Photo Diary of the Weekend

Mom, her college friend, Gail, and I have spent the weekend up at our family place in Maine.  My amazing sister from another mother, Dahlia, bought me a camera for graduation and I have been snapping photos all over the place.  The quality is really ridiculous and I wanted to try posting photos so here goes nothing :)

Mom says "hi!"  She likes wine on the back dock. Me too!

Foggy Morning view of Great Pond and Indian and Crooked Islands.

Hammock and bitty flowers. 

View off the back of a cabin out on the water - personally selected writing location for the day. 

Back dock when the sun finally came out!

Post sunset glow

cool water shot! I love my new camera!

Night time boat ride which failed because the engine died and we had to paddle back - but pretty night!

Nostalgia & Quiet Salvation.

We are a generation of busy. Of motion. Noise. Multi-tasking. Keyboard clicking, Cell phone vibrating, overstimulating, quickly moving time. We answer emails while we listen to music, talk on the phone, and look up the rotten tomatoes rating of that new chick flick at Bowtie Cinemas. We walk to get Starbucks while we text our friend, glance over a final paper, and make sure we didn’t forget our keys. Yesterday was August 28^th, 2007, the day I schlepped all my crap up a flight of stairs in Bingham tower into my freshman dorm room, excited and anxious and sweating.  And today May 29, 2011, I wear a ring on my right hand with the year "2011" and "Yale University" engraved on its surface, marking me an official Yale alum for six whole days now.  The papers and coffee and exams, late nights, great friends, hard classes, shitty weather, castle dorms, Harkness bells, Commons lunches, Atticus dates, bubble teas, chick flicks, Kappa retreats, study breaks, late night Walgreen’s runs, drunk Yorkside visits, alcohol stashes, Vivas nights, dining halls, manuscripts research, Sterling studying, crime report emails, panlist spaming, all you can eat Samurai sushi, reading responses, classesV2, work-study, car honking, 2 am conversations are over.  They handed me my diploma, I took my seat, and all the tethers, what had held and pushed and pulled me through Yale, severed.  But the pace of my life stayed the same. I was sprinting in place, now inches off the ground.

I got home and read to avoid the realization that I have no true conception of my present.  I ran on trails so the distraction of picking each new place to put my foot would keep me from thinking about all the answers I don’t have. I am floating. Waiting for whatever comes next with no push or pull, just the gentle breeze of my own free will suggesting a direction.  I have one long term goal, as vague as it could possibly be. I want to help people.  But I don’t know how or in what way.  That’s all I’ve got.  It wasn’t so scary before.  It was exciting not to have the answers when I had so many other things to do.  It’s a beautiful thing, and a frightening one, being tied to nothing but an idea about a way of life. 

But I can’t make lists about a way of life.  I can’t schedule every hour of my day on my iCal, set an alarm, text the other people for help who are trying to get the same things done…for an ideology.  I can’t comb through the library stacks looking for books to give me the answers to my personal creed.  I can’t write a paper about it, complete a problem set, go to a professor’s office hours, take an exam, get a tutor, work with a friend, Google, make a list, call my mother, take a coffee break, or sleep on my life doctrine. Everything I know about making progress, moving forward, accomplishing something, is inapplicable. I have no Dean or Master or friend to point the way.  I sat at home with my wheels spinning, the cogs turning a million miles an hour hoping to somehow touch ground and take off in a direction, any direction.   But I hung there, frantically flipping through my book of Yale tricks, pulling everything out from up my sleaves, hoping I had missed something that would help me now.

Mom and I drove to Karonoko for the weekend, a family place in Maine that was bought in the early 1900s by my great grandfather.  As we drove down Nickerson Lane with the windows down, the cool sweetness of woods and water filled my nose and I felt everything slow.  As we rolled to a stop and I opened the door to the Maine twilight, everything went quiet and still.  My clock, racing ahead at full speed through my life and ticking loudly as a reminder of its passing, stopped. My floating feet finally touched ground and stood strong and steady in the place where time stops and noise is silenced.  The smell of the trees, the cool breeze off the lake, the lapping of the water against the shore match exactly the background of every summer memory I’ve had in my life.  I’d finally arrived at my dependable, constant, sacred home, and I could breathe again.  

Encapsulating my Yale career.

                                                                            nuff said.

Abusing Panlists.

