reason #356 why i love him...

he brings me flowers when i'm least expecting them.

not much in the way of "new" here. stuffed 576 easter eggs full of candy, toys, and stickers last night. it looks a little like the easter bunny threw up in my living room. still have roughly 432 eggs to go.

saw a sneak preview of "blades of glory" last night with a handful of friends. totally rediculous. classic will ferrell. and actually, quite funny. always better with friends.

glad it's thursday. now if only i could get to bed at a decent hour a few nights in a row.

added my pitiful kitty picture to the post below. :)

i have a perfectly good excuse for not being around in a few days - i had a long weekend - and not the positive, relaxing kind.

i took thursday and friday off from work - thursday to get grace fixed and friday to attend a conference that ran friday/saturday. thursday went well - it was nice to have some downtime at home, run a few errands and take care of the cat - something i'd been "meaning to get to" for 2 1/2 years. (i hear you tsk-tsking.)

friday morning, i went to the conference and thoroughly enjoyed about half of it. but it was kind of lonely. isn't it crazy how you can be surrounded by 1,000 people (literally) and still feel lonely? that's the difference between being alone and being lonely. i left the conference that afternoon ready for some personal, meaningful interaction with a human - any human. as i headed back to the freeway in a city i don't know very well, i realized that something didn't look right... street numbers were going down, and i didn't seem to be approaching the road i needed to turn onto. so i turned around. but then i recognized a part of the route, and new i was going back to the church the same way i drove to it that morning. so i turned around again, this time praying that the street i needed to turn on would magically appear, despite being numerically out of order with it's parallel streets. no luck. so as i got further and further away, realizing i was heading east instead of west, i cried. i just wanted to go home. i just wanted to talk to someone. finally, i got to the freeway, having gone so far east that i picked up the freeway miles away from where i'd gotten off it that morning. a nightmare, leaving nothing but a sour taste of redmond in my mouth.

not having much energy that night, matt and i decided to go out to dinner and then rent a movie for our datenight. i relaxed and felt a little more cheerful (until i found a hair in my half-cooked burger) and overall far more positive than i had felt arriving home. we settled in for our movie, and my little convalescing kitty crawled up into my lap for some well-deserved TLC. that's when i noticed the gaping hole in place of her tightly-sewn incision. noting the length and depth, i realized that there was no way the body would heal that on it's own, and calmly accepted the fact that she'd have to go into the emergency room. after a phone call to warn them we were coming, i loaded her up and headed down.

let me interject something: matt does not love cats the way i love cats. in fact, it would be a stretch to use his name in a sentence involving the phrase "love cats" without grossly overexaggerating (e.g. "matt loves cats") or grossly underexaggerating (e.g. "matt does not love cats") his true feelings. but let's just suffice it to say that matt does not love cats. he merely tolerates them for my sake, because he knows i love them, and he loves me. he's a good man that way.

let me also interject that this incident is coming off an "encounter" we had merely a week ago in which he pointed out that he's tired of them and may have actually used the phrase "i wonder what it would be like if we didn't have cats". and he doesn't like spending excessive amounts of money on them. so you can imagine his train of thought and where this story is going.

so we arrive at the vet, wait 45 minutes for the vet to tell us that she most certainly needs to be sewn up, and oh by the way, it will cost at least $345.

i explain our situation to her, that $345 is simply impossible, and is there any way we can reduce the costs? she decides on an alternative method of anesthesia, which costs less but does require staying the night in the hospital (which costs more), but would save us about $60 in the end. oh, but she forgot the cone the cat would have to wear to keep her from licking the stitches because that's what got her here in the first place.

so i left the cat there and went home to break the news to matt. you can imagine how that went. i finally got into bed well after midnight, and decided i'd sleep in, pick up the cat and get out to redmond (again) missing only the general session/worship service of day 2 of the conference.

saturday morning i was up and at the vet where the final total, after cone, hospital stay, drugs, etc, came to $330, making the entire event (including the original spaying) come to a whoppin' $400. the vet sent us home with multiple medications that i would get to administer to her twice/day for 7 days (yippee!), including some kitty-valium, which i think would've been better suited for my husband.

by the time i got home, and matt got home from his bible study, i was exhausted. he talked me into staying home so we could spend the day together, and agreed to buy me the CDs of the workshops i'd miss. i was glad for the excuse to stay home. i offered him the valium, he declined. ;)

so i'm glad to say that taking saturday to myself was actually quite rejuvenating, and i needed it after that very long friday. sunday was a blast - i had a full team of teachers in kids church, so i took advantage of that rare opportunity to attend the worship service. kids church ran smoothly - we had a record number of kids and my teachers said it was one of the best days they've had. afterwards, i had lunch with a handful of our 4th & 5th graders to get their insight on how we could make the ministry more relevant to them. they're such an amazing bunch of kids and we had so much fun together. it was a great way to end the weekend.

the knitting bug bites again...

ran across this pattern the other day, and with spring arriving, i knew i had to have a few. nevermind that they're made with double-pointed needles, which i've never used before. i rushed out on saturday, armed with coupons, and bought the appropriate needles. luckily, my mother has some experience in this realm, so we had a little knitting lesson at lunch yesterday. not as hard as i thought, but certainly quite scary. will post pictures tomorrow, perhaps.

sick again...

