BEDM Day 16 - Some Personal Stuff

On my way home today the song Believer came on the radio.  I recently actually listened to the lyrics and I think that it describes me perfectly at this time in my life.  I've been angry a lot lately.  Angry that life is so stagnant.  Angry that my job thinks I and every other coworker is a slave to the institution and that they think it's okay to ask someone to cover another shift EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  Angry that this isn't where I thought I'd be at this point in my life.  Angry that I haven't taken enough risks or lived enough and am so stuck where I am that I will never get to make any choices to change that.

So the song goes...

I'm just a believer

That things will get better

Some can take it or leave it

But I don't wanna let it go

I'm a little bit sheltered

I'm a little bit scared

I'm a little bit nervous

I'm goin' no where

I'm a little bit jealous

I'm a little bit slow

I'm a little bit hurtful

And I don't wanna let it go

I am mostly an optimistic person and I really do believe that it will get better, whatever IT is.  Life, relationships, jobs, kids, pets, knitting, whatever.  But I also agree that I often don't want to let go of what things I have, even if they are hard difficult soul-crushing things.  I'm not a big lover of change. Sometimes I embrace it whole-heartedly because things are so bad it can only get better and other times I think that things will be really great when they change and they turn out to be worse than it was before.  I've heard that people fear change because they think the change will only ever be worse.  But there's also a quote that "If nothing changes then nothing changes."  Isn't that the greatest fear?  Never growing, never evolving, never developing.  I'm not the same person I was when I was in grade school or even high school.  I'd like to hope I'm a better version of that person.  But I really think that I'm also not as well rounded as I should be.  I heard in a movie once that we should live spherically, in all directions at once.  I feel that maybe my sphere is a bit lopsided.  I'd like to round it back out, hopefully into happiness.

I like the part of the song where the singer's faults are listed.  I'd agree that I'm too sheltered and scared to get out of my comfort zone.  And I'm definitely nervous that I'm going no where.  No where in my job, no where in my life, no where physically.  It seems sometimes that seasons come and go and nothing is new.  People actually ask me, "What's new with you?" and I have to think about it.  Nothing spectacular.  I finished knitting a hat.  I started tomato seedlings.  I finished some great books.  I learned how to make tea properly.  But that's not what they want to know.  They're asking, "What life-changing things have happened to you?"  For me, for probably the last decade, nothing.  I go to work.  I come home. I sleep.  Repeat.  Now we get to the part of the song where the singer is jealous.  I'm jealous about a lot of things.  Aren't we all?  We read blogs and Facebook feeds and emails and texts and we are all at some point jealous of someone else.  And others are jealous of us.  It's a circle that won't ever be broken no matter how happy you are.  But jealousy is the catalyst of change.  It's good that I'm jealous of where someone went on vacation.  Maybe I'd like to go there and never knew it.  Maybe I'm jealous of something someone made.  I could make it.  Maybe I'm jealous of the adorable pictures of their kids always on my news feed.  Time to ask myself the hard questions and do something about it.  I guess as long as the jealousy doesn't eat into my own happiness, only spurs on more of it, it's okay.  And I agree with the singer that I'm a little slow on the uptake of getting this life thing together.  I don't know that I would have been ready at any other time in my life to make the decisions I want to make now.  The ideas weren't fully formed in past-Carrie's thoughts.  She didn't have any passion to move somewhere new or didn't know where she wanted to go.  Living where she'd always lived and working where she saw herself someday working was good enough for her.  It's not good enough for present-Carrie.  And this is where I can be a bit hurtful.  Admitting that you are unhappy to the people you live with and love is hard and it often comes out as hurtful towards them.  That they have somehow caused your unhappiness.  They tell you that you could have gone anytime you wanted, but inside you know that's not completely true.  The guilt would have eaten you away and what you currently have is better than what you might have had if you had gone it alone.  You just want to change and you want them to come along for the ride.  You still don't want to go it alone but you're afraid they won't want to change with you.

There are more lyrics to the song, but these are the ones that are currently resonating strongly with me.  It's made me reassess what I can and can't change.  I know that I need to make money.  As a rational adult I can honestly look at my situation and say that there is no way I could go back to school or do anything else that does not produce a constant income.  I have bills and they have to be paid.  So no matter how much I DESPERATELY would love to move and get a Master's Degree in Clinical Microbiology, it's not exactly feasible.  (Thanks for the email though Melinda.  I would have jumped on a plane the next day if I could have.  It looks AMAZING.)  But I can still have little victories.  I can travel.  I can take on new challenges and goals and make my way towards accomplishing them.  We all get a little lost sometimes, but ultimately I still believe that it will get better.

