Roller Coaster Day

Hello again~!

So today started off super low, but ended pretty high, so I'm here to share with you the ups and downs of this hump day ;)

I started off the morning with volunteering with the OSU Recycling Center's on-campus move-out efforts from 8am to 10am.

It's equal parts admiration for how tight a system they have in place to deal with all the potential waste...and disheartenment at how much consumption and subsequent mindless disposal of material goods takes place. And that's just from what I saw on a Wednesday morning at one campus. When I start thinking about all the other days in the year and locations all over the planet where landfills are being injected with perfectly good items that others are hurting for...well, needless to say it can leave me feeling a little despondent. ;_;

So although I was volunteering (which is supposed to be a good thing) and having a hand in the move-out efforts put on by the campus (a personal passion of mine), it did put me in a bit of a sad mood.

Then I had to come home and work on this grueling manga which had been taking up a lot of my time when what I really wanted to be doing was getting items from the Greek Chapters I'd been in touch with. I was starting to wonder "is anything going to come of all the energy I've poured into the donation drive move-out with them?" A few of the houses have been impossible to get a hold of, and the others keep insisting nothing's really been gathered yet, and to wait for Friday/Saturday.

On one hand, I dread that it'll be a piddly little turn-out, and I'll have hardly made any difference.
And then on the other hand, I dread that it'll be too big for me to handle and end up with me embarrassing myself and nobody wanting to work with me again. ;_;

So yeah, I was a bit of a mess.

But here's where the upturn came in:
In the middle of the afternoon, I got the okay from the Chi Omega sorority to come and pick up some items that had been accruing in their little donation pile.
I drove the car up and this is what I was able to pick up!

A couple of boxes and six bags full of clothes :)

My contact lady there, the facilities manager "Miss C." was such a sweetheart, saying how great an idea she thinks this is and how everybody she tells always agrees, and it just made my heart swell to hear that :)

The moment I got home, I sorted the item and started posting them on the Corvallis Families Gift Economy page. It feels so great to know that these are items that are willingly being parted with by people who honestly didn't want them anymore, and they are finding homes with people who are enthusiastic about receiving them.

Later, after working with the Wednesday night drawing circle (for the last time until the fall!) I started to go about with my "guerilla-style PSA posting" mission. Mind you, it was 9pm when I got started, so I only got 200 posted around before I felt terribly tired, hungry, and cold. >_<

Oh, well. I will go out again tomorrow night, me thinks~!

OH! And the icing on the cake, was getting word back from CWS that they'd accepted our tuition adjustment plea so that both kids can go to school there again next year :D Yaaaaaay!!!!!

Phew!
So yeah, what a day of despair and hope, frustration and progress.

Thanks for stopping by, and until next time, take care and Happy Roller Coaster Day!!

Student Exodus Progress

Howdy howdy!

So today was another super scorcher, and as I sit here typing, my nape is throbbing with a sun burn ;_;
D'oh! I try to be so good about putting on sun screen, and did my face and arms but didn't realize how exposed my nape was during all my bike riding today... Oh, well. I've applied aloe vera so I'll hope for the best!

Anyway, today's highlights included the passive but larger outreach effort I'm making for my Student Exodus endeavor: business card sized shout-outs!

The front of the card

The back

These will be taped to (by?) the doors of student-filled apartments in the next couple of days.
The idea being that students will take the minute or two it takes to make a curb alert post on CL and leave their items on the curb, rather than chuck perfectly good things in the dumpster.

The QR code brings you directly to a Corvallis Craigslist new post form.

I got 1000 made, and when I think about just the apartments on 11th street, it makes me wonder how far I'll be able to stretch these things :D

Besides that, I am now going to start listening to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" on audiobook while I make more origami stars. This batch of origami stars will be for my goodbye present to the CWS 8th grade graduating class ^^

Will post photos of that when they are all done!

Until then, take care and Happy Student Exodus Progress!!

Summer 2016 Clothing Swap

Howdy hoooo~!


So today was the 2016 Summer iteration of the Corvallis Family Clothing Swap.
I swear, with every Swap I can feel the machine of it running smoother and smoother.
I have a dedicated team of volunteers who go above and beyond to make sure the Swap is going as well as it can both during and after all the attendees are there.

I love these ladies!!!!!!!

I felt that today's crowd was maybe a little smaller than usual, with both new attendees and veteran ones alike :D
Must've been the sweltering hot weather (99 degrees here in Corvallis!) that made people decide to lie low and be more subdued...

A lot was brought in but a lot was taken out too so that by the end we didn't feel overwhelmed by the mega piles of leftovers or anything :)

Mandy S. was such a dear, looking out for my and my sister's clothing needs and finding many a good professional pieces for Kathy-neechan down in VA.

So thankful to our sponsors, as always.
I had this vision that Dash would go around and take video testimonials of happy Clothing Swap goers so that we could send them to our sponsors, but the shyness bug took over. So he opted, instead, to take photos of happy folks on their way out. I think I'll make something of a collage/PPT for our sponsors using that instead. ;)

It was cool to talk to certain attendees who'd been attending since their little ones were in utero and who are now wee little babies sitting in their baby carriers. Talk about an intergenerational experience :D

It was too hot to try on my new finds to showcase in a fashion show style, but trust me I have found a couple treasures~!

