Happy New Year

Welcome everyone to 2008. I would have posted sooner, but I didn't have a very good start to the new year. Not that I think that is in any way an Oman or means that 2008 isn't going to be awesome, cause I think it is.

Anyway, here's the story. I got up early (considering I stayed up past midnight like the rest of the world) and started doing the dishes. Now, it's not that I hate doing dishes, it's just that years of grudgingly doing them at home, then not having a dishwasher for almost a year in college (not that we didn't actually have a physical dishwasher, just that the landlord never replaced it when it broke), and then finally getting grossed out enough by my roommates to do their dishes my last year of college, not to mention all the cleaning checks I had to do--has kind of turned me off to the idea. Plus, my husband doesn't really mind. Do I take advantage of that? You betcha. So, after cleaning most of the house New Years Eve, I decided to be extra nice to start out the year by taking care of the dishes so my lovely husband wouldn't have to. I got the dishwasher loaded and started, then proceeded to the many hand-washed dishes stacked and waiting. I started with the slow cooker. It had been soaking for awhile, so it wasn't too bad, but I didn't have my glasses on (it was early ...), so I wanted to make sure it was really clean. This meant a good soaping. Which I did on the counter. When that was done, I lifted the (moderately) heavy slow cooker into the sink for a rinse. Now, did I mention it was early and I might not have been up to my full strength? Well, it was heavy and slippery, and sure enough, I dropped it in the sink. And sure enough, it shattered. I was in shock. I felt like crying, and not really cause my hands hurt. I brushed some shards off them, and then they started bleeding. And when your cuts are already wet and start bleeding it's hard to make them stop. So I grabbed a paper towel and sat on a stool and tried to figure out all the places I was bleeding from. There were five. Three on my left hand, and some other non-bleeding scrapes. And two on my right. In different places and very painful. So I spent most of the day nursing my hands, and we didn't get to paint the walls like we had planned. But on a happy note, I'm banned from doing the dishes.

ABC tag

Attached or Single: Married, so I guess . . . attached

Best Friend: Helen

Cake or Pie: Pie, am not really a cake person. Much prefer birthday brownies.

Day of Choice: Thursdays are usually good, and Fridays

Essential Item: My watch, feel naked without it.

Favorite Color: bright, fun colors that look good on me.

Gummi Bears or Worms: both, but only if they are warm and squishy.

Hometown: South Jordan, UT

Indulgences: All the too much sweets we have in the office.

January or July: Well, I try to love every season for it's own beauty, but January is usually dull and July is my birthday . . . .

Kids: none

Life is Incomplete without: chocolate

Marriage Date: October 5, 2006

Number of Siblings: 1 bro, 2 sises.

Oranges or Apples: I'm really more of a banana person.

Phobias or Fears: Heights, people in authority, confrontation, making mistakes, failure, success . . . yeah, I have issues.

Quotes: "Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!"

Reason to Smile: fruits and veggies for breakfast!! Work party tonight (I don't have to fix dinner.)

Season: Winter cause of the snow, Spring cause of the flowers, Summer cause of my no longer cold hands and feet, and Fall because of the smell in the air.

Tag 3: Um, everyone I know already did this already.

Unknown Fact: Elephants are the only mammal that can't jump. Yes that includes whales.

V word that describes you: Visible, variable, voracious, viscous.

Worst Habit: wishing I was someone else.

X-Rays or Ultrasound: I once had an x-ray on my feet to see if I could get pointe shoes early . . . I couldn't, my growth plates weren't closed and they didn't want to stunt my growth. Stunt my growth, ha. I doubt they were closed when I went on pointe a year later and think what I giant I might have been had I waited. ... stunt my growth indeed ...

Your Favorite Food: Italian.

Zodiac: Cancer the crab, and don't say it's appropriate.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

...But then again, sometimes you can. And isn't great when it happens? I think it's happened to me like four times in my life. First, when my crush asked me to Prom junior year, though, now that I think about it, doesn't really count because I didn't really spend that much time wanting that to happen. Maybe a brief fantasy here and there, but I never considered it an actual possibility, ... so maybe just three times.

