Tomorrow...

We load up the UHaul tomorrow afternoon.

I'm going to miss this little house.

When we moved here a little over two years ago, I was thrilled beyond belief. Even though it's a little smaller than our first house, it is infinitely nicer. Being away from the parsonage (and the church building next to it) was such a relief. I didn't feel like my life was on display for the whole world anymore. The relief was tremendous. Probably more important was that the move represented a turning point in our lives - not just a change in address, but a change in our relationship as well. It seems like big events have always come every other year for us for some reason.

I've loved this little place, and I'm about it leave it all behind. We'll have even more anonymity in Chattanooga - it always amuses me to hear people call it a "small town" - try living in Jasper, Tennessee! If people don't know your business, they'll make something up! I relish the thought of people not feeling a need to use me a fodder for the rumor mill.

While I am going to miss Grannie & Peepop something terribly, there isn't much else here that I will miss, save the house itself. (The crazy neighbors? Not so much.) I'm looking forward to being so much closer to everything - Olive Garden? Less than ten minutes from my house. Sam's? Fifteen-minute drive. School? Instead of leaving myself an hour and a half (just in case traffic is bad), I can be there in ten minutes. Oh, and I won't be shelling out $800 in gas every month, either. What a relief! I'm excited about being near movie theaters, funky grocery stores, and whichever hospital I wind up working at. I'm looking forward to making new friends and being closer to my girlfriends from school.

And I'm really looking forward to the search for our own home - hopefully in the next couple of years or so. I'm stoked about the idea of having my house, that I can decorate the way I want. Very cool prospect, indeed.

Stuff Box, Tape, Repeat

There is one constant in packing - the more you pack, the more you have left to pack! I think stuff seems to multiply itself. Weird how that works!

Still, progress is being made. Most of my scrapbook stuff is boxed or secured in its current container. The couch has been relegated to a sad spot on the patio, awaited a trip to the dump, because even though it still looks okay, the springs are completely shot. There is no hope, and Jeff doesn't want to move it. The kitchen is almost done, except for those few dishes that I simply must leave available. Even Braeden's room is mostly packed, although none of the boxes are sealed because we keep finding things to go in them...

What a chore this is, and yet I can't help thinking how blessed I am to have a houseful of things that I don't really need. I have been graciously allowed a lot of things that let me express my creativity, and for that I am so thankful. Sure, it's a pain to deal with dusty old boxes (and the sneezing that inevitably results), but each time I seal a box, I have to smile and say a quick prayer of thanks for my many, many, many material blessings.

Moving Makes Me Sneeze

It really is unbelievable how much dust can accumulate in places that you wouldn't expect to see dust at all. For instance - how exactly does dust get underneath a stack of books laying flat on a bookshelf? Amazing. And every time I pack a box, I start sneezing. I'm actually considering digging out my N95 respirator mask (from nursing school) to keep the dust out of my nose and mouth. Lemme tell ya - that is a mark of desperation on my part!

So much to do, so little time. It's strange, though - I don't really dislike packing. There's a certain element of organization in the process that I find to be cathartic. Yeah, I know. I'm weird. In a month from now, we should be somewhat settled in our new place (Can't say "home" because we're just renting. Someday, though, we really will have a home we can call our own.) Then I'll have one more month and it will be time to start my last semester of school. It's so cliche, but my, how time flies!

The Need to Feel Wanted

Have you ever just felt unnecessary? That your presence in a situation was no more than a waste of good air? Or worse - that you wanted to be necessary and relevant and wanted - but you were decidedly unwanted?

I'm struggling with that right now. I have a helping spirit - I crave the opportunity to work and help others. It's a large part of the reason I chose to suffer the torment of nursing school - so I had a good excuse to be there for somebody.

And yet... it seems like I am never quite wanted. Or like I don't know exactly where I fit. I feel like I have so much to offer, but nobody is interested. I volunteer, I beg, and I plead - please let me help! - but the pleas fall on deaf ears, it seems. Somebody else is already doing it. I have all the help I need. There's nothing for you to do. Okay, you can help - but then we're going to take it all away from you first chance we get. On second thought, never mind. We don't need you. We don't want you.

