Holiday? I could use a holiday....

Whew....I am tired. Everything but Robb's books are here in the house and it is about 45 percent organized. It's probably more like 80 percent organized, but the 45 percent that doesn't fit anywhere is really clogging up the system. I am toying with having a garage sale on Friday because quite frankly, until some of this stuff is outta here, I can't really do anything else. The garage is STUFFED.

This little house is an interesting phenomena for me. It has actual closets. We've never lived anywhere that had actual closet space before...except maybe our first apartment, which had a bigger closet than it had a kitchen....Anyway, it is intersting to have things put away that I used to have "out." Turns out, I do still remember that I have bills to pay even if they aren't on my keyboard.

There is still so much to do that I am a little blue. It's nice to see our stuff again. ...some things I longed for and some I totally forgot about. It is nice to have a "canvas" to create on. But I am so tired. I am lonely too. I think that seeing our stuff again reminds me of my old life...my old friends. How I miss them. I feel like I am suspended over time and space right now and trying desperately to worm my way back into something that feels normal. I miss church. I miss it desperately. Which is handy since the first preview service for Vintage is in (GULP) TWO WEEKS! Yikes...so much to do...Yes...I am tired. I feel this internal deadline to have this house in working order before Vintage begins.

So Robb is working today and I am cooking an enormous slab of meat. Vin just scraped all the skin off his nose (falling on the driveway) and all three of these kids are just wiped out from playing their brains out with the kids next door. (I LOVE THE KIDS NEXT DOOR). So, I 'm going to work in the yard while they take naps and try to get something else accomplished. I think I'm gonna need some more caffeine...

I'm quitting tomorrow, though. I bought the 1/2 caff coffee. Time to fight the addiction.

Me so happy

I'm back online, Baby, with DSL! Whoo hoo! Twice the work in half the time! I will no longer be secretly mad at you for sending music clips, photos and animated stuff that clogged up my decrepit dial-up inbox. WHOO HOO!

now if I could just find my bills....

"Let me explain...no, there is too much...let me sum up"

Kudos to anyone who can name the movie I just quoted.


It occurred to me that a number of new people have been invited to this blog recently, and I thought it might be good to sum up some of the characters and story lines:

Cast of Characters:
I am Vanessa: wife, mom, ebay entrepenuer, fellow church planter in Arkansas

Robb, my husband, he's pretty intrical to the church planting thing

3 Kidlets, Mattie, Vinny and Charleigh, (who looks a lot like me, but is also Hispanic, just to clear things up a bit).

A & Jaye T: our friends here and fellow-church planters with us

Courtney: my sister in TN soon to be PA (home to me)

Ashley: my sister in Florida, wildly talented in the musical arts

klaisieprof: my hilarious best friend in MI who is guaranteed to say the most shocking thing possible (and no, honey, that is NOT a challenge)

Sara: Recent college grad in upstate NY, who calls us her mentors, but really we just like having her hang out with us.

Elizabeth: One of the bright young people we like to keep track of.

Darla: fellow church planter/blogger/and bff

Kingsjoy and Mukejoy: practically neighbors who we love to death and never get to see

Sid: our dog. She never comments, but often appears in entries.

Jdub and Shari: former co-workers, always friends, even if they do go to that OTHER PLACE to work

Cathy: My sister in law in MI who is brilliant in all she does

Andrew, akr and Heidi: friends from college amazingly found through the magic of the internet

Vintage Fellowship: the church we are planting

Guest appearances by old friends from college, ebay browsers, other family members and complete strangers.

Story lines:

We have a house in Michigan we have been trying to sell for 8 months, while laying the groundwork to launch a new church in northwest Arkansas, while selling on ebay and working at Family Christian bookstore (well, hubby does anyway). We are also a family in transition with all that that entails. All the while, we are wrestling through the challenges of leaving a pretty conservative background to do something not exactly conservative with our lives.


So that's Happiness in a nutshell.

Rock....................Us........................Hard Place

So they showed the house in MI today to an elder from the Ithaca Church of God. Apparently, the elder is looking on behalf of the new pastor they expect to call in June. This pastor has identified 12 houses as possibilities, the elder is narrowing it down to four, and they will decide when he candidates in June.

Meanwhile, the new pastor at our old church, Ithaca Baptist, is looking to rent a house until he buys a piece of land and puts a modular home on it. They have a good size family and most of the rentals in town are very small. Our house would be adequate in size and the rent money would sure help things along. But what if's plague us. It's a lot to think about....but then again, we were getting soft anyway, having a whole week of not having to lie awake thinking about where we were going to live....

fun blog entries to come...I promise.

such as, "Guess what I painted my new bathroom since my decorating constipation is over?!"

