My Bestie is Having a Baby!

I had the pleasure of attending a Blessingway yesterday for my best friend Amanda. A Blessingway is originally a  Navajo traditional ceremony to celebrate a woman as she transitions to the role of Mother. I was a little skeptical about this (but as the daughter of former commune-living hippies, I really shouldn't have been), but I had a great time. Rather than have a party for a baby whom none of us have met yet, the focus is on the mother-to-be, and giving her our well-wishes and blessings before the birth. It was so nice to have a forum to celebrate Amanda, who is such a beautiful pregnant lady!

This is us:

I have known Amanda since Kindergarten, have been friends with her since 3rd grade, and have been BEST friends with her since freshman year of high school. She has been with me during some of the best moments in life, and some of the worst, and I can't wait to meet her baby girl Eibhlin (pronounced "Ave-uh-lynn"-- it's Irish) in a month or so.

Some of the activities of the Blessingway included:

Smudging

Lighting a candle

(we all got tea lights to light when Amanda goes into labor)

A relaxing foot massage by Amanda's older sister

(her younger sister is in the background)

A presentation of beads/charms so that when she's in the delivery room she can look at them and think of the love we're giving to her, and (hopefully) that will give her strength for the labor

Holding a naked baby
(Amanda's sister has already potty trained her 5 mo daughter[!] who hung out naked most of the time)

Belly casting

And opening presents!

We also brought and read poems that made us think of Amanda or childbirth. My poem was this one by Marianne Moore:

I May, I Might, I Must

If you will tell me why the fen

appears impassable, I then

will tell you why I think that I

can get across it if I try.

I picked it because it succinctly sums up my views on life and my idea of what childbirth/parenting must be like. Plus it's short and easy to remember. :)

I'm not going to lie, I cried a lot. I went on forever about all these memories I have of her, and the more I shared, the more I remembered more things to share. I may have been slightly obnoxious since no one else knew what we were talking about, but it was a lot of fun to reminisce and to hear other people's stories about her too.

Here are a couple anecdotes:

* When we were in the 4th grade, we were on the same softball team. One time, during practice when Amanda was playing first base and I was batting, I got out at first. Amanda either laughed at me or I thought she was making fun of me, or whatever. So I threw my helmet at her. Our coach made us run to the edge of the field and back. Together. It was awkward.

* Junior year of high school, we had a series of classes together. We sat in the back of the classrooms and pretty much just talked nonstop. Our teachers must have hated us, but didn't split us up or anything. We had maybe a ten minute break between classes, and we would often go to Dairy Mart during the break and get these huge sodas that we would drink during our second class. Whenever I drink those huge fountain drinks (which isn't a lot, thankfully), I think of her.

* Senior year (I think), we went to some play at the performance theater in Eugene (the Hult Center), and because we didn't arrive super early, we had to park on the top of the parking structure. As you can imagine, after the show everyone tried to leave the parking garage, so there was a huge backup of cars and we were at the end. So we spent the waiting time sitting in my car singing songs from Alanis Morisette's "Jagged Little Pill" at the TOP of our lungs. 

I cannot express how much I love Amanda and how excited I am for her to have her first baby. Hooray! 

(it will also give me an excuse to knit some baby leg warmers)

Things I Think About at 5:14am

I think my biggest fear is that I will go to shut the blinds (if it's getting dark) or open them (if it's getting light) and there will be someone standing there looking in at me. I freak myself out with this thought all the time, and I was just sitting here wondering where that fear originated.

I have my psychopharmacology final today. I'm studying right now. I haven't decided yet whether I should take a quick pre-class nap or just continue to sit here and go over my notes for the millionth time. Wish me luck!

P.S.
I have been taking Vitamin D now for a few weeks. On the bottle it says it "promotes healthy bones and immune system," but I have basically been nothing but sick since I started taking them! Is it possible to be allergic to Vitamin D?

Finals are coming...

... but I'm not studying because I am too delighted by this blog, though it was weird envisioning this person as a Mature, Woman-About-Town (and actress on Broadway!), only to find out she is merely two months older than I am. I have forgotten that I'm slowly edging out of my 20s.

Though, in reality, I have always been a firm believer that I am much better with age. At this rate, by 80 I'll be perfect (I'm not sure whether that's slow or fast, but it gives me time for improvement).

In Other News:
I discovered a spider dangling from my sweatshirt after I took the recycling out (the Mountain of Packing Materials is receding). I brushed it off of me, then tried to squish it with a book. Squishing spiders on carpet is practically impossible, so instead I coaxed it into the book, then swiftly closed it! The next person who borrows The Girl Who Played With Fire from me is going to be surprised with the content on page 357.

