when i least deserve it

if you are returning to the lord with all your hearts, then rid yourself of the foreign gods and the ashtoreths and commit yourself to the lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the philistines.  so the israelites put away their baals and ashtoreths and served the lord only.  1 samuel 7

it's kind of like one time when i was about 5 helping my mom set the table for dinner.  i dropped an entire set of bowls on the ground and we ended up having to eat on plates for the next couple days until they were replaced.  despite fatal bowl tragedy, my mom never stopped letting me help her set the table.

grace is something i can define but am still trying to understand.

airport love

oh dears.  it seems that amidst all the hustle and bustle of things around here, i've neglected this little blog of mine.  basically, about a million things have happened since my last story telling event.

most recently has been the send off of my dear mother to the great and magnificent SFO.  forgive me as i'm not a seasoned traveler under any comparison so my enthusiasm may seem a little out there.. but that place is sWeet!!  first, the roadways leading into the central building - most excellent and easy to navigate.  (as were all the roadways germinating outwards away from the airport and onto the freeway).  second, i did not get a chance to explore further, but there's a skytrain?!?  how much for a ride??  third, rows and rows of terminals giving people the possibility of landing themselves anywhere within one rotation of the earth's time.  four, automatic soap dispenser.  toilet, yes.  faucet, yes.  but soap dispenser?!  world class, yo.

this list could continue for quite some time before i run out of trivial details to dote on.  but then, i'd completely forget to mention the moral to this story that i'd come online to publish.

that up there is my mom.  yay mom!  to describe her in 10 words or less, she is the woman i hope to become.  shore, she has some interesting quirks and tendencies and such just as all of us do.  but mostly, i think i'd be okay if i inherited a fraction of her good qualities.

alright SFO, CNY 2012 - we will meet again!!!

story time

once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to have a princess of his own.  but she had to be a real princess.  he traveled all over the world to find one, but there was always something wrong.  he found plenty of princesses, but the prince could never be absolutely sure they were real princesses.  there was always something that wasn't quite right.  at last he returned home and was very sad because he wanted a real princess so badly.

one evening a terrible storm blew up.  there was lightning and thunder and rain came down in torrents - i was frightening!  all at once there was a knock at the gate and the old king went out to open it.

standing outside was a princess.  what a sight she was our there in the storm!  she didn't look like a princess.  water was running down her hair and her clothes.  it wan in at the tips of her shoes and out at the heels.  still, she said she was a real princess.

"well, we shall soon see about that!" thought the old queen.  she didn't say anything, but she went into the bedroom, took off all the bedding and placed a pea on the bottom of the bed.  then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on top of the pea, and then twenty of the softest featherbeds on top of the mattresses.  that is where the princess had to sleep for the night.

in the morning they asked how she had slept. "oh, it was miserable!" said the princess.  "i hardly slept a wink all night!  goodness knows what was in the bed!  i was lying on something so hard that i am black and blue all over.  it's perfectly awful!"

then of course, they knew she was a real princess, because she had felt the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty featherbeds.  no one but a real princess could have such tender skin as that.

and so the prince took her as his wife, because now he knew he had a real princess.  the pea was put in a museum where it can still be seen, unless someone has taken it.

now how's that for a good story?

hans christian anderson

fallen words

katy perry came through the speakers last night while we were transferring patients and keeping up with diet orders when my new coworker asked me what kind of music i listen to.  

um. DUH.  i could start listing my head off.

but in that moment, there was a battle going on en mi cabeza.  should i tell her about my vast collection of hillsong cds in which i have each track memorized?  how i love rocking out to david crowder band in my car (esp track 13 of church music)?  how i used to choose 107.9 over klove, but now prefer scott and kelly in the morning any day?  or do i try and stay mainstream and tell her about taylor swift and sara bareilles and country songs that make me cry?  

what i came up with was this: "i listen to a bunch of different stuff."

