Five for Friday, Edition #49

 1) My husband won a big award. I mean, technically he won two big awards, one at the university level and one at the college level, but the one at the college level was super meaningful. I was there when it was announced and he was so surprised and I was surprised at how quickly I welled up with tears. He's so good at what he does.

2) The first day of classes was Wednesday. There was a "threat to life safety" emergency issued at my campus, but we didn't know at the time was that it was not a true threat to life safety.  It was scary. Fortunately, I was not the adult in the room at the time - our associate deans started telling us what to do in our office space and I just did what I was told to do. I had a student in my office and I shut off the lights, closed and locked the door, and pulled down the blinds. It was terrifying. I mean, in the end, it was nothing, but there was a half hour or so there where I was frantically trying to find my husband. I just. I never want to go through that again.

And, honestly, the rumors going around this are astounding. Someone was acting erratically at the library and someone else thought they had a weapon. This was called in. It turns out that the maybe weapon was an umbrella. That's the end of the story. But the rumor mill is out of control. 

Now we're dealing with a flood of calls for students asking to move to online classes. Classes have started. Classes are at full capacity. This feels like a surreal nightmare. 

3) The dog was sick. Again. This time it was the living room rug. So if you come to my house and it smells like dog shit, YOU HAVE TO LET ME KNOW. We are officially nose blind to it at this point because the involvement in cleanup was real.

4) Labor Day is this weekend. I have been tasked with bringing salads. Let's be clear, I usually bring a lettuce salad, but I'm OUT ON LETTUCE RIGHT NOW. I'm going to bring green bean salad and grape salad and hope for the best. If anyone dares to call me out on the salad game, I will probably not handle it well.

I also added "mani/pedi" to the options of things to do over the weekend and a bunch of us are going to get our nails done on Saturday morning. I've already made the appointment and everything. I WILL BE THE COOL AUNT.

5) Updated on seasonal SAD: It's already bad. I'm walking Hannah in the dark 2/3 daily walks again. I am chronically tired. I am very much liable to start crying if you ask me a single even slightly controversial question. I am looking forward to Labor Day, but as soon as someone asks me how the start of the semester is going, I'm nervous I might just break down. 

I decided on my birthday in mid-August that I was going to reset. It's been a tough couple of years in the old Gimbalsh household and I was determined that things were going to turn around. But the days get shorter, there's unbloggable things happening at work, and then this week happened with the dog and the active threat to life alert and the news of the world. And it has been (counts days) seventeen days since I decided to reset and I think I'm in a worse place than I was before. 

So if all I'm writing about is books and what I ate for dinner, please give me some grace. I am trying to keep it together. 

Happy Labor Day to those who celebrate. For the rest of the world, happy weekend!

I Said I Was Chill, But I Was Wrong

 Look at a comment I typed out earlier today on Elisabeth's blog:

Seriously, me of ten hours ago. "It's been a pretty chill holiday season for me." GTFOH. 

I was doing well until I got a text message from my SIL with assignments to bring things to the holiday meal. 

T&D: Salad/veggies

VEGGIES? VEGGIES?

Look, I bring a salad and it's a giant pain in the ass. It always involves a trip to Costco and hours in the kitchen the night before and then I have to bring the big serving bowl and multiple coolers and IT'S A THING. And I do it because it's food I will eat and if I won't eat anything else there, at least I know there will be a delicious salad. 

But now I have to bring MORE STUFF. Veggies? Ain't nobody going to eat crudités at this shindig. Corn is already spoken for. Green bean casserole is disgusting. 

WHAT AM I GOING TO BRING? 

Cut to my surface level chill (sorry I lied on your blog, Elisabeth) being absolutely destroyed. 

Okay, blog friends. In this, my time of holiday-induced panicking, what do you think I should bring? NOTES: Whatever we make has to be transported 2.5 hours to Iowa. If it's cold, we can throw it into a cooler. I don't know if we'll have access to an oven there, but there are microwaves if necessary. Also, this is a midwestern gathering, so please remember that this family considered strawberry pretzel Jello salad as a "salad." There will be 23 people there, although let's say a good half of them won't touch a vegetable, so 12-13. It should be gluten-free, but that is probably not a consideration with most vegetable sides. 

Please help me so I can go back to my zen state. 

