Nearly 24 years later...

I'll write more tomorrow, but for now, I just wanted to tell an interesting story:

I was talking to my friend Aaron tonight.  Granted, I don't know Aaron entirely well, but the times that I've talked to him, I've found that I've enjoyed the time, so we'll let that slide.

Anyhow, Aaron was telling me how he is doing an internship in Racine and I mentioned that I was from Burlington, which is very close.  He then mentioned how he has family in Burlington, and slowly, 2 and 2 started to come together.  His last name....Burlington...

So I asked if his grandpa was a doctor and sure enough, he was, but retired about a decade ago.  

As chance would have it, his grandfather was the man who delivered me into this world almost 24 years ago.  We are talking the first human touch that I ever felt was this guy's grandpa.

It's almost serendipitous, isn't it?

didn't even make it 3 days

My attempt to not think for a week has failed.  I guess I should have gone with a more realistic goal.  A week was just something that was not attainable.  I simply set myself up for failure.

I'm not going to lie.  I feel like crap.  It's just been a bad few days.  

And I've slept 2 hours out of the last 40, so that's just making things all the worse.  And it doesn't look like there's too much hope in sight for a whole lot more sleep tonight.  

This is one of those times when I'd really like to find a way for myself to escape myself.  

Hopefully this will all pass quickly.  

what.the.crap.

is it really only tuesday?  

i'm really hoping that this week takes a turn somewhere.  

the pesky mosquito in my room

there is currently a horribly pesky mosquito flying around my room.  i can't seem to kill it but it has bitten me about 6 times.

oh what a metaphor for life right now...

i suck at this.  what "this" is...well... yeah.

what the crap?!

Ok, so out of boredom, I went on facebook and was browsing around. 

 You know all of those applications that everyone adds and then, as if them adding them wasn't bad enough, but they send you 320,984,302 invitations to do the same?  We've all been there.  We've all unfriended someone due to their compulsion to continue to send invitations that you care nothing about.  (Don't lie.  You know you've done it.)

Well I've got a daunting number for you.  Aside from the Zombie application, Funwall! (as if the other wall is boring?) and MyStarbucks, did you know that there are 29,681 other applications that can be added to your Facebook page?  Made you throw up a little bit in your mouth, didn't it?

I think there should be an application that allows you to view the people that have the most applications.  I almost want to add as many as I can just to see how many facebook will allow me to have.  

i think way too much

I have come to the conclusion that I think entirely too much.  

And that I also use the word "incredible" so frivolously that it doesn't even maintain its originally because everything has been brought up to that level.  

So in an attempt to lighten the mood, I will write of nothing serious for....we'll try a week.  I'm curious as to whether I can actually do it.  I tend to only be inspired to write by things of significance.  But maybe this will be a cool challenge to myself.

So here goes...

Day 1

....

.......

Ok, I think I've got something.  I asked someone what their biggest pet peeve was today.  Their response was "I don't really have any pet peeves.  I guess my biggest pet peeve is when people ask me what my biggest pet peeve is."  I'm sure that they thought by answering this way that they were being clever and sarcastic.  Doesn't that just seem like a self-defeating pet peeve, though?  Irony at its finest.  The shear fact that biggest pet peeves are their pet peeves.  Wait what?  That's even too much for me to think about.  Ouch.  That one hurt a little bit.

I have no idea what I'm babbling about right now.

I'm going to end up with skin cancer.  Even in my attempts to put sunscreen on every morning when I get out of the shower won't keep me from forgetting some area of my body that is inevitably going to be exposed that day.  Saturday, I went fishing with my parents on the lake near our house for about 3 hours and managed to burn the upper part of my legs, a little part of my shoulder where I didn't get sunscreen and my shirt moved, the upper part of my forehead that wasn't covered by my bandana and that I missed with sunscreen, and the nice little strip on my lower back where my shirt came up while sitting.  I either need to get better at putting on sunscreen, or I need to wear clothing that complete covers my body and is all one piece.  (hmm...I wonder what that would look like...)

On the upside, I caught 4 fish and learned how to fillet them!

Alright.  That's enough for now.  I'd better stop before I come up with some metaphor for how filleting a fish relates to my life.

discovering the difference

Ok, this entry has a possibility of coming across a little ...odd.  So please bear with me and try to understand while I rant a little bit.

