Vacation...Had To Get Away

Prebeach Day: Berry, sweet Berry, how I have missed you. So beautiful and so memory-filled! But, really, with all the construction?? And then meeting perfect little 5 pound 6 ounce Callie…how can anything be so small and so precious?! Topping it all off: Happy Birthday dinner to Dad with the Birthday Boy, Mom, and brothers…which Dad paid for because all of his children
are broke. Still. Found out Mark has always thought crepe paper was cray paper. Yep.

Day 1, “Arrival”: Oh, so nice to get to the beach when there is still some daylight left (we usually arrive late at night). You gotta love a man that will make you pull over just before the bay bridge so he can drive and you can hang your head out of the car like a dog and ooh and aah and scream with delight while he just laughs at you. Lovely walk down to the beach with my hubs and some pina coladas.

Day 2, “Mistakes”: Thought I lost a finger. Jammed it while putting up my brand new pop-up tent (a birthday present from Mark). Couldn’t speak for several minutes. Really disliked the tent for a while. Turns out I may just lose the finger nail. Also, learned that apparently spray-sunscreen doesn’t work at ALL on a windy beach…burned the crap out of myself the very first day. Laughed HYSTERICALLY at my husband when he thought he’d get smart with the wagon containing ALL of our beach supplies (2 chairs, the tent, a camping table, a cooler, beach towels, football, etc.) and just roll it down the stairs rather than picking it up. Not only did half of our stuff fall out along the ride down the stairs, but towards the bottom step, the sides of the wagon itself fell off.

Day 3, “Achoo!”: Woke up with a head cold/sinus infection. Fantastic for the beach. Luckily, it rained, so we went to a movie. FYI: “Transformers” is awesome, no matter how lame it actually is, if you are an 80’s baby. Woke up in the middle of the night with cramps. Yippee.

Days 4 – 6, “Beachy”: I love the ocean! Despite the lack of dolphins coming to greet me, we had a great time at the beach. Sandy, sunny, beery,deliciously awesome. Found out that 1 pound of crab legs is just about my limit. Finished reading “Wicked” in 3 days…can’t wait for the musical

(thanks, babe, for the birthday book!). Hung out with Scottie T. Scottie fell out of his chair at the restaurant. Mark tried to take a picture of Scottie throwing a pack of crackers at him...over and over and over. Not successful. Had a fishbowl-sized drink at Harry T’s while laughing at my husband who apparently has wanted to go to this restaurant since all the “cool kids” he grew up with had Harry T’s t-shirts…picture a 5-year-old on Christmas morning and you may get an idea of how excited he was. Maybe. We were so close to the ocean that I thought we could probably spit in it (hypothetically). To Mark, it wasn't a hypothetical...and yes, you (he) could spit in the water from our table. Ended our stay with a romantic night beach walk, during which we convinced ourselves that if a shark were to just walk up out of the ocean onto the shore and attack us, we could get really rich from selling it to a museum.

Day 7, “Departure”: As I blow good-bye kisses to the ocean (and the dolphins who must’ve gotten the days that I was visiting mixed up on their calendar, or else they surely would’ve shown up), I look forward to 8 hilarious hours in the car with Mark and a certain perfectly perfect black puppy waiting for me at the end of the drive.