Thursday Things

1. I really left you guys on a cliffhanger last week. The software did not get fixed, we had to manually register students. Honestly, I found the whole day exhilarating. I was useful. I was cheerful. The students were so nice and they had NO IDEA this wasn't completely normal. At one point, my boss just pointed at me and said "NGS will fix it" and I DID FIX IT. 

2. Let's talk about some of the hard stuff. I had a roommate in grad school who said you should always think of your life as a pie and when things are working in one area of the pie, they're not working in another. Ideally, your pie would be just equal slices, but it never is. Let's say my pie currently has five things: Housing, Work, Money, Loved Ones (Human), Pets. In an ideal world, everything would be 20%. Right now, my pie looks like this:

a. My mom's situation is actually pretty good right now, but she has colon cancer and she's going to die. My sister and I still aren't really talking.

b. Dr. BB is not rebounding back from his rhabdo diagnosis. He is getting better, but he's pretty frustrated about not being strong enough to do certain things and that it's taking him so long to be able to resume what are normal activities for him. 

c. Dr. BB's grandmother died last week. She was 102-years-old and it wasn't entirely unexpected, but the communication around the situation only made us all the more aware of the fact that the phone tree has been neglected since Dr. BB's mother died in 2017. 

d. There's stuff going on with my own health. I have a perfectly innocuous lipoma (a fatty lump) below my right bra line. I've had it for about a decade. Well, it was innocuous until last weekend when I aggravated it somehow (maybe with a sports bra?) and now it's red and inflamed and seems to have doubled in size through swelling and it fucking hurts, so I'm sitting and standing weird to avoid it, but that's making my back hurt and my SIL the doctor looked at it and said it was fine, but it's in a tough spot because you should probably just wear loose clothing, but it's literally under my bra line and I am not a lady who can go without a bra. ANYWAY. There's that and some other stuff. Also, Dr. BB's brother tested positive for COVID right after the funeral on Monday after we'd spent a lot of time with him in close contact at the church, so now I want you to picture me wearing masks in my office like it's 2021. 

I've been struggling with a lot about this, but look, it's all life and I'm going to be fine and Dr. BB's going to be fine. This will not last forever and someday, probably real soon, those numbers on the pie will be different and I'll be fretting about something else. 

3. Work is sort of insane right now. I love it, honestly, I do. But all the last minute stuff is coming up and I have a college retreat all morning and then back to back to back meetings with students who need to repeat courses and I still have not yet published my courses to the LMS. And yesterday a brand new course was handed to me and the LMS page is a whole lot of nothing. And the kicker is that we're going to be out of town all weekend so if it doesn't get done by the end of the day today, it's not getting done. What are the odds of my success, friends?

4. But look! I have cute pets. 

That's all. I'm sorry this was so depressing. Things are FINE. Things will be FINE. My life is currently one big mess, but it's going to be FINE. In three weeks, this will all be a thing of the past. 

How are the slices of your life pie? Please feel free to complain in the comments!

Moments of Zen

Things did not go well in Michigan with my mother and things continue to spiral out of control in the hospital there leading to an emergency phone calls with subtitles of  "Where is all of mom's money?" and "Does anyone know where the will is?" and "If the oncologist doesn't check her chart this time, punch them." So, in the spirit of putting on my own oxygen mask before helping others, here are some moments from the last two weeks I want to remember.

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My Aunt Sylvia and I working on a puzzle of a fox. The puzzle was fox-shaped and it was hard to figure out the border and the pieces were not traditional jigsaw puzzle piece shaped, so it was super hard. Sylvia, who was on the phone, would point to a piece and where it belonged and she was right almost every time. Puzzle genius. With her help, I did it three times as fast as if I had to sit there fiddling with it by myself.

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We saw a flock of six turkeys on the way to the hospital. Two of them were males with their tail feathers spread out, showing all their glory.

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I stopped to get gas in my car on the way home. My uncles got out of the car and ran into the gas station. When we got home my uncle presented me with a strawberry shortcake ice cream bar and it was delicious and just what I needed at that moment. [We can talk about how I'm eating my feelings in another post.]

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The sun setting as I was going for a couple of  evening runs. There are so many more trees there than in Wisconsin and the vista was lovely. I even saw a few deer on the road with me on one of these runs.

