the anticipation

my crane wife, my crane wife.....

i'm listening to the crane wife 1 & 2 by the decemberists right now. it totally changed my mood about what i wanted to write about today. earlier i thought i wanted to blog about various things, and now i just want to sit still and listen. but i think i'm getting in the swing of things now. just had to build up a little momentum.

i'm afraid of pain. i was thinking about this tonight while i was walking emmy. she's still a puppy (barely! can you believe she's almost a year old???) and learning to be a good walker, so she gets treats when she's in the right place (next to me on my right side). she loves treats. sometimes she bites my fingers, accidentally i think, and it really hurts. on more than one occasion i've come home and found out that my thumb was actually bleeding. there are a couple of tiny blood spots on my super cute green down coat from costco (yes, it is a little girls coat, thank you). so that really hurts. i think i deal with pain pretty well when it's actually happening. but the thought of pain, the anticipation, really freaks me out. i hate getting shots. i've never given blood. i'm such a wuss. i should go get a physical before i go to build houses in tijuana this year, because i haven't had a tetanus shot in ages and i think my hepatits is way out of date too. who even knows what shots i'm supposed to have anymore. but i'm scared! i wish someone could just surprise me with a shot when i'm not looking. giving blood is a whole other story - things piercing my skin and remaining there for MINUTES on end really creep me out. so gross. so disturbing. the thought of an IV makes me cringe.

we're having a blood drive at work tomorrow but i'm not participating. are you shocked? i should make an effort to get over it, but for now i'm just going to be a baby.

very exciting present

hello! thanks for the replies to previous blogs, everyone, specifially the last one. i would like to have learned another language as well. any language at all. if they don't start doing a better job of teaching kids languages when they're young, i hope that somehow i might be able to give my children some bilingual friends to learn from. that would be nice.

i got a very exciting present for christmas. it's the nike+ipod thing. apparently i don't know the official name. or maybe that's it. but it's a little device that you plug into your ipod, and a sensor that goes in your shoe, that uses a combination of, i believe, a pedometer and GPS to track your mileage. it will also tell you your speed, how many calories you've burned, etc. brad got it for me and it think it's very exciting. but i've used it a few times and the distances have been way off, which is so aggravating. the other day i ran 8 miles and my ipod said i ran 6.5. lie! and it happened a couple of times after that. i think that the sensor might not be attached tightly enough to my shoe. i hope i can get it to work right, or at least, get it to work so that if it can't be accurate, it can at least skew things in my favor. if it had said i ran 9 miles, i probably would have found it flattering.

i am really really into running right now. if you had told me in junior high or high school that i would someday be running as much as i am, i would have been awed and amazed. there was not much that made me feel worse about myself than running. i got the reddest face, had the slowest times, and felt like i might die every time i went. but as it turns out, i think that was mostly due to me being in terrible physical shape. i still get the red face, but it feels good, i'm much more energetic, i feel more confident, and i sleep a lot better. i'm not even exaggerating those claims for stereotypicalness' sake. it's just true. it turns out that i love exercise. who knew??

second-rate billing

so here's a question: why does my head hurt so much right now?? it's really annoying. i decided that i'm going to clean out our whole house, room by room, one room per weekend. i wanted to work on the office today. but my head is so irritating that i'm just going to do a little hint of blogging for now. it's a three day weekend anyway, so what's the rush? and, no one is actually requiring me to do this project. i just really like to be organized. i'm not actually that organized of a person, which is probably why i admire organization so much. i want my life to be like a real simple magazine, where everything looks good, is in a the right place, and gets the job done. actually, that's not what i want my life to be like. that sounds too regulated and simplified for any kind of real life. real life requires a good amount of chaos to be worth anything, i think. but that is what i want my house to be like. someday, maybe...probably not though. unless i get rich and hire a housekeeper.

here's a question for the day. this will prove once and for all that no one really reads my blog, which is fine. but the question is, if you could go back to childhood and learn one thing that you don't know how to do now, what would it be? for me, it would be playing a string instrument. specifically the violin, or cello. or the viola, although i have a limited knowledge of violas except that i think they get sort of second-rate billing in orchestras and stuff. is that even true? if you could learn something new and have developed it as a child, what would you choose, and why?

