Oh, woe to me.

If you can tell me what movie that line is from, I'll give you a cookie! ;) Look at me blogging after only two days! See, I'm making an effort. If only I had this much motivation every day of the week...

SO! Watching shows like "Kids Say the Darndest Things" (I'm having issues with the word darndest. Surely that it is not in fact an actual word.) always makes me laugh. It also makes me take a step back and think about when I was a child how I misinterpreted the world around me. From a kid's perspective, things get pretty jumbled up, and generally parents have no idea their kids are even confused. Example? I grew up in the church. My parents were die hard Jesus freaks and so every Sunday morning, I would first attend Sunday School and then be dragged into what became known as "Big Church." Where my siblings, peers, and I got this phrase is still up for debate.. I think it had something to do with the fact that grown-ups were bigger than we were. At any rate, I have very vivid memories of the times spent in worship. Most of the songs I learned by heart long before I could read, so sometimes the actual lyrics to the hymn versus what I was hearing around did not always match up. I clearly remember standing between my mom and my dad as a four year old, singing at the top of my lungs: "He is exalted, the King is exalted, and I, I will praise Him!" Little did my parents know that I had no idea what the word "exalted" meant. In fact, my little girl brain registered "exalted" as "salted," and I spent numerous nights pondering why in the world we would want to salt Jesus. But who was I to question the often bizarre and absurd world our parents lived in? You know what I'm talking about.. that strange, almost 4th dimensional realm that, as kids, we saw adults circulating in. Grown-ups had strange grooming rituals ("Mommy, why are you putting that green slime on your face?") and even stranger mating habits (we all remember how our faces contorted in horror upon being given the knowledge of procreation). I can only imagine how much Mason (the little guy I nanny for) is picking up from me. I tend to spend a lot of time talking to him as if he were an adult rather than a child.. sometimes I don't even notice I'm doing it. I will jabber on and on about life and things he should know and what surfaces or objects he should avoid because they are crawling with germs and deadly bacteria that could, at any given moment, stage a coupe against our healthy immune systems. And while we're on the subject of nasty amoeba's, if you have a child that is still in the phases where they want to stick everything in their mouth, I strongly suggest NOT having a cat that is allowed both indoors and outdoors. I almost had heart failure when I noticed Mason chewing on something, only to discover it was a feather from a dead bird the cat, Milton, had dragged into the house and generously deposited on the rug in the hallway in front of the bathroom.. I was convinced Mason had become infected with some horrid bird disease.

With all that said, it's funny how we, as adults, take certain things for granted. I'm not talking about people or money or what not, I'm talking about things that just are. Case and point? The garbage disposal. When was the last time you really sat down and thought long and hard about how the garbage disposal works and where all that junk in the sink goes? Well, my last time was in fact today. Our sink has had a leak for heaven only knows how long now, and neither Anna nor I have gotten around to call in the little man to fix it. We were not surprised when the sink started backing up. But when Anna turned on the garbage disposal, the problem made itself more than apparent. I said to her, from my spot across the room on the couch, that it appeared to be broken, and she agreed. She then mentioned that she had tried to collect all of the little ends of the Otter Pops I had cut off into the sink, but maybe some had escaped. I stared at her blankly. I had no idea what Otter Pop ends had to do with our congested sink. Anna, in her calm and patient manner, said to me, "Plastic isn't biodegradable." Again, a blank stare. I KNOW plastic isn't biodegradable, but again, what did that have to do with the kitchen sink? All of a sudden, I started to feel the earth tilt on it's axis.. something was not right. Anna obviously knew something that I did not. This brings us back to the idea of things that just ARE. In Amber World, word association is a must. Because the term "garbage disposal" has the word garbage in it, I immediately assumed that anything you throw down the sink inevitably ends up at the garbage dump with last night's leftovers and Dan's holey sock. Apparently, friends, this is not the case. My entire life, I just assumed that anything that was small enough to fit in the sink hole and also frail enough to be chopped up in the disposal's metal teeth were fair game. But this is just not so. In fact, the garbage disposal actually ends up dumping into the sewer system along with the water being flushed with it (how I did not put those two together, I don't know). So really, we shouldn't be putting anything down the garbage disposal other than maybe food debris left over from dinner. Plastic Otter Pop tops are a definite no no, along with all the hard artichoke pieces I recall trying to jam down there... that body was probably a bad idea.. hmmmm.. ;)

