Made this little house a home

(Fighter–Jamie Grace)

Not the recommended method of dishwashing

So after a half hour of trying to warm up the water for dish washing and getting frustrated because it was still cold to the touch, I decided to heat some water on the stove in which to do dishes. This might not have been a lousy idea…until I figured the hotter the better and let it start boiling. If I were going to write an autobiography today it would be titled “Don’t Boil Your Dish Water, and other things I should have known.” It really means you will have to re-wash things, because you can’t really scrub when the water is so hot, so you might have really clean peanut butter in the crevices of your measuring cup, but you still need to clean it off…I’m not really sure why I’ve had problems getting hot water the past few days…but I think I am going to go back to microwaving water when my patience runs out instead of using the stove, because I think that might be a little safer…luckily I was smart enough not to submerge my hands while it was actively boiling, so there’s that.

Actually, I think I kinda do know why there have been issues getting warm water…it seems I have a new neighbor who constantly does laundry…like this person has no concept of what the QUIET part of quiet hours means and I hear the person doing laundry at 3:30 in the morning. Like seriously, quiet hours means be QUIET, not that it is quiet and we need someone to fix that. Why in the world are you playing loud music and slamming your door five time in a row at 3:30 in the morning. I get that laundry needs to be done sometimes so I won’t complain that you shouldn’t do that even though I do wish I could have a warm shower, but being quiet is NOT that hard. Trust me, during the day people complain I am too loud, but anyone who has been a roommate of mine has commented on how quiet I am in the morning. I am getting really glad that I am moving out soon…especially because I have also been reorganizing which means that every single night it is like sleeping in a hotel because things have changed so much again…I gotta stop doing that…but reorganizing is kinda fun…and also why I am currently living out of a pile of clothes on the floor…

You know you might have a little problem with keeping things when you spend ten minutes sitting on the floor trying to decide if you need a bright red post-it note from spring 2013 with the number 53 on it…you’d think that for something so small if I was still emotionally attached it would make more sense to just keep it and move on, besides it is still sticky as if it were brand new!!…but if I just kept all the tiny things to save time, I would probably need like 10 u-hauls by now to move out…and the goal is to throw away, give away, or sell enough stuff that almost everything fits in my car with just a little left for my dad and brother to move out in my mom’s van the next week…most stuff falls into the throw away category…the dumpster and I are getting well acquainted…A please give us money for a fundraiser two years ago is not something I need even if the picture is kinda pretty and I got to see a baby a couple hours before I got that paper…especially since I am not about to give my money to pay for people to play golf…not that I have anything against golf, but I feel like there are more important things I can put my money towards…like people who need care more than they need hobbies if I want to give to something…I’ve never even played real golf (unless you count on the wii) and I think it seems kinda boring…if I was going to support a sport it would be swimming…but even then, I don’t think I will ever feel called to fundraise for sports…

You’re crazy for thinking I’m a problem

Crazy–Plumb

So I have a PSA…because finals means that I am easily distracted by clickbait on the internet…but I promise this one really is worth the read. Read this!! Like for real. Click here. Or here. Or here. Or on the link: http://totallythebomb.com/5-reasons-to-not-vaccinate-your-kids …or if you don’t read, at least watch the video at the end, it gets the entire point across anyway…unless you don’t like bleeped out swear words in which case if you don’t read, get a screenreader to read the article to you…I have been going to school for 5 years so far. Who will you believe? Me or that guy on Wikipedia who dropped out of high school? No judgement on people who didn’t make it through high school; some people just weren’t made for education, but the point is, I have been focusing my life since elementary school on health education, so I would suggest you get information from me or another credible source instead of some meme on twitter, or some book written by a non-health care professional…or a politician who we all know lies about everything in an attempt to win the popularity contest. It makes no sense to me that people have no qualms about injecting botulism toxin into their bodies, but don’t want to inject organic products into their children’s arms to keep them from causing their friends to die of measles. Not sayin’ just sayin’.

Totally unrelated, but I think people think I am not paying attention a lot because I am fidgeting…while it may be true that sometimes I am doing something else, distracted, and totally oblivious to my surroundings whether intentional or unintentional, most of the time, it is a good sign I am listening if I am in motion. If I am not at all in motion the most likely scenarios are either that I am spaced out, or that I am spending 75% of my attention sitting still and 25% trying to listen to what you are saying…so basically, if you want 99% of my attention the only way you are going to get it is if I am a little wiggly.

