I hope you haven't completely given up on me and blogging. We went through a rough patch, it's true, but we're committed and we're going to make it work!

The truth of the matter is that I haven't felt like my life is very blog-worthy lately.  This is a recurring theme and I just need to get over it and write about the day-to-dayness no matter how mundane it seems. 

I do have good news: I'm running again! I hope and pray that I'll be able to keep it up without my weird ankle injury, but only time will tell. I got a membership at one of those 24-hour gyms and I can always bike and do Zumba if my body decides not to cooperate.  But once again, visions of Bloomsday and half-marathons dance in my head and my body feels fabulously fatigued.  I'm so happy for this moment of physical freedom, even if it's brief.

My sister and I have been hanging out quite a bit since she's been home on break.  Yesterday our friend Kelsie Butts came over and we made cards, prepped a pizza dough, did a Zumba class, came back home to top our pizza, listened to "That's Amore," drank wine and ate. Alison will be leaving for her Central America Study Tour adventure in about a week and I'm going to miss her so much.  However, I'm  excited to hear about her travels and see the changes that life in the third world makes in her.

Ok. Time to grab a cup of coffee (I'm two cups a day addicted again) and read through everyone's blogs!

Hmm…it seems that this blog has slipped into the realm of biweekly things.  I’ll try to correct that in the coming weeks.  Thanksgiving was practically perfect in every way, just like Mary Poppins.  My grandpa (Mom’s dad) had another little stroke though.  Please say a little prayer for him and thank God for this time in our lives—we’re young, healthy, happy, and have so much ahead of us! As for the present…here is a pictorial representation of November 2010:

 This is my hero-mentor-friend informally known as "Smith."  She was my high school Spanish teacher and track coach.  I work out with her on Mondays when we put on our thiz faces (seen above), do cleans, speak Spanglish and dance.

This is my friend Heidi.  We met when she was volunteering at Habitat and she invited me over for dinner the other night.  We're going to lunch this week and I'm going to try Pho' for the first time.

Ali and Cameron paving the way for our sled and snowboards in the Horse Heaven Hills.  We were very adventurous and discovered this little run the day before Thanksgiving.

 On Thanksgiving morning over 3000 people braved the snow and ice to participate in the Turkey Trot along the Columbia River.  My family finished the 5K holding hands. My dad's wearing his mom's hat in her honor--she spent last Thanksgiving with us and died earlier this year so this was a tough holiday for him.

Zach and Corrie were in the Tri over break and we celebrated Shivyon's birthday with cake, drinks, dancing, more drinks, and drinking games. I suppose it's good to let loose every once in a while!

According to Johnston family tradition we headed to the Blue Mountains to cut down our 15' Christmas tree.  This is by far the most beautiful one we've ever had.  I was in charge of documenting everything on account of an injured back, but Mike Jones and Ginny enjoyed frolicking in the snow.

Almost, Maine

Last week's post left me less than enthused about my everyday adventures in Kennewick.  I'm a single twenty something with lots of time on my hands and zero excuses to not be exploring every inch of the youth I have left. So, when I pulled out the "Around Town" section of the local paper on Friday and saw that there were auditions for a play at a local theater, I dared myself to try out.

Honestly, I've always loved acting.  If I could be anything--regardless of talent, fortune, and bone structure--I'd be Scarlett Johansson. So I was really excited to try out for Almost, Maine at the Richland Players Theater. I showed up for audtions on Monday night without having read the script or having any idea about what I might have to pull off on stage--was I going to have to disrobe to my skivvies? speak with a Boston accent? play a mime? I had no clue, but they shoved a little blue tablet in my hand, put me on stage with a guy I'd never met, and told me to start reading on page 35.

Auditions lasted for two hours and I had such a blast.  The play is composed of short vignettes starring a couple working through the tougher issues that arise when love goes sour.  Each scene evoked memories of past boyfriends and the guy on stage with me morphed into Mitch, Elijah, or Oscar accordingly. At the end of the audition I was so jazzed it was hard to get to sleep. I couldn't care less if I got a part because the try out itself was so much fun.

Be that as it may, I did get a "We're happy to offer you a part..." call the next day. My excitement waned ever so slightly as the voice on the phone explained Monday through Thursday night rehearsals starting this and mandatory "tech week."  I checked my calendar, accepted the offer, and braced myself for the busy months that are headed my way.

