i <3 my bike

My sister was out washing cars today, and after a short run i helped out, scrubbing bug guts off the front of her car and drying mine. Well, the garage was open and there, to a side at the front, was my lovely cruiser. I had thought of taking it out the other day as I had a package to take to the post office (Nat!), but the thought of even pumping up the tires that day was too much (a very sick day for me). Yet today, feeling a bit better and already outside, I rolled it out and pumped those suckers up. I was barefoot and still in running clothes so I hadn't planned on a gran trip. I sat on it and messed about a bit, peddles across the driveway and onto the path. Our court was calling my name, so I turned and rolled down the lawn, clipped the driveway, and was out in the street. I did some circling about and rang my bell (which says 1 <3>

Speaking of making me want to  move out to a beachy town... 

I have been considering getting a new car later in the year. For a while I was fairly certain it'd be an Audi (going for number three!), though I still did look into other cars just to be sure. Then here goes VW rolling out with a diesel Jetta and my car of choice has changed. What's so grand about a diesel one may wonder... well here it VW to answer:

The people want good clean diesel fun.

Volkswagen Jetta TDI^® Clean Diesels run on ultra-low sulfur diesel that has 97 percent less sulfur content, radically reducing emissions. Not to mention our high-torque, high-mileage, fuel efficient TDI Clean Diesel engines use a "common rail" direct injection system to decrease over 95 percent of all sooty emissions. And don't forget, the "T" in TDI stands for turbocharged.

Another plus is that there will be less parts in the car. Aiming for a VW also makes this car dream of mine more realistic! I could make an Audi happen, cos if I want something I find a way to get it most likely. The only plus to being my crazy self is that I see no limits - I want so I get. I know it's not a necessity to get this new car as my Audi now still runs fine, but, well, I would like it. And thus, this Jetta TDI seems like the one for me. The thought of having a Jetta does make me feel like some laidback surfer (tip of my hat to some old days of mine...). Total rehaul of life maybe? I need something at the very least. 

Baking delight pictures

Big cupcake for Mother's Day

White Chocolate Cashew cookies

"Marathon Cookies" with chocolate and butterscotch chips, peanuts, dried blueberries, and a bit o dried strawberries. And my sister eating them ;)

Cookies bars with little M&M's for my mum to take to her kids at work

Fruit crumble

home sick

so last week was spent with two sick boys. i knew i would get sick in the coming days, but i didnt anticipate how sick! i have not been this sick in quite some time. because of this, i had to do something terribly hard for me - ask for some days off of work. it was quite a struggle to do and caused a great deal of anxiety, but in the end I have been granted the two days i would have worked this week off. my job is so hard to be sick with, because if im not there one of the parents has to call in sick. oi. and this fact does not rest well on someone like me, who takes everyone's needs into consideration and has a terrible amount of guilt. but this is what i need. my therapist was the one who urged me to do it, and even said she could write a letter if i needed it (i still want to take her up on that offer even though i am in the clear!). i also called into the hospital and talked to an advice nurse who gave me some cough medicine which i am not supposed to drive while using. if not for that medicine i would have to work! 

while having job talk started - i need to figure out how to let them know i am not going to be working for them forever. i need to set a date. because if i dont, i will just keep working and working and never get where i want to in life. granted, im not entirely sure where that is but i know i dont want to nanny forever! i just happen to really like this family. perhaps ill need to devote some time of my therapy session to that next week. im not sure if i could, will have a lot to cram in as i missed my appt this morning (i just could not get out of bed). 

pictures of baking are coming - they are on my computer but there is one problem... i am baking again tonight! i got a bag of cherries the other week that i wasn't too diligent about eating, and cherries always make me think of making cobblers, so i rumaged through the fridge and have put together a mix of cherries, strawberries, blueberries, and a pear and will make the cobbler for my parents in just a moment. 

why cherries remind me of cobblers is that we have a sour/pie cherry tree in our backyard and the only think to do with them is bake! so years and years ago while trying to figure out what to do besides pie, i stumbled upon jamie oliver's cobbler recipe and ta-da! and just today, after all these years of having this tree, my dad decided it was time for it to go and replace it with an eating cherry tree. he had been thinking about it for a while but made his idea public while him and i were at a garden store. 

oh, off to do something with my dad, then cobbler making time. 