Lessons from Green Meadows

What I Have Learned So Far From Our New House:
* DO let your husband surprise you with a Johnny Depp poster hung behind all of your clothes in the closet so that, whenever you pull a shirt from the hanger, a gorgeous pirate smiles back at you.
* DO clean your tiny master bathroom mirrors with Barbisol shaving cream so that they don’t fog up in the morning when you can’t open the bathroom door to let the steam out because your sleeping husband’s face will catch the brunt of the light.
* DON’T decide to clip the irises around your mailbox after you get home from the bar at 1 in the morning, only to wake up the next day and see a plant massacre on the front lawn.
* DO get a label maker and label everything you own so that there is no question as to where the king sheets go in the linen closet any longer.
* DO get a Swiffer to magically attract all of the dog hair on the wood floors.
* DON’T wait to use the Swiffer until there is so much amassed dog hair on the baseboards that you burn through 6 duster sheets and still don’t get it all.
* DO buy a lawn mower so that your husband dances around the yard while he mows the grass because he’s so excited to mow his own grass for the very first time. (Added bonus=the song and jig that he made up while we were at Lowe's buying the mower and he got to get a cart because we had so much big stuff!).
* DON’T buy your first lawn mower 1 hour before you have to be somewhere, because your husband will not be able to stop himself from immediately cutting the grass, front yard AND back, appointments or not.
* DO throw things away that you hate, regardless of the emotional attachment. It's much better to apologize to the person that gave you that antique lunchpail than to look at it every day with disgust in your heart and a not-often-enough-used duster in your hand.
* DON’T assume that the kitchen faucet isn’t leaking just because your home inspector told you it wasn’t.
* DO force your husband to give you one of his dresser drawers even if he needs it because you are so over your stupid collegey plastic closet drawers and need a place for your underthings.
* DON’T make fun of your husband for all of the ridiculous mementos he keeps in his top dresser drawer…(OK, you should absolutely make fun of the “keepsake socks” from Boy Scouts and the blinking LED belt buckle and the beer bottle caps from Colorado that he has every intention of making into refrigerator magnets…).

More lessons to come…

Tennessee's Hold

For the last 7 years, I've had dreams of getting out of Tennessee. My Tennessee life has always come in spurts...2 years here, another 3 years there. It started with 1.5 years of grad school in Chattanooga, then moved to a 2-year job there, then unexpectedly transitioned into 3.5 years of grad school in Nashville. And now, just when we finally thought we were free, Tennessee has exerted its pull on us, yet again. It looks like our family will stay in Nashville for another length-to-be-determined section of our lives that we will never get back! I realize I'm making it sound a little bleak...those who know me well know of my feelings about this odd, yet beautiful, state. But I should point out the many upsides to staying here for a while...my job is perfect for me; Mark can keep his job that he likes; we have plans of buying our first house (which, Cami, does NOT mean we will be here forever) which we can furnish with great furniture at a great price, thanks to Mark's job; and best of all, it's closer to Georgia than most of the other positions I looked at. After all, we could've ended up in Dubai, seriously. So, for another several years, we will continue to proudly sport our Alabama car stickers all over this horribly orange-stained town. We will continue to cheer Vandy on whenever the Big Orange (no fruit sucks like it) comes to town. We will continue to avoid the downtown honkey tonks at all costs until out-of-town guests visit. We will continue to be amazed at how everyone in Tennessee thinks that the lack of a state income tax is a great idea while important things like roads, air quality, and a little thing called education continue to go down the tubes. But, we will continue to frequent our most favorite of biker bars sans bike, we will continue to attend the most awesome church we've ever been to, I will continue to look for Willie Nelson around every corner, I will continue to find new favorite roads every day that wind through incredible farms and valleys, and we will continue to enjoy traffic that, although Nashvillians complain about, true Atlantians know is pretty close to rush hour heaven. We will continue to root for any team BUT the Titans (thanks to people like you, Albert Haynesworth), we will continue to look forward to Trader Joe's arrival, and we will enjoy finally having some money to spend at the great restaurants Nashville has to offer. So even though sometimes I want to cry when I think about not being in the city that I love, a city that houses both of my brothers, most of my best friends, and my in-laws, and is oh so much closer to my parents, I think Mark and I will try to look at this time as yet another boost to our future...I just can't help but wonder occasionally when this "future" we keep talking about will start!

