November 2003 Archives

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Enjoy!

I recently stumbled across these articles and was thankful to hear the stories of Christians who have endured miscarriage. In particular, I enjoyed Christian Wulfsberg's article. He shared of his son, Noah, dying in the womb because he got strangled by the umbilical cord. After going through this death, he & his wife have another child. He says this:

So I'm sure you will understand why we named our youngest Elianah. It is an uncommon name in America, in fact, I don't know anyone else by that name, for it is Hebrew, and it means "My God has answered."

That's some pretty powerful stuff.

I'm going to the doctor in a few weeks to get some tests done & whatnot just to see if I have any miscarriage-prone issues that I should be aware of. I guess I'm a little nervous about it. At the same time, I'll be relieved to find out what, if anything, is wrong. It stinks to wonder. I think it will be better to know (if knowing is possible).

I think that these miscarriages have been a huge issue in my life, and in my relationship with God (sorry if ya'll get tired hearing about it!). He teaches me to trust Him. He uses my weakness to show me His light. And I need Him so much. Yet, He still chooses to bless me abundanly in other areas of my life. These are blessings I don't deserve, yet He pours them out on me. I am so thankfull for this amazing life.

Mark Quinlan came in from MN for a visit this Thanksgiving weekend. It was good to see him. We went up to San Francisco to The Shelton Theater where we saw The Book of Liz, a play written by David & Amy Sedaris. (As all of you know...I'm a big Sedaris fan).

I would rather have seen it off Broadway where David & Amy actually starred in it. I think they would have brought so much more to the performance that the actors we saw. Not that the acting was bad, it was better than most High School plays I've seen. I think the directing relied too heavy on repeated slapstick jokes, rather than relying on the writing and trusting the characters. The script itself is tolerable, but it's not the best Sedaris material out there, that's for sure.

We had a student vs. staff volleyball game on Tuesday. It was really a lot of fun, especially since most of us adults don't play very often. I think overall I did pretty well. I may consider joining a volleyball league because I forgot how fun it is. It heightens your senses more than the treadmill at the gym, that's for sure.

Anyway, there was one point where I dove for a ball and slid across the concrete. I hit the ball out of bounds...so it was a fruitless attack. I also skinned my knee in the process. (You see, us teachers are too cool for kneepads).

The scrape wasn't bad at all. Problem is, it's on a joint. So, every time you move, the scrape just gets worse and worse. So, basically, I've been a limping gimp for a couple of days. When people ask me what happened, and I tell them I just have a stupid scrape, I feel kind of stupid for walking around the way I do.

Today we had an awesome sermon in Church. It was about (many things, but here's one) how people who trust things to God's care, receive back blessings from God that are incredible.

I have learned a very valuable thing this past year. It is that everything I have is God's. He's nice enough to let me have a job where I can earn money and buy things. I don't deserve the things...I'm just really blessed to live so comfortably.

Though I was horribly saddened by both of our miscarriages, I have come to a point where I realize that neither of those children were mine. They were God's, and He just entrusted me with them until He saw fit to take them back. I'm sure I will meet them someday in heaven. (I actually tease a little, saying that God thinks that the Lewis kids are so cool that He really wanted to hang out with them...so He took them a little early).

It's difficult to say this, but I do believe that the miscarriages have brought me closer to the Lord. I think they have given me a new respect for life and a new respect for God. It has made me aware of who these children really belong to.

I used to have a list of names of what I wanted to name my children. That list has been abolished. God has told me what I am to name His children when they come. That's cooler than any name I could think of. And I will tell my children that they belong to a much cooler Father than Josh or I could ever be to them. And that He named them.

Today's sermon also made me think of tithing. God blesses us with jobs (some of us) & some kind of income. Things that, again, really don't belong to us. And all he asks for is a measly 10%. It's so often easy for me to justify some reason why I can "tithe a little less" this time around. When I do that, I'm living outside of my means and need to cut back. Give to God what is God's.

