papercranes.

Somehow, around 3:30pm my brain shuts down and it's very difficult for me to work and finish up the rest of the day until I leave around 4:30 or 5pm. Sometimes I'll push through it, sometimes I just give in and do something more enjoyable than statistical analysis of data.

Yesterday I had a very strange day, I was feeling tired and frustrated from the moment I got up...today was much better but I know that I should exercise and eat healthier. I hope to God I can get a car when I come back from France.

I still have a persistent nagging feeling that something is not quite right....maybe somewhere something is happening and I don't have a crystal ball to actually see it but I have a connection to it and feel it...I don't know what it is. Maybe I need to do something fun or enjoy something...at least I'll see one of my childhood best friends Naomi and her fiance will be in town and we will go out Saturday night and her wedding shower is the next day. I need to go to Cook's Emporium this weekend to buy her a gift!

I have discovered a great band called Papercranes....(picture above from http://www.papercranesmusic.com/images.html). I've been listening to them a lot during the day while I work and absolutely adore their music. I like the lyrics...."...only you hold you back...", "...how come change is so hard when you're changing....", "...you've got me to smile...", and "...I'll meet you in the middle of you and me..."

First picture of poppies is from (http://elseachelsea.typepad.com/)

Spring flowers....

I wanted to post these photos from the blog La Tartine Gourmande, these are such beautiful spring time flowers! It's a rainy day out right now, and the fresh pink flowers make me feel bright inside again.

Bus on a saturday...

I spent my Saturday morning taking the bus to mainstreet in Ames. I got off at the City Hall and walked down the street to the public library where I chose six dvd's to check out and returned books/dvd's I checked out last weekend. They are all non-fiction dvd's (except for one video of six feet under) about different artists/people. Right now, though I'm watching Melinda and Melinda I saw my family happened to have-- I love woody allen movies!

Then after the library, I walked to Wheetsfield Grocery food coop which is right next to the library. Different things in Ames surprise me, this food coop being one of them. It is a great organic food co-op-- it's big and the selection is really great. I've visited quite a few co-ops and this is relatively great. I got food there, which I desparately need because all my family eats are meat, burger king, and frozen pizzas most of the time which is opposite of me who eats mainly organic vegetarian food. I'm unusual to my family and whenever the topic of food comes up they look at me like I'm an alien :)

So I took the bus home with my cloth bag full of groceries...then I did laundry with some new detergent I bought at Wheetsfield and made lunch...I have the rest of the day at home so I'll probably do cleaning and work on my research project. Tomorrow I'm going to walk to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames and go to the 10am service-- there is also a meditation group there I might attend tomorrow evening. Other than that I will spend this memorial day weekend finishing up my data analysis for work on Tuesday and preparing more for the wedding.

Second day of work: complete!

My second day of work has just ended. It's a relief. It went well, and I feel like I'm getting steps closer to my first pay check which is really important. If I can just make it through the summer is what I keep saying. But what I need to learn to do more than anything else is just let go....realize that it's not easy but that I'm making it every day a little further and that is important.

I had two great phone conversations with people at University of Cincinnati today, which gives me hope that everything may work out...I talked to the Director of the department I got accepted to and asked him about a tuition waver. He said that he has put in a request already and will be able to tell me within the next week. Then I talked to someone I may be able to do research with (for living expenses in Cincinnati) during the year. I am thinking that there may be a possibility that he could pay part of the tuition for me in the form of an assistantship, if the tuition waver doesn't work out! So a lot of things are up in the air right now. Life is all about uncertainty. Even when things look certain, they never really are. So....just smile :)

Positives and negatives.

I'm really trying to keep my hopes up...and not think about the negative aspects of my life right now. If I do that, I think I will go crazy or very upset. What I need is to accept the things that cannot change (i.e. living in my family's basement in a small midwestern town with no cultural diversity, no car, and having little money until a month from now when my first pay check comes which means I have been eating peanut butter and ramen noodles too often) and act upon and change the things that can. I can change how I deal with the things that cannot change it....like take walks outside, read outside on the Iowa State University campus which is beautiful, go to the public library and check some books I would love to read, draw, write.

There are positives about my life, I am in a great relationship with someone I love, I just got a great job that started last Friday and tomorrow will be Monday and again I will be busy with a full work week. And tomorrow starts extended hours at the library I go to and weekend hours, the bus line stop is right in front of our house, I have enough money to get to nyc for my sister's wedding, I stopped drinking coffee since I came here and drink green tea daily instead, I have a potentially exciting prospect at University of Cincinnati for after this current job ends, I'm getting along fairly well with my dad and Monika, I don't need to bring my bridesmaid dress in to be altered, I ordered my shoes which will arrive in time for the wedding. I didn't even realize there were more positives than negatives until I wrote them all down. It's funny how we can become so focused on the negatives that we can let one negative outweigh ten positives, until we change our frame of mind.

I think I'm going to the public library soon to get more books and maybe DVD's and possibly work at Cafe Diem after that.

Bridesmaide preparations!

Today was my first day of work for my new job! It was great...and then tonight I started finalizing some of the plans for my sister's wedding, which will be in Provence, France, June 14th. I bought shoes from Target online,

So pretty....and then I thought I would have to pay money to get my bridesmaid dress altered but after I tried it on and my step mom, Monika, and I looked at it, we decided we can make a few small changes ourselves. The halter strap needs to be shortened a few inches, we can add elastic to the front, and cut off a couple inches of the bottom. Yay! Also, there was a huge pen mark on the front of the dress (my sister got it at a vera wang sample sale in nyc where she lives) and Monika gave me the tip of rubbing alcohol into the pen mark....it worked like magic! No more pen mark! Now I don't need to buy a huge ribbon belt to cover it up.

I still need to buy a strapless bra I think, and my sister will lend me pearl earrings. I'm excited for the wedding...the first photo above is a picture of the bridesmaid dress my sister found for 25$ but it is in a honeydew melon color and there is no ribbon at the waist, although I would really like to add one :)

Morning bliss...

This morning I was driving to work with my brother and my father and saw a lawn mower you can ride with a couple on it. A boy and girl were squeezed onto the seat together with their arms around each other, driving it across the lawn. I thought that was so romantic...they were both smiling and laughing. It was such joy to see that in the morning. They kind of resembled the end of the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off when the couple rides a lawn mower off into the sunset.