Saturday, February 5, 2011

Day 21: It's Getting A Little Old

There was more snow today. 2 more inches. We still had class. I am so over this weather! Although, the plus side is that I got to play in the snow with two of my favorite girls in the entire world!
We had so much fun sledding and chasing each other around the backyard! I love hanging out with them. It helps that they some of the funniest things in the world. I even got to teach them how to make snow angels. It is very possible they already knew how to but they didn't seem to know so I showed them and we all made snow angels! It was great. I have a picture of the snow angel Mia made but it is hard to tell there is a snow angel but let's see if you can find it!
This was, probably obviously, the highlight of my entire Friday. They just bring such joy to my life. We even got to play house, for the 9,000th time in the last month, which is just my favorite thing. I am always the mom and usually I end up "having a baby in my belly," which I am NOT a fan of! Kids have such awesome imaginations and I love that. Sometimes they make me think I might want to have children of my own and then I leave and I get over it. They sure are cute though!

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man. ~Rabindranath Tagore

Friday, February 4, 2011

Day 20: Day 4, Last One!

Ah, the last of 3 snow days! How to celebrate? Sleep in until 2pm? YES!

That is exactly what I did. Then I woke up, did nothing. Drove to QT to get Mountain Dew for the 3 of us, then did nothing. Ate lunch, did some more nothing. Then I had to stop doing nothing and I worked on Physics homework. Not as fun as doing nothing...

One of the things I love most about snowy weather is this:

How much more beautiful could the world get than these amazing icicles hanging from the library in such a picturesque way? It is magnificent, the beauty that God creates simply for our pleasure. I am constantly in awe of the world.

We survived the last snow day, we survived being around each other constantly for 72 hours, we survived having little else to do than watch movies and episodes of Friends. We are awesome. I will look back on this semester and smile about this 3 day hiatus from school but I can honestly say this is the first time I will ever honestly say I am so ready for school it is unbelievable! Thanks for being patient with me when I fell behind on my blog. All caught up and hoping to do a better job at staying updated! Thanks, also, to those who got on me about not writing. You're why I do it!

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. ~Amy Lowell

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Day 19: Day 3, Going STIR CRAZY.

Here we are, I have made it to day 3 of the insanity and I am slipping into insanity myself. If I have to look at these walls any longer I might go insane for real. Fortunately, one of my best friends at school, Kaylee, is from South Dakota. It's only fortunate because it snows there all the time. It is not fortunate for anyone to be from there or live there. (I only said that to make her mad! haha)

So towards the end of this day, we ordered 4 large pizzas from Dominos (and an order of Cinnastix for good measure!), loaded up in the mom van, and drove to Josh's house for some new scenery. It was 8 degrees Fahrenheit outside, the roads were (mostly) cleared up, and we were ready for some human interaction that didn't include just us and Kaylee's fiance, Calvin, who'd walked over every day of this snow mess.

The thing I love most about them is that all of them are musical. They play an instrument or two, sing, and just know how to have a great jam session, which is EXACTLY what we did after watching my all time favorite movie, The Italian Job!
It is very apparent to me why these two are getting married. They are perfect for each other :) Anyway, that musical medley is just what the four of us needed to get us through the rest of the 2nd snow day. Oh, did I forget to mention that just before we ordered pizzas we received a text update from the school saying that they'd canceled school, yet again?

Now, I was down for 2 snow days where we almost couldn't leave the school but was 3 really necessary? Now, I know you all know me. I am not one to complain about NOT having school but the thing about NOT having school is that I would also like to go somewhere. I mean, come on people! I had just gotten over being on bed rest for 5 days, I went to school for 1 day and then got 3 more days off!? Well that is just unnecessary. The night, however, ended just like the 2 nights previous with Kaylee and I going back to her room, popping in a movie, and falling asleep before the end. There are some things I will always love about snow days.

Contentment.

Day 18: Day 2, Please Reach Two Digits

Well, Tuesday morning, I woke up, stretched, and then I remembered.

