wandering girl speaks

Mindful

2012-02-06T20:33:00.002-07:00

Mindful
Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Reservation School

2012-02-06T20:10:00.001-07:00

The poet asks the children to hold their breath and keep still.
Eyes wide, hands covering mouths, they look around at each other.
Not wanting to break the moment until they gasp and laugh.

Now, he says, write about the silence.
Silence is a rock not moving in a lake

Says the brown haired 4th grader in a whisper.
I nod, and a few children like that, they begin
Nodding their heads at beautiful thoughts.

A little girl in braids with a waist as narrow as a wasp
Reads from her poem.
Silence is a sad sob in the night

Wow! I say. Oh Man! Could you repeat that?
She shrugs, tosses off the line, which circles the room.

A boy with a cut on his finger shakes it and puts it in his mouth.
Silence is an empty jar in an old house.
He shows me the hurt finger again.

A little cowgirl stands and waits for quiet to say,
Silence is a window not opened

We smile tenderly at each other.
Nod. In this sudden outbreak of splendor we are happy to be together.
Finally, the boy who was working on his drawing says,
Silence is in a bottle and a basket

This is the end of class time, and everyone lines up
to exchange high fives and congratulations.
Silence is when my baby sister is asleep
Silence is cats wondering.

I roll this afternoon around in my mouth.
Something sweeter than a ripe peach or custard,
How close the soul can come to the skin
When the body is still so new.

Written by Sheryl Noethe, Montana Poet Laureate

New Kid at School

2012-02-01T20:26:00.003-07:00

CHAPTER 1

Senior year, new school. That’s not how it’s supposed to happen. I’m supposed to be enjoying my life with my friends in Denver, but instead I’m walking into a small school that has a cow pasture next door. “Welcome to Huntley Project” the marquee flashes in red, white, and black bulbs. What kind of name is “Huntley Project” anyway? While looking at the flashing sign, I almost walked into the path of a huge blue truck. Stumbling out of the way, I noticed that the parking lot is full of huge trucks. Not necessarily blue, but it seems the requirement is huge and diesel from the smell of the exhaust in the lot. Kids step out of their trucks wearing plaid shirts, huge brass belt buckles, and of course, cowboy boots.

You should see the variety of cowboy boots that exist. I thought cowboy boots were brown or black, pointy, and leather. OH no. I see boots that are blue, studded with diamonds, and zebra striped. They are squared, pointy, AND rounded. And it seems like everyone wears them.

I square my shoulders and walk through the gravel lot to the doors of the old school. A woman named Deb welcomed me at the front office and walked me to the counselor’s office to figure out my schedule. The door to his office had a sign that said,

“Every day is a new beginning. What’s yours?”

I sat in an uncomfortable chair that faced the windowed waiting room, students laughing with each other, hugging for the first time since last summer, jostling to fight their way through the crowd to get to their lockers. A few glanced in, but no one really bothered me.

“Anne-Marie Watkins?” the counselor called from inside the door to his office. I walked inside and saw Santa’s clone. Seriously. Mr. Dunning had a huge white beard and a holly, jolly smile. I mean, he was even wearing a red shirt. Maybe he embraced his alter ego. The funny thing about it though is that the Santa comparison did made me feel more comfortable though. It was like seeing someone familiar.

“Hi,” I replied as I sat down in an uncomfortable orange chair.

“Welcome to Huntley Project,” he said, shuffling some papers on his desk to find my schedule, “I hope it will be an easy transition for you here. You’re from Denver, right?”

“Yep,” I sighed. “That was home.”

“What brought you to Montana?” he asked with pointed interest. It’s not every day a city girl comes to a place like Huntley Project.

“My Gram. Her name is Anne Marie Watkins too. She lives on 15^th Street by the Green Church.”

Santa chuckled a little to himself. His eyes lit up when I mentioned her name. “Anne Marie Watkins. I should have guessed from your name.”

“Actually, I go by Ree. Ree Watkins,” I corrected him.

“Well Ree, I hope you feel right at home here in Huntley. I know your Gram will show you the ins and outs of small town living. She’s a legend here you know.”

That piqued my curiosity. “Legend?” I asked.

“Yep,” Mr. Dunning replied. “Ask her about it.”

The school wasn’t that big, so I found my first few classes quickly. The kids had started to notice me. I guess that’s they way it goes in small towns. I was a big deal to the teachers—everyone made sure to introduce me and the few other new kids to everyone else in every single class. Every class, that is, until I walked into English. Mrs. Dalton was one of the two high school English teachers. I walked in, found a seat, and started to doodle on my notebook cover. The process has always been therapeutic to me. Starting with a blank yellow, blue, or green canvas, then filling it with black ink that turns into a testament to my school year. I have beat up notebook covers in a box going all the way back to the third grade. The first marks on a cover are important. It destines the entire year to follow the lines you made first. It’s kind of how I feel about my impression this first week…what I do now will determine my status at this school.

I poised my pen at the right edge of the notebook when a bedazzled behind bumped into my hand, forcing my pen into the cover and making a jagged diagonal line all the way to the top.

Shit, I thought to myself. I glanced over at the owner of the bedazzled butt as she slid into the seat two in front of me. She had long blonde hair, a tight plaid shirt tucked into her jeans, and zebra striped boots. I actually thought I could have seen her in Western. The over-the-top, Reba-loving, rodeo riding cowgirl. She turned and I saw her profile. The perfect button nose, a sprinkling of freckles, and the cutest dimples you’d ever seen. She was like the Fourth of July trapped in human form.

I looked back down at my ruined notebook cover. Now what am I supposed to do? I thought to myself. But really, deep down I was thinking, What does a jagged line mean?

I didn’t have much time to think about my cover because the bell rang and Mrs. Dalton walked purposefully to the front of the room. She looked at each of us as she took attendance, repeating our names twice. When she got to my name, she called it out as usual, but stopped as if she forgot something.

“Anne Marie Watkins?” she said again, tentatively.

“Here,” I called quietly from my seat.

“Anne Marie Watkins,” she murmured, in a quiet, whispery voice. She looked right at me as she said it and asked the inevitable. “Are you related to THE Anne Marine Watkins?”

“Yep,” I replied bashfully. “She is my Gram. I’m named after her, but go by Ree.”

“Well Ree, we have a lot to discuss this year,” Mrs. Dalton said, moving on to the other “W” on the roster.

When she finished with the roll call, she carefully set down the yellow notebook she was making notes on and turned to face us. She stood in the center of the room, hands folded as if she were waiting, but no one was talking. She looked at each of us slowly, eyes meeting eyes, the atmosphere in the room changing from novel to intense. As her gaze left the last student, she opened her mouth and recited the following poem to us:

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Usually, when teachers read out loud, I check out after the first few lines. I’m not the most gifted listener, but the way Mrs. Dalton spoke the words was…powerful. She had looked us in the eye, not speaking, yet commanding our attention. The class sat up straighter, leaned in a little closer, and wanted to jump into the words of the poem with her as she spoke them.

Sarah Dessen

2012-01-30T19:25:00.003-07:00

Since I started my ambitious 52 books in 52 weeks journey, three of the books I've read have been authored by Sarah Dessen. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and writes Young Adult fiction aimed at teenage girls. Her books are always easy reads that you can read in what I like to call my "delicious" Sunday afternoon book time. We all know what it is like to be an adolescent navigating life with the various problems thrown our way. Add social media and bigger family problems in the mix and you've got yourself a Dessen book.

Dessen's techniques are interesting. Her characters have multiple quirks that make them unique and play into the overall plot in a specific way. Things she mentions at the beginning of her books are not forgotten like most YA authors; they show up in an unexpected way later in the book. Once you understand her writing formula, the books aren't quite as special, but hey, isn't that with every author? I mean, hello, Jodi Picoult is still selling millions of books and they are all THE SAME.

I've read:
Just Listen
Very unique yet somewhat unbelievable situations happen in the book. It's a romance, but focuses on three sisters and the changes they go through during the school year the story spans. The kiss is the best kiss I've read of hers so far, and I really like the unlikely coupling of the high school model and the high school misfit.

What Happened to Goodbye (I'm currently leading a book group on this book at school)
Yes, it has the love story, but the focus of this book is more on our protagonist's journey to discover who she really is. A unique twist is the different lives our main character is able to recreate every time she and her father move. It also focuses more on the strained parental relationship, especially with the mother.

Along for the Ride
Is my favorite thus far. It's a classic love story that has all the right elements: an aloof girl, a guy who went through a painful time, the developing friendship that leads to romance, and-of course-the complication. I highly recommend this book if you're looking to remember high school love.

This Lullaby
My least favorite SD book. The main character's exploits are inappropriate yet believable because of what I hear high school students do these days. Dessen wrote this novel like the protagonist was a college student, not a high school senior graduate who is just able to waltz into bars and order drinks. The book is more crass than all of the other books she wrote, but some students may eat up the forbidden pleasures she has "overcome." Also, I just didn't think that Remy and Dexter were meant to be. The ending was subpar and left the reader a message that everything is okay as long as you have a guy!

Just to let you know, since January 1, I've also read:
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
1984 by George Orwell
Matched by Ali Condie

The Wall

2012-01-19T18:58:00.003-07:00

Honor Adamson--sweet girl who has it all but it feels like something's missing. She should be happy to be the daughter of a local politician, but instead has built a wall between her parents and her. Animal lover, poetry lover, but shy about sharing that. Doesn't think her writings are good enough to share.
Mother and Father--Local politician and country club members. Have high expectations for Honor.
Gram--Her spunky grandmother who her mother is embarrassed of.
Max Brewer--tall, lanky guy who always wears a leather jacket and listens to Metallica. Has a brown leather journal he writes in all the time. Has eyes so dark you can't tell the pupil from the iris.
Jordan Conwell--all-American guy, all-star athlete, smart, but distant. The perfect match for Honor, according to her mother.
Abi Curtis--Honor's best friend and confidante. Is quiet and is easy to miss, but her wise words are the best.
Sasha Kingsley--Literature loving, poetry reading, life inspiring friend of Honor's that she meets at the local coffee shop.
Mrs. Jay--Honor's English teacher. Has them write an assignment called "The Wall." It is a semester long assignment that forces them to identify and label the wall they've built around themselves during HS, and must write a story for each of the bricks in order to free themselves from the things blocking life out.

52 Books in 52 Weeks

2012-01-14T13:46:00.002-07:00

Recently, a fellow teacher of mine said that she prefers to gain something from her Lent promises, not give something up. She uses more of a pay it forward mentality and uses the 40 days to benefit herself and others by outward actions. I find it a refreshing way to do Lent. It's not the typical "I'm giving up soda or shopping" promises. Those promises are empty and yes, although beneficial, don't really allow for reflection or growth. It only removes things from your life for 40 days. New Year's resolutions can be the same way. I haven't had very much success with resolutions before...they've been empty, unfulfilling. This year I've decided to do something to better my mind, my spirit, and challenge me to stop wasting time doing meaningless puttering in the evenings.

52 books in 52 weeks is the minimum goal. The books will cover a variety of subjects and genres so I don't get bored with the process. I'm hoping to blog about each and every one of them either on here or on my goodreads account. The reason I want to blog what I've read is because writing is therapeutic to me and helps me understand overarching themes in my life to better myself or to become more aware of the world around me. This is not an easy task. I will do this on top of grading papers each week, correcting homework, spending time with my husband on Skype working out, and training our new dog Kia. Also, I've committed to writing a novel during the months of January and February, so finding time to read will be challenging. But this is something I've been thinking about committing to for a few months now, and January 1 seemed like the perfect time to begin. So wish me well, fellow readers and send me some excellent reading suggestions when you have the time.

Laura

Books on my list for the year:
1984
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe
Ride with me Mariah Montoya
Sarah Dessen books (my students love reading her, so I read her to relate)
The City of Gold series
A Moveable Feast
The Things They Carried
The Fountainhead
A Streetcar Named Desire
Travels with Charley
The Blind Assassin

Beartooth

2011-10-28T17:43:00.003-06:00

The last thing Maryanne saw was his black shadow falling off of a cliff.

It was her fault.

*******************************************************************

It was a typical Friday for Maryanne and Bauer. They both had arrived home from work early in order to get on the road as quickly as possible. Not a minute to waste of the precious sunshine and the warmer temps July afforded them.
"Did you pack the water filter?" Maryanne yelled to Bauer, who was downstairs repacking his pack one last time.
"Yep," Bauer yelled back, frustrated with the weight of his pack. He had been trying to make it lighter, but Maryanne was not quite as in shape as he was, so his pack usually weighed at least twenty pounds more than hers. He carried her food, the water purifier, the tent, his sleeping bag, and a plethora of other safety items they needed just in case an emergency occurred.
Maryanne's footsteps pounded down the stairs and suddenly she appeared in the door.
"Do you think you could add the stove to your pack?" she asked timidly, knowing he was already annoyed with the pack situation.
He looked up from his pack and gave her a wary look. "Fine," he replied. She knew he was upset, but still handed over the stove kit.

After they loaded everything into the Jeep, they mentally ran over the checklist one last time.
"Bear spray?" Bauer asked.
"Check," Maryanne replied. "What about the water filtration system?"
Bauer thoguht he might explode from annoyance at this point. Instead, he gritted his teeth and said, "Got it."
Finally they were on the road. The Beartooth Mountains were beckoning them from the horizon. Majestic, grandiose, and untouched. The two hikers were about to become part of the picture...and about to have their lives changed forever.

*********************

Dignity

2011-03-18T16:11:00.004-06:00

One of the worst things in life is not getting the job. I now know that.

Here's a little known fact about Laura: the only job I've ever not received was a Starbuck's barista job in Oceanside, CA. I was "over-qualified," which actually meant that they gave it to someone who eventually became my friend because she had prior experience.

Today, I became a fool in the name of "Human Resources." Never have I had to play the bureaucracy game before. It's all about who you know and what you've done. I am proud to say that every job I've gotten is because of my own abilities and my awesome interview skills. My teaching experience makes me a qualified candidate for any and all Spanish/English teaching positions. My interview shows my potential employers my professionalism and accurate understanding of the nature of teaching. My references are rock solid and I come highly recommended.

That is why I feel foolish. This week, I interviewed for a long term assignment at a local school. I pressed the suit, reviewed the interview questions, and printed off multiple copies of my resume, cover letter, and references. I went into the interview confident of my abilities and left it feeling like I had truly shown them my strengths as a candidate for the position. Two days later, I heard these awful words: "Unfortunately, we have decided to go with another candidate."

I actually knew I wasn't going to get the job walking out of the interview. I just had this sinking feeling that they would go with the other candidate because of her experience. Now, the other candidate does not have more experience than I do teaching (she's never been a full time teacher); however, she was the LTA for this very same assignment last year.

"We want you to know that this will be a very difficult decision, since we have two very qualified candidates."

Oh those words. I just literally sighed out loud reading that. Here's the thing. I actually understand why they went with the other candidate. They wanted to create the least amount of stress in the most successful manner. This assignment is a support for the teacher that's leaving. Yes, it was an opportunity for me, but it was more about her than me.

I feel foolish because of the hopes I put into the job. I should have known they would go with the other candidate. I should have known about the bureaucracy. I should have know.

At least they've seen me interview. And what an interview it was! I just wish they would have picked me.

I heard a story on NPR. A man did an experiment walking through the Mall of America. He went around a busy section of the mall and started saying, "You're in" to random people he encountered. Then, he would turn to others and say, "Oh, you're not." They didn't know him, they didn't know what he was talking about, and they knew he may be a little bit crazy...but people were stopping near him just so they would see if he would actually pick them.

Can't wait until this school district decides to pick me.

Speak to us of Friendship

2011-03-12T14:31:00.002-07:00

"Your friend is your needs answered.
She is your field which you sow with love
and reap with thanksgiving.
And she is your board and your fireside.
For you come to her with your hunger,
and you seek her for peace.

When your friend speaks her mind you
fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor
do you withhold the "ay."
And when she is silent your hear ceases
not to listen to her heart;
For without words, in friendship, all
thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born
and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you
grieve not;
For that which you love most in her may
be clearer in her absence, as the mountain
to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship
save the deepening of spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the
disclosure of its own mystery is not love but
a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable
is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If she must know the ebb of your tide,
let her know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should
seek him with hours to kill?
Seek her always with hours to live.
For it is her to fill your need, but not
your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let
there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the hart
finds its morning and is refreshed."

Thanks for being a great friend Molly. :)

Oops, I did it again...

2011-02-13T06:47:00.002-07:00

I have several pages blocked on facebook, but once in awhile I actively search out those pages and view them.

This is what I get in return for viewing those pages:

Get the point? Why do humans intentionally do things they know they shouldn't do? I read a study once about children who were led into a room of toys and told to sit on the chair facing away from the toys. They were not allowed to move until the doctor came back. 100% of the children in the study disobeyed. Some more than others. Several bold children got right up out of that chair and went to play with the toys. Some turned around, waited for a few minutes, then cautiously got up to play. Some turned around, started to get up and tried to stop themselves, but eventually succumbed. One child in the study never got up. But the hidden camera on her face showed that her eyes were trying to look at the toys, and eventually she turned around very quickly, just to see what was behind her.

Just to see what was behind her.

I thought that my facebook addiction was broken, but I am still a classic addict. I like to go back and do the thing I KNOW I should not do. I intentionally put myself in situations that I THOUGHT my mind had overcome. Damn it! Why do humans continue to succumb to our addictions or the things we know we should never do? I'm not saying that Facebook is crack...but I'm saying Facebook is my crack. And last night I used. Ugh.

Where is the I don't want to use Facebook anymore because it makes me feel bad support group?

Romeo and Juliet Act V

2011-02-11T21:02:00.003-07:00

Today I taught Act V of Romeo and Juliet to four different classes and cried after every single reading of Romeo's final soliloquy. Every. Single. One.

Student came up to me and said the following:

"Mrs. Nicholson, I've got two things."
(Says the student who barely says TWO WORDS in class EVER.)

"Sure Student. Whadoyaneed?"

"One-Are you going to cry in class today?"
(With a SMIRK on his face!)

(Huge grin, laughing bubbling out of my soul) "Yes, Student, I'll probably cry."

"OK."

"Is that it?"

"Nope. Can I bring my pizza to class next week?"
(The first day of class, he told us that he makes killer homemade pizza.)

(Chuckling to myself) "Sure thing. How about Wednesday?"

"OK. Thanks."

And he turned and went back to his seat.

And yes, I cried, reading Juliet's "There rust, and let me die" line.

Living Simply

2011-02-11T20:48:00.004-07:00

I've been seeing this term a lot lately: Living Simply

Hmmm.

Do you know what that means?

Is it Goodwill shopping? Being able to make your own curtains? Making your own flour and sausage? Refurbishing furniture or being able to paint amazing prints for free? Couponing? Renovating your own house?

Sometimes I feel like I'm not living up to the expectation of living simply because we have an F350 and an HDTV and we each are working a full time job. But, I think it means something different to everyone. To my little pack, it's finally watching the DVRd episodes of The Office, Modern Family, and Glee on Thursday nights. It's making simple dinners that always include some sort of venison. It's grading papers and staying at school 'til 5 most days. It's taking the dog on walks or writing those damn research papers again. It's going to the mountains in the F350 next weekend and watching The Queen on our HDTV tomorrow night after a long day of writing papers. It's enjoying our weekly date night at Carters for some local brews. I think, after re-reading all of the above, living simply for us is simply enjoying comedy, the great outdoors, diesel trucks, grading papers (guilty-I love it!), and local brews.

Tonight, living simply means chicken fried rice from Four Seas, because Seth is at drill and I love ordering Chinese takeout when he's gone. And I didn't feel like cooking. :)

That's basically my simple life, and I simply love it.

My Christmas Menu

2010-12-20T06:59:00.002-07:00

This is no typical menu. This menu consists of delicious books I'll read over the Christmas break. I am looking forward to the decadent nature of not reading anything that is assigned to me and enjoying the books purely for their satisfaction. Yummy! I'm already two books in to the delectable list.

1) The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
This is a very sweet yet sad book about the journey of a china rabbit who does not know what love is. Given to me by my amazing and incredible lead teacher, TerraBeth Jochems, it was a sweet reminder of how important it is to recognize who truly loves you in life and why they are the people that sustain you. During certain parts I just had to tear up, it was so sweet. I recommend this book for 2nd grade and up, but you could read it to younger kids. You'd just have to skim over sections to hold their interest, since it's probably a 3rd or 4th grade chapter book.

2) The Lonely Polygamist
This is my book club's January book and I actually enjoyed it. It is about a polygamist who feels like a stranger in his own home. It encompasses the chaos he would feel and the stuffy feeling of being smothered in your own home. It made me want to clean and get away from the book at times. An interesting and different perspective on polygamy, I would recommend it for a Christmas read; not as a you-must-read-this, but as a happened-to-pick-it-up-and-it's-good book.

3) The Red Badge of Courage

4) God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens

5) Watership Down

6) This Much I Know is True by Wally Lamb

7) Great Britain: The Lonely Planet

8) Rick Steve's Great Britain

9) People Magazine

Overwhelmed

2010-11-14T09:21:00.002-07:00

What does "whelm" mean?

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

Overwhelm--early 14c., "to turn upside down, to overthrow," from over + M.E. whelmen "to turn upside down" (see whelm). Meaning "to submerge completely" is mid-15c. Perhaps the connecting notion is a boat, etc., washed over, and overset, by a big wave. Figurative sense of "to bring to ruin" is attested from 1520s. Related: Overwhelming; overwhelmingly.

Ooooooh. Yep. Totally get it now.

What particularly resonates is the "to submerge completely" part of the definition. I am submerged. I had a dream the other night about a horror movie where this psychopath was burying women in his basement one shovel of dirt at a time. In the same basement, he was also slowly filling up a tank with a slow stream of water where another woman was trapped. The women could watch the water slowly filling the tank and the dirt slowly covering their bodies. It was horrible. I hate dreams like that.

