The Random Monday Before the Monday Before Christmas!

Okay... today is a very special random Monday. 

Because it is not just random pictures.... 

It is random pictures from my Ipod. 

You heard me. 

From my Ipod. 

I don't know why that is significant. lol. 

It just seemed special somehow. 

It is a glimpse into my life... a series of moments from the past five-ish months where i would be like "Whoa! I should take a picture of that!" but didn't have a camera or didn't feel like getting it out. So in a sense, these pictures actually are truly random, because they are just random individual pictures that were taken with no connection to any other pictures at all. 

This is the Christmas tree that has been around at Christmas for as long as I can remember. This is the first Christmas that it won't be around. It was my grandma's tree, and it was always set up downstairs on this little table thinger... but this year, it won't be. 

This is the same tree. I had to undecorate it. Due to the fact that it is crooked and very old and not in such great condition anymore. Undecorating it was kind of a sad job... this year we have a different Christmas tree. It's tiny. Tinier. There's no way that our Old Order neighbours will be able to tell we have it. 

The beach with Wendy and Renee.... I just have a thing for pictures where you can actually see the sunshine. 

This is the very very first picture that was ever taken on my Ipod. See how excited Kenton is? Actually, to be honest, I don't know what that expression means. 

I love beautiful, bright summer mornings. I took this picture the morning that Megga and I left for the cottage. It was a beautiful beginning to a wonderful weekend. ;)

This was when the hydro went out for a few hours. I lit candles. Lots of em. And it was all pretty and glowy. So naturally, I took a picture of it. 

This is a sleepy Wendy, all cuddled up to me. I am the tiny bit of orange and blue that you see in the bottom left corner. 

I love this face! I love this girl! We are so good at being at the beach together! We are actually good at a whole ton of things together. We work best together. I think that our science fair project from grade ten proves that. 

So at the cottage, there are limited sleeping quarters. And somehow, I am the one who always ends up sleeping on a couch? Actually, it is completely fine with me, due to the fact that at the cottage, there is the most comfortable couch in the world. It is also officially the ugliest couch in the world. But I love to sleep on it, and I love hearing the water, and when I wake up, I love to see the sunshine. 

If I owned a cottage, I would totally just leave a chair down by the water. It would be my thinking chair, I believe. If I felt a thought coming on... I would run to my chair. If I felt like writing, I would run to my chair. If I felt like reading, I would run to my chair. If I felt like talking, I would set up a second chair beside it, and grab a friend, and run to the chairs. It would just be so useful to have a chair. I could write wonderful things in a chair like that. I would think deeper thoughts in a chair like that. I could totally read "War and Peace" and "Middlemarch" in a chair like that. If I had a chair like that... I would be a better person. I can tell. I really could use a chair like that. 

Wendy sitting on a rock, in the sunshine, being all thoughtful. 

This is me. In a pink apron! And a blue sweater. I am by far the most colorful baker at Hillcrest. The sweater is actually just as much for protection from the ovens as it is for warmth. This picture was taken on the day that I learned that you shouldn't wear black if you work in a bakery. But it was taken in the morning, so it was before I was all hand-printy. Also, I don't know what I am doing with my mouth while I am taking this picture. Maybe my mouth just does that at 4:35 in the mornign. It might. I don't know. I think maybe it is trying to do the thing it does in the cute/funny pose with meg, except that it is failing miserably. Because Meg isn't there being all funny beside me. Obviously. 

This is Lancelet! Lancelot the penguin air-freshener. =) Thank you, Tory. =) I know that he is technically supposed to be in a car... but he is just so cute! And so he is on the thing that holds my pens and pencils and high lighters (which I decorated myself, by the way. Me and meg are just crafty like that. lol. I am ruining the randomness of these pictures by connecting all of them to Meg. lol. It's just that I have such wonderful memories of sitting on a little bed in a little bedroom in a little cottage with Meg and sticking all these jewel thingers on our pen holders.=)) Emily, you should know that this little guy always makes me think of you! "Poke the penguin... fear the penguin... be the penguin." lol. Nobody appreciates a cute penguin like you do. =) 

And this is the journal that I bought today. The tag called it a "Jumbo Journal". That's right... now I am allowed to have jumbo feelings, because I can deal with them in my jumbo journal. Yup... 192 pages. All to be filled with my massive emotions. This is one of my wiser investments, I believe. 2013 is just shaping up to be that kind of a year. I just love everything about this thing.... I mostly like its pure jumbo-ness. It is big, so even though it is not spiral bound, you can still spread it open, and one side doesn't keep popping up while you are writing. It just stays flat. This is a very important quality in a notebook. Also, it has pink lines! pink lines! And the paper is kind of beige. It is just inspiring. This is actually going to be my prayer journal for the next year (or two. lol.). 

