a stranger in my own home

I'M MOVING!!!!

I do not think that August 15th and 16th will come soon enough. I will be closer...walking distance...to campus, to Mikey, to work (all these things mean less driving :) )

Through not so wonderful circumstances and in quite a messy and annoying process, I have decided to move, and found a place to live. I hope this situation ends up being a good one!

The fact is I do feel like a stranger in my home right now. I cannot ever fully relax, I'm constantly worried about doing something "wrong", being in the way, and somewhat feeling downright unwelcome...I find comfort in my bedroom, but sometimes feel confined to just that space....a space that is share with my sweet friend Karli.so this has helped me realize the wonderful wonderful wonderful roommates I have had in the past.

A walk through roommates-past
first there was Annie: my freshman year South Carolina twin with whom people often confused me...sometimes we would even swap our "standard" outfits (you know...the favorite t-shirt you wear all the time with your favorite jeans and flippies) just to embrace the fact that people would inevitably talk to me about Jason (her boyfriend) and people would talk to her about going to visit TX. She is one of my besties and another sister to me.

I love her dearly and wish that she and Jason and they little bundle of joy lived closer than Georgia.

Then I lived with Natalie and Colleen. This year at A&M was quite interesting to say the least. They kept me laughing, taught me patience, kept me up late talking about all sorts of things and accepted me just as I am.
[unfortunately digital picture is unavailable...that wasn't introduced to my life until the end of my sophomore year, not soon enough to take a picture of the three of us]

My last two years at A&M I was delighted to live with a soul sista' and a bestie, Tori and Kelly. These years were full of joy, belly laughs, tears, frustrations, growth, and community. T has been a sweet and integral part of my life since 6th grade when we were pen pals across the great state of TX and Kelly began brightening my life in a big way our sophomore year and was my playmate all through college...she was always ready to go play, walk, jog or eat good food and watch movies.

T and Ty need to move closer..it'd be okay if they just followed me wherever I go. and if Kelly ever leaves the Station she needs to be near me as well.

In Salamanca, I had the pleasure of sharing a piso with Elaine Davis...a dear sweet friend who's friendship began months before we ever actually met in person. She has been highlighted here before. I relish in the memory of our time there together. In addition to my previous post about her, she helped me learn Spanish, helped me feel at home in Spain and constantly takes the time to care about the community around her.


This concludes the trip of those I have had the pleasure of sharing life with in the intimate walls of a home....

so long little microwave, i did not have a chance to say goodbye

Microwave, oh microwave
I apologize for taking you for granted.
You've been so faithful to warm whatever i put inside you.
You are gentle to not burn the popcorn that I continually overcook
You are a shelter for the food I take off the stove, helping it to contain its heat until eating time.
I have not been eating at home much lately,
I have not meant to ignore or neglect you.
I promise to treat you well, if you come back home to me

This morning started like most others.....
Wake up: check
Shower: check
Read: check
finish writing journals for class: check
go to the kitchen to make some breakfast: check

this is when the normal check list trails off and the day got weird. i got out the oatmeal and milk to fix my morning sustenance, turned to use the counter space near the microwave in order to speed the process of preparing the ingredients in the bowl for heating and cooking in the convenient black appliance that has sat on the counter in the corner for longer than I have lived in this home. It is when I turned around form the cupboard that I noticed the newest void in my life. The corner formerly filled with the beloved appliance now proudly boasted it's white tiles, a small purple mixing bowl and a spice rack. this has been a week of bizarre experiences.

...I hope the microwave comes back soon or my breakfast will never be the same.

summer of joy

I recently was ecstatic to receive some "long lost" pictures of the summer of 2007. The faces in these pictures, the memories brought to mind and the gigantor smiles that could grow no larger are a blessing to reminisce.

It was a summer of community among friends that I am sure I would do anything for. Friends that I could not possibly spend enough or "too much" time with who made me laugh until I would cry or until my stomach hurt. Friends who's grand uniqueness brought a delightful mix to anything we did or did not do together. Friends who make my heart jump with delight at just the mention of their name.

