My dream church

I want to go to church with the people who have tattoos. I want to go to church with people who have gauged ears, nose rings, lip rings, and wear chains. I want to go to a church with ex-cons, current cons, and future cons.

I want to go to church with people who fake tan, get their nails done, and color the crap out of their hair. I want to go to church with bikers and those immersed in the drug world. I want to go to church with Catholics, baptists, presbyterian, lutherans, mormons, ex wiccans, wiccans, buddhists, hindus, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (in laymans terms Pastafarians), agnostics, atheists, and those that just needed somewhere warm to sit for an hour.

I want to go to a church with Soccer moms, stay at home dads, work-a-holics, alcoholics, drug addicts and prostitutes. I want to go to church with families that have a mom, dad, 2 and a half kids and a dog. I want to go to church with single moms, single dads, baby mommas, and baby daddys.

I want to go to a church where people struggle. Where everyone knows that everyone struggles. I want to go to a church that people say Hi to new people who come through the door and then get their life story. I want to go to church with Republicans, Democrats, Green Party, Torys, people who don't care about politics, and people who care waaaaayyy to much.

I want to go to a church where people don't leave after sermon, they ask how people are doing and get support for their own problems. I want to go to church with anorexics, bulemics, over eaters, under eaters, health nuts, gym nazis, vegetarians, carnivores, omnivores, vegans, and gluten frees.

I want to go to church with homosexuals, bi-sexuals, asexuals, sex addicts, transgendered, hermaphrodites, and those that just don't know who or what they are. I want to go to church with people in their 20s who want to change the world. Those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s who are changing the world. Those in the 60s+ who have stories and lessons to be shared about how they did change the world.

I want to go to a church with people filled with joy, despair, happiness, generosity, charity, grace, anger, peace, frustration, hurt, sarcasm, hate, hope, and maybe someone with all of those at once. I want to go to church with people who are rich, poor, just making do, on food stamps, work 3 jobs to pay rent, and those that are living off inheritance.

My dream church has pastors that share their real life struggles. Tells the hard truth about life, love, marriage, job hunting, money, and being a christian and what it means  - all without using vague euphemisms.

I want a church that scares the world, gives hope to the world, and comforts the world.

I want to worship next to the broken and sing praises with the redeemed.

I want to go to church with me.

My dream church leaves all the doors wide open. Does not support causes but supports people. Stands in the face of adversity, not with demonstrations but with compassion. But most of all my church LOVES UNCONDITIONALLY.

The Beauty of the Barrenness

This week I started work that is in the middle of no where California. It is smaller than my grandparents' town of Elberton, GA. There is a walmart, a couple of chain fast food stores, and manufacturing businesses. It is also in the Desert in the San Jacinto Mountain region.

As an east coaster I am a firm believer of green landscapes and the four seasons. This place has one season - Summer. It is also as brown as can be. Unless you are in a neighborhood where they water their lawns every 2 hours to keep the grass alive. To be honest the grass looks and feels out of place. It feels spongy and when the rest of the environment is about the strongest of the scraggily trees and bushes the nicely trimmed deep green lawns seem out of place. There is a wildness about the scenery that makes me dream of gold rushes, cowboys, indians, and a fight for survival.

The neighborhoods here all have a fence around them. On one side of the fence is lush green and perfectly tended. The other is rough, untamed, bursting with sienna, coppers, and brown colors. I can not understaning living in full view of the untamed desert west and trying to force green into it.  I love driving the 30 minutes from Temecula (the forgotten younger brother of Napa) and it's tamed suburban feel to the openess of Hemet, CA. The mountains are begging to be hiked.

Anyone want to come visit me? Let's go exploring. I'll be Lewis, you be Clark.

Anticipation

I go alot of places and do a lot of things. I travel almost constantly and I have pushed myself to where I can do activities by myself. My life is very very full and yet, I am waiting. Not waiting patiently. O good grief no. I am waiting like a little kid the night before christmas. I am all wound up. The thing is... I really don't know what I am waiting for. I am waiting eagerly.  I just know that something is coming and I can't wait to experience it.

Maybe I just enjoy life

One down - 3 to go!

I JUST PAID OFF ONE OF MY STUDENT LOANS!!!

Every paycheck I have gotten for the past three years has had $50 taken out of it and used in an Employee Stock Purchasing Plan (or an ESPP). Once I started the Total Money Makeover (TMMO), I stopped contributing to that plan and decided to sell what stock I could (you have to hold it for 60ish days in my company before you can sell stock that you purchased) and use that to pay some of my student debt. I was planning on doing that in April 2013 anyway because I would have had enough in the account to pay of my largest student loan.

I guess I should explain something about why I was putting the money into an ESPP instead of paying directly against the principal. A) AES SUCKS... that is American Education Services. If you are thinking about getting a loan through them... just don't. When I first graduated college and was working at Applebees I wanted to pay down the principal of my loan therefore reducing the time it would take for me to pay off the loan AND reduce the amount of interest (aka extra money) that I would be paying them over the life of the loans. This is was a LOOONG  drawn out conversation with them with people who didn't understand loans or lending. One lady even said that I couldn't pay against the principal. Ummmmm no. It's law that I can and it would be stupid to say that I can't anyway. You are getting your money back FASTER!! Finally after multiple phone calls over a two month period I gave up and decided just to save it up and pay a loan all at once.