Both the women are still alive somewhere in dream limbo because of their ingenious survival methods and a stroke of luck. Woman number one has a pocket of air she can breathe through. Woman number two found a dirty pipe extending into the tank and is breathing through it.

They are still breathing. Barely.

I think I had that dream for a reason though. I feel like I'm covered with dirt while being submerged in a tank of water. I think my luck is running out. This semester has been the busiest semester to date. Here's a taste of the numbers: 5 classes; 3 internships; 3 jobs; 40+ hours a week working the jobs and the internships; 15+ hours of reading, writing papers, grading (depending on the week); 22 papers due in the next 3 weeks (literally).

Why am I writing this? Back to work...

You're studying with me, whether you like it or not. :)

2010-11-10T16:06:00.012-07:00

I am an avid fan of the English language, of literature from around the world, grammar, and reading. But when it comes to taking the test that determines whether or not you're fit to be an English teacher, there is a lot of stuff to know. My Praxis II Spanish test was extremely difficult, because of, oh, you know, the language barrier. ;) I was expecting to feel completely prepared for the English Praxis, which I take this Saturday morning bright and early. I do actually feel prepared, but have been studying my ass off just in case. I'm that kind of student.

I took the practice test and missed got 92/120 correct. That got me freaked out a bit, but showed me what I needed to study. So right now, you're going to learn all about periods of literature, its characteristics, authors, and most famous works. We're going chronologically, so have your link to Wikipedia ready and PLEASE-add info where I've missed it. This is from my own brain RIGHT NOW, so I know I will miss a LOT of information.

Classical Period (1200-455 CE)

Homeric Period
The Iliad, The Odyssey. They weren't written down then though--passed on orally.

Classical Greek Period (800-200 BCE)
Aesop
Plato (Ironically, he saw no point to literature unless it praised the gods)
Socrates
Aristotle (My fave founding lit crit father--defined catharsis for us literary folks)

Classical Roman Period (200 BCE- 455 CE)
Ovid
Virgil
Horace (In Lit Crit- write to please and to delight)

Patristic Period (70CE-455CE)
IT was an early Christian period
Saint Augustine
Tertullian
Saint Jerome
Bible

The Medieval Period (455 BCE- 1485 CE)

Old English/ Anglo-Saxon
Also called the Dark Ages
Beowulf

Technically, the Carolingen Renaissance happened in this period, but all we got out of it was Viking sagas.

Middle English Period (1066-1450)
When the Great Vowel Shift Occured.
Marie de France - I believe she revamped Aesop's fables
Margery Kempe (She decided to quit sleeping with her husband because she was "technically" the bride of Christ. She even wrote about crazy sexual fantasies concerning sleeping with her "Father". I'm not kidding.)

Late or High Medieval Period (1485-1660)
Chaucer
Christine de Pisan
Boccaccio
Petrarch (Oh, Laura, let me write a Petrachan sonnet for you!)
Dante (as in the Inferno--have you ever read the thing? It's so intricate for my mind to follow!)

The Renaissance and the Reformation-
The War of the Roses ended and Henry VIII was back on the throne.

The Early Tudor Period (1485-1558)
Martin Luther-95 Theses
Edmund Spenser- The Faerie Queen

Elizabethan Period (1558-1603)
Sir Philip Sidney- Seriously, one of the hardest pieces of literary criticism I have ever read (Defence of Poesie)
Thomas Kyd
Christopher Marlowe
William Shakespeare

Jacobean Period
-John Donne--Metaphysical Poets/Cavalier
-Ben Jonson -- Cavalier

The metaphysical poets--Focus on speculation on questions that science could not answer.

Caroline Age (1625-1649)
Sons of Ben appear on the scene:
John Milton
George Herbert
Robert HErrick
Cavalier Poets were: Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Richard Lovelace. They wrote polished, lyrical, erotically charged poems about courtship. Followers of King Charles I.

The Enlightenment/Neoclassical Period (1660-1790ish)
The Restoration (1660-1700). The British King was restored to the throne, therefore calling the movement the Restoration. Actually, I am only going to talk about the Restoration here, because I've never even heard of the Augustan Age or the Age of Johnson. Dr. K just focused on the Restoration, if I recall it correctly. The Enlightenment refers to increased knowledge about the world--it was becoming smaller and more wondrous every day. The Neoclassical refers to increased influence of classical literature on the authors. Back to the forefathers, a literary person could say. ;)

Famous Authors under the Restoration. (1660-1700)
Marked by the restoration of the throne after Puritanical dominance. Those dirty Puritans and their silly hymn books. Freedom to write like the French!
John Dryden--Mack Flecknoe;
Alexander Pope---The Rape of the Lock;
Samuel Pepys--The Diary
Aphra Behn--Oronoko

Famous Authors under the Augustan Age (1700-1750)
(Even though I still consider them Restoration peeps). Apparently the period is marked by the imitation of Virgil and Horace's letters. ?
Jonathon Swift
Alexander Pope
Voltaire

Authors under the Age of Johnson. (1750-1790)
Here we're transitioning from Restoration lit to Romanticism.
Samuel Johnson (Fun fact-he wrote the first dictionary. And he had "bad form".)
Robert Burns--To a Mouse
Thomas Gray--Elegy Written in a country Churchyard
Phyllis Wheatley
Harriet Beecher Stowe--Uncle Tom

The graveyard school of poets--British 18th C poetry. Often the poets wrote in graveyards--the subject was death of bereavement. Thomas Gray ?

The Romantic Period (1790-1830ish)
-Romanticism abounds in this period. The focus here was on the beauty of nature, expressing emotion through literature, the ideal, using simple language to express emotion. Finding the ideal.

Romantics-
Samuel Taylor Coleridge-The Lyrical Ballads--Rime of the Ancient Mariner
William Wordsworth The Lyrical Ballads-- "The Prelude"
William Blake
Joh Keats--"Odes"
Percy Shelley--"ozymandias" "Ode to the West Wind"
Goethe
Mary Wollstonecraft--Thoughts on the Education of Daughters;
Alexander Pushkin--The Queen of Spades

Transcendentalists: Dreamy clouds floating by while walking through the forest to get the mail 100 miles away (*cough* Thoreau). Let's all get together over coffee and opiates and discuss metaphysical ideas
Whitman-- Leaves of Grass
Thoreau-- Walden; Civil Disobedience
Emerson--The Divinity School Address; Self Reliance (One of my all time favorite authors)
Margaret Fuller (I can only hope my daughter will think like her someday)

Dark Romantics-
Nathaniel Hawthorne-The Scarlett Letter; The House of the Seven Gables;
Herman Melville- Moby Dick
Poe- "The Raven" "The Purloined Letter"
Emily Dickinson

Gothic--
Ann Radcliffe
Monk Lewis
Mary Shelley
Edgar Allen Poe
Washington Irving- Sleepy Hollow
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Victorian Period (1832-1901)
The start of the novel as we know it today! The loved writing about sentimental things during Queen Victoria's reign. Industry and class were a major concern for these authors.

Alfred Lord Tennyson--Light Brigade; In Memorium
Bronte Sisters
Matthew Arnold--Literary critic, but quite a good poet with "Dover Beach"
Robert Browning- My Last Duchess
Chalres Dickins
EBB--Aurora Leigh;
Jane Austen (wrote during Romantic Period, but not a Romantic writer)
Karl Marx
TH Huxley

Pre-Raphaelites-
These guys idealize and long for the morality of the medieval world. Where dost my prince cometh?
Dante
Rosetti

Realism-1860-1890
Verisimilitude-faithful representation of human life.
Realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence
Mark Twain
Ambrose Bierce
Sarah Orne Jewett
Kate Chopin
George Eliot--Middlemarch was essential to the Realism
Stephen Crane--Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; The Red Badge of Courage

Naturalists-
used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character
naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions
JAck London
Edith Wharton-- The Age of Innocence
Steinbeck

Lost Generation Writers
During WWI- We actually do not have tons of great literature produced in America during that time.
Ernest Hemingway (a personal favorite)--The Old Man and the Sea
Gertrude Stein
F. Scott Fitzgerald--Gatsby
William Faulkner--As I Lay Dying
Steinbeck

The Modern Period(1914-1945)
Generally accepted that it began after WWI ended, 1922.

Y.B. Yeats--"The Second Coming"; "The Secret Rose"
Seamus Heaney (One of my fave authors/poets--fun fact: He won the literary prize in England in 2001 ? and made the men and women who bet on him rich! The odds were in favor of J.K. Rowling for her Harry Potter series. Heaney won for his translation of Beowulf, which is the best we have to date. Apparently they bet on the literary prize more than we do during the Kentucky Derby...)
Dylan Thomas (known for his villanelle "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night")
W.H. Auden--
Virginia Woolf
Flannery O'Connor
Robert Frost

Harlem Rennaisance 1919-33
Countee Cullen
James Baldwin
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
Claude McKay
Jean Toomer

-Realism
-Surrealism

Postmodern (1945-?)
-Existentialism was the literary movement popular then.

T.S. Eliot (That ol' ex-pat)- "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"
George Bernard Shaw
Allen Ginsberg
Thomas Pynchon
Langston Hughes
Toni Morrison
Sandra Cisneros
Zora Neale Hurston
Malcom X
Martin Luther King Jr.

Hamlet's on Facebook!

2010-11-07T15:21:00.002-07:00

(Scroll down for instruction on making the image larger.)

If you are a teacher, a fan of Shakespeare, or one of the billion people on Facebook, this post is for you. I cannot WAIT to show this in class.

Also, I am considering creating one for each and every novel I teach. So relevant to our students!

(In order to SEE the picture, click on it and it will open in a new tab or window. THEN click on the image again in the new tab/window and it will be larger for you (jpeg image). If you are teacher, feel free to steal it for future use. )

Spelling

2010-10-24T18:49:00.005-06:00

by Margaret Atwood

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

The Country of Marriage

2010-09-30T17:06:00.001-06:00

The Country of Marriage

Wendell Berry

I.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

II.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.

III.

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

IV.

How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.

V.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen tine and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

VI.

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

VII.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.

The Memory Floor

2010-09-30T16:59:00.001-06:00

“Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots.” ~Hoosier Farmer

Snow was packed two feet deep on the ground when my husband and I moved into our 1948 bungalow in Billings, Montana. The Marine Corps moved us around a lot in those days, so scheduling the movers to unload our things wasn’t anything new. However, the snow was very new to us. A thick carpet of snow laid over the yard we had yet to see. It created a beautiful background for the Christmas card we would send later that year with a “sold” sign behind our two beaming faces. I loved the house and everything about the beautiful winter scene. I was a young and naïve first-time homeowner. How was I supposed to know about the perils of original wood flooring?

The floor was gorgeous. It was the first thing I noticed and the last thing I looked at when we were viewing the house with our Realtor. It gleamed with what at first I assumed was just the nature of the floor itself, but later learned was a very good floor cleaning agent. The living room floor had a few large scratches from what looked like a furniture accidents from years gone by and there was a watermark in what was to become our reading room. Two sections of the floor were dark with wear and I immediately assumed that I could sand them down to make them match the rest of the floor, no problem. Overall, the floor was loved, lived on, and absolutely beautiful.

The lessons I was to learn about the floor moved in with the rest of our furniture the day our movers came. It had snowed two days before, so the ground was covered with the beginning of the wet, slushy mix Montanans still like to call snow. It’s not. Actually, that snowy, slushy, wet mix of water is a floor destroyer. The movers did their best to prevent the destruction. They laid down plastic sheeting and blue panels of fabric to protect my beloved floor, but to no avail. Their muddy boots sloshed the slushy snow in along with an ample portion of mud from my front yard. Box after box landed on the wet driveway and came in, dripping, from the awful conditions outside. The piano was the worst. They unloaded it and thought they had enough cardboard down to prevent it from getting touched by the wet mess. They were wrong. One by one, the legs of my piano crushed through the cardboard into the mud, where it began sinking further and further into the muddy ground. As the men pulled it out of my front lawn, back through the cardboard, and onto a wooden platform, the hopes I had for a gleaming wooden floor began to wear at the edges.

Amidst the house hunting, job changes, moving in, and unpacking our boxes, we were also searching the local animal shelter’s website for a new family member. Somehow, in the chaos of our lives, I found him listed three days after the movers moved us in:

“Simba—German Shepherd mix. 10 months old. Likes children and other dogs. Is very playful. Family gave him up because of digging and chewing. Needs a family with an active lifestyle to provide him a forever home.”

We renamed our dog Buck and took him home with snow on the ground and the boxes still on the floor. Pico de Gato, my precious, snobby tuxedo cat, was terrified. And Buck…well, Buck was very interested in Pico. Thus began the war between our cat and our dog that they waged on top of my wooden floor.

The scene played in my mind like slow motion 35mm film. Pico had set up camp in our bedroom because Buck was not allowed in there. But to get to his litter box, he had to run from our bedroom to the gate we installed that led to the basement. Pico would only venture out if he thought that Buck was asleep. He would cautiously creep outside the bedroom, silently peeking his head around the living room wall to make sure Buck was not moving and BAM—all hell would break loose. Buck had been readying himself to play Pico’s game with him by pretending to sleep. Naturally, when he saw Pico’s head round the corner from his semi-open eyes, the slow motion effect would begin. All of the sudden I would hear the grating of nails on my wooden floors, the screech and hiss of my poor Pico, and the chase that produced even more horrible sounds of the nails creating new wounds in my poor wooden floor. This happened every single day. My floors were just the platform for their never-ending war. Eventually, my pets learned to co-exist. However, I would still cringe when Buck’s best doggy friends would come over to play. Their incessant wrestling would leave nail marks all over my living room. Sometimes, I swear I can still smell the spot where Buck had a number two accident in the office.

Every year, my husband and I have a huge Pig Pickin’. Roasting a pig over coals for at least 10 hours is a Southern tradition, and in Seth’s family, that tradition takes place around Thanksgiving every year. So now, Seth and I have our annual Pig Pickin’ the first Saturday of December. The only problem with that particular date is that winter usually arrives with a vengeance around that time in Montana. Last year, my floors were sopping wet because of the 17 degree weather that brought on a snow storm the afternoon of the Pig Pickin’. Forty of our closest friends trudged through the snow to the pickin’ tent in the backyard, then back in again to get warm. One of the little floor protector caps fell off one of our metal folding chairs, resulting in a patch of fresh, unfinished wood where it had been scraped back and forth across my floor. People spilled sticky cider and plates of food on various parts of the floor. It was a time filled with fun, laughter and memories.

Wooden floors get damaged by moisture and dryness. When my pets had accidents on my floor, the boards would expand with the moisture. That goes the same for my movers’ wet boxes, friends coming over and tracking snow inside, and for my husband tromping river residue all over the house in his muddy Marine Corps boots. Then, unbeknownst to me, the moisture would dry and cause the boards to shrink. The drying process left small gaps in between each floorboard because I had failed to notice the moisture that was there in the first place. After about a year of trying to keep my floors scratch-free, dent-free, dry, and clean, I gave up. My house is a home that is lived in. I don’t complain about my floors anymore. I mop them to a sparkling glaze on a Saturday morning while Seth is out fishing with Buck, only to watch them get dull with the remnants of the Stillwater River on Buck’s paws and Seth’s boots. I pull up, clean, and dry the area rugs that have little circles of dampness from one of my pets’ bladders. My new kitten’s favorite spot to sleep is in the dirt of my garden box that houses my three jalapeño plants. The box is in a sunny little corner in our kitchen that warms up Sookie’s small little body, and I know she’s comfortable. I happily sweep up the dirt she strews all over the floors when jumping out of the box, because she is just so darn cute and I know that it is just dirt.

There is now a large scratch on the floor in the living room where the wooden platform moving the piano in lost its balance and caught itself with a portion of my wooden floor. The living room and dining room both bear the scars of that uncapped folding chair leg that seems to always make its mark during good times with dear friends. The floorboards at the entrance of our home have prominent gaps and visible wear due to the snowy shoes of our friends coming to and going from our parties. I will never think about my floors first when thinking about our pig pickins’. I will remember people warming up with homemade apple cider. I’ll think of the dogs and babies that were running all over the floors and the many people jammed in the house because it was too cold outside. I will remember the scent of Southern dishes like collard greens, pulled pork, and pecan pie. I will never forget baby Isaac being coddled, hugged, and fawned over by everyone just about four months before the disease he had took his life.

Although Buck’s nails did the majority of damage to my floors, I was never really upset with him. He brought immense joy to our lives and became an indispensable part of our life. He left his marks all over that wooden floor that will someday remind me of what a good friend he was to our family. Our newest member of the family, Sookie, has no fear of Buck because I have since learned how to introduce pets to each other so they are not mortal enemies. The other day, I was watching Sookie trying to attack Buck’s tail and realized that there would be no scratches of Buck chasing Sookie across my floorboards. There would be no marks to remind me that they became fast friends on top of that 1948 wooden floor. It made me a bit sad.

I like to think that the gaps in the floorboards are filled with memories. Some of them are memories from the owners before us. Many of them were created by my family. At our front entrance, memories of the pig pickin’ are still visible in the cracks between the boards. The dining room scratches hold the memories of our family sitting down for dinner every night. The reading room floorboards will always bear witness to the incredible Buck and his scramble to go out the back door with Seth. The kitchen will probably always have a bit of dirt on it from Sookie’s scampering, marks from Pico’s fleeing, and scraps of food from our cooking. My home has taught me that there is beauty in being able to find memories and goodness in the mess on your wooden floors.

Self-Assessment Essay

2010-09-14T16:20:00.004-06:00

Paper Writing Machine?

Open-ended writing makes my brain a closed book. I am entirely too structured for an evasive paper like this that could be written a number of different ways. I write essays that almost always follow the same pattern: choose the thesis, support the thesis, conclude the thesis. Everything in those essays has a point. There is a method, there is a way to get from A to B, and I prefer that logical manner of writing. Maybe that’s why I find myself dreading this assignment. I know how to be the paper writing machine when it comes to essays; however, I hate that I don’t know if what I write for this essay is correct. Oh, the tyranny of being a perfectionist.

I prefer to begin with a list of things that I could possibly write about for an essay. Here’s a taste of my brain, copied from notes I jotted down in class last week:

“Organized; I question myself about everything I write from the first sentence to the last period; tend to forget the point I started with; in reading or writing, I prefer the story over the style (detrimental, at times). Always write all of my ideas/notes/thoughts on a Word document and then flesh out the paragraphs from there. Often write way too much, and then change the font to fit all my thoughts. .96 margins are almost essential for me. Have incredible ideas for the characters in my book—never write them down. Always use the same words. Afraid my professors think I write as a systematic machine with no creativity. Always question my abilities. Keep a list of things I still want to write about at the end of the paper. Never get to write about them.”

Of the list in italics above, I am most proud of my ability to develop an essay through the use of my notes and reflections of the topics. I start writing the essay the first day of class. In my notes, I write “essay” next to topics I especially liked reading or discussing in class. After I receive the list of topics for a paper, I choose two or three and keep extensive notes on them so I can glean as much information as possible to write about in my essay. Sometimes I feel like that is cheating. In some classes, the way to get the grade is to spit out the professor’s notes into an essay or a test. I don’t like that, because I like to use the notes to find twists in the material or to develop a different take on the subject. I feel like it is cheating because it is not all my own thoughts; but teachers and writers are the best thieves in the world, right?

Creatively, I prefer writing about my life and experiences over anything else. I think years of keeping a journal have influenced that preference. I’m good at taking a story or a conversation that I’ve experienced and crafting it into a story that is easy to read and leaves you wanting to know more about the people or experience. I am also good at writing opinion essays, since I hold strong opinions and am a decent researcher. By decent researcher, I mean that I don’t get my information from any old website; I research on empirically based, university websites. Consequently, the Op Ed section of the paper is my favorite section.

See, I’m already getting off topic. Good thing I know how to get myself back on track. Back to the list.

We talked about writer’s block in class once. You know, I never, ever have writers block when it comes to my essays. I question my work the whole time, but in the back of my mind, I still know that what I’m writing is appropriate and somewhat good. Maybe? But when it comes to creative writing, I have a huge mental block. Remember when I said I never have a problem developing an essay? It’s because I use a list of quality topics I know will work well in my essay. Well, that development becomes a problem when I write fiction. Currently, I have an incredible idea for a book that I have promised myself I will write—but I have yet to open the Word document to begin. I have too many ideas and I’m afraid that I’ll fail if I just start writing without having listed them. I also have that dreaded writer’s disease I affectionately titled “everything-has-already-been-written-phobia.” As Harold Bloom said, writers sometimes have anxiety writing because they feel everything beautiful and worthy has already been written. Obviously, I have trouble without the list. I feel like my literary soul is telling me to throw out the list for the book, but my logical head cannot grasp the concept. Even though I earn excellent marks on my papers, I sometimes wonder if my professors think I’m a machine with no creative soul behind the words I write. But then I ask myself: If I like the list so much, shouldn’t I stick with it? I don’t want to be labeled as a paper-writing machine, but you know the old saying: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right?

Wait, I’ve already written three pages? I guess I can’t write about the rest of the list. There are things I would like to still discuss, but I can’t within the strict confines of 2 pages. I haven’t told you that I like writing in the morning or that I like to proofread while I write. Now I can’t describe what listening to Jose Gonzalez, American folk, or classic jazz standards does for me while writing. Now you won’t know how Dillon caught me using Times News Roman font size 11 and .9 margins or that I’ve committed to writing a book with my husband, even though I’m terrified that I might fail as a writing partner and as an author.

Damn the page numbers, I say.

Good News

2010-09-09T14:52:00.002-06:00

I may not have to student teach in this spring. It turns out that my class 2 teaching license may get me out of it, since I already have proof that I a) student taught already and b) taught for three years.

This all hinges on a few things.