Lots of thoughts that never stop

The wee one is home sick, second day in a row. I'm on the verge of tears. This was a week where I would have been able to run every day. I've become dependent on running, just in the past two weeks, to feel okay during the day. I'm not sure what to do, and it doesn't help that this guy is not the best camper while sick. 

My thoughts lately have been zooming all over the place, and I always want to stop and try to capture and process them, yet I can't. They wont hold still long enough for me. I can sometimes capture them in a deep thought, but my memory is not the greatest and so I sometimes want to have them written down to come back to later. 

I'll see what I can do, as I am waiting for the washer to finish so I can take a shower. 

Running. when I last wrote of running, I believe, it was in pure frustration over it not going well. Ha! Just a couple days later it improved, so much. I can now keep a good pace going and for a longer time. It's great and I feel great. I know I can better and I am really trying to not let those thoughts take over and just realize I am where I am right now. But I do get frustrated, especially when I see other runners. It's hard that the ability I had in high school is now lost. While I am running, I often think back to high school cross country and different memories would surface. I ran last Friday using part of our race course. We had the hardest course in the leauge. We were also the best team. during warm ups, the other teams would be walking and yammering on about nonsence in their race get up, while our team would be in our warm ups jogging, letting our muscles remember the course so they would help power us through it later, barely a murmer from the group. We were focused. I've ran with partners during practice, but we never really talked while running. Certainly a thing or two would come up, but mostly we were just there for company and security. I run alone now, my face as focused as a race morning, lost in thoughts, good and bad, or just focusing on each pace. It's going well right now, and I really hope it will only get better. 

Photography. I'm not sure why I haven't spoken much of this, I've been meaning to. It's come up again, in a great way. I have always loved photography, capturing some moment or object in time forever. Just recently I upgraded and finally got a DSLR - a Nikon D60 (gold edition)> It is love. I moslt take pictures of animals, and then people. Lately food has come in, im not sure how I really started to do that. What I am saying is sounding lame and mundane, especially compared to the thoughts in my head. Always happpens that way. I haven't uploaded any pictures from the new cam yet, some maybe when I do my lovely thoughts will surface. 

Walking with my dad. Some days, we walk in mostly silence. Other days it's a bit of chit chat. Or a mix of the two. Lately, towards the end of our walks, we have been talking about life. It helps to talk through some things with him - we never go deep into my problems, but he shares what he knows and has learned. I find myself saying and realizing things that I never knew before, and its refreshing to have a new outlook, even if I only remember it for a couple minutes ;) 

Baking.  I have always enjoyed baking, I did it a lot with my mum and siblings while growing up. As I grew, I was trusted to do it alone and just kept with it. My favorite and best is cookies, but I never fail to try out more. These past two weeks I have done a bit of baking - I made a huge cupcake for my mum for mother's day, cookies for my dad (cashew and white chocolate), cookies for my sister ("marathon cookies" with chocolate and butterscotch chips, peanuts, dried blueberries and just a bit of dried strawberries), and in just a couple days time I am going to make cookie bars with m+m's for my mum to take to class (she's a reading specialist at an elementry school). When I get my pictures on my computer, I'll have those to show off. I usually don't bake so much so often, so it was nice to be able to do. I make cookies at least once a month for my dad though. I was not allowed to bake for a long chunk of time though, cos see, the thing is, I never eat what I bake! 

Ay, the wee one is crying cos he wants to play cars with me. I'll post and be on with myself. 

in typical lindsay fashion...

...I yelled at my parents on a holiday that is just for me mum. 

Today [in the US] it is Mother's Day. I had gotten my mum's gift more than a week ago, a Mom & Me book from American Girl - a perfect gift actually. I had bought a huge cupcake pan last weekend and planned to bake up a cake for her. Took care of the cake yesterday (Saturday), yet still hadn't wrapped the gift, let alone get her a card. Hum. 