Also apparently I am wearing my Cru bro tank to church, because I forgot to pack a nicer shirt to change into…hashtag see how much I care…okay, more like see how distracted I can be after waiting FORever for the water to get warm before deciding that lukewarm was going to have to be good enough because I probably waited too long into the morning to get warm water seeing as how it’d been more than half an hour and it wasn’t even that cold outside…so I guess we will really put to the test the inclusiveness of church…Although on that topic, after talking last week, I feel a lot more secure, and although I did continue to try really hard to drive the speed limit at all times, it wasn’t a crisis when on Thursday I noticed I was a couple miles over…hey! I made it a week, and that is pretty good.

One more thing: if I had a frustration book, this would go in it:

How’d that ‘d’ get there?! First a little c, then a little d…in the wrong spot

…I suppose I might get more done if I didn’t stop to laugh at myself (and in this case take a picture) when I epically fail at writing.

 

Party party party

(We’re gonna have a party–Donut Man)

Yes, it does look like there are only four flavors…you’re a better person than me if you think you can figure out which of the reds are apple and which are cherry…

Yep…no party is complete without skittles…I’m having a party because I am pretty sure I scored enough points on that exam that it is pretty close to impossible to fail therapeutics, which means I only have to take one more therapeutics exam in my whole life before I never have to do it again!! I hate therapeutics so much and it really feels like a huge waste of my time. Pharmacology? Bring it on, it can be hard, but at least it is super applicable to real life (and the teachers were reasonable people), but I hate therapeutics.

I should probably be doing something more useful with my life than writing…but I deserved a break…and plus, I did get something productive done…I did bloodborne pathogen training…okay fine…I took the test didn’t score proficient and took it again without ever even opening the training so I didn’t exactly do “training”…if I were really smart, I would have looked at last fall’s test before I started, because the questions never change and last year I actually skimmed the material before taking the test so I got pretty much all the questions right…yeah, apparently I can’t even do lazy right…I wasn’t made to be lazy…but if they really wanted us to not be lazy then they would either lock the exam unless the training had been opened or they would not use the exact same 15 questions and answers every single time while requiring us to do it twice a year…not saying, just saying…plus, I really miss the “it’s just Jimmy” video that we used to watch when community education got rid of the really outdated video for training…it was mostly irrelevant since I only worked in aquatics and teaching people how to teach, how to lifeguard, or how to swim, or lifeguarding was probably never going to cause me to have to worry about saw blade safety, and I wasn’t likely to be taking out a trash magically filled with blood, but it was pretty funny. Should you guys be doing that? Oh, don’t worry! It’s just Jimmy! We do this all the time!

and now it is time to stop writing because I am behind in every class including therapeutics right now, so I should really get going on things seeing as how my first final is next week and the rest of them are coming too…

Just don’t ever let go

(Hang on—Plumb)

How to feel really unprepared for an important exam: the day before spend all morning jumping up and down too excited to study, then spend the afternoon crying and/or trying not to cry because it is over.

Just like people learn to recognize counterfeit money by studying the real thing, seeing real community and people having a good time (together) in my home away from home brought to the forefront the vivid contrast between that and the isolation and lack of inclusion I face every time I come to school.

Seeing it in real life seemed like the very most incredible thing ever, and it was…until it was over and I had to learn to let go all over again but with even fresher images in my head of what I was missing out on. Like switching to a new pair of headphones, you don’t realize how much you’ve been missing until you plug in the brand new pair and accidentally blast your ears out when you only meant to play quiet music, over time you forget how it feels to be actually mostly included until you get a teeny tiny itty bitty taste of it again before having to let go again. Three hundred eighty-nine days.

I got out of class at 1:46…between then and 5:28 I got through almost one sentence of studying…yeah, that is a big problem. Life is hard and not fair, but I will not give up. I will pass this semester and prove that I am too good enough. Thought I couldn’t do 5^th year IPPE? Think again! This girl been there done that. I don’t have a grade yet, but I think I did a pretty good job of it. People might do things to me that aren’t fair or even at all okay, but I will get outta here (with a diploma). I will.

