"Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down, until tomorrow the whole world is my home"

I am such a hobo.

I mean not really in the literal sense where I don't have a means of livelihood and I ride the train to wherever it may take me. Or in the sense where everything I own is tied up in a bandanna that I carry on a stick while I wander with my faithful, yet scruffy looking, canine companion. And not even in the sense where I don't technically have a place to live but I have a lot of cool stuff that pickers come and pay me cash for. No. I do, however, mean in the sense where I don't have a permanent home.

It's true, I'm a 26 year old without a home to call her own. Sad isn't it. Not really though, I don't worry about that kinda stuff mostly. You see back in January I started house sitting for this couple that was on vacation...when they got home they asked if I could stay at his mothers house which had recently been vacated. I've been staying there ever since. Living out of Tupperware tubs and my suitcase for the most part.

The thing of it is though they put a "For Sale" sign up outside the house a couple days ago so now I need to move on soon. Thankfully my dad offered me his 1976 Fleury.

*Now I just spent 10 minutes trying to find a picture of a Fleury online so you know what I'm talking about. It was an impossible task though. Basically it's a tiny little motor home that reminds me of an ice cream truck from the 1960's. Even though it actually looks nothing like an ice cream truck from the 1960's. I'm sure you have a perfect picture of what I'm talking about now in your head.*

And since I'm going to be working at camp for all of July I've been allowed to park my new home down there already and I can stay for all of June if I need to! Whoopie! I'm not sure what I'll do in August...or September...or after that once Winter hits. Maybe, just maybe, I should buy a house. Or at least rent one.

Or I could do what I did before January and switch between living in my parents backyard in my tent or in their spider infested basement and taking house sitting jobs whenever they arise. We'll see. That's hobo style.

Weird things

Do you ever stop to think about simple things and start to realize how strange they actually are? I do, all the time. Take for example yesterday, I went for a canoe ride in the evening to enjoy the silence and the view. I was slowly paddling through the reeds and watching the bottom of the lake pass me by. Then I started thinking about fish, about how they just live in the water all the time. When we are out canoeing or boating or water skiing or swimming there the fish are, just living their fish lives in the water. I thought that was weird.

Or sometimes at night when I'm getting ready for bed I start to think about the fact that every night for 6-8 hours (usually never 8, sometimes much less than 6) I lie down in my bed, close my eyes and sleep, unaware of what's going on in life around me. However I'm not the only one doing this, the majority of people in my time zone are doing the same thing and yet there's never, ever a time when we are all asleep. Weird.

Or the word weird. It's a weird word, if you say it enough times it's gets even weirder. Plus it starts to look weird once you've typed it a number of times and also, it defies the law of "I before E except after C", silly English.

"You're the colour of my world"

This morning I was woken up at about 2:30am. However, it was for a good reason. I'm glad the person woke me up instead of letting me sleep in my oblivion. Anyway, since I was awake when the sun was rising I figured I would take advantage of the situation, hop into my car and find a spectacular place to watch the morning burst into colour!

Let's take a little detour here. This week I bought a new CD, I had never listened to it before and didn't know anything about it but it was $9.99 so really, how can you go wrong. It's called "experiment" and it's by Rend Collective. Which is basically a bunch of different people all getting together, calling themselves a family instead of a band, worshiping God in a house and recording it, if I understand the fine print right. It's pretty spectacular I would say. However, I hadn't really connected with the album yet if you know what I mean. You can enjoy an album but something deeper takes place when you really connect with it.

Return to my car at 5:45am, the sun was just starting to make an appearance, causing the horizon to turn hues of orange, red and dusty rose. I was watching it and marveling at the Creator of colours and sunshine and morning and beauty when I became aware of the words playing in the background. "I exalt You, I exalt You, I exalt You and enjoy You. I exalt You, I exalt You, I exalt You You're the colour of my world!" It was in that instant that I made a connection with my new album.



Ok I just watched that video for the first time and it made me fall in love with this group even more!

Oh one last thing, if you read this could you be so kind as to let me know you were able to? Apparently blogspot has been failing to publish new posts recently or something? Thanks ever so much!

is it for real spring?

