Frustration.

College is kinda stressful. What's even more stressful is filling out dumb paperwork to get me there.

Right now I'm trying to fill out my FAFSA, something I should have done already, so I can pay for school. It's really irritating me. This is why I put it off.

First off, The Fafsa website is not chrome-compatable, so I must use Internet Explorer. My internet explorer decides to malfunction every 10 seconds, no joke. So it resets, I have to reopen it. At the moment it's deciding to not even load the start up page before crashing. This is why I switched to the Chrome browser. It honestly is putting me in a really crappy mood. That's why I'm here, taking a break from the frustrations.

Second off, while I was able to work on it (the browser wasn't crashing at the start) I got to the point where I had to check my bank account to put a number on it. Yesterday my bank had me reset my password and the new one I made isn't working. I tried resetting it but the temporary password isn't working either. I've tried it twice. Still not working. ugh.

But it's also got me thinking. I'm immensely blessed with aid for school. With parents who don't make much money, and with not much myself, I get lots of help from scholarships, grants, and federal aid. I shouldn't be complaining over a few frustrating snags for all I get out of it. I'm being a real poopy pants. (Steph, if you read this, realize I just giggled to myself from our lovely day at work yesterday hahahaha)

For all that God blesses me financialy to pay my way through school, the least I can do is fill out some paperwork. So instead of complaining, I am going to stop here, take a moment and give a "thank you, Jesus" for all God's provision. I pray I change my attitude to one of greatfulness. Anger and frustration benefit me none. May I have the patience and peace of Jesus through the most frustrating times. Amen

Inspired

And so, I blog again.

Having taken quite the break, I have come to the conclusion that I must write, for I have been inspired by none other than a marvelous encounter with thousands of magical luminary insects. That's right. Fireflies. Or lightning insects if you want a mouthful (the words, not a mouthful of bugs, that would be gross).

Side note-Sorry I seem to blog-vomit. I tend to take too long in between so I have a a novel when I actually get around to writing. I'll try to avoid that from now on.

This weekend I paid a long-due trip to my great-grandma Stitch's house in SW Wisconsin. The tiny little town of Stitzer. The trip was.....I don't quite know the right word. Instead, I shall explain.

This summer, not only am unleashing my inner Van Gogh and Picaso with my amazing white-on-white painting skills in the apartments on campus, I have also had the opportunity to be a Physics teacher's assistant for the Upward Bound program here at Scholastica. High school students come from all over to take different classes for a month and I got to hang with them in Physics lab 2 hours a day. Pretty legit, I know.

Anyways, the reason for me explaining this is that Thursday night was my last day as a TA and I had a "banquet" that night. They called it a banquet the whole time until the actual night. It wasn't a banquet, there was no food. As I was leaving to attend this shindig, and with all intentions to depart for my grandmother's house in Eau Claire Wisconsin after said banquet, my plans had been thwarted only a half an hour beforehand.

In order to easy my lazy bones, I moved my car from the parking lot (which is right in front of my apartment) to right in front (as in right next to the front door) of Maple, my summer abode, to carry down my baggage to leave promptly after the UB (Upward Bound) par-tay. I oh so smoothly place Eunice (my lovely car) in park,shut her off, carried down my belongings, and came back to find my car wouldn't start. Nothing. Not even an frail attempt was made by my starter.

Great. This would happen as I'm planning upon leaving swiftly afterwards. I called my dad and he called a friend, Paul. Dad had me try some crap to get it to start, and after that had been, foreseeably so, unsuccessful, my dad said Paul would come look at it when I was done with my non-banquet, and if necessary, put a new started in it. I estimated I could be done at 7:30. I left at 8:30 before it had ended. I called Paul and he came over.

Paul is a car genius.

*Quick side note: I ALWAYS spell "genius" as "genious". Out of those two choices, I must be the latter....*


Back to my story. Living only five minutes away, Paul comes over to CSS in his big truck in case we need to tow. He walks on over with his handy-dandy-fix-it-man tool box, whips out a wrench, does some magical tiddley-winking and wha-la. Eunice fires up her engine.

