Since my days at the store are coming to a close, I thought I'd post a few pictures to show you what it looks like now that we've been up and running for close to a year. All these pictures were taking with my phone, so I'm sorry about the blurriness or weird angles. The above pictures are just funny that have happened... Sam likes to come help me by getting all of my toy swords off the wall and lining them up on the floor...Beth doesn't want to hang the mountain of clothes so Emily buys her a drink that we don't have a bottle opener for so she uses the fire extinguisher to open her soda. Customers frequently laugh at our ongoing antics and I think it's why they come back.
The next few pictures are a sort of panoramic view (the best I could do with my camera...) of what you see when you walk in the front door. It was a weird time of day and all the sunlight is coming in from the windows, but you get the idea... Okay, left to right...
In the next few days, I'll try to take some pics of our day-to-day goings on, instead of just how the store looks.

costumes

So...Beth and I have 2 more weeks of work left. We're pretty excited to get to sleep in on Monday the 4th. :)

I'm still making plans for my trip to Virginia in December and looking around for the cheapest ticket. So far, the best one I've found is $254 round trip. If you have any better ideas, let me know. I'm so happy that I get to be there to see Judah!


The next 3 weeks for me will be living hell because someone that I work with decided to take most of my pain meds. 2 bottles that always last exactly 30 days lasted exactly 10 days. I'm already in full-on withdrawal which is really horrible, but the worst part will be after the withdrawal is gone and I'm just left with pain and good ol' Advil. I'm kind of glad that I don't know exactly who took all my medicine, but boy would I like to yell at them. And Beth would like to yell at them, too, because she gets to hear me complain every 3 minutes about how horrible I feel. Please pray that the next 20 days go by really quickly and that I'll be able to handle all the withdrawal and pain until I can get meds again.


On to something a little funnier... If my family celebrated Halloween, here's what Beth and I would look like.


Beth would be Rollie Pollie Ollie.

And I would be Stitch.

we must be awfully small and not as strong as we think we are

As you can probably tell from the lack of serious posting, I've been very busy. My store is getting crazier every day and I drive home like a zombie every night. I have no idea if I've said this already, but my last day at work is going to be November 3. When I finally had a firm date I was so relieved but very sad at the same time. I've put alot of time and energy (well really, ALL my time and energy) into my store and it's hard to leave just when we're beginning to see some of that work pay off. At the same time though, I've worn myself down too much and pushed my body further than it can really handle. I'm looking forward to the break and praying that I will be able to regain the year of lost recovery time.

I'm still trying to decide what to do about school. I will be going to school, I just don't know what I'll be doing yet. My motto is from Steel Magnolias: I can't think about that today, I'll think about that tomorrow!

It looks like Dirk is the most excited about me quitting my job. He has already enlisted me to be the church "secretary", which really means I will do all the things that he has no time to do. I'm excited about doing his phone and computer work so I can stay in my pajamas and burn my makeup. Oh happy day.

As I said, I'm not doing well physically right now. This thing that I have, whatever I have, seems to be somewhat cyclical. It flares up and slows down as it pleases. There is not pattern that I can figure out, but it certainly is vicious. After my last appointment with the doctor that was supposed to be the leading skull-base surgeon in the AF, I gave up on the system once again. I thought I would never see another doctor again and I would just deal with this myself and learn to live with it. To me, it seemed better not to see doctors and not see any progress than to constantly be hoping that THIS doctor would be the one, only to be disappointed after every appointment. But thankfully, I didn't think like that for very long and this week I picked up the phone and scheduled some more appointments. I'm praying for the forcefulness to demand some new doctors and more tests, including a vertical MRI. We'll see...

Tomorrow is Sunday! Be happy!

good fortune

It's a busy Saturday at work and I didn't want to leave to go get lunch, so my sister and I ordered Chinese food for lunch and had it delivered. I opened up my fortune cookie and it says:

Solid gains are possible today, but with a headache.

Wow, so true.

fatso

I'm at work right now, sitting at my computer (obviously) and am compelled to relay a conversation that I'm listening to right now. There is a young pregnant woman in here shopping for maternity clothes. Unfortunately for her, her mother decided to come along.
The woman has pulled about 20 pieces from my racks to try on and she is now in the dressing room. Her mother needed a chair to sit down, so Beth gave her my office chair and placed it in front of the dressing rooms.
While trying on a dress, she yelled to her mom that it makes her look big. The mom replied, "Honey, you are big!" "Mom, I am not big. Jason says I'm not big."
Beth and Shelley and I assume that Jason is the boyfriend/husband (you never can tell around here).
She put on the next shirt and said, "Mom, it's making me look fat."
"Baby, I told you, everything's gonna make you look fat cuz you ARE fat."
"Noooooo, I'm not fat, it's just that I'm pregnant!"
She came out of the room wearing the shirt and said, "Is it too tight for my boobs?"
"Everything is too tight for your boobs."
So next she tried some pants. She told her mom that she liked how the pants looked. The mom said to make sure the pants weren't too tight. So she came out wearing the pants and the mom said, "Honey, maybe you should just make your own pants, that way you can make them plenty big for your fat legs."
"I just want to find some clothes that aren't too tight and that don't make me look big!"
"You are going to look big in everything. It's nature, the way God intended it. Get over it."