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The nurses in the ICU joking with my mom that she was their easiest patient and that they wanted to come in and hide in her room all day. 

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The time my mom said "I handled your dad's death too well" and everyone in the room laughed.

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When we came back from the hospital to find that the dogs had not handled our absence well and had some accidents I immediately started cleaning it up and I was referred to as "young, competent, and energetic." I'll take it.

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We ordered pizza from the closest pizza place which had an awesome name that I cannot share with you because I don't want to dox my sister, but it turns out that this place is a convenience store with just a couple of pizza ovens in it. This store had more liquor than anyplace I've seen outside of a Hy-Vee and they also had tobacco supplies, bait fish, and a ginormous beer cooler. They had five flavors of KitKats. The pizza was excellent, too. They don't sell liquor in grocery or convenience stores in Pennsylvania, so my uncle walked around in utter befuddlement. It was so much fun. 

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I saw some friends from high school. My high school has an Athletic Hall of Fame and one of my friend's sister was being inducted and he was going to to a little speech for her at the ceremony. One of our classmates who my friend refers to as his "archnemesis" was also being inducted and we enjoyed teasing him about having to talk to his archnemesis. 

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What has been your most recent moment of zen? 

12.3 Direction - Change in Perspective

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the third day of the month is "Direction."

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Okay, enough already. I've been whinging and griping about September, but September is OVER, so let's move on. I've shaped up my exercise regime, switched some stuff up in the morning routine to allow SAD lamp time, and decided that no matter how bad things seem to be (I thought for sure I was going to get a second interview for this job I really wanted - they even asked me what my start date could be - and it's been radio silence *womp womp*), I am going to focus on the positive. 

October!

I'm going to visit my high school friends in Michigan!

Spooky season means I get to decorate the house!

We're doing a fancy dance and dinner party at the community center for a fundraiser that should be tons of fun!

Face-to-face exercise classes!

Corn mazes!

Cooler weather means I can break out my fall/winter wardrobe!

The last month of writing on these prompts!

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What is exciting you about October?

11.28 Meaning - Life, Now

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the twenty-eighth day of the month is "Meaning."

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The 2-lane bowling alley at the community center! It's so cool.

I just wrote hundreds of words about my cat getting sick all over the house every day, but it was gross so I deleted it. You are welcome. If anyone wants to know about how I'm spending my time these days, just imagine me running lots of loads of laundry and scrubbing floors. Big Z has an ultrasound scheduled for next week (why so sick all the time, kitty?!), but in the meantime, we're just doing the best we can over here.

Speaking of best we can over here, I have to admit that I'm really struggling with my volunteer situation.  I feel like I have done my best, but things have really fallen off the rails and I'm being blamed for a lot of things that are going wrong. I'm willing to shoulder some of the responsibility, but it's been defeating to get email after email with criticisms.  My resignation doesn't go into effect until the end of the calendar year, but this is really impacting my mental and physical health and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to last it out. So right now I'm trying to figure out if this position is worth it to me. 

I admit that I have very hard feelings about not having a job and not having this volunteer position. Like, what would I do with my days? But I also know that if I didn't have this hanging over my head, I would just find something else to fill in the area of my brain that is anxious over everything.  Anyway, I don't see how I can get out of this position early, so I guess I'll just get used to dreading my email inbox.

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What's the least fun part of your life right now? 

11.23 Atmosphere - Late September

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined topic chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the twenty-third day of the month is "Atmosphere."

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I find this time of year confusing. I don't know how to dress. I'm too cold in the morning and too hot in the afternoons. It's pitch black in the mornings and on my evening walks with Hannah again. But I know that I should be soaking up all the warm weather while I can, so I find myself allowing Hannah to chew endlessly on sticks while I just sit around staring at her.

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Does September kind of bum you out, too?

2.30 Depression - Combatting Winter Blues

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the thirtieth day of the month is "Depression."

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What are your go to activities for the end of the holiday season to fight off that post-celebration depression? 

Do you reflect on the year behind you? The ups and the downs? Creating lists of the things you've done?  

Do you anticipate the year ahead of you? Make goals? Plan trips? Start creating your planner pages?