Well, that's my rampage for today anyway.

Take a 2 liter bottle (or a smaller one if your dog is smaller, but this is a good size) and tear off the label. Remove and throw away the cap. Show a few dog treats to your dog, then throw them inside the container (while he's watching). Give the container to dog and let the fun begin!

It took Henson a few minutes to realize that he could drop it down the stairs and the treats would fall out. I put more treats in it & he didn't go to the stairs, but just carried it around the house for awhile. He actually hit our cat with it a few times, which was both violent and amusing.

If your dog is stupid, you can use a knife to cut a few holes in the sides of the container, so some treats will come out when the dog is rolling it around. They think it's neato to discover that treats fall out just for rolling a container around.

As always, remove the toy from the dog if it starts to get torn apart as they could choke on the plastic pieces and stuff. And that's bad. Unless you want your dog to die. If that's the case, you have more serious issues than I can help you with.

Let the fun begin!

Here's Henson's Fun:

Hey, my treats are in there!



How do I get them out??? Maybe I'll chew on the end....



Maybe I'll just chew through the middle!



Or, I could just run around the house with the bottle....



Hey! I finally got one! That was SO fun! I wish other dogs were loved enough to have this same wonderful experience! Any owner who doesn't do this for their pets is evil and mean, Mean, MEAN!!! *Henson scarfs up treat*

The youth group at our church is doing a 24-hour fast for hunger today. It's been pretty easy for me to do it (especially since I often forget to eat anyway). But, I have to question how much this has done spiritually for me. I'm sure a longer fast would be better and I may consider doing that. Problem for me with this one is that I woke up late this morning. I came downstairs to make my lunch and I was like, "Wait, I'm fasting today. No need to make lunch!"

Then, brunch rolled around. Most teachers hang out in the teacher's lounge eating food during this time (really good food...smelled like chicken today). I wanted to eat, then I was like, "Oh, I have to get those pictures up on the website! Might as well do it now!" So I did. Then lunch rolled around and I was pretty hungry by then. Then I realized that I needed to prep some stuff for Christian Club. I got that done, a bunch of papers graded, and organized my desk (which really needed it). By the time my students came in for class I felt like I had accomplished a lot...leaving me in a great go-get-em mood.

Now it's almost dinner time and I'm feeling pretty good.

The only thing that hurt me today was this: One of my students came from cooking class and made me a homemade hot pocket. It has cheese and pepperoni and other pizza-like flavorings. But the best part was the crust. It was golden brown, warm, and flaky. I had to turn it down. Would have been so good though....

I guess I'm feeling pretty shallow that I should have been thinking spiritual thoughts throughout this fast, and really praying for those who are hungry in the world. It stinks to know that I could go through an experience like this and end up thinking about how I was awesome at fasting and totally succeeded without going through too much pain. Makes me feel spiritually empty in the end.

Well, I now have an officially developed fear of bridges. I cringe every time I drive under one. I have no problem going over them. Just under them. Actually, I have a fear of going under anything that contains a lot of metal and concrete.

See, it all started with my addiction to AM radio. I love conservative talk radio. I love Dr. Laura, Rush, Sean Hannity and others. I like to listen to their arguments then nod in agreement or argue outloud (to myself in my car...which I'm sure looks real attractive) when I disagree. It keeps me connected. It keeps me thinking. It lets me hear the news without CNN (which isn't news at all in my opinion, but that's not what this blog is about).

So, I'm listening to talk radio on any given day and, as I drive under a bridge, the radio cuts out and is replaced by loud static and high-pitched squeaking noises that just drive me nuts! I mean, it's awful! I have learned to do my entire ride to work & home while subconsciously turning the volume way down every time I go under a bridge. It's like a reflex.

Here's the clincher. Today, I was headed home from work and decided to listen to part of a CD I made instead of the radio. I still turned down the volume every time I went under a bridge! Didn't realize I was doing it until the fourth or fifth bridge. So, the next bridge came up and I had to force myself not to reach for the volume, but I still cringed as I drove under it.

