funny things kids say...

Reading tests are, by far, the funniest experiences of my life. Most of the time, my kids try to be funny. They say clever things...scream out funny words...or make silly faces. However, during a reading test, they're trying their hardest to be serious...and if they have trouble reading, they come up with good good stuff.

Today's reading test moment of the day..."Kevin's other brother used the wagon to make a f-ahhhh...f...aaahhh...f...aaahhh..rrrrrr...fart. Kevin's other brother used the wagon to make a fart...to make a fart...to make a FORT! Kevin's other brother used the wagon to make a FORT!"

Might I just add...the lovely student had NO idea they had said fart about 6 times...so I was left to stifle laughter...and exhilarated when they finally came up with fort. :) I love my kids.

i am forgetful.

I wanted to share two things about my breed of crazy: #1- I love...let me repeat...LOVE my students this year so much that I had a dream this weekend that they were in 5th grade and I was still their teacher (yet somehow in present-day) and I was writing them all letters at the end of the year telling them about the people I knew they were and who they could be...how proud I was of them, etc. Anyway, I ended up sobbing because I loved them, threatening them if they didn't email me throughout middle and high school, and waking myself up because I was so emotional. Then I felt even more guilty for taking off Friday. Personal days and I just can't work. I have guilt like the Catholic Church (no offense, Catholics, just a cliche).

#2- I love to share stories even if EVERY other teacher in the world has experienced them. So here goes, they're special-er and cuter because they're MY kids. :) So I have a student who was gone for 3 weeks because he went to Mexico for a family situation and then had a crappy situation when they got home too. It was really sad and he didn't deserve to have a crappy month of February. However, it all worked out and he's back at school and everything's working out for them. Yay!
Anyhow, he came to my back table to ask me a question the other day because he needed something...or something? I don't remember the particulars. However, he came back and said, "Hey Ms. Havens...I really missed you."...and I said, "When, [insert male student name]?"...and he said, "I really missed you when you were over here and I was at my desk working. I just missed you."

WEFKJAWE;GLKJWE G;LKAJEWF AWEF WHY ARE YOU SO ADORABLE?!

I love my kids. :)

xoxo. gossip girl? haha, no. just me. well...there are def. times in my life that nickname would've worked, but alas, I'm supposed to be a grown-up now. ;)

"a simpler way to ship"

Bull. Crap. Seriously, I have never heard such bull crap. You know why the United States Postal Service is NOT a simpler way to ship?! THEY CLOSE AT 4-FREAKING-30!

Honestly, how are you at all government-funded when you don't open until 9:30 and you close at 4:30. I'll admit that I should've sent F.S. off sooner...and I wanted to be a better steward of my F.S., but I didn't get myself together. I hope I don't ruin any Kazakh child's life because of it. I feel terrible...because I absolutely adored my F.S. experience.

Anyhow, I RACE down Jefferson-Bland-Warwick-Hiden Blvd to get to the post office and walk in at 4:29...and the curtains have been closed. Seething is not even the word.

So I realized the UPS store would be my only option, "What can brown do you for you?" and all that crap. Luckily, Karen @ the UPS store was the bomb.com and she helped me out quickly and gave me two 1-cent stamps since I haven't bought stamps in ages and mine are still 42 cents. So then...THEN I almost forget to mail the F.S. in the first place because I got so excited about mailing the albums. No worries, got it handled. Express shipped. Ballin'.

Best part...coming up...

I go to get in my car, turn it on, look to the right...USED PAPERBACK BOOK STORE!!!!!!!!! I had completely forgotten that Bethanne told me that the used books were here because I never head that way. SO! I went in and paid $14 for used paperbacks that I would've paid $42 for at the store. HECK YES! Lucky for me, they give you one free book your first time. Yes, that's right. I was a PI(Paperbacks Ink) virgin. Virgin, no more, my friends! I bought 3 great books (woo hoo--on the way to 100!) and got another free book coupon since I spent over $13. ALSO, you get a stamp on your user card for ever $10 you spend. So...I got lots of book-ish goodness and I also got book-ish goodness to use in the future...NOT TO MENTION I can trade books in! Woo hoo!