Do you just relax after the last few weeks of busy? Do a jigsaw puzzle?  Spend endless hours on the couch with your sleeping cat? Read? 

Do you fill your hours with activities? Take your dog for endless hikes as she gets muddier and muddier? Taking down holiday decorations? Catching up on cleaning that has long been neglected? 

What do you do during this time of year?

It turned warm! Mid-50s. All the snow is melting and Hannah is a muddy mess. Can you even see the camouflaged dog?

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Random anecdote #1:

We do drawings to see which aunt and uncle will buy for each of our nieces and nephews. Among others, we got our super emotionally savvy eight-year-old girl. 

(Once she told me that I would look nice if I wasn't wearing tennis shoes. I rarely wear tennis shoes outside of actual exercise, but my leg was being bad that day. This girl KNEW it would hit me right where it hurt. She's super smart. And, also, I might be traumatized from this exchange with her.)

She had a conversation with her mom on the drive on Christmas morning. "I bet Aunt NGS will get me jewelry. I've never seen her without a bracelet on."

Cut to Christmas morning when she opens a craft kit, a book about gymnastics, and a bracelet. This damn sweet child knows me better than I know myself.

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Random anecdote #2:

Somehow Dr. BB stepped in poop and tracked it from our dining room, up the stairs, to the office. I was busy on a Zoom call, so I came to this as I soon as I saw him take out a flashlight and start examining our floor very closely. I asked him what was happening.

"I stepped in Zelda poop. It was on my slipper. I'm trying to find the original source."

Now, both of our girls are very good about their bathroom habits. Hannah's only accidents have been when she was sick. Zelda always uses her litter box, but she's very fuzzy and occasionally things will cling to her butt fur and we'll find it in places that are not her litter box. Anyway.

"Are you sure it was cat poop?" (I was thinking that perhaps it was a mouse or something else that might have crept into our house.)

"Well, it's either cat or human poop."

Cut to me staring at him with my mouth open. He'd blame ME before he even considered THE DOG?!

True love. True love, you guys. 

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To see what Bestest Friend wrote about the theme of the day, go visit her at Too Legit to Quit.

When to Make the Call

I generally thinking having pets in our house makes for a happier place. They are funny and force us to think about something other than ourselves. I never feel lonely because they are around and their fuzzy faces bring me a great deal of comfort. But sometimes it is so stressful.

This morning we woke up to Hannah the Dog whining every time she turned her rear end. I took her outside briefly, got her some breakfast and pain medication, and then she just leaned on me with most of her body weight, refusing to lay down. It's times like this when I don't know what to do. How do I comfort her and let her know we're doing the best we can?  

But then there are the questions - are we doing the best we can? Should she be on a constant regimen of pain killers? Is this the dreaded "change in behavior" that means we should call the vet right now?  There's no reason for the pain - we have her on modified bedrest, so she's only walking around the block three times a day right now and each trip around the block is only a quarter of a mile. She's literally not doing anything else since we've also basically stopped training her because it seemed like even sitting and shaking was causing her discomfort. For a dog her age, this is nothing, but she seems to be in so much pain right now that we're giving her painkillers every day. Should she be getting less exercise? More?  I don't know, my friends. I say I'm doing the best I can, but am I?

And then there's Zelda the Cat. She has started to become a Cuddly Cat. Zelda has always been a cat who is willing to cuddle on her own terms. If one of us is laying down quietly, she's more than happy to come up on our laps, but generally she's like a knickknack that moves about the house. However, these days, she's become clingy. If Dr. BB is reading at the table, she's meowing at him. If I'm working on my laptop, she's putting her paw on me to request pets. Her eating habits and litter box output haven't changed, but her behavior is slightly different. Is it because it's winter and she's cold? Is she secretly telling us she's sick? Is it worth a call to the vet? Imagine that conversation - so, my cat is demanding attention - is she okay? Cats demand attention. It's what they do. But now she's doing it slightly differently. Should I be worried?  

These micro-decisions. For those of you who have children, I have nothing but respect. I don't know how you make it through birth (epidural or no? circumcision or no?), let alone all the tiny decisions you have to make about the day-to-day life of a child. I am going crazy wondering if I am doing something wrong by not placing a call to a veterinarian and you all are out there raising up the next generation and you seem to be doing it with aplomb.

