my life: as boring as ever

i did some interesting things today. i also did some very boring things. i avoided, but eventually got around to some important things. and i did something i can still smell.

let's start off with the smell: i dyed my hair today. i've been dying it a dark red/maroonish color for quite some time now. but my friend and i have recently decided to put purple streaks in our hair. i thought that would look better with brown. i tried to dye it to my natural hair color, but i don't think it's the right one. oh well. brown is brown and it will grow out much less noticeably than brown and the strange orange that my previous color was.

i went to work for a grand total of one hour today. that was because it was raining. of course, the one day i really want to go to work, it pours. i really wanted to go to work today because we were going to cook chicken at lunch today :) ah well, maybe we'll do it tomorrow.

i applied for student loans today. holy cow that is alot of money. like, alot alot of money. hopefully i make alot of money when i'm a nurse someday ;) that was the thing that i've been avoiding. and the boring thing. did you know that when you apply for a student loan, you have to do this little like half hour "class" thing where you have to read, then take a little quiz. i very nearly fell asleep. that's how boring it was.

the interesting thing i did today was i made a video. i made it with my webcam because my camera is being shipped. it was total and complete rubbish. i'm going to make a different one soon. hopefully my annunciation will be better... i'm just making this so that i can practice vlogging and uploading and such before my group vlog starts. and it is apparent that i desperately need all the help i can get...

does this count as a milestone?

today i took my car in for repair for the first time. i felt like a grown up. i was informed by a coworker yesterday that i had a flat tire. (that was really good because it was on the passenger side and i never, like ever, see that tire) so i went straight to my grampa (he lives right by the park and he's a mechanic :) he filled it with air and said it probably had a nail in it. he also said don't be too alarmed, go to such and such a car place because they do $.99 flat tire repair. so i wasn't panicking or anything. so i went there this morning and they said it was leaking between the rim and the tire itself. so it ended up costing me like $20. but that's waaay better than, oh yeah by the way you need new tires. i'm lucky i got away with just a leak. my dear minivan is nearly as old as i am...

whenever i have an eventful morning, i still think of that line from tangled: "all the things we've seen, and it's only 8 in the morning!" :)

i received some exciting news this week. we're getting llamas at the farm!!! llamas!!! apparently they're really tall... i'm excited :D

i also received some not so exciting mail this week: my bill for college. for one semester. the amount i need in loans (which i have to get before aug 1. how bout a little more notice??) is roughly equivalent to tuition for a year at my private high school. basically, a lot. ah the adventures of adulthood.

i've been feeling like this more and more lately. like all of a sudden i'm a grown up and i'm doing grown up things. it feels weird, but in a good way. kind of like an explorer in uncharted waters. sometimes i feel like i don't know what i'm doing. usually i just wing it and it works out fine. other times i talk to people who've sailed these "uncharted" waters before, like my parents or my friends. it's nice to have those resources. and if all else fails, i google it :)

thoughts from the farm

ever have those days when you just kind of feel crappy for no reason? or just like the littlest things bother you more than normal? that's the kind of day i'm having. although treading water in the sea of PMS isn't really helping either :P

anyways, that's not really what i wanted to talk about today. this is...

i never would have guessed that farm animals have so much personality! the classic example of a "dumb" animal is a donkey, yet ours has the most personality of any animal i've ever seen. her name is Freida. she loves her routine. you could set your watch by the sound of her hee hawing to be let in at 4:32 (which can be heard clearly throughout the park). when it rains or is too hot and i have to bring her in early several days in a row, she is very reluctant to go out in the mornings. some days she just flat out refuses. she's so smart we have to put a little clip in the latch of her gate because she can get it open otherwise. when we feed her oats, she picks up the bowl and dumps them out. i have no idea why.

we have two calves. they don't have names so we call them the lineback and the holstein. the lineback is the whiner. she doesn't even really moo that often, it's usually more of a mmrrrawww (if that makes sense...) but she makes the most noise. about an hour and a half before feeding time she starts up. she's stubborn about her laziness too. the holstein is much more energetic. when i bring out hay in the morning she bucks and runs around while i walk towards her. she's much louder than the lineback, but she's a little older too.