I seriously do not know how I have gone through my entire life not knowing where the garbage disposal leads. In Germany, we didn't even HAVE a garbage disposal, so apparently the magic only happens in the United States. But it makes me a little nervous.. I mean, how many other things do I take for granted? I remember the first time I had to pull the garbage out to the curb because Dan was out in the field. The first time around, I forgot all together. Apparently, the garbage man does not have time to drag my garbage out from the backyard. German trash only gets picked up every other week, so by the time the NEXT garbage day rolled around, I was more than ready to get it out of my house before it grew legs or started talking. But get this! There is no magic "Trash Can Return" fairy! After days of our garbage cans being the only ones still sitting out on the street, the little old lady downstairs ended up dragging them back behind the house herself. Dan always did it without talking about it, so it never even crossed my mind that I would need to put them back. Along those same lines is my problem with washing my own car. I have four brothers and two dads, so there has never been any need for me to wash or clean out my own car. All I knew was that every couple of months, I would walk out to my car and find it fresh as a daisy with a wax job to boot. Obviously, the Car Wash Fairy had been running amock the night before. Imagine my surpirse when, upon getting married, my car started to get dirtier and dirtier without any explaination as to why. I had assumed Dan would be the new Car Wash Fairy. I guess the tights didn't fit.

Anyway, it's late, and I have to work bright and early tomorrow morning. I will be spending the day trying to refrain from using any words that Mason may subconsciously be storing away to use as blackmail against me when he goes through his terrible two's. Oh, and P.S., I looked it up. Damndest is a word, and therefore darndest gets to be a word by default.

That's How She Became the Nanny!

I know, I know.. I totally struggle with this whole blogging thing. At least my excuse is that I'm just really busy, rather than totally depressed. Ha ha. I guess I should update from where I last left off.

My job at Border's ended January 13th at the end of the holiday season. I must admit, I was pretty bummed when it was over. They offered me a job working in the cafe as a Barista, but I wasn't really feeling that. I had been praying about my job the entire time I worked there, and asked that if I was meant to stay there, that God would reveal that to me. Obviously, that wasn't in His plan.. but something even better was (I mean, of course it was even better! He knows my heart better than anyone else!). My good friend, Rachel, called me the week my job at Border's ended and asked if I was available to nanny for two babies, twice a week for three hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I LOVE kids, especially babies, so I was super excited to accept. The babies, Maddy and Mason, were 8 months old and 11 months old, respectfully, and their mom's are good friends.. so it made sense that they would share a nanny. I seriously fell in love with those kids.. they were both SO great! The next few weeks were rather rough, however, because Mason's mom, Amanda, and the full-time nanny didn't really get along.. I mean, she was a great nanny, but sometimes different personalities just get along better than others. Anyway, after those few weeks, Amanda offered me the full-time nanny job with Mason and I was more than happy to accept. Mason is the SWEETEST and happiest baby, ever. He's seriously a joy to be around every day. It's a good fit on multiple levels. Amanda and I get along great.. she's becoming a good friend.. and being a nanny totally fits my personality. I love the routine, and it makes the time away from Dan go by really quickly. Plus, the pay doesn't hurt either. :) Mason is 13 months old now, so he's just learning to talk and walk, which is super fun for me. My hours are great, and his parents are cool about letting me take him with me during the day to run errands or have lunch with friends. I love having such flexibility (well, as much flexibility as possible when you have a baby on a pretty set routine), and it makes working around my schooling really easy. I love being with Mason so much that I actually kind of miss him on my weekends and days off! Yeah, I'm pretty stoked about this job. :)

Seminary is going well. My classes started back up in January, so I've been pretty busy with that. I may or may not be pulling an all nighter tonight to get things finished up due to two of my classes ending on Monday. Ah, the joys of final projects and tests. I'm not really complaining though.. I really do love school. Sometimes I struggle with feeling like a failure though because I don't have my degree yet. I mean, realistically, it actually is a GOOD thing that I'm still working on my degree.. it's not like I've just been sitting on my butt doing nothing since high school graduation. I have a lot to show for the last six years (has it really been that long?!). And I know a lot of my friend's got college out of the way only to now have a degree they aren't even using.. so I think in the long run, it's all going to be worth the wait. But sometimes I get down when other friends are graduating with bachelor's degrees, and I'm still trucking along. Blah. I know God has a plan for me, though, and when I really stop and think about it, I know I'm on the right path.