TOTAL, UTTER, SHAMEFUL FAILURE!

i found my new year's resolution list from last year. contrary to what the length of the list might indicate, i'm not even someone who really, really believes in the new year as a great time for new beginnings or anything like that. mostly i think i just like lists. and goals. last year was kind of a mixed bag of failures, successes, and things i completely forgot about. read and learn!

cook one new recipe a week
SUCCESS! i don't think i technically cooked one new recipe every single week, but i definitely made two or even three new things some weeks, and rarely didn't make anything new. so, when averaged out, i am victorious.

eat more slowly
FAILURE! after the first week of january, i don't think i ever thought about this brilliant idea again.

do some sort of flexibility training weekly
FAILURE! i get a lot of aerobic exercise, and i do some strength training, but i am pretty lazy about stretching, and i sit for extended periods every day at my computer and might be on my way to hunchbackland. i took a six week yoga class last january and february and that was a SUCCESS, but after that, FAILURE prevailed.

complain less
FAILURE! this is something i really should have worked on, but i forgot.

buy a house
SUCCESS! put that in your pipe and smoke it!

get a dog
SUCCESS! we got my favorite dog of all time, emmy. or mrs. emmy, as she prefers to be called.

give money regularly
SEMI SUCCESS! we've finally started to consistently (monthly) give money to a few things we really care about, such as duncan, our kenyan compassion child, blood:water mission, and the inn. i'm adding the 'semi' because we got a lot better at this later in the year, and there's always more to do. but i feel glad about what we're doing so far.

learn to drive a stick
UTTER FAILURE! i really really really need to learn how to do this, because brad's car is a stick and it's ridiculous that i can't drive it. and how are we ever going to win the amazing race if i don't learn? this must be added to my list for 2007.

find a way to love my work
SEMI SUCCESS! "love" might be too strong a word for my current work situation, but i am pleased to announce that it is approximately 574398574839578439 times better than my last one.

run a marathon
FAILURE! but i didn't really mean it when i said i wanted to do that last year. i want to in life. but i know that i want to have a running partner before i commit to a marathon, and until that happens, i'm not really set on this goal. i really shouldn't have put it on last year's list. i won't be fooled again in 2007.

do some house chore every day
SUCCESS! little did i know that only in our apartment did i have the luxury of not feeling obligated to do housework on a daily basis. a grown up homeowner like myself had no chance to fail at this resolution. especially one with a constantly shedding dog and a dark red area rug.

publish two issues of Awesome Times
TOTAL, UTTER, SHAMEFUL FAILURE! i wish i had honestly tried to do this, but i didn't at all. but with my current knowledge of microsoft office and other helpful software, should the newsletter ever have articles submitted again, i think i could publish them much more efficiently. if any of you Awesome Times writers are reading this now, i am accepting articles.


to sum up...
4 SUCCESS!
4 FAILURE!
1 UTTER FAILURE!
1 TOTAL, UTTER, SHAMEFUL FAILURE!
2 SEMI SUCCESS!

not so bad overall, for someone who knows they got a little carried away in their list-making. with six on the success side and six on the failure side, i'd say 2006 was a total wash. a moot point. actually, i think i did a good job. huzzah again.

so this is the new year

i'm kind of into making lists. and what better time to make one than on the first day of the new year? here we are at 2007 - just three years short of what danyeal and i refer to as the space age. (2010 - doesn't that have a space-agey ring to it??) so here are a few resolutions that i would like to go for this year....

run 1000 miles
(i was close this year, at 900, but i never took the time to calculate my mileage until about a week ago. this year i'm making a goal.)

start wearing face lotion that contains sunscreen
(so that i will not be wrinkly or cancerous later in life - you're supposed to wear sunscreen every day, or so i read...and what better time to start than good old 2007?)

pray more
(that is purposefully worded in a vague, immeasurable way, because i don't really want to quantify prayers i guess. i just want to pray more than i do now, because i know it's not enough for me.)

worry less
(worrying is something i do way too much of. i worry about brad, my dog, if we're saving enough money, if we're giving enough money away, what would happen in a disaster, my relationship with my mom, what i'm going to do with my life...etc. it's not really helping me out much. i hope that the "pray more" initiative will help with "worry less". we'll see.)

keep in better touch with friends
(i've gotten pretty bad about this. i've been very lazy about emailing, writing, calling, and all of that. and my friends are very important to me. i should act like it.)


i made a list last year too. i'll have to find it and do a "2006 in review" to celebrate my successes and weep over my failures. huzzah!