A survey

I got this survey by email, and I'm not really an email sort of person (I apologize to those of you who have suffered from this first hand) but I wanted to respond, so I thought I'd put it here. I hope this is satisfactory, Riva, Cara, and Jenn! I'd love to see answers from the rest of you bloggers, too....


1. What is your occupation right now? Raising Kids, which means I have to mark "Unemployed" on many official documents, which angers me to no end

2. What color are your socks right now? Socks? It's JUNE!

3. What are you listening to right now? The theme song to Word World. I can justify letting Judah watch this on TV because it's SO educational. Right?

4. What was the last thing that you ate? Grilled chicken quesadilla from Tom's Place. Yum.

5. Can you drive a stick shift? Yeah.

6. Last person you spoke to on the phone? My brother-in-law.

7. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Absolutely!! Really, would someone I didn't like send this to me?

8. How old are you today? 32

9. What is your favorite sport to watch? Almost any sport live, but on TV either baseball or gymnastics. Or, dare I say it? UFC. I know, I know...

10. What is your favorite drink? Diet Coke, followed closely by java chip fraps from Starbucks.

11. Have you ever dyed your hair? Have I ever not? It all started with grape Kool-Aid (I'm looking at you, Joy, if you're reading...).

12. Favorite food? Changes almost daily, but I always love Thai food. Oh, and those garlic knots at C&O Trattoria in Venice (thanks a lot, Ashlee, I can maybe blame those five pounds on you?)

13. What is the last movie you watched? Juno.

14. Favorite day of the year? Thanksgiving. All the family and fun, none of the stress of gift-giving.

15. How do you vent anger? By driving really fast and turning up the music. I favor James and New Order when I'm angry and maybe Cowboy Mouth or Big Country, and Depeche Mode, if I'm REALLY angry.

16. What was your favorite toy as a child? My Little Pony.

17. What is your favorite season? Summer and fall tie with me.

18. Cherries or Blueberries? Blackberries. Is that an option?

19. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back? Hmmm....

20. Who is the most likely to respond? ????

21. Who is least likely to respond? ???

22. Living arrangements? Nathan, Judah, Micah, Payasa. Plus the bears that Judah swears live in his room.

23. When was the last time you cried? Wednesday? I think?

24. What is on the floor of your closet? Dirty clothes hampers.

25. Who is the friend you have known the longest that you are sending this to? That reads this blog? Cara and Riva.

26. What did you do last ? Hugged Nathan.

27. What inspires you? Nature.

28. What are you most afraid of? Bad things happening to people I love.

30. Favorite dog breed? Ug. Don't really like dogs, but if I had to pick I'd say golden or black lab.

31. Favorite day of the week? Saturday.

32. How many states have you lived in? Only one, but it's the best one. :)

My little Olympian

Judah took part in his very first VBS this week. He went last year too, but spent most of his time in the nursery. This year's VBS was Olympic themed, and he was on team Great Britain (yeah!) with about 25 other three-year-olds. They started the mornings in the "big church" with the entire group of kids, all from his age to about twelve years old. Then they split off into their own chapel time, then got to do sports and crafts and story time. I wasn't around for any but the early part, but from what I hear Judah had a great time and was really good at the sports, and especially at running hurdles! Who knew? He even won a medal, as you can see above (actually they all won medals....it's like that when they're three, you know?), and displays it proudly.
He had a little bit of a hard time getting used to a new routine, but he eventually adjusted. Nathan took him yesterday morning since I was sick and followed him around with the camera a little. He took the rest of these pictures. Judah is in this one if you look hard enough....see the kid lying on the ground? Yeah, that's mine.
Yesterday was water day, and Judah loved playing in the pool and getting all wet, as all kids do.
I'm not sure what the logic was, but water day was also sidewalk chalk day. Maybe because the water was already there to clean the chalk up? I always like the mix though because the water makes the colors so much more vivid.
Every day there was some kind of craft that involved sticking sports stickers on something (big felt hand, picture frame, etc.) and usually the craft was all taken apart by the time we got home and Judah was sticking the stickers all over himself. This arrangement was particularly funny, I thought. He looks like some kind of mutant bug...

