Zac sent me this gem today, and if I could find it, I’d buy it and wear it (but only when I’m alone and at home.)  ~

I have a simple love/hate relationship with most of my student employees. I love them them, and deep down they despise me.  Ok, despise is probably too harsh of a word, but let’s just say sometimes they look at me like I’m the mom that drives them and their friends to the mall while singing along to Britney Spears.  (Oh yeah, I’m gonna be that mom, but that’s beside the point.)  While I don’t have favorites, I do have a certain handful of students who we share an equal amount of tolerance for each other.

One of these students in particular might be a long-lost cousin of mine and our similar musical and entertainment choices can be a bit frightening at times.  But more than anything I enjoy giving her a hard time and watching her dramatic reactions to being fake fired or making fun of her whatever shenanigan we can dream up at 5:10 on a Thursday afternoon.  Well recently she mentioned that she needed to get off work early for a volunteer project she was heading up.  Knowing that she’d have to get the approval of her supervisor, I sent her to him to ask for this favor.  Before she had the chance to plead her case and without her knowing, I asked him to deny her request and play along with me.

Confidently, she pleaded her case and seemed stunned when he told her ‘no’.  (Guess I shouldn’t have told her it would be no big deal.)  I came back into the room as she was leaving with her head down completely floored that her boss was being so unresonable.  I put my arm around her and told her I’d plead her case for her.  Again I enlisted the support of her supervisor and our boss, as I called her back into the full-time staff office and told her with a lil work I’d been able to broker a deal that would allow her to get the time off she needed.  All she had to do was dance for at least 60 seconds to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Now the guys had no clue that she had learned the whole dance last semester and didn’t think she’d go along with my plan.  But after convincing her it was the only way she could get the time off, we opened up the youtube video of Thriller and watched as she worked through her shame and embarrassment to give us a brilliant performance that riveled Jennifer Garner’s in 13 Going On 30.  By the end of her minute of glory, I couldn’t stop laughing and she quickly realized she had been played.  Being the great sport she is she laughed it off and headed back to finish her shift.  Now I just gotta keep my eyes open to her retaliation.

Last week when my family was up visiting, my mom and I were fabric shopping when I came across a fabric I couldn’t help but fall in love with.  White with black flowers and swirls highlighted by hot pink… what couldn’t be more me?  However, despite the perfection of the fabric, Mom and I couldn’t come up with a single use of it in my new bedroom.  Guess that’s how you know a room is just right when you can’t find a way to use a gorgeous fabric.  So with a tish of sadness we walked away from the fabric and decided if we came up with a use we could always go back.  Less than an hour before my family had to leave, Mom and I had the epiphany that my bed would look better if there were 7 pillows on it and not just 5.  So we raced back to the fabric store to but the beloved fabric to make pillowcases for pillows I already owned and kept in the closet until company showed up.  Well, it’s been about a week since they left and already Mom has made gorgeous pillowcases from the fabric below and mailed them too me.  Yeah, I’m spoiled

Pillowcase fabric

Completed bed with new pillowcases

My philosophy on Chinese food is simple…  there is no such thing as good Chinese food, just levels of bad Chinese.  So when Cory decided for his birthday dinner to go to his favorite Chinese restaurant in the valley, I didn’t have a huge hope for culinary brilliance.  Boy, was I wrong.  Flo’s Chinese was by far the best Chinese restaurant I had ever tried.  From the lettuce wraps to the honey beef, everything we ordered and shared with each other was phenomenal.  I just need to find a way to get my parents on the east side of town to try it out.

Sometime early in Cory and my drive down to Phoenix for his birthday with his family today, Lauren and I realized we were within a mile of each other on the freeway.  Most people would think that was a cool coincedence and wave if we passed her, but not us.  Nope, we spent the next 90 miles sending dozens of texts and calling each other to try and figure out where we were in relation  to each other.  We sped up and slowed down based upon how close we thought we were to each other, and finally, as we entered the city we saw her car in front of us.  You’d think after an hour and a half of trying to catch up to each other we’d have a plan of what to do after we were side by side, but instead, Lauren and I  waved at each other and then awkwardly tried to figure out what the appropriate thing to do would be.  No wonder we’re best friends.  We live for the awkward moments in life until they involve us.

I’m not quite sure if it was days or weeks ago that my dad asked me simply on the phone one night, “are you ever going to blog again now that you have a boyfriend?” I rolled my eyes and told him that I was working on it, but somewhere inside was unnerved that he had so quickly seized up my greatest current conundrum. You see when it was just me, talking about me was easy. All aspects of life and relationships were dissected and analyzed. Everything was fair game (as long as that old roommate or acquaintance wasn’t stalking me here), but now with another player involved I no longer feel that way. Funny thing is that while I’ve spent the last two months (at least) working to figure out how to continue to be me on here and still be open about the parts of my life that now include him, he’s had no issue whatsoever with the notion that he might be mentioned on the intarwebz.

In this new world order, I’ve been blogging privately. Seeking the necessary outlet of putting my thoughts and experiences to paper and only externally posting the silly and superficial things that allowed me to keep control of both of my domains, public and private. I’ve wondered how to appropriately answer your comments and questions of why this personal garden I once took so much pride in has been allowed to become overgrown with weeds, and honestly, the only reason I can come up with is to protect this seedling relationship. Stupid, I know. Unnecessary, I’ve come to realize. Dramatic, it’s me. Let’s not act surprised.

