(A Little Bit of March, but Mostly) April

We've been pretty busy.

Husband and I enjoyed our trip to DC to see April and be touristy. Below are a few of the picture highlights (all from my phone).

The Monument- a view from the Lincoln Memorial.

The three of us at the Lincoln Memorial

The three of us hanging out in the 'zoo.'

Post-karaoke antics.

We stopped for a break from the unrelenting wind and cold at the Hotel W.

One of many reasons she's the best-

Leaning Tower of Pisa picture with the Monument.

The weekend after we got home from DC, my family came to town for Easter- we went to the Unclaimed Baggage Store and hung around at home eating and cooking for the holiday. A few pictures:

Easter!

Puppy just refuses to cooperate for family pictures!

A normal family photo.

I spent a fair amount of time in the new rocking chair, crocheting. 

Two days after Easter, Husband and I ventured to the great city of Atlanta where we saw a Knicks game! Mom got us tickets to the game for Christmas, and Hubs had been counting down the days with excitement. Unfortunately no one could watch Puppy, so she had to come with us, but she's such a trooper, and she did a great job. Highlight from the trip (aside form the Knicks destroying the Hawks)? Conan O'Brien was there hosting his NCAA Final Four shows, and he was at our game with us! Like, 50 feet away! 

Puppy rode the entire way curled up into this cute little ball, snoring.

New York Knicks gear! 

Conan's in town!

And look! there he is!

Aaaaand, last but not least: Puppy waited for me like this one day:

Coming soon: The Introduction of Ollie.

The Dream

I started my new job this week. I'm excited.

I can remember in second grade in Florida, when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said that I wanted to be an astronaut. I got made fun of a little, but that wasn't any different than any other day in elementary school or middle school.

Throughout middle and high school, the dream never went away. It got bigger- and became more prominent in my life. I did research and learned what I needed to do and where I needed to go to make it happen. When applying for colleges, I chose to apply to a seemingly obscure one in what seemed like the middle-of-nowhere, Alabama (or at least to a South Floridian).

But taking that path has brought so much goodness in to my life- my husband and his family, our church home, a whole world of experiences, great friends, and a career in the US Space Program.

Though I can't be an astronaut (I'm an inch too short, go figure), I can work with them. In my new job, I will be communicating frequently with the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, and Mission Control in Houston (as in, "Houston, we have a problem"). Very cool.

I only realized Wednesday, when I received my official NASA badge, that I've accomplished my goal. The 7-year-old who wanted to be an astronaut, got her wish (albeit, slightly altered). I'm doing it.

Literally living the dream.

I'm blessed to be here.

The Green Room

I spent the final weekends in February and first half of March painting and decorating our guest room. It's finally done, and I'm really pleased with it. The first line of business was painting, then I took care of decorating the walls.

Some people really don't like painting. I'm not one of them. I really enjoy it. I turn on my iPod and go to town. Painting itself is easy- it's the prep work that takes all the time. Taping door and window frames, base boards, and the ceiling, and then making sure the drop cloth is taped down and doesn't have holes in it takes up most of the "I'm painting the guest room" time for me. But even though this part remains relatively unnoticed (unless you seriously mess up), it's a really important part of the process.

This is how the room started:

 

Boring.

 

We spent some time picking paint colors. We knew we wanted it to be in the green/yellow family, but we weren't really sure how bright, dark, or pastel we wanted to go. We finally landed on Behr's Apple Orchard:

 

Holy Apple Orchard!

After some painting and a few week's time passing, the room underwent a complete overhaul. The furniture was moved all around (as was our pile of clean laundry that usually lives on this bed) several times, and the drop cloth was moved from wall to wall. The blinds were taken down and put back up. All done while I was jammin' to my iPod on a pretty sweet set of free speakers I got from work.

I finally finished up all the final touches, removed all the tape, picked up the drop cloths, and moved the furniture back.

Below are a few pictures of the work in progress:

 

We also got more pillows for the bed.

 

Then finally last night, I finished making the second half of the over-the-bed art, decided where I wanted to put the other picture, and made it happen.

 

Here are the final pictures of the room, in all its Green-Room glory.

 

 

 

 

Gosh, I just love how the bright white of the blinds and

baseboard stand out against the bright hues of the paint!

 

 

 

I've always been big on the belief that the small, personal touches are what make something into something worth enjoying.

 

A picture Mommal gave me when I moved into my first apartment in 2008.

 

 

 

My mom gave us this pillowcase when we moved into our house in September.

 

 

And now the cream of the crop. The part on the left was created last year, and I loved it. It moved around the old apartment from time to time, and then it moved around the house while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with it.

 

Last week, before our DC trip, I painstakingly arranged the new canvas' crayons in opposite rainbow order as best I could, and as similarly as possible to the original. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't want it to be.

 

Monday, Husband came to visit me at work for lunch and we threw around the ideas of possibly having the two canvases next to each other upright (dripping "up" or "down"), but after I finished the melting portion of the new canvas, we decided we really liked them facing out.

