Miscellany

It's been a while since I threw a miscellany post at you, but it's certainly time. Life has been hectic, hence the lack of posts. What happened to my weeks of 5 posts? I'm struggling with 2 per week these days. So sad.

1. I'm reading a new book for a book club I joined at work. It's called Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and so far I love it. It was big back in 2006....did anyone read it already? Let's just say the main character is a 90 year old man living in a nursing home: enough said, I'm sold. I love old people and used to work in a nursing home so this book makes me smile and miss my old patients back in St. Louis. I'll let you know how it turns out but I'm already engrossed!

2. I've started to get excited about Christmas, instead of dreading the winter in general. One thing that makes me REALLY happy is designing and making our Christmas cards, so of course my mind is already running wild with ideas. Here is what I made last year, since it was the year of our wedding and I figured everyone wanted to see one more wedding picture:) :

I used various Christmas papers for the front, the same picture and the same text. Then on the inside I wrote personalized messages and used some fun Christmas rubber stamps. Sigh. I love this stuff so much. 

But now what? I don't have any recent 'nice' pictures of us from this year and I kind of want one of the whole family [duh, with Henry!]. I might have to contact a few of my photographer friends and inquire about prices for a little family session all in the name of Christmas cards. Is that overdone?

So here are some of my inspirations for this year from Tiny Prints. It's a great site with cute ideas....but I just can't bring myself to order our cards from a website. I have to do it by hand [at least for now, I'm sure someday I will laugh at myself for doing this early on in our marriage]. It's just something I thoroughly enjoy.

This baby is giving me The Fever, but also I love the print on this one:)

Um, pink and green on a holiday card? FABULOUS.

Flowers! Lots of them! In bright colors!

Still Christmas-y but not super traditional: just my style. 

Which style do you like the best?

Another item rolling around in my head has to do with gifts: what in the heck should I get our parents, brothers, and grandparents this year? Last year I was so proud of my homemade wedding albums [paper and glue, not the modern digital albums.....I was so out of the loop a year ago!]. It took forever but I cranked out three albums for both sets of parents, plus Memaw and Pepaw. They were a hit and inexpensive....my goal every year! But again, I can only make gifts from our wedding for the first year and then I become that creepy girl who can't get over her wedding....that was 1.5 years ago.

Non-creepy ideas are much welcomed. 

3. Henry got his monthly haircut 2 weeks late. Whoops! But he is blindingly white this time, which just proves how dirty he was before the cut. Look how happy he is with his fresh groom:

See? So white!

Perfect time for a photo-op: when you can see his eyes again. 

The only worrisome part of the grooming encounter? The fact that he came home with this ultra feminine ribbon/flower thing on his collar:
Nate was obviously mortified that our male dog pranced around with this all day. Somehow I think Henry liked it, though, which is even more disturbing. 

4. I'm running again but it seems that I'm suffering a potential injury these days. Ever since the marathon my right knee has been acting crazy every time I run. It's all: No you don't, you crazy biyatch. You ran way too much a few weeks ago and now I'm going to protest any more pounding on the pavement. And I'm all: Shut up and just run, I don't want to lose everything I worked so hard to achieve this year. 

So yeah, we ran in a 15k on Saturday [9.3 miles] and overall I felt great....if it weren't for my pesky knee. I'm pretty sure it's just tendonitis or a severe strain and it will heal but it's still quite annoying. I'm just doing 3 or 4 milers during the week with some longer guys each weekend but apparently my knees don't appreciate the lesser mileage. I truly think my knees belong to a 70 year old sometimes. Or maybe that's just me edging towards the big 3-0 with every day that passes. 

5. They called for snow this weekend. It didn't produce anything, which is good, because if it was already snowing in October I might fling myself from a window. No joke. I have to run with gloves and hats now, you guys. It's getting down to 31 degrees at nighttime. It's so sad. 

6. I rarely talk about work, and I'm still going to refrain....except to say that I have my first P.T. student starting next month! This will be her first clinical and she is my first student so I'm extra excited. Basically, in P.T. you have to do your time as a 'free health care professional' like all other disciplines. You pay full tuition to your school to work full time as a student in various settings. You can go all over the USA if you wish, depending on the contracts your school holds. Your clinicals are where you really learn what you need to survive in the real world and without Clinical Instructors [or C.I.---your teachers in the clinic] nobody would become a P.T. 

I volunteered to be a C.I. because I love to teach while watching students grow into practitioners. There's nothing quite like seeing a scared little student gain confidence and appreciation for their future career. I never thought of myself as a teacher but in this sense [not in the classroom, but in the workforce] I really enjoy it. I hope it all goes well and she likes me! I hope she's smart so I don't have to fail her [just kidding....sort of. That rarely happens. Please God, let her be smart]. 

7. In our efforts to be more domesticated, we spent $20 on Halloween candy this weekend. Ouch! You know how some people buy the kinds they personally hate so they aren't tempted to eat the candy themselves? Yeah, not us. We went all out with pimped out combo packs: 

One has regular M&M's, peanut M&M's, Twix, and Snickers. Nate picked this one, it's decent.

The other bag has Hershey's milk chocolate bars, Hershey's special darks, Kit Kats, Reese's PB cups [drool!], and Rolos [double drool!!]. I picked this baby and it was well worth the money, don't you agree? If we don't get many trick-or-treaters guess who gets to gorge themselves on chocolate?!?

That's all for now. Apparently I had a lot of catching up to do!