College is expensive! How about $1,000, CenturyLink?

A quick author’s note, since this is not in the usual fashion of my blog posts, however sporadic they are – this is an entry for a scholarship from CenturyLink based on what the Internet has increased my awareness of. Hope you enjoy! Technology is a double-edged sword – as we have maximized our use of it, we have made our world smaller and smaller, allowing us to get things done faster and stay in touch with people better. It has many advantages to be sure – I can make a doctor’s appointment online, register for classes, buy a book with one click, research a topic by typing in a few words, email my mom to say hi even though she lives 1,000 miles away – but many pitfalls as well. How many times do we sit down to do homework and wake up from a reverie half an hour later to realize we’ve spent the time we allotted for homework looking at PostSecret and Facebook? Those are the benign ills technology can distract us with – what about the horror stories we hear of cyber bullying or the online communities where depressed youth encourage each other to express themselves by cutting? The quote “with great power, comes great responsibility” has been attributed to many possible different speakers in many possible different forms, but its sentiment is as true today in regards to technology as it was in any of its previous contexts. Technology has taught me the paradox of being a speck in the grand scheme of things, while holding the infinite power to influence others for good or for ill with however I choose to represent myself online. When I was younger, I saw technology as a way to promote myself, to get attention. “Look at ME, listen to what I have to say!” (We need look no further than the Selfie Stick to see what a prevalent attitude this is in today’s culture.) Every little thing that happened to me was fodder for a status update, often in the form of some cryptic plea for attention that insinuated something bad had happened, without saying what. I had no lightening bolt, “a-ha!” moment where my perspective suddenly changed, but I can probably pin it down to turning 30. (Another double-edged sword of technology: Facebook ensures I won’t forget someone’s birthday, whether or not it is someone I want to remember to wish a happy birthday to.) 30 loomed ahead of me for a few years, taunting me with its “over-the-hill” jokes and images of wrinkles (okay, more wrinkles) and other such old(er)-age rites of passage. Soon before it was upon me, though, I stopped being afraid of it and saw what a blessing each birthday is, and considered not only what kind of legacy I’ll leave when I’m gone, but what kind of impression I’m giving each day I’m here. Through the convenience and fun of technology, I post status updates, share interesting articles I read, and post pictures on Facebook. Even though I live far away from all of my family, they can see what goes on in my life and watch my children grow up – a privilege denied to anyone who lived away from their loved ones before the luxury of things like cell phones and Skype. I post pictures and get inspiration from others on Instagram when I see Bible verses and uplifting quotes superimposed over beautiful scenery, or the happy, smiling face of a loved one filling up my feed. Because of the realization that thanks to technology, I have an impact on everyone I see in cyberspace - whether it’s a fleeting impact or a lasting one – and it’s up to me whether that impact is good or bad. Technology has increased my awareness of my ability to make the world a better place even though I inhabit such a small corner of it. Thanks to the way technology advances, what seems like a small corner of the world isn’t really so small after all.

The tie between immunizations and worship

One of my projects for this year is to write a daily devotional book. One of the ones I wrote recently talks about a current hot-button issue, vaccination. Thought I'd share. February 2, 2015 Whether we should vaccinate our children or not has become a hot topic of debate, especially since the (now completely discredited) theory of a link between vaccines and autism. As I write this, measles outbreaks are popping up in several states and can be traced back to a short time period in Disneyland a few months ago. It is thought by many that measles is not a very serious disease, but you don’t have to look very far to see that isn’t true – just read the heartbreaking letter the author Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter Sophie to measles. I’ve heard many arguments about why people choose not to vaccinate their children, and I don’t agree with a single one of them. Not immunizing, contrary to the belief of anti-vaxers, does not provide those that are not vaccinated with “herd immunity”; it compromises the overall immunity of the herd. I look at the benefits of vaccines and the support of the scientific and medical communities and wonder why anyone would willfully choose to turn a blind eye to the facts, thereby compromising the health, possibly even the life, of their children and the children around them. It’s the same way with the Bible. It clearly spells out the will of God – how to live your life, how to have a relationship with Him (hear, believe, repent, confess, be baptized), where to worship, how to worship – and wonder how anyone can pick and choose which verses to live by, or blatantly ignore what it teaches. If you’ve been riding the anti-vaccine bandwagon, for whatever reason, arm yourself with the facts and immunize your children. Don’t take that risk. Even more importantly, our eternal lives will be unending, and what we do with this life determines where we spend the next. Don’t take the risk of adopting a “do-what-feels-good, I-can-worship-anywhere-I-want” mentality about religion. God is not here to serve us, we are here to serve Him. The Bible is our vaccine against the devil and his schemes, and following it will ensure health for eternity.