I went down to the Terrace tonight to hear a little bit of the open mic night and just about half a quarter life crisis.  I realized how different life is compared to how it used to be in college and I really started to become nostalgic...but almost sick for it.  

After a little bit of analyzation and a quick 20 minute chat with Dave (it's good that he's getting used to hearing me ramble, picking out the meaningful points and elaborating on them now :P ) I have figured out that it was the people in that time period of life that made the difference.  

Let me try to elaborate here...

First of all, in college, people who are a bit more free-spirited tend to be found more often.  But as you ease out of college, people get 9 to 5's...the SUV...the 2.5 kids...and they lose that freedom.  But the fact is, I can never lose that.  I will never lose that.  There's nothing wrong with being that person.  In fact, these people are essential and provide balance to my life and the world.  (And from a ministry perspective, they are so important in proving to be "insiders" in ministry and providing resources for those of us who cannot quite fit into that role.)  But it is just that it is not in my nature to be that.  I will never be that, even though there are times when I wish I could be.  My soul would literally die in that situation.  

But along with that, people who are that look at me and see that I am different.  This has been affirmed so many times, especially recently, that I can't even keep count.  I will always be the free-spirited, strawberry-picking, floppy hat-wearing, sit-on-the-front-porch-in-a-rocking-chair-drinking-lemonade Rae that I am.  I will write and look at people differently and see metaphors in trees.  I will seek out adventures and get stir crazy when I'm stagnant.  

This is my nature and who I am.  I love who I am.  And I love that people find me interesting because of that.  I love that that is the reason people like me.  (I think...?)

But then there comes this aspect.  And this is where this subject could get touchy.  Let me just preface this by saying that I LOVE my friends that I have and value them beyond a point that they will never understand.  I appreciate the things I have learned because of them and the way that they have stood by me as I have figured anything and everything out about myself.  But the fact is, I feel like there are only a very very few who are similar to me in this aspect.  And I think that most of my friends would agree with this.  There are not many people that I can connect with on this level.  Even when I think about the girls that I consider my best friends, they are not like me in this respect.  

See, the ones that are like me in this area move away.  Because that is in their nature.  To seek out new adventures, too.  And that is beautiful!  But where does it leave us?  

My Myers-Briggs personality test revealed that I have the personality type known as "the inspirer."  When I heard this, you should have seen the imaginative things that went through my head.  And when friends have heart to hearts with me about who I am, this is the general idea behind the conversations.  That the way that I am...the ways that I am different...do inspire.  This is something that came as a great surprise to me and still does, but when I think about it, I love the idea that I can play this role sometimes.  

But it comes with a dilemma:  

If people look at me and become inspired or motivated, that's amazing.  But where do I get that inspiration from?  

It's like having the O Negative blood that I have.  It is a universal donor but can only receive from itself. 

I need people like myself around me.  I need that balance of having the people that aren't like me and the people that really understand and see the world the same way that I do.  But the conundrum is that it is not in the nature of people like me to stay put for very long...

So I guess the point of this is that I feel like I really only know a few people at this point in my life who are similar to me in this way and I'm craving more, but I have no place to find them.  They were easy to find in college because everyone seems to have some element of this in them in college, plus, universities just seem to be a thriving place for these people.  But then they leave...

or they change...

So I am stuck at a stalemate, I guess.

I hope that this didn't come across in a bad way at all.  It wasn't meant to by any means, but merely to point out a difference in types of people and the consequences that it can have on the various types. 

Again, I LOVE the friends I have.  I would be no where without them.  But I think they would all agree the things I had to get out here.  

oh my

So in the midst of all of this crazy weather, I was trying to figure out a place that I could go with Habitat in some random foreign country to go and build and serve.  My need to get out of this country and experience another culture has been growing greatly with the 1 year anniversary of the last time I exited our boarders.  

And then I got smacked in the face with something the other day.  

We've got a HUGE need within an hour of Madison.  So with that, I'm working on organizing a group to go do some flood relief work.  So we decided last night at about 10:30pm that we should really try to get on this and within 12 hours, it has all really come together.  

