sentimental virtue

My family got a dog while I was gone. I was absolutely tricked into liking him. They sent me pictures like this:

Awwwwwwwww, right? I foolishly fell in love with this little face and had no choice but to like him when I came home. And when I came home he was about four times bigger and not a cute little puppy. He was a giant, destructive beast. 

And I was stuck liking him.

His name is Mozzie [the sidekick in White Collar]. He's a bit of a blundering block head. He's huge, but he's still only a puppy [7 or 8 months old], so he hasn't completely gained control of his body. He just barges around, sliding into doors and chairs, stepping on people's toes, and not giving a care in the world. In fact, sometimes if he gets going too fast, he'll lose control and skid across the kitchen, slamming into the wall. Then he picks himself up, shakes it off as though nothing's happened, and goes about harassing more people. 

It's still so dang hard not to like him.

When I first came home he was completely obnoxious; jumping on people and biting and chewing up everything he could reach. Gratefully our good friends came over and taught me how to train him, and he's calmed down quite a bit. He's quite intelligent and learned pretty quickly chill out so that everyone doesn't hate him. 

And he really doesn't like being put in his kennel. 

He just sits there and makes a sad, apologetic face and whimpers pathetically.

He still likes to chew on things--lemon juice bottles, milk jugs, magazines, everything.

But uh....we really like him. I think we'll keep him.

[Title from Everybody Loves Me by One Republic]

new ways to outline an old face

Okay so. I SUCK at crafts. Seriously.

Kenyan had an end of the year party last week and I had the brilliant idea to try and imitate these invitatiions:

[source]

I started around 11:30 pm--bad idea number one. We went to walmart to get supplies--bad idea number two.

They didn't really have what we needed. We could only find multi colored little fuzzy ball things, so I decided it would be okay to make rainbow colored caterpillars. Bad idea number three.

By the time we got home it was late. And it was hot. Usually it cools off at night but it didn't that night. We had all the windows open which meant there were a few irritating flies keeping me company. So there I was tired, hot, irritable, trying to glue together rainbow colored catepillars and intermittenly flailing our 74 cent fly swatter like a deranged person. The 'caterpillars' look deformed and haphazard and nothing like caterpillars. I distincly recall at one point thinking "this one's really ugly, Kenyan can give it to her least favorite friend" [for the record, not something we encourage at our house] and "well.... maybe they can pretend it's colored snowballs piled on a stick". Each attempt got progressively worse. I just kept telling myself to stay awake and trying to convince myself that I was being a good sister. There was a lot of muttering and swearing and glue gun burns. It was precisely 12:54 when I realized this was not working. No chance.

Thank heavens for my mom who always likes to shut down my pinterest ideas. I barged in at one in the morning in exasperation and within six minutes she came up with a new, functional, much better idea that 1. we had the supplies for and 2. was something even I could manage:

I mean, anyone can make pinwheels.

It went a lot more smoothly, but it was still a challenge for me. The problem with crafts is that it takes patience. Unlike most things I enjoy [sports, yard work, etc.] exerting excess force [slamming, hitting, yelling] will not make it look any prettier.

But seriously, who even makes things this small? 

The table was split down the middle, one side being my failed, ugly caterpillar graveyard and the other half being paper scraps from my slightly more successful invitations.

I finally finished around three, shoved most of the table in the trash, and went to bed.

I vaguely recall Kenyan waking me up as she left for school thanking me for making them. Which really made it all worth it.

Moral of the story:
1. I suck at crafts.
2. Thank heavens for mothers.

[Title from Hit the Bottom by Sherwood]

you are my deamon

When I was at school in Hawaii I went through a lot of emotional turmoil and I found myself pretty restless at times. One night when I was too distraught to sleep I went down to the computer lounge and started stumbling around Youtube. I came across the then-new Black Eyed Peas song and listened to it over a hundred times. Something about the bass perpetuated the distressed trance I was in and facilitated my numbness. I remember watching the sun come up as I clicked replay again. I have this song memorized and I know the video scene by scene. I don't love the Black Eyed Peas and I don't even love this song. But that was just what happened that night and to this day I don't really know why.