 



 

This picture has a lot of my favorite things-

crayons, colors, imperfect symmetry and boldness.

 

And just in time for Mom, Sister, and Mommal to visit for Easter in 2 days.

Back in the day.

 

Me, competing with the Legend Lady

Jags Small Juniors at Nationals in 2003.

Back in the day when I was a cheerleader, I used to flip, fly, tumble and stunt for fun in my spare time. In these days, I travelled a lot from the Miami area to all around the South for competitions. Since home was so far south, it was often necessary to fly to our competition destinations. Having flown a lot, I'm pretty much a pro. I'm good with turbulence, and even enjoy it, I know what types of things are easily accessible during the flight for entertainment, and I'm small, so I keep to myself. With that said, read on.

It happened Valentine's Day weekend in 2004. My mom, grandma and I were flying home from a competition in Dallas (where we won, by the way), and it was nearly 1AM on a Monday morning.

All competitions were extraordinarily exhausting. We'd arrive at the hotel or venue on Friday night, practice in the parking lots until 11 pm or midnight, go to our rooms and have to do our hair, then sleep for a little while. We usually had to get up around 5 so we could eat, practice, get to the competition venue and check-in, then sit around and try to sleep on the concrete floors using our bags as pillows for a while, and have practices throughout the day outside (regardless of weather). We also were required to be front-and-center when any of our gym's teams were competing. Then when there was about an hour before our floor time, we'd start making our way to the warm-up areas. Practice the routine full-out twice with the music, then work individually on stunts, tumbling, or what have you until it was our turn to wait in the Pit. We waited and waited, stomachs churning. Some girls were super hyped up at this point. I was the exact opposite. I would always stand quietly, composed, going through each and every motion, stunt, tumble, and jump in my head. Then we'd compete- 2:15 minutes of extreme athleticism. Then we do it again the next day for finals.

Anyways, back to the story- we hit a patch of turbulence, and, being the expert passenger I am, it didn't phase me. But then- the pilot came on overhead and said "Please pause for a short prayer."

Like any reasonable human being, I start bawling. Like an absolute baby. The water-works. Think of the biggest fountain you can- I was watering up more than that. I put my head down on the tray table and cried. Just thought about everything and everyone I loved and said my goodbyes.

About an hour later, still crying uncontrollably, we landed in Fort Lauderdale. Finally- only after watching me cry my eyes out and bawl for over an hour, my grandma finally asks me what happened and why I started crying, and I yelled "WHY WEREN'T YOU?!" She was surprised by my answer and kind of backed off for a minute.

After getting off the plane and regrouping myself, my mom asked me again, why I was suddenly crying. So finally, I said, "In the middle of the turbulence, the pilot said, 'Please pause for a short prayer.'"

My mom and grandma laughed at me. For a pretty long time. I was quickly becoming even less enthused than I started. 

Once they caught their breath they said, "The pilot said,

"Please sit for rough air.'"

This entire story to say that the turbulence on our flight from Nashville to DC last Wednesday was worse.

DC pictures and trip details coming soon!

 

Bonus photo. This is me competing with my

high school varsity competition team in Orlando

my freshman year of high school in 2003.

We placed second.

Triathlon

This past weekend, on Saturday, March 9, I completed my first triathlon. It was a mini-triathlon, but a tri nonetheless. I found out about only a few days prior, and since I'm crazy, I decided to go for it.

The tri had a pretty cool setup. It was a nice introduction to triathlons. This was all indoors- the swimming was done in laps in the pool, the biking was stationary and the running was on a treadmill. There were volunteers (or YMCA employees) standing all around to get times and watch the laps to make everything as official as possible.

I went in knowing I'd be fine at the running and biking, but I was really nervous about the swimming. I haven't gone swimming since the fourth of July last year. Yes. That exact date. And I hadn't swum laps in years. Not since the time in my elementary-school-years when Mom thought I might enjoy a swim team. (She was wrong.)

Registration was from 6-9am, but my heat time wasn't until 10:40, so I just sat around for a few hours waiting for my turn. But I didn't mind- it kind of relaxed me to be able to see how the tri would work- and how relaxed everything was. It wasn't intense.

My time finally rolled around and I went. I only did 6 laps (300 meters), and I swear I thought I was going to die. Die. I'm not even kidding. No exaggeration. I thought I was going to die. ..After the first lap! I still had 5 laps to go! By the time I got to the second half of the 6th lap, and my lane judge/timer girl was cheering me on, I'm pretty sure every time I took a breath and could hear her cheering me, a little piece of my soul died, and I told her off in my head. I know. That's bad.

I finally finished it and found out that however near death I thought I was, I still finished the 6 laps in a pretty impressive 7 and a half minutes. Seven minutes and thirty seconds. The absolute longest 7.5 minutes of my life so far.

