Wacky Wapack Whisk

A few weeks ago I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I googled possible options and came up with three:

1. I had a brain tumor.
2. I was becoming diabetic.
3. I developed bi-polar disorder overnight.

Turns out it was none of these things, and I am now feeling better. My main symptom was that I was just being exceedingly unpredictable and impulsive. Which, as it turns out, can get you into trouble. For example, you might be in a car with your boyfriend as he is talking about an insanely long trail race he is planning on doing in the spring. And then you might say to yourself, "Self, you could do that, 21 miles up and down a mountain range can't be that hard!" And then your mouth might say; "I'll do that 21 mile race!" And then in your head you will say; "Self! What the heck are you thinking!?!?!" But by then your boyfriend has probably gotten excited and told you you can do it and has started giving you advice and thinking about a training schedule for you to use. Or maybe this only happens to me, but you get the idea.

So now I am now registered for this race, which I hear is "more fun". I am the youngest person entered (by 7 years) so hopefully I will win some sort of prize for being the youngest crazy person out of all the other crazy people. Charlie is doing the 50 mile race, I won't even get started on how positively crazy THAT is.

The point of my story is that if you are ever feeling particularly impulsive you should probably bite your tongue when there is talk of 21 mile races.

Lauren!

p.s. I used a thesaurus to title this alliterative post. Whisk can be a synonym for "run". I might just refer to this race as WWW or W3 or 3W, for future reference.

Things You Might Not Have Known About Me

1. Cucumbers are my favorite vegetable. I would eat one everyday if I could.
2. Apples are my favorite fruit. I do eat one (almost) everyday.
   
3. Grocery shopping is my worst enemy.
   
4. I know how to drive a fork truck.
5. The only car accidents I have even been responsible for have happened in my driveway. (And there have been 3, and they were all my fault).
6. I once rode on top of an elephant.
   
7. Large amounts of birds make me queasy.

Other Things that Make Me Queasy Include:

- mold
- the inside of red peppers.
- anything with lots of small holes (like bee hives...eww)
- yucky cuts/ people who are bleeding or have broken bones and thus floppy limbs.

Things I Think are Fun That Nobody Else Thinks are Fun:

1. Reading manuals to things, but only things I don't actually own or need to put together. Not just manuals but brochures and directions to projects/ rubrics to assignments for classes I am not in. Weird I know.
   
2. Dusting really dirty things to see how clean I can make them.
   
3. Riding a bike with no hands. ( I think people think this is fun, but a lot of people I know can't to it).
   
4. Doing monotonous tasks such as: folding lots of letters, putting stamps on 10,000 envelopes, sorting lots of things by color or size or the recycling code on the bottom.
   

Things that Annoy me:

- loud gum chewers.
- anyone wearing windpants
- the news.

Stuff That Makes me Sad but Really Shouldn't:

1. Any old person who I do not know. Mostly because I make up stories about them in my head, and the stories are always sad.
2. When people lose on Jeopardy, especially people who I think should really win or who have had hard lives and faced great adversity. Like that one guy who was blind.

Things That Sometimes Happen to me in School:

- sometimes when my teachers have nice relaxing voices I try my hardest to listen to them but their voices make the back of my brain go fuzzy and I can't pay any attention.
- this seems the be the most common time for them to call on my to answer a question.
- sometimes I sit funny and my foot/leg falls asleep and I don't realize it until class is over and I get up and then fall down.

Stuff that Crushes my Soul:

1. When people say "He's autistic" instead of "He has autism" or say the r word.
2. Seeing dead animals.
   
3. The time I killed a turtle, and anytime I think about that time I killed a turtle.
   

Thing I Shouldn't Tell You But I Will:

- I am ticklish, like pee your pants laughing ticklish.

I think that is enough new information for one night. Did you learn anything new about me? I hope so.

Lauren!

Rock Bottom

I Lauren Cassidy, do solemnly swear to not use my debit card for the next 30 days. If I need to buy something I will use cash. If I want to buy something I will slap my hand and scold myself for letting myself go to a fabric store/mall/ bookstore/ public, in the first place.