LAME.

we're (i'm) so fickle sometimes.  i constantly wish that i can connect on a deeper level with my friends outside of acacia/church bubble.  i talk about it, i pray about it.. all that kinda spiritual stuff that makes me feel like i'm actively trying to make a difference in the spheres around me apart from my own personal walk.

but i shy away from connecting conversation with my faith because i feel like it would then require an explanation.  and with explanation comes fear that i won't say the right thing, or much worse, that i don't even know how to express this part of me that is so core to my existence.

last night i was reading:

the lord was with samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground.

in retrospect, my reply is what fell to the ground.  conversation ended there and we continued to file and answer patient phone calls.  what would it be like to let god take hold of my conversations?  if i truly let go of my own hesitations then maybe that's where he let's his words take flight.

tortoise beats the hare, i hear.

my goodness.  i didn't realize there were training schedules like this for people running 10k races!  as you can see, i'm running a little behind.  meh hehe..  until now, i've only been going out to run as soon as i get home from work until it gets dark.  the window period for such to to take place is usually only about 20-30 minutes.  and seeing as yesterday was the longest day of the year, nights will only start ending sooner and sooner.  bah humbug.  what did i get myself into!?!?  maybe i'll just show up, grab my not-so-free tshirt and get frozen yogurt in nice air-conditioned store.  no electrolytes lost!  siiigh.

i invite you to witness the progression of my 10k training from now until july 16.  wish me luck!

so fresh and so clean!

I may have mentioned before how I sometimes write about completely random things to mask the stuff that's really going on in my life. This is no exception. What better way to break my month long blog fast than to tell you about my Scope Outlast long lasting mouthwash?!? Wheeeee :D

I bought this two pack on sale several months ago at Wal-Mart and never regretted the purchase. Buying stuff like mouthwash or toothpaste or peanut butter is always so tricky. The problem is, if you open it and decide you don't like it, there's really not much you can do other than suffer through the entire contents of the product until you finish it - which can takes weeks, of not a few months!

Happened with my vanilla flavored Listerine (yoock) and then with my Crest whitening rinse in fresh mint (that stuff burns). All together, I'm very happy with my Scope Outlast. It's super minty but not so much that you feel like your tongues being incinerated by the 13% emerald green alcohol. Yommmm. One swish in the morning and another after flossing at night and I'm good to go!

So there you have it. A wonderfully insightful look into one of the most mundane routines in the life of yours truly :)

Hehee welcome back blog!

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not mine

the saddest part about turning twenty six is that my pandora one that my brother signed me up for last year will expire.  no white hairs yet!  woohoo

and seeing as it's been a hot topic as of recent, i'll hop on the bandwagon and share my thoughts.  = ]  i'm now 1465 days closer to turning thirty (holy spicy guacamole!)  i'm sitting here trying to come up with a list of things to do before i hit three-oh, but i'm realizing that i'm a lot better at listing things that need to be done within the next 24 hours than i am filling the following years of my life with giant idea bubbles.  i just dunno..

all i can think of right now..

visit a real life hippo - i once begged my mom to take me to the fresno zoo to see their hippo.  all summer long she said she'd take me but we never got around to entering the zoo gates.  finally when she was ready to take me, we read that the hippo died.

run a 5k - really ambitious, i know.  but i think i can do it, so long as i quit planting my butt in front of my laptop when i come home from work.  i should also consider getting some running shoes and gym shorts..

learn to take better pictures - i love looking at pretty things.  half the blogs i follow are just pretty pictures and artsy fartsy design stuff.  i don't need high tech camera or anything (i already bought a fancy $3.99 camera app for my phone to take care of that) i think i just need to learn to have a good eye for framing the subject.

visit my favorite niece - (as much as i possibly can)  i'm determined to make her first word be "bo"  :D  plus she's just mega cute and i don't want to watch her grow up through youtube videos.

go swimming - my coworker bought me a pair of flippers for my birthday a few years ago and they're sO cool.  like swimming on auto-pilot.  they're most fun to use in a lake but i've only gotten a chance to do that once.  for awhile i was taking them to the racquet club but found it kinda embarrassing that the saggy old guys were swimming as fast as me without any fins.  meh.

eat better - cooking for one is kind of a pain.  but it shouldn't excuse me from eating frosted flakes for dinner.  i know better.  (although, for all the fortification that's going on with breakfast cereals, it's practically like eating a bowl of vitamins)

remember what i read - i read tons of great books.  unfortunately i always get really excited about what i'm reading and have a tendency to read straight through a book - not giving myself enough time to process the information.  that combined with my peanut brain equals nothing being solidified into my mental RAM.

hmm.  well, there you go.  that's my bucket list for now.  there's also things like marrying a hot guy traveling and living in a house with a real stovetop but those tend to be a little more nebulous and cloudy so i'm just not gonna go there  ^__<

trusting in creative hands