Not saying NO

I have never thought of myself as a person who can't say no. You know those people who just take on way too much all the time because they hate to tell people no? I have never been like that. If i am too busy, i say no way jose'! But now i am thinking i may have the wrong perception of myself.

First of all i am a massage therapist. I love my job but being self employed is actually a lot of work and a lot of stress! I have been in the business for about a year now, and i am starting to see the volume of clients that i want but now quite enough yet. So for awhile i was helping work at the family business. My in-laws own a old fashioned drive thru and diner. So i was working there three days a week and working for massage three days a week. My hours at the restaurant started at about 4 in the morning and lasted until about 3:30 that afternoon. This was crazy! So after awhile i quit doing that and was going to just do massage. But i wasn't making enough to pay the bills so i became a rep for a jewelry company out of Dallas called Premier Designs. They do home shows like Pampered Chef and Tupperware. Well i am still working with Premier and i LOVE it. I get to wear lots of jewelry, dress up in the evenings and go have brownies and coffee and meet new people and play with jewelry. It is SO MUCH FUN! But it is also a lot of work, more then you would think.

So i own two businesses, then i get the bright idea to become more involved in my massage organization, AMTA. Now this was actually a good idea because i do get to go on a retreat all expenses paid once a year and they pay for all of our travel to state events. So getting to education training that is required for our insurance is now free! And all i have to do is plan our yearly unit meeting. It really isn't that bad, but it is making my september very messy!

On top of that, i volunteered to be a part of the missions board at church. This is where i should have said no. Once again, it is not that much work, but right now it is just one more thing! Do you ever just feel like that, it was the straw that broke the camel's back? So while pondering all of this i have decided, i may not be so good at saying no after all!

VACATION!

I am going on vacation! And i am so excited! My hubby and me are going camping for the first time in 4 years! It is just this weekend, and i know we are crazy to go on labor day but i am just so pumped to get away, just the two of us. But at the same time i am wondering as i sit here under a mountain of things that i have to do and make and find before we can go, not to mention what i have to do for my two businesses, and i wonder if vacation is really a good word for it. It is more like an escape, a very necessary but unwise escape. Maybe not unwise, just badly planned, or something. But seriously, the amount of effort we have to put into going on vacation is just silly. It is a vacation! The point is to get away and reduce stress and have fun. but while i am sitting here thinking about how much i have to do and how late i will have to stay up the next two days to accomplish it all and what a big mess it will make when we get back, i think that getting ready for a vacation almost defeats the purpose of going.

Now bear with me, this is a little sticky. The amount of work we do and stressing out that takes place getting ready to leave on vacation and then cleaning up from vacation when we get back, must more then make up for the few days of stress free life we experience while on vacation! Do you get what i mean? But i guess by getting ready to go camping and all of the stress and craziness and sleeplessness that it entails, makes a vacation necessary. So in the end i guess they kind of cancel each other out, like eating carrots before you eat icecream, right?

Nicknames Part 2

okay, so while we are talking about nicknames i want to talk about baby names. Don't get excited, i am not having children any time soon, but just like any normal red-blooded woman i still like to talk about my future children, pregnancy and everything that comes with having babies, including what to name them. It is such a big deal to pick out a name for your child, i imagine even more of a big deal when you only have 9 months to decide on it. But i have been picking out names probably since i was 10, so i have had a lot of practice.

It has always amused me that names go in and out of fashion just like everything else. Not many people name their cute little boy "Fred" or "John" anymore, it is closer to "Clinton", "River" or something like Kellie only probably spelled creatively like Kelyie. Girls are no different and you don't meet many young "Beverly's" or "Frances's", it is now "Ava", "Jade", and "Kylie". Like i said, amusing and definetly follows trends. It is also amazing to me how we are so affected by the time in which we grew up. My age groups favorite names were Matthew and Jennifer. I can not tell you how many Matthews and Jennifers i have met in my age group. So of course, those are off the table when deciding on names for my children.

I have always admired the people that choose their children's names because of the meaning of the name. That was kind of a new thought to me when i first heard it and i liked the idea behind it. So i started searching on the internet. Unfortunately all the trendy, meaningful names that i liked, my husband did not. He is unusually good about thinking of someone he knew with that name that was just terrible, mean, ugly, etc and so we can't use that name cause it will remind him of said person. Now i have a few of these myself, but not every name!

I also have very strong feelings towards using family names. Now a disclaimer is in order here: if you have named your child after their father, mother, aunt, uncle, grandfather, etc. good for you! That was your choice and i am not demeaning that in any way! This is my opinion, nothing more. But i have always had an aversion to naming my children family names. I feel like it would not be allowing my child to be themselves. They would always be known as Jr. so and so and be constantly compared to their namesake. So even though i love my husbands name, we will use it as a middle name because i want my son to have his own personal identity seperate from mom and dad.