I can do this!

Lauren!

Sew N' Tell--Quilt with Border

Thanks everyone for the responses to last weeks post! I took everyone's feedback into consideration and came up with, an idea. I even drew it all out to scale and used colored pencils to get an idea of what it would be. I wanted a blue border, then a scrap border then another blue border. I started working on it over the weekend. Then I ended up talking to an old friend who basically said "Your quilt needs some brown, it will really tie everything together! Do it!!!!" I knew she was right that very second, and despite telling myself I wouldn't buy anymore fabric, I went out and got some brown fabric to finish up the border. It turned out to be what I think is a pretty snazzy border. It adds size and more color to the quilt. And the brown really does tie all the colors together, thanks so much Sarah, and everyone else for your wonderful suggestions.

I have fabric to work on the back, which I hope will be as jazzy as the front. I was going to work on it last night after babysitting, but babysitting for 2 hours for 2 year old twins turned into babysitting for 2 year old twins, their 6 year old sister and her 6 year old friend for 3 hours, which resulted in a very tired babysitter. Luckily next week is school vacation week so I have much less to do around the clinic, which means the quilt will definitely be worked on, if not finished. Oh yeah and maybe my Praxis book will finally come off the shelf and be cracked open...but I wouldn't count on it.

Check out all the other finishes this week !

Lauren!

Would you Like Some Teflon with your Pizza?

There are two reasons I don't cook:

1. I don't like to
2. I am awful at it.

Let me preface this story by telling you that last weekend I had the best pizza I have ever had in my life. I can't figure out what was so good about it but it was good, mouthwateringly good. Our friends Mike and Jaclyn made it for us. And Charlie and I have been raving about it since then.

Today I decided to try to make pizza as good as Jaclyn and Mike did. I bet you can guess where that got me. Yep, it was one big disaster. I rolled the dough, carefully placed it in the pan, then smushed the corners down to make a nice crust, added sauce, cheese, artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers, popped it in the oven and 12 minutes later Charlie and I had a huge mess to scrape off the pan. He said "did you roll the dough in the pan Lauren?" hum I thought where could he be going with that question? "No, but I did smush the corners down, and maybe some of the middle" I said. "Oh....." said Charlie.

Apparently smushing is not a term you should use or do whilst making pizza. The dough seemed to chemically bond with the bottom of the pan making it nearly impossible to get the pizza off of the pan. Charlie did his best to scrape the pizza off and salvage our meal, I would have simply thrown the pizza, chemically bonded pan and all, into the garbage.

Yum....the pizza turned into more of a goulash that needed to be eaten with a fork and knife. And the artichokes and peppers tasted like nothing so it was mostly a big goulash of nothing. Nothing like Mike and Jaclyn's pizza. But Charlie did eat it. Doesn't he look impressed with his meal?

He must really love me to put up with my bad cooking and teflon covered pizza. He even did the dishes. (I love you Charlie).

Lauren

p.s. Jaclyn, tell Charlie your secret, I'm never cooking again.

A Sewing Machine/ Attitude Adjustment- Sew N Tell

It's just been one of those weeks. The type of week where I feel like my most prominent thought was; "why me?!" I have even been crying over spilled milk, literally, ask Charlie. I can't think of one thing that made me feel this way, but can think of multiple little things that just seemed to add up and finally put me over the edge. The last straw came when my sewing machine went on the fritz. That was on Tuesday. I decided to wait it out, hope that it would fix itself. Wednesday I tested it out, but it was still messed up. So I fiddled around a little, bought different thread, re-threaded, adjusted the tension, put the tension back where it was, blew some dust away, flipped the switch back and forth. But alas it was still messed up. I think this was the point where I cried over spilled milk and went to bed at about 7:30. Yesterday the only thing getting me through the day was hoping that my sewing machine would work when I got home. But did it? Nope you guessed it. I thought to myself, "WHY ME!!! I can't even sew, I hate my life!" Luckily, I did what I always do when I feel this way, I called my Mum. Little did I know how much better I would feel, I guess I should have called her back on Tuesday. Not only did she boost my mood she also helped me to fix my sewing machine. Who would have known that one simple sentence; "try turning the needle 180 degrees", would solve my biggest problem. Once the machine was fixed, and we had gossiped about nearly everyone we know, I got back to sewing.

