Goats and the Great Outdoors

So I have been away from blogging for much too long unfortunately :/… I guess that is my usual… But I have been so busy with school and everything else in life sometime there just is no time! But hopefully I will find some more time now and again! I am nearing the completion of this semester- it felt so slow and so fast at the same time! I just have two more finals to make it through! Over the past month I survived a bunch of exams, got to catch up with my two old roomies and have a grand time with them (which included eating a whole birthday cake, making fuzzy navels with cake vodka, playing some card games, thrifting and yard sale-ing… Great times), and spent some time outside with my boyfriend- we even started our own garden! And we also had a day of adventuring recently near my hometown. We went out for a yummy brunch, went to the thrift store, and also visited a goat farm!

We stopped at a diner for delicious brunch!

This was the super cute goat farm we stopped at! They let us go back and see all the babies (kids) too! They were precious!

I had such a wonderful time! My boyfriend also bought me a goat cookie cutter, goat soap & goat milk! I had never had goat’s milk before, and I just have to say now that I have I love it! It tastes delicious! I have yet to use the soap since I am waiting until I use up what’s left of the soap bar I do have. And I am way excited about my cookie cutter! Next time I go I want to get the smaller version of it as well.

I really have no idea why I love goats so much… But yeah, all in all life has been going pretty good lately… It is hard being broke and not really have much extra money to spend, but I am getting better with my spending. Honestly all I have bought lately is groceries, school tuition/books, and the occasional thrifting outing (I was so happy I found a super cute swimsuit for only $2!! Seriously! So excited about it!)… So we shall see how I am doing as the next few months go by.

In other news:

I saw this video and it got me thinking:

I spend way too much time on the computer/in front of a screen… It is ridiculous… Lately I have been thinking about how people (myself included at times) see the world through their screens than actually seeing it- being so quick to take a picture or video of something rather than just experiencing it. I know I am guilty of this- I want to take pictures all the time! And I feel like that is sad… Although it is nice to have the memories that go along with a photo or a video, you miss out on some of the experience, and it is less about your memory of it and more of what you captured… If that makes sense. I really want to make it a goal to work on my spiritual side more and being more aware and integrated in the world… I found out about a Buddhist monastery in New York that I would like to visit sometime… It could be closer but it isn’t too far to travel. As much as a love just watching tv or being on the internet mindlessly, I can see what it does to me and how detrimental it can be. I want to be more unplugged.

I also would like to be a vegetarian… But every attempt I make just seems to fall through and I don’t stick with it. I wish food was easier! After learning and understanding things from my Vet Tech classes, I really want to treat my body well… It’s funny I am learning more about myself by learning about animals than I did with human nursing (granted I didn’t stay the full 4 years for that!) but it makes me understand better. And I think when you understand what is going on you want to take better care… Understanding my Insulin Resistance is helping me want to do what my body needs to make it better… It just makes me so confused as to what I should eat and I just hate how complicated it seems to be.

But anyway! I just go off topic so easily! That’s all for now- I need to study for my two finals I have tomorrow! Once I make it through Thursday we start Large Animal next Tuesday! So excited! Two months of sheeps/goats, cows, and horses! I am looking forward to it!

I wish I lived in the English Countryside

Sadly my Spring Break is coming close to an end… I wish it would last longer but unfortunately that is not the case. It really has been a nice break from how stressed and rushed life had been seeming lately… So it will not be fun getting ‘back to the grind’… But I guess that’s life… After seeing my girlfriends last Friday/Saturday I really did not do much else that was exciting. Worked Sunday and Wednesday. On Monday I really didn’t do much of anything that I remember (how sad is that?). Tuesday I actually did go to a job interview, which I did not get although I really wasn’t expecting too. They wanted a full time person, which I couldn’t do. But I went to the interview anyway and it seemed like it went well and they said they would keep my resume for a possibility in the future. It is a little bit depressing being rejected once again. I find it frustrating that it is so hard to get a job in a veterinary clinic just working as an assistant! I am trying my best not to dwell on the last interview I had in December… It’s so hard to get it out of my mind. But I’m trying. So that was Tuesday…

Call the Midwife

Myko and I started watching ‘The Walking Dead’, which I am enjoying (although it made me sleep horribly Tuesday night which did not make for a fun Wednesday at work). I also started watching ‘Call the Midwife’ which is very good. I love the 50′s music and all the beautiful costumes, and the stories are very good as well. And at our sleepover on Friday Emily let me borrow Downton Abbey season 2! So I basically spent all day yesterday watching it! I finish it this morning… That show is damn addicting! The actors are great and the costumes are also gorgeous… And it really is such an interesting time period (one that I had never had much interest in before this show).