Man, I seriously miss blogging! It helps clear my head. I need to get a computer, but fast! Anyway, I can't stop listening to the song that everyone is talking about. You know the one, Friday by Rebecca Black. I'm not sure why I can't stop listening to it, to be quite honest it's not that great. No offense Miss Rebecca, I'm kind of a tough critic when it comes to lyrics. The fact still remains that I can't stop listening to it so I guess you win anyway! In other news, I'm going to see Steven Curtis Chapman in Concert tomorrow and I couldn't be more excited! I am a fan of SCC for sure. His album, "Live Out Loud" was the first Christian CD I ever bought for myself and I listened to it all. the. time. His latest album "Beauty Will Rise" is breathtaking. I appreciate the ministry SCC has and I'm super excited to see him live! Also, spring is here! I love it! I feel like it's been winter fooooorever! I'm done with it, it was cute for a while but now it's time for other seasons to get a turn. I can't wait to take some of my favorite children puddle jumping. There's nothing quite like getting covered in cold, dirty water while wearing rubber boots! Til next time. Yeah, I've got nothing, I was going to put a funny video here but then changed my mind. Ciao for now!

spaces of time inbetween

I've done quite a bit of things since I last blogged

• I turned the age of 70 on wii sports
• I got minimal amounts of sleep at a weekend youth retreat
• I broke a boys heart (which still is unbelievable to me)
• I moved into a new house, kind of
• I started to restore a couple of friendships that I've missed terribly
• I decided not to go to monster trucks and regretted the decision
• I made banana bread
• I locked myself out of my house and car thus needing to stand outside in -12 for 1.5 hours waiting for CAA to come unlock my car, I was very thankful it wasn't -40
• I spent a few days with a dear, dear friend of mine
• I started playing piano
• I decided that I am going to buy a ukulele
• I watched To Save A Life...3 times
• I donated blood
• I've gone skating a few times, and every time my feet hurt something fierce
• I ate moose heart
• I made bush tea in mass quantities
• I realized that my hair is getting really long
• I had a conversation with a man who can't speak
• I got a 4:30am phone call
• I listened to a beautiful rendition of O Come, O Come Emmanuel
• I made soup for my church family
• I went bowling twice and decided it's my new favorite
• I got to see my friends baby move in her belly and feel it as well

There's more that happened I'm sure, that's what stands out at the moment. If you have a moment check out Zephaniah 3:17...read it in the NIV if you can. It's beautiful.

pə(r)ˈtikyələr

Somehow, somewhere along the line I became one of those people.

You know the type,

The ones who have to have their CD's organized according to genre

and their cups placed just so in the cupboard?

Only I don't do those kinds of things.

I'm more the type who does dishes in the same order every single time.

[First plates (but make sure the cutlery is already in the water) then bowls, then cups, then sharps, then cutlery, then anything else in order of cleanest to grossest.]

and also who tries to make things fit together just so when I put them away in a box.

I'm not sure how that happened.

So anyway, today in the fight against that I went against the grain,

I opened a chip bag upside down.

It drove me crazy for the first minute but then I got over it!

So maybe I'm not so bad after all...

Lypsol, toilet cleaner and historical fiction

So, even though I spouted off about all these things swirling in my brain and about how I'm planning on blogging about some of them I'm going to ignore that for today and start a 30 day blog challenge...(note: I will most likely not be doing this in 30 consecutive days because in between those posts I will be continuing the Pick of the Week segment as well as blogging out some of those brain swirlings of mine)

why am I doing something so cliche you ask?

Beeeecaaaaause...I have this plan in the back of my mine; a goal I want to reach in the next year or two. In order to reach that goal I need to dust off my writing skills. I used to write a lot: poetry, short stories, plays...but not anymore. I seriously need to sharpen up, so don't judge me!

So today's blog challenge: A photo of yourself and a description of how your day was.

Today I was very, very sick. This fact made my eyes itch, my lips crack and Kleenex my best friend. I don't know why but for some reason whenever I'm sick my lips get exceedingly dry. It's the only time I use chap stick. I feel like my lips soak in the wonder that is Lypsol; I can be applying the stuff every 10 minutes and yet with each new application I'm applying on bare skin...hmmmmmmm.

However, the fact that I was sick did not stop me from taking a trip into the city with a couple friends. I bought many items but two I am extremely happy about!

Yes, one of those items is Toilet Bowl Cleaning Gels! I mean hello, you put one in your toilet and it cleans with every flush for 7 days! How is that not exciting?!

The other item, "The Pursuit of Miss Charlotte Edwards" a historical fiction novel written by my dear friend Kelsey. She really is my friend! We went to camp together when we were kids and then we went to Bible school together! I'm tremendously happy for Kelsey and her publish achievement! I can not wait t read it!

