Thankfulness

It's not thanksgiving, but I'm thankful for a lot of things. A little overwhelmed with thankfulness actually, which is why it's spilling over into a blog. I'm super thankful for Don. He is the ice cream to my sprinkles, the yogurt to my fruit parfait, the roots to my flowers, the yoyo to my piece of string. Anyways I can't imagine life without him, mostly because I would never try to imagine something so stupid. Also on the list of things to be thankful for in no particular order are as follows: Flowers, a job I like and am good at with coworkers that are just a shade above mediocre, friends that are also a shade, or perhaps two shades, above mediocre, my health, my newfound love for exercise and my newfound like for healthy eating, Don again, talents and abilities and the opportunity to use them, my dogs, a God that hears me and acts on my behalf, and doesn't stop at second, third, or fourth chances, a hope that one day I am lucky enough to be used by God, green beans, awesome parents and a great family, bug repellent, and the singists.

Why I give thanks

I am so thankful that I have a husband that I love. And I have a husband loves me more than he loves himself. I hate to admit it, but I am already leagues ahead of many of those around me. Please don't miss understand me, it is not anything I have done. It is the God that I serve. He is great. And he chose to show how great he is through my life. I do not deserve it, I will never deserve it. And for that reason I want to give him glory. Because he, deserves it. 

Day off.

Just want to say that I think I worked a longer day on my day off than when I  go to "work"! I'm not asking for pity or anything, just blogging to pass the time until my feet stop hurting and I'll be back to being "off". I'm going on 12 hours of stuff around the house. Laundry gets done. Dishes never get done. Ever. I think I mostly washed dishes for 10 hours. You have a drink, eat a snack, then you have the dishes from making the snack, and wash the dish you ate the snack on. Then you start cooking food for the rest of the week and BAM before you know it you've washed the same cutting board 8 times.


Ok ok, I did a couple other things today. Practiced a few songs, went on a walk with my sister, weeded the garden, tended to the chickens a bit. Is weeded the past tense for weed? Could it be wode? I wode the garden today. Its a small garden still of lettuce and onion mostly. But it will grow, in more ways than one! I'm feeling pretty happy today, got a whole bunch of awesome surrounding me, ex: my husband, and bacon on the grill. And a back yard that pretty much makes food for me on a daily basis. As often as I focus on the bad stuff, I gotta say today was a good day and I thank God for it, and all the wonderful things in my life. Not that the day is over, no, I still have one more basket of laundry to fold, and a coffee table drowning in papers and trinkets to rescue. 

Me-yewsic.

So I currently have The Phantom of the Opera (original cast soundtrack) on repeat. I am learning that just because you can hit the notes Christine hits, doesn't mean you sound as good as her! Still, it's exciting to at least hit the note. On another note (lame pun intended) my neck is killing me. I have no idea why. Every muscle is completely tight and it feels like I lifted a truck relying solely on my neck. I didn't though. Ok...so I went ahead and announced that I would be playing at City Coffee. Dang...that means I actually have to do it...well I've been practicing today as much as my neck will allow. I would say the following sentence is a confession...but you probably already know it. I'm terrified!! Pushing the record button and singing into a microphone where I can stop, delete, and restart without any of you knowing it is much less stressful than preforming for you live. I really really want to do it, which is why I will. I'm just also going to be nervous out of my mind, and what you hear might end up sounding like crap because of that. Whelp, I guess we'll see- er, hear, won't we?

Tim McGraw

Much like the song, this post is not about Tim McGraw. Also like the song, this post is about music. I'm currently listening to some of my recordings. Sometimes I suck, but a lot of the time I like it. There, I said it. I like my music. I like my voice. I enjoy listening to it. I also enjoy listening to Jeremy Gemus, although like me, his voice sometimes sucks. I still think he sounds great, and I enjoy listening to his voice. Both of us need practice but we have a natural talent for music and singing. There, I said that too. So, I don't have as much free time (more so I don't have as much discipline) as I would like, but for now I'm going to continue practicing, recording, and posting. Hopefully so will my brother. Also, anyone else who wants to come over and record. #incompletesentenceandbadgrammar<3

Light Bistro

Frizzy haired people with scarves. Short haired people with scarves. And plaid, lots of plaid and argyle. They can wear it, I can't even spell it. That is why I don't belong in a "bistro" , not even a light one apparently. I think I even ate the bread wrong, and I know I was approximately 2 elbows over the limit of how many you can have on one table.

