Thank Goodness For iPods...

I'm on the computer, happily twiddling around while accomplishing absolutely nothing. Ruining my peaceful atmosphere comes the sound of escalating vocal cords...they sail through the air like they own it and land amongst my ears in annoying glee. Two steps behind me, door frame and then another mere five steps will lead you directly to where those soaring vocal cords are located. I am far to close to those classical notes. I glance over at my lizard and I can tell by the look on his face that he knows exactly what I am thinking. While he ducks beneath his little hidey hole to make sure he is safe from a Disney song invasion, I grab my book, exit the computer room and head towards my room. Once I am inside, with my door perfectly closed, I find my lovely iPod and with a couple deft scrolls of my thumb, I have one of my favorite punk/screamo albums on the screen. Sliding the ear buds in place I settle into a comfortable position on my bed and open my book. I have successfully averted a classical music crisis.

I feel like I have accomplished a lot...

I got out of bed at a reasonable hour...
I took a shower in under 10 minutes...
I got dressed and managed to have all my clothes match...
I ate some good food that nourished my body...
I drank water so that I wouldn't be dehydrated...
I got the mail and didn't throw a fit when there was nothing cool for me....
I successfully ate 3/4 of my leftover Easter candy...
I've listened to my new Children 18:3 CD two times already...
I gave my pet a bath and he didn't seem too annoyed at me
I wrote this lovely blog entry and informed you of all my wonderful accomplishments...
Yep, I'm pretty certain that I have had A Very Successful Day.

And I was really hungry...

Yesterday I almost ate spoiled chicken. I have some allergies going on right now, so I didn't smell anything when I took it out of the bag and started chopping it up. I mixed in herbs and spices and reheated some leftover rice. I had been thinking about Chicken and Rice all afternoon and I was finally getting around to making myself some dinner. It was only after everything was done that I couldn't stand it and I stole a little piece of chicken and plopped it into my mouth. It tasted funny. Real funky. I could not place why it tasted so weird. But then I remembered that we still haven't bought any organic soy sauce and so we were using some generic brand from walmart. I figured that that was the case and I hoped we bought some new soy sauce soon, because this stuff just wasn't as good. I kept stirring, watching as my chicken was getting golden brown. I couldn't help myself again, I snagged a piece and ate it. It still tasted funky. Why? I looked at the chicken, it seemed perfectly harmless, it looked good. I went back over to the counter where I still have not put away the other chicken breast in it's little plastic Ziploc bag. I put my nose close and sniffed. WHOA! How could I have missed it before? It smelled like rotten milk. It was totally nasty. And here I had been frying it up in a pan for the last 10 minutes eagerly awaiting my dinner. I went back to my fried chicken and felt sick. I had only eaten a couple pieces and I was already starting to feel sick, but I knew that if I let my mind wander it would definitely think of all the ways I would die of food poisoning, so I said, "Stop it. It was only a couple pieces, you will not die." It made me sad to look at that pan full of fried chicken. I had so been looking forward to eating it. I was now depressed. I had used up all those herbs and spices to make it taste good, and now they were going to the trash can. I felt so depressed I didn't feel like eating anything. But I was hungry, and I knew that if I didn't eat anything then I would feel really sick from lack of food. So I called my dad and told him that I had almost eaten poisoned chicken and he told me (of course) "you should have smelled it first" and I sighed. Good news was that we had bought one of those rotisserie style chickens for dinner last night, so I just hacked off some of that and cooked that. Moral of the story guys: don't eat poisoned chicken.

Driving along the road on the way to church....

and what do we see? Two cows, on the edge of the road, chewing their cud, wondering what we were doing staring at them. Me, my Dad and my sister had to laugh. They looked so forlorn....standing there, not knowing if they should go back, or move forward. Eventually we moved on, driving slowly down the road, gradually picking up speed as the cows got smaller and smaller in my side view mirror. With a laugh my dad looked back and said, "now they're going to follow us." Looking back I saw they were walking in the direction we had gone. Within minutes, they were out of sight, and out of my mind. At church, God had played a little trick on us. The Sermon was about Lost Sheep...or, as I translated it, since I am living in OK: Lost Cows. Funny, God, real funny - is what I thought. Just his little way of reminding us that he is very present in our lives...even when we just think it's a crazy old cow chewing her cud.