kill me.

I feel like, somewhere, that's in the Big Sister/Big Brother Manual, the most important advice: Keep smiling and try not to kill her. As a Littlest Sister, I did not receive that manual. Only the one titled The Youngest Child: Ways to Eternally Annoy the People Who Love You Most... But Hey, at Least You're Cute!.

It's true, you know.

I am adorably cute.

Just...

just not in that particular photo.

Two and a half days 'til 25, and I just got off work... can you tell?

7 til 25

2011-02-27T06:32:00.001-06:00

and I'll never stop playing make-believe

or wearing silly hats that I steal from my friends

who also play make-believe

and own silly hats

Everyone should be legally required

when they begin to question their life choices

to put on a silly hat

and smile for the camera

or in my case, I suppose, hide from it

or, uh, make faces at it

in conclusion:

I am seven days from being 25

and I don't think this is what they meant by adulthood?

but I like this way much better.

Will Work For Candy?

2011-02-24T08:39:00.001-06:00

In 10 days, I will be 25 years old.

I'm a little bit excited. It's not like there is a huge milestone when you turn 25, just a continuation of the responsibilities of adulthood getting heaped on you. I'm still pretty thick in my "what have I been doing with my life" crisis.

But I'm still a little bit excited.

Last time I was home, I made off with some of Mom's old photos, so I could scan 'em in and have them for my very own.

So I just want you to know:

This used to be me. Climbing up things was kind of my hobby.

That used to be me, too.

Although you cannot see it, I am holding a sign I made myself which says "Will Work for Candy". With a little drawing of a tootsie roll or something next to the words. And some wonderful random marker zig-zags.

Clearly, an artist in the making, that one.

Also look at that shirt and pants. Just... just look at them.

Oh, the 90's.

More on that later.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-02-23T06:17:00.000-06:00

Loss & the Granola Experiment

2011-02-21T08:35:00.000-06:00

My family back in Illinois is dealing with another sudden loss; not a member of our family this time, but a friend, a woman who has existed so permanently in my life from the moment I have memories that I kind of can't imagine my little hometown without her. One of those adults I took for granted, because she had always been there.

As I grow older, life conspires to ensure I realize just how many adults I have taken for granted.

From this far, there is very little I can do except send my love and condolences her family's way. My fingers itch to start baking or something, to show up at someone's doorstep with a casserole, but let me tell you, casseroles don't really go through the mail all that well. Also her family will be so inundated with food for the next few weeks they'll be thawing things out of the freezer for months.

God hold you and keep you, Mary Ann Bottoms.

I wanted to make that note, because I wasn't sure what to say or how to talk about it or if I should... when something occurred to me. I signed up to start this particular blog mainly to update my family and friends on things I was up to, at first while four hours away from one side of my family and a good twelve hours from my (at the time) brand new South Carolina family... and now I update from roughly ten minutes from my in-laws' doorstep and a good twelve hours from my parents and my whole extended family.

(And 18 hours of driving away from my brother Bryan, who by the way should move to South Carolina because it is awesome here, so there. I'll get you out here for good one day, big brother.)

In any case, where I was getting at before I got distracted by my attempts to convince my family to move out here was that it had occurred to me that I am under no restrictions to only write about certain things, and my discomfort with writing about death is entirely my own and has to do with my own anxieties and issues more than anyone else's.

I tend not to write about these things because they start up this whole cycle of worry and yes, fear in my mind. Writing about losing my grandma was a shift from all of that, and while I have written about what it means to lose someone who is so much a part of my heart, there's a lot I haven't really said either. Mostly due to that whole cycle and my inability to write anything that doesn't eventually just boil down to It's not fair in a whole lot of words.

But I'm not going to fall into that cycle today. I think you can write about life being sad and those things that make you happy at the same time, without it being a problem.

It's been decided.

Instead, I'm going to write about granola.

...

See, now, there's a definite shift in mood for you.

