What It’s All About (not the hokey pokey)

My church has these things called tribes, which are incredibly awesome, but also difficult to describe. It’s hard to say what they are exactly, but I can tell you what they’re not: they’re not bible studies, they’re not small groups, they’re not mission groups, they’re not community groups, and they’re not house churches...at least not strictly. Rather tribes are a culmination of all of the above. In a tribe from time to time the bible is studied, the group is small, you live on mission, you become a community, and you meet in someone’s house. Confused? I was for probably the first few months of attending a tribe, but eventually it all comes back to being awesome. 

Anywho, to get more specific, my tribe meets on Wednesday nights and at this point in time all we do is eat good food and hang out. We’re a fairly new tribe, so we’re all still getting to know each other. Each week one or two people (out of a total of about eight of us) share their life story, more or less. It’s a great way to see where each person comes from and how they ended up where they are and who they are today. 

When you let people freely talk about themselves for 10 or 15 minutes you get to learn about accomplishments, challenges overcome, humorous stories, current struggles, and quirky hobbies. And once you learn these things you’re suddenly invited into those aspects of people’s lives. For instance, one of the girls in my tribe shared with us weeks ago that she goes to square dancing lessons. Just this last week she graduated from the lessons and was inducted into a square dancing club. She invited us all to go to the ceremony, I went, and it was a grand old time, as you can clearly tell from this photo evidence: 

If it weren’t for my tribe, I would never have gone to a square dancing graduation (let alone known they exist) and I most likely would never have befriended an official square dancing club member. And that’s what it’s all about, getting to know people from other circles of life, being there for them, and allowing them to be there for you as well. So contrary to popular belief, it’s not all about the hokey pokey.  

The Street That Gives Me Heart Attacks

This is a picture of the street at the end of the court where I work: 

Every so often we venture to this treacherous street to get the kids out for some fresh air, or, when we’re even more adventurous, we cross the scary street in order to catch the public bus. Looking at this photo you may be wondering why I’ve selected such daunting adjectives to describe the seemingly normal street. But do not be deceived, this street is capable of giving me heart attacks. 

Once we open the front door of the daycare a stampede of 2-3 year olds break through the imaginary barrier of the driveway and book it toward that stop sign in the photo. Every time I trail behind them in a half walk/jog dealio as my mind races through this torturous inner dialogue: “They’ll stop at the end of the street. Of course they’ll stop. We told them to stop.” “OMG they’re not going to stop!” “No, no they’ll totally stop.” “They’re not stopping...I’M GOING TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ROADKILL BABIES.” Mind you, during these internal panic attacks, my boss is always casually strolling behind me not giving off the slightest air of concern. And she’s always right. They always stop. Every single one of them, every single time. One little girl, whom we’ve deemed The Runner, sprints with all her mini-might right up to the edge of the curb and then whispers to herself “We don’t cwoss the stweet. A car can hit you in the stweet.” I’m thankful for her self regulation, but I really wish she and the others would just stay in the safety of the driveway as to prevent the premature death of me.   

#Shortgirlproblems

I’m short. Really short. Semi-debilitatingly short. Like 4 inches away from legal midget-ism short. Usually I don’t have much of problem with this. In fact it even seems to help me makes friends (tall ones who can reach things) from time to time and I never have a problem being too tall while wearing heals. 

However, my new big-kid house has caused me to be more aware of my vertically-challenged ways. For instance, I can’t reach about 3/4 of my kitchen--enter my BFFs the kitchen stools. 

Photo proof: 

And I have this issue where I can’t stack things on my high closet shelf so I end up chucking sheets, towels, and seldom used coats on top of one another with a big heave-ho. Although my heave-ho-ing is about as challenged as my ability to grow, which results in the leaning tower of sheet (pun intended) in my closet. 

Photo proof:

Sigh, #shortgirlproblems. 

It’s Gettin’ Real

Guys. The Real World is getting real. And by the Real World I mostly mean my work world. One of my bosses/coworkers (I really have no idea if she has any authority over me or not) is pregnant and about to pop. She’s currently still harboring the fetus in her belly, but she’s officially on maternity leave, which means more work for me. Starting next week I shall be almost kinda mostly full time. Real official sounding, right? I’ll be working four out of five days of the week, two of which I’ll be there 9am to 5pm-ish. I’m aware that in actuality that’s not full time, but it’s better than what I’m rockin’ right now. So hooray for more work! Betcha never thought that declaration would be made, huh? 

