Monday Again?

Good evening, everybody. Happy Monday. Blah.

Today was relatively okay. The early morning was rough. I woke up to my cat knocking all the stuff off of my bookcase again. There are earrings all over the floor in my room. It was 6:30. I was mad. I scooped him up, carried him downstairs, and locked him in the kitchen before heading back to bed. Well, I decided to...erm...powder my nose first. And then I go to wash my hands, flip the faucet, and nothing happens. Absolutely nothing. No water. My brain shut off. I woke my mom up to tell her about the dilemma, then put my butt back in bed to make the world go away. I went back to sleep, and was launched immediately into a nightmare that had something vaguely to do with being physically ill for psychological reasons, and not being able to figure out why.

And then I woke up. And heard Christmas carols drifting into my bedroom from the kitchen downstairs. When your day officially starts with an instrumental Silver Bells, how can you not have a great day? So I go downstairs and find Mom washing dishes by boiling water on the stove and listening to really loud Christmas music. And I eat breakfast (a bowl of rice krispies), and help with the dishes, and I'm happy.

Then Mom dropped me off at Grandma's to do some laundry (as, obviously, there was no washing clothes at home), and heads off to the church for meetings and stuff.

I was there through lunch time, and therefore made do with a box of raisons, an oatmeal creme pie, and a pack of those pringles stix things.

There was nobody there, so the house was utterly silent, and there was no wireless internet to distract, so I plopped down in a recliner with my laptop and turned out something close to three thousand words.

Then Mom came and got me, and let me drive part of the way home, and everything was okay.

This evening was all right. Me and Anne have kind of been butting heads, but everything's still okay. Because God is good, and He knows just how to get me through anything.

Take yesterday for example. I have no clue how any of us survived yesterday, except that God had an extra reserve of strength and grace lying around that He dumped out on us VERY generously. Because boy oh boy did The Enemy want to mess with us yesterday. Okay, so our worship leader and his family was out of town. Back up worship leader's baby daughter was sick. So my dad is leading worship. My dad has a cold. I'm unsure of how everything happened, but somehow it was decided for Stephen's mom to help out with worship. She plays the guitar, and has a gorgeous voice.
So we get to church, and start practice. Joy's brother is, of course, running late. And then Mom comes walking into the sanctuary, looking frantic. She motions for me to come down off the stage. She told me that Andrew was sick, like horrible stomach cramps, running fever sick. She was going to take him home. She told me to tell my dad, and to let him know that he has Anne and Riley.
So I get back up on the stage and finish the song. It ends, and I was about to get around to talking to Dad, when someone walked up to the stage and told us that she had talked to my mom in the parking lot, and that she was taking Andrew to the hospital.
Well, my dad sort of freaked out, and I was dead certain that we were dealing with spiritual warfare of some sort. Ms. Diane, Stephen's mom, suggests that we stop and pray right then and there. So we did, then dad went out to call mom. He wasn't off the stage a minute when Stephen's dad, Mike, tells Ms. Diane that if my dad leaves (like to go be with mom and Andy), it would be up to her to lead worship. So now she's freaking out too, but we start practicing again. She did awesome, but I could tell that she was elated when my dad walked back onto the stage. He had no intention of leaving. So we finish practice, or almost finish, and then Pastor Jon comes up, tapping his watch. We were running late. So we head to the Pastor's office for our usual prayer time. We got through that, and through worship, okay. Then me and Joy split up to help with different Sunday school classes (I wound up assisting Ms. Diane, who was filling in for the usual 1st-and-2nd grade teacher that day.)
It felt like maybe five minutes before Mr. Mike poked his head in the door and told us that we needed to head back to the sanctuary for the closing song, the altar call.
And if things hadn't been crazy enough already, they definitely were then. It was wild. Hearts were changed, and the Holy Spirit was moving. We look over, and Haley is crying. After the song ends, we grabbed her, spirited her away to a back closet, and pray. She's just going through some junk right now, and that was exactly what she needed.
Then dad and Riley left to do some church work somewhere else, and Anne left with a friend to go to a birthday party. The six of us were split in four different directions. Ugh, I hate it when that happens. I stayed at church all afternoon.
After church, Joy and I babysat a handful of kids while their parents were doing the new member's class. Compared to the morning, that was uneventful.
And then it's over. And I'm absolutely drained. Whether it was the babysitting, or the spiritual warfare, or the fact that I was doing all of that on just a couple hours of sleep, I was utterly beat. We got home, and I collapsed on the couch.
I drove a good bit of the way home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I did the same thing today. I adore driving, and I can't wait 'til I'm completely mobile, like on my own. Just nine months!! :)
Well, folks, sorry for the super-long post. Have a great day! Talk to ya soon!

