Summah Time...And The Livin' Is...?

I love summer.

Really, I do.

Last summer..lying poolside overlooking lake Zurich...beautiful.

Bopping from country to country via sketchy trains..fun!

Lying on the beach in Greece without a care in the world? SIGN ME UP.

Summers here? Busy. Lots to do. Stress filled. Anxiety ridden.

There are definitely good things, there are definitely things I love..but there just never seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done and this summer my patience levels are already running short.

I walked into the house last night and sat down. In the front hallway. I finally crawled (literally) down to my room twenty minutes later. I managed to climb back upstairs and eat something before I lay my head on the table and pretended that I was okay, that I wasn't melting into a ball of exhausted mess. After everyone left, I crawled (again, literally) downstairs and melted into the couch. Where I sat in a zombie like state, half asleep, until I finally crawled (literally) into my bed.

Whoever said 'summertime and the living is easy' never had their busy season during the summertime.

Odd fact though...that songs lyrics are on repeat on my computer right now.

I love Eva Cassidy. And this song...apparently.

Summertime and the living is easy
Fish are jumping and the cotton's high
Your daddys rich and your mamas good looking
So hush little baby, baby, don't you cry

One of these mornings you're gonna rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky
But till that morning there ain't nothing can harm you
With daddy and mommy, mommy standing by

One of these mornings you're gonna rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky
But till that morning there ain't nothing can harm you
With daddy and mommy, mommy standing by
So hush little baby, baby don't you cry

Let's hope these lyrics come true. Let's really hope so. Because we're now eight days (?) into summer...and I'm plum exhausted.

Oh What A Day..

Weather warnings suck.

Tornado warnings suck more.

I just hope that the damage isn't too bad...

So tired, so exhausted...should have been in bed hours ago...but instead am glued to the weather network and am freaking myself out thanks to the ridiculous scare factor of any sort of news station.

BLAH!

Even the dogs are behaving...that's got to mean it's bad.

Getting a good nights sleep while the livlihood of..everything...rests in the balance....so not happening. Fun.

Happily Ever After

Today is my parents 39th wedding anniversary.

I KNOW.

THIRTY NINE?!

How is that even POSSIBLE?

I can't even FATHOM thirty-nine years, let alone being married that long.

I don't have much to say about the subject - except...holy crap...that's basically..crazy.

And since I'm just dumbfounded by the fact that they've been married THAT LONG (and subsequently thinking that I'd better throw them a party/get them an awesome present for NEXT year) I'm just going to go in for the win with a photo post. Including
some sweet oldschool photos.

Enjoy!


Then - A hippie wedding! Thirty-nine years ago today! Is it just me...or does it look like they're twelve and playing dressup?!



Then - Were parents even ever allowed to be this young?!



Then - My parents were so cool..they took pregnancy photos where my dad pretended to have a belly too. Foreshadowing...Maybe...haha! :P (Love you Dad!)




Now - hanging out in the gaudi park in Barcelona when they came to Europe to visit me :)



Now - My parents after we climbed a mountain at dawn in South Africa a couple years ago


So - that's that. Thirty nine years, a pile of adventures and stories, two of the best kids ever (I'm so modest.) and they're still together. I have no idea what else one could possibly ask for :)

Happy anniversary Mom & Dad!

They Say Bad Things Happen For A Reason..

I would like to believe in happiness.

I would like to believe that things happen for a reason.

I would like to believe that the world is a place where lollipops and rainbows flourish.

Unfortuantly, I know better.

I read the news - and dude, shit happens. In a big bad way.

Bombs explode, families mourn, sickness plagues, people lose their way.

And I am an emotional person. Often times, I find myself tearing up...getting upset about things that are so far beyond my reach and scope of normality that they effect me even though I cannot even fathom them.

Sometimes they're things that hit closer to home - and they're just upsetting.

Sometimes I just get upset about things - things that aren't in the news, that aren't huge things that change the entire course of...everything.

But because they're a matter of life and death - and death that could be avoided.

It's difficult for me to understand death - I just don't like it. I like to pretend that it doesn't exist. I play make believe and hide from it. I push it out of my mind and pretend that I don't have to deal with it.

In this case - I don't know the girl...I've never met her...and she lives half way around the world from me...I'm linked to her only from brief snippits of stories and words. A few facebook pictures and the odd little wall post. Nothing really..and yet...I can't help but be sad.

People say that bad things happen for a reason - but most times...it's hard to see past the tip of my nose how there could possibly be a reason for such sad things to happen in the world.

So I'm sad. Sad for a life lost far too young when it didn't have to be this way. Sad for her family that now is missing a part. Sad that this is the reality of life. My heart wishes things were different. That things weren't sad. That things could always be happy. It's true that knowledge is power...but in this case...ignorance would really be bliss...because my heart yearns for days when things weren't complicated and sad and heartbreaking...even though I know now that the world is full of these things...both on huge large earth shattering, news making ways...and in quite simple ways that go unnoticed by the vast majority of the people out there.

Despite this...I have to believe in happiness, in rainbows and sunshine dreams filled with lollipops and dancing frolics...because if I don't...I have no idea what the point of anything is anymore...and that is a more scary reality than anything.

Deception

The other day I came into the house to make myself lunch.

