that one time i stayed on an island and went to two museums in one day

This weekend we drove out to the Seattle area to visit TheKeeper's lovely girlfriend and her family. We took Saturday and drove into Tacoma to bond over old cars, monster burgers, and blown glass. There was an incredible amount of laughter and lots of pictures. It was also TheMechanic's birthday (he turned 17!!) and the car exhibit at the Tacoma Tube was basically heaven on Earth for him.

There were four floors filled with all sorts of different cars, from the very first horseless carriages to the British invasion, modern race cars and everything in between. We spent two hours wandering around the different levels, gawking at the different models surrounding us in a sea of shiny paint and old rubber tires.

This is the Tube from the outside. The top is like a mirror, so you can really only see the reflection in this picture...which is trippy, to say the least.

Cruella DeVill, Cruella DeVill, if she doesn't scare you, no evil thing will!

The Flintmobile! It exists! I couldn't get over it, I was that excited. 

And then of course, we have everybody's favorite 1983 DeLorean. I want this car so bad!

These two cars were solar powered race cars. I have never seen anything like them before. Incredible stuff. 

After walking around all the automobiles for so long we started to get hungry. And by hungry I mean hangry, and by hangry I mean TheSeester was starting to grow horns if we didn't go find food rightnowthisveryminute. It was all very dramatic and we left in search of burgers. 

Dad took us to this sketchy looking red building - the kind of restaurant where the outside makes you think that if you enter, you might regret it a couple hours later when the toilet becomes your new bff for life. It really didn't help that upon exiting our vehicle there was a chain link fence separating us and a spikey collared german shepherd, but we shrugged our shoulders and marched right on in. 

Let me just tell you though, those were some good burgers. I had a teriyaki chicken burger and it was so juicy and delicious that it got all over my hands and I didn't even mind. Not to mention that the portions were gigantic. I couldn't finish. 

Waddling out of the burger joint, we hit up the Museum of Glass next. It was probably my favorite part of the day. I took picture after picture after picture and let me just tell you, it was awesome. 

This is the underside of the ceiling of part of the bridge you walk in order to reach the museum. The whole ceiling was filled with blown glass trinkets and shapes of all different sizes and colors. I couldn't get over it, it was so amazing!

Then we came upon a wall my brother has deemed the alien hatchery, as if all the blown glass items in the boxes were housing little baby aliens just waiting for their chance to take over the world. Honestly, I think he's lost his marbles - especially because he is pretending to eat my foot like a subway sandwich in this picture.

Inside of this odd shaped cone is a foundry where guest artists from all over the world come and work with the museum for a week to create their own blown glass artworks. There is a viewing area where you can go in and watch the artist and their team work on different projects and learn about the process. Prior to this visit I had no working knowledge of glass blowing except for the fact that I think it's ridiculously awesome, but having watched it happen before my eyes I have an even greater appreciation for the objects in the galleries.

These faces are oil painted onto glass. In all the times I've worked with oil paints, it's never been on a glass surface before. I found this all to be really freaking cool and it made me want to try that technique out.

We spent the evening eating cake and ice cream to celebrate TheMechanic entering into his 17th year of life. There was lots of horrible renditions of happy birthday, bad jokes, and good company.

Before we left today we went to the community church, where everybody knows everybody and new people are always noticed. It was very Stars Hollow. The sermon was fantastic and even though service went for almost two hours (which according to TheKeeper's girly-friend was out of the norm) it kept me interested and thinking about what was being said.

After the service ended we were properly introduced to what felt like the entire congregation and then we left for noms. TheKeeper's girlfriend and her wonderful family treated us to lunch at The Red Bicycle (what an awesome name for a restaurant, right?) and then we rolled out of town to start the six hour (give or take) trek back home.

Because we were staying on an island, we had to take the ferry back to Seattle. Let the record show that ferries are the coolest.