I like granola. There, I admit it. I'm a closet hippie at heart. There are so many photos of me in tie-dyed T-shirts... that whole thing at the end of eighth grade and the beginning of freshman year where, I kid you not, I wore flared jeans with butterfly and peace sign appliques, smiley-face necklaces... that time where my mother remarked often that if she'd only saved her entire high school wardrobe, she wouldn't have had to buy me any clothes for a year or two because I was just wearing everything she had once worn.

I like peace, love, and happiness for all, man.

Dude.

Far out.

Groovy...?

See, now this isn't going anywhere at all.

In any case, I am a closet hippie.

I also love granola.

Granola, however, is expensive. At four dollars a box, you often expect to get more than you really do. Everywhere I looked, websites were touting the ability to make the initial investment in making it as a way to save money on buying it, since you spend some money at the outset but then aren't spending 4 dollars a week on a few ounces. I've been researching recipes for homemade granola on the internet for a few weeks now, and Jason and I finally decided to give it a try. I used a couple different recipes to come to my decision: The Best Granola Ever from Heartistic Desires and Toasted Almond Granola from Joy the Baker.

Last night, Jason and I went ahead and made it.

And it is so good... even if I sorta let it cook too long so it's a wee bit closer to burnt than it's actually supposed to be...

Homemade Granola

What You Need

4 cups oats*

(steel-cut is usually reccomended... I seriously just used our Quaker Oats stuff. As long as it's not instant oatmeal packets, it's all good)

2 cups sliced almonds, unsalted

1/2 cup sunflower seeds, unsalted

1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup honey

1/2 cup raw sugar or brown sugar (you don't want to use refined white sugar)

1 teaspoons vanilla extract

Onto Creation

This is actually really, really basic.

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. The recipe I had said to preheat to 325, but as I said before, my granola got a little more cooked than it was really meant to be, so I think how hot your oven gets might have something to do with it.

Take the first four ingredients and put them in a very large mixing bowl. Mix them around until they are thoroughly combined, and set aside.

In a small saucepan, melt your butter, vegetable oil, and honey. Add sugar and boil, just slightly, while mixing constantly until sugar is melted. Once the sugar is as close to melted as you're going to get (mine never quite did melt all the way, but maybe I was just impatient), take off heat and add the vanilla extract. Mix until combined.

Take your hot liquid and pour it over the mixing bowl, then toss and toss and turn and toss some more until every bit of the granola mixture has some of the sugar/honey/oil mixture on it. Just keep doing it. This part took a while for me.

Spread your thoroughly combined mixture onto foil-lined baking pans. I had to use two, so unless you have a gigantic baking pan, I think you'll need to use two as well.

Place in oven and bake for 20-25 minutes. You want to pull the pans out to stir the granola around at least three times during this time period. I would do it every seven minutes or so. I waited almost eleven minutes the first time and I think that was part of my granola-gets-kinda-burn-y problem.

Once that's done, pull out and allow to cool on the baking pan, and try not to eat all of it. Once it's cooled, put into airtight containers for storage. Granola keeps for a few weeks, easily. I'm not sure ours will last that long. This made about a cereal-box-and-a-half of granola. With the supplies I have on hand right now, I could make another two batches without re-supplying on anything but the oats.

I am eating it for breakfast mostly with a little maple syrup and a lot of good plain yogurt. Loves me some yogurt.

Also, dried fruit is a good addition when you're eating it. Or a cut-up banana.

I love bananas, too.

And that's the note I'd like to end on.

It's Friday

2011-02-18T12:18:00.000-06:00

... and this is a duck.

I am making a grocery list, checking it against coupons and recipes and ideas and so on and so forth. It's domestic, sure, but then you look at my super messy apartment that neither Jason nor I have really had the energy to do anything with this week and that whole domestic illusion? Totally shattered.

