Lola

I have this sweet ride I call Lola.  She's a Honda Metro that I have had since 2007 and I used to ride her all the time until I got attacked by a deer in 2009 while riding her home one night (yes it's okay to laugh, everyone does, I mean that just sounds funny to be hit by a deer).

It was a Sunday evening in October and the sun had been down for hours it seemed in gray Corvallis.  My little scooter doesn't always go the speed limit because she's got such a small engine and I was going down a small hill thinking to myself, "I wonder if I'm going the speed limit?"  I looked down, and sure enough, I was!  I starting congratulating Lola on her ability to go so fast when I saw out of the corner of my eye, the flash a set of eyes running at me.  I remember thinking that I had been hit, but I don't remember the impact.  I don't remember letting go.  I don't remember hitting the pavement.  I do remember rolling on the asphalt, not knowing which way was up.  I remember hearing the scrapping of Lola, my helmet and not being able to control my movement as I felt my body being bashed from every angle.  I kept asking myself when I was going to stop rolling because there was so much momentum, I just kept going round and round.

When I finally stopped, I couldn't feel anything.  I stood up to see if the deer was okay and my left leg gave out from under me.  I figured that was why I had two legs and began to drag my dysfunctional leg behind as I limped to the dying deer.  I had made it only a few steps when I heard a voice screaming across the street for me to sit down.  "Oh, right.  I could be hurt," I thought.  I decided to sit down on the sidewalk while she talked to the police and within seconds I was being strapped and duct-taped into a stretcher and being rushed to the hospital.  I was mostly just bruised and bumped.  Nothing broken.  I was able to hobble away that night, only having to deal with the massive swelling from being thrashed around between the asphalt, Lola and the deer.  The only thing I have to show for it today are the scratches on Lola's paint and a small divot in my left shin that is barely noticeable.

It took me six months to get back on and still, to this day I can't ride in the dark because everything looks a like deer out to get me.  The glint of a trash can or mailbox is enough to keep me inside as soon as the sun goes down.  This is not a problem during the summer in Oregon, but the rest of the year, I live in a world of gray.  There is no sun.  This means that she doesn't get out very often and she suffers from neglect.

Exhibit A: she gets left out in the snow.

Exhibit B: She resists starting because it's been so long since I have taken her for a ride.

I am not planing on taking Lola to CA with me because I don't think I will be able to ride her much while down there and I have no way to get her there.  I found her keys the other day in storage so I decide I should ride her over to the Honda shop to have her serviced for storage.  The only problem is that I have no idea where my helmet is.  I could just borrow someone else's helmet to ride her there.  But then I thought about the nasty weather we have been having and then I would need to also borrow a jacket and gloves and that was starting to sound ridiculous.  I should just have someone ride her there for me and I could follow behind in my car.  But whom to ask?  I thought of all the people that I knew with bikes, who would be cool enough to ride a pink one, and who wasn't gone for spring break.  The answer was Jimmy.

Little did I know that she was going to put up a fight.  She was not happy that it had been so long since I'd given her any attention and did not want to go.  We coaxed her along a for bit till she had warmed up enough to keep chuggen along and then Jimmy hoped on and drove away.

Well, kinda cuz it only she only went a few feet before she stopped.

My friend was a little shaken by his near death experience (not really) when she decided not to go anymore.  He's tough though, so it was okay.

We walked her across the street and began calling to see if there was someone who had a truck that would be able to help us in the middle of the day.  Turns out that people with trucks are harder to track down then people with motorcycles.  After spending lots of time on the phone and hoping that Lola would decided she'd been enough of a stinker for the day and would decided cooperate, she decided to work!

 Just to check, Jimmy rode her around the parking lot.  She seemed to be working fine.

So, off he rode.

And I followed behind. We made it there safely!  I should probably try to get over my fear of deer so that embarrassing things like this don't happen anymore.  But I wont have to deal with the until September when it is time to move to wherever the military sends us.  So... I wont tackle that fear until later.  In the mean time, I'm glad to have friends that have my back.

