Got a new chair for the guest room ($35 from @trosathriftstore!!!) and it’s allowed me to pick up this big ol crochet sampler blanket again... I forgot how calming crocheting is- the repetition, the resulting product, the time spent away from this phone lol (please ignore the adorable Hillary bag that I thought I would be able to wear with pride this past year πππ)
I got a new wreath today but it was really hard to take a pic bc I hung it on a mirror? How do ppl take pics of mirrors? I’ll never understand the ways of the instafamous.• • • I was feeling out of sorts & very SundaySad today, then I remembered that yoga is a thing. I forgot how much my physical being is connected to my mental being. I need to spend more time caring for my body & moving it & listening to it. Bodies are weird and I don’t want to be at odds with mine (a feeling I’ve had lately). Gonna keep trying I guess!
This weekend was so refreshing!!! I got inspired at (& presented at) the NC Science Teacher Association conference, camped in perfect camping weather with perfect fall leaves, survived a 10-mile hike with not-yet-broken-in boots, attended a new & awesome book club, caught up with my sis @jillb0_baggins, ate delish tacos/drank a delish mocktail/made new friends/kept the old at @katrinapm’s house, and Byron just brought me pizza in bed!!!! Im feeling really calm, grounded, healthy, and #blessed lately! (Gonna try to hold onto this feeling as long as I can in this school week lol)
Got to take some classes down to the river this week! I loved getting my feet wet in the nice cool water, especially with it this clear, calm, and low. Not being the naturalist at the Eno this summer meant that I didn’t get as much time out here as I would’ve liked. I forget how much I love rivers until I’m down in one! Gotta find my hammock straps so I can do some hiking & lounging now that it feels like fall again.
Y'all... I love weaving. It's so fun. It is very detail oriented and tedious (which I actually love) also it involves a lot of counting but not a lot of measuring (which I also love) but it doesn't make my wrist hurt (like crochet and knitting) so I'm into it. The only problem is that looms cost $500 used π²πΈ Ima save up haha
I'm sitting here grading papers looking at a stack of books I wish I could be reading!!! Take me back to the summer when we hadn't set up our TV yet and my brain was relaxed enough to read all day! I read like 6 long books in July and loved it.• • If you can believe it, I didn't really start reading for fun til like 2013... School had somehow trained me out of reading for leisure. When I was young I would read alllllll the time. Then I just... stopped? I guess? In 2013 I made it my New Years resolution to read 15 minutes per day, and it changed my life! In 2014 I read 52 books! I also credit Goodreads with making me enjoy the reading community and also @taliaissmart for peer-pressuring me into writing reviews of books. Last year I felt burdened by reading again, but this year I allowed myself to buy more books (and I got a kindle and use the library app to get ebooks), and I'm back! I was nervous making my reading goal 30 books bc I didn't want my hobby to feel like a burden. But this year already I've read 28 books!!! That's wild!!! I love books.
My little home for the next eight Tuesdays! I'm excited to learn a new craft skill (weaving) but this time with the guidance of a teacher and the structure of a class (instead of teaching myself). I think I might like this! If I do, I'd be following the footsteps of my mom's grandfather and aunt, and I think that would be really cool.
Still not over the eclipse y'all... I know the pictures all look the same but this was something that just has to be experienced in person. I was really overwhelmed. A teacher at school asked me why it was overwhelming and I had a hard time pinpointing it. That seeing the sun and the moon at the same time interacting kinda made me lose my mental footing as if I realized for the first time we are on a tiny little globe hurtling around with other globes & stuff all around space??? Or that it was just so beautiful to see something I've literally never seen before hanging up in the middle of the sky??? That it universally caused people to exclaim in awe, reminding me that nature is a language and spirit that can impact any & everybody with this sense of grandeur???? It's hard to think we are just plopped down here with no souls or no spirit... I think when seeing this sight I just tapped into the spiritual river that is flowing all around but hard to access sometimes in the humdrum day-to-day stuff. Like when I went to church after the election and the songs filled me with such a sense of the holy spirit & hope- that the fight against oppression was not new and this body of people has a language to talk about this hurt and songs to sing about this hurt and tools to affirm the humanity of all people in the face of such evil. Maybe it's this sense of timelessness that knocks me down but also grounds me? Idk but this feeling will be with me for a long time.
