Not Alone Series: Selfishness

Linking up with Jen at Jumping in Puddles and Morgan at Follow and Believe.

How do you combat being selfish with your time? As a single person, it's easy to get caught up in our own little independent world. There are those moments when we are needed for extra church things, hanging with our friends' kids, getting caught up with something on the one night we could stay in, etc., and we get frustrated that the needs of others are taking away from our own time. How do you avoid this selfish tendency and what do you do to avoid becoming frustrated with "sharing" your time with others?

Since I had a lot of positive feedback on last week's prompt {great big thank you for all the sweet comments!}, I trust that you will read with grace this week.

For the most part, I think I do okay at this. I'm part of the childcare ministry. There is a family at church whose kids I adore, so I'll "donate" a few hours of babysitting time. In the next few weeks, I'm going to start volunteering at the local hospital as a baby cuddler, and of course there's Care Net {sensing a theme, maybe?}. Most of the time I'm aware that singleness is a season and that I won't always have opportunities to get involved with different organization like I do now. I'm grateful for this time where I can juggle several different commitments.

However, I struggle with serving my grandma with a good attitude. There, I said it. It's easy for me to get involved with church or volunteer activities because I'm a people person and there are people involved in each capacity :) But when my grandma asks me to help her with something, internally I'm sighing and rolling my eyes and wishing that she would utilize one of her granddaughters who lives with her. I'm selfish because I would rather not help my grandma.

How lame, Bek. You don't like to help your 90-year-old grandmother.

I know. And I'm working on it. I'm remembering that she is 90, that someday I will be grateful for all the time I got with her, that someday should become rightthisminute. I'm working on it. I'm trying to concentrate on what a wonderful lady my grandma is and how much she can teach me and how glad I am that she's asking me to drive her places instead of wanting to drive herself {it took a while for my grandpa to give up the keys, but thankfully Grandma willingly asks for rides}. I'm grateful that Grandma is still here with us and that she's healthy and active and participating in the Daughters of the American Revolution and asking me for help with the computer because how many 90-year-olds ask email questions?!?

I combat selfishness with gratitude and the grace of God. It's an ongoing battle, but I know that I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.

Want to join the link-up? Answer the prompt and share the link to that post on Morgan or Jen's page. Hope to see you there!

7QT: Make 'Em Laugh

Linking up with the super talented but handwriting challenged Jen at Conversion Diary! {I'm not insulting her; I'm encouraging you to read her post!}

1. This week is unusual in that I'm starting my QT from scratch today. The past few weeks I've started a draft on Wednesday or Thursday, so by Friday I only have to come up with 4-5 Takes. This week is all from the same morning. And for that, I apologize. Here, laugh at this before you read any more.

via

2. My baby sister turned 20 {TWENTY!!!??} earlier this month, and like any good nerdy sister would do, I bought her a good nerdy present: The Star Wars Cookbook with Cookie Cutters {it's on sale!} is now in the hands of a twenty-year-old. She came over Tuesday night and we baked Wookie Cookies {wow, did I actually just type that?!}. They are quite yummy, although I was sad because they did not require the use of the cookie cutters. Another day, another destiny.

3. In less than three weeks, my college roomie Catherine is coming to visit! We {ok, I - Catherine doesn't know about them yet} have grand plans, and you can bet your bonnet {if you have one} that there will be pictures and a blog post to document this momentous occasion. Please pray for good weather! Spring time in the Pacific Northwest can be so fickle, and I'd love love love to have some sunshine for Catherine!

4. Last week, I think I listened to the "Man of Steel" soundtrack two dozen times. This week, Bastille's "Bad Blood" album has been on repeat. Their acoustic versions {"Flaws" and "Pompeii" and "Oblivion"} are seriously incredible.

5. Saturday is my grandma's 90th birthday party. We have cousins coming in from all over, and my grandma's room-mate from college is going to be there. {No pressure, Catherine, but I expect that you will be at my 90th birthday party and vice-versa.} My mom has done the lion's share of the preparation, and my small contribution is making the slideshow of allllllll the pictures from the past 90 years. I found some gems of my father in his younger days; please enjoy, and for those who don't know my dad IRL, know that he still makes the same mischievous face:

6. Since becoming a regular part of Notions Club, I've branched out a bit more in my writing. A few poems have come to fruition, and my guest post for Victoria was originally read at a Notions meeting. That being said, I've been thinking about sharing these pieces on ye old blog here. And I'm thinking, what the hey. I'm gonna click "Publish" and let readers see everything, not just the fun link-ups and the "how's life?" posts. Some pieces may require an explanation, some are really deep, some are rather silly, and that's the way the {Wookie} cookie crumbles. :)

7. Because it wouldn't be Friday without some fangirl memes... Today's fangirl Take is brought to you by Ben and Martin:

Smaug's Daily Affirmations

Happy Friday and happy weekend!

