Little German Girl

Today is my birthday.  This time last year I remember feeling a bit of sadness that I didn’t celebrate with big parties or birthday cake or lots of friends gathered around lifting me up.  I think I even wrote about on this blog during my self-pity party.  A year later it is amazing how differently I feel, and I know that the biggest reason why is God.  There I did it, I dropped the big bomb.  Hopefully I won’t lose most of you reading this after that, but I know truthfully that some people are not ready for it yet or will read this skeptically from here on because I have come out with it so quickly.  But in everything around recently I have been learning that you cannot hide what you are feeling inside, and you have to show people love in everyday ways to show them that Jesus loves them.  I thought about changing my blog name to something religious, and emailing all of my friends and family with the story of my testimony, but then I remember that I can still be me, the quiet and patient me, and tell it how I would with my own personality.  I don’t have to be anybody else, and the truth is I have never been zealous.  But it is worth pointing out that God makes me want to be zealous.  That is another thing I am learning, that God calls things that are not what they were, and he is working in my life to make me things I never could have been with my own human will.  So to go back to the beginning, I would rather focus on my rebirthday today than on the actual day I was born (yes I am excited I just thought of that clever little word.)  So here goes my story…

 It was about 2 or 3 months ago, and I was in my dark place.  Yes just like Stewart on Mad TV, but for real.  I shouldn’t have been, because there were plenty of things in my life to be happy about, but I still was not.  It was anxiety that ripped everything joyful out of my life and made it miserable.  I have always suffered from anxiety about everyday things that I was pretty sure most people didn’t get anxious about, like calling someone on the telephone, or being around new people, or living up to expectations at work.  I know that people get nervous about these kinds of things all the time, but I would get my body so twisted into knots that I wasn’t eating well, I was getting physically sick, and I was depressed.  Again, there were a lot of things going right, but that was how blinded I was by my disease I will call it because I felt like that is what it was.  I felt like somehow I could save myself, I mean I have a BS in Psychology and I am all about yoga and deep breathing and journaling and meditating.  I just didn’t understand why nothing I did helped me from shedding the terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that was always there just stewing.  So one day I sat down with my fiancé and I told him I needed help.  At the time I didn’t know whose help I really needed, even though God was already there in my life.  I was still looking at the problem in a worldly view, and so I decided that I would go see a doctor and consider medication.  My problem had become physiological and I thought that no amount of stress management was going to fix that.  The night after I made my appointment I was lying in bed, naturally feeling sick from anxiety about going to explain my problem to a doctor, and I began to pray like I usually do when I crawl into bed and rethink the day.  I thanked God for letting me finally realize that I couldn’t be the one to fix myself, and that I was willing to admit that I was flawed and I wanted to change. 

And that is all it took.  God didn’t even care that even then I wasn’t realizing that HE was the only one that could help me, He saw a chance and He took it.  That night something in me changed, and it has been growing ever since.  I’m not going to say that I was a different person instantly, because it has been a continuing process and will always be, but it was already starting to die away and I knew it.  By the time I went to the doctor’s appointment two weeks later, I was almost ready to tell her that I didn’t need any medicine and I was fine.  But here is where I decided to let God work in “ordinary miracles,” and I know that is a cliché but I have to use it because it just makes sense here.  I do not mean that what God did for me has not felt like a New Testament miracle, because to me it has been one.  I mean that the way we need to start looking for miracles is different today than it was when we read about it in the Bible when Jesus was alive on Earth.  Sometimes we are so caught up in wanting the flash and immediate healing, that we don’t see the opportunity of people’s gifts that God has given them to aid in the miracle.  I saw the doctor as someone who could aid in the recovery with the physiological part of my problem, while God healed my soul which was the root of the problem.  And everyday since I have felt my soul growing and growing, like the tiny little pulses when the person you love does something to remind you why you love them.  Those kinds of spirit pulses, over and over again throughout the day, growing stronger and stronger.  My love for Him is growing stronger, and I am getting better. 

Okay so something you may not know about me anonymous crowd of blog readers...I am a FREAK about recycling and being environmentally friendly.  Yes to the point that I will pick up dirty trash on the side of the road if it is recyclable...yes to the point that I have called the LitterBug hotline to report litterers...and even yes to the point that I will spend more money than it probably takes to make my recyclables into something new to drive out to the boonies to the bins since they don't pick up in Berkeley county (yes I'm working on that too haha).  Needless to say, I love it, and I want everyone to do it.  So here is my very own list of ways to recycle...formed from various tidbits of advice, personal experience, and just good ol' common sense.  Here goes...

1. Shred your junkmail and make a recyclable box for it!  That way you get the added bonus of stress relief by destroying the 700th billion Bed Bath and Beyond flyer you got in the mail this week.

2. Take a shower with a friend.  Preferably someone you would like to see naked.

3. Save your old ink cartridges.  Most office supply stores take them back and give you either "money back" for in store purchases or sometimes free paper!

