Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Catching up!

Back by popular demand…my blog. I am truly sorry for being so sketch and not blogging in forever. My. Bad. This will be in a nutshell my life update. And by “in a nutshell” I mean probably another LONG catch-up entry…

First of all, this summer has sucked. I am very frustrated and discouraged by this fact because I usually rely so heavily upon summer getting me through to the next year and then anticipating the upcoming summer to see me through the first months until the NEXT summer…

If you want to know the details on my crappy relationships you will have to ask me in person because I can’t write those details on here for just anyone to see. BUT if my life were on the front page the headlines could read any of the following:

“Innocent girl stabbed [in the back] by old Spence…”

“Girl found dead, abandoned by all, left to die of misery…maybe boredom, true cause to be determined. Autopsy results arrive Wednesday…”

Oh, this is kind of fun…then if I wrote a book, or had a movie or show…

“The Worst Year of my Life: A Year in Review.”

“The Most Frustrating [and even depressing] Story Ever Told”

“How to Lose a Friend in 10 Days”

“Confessions of [the friend of] a “teenage drama queen [or two…]”

“Who Not to Call”

“Extreme Makeover: Friend-list edition”

“It’s my Life and I’ll Cry if I Want To.”

Alright, alright…and by the way, I wonder what publication these kind of headlines would appear in? A Tabloid perhaps? The stories are outlandish enough for that…yes, probably a tabloid. MAYBE something such as People if they got wind of this celebrity grade drama…NY Times or the Wall Street Journal if they needed to awaken the world to the cruelty and neglect a human (myself) has experienced… I am NOT overly dramatic do you think? My sentiments exactly.

O-K. I finally moved. My new apartment and new roommate (although we have lived together before) are great. We went to the store, which happens to be a most dangerous place for me to enter and is in a most precarious location as it is about a ¼ of a mile from my house…and conveniently situated at the stoplight where I turn onto my street…that I can all too easily turn the other direction into the parking lot… HOBBY LOBBY!!! We picked out the fabric which we based all of our further decorating and accessorizing endeavors upon…and chose our color palette…and voila! Here is the result:

[I will post a picture here soon! I am out of town, at the beach and don't have any with me...]

This is our living room, with all of our colors, one green pillow which leads into our kitchen table area greens…which pulls from the kitchen on the other side with the reds… If you feel so led as to give us housewarming gifts, we suggest that you stay within these parameters…since you can’t register if you’re just roommates…WHICH I COULD complain about…I mean just because I’m not getting married I can’t let people know exactly what I want? I can’t have a few nice things as gifts for my home and life—because I’m not getting married anytime soon people! I WOULD create a birthday registry for myself…but THAT seems to get overlooked for me too.

This is my 9th move, my 8th apartment or house I have lived in in Athens, that is only since mid-2002! I also moved rooms in almost every place I lived in. I don’t mind moving I guess, but I am REALLY over it. The next time I move I want it to be with my husband into our first little home with the intentions of staying there until we literally outgrow the place.

Graciously I am going to break up the different accounts of drama in my life with some of the fun things I have done lately. I visited the Georgia Aquarium for the first time and really thought it was wonderful! I had a great time and took a lot of fun pictures. Pictures are always my favorite.

The next day was the 4th of July. If I have ever said something is my favorite…it is nothing compared to my love for the 4th of July. I have plenty of bad things to say about THIS years’ Independence Day…which as I have said above, if you REALLY WANT to hear me complain, please ask…BUT I am only going to say good things about my most favorite holiday. I wore red, white and blue outfits the whole week leading up to the 4th (which is always part of the thrill). I went to a Braves game and then saw fireworks the night of the 3rd . It is really hard not to keep saying things are my favorite, but with 4th of July, they really almost all are. Fireworks, they are my favorite! I love them so much and I love the Stone Mountain laser show and I love “American” music, especially country. I’m pretty sure if I ever get married I will need fireworks to be shot off…and I got to see 2 sets of fireworks this year. The first set was better because the next set, on the 4th, back in Athens, involved Ashley and I and two party pooper boys who made fun of us and ruined the whole show with their bad attitudes. HM…and I do not mean Hannah Montana…is NEVER invited to be a part of ANYthing I enjoy ever again. BUT if you ever need a happy moment ruined, call me and I will refer you to him!

Next I got to take some REALLY cute pictures of me and one of my favorite little girls. They turned out really cute considering all of the factors. I was excited to finally get a good picture of the two of us—AND we were dressed in red, white and blue!

