OK so I suck at blogging. Sue me. So many things are changing I figured I’d better update sometime. Here they are, in no particular order…

Tim’s a Graduate! YAY!!!! I’m so proud of him. We moved the stuff he had at school down to our new apartment in Indiana, PA last week… it was really exciting to see the place empty. I know you Moms out there will all be laughing at me, but I’m kinda going crazy planning furniture and decor etc….. it’s my first pad! Next week he is coming with the UHaul he got for the rest of his stuff from Allentown. Then he is taking the UHaul over to my apartment and grabbing my large furniture items, such as the table and chairs, bookshelves, couch, desk, dresser, vanity, bed frame, etc. back to our apartment. They will be there for the summer since I can’t take anything to my furnished summer sublet. 

Speaking of sublet - my lease with Franklin West is up @ the end of June, thank GOD. I’m tired of paying this ridiculous rent. My summer sublet? Only $465 a month. I’m pretty happy about that. And I’m only moving 5 blocks, which is also nice. It’s a master bedroom suite in a large house that I’ll be sharing with Pitt grad students. Fine by me. The suite has its own jacuzzi, which is nice…. ;-P

Wedding planning is chugging forward at a kind’ve arduous pace, but can you blame me when I work full time and go to school full time? I have the cake-maker, the Caterer for the reception and the venue, the Church, the Bridesmaids dresses picked out (except for Erin’s) and the wedding rings picked out. I have designed my invitations and RSVP cards. I need a florist, an organist, an A/V technician for the service, a hair stylist, and to get the menu picked out with my caterer. I need to send out the invitations (which will happen the first week of June) and finish the Service Program, and make the place cards. I also need to figure out centerpieces for the tables at the reception, and wedding favors for the guests…. *sigh*. Still in search of awesome dancin’ shoes for the wedding. Lastly, I still need to decide an organ piece to process to. Hopefully one within the organist’s repertoire reach but still badass.:-P Suggestions welcome. No, I’m not doing Greig or Mendelssohn. No way. & not Jesu either. I’m thinking a Toccata or Fugue… unfortunately it needs to be a major key…. or at least resolve to one. Thank goodness Bach is the king of Picardy thirds!

School will be ending soon: third week of June! It’s so close I can just TASTE it. I’m ridiculously excited. I’ve ordered and received my study guide for the boards I have to take for the state - so far it looks easy. I’ll take the Boards in July and go to Steelers Training Camp then, (w00t!) and prepare for the last details of the wedding. This summer is going to absolutely fly by, I swear. So much money to spend. *sigh*

Pray: that my car will hold out until I can afford to tune it up in late June, that the rest of the wedding planning will go a little faster and easier, that I can pay my bills until I get married, and that my allergies will quit torturing me!

Peace out!

sometimes, being a good friend is a real bitch. people don’t bother to realize that the only reason anybody would give a shit enough to tell you that you’re screwing up on something serious is because they freaking care about you. friends stab you in the front, remember?

*prays for return to come REEEEEEEEEEALLY soon*

edit: i also just registered for the Pittsburgh Marathon, as a sports massage therapist. it’s gonna be AWESOME!!!

Sorry I haven’t updated in so long…. very busy. And lazy. But 2009 is turning out to be pretty fantastic! God is blessing me in many ways I can’t even list them all here. I can tell you that he has protected me through potential car accidents, saved me from an exploding glass casserole pan that painted my kitchen (I was about 2′ outside the explosion perimeter), and has provided for me in my new job. 

I’m a clinical massage therapist at a wellness center up in Grove City, so I get to spend a lot of time in the evenings with Tim. I can work full time from Wednesday-Saturday which allows me to continue my schooling, and still make a living. I am an independent contractor, so I don’t really have a boss (which is very nice) and I like the client base I am building up. I am building my business fairly fast, which is good! God has raised me past my business projection faster then I anticipated. 

I am getting married in August now instead of October (w00t!!!!) and God has provided a fantastic job for Tim at a church we both really like! He is the director of youth ministries. Conservative earnings projections for me next year is about $15K, and he is salaried at $30K so we figure between the two of us we’ll be quite comfortable. Not to mention, the church is giving us a kick-a** benefits package! As I have been without health insurance since January, this is extremely important to me. 

Not everything is roses - I’m still really poor and struggling to make it financially, but there’s definitely light at the end of the tunnel. The therapists at the wellness center where I work are meeting together this week to try and weed-out/stop a quack from practicing medicine that she’s not licensed to practice… that will be stressful and hard. Groceries are very expensive these days… 

BUT God has OBVIOUSLY shown His extreme competence @ looking out for me, so I’m going to trust that I’ll make it down the aisle sometime in August with relatively little harm truly done. Details forthcoming. 

