So I, um, sorta forgot... ahem... that this puppy existed

Hi....

I kinda feel like I ran into an ex at the grocery store.  After uncovering my long-lost hand written jabber log (the cooler name I gave my girly diary), I realized that I might have neglected another expression opportunity.

So I'm sorry Salty Strawberry readers (if there are any).  I really got swept up into my own butt-hole for a few months there!

When I look at the calendar I realize that I stopped blogging about the same time I started my phlebotomy class.  What a wasted teaching moment! Phlebotomy has been surprisingly awesome and I regret not taking the time to share my thoughts and feelings about learning to do and invasive procedure on humans.  But lucky, lucky us!  I still have the clinical phase of the class to complete before it's all said and done.  Not to mention the job hunt that will follow after and all sorts of salty strawberry adventures that will soon be had!!

I really hit some speed bumps on my knitting.  I think that glorious afghan took some knitting life force out of me.  Last year I made copious amounts of hand made Christmas gifts.  Honestly, it was extremely impressive.  So far I have 3/4 of a niece's sweater completed.  Side note - this niece is one of 4 children, so I can't give just that one sweater, and this year I can't afford to buy them gifts instead.  Luckily my step daughter is very close in age and size, so maybe I can send it that way instead.

Well we'll see how all those cookies crumble, and I'll try harder to make sure some of it ends up on the interwebs for your entertainment!  Things have been very emotional with work and anxiously awaiting for school responses.  So I'm glad to jump back into this.  I was feeling a real lack of balance, and I think seeing my thoughts spelled out might do the trick!!  

The slow road to big-girldom

Disclaimer: I fully acknowledge how incredibly spoiled I am to just now be having these experiences at the age of 25, and I thank my parents for the hard work it took to grant me such advantages in life.

The transition from belonging to my parents to belonging to my husband and myself is nearing completion!  As of this week I will have big-girl responsibilities.  My dad gave me the title to my car as a wedding gift (AWESOME! THANKS DADDY!) and now I will finally experience the tedium of vehicle ownership.  The good news is, adding me and my little Rav4 brings down the premium on my hubby's risque Mach 1.  Ladies, be a good driver.  Stand up to stereotypes and be a financial asset to your man!  Woo!  Adulthood! 

We also got me switched on the health insurance.  Here's where I get weird...  I can not wait to pick out our doctor!  We are planning to stay in Houston for a while and I am a creepy kid that thinks ahead to the possibility of needing family medicine.  No imaginary baby of mine will be tended to by some FDA funded drug puppet doctor!  I am about to be a very crazy person.  The plan is to date different doctors until I find a good fit with a convenient office location.  Any jerk bookworm can be a physician, I need a jerk bookworm who has the patience to deal with an over educated know-it-all patient with hippyish medical ideals.  I'm dreaming of a D.O. practice which employs many P.A.s.  *sigh*  Wouldn't that be a beautiful place full of preventative and preferably natural treatments?  I may dabble in finding a good chiropractor as well.  Now that I'm away from my hometown network of natural medicine practitioners, it's hard to know who to call when you need to know which herbal tea suits your joint pain.  

In other, less crazy kid news...  I submitted my P.A. school applications!!!!  I'm so glad to have them out of my hands!  My fingers and toes are crossed that I will land an acceptance this year.  I also successfully completed a 48 hour detox diet over the labor day weekend.  It didn't always taste great, but I did drop 4 pounds.  The cleanse might have also contributed to the awesome run I had on Tuesday.  I felt like a well oiled machine!  

AND I finished the afghan I've been knitting since January!  No yarn left over either!  I believe this was a first for me.  I am incredibly proud of how it turned out and I love using it! 

Wavy Afghan pattern free hand out from Michael's

all the best giant throw blankets have fringe!

It covers a queen sized bed! (we have sheets, I promise they were in the wash)

So there you have it.  I am a knitting goddess with health insurance, vehicle ownership, and P.A. applications on their way to judgement day.  Things are looking good.  

I love going to the movies!