First, when my now husband asked me to Prom in high school. I liked him so badly and I really wanted him to ask me to a dance so I could show him how good I clean up and he would fall madly in love with me. Okay, so that last part didn't happen until several years later, but I did clean up good.

Second, getting my now husband to fall madly in love with me and marry me. I had to become completely uninterested in him before this happened, but in the end, my high school fantasy came true.

Third, going to London for a study abroad. I set this as a "goal" for myself when I entered college. I use quote marks because I never thought I'd really be able to do it, but then I did. And it was one of the best experiences of my life.

Now, these three experiences are unique because they weren't just goals I set for myself. In the case of my husband, I had no control over his thoughts and feelings, and so can not really consider those as goals. Goals are things you actually expect to be able to do, you just need a little boost, or baby steps, or whatever to get there. Those three experiences were dreams come true because they weren't things that I ever thought I'd be able to do.

Well, yet another dream has come true for me. (And Mo, you can do it too by the time you're 30. Let's chat and I'll share my new philosophies.) I am in a play. I'm back on the wagon, and this time, for the first time, I got a lead. And not just any lead, the lead I auditioned for. I had abandoned the hope of ever getting a lead in a play while I was in high school. This abandonment of hope stayed with me through college. I desperately wanted to get the lead in a play, don't get me wrong, I just never thought I could because I'm too tall, I only get cast for my dancing, there's too much politics in theater . . . . But one of my life long fantasies is fulfilled. My audition was very different from Morgan's. (I'm pretty sure you can scroll down and find what I'm talking about because you all read Morgan's blog too, I know.) I went into an audition, and based on nothing else but my talent and wow factor, I got a lead. And I auditioned more than a week before they cast it, with no call backs. Granted, it is a community theater production, but you gotta start somewhere, and now that I've had a taste of this dream, I think I could do it again.

So here's to dreams come true.

P.S. It's Singing in the Rain and I'm Lina Lamont.

My first dresses

I don't remember my first dress, but it was probably a hand-me-down from my sister when she was a baby. But that's okay because baby clothes are meant to be hand-me-downs. What was sad was when I got her hand-me-downs later. Not that I didn't like her clothes, but I am what is traditionally called a "late bloomer", and though me and my sister are about the same height now, she got her height mostly by sixth grade, whereas I didn't start growing until after seventh and continued on until my Junior year of high school, or sometime around then. So with her already two years older, most of her clothes didn't really fit me. So I don't know where I got some of my clothes from.

But I do remember that I have always loved dresses. There was one sun dress I had in pre-school, so I was four, and it was blue with bright balloons on it. The balloons were red and yellow. It was smocked in the front and had straps about 1" thick. I remember this dress particularly because the one time I wore it to class, I got really self-conscious. I think that was the first time I really thought about dressing for modesty. Anyway, sadly I didn't really wear that dress much after that. And every time I looked at it in my closet, it made me sad. And my little sister didn't wear it much.

I also remember this dress my cousin gave me. It was black with a paisley design and a white lace collar. I wore that thing until it was a little too small for me. I thought it was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen when she gave it to me, and I couldn't believe I was so lucky. That was the best hand-me-down ever. I even wore it for a family picture, so it is immortalized on my parents' wall.

Hmmm, dresses. I should wear them more often . . .

My Mother's Dresses

So, I've been spending time at work (see post below) reading Erin's Dress a Day blog (her May 14th post to be exact). And thinking about my own memories of dresses and my mother.



Let's preface this vignette by saying that I love dresses, I always have. Maybe I'll blog about my memories of my first dresses, but not today. I love wearing dresses now. Okay, skirts mostly, but I haven't sewn in awhile. Maybe some day I'll have a sewing room, or something in the realm of furniture so that I won't have to sew on the floor. Right now, my sewing quarters are located in the basement of my old and scary house. I could think of at least three other places in the house I'd rather sew including my disgusting kitchen floor and my claustrophobically small office/library/junk storage room. But the basement is where I will be.



