The Emotional Rollercoaster ran out of gas and I'm stuck at the top with no way down...
I'm waiting.
I'm waiting to see why God made June come at all this year. In my mind he could have wiped out the month and it really would have been just fine. But for now, I'm waiting.
My family has been through some massively BAD things happening to us. Between my wonderful stepfather (Mark) having to up his meds for his MS (Multiple Sclerosis) because of the pain, my mom getting fired for being an honest employee, my sister lying and telling her boyfriend that Mark was rapping her (anyone who knows Mark understands why it's a blatant lie), and a whole heap of other problems... I'm still waiting. I'm trying to praise Abba... really I am! I'm just waiting for a reason to do so... I'm looking and I keep hoping... and years down the road I'll see and go 'heh, that's what all of this was for!' But right now it's not so noticeable. If you pray, my family could really use a couple...
I wrote a poem today.... it's not bad.... I guess...

Thank you Lord
I'm not sure yet what for
The hurt is a constant stab
Why does it have to hurt so bad?
I can't think of why to Praise You
But I know that's what I must do
So Thank You
Thank you
Thank you, Lord, thank you.

Uh huh.... yeah... anyone with ideas are welcome...

Jonah, Kessy, and Praise Walk with Kim Alexis...

Today when I got done with work around 9:15am I was driving home and suddenly God told me to call my friend Calless (Since my brain is usually shut off at this time, I give God all the credit on this idea). Calless (Kessy) lives in Bismarck ND and is a professional nanny. Her family lives in Garrettson, SD however, and I knew she had been around the weekend before. So, thinking I would wake her up, I called her to see how her weekend went. I wanted to see her, but it didn't pan out this weekend bc of work. Anyway, I called her and it turns out that she hadn't left yet for Bismarck! Yippy -de-skippy! We decided to meet in Summit (1.5 hrs. away from Aberdabber and 2 from Garrettson) at a gas station she usually frequents. So without any sleep, I drove to Summit and met her around the lunch hour. We ate Krispy Kreme donuts and she chatted about the weekend she had Kamping. We then exchanged Christmas gifts (since we hadn't seen each other in over a year) and then also souvenoirs. I had gone to South Carolina in May and at some point Kessy had gone to Vegas with the family. She got a key chain and I got a pen :D But the greatest gift was the Jonah dvd she gave me for Christmas... I watched it when I got home. I like that movie... Khalil is my favorite caterpillar in the world! I know the VeggieTales is kinda corny (LOL-corn get it?! Veggies?! HAHAHA...ok...so it was a lame joke) but I still enjoy them much and I'm glad that Kessy knew that.:D She's much fun.
What was the other thing I was going to talk about? Oh yeah, Praise Walk.
Praisewalk is a cd i just got from sound and spirit. You walk to worship music... ingenious eh? Well needed to drop off some books at the public library so I decided to walk and let the mosquitos eat me alive. The cd was really good though, I was impressed. I would suggest it to anyone who wants something good to listen to while they are walking!
That's all that's in my mind at the moment..... Take it easy!

I'm a jerk- and he still loves me!

Have you ever felt like you were at your worst, and then you bit off the head of someone you love? Well, Jonathan didn't deserve me biting off his head... I don't even think knew I bit it off ~ God bless him!

Right-o, so I had a terrible weekend at work (it's not done yet I guess) and when I got off of work I felt tired (I'm an overnight staff), cantankerous, and achy all over. Plus, I was in kind of a melancholy mood since something feminine was happening to me this week (Ask Al for details...she's good with details: http://alblogspace.blogspot.com) and it cause rather painful agony much like a hernia.... anyway....tmi...
and then Jon calls.
I love Jon... don't get me wrong! But that moment was not a good time for him to call. I was sarcastic, tired, and wanted only to find my futon and go unconcious on it. So when I answered it, I probably didn't seem enthused to talk to him, plus I didn't really have the brain capacity to hold up a conversation, and I was very abrupt with him. This is a lesson on both sides of the fence for couples. One: if they have just gotten off of a 12-13 hr. shift, give them a couple of hours to recoup. Two: Don't take it personally if you have done nothing wrong...being a good person, they will apologize profusely in a timely manner for any ill behavior they shot at you for no reason. And Three: Still love them...we all go through trials and tribulations and I know that in my lowest of moments (after I've been thrown up on, kicked/slapped/punched/pinched, rushed, stressed, and bm'ed on... it's a pretty low moment) to know that someone loves me is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

