Change

Finals are over, the students are gone, and things are quiet around my office. I. love. it. The end of the semester always gets me thinking about change and this semester has me thinking about change even more than usual. As you have previously read, this semester has been unusually tough for my family. After losing the two friends I discussed in the previous post, three more people connected to us in some way died suddenly adding up to a strange and humbling 5 weeks this spring. I'm in prayer for those families every day, especially on days like last Sunday (Mother's Day). So, when the end of this semester came, I was particularly happy to see the change come. I'm not always a big fan of change. I HATE uncertainty. I'm a planner. I like to know what's going on, when it's happening, who will be there, and why. I like schedules, calendars, and school supplies. Not knowing kills me. However, there is another side of me that loves change. It's that side of me that drew me to being a professor and spending the rest of my life in a college-setting. It's that side of me that felt my soul dying when I was in my first job out of college and I realized at Christmas that I didn't get to move out of the cramped office I shared with the Fran Drescher-like person I worked with and have that change that college always provided at Christmas. It's that side of me that feels refreshed to live in a life scheduled by semesters- fall, spring, summer, fall, spring, summer. So, while some of me hates change, some of me craves it and is loving the fact that I feel a calming sense of peace for this spring being over and summer beginning. Happy summer. May God bless the change and stability in your life.

The Office Snuggie

I know, I know, I know...we are terrible bloggers. Here I am enjoying my Google Reader subscription-- checking it almost daily for updates from all of my wonderful friends and seeing their beautiful Christmas pictures, reading about their adorable children, and what do I (we) do? Nothing. Not a darn thing. Not even so much as a Merry Christmas to the one or two people left in our tiny readership. Oh well. Thanks, if you still check in from time to time. It's a new year. Maybe we'll be better to the blogging world.

It's really a very silly subject that encouraged me to blog today-- the Snuggie. If you know me at all you know that I am a very warm-natured person. Typically, I like cool air blowing on me in the car. I'd much rather be cold than hot. My philosophy is, you can always put more clothes on, but there's only so much you can take off. Plus, I hate to sweat. However, despite all this, someone gave me a Snuggie for Christmas. Actually, I like it. It's blue and since Jack and I like to try to save money on heat by keeping our house cool, the Snuggie comes in handy.

I'm thinking of relocating the Snuggie, though. Since cold weather hit, I've found myself shivering in my office most days. I work in an older building and I love my office, but the windows are old and not terribly energy-efficient. It's typically rather warm in the summer and cold in the winter. While I have a space heater, the person in the office next to me and I cannot run our space heaters at the same time because when we do, we flip the breaker and have to wait for someone from maintenance to come flip the switch and give us our electricity back. So most days we stay warm in shifts. To alleviate this problem, I have an office jacket, office scarf, and office gloves (complete with the fingertips cut out so I can still type). I've recently thought about bringing the Snuggie in. How convenient would it be to have the full-length blanket over me (with sleeves!) when I can't run my space heater? But I'm torn...I always thought the people on the Snuggie commercial looked like cult members. I try not to be caught up in what others think of my appearance, but I also need to keep a certain sense of professionalism and dignity, even if I am cold. I can quickly hide the gloves if someone comes into my office, but the Snuggie would be more difficult to remove quickly. What do you think? Warmth or dignity?

Welcome to the start of school!!!

Our loyal fans may be wondering where the heck we have been!!! It's over two weeks since we last posted!!! It's amazing the earth hasn't split open and swallowed all of us whole!!

I can best sum up where we have been in just a six words....one short sentence. But first a story...

I was mowing the other day for dad (who by the way is recovering nicely), and I got a call on my cell phone. I didn't fully recognise the number (aka it wasn't a number that I had pre-programmed into my phone), however did think that the number looked familiar. So I turned off the mower and answered the phone. It was the nursing home that my grandmother is now staying in. It took several minutes of me saying "Hello!?!" to get someone to talk to me. It was Granny and the first words out of her mouth was, "You are alive!"

My response, and also my response to those who may be wondering where we have been, was....

"WELCOME TO THE START OF SCHOOL!!!!"