Yes, I admit it. I am Pavlov's plaything.

The artist Neal referred to in my last blog was JalinePol W. She is an artist whose work I first saw at the Hanson Gallery in Sausalito, CA. Her work is of flowers & landscapes. She paints similar to Van Gogh, with lots of paint and a palette knife (as opposed to a brush) for most of the work. She is excellent at mixing intriguing colors. The first time I saw her work, I noticed a huge painting of a poppy field. The link on the website doesn't do it justice. It is huge and the layers of color absolutely dance. It captured me from across the gallery, so I moved in for a closer look. The color was incredible, the scene was breathtaking.

Here are some more links to her work.

Well, I have another artist that I would officially like to add to my favorites list. Her name is Hung Liu. She was born in China in 1948 and, due to some bad situations going on at the time, was parted from her father (whom she did not see again until 1994). Anyway, her story is an interesting one, and you should read it.

My personal favorites include:

Chinese Profile II

Chinese Profile III

By the Rivers of Babylon

Crossing the River Series

Fisherman's Daughter

Oh, another thing to know is that most of her paintings are huge. She majored in mural painting and is brilliant at shocking you with these close up portraits and images with their huge size. Check out here and you can see some shots of her stuff on the museum walls. I'm sure you also noticed her "drippy" style. It is unmistakable. She makes these great realistic paintings that show her Chinese heritage, all with these perfectly placed drips of paint oozing down the canvas. They give this feeling of rain or tears or simply melting away. Breathtaking, isn't it?

I need more time to paint. Actually, I think I have time, I just sometimes fill it with other crap like watching Judge Mathis on T.V. *sarcasm*That's time well spent.*/sarcasm*

Tonight there's a thing at the Art Conference (that I'm attending this weekend) where we can draw from a model for a couple of hours. I'm pretty pumped about that. Oh, and a cool thing about the conference is that it's being held in San Jose this year. It's seriously like 10 blocks from my house. Better than last year where I had to drive about 9 hours through Los Angeles traffic to Costa Mesa. When I registered today the lady was trying to give me directions to the San Jose Museum of Art and I was like, "It's less than a mile from my house." She thought I deserved some kind of an award for living so close. I think I deserved one too. Maybe cookies.

Yesterday at my Jr. High small group meeting we did a neat activity. We had this list of a bunch of things that people find to be important in life (family, God, honesty, beauty, etc.). We had to narrow the list down to the 15 most important, then the 10 most important, then the five. With the final five, we chose a color that represented each one and made a bracelet with beads of those colors. I'm wearing it as a reminder of my current values and where I think God is stretching.

These are the colors, what they represent, and why I put them on my bracelet:

*Green - Money (because money is green) - I feel that God has taught me so much about handling money. I believe that any money that I earn isn't my money...it's God's. He is trusting me to manage it for Him. So, I have been really convicted to get debts paid off and to tithe consistently and to invest.
* Gold Sparkle - Marriage/Family (because a wedding band is gold) - My marriage is one of the most important things in my life. I am so blessed to be able to hang out with my best friend all the time. God really reveals Himself to me through Josh. I also love to bring Josh joy (hence me going to Indico and playing shoot-em-up games).
* Pink - Knowledge/Wisdom (because brains are pink) - I took knowledge/wisdom over things like insightfulness, integrity, and honesty because I hope that having God's wisdom would lead me to have all of those things. I like to pursue knowledge of facts and figures, then hopefully God will use that to make me a wise person...eventually.
* Magenta Sparkle - Creativity/Fine Arts (because it's my favorite color) - I can't think of anything that brings me closer to God than the Arts. God created...so I must also create and give back to the world.
*White - God/Jesus (because God is Light) - I know this is a Sunday School answer. But, it reminds me why I'm here. When I forget why I'm here, life kind of falls apart. Where would I be without God? I don't even want to think about it.... He has blessed me so much.

