Thank God it's Friday

Okay, so Friday doesn't officially start for another thirty minutes, and I'm going to sleep for about six hours before I officially kick off my Friday, but I'm definitely glad it's coming.

Work tomorrow will be mundane, but doable. I don't particularly love it, but I don't hate it. I like it, and that makes me happy.

I have tentative plans for a movie date tomorrow night with my dad. My mom is going to a seminar for the evening, and dad and I are thinking about going to see the new Will Ferrell movie, "Stranger than Fiction." We both find the premise intriguing.

I plan to spend the weekend reading, possibly writing, and mostly practicing driving. I took tonight off from the whole driving thing. I needed a break, and thanks to all the snow, the roads are crappy anyway!

And with that, I'm off to bed. See you all on the weekend!

Morose

I just want to be up front. I've written about all kinds of moods on here. If you've been reading for a while, you've weathered the last year that I suffered from severe depression, you've weathered the season in which I came to the realization that God had healed that depression, you've hung around while I walked through very messy life stuff with a number of friends. You've seen happy and sad, up and down, and many things in between.

Today, I'm morose. Angry at life and possibly the world in general.

I had a nightmare last night. First one in a long time. Not happy. Terrorists, and a very sick, insulin dependent man. I was on an airplane again. There was a baby again. What is it with those two things showing up in my dreams, and what the heck do they mean?

In about two weeks we're going to have to put my very healthy dog, Shiloh, down. He tore his cruciate ligament last week, and the only options are surgery that costs a minimum of $1500, or give him anti-inflammatory drugs and hope like hell that this tiny chance actually occurs, and the ligament sort of reattaches itself. It's not looking good. I think he gets the pill for another two weeks, and then, because my parents aren't going to spend that kind of money on a pet, we're going to put him down. And I'm angry that it stares me in the face every time I move in our house. And I'm angry that it costs so much. And I'm angry that we have to do this. And I'm angry that it sort of makes sense as a financially responsible choice. And I'm grieving because, even though I would never choose on my own to have a pet, Shiloh has been part of our family for the last 13 years, and the whole situation sucks.

I'm also lonely. Seems all of my closest friends are now living elsewhere in the province, country, or world. No one to share heart connect with easily.

I'm confused about next steps. Life feels cloudy and tenuous as I am thinking about the future.

I feel a bit lost. Not sure how exactly to take who I am and make it fit in the church and circumstances of life that I find myself in. (Funny, isn't it, how I feel this way just a couple of weeks after dreaming every night about lost things....)

I'm discouraged for/with my brother. He's a music student prohibited from playing music. He doesn't know what the future holds.

It snowed three inches last night, and then the temperature dropped. I do not like winter. That would be why almost all of the places I'm considering either long-term or short-term moves to are either southern or coastal. Milder weather.

And, just to top everything off, driving standard is not going as smoothly as I'd hoped. I was doing pretty well last night, even managed to start on a hill a couple of times, and then, I turned into our alley, hit some ice, and slid out. I almost hit a fence. My brother had to come push me out. Following that, there was a slight debacle where I rolled down the entire length of the alley with my clutch in because every time I tried to hit the gas, my tires spun. Turns out I was in reverse, not first like I thought.

And, we're in the middle of crazy, stressful, busy, renewal season at work. Whoo hoo... I have a spreadsheet waiting for me... and we all know how much I LOVE numbers!

So there you have it. I am not so happy today. The nightmare is lingering, I'm on the brink of tears, and my muscles ache from jerking awake several times from the nightmare, plus the general tension of everything else that's going on. Hope you all have a far better day than me.

Foggy Brain

Do you ever have those days where everything just feels slow and foggy? Where thinking is almost painful?

I'm on my second day like that in a row.

I think this is partly what grief does to me, partly what exhaustion does to me, partly what deep underground thoughts do to me, and part stress from information overload.

Lovely, no?

If you think of it, say a prayer... It's only Tuesday, and I have quite a few more busy days to go before a day of rest comes around again.

And, in the midst of the brain fog, I have to practice driving a standard. Because I need to be proficient by December 1st, so that I don't have to pay for a bus pass AND car insurance for the month of December.

I liked these thoughts...

I liked the question Dan King posed in this post. "What troubles my soul?" Something to think about. Something I think we need to consider. (And, I found his observations about Hannah interesting... I've been thinking about her story a lot lately... more on that another time.)

I also loved what Marty had to say in his latest post (found here.) I was at the conference he talks about, mostly for the last day, the day that Jason Upton wasn't speaking. I listened to all of Jason's teachings on my ipod over the course of this last week and felt bathed in truth. Listening to the gentleman teach on Saturday, all I felt was confused and emotionally manipulated - there's something wrong with me because I'm not having this or that experience during the course of the teaching.

I've mulled the contrast over quite a lot this week. To be honest, I'm grateful that I heard Jason's teachings after I had spent a day with the other guy. Because they balanced the manipulation with truth. They drew me back from the edges of confusion and even anger, and reminded me why this God is worth pursuing. He offers clear and simple truths. He doesn't manipulate. He wants us to listen and hear Him clearly.

What a day can hold...

At some point, I'll probably tell you about last weekend, up at Marty and Kari's. It was fabulous, but stirred in me some things that have left me confused and muddled inside, incapable of writing about it just yet.

Instead, let me tell you what I've weathered today (in no particular order)...

• I have cried no less than 5 times, for a wide variety of reasons. Tears just seem to be my response to everything lately.
• I said goodbye to my best friend for the next three months.
• I ate baked ham and scalloped potatoes with my parents.
• I finished reading one book, and started another.
• I found out that my dog may have to be put down... we won't know for a month or so.
• I took possession of a car for the next three months.
• I drove my friend to the airport.
• I weathered the panic surrounding the 11th hour discovery that her passport was not, in fact, with her plane ticket, but in her home on the other side of the city.
• I took a hot bath.
• I waited for the passport to arrive, while wondering if she was going to miss her flight.
• I battled a severe tension headache into submission with a couple of ibuprofen, some food, and lots of water.
• I wrote a long journal entry, dumping some of my tension into typing with force.
• I held a self-pity party.
• I cleaned, and gave up on cleaning.
• I went shopping and bought books.
• I rented a movie to watch tomorrow afternoon.
• I craved a cup of tea, and then realized that I'm out of the kind I desperately wanted.

And did I mentioned I cried at least 5 times?

Here's to tomorrow being another day. I'm not sure I can survive too many more like today...