Seriously.....that was my response! :) I love my Granny, but one of the things that is weird is that some of our family members are having trouble realizing that for the rest of our natural lives come August , SCHOOL STARTS!! and with school starting, our lives get extremely crazy. However, things are starting to slow down a bit, so hopefully I'll be able to go visit Granny more often in the next several weeks.

Hope everyone else is doing well.

Jack

P.S. The phone conversation with Granny was good and we got to talk for a few minutes (I wasn't nearly as straight forward as I immediately was :)). I did get a chance to visit her a few days later, and it was good to see her.

Oh no...it's August.

Once again, August is upon us. Jack and I have come to learn that August tends to be a very busy month for us. It seems to have started when we lived in our previous location and were in charge of the campus ministry at our church. The beginning of the school year is always a big time in campus ministry so we usually had many big events with lots of things to coordinate, plus we both worked in schools so starting things up there added extra pressure to the mix. Living where we do now, August is still an insane month for us and as I turned the page on my calendar a few days ago it struck me that the days are upon us now.

So how are we doing now that summer is pretty much over? Well, the boxes are probably about 50% unpacked. I've basically completed the kitchen. I have some items to donate and some to store, but otherwise the kitchen is done and I love it. The other rooms are getting there. I've found myself staring at boxes of things now that I'm just not sure what to do with. I'm sure you have those items-- the ones that you really don't want to get rid of, but yet what do you do with them? That's the stage I'm in. We haven't hung any pictures yet because boxes have been lining the walls and it would be too much trouble to move them to hang pictures. So, there is still alot of work to do, but in time all of that will get done. It may be Christmas before it's done, but it will get there.

I survived turning 30 and I can now use the phrase, "well, when I was in my 20's..." I was able to get together with some of my friends from college, most of whom also turned 30 this summer, and we had a nice dinner. We all marveled at how strange it is that our college years were approximately 10 years ago and how old that makes us feel. I really enjoyed getting to see them and catch up.

Jack and I both had goals we wanted to meet for work that may or may not be met before school actually starts in a couple of weeks. I guess that is just the way life goes. I think God is trying to teach me to let go of my plans and be ok with going on his time schedule, not my own. So I'll continue to work on all of the things on my list and hope that this year's August goes well. Pray for us as we move through this crazy month.

Here a year...

It hit us this past weekend that we have been in the town that we now live in for a whole year (Saturday, June 20th was actually exactly one year). It's amazing how things change and yet how things stay the same. When we left the town we were living in we were very excited about moving, while at the same time very sad about leaving some of our dear friends behind. But here we are a year later and it's funny how things have changed. We are glad to be moving where we were, but as the saying goes "You can never move back 'home'." How true this has been. We are excited about being close to family, however this presents unique challenges (in SO many ways). We are excited about our jobs, however this past year has been very, very, very stressful on both of us (and unfortunately this doesn't look to be getting any better). We are excited about working with a ministry that has a leader and a church that strongly supports it, however the "perfect" situation really isn't all that "perfect". We are excited about buying a house, but the jobs that we (and everyone else) think that we should do before we move-in never seem to cease. We miss our lives in the town we left. We really miss some of the people we left. We miss the smiling faces of the students we left.

Will the other saying of "time heals all wounds" fix these problems that we seem to have? Who knows. Stay tuned! ;)

Grow in Happiness

Friends and loved ones...pray for us. I was sitting in the doctor's office this morning, reading the text book for my summer class (because of course I can't let any time go to waste) and I ran across these sentences: "Indeed, part of human happiness depends on not feeling overburdened-- at least not for too long. Few things are as debilitating as feeling frazzled by having too much to do and too little in the way of resources to do it." This is at least my third time to read this book and when I read those sentences I stopped and re-read them at least 3 more times. What a true statement to characterize how Jack and I have been feeling for the past year. I don't know why this particular life adjustment (new jobs, move, new house, etc) has been so much more difficult for us than previous similar experiences but it has continued to drain our resources and doesn't seem to be letting up. I realize that in some ways we probably bring these feelings onto ourselves, but they don't make the stress any less real for us. So, I ask for your prayers that we can learn to manage our lives and balance our responsibilities so that we can prioritize properly and feel a sense of peace and rest. Within that, with God's help, we can grow that "human happiness" the author speaks of in my class's text book.

The Work Continues...

