this is too gross.

people are insane.

when i was assisting in a kindergarten classroom, back when i was prepping for a master's degree in education, i became the makeup police. i was so known for confiscating lipstick and eyeshadows from five-year-olds that they would literally apologize when they had to use chapstick. i was fine with that. more than fine with that. no girl in kindergarten should sneak into the class bathroom (complete with tiny lowered mirrors) to apply mascara at snack time. it's insane. it's sad.

i'll acknowledge that i'm coming from the complete opposite of the glamour spectrum, having been raised by a mother who only wore makeup to parties (if at all) and never insisted i needed anything else to be amazing. also: i got my first manicure at 18, when my shameful secret about my virgin nails was discovered by a horrified new college friend, i did my own nails for my wedding, and i don't get people with good skin wearing foundation.

that being said: being a kid is awesome. i desperately miss running around outside like a hellion and not giving two shits what my hair looked like. therefore, i still hold very firmly to my belief that children should be protected from feeling that they need something outside themselves to be accepted. kids have their teenage years to feel like they'll never be good enough - they should at least be carefree when they are legitimately children.

i've gone with kids to get manicures and have no problem with occasional silly pampering. however, instilling in your children when they are practically infants that their appearance is the most important thing about them is pretty disturbing. i've got my fair share of self-esteem issues (thanks, acne!), but i've tried to prevent them in the children i've taught, not perpetuate them.

i can't wait to be the BEST PARENT EVER. haha.

free bird!

finals are over and i'm only working monday-friday (only - with hours like 6:30 am to 5 pm, only is a bit of an understatement), so this means i have a wide-open, stress-free weekend for the first time in three months. this is very exciting. luke and i have plans to hang up all the framed photos that have been kicking around the house since we moved in and to decorate for christmas. due to the dog, and lack of space in our new living room, we've decided to buy a small, potted fir tree, which will be laden with ornaments and placed on the dining table. then, we can plant it in the backyard after the holidays. i used to scoff at my parents when we had our "potted oak tree" christmas trees, and yet here i am, becoming them. it's frightening.

since getting off work at 5, i've eaten my weight in baja with luke, cuddled with the cats, laid on the couch with the dog and caught up on all my websites - essentially, i'm already making the most of my weekend.

shovels, finals, puppies

i am exhausted. like, bone tired. i've been working 10 hour days at the excavation and have developed a new diet craze that will soon take the place of south beach and weight watchers. it is called "dig a hole" and is really fairly simple. just grab a shovel and start digging a massive trench. it's awesome for your shoulders, back, arms and abs. especially when you do it for many hours.

also, tonight i have my osteology final, which will officially herald the end of this quarter. this, of course, no longer means i'll have three weeks to unwind and eat cookies, as i'll be working at the excavation until the end of time, BUT it does mean that i will be done with insane practical exams and gut-wrenching panic attacks at least until w

inter quarter starts.

also also, because luke and i are the king and queen of horrible timing, last weekend we decided to adopt a dog. granted, i am absolutely in love with her and she's amazing, but getting a puppy right before finals and just as i started working a lot and right before luke starts working entirely for himself is a little crazed. it would be safe to say that we're feeling the burn at the moment.

here she is, miss america :)

soooo adorable. and hopefully she'll forgive us for being so crazy all the time.

love you.

one year ago today, i was still engaged, working at a preschool, taking night classes a local community college to get some early childhood education classes and completely directionless. i was also the great-granddaughter of an incredibly amazing woman whose life history would probably read like a fabulous novel. my grandmother was a spectacular example of what one person can accomplish given any odds. also, she was one of the most hysterical people i've ever met and gave me the best gift possible: a close, loving family that gets together not because we have to but because we really want to.

my grandma edna died one year ago today, and it was reflecting on her life and her immense passion for learning and growing and family this past year that inspired me to get my act together and start pursuing the things i truly love in life. so, even though she's gone, she's still making me a better person. thanks, grandma. i love you.

blitz'd

sooo, eventful week!

1) i participated in a project at the coroner's office on sunday, the details of which need not be discussed here for fear my three readers will be horrified and i'll lose my fan base.

2) i've spent the last week working as an excavator at a mortuary excavation, which has been fascinating, exhausting and ultimately, excellent forensic/osteological experience. i've put in at least 7 hours there each day and then had class at night, so this week has been a little bit of a physical assault. however, i'd keep this schedule for months if it meant i was able to continue doing this work. it's amazing.

