Esther and Roads

Let's talk about this, shall we?
This being the fact that I am not the best driver out there.  Especially in cities.
I mean seriously, I think I broke the world record for most consecutive times missing the same exit on a recent trip to Houston.

The first time I missed it, I took my life in my hands and decided I had been on the interstate waaaaay to long and must have missed my exit, so I dove (well, actually, exited) straight into downtown Houston; as soon as I left the freeway, there was my exit, taunting me across the space between the exit ramp I was on and the place I needed to be.
I got down into the part of town right below the big road, where scary looking people stand at street corners and red lights last entirely too long. But I turned around and got back on the interstate going the right way as quickly as I could.

The next time I missed it, I was so busy looking for the right number that I completely forgot to make sure I was headed in the right direction.
I wasn't headed in the right direction, so I quickly tried to cross all four lanes and get in the right place.
Didn't make it.  So I took another exit.  This one took me into the "Theater District".
Really Houston?  I did not see any theaters.  I turned around quickly, used the frontage road to get back to the same spot I'd used earlier to turn around.
Let's just mention here that I am usually a fan of roads with names rather than numbers.  In the country they're fun.  Who doesn't enjoy a little jaunt down Coon Hunter Road every once in a while?
But in the big city there's something much more comforting about 45 than, say, Telephone Rd.
So I got back on the highway and tried again.

For those of you keeping count, this is now the third time I tried to get to the correct exit.  Third time's the charm, right?  Not this time.
This time I must admit the only reason I missed the exit was that I was feeling so optimistic about making it to the right place that I got distracted.
Whilst being highly entertained by the way the bumps in the road were coordinated with my radio, I missed it again.

Yes.  This really happened.  I'm driving along, smiling like a goon (Do goons smile?  What even is a goon?) and I miss my exit for the third time.

Don't worry.  Fourth time was the (uneventful) charm.

What I've Been Up To

Summer started out feeling pretty much as busy as the semester, but there has been a good change in the type of activities that keep me busy, so I'm not complaining.
This post will be picture heavy. (You've been fairly warned.) But the first couple weeks of my summer are not documented at all.  The Friday of finals week, I headed to Camp/Austin to help out with training/visit Kae.
My camera lived under my bed and I didn't take a single picture for two weeks.  Terrible.
But since then, I've been taking pictures non-stop.  Here's a sampling of what I've been up to:

Enjoying Country Life

There's just something about denim on a clothesline.  And yes, that last is a chicken coop.  And yes, it lives outside my bedroom window just like that.  I love it.

Building fences for donkeys which will arrive soon

Yes.  I live in that forest.  Isn't it lovely?

I'm sort of in love with pine trees . . .
Also

Smiling ice cream?  Yes, please.

Baking cakes

Going to Baby's ballet recital

Being hospitable to Grandma's cat, who would have none of it and chose to live in

There?  Really? Okay.  I guess she knows where we won't mess with her . . .

Taking in a baseball game with the favorites and Grandma

And getting Baby's hair cut!

She's so cute!

And, PS, I'm sitting in my favorite coffee shop, which is not playing my favorite music right now.  SO I have my headphones on and have not been paying much attention to my fellow patrons.
In a break between two songs on my headphones just now, I heard the old man across the room say, "We can't reasonably expect to create a 9,000 pound gorilla."
Well sir, I'd say you are right on track with that statement.

I Hate Quitting

But I left my job last week.
No, not the Career Services one where I have all those entertaining phone conversations.
Don't worry, I imagine there are still plenty of those posts to come.

*Now including emails!  The other day I got an email that literally had only a question mark in the subject line.  I wouldn't have opened it if I hadn't vaguely recognized the name of the lady sending it.  Really?  I might understand only a question mark in an email to a friend.  Might understand.  But one professional to another?  No.  You've got to make that subject line count, sister.*

Sorry, back to the quitting thing.  Really, I feel like I've left something undone because I left before I absolutely had to.  But, although I keep saying that I left because I have too much on my plate right now, the real reason I left is because my supervisor can't (I repeat cannot) communicate with me.  Now, I understand that this is a two way street, but I have tried so hard, this semester especially, to make sure that lines of communication were open.  But he is, as another person said who knows him, "nonconfrontational in the worst way possible."  So, basically, I was stressed out beyond what was possible to bear.

And I am so looking forward to the rest of my life without that stressor hanging over my head.

Okay, on to good things:

I just found out (well actually last week at about this exact time, but, you know, I didn't blog until just now, so for all practical purposes, I just found out) that I only have to take two more classes to graduate.

Did you catch that?  I ONLY HAVE TWO MORE CLASSES.
There was definitely a day when I thought this day would never come.  Now that it's here, I am so excited!

And you know what else?  I ran into an old family friend the other day who offered me a substitute teaching job which I'm thinking I'll take . . . since I only have two more classes and I just quit my other job.

Isn't life funny?

Be happy everyone!

Easter and a Birthday

Photos for your viewing pleasure:

When your little sister's birthday falls on Easter and she asks you to take a sister photoshoot, what can you do?

Okay, just for fun, let's compare that picture to Easter 2007:

Gotta love Texas . . .

