"roommate"

I'm afraid I'm not always one for originality. As I sat in a meeting today, I just started giggling as I spewed out facts and thoughts and aphorisms and bits of wisdom and realized that NONE of it was my own. So I confess, I'm an unoriginal, plagiarizing, stealer of a, well, creative genius if I do say so myself...which leads us to the main point of this short post: "roommate." The word in itself connotes what two posts ago sought to run far far away from: the 28 previous housemates over the past 12 years of my life. And here my attempts at originality fail me, as I post this picture of a favorite roommate off and on of the past two years, Jeannie Reed. There's a point at which someone moves from a first name to the endearing "roommate" as their name, and Jeannie wears the hat along with other women of glorying fame. But alas, she's roommate of the hour tonite, so this post goes to her. In this pic we celebrated our last night as roomies together by heading to a posh little wine bar in Palo Alto - though I'll miss the everyday interaction with her, we've ironically had better, more intentional and FUN time together as friends-in-separate-houses in the past week. Love you, rooomate!

one of those nights...

tonite was one of those nights in ministry that just made sense....and I LOVED it. One of my favorite nights of the year has got to be when we (young life) buy out the menu at Taco Bell and just go for it. Thanks to a generous donor who swiped his credit card for $163.74 at the local TB, bags upon bags of greasy, nasty, processed "Mexican" food were consumed - so that ultimately kids could hear about Jesus. I love that kids showed up who hadn't been to YL before, and even though some sat on the sidelines, ultimately laughed and felt like they belonged. I love the leader who gargled hot sauce for 32 seconds just to be "in" with kids (this was after they gargled "Jingle Bells" with the aforementioned hot sauce for 32 seconds, of course). I love the kids CHOWING down on all the food that was left after being broken up into teams to see who could finish the food first. I love the strangers who walked into this restaurant on the corner of El Camino and 20th and just watched what was going on. I love that Juvy, one of our leaders, talked about the fact that Jesus cares about the heart...that it's the most important part - and that most of those strangers seemed to walk in at 8.47 pm when she was giving the talk. Would the paralyzed man have eaten Taco Bell with Jesus? I think so! I love that two friends of Young Life, Annie and Gilbert, refused to leave before the last kid did, and were determined to leave Taco Bell cleaner than they found it. I love that the Taco Bell employees, though sweaty at the end of the evening, waved good-bye to us and thanked us for being there.

It was a GREAT evening.

yo quero taco bell.

all by myself

Right before I moved up to Washington in '05 I'd just finished watching every episode of Sex & the City starring my favorite shoe-hoarding Carrie Bradshaw (otherwise known as Sarah Jessica Parker). With her three best friends, they individually conquered the Big Apple in a unique way: through career, through love, through fame, through money, through family ... and the list goes on. They'd leave their quirky little apartments and meet up for a cosmo or a Saturday morning breakfast, and for the most part, were portrayed as successful, confident women who together could do anything.

Fast forward: I always wondered how they lived alone - all by themselves in the big city. I, on the other hand, have always been surrounded by roommates; granted, there have been two stints of living in separate family units, one up in Washington, and one down here in California, but for the most part, I realize that I have always - always, always, always - been surrounded by housemates. And to tell you the truth, college summers excluded (because with Frontier Ranch or Young Life in the midst, that'd just be over the top), my rough estimate is in the range of 28...or 33. [what do we do with the Gordon House conundrum? To say there was a steady stream of five or six is an understatement.]

In the midst of the usual this week (working, kid hang out dates - don't you love that that's not work to me? :) - reading and writing a paper for class, going on a million walks a day with MD, working out...), I also find myself packing up and getting ready to move three miles south on Saturday. And this place, or "the cute little cottage," as I've deemed it, is PERFECT. How excited I am to have a little place to call my own, in addition to having a great yard and another playmate named Chase (in the front house) for Mr. Darcy. And I don't know if hitting 30 just gave me the magical push of confidence to go out and live on my own, or if the above 28 co-habitants just made me desirous of some down time, but I'm doing it! And I'm excited! I think part of it is that ministry here on the Peninsula feels like it's finally taking off, so it's busy. And at the end of the day, having been a professional hanger-outer, I desire some down time. I want to read that stack of books. I want to sip that vino and watch netflix. And sometimes I just want to turn off.

