Kickball

Today as I was thinking of what I was going to blog about I fully expected to do a lot of complaining. Originally my post was going to be something like this:

I love to try new things and I love to do just about anything, but something I absolutely do not love is sports. Unfortunately, in the rest of the world sports are some of the most common hobbies. At school, among friends, and worst of all at church, sports are often used as a way to get to know people or hang out. I feel obligated to go, but I don't enjoy sports and I'm embarrassed at my lack of skill. Maybe one day I'll be an expert at absolutely everything else and I'll finally have to add some sports to my hobby list, but until then, I'm steering clear of them as much as possible!

However, after actually going to a church activity tonight and playing kickball, I've decided to change this post to something more along these lines:

In my whole life, I've tried to avoid sports unless forced to play for PE. I can count on one hand the number of baskets, goals, and touchdowns (combined) I've made in my life. In fact I'm pretty sure I could count on my fingers and toes the total number of times I've played any sport. There's just no appeal to me in getting sweaty and tired and injured. Besides that, when I actually do play it's pretty embarrassing. But tonight I played kickball (of course it's not a very intense sport, but there's a ball and rules and running, good enough for me) and I actually had a lot of fun. Now I wasn't good, not at all, but I had fun and that was more than I expected. I have always attended football games just to hang out with friends, and I do love screaming and cheering and painting my face, but for me watching sports is almost as unappealing as playing them. Actually though, when I was the team manager (pretty much the team mom, but for my peers) of the tennis team and learned all of the rules, it actually became very interesting. Maybe I shouldn't completely ban sports from my hobby list after all.

I Love to Learn

So tonight I'm sitting there with my crazy genius mathematician sister, and when I admire the lovely figures she's drawing, she starts to explain to me all about topology and classifying surfaces and shapes that exist in only a 4D world and why topologists can't tell the difference between a donut and a coffee cup. And you know what, I actually enjoy it, and even understand it a little. It reminds me of her letters and phone calls home from college when I was in 3rd grade, teaching me how to do modular arithmetic. And it reminds me of when I was in high school, teaching myself to do Calculus beyond what even my teacher remembered, just because I could. Now this may all sound very boring to you, but it reminded me of a me that I'd almost forgotten.

Along with my love of trying new things and doing lots of crafty type stuff, I love learning. In fact, I've always loved school and only recently discovered (after several people pointing it out and explaining it to me) that I'm creative as well. I always thought that I was a totally logical, analytical, left-brained type person. My favorite subject by far was math, the only electives I took were AP classes, you get the picture. And even though I've given up the academic university life, I will never stop learning new things and loving it all the time. Mixed in with all my sewing and cooking and painting and crafting, I want to study economics and history and biology and politics. But instead of sitting in a classroom, daydreaming during lectures, stressing about homework, and cramming for tests, I'm going to read and discuss and explore. Learn straight from the source: The Origin of Species, The Federalist Papers, The Wealth of Nations. I just wish there were more time in the day to learn and do absolutely everything!

Tastebuds Conquered

When I was younger, I used to be the world's pickiest eater. Not only were there a ton of things I hated, but among those things were the typical things that even a picky child loves—pizza, cookies, brownies, etc. It didn't help that the two things I absolutely could not stand, no matter what—onions and tomatoes—were my mom's two favorite foods and included in dinner every single night. Needless to say I got very good at picking around even the smallest pieces of grody things in any meal. I had tried several times to start accepting more tastes, but to no avail. One thing I was open to, however, is trying new things. I would eat just about anything at least once, and love to try crazy things: emu, bison, chicken heart, quail eggs, octopus, eel, sea urchin reproductive organs, a live roly-poly, you name it.

But in the last few years, I've been becoming more and more infatuated with cooking, and have started to dream of attending cooking school and becoming a chef. Now as a chef, I decided, I probably should be willing to eat just about anything, or at least your run-of-the-mill onions and tomatoes. So I got right to work on learning to love (or at least stand) things that I had previously hated. My brother taught me to adore raw fish and rare meat by taking me out to a nice restaurant only if I would try it. The nice people at Benihana taught me to like shrimp, I mean how can you not like something when those amazingly talented chefs are throwing it into your open mouth? I began to like onions when my roommate, just days after we met, made me dinner and I just couldn't be rude and pick them out. I started eating olives because I was too lazy to say anything more detailed than "everything but tomatoes" when ordering at Subway.

Still those evasive tomatoes just could never become the slightest bit less repulsive to me. I figure it's because my mom always grew tomatoes in her garden, which means before I ever encountered a tomato, I encountered a tomato plant. And with tomato plants come tomato worms. Big, juicy, green caterpillars that smell exactly like tomatoes taste. Anytime I ate a tomato, this lovely creature would pop up in my subconscious and I just couldn't eat it. That is until today. I've been working up to this for months, years even, slowly learning to eat tomato sauce and increasingly larger chunks or slices, disguised in the middle of a delicious salad or In-N-Out burger. But today I finally did it. I ate a whole grape tomato and not only did I not hate it, I actually loved it! Boo-yah tastebuds, who's laughing now?

Things I Like to Take Pictures of ~ Leaves

I adore plants. I find them fascinating and stunning. Of course I love flowers as much as the next person, but there is so much beauty in the rest of the plant that often goes unnoticed. That's why I love taking pictures of leaves!

Mixbook

After my trip to Zion's Camp, I put the pictures together to make a book for my grandparents. Zion's Camp is a beautiful place where I have so many memories. Sadly, my grandparents are going to have to leave it in a couple of months, after about 30 years of being the caretakers of this small piece of heaven on earth. I made this book so that they can bring Zion's Camp with them wherever they go and always remember it's beauty.

My New Room

I'm so excited to have a new room and a new place to start working on my hobbies. My source of inspiration for most of them in the next little while will be my lovely room, which my wonderful sister was kind enough to paint for me last week while I was away.

Didn't it turn out magnificently? She used my favorite colors—pink and orange–plus a little green to match the kiddos' room across the hall. She even hung up some of my pictures, I just love it!

In my new room I'll be able to practice refurbishing, interior design, sewing, cleaning, organizing, quilting (you may notice that the colors also match my quilt, which I have not worked on since you last saw it, I need to get to work!). I'll keep you posted on my progress.

I'm back!

Back to blogging. Back to a routine. Back to sanity. Back to reality. Back to hobbies. Back to kiddos. Back to RENO!!

Today my big sis picked up me and the last of my stuff and I'm now officially living in Reno. I am so excited to be her nanny/housekeeper/chef/anything-and-everything-she-needs. It's a perfect situation all around—I get to play house, which I love, and she gets to focus on studying like crazy to get a Master's in math (I know, genius, right?). Starting today I'll have plenty of things to do and to post about, so get ready, here I come!