Resurrection

Well, Hello…

After a year-long hiatus I have finally returned to the world of blogging.  And by “returned” I mean I am posting today and may or may not ever post again.  I just have finally become wise enough to not make promises about my commitment to this whole thing.

I’m just imagining the look on people’s faces when they see that my blog has been updated.  Most will probably think that the internets have broken down or something.

So, what’s been happening lately? Lots of life.  The school year is finished and summer is here.  I’m re-teaching myself to play guitar (because I apparently remember shamefully little from my previous lessons) so I can teach guitar lessons at school in the fall.  I’m trying to get my choir room in order, set up curriculum, and my college roommate Alison just got married.

Obviously, I am very busy and important.  I hope to write again sometime in this life… but again, no promises.

Marching Right Along

Well.

(I’m guessing that’s not a long enough to be considered a complete post)

I promise I didn’t forget I have a blog… I only forgot what it looks like.

Actually, anytime I would come to check on my blog roll I would scroll down far enough to see the “Little Mermaid” picture and, without fail, the orange hair would stress me out.  It’s safe to guess that this post is merely a way of getting that picture out of my daily routine.

In case you all have forgotten to check your calendars lately, it’s March.  March!  Yikes.

Anyway, as a way of jumping back into the habit of blogging I am going to share five favorites from my life right now.

 

 

Five Favorites:

1. Boots Moisturizer

So perfect for my sad winter skin.  It goes on thick enough that you feel it making a difference, but is NEVER greasy.  A miracle in a bottle. Seriously.

We should probably just add all Boots products my list of favorites.

 

2. Adele’s new album ‘21’

Love Adele.  LOVE.  Love.

 

3. My Target Sunglasses.

They save my eyesight on a daily basis, now that the sun is staying out longer.

 

4. My BlackBerry charger. 

My phone dies nearly everyday.  Everyday. And it’s not because I’m gibbering away on it 24/7, it’s just because it hates me.

 

5. My Kindle.

Oh, my Kindle.  I can’t even begin to describe to you all the ways it has changed my life.  Let’s just say, in the interest of time, it’s changed my life in a lot of ways.

 

**Bonus Thing I Love: My return to blogging. 

 

Let’s hope I can break the 2011 curse and blog more than once this month!

Shocking AND Embarrassing

That title should be my new nickname.

I absolutely cannot believe I’ve gone almost two whole months without posting.  The problem is I went one week without posting and got really overwhelmed with all of the important things I should have written about and didn’t.  Then one week turned into two and my embarrassment doubled and then it had been a month and then it was December 13th.  Yikes. 

The above paragraph gives you a sad little look into my life.  Being a procrastinator and a perfectionist is really hard on me.  And, apparently, on you my reader(s).

So, I’d now like to very quickly update you on the past two months of my life in a very short list.

1. I took a little trip to visit my friends Sarah and Justin in Longview and got to enjoy some beautiful weather and fun times with friends.  Our friend Miranda also came over and we built a fire, made a craft project and ate some bruschetta that, I think it’s safe to say, changed my life.

I think it’s also safe to say we had ourselves a mighty good time.

 

2. I helped with our children’s choir’s Stomp performance.  If I never have to hear another bucket being thumped on with a wooden stick it’ll be too soon for my sanity’s sake.  I also sang with the adult choir in a Christmas performance.  It’s been fun to sing in a choir again after all these years.

3. My BFF Chelsea and I and our families attended our alma mater’s playoff football game.  It was fascinating.  Our team lost but it was really fun to have a family outing.

4. I got my craft on.  Hard core.  I made three wreaths this year for Christmas and a “Gratitude Tree” for Thanksgiving.  My poor little fingers have never recovered from all the hot glue.  I made an ornament wreath, a coffee filter wreath and a lima bean wreath.  And I got to lose all the feeling in my index fingers.