1) NC needs to hurry up and send me my current, renewed teaching license. I sent it off a month ago...hope it gets here in a hurry so I can
2) Apply for my Montana teaching license. I can probably apply for the MT license if push comes to shove with my current license, but I'd rather use my updated version with my Nicholson name, not Limon.
3) Fill out the mounds of paperwork and write numerous checks to OPI for the license processing fee, the fingerprint check, the "this funds our break room coffee" check, and then I should get my MT license in the mail.
4) Take my MT license to the licensure office at the Uni, get Mrs. A to approve it all, make the call to OPI that will *hopefully* exempt me for student teaching.

That would get me out of 9 hours of graduate school fees and get me 8 hours of substitute teaching a day.

England, here we come!

Spa Day

2010-09-01T10:37:00.002-06:00

I just gave all three of my pets a bath. My job was to clean the bathroom today, and I figured I would just get it dirtier before cleaning the crap out of it. It's a deep clean kind of day.

So I started with Sookie. She hates baths. She cries the whole time, claws at everything, then sticks her tongue out at me with a threatening look that says "no cuddlemuffin for you today!" She is still hiding from me under my bed and if I accidentally stumble upon her in the house, she immediately runs into hiding.

Pico, on the other hand, loves a bath. He loves the warmth of the water and the way it feels when I pour it over his back. I don't even have to hold him down anymore. He'll sprawl out, shimmy around to make his tummy warm, and patiently wait for his "massage" (shampoo). I actually had to lift him out of the bathtub today, because he was enjoying it so much. But I had to move on to the big boy. After he was fluffed with a towel, he joined Sookie under the bed for some personal grooming.

Then came Buck. Buck doesn't hate water...he just hates water when it touches him without his consent. Therefore, Buck hates the bath. He'll jump in, because I told him to, but he'll then try to get out the whole time AND he won't listen to his sit command. I don't blame him, because I don't like to shower either. So we worked together to get it over with as soon as possible. He HAD to have a bath today because he stunk like ass, which is the stench of dried trout lake water on my dog. Yes, my dog smelled like dead fish and dirty water. Gross. So it had to happen. He ducked under my arm, but I grabbed his torso. He tried to fake me out on the left, but my shampoo slathered hands caught his front legs as they started to jump. Eventually, he was shampooed and rinsed. I had forgotten how much damage a wet dog could do though. Now I REALLY have to deep clean my bathroom, because of the massive amounts of hair and wet dog droplets now covering every surface in the washroom. Buck is a smart dog though. He knows what to do to get on my nerves, particularly (not so much with Seth. Maybe because I'm the one who cleans the bathrooms and the floors?). I had let him do his wet dog shakes 5 times in the bathroom before I let him out AND had fluffed him down with a huge, dry towel. I opened the door. Buck ran out and then stopped right in front of our hallway mirror. He slowly turned his head back toward me, gave me a smirk and a wink, then let loose with his wet dog shimmy shakes. He proceeded to do this in front of my hallway mirror, the upstairs TV, the frames in my dining room, and then he trotted back to me and sat down looking like an innocent, sweet puppy.

So, while I waited for the hair to dry to every floor that I ALREADY CLEANED UPSTAIRS THIS MORNING, I wrote this sweet little post. Hopefully my sweet little ones won't hide from me ALL day...

And exhale...

2010-08-30T16:41:00.005-06:00

Seth is a weaver of words. Whenever I'm searching for just the right way to describe something, he says it so simply that I always agree. Last week, Seth and I took a quick little trip to beautiful San Francisco. It was amazing. My soul has been feeling empty lately, and one of the main things in my life that fills my soul consistently is traveling. On day three or four of our trip, I casually mentioned that we were probably spending too much money. That's probably something I shouldn't write in my blog, but Seth's response was so beautiful that I had to share. He told me that our lives have been at a warp speed pace for the past year with things that we had to do. We have to go home to visit the fam; we have to get home improvements done on the house; we have to sacrifice many weekends together to the Marine Corps. And believe me, all of the have-to things are necessary. But Laura, he said, this trip is a huge exhale for us. We have both been holding our breath for a time away, together, that we haven't taken the time to breathe. San Francisco is the exhale.

Don't think we didn't budget. Seth and I are super-budgeters. We have a category for everything...and I mean everything. That budget includes a "summer slush fund" as Seth affectionately named it AND our regular "travel" fund that we contribute to monthly. I should probably write a different blog about the budget, so I'll move on now. We had the money. But I ALWAYS think, "if we spend less, we'll have more for Europe/NC/Asia/camping/etc." Thanks to the tripadvisor app and the Yelp app, we were able to find some super sweet meal deals in SF. We also wanted to visit Alcatraz on the trip, so in my research I stumbled upon a thing called the SF "citipass" for $68 per person. It included the alcatraz trip tour, unlimited access to every bus, cable car, trolley, and metro, and it included our entrance admissions to four more museums. We used up their worth and then some. But for the little things, like souvenirs from the Anchor Steam Brewery tour or a nice crab dinner, we didn't skimp.

Let me share with you a few of our favorite things. If I were a good blogger, I would post the pics next to the bulleted item, then have your computer load the page for 20 minutes before you could see all of them. But I'm not. So if you want to see pics, go to my shutterfly website. We took some cool ones.

On Sunday, our flight left at 6:05 am and we arrived in SF around 10:30. We hopped on the BART commuter train and it dropped us off at the Powell Street exit, which is essentially a block away from Union Square. Our hotel, the Parc 55, was right across the street (way to go Seth!). They let us check in early and so we changed and immediately headed out to find something to eat. We ended up at Punjab, an Indian restaurant, and we WEREN'T disappointed. It was so good. Their naan was SO, so good. I'll be writing a trip advisor/Yelp review for them, so check it out more in detail there. After a quick nap, we headed down to Pier 33 to pick up our Alcatraz tickets and the citipass booklets. Word to the wise-when going to SF, you should order your Alcatraz tiks way ahead of time (at least 3 weeks prior). The night tour was sold out until the middle of September when I ordered them last week. Then we walked over to Pier 39 and used our first museum ticket from the citipass booklet to go to the Aquarium of the Bay. The Aquarium was definitely aimed toward children, but we had fun checking out some of the cool fish--especially the fish swimming above our heads in the tunnels. The coolest thing to watch was the kids' reactions. "OOOOOOOOH COOOOOOOL!" "Mom LOOK!" "OOOOOH MAN THAT IS AWESOME!" Hilarious. After the Aquarium, we meandered around Pier 39, which is just a huge tourist trap for tourists like us. There are sea lions that I guess they put there for our viewing pleasure, but they were all asleep when we walked by. Seth suggested we have a glass of wine when we saw the Wines of CA Wine Bar. They had Prosecco--of course that's what I ordered. :) I highly recommend that wine bar, but it is a bit pricey. It's in a tourist trap. Of course it's going to be. The smell of waffle cones was the most overpowering smell, because the ice cream shops were everywhere. Seth got two scoops-vanilla and mint. Great, Seth. I can't have any! I swear he does that on purpose. ;)

Monday-We got up around 8 and decided to work out, since we were sure the amount of calories we would consume that day would be outrageous. I ran and did the eliptical for a bit, while Seth ran and did some of his Crossfit mumbo jumbo. I kinda love it when we work out together and ladies don't know he's with me. They totally check him out. We then went off to find me a hat, buy sunscreen, and then headed to SFMOMA. Currently, the Fisher Collection of Modern Art is being exhibited there in order to celebrate the museum's 75th anniversary. It was fabulous. It was surreal to look at surrealism in its nascent form. I think that we see so many images in the world that we continue to think we are only looking at replications when we do, in fact, see the real thing. I almost had to convince myself that I was looking at a real Rothko, Dine, Warhol, Picasso, and Matisse. I had to get up to the painting and look at the brushstrokes. It was quite a fascinating experience. We both got the audio tour (free--just give them your license), so it gave us the freedom to move at our own pace instead of waiting on each other. I recommend it if you go. The one thing we didn't know was how vast the museum's collection was. I would get there much earlier (10?) and bring a snack in your bag. It is four stories of incredible art-and each story is chock-full of amazing art. We did a decent tour of only two levels, then kind of did a quick run through the other two because it was 3:00pm and we had yet to eat lunch. Yeah. After that, we tried to go eat at a place Yelp recommended for Pizza that was 6 blocks away--fail. It didn't serve between 2:30-5:30. Bum. We had been planning to get drinks at the Rogue Ale House that afternoon anyway, so we decided to walk from the SFMOMA museum to North Beach. I saw that google maps said it was 1.6 miles, but I convinced Seth that we should just walk there. It was a long walk, but really, really fun. We walked the entire length of Chinatown and then through Little Italy until we finally made it to Union STREET, across from Washington Park to the Rogue Ale House. Mmmmmm, the beer was SO good due to the looong wait. I wasn't even hungry anymore, but I ordered something anyway, to go along with the large pints that Seth kept ordering me. Good thing I did. ;) ;) We sat there for 1.5 hours, people watching and just talking about life. One of the best times we had there I think. We had to convince ourselves to get moving, but the SF Giants game was calling, so we hopped on the Cable Car (first time for Seth!) and rode on home. To get to the Giants game, we had to take the light rail. We were definitely out of place in the sea of orange and black, but the train let us off right in front of the stadium. And BOY, what a stadium it was. We sat on the left field side, up in the nosebleed section. Seriously, we looked down from where we sat and the SF Bay was blue, beautiful, and breathtaking. I think we didn't bring the camera for that, so you can get online and look at pics on google or something.

Tuesday- We had nothing planned for Tuesday, so we decided to find a good place for breakfast. Boy, oh boy, was it good. I forget the name of it right now, but it was two blocks from our hotel and was probably no bigger than my own living room. Spectacular breakfast. I'm salivating thinking about it. Anyhoo, we decided that we should rent bikes and ride to Sausalito, CA, which is across the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a hot, sunny day in SF, which is pretty atypical I'm told. I was glad to be on a bike with some wind in my face. We rented our bikes from Blazing Saddles and were on our way. They have a pretty sweet bike path from the Ghirardelli chocolate factory to Sausalito. I forgot how much I don't like to ride bikes with Seth...but we only had a little conflict within the first 20 minutes of the ride. Maw-wage. ;) Otherwise, it was a great day for it. :)

To be continued...

Cleanliness is Equal to my Sanity.

2010-08-21T10:10:00.004-06:00

Seth made a comment to me this morning that I couldn't get out of my head on my run, while cleaning, doing laundry, or even while packing. That's a pretty significant comment to me. He said, "Laura, the cleaner the floor, the happier you are."

I must admit that his statement is true. I've been a bit depressed lately. I've not been able to get out of a funk that I've been in for some time now. I started cleaning my floors religiously about a month ago and haven't stopped the frenzy since. In fact, the cleaning has gotten so good that my addiction has become even worse. Somehow, I think that the clean floors in my house make me feel like my brain is becoming decluttered and free of all the junk that was making me feel badly. It all started when my Hoover (RIP) decided to quit sucking after 4.5 years. It was a handy little vacuum, and for the low vacuum price, it was a beast while it lasted. All good things come to an end though, huh? I'd already fixed her once before by declogging the pipes, etc. But when I unscrewed the pipes and got into the nitty gritty of the vacuum, I found nada. Nothing was blocking it. The suckage just sucked. :( My floor was dirty for 3 weeks straight. I took a picture of it, but haven't put it on my laptop here, so I can't share it with you. It was nasty. So like any good wife, I took the opportunity to share with Seth all of the research I had done for pet hair vacuums. Seth and I believe that pets are part of the family and thus, they are allowed inside with us pretty much all the time. But Buck also goes outside, so believe me, the wooden floors don't gleam like they used to. Until today, that is. Can you tell how excited I am about all of the cleaning products I own?!

Anyhoo, Seth usually lets me do the big purchases (TV, vacuum, car research, etc.). I'm just better at looking online and in the library for the good, bad, and the ugly. So he gave me clearance to spend a certain amount of money and voila! I was headed to Stuart's House of Vacuums. Let me cut to the chase. Basically every person I talked to mentioned Dyson in the conversation. Riccar, Kirby, and Miele were also brought up, but I ended up going with the Dyson because of the attachments and the power I saw. Some people say it doesn't have as good sucking power--not true. Yeah, the three I mentioned above are the godparents of vacuums, but I didn't like their fit or style. Also, the attachments didn't stretch as far as the Dyson and the suckage for the other three sucked the fabric on the couch into the nozzle, whereas the Dyson skimmed it and just pulled the hair up. I ordered the Dyson Animal DC25 from an online retailer because Stuart's was $100 more than they charged. No brainer for me.

These are the three items that have made my brain, life, and house much happier in the past 3 weeks:
1) The new vacuum. It sucks sooo good. ;) It even has extension cords that you don't have to attach to reach the cobwebs and vacuum dirt out of the vents. Did I mention that my stairs were vacuumed the other day for the first time since we moved in?! Because the Dyson actually sucked up the dirt from them! My carpets are so happy. My basement doesn't stink as much as it did before and the upstairs looks oh so much cleaner. It's amazing what getting up a little pet hair does for the state of a room. I mentioned before how great it was for the upholstery. It also has a little attachment that gets corners. And it is so SIMPLE! I can't describe how simple it is, but it only has a few buttons you use that are obvious because they have arrows or are red. Simplicity is my friend. I also like the way that you see the dirt fill up the canister. I enjoy the instant gratification. Anyone else love that too? ;)
2) The Swiffer Sweeper. How come no one ever told me about it before!? It's great for my kitchen floors. I use it exclusively as a mop. I have noticed that it leaves a sticky residue that attracts dirt. So make sure you run a real mop over it with hot, sudsy water every once in awhile. But for the in between times, the Swiffer mop pads are great.
3) Orange Glo hardwood floor mopping kit. I can't use the Swiffer for the hardwood floors because I think it's bad and I don't want to ruin the wood. Buck does enough of that already. :/ So I bought this the other day with MY spending money--that's how much I wanted it. It was $11 for the kit at WalMart and money well spent. I tested it out first and it didn't do any damage to the floors, so I went ahead and mopped the whole upstairs this morning. AMAZING, VISIBLE difference in the shine and state of my hardwoods. Before they were so dull because of the numerous animal and human and fairy footprints that had been walking over them since we moved in. No joke. I've tried to mop them with special hardwood floor cleaner before with a damp real mop, but it left them streaky and dull. AND as soon as we stepped on it again, they absorbed any and all dirt from anything walking on them. So I just straight up stopped mopping. This Orange Glo kit is perfectly timed for my sanity and the state of my hardwoods upstairs.

I wish I knew which Greek god I have to thank for cleanliness. Do y'all have any amazing, life-changing cleaning products I need to know about?

Yard Sale Treasures

2010-08-20T13:22:00.002-06:00

Or maybe I should title this "Garage Sale Treasures." They call them garage sales around here.

Anyhoo.

Today was my first official garage saling day of the year. I have stopped at a few random garage sales here and there, but I've been working on Fridays a lot and just never seem to time it right. So today was the day. I made my list of sales last night and got right to it bright and early this morning.

I was looking for the following items:
books (always books--I sell them on Amazon.com)
a bag full of gift bags
2 trash cans
frames
2 soap dispensers

I found everything but the soap dispensers and one of the trash cans.

The cost analysis:

books (always books--I sell them on Amazon.com) $17 for 12 books-I'll make around $65 on them. Breaking it down, for the hour it took me to look for them, list them on amazon, and then what it will take me to package and mail them, I usually make about $35 an hour.
a bag full of gift bags $5 and completely worth it.
trash can $1
frames- I got 5 for $3

Then I found a few things that I NEEDED to have, but weren't on my original list:

A rolling duffel suitcase for $10. It's small enough to seem like a carry on, which was the goal. I've been looking for this puppy for awhile, but finally found it today. It rolls upright like a rolling suitcase, but you can also shove the handle in and carry it like a duffel. A-mazing.
Clothes. Two cute cardigans and a t-shirt for $6 at the thrift store.
3 cute candle holders. $3
A wire mesh holder for utensils. I've been needing one of those for the pig pickin Came with utensils AND some cool clip thingys that hold your table cover down when it's windy oustide. $1
2 Kong rubber play things for Buck and some of that peanut butter stuff that goes inside it. $3. what a STEAL. Those dog treat things are expensive at petsmart. Buck has been playing with his for an hour.

Boo-yah.

Being the only one is a lonely place to be...

2010-08-17T17:12:00.009-06:00

I had a bit of an overwhelming experience today. My best friend, Becca, had a baby on Saturday. I was actually in there for the experience because she asked me to take photos. I gotta say, I did a damn good job of taking pictures with my limited experience with my professional camera. They turned out beautifully and truly captured many of the moments they had. Yeah, the pics were a little red, but as I learn how to white balance and use the F thingamajigger, I'll get better. For now, they were great.

Anyhoo, I had to be there. She put me down on the list of people who can be there, she asked me to photograph, and she's my best friend. So I went. It was a surreal experience, because I never really felt like I actually witnessed the birth. I was behind the lens as the photographer, not as a person solely watching the birth of the baby. There was one moment that I can remember that truly amazed me though. I was snapping away at the end of the pushing and thought I saw the tip of a head, but couldn't really focus on it since I was focusing my lens instead. Then, all of the sudden, a slimy, blue, cone shaped head was just OUT. That was it! Elena was just halfway out of Becca and that is the moment that made me move my camera so my eyes could see if for themselves. If anyone asked me if the experience was incredible or amazing or made me believe in miracles, I would honestly say no. But I would tell them that the experience made me take the lenses away...in so many senses.

This experience made me get out from behind my wall of "I will never, ever have a child by way of my vagina." Even though I still believe that, I can't say it's because I don't understand it anymore. Becca was amazing and labored like a rock star. She pushed for 5 rounds and then the baby was out. Done. Finito. I saw that it is not something to be scared of and won't kill me if I try. I was afraid before because I didn't know what it was like. Now I know that a child is just something I don't want right now NOT because I am scared of the labor. It was scary at times to watch Becca shake like a leaf and I didn't know half of the jargon the nurses were saying--but it was okay. Everything was fine and a baby was born. Becca and Mike are the same old same old people. She was making jokes with the Doc and Mike was the same old easy-going Mike.

I would say the experience really hit home though in another area. I have finally realized what it is that I don't like about babies and I am going to come out from behind this wall as well today. Are you ready for this?

It's because I am just plain, old selfish.

Okay, now let me define selfish for you. I've got two definitions for how I am selfish when it comes to children. These are my own definitions so just stick with me here. First of all, Seth and I are selfish together because we don't want to share our lives with another person 24/7. We are so afraid of commitment to someone else that we have yet to rent out the bedroom downstairs. I love that Seth is currently on his way to pick me up so we can head to Carters (our favorite local brewery) and meet Kyle and celebrate the end of a Tuesday. :) Doesn't that sound lovely? Oh, to me it does. I'm probably going to have to finish this post later because of our little rendezvous. But back to it, that is definition one of selfish for me AND for Seth. We leave for San Francisco on Sunday for another little rendezvous just because. We will spend 5 glorious days touring the city and leave our pets in the care of a very responsible young lady---because we can.

Now the second definition of selfish is the one that we've just recently realized. I actually can't speak for Seth in this definition, because I don't know if he feels this way and because this is what I just solidified today for myself. I went to visit Becca for the first time since she's been home. My expectations were me, Becca, her mom, and the babe. But then all the sudden there were 3 other visitors, Mike came home, and I was left sitting there on the couch reading an US magazine because a) I had already heard all of the story (I was there, remember?) and b) the conversation about breastfeeding or laboring or birthing didn't apply to me. Let me say that I am not bitter about that. If Becca has taught me one thing since I've moved here it's to think about how someone else would feel in the situation. Like Harper Lee wrote, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." I do that much more often now and will be forever grateful for that lesson from both Becca and Ms. Lee. This applies to my first visit to B and M's house because I was able to think about how Becca is feeling. I like to find a way to compare it to my dog or cats. If someone came over to see them, I would be focusing on the visitors (since I'm like family, Becca shouldn't focus on me) and I would be discussing different training plans with the other dog owners. Make sense? But even though I know I would do that it in my own house, I still felt a little left out. And that's the second definition of Laura's selfishness--I am no longer the center of attention.

Seth and I first realized that second definition of selfishness--the one about not being the center of attention--when we went home in May. It was humbling, really. Whenever Seth and I used to come home, everyone would fawn all over us and ask us what life was like and pay attention to us. Then came the nieces and the nephews. Wow, what a different ballgame babies bring on. I love my niece and nephew more than anything and want to help with them and fawn over them and pay attention to them just as much as everyone else...but it left me feeling a little left out again. Tis' the time and way of life I believe.

I need to get used to the idea of my best friend having a baby while I am here. Kelsey wrote me once that she thought it was perfect timing when I left because when she had Callie, the game changed. No more going out, lots more staying in. I get that. But I also need time to soak in that I get to share my best friend now. I mean, Elena is the luckiest little girl in the world. If I could share Becca with anyone, her child is the best option, in my opinion. Elena-you have no idea what a great mom you have. Anyhoo--

Being the only one is a lonely place to be. Seth and I are going to be in this place for a long time though. It's time to face my selfishness and realize that we are not the center of attention anymore and really shouldn't be. My little niece and nephew are the cutest things ever and I am so glad they exist. Watching the joy that my brother, sister, and best friend have while interacting with their children is amazing to see. The child has fulfilled so many of their hopes they've had during the pregnancy and maybe some even before. I hope this post didn't offend anyone. This is the one place for me to process how I feel and describe what I think. I do not want people to read this post and take from it that I hate children. Not possible, not a problem. I love, love, love the infants in my life. But I also love that they aren't mine. Besides...I'm a teacher! I've got enough kids of my own to worry about for now. ;)

How to Be a Writer

2010-08-16T12:57:00.002-06:00

Can I just start this piece off by saying that I am terrible at focusing my writing on one topic? I get into the groove of writing and forget to focus my thoughts on what I originally started writing about and I just GO where the writing spirits move me.

