Some times...

I look back on decisions and regret them. Today has been one of those days. Ugh. Fallout from an unhealthy relationship can seem to haunt you for a ridiculously long time. Particularly when they bring their kids into the middle of drama they're busy creating that you had no idea even existed. In spite of having to talk an extremely hurt and confused 12 year old girl off of an emotional ledge I have remained the civil adult in the situation. Again. Yeesh. And I even managed to get all of the icky financial paperwork I have been neglecting taken care of. Now I am going to drink lemoncello and watch Mulan. Because DAMN Monday. Way to be a complete nightmare.

The Big 3-0.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my life and am attempting some reshaping here and there where I don't like what I've found. You would think that this recent change would have been inspired by the fact that this is my last year in my 20s, but I really didn't think about that until recently. I rarely think about how old I am and I generally never feel like I'm a "real" adult anyway, so how can I possibly be turning 30? Right? No? Fine, and the wrinkles that are setting up camp on my forehead agree with you. But still, I was rather flabbergasted the other day when a friend sent me a link to this blog post that has a pretty great list of  "19 Things To Stop Doing In Your 20s" and I realized that I am almost 30. For real. Whaaaaa? My friend also mentioned making a list of things she wants to do before she turns 30 and I've decided to do the same. I know that things will be limited by the fact that I have a demanding schedule with working full time and also because going to school full time has made me rather poor as a result of the tuition and book costs. But why should a little challenge like money ever gotten in the way of finding adventure? Never. Because being creative about things can be half the fun.

Here is my list:

Read through entire Bible

Read all of the books I own

Sew a dress

Get a massage

Hike Pike's Peak

Go to karaoke and actually sing

Make eggs benedict (and make it well)

Make sushi

Have a dinner party on the rooftop

Take at least one camping trip this summer

Go to a concert

Learn how to fishtail braid

Send 1 snail-mail card, letter, or package every month (or more often)

Wear every single piece of clothing (including accessories and shoes) at least once or get rid of it by birthday.

Find an interesting 'Meet-up' group and go to at least 3 events

Use flower press

Spend a weekend at Joyce & Linda's

Go to dinner and a movie by myself

Come up with and follow through on 5 Random Acts of Kindness

Donate blood

Write on blog at least once a week

Paint bedroom

Spend a day fishing in the mountains (even if no one else can go)

Make creme brulee

Go see the sand dunes

Go to the Royal Gorge

Go somewhere (Vegas?) for a girl's weekend

Try 10 new coffee shops

Find and explore all small/independent bookstores within 20 miles of home

Write a short story

I reserve the right to change or tweak things as I get more concrete ideas on certain aspects of them, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the list.

Time for a cookie

I was SO responsible today. Here is a list of accomplishments:
-Read for linguistics class and did homework questions
-Wrote linguistics paper prospectus
-Finished 2 lit papers
-Sorted out which hoops need to be jumped through for financial aid at school
-Jumped through one of the required hoops and got as far as I can in another until I get some paperwork in the mail.
-Made a Costco trip (I love Costco but I HATE going all at the same time...illogical but true.)
-Cooked a "real" dinner (no cottage cheese and random snacks here tonight!)
-Took a bath to try to calm the crazy backache/neck-ache/headache I got after being a stubborn moron and insisting on carrying everything from the Costco adventure in one trip. Lesson: just because you can fit all of it in one of those blue reusable bags from Ikea doesn't mean you should make it fit. My shoulder is still twinging and aching.
-FILED MY TAXES! And I did it without crying. There was excessive grumbling and a curse word or two, but that is still much better than last year's experience. Which was mainly tears punctuated with despair and cursing. So I'm calling this a complete win.

That is why I deserve a cookie. But since I had a banana muffin just a few minutes ago we'll call it even and I can pass out in peace now. G'night world, it was nice kicking your ass today responsibilities!

School

Being a highly introverted, mildly insecure, and also a bit of an oddball makes for an interesting experience when going back to work on your undergrad at almost 30. (Translation: it can be rough.) Overall it has been a fantastic thing on a dozen different levels. But that is a post for another time. Today we are going to talk about the oh-so-incredibly-valuable life skill of winging something. Not just the scraping by sort of winging it that I did occasionally (ALL THE TIME) the first time in was in school (at a more normal age for pursuing an undergrad degree). Examples:

 No, this particular method of flying by the seat of your pants that I use now is a much more sophisticated version. Now it involves a certain degree of panache mixed with generally attempting to genuinely stay on top of things while knowing that it is inevitable that something will fall through the cracks and be forgotten until it is due. Example: the presentation my group was supposed to give in my lit class today. As a rule I despise having to work in groups and find it more prohibitive than helpful in learning since it is a generally accepted truth that you will get screwed over in every possible way when doing group work. This class has been the exception to that experience, there aren't any slackers or jerks in the group. Yet we still have CONSTANT issues...why? Because none of us are decisive. It can take the 4 of us a truly ridiculous amount of time to split tasks up because no one ever seems to want to be the Big Boss and tell everyone else to do. This leads to me getting annoyed about inefficiency and doing it anyway. No big, seems to work well for us. Until today. Today when our class started we had 20 minutes to compile all of the stuff we were supposed to work on individually, 10 minutes in C and I realized that the other two girls weren't coming to class. Neither one of them is prone to skipping so we assumed that they had their reasons and moved on. Turns out that L dropped the class this morning and I haven't heard from D, but I assume something important came up. The really unfortunate bit was that L was in charge of the PowerPoint and D was in charge of most of the writing...so nothing to hand in to the teacher and not a whole lot to go on visually for the presentation. C and I discussed it calmly, told the teacher what was going on, and decided to present today anyway. Thanks to the additional years experience in BS-ing we both came off as informed and confident and I can honestly say that we did not have the worst presentation in class even though all of the other groups had all of their members and resources present. One of the highlights of being 10 years older than your peers: not freaking out when things look grim and managing to pull things off anyway.