the goats are impatient. more than a few times, i have been stabbed in my backside by a goat horn on my way from the barn to the tree where we put their hay because they just can't wait that long. i stopped even walking out there, now i just throw it as far as i can. they're very friendly though. whenever i come to the gate they come and put their feet up so their faces are level with mine. if i stand still they nibble at my glasses and my hat or even my fingers if i let them. they don't get along with the sheep though. the goats and sheep both have gotten their heads stuck in the fence between them, trying to butt each other. the sheep don't really have horns, but they're feisty anyway. not very bright though. when it rains, they lose their scent trail to their pen, so i have to chase them all the way around the goat pen several times to get them to go to the gate. one of them will stand still for a considerable amount of time for me to brush her, but the other runs away and won't have it. if i chase her around the small pen in the barn long enough she'll surrender though.

the piglets are very funny. they seem a little disoriented, having lost one of their number (if i didn't mention this before, one of the piglets we had got sick and died). some of the others are showing the same symptoms as that one so i'm starting to worry. if i stand still they'll come over and scratch their little backs on my legs. they all curl up together to sleep.

who knew?

whine whine whine

ok, i'm putting my foot down. enough already with this stupid weather!! it is very very difficult to do my job when it is 97 degrees out! 97!!!!! that's not even taking into account the heat index which is 109. in addition to that, it keeps raining in the middle of the night so the grass is wet and it's so humid out there's fog in the morning. i know i'm picky. too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer. but seriously. this is getting ridiculous.

i did manage to get a morning of work in yesterday. during which i hit my shin on part of the mower. so now my leg is swollen and i have a bruise for like 3 inches surrounding where i hit it. it hurts. my family says i'm a wuss but i don't know if that's really fair. it's not like i'm making a big deal about something that doesn't hurt. every step i take hurts. that's super annoying. it doesn't hurt so bad i can't walk or anything. just bad enough that i don't want to.

so, um, i didn't actually have anything significant to say. just wanted to complain. sorry!

it's official: i'm a bad blogger

yup. that's right. it's not like you hadn't noticed though. anyway, moving on...

well the first thing i have to say is that i have roughly 1.3 million mosquito bites. this is by no means the most important thing happening in my life but it sure is at the front of my mind. ah, well, such is summer in wisconsin.

i know that there are interesting things to say about my life, but i can't really think of any right now.

oh! i've got one! tomorrow i'm going to visit my bestest friend megan at her work!! she works at like a kiddie carnival sort of thing so some friends and i are going to go ride the rides and bother her :) then we're going to go swimming at the park where i work because it is going to be like 94 degrees out tomorrow. but it's going to be a blast! it's always nice to hang out with my friends versus my coworkers because my friends actually know me really well and like me and stuff.

the possible vlog plans continue...hopefully i'm better at that than at this sort of blogging. i'll actually be talking to real people so i think then it'll be easier to think of things to say. don't worry, this blog won't go away! it will most likely be less frequent, but it will live on :)

what am i gonna do with all this food??

so americans have this funny thing we do where when someone graduates from something (especially high school), they throw a big party. we did that yesterday!!!

we had a gigantic taco bar with enough food to feed a small army. and that's just the food that was left after a nearly 10 hour party. we had more than that before. a bunch of my friends came and brought me wonderful presents. one of them was a really cute piggy bank with a graduation hat that said college fund :) another was a hand sewn purse and a three tiered pack of little notepads (hand sewn!!! did you see that??? i said hand sewn!!(well probably sewn by machine, but sewn by my friend :) another pretty impressive gift was a (also handmade) metal thingie shaped like a pig. which is pretty impressive because pigs don't have a very good silhouette but i knew it was a pig right away. so that was cool :)

plus i received one of the biggest perks of graduating: lots of money :) the people that we know obviously love me very much and they were generous. so if any of you are reading this: THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

so now life returns to normal. well normalish. now i get to start shopping for college. call me a nerd if you will, but i'm excited to buy highlighters and fancy pens and shop for dorm things. we went to walmart and i saw they had the big seasonal school supplies out. it made me happy :)

so there's some planning in the works for a collaborative vlog. i won't say too much because it's not for sure but if there are developments, i'll let you know :)

what a glamorous life i lead

as i type this, i'm simultaneously scratching at least 15 mosquito bites. i guess that's what happens when you work outside. and when it rains for a week straight.

