Hi there world. It’s me, Deeds. Remember me?

Warning; this post is going to be long. A lot has happened to me since the last post.

Have some music to entertain you: It’s one of my favorite 80′s classics… “Hold me now” by Thompson Twins. I got the inspiration from watching “The Wedding Singer” this weekend. The lyrics are oddly extremely suitable for this post.

Goodness it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. Sorry about that, but I had to wait until a few subjects I’m going to talk about weren’t so tender in my heart. I’ve been through a lot in the past month and a half.

Let’s just picked up where I left off, shall I?

About a week after my last post, John was sent to Las Vegas for training… again. During this time was our 6 month anniversary and we celebrated it by breaking up. I won’t go into detail… but essentially we came to the realization that we weren’t made for each other. We were on completely good terms when we broke up… no anger or bitterness involved. Just grown-up thinking got into the way.

On that note I refuse to say anything negative about John… he’s an amazing guy and he still has my respect and admiration. I harbor no bad feelings, and I still pray for him every day. He has an amazing heart and he’s going to go far in life, I just know it. I can still say confidently that he is one of the most amazing and attractive men I have ever met. He wasn’t an easy one to say goodbye to. It’s sad, but I’m at peace now.

I made a painting about him. I told him the meaning behind it… but I’m not going to share an explanation publicly. It is a good painting though… I keep it in my living room. I’m probably going to want to get rid of it eventually, so if anyone wants a painting just holler:

Anyways the rest of my month didn’t get any better after this.

They are right… when it rains, it pours. I had a bit of a lightening storm.

The week after the break up I got back my blood results from some tests I had done.

…

I inherited my dad’s unsightly cholesterol.

NOOOOOO. Noooo!!!!!!!! Anything but that!!!!!

I kind of knew this was coming – the girl who drew my blood said that she never saw blood clot as fast as mine did.

This really freaked me out. My levels are higher than my dad’s were at age 35. My dad had to have stints placed three years ago… I’m not really in the mood to die in the next ten years.

So welcome in the new and improved Diane!!! YAY ME!

Not wanting to go onto prescription meds anytime soon, my dad suggest I try Niacin.

Unfortunately I have a REALLY bad reaction to Niacin. It’s normal to have flushing, but how I reacted was most definitely more than flushing… it was an itchy stinging full-body rash.

Here are some visuals for you (and keep in mind.. these pictures were about 5 minutes AFTER receiving an emergency benadryl IV… it was worse before these pics!) A doctor down the hall saw it and called me “lobster girl”. Gee thanks doctor :

I look half normal in that one. Notice the blotches everywhere though.

Sun burn!!!! Notice how legs are supposed to look like on the left. Notice blistery rash on legs on the right. It was ouchie!!!

Notice the little blisters on my arm. It was starting to BLISTER! GROSS!!!

So yeah. I now have to take half a pill of Niacin rather than a full one. And I’m only allowed to take it at work, should I need another emergency benadryl IV again. Yikes.

I found out that Red Rice Yeast is also supposed to be a good natural cure for high cholesterol, so I started that as well and it doesn’t make me look like a lobster, which is a nice bonus.

I also started a few other pills to take for a healthier LDL, and really I recommend them to anyone who wants a healthy lifestyle. I’ve been noticing benefits in my energy levels and my hair, skin and nails have been healthier too!

Also I’ve become VERY careful with what I eat. I have a new goal in mind – I want to take care of my health. How I look is only secondary. In the past month and a half I lost 14 pounds and two pant sizes, just because I dropped any food that I think might raise my cholesterol. On the weekends I am a little more lax, but on the weekdays I cut out all fatty and salty foods.

Another thing that I think really helped with my weight loss is that I stopped drinking coffee, and switched to drinking about 5-8 cups of green tea every day. This is my favorite – I really like the Republic of Tea teas. I plan to stock up on a lot more of them because I’ve been burning through them like crazy:

Also I’ve been big into oatmeal and breakfast cookies. These are yummy. And good for you, packed full of whole grains. Yayyyy breakfast cookies!

Also I’ve been going nuts for wine lately too. They say it’s good to have a few glasses of wine every day for heart health… I started drinking wine as an after-work stress relieving ritual. It definitely makes me a happier person! I’m working on finding my favorites… here are the ones I’ve grown fond of lately:

Sooooo essentially I’m now healthier and more attractive than I have ever been. Hooray me!

On to my next disaster…

A week after discovering my cholesterol levels, I got into a car accident. So much for trying to be healthy and happy, nothing reminds you of how futile you are quite like the rough shake of a car accident.

It was pretty bad. It was my fault. I don’t really feel like explaining how it happened, but I had never been so scared and never felt so guilty in my life. On top of this, there was another side issue that I don’t care to talk about, that made me even more unstable and panicked.

It was a bad experience. I was in shock, I was depressed, I was alone, I was in pain, I was terrified. Thanks be to God, despite what I thought when I first got out of my car, I was the only person injured in the accident – with a few bruises, a chipped tooth and two torn ligaments in my right foot. It could’ve been so much worse, but God was so gracious to me.

The worst part was that I was alone when it happened. I had never been even pulled over by a cop before, so this accident literally threw me into shock. I ended up having to be driven home by a very creepy tow truck driver, me in tears the entire ride. Not the finest day I ever experienced, but I was delivered safely to my sister Sarah’s house who was so kind to drive me to the ER to get xrays of my foot.

