Ugh.

It's looming over me people. The big dark 3-0 is just hours away. I have no excitement about this one whatsoever. I actually kinda feel a bit depressed about it. I'm sick, pmsing and exhausted. And all you older folks, don't roll your eyes at me for saying it - you know you felt it when your big 3-0 came up too. It's just that its the dawning of a new decade and I haven't quite figured out how to process this one yet. And I miss my family. And I miss my friends. I miss them a lot.

We've got plans for dinner tomorrow night with some of our "younger" small group friends at Bonefish to celebrate mine and our friend Genesis' birthdays. Normally I would be super excited, but the frustration of this stupid sickness is robbing my joy. Lord I need you to heal me, so I can enjoy every morsel of that pork tenderloin from Bonefish that I'm going to order tomorrow night.

He's So Good To Me

I married the best, what can I say? And I should be able to say that without making anyone gag, cause I think being married for over 2 years qualifies us as no longer newlyweds. (*sniff*)

No but really, I haven't exactly been a real picnic to be around the last couple weeks. I've been irritable, exhausted, lazy and anxious. I get easily frustrated that I can't do the simple tasks that I so badly feel need to be done around the house and instead I've only been able to lay around and read, sew or watch movies. I did however probably push myself a little too much this weekend by cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen, but it so badly needed doing, I thought it was worth the pain. So I took a little something before bed to relax and get a good nights sleep on Saturday night so I would be all rested to teach with Jason on Sunday morning to our 4th graders. Only I didn't sleep. Like at all. Ok, maybe 2 hours. It sucked. I got up around 7am to head to the bathroom, cause I'm peeing like every 2 hours with all the water I'm downing and was a little off-balance from the drugs and pure exhaustion and managed to somehow miss sitting fully on the toilet, slid completely off and fell straight into the side of the bathtub jarring my left shoulder and arm. Awesome, I know.

So after what I thought was going to be a weekend of finally getting over this virus, I managed to re-injure myself and cause more pain - in a slightly stupid and embarrassing way. Yeah, that was a fun phone call to my doctor this morning. "I sorta fell...off the toilet...into the tub." So after my fall, I crawl back into bed, crying and already feeling defeated for the day. Jason gets up and once again, two weeks in a row, goes off and handles our crazy group of 4th graders at church alone. My hero. I hate that I wasn't able to be with him and help out. They can be quite a handful at times, but nothing Jason can't handle. So I kiss him goodbye, take another codeine and try to get a little more sleep. 4 1/2 hours later and I wake to the heavenly aroma of Fat Mo's burgers and fries. Hallelujah, a new start to the day. It only got better from there. I had my man for the entire day all to myself and we were able to hang out and relax. And the cherry on top - I walk around the corner of my freshly clean kitchen and sitting there on the counter is my favorite frosted coconut and maple Shipley's Donuts. He's just that good to me.

Thank you baby for being so patient and wonderful while I've been sick. You've done more than you know. I love you beyond words.

For Some Reason, I Find This Oddly Comforting...

I'm Done With VCR's!

One of the joys of being married to someone with an opposite schedule, is that there are very few opportunities during a 24 hour day to get in some quality communication.

This week has been such one of those weeks, where we squeeze in a quick 5 minute phone call here or a cup of coffee there trying to remember to mention all the important reminders or things we need to go over, like for instance recording our favorite tv shows.

In my effort to preserve watching our most beloved tv shows together, I had set up our archaic VCR to record American Idol on both Tuesday & Wednesday.

Then...

Communication Breakdown #1 - Wednesday night and I'm home licking my wounds from the day and decide that I might as well have American Idol on the background to see who gets kicked off since I'll find out from someone inadvertently mentioning it at work anyway. But then my sister Kati calls and I'd much rather talk to her, and after all I am taping the show to watch later. An hour or so later, Jason calls to check on me and as I'm obviously a bit hopped up on Codeine, Advil and whatever else is in my prescription goodies bag - I mention that I had American Idol on in the background - though I think I remember mentioning I wasn't sure if I caught who actually went home.

Communication Breakdown #2- Thursday at coffee went something like this (remember still drugged, so probably not quite accurate). Jason explaining that he **smirking** stayed up late Wednesday night watching American Idol, since I already knew who got kicked off. Granted, I watched all maybe 5 minutes of the show from Wednesday night and nothing from Tuesday, though I did mention that someone at work spilled the beans anyway, so I knew who went home. Then later that night I remember saying something like "You didn't watch Hell's Kitchen without me did you?!!" And he was all "no, I wouldn't do that! I only watched AI cause you said you had seen it." OK close enough, but whatever.

