Living Life

"Sometimes I feel the urge to just live things and not write about them."

I saw this written somewhere, and I love it. It describes exactly what I've been feeling these past few days.

Like Sunday, for example: Art's parents came up to visit, and the whole family was over, and we played bocce ball, and ate a lot of good Filipino food that Art's mom made, and we played board games, and I purposely didn't take out my camera to take pictures so I could blog about it. I didn't want to stand on the sidelines, photographing my life as it happens in front of me. I wanted to be in it.

Same with yesterday. I had my birthday party yesterday, (I turned 24 today), and, with the exception of my birthday cake, I didn't take any pictures, and I didn't try to compose a blog post in my head about what was going on around me, like I tend to do.

Instead, I made food, had some great conversations, played games, opened presents, and laughed at my friends who drank espresso when they really didn't need any caffeine. That was definitely THE craziest, loudest game of Rummikub I have ever witnessed. (It was mostly just Wayne shrieking and singing opera. Kind of.)

So that's been my life, and philosophy of, for the past few days. My job is going really well, by the way. I think I'm catching on pretty quickly, which is what I prayed about, because I want to impress them so much that they keep on as a full-time, NON-seasonal employee. Also, I enjoy it.

The end. We're leaving to watch a movie at Wayne and Sozan's. I hope you enjoyed my birthday as much as I did. :)

A Housewife No More (Starting Tomorrow)

I got my Social Security Number today! See? It didn't take that long! That's because all you amazing people out there were praying.

So I'm working 9-1 the rest of this week, and then 8-4:30 starting next week. Carpooling should be pretty interesting.

I found out that the other new girl that started the same day as me has been helping out in other departments. They've been holding back on her training so that they can train both of us at the same time. I feel bad that her job has been affected by my SSN hassles, but at least it was only for a week.

So I'm quite happy about that. But for now, I'm very preoccupied with cleaning my house, because we had family over on Sunday, so all the cleaning I did on Saturday was almost for nothing. And now I know that I won't have as many hours tomorrow to prepare for the party as I thought I would. So I have to get it all done today. Shouldn't be too difficult. If I can manage to stay off the computer.

Oh, and Mom: I got your card. Thanks a bunch! Tell Grandma thanks for her card as well.

And the Flowers...

And what weekend would be complete without the obligatory "What's-Happening-in-Jenene's-Yard" post.

Here is the latest status on my rhododendrons.

This one is the first to bloom in the front yard! They don't get as much sunlight, so they're slow, but they are coming in!


This one is blooming right in front of our living room window. You can't see it very well from outside, but I can stare at it all day long when I'm inside.


And these magnificent blooms are in the backyard. Oh, I am happy!


Remember the first bright red/pink rhododendron I showed you a while back? And I said it was earlier than all the rest? This is the plant where that solitary flower grew. I guess I did quite a bit of trimming on it, because no other ones showed up. But see all those shoots? They'll be full of blooms next year.


This is in the back corner of the house, where nobody can see, so these ones almost go to waste. Also, they're freaking huge, and I wish I could trim them, because they are growing out of control. But I can't reach that high.




This is the whole back of the house.


Sozan had a great idea: the blooms in the back corner won't go to waste because I clipped some off and put them in vases!