I'm trying to design a signature... I think I like it.

Man-Eater

This is the giant man-eating American Agave that lives at our house. Josh's grandmother planted it 40 years ago. It is also called a "Century Plant". This is because it only blooms once "every 100 years" (by this I mean, it doesn't bloom very often, and when it does, it's a really big deal). When they bloom, they grow a stalk that can get up to 25' tall (yes, feet, not inches). Our plant, being somewhere between 30 and 40 years old has never bloomed before. Until now. About two weeks ago, Josh and I noticed a stalk sticking strait up from the center of the plant. It was at that time, barely level with the lowest point of the roof. It is now above the roof.
Pictures to come.

My Job

My official title (the one that I give to all of my friends' parents and people that I randomly meet and want to impress) is Consultant for the Safety Management Department at Graphic Packaging International through Innovative Training Solutions.
What I actually do is not quite so big. I sit at my desk, blog-surf, sometimes fill out a form or two, go to meetings where they give me free food, my boss tells me that I'm awesome, play on the internet, and call it a day. I also schedule all of my own hours. I come in when I want, and leave when I'm ready. To top it off, my co-workers are all pretty great. All in all, it's a pretty awesome gig.

Go Forth and Kick

Before I left for the pool on Wednesday, I mentioned to my boss that I was going to start swimming for fitness. Turns out he was a competitive swimmer until he was like 25 (I swear, there's nothing that he hasn't done). So, I casually mentioned my lack of umm... skill. Wouldn't you know he started giving me a workout schedule. Now, I am supposed to use a kickboard for the next month or so to perfect my flutter kick before I even start trying to learn the arm strokes. Now, having been an athlete, I acknowledge the importance of the basics. After all, "fundamentals are the building blocks of fun". So I've accepted that I should follow his recommendations.
I leave for the pool (still Wednesday), get there at 3:30ish, ask for a kickboard, change into my swimsuit, and go to the pool. Well, the two lap lanes are taken (it's not a very big pool, so there are only two lap lanes), but there's only one lady in the free swim area, and she's staying in one place doing water aerobics. So I make my way towards the part of the free swim section that is closest to the lanes so that I can pretend like I'm a real swimmer in a lane. I get my kickboard out, and I start kicking. Long story short, I'm glad that I'm not an overly prideful person and I don't tend to care what other people think, because I'm pretty sure I looked like the biggest nerd ever hugging my kickboard, kicking from one end of the pool to another.
Today is a new day, though, another swim day. So I will go, and I will kick. Look out world, here comes my flutter kick!

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Josh got us both memberships to the Wellness Center (fancy name for the only gym in town with a pool). (Of course, I've been talking about getting a membership somewhere for almost a year now, and just never did. He kept telling me that it wasn't worth the money. Then, two days ago, he calls me up and says, "hey honey, I just got us memberships.") I'm pretty excited about it. I love working out, but with my joints being so angry with me right now, I just can't do as much as I would like to. Now, I have the option to swim, and I'm pretty pumped. It's definitely way easier on my joints. There's just one problem, I can't swim. I mean, I know the concept, and I wouldn't drown if you threw me in a pool, but I never officially learned how to swim. I'm a little ashamed. Moral of this story is, for the next few weeks, I'm planning on swimming two days each week after work, and I will hopefully get better. Until then, I'm just going to look like a tool taking up space in the lanes that are theoretically only supposed to be used by people who actually know how to swim. More on this later...

Delight...

In commemoration of the start of a new chapter, I'd like to revisit some things that I learned 2.5 years ago.

David says that we are to DELIGHT ourselves in the Lord, yeah? On a total side note for a moment, every translation that I have ever read has translated that word as delight, now...that strikes me as something worth looking at. Well, so...I love words, and I was really kinda wanting to understand the full definition of delight, so I went to my dictionary... now, the definition of delight is something like, find pleasure in, to please, something fluffy. So I said to myself, "hmmm...well, I feel like God wants us to find more than a happy squishy feeling when we think of HIM." Now maybe I'm wrong there, but that's my thought. So...I checked out some synonyms of delight. There were some kinda boring ones that didn't really do much for me, pleasure, joy, blegh whatever, yeah? Ok, so then I saw enthral. Now, as I said, I love words, and the more specific a word is and the more able it is to paint and sculpt and entice emotion the more I absolutely love it. Well, for me, enthral has always kinda been one of those words. I mean, for me it envokes this awesome sense of being completely consumed by something, to the point of not being able to see anything that was outside of the agent of the enthralling, the person or thing that held one enthralled. Ok, so...I already had this image in my head of a person being completely captivated beyond the point of release by anything that they were enthralled with, but I wanted to find the actual definition of enthral. Now here's where it gets really cool to me...the actual meaning of enthral is "To reduce to bondage or servitude; to make a thrall, slave, vassal, or captive of; to enslave." At first glance, I feel like this has a really negative connotation, but it really doesn't! I mean, when you think of enslavement, the first thing that comes to my mind is a sort of beating into submission, but that's not what this is saying at all! This is just saying that you are completely held captive to be made into a slave, but it doesn't say that you were forced there, you just are. You choose to be made a captive. How awesome that we are given the opportunity to be enslaved by the sheer awesomeness of God. We are told to delight ourselves in the Lord. Delight is such an amazing concept of sheer and utter giddiness. Now, imagine if you were completely captivated by that giddiness. You were so filled with joy over God that you were made into a slave by sheer adoration and excitement. Now that is awesome. I think that I would be ok with being delighted, being captivated, being enslaved by God and His awesome wonder...I would be more than ok. I would be complete.

The Restless Wanderer

I'm hitting the road this weekend in my new set of wheels. I'm boarding the puppies (boy is working all weekend), and I'm driving. No responsibility, no stress, just going.
I need this.
This whole "adulthood" thing, I don't think I'm ready for it. I still need to have weekends where I can be totally free, nobody depending on me, or expecting me to do anything.
I love my life right now in so many ways. I'm so blessed beyond anything that I could have imagined. I've come so far in the last year.
But sometimes... I miss that feeling of being a wanderer, of going wherever I want, just because...
This weekend, I'll get my fill, and it will either leave me feeling full, or empty...