Only 3 months until I get to see Dan!! He's coming for R&R sometime towards the end of June. Half the time I can't believe so much time has gone by, and the other half of the time it feels like the 15 months are just dragging on. We hit kind of a rough patch a couple of weeks ago.. we were really starting to feel the distance. It's totally normal, obviously, but that didn't make it any less sucky. BUT, our relationship is solid, and firmly grounded in Christ, and we're totally fine now. We're both looking forward to him coming home for a couple of weeks.. I'm way nervous as well. I seriously get butterflies when I think about seeing him again after all this time. We have some fun and relaxing stuff planned for his trip home.. we're going to stay at a bed and breakfast in Julian for four days and take romantic carriage rides and indulge in some spa treatments and ride some horses and llamas. That's right, I said llama's. We're also planning a night in LA to visit with our good friend Jeff and visit the tar pits (yeah, I'm weird and into that sort of thing). Mostly it's just going to be about getting used to each other again. I know it may not all be smooth sailing, but I have faith it's going to be a great reunion over all. It's weird to think of him here.. living in Anna and my's apartment, meeting Nandi for the first time, going through my normal routine's with me nannying for Mason and yoga on Monday nights with Morgan. But I'm excited!!

Let's see.. what else is going on? Oh! Next month I'm going to visit Amanda up in Chico, and then I'm going to swing into the Vallejo area for a few days and visit with Crystal. I'm SO excited to see both of them! Amanda and I always have a ball together, and I'm stoked to meet Crystal's boys. The last time I saw her, her oldest son, Landon, had just been born.. and he's three now with two younger brothers, so it's been awhile!

Please continue to keep us in your prayers! Dan has been moving all over the place in Iraq.. it's a little hard to keep up with him. :) He still appreciates all the mail, but generally doesn't have a ton of time to send out thank you notes. I apologize to anyone who has emailed me over the last couple of months and I haven't gotten back to you.. it's been a little crazy! Hopefully, I'll be better in the future. Oh, one last thing! There's a very good chance we will be going to Alaska next. We are SUPER excited about that and can't wait to start yet another adventure together!

Bare Naked

Are we having fun yet? Seriously. Bah. It's been a long week. I've been working crazy hours and for some reasons my emotions kind of feel like a wound up rubber band. I really do like my new job.. the people are great and I usually at least have SOME fun; I'm just not used to being on my feet all day, every day anymore. I think one of my main problems is I want to do well and I want to fit in. I'm a perfectionist, so it really bothers me when I screw up. And even though it's stupid, when I'm at work, I care what people think about me. AND, when customers snap at me, even when it's over something I have ZERO control over like prices or whether or not we can use a coupon, I take it personally. I think working is a hazard to my mental health..


I seriously feel out of sorts. Maybe it's the holidays.. and Dan not being here for them. Maybe it's the new job and being bombarded with so many new people and experiences. Maybe it's the whole Max-not-really-having-a-baby drama (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can ask me specifically.. I don't have the energy to explain the whole story right now). Maybe it's the fact that I feel like a freaking cow these days. Don't get me wrong.. I'm not like, depressed or anything. I just feel off-kilter. And I miss Germany. That's all there is, there isn't anymore.

