Mother's Day in Indiana

My parental units came to visit this weekend! Hooray! They've only seen our little Indiana home one other time. That was very brief and way back in November. Since then we've painted our bedroom, gained a few pieces of furniture and really settled in to making the place cozy. It was also the first time they've been here since I've become a bonafide future graduate student so a little campus tour was in order. Plus, company is the best excuse to hit a different restaurant for every meal! We managed to try Indian (in the rain on the patio, so cozy), vegetarian and Burmese this time. This weekend was also Mother's Day and so...

As a belated thank you to my fantastic mom, here are some important things she has taught me:

The 'rents and I at my college graduation

There is no secret recipe to being in great shape in your 50s. Exercise and a healthy diet does it. Don't waste time with the gimmicks.

A bad mood can be remedied by a little aggressive activity: running, weeding the garden, pulling up carpet.

Food you grow is always better than food you buy.

A dog is a girl's best friend.

The gray pants, they go with everything.

Thanks Mom! Stay tuned for a Dad version in June!

Warm Fuzzies

I have posts in the works about real things I promise but I've really only been able to think about a couple things lately. Indulge me, won't you.

First and most exciting, I was recently accepted to a Master's degree program! Beginning this fall I will be working toward my teaching certification and Master's in Elementary Education which means in just a few years I'll be able to have a classroom all my own! I'm so grateful for my current job as a teaching assistant because it has provided not only invaluable experience but relationships with teachers who gave me great letters of recommendation. Thanks, guys!

Next, it's finally Spring in Indiana! Like many people, my mood is so very affected by the weather so sunny days, warm weather and green grass makes me more pleasant to be around. We turned our heat off and opened the windows. No more heavy piles of blankets on the bed. Life is good. Spring and Summer also bring with them one chore I never really dread- mowing the lawn. I have always found mowing the lawn very therapeutic whether it's riding circles around my parents large backyard or walking rows across our little postage stamp, the mowing, it soothes me.

I know this time of year is not as delightful for everyone as it is for me, though. As I write this Boyfriend is spending the umpteenth hour with his computer finishing papers for this semester's classes. I hear only the occasional sigh or grunt. Yes, those moments make me wonder what I just got myself into. I think we're both in need of a fun summer. 

Pandora just gets me

One of my Pandora stations was killing it during my snow day housecleaning session on Wednesday (A once a in a lifetime event, you can be sure). Pandora scored my adolescence with frightening accuracy. So, if you're a kid of the 1990's, a teenager of the early aught's, prepare thyself.

Here is, I swear, the actual playlist I got:

The Wallflowers- One Headlight
Third Eye Blind- Never Let You Go
Jimmy Eat World- The Middle
Eve 6- Inside Out
Blink 182- What's My Age Again
Nine Days- Absolutely
Vertical Horizon- Everything You Want

I could immediately picture the living room of my childhood home- Ikea shelves packed with thift store books, square, grey Macintosh on the huge desk, Mom vacuuming the oriental rug while Jacob Dylan shot moody daggers out of his VH1 music video. Then, I was 15 in the Rotary Youth Camp kitchen with Megan, shouting song lyrics with all the suburban angst I could muster. It was an interesting afternoon. Here is, in case you needed a laugh, what my awkward, angst-y self looked like then:

I've cropped out friends so as not to expose their high school selves  without permission.

So, in case you were on the fence about whether technology is taking over, I'm here to tell you Pandora is my therapist.

In completely unrelated news, I have a desk! For the last few years I've just been commandeering the dining table. It's not that we use the dining table all that often (read: ever) for actual dining but it certainly isn't ideal to have notebooks, bills, pens and the like strewn everywhere waiting for the next gust of wind. My much more suitable solution is complements of a coworker who was nice enough not only to give me the desk for free but bring it to our place! Three cheers for rock star coworkers! Here is my new setup:

Of course, this moment documents the tidiest this area will ever be.

This very blog post is up on my computer in that photo. Woah, meta.

March honey, back off on the lion, little more lamb

I don't consider my corner of Indiana to be the Great White North. I have family from Michigan, they would not allow such misrepresentation. What's more, my parents live in Kansas City which has been all but completely buried in snow over the last couple weeks. So I don't have it all that bad. But no matter the severity of the winter, cabin fever sets in and the occasional weekend adventure staves off the Shining-level crazy. So, this weekend Boyfriend and I headed to...

.....Columbia, Missouri!

...for a documentary film festival!

...where we saw exclusively political films!

First, I'm not kidding and second, it was a fantastic time. I see, though, that you're going to need some convincing. Fine. Let me start by saying that we had a bunch of family in town (my parents and uncles, Boyfriend's parents, aunt and uncle) and with these people we could have congregated at a rest area in the middle of nowhere and had a blast. Luckily we were not in the middle of nowhere and therefore could eat ourselves silly. Cafe Berlin has vegetarian biscuits and gravy that I would happily choose over a real sausage version any day of the week. 

The reason we'd all come to Columbia though was for True/False, a documentary film festival in its tenth year. There are dozens of movies to see over the course of a long weekend. Serious, funny, sad, Sundance alums and premier showings. We chose a package this year that allowed us to pick three of the more major offerings. All of our movies were political in nature yet distinct from each other. What I thought would be a heavy, dry series of facts and talking heads was actually very engaging.

The first movie we saw was No, a dramatic interpretation of the advertisers who devised the 1988 political campaigns which contributed to the downfall of Augusto Pinochet. I was a Communications major in college and am usually fascinated by the world of professional advertising (although I've given Mad Men a couple tries and it's never stuck for whatever reason). The movie uses real footage from those TV campaigns and the rest of the movie was shot to match those clips- kind of an Instagram treatment for film as a producer said afterward at the Q&A (a perk of True/False, staying after to hear the people responsible talk about their work). 

Our second choice was Manhunt which, as far as I understand, is the real information behind Zero Dark Thirty. It was really interesting to see the whole process of searching for a terrorist explained. There are a lot of people who dedicate the better parts of their careers to learning everything they can about one guy half way around the world. The final movie we saw was Dirty Wars which was disturbing and educational, disheartening and eye-opening. It addresses night raids and secret missions by the military in the Middle East. As the credits rolled one part of me wanted to cry while another part wanted to run into the street screaming. There are so many destructive, immoral things happening every day that are kept so well hidden. Those films certainly made my day-to-day dilemmas seem laughable.

This certainly wasn't the most uplifted I've been by True/False. A few years ago I saw a great film called The Mirror about an Italian village's plan to get more sunlight into their little mountain community. The first year my family went my parents saw Racing Dreams, about kids who race go-carts and aspire to be NASCAR drivers. But, that's the beauty of this now not so little festival. There is a reason for anyone to return year after year. My reasons are many, interesting films, a weekend away and of course, biscuits and gravy with the fam.

Next weekend adventure? Bourbon tasting in Kentucky for Boyfriend's early birthday present. Here's hoping this trip involves considerably less snow.