What I Learned

Bleach will turn knee highs an interesting yellow/cream color.

I guess I'll only wear that pair with closed-toe shoes now.

What I Learned

When setting your alarm, it is of utmost importance to make sure you don't mess up the actual time otherwise the following conversation will take place.  

Knock on door.

Sr. B (my companion): Sr. Relish?

Me: Yes? (Half awake out of a dead sleep)

Sr. B: Um we were supposed to leave at 5:30.

Me (looking at clock): It's 4:37.

Sr. B: No. It's 5:30.

5 minutes later I was sitting in the van.  And that was after the Sr. in charge said we were leaving not a second after 5:30.... Whoops.  

Never Say Never

People say all the time never say never because never is a long time.  Slowly but surely I'm beginning to see why.  You end up eating some humble pie.

As a child I said, "I'm never moving out." - I now live over 800 miles away from home...
In grade school I said, "I'm never going to be a teacher."  - I went to college as an education major and I entered an order where the primary ministry is teaching...
As an education major I said, "I never want to work with middle school, that'd be way too hard."  - Last year I taught 7th grade CCD and was in charge of the 13 year old boys for camp...
Prior to and after working with middle schoolers, I said, "I never want to work with any group younger than 1st or 2nd grade.  It takes a special type of person to handle those little ones."  - This summer I'm helping with the 4 and 5 year olds at camp...

I think God's just sitting up there waiting for me to say never again so He can laugh and say "Just wait."

What I've Learned in the Last Few Days

1. Polyester melts.

2. Duct Tape doesn't actually fix everything.

3. Chaperoning 1st grade girls on a field trip to go Christmas caroling and then eat at McDonald's is tiring, but well worth it when they spontaneously lead the whole bus of 1st - 8th grade students in Christmas Carols.

4. Chocolate chips don't always melt like they should.

5. I prefer eating oatmeal raisin cookies to baking them. (Thank goodness Sister is very understanding and she said just try again after the first batch flopped.)

6. Don't forget you're shoes outside because that will be the one day it actually rains. 

I think that's everything.

What I Learned Today

Apparently getting ready to move across the country turns my life into a movie and a sitcom. This morning I went to finish up some packing and turned on the radio in my room, California Gurls by Katy Perry was playing and it was immediately followed up by a Billy Joel song that started out talking about some guy who moved to the west coast south of LA.  I felt like the character in the movies who turns on the radio and every song is something about what's happening in said character's life.  Later today, one of my companions and I were cleaning and she was like "Wow I'm impressed Relish." (I was questioning if she thought I don't normally do a thorough job." Then I realized that I was cleaning extra vigorously as a coping mechanism and 20 seconds later realized at one point I had been told that my mom does something similar. After declaring, "I'm turning into my mom. We clean to cope and like teaching junior high kids," My mind immediately jumped to the Reba episode where Van and Cheyenne decide eventually you turn into your parents.  Stay tuned to see if any more of this moving adventure turns my life into a TV production.

What I Learned Today

I have an accent. And according to one of my campers, I have a South Jersey accent. I told him that wasn't where I'm from but he didn't seem to care. When he mimicked me the accent was from much further south than South Jersey.

The conversation about my accent took place yesterday. Today as we passed my companion who hails from the dear flatlands as well, he declared we both sound alike.  His shock at hearing multiple people with our accent was quite entertaining.

What I Learned Today

Putting on a habit (or uniform right now for me) makes random people comfortable talking to you about anything.

Yesterday we went to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the altar of Mary Help of Christians.  Sitting with some of my companions waiting for Mass to start, an elderly gentleman came up and took the open seat next to me.  He turned to me and began talking about the Basilica.  I asked him if he had been at the dedication of the altar 50 years ago which launched him into telling me about himself.  He lives at the Veteran's home in DC and since he's 94 years old he figured he should go yesterday because he just never knew how much he longer he would be able to go out.  Then he showed me the speaker device he had for his hearing aid because he had lost most of his hearing in combat.  "Take care of your ears.  Stay away from all those loud noses and things or else you end up with bad hearing like me.  They didn't tell us that back then. And make sure you brush your teeth.  They didn't tell us to do that either and I didn't brush mine." At this point he popped his dentures out of place and showed them to me.  "See.  You got to take care because you only get one shot. God only gives you one body.  God bless you." And with that he turned back forward.

