Bella checks out my warm under-roos

The shovels are out, a new brand new snow blower is in the garage and his and hers cross country ski's are standing by in the basement. Come on snow!

I love the beginning of winter. Cups of hot cocoa in the evening and digging out my favorite winter hats give me a warm fuzzy feeling. I like finding sweaters and scarves I haven't worn for several months and pulling out my heavy-duty socks. However, the final sign of winter is putting on the "chicken-skins" for the first time.

This morning I contemplated wearing long underwear, but those toasty warm under garments were still packed away. Yes, I live in Minnesota, and it's not unbearably cold out (yet) but I hate being cold- even for a minute! Those five minutes until the car warms up in the morning are COLD! And the two minute walk from the building to the car after work is COLD!

So tonight I dug out the long underwear and am officially ready for winter. Christmas?  That's a different story!

Thanksgiving

My Thanksgiving holiday started on Wednesday. I worked from home in the morning while my car was in the shop getting some work done. Nothing major a couple new tires and some routine maintenance that I had neglected. I now have four new tires and am officially ready for winter!
The afternoon was spent cleaning/picking up around the house and prepping a few food items.  I really like getting ready to host events. I like thinking about which dish is best for each food item and then thinking about the order that each item needs to be cooked, warmed or served.
After a few hours at home I met up with a couple of friends for pedicures and dinner. It has been way too long since my toes were pampered like that!
Bright and early Thursday morning Chris and I were up doing last minute cleaning and prepping for our families. We hosted a 2 pm dinner for Chris' mom, brother, sister and my mom, dad, sister and brother-in-law. It was sure cozy in our little house!
I was so thankful to have a cozy house to share with my family- it was a wonderful day of stories, laughter, games and food. Wherever you are I hope you were also among family, friends and good times.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Mentally Stuffed, Physically starving

Recently I attended a conference in St. Paul. I know I’ve talked a lot about it, but it had a big impact on me!

I started my career as a naturalist by being dropped in the middle of the St. Paul/Minneapolis with a bag of fishing poles, a truck full of activity bins and a weekend of training. Luckily for me, I took to it like a fish in water (ha) and knew from my first successful activity that I was hooked for life.

Flash forward a several years and here I am. No longer in the front-lines but reaping the benefits of being an excellent naturalist.

I’ve been struggling with the transition from front-line naturalist to administrator. At first it was because the responsibilities were so foreign; now it’s because I’ve lost track of the naturalist in my role as an administrator.

Back to the conference: it was bursting with opportunities for me to reconnect with my inner naturalist- but more specifically to the naturalist administrator.  Higher education, training, workshops, networking... I took pages and pages of notes that week. Not just about the sessions I was sitting in, but about things I could do back at work.

Meals were rushed affairs of “What session did you attend? How was it? What did you learn? What are you going to next?” I think a few morsels hit my mouth.  I put meals at conferences and wedding receptions in the same category: tons of talking, not very much eating and I’m always hungry when I get home.

Regardless of hunger, I met new people and feel like I finally got my spark back. I’m seriously evaluating my next step in this field and I suspect it will mean I will finally be heading back to school.

After chatting with a local professor I realized afterwards that someday I want to be the person that people seek out as a resource. I want to be so good at what I do I’m recognized widely for my role in the naturalist field.

For now, I’ll try to be satisfied with filling up mentally at workshops and trainings and one day soon graduate school. I’ll try to remember to pack a snack.

This or that?

This captures my “free time” perfectly. Like everyone my free time is limited but the things I can do, and should do, or endless. When it comes to reading I’m constantly torn between the light and fluffy or the serious and thought provoking. Satisfy my appetite or feed my soul? 


So what am I trying to do on my blog? I’m going to share the world I live in, through all of the unique lenses in my head. 
* I’m a 30-something living in the beautiful city of Minneapolis.  
* I’m the wife of an Iraq war veteran: an amazing man who serves in the Army National Guard.
* I’m a young woman learning to live with Sjogren’s Syndrome.
* I’m a naturalist and environmental educator.


With humor, sarcasm and that thing called common sense I’m going to write about those things and about how they affect my everyday life.


Back to that magazine v book battle... the magazine won today. The book however will win the war and will eventually find a place for itself on my bookshelf while the magazine is set out for recycling.

First snow!

Saturday, Nov 19- 11am

Sunday, Nov 20- 1 pm

Finish your transaction and THEN finish your conversation

I love evaluating customer service. Especially the service cashiers at grocery stores provide. I worked at grocery store throughout college and hopefully I’ve never committed any of these no-nos.  

