thankfullist

a lot of my friends have been blogging lists of things they're grateful for. (for which they're grateful. ugh. my inner english teacher is hard to shake.) so i'm hopping on the bandwagon and creating my own.

here are ten of the things that have brought me joy in september:

1. a handsome and kind husband who is glad to be married to me even though i have pcos and may never bear children. this is a pretty big deal for a guy who has always dreamed of having a big crazy family. he got the big & crazy part ... just all bundled up in me, not spread out among 5 kids :). i am so glad he loves me. and he shows it all the time.

(tired after a long hike. not cranky. promise.)

2. this week, i'm grateful for aunt diane, who took us out for dinner (our first dinner out for months) and drove us all over town to find the spider. God is so good to let us have some family close by! she treated us to such a nice meal and she was so kind to us (as always). it's nice to be spoiled.

3. mark driscoll and mars hill church, who make their awesome solid teaching available free online. they make me laugh, help me learn, and bring me close to the place where God can speak to me. they even make me face the ugliness within that i try to hide, and give me a kick in the pants when i need it.

4. ann ortlund's book 'the disciplines of the beautiful woman.' it's pretty old school, but God used it to show me the beauty and necessity of being disciplined in all areas of my life ... especially in the area of my faith. thanks to the wisdom she shares, i've learned to prioritize & protect my time with the Lord - a huge blessing to my soul.

5. my new phone and unlimited texting. i love love love being able to text with patrick when we're apart. he's my favorite person ever, so being able to stay in touch with him all the time completely rocks. also, i have the cutest new ring tones. my current texting tone is "froggy night" and i'm in love with it. imagine a frog, sitting on a front porch, plucking a guitar. that's my ringtone.

6. caitlin, victoria, and chrissy. sigh. such good friends. they've made us feel SO welcome here in thunder bay. caitlin has even gotten up early to drive us around on errands, and stayed up late to do the same. she's the kind of friend you'd call when you're stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere at 3 in the morning ... and you'd know she'd be glad you did.

victoria, caitlin, & moi.
and chrissy.

7. delightful, surprising snail mail! my loving far-away friends and family have kept in touch by sending me cards, letters, stickers, notepaper, and even a dvd! it means a lot when people stay in touch, so three hundred cheers for mailers!! (i'm really bad at this, but i'm trying to improve! if you've gotten anything from me in the mail, know that i'm working hard to tell you i love you.)

8. my kitchen. i love to cook. it makes me happy to feed people. and because i have a bar-window-pass-through thingy, i can hang out with my friends and make them food too. hurray!

9. my ... ugh, it's hard to say it, but i really am grateful for it ... job. okay okay, i don't like telemarketing. i think telemarketers are even more universally disliked than lawyers and politicians ... especially when they're doing surveys on behalf of lawyers and politicians. and i completely understand why. i'd hang up on me too. but i am grateful, because it's paying the bills and after 2 months without work, we've accumulated a lot of those. (also, i made up a superhero alter-ego, RockSolid, who can bear the brunt of telemeanness. RockSolid wears a teflon suit and everything just rolls off. :). my identity is in Jesus, and RockSolid is like my imaginary personification of that. because i'm crazy.)

10. psalm 4:8. God has kept us safe even though our neighbourhood is less than peaceful. you can check out patrick's blog for details of The Incident. basically, we were scared, there was violence, and none of it touched us. *grateful prayer.*

so there you have it. my thankfullist. make your own, send it to me, and we can all say hurray together.
xoxo.

the spider

for the past month, patrick and i have been taking apple cider vinegar: two teaspoons in water, three times a day. we (affectionately?) call it spider, much to the electrification of our company, who hear us nonchalantly asking one another if we would like a spider.

mama c & papa g recommended it to us, and passed along a book outlining all the good benefits that come from taking daily doses of spider. their friend, a nutritionist, recommended it to them. when i read the book, i kind of laughed. it seemed like snake oil - full of magical promises to cure everything from warts to acne to dandruff.

but i figured - why not give it a shot? the most it will cost is a few bucks and a few puckers.

so we hoofed it to bulk barn and bought some organic, unfiltered apple cider vinegar. apparently it's got all the goodness in it when it's kind of cloudy and murky looking. mmm, delicious. ( i didn't - and don't - really think it's delicious).

