...the two football game weekend...

Yep. I willingly watched two football games this weekend. The first - from my big comfy chair watching my Aggies proudly dominate that other team...OUch. And the second with Hilary and a bunch of strangers in the Yellow lot outside Reliant where it was 48 degrees and raining on and off. Yep. I did that. Me. The girl who missed the two biggest games of her college tenure thanks to Business Law. I have to say I enjoyed it - once my body went numb and hypothermia set in the game was enjoyable. I was very relaxed on Friday during that game. And stressed beyond reason on Saturday. Though again, the helped me forget a lot of that. So here I am officially a Texan in more ways than one now that I'm beginning to watch football..

post-Christmas

Merry Christmas!  Jazi celebrated her first Christmas with her new forever family in Nederland this year with Mom, Duncan, and me.  She could have cared less about the tree and the gifts.  Her present was running around in Mom's backyard.  To copy the phrase, she "runs like a deer" - leaping and jumping.  Kind of reminiscent of Pepe Le Pew from Looney Tunes...

She is still very active and healthy.  Our goal is to go through training to become a therapy dog this year.  She has the perfect temperament - as long as you don't give her rawhide.  She gets a little possessive over those for some reason, but nothing else.  So easily avoided - she just doesn't get any.

2012 was a very blessed year for me.  I got a wonderful new job, a wonderfully furry child, and great roommate, and I continue to be blessed by the presence of those God has placed in my life.  I am so grateful for social media to be able to keep in touch and stay in touch with friends that I don't see all the time.  It can certainly be a dangerous addiction, but I believe it can me as much of a blessing!  Thanks for praying for me!  "I thank my God every time I remember each of you!" (Philippians 1:4)

...You can take a dog for a walk...

"This is my after-walk happy face."

...but you can't tell her how far to go!!!  Jaz is doing super, but she definitely wants to determine the pace and distance of our outings!  When we first get going she'll run with me for a while, and she looks like a blur next to me...today, however, we rounded the corner that leads back to the apartment, and she proceeded to sit down in the street and look at me like she was saying, "This is as far as I go."  I had to pick her up to get her out of the road!!  We usually go about a mile and a half.  And she has a 'boyfriend' we see every night - Rowdy, a Wheaten terrier who looks like a teddy bear and is so soft I just want to snuggle with him.  He's only 9 months old - so apparently she likes younger men ;)  (No comments from the peanut gallery, please - you know who you are!)  We get to make lots of new friends and always get compliments on how sweet and cute she is...but who can resist that face!?!  And it's hard to miss the dog with the flashing LED light on her collar in the dog...which is the point of having it in the first place!  We're going to try out the dog park in Nassau Bay and on Bay Area soon.

...I'm spent...

Financial Peace University is going well...I am learning that I spend way too much money on food.  So I'm hoping my budget will force me to eat less and slim down - I think I'll call it the Dave Ramsey diet :)  But if I stick to it, I will have the first of my student loans paid off in about 8 months.  Which I'm technically supposed to do before I attempt to buy a house...again...  It's such a tough choice.  Maybe I'll just find the Boardwalk Monopoly piece at lunch tomorrow and win $1 million so I don't have to worry about it...there goes that whole spending too much money on food again...

My New Personal Trainer

Jazi is heartworm free!!!  Dr. Marcoux gave us the all-clear yesterday morning, and I can't remember a time when I was more thrilled!  She told us she was glad Jaz was healthy, but she was going to miss seeing Jaz so often - she doesn't have many patients who enjoy having their chest listened to so much that they fall asleep on the exam table :)

We went to Petco after the appointment to get Jaz a present for being heartworm free.  She got a new sweater and a blinking LED light for her collar when we walk, and it's dark outside.  She was shivering this weekend with the semi-cold weather so I figured I better get her something to keep her warm while they're on sale :)

After a long nap, we then went for her very first official walk about halfway around our lake.  Then she took another long nap.  Being a real dog is apparently very exhausting!  She got to see Hilary and Belle for a little while and sleep through her first Texans game (and I napped with her during the 3rd quarter).

I also spoiled her with two new toys I bought months ago on sale at Petco - and her favorite toy that she now carries everywhere is her neon pink hedgehog.  She still won't play with the real one she lives with though!  She also has a personalized toy box courtesy of Aunt Hil and Thirty-One :)

This evening when I got home she had a very clear agenda:

1. Water
2. Potty
3. Pull every new toy out of my toy box to make sure they are still there.



a very exhausted baby with her new hedgie and toy box

4. Eat

So we both ate and then went for a run.  And she LOVES to run!  She looked like a little rabbit hopping and zipping all over.  I had to run to keep up with her, but we actually kept pretty close to the same pace the whole walk.  She stuck with me for about a mile (when she wasn't stopping quickly to sniff something incredibly amazing) before she slowed down to a good cool down pace.  We went just over a mile and a half.

 Once she made it up the stairs, she went straight to her water bowl and then crashed on the ottoman before I even had my shoes off!  She napped for about 20 minutes, but then it was necessary to pull all her toys back out.  She is now running around the living room from toy to toy.  It really is like a kid at FAO Schwartz for the first time.

Her favorite is still hedgie!  I think we will make a pretty good team!!  She is my little survivor, and I know God gave us each other for a very special reason.  I think we rescued each other.  I'm not glad she had to end up at a shelter, but I am glad God put us in the same place at the same time so I could bring her home.  Now that she's healthy, it's going to be even more fun watching how God uses her in my life, and us in the paths we cross!

I Can See the Light!!