Howdy, folks. Again, I'm am way sorry for not getting to my blog in so incredibly long. Have you ever attempted NaNoWriMo? And I mean attempted. I am, as we speak, procrastinating horribly, and am two-and-a-half days behind. Also, please forgive me if this post is needlessly wordy (i.e. too many adjectives, not enough contractions), as it has become almost-second-nature to squeeze as many words as possible out of everything I have to say. But it's working. My current word count is 18,364 words. I'm consoling myself for the fact that I'm behind by telling myself that I'm a couple hundred ahead of Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo. Cold comfort, but it's all I've got.
I still have a lot to do. So this won't be a long post. Once I get caught up, or rather, slightly closer to caught up than I am now, I will be cleaning my room and bathroom in preparation for Joy coming tomorrow. She'll be spending the day here tomorrow, so we can get everything done that we need to get done. We have to talk about the youth group Christmas party secret santa, which we will be taking control of. We are comparing notes on next year's Bible Bee, which we are getting an early start on. We will be practising for our Christmas dance. What? Did I hear someone ask 'What Christmas dance?'. Well, I'm very glad you did, because now I get to tell you! :) My bff in the whole world Joy and I are doing a dance together at the church Christmas Eve service. See, I've been doing worship dance for as long as I can remember, or possibly longer, but when we started coming to AHBC, I kind of just stopped. We didn't have a dance group, and I just haven't been comfortable with the idea of doing a solo dance. Well, I finally decided that I was, and decided to approach the pastor about doing one around Christmas time. I made this decision right around the time another lady in the church started talking about starting a dance group. So me and Joy did a lot of talking about dance. She hasn't done any dancing in a long time, and was unsure about joining the group. Together (I actually don't remember whose idea it was to start with), we decided to give it a shot together before the group actually started. So now we're working on a dance to 'Breath of Heaven' for Christmas Eve! I'm so excited!!!!!
Okay, so, where was I? Oh, yeah, tomorrow. Umm, other than that, we have to work on ideas for Sunday afternoon. We've been asked to watch/entertain kids during the 'Discovering Abundant Hope' class for new members. So we need to work out what we're actually going to do.
Ugh. I don't think I'm ever going to get this song out of my head. I have a new favorite in the whole entire world. So I Thought by Flyleaf. I'm not usually into that kind of music. Still not, actually. It's a funny story. See, my NaNoWriMo project is kind of a serious...somber...sad...something-er-other kind of thing. Not happy, really. But the only music on my iPod was happy-hyper stuff. It wasn't working for me. So I asked Andrew, who is into that kind of music, "What do you have that's loud, obnoxious, and dark." and gave him free reign of my iPod. I now have Flyleaf, Fireflight, and Skillet. Ugh. But some of the Flyleaf stuff isn't so bad, and maybe after this month is over, I'll be able to sit at a Skillet concert without being in obvious pain. Maybe. Which would be good, since I'm pretty much the only one in youth group who isn't an avid Skillet fan.
Okey-dokey, everybody. I need to be off. I have to update my other blog, I have several thousand more words to write for my novel, and then there's all those stupid chores. Talk to you soon!