Unfortunately, I am no longer able to run the half marathon on June 26th, which I am very disappointed about. Usually I use running as my form of stress relief in a difficult situation, but that has been taken away from me this month. I guess I have to count my losses with this one.

Anyways, poor dearest Chimichanga is a total loss. I am sorry Chimichanga for killing you. You were a wonderful car and kept me safe. I will forgive you for being a Ford.

This is the time I should mention that I have the world’s most amazing bank / insurance company. I was so worried about all that I would have to do to just get my insurance claim in… but after filling out an online form and three very brief to-the-point phone calls, everything has been more than taken care of. USAA – You are AMAZING. Best customer service in a company that I could ever hope for!

And of course, one last thing had to happen. *sigh* I am kind of getting used to disaster after this point!

The week after my car accident, we had some unexpected staffing changes at work. That’s a very very calm way of stating it, but  I don’t believe it would be right for me to go too much into detail. In any case, my work load was tripled and I had to do severe overtime on the weekends. I was worn out, stressed out and on my last nerve. This was the last thing I needed after an already vexing, tiring and depressing month. I had to miss my brother’s graduation, and I had to work through the ONLY SUNNY WEEKEND that Washington has seen in the past year. GAR! I was very emotional this week and I apologize to anyone who was affected by my mood swings. I should be less stressed out now that we have everything evened out at work again

Oh well. Life is improving. Very very much so.

I noticed something weird… every bad thing this month turned into something infinitely good.

The break up with John led to me meeting new people, finding new hobbies and re-creating my social life.

The car accident made me realize that I don’t really want spend the rest of my life with John (long story, don’t ask)

The cholesterol problem led to me being  healthy and confident again, losing any self-image issues I was dealing with.

The unexpected staffing change at work made it possible for me to afford the car accident and led to better pay and a MUCH MUCH better and happier working environment.

Overall, I would say that I am much happier, healthier and more attractive person than I was a month an a half ago. It’s funny how I thought life was caving in on me at the time, but because everything happened as it did, I am a much better person for it.

Anyways I’ve been busy lately. I’ve actually never had so much to do on the weekends. I’ve been painting again, finally finishing the series for my living room. I already have my next painting planned so I’m so excited to get painting again!:

and the decoration of my living room is ALMOST complete (one more painting series to make and a few minor things to buy)

And my bedroom is looking spazzy as well ( Did I mention that I discovered IKEA a few weeks ago? HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS EARLIER! I now own a dresser! YES! I have a real bedroom now!!!)

My bedroom is rediculously relaxing now. I’m very happy… and again, there are a few things left to buy but my rooms are looking great.

On the weekends I found more than enough entertainment. I’ve discovered the somewhat pathetic but absolutely entertaining nightlife of Puyallup. I had no idea such strange places existed so close to home!

Anyways.

I think that’s all.

Hum.

Yeah I am actually done yapping.

If you actually read this post all the way down to here… congratulations, you may have a cookie. It’ll probably be a healthy vegan cookie, but you may most definitely have a cookie.

Much love,

The Deeds

So this song (plus the song “kids”) by MGMT has been stuck in my head for the past… month. Yup. So I’m letting it play on my blog for a while. I hope it gets stuck forever in your heads as well!

Well well. So much has happened in the past month, I wouldn’t even know where to begin!

John and I got to go to a fancy-schmancy change of command dinner with his Navy pals.

It was so much fun! Navy functions are very entertaining to go to. It was such a great night.

The next morning we headed to Portland to go to John’s rugby finals.

Afterward we got to spend some time with my ultra-fabulous cousins Dave and Trina! We went to a great Southern/Cajun restaurant. Yum. The line to get into this restaurant is typically outrageous!

The next day we were back in Puyallup, and I introduced John to the Puyallup Spring Fair, since unfortunately he won’t be around for the Fall Fair. But we had a good time!

There were piggy races, craft shows, animals, a water dog-jumping competition, carnival rides, slushies, fair scones and elephant ears. It was such a wonderful day!

Hoooray.

The weekend after that was just as fun.

John and I went to the Freemont district of Seattle to look around. Freemont is very artistic and entertaining. Also well known to have a nice statue of Lenin in the heart of it:

John found a nice music store with lots of mandolins for him to play on. We also got to play on some harps, steel drums and metal guitars.

Next we went to the Zoo (Something we’ve been meaning to do since the first weeks we’ve been dating). I love the zoo. All the animals are so much fun.

Except I have no photos of real animals, so here’s a bronze one and John.

OH and one kid that insisted on being in the picture. ha.

After the zoo we walked around downtown seattle for a while, and I got to go a wonderful Jazz/mandolin concert in a nice Jazz bar downtown.

We saw David Grismann… a jazz artist that John’s been wanting to see now for years. He even got to meet him, but I failed at taking a picture of the two of them. Oh well… this is what he looks like:

Isn’t he cool? Yup. He is.

Anyways, the next day was just another absolutely wonderful day (been having a lot of those lately!)

There was a “dutch” festival going on in Oak Harbor, so we decided to check it out. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that was “dutch” about it (nothing compared to the crazy tulip festival in Orange City, Iowa, that’s for sure!), but we had a good time checking out all the fun shops near Oak Harbor’s waterfront.

