This is an archive and may contain old or out-of-date content. Check the date; things may have changed since the time of the original posting. Conversation is allowed on older posts, but be aware that they will not come to my attention as easily.
OH MY GOODNESS, I am so dense sometimes.I didn’t put two and two together until I was telling Becky and Lisa who we were hosting…and it IS James and Johanna!!! Ash, you’re on it. This is just SO funny.
Anyhow, that’s all I have for now, so maybe an edit/update later…
EDIT/UPDATE…
Okay, so you wanna know what I did today? I actually had a worthwhile day. For a loser like me anyway. Anyhow. I woke up this morning to this huge thunderclap that sounded like the world was ending… no lie. My dad has an aluminum boat against the west side of the house, and lighning likes to hit it. So I got up, though it was a bit early, and moved back down to the bottom bunk. Woke up, cleaned till noon, then went over to Lisa’s and finished my “surprise” skirt for camp. My goodness, it’s awesome. But it’s a surprise… shhh…
Came back, gooped around for a while, went to Walmart with Mom and Tegan to get fabric for Teg’s skirt. Which is… well, very Tegan-ish. Came back home, had dinner, yadda yadda, and then after the kids went to bed I actually put together and sewed a pair of flannel pajama pants for Tegan. With Lisa nowhere in sight. All by my lonesome, and they actually look like pants.
This is a lame entry, methinks, but I’m about to get off and head to bed… seeing as how, at this point, it’s tomorrow.
Which means five days till camp on BOTH calendars.
Over and out.
New layout and no, I didn’t make it. I’m going to make one similar, though, so don’t yell at me for bugging anyone’s eyes!!
I haven’t really updated in so long, and life is actually… happening! I am officially a high school graduate now… it’s all on paper and I just spent thirteen years of my life to hold this one piece of paper in my hand. It’s absolutely amazing. But I truly do have friends who love me… friends who go out of their way to throw a surprise graduation/ late birthday party for me and friends who call people to get an announcement in the bulletin.
So I’m really, really happy right now.
Of course, it does help that there’s less than two weeks until camp Yeshua! There’s so many people that I can’t wait to meet, to re-meet, to see after such a long time… and there are people that I’m not in a particularly big rush to see… 
… but everything will work out if it’s meant to, and I think camp will, once again, be a WONDERFUL experience!
Real update later, I promise. I’m such a slack-off.
I’m beginning to learn that growing up can really be tough. You’re a kid and everything is so simple… you love your parents, your parents love you, and the biggest trial in your life is that you can’t go out and play as long as you really want to. And then you get to be about fifteen and you’re really a teenager… thinking that you’re falling in love or thinking that you’re really too old for all of this nonsense… when in both counts you’re really not.
And then you’re eighteen with younger kids at home… and you’re getting more and more responsibilities. Your parents lean on you a little more to help bring up the preschoolers, but when you act on your resposibility, “you’re not the parent.” It’s a total and complete time of limbo… too old to really be a teenager and run around being stupid, but too young to really fit in with the adult crowd. Too old to be worried about the daily life of high school, but too young to be a true college student.
You already realized that your parents weren’t perfect… that one shocking day when you’re getting to almost be a teenager and you realize that your parents aren’t exactly God and sometimes they do things wrong or just not right… but as you’re starting to enter their world you realize that there are a lot of things your parents do that you don’t agree with. But since you’re in limbo, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. Too old to sit there, mindlessly agreeing, but too young to truly do something about it.
And there’s certain rules that were made when you were a rebellious young teenager that maybe no longer apply, but nobody is making a move to abolish them. Yes, it made sense when your father said no to makeup at eleven, but maybe now that you’re eighteen you think you’re old enough to handle it. And now that you are eighteen, you have no clue what to do with it, because there really is more important stuff to worry about right now.
Like how all of a sudden you’re being thrust into this adult world you’ve been existing in but never really a part of… you have to make lifelong decisions all of a sudden and your parents expect you to take full responsibility and act on your own initiative and be totally prepared for life in general, but yet they still treat you as a child and make these insane rules and are still generally controlling… eighteen in a time of limbo.
And all of the stupid things start piling up… like how they want you to strike out on your own and have a job, a liscense, and a car, but yet they’re too busy to take me driving or to take me somewhere to pick up job applications.
I love my parents, don’t get me wrong, but when something stupid crops up, like the fact that I truly want to be able to be friends with and help the only daughter of a family we’re practically having a feud with… I just want to scream.
Good news! Mom’s not going to make me finish every single day of school I have left. As she put it, seniors spend their last few days of high school doing finals, having half days, and rehearsing for the graduation ceremony. Which I’m not doing… so she’s letting me graduate a few days early. So I’m almost a high school graduate!
Some days I just want to get out of the house. If I had to live this year all over again, I don’t think I would have chosen to be homeschooled. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, because it was nice having academics tailored to myself, and going at my own (fast) pace and all… but I miss being around PEOPLE all of the time!! Once a week is not early enough. So I think I would have chanced it with the Shawnee public schools, living life over again. So it wouldn’t be my sheltered, Christian, Warwick experience, but really, I can’t live the sheltered life forever. And so now I’m anxiously counting down the days to camp. Just being around people again will be wonderful.
So I was cleaning my room up yesterday, clearing some stuff off of my dresser, when I realized that I haven’t been keeping up with my bible reading as much as I should be. Want to hear how bad it is? I had to go into the kitchen, look at the calender to see what the Torah portion was, and then come back to my personal torah-portion schedule and cross out about a book and a half. Isn’t that terrible? So I have to talk to Becky again and get her to hold me accountable again or something.
I’ve been pulling out old cd’s again this week… ones that I swear I have not listened to since way before I moved. One of them was the Benjamin Gate (which, I don’t even think exists anymore), and one of the songs really hit me today. It has a lot to do with a situation I’ve been dealing with in the past couple of weeks.
I had all the words in the world
now I’ve got nothing to say to you
got to be a million people that
have walked this road before
but why does it feel so tough
and I am letting go again
I think I understand
and I am letting go again
as we face time on our own
and I am rediscovering
the life that’s left to lead
a sea of rediscovery
I’ve become, like, the champion of song/poem posts recently, and I know that most people just glaze right over them. Sorry!
Yesterday there was a big old gathering out in Chandler for Shavuot. It was really really weird being at Bell Cow with no teaching tents, no shower houses, no dining tent, barely anyone there, no security buildings… whoa! Haha. But we met over there and had a service while the kids swam in the lake, and then there was a mikvah service. It was hilarious; it was so obvious where our group ended and the rest of the swimmers began: one one side of this invisible line, bikinis and guys with tight shorts (blegh!), and on the other side, a bunch of people with t-shirts and shorts or capris over their bathing suits, or just people piling into the water with their regular clothes on!!
And sometimes I wonder what it is about me that chases people away. I mean, I have known these people twice as long as, say, the Newlins, but they’re so darn outgoing that everyone just loves them. Yeah, I’m painfully shy sometimes, but it’s just because of my horrendous fear of being rejected. It’s stupid, because I know full well that the quieter I am, the more easily ignored I become, and the more withdrawn I get as a result. It’s like an endless cycle that chases most everyone away. Oh well, I’ll just go be a hermit.
Funny, Amanda K. and I always said we were going to grow up and be two old hermit spinsters with a million cats. I guess that plan’s now off because of her boyfriend and all…
and I am letting go again…