Unecessary.

I went in last week for my clinical evaluation, and my instructor told me something that surprised me. She says I have "great leadership potential" but that intimidate some of my classmates.

Huh?

Me? Intimidating? I just don't see that in myself. Most of the time I'm scared to death, and I just forge ahead to try to get the job done without showing everyone else how afraid I really am.

Intimidating? Is it because I talk a lot? Is it because I answer questions? Is it because I jump in when I see a need? Or do I come across as a bossy, loud, obnoxious know-it-all? (That is certainly not my intention.)

I'm trying to examine myself, to see if that's really true, and if it is - why? Is it something I can change? Is it something I should change?

And perhaps more importantly, is it the reason no one wants me?

(Note: These are not rhetorical questions. I've got my big-girl panties on. Fire away at will if you see something in me that I don't see in myself.)

Instruments for Sale!

I can't tell you how much I hate to do this, but it must be done... There's no room in the new house for the piano, and I can't play my clarinet anymore, thanks to a root canal on my front tooth.

So....

Would you be interested in buying a 3-pedal Baldwin upright piano? It is about 20 years old. My parents bought it for me new when I was 13. It's in very good condition, although there are some external scuffs and a couple of water stains where coke cans (or something like it) were left on it for too long. The keys are all intact. One of them sticks slightly, but it's not a significant problem and could easily be fixed. It hasn't been tuned in many years, but there is no internal damage to it whatsoever. I will try to post a picture soon, but right now I can't get to it for all the boxes in the way!

Also for sale: a Yamaha wooden Bb clarinet, Model YCL72CS. This is a professional clarinet. I purchased it new in 1990. It is in excellent condition. Keys are silver plated, with very little sign of wear or tarnishing. There are no cracks in the wood, and the corks are completely intact. The pads are also in great condition; none of them stick and all are intact. It was never played outside; only indoors for concert season. I have two mouthpieces; the Yamaha one it came with and also a Vandoren 11.1 mouthpiece. Also included are Mitchell Lurie reeds, an extra ligature, and a hard-back case. It is a beautiful instrument.

I am willing to negotiate prices on both items. If you are interested, email me at mandalee65 at yahoo dot com.

These are two of my most treasured items; I would love very much for them to go to someone who will cherish them as much as I did.

Utter Disappointment

Words don't adequately express how much is sucks to work your butt off, sacrificing any personal free time you might have otherwise had, just to get an A... and come up two points short.

Yeah. My final grade for the semester was 89.79. I have been up and down for two weeks, thinking I would have an A, then thinking I'd lost it.

Nothing like setting a goal and then utterly failing. Because the GPA doesn't show how close I was...

Frickin' sucks.

Cricut Cartridge Storage: Solved

A couple of days ago I posted about my limited-space-in-new-home dilemma. I can now mark off one item from the to-do list. Using the idea I got from YouTube, this is what I came up with:

First, the case. I originally thought it was a briefcase (I remember Dad having a similar one when I was a kid.) Turns out it was actually a cheap toolbox. I was at Lowe's looking for something and came across it by accident. It cost $21, plus tax, of course.

Inside is a flat thingie that I suppose was supposed to hold tools. I didn't want all these pockets, so I took a seam ripper to them. It looks ugly, so I used the other side, which was blank to start with.

I took round Velcro pieces and lined them up on the insert. I put the sticky side on the cartridge so that the fuzzy stuff wouldn't fall out into the Cricut and possibly mess it up. Here is the insert, mid-process.

I have 22 carts - not a lot, but more than some people, I suppose. (Mom probably has twice that many.) Anyway, as you can see, I still have room for five more on this side before I have to flip it over.

Here's the inside - not only do I have plenty of room for all the booklets, I also put in my tool kit and the paperwork that came with the Cricut. Niiiice. Even if I fill up the insert with cartridges, I won't run out of room for the booklets. Of course, some of that is because I have a lot of Solutions/Lite carts, which don't have booklets, but still. Somebody suggested tearing out all the pages from the booklet that were in languages I didn't need, and that helped considerably, especially with the older booklets.

