Unlike most people who get excited about the holidays because it means they get an extra day off from work, I usually can’t wait to be back to the “normal.” When you’re kind of on your own, it isn’t that much fun.

I mean, spending the holiday with Imaginary Boyfriend would be great but he’s out of town visiting his family. And so, I’m on my own this 4th of July.

I had big plans for today: I would sleep in, fix breakfast for myself (maybe even attempt to cook toast since its a holiday and all!) and then head to the Starlite office for a lovely day of holiday work.

These plans came to a bit of a halt last night when I began throwing up. Don’t feel too bad for me — I watched the fireworks out the window from my bathroom floor.

I decided to head to bed early and sleep in today. And of course I made it all the way to 7:36 a.m.

I’m feeling 100% better, so I’m going to head over to the office and attack the piles of files that are piling up on my desk. Snuggles and Cuddles are going with me, of course — I promised them we’d stop by the fireworks store on the way home to pick up some sparklers.

HAPPY HOLIDAY, YA’LL!

P.S. - Wasn’t trying to come across as Sad Sally today — quite the opposite!  I know my day of family grilling out, kids swimming in the pool, etc. will come one day.

I bought a cute shirt the other day. Only problem? It has an ugly string woven through the collar part / area / thing-y.

Naturally, I looked for a pair of scissors to remove ugly string. However, to my great dismay, I soon realized that my scissors are packed up with the rest of my stuff. I don’t know which container they’re in, so I was stumped as to how I would dispose of ugly string.

And then I remembered my secret weapon.

That string is history.

Love,

Your Delicate Flower (aka Seamstress Amy Beth)

Well, well, well.  I was wrong.

It wasn’t a bird in our chimney / fireplace area / thing-y.  It was a nest of birds.

Oh yes m’am.  I couldn’t make up these things if I tried.

Here’s how it went down: I hear these bird-type noises coming from that general area and immediately flip out.  Because?  Hello?  I think we’ve been down this road before.

I whip out my cell and immediately call a friend’s boyfriend.  And then, since he’s out of town, another friend’s boyfriend.  And then another. 

No one was in town so I knew it was time to Get Very, Very Serious: I called Animal Control.

Now, before you start telling me that I should have just dealt with it myself, I would like you to look around the screen in front of you.  Notice all the, um, pinkness?  And maybe a few polka dots?  Yeah, I’m probably not the best at dealing with dangerous animals.

(Yes, they are dangerous.)

(Don’t argue with me.)

It only took a few minutes for the Animal Control officer to arrive; this, of course, may have been because I didn’t exactly mention that there was a bird on the loose.  I may have said something like “There’s some rabid animal trapped in our fireplace and I’m all alone and I’m a girl and PLEASE HELP ME!”

Yeah, I played the girl card.  And I’d do it again, thankyouverymuch.

Mr. Animal Control Officer pulled out his trusty flashlight, took one look up the chimney and announced that there was a birds nest with multiple baby birds that had just hatched.  I, of course, gasped and may or may not have said something like “THEY’RE MULTIPLYING!” 

After making this announcement, Mr. Animal Control Officer put away the flashlight and headed towards our door.  Which caused me to say “Uh, where are you going?”

Mr. ACO: “I’m leaving.”

Me: “But, um, THE BIRDS.  WHAT ABOUT THE BIRDS?”

Mr. ACO: “Well, m’am, you can’t expect me to get them out, now can you?”

Me: “Yes, actually, that’s exactly what I was expecting.”

Mr. ACO: “If I touch the nest, the mother bird will never come back and the babies will die.”

And with that, I knew that the battle was over.  I mean, I hate having birds flying through our office but HELLO I DO HAVE A MATERNAL INSTINCT SOMEWHERE INSIDE ME.

Mr. ACO is coming back to the office this afternoon to take another look and see if there’s anything else that could be done.  My fear is that the babies will fall out of the nest and die on our fireplace floor and then I’ll have to clean them up and I CAN’T HANDLE THAT.  Because this morning?  I found two little bird eggs that had fallen out and almost broke down in tears.