Flannery O'Conner is a favorite author of mine because I love the eccentricity of her mind. Maybe it's because I relate. She has written several pieces about how to write or what a writer is. Here are some of my favorite quotes of hers on writing:

"Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system."

Whenever I even THINK about writing a novel (which, admittedly, is often), I start to bite my nails. I find that little crevice or that too long white part and just gnaw away. If you know me well, you know that when I bite my nails, I'm nervous about something. It could be a situation, my life, a commercial I saw, or the daunting task of writing a book that others might actually read and HATE. Flannery hit the nail on the head here--"It is a plunge into reality." "It's shocking to the system." And I'm too much of a wimp to face the shock of reality in writing my damn novel. Until now.

"I write to discover what I know."

I particularly like this quote because it forces me to face the fact that I currently don't KNOW what my novel even looks like. It drop kicks me, lands me on my back, knocks the air out of me, then yells "IT'S BECAUSE YOU'VE NEVER TRIED." I need to finally discover what I didn't know I knew.

"Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you."

Point taken. Fiction is not a simple job. It's not a fact finding article for the Times. It's not a 5 point essay for my college professor. It's me, my thoughts, and you, my reader. It's a dusty, dirty, nitty gritty reality that you are on your own for this one. I can take ideas from the world around me but the ultimate product is my mind and this screen I'm staring at. Then people like you get to read it. Actually, it'll probably be your children, since my passion is Young Adult Literature. Get ready for some strong female AND male protagonists friends! We sure do need them!

"The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."

I just like that quote. I don't need to expand upon it.

"Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing."

Okay, okay. I get it. You're right, O'Conner. But it's so much easier! If I don't write, I don't have to think about whether or not I want my books in first or third person. I don't have to agonize over the opening pages for months. I don't have to be vulnerable with my editors or worse, my readers. I don't have to worry about deadlines or plotlines or forehead lines.

And then she says again: "Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing."

Fine, fine. I'll write.

"If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you."

I saved the best for last. Do you know what I do all day long, every day? I think about stories. I see a bird soaring like a trapeze artist in the middle of the intersection and I immediately know I should tell that story in a poem. I read the latest YA fiction and I wish I were the author invoking the feelings of passion I get about those books. It kills me that I haven't tried. It's killing me that I haven't even started. Flannery's best quote about writing was so simple, it's funny. She said that if you want to be a writer, you get up at 8:00am, write for 8 hours, then "go home" at 5:00pm. You write about your day if you have a mental block for your story. You write about what you see if you can't think of anything else. You write in order to become a better writer.

It's funny. I have always told my students that. From day one, I tell them that if you try to speak Spanish in my class from day one, you'll be able to hold a conversation with me by the end of the year IN SPANISH. Why? Because we've practiced it for 1-2 hours every day for the past 260 days. I was hiking with Seth about a month ago and told him I wanted to do the Cooke City to Red Lodge backpack trip which is 27 miles one way over the Beartooth Mountains. He told me I wasn't ready for it; I told him that if I never backpack, I'll never be ready for it. Sometimes you just gotta do it. He smiled a very sweet smile at me and said, "Okay. Let's backpack babe."

I'm taking a bit of my own advice and I'm going to write. I might not be here for awhile, but I'm going to try to blog more here in order to free up some of my creative outlets while writing my book. I'm putting it out here for all of my *cough-3-cough* readers so that you know that's what I'm doing. I'm not setting a date, but putting it on here as put a fire under my ass to get up and get writing.

As a parting gift, here are just a couple of Flannery's gems that I simply adore:

"Whenever I am asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one."

"I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted."

Oh Flannery. You little Southern lady you...

I cried

2010-08-08T08:50:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, I went to see a movie with friends. The movie was funny in all the appropriate places, but the part that is motivating me to write this blog was one of the previews before the movie started. My favorite actress is in this movie about rediscovery. Eat Pray Love is not a book I loved. Oh sure, let me pay money to buy a book about a person I don't know's spiritual soulful discovery that involves extensive travel, eating, and soul searching across three countries I'm dying to visit. I thought the book pretentious and it made me extremely jealous of her experience.

I was probably 23 when I first read the book. My spiritual journey has made a turn that I currently dont' know if it is for the better or worse. However, I do know that I am in an entirely different place at almost-28 than I was when I knew everything at 23. Although I'm harboring those feelings of jealousy and pretentiousness about the book, I now feel I understand why she would go. Maturity about her situation brought to light the fact that she had experienced trauma in her life. My friend told me the definition of trauma (when it concerns counseling and the brain) the other day: When everything you thought you knew was true about the world is no longer true or what you believe is true.

I am experiencing that type of trauma in my life right now. I am forcing myself to write because I know that I will benefit from the therapeutic process of recognizing my thoughts and feelings. Notice I didn't say understanding--that's a different post for a different time. Maybe. The trauma I'm experiencing is the worst type of misunderstanding I've ever experienced and that is why yesterday, during the previews to Dinner of Schmucks, I cried while watching Julia Roberts rediscover herself. In the two minute clip, she went from desolate to vibrant. But she had all of these amazing experiences around the world that influenced her change. Must I travel to rediscover who I am? Do I need to leave the place I am to reflect?

I think I'm going to try the cheaper therapy option: the Beartooth mountains, the Montana countryside, and my local libraries. Julia had to leave to experience life and rediscover herself in the book/movie. Seeing that I don't have time or money to do that (or a publisher), I am going to redefine my life where I am. My readers know that "where I am" is many different places because of the military. But it is time to embrace life and learn what I believe and who I am. I've been avoiding that conversation with myself for awhile because it is such a difficult conversation that I know will last for the rest of my years on this earth. But it's time to stop crying about it and start doing something about it.

Why I love you

2010-02-28T08:26:00.002-07:00

When it's just you and I on a couch with our computers, I feel comfortable.
Arguing various political points, I love when we call it because we're trying to be "right."
Something I value is our enthusiasm for great sitcoms.
Something I cherish is our deep friendship.
I love that you call me out when I need to be brought down.
I say I don't believe in Fate...but if something doesn't exist that controls our love, then why are you and I so perfectly compatible in terms of our values and goals in life?
Sometimes I question why you love me.
You do the dishes. :)
Even though sometimes we don't "mesh" in terms of opinions on lit, life, and love, there is no one I would rather debate topics with.
Why do you deal with me? What do I give you that makes you love me?
I love you because you choose me. I choose you Seth. Beyond Time's limit...
Do you know that I teared up when you told me I should go to CA?
Sacrifice is something we both do well.
Because my compassion influences your pragmatism. Because your idealism makes me let got of my rationalism.
I love you because you let my heart soar with compassion, even when it costs you time and money. Truly, you are amazing.
Although sometimes I pretend I'm annoyed, I secretly relish every safety lesson you give me because it is a tangible lesson of your love for me.
Inspiration, my dear Seth. Yeah, yeah, women are supposed to exercise for themselves, but honey, I do it for you. You make me want to be beautiful.
Beauty. I take off my makeup so you can revel in under-eye circles, blotchy skin, and facial hair...because that's what you prefer.
Out of all the people I know, you are the person I would choose to have a conversation with. In an age where conversation is a dying art, you and I are keeping it alive baby. :)
Last night I told someone that he shouldn't expect a deep conversation with his future wife every day. I still think that's true. But I was wrong when I said expect it once a week. When you and I are together for an entire week, we don't force a good conversation. It just happens. Like last Friday morning over a cup of coffee.
Maybe it's like sex. Maybe I'll keep that between us.
I love that you read. Can we read together more? Can you read to me tonight?
You may already know this, but you are the best for me.

Habitation

2010-02-24T07:55:00.001-07:00

Habitation
By Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire

Health care reform is a 16-letter word.

2010-01-06T16:33:00.001-07:00

Currently, my father is without work and my sister is not covered by any insurance, because it is just too expensive. My mother works at a private school where she is underpaid and overworked I’m sure, just like any other private Christian school. My father can’t get hired in the public education system because he is too old and costs way too much money. But since that is so hard to prove, he’s out of a job and the district is saving thousands of dollars a year by hiring a recent grad at half the price. So both Mom and Dad are on her measly health insurance paying tons of money for the security of being covered by health care in old age.

I see both sides to the debate. Most people I know, because of their conservative Christian (aka Republican) background, do not support health care reform in any way and would most likely march against it in DC if provided the opportunity. I don’t agree with them completely, but I see their side.

They understand that our national debt will increase another trillion dollars that we do not have. The Obama Administration is spending money like water, which is the money that we are contributing to the federal government through income tax. Currently, the national debt is around $12.3 billion that comes from countries like China and individual investors in the US and around the world. OK, so I don’t mind being taxed, but when government officials dip into Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid like they’ve been doing, it makes me hot. That money is meant to help people, and they are borrowing against it to pay for gardens and business travel and linens. I’m not naïve. I understand that gardens and travel and linens are a necessity for some people, especially if the White House has an image to maintain. But spending thousands of dollars on superfluous projects irritates me. I also understand that I cannot control where my taxes go, therefore the increase in taxes health care reform will bring could essentially be paying for those linens the White House needs, not for my sister’s broken leg.

I have two other major concerns in implementing a national health care reform. First, I’m afraid the quality of our physicians will decrease because their workload will increase immensely. I have several friends who have been physicians for years now, and they say they would quit if health care reform is implemented because they know the quality of their work will suffer and it will hurt their patients in the long run. We have a lack of physicians as it is in the US. How can we expect more to become physicians if the promise of money is not there? Even as empathetic as physicians are, they aren’t going to work for free and certainly won’t work for under $60,000 a year. I don’t blame them! They have gone to school and spend (on average) over $150,000 for their schooling. They have earned their keep and it is certainly something I am happy to pay for. I expect a comfortable salary from teaching, and teachers are in school half the time physicians are with much less pressure from the government, insurance companies, and legal matters. Second, I’m afraid that medical research will suffer due to the fact that the most amount of money will be pumped into seeing patients and taking care of medical needs in hospitals, which will result in under funding for medical research projects. The hope I have there, though, is that that much of the medical research is done in universities, funded only in part by government grants. Hopefully private donors, like Seth and me, will be committed to gifting research universities for medical research projects that will benefit many people.

However, the benefit outweighs the cost, in my opinion.

One of my main concerns in any state or government reform is the benefit to the people. Our current health care system does not benefit the people as it should, especially the hardworking Americans who are out of a job due to the current economic situation. People like my father and my sister. He has done nothing but work hard to provide for his family, so why should he have to suffer the consequences of no health insurance? His years of service to the states of New Jersey and North Carolina have provided little retirement, unemployment, measly social security benefits he’ll get in a few years, and zero health care insurance coverage. So why are people arguing FOR our current health system? It’s a joke. People like my family don’t qualify for Medicare (for Kelly) because my mom makes way too much money for a family of 4 at under $30,000 a year.

Currently, I am covered under the Tricare. It is a military only insurance provider that covers everything. Here’s how it works. There are two main types of Tricare insurance, Standard and Prime. Depending on what you as the client want from your health care coverage, you will choose one or the other. Under Tricare Prime you pay nothing for your healthcare because the medical provider is any physician, RN, or PA that works for the military hospitals on base. People say you can’t see the same physician because it is too busy, but that’s just not true. I saw my physician three times while we were stationed at Camp Pendleton. The only problem is that I had to wait for a month to be able to see the same one. If I didn’t want to wait that long, I could have seen another (which I did at times). The main complaints against Tricare Prime is that the physician does not know you personally or your medical history; sometimes you’re seen by a PA or RN; because of the inconsistency, people believe you aren’t provided for quite as well as a physician out in town; and there are some bad stories people like to share about how inadequate the hospital was in crisis. It’s true. Military hosipitals have a bad reputation in general. However, if you are a healthy person who only needs a few basic checkups a year, I see no problem with it. I was quite satisfied with my experience at the naval hospital and expect to use it again when we are near one.

Tricare Standard is the Cadillac edition of military health insurance. With this option, you choose to pay up to 20% of the cost of your bills along with a copay each time you visit your physician out in town. It costs more for you out of pocket, but if you have the money and are not willing to compromise on your health care provider, this option is for you. You can choose any physician in town you want to see (who accepts Tricare Standard—they almost all do now), set up your own appointments and pay your portion of the bill when done. People prefer this because you can choose the best hospitals, the physicians that are known professionals around town, and the overall experience is just more comfortable.

Now, for those that still want Tricare Prime but don’t live near a military hospital (like me), we get something called Tricare Prime Remote. Any approved physician in town is one I can go see without the copay or the 20% bill. It’s a sweet deal, because I now get to choose my physician in Billings and reap the benefits of a more “quality” healthcare system.

I believe the military health insurance model is ideal. Yes, when applied to 300 million people, there will be many kinks to work out, but what health care plan doesn’t have kinks? For those who make enough money to pay for the 20% portion of the bill will be able to keep their personal physician and choose the healthcare provider they want if they need a surgery or some other medical procedure. For those who are unemployed or do not make enough money to pay the 20%, the naval hospital model will be available for them without having to pay for it out of pocket. The quality of the care may not be stellar, but if they are not paying for it and STILL being provided healthcare, they should not complain. What if we could make it so that the physicians are still paid well from their personal practice, but serve 4 days a month at the clinic for those who aren’t paying for better medical care? Do you think the physicians would be willing to compromise in that area? They would be paid that 20% directly for each patient, but figuring out overhead, pensions, and their salaries is going to take some doing. I don’t know what to suggest in that area. Do you?

No health care reform is perfect. Nothing comes without major costs and big questions to answer. But this is my position on the case: the benefit will outweigh the cost. For Americans who want to work for their money and get quality medical benefits because of that hard work, they can see their personal physician still. For the Americans who are out of luck in finding employment during this economic crisis, the Tricare Prime model would suffice. And for those who don’t want to work and just leech the system…well, we’re always going to have those. At least they can’t waste quality physicians time in the physicians private practice. They would have to go to the clinic. Health care reform is a dirty little phrase, but we’ve got to get down and dirty with hard facts and strong solutions to fix health care in this country.

10 pounds, every other year

2009-12-30T07:58:00.002-07:00

Yep. I'm forcing myself to blog, just to get back into the habit. I end up writing so much throughout the year in graduate school that I love time off from the habit. But that's no excuse, so here's to many posts to come in 2010.

The dreaded 10 pounds are back. I officially weigh over 140 and for me, that's not a place I like to be. My ideal weight is 130 on the dot. Any lower and I look emaciated. The personal goals I have for my body include:

fitting into size 6 jeans--without unbuttoning the button when sitting in class, which has been happening lately).
Having a little less cottage cheese on the thighs. Damn you, Campbell thighs!
To not eat out unless it's with friends. (This is my new year's res.)
To be able to do a 50 mile backpacking trip with Seth this summer through Glacier Nat'l Park. By "do" I mean keep up with Seth and not complain due to my out of shape body.
In reference to the above goal, get in shape for the trip by training at Phipps Park once a week with a pack on. That hill is killer.
Mariana wants me to run a half marathon with her this summer, so I guess that's a goal to meet once again.
Lose those pesky 10 pounds by May.
This one is the hardest: Be able to work out with Seth by May. If any of you have ever had Seth lead a workout, you understand what this means. My husband is in incredible shape. Yum. ;) BUT, when I work out with him, it's not fun, because I can't keep up. So this goal means I need to be able to do at LEAST: 100 lunges in one workout; 3 reps of 10 pullups (I can't do those yet...not even one); around 40 pushups; 5 minute planks; straight up boot camp plyometrics (sp?) and stuff. I don't like working out with Seth now because he pushes my body too hard and I hurt for days afterward. But on my own, I'll train up to it.
Work out at least 5 times a week. Spin class, Zumba, eliptical, running, and swimming. I've got a locker at the Y for a REASON!

I'm down two pounds, but I don't like to go by poundage really. I'll be successful when I fit back into my skinny jeans. BOOYA.

I promise

2009-12-10T15:21:00.001-07:00

I am working on at least 5 blogs right now and have ideas for 3 more. Please bear with me. It's been a crazy, hectic semester. I'm planning on writing A LOT over the xmas holiday, so stay tuned...

Be Careful

2009-10-28T17:54:00.002-06:00

A cacophony of voices she's heard over the years
The sound advice from prose she's read
A guilty twinge inside her mind
Or is it her heart?

Her heart beats furiously at the sight
STOP!

no.

Well, if it's just for a minute...

Minutes turn into hours.
Hours turn into more.
Meetings become frequent--
She states "I am not a whore."

Oh, but the mind wanders to the places
it knows it should not go.

Guard your heart above all else.

The Crunch

2009-09-13T07:13:00.004-06:00

I have recently acquired several new words as part of my vocabulary that seemed irrelevant and distant from life as I knew it before Montana. I used to throw the words around like I knew what I was talking about, but in all reality, they didn't affect me, so I didn't make them part of my lexicon and/or thought processes. Here are a few of those words, for your enjoyment:

disposable income
budget
Roth IRA
stocks/bonds
mortgage
life insurance
utilities
cash
crunching the numbers
payday
uh-ohhhhh...

For three years, Seth and I managed our money well, but had a lot of legroom, aka disposable income. Why? 2 full-salaried incomes. I am ashamed to say that the above words were just words to me, and not a part of my life. Yes, we did an excellent job saving, investing, etc., but none of those words MEANT anything to me.

I'm being vulnerable with you here, because it's important to process through things with people. Of the ones I know read this blog, you are mostly my friends I trust implicitly. This month I screwed up and bought a few things I shouldn't have at the first of the month. It was one of those scenarios I think most couples go through: You've been waiting for payday, it came, and you (both) spent too much because of the liberating freedom of knowing there was money you could finally spend!

(That's where uh-ohhhh.... comes in.)

It is amazing how much you can spend without adhering to a strict budget. My screw-ups included:

Halloween costumes at Goodwill
Marine Corps Ball dress
A table from Goodwill
Cookbook and floor mat from Costco
$40 worth of printed pics from Costco
Scrapbook supplies from Walmart

Doesn't seem like much, huh? I totally justified each purchase to myself. I'll go in order, for clarity's sake:

"But Laura, $20 on costumes is such a good deal. And one day, your daughters can play dress up in them!" I am not pregnant, do not plan on becoming pregnant in the next 3-5 years, and COME ON LAURA, that's not an excuse to buy.
"It's only $12. Sure it's a little short, but I can wear kitten heels with it. If I don't buy this dress NOW, it will definitely be gone when I come back." To be honest, I don't feel bad about that purchase.
The table was $10, no scratches, good condition, with a lamp. No regret, because we have a separate furniture fund.
"I have been waiting for BOTH of these items for so long. I've wanted Fix-It and Forget-It since we got married. It's only $10. And that floor mat will be so much more comfortable. It might even make it enjoyable to do dishes. Plus I've seen it for 5 months now at Costco, and nothing is ever here that long. I NEED to buy it this month or it will be gone." Damn Costco and its consumer spending tricks.
"It would be so nice to have some of these pics printed. Hmmm, while I'm at it, I should go ahead and order pics from the whole year. And make doubles for our friends. They would love that." Yes, I'm a giving person, but seriously, that is what shutterfly is for. I will now be uploading pics to that website and you can print the rest yourselves. :)
I needed to purchase the scrapbook supplies, but NOT because I wanted to. See, Seth has this USMC scrapbook his mom bought him at his commissioning. HE wants me to do the scrapbook for him, so we'll see how that turns out.

Obviously, I wrote this post awhile ago, and things have gotten better. Seth and I had a sitdown at the beginning of September and tallied the numbers. Seth is an amazing guy and has some great ideas, so we are going with his budget now. December just came and went, and we didn't strictly adhere to the budget he set up, but we were conscious of what we were spending and are currently on a spending hiatus due to the fact that we have spent all that we were allotted for spending money this month.

Having a budget is not fun, per say, but the benefits from that budget are exponentially better than spending the money you have in hand. Here are some things I think we have done right, now that I confessed the things I did wrong a few months ago:

We spend every dollar at the beginning of the month as if they are bills. So the money for groceries, retirement, travel fund, etc. are considered bills.
We save basically half of what we earn. Seriously.
We are smart with planning for the future with different savings accounts. Specifically, if you travel as much as we do, it costs a lot of money to get home. For us, it's $1000 every time we go to NC. No joke. Because we don't have that allotted in our monthly budget, we put money away every month specifically for travel. That way when we need to go home or want to go on vaca, it's all there and we aren't in crazy debt.
We cash in on our points earned from the debit card. I bought a 40" HDTV last month that was originally $1300 for $370 cash. First I compared 4 different stores, got quotes from them all, went back to Best Buy, asked them to match the quote I got at Vann's ($820), then gave them $450 worth of gift cards we got from our debit card reward points. Booya! Merry Christmas honey. :) Plus, I had the $370 in our savings account for home purchases (furniture, water heaters, etc). Our old TV just crashed. Well, the picture works fine, but the sound is scratchy and distorted. We love the new TV!

Money is always such a taboo thing to read about, especially if it's a friend around our same age. Why is that so? Why can't we learn from each others' mistakes and say "oh yeah, I've been there Larua!"? Oh America, let's put aside societal taboos and learn a thing or two about money from each other. If you have some amazing tips for me, by all means, let me know. No man is an island right? Let's help each other out then.

Who (or What) are the role models for multicultural students today?

