Sheesh, it’s been awhile. Things are CRAZY right now!!!!!! I wish I could explain that a little better. We are just so, well, not busy, but time seems to be dissappearing so rapidly! I am probably about 4 weeks pregnant, and I am feeling tired. I don’t have morning sickness yet, but I am having some aversion to some foods. I don’t even want to smell sugar cookies, and queso!!!!! I know it’s sacriledge, but queso is out of the question right now. Onion rings are still amazing, though.
Alton is under the weather, sort of. He gets a fever in the evening and coughs all night, but in the morning he seems fine. It’s kind of annoying, cuz I feel like I should be at work when he acts like he’s okay, but whatever. He can’t be in child watch with a fever!
Um…I think that’s it for now. It’s pretty much consuming my life, so I can’t think of anything else that is going on!

I need to actually sit down and really journal in here again, but alas this is not the time. Our Christmas times were great. We had lots of fun with family and I was very excited to see that Trevor got my wedding bands resized and they now fit! I haven’t taken my ring off for over a week now! It’s awesome.

I will update you all for real very soon!

I am definitely an under achiever. I always set myself up to succeed. I never really challenge myself, and I always avoid the leader position when I can. I’m not bragging. I’m venting my feelings about my failure in life. If I had taken life a little more seriously, who knows what I would be doing today, BUT I can’t live life in the what-ifs. I must accept and move on, but also move up! I HAVE to challenge myself while I still can. I have to push past the difficulties and manage. I want my children to succeed beyond their good abilities. I want them to soar in their great abilities. They need to see what it’s like to challenge yourself, even if they  fail.

Oh, and apparently I did have strep throat!

I suggested a condensed schedule to my boss today to save them money. It would save them $52.40 every week day. I’m awesome. Hopefully they will think so, too, and give me that money as a raise! Yeah, right. They need to give it to my girl Linda so that she can feel more appreciated. She deserves it!

So, I just ran around 2 blocks, or half way anyway. I’m going to start running more consistently. If I do this every day and increase by 1 block each day I will do very well, I think. We shall see. Something’s got to change!

So, I thought I had strep throat. Saturday night through Sunday day were pretty miserable. I don’t really feel better today, but I guess the fact that I actually have to do stuff is what is keeping me from crashing into the bed until Jesus comes back.

My throat hurts everytime I swallow, and my glands are swollen and they hurt. My throat is sore from the outside, as well. I feel like I was hit by a mack truck and they wouldn’t give me morphine. I had a fever the whole weekend, but of course, as soon as you get to the doctor NO fever. My strep swab came back negative and I should be happy about that, right? Well, I’m not really cuz she didn’t know what was wrong with me. She took a throat “culture” (it looked exactly like the swab to me) and said they would try to let me know by friday if any abnormalities showed up. Huh? So for a week I will be in the dark and miserable. So, she gave me a steroid shot in the butt to help me out, but so far I don’t feel the help. Are there any avid steroids users who can tell me when the pain goes away?!

There have been several people who have written on their facebook:

“We have power back!! Yeah! God is good.”

It’s kind of annoying. Was He not good when you didn’t have it? Is He not good to the people whose homes are now a pile of rubble and sand? I know it seems like a huge blessing when your power is restored, and it is a blessing, but must we see God only then? Can we not rejoice anyway? I have had to check myself over and over to make sure that I am seeing this as an opportunity to rock my world for real! Russell Cravens asked us to do something on Sunday in the Awaken service at Sagemont Church. He said, “Create a new normal for your lives.” That is exactly what we all need. We need to make that our battle cry in our spiritual lives! Don’t go back to hiding in your house with your televisions and covered windows. Open your lives to what is around you! Have a block party even though you have a/c! I’m hoping to coordinate one soon. I really think we need it to help boost morale.

Oh, and today day #11 of no power, and day #9 of living with my inlaws is a new day. Today is going to be the beginning of a new normal. Today my electricity came back. God has always been good!

