A Timeline of Poop

July 22: A bird poops on me while I am walking into work. Not a good start to a day.

August 21: Again, I am pooped on by a bird while walking into work. I can't win.

September 20: Ben is pooped on by a bird while sitting outside reading. I do a little dance because for one it wasn't me.

October 19: I plan on staying inside and avoiding windows.

Next time I'll get Tooth of the Month

Friday I went to the dentist. I was a tad bit wary about going to a new dentist down here. (Wary, by the way, is the word that lost me a spelling bee. It's not spelling W-E-R-Y.) I had gone to the same small dentist office in Ohio since I was 5. I didn't really want to find a new dentist and I had heard horror stories about dentists down here. Unnecessary root canals. Crowns that weren't fitted. Cavities that didn't exist. So I put it off until it had been over a year since my last visit and I wasn't getting my money's worth from the insurance I was paying.

OH MY GOSH! Dentist offices have gotten so high tech. This office that I went to was HUGE! It was like a teeth cleaning warehouse! There was a whole hallway of rooms of hygienists just cleaning people's teeth. I had never seen anything like it. Then, they took my blood pressure. Just to "make sure I was relaxed". (Or for cheaper malpractice insurance. You pick.) But the best part was the x-rays. I hate getting x-rays taken of my teeth. HATE IT. It makes me gag and it's no fun. But this office had digital x-rays. That instantly popped up on a screen in front of me. X-rays of my teeth. Just like that. It was so cool. Well until it showed that I had 3 cavities between my teeth from not flossing. Ever. And a 4th one forming. Guess who is the queen of flossing now?

The downside of the visit was that I had a cheerleader-sized version of Helga the Hygienist who felt that it was her duty to not only stretch out my lips but also floss down to my toes. My gums are still sore. I think she was trying to make a point about flossing. I get it. I'll floss now.

Don't call us, we'll call you

Today I read a job posting for a truck driver.

Wanted: One driver capable of maintaining a hazardous material license. Must be detail oriented and be able to multitask.

I don't know about you, but I don't want hazmat truck drivers multitasking.

It saved a wretch like me

Lately I have realized that I need to be a more graceful person. I need to extend more grace to others and to myself. Especially to myself. I am realizing how my perfectionism is not helping, but hurting me. Philip Yancey defines God's grace as this: "There is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and there is nothing that I can do to make God love me any less."

This is a hard concept for me to grasp emotionally. Grace in the abstract seems good and idealistic, but grace in practice seems stupid. Surely I have to do something for it. I find myself working hard to be good enough for God's grace or berating myself for not being a gracious person. I think that I am missing the point.

The other day while doing my devotions I was reading in Romans trying to understand God's grace more. I know that because of God's grace I have salvation and a relationship with God, but how does grace play out in my daily life. What role does grace have in working out my salvation? I came across Roman 8:1-2: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death."

Did you read that? There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! That phrase alone is worth a party to end all celebrations! I don't think that I have ever really understood that. I had always held myself to the standard of perfection as a Christian, and I never reached it. I kept failing. And you know what? In Christ it's ok! There is no condemnation for my short comings. God does not keep punishing me because I am not God. There are consequences for my sin and God teaches me to live more like him, but I am not condemned because I am not perfect. I don't have to carry around the guilt of my imperfections and sin. I AM NOT CONDEMNED IN CHRIST JESUS.

Do you know how freeing that is? I can enjoy life because all I have to do is try my best to be obedient to Christ. Once I confess my sin and turn from it I can move on. God does not require me to grovel and pay penitence for my sins.

We serve an amazingly good and gracious God. How can you not love Him?

That's snot my job.

Now I am sick. Obviously I know what my body thinks about camping in the rain. I won't tell you what I think about my body right now because we are fighting. Fighting with snot and tissues. I think I am losing.

Also, nothing says welcome back to work like cold chills, achy joints and 471 unread e-mails. Yep. I had 471 unread e-mails when I logged on today. When I left I had 38. That's a lot of e-mails to read and file. Which made me want to go back home dive under the covers and watch movies until I felt better. Instead I bought myself a sprite and popped some DayQuill. (Mom read: I drank some wheat grass juice and took some vitamin C tablets.) Needless to say today was less than stellar. Hurray that this is only a 4 day work week.

Anyway, back to the vacation stories. Ben and I have this theory that people when they are on vacation think that they are invincible. Which is why they stop in the middle of the road to stare at rainbows, swim in unknown waters and get really close to large dangerous animals. Nothing bad can happen to them! They are on vacation! The stupid thing that we saw someone do on our trip (besides go running towards a bear) was climb over the railing and walk out on to a rock cliff at the top of lookout mountain. Like a cliff that dropped several hundred feet. He walked out onto the ledge to take a picture of a bronze statue of an eagle. The statue was about 5 feet from the railing and I am sure that his zoom lens would have given him the same shot, but nope, he had to risk his life instead. But he didn't fall because he was on vacation! We tried to get a picture of this stupidity in action but our memory card was full and I couldn't decide which picture of us to delete the fastest. Also I needed to go pee. Oh the people you see when you travel....

Are we there yet?

We are back! And I never want to ride in another car again. Sitting in one for 11 million hours driving from wal-mart to wal-mart is enough. Our vacation originally was going to be a camping road trip of the South. But since we (and by we I mean Ben) didn't plan on it being cold in the mountains or it raining almost every day of our trip our vacation morphed into how-many-wal-marts-can-we-visit-in-one-week. Even with all our money going to feed the Man, it was a good trip.

First though I have to tell you a little bit about our trip to D.C. Being true to our overacheiving selves we crammed in as much stuff as we could. Even to the point of hauling our luggage around Arlington Cemetary the last day we were there. (Wouldn't recommend that.) But the highlight of the trip occured while Ben was sitting in the hotel room doing homework. The day before we had gotten into a "discussion" about how close to the road you should stand waiting for the crosswalk signal. Ben stands about as far away as you can because "these drivers are crazy". I like to stand right on the edge of the road and dare someone to hit me. Or at least I did, because the next day Ben saw a lady at a light drive over a curb and A GUY'S BICYCLE as he was waiting for the crosswalk. She drove over his bike. Like he had to pull it out of her wheel well. So I guess that means Ben gets a point and I'll stand next to him away from the street.

The one thing that I realized while camping is that I don't like to live far away from civilization. And by that I mean restaurants and stores. Driving 30 min into the nearest town that has a Wal-mart and an Applebees is not my cup of tea. Also I realized that camping in the remains of a tropical storm are also not that much fun. In 24 hours the side of the mountain that we were on got 2 inches of rain. The other side of the mountain got 8 inches. Which meant no river tubing or water slides for Andi. Sad.

We did get to do some really neat things though, hiking in the smokies, mirror maze in Gatlinburg, hiking through a gorge in Georgia, visiting Ben's family in Georgia, seeing Rock City and visiting the Chattanooga aquarium.

I have about a million other stories but right now it's lunch time with no food in the house and my father-in-law is coming over tomorrow and he'd probably like to see the house and not so much all these piles of laundry.