i dig your style, dude

First off: Angela, I stole you photo. I would say I'm sorry, but...but...I needed a photo!

Second: I'M ON THE DESIGN TEAM! You may (or may not) remember that I tried out for the Paper Pals' design team at the end of March. After a long time of inpatient waiting (which was really like a week), Shawna called and offered me a place! I was giving a presentation to new students and their parents at the time, so I made a really great impression when "Business Time" went off. I feel like it really brought the presentation a little bit of pizazz, you know?If you are not familiar with the musical masterpiece that is Business Time (or Flight of the Conchords, for that matter), here it is:

Side note: I've used a lot of parenthesis in this post (sorry).

Anyhoo, I'm totally stoked, and really really flattered. It's on thing to think that you are creative, and another thing entirely for someone else to think so.

When I tried out/applied for the Design Team, I had to choose things that exemplified my style. I hadn't thought too much about my style before hand, other than "wow, I am a Frugal Frannie when it comes to scrapbooking." After some thought, there are three things that I do on pretty much every layout: pictures and journaling are lined at up at right angles, I write out my journaling by hand, and I use Stickles. The photo below has all three elements on it, and was one that I turned in.














This is from the "Dear Eva" set of layouts in Birdy's baby book. The letter is from my brother David. He's great. :-)

So, in closing: yay for me! And thank you Shawna and Karen, for giving me this opportunity!

roller skates and earthquakes

I think I was a weird kid.

One of the things I used to really, really, really want to do was roller skate on the ceiling. The ceiling is always so pristine, and it had these great ramps to skate up. I remember being sad that I would never get to roller skate on the ceiling because of gravity.

And since my mind was on roller skates, I would wonder what life would be like if, instead of feet, we were born with roller skates. What would the world look like? Would we wear socks? Would we have to wear shoes with holes for the wheels, or would they be hard enough we wouldn't have to wear shoes at all?

And then I started thinking about how we would be in our mom's tummies. How would the human body create the metal to make roller skates? If there wasn't a way for us to make metal, how would the wheels turn on our roller skate feet? Would it hurt more to have a baby because of the roller skates?

These are the things I used to wonder about. Sometimes, I still want to roller skate on the ceiling (especially at my parent's house...they have ceilings just asking to be roller skated on). And now that I have a baby, I'm glad that I didn't have to give birth to something that had roller skates instead of feet. Baby feet are much more kissable than dirty roller skates.

I can only imagine what my life will be like if Birdy thinks things like this. Did any of you think about weird stuff like that when you were a kid? If not, that's okay. I think I've come to terms with my weirdness as a kid and as an adult...because I still think weird things. Here is an example:

One time, when I was walking to work, I saw a dead bird. It was outside of the vet school. A few days later, I saw another dead bird in nearly the same place. I started wondering if they were doing experiments on birds. Of course, these experiments would be top secret, because you can't just go around having dead birds all over campus. Since the people running these experiments were so smart, they must also notice I walk to work the same way each day, and they would worry I would catch on. Since they didn't want anyone to get wind of their bird-killing experiments, they would have to kidnap me so that I couldn't tell anyone. And then, they would do experiments on me too! Scary!

I thought of all of this on one day on my way to work. I told someone about it at work, and they told me I was crazy. Maybe I am. But I wanted to make sure that if there was someone who was going to kidnap me for their weird bird/human experiments that I knew that they knew I was on to them, and that someone else now knew that I knew that they knew they were going to kidnap me. True story.

I hope no one from the vet school reads this.

I think I've weirded enough people out for one day.

waiting for my family

Sometimes, when I fill out forms, I get to check the "professional/graduate degree box." That box isn’t offered on every form, but the times that it is, I get two feelings: smug and indifference. Like cjane says, people have different emotions they experience in regular seasons. I’m like Peter in Office Space; my emotions are indifference and depression. I can also be incredibly lazy, though that can be tied directly to the indifference. For the most part, I just don’t care.

There are many things I enjoyed about graduate school; my professors, my classmates, the classes that met at bars…the usual. I had a professor at RSU who was awe-some. Let’s call him Dr. Ed. Dr. Ed was my favorite professor for a variety of reasons, which even include the subjects he taught. More than the subjects, his stories and phrases stick with me more than what was taught (so I really got my money’s worth!).

One of the most memorable things he said was that he had “a limited amount of shits, and couldn't afford to just give them away anymore.”

