Finishing.

I never finished my high school scrapbook. (9th-11th grade)

I never assembled all the memorable bits and pieces I saved from my semester abroad.

I've been collecting t-shirts since I was in grade school, and have still never attempted to cut them into patches and assemble a t-shirt quilt, even though I've been wanting to do it since my freshman year of college.

I have furniture that needs stripping and a bedroom wall that needs painting and pictures to hang.

I also have letters to write; of the thank you variety, as well as the catch up variety. And I better get to it since Ben comes home from Afghanistan in October.

There are even songs I used to be able to play on the piano that I'm afraid I've forgotten how to play.

But between cleaning the house and the car and cooking and working and spending time with friends, I doubt I'll ever HAVE the time.

I'm going to have to make the time. I think it'd feel pretty good to complete some abandoned projects. Maybe once I get a few completed projects under my belt, I'll be able to tackle the most difficult project of all-- an abandoned story.

We'll see :)

This Week I...

• cut up my Discover card. Really, really.
  
• finished reading Huck Finn.
• decided to finish reading the Twilight series.
• ate fresh, ripe blackberries from a bush in my parents-in-law's yard.
• began convincing a bff couple of ours to name their future son after a swashbuckling hero.
• sat on my bed and talked to my (female) bestie.
• watched fireworks in a national park.
• stayed on a grocery budget for the first time in my life
  
• drank fresh cantaloupe/apple/grape/spinach juice, concocted by my husband.
  

Failed to Mention...

Oh, and during that same Jell-o promo at the zoo, I also met a little 3 year old boy named Anakin. No lie. I always knew there were a few running around somewhere, but I'd yet to meet one. His dad called him over to play some game we had laid out, and when they finished and came to pick up their jell-o samples, I confirmed it.

"Did you say his name was Anakin?"

The dad (who you could never tell was a fanboy just by looking at him) confirmed it with a huge nerdy grin. I had to grin back.

This Won't Be A Habit.

But today, I spent the majority of my day at the STL Zoo doing a promo for Jell-o. I thought it might be fun for you to see what I put my digestive system through today.

Food Journal 6/28/10

- honey wheat bagel with whipped strawberry cream cheese
- cup of chocolate mousse pudding
- cup of dulce de leche pudding
- cup of blue raspberry jello
- package of peanut butter crackers
- half a cup of chocolate pudding
- several bottles of water
- cup of strawberry jello
- 2 hand breaded chicken fingers
- 2 loaded potato skins
- 1 small square of cheese pizza
- roasted red pepper hummus & wheat thins
- small bowl of banana pudding (w/ real bananas and nilla wafers)
- 4 mini guinness chocolate cupcakes

I'm sorry, body. We'll do better tomorrow. Or maybe Wednesday.

Yum & Yay

It's been a pretty magnificent couple of days.

Wednesday, we (read: me, Todd & Erin) went over to the Fabulous Fox Theatre to try and win tickets to Wicked. They were running a lottery and if your name got pulled, you got to buy 2 tickets for $25 each on the second row of the theatre (partial view, but still excellent seats).

Todd's name got pulled! We got buttons, and Todd went to the box office to buy the tickets. But we still needed to buy one more seat, so I go to the box office window two down from him and just as we're about to drop another $45 for a seat in the first balcony, a lady comes by and says that since I didn't win the lottery, I can buy a ticket anywhere in the house for $40 bucks. So the box office lady quickly does another scan and finds me a ticket in the orchestra section! Forty bucks! I paid her and walked outta there grinning like a fool.

We get in the car and realize our seats are actually really close together! Row B, seats 10, 12, & 14. I didn't quite understand where row B was (that chart thing is kind of confusing). An hour and a half later, after a marvelous homemade spaghetti extravaganza, we get back to the theatre for the show and realize that for some reason, all the seats in our row are numbered evenly. So 10, 12, & 14 are all in a row.

In short, I got to experience one of my favorite musicals for the second time (and it was better the second time!), sandwiched between my husband and lil sis. AND I got to see both of them experience it for the first time (they both thought it was magnificent), all from the second row of the orchestra section. It was fantastic. I laughed out loud at Galinda's antics and shed a tear during "For Good" thinking of my beloved roommates. It was such an excellent night.

Thursday night, we attended our Financial Peace class and Todd's mom had us over for dinner afterwards. Free food and family is a great combination.

Friday afternoon, we sold one of our vehicles. For more on that, see the post below this one. It's a very good thing. And on Friday night? We celebrated. Our friend Joel turned 30 and Todd and I went out with him and his wife and our friends Josh and Kim to celebrate. There were mojitos and there were tapas. Lots of tapas. Braised short ribs with cherry reduction on green apple smashed potatoes, lobster/crawfish risotto, tilapia spring rolls, short ribs mini burgers with potato cakes and smoked ketchup, herbed gnocchi with asparagus sauce, flash-fried baby artichoke hearts with sweet chili sauce, pot stickers with peanut sauce and petite beef tenderloin with wilted spinach and blue cheese butter. Holy palate extravaganza, Batman. It was unbelievably delicious.

After dinner we indulged in some heavenly homemade ice cream desserts at the Fountain on Locust, and capped the evening at iTap, Soulard's newest, hippest brewpub, with 50 beers on tap and 450 in bottles. I had Bells Oberon Summer Ale, it was lovely.

There's not a whole lot of things better than good food and good beer at a cool place with good people. It's been a wonderful week/end. :)

Venting... An Epilogue

Sometimes I forget that God is so much bigger than $75.

Stupid? Absolutely. But I can be such a halfwit when it comes to chilling out and trusting Him. Every now and then, I have to be smacked around a little bit. And this time, well He used 30 teenagers from Fort Worth to get the point across.

