A Cartoon of My Life...

Bullets With A Bang

• Has it really been a week?  Seriously?  It seems like yesterday.  All summers pass by quickly, but this one is nearly in the can.  All of my dreams of little projects I might start up have become dust in the wind.  I am left juggling the things I MUST GET DONE immediately if not sooner.
• SKOOL iz rite arownd thee korner...YIKES!
• I have exercised more this summer than I have any other time in my life.  Aerobics once a week, tennis 2-3 times per week and ZUMBA(a new addition) once a week.  My weight is miraculously...disturbingly the stinkin' same unchanged.  I am sure it is my completely unstructured meals.  It is always about the diet-exercise just moves things along quicker.  If you don't eat right, the weight stays the same no matter how much you move.
• My school plan of a co-op that isn't a co-op has become a form of co-op.  This new development has really caught me off guard and I'm in it up to my hip waders.  It is also an unmanageable size and the new focus of my prayer life.  I have no doubt that my children will love it and I will be finding a loophole to escape through.  I may have commitment issues.  God apparently has chosen to grow me this year which is unfortunate.  I had planned on blissful stagnation.
• Tennis is so much fun and addicting that I wish I had found it sooner-like in high school.  It is the only sport I have ever really truly enjoyed on every level.  I loved basketball, but no matter how hard I ran and trained, I was always sucking wind during games.
• I am completely overwhelmed by my schedule this summer.  I have some wonderful friends that I have not even had a chance to catch up with this summer.  That stinks!
• I have so much more to say but everything else cannot be contained within a bullet.  I need to write intensely soon.  My brain is overflowing with things that must be written about to have closure on them.  The thoughts are getting all overlappy and stuff swirling around in me noggin.
• I STILL love you completely, Monday-even when you ARE manic!!

Pro-crastination

Well, I will officially confess that I am not going to finish my life story anytime soon...this is a super busy time of year.  I am serving on the homeschool board for my support group again this year.  It will be a different experience for me since we only had one live meeting last year and tomorrow makes two meetings for this year already.  Last year, we made decisions over the phone and via email.  Everyone did their own job and did it well so it was a well-oiled machine but little socializing-we were all friends but the social thing just never really happened..  Not sure what this year will be like-I think it will be very productive and enjoyable with a heaping side of social.  Tomorrow we will see if we have good kid chemistry, I so hope that we do!

Today, I mapped out my history for next year and I will compile a syllabus for it so I for sure get it all in.  Math is simple-each kid has their own thing.  Writing and grammar will be a syllabus as well.  We have workbooks for vocab, spelling and handwriting (sadly, a lost subject in public school).  Geography, art and science will have many enrichment activities next year so I will only need to plan a few lessons a week for those.

My nerdiness is in full swing-I am starting to get excited.  So, it is a pro that I procrastinate my life story to get ready for school.  ( ;

Finish Line

The next two days are devoted to total start to finish fun, fun, fun.  Then, when we get home, we will try desperately to get in touch with every single friend we have not visited with yet this summer and remedy that. 

Then, I will call it good and try to finish my planning for next year.  (SCHOOL-blech!)

Summer, you are far too brief for me to get all my funning in!

Random

• I made over $60 entering stuff in the fair.  I got blue ribbons on my bread and a purple champion on my banana bread.  I feel like a chef.
• My summer is officially too busy.  Lazy days of summer?  Where?
• We partied all weekend with my in-laws and it was lots of good fun that was funny.
• I hope I look as good at 70 as my father-in-law does.
• I have 1/8th of the planning done for next year.  This is BAAAD.
• Kayla snubs me on facebook.  I'm laughing to keep from crying.
• Arrested Development is my new funny show.  It is so funny.
• I'm not finding enough time to exercise and this is VERY BAD.
• My time at the library is nearly up.
• I wasted 90% of it on facebook.
• Facebook is a time eater.
• Part 3 will come along soon.

The Story of Me...Part 2

As broken as I was, I took some positive steps in my life.  I gave up on nursing school-I was not cut out for it, not even a little bit.  I began communications courses instead...I wasn't sure what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew I liked communicating.  I got a 'real' job (after about 2 years of waitressing jobs) doing bank processing, one with benefits and a 401K...my hours were 12PMto 8PM so I could still PAR-TAY without affecting work.  I moved back home and started saving some money, paying off some bills and trying to grow-up a bit.  When I hit the final relationship/partying/bar scene bottom...I even began to change my dating/clubbing habits.

