The Last Day

Today is my last day at work. Well, actually tomorrow is my last day, but it will be spent making sure my replacement knows what to do, so functionally, today is it. It is kind of a weird feeling knowing that I won't be back here for four months, and maybe never in the same capacity. For those of you who know me, you know that this was hardly a dream job, and I complained about it a lot. Despite this, right now I feel like it was finally mine. Working here all summer helped me to really make the job my own. I know more about the job, the people, the industry, and the office than I ever did before. After three years, I finally have a well ordered desk, a brand new computer, my very own responsibilities, and an office space all to myself.

I was the first person in the company to hold my position, and so I got to experiment and develop the job over the years. It went from sitting at someone else's desk on the oldest computer in the building, trying to find something to do, to being a valued and important part of daily business; from having to have my boss read over every email, to overseeing the hiring of two different new positions, and attempting to maintain the sanity of a hectic and rapidly growing office. All I can say is that I hope my replacement appreciates what a kick-ass job this is now that I made it all pretty and tidy for her.

Or at the very least, don't you like the pretty desk lamp and pen holder? I picked them out myself.

Blessing

Vicky Hinrichs is praying for me and she wants to talk to me about all my problems. I know this doesn't mean anything to any of you, but it means an aweful lot to me. Her phone call this afternoon is the equivelant to Santa Clause moving in next door to a kid who wants a new bike.

Thank God for giving hope when you need it the most.

Popcorn In a Little Candy Shell

Butter popcorn Jelly Bellys should be counted amoung the great joys of life. I don't know how in the world they make butter popcorn into a candy and make it taste good, but they do and they do it well. I want to get a whole bag of popcorn Jelly Bellys and only eat them for the rest of my life.

The Little Things

There is something very satisfying about having a desk fully stocked with office supplies. After seeing Office Space I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to by a red stapler. Now I have two. The red stapler was soon joined by a white razor-knife thing that makes box cutting SO easy. Two colors of Precise V7 pens, two containers of tape, some post it notes, a ton of scratch pads and a variety of sharpies, staples, paper clips, and labels now round out my collection of neccessities.

That being said, the worst thing in office world (well, second to having someone blame their mistakes on you) is to have some of your precious supplies taken from you. I am particularly protective over my knife and my stapler. The pens are a lost cause as everyone in this office seems to believe that my desk is easier to access than the supply cabinet, but damn it, leave my knife and stapler alone! One of the staplers has remained safe, but if by any chance my office theif is reading this right now, GIVE ME BACK MY KNIFE AND STAPLER NOW!!! I love and miss them very much.

Out of all the ways to write a sound...

"Tee hee" for laughter has got to be the worst. Who actually laughs that way? "Tee Hee?"

Really people.

My Grammar, Myself

Without paragraph breaks my writing would be a mess. Paragraphs break each thought into a lovely, organized package. When I am done with a thought I just take a break, and move on.

Just like that. My life needs paragraph breaks. Wouldn't it be great? After finishing a moment in life you pause, take a step away, and start anew. Each life moment would conveniently build on the next, with no confusion, muddling, mixing, or smearing. We would be a race of pause takers and much anxiety and cosmic multi-tasking would cease.

Paragraph breaks are one of the major reasons why writing is therapeutic. When everything around you seems to be spinning, you are forced to find at least enough organization or meaning in the madness to write in paragraphs.

If this isn't the case, and it seems impossible to form paragraphs as you sit down to write, then maybe you need to reevaluate your thought process and life patterns. Is a life devoid of the ability to write paragraphs worth living? Maybe the paragraph isn't just a pillar of grammatical process, it is a gauge with which to judge the quality of your existence.

Now I just wish I was able to convince my 7th grade students the vital importance of their grammar lessons...

Twelve Dollar Wonder

You know it is bad when you can't sleep from the heat. You try to help yourself go to sleep by putting moistuerizer on (I believe it makes your face feel better and more like sleeping), but then you sweat so much the moisterizer gets in your eyes and you have to get up again and wash it out of your now red and very unrested eyes.

