Over the course of the next two weeks or so, I will be writing posts focused completely on things I will either be doing more or less in the coming year. For example, I will be eating less junk food. Rollerblading more. Yelling less. Sleeping more. See?
To start us off….the top two ‘more or less’ from my list.
1. Be less negative: As you all know we just returned from an amazing ski trip in Colorado. While on this trip, we shared a house with about 40 of our good friends from church. During the course of this vacation, I somehow initiated a game of “let’s all take turns of giving eachother affirmations”. For my friends and husband I had lovely little things to say like “you have a wonderful sense of humor” or “you look really handsome when you aren’t trying to grow a disgusting beard”. However, when it was my turn, without exaggerating, I’m sad to tell you no one had anything nice to say. At first it was silent. Then one very honest gentleman (not my husband…because he’s smarter than that) chimed in to say “you’re negative” and “you’re really a pessimist” oh and also “you see the glass as half empty”….but I suppose in an effort to make it sound nice he also added “but I think the world may need people like that”. Ouch. Sooo…taking his tidbit of wisdom in stride, I am re-examining the perception others have of me. I will admit that I am a realist. I do not claim to see the world through rose colored glasses. I just had no idea I was seen as such a negative force. When I told my boss about this instance, imagining she would laugh with me and I could put my mind to ease, she simply replied with “you must see that right?”. Ouch again. So here it is. I don’t feel the glass is half empty. But introspection is not exactly the best measure by which to label yourself. I guess I have to go by how others see me live out my life to get a strong view of who I am. Which is apparently very negative. Enough so that it needed to be said multiple times, in different ways, by several people. In an effort to correct that, I will from now on be monitoring how I react and speak to others in a more positive and encouraging way. So shut up about it. I’m better than you.
2. Take more time: I have a pile of books on my nightstand. Most don’t even belong to me. Most have been lent to me by gracious and lovely people who do actually read the books they buy. However, my tendency to take the time to read lately has been almost nil. Beyond simple every day best seller kinds of books, I also have been selfish with my devotion/prayer time. 10 minutes at the end of the day at best. That’s just ridiculous. So, this year will be the year of taking more time. Time for learning and quiet and me and God. This may require me to actually get out of bed when my alarm goes off. Or it may require me to turn off the tv. Or maybe both. Here’s hoping I find the strength.
December 13, 2005: A seemingly innocent evening of two young and lovely individuals baking Christmas cookies. Two individuals who have only known each other for mere weeks, yet have formed what most would consider an obvious bond. During the course of this commonplace cookie making, the male counterpart sneaks away momentarily but returns with what will inevitably change the course of these two young lives forever.
It was a cookie. Sugar to be exact. And on it were the words, written in hurried scribble, “will you be my girlfriend?”.
Emotions were aflutter. In an attempt to seem calm and somewhat collected, the female, without audible reaction, quickly devoured the cookie, leaving behind no shred of evidence that the question, or the cookie, ever existed.
Moments later, with guilt and tension mounting, the female decided the best reactionary method would be to respond via cookie, as the question had been presented. Asking the male to leave the room so that thoughts could be collected and the best method of cookie decoration could be thought through, the female breathed deeply. With the icing tube in hand, and a nervous tummy brewing, she began her work.
The best laid plans of mice and men so often go astray. With great angst and stress, the icing tube was used with such brute force that only one letter was formed before it cobust.
Thus leaving the male to return and find only an answer of “y”. And a female with gooey, deliciously icey hands.
Of course, with some explaining, and the first of many failed attempts of cooking behind them, the happy couple did agree to forever more refer to eachother as betrothed.
Many years later they would revisit that very same kitchen on the very same date, as the male counterpart presented an even more impressively sized cookie with the words “will you marry me?” scribbled hurriedly on it. And just as awkardly, the female counterpart would fumble her way through an affirmative response, therefore beginning a life of love and laughter (and botched baking experiments).
(Given on December 13, 2009….from him to me.
Okay so I didn’t remember our date/engageaversary. But in my defense I was busy with laundry).
I have been silent these past two weeks or so. No particular reason other than every post I start to write sounds something like … hey remember that time I hid all the controllers to Chris’s video games and he gave me a 3o minute lecture in the car about HOW CAN ONE PERSON BE SO CRAZY!!? I just couldn’t seem to find the words to make anything make sense, so I followed I what I honestly believe to be the golden rule….when you have nothing but idiotic things to say….either blog it or say nothing. I went the say nothing route. And I have to say, it’s been real lonely. I think I may stick with the blogging route from this point on.
So here’s a list to add to the idiocracy.