It is becoming clear to me that while I am doing my absolute best to stay on top of my SAD, it is really getting to me right now. I have constant anxiety (about my job, about the pets, about weather, about family, about everything). I am doing all the things - taking vitamin D, using a SAD lamp, walking outdoors in the daylight - but I guess this is how it's going to for the next month or so.  Hopefully I will snap out of this and return to normal soon. Everything just seems so oppressive and hard right now.

In the meantime, I'll just sit here and continue to fret about whether or not I should call the vet because man, this is one pathetic dog I have on my hands.

A Purple Bin

I was the first person in my household to go away to college, so when we were packing for me to leave home, my mom and I diligently purchased everything the school sent us about what I would need. I rented a microwave/minifridge combo, got the extra long sheets, a set of towels, shower caddy, flip flops, an umbrella, and an extension cord, but despite our best efforts to do everything right, there were things we missed.

So it was with this that I found myself in a local Walmart* with a list of things I still needed about two weeks into my freshman year and about $200 in my bank account that had to last until I figured out  a job. One of the things I decided I needed was a larger wastebasket. The wastebaskets in our rooms were the size of a box of cereal and I was struggling with the idea that I would be taking out trash every time I left the room. So I bought a purple kitchen wastebasket.

And I moved that wastebasket into my first apartment post-college, all the way to Minnesota for grad school through five apartments. When Dr. BB and I moved in together, we used it as our kitchen garbage. When we moved to Wisconsin, it came with us. Along the way, a slight hole developed in the bottom, but it still did its job. 

(I think this goes without saying, but I'm going to say it. This stupid trash can represented my fledging independence in college. It represented to me, in a very small way, that I could be trusted to make decisions and that those decisions could be positive. After all, this thing I bought lasted for more than twenty years because I bought something that was quality and I took care of it. It represented that I was a functioning adult.)

When we moved into our house almost five years ago, the purple bin was demoted to our recycling bin and we bought a slightly larger kitchen bin. But Dr. BB took the recycling out a couple of days ago and he banged the purple bin on our outdoors bin and a crack developed. (NOTE: Fragile plastic should not be banged against very durable plastic when it is below zero.) And then the crack met the hole in the bottom and the bin basically stopped any semblance of "containing" things.

I bought a new bin - it's white and boring and sits right next to the kitchen garbage can as if it has always been there.

But I'm not going to lie. When I saw the old bin in the outside trash, I felt a teeny bit emotional. 

What household item are you oddly attached to?  Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels sad when mere things have outlived their usefulness.

*At the time, the town where I went to college had only a Kmart and Walmart. This was well before I was anti-Walton family, so I went there. I was young. I haven't spent any money there in a very long time.

My SAD Lamp

The first winter I lived in Minneapolis, I realized that during the winter months, I was a brand new person.  I had spent most of my life living in western Michigan and the cloud cover in winter months is no joke.  But in Minneapolis, it would be bitterly cold, but the skies would be clear and blue and the sun would radiate all day long.  When we moved to Wisconsin, I tried to fight it, but my SAD took over and I found myself really struggling in the fall and winter.

Last winter, it got really bad and my husband ordered me a SAD lamp. I briefly mentioned it in yesterday's post and two whole people asked me about it, so here I am to discuss it. I have a Carex Day-Light Class Plus Light and I mostly got it because it has been the top of Wirecutter's list of best SAD lamps for several years. It's roughly $150 and considering the prices were closer to $1000 when I first moved to Wisconsin, I feel like it has been 100% worth it for me. 

This lamp has two settings: a 4000 LUX, meant for daily task use and the maximum 10,000 LUX, which is therapeutic levels.  It has a larger screen than most lamps, which is for increased effectiveness. The directions say to use it every day for 20-30 minutes soon after you wake up.  You should sit twelve inches from it and you use it while you read (like I do), drink your morning coffee, or cuddle with your pet.  My only real ding on the lamp is that it's pretty heavy, so it's not possible for me to move it around - where I put it is where it stays.  The power cord is short and we don't have a ton of outlets in our bedroom, so we have a permanent extension cord in our bedroom from September through April.

And that's when I use it.  I notice early in September that I'm dragging and I want to nap all the time. This is my cue to break out the lamp.  And I generally use for a few weeks past the time change in the spring.  After that, I can generally count on sunshine from the actual world to regulate my mood and circadian rhythms. 

