Day 1 of 365

Oh man! I am pumped. More pumped than you can believe! Why? Oh hmmm.... cuz... you know. It's my Birthday! That's right. As of 12am October 21st, it became a wonderful wonderful day. The stars are brighter, the moon is large, and the temperature is just right. While everyone doesn't feel this way about their own birthdays, I can't help but over excite to make up for their lack thereof. Why? Why would this day matter? Why would any birthday matter? Why let me give you my cliche birthday rant!

Not only were you a screaming crying bloody mess on this day of birth, but your mom and dad became parents, your life came into existence (in the breathing world anyway) and why because God brought us here to experience life. All the people in my life were brought here by God and given to me by God and I thank Him for that. And even though I guess WE didn't do anything on our birthday (Thank you mothers for deciding to actually have us. Bless your hearts) we are still here existing. Every year is a new adventure and every year we get a little wiser, and probably a little bit spacier. If this isn't a good enough reason to be excited about a birthday, well I'll never make you understand. But I still love them. I'm pretty sure I've been quoted to say "everyone has a birthday everyday" or something to that affect. I think I meant everyone has a birthday at some point. I'm insane. But we've established this long ago, so let's move on.

Oh! Don't let me forget that I am a TWIN and this makes this day more magical. :) Shout out to my seeeester! Love.

So what does my title mean today? Well.... many things I believe. It is the first day of my 24th year of living. That's pretty exciting. But we don't need a countdown like that. A year would feel crazy long if I counted EVERYDAY. No no.... this is for the...wait for it... wait for it... the infamous 365 day project! I know I mentioned it in one of my last blogs but the time has come to start. An acquaintance from way back started to do a photo project where you take a picture every day. It can be of anything. And while hers were really freaking sweet and I could never do anything like that, I figured why not start? I might learn something along the way. Well, I will for sure learn discipline (taking photos EVERYDAY... exhausting) skill (we don't want the SAME photo everyday) creativity, etc. I figured I'll start off pretty simple and see what I can do in the days and months to come. It'll be exciting! Or I might fail. Or I might miss a few days. Maybe not in that order. You get the point. I know this all seems crazy considering I have a million things on my plate, but I figured that it was something for me to do during the day instead of watching endless hours of television shows. Yes, those shows are still awesome, but this will at least break up my day. And who knows what could happen in this year. There could be wonderful things to photograph, why not capture a year of your life, a year of your prime life perhaps, on camera? So TODAY folks I will post my first ever, not-so-cool photo. The rest will be found on a facebook photo album or maybe even photobucket or something. We'll see how this project starts.


Better turn in. Tomorrow and Friday are going to be BIG days filled with haunted trails, murder mysteries, dinners, shopping, and friends. Shall be awesome and amazing. Thanks in advance to all who helped make this 2 day birthday event possible.

Love

Forgiveness Part Deux

I'm asking God for forgiveness today. Likewise, I'm asking others for forgiveness and giving forgiveness to others. Wow, that's a lot of forgiving. But it's heavily needed. I'm officially 24 in a week and I don't want baggage crossing over with me. New birthday creates new meaning and new ideas and new lives. Things happen that are unfortunate. They are tragic and messy, but think about if we NEVER forgave people and we carried it with us for all time? Kept a little pocket notebook next to our bed so we could re-read the bad things done to us?

Okay side note: If you wanna feel calmed, go to Pandora.com and make a playlist based on Mumford and Sons. Holy goodness it's wonderful. Sure some of the songs are like, really? You thought THIS was a good song to add to this epic list of music? Hmm.... no thanks Daughtry, nobody wants you here. Okay, so maybe not HIM, but other people that usually aren't your fancy. And if you like Daughtry, you can go ahead and stop reading my blog. I can almost guarantee you that I will bash him again, and others like him. And if you actually take my advice and do this, you should tell me how it goes. I'm quite curious to see if you, my reader, has the same taste in music. Don't get me wrong, I love other music, but for calming purposes, and some soothing voices, this is your channel.

