Three weeks down, everyone.
I probably have to stop thinking about it that way, though.
Oh my word, another motorcycle group just flew by! I guess that's something I just have to get used to.
Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, turning a pessimist into an optimist…
I'm not sure if that's entirely possible, but I think I'm getting as close to an optimist than ever before. I had a friend text me today asking if I was getting used to living in Ohio, and my first instinct was to respond with "Ugh, are you kidding me? Its Ohio." But I stopped to think about it, and realized, whether I wanted to or not, I was getting used to Ohio. This week compared to last week was much better, and the week before was better than the first week. So applying that to my "fact-based logic" (side note--I don't think I will ever be able to learn a new language, because I am already fluent in Movie Quotes…can I put that on my resume?? And if you recognize that as a movie line, we should be best friends), I realized that every week will probably get better. Before I know it, I will actually be enjoying life here. I know I will still have bad days, and I'll probably cry some more and still be really homesick, but overall, things have gotten better, so they will keep getting better.
I'm really getting used to these big-girl panties.
You know how I know it'll still be okay even if I have a bad day? Because I did have a bad day, and I've had bad days, but in that moment, when I had to sum up my entire time here as to whether or not I was "getting used" to living here, I knew overall that I was. Yay for me. Whats in the glass over there? It looks like its half-FULL of some sunshine and rainbows and kittens! How's that for a positive attitude?
I'm still going to fill you in on my bad day however. Don't worry though, it ended well.
This week has overall been pretty good. I don't know which McGuire it was, and Cedarville certainly feels they own the credit, but I'm sure thankful he invented Labor day. Looking back, I don't know how I would have survived the week unless I had Monday off. I spent most of the week preparing for STARS, which was great because I finally felt like I had a goal that I could complete, not just spending my days cleaning out old filing cabinets. I was contacting schools, re-writing curriculum, making lesson plans, and meeting with my leaders to talk about training.
I even got a PO Box in town. Its like I'm adult!
And feel free to fill that bad boy up with cards, letters, love of any kind. Its costing me almost $30 bucks for 6 months, so lets make it earn its keep. Here is my new address: PO Box 188, Cedarville, OH 45314. (And just in case you didn't know, my birthday is in just a couple days, so hey, no time like the present (hah! get it?) to get my PO Box broken in...)
So back to my week. It was overall good, and the 'bad day' I'm going to describe isn't even that bad. I was just hit with the revelation, again, that I have moved to another state. And by another state, I mean land-of-the-people-that-move-slower-than-the-corn-that-grows-everywhere. That kind of state, just in case you were wondering.
I guess I could try to embrace the whole "live life a little slower" mentality, the "its 5 'o'clock somewhere" lifestyle (although not really because it is, after all, Cedarville…not much like Margaritaville if you know what I mean…which I'm totally okay with…I didn't like that when I lived in the Keys….now to find my back through the tangents to my original thought…) and not rush from thing to thing as if my life depended on it. However, when a simple trip to the bank to deposit one check took more than 20 minutes, when I went through the drive-thru and there was only one person in front of me, and my car is moaning and groaning as I make it sit there, idling, depleting what's left of the ozone layer with its smelly fumes, making it sound worse than a growling stomach of a hungry Sarlacc, I got a little frustrated.
In retrospect, I guess 20 minutes isn't all that long, but when you're sitting in a hot car, it feels like forever.
Then when you want to run into Walmart for a quick trip to pick up one thing and every, single person you end up walking behind is out for a stroll and in no hurry, making you look like frogger as you weave in and out of every slow moving cart, you also get pretty frustrated.
As I grumbled and sighed under my breathe (all the while telling myself, don't be visibly frustrated, you don't know what kind of day they've had, which was probably pointless because when have I ever been known to hide my facial expressions?), I moved through the crowd of people that looked like they just bought out a Duck Dynasty gift shop, and made it to my car, with a not so positive attitude of "Today, I hate Ohio."
So I drove home rather quickly, making myself feel a little better at moving faster than an Ohioan inchworm pace…which, in case you were wondering, is much slower than a New Jerseyan inchworm pace.
I guess I was a little testy because it was another home-sick kind of day.