I know.  Quite a different reaction than we’re used to when it comes to me and birds.

Hello. 

It is 2:02 p.m. and I am sitting at my desk at the Starlite office.

In the other room, there is a bird trapped in the fireplace thing-y.

I have not seen it in there, but I can hear it’s little bird-y noises from here.

I do not know what to do.

Pros to rescuing the bird: it survives.

Cons to rescuing the bird: I may not survive.

Pros to leaving the bird alone: I don’t get attacked by the bird.

Cons to leaving the bird alone: I continue to feel guilty.

Sigh.

No one mentioned this part of the job in all my ministry classes.

I think my very-jammed-packed-weekend-trip finally caught up with me because I was almost falling asleep at my desk by late yesterday afternoon. I decided to give up and head home a few minutes early so I could take a nap.

Those of you who know me in real life know that “taking a nap” isn’t a typical phrase for me. However, since the day I finished graduate school, I have tried to embrace the occasional nap.

You think I’m kidding about the whole “day I finished graduate school” thing, but I’m being serious — I got the diploma, went to lunch with my family and then came home to take a long nap. And it was glorious.

Anyway, since I skipped out a bit early today, I worked from home a little last night. I had some serious email inbox clean up to do as well as some website updates to send in. And then, I had the unthinkable task: trying to figure out how much processed nacho cheese we need to start purchasing for this fall.

Here is the one good thing about using PNC: it as a shelf life of a YEAR. And yes, this does concern me but? Honestly? I try to avoid thinking about what is actually in PNC.

Anyway, I pulled up the trust calculator and started doing my equations. If Sparkle has three weekly programs and there’s x amount of girls at school # 1 and then x amount of girls at school # 2 and finally x amount of girls at school # 3 and there are ten weeks of programs in a semester but are we going to serve PNC at the Christmas party or can we afford to maybe have pizza that week and while I’m thinking about it, how much can we spend on their Christmas gifts this year and just how many cups should we buy for this fall? And, beyond that, do we go with the 8 oz, 12 oz or 16 oz ones this year? And the napkins — should we do those or paper towels this year? And then there’s the whole Kool-Aid vs. Soft Drinks debate. Do we serve Kool-Aid in the elementary and middle school programs and then just switch to soft drinks for the high school programs? OR MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST SERVE SUNNY DELIGHT TO EVERYONE.

It is like a massive jigsaw puzzle that I’ll never actually figure out because, when I get to the end, there’s always three pieces missing. We always end up with too much of this, not enough of that and so forth. And then, each July, we pretend like this will be the year we get it right.

This year’s motto? “PNC will be great in 2008!”

Just kidding. We’re really going with “I’m gonna find my mate in 2008.”

The rhyming? You noticed the rhyming, right?

Anyway, in light of the fact that my brain is very tired from trying to figure out PNC Volume for ‘08, I have a question for you. Early next week, we’ll be mailing out our annual “back to school” letter to our entire donor base. Basically, once a year, we ask our donors if they’d consider making a one-time donation towards our budget for that school year. Most people prefer this to the monthly commitment option; we, of course, love it when people embrace the monthly commitment option but HELLO WE LOVE ANY OPTION.

What I’m wanting to know is this: if you were to get a once a year letter from us, what would you want to hear about? Do you want to know specific stories from the past year about girls we served? Or maybe you want the straight up facts and figures with a healthy dose of percentages and pie graphs thrown in. Or perhaps you’d just like a list of links of blog entries about the time I went out with That Boy? Because that? Well, I can’t think of anything that screams “Best Ministry EVER!” more than that.

Spill it, loves. The very future of our PNC fund depends on your answers.

No pressure though.

… but joy showed up in the form of a flower delivery truck at the Starlite office.

Needless to say, we feel comforted in our time of loss.