"Spontaneous violent love"

I was watching part of the extended version of Two Towers when I woke up from my unconcious spat. (Note: I work night shifts, so when I got home this morning at noon, I pretty much knocked myself out.) There was this bit about the stunt people. The stunt people are pretty awesome guys and they worked not 100% but more like 150% for literally 14 months. Most of them black belts, one an olympic wrestler, and just plain amazng people. People you'd find on on the series of Herc or Xena because most of them were Kiwis.
Anyway, it got to this part where they were talking about Viggo M. and how he worked with the stunt people. Since he worked so hard he became very close to many of the stuntmen and women. And then it happened.
"Whack!"
A good headbutt.
Elijah Wood has seen this phenomenon of meeting people, telling them an endearing thing or two, and then smacking your head against the one you've just met... he called it "Spontaneous violent love."
What a great way to explain it.
If you aren't sure where this part is... it's right at the beginning....you'll see the burning orange chair and the bearded Rohan women soon after that.

"Experience manifests in the wisdom of a teacher."

Some days I wonder about experience. Isn't it really just a nice word for screwing up and having the ability to learn from it? Really.... how do you learn from something you do perfectly well the first time around? What kind of experience can you attribute to a moment like that? 'Did it once. It worked. Now I know everything about the subject'... uh huh, sure, my aunt Bertha...

Sorry, it's just that I hate that word.....experience. When you're out seeking a job, what do employers ask? Do you have experience in the field. When you're hanging out with people and they ask you about a topic... what they're really asking you about is your experience with the topic. And when people are all too personal and they ask you about your 'experiences' in dating. Well let's think about that last one. If you dated someone before and you aren't dating them now... is that a bad experience? What if you learned from it? Does it mean it's a good experience? But you just got your heart broken! How good can that be? Or if people are digging even deeper in your relationships and they ask about your innnocence on the dating plane. "Are you....experienced?"

It'd be a whole lot easier if they just used car metaphors and asked me if I was new to the lot or if I'd been for test drives.

What I'm really trying to say is that experience isn't all it's cracked up to be. If you go into any situation, thinking, "Is this going to be a good or bad experience for me?" You are soon going to hit reality like a brick wall. Sometimes, experiences aren't really there. You don't see them. You might do absolutely nothing for DAYS on end.... and later look back on it as an 'experience'. You might be up to your eyeballs in business and never reflect on any of the experiences you could have encountered during your busy period.

I guess what I'm really trying to say......is that experience doesn't matter. Life matters. What you do with life matters. If you don't have experience, it's ok. You don't have to! I don't ever want to swim in swampy croc marshes to get the experience.

Of course, if you want the experience, I'd suggest knocking yourself out first. I'm sure it won't hurt as much.

Who get's hit on at a library?!

I don't understand the world today.... when did a library become a place to pick up chicks? Was I sick from life the day they explained that one? Ok...

I'm not what you would call.... particularly stunning. In the world of cars, I'm a honda - not a mustang. I guess it's good I'm not a Geo- but anyway. On this particular day I looked more like a Honda in need of a carwash than anything else. No makeup, my hair was pulled back in a clip, clothes that I'm sure of didn't match, and sandals. No high heels; dressing up for the occasion; type of anything here. Oh, and plus - I was in a library.

I gotta give the guy credit. It is incredibly hard to go up to a girl in any venue and strike up a conversation.... but do you know how annoying it is to be interrupted from a GOOOOOOD book? He asks me if I like Xbox. "No, I'm not a gamer." He tells me how many games he has anyway. Atari? Who hasn't heard of it? He has tons of them too. Do I read Stephen King? Not really. I read the one about the dog once.... Cujo? yeah. oh, and I watched the Green Mile but never read it. He has all of his books.