The Lima Bean Wreath in the middle of production

5. I had a birthday.  It was actually a pretty fun day.  A bunch of my students sang happy birthday to me and I had a great dinner with my family, plus we got to drive around and look at the Christmas lights.  Not a bad way to spend a birthday.

I probably would have included even more anecdotes if I had remembered to write for the past few months.  I’m feeling like I need to have a goal for my next post, so I’ve decided that I’m taking requests.  Let me know if you have any questions or would like to hear a retelling of a specific story and I’ll get right on top of that.  And I promise that by “right on top of it” I don’t mean two months later.

 

I’ve missed you, internets.  -C

The First Post Of Many Where I Blame Everything On The Heat

So, I’ve been a bit out of the blog loop here lately.  I don’t really know how to explain it except to say, it’s been 1,000 degrees here and I’m homeless and I have nothing exciting to write about (unless you consider being homeless an exciting thing to blog about).  One week off quickly became two and then, here we are, three weeks later and I have fallen so far off the blogging band wagon that I can’t even see the wagon anymore.

I have a few posts “in production” that I never finished and I was starting to wonder if they would still be relevant and interesting all these weeks after I wrote them, but then I checked Katy’s blog and was deeply inspired.  She did a whopping 7 posts in one day and put me to shame.  So, get excited, because I’m sure you have all been wondering what precisely I was doing on May 29th and now you get to find out.

What do you think it is about the summer that makes blogging so hard?  I’m inclined to blame the 1,000 degree heat, but since the heat is my perpetual whipping boy this time of year, maybe it’s unkind to blame it for my procrastination too.  All I know is that I’m planning on spending the next two months in an ice bath and I’ll be sure to blog all about it.

The Miracle Worker

Last night, my friend Meredith took matters into her own hands and made something beautiful happen.  She (once again) fixed my blog.  It amazes that Meredith always knows exactly what my blog needs even when I don’t.  It’s a good thing Mere did the redesign for me, because anytime I try to design a new blog header, I end up cursing the day computers were invented and taking my anger to Twitter to bore anyone there who’ll listen.  And quite frankly, I don’t need all the drama in my life (especially when said drama is coming from an inanimate object).  Anyway, thanks Meredith! I love it.

So, You Think You Can Blog…

Y’all.  It’s finally happened. 

It only took a year and two months but I am officially blogxhausted.

I have nothing interesting to write about or say, so I decided to do a little brainstorming and came up with nothing.  Then I decided to go through all my old facebook photos in hopes of coming up with an entertaining anecdote and all that did was waste an hour of my time.  I stopped myself before I went through old wall posts.  Facebook is such a wonderful and convenient research tool, it makes me really thankful that I went to Graduate school just to learn that databases will get you nowhere, but facebook succeeds every time.

When people find out I have a blog they usually ask me two questions:

1. “Why?”

Haha!  It’s totally understandable, why do you blog?  Who wants all their thoughts out there in the public domain?  Most women who blog are “Mommy Bloggers” women who want to keep a record of their everyday family lives or important milestones.  In case you haven’t noticed, I have no children and the only milestones I keep track of are whether or not I’ve hit any exceptional sales that week.  There are also people who blog about home decorating, fashion, weddings, sports and politics.  But, since I excel at none of those things I have a blog about nothing.  Thus, making me the Seinfeld of the blogging world.  Basically, I blog because I’ve always enjoyed writing (minus the constraints that language arts can put on a girl) and because I have some thoughts on some things that I figure other people might be interested in.  As odd as it sounds I’ve felt like blogging has become a way for me to praise God for the little moments in my life that I may not have recognized in the past.

2. “How do you do it?”

Most people are also curious about how I write so often, which is slightly mortifying considering I only blogged 3 days last week.  I know it’s shocking, what with my pressing social calendar, but I try and set aside some time to try and write each night.  The main thing that keeps me writing is my need to please people (if that comes as a surprise to you then you must be new here.  Hi!  My name is Crystal and I am a people pleaser.).  I realize that’s slightly unusual to try to blog for my 3 readers since I speak to each of those 3 readers on a daily basis, but it’s my cross to bear.

