...and then sometimes your prayers get answered immediately.

i just logged into the bank.  i hadn't logged in in a couple of days. i had a hunch to check, though.

i got a surprise last paycheck from rural cc on the 28th, which means OIOHL can stuff it.  (until they give me another class, that is.)

we will be just fine. (stop worrying, mama!) maybe sometimes it is a lot easier than i thought.  sometimes slogging through the beginning of fall for a month and a half with no paycheck really does pay off in the end.

i love the Lord.

hello, monday.

it's been one of those days.

nothing exceptionally bad has happened. it's just been...an uphill kind of day.

my class at OIOHL was canceled without me knowing about it. while this is not the absolute end of the world by any stretch of the imagination, it does make for leaner times than i was anticipating going into my course at Collegetown U.  it makes musicboy's jump to 29 hours a week at work, however, VERY fortuitous for our family.

i'm hoping they feel badly and throw another course my way. of course, who knows if that will happen. perhaps this is just another walk of financial faith.  i have a feeling it is, for a while. we'll be fine. it will be fine. but...i like it to be easy.  it just isn't.

had a mini-meltdown this weekend about health-related issues. mainly, i have felt myself slowly slipping back into not so good eating and exercise habits, and asked musicboy if he could please help me out. i told him i couldn't do it alone, and he said he would help rather than resist. his young male metabolism notwithstanding, i think we could all use a little more broccoli and few less cookies.  in the words of the cookie monster of the 21st century, "cookies are a SOMETIMES food."

went to the gym tonight with musicboy (i had literally just decided that i was feeling puny and crampy and didn't want to go when musicboy decided it was time to go...and so we went...and so it's clear that he is a huge help to me). it was a struggle.  i don't like when it's a struggle.  i mean, i was walking slow. but i did do one 1-minute sprint faster than i ever have, so there's that.

and the fact that i went at all.

so there's that.

i'm about 600 pages into the truman bio, in case you were wondering. he was my favorite president before, but now he definitely is.  flawed and foibled, but so admirable in so many ways.  i'm hoping, however, to finish it soon. it's hard to read a 995 page biography.  it is quite slow going.

i've decided, to revisit the health issue paragraph, to incorporate at least two strength classes into my gym regimen.  i haven't been doing anything with strength training, and i think it's important and i haven't been doing it and i want to do everything to rev my metabolism in the next few weeks, so that's what i'll do. and i've decided that, right now, i am just not cut out for individual workouts. i can do them sometimes when i have to, but when i have something that i really like and i have the peer pressure of the classes, i do better. 

especially when i don't want to do anything. all i have to do is show up and bam.  game on.

i was going to whine a lot in this post, but somehow i didn't. that's a good thing. 

i'm hungry.

the end.

well who wouldn't want one after this?!?

(i have never wanted a minivan. ever. anything else. a great big '72 station wagon? fine. a massive SUV? fine.  but it seems fairly clear to me that if we are going to have more than 2 kids, which we probably are (i hope!), i'll end up with one. so, oddly, this comforts me.)

i spent most of my night tossing and turning, fighting through dreams that involved me somehow having left musicboy, though he was clearly still around, and dating other prospects for marriage. 

my conscious mind was struggling with my subconscious mind all night.

i am exhausted.  contrary to popular worldly belief, i get absolutely no pleasure in any sort of world where musicboy is not my number one guy. in fact, i don't really understand how women can fantasize about other men. i mean, i understand, but i don't at the same time.  in addition to feeling like a skank with no loyalty, i can only imagine it would work to split two people apart.

that's not to say that i don't recognize and appreciate the aesthetic beauty that are some celebrity men, but i honestly can say that i'd much rather have musicboy than any one else.  ever.

so when my subconscious wants to say otherwise, i get a little peeved.

in other news, i'm speaking in church tomorrow about the role of teachers.  it's part of my (other) calling as a literacy instructor for the education committee.  i have very little idea what to say. i have some ideas, but they keep swirling around and around in my brain without much discernable focus.  i am hoping that will change before tomorrow, but it's possible that i'm going to go up there with just a few ideas and let the Spirit guide me.

that freaks me out, but i've done it before, so...there you go. 

i should go work on that, probably. 

have a good weekend, all.

a rolling stone gathers no moss.

but a butt that sits in a chair all day really might.

i am very much enjoying my time off, but i think i'm getting bored.  i'm not sure what to do about that, since every time i think about doing something productive, i cringe and watch another episode of bones.  i just can't really make myself do anything. 

the flesh is weak, i guess, even when the will is slightly more muscular.

yes, once i figured out how to stream netflix onto the wii, it's all been downhill into slothfulnessarama up in here.  my musicboy goes to work every morning, and i get up with him. i eat a bowl of cereal and i start up the bones.  i'm watching season 3 now, but i've seen so many of them already that it's really just like background noise.  so i end up doing something else--usually crossstitching--until it seems like the hours just speed by and musicboy comes home.

for a moment when he walks in the door, i feel a little bit like i used to when my mom would come home and i had done nothing whatsoever all day.  there's some guilt, although there's no accusations whatsoever coming from musicboy. 

but lately, i've not really left the apartment except to go to the gym.  i stay inside and i think i'm getting bored.  i'm beginning to feel that stircrazy feeling that i get when i don't have a purpose.  i don't like being bored.  i love my crossstitching project, but it feels like at any moment i could start to mold into the furniture.

