Yeah!!! New laptop for Christmas. Now I can keep up with my blog AND possibly have the motivation to start writing a book!!

Evil Bat Boy

Coen can go from sweet to evil in five seconds. Poor thing with his huge ears. I don't think he'll ever grow into them. But he sure does like showing off his new teeth. This is actually him smiling, not snarling.

Spa Day

For my birthday this year my brother bought me a day at "the spa." I was floored. It was such a nice present. I had never been to this hotel as a guest, so I was very excited for the entire experience. I got to choose from a massage, a pedicure, manicure, or facial. I decided to wait until after volleyball season, because I knew that I would definitely need the massage then. This past Friday I took off from school to have my massage.

Ben didn't tell me what to really expect. All I knew is that I would get an hour long massage, there would be a whirlpool, a steam room, and a sauna. When the time came to go, I wasn't really sure what I should expect. Do I bring a bathing suit? Should I put on makeup? Do my hair? What do you wear to the spa? I opted to do my hair, minimal makeup, and skip the bathing suit. I was sure I would just enjoy the massage and sitting in a quiet room.

When I got there I was greeted by an attendant. She brought me down a darkly lit, quiet hallway, into a large changing room. The changing room was what all women imagine as the perfect room to get ready in, lush chairs, fragrant candles, marble vanities, etc. She gave me a robe, a locker, and told me to put the robe on and take everything off. Everything? Like as in naked? "Surely not," I thought to myself. I'm not going to be prancing around here in nothing but a robe. I mean, I'm not too modest, but there were a lot of people walking around.
When I left the dressing room, I went up to my attendant.

I whispered to her, "Am I supposed to take off EVERYTHING?"
"Yes, so you'll be ready for the whirlpool and sauna." I choked a little.
"Oh, okay." I went back to the dressing room and stripped it all off.
A little liberating I must say, but my stomach was rolling a bit.

My attendant then led me down a hall. She pointed out the showers with the tolietries, the steam room with eucaliptus water to spray into the air, cold washclothes to put on your face when you're done, and the sauna. Then she opened the door to the quiet room. THIS is what I had been waiting for.

The quiet room had soft music playing, candles burning around the room, fresh fruit and water, and a whirpool along the far wall. My attendant told me that I should take advantage of the whirlpool after my massage. It would be good for me.
"And all you need to do is to wrap a towel around you, and slip in. Don't worry, it's all women, and nobody's perfect. A lot of people are naked here," she said.

My stomach flipped. Great, now all I would worry about is how to enter that whirlpool without showing my white butt to all these women. I sat for awhile in the quiet room, and then my attendant came to get me. She led me down another dark hallway, and introduced me to my masseuse.
The massage was great. There were a few times that I almost fell asleep I was so relaxed. When it was over I had a hard time opening my eyes and standing up. My masseuse led me back down a hall and back into the quiet room. I sat down. There it was, the whirlpool.

I started going back and forth in my head. Should I do it? Should I shed my robe to sit in the hot bubbly pool. It would feel nice on my back and shoulders. I would do it. I didn't want to go home and regret not having sat in the whirlpool. Besides, my brother had bought me the spa experience. I didn't want to just have the massage and not take advantage of it all. But I needed a plan.
Of course the quiet room was packed at this point. I sat for a few minutes, pretending to read a spa magazine as I formulated my plan. Wrap the towel, drop the robe, slip in the whirlpool. It couldn't be that hard. All the women were reading their magazines. No one would be looking at me.
I made a break for it,grabbed a towel, and stood beside the whirlpool. I tried to open my robe, facing a wall, and wrap a towel around me. That's when it all went bad. My robe began to slip, and fell partially into the whirlpool. As I tried to grab my robe and toss it up onto the ledge, my towel started to fall. I tried to "slip" into the whirlpool with my towel still around me, realizing there would be no slipping. More like "kersplash." Finally, I was in.

Well, as most women know, the ladies up top don't sink, they float. And apparently when you are in a whirpool, they REALLY float. Along with your entire body. There I was sitting on small ledge, my body being propelled to the surface of the water.
I gripped the ledge with my fingers, trying to push myself back under the water. It was almost futile. About this time, another woman was making an awkward entrance into the whirlpool. Could everyone in the room see me at this point? Could they notice my struggle to sit down? And the water wasn't even that hot. This was not worth it. But I couldn't just get right out. I had to endure the water for a few minutes.
I tried lying a towel behind my head and relaxing. But that only further propelled my body towards the surface. Finally, I realized that by bending a knee and placing a foot on the ledge, I could hold my body down. I bet I looked really comfortable, curled into a tight ball holding onto the ledge for dear life.
Finally, I was done. At this point, I could really care less who saw my white butt. I grabbed my towel threw it around me, grabbed my wet robe, put it on, and sat down in a chair, to try and relax again.
After awhile I decided to try something else. I went in the steam room for a few minutes, but it was so hot, I couldn't take it for that long. At this point I was oily for the massage and sweaty from the steam room. Why not take a shower? They had shampoo, conditioner, body wash, everything you needed.
So I took a shower. I made sure to rub a towel under my eyes when I got out. I didn't want to have mascara all over my face. But there was no makeup on the towel.
I went back into the main changing room to grab my clothes from the locker. One woman looked at me, made a face, and quickly looked away.
All I could think was, "Oh, she probably recognizes me as the awkward woman from the whirlpool." I went into a changing room and gasped when I saw myself in the mirror. I had mascara ALL OVER my face. Not just a little smeared under my eyes. I mean, it was dripping down to my chin. I looked like night of the living dead. I was mortified.
Quickly, I got dressed and did my best at wiping the makeup from my face. I left the changing room and found my attendant. Luckily she had some eye makeup remover to lend me. I cleaned up my face and high tailed it out of there.
So much for me at a spa. While the massage was wonderful, and the entire spa was beautiful and decadent, I don't know if I'm meant for "the spa." It was all intimidating to me. I do know that if I had a friend with me, we would probably have been kicked out for giggling too much. Who knows, maybe if I try it again I'll be a little more prepared and bring a bathing suit.

