Blogging is sort of natural for me. I’m a very open person and a natural over-sharer. When I have a hangnail, everyone in my office knows about it. I update Facebook and Twitter every time something happens to me that I find remotely interesting or funny. I like to think I’m not obnoxious… more conversational… but either way, I never hesitate to share the sheer minutiae of my life with the world.

That’s why these last few weeks and months have been particularly difficult for me – I’ve had Big News in my life that I couldn’t share on my blog. You may have noticed I haven’t been posting very often? It’s been really hard for me to write about things OTHER than the Big News that’s been on my mind.

So here it is: I’m quitting my job and going back to school.

After lots of soul-searching, trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, I discovered Speech Pathology. It incorporates so many things that interest me – working with kids, linguistics, early childhood development, foreign languages – and also offers lots of different career opportunities. I’m particularly interested in working at a school with young kids, which also means summers off!

I know that life seldom goes as planned, and I’m not saying that this is FOR SURE the thing I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life (because who knows anything for sure?), but it feels like the best thing for me to be doing right now. And any step in the right direction is positive. So why not go for something that I find so interesting and exciting?

There are prerequisites for the SLP master’s program that I don’t have, so I’ll be spending the next year working on those. And applying for grad school. And taking the GRE. And trying to figure out how to live off student loans.

And then I’ll get to be a graduate student!

I once got an email forward (don’t you love it when people forward you things so you, personally, can delete them?) saying that Ernest Hemingway once wrote a fictional story in six words:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

The email then asked you to write your life story in six words and pass it on. At the time I figured mine would be something like, “I can’t say no to fun.” or “Life is fantastic. I’m loving it.”  I didn’t think about it long before deleting the email.

However, just now, approximately five-to-seven years later, I decided what mine would be:

“I was going to, but then…”

I’ve recently started following this blog, and have decided that if my blog ever goes through some sort of reincarnation or my life changes in some huge way (or if I just feel like it), I might make this blog more like that blog. ‘Cause it’s a really neat idea.

Editor’s note: If you are cranky right now and/or don’t want to hear me gush about my fabulous boyfriend and wonderful life, do not read on. Go here instead. (Not that I’m judging you. I’ve totally been there. I just wanted to give you a snarkier option). You’ve been warned.

Last weekend, my cousin Kevin, his wife Jen and their daughter Molly were in town (blog post coming soon). At dinner Saturday night, Kev said that he and Jen like to play this game where they imagine what they would do if they won $50 million (or some other astronomical amount of money). He asked me what I would do. I said I would buy a house in Missoula, buy a cabin at Flathead Lake, buy (or build) a house at Waterton big enough for my whole extended family to stay in, and quit my job. Not because I don’t want to work, but because I’d like to do something different and work less but pesky things like rent, bills, car payments, and health insurance keep me working full time.

Later on, after dinner, I asked Galen what he would do. And you know what he said? He wouldn’t really change a thing. How awesome is that? He is actually so happy with his life that he wouldn’t change anything if he had all the money in the world.

And although I am totally happy with my life, too, and wouldn’t change anything (unless I won $50 million), I still like to dream. So I said, “You wouldn’t even buy a jet to fly back and forth between Umatilla and Portland?” And he smiled.

In addition to my incredible family and wonderful friends, I give thanks for many, many things. Here are just a few:

It all started a couple weeks ago, when I got an email from my stepdad.  He works for a company that employs mostly men and their work involves fairly physical (and skilled) labor.  Apparently every year employees can do peer fitness tests and try to beat their personal bests from years past.  This year, when the guy in charge of the peer fitness program sent out the email announcement saying it was coming up in January, he included a link to a motivational video from a few years back of the peer fitness trainers showing the rest of the crew “how it’s done.”  The guy who wrote the email noted he was sorry he hadn’t been in attendance when the video was recorded, but listed the names of the three employees who had been videotaped.

Motivational Fitness Video.

I thought the whole email prank was so funny that I lay in wait for the perfect time to pull the same stunt with my friends and/or coworkers.