And now after posting all about my blogging success I’ll be lucky if any of you have survived the boredom to make it to the end of this post.

Wandering On The Road To Nowhere

I have been awful tired this week and between that and an absence of post-worthy material in my life the blogging thing has felt a little impossible. 

BUT.  Then I was reading my friend Morgan’s blog and she just had a baby 7 days ago and has blogged almost every day since then.  So, I figure if she can do it then she is much better at multi-tasking than I am, and also I figured I might as well squeak out another post this week.  Unfortunately, I don’t have adorable pictures of a sweet little baby to fill up my blog and entice (or blackmail, depending on how you look at it) people to come visit.  Of course, I could fill it up with pictures of me doing cute things and wearing my most adorable outfits but I’m betting no one will fall all over themselves to see those.

So you’re stuck here, once again, reading about me.  And even though it probably won’t be cute or adorable here are three little known facts about me:

1. I DESPISE ladybugs.  HATE, LOATHE and want to SMITE ladybugs (if I had smiting abilities).  Katy already knows this because she was there the moment that the ladybugs revolted against me.  My sophomore year of college my roomie Alison and I had a beautiful room overlooking the pool.  During the warm days at the end of that Fall we would leave our window open and one day I came home to find that ladybugs had infested our windowsill and were breeding like bunnies.  There were hundreds of ladybugs all over our window and no amount of bug spray could get rid of them.  To this day, any time I see a ladybug I get itchy and twitchy.  The SICK me out.  Don’t be fooled by their sweet depictions in children’s stories.  They’re gross.

2. I love to organize things, however, big projects stress me out.  So, I’ll organize a drawer and go all out- make everything incredibly neat, clean and nice looking and then I’ll stop with that one drawer.  In other words, while I do have OCD my ADD will always win in an obsessive compulsive vs. attention deficit war.  Aren’t I a delightful bundle of neuroses?

3. I just realized that it’s April 1st and I really wanted to go back and re-write this post and turn it into an April Fools Joke, but then I realized I am too lazy for that.  (This one is little known because it just happened 2 minutes ago.)

Happy Thursday, y’all!  Have a great one!

Brokedown

My blog has fallen and it can’t get up.

I decided that I needed to learn how to fix it, if I was going to have a blog.  Now I’ve decided I never want to look at a computer again. 

Honestly, I just figured Meredith my blog tech/friend was probably busy doing something important and didn’t want to be bothered.  But now, I’m really wishing that I had just bothered her.  So, it looks like I need a computer tutorial more than ever.

And, after looking at my blog I’ve decided that the old adage has never been more true: You can lead a horse to cute graphics, but you can’t make her understand what the heck she’s doing.

All this to say: bear with me.  It’ll be cute someday soon.  Whatever day Meredith is free.

Birthdays

Today is my 1st Birthday.  One year ago today I began my blog.  Well, in all truth, I actually began trying to find names for my blog about three weeks earlier, so I started the hunt long before I wrote my first post.  Over the past year I’ve learned a lot, lived a lot and I even remembered to write some of it down.

I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you.  If you are reading this, thank you for joining me on the journey.  I am truly humbled that anyone would take a few minutes out of their day to read whatever strikes me as important enough to write that day.  And, Heaven knows, some days what strikes me as ‘important to write’ can be truly shocking.  So, I’ll repeat it: Thank You.

Also, I can’t mention birthdays today without mentioning the birthday of a very special little girl, Ginger Evans (Katy’s little girl).  Ginger- the world just got a lot cuter!  You are a precious baby girl, and I hope you always know how loved and wanted you are.  I can’t wait to see what God has in store for your life. 