Then...

Thursday night comes along and I think to myself, Jason will be so excited that I remembered that Lost was back on this week and that I taped it for him. I'm such a good wife. So I set it all up and hit record.

Communication Breakdown #3 - Friday at coffee went something like this.
Me - "Since you've already seen Idol, I'll just go home tonight and watch both shows."
Him - "Sounds good"
Me - "Then this weekend we can catch up on all our favs, like Hell's Kitchen & Lost that I remembered to record!!"
Him - "Cool". (or something to that affect).

Then...Are you foreseeing the problem yet???

Oh! I didn't tell you that I REWOUND THE WHOLE TAPE AFTER WATCHING AMERICAN IDOL?? (BLEEPITY BLEEP!!) I get home from work, change into some comfy pj's for a cozy night of relaxation, pour a nice big cold glass of Pepsi, take a codeine and curl up to watch American Idol. Except, the ONLY thing on the tape IS LOST. I'm not mad at him, its not his fault, he didn't realize that Lost was on this week and didn't think there was any reason not to rewind it. It's just an example of how hard we have to work at communicating with the little time we get together. I love you baby, its not your fault.

BUT I'm officially done with VCR's. Done. Over.

This little guy is soon to become my new little best friend.

From now I'm on a mission to obtain one of these prized and oh-so-worth-the-money pieces of beautiful technology in order to save myself from more tears of eaten up tapes, recorded over shows and forgotten daylight savings time changes. Trust me - there's been A LOT of tears.

$100 TiVo Series2 DT DVR. Capable of recording 80 hours of shows, two at a time and with a service plan of $13 a month. Can it really be? Think of the stress this little baby will save us (me).
Watch me make it happen.

M.I.A.

Sorry folks, I'm still out of commission here and doing all I can to take it one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time. Per my doctor's instruction, I had to stay home Monday & Tuesday from work to recover from this horrible virus I've got. He even gave me a note for my bosses', which was weird, but probably necessary, since I don't exactly "appear" sick, I'm just in a ton of pain. And staying home sick always seems so appealing when your healthy at work, but then when your actually really sick, its really not that much fun. Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely gorgeous outside and I got to sit on the porch in the sunshine with my book while Jason sanded the desk, but still I've been so drugged most of the time, I didn't get to really enjoy the full two days off. One weird side effect about these steroids I'm on, they make my feet itch at night, so in order to keep me from waking up and rubbing my feet on the carpet, I've been sleeping with a hairbrush between my feet, so I can scratch when I need to and fall right back asleep. I know I'm weird, but it works.

Yesterday I had to come back to work, so I don't use up all the rest of my sick/vacation time - and it was hell all day. Both my attorneys had let a lot of work pile up for me to do and I was rushing around like mad trying to keep up - it took a huge toll on my body and I was in horrible pain all day long. So after talking with my doctor again today, he's starting me on a second round of steroids to try & fight off this virus. It will be so nice to actually have my full strength back and be able to clean my house once again and feel not so groggy from the 5 different meds I'm on. But until then, not much else new to report here.

Just please keep me in your prayers, I so badly want to be over this and I really don't want to undergo any further tests. Plus, I really need to hear the Lord in where I need to draw the lines between what is best for my health and being able to say no when somethings too much for me to handle.

Hope your all well - oh and congrats to Vanessa & Josh Curtis on the birth of their beautiful baby girl Ada Victoria Curtis! She was born last Friday night at 8:03pm, 8 lbs and 3 oz!!

WHAT THE HECK!?!~

As if living in the South, where we're susceptible to tornado warnings 6 months out of the year is unnerving enough - apparently we're also capable of having earthquakes.

At 4:30 this morning, Jason and I both woke quite suddenly as we found ourselves shaking in our bed. The first thing that flew out of my mouth was "We're having an earthquake!". Jason, who normally barely even flinches in his sleep during a massive thunderstorm, says to me quite calmly, "no, it's got to be a plane flying too low or a train". I explained - we couldn't actually hear a train or a plane - it HAD to be an earthquake. And it was really rockin our house pretty good, rattling the windows and shaking the bed. And Banks ran into the bedroom jumped up on the bed and was a bit freaked out herself. So it stops and I'm all - "wait, there could be aftershocks" and my heart is pounding. And then Jason's all "I've never known there to be earthquakes here". Oh au contraire my little love-muffin. Sure enough, I get to work today - go to the local news website and guess what....