All this to say, when i am thinking about baby names, i am also thinking of nicknames. I can not name my child a name that has a nickname with it that i despise. I know that people will call my child that nickname and i do NOT want to be one of those mothers who are constantly saying "that is not his name"! For instance, i love the name Andrew for a boy. But i know some well meaning friend or relative would look at him and call my adorable boy "Andy" or "Drew" and i would fly off the handle! Isn't it kind of silly how much thought i have put into this? So i have decided that one or two syllable names are best. My favorites are Seth, Ian and Natalie. I know natalie has three, but can any one think of a nickname to shorten it with?

Nicknames

Everyone has them, even when we don't want them. Nicknames is what i am talking about. It is funny how nicknames get started! Why do we do it? Sometimes it is a term of endearment, sometimes it is some kid making fun or driving us mad, sometimes it is just a descriptive adjective that, somehow, becomes our actual name.

As a kid, i got away with not being called too many names. I was homeschooled, so that protected me from school bullies cause i was the eldest child and i was the bully! (just kidding!) But i still had plenty of cousins to play with and they thought it would be fun to come up with nicknames.

Now, sometimes kids are mean because they want to be, other times they are just not very creative and have to come up with something that rhymes with your name. Mine was mayonaise.

Mayonaise is not something you want to be called. It is white and greasy and makes you fat and lots of people don't like it. But that was my nickname. Or Man. Just take two letter off my name and that is what you get, Man. Now it used to aggravate me quite a lot, now it does just a little. I may be an adult, but i still don't want to be associated with Mayonaise.

Now that i am an adult, i find that the nicknames don't stop. I have a friend who has been known most of his life by the nickname Kubby. Do you want to know how it started? As a little kid he was so small he could fit into any kubby hole. I didn't know his real name until i had known him for several years!

My best friends husband was well known in our little valley as Fro! You can guess why. He is the only white guy i have met that can grow an actual fro. I knew of him and didn't even know it because i didn't know his real name!

Now "Fro" has taken to calling me "the Machine". Now this is actually kind of funny, and i don't mind the nickname so i am going to tell you the story.

I am a clean and organize person, most of the time. My best friend is not as organized and has a nack for coming to my house just after i have cleaned. So she thinks i am super woman and always have a clean house. Which is not true!

When my best friend moved, i jumped in to help. I know how much moving bites, and i know how much I appreciated people helping me move, and she was 4 months pregnant at the time. So she needed help. Now, a little side note is in order: when i say i am going to help someone, i am there 100% and i am not going to stop until the job is done, even if I am tired. Because i did not come to rest, i came to help.

Well apparently, i worked so long and so hard and so good helping my friend move that it impressed and shocked her whole family ( and i am sure someone mentioned how my house is always clean, blah, blah, blah,) and Voila'! My nickname is now "the Machine!" It is kind of funny because my best friends husband always acts relieved when i come to help and says "oh good! We have "the machine" here. This won't be a problem!"

So goodbye from "the machine", i have some cleaning to do!

Michael Phelps

I love the olympics! I was so excited when they came on and have been watching as much of them as i have been able to squeeze in! Needless to say my bedtime has suffered greatly! Why do they always have my fav events on late?

So my favorite events are gymnastics of both sexes, diving, and beach volleyball is pretty good too. And the swimming is interesting.

But has anyone else noticed HOW MUCH swimming there is? It was on like ALL THE TIME! So I got kind of bored with swimming. It was interesting to watch Michael Phelps swim all of those races and win them all, and almost all in record time! HOLY COW!

But now I am like, "I AM SO TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT MICHAEL PHELPS!" Yes it is amazing what he accomplished and yes, God built his body perfectly for swimming, but do we have to hear about it 9 times in every broadcast?

I can't help feeling sorry for all of the other olympians! I bet they are doing cool stuff too, but we aren't hearing about it because they happened to be an olympian in the year that Michael Phelps broke the record of Most Medals Ever.

Like, I bet that if Michael Phelps wasn't in the Olympics this year that Darra Torres would be a HUGE STORY! I mean, she is 41 years old, has a 18 month old and is in better shape then me! And she won some medals! I mean like holy cow!

One last thing i thought was amazing! I don't like watching the marathons, but did anyone know that the marathon runners who win run 26 miles running a mile a little over every 5 minutes? A 5 minute mile is fast, but to keep up that pace for 26 MILES!?! They run for a minimum of 2 hours and 30 minutes WITHOUT STOPPING! WOW! Betcha can't do that?!?