Downton Abbey

Apparently I am just obsessed with British period dramas… I does make me yearn for a time when there weren’t cars all over the place- when you could bike everywhere in town. There weren’t huge Walmart’s everywhere putting out every local business. When there wasn’t plastic every place you looked… I know I am idealizing times that definitely were not perfect in anyway, sometimes I just wish it were easier to be closer to nature and sustainability in those ways before we all became super technologically advanced and so complicated… But that is still idealizing…

Oh well, maybe I just really want to live on a farm in the middle of the countryside…

Maybe one day…

… But for now I need to get back to studying!

Friends are the Best Medicine

Spring Break is finally here! I cannot say how much I needed it… This semester has been crazy! Studying Veterinary Technology has been a lot of work- it’s definitely not just holding puppies and kittens! But I made it through my classes on Friday and then got to spend some time with my beau before heading out close to home to visit my besties- Nikki (whose blog is found here) and Emily! Here are some photos courtesy of my iPhone camera/Instagram:

 

 

 
 

I took way too many pictures of Nikki’s gorgeous cat (he is like a bear!)… But he is just too much fun to photograph! Nikki also had that really cool bottle of rum, so I had to take some pictures of it. Nikki made us chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast- which were delicious, as usual! And she has also gotten me addicted to Riesens, which are amazing little candies that taste so good! We all did tarot readings, and this time mine was pretty good. Helps to enforce that I need to keep going and keep working hard! I can do it!

It was also such a beautiful day! Sun was shining and the weather was cool… My perfect weather!

Definitely was much needed. It makes me sad that I only get to see these gals maybe once a month (or once every two or three months) since our lives are so busy and it’s impossible to schedule. But I will never be too old for a sleepover with my girlfriends! We’ve been friends with each other since middle school and I definitely don’t want to ever lose contact with them. Besties for life!

So it was a very good start to my break! As for the rest of it I will have two days of work, and the other days I just want to relax. I am going to study and do some homework to stay on top of things, but I would also like to spend some time with my boyfriend, clean up (much needed!), maybe post a blog or two, and I would really like to make some art… I just need to paint something! It’s been so long… And I will definitely be relaxing and enjoying my time off!

And now for something completely different…

… I got a haircut!

Before:

*drumroll please*

Based off of this haircut I found from typing in ‘short curly hairstyles’ in Google images. I found that picture a few days ago and have been thinking about it ever since! As soon as I saw it I loved it- but I didn’t know if I could pull it off or not. A lot of my friends said go for it. The other reason I was a bit apprehensive was because I didn’t think my boyfriend would like it, and even though I am definitely a ‘do what you want’ type of girl, I also try to be considerate of what he does like (which is sometimes I very hard rope to balance across)… But he came along with me to the salon and I went for it!

Wearing my cute earrings from a craft market- they are glass insulin bottles that were made into earrings!

Needless to say I am very happy with how it came out. I feel like a bad ass. And it’s the best of both worlds because I get to have some kick ass short hair AND some of my long pretty curls. Which was one of the reasons I like the cut in the pictures in the first place- it’s a perfect compromise for my boyfriend and me, and that makes me happy that we can both be happy. Plus, he has come to really like it . I just love how it’s different!

Now I just need some tattoos!

… Which I would love, but honestly I am thinking I will have to wait because pretty soon my bank account will be zero. For the Vet Tech program we need to get rabies pre exposure vaccines which cost just about $800… Sooooo basically I will have no money after next week :/ blargh… I guess at least I’ll have a cool haircut!

Also: Don’t be afraid to rock whatever haircut you like! I say go for it! Honestly, worst thing that happens is you hate it and then you just grow it back out (and at least you are all the more knowledgeable of what you like!)

And I’ll probably have some kind of Vet Tech related posting soon… I should’ve done one sooner, but I got lazy. I had my first Parasitology Lecture exam last week, and then this week I have my Clin Path Lecture and Lab exams, and now next week I have my Parasitology Lab exam as well as my first Animal Nutrition exam… Let me tell you I cannot wait for Spring Break! Can’t come soon enough! I am happy though that I got my Clin Path lecture grade back and it was a 96%! Yay! So yeah, hopefully more from me soon, but I am not promising!

Fat Princesses

So I have been meaning to post this for a long long time now. These pictures aren’t the best but they are all I have of this!

