Little Tasks, Peacocks and Photoshoots

Bonjour, blogosphere!

It's summer, so naturally I seem to forget everything that I have to do and should do - like edit my story, like edit others' stories, like wake up before 11am... like, blog.

It always takes a few awkward, frustrating, and terribly boring weeks for me to get used to summer, but you know, I think I've settled. I miss my friends, I miss having class to wake up for, I miss having things to do (not homework of course! Okay, I miss homework a little. Just a LITTLE, though.)

But, I have worked out a system. I give myself a few things to do every day. In order to remain sane (or, perhaps, close to it), I give myself something "exciting" to do every day; it could vary from cleaning (really scrubbing) various poorly scrubbed corners of my apartment to weeding my bookshelves (I culled my bookshelf today by selling almost fifty books to Half Price Books. Got a whopping and heart-stopping $22.50 for them, woohoo...), to doing laundry.

(Oh, alright. I haven't done laundry in three weeks. Please don't judge me too harshly, it's on the list for tomorrow. I'm down to my "this is getting desperate" underwear in the back of my drawer, anyway.)

Things I'd really like to do in the next few weeks before I go to England mostly include some little things to spruce up my apartment; hanging curtains (this hinges on finding cheap curtains), reorganizing my clothes (which kinda-sorta hinges on finding a better way to store my clothes, though I suppose I could continue to get innovative should I have to), decorating the walls of my living room (which I'd really love to do with some of my own photographs, or some cheap, thrifty art from a thrift store, which, I've just realized, hinges on remembering to go to a thrift store.)

That all aside, I have found some productive ways to occupy my time. For instance, I finally hung up some command hooks to hang towels in my bathroom and to hang the mail key by the door (instead of it living in a pint glass on the shelf). And I totally stripped and scrubbed down my kitchen (Cinderella style: on my hands and knees. Also, little mice helped me sew a dress for a magical ball afterwards, but I had to leave early - ugh! Still waiting on the prince to call me back.) I also knitted a (small and rather scarf-like) shawl.

I knitted it with Noro sock yarn, using an entire skein. Should I ever block it, I'll show you the finished product. All you get are the pretty colors right now!

I also met with a friend Elizabeth on Monday to do a "For Fun Photo-shoot". She wanted to get some more experience and build portfolios and things - plus she has a new and super nice camera and wanted to play with it. I happily volunteered, being that I love any opportunity to look pretty (and change my facebook profile picture!)

She's a talented girl! We went to the Mayfield Park, where, to my complete shock, there were real, live peacocks just strutting around, cawing their weird, vaguely apocalyptic-sounding caws. (Being that we just so recently "survived" the Rapture, apocalyptic seemed the most appropriate adjective. But seriously - peacocks sound kind of freaky!) In any case, I instagrammed (Instagram = iPhone app that allows you to alter filters of photos) one of the peacocks while it was sitting on a bench. Because that's what I'd do if I were a peacock - chill on a bench and let my feather tail flow to the ground in all its magnificence.

Peacocks aside, the photos Elizabeth took were, indeed, facebook profile picture worthy. She sent over a few, and has promised more - I am anxiously await them! It turns out I can take a good photograph when the occasion presents itself.

It's a good thing that we ended the shoot a little early, because when I got home I was blindsided by nausea and spent the rest of the day (and most of yesterday) recovering from a stomach bug apparently making its rounds around Austin. I always seem to bounce back rather fast from these things*, so I've felt practically normal today, just like I have a stomach the size of a quarter. Anything more than a small bit of food complete filled me up today - I've had to eat like a bird all day just to make sure that I was eating at all!

The last thing I want to include in the blog, is an adorable picture of Miss Emma. I instagrammed it too, just for the heck of it!

*I don't have Barb's talent for digression, so I will digress my little tale using an asterisk! I don't often get tummy bugs (which I am so grateful for - vomiting is never high on my priority list. In fact, it's on my "to never do again" list) and what I remember of having them when I was really little was just getting to spend the day in Mom's bed with the puke bowl by my side.

There is a particular occasion, however, that springs to mind, which I will call the Great Plague of St. Gabriel's, where (when I was in seventh or eighth grade - I can't remember) enough students were struck with this vicious stomach bug that they considered closing the school for a few days just to let everyone recover. Approximately three-quarters of the student body were out with this virus over a period of two weeks - and boy, was it a sucky virus. Duncan got it before I did, but that lucky sod got to miss some school for it - I got it over the weekend and was back in school on Monday, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. So that particular story is what I base my tummy bug recovery skills on. For a more complete analysis, I suppose I'd have to ask my mom.