I decided that a grilled cheese would be yummy in my tummy...so I put one on to cook.

After making it golden brown and toasted to perfection...I decided to add a few pickles to the side.

Because despite my utter disgust for cucumbers...who doesn't love a good pickle?

I grabbed a jar of bread and butter pickles and scooped out a few for the side of my plate. And then a few more. I don't think you understand how much I love pickles.

So - There I was. Picture it. In the kitchen...about to sit down at the island and eat a lovely lunch of a grilled cheese sandwich with pickles on the side.

I popped a pickle in my mouth - and suddenly...my brain froze.

Like, literally...froze.

I was so confused I didn't know what to do.

I was eating a bread and butter pickle...but...it tasted like...a dill pickle.

I ate another.

Same thing.

I sat staring at my plate for a good minute.

Then smelled the pickle, tentatively took a nibble..and put it back down on my plate in confusion.

I was a little dumbfounded as to what had happened. I was expecting the sweet, yet still pickly taste to hit my tongue...yet all I got was dill pickle. But it was in the completely wrong shape - and thus...my mouth and my brain were in complete and utter chaos.

Upon inspection of the jar which I had placed back in the fridge...evidentally someone had bought 'dill chips' - which LOOKED exactly like bread and butter pickles - except they used a dill pickle base instead of a bread and butter one.

I know - mind boggling.

I dug around in the fridge for some sort of 'NORMAL' pickle - but came up empty handed.

By this time - my lunch break was almost over..so I went back to my sandwich in despair.

What is a girl to do when her pickle doesn't look like it tastes?

The only thing I could think of was to eat them...because again...WHO DOESN'T LOVE PICKLES? I love dill pickles too..but there was just something...wrong..about these pickles. It wasn't the flavour - that's usually fine. And it wasn't the shape - that's usually fine too.

Rather - it was the combination of THAT flavour and THAT shape of pickle...that left my brain and my senses at a loss - and my puppy happy beyond belief...because he got to eat a whole mouthful of pickles that my brain couldn't process.

Oh pickle deception - I never thought this day would come.

Fool me once...shame on you...

Fool me twice? When it comes to pickles? My brain might implode.

Whatcha Doin' Yo

This morning I was all

GOOGLE - WHATCHA DOIN' YO

Instead of my nice, clean cut pretty simple google that was easy and nice - it was this weird, ugly google that was hard to read and made no sense.

Not cool, google. Not cool.

So I was all...man..I gotta google what the heck is going on the google.

So I did. And they're all changing their homepage. Which is weird.

Have I mentioned that I don't like change?

So I'm was all grumpy because google changed their homepage and it's UGLY.

I wanted to break up with google, because SERIOUSLY - how could they DO this to me? ...But of course I'm too busy/lazy/eh to rise up in rebellion when it comes to these things so I just sit by passively until my brain forgets that change has actually occured and the change becomes the norm and you almost forget what it use to be like (can we say: facebook changes? - I remember the days before pokes, before status updates and before facebook applications - I'm oldschool when it comes to facebook.) Although I haven't necessarily EMBRACED all of the changes that happen, I tend to take them in stride and get use to them and forget how facebook us to work...which is what I assumed I would do with google. This is why I'm bad at relationships. Breaking up is hard to do....haha.

I was still being a grumpy sourface until I noticed the little 'remove background image' at the bottom left hand side of my google homepage.

SAWEEEEEEEET. Let's hide change and pretend it doesn't happen I thought to myself!

Until I realised that I could pick from a variety of pretty photos.

OR I COULD MAKE MY GOOGLE PAGE ONE OF MY OWN.

AND CHANGE IT WHENEVER I WANTED.

You know, LIKE MY DESKTOP.

Then, suddenly...I loved google again.

We weren't broken up anymore. Or we wouldn't be broken up if I had had enough guts/motivation/energy to break up with google in the first place.

And I didn't even have to pretend that there were things about my relationship with google that made me angry - because I was staring at a beautiful picture of my cottage everytime I opened a new tab. Love. Love. LOVE.

Google, please forgive me for my momentary lapse in judgement - I knew you were plain old awesome the whole time...I mean...how else would you have been able to go from being a noun to both a noun AND a verb in so little time? If that's not the definition of awesome - well, I don't know what is.

Face + Palm

I've always been that girl that wanted kids...even though the thought sometimes terrifies me....it's something that I just...want.

That being said - I've been going to some fun old prenatal lessons and they're kinda sorta making me SCARED BEYOND BELIEF to ever even THINK about having children.

So far it's been...tame.

Lessons about baby care. Babies 101. How to hold, bathe, and love your baby. Basically.

Then we learned A LOT about breastfeeding. Not all necessarily things you want to hear after a 12 hour day - but the reality of life and things that you kinda need to know if you're having a baby (but wait - I'm...not....? Hrm.)

EITHER WAY - they're both just warmups.

Because this weeks lesson is entitled 'giving birth - realities of childbirth' - WITH VIDEO.

..and I thought I was scared before.

After tomorrow - we'll...we'll just add an extra r and change it to scarred.

Oi.

..wish me luck - and that I get a seat near the door in case I (the girl with the worlds weakest stomach) has to puke.

I joke - I'm sure I'll be okay...right?