FMM

Okay, so I'm going to do something new today, and I'm going to answer these questions posed by Amber at aefilkins. I only heard about it today, and figured that I like friends well enough, so why not give it a shot?

1. Do you cook every night?
No, I don't. I have a meal plan so I go to the cafeteria, they scan my handy dandy vandal card and let me have as much food as I want.

2. What kind of laundry detergent do you use & why?
I believe I have Gain laundry detergent, though I have yet to actually use it. haha. We bought it because it was a good price for the size, so it should last me all year.

3. Do you do laundry every day or loads at a time?
loads at a time. I live in a dorm, and there's just me to worry about laundry wise, meaning that I really only do laundry when I need clean underwear. haha.

4. How often do you eat out per week?
Not very often. I'm a poor college student. Eating out usually happens when I'm either sick of cafeteria food or someone offers to feed me :)

5. Where do you usually eat out?
Anywhere I feel like. With Prince Charming it's usually Red Robin, but Applebee's is my favorite restaraunt.

6. What is your favorite retail store?
Target? that's retail right? I must sound really dumb...

7. What's your favorite thing to drink?
Flavored Water, Vanilla soy milk, applejuice

8. Do you take vitamins?
only when Prince-y makes me.

9. What percentage of the household chores to you do?
Chores in the dorm room: 100%
Chores when I go visit my parents: enough haha

10. Do your children do chores? {Or will they, did they, etc}
I don't have kids yet, but when I do, they will definitely have household chores to perform, just like I did/do

11. Do you go to church?
Yes! I love church!

12. Do you have a housework schedule?
No way. I'm such a procrastinator that even if I did have a schedule there's no possible way I'd stick to it!

13. Do you keep a working budget?
Not really, I don't think. I do try to monitor my cash flow to make it last, but I am an occasional splurger.

14. What do you do at night as a family?
wow. when I'm back in Hayden it depends on who's home as to what we do. More often than not though, we're missing half the fam. Here Prince and I draw or talk or play video games together.

15. How do you prepare yourself for a new week?
make sure that I have all the stuff from the old week finished. More often than not though, I forget to do this.

16. What do your mornings look like?
Monday, Wednesday and Friday my mornings look exactly like Theory and Philosophy designed to make your head hurt and Tuesdays and Thursdays I work at Java.

17. What time do you get up in the mornings?
around 6:30 or 7 depending on the day.

18. What time do you go to bed at night?
Whenever I feel like it, haha. Usually 10 or 11, sometimes later. Last night I was up til midnight because Prince wanted to be the first one to wish me a happy birthday.

19. How do you manage all of the paperwork that floods into your household? {bills, school work, magazines, ads, etc}
throw out the trash/recycling, keep it somewhere safe if it's mildly important. and by safe I mean that one cardboard box I have on the top shelf so that I can't reach it unless I stand on a chair....

20. How do you keep your household organized? {calendars, charts, etc}
Organized? If you organized it I'd be lost! Actually that's not entirely true. Everything has a place it should be. Whether or not it's actually there depends on how much homework I have...

That Time Of Year Again

19 years ago on this very day, my lovely mother was in the hospital. Was she sick? No. Was she having surgery? No. Was she perhaps visiting someone who was sick or having surgery? No. No she wasn't.

What was she doing in the hospital 19 years ago on this very day?

Welcoming her first child into the world.

Her favorite child.

The best daughter she could have ever hoped for (aka ME!).

(haha)

Okay so I'm not her favorite child or the best daughter (although I could say I was the best daughter if I didn't have a sister....) But I am her most favorite OLDEST daughter and also her favorite Cinderella.

And I'm a daddy's girl to boot because you see, he was right there welcoming me into the world alongside my dear momma.

I suppose you could say these 19 years have flown by. One day I'm three years old riding my bike down the driveway because wouldn't you know it, I was going to school darnit! And the next day I'm a sophomore in college with a boyfriend and an future as an art teacher.

I don't remember all of my birthdays that I've had, but I know they were all special. And being born on the last day of August meant that I was never in school for my birthday, but I was always one of the youngest kids. And did I let that affect me? Heck no. I flaunted it. Look kiddo, I'm just as good at this as you are, maybe ever better than you are, and guess what? I'm YOUNGER.

I remember one year we went camping for my birthday. A few years in a row we went to Wild Waters. Last year when I turned 18 I went to Silverwood with Belle and Arby.

(me, arby, belle at silverwood)

My favorite number is 16, so when my 16th birthday rolled around I was super excited. Then when it came time to change from 16 to 17, I wasn't keen on leaving my favorite number behind. I felt like I would be cheating on 16 and have to get a new number. But then that fateful day occured, and wouldn't you know it 16 still loves me.