 

Seriously, painting these was like the bane of my existence! It all started in Fall of 2011… I was in my Painting II class and had no idea what I wanted to do for my project (as a second level you basically can choose what you want to paint and do not have to follow the class)… I took me almost a whole month to decide what I wanted to do. I had been going back and forth, but I had really wanted to do something with body image but just didn’t know what. So I thought about it and wanted to paint fat disney princesses, and I knew from the start one of my points was that they would be happy and just like the normally are- only fat too! Because during my research I found other art that had fat disney princesses, but I just hated how they looked miserable… I wanted them to be happy in their bodies! Although I wish I had made one or two of the princesses a bit fatter/different shaped- I did give most of them a more ‘small boobs bigger everything else’ because I personally have larger thighs than boobs and I like to see that represented more often. But now I wish I had been a bit more reflective of the reality of different shapes and different kinds of fatness for different women. I was also adamant with my professor that this was not meant to be a statement about how our country is getting fat- NOT THE POINT OF THESE PAINTING!…  I wish I still had my artist statement or something, scratch that! I found it!

So yeah… That was my statement, which was basically taking ‘Being fat is okay even though the media makes us think otherwise!’ and making it sound prettier and more intellectual. So yeah, here are some more pictures of the paintings I did.

Jasmine was the first princess I painted. The way the process worked was that I found coloring book images of the princess and used a lightbox to trace them (Originally I was just drawing them in my own style, but my professor and I talked and he said that they would be more effective using known images that are instantly recognizable, and I saw this point) and then I altered them to make them fat. So I had to do that for all 6 princesses first. Next I gessoed all 6 of my giant pieces of paper. Then I had to scan all of my drawing into the computer, and I went to another room that had a projector screen and used that to enlarge my sketches and project them onto a white board where I had taped my gessoed paper too (as you can tell from the pictures with me standing next to them- they are sized up quite a lot from a tiny coloring book image!)

So there was a ton of work just getting to the stage that I could even start painting! After I had gotten my sketches onto to paper, I then started mixing my paint (which was also a time consuming event in and of itself! Getting the right colors took a lot of time and a lot of paint!) and painting! I first painted in the princesses with the known colors of their clothes and hair. With their skin tone I tried to be a bit more accurate with the non-white characters… They get white washed so often it’s ridiculous! And then I had to paint the background space… Which was also a pain! I wanted to use complimentary colors that just went together, and not use the same background color twice. And it sucked if I ran out of that color because if i mixed it myself it was almost impossible to get it again (as is what happened with Snow White and that green background… took me FOREVER to get it right, and then I ran out!). And then the final step I used black India ink to do the outlines (I tried using black paint, and that just did not work, so I had used India ink in my Principles class, and thought I could just try that, and it worked soooo much better and easier!).

Belle…. I felt kinda ‘meh’ about her.

Snow White. This picture does not really do her justice… I think she may have been one of my favorites in the end- I just loved her coloring and her pose and just the look of this one. It was very pop-art-y and I like that.

Cinderella… I hated this one. So much so that after the class I tore it up and threw it away… She also just didn’t fit well, and also was out because she was the only princess not holding an object… After picking my images I noticed that all of the princesses were holding something- flower or an animal… So it seemed to represent femininity in a way, although I did not explore that as much as I could have, but in the way that being female is so much tied up in how we are judged on our looks maybe?

Mulan. She was probably the most difficult one to draw! Damn crickie! But I loved her background color- the salmony orange- I really liked it and I think her coloring went together really well.

Aurora… She was ‘meh’… Didn’t have too many feelings about her. I liked painting her gold crown and necklace, although you can’t really tell from this picture!

Ariel was probably my second favorite- the beautiful colors got me for her! And she just came out so nice!

So yeah…. Hell of a long ass process and a lot (A LOT) of work went into making these. I spent hours in the studio just trying to get everything done in time… Hence the pictures in the beginning of me shaking my fist at the paintings!

So I completed these by December ’11 and I did get an ‘A’ for that class and my professor really was proud of my work and what I was doing with my art, and that I could take it a step further… Although sometimes I don’t think he understood my fat acceptance mindset… It was a very happy moment being told that though, I really think of that talk fondly… I wish I was still working like this…

But yeah… I just wanted to share with everyone! I wish I had clearer pictures but not much to do about it now… I am honestly not even sure where I put the originals (besides throwing away Cinderella!). I think I had them rolled up and rubber banded somewhere at home, but I am really not sure… Maybe I’ll find them one day, flatten them out, and take better pictures… Who knows! But now I release these images to the world, although I may regret it one day because people are idiots… But oh well! Hopefully they affect someone positively and spread the message I intend for them to spread.