Valentine's Day

I am not a believer in Valentine's Day. I've been known to call it a stupid day, the worst holiday, and the day of black. My joy for the day first died in seventh grade. I had hopes of "going out" with the quarterback of the eighth grade football team. Our mothers worked together. We were friends. He was the person at school I liked better than most everyone else. He never liked me back. In high school, the boy spurned me by calling me "Sharece Maurice" after Drew Barrymore's character in Never Been Kissed. He was not the only reason I didn't like Valentine's Day. As I grew older, I hated the way the day of love was so commercialized. It became such a nuisance.

Today, I participated in the Valentine's celebration with the sweetest group of third graders known to man. I had a lot of fun. The way the kids cared about each other and helped each other have fun almost renewed my faith in Valentine's Day.

Work Wears

I never thought I would be the sort of person who stressed out about work or took work home with me. But as I have switched from job to job in the past few years, I have come to realize that work will always wear on a person unless the person is willing to do a poor job. My mother tends to be a workaholic. My sister and one of my brothers have been known to have similar work styles to those of my mom. My father is a recovering workaholic. With this kind of influence around me for so many years, it's a surprise I didn't work my way to a real career sooner.

My work is wearing on me. I've gotta fix that.

Death of a Cow

This morning, I was awakened by my mother. "Rece, Daddy needs your help. They're coming to butcher the cow today." Let me just say, upon principle, I am a vegetarian. If I could, I would boycott meat all together. There is something about the innocence in animals. Why would we want to hurt them? In practice, I am a carnivore. I eat meat. I prefer ham to all other meats, but I eat different meat to get proper protein.

So when I woke up this morning to help my dad, I only helped put up the corral. I felt bad doing it. And when my dad tricked the young steer into the corral, I talked to it. I tried to convince it that I was on its side. I wonder if I will remember that next summer when my dad tries to serve me tri-tip steak.

My sister-in-law watched the cow massacre. She thought it was fascinating. Why on earth she takes pleasure in a young cow's pain is beyond me.

Some might consider me a fruitcake. I consider myself empathetic. How do YOU think the cow would feel? I'd be frightened if I were a cow about to me murdered.

Bad Hair Day

This morning, my brother and his wife brought my niece over pretty early in the morning. I could hear her come into the house. She's not exactly a quiet or shy girl. I heard her ask a number of questions about me.

When I finally meandered out of my room, I was still in my PJs. I wore my glasses and hadn't done anything to my hair. My niece gave me a hug and then told me, "I don't like your hair." Granted, my hair was a little frazzled, sticking up in various spots. But she didn't need to TELL me just how bad it looked.

The truth is, over Thanksgiving Break, I went through a rather tragic hair cutting process. I started to look like Haley Mills. No joke. I'm talking about the bob from the original Parent Trap, the one that makes her look a bit like a mushroom head.

I'm hoping that my hair catastrophe will soon settle down, but for now, I grin through the terrible bashing from my three-year-old niece.

Marooned in Dayton

For the past week, I have encountered more snow that I ever remember seeing in Dayton, Oregon. As a kid, we had the occasional snow day during which my siblings and I would have snow fights, build speed bumps, or go sledding down our cousins' hill. This past week, the "rough weather conditions" led to five snow days, leaving me out of work. My sister was ecstatic. She tends to be a bit of a procrastinator and her work for school wasn't completed by Monday. My job doesn't require much "homework" so I was a bit bummed to not have school.

Fortunately, the snow didn't wound my spirits. I happen to be an avid fan of snow. Why wouldn't I be? I don't own my own car to ruin while driving in the snow. I didn't have to trudge through the snow to work every day last week. I was in snow heaven.

I was happy that my sister and cousin still lived on my road. We adventured through the snow in our jeans (snow pants have NEVER been a necessity in Yamhill County) and visited our Grandfather. While this was fun, we decided to enjoy the snow on a deeper level. We built ourselves a snowperson. I claimed that the snowperson was without gender or more accurately transgender, as it was first built as a snowman and was soon transformed into a snowwoman. My sister, not wanting to mess with the politics behind such a statement, named the figure, Frostette, both after Frosty and Smurfette, I believe. It was a sad hour when, the evening of her creation, Frostette collapsed into a few blocks of snow. Her makers had not done well to her preservation against tough wind conditions.

For the last few days, I've taken to writing stories, some of them dark, some light. It's been fun to delve deeply into my imagination and emerge with tales of humor or of woe.

And now I'm sitting here, taking a break for Twilight (reading it for the third time) and wishing that I could walk into town and go shopping at the antique mall or eat at the Italian restaurant. Snow may be fun, but being marooned in my parents' house for a week begins to get me a little bit stir crazy.

food of champions

I first heard of chili-mac in high school drama class. One of my good buds couldn't get enough of the stuff. He raved about the way the cheese blended with the chili into an amazing mass of goodness. The first time I ate it, I was a sophomore in college. I'd cut down my meal plan for the caf. and was living on toast and easy mac. One day, I splurged on a random trip to Costco and bought a six pack of chili. That's when it happened. I mixed the two together and discovered the meal of a lifetime.

And tonight, I had a bowl of that delicious combo.

deadlines and dragonflies

Deadlines are a bust. It seems like no matter how smart I am and how much I prepare myself for whatever it is, I always get stuck with the worm. It's procrastination. I'm starting to believe it's a real disease. And I think there is a cure.

What would life without procrastination look like? Would it be all feathers and candies? Sunny days on the beach with popsicles and volleyball? I think that even if I lived in this blissful world, I would stop mid-stride and think, "isn't there something I'm supposed to be working on right now?" It's probably good I wasn't born under a silver spoon, because I'm sure my moaning and groaning would have caused severe tarnish by now.