"Do you ever have that dream
Where you're walking naked down the street
And everyone just stares?
Do you ever feel so deep that you speak your mind
To put others straight to sleep?
You wonder if anybody cares
Sometimes I think I'm the only one
Whose day turned out unlike it had begun

And I feel bare naked and I just can't take it
I'm getting jaded, no, I just can't fake it anymore
'Cuz I'm bare naked and I know life's what you make it
Wish I could float away to some other day

You ever go downstairs to start your day
But your car's not there
Yeah, you know the joke is on you
You ever try your luck with a pick-up line
But you just sucked
You tell yourself it wasn't you
And I know it's hard to hold it inside
It's days like these I run and hide

When I feel bare naked and I just can't take it
I'm getting jaded, no, I just can't fake it anymore
I'm bare naked and I know life's what you make it
Wish I could float away to some other day

It's all a state of mind
But I don't mind trying to find a way
To keep my head above the mess I make
What the world creates
Sometimes it feels so good to let it all fall."

The Good Stuff

I know, I know.. it's been like a million years since the last time I updated this thing. It's been a hard couple of weeks, and I haven't felt like dumping on everyone. The last thing I need is to come as super negative. I'm hanging in there though.. things have calmed down a little bit despite being in the middle of the holiday season. I snagged a job at Border's (for those of you who don't know, that's a book and music store that also sports a cafe) last week and have been working my butt off. I had forgotten how uncomfortable standing around all day can be. But the people I work with are awesome and we have a lot of fun, plus the discount is nice now that it's Christmas present time. For those of you who have seen Clerks 2, I work with a guy who seriously acts JUST LIKE Elias. Good times.

God has really been blessing my relationships lately. I take Max to community service sometimes during the week, and I always hate having to get up at the butt crack of dawn (we have to make it to the heart of San Marcos by 7:30 and cannot be late), but our time together is always really great. We laugh a lot, and get to talk about things that matter. That's what life is all about really.. relationships. How people survive without close, personal relationships, I will never know. It's such a vital part of life.. we definitely were not made to be alone.

Dan is doing well. He's moving around Iraq a lot, but has been getting lots of flight time over the last month or so. He really likes his newest location because he actually gets internet on his own computer.. which also means he has Gmail chat back. Woot! So we're back to talking every day.. SO great! July seems SO far off sometimes. And to think when it finally DOES get here, I only get him for like two and a half weeks and then I have to send him back. I'm not going to lie.. sometimes it seems overwhelming. I try not to look ahead.. I think I'd go crazy if I just spent all my time thinking about July. Instead, I try and take it one day at a time. Looking back, time has gone by pretty quickly so far. We're actually almost past the half-way mark until R&R.. crazy!

My friend Brittany is coming to visit next month! I'm super stoked. We're taking a trip to Vegas and neither of us have ever been, so that will be fun. She's never been to Cali, so it will be interesting for me to do the touristy thing. Hopefully she's not TOO disappointed. :) Ha ha. I promise to update more often from here on out. Now I'm going to take a nap. Yay!

Oh, one last thing. I saw the movie "August Rush" this last weekend with Rachel. It was a good one for sure! But remember to bring the tissues.

And the world spins madly on.

I'm in my dark place [said in a loud whisper while glaring]. If you've never seen Stuart on Mad TV, you have no idea what I'm talking about. Regardless, you get the point.. I'm in one of my black moods. I've felt it coming on for a few days. It's been a rather hard week, and I've had way too many social interactions. I'm kind of a loner like that.. seeing too many people in one week makes me edgy. It's now Friday night and I'm grumpy and I've opted to have a night in, by myself. I was at the Anderson's earlier today helping with fire clean-up (THAT was pretty depressing.. the work is so pain-staking and time consuming that even after cleaning for three hours, it barely looked like I had done anything!) and brought like 10 loads of laundry home to do for them. So my plan is to do laundry (it actually relaxes me), eat cookies and sunflower seeds, drink champagne, take a bath, and go to bed early. And I refuse to answer my cell phone, so nobody better die tonight. That's an order.

My little brother, Max (one of three), got into a GNARLY car accident this week. The car is totalled. How he walked away without getting killed is beyond me.. especially since his airbag didn't deploy. The details of the accident are still a little sketchy, but it's my understanding that both Max and the other car ran red lights and the other car didn't have lights on so Max couldn't see him.. they hit each other head on. Max was in his little Chevy Aveo, and the other car was a van. The van won. Max is ok though.