Thank you to everyone who reached out to comfort me in my beginning of school despair!! I have been able to process things a lot more to isolate exactly why I am feeling these things & how to redirect to feel better things!!! It's easy for me to forget to do this type of thinking bc it doesn't come naturally, but that's why I have friends like y'all to help me!!!! • • • I went in to school today even though we aren't supposed to start til Thursday... I just knew I'd get stressed & want to talk to everyone and not feel like I got anything done. Though not many people were at school I still managed to spend a lot of the day talking lol... I'm now starting to get that excited feeling again!!! I'm glad to have my space back so now I can get back into my routine. Xoxoxo
School is about to start and I'm feeling honestly not great. I've been trying to push down feelings of depression since August hit, and it's making me feel all out of sorts. I didn't think about school hardly at all this summer, rather focused on reading and getting the house in order and thinking about the wedding. But now that I have to face school again I'm just filled with such dread. I feel disconnected from my teacher self after such a hard semester last spring, and I feel like I've lost my footing a little bit. I keep comparing myself to teachers on the internet and it ends up making me a combination of sad and mad. I want to not compare, I want to feel confident again, but it is hard! I want to claim my uniqueness like I worked hard to do last year, but something is off right now and I can't quite figure it out. I might just need to take some meditative days to get my mind right in this next week. Oh, also I'm going to take a weaving on a floor loom class this fall so maybe I will like it and it will give me some meditative space. We can only hope!!! (But seriously if you could pray for peace for me that would be awesome xoxoxo)
It has been a dream of mine for a while to have a screened-in porch because I LOVE reading & lounging outside but I HATE bugs/wind/direct sun. This was on the wishlist for a new house when we were looking, but I knew it was unlikely we'd find one simply bc of our price range & size of house we were finding therein. HOWEVER, this house was delivered to us from heaven because it has the most delightful screened-in porch and that wasn't even the selling point of the house!!!!! The weather here is so lovely today and Byron installed a ceiling fan (π»π»π») this morning while I was at church so now I have come home to the most pleasant room I can imagine and it is truly a dream come true. I can't wait to essentially live out of this room during the fall. πππ‘π
It's been a minute!!!! Today we went for a tasting at Med Deli to see which dishes we want them to include when we have them cater my *wEdDiNg* next year. The owner gave us all this for free and let us take home leftovers!!! While we were talking to him, regulars kept coming by to chat with him and he'd explain who they were afterwards. He also talked about how if we didn't eat everything on the wedding day, we could take it home or he'd give it to the homeless shelter because he hates wasting food. What a solid guy who clearly values this community and sees how good food can bring people together. I love it! Also... this food is going to be so legit why do I have to wait a whole year for this party?!!!?
Whew... I honestly don't know how I survived June. Grading in Ohio, the end of the school year, packing up my house, painting a new one, hiring movers for the first time (and realizing I am very ¯\_(γ)_/¯ about how to pack boxes), going to a 3-day PD conference, packing for Iceland, and now getting ready to board that plane and VACAY! Seriously. Omg. • • • When I was furiously getting a bunch of shit in the backyard ready for the dump, I realized I'd unearthed this robin's nest when it was too late. I was sad but it was also so cute I didn't know how to feel. Once things slow down maybe I'll be able to tap into my actual feelings again... that's something that I have a bad habit of doing- shutting down my emotions when I get busy. I barely even am letting myself feel the immense joy I cerebrally feel for this amazing time in my life, because I'm worried I won't be able to hold it together to get shit done. I'm working on that, though, bc feelings can be an all the time thing, you know?
