spring fever

It's a sad day when you realize that no matter how spring fever-y and "senioritis-y", you feel...there's not gonna be a break. No summer vacation, no graduation to look forward to...and retirement's a bit far off to be a very desirous goal! At any rate, I'm worn out. You get so used to years being school-calendar-driven...work some, have a break, work some, have a break...and now it's just work work work with no break in sight. Being a grown-up isn't all it's cracked up to be, in my opinion.

Anyway, we're doing good...just tired. The warmer weather makes me want to be outside, not in the freezing cold store. Matt and I planted our "garden" (in pots on our porch) last week. We have 2 different types of tomatos, a zucchini plant, a yellow bell pepper plant, and wildflowers. The veggies were all already plants (not seeds), so it's hard for me to tell if they've grown yet, but at least they haven't died!! The wildflowers were seeds, and I am happy to report that there are 6 tiny green shoots now!! I have a mixed track record with plants, so I triumph in any small victory!! My indoor plants tend to die pretty quickly, but I have successfully grown 2 huge tomato plants a few years back, so I'm hoping I have better luck with the outdoor stuff. I have this vision that we'll be saving tons of money by growing our own veggies, but I'm not sure that a few little plants can keep up with my taste for fresh produce! Anyway, every day I look forward to coming home so I can check on our "babies"....in lieu of actual human children or pets, I now have vegetables. Someone call the crazy house.

One great thing about summer is there's a lot more stuff to do, and lots of it is cheap or free. Lately we have been attending a lot of UGA baseball games...it's free to sit on "Kudzu Hill" and it's a lot of fun, so we walk over there whenever there's a home game (and nice weather). We do a lot more walking, period. On Tuesday, like good little hippies, we walked to Earth Fare to do a little grocery shopping. We like to explore the woods and trails behind our house (and pretend we're on Lost). :) Soon enough it will be swimming time, and that will be our passtime of choice until fall!! We don't have TV, and we plan on cancelling our Netflix subscription for summer...there's too much to do outside to sit inside watching movies all the time!!

Well Matt just called to say he's on his way home, so it's time for me to go. I got distracted by writing on this thing and didn't accomplish my original goal of the afternoon: to re-read one of my research papers from college. It occured to me last night that I spent an awful lot of time and effort researching and writing stuff in college, and I need to bust that stuff out and appreciate it from time to time. I don't want my mind to waste away in my post-collegiate days.

And if you want to expand your mind, you should read this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080423/od_nm/witchcraft_dc;_ylt=ApS4o.FN207JZ56.1yLRth0DW7oF (ps, how do you make a link that doesn't look like THAT??)

sunshiney day

It seems rather strange that today is so beautiful, warm, and spring-like. Yesterday was the polar opposite-- mean-looking clouds, tornados in the area, lots of rain and lightning. No fun. But today is making up for it. We ate lunch at Cali-n-Tito's, a Mexi-Cuban restaurant where you eat outside, and I got a slight sunburn on my arms...yay!! That could indicate the official Beginning of Summer for me. First Sun. Monumental.

I've been super busy lately. The sale of our store finally became "final"...it's been in the works since September and I feel like we have been "almost finished" since like...October. The fact that the closing actually happened on March 7th hasn't really sunk in yet. Brian (the former owner, *tear*) will still be around as we train John (the new owner/boss) so it doesn't seem too weird yet...but it will be sad once I don't see Brian every day! I'm excited about some changes though-- for one, I get business cards that identify me as "General Manager"! Also, I get my own Sam's membership and a business Discover card--wahoo!! And...more money. So all in all, things are looking good. Basically, I'm getting the title and pay for what I've already been doing for the last 8 months, so there aren't actually that many changes.

It's weird being a grown-up though-- as all the kids at work (98% high schoolers and UGA students) went on Spring Break this week...I didn't. And I won't. Sad story. It's weird not really knowing when your next significant break will be-- I guess whenever I have a kid and quit working! Ha! We actually do have a few fun trips and mini-trips coming up in the next few months though, so that makes me happy. I really like having things to look forward to. Otherwise life is this long monotonous pattern of work and...work. Work, one-day-weekends, and work. (Side note-- also, in the next month or so, I will be phasing out the Saturday working though, so YAAAAY!)

Next weekend (Fri-Sun)- Augusta for Easter with my family
Mar 28-30- Charlotte, NC: staying with Kristina and James, celebrating Kari with Matt's family
April 5- not sure what we're doing, but it's Matt's bday so I'm not working!
May 9-11- Statesboro, GA for my brother's college graduation & partyin with my fam
June 1-8-- Cocoa Beach, FL for vacay with my family-- yippppeeeee!

That's all so far, but that seems like a lot!! I feel like we haven't left Athens in ages, so I'm really looking forward to some fun. We hope to do some camping also, both by ourselves and with friends-- our homegroup has mentioned trying to go together, so that sounds like a lot of fun!

