adventure us

when i look at my life - it seems pretty straight forward and mundane. nothing exciting or flashy. nothing out of the ordinary. it's pretty normal.

Especially in comparison to my sister's life. she trapeses across the globe living in thrilling locations. just this week she is moving from DC to Hawaii. her life seems like one romantic whim that is long lasting and enviable in every way. she is beautiful and stunning and drinks in the life all around her.

Or take my other sister. she has an incredible husband who fights crime. two angelic children who bless every life they touch. and lives in a town where she is surrounded by loving family and simple delightful pleasures. her beauty is stunning, and flawless, even without make up or combed hair.

But when other people look at my life they say things i can't bring myself to agree with. 'oh how glamorous', or 'my my, you always have something going on'...

How do I live my own life and see all the gifts God pours out into it every day? How do I stop compairing it with my sisters'?
How do I do that?
I love life, and i don't, for the most part, feel like i am wasting it away. but i do see that i am looking side to side all to often to truly be able to progress in my own.
that being said, how do i live my life with intent without getting self centered?
maybe if i live for others and for how i can affect them, or show them love - and if i put myself and my desire for a wild adventurous life aside - then i won't even notice whether or not my accomplishments stack up.
that's it.
who the heck cares if i can travel as much or as exoticly as others? who the heck cares if i have pictures from every country on the map? but if my days are spent looking for God and knowing Him more and letting Him use me to enrich others' lives - then that life will be fully lived. and heck, he may want to use me in a way that requires travel and excitement. but if He doesn't, it won't matter. because getting to see His face at all, even in this drudge, is worth so much more than experiencing all the glamour with out Him.

I'm reading Ecclesiastes at the moment. it is so convicting and true and deeply encouraging toward the life that I know I should desire. A life with Him as the point and His Glory here and Heaven there as the goal.


Ecc. 3: 11-14 are my favorite right now.

oh man oh man

i did it. it's done.
confirmed.



i am going to spain in september.





i can not express my gratitude to my God for providing the money and time off work to go and adventure and see the creation He has lavished upon us.

bath and body asylum

before my first foot was even over the threshold...
"hiya welcome in today! are you doing alright?!" imagine a thick bobby's world mom's minesota accent...
'just fine' i manage to make my way past her when she turns to another victim
"ope, i didn't snag you in time," she says following me "you've just gotta try this"
i turn around to see if she is talking to me and before i can complete the revolution she has squirted a massive amount of some bubbling foam stuff on my entire forearm.
"it's body mousse!"
'oh my'
"it's like pop rocks for your skin!"
big cheesey grin
"go ahead, rub it in!" giggle like an excited little girl "isn't the best!"

i start to rub on it (hoping to rub it off rather than in) and when i look down i stare aghast at the bulk amount of glitter all over my self. what has she just done to me?
it this a new form of slipping people a sleeping drug so she can drag them back to her lair and give them whatever she has taken that makes her so ... so..... um.... happy?

'neat. thanks'
"oh yeah, i just love it i play in this stuff all day. i end up making my own scents because i can't stop trying everything..."

there's another patron in the store by this time and she is being equally accosted. when i saw a break i made a b-line for the sink and tried to control my facial expressions as i scrubbed of all that freaky-cric de soliel-11 year old birthday party favor-glitter. why?!?!? don't you know people are ontheir lunch break from work and don't want to be leaving a pixie dust trail of sparkle all over their office, computer, water cooler, car, desk chair, door handles, elevators, lobby, phone, key board........
have a heart lady.

anyways. everytime she would come over and force another sample of some product onto me and the other girl in there, the other girl would mutter something under her breath when the lady walked off. one time i caught 'that's actually quite disgusting'

i was cracking up.
this lady was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYyyyyyyyy to happy to be peddling obnoxiously smelling lotions and sprays to unsuspecting customers...
way way over the top.
tone it down a notch sister.

anyways, after about ten minutes of enduring this voice and crazyness the other girl and i were both about ready to get the hell out of there. she beat me to the register. the lady then tried to push more last minute products on to the poor woman.
"do you want the new tote? it just came in!"
'no no thank you. this is all i need.'
"oh i know what you mean, i have more bags than i know what to do with, everytime a new one comes out i have to buy one for me and one for my daughter. you know what else i do? i put my bady spray in the refrigerator so that it's really cold when i want to refresh myself on a hot summer day. do you want a bottle of our new scent?"
she gestures to the outrageously priced over-scented travel size bottles of lotion by the register
'no thank you'
"okay! great! what's your phone number? email address?"
'i'd rather not give you those'
"great have a wonderful day! bubye now!"

by this time i was developing a headache. i don't know if it was from her high pitched vocals or the confusion of odors my nostril were trying to stave off... but all i knew was if i didn't escape soon i mught just die there.