Random side kid story from work today: 

I was sitting on the Circle Time rug when a little three year old came up to me very sweetly, wrapped her arms around my neck, and asked, “Do I need to go to the baaathrooooom?” I looked right back at her and said “I don’t know, you tell me!” I then proceeded to tell her to go to the bathroom and try because I didn’t want to deal with finding new pants for her while she contemplated the answer and wet herself.

Something New

So I really suck at updating this blog, as you can probably tell. I initially started it as a coping method for my unemployed life. Now that I’m partially employed I seem to have lost interest. But no worries, I have a plan to change. As of right now, I’m starting something new.

Back in June 2010, my roommate Wendy began a little something called a 365 album on Facebook. Wendy took a picture every single day for a year and posted it to FB. It was a great way to recount the year once it was all said and done, plus it was fun when 11:48pm rolled around and Wendy had to scramble to find something picture-worthy on the occasional night of panic. With that idea in mind and much encouragement from Wendy herself, I’ve decided to take on this same project and make it my own. My personal twist is that each week I will select one photo from the album, post it in my blog, and explain more of the story behind that photo. This way I can incorporate my dying blog in hopes of an epic revival. I can’t promise I’ll remember to take a photo every single day, and I can’t promise I’ll stick to my new writing routine, but I can promise to take a stab at it all. So here’s to something new! 

This first photo is the mark of a new, long road. I haven't a clue what the next year has in store for me, but I'm excited to find out and I'm also excited to document it photo by photo & day by day. 

Sick of Being Sick!

When I took my job at the daycare I knew I ran the risk of picking up every bug the little rugrats came in with, but I never anticipated it would be this bad. My parents joked with me that by the time I have kids of my own I’ll have absolute immunity to all illnesses, but at this point I don’t know if I’ll make it that far. I used to never get sick. Throughout my entire college career I only missed two morning classes due to a fever of 102, and even then my fever broke by noon and I was decidedly healthy enough to go to my third class of the day to give a presentation. Now it seems like I get sick every other week. I’ve already had to call in sick three times in the 3 1/2 short months I’ve worked at the daycare. 

This last week was the worst. On Monday, I heard talk of kids being out for a stomach flu and parents mentioning incidents of vomiting over the weekend. By Tuesday night I was praying to the porcelain gods with the same illness. I got sick every 20 to 50 minutes between the hours of 9pm and 3:00am...and once more at 6:00am. Needless to say I called in sick on Wednesday. As if that night of vomiting terror wasn’t enough, I spent the next two days completely wiped out in bed and on the couch. So not only am I getting sick more often, but my recovery abilities are weakening as well. I swear this job is knocking me down one illness-wielding kid at a time. At least the kids are still as cute as ever, now if only I could get them to stop sneezing on me. 

A Long Line of Good People

I’ve recently realized that I come from a long line of good people. Rather than telling you about the awesomeness that is each individual relative of mine, I’d like to share a Charlie-ism. For those of you who don’t know, Charlie is my grandfather on my dad’s side, aka the one I got my red hair and flair from. If you’d bare with me, I’d like to tell a story of his: 

Thursday morning my dad and I sat around the small circular table in my grandfather Charlie’s nook of a dining room. 

“Hey, I got a story for ya,” Charlie called from the kitchen while preparing perfectly square multigrain waffles for our breakfast.

My dad and I sipped on our Irish coffees and awaited a famous Charlie-ism that was bound to take place. 

“Have you ever heard of the wee people?” Charlie continued. 

Considering Charlie’s an 87 year old man who still refers to people from Asia as Orientals, I figured he was incorrectly referring to little people, but I didn’t stop him.

“Well when I was a boy I went to Aunt Marge’s house. Now she’s your great, great, great, great aunt.” She’s not. She’s only my great great aunt, but once again I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the Charlie-ism. 

“Aunt Marge pulled me aside and warned me about these wee people,” Charlie began as he meticulously placed a single blueberry in each waffle square. “She said ‘Charlie, you better watch out for these wee people. They come out in the early morning and at night looking for pots of gold at the end of rainbows, and if you’re not careful they’ll snatch you up.’ Now I knew there was something fishy about this story of Aunt Marge’s, so when I got a bit older I mustered up the nerve to ask Aunt Marge if she really believed in wee people. She looked me square in the eye and said ‘Oh heavens Charlie, I don’t believe in wee people! But they do exist.’” Charlie concluded with a howl of a laugh before diving into his whipped cream covered waffle. 

I can only hope that one day I’ll be telling my grandchildren ludicrous stories sprinkled with out of date (and occasionally politically incorrect) terminology. Of course, by that time I’ll be telling stories in holograph form via my hovercraft.