Nearly Normal

My favorite place to eat in Corvallis is Nearly Normals.  So, I had to go there this Tuesday for my last ever Nearly Nasty Burrito.  Karyn and I used to go here every week so that we could eat great food and catch up, when we didn't get to see each other so often as we do now.  So of course I had to bring her along.  She wasn't hard to convince.

I not only love their food, but the atmosphere is wonderful too.

And there are pink flamingos everywhere

It's just fun all around

But of course, the best part is the food.  

I'm so excited to eat my amazing Nearly Nasty Burrito from Nearly Normals!

It is sooo good! 

If you are ever on the OSU campus I highly recommend walking across the street to Nearly Normals, particularly if it is a Tuesday, because then you get half off my favorite dish.  I'm going to miss your hippy food Corvallis! 

Military ID

I got so lost trying to drive to Salem to get my military ID.  I wrote down directions there and back and looked at the google map before I left so that I would be able to eliminate getting lost.  I'm directionally challenged and very aware of that imperfection.  I decided to take one way there and another back so that I could stop by a friends place on the way there, but it was a little fast the other way, so I'd take that route home.  I have no idea what I did wrong, but I followed those directions and got so lost.  At one point, the street I was looking for just didn't exist.  I thought that I might have just missed it, so I went back a ways and started over.  It wasn't there, so I must have not gone far enough.  That was it, I just didn't go far enough.  No.  No it wasn't it.  I don't think there is a street in Salem or the surrounding area that I didn't travel though.  I tried to call some friends in the hopes that they would be near a computer and be able to tell me where I was and how to get to where I was going, but I called all the people that didn't answer their phones or didn't have internet access.

I thought about just going home and trying again later --- then I had a thought.  I'd try to find it from the reverse, going home directions.  And, somehow that worked!  I dunno how it did, because I was so lost, but I did it.  I'm so glad I randomly decided to take one way there and another back!  When I found it though, my heart sunk a little as I saw how scary this place looked.  And now that I'm looking at these photos it doesn't look nearly as bad as my mind thought it was.  But in my head, I'd been driving all over the place lost and confused and then I saw this large building surrounded by a massive spiked fence and it did not look welcoming.

And then there was a guard that stopped me and asked for identification and why I was there.  I felt so small and like I must be in the wrong place.  Is this really where they send people to pick up a card that says they are married to someone in the military? He was very nice though and told me exactly where to drive, park and even what room number I would need to get my ID.

Then I drove past big Army truck things that seem really out of place for normal life.  This whole military thing is obviously going to take some getting used to for me.

So I park in front of this big building being guarded by intense fences and a security guard.

And I walk into this large, sterile hallway.  There are doors lining the walls that all say things that I don't understand.  I'm thinking immediately to myself that I'm really glad that that security guard told me exactly where to go because there was no one in that large hallway to ask and I would totally be the awkward person that would walk into a room that I wasn't cleared to enter and get escorted out of the building.

It took only minutes in the the Deer's Office to fill out the paper work, take a horrible photo and then walk out with a card in hand.

And then as I was walking back out in that large empty hallway, I noticed something funny.

Did you see it?

Hehe, okay, I promise I wont.  I didn't know that fountain spiting was an issue.  I thought that was hilarious.  When I see a water fountain, I think, "Oh, a place to get a drink!" not, "Oh a place to spit!"  But I guess I could be a little strange.  I was home schooled after all.

I can now enter government facilities and get military discounts.  But I don't know where to get discounts so that part doesn't really help right yet.  I can however get onto base to see Nathan's graduation next month!  And that is exciting!

First letter!

