FEELINGS

Hey friends! I just started a new blog:

www.grateful3.wordpress.com


I'd been getting a little busy, but I still wanted to blog. So I thought I'd focus down my efforts to something a little simpler. It's called the Grateful 3 because everyday I write down 3 good things, things that I'm thankful for. Recently I looked at my life and realized that I was always waiting for something, always just out of my reach, to happen to me. But God is doing good things everyday, even on days when it seems like nothing goes right.

So that's why I started this blog. For now, I'm writing something every day. I've made it a whole week!

So join me in my gratefulness. It's just another step on my journey.

Hello to the three people that read this blog! I still love you. You may have noticed me taking a three week sabbatical...or not. It's for good reason.

Just so I don't lose your loyalty, thought I'd share this ranting from this past summer. I had just spent half the night at LaGuardia airport in NYC, the other half in Charlotte, North Carolina. So...this is me with no sleep. Enjoy...that is, if you can follow me.
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Thursday, July 30, 2009

I just spent the night in an airport in Charlotte. And I don’t know that much about Charlotte, but I do know this much: They’re wise enough to put a Cinnabon in their airport. And that means that I don’t heart NY nearly as much as I heart NC.

It’s really funny, I’m parked against a wall in the busiest part of the airport, using the only electrical socket I can find to charge my laptop. There are rested people walking by me with their babies who are looking at me like, ‘You shouldn’t be doing that!” Why? Because I’m upping the airport’s electric bill? You didn’t spend the night at the airport, Phyllis. Move along, there's nothing to see here.

Maybe being in New York for a little while has turned me into a woman so heartless. This airport at 6 a.m. is busy, and a microcosm of my entire life as people pass by. There are people here who look almost just like people I’ve known at different points in my life. It’s super strange. It makes me believe that maybe there are only so many combinations of facial features, hair color, and build that humanity can come up with. Maybe the only thing that makes us unique is the soul within. I have this feeling that each of us contains a link to God, a slice of his image that nobody else has ever had before or will ever have again. Uh oh. There went the North Carolina version of my cousin Billie Faye. But where is Carolina Harold?

Other people who I “saw” in the airport this morning include:

• My cousin Lisa from Colorado
• Little Richard
• My coworker’s husband Steve
• Wendy, the girl in my educational psych class who seemed to hate me for no reason
• The dude that played Master Shredder in the Ninja Turtles movies
• Betty Rubble (wife of Barney Rubble)
• Alfredo from Storyline

Finally, I made a new friend Emmanuelle, the Italian version of my roommate's best friend Howard. We sat and talked from 2 a.m. to 3:30 a.m., then I tried to sleep, face smashed against the side of the bank of screens that list all of the arrivals and departures to and from Charlotte. The same two Indian guys would come over and stand three feet away and talk about the arrival times that still had not changed, so Emmanuelle gave me his sleeping mask and earplugs. I slept for an hour and dreamed about airport, while he stayed awake and played iphone games. He seemed impressed when I came out of the bathroom looking about 15% less like death warmed over than when I woke up. It made me realize how nice it is when a man can be impressed with so little. But when guys expect perfection, well, you just want to behave like Pink and call it a day because there’s no way you can impress that guy. His standards are already jacked.

It’s ok if I sit here, people! Why do they all look at me with such disdain in their eyes!!! Ahh, people think I’m WORKING! This guy (John McCain’s shorter cousin) just walked by and said, “Take a break”. Dude, I’m writing for pleasure. Maybe it’s that look of concentration on my face. I can’t help it, it takes a lot for me to get past spell check on nothing but a Cinnabon, some coffee, and one hour of airport sleep.

I want to be pregnant! Those ladies get so much attention for having a big belly. Can you imagine if guys got that much attention for having a pot belly? Like people giving up their seats, “Here, you’ve got a beer gut. Have my seat.”

Dear Love,

I can't stand this. It's not fair at all, and I keep on wishing you well but I never know how to bless you. I had a dream, where we fall into a swimming pool, backward, the both of us. We were laughing underwater because we were finally free. And even though we feel free now, we're not. Not like that.