We had a great weekend!  We went to to see Kick Ass 2 on Saturday, and we LOVED it!  It just so happens that we love Kick Ass, so the sequel wasn't much of a stretch for us.  On Sunday, we spent a rainy day at the beach.  I love a rainy beach day.  You can see when the next batch of rain is coming and there aren't as many people there to grapple with for a good spot.

For whatever reason this week, classic horror movies have been my thing.  I watched a string of classics while writing my PA school application essays.  It was a weird combination and it was magical.  I'm telling you, I love movies!

I'm also hell bent on discovering the hidden gems of Netflix.  For example, we watched "The Road" this weekend.  It was a very good and very different post-apocalypse.  I would be very interested to learn of any more lesser-known treasures hidden in the depths of Netflix's files.  We've been lucky to finally have some rainy evenings to really enjoy all of this movie watching!  I hope there's more to come soon!!

Master of Science

It finally happened!  We went back to Ohio this past weekend for my master's graduation ceremony!  It feels so great to finally have that chapter in my closing.  Even though the flight was expensive, I'm really glad that my husband could come share my first college graduation ceremony with me (I didn't walk for my bachelor's because I was a bride's maid that day).  I also felt special with my fancy master's hood.  

I've also finally fixed my poor neglected car!  She has her door trim reattached, and her exhaust is welded back on to the muffler!  No longer does she sound or look like a hill billy.  And the paperwork continues.  Now that she's in order, I can get the title put in my new name etc.  We're also playing the health insurance game.   

Some awesome news:  I bought some water colors and created some beastly paintings!!  I've had some ideas for paintings in my mind for almost a year now, and I've finally followed through on them.   Painting is one of those things for me that can go one way or another.  I either fall miserably short of my expectations, or exceed them by leaps and bounds.  Fortunately this time, I exceeded them.  I love getting on a creative roll.  It makes me feel super capable.  Hopefully I can keep it going and apply it to some useful projects we need completed around the apartment.  

Well I'm in the middle of cooking dinner!  Until Sunday!

I declare vendetta against my mail lady.

    Finally.  I finally got my new drivers license in the mail on friday.  It took a full month to get it in the mail.  The state of texas does this goofy thing, where they print you out a sheet of paper with your picture and license info on it.  The real thing couldn't have come at a better time.  I wasn't so sure that the airports outside of texas would be cool with my little print out.

     So the delay isn't really my mail lady's fault as far as I can tell.  On the other hand, she did put it in the wrong mailbox.  My foreign neighbors took the liberty of opening my mail before bringing it to me.  Better than pitching it without looking I guess.

    Why do I feud with my mail carrier?  Breach of package delivery protocol.  Here's how a typical package delivery goes at our apartment:

USPS tracking website says the package is delivered.
Interesting, I see no such package.
Leasing office?  No, they haven't seen it either...
Post office?  What package?  How do you spell your name again?

   Typically I do this circle of checkpoints for 1-4 days before my desired parcel is in my possession.  Ultimately the post office tells me to call them early in the morning and ask for my postal carrier before she leaves for deliveries.  Then she and I struggle to communicate given her Engrish, and I continue to circle my checkpoints as she recommends.  

Good news?  I made cheese! I made cream cheese and used some of the whey to make my own lacto-fermented ketchup!  The cream cheese and the ketchup are both delicious and I am really encouraged to continue with the transformation of my fridge!!  If you take any ideas from this blog, it should be to make your own ketchup.  So good!!

Summary: My mail lady irked me.  I went on a rage jog and came home and made ketchup and cleaned my bunny's cage.  I'm considering hosting a dinner simply to show off my ketchup.

Hmmm... this isn't Sunday.....

Not sure why I forgot to write this weekend...

We got our wedding photo-books in the mail last week!!  I decided to have them made as gifts for our parents and siblings for being so awesome and helpful.  Luckily they came in in time for me to send an extra one with my father-in-law on his trip to Nigeria.  I'll be giving my family members theirs when we  get to Ohio for my graduation ceremony :)  

That's right.  The master's thesis is done.  It is out of my hands and the next time I look at it, it will be bound as a book and looking awesome!  So now I just have to complete and submit my PA school and vet school applications.  I wish it wasn't so expensive to apply to school programs.  It's an odd and unfortunate truth that your choices in school applications can be limited by your wallet's status.

