Not so early bird

When I was younger there was an imaginary sack full of things that I planned to do when I got older. Every now and then I was watch a movie and see a young lady in her 20s reading a paper or doing yoga and I would slip that idea into my sack and think, “Someday, when I have a job and my own place… someday I’ll do that.” I think for the most part the sack consisted of things that I do now, but there are a few things in the sack that I haven’t been able to pull out completely. They are things that for some reason, even though all the right circumstances are in place, I can’t seem to get those things out of the sack. Time and time again I try, but they are too far to reach.

One of the things that is buried deep in the sack is waking up early. By early I mean early enough to spend a little time drinking coffee and not rushing out the door. At this point I would settle for waking up even an hour before I have to leave the house. For some reason there is something about my body that will absolutely never get out of bed 25 minutes before its time to go. It doesn’t matter if I have to leave at 5:30 or 9:00, I still won’t get out of bed unless it’s within 25 minutes of leaving time. This presents problems for me. I generally am rushing around, typically I forget something, and it leaves me stressed for the rest of the day. I know that I want to wake up early, and on the rare occasion that I do it makes me extremely happy and I love my day because of it, but these aren’t motivators that work. Is the problem the lack of a good motivator, or is it something else? I do know that it’s annoying when I don’t get up early enough, but for some reason I go ahead and do it again the next day.

I don’t really know at all how to fix this problem. I do know that there are plenty of things I’m doing that I’m happy about, and my little sack is almost empty, but this waking up thing and a few others just seem to be just out of reach. I wish I could say I was going to try or do an experiment and see if I could wake up early for a week or something like that but I know it won’t work. The attempt would fail. I guess for now just writing about it is enough. We’ll see where it goes from here.

Cooped up

Today I took the day off work so that I could finish studying for a test I have tonight. This class isn’t extremely hard or anything, but working full time and going to class every night really does make it hard to find time to study. I am going to be so glad when this class is over.

I feel like I’ve spent lots of time in the past few days alone in my house. Brian has had to work a few days this week that I’ve been off, and I’ve been having to study so I haven’t been going out and doing anything else. One of the things that’s good about this is that I’m really falling in love with our house. I love the way it’s laid out and I love our porch. Right now it’s raining and I took my laptop out to our back porch so I could listen to the rain and write a little bit before I get going with studying today. I love the patio furniture my parents got us and I love the extra building that I’ll use as my painting studio once I have some time to go in there. We never even looked at houses, this was the very first house we looked at and we were told about it by a friend. It really just fell into our hands and we didn’t have to think about it at all. It worked out perfectly. But, after a few days of being cooped up anywhere it starts to get a little crazy. I think today I’m going to school to study.

Since I haven’t had much time to do any extracurricular activities lately, I’ve been dreaming about things that I want to do. Here is a list of things that if I wasn’t in class I would want to be doing, and that I will hopefully do as soon as class is over:

1. Go see My Sister’s Keeper
2. Cook dinner again every day
3. Make chocolate chip cookies
4. Set up my painting room and start painting
5. Start going to Bible Study again
6. Paint my fingernails
7. Go to the mall
8. Take Timmy out for coffee
9. Go to the OKC Zoo
10. Have my 4th annual wine party – need to think of a good theme
11. Go visit Jessica
12. Ride my bike
13. Redesign my website
14. Go on a date with Brian
15. Get my hair cut and dyed

That’s just few things. Those came out really fast.

I guess I’m going to finish up my studying and take my test. Organic Chemistry blows.

Fundraising Blues

I have always been one of those people who hates receiving letters from my friends or family that ask for money. Generally the people are raising money for something worthwhile like a mission trip or a charity they work for, but being asked to give to those things has always made me feel uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s only pertained to those types of giving though, I hate being solicited period. One of my least favorite things to do is to walk around the mall lately, because there are crazy people that work in the little booths trying to straighten my hair or give me a massage every time I try to walk past a store. I would rather just be left alone and to not be bothered or asked to participate in any experience that they want me to participate in. No hair straightening, no purchasing of a cell phone, no slowing down my shopping!

