Foiled!!

In spite of my very best efforts to teach the dogs some patience and good manners when going out to the backyard, my plans were foiled. AGAIN!

Those "wascally wabbits" and sneaky squirrels love to prance around and taunt the dogs morning, noon, and night!

So even though I make the dogs sit before I will open the sliding screen door, sometimes it's all I can do to get it OPEN before they go flying out the door.

This morning, once again, the mutts managed to knock the screen door off its track.

And there I was, standing in my towel, having recently gotten out of the shower, trying to keep the door from crashing. And yet, hanging onto my towel for dear life was also a priority.

Damn dogs.

Dreams

I had an uncomfortable, awkward dream last night. I was at some sort of conference or presentation or something and ran into my ex-supervisor. We were going to sit in the same general seating area and she just pretended like nothing was wrong, like nothing had ever happened between her and me. She just acted chipper and interested in what I was doing, how I was doing.... in a word: fake. Yuck.

I can't remember much more than that, but it was definitely uncomfortable. And it seems to be lingering with me all morning.

I hate those kind of dreams.

One Tulip, Different Days

I'm not feeling particularly creative today and wasn't sure what I wanted to post. So, I thought I'd share a few more pics (my latest distraction/hobby?). I've been playing around with the camera a lot lately (as you've seen) and what with spring happening before my eyes, I've had plenty of material.

I rescued another chewed-on tulip (squirrels?) from my little flower bed on the side of the house. Can you believe this tulip...

is the same as this tulip...

and this tulip...???

with only a few days separating them?

Pretty cool, huh?

Finders Keepers

I haven't done one of these in a while...

Anyway, on my recent day off, I was out in the yard, being one with nature, when I found this cute little pot hiding inside a stack of bigger pots in the garage!

It looks gianormous in this picture, but it's not. It's a wee little pot.

It will actually go rather nicely with my other "found loot," don't you think? In fact, since this picture was taken, my little jade plant had gotten a bit cramped in there, so

I pulled a stem out of there and put it in here! Nice! And free!

What's your latest and greatest "loot"?

A Feathery Tale

Once upon a time, there was a birdhouse. A simple, unassuming little birdhouse.

It was perfect for a simple, unassuming little bird.

And her simple, unassuming little mate.

You see, they wanted to raise a simple, unassuming little family. But first, they needed to check things out. So Mama Bird swooped in- she was up to the task.

She looked right...

...and looked left....

...before she ducked inside to do a walk-through.

Then she double-checked to make sure she liked the view.

Finding everything to be perfectly simple and unassuming...

she decided to call her Realtor and put in an offer. She wanted to start feathering her nest, after all.

The End.

Me Time: Recap

Remember when I said I wasn't doing anything too fabulous or glamorous with my day off yesterday? Well I definitely didn't.

I got up pretty early, picked up some groceries- though I had to stop at 2 stores because they didn't have the mutts' food at the first one (yikes!)- and after some fresh coffee and a doughnut (hey, it was my day off, I'm allowed a treat!), I got down to work in the yard.

This giant pile of branches and sticks and dead plants is the result of a couple hours of hard, manual labor- cutting (I used my saw for a large tree limb!), clipping, bending, pulling, carrying. Good times.

The photo doesn't really do it justice, but I felt weird taking a picture of a pile of sticks and stuff. So I snapped a couple of quick shots from the relative safety of my front porch.

Then I spent a little time inside- dishes, laundry, all that nonsense. But before I knew it...

...the big dump truck and backhoe-type-thing were there to pick up all the piles of crap all over the neighborhood. (Sorry for the quality of the second pic, it was snapped through the upstairs window with my cell phone). I had no idea when they would come- there seems to be no rhyme or reason to their schedule- my neighbors have had half of a fallen tree in their front yard for weeks. Good thing I had luck on my side and I got everything  most of the big stuff and a lot of the smaller stuff cleaned out of my back yard.

I also repotted the lovely Gerbera Daisies I got last week- K-Dog sent his home with me too. They're just so dang cheery, aren't they?