Play dates: January 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, 28, 29

Variation on a Theme

Last night as I conference-Skyped with Emily and Joanna, I felt a bit sheepish as it came time to give the Lindsay Update.  There's a reason I haven't blogged in two weeks and it pretty much boils down to the fact that there's not a whole lot to talk about.  I'm in a routine here at home and while I'm enjoying myself and thanking God for the simplicity, it's not the stuff of interesting conversation topics.

I get up, work out, head to work, take a half hour lunch break and walk to Goodwill, go back to work, head home, make dinner, drink wine with my mom, and play my guitar. On Sundays I go to church with the family, check out Costco with my mom, and sometimes Grandma and Grandpa come over for dinner. Mondays bring guitar lessons that still make me nervous, and hitting the gym at my old high school with Mrs. Smith--my Spanish teacher/track coach/mentor/hero.

The funny thing is, since I'm stuck in the mundane, I forget that everyone else's lives are moving forward and filled with exciting news.  Joanna is headed to Seattle for another commercial??? Emily is spending the next week with Zach in California??? News to me!

Apparently I need to do a better job of calling all my friends up for regular check ins.  How crazy to think that I'm not getting word about boyfriend visits, blossoming romances, artistic direction, drunken snafoos and the like!

The Office

Ladies and ladies, I present to you Habitat for Humanity Tri-Cities...

 This is my office. I'd really like to take those pictures down but I don't want to offend anyone. They were there when I set up camp a month an a half ago.

Ahhhhh...typical! I had to come up with my "Top 5" goals as Volunteer Coordinator but I made sure that they didn't supercede Whitworth's alternative "Big 3." Gosh I miss that place.

 I drink lots of jasmine tea and hot water out of that Halloween mug. That picture was my first order of business in an attempt to decorate my space a bit.

The view from my desk.

 I had a really good weekend--went to roller derby and carved pumpkins with Corrie and her boyfriend Nick.  Shivyon and her boyfriend Zach came over after and we watched Shutter Island and ate Ben and Jerry's (you MUST try Americone Dream). It was nice to hang out with a group of friends again.  They're good at making me not feel like the 5th wheel.

Yesterday was my day off.  I had to do a deep clean of our pantry after a rogue spice from an Indian supermarket threatened to suffocate anyone who opened the cupboard door.  Note to everyone--if a recipe calls for asafoetida, just order Indian take out instead.  Whatever you do, DO NOT add this stuff to your spice rack. I had pumpkin chip bread baking which covered up the stench quite well and then it was off to my 5th guitar lesson.

Well, I'm going to make lunch and head to work. Love to all!

Update Shmupdate

Ever since I so melodramatically left the blogging stage two weeks ago, I have had a wary eye set on Skype waiting for Oscar to pop up out of nowhere and scare the Bajeezus out of me.  Well, I'm happy to say that hasn't happened and he is once again fading to a emotionally confused memory. 

In other news...work has been going a lot better.  I think that I'll report my job satisfaction level at a 7 today at my weekly check in (10 being awesome). It's weird how the desire to please my boss and let her know I'm happy has actually manifested itself in my daily activity and made work more enjoyable.  I made it a goal to enjoy my job more so that I could put her mind at ease, and I started doing things a bit differently. What I really feel like I'm missing is deeper relationships with the other staff and volunteers.  I made that a priority these past two weeks and I started to like going to work.

I had my fifth guitar lesson yesterday. Did I ever mention to anyone that I was taking guitar? Anywho, my former band teacher is now teaching me Beatles riffs and Dust in the Wind.  Its tough but I'm finding time to practice almost every day and the calluses on my fingers are proof. Next time the Corner House unites around a fire I'll be able to play "Scarborough Fair" with ease :) Missing you all terribly.

Namaste chileno de mierda

I let out some pent up frustrations today. Regular verbal and physical catharsis is like a colonic for the soul. Sick. I hate that analogy. Hopefully nobody understands it.
Last night I uttered my first “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow” at the dinner table. I was thoroughly enjoying my wine and noshing on salmon with the family when thoughts of going to the office creeped in and marred a good buzz. My parents just gave me an “Are you kidding me?” look and I shut up.