It was a great trip, but I am glad to be sleeping in my own bed tonight. Now I will just be happy once TheBoy is back from Puerto Rico on the 4th. Three weeks away is the pits. For real.

mission complete

I know it's a little early for an end of the year post, but I feel like it's as good of a time as any to throw out my favorite posts from this past year.

I wanted 2012 to be a good year because 2010 and 2011 kind of mostly sucked because of the drama that beheld them with a certain person in my life. But this 2012 thing, man. It has been twelve kinds of crazy and I have grown a lot from the events of this past rotation around the sun.

In January, SVI and I split ways and I got really involved in church, which was super fantastic and allowed me to build great relationships with awesome people.

February got me tatted up and thinking about the future.

March brought with it a few things, but my favorite part was spring break.

In April, I was super busy with the end of my semester and couldn't focus on really anything else.

I started the summer session in May and hung out with Tiger Lily a ton. I was also really excited for what was in store for me, but starting to realize that my time in Moscow was dwindling incredibly fast.

June was a monster. It was a tough month filled with a lot of transitions and also I started dating TheBoy.

There was a lot going on in July. I started a new job, decided to take a jump, and watched a lot of olympics.

August brought with it the start of my student teaching, and I forgot to blog about my birthday.

Life starting ramping up in September. School came into full swing, I learned massive amounts of pottery trying to stay one step ahead of my students, working with my amazing mentor teacher and making trips to Moscow to see TheBoy every other weekend.

There were lots of things that happened in October too. I think it was possibly the busiest month of my earthly existence. I had the TPA, and spoiled student, loads upon loads of paperwork and grading. I was teaching classes all by myself, subbing when my mentor teacher was gone, and trying to balance all of that with my home life as well. Sigh of relief once that was over.

November was another super tough month where I wrestled with things and feelings I'd never experienced before. And also made a decision that others didn't agree with - which was...interesting.

And then finally, December. I graduated from college (woop woop!), got a big girl job, got a macbook pro and a puppy from my parents, lots of nice things for Christmas and have been skiing to my heart's content.

So there you have it, folks. This year was about exploring myself and I think I accomplished that in ways I didn't know I was going to. A lot has changed and some of that makes me really sad and some of it makes me really excited about what's next. I'm starting to learn that even though years come and go, life never really stays the same even when you cross your fingers and your toes.

Everything and Liebster

So far this is the weirdest Christmas vacation I have ever had in my life. Mostly because of how it started and how it's going to end. The middle really isn't so bad, if we're being honest.

Friday we were supposed to have school, you see. But because of what happened at Sandy Hook elementary and the "fact" that the world was supposed to end soon, some rumors were circling the area and freaking some students out. Students and faculty were worried that some of our own students would get this big idea that they were going to go out with a bang on Friday, shooting up the school. 

I don't know about you, but I take those kinds of threats seriously - because if you just ignore it I think it will happen. And then you have to look back with the guilt of knowing you could have stopped it. So the head honchos called off classes and started winter break early. Which is a little scary, but I'm glad those students never got the opportunity to make those rumors come to fruition. 

And then my graduation present arrived in the mail, taking my mind off of why school was out of session and setting it to focus on one thing and one thing only - my brand new macbook pro. My mom handed me this cardboard box and I sang a few lines of "brown paper packages tied up with striiiiing" and plopped myself down on the couch having no idea what was about to become of me. 

That cardboard box was so deceiving! I looked down inside and saw a smaller white box with a black handle. Looking back up at my mom, I smirked. I smirked a knowing kind of smirk - one that says "really? you got me this?" Thinking that I was about to pull out of a box of expensive art supplies. I was all sorts of prepared for new brushes and watercolors and pencils, etc. 

Instead I got the shock of my life. I texted TheBoy with all caps. You guys! This! This is what I have been wanting and wanting and wanting and wanting and just when you think you reached the end of my wanting there was a crazy underground wanting garage. But macs are so expensive! I never in my entire life thought they would buy it for me, those sneaky rotten so-and-so's! 

