Imagine This

Maybe I am busy.

So what? Is that so wrong? Too busy to blog?

Part of the problem is that deep down I'm boring so after a year of blogging, I have nothing new to say. It's weird because I could be someone completely different here than in my real life because no one from real life reads this thing. The problem is a lack of imagination, I guess. I blame it on MTV, video games and sugar. I had a good imagination when I was a kid.

Maybe lack of imagination is just safer. Imgination could be dangerous. If I imagined myself as a rich multi-millionaire who went to Maui all the time I might get frustrated with my life. As a kid, you fantasize to make your life more exciting. Walking the dog isn't all that cool. Taking your dog to through the Land of Oz is much cooler. Cows become enemies. Trees become soliders.

As an adult, I guess imagination would just show us that life is always going to be lacking. We will never really get to a place where we are 100% happy with the way things are. There are always bills to be paid, weather to tolerate (yes, even in AZ) white pasty legs to tan, brains to inebriate, things to learn, savings accounts to pad, Brad Pitts to get to know.....and we're never gonna get there.

Dont' call me a hater. Don't say I am negative. In fact, I am a very positive person. But I'm a realist. The lotto just doesn't pay enought anymore.

Hope

I woke up at 5:30 this morning. Don't ask me why. For most people, I suppose that's not too early. For me, it's way too early. It's an hour since I woke up and still dark. It will be dark for a little bit over another hour. I dislike waking up to darkness. Makes me feel like maybe it's still 3 o'clock in the morning. (For those of you who know me, I'm a sunshine baby.)

What does a person with no kids do so early in the morning? I do laundry, website maintenance, check myspace messages and write something to you all. Oh, and have yogurt.

I have a new obsession in life. It's called Organized Chaos and it's happening on April 1st.

No, this is not a planned April Fool Joke with weapons of mass destruction. It's an all day concert event in my town with 8 bands from all over Arizona playing, a live DJ, skateboarding ramps and rails, raffle, games like sumo suits, bungee races, a 2-story slide and jousting. We might even throw in a rock climbing wall for good measure.

So my new obsession is quite a fun thing to do. Right now the thing I am most concerned with is raising the money for the event. $5,000 should do it. I have $500 so far.

So what to do? Well, this girl put a call in the form of an e-mail out to everyone involved and supporting it to let them know they need to get off their duffers and start asking the local business community for money.

The event is geared towards teens all over the community. We have several youth groups, community based organizations and government organizations geared towards helping teens that are going to be there to hang out and meet some teens.

I know I have written this before, but our small community has a high rate of meth use, teenage pregnancies, high school dropouts, domestic violence and so forth. I guess this is the first drop in the bucket toward starting to show a unified front around here that we are going to do something about it!

My biggest dream is simply to see the teenage culture in this area completely revolutionized. I want the society illnesses to be the exception and no longer the normal rule. The local high school tends to handle the issues in the negative. I think teens need hope. They need a reason. They need to be told who they can become. They need to know the power an uniqueness of being a teenager. They need to know a lot of things. They mostly need hope.

So I know it is weird to think of hope being packaged in an all day concert event with loud music, skateboarders, rebellious teenagers and silly games. But I hope it sparks hope in a lot of them. Hope that what they won't get at school and in many cases won't get at school can be found in people they don't even know lending a hand, putting their hearts out there to help them realize their full potential.

My Life Laid Out

Maybe I am glad that my life is undramatic. I am not a highly emotional person. I do cry sometimes without much provocation. I get the giggles without much humor sometimes, too.

My weeks are pretty much the same. I am married. I have two dogs. I have a house, a car and the bills that go with them. My mail goes to a PO Box. My drycleaner is the cheapest in town. I pick up pre-made chicken cordoun blue for dinner when I am too tired to cook and burnt out on pizza. My car is usually dusty on the outside because everytime I get it washed, it rains. My habits act as if I have more money than I do. I would rather hire people to take care of the weeds, cut my dogs nails, clean the house than do it myself. I am in hyper-drive and I've been this way for a long time. I consider it cheating to eat cookies, french fries or non-diet soda.

Relationships are the most important thing in my life. I could probably make more money than I do. I could find more time to pull my own weeds, clean my own house and wash my own car if I didn't make so much time available to people.

I don't wake up early in the morning. My typical wake up time is between 8 and 9 in the morning. This also makes me feel guilty, but I usually have evening engagements that make me unable to get home before 9 pm and by the time I unwind it's about 11 or 12.