2009-06-27T14:48:00.004-06:00

I am currently writing a research paper for my curriculum theory class titled: Bridging the achievement gap: how multicultural education improves performance in all students. But that's not the point of this blog. In the research I've conducted, multicultural ed is never seen as an integral part of all students' learning; it is an afterthought or a required addendum. Our education system is shockingly geared toward white, middle-class students, modeling our political and economic systems in the country today. I was writing a point in my research paper that multicultural, disadvantaged students can relate more to the parents in "The Family Guy", "The Simpsons", or "Roseanne" (all white-or yellow?) than they can to the parents in classic multicultural shows like "Cosby", "Fresh Prince", or "George Lopez". The latter all have beautiful homes in the suburbs, jobs that are unrealistic for many minorities in the U.S., and happily live together with a few key shows that point out racial issues and real fights. Otherwise, they don't relate to multicultural students even though the main characters are from ethnic backgrounds. The former, however, live the middle to lower class life, deal with real and relevant issues, and multicultural kids can see their situations and apply it to their own lives.
I started doing some research to see if there were any multicultural shows (sitcoms or dramas) that deal with relevant issues for disadvantaged, multicultural students. I searched CBS, NBC, FOX, the CW, and ABC. Nada. Tyler Perry's two sitcoms on TBS are the only multicultural shows I could find that are on today. If you know of any others, please let me know...I'd like to include it in my paper. That being said, if multicultural education in the schools consists of a Kwanzaa celebration and a teacher talking about the Mexican Independence Day on September 16, multicultural and non-mc students are not being taught to appreciate differences there. On to TV. If what kids view on television as normal multicultural values, then no wonder there are higher dropout rates, pregnancies, and lower test scores for them! Their heroes are the sports stars (addicted to steroids, of course), the [old] sitcoms (great father figures there), and let's not forget MTV, BET, and VH1. The lack of multicultural education in this country is directly influencing ethnic students' chances for succeeding in our democracy. I know I just opened up a can of beans, but our multicultural and white students are not being taught the positive values of their heritage, how to be a leader and a role model, what their heritages bring to the table for the U.S.
I hope I have more time to write about this issue later, but I must finish my research paper now.

Thoughts?

For Your Information

2009-06-07T15:27:00.003-06:00

Hopefully none of you get offended by the comments people may make about my blogs. They are mostly tame and tasteful, because only people I know and like a lot post. I don't like restricting who can or can't post and what it is they are going to post. That's what makes the world go round, right? A beautiful mosaic of opinions. So if you disagree with me, or want to share you've had the same experience, by all means, post your comment. I LOVE them! The more I get, the more connected I feel to you who mean so much to me. And I will still love you, even you don't believe in evolution or federally funding education or that yellow only looks good on blondes. :)

Just letting you know.

untitled

2009-05-24T10:28:00.004-06:00

There is a particular spot on the Blue Ridge Parkway where you can see the blue mountains rolling as far as the eye can see. This place of beauty, solitude, and peace is where my husband wants his ashes spread when he goes on. I'm going to spare you the name of the place, because it is sacred to me and my husband, and sometimes secrets are meant to be kept. But the feeling of that place is something I know you can relate with. There is a spot somewhere in your life where the five senses take over your body and your memory is filled with the beauty of that place. I am fortunate enough to be one of those that has several different places that invoke this hymn of praise, but I don't necessarily think that I'm better because of that. Someone that lives and works on the same farm for his whole life holds the smell of freshly cut hay high on their list of beauty. A cake decorator will always feel the fondant in their hands as they create a work of art through their hands and heart. You probably have something special you're thinking about right now that has touched your life in a way I can't ever understand.
This is why there is beauty in misunderstanding. We so often bemoan and condemn people with different opinions of beauty and life that we miss the opportunity to learn something new from them and take a moment to see life through their eyes. I feel convicted (oh the artificial christianese!) of this fallacy. Plain and simple, I feel that I have failed my creator and have instead worshiped a church or a pastor or a "non-denomination" cult following. I have recently been very judgmental of Christians because I feel like "they" always follow whatever the latest cultural Christian fad is. Tom's shoes? I have two pair. The ONE campaign? I slept out in the cardboard box last year. Before you stop reading, please let me explain: the "they" I stated above is ME. I have jumped on that bandwagon and learned the latest chords for the newest Christian artist. I have thought it necessary to spend $50 on a pair of shoes so Tom can send one to Africa (does anyone see the irony in that? I could buy 10 pair for that amount plus shipping). You see friends, I thought beauty was supporting a cause everyone else was supporting. And it is. Sometimes. But what worries me is that I only found myself wanting to do what the church told me to do, to follow the latest ministry, to support the newest missionary in town. I failed to see the beauty of doing those things and just did them out of obligation. Instead of giving money to something because everyone else is, I want to get my hands dirty in the trenches of a cause. I want to feel my senses vibrate from within me with a feeling of purpose, being, sense of worthiness. Do you see the misunderstanding I've had of helping others?
I don't understand most of the world. I have been raised in a specific cultural niche and although I have traveled the world, I still come back to that white, middle-class, Christian niche. I'm over it. I gave a ride to a girl who asked me for one. In the 20 minutes I had in the car with her, she shared how she is a refugee and is living with a family that she feels hates her. Don't know if it's true...but I do know she seemed to be hurting. Her overly zealous smile covered her pain. A man came up to me and Seth when we were downtown heading into a ministry that is part of a church we were attending here. Immediately red flags went up "addict", "scam", "dirty". But Dilbert (don't really think that was his name...but he sure was creative) talked to us for 20 minutes outside that door, telling us about how his arm is hurt and he needs money, etc. etc. I told Dilbert that he could have some of our money if he promised not to use it for drugs or alcohol. Hahaha, he was honest to me, and said "I'm not going to lie to you...I can't promise you that". But who am I to say that he didn't need some food? We invited Dilbert in, but he declined. How could I EVER understand Dilbert, his addiction, and his life on the street? Who am I to assume I know how to comfort a young refugee? I don't know anything about their lives. But I do know about love, and I know about loving the bottom rung of society. Honestly, I'm sick of church and Beth Moore and the "supposed to's" of life. But I don't know if I'll ever be sick of Jesus Christ. He is a rock star who invokes those senses in me that I talked about at the beginning. He represents good in my life and I think I want to live my life modeled only around him. He speaks in unconventional ways; he loves unconventional people; he didn't have to go to church on Sunday (the world was his church); he let prostitutes kneel at his feet and he didn't back away. I want the beautiful places in my life to be centered around the unconventional people, places, and things. I never want to forget the smell of McDonald's when eating with a few homeless dudes (we've got a lot here). I always want to give a smile to those who might not deserve it. I want to get out of my cultured brain and see beyond. That is what is holy to me.

Well, I didn't have cable for...

2009-05-02T18:46:00.002-06:00

Has anyone seen the new show for the oh-so-subtle competition called "Who Lived Without Cable The Longest?"

I sure have. It wasn't on the TV screen, but it surely is plastered all over facebook and the competitive conversations held with dear, dear friends. People gain or lose game points for various amounts of time, types of channels they have, and if they pay for DVR or HBO. Since there is such a monumental debate about this particular subject, I have decided to share a way to make it easier for all of us! I have the secret recipe for game points in "Who Lived Without Cable the Longest"!

Rules: For every category you have experienced in your TV watching years (as an adult-out of the parents' home guys), add or subtract the points given. Tally up your total and check the results!

1. I currently do not own a television. Add 10.
2. I currently own a television, but it's not hooked up. Add 9.
3. I currently own a television and have the new digital converter box set up. I get less than 3 channels. Add 8.
4. I have a TV, but only use it to watch Netflix. 5
5. I subscribe to a mail-order DVD program. Add 4, because it's cool that you get to watch a bunch of weird, indie films.
6. If you have a DVD player subtract 1 point.
7. I tell people I don't watch TV, but I really do every day. Subtract 5.
8. If you have ever said "I have cable, but only because of the History Channel and Discovery Network." OR "Oh, I have it, but I never watch it", subtract 5.
9. IF you have cable, subtract 4.
10. DVR? Subtract the total of what you have currently (ex. You have -6? You've got -12 now).
11. If you have cable for work purposes, stop playing and go watch TV.

Are you ready? Tally them up!

OK, let me shout my game stats to the world: -6 (5,6,8,9)

Scores: If you score 4 or higher, you are cool and have won the right to props. You ARE the dude who is cool enough to live without TV!
If you score between -2 and 3, you are pretty cool and can claim some respect when it comes to your non-TV watching activities. You could probably even get away with one of the quotes in #8.
If you score -2 to -20, you shouldn't ever get in a conversation about how much TV you watch, because you will lose. A lot.

Interpersonal and Social Influence

2009-04-29T15:05:00.004-06:00

There are three things that make you a trustworthy teacher that is able to affect change in our students lives:

1) Expertise. The credibility you have as a professional does not and will never come from a few added initials to the end of your name. There are few professional situations where an educator needs to tout their degrees. On the wall in the office is not one of them; I already know you have the job. In a personal email is another; it just makes you look ridiculous. Expertise is not how much I can talk about my profession. It is that I have the ability to take my student some place he couldn't find on his own.
Here are some positive ways to express your expertise:
-Language of the field/jargon. If someone asked you about disequilibrium, could you tell them how it must occur in order for learning to take place? What about cognitive dissonance? Can you actually explain what a "learning style" is? If not, why are we using the term! (Do some extra research on this point for your own knowledge--it's a complicated subject for me that merits its own blog).
-Knowledge inferred. If a professional is speaking to you about the ineffective nature of a reading program used in your school, can you infer why or why not?
-Dress. Appropriate dress in the classroom tells students and parents you are an authority.
-Things overheard. I like this one a lot. If a colleague overhears you speaking about your personal experience, they won't really listen. If a colleague overhears you speaking about educational research and how you have applied it to your classroom--now that's something to listen to!

2) Social Attractiveness.
-Now is where those little letters at the end of your name come in. If you are coaching a soccer team and never tell them that you were a varsity soccer player at your university, you're not using your power of suggestion: "Oh, then if she did that, I should listen to her".
-How you present yourself. Hopefully, everyone knows how to make a good impression in person. However, everyone is on a social network these days, and it is not just for the friends. If you have an open profile or links to personal pictures, beware. How you present yourself in those pictures is just as important if not more than in person. Don't just think, "Oh, my profile is set to private-no one will see THOSE pictures." Wrong-o. If one person tags your photo, anyone else can view it that is their friend. Six degrees of separation, friends!

3) Trustworthiness.
-That you are competent of your subject.
-That you are able to help someone without causing them harm in the process. Kids have feelings.
-That you will be worthy of your employer's word.

Welcome Home

2009-04-04T15:14:00.004-06:00

There is something most comfortable about having a steaming cup of tea while curled up on a comfortable couch.
There is something holy in the kiss before (or after) the lights go out.
There is something loving in the way pets smile.
There is something beautiful in the clutter on your table.
There is something peaceful about a sleeping house.
There is something joyful in the discovery of that thing you've been missing.
There is some relief when you unpack that last box.
There is something that makes it okay that you painted your walls the wrong color.
There is something neighborly about walking your dog.
There are some things that won't stop annoying you.
There is something stable when you see your house day after day.
There is always something to fix.
There is something significant about a home for a marriage.
There is something in the way your husband smiles after that amazing meal (consequently, thank you God for kitchens, etc.)
There is something perfect about life, even when it's not.

If there is something you would like to share...by all means!

Services Offered

2009-02-17T21:58:00.001-07:00

I am officially offering my services free of charge to all the Christmas card authors in the world today. Things like ( 's ) when there isn't supposed to be one, or ( Mike and I at the fair ) will be obliterated from your yearly newsletter, thus making people like me think you are that much more brilliant, obviously, because of your excellent grammar.

Don't let your card be "that" card. I'm kind of obsessed with grammatical errors, since that's what I do for a living kind of. I catch them all the time, but don't tell people because I don't want to be "that girl" who always points out the accidental apostrophe or the missed comma.

So if you want a meticulous, semi-professional editor, I'm your lady. ;)

Ultimate Apricots

2009-02-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

Lucy and the Dolls

2009-02-09T12:39:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time there was a little girl named lucy who had many, many friends. These friends lived all over the world, but they were very good at talking and being friends from far away. Lucy missed her friends, but life was ok because of cell phone and internet technology. It kept her friends in touch with her!

One day, one of her friends called and said that she was getting a brand new baby doll! Lucy was so happy for her that she jumped up and down with excitement. A new baby doll is what every girl dreams of, right? Well, ALMOST every girl...Lucy didn't like dolls very much, but she liked that her friends loved dolls. It's exciting to get something brand new that you love so very much!

Well, it turns out that ALL of Lucy's friends love dolls (except for about as many as you can count on one hand). Day after day, Lucy kept getting calls or messages that said that each of her friends were getting a brand new baby doll. Lucy was truly happy for each of them. She saw the excitement in their eyes and knew how much each of her friends wanted one. She was a little confused though...why didn't she want a brand new baby doll?

Well, she waited for news of the arrival of the dolls. They would come in all sorts of packages: brown, blue, pink, green, yellow, etc. It kept each of her friends wondering which package they would get.

Then finally, the dolls started arriving. :) They were the most beautiful dolls in the world, and each of them was unique to her friends. She loved seeing the new dolls and even holding them, but still, Lucy didn't want a doll.

Lucy didn't know what would happen with the arrival of all the dolls though. All of the sudden her friends had to take care of the dolls all the time. That was ok, because Lucy knew that it is an important job, being a doll-owner. But she was also very sad. She felt like she lost her friends.

Sometimes Lucy thinks it would be easier to be friends with all her doll-owning friends if she had a doll herself--but she just doesn't like them. Maybe someday Lucy will have a doll...maybe not.

I think the hardest thing for Lucy is the feeling of loneliness that pervades in the new place she's in. Just because you have a doll doesn't mean that you can't call, right?

Useful websites for need-some-work homes

2009-01-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

We are in the process of purchasing our first home and I'm really enjoying all the research affiliated with it. I've found some useful websites and statistics on remodeling/additions, but would love your input on the websites' estimated costs.

1) http://www.bhg.com/
I particularly like their color-a-room and color-a-house links. What is your favorite exterior house color?

2) http://www.oldhouseweb.com/
I like the estimated remodeling and repair costs list they provide. Do you agree with some of their prices? I think if you do it yourself, you can shave a few thousand off the price. Some things aren't meant to be done by me though, ie. installing a fireplace due to the fire code restrictions, etc.

3) www.doityourself.com
I like seeing that people do run into problems doing it themselves. It helps to read how they fixed it and what they should have done first. Also, it's actual people telling me how much certain things cost for them.

The house Seth and I are in the process of purchasing was built in 1948. It was a great price, but more importantly, it had many of the upgrades done to it we would have done ourselves (ie. kitchen, master bedroom, hardwood floors, bathroom, great fence outside). It would have been so difficult to move into a home that didn't have an updated kitchen or wallpaper that screamed 1950, because a) I'm not working to add the money factor into fixing those things, and b) you need time to complete big projects like that, and I just don't have any to help Seth due to all my graduate work!

Fortunately for Seth though, it still needs a few things (in my opinion). :) An exterior paint job, an egress window downstairs, some new wiring, and a nice large deck out back...or a sunroom! But all of these are obviously things that come with money and time and things that don't need to happen immediately.
PS-I'm not getting too excited about it until we close...I've learned my lesson with that one! And it's actually bigger than it looks in this picture. :) I'll write the "I'm so excited I can hardly stand it post" if we get the keys in hand, which looks like it will happen around March 9. That post will give you all the great details and pics.

Hmmm...

2009-01-14T16:08:00.001-07:00

I think I'm too opinionated.

The Differences of Big Sky Country and Surf Central, USA

2009-01-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

MONTANA-Where the sky goes on forever, the people are friendly, and everyone is scared of Obama's possible Second Amendment changes...

Things I noticed about Montana that I haven't experienced elsewhere...

People drive slower
Nobody dresses up to go to WalMart (You know what I mean-matching workout clothes, friends!)
Not every person I know that is my age here is pregnant
Not every person wants to be. That may change as I meet people though. It may have something to do with grad school...
It snows once a week
People talk to you in a workout class. In CA, only the regulars talked to each other. The regulars here talked to me as soon as I walked in!
I receive so many smiles here! The first week we were there, we ate at a sandwich shop called The Pickle Barrel (yes, it had one full of them), and 6- SIX- people smiled at me. They were not all guys. ;)
Down is necessary
It has been gray every day so far--AWESOME!
The sunrises over the mountains give the sunsets over the ocean a run for their money
It's hard to find a house to buy. Wait, that's really hard in CA.
You have to drive in snow and ice every day
The road systems are amazing-you go South, you get where you want to. Perfect squares! None of this random CA slap it down roads...
Heat is necessary, not a commodity
Everyone has a gun and a dog
Beer is $3.50. You read this right.
Food is much cheaper to buy in restaurants, more expensive in groceries (OH, commissary, how I miss you)
There is only one Starbucks in the whole city. It's kinda like Wilmington's Port City Java. Billings has City Brew Coffee with many buildings, but tons of little parking lot kiosks to purchase coffee. Hassle of going in to Starb's-gone!
Teachers get paid peanuts. I would start out as a first year teacher at $28K
I like how Seth put this concerning stoplights: Green means go, Yellow means hurry up, and Red means there's just a little bit longer...(every single time we're at a light, we see 1 to 3 cars run the red light!).
The other day the lady at the real estate office said "Would you two like a pop?"
There are no Chic Fil A's!!!

Similarities:

Confusing, at first
Both places have people we know from BOONE! Our waitress at a random asian place moved to Boone and lived there for 7 years. What?! (Alinna, that was a shout out to you and DannyBoy)
Had breakdowns within the first month of living in both places. Habit, anyone?
The weather is beautiful
The scenery is gorgeous
It will be an amazing places for YOU to come and visit! Even if we don't find a house-come!
Far from our family :/
Expensive to get there

Confessions of a girl alone

2009-01-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

Face it-
When a person is alone, they do things they normally would forego, hide, keep away, what have you. I am one of those people and since I have been sitting on a borrowed couch in a 100 year old building similar to The Shining, I have been doing many of my quirky, I'm all alone things.

CONFESSIONS

I haven't slept a single night in this place without the light on
I didn't take a shower until today because I was scared of being stabbed to death. Same bathroom friends.
I have spent WAY, WAY too much time on facebook, obviously pretending I am with people, when in actuality, I'm with a computer.
I eat bad food when Seth is gone. For example, today's diet consisted of: 2 cherry coke zeroes; 4 bowls of cereal; 1 donut (but from two different donuts, so I still have the other halves to eat in the morning; a small fry from McDonalds (don't tell Seth or my Nana-they hate that place); leftovers I think were still ok; cheese. VICTORY: I didn't have a third coke.
I talk to Pico like he understands my verbal language.
I watch wayyyy too many webisodes of the Office.
I also watched several episodes of the following shoes: 90210, the office, 30 rock
Each night, I lock all three locks, prop a chair under the knob, prop a chair in front of the propped chair, and than place a suitcase in front of that. Don't hate! This place is the white ghetto of Montana! There are creepy people in this building for sure...
I go watch movies alone. This weekend's pick: Bride Wars. Cute, but the same as the previews, not much different.
I go to church alone, but don't sometimes and feel guilty when I skipped.

It's because I'm young...

2008-12-31T07:03:00.001-07:00

Can I take a few moments to share with you the past month of my life? I need therapy, counseling, what have you, and since I am currently homeless and don't know where to find that, I thought verbal vomit would suffice.

Here is an excerpt of an email I wrote to my bestie, Kelsey, last week:
- arrived in Billings on Friday, nice cold day (28), but able to go out and about and see the town for a bit that night. It seems a lot like Wilmington, NC, minus the beach and the weather.
-Saturday a storm rolled in and 4 inches of snow fell. It's dry snow, so it is still on the ground. Seth almost wrecked the car (never turn a corner fast in the snow!), but didn't and saved our marriage because of it. ;) Joined costco, picked up things at Walmart for Pico de Gato and stayed inside. We also talked over the pros and cons of purchasing and renting-A LOT.
-Sunday- Tried out a new church. Ugh. Stayed inside the whole day because it was cold (-15)!
-Monday- Met with realtor and loved her. She's so great, a Christian, and isn't forcing us to buy a home. We are very grateful for her. Seth went in to work that day and I researched purchasing a home for hours.
-Tuesday- Met with the bank about loans. Kudos to us for awesome credit scores and no debt. Then we toured houses-ugh. Not a good first day. All the houses were old and had to have a LOT of work done to them...more than we can afford. But it helped us narrow down what we need to do and what types of houses to look at.
- Wednesday- Bank approval and the rates are amazing- 4.25% intrest. WOW! Hopefully they are still the same when we actually find a place. Then we hit the jackpot with houses-we found 3 that we are very interested in. I wish you could come look at them with us! I will have to email you pictures and talk with you about where to put things when it gets there.
-Thursday-Revisted 3 houses, videotaped them to show parents, got in the car at 4pm and drove freakin 10 HOURS to the Denver Colorado airport to fly home. Arrived in Denver 2am-ish, got into the airport at 3am ish, slept on the ground for 30 minutes since I couldn't get comfy, got checked in around 5am and then headed to NC with no problems. I think God got our back for that one, because if it had been delayed or anything, I might have gone CRAZY from lack of sleep. (Sidebar-Pico did great and only threw up on the first flight. That cat is amazing! Oh yeah, he flew home with us because I couldn't bear to put him in the kennel. I don't care, I felt horrible for making him move all over the place and he's doing just great.) :)
-Friday- arrived in Charlotte at 3:30 with no probs and was in bed by 8pm. :) Sigh, sweet sleep!
-Saturday- slept late and celebrated Dad in law's bday with a trip to uptown Charlotte. My sister came in town to see me with the rest of my fam.
-Sunday-Church, lunch with grandparents, cocktail hour with Seth's siblings. I really love my sibs in laws! :) It's rare to find people you can sit and talk with for hours on end. I'm glad you and Charlie are some of the few we can do that with.
-Monday-Tuesday-We visited with friends and got to see all of these brand new babies everyone has. It introduced a whole new dynamic to the "hang-out" scene and really has changed the way of the future for our friendships. I don't mean that negatively at all, I just mean that our lives are growing and that have grown to fit children now. :)
-Wednesday- Christmas Eve. We spent the day with Seth's family, went on the traditional bus ride to see the lights at McAdenville in NC, rode to some living Nativity, and finished up at the nursing home.
-Thursday-Christmas Day we woke up at my house in Burlington, NC. Opened some gifts, went to see Marley and Me (I am still hydrating due to the tears that fell during that movie), and hung out with my high school friends that night. I miss them!!!
-Friday-This is a funny one. Seth has recently decided that-GET THIS-his pants are TOO SHORT! Heavens to Betsy, you just now noticed?!? I never said anything because I thought it was kind of cute how he like short pants. It was just Seth, you know? ;) Well, we went to Belk and BOY do they have some deals. I think we redid his wardrobe for $150. Seriously, 4 pants, a belt, 7 shirts friends. I am now a department store convert! !!
-Saturday- went to eat with some dear friends, Nate and Susannah. Man, I miss them in our lives. Someday I hope the Marine Corps brings us near the same station. We had great conversation ANd got to sit next to the DUKE BASKETBALL TEAM!
-Sunday-Church and then Dad took us all out to eat at Red Lobster because he just paid off his mortgage. WOW!!! 15 year fixed rate. A-mazing dad.
-Monday-Tuesday- Hung out with the fam, walked the dog, relaxed.
-Wedesday- Woke up in Charlotte and am typing you now. I wish I were flying to Billings, but hey, whatever.

