Pictures of the Week

It's fall here and it's so pretty.

 Homemade ravioli-takes FOREVER.  I now know why people buy it instead.  It tasted really good, though.

My cat Littlefoot

He thinks I'm in the bathroom and is waiting for me to come out.  My bathroom has 2 doors so I snuck around and took this picture because I think it's really cute that he does this.  It is not uncommon that I don't realize he's there and whack him with the door on my way out.  Oops.

Awkward Sauce

My sophomore year of college was a particularly rough year for me.  It was like that chubby 13-year-old-brace-face-super-insecure version of me had taken over.   It was even harder because I had really beautiful roommates. I mean, they were my best friends so I never hated them or wished awful things to come upon them, it was just a little hard at that time to be, well, the awkward one.

One of the guys that liked one of my roommates became one of our good friends.  His name was Van and he liked to play music on his guitar.  He wrote a song kind of based off of this one in which each verse was about one of us.  We each had our kind of "sauce".  As you can already guess, I had the awkward sauce.

To give you an example of my awkward sauce that year I will now tell you a story.  It was winter of that year that we (my roommates and I) were invited to Van's cabin for the weekend along with all the coolest and cutest guys in the ward (they all liked my roommates).  You see, it is actually nice to have beautiful roommates because you get to be included in things like this.  So, we were having a nice weekend--we had snowball fights, went sledding and snowmobiling, ate good food,etc.  All was well...at least until I had to use the bathroom.

It was Saturday afternoon and everyone was resting in the cabin after a morning of playing hard.  Like I said, I had to go to the bathroom.  You know how sometimes the water gets low because something is wrong?  Well, that was the state I found the toilet in, but for some I reason determined that going to the bathroom and then flushing it would be a good idea. It wasn't.  Fortunately the water never overflowed, and after some consultation with 2 of my roommates and, due to fear of embarrassment, we decided to just let it be.

A couple of hours went by.  Van's sister had to take a shower to get ready for a date that night.  We were playing cards when all of a sudden we hear water dripping from the ceiling.  My roommates and I look at each other.  Huh, what could that be?  The toilet?  No, it couldn't be.  Well, it was.  I guess there was some serious plumbing issues going on which caused some minor flooding in the cabin.  I wouldn't say I caused the problems, but I may have exacerbated them.  Oops.  We didn't tell Van until a year later.

Fortunately that year ended and I can now laugh at my social awkwardness.  Every once in a while, though, I find myself fighting my awkward sauce. I guess it's somewhat normal to feel awkward sometimes, but I hate it! It's like everything that comes out of my mouth is so unfunny or I just don't know what to do with my body.  And you know how someone makes a joke and then someone else responds with a joke to keep it going?  I can be really good at killing jokes.  So, the moral of this story is that I think no matter how comfortable and confident I become, I will always have times of awkwardness and will just have to accept my awkwardness as part of all the wonderfullness that is me.

Let me start off by saying that I'm amazing

Today I had my first real interview for a real job with a real salary.  Go me.  Sometimes I like to think about funny things that I could say in an interview.  For example, tonight Wade was asking me if I told him how amazing I was and I said that it was in fact the first thing I said.   "Before we get this started, let me just say that I'm amazing." If only that could work.

It goes without saying that the whole finding a job process is tedious, to say the least.  It's kind of like dating in that in order to get what you want you really have to put yourself out there and risk getting rejected.  It's tough! 

Sometimes I just feel like I'm pretending.  I mean, I hadn't ever planned on being a career woman, but that is what's going on now.  People ask me what my career goals are and I mutter something like how I want to do this or that important thing. While I know I could do all that and would probably really enjoy it, it's just not what I was expecting.  But nothing in life has really been that way, so I shouldn't be surprised.

But enough about serious life stuff for now.  I have to confess that on Monday I watched 7 episodes of a tv show on netflix.  Go me...again.  That's almost a full day of work.  Part of me is a little embarrassed, but the other part of me is so happy that I have time to do that because I will probably never have time like this again.  There are defintiely pros to being unemployed.

And these are my thinks at 1:00 in the morning.

Eating Frogs

When I worked at Cafe Zupas my managers made us read a number of self-help books-one of which was called Eat That Frog.  You're probably smart enough to know without me saying that the book was not about eating literal frogs, but rather figurative frogs.  Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each day is eat a frog you can then go on with your day with the satisfaction that that is probably the worst thing you would have to do that day.  The book takes this idea and applies it to getting things done each day.  In a nutshell is says that if you take care of your most dreadful task first thing in the day, you will end up being much happier and more productive, which leads to making more money and making more friends, and before you know it you will have taken over the world.  It's true.