It was very sweet of him.  Although it really took a lot to control myself when he popped out his dentures to not get a little bit of the church giggles, but I kept myself composed.

This particular situation is really a mild case of what happens in habit/uniform and honestly it could have just been an older gentleman taking a chance to share some things he had learned in life with a young person.  Either way I take it as preparation for the conversations that could happen when I don the habit, God willing.

What I Learned Today

I'm not valid. Turns out my lovely home state doesn't issue IDs up to federal standards and you can't get on federal grounds at places like West Point.

Today as culmination of our Don Bosco class, Sr. D took us on a field trip to visit West Point and our Marian Shrine where there is a replica of Don Bosco's childhood home.  The first stop of the day was West Point.  On arriving at the security check, point my companion and I were informed we couldn't go in because our licenses' didn't meet federal requirements, and we didn't have any other form of identification on us.  Divine Intervention saved the day as we had just met an officer from West Point when we were getting breakfast and he had graciously arranged to meet us and give us a tour.  Thank goodness he was able to come and get us in so we could join the tour.

What I Learned A Couple Days Ago

When you live with your teacher you don't get real snow days, you get delayed starts.  Also, when you live in the convent and the bishop says Sunday won't be a day of obligation due to weather circumstances, you still have communion service.

It's okay though because I got to sleep till 7:45 three days in a row. Thank you Jonas.

What I've Learned So Far in the Convent

No one here plays any card games.  At all and teaching them to play Euchre is a for real struggle.
After three consecutive days of getting up before 6, sleeping in until 6:45 this morning was a struggle.
Meeting little old sisters can be overwhelming because they swarm on you and next thing you know they're all hugging you and telling you how much you remind them of their great-niece so-and-so.

What I Learned Yesterday

I have every right to be Munchkin's favorite niece.

Because filling in for AL for the day while she's at Munchkin's bachelorette party is no easy feat.  For starters, AL has everyone's schedule memorized so she wouldn't have been surprised when White Tornado waltzed over an hour after his cross country practice was over because "Saturday's are ice bath days." Duh Relish why didn't you know his schedule?   Then AL has the patience of a bunch of saints because dealing with hormonal, misunderstood preteen Little Miss would take all of it.  Almost ten must have been a pretty rough age if being told that you need to redo the bathroom sink you were in charge of cleaning causes you to break in to a traumatic fit of "No one understands me." and " Nobody likes me." Cue phone call to BOTD.   Bless Grammy for taking Star and Charmer for the day.  Next up figure out a movie for the parish Block Party.  No problem.  That had to be on the simpler side of the tasks I was left with I do believe.  The next item I thought was going to be simple turned out to be the most complicated and stressful process of my day: Scotcheroos for White Tornado to take to the FFA picnic today.  No problem right?  I bake all the time, consider it a hobby really.  Wrong.  Two trips to Walmart and Aldi's, a biking trip to County Market by Elizabeth Taylor and two pans of Scotcheroos later White Tornado had his dessert for his picnic.   Great now I get to go to a parish function right after it comes out in the bulletin that I'm moving to New Jersey in a week to enter the convent.  Super awkward interactions with church people here I come.  Let me tell you they were super awkward and I got hugs from people that I've maybe only talked to once or twice in my entire life.  A well timed text from White Tornado requesting to be picked up from Grammy's pretty much wrapped up uncomfortable church people interactions.  I took the youth minister for the parish a long with me so the city girl could get an up close interaction with horses which was all fine and dandy and I think she enjoyed it, but then a tired White Tornado put a kibosh on our fun.  He then  suckered me into giving both of the little two baths because when given the option they picked me.  Thanks guys.  Charmer in being his ever flirtatious self wanted the youth minister to give him his bath and put him to bed.  She ended up doing story time and helping with prayers which Charmer drew out to be a show off.  After making sure both kids were in bed, we left White Tornado in charge and took off back to the party.  We helped clean up for a while and then I told BOTD I was going to go home with Liz Taylor, Little Miss, and WiiMan.  Since AL had taken Little Red to go the bachelorette party, it was my lucky day to drive the Red Bus, which had been fine all day minus potentially a few sketchy park jobs at the grocery stores.  All was well until I had to park in the garage last night.  Munchkin you remember that Sunday when I had my permit and you let me drive home from church and I was going to back into the garage?  Yeah, that got repeated last night except for this time the rubber flap thing got broken and there's a scratch on the Red Bus that BOTD is going to have to get filler for.  I quickly learned the fastest way to get BOTD to come home when I called him and in a voice trying not to start crying asked him to come home please.   Luckily he wasn't mad, I think he might've actually laughed when he saw me tearfully sitting in the garage behind the Red Bus.  And so pretty much wrapped up my day in the life of AL.  