I don't even know if it's possible to be laughing underwater. And I don't know if it's possible for you to be reading this, and if you are reading it, that you'd understand. But I long for you to know the meaning of this blessing, one that Paul wrote in Ephesians:

"I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. "

But you have to know, I believe in that dream even when I don't know what it means. You're never far from my heart.

Love.
Heather

It's probably because I am watching You've Got Mail right now, but I want to do all of the following:

1. Own my own children's bookstore, complete with quirky employees.
2.Walk around downtown New York singing a Cranberries song.
3.Read Pride & Prejudice one more time.
4. Find my soulmate in some chat room. and..
5. Send a question out into the cosmic void.

I've had this verse strong on my heart today. And I don't know what it means, but it's for somebody. Maybe even me.

Men cry out under a load of oppression; they plead for relief from the arm of the powerful.But no one says, 'Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night.'(Job 35: 9, 10)

So let that be my cosmic question, for tonight. Where is God? I wish he were here, in a tangible way, sometimes. There must be some reason for this waiting, this disconnect. So we could still seek his face. So he could round up a few more lost ones. And so I could know what it means to have songs in the night.
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p.s. I really promise to stop assaulting your eyes with this blog template. It looks like I cyber-mugged a 14 year old girl. I'm looking for a new template. But first, I have to learn to play that guitar of mine.

Day #2 of calling in sick for work. It's the annual fall allergicold: half allergies, half cold. Kyla, my roommate, is a teacher, too, and she shared this with me. We bring stuff home. :)

So this morning, I realized that when you're calling in sick, there are different levels of sick. Here are the ones I came up with.

1. DENIAL SICK: You get invited to go clubbin', even though you feel a burning itch in the back of your throat and pounding sinus headache, you go, and do all the things you'd normally do. This is usually because the guy or girl of your dreams is going to be there and you're certain that if you don't go, someone else will ask him/her out for sure.
   
2. OK I'M SICK-SICK: You know you're sick, trouble is, nobody else can tell it yet. You still look healthy enough. This is when you start to try to make your voice sound scruffy over the phone.
   
3. STORMY SICK: You've taken every kind of medicine you can find and it still feels like there's a rainy thunderstorm inside your chest. You'd practically give away your HD flat screen for a chance to feel better.
   
4. HAPPY SICK: You, my friend are heavily medicated. Your favorite movie is randomly on tv, you've got chicken noodle soup, and a couple of trashy magazines (Which you don't feel guilty for. You're sick!) You feel like the king of the world.
   
5. SKANKY SICK: This is when you're starting to get well, but no one will come near you. You feel like an outcast, a leper. Everyone goes rock-climbing but they don't even tell you about it, because they know you'd revert back to Denial-Sick mode. You begin to feel guilty about being sick at all, so you do pushups.
   
6. OFFICE SICK: This is when you're not sick enough to stay home, but you go to work and you still feel pretty crappy and are mean to everyone who doesn't cough as often as you do.
7. UGLY SICK: This comes on the tail-end of any illness, a time in which you don't feel it anymore, but you still look terrible on the outside. People no longer give you the sickness benefit-of-the-doubt and just assume you're that you're not that cute.

THANK YOU for not saying anything about that last post. A lot of you are Texas fans, but you're being nice about it. I still believe Oklahoma can semi-bounce back from this, if we can get some things in order (like our offensive line). And Sammy...But they always say if you're gonna get beat, do it early in the season.

I say that because last season, Florida got beat by Ole Miss early on and Ole Miss wasn't even ranked. (That was a beautiful game.) Well anyway, Bama was so overrated. Florida was the better team and everyone knew it. So even if they did get beat, there was still hope. There's always hope...unless you're SMU. And then you just suck without reprieve.

Ok, I said Football was my boyfriend and Pride and Prejudice was my best friend. Time to invest in some of my, um, human relationships. Also time to write that huge Marzano unit lesson plan for school. (Do any other school districts have to write those?)

p.s. Apologies to any of my readers who don't give a flip about football. I promise to write something girly and sensitive next time.