I really enjoy browsing fun shops with John – he is truly a unique boyfriend in this way.  Here’s him in the antique shop with a bag full of beer:

And of course what is a better way to end the day than watching John and my favorite disney movie:

This weekend John decided to go home to visit friends and family in Virginia and Washington DC, so I got to spend time with my dearest Michaeley Farfalley.

We went to a nice Eurpoean Bakery in Olmpia, and ate our goodies in the park of the State Capitol.

Michaele found an old relative…

and we had some fun in the sun:

and we toured the capitol… something i haven’t done since gradeschool. Hello George!

And we went shopping, which is always good fun with Michaele! I got some cute clothes (ON SALE! YAY!). So I’m happy. Also re-discovered the joys of world market.

I’ve been really working on decorating my apartment as well, and it’s come yet a long way! My living room is now somewhat livable, and my bedroom is becoming more comfy.

(Sorry about the blurry pictures! I’m not very stable, haha)

So that is all happy!

Yayy!

I’ve been painting again… I’m making a new series for my living room. I’m kind of recreating this one that got sold in 2008

but recreating it in the new style I developed when I was living in Iowa. I have two done, and hope to paint the blue one soon!

So I’m excited for this to be finished! Grr, now that I look at it it needs to be tweaked a bit… the red should be more,.. red.  So next time you see them they might look different.

So. Anyways.

Oh I guess I didn’t introduce the world to my new computer yet!

World, Meet Giles. He’s perty.

I like him.

So today is Sunday, and I’ve been enjoying the day with my wonderful family and my nephews.

Ok that’s all for now! I hope you guys are having a lovely sabbath!

Bis Spater,

Deeds

Playing is MUSE: OH MY GOSH; THE CONCERT WAS ABSOLUTELY MIND-BLOWING AMAZING.

AHHH! AHHH! AHHH!!! I think I screamed through the entire concert. Wow, they are ridiculous live. I can’t believe any one person can have as much passion and energy as my beautiful beautiful Matthew Bellamy:

(Pictures are a huge thanks to my dearest BFF Michaele… I think I was too memorized the entire concert to take any coherent pictures!)

Oh goodness isn’t he beautiful?

Their sets were SOOO COOOL! Here they are on little pedestals, and the pedestals went up and down, sometimes they would just be flat on the stage, but they spent a lot of time going up and down.

Such a cool show. SO COOL. Lots of lights:

Lots of special effects:

At one point there were HUGE eyeball balloons bouncing around the audience, and then they POPPED and all this red confetti busted out! It was hilarious!

But even more amazing than the sets was the performance. Wow, Muse really knows how to but shivers in your soul.

Here is Matt during “Feeling Good”. He’s mid-air on a pedestal, with a grand piano, and singing in a megaphone (to make the effect you hear halfway through the song). What a man. What an absolutely irresistible man.

He can even come out on stage wearing a sparkly silver coat and plastic glasses and still be the single most attractive man on the planet:

Sigh. And I have my sweetheart of a boyfriend to thank for all of this. These tickets were one of my wonderful Christmas presents from him… what a wonderfully generous dude he is!

And much thanks for having him let my dear Michaele come along! She was there to control my random attacks of great joy and happiness during this concert!

Golly I look pink. Not cool.

Anyways, new topic!

Wow this seems forever ago, but i haven’t reported it yet!

John and I finished the Mercer Island 5K run together, alive, and several minutes ahead of my boss! (Hahah, not that it was a race or anything! )

Here are some pictures! Here’s most of our group… -a few.

And on the website for the run you can search for different people’s photos. LUCKILY there are none of me. But a few people did get shot a couple times, including my boyfriend and my boss. Hee hoo haa.

Ha. Sorry guys. We’ll leave the ladies alone.

What a great run it was!

OH and this is a good time to Announce that I am OFFICALLY registered for the 2010 Seattle Rock’N'Roll Half Marathon! Dun dun dun!!!!

I am a member of “Team Partner Oncology”! I started training this week. And as always, I’ve created a nice large training schedule to harass me into be a good trainee! Here’s half of it. Too tired to get you a full photo. Take that, world, take that!

Yes, I’m a horrible person. I already missed one day of training. Something tells me I’ll survive. Oh yeah, and I have tomorrow crossed off already. That’s because it’s what I really did on tuesday.

Hum. Other new things.

OH YEAH!

I MOVED! I MOVED! I MOVED!

I now live in a cute townhome with a very nice girl around my age who works occasionally as a nurse for my clinic. Hooray! She is so nice. My favorite part of living here is my new best friend, Bentley.

We’ve become good friends very quickly. He is soooo darn cuddly.

Infact, this is him and I right now as I write this:

Awwww. He’s adorable.

We like each other.

See?

To myself, I have my own bedroom, bathroom and small living room. I also share the kitchen and living room upstairs. Currently too lazy to go take a photo of upstairs, and my area is too messy and disorganized for me to post online. However my mom got me these absolutely beautiful bed sheets as my housewarming gift, and they are SOOO comfortable, warm and adorable. THANK YOU SO MUCH MOM!!!

Anyways in the next coming weeks I am focusing on things that will improve my mood!

Yes! It’s Happy Month!!! Do join me!!!!

I will blog more on it later but my “happiness” will include certain factors:

1) Running 5 days a week, strength workouts 2 days a week

2) A good vitamin regime (All the good ones A, B complex, C, D, E) and also fiber, my omega 3-6-9s, Calcium, garlic.

3) Quality happy time with my friends and my boyfriend.

4) Some form of chocolate every day.