I hope you guys had a great time because I don't think I can be mentally prepared to be AL again for a long time.

Happy Bachelorette party Munchkin.

The Final Chapter

After eight days together and a very enjoyable experience on the beach, we were all ready to head home from North Carolina.  The first day of the trip home had minimal highlights other than I beat BOTD at the backwards alphabet game.  Oh and we stopped in a Tennessee Walmart and Elizabeth Taylor decided to use a her "Southern" accent as we walked in...  Sunday morning led to some confusion when trying to find the church. We got there just in time for the opening hymn.  It was nice to be back in an enclosed church after doing the pavilion mass in NC.  The Charmer was really missing our home priest and tried to make friends with the priest in KY.

Our lunch stop for the day included Little Miss trying to walk home from the rest area in Frankfort, KY.  No worries I got her to come back.   After lunch, BOTD decided he would share the driver's seat for the last leg and AL drove the rest of the way.  This put AL, Wii Man, and me across the front seat of the Red Bus.  What we learned, Wii Man is paranoid about the gas gauge.  We had a quarter tank when we left the rest area and the plan was to drive until we got closer to home.  Wii Man didn't like that plan very much and so spent the next three hours informing AL every time we passed an exit with a gas station and then freaking out every time we passed the exit, to the point he was almost in tears.   He even got told that it had to be a BP and we weren't stopping at any other type of gas station but that didn't help.  Needless to say,  he turned into a much happier fellow when AL finally pulled into a BP.  He really had no need for worry considering the light wasn't even on and we stopped more because we needed ice for the coolers than anything, but hey whatever floats his boat.  AL has voted him least likely to ever run out of gas.   I'm most likely.   At least if I run out of gas I'll know where I'm at, since I consider myself a fairly proficient reader of maps.  Wii Man on the other hand not so much and he didn't appreciate AL and I trying to make map reading a game.

That concludes our Seventh Heaven Vacation Saga 2015.  All in all it was a fantastic vacation and BOTD did an awesome job picking out the vacation spot.

She Added a Few New Words to Her Vocab

Besides hanging out on the beach and enjoying the awesome weather for the week we also spent a lot of time playing various board and card games.  Elizabeth Taylor makes a really interesting fellow player.  Turns out she's a really risky Euchre player, to the point that BOTD was regretting saying he would be her partner on multiple occasions.  She is also quite the character when playing Bananagrams.  For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a word game that basically involves each player creating their own Scrabble board out of little tiles.  Liz Taylor decided to ditch the general convention of trying to get rid of all your tiles by spelling whatever words possible that weren't proper knows or abbreviations and waited for just the right letters to spell the words she wanted.  One particular game she wished to spell numbskull, failing to draw all the letters she needed she spelled out numbscuttle.  After that White Tornado did something to tick her off so she spelled out his name and then added is a cottenheadedninnymuggins.  Thank you Elf.

One of our favorite car ride games is the alphabet game and on ride Elizabeth Taylor was really struggling to find a particular letter (I can't remember what) and was getting irritated with me and BOTD as we were breezing through the alphabet.  After passing several Bojangles restaurants she coined it as her new catch phrase and every time she didn't agree with something she declared that it was "Bojangles."  It stuck and she's still declaring Bojangles on people, we'll see how long this lasts and if she can make it a thing.

Carolina Baby! Day 2 and some....

Day 2 at the beach house started out with mass, in an outdoor church. It was an interesting experience to say the least.  Apparently the experience was a little much for the Charmer because in the 10 minutes it took to get back to the house he fell asleep.

