Odds and Ends

"Hour of Tea" by Vladimir Volegov

Oh, hi there, all of you whom I haven't talked to for almost two months.

Still alive over here.  *waves* Life's been a little crazy and a little busy and not exactly conducive to writing long blog posts of late, but I promise I haven't abandoned this spot!  I do have a few new posts in draft right now (including a couple of movie reviews that realllllllly need to get finished) and they'll be along eventually.  ;)

But for now I thought I'd do one of those random update posts because I always like reading those and they make good filler when you're not feeling particularly Creative.  (Hey, I'm being honest here.)

So right now I am...

~Turning

Well, I'll let you guess. :D

"Upon my word," said her ladyship, "you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?"

"With three younger sisters grown up," replied Elizabeth, smiling, "your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it."

Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence. 

"You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure, therefore you need not conceal your age."     

"I am not one-and-twenty."     
~Pride and Prejudice, chapter 29

Yep, I'm turning twenty.  Or that is, I did-- almost a month ago.  (Heh, heh. I was going to write a commemorative post to bid farewell to the teen years, but yeah, that didn't happen.)  Last year my age matched Elinor's and this year it matched Elizabeth's and next will be Emma... and then I'll be out of Jane Austen heroines (unless you count Jane Bennet, but nobody does :P) until I turn 27 and match up with Anne Elliot again.

~Reading

My mom and I are reading A Chance to Die (a biography of Amy Carmichael) by Elisabeth Elliot together right now, and I just got Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won't Stop Talking from the library, so I've been enjoying what I read of that so far. :D  My sister gave me The Making of BBC Pride and Prejudice for my birthday, which has been SO much fun to poke through, and I recently finished up The Penderwicks In Spring.  Which I pre-ordered the moment it was available.  No shame. :P  I'm still working on a Goodreads review for that, but let's just say I was not disappointed. ;)

The book in the picture above is The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee by Marja Mills, which DID disappoint me, and in fact I have a review of sorts in draft right now (with a lot of philosophical rambling about the role of truth and ethics in journalism) but I'm including the picture because I thought it was pretty and I don't generally take good pictures, haha, so this one needed to be commemorated.

~Listening

I saw Into the Woods back in January and have been enjoying various recordings of that musical (Bernadette Peters is a majestic empress, y'all) and I'm also binge-listening to Cecilia Bartoli and a lot of pieces by Scarlatti.  But really, just about anything Cecelia Bartoli sings. Because she's amazing.   And hilarious.  Proof below-- this is a piece called "Papagena" from Mozart's The Magic Flute and this video cracks me up every time. :D

~Working

I started a new nannying job in January (in addition to the one I've had for the last two and half years) and it's a little bit exhausting (four VERY energetic kids ten and under) but rewarding and lovely and all that.  And the kids are beyond cute, so that's a plus.  No pictures, because privacy, but here are some amusing conversational tidbits from the mouths of babes...

 6-year-old: You wore earrings today!

Me: Yes, and so did you!
6-year-old: I always have these in.
Me: I know.
6-year-old: But yours are just SPECIAL. They're just... I don't know. So CLASSY.


3-year-old: I like my pasta clean and fresh.
Me: ......
3-year-old: I LIKE MY PASTA CLEAN AND FRESH.
Me: ..............
7-year-old: He means he likes it without any sauce on it, duh.

~Sewing

Experimenting with 50's style dresses and skirts for SPRING!  What I'd really really like to make is a reproduction of Maria's lilac dress from West Side Story, but I have a bunch of other projects lined up right now so that will have to wait.  I'm also modifying a Regency dress to fit my youngest sister so she can wear it when she plays piano for a Jane Austen themed fundraising tea at our library later this month.  (SQUEEP.)

~Watching

Last year I won a DVD set of Wind at My Back, season one, from Sullivan Entertainment, and I immediately fell in love with the show.  Recently Melody and I have been watching season two as well (and I've been showing season one to my sisters!) and I can definitely name it as one of my favorite TV shows of all time.  It's a sweet family story set in 1930's Ontario, following the struggles of a widow and her three children, her absolutely abominable mother-in-law and their friends and relatives and all their trials and triumphs and blah-de-blah.  Pretty much impossible to describe without sounding incredibly schmaltzy, but if you can get your hands on an episode or two (they're expensive and/or hard to find, unfortunately), the show is definitely worth watching.

~Writing

Lots and lots of stuff for Masked!  Screenplays, of course, but also audition sides and script treatments and character studies and all those other little things that go into producing a show.  It's a bit of a whirlwind at present, but we're getting very close to the actual filming now and that's SO exciting!

~Laughing

Well, these pictures have been cracking me up for days now. :D

~Enjoying

I was going to make this one "drinking" but decided that didn't sound quite as nice as I would like it to. :P  I'm talking about tea, people, sheesh.  My aunt recently gave me some Yunnan black needle tea which I was a little cautious about trying because it sounded quite different from anything I'd had before, but I ended up really enjoying it.  A couple of weeks ago I also happened upon Celestial Seasonings' Tangerine Orange tea in a grocery store I don't go to very often, which was a happy occurrence indeed, because that particular kind is quite hard to find these days.  :/

~Learning

Humility is a big thing the Lord's been impressing on me lately-- that along with trust and letting go.  The three go hand-in-hand, really.  I like to saunter through life with my own plan in mind, confident in the (narcissistic) assumption that everything is going to go the way I want it to, and if it doesn't, well, I'll fix it.  But "life is what happens when we are making other plans" and I've been learning time and time again that roadblocks will come up and tragedies will strike and times of hardship will come hurtling toward us, and there's not a whole lot we can do to stop them.  Or, even, get rid of them when they come.  Which is, in its way, incredibly humbling, because it reminds me that I am not the all-powerful being I like to think I am :P, but it is also incredibly uplifting because it reminds me that the God I serve IS an all-powerful Being and absolutely nothing in this world happens outside of His perfect plan.

Happy spring, everybody!