November Sweeps

I am a horrible blogger. I know that I haven't shown my "face" around here for a ridiculously long time, but it's not from lack of things to write about. Rather, I feel like in some ways I have more to write about now than I ever did before, but it's hard to fit it all into a cohesive, non-gushy post.

So I now present to you a summary of my life in the past month or so:

Shenanigans
Let me start by saying that we have fun. There really is never a dull moment with this group that I'm in. This fall that has been particularly true with the prank war that we've been in. It all started back in August when I may have dumped some water on Randy after he made fun of me. Who can say for sure how these things start, really. Since then, the girls may have put some Icy Hot on the guys' toilet seats, and maybe some Ambesol on their toothbrushes. I don't know these things for sure, but this is what I hear. Their mouths went numb- that's all I know. Matt and Naldo stole some crap out of Aleeta's car, and then Aleeta and I may have ambushed Naldo with some water guns.

And then the beeping began. For several weeks, every five minutes or so, we heard an annoying beep somewhere in the living room. Ten seconds later, we heard it downstairs. We thought it was something with the fire alarm, or some electronic equipment... we just didn't know what. We asked the guys for their help, and they weren't all too helpful. Hmmm. Wonder why that was. Finally, after we'd had enough, Beth and Aleeta turned off all of the power in the house... and the beeping continued. They crawled all over the living room until they found a little contraption under the speaker stand with the word ANNOY on it. Beth found the second one behind the clock down here. Oh, those tricky, tricky boys.

THEN we hosted Monday Night Dinner a couple of weeks back. By 7:30 or so everyone trickled out of the house and left me, Beth and Morgan. We decided to watch some TV. Except we couldn't because our remotes were missing. We all just looked at each other and said "oh no..." We looked everywhere in the house, and they were nowhere to be found. Charlotte and Aleeta arrived home, and decided we were not going to stand for this. So Char, Aleeta and I piled into Morgan's car and drove over to Naldo & Company's house. He was pretty surprised to see us, that's for sure. When he refused to disclose the location of our remotes (other than sending us to Matthew for answers), we started taking stuff and ran. Yep, we took shoes, coats, the lyrics Naldo was writing right then and there. When he argued that he needed the papers we grabbed, we told him he could have it all back when we got the remotes. And then we drove away. Eventually, we made Matt come back and return the stolen remotes, and then we made him return all of the crap to Naldo's.

This little war has been dormant for several weeks now, but I'm writing about it as a little reminder to the guys that we have not forgotten. We have not forgotten that you pranked out of turn (not cool), and retaliation will come when you least expect it.

The Doll
To be fair, the boys aren't the only ones we've picked on. You see, we live with a very scary doll named Shirley Temple. This doll used to be Beth's grandmother's, and resides next to our fireplace. Charlotte and I and Melissa Whitney have long thought the doll to be demon possessed. So when Beth was out of town a few weekends ago, we decided to have a little fun with her. We took the doll to church, and then to life group, and had every member of our group pose with the doll and make some kind of creepy face. We then asked everyone to change their profile pictures on Facebook and change their status (statuses? statti?) to something like "Nicole wants to know if Beth can come out and play..." The best part is that I know Beth's FB password, and I changed her page as well. Boy, was she freaked out when she went on Facebook that next Monday and saw pictures like this:

Charlotte's Prophecy, Part 2
If you remember in my last post, I mentioned that Charlotte predicted my relationship with Matthew long before either of us were even interested. What I didn't tell you in that story is that a similar prophecy was made alongside the one about Matt, and this one involved Beth and a certain fellow named Randy. Beth, Charlotte and I were driving to Minnesota last summer (2007) to Jonelle and Tim's wedding and, completely out of the blue, Charlotte says, "Where am I going to live when Nicole marries Matt and Beth marries Randy?" Beth and I both let out a simulatneous "What? You're crazy! I don't think so" and went on to explain to poor, confused Charlotte that neither of us were interested in these guys and that she was sorely mistaken on both accounts.

Huh. Take a look at this:

As of last Thursday night, it's official. None of us are engaged yet or anything like that, but I just had to tell the story. Charlotte knows what she's talking about.

The Boyfriend
Meanwhile, I still do like that Matthew guy. I don't really want to gush too much on here, though, so I'll keep this brief. Things have been good. For Halloween we went as Mr. Clean and a 1950's housewife. I met his parents last weekend, and that went well. And now we're gearing up for the fun of the holidays. He's joining my family at Uncle Bruce's next week. It should be good. I'll spare you all the mushiness and leave it at that. Life is sweet these days.

My Life in Omaha, Season 5
This new season in all of our lives continues to bless me. At the beginng of fall I really felt like change was in the air. I've been watching a few TV shows on DVD these past few years, whole seasons at a time, and have noticed how each season just has a slightly different feel than the one before. The principal characters are the same, but there might be some new ones, some new relationships, some new settings and situations, that sort of thing. So at the start of fall, I felt like it really was a new season (in the TV sense, not just in the autumn sense) for our group. Tom and Jenn's wedding in July had been the last season's finale, but here we all were in the premiere. Little things were changing- for example, our life group started to meet on Sunday afternoons instead of Wednesday nights. It was such a small thing, but it made everything just feel different to me. And then the big stuff started happening- Jenn told me she was pregnant (didn't see that one coming!), Beth let out the secret that she was interested in Randy, and my frustration over Matt was reaching a breaking point.

I had emailed this stuff about sensing change in the air to Ann back around late August/early September. Later in the month, after Matt had asked me to date, she just wrote to me and said, "If this is a new season, November sweeps came early this year."

And so life keeps moving along. It's not all mushy love stories, either. There have been challenges and struggles and that sort of thing but I'm focusing, with great joy, on walking this walk one day at a time. I read a great verse last week that I'm really trying to own in my life: "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." (Hebrews 11:6) I've been thinking about this verse a lot, about how I claim to have faith in the Big Story, but on a daily basis my faith can be so lacking. If I don't have faith in the little things each day, what good is my faith in the big things? If I'm going to claim faith in God, it needs to be in a God who holds each day in the palm of His hands.

And these days I am in are so, so sweet...