Anyway, on to the vignette. I remember a dress in my mother's closet when I was little that used to intrigue me. It was peach and long and flow-y with lace on the neck. I think the color would have looked wonderful on my mother, and I always wondered why she never wore it. I found out much much later (hey, sometimes I'm slow, remember how it took me 12 years to get the tarapaper joke?) that it was a bridesmaid dress from her little sister's wedding. She wore it shortly after having me. In fact, there is a picture in my scrapbook of me as a baby held by my mother with my older sister sitting next to me with a corsage on her wrist. On second thought, maybe my sister was holding me, and my mother wasn't even in said picture, but then again, there's got to be a picture like that somewhere. The facts in the case remain, however, that it was the bridesmaid's dress, and I was a baby. I put two and two together (about the fact that it was a bridesmaid's dress and the wedding and all) because of that picture (whatever one it is) and the wedding pictures of my aunts wedding that my grandma has hung on the wall of her basement. I saw my mom in the pretty dress and discovered where she got it. The question of why she never wore it still haunted me. I didn't realize at the time that my mom had very few occasions to wear fancy dresses, what with raising us and all. And also, my mom isn't really into the whole dressing up thing like I am, and would have been terribly uncomfortable in the dress out somewhere.



As far as other dresses go, I remember sitting on a pew with my mother at church on Sundays and paying very close attention to her dresses. I liked the patterns that were harder to figure out. I would trace the paisley and try to find the order in the design. I also knew which dresses were her favorites because she wore them a lot. I also remember sitting on her lap and touching the underside of her chin. It was my favorite place to touch because it was so soft, like silk soft. I'm sure my mother thought I was pointing out a double chin she was worried about, but I just liked the texture.



Ohh, childhood.

Guilt v. Boredom

Not to ruin the big stand-off for you, but boredom won. Obviously. Why obviously? because I'm posting. So the boredom at work won. But is guilt just giving up and playing dead?



Well . . . have you ever known guilt to just give up? Has guilt ever stopped fighting a losing battle? Eventually, yes guilt does stop fighting. But it hasn't given up on me yet. "It's just a flesh wound", it keeps yelling, flopping around on the ground on it's stumps.

Actually, I give in a lot of the time because of guilt. It's a very strong motivator for me. However, the absolute lack of things to do this week (I finished every conceivable project I have been saving up for boring days two days ago), I find myself reading a lot of blogs, writing blogs (obviously) and organizing things that don't need to be organized. Hey, I never said I stopped being OCD just because I was bored.

So, looks like you can look forward to posts, yes actually honest-to-goodness posts on my blog for the next few days (hopefully not weeks, please, please, not weeks I'm pulling out eyebrow hairs for crying out loud!). I guess there's good news for someone in all this . . .

Goodbye Sun, I guess I never saw you that much anyway

All opposed to the switch from Daylight Savings Time, please say "aye".

I can't tell you how messed up my body feels now. I wake up and feel like I've overslept and like I should be somewhere already because it's so light outside. And in my personal opinion, there are few things worse in this world than when you wake up late. That initial panic, that feeling of stupidity, the horrible knot in your stomach that says there is absolutely nothing you can do about it now, and the overwhelming desire for a time machine to get back those 2-60 minutes that would make all the difference. There is nothing to compare. So fighting off that feeling every morning is a little much.

Then, there's the sunset. I am all about sunsets, I just like them to happen after I get home from work. I feel like it's so late when I leave and it's completely dark outside. Like somehow I've been punished and had to work late for whatever reason. But no, it's really the right time to leave. I just get to feel punished by the sun. And then I get home and feel like I can't do anything because it's too late. I don't want to start a project and not be able to get through it before I have to go to bed. It cuts down on my productivity considerably.

So goodbye Sun. I'll miss you. I wish I saw you more, but I guess it wouldn't matter because you're too weak for me to enjoy any warmth from you anyway. I never really saw you as it was. But that doesn't mean we didn't have a good relationship. I'll call you sometime . . .