So...that's it. And that's my bracelet. It's a great conversation piece. It's also great to reflect on yourself and your values periodically. It kind of gives you a sense of direction. It also showed me a great deal of growth. This bracelet would have had completely different things 6 years ago.

I was reasearching some stuff about Lyme's Disease. I got it my senior year of high school and was in extreme pain. (I use it as a measure of other kinds of pains. For example..."Hey Steph, how much does that cut on your arm hurt?" Steph responds while shrugging, "It's not as bad as Lyme's Disease.") Anyway, even though I had it, my tests kept coming up negative. So, the doctors tested me for stuff like Lupus and Leukemia -- which I thankfully didn't have. Turns out I had Lyme's. After about 24 hours on the medication, I felt completely fine and was walking without a cane.

Fast forward five years... I read this the other day:

Lyme disease and pregnancy: Miscarriage, premature births, and still births have been reported. Transplacental infection of the fetus has occured. Transmission through breast milk is thought to occur. Any women suspecting exposure must tell her obstetrician and later, her pediatrician.

Blood tests: May be helpful as an aid in diagnosis but are not always reliable. It is possible to have a negative test during the course of the disease or following antibiotic therapy and still have active disease. The diagnosis of Lyme disease must generally be made on the basis of clinicalsigns and by ruling out other possible diseases. A negative test following treatment does not indicate cure.

So...I guess that I'm wondering if my miscarriages have been from Lyme's. There is a possiblity that I may still be carrying the disease, but just don't have any symptoms. Couldn't tell if I did because the tests still come up negative.

Well...I go to the doctor in a couple weeks and I'll be sure to ask her about it. I just get a little worried sometimes.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:33-34

So, Neal came to visit us this past weekend. (To all of you who have not scrounged up the cash to visit us: You Suck.). Anyway, when Josh was working on Monday, Neal and I took a drive across the Golden Gate to Muir Woods. It's a park that has tons of really huge, old trees. We took the long path around the place and had some good conversation. We kept commenting about how fresh the air was and how beautiful it was there. Then, we went to Sausalito (one of my top 10 most peaceful feeling places in the world). We got some ice cream and walked along the bay, stopping into the occasional art shop.

It got me to thinking. I keep forgetting that I spent most of my life (up to sophomore year in college) riding a horse through a forest. The world would stress me out, so I'd hop on the horse and go for hours at a time. Sometimes feeling peaceful, sometimes in swealtering heat, sometimes freaked out by the surrounding wildlife...but always finding a deep peace knowing that I was getting out of the busy world and engaging myself with God's Creation.

Sometimes I find it interesting that super techie Josh and I got married. I could live most of my life in a forest...but he brings out my city side. I don't feel that I've really had an opportunity to bring out his nature side though. I hope he has one. And I look forward to finding mine again too.

I feel disturbed.

You see, I sent this e-mail to Josh the other day, asking him if he'd like to have lunch with me because "I'd really love to see you today. ;-)" I didn't get why Josh didnt respond, so I called him and he came to Hyde and had lunch with me.

Turns out I sent the e-mail to one of the mothers of a girl in my youth group. A very cool lady that I barely know. She responded saying that she'd love to have lunch with me. That was very cool that she was willing to have lunch with me and all...but I felt like a total idiot that I sent it to the wrong person.

What if I had said something deeply personal in that e-mail? I didn't...thank goodness. This situation could have been a whole lot worse. Now, I think it's kind of funny. I still feel idiotic though.

I have traded classes with the Study Skills teacher for today and tomorrow. He used to be a sculptor in Italy, so I invited him to teach a sculpture lesson to my Art 1 students. So, I've been teaching his study skills and SDC (directed studies - math) classes. Here are some key differences:

1. Class size in Art: 35-38 students per class
Class size in Study Skills/SDC: 3-6 students per class

2. Art: We make stuff
Study Skills/SDC: We pull teeth and twist arms to get students to do their work

3. Art: I like it.
Study Skills/SDC: Ummm...it's...um...different?

So, it has been quite the experience. I figured out how it is that schools can say that their average class size is 23 (or whatever horrid low number they can come up with). It's because they cram the smart and average kids into one class and put all of the lower level, emotionally troubled, not focused kids in tiny tiny classes. Now, I realize that some kids do benefit from this kind of small environement, so I'm not here to argue about special ed. situations. However, I couldn't help but feel like there were other kids who would also benefit from smaller class sizes, not just a select group.