I've found that it's been really helpful to me. I don't LOVE getting up half an hour early to do it, but it's actually kind of a peaceful way to start my mornings.  I nap a lot less, my mood is much more stable, and I'm much more eager to get out of bed. If I skip a day, I immediately notice that my energy dips. I dread traveling in these months because I know that I'll miss my lamp time.  You can use some full-spectrum lightbulbs in regular lamps, but the oversized screen is actually pretty key to making sure you get the full benefit.  Anyway, if you live in a place that doesn't give a lot of sunshine in the winter, this might be an option for you.  Two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me. 

If you have questions, ask away!  I'm an open book about this.

A Simple Thank You

I spoke at an event sponsored by the organization for which I volunteer. It was a simple request and a simple enough job to go up there and say a few words about my experiences. And I didn't give it a second thought. And today I got a thank you card from the organization and a direct quote said "You are such a fun and vibrant presence and I'm grateful to have you as a volunteer." It was a very sweet thing to say and I think I may have to thank them for their kindnesses.

Little Moments

For the most part, my bike ride home is pretty, well, to be honest, boring. It’s a bike trail that runs parallel to a major road and it’s just not very interesting. It’s great that I don’t have to ride on the major road and I love that there’s a bike trail, but it’s rather boring. But then there is this brief section where I get off the bike trail to get to my actual house. It’s on some surface streets in a neighborhoody neighborhood (and if you don’t know what that means, it’s because you’ve never lived in a downtown where the neighborhoods are really barhoods). Rarely does a car pass. When they do pass, they inch by me slowly, as if to digest the fact that there is a random person pedaling down the street with a billion manically flashing lights attached to her bike. It’s so quiet I can hear the CRICKETS. Crickets, people. Crickets in Minneapolis (spell check just underlined Minneapolis – I was momentarily convinced I had been spelling the name of this city wrong for three years)! Who knew that there were noisy bugs here? I can hear the wheels of my bike on the asphalt and the wind echoing around in my helmet. I pedal slowly to savor every last bit of the stillness. The smell is Downy-fresh, as if someone is constantly running a dryer full of towels, strictly for my benefit. I can act as a voyeur as I ride along, peeking in open windows to see who’s watching Monday night football, who’s chatting on their computer, and who’s holding hands on the porch. And the porches – the porches are all lit up and people sit in them. Some people read on their porches, some people talk to each, and one cute little family is always on their porch playing games. It’s a moment of peace I am thankful that I get when I am biking home at 10:30 on a Monday night.

Bountiful Optimism

Okay, so here are reasons I am happy I am me. 1) Today I got to lay down on the grass in the sun in the middle of the day and take a nap. The ability to look outside and see the sun shining and the leaves rustling in the trees and say, "hey, I should go lay out there for a bit and soak up some of that nice outdoorsy atmosphere" and then actually do it in the middle of the day is something to be thankful for. Yes, I had to stay up later tonight to make up for my truancy in the middle of the day, but it made me happy and that was what mattered. 2) Today I got to eat lunch with a friend and we discussed big, important things, like the relative merits of mushy oatmeal or oatmeal that is so dry you can sculpt it and which local radio station was the best and how to best clean his nasty, nasty, nasty floors that look like they haven't been cleaned since the 70s. 3) We baked pumpkin bread muffins last week and we just pulled some of them out of the freezer for breakfast tomorrow!! Whoo hoo!! Muffins for breakfast. 4) My best friend in the universe sent me an email today and told me that she loves me. 5) I had ice cream today. The real stuff. No soy. No yogurt. Straight, from the cow, creamy ice cream. 6) My cell phone ringer makes me giggle. "War" by Edwin Starr. What is it good for, anyway? 7) John Kerry might win the election, right? Right? Right? 8) I had a super-productive day today, so I can go to sleep thinking that I have done as much as I can and crawl under my blankets and slip off to peaceful dreams without panicking because something still has to be done for tomorrow. 9) New shoes from Payless!! Brown with pink (PINK!) laces. 10) All of my books for the semester have arrived at long last!! I will no longer have to make photocopies of books I have purchased but have not received in the mail, yet!! Whoo hoo!!