This morning, however, at my weekly check-in with the boss, she asked me “On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the best, how do you feel about your job?” I wish I could have spared her feelings but I was honestly at a 3. I’ve been trying to make sense of these feelings since I landed what seemed like a dream job. I have every reason to be grateful and thanking my lucky stars that I have a steady income right out of school. But, instead of looking forward to work, I’m having to remind myself daily that this is a means to an end.

My second….WHAT THE F***?!?!?!?! Ok. Oscar just Skyped me. To hell with catharsis and yoga and intellectually stimulating blog posts. An hour and a half of Bikram poses is no match for ex boyfriends. Damn it all.

The Brothers Awesome

Thank God it’s Monday.  It’s the second day of the weekend (for me) and I’m off to a lovely start.  I rode my bike to the closest Starbucks to meet up with Shivyon before she scooted off to school.  The java-charged conversation and hamstring-stimulating ride home have me fully awake and all too excited about the prospect of blogging. I’d love to fill you all in on the exciting goings-on of the Mid-Columbia basin…but there are none.  So let’s do a book review instead.

I tried to scrounge up the notes I took on the books I’ve read since graduation but I’ve misplaced the journal that I was using for a couple summer months.  So, while I can’t really back up my recommendations, I would say that God’s Will as a Way of Life by Whitworth’s own Jerry Sittser and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (a Holocaust victim) are both worth the read.  Luckily, my current journal picks up on July 28 and catches the reflections on my favorite book to date—The Brothers K by David James Duncan.

This novel tells the story of a family from Camas, Washington from the late 1950s up through the 80s.  The Chance family is composed of twin girls, four boys, a Seventh Day Adventist mama and a baseball hero papa.  Each member of the family offers an opportunity for Duncan to comment acutely on some facet of religion, politics, philosophy, and human nature.  Peter is a Buddhist, Everett’s a draft-dodging hippie during the Vietnam War, Irwin is the lovable all-American family man, Kincaid plays the quiet observer, and the twins find opposing fulfillment in science and Christianity.

I stumbled across this title while perusing a list of favorite books of Whitworth faculty members.  About half the staff had chosen The Brothers K as their book of choice and I have to follow the crowd on this one.  I got to know the characters so well and was deeply emotionally involved with the storyline.  I would laugh out loud at Everett’s wit and cry for the twisted injustice portrayed in the last 50 pages.

I won’t give any more details in case anybody is planning on reading it.  If you do, let me know so we can compare notes.  Love to all.

Gotta keep your nose to the grindstone

Ahhh the last day of summer. So sad to say goodbye to 100 degree weather and lazy days at the river. Oh wait, I was in SEATTLE this year. Scratch the line about summer, I’m ready for fall.

I need to leave for work in about ten minutes but I want to get a blurb in before I start my third week of craziness at Habitat. After an enjoyable Sunday-Monday weekend filled with cocoa-banana muffins, awkward Jonah Werner concerts (no one told me that you had to be a high schooler to go), guitar lessons, and my second attempt at sambar curry; I’m rested and ready to get back to scheduling volunteers and being the tech girl at work.

Working for Habitat is not what I expected in the slightest. I have to remind myself (often) that it’s a blessing to even have a job in this economy and to thank God for the good things rather than focusing on the negatives. I think that everything will get better as time goes on and I get more acquainted with my duties but right now I feel overwhelmed and unprepared for the infinite task list that awaits me in Richland.

Here’s a look at today’s to-dos:

Pray-pray-pray

Check emails that I missed from taking Monday off

Schedule corporate groups to volunteer on Saturdays

Make sure the store is stocked with volunteers

Meeting with my boss

Revamp the current system for scheduling volunteers online

Enter data for the past 3 weeks volunteers

Update our website and facebook pages

Get a table ready for a street fair tomorrow

God help me.

My first week as a grown-up

I’m home. I’m in Kennewick. I slept in my own bed last night and my two best friends from high school (Corrie and Shivyon) came over last night. It’s hard to believe I’ll be living in one place for more than a five month stretch. Since heading off to school four years ago I’ve been caught between Kennewick, Whitworth, South America, and Seattle. The funny thing is, as much as I’ve longed for more stability in my life, I find myself eager for the next adventure.