I got my first letter from Nathan this weekend!  I love my letter.  It is so nice to be able to relax, sit down to read and not feel pressured to fit as much conversation into 15 minutes as humanly possible.  It's like those old cell phone commercials where they used to talk really quickly into their phones to avoid paying overage fees.  Also, I can read his letters over and over again, and you can't do that with a phone call.  Although, I would never deny the opportunity to hear his voice, it's nice to have this as well.  It helps on those in between days.

He's my favorite.  I love that he still calls me wife as a pet name.  Like calling me his wife hasn't lost any of its excitement during our marriage so far.

He told me about how he got in trouble a lot at the beginning for lots of small things.  After they had been taught how to clean and organize their dorm, they had an inspection and Nathan said that he, "probably had 25 things wrong."  But in his last inspection he  only had 3 things wrong and one was that he had his toothbrush turned the wrong way.  That made him pretty happy for a while.

He says that he's having fun, growing and learning.  It's hard and he's getting more excited about his future in the service.  I am so proud of my husband!

Of course there were sweet things about how much he loves and misses me that just melted my heart, but I wont make you read about the mushyness.  I will say however that I am very lucky to have him!

More Then I'd Hoped For

I finished up my college career this last Friday.  I was so afraid that the combo of Nathan being gone, the stress of the flood, and the pressure of my looming graduation, would result in me having to take at least one class over again.  I had gotten the grades back for all the classes I was afraid of passing, then the grades from the classes I needed extensions in.  All that was left was the random class I decided at the beginning of the term was something I didn't want to leave Oregon State University without learning about.  It was a class outside my normal realm of education, but I thought that it would help complete my agriculture experience.  Even though I knew that this class was going to make me work and that the classes in the crop and soil science department were hard core, I really wanted to learn about crop production.  I loved learning about crop rotations, how different the management is for each crop and how farmers have been able to become so much more efficient and sustainable in the last 20 years.  (This video is a fun way to see how brilliant our farmers are!)

But, I wasn't going to be battling senioritus like I thought I was, to get a good grade in this class.  I got something much bigger.  I went into that final having studied as much as I could, considering what was sucking away all my time (er-cough-flood-eck-hem).  I was not nearly so confident on that final as I was on the midterm and that freaked me out.  I need to know that I have all the material down forwards and backwards, otherwise, my confidence goes down the drain and my test scores drop.  When I turned in my test, I knew that I was unsure about some of the answers... like, how I couldn't remember the latin name for a potato to save my life, so I made something up... something that I know hardly resembled what it should have been, but I couldn't figure out what it was suppose to be.  I could remember that in Europe, they call alfalfa, lucerne, but I could not remember the name for a potato! Urg!

This was the test that I was most worried about and it was the last grade that I got back.  I have been so anxious to see if this class was going to stand in-between me and graduation.  All I needed was to do score well enough to get a C.  C's get degrees and that's all I really want.  Just a degree please.  When I logged on today to see my final scores... there it was, Intro to Crop Production, on the left hand side of the screen.  I squinted my eyes and shrinked away from my computer as I slowly scanned across the screen to see the letter grade that was sitting next to it.  I kept saying in my head, "please be a C, please be a C, please let me pass." And this is what I saw:

Not a C but a B-!  Oh my!  I did it!  Not only did I do it, but I did better than it!  I didn't have a single C in the whole bunch!  I felt like an over achiever or something!  What was I so worried about?  Of course I didn't have to worry about failing.  I work hard.  Silly me.

I've got to say that if I was going to give anyone advise when starting their college career, it would be to work extra hard at the beginning of your classes so that when the end comes and it's time to turn in those term papers and take those finals, you've pretty much got it in the bag.  Going into that last week made me so glad that I didn't slack off during the term.  I had all A's and B's in my classes and I was sure that my finals would bring those down with all the drama that had happened --- and they did, but not by much.  I am so HAPPY!  I did it.

I am a college graduate.