I was completely speechless for about ten minutes. It felt like I could only talk in fragmented sentences "I'm so... You guys! ...but really.... it's just... wow." And it kind of just went on like that as I proceeded to open up the box, remove my new computer, start it up, set it up, and figure it out. Their only mistake was giving it to me before dinner, because pulling me away from it to get out the door for pizza was almost impossible. 

But aside from all that awesomeness, I have to remind myself not to get caught up in the commotion of wanting winter break to be almost over. TheBoy doesn't come back until three days before my break is over and when he first told me that I was mad. I was selfish and self pitying, complaining to my mom that all I wanted was to spend longer than a weekend with him for once and he was freaking gone. And then I got over it because there's nothing either one of us can do about it. A weekend together is better than nothing so I'll take what I can get because I'd rather have some than none at all. 

So to distract myself, Mom and I made Stollen today, which is German Christmas bread in case you were wondering. We made four loaves and are currently down to only one....and we didn't give any away. I am not allowed to eat any carbs tomorrow, guys. I swear. I am doing good at this whole losing weight thing and I'm not going to let these holidays stop me! But that bread! It could be my downfall. 

And on a slightly related note, I have recently rediscovered a love of reading. I read The Hate List in a day, it was so good I couldn't put it down. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend that book. Although with all the Sandy Hook stuff going on, it hits a little close to home. In The Hate List it makes a small reference to the book Ender's Game - which caught my eye because I remember TheBoy had talked about liking that book. So I decided to read that one too. I think it took me three days to make it to the end. Such a good book - really. So now I need something new to devour over my Christmas vacation.

Reading always gives me ideas for writing too, and I had originally planned to write some sort of fiction piece for Friday's End of the World extravaganza, but then I ended up taking a nap instead. So there you go. I'd like to write more fiction though, I only have a couple pieces here on the blog, but I can't help feeling like I should do more. Maybe next week. 

Last, but not least, the great Stephanie whom I love and adore has tagged me in a blog post for the "Liebster Award" and so, you know the drill. Questions, answers, facts, more questions and tags. Ready....go!

The Qs: 

1. What's one thing you want for Christmas? Money. Honestly, the older I get the more that seems to come in handy. Plus, I already got my macbook pro so I'm pretty much set for life. 
2. What do you think our kids will say about the music we listen to? What will you say back? I'd like to think future generations will like the music we have now and they'll think it's cool because it's "retro" and then I'll play them some disco music to see what happens. We got to lay down that boogie and play that funky music til we diiiiiieeeeeee. Yes. 
3. Would you rather be eaten alive by kittens, or lick a hobo clean? Can I just completely opt out? I hate these kinds of questions. 
4. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself? Oh man, I would tell myself not to waste so much time being hung up on PC. Seriously. 
5. What's one thing you're really bad at that you'd love to do well? Sing. I can't carry a tune in a bucket but I'd like to. 
6. How do you feel about bleached blonde hair? Some people can pull it off and some people can't. The people that can't should really learn that about themselves...
7. Would you rather be a Yankee or a Southerner? I used to think I wanted to be a Southerner but Pinterest kind of ruined that for me with all the "You should prefer Southern girls and if you don't, raise your standards" That just kind of made me want to punch them all in the face. I'll stick with being from Idaho. 
8. Have you ever written a letter to Santa? Do you remember if you got what you wanted? I wrote a letter to Santa in 2nd grade and I had a 4th grader "elf" write back to me. It was a school project and I had grown up knowing that Santa wasn't real, so I never put much stock in crossing my fingers that he would bring what I wanted. 
9. How old were you when you had yours first crush? 4th grade. I had the hugest crush on Marty Hawkins. It was bad. 
10. Do you prefer the country or the city? I'm a country girl, but I could make a suburb work depending on what city I was near. 
11. Do you want to be rich when you grow up? Truthfully I just want to have enough money to live a comfortable existence that afforded a plethora of traveling opportunities, beyond that is not my concern. 