So now I was the new single girl at work and everyone wanted to fix me up with someone.  I was not interested.  I was trying to really look for someone who was a nice guy-not to marry, I had long given up on that fairy tale-just a nice guy to date.  My ducks were almost in a row, I was almost passing for normal.  I had hardly any friends left, by choice.  One of my good friend's cousin, Beth, became someone I was hanging out with alot.  She and her husband, Pete, had one daughter, Kirsten.  I became smitten with their family and the life they had.  Kirsten was a lovely toddler that was very picky about who she liked and she liked me.  Beth and I developed a very strong friendship.  She was teaching me how to be a wife and mom, though at the time it was all subconscious.  I had developed a pattern of going to their house a few nights a week after work.  One night, I arrived at their house after work and there was a Harley on the carport.  My sister and her husband had a Harley and I just loved it when he took me for a ride every so often.  I had worked with a guy when I was about 17 who took me for motorcycle rides and began my love for them...even though he rode me over the Brookport Bridge on it.  I was in a state of shock thinking about Pete getting a motorcycle.  When I came into the house teasing him about his cool factor going up...I was met with a guest who was the owner.  He was also the owner of some pretty awesome dimples.  He asked me if I wanted to go for a ride.

The Story of Me...Part 1

I have been letting what people think rule my life since forever.  Concurrently, I have been rebelling against those same people since forever.  As a child, the youngest of four girls, I wanted desperately to be accepted and embraced by them.  I was not.  Instead of being sweeter to try to woo them, I chose instead to be their worst nightmare.  Passively, of course, I'm not stupid.  Later, I ridiculed their lifestyles and judged them mercilessly.  After that, I enjoyed shocking them with my bad behavior.  I never received the love and acceptance I wanted from my siblings.  In fact, I'm not sure I always have it today.

In school, I wanted to be well-liked by my teachers.  If there was such a thing as a teacher's pet, I wanted the dish to have my name in bold black lettering.  I wanted to be everyone's friend.  In third grade, I wanted to make sure everyone went to heaven with me as well...but that is a whole nuther blog post.  I was willing to sacrifice anything I needed to to be liked.  This was also true as a young teen.  Though still a teacher's pet, I was often plugged in to some very unlikely behaviors.  My peers had begun to help shape my life.  I began a sort of double life.  I won't go into details beyond saying that I made very poor choices and still bear the scars from pleasing the wrong kind of people. 

I believed with all my heart that as long as I was smart, studied, made good grades, and was active in school activities, life would turn out well for me despite my double life.  I made many poor decisions that a kid without someone to look out for them makes.  I look back and marvel at the little jewels and marvelous people God planted in my life.  I never doubted for a second that he was my best friend or that he loved me.  I just knew I did not measure up in his eyes and behaved accordingly.  I was part of a very active youth group that profoundly affected me, shaped me in wonderful ways.  However, I always felt like an impostor.  I just wasn't 'good' like they were.  At some point I never even tried to evangelize anymore...I was just too messed up and I knew it.  On my score sheet, I did not even really believe God would let me into heaven...I just knew He still had not given up hope that I might straighten up.

Eventually, I gave up the hope of Heaven.  It was then that I set out to do ALMOST everything I was big enough to do.  If it was wrong, I intended to give it a try.  My relationships with friends were very conditional.  You let me down and it was over.  I have a lot of wonderful people in my past that I dumped because they were not what I needed them to be.  My relationships with the fellas were needy and desperate with a side of maliciousness.  Miraculously, I was never involved in an abusive relationship.  Probably because I usually chose men I thought I had power over.  I was a very troubled young lady.  On the outside, I believed I was living it up...on the inside, I was too broken to ever be repaired.

Quick!

This is just a quick post featuring my favorite format, bullets.

• I insisted the girls pack very carefully.  I went through everything they packed for this outing.  I reminded them to pack socks, undies, toothbrush, etc, misc.  They did not forget anything.  HOWEVER, I forgot to pack underwear for MYSELF!!  (Thank you, God, for laptops, wi-fi, mapquest and Dollar General.)  
• I hate communal showers and rooms without personal bathrooms.
• The seminars here are awesome.  Three loud and clear messages impacting me today and forever more:  1.  Love means caring about someone else's relationship with God more than their relationship with you.  2.  Severing a relationship over a difference of any sort effectively says, "I want my way more than I want this relationship."  OUCH!  That is really mean when you look at it that way, isn't it? 3.  Our church is light years from other Churches of Christ.  I sat at a table with an elderly couple that spoke on how they long for younger families to attend their church.  In the next breath, they criticized their new young pastor's wife for not always attending church with her teen aged son on Wednesday night and questioned her Christianity to me, a total stranger.  They pursed their lips and moved away pretty soon after I told them my kids often have to talk me into going to church on Wednesday nights.  Come on young families, come feel the love, NOT...love is the answer they seek.  All you need is love, love...Love is all you need.
• This is the most beautiful college campus I have ever been on...probably should mention that I have only been on four other campuses (campi?) and two of those were community colleges.  However, do other college campi have porch swings sprinkled throughout the yard?  Porch swings are awesome.
• My daughters are all three having several best days ever in a row.  They may even forgive me for the whole PBC debacle.
• I should be sleeping...wi-fi, you spoil me.