Christmas break

So, I have had time off of work since the 23rd of December. I spent 5 days at home in KC with family and friends. Had fun catching up with old friends, playing Hold 'em with the family on Christmas day, cruising through the Chicago street lights, and doing a little bit of shopping. I came back home to the ville on Tuesday evening with every intention of cleaning my house, puttin away Christmas stuff and being overly productive. So here it is Friday and I did absolutely NOTHING on Wednesday or Thursday. In fact, both days I slept past 11am! It has been years since i have done that, so that was great!!!! However, my vacation is almost over (i go back to work on Tues)and i had not really accomplished anything besides relaxing and reminiscing!(which is not all bad). So today I determined to get up early and get started on things. well, if you consider 11am early, lunch with some girls from work, and paying property taxes "getting started on things" then i did great!!! Actually I did get some cleaning done and some Christmas presents put away. I have a feeling this is what it is like to be a housewife;dishwasher going, washer and dryer going, piles of laundry on the floor, cleaning, and baking cookies. . .PLUS having some screaming kids running underfoot.Scarily, that does not sound too horrible. Anyways, just a little update on the past week or so. Hopefully i've convinced some other friends to join the blogging world so that I can have more interactions...but thanks to my faithful readers.

The hypochondria that is me and the insight it provides

As many of you know, or may not know, sometimes i am a bit of a hypochondriac which by Webster's definition means, "extreme depression of mind or spirits often centered on imaginary physical ailments". While I am not depressed about it, I constantly believe I have some new ailment. One day I have a tumor, the next day I have some heart problem. Unfortunately, my recent descent into CSI addiction has not helped to quell this condition. The other night I was talking with Dan and discussing some chronic back pain that I have seemed to develop after a car wreck we where in. I was wanting him to pop my back and make it feel better but then my hypochondriacness...err...set in. What if he breaks it (keep in mind he has popped it many times before), maybe it's just one crack away from snapping and then I will be paralyzed, then of course this set off a whole new set of worries. So as were discussing this and he was trying to bring me back to sanity, I got to thinking about the human body and how perfectly fit together everything is. Everything is connected in such a perfect way to make us who we are, to allow us to operate the way that we do. It is beyond my mental capability to understand how people can think we just came into being. I was reading an article about intelligent design and how it was banned in some Penn. schools and it just got me bewildered all over again. I mean really, can intelligent people really believe that we just BANGED into being, with all the complex functions that our body is made up of? It blows my mind away.
So, Dan informed me that our bodies have lots of back up systems to help when something else fails. This is somewhat comforting but I must think that by now I have worked through most of my back up systems, which means I am bound to catch something sometime right?

Small Town Charm

Over the past 6 years that I have lived in Kirksville, I have come to accept that I have grown to love this place. Growing up in a big city, attending a large high school, and having all the luxuries of big city life always apealed to me until I knew something different.
For those of you who have spent a significant amount of time in the 'ville, you know what I'm talking about. When I first came to college, I was mortified at the thought of spending 4 years here and thought about transferring many times during that first year and a half. I could not get beyond my college bubble or get past my upper middle class upbringing to really value what the town had to offer. The small town life has it's charm and beauty. Now that I am working here and have established friendships and connections throughout the community, I love it.
I love being able to go out to a store and run into someone I know from the community. I love that everyone here is on a slower pace than the rest of the world. I love that I don't feel like i have to "keep up with the Jones's" and worry about what's in style. I feel like it's much easier to live a life of simplicity. Whenever I go to St. Louis or Kansas City for a visit, I am amazed at the pace of life and amazed at how quickly I have forgotten what it's like to live like that.
I do miss shopping malls, good restaurants, and shorter drives to places but I don't miss the hustle and bustle of the big cities, the demand to keep up with society, or the 45 minute commute to work. I love the town square, the crazy language people use here, friends who live on acreage, being able to see the big and little dippers as well as the milky way, visiting mennonite and amish farms, farmer's market, El Vaquero, everyone knowing everyone's business and taking care of one another.
I don't say that I will never live in a big city again but I can say I have come to appreciate and even love small town life. I wouldn't mind settling down on some acreage with a few lab dogs that roam the countryside and the nearest neighbor being a mile away. That just doesn't sound too bad.