I also never want to answer the door when a little kid comes to the door to sell candy. This is the one that always gets me though, because I will buy the candy from the kid who is selling for his team or church or whatever. I have a hard time turning down someone who is under 10, especially when they say something that is overly-rehearsed and their parent is standing 15 feet behind them in the street for moral (or sometimes forceful) support. Plus, I like candy, especially America’s Finest Chocolate, so I don’t really mind buying a candy bar from them. Maybe part of the reason I don’t mind this much is because I sold candy as a kid for softball and Drill Team and those types of things. I guess I see the kid and feel some sort of bond with them because I’ve been there too.

I honestly care, a whole, whole lot, about missions and organizations and what they do. I am passionate about helping people in different ways and when it comes to volunteering or working for something, I’m all for it. I just don’t like being asked for money. I don’t necessarily feel like I need a lot of money, and if I know someone needed something I really don’t think I would hesitate to offer it to them, but there is something about being asked that bothers me. So, does this make me a bad, selfish person? Some people don’t seem to mind being solicited at all. They don’t feel the need to shy away or avoid the situation. They simply hear the person out and then give an answer, yes or no, to the request. Some people aren’t immediately turned off by the fact that someone wants something from them. It’s such a silly thing really, for me to be so completely uncomfortable and opposed to interacting with someone who wants something from me. What’s the big deal anyway? I can always say no. And maybe, just maybe, it will be something I’m actually interested in helping with, but if my initial reaction is negative without hearing them out then I’ll never know.

This is all very interesting really, since I am a Fundraising Coordinator, and every fall my job is to encourage parents and runners to go out and do the exact thing that I despise. I want them to go out and ask people for money so that their kids can continue to come to school, and so that me and my coworkers will continue to get paid. I give them ideas on how to write a good letter, creative ways to raise money, how to ask a small business, how to ask a big corporation, how to think outside the box, how to use Facebook and other social media to help with their campaign, etc. Being stretched so beyond my comfort zone makes me feel a little big like God might be trying to teach me something. Maybe someday down the road I’ll need to know how to fundraise, or maybe he just wants me to have a different heart for giving. I don’t know. Either way, for the time being this is where I am and I’m going to try to do a good job. I guess I just have to hope that the people they ask aren’t too much like me. I guess we do have one thing on our side, I don’t think I could even say no to this face:

Morning on the Porch

Right now I’m sitting on my back porch drinking a cup of coffee and listening to the tree’s branches that surround our back yard wave in the breeze. Brian is sitting quietly next to me reading a new book he got for his birthday on photography and holding the rim of a cup of coffee up against his forehead as he rests his elbow on the armrest of his chair. It looks uncomfortable to me, but he must not think so. Every now and then a cool breeze will come through and all of the leaves will swish louder than the other moments, making me look up from the keyboard to watch them. They always look this same, so I don’t know what really makes me look up besides the startling sound. The coffee I’m drinking is really, really good this morning. Brian woke up before me and made it, and the smell of it woke me up and gave me the motivation I needed to get out of bed. I stood up, went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and walked out into our kitchen and living room to find that Brian was missing. I took a few more steps towards the chair where he normally sits in the morning and saw him out of the corner of my eye on the back porch. Seeing him in a different setting doing something by himself that he found enjoyable and relaxing made me so happy. I almost didn’t want to intrude on his time, but when I stepped out to say good morning the way he smiled at me was so loving. He looked genuinely happy to see me awake, so I decided it was ok for me to get some coffee and come outside too with my laptop and write. The cooler weather today must have drawn him out. Weather.com is telling me that is 82 degrees right now, which feels like a cold front after the terribly hot week we had. If I didn’t have to study for a test today I would take Brian out into the world and ride bikes or play Frisbee golf. Maybe I’ll do that anyway.

Last night we was Brian’s birthday party, and we had lots of fun. The house quickly filled up with family and later filled even more up with friends. We ate hamburgers and hot dogs, pasta salad, deviled eggs, rice krispy treats, blackberry cobbler, cheesecake, baked beans, ice cream, chips, southwestern corn dip (which was really good), and more that I’m forgetting for sure. We were definitely prepared to feed an army after our moms brought in all the side dishes and extra desserts. Toni asked me relatively quickly if I had any Disney movies, and thank God we had Wall-E or I don’t know what we would have done. For someone who loves Disney movies so much I certainly don’t have very many of them. I’ll have to make a note to start collecting them for situations like this.