Today was the last day, and I stuck around a little bit longer to watch. At the beginning our children's leaders (Teri and Becca, who are incredible) had all the kids go up on stage to sing some songs and practice for a performance on Sunday. Going up on stage is the joy of Judah's life right now, so he ran up and got right in the front row. But he didn't sing, oh no. He jumped around like the world's littlest mosher, sat on the ground for a while, then turned around backwards and watched all the other kids sing. I sat and watched him go crazy while all the other kids in his class just stood there quietly, not singing, but not messing around either. Will it always be like this? Is my kid the one other mothers will look at and be all, "At least my kid's not as crazy as Judah"? Oh well, at least he's having a really good time.

Enneagram

I love taking personality tests, just to see how close they can come to pegging my personality. I found this one on Wendy's blog, and it did pretty well with just 37 questions. I came up as a Type 2 by one question, but tied for second on types 4, 7, and 9. I read them all, and I think the type 4 was the closest. So here you go. Take the test and check your results here.

The Romantic/Artist (the Four)
Romantics have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
Be a supportive friend or partner.
Help me to learn to love and value myself.
Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being a Four

My ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
My ability to establish warm connections with people
Admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
My creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
Being unique and being seen as unique by others
Having aesthetic sensibilities
Being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being a Four

Experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
Feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
Feeling guilty when I disappoint people
Feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
Expecting too much from myself and life
Fearing being abandoned
Obsessing over resentments
Longing for what I don't have

Fours as Children Often

Have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
Are very sensitive
Feel that they don't fit in
Believe they are missing something that other people have
Attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
Become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
Feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Fours as Parents

Help their children become who they really are
Support their children's creativity and originality
Are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
Are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
Are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Christmas in June

Every year my parents give all of us kids a group Christmas present that we all use together. The tradition started sometime around 1995, and it's been really fun. The first year was Disneyland annual passes and other years have been trips to the Pageant of the Masters, family vacations in Big Bear, Mammoth, Catalina, and Solvang, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember at the moment. This year was a day at the Huntington Library followed by dinner at Roscoe's Chicken N' Waffles in Pasadena - two of my favorite places!! We had a really great day, doing the "kid friendly" version of the Huntington, which meant lots of time in the children's garden and very little time in the galleries. Nathan and my dad and I did manage to sneak off for a little while to check out the exhibit on body and landscape in LA. It was very cool, and I could have spent hours there.

We started our day with a little picnic on the lawn outside the museum. Then we ventured in and headed for the children's garden, stopping at the iconic fountain and marble-statue-lined lawn on the north side of the house.
Judah and Papa ran around the fountain a couple times and looked at all the koi fish before we moved on....

The children's garden, thankfully, has tons of water features that kids can get into. The adults (some of us) took advantage of the cool water on an over 100 degree day and got wet too.
The kids all got into a splash war with the tiny fountains, with the girls finally just sticking their heads in the water and soaking their hair.
Even Micah joined in and had a great time. Look at how white that boy is! Whose baby is he, anyway? We slathered on the sunscreen and hoped for the best. It turned out just fine.
Zoe and Lindsay horsing around, still in the children's garden.
Our little family of four, on a bridge in the Japanese garden. We ended up spending a lot of time there toward the end of the afternoon, because there was a lot of shade and grass, and tons of fish and turtles and ducks for the kids to look at, even a family of four baby ducks.

Dad and mom, the people that made this all possible, relaxing near a pagoda. Thanks, mom and dad! We all had a blast.
We managed to get about one shot each of all the cousins together. If you zoom in on this one you can see that Micah is NOT HAPPY. This was taken seconds before he rolled backwards down the hill and almost landed in the lake. It scared him pretty good, and ended the photo session.
Lindsay in a tree being a "Lindsay apple" right before the guard told us to get all the kids (they were all in there) out of the tree.
What was left on my plate at the end of dinner. When I first heard about chicken and waffles served together I have to admit I was kind of grossed out. It just seemed wrong. But after I went there the first time, about seven or eight years ago, I realized that this combination, when done right, is just this side of heaven. It is so tasty, the perfect way to end a long day: one diet coke, one waffle, and one piece of really good fried chicken, plus bites of Nathan's omelette and Jude's buckwheat waffle and the community macaroni and cheese. So, so good.
The whole gang at the end of dinner, plus our waitress who was super nice. We all went home stuffed and tired and very happy. It was such a fun day!