Potpurri II

A mish-mash update:

Mother's Day was fab-tas-tic. My hubby took the kids out to a donut shop first thing in the morning and left a thermos of coffee on my night stand with the remote for the tv. I slept in for the first time in....when was Mattie born???? After a couple of cups of coffee and watching "Breakfast at Tiffanies" on AMC, they arrived home with presents and cards: kid's-choice jewelry from Walmart (so cute), a flea-marketting magazine, a detailed map of the area so I can find sales faster, and a new set of sheets...the ultimate in home-sweet-homeness. Then we got dressed, went to an estate sale in Fayetteville where I made out like a bandit, then a picnic at Wilson Park. As the icing on the cake, we went to Home Depot where I indulged myself in a pile of paint-chips and priced toilet-seats. Arrived home, where hubby got a much-deserved nap, ordered a pizza for supper and watched our fav shows until bedtime. This is my very definition of the perfect day.



This is a pic of what I made for our moms for Mothers day: my mom's had a monogram letter on it and Mars (my mother-in-law) called to tell me that her Mom had a set of the dishes that I used for hers. I liked them so much that I made one for me!




We are expecting to begin moving things into the new rental this week. We're going to do it piecemeal until school is done and we get a day or two together to pull the whole thing off. We are paid up at the storage unit for another month, so hopefully, we'll be ready to have a big garage sale in four weeks.


We're still expecting some news from the bank in Michigan. They have been discussing letting us just pay interest instead of principle, which would cut our payments down quite a bit.

Tonight, I will be playing the role of the grading fairy. Hope my wings still fit after the binge yesterday.

Tomorrow, Robb has a pot-luck teacher's lunch...so I need to think up something for that and in the evening, there is an Awards program for the kids.

Wednesday is a "normal" 9-5:30 day and whoo-hoo...watching ALIAS. SO happy to see 'Sark' back! Love the evil genius.

Thursday is Mattie's last day of school (and Robb's btw) and there is an afternoon carnival for the whole family. Robb works that night.

Friday is the long day when he works 9-10

Saturday is almost too far away to think about.

Grocery dilemma: we have three cans of crushed pineapple and a head of lettuce and a bottle of bbq sauce in the fridge. In the freezer, a massive beef brisquet that was discounted so much I had to buy it for a moving celebration meal. Don't really want to move groceries, but don't want to starve either....Oh, scratch that. We have pancake mix. It's all good.

I reached my red star in ebay! That means I got my 1,000th unique positive feedback comment. I have also been invited into the power seller program. While basking in that success, I got an email from a person I sold a revereware teakettle to. She is upset that this item was made in Korea when she thought that all Revereware was made in the USA. She is also dissappointed that the spout cover doesn't stay open unless she holds the button down (unlike her old one that had a lock on it) and that the copper on the base is so discolored. "I guess I'm stuck with it, but I'm not happy." She wrote. Really? REALLY? I'm lying awake at night wondering how we are going to meet the basic human needs of our family and she has her knickers in a bunch about the underside of her teakettle? You know how you make things into verbs that aren't really verbs? I'd like to clean her teakettle for her.

87587: This really deserves it's own entry, but I will sum up by saying that this the name of my children's elaborate immaginary Spy School. Their teacher's name is Mrs. Lemon Drop and they have many a wild adventure on a daily basis in the name of "spying." Calvin has set up an "office" on the kitchen bar, stacked with his important spy school stuff which he has asked that I please NOT pile anything on, since it is his "important work." He spends hours sitting at his office, busily working on his spy school work. It is "hard work" he tells me. It includes a lot of codes and clues and secret messages.

So that's a few things that are going on. I know there is much more that I haven't even attempted to write about, but the day is getting away from me and I have a "glamour" set of ebay items to list.

See, I really am made-over at the mere thought of painting something!

Getting off this roller coaster....

I think...I THINK...we might be getting off the housing roller coaster. We filled out the application for a nice little dollhouse of a rental. We asked for a flexible lease in the case the house sells, and they offered to take the rent down another 50 dollars if we'd go for the year. Upon further reflection, we figured we wouldn't want to move around Christmas (again) anyway. It's nice being the sixth graders of renting even though we are the 7th graders of house-buying.

The house is one of the newer small subdivision houses, has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a one car garage, all the appliances including washer and dryer, a "real" not gas fireplace, a small fenced back yard for Sid, and it sits on a "knuckle" which is a cul-de-sac with an elbow : ) There is no way in Hades that my massive furniture collection will fit in it (believe me, I moved furniture in my sleep all night!) but we figure a massive garage sale will go over pretty well. The neighborhood is very nice, looks to be heavily Hispanic, which is fine by us, since we are 20 percent Hispanic ourselves : ) The other houses are clean and neat and full of kids...an icecream truck drove through while we were there. It reminds me of Westwind Estates, actually. An almost-new elementary school is about a mile away and it is a 10-15 minute drive for Robb to work. There is also a community park and fishing pond two blocks over. It is in the southern part of Springdale, which is the school district we wanted but is close to Fayetteville, which is the town I like best. No more "all day drives" as the kids call them, I can drop Robb at work, do a few estate sales, go home and inventory, put on some dinner, throw in a load of laundry and go pick him up again.