Look how grown up she is now.  Crazy!

Okay, aside from the hair-in-the-wind beard/mustache, I really like that one.

And then the wind picked up.

Love that last one . . . It's like Cousin It.

I definitely prefer being behind the camera to being in front of the lens.

I was so frustrated because I couldn't get my camera to focus on this little red berry, even with manual focus.  (I'm still in the learning phase.) But this still looks cool focused on the green leaf.

Then we found this ripe berry!

And baby proceeded to eat it.

Almost as good as birthday cake.

A Critiquer

Yep, that's what I am.  I just recently realized that I critique things all day.  ALL DAY!

At Career Services, I critique resumes.

In between classes I critique my classmates' creative works because that's what we do.  We workshop.

I am one of the poetry editors for my school's literary journal (okay, so maybe that's not critiquing, but I decide if things are worth putting in or not).

At the Writing Center, I critique papers.

I am a critiquing machine.
Okay.  That's all I really had to say.
But isn't it a little weird that I do the same basic thing all day in several different capacities?

Executive Decisions

I hate making them.
I don't know if this is a product of my raisin' or what.  I don't feel like I was raised to doubt myself.  But somehow I did end up with practically an inability to make a decision about anything.  This may partly be a self-defense mechanism.  I've never been known for my wonderful common sense . . .

*Even more of a side-note:  It's always been one of my greatest fears that my one-day children will inherit my complete lack of common sense.  That would be bad for the world.*

Okay, back to what I was saying before.  I absolutely hate making decisions about anything.  I will always ask for other people's opinions before making a decision.  Provided there are other people around, that is.

You can imagine how I felt about being the only lifeguard at camp last weekend.  Yep.  This little non-decision-maker watched over a pool which had anywhere from two to probably 60something people in it at any given moment.
At one point, I told one particular young gentleman that he couldn't have a tube in the shallow end, that all the tubes had to be in the lazy river even though he was one of the two people in the shallow end at the time.  Actually, it probably went a little more like I didn't know that he was about to be using the tube and I asked him if he could please toss it over into the lazy river for me and he said "What? we're not allowed to have tubes in the shallow end?"  I looked at him sadly and shook my head and immediately began pondering why "we're not allowed to have tubes in the shallow end."  It's a rule from the summer that I was just blindly following even though there really wasn't any justification for applying it at that particular point.
So, I made a quick decision that I would only enforce rules that were directly related to actually keeping the patrons safe.  (Yeah, things like the always-beloved "Walk, please!")
Immediately after I'd made that decision and was feeling foolishly proud of myself for having made a decision of my own, the self-same young gentleman and his chronies took up the ever-popular and forbidden-in-the-summer game of throw-the-football-from-the-shallow-end-to-your-friend-on-the-diving-board.  I watched them for two seconds and decided that it was okay because there were no small children around in danger of getting hit in the back of the head by the football.
THEN, the young gentleman noticed me watching them and said to me "What?  You're gonna tell me that I can do this, but I can't have a tube in the shallow end?"

I just can't win with this decision-making business, can I?

A Confession

BackGround Info:  For years (possibly forever, in fact), I've claimed to dislike gold.  Almost all of my jewelry has been silver and I felt kind of sad about even wearing necklaces with thin gold chains.  In my senior year of high school I discovered white gold and got excited about it, so I had to narrow my claim to not liking yellow gold.
My "class ring" for high school was not traditional.  My parents told me to pick out any kind of ring I liked and they would buy it for me.  I chose a pretty fairy-ish ring with a white gold band and a flower made of diamonds with an emerald center.  The only thing that clouded my joy about this choice was the fact that there was a tiny yellow gold twist underneath the flower (presumably the vine the flower grew on).  It took me several weeks after I got it to wear this ring for the first time, all because of that gold vine.
I know, I know.  I am slightly too obsessive about things sometimes, but I just really didn't like it.

When it came time for me to get my college ring, I knew I was going to get a traditional ring since I hadn't gotten one in high school.  I'd also decided, way back when I got my high school ring, that I wanted a silver or white gold college ring.  Of course.
However, when it came down to the actual moment of buying the ring, I caved at the advice of a friend and bought yellow gold for really only one reason: it looks more professional.  This is a very logical reason, but I have no clue why, after years and years of defiance against yellow gold, I made one of the biggest purchases I've ever made in yellow gold.

So now, we come to today.  I've been wearing my ring every day I possibly could since I bought it.  No weeks waiting to wear this one because I feel truly proud of the accomplishment it represents (after all, I've persevered through this thing called secondary education for almost five and a half years) . . . and because I spent so much money on the ridiculous thing!
Today I happened to glance down at my right hand in the golden midmorning light and I suddenly realized something.  Yellow gold actually looks really good with my skin tone.  And even more shocking:
Yellow gold is beautiful.
Did you catch that?  I like yellow gold.

Confession:  I've been lying all these years.
I'm sorry to have deceived you all for so long.

Little tid-bit of information:  "Golden" has always been one of my favorite words.  It's just taken me a long time to discover that I actually love what it's derived from as well.