The school stuff is moving forward, but my name change is still in limbo.  The state of Tejas has opted to withhold my driver's license for no apparent reason.  They claim that my license was put in the mail July 15th, but that I must allow until August 15th for it to arrive.  Bull. Shit.  I really can't wait for that silly thing to get here.  I'm not entirely sure that the paper temporary license they gave me will please the airport security when we fly to Ohio next weekend.  Only one way to find out.

I ordered the buttermilk cultures I need to begin my Nourishing Traditions fridge transformation.  Once they get here I can begin to preserve my own condiments and other prepared ingredients.  I can't wait!! I already bought my ball jars and am keeping an eye out for other handy glass storage for my concoctions.

The times, they are a-changin' (in our fridge)

So one of my life long best friends got us a great wedding gift.  We got a cookbook/natural lifestyle guide titled "Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats," by Sally Fallon.  It. is. awesome.  The book gives you the basic information you need to be able to feed your modern family using pre-industrialized food preparation techniques.  Told you it's awesome.  I'd really like to make the switch to home made and natural foods before we're ready to start trying for kids.  

My nerdy background has made me privy to lots of information on epigenetics and the impact that your diet can play on the child you carry in your womb.  But for the sake of my wallet and my husband's picky palet, I'm starting off slow.  I began by asking for glass food storage containers on our wedding registry.  BPA can do some nasty things.  The convenience of plastic is not worth risking health in my book.  

First recipe?  Well we are out of ketchup, so I will begin by fermenting my own ketchup.  The game plan is to replace our previously store-bought items with home-made as we run out of them.  I think after ketchup I'll tackle mayonaise, which seems like a nice simple recipe.  The cool thing about these recipes is that they use lacto-fermentation as preservation.  If I do it correctly, most of these condiments will last for months in the fridge just like their store-bought counterparts with artificial preservatives.

I'm hoping that this time next year, my fridge will have at least 75% home made contents.  I don't expect that we will ever completely break away from convenience foods.  Let's face it, I love Wendy's, my husband loves Popeye's, and we both love Steak'n'Shake milk shakes and treating ourselves to a dinner date night out.  My hope is that the majority of our regular at home diet will have fewer labels with encyclopedias of ingredients on the back.  

In other news, we're nearly finished with Mockingjay in our Hunger Games audiobook adventure!  It has been so great to share books I love with my husband, and we've bothed really enjoyed some time together at home without a TV.  We really had fun revisiting the Hunger Games movie now that he actually knows what's going on.  He said it's like a whole new movie when you really understand the back story.  Now we're both fired up the the Catching Fire movie this fall!!!      

I also ordered our wedding photobooks and they should be getting here in the mail early this week.  It will be great to finally have our pictures in a physical form!  I think the next project will be getting some quality prints framed up, but I might wait until we move to our next place and have more wall space.  

We've got a lot more exciting stuff coming up, I can't wait to share once it all goes down!

One way to lose a quick 2 pounds...

    This week I finally got around to donating my hair!  I was very careful to grow it out nice and healthy for the wedding, and now the inconvenience has taken over.  The truth is that we live in Houston.  Hair to your elbows just plain sucks in 100 degree heat.  So here's what happened:

I weighed myself before and after the salon. 2lbs of hair gone to locks of love!

I still haven't gotten my driver's license back from changing my name, so that battle drags on.  The thesis drags on as well.  I can't wait to get that stupid thing over with.

    Basically things are dragging on, and I had a frustrating week.  Luckily I was able to lean on my friends and family when I had a few rough days.  I'm pretty worn out from a long weekend, so I don't have much juice for writing about the week.  Maybe I'll jot something this week before next sunday to make up for it.
   

Monday is the New Sunday

So this week I gained some serious knitting steam! I had nearly run out of my yarn and ordered some more from the nearest Hobby Lobby (who has yet to obtain some after 2 weeks).  Luckily, I was working in another part of town and stopped in the HL while I was wandering around.  They had a great big shelf full of my much needed yarn!