You remind me of a cigarette…you make it harder for me to breathe

(Jekyll and Hyde—Plumb)

I have therapeutics tomorrow so this is going to be another brain dump of a post…

What is life like on campus? Well, sometimes I am doing pretty well and maybe not thriving but definitely doing more than surviving…and other times I am standing just outside the door holding a notebook and trying to force myself to take the next few steps to hand the notebook to the person who needs it and wishing I could just turn invisible and melt right into the brick wall…which then leads to a flurry of decision making trying to decide what to do next for best chances at both short and long term success…but each day is a new day and I get new chances to try again. That was then and this is now.

Similarly, although my goal in life despite people trying to dissuade me, is still to be just like everyone else…which usually is not a big deal, because I know I am not actually everyone else and can adjust accordingly…but yesterday we were doing yoga at school and I adjusted as much as I could without making it obvious that I was accommodating myself, but it was not very possible to blend in and support all my weight on my left side…which meant that by the end my right ankle was on fire and my right shoulder wasn’t doing a lot better. yeah, I may be right handed, but I am left-everything-elsed…and I used to be pretty close to ambidextrous, so I mean I probably could have been left-everythinged if I really had wanted to when I was little. And that would be a lesson learned that fitting in is not the most important thing in the world.

This morning is going to be the very best day of my whole entire life so far!! Inclusion is my favoritest thing in the whole world!! I haven’t proctored since the day I did it barefoot and then after proctoring worked the front desk. I miss working the front desk, and I don’t get to do that today, but I do get to proctor which reminds me of that day. And after that the real excitement starts…I am so so excited…I am way too much of a rules follower to run my hands along the walls even though I want to, but I love that I could because I didn’t technically say I would not pass go, not collect one million dollars…I probably shouldn’t use that analogy, because that is about not collecting extra rewards when going to jail in Monopoly and even though there are some pretty awesome rewards inherent in going to jail in real life, there really aren’t in Monopoly, and also I am not going to jail…and the fact that going to jail also means that you are probs going to never going to be able to easily find a new job or housing again, the rewards are probs not worth it unless you plan on living out a life sentence in which case I could totally understand the security of good food prepared every day and no rent to pay and getting to the top of medical care lists automatically and getting that for free…what’s not to want about that?! We incentivize going to jail quite a lot…LOL…but I am not going to jail, just to my happy place…and I am very happy…probably happier than I would be going to jail anyway, because IDK if you can wear shorts in jail because all the pictures have people wearing winter pajama pants.

I was never on the every single week list either for proctoring or for working the front desk, but that front desk thing worked out really well in my favor because everyone knew I was really quiet and recognized that I didn’t usually work the front desk which meant that instead of asking me to call IT, people would tell me they were going to call IT, which was awesome, because at the time, having to call IT might have been the end of my volunteering my time to the front desk…yeah, I was comfortable with everything else, but making calls was not my forte. Proctoring is kind of take it or leave it for me. I like being on the emergency list, but aside from helping out when it is critical, proctoring just isn’t that exciting or rewarding for me.

Why is it that it is when I am re-watching my favorite videos (like talking to Siri about suicide) that everyone wants to talk to me…hashtag awkward…I feel like I am constantly stopping my video so people don’t get the wrong ideas…but seriously Summer Beretsky Bukeavich has a really awesome video series on talking to Siri about suicide and it is hilarious and I have been re-watching it for years…she also has Zerby the parrotlet videos, but those get old really fast…

When I was at Panera yesterday at like 6am, there were a bunch of girls there who were super obnoxious…I waited in line for 30 minutes because “can we have salad” “can we have soup” “I don’t know what I want.” They apologized when they finally finished ordering, but oh my…those girls were driving me crazy…one of them was going on and on about how she was in trouble for being late too much and it wasn’t such a big deal because she was late like every day for a month but it was never her fault…(for example, she was at Panera, so she was only a block away an hour in advance so it was basically like she was there…)

Today I think I figured out why I have wanted to scratch my eyes out despite the fact that they really didn’t look like pink-eye…hmm…probably something to do with the fact that there is a yellow haze of pollen that I have to wash off of the windshield of my car in the morning which means it is probably in the air and I just can’t see it without a surface to collect it…