I spend a lot of time worrying about things I shouldn't. My mind is a steel trap in some ways. When I have a list of things to do, I have a hard time letting something go until I can completely cross it off of my mental list as done. Therefore, I tend to feel like I am pestering people and taking on too much responsibility. I should let people handle what their job is.

Then sometimes I get overwhelmed by everything and I end up shutting down totally. I take a day off for no reason and spend most of the day watching my Friends DVDs in bed and eating chips and salsa or string cheese. This happens about once every other week.

I spend the majority of my time either working at my profession or working on my passion. As the past year has rolled by, my passion in working with teenagers has grown. I have increased my energy and time spent with them. Jeremy and I are planning more and more things to help build a basis for a huge amount of growth. We want to establish a steady program to meet most of the teenage sub-cultures and issues. We want to be able to have after school tutoring to a crisis hotline to kickin' events like our all day concert. Our passion is to see them change. We live in a small community that is overrun with meth use, domestic violence, poverty, teenage pregnancies, crime and a high drop out rate.

Yet even with our current meager resources, we have seen an impact on some individual lives. We know that if we weren't here doing what we are doing, they would be different people without much going for them. As it is, they still struggle and get into trouble but they are managing to be better people than their circumstances are dictating.

Today I am finally taking down the Christmas lights from the roof line, replacing light bulbs that have been burnt out for six months and I'm gonna clean the house. We used to have a set meeting in place on Saturday nights. This is the first Saturday without it. I feel free. It's the only day a week that I now have unaccounted for. So it's 11:22 and I'm still in my PJs. I gotta go change and go to Home Depot.

La-La-La

Well, it's good to be "back". I will be MIA again as I am going to another conference. Jeremy's not going so I am trying to figure out if I should just make up an excuse as to why I can't go. (Jeremy would be my husband.)

I have been thinking about learning a new language or taking some random course at the community college. I love to learn. I could have been a student for life if it paid anything, but alas, the colleges expect me to pay them. My mom has a Masters Degree and my dad a Doctorate. My oldest brother is finishing his degree in Math. Talk about some crazy ass classes! He gives me the problems he's supposed to know how to solve and all I can say is "Huh"? But he has 2 semesters left so that's pretty cool for him. He's gonna make good money when he's done.

Oh, the other thing new in my life is that my little brother and sister in law have found out that they are having a boy. She's due in May. So in addition to my three nieces, I will now have a nephew.

We are thinking about having J quit his regular job to pursue his passion which doesn't pay anything and there is really no way to make it pay. Should be interesting. Thank God I'm in a profession where the sky is the limit on the pay for the most part. We haven't decided yet what to do about him quitting. It would be a stretch.

Okay, no ending to this rambling.

La-La-La

Well, it's good to be "back". I will be MIA again as I am going to another conference. Jeremy's not going so I am trying to figure out if I should just make up an excuse as to why I can't go. (Jeremy would be my husband.)

I have been thinking about learning a new language or taking some random course at the community college. I love to learn. I could have been a student for life if it paid anything, but alas, the colleges expect me to pay them. My mom has a Masters Degree and my dad a Doctorate. My oldest brother is finishing his degree in Math. Talk about some crazy ass classes! He gives me the problems he's supposed to know how to solve and all I can say is "Huh"? But he has 2 semesters left so that's pretty cool for him. He's gonna make good money when he's done.

Oh, the other thing new in my life is that my little brother and sister in law have found out that they are having a boy. She's due in May. So in addition to my three nieces, I will now have a nephew.

We are thinking about having J quit his regular job to pursue his passion which doesn't pay anything and there is really no way to make it pay. Should be interesting. Thank God I'm in a profession where the sky is the limit on the pay for the most part. We haven't decided yet what to do about him quitting. It would be a stretch.

Okay, no ending to this rambling.

Aren't You Glad You Read This?

Hello! Did you miss me? I missed you. Deeply.

I guess I haven't had much to vent lately because I haven't been writing.

I am working with my doctor to lose weight. I am at the point where I am completely unhappy and thinking that I would rather not look like I do. Well, I mean, my body anyways. My face is beautiful as ever. :) Too many pieces of fudge over the holidays, I suspect.

So I am juicing. That means I put vegetables and a little bit of fruit into a thing that takes all the juice out of them and I drink it. So now I'm getting about a weeks worth of veggies twice a day.

She had me start taking new supplements, too. However, she told me to take 4 pills twice a day. So I did. I threw up magnificently! Called the doctor. Oops- she forgot to mention I have to ease my way into it and take one twice a day and work myself up.

Oh, and too much beet juice makes my poop really red.