5) Going tanning.  Mildly. But it’s something that greatly improves my mood, and feels amazing after a long run!

6) Start Painting again. Devoting time to my creativity.

(huh. I really like this painting. i found it randomly online..)

7) Spending time Cuddling with my new best friend, Bentley (Who is currently functioning beautifully as a foot warmer).

Listening to more positive music. Goodbye A Perfect Circle, hello MGMT. They make me smile for some reason. Good band.

Yup. I’m determined to have a great month, and hopefully much much longer than that! I’ll report back later on my success!

What makes all of you happy? And why aren’t you doing it? I challenge you to take this month to improve your quality of life in whatever ways you can think of!

Anyways, work tomorrow and then a nice weekend of attempting to clean my house and hanging out with the goofball that is Michaele!!!

have a wonderful week, world!

Well I suppose it’s been almost a month since my last update in the lovely world of dianefeucht.com … even though it seems a whole lot sooner than that. Time has been a skipping and a jumping and a hopping. Wow. I can’t believe that time is moving so fast.

Well, let’s see. What’s happened since the last time I updated?

Oh yeah! I dyed my hair! and Cut it! for the first time since…… last July. So I definitely needed an updo.

Here is just before the hair change:

And here is just after!

Yeah blonder. It’s that time of year.

John had gotten home (finally!) from two weeks of training in Las Vegas two weekends ago, so I surprised him with a welcome-home present of a fire pit!

John putting the fire-pit together using his handy-dandy tool chest. (though that is a lot of tools to be using for something that has less than a quarter page of instructions with just six steps… )

What a perfect way of spending the afternoon.

Nothing is more delightful in life than a wonderful boyfriend, a blazing fire, a beer and a cigar. It was a lovely evening. Well, until we got rained out.

We were going to make hobo dinners together (meat and vegetables wrapped in tin foil and thrown into the fire to cook) but we were rained out and ended up just baking it in the oven. It was yummm!

Also last weekend I got a sneak-preview of John’s crazy skateboarding skills.

Yeah. It’s the inner teenager that is still trapped inside of him. Though it is quite impressive!

John is going to attempt to teach me to skateboard next weekend, so that is something to look forward to! I’m actually pretty excited!

Work is going well. That’s for sure. This past weekend we had a garage sale. All the proceeds are going directly to supporting Colon Cancer Awareness…. here are a few photos from that:

I did a lot of baking. A lot. Here is my stash that I made:

Yay for the bake sale part of this garage sale!

Olga our billing girl…. trying to hide from the camera.

Lynell our Medical Assistant who was there all day with me helping out with the garage sale

Sandra, our Nurse Practitioner.

We raised a good amount of money for colon cancer! Next week several of us from our office is going on a run on Mercer Island in honor of this cause.

I plan to just do a 5K (I’m still in recovery from the utter disappointment of getting injured last year while marathon training… not quite ready to formally train for something like the half marathon), but several of our wonderful women are going to do the half marathon. I am so proud!

Anyways, I’m all the sudden MUCH MUCH MUCH more excited to do this run as my absolutely wonderful boyfriend, John, agreed to run the 5K with me.

Hooray for him. He’s such a wonderful, handsome bugger.

So what else has happened.

Oh yeah! Yesterday we celebrated Michaele’s birthday. It was a good time. John, Michaele and I went out to Olive Garden for dinner, and then went to a nice fancy-schmancy (C.I. Shenannigans) restaurant for wine and deserts.

Me and Michaele shared a huge piece of carrot-cake… which I think we only ate 1/5th of. Uhh. Actually maybe just 1/6th. It was humongous. Apparently there are people who do eat the entire slice as a dessert following a huge meal. Gross. I’m pretty sure the cake is as big as Michaele’s head!

John had a good time too. Hello, John!

Sorry about the bad quality photo. it was a dark restaurant and I upped the exposure to a maximum.

Today was an absolutely lovely day as well. Church and then a lovely Sunday dinner at my parent’s house. My nephews were there and it was a wonderful time playing with them.

Haha. Aren’t they cute? They were looking at a helicopter. How sweet.

The day ended with spending time with my favorite guy, smoking a hookah and listening to some music on Pandora.

life is good currently. exceptionally pleasant, actually.

Anyways. stay tuned as a few more exciting things will be happening this month! I’m moving into an apartment with another girl,  John is teaching me how to skateboard, we are doing the 5K run, i’m hoping for a trip to the zoo,  John is getting to be stationed in a base right next to me for a week (much nicer than being 2.5 hours away), the MUSE concert is coming up as is Easter! Well, hooray! So much to look forward to. It’s exciting!

Well, that’s life for now. You’ll be hearing from me later!

I’m doing pretty well. Kind of been tired lately. And there is a lingering headache I’ve had for the past three weeks. Thank God for Ibuprofen.

The song you hear playing is one that I’ve had stuck in my head for the past week. Now it’s your turn to have it stuck in yours. It’s “maps” by Yeah yeah yeahs. They are a band that I’m only slightly familiar with and am looking to get more into them. In fact, I’m at a point in life right now where I’m starving for new music. The bands that I want to look into in the next few months include:

1) Yeah Yeah Yeahs

2) Stars

3) The Bird and The Bee

4) Beirut

5) The Decemberists

6) Rufus Wainwright

There’s more, but that’s all I’ll work on for now. If any of you have something to contribute or other band suggestions, I’ll be more than willing to listen.

