Clean Sweep: Take 2

Last spring (2011) I tried to clear my house of a lot of junk that I no longer need.  I had read about someone who had done a "40 bags in 40 days" challenge during Lent as a way to get her life together.  So I gave it a shot.  I failed.  Miserably.

So here we go again.  I'm leaving for the first of my fall vacations in 20 days.  I've been in this house for almost 20 months.  There are still boxes not unpacked, shelves not set up, rooms not decorated, and junk not sorted.

Last time I really didn't have any rules for myself, which I think was a large contributing factor to my failure.  And let's be honest, I don't really care for rules that much anyway.  So I'm going to call them "guidelines" for success.....

A.  If an item of clothing hasn't been worn since I moved into this house, it's gone - either to the trash or the local thrift store, depending on condition. Same goes for shoes (and those probably smell so bad they need to be burned immediately).
2.  If something for a craft project was purchased before I moved to Maryland, there's a good chance that project is never getting done.  Give it to someone who can actually use it!
3.  I do not need to save every piece of paper from everything that ever happened.
4.  I doubt I will ever have use for the scanner and digital camera dock that was purchased in 2002.  Just saying.
5.  There is no standard size for the bags that need to be filled and removed, but anything smaller than a standard grocery bag is unacceptable.

The reward for completing this challenge will be new nightstands from Ikea that match my dressers!  Anybody want to place a bet on the outcome?  I hear Vegas odds are 10-1 on this race....

Days to go: 40
Bags to go: 40

What Keeps us Going

Sometimes I feel like I've spent the past two years in a constant state of "stressed out" with living in the real world.  But it's always nice when something happens to remind me that for now, I'm in the right place.

Ask anyone who works at a summer camp and you will be told that we "don't have favorites" when it comes to campers.  But it's all a load of crap.  We all have our favorite kids over the years.  Some are lifers at camp, and others only come once but manage to leave a strong enough impression that they make the list.  One of my favorites is here at New Year's Camp this week.  

Tonight, at the big NYE bash, he was sipping sparkling grape juice from a plastic champagne flute with his pinky finger extended.  I told him that I liked how he was holding his cup like that, to which he responded, "I don't know why I do that I just have this problem with my hands."  I told him that in fact, he did not have a problem, that it was the classy way to hold a fancy drinking glass, and that his hands were perfectly normal.

He then proceeded to thank me...for calling him normal.  

It kind of broke my heart that being called normal seemed to make his day better.  It's really ironic, though, because around here, nobody is normal, and that's what makes us all our very own kind of normal.  

Time Flies

I just realized that exactly two years ago today I started my job here.  MY HOW TIME FLIES.

A Hint of Wasabi

Today was a fun day spent at the Town of LaPlata's annual chili cook off. We had a team entered in the contest from work and since it involved cooking of any sort, I volunteered to be the ringleader. There is, after all, this one kind of chili that I really love to make because it is so easy and appealing to people of all levels of moral eating standards. So I insisted we register for the vegetarian category, thinking that there would be less competition and maybe we would FINALLY win one of these town contests.

The great thing about this chili is that is is incredibly easy to make. You throw a bunch of stuff into a slow cooker and let it simmer overnight. Then you've got this fantastic chili that you don't have to worry so much about [temperature-wise] because it doesn't have meat in it that will quickly go bad. It smells really spicy, but only has a little kick to your mouth. Give it a try sometime:

Chipotle Black Bean Chili

Ingredients:

-2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed

-2 cans diced tomatoes w/peppers and onions

-2 cups salsa (your choice)

-1/2 white onion, finely chopped

-1 Tbsp chili powder

-1 tsp minced garlic

-1 tsp ground chipotle pepper powder

-1 tsp ground cumin

Directions:

Toss it all in and simmer on low for 8-10 hours.

But then I read the rules for this particular chili cook-off and realized that I was potentially doomed. The rules stated that because all chilis had to be made from scratch, the only canned item we could use was beans. Fast forward to last night, and I (along with two other staff) found myself chopping a 20-pound case of tomatoes, an entire flat of cherry tomatoes, fresh peppers, onions, and jalapenos. When we decided that we had enough (which in the end was far too much) chili in the pot and needed to let it simmer, I was concerned.