I started work on Wednesday at Habitat for Humanity. I took a tour of some of the homes that we’ve recently built with my boss Theresa and then got thrown into my job. There was no training, no time for training, no bulleted list of things to be done…just an office and the last Volunteer Coordinator’s sticky note filing system. The first two days were admittedly rough. I didn’t have any perception of what my priorities should be and I constantly was running between offices trying to get a feel for how things work. Friday felt so much better. I made phone calls, scheduled appointments, translated for a couple of women looking for help from Habitat, and got ready for my first day out at the construction site.

It’s an amazing and humbling experience to be working so closely with volunteers. On Thursday I realized that the women who had been working full time on a fundraising even right outside my office were UNPAID! Talk about a way to keep paid employees accountable.

Saturday is a work day for me but I’ll have Sundays and Mondays off. Hopefully next week will result in more understanding and better stories. I’m still hoping to get guitar lessons and a gym membership penciled into my week, but who knew how exhausting 9-5 could be? My mom, probably.

One Week Down...

So as predicted, I have been M.I.A. for the past week.  Last Wednesday I took my final exam early and bolted out of Seattle in hopes of reaching Kennewick in time for dinner.  On Thursday morning I had a two hour long interview with Habitat for Humanity for the Volunteer Coordinator position.  After talking with everybody in the office and getting a tour of the re-sale room (where they take donated appliances and building materials and sell them at half their value), they offered me the position.  I'll have you know that I accepted and I'm excited to start work on September 8th. I'll be sure to fill you in on my duties once I'm a bit more acquainted with the job myself.

After the interview, Cameron and I packed for family reunion fun in Sun Lakes Middle of Nowhere, Washington.  There were 40-50 of us staying in little bunkers and enjoying the huge communal kitchen that the site offered.  We swam, ate, hiked, cliff jumped and played with babies. All great fun. 

I left a day early to catch up with Analisa, Ebay, Jimmy and Keith in Tacoma on Saturday night for the Lady Gaga concert.  We meshed right in with the other freaks wearing fish net tights and neon colored accessories.  Gaga delivered a sacriligeous shock-and-awesome show, and we finished the night sweaty from monster dancing to "Bad Romance."

After a night spent in a tent in Analisa's backyard I made my way to Portland for a camping trip with my long-time friend Sean and his roommate James.  We fished, hiked, caught crawdads, rope swinged, gutted fish, whittled and ate s'mores for three days in the Oregon wilderness. I haven't felt so much like a kid since...I was a kid perhaps. With no agenda, I was free to roam, nap, war paint my face, and observe nature without a care in the world.

I just got back home a couple of hours ago seriously in need of laundry detergent and time outside of my little Corolla.  I head out for Seattle tomorrow to get Ali and hear about her summer at Malibu Young Life Camp. On the 30th I fly from SeaTac to Denver to spend a week with Allyssa and I'll be returning to Spokane on the 6th.  Anybody wanna pick me up from the airport?

Sorry for dropping the ball on blogging. The next month’s activity forecast promises a shower of visits with friends and family, a sunny week in Colorado with Allyssa, and a hailstorm of job hunting busywork. So, in preparation for another possible blog disappearance I thought I’d squeeze in a little update.
Where to start? Last weekend sounds reasonable. The Haacks came home and Emily drove over to visit me from Friday to Monday. We went crabbing with my cousins all day on Saturday and met up with Ande for Indian food on Sunday. Both were fun new experiences hoped to be repeated in the near future.

Rylie and I have been spending a lot of time together which has helped me not go crazy with lonliness during the daytime. I started going to Bikhram (Hot) yoga with her—one and half hours of sweaty, detoxifying, contortionist torture, for those not in the yoga loop—and I’m addicted.

I also started my Tri-Cities job search and found a promising position at Habitat for Humanity. After sending in my application and talking with a lady from the organization, I feel really good about possibly being their new Volunteer Coordinator. However, there is another position on the radar as a Program Coordinator for a farm-worker housing development C.A.S.A that also seems like a perfect fit. So…we’ll see.

My professor graciously agreed to move the final final of my college career (HALLELUJAH!) to this coming Wednesday so I could make it to an interview with H4H on Thursday morning in the Tri-Cities. Then, it’s off to a family reunion, back to Tacoma for GaGaugust, down to Portland for camping with Sean, back to the Tri to pick up my mom, over to the West side to get Alison from camp, way down to Colorado for a week with Allyssa, and into Spokane to hitch-hike to Kennewick and start my job (fingers crossed) the next day. Geez.