I was wrapping up at a store this afternoon when a manager called out to the cashier “Charlie, Charlie! What are you still doing here?”  Of course this grabbed Charlie’s attention and he stopped paying me any attention. I counted in my head one, two, three, four... as he waited held my card, receipt and coupons hostage in his hand and held a conversation about what time his shift ended.

...ten, eleven, twelve... Couldn’t he just hand me my things and let me go?.... sixteen, seventeen, eighteen... Shouldn’t the MANAGER know better?... twenty one... Oh hello! You remembered I’m here!

Tight polite smile and I’m outta here. 

Stupid Minnesota nice kept me from saying “HELL-OOO! Can I go now?”

Living with Sjogren’s Syndrome: Part 2

While reacquainting myself with my blog I reviewed some past blog entries. An entry from February 2011 Living with Sjogren’s Syndrome was one of my last posts before I went on my, ahem, sabbatical.  I figured an update was due.

In that entry I explained how my outlook had changed due to my recent diagnosis. I’ve been doing my best to continue to do these things:

• I carefully plan my days to bank extra time and energy for evening dinner or happy hour plans.  I also know I need to schedule down time for myself.

• I work hard at work, use my comp time to go home early when I can and try really hard to leave work at work!

• I eat healthy as much as possible when confronted by bad choices I try to remember how awful I feel after I indulge in something delicious- but bad for me.

• I try to exercise regularly. This is probably the hardest because I feel better when I’ve been exercising regularly.  But, when I feel like crap it’s hard enough to find my work-out clothes much less get out the door!

Regular exercise continues to be challenging and eating healthy is probably the biggest and best variable to predict my energy level. (As I sit here with a giant piece of cake...)

I didn’t realize until very recently that my ability to plan, create lists and prioritize are the skills keeping me afloat in all aspects of my life. Whether it’s work, Thanksgiving dinner or planning my blog posts you can bet I have a list, a timeline and benchmarks to make sure I successfully reach my goal with the least amount of stress.

So I found it ironic that I read that post when right now, I’m incredibly run down and have persistent muscle pain permeating my body. I’ve been feeling pretty down on myself for not feeling well: I should be pushing through this, I should have been eating better and doing a better job of (fill in the blank).

Today I realized I need to add a bullet to that list I made back in February:

• I will acknowledge my bad day, days, week or weeks.  Having a bad day here and there is allowed, understandable and is NOT failure.

It sounds silly but it was a very liberating realization.

Blog Health

Dinner and silent auction at Dodge Nature Center. 11/10/11

I spent the majority of last week at the National Association for Interpretation's annual fall conference. It was in St. Paul and I was very happy that I was able to attend. The hot topic was social media in the field of interpretation.

In case you're confused by the term interpretation. The field of environmental education is filled with park rangers, naturalists, science teachers, and interpreters. I know it's confusing and ask any naturalist (the preferred term of folks in my neck of the woods) they'll do their best to sort it out with you.

Back to social media... it was all over the conference! I attended a session titled WHY BLOG? Officially, I attended this session because I want to start a blog at work. Unofficially, I really enjoy the blog that the presenters author: The IBD Blog.

I learned a lot at this session. A blog needs to say something (preferably in a unique voice) and it should support a mission, vision or achieve some established goals. As a blogger I should know my audience and be consistent. Hmm...

I started my blog when I was a naturalist constantly on-the-move and wanted/needed a way to stay connected with family and friends. That was enough to carry this blog through the years. Once I settled and stopped moving my blog started to falter. (And the guilt started to set in, sorry Jena!)

So here I am. Ready to evaluate my blog:
Unique voice- the many hats I wear give me a unique perspective.
Mission- I don't have one... I'll have to work on that one!
Audience- Family and friends
Consistency- I'm embracing the planner in me and I think I've got this one covered...

So, I haven't been taking very good care of my blog, but let's see if I can nurse this baby back to health!

I need to start taking pictures!

What a fantastic weekend!

On FRIDAY night a group of four couples, two moms and one sister went out for Valentine’s Day dinner at Buca di Beppo.  Yum!  Valentine’s Day dinner at Buca is a tradition one of my friends started several years ago. It’s always a good time with lots of yummy Italian food, delicious red wine and laughter. The eccentric waiters don’t hurt either.

On SATURDAY night we hosted our last candlelit event for the season at work- over 850 people attended to ski, snowshoe and hike over four miles of trail! It was our best attended winter event to date! The perfect temperatures (isn’t it funny when 30 degrees is “perfect”?) and deep snow pack have made this winter a record season for us.

On SUNDAY night we went out for karaoke and celebrated two friend’s birthdays. The stars aligned and many friends showed up that we haven’t seen in quite awhile!

But I have no pictures to show for it.  Grrr…. Bad Krista!

