New Days

It's been six years.

Wow.

The surreal feelings while reading my previous posts are a little overwhelming. Bullet point changes:

• I'm 24
• I am pretty healthy, physically
• I have a boyfriend I love and we're both thinking about marriage
• I have a good dog
• I have an apartment with my sister ...again. I've shared three with her since the last post.
• I have my own dog care business, make my own hours
• I do regular farm work and gladly live outside Rutland city but close enough to enjoy it's comforts.

Praise God because none of it was earned, all of these huge blessings are gifts!!! Christ has truly loved and provided for me more than I can describe and/or explain. I love my life. I still find things to worry about and I'm making plans for my future that are surely subject to change but I have so much to count as graces and gifts that my heart is swelling with gratitude and bursting with all the knowledge and understanding I've come to that I really must write about it somewhere.

My sisters were telling me that I should start with the beginning, to really know and own to my story. After much thought and some hesitation, I figure I can start with the biggest slices of truth that affect my understanding on a regular basis and then go to how it matters. That brings me to the beginning but at least then I'll know a bit what I'm aiming to reveal in my life, to myself and to anyone that wants to know.

Slices numbered irrelevantly:

1. Being Catholic, knowing/professing/meditating on the truths the Church teaches in her tradition and teachings is pretty foundational. I think there's a plan, a reason and causality to pain, suffering, love, sin, sadness and orgasms. Yep,  I just said that. It's true, I believe, that there is a very very important reality that ties them all together and beats like a heart within the beast we call life. 
2. Theology of the Body, Catholic again, though an objective study in my understanding, of how our bodies describe God's Love, His Mercy and His Beauty. Looking at the starts to understand ourselves, or writing poetry to describe the indescribable feelings, those are similar feats of study as the Theology of the Body.
3. Love and Respect, as a recent finding of mine, is perhaps one of the more helpful slices of truth in my discovery as it concerns the different needs and wants of men and women and the goodness of their differences. This is based on Ephesians chapter 5: verse 33. Men Love your wives as Christ loves the Church and women Respect your husbands as the Church respects Christ and His authority. That is not a direct quote, simply my memory, but it's basically the point. This "finding" has changed my life.
4. Shame, especially how it is felt, and how we can be (not resistant, because that's kind of impossible) resilient and not spread shame. 

This is the beginning, this is my brain in a nutshell.

New happenings

About a month ago, I was packing up my stuff for a week in Burlington. I thought, "Alright, I'll bring this, that, oh and maybe this. Really, I'll be back in a week, and Cathy and I will start looking for jobs here." I looked out my window and saw right past the green trees and neighboring houses, straight to the rolling mountains, the only thing in my life . "There's got to be a better way than trying to enter the rat race..." I said to myself.

Days passed, Cathy and I were applying to every store in the U-Mall, then friday comes and I was hired for a part time job. It seemed like the next few hours after that call, all I could think was "Everything is going to change." I was right. Cathy had to look for two more weeks, but she found a couple jobs in Burlington as well. This was long in coming, as spending a couple weeks somewhere for free is weird for anyone I think, if the time of stay in undetermined in the first place.

Now, Cathy is working in the morning, and I'm closing at this store, and we have completely opposite schedules. She crashed before I even got home last night! Oh well...

I'm slowly learning to get used to whatever my situation is and pray at night, in the morning, and every time I stress. Since that's like all the time, my prayer life is improving! haha I can not wait until we have a appt. to decorate! random...

Since December... not much, just life!

How much can go on in several months? A LOT, let me tell you!

Goals haven't changed much! :D Just how close I am to them. Also, the way I'm prioritizing them has changed.

1. get a real Job
2. get an apartment/move out of the house
3. finish high school
4. get a dog

Ya... I have found an office of Vermont Adult Learning that will take me, so now my focus is on finding a job and apartment so I can get me diploma in Burlington, VT. Pray for me, please!

The whole dog thing is sort of laughable right now, considering how far away that goal seems. But hey! I have to have smaller things like that to look forward to! I simply wish people who do the hiring would ask me to apply at their place. BUT! Since that's not going to happen (I think), I'll do it the old fashioned way and look! Seriously, I have been looking. I just haven't gotten into the whole 'persistence' thing down yet...

Again, pray for me, please.

Friends, food and DOGS..... in that order.

So many things are pulling me in different directions. This isn't really that unusual because I'm 18 though only slightly ambitious.

Goals for this year:

*finish high school

*get a real Job

*get an apartment/move out of the house

*get a dog

I'm pretty sure it goes in that order, in terms of priorities. I HAVE to finish high school education. That is something I'm requiring of myself. For a long time, I was thinking seriously of going to college. I visited a couple and found a few problems, or you can call them "interesting findings".

1) I must get college loans, because there is very little chance of me (being a home-schooled kid) getting grants or scholarships at this point.

2) The information I'm learning on the campuses can also be learned at home for a smaller price as well as getting paid as an apprentice.

3) I would be living on campus with stupid rules (like no car for your first year and dorm stuff) for me to really value the social value, whatever that is. People put so much stock in that, but I wouldn't be going to college for social reasons. I'm sorry, but that's not a good enough reason for me to spend that much of someone else's money (or pretty much money I'll have to pay back when I'm thirty). Social life can be gained while learning in a different style.

