Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Lullabies

In our neighborhood we have a slightly different version of lullabies…. Instead of a soft voice whispering into the quietness, it’s sirens from the numerous police cars roaming our drug infested location, with a solo by the random car alarm [which last night lasted 10 min! no kidding], and then some harmony of a helicopter circling above probably attempting to spot the runaway convict. And then, when you think you are finally relaxed enough to drift into the nothingness of sleep…some crazy Mexican speaking men start yelling at each other outside even though it’s 2 am and the rest of the world is sleeping! Yes, between the car alarms, the honking, the sirens…it’s crazy. Life changing I’m sure….after this year I will probably never be able to sleep in a quiet room again.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

dirty dishes no more!




Dude, so we bought a dishwasher this weekend from a garage sale….we come home and say to the roommate “Hey, we bought a dishwasher and we’re wondering if we can use your car to transport it”….she looked at us like we were speaking Chinese and then said “You guys just don’t make small purchases do you?!” [laugh]…nope. But then it was like, issue after issue after issue…..we didn’t fit it into the car….so we paid the owner $10 to haul it over to our apartment…..then we get it all plugged in and everything and no water…[of course]…so we do some research, we tip it upside down decide that it’s probably the hose that’s it’s clogged or something…so we attempt to replace the hose [we totally took pictures of the dishwasher, the hose, the plug in and then headed off to the home improvement store with the digital camera to make sure we were doing the right thing].

So we then buy the wrong hose to hook up, decide to bring the old hose with us this time to the hardware store…but this takes so much longer than it should ‘cause it’s metal end it sealed to the next piece because of all the corrosion. So like, two hours later we finally have the new hose in place [we never actually got the two pieces apart ourselves…we took it to the hardware store to the boy Neubia was flirting with on the first trip, and he took it back to the cleaners section of the store and just started spraying all sorts of chemicals on it (laugh)…and it finally came apart].

So back at the house, with the new hose in place, we attempt it again, with no luck…still no water. After many phone calls to fathers, and numerous attempts to research it on-line, we call the GE 1800 number and they give us a few suggestions….we do it….then it actually pumps the water in [hurray!], but when we look in at the end of the cycle there is like 4 inches of water still in it….not right.

We look all over the internet, end up calling the GE lady again….follow her suggestions, nothing works. So, because we had no other ideas we decide to just run it again and see what happens.

So around midnight, we have finally came to the end of the second run through and because we are aware that we might have just made the situation worse, I suggest we roll the dishwasher halfway out the door before we open it [in case there is more water in it than before]…..Luckily however, after rolling it into the darkness, Whit opened it and nothing….all water was properly drained…hallelujah!

I swear, we don’t always go looking for crazy crap to happen to us…a lot of the time it just finds us [shrug]….[smile].

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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

woah...I know, it's been forever

Man, I don’t even know how to start the freakin blog anymore [smile]. But I guess that I’ll just bust up into what is actually going on.
I’M IN INDY! Woo Hoo! [for the most part anyway].

I am confident that God has amazing things planned for this period in my life, I know he does….but trusting him and having faith that he’s going to come through…man, so much harder to do than to say.

So I desperately want to work with a photographer… and two months ago, I thought this was entirely possible, and that if I trusted in God he would provide for me. But get this, I get here, call a few photographers in town, e-mail my resume out…and then go talk to this particular photographer, Karen. Which is great, her work is awesome and she has a few events that she’ll need an assistant photographer for in September. But in talking with her, like, my hopes for that photographer position are mostly shattered ☹. She tells me that in the last ten years sales have decreased like crazy. 5 years ago she was shooting 140 weddings a year. This year she has 35 on the books. How crazy! Anyway, after a few days of moping around and asking God what the hell I was supposed to do now, I’ve finally been able to push forward. But man, it’s so hard. Like that pushing part. I know who I am and that if I get a job I will rock it….but that whole getting a job thing…like, the career counselor at Drury said that 90% of jobs are not listed….then how are you supposed to find these jobs? [sigh]. So, I have resorted to the classified ads, and some employment magazine. It would be a bit different if I had the connections, but I don’t….so I feel so out on a limb here.

Anyway, I’ve been dealing with that like mad. And I know deep down that God is absolutely going to put me in the right place, but waiting is so cruel.

On the up side…all this uncertainty has definitely improved my prayer life. My God is amazing, and I know it, but it is truly in these moments where I am being carried and letting Him walk for me that I realize just how much I need Him. I had two great conversations tonight…..and the whole thing where you know you have to let go of things in order to really feel God and his massive amount of love…man that’s tough, but so rewarding. And it’s all sorts of things that you have to give up….sometimes it’s old friends that are unintentionally holding you back from where God wants you to be, and sometimes it’s your fears, sometimes it’s a romance, sometimes its comfortability and sometimes it’s giving up the power and control that we all feel like we need in our lives.

But I can’t help but think that when we do that to glorify God, that he’s going to see that and reward us for doing the right thing.

Man [smile]…life, huh? I know I just have to plug my nose, hold on to my top and jump in…but it’s still nerve-wracking. I’m going in to see a chiropractor tomorrow and fill out an application to be an assistant. I think it would be awesome, and it’s closer to us [like 15 min. away…how awesome would that be]. I’ve just got to shine and be all what God has let me become.

And lastly this:
“Consider it pure JOY my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be MATURE and COMPLETE, not lacking anything.”
-James 1:2-4

So here I am….joyful and desiring that place where I am found mature and complete in God.

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*maike rinaye*