 

Living with Sjogren's Syndrome

Last year at this time I was nervous eyeing up everything on my plate. 2010 was shaping up to be action packed! Chris and I were planning our wedding, a 2 week cross-country road trip, home and garden projects, looking forward to my sister’s wedding and he had several multi-day (and one four-week) military trainings on the calendar. Would I have the gas to survive the year?

In early 2008 I was diagnosed with Sjogren's Syndrome and I spent two years trying to figure out how to manage my responsibilities and still have enough in the tank for fun. That's not to say I didn't have fun! I met and developed an amazing friendship and relationship with my husband and advanced my career but it wasn't easy.

I was constantly exhausted, in a lot of pain and generally wasn’t very happy. I felt very limited by Sjogren’s and the symptoms that often overlapped with Rheumatoid Arthritis and/or Lupus. It's easy to see why I was worried about surviving 2010!

But everything changed late in January. I attended a support group for Sjogren’s and a woman approached me during a break.  She said, “I’m 80 years old and I’ve traveled all over the world and have 6 great-grandkids. You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.”  If asked, I sincerely would have guessed she was mid-fifties; I NEVER would have guessed 80! She offered me a few more words of encouragement before the meeting started up again.  

Right then and there I decided that I wasn’t gong to be “sick” for the rest of my life. I promised to take care of myself, maintain realistic expectations and not dwell on my limitations or bad days.

I realized that if I spent the rest of my life over-analyzing every muscle ache or swollen joint I would always be worrying about something and wasting precious energy obsessing about what I couldn’t do instead of saving it up and using it for an adventure.

In 2010 I changed my attitude. With the right amount of planning I can do anything and keep up with my family and friends. 

• I carefully plan my days to bank extra time and energy for evening dinner or happy hour plans.  I also know I need to schedule down time for myself. 

• I work hard at work, use my comp time to go home early when I can and try really hard to leave work at work!

• I eat healthy as much as possible when confronted by bad choices I try to remember how awful I feel after I indulge in something delicious- but bad for me.

• I try to exercise regularly. This is probably the hardest because I feel better when I’ve been exercising regularly.  But, when I feel like crap it’s hard enough to find my work-out clothes much less get out the door! 

2010 was about figuring out how to survive and 2011 is about taking those tools and strategies to the next level. Not sure what all 2011 has in store for me, but I did just sign up for a Warrior Dash in July!

Mistaken identities

Visitor Center crew from left to right: Alicia, myself, Autumn and Katie.  

I don’t know why but ever since Katie and I began working at the Visitor Center (about 5 years ago for both of us) our co-workers can’t keep us straight. These co-workers don’t work in the same building with us, but they should know our roles and responsibilities by now.  It’s annoying and when it happens we roll our eyes (because they can’t see us) and gently remind them of who does what. 

A new twist:

Last week one of Katie’s temp staff, Amanda, casually says to me “Dorian says hi.”  I stop sorting paper and try to recall if I know anyone named Dorian. That’s a pretty unique name it should ring a bell, but it doesn’t.

“Who?” I ask her to repeat his name.

“Dorian” some last name I’ve never heard.  “He went to school with you.

I mull this over some more and am clearly stumped.  “What does he look like?”  

But Amanda has moved on and she half heartedly describes him “he’s this tall (gesturing to a guy about 5’ 10”)and  has blondish hair”.  Since that pretty much describes just about every guy I’ve ever met I drop the conversation. I spend the next hour or two feeling like an oaf for forgetting this person.

But then…

Later in the afternoon a package arrives and Amanda brings it to me.  I can’t hear conversations that happen at the front desk or up near Katie’s office very well in my office. (I’m in the far back.) But Autumn appears soon after Amanda returns to the front desk with a puzzled expression. 

She tells me that after Office Depot dropped off the paper Amanda asked her supervisor, Katie, what she should do with the package.  Katie looks at it and says, “It looks like the paper Autumn’s been waiting for- bring it to her.”

Autumn’s office is between mine and Katie’s office.  And I do recall her squealing with delight (she loves packages and has been waiting to finish a project with this paper) “Oh goody it’s finally here!”

But Amanda marches right past Autumn’s office and brings it to me. “You got a package!” 

So here Autumn and I are standing in my office with a roll of paper between us trying to piece everything together. “Autumn, do you know someone named Dorian?”  She slowly nods and we realize that Amanda has us confused.  How do we delicately UN-confuse her with embarrassing her?  

Autumn waits about 10 minutes and then visits with Amanda at the front desk.  “So I heard you talking to Krista about Dorian, I know Dorian too! How is he doing? 

She’s not convinced it’s cleared up yet… perhaps more to come?