Here’s the music video to the current song for those who live in other countries that don’t allow playlist.com playlists to play (achem, dass bedeutet dich, Katja. sag mir, ob es für dich funktioniert! Du auch Onkel Herbert…)

Anyways. Life.

I’m settling well into my new job. It’s still a lot of stress and I have a lot to learn, but every day I become more and more confident. The more independent I am without having to ask for help, the happier of a worker I am. I soon get to start working on improving the clinic’s website, which currently is a little bit on the sad and unprofessional side right now…

http://partneroncology.com/ is my new baby. Watch it grow!

I also joined a gym, and really need to start working out better. My marathon dreams are still continuing as I am now setting my sight on the seattle marathon at the end of November.

Also, I am starting to paint again! Thanks to getting paid again, I was able to buy some simple art supplies. I am so eager to get painting, it’s been too long since my last painting… about 8 months ago. *gasp!* Bad art major, bad!

I have been having a pretty good social life, which is amazing considering it’s been 6 years since I’ve last lived in Washington.

I got to meet my friends Luc and Sarah’s dog, Watson:

And have been hanging around my buddy Michaele a fair bit, drinking coffee and shopping. What else do we know how to do? Well, besides be absolute weirdos. (look how long my hair is getting! yay!) :

The wonderful shirt you see me wearing in this picture was from Anne Taylor Loft and costed me merely $3. Yes, What a steal.

Yup.

John is doing well.

This is us on superbowl sunday – he had a small get together with a lot of his navy friends and it was TONS of fun. I never enjoyed the superbowl nearly as much as I did this year. He’s truly a wonderful boyfriend to me.

John has also gotten me into rugby. He plays for a team based out of Bellingham, WA, and I’ve been coming to his games to support him and watch how manly  he is. He’s been doing such a great job… I’m one very proud girlfriend. And I am learning all about rugby… it’s such a funny sport to watch. I have to constrain myself from giggling half the time, but it’s intense.

Here’s the only picture I have of John playing rugby currently (all the other ones I took are on John’s camera…) He’s kicking a field goal in the third half of a rugby game (he made it!)

Yaaaay John!

Us before a Rugby Game. Yaaaaay.

Also we celebrated Valentine’s day! Well, we celebrated it the day before valentine’s day. After the ruby game that you see above (haha he was really dirty and had to wash himself under a hose) he took me out to my favorite kind of food…. GREEK. *droooooooool*. Also I receive a dozen gorgeous roses and chocolate (*siiiigh* ) that I feel a need to brag about.

I’m such a spoiled little brat.

Valentine’s day itself was actually kind of hilarious, as my night included me, john and all these things (yeah, we’re different)…

In our defense, the buffalo wings and orange julius were home-made. Yup.

Anyways, not much else to report. I’ve been doing well… Working hard, playing hard. Life is full of variety, which is good. Keeps me entertained.

Oh yeah. I’ve started drinking my daily value of water every day. It’s not easy. You should try it.

Anyways. Exciting things too look forward to… Michaele’s Birthday (I’m taking her out for a girl’s night!), St. Patrick’s Day, MUSE concert (John got me tickets! *Shrieeeeek!!!*) and a whole lot more… I’m sure I’ll be posting in the near future with all this excitement around me!

I wish all of you a wonderful week!

The Deeds

]]> http://www.dianefeucht.com/2010/02/28/my-kinds-your-kind-ill-stay-the-same/feed/ 2 http://www.dianefeucht.com/2010/01/29/wait-for-the-stone-on-your-window/ http://www.dianefeucht.com/2010/01/29/wait-for-the-stone-on-your-window/#comments Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:36:37 +0000 Diane Feucht http://www.dianefeucht.com/?p=1896 Hello world. How are you today?

The song playing (O Valencia! by The Decemberists) is one that John gave me. It’s great and makes me smile. You should listen to it.

I’m doing quite well actually. My unsettled and unsure life is slowly making more and more sense.

Lots has happened since my last post. Oh so much.

There was christmas. Which… honestly i don’t think I have any pictures of. Hum.

However, since the last post had no pictures, I shall over compensate with this one. Hooray.

I did get to spend quite some time with my absolutely delightful cousins, Dave and Trina.

They got me possibly my favorite present this year, my new best friend Poppy:

Yup. I do love a good cow every now and then.

I was very lucky to be able to join the Andersens, my brother and a few other church friends to go skiing at Crystal one day! It was an incredible day of exploring the slopes! Nothing compares to the freedom of slipping down hills on two thin boards. It’s been way too long since I’ve last been on the slopes, and I must thank the Andersens so much for arranging such a great day…

Haa haa.

I spent Christmas and the following week in Puyallup with my family. It was the week before Rachel’s wedding, and I spent most of my time being Rache’ls chauffeur. I had the pleasure of showing many of our out-of-town guests around Seattle while Rachel was busy finishing up her wedding plans.

Then was Rachel’s wedding. Hooray for Rachel! I’m very happy that she has found the love of her life and had a beautiful wedding! I’ll let the photos stand as testimony to that!(the photographer was Natasha Reed, she did a wonderful job!)

Our family is expanding so rapidly!

Ok so enough of that.

Shortly after Rachel’s wedding I spent more time trying to search for jobs, and I finally found one!

YAY EMPLOYMENT! This has taken quite a burden off my shoulders to finally have a job.

