On Becoming a Person

I was cutting pita bread to make homemade pita chips this evening, and I accidentally sliced halfway through my middle finger with the knife. It was pretty blatant—like I went down it with a sawing motion and everything. And the knife was Cutco, so it did not take much effort to do the damage! The blood soaked through 3 layers of bandages, sweet!

When it finally stopped bleeding we cleaned it out and it looks okay; it is just sore! At least the pita chips came out delicious :-).

I am feeling a little mushy this morning, so I just thought I would share that. I am also feeling a little vague, so we shall see how those two things go together.

Mostly, I wanted to express my thankfulness for having some people in my life who really care about me. In the counseling profession, I/we spend so much time caring for others that sometimes it is hard to accept or to even believe that anyone could care about me in return. Now I am of the mindset of Carl Rogers that if you have even one person in your life who genuinely shows in interest in what kind of crap is going on for you, that makes a huge difference. It certainly does not fix everything, but having a friend or friends that you can be fully real with is quite a glorious notion. Would you agree?

This morning I attended the Writer’s Guild memoir writing workshop that I mentioned earlier. It was phenomenal. I was by far the youngest person there; I think the next-oldest person was probably 15 years my senior, and the majority of the folks were older than 50. But the group had a lot of diversity. We discussed a lot of things about the logistics and style of writing memoirs, and we got the chance to do some on the spot writing activities.

I decided to take a risk and read what I wrote out loud to the group. The topic of it was not the most pleasant thing, but people responded super positively to it. I felt quite supported. One woman, Janni, came up to me afterwards and said she really liked my writing. She also shared one of her pieces which I equally liked, and asked her to give me one of her manuscripts to read/edit/comment on. She suggested that we be “writing buddies” and I think this might be a fabulous idea. I am still not sure how that will work out since I am super busy, but I think it would be really fun to have someone else who shares my passion to connect with. I have never had that before, and I have been longing for it for some time. I can’t wait to read her manuscript. The small portion I heard in the group was fantastic!

Ah, I am proud of myself for this. I decided too that I would actually join the Guild as a member, so now I get to come to monthly meetings and participate in critiques and stuff. I am hoping that this will provide me with some motivation to actually work on my own memoir and someday achieve the goal of publication that I have had in me since I was in middle school. Hurrah!

I am continuing on with my Blizzard tasting quest. Since my last post, I have tried these additional flavors:

Butterfinger: Tastes just like the candy, but I think it is  a little too sweet
Mint Oreo: This is pretty awesome; it reminds me of the Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies
Choco Cherry Love: THE BEST!!! Such profoundly absolute deliciousness cannot elsewhere be found. It is a perfect flavor for the Valentine’s Day season.

My mom recently tried the Midnight  Truffle one and said it was pretty good but could be a little less chocolately. I think that will be the next one on my list! You know what they say: Half a Blizzard a day keeps the blues away!

I actually found this band on YouTube, and I think they are unbelievable! They are called Boyce Avenue, and they do acoustic guitar or piano covers of a wide variety of songs, including alternative, rock, folk, country, and hip hop. I actually think a lot of them are better than the original songs. The dude’s voice is terrific.

Here are a few of my favorites:

This was one of my favorite songs when it originally came out in the ‘90s :-).

Here is some classic Michael Jackson (it’s the Free Willy song!). I think it is super pretty. Go ahead—judge me.

This is a hip hop one, but it is freaking amazing.

I love it all because it is fun to sing to. Check them out on YouTube—you will NOT be disappointed!

I think I have gotten a lot better at taking risks in the last year or so. I think I’m referring mostly to interpersonal risks. Like being more of my real self across as many situations as possible. Saying things that are hard and scary, but need to be said. Being honest about my own fears and flaws. Being my true feelings instead of putting up a mask.

And some interest stuff, like asking friends to accompany me to shows that I like (women’s studies events, poetry readings, etc.) so that I don’t have to do everything I enjoy by myself or, more likely, not at all. Submitting more research to things, even when I am afraid it will get rejected.

And one of the newest ones: I am going to a Writer’s Guild workshop in my city. I read about it in a local town newsletter, and I decided to find out more about  it. The people in the group are probably WAY more advanced in writing  than me, since a lot of them are published, but what the heck. This might be an awesome growth opportunity. It’s for a couple of hours on a Saturday at the public library. The topic is on publishing an autobiography; something I have been wanting to do for a LONG time. It’s already at least half-written. I have a lot of crap to share with the world.