Random things: 

-So several weeks ago... my family went to this place for lunch.... and I didn't want to go... and there was only one couch, and me and my three siblings just fit perfectly on this couch (although kenton thought it was a bit close. lol.).... and then the elderly man of the house must have thought I looked bored.... so he so kindly handed me an open magazine... and said "I think you would probably be interested in this article!"... and I looked at the title of the article... and it was "Love for the Unlovely"... and me and Kenton cracked up. I guess now we know what Laverne thinks of me. lol. 

-At work the other day, me and Florence were talkin'. And when me and Florence talk... well, nothing important gets said. lol. But this just made me laugh. lol. We were discussing how I should move far away somewhere, so that she could come visit me. And she asked me where I would want to live (Ireland, duh.) and I said that maybe she should pick the place that I live, since the entire purpose of me moving away was so that she could come visit it me. And the following conversation took place: 

Me: "So where do you think I should live, Florence?" 

Florence: "Hmmmm... Which would I rather see- the Africa men or the China men?" (and i'm pretty sure that by "men", she was just meaning like, the general people of those countries. Not actually like just the men. lol.) 

Me: "What about the Irish men?" (meaning just the men, and not the general people, of course.) 

Florence: "Did you see the man with the sign that was in here last week?" (Topic change! This happens a lot at Hillcrest. I love it, because it means that I also get to be as random as I want to be. At Hillcrest, you are free to be yourself. As long as you are a Mennonite.) 

Me: "There was a man with a sign?" 

Florence: "Yeah! His hat said 'kiss me- I'm Irish! But I don't think he was any more Irish than you or I.'" (hardly a sign, in my opinion. lol. But I think that some things must just get lost or confused in the mental translating from German to English that they do in their heads.) 

Me: "So did you kiss him?" 

Florence: "No!" (I guess that would be taking customer service a bit farther than she is willing to go.)

...okay, so that conversation was a lot funnier at the time than it is now. lol. 

-I just have one Christmas present left to buy! and then I'm done with that. =) 

-My family is baaaaaaaaaaaad at names exchanges. It's Renee's fault. 

-Renee and Wendy invented a game. It's called "Test Your Temper". And basically, it requires two players, and one player is just generally as annoying as they can possibly be. The aim of the game is to see how long it takes the other player to lose their temper. Yeah. That's my little sisters for you. lol. 

-I am bad at advent calenders. I got behind, I caught up, and now, i am like six days behind again or something. And it's still sitting close to my heater thinger. Some people never learn, eh? 

-I can't go to Wal-Mart without buying those 98 cent packages of three Lindor chocolates. I just can't do it! 

-I bought a new Bible. It's pretty. 

-The school shooting in Connecticut... is incredibly sad. Yesterday afternoon I saw a picture of some of the kids outside of the school after the shooting in Saturday's paper, and it nearly made me cry, because some of them looked terrified, and some looked blank, and some were crying, but they had all been exposed to fear that no child should experience. So sad. 

-A quote from Wendy, about the sucker she was eating on the way home tonight: "It's sweet- but it's violent. It's the kind of thing that you like, but you don't like. You can't put it down, but it's too sour." Yeah- that's an intense sucker there, kid. She also came up with an entirely new superstition while we were driving home this afternoon (this one was directed at Kenton. lol.): "If you make your little sister mad, you will have ten years bad luck." So there you go. Ya'll better treat your little sisters real nice. I just used the word "ya'll". and do you know why? (see point below)

-It's because Annie F. Downs is one of my writing heros. And I haven't even read her book yet. I own it though. Ordered it from Amazon. It's sitting on my bookshelf, with its cool cool cover, and I can't wait to read it, because I can tell that it is going to amuse me and teach me great things. Which is exactly my goal as a writer. So yeah- Annie is a completely hilarious writer. thank you, Joy, for introducing me to her! I love her blog.. it is one of my "most visited" pages in google chrome. Anyways, she uses "ya'll". And it just sounds so good. lol. So I couldn't resist using it just once. Here is the link to her blog, if you are interested. http://annieblogs.com/ 

She says a lot of good stuff, and also a lot of funny stuff. She also says a lot of things about writing that I love and when i read them i go "HEY! THAT IS HOW I FEEL ABOUT WRITING!". she says things like "It's like constantly making a DQ blizzard in your head that stays on that little spinner thing until you sit down and write." True. and..."I sat down at my computer and I typed away like my next breath depended on it- It literally felt like I was underwater and the only way to kick to the surface was to let the words out. Pages and pages and pages flew as the tears poured and when I was done, I had somehow run a marathon emotionally as well as felt my heart be gently wrapped in a bandage that I could not see, but felt the coolness of it." True. I know that feeling. and.... "Hello, six truly large cans of stewed tomatoes- I don't know why, but I'm buying you." Okay. So that is not a deep revelation about writing. That is just funny. 

Okay, now for some reason my formatting has gone all weird. 

I think it is trying to tell me that it's time (past time!) to end this post. 

So I will. 

I hope you are all having a wonderful time preparing for Christmas! =)