marvin "starvin marvin" mickelson 09/20/99-11/19/09

Marvin died tonight mom. The Browns found him in the bushes in front of the house. We think that he had a either a really bad seizure or a stroke. They helped Kallie bring him inside to the kitchen. Kallie says that his breathing was very labored and he wasn't interested in anything, not even cheese. She called dad and he left work immediately to go home and help her out. I feel so bad that she was home when this happened. She always seems to get stuck with these things. I couldn't stop picturing the way I found Max in the yard way back when we lived in Itasca. The way Kallie described it, it was very similar. We're not sure what caused it but he just closed his eyes and stopped breathing while laying on the kitchen floor. Kallie was about to take him to the vet but he didn't make it. Maybe it was better this way, but man this year sucks so much mom. Maybe you will see him soon? I'm not sure how the afterlife works but I'm sure you would enjoy it and so would he. Maybe he missed you too much. That house is beginning to accumulate too much death. I miss you mom, and now I miss Marvin too. 

bears lose...

So tonight at dinner, I brought up the fact that the Bears have been sucking lately and Dad said that he hadn't been watching it this year. Kallie asked why and he wouldn't say but he got this far away look in his eye. He said that he knew what was going on but just couldn't sit down to watch the games lately. I think it's because he misses you and that is what he associates with you. I miss you too. Kallie was watching old home movies so that she could see you. do you get the Bears game where ever you are?

vet tech school

Hi Mom,

Today, Kallie and I trekked out to Tinley Park to visit the Vet Tech Institute at Fox College. Kallie and I got a grand tour and she got the schpeel about the admissions process. She looked really happy when we left and I asked her if she thinks she can do this and she said yes. I am so proud that she is ready to move on and find something that she loves and is good at. I truly believe that she has a gift with animals and I think that she is beginning to realize it too. Unfortunately, when she got home and showed dad the stuff he made a big deal about how much it costs (less than AU, which he wanted her to go back to). I think I might call him tomorrow and encourage him to support her because she needs everyone behind her right now. I feel so bad sometimes, like I failed her because she has these insecurities when she shouldn't.

Chris also went to go meet Norah today and was supposed to call me when he met her, instead he called when he was in the car and said We Have A Dog! Which I am happy about, and he was so very nice by pointing out my excellent internet find. But, I wish I was there. Getting a puppy was always something that I imagined that we would do together. It makes me sad that he is experiencing it without me. Which just adds to the overall sadness that I feel right now with everything that is going on at work.

Love you, night.

happy halloween.

Happy Halloween Mom! I'm sitting at the house waiting around to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters. There hasn't been much this year. Dad says that most of the little kids came right away at 4pm before I got here. Most of mine have been high schoolers in lame/no costumes. Lucy has on her skeleton again this year.

As we have been doing for as long as I can remember, we carved pumpkins together. We missed you as always. Dad carved a pirate (can you tell?) and kept "Arrrgg-ing", it was pretty humorous. Here are the pictures I promised, I don't have any physical photos of us doing the carving as I was trying to get my teeth cut:

Dad and Kallie with the pumpkins we were trying to get a group photo with the timer on the camera but I have a bunch of blurry photos of me running back over.

All three of our pumpkins. Dad is on the bottom with his pirate face, then Kallie's looks very pleased, and mine is on top with it's goofy grin.

After we put dad's out side we went back to the kitchen and minutes later we see Marvin trotting away with the pumpkin in his mouth. Starvin' Marvin strikes again. By morning, Kallie had already sent me a photo of what was left of the pumpkin. We knew it was going to happen but it was still hilarious.

Halloween feels different this year. Is it because I am too old? Out of the house too long? You not being here? There being no decorations up this year at all? I'm leaning toward an all of the above mix. It's strange to be here and without your or the promise of a halloween party. Once I get a house I will pick up where you left off and host awesomely-awesome halloween parties.