All in all...fabulous turn of events...and Stanley's on his way back to Omarserik! :)

7 days 'til Spring Break!

love.

living in filth?

I was thinking this evening about the phrase "living in filth"...because I do. Most of you know this. Most of you also know I obsess when I clean...I'm talking hours and hours on small square feet of space.

It takes me ages to clean a kitchen...I'm talking a solid day's work. I get so easily distracted that I go to wipe down the cabinet and then I end up reorganizing the entire cabinet...are these spices old? Is this food bad? Should I throw this out? How often do I *really* use paprika?...this takes me ages.

So, as my cats are ALWAYS pooping in the floor (and now rubbing their butts on the carpet afterwards), I realized that I truly live in filth. As I got to thinking about this I realized that "living in filth" is the only phrase I can think of that starts with "living in..." besides "living in sin". Now, I realize that people usually say that others are "living in sin" when they are living together as an unmarried couple, but then I thought, "Aren't we all living *in* sin?" It ended up being so parallel for me. My first thought when I realized that I truly live in filth was that cleanliness is a never-ending battle for me. I clean and clean, I do loads and loads of laundry, I wash dish after dish...and the next day there is dust, cat hair, at least a dirty pair of underwear, and another glass of water...circle of life?...circle of filth.

It's crazy to me that this relates directly to struggle with sin. There's no way for me *not* to live in sin. I may not live with men before marriage, but I'm still living in sin. Even the people in the world I think of as the "most holy" people on the planet (memaw&pa) are living in sin. There's no way *not* to live in sin, and I get that. Really, I do. But it shocked me that as little as I've thought about this lately, it's so largely because my quest for perfection is EVERYWHERE. I accept mediocrity in everything because I am so afraid of failing. If I strive to "get by" at least I won't fail when I just "get by". Even so, thinking this way means I'm failing myself, and inevitably, God. However, I'm always going to fail God. This goes straight back to my issues with cleanliness/organization. I feel like it's a never-ending cycle and sometimes that is SO hard for me to get out from under.

With everything that happened in my life in 2009, I just felt like I couldn't breathe. For a large portion of '08-'09 I felt like I was drowning...cue lyrics that describe my feelings:

"Come on, my star is fading

And I swerve out of control

If I, if I'd only waited

I'd not be stuck here in this hole...

Come on, oh my star is fading

And I see no chance of release

And I know I'm dead on the surface

But I am screaming underneath."

That describes how I felt for a LONG time with 100% accuracy. It was indescribable. What's worse, I really couldn't figure out how to tell anyone. I couldn't figure out how to get my thoughts out on paper, let alone verbally. So naturally, worrying about sin was top of the list as well. Shame, guilt, doubt, delusion...I felt all of those things. Nothing made sense: nothing about me, nothing about my family, nothing about my relationships with anyone. I just couldn't figure anything out. Obviously.

When I figured things out, I still felt lost. I felt even further down in my hole because I couldn't get rid of the fact that I felt relief and that sounded so awful. Feeling relief from a situation you choose to put yourself in and commit yourself to forever makes you feel like the biggest jerk ever. It made me feel fake, like I'd lied to everyone...especially myself. So the cycle of sin continued to spiral. The cycle of filth in my life continued to pull me down.

Cue hating God, hating faith, apathy, etc...

That was the fall of '09. I actually said to someone, "I'm pretty sure God exists, I just feel like He's not really that interested in being a part of my life." Worst part? I still feel that way sometimes. The deep thoughts are helping though. I'm pondering all sorts of stuff I haven't pondered in ages.

Anyway, I'm not sure what point I'm actually going for...besides that I applaud people who don't get bogged down by living in literal filth or figurative filth [sin]. I attempted to do the FlyLady plan (www.flylady.net) and quickly got overwhelmed by cleaning things so often. I knew this would overwhelm me, but I am still determined to keep my house clean for at least a month...at some time in my life.

I'm determined not to let the fact that I'm doomed to live in sin be used an excuse to purposely sin or accept mediocrity, whether it's blatant sin or just the sin of "getting by".