So my water bottle dropped and I was sad to see it was not Wiggle Worm-proof…but when I picked it up I discovered that actually it was Wiggle Worm-proof. Despite having a hole I could shove my key into, it still holds water…it’s not that I abuse my things…the problem is more that tutoring was supposed to end at 8:30, and it didn’t, and I was having trouble leaving. So I was out too late, and by the point I was walking to my apartment, my awareness, coordination, and memory were lacking…sometimes I drop things because I just forget I am holding them and let go (that happens a lot to my poor phone). In this case, I remembered I was holding the water bottle, but wasn’t holding it very well due to poor coordination at night, and didn’t have sufficient awareness to realize it was falling until I heard it hit the ground…I also picked up the trash the mailman leaves in my mailbox three times on the way up the stairs…sleep is a wonderful thing that I need every single night, preferably at or before 9pm…

Just like you I’m a human being

(Human Being–Jessie Daniels)

LOL…literally…before I deleted this comment permanently, I had to take a picture of it because it was so hilarious…sometimes spam comments are ridiculously obvious or else they are just like one not very related sentence but the author/email address gives it away…

but this one made me laugh.

 

“This place else may anyone get that type of information in such a perfect method (insert random enter here for no apparent reason) of writing?”

Umm, what in the world does that even mean?!

The whole comment is so nonsensical that it is hilarious.

The email addresses might have made it seem like some random person desperately trying to gain attention/approval if there had been a linked account or something, but the lack of a linked account and the author’s name just made it clearly spam…and kinda added to the hilarity, because the author’s name was about coupons and the comment had absolutely nothing to do with coupons…I have to wonder if the author was hoping I wouldn’t see through this one and that I also had a policy that after your first comment all further comments get automatically approved. I did and I don’t. I am not stupid. I will see through most if not all attempts at spamming me, and I do have my settings such that I will read every comment before it gets published…well, unless for some reason I didn’t check my comment box for too long and the comment expired, but that only happens to comments that wordpress labels as spam, because comments wordpress thinks are legitimate don’t expire as far as I know.

Sometimes it’s nice to take some time off, do what you really want to do

(Gone Fishin’–Thomas and Friends)

LOL…like anyone really has time for that 🙂

A bad thought to have the last month of the school year: I used to hate facebook mobile so much I refused to use it…I don’t know why I hated it so much…it isn’t as easy to navigate as real facebook, but it really isn’t so bad and there are so many pictures…LOL…famous last words…but actually I was so absorbed in re-organizing my apartment (also a bad plan) that facebooking didn’t last very long…umm, I’m only going to live there another month, so why does everything need to be reorganized so many times? Especially when the final product ended up being 97% the same as the original…what can I say, girl likes familiarity.

I wish we didn’t call things “fruit.” When people start talking about seeing fruit at church I have to work really hard to stay on topic, to avoid the awkward my brain just shot over to how much I love raspberries and kiwis and grapes and plums and cuties and and and…and I just missed the rest of the sentence. Maybe we could call them stuff of the spirit. Stuff and things are like my favorite words. Metaphors are distracting.

You don’t realize how much stuff you have until you start packing and for every bit of stuff you pack it seems like the stuff left unpacked multiplies to take up the space you just picked up…sometimes I wish I were just a little less blessed so that I had less stuff to pack up…either that or that my mom hadn’t insisted that I needed a mattress, printer, and nice table and chairs…so much stuff. And besides, I like sleeping bags, have sat at the table a grand total of 3 times in three years, and have used the printer print a grand total of three pages aside from the test pages.

It may not have been my best plan to put what may very well be my most difficult rotations as my very first two…I was already a little overwhelmed with all the assignments that needed to be done and the places to be…and then I looked at the grading criteria…oh my…looking at that was eye opening…what they presented to us as something not to worry about because we would do fine, looking at the preceptor grading directions, looked a lot more intimidating and challenging than looking at the student version. I might be one of those 5% of people whose GPA is negatively impacted by rotations now that they’ve changed to including rotations in our professional GPA.

I accidentally let myself start hoping on Friday evening and I was really excited…you know that you have been through a lot when it is actually really relieving to wake up Sunday morning not really hoping anymore but not crushed. I find that I am significantly happier with life if I am pleasantly surprised with a positive thing I am thrilled about but didn’t hope for than if I allow myself to hope and sometimes end up crushed when what I was hoping for is squashed into the ground.