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"

Oh what a week! Apart from getting Marshall the Female towed (as Joanna and Ebay named my paint chipped Corolla), life has been full of good music, tasty food, spiritual deepening, and quality conversations with friends and family. Here’s a brief overview of last week’s highlights:


My mom and Cameron came up to Burien last Saturday and whisked me away to the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery for a warm evening spent with Jamie Cullum. If you don’t know him, please do yourself a favor and check his music out. He is the most talented performer I have ever seen.

We celebrated my Grandma Helen’s life in Spokane. As with any Johnston family gathering, distant cousins were popping out of the woodwork and there was no shortage of new babies. I hitched a ride back to the West Side with my cousin Barbara and her kids and am looking forward to a crabbing trip with her family in a couple of weekends.

I got my first s’mores fix of the summer at a friend’s house in Burien. I met the host through church and realized how nice it is to be counted as a part a group of friends close to “home.”

With only one class left for the rest of the month, I devoted more time to understanding polynomials (nearly) stress free!

On Friday I met Ande at Pike’s Place to wander without direction through Seattle. She bought me flowers to kick off my birthday weekend and we shared pizza and wine on the Puget Sound while we waited for Analisa, Ebay, Claire and Joanna to arrive.

Saturday brought a relaxing morning and a drive out to Wallace Falls. After a hike and a late lunch of burgers in at the Alpen Drive Inn in Start Up, we toured Edmonds and headed for Thai food in Burien. We rounded out the day with my second helping of s’mores for the week, wine, and a campfire (compliments of Fire-bay) on the beach.

I thank God for 22 years of blessings—a solid family, food in my belly, and friends with whom I share everything. THANK YOU!

Tow this Seattle

Uff! Today was a doooooooo-zay! I braved the 1-5 morning traffic foregoing my usual bus ride, opting instead to spend a hectic half an hour blasting country music in the Corolla. After finding free parking 20 blocks away from the UW, I hiked to class prepared to stick it out in the library for the rest of the afternoon. If only I would have paid more attention to the “NO PARKINGFROM 4-6PM” signs that lined 15th Ave on the way to class. At around 4:45 I finished the return hike to find…no car.

Apparently the city of Seattle takes their tow zoning very seriously. One call to Lincoln Towing and a 20 minute teary bus ride later, I found myself on a seedier side of town ready to fork over my debit card and get my car back. $140 later I drove away puffy eyed but ultimately thankful that I would get to relax with Ande over Mexican food in Edmonds.

I rebounded quickly. It’s hard to stay upset when a stranger on the bus (who’s watched you wipe snot on your hand for the last couple miles) touches your shoulder and says, “I hope you have a better day.” How can you complain when you know you have enough money in the bank to get the car back AND pay the parking ticket AND go out to dinner afterward? Sure, it’s enough to make you cut up a couple lemon wedges and shove them down the neck of a cold hefeweizen when you get home. But…things could definitely be worse.

The Haacks left for a cruise on the Baltic Sea this morning and I already feel abandoned and alone! I’m amazed at how socially dependent I have become. It used to be that I’d savor every millisecond of “me-time” and even get grouchy if someone had the audacity to intrude upon my solitude. My sister is still sore about the one morning that she came to sit with me at breakfast in Saga. I rudely informed her that apart from my friends--Grapenuts and the New York Times—no one else was welcome at the table.

I do feel bad about that now, especially as I think about how nice it would be to share high-fiber cereal and liberal reading material with somebody other than Apple and Pacy tomorrow morning. I realize that I’m being melodramatic, but the past nine hours of “me-time” have left me feeling a little OCD and questioning my ability to relax.

Lately, my inclination to be productive at every waking moment of the day has resulted in a ridiculous amount of time spent in the kitchen. Take today for example: After getting home from kick-boxing and a trip to the market, I put myself to work. I doctored a whole wheat bread recipe that I found online, making sure to knead for three entire Lady Gaga songs, and set it aside.

In the hour and a half it took to rise, I wasted no time in scouring the pantry for granola suitable ingredients. Five hours later I had the granola in Tupperware, bread cooling on the counter, and the broiler ready for an asparagus accompanied dinner.

Somehow, on my day off from classes at the UW, I found a way to stay busy from the moment I woke up to my 9:30 bedtime (yes yes laugh it up). Why can’t I just be? And why is it so distressing for me to be alone? This is your official invitation—psychoanalyze me please!

