Random Happenings

I don't know if anybody remembers me wanting to get my nose pierced so yesterday, I did it!

Right in the middle of my nose (called the septum, in case anybody thinks that word is fun to say like I do!) and it hurt really bad. 

And I'm TOTALLY kidding!!!! Really, really, for real the septum piercing is fake. I bought this fake body ring at Claire's yesterday and thought it would be funny to freak my mom out (and she was pretty freaked. I wish I had a picture of her face because it was priceless!). Oh, and I'm not kidding about it hurting, the little clasp in the inside pinches pretty bad that when I was wearing it on my lip earlier today my lip started to go numb. :-p

Anyway, just thought I'd share and maybe give y'all a mini-heart attack since I like to play little pranks like that. I'm also going to share with you some other little random things like this Jellyfish that I made!

Isn't it cute!? I'm not quite sure how I got this ^ from this but it worked and I'm really happy with my jellyfish (Haven't decided yet if it's a he or a she... any suggestions? I'm thinking girl what with the pink rosy cheeks and all but it could be a boy too.... I'm so indecisive!)

I also made a carrot! My sister, Mercedes gave me the idea and was pretty much the mastermind behind it all, I just made it. I never would have thought to have made a carrot but I loved the idea when it was suggested and I think it's really cute. I'm currently on a random crochet mission and trying to come up with cute, random things (like carrots and jellyfish! oh, and I made a worm/caterpillar thing but I don't have a picture of that yet) to make and maybe sell.

I'm considering starting my own Etsy business or going to a really neat store that Mercedes took me to yesterday called Alley Cat that sells homemade things (it looks like what I would imagine and Etsy real life store would be. So fun!) and they had some cute crochet plushie animals for sale. My mom has always told me that I could sell the stuff that I make but I never really believed her until I actually saw what was being sold on Etsy and at Alley Cat and it's stuff that I can make! Next time I go there I'm going to ask the manager about selling my stuff and we'll see what happens from there. :-)

On another completely random note (since this is all about being random!) my goober sister is home from camp! Bethany made it home safe today from Louisiana, where she was working on staff at a christian camp all summer and she'll be home a total of 13 days before heading off to Heartland college. I'm only going to get to hang with her about half that time since I'm heading to a wedding/reunion with friends I haven't seen in forever and I'm very excited about it! I anticipate a lot of fun and I'll definitely try to blog and show y'all some pictures if I have internet. 

And I think that's it, for now. I'll write more later but for now, here's another random picture. I love random! :-D

Happy Birthday LH!

Today, exactly one year ago, I started my little blog Life Happens and it's been the one and only blog that has actually ever made it to one year, with at least one post every month from August 2010 to August 2011

So today, I will give you all the stats that I have on my little blog, as well as link to a few of my posts to highlight the year's worth of posts I have here and then I'll end with why I started to blog and something pithy and sappy to close with. :-) Enjoy!

The total page views LH has: (as of right now when I write this. By the time you read this you will be adding another number to that. Thank you!)

5,204

The month with the most views is:

NOVEMBER 2010

because the two most viewed posts happen to be in November and those are:

UPDATE with 176  views
and
Update #2 (written by my friend Julie) with 112 views

The post that has the most comments is:

new look, new direction with 7 comments
and
I just don't want to. with 5 comments

The month with the least amount of posts is:
A tie between
JANUARY & FEBRUARY 2011
with 2 posts each.

The month with the most amount of posts is:
NOVEMBER with 15 posts

The current number of posts I have published:
(Excluding this one)
77

And now, here's a review of this year with some blog posts that I picked out. It's not just highlighting the year of posting for this blog but it's highlighting MY year as I shared it with you so I picked out some posts that I thought best did that.

Celebrities and Dialysis
What NOT to say
Phase two in progress
This is taking f.o.r.e.v.e.r.
It's a date
Second by second
Tomorrow!
I'm HOME!!!
Just like I thought it would be...
That's how it is
Six Impossible Things
Kristi and Lefty
My current project
Long time no blog post!
My OneWord
And then what?


So there you have 16 posts highlighting my year of blogging here on Life Happens and I hope you enjoy looking back through them as much as I have. Some are really snarky and make me slightly embarrassed that I wrote them but I did and I included them in the highlights anyway. Because who really wants to forget that I refused to wear a face mask anyway? :-p

But there are some that I'm proud of and there's some that encouraged me all over again just by re-reading them. Like my Alice in Wonderland's spin-off of believing six impossible things and my recent discovery of my one word theme (it's more of a motto).