Speaking of Saturday, I had a conversation with someone before church, and so much healing happened in that like 10 minute conversation…I could have talked myself in circles for many more hours and made little if any progress and had already been at it more hours than I’d like to admit before I figured out it was time to talk in person to someone who might have answers and/or empathy. There was a situation that had sparked memories of negative things that happened related to church in the past, and therefore I couldn’t pretend the current situation didn’t exist and stick my head in the sand and not worry about it. My past experiences made this very real and very important. I needed to know that I was safe at church. I needed to know that church was not just another place to go to get hurt. I needed to know that people care about each other, not just about looking good or finding lemming-people who will blindly follow without asking questions. I needed to know that simple differences in people’s perspectives could be respectfully accepted. This was different than other situations, because it was the most honest I had ever experienced a church issue, but the honesty didn’t correlate with anywhere close to a fully processed situation until that conversation…not that it is fully processed after that conversation either, but it is a lot closer than it was.

I have been noticing recently how much I don’t know about Christianity. I don’t like how vulnerable that makes me feel. I have read the Bible cover to cover, but my reading comprehension level isn’t such that I necessarily ever get a lot out of it. I took how to read the Bible as a ninth grader, but ain’t nobody got hours upon hours on a regular basis to read the Bible the “right way.” I graduated the class, but I will admit that I don’t even remember all the things you’re supposed to do anymore, much less do I actually do them…especially because I don’t have 40 hours to pour into reading just a couple pages. Three times this week though people have talked about something about Christianity that they expected me to already know and instead I was working on learning…and now on my list of things to learn someday: what does elder, deacon, staff, and pastor actually mean, because some people talk like those are completely different things and other people talk like certain of those terms are one and the same, and I am so lost. (Okay, so I definitely know what staff means, but just not how it relates according to some people or doesn’t according to others to all the other items on the list). I am starting to understand why some people think Christianity seems like a giant exclusive group of insiders. So many things to know to follow along…

These are the mysteries I don’t understand…that’s why every day it’s off to school I go

(Planes, Trains, and Microwaves—GoFish)

Actually, I do not go to school to learn about sleep deprivation. That is a side effect of figuratively going to school to be a pharmacist, and physically going to school for the sake of classes and easy internet access and social time…Also, I try not to go to school every day. I do best with going to school 6 days/week with Sundays off whenever possible (not off from studying, but off from coming to school)…not always possible, but always the goal.

I have always wondered why babies if they are kept awake too long are super fussy but too tired to fall asleep. I did not uncover the reason behind that, but I did discover that it really isn’t just babies.

So Wednesday I was up way too late because leaving is one of those things I got better but not good at…plus I LOVE people, so being with people feels so good that I don’t even necessarily WANT to leave which impedes the process of leaving when I want to or should. So tired. I tried to get up in the morning on Thursday and couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to read my texts, so yeah…I finally got packed up and ready to go to school and got about halfway to school and almost turned around because I could not find my keys anywhere! As it turns out, obviously, I found my keys in the keyhole to make the car go…LOL…

Yeah, so when I am sleep-deprived, my brain gets super messed up…it is not so good…like if I told you your green shirt was purple there isn’t anything you could do to convince me it is green…that is how screwed up my brain gets…

…so obviously the greatest thing to do would be to stay up excessively late again Thursday night…so we got started with FCA almost an hour later than we were supposed to…which meant we also finished an hour late…which meant I was ridiculously tired by the time I left. It was kinda bad…I was SO tired, but just like a baby I was too tired to actually fall asleep until I eventually crashed…I just wanted to duct tape over my mouth and eyes and vocal cords to force myself to shut up and go to sleep.