The Facts:

1. I am a huge grinch. I love Christmas, but it just takes me a really long time to get in the spirit of the season. 
2. I wish that holidays were more family filled, but none of my family seems to make that a priority. 
3. We get a brand new puppy on monday! Heyo! 
4. I'm really good at CatchPhrase.
5. I think coming up with 11 facts about myself is more difficult than it should be. 
6. I am not a people person. 
7. The telephone and I are not friends. 
8. I fully believe that actions speak louder than words so if you say something, you better back it up. 
9. Speaking in accents is way more fun than speaking in my normal voice. 
10. Sometimes I just want to run away from everything and go live in a foreign country. 
11. I'm really glad I made it to the number 11 on this list. That was hard. 


The New Qs: 

1. What is one thing you've never tried before but really want to?
2. If you could pick one new instrument to play, what would it be? 
3. What is your absolute favorite book of all time? And if you can't pick just one, give me your top three. 
4. Favorite thing to drink? 
5. What's the question you get asked most often and how do you feel about that? 
6. What age do you most often get accused of being? 
7. How did you meet your best friend?
8. Favorite holiday tradition? 
9. What's the biggest mistake you've ever made? 
10. How old were you when you realized what you wanted to do with your life? 
11. What's your favorite thing to wear? 


And now the Tags:

(If I'm honest, I will tell you that there aren't a great many people here in the blog world I feel comfortable enough to tag in a post, especially because this past year my posts have been so irregular and that I don't really have a steady following, so I'll just tag some people anyway and see what happens.) 
Natalie
Stephanie (can I pick you even though you already got it? I really want to know your answer to my #3 because I'm in the market for new and good books!)
...and I'm done. I'd tag Alana but Steph beat me to it. 

life as i know it

It's spirit week here in high school again in preparation for a big rivalry basketball game. So far we have had Ugly Sweater Day, Toga Day (I politely declined from participating in dressing in bed sheets), Color Day (I wore blue...shocker) and Disney Day (gypsy Esmeralda!). Tomorrow is Green and Gold Day because those are our school colors. A massive pep assembly is in store, followed by the girls and boys b-ball games in the evening.

Cross your fingers that the weather doesn't interfere.

We got what I want to say is around 5 inches of snow fall last night. The roads were white on my drive to work this morning and the snow was still falling from the sky. It's grey out here in the pacific northwest - grey and gloomy and dead. TheBoy is in Puerto Rico on vacation and has been taunting me with pictures of warm sunsets and stories of snorkeling with giant sea turtles. I try not to be too jealous or miss him too much, but sometimes that can't be helped.

As I was driving through the snowy terrain this morning, I couldn't believe all the things going on in my life. I still have trouble feeling like I'm headed to work, you know? It just doesn't feel like this is my job... They actually pay me to show up everyday, and wow! I lucked out in that department.

I play volleyball during first lunch, hang out with some awesome upper class-men in second lunch and spend some quiet time in the library the rest of the day. It's nice to not have homework or tests or an impending sense of the coming semester.

Although sometimes I kind of miss all the fuss of being an actual college student. I looked at my degree audit online to see what classes I would need to take in order to graduate with BFA and it's three classes. Senior Thesis, Senior Studio and New Media. That's it. Maybe someday I'll go back and get that, but for now I'm going to try and enjoy my time just working.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately I'm not sure, I have been very goal oriented - always thinking of what's next, what happens when this is over, and where do I go from here? I've never really learned how to enjoy exactly where I am and who I am at this very moment.

To not be constantly thinking of the future is a weird and slightly uncomfortable thing for me to deal with. But there's a lot of pressure to do more, to be bigger, to take that next step. Sometimes I feel like I'm stepping and I don't know exactly where my foot is going to land. I'm holding my breath that everything will just fit into place right where I need it to. So far that has worked for me, but you never know.

