"Wait, let me check my planner" -- said me never.

I feel like life after house sitting is going to feel like a vacation.

House & pet sitting is a great way to make a quick buck -- I get to pretend I have a dog for a few days (or weeks, in the current case), and I get to stay in beautifully decorated homes -- but I swear my brain has a limited number of responsibilities it can handle before things start to fall through the cracks. Between school and it's accompanying homework, actual work, dog-walking and working at the Farmer's Market, as well as time with family and friends and professional junk development, like tailoring my resume and researching jobs, my mind is pretty darned occupied before having the responsibility of an entire home, a garden, and two pets thrown at me. (Note- I am, however, so thrilled that my friends could go on their trip to Europe, and I'm happy to have played a major part in helping them get there. I just don't think I'll be house-sitting again any time soon.)

On a similar note, I have a subconscious aversion to planners and calendars (unlike this girl, who I think is super cool, but we probably definitely couldn't bond over planners). I've tried countless notebook/academic/weekly/designer planners, and they end up 99% unused at the bottom of my purse. Even my mom (who, ironically, passed on her incessant to-do-list-making trait to me but forgot to give me the writing-in-a-planner trait) has bought me a planner nearly every year since early high school, and they all end up being tossed in the trash.

                - Birth! Newly torn out of Christmas wrapping paper or drawn from a bookstore bag

                - Next hour: Lying on the counter near me as I explain to my mother again why I don't use 

                              planners.

                - Next 10 minutes: Being written in as I attempt, once again, to try to use a planner. It
                              usually goes something like this:
                                "Do homework."
                                "Football game."
                                "Farmer's Market."
                                 *...star doodles...*
                                 *My thoughts concurrently:* "Uuuuggghhhhhhh thisisdumbbbbb."

                - Next 6 months: Sitting unopened in my purse or on my desk.

                - Next week: lying on the floor of my room.

                - Next 3 years: Stuck in a shoebox once I get around to cleaning my room.

                - Tragic death by trashcan.

Anyways, I am a hopeless anti-planner and furious to-do list maker, hoping that life continues to be kind to my awkwardly imbalanced organizational ways.

Some random photos of my week:

What I walk by every day to get to class and work (Ohio Stadium). O-H!

 Equally monumental, the elixir that often gets me through those days of work and class.

 I celebrated the first day of fall with a batch of homemade pumpkin cookies (recipe here). I thought they were pretty fantastic, and I ate, uhm, several.

The prettiest flower bush on one of my dog-walking routes. These flowers have literally been there since May, changing colors ever few weeks from white to pink to blue to green to burgundy. (I feel like Professor Sprout from Harry Potter secretly uses this house as a summer home....)

 

 On yet another dog-walking route, I found a low stone wall running along the sidewalk for thirty feet or so with hundreds of hen-and-chicks growing in the cracks and crevices. Given that I've only seen hen-and-chicks in bunches of like, 3 or 4, this was super cool.

A sunflower I was lucky enough to snag at the Farmer's Market :)

More to come soon! The weather is continuing to cool down, and I can't wait for apple cider, brainstorming about Halloween costumes, chili, more football games and more free time!!

Sammie