There IS light at the end of the tunnel!!  The heartworm journey is almost at its end, and I am so ready to treat Jasmine the way a dog deserves to be treated.  And I'm hoping her energy will inspire me to have more - and get me outside and moving while the weather is about as nice as it gets in southeast Texas.  We only get September, October, November, and March where the outdoors are tolerable and the mosquitoes are minimal, right???  Dr. Marcoux at Egret Bay Vet Hospital has been AMAZING!  Jaz, Duncan, and I are trying to figure out what we will be getting the staff as a present for getting her on the road to recovery.  (Duncan loves his sister - she just doesn't like him much if he's not in his 'kennel'.  She loves to lay next to his cage and watch him run on his wheel though.)  If you have a pet, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE put them on heartworm preventative!  The treatment to kill the adults once they've grown and reproduced is expensive, dangerous, and very taxing on both the pets and the humans who love them!   It has been a long three months!
Duncan went through his final quilling the past few weeks (which means he is officially an adult now) - so I have had two very grumpy 'kids' this month and will be glad to see both of them back to their sparkling and prickly personalities soon!  And I know Jaz will be so excited to hang out with her BFF Belle again in a few weeks!
And of course - with all this additional expense, comes - budgeting!!  Hilary and I are taking a Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University course at her church on Sunday evenings.  I'm much worse with money than I thought!  And I'm going through hand sanitizer very quickly touch all that dirty cash- ew.  (If you haven't heard of Dave Ramsey's cash-envelope system - check it out at www.fpucentral.com.)  It's really making me focus on where my money goes, and I am trying to help it stay put instead!  But boy I miss my large McDonald's latte every Monday/Friday morning!  I'm suffering through office coffee at the moment to save everything I can for Dave's 'baby steps'.  Alternative sources of caffeine are a must :)  I will keep everyone posted on that one!
Apparently I also failed to mention that I'm working back in the insurance industry - on the business side of things rather than IT, but I think pretty much every has figured that out by now!  But that's another story for another time...goodnight, All!

New Journey with a Rough Start

Goodnight - hope you don't need this pillow...

So for those I haven't told...my newly adopted dog is beginning heartworm injections tomorrow.  I'm absolutely terrified even though our vet is amazing, and I feel so blessed to have been led to her.  The office manager at my complex goes to church with the vet and her administrative assistance, who also used to manage my apartment complex when it first opened up and will maybe be moving into the same building I'm living in - in January.  Such a small amazing world that God uses to link His people together.  I started a page for Jaz to document the whole treatment - sort of therapy for me I guess.  Anyway, please keep us in your prayers - I know she is going to be hurting and  not really understanding what's going on.  It breaks my heart to put her through this after only having her for such a short time.  I don't want it to mess up the trust I've gained from her.  She's really been such a blessing since I've had her, and I really don't want to lose her or see her suffer.  Thanks, my friends!

Remembering What She Taught - the R.M.S. Titanic

"My mother had a premonition from the very word 'GO.' She knew there was
something to be afraid of and the only thing that she felt strongly about was
that to say a ship was unsinkable was flying in the face of God. Those were her
words." -Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor

To anyone who has known me for even a brief moment, it’s unlikely you don’t know my strange obsession with the Titanic. From childhood, long before Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio brought Her to life, She has been a fascinating topic of which I have devoured numerous accounts of Her discovery, recovery, survivors, and victims.

I’ve seen what has survived in museums, and those who didn’t in cemeteries. I’ve watched movies and documentaries, and lost myself in the sometimes conflicting accounts of Her existence.

How can I put my fascination into words? When I found the quote from Eva Hart, I
knew. My love of the Titanic is somewhat based on a love story, but the symbolism of Her life which has me mesmerized – is the very symbol of the fragility and arrogance of the human race.

There were innocent lives lost in the face of human arrogance; a fact that I never intend to devalue in my assessment. It is not those lives I blame – nor do I intend to place blame on any which many already blame for Her demise. The fact is that many built Her up to be something so strong “even God Himself couldn’t sink.” The media, the engineers, the construction crew, the management – all condemned Her and those aboard Her with the word ‘unsinkable.’ She was built to defy nature and to defy the God who created those who created Her.

How often does history repeat itself? Didn’t Eve allow Satan to deceive her into
thinking God wouldn’t take her life? Wasn’t almost all of humanity wiped from the earth save a few handpicked by Him aboard an Ark? Didn’t an innocent man die at the demand of the masses because He seemingly went against God’s laws – which were written by men who were twisting His words? Because the crowd was uninformed, didn’t understand, or didn’t want to? Our arrogance as a race takes us back to the garden and repeats, over and over, throughout history.

And continues beyond the death of the RMS Titanic. But She sank at the feet of the Father – because men said She couldn’t.

Our God isn’t vengeful, nor can He be called mean. It can be argued that He caused Her sinking because, after all, the earth is His creation. But the earth is now Satan’s domain, as noted in Job. God allows Satan access to humanity, but God still controls Satan's access to us. It remains that our choices are those which condemn us – free will, which a merciful and loving God allows.

Many of those who deemed Her unsinkable no doubt faced certain humility as they watched and felt her sink. How many hearts went out to those who faced an innocent death – because of the decisions of a few and the declarations of many?

Wasn’t that what happened at the cross?

The Titanic story will be repeated. I’m sure it has been in recent history and perhaps just not touched me like Her fate and the fate of Her passengers did. Perhaps other
situations exist which bring to light the same realizations to others. My heart goes out to those who lost their lives, wishing history had been different for them.

The same is true for Jesus.

I wish He hadn’t had to die for my arrogance. My sin. My foolishness. But He did.

And I’m forgiven.

We have no survivors of Titanic left on this planet to share Her story. Fortunately, we have Jesus who conquered death for us many years before so we can be around to retell Her story.

And His.