I look back over the past three weeks and can't believe I am homeless, in NC, with my poor little cat, and about to start grad school. Oh yeah, I got in! :)

So could I ask for some prayer?

That we find a house and make an offer by Thursday. Friends we have been praying and seeking wisdom from people and know this is the best option for us. Renting is out of the question because of Pico (hardly any place allows cats), AND it is more expensive than a mortgage.
That I will know what I am doing registering for classes and getting stuff together for the beginning of the semester.
That subbing will work out as an extra job for now.
That I will be able to work out a schedule for studying and working quickly.
That I will be able to meet a few goals: Bring in $1000 a month for us at home; earn a 4.0 GPA; that I will be happy with what we have in our home and not need any more.

Thanks for your prayers friends! We love you and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Goodbye to the Beginning

2008-12-14T08:40:00.001-07:00

I want to reflect on all the things I appreciate about California, which may mean less pictures and more words for this blog. Please forgive my mind--it runs away as I try to catch up!

California is where I learned how to be a wife (even while my husband wasn't around). I realized that our relationship was still our relationhsip even though Seth would be gone for months at a time and I had to create a life without him. I loved learning Seth and all his little quirks I never knew about and beginning our legacy as couple.
California is where I learned how to be hospitable. I have always been the girl that will look for the "new guy" in the room and make them feel welcome, but since that didn't ever happen f0r me in California, I learned it had to be ME who created hospitality. So even though I have mediocre cooking skills, I would have people over for dinner, game night, DSDC, what have you. This lesson is something I will take with me everywhere, since I move so much. :) Hopefully, Montanians are much more hospitable than my previous residence.
California is where I was challenged physically. It provided so many opportunities for physical activitiy that I couldn't dream of staying inside. Actually, I did stay inside after Seth's first deployment (horrors), gained 13 pounds when he got back, weighed in at a whopping (for me friends) 144 pounds and decided that was it! Since California has amazing weather ALWAYS, I joined a running club and ran my farthest mileage ever, which I thought was 16 miles, but my girlfriend who ran that same route told me it was actually 19. Wow. I never thought I would be able to run more than 7! I also became involved in lifting weights due to my consternation with my not so toned arms. ;) But above all of that, my greatest physical accomplishment was hiking 30 miles of the John Muir Trail in Yosemite. I have no excuses here in Montana, huh?
This may seem unrelated to many of you, but California is where I learned that sometimes, I need to keep my mouth shut. I used to proclaim all of my ideals and beliefs to the world about anything; seriously, how can I tell people I want to have a natural childbirth if a) I don't know you, b) no one should ever say that, and c) I've never been pregnant??!?!?!!? I learned that sometimes, your personal beliefs should be kept to yourself. More than once, I've been offended by the personal questions people ask, and you may disagree with me, and that's ok. Just know that's how I feel and no, I don't want to talk to you about baby food or how to birth a child or what the best stroller is...unless I know you and actually want to (Kels, I do want to talk about it with you)!
California is where I became a professional in my profession. I began teaching the sixth grade with apprehension, not knowing what in the WORLD I was doing. I came out of my third year knowing how to teach reading, what works best for teaching grammar, how to organize my classroom and lesson plans efficiently, and how to truly challenge my students. My students last year boosted their SAT10 scores across the board by 10 points. Some of them jumped up by 30! Thank you Lord for the opportunity you gave me.
California offered some amazing times for my friends and me. I got to hang out on the beach almost 365 days a year (if I wanted to, which I usually didn't-I'm not pessimisstic, I just don't like the beach very much); Seth and I rode our bikes along the PCH and through Camp Pendleton; We made some of our best friends and traveled with them to Vegas, Lake Arrowhead, Lake Tahoe, Big Bear, and LA; We camped in 100 degree and sub freezing weather; We learned about love and friendship and community.

I love California for what it gave us and what it taught us. It will always stay in my heart as the beginning of my marriage, the beginning of incredible friendships, and the real beginning of my life as a woman.

For Posterity's Sake

2008-11-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

This will surely never happen again, so I had to record it for the world to know!!!

Laura

Saludos Galacticos Space Ranger,

Has recibido una transmision intergalactica de un amigo que acaba de unirse a los rangos de los Guardianes Espaciales al completar una mision en la nueva experiencia interactiva, Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster, en el parque Disneyland® de California.

Al Infinito y Mas Alla!

http://www.disneyland.com/Buzz

Home

2008-11-15T09:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a normalish day. I went to school, had an amazing Bible class with my 6th and 7th graders, and finished out the day with cross-country practice. Nothing too special about the day, except for the fact that I was itching to get home. Almost every 10 minutes I thought about my comfortable orange couch, or my mac just waiting to be touched, or my cat meowing at me with excpectations of petting or food.

I wanted to be home.

I went to go get gas (or something of that nature) while the light was fading into deep, dark dusk. I love this time of day, because I'm usually driving down Hwy 78, to the 5, and back to Camp Pendleton where we make our home. This time in the car makes me reflect on what had happened during the day, greets me with tidings from my NPR news friends, and helps me think for a minute.

How often do you just think for a minute?

The 15 minutes I have to drive home are hard for me though. I sit there and think about all the people I could call and catch up with when a small voice says "Me." I ignore it, and continue to scroll through my list of names, which makes me feel oh-so-very important because I could call all these people right now! And God still sits in the seat beside me, waiting.

I became proactive about the silence I knew I was yearning yesterday and the person who yearned for me. I threw my cell AND my bluetooth in the back, clicked off the radio, and just...drove. Then I saw why God wanted my attention. He wanted me to sit for a spell and look at the representation of the majesty of who he is--the beautiful California sunset. I must admit, when I moved to CA, I was disappointed in the caliber of the sunsets. Summertime sunsets in California are (to put it lightly) lame. No cumulous clouds, the sun is small, it's usually dimmed by the cloud cover, etc. But if you can wait to make your visit in October or November, that's when you'll see the true beauty of this magnificent state. What I saw the day I turned off all the apparatuses was awesome, in the literal sense of the word. The sun had an oblong shape due to the clouds covering the top and the bottom of it. It's rays produced vivid colors in honor of the California citrus fruits, I'm sure. Bright red bled out from the shock of pink hovering around the sun like a million fairies. The orange clouds looked like they could have been on fire, less the pink and red swirls travelling through them like ribbons. But the most beautiful thing was the size of the sun. God said to me "I am this big, this beautiful, this awesome--just wanted to remind you."

I tried to focus on driving while craning my neck for a better view, but eventually, obstructions blocked it from my view. I couldn't stop because I was on the highway, so I decided to catch the end of the show at home at our beach. As I drove down the 5, I felt a yearning to be at my home though, this gravitational pull to be h-o-m-e. To sit on my back porch and watch the sunset over the ocean there. To feel the comfort of the four walls and what they've held inside them. I know it's silly to ponder, but at times I think our homes become as much a part of our family as our pets do. We fret over their well being, we clean them and make the beautiful for guests. I talk to mine. :)

So I drove home instead of the beach. I drove onto base and couldn't get there fast enough. I was itching to be out of the car and in my home. As I turned onto my street, I slowed. I let it sink in. I let that big sigh happen, the huge relief after a storm, the immense pressure lifted from a weighing day, and I pulled up to my house. I sat in the car and looked at the structure for a minute. It represents so much to me and my role as a new everything for the past three years. It holds memories of anxious greetings when I heard the bell ring while Seth was on delployment. It is the keeper of so many different people's laughter that I don't know really where it stores them all. I swear it talks to me. It whispers that we are a family, whereas the first year we lived there, Seth and I were separate entities due to deployment and the lack of togetherness we had. It was, in some of my dear friends' words, a place of rest, warmth, and comfort.

In two short weeks I'll this beloved home of mine. But the memories won't leave. They are imprinted in the walls, in my mind, and in the lives of those who came and enjoyed the comfort of it, not to mention on the hard drive of my mac. ;)

Taxes and Coke (Stolen from Amy's blog-thanks girl)

2008-11-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

Taxes explained with Coke

(modified from original beer version just because).

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for Coke and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The 1st four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The 5th would pay $1.
The 6th would pay $3.
The 7th would pay $7.
The 8th would pay $12.
The 9th would pay $18.
The 10th man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do... The ten men drank everyday and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

'Since you are all such good customers,' he said,

'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily Coke by $20. 'Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers?

How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his Coke. So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same percentage, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so the 5th man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The 6th now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The 7th now paid $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The 8th now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The 9th now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The 10th now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free.

But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got one dollar out of the $20,' declared the 6th man.

He pointed to the 10th man,' but he got $10! ''Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the 5th man.

'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair he got ten times more than I!

'That's true!!' shouted the 7th man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two?
The wealthy get all the breaks!

'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all.

The system exploits the poor!

'The 9 men surrounded the 10th and beat him up. The next night the 10th man (the richest) didn't show up for drinks, so the 9 sat down and had drinks without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill! The richest man had been paying for more than all the rest combined.

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, liberals and socialists everywhere, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

(Based on an article by D. R. Kamerschen, Ph.D., Professor of Economics University of Georgia)

Big Sky Country

2008-11-01T14:43:00.000-06:00

Billings, Montana

Here it is on the map:

Seth found out last Monday that he received the coveted I&I billet in Billings, Montana. This means he'll be the officer in charge of a reserve unit for the USMC. I am so proud of him for being the person selected for this amazing job.

I am so excited to move back to seasons, snow, cold, small town atmosphere, no traffic, morals, and the slower life. It's also exciting to think that I'll be able to start graduate school at Montana State University. They have an educational technology degree program that sounds very intriguing. We'll see how that turns out though.

Billings is about 3 hours away from Yellowstone National Park, 2 hours from Bozeman, MT, 8 hours to Glacier National Park, and a plane ride back to CA or NC. :)

We're slated to move December 8, 2008. Pray we can find a home to purchase, for my gradutate school admissions process, and a smooth move and transition for us and for my students. More information to come!

Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Monthly Normal and Record High and Low Temperatures
Rec High °F \| Rec High °C	68 \| 20	72 \| 22	80 \| 27	92 \| 33	96 \| 35.5	105 \| 40.5	108 \| 42	105 \| 40.5	103 \| 39.5	90 \| 32	77 \| 25	69 \| 20.5
Norm High °F \| Norm High °C	32.8 \| 0.4	39.5 \| 4.2	47.6 \| 8.7	57.5 \| 14.2	67.4 \| 19.7	78 \| 25.6	85.8 \| 29.9	84.5 \| 29.2	71.8 \| 22.1	58.9 \| 14.9	42.7 \| 5.9	34.5 \| 1.4
Norm Low °F \| Norm Low °C	15.1 \| -9.4	20.1 \| -6.6	26.4 \| -3.1	34.7 \| 1.5	44 \| 6.7	52.5 \| 11.4	58.3 \| 14.6	57.3 \| 14.1	47.1 \| 8.4	37.2 \| 2.9	25.6 \| -3.6	17.7 \| -7.9
Rec Low °F \| Rec Low °C	-30 \| -34.5	-38 \| -39	-19 \| -28	-5 \| -21	14 \| -10	32 \| 0	41 \| 5	35 \| 2	22 \| -6	-7 \| -22	-22 \| -30	-32 \| -36
Precip (in) \| Precip (mm)	0.81 \| 20.6	0.58 \| 14.7	1.12 \| 28.4	1.74 \| 44.2	2.48 \| 63.0	1.89 \| 48.0	1.28 \| 32.5	0.85 \| 21.6	1.34 \| 34.0	1.26 \| 32.0	0.75 \| 19.1	0.67 \| 17.0
Source: USTravelWeather.com [1]

It's gonna be cold, but the summers will be that much more beautiful. I told Seth (when he was thinking of moving to Anchorage) that I am so good with anywhere cold, as long as I have one thing: a treadmill! I am going to miss the beautiful workout weather so much, but don't want to fall in a rut due to the cold. So we bought one, and I promise I'll use it.

There are about 90,000 people in Billings, which is 45,000 more than my hometown in North Carolina, and about 100,000 less than the population of Oceanside where we live now.

Apparently Interstate 90, which runs straight through Billings, doesn't have a speed limit. We'll tell you the truth when we get there.

It's got several theaters and an art museum. I have a feeling it will be a slow pace of life...and I so look forward to it. :)

The Fence-Rider's Manifesto (of sorts)

2008-10-13T15:58:00.000-06:00

I don't feel well today, so I don't have a witty introduction to the forthcoming essay, however you can tell from the title that it's about the middle ground.

So I started to think about the middle ground and what that means in my life. I've included some quotes I've heard that refer to the topic, so please feel free to comment or add!

Independent Voter- "I'm fiscally conservative, but socially liberal"
Christians ages 12-32 ish- "Jesus lives in the grey" or "Tolerance for all [no matter what the Bible actually has to say about it]!"
Coffee vs. Tea- "It depends on my mood. Or the time of day."
Cable TV- I'm in the middle with basic cable that we've had for a year this month.
My job- "I would rather work elsewhere (anywhere), but can't leave my students."
Projects at home- I'm the queen of starting and not finishing. The handles on my upstairs furniture have yet to be installed and I still haven't painted the final piece black. Um....
McCain vs. Obama- 3 weeks to go and I'm stuck in the middle. Should I put quotes around that one? Seems I see that on facebook all the time...
Style- I love looking cute, but won't put the time into my hair, so I half-ass it and it looks decently in the middle.
Prop 8 in CA- Do I really feel that government should control who can or cannot marry? Do I really think it's beneficial, knowing that common law marriages are not working in Canada?Do I trust Americans to be truthful in their relationships and not have my tax money paying for their lies?

I'm not finished, I just have to go to dinner with Susannah.

If you don't believe in media biase...

2008-10-07T20:49:00.000-06:00

You are wrong.

As much as I don't agree with much of what President George W. Bush, I do not believe that the media (Emperor Motion Pictures in this case) should be allowed to sway Americans' opinions through this:

Already, I can tell that this movie sways so left it doesn't even use its right leg at all. I am not a republican. I am not a democrat. I am an independent that is shouting as loud as I know how that I do not support this movie, this release date, and the opinions it will sway and/or change.

So join me friends. Do not see this movie until after the Presidential elections in November (if you feel you just have to see it).

Thanks! Laura

PS- This is a shout out to McCain and Obama--great job tonight in your debate! Thanks for giving me a reason to talk to the TV. ;)

Sable

2008-10-04T07:59:00.000-06:00

Some of you may know that Julius recorded Seth's homecoming from Iraq last year (the first deployment). Recently, the band Sable wrote a song called "When he comes home". For their music video, they've recorded many different YouTube videos into a compilation for their song. You should definitely check it out...especially since they just asked J's permission to put the video on TV.

Here is the link--enjoy!

Questions asked by my 6th/7th Grade Bible Class

2008-09-24T15:45:00.001-06:00

1) Why did God create hell?
2) Why does God let people go to hell?
3) What happens to Christians when Jesus returns?
4) Can people become Christians after all the rest of the Christians go to heaven? Who would be there to lead them?
5) Does the tribulation exist? How long?
6) Why is my mom sick with cancer?

Carla Dean

2008-09-20T10:46:00.001-06:00

I have many dear friends at my school, and they are one of the top three reasons I stayed teaching there this year (along with God's will and my wonderful students).

Among them are beautiful Lori who is most quoted in my life lessons journal; Ebony (who is no longer there) but taught me to feel God with my soul instead of thinking about him in my head; Eliza, who is no longer there but should be because she brought relationship to the middle school department-she took time out of her lesson plans to get to know the kids; Charla (who deserves a whole other blog entry) and how at 4? inspires me to no end in my athletic ability, all the while drinking REGULAR coca cola; Linda, who taught me how to teach middle schoolers and is my compadre upstairs in our MS department; and finally Carla Dean, one of my new favorite friends.

I'm not sure how old Carla Dean is exactly-possibly 50? She came to our school 2 years ago and it took me awhile to get to know her, since the MS and elementary teams don't spend too much time together. A little background on her: she grew up in 3 different African countries, came back to the states to attend Abilene Bible College and went back to help the people that had become her family. She's never married and has 8 (?) kids that she adopted that live in Kenya still. She went through the traumatic experience of being told to leave her home in Kenya because she was old and alone (aka church ran out of money). Did I mention that she has battled and survived breast cancer within the past 8 years with confidence and assurance that God didn't MAKE her have cancer. I have fallen in love with Carla Dean!

Well, CD recently shared her weight with me and confided that she wanted to lose 50 pounds. She has drastically changed her diet and is eating everything au natural and healthy. She doesn't sneak cokes and french fries like (*ahem) I do. So I asked her if she wanted to walk with me a few times a week. She was torn, I could see, because her energy is NOT like it was before cancer (she now has chronic fatigue), but wanted to make the time. I try not to sound too "preachy", but really health is all about getting out and doing SOMETHING physical each day, so I hinted that it would be the perfect opportunity to get the walk in before she crashed each night. After much convincing, she accepted and we are now walking 2x per week around the perimeter of our school.

God did this for me, not for her.

Carla Dean is one of those people that don't agree with you because you sound like you're right and doesn't keep quiet if what you say is biblically incorrect. I LOVE IT. Friends, it is so, so refreshing and inspiring to hear her talk from her heart as if she believes every drop of word that falls from her mouth. She talks openly about her best friends that were Hindu in Kenya and that she loved them, developed relationsihp with them, became part of their life, but didn't feel ever as if she had to keep quiet about her belief. She refers all her American tourist friends to her Hindu friend's shop there in Kenya and bakes them cookies every Christmas. She shared about her Jewish doctor that she got in a discussion with about his opportunity to become a completed Messianic Jew. Because of her tenacity (not because she was trying to score this), the doctor told her how much he respected her for holding strong beliefs and being knowledgable about them. Then he sent her home with no bill.

I am inspired. I look forward to our walks each week, ready to pose new questions about the Bible to her. As a MS teacher, I get some doozies for questions, and the kids are WANTING to know SOMETHING. They are coming out of the age that when it says "all scripture is God-breathed" that they believe God breathed and it appeared like Aladdin's Genie. I must admit, I have had to do hours of research on some of the questions, because they rocked my own personal theology (Hell? Why does God let people go there?). So Carla Dean and I walk our little mile loop 3-4 times and talk theology basically the whole time. You will be reading much about our conversations here, I suppose.

But this blog was just to introduce her. I'll pose the doozies in later blogs.

Please read this blog.

2008-09-18T21:17:00.001-06:00

I have mentioned Jonalyn Fincher before, but she has just addressed something that has been at war in my mind and my heart for two and a half years now--what to do when babies come.

The response many of my esteemed friends would say is to stay home with your children as they grow in order to provide them a nuturing, stable foundation for life. Yet as the years creep closer to 30 (yes, I have recently begun to think about the number 30), I do not have that innate "womanly" desire to have babies and stay home with them. I must admit that at times, I have felt like less of a woman because I: don't want kids, I love spending time alone with my husband, I appreciate contributing a salary to our income, I feel validated in my profession, I take my birth control almost religiously, I won't get a dog because it's too much committment, and don't want to have to stop working if a baby comes along. Whew.

So is it a desire that my esteemed friends I'll have someday? I believe them because they mean so much to me. I believe that I'll want to create a child with my husband. But I believe fear is what was keeping me from even thinking about it, because I don't want to give up what I have now. So when John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, I couldn't stop smiling all day long. She's a powerhouse, ladies and a mother of 5. She is dealing with all sorts of issues in her family (and I bet she's doing it well) all while running for VP of our COUNTRY! Now here's where Jonalyn comes into the picture:

"I value childhood as a significant time. I value family immensely. I honor and admire women who've chosen to stay home with their children. I'm so grateful for the hours upon hours that my mother gave me during childhood. But there are some problems with the belief that only stay-at-home mothers really care about family values.

Problem #2- it assumes that women are the only capable, proper caretakers, sidelining capable fathers. For instance, no one has asked Obama who will be caring for his children while he runs for office. This double standard is common among conservatives, but it is inconsistent and unhelpful given how many conservatives are also Bible-believing Christians (like myself). Because as we ought to know, in Scripture God himself is clear to point out that parenting is a two-person task, and never commands mothers to stay-at-home as their God-ordained duty. "

PLEASE read the rest of her blog here. You won't be disappointed, and if you are, I welcome your thoughts as I'm sure she does.

1st Annual Clothing Swap

2008-09-18T21:17:00.000-06:00

At the end of the summer, I started doing some reflective thinking concerning my spending habits. I took a good long look at my closet, checked the quicken reports from the last year, and realized that I needed....nothing.

But as many of you teachers know, you get an itch (a hankering if you will), for some new duds at the beginning of a school year. My clothes are perfectly fine and will work well for the next 5-10 years, but...well, you don't need me to explain. I'm a girl and I like to look cute in new things.

