Dream on

I had a dream last night that I think would make a really cute Lifetime Original Movie (at least I would watch it). I dreamt that I was visiting my sister, but she lived in, like, Manhattan or something. Anyway, her apartment had a living room with a huge bay window and a window seat, and I would sit and read, or watch a movie, or sing and dance around and just generally be myself. My sister wasn't home, she was probably at work. (Who invites someone to visit if they're just going to be at work the whole time? Rude. But not the point). In her neighborhood there was this guy, who would walk past her apartment every day on his way to work, and on his way home. After a few days, he started leaving little messages (like...'hey', 'how are you?', 'I saw you singing and dancing like a crazy person the other day and it made me laugh', etc.), and we would communicate through these little notes. My sister didn't approve of me talking to a stranger, but then again, she was never home. On the day I was supposed to leave, he left a note actually asking me out for coffee, but I couldn't go because I had to get to the airport. And that's the end...

What does it mean?

This is actually one of my more normal dreams. I would love to go to a dream analyst sometime and find out what my dreams mean. They are usually pretty complex and bizarre...

What have I been doing lately?

I haven't been feeling very 'bloggy' lately, so I took a little two month hiatus. Part of it was that I was feeling very overwhelmed about what to say about my sister's wedding (which was perfect and beautiful), but now that it's been a while, I don't have to say anything about it. Here is a brief update about what I've spent my last two months doing:
My sister and brother-in-law's wedding (Left); Bachelorette party for one of my best friends/college roommate (Top, Center); Relay for Life (Top, Right); Color Me Rad 5K (Bottom, Center); and because I had to fill that awkward bottom right-hand corner, I got a new phone. It's an iPhone 4. I like it! (Bottom, Right)

I also got a second job, which doesn't leave a lot of time for much else (except for the phone, all these pictures and events occurred pre-second job). I have been working as an afternoon teacher at another preschool for almost a month, and I love working with 3-5 year olds, but spending all day with them is really quite exhausting.

Life is what happens.

Whether you're busy making other plans or not...life just keeps happening.

Sometimes life happens when you get to go wedding dress shopping with your sister. I was so glad to get to be a part of that! It was an experience that included waking up at 5am, trying to get a peek at the Starbucks drive-through guy from the passenger seat of my mom's car (all I could tell was that he had a cute chin), and sitting in a chair (& occasionally on the floor) as my sister tried on well over a dozen dresses at two different bridal shops. But all of it was more than worth it to get to see the look on my sister's face when she walked out of the dressing room in 'the dress'. I can't describe it, there was just this glow on her face!! The dress is beautiful...and just so 'her'! Life happened.

Sometimes life happens when your pants rip. Right up the seam of your back pocket. While you're at work...that's when this happens:

Yeah, I patched them...and my co-workers agree with my decision to do so. Why get rid of a pair of jeans because there is a rip in them? Especially when I can make them somewhat perfectly decent-ish again. There is no point in buying a brand-new pair of pants so I can sit in a sand box. It is a total waste of money. If I am going to buy new pants, I am not going to sacrifice them by exposing them to glitter, glue, paint, snot, peanut butter and bleach water! Life happened.

Sometimes life happens when you're cruising down the road going 38 mph on your way home from work:

If this little pink slip of paper doesn't look at all familiar to you, consider yourself lucky! This is what a speeding ticket looks like. I thought I was driving at a perfectly respectable speed...I didn't realize I was going through a school zone. Suddenly, my 'perfectly respectable speed' is 13mph over the speed limit. Now I have to go through traffic school and all the blah blah blah that comes from not paying close enough attention.

Life happened!

I Celebrate the Day!

I've been itching to write about Christmas all day! However, mom enacted a laptop moratorium in order to keep our holiday merry and bright and our family as tightly knit as ever! (And I mean that quite literally...as mom, sis and I spent our afternoon knitting, purling & cabling away!)

I love Christmas! I really, truly do! I love twinkling lights, and colorfully wrapped boxes. I love Christmas music and Christmas movies. I love traditions and I love Santa...but mostly, I love Jesus!

I love the Reason for Christmas. I love that we celebrate the birth of the One who came to save us all. It's easy to get lost in the glitter and sparkle of the holiday season. It's easy to get caught up in the shopping shopping shopping and the getting getting getting. Sometimes it's even easy to get caught up in the giving. With all the distractions, it's easy to forget that all the giving and getting and shopping and decorating doesn't matter. Not in the least. We have already been given the greatest gift there is to give. It doesn't come in a colorfully wrapped box, it doesn't sparkle or twinkle. This gift isn't an apron and pie cookbook. It isn't a framed diploma. The gift is life. Eternal life. Life that we get to live because Jesus was born. Jesus was born to die. For us. To give us life.

