Skip to main content

the good, the bad, the awkward

Week one is drawing to a close and I'm exhausted. Work's gala was this week (last night specifically) so I've literally had only one thought this entire week: GALA. The theme was Prom: the Retro Romance. Turns out there is a good reason to hang on to your prom dress- you never know when you're going to need to wear it for a work event.
Gillian and I did not coordinate our outfits on purpose


For me, it was amazing that I was even able to fit into my prom dress again. By the end of the night I remembered why I regretted the dress choice. You can't see it well in the above picture, but the dress is covered in seed beads. It isn't as heavy as I remember, but it was just as scratchy. We got home and Jack told me that he could see where the beads had left an imprint on my back from sitting in the car seat. But anyway- woohoo! ten years later (oh my goodness), I still own it and had a second wear of it. That seems almost as rare as re-wearing a bridesmaid dress.

The event seemed to go well- Jack had the bid stickers so we ended up with a giant oil painting, some make-up, and a year's worth of mani/pedis (I'm most excited about the last one). I'm utterly exhausted and ready to move into a slightly slower work pace.

Regarding THE LIST: 
  • Reading a Psalm everyday has not become a habit yet, but I'm working on it. I've at least read 8 Psalms.
  • I've added "crocheting a scarf for Jack and for me" to the list
  • Hiking will be added to the list, per Javi's suggestion; I'm hoping I'll figure out where soon. I think maybe a full day hike in Colorado this summer. There are a lot of great mountains I haven't seen yet.
  • I REGISTERED FOR A HALF-MARATHON!!! March 22 in Waco I'll be able to scratch that off.
  • It's been a challenge to take three pictures not on my iPhone, but I submit the following from Mikey & Lauren's Super Bowl party:
Lauren is caught off guard
Patrick and Gillian cheering on the Broncos, like Sisyphus
Mikey making cobbler (blackberry!)
Go football?


So that was the GOOD



I didn't get as much accomplished this week as far as non-work anything goes. I did manage to injure myself cleaning up the gala today.


But look at my pretty nail polish


So that was THE BAD


And as alluded to by the title... THE AWKWARD


It's Jack's prom tux and my prom dress. I promised my mom I would take a picture of us all dressed up. I should have done it earlier in the night, but midnight worked just as well. We took a legit, cute, normal picture. Then Gillian asked if we wanted one of the awkward, posed prom pictures. Since Jack never took one we had to explain that at school dances you inevitably take a posed picture with the guy hugging the girl and resting his hand just above her hips with her hands on his. It always looks awkward. So we took one, awkward faces included.

Maybe that means I've crossed something off my life bucket list- I went to prom with someone I genuinely wanted to go to prom with. I honestly can't think of anyone else I'd rather be taking an awkward prom picture with than him (BBC actors aside, who would probably look beautiful and not-awkward at all and spoil the picture). Love that this picture pretty much encapsulates our relationship.

Love him, love that we have this picture



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Syllabus for the Next 18 Months

I decided at some point in the last week that I wanted to make a checklist of 30 things to do before I turned 30. Creating a list of 30 things is harder than I imagined it would be. But, to quote Julie Andrews (which I suppose is actually quoting Rodgers & Hammerstein), "let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start." There's nothing magical about turning thirty. I imagine that on July 2, 2015, when I wake up, my eyes will still be blue, my fingers will still number ten, my instant desire will be to go back to sleep. That said, it is one of those watershed points in life. The idea of approaching thirty is both reassuring and daunting. At least I'm theoretically past the point of having a quarter-life crisis. What I want to do is be able to look back at my 20s and tell my future kids about all the adventures their parents had before they were thirty. Creating this list isn't going to create those adventures. We've already had s...
7 comments
Read more

Claire tries cooking! Pineapple Chicken Quesadilla and Figgy Balsamic

We are the typical American family when it comes to food habits. In that, we eat a rotation of approximately the same 5 meals: - Chicken Tacos - BBQ Chicken - Sauteed Salmon - Spaghetti - "Meatloaf" Pies Every once in a blue moon, I'll add something "fun" to the mix: - Stir Fry - Pretzel Chicken - More different fish - Roast Chicken Fun meals ceased to exist once baby boy showed up, but now that he's able to sit in a high chair AND has a bit of a schedule during the day, cooking is incrementally becoming an easier task. Last night I found a slow cooker magazine (yay Better Homes and Gardens!) and realized that I'm bored with the same 5-6 meals. Trying to find new permutations of said meals is also a task I don't completely enjoy. Only Tuesdays should signal a specific food (e.g. Taco Tuesdays). So here goes a novel experiment - I'm going to try and cook something "new" once a week. Full disclosure - I'm a big fan of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Work-Life Balance, the Protestant Work Ethic, and Cross-Cultural Expressions of Worth

The United States and the United Kingdom are not the same place. Over the past 19 months, the differences have become apparent in some hilarious ways. For example, football means something dramatically different in Aberdeen than in Houston (and I use dramatically because both sports incite equal amounts of drama). I am fortunate in that I share a graduate student office with non-Americans. My department is overwhelmingly American and at times it can feel as though we aren't living in a foreign country, and to a larger extent a foreign culture. The realization of how vast these differences are appeared in an unusual manner this afternoon- the rights of postgraduate students to take personal time, or annual leave as its known here. The discussion emerged in response to a lovely blog by a postgraduate student elsewhere in the United Kingdom. At her university, the school requires their students to take annual leave, up to six weeks a year in that case. It seems that she isn'...
Post a Comment
Read more