This may be the happiest PostSecret I’ve ever seen:
It’s 3:50 pm, and these things have made me happy today:
1. Being greeted as I walked in the door to babysit with cries of “Miss Jessica!” and “Miss Je-ca!” after almost two weeks of not seeing my babysittees
2. Brushing Claire’s curly red hair into two tiny pigtails
3. Drinking a peppermint steamer (which I bought after at Common Grounds only ten minutes after not allowing myself to stop at Greenberry’s on my way home. bad employee.)
4. Seeing no less than seven of my friends as I wandered campus
5. Buying two of Becca’s beautiful prints from her senior show
6. Eating brussels sprouts after days of surviving mainly on sugar (delicious, delicious sugar)
And there’s still so much to look forward to.
Sundays are curious days. For a long while, it was my favorite day of the week; it still may be. A sunny Sunday with beginning with a meaningful service and people I love in the morning can be the perfect day.
Certain times, I’m left feeling disjointed Sunday evening. It’s almost a shock to my system to have an eventful, social morning with nothing to follow it up in the evening but hours of alone time in the dark. I can easily occupy myself with a good book, but I still feel a peculiar disquiet. Is this a natural feeling? Should I be trying to find a way to fix it, or let it be?
I hope you found reasons to rejoice this Easter. He is risen!
Today I was browsing the featured items on Etsy’s main page, and eventually ended up at this photo by Tricia McKellar:
It reminds me of a song I knew when I was younger, the chorus goes like this:
All God’s critters got a place in the choir.
Some sing low, some sing higher,
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire.
And some just clap their hands, or paws,
Or anything they got now.
The rest of the song can be found in this book, which was originally given to me by my “Uncle” Mel. We got a lot of mileage out of that book. I think my favorite verse is the one that ends with the porcupine talking to himself. 
(Also, Happy Birthday, Dad!)
A website I found recently that I adore is Postcards From Yo Momma. People send in amusing conversations they’ve had with their mother via letter, postcard, e-mail, IM, text message, etc. and then they are displayed for the world (or at least the online world – but really, big difference?) to see. One of my favorites is:
Mom: aASDFGHJKL;’
Mom: 890-
Me: ?
Mom: SORRY i WAS VACUMING THE KEYBOARD
Perhaps I’m so fond of them because it reminds me of how funny my mother can be. Why does it take us until after we’ve left home to realize this? (Mom, if you’re reading this, I hope I’m as cool as you when I “grow up.”)
Here are some conversations with my mother I found in my archives:
[12/06/2006;23:54 PM] Mom: Hi!
[12/06/2006;23:54 PM] *** Auto-response sent to Mom: Red Bull gives you WINGS!! (I hope wings secretly means super paper writing skills)
[12/06/2006;23:59 PM] Mom: OK, you need to stick with the acronym. Writing In Nacho Guacamole Speed. That’s just an example. I can send more.
[11/05/2006;17:38 PM] Mom: How much sugar have you been eating!
[11/05/2006;17:38 PM] Mom: ?
[11/05/2006;17:39 PM] Mom: I’m going to assume that it is sugar, and not mania.
[11/05/2006;17:39 PM] Me: Manis would explain it
[11/05/2006;17:40 PM] Mom: That is the fun part of being bipolar.
[11/05/2006;17:40 PM] Mom: …so they tell me!
I haven’t been going to Sunday School recently. I outgrew the college-aged class I loved and felt disconnected from the young adult class. Plus, I’m not big on book studies, which was the last thing the class was doing. Today I went, though, and I’m glad I did! We’re combining with one of the adult classes and today we wrote and shared six-word autobiographies. Some were lists of words, some managed to tell a life story from childhood till the present, and others were about current situations. Here is mine:
School, school,
school, school…
Now what?
I wrote a second one to help explain more of what I’m struggling with behind the obvious decisions I’ve been having to make, but I left it there and can’t remember it. It told the story of not being able to measure my successes now without grades. It was easy to evaluate myself when I was getting straight A’s. It was hard work to get there, but I knew I’d done well – and more than that, I was validated because the grading system is recognized by everyone. Now I have to find a way to value the things I’m accomplishing and be content even if I’m the only person who knows what I’ve done. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s a different perspective that might take a while to get used to.