P.S. Sorry if I bore you with the cooking stuff, but there is a reason the blog's called "Starting from Scratch."

Turn that frown upside-down...

I’ve been in front of this glaring computer screen for most of the day. I have my back to the windows that sit between me and the Puget Sound. The sun has just decided to make an appearance, reflecting off the dust particles and smudges on my screen rendering it even more glare-y. And here I sit, gloomily contemplating a day full of lame excuses.

I decided not to go to kick-boxing today because I was going to study for the finals I have scheduled for tomorrow. I decided not to work out period because my throat is showing all the signs of an impending cold. I’ve avoided going outside because it was too cloudy, and I’m not about to grace summer with my presence unless it has the decency to stop being a drizzly little bitch. Now, I’ve come full circle and started avoiding my study guides after calculating that I only need a 53% on the final to pass. Yes, it’s safe to assume that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

I think that tends to happen when you’re sharing a bed with Apple the Diabetic Pomeranian. She doesn’t realize that you’re planning on skipping your 9 AM kick boxing class and proceeds to force you out of bed before 6. Huh…sounds likes someone’s making another lame excuse for her bad attitude.

So, here’s to snapping out of it and looking on the bright side…the sun is out now, I’m a day away from never thinking about the Protractor Postulate again, I have a date with Ande to look forward to, I just charged my new iPod, AND even though I went for a run yesterday, my ankle is relatively unswollen. Yes. Thank God, thank blogging, thank positive thinking. I feel better already!

Even Rocky had a montage...(name that movie)

This is my past week in pictures. Enjoy!

Top Down in Karin's convertible with Rylie and her boyfriend Paul.

Saturday morning at the market with Ande. Hooray for sun! I had to wear sunscreen :)

Making caramel and drinking coffee...I'm officially addicted again.

Taking care of Apple. Do you see her hernia? I'm almost touching it.

Canoeing (what a weird word) with Ande at the UW.

Quattro Formaggio Pizza and Beer at Big Time Brewery afterward. Heavenly. 

My cookie experiment--Brandy Snaps with Baileys instead of Brandy.  I decided I don't like crunchy cookies.

Make your own caramel!

For the Fourth of July I tried my hand at making a Caramel Pecan Cheesecake.  The Cheescake dissappeared quickly but I was left to deal with a cup of leftover caramel.  I ended up putting it in my coffee every day last week and IT IS TO DIE FOR!! It's super easy to make so I thought I'd share the recipe:

Better Than Starbucks Caramel Sauce

1 Cup White Sugar
1 T Water
3 T Butter
1/2-1 Cup Whipping Cream

Put the sugar and water in a sauce pan on medium high and wait for it to boil.  It seems impossible when you compare the mountain of sugar and the little drip of water, but be patient! Once all the sugar has turned amber in color add the butter and stir until melted.  Remove from heat and while stirring add the cream a little at a time. You can adjust the amount of cream to how thick you want the caramel to be.  Let the caramel cool and keep refrigerated.

Summer decided to skip the Fourth of July celebrations in Seattle and opted for a fashionably late arrival on the sixth. I was more than a little miffed at having to endure a drizzly fireworks show, but over the past few days tank tops, country music, and surprise convertible rides (complements of the Haacks) have put all dreariness to rest. It’s incredible how summer days leave me reaching for rose-colored sunglasses and temporarily push all negativity out of sight. Too bad they don’t sweep away math homework as well.

Not much is new on this side of the state. Math proofs continue to be tedious, I’m missing friends and family like crazy, and I have a ton of free time on my hands. One new addition to my routine will be taking care of my friend Rylie’s Pomeranian--Apple. I don’t know how I’ve gotten myself into so many volunteer dogsitting positions this summer, but this case is particularly demanding.

Apple is not your average Pomeranian. She was rescued from a dumpster in New York City (I think) and has a plethora of health problems. She is about 14 years old, has 4 teeth, a bulbous hernia, a collapsing trachea, and diabetes. While other people might dismiss her as an especially unfortunate product of over-breeding, Rylie sees Apple as her guardian angel. Over the past few years, she has kept Rylie company in and out of countless surgeries and during a lonely move to Arizona. Rylie, in turn, is devoted to caring for the little creature and loving her as much as possible.