I have to admit.  I love that my computer remembers panlists and so I get to send emails to panlists and know that I just got in touch with all of my favorite Yale people at once, without having to type in all their email addresses.  It's things like that. Things like Yale panlists that I once kind of hated, but I know I will really miss.  To my Kappa girls!  My maximizers of foxiness (Hoorah Kappa '11!) and my absurdly creative Vagina Sisterhood (Vagina Monologue cast)!  I LOVE YOU! :)  I promise I won't spam too much!
xo
The end.

Goodbye Yale, Get it together Peace Corps, Hello Maine :)

I don't really know where to start.  There is so much to fill in and so much I guess I'm not quite ready to talk about.  I suppose we should start with orienting ourselves.

1. I'm not in Rio Grande Valley, Texas anymore, though the trip was freaking AMAZING and I lack words to describe how great it was anyway.
2. I have officially graduated from Yale University, which as I predicted, has left me floating in space with little to hold on to, too many amazing people I have said goodbye to, and a beautiful class ring that I wanted super badly and have yet to take off.
3. I am currently listening to Mumford and Sons in the big bed in the "Garage Cabin" at my family place in Maine.  Not the usual - I am not surrounded by crazy cousins but instead have a nearly blind doggie asleep and SNORING on the carpet in the middle of the room.

So here I am. What to say? I didn't realize how badly I would miss everyone right away when I graduated. Graduation was a whirlwind and happened and ended so fast.  Commencement day was overwhelming, and I feel like there are too many people I didn't get a chance to really say goodbye to.  Mom was exhausted when we left so I drove home and I cried driving out of New Haven, at my last glimpse of the Kappa House, a place I had called home because of the amazing women I got to live with; Old Campus, where I lived for two years and always looked like the inside of a castle; Calhoun, a place I felt so much for right when I left and wish I had just one more year with; Cross Campus and Sterling Library, the most beautiful view on campus looking up that grassy lawn to the beautiful tower of the "cathedral of knowledge"; Commons, where I spent so many days studying hard inside and having meal dates with people I loved.  It was so hard to leave, and little things make me think of those people who made my time at Yale amazing despite the constant struggle.  I miss them all, those who graduated this year, who won't graduate for one, two, or three years, and those who have already graduated and meant so much to me.  I can't believe I don't have another year!  It's heartbreaking, and I don't know when I'll finally get over it.  To those girls that I lived with and love too much, I don't know how anywhere will ever feel like home without them.  My friends at Yale have truly become family and I hope that despite all the amazing things we are all going off to do, that we remain close, because I can't bare anything less.  I love you!

Being home has been strange.  I am a better person than I was when I left for Yale, and much different. At my house in Lyme, I feel myself fall into old routines and habits that are not representative of the person I am now.  It scares me a little, I feel like coming home has taken me a step back and I have this fear that the longer I stay in that house, the further back I will slip, and the more progress I will lose.  At the same time, it is a relief to be back in the place I called home with my Mom, because it is proof you can always go back to the places and people that you love.  The comfort of being home has eased some of the sting of  severing myself from the place I have called home and people I have called family for the last four years.  We are adaptable, and in a way I love that because we survive, but I hate it too, as if it almost cheapens the extraordinary things we cultivated that we have to leave.  I hate knowing that I will be ok even though I just said goodbye to something so wonderful, but I also cling to that idea for comfort at the same time.

It's been 4 days since I graduated from Yale, and I am already aching for a project or really any intellectual engagement.  I have been reading like a crazy person, and discovering new paths to run through the woods on my daily run.  I'm currently reading Little Women, because I think I unintentionally read an abridged version when I was in 4th grade and I feel like everyone has to read Little Women.  It's sort of fun, because I'm reading from my grandmother's old copy that was given to her in the 1930s, and the binding is broken and floppy, and the occasional illustrations are old-school.

I have fallen into a kind of routine. I've been reading and sleeping late, and an hour or so after brunch I leave my house for an epic "walk-joggie-run" as I explained to Mom.  I remembered this trail through the woods that leaves the pavement and cuts through to the center of town.  I went on the trail the other day.  I had forgotten that it followed Grant Brook all the way into town.  It was absolutely beautiful running along next to the brook, and fun to have to pay enough attention to make sure that I didn't trip over a root or step wrong on a rock.  I flew through that stretch of woods, realizing for the first time every how much I LOVE trail running!  When I got onto Market Street down in town, I discovered a second trail I had forgotten about that goes all the way down to Route 10, and I followed it, as it followed the brook, and the sun was shining, the weather beautiful, and the trail was well maintained.  I came out on Route 10 and walked up to the library.  I ran into Alex, my friend from Lyme School (we went K-8 together).  We chatted for a bit, I poked through some of the new fiction on the library shelf, and then made my way home.  It was absolutely lovely, took me about an hour and a half with the Library stop, and I was tired by the time I got home.  It was a great workout and let me really center myself again.  The only negative of the whole run was that I found about three ticks on my clothes afterwards.  I am morally opposed to ticks, and find them absolutely revolting.