Self-Esteem, William James Style

I was doing a bit of homework tonight, and I read something in a chapter about self-esteem that really resonated with me, so I thought I would share it.

As a bit of background, William James was a pioneering psychologist who happened to write a book that I know well, as it was used as a textbook in my Psychology of Religion class in undergrad (The Varieties of Religious Experience) and was venerated by my professor.

"William James, for example, noted that people can stake their self-worth on strikingly distinct qualities, with the result that anyone can achieve high self-esteem as long as they emphasize their strengths and devalue their weaknesses." 
(from Bosson, J.K. & Swann, W.B. [2009] Self-esteem. In M. R. Leary & R. H. Hoyle [Eds.] Handbook of individual differences in social behavior).

I like the idea that anyone can achieve high self-esteem. (That is certainly in practice daily at the ShepAlder household!) It makes me feel hopeful and optimistic for people, my clients, etc. 

The ShepAlder House (Now With More Delightful Shelving!)

Remember when we got our awesome bookshelves that were supposed to be a Christmas present but ended up being a Christmas/birthday hybrid present because I was too lazy to measure our hallway? Well, we (finally) put them together today!

In all fairness, we assembled them into their little box forms as soon as we got them, but then they just hung out in the hallway for two weeks looking like this:

We recycled most of that stuff, by the way, because Josh is awesome (and because I whined), though it didn't all fit in our recycling bin, so some of it is still living on our kitchen floor (in case anyone needs some Styrofoam). 

I have been wanting to get this task done, but we kept putting it off. Finally, today I said it had to be done. It wasn't easy. There may have been some swearing involved (on my part) and some crying (also me), but now it looks like this:

They apparently only give you one shelf per unit, so it looks a little strange right now. We're getting additional shelves in the future. But we finally have something to go in that awkward space in our hallway! Also, we finally have a place for the books that have been gathering around our house in piles! And for the DVDs we're (I'm) too lazy to sort! 

This is what it looks like from the other end:

We're missing a corner piece, which we didn't realize until we had taken everything out of the boxes. They literally shipped this to us on a pallet, wrapped in cellophane, which is now sitting in our garage (in case anyone needs a huge, wooden pallet that FedEx refused to take with them). My mom said that the people at Levenger were really nice to her when she called them about it, so that was positive. 

In reward for helping me today, I'm letting Josh display his Mr. Potato Heads on the top. I think that makes me a pretty good wife. 

Things We Did in Eugene

I got a bit of a break from school, so we went down to Eugene to hang out with my family/sit by the pool. Unfortunately, for the first two days, it was overcast and cold, so we had to find other ways to keep ourselves occupied.

My dad just got an iPad for his birthday, so to christen it for him, Josh set his wallpaper to our awesome beard picture:

It took almost an entire day before he even looked at it and noticed what we had done. This is just one in a list of things we have done to my dad's electronics since he doesn't know how to fix them. My dad's ring tone is still "I Like To Move It, Move It" (from "Madagascar") because Josh set it to that as a joke.

My brother went on a cruise with his friends, but before he left we watched a bunch of movies together. He has three dogs who absolutely love him, and who also love to snuggle. Every time Austin would sit down, his dogs would hop up on his lap:

There are three dogs there-- Jack (my favorite), in the middle is Bella, and Bean 

After Austin left, his dogs were sad and tried to snuggle with Josh instead:

After two days, the sun finally broke through the clouds, so we got to do a lot of this:

Plus, we got to do some swimming, of which I did not get a picture. I'm a little freaked out about going to Hawaii because I have skin that basically hasn't seen the sun since I started grad school three years ago.

On our last night, we got to hang out with our friends. Josh made us play Wits and Wagers. It was lovely to be able to see Laney, who is in the midst of moving from Seattle to Oakland, Maret, who is studying for the Bar Exam, and Logan, who is in Architecture school at UO. We don't get to see any of them nearly enough!

Logan, Maret, Laney, me, and Josh's huge head

We did have kind of a terrifying moment driving back to Beaverton because somewhere before Salem we were stuck behind someone who was driving in both lanes! For more than a mile! Josh drove on the shoulder to get around the person, but we both agreed that we would rather be in front of that person than behind. It is also pretty cool to drive up I-5 on July 4th because people were still setting off fireworks. 

All in all, it was a good trip.

My Favorite View of Summer

Moments later, there was this view, only underwater. 

I love Summer!