It started when I went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee in the office. I opened the cabinet that held the coffee and tea supplies, and a sudden rush of sadness and despair and intense homesickness washed over me, and it was all I could do not to curl up on the floor and cry, wishing I had my bunny-foo-foo with me (Some of you know of whom I speak. For the rest of you, she's my childhood stuffed animal…that may or may not currently be on my bed now…). It took me a second to regain my composure (thankfully in an empty kitchen) and figure out what just happened. I realized a smell had hit me when I opened the cabinet, and I thought that was the cause of the sudden attack of my tear ducts kicking it into overdrive, and looked at the boxes of teas. Then I saw it. A box of Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer. I had not smelled that tea that strongly in years, and I realized it was always a staple of my mom's in her tea drawer (Was it a drawer? Maybe a cabinet?), and smelling it took me all the way back to when I was 4 and living in Plainfield, NJ, and the homesickness brought on by that was almost more than I could bear. But then I was actually ok. Something like that would have normally done me in, and it almost did, but then I smiled at the memory, enjoying the fact that I had something like that to hold onto.
Whenever you read books, the characters are always describing their memories in such poetic, romantic ways, recalling moments and then giving descriptions that make you think "Who in the world talks and thinks like that?" But for a moment, I felt like one of those characters. I could picture myself standing in my old kitchen, looking at the box, smelling the fragrance of the tea, and feeling…at home.
I was NOT going to let that become a crippling, depressing, soul wrenching memory though, and choose to remember it with joy and optimism, and then I proceeded to make my cup of coffee…which turned out to be just disgusting. So I made another one, which was just as terrible. So it was all for naught, but I like that I had that little moment with just me and my memories.
It definitely didn't help that whole "Today I hate Ohio" feeling later on, though. But it was only a "Today" feeling. Once I got home, I turned my brain off with a few episode of The Office, and then I met up with a new friend and we hung out for the rest of the night.
I wasn't necessarily declaring my love for the state of Ohio yet, but I definitely didn't hate it anymore.
It helped that my new friend is also a Whovian. No, that's not a fan of a Dr. Suess character, but a fan of a different kind of Doctor. We talked about David Tennant, daleks, sonic screwdrivers, and then moved onto Jane Austin, Shakespeare, M. Night Shyamalan, movies, books and crafts, and a friendship was forged.
Look at that improvement.
So yeah, it was a pretty good week overall.
I also started focusing on a Promise of God this week. I wrote one down, and put it up on my mirror, and as His child, I'm claiming it as my own. Its reads "It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved sleep." Now, the first time I read that, I thought it said "He gives to His beloved sheep," so I thought I don't have to stress about work and be up at night thinking about the next day, God will give me what I need to take on the day because I am one of His beloved sheep and He'll give me what I need. Then I realized it said "sleep," and after feeling like an idiot, I realized it was all the same thing because in the end, the problem what I wasn't seeping well. I've been having weird dreams, and I haven't been waking up rested. But as the verse says (whether I'm a sheep or not), I don't have to toil, because He will give me sleep. And I have felt pretty rested all week. I'm taking that as a gift from my Heavenly Father.
I'll leave you with this last story.
On Thursday night, I pulled into my driveway, and it was about 9:30 so it was pretty dark out. For the first time, the sky was completely free of clouds and I could see stars. Not just stars, but ALL the stars. The milkway was visible across the sky, I could pick out some constellations, and it was perfect. And then I saw it, a flashing light moving slowly across the sky. Nope it wasn't a plane. It was a tumbler. Thats when a satellite is spinning as it flies through the atmosphere, and as it spins, it reflects the sunlight. The last time I saw one I was about 13, so this was pretty cool. My first instinct was to call my fellow atronomy-nerd, my mom, and tell her to run outside and see if she could see it to. So yeah, apparently when I get excited, my judgement is slightly clouded, so I didn't think through that whole living-600-miles-to-the-west thing and that she probably/most definitely wasn't going to see it. But instead, when she ran outside and looked up, she saw a huge shooting star! That was such a cool moment for me. Both of us looking at the same sky, being amazing at what we saw. Thanks, God.
Remember that time Ohio wasn't that bad?
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