This is actually how the Charmer spent a fair amount of his time in the car.  Vacation was just too much for the little guy. 

After refueling and sunscreening it was off to the beach for the afternoon to play in the ocean.  The fact that we were in the ocean had to continuously be reinforced to Star and Charmer since they kept calling it the pool.   By the end of the week we seemed to have gotten it down with at least Star that we were in the ocean. 

Monday brought the first full day we spent on the beach.  It was absolutely wonderful.  What I learned that day was the humidity right off the coast is intense when you're going for a run and after a stifling run Monday morning, I gave up on the whole idea of working out on vacation and chalked swimming in the ocean up as good enough.  Elizabeth Taylor learned on Monday the value of frequently reapplying sunscreen.  By the end of the day she was stop light red and in a decent amount of pain.  Little Miss, although not as red, also fell to the pain and agony that comes from sunburn.  

Liz's day after pain drove us to find different forms of entertainment on Tuesday.  AL found the Cape Fear museum and we departed for it.  The guy working the museum informed us the museum is not the biggest in the state, but it is best in the state.  I'll give it to him, it was a pretty cool place.  It covered American history starting with the Native Americans and went up until the late 20th century. Through out were interactive things for people of all ages to partake in and really there was something for everybody to see.  By the end however, the Seventh Heaven crew was ready to move on to something different.  We did a little bit of a driving tour of historic Wilmington, which is gorgeous and I would love to go back and tour someday.  To spark the interests mostly of White Tornado, but some of the other older people as well, we drove to see the USS North Carolina.  AL read up that the self-guided tour was three hours and a lot of stairs so for the present time we opted out.   

A delicious stop at a Red Robin wrapped up our day off the beach. 

Sidenote: I learned something about Star on vacation, for such a tiny person she has an amazing capability to take up an entire full sized bed. 

I ended up moving her back to her side every night and every morning she was right back to being right next to me.  She will admittedly tell you that she likes to snuggle while she's sleeping. 

What I Learned Today

I am not meant to be a bike mechanic. Neither is Elizabeth Taylor.

Minnesota Eh!

This is a little late, but last Friday the Engineer and I took off for a suburb of the twin cities of Minnesota to visit our friend the Musician for the weekend.  Some things the Engineer and I learned this weekend,
There are many different versions of the alphabet game, we completed none of them,
When a tire blows on a semi it sounds like a gunshot going off and will awaken all sleeping passengers in a vehicle
It's really easy to mess with the Musician as to when you are going to appear on her doorstep, Minnesotans don't appreciate when you show up in Blackhawks shirts,
Old people from Minnesota will attempt to make any connection to foreign youth -- "One time I drove through Illinois on my way to Florida...",
It's the land of 10,000 lakes and no Minnesotan will let you forget it,

As is evidenced by most of my pictures from the weekend.

Going three days without rain is absolutely glorious,
The Cathedral of St. Paul is gorgeous,

I really want to go back and do more touristy things in the twin cities because two and half days were not enough,
It is possible for either the Engineer or I to fall asleep every single time we get in a car, thankfully there is no photographic evidence of that,
Knowing where you're going is especially helpful when taking friends from out of state on a tour,
It's fun to match your friends,

What you can't see is our matching black shorts and over the shoulder purses...

Also on Engineer's list were they don't sell liquor in MN grocery stores and you should always wear tight swim suit bottoms when boating. 

All in all I'd say the Musician did a pretty good job at convincing us that Minnesota is pretty cool place. 

What I Learned Today

Dairyland Seed paring knives can be used for more than cutting food.  For example, taking down whiteboards hung with 3M strips off the walls.

Thanks Big Bad.

What I Learned Today

Elizabeth Taylor needs to get out more. She asked for chopsticks at the Mexican restaurant...

What I Learned Today

Siri doesn't always do what you ask her to do. When asking for directions yesterday, I got told "I'm sorry about this, but I can't take any requests right now.  Please try again later." 

I think I just got sassed by my phone...

What I Learned Today

I have ADD when I drink a Peach Mango energy drink.  Eventually it wears off though and I still have to study for my Anthropology 101 exam.