Things that make me miss you:

1. Michael Jackson songs
2. Snow
3. Blankets
4. Water
5. Pizza
6. Telephones
7. Cows
8. Mostly any music, really
9. Airplanes
10. Eating dinner
11. Hands
12. Notebook paper
13. Singing in Church
14. Christmas songs
15. Fingernails
16. Mtn Dew
17. Monsters
18. Card games
19. Sticky fingers
20. Movies
21. Silver cars
22. Duct tape
23. Phantom of the Opera & Les Miserables
24. Thanksgiving
25. Sand
26. Watermelons
27. Wishes
28. Fishes
29. Basketball
30. espn.go.com
31. Chili
32. Hot cocoa & tomato soup
33. Farms
34. Games
35. Cousins
36. Nieces & nephews
37. Laughing
38. Mountains
39. Everything
40. Ice skating
41. Ice cream out of the carton
42. Chocolate covered almonds
43. Kisses
44. Hearts & love

And so many more... love you Fred!

Updated Inconvenience

At 22 accumulated inches, Chantilly, Virginia is buried in more snow than it really ever sees. And I am in Provo, instead of flying home.

I am mildly put out, to say the least.

Inconvenient

So, I live in this town where it snows all the time. All winter long, we've got snow and snow and more snow. Sometimes, to shake things up, it's just really, really, freezing cold for a few days, but then it never fails to snow again.

I am always so excited to go home for Christmas and escape the Utah winter. It's usually a little tricky to get out, with the icky weather in Salt Lake, and then sometimes on my connections. This time I'm flying through Denver: SLC and DEN- yikes, that's double-risky!

Anyway, I was all up to date on the weather reports: Salt Lake, clear skies all weekend. Denver, mostly sunny through Tuesday. So, we're good, right? Clear, going to get home no problem. Perfect!

But, no... that would be too, too, convenient. Instead a massive storm has decided to hit the east coast tonight.

They closed schools and cancelled church a few weeks ago for 4 inches of snow.

Translation: No one back home knows what to do with snow at all. Everyone is entirely incompetent, and cannot manage to get snow off of the ground. We're just not used to it.

The all-time high for a December snow event in DC is currently set at 12 inches. Quote:

"Total storm snowfall totals of 1 to 2 feet are forecast to occur in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan areas by dawn Sunday... Which should eclipse the December records for both cities. The record December snowfall for Washington is 12.0 inches on 18-19 December 1932"

So, basically this is outside the norm, to say the least.

And highly inconvenient.

I just want to go home!

Dumb snow.

To Do List

• Finals: Statistics, Pest Management, Turf Science, Religion, Business Strategy
• Project: Grounds Practicum journal
• Sleeping
• Shoveling snow if it comes (probable on Wednesday morning)
• Survive this week
• GO HOME! Celebrate Christmas, eat food, love my family, etc.
• Come back to Utah with my sister! Yay!
• Finish up college- one full semester left!
• Be a grown up?

Stress Cooking

So, we've all heard of stress eating. And likely many of us have done it. I personally am guilty of overindulging in a pint of ice cream or throwing back a whole can of Pringles under tense, overworked conditions. Something about stress just makes crappy, sugary and salty, dripping with too much bad for you stuff food so much more appealing. As if it needed any help.

But this is not the point or topic of this post. As mentioned in the title, we are here today to discuss stress cooking.

Now, typically when I get stressed I have a game plan. It goes something like this:

1. Get my planner and a pencil out
2. Write a list- everything that needs to get done, and when the deadlines are
3. Budget my time. Give every task an allotted number of hours to get through them in
4. Schedule it out. Task out every hour. Study for 319, write paper for 198, eat dinner, take a nap, do 221 work again, breathe. Sometimes I forget to schedule in time for breathing
5. Do it

Anyway, as you can see, when I get down to it, I mean business. Right now I scheduled a half hour to check emails, facebook and blog. So, I'm right on schedule.

I used to fail to schedule time for the stress-relievers, though, you see. I still feel guilty writing "watch half an hour of mindless TV" in my planner, or even "call home" because these things are not going to get my immediate goals done. They will, however, keep me sane. But when I get so swamped that I can't even find the time to write these things in, there is one pleasure that I can always justify the time for: food.

You see, if I stopped eating, I would pass out. Can't study passed out in the hospital from starvation, now can you? And, I can stretch this argument even further. If I stopped taking the time to make food, I would have to live this week on Goldfish crackers, trail mix, and (if I really felt like committing some time to it) toast with peanut butter. And that would impair my test taking skills. I would hate to score below my targets on account of undernourishment and fruit snacks.

So, you see, it is utterly imperative that I continue to eat well, even under the greatest burdens school can heap upon my frail shoulders.* I take this excuse to the extreme, and tend to indulge quite heavily in Stress Cooking.

Unlike stress eating, stress cooking really is fairly healthy, at least as far as what I am actually putting into my mouth is concerned. Whether it is a healthy habit or not remains to be determined by a professional of psychiatry or some other such qualified individual. Instead of eating chips and candy all day, I go crazy trying new recipes and recreating old favorites, with varying levels of success. Because I have budgeted time to dinner, I go for it. When I'm stressed I actually go through the effort to thaw some of the meat that I have in my freezer for once, for example. Usually there's no time to thaw so I just go without protein, but when I'm stressed, I make time for the microwave! I will find the time to defrost chicken, stir fry it with broccoli and carrots, serve it over fluffy delicious rice. Or to bake up some enchiladas or a pan of lasagna (as if I could ever actually finish a whole pan of that stuff before it goes bad!) or some other fabulous culinary miracle. Tonight, I might go a little more low key, and make up a tillapia fillet- they thaw and cook much faster, and I don't have to cut them up at all.

Anyway, just writing about it has me going too far. I have come up with at least sixteen more ideas for dinner tonight since I started this blog post. Yikes, I'm a mess! Gotta go- the kitchen is calling!

*Note the sarcasm. I don't really feel this weighted down with school, I just sometimes get awfully melodramatic over my life. This here is called laughing at myself.

Babies

So, today I went to church with some great family friends whose baby was being blessed. It was a sweet, lovely experience, and Sarah Elizabeth is precious.

Yesterday, Keith and I went over to play The Farming Game (awesome, by the way) with his cousins Hal and Jenny, and I got to play with their 5 month old boy.

And I'll be honest: I know that I am not ready at this moment to be in charge of someone else's life, especially not someone small and wholly dependent on me. But at the same time, I am so very ready for a beautiful little family of my own.

Anyway, I'm feeling mildly baby hungry tonight. But that's a ways off still. I've got some other steps to complete before I get there! But I'm excited for eventually.

Dysfunctional

I am a mess.

My room is a mess.

My brain is a mess.

My schedule is a mess.

My classwork is a mess.

I am 100% disorganized, distracted, and dysfunctional.