f is for fire.

on friday, we turned the clocks ahead in the office, convinced everyone that their phones were wrong, and left an hour early for the landing where the water tasted much better than the beer.

saturday: give life, give blood. on the way, i saw some speeding jerk hit a baby deer running across the road. i called the missouri conservation department but they couldn't really understand me-i was crying too much.

saturday night: my parents started arguing in front of me and now they won't stop. i don't know how to tell them that it sucks.

on sunday, i laid out too long, burnt a little, pretended to be very girly, and then dropped the girls for the boys. we built six- and eight-pipe sets for fireworks, golfed on the wii, and made awful strawberry milkshakes. top that, fake-finger-nail-girly-movie-sangria-shoppers.

by the way,
i dropped a pint without a blink.
and the baby deer was adorable, tiny, and all in one piece-just terrified after its near-death experience.

AND I AM GOING TO DALLAS FOR THE 4TH OF JULY!
i'm sorry we're all growing up.

k.

well, so much for the internship. katie put in her resignation and they think they are going to hire me for the job. i suggested they just pay me for time well spent and then i go back to college.

we played a game the other night over her beer, his iced tea, and my diet coke. favorite recall:

"everything's gotten taken from me: my job, my car, my kids, my house...they ain't gonna take away my fishin. no they ain't."
"ma'am, you don't have a place to sleep..."
"they ain't goin' take away my fishin"
click.

i went running/jogging/walking this morning on my butchered foot. there was a dead mouse on the road. rerun.

L.

I am sitting at my desk at work, with lightning flashing outside. I know that I don't often appreciate clouds and rain but today it just seems ideal. This is not to say that I am particularly drowsy or moody, liking the clouds for their dreariness, but its a small break in the heat and the rain is making a nice, consistent sound.

I have a few times doubted my career plans due to this job. I have some experience in the social service area but never thought it would be so capturing like it has been...not to mention that working for the homeless and destitute doesn't exactly bring about great income or even pay raises. But what do you do when the shoe fits so well, even if you don't always like the way it looks?

The proverbial shoe just got pissed on by the homeless man's dog.

While there are people that drive you near insanity, there are others that are putting their lives back together, working their asses off for their children, and setting up precautionary measures so what happened before will not happen again. Somewhere in that, you find that you helped.

You are humbled continually by the way they walk to work, leaving an hour earlier than they are scheduled to be in, not because of rush hour, but because it takes all that time to walk. They ask for help, forgetting their pride, recognizing that if they don't ask, they may never find it. And they encourage you, telling story after story of their life in pieces, letting you know, that with the right steps, those pieces can shape into wholeness again.

I don't mean to be sentimental but there is a lot of brokenness in this part of the world. The more I learn about it, the more it hurts...and the more I want to help.

Thanks, Z.