Knowing these things, I refuse to become in such debt with the government or banks. That's probably one of the stupidest things I could do right now.

There is a huge farm trend in my family life these days. My brother and dad are putting together budgets and information for a future farm. They are going to find land and livestock providers before spring because that's when they have to start. I don't know how they want things to be started and all that but I have a massive craving to be a part of this. It's who I am! I've dreamed about living on a farm with a dog and cows since I was really little. I'm not a city person. I feel so in between, like I don't fit into either worlds yet. All I want is to become my own person with fulfilling work. Is that too much to ask from the world?

I started getting into Cesar Millan. I mean, obviously, his work. It's beautiful to see people and animals living together in harmony, not equality. That's not the way we are meant to live with them. In his book (I got it for Christmas, YAY!) "Be the Pack Leader" he says that we should perfect democracy among human beings before we start imposing it on animals. That's an interesting statement. I only have one problem with his thinking. He thinks of people as animals too, though somehow different than other animals. We have infrastructure and we have the natural ability to make all other animals work in harmony.

Our unique ability to do this in nature is not coincidence though. I'm not clear on how he thinks of that but I am sure that most of his understanding has helped me see the natural place of things. He just sees humans in a different place in the totem pole than me! haha

So many things that I've been learning about recently fit together to form this beautiful truth about people. We are different from everything out there. And furthermore, it's impossible for any one to be exactly like the other. We are so different yet so similar. Beauty indeed.

how can I say.....

When so many things change in some six months, there is an extent to which I think "What was I doing back then? I can't remember what was going through my head as I said that...." and so now I find myself a different person! Not altogether. It's not a bad change I hope. Iwant to be a FARMER! :D

So, I did this video as my final project for my Intro to College Studies Class I finished yesterday (the reason I feel free enough to blog haha) because I want to be a farmer. I don't know if I'm going to end up going to a college but if I do, I'll know what to do.

This was shot in my library at home. It took me about three or four shots for every question section. Then I wanted to put in more Joel Salatin but I ended up only getting him in a small clip at the end.

I LOVE THAT GUY! Not in a weird way; it's just, I would love to have him as an uncle or something! He's a wonderful farmer and has the guts to stand up to all the government cronies they keep sending his way! I wish I could have half the brilliance in his brain!

Please do me a favor and go to www.youtube.com and type in "Joel Salatin - Polyface Farms". Or, if you've seen "Food Inc." then he is the farmer they talk to at the end. He has pretty much come up with a solution for corporate industrial farming. His formula for localizing food pretty much demands more farmers out there, but I think there are TONS of people sitting in cubicles, just dreaming of the countryside right now, but too poor to start a farm and just not quite enough connections to feel like it's a possibility. I think that if we can change some of the laws in regards to small farms, this would bring localized food streaming into the market at steading and ever growing rates!!! How exciting would that be?!

Does anyone actually trust all food that the USDA approves anymore?! They are in bed with the industrial food companies! Honestly!

Getting Older

ok so I think to title "Really long time, no post" is just ... well it doesn't quite cover it. For a long time now I have all but forgotten about my blog. I used to be on it constantly but life is carying me away. :D

So I'm just going to give a general outline of my last few months...

Starting January my family started the process of moving out of a new house, and my two older sisters and I came up with this brilliant plan to move in to the new house (new to us, it was built in the late 1800s) and pay rent for my parents while we all attempt to move all out belongings from our house only two blocks away and twice the size of our "new" house. Anyway, mid-February we (my sisters and I) move in and celebrate our freedom for a short time! After all we had the whole place to ourselves for something like a whole two months! This is when I discovered how troublesome it is to not work quite as often as my sisters because this obviously means I have ALL house work to myself. Interestingly enough, I found I LOVED to vacuum (a good thing as I had to do it every day because of a dark blue rug) and didn't really mind doing the laundry. Cleaning unfamiliar things is easy! I really didn't like to do the dishes though... so naturally I didn't! (We gradually moved to paper products ;) It was as easy as that during the day, but then my sisters came home and ragged on me for it until I was so upset that I would just refuse to do them. I realize now this was an extremely childish conclusion but bear with me...

I had a crossing guard job then so I was able to contribute equally to the rent but never had any money left over as my sisters did. I didn't care so much because they wouldn't mind buying me things every once in a while. But I still had this sense of being inferior to them. I was always labeling this feeling as feeling younger but that wasn't really it. Later on though, I am grateful that they didn't care about my having more time as them, as long as I got a few chores done while I was at it and able to give rent money when it was due. Over all, I had the best situation because I was able to pursue my interests. Write or play an instrument. I didn't have to worry about groceries because they covered that with their paychecks. Of course there was also the privacy aspect, and we were able to have friends over whenever they felt like coming. Granted everything wasn't half as prepped for company as my mom would have had it but it was good enough for teenagers.

Then my parents started really having to work on our house and moving in more and more things. Things changed but it wasn't as different for my sisters as it was for me. My mom started doing chores and I was able to laze around more and more. Then summer comes around and my job with the crossing guard is now gone. Finding respect these days is all about what you can do for other people. If I was doing all the chores and working on helping people around the house, people would probably forget that I have to work! At least for a while.... :)

For now, I am looking for a job and being constantly humbled by God. God Bless

My moto!

This is a video of a Christan band called "Mercy Me" and this is there song "So long self". Check it out!

God Bless