Merry Monsoon Christmas

So...I don't really feel like telling the whole story right now...I'll post it later...but it turns out that it's raining in our apartment. The rain shower was contained to the kitchen last week...but gravity, doing what it does best, has spread the rain to the living room now. I'm pretty bummed. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that big of a deal...but i feel overwhelmed by all that's up in the air currently. I mean, we don't know if we're going to be able to live there while repairs are taking place...we don't know where we'll live if not...we don't know where we'll store our stuff...and I really don't want to have to be somewhere else for Christmas.

Everything each of us owns TO OUR NAME is in that apartment.

And just answer some questions that I know you're thinking:

1. No. The apartment manager cannot move us to another apartment because they're condos. Each unit is individually owned and there is no "manager".
2. We DO have renter's insurance, and that will cover any belongings that are damaged.
3. The people who own the unit above us ARE responsible for the damage to our unit, but they moved out 6 months ago when they foreclosed on their unit.
4. No. We're not going to move permanently. Our landlord has been GREAT to us, and we don't want to hang him out to dry during this difficult time. He lost his job a few weeks ago and I'm pretty sure our Rent is the only income he has right now.


Oh, and on top of all this, the pilot light for the heat keeps going out, so we don't have heat. YAY.


Merry....
Christmas.

If you pour a pan of boiling water on the sidewalk...

It'd freeze almost instantly. You don't believe me? Look:

It's hard to see that, but it says that the temperature right now, at 12:45pm in the afternoon...in the midday sun is 1 degree. ONE DEGREE above ZERO.

This morning when I got up and was heading out to drive myself to the bus stop (so that I don't have to drive in the snow) the radio said it was -18. The windchill was -36.

Yesterday our pilot light went out. Which meant no hot water. No hot water means no heat, because our heat runs off the hot water. So...all day in the negative-degree weather we had no heat. Our landlord is usually so good about taking care of things for us, but he didn't ever call me back, and once the sun went down it was clear we wouldn't make it through the night without heat. So, we called Mike...because Mike almost always comes through for us...and he came over and re-lit the pilot light.

This morning while standing out in the negative-degree weather my toes got really cold. So cold, in fact, that I almost started crying. When I got on the bus the windows had ice on them. Not frost. ICE. On the inside.

Someone tell me why I live here again?? Maybe because of this:

Babies don't like me

Last night we had our commUNITY group over...and one of the "members" (or whatever) had to babysit so she asked if she could bring the baby. I said sure. I figured there's no reason she can't come just because she has this one baby. Now, bring over a toddler and it becomes a dangerous situation. Our house is puppy-proofed but not toddler-proofed. You know...toddlers have thumbs and can open things...whereas dogs just paw or nuzzle things. Anyway. She brings the baby over and as soon as it crossed the threshold of our house it started crying. I said..."Babies generally don't like me." and they just laughed. Y'ALL! That stinkin baby cried the entire time. We tried everything to get it to stop. Nothing worked. They changed her diaper, they fed her milk...everything. She just kept on crying. I felt very glad that I was not caring for this child. I even found myself thinking..."for heaven's sake, kid...will you STOP crying??" and then I thought, my goodness...it's a good thing I'm nowhere near ready to have kids.
Then, because we were talking about babies, M and E, who are engaged to be married in April 09 started discussing babies. E said, "I think we're going to try to have a baby in September 2009." and I thought for a minute...then I said, "Well, you had better get started on that now, because you have about 9 months and a couple weeks to get that going." and everyone laughed a lot. E meant to say 2010, and so she was like ?????? but it was really funny!

Today I called an English Muffin a "McMuffin" about 453 times. Fatty is as fatty does.

And Heather finally posted again! I was so glad to read it, except the parts about how she got pregnant. Thankyouverymuch. But Anyway, it's a sweet post about how much she loves her children. They are sweet children. :)

OK...I'm doing better today. I didn't get any more sleep than I was getting, but today I had some coffee and it's really helping me!

Let's waste time chasing cars...

Hi.

I have no idea why I always feel compelled to say Hi at the beginning of my blog posts. Jules joked me about it the other day, and until then I hadn't realized I do it. But the proof's in the pudding...or whatever the saying is.

Anyway.

Oh, also random: my title. Just a song playing on the radio right now. Whatever.