When you’re dating someone named Imaginary Boyfriend, you tend to get a lot of weird stares questions about your relationship.

For example, people are always asking me what he looks like. I don’t really understand what they’re talking about. I mean, I know I’ve posted this picture of him before:

He is soooooo cute.

People also want to know what we talk about, which is kind of a funny question to me. I mean, we talk about all the usual things that other couples discuss — where we want to go on Saturday night, how work is going, what Shamu was doing on his webcam last night. Just the typical stuff.

Some of the nosier people go as far to ask how we handle the physical aspect of our relationship. Like any other couple, we have to make sure we’re leaving room for all three members of the Trinity between us. We try to go out with groups and keep the “alone time” to a minimum. After all, in the event that Imaginary Boyfriend turns out NOT to be The One for me, I want to make sure I’ve honored my future husband in my relationships now. Can I get an amen from the single sisters in the room?

The only negative part about our relationship is that my friends seem to have a hard time “connecting” with Imaginary Boyfriend. They tell me that they feel like they can’t “see” him. Some even claim not to be able to hear him — I’ll admit, he does speak softly sometimes.

Other than that, I feel like we have a pretty good relationship. He’s kind and sweet and, best of all, he lets me talk all I want.

Which, in case you’re new to the bloggy, is an awful lot.

After being away from the office for a few days, I’m terribly busy but I had to tell you something sweet that just happened. I was writing a letter to one of Starlite’s donors and, in it, I was mentioning which public schools we’ll have programs in this fall. As I started to list the names of the school, I actually couldn’t remember one of them because there were so many in my list.

I know the significance of that probably won’t mean much to you but it sure does to this girl. There’s never been a time in our five year history that I couldn’t recite the list of schools at a moment’s notice.

If you met me or my team in real life, you’d know that we don’t care one tiny bit about adding more schools so we can “prove” that we’re moving forward, doing better, etc. It just isn’t about that to us. But every school on my list represents a whole lot of girls that God is gracious enough to let us touch.

And so, while I sat here at my desk trying to remember which elementary school I had left off the list, I started crying. Because this girl?

Well, she never thought that a moment like this would happen.

I’ve just crawled into bed after one of the busiest weekends of my life, and while I know I should just wait ’til tomorrow morning to check in, I couldn’t help but log on and say hello to ya’ll.

I was out of town this weekend for some stuff and didn’t really have a free minute at all to check in. I had written a post for you right before I left but when I tried to publish it from my Very Complicated Cell Phone, it created quite the little problem. And then the post was eaten alive by the blog monster. Farewell, blog post — we’ll miss you.

Now that you’re adequately bored, I’d like to spice things up a bit. Do ya’ll remember my cousin Cate, the one who is… well, country? Cate offered to go with me this weekend so I wouldn’t be traveling alone and, since I spent 13 hours in the car, I sure was glad to have her along for the ride. That is, until The Bad Hair Incident occurred.

I was trying to finish getting ready for an important meeting when I had an absolute hair crisis. Cate, bless her lazy little heart, just sat on the couch as I shouted various demands to my hair from the bathroom down the hall. After listening to me and my hair have it out for a few minutes, Cate decided to help out — by making a little video of the crisis.

Now. I almost didn’t post this video because I’m not wearing make-up in it, but once I saw it, I knew ya’ll just had to hear Cate’s accent. And, well, her snorting.

We don’t know why Cate snorts when she laughs, but by goodness, she does it each and every single time something cracks her up. It is hilarious — and she thinks so too. Even funnier? The fact that Cate filmed this sideways.

If you don’t laugh when she says “It ain’t the highlights!” then we need to talk because, friend, something is wrong with you.

Also, I did the research for you — Cate snorts seven different times in this one minute video.

You’re welcome.

Hi, ya’ll! We’re having a little trouble with the bloggy but no worries — things will be back to normal soon. I’m out of town this weekend and a bit too busy to figure out what’s wrong, so (hopefully), I’ll see you Monday morning!

Love,

Amy Beth