So give me another chance, and I’ll make it right starting right now because it feels like forever and I have so much I need to share. Take a big deep breath, world, and we’ll start with the obvious. I have a boyfriend and while this is never going to be one of the girlfriend blogs, you will once again be privy to all aspects of my life including him. Sound like a good deal? I hope so!

This is so gonna be stuck in my head for days and days and days and day. Plus, I wanna be their friends. Don’t you?

I need basketball. I need basketball now. I can’t wait til Thursday. I might need a March Madness 12-step program. Do you think Chase Budinger would be my interventionalist? I hope so.

My dad forwarded an email to me today with a handful of these letters to God, and I had to share my favorite. Outta the mouths of babes.

Sweet 16, here we come!  After everything our Cats have been through the past few years, It’s great to see success coming from a team half of the nation didn’t believed deserved their #12 seed.  Now I have to wait too many days until the Tourney starts up again, but when it dies….Bring on the Cardinals!

My family left today.  I swear everytime I have to say goodbye to them it gets harder and harder.  I cry more, and it takes that much longer to get my emotions back under control.  I’m not really sure why this is.  I wasn’t this way in college.  I’ve said goodbye to them and hopped in the car to drive home numerous times.  Maybe it’s because they all live six-hours away and as much as I love my life in Flagstaff, I miss them more than I can express most days.  Maybe because I feel like the odd family member out, the lone gun man, and don’t know how not to feel that way.  I’m almost controlling and selfish with the time I get with them, and that realization is a horrible feeling.  You’d think the older I get and more of a life I build here, the easier it would be to go back to that life when family time is over,  but that’s not the case.  Now don’t get me wrong, it was a great weekend.  We had tons of laughs, enjoyed two days of March Madness, did a good deal of shopping and spent quality time together, but still I’m sad and left wishing for more time together.

On the other hand and just in time to cheer me up, Lauren is back from her overseas trip and should be arriving on my doorstep soon.  I can’t wait to hear stories of her trip and just give her a huge hug.  I’ve missed her immensely the past two weeks and will be relieved to know she is home and safe.  Plus, two weeks of life is a lot of catching up to do.  Then, to add more fun to the proverbial pot, my old and dear friend Emily is bunking at my casa tomorrow night as she drives through Flagstaff.  I’m sure we’ll spend our time together catching each other up and gossiping about the old gang while feating on Oreos and ice cream.  I haven’t seen her in almost two years, and it’s been months since we truly had a good chat.

Life is funny like that.  As sad as I am to say goodbye to three of the people I care most about, God has provided me with hellos and hugs of others that I’ve been missing.  I know deep down that even when I say goodbye to Emily Monday morning or remember the three hundred mile distance that separates me from my family, I am still loved and still love, and that’s more than enough to get by.

Tell me again how we didn’t deserve to make the Big Dance… exactly.

March Madness is finally here. Our brackets have been decided and submitted to Zac’s “weirdsowithbeardos” ESPN group. Just in case, you wanna follow along… here’s the official Men’s 2009 Division 1 Tournament Bracket. Go Wildcats!  (PS – No matter what any one tells you.  I did NOT take today and tomorrow off to watch the games.  I swear.)

My family is on its way to visit me, and to be honest, I’m having a hard time focusing on anything because I cannot wait for them to get here.  Zac has visited me a handful of times since I moved, and dad was up here after Christmas.  But mom has yet to see my place finished, and I blame her for my Christmas decorations staying up as long as they did.  Part of me just kept hopping if they stayed up, she’d eventually come and see them.  Yet, apparently, she has a full time job and has to take care of the boys… so no visits for Laurel until now.  I have spent way too much time as of late meticulously making sure everything is as it should be in my house.  I’ve grocery shopped for everything they liked, planned meals, and have visited Target four separate times to ensure I have everything they could possibly need to be comfortable.

What is it about our parents that even as grown adults we have an obsession with pleasing them?  Will it really matter to them that every picture and decoration on the wall is level?  No, you say?  Then why did I have to check every single thing on every wall with a level last night?  I’m sure Cory thought I was losing my mind as I checked and rechecked my parental preparation list 15 times yesterday and today to make sure everything was just right, but you only get one chance to make a first impression.  Even as I think about this afternoon, it seemes laughable to spend that much time focusing on details they won’t even notice.  People come in and out of my place all the time and probably couldn’t tell you what colors the throw pillows on my couches are, and yet I went so far as considering ironing the wrinkles in them that I noticed late last night.  Maybe I’ll just turn off all the lights and light candles, so that the room has a nice glow when they get there without shining a spotlight on anything I might have missed.  Yeah, that’s a good plan.  Then they’ll think their daughter is holding a seance and not critique her decorating, cleaning, or living as an adult skills.  Whew, I feel so much better.

All I can say is thank you, Judy. Thank you so very much for getting this song buried deep into my brain so that all day at work I can’t stop making up my own verses. One day I will buy your children obnoxious, noisy toys to repay your generosity.