Cool, huh? My next task is figuring out how to store my Sizzix & Cuttlebug stuff. That's going to be trickier, since the sizes are not uniform. Any thoughts?

Pending Storage Problem

Although I am looking forward to our move, the house we are moving into is much smaller than my current one - two tiny bedrooms, a tiny bathroom, a tiny living room, and a tiny dining room. (Thankfully, the kitchen is about the same size as what I have, otherwise I'd be in serious trouble!)

All these tiny rooms mean I will have to do some serious downsizing. I'm actually heading straight into panic mode, because I've always had an office/scraproom. Always. I've got tons of stuff - dozens of stamps, a Cuttlebug and a Sizzix Big Shot, four different plastic paper storage drawers, a big Cricut and several cartridges, and miscellaneous tools, embellishments, and idea books. Then there's my PC and laptop, two different printers, and a scanner. Oh, and my textbooks. I have no idea what to do with it all! I've invested far too much money into the die-cutters to get rid of them. I can weed out the paper and a lot of the embellishments, but that's about it.

To further complicate matters, Jeff thinks I should put it all in the basement - which is not insulated and will require at least one dehumidifier because it leaks on one side. I'm very hesitant to put my stuff down there, particularly the paper and electronics.

So... I need storage ideas - and cheap ones. Jeff doesn't want to look at it, whatever I wind up doing with it, so it's gotta store easily, neatly, and unobstrusively.

For the Cricut, I'm considering this really cool setup from a fellow Cricut junkie. It was originally intended for ribbon, but works beautifully for Cricut cartridges. And who would have thought of using plastic canvas to make dividers? Brilliant, I tell you!

I found another possibilty on YouTube. I love this idea, because the cartridges are completely out of sight.

Anybody have another suggestion? I figure I will focus on one problem at a time, starting with the most expensive stuff. lol

Help? Please....

Movin'

God is pretty incredible. He has a knack for answering prayers 1) in a completely unexpected way; and 2) sometimes even before you knew you needed to pray for it!

Case in point: Friday we found out that we have two months to get out of our rent house, because the owners want to sell. It had been a pretty rotten week for me, and that was not exactly welcome news. We really had hoped to wait until I graduated to move - sometime in January. When Jeff called to tell me the news, I just sat there, kinda numb.

Five minutes later, he called me back. A friend/coworker of his had offered to let us rent her house back at the first of the year. She's getting married and heading to Nashville in a few months. We turned it down, because we weren't ready to move yet. The last we heard, she had several other possible renters.

Jeff called her right after he broke the news to me... and guess what? She still didn't have a renter, and was actually relieved that we still wanted it! Seriously, how awesome is that? Within hours of being told we had to move, we had a place to move to. Absolutely amazing. It was as if God was just holding it for us.

Oh, and did I mention the house is in Chattanooga? Yeah. We are getting out of Marion County. Finally.

Woot!

Rattled

I'm utterly exhausted - emotionally, physically, mentally. Too much is coming at me at once.

If you are the praying type, I would appreciate it greatly if you'd offer up one for me.

"Don't lose your sense of responsbility in the sea of God's sovereignty."

- James MacDonald

Letting Go

In my lifetime, I have let go of many things... dreams, people, beliefs... but perhaps nothing so important letting go of as the things that have hurt me.

There's another word for that letting-go: it's forgiveness.

I've learned many valuable lessons about forgiveness in the last few years. First and foremost, no human can possibly forgive of his/her own accord. Without help from God, it just isn't happening. I've learned to pray to God to teach me how to forgive, and it was one of the best prayers that He answered. I also learned that bitterness and forgiveness are incompatible - the two won't coexist. You have one, or you have the other, but you never have both.

I have forgiven much; in many ways, I have forgiven more than I ever dreamed I would have to. But now I'm at a crossroads of sorts, and I realized today that I have more to forgive, more to let go.

(I know I am being unbearably vague here, so I apologize, but in the interest of not hurting others, ambiguity is going to have to suffice. Moving on...)

