oh, you know

okay then.... nearly 6 months since my last post. no lame-o "i forgot my password" excuse this time. i'm just not doing a very good job at keeping this up. at all. whatsoever. i was all about blogging in high school. i don't know what happened. i still read numerous blogs weekly... somehow i forget to update mine. i'm pretty sure not even darling sharon reads this thing anymore, but it's time for an major update regardless.

...a month-by-month update of what you've been missing in my life. just what everyone needs, i'm sure, complete with pictures and tons of clickable links.

MAY/JUNE

(i realize my last post was in june, but metra animal shapes hardly count as an update.)

i spent these two months at olivet; i took a few classes and had a part-time graphic design job for shine.fm. it honestly wasn't much of a summer... i didn't have a car so i couldn't go anywhere and spent most of my time pining for christopher and the care free summer we shared together last year. 

still, i knocked out three gen ed courses, refinished a vintage schwinn, and spent two months with the best roommate i've ever had, arissa beck. i realize this picture is from christmas, but it's the only one i have of us really. 

pretty much we spent the summer being awesome. we made our own bagel chips, walked to dairy queen on a weekly basis for mr. mistys, and found 100+ ways to cook chicken for dinner. (not exaggerating.)

i also spent may-august as a freelance designer for the student development office - which was an incredible opportunity. that job gave me a foot in the door as professional designer and TONS of resume experience... i created the designs for our "first week" mailer - a schedule of back-to-school events sent to the entire student body, helped out with our student discount card and yearly planner designs, and designed all the ollies follies tshirts for the freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior classes. it's pretty interesting slash awesome for me around campus now... i usually see at least one person wearing my work every week. considering all the work i did for the school, 3,000 people at the least have seen on of my designs. that may not be a big deal in the grand scheme of things.... but for a student designer who still knows nearly nothing it's pretty exciting. 

may and june were sometimes lonely because i only saw christopher maybe 3 times total, but they certainly were good months for accomplishing things. (may side note: on the 7th christopher and i celebrated our year anniversary with a trip to warren dunes. all mush aside that man is absolutely fantastic!)

JULY

the weekend in between june and july i packed up the contents of my apartment, moved back home, did quite a few loads of laundry, and packed it all back up again... in two large suitcases bound for australia. 

i don't know if i can ever begin to describe the time i spent there with my mother. i am so glad we were able to take a month and spend it together wandering around the places she grew up in. i took so many pictures and yet looking back at them it seems as if there is so much i didn't capture.... this hardly describes my trip:  

1. typical city skyline... beautiful. 2. one day mom, grandma and i went to the camellia gardens... a huge national park/flower garden. the camellias were in bloom so we walked around, had afternoon tea, and grandma fed the ducks. 3. mom! this was taken at the oriental gardens in the heart of sydney. 4. we saw various natural inhabitants of the outback, such as a crocodile 5. a spider the size of my fist, not kidding 6. kangaroos, of course and 7. precious the koala! yes, her name is precious, and mom and i had a mini-photoshoot with her and got to pet her (holding a koala is illegal) in the sydney wildlife center. (centre?) that was a major highlight of my trip. 8. classic shot of the opera house and bridge. i have 50 shots of this, from varying angles and times of day, but i had to include it. 9. view from the hotel at sunrise. mom and i were able to stay 6 days in the sydney hilton (for free thanks to dad's accumulated points) and were upgraded to the special "relaxation suite" aka $$$$$. ironically, this picture is of the shipping yard my grandpa worked at for most of his life, and i had no idea when i took it. 10. aside from the week spent in the heart of sydney, we stayed at my grandparents house. drinking tea in the sun was their morning ritual. 11. mom and i enjoyed a lot of fancy-pants coffees... places in australia seem to make them better than the states. this one was taken at sappho books... an amazing used bookstore/coffee shop in glebe. the two story building was busting at the seams with books on everything from jazz to macramé. in the back of the shop was a little coffee/desert bar that opened up to a beautiful courtyard, stretching on for ever with trees springing up from the cobblestone and walls filled with a local artist's paintings. 12. classic "oh man i'm in australia" shot. everyone has one, right?  

