Leaving on a Jet Plane....

Oh crap.

Seriously, I should probably start taking the xanax now. I'm a little numb this morning as to what's about to go on. My clothes are packed, probably over packed. But that's normal. I find it pretty ironic that I use the same suitcase to go to Dallas for the weekend, and I'm going to Africa for a week. And I'm only packing one pair of shoes and wearing the other one. Seriously, I should get a gold star for that.

This morning I read my daily devotional, which I don't do daily, but I probably should. Gotta love Beth Moore. Today's verse is Isaiah 40:2. "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and announce to her that her time of servitude is over, her iniquity has been pardoned." I immediately thought about Hana and her family and how they are trapped in the servitude of poverty. Then I felt guilty, you can love the Lord just the same when you are poor as you can when you are rich, and you probably rely on him more.

Even though I think that we are taking her out of her servitude of sorts in the orphanage, we are also taking her out of her home and her country and away from her biological family. I can't even imagine what's running through her head. I'm 32 and overwhelmed, she's 12. I also started thinking about the verse and how I'm living this overly comfortable life and how my worldy desires are keeping me hostage as well. I know my eyes will be open to a whole new set of things when I step off that plane....first in Dubai with all the oppulancce of that country, then Ethiopia and it's poverty.

Good thing I packed tylenol, all this thinking is going to give me a headache. :o)

In other news, here is a picture of the seats in economy on the flight we are taking....
I can't lie when I say I'm a little excited about all the tv and movies...and a little dissappointed that Twilight and New Moon aren't available. :o)

I can however watch the first season of Glee, any season of Friends, tons of Disney movies, other TV Series and a bunch of other movies. I'm also packing some books and other things, because 16 hours is a pretty long time.

Love to my readers, and I hope to be able to update from the other side of the world.

O.M.G.

So I think it just hit me this weekend that I'm going to Africa. Seriously.

I've known this was going to happen for the last month or so, but as is the story of my life, I've procrastinated comprehension until this point.

I've never let the country.

Next Saturday I'll start my day in North America, and end it in Asia...Dubai, UAE in the Middle East. The next morning I'll be in Africa. Holy Crap. Texas on Saturday and two continents later over the next 36 hours. And I've never been to Mexico. Kind of put things into perspective about how big and small the world really is.

I'm petrified. Really, I am. I haven't flown in five years, the last time I ended up in handcuffs, and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to get frisked every time we stop.

I'm afraid of how emotional this is going to be. I get choked up at Hallmark commercial, episodes of Oprah and downright blubbery at Extreme Home Makeover. And we are bringing a kid back. What if she doesn't like me? What if this is devastating to her, which it will be? How is this going to effect Dawn, Tony and the girls? Not to mention my parents who are beyond freaked out?

We are changing her life in an immeasurable way, and I know she'll change ours too.

I'm afraid of those things too.

I don't know if I'm ready for the changes that I feel that God's about to throw out at me. I've always said I need some in your face direction from God, but I'm really about to get it, and it makes me nauseated. Like first date nauseated. And if you know me, you know what that means.

I'm hoping to blog about the trip while the trip is actually happening, but I can't make any sort of promises. It would be awesome to have access to the internet while I'm away from the US of A, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

So, it's 10:15 on Monday night here, which means it's 7:15 Tuesday morning in Dubai, and 6:15 in Ethiopia. I get exhausted the first week of Daylight savings time, so this time change should be fun. :o) Oh well, just looking at this puts it all in perspective. I'm hoping I'll be too busy smiling and playing to get wrapped up in the craziness of it all.

