New Nephew!

Woohoo! It's finally here! He's finally here! My sister had her baby this weekend. Cade Elliot was born early early early in the morning on 28 October, 8lb 13oz, a healthy baby boy. Garrett is getting used to the idea of being a big brother, and it's really sweet to see him trying to figure out ways to help the baby when he starts crying and fussing.

After the excitement of rushing up north to take care of Garrett while Nikki was still in the hospital, it seems very quiet at the homestead in Muskegon. Dad and I are here to take care of some things before going back up for the weekend. Dad is racing in the epic mountain biking challenge "The Iceman" in Traverse City/Kalkaska this Saturday, so he and I will drive up again on Thursday or Friday. I'll be driving separately so that I can stay with Nikki for a week or so and help her as she learns to cope with two dirty diapers at the same time! (In other words, my goal is to finish potty-training Garrett in 7 days.)

So, I'm an auntie again - and in the meantime, Garrett is starting to jibber-jabber and "auntie" is a word he's starting to say! Yay! Now if I could only get him to say "Auntie Jay" altogether-like... that'll be next week too. ;)

Until next time!

84.

Sweet success.

My "purging project" is often a topic of my blog. I'm sorry if it gets old - but it's what's happening when I'm unemployed and back at home.

I've made some insane progress in the two+ weeks that I've been home. In. Sane. We're talking emptying whole boxes in my closet. We're talking selling the extra-cushy and not-so-desirable margins of my yarn stash on craigslist. We're talking emptying two whole rubbermaids from under my bed. Insane.

But I don't think that any of that equals the amazing feat I pulled off today. It's something that I had every intention of tackling the last time I was home, but ran out of the steam I needed to even think about getting it done. It's something that's been haunting me for years and years: the basement filing cabinet.

It all starts at the beginning: I've always been a saver of everything useless. (You never know when you might need the assignment you did on the abrahamic covenant in the third grade!) At some point it became apparent (I think in middle school, more or less) that the vast portion of my clutter was paper, mostly falling into the categories of either school or art. So, in order to save my sister from being drowned in paper as my stuff continued to overwhelm our "shared" room, Dad gave me one drawer in the basement filing cabinet. I sorted all my papers into little manila folders. Then added more. And more. A third category of creative writing was added. And then the one drawer became two. It's true: I went through all my middle school papers and many of my elementary papers sometime between now and then. But it didn't do much good on the grand scheme of things. Barely made a dent, really.

Well, that all ended today. I rolled up my sleeves and laid all of my manila folders on the basement floor, stretching from one wall to the other in 21 piles of 5 or more. I plugged in my boombox and picked the first of my day's selection of cds, started up the tunage, and began my work. A trash can, a double-wide crate for recycling, an eraser and a pencil were my tools. I sorted through everything, and quickly learned two rules for sorting through my high school papers: 1) if it's from an English class (or something similar), take time to sort through the prosaic assignments and the unique, creative pieces of writing. Toss the former, save the latter; 2) if it's not from an English class (or something similar), take time to find and remove all the staples, pieces of tape, or other strange things, then toss.

I worked from a little before 10:00 until 11:00 (when I took my Price Is Right/Lunch break), from 11:45-13:00 (when I took my bike ride break), 15:30 to 17:30 (when I took my supper break), and from 18:30 to 17:30 - when I finished. Quite a day's work. I successfully sorted through all my folders, from "English 9" to "Church Bulletin Art (General)" (not sure why the "general" was included - there wasn't another church bulletin art folder), from "SPAN 2010" to the scarily mysterious "Other" folder. At the end of the day, I had a slightly full trashcan, I had maxed out the carrying capacity of the double-wide "recycle" crate, and I had down-sized from two jam-packed file drawers to one, half-full drawer.

The final toll: two shoe boxes of random stuff emptied; 84 manila folders completely emptied.

Learning how to drive (again)

It's official: I am the proud owner of a silver, 2001, Subaru Forester named Suki. She's a great little car - lots of space inside, low mileage, clean interior, no major issues (that we've found anyway). The only catch is that she's a stick shift. A manual. Aka: something I've only learned how to drive one time in the Pine Park parking lot when I was still in high school. That was five years ago now.

So I've been learning how to drive for the last week, and as of yesterday I am now good enough to drive without a chaperone. But that doesn't mean I'm still prone to "killing it". This is definitely going to take quite a bit of practice and getting used to on my part - luckily I'm finding little things to drive to, like church, the dentist, the grocery store, Grandma's house, and the like. I also have the freedom of time to drive during the middle of the day on weekdays in non-busy areas, which is another plus. There's a fine balance of when and how fast to push in with the gas and let off on the clutch that I haven't quite figured out yet, but I am honing in on it. ;)

In other news, the purge continues. After several days at home, I have managed to clear plenty of space in my closet (and then fill it) as well as empty an entire under-the-bed box (quite an accomplishment, if I say so myself). Of course, I'm still not unpacked and my room looks completely in shambles, but I'm not too terribly concerned. I've still got time. Although I did get an interview yesterday at Big Bend National Park in Texas - my first call-back since I turned down the Puerto Rico job in June! Very exciting. Hopefully this is the start of something good. But even that job would have a start day of mid-November, so I've got a few weeks at least. I think...

Home again...

... home again, jiggity jog!

It's been a whirlwind adventure, but I'm back home and unpacked enough that I found the time to upload pictures, which you can now find here. Hopefully it'll explain some of the photos from the teaser and put them in context for you, as well as give you some insight into the story of my trip. I tried to be as telling as possible with my captions! :) It was a great trip, I saw many beautiful things, but I am so glad to be back home finally.

It's been quite awhile - 9 months! You could have a baby in that time! My sister is about to! Any day now, really, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to get home so badly.

Now that I am home, things are moving pretty fast. I've finally returned Dad's car, and promptly started jumping through the hoops of buying a car for myself! I've got a silver Subaru Forester, stick shift (that's been fun...), that I've decided to call 'Suki'. Hopefully by the end of the week, or perhaps by the beginning of next week, I should have the keys officially. Of course, this means that I'm gonna have to start doing things like pay for insurance, but I'm kind of excited. I feel like owning my own car is very much a rite of passage that I was behind on until now. Woohoo!

I've also been busy with... you guessed it! Purging! I've been continuing this project that I started my senior year of high school, and I am making some definite progress. If you'll recall, the last major purge session saw me move from my old room into my brother's old room, which was much smaller and had a lot less storage space. In other words: I forced myself to have less by necessity of space. Well, then I finished college and moved back home and found that I had two lives of stuff that I was trying to fit into one life. Oops. I've had a somewhat similar experience coming back home again, but I'm fighting it. Even as I'm unpacking, I am busy sorting through my things, making room on my shelves (and then promptly filling them again). This time around I am being ruthless - my mantra is that if I haven't used it in five years (i.e. since I was in high school) there's no way I'm going to use it or need it or be incapable of purchasing a new one should the need arise. So chuck it. Or put it in the Goodwill box.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I've given up on getting more stuff altogether. I just got my name in a drawing for an ipad with the local Christian radio station! These are the things you can do when you're all alone in the house, just sorting your stuff and listening to the radio all day long!

Until next time!

Teaser...

I've had a great adventure so far, but I'm only halfway there! I've got a couple more days on the road, and then there will be more pictures (and their accompanying stories) to come!