So, this is day #8 with no power at the house and day #6 of living with the Parker’s. We really are not bad off at all if you look at it with a broad perspective. I know a lady who lost everything, and I just don’t have power. My house is still there, it’s in excellent condition, and I could live in it if I wanted to. I’m blessed enough to have family here that will take us in and keep us comfortable. How many people in the world really have that?

I was doing really well with watching what I was eating and I even exercised every now and then until this IKE fella threw a curve ball at all of us. I had lost 6 pounds and I was continuing to lose weight. All I’ve eaten since Friday the 12th is junk food. How can you diet during a disaster?!? It’s impossible. I’ve decided to not punish myself until life becomes normal again, and there is nothing wrong with that at all!

I think one of the most interesting things about this entire hurricane is how different each person’s perspective is; and each person’s story. I remember being in Ethiopia 3 years ago and hearing all about hurricanes Katrina and Rita and thinking it was terrible. I sat in my house and had a fan blowing on me with music playing in the background while I clicked through pictures on aol of all the devastation. I read emails about the horrible 12 hour trips in cars that should have only taken 2 hours. My thoughts were always, “thank God I didn’t have to deal with that,” or “I feel so bad for those people.” I never once really and truly understood what they were going through.

Even now, I still cannot relate with my friend from work whose roof crashed in on them during the hurricane. They had to rush to their neighbors house and lost EVERYTHING!!! They drove to Dallas with all they could fill their cars with; it was two trunks worth, and these are small car trunks, too. They have no house now. They have no clothes. They have no tv. They have nothing. How do you relate to that? I can only symathize. I don’t really want to have an experience like that in order to empathize, but you start to feel guilty that you have never gone through anything so devastating. Is it okay to NOT feel guilty? I think you must be heartless to not have some sort of guilt, but all the same you can’t beat yourself down. You can, however, give all that you can to those you know. We are seeing so much hospitality and communication between neighbors that has never happened before. Trevor and I have lived in our house for over 5 months now, and Friday was the first time I walked to all my surrounding neighbors and said hi.

These days have been boring. Now that we are staying with the inlaws, with power and all that, I am bored. I was still bored at the house without power, but there were things to do there. Now there is nothing to do, and there is television. The television has become evil. Instead of digging deep down and trying to fix the fence that was knocked down, that we don’t really know how to fix, we’re watching tv and checking our facebooks. How do I inspire those around me to get up and do something?! I want to be busy. I want to say I was helpful and charitable. I want to have the block parties and stay up playing cards and telling stupid jokes, or reliving childhood memories. Instead, I’m bored. I had a little entertainment today. I got a call to come to the YMCA and help clean up if I wanted to, and I was bored, so I got excited to go to something. When I got there, the damage wasn’t obvious so there really wasn’t anything we Y-ladies could do since we lack the education for electicity and such. There were a couple IDIOT members who came by and asked, “when is the Y going to be up and running” in their exercise clothes ready to come run on a freakin’ treadmill. I wanted to piledrive one lady. We just got hit by a hurricane, why don’t you ask, “is there something I can do to help,” instead of being so unabashedly selfish. She was a bean-pole, too, so I wanted to smack her for that as well. RUN OUTSIDE YOU RETARDED PEOPLE!!!!!

Our home smells. I could go do some cleaning, but what is the use? I’ll clean when I have power, I tell myself. When will that be? I could really and truly breakdown and cry because our world has been turned completely upside down simply because of grocery stores and gas stations not being plentiful like they always were. I have lived in Third World style living for 2 years and yet this is almost harder to handle because it’s not supposed to be like this! What exactly am I supposed to learn? I know I need to learn to be less careless of the fact that everything is plentiful. Billions of people live like this everyday for their entire life, can’t I handle a week or two? Americans are so spoiled. I loathe even more all the people who worship celebrities right now. Isn’t that terrible? Even with devastation to occupy my mind, I can still get pissy about materialistic morons? I am a moron. When will I ever learn to ignore the exponentially increasing “me-mentality” of this world? Could we ever reverse it? All signs point to ah…hell no.

