NaNoWriMo!

What, you ask, is NaNoWriMo?
It is the abbreviation for National Novel Writing Month. During NaNoWriMo [and if you want to make it EVEN shorter... NaNo] the main goal is simple: to write one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time. Of course... this means no editing, no back-spacing, no re-reading or correcting. The only thing that matters is quantity, not quality.

My inner perfectionist is going to get whacked over the head with my laptop. But this is a good thing! Haha.

I already have my novel idea [haha, pun not intended... until I realized what a great pun I'd just made!] set up, and my pre-writing is pretty much done. On http://nanowrimo.org my username is dappleddakota [obviously]. Right now I'm trying to come up with a plausible way to actually show up in person at one of the write-ins that's going to happen in Tulsa. I know of one that will happen exactly 11 minutes from my house [I mapquested the location!] on a day of the week that I could potentially attend.. But would my parents go for it? I'm not sure.

One thing is for sure... I must also keep up with my schoolwork! That will be the challange. Anyone interested in doing this with me??

I'm going to expect to have one craptastic nanonovel by the last day of November... I wonder how long it will take me to edit?

Tina

Mandibular Hypoplasia, Pt I

So. This is a little story about a condition called mandibular hypoplasia. We'll call it MH. When I was a tiny girl, I had a normal face. At one point, both of my jaws were growing together in harmony. Then something happened. My lower jaw [the mandible] got tired and stopped growing. However, my upper jaw was still going strong. When my upper jaw stopped growing, my bite was still off and there was a huge gap between my front upper teeth and my front lower teeth. Unfortunately, my orthodontist could do nothing about it. My teeth were as fixed as they were going to get with braces.

I had to have surgery.

It took seven months to get the surgery scheduled. In this story, the insurance company is the bad guy [booo!]. Anyway, after getting denied several times we just said oh well and did the surgery anyway. So, we went to the hospital at 5:30 in the morning. I changed into that weird paper gown and nearly froze to death while waiting to be pushed to the operating room.
At this point, MH began to get very scared. He wasn't going to last much longer!
The first anesthesiologist [haha! SCORE! Spelled that right on the first try..] was kind of odd. She asked me the same questions I'd already been asked at least two times that morning [is my name spelled correctly on my arm band? is my birth date correct on my arm band? had I eaten anything past midnight? had anything to drink past midnight? had I ever had a known reaction to anesthetic? was I allergic to any medicines? was I currently taking a daily medicine? do I know what surgery I'm going in for? etc, etc, etc.]

A different nurse came in to start my IV. My mom had to leave the room while she was sticking me. It actually wasn't bad at all. She found a vein, gave me a shot to numb the area, and I hardly felt a pinch at all. Though the saline solution they ran through my veins made me even colder for a bit.
This nurse repeated the questions the first lady had asked. Then she left.
Finally, my surgeon showed up, as well as a very pretty anesthesiologist. I bet she wasn't any older than 26-27. They repeated the questions AGAIN [what is this, now? 5 times?] and had to make an addition to the paperwork to state that they were going to, indeed, take out my upper wisdom teeth as well. [Double whammy! My lower wisdom teeth were taken out over a year ago.]

My surgeon is a very nice man. He's a great Christian and very nice. However, at that moment, while I was laying on the little gurney bed trying not to freeze or have a nervous breakdown [I wasn't scared of the surgery. I was nervous about waking up after the surgery. Pssh. Who cares what they do to me while I'm passed out under anesthetic?!] I wasn't too fond of my very nice, smiling surgeon.

And the pretty anesthesiologist made me spray nasal saline solution up my nose, which choked me when it went down my throat. [And believe me, if I'm bothered by a nasal spray, its bad. I used to take a nasal spray daily for my allergies.] But she apologised. So I forgave her.
Then they stole my glasses so I couldn't see, gave them to my parents, and wheeled me down to the operating room.
Next installment coming soon. :) haha. I know y'all are just waiting on the edges of your seats!
Tina

RIP Christina Lester

I realized that in my lack of posting-ness... I didn't make a post about Christina. She was a 13 year old girl that I used to ride with. I rode her horse Ed many times when he was still on school horse board. I was the first person at the barn to talk to her mom, besides Kim. Christina passed away along with both of her parents and her 16 year old sister in a private plane crash. It was very sad, and happened a little over a month ago. It was the first time a lot of the littler girls at the barn had to deal with a death of a person so close to them.

However, they were strong believers in Christ, so I know they are all in heaven. :) Which makes it not so sad. When I went to the funeral with the rest of the Southern Hills gang, they had two whole pew rows reserved for us in the main sanctuary. Apparently, people filled the main sanctuary, balcony, gym, and many classrooms of the school attached to the church. It was a funeral times four, which was hard. I think the hardest part was seeing those four caskets, and seeing Christina's helmet on top of hers.

During the funeral I realized that I knew Christina's brother from my freshman year at Metro. He sat beside me in spanish class. I met Christina two years after that, though, so I never made the connection.
Anyway... I made a video for Christina several days after I heard about the plane crash. The day I learned about it there was a meeting out at the barn and we had a big hug/cry/groom Ed/planting flowers for Christina/signing a posterboard for Christina session. The older girls were hugging and comforting the younger girls. It was pretty tough. But Kim's youngest daughter, Nicole, was the one that asked me if I could make a video. So I give her the credit for the idea. Every time I hear this song on the radio now, I think of Christina and my eyes get kind of misty. But I know she is in heaven now. :) So it isn't too sad.
Anyway. An update from the big void in space and time when I wasn't updating my blog at all.

Tina

Way Too Long!