I Wear Blue Pumps When it Snows

My wardrobe right now is comical.  I'm prancing around in my jeans and high heals because all my semi practical shoes have surrendered the ghost (to the germs of sewer water) and are no longer with us... I miss them so much.  There are definitely benefits to wearing heals all day and dealing with the sore feet by the end of the day.  I have never had such great customer service, nor had nearly so many doors held open for me, people offering me to walk first through a walkway or elevator door.  I even got discounted Jamba even though I seem to go there all time (to treat myself) since Nathan has been gone and I have never gotten the rock star treatment before.  I walk through a room and everyone seems to send this vibe like I must have my life together... haha, if they only know that I was wearing my super cute heals to walk around campus and run errands because I didn't have any other shoes to wear!  My luck didn't last very long though.  Corvallis decided that since it's the first week of spring, that a snow day would be in order.  I got to wear my teal, swede pumps all day in the snow.  Some people looked at me like I must be the most stupid, vain person to be wearing those shoes and others gave me props for having the skills to walk in heals in snow (without killing myself).  I'm glad I have been spending lots of hours practicing my rhumba dancing because that totally prepared me for heals, balance and the much needed core strength to stay upright.

My feet this morning.....

And this evening...

I'm laughing now just thinking about doing this all over again tomorrow. hahaha... oh my :(

Working with Exotic Birds

When I realized how long I would be without Nathan, I started looking to find ways to fill my time after graduation.  I knew that I would have plenty to do the first few weeks he was gone, with my finals and term papers due (little did I know how busy I would actually be), but I knew the second I took that last final, I would have no homework to keep me busy and I wouldn't have a job because it is a student position at the Oregon State University Seed Laboratory... so we decided I should move back down to sunny California so that I could be around my family and get a chance to enjoy the sunshine (I also have plans to steal a cute baby that belongs to one of my besties down there... at least while he's happy and smells good, if he's not, I will hand him back to his mother gladly).  I also started applying for volunteer positions, mostly ones working with animals or on local conservation efforts and I heard back from one that I'm particularly excited about... I get to work with exotic birds!  I found them through volunteermatch.org and was offered a position to come help!  I replied to their email very enthusiastic about working with them and then I didn't hear anything back for a while.  I started to fear that I scared em off or that maybe they lost my contact information.  I remedied that problem by sending a beautiful cover letter and resume to them through snail mail and they called me today to say that they got it and that they think that I would be a great match and they are excited to met me!

How amazing is that?  I've been learning a lot about conservation and have always been fascinated with birds (even though in an agricultural college all of my bird knowledge is about chickens).  I'm soooo excited about this learning opportunity!

I'm hoping that they will let me tell about my adventures here on my blog.... I have a meeting with them April 3rd to discuss the details!  Fingers crossed that it will go well!

Check em out!  http://pandemoniumaviaries.org/

Nathan's Second Phone Call!

I just heard from Nathan!  I was so sad yesterday thinking that we had missed the opportunity to talk to each other and would have to go another whole week till the opportunity came round again.  He said that he didn't know why they didn't get to call yesterday because they definitely had the time to do it, but he will still be able to call next Sunday... so that's kind like two phone calls in one week :) 

So our 15min. phone call went something like this:

He got his job list this last week.  When you're given a job in the Airforce, you don't know where you will be going till you've gone through a good chunk of boot camp.  He got his list of possible places to go to (which is just about everywhere when your job is to be the Geek Squad for the Air Force) and wrote down his list of top places to go to, in the hopes that we could go to one of those places (they have to send you where you are needed, but like to let you think that you can actually pick where).  I had already instructed Nathan on how to rank the places to go to; first to go outside the country in europe, then warm places outside the country and then every base in California, and then the US coastlines, and then (very last) the places in the middle of the country (I've got too much California girl in me to go too far away from the coast).  

So number one on the list is a base in Germany, second is Italy, and third is Japan!  Then we've got all the Cali ones and then a random Florida one too.  I'm getting very excited for our coming adventures! 