It's a Twista!

i should never go to walmart. i just should never go. something crazy always happens. but i had to buy diapers!! i had a diaper cake to make!! first, i didn't know where the diapers were and had to ask. i felt like such a dumbass. but i've never had to buy them before! and by the way, for those who don't know, diapers are expensive!! i told mark we need to come up with a way to potty train our kids before they turn 1. and, for those of you who don't know, diapers are not (as i thought) in the toiletries area where the adult diapers are. no, they are in the baby clothes section. diapers look a whole lot cuter when they're next to onesies and baby socks than they would if they were next to some Depends (i think it's a marketing ploy). so i spend a zillion hours trying to decide which diapers to buy...i decided to just go with one of the 3 names i've heard of (huggies, luvs, pampers) and ignore the fact that no diapers exist without baby pooh on them...huggies, it is. just as i was finishing up, the walmart head honcho came over the loudspeaker and said "attention walmart customers and shoppers (and here i thought those were the same thing) and walmart attendants (are these like mixes of stewardesses and grocery store clerks?), we need everyone to move to the center of the store. there is a tornado headed this way"...so we kind of all just start moving toward the center. when we're relatively close to the "center of the store", we can see old women who apparently can't hear the announcements wandering back and forth in front of the cash registers, not able to figure out why there are no cashiers. several old women try to leave and one employee says "look, i can't stop you from leaving, but i can't check you out." old women who want to go home are not very open to the idea of standing around like a bunch of cows with 200 other idiots in the middle of walmart while witches fly by the windows singing "dun-da-dun-da-dun-da, dun-da-dun-da-dun-da, dun-da-dun-da-dun-da DAAAAA". i happened to be standing in the pet aisle. one of the employees was next to me and resolutely informed me that when the tornado came, she was going to get some of the dog beds and put them over her head. the boss woman comes back on the speaker like 10 minutes later and tells us that we ALL need to move near the ladies' dressing area. if you've ever been in the ladies' dressing area at walmart, you'd know that it only has like 3 dressing rooms in a closet-like, no-roof area in the middle of the store. needless to say, all 200 or so people that were in walmart at that time were in no way going to fit anywhere near the ladies' dressing area. she then comes back on the speaker and tells us that the warning isn't over until 11:30 (it's now 11:05), so we just better stay put until then. then, 5 minutes later, she comes back on the speaker and tells us we can go home. then i went to publix and laughed with the cashiers at all the idiots at walmart who are afraid of a little rain :)

PHinisheD!

i'm done! i'm done! dissertation has been written and successfully defended!
here are the stats without appendices:
175 pages
46,080 words
1,235 paragraphs
1,000,000,000 pounds of stress relieved

if anyone would like to read about measuring the quality of prekindergarten classrooms and assessing the early childhood environment rating scale, you are welcome to it. and, thanks to the $60 fee that i am required to pay, it will also be available on microfilm which, as we all know, is the wave of the future...or at least it probably was 50 years ago.
i, on the other hand, will be searching for employment.
yippee!

Where's my rainbow?

