giving up

I don't have enough deep things to blog about! I dont just want to recount things that I've done during the day, and it's not like I have tons going on to blab about. So...I'll let you all know if I decide I want to keep up with this page in the future. But for right now, I have nothing to say.

Smashing Pumpkins and (whoah) an update

S.P. are getting back together, apparently!
This could be awesome, or a huge letdown.

It's sad but I feel like I don't have much to say lately worthy of blogging. My little world is nothing exciting really, and I was getting tired of rambling about the little insignificant things. But I'll give a little update here so you know where I'm at.

We're settled into our new home, and they've finally come and planted grass. Our yard has been going back and forth between dusty dirt and slimy mud the past couple months, so it'll be nice to see some green. I'm much more content to be a mom when the weather's warm since I go crazy hanging out in the house all day. Gabriela's now 19 months and she's actually (finally) saying a lot more words. Today she was saying "bye!" repeatedly after we left my sister-in-law's house.

We're finding that our church still isn't exactly what we want. It's confusing because obviously a church isn't going to be perfect and there are going to be weaknesses, but the main thing we struggle with is the Pastor's teaching...it's just so simple and non-intellectual and we don't ever learn things from his sermons. To make up for it, we've been listening to sermons from my parents' church and from this amazing church in Portland called Imago Dei. We heard about the church through Don Miller (writer of Blue Like Jazz) because it's where he goes and it sounded unique. Anyway the Pastor's sermons there are exactly what we like, so we download them every week (podcast) and I will often listen to them while I run on the treadmill at the Y. It's hard because we felt that God wanted us at North Pointe, but we're still not getting to know people there because it's hard to talk with Gabriela running around afterward, and we get so bummed and bored during the sermons. We love the rest of the stuff there - the music, the people, the way they have small groups, their vision, etc.

I'm really striving to improve certain things about my character right now. Especially with being selfless and being positive without getting so anxious about everything. It takes a lot and it can be so sad and frustrating at times because I fail at it all the time. I'm trying to look at everyone else as more important than myself (including annoying ladies that stand in the middle of an aisle at the grocery store, acting like they don't see you when you're trying to get by). And of course putting Gabriela and Travis' needs before my own.
There are certain verses that have hit hard lately:

Romans 12:9-11
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to eachother in brotherly love. Honor oneanother above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.


Philippians 4:8
Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, excellent, or praiseworthy - think about such things.

I get so caught up in being anxious about silly things that God is in absolute control over, so Philippians 4 really has helped me lately to focus on the good things instead of the negative.

Well that's enough for now.

my sweetie

Man does she wear me out but I could squeeze her and kiss her all day long! 

let's talk about insomnia and Walmart

Why in the world can't I sleep? I have sleep medicine and even that's not working. I'm so exausted too. It's so bizarre because the more tired I am, the more inclined I am to be afraid I won't be able to sleep, thus I get terribly anxious. So I'm drinking some wine right now, to hopefully make me even drowsier.

It's weird that this world is only temporary, isn't it? Sometimes I get started thinking about heaven and eternity, and my brain just gets overwhelmed, I don't have the means to understand it. But we're going to be spending eternity with our Creator - the only place where true joy rests in this world. It's hard to think that way though, to live for eternity. A huge thing is to realize how stupid material possessions are. Could we give everything up for the sake of Christ? This is sad but true: clothing is my weakness in material possessions...how silly is that? Luckily I don't care about cars, nice furniture, or fancy china though. It's a constant battle to remember how insignificant "stuff" is when you go to Walmart especially. Almost everything you see, you think: "I could really use that, and it's such a good deal!" Walmart baffles me...they are going to take over the world. Just you wait.

sorry

Just wanted to write to apologize about how terribly boring and shallow my blog has been lately (with exception to the Stavesacre song lyrics I posted). I will work on posting about most interesting things and not just day-to-day monotony.

my sweetie

she is now 18 months...I can't believe it.