I am working in an Oncology Clinic and will have a few different roles there, but will be doing mainly general office work. I will also be able to dabble a little bit in graphic design/website design, but for now I have to learn all the fun roles of being a receptionist. After a few weeks I will learn other roles in the office as well, but only one thing at a time. It’s coming along, but I always hate the start of a job when I have no clue what I am doing.

Which also means I moved, once again, back to Puyallup. Have I mentioned how sick I am of moving? BAH! BEH! BOO! Only one more move this year left, when I am able to afford an apartment on my own!

Anyways. Not much else going on.

Oh yeah, I am now dating a handsome, wonderful, generous, strong and affectionate young man who spoils me to death. I suppose I should mention him as well. His name’s John. I like him.

Anyways, I am out of things to say. I have so much to look forward to in the next few months.

Anyways, I’m exhausted and I’m watching my first rugby game tomorrow. Weekends have never seemed so sweet to me as they are now. If only there were more weekends.

Have a lovely week, world! I’ll try to be a better poster from now on, especially now that my life is a lot more stable!

Much Love, The Deeds

No pictures with this post. Sorry. Just boring talking. But hey – have a song, it’s a good one.

So.

Diane’s ever-changing life has changed.

Again.

Very dramatically.

I moved to Portland.

I currently am living with my absolutely wonderful cousin, Dave, and his beautiful and incredible wife, Trina.
God must have extra special rewards for these two in heaven. They are absolutely incredible.

I’m currently in a major job search (which is going well), and hope to soon be up on my own feet.

My decision was kind of sudden, but the reasons were plenty:
This is where I want to go to grad school.
This is where I’ve been wanting to live for so many years now. This city is incredible.
It’s close to family, yet not too close.
Portland has so many opportunities for artists.
And also, if I’m going to start out from scratch anyways, it might as well be in Portland – a city with more of my personality and a much larger job market than I was finding in Puyallup.

I am sad that I am further away from my parents, my sister, my brother, my brother-in-law, my best friend, my nephews, a certain boy and many of my high school friends, but I must continue reciting to myself,
“Puyallup is only 2 hours away. That is nothing.”

I’ve spent the last 6 years of my life being a 7-14 hour plane flight away from home. A 2 hour drive is much nicer.

Thank you to everybody who has supported me.

I have been shown such an out-flowing of love and generosity.

It’s incredible, I don’t remember a time that I’ve felt this loved.

I will be home in Puyallup for Christmas and Rachel’s wedding.
I’m absolutely excited to see all of my family again.
I’m so excited to see Rachel get married to a good man.
I’m excited to watch my nephews have that child-like excitement for Christmas.

I believe this year is going to end with me very much at peace.

My heart feels good about this decision.

I’m feeling uncomfortably optimistic.

2010… I’m ready.

So much Love,
The Deeds

I had an absolutely wonderful week this week, and I hope all of you can say the same. There has been so much going on that I have a feeling that this will be a freakishly long post!

First of all the most exciting news….. there is a reason that I chose another Muse song for the song of the week…

I AM FRIGGEN GOING TO SEE MUSE!!!!!!!! AHHHHH! AHHHH!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

*SQEAAKKKK!!!!*

Believe me, every time I think about going to this concert I break out into a small happy dance.

HOLY CRAP, I AM GOING TO SEE MUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

***Insert image of Diane hyperventilating here****

I found out that Muse was chosen to be the Headliner for this year’s Deck the Hall Ball in Seattle…

Wow I am going to attempt to be close enough to Matt Bellamy so that I can smell him… or touch him… or get a restraining order…

My absolutely wonderful and amazing brother-in-law, Andrew, presented me and my buddy Michaele with tickets. I could never be happier with a gift. Michaele and I were planning on robbing a bank (not really, don’t arrest me!) in order to get enough money to go. BUT I’M GOING! I CANNOT WAIT!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just understand… I’ve been fascinated with this band since 2003. It’s on my list of 25 things to do before I die to see them in concert. I am convinced that Matt Bellamy secretly wrote the song “Map of the Problematique” for me. I am literally shaking with anticipation.

Ok enough boring my general crowd of people who don’t really care about Muse and my obsession with Matt Bellamy.

On to other things:

My marathon training has been going swimmingly well! I LOVE running. Here is my Nike+ running schedule for this month so far!

Yes, an easy 9 miles on Wednesday… I’ve still got it!

I’ve chosen the marathon that I’m going to shoot for next year, granted it doesn’t sell out before I have the money to pay for registration…

The cool thing about this marathon is that every mile they have a live band playing! And on their main page they have a picture of Death Cab for Cutie… so if that possibly means that DCFC is one of the bands… then I’m sure my running average will jump up a few seconds faster per mile!

It’s June 26, 2010 and is a run between Tukwila and Seattle! It is a marathon that gets sold out quite quickly, so hopefully I have a job soon and the registration fee ready before it fills up!!!! But I’m pretty psyched out to be running again! Yay!

And by the way… I’m absolutely enamoured with these shoes:

Also, in hopes of staying injury-free running this time around, I decided to read and take on the practices of ChiRunning… and so far it’s been doing very well for me! There is a lot of good advice on running technique.

With every other sport you have training with technique, but runners tend to just… run. This tells you the best way to run without putting excess strain on your body… which for me is Hooray!

Also on Tuesday this week, Sarah had me go on a special mission. I stopped by Lacey to pick up Michaeley Farfalley…

isn’t she lovely?

and we went on a nice long drive.