1. I haven’t yet purchased one single Christmas present. I remember the days when I would be done shopping by November and I would buy presents for every living person that bothered to learn my first name. I think those were the same days I worked in retail….I’d take any excuse to buy the pretty things I was surrounded by all day. Now I’m surrounded by Chris and a dog with IBS. First one to comment gets them both in their stocking this year. MERRY HANUKA!
2. My husband just emphatically yelled the words ‘Can I put a digital sight on the laser sword?’. If it weren’t for the video games, I sometimes wonder what his every day vernacular would sound like.
3. Chris finally let me get a Christmas tree! Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! I can hardly believe it myself. I spent 4 days with my nose stuck in it just soaking up the smell of sap. However, with great conviction he did force me wait over 24 hours to hang a single light or ornament. Which he had NO explanation for other than his crazy and world renowned “we’re doing this thing for no reason other than I feel like it” father did so when he was a kid. I googled, took polls and even asked his family…WHYYYYY cannot I not decorate my tree for 48 hours after I bring it in the house? No one had a clue. Google didn’t have one reason why. Not one. Google has a reason for everything. Google has a reason for why men have nipples and evil exists on this planet. Google is all knowing. And it doesn’t know why I had to wait a full day before decorating my tree. So while he was out with a friend, and without his permission, I did it anyways. Sorry. I’m sure he’ll bring it up in marriage counseling some day as the thing that put us on a path of marital destruction. But Christmas was ready to come and it couldn’t wait for another 24 hours.
4. We are not on a path of marital destruction. Not even close. In fact 3 minutes ago, without warning, he looked at me and said “Have I told you today how awesome you are?”. To which I responded….”Nope, but I thank you kindly and reciprocate the same affection”. We share kinship in our uniqueness.
5. On Saturday, I thought this blog had made it big. I had over 300 hits by lunch time, ON A WEEKEND! I thought someone must have posted me up somewhere real famous. It turns out it was just Chris at work looking for something I had written a long time ago. I’m not sure if he found it. I was in the middle of telling him all about how we were both gonna be able to quit our jobs and live off the royalties of this one silly blurb and we’d finally be able to finally afford cable and real hamburger…..when he broke the news that all those hits were him scouring through past posts. All 300 or so of them.
I almost made him sleep on the couch.
Dream crusher.
This year I am thankful.
For this mustached man. In this cramped van. For loving me and blessing me day after day after day.
For the beauty of this world. It is a gift from God.
It is an expression of the love He used in creating a planet.
A fraction of the amount of love He used in creating me.
Sincere, praying, loving, beautiful women who consistently remind me what it means to have fun.
Mature women who daily teach me what it looks like to be a true wife and mother while still worshiping with a sincere heart.
The knowledge of knowing that I am a chosen child of God. There is nothing on this planet I can do or could have ever done to deserve the blessings I have been given. Those blessings are not even close to being done revealing themselves. I live in peace in knowing Him and His intention for my life.
This year I am thankful for these things and so much more.
My family is amazing, my job is secure, my home is comforting and my church body is challenging.
This world is beautiful in places and devastating in others.
Similarly to my own life experience.
But.
Today and tomorrow I will be blessed.
In the devastation of life, He is still good.
And I am still His.
As Thanksgiving approached, and as our ski trip approached even faster, I felt a strong gratitude to the fates of this earth that I would escape yet another year of being forced to present a portion of the Thanksgiving meal to friends and family for their judgement and critique. Only once before have I taken on the huge burden of cooking for a special family occasion. Needless to say I now have a dish with the word “surprise” after it in the title. It’s never good when you make a meal that in no way was intended to be a surprise but is titled as such despite it. Especially when that meal was macaroni and cheese.
Just as I was becoming comfortable and confident in my ability to always avoid cooking for others, I was assigned a main dish for our small group Thanksgiving meal. It is not cost effective to buy a fully cooked/dressed turkey on short notice, therefore I would have to buck up and make it myself.
This is a true account of my latest endeavor in cooking.
Step One: Get fierce. Really ramp yourself up. Get in front of the mirror and practice your best model faces. Put on jewelry you love. Sport the heels if you have to. Whatever it takes to make yourself believe you are a strong and confident woman, capable of accomplishing any goal set before you. Even graciously accepting criticism when your macaroni and cheese turns into a starchy ball of noodly cheesiness.
Step Two: Purchase ingredients. Line them up in order of size. Photograph them. This really locks in the flavor.
Step Three: Get busy with the BRINE by simmering two ounces of vegetable stock in a large pot. I was going to use a smaller pot but remembered that before it was all said and done I would also be adding a significant amount of cold water to the BRINE. I would hate to overflow the BRINE. (can you tell I like the word “BRINE”?)