The morning was interesting though, because ALL emotions are inflated when sleep deprived. So I liked the song on the radio and got really excited…and then it was hilarious when I got lost on the way to school. Yeah, that happened. See, the road was closed that I always take to get to and from school and I was a little bit too dumb to notice it until I was in the middle of the intersection so I didn’t really have the time to stop and critically evaluate what I should do…like turning in the correct direction to actually go a different way to school…on the positive side, I did figure out that I was going the wrong way and wasn’t totally sure where I was before I ended up on some random freeway…also, I found a traffic jam. So yeah, it took an extra half hour to get to school…I only live a mile and a half from school…and I was thrilled with pink lemonade for lunch just like in the Sound of Music!! Yeah, a lot of the foods they were serving were foods I don’t eat (umm, hello mystery off-white goop that definitely does not look like frosting or like mashed potatoes which are the only types of white-ish goop I can think of that I like) but I definitely eat hamburgers and pink lemonade and tomatoes (obvi not mixed together. That would be disgusting…but cups and divided plates were invented for a reason)…and it was also awesome because the email they sent about lunch didn’t sound like there was going to be much of anything that I usually eat, so it was super awesome to end up with a plate that looked like I was actually eating a meal…

On the less positive side, standing in line FORever just to not get to the front of the line before the end of the day was super frustrating. I don’t really understand why we have to get new pictures in the first place, so standing in line for two hours just to not get a picture is not fun…it isn’t really the picture people’s fault, but more that they really shouldn’t have sent 250 of us over with two hours left in the work day. Especially after taking up an entire day we should have had to study for the big exams coming up, it does not help the crabby level to have us wait in line forever and ever for no good reason.

Totally unrelated, but wanna know a good way to derail my studying when I do get a break? Tell me I have to pick at most the 10 very best articles on a particular subject, and not only that but my list must be almost a complete match to the teachers list…it is reminiscent of APUSH where before each exam we had to write about the 20 most important events and 10 most important people and I had half a notebook full by that point of page numbers and events/people and spent hours choosing (and or sulking and freaking out while my parents tried to involve me in choosing followed by screaming when I was sure that the event on my list was not actually important enough). In retrospect, the point of the assignment was to do the writing, and there were very few wrong answers…but now there are right and wrong answers and instead of a couple hundred pages of text book to select from, I have the nearly unlimited number of articles on the internet to select from. There are like a billionty articles on the internet, and I have a love-hate relationship with all of them…and have no idea how to choose the best ones and so I get stuck and work myself in circles and get nothing productive done…

No need for walls you see right through

(When I’m with you—Citizen Way)

 

So I wrote this over the course of Monday and Tuesday then Wednesday morning I got some news that kinda…okay, more than kinda…rocked my world. I’m not ready to process it out loud yet, because like I literally just finished reading my email and I’d rather go through the motions of moving down the task list before I stop to let myself really process it…but basically most everything else I wrote here seems kinda silly and trivial compared to the rest of my world.

 

Five Things

 

ONE::

So I was reading recently about how the Newtown shooting never really happened and was actually a hoax…which was mildly disappointing because the Newtown shooting was what helped me figure out what I wanted to do if I couldn’t be a pharmacist. Apparently the building it was supposedly happening at hadn’t housed classes for years and was only a storage facility, and there were websites set up for the “victims” the day before it supposedly happened among other issues that detract from the story presented…whatevs…true or not, it was a good story…although not being true does explain why I could never really find the information I really craved at the time and explains why it didn’t seem like anyone went past sensationalism in the reporting into real life…and even stories can remind us of what to do to protect ourselves from the real life bad guys. Don’t go to school guys! It is dangerous! That is a message I can totally get behind! (Okay, not really, I go to school Monday through Saturday even though it isn’t safe because going to school is what you do if you want to be successful in life…or if you want easy internet access).

 

…but on the topic of shootings, there was one a couple blocks from school…it was kind of disappointing, because it was so close yet I didn’t even hear anything had happened until half an hour later when an email got sent out…I always miss all the action! I could be seeing history be made and instead I am always doing something else…like when a car drove into the pool and I was totally oblivious until I was done swimming, had my stuff packed up and we couldn’t leave because my carpool buddies wanted to try to get interviewed…or like when I heard on the radio that a bridge collapsed and it didn’t faze me, because they’re always talking about something on the roads, and then I was getting a ride to bible study and someone waved us down to tell the people driving about what happened and apparently it was a big deal, and people were watching it happen again on TV when we got there. On the positive side, because people weren’t exactly rushing into this area around school with that kind of news even though there was news that the shooter was caught at like 6:45 (so it probably actually happened at like 6:15 since there seems to be about a half hour lag between happenings and being told), in between of finding out about the shooting and the all clear I could go with my friend to get smoothies and talk and I had the time available to be the kind of friend I wish I was. In defense of going out when there was no notice of the dude getting caught, the shooting happened south of campus and we went north…and beyond that, I believe that people don’t just decide to go around shooting random people, so if you are using your head and being a generally good person you have very little to worry about…plus, since it had happened so recently there were probably more police dudes out than usual so it would actually be safer than usual to hang out outside…although it does mean you gotta be more careful about traffic rules b/c you can’t play the no cop no stop card when there are cops everywhere. (I don’t actually even play that card…I just like how it sounds…but I will admit that I have difficulties with paying attention to the speed limit…and one time I parked somewhere specifically marked no parking because my friend told me to and I was afraid to stand up for myself and was running late and was only going to be parked ten minutes tops)…

