My mother-in-law, who has been visiting with us for the last two months, cut and dyed my hair yesterday and I love it.  She must’ve cut off over four inches, a testament to the sacrificial mommy lifestyle, and probably the first I’ve had it cut at all in over a year.    Otherwise yesterday was a complete write-off.

I was disappointed in the grade I received on my quarter two assessment in Human Biology.  That’s not to say I received a bad grade, I got a 2:1 and still maintain a 2:1 in the course thus far, which is what I’m ultimately aiming to do (in the UK, a 2:1 is below a first, which is the highest).  But after talking to my friend Jen about it, she sent me a link to a post on dooce.com which really hit home about the blogger’s daughter and her perfectionism:

When you attempt something, you don’t want to be good at it. You want to be the best. This personality trait bares its fangs most noticeably when you practice piano. And here’s the thing: your skill level has far surpassed everything I know about reading music, so your father has to help you practice. Your father is very good at everything he tries, but he’s not a crazed fanatical overachiever like I am. Like you seem to be. So I’ve had to walk him through what goes on in your brain when you hit a wrong note or can’t hear a rhythm.

“Jon, that wrong note makes her think she’s going to end up homeless.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” he’ll say.

“True,” I concede. “But if you raise your voice while she’s in that spiral, not only will she end up homeless, she’ll end up homeless and then someone will steal her cardboard box.”

As hard as it is to explain, that’s where I go emotionally when I fall short of what I personally think I’m capable of: I’m going to end up homeless and someone will steal my cardboard box.  It isn’t logical, but any feedback that goes against my internal idea of me is a hard thing to swallow, and I feel as though I’m capable of better than even a 2:1.   I’m driven to do well at this, to be a great female role model to my daughter, to not end up jockeying a phone for a living the rest of my life.  I feel as though my goals are realistic (I read once only about 10% of majors in the hard sciences come out with firsts… so I feel 2:1 is more than reasonable) but I also feel the pressure of succeeding to the utmost degree so I can get into grad school when this ungrad is all said and done with.     I’ve never been challenged in this way academically before: my first excursion into university, despite the attempt at a double major, was fairly easy (she says, having been nineteen years old without a care in the world) and I was always on the Dean’s honor list.  This go around is… well… about a million times harder.

It’s been a hard couple of days overall, mostly due to the lack of sleep I’m getting as a result of Moo, who is eighteen months old mind you, waking multiple times in the night and we’re not sure why.  Couple that with getting up at five for work on Sunday,  working a full day, and consuming enough Redbull to bring down an elephant (I really must stop with the Redbull).  I was exhausted when I got home.

Then our boiler broke during the coldest weather we’ve had this year.  Fan-fucking-tastic.

I hate writing about my “problems” on my blog because it sounds incredibly shallow and, even in the throes of emotion, I am still a logical enough person to recognize I’m so very lucky my problems are first world, middle class problems.  I don’t have to worry about feeding my kid or barely scraping by, and we even have enough money in reserve to fix the damn boiler.  Yet it was an amalgamation of everything and, in the course of just a day, I felt like I lost my controlling hold on everything.  I felt spread thin in a way I’ve not yet felt: as though EVERYTHING I am doing can never amount to my best because I’m trying to do too much.  I went from feeling like I was sailing calm waters in a boat I built myself to feeling like I am barely keeping my head above water in just a twenty-four hour period.   And I was angry: angry that Mark had neglected a “blue job” (as opposed to “pink job”) of getting the boiler serviced before winter hit, and also angry at myself for becoming THAT woman I said I’d never be: the one who cannot, for example, even locate the electricity meter because “it’s something her husband deals with.”  Ugh.

I guess what it comes down to is I need a more realistic idea of me.    I’m not superhuman, nor am I perfect, nor will I achieve savant-level accomplishments academically, nor will I wake up one morning with the ability to fix my own boiler.  What I can do, what I am capable of, is trying my best at whatever it is I do: school, work, motherhood, life.    Sometimes, I wish this thought were enough.  Sometimes it’s not, but ultimately it has to be.

There is something incredibly hot about a man who, after spending the entire day at work, still comes home and gets on his hands and knees in a suit to play with his daughter.  Reason #339487 why I love this man.

