Peace Out, Missouri

I don't know what I used to do when I was waiting in airports before I had a blog.

I'm leaving Missouri. And that makes me sad. I think that I should have a rule that says I don't get to come home until I've been somewhere for at least 6 months. If I come home when I'm still in the middle of the awkward stage of being new somewhere, it makes me hate it when I have to leave. I'm too comfortable in Missouri and I get to be loud and inappropriate and probably a little obnoxious and people have to still love me. Not so elsewhere.

I feel like I've written this post many times. I love to roam, I love adventure, but part of me wants to be able to hang out in my family's suite at every Mizzou basketball game this season. Part of me wants to be able to drop into my mom's house to watch satellite TV whenever I want. A lot of me wants to be there to play dolls with my niece and Star Wars with my nephew.

I want to be comfortable but I want the good that comes with taking risk. Oh, well.

Back to Arizona, back to my life.

So Close to Home

I was duped by the fabled perils of holiday travel. I got to the airport 2 hours early, something I never, repeat, never do. (Well, I never do now that I don't fly with my mom anymore.) It's unnecessary.

But people kept talking about how crazy it was going to be, so I came 2 hours early. And, people were right, it was busier than usual. But turns out the airport was prepared for that. I even checked a bag and still made it to my gate with an hour and a half to spare.

Thank goodness I have a blog that I've been neglecting and free airport wi-fi. I think I'll make a list.

Top 10 Things I'm Excited About This Christmas:

1) Nativity Challenge 2009- My brother and I have a decades old traditional nativity challenge. It consists of closing our eyes and taking turns picking nativity pieces out of the box. The person who ends up with Baby Jesus is clearly the winner.

2) Satellite TV- This is always my favorite about going home. I watch movies, ESPN, and Discovery Channel marathons (Mike Rowe- I love you).

3) Fighting with my brother- It's inevitable.

4) Christmas Eve Dinner- Another tradition including steak, shrimp from a box, pink salad, and broccoli casserole. Delicious.

5) Presents!- Come on, you're all excited for presents too. Don't pretend like you're above it.

6) Christmas Family Game Night- Always Christmas Day Eve. Very competitive, very fun.

7) Playing Charades/Scattegories/Mafia/Taboo followed by a trip to Steak n' Shake- Everyone get pumped. You know who you are.

8) Watching my grown-up family struggle to put together whatever presents my niece and nephew get- Why so many pieces?

9) Midwestern Stranger Friends- I keep telling people, it's not weird to talk to strangers. Midwesterners know this and I am excited to be back amongst them.

10) Home. Pure and simple.

I love my life and I love my adventures, but the feeling I got when I drove out of Williams reminded me that Missouri is home and there's no place like it. If only it were baseball season...

White (Pre-) Christmas

It's snowing right now. I'm listening to Sarah McLachlan's christmas album, drinking yummy tea, and generally enjoying my life.

All week long, I've been grumbling. It snowed 2 feet Monday night. I can't tell you how simultaneously beautiful and inconvenient this was. My housekeepers missed a combined total of 5 days of work between being stuck and illness. This did not work out well for me.

But this was the last group we have before the new year. And now I'm at home on a Saturday and all my work is done. And it's snowing more on top of the 2 feet. And I literally can't help but love my life.

How many of you were picturing that I live in the desert because I said I was moving to Arizona? Yeah, that's what I thought too, but I live at 7,000 feet and we have pine trees and snow. Crazy.

Here's some pictures:

This is my front yard. Narnia?

Matt, Katie, and Roxy playing in the snow Tuesday morning after we attempted to get my Blazer out, got stuck, and had to dig it out and push it all the way back to the house. We then spent an hour playing in the snow and making chocolate chip pancakes before getting picked up by our boss in the plow truck. It was an adventure to say the least.

Katie waist-deep in snow (kind of).

Roxy goes bonkers in the snow. She loves it.

And my favorite snow picture, of a couple of the dorms at camp. You can see how deep the snow was on the sides of the pathway. Isn't my work pretty?

And looking across the field at the clubroom and another dorm.

A week from today I will be home in Missouri and I'm so looking forward to it. Trust me, no matter how much you love to wander, it still feels good to go home, decorate a tree with your childhood ornaments and be surrounded by the familiar. Let's hang out if you're in MO!

Song of the Day: Wintersong by Sarah McLachlan

Frankie Says Relax

I am so relaxed, I can barely get myself to get out of bed. This is the best feeling in the world.

My life feels crazy right now. I feel like there's not enough hours in the day or energy in my body. I feel like I'm constantly moving, thinking, interacting. And, although I'm a people-person, I'm an introvert at heart. I derive my energy from spending time alone.

Hence, today.

I slept until noon, I made chocolate chip walnut waffles, I read half a book, showered, and then read the rest of it. I didn't blow-dry my hair or put on any make-up.

Now I'm sitting next to Katie and Jen at our kitchen island, blogging and getting ready for our nightly Christmas movie. (Yeah, we're playing a Christmas movie every night of December at our house. It's awesome.)

Needless to say, I am contented.