On Sunday, much to the good judgement part of my brain's dismay, I began another quilt. With my machine fixed I was able to finish the top.

I used some fat quarters and also a charm pack that I bought back in September (ek) and also a twin sized flat sheet. I realized that those are much cheaper to buy than yardage, especially of a solid color. The triangles were really quite simple to make. I used the 2 squares into 4 triangles trick that Lorelei taught me a few years ago.

I think this is the best job I have ever done of matching points. Ever. However, it is rather small and I am trying to think of border ideas that will still maintain interest in the triangles, yet add width and height to the size of the top. Any ideas are welcome, and in case it is important I still have a lot of blue sheet left and quite a bit of scraps of the patterned fabric.

And here are the little presents I made for my friends for Valentine's Day. I made them out of scraps and stuffed them with batting and lavender. I hope my friends like them.

Be sure to check out all that other great finishes at the Sew N' Tell.

Lauren!

P.S . Thanks for all your help Mum. xoxo

Dreaming of Summer

Am I the only one who is sick of winter? I usually don't mind it but right now it is so very cold and there is no snow on the ground. I wouldn't care so much if there was some fresh white powder to cover all the brown. It just looks so yucky everywhere I turn.

I thought that some of my summer pictures of flowers from my Mum's garden might brighten things up a bit.



I have been inspired lately by a lot of "art quilting". I saw an amazing sunflower art quilt made be Rene in the Sew N' Tell a few weeks ago that I am in awe of. I have been dreaming about making my own someday since then. These pictures are some that I thought might work out well.



I have to be careful though because once I painted a picture for Charlie of a waterfall and his roommates, and almost everyone who has ever looked at the painting, have said it looks like something Georgia O'Keefe would paint. I suppose that could be taken as a complement, but lets just say that I have been very cautious about my paintings and any other artwork since then.


Did you know Lupines are my favorite flower of all time? I also really like Lilacs, I think I like flowers best that start with the same letter as my name.


Here's hoping spring is just around the corner. And if not, then here's hoping that I can get started on a pretty flower art quilt real soon.

Lauren!

My New Haircut/ The Countdown Begins

Monday was the first day of my 3rd practicum placement. I have 4 to do in order to graduate so this means I am (just a little bit) more than halfway done. Hurray! The only bummer is that this placement is on campus. That means that "clients" come to the clinic on campus and the graduate clinicians (me, and my buddies) provide therapy, and our professors/ supervisors watch us and make sure we don't mess anything up. This sounds like fun, but it's actually nothing like any SLP job anyone would ever really have in the "real world". There is way more work than in the "real world", and much less interaction time with "clients" than in the "real world".

This would not be an issue if I had never gone off campus and seen how things happen in the "real world". But alas, I have been to the real world, and seen how SLP there function, and now I am back in the contrived world and it is driving me insane. Imagine being stuck in a deep dark hole. While you are in the hole you can see a teeny tiny speck of light. As time in the hole passes the light gets a little bigger, and eventually after days and days of being stuck in the hole you finally get to leave and feel blinded by all the light and so happy that you are out (in the "real world"). Then imagine your dismay when someone kicks you back in the dark hole. That is how I feel right now.

Not a good way to feel. I knew I would feel this way so I decided that in order to boost my mood I would get a hair cut. Here it is:

What do you think? I like it.

I promise I will be in a better mood from now on. And if not then just know that there are only 92 more days left of on campus clinic. And only 184 until I graduate! Hurray, that speck of light just got a little brighter and closer!

Lauren!