attention: this is NOT ice cream

I was feeling fancy today on my grocery-shopping afternoon, so I drove past my usual Broadway Fellini Kroger and to the Nike-shorts-and-visor-wearing-soccer-mom Bearden variety instead.

I wandered into the natural and organic food section and found some dairy-free Cherry Amaretto Coconut Frozen Dessert.

It is disguised as ice cream, but is in fact not ice cream at all so I can eat it, which is good...because I just ate a whole pint of that delicious poser ice cream stuff.

It is hot as a fire outside.

on my honor, I will try...

In an act of self-promotion, here are two of the latest things I have written for the News Sentinel, both covering last week's 100th Anniversary of Girl Scouts.

This is about the program's East Tennessee roots and the history behind some of the earliest troops.

This is about the family that lives on and manages the property of  the Girl Scout camp in nearby Andersonville, Tenn.

productivity is not the same as fruitfulness

The Leap Day came and went, as most days do, in a blur of commitments and rushing from place to place. The "extra" day, much like the free hour acquired during Daylight Savings Time, didn't garner any more items crossed off the to-do list than any other. Rats.

Somehow in the midst of life management, work, small groups, relationships and some semblance of a regular sleep schedule, I still put pressure on myself to have no downtime. Because downtime=lost productivity=laziness, right?

I say yes to things I don't want to do because I don't want to have to deal with the fallout of saying no, and explaining that I do, in fact, need time to revive and refresh before beginning the cycle again on Monday morning. This pressure we feel to be constantly connected, plugged in and available is draining to the body, mind and spirit. Taking time for yourself does not=lazy/sketchy. It means that you know your limits and what you need to operate from day to day.

The Lenten season has introduced the concept of adding/taking away practices that I want to integrate into daily life/don't want to get back, respectively. Things I don't want to get back? Feeling guilty for saying no. Things I want to become second nature? Being a woman at rest, and being a human be-ing and not a human do-ing.

Two articles I read today that spurned this amalgamation of thoughts are "Leap Year and the Gift of Time," on the Radical Womanhood blog, and "Pilgrimage," on the bluebookblog.  Good stuff, worth a read.

At the end of a busy week, today is a rare day of rest; catching up on reading and unpaid bills and enjoying the feeling of having to be nowhere.

thursday things

1. FINE. I  am a blogging delinquent.
I apologize. I could blame it on the craptastic Internet I have in my apartment or I could just own it. I promise to be better...to the 5 people who read my mostly-scattered thoughts.

2. Apparently cutting my hair is the only thing worth talking about, but I have done a few other interesting/fun/maybe only fun to me things since then. Which I will now list, in random order of importance. 

3. I have been given way more opportunities to write, which is awesome and has kept me very occupied. I am working on two bigger stories that I am excited about seeing unfold. 

4. After scaling back my daily coffee consumption by half (I don't want to say how much is half. A little ridiculous) and experiencing two weeks of intense headaches, I am proud to say I am over the hump of caffeine withdrawal. 

5. I took the online test to be a Jeopardy contestant. I love trivia. I am so weird. It made sense. Stay tuned. 

6. One friend moved away and one friend is moving back. Emma, my lovely Canadian, is now laughing at all of us still in the throes of winter from her apartment in summery Brisbane, Australia. Way to take on for the team, Em. On the flip side, however, is my lovely friend Stephanie moving back to the motherland from NC! It’s about dang time, is all I have to say. 

7. And speaking of friends I made in college, I got to visit my roommmate from freshman year in Hess Hall, Taylor, a few weekends ago in Atlanta! She has been working there right around two years and I hadn’t gotten to see her face since Sept. 2010. TOO. LONG. We had a great time reminiscing our days as 18-year-old roommates and wondering where our twenty-something selves will be in the future. 

8. The Fellowship and friends are headed up to the mountains for the weekend, which I could not be more excited about. 

9. Actually, I might be more excited about these little pieces of heaven I’m making on Saturday. Oh, excuse me while I wipe slobber off my keyboard.

10. I would like this bout of cold weather to produce some snow, and then it can get warmish like last week. Was it not just so beautiful that you wanted to eat it?

chop chop

Until about 2 weeks ago, I had been growing my hair out for about a year and a half to donate.

It was the winter-induced-static-cling, 20-minute blowdrys and general hard-to-manage-ness that sent me over the edge and prompted the CHOP.

I've never shown this much of the back of my neck before. I'm loving it. 

The Last Ponytail

CHOP

What had been attached to my head.

the worst

I have made this statement several times to different audiences and I will continue to stand by it.:
3:30-4:30 p.m. is THE worst hour of the day.

Here are the facts:

1. It’s the weird time between lunch and dinner. If you eat lunch during this hour because you got busy earlier in the day, you can forget being ready for dinner at a normal time. So you just continue to be hungry until you hit up senior citizen dinner at 5.

2. When you had a snow day, this is the hour in which your attitude goes from "NO SCHOOL TODAY!!" to "Crap, we have to go to school tomorrow."

3. It’s right when you would get home from school and the only thing on TV are Japanese cartoons and melodramatic talk shows.

4. It’s the time after lunch, but not quite quitting time at work that your brain starts checking out of everything and/or nothing makes sense anymore.

I could think of some more but I’m currently in the throes of the worst hour of the day.

america's hat

This is what Canada is like, eh Emma?

She can ride a moose ya'll. I've seen it.