I spent a lot of time outside and got pretty dirty in the process, though surprisingly not too scratched up. It certainly wasn't glamorous, but it was necessary. The mutts were excited to spend most of the day outdoors and eventually I got a chance to relax and read while soaking up some sun. It was a good day.

Today...I'm a little sore. And although I was in the sun for the better part of the day yesterday, my nose didn't even get pink! Not that I want a sunburn or anything, but a little color would be nice. I'm beginning to think I'm a zombie or something.

Anyway...what's your favorite way to spend a day off?

Happy Spring!

"Meanwhile spring had come,

beautiful, harmonious,

without spring's anticipations and deceptions,

one of those rare springs that bring joy to plants, animals and people alike."

~ Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

A few springy pictures from my time being "one with nature" today! The second two pictures are of the buds on my magnolia tree. I had no idea they'd be pink! There are tons of buds, so I can't wait until they bloom! I'll keep you posted on the progress. You'll be seeing more of my little birdie friend too!

Me Time

I have the day off today! Nothing too fabulous planned, just some yard work, house stuff, and maybe a little grocery shopping. Oh, and I might paint my nails and do a little pampering...after the chores are done...

Happy Monday!

Mystery Solved

First of all, while I was trying to create a little suspense, I wasn't intentionally trying to drag it out. I didn't have a chance to blog yesterday and I was gone all day today, so this is really the first chance I'm getting. I'm sorry to keep you waiting!

Back to the mystery of the Gerbera Daisy I found on my desk Thursday morning. I'd momentarily stepped out of my office when the flower bandit struck, leaving one for me, one for K-dog, and one for Lovely Miss L, so it really was a nice little surprise for me when I returned. I learned quickly that our colleague, who happens to be the Assistant Dean of Students, left them for us.

But why?

You might remember me mentioning that I had been working on a program with a faculty member in Psychology. We put together a collaborative, multi-disciplinary panel of speakers to discuss graduate school and careers in human services. Our panel consisted of a Clinical Psych faculty (not the one I was working with to organize the event), a Sociology/Human Services faculty who had a Masters of Social Work (MSW), myself (Counseling Psych), Lovely Miss L (a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)), and K-Dog (Clinical Psych). We prepared a few answers to our most frequently asked career/grad school questions, and hoped the student participants would have questions.

So I worked to get our panelists on board a while ago and spent much of this week and last week ironing out the details. We invited Psych and Soc majors and minors by email and my co-planner announced the program in her classes. We asked students to RSVP because we'd be feeding them. We hoped to have 15-20 students, which would be a decent turnout for such a program.

The invitation was sent last Thursday and by Friday at 5, we had received 15 responses. Woohoo! By the end of the day Monday, we'd gotten a few more and estimated we'd have nearly 40 people, including the panelists and other faculty who had been invited. I went shopping for snacks and drinks on Monday night, laughing about how much crap I piled in my cart. By Tuesday night we had 39 responses and had to change our location. At this point, Lovely Miss L was starting to get anxious about speaking to such a large group. By Wednesday morning, we had 50 student RSVPs! The program was Wednesday night, by the way. I flipped out at this point. Not because I had to speak in front of a large group, but because suddenly we did not have enough snacks, drinks OR plates/napkins. AND K-Dog started asking me questions about what he was supposed to do/say (I sent him a memo), the format of the program (also in the memo), and he started offering suggestions... though to his credit, he did apologize for not being involved in the process and then offering suggestions at the last minute. He also ran to get more snacks, drinks, etc., thank goodness because I had appointments!

The program went well, we had a very full room, some pretty good questions and our panelists seemed to enjoy themselves. The biggest compliment for me was when our Psych faculty panelist said, "Gosh, we've clearly invited the wrong people before! In the past when we've tried to do this we've had 8 students show up!"

