Sunshine and Herb Gardens

My fingers currently smell like cilantro and dill. This is a problem because it means that as I'm attempting to get my work done, I periodically stop to smell my fingers. This immediately turns me into "that-weird-girl-smelling-her-fingers". Luckily, I'm in the privacy of my bedroom and can breathe in the delightful smell without awkward staring, despite being apparently insane. This fantastic situation came about because of my wonderful mother. 

Lemon Thyme

One of the last times I was home, I casually mentioned wishing that I had fresh herbs at my apartment. The next thing I knew, we were planting herbs in adorable scrounged-up containers for my windowsill. So now I have seven different kinds of herbs on my windowsill and fingers that smell like cilantro and dill. 

Having fresh herbs on hand has been wonderful for the past few weeks. Everything I make tastes especially fresh and flavorful. The only way life could be better is if I could take advantage of the currently beautiful weather by sitting next to the pool, but instead I'll be studying for my midterm surrounded by the smell of cilantro and dill.

Oh well, it's all part of life as a college student, so back to work!

Kinder Surprise Eggs - Childhood in a Chocolate Shell

Over memorial day weekend my parents took me on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Montréal and Québec City. Aren't they awesome? I certainly think so. Being in Canada, we were able to buy one of my favorite candies: Kinder Surprise Eggs. They're illegal in the U.S. because of the toy inside, so I only get them when I go out of the country or someone brings me one as a souvenir of their travels (But shhhh don't tell - it's illegal to bring them back). 
These chocolate eggs make me giddily happy and excited in a way that probably isn't normal. The bright foil, the soft layers of milk and white chocolate that form the egg shell, and - of course - the toy. My cousins and I used to get them in our christmas stockings along with clementines and chocolate coins and every time I eat a kinder egg I think of christmas morning with all the cousins trying to put together the sometimes complex toys. For me, the joy of Kinder Eggs is part delicious chocolate, part nostalgia, and part getting to act like a little kid again.

Impatience and Flowers

Spring has come early to my notebooks. There are little flowers scrawled in the margins. Tiny daisies, snowdrops, crocuses, along with all the unnamed flowers seeded only from the corners of my imagination.

I’m impatient for spring. For green. For warmth. True warmth from the sun, not radiators that always leave your toes cold.

The warm beautiful intermittent days like yesterday only tease me, make me even more desperate for lasting spring. This morning I woke up to see snow falling grey outside my window. It was more crushing than I had any right to be. Yesterday was beautiful. I walked in the sun and through the mud, arriving at my destination with a warm body and a cold nose. Today, everything outside is grey, so I’ll sit inside and draw lopsided flowers in my notebooks as my pen daydreams of spring.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been so completely impatient for spring before. I am aching for the warmth of spring to truly arrive. I feel like I’ve accumulated so much quiet tension in my skin over the winter. I crave the warmth and sun that will wash it all away and I’m impatient for it to arrive.

My poorly scrawled flowers sneak their way out of my notebooks as the pen in my hand (leaving inky blotches on my skin) wanders aimlessly. My coffee cup has sprung into bloom (roll up the rim to win lose) and my to do list has been engulfed in vines ornamented with lopsided trumpet lilies.

Even my skin can’t escape this early bloom.  Not paying attention to my pen I absentmindedly scrawled a flower on my pinky finger. Later, forgetting, I rested my face in my hand, leaving an inky smudge on my left temple.

Everything is coming out in flowers and poetry, and a line from a Great Big Sea song keep running through my head: “The days will wash away the nights when Summer (Spring) comes” I’m ready for this grey, cold, tired winter to be over.

Looking Back

Sorry about the delay, I’m a few days later than I meant to be. But back to my media fast. Days one and three (I’ll get back to day two later) went surprisingly well. Day one was wonderful. I finally finished redoing my room. After an entire summer, I was able to finish everything in one day once I got rid of all the distractions. I now have a beautiful, bright, peaceful, and slightly quirky room. (Too bad I’m moving back into UB tomorrow and I’ll have to leave this room behind.) I went to bed that first night ecstatic with the way things were going. How well the first day of my media/technology break went just made the crash and burn the second day that much worse. There were outside factors that I won’t get into here, but it was just a bad day all around. The first day, it was easy to stick with the fast, but the second day proved to me just how hard it is to go through a normal, crazy day without being sucked in by some aspect of media. The switched on Television, combined with a desire to be near my family overtook any vestiges of will-power I had left. If that had been all, it wouldn’t really be an issue. Those were, after all, special circumstances right? But I just kept going from there. Once the floodgates were opened a crack, I determinedly wedged them open wider and wider until they were gaping, and I kept them there with my stress long beyond the reasons I originally had. I stayed up late into the night, watching television and fending off any reason to go to sleep. The next day went smoothly again, with very few hiccups in the plan, but it seemed almost like an afterthought following the two days that were such polar opposites. I did a lot of writing and drawing, as well as finishing some unfinished projects. My media fast left me more aware of the relationship I have with media and technology, and I hope I can keep that awareness as I head back to school.