I'm having a hard time right now. I've started riding the bus, and although I cannot tell you how thankful I am for not having to drive to work everyday now, and also for the fact that the bus is not like ghetto and scary, I am TIRED. I have to get up much earlier than I would if I were driving, and since I'm new to the bus thing, I'm still having to perfect the amount of time I need to leave my house in, etc. Also, I get home around 7 instead of 6, which means LOTS to do at night and not much time to do it in. Also, I keep getting car sick. The driver is doing a great job, it's really not his driving. It's that I can't see out. The windows are constantly and completely fogged up because it's like 3 degrees outside and if you sit in the back part of the bus you just can't see out. And I like to spend my hours on the bus reading...so that adds to the car-sickness. So, I'm trying different seats, different sections...i don't know.

The point is...I'm really really exhausted. I haven't been getting enough sleep and this morning I got up, looked in the mirror...and I have black bags under my eyes. BLACK. like someone punched me. Hi. I'm 24 and I have the eyes of a 55 year old woman. YAY!! I'm trying to go to bed early but it just hasn't been happening. I actually am starting to feel a cold coming on...I think that's partly to blame on the tiredness and partly to blame on standing in the dad-blasted cold all the stinkin time.

Tonight is our CommUNITY Group...and although I'm really glad to see everyone...I'M SO TIRED. and lots of times people stay over until like 11. That CANNOT happen tonight. I have no idea if it's too rude to tell everyone that I'm super tired and that I'm shutting down at like 9. Is that too rude?? (i have no idea who I'm asking...Heather???)

I feel like crying. I feel like laying in the exam room and crying. Because I'm tired. Because I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Because there' s still so much to be done. Because my house is a disaster and people are coming over tonight. Because work is SO busy now. Because I need to do things like eat and shower and I just don't feel like I have enough time. :(

It's too bad I'm not riding to work in an RV. That's SORT OF like a bus...and it has a shower...a kitchen table and fridge...and I could probably even sleep on the way. Anyone want to drive me to work everyday in their RV???

Yo! What's up with all the unity???