All I've managed since 9 AM when I dragged myself into semi-productivity has been going for Day 2 of the (modified) C25K I'm doing, working on this grocery list, fiddling around with photos I took with my camera yesterday, and... well, does talking to friends count as productivity? I'm not certain if it does or not.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

In a couple hours, I'm going to go wake Jason up, and we'll go get groceries, drop some books off at the library, maybe go pick up my paycheck. This week has been fantastic; when I'm not working, we get to hang out when he wakes up. When I AM working this week it's been day shifts, so I come home and he is awake, and we have hours to see and talk to each other and in general act like giggly flirty crazy people before he has to go to work.

I've slept better this week, which is probably a sign I really don't need to stay up until 3 A.M. doing a whole lot of nothin' just because.

I don't know that it will stop me from doing just that, however.

I just don't know.

It's absolutely gorgeous here. 72 degrees. I did my running stuff between 9:30 and 10 AM in this beautiful balmy spring weather. I could feel sunlight on my skin, and I ran in a T-shirt and running pants, no jacket, no nothing. I could feel the wind against my ears and the back of my neck.

I think I could get used to spring in South Carolina, this odd February spring. Green things popping up all over the place.

I'll probably wear sandals when Jason and I go out to get groceries later.

Yeah, that's right.

Three days in a row, people. Sandals. In February.

I hereby officially renounce all my affection for Illinois and its harsh icy freezing winters. I am going to be a southern lady once and for all. Southern ladies get to have southern winters and southern springs.

Now come talk to me again when it's 100 degrees outside with 100% humidity in the middle of the summer and see how I feel then.

... this is also a duck.

Different duck, though.

Camera, Chicken, Coffee, Cup

2011-02-17T09:33:00.000-06:00

The title of this particular entry makes me feel like I'm on Sesame Street.

My camera has arrived!

I had begun to despair.

And of course, while yesterday and the day before were both gorgeous days, today is gray and dreary.

Such is my luck.

Jason and I have wandered around a store called Earth Fare a few times. It's kind of like a tiny neighborhood Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, without all the blaringly bright lights, but still with all the cheerful people in aprons asking if there's anything they can do for you. The last time we wandered around in there, I took a newsletter, and it said something on the front about signing up online for coupons and freebies. I did just that, and discovered the "yay! you signed up!" coupon was for a free "Dinner for 4" with a ten dollar purchase.

So last night Jason and I went back, bought some tortilla chips, a little bit of delicious cheese, and dessert... and received, via the coupon, a bag of baby carrots, a little 1 lb container of mashed potatoes (with the skins left in! Nom nom nom) from the deli, and a tiny whole chicken. Okay, so it wasn't tiny. But still! It was a whole chicken!

We looked up how to cook the chicken.

And then Jason made this:

And it was incredible.

In other news... it's warm here. Like, warm. At 10 in the morning, it is currently 52 degrees... on February 17th. That's notable. Yesterday, with all the sun shining on my back, it was wonderful. I keep opening the porch door to let air in, and then having sort of pinch myself because it's February.

Last year at this time, I was taking photos of snow-covered fields and writing poems about winter. This year I'm walking around in T-shirts and sandals.

Which I have not been writing poems about.

I might write an ode to the coffee I'm drinking right now, though.

Ahem.

Not really.

I worried you for a second there, didn't I?

This is the coffee I'm drinking right now. It was reccomended by some friends of ours... I didn't even know it existed before I woke up at their place one morning, went a-rummaging, and found that the great coffee James and Jessie had been making came from this place. West End Coffee is on the other end of Greenville, roasting coffee beans and selling them around town. We found this in Earth Fare, at a really good price for locally roasted stuff.

I bought the milder stuff, although they have a Smoky Mountains Blend that's very dark. Since I mostly drink my coffee in the 'morning' (morning being a relative term for someone who will routinely go to bed at 3 AM and wake up at 11 AM given half a chance) I like to stick to milder stuff.

Plus... it works better with my french vanilla half-and-half and milk concoction I tend to drink my coffee with.

It starts out that light, but let me promise you, I add more and more coffee as I drink it, and don't add any more half-and-half or milk. By the end my coffee looks a little less froufy, I swear.

So now that we have witnessed the Return of my Camera, perhaps I will force myself to get dressed and go for a walk... or something.