it's pretty puckery, but it gives the nicest little flare in the belly first thing in the morning that totally wakes me up. :) patrick takes his mixed with pure maple syrup in a glass of water; i take mine in a shot and chase it with water. we're both wimps in our own way: he tries to sweeten the bitter, and i try to get it over with as quickly as possible.

within a week or two, my skin had cleared up - completely. acne is one of the most annoying aspects of pcos, and i've been trying to manage it with medication which helped, but didn't totally eliminate it. not only was my skin acne-free, it was smooth and i didn't need lotion ... wahoo! i haven't changed anything else in my lifestyle, so i think it's safe to credit the spider with the improvement.

after a few weeks of enjoying luscious new skin, i started wondering if this has helped other people with pcos. so i googled, and found that there is a TON of research on the spider's effects on pcos ... all of them ranging from mildly to wildly positive.

so i'm pretty pumped about the spider. our bulk barn ran out, and patrick's aunt drove us to a health store on the far side of town. we bulked up and bought three bottles - which should hold us over for a while!! :) we had to go for a few days without it, and i really noticed the difference. boo to that. when we noticed our supply running thin, patrick stopped taking it and let me spin it out as long as possible. i am married to a very good man.

anyway, i'm totally not a remedy-of-the-month-er, but i thought i'd share. i know i've got a few pcosy readers, and i'd love to know how it goes, if you try it. as for me, i give it two thumbs up (i'd give it more, but that's all i have).

slim

i was feeling sick tonight, and craving something salty. i really didn't want to walk through the dark and marshy shortcut to superstore, nor did i want to take the 4km trip on the sidewalk at 1030 at night. i was sick. i just wanted to stay home. but i really really wanted something salty to settle my stomach.

so i made some slim.

(slim: the luscious marriage of whipped potato and flour, fried in butter and topped with salt.)

one minute i was standing in my kitchen, woefully nauseous and homesick ... the next minute i was sitting in nana's kitchen, taking a piece of slim off her brown-rimmed stoneware plates. she was standing at the stove in a 1970s-print apron, flipping more delectable goodness on a cast-iron skillet. my sisters and brother and i were not arguing, reading archies, or breaking the spines of l.m. montgomeries ... we were eating. silently, saltily, butterily. and thanking God in our innermost hearts that we had an old-fashioned irish grandmother who was dishing up platefuls of piping hot potato magic, as fast as we could eat it.

i love you, nana. thanks for making me feel better, a thousand miles and twenty years away.

cringing in my soul

i have a confession to make. i am terrified of creepy plane noises.
not ordinary flying passenger planes, but horrible zoomy rumbly russian-spy-sounding planes.
(patrick pooh-poohs this fear and tells me that no russian spy planes are allowed in cdn air space. well of course they aren't ... but i bet the good ones get in anyway. that's their job, right?)

(these are russian planes. let me know if you see them coming.)

i often have spectacular nightmares that i go outside and look up at the sky and suddenly it bursts into action, filled with planes zooming and shooting at each other. and i know that canada is at war and i need to join the resistance.
(this usually ends up with me on a top secret mission and running from the bad guys who have invaded halifax.)

when i was little, my mom babysat a twisted kid who told me that a ghost lived in the pencil sharpener, and that airplanes would come and get me if i was outside playing when they flew overhead.

i'm no shrink, but i think this may have something to do with it. i'm not afraid of pencil sharpeners, but freaky non-passenger planes do make my heart beat fast.

when i watched pearl harbour, i completely knew what they were feeling when the planes attacked. i've felt it, dreamed it, feared it.

once, when we were living in toronto, a huge group (squadron?) of not-normal planes zoomed over the city, flying really low. they were so loud, and so low, and all of a sudden i imagined bombs plummeting to the ground. my heart didn't stop pounding for hours. i kept waiting to hear someone with a blackberry yell that we'd been attacked. (clearly, it didn't happen).


apparently, there was an airshow nearby, and these planes were on their way. ugh.

anyway, this morning a loud, abnormal plane circled by and i cringed. i thought writing about it might help.

it probably didn't, but now you know my secret fear.

settling in

we've been in thunder bay for three weeks now. high time for a post.