But I got really attatched to being 17 and I didn't really want to turn 18. Sure 18 meant I could smoke if I felt so inclined and now I could legally buy porn (sarcastic eye roll), and I could write my own notes to excuse me from missing class (haha).

Today I'm kind of excited to be 19. You see, this is my last year of being a teenager and to be honest I'm not really that attatched to being 18, so it's an easy age to let go of. Princey turns 20 in October. I tease him about being a grandpa and needing to reserve a room in the nursing home. He just tells me shut up with a huge grin on his face.

This is the first time in my whole life that I have had to go to class on my birthday. I remember when I was turning 13 and going into the 8th grade, my birthday was two days before school started. But that was the closest it ever got to school. Two days.

(turning 13)

Now I've already been in school for a week. It's good ol' Monday morning and I've already been to two classes today.

But you know what?

It's going to be a good day, darnit!

(19 years old today)

I'll Be Home For Christmas

Parkinson's Disease is my least favorite out of all the diseases that I know of. I've done some research on the subject - but not near enough to make me an expert. As I've gone through school I've written a few papers about it, done a couple of speeches, but that doesn't really mean anything other than I've gained some knowlege about the subject.


One thing about Parkinson's Disease that I absolutely hate the most is the Parkinson's dimentia that consumes the mind of the infected. Actually I really hate the entire disease as a whole. Mostly because I don't have the opportunity to know my grandfather simply because his body is riddled with the disease.


My dad's dad has had Parkinson's since before I was alive. So his better years were when I was too young to remember and all I'm left with are pictures of him pulling me around the backyard of their SoCal house when I was two years old before we moved to Idaho. My cousin's have a better grasp of the truly amazing person that my grandpa was than my siblings or I can even imagine.


The last couple of years have been hard. Hard on everyone. The disease is progressing and now I don't really know how much longer he's going to be here - I just know it's not going to be an incredably long time. I know it's ridiculously hard on my oma. She lost her own mom to Alzheimer's and now her husband to Parkinson's.


I told my own dad that he simply isn't allowed to contract Parkinson's Disease. Simply not allowed.


My dad said today, in only the third time I conciously remember him tearing up, that he's known for a while his dad won't be here long, but seeing it in print the other day (I think in an e-mail, but since I don't live at home anymore I'm not completely sure) is what rattled him the most.


He said he wants to go home for Christmas.


That struck a chord with me.


Home to me is Idaho. That's not where I was born, but it's where I've been raised. I don't think I'll live here forever, but for now this is home. But Dad was raised in California. He jokes about leaving as soon as he could because he doesn't want to live here anymore, but then today he called it home.


Home.

I didn't really think that my dad considered California home. I always figured Home was here. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that home is where your parents are. I live in Moscow when I'm at school and I live in Rathdrum when I'm at work over the summer - but home is here where my parents live.


They talk about moving to Montana and when they do, I'm not sure where home would be for me then.


I saw a sign once that said home is where the heart says 'Ahhhh'


So where is that?


I just know that this disease has taken more than it's fair share of heartache on our family. It's robbed me of a grandparent. It brought out a side of my father that I don't see at all.


And as I sit here in the family room of my parents' house with The Keeper and Cinco as they play Halo 3, I'm a little excited at the possiblity of going to Cali this winter for Christmas and I'm a little sombered because I don't know how much longer my grandpa is going to remember who I am...

Grandpa trying to whistle. :)

Grandpa and me at Balboa Park


Smile :-)

Fix It Friday #26

It's been a long time since I've done a Fix It Friday, and let me just say that I have missed it SO MUCH! But now that I'm settling back into a routine at school, here are my edits:

This is the original:

Edit numero uno:
edit zwei:

And the final destination:

Messy Fingers and a Blind Brain

I swear to you all the first week of school is the most expensive. I've bought so many art supplies I'm beginning to fully understand the term Starving Artist, haha. But I really like my drawing class so far.

We started working with contour lines yesterday. We drew on newsprint paper with charcoal. I'm not really big on charcoal because usually I just draw with pencils. But it turns out that I actually enjoy charcoal. 1) because I don't use it a lot. 2) because your fingers get super messy! and 3) because it's a lot different than pencil plain and simple.

Prince has the same class at a different time - so even though they started out doing contours like my class, they did blind contours of their hands which looked like this:


My blind contour drawings were of the still life scenes variously placed throughout our classroom. My prof was incredably impressed with my second one. I knew I liked drawing, haha. But blind contour drawings look the weirdest out of all of the contour drawings in my opinion. It's because you're not allowed to look at what you're doing.

(the one that Prof really liked.)

I don't like any of the drawings that I did where I could actually look though. But I do think the one of my shoe is slightly interesting. I know my foot looks small - and it is. The shoes I was wearing that day were size 4 1/2 and I'm not even exaggerating a little bit.