This statement stuck with me, and continues to guide my life.

Why? Because I just don’t care. I don’t care about a lot of things, and I have to ration out the shits I do give out, because I don’t give a shit quite often nowadays. I have a lot of things I have to care about now (more so than at any time in my life), so I can’t really care about things that don’t matter. And I don’t care about some things that DO matter, which will surely come and get me in the end.

Exhibit A: Packing. I hate packing. I’ve been putting it out of my mind so I can live in a pack-free dream land. This is going to be great until we have 2 weeks left in our apartment and I realize I have to scrape together all the care (or “shits”) that I have left and actually get ready to move.

Exhibit B: Weight loss. I want to lose the baby weight and post-wedding weight. I really do. I just don’t have enough effort to care about focusing on it. This will work until I either get disgusted with myself or get diabetes. I’m beginning to feel more of the former, which will hopefully get me to care and avoid the latter.

Exhibit C: Basic household chores. I’m talking about you, mountain of laundry and pile of dishes. If I don’t think about you and stay in the living room, I don’t have to care. This works only until I have to eat or sleep. I’m working on ways to avoid both.

I care about people a whole lot more than I care about things.
The people that I really care about consistently are Birdy and Brandon, which is good, considering I’m partly responsible for keeping her alive. Birdy and Brandon get the best of me, which is how it should be, I think.
I’m off to go home. The laundry can wait. I have a baby to snuggle.

brevity

Don't tell April, but it's snowing again! I love snow. I hate the ugly brown/green of the athletic field outside my office. White is much prettier. :-)

Also, I'm going kind of nuts about the design team stuff. I'm not--how do you say? Ah yes, patient when it comes to waiting.

More pictures of my darling Birdy will be up this evening.

wiggle wiggle

Say you had a room like this in your house:

And, say you had the means to make that room better. A dumpster, some IKEA shelving, lots of caffeine, whatever. The bottom line is that you would have the resources to make that mess and clutter disappear. Would you do it? Or, would you leave it as it was?

That is how I feel about how I look. I have the ability and resources to clean myself up and remove my clutter, but I don't do it. Why? I don't know why. If someone would like to arm-chair psychologize that one and figure it out, please let me know.

art is be-ewe-tiful

I love that the human mind can conceive and execute things like this.

if i could...

...buy these items, they would be in my bedroom.

breakthrough

The purpose of this post is twofold.

One: I almost won a $100 gift certificate to Amazon at The Pioneer Woman's homeschool quiz. Boo to me.

Two: I have a new diet plan. I'm calling it "Lazy Anorexic." It came to me in the wee hours of the morning when I had to get up to work out. I sat in my friend's car wondering out loud why it's so much easier to be fat than skinny. I then wondered if there was a way to loose weight that didn't involve me getting up in the wee hours to work out.

AND THEN IT HIT ME.

I realized that if I slept all the time and didn't eat, I would totally lose weight. The idea of sleeping all the time greatly outweighs (HA) any discomfort that hunger will cause, I'm sure. I'm looking into writing a book and coming out with some pre-packaged diet aids (water and sleep medication) to help counteract the fact that I'll have to quit my job to focus on sleeping. Anyone else interested?

oh jemaine. you rapped into my heart.

baby book eta SOON

I was going through my scrapbook pages last night and organizing them into Birdy's baby book (which, once a few more events are scrapped, will be finished) and I realized that while I had the page protectors, I didn't have post extenders. The things I learn. Moreover, the things I never thought I would write or say: post extenders. Gar.

I think it's turning out well, the baby book. It's full of things that I want to remember about this year. To be honest, I don't care when she smiled first, or crawled, or rolled over. I want to remember that she and Brandon come and visit me at work during lunch. That we went to the pool. That she got temporary tattoos with our friend Kate. That she has already been drinking and driving (long story, no alcohol involved). I want pictures of her smiling and being hugged and loved and kissed.

Having a baby makes me think a lot more about my own mortality. When I'm going through her book and making pages, I keep thinking "if something happens to me, what do I want Birdy to see about me?" I just want Birdy to know that she is loved, and that we had good times. This baby book is all about that idea.

Onto something less macabre. I bought this today. I'm stoked beyond reason. This is going to be my version of my friend Anita's post-its she has with her kids' funny stories and crazy quotes. It's going to be awesome. Promise. You can see Ali's version, which is also awesome.

And last thing: I think I'm going to do this. Wish me luck.