Hello, Leon.

List of 6 Excuses 

(for why I haven't updated since November):

1. I'm a full-time college student and full-time college students are overworked, overcharged and overly-exhausted people. 

2. My creative well was bone dry due to an increased amount of stress and displeasure experienced during the last few months as a direct result of reason 1. 

3. My iCloud refuses to work properly and I refuse to spend more than 30 minutes figuring it out. I am stumped and have not a clue in the world how to talk my iPhone into sending my photo-stream directly to my computer beyond what I've already done. It just sits there and laughs at me. 

4. I've taken on yet another role. Go ahead and call me Intern Caitlyn again. This means I have to spend 120 hours of my little life working for the American Diabetes Association before May 3rd. It's fun but calculate 120 hours into real life and full-time college student status and (HELLO) you understand why this has made it to the List of 6 Excuses.

5. My French class is all-consuming. 

6. My babysitting business is starting to take off. One or two referrals and suddenly I feel like every Raleigh mom is giving me the once-over when I'm at the grocery store. But I love it- there are some stinking cute kids down here. And they call me Miss Caitlyn so basically I'm a fan. 

So there you go. That should clear things up. 

But if not, then you can kindly take your negativity elsewhere.

Yesterday was my 22nd birthday (whaaat?) and super-storm Leon made his big debut. 

I was really looking forward to celebrating on a nice warm day but Leon had other plans. 

Pushy. 

We did manage to make our way over to Whole Foods and got me a birthday cake. 

It's from Whole Foods so really it's like the healthiest cake we could've gotten, right? 

 

We got 2 inches of snow which isn't the biggest of deals but down here that's more than enough to call off schools and cancel classes and shut down businesses and hibernate for a day or two. 

So that's what I'm doing. Sort of hibernating. 

I slept way too long this morning and so all day I've been kind of groggy-stupid. I just want to go back to bed but I've gotten plenty of sleep and more would just make it worse. 

Why do bad things happen to good people? 

You know when you sleep too long in the morning and you're like borderline awake but then you have the craziest dreams? Or is that just a problem I have? 

Well either way, I had the weirdest dream this morning. 

Mary Catherine was our new kitten? 

She was human, but we treated her like a cat. 

And we let her outside but then we went to bed and accidentally locked her out. 

So she shacked up with a kind possum family that lived under our porch.

Then the next morning I went out to find her, my precious kitty, but I couldn't find her! 

I called her name over and over and then the neighbor told me she saw her go down the street to the hospital. 

So I made my way to the hospital and there she was, little kitty/MC curled up in the corner sleeping. 

I was warned by the nurse that she wouldn't act like a kitty because she was basically raised by possums. 

I figured it would be fine, she spent like 1 night with them, how bad could it be? 

But then I picked her up and she screamed some crazy, possum-like scream. 

Scared the crap out of me. Then I realized I was terrible and had really messed up my kitty-sister. 

I woke up crying. 

And no, we don't have a cat or a kitten, there is no possum family living under our porch, and there is no hospital down the street. 

I am also not implying that my sister is an animal or that she was raised by animals.

I conclude that I have a wild imagination and that sleeping past 10 is no longer a good idea.

Clearly 22 means that I can't handle all that sleep. 

Goodbye youth.

Want to re-cap Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks? Because I want to!

I'll go ahead and get all the puppy pictures out of the way first. There are a lot, brace yourselves. Shasta's just so photogenic and Iris is so stinking cute. 

Danny is Iris's favorite person. 

She's a stunner.

See? Shasta was born to pose. 

I taught Iris how to play Scrabble. She wasn't very good. 

Shasta got a haircut and we made fun of her, shame! 

And Baby Iris officially loves shoving her face into the snow. Good for her. 

I may be slightly obsessed with those two, but can you blame me? They're adorable and they are so cuddly and I miss them so bad! 

Winter in PA was lots of fun. We had snow more than we didn't have snow. Or maybe that's a lie, I can't really remember if I'm being honest. It seems like a life-time ago. 

 But we tried to play in the snow at one point. It was cold and windy and Iris was occupying herself so we didn't feel the need to stay out long. 

I do remember hanging out with Carli Sue a lot. We decided to decorate the guest-book at the Corner Coffee Shop over Thanksgiving break. She drew a lovely turkey with a coffee and I wrote an impressive list of what we were thankful for.

 

I'm thankful for her! 

I also saw old high school friends and we did our high-school-friend thing where we called someone and took a picture and tagged them on facebook. Because we're so creative like that. 

 Yu Qing was on the phone. True story! 

I took so many pictures of all the happenings. I mean, it was Christmas would you expect anything less? Also it was my last winter break. The last time I'll get four weeks off for Christmas because apparently that's not normal and real people don't get that. 

That's a serious bummer.

And Kyle isn't in many pictures because he was gallivanting in Ukraine! We were super excited to have him back home!

This little Amish lady made me smile. I don't know why, but I found her absolutely adorable. And I felt bad that she was walking to get her mail in the cold, rain. I thought someone should recognize and document on her behalf. 

2014's going to be great, isn't it? 

So much hope for this year!