my first day here, i found a job. i was elated!
my first day of the job, i realized it was not for me. it was icky. dirty. gross. and i was supposed to spend 40 hours a week there. couldn't.
so i quit. and when they asked why, i told them the truth. even though i didn't want to hurt their feelings.
and they didn't even pay me for the day i worked.

so i've been looking for a job ever since. i don't even remember all the places i applied. haven't gotten ONE call yet. yowza. patrick too.

in between job hunts, we've been having a lot of fun. in the past 3 weeks we've had awesome company:
julie & mrs frank, mr rodgers, patrick's aunt diane, aunt chris & cousin erica, the bechards & bouchers, the clarks, and the brundages and chrissy :). some visits were super-short, some were nice & long, but all were fun. our little apartment loves having people over.

we've also: climbed mt. mckay, walked at trowbridge falls, hiked in sleeping giant provincial park, and centennial park. we've listened to mark driscoll, watched a movie (prince of persia: only watch it if you can sit by someone who will warn you when the snakes show up. shudder.), played board games, and made postcards. we've gone to meetings, gone to the cottage, gone for long walks in the cold (this city is chilly!), tracked a missing parcel all over town ... we've been busy and happy.

today patrick is doing school stuff and i'm prowling for jobs online. and i'm blogging, because i've got a few seconds alone. (NOT that i'm complaining. being busy keeps me from missing you too much.)

i've got some postcards ready to mail, and i plan to take a walk this afternoon. maybe i'll walk through the mall and pass out resumes everywhere. applying online doesn't seem to be panning out for me. :). i guess i'm just more awesome in person.
kidding.

so now that you know thunder bay is awesome and fun, here are some things to make fun of:
motors & muscles. on our first day here, we saw a parking lot rally where people showed off their bikes and their lifting skills. there were lots of men with ponytails and women with bicep tattoos. i felt my neck turning red just watching.
the 80s. we saw 2 couples, separately, where the men were rocking puffy, feathery mullets, and the women had skyscraper bangs. one of the ladies had crimped hair. (crimped! is that the word?) it was great.
our neighbours. we have the strangest neighbours. the apartment building across from us houses people who love to yell out the windows at people on the street. and then, instead of using the door, just climb in and out of their living room window ... on the second storey. frequently.
scary nighttime yelling. during our first week, we woke up to the sound of a group of men yelling. it was indistinguishable at first, and then i heard "stop him! he's got a gun!" i didn't know if it was a fantasy league, larping, or real scary bad guys. i didn't want to look out the window, so i just cuddled closer to patrick.
last night we heard a breakup in stereo, just under our window. the guy called the girl a really horrible name, and stormed away. she yelled "shawn! come back! come back!" and patrick laughed, and said, "if he called me that, i wouldn't be yelling for him to come back!" good riddance for sure.

we miss our nephew and nieces so bad it hurts. wish we could be there for max-a-thousand's birthday today. hope he has a great one.
i miss my esl class. my awesome friends. my sweet sisters. my amazing parents. my paycheque.
pray for us. we need it.
we love you.

a quick hello!

today we finally got the internet hooked up in our apartment in thunder bay!
we've had a fun week offline (with daily visits to the university to keep in touch).
here are some highlights, about which i'll blog more later:
-bikes & muscles
-the 80s are back (or still here ...)
-shoppers rug mart
-pretzels, postcards, & patrick
-my icky job

i've got to run, because we're expecting friends any minute. but i wanted to say hi, thanks for still checking out my blog even though i haven't been on forever.

love you.

where i am now

last summer, patrick and i lost our baby. it was really tough. we'd been so excited. we were about 11 weeks along.

we knew it was a high-risk pregnancy, due to my pcos (polycycstic ovarian syndrome). still, it felt like all the lights in the world went out when we lost our baby.
when we lost our jobs a few weeks later, it didn't make our sorrow easier to bear. in fact, it seemed pretty overwhelming. after a summer spent in bed rest and then losing our baby, to lose our jobs and apartment on top of that felt like a cruel punishment.

we moved to fairview, got jobs, and i struggled through my last year of school. and it was a struggle. i just wanted to curl up and ignore the world, to mourn my loss, to cry. i hated going to school, watching other people get pregnant and carry babies, watching other people find jobs and live in nice places.

