During the holiday break I was able to get together with some school friends, including the famous Devin and Loretta. We ate a good steak dinner prepared by Loretta, watched a movie, and just enjoyed catching up.

It’s ridiculous, but I fretted the entire day long in anticipation of this event. I spent extra time on my hair and makeup after my post-work visit to the gym. Next to my former peers, who are all working towards their master’s degrees (either currently or intending to pursue it next year), I tend to feel like a has-been and an imposter: a girl who, although she could have gone on to study nearly anything she wanted, although the unrivaled glories of pedantic, heady academia were within her grasp, threw it all away in order to have a “career” (say it with a sneer in your voice) and live the normal life of a commoner.
(Yes. I have issues.)

In other words, masters’ students and doctoral candidates make me feel super inferior. There were many people who hoped that I too would go on to “do more”. So it has been with some trepidation that I approach conversations with my friends the Classics majors, in spite of my deep and abiding affection for them.

However, as I spent time with these people who I haven’t seen since April and listened to them talk about grad school applications and doctoral candidacy and teaching assistantships and writing papers and taking exams, my inferiority complex all but dissipated and was replaced with something else: relief. And as I left that evening, I felt positively giddy. And supremely thankful: thankful that I have time now to spend several hours a week at the gym. That I get to go to bed at a decent hour most nights. Thankful that at 5:00 I get to go home and leave my work at work. Thankful that I get paid every two weeks and while the amount isn’t extraordinarily large, it’s enough to pay for my needs and my wants and chip away at my debts. Thankful that I haven’t read a stitch of Latin since April (except to prepare for the lessons i teach) and thankful that I can still pick it up again anytime I want to but I do not have to stay up with it past midnight. Thankful that I have the freedom to have a life: to invest more time in other people, to do more at church, to participate in my family, to take care of my horses.

I am proud of my peers: Devin at Emory, Jaci at Wisconsin, Kate and Loretta bound for Yale or Oxford or who-knows-where. But I do not envy them. I am so happy to be working my little website coordinator job at my little think-tank employer and living my little life with my little farm and my not-so-little family and teaching my little students. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Well, maybe one thing.

But you can’t always get what you want.

I’m on vacation–my first one since becoming an actual salaried full-time member of the workforce. I have scrupulously saved my last 3 days of paid time off in order to take them now, in this week between Christmas and New Years’ Day, thus maximizing their impact because when combined with holiday days, it means that I won’t see the inside of Acton’s offices for over a week. (Well, except for Wednesday morning when I go in to send out the weekly commentary…um, right. we’re just going to pretend that’s not happening.)

I’m Not Doing Anything. No work, no freelance, no travelling. And revelling in it. There are a few personal projects I’ve wanted to accomplish for some time and maybe I’ll get to those. Or maybe I’ll just lie in bed in my pjs and read books and surf the internets and eat chocolate all day. If that’s what I’m doing, it’s going great so far. It’s 11 am, I’ve barely eaten breakfast, and now I’m back in bed. Littlest bro is on the floor, keeping me company while Momz is out on some sort of errand. Currently he’s pushing buttons on my cell phone. He’s either calling Slovenia or deleting my entire phonebook–I can’t actually tell. Whatever.

Littlest bro likes electronic things. Like my iPod shuffle, which kept him thoroughly intrigued for about 15 minutes while we waited for our food at Applebees a couple of weeks ago.

“If I puts these thingies into my ears, i hears noise. When I takes them out, no noise.
Weeeeeeeeeeird.”

It’s a balmy 43 degrees today and sunny, which means I should probably take a horse out for a ride. It would kind of be a crime not to in such lovely weather. I know I use the term “lovely” quite loosely here, but really, it’s all relative because at this time last week, we were still trying to dig out from the Great Blizzard of 2008 which (to many peoples’ chagrin) forced the cancellation of church and various other activities. It was a bummer to have church cancelled. But honestly, it’s nice to have a day when you’re forced to just slow down and stay home and do very little.

This is our house, in the blizzardy aftermath. I took this picture when it was largely clear, but the wind was still blowin like crazy and eventually started kicking up the snow into a whiteout winter wonderland again. All that white stuff? 3.5 feet deep. Underneath? our driveway.

This is why Mr. Hunter couldn’t get to church to unlock the building last week.

Mr. Hunter has ice in his facial hair. It was that cold out.

Those orange stakes denote where our driveway is supposed to be.

Ethan digs out the front walkway.

That's me in the middle. I know I look funny. I mostly wanted to stay warm, not win any fashion shows.

Brycen watched from the house. Probably a wise choice considering most of the snowdrifts were over his head.

After putting forth their best attempt to clear the driveway, the gentlemen spent the rest of the day in a technologically-induced stupor.

We also took the opportunity to do some Christmas baking.

Before the day was out, we had produced gingerbread, shortbread, sugar cookies, peanut butter balls, and butterscotch fudge. It was all sooooo tasty.

And that is how you spend a snowed-in Sunday in the Hunter household.

A few weeks ago my longsuffering Mother helped me take some Christmas photos with my unruly herd. I wanted to do some lovely Christmas cards…bought all the stuff, designed the card, but never got around to printing the photos. Maybe I still should this week even though it’s after Christmas? What do ya’ll think?

