Michael

I just found this photo of my brother and I from back in September (the weekend of his wedding) on his front porch. I really like it. All the reflections make it a much more telling photo than it would otherwise be. :) Plus it says 'kid sister' like none other. I love my brudder.

Two cool blogs

Hopefully this won't scandalize anyone (ha..) but here are two cool blogs I just found. Both with art to make you think...

PostSecret

and

Chromasia

I won't miss

In still thinking about my last post, there's this quote I have in my head but I don't know who said it... CS Lewis? Rich Mullins? Someone else entirely? I don't know but it was something like this:

In the near future you will receive news that I am dead. Do not believe it. On that day, I will be more alive than ever.

In that spirit, I just made a list. Things that I will not miss once I'm fully alive and living in heaven... (it's kinda fun to think there will be an end to these things)

• Overly scary movies
• Reading about starvation in Africa and other poor areas
• Having to put so much energy into being healthy
• Being so forgetful
• Feeling lonely
• Back aches and holding my stress in my neck
• Stress. Woohoo!
• Money issues
• Self-doubt
• Having to wake up earlier than my body wants to
• Being misunderstood and misunderstanding others
• Theological debates
• Seeing people and animals suffer
• Paperwork
• Time.

Longing for God knows what

Tonight my mom is in San Antonio, my brother and Jess are in Las Vegas, my Dad's in Minnesota, and I'm here in North to the Carolina. Crazy world. It is a crazy modern world that lets us all sit together in a living room on Christmas day and has us this spread out just a couple weeks later.

Tonight I am missing people who know me really well. My friends here are amazing... and they really are much more than friends. They truly are my brothers, my sister. But we don't have a ton of history yet. I just miss the familiar, the silly. You know what? But even thinking of those who I am so close to... now that I further think about it, I guess I am longing for something even more familiar than a friend. I think this is what longing for heaven feels like. It's a feeling that can't be satisfied by food, or by being in a certain place, by doing work or a fun activity, or really by people.. they say there's a God-shaped hole in each of us and tonight I feel it.

Sigh... Life is so strange. Existence is... surreal.

Aveda (uh-vay-duh) lol

So the alphabet soup continues.

Today Amanda and I went to Aveda in Chapel Hill where we got pedicures and facials. Sweet! It was so relaxing. Well the pedicures were not amazing... but the facial. Ohhh my gosh. They did everything from having us breathe deeply, to massaging our feet with oils, to using aromatherapy... on and on. It was really nice and really cheap, too. It was as good as a full massage, I would say... something about relaxing your head and feet makes your whole body feel better.

Not to be too intimate here... ha... but the best thing is just the power of touch and also, is this strange?, the power of someone using your name. The lady who did mine was so good at it, and kept calling me by name, which just makes you feel so loved and affirmed. Funny that you can experience that from a total stranger.

Capote (cuh-poe-tee)

We just went to see Capote... at an independent theatre with beer.. Haha. I liked the place, even though hardly anyone was there. It is an interesting movie. Quiet, sort of slow in a necessary way, stark rather than romanticized. It is about Truman Capote, an American writer who was friends with Harper Lee and who wrote In Cold Blood about the brutual murder of a family in Kansas. What I like most is the writer's curiosity that says there is a story behind even a murderer, a human story with a human face and name. Of course the curiosity does not belong exclusively to writers, but they especially want to see the person behind the act. I do believe there is a complex and confusing mess of circumstances and family members (or the lack thereof) and emotions and chemical balances or imbalances and a thousand other things that make a person who they are. The most brutal killers or other kinds of criminals (rapists, etc.) typically have a desperately sad story of not receiving love, experiencing total abandonment, and many other unthinkable things. It doesn't make crimes excuseable, it just makes them as tragic as they really are. Tragic not just for the victims and their families, but tragic also for the criminal, and his/her family, and for the human family everywhere.

Forms of procrastination

I have a tendency to get caught up in all the tiniest details of a work project, forgetting completely to prioritize those things that would help me make connections, make an impact, get work, get paid, etc. I am more apt to work out an administrative problem or organize myself then get a mailing out or make phone calls. This has to end today!! I need to be ready to start contacting potential clients by next week. Early next week. January should not go by without this happening.

You could start with "I'm doing genealogical research..."

Me: Hello?
Lady: Jennifer?
Me: Yes?
Lady: Is your middle initial T?
Me: Who is this?
Lady: I'm looking for Jennifer with a middle initial T.
Me: That's not me.
Lady: You weren't born in 1980?
Me: No
Lady: Ok. Sorry to bother, goodbye.
Me: Bye.

Hah.