Nights of endless card games and other ways of discovering fun.
Countless trips to IHOP.
Discovery of the goodness of Buzzbrews
[not pictured here, but noteworthy]

times of telling stories and writing them as well

July jazz, homemade icecream, sytycd.

Evenings with each others families and parents.


Encouragement, disagreement, challenges, fun, joy and the bittersweetness of separating ourselves by distance....thank you for the blessing you are to me and the great joy your bring to my life!

To all my friends pictured here and all the ones not: thank you for taking the time to love me and for accepting me,and those around you for who they are. my friends, you are truly of the highest caliber. I have learned and continually learn so much from you and hope I am blessed enough to have you in my life always.

the obligatory earthquake post

Yes Dad, Mom, Ricky, Bev and other concerned friends, we are in fact a-okay.

We said when we moved out here that we secretly (or not so secretly) wanted to experience an earthquake sometime during our lives here in CA, and now as of yesterday, we have!

I'm not sure I can accurately describe the experience. I was sitting in lecture, trying to stay tuned in to the professor but with a little more than 2.5 hours of class down and 15 minutes left in class I had already somewhat checked out for the day...my mind had drifted to the delicious Chick-fil-a feast I would be enjoying for dinner. Then my third floor lecture room began to shake. It was something like being on a boat that was rocking back and forth being tossed by waves from a great storm....or similar to if you were sitting in a small car and bullies came up and started leaning and pushing your car around with you locked inside being jostled about. The room shook pretty hard, it was surreal. The room continued to shake but to a lesser degree, really it was bizarre. Then the floor just had a few spasms of tremors and then it was finished.

During the minute or so the earthquake shook us some people in my classroom panicked and wanted everyone under the desk, but i was too intrigued to hide. Some guys in Mikey's class provided him some comic relief as his two neighbors both went to get under the desk only to find out both would not be able to fit and began to laugh heartily. This was the moment/experience we had been "waiting" for in our California existence...

...we were released from class and went home, hoping for no aftershocks and ready to look up where it had happened (about 25 miles away) and how big it was (about a 5.8).

I don't think I would want to experience one much larger than this. This was big enough to be felt and to be a little unsettled for the time being but small enough to not do serious harm or damage here. It is weird to have the one thing that has always been stable (the ground I walk on) be the thing that was shaking and moving everything resting upon it. Where do you go for stability? no where Where can you hide to get away from the movement? you cannot. Unlike other natural "disasters" or phenomenas rather earthquakes have no warnings. There is no path that one can look at and see it is coming, no time for evacuation; one minute your world is still and stable and the next minute your world is shaking.

Truly and interesting experience.

Now a therapeutic thought: Many of the Californians around here did a relatively good job of invalidating my experience. If there is something I have learned from working with my clients, it is being able to listen, hear them and validate what their experience has been. Our experience is our own, based off of what has happened in our past and what we know; they are unique to as all. I was greeted by the locals with statements like "What's the big deal?" "Talk to me when it's at least a 6.1" "I cannot believe people are actually talking about this earthquake" "People need to just relax and realize this was nothing". It was as though I was silly for seeing, feeling and thinking as I did about what had just happened. Some were gracious about it and I can see where the others are coming from. People do use the term "surviving an earthquake" and that is a phrase that is understandable when the earthquakes are large and destructive. Yesterday, we in no way "survived" an earthquake, it was too small to be something needing to be survived; we did in fact experience one. I am thankful to have had other "transplants" here to talk about this with to get some validation.

...so next time it rains here and people think it is flooding (by flooding they mean something a little harder than a drizzle) I need to remember that this is their experience.

...but next time it hails and they say "IT'S SNOWING"....i might have to listen and somewhat invalidate their experience.

oh grandma

You may or may not recall this beautiful woman, Grandma Evie

she made her debut appearance on this blog a little under two years ago when Man and I made a surprise visit to her house and downed some ice cream with her. She sure put my to shame in that department. Grandma loved her ice cream.

About two weeks ago, Grandma Evie finished her struggles of poor health, clotted arteries, achy bones, shoveling snow (or needing it done), burst pipes in the Michigan winters and many others. She slipped away from us unexpectedly but without struggle, she was merely finished.