Happy Halloween Mom, love you!

norah

Guess what mom, Chris and I may have found a dog for us! I stumbled across her online and she's close to Chris in Des Moines. She's super cute, I know that you would agree. Chris will hopefully get to meet her this weekend and test her out. We really want a dog.

I took Lucy out there with me last time with every hope that it would feel right and it didn't. Lucy is like my last little piece I have you right now and I want to keep her but, she didn't like the apartment and clearly missed everything at home. There was one night where she looked so sad, just like she did after you died, and it broke my heart. She still misses you, Kallie says that she will sometimes wander the house looking for you. We all miss you. So, Kallie officially gets her now because I want whats best for Lucy, even though it's hard to let the last of you go. I know Kallie will take care of her, but it's still hard.

The dog that we are looking at is named Norah and she's almost a year old, a corgi mix, very lovable and likes to swim! Here's a photo of her:

I'll be sure to let you know how it goes and if we get her. Chris told his mom about her and she's excited that she might get her first grandkid (that's what she called her)... his dad overheard this and almost fainted, haha.

I let Kallie down tonight and feel really bad about it. She wanted to carve pumpkins tonight and I agreed. Unfortunately, as you know, I suck at managing my time and overbooked myself. I felt like the worst person in the world telling her I wasn't going to come. I pictured that she had everything ready to go and how disappointed she looked when I called to cancel. I rearranged my schedule tomorrow so I can go over there and do what we've always done every year since forever--carve pumpkins together. Only you aren't here to take the pictures. I'll be sure to take a few for you though, I try to remember stuff you did so that things can carry on somewhat like they did. Only not really because you not being here really makes a huge difference (go figure). Well, it's really late and I have stuff to deal with tomorrow. Someday I will be sure to tell you all about my moron and how it's ruining my life. But that's for another time and place.

Goodnight mom, love you.

do they have internet where you are?

Hi Mom,

I had the strangest impulse to call you today and ask if I could take you out for tea. As I was reaching for my phone I realized how silly a thought this was. I still have your number saved in my cell phone and cannot bring myself to delete it. I'm not even sure its your number anymore. Things have been hard without you, Dad has really thrown himself into this wedding planning nonsense and I wish you were here to stick up for me. I blame my crazy hippie-dippy ideals on you. But I bought a foofoo fancy dress that was probably made in a sweat shop for more money than I care to admit. Aunt Kelly and Grammy cried when I put it on, the entire time I was wondering what you would have thought about it. I'm getting through life though, it's just not what I would have forseen for myself.

Love you Mom.

Aches: both head and body

So I suck at this blogging thing. I'll do better, I promise.
Tonight is the eve of my official-official debut as the Hall Coordinator in my building and my brain is fried with things that need to be done and searching for things that I forgot (while I was typing this I just remembered something else I need to do before I go bed, oy). The early arrival students move in tomorrow and I have two new staff members in my nest, one that we hired tonight... talk about pressure. If tomorrow goes well, I believe that I will have a less stressful week but that's me saying that at 1:30am while sitting in the hall office blaring my music and shivering from the open window. I need to sleep. But there is just too much in my brain to do that. Collapsing into a coma every night is becoming more natural for me unfortuneatly. Wish me luck tomorrow as I debut in front of parents and have students under my care again. Times like this, I wonder why I signed up for a job like this. You have to be crazy to enter this willingly. I'm sure I'll change my mind later. Until then...

Off to Ioway...

Chris has been moved in and acclimated. It's bittersweet because he has a shiny new job and our future apartment but he's hours away, in IOWA. His apartment is nice and big, I won't mind living there eventually. I miss him already.