I am sleeping terribly.  Every night I have these super vivid dreams about graduating from Yale and about the people that I miss the most.  I wake up five or six times a night.  It's awful.  I'm sad enough during the day that I just want to rest when I am asleep!  Last night, I tried sleeping in my brother's old room (he's been out of the house for 8 years) and it helped a little but I still slept badly.  I don't know how to fix it, so I am just hoping that I stop graduating in my dreams sometime soon.

I went on another beautiful run today, which was great, and had to fend off the ticks as I went.  I don't know why those little bastards creep me out as much as they do but I'm terrified of getting Lyme's disease and not being able to do the Peace Corps.  I also hate the idea that they are crawling around in my hair...gives me the heeby geebies.

Peace Corps Update:
 I suppose I haven't updated about my recent conversation with the Peace Corps.  So I heard back from the Peace Corps about a week before graduation asking me when I would be available to answer a few questions the following week.  I knew at that point that I had passed my medical forms, and passed everything I needed to, and was just being re-reviewed by the placement office.  Apparently, I had missed the deadline for my program by a day, which was frustrating because they had been reviewing my medical forms for two and a half months at that point.  Because "I" missed the deadline, the placement office had to re-review my application and assign me to a new program.  I agreed to talk with Brian, the placement officer, the day after graduation, Tuesday.  When he called, he asked me a lot of the same questions I had been asked in my initial interview and I answered them again.  He asked if I would be willing to do worldwide service, which means places other than my geographic preference (Central/South America).  I responded with something along the lines of "Well, if I could pick where I went, I would choose C/S America because...    He then told me that because of budget cuts there were fewer programs going out, and that most of the health-extension programs were in West Africa.  I then, super hesitantly agreed to be considered for worldwide service.  He told me he would be in touch, I asked if he could give me more information than that, he said not really, but he would probably be in touch within the next week.  In classic Peace Corps form, I still haven't heard from him. So much for that.

When I got off the phone with him, I wandered aimlessly around the house thinking "Oh My God what did I just do?"

On my run I let myself mull over potentially volunteering somewhere in Africa.  I think my biggest reservations are that I don't speak French and I am terrible at learning new languages and also that anywhere in Africa is so much more expensive to get to for anyone than Central or South America, that so many people are less likely to visit me than before.  Other than that, I really should go where I am needed and do what I can to make a difference.  We will see what happens, and now, again, I am just waiting.  (Sound familiar?)

One thing we do know:
I mentioned to the guy that I would also be totally happy doing education while in the Peace Corps and he told me he was just in the health extension department, so that was definitely what I was doing.  One piece of solid information. I'll take it.

Maine
I got up to my family place in Maine today and felt like a million pounds were lifted on me.  This place is truly my salvation.  I love it so much here.  My mom and I drank wine and sat on the back dock watching a lightening storm over the hill to the West of us.  It was beautiful.  We then walked to her cabin and sat on her porch.  We talked for three hours, sitting there in our rocking chairs.  It's wonderful to be here, like truly coming home.  I miss my cousins and wish they were here with me, but I am so happy to be here and so sad to think that I might not be back here for two years.

I'm tired. It's late.  I'll write soon.

The end.

Journey to American Mexico: dog "stools", baby vomit, and marriage proposals

I can happily begin this story with the ending - I am sitting in a super funky coffee shop called Moonbeam Coffee in the middle of what I've decided to call American Mexico. I desperately want to buy myself some coffee because I'm absolutely beat, but I just spent $20 on a super sketchy cab ride, which was a lot more than I expected, so I'm just chilling here, trying not to let the smell of deliciousness get to me.  So that's where I am now, but the question is, how did I get here?