Grandma was a sassy lady, shortest of our bunch and feisty to make up for her lack of height, she had to be to have been a Navy Nurse for so long. She would fly from Michigan with bags of special cookie dough in her suitcase just to bake them with Man and I. She was always finding patterns she wanted to stitch, projects to start and perhaps never accomplish but that didn't matter, especially if the pattern and materials were on sale. At the end of her visits she would cook huge pots of chili and leave them in our freezer so we would have some good meals in the winter, she never really understood that we never got snowed in to our house in Texas. It was delicious just the same. Every year on all our birthdays she would call and sing us 'happy birthday'. She was intensely thoughtful, and always happy just to hear the voice of her granddaughters and sometimes even eager to talk about...absolutely nothing.


we miss her. we were not prepared to have her go but we know that she will never really fully be gone from us.


In her passing she's still working and mixing things around in our lives. She brought her three children together after 27 years.

Because of the timing of it all my family was able to be together for Father's Day and had the delight of seeing dad's momma: Grandma Barb

who also loves ice cream! i come from great women who love ice cream, you cannot blame my affection for the savory treat. Grandma Barb, is Lucille Ball...her expressions, ideas, stories, all of her. I am convinced, even my dad says that she has always reminded him of Lucy, even growing up. Her eyes sparkle, she's always into something: bowling, golfing, oil painting, piano playing, crossword puzzles and always always talking and laughing. we love her dearly!


the past few weeks have just reminded me that no matter what, how sweet family is. no matter how distant or close, odd or normal or boring. no matter the form of relationships held, family is so precious and so sweet.

and i think it might be fun to be a grandma some day...especially if it means ice cream!

the road less traveled

Needing, desiring, knowing I should take the high road has been a theme in my life lately....though taking the high road is not necessarily what I have done.

It is one thing to be forced to take the high road and another thing to have to choose to do so.

At work, it seems easy to take the high road. The consequence of not taking the "high road" at work....getting fired (which to some might not seem so bad because I would gain a lot more sleep and free time). So when a customer is rude, yells, makes snide remarks about how crappy our store is it is "easy" to grin in bear it. Well I guess it is easy to choose to take the high road and just move on with a smile to the next customer or drink to be made. Done deal.

It is those other times...when your job isn't on the line, no one will punish you for not reacting in love, grace or mercy and there is no punishment that the high road becomes a little harder to choose.

My instinct is anger, spite, sass, contempt, justification...the list goes on. I dwell on the situation, I let my anger or resentment brew within me and that so quickly takes over any hint of love within me. This is when my flesh takes over and I stop dying to myself and take my life and actions into my worldly hands. Sometimes my instinct remains internal and I have to painstakingly force my outward actions to be what I "know" to be the right response. Then I still become frustrated that doing the right thing, loving people, treating people with value and respect is such a painful thing for me to do. It is nicer to think that loving people is easy for me or that it comes naturally, seemingly effortless.

How is it that one gets to the point of their instinct lining up with what the right response should be? I know that part of the beauty of God's power is needing him to intercede and dying to myself daily...for now it my "me" still frustrates me.

Taking the high road, the road less traveled, turning the other cheek, loving our neighbor. These are
things I know I need to do
things I know I want to do
things I am often too selfish and proud to do
things I will never be able to do in my own love, but are in fact possible to live out....

please forgive me when I fail.

the art of listening

This past weekend I had the pleasure of being in a wedding...the joy and delight that the weekend held will be saved for another day, or no blog at all.

Throughout the weekend I encountered many people who played significant roles in my life but have not been an active part of it in years. With some that meant we had lots to catch up on, with others it mean skipping the years missed and filling one another in on the here and now. Not having ever met the groom or any of his friends before this same weekend meant gaining many new friends and hearing and experiencing who they are. Regardless of what the situation was, listening was a huge part of it all.

I am beginning to realize, through classes and life, the need to not only listen, but to hear what it is each person and situation is truly trying to convey both in what they say and what they neglect to say. Do not just assume you know what someone is trying to say because you think you have experienced the same thing or you have more skill or education in the area but put your own thoughts aside and hear the person you are engaging at the time.