Step Four: Add an insane amount of salt. Two cups to be exact. Don’t worry. All the salty goodness gets rinsed off the turkey lurkey before it’s cooked…so you only actually ingest what gets soaked into the meat during the BRINING process. I think you’ll live through it.
Step Five: Add 1 tablespoon each of dried Thyme/Sage/Rosemary. Let this simmer until the salt is good and dissolved. Once it has effectively smelled up your house (in a good way), pull off the heat and let it cool while you wrestle your turkey to the ground and beat it into submission.
Step 6: Wrestle your turkey to the ground and beat it into submission.
Step 7: Call your husband into the kitchen so the two of you can laugh and play with your defrosted turkey. Take photos. Try not to laugh directly over the turkey. It’s not hygienic.
Step 8: Get that submitted turkey into a BRINING bag. Once your BRINE has officially cooled, add an additional 2 cups of cold water to it. Stir and pour into your BRINING bag. Tie it up and let that bad boy soak overnight or however long you have. I soaked over night. Personally I like any kind of cooking I can do in my sleep. It makes me feel domesticated.
Step 9: Clean that BRINEY mess of a turkey completely off. I didn’t take any photos of this step because it was 6:30 in the morning and the site of that bald and BRINED turkey about had me in the bathroom clutching the hardwood. The last thing I was thinking was “how will the internet people know how to wash off a turkey if I don’t show them?”. You’ll be fine. Just rinse it thoroughly and wrap it up tight with some heavy duty tin foil. Drop that sucker in a preheated oven at 275 degrees. I went by the “10 minutes per lb” rule. It worked out pretty nice. That had me at 2 hours, which I effectively used to have approximately 3 nightmares on my couch.
Step 10: After your turkey lurkey has been roasting for the chosen amount of time, uncover it from the foil and re-cover that bad boy in some melted butter. That’s right. Soak it in salt and then cover it in butter. This isn’t for the weak of heart. You must crave cholesterol to eat with me. Repeat this step about every 20-30 minutes. I re-coated every 20 minutes because I love butter and anytime I can brush it on something, I’m doing so as frequently as humanly possible. At this point I also upped the ante a bit on the temp (I was running late and feared an underdone bird).
Step 11: I read several different ideas on where to let the bird stop cooking, but I went ahead and pulled it out at 165 degrees internally. Pioneer Woman says that the bird doesn’t stop cooking just cause you’ve pulled it out of the oven, so beware of getting it too hot inside. I believe her because she likes butter almost as much as I do. We have a strange kinship. And what is friendship if there isn’t trust?
Step 12: This was supposed to be when I took the money shot. However I let the carver start before I documented the finished product. So based on this photo alone you are supposed to see how amazing it was. See that beautiful golden color? Yeah that’s because of how crazy I went with the butter. I’ll have you know that butter skin was awesome.
Step 13: Eat every single ounce of meat off the bone. Go ahead. It just feels right.
Step 14: When you are done with that, let the biggest dude in the room eat the scraps. I believe this to be a testament to its gloriousness. Nobody can call this a turkey surprise. Not when you eat the scraps.
Step 15: Let your husband take you out for a celebratory ice cream. Tell everyone you know that you successfully cooked a bird and even soaked it overnight in BRINE. And if they don’t know what BRINE is….laugh maniacally and walk away gratified with yourself. Even if you didn’t know what BRINE was 24 hours ago.
All my life, I had a desire to be special. Talented. Funny. Desirable. Something. Instead, for most of my childhood I struggled through school and had a difficult time showcasing any specific skills or talents to set me apart from the pack. I never really doubted that I was smart. I have always loved challenges, but struggled to compute through long word problems and even the most simple math problems. Oh algebra, how I hated thee. In fact in high school I even failed it. That’s right, I said failed it. I was not the best scholar in school. I loved learning, but never could find an effective way to do it. And here is why…..
I see the world in images.
So for example, when you say “H is a letter” I immediately know that it’s second column second letter from the left. They are always in the same order in the same position. They are not individual. I don’t see one without seeing all the letters and how they are in relation to one another in the image. Same goes for the days of the week. You’ll notice that Saturday and Sunday are much bigger and on top while the weekdays are small and in reverse order. I have no idea why this is.
Almost everything is this way for me. Nothing is just a single thought. It is an image that shows how it relates to something else, almost like a flow chart.
Except numbers. Numbers are in a single line and almost completely fuzzy. In fact by the time I see the number 30 in the line, it’s on a gradient transparency. I see very little after 32. They are all so difficult to see. It’s no wonder math has always been such a struggle for me.