Much to my delight, within a week or so, our HR person sent out an email to the entire company saying she wanted to decorate the first floor bulletin board with photos of “how the employees of The Foundation spent the 80′s.”  She said there would be a contest for the best photo.  Her email went to the entire company.

I almost immediately responded and chose three of the (very few) men I work with to call out.

I know how Matt, Sean and Dave spent the 80′s, I said, because there’s video of it. Then I included a link to the video and all its spandex and aerobic glory.

It was about 4:30 on a Friday when I sent the email, and Matt and Dave were both already gone for the weekend.  (Sean responded almost immediately, asking if Dave had told me about the Reunion Tour ’09 plans that were in the works.)  After sending it, I got a little nervous that the guys might not think it was as funny as I did… so I sent a separate email to them saying that I chose to pick on them because I knew they could take a joke, and I hoped they weren’t offended.

Which brings me to today’s story.  I felt that since I threw Matt, Sean and Dave under the bus for a good laugh, it was only fair that I embarrass myself in front of our coworkers to make the playing field even.  Being an 80′s baby, I have access to very few of the photos of me from that decade.  However, I do have the electronic copy of this gem:

That’s right.  This is a photo of me wearing panda earmuffs that match my brother’s slippers, with a fake plastic stethescope in my belt loop (funny, considering how many real ones I had available to me), strangling my brother with a look on my face that says, “Nothing to see here…”  I mean, when he was strutting around with cheeks like that baring so much diaper-midriff, how was I supposed to compete for attention?

This is a fun test.

First, find a friend who likes to be right.  Preferably one who also likes making fun of you.

Take that person with you in a public place and find someone there who you think has the exact same color hair as you do.  (Comparing your hair to theirs physically and up close will ruin this test.)

Then tell your friend that you think that person is your hair color twin.

Odds are very good your friend will be thrilled at the opportunity to tell you you’re wrong and make fun of you.

I never realized how different my concept of my own hair color was until today, when I went to get it done and my stylist, Daniel, put darker colors in it than he normally does.  He said that when he normally does my highlights/coloring, he does two foils of the lighter color for every one of the darker color.  This time he did the opposite.  And when my hair was dry it was the exact color I always thought it was, except it was obviously darker than it has always been.

I spend a fair amount of time looking at my hair in mirrors, windows, cell phone screens, and any other reflective surface I can find.  So how do I have such a messed up sense of what COLOR it is?

My high school Calculus teacher, Mrs. Burrell, once said to me, “When I watch Emeril and he’s cooking something, he’ll just throw in the last ingredient and say ‘BAM!’ and all of a sudden it’s delicious. When I try to emulate it, my food is disgusting. And then he says something like ‘It’s not rocket science!’ And then I usually say out loud, ‘Oh yeah, Emeril? My food may be inedible, but I can do rocket science. BAM!’”

This woman was the reason I decided to major in math in college.

Why do I bring up Mrs. Burrell, you ask? Because I know a lot of things (the phonetic alphabet, how to get just about any stain out of clothes, how to pronounce the word “ophthalmologist” in French, what milk looks like after it’s been left out in a glass for a few days, Calculus) but I don’t know anything about cooking.

For instance, I didn’t know until tonight that “simmer” means “on low.”  I also don’t know what to do when you accidentally over-simmer couscous and burn off all the water and butter… What do you add?  And when the couscous comes out tasting about as good as chewing on a blade of wheat, what do you add to make it taste better?  What if your only options are salt, pepper and paprika?  And when you realize that you haven’t actually filled up your salt and pepper shakers, how do you know which one should be salt and which should be pepper?  And after you’re done eating, what do you do with the couscous that sticks to the pot because, for the first time in your life, you don’t have a garbage disposal?

Good thing my dad will be here tomorrow to tell me what to do with all this couscous all over my kitchen.

I knew this was going to happen.

I tried to play tough when I moved into my own apartment… I did pretty well, too.  I learned to take out the trash regularly, I changed lightbulbs… I’m learning to deal with the odd hours of the laundromat downstairs…

But I knew that this day would come, and then It’d be over.

Today I found a millipede in my apartment.  When I saw it, I calmly shouted “WHAT IS THAT AND WHAT IS IT DOING HERE?!?!”  I was by myself.  Also, the millipede was dead.