I don't know where this depth is coming from, but I also wanted to share with you some more beach photos. :) Just for Haley.

"Serendipity" from Nights in Rodanthe

Indescribable.

i heart water.

some more faves from that morning:

me & my bff flat kazakh-stanley.

view from the top of the dunes. love the steeple:
i heart plane lines. they look like shooting stars here.sunset on the sound.
aaaaand i accidentally stalked a couple. :) but honestly, what a romantic picture?!

i love when the moon is out right after the sun. i was laying on the sand. freak.
mmmmm...the wind was a-blowin'
new sunset? stalking new strangers.

i heart you too, sun. today's sesame street lesson will be the lowercase letter "i".
bright & blazing.deeeLICIOUS wallpaper.
beautiful sky.




had to do one more self-portrait. :)

Christmas tree graveyard @ OuterBanksPier


last one on the blog: through the "cracks" (huge gaps) in the floor at OBX Pier. beautiful water.


what a beautiful weekend to be there. sorry for the randomly introspective/deep thoughts lately. thanks for reading. xo.

great mysteries of life?

I just spent the last 2 days at my favorite place in the world: Nags Head, NC. One of the things I decided to do while I was gone was to document everything I could. So I took 626 pictures.

Not gonna lie, I'm not sure when I've ever taken that many pictures, especially not in 2 days. I took 200 pictures of a sunrise...ONE day. Add in last night's sunset and this morning's sunrise, solid 400.

So while I was sitting there, on the beach, in the chilly First-Day-of-Spring air, I thought about why the beach is so darn photogenic. I mean, obviously it's beautiful and all that...but I realized why I am so fascinated. Every time I stopped taking a picture I found something else I wanted to take a picture of.

It's no secret that my relationship with God has been...less than satisfactory? I realize that, as Christians our report card never comes up with all A's (or all S' if you teach first grade), but I haven't even been trying to attend school, as it were. I've been very truant in my relationship with Jesus and I never felt it more than when I got to the beach. The beach is my "place". That sounds so ridiculous to say. The beach is the only...ONLY place I can sit by myself. It is the only place I will go alone. I don't even like going to get groceries or gas alone...but I'll sit alone on a beach for hours. Anyway, I typically feel really connected to God there...something about relatively uninterrupted nature. After all, the ocean is the one place we can't just "go invade". We can't go live under it automatically, not without coming up for air. We can't build right into it unless we want our structures to crumble. I am fascinated by this huge body of water that I respectfully fear doing what it's done, uninterrupted, for centuries. I realized Friday afternoon that I hadn't been "there", at the beach or anywhere, in a really long time. God and I hadn't been clicking and I've been relatively unaffected by it. However, being there this weekend was like seeing the beach all over again.

Sitting with a camera was INSANE for me because I realized that EVERY second at the beach is different. Yesterday it took about an hour for the sun to start rising and get all the way up into the sky. Today it took about 30 minutes. I mean, literally, I got up and the sun wasn't peeking out at all. By the next hour it was *hot* sitting in direct sunlight. It was insane. Every snap of the camera showed the sun in a different position...amazing.

This brings me to my point (sorry it took so long): the beach has been doing the "same" thing over and over for centuries...and yet it never does the same thing twice. Every second, every wave break, every seashell washed up is different. Every. Single. Time.

Amazing.

Also amazing, what a surprise unexpected colors can be. :)
Happy Spring! :)

House Rules

My 11th book of the year was The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson (I don't know why my blog won't let me underline again). That book was real, real good. I mean, not top 10 books of all time or anything, but a pretty sweet blend of history and assumption. I really enjoyed it and it didn't take long to read.

My 12th book of the year is House Rules by Jodi Picoult.

Jodi Picoult is by far my favorite author. She writes very well-developed books about a variety of controversial subjects and she always keeps enough information close to the vest that you can't quite figure it out. This book was not my favorite because the ending has me a little confused, but all of her books are well worth the read. More of a review to come later.

I thought I was up to book 14, but I've apparently confused my numbers. Starting a few John Grisham books this week that should up my numbers. :) Very excited at the prospect of completing my goal! :)

More blogging to come when I can catch up on my thoughts.