The Journey:

New Haven, CT
It all started yesterday, when Dahlia drove me to Union Station in New Haven to catch my 8:30 p.m. train to Hartford.  She drove at a sluggish pace after Cassie put the fear of God in her not to screw up her car.  About 20 minutes later (note: exaggeration), when we finally got to the train station, I gave her a kiss goodbye, feeling slightly guilty for leaving her for a week, watched her struggle to figure out how to pop Cassie's trunk, grabbed my shit, and wandered in.  I got my eticket off those weird little box things, turned around to the board and discovered that my train was running 25 minutes late.  I should have known right there that I was doomed for the next 24 hours, but what can I say, I've got a lot of optimism...and I selectively believe in omens (late trains not fitting into that category...though I may be adding them).

I had a train ride to Hartford during which I had a quiet conversation with my Mom on the phone about how people should and should not be allowed to speak to her.  Which, of course, due to protective instincts and empowered female-ness, left me a little "rawr"-y (angry and irritated isn't the right word...maybe growly?

Hartford, CT

I got off the train in Hartford and because I'm going to a place that apparently never drops below 90 degrees, and I didn't want to check a bag, I had no warm clothes.  It was freeezing in Hartford.  I waited for my friend, Rachel, who goes to Trinity College in Hartford, to pick me up.  I didn't want to make her wait so I sat outside.  I got outside at 9:47 exactly, by 10 p.m. I was shaking with cold, by 10:25 I had walked back inside, and called her.  "I'm a block away," she said.  At 10:35 she finally showed up.  We went back to her dorm room and hung out with her friends for a while, had a little Andre (you know, keepin in "k"lassy) and then went to bed.  "Going to bed" meant she fell asleep and I read in her common room because 11:30 p.m. was too early to think about sleep when 4 a.m. had been my bed time for two weeks.  I finally got to sleep at 1:30 and woke up when she (in her sleep) ripped all the covers off me and rolled over with them. I wasn't having it so I just yelled her name at her and she woke up and was like "oh, dude, sorry." and then rolled over and fell back to sleep.

Woke up at 6 a.m., got some coffee, she drove me to the airport.  hahah She gets confused between Arrivals and Departures, "Well, technically, we've just arrived so I always want to go to arrivals...but you're departing, so..." Don't worry, we made it.  I checked in, hung out, got on a plane, and flew to Chicago.

Chicago, IL

I was told in Hartford they couldn't print out my boarding passes for the rest of the day because United and Continental are merging but haven't really done it yet, so anyone who flies with either of them gets kind of screwed over.  I had a ripped piece of notebook paper that told me where to go in Chicago.  I should mention that at this point my foot was throbbing so badly I was hobbling through terminals.  I don't know if I have a stress fracture or what but it sucks A LOT.  It kept me up last night and has ached sooo badly today.  Anyway, I hobbled my ass to the right gate in O'Hare, which happened to have a leak in the ceiling (on a sunny day?)  I promptly discovered that my Chicago flight to Houston had been delayed 2 HOURS!?  I would have loved to hear a reason for that.  Well, with that flight delayed two hours, I was going to miss my connecting flight in Houston to McAllen.  I asked the guy to move my flights and he said he would, but then just didn't.  He told me to talk to a guy in a red jacket when I got to Houston if we missed my original connection.  I sat down, hoping the guy wasn't screwing me over.

Dog Stools
I happened to sit down next to a woman who was freaking out because she didn't get that United and Continental were merging and no one had told her, so she thought her ticket didn't match her flight anymore.  I explained it to her, and then let her borrow my phone to tell her daughter when she would be getting in.  I then proceeded to hear all about her life.  She has a grand daughter who is graduating from Texas A&M. Her grand daughter studied education and wants to teach 4th, 5th, and 6th grade.  For now she is getting paid $30 to $50 dollars an hour to tutor various kids.  Her daughter has had about 50 dogs who have all gotten Cushings Disease (or something?) which results in them losing basic functions, going blind, and "they get bloody stools at the end".  She had been trying to persuade her daughter to get that looked into because it had to be an environmental factor that was killing all her dogs. She said her daughter's maltese is already in the early stages and needs to be put down and she asked that her daughter do it before she showed up so she wouldn't have to deal with it.  I found out she lived in Houston for 10 years, and worked for a tutoring firm that paid her lots of money and only had hundred dollar bills, so if she billed them for $340, they would give her $400 (yeah I got multiple examples of what rounding up was like).  I was told she moved to Chicago and bought a house, but she regrets it now, and it is worth 11,000 less than when she bought it, so she doesn't want to sell it now, and she has put $6500 into repairs and improvements to the house.  We then moved on to a discussion about how process foods can give your dogs Cushings and how she only feeds her dog food that she makes.  She apparently cooks her dog roasted turkey, vegetables, and squash (on a daily basis?).  "She's spoiled" is all she said.  She then told me that dogs can't digest corn.  It apparently goes right through them.  Apparently processed dog foods use corn as a filler but this one time, she fed her dog a vegetable mix pack that had corn in it, and, "you know, the next day, I knew that it was true that they don't digest corn...you could see it, in her stools".  So after that she didn't buy her dog vegetable mix packs that had corn in them.  She apparently really bonded with me because she was touching my arm and talking and talking.  Good to know I make people feel instantly comfortable enough to talk about poop?