So that, my friends, is what I'm doing. And I can't wait! With it comes more intentionality on my part, but with it also comes an eventual dose of knowing thyself - and for that, I can't wait.

another hard but good

Sometimes I covet sitting in the hard stuff, as icky and sucky as it is. Sometimes I automatically roll my eyes when there's always a positive spin on the end of a hard tale of woe - though I do it myself much of the time...so, as our mantra here with young life in the mid-peninsula has been to be ENCOURAGED by what we do see instead of DISCOURAGED by what we don't see, I choose both...

Hard: learning that the statute of limitations was up on my accident from 2.5 years ago, and that they never received my signed documents this summer, so the case is closed. I'm out $3500 owed to me. Grrr. Jesus, will you grow a tree of 3500 other blessings?

Good: I spoke about Young Life in the ministry spotlight at a church on Sunday, and we had almost 30 responses from folks wanting to get involved on various levels!

Hard: the girl who was going to move into my spot in the house had to back out on Tuesday...when will I get to move into the cute little cottage with Mr. Darcy?

Good: I'll still be moving into this cute little cottage with Mr. Darcy. I'm SO excited to live by myself, to live in this backyard place with Mr. Darcy who will have a HUGE yard and another pup named Scout to play with!

Hard: I'm tired and ready for vacay.

Good: I just had an EXCELLENT vacay last month in St. Simons, Georgia - oh to relax on the beach, to read, to sleep, to laugh, to converse, to eat buttery, greasy southern food...

With my friend Claudia from here in SM who took me to her southern homeland!


With college roommate Mandy who happened to be staying 10 minutes away that same weekend I was there!


Okay. Now I'm done....hard but good: that's life. that's life.

just a few pics

Some of life in a nutshell:

My younger sister Aleah got married in August! With sister-in-law and brother, Melissa and Brandon...

And, is he NOT the cutest nephew in America? Balloon-play with Jared Christopher...

Congrats Aleah and Mikey (who are, as we speak, enroute from Dublin!)

My friend Claudia joined me for a little Oregon-California road trip heading back down south; on the way we decided to take a little detour in Brownsville (OR), and stumbled upon the 2nd annual Stand By Me festival! Who knew? And though most of you know, autographs are being given out for our dunce-like appearance in the Oregonian.

Fall, here we come!

writing. period.

I've started writing again - apparently facebook status updates just aren't cutting it. Rewind to last November: hailed by friends and family as pure insanity, I signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month). 3 days and 4000 words into it, I quickly realized that this dream wasn't going to be accomplished. So here the dream book comprised of a little bit of story time, wit, intelligence, Jesus, nature, love, laughter (Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard and Frederick Buechner all rolled into one) saw its sad demise onto the back burner of my desktop.

But along came Monday. And Monday evening I found myself on a plane, situated next to Carlos the wine distributer and BB the mysterious Silicon Valley clone and author of "Boys Are Stupid."

"Why is that the title of your book?"

"Well, because I have a philosophy: boys are stupid and girls are crazy." BB decided to write a book for his beloved goddaughter upon her coming of age into teenage-dome.

"But how did you ever get it published?"

"Lulu.com. It's a self-publisher."

So there you go, friends and family, inspired by BB, last night's vision of this year's Christmas presents (watch out, Martha - I've got my own handy craft!), I am back on the bandwagon writing again.

Current wordcount: 4,344.

Any bets on how long this current excitement will last?

no more camping!

...no, this does not refer to the pitch-age of tent - you KNOW i'm going to continue doing that....but as of today, cara's young life summer camping season is OVER! it's easy for a YL summer to last 6-7 weeks away from the area (ie: where I live), but with only a two week assignment and one week at woodleaf, high school camp, I am DONE! That is huge! Here then is the plan for the rest of the summer:

this week: REST. big time. i can't even get off the couch right now and I LOVE it.

saturday: scotty and annie's wedding in tahoe
sunday: drive north
monday: drive north
sunday, august 9th: aleah's wedding in WA
august 15th-ish....make my way south.