Some of them made me laugh, like my silly story of Kristi and Lefty or remembering how I felt like a celebrity (what I assume celebrities feel like, anyway) when the lady at the hair salon knew who I was because I was on the prayer list at her church.

My favorite part about this blog though, are you guys. My readers, my "followers," my main reason for blogging in the first place. And for my last statistic to show...

The total number of comments I have:
(as of right now and counting my own)

108

Yeah, that's huge. Sure, I've probably got about 20ish posts that don't have any comments but the majority of my posts do all have comments and I've read every single one of and sometimes more than once if they were particularly encouraging. All I can say to that is KEEP EM COMING! :-D 

Oh, and thank you. For reading my little blog and commenting and telling me in person that you've enjoyed reading what I write and for just reading. You encourage me and you inspire me and you're the reason LH has made it a whole year because without you motivating me, I would have stopped.

And the reason I started this blog in the first place? To share with anybody who wanted to know, exactly what was going on with me so that I could eliminate the "telephone" effect where I would tell someone I wasn't feeling good and then a prayer request was sent out and then FB statuses, text messages and emails would be going around where all of a sudden I was getting ready to go to the hospital or I had collapsed on the floor or I had a blood disorder or I was too weak to get out of bed and now everybody was worried and calling trying to get more info. It was a mess trying to sort out the wrong information and tell everybody what actually was going on that I just decided I needed to take control of the information "flow" and that way, there would be no question whether or not it was accurate because it came straight from me and with the blog format, everybody could just copy and paste my blog link and direct everybody to the source.

In a nutshell, I was tired of everybody updating everybody on me and I wanted to do the health updates myself. 

So, here's to another year of Life Happens and we'll see what happens next! 

And here are some pictures that have been posted before plus some new ones. 

The very first picture I ever posted on here. To think I was actually excited about wearing a mask then. 

I also do not miss giving myself those shots. AT ALL. Any of them. 

I never want to have my hair that short again.

Me and my dad about 6 months after surgery.

My first (non-hospital) trip after transplant to visit friends. This was a happy day! :-D

The original me :-)

Another happy day. My sister's graduation and about the time I started to consistently feel good again.

Things hoped for and things not seen. Sums it up good.

Ok, and now, I am really done with this post. It's probably the longest post I've ever done and it's also the first post I've done "ahead" of time. Meaning that I'm writing this the day before it will actually post because on August 4th (today) I'm out doing stuff with my sister-in-law like getting my eyebrows waxed and shopping (because that's what we do best!) and it's really weird to write in this tense and not a future tense like I want to do right now since I'm not writing this today but the day before. Ack! Ok, now I'm really stopping.

Have a great day everyone!

And then what?

In about two months it will be my 1 year transplant day. (Nov 4th) and it's been about a year since I started this blog to journal about it. (More on that later)

Last year I could hardly get out of bed and I was going three times a week (for four-five hours at a time) to a dialysis center sitting in a chair while my blood cycled through a machine before switching to my home dialysis which meant spending hours sitting in front of an I.V. pole while I cycled fluid through my belly. Fuuuun....  :-/

Then I got the transplant and then, after 6 long months, I recovered and then.... what?

There's my dilemma. What do I do now that I'm well? How do you exactly move on *mentally* after your physical self goes through traumatic, horrible circumstances? Am I well enough to work? What if I can't handle the stress of "real life?" Should I go back to college? Maybe I'll just keep hanging out at home because I don't know anything else? And the always dreaded: When am I gonna get sick again?

Because for me, there is no "if" about getting sick. I know I'll get sick again, I just don't know when, or how bad it will be, whether or not I'll be hospitalized again or whether or not I'll have to undergo surgery again but it will happen. And I can only hope and pray that it will be nothing more than a cold that I can take Tylenol or Ibuprofen for. 

So... that's where I'm at right now. Sitting at home trying to decide what my next step should be. I played a  game today on my DS where the side of the screen constantly moves forward so you can't go back and you can't go ahead any further than the screen will let you so you never know what's next until it comes into view. If you wait to long and don't move, the side of the screen will start pushing your character forward (and sometimes push you right off the edge of the platform you're on and make you fall into the lava which kills you instantly and then you have to start all over but that starts breaking down my analogy so just disregard.) 

My point is: Mario (the character of the game I was playing) has to move forward or he dies. And I have to move forward or... I... don't die but I don't really live either. I can choose to sit and just sorta get pushed into the future as each day passes and stay stuck or I can choose to get up and move and live and make the next jump and trust that God will show me where to land.

Disclaimer: I do not own Mario. 

