PTS and picture-fun

today is my last day working at The Parent-Teacher Store. i am on my very last one-hour lunch break at Panera Bread Co. i've grown quite attached to this place. i'll miss it very much. the mediterranean veggie sandwich has become somewhat of a comfort food for me.

on my last day, i'm working a 9-5 shift. today is the day we get our shipment. AND it's my turn to clean the bathroom. what a day.

here is a totally unrelated yet adorable picture from the weekend. jesse and i were watching ruby for a few hours, and in between dancing and changing outfits five times, we managed to have a little photo-taking-fest. this one's my favorite.

ear to the ground

i'm sitting in panera on their free wifi. i've made a habit of coming here during my one-hour lunch break every day, ordering the "you pick two" (i usually get french onion soup and the mediterranean veggie sandwich) and an iced green tea, and then sitting on my computer while i eat my lunch. yesterday i was lucky enough to catch my sister, solange, online while i was here. as we were chatting through gmail chat, she suggested that we both log into skype so that we can have an audio conversation. "but i don't have my headphones," i protested. she pushed me, "so? you don't need them." i finally gave in. so for the next fifteen minutes or so (during panera's peak hours, i might add), i spoke to my computer, laughing and giggling, as all the other panera patrons stared at me with concern. the volume on my computer was turned all the way up, but it was so loud in the restaurant that i still found myself having to lean over with my ear to the keyboard in order to hear her. i felt like a native american listening for the buffalo herd....or a caterpillar listening for the ant herd.

today i brought my headphones, but solange wasn't online.

this is the stuff life is made of

so about the canmore folk music festival--it was pretty much amazing. there must have been over twenty bands and artists covering a range of genres from country to celtic to bluegrass to african. there were two bands there who i had seen perform there in 2003 when i went, fruit and the duhks. i'm a big fan of fruit. here is a picture of me with them at the festival: three girls from australia. really nice harmonies and a jazzy sort of influence. the duhks are straight-up folk music. pretty cool. they have a banjo player, which earns them points in my book, and they've recorded all their albums in nashville. woohoo!

here's a funny picture i just thought i'd show you all. no real relevance to the story, expect that it was taken in camore, alberta.

i was also really impressed with the cottars. they're two brother-sister pairs. both the girls are 16 and the boys are 18. they knocked my socks off. the lead singer, fiona, has this incredibly sweet voice, yet so powerful and well-controlled. they're so young, yet they have such a strong connection with and respect for folk music of all kinds, celtic, slavic, and even a song in gaelic.

there was a vendor at the festival with a booth called the cats pyjamas. they sold all kinds of things like buttons and cuffs, handbags and clothes. real funky stuff. but their main sale was hats. this guy, kurt, made hats right there with his sewing machine. he had a bunch of pre-made hats which you could buy, but you could also pick out materials to design your own hat. then he'd come and feel your head, and in five minutes you'd have an awesome hat custom-made to fit your head. and it always fit! amazing, i tell you. and that's not all...as it turns out, kurt is from wodonga, australia, the same town as mona v. (gustavo). i just happen to know the wodonga high school fight song (long story), so when he realized i wasn't kidding about knowing where wodonga is, he and i became good friends and he cut me some good deals. he also told me i can have a job anywhere in the world where he's putting up a stall. sweet deal, eh?

but really my trip up to montana was way more than just hats and huckleberries. while i was at school there, the staff became like family to me, and the area became my home. i hold a very special place in my heart for the tobacco valley and eureka, montana. it was the place where a lot of significant changes in my life took place. where i learned and grew more than i knew i could. it was where i found the Baha'i Faith in my heart for myself. and who wouldn't grow and have spiritual experiences in a place like that? surrounded by such beautiful nature, when you wonder where it comes from, there's only one Source to attribute it all to.

the Chrysalis School, where i went, offered me a job for after i graduate college. actually, Kenny offered it to me to have me start immediately, but he was half-joking. but i would love to go back there. being there and having loving, understanding, and patient adult influences around me was the key to my growth and happiness there. not only do i feel like i owe it to those people to try to pay it forward, but i would just love to be a part of that process.

by the way, as it turns out i have a tear in my sphincter. when the doctor told me, i laughed. all i could think of was wayne's world.

warning: this post may contain content inapproriate for children or people weak of stomach. reader discretion is advised.

i owe you guys an update. sorry for my absence.

i'm getting a colonoscopy tomorrow. when i told my friend meredith, she responded with, "what?! why? you're not 50 yet!" no offense to any of my 50-year-old readers.

thankfully, i'll be sedated for the procedure itself. however, today i had to do the bowel prep (also known as a colon prep). this is the worst part of the whole process. it is the part where i clear out my colon in order that the doctors may have a clear look at it tomorrow. so what do i have to do? well, following the doctor's orders, i took the maximum daily dosage of dulcolax and magnesium citrate. i also got a prescription of miralax. on the bottle, it says that the daily dosage is 17 grams. my doctor's orders were to take 255 grams today. so basically i'm sleeping on the toilet tonight.

it's 11 p.m. and i still haven't finished my miralax. i feel completely nauseated because i wasn't allowed to eat anything solid all day. all i've had are a couple popsicles, a cup of tea, peach jello, some white grape juice, and two bowls of plain chicken broth. and of course, all my laxatives and gatorade.

the magnesium citrate was advertised to have a "pleasing lemony flavor." it has turned me off of sprite and 7up forever.

on a lighter note....i had a really nice vacation in montana recently. i went to boarding school in eureka, montana for my last year of high school, so i went back to visit. i hadn't been back there since 2003, and oh how wonderful it was to be back. kenny, my surrogate father at boarding school, has recently gotten his pilot's license and a little plane. so on my first day there, he took my flying in his little orage plane. i actually got to pilot it a bit myself. while i was in control of the flying, and we were caught up in conversation, kenny looked out of the window and said, "oh no! we're in canada. we'd better turn around before the F16's show up." thankfully, nobody showed up and we got out safely.

i also had an unsuccessful day of huckleberry picking. yes, a huckleberry is more than just the name of a mark twain character. they grow all over northwest montana, and they grow only in the wild. every summer, girl's from the school go huckleberry picking and get gallons and gallons of berries to freeze and use the whole year for pancakes, pies, jams, milkshakes, and smoothies. see all the gallon jugs they're carrying? on a regular huckleberry picking day, those jugs would all be full. yum. unfortunately, the bears had gotten to the huckleberries in that area before we did. it was still a nice hike. i found my new favorite flower:

indian paintbrush

we spent the weekend in the canadian rockies at the canmore folk music festival. i love canada for so many reasons, but one of them is that canadians all really appreciate the music of their ancestors regardless of where they came from.

here is a picture of the drive on the way up to the festival:

i'm going to have to finish blogging about canmore later. they told me that the bowel prep would give me the worst diarrhea of my life, but i think they actually meant to say i would be peeing out of my butthole.