So something interesting about what this means for me…or really what it means about me….I discovered an article that kind of details specific characteristics of people who have spacial perception. For starters, there are two types of people who deal with this. One is the spacial learner who scores really high on IQ tests and is most often recognized as a genius. Yeah that’s not me. I’m the type that doesn’t perform well under timed testing situations or with math or memorization. I do, however, love a challenge, doodle incessantly, bleed creativity and live through music. True, true, true and true. I dream vividly, love computer graphics and watch television avidly. True, true and I wish it weren’t so true. It also generally expresses itself by causing me to stumble over really simple tasks, such as writing blog posts or remembering to buy dog food. But complex long term projects kind of really make my brain tingle.
I wish I would have known about this when I was a kid. Imagine all the things I could have accomplished and avoided had I known that I needed to be taught differently than every other brilliant schmuck in my class? Although, in my district I’m pretty sure they would have had no idea how to handle me and I just would have ended up in my mother in laws behavior disorder class (she restrained kids in my junior high). I probably would have given her an asthma attack and that never ends well. Be happy it didn’t play out that way Debbie.
One benefit to finding out right now is that it’s believed to be hereditary. I’ll be able to observe my own spacial spawn someday in an effort to help them avoid any issues they may find in seeing images and flowcharts 24/7.
In the meantime, I’ll probably just be a weirdo and keep being bad at math and memorizing. Fun research though huh? See now you can call this an educational freak show blog
Boy do I have it. I’m literally incapable of expressing how blocked I trully am. And not even just in the blogging world. In the design and work world as well. Simple tasks seem to overwhelm me more than ever lately. Which is also explained by a huge realization I had today, that I most assuredly will be sharing with you within the next 24 hours (more than likely unless otherwise distracted).
So here is a list:
1. I wore my snow suit all night. Goggles included. I’m getting prepped for next week’s ski trip. Most people hit the gym in preparation for a strenuous ski excursion. Not me. I lounge in the clothing I will most assuredly die of exhaustion in on top of a snowy mountain. It’s kind of like preparing.
2. Chris got his school schedule just about finalized this week. As of right now he will be attending class every single day. Of course most of those days he’ll be on campus for just a few hours in the middle of the day, but none the less, things are about to get really interesting in these parts. I love schedules and lists and tasks. Chris likes sweatpants and donuts. We are bound to meet our maker over this.
3. We hosted Lot Fam at our house this weekend. Wanna know the raddest part of that besides getting to have a group of really rad people over to have a rad bible study? They bring rad food over and then leave it. I have a gallon of chocolate milk in the fridge right now and I’m DYING to chug it before I go to bed.
4. Battle Studies premiers in 42 minutes from right now. I’m pretty much gonna stall out at work tomorrow. I may be busy learning lyrics all day.
5. 
am I the only person on the planet that didn’t know until today that brooms stand straight up around this time of year because of changes in gravitational pull? um. this broom may never get put up. i can’t wait for chris to come home from work and see if he thinks it’s cool. he probably won’t. but that’s kind of how he pretends he’s cooler than me.
I realize I’ve been short on content lately. Honestly I’ve been super swamped. With this and this. It’s amazing how much you think you can take on while also working a full time job before you find yourself not arriving home until 9:30 every night and only seeing your husband for about roughly 5 minutes in passing as you serve together on a cleaning team at church. That’s when you know you’ve probably taken on a bit much. It’s a crazy season for us…and it’s most assuredly just preparation for what is around the corner.
For example. Chris will be starting school this January. Last week I came home very late one night (shocking I know) and reminded him that his FASFA needed to be finished before his appointment with his school admittance counselor the next morning. So he grabbed the laptop and logged into his already started application (he takes initiative…it’s awesome) and began listing to me all the important documents I would need to unfile in order for him to finish the form. So as I began retreiving all of the pertinent information I began noticing how different the FASFA form had changed since my days in school (350 days to be approximate). I brushed it off as a makeover to the website and kept moving. However, once the form asked me for my credit card information I took it upon myself to do some research only to discover Chris had inadvertantly given all of our important and SECRET information to some scam website pretending to be FASFA. When I asked him how he had found this website his response was classic. Monotone and oh so very Chris-like….he simply said
“I googled it”.
Which has become my new mantra in life and the stock response to all questions like “where did you find this bundt cake, it’s delicious”.
OH that?
I googled it.
Slow and methodical. Just as Chris would have it.
And on that note….a conversation between the two of us on the way to dinner tonight with his family.
Me: How do I look? I barely had time to look in the mirror.
Chris: Uh. You’ll do better next time.
Me. (long pause) You do realize that I will remember that.
Chris: What? We were just being nice.
Me: Can you explain to me what was NICE about that?
Chris: You say tomAHto. I say tomato.
Me: Perfect.
I wonder if they offer any classes in college that could help him with his complimentary skills.