So here are some of my goals:

Learn how to take amazing photos...

Travel to London...

Have some kids...

And take some time to really think about what I want to do in my career.  I've been in my current job for almost 10 (!) years.  Do I really want to be there 10 years from now?  Do I want to do something else?  This goal is probably the most scary of them all.  It would mean giving up a steady income, health insurance, almost 3 weeks of paid leave every year and a number of other things.  But if I don't look around at my options then I'll only kick myself later.  It doesn't mean it needs to be immediately but I also need to keep my eyes open to the possibilities.

BEDM Day 15 - Still Feeling Poorly

I have officially lost most of my voice.  I went home from work early today to rest it and had Mom stop by the store on the way home to get a humidifier.  I read online that there isn't much a doctor can do, so I'm not going to make an appointment.  At home remedies include drinking more (check), resting your voice (trying to talk less is hard, but working on it) and humidifying the air.  I took a bath to jump start this one and then we'll set up the humidifier tonight and see how it goes.  In the meantime my mind can't think of anything interesting to blog about, so you get a plethora of cute puppy pictures instead.  Enjoy.

BEDM Day 14 - More on Allergies and Things I'm Thankful For

It is a good thing that this isn't a video blog because all of you can still hear me.  Those people who I interact with daily can't.  Yesterday I started to get a dry cough and by the end of the workday I was so tired I couldn't hardly move.  I woke up in the middle of last night drowning in my own sinus drainage and having trouble breathing.  Today I had to teach my student on the bench and with all the talking my voice has left me like Ursula took it for my legs.  I have the really low range so I can talk like a man, but I have nothing from medium to high.  Also about two weeks ago I started having trouble with the vision in my left eye.  It was unable to focus in the distance, like I had suddenly gotten more blind than I already am, and there was a constant smear across it, as if you were looking through a lens that needed cleaning.  I've gone to the eye doctor for that and have steroid eye gel that I get to drop in twice to three times a day.  I also got another prescription of my allergy eye drops and with both of those the vision has gotten much better.  I'm still wearing my glasses constantly but it could be worse.  So in honor of my body falling apart, here are five things I am thankful for.  You never know how much you use them until you don't have them.

1.  My voice.

Apparently I talk A LOT.  Today when the 12 o'clock person came in she said it was creepy because it was so quiet.  I'm loud and I know it, but I didn't know how loud.  Also I found out how much Mom says "What?".  I repeat myself a lot at home and usually at a louder volume for her and without a voice it's just frustratingly pointless.  I've already resorted to charade-like gestures to get my point across.  And I guess she's going to learn how to read lips.

2.  My eyes.

When one of your eyes is out of focus the other eye obviously struggles to make up for it.  Working this weekend with one of my eyes completely out of focus gave me a serious headache.  I wanted to find an eye patch from an old costume to give me a break.  I even had a mind to tape some gauze over it for relief.  I did not resort to either.  Instead I often took my glasses off for close-up work so that both of the eyes were out of focus and working equally hard to make it clear.  It made me feel SO old.  On top of that when I was at the eye doctor he said that I should think about multi-focal lenses.  Which mean basically "bi-focal lenses."  I'm 32.  Bi-focals, REALLY?  Can't I get some trendy reading glasses?  (Which I already did when I was at the bookstore the last time.)

3.  Technology.

Now I'm not a BIG fan of how plugged-in the world is today.  But yesterday I was at a store just checking out a high price item I was going to buy online.  (I'm being ambiguous because it will have it's own post when it comes...)  Well, of course, a friendly associate came up and asked if I needed help.  I said no, Mom said yes.  So I asked him a couple of questions about said item and he couldn't answer most of them.  He asked if I was purchasing it today and I told him it was online (from the same store I was in, I'm not cruel).  He said we could purchase it in-store and I reluctantly agreed.  We went over to a terminal and he searched the website for it.  I couldn't remember the exact package I wanted but we found one that was "close".  Now I'm really picky about my stuff and if I've done the research on something, I want what I looked at and decided on, not something that's "close".  Luckily he said that since it was from a Marketplace vendor and not the store itself, he couldn't order it.  I went home happy.  I'd gotten to play with the item, see it's competition and know that I was getting the better of the two, and leave so that I could go buy what I wanted.  When I got home I hopped on my iPad, found the exact package I had been looking at the day before (which he couldn't find), add everything to my cart, assess the amount I'd be paying leisurely and not under stress to buy more or add insurance, chose 12 month no-interest financing and very nervously clicked purchase.  Thank you technology for allowing me to buy things while sitting in my comfy chair at home in my pajamas.