So Many Thoughts

Well, here goes. It feels like I've been thinking I should blog about that for too long, so I'm going to try and get a few thoughts out. Brace yourselves.

1. Dahlia and I have made it official: we are going to Prince Edward Island in August!!!
   
   Woot! We are super excited because a) we got tickets at a GREAT price and b) we found an adorable little inn {Sherwood Inn and Motel-how perfectly quaint and Island-ish!} for a magnificent price AND that has a shuttle to and from the airport! Oh, and yeah, because we found an Anne of Green Gables itinerary. We are totes going. It's ok- you can be jealous. I would be, too!
   
2. Update on the job thingy: I interviewed for 2 Saturday positions, and one I knew wouldn't work out and the other didn't call me back, which was fine because I realized I don't want to be tied to a consistent weekend schedule. So God knew what He was doing {as per usual!}, and actually I interviewed with two different families to babysit and so that will be fabulous. One family will call me eventually {the dad is going to China for a month, so no date nights for a while!}, and I'll be babysitting for the other family for the second time tomorrow. Totes perfect. Thank You Jesus!
   
3. Grandma is getting settled. I think we're all getting more used to each other, and things have been working out pretty well these past few weeks. Again, thank You, Jesus.
   
4. I would really like to blog every day in May like Jen is doing, but May is like the craziest month for me! I leave Saturday to go to the Great Nation of Texas for 5 days, then I'm home for less than a week before I go to the Bluegrass State for work {and play!} for a week. Blogging is highly unlikely this month, let alone every day, so I will do my best to do something fun in June. :)
   
5. This week was my second time volunteering at Care Net. I'm really enjoying it. Technically, I'm still in training, so my 4 hours consist of watching videos that we show clients and reading the volunteer handbook. Still, it's been amazing. The clinic has such an atmosphere of peace and honor and service; I feel God's peace when I'm there. Oh, and crazy thing! The other volunteer who is there for the Thursday afternoon shift -Brandi- is a cousin of one of my friends from Berea! Small world.
   
6. Speaking of this afternoon, I almost passed out today. Yeah... So I don't do needles... or blood or guts or anything that is yucky...as in, I don't like to see them. And I really don't like to hear about any of that.

   

   These lovely Crate and Barrel sheets perfectly matched the color of my face.

   The first time I passed out was in the 4th grade when I found out that my wrist was broken. The pain didn't do it; it was looking at the x-ray {which looked pretty normal, bee tee dubs} and hearing the doctor say, "Here's where the fracture is..." Boom. Down I went.
   So today I was shadowing Brandi's parenting class client, and the video we watched was about the 3rd trimester of pregnancy and then it went into labor and delivery. Now, I've known about the birthing "activities" since I was probably in 2nd grade, but it has always been one of the aforementioned topics that give me the heebie jeebies. I was doing alright with this video, until the narrator started talking about this little surgery-like cut the doctor can make during labor...and so I went into the kitchen and put my head down and waited for blood to return to the upper half of my body. Yep. Second day volunteering, and I have to go lie down in the other counseling room. Awesome.
   
7. I'm excited to go down to Texas next week {technically this week} because I get to see my friend Laurie without having to visit the Frozen Tundra! :) And also because we are planning on watching Season 2 of "Call the Midwife," yet another BBC show that has captured my attention. If you have not seen it, finish what you're doing and go watch it. SO well done. Not like steak. Like a dozen roses...perfection.
   

Well, 7 seems like a good number to end on. I hope that this brings us up-to-date on most items of late... oh, and as for the last post, I think that writing things out and then going to Book Club {a group of us are reading and discussing Lady In Waiting} and talking with the bestie for a good hour afterwards helped me move forward in my thinking. I'm still thinking and praying about things with my parents, and I think God and I are getting closer and I'm comfortable thinking more openly about the future. So, thanks for listening. :) Happy May!

Thoughtful Tidbits

In no particular order, here are some thoughts...

Grandma told me last night that she is very glad to live with us and that she's grateful she's not alone. She said that even when we're in different rooms doing different things, it's ok because she's not alone in the house. This really made me think, because Grandma and I are very much alike: we are both firstborns {that encompasses A LOT}, we are both very organized, and we both like to be around people. But it's been a big change having her with us... to be fair, I got home only a day and a half before she moved in, and that was less than a month ago, so everyone is still adjusting.