Thankful for this charmed life.

It's nearly 11:00 on a Wednesday - a completely typical night. The house is quiet except for the TV, always on for background noise, and Sam (our dog), who is constantly snuffling as if he suffers from the same allergies as the rest of us. I'm just sitting here feeling grateful in the midst of this mundanity. I love my life, and the simplicity of sitting here with a recorded episode of People's Court playing on tv and the kids all asleep. It's the quiet moments like this that inspire me to reflect on just how much I have to be thankful for, as cliched as that may sound. Granted, there are things I'd change if I could - I wish my husband could bring home the paycheck he does while working in Spokane rather than Grand Coulee so that we could go to sleep next to each other every night instead of spending three nights each week sleeping alone, but I don't see how I can complain even about that when we've been so richly blessed. There are so many events in the past I can look back at and contrast it to life now and see such a vast difference in not just the quality of my life, but the substance of myself. I've done a lot of growing up recently - I can pinpoint the exact day that I went from a selfish, egocentric adolescent in an adult's body - maybe I'm being too hard on myself- then again, maybe not - but when I look back over my past I can definitely admit that I've always been most concerned with how things affected ME, how everything made ME feel, or inconvenienced ME. There are still times when I have to fight that old enemy of pride or egotism, but it's far less of a problem these days than it used to be. Though there were many struggles we had to go through for me to grow and for our family to successfully blend (if either of those terms can ever truly accurately be applied to remarriage and stepfamilies. lol) and though I wish many of them had been unnecessary, for the most part I'm thankful for the way life has unfolded over the past four years. After all, it's the trials and things that test us that help us to grow and better ourselves. Now when I think about other relationships I've been in or the most grevious of mistakes I've made, it feels less like I'm recalling my own memories and more like it was something I saw in a movie. I've been back in school part-time for a couple of weeks now, and though at first it felt a little overwhelming - after all, thus far I had only ever juggled two of my current roles at a time (when I was in college at 20, I only worked and went to school; after having kids and returning for more schooling I was also a stay-at-home mom). Having never done it before, I was confident that I could juggle taking care of a family, working part-time, and 7 credits of classes but a little nervous; unsure if I could juggle all three and give each responsibility my full attention and best efforts. Also, grading writing assignments in college is subjective - you're never completely sure when you start a class with a new professor what their writing style is. Turns out though, I needn't have worried - one of the great things about onine classes is that you can work ahead if you're so inclined, so right now I'm done with (and aced) everything due through the 24th. As it often happens, I started this draft a few weeks ago and am just now getting back to it.The only thing that's changed is that I'm nearly done with all of the assignments for both of my classes - I expect to be completely done within a week, and the quarter doesn't actually end until December 5th. I register for the next quarter of classes on the 3rd, and I'm planning on taking 18 credits (full-time is 12). After literally months of studying and brushing up on math, I went and took my placement test last week and got into the class I wanted to (phew!). 4th quarter at work is in full swing, and I'm enjoying the fact that when it's over I'll be switching gears and finally pursuing a career. What blessings God has showered on us lately....it's overwhelming. =) Today is a day well suited for nostalgia, as it's London's 7th birthday. It's hard to believe it was only 7 years ago that she was born when she acts more like a teenager. lol It has been amazing to be a mother to these two little girls, and I can't wait to see what the future has in store for them, and for our whole family. Wish me luck - as soon as I'm finished with school for the quarter, I'm going to start putting more effort into the book I started working on. Who knows, before long maybe I'll have some good news on that front, too. ;-)

It's time!