When God flooded the earth, He sent a rainbow to remind His people of His covenant. When God flooded my bathroom, I got nothing! Last night at 4 a.m., I woke up to my dog barking her fool head off. Mark is out in Colorado having the time of his life snowboarding while I try to get my dissertation finished and simultaneously attempt to mop up what can only be described as 20 toilets worth of water spilled all over my guest bathroom that is about the size of 1 toilet. Trinity's bark wasn't the "I need to go pee" bark or the "I hear a noise outside" bark, but it was more like the "There is something seriously wrong going in this house and my goal is to make my mom as scared as I am" bark. I was really out of it, being woken from a deep sleep, and I'm pretty sure I thought there was someone in the house and I put the covers over my head in the hopes that the intruder wouldn't see me. Then I realized that I was hearing a weird hissing noise coming from the bathroom in the hallway. I considered getting Mark's hatchet from beside the bed before venturing out of the bedroom, but I decided against it (probably a smart move, because I may have tried to hack the toilet to pieces). The bathroom looked like a volcano, the toilet spewing great spouts of water from two spots. The floor was already covered with a layer of water. Apparently I really don't think well at 4 in the morning and my first thought was to open the top of the commode and see what I could do. After moving random things around inside the toilet, I remembered (duh) that I could shut the water off at the wall. So with the water gushing right in my face like a scene from Tom & Jerry, I pushed my way to the wall to turn the water off. With Trinity hiding in her bed, I called the apartment emergency number and left a message. The guy called me back a minute later and I told him what had happened. His advice? "Do you have towels?" Well yeah, I have towels. Apparently he lives 40 minutes away and wouldn't be getting to my flooded bathroom until the next morning. So I used every towel in the house trying to sop up gallons upon gallons of toilet water from my floor. In the process, I discovered how dirty my floors are because dog hair was floating by me from spots that the mop hadn't reached, ever. After moving everything out of the bathroom and laundry room (where the water had flowed underneath the washing machine...which is a much dirtier place than the bathroom floor), I sopped up enough water to be confident that the apartment below me wouldn't be flooded, as well. Trin and I got back in bed around 4:45. All I was thinking as I sopped and soaked and squeeged was how Mark would probably have a much better solution to this mess if he were here. So where's my rainbow? I guess the rainbow is hidden in the fact that if it had happened 12 hours earlier, I would've been in South Carolina and I'm fairly sure that much more than a few magazines, a couple rolls of toilet paper, and part of our wedding guest book/wall hanging would've been ruined! Plus, I get to go pick up my hubby in about an hour and a half...what better rainbow is there?

Dissertation Deadline

This is exactly how I feel right now. I just set my defense date for March 19, which seems so far away, but then when I remember that I have to send my paper to my committee 2 weeks before that and give it to my advisor for revisions like 2 weeks before that, I'm pretty sure that means I have to be finished with it sometime last year. Couple that with the fact that I'm still waiting for some data to come in from people who promised it to me last month, and you get a recipe for a time bomb. Tick...tick...tick...

One man's trash...

Ever since I can remember, I've had virtually no money to buy people gifts, at Christmas or otherwise. Comes with the territory of assuming a career as a student, I suppose. So I've had to get creative with presents, and often those presents have come out of some sort of junk-ish item. For instance, there was the clock made out of an old record; the end table made from an old cable spool, a gallon of grout, and a few bagfulls of glass scrap from a nice stained glass maker; the $5 garage sale dresser decopauged with free rave flyers from Little 5 Points. (Actually, it's starting to sound like I only give this crap to my husband, who was the recipient of the three gifts mentioned above...should he be concerned?) Anyway, this Christmas is no exception to my trash-to-treasure (well, I can call it treasure, anyway) gifts. But I'm sooo proud of this one! My littlest brother is a huge car nut, and clearly, I can't buy him a lamborghini. He's getting ready to graduate and move out on his own, so I decided to make him a wall clock out of an old hubcap. My husband and I went to the car junkyard the other day and spent 2 hours walking around in the rain to find the "perfect" (meaning: intact, not too heavy, not from a minivan, and not too shiny) hubcap from which to make this clock. By the way, this is a pretty fun and cheap date...it's amazing what things people leave in their cars, and it's equally amazing what other people will pry off of those cars to take home with them. Anyway, I'm so stoked about this clock; almost as stoked as I am that I get to go home for Christmas (cue Michael Buble singing in the background) and give it to my bro. In fact, when I told him his gift was coming from a junkyard, he told me that was just like telling a woman her gift was coming from Tiffany's. Man, I love that boy. Hopefully this "treasure" will last longer than Mark's did (the record clock and the end table never made it out of his hell hole of a bachelor pad, but the dresser...drumroll...now has a happy home in our closet).