So if you are reading this, in the Madison area and looking for the opportunity to go love a community that is hurting, let me know.  We're moving on it. :)

On the other side of it, the last 24 hours have just been in.sane.  I only slept for about 4.5 hours last night because I was working about 3940283 things that needed to be done, but I woke up feeling like I drank 6 cups of coffee on an empty stomach.  

And it was the first night of restless sleep that I think I've had in like a year or something like that.  I usually sleep hard and fast, but last night, I tossed and turned all night.  Something must really be riling me up.  

On another front: Support raising is moving along.  I've got a first stab at a support letter and a list of about 100 people that I'd like to send it out to, but only about half of those addresses.  We'll give it a first run though after I get another draft of a letter done.  

Ok!  Time to jump in the shower and take a break from all of this by going to work. :P

anyway...

I thought I'd go down to the park today and sit and write for a bit, so now I'm camped out on a picnic table in the middle of a very flooded Vilas Park.  In fact, the ground under my feet is full of water and squishes every time I shift a little bit.  The flooding has been amazing.  I was looking at pictures of Burlington and it's like the whole town is under water.  And yet, the rain and storms seems to have brought new life that I've never seen before to the land.  Everything is so lush and a shade of green that I have never quite seen before, but only imagined.  And against the new blue of the sky, the dissonance of the color makes me a little bit emotional every so often.  There was a patch of trees on the way out to the wedding spot that was absolutely the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen.  The shade and sparkle of the waxy leaves against the sunlight took my breath away and if I hadn't been in such a hurry, I would have stopped and laid in the grass for a while beneath their shade.  

(haha...a 12-year-old-or-so kid just fell into the mud next to me as his brother was tackling him.)

Val was absolutely stunning yesterday.  And while that can probably be said about almost every bride, there truly was something impossibly beautiful about her yesterday.  The second I saw her an hour and a half before the wedding, I was driven to tears.  Without over analyzing every emotion involved with yesterday, I think it was a multi-faceted, complex array of emotions.  First of all, the look of pure and absolute joy mixed with the overwhelming nervousness of committing your life to another person (hi. frightening.) brings out that resonance once again that I always seem to find just unbelievable.  Getting to see that was emotional in itself for me.  Obviously, there's the ever-existent question of if I will ever be ready to make that sort of commitment, along with the question of, even if I am, will I ever find anyone willing to make that commitment to me...  But I really don't think that made a huge difference.  

But it was something different.  When I stopped to think about it while I was sitting on top of Tyrol Basin, after having climbed the entire thing barefoot and in a sundress with flowers in my hair to watch the sun go down (I know...typical me, right?), I realized something intriguing.  This beauty that came out in Val was not something that just happened yesterday on the day she wedded Brandon.  It was something that had developed over the course of months...since she and Brandon began their journey of becoming one.  Granted, they dated a shorter amount of time than many couples, but over the course of the last 10 months that they were dating, engaged and married, Val has grown in beauty.  I think that I noticed it many times throughout that period, but just never added them all up until yesterday.  

Brandon has brought out the elegant nature of a girl who, though confident and sure of herself, was not quite comfortable with allowing people to see it until him.  It does not mean that she was not complete until him, but rather that 2 people came together to emphasize the splendid uniqueness of one another.  

Simply put, he brought out an image of beauty in her that already existed.  

I guess this takes me to so many other places of thought...

It would seem that the same situation occurs when people are wedded to Christ.  There is a beauty that evolves and is uncovered from the depths when a person comes to be wedded and deeply committed to our Father.  I have seen it over and over again, especially in the house that I currently live in with anywhere from 6-8 other girls at any given time (not to mention the honorary members!)  They are never as beautiful as when they are drawing nearer to God.  The light in their faces when they ponder his goodness and faithfulness...  The radiance they exhibit when they discover a new attribute that they had never known before...

He brings out that uniqueness that He created in every person when people draw nearer to Him.  He created it and He brings it out when people return to Him.  

So perhaps that is what the beauty of a bride is actually.  It is the look of joy in a woman's face when she has found the man that draws her nearer and leads to her Creator, the one who instilled her with all of the beauty in the world.  