*wanders off to go do laundry for the week*

so i just lost my health insurance, effective february first and possibly sooner. and, my boss just gave me a schedule i can’t work. so, i’m about to hand in my notice….. and look for a new job. i’m really scared. i’ve got at least 1 exciting opportunity so far, applying for a sub-contractor position as a massage therapist in a chiropractic office. however, even if i get it, i’ll have to be solely responsible for drumming up my own business to make a living. it’ll take me at least a couple months to start making a living, best-scenario. other then that, i’m just applying left and right to any job i think they’ll look twice at my resumé. if you know of anybody looking for office help, let me know! 

i’m so scared of getting sick. i get sick every winter, and usually have to go to the hospital. if i end up in the hospital without health insurance…. i just don’t know. and then marketing and drumming up business - will i be able to draw enough business to make a living??? i would need at least 10 massages a week to make a living and support myself. that’s a LOT of massages to book. :-/ PRAY FOR ME!

hey all you nerds out there, there’s a new NPR program i’m really excited about. it’s called intelligence squared, and it’s oxford-style policy debate on relevant issues to today, done by experts in the field. today’s debate was on whether or not google was following its original business ethic (and by extension, staying true to its shareholders) when they made a deal to do business in china under chinese censorship laws. the panelists were respected researchers, writers, and professors in the fields of economics, business ethics, journalism, media relations, computer science, etc. it’s really refreshing to know in this world that there is still an iota of intelligence out there and people want to discuss complex issues on a professional basis! just made me grin the whole hour i listened to it.

atm i am on a cleaning rampage in my apartment. i cleaned a lot of stuff i’ve been wanting to get to for WEEKS… it’s nice. i’m determined to leave for christmas break with my apartment spotless!

birthdays are no different the any other day of the year. it’s coincidental that you happened to be born on that day, because that day of the year was around long before you ever were. in our culture, it’s mostly an excuse to be selfish and suspend your normal perimeters of acceptability/expectations are from life and the people around you. this is not a positive thing, but merely you losing ground in your battle to develop something better from yourself. so grow up and get on with it. 

if it’s your birthday today, i’m sorry, this post wasn’t written to you, it was written to myself. 

jingle bells and happy holidays.

you guys probably think i’m going to write about green bean casserole or something, but i’m actually referring to being incredibly sick. yeck. it seems like at least every other time i come home for the holidays, someone in my family is sick with something nasty and passes it around to everybody just in time for the holidays! last time it was a nasty case of strep (remember gargling hard tequila to burn out the infection in the backs of our throats, mollie?). this time, it’s the flu. now this is not the first time the flu has made its rounds at thanksgiving at my parents’ house - i remember our first thanksgiving after we moved here, we all had it so bad that the entire family puked the entire day of thanksgiving and our guest had to leave. hopefully this year won’t be so bad - we all seem to be getting it in succession, and it seems to be a fairly quick bug. first dad had it for about 5 days (but he doesn’t count, because he has a compromised/suppressed immune system anyways) who passed it to christian (who had it for 8 hours) who passed it to elizabeth and mom (who had it for 12 hours) who passed to abby, tim and i (tim had it for approximately 5 minutes, abby is still battling it after 36 hours).

i am currently on hour number 11 with it. however, i feel convalescence coming… all my irregular bones are aching, which is a good sign that that i am having iodine and calcium sucked out of my bones to re-stock my thymus and thyroid. i was lucky - so far i have only puked once. abby is on round 9, i think. abby has always had a pathetic immune system though, having an underdeveloped thymus from being born over a month early and loaded with too many vaccinations too early because she was a sickly child. people, don’t vaccinate your children until they’re like 6 years old and have had plenty of dirt to eat. then pump ‘em in. before the age of 3, and you’re likely to end up with a ruined immune system at best, and autism or mental retardation at worst. 

i’m praying for a quick recovery, because man, do i hurt all over….

my newest project for the next several weeks will be compiling a massage therapy resumé. i’ve talked to a lot of my instructors and other massage therapists, and the general consensus is that in PA, you’re pretty much perfectly well off starting to practice after the first half of our program. additionally, i found out that i can get liability/malpractice insurance from ABMP on the level of practitioner or student, (i’ll probably go with practitioner) and that allows me to get hired as an employee at a salon or chiropractic office for massage. 

i’m really excited about this idea, because it would allow me to a) get a raise in income and b) possibly leave my current job sooner then i had anticipated. please lend me your prayers as i pursue this. 

p.s. - i have to develop a logo for my business. anybody got any ideas?

word to the wise: get a passport. it’s nice to have as an additional current form of government ID. because if your wallet gets lost or stolen, and your drivers license (which of course you are trying to replace) is your only current form of government issued ID, then no public notary will be able to sign a form for you to get another drivers license. retarded, huh? lesson learned - i’ll get a passport sometime soon. hopefully it won’t cost a bajillion dollars, because i certainly can’t afford it. to get a new drivers license, i will have to take every earthly form of ID that i could possibly have, and go to a drivers exam center to have them print me up a duplicate. and, because tuesday is my only day off, that is the day they are all closed. LOL. no actually, it randomly happens to be veterans day. *salutes flag for my dead granddad*. 

spent most of the morning trying to get a drivers license, and getting the last groceries i can afford until my ATM/debit and credit cards come in the mail. pray they come soon. i have the next 5 meals planned out - after that it’s all crossed fingers and prayer. looks like i’ll have to get my drivers license this weekend, because it turns out in a stroke up luck that the mercer drivers exam center is open on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th saturdays of the month and the 15th is the 3rd saturday in november. thank goodness i can still go up to GC for premarital counseling like i’d planned this weekend. now if only my debit card comes in time for me to actually get the book….:-P