The List

My job is amazing. I am absolutely in love with teaching my block of social studies and language arts. When I wake up in the mornings, I almost hop out of bed and sprint to the shower in order to share something new with my students that day. I hate missing school. Oh, it just rips my heart out.

I had to take the afternoon off of work today, and it was tumultuous to my routine. However, I got to have dinner with my dear friend Amy. She surprised me and bought my lunch! It's little gifts like that that really send my heart into deep appreciation for great friends. Then I was talking to my sister, and I found out she was going to be at my parents' house for dinner. Needless to say I spent the entire afternoon losing in baseball to my nephew and taking advice from my 4 year old niece.

We read books together, and I discovered that I have more voices inside my little body than I even knew: cajun dialect, Cinderella, an evil stepmom, mice, and the list goes on. I do believe, however, I was more impressed with the impersonations than the two little rugrats were. After a few airplane rides, and inevitably the same amount of airplane crashes, they had to head back up the hill to get ready for preschool in the morning. Man, I miss them already.

When they left, the three of us got to just sit and breathe momentarily. Once again we were sitting on Mom and Dad's back porch just talking about life. Dad asked me what exactly I was looking for in a guy. I do want to start with the notion that I'm not looking for a guy. But that being said, I gave him a list.

Some people may be taken aback that I have a "list" of things I feel the need to have in a man. Regardless, I do have things that I just desire. From what I've read in Psalms, God will give me those desires if I follow Him. Therefore, I just go ahead and lay it all out there for Him...just to make sure He knows!

While I was in the middle of talking about this man I haven't met yet (ohh...that song.."I haven't even met you yet...ahhh), I just stopped and said, "Man, I really need to lower my standards. No one will ever fit this mold." My dad's a genius, if you haven't figured that out yet.

His response was this, "If you lower your standards, you will get a husband. But if you keep your standards, you will get a husband you love even when he is old and fat." Yes, I laughed. But there's a lot of truth in that, honestly.

For now I am more than contempt on being by myself. As I told my parents, I can't imagine a life better than mine. After listening to my sister cry over stress from a family, job, and husband and seeing friends go through divorce, I'm pretty satisfied with the bubble baths and soothing nights of writing I so much enjoy. To get married would put a 180 on my life. Africa would be out of the picture for next summer. Charlee would be by himself. My students would have to call me by a new name. And I'd have to cook for twice as many people. Plus, it'd be kind of depressing to have to share a bed. I really like sleeping in the middle.