In the last minutes of being 29 you can catch me getting emotional over this sorrowful/beautiful/wrecking song by Sylvan Esso. Life is so big and vast and it overwhelms me with happy & sad all at the same time. π my 20s were so great but I really think my 30s are going to be a whole new kind of beautiful
This thing happens when people meet me for the first time where they are so surprised when I turn on my entertainer side... like, I seem normal & down-to-earth & maybe sitting back bc I've never met any of them before, but then it's karaoke so I give my all singing every single word to Friday by Rebecca Black. My friends are used to these shenanigans, but people who don't know me all of a sudden see me as simply defined by that silly side... like they start pressuring me to perform at any given moment and they try to make me be funny on command or something. Whenever this happens I get super annoyed and shut down and want to just sit in my room by myself and go into hiding so people stop asking me to tell jokes or sing songs or whatever. Usually my best friends or people I connect with just laugh and then keep treating me like a rando which is honestly my favorite. I'm not trying to steal the show 24/7 and if you hang out with me for a while it gets old & you'd probably want me to chill out honestly. This is all coming up bc I'm in Ohio grading APES exams and last year I did karaoke and wore this cat sweatshirt and this year a bunch of people keep doing that thing I just described above and I am Over It. But I did meet a group of really funny people who don't make me perform but keep being funny back to me and it feels way better and is actually a fun time. • • • Lol the struggles of an entertainer I'm so annoyed at the way I sound talking about this
(Photo credit: @glossier) I really love these reminders because they have enough grace while keeping the firmness that I try to use when thinking about my own work. I definitely struggle to do one thing at a time, but I am working at it. That's what's nice about this week grading AP exams in Ohio- from 8 to 5 I have one job, and that's to figure out if the kid answered the question. All these educators are in a room dutifully reading & thinking & processing & deciding, and it's really actually awesome. It's hard to comprehend the scale of these tests though. This many humans exist?!??!!! Wild.
TBT!!!!!! I am such a pack rat for notes & mementos- I just found this flier in my teaching notes/memories binder from when Pringle went missing while I was student teaching. Turns out she was just chillin with some rando Carrboro couple & their rabbit, lol. I love memories!!!!! And I love Pringle.
We got Byron's Mom a peony arrangement for Mother's Day and it's still going so strong and is so pretty. I love flowers!!!• • • House things are falling into place!!! I'm about to own a house with my Swtbb!!!! There are only 2 more school days that I'm going to attend!!! Summer is so close!!!!! Omg!!!!!!!!
bOdY PoSi PoSt!!!! I'm not that body positive these days though I feel like I'm trying to be. I'm definitely at the highest weight I've ever been, but I also have the best work/life balance I've ever had??? And I had salads for lunch like infinity more times this semester than I ever had in the past??? I'ma try to do a 90-day-yoga challenge, by body-posi yoga friends @mynameisjessamyn & @nolatrees, but I still balk at seeing my body move in the mirror. Like, I want to *fix* it, but I feel like that's not the right outlook. My body isn't broken, and it is wonderful and strong and holds me up every day!!! I'm hoping to aim for health and less for weight, so I think I'ma just rock leggings and flowy skirts so I don't have to face the weight for the summer. Also I'm gonna try to learn to cook so I don't eat pizza as much. Also this may or may not have been inspired by the classic "Ms. Refvem are you pregnant?" question from a student that is a once-a-semester guarantee. π€¦π»♀️πͺπ»ππ€Έπ»♀️
Been thinking about how to feel two feelings at once without labeling one as *bad* and the other as *good*. I think I do this as a part of my enfJ personality (emphasis on the J) to help me judge the way forward so I can make a decision & move on. However, I don't have to apply that mindset to every decision. Ex: things are pretty much going forward on our house, so I'm feeling really nostalgic & sad to leave our current neighborhood & little house. But I'm also excited to move to a new place and move on to a new phase of adulthood!!! Part of me wants to shut down the sad part or not start feeling the happiness part to help me feel better about the decision, but another part of me thinks it's ok to feel both feelings at the same time. Idk. • • • This is not a pink filter- we have a grow light on our lemon tree that is BRIGHT PINK from 7:30am to 5:30pm every day π³ππ
