15 year old me

Wow. This one is a thinker. I like thinkers :)

How much we grow and change over the years is astonishing. I am bits and pieces of who I was at 15, most of the innocence and naivety gone, but so much of how I view the world and myself has changed dramatically, and I am glad for this. If I could sit down with my 15 year old self as a two-months-shy-of-my-31st-birthday-adult, I can think of a few things that I would share in hopes of easing some of her 15 year old stress.

At 15 years old I was only a few months into my freshman year of high school and still very shy in most social situations, being around my closest friends being the exception. No serious boyfriends yet and school and dancing were at the top of my serious priority list. I was focused, driven and determined to do well and make my parents and teachers proud of me. I was, hands down, your classic people pleaser. I was often so afraid of failing that I simply opted out of trying new things. For example, I wanted to play basketball, soccer and sing in the 'fancy' choir, but I was too afraid to try out, look stupid and worst of all, fail. Some of these attributes remain the same in me today. Some are very different... :) Now I am louder, more social, and no longer afraid to try AND fail at things, which is huge! This alone has opened so many doors. I now more often am willing to take risks and put myself out there. The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward after all :)

Straight away, I would tell 15 year old me that she is never going to make everyone happy so don't waste too much time stressing about it. The most important thing to remember is to always ALWAYS bring your best in all that you attempt. I would also tell her that failing at something is a wonderful way to learn! Embrace failures and try to learn something new, continuing to apply these life lessons when you encounter new ventures.
One of the most important things that I would share with her is to spend more time laughing with family and girl friends and leave those boys for later years:) There is plenty of time for boys. Boys can be good friends too:)  Man OH MAN was 15 year old me boy crazy! She could not wait to date and kiss boys and have somebody treat her like she was special. As a 30 year old, I would look at 15 year old me and tell her that she is already special :) That her worth is not determined by how many boys think she is good looking and want to date her. This alone could have solved many self-esteem issues that 15 year old me had. If she would have been able to just be as free and fun as she was around her girl friends, not caring (to some extent) what people thought of her, many stressors would have been alleviated :)
In short,
15 year old me, you are already awesome :) You are kind, friendly, a good dancer and student, you love your family and work hard to achieve the goals you set for yourself...keep up the good work and enjoy being you!

With love,
30 year old you

A golden oldie with some good friends from 15 :)

 

 

 

 

Ode to the spider in my shower

Random poems by Rachael

(Inspiration?.....showering with a spider.) Strange? Most definitely.

Day two of seeing you, spider.

I'll admit, I'm perturbed by the sight.

 

I'd be willing to let you hang 'round

If you keep eight feet in the corner

and refrain from falling whilst shampooing.

 

Although I wish you would flee,

I lack desire to plead

and thus

I continue my shower.



 

Good morning! Not.

I feel like instead of asking the question IF I have strange morning rituals the question should ask WHAT ARE your strange morning rituals because whether you accept that you do or not, everyone has quirky things they do in the morning in order to function. (Weekends are a whole different kind of weird than days that I work :)

Let's start, shall we! I, personally, think that the sound/song/etc. chosen to wake up to can make or break the vibe of the day aaaaaaand also says a little something about who you are as a person. Currently, my alarm tone is the Pink Panther theme song :) One a side note, I also enjoy You Can Call Me Al, the Duck Tails theme song, or Kung Fu Fighting. These songs just put a grin on my face immediately, which is exactly what I need since I am NOT into mornings. I don't even want to think about how annoying my day would be if I woke up to some random tinkling bell sound or regular alarm clock. Just.bad.

Back to my morning shenanigans....the snooze button is equally the best and worst invention. I know I'm going to hit it at least once so I intentionally set my alarm for 10 minutes earlier. Yup, I'm winning that round. I'm going to snooze AND have enough time to get ready. Genius.

I also like to 'wake up my room' so to speak. Huh? I can hear you asking. I make my bed every day. I haaaave to. I'm kind of a freak like that. I will literally think about my unmade bed and probably get hives-I don't know, I've never actually done it. Too risky. You can blame my parents for training me so well ;) Secretly, I love to have my room in order so I thank them, but some days I would really prefer not to care that my bed is made, especially when I wake up with 20 minutes until I have to leave for work. *Sigh, oh the burdens of being a neat freak.

I also have a weird order to how I get ready, but that would be sharing a bit too much of my crazy :) I don't want to seem tooooooooo quirky now do I? Short of the long, I do what I need to do in order to make mornings better since it is far from being my favorite part of the day. What weird things do YOU do??

The picture below sums up how I feel puuuuuurrrfectly ;)

ritu

 

 

Tea time!

I love today's question! It's right up my gotta-have-a-book-in-my-hand-at-all-times alley! Not only do I have a super duper BIG love for reading, but when it comes to books, I prefer my head to be in the clouds as often as possible.

If I could have tea with any fictional character, I would most definitely pick Dumbledore :) If you know me at all you know how much I absolutely, positively enjoy the entirety of the Harry Potter series-films included. Fun (perhaps ridiculous) fact is that I have read each of the seven books over five times each. I may have a slight obsession with this wonderful wizarding world and most definitely would have attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry if given the chance. That said, was there ever any doubt who I would pick to have tea with??

