Tuesday, I think

I'm finding it a little harder than normal to keep up with what day of the week it is due to not being at work! But I'm coping ok. :) The delay in blogging has been due to some travels and a lot of sleeping.

Matt was gone all of last week on business. That left me to just kind of play around the house and do some light cleaning. I was SO thankful that my little critters, who normally wake us up at 7am on the nose, let me sleep until I woke up! It's like they know I need it! Most days, that wake up time was (and is) 10am. My body is quite content with 12 hours of sleep a night. My body has not been as content with the new medicine over the weekend, however. Since Matt was already in Maryland, I drove up on Saturday to hang out with some dear friends near Baltimore who just bought their first house in October. What fun we had! However, my joints really started to hurt fiercely on Saturday. :( I think this is just part of the ebb and flow of things to be expected.

We had some great food, fun conversation, and a great game of hearts to help us pass the time. And they said my yellow medicine looks like acrylic paint. They are right! :) The break from the normal routine was good - but I was happy to return home. We saw our small group friends from church for the first time in weeks on Sunday night and that time was just phenomenal. There are about 20 of us that get together every Sunday night to study Scripture together and pray together. They are dear dear friends - brothers and sisters, really - and they are so vital to my survival!

Sunday night I started a 'new' Bible Study on my own. I'm going through the Beth Moore study "Believing God" - which I actually started several years ago right before I went to Bangladesh. I never finished it. And I think that where I am in my life right now, I really need a fresh boost of faith to believe and trust God with some really big obstacles that we are facing.

One of the things I did last week was take down all of the Christmas decorations and clean up the garage. My cats were all too eager to help in the clean-up process. This is Gumba. :)



Even our stupid cat, Caroline (the gray one) wanted to help! Yes, I know it's mean to call her stupid, but really folks, she is the dumbest cat I've ever met. She is pretty. And she's super soft. But she is mentally challenged. Really.



I wake up most days and feel like I've moved to Minnesota! There has been snow on the ground here since December 18th!!! And it's been freezing! It is supposed to warm up later this week - and I can't wait. I remember when my best friends from vet school, Sam and Chad moved to PA our first year out of school and all of the snow they had. They had this picture of Chad with a kite running in the yard in March. It was the first time they had seen their grass since December. I'm beginning to understand their elation and just might go out and fly a kite when I see grass again, too!!!

The snow has been fun - it's just getting old. But here's a picture of my girl, Neema enjoying it. She loves the snow, too - but I think even she is getting tired of slipping and sliding when she goes out to pee.

I'm pretty excited that my new book arrived today! Ok, REALLY excited! :) When Matt and I last drove to TN the first week of December, we listened to some podcasts of NPR. One of the shows we listened to was an interview with the new director of the NIH - Dr. Francis Collins. He is the founder of the Human Genome Project and though a very respected scientist, he is also a born-again evangelical Christian. Hearing him speak on the radio really gave me some hope that he's the guy heading up our nation's health research system and I also thought he was very articulate without being 'heady.' Turns out, he's written a book. As soon as I heard that, I turned to Matt and was like "I want to read that one."

Fast forward a few weeks. Christmas-time. My boss, Dr. Bowman, hands me a gift card to Books-a-Million. He tells me he wanted to get me a book by the new director of the NIH but they didn't have it in stock. I was taken aback a bit - trying to find a replay of me telling him of the NPR broadcast I had heard. It didn't exist. I had not mentioned it to him! As it turns out, Dr. Collins is a native of Staunton, VA and is a friend of a friend to Dr. B! So, I wanted to read the book, Dr. B wants me to read the book, so I ordered the book! It arrived today!!!!! :) I should have a review for you to read, soon. It's called the "Language of God."

I have been trying to find something really productive to do every other day. (Giving myself permission to do nothing on the other days.) :) Today I worked on some work stuff for our spring horse vaccine letter. And laundry. Matt and I both get stuffy at night when we go to sleep (he far worse than me, poor guy) and I think it's a dust mite allergy. So, I bought mattress and pillow dust mite proof covers and am washing ALL the bedding on the 'sanitize' setting. We'll see how it works tonight!

God is who He says He is.