Well, til next time take care and Happy Summer 2016 Clothing Swap!!

Certificado Literal de Nacimiento

Hello hello!

My, what a day!
High of 88 degrees and a mixture of fun and productivity and personal endeavors and progress!!

Firstly, I got to spend a couple of hours this morning with the sweet Karen C. who helped me start my journey of tackling my favorite song from R&M: Do You Feel It? by Chaos Chaos.
On the piano!!

It's amazing. I feel like I'm at a first grade (max!) level when it comes to reading music and Karen's there are college graduate level reading and performing a beautiful piece without having even ever heard it before~!!!

#aspirations

Then I got some work done, created some key pieces for tomorrow's Clothing Swap, and then...the icing on the cake:

Yahoo!!

Yeah, that's right.
It's a new copy of my Spanish birth certificate which was the last piece of documentation I needed to be ready for our cita with the Spanish Consulate in two weeks in San Francisco.

After anxiously waiting two months for this, I am finally all ready for proceeding with getting the kids' Spanish citizenship arranged and even getting our own Libro de Familia -- buya!!!

We also topped the night off with pizza and wine, so I'm gonna sign off early tonight.

Thanks for stopping by, take care and Happy Certificado Literal de Nacimiento!!

Roses & Thorns

Greetings again~!


I thought I'd share with you something we do at the table every evening for dinner:
Roses & Thorns

This is pretty much each family member's opportunity to share their rose (best part) and thorn (worst part) of the day.

It's a nice way to hear about everyone's day and often leads to more in-depth story telling about it or tangent conversations in general.

Tonight Roses & Thorns look something like this:

Roses
Dash = hanging out with William
Ella = playdate with Beatrix
Chrissy = raspberry picking with the kids
William = "this dinner" (is default answer)

Thorns
Dash = getting pricked by the prickly plants out back
Ella = none
Chrissy = not really liking the star to of "Sense & Sensibility" which I'd just begun listening to
William = mama making him eat his dinner

Before R&R we always given thanks too, either with reciting "Blessings on the Blossom" or singing the "Thank you God for ____" song or just exclaiming いただきます！　


What are some family table traditions you have in your household?
I'd love to hear about it!

Until next time, take care and Happy Roses & Thorns!!

Waiting with William

Hello again~

I don't know if I told you this already but the kids have two different schedules at school that looks like this:
Although Ella goes to school five days a week, William only goes three (M,T, W) and though they start at the same time (8:15), Ella gets out at 2pm, while William gets out at 12:30pm.

That means that three days a week, assuming I'm the one doing pick-up (I usually am), I have to kill time between 12:30pm and 2:pm.

That's one and a half hours.

I opt to hang around on campus rather than go back home, because 9/10 times I've ridden the bike to school, which means it'd be 30 minutes to home and then 30 minutes back to school again...so I might as well sit tight there.

I talked a little about what I do while waiting for all that time back in my Waldorf in the Spring post.
But I thought I could take this opportunity to disclose a little bit more about how William and I spend the early afternoon together.

We'll start with when the weather is crappy.

Depending on its availability, we'll take advantage of having the school gym all to ourselves.
William will practice dribbling while I play on the piano, or we'll nab some books from the front office and read them quietly.

A few times we got to be spoiled by Miss Wendy and hang out in the Golden Roses room where William played and I got to sip tea with her.

We've also been known to volunteer to sweep the hallways which get quite dirty from all the dirt and muck that gets tramped inside.


But when the weather's nice, oh how good it is to hang out at CWS!

There's the various playgrounds to take part in; seeking shade in the woods; exploring the greenhouse and garden; or even climbing the bamboo out front:

I swear, he's suddenly shot up, this kid.

That last one's technically a new addition but one that I look forward to rocking for the remainder of the year and next fall too.

Oh, man.
Speaking of which next year is going to be even more interesting with the difference of the two kids' pick-up times.

William, being in kindergarten, will still get out at 12:30 but Ella's class won't be released until 3:15 @_@

I'm not quite sure what the game plan will be then in terms of pick-ups but one thing's for sure:
I have enjoyed this routine very much this 2015-2016 year, and I cherish all the bonding time it's given William and me.

Well, until next time take care and Happy Waiting With William!!

Merry (chockfull!) Month of May

Hello hello!

Wow, I was absent for a long time there.
A month and then some, to be exact.
But you have to understand, I was suuuuper busy and updating my blog just fell by the wayside.
To make it up to ya'll, I will now give an overview of just what it was I was so busy with in May, starting with...

1) Origami Lucky Stars
As I'd mentioned briefly back in April, I had been slated to help decorate for CWS's annual Spring Fling adults-only dance. In my mind, I was envisioning making a bunch of little origami lucky stars that would hang off branches throughout the gym in a woodland-esque scene.
Unfortunately, after a couple of weeks of feverishly folding 200+ stars, the Spring Fling got cancelled suddenly, so I was a bit left in the lurch.
Nah, not really.
I ended up giving a few away for Mei's 11th birthday (お誕生日おめでとう！), incorporating them into Japanese lessons and Sunday School class and...this!