I manage to make a clean break at the pressure spot. no additional purchase no exchange of personal information...
just pay and leave
pay and leave


however, while i was at the register she was trying to do about five other things, like talk on the phone, take messages, blurt out scripted sales attacks...
she was so rude to the girl she was working with.
RUDE
it was weird to see her spilt personalities so prominantly displayed. and sort of sick.

i felt so bad for the girl who was just trying to stock the shelves, do her job and not cause any trouble. this lady was bossing her around and practically shouting about all the new lines of this and that.
to her, scented goop is life. the rest is just details.



i love people who love what they do. but i don't love people who've sold their soul to some product or company at the expense of their sanity and ability to be a real human being.

I have this friend...

and she was at the pool with a bunch of her other friends. her apartment is not even a block away from the pool. how convenient!!
so anyways. after hours of laying in the sun and splashing in the pool with said friends she decides it's time to head home for a bit before she has to go out for the evening.
"be careful on your long trip home!"
one of the friends shouts after her.
not fifteen seconds later she is carefully making her way over the stepping stones that cross the pool to the exit, and you guessed it.
she was on the last stone and her flip flops and the wet surface did what they always do - cause some serious slippage. however, she caught herself.
'whew that was close,' she thought to herself
then
BAM
no sooner had the htought left her head that her other foot slid off the edge of the last stepping stone.
she dropped her bag and caught herself and pulled off an elaborate spin move as she went down. she ended up sitting down really hard on the edge of the pool and then just giving up and laying down really hard.
aha!
she started to laugh, the irony of her friend's statement hit her immediately. 'be careful on your long trip home'... classic.
but no one laughed with her. no one even flinched. not even the guy sitting a foot away from her.
she looked over at her friends on the other side of the pool. gave a thumbs up and yelled, i think i broke my legs!' haha.
nothing.
they just gawked.
so she got up. praised God that her bag with her cell phone etc had not gone in the pool and hobbled off.
when she finally made it to her building and up three flights of stairs and sat down at home, she realized the pain was legit.
she had a right knee swolen, bruised and gashed. a left knee with a green and red raspberry the size of an egg. and a big toe with a sizeable chunk missing from the top.

oy.

about two hours later one of the uncaring pool-friends called to see if she was okay. then they laughed about it.

we've hit a milestone here

so i have this sweet dress that i love. and i have acouple of pairs of shoes that sort of go with it. but really - neither is just PERFECT. well, i want to wear that dress tonight but the shoes that go better with it are so tall and precarious. (the evening's event will involve plenty of stairs - this does not match up) the other shoes sort of lessen the dramatic flare of the dress, but their ok. so i spent my lunch break at the mall. i looked and looked in every single shoe vendor there.




people, let me tell you.
if you had asked me six months ago if i thought i would ever be able to go to every shoes store in the mall and walk away empty handed. i would have said you're crazy.



that's right. no new shoes. don't get me wrong. i saw plenty of shoes that i wanted and felt that 'i can't live without you feeling' toward, but none that served the intent of my original persuit. so i managed to reign myself in and practice some SERIOUS self restraint.


but i am still left with the pickle of having no perfect shoes to wear. i'll probably just wear a different dress and let the preferred one wait until it has some sole mates...
get it?
sole... soul... it's a homonym.



so that's it for today.

shoeless joe out.

Willem Dafoe and answered prayers

Well this past weekend was full.
and it FLEW by. I can't believe it's time to trod through another week.
Let's recap:
FRI - found out my sister got a job in hawaii and will be moving within a couple of weeks.
Cooked dinner for my grandparent who had come to stay the weekend with me. A dear friend came over and the dinner/visit lasted several hours.
SAT - made breakfast for grandparents. Friend came back over.

**on friday night the brief mention of a kitchen suppliy store in a town an hour+ outside of Austin somehow morphed and exploded into the next day's plan. I was really unsure about what the heck was going to happen if the store wasn't as cool as I said it was and we had driven an hour and a half both ways to go walk around in it. **

around 9 am all four of us loaded into my civic and we took to the open road. on the way there I kept praying that God would bless the trip and make it worthwhile and a joy for my grandparents. so we got there and hung around the courtyard near the kitchen supply store and shopped around. then we went to the bluebonnet cafe. God blessed us with the sweetest waitress ever and she handled my grandpa and his ornery self like a pro. she made their day. they loved it so much. Thank you God for arranging that and making the drive and trip so perfect.

then we got back to my apartment. my grandpa slept and my friend and grandma and i sat in my living room and talked for about three hours.
when he woke up we all drove down to the river and took and evening riverboat cruise. it was so fun.

Willem Dafoe sat next to us. you might remember him from Spiderman or finding Nemo or The Aviator or one of the other billions of movies he's been in.
we're pretty much best friends.

anyways then we went to this radical burger joint and ate and then returned home.

