Heroes in a Half Shell (On a STICK!)

Things I Love

The Ice Cream Truck

When I was very young, likely before Brother was in the picture or at least before he was three, my dad and I would play outside, fly kites, etc., and he and Mom and I would take walks and almost ALWAYS bought something from the ice cream truck. After I was older, we'd save money for summer days when we could chase the ice cream truck (they never stopped in the right spot) to get something. Some of my neighbors even chased it several blocks on rollerblades!

A few years ago I got a huge craving for ice cream truck ice cream. No matter what happened, I could never catch them when I had cash in my wallet. This went on until early May of this year, believe it or not, when I was at the park with a few friends and the truck came by. I got my first ninja turtle of the millenium. Since then I've specially kept ice cream money in my wallet, and last time we went to tube the river I handed two soggy dollar bills to the lady in the truck.

Well anyway, today I was watching TV with my pup when I heard the familiar chimes of "Do Your Ears Hang Low?" passing by the house. Without hesitating, I grabbed my wallet and ran out the door -- barefoot -- and sprinted down to the end of the block where the truck sat waiting. I got another ninja turtle...I've decided I prefer them.

I realize I could probably buy these at a store and have the Heros in a Half Shell any time I want, however I think the thrill of the hunt is worth a little extra money, and the unpredictability makes it extra special.

Grilled Apricots

I made dinner today, and by that I mean a baked sweet potato and grilled apricots with almonds. Grilled apricots are Ah-MAZING. I dipped them in a little bit of melted butter and brown sugar and grilled them for only a few minutes, flipping them frequently. Then I threw them in a bowl and drizzled honey (raw local honey!), extra brown sugar, and some of my roasted almonds on them. I saved the almonds for last and had a lovely syrup to drizzle them in at the bottom of the bowl. I think they could have taken a little more time on the grill but flipped them more often.

I also love baked sweet potatoes, but I think that a picture of it would be rather boring.

Things I don't Love

Being Disorganized

People who know me will likely roll their eyes at this. I have always struggled with organization. And I'm not alone. People with ADHD have a lot of trouble getting organized. We'll get as far as neat piles in various locations that then get scattered when we need to find something. I have several piles going right now actually.

How I'm going to fix it

I honestly don't know how to do this. I recently spoke with a professor who advised me to stick to what works and not punish myself for systems I'm not successful with. My trouble is that I'll find a place for everything and then get something that doesn't fit into a category! OR I'll put something down and completely forget where. And then I'll get to a point of wanting to do something about it, but because I can handle big picture things but not necessarily all the details that make up the idea, I get overwhelmed with the scope of the task and simply don't do it. Again, this is true of most people with ADHD and was the same when I was medicated. When I realized that difficulty organizing was part of ADHD I understood why no matter how hard I tried growing up I couldn't keep a clean room, and why friendly admonitions to "just do it" caused me so much anxiety. It also explained why I was so strict about the systems I did have in place, such as my CD collection, my books, and my movies (Movies, for example, are all in the same telephone stand and arranged first by genre and then by title) I'm looking at various organization tips and recently got a special folder just for financial documents, however I'm still not sure how to go about this. Anyone have some helpful suggestions?

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!

hmm, revamp

My blog has lacked structure lately. And photos. I have decided, therefore, to change my format. Because a lot of my posts are complaints, I have decided that I'm going to focus on things I love. I will also mention things I don't love, but I'm also going to post how I'm going to change it. All of this should have at least one to three photos because, well, I think that will make things better all around and more entertaining (as a certain Disney villain once said, "How can you read this? There aren't any pictures!"). There will be messiness, because I, being a person who has ADHD (and has had it her whole life), am very bad at being organized and sticking to a system. But I will try. And maybe you readers can help me!
So, on to the first post!
Things I love:

Had to include Penny! As you can see, I've decided to forego the whole "no dog on the bed" rule. It lasted awhile, though!

This corner of the room. Let me point out the particulars. That blanket I crocheted in my last year at college (the year I started this blog!) and even though I didn't weave in the ends properly, I love wrapping myself in my gypsy blanket.