Speaking of notes, I’ve recently discovered this amazing website called evernote.com. It is amazing. I LOVE to make lists, and this is basically a tool that you can use to keep lots of lists organized for yourself. You can also install this thing on Firefox or Safari where you can click on a web page at any time, and it will turn that page into a note and add it to your Evernote box. I do that a lot with recipes. I will click on a recipe to save it to my evernotes, and label it recipe or dessert or whatever, and then when I want for something to make I can look at all the recipes that have looked good to me on the internet to decide what to make, instead of going online searching through thousands of recipes to find something that looks good. All the things that have looked good to me are already in one spot. This works for me because I read food blogs a lot, so every day I’m looking at recipes and saving ones that look good. When I started my Evernote, I started with 9 Lists that are useful to keep updated from an article Brian sent me from Lifehack.org. For someone who likes to keep lists, they are really great ones to start with. I highly recommend you all start an Evernote account and get these 9 lists started.

Now I guess I’m off to study for my test I have tomorrow. At least the day had a very relaxing start.

Flag Day

Happy Flag Day everyone! I have always really enjoyed Flag Day, mainly because it’s my brother’s birthday too. I think we’ve always thought it was pretty funny that his birthday is on such a silly holiday. When we were younger and living in a neighborhood with lots of other young families, they did parades for some holidays like Halloween, the Fourth of July, and Flag Day. I remember on Flag Day a fire truck would come out and all the kids would hold a flag and carry it as we walked around the neighborhood. Some kids rode in wagons, which I think I remember Timmy and Zach (a little boy we babysat) doing as I walked alongside with some of my friends. We were young enough that when we told Timmy the parade was for his birthday, he believed us. I love when kids are at that age where they believe things that make them extremely happy.

This Flag Day in Tulsa is stormy and wet. Today Brian and I are going to go to my parent’s house to celebrate my brother turning 20. He’s old. He is going to be a sophomore this year at OU and he got straight A’s this past year taking all these ridiculously hard classes. He’s probably going to work for NASA or the CIA or something doing math all day long when he graduates.

It has been almost 2 months since my last update, which is terrible and I’m very sorry. A lot has happened since my last post that I will just sum up quickly. We have moved into a house, which is extremely nice and awesome, I’ve gotten through one fundraiser and planned another one, a golf tournament, which is going to happen tomorrow, and now that I’ve given it a substantial amount of thought and actually started taking classes, I think it’s safe to go ahead and tell the world that I am going to go back to school and apply to get my master’s in Genetic Counseling. It’s something I hadn’t heard of a 2 months ago, but it is such a perfect fit with where my life and work have taken me that I think it’s really what I’m supposed to do. The next step is to take a few classes that I need before I can apply to the program. The classes are Organic Chemistry (which I’m taking this summer), Genetics, and Biochemistry. I’m really excited about taking Genetics because it’s something I always wanted to take when I was at OU, but I never did because it seemed a little silly to take such a heavy science class as an elective when I was already taking big science classes. Now I wish I had followed my heart and taken it back when I wasn’t working full time. I know it will all work out fine, it’s just that the next year is going to be busy with night school.

So, that’s what’s been going on around here lately. I’ll have to find some pictures of the house and put them up here. I promise I’ll be back sooner than in a month and a half.

Jessica was born today… 25 years ago

Tomorrow is Jessica’s birthday (but the date on my blog will reflect her birthday as being today since I haven’t changed the settings to reflect my current time zone), and as a tribute to her and her friendship I thought I would post some pictures that I have of her. I know she’ll probably hate this, but it’s her birthday, and on your birthday you have to take a little bit of extra attention.

New Flip Flops

I decided to make a new header for the site, and I hope everyone likes it. I went back to the old title and hopefully the new look will inspire me a little bit to start writing more. When I first started blogging, I used it as a way for friends and family to keep up with what I was doing since everyone was so spread out. I was in college, friends were at other colleges, and I didn’t live in the same town as my family, so it made sense. Now there aren’t that many people who read this outside of Tulsa, so I feel less of a need to keep people up to date on what’s going on. Sometimes it’s hard to think of something to write about that most of you don’t already know, but I guess that’s when I need to be creative and think of something. I’ll try to be better. It turns out that today, I do have a little story to tell.

I’ve had the same pair of brown flip flops for a very long time. I’m not sure when I got them, but I think it’s been several years that I’ve had them. They are just plain, rubber, brown flip flops. I never really wore them or held on to them because I like them, but mainly because they were comfortable and matched almost everything I wore (I wear a lot of brown).