When it gets to this place, one's red eyes and sad face are a call to action. So, Kathy and I acted. We went to Lowe's last night and bought a bunch of stuff to make our little, sweltering room more tolerable. We bought blinds and tools to put them up with (a 59 piece home repair kit that we are quite proud of) and set to work. After three hours and a call to the Saviors of The Blind Installment (thank you Tim and Brian and the drill that came with you) half of the blinds were up and the room no cooler. That is until we turned on the Twelve Dollar Wonder.

Our room is the only one in the house without a ceiling fan. We looked for a large, room sized fan to buy, but Lowe's was all out of anything that looked remotely helpful. The only fan left was a "desk" fan; a little thing you put on top of a table. We took our chances with the little white fan and bought it anyway. Kathy put it together and we plugged it into the sole remaining outlet. Then our lives change. The Twelve Dollar Wonder circulates cool air around our room. Where it is getting this cool air, we do not know, but there it is and it is great.

Moral of today: The Price of a Good Night's Sleep is Approxiamtely Twelve Dollars and Blinds are a Pain in the Ass.

The End of an Era

One of the great things about childhood is that there are no ends, just beginnings. There is no time in your short lifespan to develop an attachment great enough to miss, really. I once had a cat named Pepper. I loved that cat and one day, I realized that he wasn't coming home again. I cried until my parents came in to quiet me, and I swore I would never forget that cat. I pictured him as I last saw him, sitting in the garage doorway, and I decided that if every night I remembered that picture of him then I couldn't ever really forget him. It worked. I still have that mental image of that silly little cat seared into my mind. Almost ten years later I picked out a little, smelly (yes, smelly), spikey, disheveled kitten from a box of lovely ones because he looked like that cat.

But the loss of Pepper didn't really hurt. Sure I cried myself to sleep one night, but I can't remember even thinking about it the next day. I never cried over a cat after that. When I was twelve my grandfather died. I didn't really know him, and I always felt like I should have cared about his loss more, but I didn't. He was a man who was distant and uncommunicative (we didn't know about the cancer that killed him, nor the Christianity that saved him till he died of the former), and so I didn't even cry at his funeral.

Now, a grown up heart, that sucker can hurt. It can ache for months, even years. It can suffer the end of an era and never fully recover, and yet eras go by, seemingly uninterested in what they do to us grown-ups. School, jobs, and houses change, people move, relationships fade into nothing, and the poor heart must keep on going.

For me, I am realizing that part of growing up is living with sadness that can't be fixed by a new kitten or a good night's rest. Sometimes things will be bad, they will hurt, and there is nothing that can change that. On second thought, maybe being grown-up is knowing how to move on, how to grow past the past and keep on plugging away. Eras may come and go, but the mature heart knows that a new one is coming and it brings a fresh joy.

Show me the next era and teach me how to hope in it.

Speaking of things that are important...

Family is important. Family and their lives, interests, relationships, and events are important. I would even venture to say that they are more important than most of what we do in ife. I mean, who are we without the family God has given to us, whether they are blood related or not?

That being said why, I ask you, am I at work right now? In order to get to work today I had to leave my home in Temecula at 6:30 am. In so doing I missed my sister leaving for her 20 day tour with the Navy. She left this morning in her Summer Whites (a dress uniform not to be confused with her Dress Whites, I am told), to board the freaking USS Reagan. AND I WENT TO WORK INSTEAD!!!! The rest of my family went with her to see her off and are now on their way to the cabins.

Today and tomorrow I have to let the mundane, soon to be forgotten, details of life (work being the big one) get in the way of the memory making, enriching part of life. As backwards as that seems, I am finally realizing that it is only through the mundane that we appreciate and experience the good stuff. My job is boring and fulltime, but it pays well. It pays well, so I can go to the mountains tomorrow night and meet up with my family. And someday soon, with the money I earned being bored, I am going to take little miss Navy and our baby sister to a country music concert. Yes, I love my sisters THAT much.

My Dad has been trying to tell me this stuff for years. There Dad. I get it.