And of course, who could miss George Seraut's Sunday Afternoon on the Island de la Grande Jatte? A mild obsession with Sunday in the Park With George has secured my love for this painting and it has hung in every dorm room and apartment I've lived in since college (except for when I moved back home last year).

I took a trip to Austin for the day a couple weeks ago and strolled down South Congress (another "things I love" post for another day). I passed by a couple who were shadily leaning against a wall offering for people to look at their art. Most of it wasn't my thing, but then I saw this: and I really couldn't stop looking at it. This is an original and they gave it to me for $10. The next day I found a frame for it and put it on the wall. The artist is Levi Glassrock and he and his wife Sarah have a character called "stitchlip." They are on myspace, zazzle, youtube
and all sorts of things!

Oh my! It seems the Puppeh really likes to get into my pictures. I love this dog!

Probably among my favorite purchases was my bird sticker. I got this tree and a billion birds at Target. The flying birds are all heading over my window and the perching birds are hanging out on top of various pictures and frames in my room. Can you find the perched bird in this picture?

Now, things I don't love:

I tend to spread out clothes to dry on Penny's crate. And then I just drop stuff on it. And then the books on the top shelf get knocked over and I never put them back up because I'm too short to reach it without putting myself in danger.

What I'm doing to fix it:

I cleaned. Simple.

I don't know how long I'm going to format it like this; feedback would be great! For now, however, I think this is a nice change.

On Unwanted Suitors

Umm, I'm having a bit of a situation. Without revealing too much in case by some miracle of the interwebs they find this, I THINK I'm being pursued. By two men. In whom I have absolutely no interest. One is the first person I met in my program and he is a very nice person but I don't feel that we would be good for each other. And I think that he would see that fairly quickly were we to become involved. But it seems that he's been pursuing me -- unbeknownst to me -- since close to the beginning of the school year.
And on top of that, one of the men in the storytelling group I attend has been making overtures quite out of the blue. He called me sweetie and walked me to my car and gave me what I will deem the most awkward hug in the history of my life. This morning he started texting me and again texted me tonight asking how my day had been, where before I really don't think he had shown much interest.
My issue in both these situations is that I am not interested in dating these guys but also I have no experience letting people down easy (or rejecting them in general to be truthful). And they are both being a little vague about their intentions as well. I will see both of these people at gatherings over the course of the next year and I don't want to make things difficult or uncomfortable for either of us or the people in the group. Any tips people?

That does it!

Somebody get me a tapestry needle. I'm changing my name to Penelope.

Reliving nostalgia

Recently, I received a free subscription to netflix. I quickly stocked my queue and began watching whatever I could on demand. This led me to Shelly Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre. I watched a few episodes and came to one I recognized immediately, Sleeping Beauty. I must have seen it at a babysitter's house or something. Those of you who have seen this know that it's set in Russia and uses Tchaikovsky's original score from the ballet, and also that it features, among others, a young Christopher Reeve. I was not yet ten when the horseback riding accident robbed him of his mobility and I did not see many of his films or appearances. The minute he turned around his handsome head and played the humble, smiling, eager "squire" to the "significantly more handsome" "prince", I fell in love in a way I fell in love with Kevin Kline the first time I saw Pirates of Penzance and they way I fell for Kevin Kline again when I saw him in Cyrano de Bergerac. And I began to mourn for real the loss of this beautiful man. Mourn for his wife, widowed only a short time before she, too, left this world, leaving her son to walk the world alone.
I wish he was still here to lend his comedic turn to the stage today. I wonder what the world might be like if we were still graced with his presence.

I'm sorry.

I'm sure things are fine, and I can remember other posts I want to write at the present, but I'm really not in the mood to write anything, or at least anything too uplifting. I'm lonely and feeling a bit friendless and bemoaning the absence of someone to come home to (Penny only barely counts). The absence of someone who wants to hear about my day, of someone who cares. I'm sure another day and another time I won't feel this way, but for now I wish I had a companion.