All in all it has a good point and I am proud to say that I have been able to apply it in my life.  For the past couple years I have been fighting adulthood.  For me this is manifested by me moving back in with my parents, refusing to take care of important things like renewing my car registration until I get pulled over (twice), not picking up my clothes or cleaning up my messes (sorry mom), and not making important phone calls because people sometimes scare me (that's not really true, but I sometimes forget that I've actually overcome that).  You get the picture.  I blame it on my birth order.

So, as I rapidly approach professional life (if all goes well on the 28th I will be an official professional), I am deciding to discard my childish ways.  I started today by making important phone calls-3 of them actually-to my former preceptors to ask for letters of recommendation for a job to which I'm applying.  I was anxious all night and slept horribly.  It's not like these are scary people.  In fact, they are all really nice.  Well, long story short-I did it!  I called them.  And they all agreed to write the letters.  It felt really good.  So, the moral of this story is that although frogs are really disgusting and may make you sick to your stomach or lose sleep because they are so dreadful, it feels really good just to eat them and be done with it. So to all of you procrastinators out there, eat that frog!!!!

Worry Wart

noun \ˈwər-ē-ˌwȯrt, ˈwə-rē-\
: a person who is inclined to worry unduly 

That's me.

I had a scary thought the other day...


"What would I think about if I wasn't worrying?"


Oh, my goodness, I might actually get something done.


The amazing thing is that it has actually worked.  


Imagine that!

Getting Lost

It is not uncommon that I get lost in the town where I have lived since I was 9, but this latest incidence was the most ridiculous.

I was trying to get to the immunization place, which I have been to before.  It has been several years, however, so I looked up directions online and gave myself plenty of time so I wouldn't be rushed and have to speed.  So, I make my way to 10 Stoneybrook Road.  I knew something was up when it looked nothing like I remembered it.  I called my mom who looked up the address which was 10 SUNNYbrook Road.  You can see how I made the mistake, right?  So, I guess my mom was having a backwards day just like me and told me to go south instead of north and west instead of east.  By the time I realized what was happening, turned around and got there, I was half an hour late.  They were closed.  They let me make another appointment, thankfully.  But I was little perturbed when the lady kindly suggested that I try to be on time next time.

The entire trip lasted 1 hour.  I went home, climbed in my bed and just cried.  It wasn't that I was upset at anyone, but more that I was just so tired and frustrated that I wasted 1 HOUR lost in my own hometown!  Pathetic. :)

Confession

I have a serious problem.  I cannot...for the life of me...complete the laundry process.  What usually happens is I wash it and put in the basket where the wrinkles set in.  I could leave it there anywhere between 24 hours and 2 weeks.  I still have some unfolded laundry on my chair from 2 weeks ago.  I mean, why fold it when I'm just going to UNfold it and put it right back on.  Well, I'm trying to change this about me.  I mean, for heavens sakes, I'm almost 26 and I still can't get this down.  So, today I was determined to complete the process.  I started it at 9 am this morning figuring since I had no scheduled commitment (my ideal Saturday schedule), I would have no problem completing it.  WRONG.  Here I am at 12:15 too tired to do anything but write on my blog with my basket of folded laundry next to me.  (hey, I did fold it!)  Oh, the thought of taking it upstairs and putting it away makes me want to fall over. So, I won't.  I will leave it there until who knows when.  I guess I will have to try again in two weeks.

Measures of Happiness

I have yet to share anything about my mission on this blog, and I figured it was about time.

At one of my interviews with my mission president he asked me if I was happy.  Happy?  Ha, that's a good question.  I'm pretty sure that day, since most days were pretty the same, we had contacted in the cold rain and probably got rejected a lot.  That was hard day after day.  So, I wasn't particularly happy at that moment of time.  He then went on to teach me something I have never ever forgotten.

He said, "Sister Smith, happiness cannot be measure at specific moments of time.  We have to look at happiness over a period of time.  Most of the time life is hard and a lot of work.  But! There are wonderful moments scattered here and there where we learn a valuable lesson or the Spirit gives us a boost of strength or we feel God's approval of us or when we understand why something has been so hard for us. When we do this, we will see that we are actually very happy despite the little things every day that can cause us so much frustration."

That short conversation has changed my life and helped me to see what happiness is really made of.  For me my mission, and even "normal life," is a series of hard, difficult days.  But as I look back, even though I was going through something difficult, I remember being really happy over most periods of my life.  I guess I realized what makes me truly happy is not ease, but the process of being stretched and pushed because that is the only way that I can obtain what I really want.  Ease only makes people fat and lazy, and who really wants that?

And those are my thinks on happiness.