So Ready

I'm ready for the warm feeling you get when the sun shines on your skin, the smell of freshly mowed grass and how it feels against your bare feet, and the sound of people interacting outside. I'm ready for picnics and cartwheels and swimming. I'm ready to cruise around town with my windows down and my music up and my hair blowing in the breeze.

I'm ready for flowers and sprinklers and foot freedom. I'm ready for a good sandwich followed by sweet lemonade. I'm ready for green leafs and lady bugs and bumble bees. You can keep the wasps though, I'm pretty sure no one likes them.

I'm ready for road trips and adventures to nowhere. I'm ready to have sunshine until 9 o'clock at night. I'm ready for T-shirt and shorts weather. I'm ready for flip flops and day dreams and cloud watching. I'm ready for lakes and rivers and camping and fishing and playing pretend.

I'm ready for barbecue and vanilla ice cream. I'm ready for summer, but I'll take spring if and when it actually decides to show up. I'm so bored of the wind and rain. I don't know how much longer I can take it.

I'm ready for this.

The Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs and Jesus

Let's talk about Easter. There's a fun side to Easter, a commercial side to Easter, and a religious side to Easter. It's a pretty complicated holiday, to be sure.

I mean, we have the Easter bunny - which I've heard that the bunny was a fertility sign from a pagan holiday that merged with the celebration of the resurrection of Christ when Constantine up and got Christian all over the Roman Empire. But when you're little you have no idea about that stuff - the Easter Bunny brings you everybody's favorite Easter baskets! Candy! Toys! Fake green paper strips to imitate grass and get all over the house and in corners you didn't even know existed! And candy!

And I mean people, let's not forget the famed Easter egg hunts! I remember that was the thing I used to be the most excited about when I was little - I mean yeah, okay, church in the morning in a highly uncomfortable dress and tights! (Tights I tell you! Oh the horror! How my legs loathed being encased by suffocating white thin socks that went all the way up to my waist! It was torture.) But even though we heard the message about the wonderful thing that Jesus did for us, I was still super stoked about those plastic eggs filled with sweets waiting to be found in our house. Coloring the hard boiled eggs was almost just as fun.

I remember being so disappointed when my parents decided to quit hiding the eggs for us to find. I was mad at them for taking away all the fun. I felt like they were just being too lazy to hide the Easter eggs, and to an extent that was true. I mean, they'd been doing it for a long time when they finally decided to stop, but I still felt like it was unfair. I felt like The DP and The Mechanic got shafted because when I was their age I still got Easter egg hunts.

The Keeper and I took it upon ourselves to hide the Easter eggs for the little kids. That didn't last very long, but it made me feel better. And then my aunt and uncle moved across the state line from us, about a half hour away, and they held grand Easter egg hunts. Not only were there eggs filled with candy, but also with coins. And I just couldn't get over that. Those crazy kids also hid a "Golden Egg" filled with a 20 dollar bill - and you can guess that's what the real competition was about. We each wanted it equally as bad as the others and every year we set out on a mission to find that silly egg and claim the prize for our wallets!

But now that I'm older, egg hunts are a little below me. I still miss them, but I don't feel like I'm missing out something fierce just because I don't participate in one. However, I feel like for me it's more about celebrating Jesus. And eating candy.

I mean, this holiday I feel like should be bigger than Christmas. Yes, Christmas is all fine and good and shouldn't be overlooked because it is a truly great thing to celebrate the birth of our Savior, but Easter! People, Easter is when we celebrate the reason that He was sent to us! His death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb three days later to save us from our sins! I feel like that message is somewhat lost.

The pastor today gave a good message about sinning and missing the mark but we are forgiven! And we are loved no matter what the circumstance, no matter how bad we mess up, or how low we think we've sunk, Jesus' love will always find us. But I feel like he just didn't really drive his message home, he would talk right up to the point and then stop short. I kept waiting for him to say "But He is RISEN! And we are FORGIVEN! Hallelujah! What a HAPPY DAY!" But he just never got that excited about it. I didn't feel like he really celebrated that awesome wonderful news.

Don't worry though, I got excited myself. Today was about celebration, and I celebrated by eating tootsie rolls and Reese's peanut butter eggs and treating myself to dinner tonight.

I'm not perfect, I don't try to be perfect, but I am forgiven and I am loved and my Savior has conquered the grave to live again! And what better news could you ask for?

Missing: Natalie's Brain

I'm pretty sure I have become a horrible blogger. I used to write faithfully, everyday. I would come home from class and spew all the details of my day into the interwebs for everyone to love and cherish and absorb because I was just. that. important.

And now, you know, I'm lucky to post three times a month occasionally. I still read blogs. I check in and see what's up with everybody and their awesome blogging lives. Sometimes I will even leave a comment, you know, really step out on that limb.

