Nag

"Z, will you take the attendence down to the office for me?"
"Ugh!!! Do I have to?"
"No, I just thought I'd ask. I can get someone else to if you want."
"Fine. Nag, nag, nag, that's all you do!"

What I love about Sunday

Driving home a few minutes ago this song was playing on the radio and it made me think about my list of what I love about Sunday.

• Sleeping in.
• Waking up, and then sleeping in some more.
• Waking up again and staying in my warm, comfy bed to read a book.
• Finally dragging my lazy carcass out of bed, dressing up a bit more than a normal day - or dressing down more than a normal day depending on how I'm feeling.
• Spending time with my sisters just chilling out.
• Driving to church and anticipating the service.
• Going to church.
• Getting welcomed at the door by friendly people that I like.
• Our AWESOME worship teams - seriously, they are fantastic.
• Worship.
• Seeing my friends.
• Sitting with Tiersa at church again, just like in the old days. (I'm SO thankful for her furlough)
• Learning new things from my 'friend' the DUDE (aka PH, aka Pastor Harry', Fields the Genius or my awesome friend DaveM. I worked closely with those men for 5 years and I love them and I miss seeing them during the week. It blesses my heart to talk and see them each Sunday)
• Chilling after church and talking with people. Talking about stuff, or the sermon, or books, or funny things.
• Getting a hug from my dad.
• Seeing and talking with my old Youth kids.
• The occasional after-church lunch outing with friends (I loved that more in Ontario where we had Church Chicken aka Swiss Chalet)
• Having a long Sunday afternoon nap.
• Reading.
• E-mailing, blogging, texting, writing letters.
• A lazy afternoon and evening at home.

LOVE it.
Sunday as a day of rest was ingrained in me from a young age, and it is a habit that I have kept for 29 years. I crave it, need it, love it.

Big Sister

I'm a big sister.
x 4

I have three biological little sisters, and as of recently I have been matched up with a 7 year old girl through the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program in Kamloops. It's great. I really do love time that I get to spend each week with my little sister.

It's a great program. The application is quite long. There are a lot of interviews, home visits, looking through files, meeting with co-ordinators and doing everything that needs to be done in order to make a good match between a big (me) and a little. But once it is all done, and if it is done well, it makes the process worth it.

My match is great. My little loves to bake, read, do science experiments, go to school, play, do crafts, and basically is the 7 year old version of me. It's fantastic. I knew that we were the perfect match about 6 weeks into it. We were driving to a Christmas party and I let her pick whatever song she wanted to on my i-pod to listen to on the drive. Out of ALL of the 3000 songs on my i-pod she picked "Cover Girl" by the New Kids on the Block. Seriously. She's awesome. It is now our theme song and we listen to it approximately 18 times every time we hang out.

The best part about having a little is that for a few hours each week I get to not be a teacher, and not be a young-adult, and not be 30, but I get to be 7 again.

And when you are seven, what is better than building a massive fort with all the blankets and pillows in the house and playing snakes and ladders?
Or getting a make-over?
Think about becoming a big brother or big sister. It's pretty sweet.

cold-kirk

It snowed a lot last night. More snow than I have EVER seen in one dumping in Kamloops in the past 6 years. Everything was under a good 6 inches of beautiful, dry, powdery snow. It was a winter winter wonderland. Freezing cold. But a winter wonderland nonetheless.

As Bethany and I were sitting in the living room today listening to the wind howl outside, she looked wistfully out the window and with a sad look on her face sighed, "I feel bad for Kirk. He must be so cold outside."

I scruntched up my forehead wondering who Kirk is, and why he was outside and how Bethany knew someone named Kirk and I had never heard about him before.

Then I realized.
She meant Cat-Kirk.

He was covered in 6 inches of snow. And in his defense - and Bethanys, despite the fact that he is ceramic, he did look really cold today.

The Haunted Microwave

My microwave is haunted. Or possessed. It depends what day it is. Interestingly enough though, it tends only to be haunted/possessed during the winter months.

What happens is this. Every January-March for the past three years, my microwave has attracted the spirit of someone who is attached to my 60$ wal-mart special microwave. The microwave will start beeping randomly. First it will start off with one beep here and there. Nothing too strange. But then it will start beeping obsessively until I can get to it and unplug it. When I want to use the microwave again, I have to plug it in and none of the buttons will work. I'll leave it, and it will start beeping again a few hours later. And the cycle continues until I get to the point where I decide, "ok, this microwave is fried, I'm just going to leave it unplugged and get a new one."