I've been wanting to blog all about my life but I can't now because it would make me think about how stressful this week is going to be and I refuse to do that. Because I'm going to remain in a chipper good mood and optimistic about the fact that we only have one more group coming before the new year and only two more weeks before I come home for Christmas!

I feel like I'm in college during finals week except other people actually count on me to get my work done now.

I might go read another book...

Song of the Day: Warm Whispers by Missy Higgins (can't get enough)

Yep, New Moon

I went and saw New Moon this weekend. I'm not even going to pretend to be all embarrassed about it. It was awesome.

Seriously, I realize that it is angsty and about vampires and that 13-year-old girls go crazy for it, but I love it.

I, unfortunately, couldn't go to the midnight premier because I have a big girl job now and we had a crazy busy day on Friday that I needed to be ready for. (Otherwise, I totally would have. I love midnight premiers. Although hysterical middle schoolers scare me, so this one might've been too much for me.)

Instead, we went to a Sunday matinee. We bought our tickets 2 hours early and there were people lining up to get into our show already. We weren't that concerned with our seat position, so we came like 15 minutes early and ended up in the 2nd row which is nowhere near as cool as it used to be. In fact, it makes me a little motion sick.

The best thing about going to the Sunday matinee is that all the middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college kids had already seen it. Who does that leave? 20-something to middle-aged women. That was the entire sold out theater.

This audience definitely made things more enjoyable. There was no squealing and glee when Jacob took off his shirt, but instead hearty laughs at how cheesy it was. The entire series tends towards the cheesy and I was glad I saw it with people who could appreciate the humor but yet still gasp out loud when Edward leaves.

It was awesome, I'm firmly on board with the hype, and I'm immediately rereading my books (again) as soon as they get here this week. I don't care what you think.

And you're welcome for returning to Twilight posting. I know you've missed it.

Song of the Day: Roslyn by Bon Iver and St. Vincent

Sleep Sounds Nice

We just turned over all of camp in one day. There was a group in that left at noon and another group coming this evening.

This means that I spent the entire day organizing a lot of people, problem solving, walking at a quick and determined pace, and answering radio calls. (Seriously, I heard a lot of "Kate, copy, Kate" today.)

If you know me at all, you know that this is a little bit of work heaven for me.

But it also means I am exhausted. So I have no witty blogging in me. But I do have something that I think is just as good.

Classic YouTube Video Revisited: The Katana Slip (I'm not kidding when I say I used to watch this 15 times in a row, laughing so hard I was crying. So good. "A piece of the tip just got me there, O'Dell." Hee.)

Childhood Terror

I have a question for you, blog friends.

Do you have something that happened to you in childhood that should not have been a big deal but ended up putting an irrational life-long fear into your heart?

Or is that just me?

When I was about 5 years old, I saw 2 minutes of an episode of Picket Fences and it legitimately scarred me for life.

Yes, that's right, Picket Fences. I didn't even know what Picket Fences was about until I just looked it up on IMDB. Because I've only ever seen those traumatic 2 minutes.

Let me take you back.

It's approximately 1990. I'm sitting in my dad's room in my pink nightgown with the bear in a tutu on it while my dad mills about, doing some busy adult thing. He left the TV on and the show we were watching ended. I sat sucking my thumb as I wondered what would come on next.

Cut to the TV. A little girl is at Show and Tell in her elementary school classroom. She begins to tell the class all about this incredible object she found in her back yard. The background music begins to swell. She pulls out the object and it is a human hand floating in a jar.

At this point, I am paralyzed with fear. The theme song comes on, the credits roll, and it cuts back to a sheriff discussing the little girl's hand with his deputy. They explain that there is some kind of criminal on the loose who is cutting off people's hands as souvenirs of his criminal activity.

At this point, my dad turns off the TV and tells me to go to bed.

It was a while before I got to sleep.

Now, to preface this, I was under a few wrong assumptions at this point. One, I thought that being put under amnesia and simply falling asleep were the same thing. So, I thought someone could perform surgery on you while you were asleep as long as they didn't jostle you around enough that you would wake up. Two, I thought that it was possible that someone would want to just cut off people's hands and keep them. I now realize that the criminal in the show was most likely killing the people and then taking their hands, but that is not what I assumed at 5. I thought that there was someone out there in TV land, breaking into people's homes, cutting off their hands and leaving them to wake up handless.

I went to bed that night with a plan. I decided to sleep with my entire body covered by my blankets, except my head. If they had to move the blankets to get to my hands, I would obviously wake up. And since this fictional criminal only wanted my hands, not to kill me, he would run away when I woke up. (I kept my feet covered as well, just in case.) My plan was full-proof.

I never woke up to a hand-stealing mad man, but I carried the fear with me. I continued to sleep completely covered. Years later, when I rationally knew this was all idiotic, I still couldn't sleep if my hands or feet were not under the covers.

Nearly 20 years has passed since this incident, and I would like to say I've moved on. I understand that nobody is going to cut off my hand. But I still sleep completely covered by the blankets. Because it's comfortable, and a little piece of that anxiety hangs on.

Thanks a lot, Picket Fences.