I paved the road with good intentions for so long, and finally my money is getting put where my mouth is. I've talked about going back to school, I've talked about writing - I've talked about a lot of things, but nothing along those lines ever got done. Of course, that woman of inaction and good intentions really feels a lifetime away from who I am now. I think back to, for instance, 16-year-old Laura. The girl with the overinflated sense of self-importance who didn't care about anything as much as she cared about having a boyfriend and feeling loved. The girl who used any advantage she could to be the center of attention. This would continue for many years, although it would take her a long time to realize it. 20-year-old Laura, whose careless actions and need for love turned into becoming a mother two weeks after her 21st birthday. One of the best things that would ever happen to her; it starts to get her to think outside of herself and care more about other people. Ultimately though, even as she aged she essentially stayed in that 20-year-old mentality thanks to being in an abusive relationship with a poor excuse for a man that was the complete opposite of a mature, responsible husband and father. Others, mostly parents and welfare, paid their way, enabling the two of them to continue behaving like children playing house. 25-year-old Laura finally asserts herself enough to get out of the marriage after countless forms and incidents of abuse and adultery, but still thinks more about herself than most people. And then....fireworks. A sudden, shocking realization that love is not what I thought it was. Growing up with divorced parents doesn't give you the best example of what marriage is supposed to be like, and early "relationships" and my first marriage only reinforced the wrong things. But then out of the blue, when I had sworn I didn't want to get married again, Vernon came along. The rest, as they say, is history....it's likely you already know the story. ;-) Sure, there were struggles. Merging two families is not easy, but we're past all that. Being with a real man, a Godly man, who is mature and responsible and a wonderful husband and father, has helped me do the growing up I should have done long ago. I am no longer the first person I think of. I get things done. It has brought material blessings as well - first there were the big things I finally got to cross off my bucket list - buying the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder I've wanted since I was 18, and seeing Nickelback in concert, both incredible things. We continue to be blessed even more - I went back to work at Guardian this May, and shortly after that Vernon went back to work through the union at Grand Coulee Dam. That enabled me to decide to go back to school and focus on writing - as of week after next, when the girls get back from my visiting my parents, I'm going to part-time. I can actually work because I want to, not because we need me to. I'm sitting here typing on my new laptop that we just purchased, and we looked at a house earlier that we're hoping to buy. It's just unbelievable how we've been blessed in so many ways. 30-year-old Laura loves life and the way things have turned out. God and family are the most important things, hands down.I see so many differences in myself, and I could not be happier about where life is in where it's going. Since it's been so long since I've written anything and I finally got a new laptop, I knew it was time to dust off the creativity and do what I do best these days - take care of business. ;-)

Happily Ever After

As with so many other things in life, my time in California didn't turn out as I intended. What is that quote by John Lennon? "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans." Ain't that the truth. The good news is, things turned out BETTER than I had anticipated, because I'm writing this from home in Washington, where I have been back for almost three weeks. =)

The plan was to be in CA for a few months (we estimated six) to help with the cleanup of my grandparent's property after the passing of my grandpa at the end of last year and to finish my A.A. while I was there to make sure my time away from home was spent as productively as possible. I never even got a chance to take the math class I intended to take from Merced JC, because after I had been gone for a month my hubby and I decided that we had been away from each other more than long enough and I needed to come home. We had already bought tickets for me to visit him for ten days around Valentine's Day, so we decided we would go ahead with that (since all we could do with the ticket was use it some other time, not get the money back), then the girls and I would head back two weeks after that.

