Now it's my turn.

Okay. So, there's this blog I read called biscuit (idk how to link things, so we'll leave it at that...) and I've been reading her blog for months but today she posted a semi-intro about herself.

I'm a copycat. So it's my turn.

I'm Emily.

I don't do long walks on the beach, I hate the color pink, and there's a unicorn over there.

I'm weird. Like, super weird, especially when it comes to my sense of humor. It's just... no one gets it. And they think I'm mean. I'm really not, I promise!

Sarcasm just doesn't translate in text. And according to my finace, you never know if I'm being serious when I'm talking either.

Yup. I'm engaged! :D

This blog was actually started kind of a long time ago and really I used it to keep my family up-to-date on my life when I lived in Connecticut. So there are some really super effing long posts that I do not expect anyone to ever read. So don't bother, it'll probably just bore you.

I like to write, and I'm wordy (another family trait... blame my ancestors) but I have trouble being inspired. Hence the stealing of biscuit's idea.

Admittedly, I care far too much about how I look, mostly in terms of weight. Which is stupid, because I am perfectly normal and I like food, thank you very much.

Caffeine gives me panic attacks, so I don't drink soda or coffee and I can't eat chocolate. I'm also almost a vegetarian (I eat chicken sometimes).

I'm pale. But I discovered yesterday that I do not have ivory skin. I have alabastor skin. And I found makeup to match. This makes me almost stupidly excited.

Unlike a lot of people, I have NO IDEA what I want to be when I grow up. I'm 24. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Communications with minors in English and theater. Have I used any of it? Nope! Go me!

I love love love trivia. Trivial Pursuit is actually my favorite game, and I have at least three books of useless information.

Twitter? What's that? I Facebook. Feel free to become my friend. (www.facebook.com/emily.blood) But if you do, be sure to write a message to tell me who you are, otherwise I'll reject you.

Making friends is kinda easy for me. However, I have no friends within a 15 minute drive of my house. In fact, they're spread pretty much all over the U.S. and parts of Europe. In moving, I intend for that to change. We shall see.

I am of the opinion that I am very boring. I apologize if you think that's true.

MUSIC. I sing a lot, but usually when no one can really hear me. Solos make me nervous. My whole family is musical, and we sing the doxology in, like, twelve part harmony at our gatherings (reunions, Turkey Day, Christmas, etc). Maybe someday I'll figure out how to post a video of me/my family singing. We're pretty fantastical, if I do say so myself.

However, regardless of the above statement, I don't like Glee. Figure THAT one out.

I crochet. And knit. And sew. Be jealous.

Aaaaand I'm done. Have a great day.

So here's a story.

So now I'm going to tell you about my best friend. Because she's basically the coolest person ever. And hopefully she doesn't mind.

Meet Jessie.


Jessie likes Vogue magazine, care packages, and Spanish moss.


We like to vintage and thrift and find used books and go to Starbucks to crochet on warm nights.




***filling empty space***

When we hang out, most of the time I'm on my comp and she's on hers and we don't talk unless we want to.

This one time, we made cupcakes. It was epic.

She lives 4.5 hours away from me, in KY, and has a Southern accent. Soon, though, she'll only be 1.5 hours away, and that will be ah-mazing.



Obviously there's more to her, but she's my best friend and I don't like to share.

Be jealous.

Moving

All of my hard work has paid off and I recieved a call last week from my boss asking how soon I intended to move down to Cincinnati because I was going to be moved from just a work-from-home-temp into a temp-to-hire in a different department. I have to move to Cincinnati by Nov 29th! So of course this means extended conversations with my fiance about how we're going to make this work, asking for help from my Cincy friends on where on earth I could live, looking online, figuring a budget, saving as much of my money as I can until I move so I have a bit of a buffer, etc etc. I'll admit, it's really stressful! But I'm also really excited. The last time I spent an extended period down there was a really great experience and I can't wait to be back there getting reacquainted with those people I met before. PLUS (this is my favorite part) I'll have normal working hours and nights off. SO EXCITED!

On a different note, my poor fiance has had a rough month or so at the new job he took the day before my surgery. He gets up at 3am or earlier so he can be there by 4:30 and sometimes ends up working until 5 or later! It's ridiculous and it's killing not just his energy but also his spirit and it's rather contagious. This morning he called after his first delivery to tell me he has a meeting tomorrow at the store he used to manage and we're both hopeful that they'll take him back, not necessarily as the manager but as something, anything. This in itself will make it easier for him to move to Cincy with me after the wedding, if that's what we decide we want to do. He will also be happier with set hours, more time for sleep, for life, and I'm really excited for him.

Happier note, on Halloween the only seasonal activity my dear Clyde and I got to do was bake some pumpkin-shaped ginger cookies and then frost and decorate them with candy corn, sprinkles and red crystals. SO fun, and very tasty!

