Photoshoot (aka The Game That Never Gets Boring)

David and I decided to take our own engagement photos, but we need some help choosing which ones to include as a 3'6" by 5' poster for the wedding ceremony backdrop. Help!

Photo 1:
David says he's making a funny face, but I think he's handsome.


Photo 2:
Here's a fun candid that I think really captures our spirit.


Photo 3:
I love that we're looking lovingly at each other in this one.


Which one is best?

Spring Break?

Today marks the full official day of Spring Break, and all the freedoms, sleep, and sweatpants that ensue. I say official because technically I took a sick day yesterday (a legitimate sick day filled with Sinus Wonder). I have dreamed of this week, oh, since mid-January. The crocuses magically reminding the other flowers that it is spring, the temperature rising enough to wear a feminine flowered skirt, the books on my shelf becoming friends with me again.

Imagine, then, my consternation when I glance out the kitchen window to see this:



And run to the back to make sure.



And run to the front to double check.




And scrape the five inches of snow off my car, so I can go have breakfast with David.

It's almost April, weather. Stop being a jerk.

*note: sorry about the sideways pictures. If I knew how to right it, I would.

Mary is...

This is a fun game:

The contradictions are amusing:

mary is the mother of god
mary is a devil

or

mary is a whore
mary is still a virgin

My relationships appear unhealthy:

mary is the last thing i own
mary is unbelieving; makes acquaintance with the fairy
mary is beheaded by her cousin


Some things are true:

mary is arrested for giving brownies to suffering patients
mary is busy

Some are just silly:


mary is a chicken
mary is looking to hire hundreds of monsters




mary is for everyone

My Horoscope

Karli read this out loud from the paper today as a joke:

Pisces: Musician Sarah McLachlan told the crowd at one of her concerts: "I feel great about singing really depressing songs." In the U2 song "A Man and a Woman," Bono sings, "The only pain is to feel nothing at all." They are your role models in the coming week, Pisces. I hope they inspire you to feel grateful for your capacity to experience such intense emotions. You're lucky to be so sensitive! You're blessed to have so much vital force! So please celebrate your talent for feeling melancholy and overwhelmed. Congratulate yourself for being such a connoisseur of guilt, confusion, and anxiety. You're more alive than other people. You've got a soul as big and wild and deep as the Amazon River.

Oh, I'm grateful.

And more alive than all of you suckers!

No, actually, I've been downright cheerful all week. Oh well. Maybe I'm dead like everyone else.

Improving Slowly

I've felt much better since Sunday; an event I attribute to continued salsa lessons, newly acquired vitamins and discovering this website. Thanks, Jake!

I feel like this most of the time:



The last couple months, I've been constantly on the edge of falling into a muddy pit. I'm one misunderstood comment away from sobbing inconsolably for two or three days. I'm irritable and snappy. The you're-not-and-never-will-be-good-enough dragon whispers constantly in my mind. I feel at fault for everything tragic, wicked, or annoying in the world.


And while this might be a usual sort of funk for first year teachers, for women planning a wedding, for women adjusting to hormonal birth control, for Eastern Washingtonians in March when the weather forecast says rain/snow 35 degrees every day for the next ten days, I want out. Normal or not, I want to be healed. I want joy and peace that seems impossible right now. I want to run from the voice that yells You're Too ______________ (stupid, lazy, fat, ugly, boring, etc) and You Don't Have Any ________________ (strength, friends, talent, time, energy).

How do I summon the gumption to get out of bed when I am so worn down I don't have any fire left in me?

Magical Mermaid Lungs

While proctoring this test to juniors who failed the reading/writing portion, I ran across this old memory:





It almost made me laugh during the test (gasp! horror! not that!)

Current Stress:

the guest list numbers nearly 500.

our room holds 250.

assuming 15% of the people invited don't show, we still need to pare down our list by 200 people.

200.

people.

wimper.

Fighting

The current battle with my to-do list rages on.

It is harder on days like today when I try to nobly accomplish something difficult, car-related, and tedious and it falls through, wasting the best part of the afternoon.

I feel pulled in so many directions that I want to cry. And my emotions ricochet off the people I like best.

But there is hope of spring.