Maybe I'll come back to this...

surreal

so brandon and val are married.  nuts.  they were the first of my close circle of friends now to get married.  4 more couples to go before the end of the year.  val, of course, looked incredible.  :)

it was a pretty crazy day too.  the rain held off, literally, just until the end of the ceremony and then the musicians rushed around trying to take down the sound equipment.  that was fun... but we got everything in on time. 

i'm really sore from dancing and climbing the mountain that is tyrol basin barefoot.  i had to make sure i didn't have tics all over me, but it was completely worth it.  the sunset from up there was just amazing.  

i've got the next few days off here, which sucks, but that will give me time to write and start support stuff for the internship, so that will be good, even though i really would like to be working...

so tired now.  must go to bed.

beyond tired

Today was long.  It wasn't bad or good.  It was just long.  I had my clinical starting at 6:30am and did that until 1:30pm.  I had a bit of time off in there where I got some things done at home and went for a run and then had to go into work at Starbucks from 5:30pm until 10:30pm.  And I'm now lying in bed, willing myself to go to sleep because I need to get up and do it all over again in the morning.  

I haven't worked a 12 hour day since the old Dippin'Dots days, but even then, it never was a full day of work.  A lot of that was drive time.  (Speaking of Dippin'Dots, I hear Mr. Ester invested in a new Dots stand that is shaped like a huge marshmallow and has dots all over it.  Sweet.  What's even better though, is that this stand actually has some sort of protective shelter for the workers held within, which must be great when it rains.  Carolyn and I used to have to stand outside in tornado warnings at the state fair because we couldn't leave the ice cream.  But hey, that was a fun job, so I'm totally not complaining.)  

Tomorrow is the last day of my clinicals.  Cripes, that class went by fast.  I take my final exam on Friday and then just have to pass the state exam and then it's on to finding a job!  I'm seeing quickly that I would fit well in this setting.  Yes, the atmosphere is sterile.  Yes, I have to do some pretty nasty things.  Yes, I want to be outside most of the time that I'm inside.  But I love how many people I get to meet and help every day.  It's invigorating.  

I'll tell some stories tomorrow when I'm not dying because of how tired I am.

Don't worry, I'm taking notes as I go...

Also, I think I'm going to take Andy's advice from a while back and buy myself a tape recorder.  

surprised at survival

today was one of those really long day that ended up being really really great.

-clinical day #2: rocked it.  got to hang out with the coolest older people all day.  the hospital setting is really taking to me.  

-i'm getting better at this popular thing called naps.  2 hours on the couch today while my roommate tapped away on her keyboard.  it was like a lullaby.  i'm not really sure why.  hey!  that rhymed!  

-got to the 6 Pack before the game only to find Leah sitting on the couch.  YAY!

-icy dagger played their first game tonight against the drake hotel and casino.  we were a bit worried going out because we only had 3 girls, which is the minimum before you have to forfeit, but it ended up that they only had 3 too.  playing the whole game was rough and i got really tired, but we did ok and i actually surprised myself with a couple of good offensive and defensive plays.  not too many blunders.  so way to go christine and vanessa.  we busted it out.  :)  oh...good job, too, boys!

-went to the Dane for our 2 free pitchers and beer bread.  mmmmm....

-got home and found out that the Brewers won, too!

all in all...great day :)

p.s.

Note to self (or to those reading who want to get me an early birthday present *wink*)

I want a good thesaurus.  I need to buy one.  Actually, I should really buy myself a good dictionary too.  I love words.  I think I would just sit down and read that.  

Strange?  Probably.  

Nerdy?  Totally.

My idea of an amazing night in?  Absolutely.  Leave me alone. :P

things that make you go "hmmm..."

In an attempt to just write more and create something every day, I've decided to try to start writing some "poetry" again.  I don't know if I'd ever call what spewage comes out of me by that name and assert it so highly, but I figure that it will be a good exercise to just try to compress thoughts in a concise way that still allows for that from-the-depths-of-my-belly emotion.  

It's more of an attempt to actually put some of these thoughts to some sort of use.  What use they will be given is still up in the air.  If nothing else, it will finish off those notebooks that have only been half used.  

Perhaps some day, if I am ever brave, I will put some of it up here.  

Greg is married.  Crazy.  It was a really odd, surreal wedding for me.  I haven't quite pinpointed it yet.  

I'm a bit frustrated with myself currently, but it'll pass I'm sure.  It usually does...