And then there's this whole business of stepping off of a cliff thinking you're going to set foot in one area but you actually land in a completely different part. Like how I told myself that after I graduated I was going to take a year off. Work a mindless job. Travel. Move back to Moscow with TLily and hang out with my friends. Then the library changed that idea right around and now I'm finishing out the school year at the high school until June.

From there I don't know what will happen to me, but I'd like to move back down with TLily and be closer to TheBoy also. Long distance is the worst.

wrestling with roxy

this fat little chunk is named Luke and he gets to come live at our house around Christmas

theMechanic, me, and TheSeester

my (not so ugly) ugly sweater

photo cred TheBoy in puerto rico

contrary to popular belief, we don't really like each other that much

finally finished the project TheBestFriend asked to do a long time ago

what i woke up to this morning

love or something like it

Sometimes I go back through my old posts and remember how dumb I was back when I first started this little blog. Oh my gosh, can I just tell you? My style was the worst. I wrote about every day things from what I ate that day to whether or not I went to the bathroom. Sometimes those posts make me smile and sometimes they make me shudder.

Like all those posts I wrote about PC and how perfect we were together and how much I liked him. I was completely head over heels in love with that boy, don't you remember? I reread some of things I wrote and I can't help but roll my eyes at how naive I was about everything. My attitude towards our relationship and the things that happened between us. So much is different now, so much has changed.

For one, I will probably never love another boy the way that I loved PC. I had never been hurt - I mean really hurt before. My heart was in his hands and I had absolutely no fear of the future. I wasn't guarded, I didn't have fences up, I just loved him freely and with total and complete abandon. I loved without being afraid of what might happen. We planned the future, we talked openly and honestly about how we felt for one another and we didn't have any reservations that our love wouldn't be reaffirmed by the other. Looking back it was probably a very beautiful relationship, but it was so full of flaws that only hindsight can shed light on.

Someday I hope someone will love me again. It will be massively different, I know. We will both have baggage from past relationships - platonic and romantic. But I want to be able to love without being afraid, because right now I'm terrified of putting myself completely in someone else's hands. I have a few friends who have said that I'm not the same since PC and I split.

Well, that girl who loved him is gone. She's broken. She's guarded. She's afraid. She's different.

For as much as I like being fearless about everything, I definitely am not reckless with my heart anymore. I learned a lot by letting SVI in as far as I did. Even though we were never very serious, that relationship helped me move on from PC. It pulled me into the light and made me realize that PC was not the end of the world for me.

Now I have TheBoy, and he is great so far. We are sometimes eerily similar in our likes and dislikes. We are different enough to make it interesting and we each bring our own talents to the table. The L-bomb has not been dropped and I don't know if it ever will be between us. If it is, it might take us a little longer before we get the courage to use it. Love is such a strong word connected to a strong emotion that I want to be absolutely sure I really love that person before that word leaves my lips.

There have been times where I have wanted to say it, but I stop myself. Because loving means I'm vulnerable again. Loving means I can get hurt. Loving means giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting them not to. And I don't know if I can trust TheBoy like that yet. I just don't know.

I had a conversation with a friend a couple days ago about love and how I'm scared of using that word. He told me I shouldn't be afraid to say it and if saying that word scares the other person away then it was never going to work out anyway. Solid logic right there. But even though his argument is pretty valid, I'm still not sure I just want to drop it willy nilly. Which I don't think was the point he was quite trying to make, but still. Perhaps someday in the near future that word will be part of my vocabulary when it comes to boys, but for now there is no pressure. If it's meant to happen I think it will and I don't need to be worried about rushing it. Ever.

It All Comes Down To This

There are big moments in life. In all my 22 years I have had some pretty big moments, but not many that compare to the nerve racking excitement that is graduating from college. It's no secret that I have been in school since I was five years old. Stories exist of me riding my bike down the drive way telling my mother that I'm going to school, regardless of the fact that I was only three.

