Coconuttylimestrawberrylicious

Things I Love:

Cupcakes

My room mate and I made awesome cupcakes yesterday. We made the cupcakes from this recipe and the icing from this recipe
and added the stuffed strawberries. We stayed up until 1 AM making them. Totally worth it. Penny enjoyed one of them...grr. Here they are pre-baking, the fluffiest batter I've ever seen. And here they are after baking! Coconuttylimestrawberrylicious. Room mate #2 iced them, I might have done it differently.

Texas Thunderstorms in Summer

I love love love the way clouds change the way colors look.

I love the way concrete smells when it rains, when it's so hot outside that the steam rises from the pavement.

I love the sound of thunder. I love the few days I get the chance to actually drink a cup of hot tea and sit by a window with a book watching the rain. When I have my own place I have to have a chair by a window.

Being treated like an expert

I babysat last week for an 11 month old. Her parents gave her a push-pull cart for her upcoming birthday. The dad said "What do you think about the length of that rope? Is that a safety hazard?" I looked up to see that he was asking ME! And then the mom asked me about transitioning from a bottle to a cup. I felt like looking behind me to see who they were really asking. They couldn't be asking this 23 year old grad student about parenting and child safety. Really?

It was amazing. I loved it. And I had answers. And I was listened to. I was an adult who had information, not some child they hired so they could run out of the house for a few hours. They trusted me and valued my opinions. And when I work in caregiver education I will be able to do that all the time.

Things I Don't Love:

My dog can get into my new trash can

The one I replaced my old trash can that I got for my very first dorm room with. I figured she shouldn't be able to get into it, but she keeps bringing me stuff from it.

What I'm going to do about it: My trainer said that if we keep putting non-exciting things in it, making sure there's no food or tissues in it. The problem is that this dog finds EVERYTHING exciting. She will bring me a clothes tag or a twist tie. I might have to bitter apple the whole thing or get a harder-to-open trash can.

My puppy is so smart!