But it took me a good half hour to calm down.

I don’t consider myself a very girly girl, but I have my moments.  Spiders are my number one irrational fear, and anything creepy-crawly that reminds me of spiders gets similar ridiculous reactions.  I still have nightmares of finding spiders in the shower with me (which has happened to me, and may be the most frightening experience I’ve ever had).  I also only recently got to the point where I could kill a spider myself without completely losing my ability to exhale.

I came a long way in the two years Brian and I lived together in our second apartment.  In the first one, we had a third roommate, Liesl, who was more than happy to kill spiders and make me look like an idiot (although not necessarily on purpose).  With Brian, though, I had to be tough.  The first time I found a spider in the apartment, it was actually in the dryer.  I was about to switch my sheets from the washing machine to the dryer and I opened the dryer door to see a gigantic black spider, roughly the size of an appetizer plate.  I bit my hand while I worked on regular breathing, and then calmly called Brian over.  “It’s a spider,” I said.  “Will you kill it?”

“Ew.  No.”  He walked away.

This tactic had never failed that I could remember.  Even if my brother or my dad said no, I could usually get the other one to take care of the thing or put it outside.  It was on that day that I learned to kill spiders on my own.

But this millipede thing brought up all the fears I’d been suppressing.  Where did it come from?  Are there more?  How did it get in?  How big was it before it died and curled up?  Does it eat humans?  Will these millipedes be peaceful overlords?

Answers will be forthcoming as they are revealed to me…

Things I did not know about Swine Flu until last week:

1. It is basically the flu but a little bit worse, in most cases.
2. If you get it, you most likely will not be tested for it, because no doctor’s office wants you to pass through their doors.
3. If you do go into the doctor’s office and they think you have swine flu, they STILL won’t test you for it because they don’t want to overload the state labs. They will, however, make you disinfect your hands every five minutes and make you wear a mask like your dentist wears when he’s drilling your teeth.  Any nurse or doctor who comes into your room will be wearing a matching mask.
4. Even though they don’t test you for it, you probably have it. And they’ll tell you that. But you’ll feel like an idiot if you repeat it, because… how do you know?
5. You will most likely be reduced to the most pathetic, worthless form of yourself for at least three days. And then you’ll get back to work and not know what to tell everyone because you don’t know if you actually had swine flu.

And on that note, I will leave you with this photo from my dad’s Facebook page:

I’ve mentioned before how my mom taught me to celebrate the Jewish New Year by doing Tashlich and celebrating change and fresh starts. This year, I may have outdone myself.

Aside from the national change I wished for eleven months ago, I have also witnessed significant changes in my personal life. I moved to an area of Portland with which I’m relatively unfamiliar, to live on my own for the first time in 26 years. I got a new job. It may be in the same building with the same coworkers, but my duties and reporting structure have changed. I started seeing someone new, and he’s fantastic. Pretty dramatic compared to last year, when I think I cleaned out my closet and washed my car.

Speaking of Galen, he very sweetly agreed to do Tashlich with me this year. For those not familiar, this is a Jewish tradition I’ve compared before to a mix between Poohsticks and Confession. I don’t consider myself particularly religious (I would say “spiritual but not religious,” to us a phrase I learned from Match.com), but I do love tradition and Tashlich really resonates for me. The basic gist is that you take bread to a body of water and throw a bit in for each of your sins (or as I like to think of it, “areas for improvement”). Then they float away down the river and you get to start fresh without them hanging over you. How can you argue with that?

So Galen and I went down to a dock on the Willamette River, armed with a few slices of bread and a year’s worth of baggage. After we sat down and threw a few pieces in, some Canada Geese came over and started eating the bread. We joked that the birds were going to get sick later, but didn’t think much of it.

Then the geese came up right next to us and waited for us to throw bread directly into their mouths.

Then a few seagulls appeared.

Then there was a staggering number of seagulls circling overhead.

Then the seagulls and the Canada Geese were all cawing and squawking and fighting over our sins.

And then we hightailed it out of there. As we were leaving, I turned to Galen and said, “Next year, we’ll throw them from a bridge…”