I can't tell you how torn in two I felt both when leaving here in the first place to go to CA, and then leaving CA to come back home. Where my husband is, where we've made our home together, is where I belong - after spending two months back at my parent's house over a year into my marriage, I feel that more than ever - but it was hard to leave my family again, not knowing when I might see them again (but knowing it would be a long time for sure). After living away from them for a year, it was great to see my parents, my brother, his kids, everyone there of course - but I'm so glad to be home with Vernon. =)

The trip back here wasn't so great, though - we were about 20 miles south of Klamath Falls, Oregon (still a good eight hours from home), in the middle of nowhere when the car started making a funny noise. God was looking out for us for sure, because even though we were literally in the middle of nowhere, this happened to occur right near a gas station thankfully placed in that nothingness. A good Samaritan, a guy who said he normally eats lunch at school but didn't like what they were serving that day, took the time to look at the car and figure out that the problem was the radiator hose, which needed to be replaced. He taped it up so I could make it to K-Falls, where we got the hose replaced - and then ran out of gas right afterwards. This also happened in a very handy place, right next to an auto parts store where the girls and I walked to buy gas cans, and a gas station where we walked to put gas in the gas cans. Luckily the trip was uneventful after that, and the girls were great troopers, but it was a miserably long drive. It literally took from 4:45 am Friday morning to 12:45 am Friday night/Saturday morning.

At least that's over now though, and especially after spending all that time apart, life is better and we are happier than ever. =)Being a newlywed, never mind a newlywed trying to blend five children from two families, can be difficult - but when you find the right person like I know I did, it's all worth it. We just hit the 16-month mark on the 26th - hard to believe it's almost been a year and a half already, but no matter how slowly or quickly the rest of our life together passes, I'm just glad I get to spend it with him. =)

Aloha

As usual it's been a long time since I've took fingers to keyboard (as opposed to pen to paper, which I can't stand doing anymore since I type so much faster than I write. lol) and as of right now, much is different than it was the last time I wrote.

My grandpa had been suffering from Alzheimer's for quite some time and was getting progressively worse over the last few months. It ended up being necessary to put him in a nursing home only about a month or so ago, and since my temp job had recently ended V and I decided it was a good time for me to come down here for a little while. I didn't make it here before he passed away - it happened on the 29th of last month and I got here on the 3rd after a long drive down. I did get to stop and meet one of my cousin-in-laws on the way down and spend the night in Red Bluff, which broke up the drive a little bit (13 hours on Monday and 4 on Tuesday)and was a lot of fun. It had been a while since I had spent hours into the night girl talking. =)

The funeral was on Monday, which is hard to put into words. He was my grandpa, and now he and my grandma are both gone, but he had been suffering for a long time. I hadn't been planning on saying anything at the funeral, but I had a few thoughts floating around in case the mood struck. After my stepdad and my brother both got up and said something, I decided I needed to as well. Me, my brother, my cousins, Gage, and Dale's son Harlan all wore flannel shirts over our dress clothes in honor of Grandpa, since that's what he wore every day of his life. =) It brought a little bit of a bright spot to a sad day. I wish I had gotten a picture of all of us dressed up with flannel shirts on over our nice clothes. =)

With Grandpa's passing comes the need to clean up his property, which is quite a feat, and one of the reasons I won't be headed right back home. It's not a cheap or simple decision to drive 1,000 miles away from home, so we decided this would be a good time to help out my family and tie up some of my own loose ends - namely, helping to begin the cleanup of Grandma and Grandpa's property, and taking the last class to get my A.A. In Washington the requirements are different, so the one class here would translate into three or four there. Since we didn't make the decision for me to come down here until it was almost time for the semester to begin, I wasn't able to get into the class I wanted (showed up at 8 am the day of the funeral, which started at 10, and was way too far down the wait list) - but the good news is, I won't have any problem getting into a Math 70 class (or whatever their equivalent of it is) in Merced. So I'll take Math 70 at Merced this semester and 90 during the summer semester at MJC, and be all set to transfer to EWU (Eastern Washington University) when I go back home.