Wow. It's been a while, huh? I apologize for my extended silence. Life's been a little hectic. NaNoWriMo's here. That's pretty much all I get done these days. But I'll fill you in on what's happened since my last post.

Friday was EIGHTIES NIGHT!!! We had a ton of fun. The costumes were awesome, I'll post a pic. We played eighties trivia and pictionary, ate food, and hung out. It was a great time. Other than the fact that Josh had a chip on his shoulder. I don't know what's up with him. He's just kind of had an attitude here lately.

Halloween itself was interesting. Fun. Awesome. Of course, Halloween around here is usually a little anticlimactic. There's nowhere to trick-or-treat. Not that I'd be doing much of that. 15+trick-or-treating=bad idea. And slightly creepy. But I'd love to take the kids around. They've kind of gotten jipped. I lived in the city for the first part of my life and did my fair share of it, but now we're out in the country, and none of the kids have gotten their turn. But this year was the best one in a while. Both Andrew and Riley had birthday parties to go to early in the day. Then Anne's best friend came over, and we all went to the Harvest Party at a nearby church. There we met up with Joy and her family, along with a whole bunch of other folks from our church, and from my old church. It was kind of odd. Over two-thousand people there, and it seemed like I knew every other one in some way or another.
Afterward, Joy came home with us and stayed the night, and Anne's little friend stayed over too. We watched Monster House together, and consumed ridiculous amounts of candy. And we had the most EPIC candy fight. We were sitting on the couch, the four of us. The kids had spread all their candy-winnings from the evening out on the couch, so we were sitting on candy. And we just randomly started throwing it at each other. It was awesome.
The next day was insane. First we had church, duh. Then all of us, including Joy, went to my Nana's house for my little cousin's birthday. That was an awesome time. Afterward, Mom dropped me and Joy off at the home of a friend from church, where we got started on our NANOWRIMO PROJECTS!!!! Lol, it's so crazy. I can't believe it's November already. Just to let you know, I'm probably not going to be blogging much this month.
Since the weekend, I haven't done much besides write. Until today, I was about a day and a half ahead. Then I decided to take today off. So tomorrow I have to get back ahead.
OH MY GOSH I TOTALLY FORGOT!!! I GOT MY LEARNER'S PERMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How crazy is that? I myself can't believe it. I swear, the folks at the DMV must have been trained not to smile. They're so darn grumpy. There I am, this little teenager getting her learner's permit, excited and nervous as can be. And when I get nervous, it's my instinctive reaction to smile. So there I am smiling at everybody like an idiot, bouncing up and down just a little bit. And not one of them smiles at me back. I mean, forgive me, but I thought that it was common decency to return someone's smile. Whatever. At least I got it.
I feel kinda bad though. So last night was youth group, right? Well, I got my permit yesterday. And it was definitely a God-thing. I couldn't have done it alone. So I felt obliged to make a praise report about it in youth group. Well, wouldn't you know it, before I could open my mouth, Stephen says, "I passed driver's ed with a 95!"
Well, he still doesn't have his permit. I probably should've given it up, but I went ahead and asked Joy what she thought. Would it be ick to still give my praise?
She said it wouldn't, so I went ahead and made my report. I felt really bad, though. Almost like I was one-up-ing him. And guys hate that. Oh well. Today I got my H1N1 vaccine. Ugh. For one thing, I hate needles. Absolutely detest them. And it hit me. I'm in the middle of my greatest nightmare. See, I am absolutely and completely petrified of epidemic/pandemic illness. It is my biggest fear. And here we are dealing with a GLOBAL PANDEMIC!! I'm still not sure that I can deal with that. I'm working on it. Ugh.
Tomorrow I'm baking all day. We need cookies and brownies for Saturday. Saturday is the Fall Fest at church, which we're all really really really really excited about. I get to paint faces with Joy again. Some of the other youth kids are gonna help to. It's gonna be fantastic.
Well, that's about it. I'll probably be back on soon. Good night!