Christmas Surprises

Christmas never fails to bring surprises, but this year may top them all. my boyfriend's back. javier lopez has returned to the braves, and i couldn't be happier. i know that he's just been given a chance in spring training, but believe you me, javy will perform. and with any luck, he'll be given his old number so that i can once again wear my javy shirt to the games and little kids won't wonder who this "lopez" guy is. who knows what awesome changes are in store for the bravos now that my javy has returned? the glory days are back, baby! they're back!!

How to Shmooze

I recently asked a good friend what the most influential books in his life had been, and he responded with Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People." As I know this guy pretty well and respect his opinions, I completely thought he was joking. He wasn't. I had always thought of this book as a way that salesmen, politicians, and those hokey televangelists with the big pink hair could put some more notches in their belts and fifties in their pockets, a kind of brown-nosers' guide to life at the top. Having never read the book myself, though, I'm pretty sure that my perception was based entirely on the title alone. And by the way--I still do hold to the fact that it is an abysmal title. But, because my friend doesn't fit in any of the fake, money-grubbing, despicable categories I've mentioned here, I've decided that I should read the book for myself. I see this thing ending in one of three ways. One, I realize my friend for what he truly is: a sad, false little man with such little regard for himself that he relies on the number of "friends" on his myspace page for his only source of self worth. (As I created the page for him because he refused to resign himself to cyber-relations, I think this outcome is highly unlikely). Two, the book changes my life, as well, and consequently my relationships become much healthier and much more fulfilling for all involved. And three, I realize that the sway I have held over people in the past has been a drop in the bucket compared to the influence I could have, and I end up ruling the universe and "persuading" everyone to do the things that I think are necessary for life (eating ice cream at every opportunity; bringing home Christmas trees the day after Thanksgiving, no earlier, no later; refusing to wear orange no matter the cost, etc.). If only I had more friends to give me their opinion on the book...oh, wait...that's outcome number four! Stay tuned...

Blessings from Heaven

"Consider the sparrows of the field, they neither sow nor reap, but God takes care of them.”
I'm not sure about how much reaping and sowing go on in our lives, but God sure does take care of us. Lately I've tried to be aware of all of the ways God blesses us. There are the little ways, like how we'll just oddly decide to take an alternate driving route to our friends' house, only to miss an incredible wreck that we would've been stuck in for hours if we had gone the other way. Or how I often get e-mails or phone calls from friends/family just when I need them most. Or how it seemed that we would be alone for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year because of Mark's work but, without any doing on our part, it turns out that both holidays will bring family closer to us so that we can spend them with the people we love most. But just this past week, 2 huge blessings fell upon us and I feel like I'll burst if I don't tell everyone! Mark and I, as everyone knows, are pretty low on funds right now. Even though we are really strict in how we spend our money, it's a challenge every month to stay in the black (or is it in the red? in the white? I really shouldn't use phrases like this if I'm not sure how to use them correctly. I mean to say: in the whatever color means no debt). This is especially hard as the holidays approach because our friends and family are so giving and we really love to reciprocate that sentiment. So Mark comes home on Monday night and says that the people at work love him so much that they are giving him a promotion and a raise...to start at the beginning of December. Perfect timing or what? And then to top the blessing cup right off, this week we are down to the bare bones in our pantry and I can't go to the grocery until this weekend when I get paid. So I'm getting pretty creative in our meals this week, but even creativity runs out. Just as I was wondering what Mark could eat for lunch since all of our bread was gone, and wondering what we could eat for dinner since all of our everything else was gone, Mark gets a free lunch at work that was brought in for a meeting he wasn't a part of. And then, best of the best, our friend calls and invites us to celebrate his 30th birthday at one of the fanciest restaurants I've ever been to, courtesy of his father-in-law, who wanted to treat him to a birthday dinner and asked him to invite 2 friends. It was fabulous (although I think 5 choices of water is overdoing it a little bit)! All this to say, God is so good to us and we are so undeserving. I think the verse "Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself" is such an awesome encouragement and always proves to be so true. Thanks, God!