Comment Moderation

I often talk about the fact that everything I do on the blog I do for my one reader.  I have to confess that I don’t technically have just the one reader.  However, she’s the one who reads daily and comments.  I jokingly told Katy last month that I felt sorry for her because my New Year’s resolution required a lot of work from her as my one commenter.

I’ve known others read the blog but maybe don’t feel comfortable commenting or don’t want to take the time.  Over the weekend I was talking to my Mom and she told me that she’d read the blog and really liked one of my posts from last week.  I basked in the glory of being a successful writer for all of two seconds before she said, “but that one post, about your mattress?  That was WEIRD.  What were you thinking?”

I told Mom that if she wanted to issue a complaint she had to talk directly to the “Comments” department on my blog because I didn’t accept criticism in person.  I only accept praise.

Then Mom told me that she’d never seen any comments or anywhere to write comments.  So, please excuse my Mother and I while we have a technology lesson in blog-form.  But, just in case, you had been wanting to lodge a complaint (or compliment) but couldn’t figure out how to do so the comments are at the bottom of this post on the right.  Please feel free to do so, even if we’re strangers…. or if I’m your daughter.

For the rest of you (Katy), I apologize for wasting your precious time.  I promise to be back tomorrow with something worthwhile, like a list of my five favorite lip balms.

(I kid.  I could never choose only five favorite lip balms.)

Resolution Rewind

Today is the last day in January.  I say that just in case you missed it and didn’t realize that it’s the 31st which means that my January Resolution is up!  And it was successful.  I challenged myself to blog for 5 days a week this month and I survived.  Granted, I won’t be winning any literary awards any time soon, but I had a lot of fun doing it which was the whole point.

And since most people do a year in review I’ve decided to be completely self-indulgent and start slowly with just a month in review.  Here were a few of my favorite January moments (in case you missed it the first time):

5.  My Mom surprised me with a gift that keeps on giving.

4. I shared this sad reality.

3. This picture surfaced on the blog.

2. I had a (rare) moment of seriousness and shared my failure when it comes to perfection.

1. Do you ever forget the mid to late 90’s?  This little post brought the memories SCREAMING back to me.

Before this all began I knew that at the end of the month I would want to write a post about how it had all changed my life and the way I look at my days.  Instead, it mainly exhausted me and made me realize that I don’t do anything.  Upon realizing this, most people would stop writing a blog.  But, luckily for my reader, my own personal combination of ego and denial refuses to let me quit.  In other words:

Good News Internets, I’m here to STAY!

(Unless I change my mind in the next week)

Shout Out

I need to send a big time shout out to my friend Meredith Mondoy.  She is the genius behind my new blog design.  Meredith swooped in and saved the blog from my own shoddy workmanship (and she did it in about an hour).  Meredith is Katy’s sister and I got the chance to know her when Katy and I were roommates in college. 

(Meredith, Katy and I)

I knew we were meant to be good friends because we shared a mutual love for musicals, laughing and figure skating.  I seriously love the Mondoy family and I consider myself an honorary sister (even if it’s only in my mind). 

One of my favorite vacations ever was the time Jennifer and I went to visit Katy and Dan and we ended up crashing the Mondoy’s vacation as well.  I had the best time and I hope they invite me on their next family vacation!

Mere, Jen, Katy, Me and Melanie

 

Mere- you are a miracle worker and I owe you BIG TIME.  You will always be my BFF……AEAE!

Help!

I think that my blog may have officially broken my spirit. If you know anything about the internets or how to fix my blog I need help. I can't figure out how to make my header look cute. Or at the very least how to center my words.

And here I thought that they let just anyone have a blog. But, it turns out that apparently you need to know more than how to turn on your computer before you can be successful. I'm beginning to think I need to take up a new hobby. I may have to return to the world of needlepoint. So, if anyone is still looking for Christmas presents I'm sure my new pillows will be a big hit this year. The sentiment on the pillow says "my friend stopped blogging and all I got was this ugly pillow" and they're sure to be covered in blood. Congratulations, world of technology, you win.