The ad has been in the paper for a while, I just never called it for some reason. It was low on the list and I usually pooped out before I got to it. I actually made quite a few excuses for NOT calling about it.

I think that this might be a way to get our feet under us, which would be a great thing. I am stressing a bit about moving again and all that must be done and figured out, but it will feel good to sleep in my own bed again.

I don't really even remember what we have and what we gave away in the dark...gonna find out soon!

Do you ever have so much to do....

...that you sit and read a bunch of blogs and mess around online doing nothing in particular until the stuff you are supposed to do literally ignites into flames?

Fellow Procrastinators...what are you currently putting of until later? Let me know...when you get around to it...

so much....

There is just so much going on right now that I can't write about it all. It's that crazy feeling of trying to do something that you are pretty sure can't actually be done, like carry 5 full glasses of pop across the room....So if you wonder what is going on, the answer is "A LOT" but also, "Nothing." I'll let you know if that changes!

...and also, it is utterly amazing how an empty ink cartridge can pretty much gum up the whole machine.

Never a Dull Moment: May 8, 2006

7:00 a.m. Rise and shine, pack hubby's lunch (wait, did I do that?), get the fam dressed, find something for me to wear that won't land me on that "What NOT to Wear" show, put on makeup! Feel so put-together.

8:33 a.m. Roll out the door with coffee, banana and a piece of deli ham for protein.

8:34 a.m. My purse is ringing....it's SARA! "Hey, Girl...just one more week of college and then you're done!" BEEP BEEP call waiting....

8:42 a.m. It's Donna. She's have a lousy day, but at least she has a cute dog.

9:00 a.m. SHARP: Drop hubby at work, say hello to his sweet co-worker, Cathy.

9:05 a.m. Post Office run. No mail til 9:30, but at least I can mail the pop bottles I promised to a buyer for a stage play.

9:15 a.m. Hobby Lobby run for Mother's Day doo dabs.

9:30 a.m. Items collected, standing in checkout line. Calvin grabs himself and says he is going to pee his pants if I don't take him to the bathroom RIGHT NOW.

9:40 a.m. Back in checkout line and proceed without incident.

9:50 a.m. Post office again. Get the mail this time.

10:00 a.m. Stop at Thrift store for quick look since I have the car.

10:45 a.m. Arrive home, kids hit their bikes and I prep for Mother's Day project.
Scratchy noise in kitchen area.

11:37 a.m. "Mom, I"m hungry."

11:47 a.m. "Mom, I'm hungry."

11:49 a.m. "Mom, I'm hungry."

11:50 a.m. Look up distractedly and mumble something about being almost done.

12:05 p.m. Finish Mother's day project except for finishing touches. More scratchy noises.

12:06 p.m. Mother's day project slips out my hands and smashes.

12:09 p.m. Make lunch. Notice I left out three bad minutes.

12:20 p.m. Scratchy noises continue. This of course is some kind of animal trapped in the region of my stove hood vent. I waffle about calling Phyllis, because the house is pretty dirty and I don't want her to think I don't clean. (I mean, I haven't, but I...never mind.) On the other hand, there is a critter in my kitchen. Compartmentalize and ignore.

12:30 p.m. Put kids down for naps. Mommy time.

12:30-2:30 p.m. Make menu, plan week, research some ebay stuff, rsvp for birthday party, read blogs, make coffee, read newspaper online, collect rental ads, do laundry, contemplate scratchy noise.

2:30 p.m. Begin calling through list of rentals. Curiously, the only place my cell phone works is standing at the stove. Scratchy noises intensify.

3:30 p.m. Check Mattie's schoolwork, only to discover she doesn't have half of it done.

3:55 p.m. Do or die time. Put on gloves, open the kitchen door, barricade the door to the living room, begin dissassembly of the hood, fully expecting rodent of unusual size to drop on my face at every moment.

4:10 p.m. Tin flap holds mad-scratchy critter out of sight and from freedom.

4:22 p.m. Poke tin flap with broom handle. Feel life-force through the handle. Scream, shudder, scream.

4:32 p.m. One last mad poke with broom handle... Large black bird flutters wildly past me, and straight for the door...the one that isn't open. Hits window and falls on the floor. Flies wildly around the room, while I simultaneously scream, try to find the camera and scream some more. Bird finally makes its way to the great outdoors.

