i haven’t died. i promise. we are still waiting for our internet to be hooked up at home (thursday…as i cross my fingers) and my computer for work should arrive tomorrow (again, crossing my fingers - it was supposed to be in today!)

it has been interesting not being online for the last few days. i have a lot of email to catch up on (21 down, 19 to go and that isn’t happening tonight, sorry!)

i am sure my subscribers and stats have tanked (i refuse to look) but for the six of you still hanging in there, thank you. i appreciate it.

chris and i have spent the last few days exploring nashville and our neighborhood. last night we had coffee with our friend spence and trotted off to a suprise birthday party after that. we really have felt so loved and welcome and we have yet to buy any food other than cereal because our fridge has been stocked due to the kindness of others.

(thank you)

today is my first day at cross point and it has been a blast!

the break has allowed my brain some down time so once i am computered and interwebbed up, i can’t wait to get back into the swing of things. i also found out that they are shipping me back the edited manuscript of mad church disease this week…so i am pumped to see what they have done to make my words make sense.

in the mean time, i feel like this blog should serve a purpose…so, let’s all pray for each other, alright?

list your requests below and we shall pray!

…i’d like to say i don’t have internet.

somehow we have a little dot of wifi showing up. we were supposed to have ours hooked up today, but they somehow lost our reservation. so until thursday, it will be quiet (although we might go to the library and use the computers there…or lug our iMac to a hotspot).

so, we moved in quickly (under an hour or so once we got going and a whole group of people showed up!) and am totally digging the new place.

more thursday…or sooner if we can.

much love!

alrighty…so, by the time you are reading this, we are hopefully on the road to nashville. we’ll be staying the night in memphis (in a fancy-schmancy hotel because afterall, it is our 5th anniversary) so, yeah. there you have it.

if you could pray for our safety as we travel, and for everything to just go smoothly (we had a few hiccups with the moving truck company) that would be great!

see y’all later!

chris and i just finished packing. not counting furniture or other random things (which, don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of)…we only have 38 boxes of stuff to move!

that is it! i think the movers are going to laugh at us.

i remember after our second year of marriage we filled up a 24′ truck and packed our cars to the brim as we moved out of a 1400 square foot townhome. we had SOOO much stuff. and that was after we threw and gave a lot of it away.

now, i hate to brag, but 38 medium sized boxes? including our clothes, food, appliances…everything?

that is not too shabby.

the movers come tomorrow at 10 am, but we don’t leave until friday at 10 am. we’ll spend the day cleaning and…who knows? no TV, computer…nothing. fun times! i probably won’t be back online until saturday…thanks for being patient in my absence!

oklahoma city, thanks. it’s been a fun six months.

nashville, here we come!

what was your worst moving nightmare?

so…it has been a week without internet on my phone. and seriously, it hasn’t buzzed in over two days. i think i am past the original withdrawal/pity-party stage of “nobody loves me” because evidently my self-worth was tied up in how many times my phone pinged me a day…

we also don’t have internet at home. or laptops at the moment. and i really don’t feel like hauling our iMac down to our nearest wifi provider…

fortunately, someone named “linksys” occasionally pops up in our airport and we can get online. but it’s not always there…so i can’t guarantee how much i’ll be online this week…

our internet guy will be coming out at the same time we are moving in on saturday (which, if you live in nashville and want to help, email me — anne @ flowerdust . net) so hopefully that will bring some consistency back to my online social interaction.

back to packing…and to get valium for our cats. seriously. that’s what they drug your cats with for road trips. anyone ever done that?

this is our last week in oklahoma city. two of our closest friends each wanted to celebrate the future with us one last time before we escape to nashville.

last wednesday, our friend aaron called chris and asked him if he, and his wife lorren, could take us somewhere.

where?

somewhere.

about thirty minutes later they were at our house, and thirty more minutes later we were at a casino in the middle of nowhere, oklahoma.

aaron slapped a twenty-dollar bill in our hands and told us to go to town. lorren and i lost our money in the penny slots after about 15 minutes. chris, on the other hand, managed to take his last dollar and win $60, only to lose it all playing a slot machine called the lusty devil.

those lusty devils will win every time.

it was certainly the most random farewell we have ever experienced…yet even though the cigarette smoke that permeated our clothes is now gone, our casino trip is something we’ll remember forever.

==

last night, we went over to blake and ally’s house. we’ve only known them a couple of months but every time we hang out, it’s well past 1 am when we leave.

after dinner, we got snow cones, checked out the house they’re moving into, and headed back to their home where we began discussing important theological issues such as communal living and scary times in tijuana. as chris and i spoke of our accidental trip into the slums of mexico, a loud bang echoed in the living room and glass shattered above the couch where blake and ally sat.

blake threw ally on the ground, somehow i manged to fly about 25 feet and assume the army-crawl position in the kitchen whereas my husband looked ready to fly through the window and kick the crap out of whoever just shot/threw a bomb/threw a rock through the window.

as ally and i looked at each other, trying not to let the fear-induced swear words wake their four children up, blake and chris approached the front door.

i suddenly remembered our life insurance policy ended thursday and got a little worried.

blake’s brother along with his children had decided to TP blake and ally’s yard, and for fun, he also pounded loudly on the window causing it to break.

at least nobody died.

but our car was TP’ed.

and after we recovered, continued our conversations about transgendered mexican prostitutes and (unrelated) marketing and target audiences, blake prayed over us and we drove home.

this is life.
the way it should be.
unscripted.
scary.
random.
fun.
memorable.

i feel completely unworthy of these friendships, yet completely grateful.