After he went though the list and apologized for picking the place in Japan that gets around negative 40 in the winter rather then the one that was warmer, and after saying sorry for picking a base in florida on in the list of state side bases, rather then one that was closer to family... he paused for about half a second and then told me to ask him questions because he couldn't think of anything to say and he only had 15 minutes, so we have to get it all out quickly as we can.... He hadn't heard about the flooding yet.  I gave him the readers digest version, told him what was damaged, how we had so much help and that the next pile of letters he's gonna get from me will be me freaking out about the flood.  He was very happy to hear that we had so many people taking care of me and felt bad that I had to deal with that on my own. 

Nathan told me that he probably wasn't going to get a six pack while at boot camp.  This is a big deal because Nathan and I have a deal.  Currently we do not own a television of any sort.  Nathan dreams of having a 50 inch TV and I think that 50 inches is a ridiculous amount of TV to put in a room.  So, we made this deal: he gets a 6 pack and he can get a TV.  I get something, and he gets something... that way we both are happy.  And honestly, I thought that this would be a good way to never have a ridiculously huge TV in my home.  So although he says that he's definitely getting stronger down there, he says that it looks the same.... and he's going to get the 50 incher when he's done with boot camp anyways.  I tried to put the breaks on a tell him no, but how do you say no to a guy who's in boot camp?  My brain was telling me to put him in his place and make him take up his end of the bargain, but my heart was telling me to take the bullet and let him get his gnarly giant TV.  He then told me (knowing exactly what I was going through my head) even if I said no, he'd leave one day and just come back with it.  I had to laugh and let him know he could have it... reluctantly. Oh, I can't believe I'm going to have to learn to live with a beast that size in my house.... I can already feel the regret from that moment of weakness.  Oh well, at least I wont have to stop at the electronic section every time we go to Target just so that he can stare at them darn TV's for a while. 

He's been doing a pretty good job staying out of trouble.  He said that he finally learned how to make his bed!  He's been getting marked down for lots of little things like a brush being turned the wrong way or making his bed exactly right and that he's gotten the hang of that now.  Because he is in a special forces squadron, they train much harder then everyone else and he says that they always run 5 miles more then everyone else and their workouts are much more intense in general.  I asked him if doing P90X helped to make him more prepared for the physical side of boot camp and I got a big fat, "NO, it did not."  And he was always so proud of himself when he came back from working out and was all swole... P90X has nothing on bootcamp. 

Even though everything has been the pits lately, it's so good to hear from him.  We make each other laugh and everything just seems so much better with him.  I've got sunshine in my world again being able to just spend 15 minutes on the phone with him.  I love my husband so much! 

Word of The Year

Back in January, I was stalking one of my favorite blogs, The Lettered Cottage, and read about her "word of the year."  It is apparently the new New Years Resolution.  You pick a word to create inspiration and give you focus for the year.  I love words, so I thought I'd pick a word that could inspire me this year.  I thought and I thought and nothing seemed to fit.  I decided that I was trying too hard felt that it might be better to let the word find me.  The word that eventually came to me was a little strange, IMPERFECTION.

Every so often a person feels like they need to reinvent themselves, and this year, knowing that graduation from college was just around the corner and I'd be entering the real world, it seemed like a good time to create a new me.  I wanted to be more bold, to accept all my imperfections, to have style, and fly by the seat of my pants into this new adventure in the real world.  I knew that I would be making a lot of new adjustments this year and that I would need to be my strongest self to survive all those changes.  It may seem strange to focus on Imperfection when I want to build myself up, but I knew that I would have to accept all my imperfections to be able to be my strongest.

I remember sitting on my parents bed where my mom and I had many heart to heart conversations and complaining to her about my lack of grace.  I did not like that being a klutz came so easily to me and I tried ever so hard to cover up that imperfection around my friends.  She told me, "Oh honey, you're going to have to learn how to embrace that.  You can not escape it; being a ditz is in your blood."  She taught me so much about just being yourself and I don't think the weight of her words had really sunk in until recently.