In class I am constantly being told to listen to to what my clients are saying. Listen by hearing their words, including in that their background and perspective, their non verbal actions and gestures, what they highlight in speaking, things they avoid and anxiety levels in the room. Who knew there was so much to hearing someone?

What has prompted my thinking about these things? My hair. This lady came over to do everyone's hair for the wedding if they so desired. The time came and the lady was just incredibly unsatisfied with the state of my hair. I had washed, dried and straightened my hair, applied a little gel and pulled some pieces back. I thought it was a pretty good effort on my part and that I was not going to mess up the vibe of the wedding by being a hair disaster or anything. She just had a strong desire to create some curls in my hair. I thought that would be fine but I went ahead and gave the normal disclaimer I give to anyone about to wash, cut, dry or style my hair: "my hair is super thick, it isn't straight nor is it curly. it is really good at frizzing and being huge...sometimes it just does whatever it wants no matter what you try to do so just take that into consideration when you decide what you want to create with my hair" her response was something like: "Honey, do you think I care? This is my job, hair is what I do and I am really really good at it, It does not matter what your hair is like." I thought maybe she would care, I was just trying to give her a frame of reference...but

Fair enough.

About 10 minutes later she stops what she is doing and says "Your hair is really stubborn, did you know that?" I thought of course I knew that, I tried explaining that to her before we began the process. She looked at it for a few more minutes and said "Well, I cannot do anything else for you. Your hair is just doing whatever it wants and does not want to obey. These curls just are not working."

Leave it to me to have stubborn hair. She left it to me to salvage the curls and the lack there of that she could not get to stay in my hair. Perhaps had she listened she might have tried something a little different...something that would not go awry with stubborn hair as curls can often do, something that I would not have needed to finish up for her. So I finished doing my hair again while beginning to think about the importance of listening and hearing.



Isn't my family sweet?

hard to please, my learning experience

My first academic endeavor at the age of 24 was a creative project. Going back to the basics of education, kindergarten style with something fun and creative!! Sounds like a great break to the monotony of paper writing that happens in graduate school, no? I think it could have been. But it only reinforced to me that my struggle this quarter so far has been the complete freedom given to me in all of my assignments.

Write a 4 page assessment of a client: sounds easy enough, except the typical length of these assessments are 7-9 pages single spaced and our was to be 4 pages double spaced. My response: unhappy about having to write something so short, wishing my professor would want something well written and a complete assessment as opposed to me just writing to fulfill a requirement. I am ridiculous.

Write a paper my NT Gospels professor says...what should the paper be about? Jesus and the Gospels. No parameters other than number of words, size of font, width of margins and due date. My response: unhappy that there are not paper topics to choose from, even though those very topics would have probably been of no interest to me and in that situation I would have complained that all the topics are lame. Again, I am ridiculous.

Write an outline of the gospel of Mark: instructions from professor, "don't make it suck" other than that, complete and total freedom as to how to outline the gospel. My response: I don't know what this guy wants from me and mine is going to suck so I should just choose to be frustrated about it...ridiculous, yes I think so.

Make a creative project about you and the characters that make up who you are. Do whatever you want there are no rules or limits to the project. Have fun! These seem to be great rules huh? I was somewhat excited about this project, except I found myself still wanting more rules or parameters. I wanted there to be something that was required of me: a number of characters, a style of creative project...something tangible to work from. I ended up starting off my existence as a 24 year old student with bad time management...leaving 30 minutes to complete this project...the one fun assignment I will have in grad school. My response: frustrated with myself, disappointed with the lack of effort able to be given to this project.

You shouldn't really care about my academic endeavors, or how disappointing I tend to be in myself. I see the reality of how hard I am to please. I do not think my professors will ever be able to win in any assignment they give me (save one paper I wrote last quarter, I actually loved writing it), but probably never again will that happen.

