My Why

M's Topic: What's your why? Why do you do what you do?

This topic's sort of killing me this week. I keep pulling up my blog, staring at the topic, and closing things down again. And I guess the reason for that is because I don't really have a why. When I was younger, I did what I did because I didn't know what else to do. Kind of like, "just pick something already and get on with it."

Instead of doing things just for the heck of it, I'm doing them for the heck of it while in survival mode. I have to support my son, and myself, and eventually get my life together well enough that I can provide my own source of food and shelter, so that my parents can get on with their lives, as well. This effort that you see me put forth is pure desperation, folks! ;)

I can't offer much else on this topic, at least for now, but take what I've got for what it's worth!

What was I doing on this day, 10 years ago?

Ten years ago.

February 2nd, 2006.

I was a junior in high school. I was thinking about cutting my hair short. I had just decided to try out for a school play for the first time ever (I had only ever worked backstage, but this time it turned out that I missed auditions by one day). I was still crying my eyes out from breaking up with my high school luuuuurrrrrve. I was returning college junk mail with my "sign me up for more junk mail from your university, please" information all filled out. I was signing up to graduate from high school a semester early (I just couldn't keep coming to school every day with my luuuuurrrrrve now that he hated me! -read with a dramatic flair-). I was babysitting a ton. And working at Four Season's Video. I was doing my best to stay out of the way of the planning for my oldest sister's wedding. And racing around in my little, seventh-hand, smoking, stinky, 1992 Ford Taurus. I still slept with my pound puppy, a gray poodle named Bonnie. I had my own little dog, Mac, who was just a little guy, 2.5 years old, and my grumpy, old-man dog, Roy. I was considering becoming a CPA. I was listening to Johnny Cash and the Beatles, daily. I thought I was pretty cool. Not much else was going on. I was in high school...

Stress Relief

M's topic: What's your favorite stress reliever?

This is a hard one for me! I am always stressed, and even when I'm taking a break from all of the hard things in life, I'm still holding that stress somewhere. When I'm at a friend's house, when I'm playing with the kiddo, when I'm out for a walk in God's glorious nature..

It's in the back of my head. No matter how hard I try to let it go. But here are some things that help.

~Spending time with friends

~Putting puzzles together with N

~Playing catch (especially when you hear a solid smack of the ball in the webbing of your mitt)

~Eating a burger (I KNOW that's terrible!!! But if you get a good one, it's so delicious that you forget what stress is while you taste the goodness that comes between two slices of bun!) ((And I'm totally serious about this one, though you may think I'm crazy!))

~Reading a book

~Moving (my body, not moving to a new home)

~Traveling

~Sometimes painting. Sometimes it stresses me out more though, because I'm a perfectionist.

~Building things. It's so therapeutic. I like to see my hard work has actually resulted in something that's tangible.

~Biking really fast

~Driving in the heat with the windows down

~Swimming

~Watching a good movie

~Attending high school basketball games

~Getting a massage

~Snuggling N

~Bible study

~Almost anything with N, actually

Yep. Any of those things are just grand. And there are more.

^^ Stress = Relieved

One Thousand Gifts

My cousin sent me this picture a couple days ago:

by Brian Andreas

Cute, right? Only things have been the pits for me lately, and I've noticed something about myself. I used to be super chipper and positive and optimistic and I tried to see the best in everyone and the silver lining in everything. 

Notice I said used to. 

I'm not so chipper and positive and optimistic anymore. I don't necessarily look for the best in everyone.  And I sure don't see the silver lining in much of what goes on in life anymore.

The opposite of that mean monster's story has been happening to me over time, and I'm turning into someone that I feel disappointed by. 

I want to see the best in everyone. I want to give them a chance, and to even develop a friendship with them. Yes, I make friends with people, but I sure don't give people second chances or try very hard to see things from a different light when I see them do something that I don't agree with. 

I want to see the silver lining in life. I want to take everything, the good and  the bad, and find a positive, happy takeaway. Something that leaves me feeling as though everything has meaning in it, and it's not all gloom if things don't appear as we want.

A couple years ago, my friend lent me this book by Ann Voskamp.

One Thousand Gifts

I was going through some awful stuff with N's father, and I cried all the time. It felt like life would never be okay, N was going to be scarred, I was scarred, the only thing I had ever wished for my entire life was never going to happen, my life had been ripped away from me, torn into shreds, and then went up in flames.