Dumbledore is a fantastically written character. I appreciate his charismatic, quirky, silly, serious, adventurous, focused, intelligent, light-hearted, wondrous, deep thinking, caring self and feel that our conversation topics could be endless and exciting. Just wondering about all the strange and magical animals, games, spells and history we could discuss makes me smile :) I feel sure that he would know exactly what to say to cheer me up or motivate me after a difficult day. Albus is a wonderful example for a teacher as he is constantly demonstrating not only how to challenge and push his students into discovering and sorting things out for themselves with all the right clues and information, but also how to be a kind and caring educator. There is just something absolutely delightful about Albus Dumbledore :) Cheers!

"Of course this is happening in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Albus Percival Dumbledore

Wedding road trip

Yesterday afternoon, Adam, Alicia, Keli and I piled into Adam's Subaru and headed down to Corvallis for Mo and Blair's wedding celebration. And what a celebration it was! We got into town, checked in at our awesome Super 8 hotel room and headed straight for Local Boyz for Adam's favorite Hawaiian food :) Had a girls-get-ready-together party in our room while Adam napped-smart fella-and at 4:15 headed to The Vue (awesome, newer, urban reception location) to catch our bus out to the ceremony on Bald Hill. The bus ride was quite the adventure...We rode on bus two and as soon as we got separated from bus one at a red light the driver looks back at us and asks if any of us know where we are going because he did not have directions. Ha! Awesome :) We took the scenic route through Philomath in a great big circle, but we made it! The ceremony was lovey and oh so picturesque up on Bald Hill in the early evening. We had a 10 minute walk from the bus up to a great open barn. Mo did such a fab job of creating a special place for their marriage vows. It was exactly what I would have pictured for them :) Their pup Capone even had a special blue tie on for his walk down the aisle!

The buses took us back to The Vue-which was a GORGEOUS venue- much quicker on the way back for the reception which started off with cocktails, followed by a yummy dinner and of course dancing! What a phenomenal group of dancing friends and family Mo and Blair have! It.was.a.BLAST! We all danced and drank until we were all kinds of good lookin' sweaty people lol. After the reception, the party continued down the road to a local bar The Peacock or Top of the Cock as the upstairs area is called and dancing continued well into the night in our fancy attire :) All in all, it was such a wonderfully, fabulous evening celebrating great friends and we ended up with many, MANY silly memories and stories :) Congratulations to the happy couple!

Back in time

Today's question is a fun and random one. Do I secretly miss polaroid cameras? Ummmm....HECK YES I do! Those cameras were big, bulky and expensive to have, but oh they were so much fun!  I remember that I received a smaller version for one of my birthdays and I loved using it. Taking pictures now is strange...with everything either on your phone camera or ending up on your computer, more than half the time you have to actually make the decision to get prints made. You can see your pictures literally after taking them on your digital camera and phone so there is no excitement or rush to have prints created. Polaroid pictures were special because it was a surprise in the moment that you had to wait for, but not for too long :) Plus, you got to "shake it like a polaroid picture!" (Thanks Outcast :) Sometimes I long for a time before I was attached to my cell phone checking the internet and other avenues so easily and out of boredom. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy using technology and have grown accustomed to it, but if there was a way to take it back to a step or two -like what you do when you go on vacations to somewhere fun and exotic :) You tell your friends and family that you will be "out of touch" and turning off the world to relax. I actually think that occasionally technology stresses me out! Polaroids were a great novelty to have as a child and I'm glad they still make versions to use today, but with the ease and amount of pictures that a digital camera brings, polaroids just don't have the bang for their buck that they used to.

My biggest adventure thus far

Omgeeeeee! Today lasted forever. Some days I wish I had a normal 9-5 or even 8-4, 10-6 job and didn't have to work 10 hour days. Granted I get a nice long lunch break, but I would trade it for 30 minutes if I could work 8 hours and be done. Anywho, for today, the question sparking my post is to talk about the most out-of- character decision that I have made. There are not too many things that I have done in 30 years that are truly out of character (at least that I would mention in my blog that is :) but the one that seems to ring the truest is deciding to uproot my life in Portland, Oregon and move to a small city in Thailand to teach English to Thai children for a year.

When I first told my parents, family and friends that I wanted to move to Thailand to teach, they thought I was kidding. Jokes were made, laughs had. They were all aware that I was looking into applying to join the Peace Corps in order to hopefully get some of my student loans forgiven in addition to new experiences outside of my comfort zone. This adventure would be semi supervised though and moving to Thailand was basically a leap into the far, dark, other side of the world. However, I ended up deciding that two years seemed like too long of a commitment. I also was a bit concerned that I would end up somewhere I had no desire to be. Short story short, I applied for a job at a private school in Nakhonsawan, Thailand for the simple reason that I already wanted to travel there, why not just spend a year exploring and working there in Thailand? I ended up getting a call back and a phone interview that went extremely well and ended in a job offer to teach two, three and four year olds English at Yuwapat Kindergarten School! :) The rest is history as they say, I had about a month to get sorted, packed, say my farewells and book my flight. Not aaaaaaall were on board, enthusiastic and confident in me at first, but man did I prove them wrong! I can honestly say that I flourished while living and teaching in Thailand and made so many wonderful friends and memories that I will cherish forever. I also found out what I am really capable of and just how small my world really was.

To this day, I am grateful that I trusted myself and took a chance on adventure!

*Below is the tattoo I will be getting in the very near future to remind me of Thailand always :)
The bottom elephant ;)