Perhaps due in part to my summer-induced euphoria, I find myself contemplating their relationship as a powerful example of respect for life. Personally, I’m quick to judge the worth of those around me based on physical or mental capacities. Perhaps the value of life has nothing to do with the world’s standards of productivity and success.

Last week was one of early mornings, frantic commutes on I-5, and a nauseating amount of mathematical proofs. All the romanticized notions of being a Seattleite from a couple posts ago have long since bowed to the more pressing concerns of merely passing my classes.

This morning exemplifies quite succinctly how I’m reacting to the math classes at the UW…I woke up to the cawing of an obnoxious crow outside my window. Upon realizing that the crow was not my alarm, I assumed (in a slew of choice expletives) that I must have overslept, missed the bus, and lost all hope of scraping by in math and graduating by the end of summer. In reality, it was 5:45 and my alarm was set to go off in another 15 minutes. In my paranoid state I decided to blog instead of fall back asleep and risk missing my alarm again.

To give you all (all two of you?) an idea of what life has been like on the west side, take a look at the agenda for today:

Wake up at 5:45 to crow cawing.

Catch the bus in Burien at 7:00.

Do homework during the hour commute to the UW.

Spend two hours in Algebra writing proofs.

Spend two hours in Geometry taking notes.

Stay in the library/professor’s office until 5 trying to finish a good chunk of the Geometry homework.

Take the bus back to Burien and relax to the loud couple two seats back talking about their troubled pasts.

Water the flowers at the Haack’s house.

Eat, and work on Algebra until about 10:00.

Collapse into bed, proofs spinning in my head, and nervously set my alarm for the next day.

Buon Appetito!

Just in time for the weekend, a canopy of grey clouds stretched across the Sound to push me inside and away from any hope of summer sun. While the threat of rain may dampen thoughts of exploring nearby parks or long walks on the beach, it certainly encourages indoor creativity. The dismal weather all but forced me into a five hour tortellini-making endeavor.

After I discovered that conjuring up the folded Italian dumplings wouldn’t require a full-blown pantry overhaul, spinach tortellini secured a spot on the Saturday’s dinner menu. I zipped down to the supermarket to grab a couple missing ingredients—prosciutto, parmesan cheese, and ricotta. After reading through the green pasta dough directions as outlined in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Barcella Hazan, I set off on a daring adventure into the depths of la cucina italiana.

Making the tortellini filling was a cinch. I sautéed a handful of onions and prosciutto in butter, added chopped spinach to the pan, and dumped it all into a bowl. I added an egg yolk, freshly grated parmesan and ricotta cheese, along with a couple dashes of salt to taste.

The handmade pasta dough proved to be a much more difficult beast to tame. After cooking about eight ounces of frozen spinach and wringing it of all its green juice, I tossed it into the center of a volcanic mound of flour and whisked eggs. Little by little, I added flour to the egg-spinach mixture until the dough approached the non-sticky threshold. (Stuffed pasta flour should retain a slight amount of stickiness to allow for sealing later on.) I covered the green mass and let it relax for fifteen minutes.

The book called for a three step dough-thinning process involving a long dowel-like rolling pin. However, after an excruciatingly long kneading debacle, I couldn’t be bothered with authenticity. I smashed green blobs of dough onto the counter with my plain Jane rolling pin and cut out square wrappers that wildly varied in thickness and dimension. Keeping the extra dough sheltered in plastic wrap, I placed a pinch of the cheesy filling in the center of each wrapper, folded the squares into triangles and sealed the edges with my fingertips. Before the dough became too tough, I pinched the two points of each triangle (along the folded edge) together and left the beautiful little tortellini on the counter to dry.

By this point my friend Galen had arrived with a bottle of red wine and ingredients for a roasted vegetable soup. We plopped the tortellini in boiling water for a good ten minutes and enjoyed them with melted butter and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese.

While admiring my forest of misshapen pasta, I realized that devouring them alone would have been a shamefully depressing end to a day-long epic tortellini battle. In true Italian tradition, I savored each bite in good company with a glass of vino close at hand. Buon appetito!

I am sitting in a beach-blue painted sun room staring out at Vashon Island across the Puget Sound. In true west side fashion, the sky is slate and promising rain. I, of course, forgot to pack an umbrella.

