Elementary My Dear Watson

I am pleased to announce that November 17th shall forever be remembered as the day I saw Stuart Mclean.

In the last week or so I have read and listened to quite a few Vinyl Cafe stories and have enjoyed the fact that many of them occur in my very own neighbourhood.  After discussing this with my roommates they informed me that he is rumoured to live somewhere in our ‘hood’ (yes, I just said ‘hood’.  deal with it).  So yesterday I may have wished multiple times that I would see Stuart Mclean someday.  Turns out wishes do come true.  Less than 24 hours later I was sitting in a coffee shop reading an article for school.  Just as I finished the article and began thinking about pulling out “Stories from the Vinyl Cafe”, the man himself walked right by my table.  I hope we didn’t make him uncomfortable with our stares.  I am not joking when I say I was about to read one of his books.  You can ask Shannon.  She was there.

My famous person sighting count (not that I’m keeping track) since moving to Toronto is up to 4.  That is more than 1 a month.  Amazing.

Just so you know.

If you keep an evening free sometime between March 10 and 13 and decide to spend your evening going to see Crazy for You put on by the Clearwater players, you will be entertained.

I think you should do it, and clearly, if I think you should do it then it is obviously the thing you should be doing.

So take my advice.  Save some time.  I’m giving you fair warning.

Here are the top ten reasons why you should save some time NOW.

10) Hilarious show.  Trust me it is funny.  I know that I have let some of you down by saying things are funny and then realizing that I am the only one that feels this way.  This is different.  Crazy for you is hilarious.

9) I’m in it.   If you are reading this it obviously means that you think I am cool (even if that is not true).  I think that is a good reason.

Songs like “I’ve got rhythm”, “Embraceable you” and “Slap that Bass”.

7) The songs are ALL Gershwin songs.  Who doesn’t need a little Gershwin in their lives?

6) The cast is wonderful…and hilarious…and wonderful.  You will love them.   I do.

5) Every year the Clearwater Players production gets bigger and better.  So this is year four.  You do the math.

4) We can entertain.  Believe me.  We entertain well.  

3) You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wish you had auditioned. 

2)  It is for a sweet cause.  Well, at least I think raising money for camper bursaries is a sweet cause.

1)  The last reason is just because I said so.

If you want to know more.  Just ASK me!

I have been running away from this statement that Jesus makes for the last little while.  We’ve been working through the beattitudes at church recently and for some reason I have been dreaded the ‘peacemaking’ week. 

Usually when I go all ‘Jonah’ on God, at least I know what it is about.   Right now I’m not sure, but this verse has come up about 5 times this week and each time I want to hear it less and less.  I know this is something that I need to figure out…but I think first I need to figure out what Jesus means when he says ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’.

Thoughts?

This is my American Sign Language Fail of the day.

Sometimes I mix up the words ‘hamburger’ and ‘married’.

Good thing I have never asked someone if they ‘want to get a hamburger’ in ASL.

I think 100 is an awesome number.  Back in the day (elementary school), I thought 100 day was the coolest.  Not only was the 100th day of school so awesome because 100 is such a big number–you seriously aren’t even 100 months old until grade 3ish– but it was also full of fun things that had to do with 100.  One hundred candies, counting to one hundred, collecting one hundred things, etc.  Even before the phenomenon of 100 day I was in love with this number.  I remember sitting on the floor of our living room in Toronto–which means I likely in Junior Kindergarten — and I was counting all the pennies that I had and boy did I make it to 100 and it was SO worth waking my mom up to share the news very earlier in the morning.  Not only does this memory remind me that I was crazy obsessed with either pennies or the number 100, but it also reminds me of how ridiculous my brain was.  Somehow I could count to 100 when I was super young, but I was unable to read until grade 2.  Ridiculous.

Anyways.  My point is:  This is a special day because this is my 100th blog post.  No I did not keep count, wordpress does that for me.  However, I have been looking forward to this moment for a few months–at least since post number 85.  I has given me reason to pause and reflect on the past 99 blog posts.  I took some time to read some of my older thoughts– it was interesting.  Some helped me realize that despite the fact that sometimes the teaching profession makes me crazy, in the end I love being a teacher.  Some were good memories of exciting things I have done.  Some reminded me that I have been through some hard times, but overall my life has been full of joy. 

This 100th ‘reflection’ has reminded me that I can choose to live only in the brokeness that is a part of my life, or I can choose joy.

I choose joy…and dancing.

Is it just me, or are their ASL signs for things like Hot-Dog and Hamburger, but not for various types of vegetables.

Does anyone else find this strange?  I guess you can just finger spell the names of vegetables.  However, I feel it is probably better for someone (read: child) to be able to properly identify a vegetable rather than a strange process chunk of ground up meat.

Strange.

1) waking up under very warm blankets

2) having time in the morning to sit down at my piano and sing

3) chocolate (in any form)

4) glee

5) realizing that eating turkey would cure my insomnia

6) spending time laughing with my family

7) an abundance of time spent eating food, drinking tea and watching stupid movies with friends

8 ) long walks in the woods

9) delicious food (and I didn’t have to make any of it)

10) this song: 

laugh with me.

watch stupid movies with me.

cry with me.

ugly cry with me.

hold me when I am ugly crying.

hug me.

give me kleenex when I need it.

go for walks with me.

remind me that I am loved.

remind me of God’s love.

walk me home when I need it.

give me warm beverages when I need a good pick me up.

get my notes for me when I miss class.

help me with my assignments when I have no brain power left.

tell me when it is okay to stay home from school.

In a week where I have struggled to see goodness in anything, this is one area where God has continually (and obviously) shown me how incredibly blessed I am.  I cannot express how thankful I am for the friends that God has given me…every…last…one of you.

I know that “I can do [and get through] all things through Christ who strengthens me” and I 100% believe that one of the ways that he strengthens me is by surrounding me with people who love.

These past few days have been a whirlwind, a hot mess, overwhelming– actually,there really aren’t words to describe them.  Our camp community has experienced an unfathomable loss.  Someone that we love, admire and look up to has taken his own life.  Not only does the shock of this news hurt beyond belief, but it is so hard to see so many of the people that I love so deeply saddened and yet I am too hurt and broken to help in any way.

Though aching with saddness, this week I have felt incredibly blessed to be surrounded by a community of people who love each other deeply.  It is so much easier to deal with this loss together.  To be able to cry with each other, pray with each other, share memories together (which usually ends in simultaneously crying and laughing together), make food for each other, hug each other and just be with each other.

I want to share something that Karmyn wrote on her blog recently.  It is all those things that I have been trying to do/believe/feel over the past few days.  I hope she doesn’t mind being quoted….

“…with Christ, things are never hopeless.  There is always hope, because, in the end, God wins.  He overcomes everything that sin brought into this world, including sadness.   We can choose to ignore that fact and be swallowed by  the sadness, or we can choose His hope.  Even in the sorrow, we can choose to see the grace, peace and hope that God brings for each of us.”

Thank you friend for reminding us.

When I can’t sleep (like right now), I become a bit paranoid and assume that I have insomnia due to something that I did.  So I have been searching the interweb to find out if eating too many peaches can give you insomnia (it doesn’t).

Now as some of you know, I have recently discovered that I have a bit of an intolerance to corn.  In fact, my life is a whole lot better sans corn.  So I decided to google ‘corn intolerance’.  Turns out I am not the only one!  So exciting!  So here is a blog that I thought I would share!!!

Corn Free Blog!

P.S.  corn free is a lot harder than I thought….sigh.