A Fly

Right now I'm sitting in the office at my home and laughing at a fly. You may think that I've lost it and I am completely bored, but this might just be the dumbest fly on earth. It keeps flying around and around and running into the mirrored closet doors. You would think that after about 50 times of hitting the closet (and I'm not exxagerating) that it would fly off to someother part of the house. Nope, it's still flying into the mirror. Fifty One... Fifty Two... Fifty Three...

School Begins Without Me

Well, school has finally began again for the students in Riverside. I didn't have to go back with them because I am in the process of taking the CBEST to become a substitute teacher. I resigned from my job of 6 months at Madison Elementary School and I will never have to be a instructional assistant again (unless I have this lingering desire to go back and do that again)! I am sort of excited to sub and sort of not. Here are my fears:

1) I won't pass the CBEST when I take it in October and will look stupid and have to retake it in January or February.
2) I will get bored and lazy between now and the time all my paperwork goes through to actually sub.
3) I will be called every morning at 5am (the butt crack of dawn) and I will be a grouchy sub all day long or I'll pick up the phone and hang it up never getting a sub job ever.
4) I will have to take a TB Test for the eightieth time in three years (really it would only be the third time)
5) I will have to be fingerprinted again and the same lady who took 30 minutes the last time will be pulling at my fingers again and again. (Apparently I have fingers that don't fingerprint well, who knew?)
6) I will not get a job at all and all my precious time and money will be wasted (not to mention the fact that I expelled a lot of brain cells taking a test to be a sub)

Hopefully none of that will happen or if it does at least I'll have already gone over the scenario several times in my head. Until then I guess I will just enjoy my time off and pray that I pass the test!!

Friendships are Hard

I wasn't going to post anything about this, but I feel as though I need to get it off my chest.

Have you ever thought that your life was going pretty good and you had no worries about anything? I felt like that until about a week ago when I went to check a message I had received on myspace. I had received a message from a girl I went to high school with and who I had always considered a really good friend. The message went a little something like "...now that we are mature and older... why didn't you like me in high school?" Now grant it I'll even admit that I have never been the greatest friend to some people, but I thought that after being out of high school for 7 years that I wouldn't have to deal with something like this. Apparently it has been festering with this person for sometime. The one thing that I can't understand about the question she asked me is that I never didn't like her in high school and I have never not liked her. I have disliked peoples attitudes in the past, but I have never even thought that about this person. I am an extremely sensitive person and when I read this it inititally hurt me, then it made me mad and now I have no idea what I'm feeling or what to write back to her. I have been mulling over it for a week and praying about what I should say, but I really dislike confrontation. I obviously don't want to be harsh in writing back and I don't want her to think that I don't like her, but I want her to know that I was hurt by her statement. I guess I'll just continue to pray about it until I figure out the right option.

Book Meme

Okay, I've been tagged by my wonderful husband, Mike to do this Booke Meme thing. Here goes:

1. One book that changed your life: I don't know if this changed my life, but it changed my perspective on dating and marriage. Boundaries in Dating by Henry Cloud and John Townsend.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: I read books constantly and I read them multiple times. I think it's because I read fast. I have read Roots by Alex Haley about 4 times (you know you've read a book a lot when the cover has fallen off) and I've read all the Harry Potter books twice.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island: I would want a book that would keep my interest so yes even though it's the go to answer I am going to say The Bible becasue even though it comes as one "book" it's many books that all have extremely interesting stories. I would probably want The Message version though, just to be able to read it in a modern day language.

4. One book that made you laugh: As You Like It by William Shakespeare. I know it's weird that I can laugh at Shakespeare by just reading it instead of seeing the play, but I studied it so much in high school and in college that I can read it pretty much understanding every word without looking it up. Plus any play is more amazing when you can read it and imagine what it looks like.

5. One book that made you cry: I've cried while reading a whole lot of books, but the one I can think that made me cry most recently was (now please don't laugh) The Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares.

6. One book you wish had been written: How to Cook a Meal and Clean Up Without Actually Doing Any Work! I hate cooking and I really do not like having to clean up everything after I've cooked it. If there's a book out there like this please let me know.

7. One book you wish had never been written: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. Now I was an English minor in college and I love reading, but this book is the only book that I've ever gotten Cliffs Notes for. I had the hardest time reading it (I fell asleep everytime I opened it up) and I will probably never read it again.

8. One book you’re currently reading: I am reading a lot of books right now, but if I have to pick then it would probably be The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. I see it every time I go to the bookstore, but I never buy it.

10. One book you’d like to write: Junior High Drama: On and Off Stage. I have wanted to write this for a while. I think I would incorporate original scripts in it and make it a book for junior high students and maybe give them insight into a few things. I don't know, it's all still in my head. I think I would also like to write a book for wives of youth pastors. I just wish there was something like that out there that I could have read or could read, maybe there is and I just haven't looked. I feel like thenwife of a youth pastor is such a strange ministry to be involved in because there is this hidden thought among parents and volunteers that you are the "lady youth pastor." My working title is: Oh Crap, I Married a Youth Pastor! Now What Do I Do? :-)

Okay, I now tag John Snyder and Stephen Perry. They are the only two that I can find that don't have this on their blogs and I have no idea if they even read my blog, but I guess it's worth a try.

Going Public: San Francisco

I know it's been an extremely long time since I've blogged and I'm sure the two people that read my blog are itching to know what I've been up to. :-)

July was extremely busy for me, including the first week of August. Here's what I did:

After getting back from vacation Mike and I leapt right into Going Public. I was not looking forward to it. You see, Going Public is a Choir Tour/Mission Trip, more emphasis on Choir Tour than on missions in the past (at least that's what I'd been told). I have nothing against Choir Tour, especially since I went with my church all four years of high school, but I was not looking forward to going as a leader on a trip where I wasn't going to have much to do. Yet once again in my life I was wrong and I found that I enjoyed it a ton and was sad when it ended. I learned a whole lot of things on the trip. The first being that high school students are amazing and no one should ever underestimate the things they can do and the difference they can make. I would have to say that the trip in its entirety surprised me by the amount of missions type things we did. About two-thirds of our students were in the city of San Francisco doing things like working at the Rescue Mission, doing manual labor at a church, fixing up a place called Page Street Baptist Center near The Haight District and Evangelism all over the place. I was with the one-third of students that were in the suburbs at Western Hills Church doing a Kid's Club and Sports Camp. I was able to help with the Kid's Club which I love doing and was right up my alley.

I also learned that those punk kids in junior high can grow up to be pretty amazing high school students. As a lot of people know I am not very good with clingy people or students who have no respect for adults or leaders. I had the opportunity to work on this area of my life while in San Francisco. I was put in a room with two other girls, one which thought that I didn't like her because she was such a punk in junior high (and yes she was a very punky, annoying kid in high school) and the other girl in my room is kind of clingy and says things that are very rude most of the time. I was actually very disappointed at first with my room assignment, but by the end of the week I'm glad that I was put into that situation. I'm not saying that these girls still don't do some things that I'm sure will get on my nerves in the future but I look at them in a whole new perspective now. They are both just girls that need to be loved and they need to be told that someone cares about them.

Overall, God gave me a whole new outlook on Going Public and I am definitely looking forward to going next year and making all new memories.

Oh! One absolutely, amazingly, awesome thing we got to do was go to Monster Park where the San Francisco 49ers play. We were able to go to the locker room, the field, the steps (I stupidly ran up thinking I could do it just like the high school students; almost killing myself and/or passing out I'm not sure!), and the press room (media and written).