I was devastated. One Thousand Gifts was hard for me to read, but it helped me. I tried to actively look for the gifts in every day, in every moment, and it helped.

Grad school has been a nightmare for me. I'm still not even sure how I made it this far into the program, but it has taken it's toll. Anymore, I feel like all I do is moan and complain and whine about how it's so hard, and the program is awful, and I don't want to continue the program, and the professors are awful, and on and on and on. 

I have a hard time seeing the positive in anything anymore. Grad school took me and turned me into a monster! 

Well, after B sent me that photo (of the mean monster) and after I had sat and thought about it for a while, I decided enough was enough. The things and people in my life that make it hard, whether it's N's father, mean professors, difficult assignments/exams, long distance internships, anything, I am not going to let it take control of me. 

I will not be the mean monster's doppelgänger!! I will be me, and I will be kind, and thoughtful, and generous, and caring, and loving, and accepting, and turn-the-other-cheek-ing, and look-for-the-positive-ing, and silver-linings-exist-ing!

I'm going to journal my own thousand gifts, every day, every time I see one. Whether it's iridescent suds in the sink, fluffy toddler bed-head, a friend's laughter, a feeling of energy, satisfaction of being able to drive home, or the solid thwack of a shoe on a soccer ball in the yard. I will see the positive, and I will look for and hope for the best in everything.

And when I write my thousand gifts, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep on writing them.

When it's summertime..

M's Topic: the one thing I am looking forward to the most this summer...

This post is going to have to be short and sweet today, due to the impending horribleness that is proving my competency via an oral exam this week. I have much to do yet to prepare!!

Since I've been drowning in studying for my competency/departmental exams/boards/whatever you want to call them for the last 6 weeks with few breaks, I've got a pretty one track brain when it comes to the topic M gave me. The one thing I am most looking forward to during the summer is having NO WORK/SCHOOL RESPONSIBILITIES. Ugh, I can't even EXPRESS how much I can't wait to be done writing papers, preparing for exams, preparing for presentations, making lesson plans, agonizing over the correct procedure for a clinical bedside exam, coming up with enough appropriate questions for my supervisor when asked, "do you have any questions?"

I know that as soon as I get through my departmental exams and the speech praxis, the answer to M's question will probably change pretty quickly (e.g. spending all day long with Magoo, going to see family that I haven't traveled to see in 5+ years, camping, spending weekends with friends instead of my computer, the list is potentially endless). For now, I just can't wait to be done with studying, preparing for exams, and STRESSING over all of this stuff!

Wish me luck and cross your fingers and pray Pray PRAY for me this week and especially Friday morning!!!!

Story Time: One Dog Night

I'm not reading a book every week this year: see the date? It's January 17th, so we're almost into week 3 of the new year, and this is my first book, ALTHOUGH it WAS an audiobook. However, I'm still literate. :) (Although I don't exactly read books that encourage a lot of thought.)

I spend a lot of time in the car, so I've gotten into audiobooks lately. A little library nearby has a pretty decent selection of them, and I've also enlisted the help of the super sweet librarians. I'm working my way through a series of books by the author, David Rosenfelt, about a New Jersey defense attorney, Andy Carpenter. They're extremely sarcastic and each book is really unique, but ties past characters into each new story really well. I love all of the characters and I'm going to be really sad when I finish the series and there are no more to read! (I'll probably send harassing emails to the author, trying to heckle him into writing more books!)

I just finished One Dog Night, which is book 9 out of the 13 book series, and I tell you what, any subsequent audiobooks are unlikely to hold up to my standards now established by my newest favorite comedy/crime/courtroom series! This one has a thumbs up from me. :)

DRWP Employee of the Week: A Look at 11th Grade Composition

I've been searching for my undergraduate GPA like a crazy person for the last several weeks, and while searching, I found a few gems from middle school and high school. It's very nice when people share, so here's something goofy from my junior year of high school. 

DRWP Employee of the Week

When I was fifteen, I obtained my first, official, honest, paying job. It was a summer job right after school was out for the summer in eighth grade. I was so proud. However, that didn't even compare to the pride I felt at the end of the summer when I was hailed as the employee of the week at the Deep River Water Park.

My brother Josh had a job there as a member of the maintenance department, and I knew exactly what I wanted my first job to be when I had my fifteenth birthday that June. I talked my brother into bringing home an application so I could sign up right away. I became an official member of the Deep River Water Park Maintenance Department exactly five days after my birthday.