It just didn't look or smell quite right. But we left it on the stove and just let it be for a while. I went back to check it around midnight and felt a little better about it. But it wasn't until my 3:30am check that I knew it was going to be okay. The smell of it took me back to Indiana, to my little one-bedroom-off-campus-campus apartment, to the first time I ever made it...

You see, I had been assigned to make potato salad for a potluck back in grad school. And since I'm grossly unskilled at estimating how much food a crowd will eat, I bought approximately 40 pounds of potatoes. Of course, I only ended up needing about 10, and then had 30 pounds of potatoes on my hands and nobody to feed. So I made a facebook event called "Leftover Potatoes" and invited everyone over. And then realized that Inga, my vegan friend, would be attending and I had animal products in just about everything on the menu.

I did a quick google search for vegan crockpot recipes and this was the first thing that came up. I was so delightfully surprised by its heartiness despite its lack of meat that it became a regular staple of my apartment. I almost always had some in the crockpot. I made it for my parents when I was visiting on a Friday during Lent. I've entered it in numerous chili cookoffs, and each time altering the ingredients just a little to find perfection.

And today I think I finally did. You see, I've also been known to make what's called "The Double Burner" - because it burns on the way in and on the way out. The first time I made that I was on a mission to make the eaters of it sweat and cry. I went to the grocery store and grabbed every spicy thing I could find. Wasabi included. And then, this morning, just before we packed up to head to the Town Hall, I dropped in a teaspoon of wasabi.

We got a lot of good reviews, and a lot of thankful smiles from the vegans who had been dragged to the event by friends and family. We didn't even place when it came time to announce winners. Of course we're slightly disappointed, but overall it was a good day. I got to spend it feeding people, and that's what I love!

I'm eating a bowl of the leftover chili as I type this. It's cooled to almost room temperature, and the only utensil I could find is a fork. But I'm making it work.

Welcome to Maryland

The following story was quite traumatic for me, so I've waited the better part of a month to share....

Part of the joy of living in this great state of Maryland is getting to register your car at the MVA. That's the DMV for all of you non-Marylanders out there (the BMV for all you Hoosiers). Except worse. I should start by touching on how amazing the website is. If you're looking for straightforward ANYTHING, it's the wrong place to go. It's nothing but a variety of links that lead you in circles to pages with nothing helpful.

So when it finally came time to register my car, I was going in pretty blindly. My first visit to the MVA was fruitless except to learn that the documents I brought with me to prove that I lived in Maryland were wrong. Went back a few weeks later to try again and successfully obtained a Maryland driver's license. Baby steps.

That day I also got a letter from the state asking my bank to send the title on my car to Maryland so it could be transferred from Indiana. Faxed it in, got confirmation from the bank that it was sent, and then waited for THREE WEEKS for Maryland to notify me by MAIL that they had received it. I'd be willing to bet it's the last state still relying on the modern-day equivalent of the Pony Express to take care of important, time-sensitive correspondence.

Anyway, since nothing in my life is ever plain 0ld normal, you can believe that this situation only gets better. And by better, I obviously mean more ridiculous. The majority of my random life happenings stem from being an Army brat, and this is no exception. Since I had to buy my car in a span of eight hours in order to get back to school where classes had already begun the previous week and was really in no financial state to BE buying a new car, Dad had to co-sign the loan with me. Although he would tend to disagree with me, I like to think that means he's primarily responsible for making the payments. Hey, a girl can dream, right!?

So seeing as though he as the primary on the loan, he is the primary on the title. Fair enough. But that gave me a total of ONE day with him being in town to visit to get everything else squared away. I set out that morning with high hopes: state inspection at 8, MVA at 10, Chipotle for lunch, and at my desk by 1 at the latest. I'm such an optimist. The first, and by far the coolest, event of the day was when I was checking in my car at the local dealership for the state inspection and oil change. When giving the service advisor my address, he laughed a little and said, "I'm your next door neighbor." My response of course was something along the lines of "NO WAY! I'm so sure it took an oil change for us to meet rather than in the stairwell."

Moving on. Dad and I left the dealership, stopped at Starbucks, and headed back to my apartment. There we finished a few last minute tasks, loaded Mom and Dad's car, then headed back to the dealership. That part of the day ended up taking an hour longer than expected. And then came the bad news. My car passed all parts of the inspection...except the window tint part. Apparently, if the front windows are tinted, you have to get the State Police to inspect it and give you a piece of paper stating that it isn't TOO dark. Hooray.

