Here's to you, Grandpa...

I am embarrassed at how long it has taken me to write a new post since the end of the semester, but I promise I've been more busy than lazy!  In the time that has passed since my last post, there have been the usual Christmas festivities (beginning on Christmas Eve eve this year with the Mallalieus), but also the visitation, burial and memorial service following my Grandpa's death after a long battle with Alzheimer's.  Christmas was chaotic but heart-warming to be with all of the family again.  Today is the first day since December 20th that we haven't had friends or family visiting or staying with us!  As opposed to the expected reminiscing of Christmas memories and traditions on my first post after Christmas (it is tempting!), I'd rather share some of the memories I have of spending time with Grandma and Grandpa over the years in memory of Grandpa.  There are many more, but here is the list I wrote in my notebook while sitting in the waiting room at the sleep doctor's office.

• Grandma letting me eat brown sugar in a bowl
• coloring in coloring books with the crayons Grandma kept in a purple basket
• painting each fingernail and toe nail a different color with Grandma's nail polish
• playing Phase 10, Skipbo and Mexican train dominoes at the kitchen table with Grandma and Grandpa
• eating bowls of Grandpa's cereal - Quaker Oat Squares - dry, as a snack
• sorting their glass marbles by color on the living room floor
• playing house in the bedroom in the basement
• Grandma and Grandpa's dog, Peanut, jumping and barking when I came through the door
• mixing Welch's grape juice and ginger ale as a special treat
• Grandma always re-stuffing and "re-squeaking" the dog toys
• trying on Grandma's wedding dress
• trying to figure out the doctor's office-style scale in the basement bathroom
• singing karaoke to Titanic's theme song "My Heart Will Go On"
• playing badminton over the clothes line in the back yard
• Grandpa pitching to us in the back yard when we played softball
• going out to the meat shed to get ham for Grandma to fry up
• riding in the back of the "5-wheeler"
• organizing the TY beanie babies in their cabinet and cataloging them
• helping Grandma make noodles
• joking that Grandpa blew holes in his underwear when Grandma was folding his laundry
• giving Grandpa a Listerine breath strip when he was ushering at church - he got it stuck to his upper lip
• going to the back of the sanctuary to sit with Grandpa and get candy during church
• riding along with Grandpa and Dad to cut wood
• Grandma getting the dirt and dust off our clothes with the air compressor
• sitting with Grandpa in his La-Z-Boy and doing word searches with him
• being fascinated by Grandpa's touch lamp

I'd like to share more, but Mom just walked in the door and I'm contracted to write the Christmas letter - well, New Year's letter, I guess - and if she sees that I'm working on something other than that, I'll be in trouble.

Please have a fun, SAFE New Year's Eve!

I haven't forgotten about this...

I know it's been forever since my last post, but I figured that last one was long enough to hold you over for a while.  No, actually, I've just been super busy trying to make myself study for finals.  Note the way I phrased that sentence.  It seems that the only time during the whole semester that I feel like cleaning my room is when I should be studying for finals.  Here is a picture of my room from last semester:

Believe it or not, my room actually looked even worst than that when I started cleaning this afternoon!  The floor is a rare sight in my bedroom.  When Josh comes to visit, he usually clears a path from the door to the bed, which is a treat for me since I usually just vault onto my bed from the door.  Anyway, instead of studying for my organic chemistry, global earth systems, and physics exams, I proceeded to clear the clutter out from under my bed, dust my bookshelf, and load all my spare change into my new piggy bank.  Oh, and I made up my bed and designed makeshift tie-backs for my curtains.  I swear, I'm never more creative and artistic than when I have a million other more important things I should be doing!

I so wish I felt like cleaning and creating when I didn't have SN1 and SN2 mechanisms to memorize and carbon cycling to summarize!  Although, I think it might disappoint people if they visited me expecting to see all my personal belongings strewn about, just to find an organized, tidy living space sans personality...but then again, maybe not.  I used to pay my brother to clean my closet, and I've bribed a few of my friends to help me organize my room, but it's such a huge job that even hours of focused work makes but a small dent in the monstrous pile of clothes and debris that blankets my room.  I've just accepted my wreck of a room as one of my less endearing personality traits :)

Alas, I must get back to studying.  I had been working rather diligently before I turned my computer on to check my email, after which I logged on here and couldn't resist to type a "quick" post.  Another thing I must accept about myself:  I am never short-winded.