A reframe of the situation perhaps, something I have learned from it: Just the way people respond to freedom. For me the complete freedom of things frustrates me, I become overwhelmed with where to begin, what to do, will I be a disappointment, will I be able to do things with excellence if nothing is expected of me at all? Though this is something so many people want. Freedom from rules, restrictions, parents, responsibility. I lean towards wanting the rules, the restrictions. When those very things are given to me I rebel by being frustrated when people tell me what to do. Through needing a balance I am learning to find the beauty in the freedom that comes from boundaries. These are things we have heard before. God has set up things to live by and our country has set up laws for us not as rules and restrictions but as boundaries. Within the boundaries we can find complete freedom to play and thrive...so let us learn to thrive.

simple joys in life

If you know me, you know that I delight in simple joys in life.

At least three times this week I have relished in such joys.

On Sunday I wore a new pair of socks. I know, I know not really a big deal. But really you have no idea! Mikey gave me perhaps close to 7 new pairs of socks for Christmas and this is either my second or third pair to have worn since receiving that gift. Why might you ask have I repeatedly washed and worn old pairs during these colder months and not delved into the new socks? Because I love the feeling of putting on that pair of socks for their very first time they have ever worn! I enjoy it so much in fact that I save that for days of celebration or bad days, so I can add enjoyment to the good days or have a pick me up on the bad. Sunday was a good day and thus merited new socks (and I needed a little motivation for studying for finals...it is okay if it does not make any sense to you. I do not expect for it to. Just take me as I am. I love wearing new socks).

Sunday...that leads me to another simple joy. I love how I spend my Sunday afternoons. They are generally full of relaxation and pleasurable things. This week Mikey and I spent part of Sunday afternoon studying outdoors. The joy part is in reference to being with Mikey and the being outdoors part of the sentence, not the studying part. It was gorgeous outside and perfectly enjoyable!

My hair is long.

and in this picture it is perhaps too long. Add another inch or so to it and you can imagine the length it was when I woke up this morning...


So another simple joy....getting my hair cut. This is not a joy that I partake in too often, either because I am too lazy to cut my own hair, do not have time to spend cutting my hair or cannot find any one in the current place I live that can cut my hair. Oh, and I love it when people play with my hair, as long as they do not just pull on it so it rips out of my head.

Today I spoiled myself. I found the sweetest hair stylist in Pasadena, her name is Elba. Went to her after 9 months of letting my hair grow and told her to do as she pleased, but perhaps I would like to keep my hair kind of long. I sat down and for 30 minutes she did what she does so well. She told me about her life, her husband, 3 year old daughter, her return to college after 16 years of cutting hair and 16 years of not being in school. She wants to be a pre-school teacher. She decided this after her daughter spent a year in pre-school. She saw the impact it made on her daughter, the creativity involved and all the children she would encounter and decided it might be something she would like to do and could even be good at! So here she is taking classes 2 days a week, cutting hair 3 and resting on the weekends. She grinned as she told me stories, I grinned in response to getting to hear the heart behind this precious lady who was giving me a gift that no one else in California has...and not many people in Texas have either, a haircut.

30 minutes and a small trash can full of hair later...I left Elba. I loved her so much I told her I would come again in May (considerably less than 9 months will pass between haircuts from now on). No we did not set an appointment, but oh man I want to go back, if anything just to spend some more time with her.


These are just three simple joys and pleasures I have experienced this week, off the top of my head. I know that if I were to think about it a multitude more have been experienced, some I have realized and relished in, others I have not taken the time to enjoy.

What are some of your simple joys in life?

another one of mine you ask....pancakes, especially when consumed in the evenings!

survey says...

Option numero DOS!

That's right, the lower socio-economic, low cost counseling center. Not to mention, it is near a Wendy's. How could I pass up this opportunity?

I hope you took my advice and did not hold your breath to find out where I would be counseling for my practicum...if you did not take my advice, maybe you should have. I am sure passing out from holding your breath for days on end was not worth the wait.

So all the interviews, waiting, and decision making is over. Now all I have to do is learn as much as I can in the next 2.5 months so that perhaps I will be equipped enough to counsel people. Right now I think I might know just enough to do some damage :)