If you've never been mid afghan and low on supplies, you may not know this kind of despair.  I have a nasty habit of beginning large projects with too little yarn and small projects with too much yarn.  It could be some strange form of knitting dyslexia, but I may need a few more cases before I start naming disorders after myself.

Some more good news!  We got our wedding pictures back from the photographer, and the wedding video back from the editor!  Also after  a few months of asking my husband to read a book with me, we are reading/re-reading the Hunger Games together! Bam!
I love these books and really wanted to re-read them before the next movie.  Solution?  Get yourself a library card and download an e-audio book. My dad does this all the time to listen to books while he walks the dog.  It's a great service.  You can load the books onto your ipod or whatevs.  Right now I love having it on my laptop.  We turn off the TV and listen to the story.  It's like listening to the pre-TV radio stories, and is a super easy way to enjoy a "book" with your non-reading engineer types like my dad and husband.

So that's pretty much it.  I had a pretty good week. Nothing spectacular, but a solid handful of little pleasures is a great reward.  And I got a free milkshake today.  That is all.

Better late than never!

     So last night I was supposed to write my 3rd blog entry.  Didn't quite make that deadline.  I made another important one instead... submitted my master's thesis draft for a preliminary review by the graduate school!!  Woo hoo! May not seem very exciting, but it is a very important step toward getting this master's degree thing wrapped up with a nice little bow on it so I can move on with my life (by applying for another master's because I'm drunk on learnings).

Scholastic ambition is dumb.  Avoid it if you can.

    Last week was a pretty good week.  Husband man and I had a great 4th of July with friends and family.  Like most people in Texas, we enjoyed a far too carnivorous day of eating and drinking with some pyrotechnics sprinkled in there.  It's hard to spend a thursday much better than with family, food, and fireworks!

Real G's chill with fam

    I did manage to create something this week in between the mad thesis scramble of '13....  apple-banana bread!!  Am I a genius?  Certainly not in the kitchen.  Any other form of genius has yet to manifest, but we will see.
Back to the lecture at hand (perfection is perfected, so I'm 'a let 'em understand, from a young G's perspective)....  apple. banana. bread.

    I used this recipe for classic banana bread.  Then I got snazzy.  Add 1/2 cup of peeled then diced apple.  You definitely want to add 1/2 of chopped walnuts if you've got them, but no sweat if you don't or if you are a hater of delicious, savory tree nuts.  (More apple = more juice, use a little less milk if you're gonna go apple heavy)

    Are you impressed?  Well you might want to try the recipe with the added apples and re-evaluate your answer.  The apples lend a little juice to the situation and make for a very happy, moist banana bread.  I recommend serving it hot out of the oven so that your butter can melt on nicely while you pop planet of the apes into your DVD player/Netflix cue.  Please don't ruin your wonderful new bread with hydrogenated soy bean oil spreads and bull shit.  Cows make milk, milk makes butter.  Less chemistry is better.  (Learn you some moderation like a grown-ass adult and stop eating industrial by-products. end rant.)
     Probably one of the most memorable dates I had with my husband was the first time I baked nanner bread for him and we had a Planet of the Apes marathon in my apartment.  Oh yeah, it's corny. Oh yeah, it's delicious.

    May-haps I shall concoct a rum cake and view many Pirates of the Caribbean, if the winds a-favor it.
    Better yet, we'll have a Matrix marathon and I'll bake cookies then take them all away because they were only part of the Matrix and we're above such falsehoods.

    I didn't take a picture of our spoils this time... I'll get better at this.

 
   

Oh geez! oh geez! There's so much to do!

So all week I've been re-reading last Sunday's entry and getting so excited to write my next post!  It's Sunday night.  I did stuff all week, and now I'm not sure how to share my activities in a way that serves any kind of purpose.

Alright le-go, leeeeerrooooyy jeeeeeeenkiiiinnnsss!!
       
It was one of those weeks where you are constantly doing things and checking stuff off your to-do list, but somehow didn't get enough done.  I have a feeling that this post-wedding clean up process will keep me occupied and on a productivity treadmill for quite a while yet.