In the short time I'm here (feels like a really long time since I'm away from my husband and my home, but in the overall scheme of things it's not) I doubt we'll make much of a dent in the cleanup at my grandparent's house, but that was a big reason for staying so long. I've been away and out of the loop for the past year, which in many ways has been nice - not being away from my family of course, but just being independent and being out from underneath the microscope you (as in everyone) inevitably end up under in a small town - and I want to take advantage of this opportunity to help my family since I haven't been around.

My grandparents lived on 20 acres of property, 17 of which have always been populated by almond trees and 3 of which, other than the house, have always been filled with cars and the myriad of things my grandpa had collected over the years. You name it, it collected it. Hard to believe I lived there for 6 years and never saw inside his shop - well, maybe not so surprising when you consider what a klutz I have always been - V calls me his bull in a china shop. :-p It was amazing to walk around there and all these rooms I've never seen and look at his collections. There were many things I knew he collected, because his storage space was not limited to outside or in the shop, etc. I grew up manuevering through makeshift aisles inside the house because no space was off limits to Grandpa's collections. It probably sounds unbelievable if you grew up in a pristine house, but I look back on it fondly because it was just so.....Grandpa. =)

My brother was always closer to Grandpa than I was, and I was closer to Grandma - but even though this was Grandpa's funeral, it felt a lot like losing Grandma all over again. We grew up there, playing in the built-in pool shaped like a P for Prouty, complete with a slide and diving board, listening to Garth Brooks blasing from my brother's tiny bedroom - particularly "Two of a Kind" and "Friends in Low Places", playing for endless hours in the orchard, jumping around in the mud during irrigation time.....there are so many memories. There were endless things to do around there with a little imagination and my favorite playmates, my brother and my two cousins. Grandma and Grandpa taught us that marriage really can last forever. I believe they were married for 55 years before my Grandma passed away. They were like our second parents....they taught us so many life lessons that have helped shaped us into the people we are and will always continue to guide us throughout the rest of our lives. Even though I miss my husband terribly, I'm glad I could be here to say aloha to Grandpa, (aloha, not goodbye, because when Grandma was in the nursing home and Grandpa would leave after a visit, he would always say aloha) and glad I can help with starting to clean up the property. It will be a wonderful tribute to them when it gets all cleaned up,a nd I'm glad I can be a part of that.

Six months - that's what we're anticipating our stay here to be - is a ridiculously long time to be away from my husband, but we are going to try and see each other once a month, and of course we talk constantly throughout the day between texts and phone calls. And absence really does make the heart grow fonder - I can't wait to see him for the first time after being away from him like this. =)

Another thing I'm going to work on down here is my writing - on one of my visits back, we're going to get me a laptop (a Mac, of course - he's kosher with PC's, but after using an Apple, I can't go back. lol. So I'll have a lot to keep my busy while I'm here. Tonight I start taking a Shakespeare class at MJC from my sister-in-law, who is an English professor there, so that will be fun. =)

All in all, despite the sad reason for my arrival, I've got a lot of good things in the works for my time here. Faith is going to go to school with some of her old friends from the Christian school, so she's excited about that. We're just waiting for the go-ahead from the school that they've received all her records. London isn't old enough for kindergarten later this year by Washington's standards (their cutoff date is in August), but we're going to test her into it since she already knows a lot of the things you learn in kindergarten thanks to having four older siblings. In order to help her prepare, my ex-sister-in-law, who was Faith's kindergarten teacher, is going to homeschool her.

So that's about it for what's going on in my life right now - missing my husband, missing my grandparents....but at least I get to see my family and friends for a while (which is good, because I don't plan on coming back much after this visit, and I'm going to use this time to get a lot of good things accomplished. =) Wish me luck!