Warning: open waters and deep feelings ahead...

Some ways I've thought of blogs in the past: a way for zealous fans to follow their idols, sort of online support groups for a myriad of personal, emotional and familial issues (pretty much for "people with problems"), time-fillers for people who literally have nothing better to do, a political or social platform.  I've never considered the "blog" a medium of pure inspiration.  I had a stigmatized view of blogs, and even still I hear my own voice laughing at myself when I tell someone that I've "created a blog."  But today I read a blog that touched me in a way that I was not expecting, and quite frankly not ready for.  I originally started this blog with plans for it to be witty and amusing, but after reading a few posts from a blog Hannah recommended, I find myself wanting to share deeper feelings and put more of myself into this thing.  It's only appropriate that Hannah introduce me to this inspiration, since she is the one who introduced me to the idea of blogging.

Kelle Hampton's blog, "Enjoying the Small Things" has a convenient link titled "Start Here If You're New" that sits at the top of the web page like a newly unlocked door to an extra chamber of your heart you didn't even know you had, beckoning for you to come and discover a new appreciation for life.  Clicking on the link takes you to the story of the birth of Kelle's second daughter, Nella.  It is the heart wrenching story of a mother's unmatched excitement to meet her new baby and the devastating disappointment upon discovering her daughter has Down Syndrome.  Kelle is an amazing writer and photographer, and she tells the story of possibly the hardest day of her life with such eloquence and sincerity.

Enjoying the Small Things: Nella Cordelia: A Birth Story  I challenge you to read her story and not tear up.  I certainly couldn't, and I have a pile of about ten soggy tissues sitting next to me as evidence.  I was straight up sobbing!  I was worried that my roommate would hear me through the wall and come see what was wrong with me.  I must admit that I am a crier when it comes to watching movies and reading good books because I always empathize and put myself in characters' shoes, but my reaction to Nella's birth story reached me on another level.

I am going to college so I can be an educated, self-sufficient, independent woman.  I'm a marine biology major and I'm passionate about what I study.  Nothing gets me riled up and up on my soapbox faster than seeing someone litter at the beach or flick a cigarette out of their car window, but my educational and career goals mean nothing to me if I don't have a family.  It is natural to try to picture your "grown up" life when you are a child, and even a college student.  Ever since I was little, I'd talk about how I wanted to be a veterinarian, a dentist, a doctor, or a scientist, but I never thought about what my job would actually be like.  Even now, with graduation in the not-so-distant future, I have trouble picturing and truly caring about what my career will be like.  What I thought about since I was very young and still do think about when I try to imagine my life in five or ten years circulates around one entity: my family.

The one thing I look forward to more than anything is having children of my own.  Yes, I will treasure my wedding day like none before it, but I can't imagine anything more glorious than to bring a child into the world that is a mix of me and the person I've chosen to spend the rest of my life with.  I can neither count nor guess at the minutes and hours I've spent thinking about how wonderful starting my own family will be, but not all imaginings of the future are blissful.  Like anyone else, I have my fears, and having a baby with Down Syndrome is one of those fears.  I've tried to imagine what I would do or feel if that happened to me, but there is absolutely no way of predicting something like that.  This is why I sobbed so hard when I read Kelle's story.  No, I haven't had any kids yet and I don't expect to for at least five years, but somehow I could relate to the emotions Kelle experienced the day of Nella's birth.  I read the story as if it were my story, and it was completely devastating.  But then there was hope.  Kelle realized that she could still live a normal life and that her daughter does not have to be defined by her Down Syndrome.  Like every other person who plans to have children at some point in his or her life, I still hope and pray that I will have healthy, "normal" (I use this word hesitantly) babies, but Kelle's strength and willingness to share her experience makes me less afraid of the possibility of having a baby with DS.