Back to forgiveness. Here we go. So could you hold on to the bad things like that in your little notebook? What would it say? Tiffany told everyone on the playground that I liked Dan. It was embarrassing. I was 5. Of course I still remember it. My mind is a steal trap (except sometimes it's not. whoopsies. lol) But when I see this Tiffany girl I would never think of walking up to her and yelling at her for doing that to me. I was five! And heck, Dan is and was cute! Or hmmm... another example you guys are looking for? When I was 4 Sam in the trailer park we lived in (don't ask) ALWAYS led us around in follow the leader and Holly and I never got to. Maybe that's a bad example, because I don't think I'd be friends with her because of that. lol. But you get my point. If God forgives me probably before I even do the bad thing because He knows everything, then I can handle doing some of my own forgiveness. This is taken off BibleGateway.com

1. Genesis 50:17
   'This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.' Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father." When their message came to him, Joseph wept.
   Genesis 50:16-18 (in Context) Genesis 50 (Whole Chapter)

Sure, it's asking Joseph to forgive, but I think it can directly relate to me.

And you know... I probably shouldn't feel so bad that I can't seem to forgive as much as I want to. God made us these awesome and unique creatures that love, and hate, and have so much emotion we don't even know what to do with it. Things are bound to happen! And since we are born sinners, we are going to sin. We can't be perfect like our wonderful Father, so we sin and we feel bad and we repent and we do the cycle day in and day out. So... I guess I'm starting at step 1 today. I'm okay with that. The beginning is always nice. It's refreshing. Let's hope this step 1 lasts at least until my birthday! Or that we can go through the cycle again before then. Haha. What a silly world we live in. Have a wonderful day today friends and kids alike!

Love

Mile One: Here we are

Okay, we obviously see a very big change in my blog. I'm loving the new background... very fallish. And the profile photo? Well not to mention that it was at like 5 years old, it was needing to go. This one was taken on my sister's wedding day. I have another photo in my mind but it'll have to be developed before I put it up there. The Title? Oh the title is the best! I thought of it as I was trying to fall asleep last night. I kind of wrote a description on my "About me" section but I'll explain it to you kiddies right now anyway. Basically I think miles are interesting. We travel them everyday collecting them on our cars and not paying attention to them. Well I basically got my car brand new. It was shiny, it was showroom floor material, and it was mine. And I drove it EVERYWHERE. Seriously. Nebraska, Iowa, Chicago, D.C., New York, Boston, Cleveland, Wisconsin... this list could go on, but I won't bother. You get the point. And then suddenly my car hit 50,000 miles. Considering I started on mile 24, this was a huge deal! So I took a picture and decided, woah. What have I done in the last 50,000 miles? And the answer surprised me. So flashback... or forward.... to now. College is over (basically) and life is in a sense starting over. And instead of counting the years of college, or how many years have passed, it was just nice to kind of start over with actually doing so. I didn't want to write a new blog, I wanted to keep my same comfy one. Nothing really will change. Maybe the ideas I write about, or photos will be added a lot more (365 project is sounding oh-so-enticing.) So yep! Just thought I'd give you guys the heads up.

Love

24 and 40

So while I'm still a week or so away from my birthday, I've noticed a trend. By 11pm this evening I realized that over 10 of my friends were already in bed, or at least heading to it. I can't even try to contain myself. The image I'm getting??

(Photo from somewhere online. Ringobingo.net apparently!)

Now that's not what I really had in mind. 20 somethings are supposed to be alive and full of energy, still living off of those college fumes. But most of my friends got day jobs and are not able to keep a young lifestyle and still be bright eyed at 8am. Where am I going with this? Well... it's a confusing place to be in I guess. Where do you go from this point? I serve at nights and everyone else works in the morning. I feel at a loss because I don't want to conform to this horribly rigid schedule, but I want to see my friends and boyfriend at a normal hour. Although the serving world has been paying me pretty well.... so it's hard to turn my cheek on it. Maybe I was just hoping that this phase in our life wouldn't hit already. Or if I were married by now it wouldn't be so bad because I could just come home to someone and curl in bed with them. With Alyssa, she might be weirded out if I curled up next to her. Actually.... she'd probably hit me because she'd be confused as to who was in her bed.

Hmmm, what to do what to do! There is always a possibility of a day job but it seems that all options depend on other options. Confusing? Yah. I know. I would love to start serving in downtown mornings and afternoons because there would be great clientele (aka business people and people enjoying the cities) and then I'd have all my nights off. But the downfall of this is that I need to finish a class next semester to graduate. I could do a night class but then that would interfere with the fact that I'm trying to see where this internship position will lead me. Will I get a job there? And if I do why quit my serving job now or quit the new place if I decide to switch. And I want to leave all doors open just so I don't close a window? Oh I dunno! So you see my dilemma?