I talked to my mom and my brother on the phone, texted with Sam about the flight delay, made the airport people put me on the later connection flight, and then asked this really nice guy next to me if he liked his Kindle because I'm thinking about getting one for the Peace Corps.  That dude should be a Kindle salesperson.  He's got the well polished look, but is really laid back and honest looking so you trust everything he says.  Seriously, I want a Kindle.

Baby Vomit
Finally left on my flight from Chicago to Houston.  I sat next to this mom and her not quite 2 year old daughter, this little adorable blondie.  The little girl was soooo excited about opening the latch to the tray table and having it come down, then putting it back and using the switch to close it.  Her mom and I were on relatively constant surveillance to make sure she didn't get smacked in the face with it.  She also opened the flight safety manual and made a "woooooooooooooo" sound, like she was really impressed.  You had to be there, but I laughed for like ten minutes.  As soon as the flight went up though, she promptly fell asleep on me.  Her mom felt so bad but I figured it was better than wailing baby, and she was cute, so we just left her there.  She slept almost the whole way until the last half hour, when she woke up and just started crying.  Her mom thought it was the change in air pressure and so we both kept saying "almost there!" but she kept crying, then she promptly threw up EVERYWHERE, multiple times. It was a shit show.  I stopped breathing through my nose because the smell was going to kill me.  I helped clean everything up but felt pretty grateful when the plane landed and I could run out of there.

Houston, TX
By the time I finally got to Houston it was 3:30, the time I was already supposed to be done traveling and I still had a flight to go.  By that point I could barely walk my foot hurt so bad, and I needed to change my shirt because I had vomit on me.  I thought I had packed ibprofen in my bag, but turns out I packed Midol instead.  I was pissed at myself for about 5 minutes, when I realized that midol also has acetomenaphin in it and now I just wouldn't be bloated as an added bonus, so I took two.  I went to get my ticket sorted out and make sure I had a spot on the plane to McAllen.  The woman who was working on my stuff almost put me on a flight to Tulsa, which would have been bad but it was figured out in the end.  I then went into a random restauranty/cafe place and sat by a window to just chill for a little while.  Is it just me, or do you think really morbid thoughts when you're flying?

Let me explain - I have this ritual when I fly where right before I take off from the ground I say a little prayer that is usually some slight variation of "Please let me get back to the ground safely, please let me touch the ground in one piece again".  I say it when I step into the plane and with my eyes closed as we're taking off.  I also, when we hit the runway after a flight, say "thank you".  It is a weird ritual of mine, and I don't usually stress out about flying while I'm in the air, it's just taking off and landing.  But, for whatever reason, it leads to super morbid thoughts during the day. For example, while I was sitting at this wall of windows, these two big trucks carrying tanks were out on the pavement, and one of them backed up so it was about two feet apart from a similar truck.  I was probably about 100 feet away, and I couldn't help thinking, watching that truck back up, that if he went fast enough and hit that other one, the tanks labeled "FLAMMABLE" would blow up and I would be killed. And then, being the ridiculous writing oriented person that I am, I tried to think of how I would describe that death and came up with something awful that involved the phrases "bits of charred smoking flesh" and "shards of glass".  I, immediately, thought "wow I'm so morbid." I turned my attention to the ridiculously thick Texan accent I could hear on the guy behind me, and giggled to myself.  I seriously saw the most ridiculous people in the Houston airport I was giggling left and right.  I felt like I was on another planet, so many people were so overly groomed they looked ridiculous, like slightly better intentioned Jersey Shore people.  I must say, this doesn't go for everyone, for most I was pretty impressed by how sharp looking everyone was, very put together.  Either way, felt like another planet.

