bake me a cake as fast as you can

I stumbled across a gem of a baking blog, honey & jam, a few weeks ago when surfing for pumpkin recipes. The author, Hannah, is an adorable girl from Georgia with a talent for photography, which comes in handy when she snaps photos of her DELICIOUS-looking baked goods. Plus, she loves Jesus and isn't afraid to come right out and say it in her blog. Very refreshing.

So I have been scheming and dreaming and list-making so that next month I can start creating some Weight Watchers-friendly versions of some of my favorite honey & jam finds. Up first: pumpkin bread, pumpkin cupcakes, and root beer float cake. My taste buds are so excited just thinking about it.

Side note, I am loving this fall weather! Wind, clouds, a little bit of rain, mmm. I can wear cardigans...during the DAY! Pure joy, I tell you. Too bad a lot of the trees in my neighborhood are evergreens, so I'm missing the vibrant fall colors of Sacramento. But, I'm going home briefly next weekend, so I can get my fix.

optimism

There is so much to love about my life right now.

Jon was accepted into University of Virginia Med School. OK, not exactly my life, but nearly so. I have been there all four years while he studied, struggled, and succeeded, and now I see what it all was for. I shared a little of his sacrifice, maybe a lot, and now I can share in his joy. I am tremendously proud.

I got an interview for a position working with foster children. With opportunity comes hope, and I have been clinging to it like a life raft while drowning in a sea of disappointment that tutoring children with autism isn't what I'd thought it would be.

So many good library books are in my possession right now! Just finished The Princess Bride, currently devouring Angels and Demons, with Everything is Illuminated, Olive Kitteridge, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies waiting in the wings.

I am interviewing at Sac State early next week, which means a) generally good things for my future, and b) a long-overdue visit home. Lately, homesickness has left me feeling empty. Just getting to see my family, even for a brief time, will be so incredibly restoring.

Jason Mraz is on shuffle on my iHome. That pretty much says it all.

Oh, and this: Love is real, it is not just in poetry and stories, it is truth and it will follow you everywhere you go from now on. Isn't that the truth.

sun < clouds

Go away, sun! Stop making me feel guilty for wanting to stay inside all day reading a good book and occasionally doing important work. My bathroom needs cleaning, my bed must be made, laundry needs folding...oh yeah, and I have two essays to write for my Sac State application which is due in precisely 4 days.

Fortunately, these only require one page double-spaced each, which is possibly why I have put this off for so insanely long. I tell myself it's just that I work best under pressure, but really I have gotten extremely good at finding ANYTHING else to do besides work on these essays. (This blog post is example #385.)

To keep myself motivated, I put aside the book I am currently reading and loving, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, until I am done with these essays. Then I will be able to read in peace without my conscience nagging at me.

friday night

Could my life get any more exciting? Tonight I simultaneously cooked tonight's dinner, tomorrow's dinner, and baked 4 dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, all while watching back-to-back episodes of Criminal Minds on A&E, and now I am in bed. Fabulous. I could cite tomorrow's early morning shift at the coffee shop as an excuse for not going out, but I probably would have declined invitations anyway. I am a homebody through and through and I like it.

This week I sold my beach cruiser and got a fabulous mountain bike on craigslist. Her name is Max, short for Maxine (Linz, I told you, I name almost everything). She is purple and fierce and she has a water bottle holder. Love at first sight, let me tell you. Next step is to find a wire basket on ebay and hook that sucker up so I can pedal on down to TJ's or Henry's or the library or Balboa Park or a friend's house, all super conveniently located within biking distance from my house. MLIA. (And that A stands for AWESOME, not average.)

humdrum

How sad that "humdrum" denotes something lackluster and uninteresting. It's so fun to say, I say it like a doorbell rings, "HUMMMdrummmm" and the "m" sound tickles my mouth.

Tonight I read my sister my favorite children's stories via webcam and it made me miss home so much I thought I might start crying in the middle of "Where the Wild Things Are." But now that I'm older the gaps between home visits are getting longer. So, I won't be going home until Thanksgiving. That means another month and a half. Lucky for me both of my siblings now have webcams so I don't feel too much like I'm missing out.

Speaking of WTWTA, I just bought the soundtrack on iTunes and I think the quality of my life has fractionally improved. Karen O has a nice voice, even if she is a little nutty on stage (the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on SNL is a good example), and the songs are so whimsical and childlike and exciting, I'm even more anxious to see the film. Let the wild rumpus begin!

Today ends my work-free week. Tomorrow and Friday are both tutoring days. Next week I am expecting a call that will hopefully change all that, in a good way. And Saturday is coffee shop-ing, which I'm falling more in love with even as it's driving me crazy. I hope I won't have to give up my job there if anything else changes, it's such a nice distraction and such a different direction than what I'm doing with tutoring.

I need to put up pictures of my apartment, even if it as not as cute as either of my East Coast friends' abodes, or that of my SacTown love. Hopefully this will be on my wall soon to cheer me up.

Side note - this is the latest I have stayed up in...weeks. Add one glass of wine and you get terrible rambly nonsensical posts such as this.