Then there was that fiasco when I started high school where I was nervous all the time and I quit eating breakfast. And just like everything else in life, high school ended too. High school graduation is nerve racking and exciting as well, but in a totally completely different way. With my high school career I knew what was happening after I walked across the stage in that viking blue cap and gown with honor cords. I knew I would be walking into the dormitories on the University of Idaho campus in Moscow come August and I knew that would start a whole new life adventure.

Graduating college, on the other hand, is a whole new world of feelings. Not only is it going to be weird not worrying about term papers and semester projects and gallery reviews, but most of my friends still live in that place and here I am on the other side of it all.

Saturday at 11:30 TheBoy dropped me off in front of the Kibbie Dome. It was an hour before the ceremony was supposed to start and that whole morning I had been fine. I took a shower and washed my hair. Soaped up, rinsed off. Shaved. It was just like every other morning of my worldly existence and then when his little mazda pickup rolled to a stop in the crowded parking lot and it was time for me to shoulder my bag and head inside, something inside me clenched up. Suddenly I was nervous and nauseous and I couldn't believe he was leaving me there by myself.

"I'll see you soon," he said with a cheerful smile. He was more excited than I was.

"Not soon enough," I replied, and stepped out of the truck. It was cold and windy, but the sun was shining. I headed for the overly populated insides of the ASUI Kibbie Dome and held my breath. Today was the day I went from being a lowly college undergrad to a fully graduated Vandal allumni and but how weird was that going to be?

I had no idea where I was going once I got inside so I just followed other cap and gown clad bodies and wound up next to the other students with bright blue tassels. Apparently I needed a name card, for the photographer's sake, so I was sent to the front of the line to fill out my information. They didn't have a card with my name on it, which should have been a sign that I was in the wrong place, but you know, nerves.

So they gave me a blank one and I filled out the information and went to stand in line with the other college of education grads. I talked with some elementary school teacher hopefuls who were all just as nervous as I was about the whole thing. I was a wall flower mostly, just listening to the nervous nellies of the day chatter on in hopes that would help to calm them down.

Deans from other colleges would walk through our lines and congratulate us, asking what was next in life. We pretty much all had the same answer: Find a job. And what did they expect us to say, really? My adviser from the College of Art and Architecture made her way down our line, shaking hands and sharing smiles when she finally got down to me.

"You should go over and say hi to the other students in the Art and Architecture line!" She was telling me names of friends who were over there and I wondered why I wasn't in that line, too. I mean, I was supposed to be graduating from that college anyway, right? But they gave me a blue tassel! I followed her over to the line and we figured out the guys at grad fest had made a tragic mistake. They signed me up for the College of Art and Arch but had given me the same color tassel as the education college because I was graduating to become a teacher. It had been monumentally confusing at the time, but I trusted them.

Actually, I'm kind of glad they gave me the wrong tassel because the Art and Arch ones were brown. Blue fits me much better. I'm a blue kind of girl. I furiously texted mom and TheBoy to figure out where everyone was and uploaded a picture to Facebook. Today was the day. It all boiled down to this.

Music started playing over the loud speakers and then it was time for what I can only relate to as "march in." I'm sure there is a fancy official name for it, but it reminded me of gymnastics meets when all the teams would make their way to the floor at the beginning. Regally dressed faculty officials directed us to our seats as row after row of black caps and gowns filled the floor of the Kibbie Dome. It was decorated with giant black curtains, purposefully placed bouquets of white flowers, and two wooden podiums at the front, one of which was over 100 years old.

 As I sat in that hard backed plastic chair sandwiched in between people, some of whom I'd never seen before in my life and some of whom I had cried and sweated and bled through agonizing art history and studio classes with, I thought about how in the world I ended up here.

I didn't set out to become a teacher, let alone an artist. I didn't know the road I would take once I started this journey, I just put one foot in front of the other and I kept going, no matter what happened. There were a few times that I wanted to drop out, but I didn't. There were a few times where I considered switching schools, but I stayed. I have made some of my best friends at this school. I have learned some important lessons while in attendance at this university. It helped shape me and mold me into the very person I am today, and had I gone somewhere else I would be someone else.