I think I have even done a fairly good job accepting Imperfection in my life.  This term in school I decided to take a ballroom latin technique class.  I love this class and feel like I severely lack the grace or passion to correctly perform the rhumba or paso doble, but I love it.  We have a small set of bleachers in the gym where we have class that everyone puts their backpacks on and it's where we all sit on to put on our dance shoes.  Being the genius that I am, I sit at the top of them because it's a little crowded with all the smart people at the bottom.  I strap on my shoes and begin my decent down the bleachers as I realize that I am in heals and my center of balance has been completely thrown off and I am beginning to topple forward.  I try to catch myself on the next step and right myself, to only falter again on the step after that and repeat the cycle till I reach the bottom and I stagger on the floor trying not to run over people in my path.  The whole room is looking at me like I must be my first day walking upright and I can feel the blush that is spreading across my face as I try to stand up straight and look like a normal person.  I was so embarrassed, but I took a little bow to let them know I was alright and then proceeded to talk to my friends like what I did was totally normal.  And well, honestly, for me that was normal.  I'm a mess and I'm totally okay with it, people know that I am not perfect and that's how it should be.

Layla, over at The Lettered Cottage, recommended doing a craft each month to help bring you that focus each month on your word.  I decided that I couldn't do one every month, but I could do something to help remind me of this word.  I decided that since I love to doodle and I can squeeze in time to do that here and there while waiting for a class to start, or while on hold on the phone that I would just do a little art project.  I slowly decorated the cover of my day planner so that I would see my word every day and be reminded of my goal to accept my Imperfections.  I recently ran out of white space, so now it's time to share it and start a new project.

Everything is in Storage

This Saturday I had some of the most wonderful people come to help me clean all my things, put them into boxes and move them into a storage unit.  We got an entire apartment that had been seeped in sewer water cleaned and packed in less than one day.  I am so impressed!  This has been so hard to do without Nathan here with me or even being able to talk to him about what has been going on, but having such a great support system has helped out immensely with my sanity.  I feel so blessed to know such wonderful people!

The Relief Society started coming over at 9am to clean and pack everything.  They all were moving so fast I couldn't get a good photo of them with my camera phone.  They were amazing. 

They were done around noon and then the Elders Quorum came over and put all my boxes and furniture into their trucks and trailers and moved almost everything on the first trip! 

It's so nice to know that as a Mormon, you have this wonderful ward family that is able to help at a moments notice. 

They piled everything up for me.

Even used their coats and sweatshirts to dry off my stuff that got wet on the rainy drive over. 

They made this very full garage go from full... to this, in minutes. 

And this sun room went from filled to empty faster then I could believe! 

And I have to say an extra thank you to Marie Campbell, because she was the first one there at 9am and she was the last one to leave at 3pm.  She was more thorough then I could have ever been, even if I wasn't stressed out.  If you are ever in trouble, she's will know the plan of action.  She's my hero for the weekend!

Thank you so much to everyone that was able to help me recover from the water damage, everyone that kept me in your prayers and the people that helped to feed me (Lauren Moholt, Erika Shultz, and The Elton Family).  I really do feel blessed!  Having such wonderful people like you in my life has made this horrible week so much better then it could have been!  Thank you, Thank you, Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

My Karyn Friend

Yesterday my wonderful friend Karyn took all my clothes and blankets and such to the Laundromat along with my change bucket (if you don't have a rainy-day-change-bucket, I'd highly recommend having one, I can't tell you how many times I've been saved by the change in this bucket). 

She filled up 10 washers with my dirty things and used up all the quarters on the first round of washing, plus a lot more to to finish the job.  To tell which washers were ours, she put a penny on each one with our things in it.

I think that everyone should get a besty named Karyn.  They are very helpful especially when you really need that extra effort.

She even dried all my laundry while I was in class.

I love my Karyn Friend.  She is so wonderful!