Almost died today

I did not have the best time at the gym today. In fact, it was hell! Seriously. I was loving my trainer (Malak). I do love her. But today I hated her. We were doing legs for the first day ever, and she took the first five minutes and worked me so brutally and senselessly hard that I about died and (this is the worst part) had no energy for the remaining 55 minutes! Sheesh! I don't know if she just totally overestimated my fitness level or what. But I was breathing so hard and feeling like crying!! She said "Don't hate me" and I was thinking, uh, it's hard not to right now! Anyway. I think we will find our happy balance where I'm super challenged and she is taking me out of my comfort zone, but today was insane. That's all. I am not even really sore (well, right now, that might change overnight) but that just shows you my point... she killed me in 5 minutes so I didn't get to work my muscles the right way. She always asks me if I'm feeling it where i'm supposed to, and I simply couldn't because my supporting leg (the inactive one in an exercise) was so weak and shaking that I could only think about the resting one! Sighhhh!!!

Back to work... I am trying to solve a problem. How do you email an image that is a link (not an attachment) and also a link to go somewhere else? Maybe it's impossible. Hmmm, I don't know! It's driving me crazy. I can usually find answers online but this one has me stuck.

I wanna know

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show meeeeeee, ohh
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me

Listening to this thugged out version of the old Foreigner song.. this version is by none other than Wynonna! I'm jk about thugged out. I heard that on Dr. Phil today when I was on the treadmill. Hehehe. But really, give this song a try.

The guys also just introduced me to Regina Spektor. She is amazing! I love this song, which we affectionately now call "the hiccup song."

The traditional pre-sleep ramble

Yeahhhh. What is up, my friends? I'm going to post even though I have nothing to post about at the moment. I am on my way to sleeeeeeeepytime. Yes, yes. You know what? I think sleeping is a pretty sacred time. I have come to appreciate it more and more. Even when I see a child sleeping in a movie, even that, I think "wow." Seriously. lol There's just something so comforting and safe and restful and wonderful about the sheets and the pillows and the quilts and the darkness broken only by dim, distant lights casting glows into your bedroom. Something so peaceful about the time we set aside so regularly just to restore and to dream. It is pretty wild that every 16 hours or so, we go unconscious for 8 hours. I mean really. It is interesting that we were made this way - requiring this, desiring it, and enjoying it. Sleep, that is!

Tomorrow must be productive. I'm going to the gym in the morning and then I am working like a mad(wo)man to get some projects started and/or done. Then we are going out to celebrate Curt's 27th birthday. And then the partay will go all night. Hah. Just kiddin. But we may go for some sushi and sake, both of which, amazingly, I have never had.

That's all the randomness I can impart to you tonight, my friends. I love you.... each of you precious few who view this site... and all I can say is, don't wait to start your life. Delight yourself in living life to the fullest right now. Don't hold the phone for anything or anyone. Just trying to remind myself of that, ya know. You are beautiful when you are living your dreams, or becoming more of the person you are and you want to be, or simply loving the people near you. That is beautiful. You don't have to aspire to so much to be special, or beautiful, or remembered. Just love as much as possible... and enjoy yourself. :) Where that's coming from, I don't know, but just go with it...

Gumbo with Bertha

Bertha is my neighbor. I pass her door on the way to mine everyday. A lot of times she'll have her door wide open, and hollers hello to me from her kitchen when I am going up the walkway. She comes out, and we chat about what's new. She has the most beautiful granddaughter. She's preschool aged and her name is Jillian... goes by Jilly. Bertha moved here from Louisiana to be near Jilly because they have a close relationship. (I can relate. Grandmas are very special to little girls.) But lately Bertha is talkin about "Lee-ziana" more and more. She's hurt that she hasn't gotten to see Jilly lately. Her mom (Bertha's daughter in law) is not being very friendly, and Jilly's parents are separated. So it's a little messy...

Today I kept hearing someone honking their car horn like a maniac. I mean, really, just, honking. It finally occurred to me it might be Bertha so I got up and went the window - there Bertha was, sitting in her minivan and motioning for me to get myself downstairs. lol I went out barefoot (sigh. North Carolina winters...) and she told me she had some extra shrimp gumbo and sweet potato for me. So we just had a nice visit over lunch. Actually it was my second lunch (doh!) but I wanted to sit with her. She's a sweet lady. Her husband died three years ago. She's doing well but I am sure this is all such a big change, especially move across states. She's thinking of going back if this separation from Jilly continues.

She also had a maintenance guy come over, and fed him too. (Funny how old ladies love feeding boys hearty meals. I guess especially so Bertha since she raised two boys.) He had gumbo too. Then he helped "fix" something... a broken crucifix. He superglued Jesus back to the cross, though the Lord was handless (she may have vacuumed up his hands).

This was all a funny hour or so. Now back to work...