Or maybe I'll just paint.

Jason picked up a book of photos from NASA's explorations in space from the library, and it reminded me so much of the mental place I was in when I painted this last year, I don't know. My sketchin' hand is itchin' to start something. My paint is itching to paint and I just haven't been able to think of anything to paint. I've got several empty panels sitting here waiting to be filled.

So I suppose that means, despite not having to work, today will hopefully be a busy one for me.

Today's blog entry has been brought to you by the letter C.

On Brad Land's 'Goat'

2011-02-14T19:55:00.000-06:00

I picked up a few books at the library Saturday. Two cookbooks and two non-fiction books, Goat by Brad Land and The Well Dressed Ape. I read all of Goat in roughly three and a half to four hours.

It's a quick read, written by someone who doesn't really seem to be a trained writer (although Land has a master's in Creative Writing) when he's telling the story.

The chapters are more like conversations you have with someone, where you sit and listen, at first with morbid interest and sympathy and eventually with outright concern and occasionally horror to the story of their life unraveling.

The book starts with Land being the victim of a kidnapping, carjacking, and vicious assault. How "the incident" (as it is referred to by awkwardly well-meant friends and family, unable to really deal with what occurred) affects Brad is obvious in a few ways; he both pulls away from and desperately clings to his close relationship with his brother Brett, follows Brett to Clemson University, and begins to pledge the same fraternity Brett is in.

Like I said, the book is a super fast read. It's also disturbing.

Fraternities and sororities have worked hard on the surface and often all the way through their many ranks to do away with 'hazing', the isolating psychological mess forced onto prospective members to make them prove just how much they want to be there.

Brad attends Clemson when this hazing, according to his fraternity's handbook, doesn't exist.

It does, however, and the relationship between his assault and many of the things he goes through during the hazing process will make you shift, uncomfortable, wondering at the ways people can be absolutely vicious to each other, then go out for drinks and a cigarette like nothing happened the next day.

Brad's story isn't really a happy one, but the absolutely natural tone of his writing is really impressive. I couldn't stop reading the book, even as life went on around me. I kept waiting for Brad to throw his things down and quit in a rage, or for Brett, his brother, to realize the damage the hazing process was doing to someone he loves and to he himself. Whether or not that occurs, well, you'll have to read the book.

I know I don't really do book reviews, but I really really liked this book, and I wanted to talk a little bit about it. I'm a big non-fiction reader, and I know some people who can't stand it because they feel non-fiction is invariably 'dry'. I can tell you, this book does not read like non-fiction, like a memoir counting off events and their significance. This book reads like a conversation, a rambling drunk-chat in a bar just before last call, when you realize halfway through that the person you're talking to may simply be unable to stop, at least until they pass out face-first in a bowl of peanuts.

It's a small book, but it sticks with you. It's not exactly something you give to a high school graduate as they're going off to college... or maybe it is, if you're the kind of person trying to scare some sobriety into the high school graduates you know. The matter-of-fact descriptions of parties and the ever-present alcohol and expectation that one be drunk, hung over, or preparing to drink as opposed to having anything to do with actual schoolwork or classes were familiar reminders of so many people I knew at SIUC when I attended that school.

Like I've said... I really liked the book, but it's definitely one to read and then sort of turn over in your mind. Land takes a pretty hard look at his own life, and is really honest about what those years were for him and for those he knew.

So...

I'd say 4/5, if I had a 1-through-5 rating system.

Which I suppose I do, now.

Hmmmn.

The Great Milk Debate

2011-02-13T21:58:00.001-06:00

Jason and I have a divide growing between us. We are in the midst of the Great Milk Debate.

No, this is not the whole milk vs. 2% vs. skim debate. That debate doesn't exist in my house; we buy skim. I've always drunk skim milk. I will continue to drink skim milk. The other stuff leaves a kind of film on my teeth.

Unless I'm at Justin's house, because he drinks 2% so if I drink coffee there, well, my choices are somewhat limited. I'll never turn down good milk for my coffee. I'm not that ungrateful or picky of a houseguest.