At 17 I was on this same floor of this same building gobbling up all sorts of information about what I was going to do with the next for years of my life. I was nervous, giddy, and excited. I spent the night with two college freshmen and another high school senior. We ate at Bob's. We walked around the buildings. Everything was fresh and new to me. To think that this same floor of this same building was where it was all going to end too was just insane. Mostly because I didn't know where all the time had gone. Had I just blinked? Wasn't I living in a room with my high school best friend just yesterday?

It was hard to hold back the tears. I worked hard for this. I fought for this. I filled out mountains of paper work and learned to draw, paint, print make, watercolor, barista, make friends, write papers, take tests, love boys, love Jesus, and become my own person all in a four and half year span. To say that I wasn't emotional would have been an understatement and after the president of the university handed me that black diploma case with the gold university stamp on the front of it, I just felt like melting. With blurry vision I shook hands and smiled at all the people congratulating me.

I was in a surreal state and I kept thinking that any moment it was just going to be a dream and I would wake up in my tiny Moscow apartment to find out I'd slept through class again. It couldn't be all over, could it? Could it?

There is a lot that I am going to miss about being in college, but there is a lot that I'm thankful to be finished with. Maybe someday I will go back for my master's degree and become a college professor, but for now I'm content to just see where this adventure takes me.

I celebrated all day Saturday with my family and TheBoy. We ate a tremendous amount of sushi and then bowled two games, which is another story for another day, and then we finished off at the movie theater to watch Playing For Keeps (sorry Boy that I made you sit through a chick flick!!). It was a fantastic day and I spent it with fantastic people that I love to be around.

Everyone keeps asking me how it feels, and I honestly don't feel that much different. I still have a week left of student teaching and then I have the library position until school is out in June. Ask me when I don't have to register for spring classes. Ask me in the summer when I don't have to go back in the fall. I'm sure it will be weird, but it will be my weird. It's just a new page in this book of life, a new beginning that is right in the middle of my story.

1st day of college 2008

graduation 2012

onward, ho!

December swept in like a burst of cold air under the door, unnoticed until you realize that your toes are freezing and you need a nice pair of thick socks. One minute I was stuffing my face with turkey and yams and the next minute I'm playing Christmas music and wondering when it's going to start snowing. Oh December, each year it seems that it takes you longer and longer to be covered with white.

I was in Moscow with TheBoy when December snuck in through the back door. I turned to the TheBoy and  asked if he could believe it was the 1st already. He looks at me and says, "It's December?" We laugh because, really, how can it already be December? Sometime this month I will have been with TheBoy for 6 months. I counted it out last night because I was curious, and then I didn't believe myself so I had to recount. But there it is, six months. Who knew?

If I'm being honest with you, it doesn't look like it should be December. There's no snow. The grass is still green, although there are some areas of lawns that are starting to die off and turn brown. The leaves are all gone from the trees and the weather is cold and windy. It gets dark around 4 o'clock now, which, admittedly, is my least favorite thing about the winter months in the Pacific North West. I want to have summer back already - the warmth, the sunshine, and the being able to do things outside without having to bundle up so much - I miss it all. Some people are all for the cooler weather, and to you I say - keep it. I like winter for skiing and that's really about it. The sun doesn't shine, the wind chills you to the bone, and for some unknown reason people inexplicably forget how to drive. It is a major conundrum, folks. I could go on for hours, really. But I won't. You can thank me later.

On a slightly unrelated note, I graduate on Saturday. I have so many emotions running through my system right now it's a miracle I am even remotely functioning today. My stomach is a ball of nerves. So much to do, so much to do. Inside and outside of schoolwork, too. But then it will all be over, and what do I do about that? I don't even know how to feel about this whole graduation thing anyway. It's too overwhelming to handle right now. My brain is fried.

That face. It's the cutest.

Those dogs. They think that laying on top of me is way more comfy than just laying on the couch. It's a good thing I don't mind so much having to share my space with those little fur babies.