So each month last year I did these round-up posts as a means of keeping track of and staying motivated on goals I set out to achieve as well as mention little things that may not have made it into a blog entry.  This year I’m doing the same, as it was (and still is!) a great way to track my progress for my resolutions.

I’m surprised I got as much completed as I did to be honest, as things around the Doodle household have been busy since… well since… I don’t know, Thanksgiving last year? Ha!  With the holidays having been a blur and family coming in and out of town (Mark’s mum and my dad have both stayed with us this month) schedules and routines have been out the window, and I’ve resigned myself to rolling with the punches and getting everything back on track in February when things settle down again… or will they?  My new course, Biological Psychology, starts this week and will run alongside my existing Human Biology course.  I’ve dropped Insanity this month in favor of starting over again on Day 1 in February as I was missing too many days in the schedule due to the busy holiday season, but luckily I’ve been watching my weight in the meantime and still losing (despite many a binge on delicious holiday treats).  I am DETERMINED to hit that goal weight and body this year, all the hard work put in since August 2010 is paying off, and I’m in the home stretch.

Also, Awesomeville is just 9 “likes” away from 100!  Have you “liked” Awesomeville yet?  If not, you’re missing out on getting Awesomeville updates direct to your Facebook feed! The “like” box is just over there, on the right.

Resolutions 2012:

• -Pictures taken:  1,797 (1,797 / 15,000)
• -Books read:  4  (4 / 30) 
  • A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
  • Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
  • Life and Laughing: My Story by Michael McIntyre
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• -Pounds lost:  2.6 lbs ( 2.6 / 30)
• -Home improvements: 1 (1 /6)
  • Living room decor.
• -Register for a spring course: DONE!  Biological Psychology starts this week and I am very excited to explore the material, just hoping two courses won’t be the death of me.

More awesomeness from January:

My husband used to play the saxophone, did I ever tell you that?  He picked it up as a teen thinking he’d learn to play sexy tunes so all the girls he fancied would dance provocatively around him (joke a la Eddie Izzard).  This didn’t happen.  Instead, fifteen years on his wife digs it out of storage, polishes it, and puts it on the shelf in the living room.   I love its beautiful contours and intricate parts, and I love how it fits in with the canvas art I made a few weeks ago.  I myself never learned an instrument, after being told at nine that my recorder playing was “wrong” and that I “probably wasn’t cut out for music.”   I had a wild idea that I would LEARN how to play this sax that lasted for about 24 hours before I came to my senses and realized I do not have that kind of free time. At least, not without giving up games or reading or something.

Much like the creep of holidays into earlier and earlier territory each year, so follows the so called “spring” cleaning.   This year I started with my laptop: clearing off programs, deleting copies of copies of copies I seem to build up out of nowhere, and organizing all of my photos into a more comprehensive system.  I even deleted a 30GB sized folder full of nothing but funny images I found online.  What?

(via)

I didn’t even look in it, just threw it out.   Ran the disk defragmenter, opened the laptop itself and gave it a good cleaning with the can of compressed air.  Runs beautifully again, and I’ve never had it this organized. I also rolled out a new blog layout.  Spiffy, huh?

I’m excited that spring-cleaning-in-winter this year includes painting and decorating the bedroom, as it’s been completely neglected as we slowly improve upon the other rooms in the flat.  The bedroom still looks as it did when we moved in, right down to the bare bulb dangling unceremoniously from the ceiling.   I’ve got a lot of ideas, and it’s going to be fun.  I’m feeling productive at the moment, inspired, and I’m ready to begin: home improvements, my next course, the rest of the year.

 Perhaps winter is a better time for our cleaning anyways, spring is for fun.

Glennon Melton: Don’t Carpe Diem

Last week my dad finally made it over to the UK for a visit.

Moo took to her Pops instantly, excitedly waking him up in the mornings with a loud “squee!” and then spending our days showing him around our beautiful town.

It was nice to finally have my dad visit and see our lives in the UK.  I know he worries a lot, and I think the trip went a long way to laying those fears to rest: we’ve carved out a life for our little family here in the UK, and it’s a good life.

