bad mood.

i am not in a good mood today.

while out and about in the city i found myself re-hashing my life and what things are not going well (why am i unemployed? why are we still in this city? why is it hot?). coming back i promptly fell asleep on the couch. luke woke me up and moved me into the bedroom and we awoke much too late in soaking wet sheets. the bus isn't coming to take us to the grocery store. nothing is getting done. and i cannot stop sweating.

i'm in a bad mood.

as i was laying on the couch sweating and complaining, my wonderful husband came over, sat next to me, and rubbed my leg. he looked at me with those sweet eyes and said:

"wifey, i'm glad we don't have a guinea pig*."
"why?"
"because it would be dead."

nothing like putting a bad mood in perspective.

*we've been thinking about getting a guinea pig. however, we would need to wait until the fall, because apparently, guinea pigs are very susceptible to heat stroke...

4-miles

WE MADE IT!

summer snapshots

nothing says summer like a hot, humid night, standing barefoot in the kitchen with the windows open, fans blowing, and cutting up strawberries for strawberry shortcake. luke would rather have ice cream than baked goods, but i like to bake, so this week when we ran out of ice cream, i decided to take the opportunity to make strawberry shortcake for dessert. it was delicious.

mr. williams gave me some squash, lima beans and peppers our of his garden this week. he's having trouble with the deer eating his tomatoes, too. we all are. but we did enjoy the fruits of his labor (yum, squash chips), and hopefully soon we'll have some of our own. When we got back we found several spaghetti squash growing, along with some watermelons, okra and pumpkins. gardening is pretty exciting.

every baseball game the dc lottery pays for two lucky fans who are sitting way in the top sections to move down into the seats right behind home plate. every game luke and i attend we look at those lucky fans up on the big screen as clint (the announcer) introduces them to the masses, and beth and kenny (two of the nats pack) escort them down to their new seats. every game we think "we wish that was us...".

well, my friends, let me tell you a story. last week luke and i went to a normal nationals game, bought our normal $5 tickets and sat in our normal, incredibly far away (but still fun) seats. in our nats shirts, we anxiously awaited the start of the game, i filled out my score book, and we watched as the first batter came up to bat. then, out of the corner of our eye, we saw the camera guy come up the stairs and look over to section 401. then over to section 402. "oohhh" we thought "the lucky seat upgrade!" we fought the urge to say "us! us! pick us!" but instead concentrated on the game and keeping score like nothing weird was happening. then we saw clint. he walked up the stairs and looked around. he searched in section 402. "there are no fans over there!" we whispered to each other. "he should look over here!" as if he heard us, his head turned. he smiled and walked over to us. "how are you doing today, folks?" he asked, with his cheesy grin. "can we give you some seats to the diamond club?"

yes. we were the lucky seat upgrade of the game. after talking to clint about moving to different seats, the nats, his life history, our life history, he introduced us to the masses at nats park. told everyone how we were fans, and how they picked us because of our nats shirts and because of how we kept score, and then beth (who is our hero, because apparently she was the one who told clint to pick us) and kenny led us down to our lucky seats. so close that we could see the the sweat spot on the homeplate umpire's back get bigger as the game went on, see the ball release from the pitchers hand, yell with confidence at the ump when he called a ball a strike (or vice-versa, depending on who was batting), and cheer for ryan zimmerman to get a home run and feel like he might actually hear us this time.



it.was.awesome.

along with this lucky seat upgrade came padded seats and $35 to spend on food (which was ordered from and brought right to your seat...) so we sat in those padded seats

and drank (crazy expensive) frozen margaritas out of ridiculously large nats glasses.

and just felt pretty lucky and happy, in general, that we got to experience the dc lottery natstown lucky seat upgrade.

so that's my story for today.

tonight whitney and i are running a bastille day 4-mile race. i'll let you know if we live to tell about it.

summer snapshots

it's so hot in our apartment that yesterday we left the butter out of the refrigerator for about 2 hours after breakfast and it melted. and our thermostat is most definitely maxed out at 88. but i'm pretty sure it is hotter than 88 in here.

though i was thinking about it the other morning as i was getting ready to complain about the heat and i realized that luke and i may never live in a house with ac again...or at least it may be a very, very long time before we do. so i reckon it's time to stop complaining and start getting used to it.

anthony was in town this week and whitney came over and we spent the evening cooking dinner together, laughing, playing scattergories, eating ice cream cones, talking about old memories and making new ones. i love having old friends in town! there's something so comfortable about old friends.

side-note: mint in a salad is amazing. try it. you'll love it.

we've been spending a lot of time with this one, and it has been glorious.

i honestly cannot say enough about how much i love this woman. we went to a baseball game together last t-shirt tuesday. here are some snapshots:


it rained. hard. and so we snuck here under the stairs, after the lightning called the game and forced everyone down onto the concourse. the storm was quick, but fierce. afterwords there was a lot of lightning behind the scoreboard and some beautiful clouds above the field.

we've also been gardening in our community garden, which i find incredibly delightful. i like how a guy just walked by today and handed luke some celery. and how in my garden i have swiss chard from one plot and tomato plants from another. how i know my garden neighbor will be getting married in two weeks in the mountains, how we met a neighbor in our apartment complex because her plot is diagonal from ours, and how mr. williams and i share our gardening woes when things don't grow exactly as they should (though, he humors me, his garden looks amazing...).
(the last picture is of luke spraying a bird, i kind of liked the picture...)

i guess community is the word of the day, because i realized today how much i love the unique community at our church. i walked downstairs to hear a woman speaking spanish with a new family from columbia, and a man speaking chinese to a visitor from china. i love the way that pretty much any person who is asian who visits our church will probably be able to speak their native language with someone during our community lunch after church. how pretty much any visitor from around the world would be able to find someone who has been to their home country--and it's not because it's a big church (we only have 100 members...) it's because we are lucky enough to go to a church that cares about the world and therefore attracts people who are from all around the world or who served all around the world. it's an international body of christ, right here in washington, dc.

it's vbs this week at washington international, by the way. i'm teaching 4 and 5 year olds. it should be a blast.

