The thoughts roaming around my brain today (is it any wonder I can’t get any work done?):

* When, Lord?

* I really should vacuum.

* Bacon and pancakes with seven beautiful women is a treat on a Wednesday morning.

* Please heal my friend, Lord.

* I am so blessed, Lord. Thank you!

* Why isn’t there a cure for heel spurs and bunions that don’t involve surgery?

* Heavy sigh

* Receiving flowers from my three year-old neighbor just brightened my day!

* How can I be turning 43 on Sunday? What happened to 34?

* How, Lord?

* I wish I lived closer to family, but I want them to come here!

* I am dreading Mother’s Day this year. Pastors who lose their mother two months before Mother’s Day should not be required to preach that day. Just sayin’.

* I love my husband.

* My pants are starting to get baggy. How cool that sentence sounds and looks.

* I am so proud of my friend and all the hard work she is doing to be whole. I love you!

* Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve J

* I have the most incredible, supportive, hilarious friends. It seems almost selfish to hog them all to myself!

* I can’t wait for Elijah to be born.

* How, Lord?

* It is way too nice out to be in here blogging or working!

I wanted to come out of hibernation long enough to wish all of you a blessed Resurrection Sunday. May the knowlwdge that our God has the power over life and death change the way you live today!

P.S. Hopefully this blog will also be resurrected someday.

Thank you for all your prayers and notes. My mother passed away shortly after 8pm. She was on a ventilator all day and was unresponsive. She was in no pain nor did she suffer. They ruled it was a massive heart attack around 10:30pm last night and her brain went too long without oxygen.

Please pray for Dad and for we three girls as we go about this hard process.

How it works: Go to Google search and type in your name followed by the word "needs." For example, I searched for "Tina needs." You will get some really funny search results. Make a list of the first ten results that you get - or more if they're funny and you have nothing better to do :)

Tina needs…

… a slower pace (a week’s vacation would be a beautiful thing!)

… Godiva (and a Diet Pepsi. Don’t forget the Diet Pepsi)

… to win the Home Depot contest (I wonder if it involves a new home… this seems to be a pattern)

… to lose weight (worked out at the gym tonight. Go me!)

… prayers (that the headaches and urpiness take a hike)

… a new home (this must be the one provided by Home Depot when I win the contest)

… a breather (yep… that week’s vacation is sounding even better)

… some lovin’ (I’ll sit here while you show me the love…)

… help moving (when I move into that new home form Home Depot)

… to check her caller ID (it could be Home Depot calling to tell me I’ve won!)

How do you express your extreme thankfulness for God’s provision of tremendous blessings in your life? You blog about it, of course!

Physical Blessings:

My wonderful, beautiful sister LeeAnne, and her wonderful husband, Gene, (Sorry, Gene, I can’t use beautiful unless I describe your heart! ) blessed me with a membership to a local gym. They joined the Y so Lynzi could learn to swim, but still had this contract they were paying on. She did all the paperwork so they could transfer the membership to me… something I could never afford on my own!

I met with the personal trainer on Friday evening and learned he is a Marine Corps reservist! My first thought was, “Oh crap! I have a drill sergeant for a trainer!” but he was really sweet and stumbles over his words a lot. I meet with again on Tuesday after work. Bring on the pain!

Friend Blessings:

Elton John and Billy Joel are coming to Madison in May, just in time for my birthday! Knowing that we can never actually buy tickets ($99-179), I was determined to win tickets from one of the five or six radio stations giving them away before they went on sale. One station gave their listener’s club and “unfair internet advantage by listing the hour each day tickets would be given away. Knowing that I was fanatical about this, the ladies in my department all joined me in calling, believing that we had a better chance with seven people calling at once! We never got through, and I’m not going to the concert, but I sure do have great friends!

Financial Blessings:

I came home the other night and the internet was still not operational. I called the provider and they said our area no longer had an outage so it must be my connection. After 40 minutes on the phone and unplugging, restarting, plugging, and a bit of growling on my part, it was determined that the connection was fine, it was the router not allowing me to access the net. When the guy on the phone asked how old the router was, I told him it had to be at least four years old. He “diagnosed” that I would need a new router since “things die suddenly sometimes”.

Knowing that the budget has no wiggle room for new routers, I was determined that this one was NOT dead and would be resurrected and would work! I laid hands on the little purple and black contraption (it really was black and blue before I touched it!) and prayed over it. Then I disconnected it so I could get online, found a message board for that router and followed the directions listed to reboot the router.

TADA! As you can read this, I am back online with my “dead” router!

Spiritual Blessings:

As if the week couldn’t get any more blessed, I got a call on Friday afternoon from a new woman at the office to come to her cube as she needed to talk over something. When I got there, she shared that she won four tickets to the Chris Tomlin/Israel Houghton concert for Saturday night and wanted to know if I would like the last ticket and to go with her and two other ladies from the office!

