five things

Five things that make me happy:
(About a month ago some fb friend talked of making a list of 50 things to be happy about.  I thought I might try it, got as far as what I ate for lunch, and couldn't finish.  I'm going to do better this time--but 50 is still too ambitious for me.)

5.  Well, to honor the original list:  grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches.  It was a really great lunch.

4.  Rainy days.  Everyone I know seems to suffer from season affective disorder, but I am the opposite.  I love clouds and rain and cold.  I especially like when it rains at work because we're surrounded by windows, and I love the watching the sky drama. And since it's ridiculously hot here now, sweltering, miserable, August-style hot, I'm remembering our storm-riddled, mild-temperatured spring with all sorts of fondness. (Well, not the devastating tornado part of it, obviously.)

3. Singing.  Various factors have kept me from my church lots for the past couple of months, but last Wednesday I managed to be there for an entire service for the first time in forever.  There was this spectacularly transcendent moment when we were singing "How Great Is Our God" that managed to restore my spirit in ways that I didn't even realize were needed.  I'm going to remember not to forget to sing.

2.  FitFlops.  My moma bought me these.  I mentioned to her sometime in passing that I thought I would buy some this summer.  The truth is I'm getting too old to wear cheap shoes all the time, and I have long admired Michelle's FitFlops.  So she bought them for me out of the blue because she's so precious.  They're delightfully comfortable, and I don't even mind that they make me even taller.  Typically I don't like shoes that make me taller, but these are great.  Thanks, Moma!

1.  Family.  I couldn't decide if it was even fair to include the soul-filling, constant-comfort kind of happy that is my family in a list where I talk about sandwiches and footwear, but it would be an insult to omit them and the laughter, the belonging, the delight that people I've known my whole life can still surprise me with their strengths and kindnesses. They are mine, and my cup is full and overflowing just from being theirs.

Five things that make me nervous:

5.  Grad school.  It's happening this fall, I guess, though I haven't been officially accepted yet.

4.  Summer Reading Club. It's the most intense seven weeks of my entire working year--plus the even more than most intense six or eight weeks getting ready for it.  Somehow it always sorts itself out, but in the meantime it slowly sucks my will to live, or at least my will to blog. (Only five and a half more weeks to go!)

3.  Awkward situations in movies.  Have you noticed this thing in every comedy made in the past few years wherein all the humor relies on social awkwardness or characters who create ridiculously embarrassing situations for themselves?  It seriously makes me squirm.  I can't take it.  I'm a mess.  I know I shouldn't get so invested in stories and fake people, but it's a thing I do, and it's nerve-wracking.

2.  Tweeting.  Maybe I haven't told you that I'm on the twitters (@sellensam if you want to follow me), but I've been tweeting with some regularity for a few months, and I still find it intimidating.  I think I need to stop following funny people and that will ease the tension.

1. The state of my DVR.  I started falling behind on tv in April and though I've taken some time here and there to try and catch up, there are still two or three shows that have been over for weeks that I can't seem to finish, and the So You Think You Can Dance episodes are piling up.  That's really not the kind of show one should put off, and yet I can't seem to sit down and watch.  In the meantime, the free space percentage on the DVR shrinks daily.


Five things that aren't going my way: 

5.  FHDM has never been a more appropriate name for him, but sadly he's never going to be my future husband.  Donald Miller is engaged to someone who's not me.  I'm sure she's a lovely person as he recently tweeted that she's going to Africa to help children, so I can't even hate her.  So I'm once again taking applications for my future husband.  Fairly minimum job requirements:  must be funny, literate, a multi-millionaire, and willing to let me have my way always.

4.  My Grams is not doing well.  I've not known whether/how to communicate this to pretty much everyone, but how to deal with it on the blog has been especially confusing.  Ultimately, it's a family matter, and while I'm not hesitant to broadcast family stuff normally, I've just gone back and forth on how much I want to talk about this.  But here's the deal.  She's in liver failure, and she's at home and in hospice care.  And she has good days and bad days, and it's not any fun.  On the other hand, I'm going to see her two or three times a week, and that's been mostly nice.  I'm seeing a lot of my family which I also enjoy.  I have a lot of feelings about it, and for once in my spill-my-guts life, I am doing a terrible job of knowing how to talk about it.  So apparently I'm going to do so awkwardly.  Thanks for not judging me too harshly for the awkward. And thanks for the prayers that have been sent up and will continue to be sent up on behalf of her and my family.

3. My house refuses to be trained to become self-cleaning.  I know it could do this--if only it would apply itself.  But alas, I come home nightly, and the same messes I left that morning are there, taunting me.

2.  I fell off the healthy-eating wagon in April, and I can't seem to find the discipline, energy, or interest to get back on. 

1.  I know this five things was my idea, but now I can't think of a fifth go here, and I've ruined the lists.  I guess that could count as something that's not going my way.


Five things I've learned lately:

5.   You can't force funny.  A couple of weeks ago, cousin, scholar, theologian, #1 blog fan suggested a humorous treatment for a topic I was considering writing.  If I could have pulled it off, it would have been perfection (so perfect that I'm keeping it in reserve for another time), but as I tried to write it, it just wasn't funny, and nothing I did was helpful.  So I stopped throwing good humor after bad.

4.  Don't get a haircut without a plan.  I've been growing my hair out for two and half years.  And then suddenly it was a mess.  I never wanted to fix it, it was so long it didn't even make a cute ponytail anymore, and it was smothering me in the oppressive Arkansas heat.  So I decided to get a haircut last week, but I didn't pick a style or find a picture or make a plan, and as a result, I have a mess on my head.  The official length is pretty much what I wanted, but my usual long layers that I need to thin out the ends and make them lay nicely turned into short layers that pretty much guarantee my hair's going to flip and be insane and never lay nicely.

3.  My tastebuds routinely make a fool of me.  Though I've always claimed to not be a picky eater, there have always been certain foods that I didn't like and would never eat.  Lately, I've had opportunities to re-try some of those foods or go hungry, and what I've found is that I like pretty much everything.  Fish is still iffy, and oatmeal is questionable, but lima beans are my new best friend.  Go figure.

2. Sleep is important.  Okay, I knew this one, but lately I've been forcefully reminded.  My sleep pattern is off, and it makes me constantly late and occasionally irrational.  Boo.


1. I don't know everything.  Yeah, I knew this one too, but you can rarely tell by the way I act.  So recently I've been becoming more okay with not knowing everything, and though it's an adjustment, I think it's a welcome change.  I dare say it might eventually make me a better person.  Keep your eyes peeled for that.