Just, you know, in my house, we drink skim and wait a second... I think I just rambled off in the wrong general direction.

Let's get back on track here.

Ahem.

Jason and I are in the midst of a debate.

A divide grows between us.

This divide begins and ends with a very simple statement, from me.

"Honey, we need to run to the grocery store and pick up a couple of things."

Jason's response, in that voice that means he is being absolutely reasonable:

"We just went to the grocery store a few days ago, there's not really anything we need."

I point out that we are out of milk.

"So?"

Who really needs milk? All I do is add it to my coffee.

I point out that we are also out of coffee.

He stares at me. He points out, in that same voice of absolute reason, the absolutely correct and reasonable fact that when we went shopping, he asked if we needed coffee then, and I declined to buy any.

My answer, frankly, was pretty silly. I think I mumbled something about not realizing how low we were on coffee just then, and then I made some for Justin and I when the three of us had dinner and Venture-Brothers-marathon Saturday and by the time I finished making my French press full of coffee for Sunday morning... well...

No more delicious coffee.

I mean, this is the stuff that makes me stop snarling in the morning and start either smiling or not-actively-growling-at-people. That shift in mood is a very important one.

However, Jason points out that in his opinion, we don't really drink that much milk anyway, so really, we could stand to wait until the next time we go grocery shopping, couldn't we?

I repeat that it is a staple.

He repeats his belief that it isn't, not really. We don't even drink that much.

The last time we ran out of milk (or actually, it went bad a whole lot earlier than it should have and we had to toss it) I drank coffee with raw sugar but with no milk to add creaminess and really, I just don't like coffee all that much without at least a splash of milk. I mean, I'll drink it, but really, why would I do that when delicious milk exists in the world?

And so the divide widens, between "We just got groceries. You are talking about making a completely unnecessary trip. Seriously." and "But... we need milk! Also coffee! Really, we need coffee, and I put milk in my coffee, so we need milk too. But milk! MILK. I will say milk as many times as I have to, here."

So I pose a question to you, friends, family, and random strangers on the internet:

Is milk a staple in your house?

When you run out of milk, do you make your way down to the corner store or to the supermarket pretty quickly to pick up some more? Or do you just wait until your next grocery run, you don't drink that much milk anyway? (For this question, any milk alternatives do count as milk; soy, almond, rice, hemp, etc and so forth that you drink for milk purposes count as milk).

Milky-milk milk milk?

Milk?

A tisket, a tasket

2011-02-13T11:49:00.002-06:00

Today, I wish I had my new camera already.

The cat's been adorable,

Jason is in the kitchen throwing something delicious together for breakfast.

Last night I could have taken photos of this crazy-good dinner I made (Rachael Ray, you have redeemed yourself). It was chicken I thawed out yesterday drenched in Buffalo Sauce and a touch of olive oil, baked in the oven with onions rings and then placed on top of some mixed greens with a bleu-cheese-and-sour-cream-and-celery dressing thing that was so good we could have eaten it right out of the bowl.

As a dip.

With crackers.

Or a spoon.

You'll have to content yourself with words, I suppose, for the moment. It should be soon! Hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday.

And then you'll be inundated with mundane pictures of my life all over again.

In the interim, I'll have to leave little tidbits of information, and otherwise sit here and sip my coffee, slathered with milk, sugar, and some cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice for flavor.

In the meanwhile, I want to point out a couple of blogs I follow:

With a Heart Full of Daisies belongs to a woman, Kate, who I knew back in high school, as well as working with her for a summer cleaning college-students' apartments after they moved out. She talks about wedding fashion (she's engaged!), style, design and home decor, food, personal life stuff... basically anything that catches her thoughts long enough to be written down. I really enjoy reading blogs by people I actually know in real life, it's kind of a special sort of cool.