4.  Honey.

Because of the severeness of the allergy season this year we have been eating local honey to try and curb some of the reactions.  Now I know you are going to say, well I guess that didn't work.  But I haven't been eating it as regularly as I did at the beginning of the month and all these symptoms have come on.  Psychosomatic or not, I don't really care.  It tastes delicious and if allergies are a valid excuse to have a piece of toast with honey on it once a day, I'm gonna take it.

5.  My Mom.

Here's the sappy one.  I really couldn't do all this life thing without someone to help me and be there with me.  My Mom is awesome and I can't tell her enough or express enough gratitude for all that she does for me.  I mean she just put together our lunches for tomorrow.  And she does dishes (which I hate).  Sometimes I can be a real jerk, but she just brushes it off and never takes the bait.  It makes it really hard to fight with her, which is both good and bad.  I asked her what she wanted for Mother's Day and she said, "Nothing" and meant it.  She doesn't see the need of purchasing more stuff on a holiday that should be shown all throughout the year.  But on Mother's Day I did see something at Amazon that was on sale that she'd like.  So I got it with two day shipping and it arrived today.  "Happy Mother's Day!" I said in my pathetic excuse for a voice when the package was on our doorstep.  It was a purple infuser mug like my turquoise one from a couple of posts back.  Now we have two wonderful mugs!

What small things are you thankful for?

BEDM Day 13 - So tired...Must Pin...

I'm pretty exhausted today.  I think partly it's my allergies which have lately caused the vision in my left eye to be out of focus and smudged, like fingerprints on a lens.  Today I was the lucky recipient of a dry hack-y cough and continuous sinus drainage.  Really, it's lovely.  So on my most tired days I usually only have enough energy to turn on my iPad and pin things on Pinterest.  Whenever you guys in my Facebook crew see multiple pins, it's because I'm exhausted.  So here are some of my favorite pins this week...

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

This was the most delicious crisp recipe I have eaten.  We have a very prolific rhubarb plant, which is currently in it's prime, and you can only eat so much pie.  This recipe was easy, quick and delicious; three things that make it a winner.  It's so good we've already made it twice this week.

Mr. Nobley from Austenland

We've established my love of all things Austen and though she didn't write him, she should have.  This is from the movie based on the book Austenland by Shannon Hale.  I read the book last year and LOVED it and promptly bought the sequel Midnight in Austenland, which is pretty darn good too.  Though the movie isn't quite what the book is, it has it's redeeming qualities...like J.J. Fields who plays Henry Nobley.  He's like Jude Law and Tom Hiddleston's all mashed up together (a quote also from Pinterest).  I'd let him follow me home...

Novembernebel Shawl

Someday.  Someday I will finish beautiful shawls like the one above and not just start them and abandon them.  And I will wear them while I walk along the shore barefoot in a gauzy white dress or maybe while I "garden" by walking around perfectly groomed beds of flowers with my cutting basket and gather flowers for my arrangements.  Okay... those things probably won't happen, but I WILL finish a shawl.

Floating Lantern Festival, Honolulu

I love Hawaii and plan on going back again and I hope I can time it so that I can make it to this.  I think it would be gorgeous and moving.

And a funny to end on.

BEDM Day 12 - Monday Means Garden Time

I work in a laboratory at a hospital and laboratories like those work 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week /365 days a year.  The lab is NEVER closed and that means that I get to work weekends.  I'm pretty proud of myself for getting blogs up on both Saturday and Sunday, even though I had to work.  But since I work every other weekend that means I get one day off during the week, which for me happens to be Mondays.  So today is a One-Day-Weekend Monday.  It means laundry, house cleaning, gardening and usually a little bit of laziness (or a lot of laziness based on how busy it was at work that weekend).  In the spring, summer and fall however garden time takes up a lot of time on Mondays.  Today I went out to the vegetable garden to work on the watering system again.  We put in the most wonderful underground PVC system last year, and it's still working well, but last year I had made a boo-boo.  The thread for the entry to the system was supposed to accommodate a small hose to attach the watering system to the irrigation system.  The problem is it turns out I'm not good with male and female ends.  That would be the proper end needed to attach a hose, not a people, but the idea is the same.  Which end goes where?  It turns out I have a male end on my faucet from the irrigation system (most all faucets do) but I put a male end on the entry to the watering system.  Now I'm a big proponent for equal rights for all, but it's kind of difficult getting two male ends together when we're talking about PVC and hoses.  Last year we jury-rigged a hose so that it had two female ends, which meant cutting off one end and replacing the male end with a female one, but that also meant that the fitting was...poor.  We did lots of tweaking and I religiously tightened the screws on the clamps all summer long and made it through.  But at the beginning of this year it was high on my to-do list to fix those entry pipes.  So I came up with an idea for this Mario-style PVC do-hicky that would get the entry to the watering system to line up just-so with the irrigation system and then it would take only one very small hose to get them together.