3) we just got home from thanksgiving at the aunts' house and i have recovered from my primary vomitus gorge stage and am now pleasantly full. i'm also near-sick with exhaustion, so i am going to sleep.

end recap. more tomorrow night after i excavate.

i'm her mom! no...she's not.

when my brother sam and i were kids, we went on countless road trips with our grandparents, and listened to hours upon hours of stephen king books on tape and old radio broadcasts of "the shadow" (who knows, by the way). this early exposure to recorded audio inspired us to tape our own shows, stories and ridiculous news programs. we came up with my absolute favorite in the months before our younger brother clay was born: having just watched an episode of "the magic school bus" in which the bus and everyone in it shrinks to the size of a red blood cell so that they can learn about the human body, we developed a story about how we traveled deep into our pregnant, ravenous mother to find all the things she'd eaten recently (which included, as we discovered in our journey, the hind legs of our family dog). we were insane as children and i love that we have it preserved for eternity on tape.

as technology progressed, and our little brother, now born, started to grow up, we began using our parents' video camera to film our characters, the best of which was the one we created for clay. her name was mrs. marmalade, and she was an elderly british woman who walked with a cane and wore the old, handmade cardigans we inherited from our great-grandparents. after outfitting him with the cardigans and big, floppy hats, we forced our three year old brother to act out story lines like "mrs. marmalade goes to the market," in which she putz'd around for fifteen minutes to find enough coins to buy her butter, mumbling to herself (side note: there is nothing like a tiny boy trying to do an old lady english accent). again, we were insane as children.

all of this would have been perfect fodder for a youtube channel. if i may say so myself, we were hysterical, crazy little performers. we could have been contenders!

but, because we came of age a decade too soon, none of our creative genius exists for the universe to access. that's why i think i love this so much: kittens. i know i just railed against exploiting children on national stages, but i don't think this is exploitative. i would have absolutely loved posting something like this as a kid. so much attention!

that's macerating.

i have officially been a vegetarian since i was 8 years old. i say officially because i'd always hated eating meat, i just wasn't autonomous enough to stop having silent standoffs with my dad over in 'n out burgers until i was in third grade. i also stopped consuming milk, eggs and cheese around the same time, and cultivated a really impressive, robust lie about my lactose-intolerance, which explained why i pulled the cheese off of pizza slices in bowling alleys at birthday parties.

as a kid, i didn't like the taste or texture of most animal products and that's why i hated eating them. i have never claimed to have been so worldly at 7 that it was the eating of animals themselves that skeeved me out (however, as an adult i can say that it was the "muscle-y" texture of meat that was gross, so maybe the animals-as-food issue was subconscious but there nevertheless). that being said, having read many, many books about vegetarianism and the factory farms of today, i can say that i'm very proud of my decision to stop eating meat, regardless of how i came to make it.

so, having been a life-long animal lover and hider of fish sticks (almost always halfway in the kitchen trash, so that no one would be the wiser), i have recently had to make a few sad choices. i'm currently a first-year in a forensic anthropology program, because in college and at the tar pits, i fell in love with the idea of building up the stories of people long dead from what they leave behind (namely, their bones). it's like my own personal religion. it's comforting to know that even if you've been dead for thousands of years, if someone so chooses, they can figure out really detailed facts about your life, such as if you were right or left handed or what foods you ate as you were growing up. afterlife or not, your story never really disappears on earth, and i like that very much.

the sad choices: macerating animals. meaning: helping remove the flesh so that the bones can be cleaned and catalogued and used for comparison, etc. yesterday, i helped* macerate a rabbit, which was both absolutely horrifying and legitimately not as disgusting as one might think it would be, which i realize is a complete contradiction. explanation: it probably wasn't more foul than anything someone might make for dinner - tonight, even. however, for me, as someone who get teary eyed walking by all the animal parts in the meat section of the grocery store, it carried with it a lot of intensity.

i'm not planning on making the deconstruction of animal bodies a hobby. however, i'm glad i did it, simply because i'm gonna see a lot of really upsetting things in the next three years and i'm celebrating any little step to getting over my shock and awe.

*by "helped" i mean that i used a scalpel for approximately six minutes, after which i figured i'd had enough of the "experience" and was done.