White Christmas!

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

After 2 very long weeks at work, I think the humbugs have finally left and with only 4 days left, I am beginning to get into the Christmas spirit.
Things started turning for me on Friday night when Will and I went to see the lights at Our Lady of the Snows. It's hard to fight the Christmas spirit when you're faced with a beautiful nativity scene, about a billion Christmas lights, a thermos full of hot chocolate, freezing temperatures and a petting zoo.
The rest of the weekend followed with some crazy Christmas shopping, a beautiful meal shared with close friends and a trip to the ballet with 2 more dear friends to see the Nutcracker.
Monday involved some more crazy (but productive) shopping with Will and today is the Christmas party for the kids at work. I'll get to share Christmas dinner with my girls and then watch them open their presents in the dorm.
Maybe tonight after the party I'll actually feel like decorating our sad, bare tree in our living room.
And the excitement continues to rise as snow is in the forecast for Christmas Eve day!

Where's the Christmas Cheer?

I can't believe Christmas is in less than two weeks. The whole month of December has felt very hectic with a long list of to-do' s and events. I haven't really even begun Christmas shopping or most importantly "prepared Him room" in my heart. How did things gets so crazy?
And to top off the normal busyness of this time of year, the accreditation board for my company is here this week for our 3-year review. I mean, who comes to do an audit two weeks before Christmas??!! It just seems absurd. It seems like a very Grinchy or Scroogey thing to do.
So, I spent the entire weekend at work trying to catch up all of my reports and files. I would've much rather spent the weekend in the comfort of my home watching the snowflakes fall and avoiding the blustery winds and painfully cold weather. And maybe Will and I could've decorated our tree. We bought our tree Thursday night and it has since stood looking very sad and empty in the corner of our living room. We debated last night whether or not we should even decorate it.... When did decorating the tree become a chore?
My part of the audit should be over on Wednesday and I am hoping that things will begin to slow down afterwards and that I will begin to feel more of the Christmas cheer.

Another project

Will began work yesterday on one of my latest "projects" for him. Its a 10 foot table that came from the building at my old job. It was original to the building and so it is at least 90 years old. The table is too big for our dining room and he is in the process of cutting it down and refinishing it. He's already scraped off two layers of veneer on both the top and bottom and is now down to what will be "our table"- composed of solid oak and maple.
The plan is for him to have it ready by Thanksgiving... yes, THIS Thursday. His family will be coming for dinner and I am so excited to have a big table for all 10 of us fit around. It's going to be great!
I'll post pictures later.

Just another manic Monday

I really don't like Mondays.
First of all, Will has to be at work by 5:00am (on Mondays & Fridays) and I usually wake up when he does. This Monday, for some reason, I couldn't go back to sleep. Ugh!
Second, I usually have several messages already waiting for me when I drag myself into work. They are usually not good messages. They are usually about some kind of crisis that a girl had over the weekend.
Yesterday was no exception.
Overall yesterday, 4 out of 6 of my residents had some kind of crisis:
- one has self-pierced her nose and keeps putting a straight pin back in when she is away
from staff; the same one punched a boy twice in the van on the way home from school
- one was suspended for skipping class- she denied it and ended up yelling and cursing
at me ... and she told me she didn't like me... ouch!
- one lost her flash drive with a 7 page paper on it that she didn't save anywhere else
- one was promiscuous over the weekend, was not safe about it and is now asking for the
morning after pill

It is so hard for me to watch these girls make bad decisions and not feel responsible for them.
They definitely keep me on my toes and dependant on God.
I was able to go to my BSF Bible study after my chaotic day and be reminded that God's plans cannot be thwarted and that we cannot always know what He is up to. Praise God for that! I can't mess things up (too much!)
I'm sure glad that I have almost another full week before I have to have another Monday. Phew!

Heart on your sleeve

Today I took a girl to lunch at Imo's following her court hearing. The man at the register had a tattoo on his right forearm that caught my attention.

"Even straight roads meander"

Hmm... Very deep for a tattoo.
I really wanted to ask him about it but I decided not to since it would probably have embarrassed the girl with me. It just led me wonder throughout my meal about what could've possibly led him to have this permanently embedded in his skin. In red ink... in cursive.
People can be so interesting.

Missing Person Report

I rarely ever post on here and sort of feel like I've left this blog behind for my fishing blog. Cheryl has done a great job of keeping up with this one, though. Our life recently has been hectic and exhausting, but with clear moments of excitement.

We are still working on the house as much as we can, and plan to finish the bathroom (finally!) and are waiting for a warm-snap to finish painting the body of the exterior. Cheryl did a massive amount of landscaping in the summer and early fall that has done a lot for the general appearance of the house. Just a few of the projects I have planned for the winter are: sanding and refinishing the fir planked front porch and then gutting the upstairs rooms and rewiring/insulating/drywalling them and refinishing their floors. After I get the floor heat and marble down in the bathroom, I can do base and crown; that needs to be done asap so I can get upstairs and start tearing out walls. In one of the bedrooms, I'll reframe a wall to include a closet and reclaim some of the now-useless attic space.

Cheryl is hard at work at her still-new job at Epworth. She has long, hard days working with the girls there, but has the opportunity to do significantly more therapy work with the clients and their families. Again, it's very hard work but she is rewarded with moments of light in their lives. Thankfully it is much closer than St. Vincent, within walking distance for her which she often takes advantage of for convenience and a bit of exercise.

I am still on the job hunt and still turning up very little. Unfortunately I am either over- or under-qualified for most of what I apply for. Having a background in archaeology and divinity is a strange combination on the job market and one that I continually have to explain away during interviews. It is difficult to make my life make sense to others when it makes none for me. I am still fishing feverishly away, but not as much as I had been during the summer. I am building rods as fast as I can buy, afford and fish; I'm waiting on numbers three and four to arrive in the mail now. Professional custom building is just around the corner, but I doubt that it will be profitable for a while; it is a very tough business with high-cost and good competition. I am still working on writing a book and am in the stage where writing happens as much as editing; I just need to finish it so I can start legitimately talking to publishers. I'm about 60% to a "completed" manuscript.

Other than that, life is whatever the day brings to Cheryl and me.