Good Friends

Today i want to talk about friends. I have a couple of great friends! And hears the thing, we were friends in highschool! this excites me because i know that most people loose touch with their friends from highschool. Well it has been four years and we are still going pretty strong. Yes, we don't see each other as much as we would like to, but we do manage to get together at least once every couple of months and usually for each others birthdays. It is amazing how much a friend can lift your spirits and just make life better. Just being able to sit down and talk about your life and what is going on is just nice! So i met with my two best friends today and we had lunch. I was so ridiculously excited that they were coming to me instead of me having to drive into town! i know that may seem silly, even though it might not be quite so silly in view of gas prices these days, but it just made me feel important and special! Good friends have a way of doing that! I know my life without friends would be pretty boring. And when my life did get exciting i would have no one to call and talk about it! I love my friends, and if you don't have some you should get some!

Living with God Part 2

God is a huge part of my life now. I can honestly say that i notice if i miss my morning bible study, my day just does not go well. But even thought God has shown himself to me in so many ways, up until this january i still struggled to have a consistent bible study time. I am sure many of you can relate. It was not until I went on a mission trip to Argentina that it all changed for me. And just a little side note, if you have never been out of the country to go on a mission trip YOU NEED TO! It is a phenomenal experience that can't even be put into words. Now, i know everyone always says "oh, it changed my life". Now that sounds pretty cliche' and that is exactly what i thought going into the mission trip. I was prepared to work hard and make a difference and if it gave me a new perspective, then cool. But "changing my life" just sounded way to cliche'. So let me just tell you a little bit about the mission itself. It was three weeks long and there were about 4-500 people from all over the world there! We had no hot water, though we did have plumbing and electricity. We were there to finish a massive auditorium, three stories high with dorm-like rooms surrounding three sides of it. We also were there to plant 10 churches and do various outreach programs. We had several vacation bible schools out in the community, visited two prisons and one shelter, put on two womens conferences and one mens conference. Lets just say we got up between 4-6am and didn't go to bed until about 12pm, if we were lucky! It was exhausting but so thrilling to see so many lives touched, and against all odds we completed the building. I think one of the most neat experiences was worshiping with some of the church plants. They could not really converse with us, because most of us Americans could not speak their version of spanish, but we could worship together. And it just gave me goose bumps to be half a world away, meeting people who believed in God, the same God that i did, and being able to worship together, even though it was in different languages! It really made me thankful for all i had back home. These people were so happy and they had nothing in comparison to what i had back home. But anyway, to make a long story short, it was amazing and God did and awesome and mysterious work in me while i was there. When i got home i was able to give all my worries to God and honestly NOT WORRY or stress about ANYTHING! i was also able to make worshipping him daily a priority, something i had struggled with all my life. So even though i may not have been as close to God before all of this as i am now, i still can not see how anyone can live without knowing God.

Living with God

I have often wondered how people make it through daily life without God. Now, i must admit, i haven't always been chummy-chummy with him. I mean i was probably the typical christian: went to church on Sunday's and Wednesday's, read my bible ocasionally, prayed on a daily basis and new God answered prayer. But he wasn't DAILY a part of my life. And honestly i think it was because my life was pretty easy! i had great parents who loved me and a brother and sister who sometimes loved me (!). I didn't have to go through any major traumas. In short, i had no reason to need God to be a part of my life and to make my faith and my religion my own, instead of just something i did cause i was taught to. We humans are kind of silly like that. You know, we pray that our lives will be easy and nothing bad will happen to us, but in the end, when something bad does happen, we grow so much closer to God and are such better people afterwards, we should be PRAYING for bad stuff to happen! okay, maybe not quite. But for me personally, i didn't grow in my faith until i got married and was on my own. I think i had an unusual first couple months of marriage, even the first couple days. Me and my husband had a short honeymoon and then packed up and drove 1000 miles to move me to Arizona, which was were my husband was finishing school and where we would be living for at least the first 6 months of marriage. Now the actual trip was kind of exciting, but when i first realized that i would have to plan and save for this move ALL BY MYSELF i got the heebie jeebies. The thought of having to figure out what roads we would take, where we would stay, how much gas and food we would need, and how much money we would need for all of that, well, it was a little overwhelming. But nothing compared to driving into Arizona. Both me and my husband come from a small town, a very small town where everyone knows your name and says hi. In fact i can't count the times that we were late to a party or some other function because we ran into someone we knew and got to talking. When we moved to Arizona, we moved into a HUGE city. My new husband gave me a sixty minute lecture on how different it would be and what i could and could not do for my own safety. I could not leave the windows down when stopped at a light, especially if someone was in the crosswalk, i could not smile, wave or even make eye contact with anyone i didn't know, i could not go grocery shopping or driving by myself except to go to work, i couldn't do laundry or pick up the mail from the office, etc. It was soooo shocking! But i made it and six months later we moved back home. At that time i was still relying mostly on my new husband, and not enough on God. Things were going pretty good! Then two years later i got laid off. God was forcing me to turn to him. And now that i look back on it, as much as i hate having financial difficulty, it has made me such a better person and forced me to have God in my life every day. I don't know what I would have done if i had not had God to turn to! But this post is getting long so i will continue the sage tomorrow!