So I decided to join forces with some of the wonderfully stylish women I know here and hold a clothing swap. Please, don't let me convince you with my words--check out the proof:

We started with dinner.

...then we headed upstairs to start the shopping! I had set out my clothes in some semblance of order and when each girl showed up, they went upstairs and set their own clothes out on the different piles. It was good this way because no one knew who had brought what, so if you felt uncomfortable with the condition of your clothes, you didn't have to admit they were yours. :) Remember: One woman's goodwill pile is another woman's fall wardrobe!

I cannot recommend your own clothing swap enough. It was a great time to get new people together to share clothes and to share the love. :) PLEASE let me know how yours goes when you do it!

2008-08-19T22:55:00.001-06:00

When Seth and I were visiting my parents in NC, we got to sleep in the guest bed. Well, usually I sleep with my sister when I’m home, but when you get married, you sorta gotta sleep with the hubby. So I got into the semi slanted to the left bed, while Seth (being the larger of the two of us), got on the right side. After shoving and fighting and pulling and kicking and nudging all night Seth finally got the upper hand with one HUGE roll over to my side of the bed. The slanted side. I promptly fell onto my side, hitting my head on the table on the way down. “What the !@#@?!?” I yelled up at Seth. He quickly sat up in bed with a sleep deprived/kinda concerned look on his face and cried out “Oh baby!”, then literally fell back onto his pillow completely asleep. I yelled at him on my way out the door. Something about never sleeping with him again and going to my sister’s room.

He didn't remember a thing in the morning.

The funny thing about all of this is that my mom finally got a new box spring (that’s what cause the problems) when a guest of hers slept in the bed. Of course she didn’t believe me that Seth knocked me out of it. Not her own daughter.

2008-08-19T22:55:00.000-06:00

When Seth and I were visiting my parents in NC, we got to sleep in the guest bed. Well, usually I sleep with my sister when I’m home, but when you get married, you sorta gotta sleep with the hubby. So I got into the semi slanted to the left bed, while Seth (being the larger of the two of us), got on the right side. After shoving and fighting and pulling and kicking and nudging all night Seth finally got the upper hand with one HUGE roll over to my side of the bed. The slanted side. I promptly fell onto my side, hitting my head on the table on the way down. “What the !@#@?!?” I yelled up at Seth. He so graciously sat up in bed and cried out “Oh baby!” while looking at me, then literally fell back onto his pillow completely asleep. I yelled at him on my way out the door. Something about never sleeping with him again and going to my sister’s room. He didn't remember a thing in the morning.

Contentment

2008-07-14T20:23:00.000-06:00

My husband is home. :)

In preparation for Seth's return

2008-07-11T15:40:00.000-06:00

Today I was reading Jonalyn Fincher's edifying blog and came across this particular post: Beth Moore and Eating Out. I hope you take some time to read it and the rest of her probing blogs.

Most of JF's blogs make me think more about my femininity and character as a Christian woman, but this one made me think about just being Seth's wife. It is an honor I am proud to have, however, I need some refining for this homecoming.

When Seth returned from Iraq last deployment, I was bitter. I was selfish, condescending at times, and living for me...not for us, not for God. My thoughts consisted of comparisons: "Since I've been taking out the trash for 9 months, now YOU have to from now on" or " Since I made dinner, YOU must wash the dishes." I was not loving, serving, or even being a good friend much of the time. I loved to complain about how much my sweet husband was working, but failed to remember he was working a) for his country b) for our comfort and c) because he is a man of integrity that completes his job thoroughly. If I had $1 for every time I called him to ask what time he was coming home, I would be able to purchase that mountain bike he wants me to get. Plus the mattress I want to get. PLUS that trip to Europe.

Since I turned 25, it seems like I think about everything I do in an analytical sort of way. I wonder my purpose in friendships, relationships, and mundane activities. My mother in law thinks it's because my frontal lobe closed. I think God's telling me to get over my I-Love-Laura syndrome and start loving-LOVING-people and the mundane activities of life.

Friends, for me it has got to start at home. If I cannot serve my husband in love, then everything is meaningless, it fades with the wind. What I love about Seth-what brings tears to my eyes as I write-is that he loves the broken me who refused to make his side of the bed. He loves the me who nagged him about coming home every night. He loves the me who couldn't/didn't cook every night. He is a wonderful man that makes my heart feel peaceful. I find rest when he's near. I miss him more than I could describe in words. And I get to see him in 48 hours.

I love experiencing deployment. I love the anticipation, the heartfelt conversations, the longing for your loved one. I love making packages, receiving poems and letters, praying for my husband's experience. I love knowing that we can do this. But I also hate it at times. I hate the separation when I know we're supposed to be together. I hate it when I begin to forget about him, or feel too far to connect. I hate feeling distant. However, I feel that my experience with deployments has given me a taste of Heaven. The allegory of the service member's homecoming can be so closely compared to that of Jesus's return. I long for him to be here with me in person; to talk, to touch, to embrace. I hate the separation that was made when man chose knowledge over relationship and I intimately know that relationship is always better than knowledge. Sometimes I get mad at God for taking JC away, for not returning quickly enough for my needs and then I remember it's just like the military: he'll return when his people are ready and I can only anticipate the homecoming. But what a sweet, wonderful, beautiful, emotional day that will be friends! I get to experience a taste of Heaven when my husband returns...and all I can say is that it is an awesome day. (Don't cry too much when you watch this...Jesus is coming home soon!)

So this time, I am going to start the refining process with cooking and reading. I think Jonalyn says it best here:
"I'm an old-fashioned believer in the goodness of the process. That when I take time to cook, the eating is better. That when I take time to be with the Triune God, he will show me something about the passage that will be a long-term satisfaction, lasting me through the weeks. I'm not saying don't listen to Beth Moore anymore than I'm swearing off eating out (though I have in the past and it was a good season). What I am saying is that if we rely on a Bible study to find out about God and never approach him one-on-one, we might miss the quality of Scripture, just like we miss the quality of a home-cooked meal."

Please be my accountability friends! Ask me how my meals are going. Challenge me to cook something new. Push me to read my Bible...the plain old b-i-b-l-e. I'm so looking forward to Seth's return, but more to becoming a wife that follows God's greatest commandment: to love one another as I love little ol' me.

Body Image

2008-07-07T21:45:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I just want to write to get a few thing off my chest and out into cyberspace where few may be reading and relating.

You don't have to give me a penny today...my thoughts are free. Ladies, I am so frustrated with the perspective I have of my body. We have been bombarded with the suggested body prototype since we were 1 foot tall from every angle. I remember being 5 years old and knowing that my mom had a stomach that was bigger than normal and I knew I wasn't supposed to ask her why! I was sitting at the kitchen counter in Swartswood when worked up the nerve to insinuate that she had a bigger stomach than normal. She was very gracious and understanding and went on to tell the 5 year old me she had just had a miscarriage. I remember feeling relieved that I didn't hurt her feelings with my question...but the real question about all of this is where did I LEARN that her stomach was bigger than normal (and not in a pregnant kind of way)? Do you know kids that understand the word fat?

I was never the skinny girl. I was probably 8 When I realized that I was bigger than most other girls my age. I wasn't fat or big or even overweight...I was soft and a bit chubby. I remember a comment made from one of the parents on my softball team "Laura, you look like you've lost some weight." To me. As an 8 year old. That comment solidified my image of myself as a not-so-skinny girl.

I don't think I've ever gotten away from that comment or the stain it put in the recesses of my brain. I could probably look like Paz Vega and still think of things to change or the parts of my body that I hate (eg. my stomach). Now I don't want my readers to think I have any type of disorder, I just have normal girl tendencies to compare my body to others.

Here are few things I do as an adult due to the impressions of my past. Right now, I am typing with a pillow over my stomach. In the past year, I have been consciously deciding to put the pillow down because I really have nothing to worry about. But it's like taking candy from a baby, except the baby audibly cries, while my mind cries at me to "cover up." So that brings me to the next thing I do: the crossed arms. Have any of you ever done the crossed arms across the stomach because you feel 'a little bloated', etc.? There are many variations of it: the hands in prayer, the one arms cross, the turn to the side so my arm is in front. It's ironic, because I do this so people can't see my SKINNY stomach, and instead they are looking at my unmuscular arm!!! Yes I am being raw or candid or whatever you would prefer to call it, but I told you you were getting my thoughts today.

Here is what I don't understand about my body image. I have a husband who thinks I'm super sexy and never fails to tell me. In the past year, I have challenged my body to a myriad of difficult athletic feats, from cycling Camp Pendleton, to starting to swim, to training for a marathon (and getting to 16-18 miles), to lifting weights, to counting calories (yes, this is the most difficult of them all), and I still have body image issues. I fit into my skinny jeans, have visible abs (sometimes), and feel sexy. Ladies, why doesn't it go away?

I have a friend who is amazing. She is beautiful and talented and athletic. She's got a beautiful body, but even better, she's got a beautiful soul. She's infectious; you can't help but love life when you're around her. She's the epitome of content in my eyes. She drinks beer and doesn't feel guilty. She doesn't ever do the cross arms. She wears short skirts that show off her beautiful legs, even though she has told me that's the part of her body she would change. I love her and love being around her, because I never feel envy, I never feel comparison...I only feel friendship and love.

More to come...again. This one will take me awhile to finish. It's for a good reason though...I'm helping people move, working out, then cleaning the boys' barracks for their return.

A celebration of Allison

2008-07-05T16:33:00.000-06:00

This past weekend, the Mod Squad celebrated Allison as she wed Matt Kelly. We all arrived in our beloved Boone last Friday afternoon and started decorated the beautiful cabin her parents graciously rented for us.

This is a bird's eye view, but it was a pretty sweet setup, complete with a great pin the penis on matt game, guess the phallic ink blot image, and a myriad of others. She also practiced walking down the aisle, and opened up tons of sexy lingerie. Hope they're having fun in Alaska!

I had to include the cake!

Allison has two lovely Aunts and they threw her a beautiful bridesmaids luncheon at the Lazy Bear Lodge in Vilas, NC.

The rehearsal dinner was held at the Crestwood Inn and Lodge with this incredible vista in the background. There were many meaningful speeches given, but I don't think any were quite as good as the one below:

Babyland

2008-07-01T06:43:00.000-06:00

Recipe for baby:
1 birth of two individuals
2 lifetimes of happiness
1 fateful day where the 2 individuals realize their attraction
appx. 1-4 years of dating
1 large diamond ring
appx. 1 more year of engagement
1 beautiful wedding night
appx. 3 pregnancy tests from baby "scares"
appx. 2-4 years of marriage
Add "lots of prayer" to taste
appx 1-12 months of trying
25+ phone calls

Voila! A recipe for baby!

Congratulations to all my friends having little ones!

Matt and Melissa Davis- Due December 25

Julius and Carey Milani- Due January 3

Charlie and Kelsey Stocker- Due in April

And congrats to Mark and Sarah Borg, Andrew and Amy Weiler, Neils and Erin Toft, Don and Neena Porter, Rico and Christina Galvez, and to any other couple I may have missed!

1:08:53

2008-06-21T21:16:00.000-06:00

Today Seth ran a triathlon in Okinawa. He was part of the 18-29 age bracket for mountain bikes. He had to borrow a bike from a Corpsman that was too small for him, but we all know he kicks butt on the bike, which he did. Seth was #40 and kicked some booty!

They blew the gun at 8:13:45 and began the 5K. Then they mounted their bikes and took off for the 12 mile bike ride. Finally, they transitioned into the 400 meter swim.

Friends, Seth got 3rd Place!!!

He ran it with 1st Sgt Huckobey, who encouraged Seth's triathlon debut.

How sexy is my husband? ;)

Pet Peeves and Annoying Habits

2008-06-21T18:40:00.000-06:00

Here they are circa June 2008:

Pet Peeves:

When things are spelled incorrectly.
"Can I have?" instead of "May I please....?" (And yes, I do not answer my students unless they say the latter.)
When my cat poops on the floor (this is a literal one folks)
When people are talking to me, I dislike when they A) check out my outfit and/or cleavage while talking B) Talk to me while they look around for someone. Focus, people. C) Talk over me.
People who speak condescendingly. Anyone can answer a simple question without making the asker stupid.
Cell phones in: church, movies, cars while texting
That every time you wash your car in California, it immediately gets dusty when you drive away.
Buying something and having to return it. Or is that just a dislike?
That shoes in size 10 are never cute

Annoying Habits:

Checking every word in my emails before I send them.
Having to search online for the correct spelling of places.
I bite my lip while people talk to me. I know I look weird.
Biting my nails.
Singing (although it's usually unbeknownst to me.)
I say the word "like" too much
I say the phrase "well there you go" way too much
I always look at people's eyebrows first and judge their looks on them!
I tend to form my sentences slowly and

facebook photo envy

2008-06-20T00:51:00.000-06:00

From time to time (err...daily), I check facebook to see any updates on friends' photos that may have occurred. Why?
1) Because I live in California and have no real connection to anyone in NC or the globe outside for North County San Diego.
2) Because it makes me happy to see my friends in action. I love seeing their smiles, their new boyfriends, their homes, their lives. I miss them.
3) (and most importantly) Because if I look at friends' pictures-especially the married ones-I know that I will soon be having that life again.

I absolutely cannot stand the pause Seth and I have to take out of our life for the job he has. I love our life, I love our friends, I love his job, I love the military, I love him, but I just want him here. I do have the homecoming to look forward to, but that in itself is bittersweet. His return is temporary bliss, followed up with the impending dread of his leavetaking yet again. How do I do this?

I look at my friends' pictures. I see pictures of Molly and Alex's new tile floor and smile, knowing that Seth and I will one day have the mundane pictures of tile grouting on our facebook. I look at our surfer friends' status and know that soon Seth will be surfing and I will be sunning, cheering him on at every glance up from the book I'll be engulfed in. I look at my friends' new wedding pictures and reminisce of sweet times together before our wedding day.

Friends, I know without a doubt that Seth and I will have our life together someday. However, now is not that time...and it's ok.

I love you Seth and I miss our life.

Baptized in the backyard

2008-06-13T20:44:00.001-06:00

I have a dear friend that has earned a spot in the column to your right who spent last Friday night with me. It had been a hell of a day, with exams, report cards, stress, grading, renweb, and a killer headache to top it all off. I went to the gym and ran for a whopping two minutes when my brain communicated to my body that the pain wasn't going away by pounding my feet for 30 minutes. Next I tried the elliptical but to no avail.

So I went to Blockbuster and rented Season 3, Disc 1 of Weeds.

My friend Stine decided to come over and make it a lazy Friday with me. We teachers have Friday nights to recover, Saturday nights to forget, and Sunday nights to dread. I couldn't have asked for better company last Friday, even though I was out of commission due to my headache. We were regaling tales of our childhood when the subject of baptism came up. Stine is working for our church now and I suppose we were talking about something baptismal when I thought I heard, "Yeah, I was baptized in the backyard."
"What?" I said as I looked up from my computer incredulously.
"Yeah, I know," she replied.
"No really, what did you say?"
"Well, my Grandma thought I should get baptized, so she pulled me into the backyard and baptized me with the water hose," Stine explained as she continued pasting bible pages onto her current work of art she had brought with her.

I told her the first book she writes needs to at least have a chapter titled "Baptized in the Backyard." That is why I have honored the memory of her future book deal with the title of my blog. Love ya Stine.

www.thedailyplate.com

2008-06-01T09:20:00.000-06:00

From: Military Wives- our husbands' are coming home group

When my husband first deployed, I lost 15 pounds just due to the anxiety felt and the lack of motivation I had for cooking (cereal for dinner anyone?). I guess the positive side of that was that I got to buy a size 6 pair of jeans from AE...they are so sexy. However, when my husband returned, so did my 15 pounds and now I have to squeeze and shift and jump and wiggle my way into those jeans and still have a bit of a muffin top when finished with the whole ordeal. So my goal is to fit in my skinny jeans again but my own way this time. I have lost 10 pounds since he left in January (of course, cereal is one of the culprits again), but have also training for a marathon, am personal training at the gym, have started exercising a minimum of 5 days a week, begun to swim at least 2x a week, and feel great about myself. I've also started calculating calories on this website, which has been amazing and eye opening. According to the fitness manager at the gym, the way I can tone up and get into my skinny jeans is to eat less than 1700 calories a day. That's just eliminating one extra brownie or that third piece of pizza. (Don't worry ladies...nothing could make me give up REGULAR coca cola...I'd go over my calorie goal for them any day!) I feel like I am eating healthier and it has eliminated my addiction to fast food. I have cooked more in the last month than the 14 months my husband has been gone combined! I'd love you to join me in the battle of the skinny jeans and get sexy for our husbands but ultimately for ourselves!

In response to Teacher Appreciation

2008-05-17T18:09:00.000-06:00

I got this email from my dear friend Alyse after she read my post and I absolutely HAD to share this with you.  Please enjoy reading this as much as I did.  :)


Oh Laura that was a WONDERFUL post! At South Graham the administration gave us each a small gift (mostly candies) each day.  On Wed. there was a duty free lunch, not something I have ever had and honestly not something I was looking forward to.  I have kids who require A LOT of help and frankly leaving them with two principals and an ENTIRE cafeteria filled with other students was not thrilling to me.  I begged my principal to just let me stay as I was not comfortable leaving BUT she wouldn't even listen to me! Instead she literally pushed me out of the lunch room and said "We'll be fine!".  Clearly she had never seen my kids eat, but I decided that given she just asked me the other day (yes seven months into school) if any of my kids could read (um do you read my lesson plans!!!! They are Autistic not baboons!) I decided maybe she did need a little QT with my babies.
 20 Min. later after scarffing down my Quizno's pita (VERY GOOD!) I mosied back to the lunch room to find the following: 
1. Student A was eating jello off the floor (mmm yummy)
2. Student B had not had his banana cut up the right way and had PROJECTILE vomited after choking.
3.  Student C had made soup out of mashed potatoes and milk and them dumped it down the leg of the principal.
4. Student D was in HYSTERICS bc no one had opened his milk
5. And the other kids were just glad to have full bellies and dessert on the way
Yes yes it was  everything I had hoped it would be and more.  My principal emailed me later in the day and said "Next year we will have more help in attendance when your class is in the cafeteria.  Until then God Bless you and your patience and how do you not throw up while watching them eat!?" I emailed back and said the only thing that has made me dry heave at this point was the day I found booger on my water bottle.. that was not mine!

Oh the joys of teaching!!!!

Teacher Appreciation

2008-05-13T21:07:00.000-06:00

Teacher Appreciation. It is one of the three days of the year that teachers are appreciated through gifts (mostly monetary gifts, that is).

It's a day I look forward to for a month. You see, they give us these fun sheets to fill out telling the parents our "favorites": flower, candy, store, etc. I always put Starbucks, Target, and Coke on my list, secretly hoping my parents will forget the candy baskets, the sees chocolates, and finally get me something I REALLY want.1

It's that time of year again. I have worked at the same school for two years now and last year they had an entire week of teacher appreciation. Well, the staff at our school decided to complain (staff=office, extended care, etc.), so this year it was changed to "Staff Appreciation Day". Staff. Day.

I teach middle schoolers. That means that with every permission slip, every rubric, every handout needs to be recopied for someone, and usually 2 days -2 weeks after the fact. Well, my school sent out one...1...handout about teacher appreciation A WEEK BEFOREHAND. Can anyone tell me which middle schooler in the WORLD would remember teacher appreciation a week later?

Yes, I am being selfish. Yes, I am being a brat.

Wednesday rolled around like any other Wednesday, except for the fact that the 8th graders came bearing gifts in hand for their homeroom teacher, 7th graders had a few presents for their homeroom teacher, the entire elementary school had tons of beautiful gifts for their teachers (oh and everyone brought something for the staff), but guess what Laura got?

nothing.

Not one thing. Not a card, not an I love you, not a stuffed animal from one of my students' rooms.

So I did what any humble, Christian, ladylike teacher would do: I sat my kids down, threw some construction paper on a table, and gave them the lecture of their lives about appreciating their teachers. It went a little something like this:
"I cannot believe that you did not bring one single thank you note to your teachers today. Not only to they give their blood, sweat, and tears for YOU, but they get paid peanuts to do that. They wait for this day all year long, expecting a sweet, meaningful note [implication: gift card] from all of you. And not ONE of you brought one. Not ONE! You are to write a thank you note to each one of your 5 teachers. No, wait. Don't even BOTHER writing me one. I do NOT want a note from you that I myself made you write. That's insulting. "

pause
(18 pairs of eyes trying to look at me and their paper, not knowing which one to choose.)

"Julian, get to work."

By the end of the week, I ended up with the following:
1- A handmade card from Dominique
2- A heart box with the following in it from Octavia: a stuffed bear, a sweet note, a homemade key chain and outside of the box she made me a sign with my name on it. Quite possibly the sweetest gift I've ever received. She was sooo proud of those signs.2
3- White out, pens, and a bag of pretzels from JT
4- A gift card to B and N from Cody along with a sweet note
(Not in my homeroom)
5- A beautiful African bag from James
6- Gerber Daisies from Chris
7- Starbucks from Heather and Miranda
8-Chocolate from JJ and Briana

Happy Teacher Appreciation!

1- All teachers want one thing (when thinking monetary gifts, of course): T-A-R-G-E-T
2-The gift from Octavia might possibly be one of my favorites ever. :)

I celebrate you!