When Miss L and I were cleaning up after the program we ran into B, who does men's programming and works directly under our Assistant Dean. He was excited to know how things went, especially since he talked me off a proverbial ledge when I was freaking out earlier. He was astounded that we only invited people through email and word of mouth, rather than posters, Facebook, etc. Oddly enough, B ran into the Assistant Dean at the grocery store later that evening and "told her the buzz" about our program. She was so excited and happy for us that she bought us the flowers. She loves giving small personal gifts and told us she wanted to do something nice since we'd put together such an awesome program that students were clearly interested in. She was also very happy that we were able to collaborate!

The rest of the week passed by in an exhausted blur. I'm hanging up my party planning hat for a while.

So that's it. Mystery solved.

All right, be honest. How many of you thought I had a romantic secret (or not-so-secret) admirer?

Somebody Loves Me

Look what I found on my desk this morning!

A potted Gerbera Daisy. In a cheerful yellow.

I'll tell you more about it later...

Wet Day...

...sad dog.

Make that two sad dogs.

It was a beautiful day today. Until I was almost home and it started raining. The mutts ran out when I got home, but were soon wet and waiting to get back in.

And there they sat. Waiting out the rain.

Success!

We've had a student intern working with us this year, and recently hired another one. They've been absolute blessings! My intern (I say "my" because I'm her direct supervisor, but she's really "ours") designed an amazing poster series for suicide prevention and some general advertising for our services. Let's face it, the old posters were ugly. And cheesy. Yuck, not us at all.

Hers are way better. Here's a partial shot of a nearly-final draft of her poster- I cropped it and added a watermark that doesn't appear in the actual poster, obviously.

I think that little wooden person is our new unofficial mascot! The posters are pretty powerful, no? I know we wouldn't have gotten these done without her hard work and creativity.

So I was a little nervous when I found out recently that the internships offered to students were being examined and we needed to "reapply" to be able to call our positions "internships". Clearly the benefits to the students were great- they can officially call it an internship on their resume, it's a higher level of pay, blah, blah. The benefits to US were huge too- higher minimum requirements, higher pay, learning objectives...all which basically meant that we would be more likely to attract more motivated, qualified students who would be around for a least a full year. Overall, I completely agreed with the decision to re-examine some things campus-wide, but the moment I found out we had to submit a job description, learning objectives, etc., I was overloaded and a little stressed.

Naturally, I had my intern fill out the applications. :-) She did a great job and we worked together to get everything submitted on time.

Then I got an email "suggesting" I make a change that I thought was silly and since I was in the middle of dealing with a few crises on campus, K-Dog and I decided it wasn't really necessary (and by the way, was not required according to their instructions). After a few weeks we got an email requesting additional information from the committee. A handful of tedious, miniscule points of clarification, including the previous suggestion. Again, my rock star intern took a stab at it- one of the points of clarification required percentages of time spent on each of the duties/tasks, so who better would know than the intern doing them? Exactly. Again she and I worked together to get the changes made and submitted.

I found out last week that our internships were approved!! Woohoo! Even better news: my rock star protégée is interested in keeping her position next year! Whew!

Book Review: North of Hope

check it out

I recently read North of Hope by Jon Hassler for a book discussion with faculty and staff at work. It was the first time I got a chance to participate in anything like that at work, so I was looking forward to it. Plus, I don't get out of my office much...

Anyway, the book is about a Catholic priest, Father Frank Healy, living and ministering in Northern Minnesota on an Ojibway reservation. He's in the middle of a vocational crisis and trying desperately to fix it when he runs into his old high school girlfriend, Libby. Libby has some major issues of her own to deal with- a mentally ill daughter, a drug-dealing alcoholic husband, and her own loss of hope.

I loved the book. I thought the characters were imperfect and believable. I loved the regional dialect and topics of conversation (the weather), the cultural tension, and each character's own struggle with hope, faith, morals, and love. Since the book takes place in Northern Minnesota, the weather is a major factor in the book...so much so that it's like another character. I'll be honest, I started reading this back in January and had to put it away for awhile because Hassler does such a wonderful job describing the dreary, bleak, bone-crushingly cold winter that I couldn't handle reading it at that point!