(parentheses)

today was a beautiful day. it was windy and sunny and warm. it was a day where the air flowed so freely through our open windows that it didn't even matter that we don't have air conditioning.
i spent the beautiful day in the garden where the sky was blue and the dirt was brown and the plants were green. all of the plants. including the blanket of weeds that covered the garden. how is it that weeds are having no problem springing up everywhere, and yet my green beans are refusing to sprout? on a happy note, though, i do love the smell of hay. even if it doesn't help with the weeds as much as i thought it would (read: it doesn't help at all).


time in the garden is usually spent thinking. today i spent it both thinking and listening to npr. i've been restless lately. as if given the chance i could sprout wings and fly somewhere and be perfectly ready to adjust and live my life. HA. i keep saying that i can't wait to go abroad, to live in a slum where i will be forced to be dependent on God every day for everything. but today i was thinking about how God is really forcing me (emotionally) to depend on Him NOW. i need to remember that i am in desperate need of God always. and that i'm in dc right now because He still has things for me here (like learning to depend on Him, maybe?) and lots of other things too.

like whitney! whitney is here for the summer! and other friends and sister friends are visiting!

and i do love downtown dc in the night, the monuments are incredibly beautiful at night (we need to go downtown at night more).


and i have so many opportunities to serve and love the community around me here and now! and i have a billion more beautiful sunsets to witness from our bedroom window!


God is slowly teaching me to embrace this time of waiting (why is He always trying to teach me patience and why will my stubborn self never learn it?). this time of transition...i'll keep you updated. (i guess i didn't have much to say, i just realized it was halfway through june already...when did that happen?)


(this is just a picture of my weirdo husband. i don't know why, but i am still in love with him.)

i've used a lot of parentheses in this post.

good.

i only blogged once in may. fail.

we just came back down from the mountains. then we came up to dc. now we're home, and it's hot. really hot. and it's the first day in june. this is going to be a long summer. luke and i were talking about the hot and i said:

"well, at least it's still at the point where i still get a little chilly at night and have to use a sheet. one day it will always be hot..."

"like when we're abroad..." luke answered.

"oh, yeah...that too. i was talking about like august..."

i forget sometimes when i'm complaining about the heat that we're going to be moving to a place where the yearly average temperatures are in the 80s...

anyways, point being we just came home. home, where it's hot and noisy and i spend most of my days gardening and talking to old Mr. Williams who gives me cold water and gardening advise and reminds me of my Pappap. i like our community garden, and the way it's green and brown and smells of hay and mulch and compost. most days, i feel like i belong here and i'm quite happy.

i wanted to share some pictures with you from our trip. mainly because the mountains make me feel closer to God, and i want to show you pictures because it reminds me of feeling closer to God. when i'm away, at the mountains or at the ocean, i have no problem waking up early to stare at the mountains and think about how awesome God is. so i spent my time this week on rocking chairs with God, hiking through the mountains with family, running/walking/exploring with sisters and watching way too many bones episodes. we played games, made s'mores, ate food, walked around, petted our dog and watched sunsets and sunrises. it was a pretty good week.

we started out the week at Christie's graduation. it was a pretty time, and they had stickers for the whole family to wear!


then we headed up to the mountains. where they had bluegrass music (that little girl totally rocked out the entire time...)

and steel drum bands from the local high school playing in the community square (kind of random, but they were awesome).

this was definitely the view from our porch (see how it's easy to worship God while looking at that?)
and this is Christie playing the uke on a rocking chair while looking at the view from our house (i seriously have the most talented sisters. ever. they played and sang on that porch like nothing else...)
then we drove/hiked to see all of boone. and it was pretty.

and the next day we went adventuring (down some pretty steep paths...) to look for waterfalls.

(don't we look like adventurers?)

and we found a lot of them (but the pictures do not do them justice).

(did i mention that the view from our porch looked like THIS?!).

we watched the sun set...




and the sun rise*...


and we went on more hikes to the very tops of mountains.





then we got all gussied up for a nice dinner.


and we watched the moon rise. (seriously, the moon was HUGE.)


and then we watched the sun rise again.

(that cloud above the sun is definitely about to catch on fire...)

and after all of that perfectness i got to go watch Abby get married.

yes, it was a good week.


*my mom and i got up wicked early to go find the perfect spot to watch the sunrise on the blue ridge parkway. we found some gorgeous photo spots, but when we got back to the house my mom realized that you could see it perfectly fine from our sun room. the second set of sunrise pictures was taken from the house. but i'm still glad i got to chase the sunrise with my mom.