Rainbow order, of course.

So yeah, I now consider myself quite an expert at Lucky Star creation, so if you ever wanna learn, just let me know! I work with 8"+ long strips cut to 1/2" but my goal is to get down to 5 mm to use in jewelry and the like ;)

2) Student Exodus
Some of you may recall my 2016 New Year's Resolution post back in January, wherein I mentioned wanting to do something to divert waste during the great student move-out happening in June. Well, after thinking about it over five months, I finally came up with a plan which I set into motion the third day of May.

The doorhangers come with move-out timeline/calendar and two complimentary bags

I pretty much adopted what OSU does for their on-campus residents, and tweaked it to work for the Greek houses (frats and sororities) that I targeted for this. The idea is that the students can turn their move-out into more of a donation drive, with their unwanted items going to local non-profits and families in need.
 I dished out the resources and materials for 1000 "move-out kits" total, but at this point have only handed out 400 or so between a dozen or so Greek houses. Oh, well. The leftovers can be used for next year too ;)
Next week will really be the busy week of winging by the houses and picking up the items to redistribute.
I'm nervous but excited! It's the first year anyone's done this (from what I can tell) and I've gotten lots of positive responses from folks I've told. The GT will even be covering it too, so yay!
Watch out for more updates on that next week and beyond ;)

3) Audiobooks
So between these two repetitive and time-consuming tasks, I've found myself with a lot of time to listen to audiobooks!
Within three weeks, I listened to:
George Orwell's "1984"
Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice"
Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist"
and now I'm 30 minutes away from finishing a podfic for the BBC Sherlock show called "Disregard the Danger."

I love audiobooks for their multi-tasking capabilities, and I must say that I have a couple of preferences when it comes to them.
Firstly, I like one reader to narrate the entire book, doing all the characters' voices and everything. None of this "cast of voice actors to do all the characters" B.S. ;P
I also like them to be hella long. "The Alchemist" was just over four hours long which was too short for me, sir.

Anyway, I don't know what I'll be listening to next, but I'll be sure to share it when I'm done.

4) Art
There was also quite a lot of art done this month!
Ella, the resident artist of the family, has been developing her style more and more, especially with the help of a new desk (thank god for curbside finds!) and her Pokemon book.
Here's one drawing of hers that particularly tickles me pink, which she did for my 32nd birthday:

Rick & Morty forever and ever.

Just look at Morty's cheek! It's bulging from the cake that's in his mouth. Awesome, right?? :D
Myself, I've been working a lot with the local schools and artists groups, but got to do something I'd never done before! I worked with the Corvallis Drink & Draw Social Group!
The group usually meets at a pub or other such location to draw in a social setting. But they'd never had a themed session with a clothed model so I got to be their first one :)
The theme was "Cowgirl" and it was a lovely time with a super lovely and talented group.
Below are two pieces created by the lady who runs it, the very talented Patricia Smith:

Held each pose for 30 min. Not bad! :D

Jason Courtney also shared some with their Facebook group page, that you can see here. Wow, so talented!!!

5) Lamprey Creek
As for an outdoor activity, I'd like to share with you what we have been up to as far as Lamprey Creek.
Thanks to the proactive and wonderful Tess Hoffman, CWS will be an official contributor to the restoration of the newly named Lamprey Creek in MLK Jr. Park here in Corvallis.
What that means is on the first Saturday of May we helped clear away the blackberry bushes chocking up the creek; and last Saturday we helped set up and take down the official awakening ceremony.
It's good to show the kids that volunteerism is what makes the world go 'round, especially for such a noble cause as this.

Ella sporting her CWS shirt!

It was a good time, and I look forward to coming back in the fall to help plant a garden or two! :D

Those were pretty much the main things I thought I'd share from the month of May.
I feel I ought to share a recent photo of William too, so here he is on May 1st at our church's "Lego Day" event:

So excited with his teacher Miss Louise.

I've also been playing a lot of piano, and even memorized a beautiful piece by Brian Crain in just one week! It's called "At the Ivy Gates" and it's just lovely.
I also hope to pick back up Amelie's "Comptine d'Un Autre Été" and hopefully a Rick & Morty song or two!!!!! I suddenly feel like I can do it! Wish me luck~!

 Oh, I also got to translate the remaining volumes of this super sweet manga called "Kilala Princess":

かわいい〜♡

Can't wait to read it to Ella. I think she'd really take to the art and storytelling devices~

We also had three families over for dinner on three different weekends, which is pretty big for us, but something that we definitely want (need!) to do more often.
We've discovered that the trick is making it a "build your own ____" kind of dinner. Examples include "build your own burrito" and "build your own sandwich." "Build your own pizza" is a good one too ;)

Well, that is all I have to say about May.
June is gonna be awesome busy in its own way and hopefully I'll be better about updating so that I don't have to dump a bunch of stuff on you in one go. :D

Til then, thanks for stopping by, take care and Happy Merry (chockfull!) Month of May!!