(yes, dad, i'm taking my vitamins.)

i seem to have this thing - every few weeks, i'll get a sore throat - really hard to swallow, painful to talk, etc... then in a couple of days, when i'm getting desperate enough to go to the doctor, it just goes away... it's back again.

and i spent all evening with my sister-in-law yesterday, who called this morning to say she'd woken up with pinkeye. lovely. i don't have time for sore throats, i most certainly do not have time for pinkeye.

anyway - weekend was great, but super busy. but what weekend isn't? i'm really looking forward to easter this year. so much exciting stuff going on. not to mention the cute easter decorations in stores.

i've figured out that my "favorite season" is always the next one... in summer, i'm looking forward to fall. in winter, i'm looking forward to spring. i think that God's design of four seasons each year was quite ingenious, really. just enough time for me to get my fill of one and then i'm ready and anticipating the next.

how's that for random.

they kinda look like penguins...

don't they?

{this is the shot they asked me to take - they needed a new promotional photo of the group in their classical attire.}


{i hope they like penguins, otherwise i might not be asked back.}


{the lighting was a little nuts - the lighting crew was nice enough to turn on plain white for me, but if they were too low, the outer edges weren't lit well enough, and if they were too high, we totally blew out the people in the middle. as it is, it's a little iffy. i choose to call it "high contrast".}


{i told you this batch wasn't quite as interesting as their earlier shows... i was left to my own devices to make the other shots i took interesting to look at... so a few unusual crops and camera angles came into play.}

i'm loving that this is turning into a regular "gig". it was also a good excuse to get the camera out - i've been resisting lately for lack of muse, time and creativity. now, as i watch the first signs of spring peeking up through the cold, dark dirt, i'm feeling that familiar stirring in my shutter-button-finger.

had lunch with my dad today, who was in town while my step-mom was undergoing minor surgery. it was so good to see him, but 40 minutes wasn't nearly long enough. the only downside to my ministry position, and our team being as small as it is, is that it makes it super hard to get away for a whole weekend now. hopefully the team size issues are temporary.

that's it for me - glad it's thursday.

i'm making progress in my decorating project at home - saturday, i hung about half of my picture frames (complete with pictures & clean glass plates!) it looks pretty cool. maybe even cooler than i expected. i'll post some before & after when we're finished. still have to figure out what to do about curtains and the furniture. also have to paint some wall patching, find an affordable under-bed storage solution, and fix the close doors. but it's coming along.

sunday was an event day in kids church - this time, "creekside camp-in". we built a fake campfire, sat around it during large-group time, sang songs around it, and even had s'mores, thanks to a borrowed microwave and some teens that i roped into making them for us. the whole day was a huge hit. we offered special incentive prizes to kids who brought friends, and had a record number: 28 (we average 18). i pulled out the camera when i wasn't teaching to get a few for the ol' scrapbook. nothing award winning, but i'm glad i have pictures of the "fire" because it's nearly impossible to describe:

{content little guy anticipating his s'more}

the "fire" was made by turning a circular fan (which rotates horizontally) on a horizontal plane. we cut a sheet to fit around the face, to hide the sides. then we cut strips about 1" wide and 12" long from yellow and red cellophane and taped them to the grate of the fan. (one of our leaders is an architecture student with very strong engineering tendencies. i said "i want a fake fire." and this was his scheme.) and the "rocks" you see around the fire "pit"? potatoes that i spray painted grey. brilliant, and the kids got a kick out of it.

the whole morning was chaos, but it was structured chaos. i was definitely exhausted by the time we were done and packed up. and my day wasn't over - i was asked to photograph Choir of the Sound's annual classical concert that afternoon. i'm finding myself really enjoying stage photography, and looking for other ways to pursue it. maybe i'll post those tomorrow. not quite as interesting as their christmas show though. no costumes, no dancing. just alot of black and white and standing still. :) (but at least they don't cause focus issues when they're standing still!)

not much happening today, so i thought i'd share a few photos. a couple of weeks ago, matt went with our youth group to winter camp at mount baker. he had his first opportunity for snowboarding there, and his wife is very relieved that he has since decided it's "not for him". wheew.

anyway, i sent him with our compact digital and very strict instructions to take lots of photos. what i didn't specify was that i wanted photos of him too, specifically, photos of him on the snowboard. what i got were a ton of (to his credit) really beautiful scenery photos, like this:

and this (taken from inside the bus - i think this guy has an eye for composition!):

work continues on my picture frame project tonight, i hope. my last can of spray paint is defective and does alot more spewing than spraying. matt brought me a new can, as a hint, i suppose, to get the heck out of his man-space.

and the pictures should be here any day. i see alot of nail-pounding in my near future.

wheew.

what a weekend. the first weekend this year that i didn't have a meeting or some kind of activity on the schedule. i saved all day saturday for me and it felt wonderful.

worked a little on my bedroom decorating project. it's not enough to be called "re-decorating", but still - quite a bit of work. so last week i bought 52 of the dirt-cheap picture frames from JoAnn's (too bad they only had black), and two cans of white spray primer and two cans of white spray paint. saturday afternoon, matt let me encroach on his man-space (the garage) to paint my frames. it was definitely a couple-hour project, and i'm not done yet. i laid in bed saturday night, unable to sleep because the tendons in my wrists were throbbing, and today, i have no grip strength. between coats, i patched miscellaneous holes in the drywall of both our bedroom and dining room. can't wait to get those puppies painted - they've been there since we moved in nearly three years ago.

so, the photos for the frames are en route to my mailbox. next, i get to windex 52 little glass plates and fill my 52 frames with my 52 photos, and then i get to measure 52 times and pound 52 holes. in all my anal planning about how many photos, frames and dollars this project would require, you'd think i'd have stopped to consider how much work this would entail!

still have to work through curtains, and figure out what to do about my non-white furniture (in a room of white trim...)