Picture Friday

I took this picture and then found this quote while I was editing it. They just totally went together and I wanted to share. :-)

Do the right thing because it's right. Face the truth. Courage to say no. Magic keys to living with integrity. That's a lot of stuff to ponder right there.

Enjoy pondering!

My OneWord.

Some of you may or may not be familiar with the OneWord New Year's Theme. You can click on the link for more info from someone who originally started this but I'll fill you in right here.

Basically, it means throwing out the list of resolutions that you do every year after Christmas of all the changes and goals you have to start working on as soon as the fireworks fly and the countdown ends with the silver ball dropping to the bottom. Only to forget all about that list by the time February rolls around.

So instead of making that list, you choose one word as a theme for your year. Something that will motivate you to make the changes necessary in your life. A word that will remind you of where you're headed in order to become better and more Christ-like. Obviously, it's going to be a word with a lot of meaning so that it will help guide the decisions you make.

And you're probably wondering why I'm bringing this up now since New Year's for 2011 is LONG past and 2012 is still five months away. Welllll..... It's because, last year, I saw a couple friends coming up with their word and since I was still healing from all my surgeries (ok, just two but one was really major so it counts for like, five surgeries.) and I was still stuck in bed and had a hard time getting out (mostly because it takes a whole lot longer to heal emotionally than physically, more on that later) I thought this would be a good idea since I never finish my resolution list and I can't really do a whole lot anyway. A one word theme sounded great.

Except I hit a big problem with that. I couldn't decide on a word. At all. I thought about heal because I was healing up on all fronts at that time, but it didn't really do anything for me. I thought about love since I had been shown love in so many different ways and I wanted to return some of that by loving back, but I was already doing that so I didn't need a word to remind me. I thought of content, joy, maybe strong, or even recover but nothing stood out to me or screamed at me "THIS IS THE WORD!"

I prayed, I read other blogs from people writing about their words trying to get an idea, I prayed more, I searched the Bible once for a word to stand out (even randomly pointing at different words, which got me some interesting candidates sometimes) and I just got nothing. So I gave up. I'm not going to have any word, or theme, or resolution this year at all, I decided.

But I guess I never really did forget all about it since I still saw other friends writing about their word and how it was affecting their decisions or how they saw it pop up several times that day or how God was working that word into their life and helping them to grasp a deeper meaning of it. And on Saturday I got my word. And it surprised me. And then I saw it pop up in two other places and heard someone say it in a movie. And then I got excited.

Do y'all want to know? Of course you do, since you're interested enough in my life to read my crazy little blog. :-)

It is:  ORIGINAL


-adjective
1. Belonging or pertaining to the origin of beginning of something, or to a thing at its beginning.
2. New; fresh; inventive; novel:
3. Arising or proceeding independently of anything else:
4. Capable of or given to thinking or acting in an independent, creative, or individual manner:
5. Created, undertaken, or presented for the first time:
6. Being something from which a copy, a translation, or the like is made:
source of definition




Do you want to know how I came across this lovely new word that explodes in my head when I think of all the implications to my life that it holds? It was thanks to my previous post on being normal that I almost didn't publish because I couldn't really get all my thoughts together on the topic and I just needed something to update my blog with because I didn't want y'all to think I quit writing here. And even though I wasn't expecting any comments (even though I LOVE them, yes that's a shameless hint plus a thank you to those who do comment.) I did get one comment and she mentioned my word.

And as I looked at it, it smacked me in face and screamed "THIS IS YOUR WORD!" Of course, I was surprised because I gave up on finding a word because I couldn't settle on one and, naturally, I tried to ignore this even though I had prayed hard for it in January. (See what happens when you comment!?)

I thought about saving it to share when 2012 actually happened but, then I thought, I'm going to be original and I'm going to share my word in August, because that's when I found it (or actually tripped over it because it was set down right in front of me.) And this is my first decision based on being original, but I can guarantee there will be more. And I plan on keeping this word until I come across another one, just in case you were wondering since I'm not choosing one in January like everybody else.

Do you have a word for 2011? (feel free to share mine!) Are you one of those talented people who can actually complete at least one item on their resolutions list? Did any of those definitions speak to you in any way like they do to me? (I'm a copy of God and I'm the first me ever created. WOW!) Do you think the one word theme is dumb? (be honest, I like honest.)

P.S. A thank you to my friend Shieldmaiden, who was the author of comment in which I came across my word and who I am gonna get to see next month in a pretty white dress marrying her man. (insert girly squeal here) :-)

And remember... there could never be a more beautiful you. 