So Merry Christmas, and here's to many more!

Daughter. Sister. Friend. Teacher.

I had another sub job today, and I filled out a W-4 form, which means I am technically not unemployed anymore!! Underemployed, yes, but unemployed? Uh-uh!

Can I just say that I absolutely love preschoolers?! I love how uncomplicated they are. I love how inquisitive they are. I love how their little minds work. The way they see things is just so precious. Everything in their world fits a certain category. Everything they know is limited to the little world that they're used to. In a preschooler's mind every classmate is a friend, every adult is called 'teacher' and apparently, every woman is a mother.

Today I got to have a conversation with a preschooler that went like this:

Her: How many babies do you have?

Me: I don't have any babies

Her: how come?

Me: Because I'm not a mommy

Her: Then what are you?

I was an adult woman who was not a mom...I think that caused her little world to expand ever so slightly. I explained to her that I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a friend. And I am a teacher. I am a lot of things.

Oh! What a (not so) Beautiful Morning...

I've been house-sitting for the past few days, and it's been really nice to have a place to myself, about an hour away from my folks' house. Well...that is until this morning. When I locked myself out of the house. In my nightgown.

I went out to give the doggies their breakfast, and apparently, the back door automatically locked behind me. Beautiful. Now I'm in my nightie, my phone is inside, and I don't know ANYONE in Fresno. So I did the only logical thing I could think of. I hopped the gate so I could be in the front yard. I waited until someone came jogging by, flagged him down, and asked if I could use his cell phone (now, if my life were a TV show, he would have been cute and in his mid-to-late twenties; but because this is my life and not Rachel Green's, he was in his 40s and kinda gross). Then I did what I always do in a crisis. I called my mommy since her's is one of the few numbers I actually have memorized...and she used to work with the mother/mother-in-law of the people whose dogs I'm watching. I asked her to call her friend to come rescue me somehow...

Then, I hopped the gate again and waited. And waited. And threw the ball around for the dogs. And waited. And then my beautiful sister (whom I love dearly) begrudgingly came by with the key so I could finally (after two and a half hours) get back in the house.

Does this stuff actually happen to other people? Or is it just me? Cause if it's just me, then other people are totally missing out on feeling like constant screw-ups!

Through the river and over the woods...

It has been raining here for, like, a week straight! The sun finally came out today, and it was beautiful!! (I was secretly hoping for a double rainbow, but the rain stopped shortly after the sun came out...) I've never seen rain like this before, it was incredible!! A little ridiculous, but mostly incredible!!
The next few days are supposed to be sunny, or at least not rainy, for the next few days...but I'm not going to be here. I'm flying to my grandma's for Christmas...the best part is going to be the 4 adults in a Prius road tripping from the Sac airport to grandma's house...and I can't WAIT!! Mostly because my family is CRAZY!!!. First off, 16 people over for Christmas. 5 cousins, 2 aunts, 2 uncles, 3 dogs, 2 cats, 1 step-cousin, 1 cousin-in-law, 2 parents, 1 sister and a grandma who says and does things mostly because she's old and no one is going to say anything back. I will give an example: My grandma came in September and tried to give me money. I told her no. I refused to take it. So what did grandma do? She stuffed it down my shirt!!...yes, apparently, my grandma thinks I'm a stripper. She also says stuff like "Because you'll want to go to church on Christmas eve, I should probably start going again so they remember what I look like there." Oh, grandma...
I am so ready for this crazy to happen!! Bring it on, Christmas, bring it on!!!

But first, I should probably pack!


The picture I'm sending with all my Christmas cards next year...I hope your Christmas is as awkward as mine!!