Then, since transitions weren't being timed, I took a few minutes to sit in the locker room and regain full consciousness. About 7-8 minutes later, I found myself trying to get comfortable on a spinning bike. Oh my gosh, those things are so wildly uncomfortable! I did the 5 miles on the bike slower than normal, but I wasn't really trying to "win" anything.

Moved on to the quick mile run.

After I finished the mile run, I felt this strange sense of accomplishment. My first triathlon. I'm a triathlete! (Never thought I'd say that!)

My impeccable athleticism inspired Husband to go for a run later Saturday afternoon.

The rest of the weekend was spent watching FRIENDS, playing with Puppy, church, and ice cream :)

Things are right.

Today is a good day. It's the start of the world straightening itself back out.

I've had a really rough couple of months at my job- constantly being degraded and condescended. When the behavior first started in the middle of last year, I thought it was because I was young- almost 12 full years younger than the next employee closest in age to me!

Then I thought the problem was me. Am I not smart enough? Fast enough? Detail-oriented enough? Do I not work hard enough, and am I not learning the material thoroughly enough?

Then I thought it may have something to do with how I dressed. I work in a very casual environment- it's not unusual to see some men wearing shorts! That's really casual. But wearing a t-shirt and jeans everyday isn't too casual, as most people wear the same thing.

I thought, maybe I'm giving off a very young and immature vibe. So I made my office more "adult" by taking down pretty much anything fun, or anything that really defined me.

Then at the beginning of 2013, when we were swamped with problems and working until 6 or 7 at night, even after arriving at 6:45-7 in the morning, that I realized the problem wasn't me. It's them.

What I am and what they want are different. They want a person who will ignore their life, their family, their friends, their church, for this job. They want a person who has as many years of experience as I've been alive (all three of the people I work most closely with on a daily basis have been in this line of work for an average of 25 years. I'm 24.). They want a person who can look at a problem and immediately know the answer.

I'm not that person. I need time to investigate the problem. I need time to learn the program and to scour documentation. Which is what I spend a fair amount of time doing.

I am not willing to work 12-13 hours a day regularly. I am not willing to ignore Husband and my family and friends to fix our customers' problems. Of course, there are cases where this needs to be done- and I've done it. I've worked the weekend. I've worked from 6:30am- 8:30pm. I've done it. Those times were enough for me.

Enough for me to realize that this job is not worth ignoring my family. It's not worth missing out on what's happening with Husband and Puppy. It's not worth feeling like I'm worthless, and being so afraid to come to work that it makes me physically sick. It's not worth the fear I've developed of the sound of footsteps outside my office- in case that person is coming to belittle me.

Today I accepted a new job, working on experiments on the International Space Station. Sure, there are funny hours, including shift work, but there are many positives:

1. I'll finally be living the real reason I moved to this state: The Space Program
2. I can rebuild my self-esteem and self-worth.
3. I still get to be science-y and social: I'll be working with ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japanese Space Agency), as well as the astronauts physically onboard the ISS.
4. After 4 days working, I get 4 days off.
5. I'll have time during the weekdays to actually get out and run errands, instead of trying to cram everything into a 1-hour lunch break.
6. I'll have access to the Arsenal (which means cheap bowling for Husband and I!).

As much as I like the work I do now, it's not the right fit for where I am in my life. I enjoy the work, I enjoy the customers (for the most part), and I enjoy the people I work with (for the most part). But it's time for some positive changes.

It's time for me to be back.

I've never seen a bunny lay or hide an egg.

We've stumbled into the month of Easter again! I love this holiday. To me, the idea of it means spring is coming, and with spring comes warm weather (please, oh, please, let there be warm weather soon!). I'm excited, but also appalled.

Everywhere you go for the rest of this month will be decorated with pastel eggs and small pretty dresses. Light yellow dress shirts for men, and something floral for women. That's all good and well- nothing wrong with a new outfit. There's the Easter bunny relaxing on that giant chair at the mall, which can be hit or miss in terms of varying degrees of nightmarish costumes.

This bunny who comes once a year to hide eggs in homes of many children (and adults). Does no one else see the outrageous thing this bunny does every year? Breaking and entering into our homes and yards to hide eggs? It's a little weird, if you ask me.

But where is the Lord in all this? Isn't this holiday His? Easter, not unlike Christmas, has become a holiday used for cookies, candy, weird guys in costumes, and decorating. Easter isn't a day set aside on a seemly random Sunday once a year for us to celebrate dyeing eggs and hiding them, or dressing up our children and pets, or having the family over for lunch.

Easter is the day Jesus rose from the dead. The dead. That is enough to celebrate! Our Lord is risen and He came back to bring us into a world with eternal hope and rejoicing!

He didn't endure suffering and death so that His people in His church could wake up early that Sunday morning to find the Easter eggs and Easter baskets filled with goodies - He died so we can live with Him forever.

I don't judge those who decorate and hide eggs, or those who get extra-strength dressed up. The little dresses and hats are cute. I love decorating eggs and searching for them. I love getting an Easter basket!

But I don't forget the real reason for the holiday.