today, i tried to feel a bit more like a normal person by dressing in real clothes (instead of those awesome shorts i told you i got at sam's club). i got my OIOHL work done, and may try to get ahead of the curve for the course that's starting on tuesday.  i'll probably try to clean a little bit, because that makes me feel less like a major slugbutt.

but really...i have three something more weeks of this.  and we're poor-ish (or trying not to spend too much money until we both get paid again).  i'm trying to think of cheap, fun things to do. i'm thinking of a picnic one day at our park, but other than that...i'm out.  maybe we'll go hiking at a local nature area.  maybe i just need to make a list, because maybe i actually have ideas. 

anyways.

i'm bored a little and my brain isn't working well anymore because even though i'm getting up earlyish, we're not going to bed until like 2:30 and 3am. 

hey, here's an idea.  maybe i'll take a nap.

flour and oil.

do you know the story of elijah and the widow?

that's how i'm feeling right now. 

i don't like money.  i don't like it at all. i don't like dealing with it, i don't think i'm especially good at it, but i am in charge of it in our family, mainly because i was already paying most of the bills for my entire apartment before we got married (everything was in my name), so when we got married, it was pretty easy for me to just keep doing it. 

but it perplexes me, the slippery nature of money.  i don't like the way it pretends like it's there and then it's not, but it is at the same time.

let me explain.

i am not one of those inexperienced people who looks at their balance on any given day and says WHOOHOO I'M RICH.  far from it, actually. i'm incredibly cautious because i have been in DEEP debt before (and only got out of it because my mom is awesome and helped me get out of it...really, she got me out of it) and refuse to get there again. in fact, since my mom started helping me, i have not carried a balance on a credit card for more than a couple of months. i am vigilant about keeping us out of the red and am really committed to saving as much as humanly possible.

with a few really large expenses on the horizon, that's important to me.

so when i look at my balance on any given day, i don't think a thing about it. instead, i consult my handy dandy notebook, where i keep track of bills and expenses and what we actually have is there in assorted shades of ink. 

but the slippery nature of money is this. just about the time when i think i'm going to be able to put a sizeable chunk of money into the savings account, it's just gone.  that is frustrating to me, because one of my primary goals for the last five months has been to build up the savings account.  it has grown, every so slowly, but not by much. 

(if this reminds you of how the weight loss thing is going, the parallels are clear to me too. what i think i want is not happening--but that's not to say that things aren't happening.)

because even while the money seems to slip through my fingers far too easily, it's going to things that are awesome--like being able to pay off a $700 unexpected and unplanned brake job in one fell swoop, or being able to pay back tithing that somehow slipped through the cracks without worry.  i know that that sounds like we are rolling in discretionary income. we definitely have sufficient for our needs, so please don't think i'm complaining.

i'm definitely not. in fact, as i think about money, i think about the widow. 

i think about that story because it's miraculous in a completely not-like-you'd-expect way.  the widow didn't get a big basket of fruit and grain on her doorstep after she followed the prophet's counsel. she didn't suddenly find herself rolling in money.

she didn't GET anything that she could see.  she just never ran out of what she needed.

and that's the way we've been blessed since the day we got married. in somewhat lean times, when i'm worried about how we'll manage until the next paycheck, the food just lasts longer. i can make more with less, or i get creative. or i drive less, so there's no need for gas. or we find ways to entertain ourselves with what we have or we make use of the free gift stuff we still have access to. somehow, it just all lasts or the time seems to go quite quickly. 

in the times when it seems like we'll get way ahead, when i do occasionally look at the balance and think WHOOHOO!, the problems and challenges come...so that we can deal with them.  and we haven't had trouble dealing with them, even though i know that in other times in my life, such expenses would have knocked me flat.

at times, i still wish i could build that savings, that i could rest knowing that we had more than sufficient to buy a year's worth of health insurance without cleaning out all of our bank accounts, or so that we could have enough never to have to worry about anything if somehow the jobs dried up. 

it's one of the reasons why i work as much as i do. while i can work this much, i keep thinking that it's preposterous to not take advantage of every opportunity. if it means that i have to work a little bit harder or do a little less pleasure reading and a little more discussion board moderating, who's to complain about that? because i see every one of those jobs as a blessing, and i take them as a way of signaling to the Lord that i am aware, that i am appreciative, and to keep them coming.

never look a gift blessing in the mouth, to take and butcher an idiom.

but even as i do this, and even as i worry about upcoming expenses, and even as i pray for more classes and for things to work out, i know that the flour and the oil in our lives will never run out.  i know that the Lord's promises are sure, even when i don't see them at work. 

adjunct a-go-go.

so, i have another job. i think the adjunct "interview" process is hilarious. as in, there isn't one. you send in all of your stuff, they make sure that you're qualified, and then when you show up to the "interview" you get assigned classes and get books.

there's no real weighing and measuring and horrors of the interview process. you're essentially a cog in a large wheel of labor, and so it's just a negotiation about how many classes you want and when you can teach them.

i muse on this because it happened to me, again, today. it happened the same way with rural cc, and now it happened again with what we'll call local cc.  it's the feeder school, in lots of ways, for Collegetown U, so it's good for me to work there.  but that's another story altogether.

i just find this whole process so different from the Collegetown U interview process and the rumored tenure track interview process, which i have never experienced and yet am not sure i want to experience at all.

i like this whole "you are qualified, thus you may TEACH" deal, but then again...that might let some bad apples into the bunch.

but since i am a lovely, delicious, not bad apple, i will take it.

i'm excited. i will be teaching 7 classes, at least, in the fall. my dissertation committee thought i was insane girl for doing 6. 

ha! take that!