Like the new look? I finally sat down and learned how to make tabs up there- woot! Feel free to check it out and give suggestions, either for the Intro page or for future pages. What do you want to see?

Mom and Pops are in Texas for a couple days, enjoying the 90* weather...I'm not jealous...well, not very jealous. 75* is my ideal temp, but I'll take 90 over 40 :(

Speaking of Texas, I'm heading there myself in a couple of weeks. My internship in the Frozen Tundra ended, but I agreed to go to Dallas and help out with their big event there. Yay for business travel! It will be fun to see my co-workers again, and the sunshine sure helps :)

My weekend plans consist of the Ladies' Conference at church and maybe painting my nails. How about you?

Um, yeah…hi.

Ei yi yi. Sorry about the Funny Friday fail. Haha, I just continued my own alliteration. Ok sorry, moving on.
Ok, so like I said previously, lots of things have changed around here and life is busy and crazy and isn't all life? It’s just the adjustment period of getting used to living in a new place and working with other people’s schedules and things like that. Gotta add blogging into the ol’ routine.

So I interviewed for a job on Friday and then another one on Tuesday. They’re for Saturday receptionist positions, which I’m thinking will simply help expedite the buying-a-house-like-a-grown-up process. Woot. The one I interviewed for Tuesday is not going to work- I already emailed the gal and told her thanks but no thanks, so we’ll see if I hear from yonder Friday interviewer today.

Also, hello! Babysitting jobs galore! I signed up for a couple of websites and applied for less than 20 jobs, and BOOM! People email me back! Apparently babysitting for 10 kids at a time makes for pretty decent experience, right, AJ? ;) The answer is yes, for those who don’t know.

Moving on from my weekend habits…

My grandpa’s memorial is this Saturday. Mom helped Grandma narrow the oodles and oodles of pictures down to less than 200. I kid you not. Mom and I went to the store and scanned 173 pictures for the slideshow. So we put those pictures into PowerPoint last night, and today I've sized and cropped and labeled them. Tomorrow I’ll sit down with Grandma and have her identify the people that I can’t. We’ll add music and then we’ll be good to go on Saturday.

My sisters and I are going to share our memories of Grandpa together. We've written down quite a few memories, and then we organized them and determined who is going to share which one, and when J comes home from college on Friday, we’ll run through it and time ourselves. There are several other people speaking, so we need to be timely. I’m sure we’ll do fine, though, since we have so much public speaking experience.

So that’s basically been the extent of life right now: work, work, and the memorial. I will do my utmost to post Funny Friday’s tale this week, but just in case, here is something funny that I’m going to share on Saturday.

Grandpa and I were in the car while Grandma went into the store. A bald gentleman walked in front of the car.
Grandpa: Well, I bet his haircuts are cheap!

Enjoy your week!

Hey, I'm Alive

So, sorry for dropping off the grid there, folks! I ride two airplanes and suddenly can't put my thoughts in order. Sheesh.

Actually, the airplanes are not to blame. I got home safe and sound, and so did my luggage. That night I stayed up really late with my two at-home sisters, and we laughed A LOT and talked about boys and sister stuff like that, and then we finally went to bed and thank God that we were all on break!

Wednesday, I seriously rocked. I unpacked all four suitcases into my new room {as in, my room was moved to another room without my presence, and then my sis on Spring Break crashed in there, and it was chaos...actually, it still is; it's just shut-up-in-drawers chaos now.}. Like a boss.

Thursday, #bestierunion!!!!! Totes fun. We talked about Doctor Who and sexuality and passion and oh yeah our future place together. You know you're best friends when...you talk about all of that during a 30 minute lunch period. Yup.

Also, my grandma moved in with us. We had the MCs come and help us load things in the truck and drive the mile down the road and then unload. We got it all done in just a few hours, which was nice. Grandma's been getting settled pretty well, and I think it's all going to work out for us.

I started work this past Monday. It's been fun. I'm learning a lot, mainly that getting up before 6am is NOT my favorite thing, but oh wait, I already knew that. :-p But seriously, it's been great. I've also been getting my name out there for some tutoring and babysitting jobs, and I have an interview for a receptionist position tomorrow, so hopefully I can start making bank and get a place sooner. Apparently the old saying "Cash is king" applies to the housing market too. So if you think of it, please pray that I find the perfect position{s}.

In other news, I'm really looking forward to sharing tomorrow's Funny Friday, because it's a doozy. AJ, you know what I'm talking about. Heck to the yeah.

Alright, peeps, I hope that I've convinced you that my heart still beats. Peace out til tomorrow!