I can’t tell you how good all of this feels. It’s like I am a new person.  A freer person. A happier person. For probably the first time in my entire life, I like myself. Pretty awesome stuff.

<—Me & Greg in our younger days

My last entry was about ice cream blizzards; this time it is about a snow blizzard! We got pounded on Friday night with over a foot of snow. It was quite windy around our apartment complex, so the drifts were colossal. I had a haircut appointment at 8:30 on Saturday morning, but I couldn’t get to my car! There was a wall of snow up to my waist, if not higher, blocking the entire front of our  apartment building. I couldn’t get out the front door. I even tried going out the back door and walking around, but the wall went to the end of the building and then joined up with a gigantic mountain of snow from the grocery store parking lot, and another waist-high drift. Aside from trying to wade through the drift (and then consequently be soaked and freezing from the waist down), there was no way for me to get out. Even our snow shovel was beyond our reach, since it was in the garage along with my car. To make matters worse, a plow came and plowed the drive, but built up a 14-inch wall of snow behind all of the cars in the parking spots so that they couldn’t really get out either.

Needless to say, I had to cancel the appointment.

On the bright side, John and I built a snow fort in the backyard.

Dairy Queen is celebrating 25 years of donating money to some children’s hospital. In honor of this, they currently have a total of 25 Blizzards on the menu. 25 Blizzards!!!  AHHHHH! When I saw that I almost had an aneurysm.

They have them broken down into 4 categories (at least it is this way on the menu of the DQ by us): Cookie Lovers, Candy Lovers, Chocolate Lovers, and Fruit Lovers. They have a lot of new combinations—take the picture above as one example.

I have decided that it might be fun to try all 25 of them (or at least the ones I think I could tolerate; they have a fruit one with coconut and pineapple that is definitely a no thanks). So far, this is what I have:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough: AMAZING
Oreo: A staple when you are feeling like something crunchy, though not my top favorite
Oreo Cookie Jar: Pretty good, but too much cookie. I like them better separately.
M & Ms: A classic “I need chocolate” kind of treat
Cappuccino Heath: AMAZING
Mocha Chip: This tastes like coffee with chocolate chunks in it; I think it would be better without the chocolate chunks
Reeses Peanut Butter Cup: I like it, but it would be better if it were Reeses Pieces! Trust me. I know. That is the perfect cross between this one and M&Ms.

I think I will continue to update as I try more flavors!

P.S.-- I found the menu here: http://fanbook.blizzardfanclub.com/?p=359

I think something is wrong with my new zoom lens :-(. It won’t autofocus. John said he paid like $100 extra to get a lens that would autofocus, and here it is not working. I have only used it like 3 times, and if I remember correctly, it might have worked initially when I first hooked it up, but it hasn’t worked since. I’ve tried all the stuff I am supposed to—making sure the lens is attached correctly, making sure the camera is set to autofocus and not manual, making sure the camera itself works on autofocus with a different lens, etc., but it just won’t focus. It works just fine on manual, but then I end up with a bunch of blurry pictures when the subjects are moving (DUCKS & GEESE!) because I can’t focus it fast enough.  

         
(These were taken from across the entire pond, which was frozen!)

John said we can send it back to get a new one, but it will take like 3 months. But I am hesitant to do this until I am sure it is actually broken and it isn’t something about me. That’s kind of my fear, that I am dumb and just can’t figure it out. I have never used a zoom lens before so this is quite possible. Alan suggested taking it to a camera store and having them look at it, but this also makes me nervous because I feel like I don’t know enough to even have an intelligent conversation with the people there.

John said the other night, “You have to start learning how to do this without your brother around to help.” Blah. Having him around to help sometimes feels like half of the point.

Introducing… my (so-to-speak) famous husband!

A guy from Microsoft emailed John not too long ago and asked if they could feature his professional blog on the official ASP.NET webpage. This webpage is the official online Microsoft community for web developers. They haven’t put his link up there quite yet because they are working on re-doing the website, but I guess they are planning on it.

(This famous Microsoft guy already linked to him at the bottom of this post: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/)

To be honest, I really understand about 1.3256% of what John writes about on the blog. I know he comes up with creative ways to solve problems with website code, or he invents new programs for applications and stuff, and then shares his work and gets comments and ideas from other like-minded developers. That’s pretty much it, and I’m okay with that!

Even if I really don’t understand it and can’t appreciate it as fully as I wish I could, I am happy to see my husband using his talents and getting noticed out in the community :-)