{+}  a side project i put together for christopher... be warned, it's mushy. 

AUGUST

by august 3rd mom and i were back home in good old nappanee. it took about 18 hours of straight sleep to recover from the jet lag, but the whole month was still a fuzzy whirlwind for me. 

while mom and i were in australia, we found out that my grandma ufkin had cancer. it was pretty severe and was throughout her body, so grandma made the decision to ride it out. no chemo, no operations. by the time mom and i were able to visit, everything had taken a toll on her body. she was put on a morphine drip to help with the pain.

it was difficult, but when we all heard that she had passed away, we all had a certain sense of peace. i think most families of cancer victims would agree... the mourning process starts when the cancer is first discovered and from there you pick up the pieces, enjoy every last moment of life, and pray for comfort and peace for the family member. 

sadly, the world doesn't wait for you to feel better. after spending the weekend with family and friends in illinois, i packed up everything yet again and moved back to olivet. as an executive member of student council, i had to be at school early to help with freshmen and to prepare for the upcoming year. 

hardly a week passed, saturday evening. i was at a birthday party for a friend... i got several voice mails from my mom and both brothers telling me to call home as soon as i could. there was an urgency in their voices... i expected the worst. was dad in an accident on the toll road? did something happen to grandpa ufkin? no, no. it was grandma cook. she had a stroke in the middle of the night. collapsed on the neighbor's porch, trying to get help for grandpa who had fallen out of bed. that was it. she was gone. 

i can't explain the grief and shock i went through after hearing that. i never thought it possible. i had just spent a whole month in her house, eating breakfast with her, drinking orange juice she squeezed for me from the tree in her backyard. 

what was even worse was the fact that i couldn't go home. my roommate annie and friend amanda drove me halfway to nappanee, but my parents made us turn around... mom was leaving in the morning and needed time to pack and rest without having to worry about my safety to and fro campus. completely understandable but still utterly awful. i spent the rest of the month on the verge of tears, sometimes breaking. 

SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER

things gradually improved. school life took over.

i can't believe it's almost christmas... i think i have something like 11 days of school left. aannndddd i just ate a big slice of dread pie.

then again, thinking about all my classwork, i have all my projects for ceramics finished (thanks to a 10 hour day spent in the studio neveragainohman) and i'm on track with my watercolor stuff. i finished my huge lit term paper last week-ish and i'm getting a 126% in graphic advertising. holla back at that extra credit. 

the main ingredient in my dread pie would be professor gary thomas. oh my geeeooosh that man is tough. last semester i decided to drop my english major and add another art concentration - illustration. bad decision? possibly. his daily homework assignments.... shootmeintheface. 5-10 of those per day. bah!

i'm doing well enough in the class, but because of the amount of homework sketches he's assigned over time (oh yeah, and because i have other classes, a job and a social life) i'm probably a little behind in my series, "nappy headed folks." i'm not sure if that's what i want to call it, but so far it's sticking. we need to create roughly 6 pieces, and i only have two finished. here's my favorite so far: 

since you can't really see the hair detail, here's a close-up...

detail-wise it's a pretty pathetic photo (but i still love you, photobooth.) oh well. you can see why the series is entitled "nappy headed folks." i'm really please with how things are  turning out... but if it's taken majority of the semester to make two, and i have 4ish more to go... i've got a lot of work cut out for me. 

other than that, things are wrapping up nicely. i'm starting to get the warm fuzzies about christmas. now that thanksgiving has reached us, it's time to break out my favorite holiday album, "maybe this christmas tree." it's been on repeat all day.

aaannnnndddd now that i've written a small novel, it's time to end this post... with promises more (shorter) posts to come.