It took over 200 shots to get the right one. Here are some of the funnier rejects…

um, not so much….

better, but still problematic…

Max: about to bite mom.
Jezebelle: looks like witch mare from the underworld.
Starr: Spaz!

“If we gang up on Mom, maybe she’ll take off the ridiculous hats.”

notice the *chomp* in the corner

Mr. Maxling is so gorgeous in this one.

Wheeeee!!

“That’s It. We’re getting OUT of here.”

Merry Christmas to ALL!!!

Last night I took my two younger sisters for a very special evening out: we went to see the Nutcracker performed by the Grand Rapids Ballet at DeVos Hall. This event was made possible by a generous person who often provides ballet tickets to Acton employees. The girls, I think, were thrilled because they’d never been to see a ballet before. I can’t remember the last time I was either–I think I recall seeing Peter Pan or Peter and the Wolf or something with my mom and cousins…this would have been when I was about 6.

Not only were the tickets free but–as you can see–our seats were AMAZING. We were in the third row, center. Close enough to see every detail of the dancers’ finery and every chiseled muscle on the tights-clad legs of the male dancers. Um….yeah. Moving right along…

The show was beautiful. The girls loved it I think (in fact right now they’re in the other room enthusiastically describing every detail of the show to mom.) Dancers amaze me…I cannot even begin to comprehend how a human being can use their body so gracefully! Maria Kowroski and Charles Askegard, of the NYC Ballet, were there to perform as the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Nutcracker, and John Varineau conducted the Grand Rapids Symphony in the pit. When I was in high school I was lucky enough to play under him in the Youth Symphony, and I got to catch up with him a little bit at intermission–he couldn’t believe I’m all graduated and making money already. I told him that makes two of us.

And here’s the curtain call (with Varineau and all). The curtain call lasted forever (I think the performers had to bow 7 times) and involved a standing ovation, perpetuating what I’ve noticed to be a disturbing trend in Grand Rapids over the past couple of years. Every single show I’ve been to lately has ended with a standing ovation. Call me an unappreciative curmudgeon, but really, I ask, is that entirely necessary? I know that the people of West Michigan love our performing arts and are wildly appreciative of our dedicated performers, but seriously–when you give an ovation after every single performance, it defeats the purpose.

But, like I said, maybe I’m just an unappreciative curmudgeon.

Anyway, it was a really lovely night.

Life is seriously good. Unlike the many students I know and love, I am, for the first time in years, NOT having finals this week. I am not stressed, overworked, sleep-deprived, or frazzled. Instead, I am spending my days sipping mochas while I use a 17″ MacBookPro to work on Acton’s new website, learning cool things like jQuery along the way.

Today was the icing on the cake: I went to Rosa Parks Circle (only yards from my building) and spent my lunch break ice skating. The air was nippy and the sky was blue with fluffy clouds and they were playing Christmas carols on the loudspeaker and there were only 4 people on the rink.

Seriously. I have it made. Next time I start whining about something, somebody please just slap me upside the head and tell me to stop. You have permission.

Yesterday, in an act of astonishing family togetherness, we went and cut down a tree at the lovely Vormittag tree farm in Standale, MI. Here are some photos about that experience.

It was blizzarding yesterday, which meant that travel was a little more interesting than usual. Nevertheless, we forged ahead. Because our family is so ginormous these days, we took two cars–the parents and the kids rode in my trusty Redtruck, and us older siblings and the fiancee rode in my brother’s Taurus.

This is the gorgeous old red barn at Vormittags’ place.

At first there was a lot more snowballing than there was tree-cutting.

Colin and fiancee Lisa are getting ready to retaliate…

…but that didn’t go so well either.

Finally, retribution.

Brycen hides behind the trees in order to avoid the mayhem.

Eventually, after much controversy, we made our selection…

…and the strapping young men carried it out of the forest.

I kind of love how handy my pickup is. It’s so cool to put things in the back.

We also took some gorgeous portraits while we were there.

All 8 of us.

(same photo, old-timey style)

So sweet.

This is my first winter as a not-student.
I don’t know why I feel the need to comment on that fact, except that it just feels weird not to be slushing around campus in the snow, dragging a backpack and an armload of obtuse texts and dodging between other students, heads-down to avoid the whipping wind. It’s the first winter that the first snow doesn’t see me drowning in papers and studying for exams.

I miss the fascinating boredom that was Latin class. (But don’t tell Levitan and Anderson I said that.) I miss slushing around on campus.

But I love working downtown, I love having the bank and the library and the bookstore within walking distance of my building. I went to Grand Rapids Main library for the first time in my life today. It was kind of stunningly enormous. I could get lost there.

Yep.

P.S. I started reading Harry Potter this morning. Probably, my reading all of this teen fiction lately has something to do with the fact that I read about 3 fiction books during my entire college career. I have a lot of catching up to do.

I just finished reading the last book in Stephenie Meyers’ “Twilight Saga.” Whenever I finish reading or watching a good book, movie, or the last episode of a TV series, I get such an intangible feeling of bittersweet happy mingled with loss. There is the happiness and the relief in knowing that my beloved characters are all happily-ever-after, and there is a frustration that the story is over and I don’t get to share in it anymore. And some sort of nebulous loss, that I’ve come to the end and know all there is to know about those characters, who seemed sort of like friends.

I guess that’s what fanfiction is for.