Tools of the trade.

But, not being a professional with PVC, my measurements were obviously off and they'd need to be almost perfect to get it right.  I am a PRETTY big perfectionist but at some point we all say screw it.  So Mom stopped by a local hardware store (instead of the big chain store where we'd gotten our PVC and had seen all the options available) and they had the most miraculous PVC attachment.

The end is female (hooray!) and it twirls!  Which is the other problem we'd run into.  You see, when you screw on a hose to a stationary object it twirls around (obviously), but when you try to then attach it to another stationary object it becomes impossible.  Something has to give.  This glorious piece of PVC will solve all of my problems.  So today I got to put them on.  First I had to saw off the only crazy attachment we'd put on.

Then I filed down the tops on all the PVC because they were crooked and a flat top makes a better fitting.  Then I used PVC cement to put them on.  I was going to take pictures, but you have to be fast because it kind of "melts" the PVC and you have a limited time before it dries, which is when you want to have your other piece attached, and I was doing this solo.  So you only get before and afters.

With that finished I looked around the garden beds and those that we hadn't turned over yet were growing the nicest crop of weeds you've seen.  So I weeded and in the middle of that Mom came home from the eye doctor's appointment she had (see you also get to schedule as many doctor and dentist visits you can on those Mondays too).  She joined in and we got them cleaned up right quick.

Besides growing weeds there are some real vegetables already growing.  Peas and carrots, onions and radishes and potatoes have all been planted and are eagerly awaiting the return of their water via the new and vastly improved watering system!  (They have to wait 24 hours.  The rules of PVC are simple and finite.)

Toby waiting for Mom to come back.

Gardening hats are required.  A lady shouldn't be too tan.
(Plus I was wearing my glasses and a hat works better than sunglasses.)

After all the hard work you need to relax for a moment.

BEDM Day 11 - A Good Cuppa

Along with my obsession for Jane Austen, I have acquired a love for all things British.  In that vein I decided it was time to see what the whole "tea" thing was about.  I wanted to learn how to make a proper cup of tea.  This desire was so deep that I was having a dream recently and, of course, Tom Hiddleston was there and I could feel myself waking up and I told him, "Wait!  You have to teach me how to make a proper cup of tea!!", and he was laughing at me and I woke up.  I mean, I figure Tom is SO British, he'd be the person to ask.  But being AMERICAN and trying how to learn to make BRITISH tea is quite the research project.  First I perused tea pots.  I wanted to brew loose leaf tea, because let's face it, I'm a lady.  There were a couple on Amazon that looked promising with infusers and everything, but when I was in Seattle lately and found a lovely kitchen store called Mrs. Cook's. They had the most inviting display of lovely teapots I had ever seen.  So I bought this one by London Pottery (cuz with a name like that it can only make the most British of teas) that is the perfect 4 teacup sized pot.  Then I researched tea brands.  I knew that I liked black and green teas and didn't like herbal teas so much.  I found a bunch of teas that came from Britian like Twinings and Taylors of Harrogate.  I also found some blogs that described the quality of different teas and heard about Yorkshire Gold.  I mean, come on, a name that has "Yorkshire" and "Gold" in it has to be top notch.  So through their website I came upon a distributor here in the US.  I ordered my Yorkshire Gold as well as some English Breakfast and Scottish Breakfast tea.  And then I waited.  It took a while and this was good tea so I was patient.  In the mean time I realized I had bought a bit much tea and would need to drink it more regularly to use it up before it went bad.  I couldn't take my teapot to work (I mean I COULD, but let's only let the people at work see part of my crazy) so I then researched mugs with infusers and found this one.  It is lovely and my favorite mug of all time.  I clean her nicely and keep her free from tea stains and she rewards me with a delicious cup every time.  When my tea arrived I was so excited.  But then I had to go away for a week and leave my pot and tea at home, waiting to be used.  In the meantime I was back in Seattle and wandered through Mrs. Cook's again and picked up an adorable little pitcher for milk and a saucy little pot for my sugar.  Because we all know that British tea is made with milk and occasionally sugar (to each their own).  I wasn't sure how I would like my tea, but a good hostess has all the necessities.  And all I ever see my sugar pot doing is this.  Only he has just one arm, so he's sassy.