Look out world, here I come armed with charcoal and newsprint. I'm DANGEROUS!

Friendly Acknowlegments

So after a mildly sarcastic and very over dramatic texting conversation with Ariel about how aparently all my time is spent with my boyfriend I have decided two things.

1.) I realize that yes, in fact, I DO spend a lot of time with my boyfriend and that yes, it is in fact nice sometimes when I can talk to people...like, oh say, my father, and how about Belle? and lots of other people with out being in Prince Charming's presence.

and 2.) Belle is a total badass. She can be kind of bitchy sometimes, and bit overbearing. She's loud and slightly obnoxious if you're not used to her personality. And she can also be hard to live with because she's slightly inconsiderate of her roommates - but despite these flaws, she is still a good friend. Maybe not my best friend anymore, but she's still someone I can talk to and she will still tell me how it is when necessary because she cares.

Ariel on the other likes to tell you what she sees, but then when you do not automatically correct said ridiculous behaviour, she has it out with you and tries to turn everyone against you because she wants to feel like she is the higher power.

I blame her parents.

Anyway, today would have been lovely hang-out-with-Belle-time-because-you-haven't-really-done-that-in-a-while time and truth be told I kind of miss it, but Ariel overdramatizes everything and now I don't want to go to bed because I'm still upset.

I can't wait for Friday.

It's the fair.

The fair makes everything better.

Besides that, Monday is my birthday. And you know what that means! Presents! HAHAHA. Anyway, birthdays are healthy. The more you have - the longer you live.

So may you all find out who has your back and may you all have many joyous birthday occasions to celebrate with said back-having friends. :)

Aftermath of Day One

So my first day of classes is officially over, and to be honest I think I like all of the classes I'm in so far. My science class is for non-science people so it shouldn't be too terribly hard. My ART 205 class is going to be death as far as the difficulty level, but it should offer some great discussions so I'm mildly excited about it.

As far as my studio class goes, so far I don't exactly know what to think about it. I'm pretty sure it will be awesome, but our first project has me feeling a little bit taxed in the creative department. We are supposed to have one object conveying an emotion of our choice and then the space around said emotive object should convey an entirely different emotion. It's not too hard I suppose, but it's not really that simple either. The class is called design processes and while I'm not majoring in design, it's required on the art side of my education major. We'll see how it goes throughout the year.

My education class is going to be interesting also because we have to go out in the community and interact within the community. I also have to pay 42 dollars for a background check to prove that I don't have a record so that I can interact with the chillins. Woohoo.

But the funny thing about today is that I am wearing a Twinlow DayCamp shirt. (No, that's not the funny part yet, okay? Be patient.) And as I was walking to my studio class this random bald guy in shades stops and gives me a double take. At first I was like "wow, creepy old dude. to you I am jail bait!" and then he points his finger at me and asks if I go to Twinlow. I replied with the standard "No, sorry. I work there." As to which he answers "Oh. I own some property on Upper Twin. You from the Rathdrum area?" I informed to his disappointment that I'm not from Rathdrum, but that I've been to Upper Twin and thought it was very pretty there. As we parted ways I called Prince Charming because he was giving me a hard time about giving press to the place in which I am employed.

It made my day - and today is a good day. Not only is it day one of classes in a school that I feel like I honestly never left, but it also is the 9th month that Princey and I have been an official couple. :)

Toady

A fine piece of art work if I do say so myself. *ahem*

Return of the College Sophomore

So it's a new school year. And I'm back in my lovely dorm room in anticipation of the classes that will begin Monday - on August 24th - aka Princey and my 9 month anniversary. Whoop. Happy day, here's some home work ;)

But I'm here with a new attitude. Last year I was here because I thought maybe someday I would thank myself for my selfless choice to better my education right after graduating from high school without taking a year off. Then second semester I was really wishing that I hadn't come back to school and I battled with myself to decide to stay.

Then somewhat of a miracle happened.

I changed majors.

When I started college I wanted to know exactly what I was going to do and then go do it. I didn't want to change my major a whole bunch, and that if in fact I did resort to a major change that I would still be in the same field so I didn't feel like I squandered a whole lot of precious time. However, my major has changed 180 degrees and I think I'm all the better for it.

I'm now majoring in something I think I may actually enjoy since I get to take some classes that I actually get to draw in. Yay! And I have Princey here, so I won't be going home every weekend to get distracted from my studies.

Also on the plus side, because Prince Charming and I worked together all summer under the same roof for 3 months, I'm not really worried about getting sick of him. Plus here, we each still have our own space which is a nice thing to have.

Today has been a very busy day, and I'm really glad it's almost over. Moving in was the hardest part because I had a few big boxes that would have been nice to have a boy help with, but Prince was busy doing something that I'm not exactly sure of what, so Mom and I unpacked by ourselves.