SUN - we went to my favorite resaurant for breakfast. THE kerbey lane. then on to church. after church grandma and grandpa were supposed to follow us to lunch and then leave town from there. well we get on mo pac and immediately five or six cars get in between us and them. so brian, who is driving, slows way down to try and make people pass so we can decrese the gap. but no one will pass. i have never seen anything like it. pretty soon we were leading a parade of cars going 50 miles per hour on a highway were the average is 70 mph. and after this goes on we eventually loose visibility of them. so we pull over at the exit we were going to take to see if they were going to catch up. they never came. so we proceeded to drive around for over an hour looking for them.

they don't have a cell phone and have never driven in austin on their own.

we took every possible route they could have taken in between when we lost sight and where we pulled over. nothing. only hopelessness.

so what can you do?

we prayed about it and then went home to make lunch.

after a while my mom called and said they had called and left a message on the answering machine saying that they were on their way home.

good.

well the trip from here to there only takes 5.5 hours. so after about 7 hours and they still weren't home, it was getting a little worrisome.

it turns out they had to stop for some storms to pass.

but they eventually made it home.

whew.

thank you God for answering a weekend full of prayer.

you are so sweet and faithful.

break it down now

okay. remember how i told you about my apartment managers and the ants and the counter top and there's probably other things i left out before...
well, hold the press, the following is the most recent development on the case.

I go in on Wednesday to pay rent, resign my lease and cordially bring up the couple of unsolved issues with my apartment.
I talked to her about the counter top. she was acting like it was news to her. so i retold her the situation and said a guy had come by two weeks ago to look at it and nothing has happened.

well later that day she called to tell me that the contractor was going into my apartment to look at the bathroom counter and see what color he needs.
wait.
it's my kitchen counter that is buldging out everywhere.
are you sure? he said bathroom.
yes ma'am. i live there. it's the kitchen.

anyways. then she calls back to say that he will be fixing it first thing tomorrow morning. fine.
whatever, so before i leave for work i follow their instructions to clear the affected counter of everything so that he can work on it.

i return home at about 5 pm.

i look down to kick off my shoes where i usually do. there's always a pair of crocs and flip flops by the door. but they were gone.
where are my shoes?
i look. they're in a pile across the room.
also across the room, on my dining table is every single object and applience from my kitchen. what?
the pictures from the wall were piled on my chair in the living room.
how odd.
then it hit me.
the stench of varnish and laquer started to fill my head. it was so very strong. if i had not been distracted by the missing shoes when i firt came in i am sure i would have been knocked plum over.
i went and opened the patio door and turned all the fans on hi to try and move that odor out.
then i go and look at the damage to the kitchen.
first of all my, now bare, feet stick to the carpet on the living room side of the bar. that's not natural.
then as i walk around to the tile the stickiness continues.
all my counter tops.
all.
every single one
is shiney as can be and reeks.
i go to test and see if they're even dry. nope.
still wet.
then i check the area of original concern.
he apparantly just touch up painted the parts where you could see the wood bursting through. it is still swolen and still unsightly, only now it's shiney.

so here it is the next morning. before i left for work the counters were still sticky.
last night when i went to do my laundry i found my espresso machine, toaster and cutting board on my washer.
odd.


so that's all pretty weird.
i felt really peeved when i first arrived home. so i marched down to the little office and sort of acted like a B. i was still friendly and definitely didn't blame anyone or make the girls feel like they were dumb or anythig - but i made it very clear that whatever was done to my apartment was not even close to a solution to the problem i had asked them about. and now my tile and carpet are sticky with varnish, my apartment smells horrible and all my counter tops are useless.
i made sure i wasn't going to be expected to pay for this when i move out.

whenever i had a bit of an attitude - the managers were suddenly helpful and nice and a true pleasure to deal with. i guess that's i am supposed to act to them all the time.


anyways.
i get back to my house and notice that my bedroom door was closed.
and some stuff looked like it was a little altered.

then,
the toilet lid was down. it was not down before i left.
THEN the toilet paper roll was empty. this is a pet peeve and i most certainly did not leave it that way in the morning. and i had swept my bathroom floor a night or two before and there was shoe crud all over.

EWEWWWWWWWWWWWw.
if you are a handy man. and you are coming to someone's home. do your business before you get there or use the public pool bathroom a mere staircase away.

ugh. and that's a courtesy that is aside from not disassembling thier entire kitchen and heaping things in various hiding spots around the house. especially when you're not even planning on fixing the only problem that you were called in for.
and if you are going to thoroughly coat someones kitchen with slow drying strong smelling sticky gross ugly shiney crap, maybe give them a heads up about it or do it earlier in the day...
also - never in my life have i heard of someone painting a coating on the smooth satin finish formica counter tops...
who said that was a good idea?


well anyways. now my kitchen is still torn down and smells weird and i am supposed to cook dinner tonight for my grandparents who will be staying all weekend.

perfect.