Anyway...I smell outdoorsy-- that combination of sun and sweat and I'm not sure what, but it's not necessarily a good smell! We went to play frisbee at the intramural fields, then went walking for awhile. It was great to be outside. Matt is pining for a dog the way some girls I know are pining for babies!! Every time we'd pass one he would whimper and whine and I'd have to drag him away. If our landlords weren't punks, we'd get one, but alas...they're punks. And that's all I have to say about it. Goodbye!!

paradox

Apparently I am having some age/identity issues, my husband tells me. Most of the time I feel like a really old person-- like maybe 65 or so. We go to bed early-- 10 at the latest, usually. We sleep 8 or 9 hours, then get up for work. Since I eat breakfast early, I'm hungry for lunch really early-- 11 or so. Since I eat lunch at 11, I'm starving again by like 4. I usually eat a snack, since Matt's not even home by 4...but I am always starving for dinner by 5 or so. When we go out to restaurants, the only other people there that early are elderly people. That's okay with me-- less crowds!! So most of my day makes me feel like I'm practicing for retirement already.

But then there's the part of me that is 5 years old. Last night, as we went to the restaurant at 5:30 for dinner, I insisted on wearing my rain boots and made Matt walk 20 feet away from me because I really wanted to splash in all the puddles in the parking lot. For the past few days I've had this insane craving for 2nd-grade-style decorated cookies. You know-- sugar cookies in shapes, frosting, candy on top? Oh yeah. So after dinner we had to go to the grocery store so that I could make all my decorating cookie dreams come true. Man it was good. Matt says he doesn't know whether he's married to someone very old or very young. It's tricky. I'm sure he'll get over it.

Anyway...now that I have the vanilla frosting I've found a much quicker way to get the frosting-with-candy fix. As it turns out you can skip the cookie all together! I'm taking Hot Tamales (the cinnamon candy kind, not the Mexican lunch kind) and dipping those bad boys straight in the frosting-- amazing! It's awesome to be a grown up and not have parents telling you how to eat your food and not to double-dip your candy in the frosting. I think frosting-dipped candy is a PERFECT after-work snack, and no one can convince me otherwise!!

So work is going much better than expected this week. Matt's feeling better, too, so all is looking good here. My boss gave me a gift certificate to one of my favorite restaurants to thank me for the crap I put up with last weekend, so that was really nice-- and allowed us to eat out last night instead of me cooking!! I'm all about a free date night! I got off work early yesterday and, finding myself with a few spare hours on my hands, ended up going to Hobby Lobby for my first time ever. I've been resistant of going there cause I was under the impression it was the same as Michael's, and I really can't stand Michaels. However, many reliable sources assured me it was much, much better than Michael's, so I decided to give it a try. WOW. It was amazing. I wandered and wandered for the longest time. It was like a magical land. Anyway, I did manage to escape without spending a dime-- yaaay! Afterwards I stopped by the beauty school (haha, doesn't that sound like something from the 70s?) where my friend Catherine was getting a PERM (doesn't that sound like something from the 80s?)...it was taking all day and she needed company. After that I noticed a blood drive next door so made the impulse decision to give blood-- that is, save three lives. What a saint I am. Haha. Anyway, so that took awhile and left me crippled-- they even told me that I should not cook or do dishes, my husband should definitely take me out-- so it's a good thing I had that gift certificate!! I spent the rest of the night reminding Matt to "Be Nice to me, I Gave Blood Today!" He needed a lot of reminding. I had lost my sticker.

Now dinner's in the oven (meatloaf) and I'm waiting for the hubster to get home (he worked out of town today). We have homegroup tonight, so I'm pretty excited about that. Lost is tomorrow night which is GREAT-- I've heard that Juliet is going to be highlighted, which is good and bad. She just really stresses me out cause I can't decide whether I think she's good or bad. Most characters I have a gut feeling about, but I just can't figure her out! Like me-- she's a paradox. Mwah ha ha. Peace. :)

monday already??

Ugh. I need another weekend to recover from this one. This weekend really didn't count. Sick boy was...sick. Work was...awful and long. I had a perpetual headache...all weekend long. Saturday night and today we got to hang out with Matt's family, so that was a bright spot in the weekend. Unfortunately, though, Matt was still sick, I am still stressing about work, and I really don't think it's fair that Monday is a mere 4 hours away. Matt will probably take a sick day. I need a mental health day, but since I don't think anyone's paying for me to have one, I guess I'm putting on my big girl panties and going to work. Sometimes being a grown-up sucks.

Bright spots of the weekend (hey, I can try to be optimistic): Eating at Doc Chey's, running into lots of people I know and haven't seen in a long time at Doc Chey's, hanging out with family, doing the announcements at church, being refreshed by worship and teaching at church, sitting on the porch at Barberito's to eat a yummy California burrito, running into old friends at Barberitos, lounging all afternoon, getting a much-needed past-due check for babysitting. Playing tricks on my cat. Doing headstands tonight until the bloodrush to the brain made me feel crazy. The first half of the Dane Cook DVD we watched.

I'm tired and need to go to bed but I just don't want to because it will mean that it will be Monday sooner and let's face it: no one wants it to become Monday.