The poor girl has just now chosen the clothes she likes. She brought them up to the register and while Beth was ringing them up, the mom was still trying to talk her out of them because she was a huge girl and all the clothes made her look like she was really fat, not just pregnant.

I'm so thankful that my mom will never do that to me when I get pregnant and huge.

changes come, turn my world around

Life is about to change for me...again.
After much thought, advice from wise people, and prayer, we decided that I needed to quit my job before the end of the year. I think I mentioned a couple of posts ago that our medical insurance is going to drop my coverage if I'm not in school fulltime by January. I've known this was coming for my whole life, but I never thought I'd be in this position when it came. I always thought that by the time I was 21 I'd already be in school fulltime and it wouldn't be an issue. But the reality is that it's a big issue and getting dropped from health insurance right now is not cool, so I will be registering for school in a few weeks and starting right after Christmas. My parents and I decided that it would be best for me not to continue managing my store while I'm jumping back into school. It was a hard decision to make since, by the time I quit, I will have only been at my store for a year. Thankfully, I have a very understanding boss who, at least in front of me, took the news well. It will be hard to leave the place that I helped bring up from the ground but I'm grateful that they gave me the opportunity to do it.

As far as school goes, I still have no idea what I'll be doing. In this whole 2 years of pondering and self-reflection and researching, I haven't become passionate or even extremely interested in one area of study. If you remember, before I got sick, I was going the Nursing School route, so when I started thinking about school again, I thought I'd just get back into nursing and pick up where I left off. It seems that it's not that easy though. At the rate I'd be going when I start, I think I'd have one or two more semesters of class work before it would be time to start clinicals and real nursing training, but with my condition, no nursing school or hospital would let me do that. I'd have to be close to completely healed and definitely off of most of my drugs before they'd let me train in a hospital.
With that in mind, I started researching and thinking about other majors I could switch to. Nothing came up. There's really nothing else that interests me at this point. Not that there won't be something once I'm in school again, but for now, I have no ideas. So my dilemma is this: Do I waste money paying for classes that I really don't want to take or that won't get me anywhere just to satisfy Tricare and to keep the mandated fulltime status? Or do I go with the nursing track again, praying that I'll get better sometime between now and the actual nurse training and praying that these next two semesters aren't a total waste? Who knows...

Thanks to all who were praying for the most recent round of tests and MRIs. Everything went well except for the MRI, which the tech said was terrible because of my braces. This was a critical MRI and was supposed to show us in detail what kind of damage has occurred and how to possibly fix it. The tech who was doing it said that his guess was that they'd have to redo it after my braces are off. :( No fun. I have an appointment on Thursday with a new doctor that I haven't seen before and he's supposed to be the leading lower-brain specialist in the Air Force. We're praying that appointment goes well and that we'll have lots of new information (and that he'll be able to read the MRI anyway).
The subject of brain surgery seems to be surfacing in conversations more frequently and I've been talking with more people about the possibility. I'm not quite as opposed to it as I had been, but I told my sisters that the only way I'd do it is if they all agree to shave their heads with me. I already have my friend Emily on board, the older sisters are pondering the idea, but Beth and Shelley are definitely opposed. Just think of the priceless pictures we would have if they would all go bald with me... :)

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as he has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

virginia

I'm in Virginia! It's fabulous, as always. We're sticking around the houses this week, which is exactly what I wanted to do, so it's very relaxing. After I'd been up here a few times and especially after living here last summer, I'd seen all the sights and done plenty of driving around. This time it's nice to stay in pajamas all day and read to the kids, watch movies, make up silly songs, and just be.

Of course, the only reason I get to do this is because of Emily and Beth. They are selflessly working my store from open-close (which means 9:30am to 7:30pm) every single day while I'm gone for a week. They are awesome girls and are so sweet to let me have this time off. I'm trying my best not to call them and just trust that they have everything under control. Which they do. Except for the ceiling that's trying to collapse....again, they say everything is running smoothly and that I don't need to worry. If you're in the part of town this week, please take Emily and Beth some very LARGE DrPeppers, Mountain Dews, strong coffee, or some other form of caffeine.

Tomorrow we're driving down to Culpeper to see the Mt. Lebanon people. I think we're eating lunch and spending the afternoon down there...we're pretty excited about that! And on Sunday, an old friend of Dad and Mom's is preaching at Dave and Kristen's church which is also very exciting. I don't think I remember him, but I'm always happy to meet old friends of the family.

Guess that's it for now. I'm going to go try to make Liam love me...