 

And speaking of news, I was reading Monday about this lady who wanted to be “the fun weekend mom” so she got a hotel room and had a party for her teen and gave him heroin and fentanyl. She woke up in the morning to a dead kid…followed by some criminal charges. I’m really glad that I don’t have the fun weekend mom. My mom’s sense of humor doesn’t always line up with mine, but we both agree that a drug party doesn’t sound enjoyable…but my dad and I are a lot more similar. “Hey, you’re not shot, right” “Not that I know of…lol” “Good, keep it that way”

 

My opinion is that we live in a world people get shot and houses explode and you can either laugh and enjoy the story or you can live scared of your own shadow…oh yeah, houses exploding! That’s a good story too! So my parents went to yell at my brothers for kicking the furniture and they were both asleep in bed…as it turns out the sound and jolt of the apartment was from the explosion of a house a few miles away. A house in the same neighborhood as the house we were planning on moving into soon. The news didn’t immediately say which house it was and our house was getting a furnace that day…so they were obviously concerned that it was our future home that exploded…not that it is really any better that it was a different home that exploded, ’cause that one had a person in the garage when it happened and she went to the hospital and apparently kids aren’t allowed to visit people they barely know at that hospital…

 

TWO::

It bugs me when people over-spiritualize things. Not to be a negative-Nancy or a depressing-Debbie or anything, but while it is all well and good that God CAN do everything, it is not very helpful when I say I can’t to assert that God can…or that I can do anything through Christ. Is it true that God *could* write a stellar paper for me and study for and do well on three exams and five quizzes and a couple group projects, do 500 pages of reading, and be prepared for the next things coming up after that for me in the next week or so? Sure, he could do that, but chances are, he is going to leave it to me to get done with whatever I am able to get done with. That doesn’t make it any easier to accept that I can’t do everything I am supposed to be doing, because that is only the academic side of life and ignores the social, emotional, and “life” aspects of life, and even if I just had the academics I don’t feel like I could do it…In fact, that over-spiritualization sometimes hurts. It makes me question am I doing something wrong? Why aren’t things working out the way everyone tells me they will? Why can’t I get it right when everyone else must be able to do it since they are spouting this wisdom at me?

 

God works in mysterious ways. God cares. God does not tend to do people’s homework. Not being negative, just being real.

 

THREE::

Halfway to the parking garage at the end of my school day on Tuesday I figured out where to hold my ID and keys to throw it so that I actually catch it most of the time. That might seem pretty trivial, but it was pretty exciting…and besides, when most of the big things are going wrong, it is the little things that matter the most. Also, this means my ID and stuff won’t go swimming in puddles or tree-climbing or go on similar adventures anymore…

 

FOUR::

So this is kind of a corollary to what I was talking about recently on facebook…but I was thinking maybe I love God too much because I’d really rather hang out in heaven in his physical presence than on earth with his spiritual presence. The hard part with that would be leaving behind all my friends though, so I was thinking that I would like to go to heaven if I could take (list of names) with me…but then I realized that would be a problem because it would take all the really awesome people off of earth which would really not be fair to the people left behind…and since non-Christians can’t go to heaven, that would be a big problem, because I can’t just solve that problem by broadening who I am going to take with me to include every single person on Earth. Plus, the reason I gave myself for why I shouldn’t wish I could go to heaven right right now is that there are a lot of people I can help by being on earth that I probably can’t help from heaven…so solution number two was to take the bad people with me to heaven…but the bad people haven’t accepted Christ as the Lord and Savior of their lives and thus would have to go to hell instead and it isn’t very fair to take away their chance to change their ways before judgement day…which means I can’t go to heaven…which was kind of disappointing…until I realized that in reality I never had a choice of when to go to heaven in the first place, so nothing really changed besides my wild imagination coming back closer to reality.