I’ve given up many things for Lent in the past, including ice cream, pop¹, make-up, MSN Messenger², and chocolate. This year, I decided to give Facebook a shot. I couldn’t take it upon myself to give it up completely though; I do learn important things from using it (I would be referring to events and the like, not [merely] gossip ). So, I have limited myself to an hour each day. Now, this may seem like quite a large chunk of time to some of you, but you need to know my Facebooking style before you can understand what a sacrifice this is. I tend to leave both Gmail and Facebook up in neighboring tabs all day so the moment I see a notification pop up, I can check it. I do other things, of course, but it’s always there. I’m keeping track of my minutes using Stickies (I currently have 22 minutes left!), which seems a little anal, but unless I want to cheat horribly, it’s pretty necessary.
This has forced me to find other things to do away from my computer. They’re all things I’d do normally, just maybe not in quite a large concentration at once. Yesterday, I went on a walk with Bess, a jog alone, cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed my room and the upstairs hallway and the stairs, washed dishes, answered e-mails, finished a book, started a new book, took a late afternoon trip with Katie out to eat and to Barnes & Noble (and had an adventure on the way back), and watched Top Chef with friends. Today, I woke up early, which was nice, but gave me more hours in my day to figure out what to do with. I ran some errands and read a bit and did other normal around-the-house things and decided maybe I should take up a hobby. I’d like to learn calligraphy; think I could get a side job addressing wedding invitations? All this free time might sound nice, and it is for a while, but after many, many months of trying to figure out what to do with myself³, I’m even more excited to start my new job next week.
¹ Since about a year into spending most of my time in Virginia, I’ve been using the word “soda” instead of “pop.” The word actually looks a bit funny in my list, but I used “pop” because that’s what I called it back in middle school when I gave it up for Lent.
² This was my sophomore year of high school, back when I used it all. the. time. Also, back when MSN Messenger was the “cool” thing to use. I haven’t decided whether MSN/AIM is a Midwest/East Coast split or a high school/college one. Thoughts?
³ I did start volunteering a while back, but only went a couple Saturdays. I should start that again.
This afternoon, I was on a walk listening to a podcast of “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me” and they mentioned a website I found slightly hilarious: PMSBuddy.com
“The free online PMS reminder…saving relationships, one month at a time.”
Saturday night, we went out for Bess’s birthday and sometime while I was devouring Maggie and Rach’s brownie dessert, Maggie asked us what the best three days were from the past year.
Whew. That’s a lot of days to go through, and although I remember events, I can’t remember the emotions associated with the ones that happened a year ago as well as the most recent (of course). I couldn’t come up with three entire days, but I did come up with one day and two moments. I may be looking over happier moments, but I think the ones I came up with are pretty good:
chronologically
1) I knew I had to include something from my internship since it was such a big (good) part of this past year. I decided on the time the Design/Editing department surprised me the week of my birthday with a party, complete with homemade baked goods! Just this evening I remembered what it felt like the first time I saw one of my articles published online…that was a pretty good moment, too.
2) The Chambers concert last spring. I hope to never forget the looks on my friends’ faces when they saw me sitting in the audience (I made a surprise trip to VA just for the concert!) and the singing was pretty awesome, too.
3) My one awesome day was two weeks ago, when I got to spend an entire Saturday doing fun things with some of my favorite people ever. We went to Blackfriars and Baja Bean and Kline’s and the basketball game and the campus movie and played poker! It gave me the people fix I’d been craving for a while.
Cheapest gas seen on the drive home: $1.43…somewhere in Indiana. Unfortunately, I had an almost-full tank at the time.
Cheapest coffee: $.55 for a travel mug refill…somewhere in West Virginia or Ohio. Not very good coffee.
Best coffee: Love’s Travel Stop on 74 on the west side of Indianapolis…$.85 for a refill.
Most mph driven under the limit: 40 mph…25 in a 65. It was icy and incredibly windy. Thankfully, it was only 25 mph bad for a couple minutes.
Most exciting weather advisory since I’ve been home:
BITTERLY COLD AIR AND BRISK NORTHWEST WINDS WILL COMBINE TO PRODUCE DANGEROUSLY COLD WIND CHILLS IN THE RANGE OF 25 TO 35 BELOW ZERO THROUGH MONDAY MORNING.
A WIND CHILL WARNING MEANS A COMBINATION OF BITTERLY COLD AIR AND STRONG WINDS WILL CREATE DANGEROUSLY LOW WIND CHILL VALUES… RESULTING IN FROST BITE… HYPOTHERMIA OR EVEN DEATH IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN. IF YOU MUST VENTURE OUTDOORS… DRESS APPROPRIATELY IN LAYERS COVERING EXPOSED SKIN. FROSTBITE WILL OCCUR IN A FEW AS 10 MINUTES IN THESE CONDITIONS.