I think this post got a little sappier than I had planned, but I've typed too much already to abandon it now!  If you are like my mother, you were probably thinking as you read my post that I need to focus more on school and not be thinking about having babies for a good while.  Or maybe you're wondering why I worry so much about having a baby with DS.  Well, I have a weird quirk where I'm afraid that if I expect the best, instead of hope for the best and plan for the worst, the worst will come true.  I picture my future life as perfect as I'd like it to be, but I still acknowledge the fact that in the end, I only have so much control over the things in my life.

Go Big Blue!

ODU's mascot, Big Blue, is in the Capital One mascot challenge finals and we need all the people we can to vote over and Over and OVER!  The Capital One National Mascot of the Year gets $15,000 to go toward its mascot program, in addition to the $5,000 each school's mascot program gets for entering the contest.

During each of the 12 "regular season" voting weeks during the football season, faithful fans logged onto www.capitalonebowl.com to vote for their favorite of 16 mascots from universities across the country.  Each week the 16 mascots were matched up in head-to-head battles, and their wins, losses, and total votes were tallied as the competition continued.  At the end of the regular season Big Blue had the most votes at 1,004,220, putting us more than 100,000 votes ahead of Montana's "Monte," who had the second highest amount of votes.  Big Blue ended the regular season with a perfect 12-0 record, as did University of Texas El Paso's "Paydirt Pete."

Now the challenge is in the third and final week of the playoffs, and after last week's intense battle against the Oregon Duck, Big Blue is poised to win it all!  Up until this week, there has been a live-feed bar at the bottom of the Capital One mascot challenge website showing the latest tally of votes for each mascot.  Since the winner of the challenge is not going to be announced until halftime at the Capital One Bowl, there is no more live feed to let us see how we are doing against Paydirt Pete.  This means it's time to VOTE like there's no tomorrow!

If you're bored at work, at home, or just need to take a quick break from whatever you're doing, PLEASE go to www.capitalonebowl.com now and vote for BIG BLUE!

Since the November elections are over and I know that you're just pining away for those original, respectful (ha!) campaign ads, here's one to hold you over until the next round of mudslinging begins (although you may be disappointed if you were looking for something scathing or scandalous) :

Check out the video that got Big Blue into the challenge!

Again, go to www.capitalonebowl.com to vote for Big Blue!  You can vote as often and as many times as you want, so vote every chance you get!  Think about it...if you pay to eat at a buffet, you don't just get one small plate of food (in fact, if you're like my dad, you get about three more plates past when you're comfortably full in order to get your money's worth), so don't just vote once and forget about it--let's test the limits of Capital One's servers!

Voting ends Monday, December 13, at 9:00 am Eastern Standard Time.  Big Blue thanks you!

The kind of humor that gets me through organic chemistry lab...

In honor of my last organic chemistry lab EVER (other than my final exam)!  I'm not going to lie - I pretty much loathed this lab, but there were a few things sprinkled throughout the semester that made o.chem lab almost bearable.  We were doing a lab where we had to isolate and purify via recrystallization a compound called trimyristin, which is found in nutmeg.  It was actually kind of fun crushing and grinding the nutmeg into a paste - a great way to take out my frustrations on organic chemistry!  But I must say, the labeling of the nutmeg bag really made my evening.

This should be interesting...

My cousin, Hannah, suggested to me that I should start a blog when we were together with the family for Thanksgiving, and I haven't been able to get the idea out of my mind since.  I write my family's Christmas letter every year and several people have suggested that I write more than our annual letter, but I usually just meet their compliments and suggestions with a smile and a "thank you" without any serious reflection on their comments (this is not to say that I do not appreciate them).  I guess if enough people think I should continue to write, it's worth a try on my part.  So, I may just be indulging my narcissism by expecting people to read what I post, but at the least it will provide a new form of procrastination for me that is slightly more intellectual than playing games on msn.com.

I hope you enjoy my "crumbs of consciousness" as much as I enjoy doling them out!