We stopped at a house that had a cow. Moo.

And we picked up an absolutely adorable new member of the family!

World, meet Mr. John Chrysostom… more commonly known as Jack 2.0. He is a 2-month old pure-bred Golden Retriever. He’s kind of a fatty and likes to lay down funny:

But he is such a snuggler. The moment I saw him I picked him up and he immediately started cuddling with me. He loves taking naps with me… here is us this morning:

He’s soooo cute to sleep with. I love this dog.

Yup. There is the new happy family.

On Thursday I got to teach a high school class! A friend from church is the teacher to Tacoma Baptist School, and he invited me to talk to his class about Acrylic painting / contemporary art. It was pretty exciting… and I loved doing it. The students were a lot more curious and interactive than I thought they would be, and I really enjoyed teaching them.

And on Saturday, of course, was my 4th Annual Pumpkinfest!!!

On the menu this year was:

Pumpkin Beer

Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle

Pumpkin Mousse Cheesecake

Pumpkin baked Ziti with Italian Sausage

Pumpkin Hummus with Baked Pita Chips

Pumpkin Cookies

Pumpkin Bread

Pumpkin Cupcakes

An Orange-Chocolate cake for Pumpkin Haters (aka Sarah)

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin Spice Coffee

we also had a real pumpkin in there. We had fun “carving” it. Here is Sarah making anal-retentive holes into a pumpkin. Andrew was a little skeptical:

Here is me making holes for the fun of it in Sarah’s pumpkin:

If you look closely at my shorts, by the way, Sarah embroidered the awesomest thing ever on to them:

Yes, this is love. She got the pattern from urbanthreads.com which has a lot of designs that I’m crazy about.

Back to Pumpkinfest… Michaele was very gracious to come help me out with the baking. She made some absolutely lovely pumpkin cupcakes, and spent many hours working as a functioning jungle gym for my nephews.

Thanks Michaele!!!

Sammy also tried to be a big help, but ended up looking more like a lobster instead.

Then the guests that came were Michaele and several people from my high school class! We had a blast that evening.

We played one of the best games in the world… I think it’s called Pictonary Telephone. How it works is everybody has a stack of papers. The first person writes a sentence, and then passes the stack. The next person draws a picture on the next piece of paper that describes the sentence. The next person only gets to see the drawing and writes down a sentence they think the drawing is trying to show…. the next person does another drawing, then another sentence.

Here is one of my favorite examples from the game last night:

Michaele started this brilliant round with the sentence:

My friend David then drew this lovely picture:

Charissa interpreted this picture to mean:

Autumn then drew this lovely photo, which is freakishly similar to David’s:

Which Sarah translated to say:

Andrew then drew this lovely picture:

Which  I translated to say:

So I hope that makes sense to the world. It’s the best game to play when you have a large group of people. My favorite drawing of the night was this one:

so yeah, life has been good to me! Except I’m starting to feel threatened in this house. Every time I look at the “to-do” list on the refrigerator, I see a new idea like these three:

Hmm… should I be worried?

Also, Sarah and I made a collaborative bundle to sell. Her cloth diaper embroidery skills and my new yarn dyeing skills:

Cute, no? Currently I am entertaining the idea of starting my own online yarn-dyeing business. We’d call it “Deedle Dye”. I just have to make an inventory of dyed yarns before I could really figure it all out! So that is an exciting possibility!

OH and ONE MORE AMAZING THING!!! ELFYOURSELF IS BACK!!!! WOO HOOO!!!
Here is my lovely family :

Anyways, I think I’ve talked long enough! I hope you all have a lovely week!

Love DeedleDee

I have to admit that the hardest part of writing this blog is picking out the song of the week. I just sat here for the past half hour dinking around my music collection.

The sad thing is that I know that half of you either A) can’t even hear my music in some countries (like Germany) and B) even more of you shut your sound off the moment you reach my website.

Oh well. Turn your music off. See if I care.

Well anyways, what you are (or aren’t hearing) right now is a song from Muse’s new CD, “The Resistance”.

Many of you have heard me gush about Muse as my favorite band, and over and over again have I praised the genius and absolute-incredibleness of my dearest love of loves, Matthew James Bellamy, lead vocalist, guitarist, pianist and songwriter  for this marvelous band:

However… this CD is… different. If I didn’t love and respect Matt Bellamy’s musical genius as much as I do, I might just give up on him. Unfortunately this CD sounds a little bit of a weird mix of Queen / U2 / System of a Down / and Indian/Arab music. I never thought I’d have all those words in the same sentence! Generally: If you don’t know MUSE very well, please don’t start with this CD. Start with Absolution or Origins of Symmetry… those two were flawless.

The most redeemable point of this CD is the last three tracks, which you are currently listening (or not listening) to. Muse wrote a Symphony! Hooray! It’s called “Exogenesis” and I believe they did brilliantly, though I am waiting for my classical geeky family to tear this statement down. *and now I’m holding my breath for negative comments*.

And to make matters MUCH MUCH WORSE (believe me, I’ve cried over this already), MUSE SOLD THEMSELVES OUT… to none other but the horrifying vampire-crazed teeny boppy series of Twilight! *gaaaaaasp!*

Which I know even more about because I actually watched it this week. I almost choked on the sappiness. My sister Sarah, however decided to marathon it through reading all four books this week… and yes, she managed to read the entire series in 9 days.