Wish List: Chi and Dragons

This past weekend brought two new items into my life that were immediately moved to the very top of my wish list: a Chi hair straightener and a dragon.
I'll start with the Chi. My sister-in-law came up to visit. We were getting ready to go out and she asked me if I wanted to use her hair straightener (a "Chi"). As anybody knows, because I had my hair up in a ponytail all day (from straight-out-of-the-shower-wet), I told her that no straightener could tame my hair well enough to wear it down that night. But she convinced me to try it, so I released my hair from its rubberbanded knot, revealing cascades of all kinds of wonky waves, and set to straighten. It was as if I had a magic wand in my hand and was secretly issuing some kind of ancient spell from my mind as I passed the wand over my hair. It was incredible. I have fairly crazy hair, so rarely do I ever talk about how pretty it is. Not this night. I couldn't STOP talking about it, touching it, brushing it, swooshing it back and forth. Glorious. It could've been angel hair, but it was MY hair. So now I just have to save up $85 to purchase it. Eighty-five dollars, you say, for a styling tool? Honestly, I would've been willing to pay five times that amount. It's that good.
Yesterday Mark and I watched Eragon and I fell in love. I want a dragon. I really want a dragon. In fact, I want a specific dragon, Saphira. But if I can't have her (which, clearly, I can't, because she has chosen another rider), I'll settle for whichever one chooses me. I wonder how long one must wait? I've heard that some dragons wait thousands of years to hatch until they feel the presence of their rider. That means that somewhere, maybe on a ranch in Nashville, maybe in a bar in Stockholm, maybe in a fune in Okinawa (where Mr. Miagi also waits for me), my dragon sits in his/her egg just hoping to soon fulfill her destiny with me, her rider. How exciting! Plus, how much more awesome of a dragon rider will I look like when I'm fighting evil from the tail of my beast with gorgeous, shiny, stick-straight hair?

Volume: 12

Lately I've been thinking about people's quirks, specifically those of my close friends and family...I think I have way more than people realize. Actually, I'm pretty sure that my friends could come up with a much worse list, but I'm giving it a go...

I have to keep my car radio volume level on an even number.

I can't stand for people to scrape their plates with their silverware, but I could listen to nails on a chalkboard all day with no effect.

I love the words: fantastic, shimmer, dessert, deep, grace

I hate the words: unpack, leakage, zeitgeist, parse, merge

I have to wear matching bras and panties every day as much as laundry allows, and I get a bonus if I can match them to my clothes.

When I make a to-do list and then I do something that isn’t on the list, I will often write it on the list anyway and immediately cross it off.

If I use the bathroom during a football game and my team has a bad play while I’m gone, I can’t use that bathroom again until after the game.

After I put chapstick on, I rub my lips together so often that the chapstick only lasts for like 30 minutes.

I refuse to eat brussel sprouts.

I have to sleep on my husband’s left side from now on because that’s the side I slept on when we were first married.

I have to do all my shower processes in the same order or I forget what I’ve washed and what I haven’t.

When my husband jumps on the couch with the dog and it moves a quarter of an inch, I freak out. How will I ever find the exact indentation in the carpet again, and what travesty will occur if I can't?

If I’m reading a good book, I have to cover up every word on the current page and the next page except for the sentence I am on, because I don’t want to accidentally read something that hasn’t happened yet.

I believe that if I wish upon a star, as long as I say in my head “Starlight, starbright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight” first, my wish will eventually come true.

I have to have turkey at Thanksgiving.

I have to have ham at Easter.

Every morning I leave the house, I have to say to my dog, “OK, girl. I love you. See you this afternoon” and then make a kiss sound twice, or else I am sure that she will be upset and do something destructive while I’m gone, despite the fact that she hasn’t done anything bad in like 4 years. Probably because I’ve been saying my morning routine to her every day.

I worry about letting a car with a UT license plate out in front of me…does that mean that they will beat us because we’re suckers, or that we will beat them because we’re nicer?