Off we go to the nearest State Trooper Barracks...only five miles away. Once there, the nice man inside informs us that they only do tint inspections at the MVA headquarters in Glen Burnie. I play it cool...but I'm FREAKING OUT inside. And naturally I get a bit dramatic. Getting to the Glen Burnie MVA was an adventure in itself because Stella (my GPS), though accurate, took me a really weird way. We park and Mom says she wants to stay in the car. Dad and I head to Building A, as the sign instructs us to do in order to get a tint check. And the sign on the door says that tint checks are temporarily in Building D.

Are you starting to see what I mean about nothing in my life being normal?

Since Building D is twice the distance from the car as Building A, I send Dad back to get my car while I head over and get in line. Thankfully though, there is no line. So as soon as Mom and Dad arrive, we are good to go. Or so I thought. The State Trooper man, who was not so friendly, informed me that the tint was tooooooo dark and I must scrape it off before I can register my car. This is when I start to break down. I told Dad he had to drive cause I wasn't capable at that point in time. On our way to the Lowe's across the street to buy razor blades and Goo Gone, the conversation went something like this...

Dad: Well at least you didn't have to pay for this first set of tint

Me: Yeah but I'm gonna have to pay to get it re-tinted

Mom: Well we can get you that for your birthday

Me: I don't want WINDOW TINT for my birthday

Mom: Well what do you want then?

Me: I don't know.

This is when I broke down and cried. I always cry at the stupidest things...like Gatorade commercials and Extreme Home Makeover.

Well we bought razor blades and went to town on my beautifully tinted windows. It was then that I had the revelation that I really wasn't going to make it in to work at all that day so I emailed my boss and basically said, "See you tomorrow." Then drove back to the dealership in Laurel to get the inspection slip. After that, it was on down to Waldorf, which is the best choice of MVAs in the area despite it's distance. We waited in a line longer than the Alaska coastline, got a number, and took our seats.

When our number was called, we had [finally] hit the luck jackpot. The lady behind the counter was the nicest, funniest, most helpful Motor Vehicles clerk I have EVER encountered. And Maryland is the fifth state in which I've had a license in the seven years I've been driving. So that's saying a lot. And a mere $378 later, I was no longer driving illegally in an unregistered vehicle halfway across the country.

But the best part of the day was still yet to come. We went to Chipotle for dinner. And this wasn't just any old visit to Chipotle. No, it was the first time I enjoyed a delicious burrito bowl since before Lent began. I'm really not sure what possessed me to give up Chipotle for Lent, but I'm sure I'm a better person for it. And now that it's over, Chipotle can stop worrying about going out of business due to my lack of visits.

My parents still had to drive seven hours back to New York since Dad had to work the next day. They got home after 2am. My parents rock.

The Scenic Route

So I recently started a new job. It's not really AT ALL what I went to school for. But it's fun, it's gonna pay the bills, I'm learning a lot, and best of all...I LOVE IT! In a nutshell (is that one word or two?), it's my job to make things happen. And I like that.

As a result of taking this job, I've been asked a lot the past three weeks what my eventual career plans and life goals are. I really don't have an answer. I have no big idea of how to gauge the success of my life when it's all over. And I think that's fine. I'm perfectly happy to meander through life without a big plan. I am certain of a few things, though...

I want to help people.
I want to be a good friend.
I want to always remember to laugh.
I want to feed people.
I want to live out loud.

So when people ask what my plans are, I tell them I plan to take the scenic route through life, and to enjoy wherever it takes me.



Also, I'm pretty sure Taylor Swift says it best in her song "A Place in this World"...

I don't know what I want
So don't ask me
Cause I'm still trying to figure it out
Don't know what's down this road
I'm just walkin
Trying to see through the rain falling down
Even though I'm not the only one
Who feels the way I do
I'm alone
On my own
And that's all I know
I'll be strong
I'll be wrong
Oh, but life goes on
I'm just a girl
Trying to find a place in this world
Got the radio on
My old blue jeans
And I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve
Feelin lucky today
Got the sunshine
Could you tell me what more do I need
And tomorrow's just a mystery, oh yeah
But that's okay
I'm alone
On my own
And that's all I know
I'll be strong
I'll be wrong
Oh, but life goes on
I'm just a girl
Trying to find a place in this world
Maybe I'm just a girl on a mission
But I'm ready to fly