The long awaited Harry Potter 6 movie came out this month. I was very afraid of what this movie might be like first of all because 6 was my favorite book of the series…and my least favorite actor plays a very important role in the book/movie. WELL, the movie was nothing like the book. BUT the bad actor didn’t ruin the movie BECAUSE they left him out so much…which I can’t say I’m not sad about. Maybe someone else realized that he does a terrible job of portraying Dumbledore. See, Dumbledore is like God. He is the picture of goodness. Everything goes back to love for Dumbledore. He is seeming-to-be ever present and all-knowing and more patient and gentle, yet firm and powerful. He is feared in a reverent way but would never hurt anyone…and the actor is so angry and yells and is abrupt…and that’s enough. It could and should have been done as they are planning to do the 7th movie, in two parts. They left out a TON of the memories that are really important to Harry understanding how to fight Voldemort… There were scenes that were not in the book, had nothing to do with either plot, the book or the movie…like what was the point of burning down the Burrow? Ginny and Harry do NOT openly love each other the way it is shown…and it doesn’t tell the importance between Ron and Hermione’s developing relationship and WHY she is so hurt by Ron and Lavendar and WHY Ron would even go out with Lavendar. BUT the BEST part was the part when I was the only person in the packed (remember, sold out) theater that screamed her head off and failed to STOP when the inferi hand grabbed Harry’s wrist from out of the lake. One last thing…what kind of clear blue weird crystal/lego looking things that was the setting of the cave…?

Now back to “serious” drama…next on the list (after my friend drama) is my job drama. In the past few weeks I have received my parent handbook for preschool this Fall. I have also talked more with my boss, he has hired another teacher, I got to see the progress on our facility AND I got my curriculum so that I can start planning things for the year. I am getting SO excited…which is really big for me because I have had such a hard time getting excited about much of anything job and future related since last summer. [Recap: Summer camp at McPhaul, taught me that in reality I didn’t think I did want a full time job there…square 1. Intern again? Nope AND I felt like I had closed that door. Next was home day care…and I got REALLY excited about that. I formed my own LLC and went full steam ahead…and that door got slammed in my face too. I was encouraged to pursue church preschool and mother’s morning out and THAT just didn’t work out either. I turned down the best of 3 corporate daycare jobs that I was offered…and there comes the hiring freeze…my unemployment history in a nutshell…] Well since last summer, I had continued to be a substitute teacher at McPhaul and had fallen back in love with the idea of it being my dream job. I am not sure if I convinced myself of it or it was truly something God put on my heart but I was convinced (and still might be a little) that He was calling me to McPhaul, to be a light, to witness to the faculty and families there and to love those children. For years I have had my special few that I pray for very often and I really desire to be a part of their lives. All 3 of these families I have baby-sat for outside of McPhaul and really feel like God is putting me more and more in their lives for a reason. But I had finally decided, especially upon taking this job with Little Prodigies that I either must have heard wrong, that that might have been the Lord speaking but just not for right now…and I was encouraged to think that if it IS His will that I be at McPhaul I can still wait on Him for that…just not as passively as I was waiting on it this whole year. So I have pretty much allowed myself to give up that dream for now and get excited about LP… Well on the weekend of the 4th however I had a dream about McPhaul people again. Immediately I woke up feeling a little sick to my stomach. I remember telling Carrie and Lindsay that I had had this dream and that if there is an opening at McPhaul I was going to be sick. I let it go for then after they both had helped me to rationalize that McPhaul was my only refernce for daycare so the Lord could be using my dreaming about the administration there to tell me things and to pray for the administration at LP. I had dreamed something about the pairing of teachers…which is something I really should pray about for LP too. So all was well again... until I had another dream…and another…then I knew it was coming. The next day a friend of mine who works at McPhaul facebooked me the message, “Hey Catherine, I heard there is an opening at McPhaul for an assistant teaching position in the older toddler room. I remembered you saying you would like to get a job here and thought you should check the job site…” so I did, and after months and months of checking at least weekly, if not daily…there it was…

What did I do? I was so frustrated! I was angry at God first…I thought to myself, “Seriously? Is this some kind of joke!?” I finally resign myself to the fact that I am probably not going to work there…and I am ok with that…I can rationally remember the summer before when I said repeatedly that I was really glad I got the summer job if ONLY to realize that I don’t WANT to be here full time… BUT NOW!? RIGHT AFTER I took another job…!? Right after I had gotten all excited about my new job. I just didn’t understand. I felt like again I must’ve heard wrong, that God was about to slam this door in my face too, that maybe it was some kind of test. ANYWAY… I received wise counsel that said that I had to at least apply…then I decided myself that I would apply…then pray for a no. Then I felt ok about things with God because I actually wanted to apply and then get the NO from McPhaul’s end, from the physical world, that I can’t deny…and then I will never wonder, never regret…hopefully…and that’s how it went down. I applied (after a long grueling battle with my own stubbornness to sit down and figure out how to write a coverletter…) and now I can just pray for my “no” and wait…

Update on the boy must also be told in person although I invite you to ask…and that might be all…