I guess that's my rant today. Of course I really don't want to go back into a different point in my life, I'm excited to see where it goes from here. I think Ill just sit here and wait for an answer. Or pray about it. That's always a good idea. : )

Love

Not the smartest bulb....

So for months I've been very frustrated with my blog. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't letting me do certain things like change the font, font color, font size, etc. Well... turns out it's because I've had it on the wrong setting this whole time. Can someone say yikes! Honestly! You think I would have tried that. I'm not even sure what I really did TRY. There was an assumption that since Blogger had updated itself and I never changed anything that my stuff just got crappy. I was highly deceived by myself. So now that THAT's out of the way...

Good morning all! I know...it's really noon-time and not morning in any way, but I'm not a morning person. I was kind of this morning as Justin was getting ready for work. Alyssa was up as well since she had to be the boss at her work today, so I figured, why not? I didn't last that long. I helped Alyssa rub cream on her... tattoo... and made sure Justin didn't forget his lunch and then I was back in my warm and comfy bed. So you see... this morning stuff is just not for me. I've already done my share in morning jobs. There is talk about actually trying to serve during the days somewhere, but we'll see where that goes.

Speaking of tattoos, Alyssa got one like TWO days ago. I feel like these things have to be planned so far out in advance, and while yes, she had her estimate done on the thing but she was kinda like, well... today is the day. And then went. But hey, it looks nice, she is happy, and all is well.

Today will be a lazy day. It's the Twins first day in the play-offs and it'll be a very busy night. So I'm going to enjoy this opportunity to be alone, watch some wonderful shows on Hulu, eat something uber tasty, and work on my very long-time-taking novel. It should be a delight! I also learned today that RANDY MOSS is coming back to play for the Minnesota Vikings. Like... he'll be there for the game on Monday. Weird. Really weird. He was the ONLY player I knew on a sports team years and years ago. Now it's becoming a flashback to when he was here and now I can't seem to get the Titanic song out of my head. Like I said, weird.

Finances and legal issues. Life is too short for that so moving on.

The big 24 is coming up in almost two weeks and I'm not ready! I have NO idea what I want to do, no idea what I want to wear, no idea when to do it! I'm usually the one making plans for my birthday. Not because I don't think others would come up with something to do, but it's honestly not their job. It's my birthday and I'm the crazy one who thinks birthdays are just these magical things that happen once a year and that time is the only we get to really acknowledge someone on a yearly basis. It shouldn't be too hard to remember considering it happens the same time every year (Like Christmas and New Years) and why not make people in your life feel special? If I had the money, people would always get something from me. But I don't.... so... it'll probably be a hand-made card from me. Enjoy! At any rate, birthday plans are stuck in park. I don't wanna make people do anything in particular. I just want to see friends and family as usual. So if ANYONE has some good ideas, drop them by my way. :)

Lately Justin has been saying that I'm like Holly in a lot of ways. It's funny. Because I honest to God don't see it. I mean I think it's cute that we have these traits that make us the same even though we are very different people. It's nice to know we are twins in one way or another. But why don't I pick up on it? Hmmm... being a twin is confusing. It's much more than being just a sister. You have this bond automatically from birth. While we aren't identical twins, we still hung out in our mom's womb for 9 months together. And we still did EVERYTHING together until what? Middle school? That's like 13 years and 9 months of being glued to each other's side. It's quite interesting really. Not that I would really WANT twins (hoping it skips a generation...) but what a miraculous thing it would be. God really had something crazy going on when He thought up this one.

Speaking of the wonderful God. I've been slacking. And I really didn't notice/care until recently. Not sure why. Life is busy and crazy and you run out of time for things and in my case, I work ALL THE TIME when there should be church going on. But that's just how it is. We are supposed to fight against all these temptations to be busy and find time to settle down with the Lord. I think we make it more difficult than it actually is. All I really have to do is 1) pray or 2) reach over and grab my Bible and go. Or even better 3) switch screens on this laptop that I'm writing on and watch Mark Driscoll. Not hard. Which is what I'm going to do. Right. now.


Love

***With Flowers In Your Hair***

The title today? A SONG. Go figure. It's a Mumford and Sons song and it's amazing. I absolutely love it. Alyssa gave me a CD full of wonderful music and that was one of them.... It's called "After the Storm". GO buy it right now. I dare you.