Family coming to visit is always a double-edged sword.  I really do like living here (even if it was a hard adjustment in the beginning) and sharing my life here with my mom or dad for a few weeks reminds me why I love Brighton:  I love having the sea at the bottom of my street, the cry of seagulls in the early morning, and 10pm sunsets with a jug of Pimms on the beach in the summer.  I love the life we’ve made here.  I’m also reminded just how far away my entire family is, how hard that is, and sometimes it feels as though it would be worth uprooting this little family of mine to move us all to the US.  But I do count myself lucky as my parents are visiting more and more, mom will be over in the summer as will dad, who decided he couldn’t be away from Moo for too long.    As an expat, all you can do really is make sure the time you DO have together is quality time.  And we did.

It was a good week.

2011 was a big year in a lot of ways for me as I set out to discover what it was, exactly, that I wanted out of life: life as a family, as an expat, and as an individual.  When it came to photography I thought I wanted to pursue a business of my own, at least on the side. Yet when it came down to it, I really didn’t want to. I didn’t have that drive needed to make the effort to fit this one more thing into an already busy lifestyle.   I became a fauxtographer: whipping out a business name, portfolio, and brand before I really knew what I was doing or where I was going.

As I learned more about photography I learned a bit about myself.  As it turns out, I really don’t want to take photos of people I have no emotional investment in, I don’t want to turn this hobby that I love into a job.   So I’m detaching my photography from the brand I created. I learned a lot about myself in pursuing Odyssey Photography (for it’s short 14 month life span), with the most important lesson being that the second it becomes work, the second the shots become forced and my heart not in it, is when it stops being fun.  And for me, I want this to always be something I do for fun.

I’m a rookie and, with any luck, I’ll continue to be a rookie for a long time: always learning, trying new techniques, new editing practices, and on and on as I get better.  I’m looking forward to how much more I will learn this year.

Google has decided to end Google Friend Connect service for all non-blogger based blogs starting March 1, 2012.  I don’t really have a lot to say on the matter other than 1. WordPress is a superior content management system and 2. I don’t want to lose readers, so I’m offering alternative methods for staying up to date with Awesomeville.

I’ve replaced the GFC follower box on the right with a very similar widget for following Awesomeville.co.uk’s Facebook page.  Click “like” and receive new post notifications to your Facebook news feed.  Highly convenient, wouldn’t you say? Awesomeville updates, neatly packaged and delivered right to your Facebook feed, sitting right there between the link your brother posted that’s probably not at all safe for work and the status update of a woman you’re friends with but not friends with who posts graphic details of her offspring’s bowel movements.  Why, my blog update notifications on your feed are practically  little rays of sunshine!*

You can also subscribe to the RSS feed. 

(*I’m only about 60% this arrogant).

When Jen said the color in my living room was very “jazz” one night (we may or may not have had copious amounts of wine) I instantly had an idea for some really cool wall art I could totally create myself and have printed to canvas.  So I set about creating three simple images involving jazz playing silhouettes on bold back-lit backdrops with photoshop.  I did a mock up (1) image of what it might look like on the wall, ordered test prints, made adjustments and improvements, ordered test prints of mock up 2 , and finally ordered on canvas. I even learned how to use Illustrator in the process in order to make proper vectors.  I am insanely happy with how they look hung up on the living room wall and also satisfied in that 1. it’s something I’ve made, my own art and 2. by creating EXACTLY what I wanted I didn’t simply settle for something close but not spot on and store bought.

The prints are 20 x 30″ each and, whilst canvas is a pretty expensive medium to print in, they are the perfect size to make the impact I was looking for.  I used www.dscolourlabs.co.uk because, after trying several online shops for print quality, DS Colour Labs is the best by far.  I love how quickly they process orders, I love the color reproduction, and I love how safely they package everything (take note Shutterfly, you DONT ROLL PRINTS!) so I trusted the same quality in my canvas order, and they delivered. *

I’m absolutely in love with 1920s -40s era jazz, big band, and swing;  Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and other Harlem legends, and this was a great way to bring that into our living space.

(*not paid to say it.)

(Click each photo to enlarge!)

Photos from my niece’s blessing.