Newnan, Georgia.

So we're in Newnan, Georgia. It's just south of Atlanta, and we drove here from Augusta yesterday. We ended up leaving Augusta late because it took so long to actually get all of our stuff out of the house. I swear, it is so EXHAUSTING to move. I have never done anything else that has made me as exhausted in my life. Oh, I'm glad that it's over and we're on the road.

We drove here to Newnan to stay with the Royles. Mary and Scott and their daughter Summer are so nice! Paul had a fever most of the day, and he did when we arrived he was burning up. Mary made Paul eat a spoon full of freshly-chopped garlic and wash it down with a huge glass of water. I have to hand it to her, he does feel a lot better today.

Sorry this is so brief, but we must be on our way again, this time to Madison, Alabama to visit my cousin Charsty.

Happy sneeze-day to me...

I always think I'm so funny. For my Facebook status, I put a reference to 24, and I am so curious to see who will understand it and who will ask me hilarious questions about what I mean. I crack myself up sometimes!

Anyway, we FINALLY sold the contract, some people put down a deposit, and we're supposed to be ready to leave tomorrow. I say supposed to because I'm not fully better yet from my sickness, and Paul has come down hard with it, too. Last night, he had a fever for hours, and today he's not feeling great at all. Between the two of us, we haven't managed to get very much done. I have to hand it to him, though. Today he did the nasty job of cleaning out the car even though he was coughing like crazy and it was freezing cold outside. At least I was working in the warm kitchen!

The good news is that I feel quite a bit better today than I did yesterday, and I've been in good spirits all day. I have to say, it's a strange birthday, though. No one has called me, and Paul didn't even remember until I reminded him this morning. It's like it's not real. I suppose when you grow up, that's the way birthdays usually are. Nobody cares about them unless you remind them. You have to say, "Come to my birthday party! I'm special, and you need to come show me that you love me by giving me gifts!"

Speaking of gifts, my friend Emilee brought me a care package because I'm sick. It had nice soft tissues, chicken noodle soup, chap stick, vitamin C drops, and a mug with hot cocoa mix and hot apple cider mix. It was such a nice thing to do! I will really miss Emilee.

That's the depressing thing about hopping around the country like this. When you leave a place, you always have to leave people. It's so sad! Why can't everyone that I love just come with me where ever I move? It can be like a caravan!

That's how I think it should it be.

I'm sick.

Oh, man. I've really come down with something this time! I was getting a sore throat last night, and I took NyQuil in hopes of getting some sleep. Well, I slept, but I was so sluggish and miserable this morning from the drug-induced sleep. I'm so tired.

We haven't had any luck, yet, selling our contract. People seem to be too turned off by the neighborhood. I'm starting to develop a contingency plan of what to do when Saturday comes and we haven't managed to sell it yet. (Cry, become a begger on the street, etc.) I'm so frustrated, and I wish people weren't so obsessed with appearances. It really seems to be less about being safe and more about living in a place that looks good.

I hated being in bed most of the day when there is so much I should be doing, but I was just too sick. I spent several hours in a half-doze, slipping in and out of bizarre dreams. Thirty second dreams are the weirdest- there's usually an image, some significant idea, and not much else.

Ugh. I'm like one of those toddlers that makes you cringe- nose running out of control with no mother paying attention, who incidentally needs a good nap.

I think it's time for bed.

Time to get a gun.

This is one of those days that makes life feel too long. I need to write several articles and study for my final at 3:30, and there are about ten other things I need to do in preparation of moving on Satuday... but I have a sore throat, and I feel all stupid and lethargic. It's like my thoughts are on "extra slow" mode right now. I'm so sleepy!

We're still looking for someone to take our contract. The pressure is really on since we're leaving this week. Paul had this creepy email from someone responding to the Craigslist ad. They said something like, "Don't be alarmed, but I came to your house to watch you. I'm interested in you, and you should come to this website." We were wondering if someone really has been watching us or if the person is some kind of prostitute...! It's not like we have actually posted our address online. But someone could have found it, if they were willing to take the time to wander around and look at every house.

Maybe it really is time for me to get a gun. Anyone who comes too close to me will regret it!!!!!! I'm terrible at aiming, but that's not much of an issue if someone is just a couple of feet away.

Well, I guess I'll spend the next hour studying for my final. I'll be so happy when it's over and I can go collapse somewhere.

Carbohyrates are your friend.

We've just updated our post on Craigslist and I was thinking it might be a good idea to include bribery and/or a plea. "We'll make you cookies and serve you sandwiches and give you a massage if you'll take over our contract. PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're BEGGING YOU!"

It's important that we sell the contract if we're going to have any money for visiting our families for Christmas. Otherwise, there won't be any money for driving. I'm sure someone will take it, but it is stressful waiting around for people we don't know and hoping they like the house once they've seen it. It gets old.

But I decided we have to use up all the food in the house before we move, including two big bags of flour (one white and one wheat). I just went hunting for simple recipes online and found two bread recipes, two roll recipes, and two brownie recipes. I figure it I make all six of the recipes, most of the flour should get used up. The downside is that massive amounts of carbohydrates would be floating around the house, tempting me every second of the day to overindulge.... Funny, but it just sounds like even MORE of a good idea when I put it that way. I happen to love carbohydrates-- they make me feel all energized and stuff.