My problem is that I just don't know what to write about. I mean, there's lots of things I could write about, but then I sit down to write it and spend half the time erasing it all and starting over before I ultimately delete the whole thing.

I have taken to hanging out with boys, working, homework, music, causing problems, watching too much ANTM and running at the gym. I suppose this could give me some great blog fodder. I'm interesting. I'm funny. But my mind really just likes to give me a complete blank whenever I'm about to do something important.

Also, I feel like I don't comprehend anything anymore. Just ask poor Prince Charming. We'll be at Bob's eating a meal, and he is sitting there chattering away about video games and I'll just look at him with this deer in the headlights expression not understanding a word he just said.

It's just like chalk on a nailsboard.

(Stuck that one in there for you Prince-y. Phhbbtt)

I wonder how I get anything done though. Somehow it happens because my homework keeps getting mysteriously turned in... so someone has to be doing it. I've been spending a lot of time at work. Working mostly, and doing homework. Lots of homework.

I created an e-portfolio. I've been busy painting. I've been busy teaching - and today was our last art 100 lab! Tears! I registered for classes. I have only three semesters left! That's a scary thought if there ever was one. I assure you. I can't believe I've come this far. I also can't believe that TheKeeper is starting college in the fall too.

Anyway, this is a mess of a post, but I feel like I have to do something so you don't think I've gone and died on you all.

It's A Process

I had to paint ice cream. Well, first I painted the ice cream cone before class started so that it would be dry by the time I had to paint to actual ice cream.

Then, as we were painting our ice cream, naturally the ice cream decided that melting all over the place was a fantastic idea. And so then my painting just had to evolve and change with the ice cream.

It's a little more difficult that one would think, painting ice cream. Especially when it's three different colors all rolling around and melting together and getting all up in each others' business.

Towards the end of the painting process, my ice cream more closely resembled some sort of thick soup rather than delicious chocolate/strawberry/vanilla goodness.

It transformed from a ball of ice cream into a puddle, and I had to put in a background to show where the ice cream was collapsing.

This was an Adventure with a capital A if I've ever had one.

And the final product:

Mmmmmm tasty.

Word Rambling And More Paint Hate

It occurred to me that I have yet to post anything since April started, and well, that's just a shame. It's not that I've been too busy to write anything, it's just that every time I sit down in front of my computer and enter blogworld, all of the contents of my brain escape.

My fingers start getting ahead of my mind, and then I start omitting words from sentences, typing letters out of order, and well, it just ends up being riotous and forcing me to get out the pitchfork and lanterns while assembling a small militia of grammar warriors to round everything back up. I wish it was as fun as it sounds, but believe me, word-wrangling is actually quite perilous at best. One may end up with paper cuts, and we all know fun those are.

But in all seriousness, I really have been up to a lot of nothing. And by nothing I mean lounging around knee deep in homework and painting and charcoal, and I just can't even tell you what color my hands are supposed to be anymore. Sometimes they are green and blue and brown and sometimes I think I'm turning into a Labrador from 101 Dalmatians. At the moment I am human toned, but who knows how long that will last?

Probably until tomorrow at about 2:30 in the afternoon when my painting class begins. It will all be downhill from there you know. First it will start off with a smidgen of this color, a dollop of that, and before you know it I'm a rainbow. Lovely. And you know what else? None of my colors will match what they're supposed to match, because I am just that good at painting, you know.

They teach you in art classes throughout the years that great artists are never understood during their life times. A lot of famous artists were "bad" at art in school too, they had teachers who told them they should just quit and take up dentistry or some such line of garbage. I think that means I must just be really great at art, since my artwork almost always looks absolutely and entirely nothing like anyone else's artwork in any of my classes.

At least that must mean I'm just awesome enough to have my own style? I think yes, definitely.

But really, as the years go by and the more art classes I have under my belt, I'm starting to realize that I really don't create art the same way these other art students do. I wish I had pictures of my classmates artwork to show you, because some of them are simply amazing. And trust me, it's not that I don't think my artwork is amazing and I'm not putting myself down, but my pieces just don't look like theirs do. And that leaves me wondering, what exactly am I doing differently?

And maybe that doesn't matter. I create what I create and it looks how it looks whether or not it looks like how I want it to, or maybe how my instructor wants it to. But at least I do it, right? That counts, right? I mean, my colors may not match, and my texture might be different, but I just put my own spin on the original. I'm an artist like that.

Really, I don't even know where to begin. I think it's just atrocious, and I kind of hate it a lot, honestly. The people are my favorite part, but if I could just scrap this whole thing I would. Remember how I told you that I'm not great at mixing and matching colors? Here is your proof.

There are some things I like about this painting, but I'm not really proud of it. I'm not too upset though, because we have several more projects in the next couple of weeks, so I think I'll have more than enough chances to redeem myself.

I mean, we'll see what happens.