My observant readers

Some of you noticed that the date on my Cure ticket is October of 2007. Just to put your minds at peace, no, I didn't lie to you when I said the show was May 31st. It got re-scheduled, since the album release got postponed and wasn't released last fall, as originally planned, so all the concert dates got pushed to 2008 to accomodate a release date somewhere around the middle of April. Alas, we still haven't seen it, and it's now scheduled to come out September 13th or something like that. Which made the concert a little weird, listening to new songs that aren't out yet, but I'm pretty excited about the album from what I heard at the show.

So, all that to say, the concert really was in May, in spite of the ticket date. :)

Obsessive personality

I get obsessed with stuff. Does everyone? Sometimes I feel like I'm just weird. And I can hear you all saying, "Yeah, you are." But usually my obsessions don't last that long, they burn out pretty fast. Like that one time that Nathan and I practically lived on blow pops for about six weeks in late 2001, when we were each eating five or six a day, and then we suddenly stopped and I've eaten maybe two in the last six years. I was thinking about my obsessions today, and trying to determine what this says about my personality. Do I get bored easily? Is everything just a flash in the pan with me? I don't know. Here are some of my current obsessions. Let me know what you think.

Morning glories. I plant them wherever I see dirt. I may be the only person in California that does this, since they grow like weeds here and are a total nuisance. My theory is that I'm making up for lost time, since I was never allowed to plant them where I grew up because my dad abhors anything of the vine persuasion, probably because he knows HE'S the one that will have to prune it before it swallows the house whole. I'd probably also love kudzu. Do you think I'd be arrested if I imported it here?

Freezing stuff. I've always felt that anything you're drinking can never possibly be cold enough, and for the last week or so I've been throwing water bottles and coke cups in the freezer, sometimes with disastrous results. Nathan kindly explained to me that water is the only thing that expands when frozen, and that's why I end up with ice an inch above the top of the bottle.

Salami. Not sure why, but recently in the evenings I head for the bathtub with a good book, a few slices of salami and several....

Baby Bel cheeses. They're so good! Eszter calls them chomp-chomp cheese, because of the Pac-Man like shape that the wax takes when you take it off the cheese. I could eat this stuff all day long.

Cross stitch. Never thought I'd get into it, but I suddenly love it, especially since I found some designs that aren't sickeningly sweet on this site. It calms my mind.

Owen. I found the album At Home with Owen used at Lovells the other night, snapped it up, and have listened to the songs The Sad Waltzes of Pietro Crespi and Use Your Words a hundred times each. I can't get over them.

I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of them at the moment...

The Old Switcheroo

I know the pictures aren't that great, but do you see what happened there? I sold the Mustang! To Christi! It's the best thing that ever could have happened. I still have visitation rights, and Christi even lets me drive my old car when we go out. Isn't she awesome? :)

Because Riva wants to know

1. What was I doing ten years ago today?
If I wasn't so lazy I'd go grab my journal from 1998 and tell you EXACTLY what I was doing. But I am, so I'll approximate. I had just graduated from Biola with a BA in English Literature and was freaking out about what I was going to do with my life. I was still working in graduate admissions, doing my best to fly under the radar, since technically it was a student position and I was no longer a student. I was finishing out my degree by taking a summer course of California History, which turned out to be one of my favorite classes of my college career. I had just met and was dating an extremely unsuitable guy. I was about to turn 22, and getting ready to road trip up to central California to be the maid of honor in my friend Miriam's wedding. AND after that I was going on a trip to San Carlos with my parents and Steve and Arla and Arla's family. It was a pretty busy summer.

2. Five things on my to do list today?

Day's done, but here's what I did today:

Went to Babies R Us, had lunch with my parents, helped coordinate a wedding, went grocery shopping, gave Micah a bath and put him to bed.