I have about a billion blog entries started and had great plans to finish them this morning...but today ended up being like that long stretch of night filled with too much of that dumb song. So I turned on my black music playlist and baked four dozen cupcakes. And I'm going to sleep tonight hoping that tomorrow I will wake up and want to do more than listen to an auto-tuned train wreck.

[Title from Just Can't Get Enough. Obviously.]

a feeling

Sunday night we played cards with some friends. There was broken glass, blatant cheating, bad jokes, and ab-exhausting laughter. On the way home we decided to make an impromptu trip out to the country to see other friends [we're pretty popular around here].

While the adults were sitting and talking and the little girls were downstairs playing, Alex, Jace, and I went outside to drive the golf cart past sleeping neighbors' houses. As we were careening down the long stretch of driveway, [and in between fearing for my safety with Alex at the wheel] I looked around at the seemingly endless land, at the vast night sky where five different stripes of deep blue blended into one another, at the cool breeze whipping our hair and tugging our dresses, at how happy I was to know the good people I know out here, how much I genuinely like these people, how much I love my dang family. 

And it was a good moment. That's all.

[Title from All About Us by He Is We]

destination: beautiful

After a solid three hours of sleep, Alyssa and I got up, picked up Jeremy, and started on our sixteen hour drive.

 I felt awful. I had that disgusting feeling where my body isn't ready to be awake and my mind really never went to sleep. As hard as I tried I couldn't fall asleep again. I ate a waffle with syrup [yeah, not exactly road trip food] and wrapped the sticky, messy knife in a post it note for lack of better options. 

Alyssa's roommate Jessica/Ashley was a doll and packed us some fresh fruit

We weren't in any sort of hurry and stopped at any rest stop or landmark that seemed vaguely intriguing to stretch our legs, refill bottles of water [because I kept spilling them, not because we were drinking them], and take plenty of pictures. 

For those who aren't aware, Jeremy [my sister's boyfriend] is a pretty skilled jump roper [he was actually on America's Got Talent!] and so he starred in a lot of my pictures.

In efforts to get a good camera angle I scaled the side of a mountain and slipped a little. My stomach dropped further than I slid, since the prospect of a painful death was facing me. But. My trusty shin saved me, and I got the mountain equivalent of a rug burn. Ouch. 

It seriously felt a lot worse than it looked. And yes I was barefoot, which was probably why I slipped. And it was great coming home and seeing friends with a cool new scar. :)

 We stopped at the four corners for a bit. Alyssa and I went there with our family over ten years ago, and the only real memory we have of it was that my dad collected some rocks and stashed them in an empty cereal box. I did not remember the retaining walls, the per-person admission charge, or the little Native American shops set up around the monument.

 It wasn't until we were in New Mexico that I started to feel like we were close to home. It was mostly brought on by a disgusting dust storm. We were getting gas when we were hit with the first suffocating wall of dirt.

 These pictures don't do it justice. It was impossible to see anything; even the headlights of cars weren't visible from any sort of distance. 

It was disconcering and I was a little bit scared for my safety, but it passed fairly quickly.

 We passed this little scene and had to turn around and go back to take a picture:

Haha. 

Somewhere along the way I took some sleeping pills. They were fascinating, bright blue little bubbles that did absolutely nothing for me. I took double the dosage and still wasn't even able to sleep but for short periods of time. Just enough to be awake frequently enough to take pictures, change the playlist on my iPod, and sort out a few remaining agitated thoughts. 

Somewhere in New Mexico I woke up to some crazy rainstorm. As I watched, the rain turned to snow and the highway quickly became covered in a soft powder. Then, just as instantaneously as it turned to snow, it turned to hail. Um...what?

These aren't the greatest pictures, but it was a pretty accurate representation of how eerie the sky was [and how groggy I was during all of this. I think the sleeping pills finally kicked in].

We finally got home around 2.30 in the morning and, exhausted from so many hours of doing nothing, crawled into familiar beds made up for us by my darling little sisters. 

I learned later that while I was sleeping we drove past a fire, so on the course of our drive we saw a fire, a dust storm, snow, rain, and hail, yet we made it home in absolute safety. Makes for a pretty solid trip. 

[Title from Sun by Mae]