Green Bride and Relay for Life

Two quick things:
I finally got my copy of the The Green Bride Guide by Kate Harrison in the mail, very interesting so far!
And,
Let the craziness begin...
Thursday: Tie Dye Relay T-shirt, shop for hot dogs and assemble a banner for the Relay
Friday: Pack up the car and head to Relay before 3pm and then do all the Relay stuff for the night
Saturday: Pack up the campsite around 5am and head back to IMSA for Orientation. Do Orientation all day long
Sunday: Clean up and check out all the Orientation people, head out to Hoffman Estates to pack up the cars to move Chris out to Iowa. Drive to Indianola, Iowa.
Monday-Tuesday: Unpack Chris and Explore Simpson College
Wednesday: Drive back to IL, alone :(, then do some planning for IMSA's training
Thursday: No Doubt concert at Summerfest with SQuick!
Friday: Get ready for EXCEL summer program and round two of Orientation

and so on, I could list things out till August... Eeek!

swine flu

Chris has been sick for the last three days. It has been a gross, uncomfortable to watch kind of the flu. He drove out to Aurora on Saturday night so that we could go to my cousin's baby's baptism the next day. Well at 7am on Sunday Chris wakes me up all sweaty and flushed saying that he's hot and doesn't feel good. I felt his head and haven't felt a forehead that hot before (and living with a bunch of teens gives me a lot of foreheads to feel). I don't own a thermometer because I rarely have fevers so I went down to our hall office to borrow one out of the first aid kit. He had a fever of 102.4 and according to the CDC all of the symptoms of swine flu. Awesome. Chris also informs me that a couple of kids in his mom's class at school have had it as well. Boy am I glad that he has been staying there lately to catch whatever this is. I then put him to bed and got dressed. He wanted to see if he felt better in time to make it to the baptism still (we did not). I was able to go to the store and get him meds, fluids and thermometer. All day he maintained a high fever. On Monday, his family had to get to the airport so sick boy and I drove out to Hoffman Estates then to O'Hare and back to Hoffman Estates. I left Chris there to get better so I can disinfect my apartment and he can take care of his mom's pets. It's Tuesday, and Chris still feels sick but no more fever, thank goodness!

When I got back from dropping Chris off I helped Michelle move over to the North Central College campus where she will be working next year. It was fun and kind of sad that she is leaving. Just more of a slap of reality as to what next year will really be like. It's going to suck when Sarah leaves at the end of the month.

Why do I feel like summer is almost over and school is about to start way too soon?

Reception Sites

When I was first envisioning reception sites I wanted something naturey and outdoors. Now I have absolutely no concept of what wedding planning looks like. I was imaging an arboretum and a park. Well my father was insistent that I look at banquet rooms in hotels (he is the hotel General Manager of the Wyndham Drake Hotel in Oakbrook and knows weddings, much to my denial). So I gave in and said that fine we would look. Today, we went to the Herrington Inn in Geneva, IL and it was beautiful. Rustic wooden accents and brick walls, lots of windows and natural lighting. I forgot to bring my camera with but here are some stock photos off the internet:



My aunt and I are going to go back later and take pictures of the room so that we can see exactly how much decorating wise we need to do. I'm pretty happy with and getting really excited!

let summer begin!

We're back after a relaxing week of camping up at Devil's Lake. It was definitely a much needed break from life. We hiked everyday, made fires to cook our food and froze our toes off at night when the temp dropped to below 50 degrees inside our tent. We are now stuck in a haze of laziness and have spent the last two days sleeping and playing Blokus (best game ever). Tomorrow, Chris is moving out of my apartment and into his parent's house to watch the animals while they travel to Africa to visit relatives. My plans are to go to the dentist and clean my garbage pile that used to be my apartment. I wish I had more to update about weddingy stuff by alas, we are at a standstill for at least another week. My father has decided on the Herrington Inn in Geneva, IL and we have plans to visit the location next Saturday.

Here;s an update on my lofty wedding ideas:
1. Keep the budget around $10,000: I still want to do this but my father is talking about having a selection of wines and steak for dinner...
2. Book a location that is already beautiful so we don't have to worry about decorations: Luckily the Herrington isn't too ugly :)
3. Find my mother's wedding dress that is rumored to be stowed away in my parents' basement and see if it is salvageable: it's not. It is completely ruinned and I will have to buy a nice dress.
4. Find a way to feed our 100 guests at about $40 a person: HA
5. Get a date, so I can finally answer people when they ask me: looks like the end of June 2010...