 

our new family room

 

a break from moving

Well for those of you who got my email about how I wouldn't have internet starting yesterday, I wasn't lying - I thought it was seriously going to be shut off then, but I guess Travis decided to keep it a bit longer. I need to sit for a minute and blab about crap because I'm tired of the moving process! Everything is so messy and chaotic everywhere, but it's a nice reminder of how stuff just isn't neccessary to enjoy life. I want to give tons of stuff away. The hard part is going to be getting rid of my art stuff though...I have tons of photographs, drawings, etc. that are just taking up so much space. Also, there is so much built-in shelf space and window sill space here, so I was spoiled and had a bizillion pictures in frames all over the place. I don't know what to do with them all. This is so boring...any of you that are finding this post interesting, you guys are huge dorks. (Anj, Jess, Sally, and Alicia...I'm talking to you!!) hahaha, even you guys are probably bored to tears. I'm flattering myself, aren't I? And Jill, I want to hear a comment from you still...you better not be lurking and hiding. Actually, you probably gave up reading this boring post a sentence into it, so you probably aren't even reading this part. I'm going to put your name in bold!! Ha!

Congratulations Derr!

Me with a married man!


I think Sally just realized there were some tasty remnants on her lips after that huge meal we ate. Ahh this photo of us makes me think of our ridiculous times together during college in York. Derr (Jeremy) was one of my best college friends, and he used to hang out with Sal and I all the time. Those years seem so long ago.

 

I'm healing in slashes and burns.

This is a new song by Stavesacre, one of my favorite bands. The lyrics are so powerful and talk about how we build character through pain and hardship, and also how we need to let go of everything here on earth and look to God. Take time to read.

Kill My Darlings

Kill the lights
Sever all lines
Lock the doors from deep inside
Tonight, no one’s home
No Idiot Wind
Soothing din
Distracting from the task at hand
Tonight,
I’ll know what I can know

I’m dying tonight
I’m taking my time
Perfection begins when it hurts
I’m healing in slashes and burns
And that’s how you live with a curse

To separate
Concentrate
Surrendering through meditation
Centering a soul
A Kingdom First
A Blade of Verse
Deconstruction in reverse
What have I ever really known?


Leave it all behind
Nothing here is mine
But – IwantitIneeditInurtureandfeedit
Kill my darlings, once and for all time
Because nothing here is mine
Nothing here is mine
I leave it all behind

And that’s how you live…
That’s how you live…
That’s how you live with a curse.

www.howtolivewithacurse.com

a crazy exciting post

This morning I drank a huge cup of coffee and now I'm sick as hell to my stomach. What am I going to do? Haha Sally and Derrick, that was for you. They were making fun of me and my blog this weekend at my friend's wedding - apparently I've talked about drinking coffee and feeling sick too much...so I apologize to all those who were bored or annoyed at my past complaints. I will continue to try to write about deeper things to keep you all more entertained.
(by the way Jill, you better post a comment at some point!)

thoughts on moving

Hello! I'm back again. All I've done while Gabriela napped today was clean so I'm sitting down to collect my thoughts and write. Crap, she's awake...just heard her on the monitor. Well I'll stay on until she really wants out. Mmmm I made this amazing stew this afternoon with a bit of red wine - really adds to the depth of flavor. Let's see, what's in my head...well, I'm really anxious about moving. We move April 29th and I keep thinking about how much work it's going to be to gather everything we own and bring it over and then re-organize everything we own. How do people do this? I don't think I have it in me to stay very calm and relaxed and not stressed during the move; I'm going to have to drink a glass of wine or something. I'm just such a worrysome anxious type. I get overwhelmed really easily when things feel out of control. And I can't imagine anything feeling more overwhelming than having every material possession I own all in piles everywhere. OK, must stop thinking about it. Writing about this reminds me of how miniscule my problems are in comparison to people that don't even have a place to live - gosh I feel stupid now.

This post is pretty ridiculous, huh? At least I got some of the anxious thoughts out in the open.

scabby knees and a big head

I don't feel like typing the whole story out because I told a lot of you anyway - but basically, on Sunday, I tripped on the sidewalk as I was running and fell really hard and scraped up my knees real bad. Luckily there was a van full o' Jehovah's witnesses that had a first aid kit and were very kind and helped get me bandaged. They even took me back to my car which was about a mile away from the disaster site... at the Y. They didn't witness to me about Jehovah either, which was good. I can't believe what an idiot I am for falling like that - people driving by must've been cracking up. Then Monday was my birthday, as I bragged about. Travis took a half day and we met up with Anj and Justin at the opening Phillies game. We ate and drank a lot and had fun together. I had a really good day. But at that point I was still limping around because of my knee wounds. I didn't think I'd be able to run the race in Wilmington that my dad and I registered for, but then I figured I'd be fine and that my wounds probably wouldn't open up and spurt blood as I'd envisioned (I'm such a baby). So we did the race - it was 48 degrees and very windy. Dad pushed me along the entire time and I was wheezing like hell because of my asthma toward the end. I was about to die. In all seriousness I really did push myself as fast as I could go, and came out with a time of 25:39. I'm really proud of this time because I haven't run a race since junior year of high school during cross country and track, and this time was right around what I was doing back then, before I even got asthma. Sorry I'm being really braggy but I'm just so glad I met a goal. Also I would've gotten an award because I got third out of the girls in my age group (20-29). It was a small race...but still. OK I'll shut up about myself now. How are all of you? Post me a comment if you're reading this and tell me how you're doing and whether you've met any goals recently.