Gah! It's been way too long since I've had a blog post! I need to start doing these more often again.. My life has been SO busy lately. I had jaw surgery. I suppose I could do a series of blog posts on my surgery. They would be interesting to look back on. Maybe I'll do that over the next few weeks. Anyway. This is a sad, short little post. I'll probably make a few more today or in the next few days to make up for not posting. Tina

My BEAST!

Lookitlookitlookit my BEAST! He's better again! Mostly. haha. He has a wound that he got several months ago that is still scabbing over & breaking open & scabbing over again. But I can live with that, and in the meantime, we can walk, trot AND CANTER! Awesomeness. We went and hacked out with Kimberly & Chase behind the barn property, on Target's property. haha. It was FANTASTIC! And very freeing. I got this huge rush of adrenaline and we weren't even cantering that fast, cause Kimby was working on her poppy stadium canter. haha. We were just special and extremely heavy on the forehand, but I didn't really care. I had all the boots I owned on Koda, splint boots & bell boots, just as a precaution. haha. I love the sound that bell boots make slapping against hooves! It's great.

So yeah. Anyway. About every three days the scab peels off and a new one forms again. So every three days I have to put my pink lady wound care stuff on it. Using my new purple latex gloves. haha. I feel special when I use them. Although they're from a bag, not a box, which is really, really annoying. haha. I am a lazy bum! But that's okay. I'm thinking next month the scab will be totally gone, and we can start jumping. w00t!!!! :D

Tina

#B90x

So. B90x. If you follow me on twitter, you've probably heard that I'm taking on B90x. It stands for "Bible in 90 days." I'm going to read the Bible in 90 days. I've actually just finished my day 4 reading, which was the end of Genesis. Tomorrow I start Exodus!
The reason I've started this, is because I saw that on Pastor Steven Furtick's twitter, he challanged himself and his staff to do this plan.

“B90X is a revolutionary system of intense, truth-absorbing, brain-busting Bible reading that will transform your understanding of Scripture from intro to nitro in just 90 days! Your personal trainer, Ruach “The Breath” Yahweh, will drag you through the most intense infusion of His vision that you have ever experienced and you won’t believe the results!”

I've decided... I'm going to actually finish it. haha. I've started reading the Bible all the way through, but I usually forget or lag behind by the fifth day. However, this thing is so intense there is no way I could ever forget it. Plus, on twitter, with the hashtag #B90x, I'm always reminded. And I write two days worth of scripture-reading deadlines on my full-length mirror with a dry-erase marker.

Here's the PDF file that is on Elevation Church's website that keeps me on track.

I'm bracing myself for some awesome Bible reading & revelation here. :) I'm also determined to not need the "grace days" that have been stuck at the end of the schedule, in case you miss a day or two. Nope. Not for me. ^_^

So... I'm in it to win it. And the fun thing is... everybody wins! Even if you only make it a third of the way, or halfway, or three-fourths of the way through... hey... You've just read that much more of the Bible, right? How about you? Are you in? Heck, if someone I actually know [not just random twitterers, which is awesome, but I don't really know them. haha.] does it with me, we'd both be just that much more accountable & able to finish the whole thing. But even if no one else does it, I'm committed to this thing! I might update on my readings weekly or something. Like on Sundays. That sounds like a good plan. :)

Till next post, God bless!
Tina.

I'm Not Normal. [I Hope You Aren't Either.]

Haha. How's that for a title. Anyways.... Ever since I got back from my 8 day trip with my youth group to North Carolina, I've been listening to Pastor Steven Furtick's sermons online. [www.stevenfurtick.com, click on the "watch sermons online" button.] Furtick was the speaker for our first evening service. And besides being very easy on the eyes [all the females in the audience were having to concentrate very carefully on the message & God, and NOT bemoaning the fact that he was married with 2 children.] he had a GREAT sermon. :)
I also found him on twitter. I favorited this tweet: "Now that was fun. I might never preach to non Pentecostals again. They screamed for me to keep preaching about 40 mins into the msg."
Yeahh buddy. :P Wow. I just stole that from Courtney. I will never do that again. Sorry Courtney, I love ya, but... I don't need another "dude" situation on my hands. [I love you too, Kate. ^_^]
Anyway. Besides the fact that PH kids are some of the most fun kids around [myself included], Furtick's sermon really was good enough that I wish he had kept going a little bit longer. It was on throwing Jonah out of your boat. You know, the sailors would have died if they hadn't eventually thrown Jonah out of their boat. So whether what's keeping you in the storm is a habit, secret, or relationship, you need to throw it out and give it to God. Yadda yadda yadda. It actually was pretty awesome. But I digress.

I've been listening to several more of his regular Sunday morning sermons. My favorite series so far is Cow Tipping [tipping over the church's sacred cows that no one wants to talk about]. But that's not even what I wanted to type about. You need to see cow tipping for yourself.
What I wanted to blog about was his Purple People Leader series. I've only watched the first sermon [writing this takes the place of watching the second, and I don't have time for anything else], and the title of that sermon is "You're Not Normal."

Anyway, he goes on to say that Christians shouldn't be just like everyone else. We're supposed to be different. Peculiar. Strange. Not normal. Unique. But, there's a fine line between being unique and being weird. When we cross that line to weird, then we aren't useful any more because people just think we're weird and won't take us seriously.
So... bottom line: You are special. NOT just like everyone else. God has a vision for your life. You need to be unique to fulfill it. When you are unique you are useful in the hands of God.
However... when you cross the line to weird... you're just.... weird.


That was my mini-stolen-sermon of the day. Yay!
Tina