Last week, August Gate participated in a youth missions camp called PowerPlant. Kids from all over the country go to different cities and help local church plants in the area by doing service projects or whatever the church needs done. The group that helped us was from Cana Baptist Church in Burleson, TX. Their youth group helped us clean, organize and paint the children's area inside the church we rent from and they did some landscaping around the neighborhood as well. They were such great kids and really did a great job with everything.

At night, after the service projects and dinner, they all met back up at a local university campus for their evening worship and teaching time. Todd was the evening speaker for the week (which was pretty surreal to observe, after being a youth camper myself for SO many years), and on Monday night, speaking about the way the Gospel should change our hearts as well as our actions, he brought up the story about our neighbors.

At that point, I was perfectly aware of the way I needed to internally handle that situation-- but I wasn't there yet. I was still pissed. We didn't have the money for the ticket and our neighbors were passive-aggressively antagonizing us. I wanted time to sulk a little.

To keep the ticket from doubling, we'd gone to set a court date, trusting that the money would get figured out before the middle of July.

On Friday morning, while Todd was laying out the plan for their final day of work, the kids interrupted him and presented him with a weathered manila envelope with "PTO" printed in sharpie on the front.

Parking Ticket Offering. Contents: $126.00 of their own money.

Needless to say, I was immediately humbled and convicted about my ridiculous behavior.

As of today, the ticket is paid in full and car that got the ticket (the Element) is sold-- to a young guy and his pregnant wife from Fayetteville, Arkansas. We put it up on craigslist and within 3 days, we got a call. We were able to pay off the car loan and still made some money from the sale (which helps out with the last couple of bills this month). We'll be saving over $350/month being a one-car family, and since we both live and work so close-by its really not a big hassle. (We've been practicing for the past three weeks, it's SO nice not having to worry about parking at work :) Also, we just happen to be in the week of Financial Peace University where we do the debt snowball and talk about having "gazelle-like intensity" when it comes to getting out of debt. We were ready to sell the car. Wanted and needed to. Dave Ramsey affirmed our decision. And the Lord provided a buyer quickly. And guess what? The buyer paid cash. Two years worth of income tax returns. Done and Done.

God is good. Equally as good as He was the day we got the ticket. And as good as He will be on the day we're debt free.

This Here Is Real: *Vol. 2

*This might become a series. Or it might not.

Ten years ago this month, my first love asked me to be his girlfriend. It was a really big deal. It was the first tangible step in my "ridiculous obsession with love".

I didn't date until I was 15 and up until that point, I vented a lot of romantic frustration by writing. I made up beautiful, sappy courtships for fictional people. Or I re-imagined characters I'd seen on tv or in movies. I'd pull them out of the boring action stories their creator had placed them in and then tend to their sad, grossly unattended personal lives. I knew it was a parasitic approach to creation, but I wasn't old enough or creative enough to envision and birth an entire world and backstory for it by myself. So I spent years as a borrower—and I had a blast with it.

Sometimes I'd take characters who were already in a relationship and expand it, but other times, all I needed was an inkling that two characters were into each other and that their romantic tension was being neglected—then I'd go crazy.

I wrote stories about Power Rangers and Barbies. I wrote stories for cartoon characters, fictional action heroes, and the stars of my after-school tv shows. They all turned into musicals, sometimes with ice skating. Other times I pulled my favorite characters from one cast and stuck them into another cast. (If I was still into this, it would be like taking the characters from LOST and casting them in Les Mis, but still letting them have their behind the scenes relational drama.) True story. That was my life for years.

You can only imagine my shock, when as a 14 year-old, I discovered that I wasn't alone in this hobby.

Have you ever visited fanfiction.net?

Well… you may not want to. It's kind of ridiculous. And kind of amazing. But it was created for and by people with my same mindset; fans who thought they could do it better. Or fans who were just really bored and liked to write. There are categories on this site for everything; anime, movies, books, songs, tv shows, etc. All you have to do is be a fan and think you know exactly what is missing from some character's life.

For me, that character was the daughter of two heroes that meant a lot to me back in 1998. If you care to fly your freak flag and seek out the story beyond the six Star Wars films, you will find books. LOTS of books. And in them you will find new villains and new planets and new reasons to go to war. You will also find new heroes and weapons and academies on remote jungle moons where aspiring Jedi knights go to be trained. Among them, you will find the daughter of Han Solo and Princess Leia (they actually got married, in case you were wondering). Her name is Jaina. She is stubborn and sassy and extremely brave—exactly how you would expect the daughter of the aforementioned two to be.

In the books, Jaina was usually busy getting kidnapped or being hunted or slaying things and fighting in battles, and that was all great—but I couldn't figure out why she didn't have a boyfriend. So I wrote a story and gave her one. An awesome one who was charming and handsome and rough around the edges. He also happened to be a bad-ass starpilot, a guitar player AND he could dance. Dreamboat.

I worked on that story from the fall of 1998 until the fall of 2002. Even after my raging love for Star Wars died down, I was in love with my characters and I couldn't stop editing their lives. I still have the story. It's over 57,000 words on 190 pages in a word document. It's hilarious and dramatic and schmaltzy. But it's finished-- one of the few complete pieces I have. I don't think I'll ever give it to anyone (else) to read, but I'll also never throw it away. It had its place, served its purpose and it is now permanently archived.

So, there you have it. I wrote fanfic. Now that that's off my chest… onward and upward. :)

P.S. if you have read my fanfic and I still know you, you're one of a very select few (Lauren!). And you better not tell anybody how to find it! :)