On Easter Sunday I had the time (and was back home again) to try out my pot.  Since we keep all sorts of clutter I easily found some teacups and saucers and Mum and I sat down to figure out how we like our tea.  First I tried it plain.  Quite good.  Then with a bit of sugar.  Mmm, very good.  Then with a splash of milk.  Oooo, it turned the tea a lovely warm tan color and it was delicious.  I never thought milk in tea would be tasty, but it is, oh man it is.  So, would you like to join me for a cuppa?

First you boil the water.  BOILING hot water is a must.

My wonderful mug.

Two teaspoons of tea.  One for me and one for the mug.

Look, if it's good enough for the Prince of Wales, it's good enough for me.

Boiling hot water poured over the tea.  Timer counting down for 3 minutes.

Put the lid on, silly.

All done!  Lift the infuser out and the lid catches the drips!

I like mine with a bit of sugar.

And a splash of milk.
(Sorry it's not in focus...I was trying to catch the swirls.)

If you want to come over, we can do tea properly!

But today it's just a cup for me!

BEDM Day 10 - Books

Books, books books!  I cannot stop buying books.  Real ones and Kindle ones.  I have stacks of "to read" piles on tables and floors and for every book I finish I buy two more.  (Oooo!  That was rhyme-y!)  It doesn't look like I will ever get successfully through my piles.  My bookshelves get so full that I "unload" the non-rereaders and banish them to the upstairs.  But those shelves have gotten so full that there are a couple of stacks on the stair landing that may be making a permanent home there.  We'll call it scholarly decorating instead of hoarding. :)  In the last couple of years I started keeping track of what I read each year.  It's fun to look back and see how many I get through.  I also started using Goodreads to keep track, which just encourages more books because they suggest them or I find more written by a favorite author.  The monthly Kindle deals from Amazon don't help either.  There are pages of new books on my Kindle and sometimes I look through them and wallow in all the wonderful books I have to read.  So, here are the books I've read so far this year...

Emma by Jane Austen

This was a wonderful Austen starter book.  I have watched the 2009 BBC miniseries so many times I can quote most of the lines word for word and the adaptation was so faithful to the book that reading it was like watching it again.  I love all of Austen's novels but have only enjoyed them as film adaptations.  I thought that this year it was time to actually read some of them.  The language wasn't as hard to conquer as I remember and it kept me reading to get to my next favorite part.  All in all I loved it.

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

I tried to read this after Emma and it just felt flat.  None of the characters seemed to have any depth and it had been quite a while since I'd read Beautiful Creatures.  Maybe another time I'll be able to get into it, but it ended up going back on to my Kindle shelf.

The Golem and The Jinni by Helene Wecker

This book was fantastic.  Every character had such a deep backstory that you wanted to hear more.  She did a great job of giving her main characters plenty of time in the story but still gave you enough of the secondary characters to keep it interesting.  I love how she tied up her story at the end and left it open enough to feel that the lives of the characters continued on after you closed your book.  I read in the Q&A at the end of the book that she had lots of short stories that she never could develop into a whole novel and you can tell that that's how each of her characters became so multi-faceted.  It's refreshing to read a book where you can tell the author loves each of the characters dearly.  It made me want to start writing short stories about ideas that I have for books.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Since I'd read Emma I'd wanted badly to go back to more Austen.  So of course the next obvious choice was P&P.  I'd started it when I was in high school but couldn't get through the language then.  When people asked why I was reading it again and I had to tell them I hadn't read it before, only watched the film and mini-series, I felt a bit embarrassed.  To be into everything Austen and not read Pride and Prejudice was a sin tantamount to none other.  But I can officially say I've read it!  And loved it!  Mr. Darcy is so much more in the books than anyone can portray.  I really do love Mr. Darcy!

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

This is the book I'm currently reading and so far it's pretty awesome.  I enjoy the snappy intellectual conversation between the characters, it makes me feel like I'm watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  But I know a book about cancer kids can't end well so I've got the box of Kleenex ready for the end.  Wish me luck...