When a Southern Woman Rambles... is run by L. Avery Brown, who is hilarious, the kind of woman whose work you can read and hear her inflections and accent in your mind while you do. Her stories and anecdotes and quips are a ton of fun to read.

rockstar diaries is a new one I picked up, written by Taza, this vibrant smiling lady. She just had a baby, as in roughly two weeks ago she had this baby. I only started reading her about a month ago, so I'm almost as new to all her stories as you will be when you click!

Stealth Jew is another new blogger, a friend of mine. She has three small children, a husband, and an incredibly hectic day-to-day schedule. She's got a wry, sarcastic sense of humor and a great way of saying "Well, isn't THIS interesting" to all life throws at her.

So there are a few blogs around here that I keep up on, some new, and some not, and I think you should give 'em a try, too!

I'm going to finish my coffee now.

I wonder if I went through my archives, how many of my entries directly reference either the fact that I am drinking coffee now or will drink coffee in the future.

That's probably a very, very good question.

Spring Things

2011-02-10T13:02:00.000-06:00

I would like spring to come back soon please.

People in colder states/areas probably think I'm hilarious for this, since winter here is so incredibly mild, but I'm tired of being chilly and of everything being vaguely greenish-brown, short days and weak sunlight. It's pretty much time for green to come back, real green.

For the kudzu to wake up and start moving, like some massive mindless predator, to cover everything in its path.

A working artist from Greenville is in this month's Southern Living, in an article that showcases some artists and craftswomen working with old furniture to refurbish and give new life.

Barb Blair owns knack (and also, lucky for me, has a blog! A new blog to follow! I already follow like eight hundred but this is a Greenville blog). I thought some of the photos in this month's issue of the furniture she's worked with were really cool.

Perhaps I'll have to make an appointment to mosey on over there and talk to her about getting her start, making a business out of what she is doing, and all that stuff.

You know, life stuff.

In the meantime, spring things. Things that make me think of spring. Maybe I just want to type the word spring a few more times.

Spring is a good season for me. Spring is new flowers and a new humid warmth to the air in Illinois (I can only imagine that my concept of humidity will be vastly changed by living here in South Carolina now), spring is my birthday which always seems kind of fitting, really.

I know I just did a 'pretties' post not too long ago, but really, sometimes I just want to look at pretties... especially when I have no camera to take pictures with (YET, only a few more days!) and not much to talk about except for my own propensity for navel-gazing and worry, two things I am going to try and spare my readers.

So spring things it is.

Things that make me think of spring.

Spring spring spring.

This woven basket from Coldwater Creek.

A photo I took last year, spring flowers in Illinois.

This ladybug-and-leaf necklace from The Brass Garden.

These articles on growing strawberries in hanging baskets or colanders.

These shoes from (who else?) Privo.

This photo, taken last year in April on the Greenville Daily Photo blog.

While I think of these things, it's almost fifty degrees outside and pretty gorgeous.

Jason will wake up soon, we'll take a walk around the apartment complex. I will bemoan my lack of camera. He will remind me that the camera is coming to me soon.

I will bask in sun, and Jason will, too. The days are getting longer, which we can only be thankful for. Those times Jason gets actual time in sunlight, soaking up vitamin D, are pretty important to us. He went too long driving home from work in dark mornings, waking up to the sun beginning to set at four-thirty in the afternoon.

That is not a good way to wake up.

I need a walk. Or a nap.

Or more coffee.

Or spring.

Don't Carry It All

2011-02-09T13:06:00.000-06:00

I know, I know, it's been something like six days since I last updated. That is quite some time for me to go without updating when I'm right here at home, with no good reason not to update.

Well, I haven't had much to say, is all.

Life goes as it goes, in fits and starts, here and there. I'm a little discouraged and frustrated at where I am right now- not location, but rather what I've accomplished or what I haven't. I'm about to turn 25, and I had all these grand plans for where I would be and what I would be doing at 25.

So many of them come to nothing. Some of that is through no fault of my own, and some of it is my fault. It is due to my lack of motivation, my willingness to exist in certain areas I am not necessarily okay with staying in just because it's more comfortable or easier than taking a risk.