After a five hour drive from Spokane to Seattle, I arrived last night at my summer abode. In response to a desperate plea for lodging that I had posted on Facebook a couple months back, a friend from high school graciously offered me a spare room in her parents’ house. Apart from doing odd jobs, such as organizing a mountain of CDs into the entertainment system, I’m living free of charge for two entire months while I finish up my Math degree at the University of Washington.

Last night I plopped into a big comfy bed, utterly exhausted from the drive and the Corner House birthday hoopla from the night before. Tired as I was, thoughts ricocheted noisily off the walls of my brain, preventing sleep from overwhelming me until about midnight. I awoke early this morning still buzzing with excited uncertainty regarding the next two months.

I don’t have a single reasonable expectation for what will happen within the next hour, much less within the span of the entire summer. I’m in a big city known for coffee, wet weather, fish, and grunge. I, on the other hand, am completely unknown and open for reinvention. For all Seattle knows, I’m a patchouli-wearing vegan, an aspiring Broadway actress, or an uptight Math geek by day and poetry-reading wino by night. The possibilities are fabulously infinite.

Whether I decide to devote myself to investigating Kabbalah or remain relatively unchanged is yet to be determined. Either way, I’ll keep you posted.

About a year ago I stepped off a plane into Seattle summertime ending a five month study abroad stint in Viña del Mar, Chile. Eleven months later, I still catch myself wide-eyed and stunned by the grandeur of American society. For me, it took that of out-of-country experience to really appreciate and analyze the privileges that we enjoy as citizens of the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. Cell phones, personal automobiles, and wireless Internet are luxuries rather than necessities outside of our American bubble. Since being back, I have often contemplated how these things—created for our convenience and pleasure—ironically end up complicating our lives and stressing us out.

Take the automobile for example. Almost every adult in my suburban community has a car. As a result, we can make quick trips to the supermarket, easily visit our friends across town, and take our kids to school in the morning. However, our ability to get up and go burdens us with the expectation that we fill our days with endless meetings and activities. We are expected to make a 45 minute commute to work, meet friends in town for lunch, drop off a package at the post office, pick the kids up from soccer practice, and grab a gallon of milk “on the way home.” Add rush hour and that unavoidable stop light that is always red, and the car—once a symbol of personal freedom—becomes the ball and chain tethering us to an inexhaustible list of To Do’s.

It’s fascinating how quickly “I get to…” has become “I have to…” In what other ways does technology turn our privilege into obligation?

I received a text message from a good friend this morning requesting the URL to this blog. After creating the page over a week ago, I hadn’t truly committed to posting my thoughts, feelings, and whereabouts over such an impersonal medium. A skeleton of a blog awaited deletion or a fulfilling first post as I debated whether or not I should add to the overwhelming amount information that the World Wide Web has to offer. Obviously, I decided to appease my text-savvy friend with a post, keeping in mind that deletion is always an option.

The idea to start a blog was conceived via countless conversations with my six housemates during our post-graduation road trip to Northern California. Life After College impatiently waited in Spokane, ready to unload internships, grad school, jobs in far off places, and uncertainty onto all of us the second we pulled into the driveway. A few of us decided that the easiest way for seven busy young women to stay updated and involved in each other’s lives during the tumultuous years to come would be through blogging.

So here I sit typing in Kennewick--the first to leave the Corner House and the first to post. I got home last Monday night after a final barbeque at the Corner House and a Lady Gaga farewell chant to send me off. After arriving home, I promptly went into “retreat.” I turned off my cell phone, avoided the Internet for three days, and spent some time in silence and semi-solitude. I also took on the prestigious position of puppy sitter for our 10-week-old black and tan coon hound, Ginny. In between dropping my brother off at school, taking Ginny on walks, and cleaning puppy poop off the carpet; I prayed and wrestled with task of discovering my vocation by Thursday morning.

Of course, I am no closer to pinpointing God’s calling in my life than Ginny is to learning that my computer cord is NOT a chew toy. My mom, however, gave me a nudge in the right direction by handing me a dog-eared copy of Jerry Sittser’s The Will of God as a Way of Life. On the third page, Sittser explains that in our search for vocation “we pray for guidance, we look for signs, we seek advice, we read the Bible for insight, and we search our hearts.” In a sentence he summed up my three day retreat and went on to offer an alternate approach to seeking God’s will. I’m only two chapters in, so I’ll try and finish it up this week and give a full report on Sunday.

P.S. I’ll keep the posts shorter in the future.