Okay, I took a break from writing, as I was ridiculously tired. So as of now I've slept, worked and now it's crazy hot and I'm sweating hard core....from typing.....anyways....

So Paul fixed up Eunice, and I was leaving Duluth by 1:00 in the afternoon on Friday instead of Thursday night. After getting a wee bit lost, I eventually made it to my grandma's in Eau Claire, and we made the rest of the journey together in her sweet Chevy Silverado, listening to oldies the whole way. This one I found particularly funny :) Yes, click it and listen.

We made it down around 8:30 and visited for a bit but then we drove over to our motel in Mineral Point, WI, about a half hour drive from Grandma Stitch's. Now Mineral Point is a pretty cool little town. Back in it's hey-day Mineral Point was bigger than Milwalkee and Chicago combined. The whole of Iowa Country, WI didn't have glaciers, so the surface of the land was rich with minerals. Prospectors and miners came and settled, it was actually the first mineral "rush" in the United States. The news reached England even, and Cornish settlers came and set up their homes as well.
The town is filled with some pretty awesome houses and some really cool old buildings!! I'd like to go back one day and spend more time there!

But one of the coolest things was the drive to Mineral Point that night. Over the many (and I mean maannnyyyy) corn fields down there, there were thousands of fireflies! It was amazingly beautiful, this blog can not do it justice. I hope you get to see something like it one day! Seeing this site did 3 things for me.

1. I was yet again amazed by God's beauty and creativity. The thought that He would give us such a treat puts a huge grin on my face.What was He thinking when he made the lightning bug?? "Hmmmmm lets see here....lets give them another bug.....I know we already have a bagillion, but what the heck, why not one more....yeah! One that comes out at night! Only this time, lets make it interesting..... Let's make it's butt glow!" I sure get a kick out of Him :)

2. I was extremely thankful for His Provision. I've had car problems before, like Lee (my older brother) running my first car into a tree on thanksgiving morning and I got a new( to me) car that seems even better in a couple days. This time He provided a trustworthy friend close enough and around to help me out so I could still get to see my family (that I never really get to see). Thank you so much, Lord. May I trust more in your provision (as you've shown it to me soooooooooooooooooooooo much all my life!)

3. It inspired me to write in my blog again.

Saturday we spent time with family and had us a wienie-roast! Good food and good company. can't ask for more.

Sunday we visited some more and took off for home as I had to get back to work on Monday morning. Sunday was miserably hot and humid haha. Being a northern Minnesotan, where we are used to the below zero range most of the year, 100 and super high humidity was definitely not my definition of a pleasant temperature. Best of all, the AC in the van doesn't work haha. We had the windows open and the sweat drippin.

We drove back up through La Crosse, WI after driving along the Mississippi river. Wow was that beautiful. Actually, all of southwest Wisconsin is gorgeous. I'm talking beautiful hills and valleys, amazing trees, cute little old farms and all that jazz. Really beautiful. (Not that Northern MN isn't beautiful, mind you, it's just a different beautiful :) )If you get the chance, take a nice drive down there on a hot summer day in a convertible :D (although not as hot as it was!!!)

We stopped at Goose Island Campground, where two sets of my great aunts and uncles were camping to see them for a bit. While we were there, my sister and I walked over to the edge of the Mississippi to stick our feet in and maybe cool off a bit. Well it was super muddy haha, but there was a treat as well! There were HUNDREDS of frogs!!!! They all would jump into the water when we walked by, and it was fun trying to catch a few. :)

I returned from my grand trip around 8:30 and was convinced by my roommate, Selam, to go see the last Half of Harry Potter. If you haven't seen it yet, and want to but don't want to know my opinion, look away...don't read this next part.....are you still looking???? Stop it....okay, here it is.

I was pretty disappointed. This was their final chance to live up to the book, and they fell flat on their face. That could have been the most epic ending in a movie since The Two Tower in The Lord of the Rings series. You missed your shot.

All in all, cars sometimes break, I'm emmensely blessed with God's provision, Family is good, God is great, and Harry Potter....well I was expecting it to be bad anyways.

I wish you pleasant dreams, happy days, a joyful heart, and God's love. :)