Working Girl

WOW, dear keyboard, it has been a while hasn't it? :-p I haven't sat down at the computer at home for more than a few minutes and only to do something absolutely necessary in more than a month - I finally truly understand the concept of not wanting to do anything at home that resembles what you do at work. That's right, I am FINALLY a full-fledged working woman! lol About two months ago I got hired at a temporary agency to work for an insurance company in Spokane. It worked out perfectly, because my training ended the same day my parents brought the girls home from California - training started at 7:30 and now I don't start work until 8:30, so that gives me time to get Faith ready for school and drop London off at her babysitter's house.

I've never been a fan of putting my children in daycare and still wish I didn't have to, but she goes and plays at the home of a family from church that's only about a mile from my work, so I'm much more comfortable with that than with traditional daycare. Of course I wish I could spend more time with my kids - Faith comes home with Braden after school and I don't get home for another 2 1/2- 3 hours, but at least Vernon gets home right around the time they do, and it makes me feel good to be contributing to the family - not to mention the perks of professional success and the completely different world of being around adults all day.

I've made some great friends thanks to work, which was an unexpected bonus. I went into this thinking that it didn't matter if I liked it or if I made friends, I was there to do a job and help support my family - and I ended up LOVING the work that I do and being happy to spend my day with the people that I do. My workspace has four desks - mine, an empty one, and the other two are occupied by two of my favorite people from my training class, and we have become true friends that genuinely care about each other and not just acquaintance-level friendly co-workers. I can literally talk to them about ANYTHING, and we often spend the first ten or fifteen minutes before starting work talking about what's going on in our home lives. One of my co-workers and best buddies is a few years younger than I am, and the other is 6 or 7 years older than my husband, so she often has advice and wise words for us youngins. lol

What I actually do - besides talk with my friends (lol) - involves working on the computer all day, occasionally making phone calls, and using several different programs to set up information for the sales people to give companies quotes for whatever kind of insurance they're requesting. It's actually really interesting, fun, and fast-paced. It's also kind of high stress because we're constantly under deadlines, but it's the kind of stress we can leave at work, so I don't mind that part of it too much. Not only do I love my job and have great friends there, we also have a cafeteria with seriously AMAZING food. AND, as if that weren't enough, I earn way more than I ever expected to be earning at an entry-level job after being out of work for almost 7 years. Ironically I work on a lot of quotes for the East Coast - or maybe not so ironically, since our sister office is in Bethlehem, PA.

So let's see....in the time since I last posted an entry besides getting an awesome new job, I got my girls back (yay!) and got to spend a couple of days with my parents - they drove the girls back up here and stayed from a Wednesday to a Sunday, so that was really nice. One of the downsides of living here is missing all of my family and friends back in CA, but it's so great to finally be out in the world every day, making new friends and working. One bad thing that happened in the last month is that my clumsiness really got the best of me - I fell and sprained my ankle so bad I nearly fractured it. I had to hobble around on crutches for a week or so, then got a giant boot to wear - I just saw the doctor this morning and FINALLY got permission to keep the boot off and only use the splint for another week or so, by which time hopefully it will finally be healed. The only downside of that is that I got to park in the visitor parking (right next to the handicap parking) at work, and I won't be able to do that anymore. lol

Another bad thing that I'm really sad about is that we have to get rid of our dog. =( It's really upsetting because I love her so much and she was my constant companion when I wasn't working and my girls were gone, but now that I'm working it's not fair to keep her in a kennel all the time, and I don't have the time to devote to her and housetraining her.....as logical as it is to find a home more advantageous for her, it's still really sad to me.

Tonight is one of the very rare nights where it's just me, Faith, and London here at home - it's Friday night in September, which means highschool football! My stepson plays in the band, one of my stepdaughters is a cheerleader, and my husband volunteers to do the lines at the games, so they're all gone right now. It's nice to get some time with my girls - and will also be nice to finally have some time with my husband! I feel like we barely get to see each other with both of us working.

Speaking of time with my favorite people, I'm going to take advantage of the time I have left with the girls, and Vernon will be home soon. =) I'm so happy it's Friday! And even happier that Vernon and I both have Monday off. I hope you enjoy your weekend too!