Demolition continues at our house. We officially have a hole where the master bedroom shower used to be, but we also have a new shower head where there previously wasn't one in the guest bathroom. Tiles have been removed and I think I saw a little smile on Jack's face when he got to take a sledge hammer to the shower floor this past weekend. It is fun to work with tools and tear stuff up, no matter what it looks like when you are through.

The wallpaper removal is a whole different story. Whoever put up the border in the living room and dining room loved wallpaper paste. LOVED wallpaper paste. I think they must have found a good sale on it somewhere and just hated not to use it all because they double or triple pasted this border on this wall. It was going no where. This border had to be removed in layers-- the top layer, the backing, and then the sticky residue left behind kind of like when you remove a price tag from an item and the residue is left, but worse. My mom, Jack's mom, and I, along with my cousin, and a few others from time to time have worked on it for days and we have about a wall and a half left to remove.

We are beginning to consider paint colors and floor coverings so everything is moving along nicely. We are rather boring when it comes to paint, so that choice shouldn't be too difficult for us. And when it comes to floor coverings, we prefer carpet. I know, I know...hardwood is beautiful. Hardwood is THE thing to do. Hardwood is easy to care for (sort of). We've heard all of the arguments and seen all of the eye rolling when it comes to floor covering. We do have some original hardwood in the house, but we just prefer carpet. So, we will protect that hardwood by choosing a carpet that we like and enjoying the comfort of nice, soft, warm carpet. Thank you.

Between all the work at the house and all the work I'm doing for my summer teaching, I completely forgot that this past weekend was a holiday weekend until last Friday. So while I enjoyed having the day off yesterday and spending some restful time with our families, I now have to be mindful of the shorter work week in completing what I need to do for my summer class. I am trying very hard to focus on enjoying each process that I am dealing with this summer, from the house, to teaching, to all of the other work I am having to do. I know how quickly this summer is going to pass me by and if I spend all my time worrying about how quickly it's going to go or wishing the house was done and I was moved I'm not going to enjoy any of it. So instead I'm trying to learn as I go, take pictures, and enjoy the processes I'm involved in. I hope that will help me make the most of this summer.

Renovations

We closed on the house two weeks ago tomorrow. It feels great to have a home even if we don't live there yet. Since my job is more flexible than Jack's and allows me more opportunity to slip away and meet plumbers, contractors, etc for estimates, I've been calling people and meeting them for the past several days.

Some things have been difficult about this part of the process that I didn't expect. For example, do you know that there are multiple ways to take down a wall in a home? We met with 7 different contractors/carpenters who were qualified to take down a wall between two living rooms and each of them described a completely different way that they planned to take down our wall. Some of them seemed viable, others seemed a little scary. All of it was a little overwhelming. The fun part for me was listening to all of them talk about what they would do and how they would do it so now I can ask some questions and talk about taking down a wall and sound half-way intelligent about it. "So are you going to put a header up there or are you going to use an LVL beam in the ceiling?"

That's right...just call me Francie Vila. Or better yet...name me after one of those people on HGTV who never actually does any of the work but stands back and watches other people while smiling and talking about it like she knows what's going on. Yeah, that's who I want to be.

We have pretty much settled on who is going to do most of the work now, so it's a matter of making some of the detailed decisions and waiting for when they can work us in. So far-- so good.

Summer has begun as far as my school year goes. I am teaching a class that begins shortly so I haven't really gotten to take a break yet, but I look forward to taking one soon...maybe.

New Beginnings

Living on a school schedule provides an interesting viewpoint on time. School marks definite beginnings and endings multiple times each year. While most people are thinking about what's new around Jan. 1, for me it's more like mid-January and mid-August.

Each year at the beginning of a new semester, I usually have both feelings of eager anticipation and trepidation as I imagine what my new groups of students will be like. Even classes I've taught multiple semesters are made new by the arrival of a new group of students. And each class usually develops its own special personality. What will this group offer? Will they be enthusiastic? Intrigued? Bored? Frustrated? Nervous? Probably a little bit of all of that and more as the semester continues.

Next week will begin a new 16 week semester full of surprises, new relationships, and learning for the students and myself. Next time I blink, I'll be walking into graduation and this new beginning will become an ending. That is one thing I do love about this job-- change in new beginnings.