Well, of course! The concert was incredible and Chris is a fabulous worship leader. To top it off, Christy Nockles of Watermark fame was singing with him and she is one of my favorite singers!

Experiencing great worship with some great ladies and knowing God has His best for me in His sights. WHOA!

How are you being blessed lately?

1. I love to color with crayons or markers. Coloring books and those big ultra-detailed posters (not the black velvet ones… the velvet messes with my markers and it leaves velvet sludge on my hands).

2. I find it easier to talk to men than women, thus most of my close friends are men.

3. I feel inadequate quite often.

4. If I could, I would move back to Indiana in a nano-second.

5. I have never seen an episode of LOST, Survivor, Ugly Betty, 30 Rock or The Office.

6. I think my husband is the funniest man alive.

7. My baby sister, LeeAnne, is my hero.

8. I fall, often. (By the grace of God, I’ve never broken or severely dislocated anything)

9. I have over 150 different nativities in all shapes, sizes, mediums, and species.

10. I’ve grown spiritually by leaps and bounds in the past two years.

11. My grandmother got mad at me when I was 18 and never spoke to me again.

12. I wish I had asked my uncle about his experiences in Germany during WWII when he was alive.

13. I had a paper route from the age of 9-21. It paid for my first car and my first two years of college.

14. The first funeral I preached at was my mother-in-law’s.

15. I could eat bacon every day (I said I could, not that I do).

16. I have a fear of deep water; heights; and stairs with gaps.

17. I can’t hear on the telephone without my eyeglasses on.

18. My dream is to be a traveling evangelist, preaching Jesus and singing my little songs.

19. Or, I would like to play drums and/or sing lead in a worship band or retro 80’s band.

20. I could watch football 24/7.

21. I’ve never traveled outside of the USA.

22. I believe my Mom is the most beautiful woman in the world. And she’s pretty darn smart, too!

23. I love Adam and Lynzi Mae so much it hurts.

24. I am painfully shy in small groups and in groups that are too large. There is never a clear differentiation as to where one ends and the other begins.

25. Steve is the smile on my lips, the joy of my life, the laughter in my heart, the goofiness to my seriousness, God’s grace personified, and the love of my life.

Stupid Tina Trick #458821

I awoke this morning completely oblivious to the fact that the snow plow had gone down our street some time during the night, and fully expected the drive to look just like it did when I got home from having dinner with Don and Linda last night… completely covered in three inches or so of snow, but completely drive-through-able.

It wasn’t until I backed out of the garage and saw the snow at the end of the drive that I remembered that I shouldn’t have hit the snooze forty-eleven times this morning. Being the completely optimistic person I am, I determined that my little red clown car Toyota Echo could plow right through that “little hill” of snow, so off I went at breakneck speed … only to be stopped abruptly in my tracks when the nose of the car dug into the MOUNTAIN of snow!

I got out of the car and went back to the garage to get the shovel and the big bag of cat litter that I’ve been saving for such a time as this. I shoveled out the front tires and the nose of the car, threw down the litter, and put the car into drive, fully expecting to be on my way to work.

HA! All I did was spin my tires and throw cat litter all over the neighbor’s yard! I jumped out and shoveled more and lay down more litter… what is it they say about doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results?

I tried calling someone from work to come get me and I would worry about the car later, but no one was answering their phone. Normally, I would have just walked, but it was -4 degrees before the wind chill this morning! So, I was determined that I had to get that car out of the snow!

In a fit of muttered prayers and growling, I poured more litter under all four tires, just as my neighbor pulled up and offered to help me. As she parked her car, I was finally able to get the car to move backward!!! She ran up and shoveled the pile holding me up and soon I was on my way!

Lesson learned: Next time it snows… call in to work stoopid!

Stupid Tina-ism #874616125

While explaining to my co-workers about the offer my beautiful sister, LeeAnne, and her hubby made to transfer their gym membership to me for the remainder of their contract, I explained the gym this way:

“She said at the gym in Indiana, they have a darkened room where they play movies while you make out.”

Now everyone wants to go to the gym!

Stupid Tina Trick #458822

When I got home from work this evening, I had to finish clearing out the driveway and digging out the mailbox that was blocked by three feet of snow that was three feet out into the road, plus the six lots of sidewalk that the church is responsible for. We just purchased an awesome snow blower this year that has six speeds forward and two speeds in reverse and it devours snow!

Usually.

When I started down the driveway the auger no longer augered. The blower came with a big stick to shove down the chute in case anything got jammed in there. I was able to turn the chute to the right enough that I could hold down the auger lever and see what was happening down in the little hole.

I poked around, and then squeezed the lever again. No augering.

I poked harder and squeezed again. Auuuuuugh!

I muttered a few choice words at the machine while holding down the auger lever and peering deep into the chute… when…

FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMP!!!!!

The auger decided to engage at warp speed and spewed snow right into my face and down my coat!

Lesson learned: Never cuss at a contrary snow blower while staring down its throat!

What silly thing have you done lately?