This hasn’t been the most fluid thing I’ve ever written, but then again, my thoughts are always a little bit like rabbit trails.

There are days that crawl by, and days that zoom by. What kind of day is today? I guess we’re somewhere in the middle.

How do you get children to learn good behavior? How do you help a child understand that hitting is wrong? How can you help them express themselves in a more healthy fashion? I’m stumped. I’m about to start potty training again, so how do I control my behavior? Life is funny.

So I can’t fall asleep tonight. I’m too full! And no, I don’t mean in the stomach sense; more north: the heart. I don’t understand how that is keeping me from sleep at the moment, but I can’t explain it any other way! I am full and it makes me smile! For one, my son is going to be the smartest kid in his kindergarten class! All the things they are working on for the year, almost, he already knows! He’s just going to be getting better at it. Some might ask, why not try to skip a grade? Well, he’s already young for his grade, and I don’t want to inhibit is chances in physical things when the time comes. He’ll get challenged enough, and it will give him better grades for college, right? HA! Seriously though, my kid is smart.

Another thing that makes me so happy right now is my husband’s joy in his job. The last 2 years he has been teaching I have seen the apathy and discontent etched in his face every day and it broke my heart. I want more than anything for him to feel useful and satisfied, and so far this year that is what I am seeing! He has switched to teaching 10th grade Geometry which makes most people cringe. Trevor, however, seems to be flourishing as a teacher with this new subject.

Another thing that is making me smile tonight is my own satisfaction at my job. You wouldn’t think a part time gig at the ymca would feel fulfulling, but it does. There are definitely seasons of frustration, but the seasons of love outweigh them. My superiors are my favorite people right now. I love them and I treasure their respect. It’s sounds super dorky, but I am stuck on creating a Top 10 memories list and framing it for them! What a nerd!

So, these are some of the things that have filled my heart, and I think the #1 thing that is keeping me awake is my much improved intimacy with my precious LORD. It has been much neglected as of late, but in the past 8 days or so I have rekindled a burning desire to know Him more and entirely. I hope to inspire with my smile these days. I saw a member of the y the other day when I was working out, and she laughed at me, and I said, didn’t recognize me without the uniform did you? She proceeded to say, oh no, I always know you by your smile. You have a great smile. What a compliment? I can really get caught up in the frustrations of life, but tonight is not one of those nights. Tonight I am smiling…soon I will hopefully be sleeping!

My son is 4, and today he said something that I know he didn’t really mean, but then again…

He was in the bathtub and called out that he was ready to get out, so I went in to get him. He says, “I wanted Dad.” I say, “oh well, I’m here. Get out of the tub.” He proceeds to cry, and I say, “why are you crying?” He says, “I wanted Dad.” I say, “Why can’t I get you out?” He says, “because I love Dad.” I say, “And you don’t love me?” He says, “No.” So, this was seriously 3 minutes ago and I am drying my eyes while telling you my story. I know he doesn’t understand the full concept nor meaning of the word love, but in some senses he does. I know that he prefers his Dad sometimes because they wrestle and all that, but I never thought he would say something like this. I want to tell him I’m hurt, but how do you explain this to a 4 year old? He says he loves me because I say I love him, and I know he does, but I’m just upset right now. That is why my thoughts are all jumbled.

My younger son has Hand, Foot and Mouth disease right now. It apparantly pops up around late summer, early fall and mostly affects kids under 4. Yesterday, the child watch found an occurance in their staff, and that day after Alton’s nap he awoke with a sore in the corner of his mouth. It looks a lot like a fever blister, which Trevor’s family has, and I started thinking maybe it was just a coincidence, but then I saw a bunch of sores on the inside of his mouth. It supposedly lasts 3-5 days and there is nothing you can do about it besides comfort him with Tylenol. It’s so weird, but this happens when your kid is around other kids.

So, yesterday’s good day is pretty much gone.