But yesterday something happened that made me very sad. It was raining, and I was getting out of my parent’s car in their garage and I slipped. I fell down and bruised my arm, but other than that I wasn’t seriously injured. It wasn’t that big of a deal except it made me realize that these flip flops that I’ve been holding on to are a threat to my well-being. My mom told me that I needed to throw them away. “You’re an adult!” she said. “You don’t need to wear those shoes!” I guess being an adult is not compatible with brown slippery flip flops.

I got home and told Brian about the incident, but I didn’t tell him that my mom told me to throw them away, hoping that maybe he wouldn’t think of that and that I would get to hold on to them for a little bit longer. They really are so easy to put on when I don’t know what else to wear, and they are sooo comfortable. I really didn’t want to throw them away. After telling Brian the story though, his first words were pretty much the same as my mom’s. He thought it was time for those shoes to go too.

This morning we went to church and then afterwards we drove by Sun and Ski, and Brian thought we should stop in and look at new flip flops that are actually sort of safe. I tried on lots of different types of Reefs and decided on this pair:

As you can see they are sufficiently treaded and are the same basic style as my others. These are great too, because they actually have arch support, and when I walk I feel like I’m bouncing around. They are amazing.

So, after buying the new shoes I gave in to the request of those who love me and decided to throw away the slick, deadly shoes. Farewell my brown friends.

Rosalind Cook’s Studio is amazing

After a long week of event planning I’m sitting on my couch drinking a cup of coffee and thinking about the things I did. Yesterday I got to do something pretty incredible that I didn’t even know existed in Tulsa. I visited Rosalind Cook’s studio. Rosalind is a sculptor who has sculptures all over Tulsa and other parts of the world. If you visit Utica Square ever you will see one of her works of art in the courtyard outside of Starbucks at the West end. She also has them in front of St. Francis, Kirk of the Hills, and several other places, including the Little Light House. Every year she donates a sculpture to the Garden Party so we can auction it off, and this year I got to go with my boss and a lady on the committee to pick one out.

Her studio is behind her house in a separate building, and her house is amazing. When you walk up to her front door you see sculptures surrounding a little stream that actually goes under her house and through her back yard. These bronze sculptures are various sizes and are all of kids, Jesus and other religious figures, Grandparents with their children, kids holding frogs, etc. They are really amazing. Her house is one of those amazing houses that you drive by near midtown and wonder if you’ll ever be cool enough to afford. She greeted us at the front door with her Golden-Doodle, probably the friendliest and least scary dog I’ve ever seen in my life. She is so nice, and I was immediately comfortable as she welcomed us and took us through the house and into the back yard. Her yard is perfectly landscaped with several more bronze sculptures throughout the flowers and trees. We walked over a small bridge and into the back building which is her studio, and when I walked in I had to focus very carefully to not let my jaw stay hanging open very long. There were probably 100 sculptures sitting around. Some were life size and even larger, some were as small as a glass or water, and some were works in progress sitting on pedestals with different small sculpting tools surrounding them. She explained how she will make a small sculpture and send it away when someone wants one that is life size, and they scan it and then make something out of foam and then send it back so she can resculpt it bigger. I didn’t really understand the whole process but it was great listening to her talking about it anyway. The really crazy part was when she started telling us our options of sculptures to pick from to take to our auction. We were given several choices, and I thought it was crazy that we were given this incredible gift by being able to take one with us. We looked at a few of children, some of Noah, some of Jesus, etc. They were all amazing and I knew if I was the only person who had to make the decision I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it. Eventually we all agreed on one of Jesus holding a Lamb. As I said recently in a post, I am usually not a fan of Christian inspirational decor, but this sculpture was absolutely amazing. If it wasn’t worth over $2,000 I would consider buying it myself.

I desperately wanted to take pictures to post them on here, but my camera was dead when I got there and checked. Julia Ann, our committee chairperson, took some and when she gets them to me I will post them. If you’re at all into art you’ll be blown away. Check out her website on the link above to see some of her sculptures and where they are located around Tulsa.