I have been holding in a great deal of hurt. It wasn't coming from any one person in particular (rather a large group of people), but it was more of an accumulation of years of keeping my mouth shut when I wanted - needed -  to speak, of being brushed aside by others when I desperately needed a friend, of bearing the knowledge that I or my family was the source of someone's gossip session, of years of frustration over a situation that I just couldn't change. I was talking to a group of friends today, and it dawned on me that I am painfully bitter. Though I learned the lesson of forgiveness in a very real way a few years ago, I hadn't applied to other areas of my life, and the bitterness was eating away at my soul.

So I am making the decision today to let go. I still love the people involved (although I don't think the feeling is necessarily mutual, and that's okay), but it is time to let it all go. I choose to forgive. I choose not to wallow in the past, but to forge my way into the future without being weighed down by the hurt from a situation I couldn't improve. No more excuses. No more complaining. No more bitterness.

God is good. He has blessed me richly, starting with His forgiveness for me. How much more should I forgive others! I don't want to blindly pass His blessings because I am so focused on my own hurts.

I am letting go... and moving on.

Stuff, and other assorted random thoughts

First, I am going to shamelessly plug my recipe blog. If you are one of my handful of followers here, and you also happen to enjoy cooking, check out Real Food - Real Folks. My updates are somewhat sporadic, I admit, but there is still lots of good stuff that that I feel somewhat guilty about keeping to myself. :)

Second, Braeden and I are on the way to recovery. He has, as usual, ran ahead of me down the road a bit, but I'm better, too. My biggest frustration now is my ears - I still feel like I have permenent earplugs and I am more than ready to be able to hear again!

Third, life is good. I feel exceptionally blessed right now, and thankful to God for all He's done for me.

Fourth, unfortunately, a blessed feeling does not get the studying done... and I have a test this week. So bye for now. Have a blessed week!

"You'll please God with your attempts to show the respect that your husband, His beloved son, deserves - not because he does everything perfectly to deserve such reverence, but because he is divinely and uniquely created in his heavenly Father's image."

- Shannon Ethridge, Every Woman's Marriage: Igniting the Joy and Passion You Both Desire

What a Day...

I get sinus infections from overblown allergy reactions at least 4 times a year - sometimes more. Usually it starts with icky nasal drip, and within a week has progressed to a full-blown, green snot, chest congestion, sinus headache mess. I generally try to avoid antibiotics because I get these infections so often that I don't want to become desensitized to the antibiotics; it's only when I am really desperate that I resort to going to the doctor for meds.

Today I got desperate.

I'm not the only one who is sick. Braeden has progressed with the same thing I have at about the same time. The reason I gave in and took us both to the walk-in clinic today is because in the wee hours of the morning, I woke to find two things: 1) Braeden was standing by my bed, bawling his eyes out because his ears hurt; and 2) I had no idea how long he'd been standing there, because my good ear hurt so much I could barely hear a thing. It took me several minutes to realize that Braeden hadn't had a bad dream; he had a raging earache. We spent the next two hours medicating with ibuprofen and heat pads to no avail. I eventually told him to play video games at 3:30am in a desperate attempt to distract him from the pain. That lasted about 30 minutes, then he came back with me. Finally I hit him with a heavy dose of Benadryl, which blessedly knocked him out.

By the time I woke up, both of my ears felt like someone had jammed plugs into them, and pain was radiating from my ears to my jaw to my neck. It hurt to chew, it hurt to stand up, it hurt to hiccup, and it hurt to blow my nose. Incidentally, I was also so incredibly congested that I could barely breathe through my mouth; thank goodness I have a prescription inhaler, or I'd have been in trouble.

So off to the doctor we went. At clinic #1, we waited 15 minutes because the desk lady was ignoring us, only to find out it's not a walk-in clinic until 4pm. So we drove halfway across to the county to the only other walk-in clinic available, where we waited three hours for a doc to tell us what I already knew - that we both had raging ear infections and I had a sinus infection to go with it.

