IHOP Girl: January 2007

Monday, January 29, 2007

Chilly

I can decide if my complete sense of disorganization comes from by desire to graduate, my busy schedule, or a lack of motivation. Perhapes all three to some degree, although I really want to be organized. Mainly, our classes have all these projects that are overlapping, along with the fact that my weekend (when I usually get organized) was kinda shot. Oh well! Lol...I think that tonight when I get home I will sort through all my stuff...

Oh I will share with you a rather hillarious moment brought to you by my slackish self :-). Sunday night around 10pm...yes after I should be asleep...I was up hanging out with some friends watching Back to the Future (such a good movie), when a quote caught my attention. I cannot remember who said it, I'm sure SFL will enlighten me, but I think that Loraine said it. She said "he's my dreamboat". I about choked when it hit me that this is a common reference between my parents...Oh the 80's...I will also admitt that we had way to much fun thinking about how Doc goes 30 years to the future which would be 2015, and what is says about it. My philosophy is that if Doc is correct we might as well stop paying for road and highway maintainence, because we'll be using flying vehicles. Haha, oh what fun.

Alright, I'm off to study a bit, or something.

P.S. You know I thought about doing something very theological...but then decided that I really didn't have the brain power this morning.

P.P.S. So my title makes some sense - it was a balmy 18 degrees this morning.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Really Fast

For the sake of trying to keep up with my blog, this will be a very short post because I have to go set up for church in 5 minutes....Come to think of it I feel like at times my life runs in 5 minute intervals. Enough of that...So my new story - last night -

I was upstairs hanging with the T's, who if you recall are my fabtabulous landlords, and friends. After dinner and plenty of chocolate chip cookies :-) we went to work on their bathroom sink and tub, which ran into some trouble with having random objects dropped down it's drain - thus leading to a massive blockage. We had 6 foot pipe snake, but that was not long enough to reach, so at 9 o'clock at night we called next door to borrow his 25 foot snake...This then led us to a hillarious discussion of snakes...but lets not go there.

Needless to say when all was said and done the sink drained, the tub drained, and the three of us were covered in brown - crap...and smelled like bleach, vinagar, and REALLY nasty crap.

I took a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG shower.....

More later :-)

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Update!

Hey all! I'm sure that you had all thought that I must have dropped into some eternal vortex unable of escape - thus explaining my complete and total lack of blogging. Well...I am afraid that you are mistaken. To tell you the truth I am trying to get back into the swing of school, as it is I have been avoiding going grocery shopping like the plague. Things are good though, I do like my classes much better than last semester. Yesterday however, I think that the entire class' jaws dropped when we saw the 19 page syllabus that our instructor handed out...19 pages!!! Talk about assignments!!!

Then this past weekend I went to Georgia for a Vineyard Church Conference for Small Group Leaders. It was a GREAT conference, and it was so fun to get away from Clemson a little. Church is going so well, and the whole leadership team is so excited for implementing more of what we learned over the weekend.

I also have been kept busy fighting the Squirrel Plague which has been taking over the neighborhood. Yes, my friends - the squirrels strike back!! All we know, is that squirrel plague has a strange effect on human children. It causes them to breakout in a red rash all over there body. Humm...................Well at least that is what my friend Matt and I have determined by our very scientific method. You should have heard my pastor - he was like "REALLY! I heard something about that yesterday!!". I about died laughing....trust me it was hillarious.

Alright, I have to leave for Clinical in 5 minutes, so I'd better sign off. I will be back to post more later!!!

Movie Night In...I love a good movie!

Mega Mind
Taking Chance (Will make you cry like a baby)
Charlotte Grey (A bit of a different take on Nazi Germany)
Series - Merlin (I LOVE BBC)
Robin Hood (Okay, a love Russell Crowe, you'll have to understand that about me...)
Kingdom of Heaven (Chuck full of acting power with an epic tale)
Miss Potter (Such a great film! Story of the creator of Peter Rabbit)
How to Train your Dragon (Possibly my favorite animated movie ever...I'm like a little kid, I watch it over and over)
Buck (Sundance winner, Biography of Horse Trainer, heart touching)
Lost in Austin (Modern day spin on Pride and Prej.)

Life as a nurse...

Great words by Reb Jeff: Vayishlach: Facing Death

"Rachel died. She was buried on the road to Ephrat — now called Bethlehem. Jacob set up a pillar above her grave. It is the pillar at Rachel’s grave to this day."–Genesis 35:19-20

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidui http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_(Judaism), and preparing the notifications to the community, feel like little fragments of the sacred. I have been entrusted with the care and tending of the most powerful, complex and difficult emotions that a person can experience in life. I have been made, in some small part, a guardian of the memory of a departed soul — a life that touches upon many other lives.After dropping off my older daughter at her high school this morning, I made a stop at Treasure Coast Hospice http://www.tchospice.org/, a remarkable organization that sets a very high standard for the loving and respectful care of the dying. There, I visited a lovely man whom I have seen a few times in his hospice room. I sat by his bedside and listened to him (in full possession of his faculties) as he told me about his worries about his family, the support of his wife after he is gone, and the future of his children and grandchildren. I was deeply moved by the way he put any concern for himself — even while facing death — in a distant backseat to his concerns for his family. When my own time comes, I can only hope to have his awareness of the way that one life can touch so many others.Also at hospice, I visited a woman I have known for the past two years — a dear soul who is a former Jewish religious school director. I sat with her, too, singing psalms to her as I listened to her heavy and labored breathing. I have no medical training, but I have come to know the sound of a person who is close to death. The body begins to fight for each breath as it slowly looses it grasp on life. As I held her hand and sang, I realized that being a rabbi is no protection against becoming one of the people caught in the web of connection. I, too, am changed by the loss of a life that has touched mine.Later in the day, I met with a couple from our congregation. She had just learned that her brother died yesterday in a car crash. Coming to terms with the loss is made more difficult for her by the fact that she and her brother had not seen each other or spoken in five years. Sometimes, people think it is easier to mourn the death of someone who has moved out of your life. In my experience, though, it's harder. Grief is magnified by wounded love and regret. I have no magic words to say to ease the pain of mourning. All I can do is listen, become a vessel in which people place their stories, and offer compassion.Actually, there is one more thing I can do. I can have faith that "all I can do" is all that I need to do. It is enough.In this week's Torah portion (Vayishlach) Jacob watched Rachel, the love of his life, die in childbirth. He was overcome by grief. Jacob had worked for his cruel uncle Laban for fourteen years to earn the right to marry Rachel. Now she was gone. Because she died while they were traveling, Jacob had to bury her by the side of the road. He built a pillar of stones on the spot to mark the place as sacred.This is what we all do, in one way or another, when death enters our lives. We grieve and our hearts break. We wish that we could continue to walk along the path of life with our loved ones forever, but the dead cannot fully join us. We have to leave something behind in order to resume our own journey. So, what do we do? We mark the moment as sacred. We erect monuments — both in cemeteries and in our hearts. The stones we place on top of stones remind us that a life may end, but its sanctity is forever.The Torah says that the monument Jacob built for his beloved continues to stand until this day. A life that touches the lives of others never ceases to send living reverberations throughout the web that binds us all.