So that's how my day was: I was sick, I used lots of Lypsol, I overcame all that and spent the day out and about where I bought exciting purchases!

of mice and little girls

The other day a couple of girls from Kids Club showed up at my house to visit. We hung out in my front yard for a while and enjoyed life. They climbed into my cedar hedge pretending to be Alice in Wonderland. While in there they discovered a birds nest with eggs in it, pretty exciting stuff. Also while they were in there about 10 blackbirds flew out of the hedge and perched on Henry's tree, staring at their invaded home begrudgingly. Then they decided they wanted to water the plants in my flower boxes with the rain water (there actually wasn't any plants in the boxes yet but I figured it wasn't going to hurt anyone if they didn't know that little fact :)

This is when they discovered...the dead mouse!

Dun dun duuuuuuuuuh!

It had drowned. And was dead in one of the buckets they wanted to use to water the "plants" All three of us crowded around the bucket to take a look at the tragically deceased critter. It's tongue was sticking out. The one girl dumped it out of the pail and went about her watering business.

The second girl went for the other pail, she looked inside and shrieked, "A SPIIIIIDER!!!!" To which I and girl #1 responded with matching "EEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!"s while we all ran in different directions.

Hmmmmmm.

Oh that Henry

I live next door to this wonderful old man, he's in his 80's and before moving into town lived on a farm his whole life. He's very smart, very active and is not used to living in town yet (he still owns his tracor, it sits in the backyard)

Henry hates dandelions, hates them. If there's a dandelion within 50 feet of his yard you can consider that poor weed flower as good as dead. It's Henry's duty, no, his delight to destroy all of said yellow plants.

One morning last summer I walked out of my house, when I turned around to walk towards my car I saw a man in my front yard swinging a sickle. I jumped, my heart momentarily stopping, thinking that for sure the apocolypse was taking place and my head was about to be disconnected from my body. The sickle came down, I cringed...

Henry killed that dandelion in my front yard good.

Brad, the frustrated.

Last night at 9:30 my phone rang and like I always do I looked at caller id before I answered it. Because the reality is I can't live without caller id, I like to know who is on the other side of the phone before I say, "Hello?". It showed up as, "Unknown caller" I paused but then I decided to answer it anyway because some of my friends block their cell numbers. It was a telemarketer, or close enough anyway. The voice on the other side of the phone was a pleasant young man named Brad who wanted me to take a survey about the shows I watch on television. But it wasn't a phone survey, oh no, they wanted my mailing information so I could check off little boxes of which shows I watched at what time during the day.

He sounded like a nice enough guy but I didn't want to give him my address. So I kindly told him no but he insisted that it would be a really good idea for me to take this television survey. So I, kindly, insisted that I'm not really a survey taker and even if they did send me the papers I would never fill them out, so why waste a stamp? Then Brad did something I've never heard a telemarketer do. He held the phone a small distance away from his mouth and made a frusterated grunting noise! I found this funny so I laughed and told him I was very sorry and I hoped he had a good night, even though he was probably being rejected many times over. He laughed too and said, "Goodbye, thanks for listening!"

It was a nice conversation, I like Brad.

"If I ain't busy doing something I'm busy thinking of something to do"

Fall is a busy, busy time of year. Did I mention I'm busy? But I love it, even when it seems insane! God is putting together some great stuff and I'm very excited to be a part of it! I'll tell you all about it later, after I'm finished looking like this from all the rushing around...



Juuuuust kiddin!

People don't believe it's true...

Shy 1 (sh)
adj. shi·er (shr) or shy·er, shi·est (shst) or shy·est
1. Easily startled; timid.
2. a. Drawing back from contact or familiarity with others; retiring or reserved.
b. Marked by reserve or diffidence: a shy glance.
3. Distrustful; wary: shy of strangers.
Synonyms: shy1, bashful, diffident, modest, coy, demure
These adjectives mean not forward but marked by a retiring nature, reticence, or a reserve of manner. One who is shy draws back from others, either because of a withdrawn nature or out of timidity: "The poor man was shy and hated society" (George Bernard Shaw).
Bashful suggests self-consciousness or awkwardness in the presence of others: "I never laughed, being bashful./Lowering my head, I looked at the wall" (Ezra Pound).
Diffident implies lack of self-confidence: He was too diffident to express his opinion.

I found this definition here

Shy 2 or "shyness"
A crippling condition that causes one to draw away from others in social situations. It is, in fact, a fear of other people, especially people you are not familiar with. This condition can lead to tense relationships, lost opportunities, or a wrong reputation of being "rude" or "stuck up" Shyness has been found to usually be caused by a lack of confidence in ones self and even a dislike of ones self.

I found this definition in the recesses of my brain...