sorry i haven't been updating as often. i do have at least a semi-legit excuse. (hey spellcheck didn't correct my use of the word legit :) as you probably know if you've been reading, i have family in town. this is amazing and awesome and fun filled. but it also means that i have less time to just sit down and take a minute. this is also due in part to the fact that we are getting ready to host a gigantic party tomorrow and there are still roughly 1.5 million things that need to get done. but we'll get them done and it will be awesome :)

remember when i said we had new piglets at work? probably not since it was like 2 weeks ago. (unless you just scrolled down to look :). anyway that one piglet is still sick :( she won't eat, she still has a fever, and she's losing alot of weight. the vet won't volunteer his time to come all the way out to the farm for one little piglet (which i think is stupid :P ) every day i go in there and every day (so far) i'm just thankful she's still alive. i wish there was something i could do...

a day of independence

that's right. happy birthday america! you don't look a day over bicentennial! this is a time for cookouts and fireworks going off all over the neighborhood. it is also upwards of 80 degrees, which is as it should be in the summer!

we're having a nice little family reunion at my house all week :) my grandparents drove aaaalllllll the way from south carolina to come see all of us and they're staying with my family all week. this is awesome :D they have this wonderful stuff in south carolina that they don't have here in wisconsin. it's called okra. it's this funny little vegetable that tastes delicious when deep fried. does it still count as a vegetable if it's deep fried? probably not but it's my favorite vegetable :) so we fried up a bunch of that last night along with squash and green tomatoes.

tonight we're having a cookout at my brother's house (he has his own house now!! he bought it :) so that should be fun.

i'm still planning all this college stuff and i have come to a conclusion: simply preparing for college is going to cost me a small fortune! i certainly hope it doesn't cost this much every year. most things i won't have to keep buying because once i have them i have them and they'll last all 4 years (hopefully). other things won't though. i guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it though.

WOOOOOO!!!!

it came!! at long last, i found out who my roommate is!! her name is melissa :D i think this year is going to be pretty freakin awesome! facebook has been overrun with everyone posting about their roommates and what residence hall they're in. it's all very exciting :)

today was an excellent day for mail! not only did i get my roommate assignment, i also got the laptop skin that i have been patiently waiting for. it has multicolored owls on it and it's soooo cute :)

today was so hot that everyone was sent home at noon. that is pretty hot. it was 80 when i left the house at 8 am. i had some interesting experiences at work yesterday though. first of all, it is apparent that many of the guys who go to my high school disc golf at the park. this  means there's a bunch of shirtless guys that i know all over the place. it's weird.

i was mowing at one of the more secluded areas of the park. shortly after i began mowing, i noticed a man, probably in his 50s, sitting on the grass, just kind of looking around. however, the longer i mowed, the more it became apparent that he was looking at me. eventually he moved to his car where he sat with the door open watching me. when we mow we have to move the picnic tables so that we can mow the grass under them. the first time i came to a picnic table i mowed around it, moved it and mowed under it. standard procedure. the next time i came to a picnic table, i mowed around it but continued mowing, planning to come back when i had mowed that whole section. except when i came back to move it, it had already been moved! as if that wasn't creepy enough, he proceeded to lay on top of the table and watch me mow. there was one more picnic table which he also moved while i wasn't looking. all told, he sat and watched me for 2 hours!! now i'm all paranoid about silver minivans :P

*shudder* i don't want to talk about that creepyness anymore :P

my grandparents are currently en route to my house! they should be here by tomorrow morning :D

i have lost count of how many times i have done my happy dance today...