I think I've mentioned a couple (or 456) times that me and my roommate/best friend host what we call a community group on Wednesday nights. It has been going on a little over a year now. It's called a Community Group because our church is fairly large and we don't have Sunday School (thank the good Lord!!) and so it's a way to branch out and meet people and "do life together". It's a fairly new idea (or at least the idea set in motion is fairly new) having started a little over a year ago. The preacher was challenging the "congregation" (i hate that word) to start a small group where people can come over or meet at a central location and just do life together. When all this occurred, me and Jules had only lived here for about 8-9 months and we didn't have a lot of friends. Actually, we had 2 friends. TWO. So, Jules said, "why don't we do it!?" which is totally out of character for her! She's usually a little bit introverted and holds back when it comes to meeting new people. I'm usually the one who's like, "Yeah!! Let's put ourselves out there!!" But the roles were completely reversed at that moment. She said we should do it...I said Heck no!! But, in the end she talked me into it--basically by saying that if we wanted to make friends and have a life here then we needed to do SOMETHING. So, we signed up...took the "class" and started our group.
The first Wednesday we had a couple come. They were super nice. We hung out and had a little finger food tray. I think I remember thinking that they'd never come back. I figured that people have enough "crazy" in their lives without adding us to the mix. The next Wednesday night that first couple did not come. (I knew it!) but a new couple came. They were really nice and seemed pretty normal, too. I figured they wouldn't come back either, but they did. And guess what!? The first couple came back too. I think the next time we met was for a Christmas Party. There were 6 of us there. It was the first time the two couples had ever even been in the same room with one another. Me and Jules were both going out of town for the next week or so for Christmas and then there was New Year's so we didn't meet for 2 Wednesdays. I figured we would never see these people again--that they wouldn't come back after the holidays.
So, January 2008 comes along and the church hosts this thing where all the groups set up a table and a sign and you stand there and you advertise your group and people can sign up to get emails and info about your group. We had people come. About 8 signed up. Maybe not even that many. I can't remember. So I emailed the group list and the next Wednesday we packed like 10 people in our house. I remember thinking...Oh, these people will get a taste of my crazy and they'll never come back. But they did. They kept coming back. And they brought friends. (I have no idea why). At some point we were packing 25 people in our house. TWENTY-FIVE. I still couldn't figure out why 25 people wanted to hang out with us, and I kept saying, "They'll never be back.
In the beginning me and Jules sat down and really discussed in what direction we wanted the group to go. We knew that neither of us felt we wanted a very serious, straight-laced Bible Study of sorts, because neither of us are straight-laced or very serious. We knew we wanted to provide a fun atmosphere, and we knew that we wanted to create a comfortable environment where people could come and make good friends that they could count on and build relationships with. So, that became our main focus. We started out with a schedule of doing Dinner nights, Game nights, Themed-snack night, and Bible study night. That went on for months, and was pretty successful. We had a couple "members" who were coming every week, but sort of putting pressure on us to create a more strict "Bible study" program rather than a "fun" program. We weren't sure what to do, and we really didn't want cause anyone to leave, so we started trying to please everyone. There were some who wanted a little bible study but still fun, some wanted only bible study and some said they got enough bible study elsewhere (i.e. church, other groups, etc). We weren't sure how to please everyone and we started to dread having the group. We tried to assign volunteers to particular weeks to do a Bible study, but then people wouldn't show up and we'd be left scrambling. We refer to that time period as "the wonder years" because it's a WONDER anyone stuck around. It was terrible. The group felt strained because we were strained. It was a very rough patch. Finally we had to sit down with the people who were causing a rift and tell them that we had gone astray from our original focus. It was a very uncomfortable thing for us to tell someone, "hey, if this is not the group you're looking for THAT'S OKAY....but we're not changing. Let me tell you about some other groups you might enjoy." I was constantly worried that we had stepped on some toes and that those people would gossip or whatever about us. But, eventually we felt we had done the right thing. It wasn't immediate, but those people who were unhappy with our group, they left and last I heard they found a group and were very happy. And we were happy too.
So, fast forward a few months. We no longer have 25 people coming...lots of those must have figured out how crazy we really are ;-) . We do have a core group of about 12 that come almost every week. We have new people email me almost every week who want to try the group out. Sometimes they stay and sometimes they don't but either way, it doesn't matter. I really feel like we are doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing.
So, now we don't have a set schedule of what "activities" we do each week. But we are trying really hard to come up with some fun things to do. During the summer we did a great job, with things such as Kickball games and swimming nights. We had Thanksgiving dinner last week, and in December we have all kinds of things planned. Including a Christmas party--where there should be more than 6 people, and almost everyone will know one another.
In the beginning if you would have told me that we'd still be going strong after a year, and that the original 4 "members" are still there, I would have laughed in your face. I would have said that you were insane, because people have enough Crazy in their lives without adding us to the mix. I would have said that we don't have much to offer and that people won't come over just to be bored. And I would have been wrong. As it turns out, we love these people who come over on Wednesday nights. They have supported us in every way possible, showing that they really care about us too. There have been times when Jules was out of work when we weren't sure how the bills were going to get paid. Without anyone else knowing one of the "members" gave us 1,000 dollars. ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Another person gave us 300 dollars. THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS!! People sacrificed what they had to help us out. And they haven't just supported us. They've supported each other. They've been there for one another. They've built the relationships that count and that they can count ON. They have friends they can call at 2:00 AM if something goes terribly wrong. And THAT'S what we were aiming for. We love our friends--and can pretty securely say that they love us too.
That's what CommUNITY is all about.

Thank you, God, for Turkey Day!

So, this Thanksgiving I couldn't afford to fly home, and let's face it...I wasn't making it on Standby, so Jules and I decided that we would just stay here and cook for our other out-of-town friends. Jules had to work most of the day, so we prepared almost everything ahead of time and just popped it in the freezer or fridge. It all went off pretty smoothly--I didn't even burn anything. I did have to peel the skin off the turkey because when I unwrapped the turkey it had this slimy snotty stuff all over it and I couldn't get it to wash off. So, i just pulled all the skin off. GROSS!! nobody wants snotty turkey. Later I got a little panicky because I felt like our turkey wasn't going to cook on time. It only took us a little while to realize the reason it didn't look like it was cooking was because it was naked. I took off it's (snotty) skin and so that made it a little more light pinkish than golden brown. Sounds appetizing, eh?

Well, anyway, we ended up with 6 people at our little intimate Thanksgiving Feast! I tell you, there's STILL some of that food left! Someone PLEASE come eat it!!!

And the best news of all, I didn't over eat. I ate slowly until I was full, and got up from the table. And seriously, I think that's the first thanksgiving in my life that I've done that!

Ok...now I have to go and gouge my eyes out until it's time to leave!!!