Maybe I can find some biscuit recipes...

Heated ceramic explodes. Now I have proof.

I ran out of my medicine last night and didn't make it to the pharmacy until late this morning to get a refill. Consequently, I missed my morning dose and had a blood sugar spike after breakfast. It has been a long time since I have had one, and the feeling was so strange. My mind fell into this weird haze and I kept getting distracted from what I was trying to think about. Eventually I went for a walk to bring it down.

While I was on my walk, I ran into two black young men, and one of them was so friendly to me. I thought he was really nice, but his accent was so strong that I couldn't understand a word he was saying. It probably didn't help that my blood sugar was still high...! But I really couldn't understand him! I could tell he was asking me a question, but he got tired of trying to make conversation when my only reaction was to stare at him and say, "What!?" over and over again. It was kind of ridiculous and I eventually said, "Have a good day," and walked off. He probably thought I was mentally challenged or perhaps from a foreign country. (The South might as well be a foreign country, I tell you. I don't know if I can call what they speak down here English.)

When I got home, the house was cold and I decided to turn on the oven to heat it up a little. All the dials on our stove look the same and I accidentally turned one of the wrong ones....

I was sitting in the next room about five minutes later and heard a crackling sound. Then came a loud pop and the sound of something shattering. I went running into the kitchen to find pieces of an exploded ceramic plate all over the room. One of the burners was red hot and surrounded by the biggest pieces of the plate. I ran to turn off the burner, mystified that heated up ceramic explodes. It was a little frightening to pick up the pieces that had flown all the way across the room. Some of them were about the size of throwing stars and just as sharp.

For the rest of the day, I couldn't help imagining what would have happened had I been standing in the kitchen. I had fun imagining blazing hot ceramic shrapnel embedded in my belly. I suppose I would have called 911, although maybe I could have pulled it out myself. Would they have become burned into the skin?

I know. I'm macabre. :)

Trudging through something thick and nasty...!

I've spent most of yesterday and today working on my huge anthropology paper. It's basically a compilation of a lot of work I've done over the course of the semester, but honestly it's difficult work. The thing is, my teacher gave me A's on my previous essays and I just can't figure out why. Now that I'm reading through them and tying them all together, I can see that they're horribly organized, horribly written, and not very well thought-out. It's like trudging through something thick and nasty...! I would say they're all C's at very best.

My theory is that the other people in my class must have written essays so abysmally horrific that the teacher had no choice but to use my writing as the "A" standard. Otherwise everyone else would have failed her class! That can be the only explanation for those deceptive A's. There's no way I deserve them.

So what I've been doing all day is going through my essays a paragraph at a time. First I cringe, then look away, and then I try to figure out what I meant to say. Once I've gotten that far, I begin carefully reconstructing and rewording every sentence, sometimes deleting huge passages.

This is no picnic.

I hope that after all this insane work, I'll actually finish by 8 o'clock when the whole thing is due. And maybe the teacher will smile compassionately on my pathetic deluge and give me a passing grade.... (I have NO IDEA if "deluge" can be used in that way, but I'm too exhausted to care!)

Time to dust off the ol' blog...

So I'm at school and I need to write a huge compilation paper of my ethnography. (That's the field research I did for my anthropology class.) I also have to write as many articles as I can for my new job. But when I sat down at my favorite spot in the computer lab, I thought, "My poor, pathetic blog has just been sitting there collecting dust! I've got to do something about..."

Blogs DO collect dust, you know. With disuse, they sort of get stale and start to stagnate. Like all the swamps around here, they start to smell bad and that makes people leave them as quickly as possible when they're browsing through. Not that I'm some kind of glory hound, but I do like people to read the things I write. I like to know that people are listening to the things I have to say, and they're not likely to do that if I don't keep the blog up to date and change it up a lot. I must let no more dust fall!

Honestly, with trying to figure out how to get the money to move and finishing up the major projects in my classes and taking time to build up my relationships and improve my life, I have hardly had a second to think about the blog. We haven't been able to find someone who wants our house yet, and we're really counting on getting our deposit back if we're going to have any chance of paying one when we move. I've been trying to find out about independent study classes here at ASU so that I can stay enrolled with this school and not have to hassle with transferring in the middle of the school year. FHSU has been monumentally unhelpful with helping me transfer there, and the person "assigned" to answer my questions won't help me at all. So I'd rather stay enrolled with this school if I could, but ASU's website is also monumentally unhelpful. My head spins around and around as I try to figure it all out...!

But this is just how life is. Whatever you try to do, there will be obstacles and anxiety. We always seem to be on the brink of disaster, but things always work out somehow. We've never actually been homeless yet, or died, or been sent to prison for not paying our utility bills. Our phones have only been shut off twice, and one of those times was in error.

Things are always going wrong, but life is good and I am happy. I ought to laugh at my own anxiety and remind myself of all that the Lord and many good people have done for us already. The list is pretty impressive and I'm sure I don't know most of the things on it!