Pleasant moments.

Since the beginning of the year I have been writing down a pleasant moment from the day on a little piece of paper and then putting the paper in a tall glass canister I have on a chest of drawers in my room. Generally it is a very simple task and only takes a few moments before bed, most of which are deciding which particular thing I am going to write down. Sometimes I "cheat" and write down a few. Sometimes I forget for a couple of days and have a surprisingly hard time coming up with something to write on the slips of paper with older dates. So strange that the days are so pleasant can seem so bland and forgettable so quickly. As a general rule (some are completely crappy of course) I find that there is very rarely a day without at least a handful of nice things if you're looking for them, how is it that I forget the little things that make a day feel rich so quickly? The phenomenon itself is exactly why I've started writing a highlight or two down, time seems to be moving incredibly quickly of late and I don't want to have rushed through things so fast that I forget the things that give the days depth. Enjoying the richness of life isn't something to be squeezed in when random and rare free moments happen or something that can be put on a to-do list.

Pondering things...

I knew when I decided to give up movies/tv & social media for Lent that it would open up a whooooooole lot of time in my day-to-day life. Surprisingly, with the exception of a few days here and there, it hasn't really felt that much different. I mean, I obviously can tell the difference between having a movie playing while I'm cleaning and NOT having one going, but I think I thought that I would spend a lot more time thinking about deep things and exploring my beliefs and whatnot. Instead I've just learned how to let things be a little quieter, a little less chaotic, and a little less dependent on constant input from the outside world. It feels fantastic. Except when I just really want to have a Harry Potter marathon on a snowy Saturday. Just kidding. Mostly.

Having more free time on my hands has also been good for my non-school reading. Since I haven't been filling my head with random fluff from various shows or movies I have had a much stronger urge to make time to read some good fiction and thanks to a sweet friend who loaned me a nice stack of books I was able to sate the desire in a very pleasant manner. I am now determined to read through all of the books that I own and haven't read yet. Which is actually a shamefully large pile. Literally. I pulled them all from the various bookcases they were sitting in and put them on my headboard as a constant reminder. Hopefully having two free days this week will enable me to put a few of them back on their shelves. Spring break partying introvert style: reading and tea! But really. So much better than massive partying on every level, but especially the level where people expect you to talk with them and stuff when you'd rather do just about anything than socialize in a massive group. *shudder* Yes, a nice quiet spring break at home with some books is just what this too-old-to-be-where-I-am-in-college-seriously-I'm-almost-30-people girl needs.

Speaking of spending my time in a hermit-esque manner, I spend my Saturday at home baking, cooking, sewing, and reading. It was heaven. Today was highly similar (with the exception of church where I interacted with other actual humans) but not quite so productive. Though I did manage to start and finish crocheting a darling little baby cardigan for a friend who will be having a little girl in a month and a half. Baby things are terribly intimidating to me for some reason, but I've discovered that the trick is all in finding a decent pattern. Thanks random strangers on the internet for sharing your brilliance and enabling me to make ridiculously tiny clothes and shoes without cussing! Heh. But really. The first few times I tried to make baby booties definitely involved language I'd rather not admit to using. Oops.

Now I must ponder which projects I shall tackle on my first "official" day of break tomorrow.

Oh yeah.

This blog exists. I completely forgot about it until I stumbled across it a few moments ago. Perhaps I shall try writing a bit more often. For now I shall post a completely ridiculous list about the random things that I did today:

*Slept until 8:30 because I was up until after midnight trying to finish a book. A goal I did not accomplish.
*Made delicious potato soup. (Seriously, not bragging. It is delicious. It also wasn't my recipe so I think I'm allowed to say it is fantastic soup. ) I mixed The Pioneer Woman's potato soup recipe with some random tweaks here and there and it. is. SO. good. Perfect for the rotten weather today.
*Sewed an apron using material from an old men's shirt and sheet I found at Goodwill recently, both of which are paisley.
*Made banana bread muffins. (Should that just be banana muffins?) They are my best GF adaptation yet. Yay for slowly figuring out how to do gluten free...years after I (mostly) stopped eating gluten. Not cheating anymore really helps motivate learning. As does having extra time on my hands with my Lent choices. Sacrifices? Giving-ups? Hm.
*Ran several errands in-spite of the stupid, nasty, wretched, horrible, awful snow storm. I have resentment issues with storms that dump almost a foot of snow right after SPRING starts. It is just cruel. Couldn't you have held off a week or so evil storm??
*Made a fancy salad with baked goat cheese a la America's Test Kitchen.
*Finished the book I tried to finish last night, The Calling of Dan Matthews. I adore the the book that Harold Bell Wright wrote this as a sequel to, but this one didn't capture my heart in the same way. But it was still a pleasant read. Next on the list: The Gates by John Connely.
*Baked molasses cookies with lavender vanilla glaze. Technically this process is still happening since the last batch of cookies is in the oven. The first half of the cookies are too hard, but with some fiddling with the temperature and time I think the second half of the cookies will be better. Which is good since I'm going to mail some to a friend in NY per a discussion we had earlier this week.

That is all. Not a bad list. I meant to make a version of this goulash for dinner, but something about eating two banana muffins and a bunch of the chocolate chip cookie dough I made last night slowed my appetite and I ended up eating the salad for supper instead of lunch. Oops. Tomorrow will be goulash day. Afer I freeze my butt of for Palm Sunday at church.