On the first day of work, I came in at ten 'til seven in the morning, wearing my brand-new, extra large Hawaiian shirt and my blue pants, and met my awesome new boss, Keith the Mullet Man. I quickly became aware of the fact that my boss was the coolest department boss in the entire water park. He took me on a tour of the entire park, explained the different sections, showed me where to find brooms, Pik-Sticks, and skimmers, and showed me how to find my way back to "Keith's Workshop." He even gave me my own DRWP water bottle. 

He sent me to Court 1 for my first day, which was the envy of most of the maintenance workers, because of all the tips that could be received for sweeping up napkins and French Fries. All I had to do was weave through the tables flipping and scooping with my little broom and my dustpan on a stick, with an occasional run through the front bathroom to make sure that no natural or unnatural disasters had occurred during the fifteen minutes since I had checked last. I had mastered the art of flipping and scooping by the time the park had been open for ten minutes.

When lunch break rolled around, I had no idea. Josh came to get me for lunch at twelve, and I experienced my first artery clogging water park meal. I began with a cup of greasy chicken bites, and ended with half of a funnel cake. This finished, I heaved my unsettled stomach out of the chair in the break room with the fuzzy TV screen, the fly trap that wasn't trapping any flies, and the popcorn machine with the two week old, fly infested popcorn, and went back to work sweeping up napkins in the food court.

At three o'clock, I bought a strawberry smoothie with a food token and came into the break room where a stimulating newspaper question and answer game was beginning. After smoking Keith the Mullet Man, Brian the Clueless MIT Student, and the rest of the maintenance department, we went back to clean the bathrooms one last time before our shift was over. My first day at the Deep River Water Park was over.

The second day, I worked the hill. On the hill, I mastered the art of Pik-Sticking rather quickly. This required muscles in the left arm to carry the five gallon bucket, and index finger movement on the right hand for controlling the Pik-Stick. The general concept of the Pik-Stick was to squeeze a handle at the top of the stick, and a claw on the other end would clamp on whatever trash item was being focused on at the moment. After picking up this particular skill, there wasn't much I couldn't accomplish.

The summer continued with eight hour shifts starting either at seven a.m. or two p.m. My personal favorite was the night shift, because much more meandering was tolerated while Pik-Sticking. Also, Keith was usually grouchier in the mornings, because Rob worked the morning shifts. Rob was the only person I ever know who could actually drown the Dolphin, which was an underwater vacuum. Either that or he would drop a lawn mower in the Lazy River. The entire maintenance crew would wait in anticipation in Keith's Workshop before the park opened to see what kind of accident Rob had that morning. Even though Keith was usually mad, Rob did liven up the mornings. It was during a morning shift in August that I became aware of my acquired position as the employee of the week.

The employee of the week was a position that was revered by all the employees in the park. First of all, it was a great honor to be chosen as the employee of the week, because that meant that I would have my picture with the assistant manager posted on the employee of the week bulletin board. Next, I received free food tokens from Christ, the assistant manager of the park. Food tokens lasted a long time for me since I was friends with the workers in Milo's, which was a restaurant above Keith's Workshop. Also, I received an Employee of the Week certificate wishing me a "Splashtastic Week" that was signed by Keith, the manager of the entire park, and myself. However, the greatest honor was yet to come.

The greatest honor was parking in the employee of the week parking place next to the break room. Employees of all departments envied the employee of the week parking places since it was a mad race each morning to get a parking place in the cramped employee parking lot. The employee of the week parking place had a special sign posted above it indicating exactly who it was for. That person was me. I had dreamed of the day that we would be able to drive the blue whale of a Bonneville to that parking place and pull into it instead of driving on. I never believed that I would really be able to do it, and it was exhilarating when it actually happened. When the car stopped, Josh left immediately, but I had to sit and savor the moment. It was truly fabulous. I was so proud when the other employees be can arriving and drove past me to their insignificant parking spots without employee of the week signs.

That entire week was wonderful. I was held up in a glorified position as employee of the week and people recognized me from my corner picture with Chris, the greasy assistant manager. My certificate was posted in Keith's Workshop until the end of the week when I took it home and posted it on my own wall. I spent two minutes savoring the employee of the week parking spot every day all week. Altogether, it was my greatest achievement as a working citizen of the United States of America, and I was very proud. It was an incredible achievement for me, and I was extremely triumphant.