A recipe, sort of.

Chicken Fried Rice:

Cook rice with appropriate amount of chicken bouillon dissolved in water in a pan. While that is doing its thing:

In a bowl:
1-3 tsp/several splashes liquid smoke
Add soy sauce (low sodium)-a decent amount.
Add slightly less balsamic vinigar than soy sauce, but more than the liq. smoke.
Also add worshesteshire sauce. I can't believe I spelled that right on my first attempt. Smell the mixture, then add more W sauce if it still smells like liq. smoke, but not a lot more. Don't smell again.
Put veggies in wok. Broccoli, peas, other stuff. Add more sauce to the sauce bowl cause it doesn't look like enough. A little bit of everything but liq smoke. With a little too much emphasis on the W. sauce.
Scramble 2-3 eggs if you forgot to earlier. Add between 1 splash and 1 sploosh (pronounced like "soon") of milk to the eggs. This is probably where you would add water chestnuts or bean sprouts to the wok if you had any. If you don't, just skip that step.

Steam veggies, or do something until they are not frozen/heated through throughly. Note how similer the last two words in the previous sentance are. Add rice, and veggies to wok. Turn up to high heat. Add some saflower oil and chicken. More chicken if you like a lot of chicken, less chicken if you like less chicken. Cook till cooked.

Here comes the hard part.

Make a moderately large sized hole in conglamoration of food in wok. Add eggs. Push them around, without getting any of the conglamorate in it for about a minute or two until they are starting to cook, then kinda stirfry/mix in the edges until the egg is all mixed in. The goal is you don't just want to coat everything in egg and it gets gooey. Then eat.

Also, sushi vinegar because I forgot about that. If this doesn't make sense, that's ok by me. Its really just my notes of my second time making chicken fried rice off the top of my head so I can hopefully make it similarly to the first time I made it, since it came out good then. This batch? Not as good, because I forgot somethings. But hopefully batch #3 will be good again!  Kudos for reading this until the end!

Set Fire To The Rain Cover by Mallory Lynn

Me singing a song. Don took one of the video recordings and matched it up to the audio vocal and guitar tracks I recorded.

Eat your heart out, Patsey Cline.

Its crazy...when you finally understand something you thought you understood. When you actually mean something you thought you meant. When you really want something you thought you wanted all along. When things just aren't working...when they don't add up...might I suggest that you weren't doing all the things you thought you were? I realize that I'm being more generic than ibuprofen on the shelf at walmart. But...he who has ears to hear, will hear. I can't tell you much, but, there was so much in my life that I thought I knew about myself. I thought I had the right attitude on things, I thought. Then, then I ran face first into God. You know, that guy who made the universe. I thought I knew God. In fact I would venture to say I did. I think I had some kind of estranged step-parent/only talk to you on my birthday kind of relationship. I thought I knew what I wanted in life. I thought I knew what GOD wanted for me in life. Then, in His infinante wisdom, He decided that it was time for me to make a shift. He showed me that all the things I thought I was keeping myself "safe" from were just my meathods of staying away of things I was afraid of. All the things I thought I was avoiding because item was the "good, Christian, moral" thing to do, he showed me I was afraid of those things too. Then he crushed me. Like, obliterated me. That monster under the bed that I'd been baracading myself up against for so so long, that I'd worked so hard to stuff deep under the bed so that it could never find me, he let it out. Like, I woke up one morning to the monster chilling on the foot of my bed watching me wipe the drool off me face. So I tried to put him back under the bed. Then I woke up the next day to find the monsted standing by my nightstand, elbows on the bed propping up its unbearable face. So I tried as hard as i could to get him back under the bed where he belonged. After all, I had always put him there. I knew where it belonged! It was a monster after all-you can't just let those things run around your house. They're are dangerous. So, God saw that i just wasn't getting it. The next day i woke up to him cozied under the blanket with me, wearing a pair of my pijamas! I realized at that point, that hiding the moster wasn't the answer. I sure as heck didn't know what it was though. Then I read in 1st John that the opposite of love isn't hate. Its fear. And I though, I have fear. Fear of a monster- but isn't that a completly rational fear? Then i thought, if I am full of fear...that means I don't have love? Then I realized that I don't love people, not unless they love me. And that just isn't God's way of doing things. Confront my fear, my moster. maybe, just maybe God will be bigger than it. And i won't be afraid of it anymore. And then I will have room in my life to love.