Spicy Shrimp Alfredo Fun

Lately I’ve been cooking a lot, and it has been mainly the same things over and over. This Thursday I was sitting at work trying to decide what to make for dinner, and I decided that I wanted to try something different and look for a recipe online. I had shrimp at home, and I wanted to make some type of pasta. I personally really like alfredo sauce, even though it’s really not that great for you, so I went to the Food Network website and I did a search for shrimp alfredo. One of Emril’s recipes came up, and it looked spicy and good so I decided to give it a try. You can find the recipe RIGHT HERE!

I didn’t have andoille sausage, so I knew I needed to get some. I figured that Whole Foods would have it for sure, but I thought it might be something that the regular grocery store would have, so I went to Food Pyramid first, because I also needed a few other things that would be cheaper there and I didn’t really need to get all of it at Whole Foods. So, I went to the section where the sausage is and I didn’t see it. Now, I was fairly sure what I was looking for, because I have seen pasta and gumbo recipes with this type of sausage in it, but I wasn’t exactly sure if that was what type of sausage it was. I didn’t see it anywhere (a severe flaw of both Food Pyramid and WalMart, they never have ingredients I need), so I decided to ask the person at the meat counter, because they should know… right? This was a big mistake.

I walked up to the counter and asked the woman if she knew if they had any andoille sausage. She looked at me with blank stare, then looked down to the sausage at her counter. I knew that the sausage was not in the counter, because all they had was Italian sausage next to the refrigerator or shrimp. There was a very, very small selection. But, I didn’t expect to find it in that counter at all, I just thought she might point me in the right direction. She pointed to the Italian Sausage through the glass and said, “Here it is!” and proceeded to grab some gloves to dish some out for me. I said, “No, I’m pretty sure that’s not it,” and then I showed her the word “andoille” on my sheet of paper that had my shopping list on it. She looked at the word, then back down through the glass, and said “Yeah, right, that’s it.” At this point I knew she didn’t know what I was talking about, and I decided it was probably best to go to Whole Foods for this ingredient, so I politely said, “No, I’ll just look around,” and started to walk away. She followed me out and walked over to the section where you find pre-packaged sausage, and she pointed to a huge roll of Summer Sausage and said, “Oh, here it is!” with lots of excitement in her voice. I sighed… then walked over and said, “No, I think that’s Summer Sausage, I’m looking for andoille sausage, and I’m pretty sure it’s different.” She proceeded to keep looking through the packages for the key word, while I stood beside her knowing it wouldn’t be there since I had already checked, but deciding to let her try and help if she wanted to. After a few minutes of her finding different types of sausage and trying to convince me that each one was what I was looking for, I thanked her and said, “I guess you guys don’t have it,” and just walked away.

Whole Foods had it. I asked a guy in the meat department and he walked me right to it. They had several different choices.

So, I went home and proceeded to make the pasta. Brian decided he wanted to help, so we did it together and it was lots of fun. I cut up the ingredients and Brian put them in little bowls:

I didn’t take pictures of the cooking process, but I just followed the directions exactly and never ran into any problems. Here is the finished product. It was extremely flavorful, and If I made it again I would use less sausage. The sausage basically made the whole thing taste spicy and.. well.. like the sausage. It was still very good though and I would make it again with the modifications. I also didn’t use as much shrimp as the recipe called for, and it may have been better with a little more shrimp. So less sausage, more shrimp.

Voila!

Daily Coffee Inspiration

One thing I like about working at a Christian organization is opening the cabinet where the mugs are kept and looking at all of the inspirational ways I can drink my coffee each morning. I don’t really like the coffee that we make here, so I bring my own in a to-go cup, but then when I get here I like to pour it into a regular mug. It’s just much more enjoyable to drink coffee in a regular mug as opposed to a sealed thermos through a lid with a tiny hole. It just tastes better when I get more than two drops in my mouth at a time.

I typically am not a fan of inspirational scripture decor, but these mugs really do make me smile. The mug I’m using today is colorfully painted with flowers, leaves, and bees flying along the rim, and it says “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. Psalm 90:17″ going around it in curly writing. It makes my coffee experience and my morning fruit medley more enjoyable. Lately I’ve also enjoyed using one that has the words to a song on it about friends. I don’t know what the song is called, but the mug says something like “Because friends are friends forever if the Lord’s the Lord of them”…etc. The line goes on but I can’t remember it right now.

I hope you enjoy the slightly blurry iphone picture.