Sleep deprived!

okay, so i got the picture thing figured out! it wasn't hard like i thought it would be and now i have pictures! i love pictures! pictures just tell a story that words can't. so every day now i am thinking of cool things to write about on my blog and then when i get to the computer i forget them all! do you ever feel like that? like there is just too much going on? I always feel like i am behind on my sleep, and i probably am. I thought it would get better after college, and it did a little. but i never wake up and feel like i don't need any more sleep! does any one actually wake up in the morning and NOT feel like they could just go back to sleep? i am sure some people do, but i don't think it has ever happened to me! however, i am a night owl. it does not matter how tired i am, if i am up past 9 i will wake up and get a second burst of energy! and it gets even worse if i stay up past 11:30! and to make matters worse, my husband is also a night owl! so we rarely go to bed at a decent hour, but he still gets up at 7:30 for work every morning! i don't know how he does it. I at least don't have to get up until 8 or 9 and sometimes i don't have massages in the morning at all so then i get to sleep in! aahhh! blessed sleeping in! i know it is probably not good for me, but i love it!

Holy cow, pictures?

okay, so today i am going to attempt to put pictures on my blog. I am sure a lot of you are saying, oh brother, technically challenged. Well i know it is not that hard, i have just never done it. And i don't like the unknown. Does any one else hate going into things, not knowing the details? I think i have always been like this. Even when i was little i remember driving my mom crazy always wanting to know what we had planned for the next day. On the other hand, my husband is NOT like this. He likes to fly by the seat of his pants and seems to do it well. Meanwhile i am freaking out because i have plans, or i don't know what he has planned. But he doesn't either, cause he doesn't plan! I think sometimes he gets so frustrated with me and just has to tell me to stop worrying, that he has it all figured out. I am getting better at letting him just fly along with no plans and take me along for the ride. I guess God knows what he is doing when he puts two people together! With Michael in my life i may have some hope of not turning out old and boring and organized all the time, with all my yarn lined up in a row and 12 cats to keep me company! ( why do we always use cats as a picture of someone who is boring, old and alone and has nothing going on? That is not very fair to cat owners and lovers!) Anyway, i have digressed so far now that i don't remember what i was talking about. If you are going to be reading my blogs on a regular basis, get used to it. Sometimes i think the spaghetti in my brain must have electrical shorts in it (you know, girls have spaghetti and boys have waffles? I'll talk about that later). Anyway, enough digressing, now that you are all so confused I sign off, i have a massage to do.

How do people do it?

okay, I am in awe of all of you people who blog every day about something incredibly interesting or witty or some how you make it really good! Is my life just that boring? This week is a little crazy for me. I did chair massage at our local fair and rodeo last night and found their is a cowgirl hiding inside me. As I was putting on my jeans and my boots and lamenting that i don't have a blingy cowgirl belt (which i am not sure why it matters! This is the only week in the whole year that i would ever wear it but for some reason it is a BIG DEAL!), I was quite comfortable and, honestly, proud of how I looked. I felt like i fit in. Hometown girl just down at the fair, hanging, to cool for words! i know this is really silly but every year at the fair i feel like it is a beauty contest. You see all your old classmates and it is like they size you up. And there are always those girls that wear a mini skirt and heels and you are just thinking, "oh honey, not at a fair! Way overdressed!" But for some reason finding a happy medium is hard! I think i have it down now though. Boots, jeans (not shorts), a tank top or a button up shirt. I don't know why this matters so much and now I feel silly for making a big deal about it, but it is. You know what I mean?

I'm not sure what I am doing

Okay, so I have been hearing about this blogging thing for awhile. I must admit that I didn't really know what it was, for a really long time. You know, I am young, I should have all the techno stuff down. Well I didn't. I had no clue. But since then I have been reading some of my friends blogs and I really like it. In fact I am bummed when they don't have a new post or when I don't have time one day to visit their blog. This is further compounded because I only have internet at work (yes I don't have it at home, I know, shocking right?), and at work, the computer moves about a inch every 5 minutes. In other words it takes me about a half hour to answer 10 emails! So I am not sure how faithful I will be at this blogging thing, but I enjoy everyone else's so much that i thought i would give it a try. And maybe by blogging I won't write everyone such stinking long emails that I am sure they hate to read. This way you can read my blog or you can not. Everyone's happy!