i can see now that my eyes were on the very small picture. i know i needed to mourn – and i did – and i leaned heavily on God and patrick and was carried through. i was so relieved to be done – done! - and i took a part time job so i could rest. i'd worked 6 days a week since january, and patrick wanted me to have a break.

before i applied for jobs, i asked God for some specific things. i wanted a job with:
-part time hours, so i could rest.
-sundays and tuesdays off, so i could still teach sunday school and esl.
-graveyard shift, so i could be on the same type of schedule as patrick.
and i got them all when i was hired at superstore, working in joe fresh. i worked wednesday through friday, and got midnight dates with patrick on our shared day off (monday). God had answered, and it was perfect. on top of all that, instead of listening to the two-hour mix tape that superstore blares, i started listening to sermons while i worked.

in an 8 hour shift, i usually got to listen to 6 sermons. it probably sounds really boring, but in reality, it was wonderful. i mostly listened to mark driscoll, sometimes rob bell - both dynamic speakers who always talk about Jesus. my mind was engaged, and not with my usual topic (myself), but with Jesus. i opened boxes and arranged clothes with my hands, but with my thoughts, i was deep into the Bible.
and without my even realizing it, my sorrow started to change.

i think, at the beginning of the summer, if God had asked me, “what do you want Me to give to you?” i would have said, “a baby.”

but now, what i want most is God. all of Him, always. i want Jesus to live through me. i want to do the good works He has prepared for me to do. i want to be close to Him, to delight in Him, and to acknowledge Him in all my ways.

what i mean is, i don't want a baby more than i want God's plan for my life.
He truly has directed my path.

i'm content to trust Him. i find my joy in Him. i just want to know Him more. and that's where i am now.

twelve thousand steps

i'm still doing 12000 steps per day.
but i've been ignoring the scale because i'm afraid that it will discourage me. :)

i want to keep going. having my pedometer to keep track is such a fun little way to get my exercise in, and it makes me conscious of being active - and gives me motivation to keep at it.

sometimes it seems overwhelming - especially when i've been slogging through the day and haven't gotten a lot of steps and suddenly it's dark out and i've got to ramble all over the city ...

but i'm always glad when i do it. i can go different routes - and i can break it up in big or small chunks - i can listen to music or sermons or just listen to the sounds of the city - i can walk with friends or my sisters or mom or my amazing and handsome husband (my fave!) ...

it's pretty fun. three cheers for my pedometer!

bathroom break

last thursday night i was at work, busily opening boxes and hanging/arranging clothes. i was listening to my ipod, waving at patrick every now and then (he'd been called in to cover another guy's shift, so we got to work together) ... just having an all round good night. (i love when i get to unpack an order - it's a lot of work, but it keeps my mind more engaged than when i'm just straightening and cleaning the department).

so it's a little while after break, and i realize i have to pee. i dash upstairs to the staff washroom, which really creeps me out. sometimes it seems like i can hear someone else in there, but i'm all alone. i blame it on the vents, but i have no idea.

i reach for the t.p. ... and there isn't any!! and i was totally alone - in spite of the freaky sounds - and i've never ever ever met anyone else in the bathroom. there are only 2 other girls on nightshift, and i had seen them both making bathroom trips before me.

thankfully, i had my phone (it's my ipod too - i don't randomly take my phone to the bathroom like a textaholic jr. high kid) and patrick's boss had called earlier in the day, so the store phone # was on my phone ...
eventually, i got patrick, and he came and rescued me.

my knight in shining toilet paper.

boo to pcos

pcos is kicking my butt.

inspired by my brother in law, i got a pedometer and have walked 12000 steps/day for a week. it's been fun, and i've felt pretty pumped that i'm probably doing something good for my body.

knowing my pcos-iness, i didn't want to hope that my week of walking made me lose weight ... but i at least hoped that i'd be able to maintain.

i freaking gained five pounds. ugh.

anyway, i'm going to keep walking. i've loved it, and it feels like a little victory every day when i see 12000 on my screen :). if you have any words of encouragement, send them my way. i need 'em.

abiding,

my cousin gwen recently blogged about john 15, where Jesus tells His followers that He is the vine, and we are the branches. He says that when we abide in Him, we will bear fruit.
this makes sense. if the branches break away from the vine, they have no root, no depth, and can't produce anything ... they're dead.

so it's the middle of the night, and i'm reading her blog. i worked all night yesterday and got sunburned all day today. so i'm hot and sleepy and not very bright. but her post made me think: how do we "abide in Him"? if i am a branch, how do i make sure i'm abiding in the vine?

so i opened up john 15 and there it was ... the answer to my middle-of-the-night deep thoughts.