4:40 p.m. Congratulate self. Leave message on hubby's phone. Call Mom.

4:45 p.m. Scramble to get kids ready to go pick up dad, while contemplating the mysterious nature of the Almighty with Mom on phone.

4:55 p.m. Sit in traffic.

5:30 p.m. Arrive at bookstore.

5:45 p.m. Hubby able to leave bookstore.

6:01 p.m. Appointment to see rental. Cheap, five minutes from work, Christian Landlord, flexible lease, big fenced yard, pets okay, hardwood floors, 3 bedrooms, one bathroom, tornado shelter, busy, loud highway out front, small, but again...cheap.

6:20 p.m. Grab supper at Mall. First time ever eating Chik-fil-A. Might be because I'm starved, but it is wicked good. Kids have fresh fruit salads with their meal and servings are not obscenely huge...I think...I think I LOVE Chik-fil-A!

6:30 p.m. Meet A and J at the movie theater to check it out for Vintage meeting place. It'll do. Hang out til...

7:30 p.m. Divy up signs, take pictures, laugh a lot.

7:40 p.m. til 11:00 p.m. Put up signs all over Northwest Arkansas. It only feels illegal. Used my hazard lights more than I ever have in my life. (Click on the title to see pics on the vintage website)

11:15 p.m. Had a glass of wine to counter the "buzzing" feeling of still driving, watched "The New Adventures of the Old Christine" which makes me laugh for some reason.

11:30 p.m. Collapse into bed, exhausted.

P.S.

4:00 a.m. Awake and staring at the ceiling.

4:30 a.m. Still awake.

5:30 a.m. Start composing this blog entry.

5:45 a.m. Finally drift off and start dreaming about camp. Why do I dream about camp so much???

7:01 a.m. Time to rise and shine or... something.

Hmmmm

I know some of you are curious about how I'm doing with everything today. Well, I'm here, putting one foot in front of the other, trying not to think so hard, and to just keep breathing. We all prayed that the house would sell in three weeks and God said "No." I'm not throwing a massive tantrum about it. I'm not "mad at God" or any other trite nonsense. I'm mystified. His incomprehensibility makes me leery of this Lion who is not safe, but good. It is my profound belief in his sovereignty that makes me stand back from Him....shaken by his unequivocal "NO." I think I am moving past believing that I'm supposed to learn some lesson, to reason out some "aha" feature of God's character that I hadn't plumbed before. I also don't think that He is punishing us for something. I don't think that it's some secret heart thing, like that I want a house more than I want God's will. The bottom line is that a family needs a home to work and do God's will out of, and I'd be a little nuts to not want a home or to not feel concern about it. I have three kids, afterall. Frankly, I have no more strength or brain power left to reason out the ways of Someone who's ways are higher than mine. I'm tired. So I keep going...in a kind of death march....trudging along to whatever and wherever He is taking me, no longer the slightest bit interested in influencing whatever that is.

Seriously? Seriously!

It occurred to me this morning that this is the reason for all our "problems"...the first sermon series at Vintage.

just a heads up

Ummm. Well, the three weeks have passed, and the house isn't sold. We still know nothing about our future. The kids have what looks like impetigo and I pulled a tick off Vin's neck last night. When I crawled into bed, there was another tick on my pillow. I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back. My soul is in the fetal position. I'm going to do some laundry and stay in my pajamas until the world is a little more manageable if that's okay with everyone.

I feel like God and I have broken up.

Robb says that every good story has this part, but that it doesn't end here. That was a nice thing to say. I still like him.

Things that Bite

Used dentures

and

When ebay removes your listing for used dentures because it violates their prescription policy.

Today

I'm not doing so well today. I am waiting for news about Robb's job interview for the manager's position, and tomorrow marks the end of the three weeks that I asked everyone to pray our house would sell within.

It's zero, hour, folks, and I am feeling it keenly. I don't think I can stand living in this nether world, "a snail between two shells," "stuck in a moment" ...whatever it is...much longer.

I am thankful for what I do have:

A wonderful and loving husband whom I adore.

Three sparkling children, full of mischief and innocence.

A roof over my head, windows that open on God's amazing beauty, screen doors that let in the fresh country air, and REALLY nice appliances : )

Work. Creativity. Ambition. Drive.

A friend who is on the way over with lunch.

Health and the ability to sleep most nights.

Extended family that has been amazingly supportive.

Friends near and far.

Books.

Music.

Roses, especially climbing red roses that bloom even in the dog's ugly yard.

Baby birds with ugly fuzzy heads.

Forgiveness. Even if God never gives me another thing, I am forgiven.