There's no place like home for the holidays

Sometimes I wonder 'at what point in my adult life will I stop referring to my parents house as 'home'?'
My apartment in Simi Valley is very home-y, and when I am somewhere not in Simi I always refer to my return as 'going home', however, any trip up to Visalia can also be classified as 'going home'.
And talk about 'from Atlantic to Pacific, gee the traffic is terrific'...I think driving to the Atlantic coast would have taken less time than I spent on the 405. It took me 5 whole songs, and at one point I'm pretty sure I was part of a convoy...there were so many trucks, it was redic!
But I made it...I made it home to Visalia. Hanging with the 'rents watching Dog the Bounty Hunter.
I get to go to church with the fam tonight, and get to see some of my CLC peeps that I haven't seen in about a year, including my goddaughter.
I have been a terrible godmother lately, it's hard when you live so far away...but for a few short days I get to be around family and friends and to be surrounded by all Visalia stuff that for some reason I tried so hard to get away from.
When I come up here, I have little to no time to relax, my time is pretty booked because I have so many Visalia things to see and Visalia things to do.
Tonight is soup and church and PIE SOCIAL!!
Tomorrow gotta get up in time for the parade, Thanksgiving 'linner' and watching 'A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving' with the sis
Finding time over the weekend to watch Deathly Hallows with Becca, and Tangled with the bff...hopefully going down and getting some lunch or at least a tea at 210 (assuming they're still open on Saturdays) and squeezing in time to be bummed about missing the "Monday after Thanksgiving Visalia's Candy Cane Lane Christmas Parade"

My parents went on vacation and all I got was...

...about a week's worth of cheesy souvenir mugs!
Introduction to 'theme within a theme'...the next four days will be the mugs my parents brought me back from the road trip they took last summer. I don't remember what they brought back for my sister, but it was probably something that was 4-mugs worth of non-cheesiness.
I kinda like these mugs though...in a quirky kind of way. They remind me of something you'd see at grandma's house (probably not my grandma...but a grandma.)
This one is from Wyoming. It has a wolf on one side that I wasn't able to capture the awesome-ness of with my camera, so I decided to just not bother and stick with the the caribou or moose or whatever on the 'right-handed' side of the mug.

Also, a thought struck me this morning as I was making my coffee...
I wish everything in life was like coffee filters. I mean, you can buy a package of 200 for, like, $1.75...and you know how long it takes to go through 200 coffee filters...almost a year. I can spend $1.75 on something that lasts almost a year.

Wonderfultown

New York, New York!!
I've only been to NYC twice in my entire life. And the last time I was there, it was hardly for more than 36 hours. But I loved it!! I wouldn't want to live there, or anything...it's a little 'I don't want to live on the moon'
There is just something about a big city (and all that theatre!!) that has a wonderfully strange effect on me. It's such a high to be around all that hustle and bustle. Besides the fact that I wander around looking like a country bug...
The first time I went was with my sister, and I can't imagine anyone else who I'd rather go with! We were there for a week and we saw Broadway shows and went to museums and spent almost a whole day in Central Park. We went to Ellis Island and found 'Grandpa Tony' in the immigration records (my dad's mom's dad). We went to the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building. We saw the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero, we shopped and ate hotdogs from a cart. We had breakfast at Tiffany's on 5th Avenue and we saw a taping of the Today Show. And we barely scraped the surface of what the city has to offer.
I can't wait to go back again. But until then I have my memories, my pictures and my mug:


In other news...I got a new computer, so I've been working on transferring all my files. It took me almost all day yesterday to make sure I had all my music. I thought that was complicated (3228 songs...whew)--I am dreading trudging through all my pictures. Trying to figure out which ones transferred on my external hard-drive and which ones didn't. And sorting them because they didn't stay in their files when I stuck them in iPhoto...urgh

It's about time...

I haven't posted in over a week...I fail at blogging.
But in case anyone is actually reading this (Hi, Becca!!) I will write something.
On Wednesday nights I meet with my high school youth (Higher Ground) to have Bible study and fellowship. I really like meeting with my HG peeps on a weekly basis, because I get to check in with them and see how things are going, I enjoy hanging with my students. I feel bad for other youth directors, I bet their students aren't as awesome as mine. We start with a game, and then move into 'Highs and Lows' (when I was a camp counselor in a girls' cabin, we called it 'Rainbows and Spiders'-cute, right?)
I will share my (Roses/Thorns, Hills/Valleys, Something you likes/Something you dislikes)...I'll start with my low, that way it gets better at the end.
Low: My bike got stolen...my bike that I've had for SIX WEEKS got stolen. Bummer. BIG BUMMER. I really liked that bike, her name was Dorothy (I name things, don't worry about it) She was white with a black basket and a Relient K bumper sticker. I've never really been the victim of a crime before, so I feel very violated. I'm still in mourning.
High: I moved!! I finally have my own apartment, and it's kinda fun. I don't really have furniture yet, and I'm not completely unpacked...it may not be much, but it's mine!! I almost feel like a real grown-up. My sister came over the weekend, and she helped me unpack and I got to be a little hostess...I cooked for us and then we slumber partied it up on air mattresses in my living room!! Yay bonding!
I'm really excited to get furniture and start decorating so I can make it 'home'.