I wonder what my dog’s voice sounds like inside her head. And oh yeah, I’m sure she has one.

So much more to come…

Waxing Alabama...by me

tyrone prothro, brodie croyle,
juwan, kenneth, and tim,
every time i think of you,
a tear also falls for him.
he, the coach, the lamb of a man,
the tender-hearted doll.
oh what i wouldn't give for him
to come back to bama ball.
but alas, the bama fans are nuts
and demand a higher rank,
and rest assured, coach nick saban
laughs all the way to the bank.
but this season does offer us
a glint of shining hope,
that saban, wilson, grant, and hall,
and tiffin (he's no dope),
can ride the wave of crimson tide
right to old auburn's door,
shut down the farmer battle cry
and add to bama lore.
could this be it, number 13?
i think it's a little fast,
but God willing, our redneck rivals
will feel the BAMA BLAST!

Lament to a Nose Ring

I had it for 6 years and now it's gone. There were no long goodbyes, no tearful partings. It was there, and then it wasn't. And I miss it and I don't. I miss the feeling it gave me, the sense of badassishness that it provided in a world where so often I'm not so badassish. I do not, however, miss worrying about losing it every time I blew my nose. In our time together, we became virtually inseparable. It never left my side (er, nose). In the end I suppose it decided it was time for a different path, as so many of life's pairings inevitably separate. Either that, or it was the constant wiping of sweat off of my face in our last game of 110-degree-weather golf. Either way, it's gone and I've decided that I will let it go. Actually, I decided that after several failed attempts to replace it. Apparently my nose had grown so accustomed to that particular stud that it had no eyes for any other. So, as my mother whispers silent prayers of thanks, I will go on, sans facial piercing. I wonder who this new person will be. I wonder where my need for the occasional feeling of badassishness will be satiated. Perhaps it is time for my first tattoo (sorry, Mom)?

WTF?

They say that you learn something new every day. Today I learned a new fact about one of my favorite American clans...sorority girls. I had heard (and seen movies with wonderful depictions) of the trials of sorority rush; about how you must wear the right clothes, ask the right questions, respond like a Miss America finalist, sit with your legs crossed just-so, party just the right amount (not so much that you're a drunk, but enough to make you fun at a House party), be adequately promiscuous (not so much that you're a raging slut, but enough to make you sufficiently wanted by the frat boys), etc. What I hadn't heard, however, is that some girls actually take classes (it was referred to as rush school) to learn how to be in the A-list sorority echelon. Such classes train you to shine during rush with your most brilliant Kappa Delta-ish sparkle. They polish you until you can rush with the best of them, and be accepted into your top pick. Not directly exposed to the Greek system myself, thankfully, I can only hope that some glimmer of your original personality will still lie latent somewhere inside yourself after the process is over. It's astonishing how much people, especially girls, will try their damndest to become a person wanted by the throng of mostly blonde, mostly white, mostly there on their parents dollar with plenty of dough to spare, sorority girl. Thank God for Berry College.

Wherefore ART thou?

We went to several art galleries this past weekend, and I am struck with the question of when a piece of art really shouldn't be considered art. I understand that people have their own unique interpretations and tastes and visions and blah blah blah. I fail to see how a photograph of a fuse box, regardless of the incredible lighting or the nouveaux angle, can not only be called art but be sold for $500. I don't expect everybody, or really anybody, to necessarily like the "art" that I own, and I certainly don't expect one single person besides my husband to appreciate the hideous oil-mounded-on-canvas "painting" of a dungeon hallway that looks like it belongs in The Haunted Mansion that he so cherishes. But I think some people just so strongly feel the need to be creative but so deeply lack the talent that such adjectives demand that they just throw whatever they can on a canvas or photo paper and call it art. And it isn't. I'll just warn you that if I walk into your house and you have "art" covering the walls that consists of paintings of decapitated babydolls, two-headed roosters, skeleton heads on Dali-knock off drawer bodies, and/or oversized plain white mailing envelopes, I will promptly leave, whether you have guacamole or not.

