Guys!! It's March!

I made it!! The last three years the month of February has been super-craptastic for me. I don't know if it's Seasonal Affective Disorder, or long Wisconsin winters...oh wait, are those the same thing?! I DO know that last year it was because my mom had just died, but whatever the reason, the month of February has been absolutely heinous for me for several years running.

Until now, baby, until now.

A couple of weeks ago I realized that we were halfway through the month and IT WASN'T AWFUL!!!

It was a big moment. :)

And now the month is officially over, and I can say with certainty that it was better than in years past. Maybe I have broken the curse. 

Valentine's Day 2014 - aka, "the day Margaret's love for chocolate milk came back to bite her."

Yeah, see, my jar of chocolate milk leaked in my lunch bag, which I didn't notice until I saw the drops of milk across my desk at work as I put my lunch bag in the usual spot. (I wonder what the seat of my car looks like?!) So I went to the break room to clean it up - yup, my lunch was swimming in 1/2 inch of chocolate milk at the bottom of my apparently-only-partially-waterproof lunch bag.

It wouldn't have been that big a deal, I mean, every item in my lunch was in a tupperware-like container, but today was also the day I decided to restock my supply of chocolate at work, so the contents of my lunch bag included a bunch of M&M's...in a paper sack.

So the truth that I have learned on this day of chocolate is, as one of my co-worker pointed out, M&M's melt in your mouth, not in your hand, unless they are swimming in milk.

And also - I should make sure the lid and the jar go together.

Finally...

..I remembered to go to this website on the appropriate day!

http://isitchristmas.com/

It was quite a triumph. :)

Unlike this morning, when I AGAIN lost to Dad at racquetball. Ah well, humility has to come in all shapes and sizes. ;)

The mind

Man, I had a post idea in my head for the last few days and then I came here and I lost it. It had to do with...something. Something I've been thinking about for a while...yup, gone.

I painted nails with my niece and her two friends today. It was SO FUN! I think I have a pretty fun collection of colors, but since most people just don't get excited about nail polish like I do, my collection is perhaps under-appreciated by the general populous. ;) So it was totally fun for me today when these 3 cute 10-year-olds dumped out my bag of polishes with gasps of delight, and all we heard for the next few minutes was, "GUYS!! Look at THIS one!" in excited voices. :) :) Loved it!

I feel like a) I want to write something meaningful and b) I don't want to be melodramatic, and I don't know how to balance the two at this moment, so I'll just sign off, and try again another time.

Blog out.

The gathering! The gathering!

Hail, hail, the gang's almost all here! Another part of the family arrived tonight, so we're only 6 people away from having the full crew in one place - woohoo! There's pretty much nothing I love more than having all these people that I love in the same place at the same time. It can be a little overwhelming in my parents' little house - too many people and too much craziness to absorb it all, or to carry on a real conversation :) , but I love love LOVE it!

And the thing I love next-most? How much we all love each other. :) It took 2 of my nieces (ages 10 and 4 1/2) a good...several...minutes to say good night and good-bye to each other tonight, even though they'll be living only 20 minutes apart for the next 2 weeks (instead of 2 states apart) and will pretty much see each other every day. The 4 1/2 year old said it would be just "SO HARD" to not be having a sleepover with her cousin that night, complete with the HUGEST pathetic eye roll you ever did see.

Yay love! Yay Christmas!

I think I need to be here more.

I need an outlet, a place to write and think and process, and I think this might be it. And my journal. And my prayers. But I hope that some of my thoughts are things to share, maybe to lift others, and certainly to help me be braver, so I think I'll put some of them here.

See you soon.

And so it begins.

Today I moved into the dorms (I know, right?) for the intensive summer Arabic program. Which, yes, I am doing for the second time. :) And here are the things that made my day:

• I can park my car in the parking lot right next to the dorm on weekends. Woohoo! That means that on Sunday mornings, in my Sunday clothes and the heat and humidity, I do NOT have to walk 15 minutes to the place where my car will be parked during the week. I can move it on Saturday and Sunday mornings for the next 2 months just go easy-peasy. Man, I'm so relieved; I was dreading that walk.
• I do not have a roommate! For the last month I have thought that I was going to have a roommate, seeing as how that's what the paperwork about housing for the program said, and I was kind of nervous and kind of worried and kind of just kind of dreading it. I mean, I haven't had a roommate since 2001. Yup, it's been a while. So this means I don't have to worry about keeping anyone else up with my light on, or being kept up by anyone else, or the whole "what if she was 19 years old and just really young and annoying" thing. Yay! It also means, however, that I don't have an automatic buddy/study partner, so I'll just have to be friendly and make friends. Le sigh. ;)
• I get to miss orientation tomorrow to go to church! I wouldn't be so excited about this except that in working things out with the program coordinator I found out that the orientation is mainly for people who don't live in this town, and, uh, I live in this town, so I would have been basically bored out of my mind anyway. 

Some of you may remember that when I did this program a couple of years ago, it was not the best experience for me. In fact, that program that summer was one of the toughest times I've had, ever. So, yeah, when I got the funding to do it again this year, I had a moment of panic and heart paralysis, and I thought, "OH. NO. This means I have to do the program again. WHAT was I thinking when I applied for that money?!" And I've felt quite a bit of angst about it since then. But tonight, after moving my stuff into the dorm, and making some friends at dinner, I felt pretty dang good about things. I have a placement test tomorrow, and then I'll find out what class I'll be in and what material I'll be covering. I haven't taken an Arabic class in more than a year, and one of the profs is thinking that I'll just pick up with the next class, after the one that I took a year ago, but I don't think so. We'll see.

Anyway, mainly I'm just happy that I'm feeling pretty comfortable. I am going to get a priesthood blessing tomorrow, and that will be a good comfort and strength, but I'm SO relieved to be feeling so good. I know that my attitude last time I did this program made a HUGE (negative) impact on me and my learning and my overall experience in the program, and I am DETERMINED not to sabotage myself again that way.

In other news, this dorm bed will be the 8th different bed that I have slept in in the past three weeks. So even though it's not "home," it will be nice to feel more settled and less living-out-of-a-suitcase-ish than the last three weeks. Of course, I did spend the last three weeks seeing my ENTIRE family, so the consistency of the upcoming 2 months in the dorms doesn't actually compare. At all. But whatever. :)

Good night, friends!