the unexpected domestic

He is risen!

He's alive! He's alive! He's alive and I'm forgiven, Heaven's gates are opened wide!

i should have gone to sleep when i was sleepy.

Disclaimer: I wrote this last night when I couldn't sleep.

#1 - Yep.  and now it is 11:30 and I cannot sleep.  So instead of laying in bed and being frustrated that I cannot get to sleep, I threw in the towel and got up.  Now I have eaten 6 pizza rolls, drank a ginormous glass of water, and am now watching the 3rd season of Big Bang and updating my apps on my lovely iphone while writing this.  and by writing, I mean physically with pen to paper.  Some time during high school, my classmates progressed from hand writing their rought drafts of their papers to typing the rought drafts.  yeah...that never happened with me.  I always have the need to hand write everything I do before I type it.  I just need to see it in front of me, on paper first. 

*for the record, I do not want to be awake at night.  I like to sleep when it is dark out and be awake and productive when it is daylight out.

#2 - I had something else I was going to put here, but I cannot remember what.  Oh well, I just ate a delicious cupcake.

#3 - I added to my herb collection today!  I got some peppermint, some chocolate mint, and a cayanne pepper plant.  Hooray!  Why does the earth tempt me so?  i'm so in love with everything plants.  I cannot get enough.  I also got a garden rake. So I can now finish cleaning up my garden a little more before I get my wonderful brother-in-law to come disc up the land a little bit more so I can plant in two weeks! I heard from my f-i-l that his dad said to always plant at Easter.  So the time is near!

#4 - I also acquired a flat of succulents today.  And as of today I am planning to split them with Jessica, but she has not gotten them yet so we'll see how that goes ;) Just kidding jessica!  I have always admired succulents, but only from the standpoint of just looking at them.  I had never considered planting them because a) you don't cook with them & b) they are sorta expensive at Wal-Mart.  Unfortunately Wal-Mart is the only place around here that has garden stuff.  Well, besides Barrett's, but I always feel so intimidated to go there.  Pretty much because I don't know what I'm doing and they're gonna think I'm a nut case when I go in there and tell them what I want and it doesn't make sense, but I don't know that.  Ha ha. anyways...chasing rabbits here.  I am excited about my succulents and would like to find something neat to do with them (thanks Pinterest).  So far, most of the projects I have liked will require a lot of these little bitty plants.  Oh, well.  I'm sure I will figure it out!

laters.

hello monday

hello computer software - I have accepted the task of uploading the sermons to this website called "Sermon Audio" where people all over the world can look up and listen to God's word from many different preachers.  kind of excited, I hope I do this right.

hello garden - this week I am going to work on my garden some more!  I need a garden rake to get the rest of the grass out of the little plot I have.

hello coffee - enough said.

hello new ideas - I have decided that I need to be more productive throughout the week.

hello pictures - I hope to get more pictures printed and get caught up in my project life album!

hello home improvement - even though we have already gotten our house re-appraised and gotten all the paper work settled out, we still have a long way to go on our house and I am dedicating to one task a week to get it finished with once and for all!

hello taxes - hopefully going to do our taxes today so we don't have to worry about that anymore :)

have a great week!

i do not know what i am doing

i do not know what i am doing. in a few weeks, I will have been uneployed from my full time job for a year.  I don't know how to feel about this.  in the last few months of my time there I hated it.  I hated everything about that place.  I went to work, did what I (thought) I was supposed to do. Got yelled at for doing it wrong. Withdrew more into my shell there.  Learned the true meaning of what it feels like to "have the walls feel like they're closing in on you."  over the months I had also been slowly taking the things that belonged to me home.  which, by the way, was not much.  But that monday, the day I got called into the office after seeing oh, about fifteen other people go by, and by people I mean the guys.  and by the guys, I mean the welders and the painters and the mechanic and the installers.  People who do not come up to the office.  and I was the naive one.  I just watched them and wondered what was going on.  wondering if this was some kind of company thing.  then I was buzzed in.  and found out what had happened.  and what was happening to me.  on one hand, I was a little scared.  this was my first job after graduation that was in my field of study.  on another hand, I was not so scared.  this had just happened a little over a year ago.  and on another hand, (yes I have three hands) I was relieved. elated. ecstatic.  It took all of my will to calmly go back and sit at my desk and tell Berneice "thank you for everything you have taught/done for me but I'm not coming back tomorrow."  when instead I wanted to grab the keys to my jeep and jump and shout and sing and laugh at everyone else who had to go back to the horrid place tomorrow.  I didn't even tell anyone else "bye."  I didn't feel any connection to that place and was glad to be rid of it.

but flash forward to today.  I am still currently unemployed.  and while I am loving it, and learning a lot from it.  i still have no clue what i am doing.  what am i doing with my life? i have been on a few job interviews but (obviously) have not gotten a job.  it is so discouraging, let me tell you. but i must keep on moving forward.  i do little things here and there every once in a while.  i get to go and pretend i work at this great coffee house. Second Street Bean.  just in case anybody wants to go there.  and while i am trying to find a job, i will find what makes me happy.  because i believe that you can have a job that makes you happy at the same time and i will find it.  right now I consider my job to kevin's wife and take care of him and our house and our animals.  after all, i was created to be his helper.  (please go read Created to be his helpmeet it is such a great book and so inspiring!)

i wonder how many other people feel like this right now.

also, i came up with the title to this post as i realized i do not know what i am doing on typepad.  i can't get any pictures to load!

