The plight of an over-protective herding dog

My New Year's resolution (to be boring) is slowly disintegrating. For the first time in my life, I am a refugee. Mine and BJ's new home was hit hard by the storms in Kentucky. We have no power, water, or heat, so we are currently at BJ's parent's house. We're okay, and, thankfully, our church members are doing okay, but it is going to be a very long time before things are back to normal. In fact, it is going to be a very long time before we have electricity.

If you want to hear more about everything, give me a call. For now, I don't feel like recording everything that has happened. Honestly, it is still just a little too hard to believe. Instead, I just want to tell one of the nuggets of a good story that has emerged from this mess.

Tuesday night was the first night without power at our house. Luckily (we thought), the church office still had power, so we settled down on BJ's futton and started watching movies on Netflix. At about 8:00 p.m., however, a tree fell into the transformer in Farmington, and BJ and I were forced to try and find a warm place to sleep. We found a place for us fairly quickly, but the dogs were a bit trickier. Most people in Farmington don't keep housepets, so BJ and I were going to have to lock them up in our frigid laundrey room. However, since we are one of those pathetic couples with no children who treat their dogs like they are their babies (yes, I realize we are that couple), the idea of this traumatized us. Thankfully, our normal dogsetter had a log fireplace and was at home, so we dropped the dogs off there.

At this person's house, there were about 8 people bunkered down (every house with any source of heat was full). Of course, these people were moving around trying to get settled into the one room with a fireplace. Sienna and Gus are pretty attentive, so they knew by this time that something was going on, mommy and daddy were stressed out and gone for the night, and things were dangerous outside. For Sienna, this translated into being neurotically restless. For Gus, this meant he had to save everyone under his domain of protection, which, 0f course, was everyone in the house. Anytime people would go near the door he would start pushing them around and herding them away from danger. It was as if he was saying, "Don't you realize it is dangerous out there?" Poor guy. He has so much responsibility in life.

I wasn't there to see it. I only heard about it after the fact, but it is still nice to know that despite how difficult the past few days have been, Gus is still Gus. He is still trying to take care of everyone, and it is a heavy wieght on those shoulders.

I would like to ask for prayers for everyone in our region. It is an odd thing going through a natural disaster of this magnitude. I don't know how to explain it, but just keep them all in your prayers.

what's up

My blog is supposed to be a record of my life, and it recently occured to me that most people probably wouldn't really know what I am up to if they had read my blog the past couple of months. To remedy this, I've decided to do a quick post that is simply what is going on in my life, so here it is.

• The biggest change in my life is my new job as administrative assistant in the AIMS program at Murray State University. I love my job. Or rather, I love the people I work with, and I am coming to love the job also as it is developing. In the summer, we will have over a hundred high school students on campus taking college courses (I might even teach an art course). It promises to be an interesting summer.

• I have also started a new graduate program this month. I am seeking a Masters in Public Administration. Right now I am taking the introductory course. Basically, I am reading page after page after page analyzing our political system. As a political junky, it is not half so boring as it sounds.

• My favorite time of the week is when BJ lets me proof his sermons. I get to ask him all the hard questions, decipher what he is trying to say but not quite saying, and help him work through arguments that aren't developing. It is challenging and facinating and wonderful. But, shh, don't tell anyone a woman is helping with the sermons.

• Despite being really busy, my main goal is to keep up my art. I know I am pursuing a degree far and away from an MFA, but art is still my first priority. It just unfortunately doesn't make money. So, anyways, I've been working every night on art when I'm done with homework. This is the painting I just finished (please excuse what an awful photograph this is):

So that is life. Work, study, paint. Not a bad life, or at least I'm not going to complain.

Yesterday was a good day.

I think I'll just leave it at that. In fact, I think Sasha Obama can say what I'm thinking better than I can.

One way to describe my brother

This Sunday after church, I spent a little time talking to the brother of a girl with whom I am wanting to set up my brother. I don't usually do this sort of thing, but I think they might be fairly compatible; who knows, they might get at least a friend out of the whole thing. Unfortunately for my match making prowess, my husband is vehemently opposed to all forms of setting people up. Here is the conversation that followed in the car:

me: Her brother thought it was a good idea, also.
bj: Does he know John?
me: No, but Bro is just me with boy parts.

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I got cracked up at what I had said, so I immediately called my brother so that he too could enjoy my clever sense of humor. This was my brother's response while also laughing: "Well that isn't exactly true (stuttering)...but the 'boy parts' part of it is true." He later recommended that I blog on this to embarrass our mother. So of course, (I have always done what my brother tells me to do, even when it is idiotic) I decided to oblige. So here's a post for the specific purpose of making my easily blushable mother blush. hehe

Here's a picture of me and Bro at Christmas. I like it because he looks sinister, and I look short and happy.

New Year's Resolution: Be Boring

I just caught myself making the most alarming comment on a friend's blog. Kayla, one of my best friends from college, was writing about how 2009 has the potential to be the first year in a long while when she won't face a major life change. Here was my comment: "That's my goal for this year: no major life changes. I am so tired of constantly being in adjustment mode. Hopefully, on Dec. 31, 2009, I will be toasting an impressively uneventful year."

How boring could I possibly sound! And, yet, that is exactly how I feel. Here's a short recap of the past 6 years.

2003: graduate from high school, go to college, live in a dorm
2004: start dating BJ, moved to another dorm
2005: get engaged, move to apartment
2006: move in with my brother, then move to mine and BJ's first home, get married, and then find out that I had married a preacher (that was a shocker)
2007: graduate from college and move to Frisco (catching a theme here with the whole moving thing.)
2008: move to Kentucky, for crying out loud (what does that saying even mean? All I know is that I wanted to express the absurdity of this last one), and get a real, full-time, dress nicely sort of job.

So yeah, I'm okay with the mundane this year. I like my house. I don't want to leave it. I'm really, really tired of moving. And I don't want any more major adjustments. Other than taking a few graduate courses, life should rock along smoothly this year. For a girl who hasn't lived in the some place for over a year in 6 years, that is sounding pretty good.

We made it back!!!

It has been a long week and a half since my last post. We have spent most of the time on the road. And, of course, I finally got to see my Texas. It was wonderful. In the past week, I have had a chile relleno, chicken taco salad, stuffed bell-peppers, a whole lot of rice and refried beans, and my favorite fast-food take on Mexican, Taco Bueno. So yeah, it was a good week.

The best part of my week was getting my Christmas present from my mother. Turns out, that crazy lady has spent the past six months slaving aver a quilt for me, and I had no idea. It is a bear paw quilt (my favorite pattern) and it has some of Grandma Farr's fabric in it. I've already got it on our bed upstairs. Here is a picture of it right after I opened it.


Christmas was wonderful, but I can sincerely say that it felt pretty good coming home. This house and this area has become home to us in a short period of time, but as always, one has to leave for a little while to truly realize that where they live has become a home.