But I'm super cheap, so I never do buy a new one. After a month or two, I wonder if maybe the microwave spontaneously healed itself so I plug it in, and low and behold - it will work again for another 9 months. Amazing. MIRACLE!

Then we go through the cycle again. The cycle started again last week. We know how it goes, so the microwave has been unplugged waiting for the day for it to heal itself.

But then. Last night. 3am. The microwave starts beeping.
I wake up.
How is this possible?!?!? It's unplugged.

Man! That is one relentless ghost! Even working when the microwave has no electrical source.

In my dopey-half-sleeping state I ignored it for a while. Then as it continued to beep and as I woke up a bit more, I started thinking about all the ghost stories and ghost movies I have seen over the course of my lifetime and I started to get really freaked out. So scared. I did NOT put my brave face on and go downstairs to see what was happening.

Finally, at 7:15am, when it was a little bit light outside (read: SAFE), I went downstairs.
The microwave had been plugged in!
How? How? How?

Is my semi-new home haunted by a ghost that is trying to communicate with me via morse code from a beep-ey microwave?

Wiiiiierd.

Ridiculous Adventure

Today I want to tell you about my best and worst adventure of the summer. I can't believe that I didn't share this with you in the summer, how it slipped my mind I don't know. But I'm going to tell you about it today, and hopefully I can convey to you the ridiculousness of the situation.

As you know, my heart lives in Barkerville British Columbia. This past summer while I was there, me and my BarkervilleBestie Amber talked a lot. And one day in July - when it full out snowed, I was telling her about how in Kamloops it gets to be 40 degrees and sometimes we like to blow up air mattresses and inner tubes and float down the river. Like this:
It was a wonderful memory to share with Amber that snowy, cold JULY day. We thought to ourselves, "if only it was warm here, and if only there was a river we could float down on one of the 3 summer days that Wells/Barkerville gets." Then we remembered. There was a river. Well.... a creek really. But it was totally wide enough for us to float down (we thought) and would be deep enough to support our little blow-up fishing boat (we thought). So the plan was hatched. One day, before the end of August when I left, we would put her boat in the river/creek half way between Wells and Barkerville and float into Wells where we would climb out, walk the boat home and then pick up her truck.

Days passed. Summer came and went - on the same day nonetheless - and we never got around to floating down the river. Finally, on one of my last nights, we packed our bug spray, bear spray, and sweaters and loaded the boat. The river was four or five feet deep where we put in, and about 4 m wide. Wide and deep and fast flowing enough for us to float comfortably. For about 20 meters anyways.

The river was narrow and we often hit the sides. Especially when the banks would narrow, the water would rush quickly and a hairpin curve was ahead. It was more like... bumper boats... than anything else. We would laugh. We ran into low trees, we hit the banks often, and then the river would widen, and the water would get shallow. We would yell "BUM'S UP" and lift our butts of the bottom of the boat that was now scraping bottom. Sometimes it worked, more often than not one of us would get out and pull us to deeper water.



It was a ridiculous gong show.
But we laughed. Oh we laughed.


For about 90 minutes.
Then we realized that this boat trip was taking F.O.R.E.V.E.R. The lights from town were not getting any closer. It was getting darker and colder and less fun to struggle through the bog. We still laughed a lot, but the ridiculousness of the situation was less hilarious as time passed.


After 2.5 hours the lights of town were close. After 2.75 hours the lights from town were farther away and behind us. We had missed the turn off and were now heading for Quesnel. Our options were to turn the boat around and paddle against the current, or pull out and walk through the bog back to town.

We chose the second option.
AKA the wrong option.

With much difficulty (and me fully falling in the river up to my chest) we pulled the boat out of the river and walked with it approximately 2 meters through thick brush and swamp before abandoning it. Part of the difficulty was the terrain, most of the difficulty was our inability to stop laughing. It took us a further 30 minutes to stomp through calf-high stinky swamp mud OR crawl over 8 foot tall bushes. We lost our shoes I don't know how many times. We fell down a million, we screamed a lot, we laughed even more, we got a bit worried about meeting a moose or a bear, our legs and arms were scratched beyond recognition. But we made it out eventually. The boat remains lost to the bog to this day. It was a ridiculous adventure. But so ridiculous that it was hilarious.

(This is why it took so long. It's not a nice straight line. It's obnoxiously wiggly)