2000s...What A Decade

Inspired by another blog I read..here's to the last decade of my life:

Graduated from College
First teaching job... Yoe High in Cameron
Met Claudia
Met Jessie
Lived with Erin
Directed my first play
Applied to and was accepted into grad school
Cried buckets of tears moving to Dallas
Moved to Dallas
Started graduate school
9/11 happened
Sat with Jheren Svoboda, Erik Powers and Joey Renner (students) and watched the news.
Got baptized and joined a church.
Changed major to counseling after one semester
Lived with Jennifer
Hated teaching at Marcus thanks to some very rude kids
Met Christa, Lori and Brandi working at Marcus
Went to Las Vegas and house-sat for a month with Erin
Met the Bumpus family through Erin.
Convinced Claudia to move north
Lived with Claudia
Moved out and lived on my own for the first time
Realized that working full time and graduate school sucks.
Spent lots of time and money on boys basketball games.
Met the Netschs and the Lands and gained some bonus brothers.
Nick, Lucas, Marcus, Tommy and Taylor and Cooper.
Dawn, Tony and the girls move to Minnesota for a year and a half.
Teaching at Marcus got better.
Took a day off work and drove to Anderson to vote for George W. Bush in the 2004 election.
Got great advice from Kevin, my principal, "sometimes problems just have to graduate."
They graduated (and eventually turned into normal people).
Traveled alot with Debate and I hated being gone so much.
Chicago, Philadelphia, El Paso...and everywhere in between.
Got detained by the police for having a gun on a plane in Philadelphia.
Explained to my principal why I had a gun on a school trip.
Resigned from Marcus, not because of said gun, but because I got a counseling job.
Packed my apartment in a week and moved to Houston.
Inconsolably cried the entire way, in the rain. Should have told me something.
Laid on the floor of my apartment in Houston and cried harder than I should have.
First counseling job at Elsik in Alief.
Oh. My. God.
Changed 500+ schedules with no clue as to what I was doing.
Hurricane Katrina.
400+ new students on our campus, all of them angry and scared.
Working 10 hours a day and doing a secondary internship downtown.
Hurricane Rita.
Huge fight at school, 20+ kids arrested.
Decided I was going to look for a new job.
Christa and Craig got married.
Got a job in The Woodlands
Lived with Erin again.
Made it through my first year as a College and Career Counselor.
Erin moved out and I started living by myself again.
Robin and Jason had Tyler.
Liz and Kevin had Connor.
Started taking blood pressure medicine. (not because of aforementioned things)
Got sick and lost 20 pounds.
Still taking medicine, just less.
Had a conlonoscopy and endoscopy
Diagnosed with Gastroparesis.
After 20+ years of not knowing why I get sick when I eat random things, finally got answers.
Robin and Jason had Dylan.
Erin and Jeff got married.
Drove to Missouri and back with Brandy.
Started year 10 as an educator!!

Love Theatre, Hate Drama

First, as a totally unrelated update...I'm feeling better but not great. I still have strange pain in my back/flank/side/left part of my abdomen pretty much 75% of the time. My primary care physician is pretty sure that the antibiotic that he put me on in April mixed with the unusually high amount of acid that my stomach produces (average is 5-20, mine at one point was in the 90s) and cooked the inside of my stomach producing Gastritis and possibly Ulcerative Colitis. Either way, I have been watching what I eat, not taking advil or aleve when I have a headache, as they are a big no no, and everyone will love this...I've eliminated alcohol from my diet. What a joke. I don't stinking drink. I go back to the GI doctor next week for another round of tests that will probably include an upper GI, and hopefully not an endoscope or a colonoscopy. First, that's expensive, second the prep almost did me in two years ago, I'd rather not do it again. It's a pain in the butt! HA!!

Anywho...on to the title of this blog.If you are reading this you probably know me, if you don't, you can read some of the first blogs and see that I'm a pretty plain and simple girl. I'm 31, single, have an awesome family and some rocking friends.

As I have written before, Eric from East Texas and I have known each other forever. We talked a few times right around my 30th birthday. A year passed. I text messaged him on his birthday in March and he started texting me again. It made me wicked uncomfortable. I couldn't exactly put my finger on it at first, but over the course of the next few days the texts turned from how are you, to when can I see you. I stopped answering them, being the non confrontational kind of girl I am (haha). Then I told him that it was making me a little uncomfortable considering he was married and saying that he wanted to hang out with me without his wife. They were having trouble and even if he still had feelings for me, he would never act on them.