Here's Mom standing in front of the breeze because it was about a million and six degrees out.

Here's the room after I unpacked all the boxes:

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go draw a toad...

Decorated Anticipation

So today was my last day of work at Twinlow for the summer. I came home to an eye doctore appointment and was told my eyes loved me so much that they needed some glasses. So I'm going to become a very cute 4-eyes and Princey will love me just as much as he did before. He helped pick out my frames.

My mom wanted him to come home with us for dinner.

(She says he's a keeper.)

(And she was keeping a dirty low down rotten secret from me that she almost blabbed about to Princey but thought otherwise.)

She tried to entice him with the lucious pulled pork that was dinner, but even though he would have loved pork over the chicken that was served at his house, still he decided to stay. I think he just missed home - which is understandable because the boy hadn't been there in over a week. Whatevs. He's a lot different than I am in some ways.

BUT as it turns out the real reason my mom wanted him to come home with us was because of the dirty secret that she didn't tell him.

Our Yukon XL in all it's glory pulled into the drive way after 6 o'clock this evening and my beautiful mother hit the door to open the garage. As the door slowly creaked it's way up, it revealed the most amazing thing I've seen all day. (Excluding my friend Vampire's epic display of his newly learned wake boarding talents.)

It was

my

new

car!

I would show you a picture of the epicness that is my new ride, but there are none yet. It's a beautiful white Mitsubishi Lancer and I LOVE IT beyond all reason. Seriously. I probably love my new car as much as Tia loves the Twilight Series. And that's saying something.

Anyway, I suppose I may post something of actual excitment tomorrow for those of you who care. :)

Turning the Page

Summer camp is mostly over! Last week Princey and I did an over night camp, which is way out of the norm for us, but it was fun anyway. We had a good group of boys and did a lot of fishing. We should have done some more sailing, but the weather wasn't that great. Some days it was too windy and choppy and other days the water was smooth as glass. But we all had an awesome time making some sweet crafts and FOOFing like no other. (BTW FOOF is Feet Off Of Floor aka rest time ;] )

But now day camp may or may not have one last week left, and then on Friday I move back down to Moscow for my second year of school! This year should be WAY better than the first year for a plethora of reasons. 1) The most obvious - Prince Charming will be there. 2) I'm taking art studio classes so I might actually be having some FUN at school. C) I already have a job down there that I know how to do and like doing. And Quatro) I'll have a car this year so I don't have to rely on other people for transportation, which makes me happy. And that's a good thing because I LOVE being happy. Ha, ha.

So for now, I'm hanging out with The Keeper and his friend, Cinco. We're jamming out to Owl City and being online surfer dorks. It's fun, but I kind of wish that I was still at camp. The only real reason that I'm home this weekend is because DP is getting baptized tomorrow! WOOHOO! There are a lot of similarities between our baptisms except that hers hasn't happened yet! ;)

But DP is totally worth coming home for - even if that means I missed the dinner that Princey made me. Which makes me totally sad. We went on a boat ride with the staff this evening, and it seemed that my elbow and Prince Charming's nose were destined to be together this boat ride because I must've hit him with it at least twice. In my defense though, my hood was up because it was raining and we all know that hood over head equals a periferal vision level of negative 250. Yeah.

The first time we collided I just moved seats because instead of letting me apologize, he just pushed me away and turned his head so that I felt like a total jerk of a person and not a very good girlfriend at all. The second time it happened we were headed to the boat house to replace our life jackets and I threw my arms in the air without the knowlege of Prince standing behind me and we collided yet again. Then he did the same thing - pushed me off and turned his head. I didn't think I could possibly feel worse.

When we get back to Staff Housing he grabs his PSP off the couch and then hibernates in his room while I sit out on the couch texting my mom for a ride home this weekend. We haven't spoken since we got home and I didn't know if I should go talk to him in his room or leave him alone - and then he left the house without a word to me. So my parents get there and I found out from another co-worker that Princey went for dinner. I leave without saying goodbye.

On the ride home Prince calls me, but I don't answer because I'm having a conversation with my parental units. He calls again and again I don't pick up. He calls me a third time and I figure I better answer before he loses his head in frustration.

The poor boy thought I'd left Camp for good since next week we don't technically have to work.

He made me dinner.

He fed it to the cats.

When he found out I'd left he threw the peanut butter jar across the room and slammed the door.

I felt so bad.

But on the bright side I'm going back to Camp tomorrow to finish up some stuff and maybe work Monday and Tuesday.

Anyway, I think I'll get back to a more regular posting schedule when I get back to school. Sorry I haven't been too terribly interesting all summer.

sleeping on the couch during FOOF

expert bow positions during yoga class :)