 

FIVE::

So moderately recently they added some flashing lights in the parking garage at school…and some days I have half a mind to go pull the plug on them or fix them with some nice black duct tape. I will be the first to admit that I am not great at parking and that I sometimes go home later than I should. When I am having trouble parking I don’t need the motion of the stupid lights flashing on and off. Similarly, when I am half asleep and trying to get un-parked and out of the parking garage I REALLY REALLY don’t need that extra motion of lights flashing. That is super distracting and not very safe because if I sense motion I assume it is either a person or a car. That means I either jerk away from the motion to avoid an accident—which actually has almost led to a minor accident, or I just completely stop and look around to try to find the obstacle. That inconveniences anyone else who is around or it can also be dangerous, because other drivers don’t expect me to slam on my brakes unless I am going way too fast when I come upon a stop sign or a red light. I don’t know whose brainchild the flashing lights were, but it was a really bad idea. I wouldn’t be opposed to a light that was always on, but the flashing is really annoying and distracting and unsafe.

I like to eat eat eat

(Apples & Bananas—The Wiggles)

So a few years ago I did a funny food tips part one and never did part two…I can’t remember what I was going to write in part two, but I definitely have lots of experience in things that (don’t) work

Sometimes you have to redefine success…I might have learned the hard way that some apples you can cook forEVER and they will never soften enough to make applesauce (or at least won’t soften enough in the 25 minutes I cooked them plus 15 minutes of trying to mash them up)…but if I pretend my goal was apple pie filling, then I was wildly successful…and, I mean, if you have teeth then applesauce and apple pie filling are pretty much the same thing anyway…now if I remembered what kind of apples those were so that I could make a mental note not to use that variety for applesauce again that would be even better…

Don’t stick your fingers in the crock pot after it has been cooking all night. No, it is not hot enough to burn you the way boiling water would, but it is very hot and kinda hurts…

Cutting boards should most definitely not be balanced on a corner of the counter mostly supported by your left hand…unless you like cleaning up cut up food when the last cut comes down a little harder than you expected thus catapulting the entire board onto yourself and the floor.

Speaking of cleaning up, make sure there are no holes in the bag of ramen before smacking the bag to break it apart…also messy…although ramen noodles are easy enough to vacuum up if needed and don’t leave the floor slimy or sticky until mopped.

There is a pretty good chance this one was also on part one, but it stands repeating to turn off the water when it is not pointed at either the sink itself or some other appropriate water containment device…which would not include the floor, the trash can, the bed, or the clothes you are currently wearing…among other things.

Similarly, do not turn a pan full of water sideways to clean the inside at a better angle…unless you would like to change clothes…

Don’t buy bags of frozen vegetables that are already conglomerated into one big popsicle of peas…by the time you are ready to use them it will be near impossible to make them into small enough chunks to fit into your bowls.

Always pack a spoon. Even if you think you don’t need one. Just do it…that way you don’t realize too late that you forgot a spoon and will have to use and wash a metal spoon that can’t even go in the microwave…yeah, not really sure what the point of metal spoons are for things besides ice cream…why would I want a spoon that I can’t microwave?? (Well okay, it is more economical to use a metal spoon and wash it, but when spoons are like $2 for 100 using and tossing doesn’t seem like such a big deal…also, I saw somewhere that they were making edible spoons…that would be so awesome…although I can see that going very wrong, like if you lost track of which spoon was which flavor and using a spicy spoon for your ice cream…

One college student living alone doesn’t need 70ish plastic food storage containers…it seems like a really great idea when you see all these containers in the store that seem so awesome, but it is a lot less awesome when you start thinking about having to pack all of them to come home and have two ginormous boxes of plastic food storage containers…I have used at over 90% of them at least once…and there are like 23 that I use pretty much every week…but I could definitely live comfortably with significantly fewer containers…although judging from the supply at my house, that is a problem that won’t last forever…my mom is always buying new containers and there is never anything to pack my lunch in…(mild exaggeration, but not by a lot)…