3. Things I would do if I were a millionaire?

Buy a private island. Buy everyone in my family neighboring islands. Buy a whole bunch of boats to go back and forth. Buy another island nearby and put up a mall where the only stores would be Borders (for me), Turners (for Nathan), Home Depot (for my dad), a Ruby's (on a pier, for my mom), Golfer's Paradise (for Dave), Williams-Sonoma (for Julie), Jack's Surf Boards (for Steve), Cost Plus (for Arla), Rockler (for Ken), Trader Joe's (for Elly), Fry's (for John), Tall Mouse (for Jenna), Tilly's (for Brian), the Orange Antique Mall (for Ashlee), Brooklyn Pizza (for Jeff, who also gets a really good internet connection for all his Craigs List stuff), and Joanne's (for Heather). 4. Snacks I enjoy?

Chips and salsa, olives, really dark chocolate, Little Debbie's oatmeal sandwich cookies, Campitelli's cookies, salami, Baby Bel cheese, ice cream, popcorn.....

5. Places I've lived?

Lots of cities in Orange County, with two brief ventures out from behind the Orange Curtain to live in La Mirada and Uptown Whittier.

Personalities in pictures

I picked this up from Wendy's blog and thought it was pretty fun. Check out the concept below and create your own!

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions :
1. What is your first name? Kristy
2. What is your favorite food? Thai food
3. What high school did you go to? Whittier Christian
4. What is your favorite color? Aqua
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Jonathan Rhys Myers
6. Favorite drink? Diet Coke
7. Dream vacation? London
8. Favorite dessert? Roy's chocolate lava cake
9. What you want to be when you grow up? A traveler
10. What do you love most in life? Nature
11. One Word to describe you. Imagining
12. Your flickr name. London Blues

And here are Nathan's:

1. What is your first name? Nathan
2. What is your favorite food? Tom kha kai
3. What high school did you go to? El Dorado
4. What is your favorite color? Blue. No, green!!
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Catherine Zeta-Jones
6. Favorite drink? Weinhard's root beer
7. Dream vacation? Flyfishing New Zealand
8. Favorite dessert? Cheesecake
9. What you want to be when you grow up? A chiropractor
10. What do you love most in life? The outdoors
11. One Word to describe you. Honest
12. Your flickr name. All Hands

My mom was totally hoping I'd outgrow this

But I just don't think I'll ever really outgrow the Cure. I've loved them since I was 14 and heard Pictures of You, and that was the beginning. I don't play them non-stop anymore, it's true, but I'd still list them as my favorite band of all time.

Saturday night I got to go to my sixth Cure concert (thanks, Jenn!), this one at the Hollywood Bowl. And it was incredible. I have to say, I think the best way to hear the Cure is outdoors while the sun is setting. The weather was perfect, warm but not hot, and it was a nice clear evening. The setlist was really good. I wouldn't say it's the best I've ever heard (that was the Greek in 2000), but it was cool. They played a lot of stuff that radio-Cure fans would like: Inbetween Days, Lovecats, Just Like Heaven, Boys Don't Cry, A Forest, Close to Me, Lullaby, Why Can't I Be You?, Friday I'm in Love, and stuff like that. But there were a couple little gems. They played To Wish Impossible Things, one of my favorites and one I've never heard live, and Prayers for Rain, and From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea. And Pictures of You, a standard, but still beautiful and somehow different every time they play it. There are a lot of songs I wanted to hear, but their library is so huge that that'll always be the case. They played for three solid hours, and did three encores. As they were walking off the stage at the end of the third one the roadies began to unplug the guitars, but then the band paused at the very edge of the stage, talked for a few seconds, and turned around and came back one more time to play Boys Don't Cry.

Here's the view from our seats. They won't let you take your camera in, but everyone has camera phones now, so what's the point? We were in section D, which is really really good. It was such a good concert!! I loved all the new stuff they played, too, especially the song they opened with, which I think is called Under the Stars, but that's really anyone's guess since the album's not out yet.

So, I guess that's it. They only really come around every four years or so, so I'll be there again in 2012, black eyeliner in hand.