2008-05-01T22:51:00.001-06:00

Seth, I celebrate you because you are the most honorable man I have ever met. I admire your integrity and purpose. I strive to be as good of a wife as you are a husband to me. You inspire me to do things I've never done before; and I always love them when I'm finished. You make me feel sexy, beautiful, and intelligent. You're not afraide of those things either...especially intelligence. I have never met a man in my life that is so open to intelligent women. I truly, deeply thank you for that gift. You share thoughts and quetions on life and philisophy, politics and religion, all the while respecting my own opinion. Again, I can't ever thank you enough for letting me be Laura, and not expecting me to be an ideal. You allow feminism and equality in a beautiful way. Then when I think about your person, your character, I can't help but smile. I love how you smile at me with crinkled eyes and a crooked smile-those are the ingredients for a melting of my heart. I love that my heart skips a beat STILL whenever I see a cyclist riding with brown pants (Oh, memories of Boone). I love the idealist in you that matches the pragmatic in me. God pairs opposites with a plan. The inspiration you give to me about our life, our love, our devotion makes me immediately begin to plan. :) You care for the little things in life, which reminds me that you care about the little things for me. I respect you for feeling social responsibility. You not only have a desire to save our environment, but you feel duty and honor toward your country, and serve it with your life. I respect you for your character. We fit like chocolate chips in the best dough Paula Deen can whip up. Or I like to think of us as the silhouette of the Appalachian Mountains against the darkening evening sky. Majestic. Holy. Earthy. Beautiful. Melting together, just as you melt my heart.
I love you to the edge of Doom and beyond the limit of Time.
Laura

The Jester

2008-04-24T18:44:00.001-06:00

This is an amendment to my previous post.

Although I am only friends with her because of work, I love the jester now, and I don't know what I would do without her!

Moral of the story: Sometimes life forces us to become friends with the greatest of people.

:)

For my Lover

2008-04-17T08:50:00.000-06:00

My Lover is
Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest
is my lover among the young men.
I delight to sit in his shade,
and his fruit is sweet to my taste.

He has taken me to the banquet hall,
and his banner over me is love.

Strengthen me with raisins,
refresh me with apples,
for I am faint with love.

His left arm is under my head,
and his right arm embraces me.

Awake, north wind,
and come, south wind!
Blow on my garden,
that its fragrance may spread abroad.
Let my lover come into his garden
and taste its choice fruits.

Place me like a seal over your heart,
like a seal on your arm;
for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame.

Many waters cannot quench love;
rivers cannot wash it away.
If one were to give
all the wealth of his house for love,
it would be utterly scorned.

The story of me-Part 1

2008-04-05T15:42:00.000-06:00

Instead of asking what a person does for a living, I like to instead simply ask: "What is your story?"

My mom likes to constantly remind me that I'm her non-communicative child. Months can pass until I happen to share something with her in a story I'm regaling about my life apart from her. But she needs to realize that I am not doing that in spite...I just live in the moment. I can literally forget what happened the day before completely unless I write it down or someone asks me about it.
I like to say it comes from the life I've lead. Some of you may know that my parents moved my family to Mexico to do some mission work while I was in my senior year of high school. So during those formative stages of my life as an "adult" in college, I quite literally had no one to share it with. It cost a lot of money to phone home.
But God does things for a reason always. Why my parents moved to Mexico during our high school years, we'll never know. God's calling I suppose. However, I can now look back at that paradoxical time and say that it prepared me for this: my marriage to a Marine. Again, I have no one to share my stories with barring this automated machine I stare at daily. (Note: future blog: can one have a relationship with a mac?)

With all that to say, I encountered someone yesterday who asked me, "So Laura, what's your story?"

Well, if you insist. ;) Here are a few surprisingly interesting things about me. I'd love to know if I shared these stories with you. I really need to get better at that.

1) I love to dip my french fries in ranch dressing.

2) On my very first day of school in my life (circa age 5), my mom put pink foam curlers in my hair the night before, dressed me up in a black and blue checked jumper, and carted me over to my Nana's for the very first day of school picture looking like a raven haired shirley temple.
I still love those curlers and I still own them.

3) We do not have cable, however, I have had the blessing to become friends with amazing women of whom I not only like their TIVO, but their beautiful friendship as well. Therefore, in 2007, my little know fact was that my dear friend Colleen and I watched the Gilmore Girls religiously every Tuesday night while our husbands were deployed. Since she has moved home to Seattle, I have made another dear not just neighbor friend Kelsey. She and I have established our 2008 Tuesday TV show regimen while (again) our husbands are deployed. The show: The Biggest Loser. And the Office, when it comes back on.

4) My passion from the age of 7 to the age of 19 was musical performances. I acted in a total of 17 plays for the Alamance Children's Theater, a few in which I was the star. I was addicted; it was my childhood drug. Give me a stage and I was high as a kite. But nothing compared to the euphoria I would experience in...high school musicals! I felt like I had made the big time when I was given the lead role in the musical Anything Goes playing the night club harlot Reno Sweeney. I was in heaven. I went on to perform as lead dancer #1 my junior year (unfortunately, the parts in 42nd Street were made for two other girl classmates), and
finally Dorothy (again, a performer) for my final bow as a performer in ______. ?
Maybe I'll do it again someday...I've always wanted to be Maria in West Side Story.

5) When I was 15 years old, my wonderful parents threw me a Quinceanera, the coming out party tradition for Mexican girls. It was amazing. I wore a white dress, all of my friends were a court around me, I got my hair done, and all of these people were invited that I knew and loved...at age 15. I am so blessed.

Lt. Nicholson

2008-03-28T15:29:00.000-06:00

I am proud to share some wonderful news with all of you.

On Monday of last week, Seth was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for his actions on December 6, 2006. This was the night that one of his Marines was killed in action, and Seth's actions merited the attention of the Battalion Commander and earned him this high honor. Lieutenant Colonel Wortman presented the medal to Seth, and he accepted it in honor of the Marines that worked so diligently that night to protect and preserve the lives of all who were there.

It is such a big honor to receive this medal. :)

Congratulations Seth. I am so stinkin' proud of you!

Restful Relaxation

2008-03-27T22:59:00.000-06:00

Vacations are on my top 10 favorite things in life list. I love hurried vacations, leisurely vacations, short vacations, active vacations, surprise vacations, and family vacations. Today is basically the end of my final vacation of the year before school ends. 2 weeks of no school, attitude, lesson plans, meetings, strife, stress, and math Olympic practices. As much as I love teaching, I am worn out. I needed this vacation in order to recharge and have some blissful relaxation. Ahhhhhh.
This vacation however, was not what you might call restful. I flew home to NC to be with family and friends and got to see some great people from my past. I love the depth of old friendships.
First I visited Matt and Melissa Davis.

As you can see, they had some nice things to say and on my last day there, we reminisced about some great times we had in college. Most of the things we laughed about were the plans the Justice Brethren had to make people throw up in Welborn, beat each other up in the bathroom, tricks played on football players in Justice, and much more. I was crying from laughing so hard. ;)

After I said adieu to M&M, I drove down the road to Lexington, SC to visit some good friends I had while being a Resident Assistant in College. Bryan and Lindsey Parsons are such a cute couple and Linds actually had me come speak to her classes at the middle school where she teaches. It was a fun experience and I forgot to take a picture.

I then went and caught up with my dear friend and new sister, Molly. I truly love the time I spend with her...every time I feel wiser and better about life in general. She's like a cup of really great coffee...it only lasts so long, but you savor every moment. Mmmmm. After we shared a cup o joe together, we purchased a bottle of wine and drank every drop of it back at her house. I love days like that, don't you? It's a killer combination: an old friend, a cup of coffee, and a bottle of wine. It was actually difficult for me to sober up before dinner with mama robyn but worth it.

This is Molly and my dog-nephew Charly. :)

I then went to see mi familia-Limon style. We all piled in la Limonada (our green van) minus Kevin and drove 11 hours to see my Grandpa Limon who had just had his leg amputated. This is a hilarious video of the scene:

Thoughts on a gangsta part-ee

2008-03-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

When did it become ok for "white" people to throw a gangsta party?

Being a college graduate, I actually attended one of these events, and thought it was sooo fun to dress up as gangsta. Big old red/black lips, wife beaters layered, a plethora of different colored bandanas on various parts of the body. The biggest pair of sweats I could find.

Who does that?

Are there any other facets of life where we think it's ok to dress up as someone (who still exists today...people you may see walking on campus)? I haven't been invited to the Asian party yet. Wait, maybe someone will start throwing skinny pants on boys parties! Then we can make fun of all of those ridiculously tight pants that men wear these days. Can anyone think of one time they have ever been to a "white" party thrown by a race other than whites?

I have more on this, but need to go to school now.

On Friendship

2008-02-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

I was writing in my journal last night before bed. I had some extra time and wasn't too tired, so I wrote about something I've pondered for the past 2 months now: What is friendship and what do I want in a friend?

In writing, I found that my words flowed out and my mind had been thinking about it much more than I anticipated. There were ideas I hadn't anticipated and reconsderations of friendships I have now.

In my life, there are 4 types of friends.

fast friends-the few that will never leave your heart, even through the distance that separates you. The friends that show up when you need them...without ever asking them.
close friends-the few that you will reunite with like you saw each other yesterday.
gossip friends-the many that you remain friends with only to talk about other people's lives or how your own intertwines with theirs.
friends-the temporary friends that God gives you for a time.

I thought about what I really wanted from a friend. I have always been a flitter, but I see now that deep relationships with few people are what one benefits from. My goal for this year is to develop my friendships with few people, and forget the competition of many. I also want to enhance my friendships with those who edify, challenge, and love me, so I can learn from them and do the same.

So join me and let's catch up! Even if we are just friends, it's important to know you're loved. :)

For You

2008-02-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempest and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height may be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But hears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov'd,
I never write, nor no man ever lov'd.

~William Shakespeare

I love you to the very edge of doom and beyond Time's limit.

On immigration

2008-01-28T20:13:00.000-07:00

Argument: "Why are these people coming to our country and don't even speak our language? I hate trying to talk to them."

Immigrants are trying to actually make a life for themselves in a country of opportunities. Many times, they work longer hours than we know, for less pay than we could imagine, with harder labor.

Counter Argument: "Why do Americans travel to different countries with the expectation that 'they should know English'? Isn't that the same?"

I'd love your thoughts...

I'm proud

2008-01-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am a proud person...I don't like to lose, I like being unique, etc. etc.

However, today I am proud of me.

Today I joined the West Coast Road Runners club and went to my first run. We run every Saturday morning, have a seminar after the run, and they provide a training schedule to follow during the week.

I was so nervous about parking that I got there 40 minutes early. I was the only one there. :)

I sat in my car, not really knowing what to do (since this was my first day), and finally got out about 10 minutes before the run started. My coach is Remmi and I am part of the Catalina runners (10 minute milers). The Cat group was very large, so I wasn't too nervous about my performance. I WAS nervous about the mileage. Yes, I run occasionally, no I don't like it, yes I am the cross country coach at school. But that is coaching...now it is MY turn to perform.

I have always been saying that I want to be a runner, that I want to run a marathon, that I want to get in shape. Well this club is killing 3 birds with one stone.

Today I showed up expecting to run 4 miles (I thought that was what the website had said). Ladies and Gents, it was 6. I don't think I have run 6 miles since my sophomore year of college...and that was probably 5. Automatically, I had to poop . Hey, it was nerves!

So I stood around trying to psych myself up by talking to people. I looooove clubs like this because you make so many friends. I talked about their marathons (or half-ms) and it really movivated me. But I still didn't want to run 6 miles on my very first day.

So we began. I and I ran and ran and ran. About 1 mile into it, Emie started to chat with me. She's around my age, married, and has run 2 half marathons. We ran the same pace anyway, so we ended up running the whole way together. It was SOOOO GREAT! I now know that I am a good runner if I run with someone. I always could run well with Seth...not so much with Colleen. I wonder why?

So Emie and I ran our 6 miles. I admit, we stopped for 30 seconds...total. I am so impressed with myself.

I am very excited, as you can see, and will be blogging occasionally about my progress. Rock n Roll Marathon, here I come!

Have you been generous today?

2008-01-13T18:49:00.000-07:00

I just spent 58 minutes on the phone with a man named Terry. He works with me for the Jr. High ministry at church and we had our very first actual conversation this morning. I want to explain why exactly I spent 58 minutes on the phone with him, so let's start with lunch.

At our leaders once-a-month debriefing, I sat down catty corner to Terry and he mentioned that he is starting his new job on Monday. "What is your profession?" I happened to ask, just because I was curious. "Uh...well...I guess I could be classified as a computer geek." Being my oh so humble self, I said "Maybe you could help with with my computer?"

You see, this morning, my lifeline (aka the internet) was frozen because apparently, people on my street having been piggybacking on my wireless internet and I exceeded my bandwidth (the amount of downloads/uploads that occur). So I battled with Cox, battled with Linksys, and refused both of their you pay me at least $75 to fix it offers.

So Terry gave me his number and said to call anytime this afternoon. He spent the most helpful 58 minutes with me that any computer person has ever spent with me on the phone...and that has been a lot with Linksys.

I used up 58 minutes of HIS Sunday afternoon. He could have been napping or watching replays of the Chargers victory, yet he offered his generosity to me.

I am humbled people. And my computer is now secure, secure, secure.

I LOVE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY!!!!!!!!

How to be a friend

2008-01-13T16:32:00.001-07:00

Know that you don't have to know what to say to a person if they are sad. Just be there.
Here is a picture of the friend who knows how to do this best in my life right now.
He even nuzzled me when I started to cry...

The day after your beloved leaves

2008-01-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

What are you supposed to say to your beloved?

"See you soon?" "I love you." "I'll miss you like crazy."

7-12 months. January 12, 2008 until.........

I took Seth to his workplace (Camp San Mateo) this morning at 1:30am. They had to be there early in order to clean the barracks, load gear, get on buses, and drive to March Air Force Base. From there they are flying to Okinawa, Japan via Alaska. He supposedly left around 11am. It's noon now and they're probably still loading.

This time Seth gets to fly to his deployment. Last August when he deployed (2007), they left from a boat down in San Diego. I didn't get to see him off on the boat, but it was nice to know he left from home. This time he'll fly to Oki, fight jet lag for a few days, and be off on the 31st MEU (boats again) for the next few months.

PROS:

His unit is relieving a unit that was originally supposed to be 6 months and got extended to 1 year. I know those wives are happy.
I'll probably get more quality work done for school
I'll work out more. (I like classes...Seth likes running.)
Girl time?
I get to hog his side of the bed.
My house will be clean for the first time in 6 months.

CONS:

I don't have anyone to hang out with on Saturdays or Sundays.
My motivation for working out is gone.
I'll miss his spontaneous laughter.
The person I can be my true self around is gone (we all know it's different with even the best of friends).
I get to hog his side of the bed.
The person I can tell anything to and he'll still love me is gone.
Pico will miss him and he'll miss Pico's growth.
Half of me is missing.

The day after your beloved leaves is the worst day of deployment, because the person you would cry to is the person that is gone.

Especially if it is a Saturday.

I believe in evolution.

2007-12-30T00:19:00.001-07:00

As I was looking through candidates' websites today, I kept seeing one question asked: "Do you, sir, believe in evolution?"

I started thinking about their answers. Here is a direct quote from John McCain:
Q: Do you believe in evolution?

McCAIN: Yes.

Q: I'm curious, is there anybody on the stage that does not agree, believe in evolution?

[TANCREDO, HUCKABEE, and BROWNBACK raise their hands, indicating that they do not believe in evolution].

McCAIN: I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.

Senator McCain said he believes in evolution, yet felt he had to put out a disclaimer that he sees God in nature. I thought that ridiculous, having to use a disclaimer for believing in something.

Why is evolution wrong? I started to discuss this with Seth, and as we were talking, I realized that the only reason I believe in evolution is because someone told me to. Why should I?

God is the creator of our world, but we cannot begin to put his timeline in our tiny, minute brains. Since we cannot fathom what a minute/year/century is for God, how can we assume that God didn't create evolution for his purposes?

Micro, Macro, adaptation, whatever type of evolution you believe in...let me assure you, God was the creator of it and it all acknowledges him.

Thanksgiving

2007-12-12T18:16:00.001-07:00

For Thanksgiving this year, I am filled with Gratitude for my beloved friends. Let me share a piece of the gratitude with you...

The week started off with a competition of the Choirs- EAST vs. WEST

It continued the next day with surfing, baking, sleeping, laughing, and relaxing in San Clemente. I believe that the favorite part of everyone's trip was Wednesday's p.m. festivities. Here's a riddle for you: What do you get when you put 4 girlfriends from college together when getting ready to go out for the night? A dress-up party! Friends, I haven't had so much fun getting dressed since my dorm room days (Miss you Jackie). Drumroll please...

We sipped on LIT's at the restaurant by the pier, reminisced, giggled as only girls do, and made quite fond memories. Here are a few more pics to remember us by...

The next morning, my first Thanksgiving Feast commenced. Please be aware that I had never before cooked my very own turkey and I had no idea that it's innards would be in little plastic bags to remove. I am SO thankful my dear friend Melissa Davis was there to guide me through each step, even while feeling queasy from the previous night's festivities.

It's here!

2007-11-18T13:39:00.001-07:00

I've been waiting for this week for months and months...Babes, Bread, and Bros!

8 people
6 days
taco tuesday
weiner wednesday
Thanksgiving thursday
fiesta friday
Christmas karaoke
surf n sand
sleepovers
fine china (a personal guilty pleasure)
home

friends :)

I live in Babylon

2007-11-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

I went to bed last night thinking I would sleep until, oh, 7:30am, but I suppose God had bigger plans for me. At 5:36am, my cat Pico started nuzzling me from his post beside my head. If you've never had a cat nuzzle you, the whiskers are like eyelashes caressing your face, except much more ticklish. I counted up the hours in my head. You've got 8 hours, you can get up.
So I write to you at 6:26am, after spending an incredible 45 minutes getting my mind blown.

I live in Babylon.

I literally live an hour and a half south of Los Angeles (well, figuratively, because it's more like 3 hours with traffic), in the world of fake boobs, retinal, and face lifts. A common topic of conversation: "When do you think you'll get a face life?" or "You should try botox...right there, see that line?" as I look for the faint wrinkle above my eyebrows that's requiring a magnifying lens to locate. "Oh yeah...."

I personally know 3 women who have boob jobs-excuse me-breast enhancements, and two of them got them while our husbands were deployed. When I mention that I'm not interested in one, it's almost as if my friends cannot believe me. They start jumping all over my comment, saying things like "you'll change your mind" and "there's nothing wrong with it."

Now, I could go on and on about my opinion of breast enhancements, but that is my personal opinion, and it may not agree with yours. I'm not here to tell you that boob jobs are bad, they just aren't for me. Ever.

In this Babylon-esque land I live in, fashion is not an accessory...it's a standard. I feel like the frumpy one because I have on too little makeup, too many clothes, and my hair isn't styled. I don't wear tights (just can't do it), although everyone else is. I don't wear surf/skate clothes, because I'm a teacher and I just can't wear it all the time with my khakis and Clarks. I don't spend $85 on a haircut, $200 on color, and $45 a month for my nails. I don't shop at Nordstrom's.

Do I sound like I'm complaining? I don't mean to. I just know that I don't fit in with this whirlwind beauty routine of a world. I get funny looks when I wear my chacos to church. My favorite pair of jeans are from Old Navy, not Sevens. In fact, I've even tried to buy a couple pairs of designer jeans, but they just don't fit right! I desire to look beautiful like the Californians, but through the book of Daniel and Isaiah, I'm learning what beauty is.

*A side note: I have many beautiful friends here in California that do not fit that stereotype. I'm just writing my opinion of the general population here.

Please read this with me:
1 Peter 5:6 "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time."

Now, if I may share, an excerpt I wrote for my bible study:
"First, I confess that my goal is to be better than others. Be a great teacher, look prettiest, be the best friend. To humble myself, I need to admit that I am a learner always and do make mistakes.
I always compare myself to women my age. Questions I ask are:

Am I prettier than they are? OK...whew, they don't have that on me.
If I'm not prettier/skinnier- Am I more interesting?
If they can do something, can I do it better?
Am I a more interesting person?

Here's that part that annoys the hell out of me. I hate that I do this

What is wrong with them?

I pick something out and then justify their flaw because I feel that it makes me look better.

I just need to ask for repentance right now. Please fix my squeaky, broken mindset. Use Daniel to heal my mind, to restore it to the right place. How am I now does not honor you and it hurts my reputation. Please...please...lead me into forgiveness and restoration."

Ladies and gentelmen, please bear with me while I try to win this war with my mind.

Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Monthly Normal and Record High and Low Temperatures
Rec High °F \| Rec High °C	68 \| 20	72 \| 22	80 \| 27	92 \| 33	96 \| 35.5	105 \| 40.5	108 \| 42	105 \| 40.5	103 \| 39.5	90 \| 32	77 \| 25	69 \| 20.5
Norm High °F \| Norm High °C	32.8 \| 0.4	39.5 \| 4.2	47.6 \| 8.7	57.5 \| 14.2	67.4 \| 19.7	78 \| 25.6	85.8 \| 29.9	84.5 \| 29.2	71.8 \| 22.1	58.9 \| 14.9	42.7 \| 5.9	34.5 \| 1.4
Norm Low °F \| Norm Low °C	15.1 \| -9.4	20.1 \| -6.6	26.4 \| -3.1	34.7 \| 1.5	44 \| 6.7	52.5 \| 11.4	58.3 \| 14.6	57.3 \| 14.1	47.1 \| 8.4	37.2 \| 2.9	25.6 \| -3.6	17.7 \| -7.9
Rec Low °F \| Rec Low °C	-30 \| -34.5	-38 \| -39	-19 \| -28	-5 \| -21	14 \| -10	32 \| 0	41 \| 5	35 \| 2	22 \| -6	-7 \| -22	-22 \| -30	-32 \| -36
Precip (in) \| Precip (mm)	0.81 \| 20.6	0.58 \| 14.7	1.12 \| 28.4	1.74 \| 44.2	2.48 \| 63.0	1.89 \| 48.0	1.28 \| 32.5	0.85 \| 21.6	1.34 \| 34.0	1.26 \| 32.0	0.75 \| 19.1	0.67 \| 17.0
Source: USTravelWeather.com [1]