Jesus says "abide in my love. if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love [...] this is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you." (john 15:9, 10, 12)

and, as a preacher i heard recently said, loving one another isn't having sweet feelings for one another. it's an active, doing-giving-caring sort of love. the old-school translators captured this feeling when they used the word charity to describe this kind of love. sacrificial doing. thinking about others.

so when we love each other ... charitably ... we're abiding in Him. so our relationships and actions with other people really really do count. kindness and consideration and service all help keep us thriving in spirit.

which is a pretty awesome way for things to be. to be productive sections of the vine, branches don't have to be deep thinkers (clearly ... zzz!), professionally religious, painfully good, intensely smart ...
it is simultaneously much bigger and much simpler than that: we need to love each other like Jesus loved us: actively, sacrificially, and obeying the Father.

marriage review

patrick keeps writing book reviews, so i decided to write a marriage review. the opinions below are inevitably biased, mushy, honest, and all mine.

summary:
overall, patrick is the most amazing husband ever. i can't think of anything better to wish for a couple than that they have a marriage like ours.
we got married four years ago and things have been getting better ever since. when we first started off, we thought it was spectacular. and it was.

things i don't like:

we did have some rough spots, getting used to each other (and getting to know each other! 6 months of long distance doesn't really make a couple instantly, flawlessly compatible). i had to learn that every action isn't loaded with significance. life isn't a short story, so i can't expect every moment to be hugely revelatory. sometimes we both do things out of character, or do things that don't express what we really feel. (we - i - had a few drama moments.)

about me: i can be too needy and dramatic. i don't like this about myself. i'm trying to laugh more and pose less. i think it's helping.
about patrick: he can withdraw and be distant, and he can give horrible compliments. um - this one isn't really something i don't like. well - it's hard to categorize. sometimes patrick says things that sound like shocking insults but were meant well. (i'm practicing forgiveness, so i won't record them.) luckily, i didn't hear the first one until after the knot was firmly tied, so we set sail on blissful seas. :)

(things i like)
mostly, we had some really big bonuses going for us.

we both love God, worship Jesus, and believe the Bible. so in the deepest core of our hearts, we're building on the same stuff. the same things are really important and beautiful to us, and we have the same basic blueprint for living. we want, above all, to bring glory to God. and that works out in the little things, which means putting each other first, and trying to forgive quickly.

also, we speak similar love languages. words of affirmation build both of us up, and make us feel especially loved more than anything else. also, i tend to speak the love language of acts of service - which, awesomely, turns out to be patrick's other love language. (when i'm overflowing with love for patrick, i do laundry, or clean up. then he's all like 'oooh, you love me!' and we both feel mushy. weird, but it works for us.)

as well, we love to read. we've read a lot of books on marriage and sex and intimacy, which have helped us to be aware that love needs to be made. (HAHA BEST freudian slip ever. i'm leaving it in.)
what i mean is, love doesn't just happen when two people who dig each other get married. we have to deliberately nurture it and plan it. like, if we want to wear clean clothes, we have to deliberately do the laundry. they don't just happen. and if we want to eat, we have to cook, and do dishes.
same with love. if i want a snuggly marriage, i've got to be a warm person that someone would want to snuggle with. if i want openness, i've got to be willing to be open too - scary as it may be! if i want patrick to feel adored and amazing (because he is), it isn't enough to just assume he'll know that i feel that way about him. i've got to show him and tell him.

on top of all that, we've got a lot of the same interests. we like to read, write, and talk. we love to cook together and have company (although i like any number of people, and patrick prefers small groups). we like lame youtube videos and quirky cartoons. we like long drives up the coast and serious conversations. we're pretty dorky and incredibly happy. we're as comfortable with each other as we are alone, so we never need to pretend to be someone we're not. this is a deep and awesome goodness.

rating:
the main characters are stellar and conflicts are resolved. i give this marriage 5/5 sunset drives to peggy's cove.