Halloween

So every year before Halloween, I have all these great ideas about what I can dress up as. And then every year, I completely bail out. I don't put forth the time or effort to create the elaborate costumes that some people come up with. And I'm always jealous.

I knew this year that I had a costume party to attend, and I had to come up with some costume. I kept trying to come up with someone I could dress up as.

I finally narrowed it down two possibilities. First, Sookie, from True Blood. It would be pretty easy. Black shorts, Merlotte's shirt, Keds, a pony tail, and a bite mark.

But I thought that a lot of people might not know who I was if they didn't watch the show. My second choice was Octomom. Crazy, a hot mess, and babies. I could do that easily. I mean her hair is even nasty looking and dyed.

I wouldn't have to try too hard with this one. So, I found black hair spray color, and eight baby dolls at the dollar store. I looked up all the babies' names, wrote them across their shirts, borrowed a papoose to carry them in, and then sprayed my hair, and lined my lips. The result was a little hard to look at. I caught myself off guard a few times throughout the night when I saw myself in a mirror. A few people commented on my fantastic "wig," while others didn't recognize me at all. I guess I shouldn't go dark.

Fire Pit

So this past Saturday I had my long awaited block party. All in all it was a pretty good time. You can't go wrong with cold weather, good friends, good food, and two kegs of beer. My mom came into town for the night and was gracious enough to help me get the house ready, and somehow I got everything done that I wanted to (except for mowing the lawn, but that can ALWAYS wait). My house looked very pretty and I had a lot of people that commented on my new chandelier. :) Unfortunately, after all of the trouble I went to, to make my porch look nice, I forgot to take any pictures. I didn't take any the entire night.

The one thing I was looking forward to the most was the one thing that didn't really turn out as expected. This spring when my parents moved to Destin, I inherited their fire pit. I've always wanted one and was so excited to get it. Even though I have four fireplaces in my house, the house is so old that they have all been bricked in. I'm so jealous anytime someone mentions that they built a fire.
So all year I've been preparing to use the fire pit! Everytime the wind has picked up and limbs have falled, I've gone through the yard collecting twigs and stacking them on the pit to burn later.
Well, this Saturday the time had finally come. I took all my twigs and broke them into small pieces. I placed them carefully in the pit and made a little stack of twigs next to it to burn. My mom had promised to bring some pine cones to make the fire smell nice. It was going to be great! I'd have a nice fire in the front yard for people to crowd around in the cold weather we were finally having. But it didn't work out as I had envisoned.
First of all, the damn thing wouldn't light. I tried my hardest to blow on the fire, add more twigs, burn newspaper, etc. I consider myself a pretty resourceful person, and I have watched other people and made numerous fires of my own. But the damn thing would not catch.
I kept looking to the guys around as if it was their responsibility to get this fire going. Where is Bear when you need him?

Finally, a friend of mine stepped up and had my fire roaring after a few minutes of trying.

Within twenty minutes, I was out of twigs. No more fire. After six months of saving these damn twigs, thinking about the wonderfully warm fire I would have, my "wood pile" had burnt up in twenty minutes. Everyone was laughing at me when they asked where more wood for the fire was, and I would hold up one of my twigs.

My neighbor, being the generous man that he is, brought a bag of charcoal down from his house and we ended up standing around a fire pit burning charcoal. My sweater still smells like a grill.

Christmas Cards

I've decided this year to have Christmas cards made with pictures on them, rather than buy the typical ones. At first this excited me, now it's stressing me out a bit. I feel like I have to tell the story of my life, of the past year, in three pictures. Is that even possible? So much has happened to me. I have the card picked out, but I keep going back and forth trying to decide on which pictures to use. Paris, Germany with Dad, Grayson, Coen, the beach, birthday, etc.etc.etc. How do I narrow down a year into three images?

UAH Interview

I received a call today from the lady in charge of the scholarship that I received this past spring: http://oip.uah.edu/star.php. Apparently my name was chosen out of the group and someone wants to interview me about my project and my trip. I'm pretty flattered about the whole thing and very curious to see how this all turns out. I just pray that I get some positive feedback from my students and this whole project isn't a wash.

If this all turns out like I've planned, I think that I am really going to take all of this to another level. Now that I've found a novel and really connected with the material, the characters, the time period, the author, the movement, etc, I think that I could take all of my research so much further. I'm considering taking a group of students to Spain this next year. From the response I've received from a few students, I think that there would be a large number of kids interested in going. Then I could continue my research and documenting in Spain.