Oh yeah baby. Who knows their earthquakes? This west coast girl knows a little something about earthquakes, but you'd think my California-born husband would too! I think he's been away from home a little too long.

But seriously now, how fair is it that we're prone to earthquakes AND tornadoes? And here I was thinking I was trading one for the other. Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit! (*That's for you baby!!)

Not fun.

Sorry I've been a bit absent from posting lately - I really haven't felt well the last few days and had to see the doctor on Tuesday after having chest pains for 2 days. He had me come in right away for chest x-rays and an EKG. I didn't think it was my heart, but he wanted to be sure. Turns out I have a weird viral chest infection called Costochondritis. It's basically an infection in the sternum and ribs up to the breastbone. It freakin kills and there's nothing they can do for it except let it run its course and keep me on painkillers to get through the pain. It pretty much sucks. Sitting up hurts, using my arms kill, taking too deep of a breath even hurts a lot. My doctor said that there's no known cause of it or how long it lasts. I'm just hanging on waiting for it to pass. I actually called in sick yesterday which I never do, and stayed on the couch or in bed most of the day drugged up on codeine. Jason was home though, which was a major bonus - and he helped take care of me and we caught up on American Idol and Hells Kitchen. I should be home today too, cause I still feel like crap, but I need to save my vacation/sick time for our upcoming family trip to the Oregon coast. Leave it to me to find some weird rare virus to come down with.

Game On

This was the conversation between one of my bosses and myself this afternoon:

my boss: could you change the date on this letter to today and not the 11th?

me: ok, but today IS the 11th.

my boss: when did it become the 11th?

me: at about midnight last night.

my boss: huh.

me: try to keep up, the game is constantly moving.

....and then we both had a good laugh :-)

And yet again...

American Idol closed out their special show "Idol Gives Back" with a well known praise & worship song - "Shout to the Lord!" It was awesome, nothing about the song was changed and it brought tears to my eyes - the rocks will cry out!

This is for you Jess!

I think we watched this scene about a million times :-)

I sure do miss roommate time with ya Jess! Hope your well and we'll schedule a phone call soon!!





For those of you that don't know - one of my best friends Jessica Griffith is stationed out on an Air Force base in Germany with her husband Ben who's a fighter pilot. Well actually, Jess is in Germany and Ben was deployed out on a mission in January. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers!!

Here's some pics she sent me the day Ben was deployed:

I love and miss you girl! Your never far from my thoughts!

American Idol

So this last Monday, Jason and I entered a song of his into the American Idol Songwriting competition. Just like last year, they open up a competition where songwriters can submit a song of theirs that could possibly be chosen as one of the top 20 songs that will be voted on by the public. They don't announce these songs on the actual show, but on their website American Idol and people can go there to register to vote for free and then pick which of the top 20 songs they like the best, which have been chosen out of the thousands of songs submitted. The winning and most popular song out of those top 20 songs will be sung by the winning American Idol contestant on the season finale. Just like Jordan Sparks from last year sang "This Is My Now". And the winning song will also be a single on that contestant's new album and finally the songwriters will be offered a publishing deal. We know its a HUGE long shot, but I believe in a God where ANYTHING is possible. After all - there were THOUSANDS of single men out there on a website that I happened to be browsing one week and I found the ONE man God had for me, my needle-in-a-haystack if you will - so I believe that anything is possible!!

The top 20 songs will be chosen by the American Idol A&R team by April 10th. If we hear anything at all, you can count on us sending out emails, phone calls, newsletters, whatever we can to spread the word. But I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. For now, what we need our friends & family to do - is to please stand with us and pray that God would open this door of opportunity for us - IF it is His will. This may not be our time, and that's ok. But we do know we are in the will of God for His plan for our lives, so we're taking every opportunity we're given to take that step of faith.

Oh! And before I forget - Jason's song is called "Be The Change". He wrote it with Lindsey Grant, who has a publishing deal and a record contract with Midas Music. She's the one actually singing the song on the demo. It's VERY rough, they recorded it Monday morning, dropped the CD off to me and I uploaded it with their entry to American Idol. But regardless, the song is great - and there may even be a chance that Lindsey might record for her next album. So who knows - this song could really go places!

If you want to hear the song, just push play on the little MP3 player below. Again, remember its not like his typical demos with a full band in a recording studio - its just Jason on guitar and Lindsey singing in the Midas offices.

(copywrited by Over The Monster Music)

And for those of you that missed it - check out Dolly Parton's performance of her new single "Jesus and Gravity" from Wednesday's night American Idol show. She starts praisin and having church up in there!! And finishes her song by saying, "Hallelujah Simon!"