In our discussion, we talked about the themes of hope and love and how those changed for each character throughout the story. Some people thought the book was bleak and sad; I thought it was hopeful, yet real. I mean, there are definitely some heavy issues and tough struggles in the book (I won't spoil anything), but hope is always there. There was humor too, especially in the gossipy old women and the pleasantly confused older priest.

One of the weirdest and most interesting parts of our book discussion was the comments this guy kept making. I swear he had at least three comments about Catholic priests not being able to marry. He also kept commenting about how "the tension could've easily been resolved" if Frank could've just married Libby or this or that could've happened. Well, no kidding. It was like he wanted everything to be nicely wrapped up and problems solved...hmm, I wonder if he is hoping for that in his own life? Sorry buddy, but life isn't always like that and neither is good writing.

Overall, the story has more to it than you might think at first glance. If you're looking for something to read, give North of Hope a try...especially if you're looking for your next book club selection-- the discussion can be really interesting!

What do you think? Would you prefer a book to have all its loose ends tied up nicely with a bow or would you prefer a little realism and tension? Do tell...

Saturday Morning Surprise

Instead of sleeping away the beautiful, sunny morning I got up and washed my face, brushed my teeth, and put my contacts in so I could take the dogs out for a walk. At 8:25. On a Saturday. I know, not my typical Saturday routine. But we'd had so many days of dreary, wet weather I just couldn't pass this up.

Well, that and I spent my whole Friday night walking, brushing, and bathing my mutts. They hate baths. Lilly stays as far from me as possible and glares at me for hours after the horrific indignity I force her through. Montey actually loves the part after the bath, when I rub him dry with towels. Seriously, he will sit in my lap for hours letting me rub him down all while covering me with kisses. (OK, just realized that sentence could come across in a very dirty way. Ooops.)

Anyway, since my yard is dirty and the mutts are clean, we walked this morning. I had a simple breakfast and enjoyed my coffee while finishing my book and then decided to go thrifting to see what I could find.

And then I checked work email and read this subject line: "You've won an OTM award! Congratulations!"

Huh? A what?

After a little research, I found out that someone (I don't know who) nominated me for an Of The Month (OTM) award for March for a presentation I did in a residence hall. The OTM is given by the National Residence Hall Honorary, which I just learned is the "recognition branch of the National Association of College and University Residence Halls (NACURH), Inc." So apparently, since I won at the campus level, it will now go on to compete with other OTMs written by students on a state-wide level. If it wins there, then it could go on to compete for national awards.

Honestly, at first I thought it was some kind of mistake or fake award. Yes, I'm that cynical. But it appears to be legit. I have no idea how many nominations are submitted per month, or who else I was "competing" with on my campus to be deemed the winner. I'm sure it's really no big deal in the grand scheme of things. We'll see what happens, I suppose.

I guess I'm just kind of shocked. I mean, I was really just doing a part of my job. Granted, the topic is one I'm pretty passionate about, but still. An award? Really? Me?

Really?

Anyway, just thought I'd share my surprising news. Hope you're enjoying your weekend!

April Snow Showers, Bring May Flowers?

Here's what I woke up to this morning (You can see Lilly in the yard, checkin' things out). Ugh. Doesn't look too different from this storm in December, does it? The puppies were so excited to go outside when we woke up, but boy did they get a rude awakening! It took only a few minutes before they were waiting to get back inside. Montey was so anxious to get in that he forgot the screen door is back on and boinged his head into it. He just sort of shook his head and looked at me.

Here's a couple more pics of my ride to work. The snow is heavy and sticky, so all the trees were pretty.

But not so pretty that I want it to stay around! I'm ready for the warmer weather predicted for the weekend!

The Blind Leading the Blind

Somehow, I'm still not entirely sure how, I became the adviser of a just-forming student organization. There's a whole process to become "recognized" as an official student organization. I know very little about that process on this campus. And it seems that the students know only slightly more than me. As an adviser...shouldn't I be... advising?