I'm in tennessee!

yep. I am here up north in Tennessee.  Kevin, Kendall (brother-in-law), Jared (cousin-in-law), and I left our little town behind last night and traveled to Tennessee!  We got up here to Gatlinburg around 8:30.  I am such a lucky girl.  the three guys all sat in the front on the bench seat while I got the entire back seat to myself to sleep.  aren't they the best? haha.  once we got up here, we ate breakfast at cracker barrel, so yummy! then we traveled for a little bit and then stopped at a knife museum.  which was incredibly boring yet incredibly interesting at the same time, if that is possible.  After we (finally) left there, we continued on our way and drove through pigeon forge and on to gatlinburg! it was still fairly early, so the first thing we did was go straight to ober gatlinburg.  this place holds good memories for my hubby and his brother.  but oh my goodness, there was snow! like for snow skiing.  something I'm not so interested in, but still kind of surprising.  the boys wanted to try to snowboard but it is closed until tomorrow for some reason.  we did go down the slide thingie with the sleds.  I'm not sure what all of that is called.  I do know it is fun, and we did it twice, and it is very scary too.  my favorite part is riding on the ski lift! I love looking down and riding peacefully up the mountain.  after being there for several hours, we finally made our way back down and drove to pigeon forge and got a hotel room.  which made me a very happy girl because I got to take a shower and wash my hair.  it was all icky from sleeping in the car all night.  and now I am currently sitting in the dark while the boys sleep.  hopefully they'll wake up soon because I'm hungry. 

this trip was pretty spur of the moment and I am having a total blast!  I didn't expect it to be as cold as it is.  luckily I packed jeans instead of shorts!  and I did get a cute beanie.  it's purple striped.  I'm not sure what the rest of the night holds, or when we will be going home.  I do know I miss my little Roscoe baby.

one day I will figure out how to get pictures up here.  pictures are more fun to look at than read my words. :)

hello monday

hello rainy day - it rained all night and looks like it will be raining all day.  it sure does make me want to have a nice lazy day!

hello kevin - he comes home tomorrow!  so excited with what all we will do!

hello garden - last week, my brother-in-law and I began on my garden!  I can't wait to work the ground a little more!

hello pictures - finally, I am getting around to organizing and editing pictures from our wedding and honeymoon.  and by editing, I mean looking up tutorials on the internets because I have no idea what I'm doing!

hello exercise - a friend and I had our first exercise date yesterday afternoon. we walked three miles! three! go us :) we vowed to both keep it up.  unfortunately it's raining, so now walking in the park today!

current obsession.

ok. I have a confession to make: I'm in love! Like, obsessively in love.  As in I was up past midnight last night thinking of it.  Who is this new love of my life you may be wondering? The name of my obsession is mint, basil, lavender, chives, lettuce, and strawberries!  My obsession began last year when I bought an herb starter kit from Lowe's.  It came with five herbs to start as seeds and grow.  I can't remember all of what I had, but I dos till have a pot of basil and a pot of chives.  The other three plants died.  I was not very good at taking care of these little plants, mainly because I had no idea what I was doing.  Sometime during the summer, I discovered a wonderful little mint plant at the grocery store and thus my love affair with mint began!  I had wonderful dreams of mint tea and mojitos for the rest of my life, all from this tiny little mint plant.  Then it died.  Fortunately, I realized this was not my fault when I noticed these little bugs had taken over my plant.  Sadness.  So I worked hard at keeping my basil and chives alive for the winter and now it is the very beginnings of spring and I'm feeling that itch.  This year, I vowed, would be different.  I planned to devote my time and my love to theses lovely plants and get them to thrive!  So after, some research and reading of mistakes most beginners make, I did something that I knew was right but at the same time it felt so wrong.  I gathered all my little herb plants and began to prune them. The basil, the lavender, and the mint! Oh the wonderful refreshing smell and taste of the mint is my favorite.  This is proof of my love for them.  Last year, as I was growing them, I didn't think I should prune them like I had always read.  I wanted them to just grow and get big and flourish.  To a beginner, cutting them seems like a big step backwards.  I read on what to do with the herbs once I clipped them and found many uses I could do. I could dry them and use them later on. Or I could hang them in bunches as aromatic decorations.  Then I stumbled upon this little article on Pinterest about how herbs can be beneficial to chickens.  I knew then what I would do.  I have a good friend who has several pet chickens and when they are laying eggs, guess what I get!  You got it, fresh eggs.  I love these wonderful things.  There is no comparison to these eggs.  I can't get enough!  So I took my small bounty of clippings that I got from my plants and laid them in a strip of burlap ribbon, rolled it up, and tied it with some twine.  Then I took this little herb bundle to my friend to lay out for her chickens!  One thing I am looking forward to about growing things is the giving.  It is the giving back to others and knowing you're giving an awesome tasting treat!  So while I understand that it is important to prune your herbs, it was so nervewracking for me to do so!  But, I sure am glad that I was brave enough to do it because my plants are flourishing even better than before!  I don't understand it, but hey I'm not complaining!  I've got to run, but I will keep you updated as this season progresses!

tuesday at the bean

Good morning!

Today is Tuesday so that means that Kevin has left again to go to work.  I took the opportunity to come to the Second Street Bean and use their super fast internet. Oh, and to get delicious coffee! I mean, I love my coffee.  But there is just nothing like sitting in a coffee shop drinking coffee and eating a cinamon roll.  Both of which are very scrumptious.  If I don't get a job soon, I think I will begin to come and knit here maybe weekly.  My aunt belongs to a stitching group in Dallas and they meet at a coffee shop every Friday.  There's just something so classic about meeting at a coffee shop to do creative things, don't you think? 

Well, I'm going to have to run!  I have things to do!

elizabeth