I go over and over my decisions in my mind, the ones so far back I can't change a moment, those I wouldn't change even if I could, and those I wish I had.

I'm going to turn 25 in less than a month.

I'm not where I thought I would be. This was the year I had planned to start having children, and I can basically guarantee on several levels that that's not going to happen. I had ideas for what my career would be, and I can't say I even have a career... just a job. A paycheck.

There's nothing wrong with having a job as opposed to a career, really. I just... kind of wanted a career.

But then, I have to stop myself from wallowing in all this melancholy and tell myself that what's more important is what I do have, those things that make it all worth every second.

1. I have a family that is endlessly supportive, and endlessly plain-spoken. Both at the same time. And I can't even vocalize how wonderful it is to know there are people who have your back no matter what, but who will nonetheless let you know that this isn't a good idea... but it doesn't mean they won't be behind you every silly step of the way.

2. Jason. I never could have planned to meet someone as perfect for me as he is.

3. My brilliant singing questioning princess-dress wearing mud-puddle jumping niece. I see her grow in photos and videos my sister sends to us through e-mail, and it reminds me how much of life should be pure joy at the fact that we are living.

4. Books. A world with no books would be so very, very grey.

5. An occasionally surreal bond with basically all cats who get anywhere near me. Even those cats deemed shy or hostile tend to let me pet them the first time, and come to me to get petted after that. Really, I could just type 'cats' in here, or 'animals'. Or 'pets'. Small dependent creatures with heartbeats.

6. An apartment we can afford, jobs that make enough money for us to go on vacation and put some away in savings, a car that keeps running, central air conditioning and central heating, living in a city with shops and gas stations and an economy right down the road from us.

7. In-laws who are endless wells of support, conversation and southern food. Have I discussed the lima beans and banana pudding and gravy these people make? Have I? I might need to, if I haven't. There's a whole education in cooking down here.

So there you have it, the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of my quarter-life crisis... at least part of them. Some of them. You really don't want to hear all of them.

At least food for this week promises to be incredible... last night was Cod with Cornbread Crumbles (originally cornbread-fried-cod 'til I realized too late that Rachael Ray has no idea how to fry things and I trusted her recipe and not my instincts) and a red-cabbage-and-carrot salad/slaw thing with lemon vinaigrette. Today's lunch was spicy roasted chickpeas with leftover red cabbage slaw, tonight is Chicago-style hot dogs (I'm feeling very northern today)... and tomorrow I'm testing out my ability to make a pimiento-cheese-sauce to top chicken and broccoli with, as per the Southern Living 1,001 Ways to Cook Southern: The Ultimate Treasury of Southern Classics I received as a Christmas present (I am feeling very southern lately, too... maybe that's why I've been staring pretty hard at hush puppies recipes)...

It's that kind of week.

I apologize for almost a week of silence. I've been trying to figure out how to word an entry if I did talk about what I'm thinking right now, or if I should just not talk about it at all. I suppose you know what I decided on, if you read all the way to this point.

My new camera, my birthday present from Jason, should come in a few days! We got it on sale. Once it's here, I can start showering you with photos again!

Won't you just be thrilled.

I know I am.

A Few Things

2011-02-03T10:42:00.000-06:00

1. So it occurs to me that I haven't actually pointed out on my this here blog that I actually don't have a working camera right now. Indeed, my camera, she is gone. I was able to save the memory card to get my photos from Colorado, but the camera itself, well.

The camera has gone to meet its maker, so to speak.

It's a long story.

Well, no, it's not.

It's a very short story that kind of embarrassing and honestly I just don't want to get into it.

So, until we are able to purchase a new camera, I am camera-less. I will do my best to post some old photos, or something to keep up visual interest. But honestly, it shouldn't be very long before I have a new camera and we can start seeing new pictures again!

2. I went to bed at 3 A.M. last night, just because.

Now my head is all foggy and odd.

You might think I would learn my lesson.

You'd be wrong if you thought that.

I'll probably be up til 3 A.M. again tonight... just because.

3. Exciting news!

I am going to New York City in early April!

