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Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Cranky

I'm so cranky...

What is my basic malfunction here?

I don't know...

I'm a little...um...uninspired, I guess.

We are waiting...waiting...waiting...

For the loan to go through...

For the house to close...

For my cold to pass...

For the weather to warm up...

For 10 minutes of down time...

For 10 minutes of ALONE time...

For a return phone call from Colorado...

For Spring to really get here...

For bare feet and BBQ...

For the right time to say something....

Just waiting, waiting, waiting...

Its like Christmas Eve...

Like that DisneyWorld commercial...

"I'm too excited to sleep!"

HA!!!

Soon, our whole world is going to open up like a beautiful daffodil and just spread sunshine all over the whole world...

But for today, its just a growing stem waiting....

And it makes me CRANKY!!!

On another note, I've been going through pics of me and my beautiful sister to put together a new album project...and I found all kinds of things that just took me back...WAY back...

Here is sunny look back...

Maybe if I concentrate on this, I'll get uncranky!

On the Grass orig

Oh, and in case you haven't seen Ali Edwards CafePress stuff, you should. Now THAT is inspiring...I want to design my own quirky saying and have some T-shirts made...tht would be fun!!!

Peace, ya'll!

Monday, March 20, 2006

Stealing Joy…

Its been a week of challenges and changes…

House reality set in…bank checks and documents to sign and proof of this and that and some other thing. I am amazed at the fact that there are still con artists in the world who manage to fool banks, with all the documentation that is required. I’m saddened by the fact that my document package alone cleared an acre of forest. It’s a challenge to conceive why they need all this stuff….and further a challenge to find the things they need in the mountain of boxes still packed into my in-laws garage…

House reality has arrived in another fashion as well…we moved all the way across the country with no bed, no microwave, no toaster oven, no patio furniture, no kitchen table. We have a new living room set and all the cooking utensils a person could want in a lifetime (I even have an ice cream maker!) but no bed. Both totally fun and totally crazy to think of all those rooms with little or no furniture!!! It’s a challenge to not get wrapped up in what we don’t have, to focus on what we do have…and to breathe deeply every once in a while so I don’t hyperventilate from both the anticipation and the ever-growing to-do list.

My family lost a long-time friend to cancer this week. She was instrumental in my life – somebody who had both rules and fun. I explored a life through her that I would never have explored, and found out what having a fun teenage life could be like. She was both strict and permissive, a person who could say “why not?” and “this is why not” in virtually the same sentence, a person who believed life was supposed to be both hard work and hard fun and all about the people you gathered around you and the joy that shared lives brings. I was going through old pictures and remembering the last Christmas we all were together, how fun it was…how crazy it was…how absolutely HER it was. A short visit, with a long memory. It will be both a change and a challenge to imagine life without her in it.

There have been challenges with both our families’ collective health this last week– mental, physical and emotional. Severe headaches, allergies that manifest in strange ways, sleepless nights for no apparent reason, un-anticipated marriage issues, colds that won’t end, hurdles that require extra effort and time that just isn’t available, nonsense bickering that escalates into blow-out fights, excuses for bad behavior and apologies that never come, ex-husband issues that appear out of nowhere…and the list goes on and on.

It’s that last one, that ex-husband issues that really got my light-bulb turned on…

Through that one thing, I realized how very, very blessed I am. I’ve got everything I want and need in my life right now. So many amazing and wonderful Blessings are on my horizon, so many joys hoped for that are now manifesting in my life. And for that ex-husband issue to pop up amidst all the other sad, mad and unruly things this week…that was my clue.

The devil is, once again, all up in my business and the business of our families. He is attempting to steal our joy at the amazing things we already see on our horizon, the beautiful and stunning Blessings that we already know for certain will manifest. It would be so easy to get caught up in the worry and the fretting over these things.

So, my biggest challenge of all this week was remembering…

Remembering that I am a child of God, the child of a King, a princess…

Remembering that He knows the plans He has for me and that those plans are not to harm me…

Remembering that all things work together for God’s greater good…

Remembering that in all things, and in all seasons, I am to rejoice in the Lord…

Remembering that He doesn’t give me any more than I can handle with His help…

Remembering that above all else, I am eternally blessed...

Praise God!

Peace, everyone!!!

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Shopping for a home…

I know, I know, I know…I’m a bad bad blogger!!

In my defense, I got a new job three weeks ago and I’ve just not gotten used to the schedule...How sad, don’t you think?

Well…we took the plunge and are buying a house – our first house. We are SO excited…and because we are in North Carolina rather than California, we were absolutely overwhelmed by how much house is available for relatively small prices!

It was an exhausting search…

But I learned some very important things in this process…

For starters, “home” means very different things to very different people.

The vast differences in homes – all I the same relative price range – was astonishing..

There were large homes, small homes, large lots, small lots, old homes, new homes, and just every little thing that you could think of…

But more than that – more than the vast difference in the real estate itself - what shocked me was what we found behind closed doors.

To be honest, there was a certain amount of equality in the outsides of the homes we saw…all in good neighborhoods, all with grass, trees, landscaping, new paint or trim, lots of curb appeal.

But inside…

Inside is where the vastly differing definitions of “home” can be found…

Some had dark, small rooms that were darkly furnished…

Some had a different color in every single room in the house…

Some were just old and neglected and badly in need of TLC…

One had bats…

Another was so filthy that I didn’t want to leave the foyer…

One was so well taken care of that the 1970’s Goldenrod appliances looked as though they were brand new…

Nearly every one of them had a room painted red, burgundy or orange (including the home we bought!)

Some had a different wall paper in each room…

One had grass green carpet on one room, navy carpet in one room, burgundy carpet in one room, peach carpet in one room…and so on…

Some had Louis the 14th style furniture…

Some had very modern décor…

Some had lots of family pictures…

One had no art hung on any wall in sight...

All of them struck me in one similar and fascinating way...

Somebody calls each of these houses "home."

Stunning...

Peace, everyone!