I got in the car to leave... and it wouldn't start. No surprise there; it always does this to me at the worst possible time. I have to turn off all the electronics in the car, turn the key over as if I was starting it, and wait for ten minutes for the security system to reboot. It is a total and complete pain in butt. After the allotted ten minutes was up, I started the car, put it in gear - and it promptly died. Guess what? It wouldn't start again. So I got to wait another ten minutes, with a cranky kid in the background begging for something to eat or drink (by this point it was 1pm and neither of us had anything except a few sips of my coffee).

I finally get the car going and we head to Wal-Mart with the prescription. I dropped off the script and took B to Taco Bell. We came back to for the meds, only to find that 1) they still weren't ready; and 2) one of the scripts for B was out of stock.

By this point I was ready to throw something. My ears were hurting so much I was almost in tears. We went home with 2 of the 3 meds. Then I had to work for a couple of hours... I missed school tonight because Jeff is working and by the time I got finished with work, I wasn't going to make it anyway. I logged into eLearn to find that my last test score went from a B to a C because they dropped questions I got right.

Seriously... I'm halfway expecting the house to burn down. Given the day I've had, that would be about right.

However, I am also struggling to be more content and thankul, so after this (very long) ranting post, here is what I am thankful for:

1) my eardrum was not ruptured. Hopefully I won't experience any permanent damage (I've already lost a good bit of hearing and can't afford to lose more)

2) we were able to get antibiotics for me and B. The one I have to go back for is just a prescription combo med for B.

3) The car did eventually start

4) I got a nap and felt a little better

5) I also had to have a steroid shot, and now my jaw and neck don't hurt.

6) Being at home tonight instead of in school means I have time to work on my clinical stuff from Monday that has to be turned in

7) I have friends from school who are sending me notes and audio from class tonight.

8) I have Grannie & Peepop! They were ready to come all the way down the mountain just to bring B some food at the doctor's office (didn't, though, because we couldn't have food in there.)

Maybe tomorrow will be better, eh?

What if?

What if... what if everything you ever believed, everything important that you ever held to be true - what if it all suddenly turned out to be wrong?

What would you do? How would you react? Would it leave you devastated, or would you be glad to "see the light?"

Daleks & Geekery

I am such a geek, and I am totally proud of it! Recently I started watching the newer Doctor Who series, and immediately fell in love. Today I ran across this video of inflatable Dalek toys, and I want one!!! Who cares if they are meant for preschoolers? I can squeeze in!

Dex

I just realized I never posted any pics of my new baby! I am most definitely Dexter's person - he follows me everywhere I go. I love him very muchly! :)

Eh?

Blog troubles... I tried to redesign but what you see is NOT what I put in.

Back to the drawing board...

Well, It Snowed

Granted, we did not get the massive dumping of snow that the northeast has - but for this part of the world, one inch is a big deal, and a six to eight-inch snowfall will be talked about for years. The sub-freezing temps have kept it around for a week, and I must say I have enjoyed every minute of it.

Braeden had multiple "accidental" crash & burns.

I admit that the getup is a little goofy, but you can't exactly buy snowsuits in the South, so a little redneck improvisation is called for.

Snow cream! Never had it before, but made it this time. So good!

Sooooooo pretty!

Sizzle surprised me by hanging out with us for a while.

Jeff & B made several attempts at sledding without a real sled, and eventually gave up.

Snowman attempt. They quickly got bored with this, too.

Don't know if you can tell, but this kid had a seriously runny nose!

After failed attempts at sledding and snowmen, the boys decided to build a fort - which was, in my book, a seriously cool thing to do. They packed snow into a large Rubbermaid container to make the blocks.

There are always unexpected side effects to redneck improvisation. In this case, Jeff bought B a set of adult-size rain pants to keep his legs dry. The pants were way too long, so he rolled them up and used small bungee cords to hold them in place (yes, you read that correctly). The mesh lining on the underside of the pants collected a ton of snow, and the poor kid was carrying around about five extra pounds of white stuff on his ankles!

When it was all said and done, we had two very entertained boys. I wanted to be out there with them, but that's the thing about working from home - you don't really have an excuse not to show up when the weather gets bad.