The good ole days

In the more recent weeks,I have had some interesting revelations. 1. I am getting old. 2. i never want to be a single mother. 3. The carefree days of my youth are long gone. Now, the first and third revelations kind of go together so i'll start with those. This past summer i bought a house. A " cute 2 bedroom bungalow for an Unbelievable price" according to my realtor. I now have a mortgage and currently own about $700 of my house. I have car payments, utility payments, plumbing problems to resolve, sidewalks to shovel, grass to mow, and jury duty to attend now that i'm a homeowner. The financial means to provide for all these expenses and then some come solely from the grace of God providing me a job to meet these expenses. I work 8 hours a day, come home and cook dinner and clean. I try to work out, read a book, watch CSI (must be honest, CSI takes priority), hang out with friends, catch up with old friends, do laundry, and any other activities in my schedule before 10:00 when I'm ready for bed. This leads me to my second revelation, which may seem like it is a random thought mixed in with the other two but is not. I CANNOT imagine doing all the things listed above, as well as providing for the welfare of a child who needs more attention, nurturing, love, time,and teaching then I can give in the 5 hours i have after i return home from work. I have a new respect for single mother. I am way too selfish right now to have children, even i were married. It's an interesting perspective to think of our Father sacrificing so that we may have life and seeing that played out in a parent/child relationship.
So basically, I'm getting old, not ready for children, and have lots of responsibility, What happened to the good ole days when mom and dad paid for everything and the only thing we had to worry about was what kind of cereal we were having that morning before school?

The best days

The little guy you see above is frosty, put there by a mysterious man at about midnight last night. When i frantically woke up about 1am and wondered if he had made it back to town amidst the swirling snow and growing more frustrated when he would not answer my phone calls, I hurridly got dressed and was ready to march over to his house and give him an earful for making me worry. However, when I opened my front door, this little guy greeted me on my porch and my once frustrated face turned into a smile. How can you be frustrated at someone after that? So i did indeed go over to confirm that it was him who left it and not some crazy snowman making madman and also to confirm that he was alive and well. Then we had a fun time around the town at 130am, making other little snow creatures.
As i was going back and forth between pretending to be grouchy and nonchalant with him, I had a thought. Do i give others my best? Do i give my best friend my best? Do i give my boyfriend my best? Do i give my friends, my coworkers, my family, myself, my best? Most importantly, do I give God my best? Sadly, I had to admit no to all of those things. Now, I know that I probably am not always going to be able to give my best all the time, to everyone, but do i even try most of the time? Am I ok with just giving everyone the "mediocre Sam"? God is not ok with that because he created me for so much more. I know all those people, including God, that I listed off will forgive me and still love me, even when I don't give them the best of me, but I desire to love the best at all times, to forgive the best at all times, to serve the best at all times, to honor the best at all times, to fulfill the plan God has for me the best at all times. Society tells us that we deserve the best...I think that God deserves our best.

Just to keep you updated, the girl i was talking about yesterday who made me want to pull my hair out, got in a fight with five boys at lunch. She apparently threw her lunch tray, hit them with a lunch tray, and then jumped on some of them and started punching them. She's now coming in for a crisis assessment and may be hospitalized. Sometimes that's our only way of getting them out of their home situation to get to the root of the problem. I was told that I needed to let people know what exactly it is I do so that some of my posts make more sense. I work for a community mental health agency as a case manager for children with mental health diagnosis. I typically explain it to a new parent as step above a mentor and a step below a counselor. I work with children in foster homes, residential placements, children who have long history of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. I help kids with anger management problems, children who lack social skills, and children who have educational problems. I don't remove kids from their homes, but do make recommendations for that to happen or not happen. I did have to testify in court a few weeks ago about removing a kid, that was a terrifying experience. You definitely see the harder side of life in this field and sometimes you have to remind yourself that there are people out there without major problems who lead a semi-calm life. Anyways, just a stressful week at work, normally it's not this crazy, but state people are coming in to do their yearly monitoring next week!!! Hope everyone is having a good week!!