Got on my flight to McAllen, little puddle jumper that had SO MUCH TURBULENCE I actually gasped out loud.  It also didn't help that I was right next to the uncovered propeller and felt like something out of a WWII movie.  I had another morbid moment, when we were still on the ground and they were testing out the propellers before we left the gate and they were vibrating really violently.  I was like, if that shit comes lose, I'm done for. I don't know why this happens to me.  It makes me sound like a miserable person - which I'm not! I swear it's just when I fly that I think these things, and I can't be that bad because that woman talked to me about poop.

McAllen, TX

I walked out of the airport to the only taxi available and the guy didn't speak english (i'm that close to Mexico right now).  I thought I would be ok, because I used to be nearly fluent, but they speak spanish so differently here, and i'm SO out of practice.  When we finally got going though, and i fell more into the flow of it, he started asking me how old I was (he's 31).  Then he asked if I had a boyfriend.  When I said no, he asked me why not.  Did I not want a boyfriend? He kept repeating that he didn't understand why I didn't have one.  Then asked if I wanted to get married. I said no. Then he asked me when i wanted to get married, and I said I wanted a job not a husband.  I don't think he knew what to do with that. We talked about marriage and boyfriends, and what was wrong with me because I didn't want to be married and I didn't have a boyfriend and then I was at Moonbeam. And here I've sat, recounting my story.  I'm SO excited to finally see Sam and not feel like I'm traveling anymore.  I've been up since 6, in texas since 3:30, in his part of Texas since 6:30, and it is now almost 9 (he had TFA stuff).

To end - yay for American Mexico, dog stools, baby vomit, and marriage proposals. I will fill in more about this strange place over the next few days.

My mom just emailed me "you're less than 5 miles from the Mexican border. I'm worried. Please be careful. Call me when Sam gets you." hahahha

The end :)

The Wisdom of Joan Didion

I am currently sitting in Starbucks trying to find this mystery quote by Joan Didion on depression.  I have this procrastination-oriented belief that if I find this quote, I will magically be able to articulate in my book what it was like to be depressed for three years, and what it was like pulling myself out of it.  The quote has continued to elude me, along with the words I need to explain what I went through.

However. I came across this really amazing quote I've never heard before that was, of course, written by the illustrious Joan Didion.  I couldn't hold its glory all to myself so I thought I'd post it up here.  Didion is da shit.

"I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it." 
— Joan Didion

Mind blowing right? I feel like I read Didion and just think to myself, "PREACH!" I want to be someone like that someday.  Someone incredibly articulate who writes brilliant things that inspire, make people laugh, or think, or not feel alone.  Anyway, thought I'd share it.

The end. :)

Things I love and hate.

I thought for a while about coming up with something epic to start my blog with but it was just too much pressure, and too much effort to come up with something profound on command.  Instead, as usually happens, I found my inspiration while procrastinating finishing my book.  It is a simple list, and is not insightful or profound, and will probably serve as a relatively shitty start for anyone I manage to coax into reading this thing, but it is real, and raw, and ridiculous...which is how I like to think I live my life.  (Oh, that is kind of profound!...maybe?...ok, fine, not really. But I still like the new RRR policy...might use that as a new life mantra.)

Anyway. On to the list. It is done in Kappa style.  I've been taught to always start with a positive and end on a positive, and just to show off, I've decided to end on two positives. So there.

1. I absolutely love it when I am doing dishes with the dial soap we have in our kitchen, and for whatever reason tiny little bubbles escape the sponge and float off into the air. It makes me so happy.

2. I am literally disgusted by few things more than I am by a dirty kitchen.  Our kitchen... was disgusting.  I walked in there and I couldn't leave without scrubbing it down.  I feel like people lose sight of the fact that those dishes you seem incapable of cleaning well will hold your food AGAIN. That counter top you leave food tidbits on to dry will eventually be used to prepare your next round of food.  That sink you toss your used dishes into will eventually fill, and then what will you do (if I don't clean them first)?  I washed all those dishes, I scrubbed that counter and stove top, I emptied that sink.  I am a champ.

3. I LOVE a spotless kitchen.  There is nothing nicer than a clean kitchen.  It's so pretty, and sanitary, and sparkly.

4. I ALSO love a glass of wine as a reward after I have cleaned a dirty kitchen.

I'll be honest, cleaning the kitchen up after other people makes me feel like the nicest person in the world, even if I have thought mean things towards the people who left them there while I scrub their dried moldy food out of dishes they thought they had cleaned and already put in the drying rack.  I am great.

The end.   :)