So I’m threatening to buy Sarah a Edward cut-out for Christmas, though I wouldn’t want Andrew to get jealous.

Anyways… I have exciting news!  After one painful month-long hiatus from running, I am back on the road again!!! Hooray that Washington weather is temperate for me to run outside most of the year, and that the Washington terrain is a lot more interesting than in Iowa. Unfortunately, more hills makes my mile average slag a little bit… I’ll be a much stronger runner overall because of the terrain.

Here is my stats for my Friday run!

So yes, it’s a bit slower than usual, but what’s to be expected?

And my new Nike LunarGlides?  I’m in love! My feet have never felt so cushioned and so light at the same time! So hooray for that!

Wow, I really missed my endorphines.

Anyways, I’ve been primarily living at the Flanagan home lately. I absolutely love the atmosphere here… it’s just rediculous.

I mean, this morning I woke up to Sarah saying, “DeeDee, get out here. You HAVE to see this.”

Dragging myself out of bed, I walk into the bathroom to see this lovely scene:

That wasn’t even all of it… there was a lot of foam lining the hallways. I guess they just wanted to help me clean the bathroom, right?

Like when they did this to the back window two weeks ago:

They were just trying to be artistic.

I love being with the nephews. Today me and three of the boys had an impromptu dance party to “ABBA” when their parents left me to babysit them. The boys love ABBA. Good job raising them, Sarah and Andrew!

And yes, the boys do like to run around mostly naked most of the time. I don’t care how many times you try to put clothes on them, they just keep coming off. So it’s not that we don’t clothe them, I promise!

Sarah and I decided to try a new hobby today… we were dyeing OBV fabric with shaving cream. Although the results quite literally went down the drain (there is a lot of tweaking to be done before we get this dyeing thing right!) we had a lot of fun in the process!

Maybe too much fun:

(Yes! I remembered to wear gloves this time! I can’t go to church tomorrow with green hands now, could I?)

So… yup. I don’t feel much like explaining what we are doing, because we failed miserably and the less you know the better. Just look at the purty colors!

So yes, my day started…. and ended, in foam. That’s the life of living with the Flanagan Clan.

Ok. So that’s all there is. I’m still jobless. It’s kind of nice. Sarah and I took our blood pressure in the mall the other day and mine read 76/50. Though I know it’s most definitely that the machine was broken (we had the kids with us for goodness sakes! Just seeing the four little monsters together adds about 70 points to my diastolic number), I feel like I’ve been a lot more at ease and healthier than when I was working myself to death in Iowa. I hope never to do that again… Diane will not do crazy hours anymore.  Diane will find a less-stressful job. It’s a promise.

ANYWAYS::: Next week is my fourth annual PUMPKINFEST!!! (hooray!) So look out for a post in a week. If you live in Washington and are my friend and haven’t been invited yet, then let me know and I’ll invite you.

I hope all of you are having fabulous weeks.

Much Love, Deedles Marie

So it’s been forever since I”ve  used one of my top three bands as the song of the day. So, have some Postal Service Good Washington band for my first post from living in Washington again!

So I’m really really really sore right now… I worked out yesterday and got my butt kicked. I feel like such a weakling! So currently I am being lazy on sarah’s tempur-pedic mattress.

Wow, I want to steal this mattress.

No really, it’s amazing. Anyone who has a whole lot of extra money to spare should buy me a tempur-pedic mattress.

Anyways, lots has been going on. I’ve been getting used to living here in Washington. I have been mostly staying at my sister’s house to help out with crowd control and help out around the house.

A few days after arriving, we had Ethan and Patrick’s joint birthday party. As fun as having 9 kids wreaking havoc in a small house can be, the adults were soooo exhausted after this small ordeal.

The theme was star wars.

Yup that was a darth vader piñata. Amazing, I know.

Here’s all four kids in their star-wars related outfit:

And if it isn’t obvious, this is Darth Vader, R2D2, Yoda and an Ewok. I love them.

Anyways, since Sarah now has season passes to the Point Defiance Park Zoo, one day we decided to escape the house and play in the zoo with the little ones.

Here is Spider-Sam.

And Spider-Pat

Little Liam got to just chill the entire time. Isn’t he cute?

Patrick attacked the artwork. It’s kind of tradition to do so.

Sammy the snail.

Sammy the anemone.

Ahh! The Flanagan clan is being eaten by a shark!

Me, Ethan and Patrick riding the merry-g0-round

I wanted to have some fun too! So I did.

Well I’m loving it in Washington. There are some things in life going on that is making life extra happy. I especially love being closer to my nephews

They make life so wonderful for me… most of the time.

Also I’ve been working very hard on my graduate school applications. It’s a pain that they make you pay in order to most likely be rejected. Bah! But I feel like I have a very strong portfolio this year, and I’m very excited and proud to show it to the five schools I am applying to!

Yup, I’m really hoping that this will be my year to get noticed. Despite what happens, I am feeling more confident than usual. Hooray!

I was also the recipient of some absolutely beautiful flowers this week. Just thought I’d share.  They are so pretty!!! And make me smile every time I see them

I have some other pictures on my phone that I wanted to share, but the computer I”m using doesn’t seem to want to cooperate! Sooo… that’s all folks!

Life is going great! All I really need now is to finish grad application and get a job finalized! Besides that, life should be running rather smoothly!

Well I hope you all are having a fantabulous week!