4. If you live near a Publix, save your styrofoam egg cartons and other fast food take-out trays...they have a bin in the front that you can recycle them in.  In rare cases, recycling centers will also take styrofoam.

5. Use a Nalgene bottle instead of bottled water...that way you don't have to buy water all the time (shouldn't it be "free"?) and you can save plastic!  And you can test the myth that you can run over them in your car and they won't break!

6. Cereal boxes/snack boxes made out of paperboard are recyclable in most areas...fold them flat and you save them, and you will save yourself from cramming them into the trashcan and then trying to shut the lid 50 times.

7. If you have a backyard...compost!!  It is really cool to watch your old food turn into dirt.

8. You can save plastic to-go type containers or lids from plastic cake trays to make home-made greenhouses.  Just get a pot, some dirt, and your favorite pack of seeds...water well, and put the plastic tray over it with some holes punched in it.  Perfect for growing all your herbs...oregano people, oregano.

9. Save gently used Ziploc bags from home-made lunches in a box under your sink.  Then when you have dinner all those raw meat scraps can go in there so they don't stink up the garbage can.

10. Save sturdy containers from purchased items that you have used up (peanut butter, wet wipes, etc.) to store things...you never know when you might need an extra box for toiletries, first aid kits, or tampons. *Note: Do not recycle tampons.*

11. Save funny greeting cards you have gotten over the years and tear off the personal message page.  Then write your own quirky message on the back and give them to your friends as "catch-up" notes...most of the time they're better than Hallmark's cheesy-ass sayings.

12. Okay this one might freak some people out, but I'm just going to go ahead and say it.  "If it's brown, flush it down.  If it's yellow let it mellow."  There.  Seriously though, how bad can your pee be for the toilet...it's already got ammonia in it!

Stay tuned for the rest....To Be Continued.

I love Obama, it’s true. 

No I’m not going to write a song about how I have a crush on him, that’s just weird.  But I will take the time to further explain my feelings, although I am certainly not someone who frequently throws out their political views for others to feed on.  Conflict scares me, conflict bad.  Or at least that is how I used to think about politics.  No Laura, don’t start an argument with your conservative friend who likes to listen to Rush Limbaugh and thinks Bush is a nice guy.  That will just make conflict, and we don’t like conflict.  Well, you might say I can see change coming my way…because Obama makes me want to argue.  He makes me want to stand up for what I’ve held in for so long, and that is that I have a voice too dammit.  Yes me, the quiet, insecure, southern Christian girl who against all the geographical and philosophical and societal influences, is still a die-hard liberal at heart, I have a freakin’ voice too.  And no I don’t want to sit around and listen to any more dumbass presidents say that they have it figured out, and they can see victory, and they won’t rest until they’ve won, and all that other bullshit that we’ve heard for far too long.  Because it is just not true, some things cannot be won.  Some wars do not have victory.  And I don’t want to pretend anymore that the government can sit up there in their holy city and lie through their teeth and tell us that they have it figured out.  Okay, I have begun to rant.  Let me get back on track…

The thing that makes me believe in Obama is that he has the ability to make people care about the government again.  Through the majority of his speeches, I see an underlying message again and again that we are the ones capable of change, that we can decide the future of this country again, not someone who is so separated from the American people that he thinks that 5 million dollars a year is middle class salary.  If Obama is anything, he is a mirror showing us, the ordinary people of this country, the potential for our greatness.  My generation has been called apathetic towards political happenings, and Obama makes me feel alive and hopeful and willing to fight if it means we can win and we can have a voice again.  I’m so damn tired of having someone in Washington who cares more about his own values and instilling them in others than someone who might really care about what I think and want me to have a part in things as well.  It is time for us to start making change happen, not trusting in someone full of lies to tell us they can handle it.

So today is just another day, and it is also the day I was born twenty five years ago.  Every year that I turn older and older, I can't help but think what happens to the excitement and celebration of this occassion as people age.  When we are young it can be such a spectacle with piles of presents, parties, friends coming over to spend the night and stay up until six in the morning in the treehouse my dad built and throwing skittles into the lake, talking about boys and promising to always be with each other on our birthdays.  And now I am lucky if I get a text message or an internet post.  This is just the new way to reach out, and I am just as guilty for using the cheap way out as everyone else.  Just makes you think what technology has added to the world in every aspect, even wishing someone happy birthday.  Like how I also used to love writing in journals, I practically collected them and it felt so good to get a clean new one and crack open the cover and crease down the page and start my first entry into a book of my life that would catalog a day, month, or year out of my life.  And now I'm sitting here blogging because I type faster and my hand starts to hurt from writing because I write notes all day at work, and wah wah wah.  Sometimes technology just blows.  There, I said it.  Sometimes I just want to run away into a national park or something and forage for the rest of my life and hope nobody notices the crazy woods lady.  Somehow I got off target, but it's my birthday, and I'll rant if I want to.