Well, I do know one thing. I love teaching art. As soon as I get assigned to teach a different subject, I will instead begin my new career as a real estate agent.

Well, Josh took me to Indico. I played a game called Desert Combat with Josh and Neal and a few others who had coined names like "Milkman" and Something-"Sniper" and other strange names. I had no idea what I was doing. People started driving planes around and shooting at things. I was like, "WHO DO I SHOOT!?!" Josh said, "People in blue text." I turned, spotted a man in blue text, and he killed me.

A game where not hesitating is important to your survival is not the best game to jump in to. When I finally figured out how to type messages to people, I chose to write things like "Please let me live!" and "I suck at this! I'm not worth your ammunition!" But, I think that the other team just came after me more, figuring I was worth easy points.

I decided to be bold and fly an airplane...and crashed it within four seconds. So, I thought I'd try a boat...and sunk it just off shore. Sad part with that one is that two other teammates were trusting my driving ability (stupid decision) and they also drowned. I tried driving a jeep, but the stupid enemy planes kept bombing me. So, I learned that I'm best on foot. Josh and I teamed up on a tank and I became okay at manuvering that fat thing around.

Josh let forth an excited, joyous noise when I said "Dude! The enemy is totally bombing our spawn point!" Josh clapped his hands together and said I was "a true gamer." Freaky.

All in all, the game made me tense. Why would I choose to play a game that makes me feel panic and get tense? I don't think I would have felt that way if I didn't feel so clutsy stumbling around the keyboard, trying to get my dude on screen to react the way I wanted him to. That, and I couldn't choose to be like a cool combat chick...I had to be a guy. Stupid game.

It was free for me to play because, apparently, gaming places also have a ladies night. The fact that they have to make things free to get women to come in makes it pretty clear that chicks aren't into gaming. I might play again though. We'll see.

I just realized that when I stopped using Mac homepage, I forgot to export my pics (from my Historian & Artist links) to html. So, now there are just a bunch of broken links. So, basically, I suck. I'll get them fixed maybe by the end of Thanksgiving break. Since I'm not going home for the break, I'll have plenty of time to sit around and fix broken links on my site. I may also try to tighten up my code. When I first made the site I was all proud of myself because I had actually made something with HTML. Now I look at my code and I'm like, "Holy crap! I used SO MUCH code to get it to do that!!!" So, now I need to (as Dr. Evil would say) "Get the info." Then my site can be freaking cool! Or at least just cool. Or maybe I would settle for coolish.

Last weekend, Josh and I went to CostCo and got one of those huge, cheap bags of kitty litter. Feeling like we got a great deal, we were excited to have this seemingly limitless amount of kitty litter. Problem is that we put it in the back of my car and the bag ripped open. Kitty litter, in a semi-generous amount, was dumped all over.

Today, Josh and I stopped at PW Market to pick up some sodas and what-not. As we were leaving the store, we came upon a stop sign. Slowing to a stop, I heard this kind of air-pressured whisper sound. Josh and I looked at each other, wondering what this could be. I jumped out of the car and threw the hatchback open and found that not one, but two of the soda bottles had sprung leaks and were squirting all over. I kind of wrapped them up in the plastic bags, releaved the air pressure, then Josh and I headed home.

Upon arrving home, I saw that both 2 liter bottles had about 1/4 of the soda remaining in them. Expecting a huge mess, I put the bags away, then realized that there was no mess.

The kitty litter from the previous week had absorbed all of the spilled soda. ROCK ON!!!