A Little Rambling

This is my 200th post!  Apparently, I am celebrating by offering you free food and good company next Friday.  :) I still don't have any plans for my actual birthday, so I thought I might capitalize on all those places that offer free birthday eats.  The list of places that offer free stuff is very, very long, so I whittled it down to ones I would actually be willing to do.  Most of them, I don't even have to buy something to get it!  (although I've signed up for enough e-clubs that my spam box will be forever full of fast food.)  Who wants to join me for a day of free eating?  I'll share a lot! BREAKFAST Denny's - free grand slam IHOP - free meal Einstein's - free bagel? First Watch - free entree LUNCH or DINNER Firehouse Subs - free medium sub Liberty Market - $10 towards meal Joe's Farm Grill / Joe's Real BBQ - free meal ($10) Ruby Tuesday's - free burger Schlotzsky's - free sandwich SNACK Wing Stop - free fries Texas Roadho

A broken relationship is like a wound. A deep cut hurts, the ragged edges of the flesh raw and the exposed nerves burning at any touch, no matter how compassionate.  As long as it is left untreated, it cannot heal.  Ignoring the pain doesn't make it go away, it just allows it to fester and get worse.  The longer you wait to heal it, the bigger the scar will become. You could stitch it back together.  With time and care, it will heal.  There may be a scar, but the new skin will grow over it, and it will fade with time.  If you've waited too long, there may be some stiffness at first, but even if it never quite goes away, it's still whole. Your other option, to keep it from becoming necrotic and killing off the rest of you, is to amputate and cauterize.  This is a very drastic choice, and won't always fix everything.  You'll have to get used to functioning without it, because you can't put it back together again.  Even if the worst is gone, there may still b

I don't have a fancy actual topic to write about, but I want to keep the blog alive, so today I will treat you to some of the top floating contents of my mind. 1.  I learned that Yom Kippur is on September 25-26 this year.  For why this is relevant, go listen to this song that has been stuck in my head all week. 2.  As a music teacher, I have a pretty high ambient noise threshold.  However, teaching Pre-K VBS has the ability to surpass that threshold, and for the first time in a long time I found myself driving home without the ipod playing, enjoying the silence. 3.  My 24th birthday is in about two weeks!  It's the day before I take my AEPAs, so I can't do anything too crazy.  In thinking of ways to celebrate, I realized that I've never had a birthday date, so that's what I'm going to wish for on any wish-chances (stars, eyelashes, pennies in fountains, 11:11, dandelions, etc) between now and then.  My birthday's even on a Friday this year, it'd

I've had a lot of time to myself already this summer.  My sister is up in Seattle for the summer, Dad works, Mom's been working out of town, most friends are in summer school or out of state, and I don't work till 3 or 4 pm each day.  This means my mornings are full of...not much.  It has more than made up for the hectic craze of the last semester, and I'm ready for my life to be filled with a little more busyness again.  This week I was actually pretty good about not sleeping in super late and being a totally lazy bum.  I've been keeping up with my cooking challenge to myself, though I haven't posted it.  Last week's counted double, because I made pizza dough and pizza sauce from scratch recipes.  It was pretty delicious, and I've still got a lump of dough in the freezer, and a small vat of sauce to be used.  (I was expecting about 8-10 people and ended up with 4, so there were leftovers!) Some days, though, I just laze around the house, wondering

The house hunt has officially ended (alas!), and the great apartment caper of 2012 has begun!  In a little over a month, I will hopefully be moving to the East Valley with Chantel and Sicily (and Dallas and Fiyero), which will cut down on my gas bills considerably.  I spent this afternoon running around to seven different complexes that all theoretically met our qualifications for living spaces.  Four have been stricken from the list, one is teetering, and two are actually pretty darn nice.  Hopefully we'll all agree and move in soon. Here are a few things I learned today that might make apartment hunting more endurable. Don't go alone.  It's waaaay too boring, and you have no one to bounce ideas off of or compare notes with.  Nate was gracious enough to accompany me and save me from losing my mind, since Chantel and Sis are out of state. Don't go in summer if you live in Arizona.  (whoops.)  If you do, complexes that have a/c in their model rooms automatically

1.  hearing students excitedly telling their parents what they learned today 2.  my boss telling me I'm a saint 3.  getting new students who are already pretty good 4.  getting new baby students excited to learn 5.  students wanting to hear me play 6.  making silly faces and yet still having 'classroom management' abilities 7.  brownies, cake pops, cupcakes, cookies, and raspberry lemonade 8.  a photocopier! 9.  listening to my students make up their own music 10.  when I can tell my students actually like me :) I am so blessed in my job!

I overheard (and then butted into) a conversation the other night at a church event with some friends.  They were talking about a man in South Africa who was explaining to my one friend why blacks were naturally inferior.  She was astounded that someone could believe such a thing in this day and age, but realized that's how he'd been raised and taught, so it was what he really believed.  He had a litany of reasoning to support his claim, not realizing how much of it was unfounded in reality.  It didn't matter if it was true, it was all he knew. How much of what we believe do we only believe because it's what we were raised with?  Our parents teach us something, the lesson is reinforced by other important figures in our lives, and we accept it as solid truth with no margin of error.  It's simply how the world is.  We build our lives on this foundation, and when it is challenged, we have no doubts that we are right, and we continue blithely believing. Eventually,

Most people don't really know their neighbors, at least not in a city like Phoenix.  It's too hot to play in the streets together, too much traffic, too many questionable neighborhoods.  We keep to ourselves in our air conditioning and our own backyard pools. I, fortunately, am an exception to this rule.  I know most of my neighbors, and their families have known my family for a generation or two.  Several go to the same church, we have neighborhood parties on big holidays, and you always know someone with a spare key when you lock yourself out.  I've tutored, taught, or babysat most of the kids on this block, and there's always someone to feed your pets when you're out of town, or someone willing to lend you an egg or some sugar.  However, sometimes the best perks are the little things.  The doorbell rang tonight as I was sitting around talking with my dad, and I opened the door to see my neighbor and her daughter standing there holding out a plate with two enor