This week/weekend has been nuts. Now that wedding season is over, I'm working like crazy. It's great because I have money and I can start paying bills, I dunno, ON TIME, but it's tiring. But I'm making bank! And on Wednesday was Nate's birthday and he had a party on Saturday. We (Justin and I) were supposed to go to an apple orchard with him, Camry, and some other people but it was just too far of a drive so we were bad people and went to Apple Jack Orchards in Delano, MN. Let me just say that it is a great place. They have a wonderful corn maze which Justin and I conquered in an hour. Yes, it took that long! It was probably even longer but right away after we had been there for fifteen minutes, I REALLY had to pee so we had to go back and start all over. haha, I am four years old for sure.

(Copyright Apple Jack Orchards Inc. Picture taken from (http://www.applejackorchards.com/sitepages/pid43.php)

It was a lot of fun and I'm glad I got to do that with Justin. Oh! I forgot! we also went to my brother-in-law's restaurant! Mmmm it was very very tasty! :) We got a pizza with spicy sausage. I approved. And we got to sit outside since it was so nice out. Yay fall days!

Afterward we met up with Nate at his apartment and hung out with some rather cool people. I really enjoyed the conversation and the food that Nate so graciously gave to us. And I brought the Oreo's with the 5 BOO-RIFIC pictures on them. What a wonderful treat! haha

Once Nate's party died down, Alyssa, Justin, and I traveled over to the Beckman's place. Awww, that sounds cute to say. :) Anyway, they got a lot of gift cards from the wedding and bought some sweet stuff with it. They did well! And they were all dressed up because they were going to the Renaissance Festival today and had to make sure everything looked okay. I was so confused at first... I'm like is this how you dress when no one is around?? lol! Oh, and we got to see the wonderful slideshow from their Honeymoon. I know people always make fun in movies about having to watch people's slideshows, but I love it. It's usually pictures of things and places I'll never go to, so it's really refreshing. There was a HYSTERICAL picture of Jen trying to climb this rock and she was in these flip flops... oh man... it should be her facebook photo. That's all I'm saying.

Now it's my time to relax. I have a few hours in between my shifts and I'm lying in my bed with my jammies on. It's quite delightful. I know I have another crazy working week ahead of me but it'll hopefully end in a weekend at a cabin up north. Now that should be thrilling. I'll have that be the light at the end of the tunnel. huzzah!

So ladies and gents, have a great rest of your weekend.

Love

It's Friday and I'm not done yet

I'm exhausted. Just physically overwhelmingly exhausted. I've what feels like 70 hours this week, and I still have to work tonight and I have a double on Sunday. It's never ending and I think my body is going to hate me after everything is said and done. But it's my fault because I have lots of bills and I need to work like this to pay everything off. Man, you really don't understand bills and money and finances until you are in the thick of it. Or maybe it's just me. At any rate, I need to get rich fast or I'm doomed! When I say doomed, however, I think of that cartoon Invader Zim and it makes me laugh. Zim's little friend... Grr... would just run around saying doom. It was hysterical. Okay, maybe I'm delirious. I just woke up, leave me alone!

The nice thing is that it is OCTOBER! YAYAYAYAYAYAYYAYAY! My favorite month ever! Why you might ask? Hello!! Birthdays, and pretty leaves, and apple orchards, Halloween, MEA for the kids still in K-12, and I can't even think of anything else, but I'm sure there is more. It's much better than, oh I dunno, cold months. They are wet and cold and dirty looking and dreary. Haha. I'm mean. I think everyone is partial to the month they were born in. So maybe I won't be mean to them.

I also have Saturday off. Which is already jam packed with birthday things. But... it's okay. I'll still get some me time. And some Justin time. Hee hee.... Just...in...time... okay. .That was funny to me. Maybe I shouldn't write blogs when I've only been awake for 10 minutes.

My book is coming along nicely. I know I haven't been working on it lately, but sometimes people need breaks. And this last stint was my break! So I'm off again to work viciously hard on it. YAY! I need to get it out there. I need it to be this thing that has finally been rejected, or accepted, or degraded, ya know? It's cool that I've written something and I've done something that not everybody does, but it doesn't mean much if I'm too scared or not ready to put it out there. All things considered, the book isn't really FOR other people. I mean it's about my friend that died when I was in high school, yes, but it's also something that helped ME cope. Something that if people wanted to remember, they could because it'd be all written down in this book. But it's still what will make me an Author when you say "career goal" my mind screams author. And once I get this out of the way, I can start something new. Start on a new page and just go. Won't that be amazing?

Alright, time for my busy day to start.

Love