I was really hoping he would get the hint that we didn't have much to talk about... but then he started talking about the weather, a bullet in his head, SSI, colostamy bags, extreme constipation leading to hours-literally in the lou, and his high school years. I've been out of high school for about four years now. I really don't talk about high school. But I guess he loves to talk about high school. People he' s picked up and tossed across the room.... stuff he's done... I'm wondering if there was a nice way to get out of the conversation. And then he asks, "Do you have a boyfriend?" Hallelujiah! "Yes." "Well, I gotta ask." He laughs and slaps me on the arm. I'm leaning as far away from this guy as possible.

Then he notices my tattoo. I have a tatoo. It's a crazy neat looking cross on my leg. " Are you a Christian?" "Yes." "Me too! I gotta ask!" He laughs again and trys to slap me on the arm. He misses. He doesn't seem to mind. "What denomination?" "Catholic." Finally he looks a little awry.

"About 5 yrs. ago I went to a Catholic church and everyone in the church put down these things to kneel on- " "Kneelers." "- and they all started bowing down saying the 'Hail Mary' in front of this huge statue of Mary."
I looked at him kinda funny. Any Catholic can tell you that we don't bow, nor do we say the Hail Mary during Mass. Where did this guy go?
"That's kinda odd, because usually the Catholic church doesn't say the Hail Mary in Mass- " "You know that 'you shall have no other gods before me?"
"Mary is not a god."
"It seemed a little satanic because the priests repeat the same thing over and over again - "
"That's because Christian priests couldn't read 2000 yrs. ago. To help them give the gospel they memorized the mass so they wouldn't have any variances. The bishop had to actually say the sermon in every church back then, because he was able to read and write."
"It just seems a little creepy to me. I say a different prayer every night."
"Uh huh."
After half an hour of this, and after he asked me out for pizza, he asked for my phone number. I gave it to him in hopes that he would go away. He did, ten minutes later and after he scrutinized how I write my name... making the 'appropriate' corrections.

Bad puns, corny lines, way too personal information, insulting my denomination, ignoring the fact that we have nothing in common, and the fact that I have a boyfriend, and scrutinizing that my 'e' in Amber isn't 'e' enough. All of you fellas out there, listen up:

This is not the way to pick up chicks!!!

-Amber

The day of the creepy man, the birthday, the yummy food, and the contract.

On Sunday (yes, today is Monday) was my fun friend, Kim's day of birth. She now has had 22 of these exact days and I found it my duty when I woke up and after I took my shower (making it a rousing 8:30am) to call her up and wish her happies. Heh... what I really did was WAKE her up and talked her ear off for 15 min. until I was certain she wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. Yeah, I'm kinda harden-hearted that way... but I got to find out if she liked my gifts or not. I was hoping they had gotten to her by the time the 19th came around. I'm glad to see that they did. When I finished the conversation and brekky... I poked at Jonathan to wake up.

I was visiting a dearly beloved one (I call him Jonathan :)) and since it was Sunday- A Sabbath in the Western Christian World (WCW) we went to church. Now, while both of us are technically Catholic, we both also enjoy a good Protestant service every once in a while. Sunday just so happened to be one of those days. So we (along with our faithful compadre, Eric) went to a Methodist Church called, Cornerstone.

I liked Cornerstone. The atmosphere was great, the music was awesome, and the sermon was especially convicting (like a good sermon should be). The sermon was about sex, but we'll discuss this later on. The only disfortunate thing about this service was a man who sat by me during it. We have officially dubbed him, "The creepy man." The creepy man started out by pointing at random things. Me, being friendly, would look, smile, and nod. Since the worship music was still in full motion, I felt it wrong to talk during this time for God. Hoping to get him to stop talking to me during this time of the service, I really got into the music. (I was into the music until I noticed the creepy man and lost my train of thought) This action really did work, until the music stopped. At this point I was thinking, "It's the sermon. People don't talk during the sermon. He must know that." It turns out he didn't. After he tried to talk to me about his shoe, the baby in front of us, the names on the bulletin, I actively ignored him and tried to pay attention to the sermon....taking notes on sex, like I was planning on writing a novel on it someday. He didn't say anything to me after that (good thing too, cuz I was nearly sitting on Jonathan next to me). When the sermon was wrapping up I finally looked over to my right for the first time in 20 min. He starts in on the weather outside. "94 degrees out there. It's cold in here, but not out there. It's really hot out there." "uh huh." At this point the pastor was talking about a guy named Tom who was going to come up and talk. I guess this aggravated the creepy man. "I don't know this Tom guy. He doesn't go here. He shouldn't be up there. I don't know him. What's he talking about father's for? My father died a long time ago. He shouldn't be up there. He's handing out free books up there... well I'm not going to take it. I won't read anything from that guy. He shouldn't be up there..." At this point Eric and Jonathan are starting to notice (mostly because I'm inching towards them the whole time) and when we left, they had a good laugh over me being scared in the church and so forth. They had a good laugh until we dropped Eric off at his place and Jonathan and I went to his parent's for Father's day lunch.