Reflection (from Mulan) by Mallory Lynn

Life changers

Do I have a mission? I guess I do think that life is more than just waiting for the weekend, so I can play my piano or new guitar, or play my games or hang out with my friends.
Christ's church is made up of people. If all the people that make up the church looked like me, what would the church look like? Would God's kingdom on earth be advanced?
Hebrews 12:1-3



I need to get a mentor.
If I spent my whole time righting all the wrongs done to me I would have no time to complete the task that God has given to me. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. He will repay, vengeance belongs to God. People who make a difference, it will cost something. Living a life that matters to God will cost. Press on. Don't waste your life on silly things. All mankind comes from God. Change your own world. Your little world one step at a time.

I blog of Saturn.

Did you hear the news? The old must die for the new to grow.


Jesus Christ, Light of the World
You never did forget me
and when i bled in darkness, You held
me
still held me
when desperate nights i cursed You
You loved me, still loved me
Jesus Christ, You dry the tears
You break my heart of stone
Your words are life
cut marrow through
the darkness, to the bone
a heart of flesh You gave me
only You can save me 
  
My heart of stone has to break so I can have a heart of flesh. Don't be fooled into thinking stone doesn't feel.

Sometimes the bravest thing...is to hope.  

So, have you read/heard of the parable of the talents? It doesn't matter, you can HERE if you want,but there was this one guy with a talent (which is technically money back in the day, but for today's purposes it actually refers to talent, like, what you can do). This guy only had one talent unlike his counterpart servants who had 2 and 5 I think. Their boss goes on a business trip and he tells them to somehow turn a profit. The others invested there money, but the bright guy who only had one decided to bury it. Brilliant right? No chance he would be out of money when his boss returned. WRONG. His boss was more of a "no guts, no glory" kinda guy it as turns out. He came back, and the two servants with more money had doubled their amounts, the guy with one coin gives him...that same coin back. He didn't do anything with it. Except make it all dirty. Needless to say, that guy was fired. 


Whats the point of all this? Ok, believe it or not I have some talent. Aaaand, I don't use it. That's why you probably don't know it. But I don't want The Boss to come back one day and tell me I'm fired because I didn't use the one talent He gave me. Sooo...sometime in the next few weeks you might see something popping up here. That involves me and talent. Yeah, that's pretty much it. See ya soon.

Inspirational

Most sensational, celebrational...no, I'm not going to blog about the Muppets, I haven't even seen the new movie. But I'd like to. Any takers?

Well anyway, my life took a turn for the better, a week ago, all because someone inspired me. So maybe you need someone to inspire you to become what or who you aspire to be. For now we'll talk about exercise, since that is where my changeyness occurred. (I like made up words!). BUT before I tell you exercise is good for you, I'll just tell you that what I started doing a week ago has given me the strength to take baby steps in changing a few other things in my life that need changing too. I think when you see improvement in one area, it tells you maybe you can do it in other areas, you think: "Maybe I don't always have to fail at improving who I am." It's also given me more energy, I'm less prone to get upset/depressed, and it made my heart (the physical and the metaphorical one) feel better. And that is exactly what my inspirational person told me it would do. (They weren't a shrink by the way, just your average ordinary everyday person like me and you. But probably more like you cause I'm kinda weird.)

In fact, they weren't even trying to inspire me, so I thank God for sending that person along to do what they did when they did. And I continue begging him to help me keep doing this wonder working thing so I can keep going on the upward trend, because I HATE exercise. Did you already forget we were talking about that? Really though, I hate it. If you know me at all, you know I hate it. I would get all gungho for new routines, or trying different types, for varying amounts of time... and it never stuck for more than a couple days. But for some reason, someone who also loves carbs and hates moving just for the sake of moving, was able to wake up at 5am and better herself, which in turn betters those around her. Something about that made me want to try waking up early. Not 5am early, but about 6:30/6:45am early. And I did it, I've been doing it. I'm not saying that waking up before work is your thing, I'm just saying don't give up trying to find your "thing". Shoot, maybe you run 5 miles a day but there is something else in your life that you can't seem to conquer. Don't give up trying, find new ways. It might feel like you're going 2 steps back 1 step forward. But if you give up, you'll fall farther back a whole lot faster. Want another tip? Theres this "being", his name is God. His son's name is Jesus. And they help me out a whole, whole lot in life. Even when I'm not asking them to. So maybe, if you've tried everything else, ask them for help. What have you got to lose?