Category Archives: Life in Big Sky Country

Positive Posting

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I could write about my thoughts on the election and who to vote for.Â? (BTW, those voting for McCain: your voting day is actually November 5th!)Â? However, I’m not in the mood to be pissy.Â? I could write about how offended I am at the crap Focus on the Family put out (also known as “The Letter from 2012”).Â? That also goes under the politics category so I’ll skip it.Â? The sea monkey is zapping all the energy from me and it’s taking more energy than I have to be righteously indignant.

So… here’s a cute story:

The newspaper in Cut Bank asked some kids what they wanted to be for Halloween.Â? The best response (in my humble opinion):

Freddy COUGAR

Somehow, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch the Nightmare on Elm Street movies again (well… even for the first time) with a straight face!

What’s Up These Days

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[+] Day of Blogs went well. I raised $105 which isn’t bad considering that I really did no publicity for myself this year. The event itself raised about $12.5K I think — I need to go through and do the final tally tomorrow. I’m looking forward to having Blogathon back next year and having Cat and Sheana and Heather dealing with the minute details of running things though!

[+] I’m off crutches (as of Saturdayish) and working on healing the foot and ankle. The foot is better and the pretty colors are gone. The ankle, on the other hand, was rotating and popping in its socket on Thursday so I’m in an aircast now.

[+] I got to go hang out with the Incarnation peeps on the 20th as Jon was at Boy Scout camp and I didn’t really want to be at church alone. It was nice to go down and just be able to worship as Jen and not as Pastor Jon’s wife.Â? It was also quite spiritually feeding to do liturgy that I’m at home with doing and which gives me comfort and lets me be the somewhat high-church person I am.Â? After church, I hit up the evil store, 2-J’s, and then went home.

[+] I finished up the latest Philip Yancey book which is on prayer and I really recommend it.Â? It made me think in a good way and it also subtly changed how I think of prayer, especially in a healing context.Â? I know that the way I’m praying for people now is different and I’m hoping that I continue to learn more in that direction.

Life With Horrendous Pain

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So we’re getting this stuff in Big Sky Country called r-a-i-n and it’s coming in the form of multiple fast-moving thunderstorms — the kind that are triggered by rapid pressure changes. This means… the lovely wonderful rain that we’re getting is triggering really bad migraines for me which are hitting me in the face and head. The Imitrex and Trimitex (Imitrex with Aleve) will moderate out the migraine so that I don’t have the nausea and dizziness but I still have some pretty acute pain. Add in the lovely jaw pain from the TMJ which is probably also triggered by the weather and you have a pretty potent combination of pain.

Yesterday, I managed to spell the pain a bit. Today was to the point where I was either going to take the pain or I was going to start screaming because it was so awful and that was 7 hours of my 8 hour shift. The last 45 minutes of my shift were spent with me in tears repeating Philippians 4:13 to myself to get myself through. I was crabby and I seriously had to remove myself from my work area a few times to avoid screaming at co-workers.

So why don’t I just go home? Because it’s not like that’s going to do anything for me either. THERE. IS. NOTHING. I. CAN. DO. FOR. THE. PAIN. Seriously. I accidentally took twice the safe dose of Aleve today between the two tablets I took at 10 am for my jaw and the Trimitex I took around 1 for a migraine that came on. I can’t do anything at home that I can’t do at work and at least at work, I get paid to be there.

I have a dentist appointment tomorrow at 8 am (!!!!). Please pray that they can do something for me to at least kill the jaw pain so I only have one part of my head exploding instead of two.

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I Really Should Update More…

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I haven’t updated because I’ve been getting home late from work, exhausted, and needing to zone out. Most of what’s been on my mind lately is work stuff and as I really don’t want to be dooced, my work life is separate from this blog.

So… here’s the scoop on my activities lately.

[+] After having a craptastic week culminating in my glasses breaking that Friday (and having to be duct-taped together so I could drive home from work), I chose to spend last weekend in Great Falls getting my glasses repaired (and replaced thanks to my wonderful in-laws) and hiding from whoever seems to be putting the pins in my voodoo doll of life. It was great to get AWAY from the Hi-Line for a few days and I’m thankful to have family down there with whom I could stay.

[+] I attended worship at Church of the Incarnation last Sunday and enjoyed having a worship service where I could be anonymous and also not be intimately knowledgeable about what was going on. I am truly Episcopal/Anglican at heart and while they used some different musical settings than I remember from my church in San Jose, it was still really wonderful and familiar worship. Kudos also to Rev. Tim who preached one of the better sermons I’ve heard in an Episcopal church and managed to take the week’s passage in a different direction than I’ve heard before with that particular text. The church has a healing/intercessory prayer time at the end of the service and knowing how much I needed it, I went up and participated… and managed NOT to cry. (People laying on hands and praying for me usually reduces me to tears — it’s a testimony to the power of prayer and of what the Spirit is doing in me but it can also be kind of embarrassing.)Â? I kind of wish I could head down there more often because it was such a great experience in terms of worship for me.

[+] I attended my first barrel race last Sunday afternoon.Â? Being a sissified city girl, I’d never seen it and I managed to not look like a complete idiot to those who are knowledgeable about it by looking it up on Wikipedia and also asking some of my Montana relatives about it.Â? So why did I go?Â? Well… one of my co-workers is a barrel racer and I asked if I could come watch.Â? I actually enjoyed myself and it looks incredibly fun though it’s not something I’d ever do.

[+] I discovered a new podcast while trying to find something more wholesome to listen to at work than Lime n’ Violet.Â? (I have no problem with the divas but it’s hard to explain to the people around me that I’m snickering at comments about German man-shaving.)Â? It’s called “Catholic in a Small Town” and it’s about the lives of a Catholic couple in a small town (duh!) in Georgia and how they’re raising their kids, viewing their faith, interacting with media (especially movies).Â? I highly recommend it and I’d link to it if I could find a website of theirs that worked!Â? (Ahem Mac and Katherine…)

[+] On the subject of Catholic things, people who are Catholic/know Catholics/want to be Catholic need to listen to last week’s episode of Speaking of Faith.Â? Seriously, it was brilliant.

[+] Last Saturday, I decided to scout out where Church of the Incarnation was (mostly so I’d know how to get there and where to find parking) and when I saw the neighborhood, I decided to take a walk down the street to the other interesting looking church… which turned out to be St. Ann’s Cathedral.Â? I went in, blessed myself, and knelt in one of the pews to pray the daily prayers I usually say in the car on the way to work as well as some special ones for a co-worker facing surgery.Â? There were others in there praying and I thought this was pretty cool.Â? After I finished and had sat for awhile, I decided to look around (mostly to see if there were any candles that one could light) and saw that people were going into a back room and kneeling in front of a screen.Â? Oh… yeah… Saturday afternoon is when people go for Confession (OK… technically called “Reconciliation” now) so I understood then why the church was so full.Â? As it would probably take a few hours for the priest to hear my confession (mostly because it’s been like 9 years since my last one in the Catholic Church), I decided to leave the nice worshippers to their shriving.