Normal

Is there really such thing as normal? Did there use to be a normal standard (as spelled out in the Bible) but due to a steady drift away from the church and the Bible and anything remotely close to Christianity, have we lost sight of what should be normal and what isn't?

Look at any dictionary or thesaurus you want and you'll get some definitions and keywords like this:


Conforming to the standard or to the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural. 


Dictionary.com, in addition to the definition above, had these to say about normal as well.

Free from any mental illness; sane.
Approximately average in any psychological trait, intelligence, personality, or emotional adjustment.



Mental illness is abnormal? Physical illness probably is too, then. Most people have something physically "wrong" with them ranging from arthritis to impacted wisdom teeth to some complications due to pregnancy to cancer to asthma. Does that make everybody affected by something like this not normal?


Who exactly is to judge what is normal or not anyway? Who decided that in order for women to be attractive their bones have to be sticking out and a size 0 pant needs a belt to keep it from slipping off bony hips? Why is it that young people feel the need to "stand out from the crowd" by getting all sorts of piercings and tattoos? (the only problem with that is they only stand out from one crowd, while they fit in with another crowd who's done the same thing). 


Kids who are sick with some chronic disease usually say something along the lines of "I just want to be like other kids, you know, normal." What they really mean to say is "I don't want to have (fill in the blank) anymore." 


I think I've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as normal. Not now, at least. At one point in time, there was normal. It was the one time on earth when everything was perfect and that was shortly after the world was created and filled with oceans, plants, animals and, the finishing touch, people.


Adam and Eve were perfect and being perfect was normal. Having free will is normal. Being curious is normal. And if Adam and Eve had been able to not give in to the temptation to sin... someone else would have. Because, maybe our sin natures our normal too, otherwise God wouldn't have had to come die for us so we can be saved from ourselves.


Never mind, there is such a thing as normal, and it's not a good thing. It's not normal to dress modestly, to date someone without sleeping together, to go to church regularly, to read the Bible, to not yell hurtful words when you're angry, to give food to the homeless.


"If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me [God] before it hated you." John 15:8


I was one of those kids that wanted to be "like everybody else" but not anymore. I don't want to be normal. I want to be like God. And NOTHING about Him was normal in our crazy mixed up world of "fitting in." 




Just some random thoughts I've been thinking about lately. Is there anything you have to add? Do you agree? Disagree? Did you ever just want to fit in and then realize that it was better to just be the you that God made? Share your thoughts in the comments below, I want to know what you think. :-)

Long time no blog post!

Sorry! I keep wondering when my life got so busy but I guess it just happened so gradually that I didn't realize I had so much going on and then my poor little blog got neglected. 

I don't have pictures yet but I will put them up as soon as my sister gives them to me. I was able to visit her this last weekend and had such a great time. I've been really missing my girl and it meant a lot to be able to see her and hang out together. 

Yesterday our Backyard Bible Clubs started, we have two at our pastor's and assistant pastor's house and both clubs have had a great turn out. Since my pastor only lives right down the road from us, I've been helping with the club there. I do puppet shows, sing songs and help play games and get wet with the kids. Today was our second day and I'm pretty sure I'm having more fun than the kids are! I love hearing them sing and to see them so excited about the games and Bible stories. 

I have an appointment at the transplant center tomorrow and my dad has an appointment with his doctor up there as well so while I'm not so thrilled about the drive up there, I am looking forward to having lunch with a friend of mine that I haven't seen since my sister's graduation so I'm pretty happy about getting to see her and spend some time with her. :-)

I'll blog tomorrow if I can about how my doctor's visit goes and give y'all a health update so you know how I'm doing. I'm continuing to improve, obviously, since I've gotten myself busy with things like weekend trips to a summer camp to see my sister and playing around with little kids singing Bible songs and doing puppet shows.

Also, if you're not on facebook or you've just missed it, I have started a very informal exercising "program" (I put that in quotes because it's hardly a program) of.... hula hooping! Yes, you read that right. I bought a really cool hula hoop that comes apart into sections for easy traveling and I learned some tricks watching youtube videos. It's an aerobics/cardio exercise like Zumba or Walk Fit and it's very low impact (unless of course, you happen to whack yourself in the head with the hoop while swinging it above your head, like me) and it's a TON of fun. So much fun, in fact, I've got materials to make my own hula hoops and my whole family wants one. :-)

I'm buying a camera from my friend tomorrow (she wants to get rid of it so she can upgrade) and then I'll be able to take a lot more pictures of things like my hula hooping family and the progress of my bedroom redo and all sorts of other fun stuff so you can keep up with this crazy life of mine.