Worst company ever!!! Except for comcast

Which brings me to B) I get 15% extra from my company to buy my company's stock. So say I want to put in $100 to buy some stock. Technically they give me a discount and make the stock worth 15% less but in reality I am still wanting to buy $100 of my stock so they throw an extra $15 on there and I end up owning $115 worth of TE stock. So the extra 15% is greater than my interest rate on the loans but in the end it probably all evens out because of stock market fluctuations.

Under the TMMO, it is suggested that you pay off the smallest loans first that way you see results faster. Then you take the amount you were putting towards that loan (both the minimum and whatever else you were paying) and put it towards the next biggest loan. Then when that loan is paid off you put whatever you were paying to the two smallest loans to the next smallest and so on and so forth.

Anyway I sold my ESPP shares and got back a HUGE check (at least, huge by my standards). I paid of the second smallest student loan because it had the higher interest rate. And put almost a third of the check into savings to go towards paying off the smallest loan. I am hoping that with the money I have already saved up, the portion of the ESPP I have saved, along with future savings I will be able to pay off the second smallest loan in about 3 months :D. And that isn't even considering the money I save on groceries and gas when I am on audit. :D

ONE DOWN THREE MORE LEFT TO GO!!!!

Neverland

My best friend and I are watching Hook on a very relaxing Sunday afternoon (during which I should be studying... only 10 more minutes I promise). When I was growing up my sister LOVED Peter Pan and I think that of all of us Baker kids she was the one who understood the beauty behind Neverland. The ability to never grow up.

I never wanted to be Peter Pan. Katie did. She loved the idea of flying and having adventures. Swimming with mermaids and fighting Pirates. I was content with being a lost boy or, even better, Tiger Lily (never Wendy or Tink, Wendy seemed too whiney and Tink was a bit of a b-*-t-c-h). Now as I watch Hook I see even more clearly how anxious I am to grow up.

My family has an unusual ability to remain young. Not young physically but in the heart. What comes easily to my family, I sometimes need to work harder at. Ever since I have been young I could not WAIT to grow up.  I wanted to go to high school and when I was in high school I couldn't wait until College and in College I dreamed of settling down with the right guy and having a couple of kids.

In watching Hook I have the desire to fly to the second star to the right, continue on til morning, and see what adventures I could have. I think that my desire to remain young has transferred itself. Since I can't go to Neverland, I go to Barcelona, London, and Argentina. But I do grow up, or at least old. Hopefully I can embrace my dad's motto. No, not "Ask for forgiveness not for permission" but "They can make me grow old, but they can't make me grow up".

Who wants to go play kick the can?

"To live... to live is an awfully big great adventure"

What do you do with leftover memories?

I am a bit of a memory hoarder. No, it’s true! My actual memory sort of epically sucks and usually if I have a picture or a memento from something that happened I can remember it better. My roommates, Caitlin and Dana, were laughing at a shared memory that, apparently, I should have been able to laugh with as well because I was there. I asked if there were any Facebook pictures of the get together. Caitlin said there wasn’t. My quick reply was “No Picture, No Memory”.

Every year throughout college and high school I had a box for each of the 4 years I went to Villa and PSU. In these boxes I would put things that I wanted to keep to remember that moment. This made it really easy for my Mom, Katie, Kristen, and John to put together my scrapbook when I graduated from High school because I had all these pictures and memories in boxes under my bed.

Every so often I go through the boxes. Sometimes I remember what the memento stood for, other times I don’t. Sometimes it’s easy to understand – like the program from the high school plays I was in. And sometimes I have no clue what is associated with – like the stuffed Woodstock bird from Peanuts. I have no clue what memory is associated with him (usually meaning I have lost that memory for all time). When this happens I just throw out the item (or in the case of Woodstock give it away to the Salvation Army) and when I can – I consolidate those boxes.

Facebook makes it easier for me to remember things. Everyone has pictures from everything and mostly it is in chronological order.

But what do you do about the things that you don’t know if you want to keep?

I use to have a box of stuff from Jason, my freshman year boyfriend. It had a weird smelling candle, a hedgehog stuff toy thing, and some letters/birthday cards he had written me or conversations we had over AIM. After sophomore year that box found its way under my bed at home and didn’t resurface until I moved out to Manayunk for the first time where it was placed at the top of my closet shelf with my other memory boxes. I didn’t actually go through it until I was moving out of my apartment in Harrisburg, a year and a half after its rediscovery. Going through the box brought back some great memories but also some old pain. I threw out most of the stuff and kept a few things like the candle. (You never know when the power is going to go out).

I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know now, what to keep and throw away from these relationship boxes (good grief it sounds like I am back in 4^th grade when I had box of stuff that reminded me of my crush). I just made an educated guess as to what I would want and what I wouldn’t. But to be honest, this is the first time I have thought about that box since I threw it out. Does it mean that I shouldn’t have kept anything from it? I can’t even tell you where some of the things I kept are. Maybe in the attic with all the books and stuff I kept from College or maybe in the college memory box in my closet.

Now I am in the problem of going through the “box” from my last relationship. Work is switching out my old Dell and giving me a new Lenovo. On my work computer is some personal folders that I need to move to my computer at home. One of these files is of my last relationship. A poem, photos, and saved text messages. It's been long enough that we are both over the relationship and remained good friends but honestly I don’t know what to do with the folder. What do I keep? What do I put in the recycle bin? How do you decide which memories to keep and which to let go of?

What are your thoughts? Did you have a “box” of old relationships? Did you keep it or throw it away?