august 27th: take a REAL five-day vacation to a little island off the coast of GEORGIA (yes, america) with my friend Claudia! Put Mr. Darcy up in a doggie-hotel! Turn off the cell phone, leave the laptop at home, lay on the beach, read five books, eat well, drink well, rest well, laugh hard and have a merry old time! in the meantime, here are some pics:

this was from a fundraising event we did for young life in june called CAMPNAPPING where adults in the community got "kidnapped," and had to raise bail. fabulous friends Raven and Kiara helped kidnapped Cathy, one of the adults with me, and were SO scared that we ourselves were going to get arrested. No way man.

my assignment this summer was speaking to middle school kids for three-five day sessions at camp maymac in santa cruz. As usual, it was a growing time, but I LOVED it. for more stories, just ask. :)

this was the "door" illustration i used for all of the talks...here, the work crew and summer staff (high school and college volunteers) had placed "before Christ" words that they thought of themselves as on the door to signify NEED. Oftentimes, in trying NOT to then feel that way about ourselves, we try and solve the problem on our own...we slam the door shut, and we put a big "keep out" sign on the door towards Jesus.

here's billy and reylon, two friends from maymac, whom I took for the day, touring north of SF. i don't think taking pictures in front of golden gate will EVER get old.

and here we are at woodleaf last week: here's megan, one of the girls, and I on SQUARE DANCE night! and yes, I broke my toe: MFBB....my first broken bone!

Here's Hailey, one of my favorite freshmen friends: we were obviously looking hardcore for sports uni night.

And here's Li, another favorite (okay, let's just admit it: everyone's my favorite!). But there were some pretty cool things that happened with Li this last week, and I was blessed to share life with her at Woodleaf.

Finally, here's a very special part of last week: Aisea. Aisea, who's originally from the Bay Area, was at Woodleaf as the camp musician for the month. Besides getting to connect with him personally, it was beautiful to see him take our four Tongan girls under his wings and give them a little VIP time. There's no doubt in my mind that he was to be up in Challenge, CA at our exact time partially for this very reason. I love it when that happens....

finally, just last night we celebrated the 30th birthday of an old teaching buddy and dear friend, Jenn, out on a sailboat on the bay! how I love Erika and Jenn!

just a couple of little pics.

The annual sickness has come upon miss mac....ahh, for resting, whether I feel like it or not! (And while I'm at it, does anyone have any fool-proof remedies for this cold/flu-like thing that's not going away? I yearn NOT to go to the doctor. Bleh).

First, we had our last YL a couple weeks ago, beach bonfire style! Here's a shot with Annie and Li - Annie's a leader and Li's a kid. Both are rockstars and convey the excitement of the evening.

Davarian has soon become one of our favorite friends at Young Life - the other week he tried to convince a poor new leader that Lil' Wayne was his dad and that he had a pet panda bear. And that, Davarian, is why I like you! Here he is in some girl's Uggs...


Then, two weeks ago I traveled up to WA for a "south end" trip, as I like to call it, making stops in Auburn, Tacoma and Gig Harbor. Old roommate Gracie was getting married, so it was an absolute delight to be there for the festivities; Gracie's then the younger sister of Gaylynn, whom I was on work crew with waaaaay back in '96 - here's Grace, and then work crew buds Heidi, Gaylynn and me.

Congrats Gracie and Buddy (best names for a couple, EVER).

I also got to meet n greet the newest Nelson, little Henry James! congrats Amanda and Jess! He IS a little campfire...ie: quite stare-able.
Finally, I did make a quick stop in Auburn, and got to hang out with one of my favorite YL girls, Nikole. There's nothing like a walk n talk with Starby's in hand.

Finally, last weekend was my dear friend Dirk's jorts and ports party - for those of you, like me, who don't use "jorts" in your regular everyday vocabulary, it's a nice little combo for JEAN SHORTS. There you go. Anyways, first we have a pick with my long-lost friend Claudia - she's that friend that you've known for less than a year, but you feel like it's been for-evah.
And last, but certainly not least, I just want you to get an idea of my outfit for the evening: joveralls! Here I am with Erin, a friend on the Peninsula who actually hails from AUBURN of all places; we both showed up with the one-strap down joveralls. And, mind you, the beer I'm holding - it wasn't mine. I'm much more of a ports girl! :)

And now...off to the store for some flu drugs-of-choice!