Immediately I jumped out of bed, ran to the nearest window and what do you think I saw? A BLIZZARD. I was actually in a real snow blizzard. It was snowing hard and it was windier than you could imagine. I was worried.
This is post blizzard but let me just tell you, I had a half hour until I had to leave the comfort of the indoors to go to work in the library on campus. I was praying for it to stop snowing harder than I had ever prayed for anything in my entire life!

I started getting dressed, bundling up in everything I had brought over to the school from my house which wasn't much to hold up against the almost negative temperature. I slipped on some jeans, then sweats over those and then my boots. I put my shirt on, my sweatshirt, and wrapped my scarf around my neck and mouth and nose. Then I ventured out into what can only be described as the arctic. It was terrible. I had to close my eyes for fear of my eyeballs freezing in one position. I looked down so I could tell how deep the snow I was stepping in was. I hid my hands as best I could while holding my hood on so no skin was exposed. I felt like an eskimo who'd never been allowed to go outside but chose to venture out anyway.

Worst idea ever. Thankfully by the time I got off work, it had stopped snowing but I didn't know what to expect for the next couple days. Anything could happen. And by anything I really mean anything. All I knew is that I needed more clothes, warmer clothes, and I needed food because I was starving. (haha, okay, small tangent, sorry!) I went back to Colaw, ate, and vowed to stay inside for the next...well, as long as I had to in order to stay warm.

Day 17: Day 1, Little Did We Know

In order to put this picture in perspective for you, that snow drift was up to just below my chest. This is a small snow drift in comparison.

Let me just help you understand a little of what is going on here these days. We had a blizzard. Predicted 15-19 in. Reported up to 17" of actual snowfall. Record low temperature set at -6 degrees Fahrenheit in Tulsa, OK, just 40 miles south of Bartlesville. Mass chaos.

So, it is cheating a little bit to be writing about the snow on what is serving as the post for Monday but if it helps, I have a snow picture for Tuesday as well. It just sets up perfectly what I am writing about. So this weather I am describing to you may have you thinking, why is this even a big deal? I myself was asking the very same question. I went to Walmart to buy some food for the next day because I am a wimp when it comes to being cold and I knew I would not go out into the cold to walk down to campus for food and when I got there, I couldn't believe my eyes. People everywhere (not exaggerating). NO FOOD.

I went to get bread. NONE. Looked for milk. GONE. Turned around and looked at eggs. EMPTY. I love soup on cold days. BARE. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Everyone was going insane! It is just one day of snow, people, what are you doing?! Little did I know.

Expect the unexpected.

Day 16: Realizations

Today has been a day of realizing things about my life I was unsure that I really knew before. I have ten major realizations that I want to share with you.

1. I worry so much I make myself ill. Literally. I need to let the little things go so that when the big things come around I have enough energy to deal with them.

2. I am really great at picking friends so I am not sure why I feel like I have to keep secrets from them so much that it gets to the point that I can't talk to them about anything without spilling out my guts to them.

3. I allow situations in my life to get so out of hand that by the time I address it, there is no way it can be fixed.

4. When I think, I allow myself to reach the worst case scenario before I ever think about the best case scenario which, in some ways, makes me a pessimist.

5. I am incredibly impatient. I have no patience to just wait for something. I always have to be somewhere as fast as I want to get there, have something as soon as I want. Instant gratification. Not in all things. Just enough to make it something that annoys the crap out of me.

6. I am blunt. I tend to forget to filter not ever to my dismay but to a lot of other people's dismay and I have to apologize a lot because of that.

7. I am paranoid. I always feel like if one person acts a certain way, someone with similar personality characteristics are going to act the same way.

8. I trust very few people. What more can I say about that?

9. I act like I know a lot more than I really know and am not quick to back down when proven wrong. Some call this personality trait stubbornness.

10. I am lazy. I do what I have to but I don't do more than expected a lot of the time. It is like pulling teeth to try to get me to practice my pieces for voice or do an extra workout or finish my homework on time. I do it usually but I hate it.

Sometime this week I will follow up with a list of things that I am going to actively do to fix these flaws in my life and maybe I will even have stories of how I have been applying those ideas! This will be fun :)

Today's picture is of a really great experience I had at the beginning of this school year. It started off really well and that is how I want to end it. So right now, with all of you as my witnesses I am going to make the rest of this semester great.
"Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them." William Shakespeare