Anticipation

My husband's coming tomorrow! My husband's coming tomorrow! My husband's coming tomorrow!!!!!!!!

As a side note...

Deciding what window to look out of to check the weather here is like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. Each window offers a completely different weather picture. And, just like many of those old books, somehow, no matter which window you choose, you still wind up in the end with rain anyway. Ha, and to illustrate this...I just came down from getting coffee when I started to write this. I wanted coffee because of the cold rain outside. And I just turned to take a picture of the rain to post with this message, but the window shows me blue skies and sunlight. Seriously. It's all a freaking illusion.

Unforcasted Weekend

What a weekend. Friday night I met a girl from school and a friend of hers at an Irish pub downtown and found out that they had Hoegaarden on tap...funny how I have to come all the way to Sweden to find that. So happy. Turns out that 3 big beers that are all different and all heavy, even when you've eaten, can make you walk pretty funny, but the sunset was beautiful and I got yelled at by a Swedish man on his bike when I was taking pictures. I couldn't stop laughing. Saturday I went on a boat ride with Eva, Mats, their daughter Cajsa, and a friend of hers to an island in Lake Malaren. It was like we stepped off the shore of civilized world and into a 1,000-year-old time warp, and it was awesome. Only a handful of people still live on the island, but we hiked and picnicked for several hours without seeing very many of them. The flowers are starting to come out and, despite the unforcasted cold and clouds, it was beautiful. I've been on more picnics here in the last month than I have in the entire last year in the States. Picnics are soooo underrated. Speaking of unforcasted cold, apparently Sweden is famous for that, too. Everyday the past week has been a mix of t-shirt warmth, clear blue skies, thunder, lightning, rain storms, hail, and bitter cold. Dressing for the weather is more of a challenge here than I've ever encountered before and, honestly, I've never been all that good at it anyway. Saturday night Mats's 18-year-old daughter Sara and her friends made dinner for us, and we talked about how Swedish sheets make more sense than American sheets and Americans can't pronounce Swedish words correctly. However, I am the apparent exception, thank you very much. Sunday I went with Martina and her girls to the fair (really similar to US county fairs with dinky rides and overpriced crap for sale). Then we went to Anundshog, one of the biggest and oldest burial mounds in Sweden with rock formations that look, from above, like boats. We climbed to the top of this huge hill and then the Swedish unforcast kicked in and we had to picnic under the roof of a nearby building instead. After lunch, the rain stopped, and we walked around the hills and watched the girls play. And then the hail started and all 4 of us ran across the field to the car holding the picnic blanket over our heads. Martina and I left the girls at home playing the coolest Playstation game ever and went to see her husband, Christer, at their sailboat in the marina. If I had a sailbot, you know that I'd wear an eyepatch, hair beads, and lots of eyeliner all the time. I had to spend the night last night at Mats and Eva's house to take care of their cats while they were away. No, I have not developed a liking, per se, for cats, but these were pretty cute. I watched Anna & the King and Tomb Raider 2, interspersed, with Swedish subtitles. Funny, because both of those movies have a lot of other-language speak, and without English subtitles for those parts, it's impossible to understand. I slept like crap because of the 2 skylights in the room I slept in. The sky didn't get completely dark until around midnight or 12:30, and the sun came up again around 3:30 in the morning. I kept waking up and looking at my watch and wondering if I had slept until 3:30 in the afternoon, but no, it was fake afternoon. This morning I walked home in BEAUTIFUL weather and was so warm when I got home that I opened all the windows in my apartment. I got into the shower and when I got out, it was freezing and getting ready to pour rain. Ah, well. It's my last week in Sweden (and I just now learned how to pronounce goodbye in Swedish correctly...sigh).