On a side note, my family keeps making these comments about my dress and how I need to buy something nice so I look pretty. Why am I beginning to feel like there is something wrong with the way I dress...

Can we start yet?

We are still in the pre-pre-pre-pre planning stage. It's getting old and is time to move on. My father has taken over most of the planning but is starting to be more accomadating. My aunt, grandma and sister are absolutely stuck on the fact that I need a fancy, expensive dress. We don't even have a venue or date picked out yet and all they can talk about is a stupid dress. Why is it becoming more and more apparent that my brain is not screwed on straight when ever anything about the wedding comes up. I just want to get the ball rolling. My dad has contacts at the Herrington in Geneva, IL and is getting a list of dates from them that we can pick from. Maybe then we can start actually planning things...

Back to Everyday Life...

The funeral is over and I am back to work again. It was so hard to put everything on hold to attend to the matters of honoring my mom and greeting the hundreds of people who came with condolences. It was great to see how many people my mom touched in her life. As I chokingly said at the funeral in front of the overflowing room of people as I began hyperventilating (and for the record I am usually very comfortable speaking to groups) that my mom surrounded herself with the best of the best and I know that I will always hear her words of guidance from others but it is still going to suck not having a mom to help me put on a wedding dress or walk me through raising my children. But all that is over and I am back to the everyday swing of things.

School is nearing a close here at IMSA and the seniors have a week till graduation, my high school graduation seems so long ago but I am able to relate with their sadness and excitement for leaving to go to college. I know they will all go on to do great things!

Onto the wedding planning side of things, holy crap is this a pain in my caboose! My father (a very experienced hotel general manager with an extensive catering background) sees a formal, traditional reception in our future. Which I am fine with but who is going to pay for this? He is speaking of taking out a loan on the house and having Chris and I save every single penny for the next year (and we are people who like to buy shiny new toys). I just want to marry him. Not through a party that is cookie cutter to what "weddings are supposed to be".

Here are my very lofty dreams of wedding planning:
1. Keep the budget around $10,000 (this may not be possible but I figure aim low at first and then we can reevaluate it later)
2. Book a location that is already beautiful so we don't have to worry about decorations (waste of money in my book, but necessary if you reserve a stuffy hotel banquet room... we'll see how this one works out)
3. Find my mother's wedding dress that is rumored to be stowed away in my parents' basement and see if it is salvageable (she was always smaller than I am now but she was 6 mo pregnant with me when they got married and my grandma claims that she just bought a larger regular dress)
4. Find a way to feed our 100 guests at about $40 a person... buffet style?
5. Get a date, so I can finally answer people when they ask me!

There is a Season...

My mom died last night. What do I do?

http://www.legacy.com/dailyherald/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=127304738

_______________________________________________________
Ecclesiastes 3:1.

“

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

The boy is finally done with SIUC and is moving up here for the summer tomorrow!! I am so excited on multiple levels. Now I just need to be able to clean my apt before he "squats" here till he moves to Iowa. Eek!

Money Matters

I guess I always knew this but never fully realized it but weddings are freakishly expensive! Everything seems to cost hundreds or thousands of dollars for silly things. And the tricky thing is that a lot of places seem to charge you more just because its a wedding. But that seems so very unfair. Reception sites charge double for a wedding as opposed to say a family reunion. I think that we should just fudge the details and call it a family get-together (which is true). I want to be as cost effective as possible and I think that I just enlisted two of students to play instruments for the ceremony, on the condition that they could attend the reception and I think that I can handle buying them an overpriced dinner so that they could share their talents with us. I am looking to hire student photographers to capture the day on the premise that they hand over their SD cards to us. And I am not picky about having a fancy, expensive, uneatable, tiered fondant cake so I need someone to be willing to bake hundreds of cupcakes and frost them. We'll see what happens. I want to go the cheap route as my family will be paying for a funeral sometime this year (which are way more costly than you would expect). I have already begun to choose my people but Chris is slacking. I just want to get all this over with so that I can relax later on and not be stressed because I'm sure that I will be doing a lot of stuff myself.