Can I get a what what?

He mentioned that he still had the letter that I wrote him (when I was 15 or so), and he would never cheat on his wife. I sat, stunned into silence, which we know is rare and replied to the text that I definitely never wanted to be in any situation where my character or his would even remotely be compromised or questioned. My friends agreed that it was also weird and to stay away.

Flash forward to last night when I received a lovely facebook message from his wife blaming me for ruining a 14 year relationship/ 11 year marriage. Apparently it's all my fault. I have single handedly broken the hearts of their 11 and 9 year olds. She's devastated.

She also writes messages like a drunk 10 year old.

But that's just me being catty. Meow.

I emailed her back, basically gave her the down low of what when down between the two of us to which she responded that it's all on me. Apparently I'm the cause of it. There was really no reason to it, but it's my fault.

Here's my thought on the whole thing.

1. That man called me. We talked. Nothing happened.
2. That man suggested that he venture to my home, sans wife. I disagreed and stopped talking to him.
3. I texted man to say happy birthday. Was it the right thing to do, probably not, but I did it out of friendship, not malicious spite.
4. When man suggested that he visit again, that his marriage was based on wife getting pregnant and was going down the toliet, I told him no.
5. I even took the blame saying that it was me that was uncomfortable and he got pissed.

Apparently I'm a homewrecker.

I know that this isn't on me.

I know all I can do is pray for them.

And for me.

Sheesh.

I love theatre, but I hate drama.

Romancing the Stone....

So, after being diagnosed with kidney infection I took antibiotics for a week. Felt worse. Back to the doctor who ordered a CT scan and said, "three millimenter stone lodged in your ureter" go to the urologist. The urologist said, "This isn't a kidney stone, it's a calcium deposit, but this too shall pass." And gave me some prostate medication (no lie) to open up my ureter and urethra, and I stayed home for two days and a weekend and felt awful as I strained everything that left my body. Felt better and went to school...because TAKS won't test itself. Back to the urologist on Wednesday who took a different kind of xray and said, "nothing's changed, we're going in after it."

And when I woke up, my mom told me the news. No stone. My doctor had already gone back to work.

Back to the urologist and my primary care physician next week. I'm going to chalk this up to age, take a vicodin and move on.

When I woke up I had a dose of phenegran and some other anti-nausea med. Then my back spasmed--in the same place that all of this started three weeks ago--and it took 1 dose of liquid vicodin and three shots of morphine to make it stop. It's done it three other times since Friday. Any suggestions?

I'm just going to go to my doctor's office and refuse to leave until he tells me what is wrong, or tells me that I'm crazy and it's all in my head....which at this point would at least be a reason.

And that picture is of the procedure that was done on Friday. I was knocked out, but no wonder my back hurts...those stirrups are high! I don't know how you mommas did that!!

Where Have You Been All My Life

Ok...maybe I'm just a little lame and wanted to post...but this snack is "snacktastic." I do love goldfish...and the extreme ones are great...and I love pretzels, but this little snack is fantastic. I'm sure all you moms out there already knew about this, but I saw them in Wal-Mart today and decided to try them and I am so glad that I did!!

I was in the lovely Wal-Mart Superstore today waiting on my prescriptions for my KIDNEY INFECTION. What the heck. I have never had one, and this stinks. Seriously. Back Pain, Nausea, weird fevery skin with low fever. Stinks. PLEASE say a little prayer because it could be the start of a kidney stone, but I am hoping that it isn't!! The biggest bummer is that I won't be going to Dallas for this little guy's second birthday.



I am sure his mom knows how to use the camera...but I was going to try to take 200 pictures like I did last year. :o)

Swagbucks

http://swagbucks.com/?cmd=sb-register&rb=433624

Swagbucks...totally legit, and we should all be doing it!! It doesn't take long at all. I've had it about a week and have 30 bucks already. I need many more to purchase bigger gift cards, but I'm told that having friends add is the best way to up your points...so go to that link and add add add!!