She's 50!

I was hoping to post this yesterday on her actual birthday, but still let's take a moment and celebrate the fact that my Mom is 50 years old. My Dad took the plunge in January and now both of my parents are eligible for membership in the AARP. That's worth celebrating in and of itself. I love my Mom, the feisty Christ follower that she is. I hope she had a great day.

...but not the bed

I have made the following things today:
a hanging mobile decoration for the bathroom.
pico de gallo, which made my fingers sting.
dinner, from a combination of chicken, leftovers and the aforementioned pico de gallo.
a trip to the mailroom only find we had no mail.
a stunning victory in dr. mario moving me to level 14.
the potential for new life by planting some wild flower seeds I got from a starbucks card holder.

But I didn't make the bed.

And still I'm calling this day off a success.

cleanliness is loneliness

Picture this: a young wife spends thirty hours of her week slinging lattes and managing baristas in a fast-paced and very clean environment. The other parts of her weeks include time at church, volunteering, reading smalls books with well designed covers, creating dinners with chicken as the main course, watching malcolm in the middle reruns, etc. And then there are times when she is alone in the apartment she shares with her equally young husband. What is she to do?

Jon officially went back to school on Monday, so we are now officially into day three of jon being in school and me working. It's weird. I decided yesterday that the best solution to first being alone or second being alone because jon was here but doing schoolwork was to clean the house. I put on the decemberists and had a good time scrubbing away. And it's too bad we don't have silver to polish because I'm not quite sure what to do next. Rearrange furniture? Buy decorative pieces online? Set out on my own exploring the city and meeting new and interesting people? I guess we'll have to wait and see. I am thinking of turning a long piece of dried grape vine into a chandelier type fixture. More to come.

bling. bling.

On our last night visiting both the PostEast and my parents, we discovered my dad is really cool. Wait a minute, I just made this a fitting Father's Day post. Anyway, my dad is an engineer and makes money counting machines for international companies. In fact if you were to go into a bank it's very possible you would see one of these machines with the name Cummins on it. That's my dad, at least that's the company he works for. When we were visiting he had just gotten back from a business trip in Turkey and his very official looking briefcases were in the foyer of my parents house. We were sitting around and Jon asked if he had any counterfeits with him. My dad proceeded to pull out envelopes filled with cash, both legitimate and counterfeit. We had thousands of dollars in our hands. Jon was giddy as a school girl about the counterfeits as he held each one up to the light. I decided we needed to project our bling to the world. Our momentary bling at least.

Here I am

Good news folks. The Sanchez family is now legally connected to the internet. We bade farewell to our neighbors wifi and not our neighbors (we'll miss you fireman) a couple weeks ago. Now there's a guy installing carpet next door in the empty apartment and singing loudly in spanish. And Jon and I are at home, lounging about as he has finished work early this week in preparation for his upcoming entrance into academia. I'm not sure how playing video games helps you prepare for a master's in teaching program. I'll have to ask him. Cleansing the palate, he says. As for me I just have the day off.

I always thought I was a laid back, easy going person. When I moved to Portland, my roommate Karla was quick to inform me I was type A. How was I supposed to know? I have been surrounded by type A's my entire life. And let me tell you when you live with Type A's the house will be clean. When I got married, Jon was quick to inform me I grind my teeth at night. So somewhere I'm holding in this stress, I suppose, unleashing it when I sleep. Last night, after a closing shift at work that went surprisingly well, I dreamed I was stuck at this cottage like Starbucks store trying to get it closed up before the openers came. It was a disaster. And people told me this job would be stress free. I often wake up in the middle of the night and my mind is focused on making my sleeping husband a drink or fixing the chai pump. Is it in Fight Club that there's a line about dreaming about work? As if it didn't take up all your time during the day. Was it fight club?

All that to say two things: I may be stressed, and I'm starting to miss school a little bit. At least, I miss the balance school provided with work. But it was a forced balance because in school I have to be reading and sitting all the time and at working I have to be standing and cleaning and interacting with a wide range of people all the time. Now I'm free to create the balance and so I'll work at writing a curriculum for our 3's room for father's day and Jon are shopping for grown up clothes this afternoon.

I do have some exciting news. My friend Karla is officially back from her time in Afghanistan. She's great and unpredictable and I love spending time with her. Also, a friend from church is bringing home her son from Korea today. He is adorable and I'm growing more in my amazement over the adoption process. Very exciting.

"I have news for you. This book is older than you think."

My [Thoughts] on [Brackets]

About six years ago I was deciding where to go to college and lovestruck as I was I was working on a scheme to be close to my long distance boyfriend. The stars seemed to align when I found out the school jon was going to, Multnomah Bible College, had a journalism program. God was giving me the nod of approval, I was sure. It turns out Multnomah has a horrible journalism program and I was much better off at Drake. Besides my Dad gave me a stern look and said, you are not going to school in oregon. That ended that. Instead I spent four years getting an actual education in magazine journalism, still apart from my love, but closer to completing my life plan.

Now I'm on part two of my plan, attend seminary to get bible training, and part one, get an excellent education in magazine journalism, keeps butting its nose in part B's business. It started when a couple of my professors insisted we use the New American Standard translation of the bible. One of my first assignments was to read Ephesians four times from the NASB. It was grueling. The translation attempts to stick close to the Greek structure, which is a poor decision if you try and read it because English is not Koine Greek. And the translators also decided to italicize any words they had to add to the text for understanding, because sometimes the Greek will leave out implied subjects, verbs, clauses. So now whenever I read from the NASB and run across one of those italicized words I always try and read the verse without it. I suppose this is an attempt to get at what the text is really saying. It's also a form of built in scepticism.

The Voice, the student newspaper at Multnomah and the byproduct of their program, also seems to adopt the NASB practice of adding words and clarification that its interviewees were too careless to include. Throughout the paper you'll find brackets around works indicting something the writer has added to a quote for clarification. They are everywhere, overwriting very important parts of the quotes. I'll give you an impromptu example: The president of the Bible club gave his opinion on the school. "I [love] the [school]," he said. "I've really been [blessed] by [my student newspaper] and challenged by them." Each time I see a set of brackets I try and figure out what was really said and how the publication can still feel a sense of credibility with such shoddy quotations.

Someday when I have my own publication I vow to not abuse the clarifying bracket. Instead I'll feel perfectly satisfied like a real journalist would by changing their quote without any indication to the reader. Today I'm taking a break from being a housewife. I've been in the house for the past three days, thanks to my days off, and I'm going a little crazy. So against my best judgment I ventured outside to the local coffeeshop for a little free wifi and social surroundings. I'm glad I did.