Dan and I could use a LOT of prayer right now. We're in the process of making the biggest decision we've ever made as a couple (other than deciding to get married), and while I can't go into details right now, it has the potential to change our entire lives. We really just want to follow God's lead wherever it may take us, and remain faithful to Him regardless of the consequences. But we're stressed, and tired, and Satan is very good at exploiting our weaknesses. So please pray that God grants us strength, wisdom, and patience to wait on His command.

Grey's Anatomy last night was rather unsatisfying. Next week a school bus full of children crashes, and some kid comes in with a pencil stuck through his eye from the debris flying around. Hopefully it's a little more gratifying.

When in doubt, call Mom and Dad.

Ok, so technically it's my dad and step-mom, but you get the point (my real mom lives too far away for me to run to her house when things get hard). Yesterday, my 7-month-old, 51 pound puppy got sick. REALLY SICK. She had crazy amounts of crap coming out both ends. She woke me up SUPER early to go out, and it was all down hill from there. By late evening, I was practically in tears not knowing what to do and completely overwhelmed. I've never owned a big dog, so dealing with one alone was especially hard. SO, I loaded Nandi and Madeleine into the car (Nandi puked in the garage on the way to the car) and drove like a bat out of hell to my dad's house (Nandi also pooped in the car on the way there). Debbie, my step-mom, met me outside to deal with Nandi as I was ready to have a nervous break down. Lucky for me (and my brothers) my dad and Debbie are GREAT at handling whatever we throw at them (and often times we throw more than any normal parents could handle at them.. we seriously tell them EVERYTHING). Debbie put Nandi in their backyard AND cleaned my car out for me. My dad made dinner for us, and I didn't even have to fix my own plate. By the time I went home, I felt like I was in one piece again, and Nandi's stomach had finally settled down. I would probably die during this deployment if I weren't so close to so much family.

What did Nandi get sick from you ask? Let me explain. Nandi is part rhodesian ridgeback, part boxer.. but mostly rhodesian ridgeback. She looks just like one except she's actually missing the ridge down her back. Way back in the day, ridgebacks were bread in Africa to be lion hunters and killers. They are the only dog in the world strong enough to kill a lion.. their name actually means "king of the lions." This means she extremely strong.. at 50 pounds, she can already over power me when she wants to (thank God for puppy school). I gave her this bone that would take a normal dog a couple of months to chew up. It took Nandi three hours. Though she was strong enough to eat it that fast, her digestive system isn't built to eat that much bone in one sitting.. so things didn't go over so well in her digestive track. Normally, she's smarter than the average dog.. but apparently not when it comes to her stomach.

Today, my dad and Debbie came over and helped me get my house in order. Everything is almost completely put away, thank God. It was really starting to overwhelm me and stress me out. With three of us working on it, things went really quickly. Things should totally come together tomorrow INCLUDING all of the stuff that belongs on the walls. Woot!

To close, I dyed my hair so that's it's closer to my original color. For those of you who don't know, I was born with bright red hair. The red has darkened a little bit over the years, but I'm still a red head. Somewhere along the line of getting it highlighted, it started to look rather blond.. and I got tired of it, and the upkeep it required. So we're back to red. I actually missed it.

Happy Halloween!

Just so we're clear, Halloween is by far my least favorite holiday of the year. I'm not sure what caused my aversion to it, but most of the time I'd rather just skip it all together. However, this year, I opted to dress the dogs up and take them to the Harvest Festival at RBBC. Nandi was a pumpkin and Madeleine was a dinosaur with a little caveman riding on her back. SO CUTE. Anna went with me so I didn't struggle the whole night trying to control both dogs. Nandi did a WHOLE lot better than we expected her to, so that was a relief. The festival was pretty crowded.. we actually managed to fill up the parking lot so people had to start parking on the street. And for the record, Anna was dressed like an 80's chick, not a hoochie. :) Enjoy the pictures below.

I just finished watching the Invisible and Captivity. The latter I don't recommend at all, but the first one was ok (although fairly predictable). I got to talk to Dan on the phone last night at like 2:30am. It was good to hear his voice, but sometimes the phone calls actually make being away from him worse. Sad day.

I'm excited it's finally November! BRING ON THE TURKEY!