Hope you're having a great week!

Daydreams...

Yesterday while I was working, for once without any noise in the background, I began to day dream.

Now, day dreaming is a normal thing, even when there is noise I daydream and now that I'm getting married the wedding is a frequent subject. This time, however, it wasn't at all. Instead, I daydreamed about

My children.

Johnny and I have discussed when we intend to start trying for children and we've talked about what names we like (Ellen, Liam, Lanie...) so it was easy to daydream about our hypothetical son Liam and his hypothetical problems. As a woman I often fear that I will be the world's worst mother, that my kids will grow up to be jerks and selfish and snobby and any other bad thing I could think of so as I daydreamed I began to think of things I would do and the stories I would tell them to help them not become "that" guy/girl when they grow up.

I especially was thinking about my daughter, assuming I have one. I daydreamed that she had come home from school in tears because someone or other was mean to her or certain people didn't seem to like her, etc, we all know the drill. And I, as her understanding mother, sat down with her to let her know that what certain other people thought really didn't matter and went on to tell the story of my childhood.

I wanted to be friends with the popular crowd. I was painfully shy and hated standing out as different. In third grade I dressed up a day early for picture day and cried when I found out, and later that year I was so worried about being the only person to wear shorts to school that I actually called one of my friends every morning to find out if she was wearing shorts so I wouldn't be alone. I often felt people didn't like me for who I was so sometime around middle school I began choosing one close friend and then doing everything possible to be just like that girl because everyone seemed to like her so much more than they liked me. This, of course, didn't work, pushed that girl away, and I'd lose a friend. This happened over, and over, until I got to high school and I had zero close friends except for the one who didn't go to public school. As a result I absolutely despised high school, no less for the fact that due to all of my mimicry I had completely lost touch with who I was and was no longer an individual. It took me all four years of college to finally figure out who I was and when I did, an amazing thing happened:

People liked me.

So I tell this to my daughter, who is still in elementary school and easily moldable, and explain that she should just be herself regardless of what other people think, and that it's so not worth it to try to blend if she doesn't because who wants twenty of the same exact cookie-cutter people when she can be one in a pool of a thousand? And I daydream that due to this conversation she becomes exactly who she was meant to be, and that she allows her individuality to mold and shape her. Wow. Every mother's dream.

I hope I'm as good of a mother as I imagine I could be. All I have to go on is the example from my own mother and, let's be honest, she's pretty darn amazing. She did, in my completely unbiased opinion, a fabulous job with her own four daughters and I can only hope to do half as well as she did, and does. It is my goal to keep her around for as long as possible, regardless of her cancer, so that she can help me when that time comes. My children deserve to know their grandmother (who wants to be called Mimi. SO adorbs). I hope and pray and assume that they will.

Cheese and Whine

All I want to do today is complain.

It started with an email from Old Navy, which is having a big sale on coats. I desperately need a good warm winter coat. But the Old Navy store we had went out of business and left our mall meaning that in order to get cheap, decent clothing I have to drive for an hour. Complaint number one.

It's a cold, dreary day, and I'm dreaming of Panera. And there's nothing around here that is remotely close to being like Panera except for the local coffee shop, which sells paninis, wraps, some sandwiches, and a soup of the day. The soup is pretty much never a vegetarian option, and even if it were it's nothing like the black bean soup at Panera. Complaint number two.

Aaaand number three: my wonderful fiance needs a coat too and wants to go with me to Old Navy to look for one. He works today, meaning we're waiting till tomorrow. Otherwise I would go today. ***nothing against you, Clyde darling, I love you!***

And everywhere nearby with an Old Navy also has a Panera. Guess I'm getting my fix tomorrow instead of today.

OR. I find the recipe and go to the grocery store to buy the stuff to make my own black bean soup. This is, honestly, the most likely outcome.

On a different note, yesterday I spent the ENTIRE morning before work, from 9am till 3pm, sorting out my clothes for storage/Goodwill, cleaning and rearranging my bedroom, dragging a five shelf bookcase in from the garage and up three flights of stairs (followed by six boxes of books), organized the bookcase, washed my curtains, made some pizza, read a bit of a book, and then started my job at 3pm as usual.


I am very proud of myself and love love love how my room turned out. It's also very exciting to have half of my books back after they spent a year in the garage as yesterday was the anniversary of Emily's move home from CT.



Both pictures were taken with my phone. I was too busy for it to occur to me to take pictures as I went. These ones were only taken so my friend could see how things were going!

*sigh* Off to the supermarket...

Oh Great, Deep Thought...