a loser on a Friday night

There is still something in me that feels like I need to have fun on Friday nights. And tonight has has been pretty dull. Travis always falls asleep so early because he's so beat from the week., so then I'm just hanging out by myself alone. I'd love to go out and dance or something, but there are just a lot of crappy bars around here enveloped in smoke and I don't have anyone who'd want to dance like an idiot with me anyway. Anyway I wish I was out doing something fun. I don't know if I'll ever grow out of this. I'm just such a fun-lover (dork). Plus it's such a beautiful night! Well I don't have much else to say right now, plus no one will probably read this anyway. I'll just say goodnight to myself now and go to bed and dream of dancing the night away while laughing with close friends.

dreams

Last night I dreamt of being on vacation in some beautiful beachy place with Sally. We were both almost black from being in the sun so much. I can't wait for warm weather and being on the beach!

Jess visited Friday night and we went "midnight bowling" for 2 hours. My arm is still hurting from throwing the ball down the lane. It was the funniest thing though - Jess falls almost every single time she throws the ball. She insists that she doesn't understand how anyone could stay on their feet since the ball throws the whole body off-balance. One time she fell really hard and totally ate it. Well, she fell on her ass but it was hysterical. I told the girls in the lane next to us to feel free to laugh at her when I saw them stifling giggles. When midnight bowling was coming to an end, these idiot guys in the other lane next to us started lifting up their shirts and dancing like girls. The guys kept talking to us in drunken stupors. People really can be pathetic, it's sad.

I can't wait for warm weather.

 

Thursday

I wish I could figure out who reads this regularly. Do me a favor - if you read this entry, please fill out a comment, pretty please! You'll make my pathetic day!

We had our small group again last night and it was even worse than last week. We have 5 readings to go through every week, and this week we only made it through one and a half. There is this one 60-year-oldish Italian/Polish mobster-type man there that doesn't know when to be quiet...I think he's got something missing or something. He'll interupt people a lot, and he probably takes up 50% of our discussion time by rambling about things that often don't even make sense relating to our workbook. He's that type that you can tell he's not even listening when you're talking to him, because he's too busy thinking of what he wants to say next. Apart from that I really like him - he gives everyone a big smooch on the cheek when he sees them (even men) and he drives a cadillac around and can be really funny, but the stuff he goes off about during our small group - it's just so frustrating. Our poor group leader keeps trying to end his talking by changing the subject but the guy just doesn't get it. And everyone else in our group really likes to talk too, so it just feels like everyone's fighting to get a word in. There are good things about it though; especially the fact that we're building friendships with our church body.

So I made this dumb quiz this morning that most of you readers will probably take or have taken, and it's interesting that my own sister in law only got 2 out of 7 of the questions right. They are all pretty basic questions about me, although I admit - the question about which actor I find most attractive could have been tricky for most people. I guess it's just a reminder that Travis' family really doesn't know me that well, even though I see them all quite often. It's pretty weird. I guess it's because I can't really be totally myself around them.

I can't freakin' wait for the weekend.

I'm so tired right now

That I'm ridiculously nervous that I won't be able to sleep. Why do I get like this?! Stupid, stupid.

Travis and I went to our small group tonight from church and I was really bored during the actual discussion time. It was frustrating because we couldn't get through hardly anything (we're going through a workbook) because some people just wouldn't stop talking. There are like 10 people in our group and certain people just don't realize that they shouldn't be dominating all our time by rambling so much or we won't be able to get anything accomplished. I most enjoyed the time after the group study, talking to people one on one. I love getting to know new people. I'm just a cheeseball like that. We ended up leaving way too late because we were talking to this couple for so long. Poor Travis has to get up at like 5am but I didn't want to be rude. Well I really should be getting to bed now. so um.....goodnight.