I've always been shy, ever since I was a very little girl. I used to hide when people would come to visit my parents. If I ever had to do a presentation at school I would hold my papers in front of my face. I once puked in front of the entire school at a Christmas concert because I couldn't stand the fact that I was standing in front of all those people, dressed as a snowflake. (I was in grade 2) It's always been a part of who I am. I did grow out of it as I got older and had more opportunities put in front of me. I've sang in front of large crowds of people, I've shared my testimony with complete strangers, I taught English to adults overseas, I even MC'd Millar's YouthEdge! So I'm not hopeless.

But sometimes the shyness creeps up on me and takes over. Especially when I meet new people. Which is really an unfortunate time to get shy because I know from experience that it makes a person look like a snob. I'm not a snob, I'm just really shy! Seriously! I started thinking about why I'm shy. What causes me to want to flee when I'm put into some social situations? It's really a very pitiful and selfish reason...

I don't really like myself all that much at times.

Which is stupid because I know who created me and I know He loves me and sees all sorts of potential in me. Besides, the fact that Christ is in me makes it so that I don't even have to worry about what others think of me, or of being rejected. "Greater is He who is in me then he who is in the world."

Plus I'm scared of people. I really am.

Which is also stupid because they are just people, just like me! So why not just smile and love people, not be scared of them. Afterall, "perfect love casts out all fear..."

all of that AND a muffin?!

Today at work while I was carrying a big bowl of hashbrowns to the brunch buffet the man I went in front of to empty that bowl said to me, "Your husbands must love you ladies, you're such great cooks!"

He was just giving us a simple complement.

So I said, "Thanks!" (to assure him I had caught his complement and was appreciative) "But they never get to eat our cooking because we're always here!" (I said this because I like to think I'm witty and I wanted to make him laugh, which he did.)

Now we all know that I'm not married, but he didn't. So yes, I guess I slightly lied. Well I implied something that isn't true. But he didn't want to stand there while I explained how I wasn't married, he just wanted to let me know the food was good.

So there!

Change is in the wind...

It's almost that time of year again. Fall. Fall always makes me think of change. people usually move in the fall, last years graduating class takes off for school. There's just always new stuff going on.

I have this strong feeling that this fall is going to bring some major change in my life. Some of it scary change and some of it good change. For example, on September 5th Jenny and Janelle will both be leaving for their first year of Bible school. It's a little sad for me because I feel like I've grown so close to them this past year. On the other hand on Sunday I met Anna, she's new to town and I have a feeling that we are going to be great friends!

I'm thankful that in an everchanging world God will always remain the same. I really like having something constant in my life. I cling to that in the changes that scare me.

It's going to be a good year though, I can tell!

And there it was...

Yesterday as I was sitting in my car uptown waiting for the mail truck to get in I saw a tiny, brown bird taking a bath in a dirty mudpuddle.

For some reason it struck me as beautiful.

Small Town

I live in a small town, it's an interesting life! Everyone knows everyone elses buisness, many of the men gather for coffee at the same time everyday, you get your mail even when it has no box number on it (or the wrong box number), children bike around town with no parent supervision and no one worries...it's interesting.

It can also be ridiculous.

I recently learned of a bylaw that is present in my town. You have to tie up your wind chimes after 9pm, if you don't you could get fined. That's a real bylaw where I live!

Someone better tell my dad before he gets arrested!

On March 5, 2007...

I had forgotton about Myspace for a while. I went onto mine just tonight after many moons of not being on it and I read this blog entry I had put in. Enjoy a day in the history of my life!


today I...

...Used my new face wash I bought at walmart
...put on makeup for once in my life
...shoveled the sidewalks at the bank
...recieved a compliment from the newly elected number one counsellor on the reserve
...saw Tim Tams on special in the Extra Foods flyer (only $1.99 a package!)
...had an older man say to me, "I better go to the little boys room before I leave!"
...think someone called me a b**** after I served them even though I was polite and kind
...did the floors at work by myself, again.
...ate beef noodle soup for the first time ever
...had to run after a guy who forgot to pay for his sandwhich
...poured half a can of Pepsi down the sink and was sad
...discovered I am on at the cafe every day next week
...wished I had a different job
...saw sadness in someones eyes
...missed David Melby
...googled information on Bed Bugs just for kicks
...wished I could be a better person for GOD
...watched Corner Gas with my mum
...wondered what September holds for me
...wished there was someone to hold my hand
...wished Janelle would come on msn so I could talk to her and then she did!
...showed my dad my new camera

It was a day...nothing out of the ordinary or spectacular, just a typical day.