Most women are aware of the fact that they have the option to change their name after getting married.  What I was unaware of was the time frame for this process.  It took 4 weeks to get our marriage license back from the county (with another couple's license included.  High five, Harris County).  Now I found the time to take all of my forms of ID to the social security office, but have to wait another week or 2 to get the new SS card.  Tally is at 6 weeks post wedding date.

Then I get a new driver's license (another week), have to change my info with my bank, prescriptions, health insurance, car title, car insurance, passport, refile all of the paperwork for my jobs, and whatever other things that will inevitably create a huge inconvenience to myself when I forget them.

Pretty sure I'll be looking at a 4-6 month total process to take my husband's last name.  Good thing I really want to have it!  Seriously, go on facebook and search for people named Caitlin Riley.  Start counting... ok don't really, because that's a boring way to spend 20 years of your life.

Somehow I managed to marry a very nice Nigerian man with an easy name!  I would be willing to bet any sum of money that I am the only person on the planet with my married name.  Yeah, I know that there are 7,000,000,000 humans with names on this planet.

Is it worth the effort to take your husband's name?  I love my family and my maiden name identifies me as part of that family.  For a long time I thought I wouldn't be able to part ways with my ethnically obvious name.  There's something comforting about having a clear identifying link to your family history.   But I can't imagine any better way to fully embrace the fact that my husband and I have made the beginning steps toward creating our own family identity together.

I'd call the process a necessary evil, but the end result is an exceptional reward.  This week was trying for me.  I can be very patient with people and animals, but I hate waiting for procedures, tasks, and outcomes!  There just aren't enough gold stars and "grape job" stickers being handed out these days to validate life efforts.  So I was really grateful this week to have a husband who is willing to serve that purpose.  Nothing better than a heartfelt pep-talk to get your eyes (refocused) on the prize(s).

Our entrance into the Nigerian wedding 

Commence Launch Sequence

   I'm not a terribly huge fan of twitter or self pitying facebook status updates.  I'm not a big texter or much of a shutter bug.  Those things being true,  I'm getting excited to use blogging as an e-journal.  I hope to use this blog as a means to share some of the cool stuff I learn as life rolls along.  But beware... my journaling is traditionally a random, wordy stream-of-conscieness type pile of stuff.  Being my own biggest fan, I think it's whimsical and entertaining but if you're not fluent in jabber you may prefer another blog.  
   What makes my life and hobbies worth reading about?  Nothing in particular. But I can proudly say that I am constantly chipping away at becoming the woman I want me to be.  I've very recently married the man of my dreams, and still have quite the to-do list to conquer.  I believe that self affirmation is a powerful tool in achieving your goals.  Hopefully, publicly sharing my aspirations (small and large) will make me feel accountable for completing them.
   What the duck is a salty strawberry?  I am.  I'm borderline ginger (strawberry), unfortunately lose my temper (Irish*), and can be more cynical than I'd like to be (scientist*).  So here we go.  I love stitchery crafts.  I consider myself a knitter, but like to crochet to shake things up!  I love to eat.  This basically leads me to two more hobbies, cooking and working out.
     I'm not the greatest chef, but I get a lot out of learning how to best use ingredients and trying new foods.  My husband is 1st generation nigerian, so I have been working hard to learn a new nigerian recipe from my mother in law every time we visit.  I have a love-hate relationship with being physically active.  I love the confidence, I love the results, I love the calorie budget it provides for my sweet tooth.  I hate the battle for self motivation, I hate that jogging is my primary cardio now, and I hate the lame jog pace my short legs provide.  I love cartoons, sci-fi, movies, history, science, fish, pet-care, water sports, and spending time with my friends and family.
   I'd like to get as much as I can out of this blog by posting something new at least every sunday evening.  Hopefully I can reflect on my week and share what I've learned or created, or even just share something that I'm grateful for.  Again, self-affirmation is key.  The physical act of smiling can release the neurotransmitters that tell your brain you're happy.  So smile and feel happy, blog about your happy life and have a happy life!

*The Irish scientist part of my self description lead to the Cleveland colloquialism "salty" in the title

P.S. That scientist bit is not a lie.  As you may have noticed by my asterisk use above, shit will be cited and whozits will be analyzed.  No apologies.  Asterisks are real things, and I use them as such!