Let's see, so c-bear tagged me:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

The closest book on the shelf was Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" (yes I really do own this book and have read it some time ago...cannot remember much about it other than I did not like it nearly as much as Steppenwolf.)
Enjoy...

The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel

Hermann Hesse

"Be that as it may, he went his own way.  We suspect that he avoided Waldzell partly to expunge as far as possible from his own mind and the minds of others the memory of his role as a student there, partly so that he would not stumble into a similar role among the community of Glass Bead Game players.  For he probably bore away the feeling from those early days that he was predestined to become a leader and spokesman, and he did all that he could to outwit the obtruisveness of fate."

Sadly, I do not have 5 new people to post to, as I am somewhat of a hermit on this vox thing. 
Happily, I am very much intrigued by "The Children's Hospital" C, and I will be purchasing it soon to dive into.

So I couldn't let my only comeback post be about my random valentine's day experience.  It is Friday and I am not working (halleluiah).  I have decided that these tiny pieces of heaven at the end of the week that have somehow been given to me as a beautiful gift will be spent in pursuit of pleasure/spirituality/love.  And no, it wouldn't have anything to do with me reading "eat,love, pray"...okay, maybe just a little bit.  Despite it's mark of death from Oprah Winfrey, it really is a good book.  It's got me wishing I could be a traveling writer so I could go off and explore the world for a year and not have to work in the real world.  Someday I will get to Bali, someday.  But instead of just wishing this time, I seem to see the greater purpose of one extra day a week to just do with what I like.  Which has me wanting to simply live on these days.  This is where I become real and I stop worrying about the amount of time slipping away until monday, because hey...I've got two more days to worry about that.  So I'm off, let's see what happens.

How did you celebrate Valentine's Day?
Submitted by Stephen.

at a pirate themed restaurant, then back to the apt to play some guitar hero.  for serious.

So I'm currently doing a little one-week rotation at an inpatient facility to observe a real live occupational therapist...yippeeee.  while my short time here has already strengthened my decision to become an OT even more, i am somewhat concerned about the "techs" as they are called, basically the people who watch out for the patients when they are not in therapy (which is most of the day.)  Case number one:  Yesterday a man came downstairs to the therapy gym all wide eyed and ready to rock with some therapy (okay so his head was thrown back and he was drooling and asleep, but whatever).  As we go over to him, we notice that there seems to be something leaking out of his special boot that he wears to prevent foot drop.  not only that, but the boot is on upside down (at which point my mentor tells me that it's an improvement from the time she saw it come down on his elbow.)  So an inspection ensues, and come to find out that his pee bag is leaking...hmmm, someone has left the valve open.  And come to find out these braniacs upstairs knew that it was leaking and sent ol' soggy boots down to therapy anyway.  Both boots and socks were soaked with urine, and there was a nice little puddle on the gym floor to clean up as well.  Wow, gives you faith in the people upstairs (literally speaking of course.)  Case number two: Today I was up on the patient floor going into a meeting with my mentor when we saw one of the patients that we were going to be working with.  He is apparently very dependent for everything and seemed to be very aggitated at the moment.  He was sitting out in the hallway with no one around (I begin to wonder if these techs are just some mythical creatures that are only spoken of and not seen) jumping around in his wheelchair and looking like he was going to bolt at any minute.  When my mentor and another therapist tried to find someone to keep an eye on him, his tech was in another patient's room doing something and said she had it covered (again, never saw her, but i did actually hear a voice).  As we are all walking away the man lunges forward in his chair and looks like he's going to do a face plant...still no tech.  We finally went into the meeting and the PT stayed behind to watch out for him so he wouldn't hurt himself even more.  And so i'm just wondering how much these techs really care about their patients or if they are just there for the cafeteria food.

wow, so post number one...bum-bada-buuuuuuuu! YAY.  I haven't blogged since my days at xanga, so all this fancy technology is new to me, seeing as it was only available on xanga for the poor few willing to pay in order to vent on the internet.  me likey the free stuff.  maybe this will get me writing again, seeing as i was scarred by the poetry nazi back at College of Charleston (the woman wouldn't give me my portfolio back...okay so i was a little late in asking for it but still) all those drafts lost, as the only computer holding their contents decided to succumb to the blue screen of death.  damn you blue screen, DAMN YOU! okay, you can tell i'm not bitter anymore right?

meanwhile...let's explore the background noise:
somewhere off in the distance a slightly psychotic puppy runs spastically through the house, chewing on something of unknown origin.
the tv boasts the latest update of "Decision 2006: Battleground America" according to the local news, along with never-ending commercial breaks of canidate bashing.  a joyous warmth grows inside me knowing that by tomorrow, i can get back to watching the usual mind-numbing, yet far less offensive tv ads.
the rain has subsided for the time being, leaving a calm silence outside the window before the next string hits.

i think i'll go make some hot chocolate.