Well, my dad had brought up the idea to take my mum to the spa's today as she had woken up in not such a great mood. Great!, I thought. I looked forward to having some alone time. I was going to hang out with a friend, who was out with her mum when I was ready to leave. I was ready and anxious to get going. So I went out, told her I'd pick us up some coffee (iced lattes from Peets), but i had a bit extra time in order to meet her at her house. So I stopped into a shop to look at cards. The Mother's Day ones were kind of lame, but I found a perfect one under the category of "love." I picked her up some dark choccie - Green & Blacks as I hear its good. 

After my hanging out, I had to pop into the food shop to pick some things up for my parents (my offering, I love to do errands!). Well, I called to a. see if they had thoughts of anything else (they had) and b. see when they were planning on going (very soon, I hoped). Well, plans were not definate. I started getting angry here, told my mum that she had to just call the place and make it a plan, no having it floating about. Well, she didn't, so when I got home and asked her about it, my anger grew. Asked my dad about it, my anger grew more. Went to tell my mum something, and my anger exploded and I yelled at them. I just get to frustrated too often - they are always saying how they want to do more things together, yet they never do. They come with ideas but they just float away. Argh!

And, well, me yelling and making the day a bit not enjoyable when it's a day for my mum - birthday, Mother's Day, is nothing new. I did this growing up all the time. I had gotten better recently, but well, it still happens! What I realize now is that I just react off of how my mum is feeling - she does not enjoy her holidays and try as I might, I can't fix her and make her happy. So as the day goes on and I fail harder and she's not enjoying, I can't handle it. 

After the yelling I did some cleaning and finished off the huge cupcake. I just brewed inside my head, and that little outburst spiraled into a whole lot of negativity, but it was good to be able to focus on the creativity that went into the cake. I couldn't take the comments from my folks though - I just gave them a solid face. I wanted to speak in gratitude but I knew if I opened my mouth the anger would leak. 

That helped, I calmed down a bit to the point where I could talk and the evening wasn't ruined. I wrapped the pressie, wrote in the card, and stuck the choc bar inside the envelope. It sat in the living room for a couple hours before I asked my mum when she was going to open it! She enjoyed it, had a good laugh with the book as she looked through it. I told her she needs to fill it out during the week so I can know more about her when I get home at the end of the week. I hope she does! there are also some activities we can do. 

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Today on my walk my dad asked he "how I was doing." How can I even begin to answer that - to him. I didn't say much, "alright I guess." He said I seem to be doing okay - yes, to the eyes I am as I have put on some weight, but am in constant agony over it! Well, an eventual comment was "next you just need some friends." Usually, I would agree. I have for years. For years I have wished for, dreamed about, and said to others that I will get some friends. Today, however, after a moments thought I said, "I don't want any." It's the truth. After all those years, I realize I just don't want any. I am fine by myself, life is easier to manage. I can do what I want, when I want, and without having to talk to someone else. Now, my bestie Liz is of course the exception! She is more than a friend, truly, she is just part of me. 

I was thinking about this more tonight - I don't know how the thought got there. I was trying to think what to do with my life - I have finished college and am not making much progress for grad school. And meeting people, well, I'm not sure about. So this leaves me alone - alone for the rest of my life, no mate. I think that would just be for the best, my mates have always caused me anxiety. Perhaps I'll adopt a kid. I never really wanted to be pregnant anyway. So it seems like that will be my life. I guess I'll have to be okay with that. 

riddled with anxiety

I'm not really sure what has gone wrong or where it went wrong, but it just hit yesterday. This never ending, solid thoughts spinning around in my head, a constant reminder of everything. I've just been so uneasy, it all seems too much. I look too much into the future and focus on this self I want to see, rather than just being present in myself. Right now, I can't be in who I am right now. 

The weekend went well otherwise I suppose. My parents and I went to Norway Day Festival on Saturday. I hung out with Liz and did some errands on Friday, errands on Sunday also. I've been doing a project: I have a lot of film that when I have gotten developed, never requested a cd for them. So now I am getting them all onto cd. I am going to be switching over to mostly digital photography. One of my errands yesterday was buying a Nikon D60 (gold edition), so psyched for that, will start playing around with it soon I am sure. 

Sailer and I had a lovely time together - much catching up on as I had been gone for most of the previous weekend! So, lots of her following me. I let her have a great amount of lap time, and endless amount of pets. 

At work now, the wee one is home sick today.