My little cousin-in-law (which it's kind of odd to say that, as she's 18, but let's just move on) will be singing at Carnegie Hall! Several of my lady in-laws are going to go see her perform, and we'll get to spend a long weekend in New York City!

So there's another place I've never been before!

I can only say thank you, Robin, with complete sincerity, because that is going to be so cool.

Well, once we're there.

I suppose I'll have to go into more detail when I warn them about what happens to me during takeoff and landing on planes...

I mean, honestly, by the time this year is over, I will have been in a plane something like ten times.

Hopefully that'll help me flail a whole lot less during takeoff.

Especially since this time I won't have Jason or Jason's poor understanding best friend Justin to clutch onto. I think I left fingernail marks on one of them last time.

I'll just have to work a little harder to be calm this time.

4. Our order from Amazon came yesterday (thank you, gift cards!). I have been listening to the new Decemberists' album nonstop, as well as the Laura Marling CD I got. It's so wonderful to finally not be listening to Laura Marling on youtube, but on my CD player, that I actually own.

Adding to that is another book I bought, Suck Your Stomach In and Put Some Color On!: What Southern Mamas Tell Their Daughters that the Rest of Y'all Should Know Too by Shellie Rushing Tomlinson. I bought it on a bit of a whim. The books by Celia Rivenbark (I talk about falling in love with her humor writing here). I know it seems like I'm falling too hard into this reading-up-on-bein'-Southern thing, but it's just so funny to read these books and go "Yep, I know people like that now. Yep, and that too. Heard that before".

Maybe I'm just trying to fit in.

Or...

maybe I just like funny writers?

5. I need coffee. I will groan like a zombie and head into the kitchen now. And there I will make the coffee.

Brrrrraaaaaaiiiinnnnnnsss...

I mean cooooofffeee....

Pretties

2011-01-31T15:28:00.000-06:00

This pendant, a charm for safe travel, by debradane at etsy...

This doormat from Uncommon Goods...

"Ballgown"

Giclee on canvas

30 x 24

This painting, as well as all the others I could find, by the late Pino Daeni. His understanding of skin tone was incredible.

This women's bluegrass CD I bought at Mast General Store a few months ago...

The most beautiful (and ridiculously expensive) Kitchen-Aid mixer I have ever seen in my life.

(Even Jason drooled over this with me in the Williams Sonoma store)

This song by Ingrid Michaelson

The newest Spectrum book on contemporary sci-fi and fantasy art, Spectrum 17. I own 15 and 16. I would love to own every single book they've ever put out... these are some of the best art books I've seen.

This bracelet I got from my sister at Christmas, which I wore as a good luck charm while traveling on vacation.

"Endeavor"

oil on canvas

50 x 60

This beautiful painting by Britten, whose work was being shown at an art gallery in Beaver Creek when we were there, and which you can see more of at the art gallery's website here.

The King Is Dead, the new CD by the Decemberists, oh so soon to be mine all mine (ah, gift cards are so wonderful).

The lovebirds necklace by the vintage pearl... although obviously the initials I would get on my necklace would be, er, slightly different.

One more, and then I shall end this parade of mindless consumerism. I've been looking at pretty things in-between my stop-and-start attempts to pick up our living room while Jason is sleeping... to do without being loud enough to wake him up.

Which is difficult, since the cat has now decided that closing the bedroom door is a signal for her to start yowling as loudly as she can to try and get in and/or out, depending on which side of said door she is on.

last, but not least...

This tea, arguably the best of all possible ideas for tea. It's a chocolate mint tea, and with a touch of milk and honey it's like drinking a Thin Mint dipped in cream.

I just drank the last of our chocolate mint tea last night.

This makes me very sad.

Perhaps it is a sign we need more.

(This is what I keep instead of cookies. If I buy cookies... I eat them. This is a problem.)

Instead, I drink tea.

Okay, now done with the pretties and time to force myself to focus 100% on neatening up my living room.

...

Hmmn, I wonder what else there is to look at on the internet...