As most of you know, my job is exceptionally boring, so to alleviate boredom I have various DVDs playing in the background. For awhile it was Gilmore Girls. Then it was NCIS. Once I ran out of those it became various films such as the Pirates trilogy, and often times it has been the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I have found LOTR to be a really wonderful film to have in the background, and today was a LOTR day.

When I watch films like LOTR or the Narnia films I am often overwhelmed by a melancholy feeling, or nostalgia, or even wonderment. J.R.R. Tolkein created a phenomenal world, one which it is easy to believe truly existed. It is easy to think that once upon a fairytale Elves were the dominant life force in the world, sided by dwarves and men and the occasional wizard. It is easy to believe in an ancient world based on valor and crowned in glory. A world where the Age of the Elves ends and the Age of Men begins, where there is a City of Kings, where Horse Lords rule the land, with legends and tales and honor and duty... I just can't find the words to explain what it does to me. When I watch The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe's final scene in Narnia where the four royals are crowned and they crown Peter "King Peter, the Magnificent"... Wow. Just... wow. Magnificent. Just. Gentle. Valiant. Words you rarely hear in today's society. True valor is lost. Justice is replaced by little black books and honor by little white lies. Magnificent ancient memories are made into museums or torn down for condos, people care little about the troubles of others. It's a different world we live in. And how sad for us.

How very, very sad.

I knew it, I KNEW it!

Johnny proposed, just like I thought he would!! He read my last post where I postulated the possibility and proceeded to tell me that he only wanted to dress up because it was Sweetest Day.

So here's how it happened, but to explain I have to go back five years....

Johnny and I met in college, though neither of us remembers a handshake. He ended up taking a break from Muskingum for a short while to go to Kent State, which happened to be around the same time Facebook began to get popular. I joined FB at the request of my then-boyfriend, who was also friends with Johnny, who decided to add me as a friend even though we didn‘t really know each other.

He eventually came back to Muskingum and one day I was walking up the hill through the field across the street from my house just as Johnny was walking up Lakeside Drive to class and he called "Hello Emily Blood!" to me, and I called "Hey Johnny Cross!" back!

So, coming back to the present... We spent the morning getting ready for Muskingum's Homecoming, beginning with the parade. As I am a sorority alumna we met up with the other alumni in front of the president's house to watch.

Every homecoming also includes an alumni/actives sorority meeting, which originally I had intended to skip but as I got to talking to the other alumni I ended up feeling I should probably go. So I did, and Johnny went to the football game against John Carroll, which I joined him for at halftime once the meeting had finished.


I don't understand football, but it was fun just the same.

Afterwards we went right back to my house where my mother decided I needed to do my chores before leaving to go out for dinner. I still needed to shower and put my face on and Johnny needed to fix his hair and I ironed his new dress clothes… Because of this, we didn't leave for dinner until 7:30pm.


Originally we were going to go to a place called Muddy Miser's, but as JC was in dress pants, dress shirt, tie and sweater and I was in a cocktail dress we felt we were just a little overdressed. After driving around looking for somewhere to eat and making a couple illegal U-turns and yelling at each other a little we decided to go to Olive Garden.

Wine, pasta, chicken marsala, salad, breadsticks, and PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE. We both got a piece, and I brought mine home to finish later, and some older man who was sitting at a table down the way told us as he was leaving that it was our fault he had also ordered the Pumpkin Cheesecake. :) You’re welcome!

After all of this we drove back to New Concord for a stroll around the moonlit campus. It was unfortunate that wearing heels and only being two and a half weeks out of surgery had really annoyed my knees, but I brought a pair of casual shoes to wear for the walk. At first I thought he was going to lead me to the spoonholder (a gazebo-like structure that covers the drainage hole in the college's lake) and I was going to roll my eyes at just how cliché that would have been. But instead he kept walking until we were just past it and I began to think we really were just going on a stroll when suddenly he hung back. “What are you doing?” And suddenly he was on one knee, on a random place on the sidewalk, pulled out a box, and said "Emily Diane Blood, I love you. Will you marry me?" It took me a few minutes and his explanation for me to realize he proposed in the exact spot where he said hello to me all of those years ago!


Of course I said yes. :)

Johnny and I wanted a picture taken of us in all our glory (and to show off my new bling) so we went over to the house where some of our mutual college friends live to have them help us out. Three of the four girls weren't home and the other was in the shower so we had one of my newest sorority sisters take the picture while we waited for D to be clean. What really stinks is that I thought I looked pretty darn good last night, but every picture taken of me looks terrible! However, I will post one of those pictures anyway.

And there you have it! We have no idea when, where or how but we’re working on it. We’re both very, very happy and it’s a little hard to fathom (someone at church today referred to JC as my fiance and I did a small double take) but we’re positive that we were made and meant for each other and pray that God uses our relationship and our marriage for His glory.