The fact that we'd like to become a chapter of a national organization both helps and complicates things a little, I think. On one hand, the national organization has a lot of templates and examples to use in getting established. On the other hand, it seems as though one or two of their steps conflicts slightly with our process. Oy.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to get a big, collaborative program organized and like most of the other programs I've run recently, things are more complicated than they need to be. BUT we're nearly set. I hope. And thank goodness I have a faculty member helping coordinate things...yet she's only been here a few months longer than me.

The blind leading the blind. Yup, that describes my life right now.

To say that I'm feeling overwhelmed at this moment in time is an understatement.

Lip-Smackin' Good

 source

What is it about a newly-opened jar of creamy peanut butter generously slathered on a soft piece of bread that makes it taste so darn good?

Mmm, good afternoon snack!

What are you snacking on today?

Payback is a B*#@h

My sister, Boo, recently told me to get back to blogging more often. So I searched and searched for inspiration. And since I recently posted about Lenny, I realized there was one more small part to that story I would like to share now.

When we left off with the story, I had just taken (and passed) my final in the class Lenny and I shared. My deep, abiding love crush on Lenny continued just as strong as before. The next semester started and I didn't have any more classes with Lenny. :-(

Meanwhile, Boo was in high school and happened to have a new student teacher. Lo and behold, her student teacher turned out to be one of Lenny's teammates. Apparently, he was also kinda cute. My sister sort of hinted at talking to her student teacher about Lenny and maybe mentioning that she had an older sister, blah blah. I forbade her to speak to the student teacher about any it- in my mind, the student teacher would naturally tell Lenny all of this and the two of them would share a good laugh over it. I vowed I would make her regret it if she did. I even explained how mortified I would be if she did something like that.

She didn't listen to any of what I said.

She called me one day and excitedly told me that she mentioned something to her student teacher about me and said something about Lenny. I never really did get the details. Boo conveniently "forgot" exactly what she said to the student teacher.

I was furious. And yet calm and focused on my plan for revenge. It just popped into my head, fully-formed. So the next night, while Boo was gone, I went to my parents' house, marched into Boo's room, scooped all of her bras and undies out of her drawer (she had a LOT too) and threw them into the bathtub where I doused them with water. Then I put all of them into our big chest freezer in the garage.

I smiled a grinchy smile, thinking about how surprised she'd be the next morning when she went to get dressed. I could imagine her looking high and low for her undies and finally finding them frozen solid in the freezer.

Ah, payback. To be fair, I did warn her.

In the end, I think someone told Boo where her undies were. They weren't frozen, just a bit frosty. She was mad. Even today, she says it was "mean." Payback sucks, what can I say?

And I sort of got yelled at for putting wet stuff in the freezer like that.

But I would do it again, darn it. I would do it again.

Ah, The Weekend

Spring Daffodils

Today was a day off for me! Hooray!

I haven't been sleeping very well all week, so last night I had a relaxing evening and went to bed kind of early...10:15ish...I actually FELL ASLEEP quickly! Yay! Aside from waking up a few times because of the dogs changing places, I slept pretty soundly, which was a relief. The best part was getting up to let the dogs out this morning and going back to sleep for a while, just because I felt like it!

I got my taxes done today, put my screen door back on the patio, planted more parsley and basil for my little kitchen herb garden, and finished a book for an upcoming discussion at work. I also took the dogs for a walk - no, I didn't see Dog Guy- and then we packed up the car and drove to my parents' house for the weekend. It should be a weekend full of fun, family, and food.

I hope you all have a Happy Easter!

I Stole an Avocado...

And I just ate it. And it was good.

OK, so I didn't mean to steal it. It wasn't even my fault. I picked up a few things at the grocery store last Sunday and as the guy was bagging my stuff, one of the bags broke and a bunch of stuff fell. Luckily, I didn't have eggs or anything breakable in that bag...and luckily he had cat-like reflexes and managed to juggle most of it and dump it back on the counter. However, in the process of re-bagging everything, he apparently grabbed the next woman's avocado and threw it in my bag. And today I threw it down my throat via a lovely turkey sandwich.

Does that make me a bad person? Because I didn't jump right back in the car to return it to the store? Or turn myself in to the police? What would you have done?