mmmm.... yummy food. I think it even tastes better when you don't have to cook it. Diane made uber nice chicken with bbq sauce on it, and blaine made this stir-fry with loads of yummy veggies and what not served on rice. It was gooooooooooo (deep breath) oooooood. And then we hung around until Jonathan's brother's left for Brookings, and Jonathan fell asleep on the couch watching 'Meet the Parent's'. When he woke up, after Blaine and I had a good chuckle over him falling over unconcious on a whim, we decided to pick up his bass and the amp head, and head back to his place. He was so tired, it was funny we stayed on the road for the 10 min. drive back into town!

Jon was tired and asked for a backrub. Then a foot rub. I laughed when he asked if I could rub his face! When he was finally relaxed (and I stopped laughing), we started talking about the sermon. The pastor talked about sex as a bonding in marriage and really... anywhere else it's used. Bonding is the purpose for it. It's a blessing. But sex can also cause wounds. Like sticky tape on a shirt. Every time you put it back on the shirt, a little more stick comes off. That's because it leaves a little bit of stick wherever it goes. It can't help it. Then, at some point the tape isn't able to do it's job. If need to hold anything together, it would fail miserably... and that's where we decided the contract should come in. It's signed, dated, and is relevent to our current relationship and has a clause to change when the relationship changes. It's very good, but too long to put in this already long blog. Let's just say that I don't think every relationship needs a printed out, signed in black ink, contract to keep each other in line. But it's a good physical reminder of the vow we made to each other and to our future spouse's. We won't put the tape on the shirt.

The Dilemma:

Today, a wonderful Saturday, beautiful weather, light breeze, amazing music in the air, and there's an artwalk. Artwalk's are fun, aren't they? It takes all of the local talent, put it's into a big outdoor area, and asks the locally untalented to buy stuff.Basically. Oh! Plus there's usually food! MMMM......foood. I like food for various reasons. None of them which we'll talk about right now though. :D

To make things even more interesting, I was invited to go tasting wine with Jon's family today. The downside was that Alexandria is closing in on 2.5 hrs away from here... so it'd be clocking into a 5 hr. round trip drive, to taste wine... which I don't like to begin with. It's a good thing Jon decided against that. He figured that checking out the Artwalk would be much more beneficial....er.... fun. So that's what we're planning on doing.

Ok, so no dilemma, but it was a good choice making moment in the hallmark of early years! Live with it...*wink*

Until I think of something else to write,

Amber

My friend Alfred mentioned blogging in an email the other day. I thought to myself, " Blog? Do I blog? Should I say excuse me if I do? Hmm.... I must check out this phenomenon." So I did. Then I got a blog. I hope it's not contagious.... what would the world be like if everyone blogged and never talked to each other? How insane is that? You don't walk up to your friend Bill and asked, "Have you blogged today? You did? Then I'll see what's going on with you later while I'm checking my mail. No, I really don't need to talk to you right now. I'll just read your blog."

I can see a perk to this blogging bit though. People I've never met can relate to the insanity that is me. People who I've met a thousand times can also relate to the insanity that is me! And people that I don't see every day... week... month... or even year... can still catch up with my life when I'm not around to run into them on the street and ask about their blog. See? In a roundabout way, it brings people closer together while pushing them away. It's ingenious in it's paradox... don't you think?

Ok. That was a bad question to ask you guys right away.... it's not my place to presume that. *wink*

Until I think of something else to write.....

Amber