Timeline of Life

So Chris has brought to my attention that we need to follow the academic year because we both need to be living where our jobs are which means it needs to happen before August. That's 15 months. Eeek. Hope I don't screw it up.

On a less happy, more stressful note, my mom is not doing good. Everyone is saying it's a matter of time--days even. I think that this just pretty much sucks.

And it begins...

Oh my... it actually happened. I am engaged. He proposed. It happened. Half of me is past it and ready to plan. The other half is completely shocked and overwhelmed. Everyone is so full of questions and I just don't feel like I have the answers. Allow me to take a step back and explain yesterday and all its craziness...

We had plans to take my dog Lucy to the dog park and then to try walking along this path that weaves through the park district's land. Lucy swam and enjoyed the beautiful weather to her little hearts content and she was acting so good so we left the leash off and let her run and roll and do what dogs do. After she swam we decided to go for a walk and let her go. Ironically we were walking through this area that has this beautiful pavilion that is surrounded by tall wavy grass in the late summer/fall and I had mentioned how if we ever did get married outside I would want to do it there because it is so serene. So we walked past it into the wooded area and was just enjoying eachother and the weather, Lucy was exploring and being a good dog (when she wasn't trying to find dead things to roll in).

And we found ourselves at this scenic lookout with a bench and Chris sat down and re-hydrated ourselves. There was this loud honking bird looking for its mate, a woodpecker in the tree near us and this huge bumblebee that was really interested in my head. We're just sitting there and Chris pulls out this little bag that he calls his "survival kit" and shows it to me. I tell him that I saw it last time I was in Carbondale (it was newly aquired) and he insisted that I open it because it has new stuff in it. A little info on Chris, he always has something new to show off so it is not unusal for him to randomly pull out something new and share it with me. I just didn't understand why he wanted me to look at something new in his survival kit, band aids? a new knife? Nope. It was this huge blue box. Now I kind of glanced at him and he had this big goofy grin on his face and told me to open it. I did and suddenly became very nervous. Inside was this big beautiful sapphire in a white gold tension setting. He asked me to marry him and I said, well shouted a little, YES and hugged him. He took it out of the box and put it on my finger and I kissed him (we took the above picture). It was all so surreal and I'm sure that I have left out all kinds of details because I was just in a state of shock, Chris had yet to successfully keep a secret from me. I can remember everything in clear detail up till that moment and once he handed me that kit everything is hazy and vague. Eventually we left and walked out of the wooded area and back to the car as Chris tells me all about his planning and plotting.

We then arrive at my house (which I go to for dinner every Sunday) to find my entire family assembled with champagne waiting. Of course my awkward-against-my-will self just stands there quietly dodging questions and queries from my family about details, dates and futurey things. As far as I see it, I preformed all wrong because I was supposed to have all of this stuff already planned out and ready to jump around excitedly as I answered their questions. For the record I was and am excited but it just takes a bit to sink in. And there is this whole side thing called most simply my dying mother who during all of this conjoling is sitting by herself in a hospital bed upstairs staring at a droning tv. Is it okay to be so excited and happy when your mother mostly likely won't be at your wedding. How is one to plan a party when you never know when you might be planning a funeral? Needless to say it was a very emotional day and night. Once I got home I told my 02 family and thats when it really started to sink in, this is real.

So all day today I have been making my rounds around campus to tell the rest of my IMSA family before it became what I call "Facebook official", which it is now, and I even got on some wedding-y websites to start looking around. I have no idea what to do and it has only been a little over 24 hours and I have no clue where in the world to start.