I thought it was about time that I wrote something again. Life has been busy and relatively boring since I graduated. There are only a few things that I really need to mention as far as updates go.

1) I moved home. I think I mentioned that in an earlier post. I'm still living in my parent's basement with my sister. Things are going well, in my opinion. I love living with my sister. Every time I have to leave her I feel like crying. She is one of the most precious people in my life, and while we do have disagreements and get on one another's nerves, we both love each other so much. That's something that I've really needed.

I don't really see much of the rest of my family, even though they live just upstairs. Sometimes they'll come down to talk to us, but mostly any contact comes from me going upstairs. Frankly, I prefer it that way. As much as I love them, I can only take so much of my parents.

One of the very best things, though, is being back in Idaho. I have said it before, and I'll never be able to deny it: I am a country girl. I don't mean that in the sense that I listen to country music, wear cowboy boots, and love cows and horses. Not that there's anything wrong with that. No, I am a country girl in that I love the wide open space of rural life. It is abrasive to my soul to always have people everywhere, to never have silence and peace, to not be able to escape. I love that I am surrounded by fields and farmland, that I can see the Milky Way on a cloudless night, and that the only reason I wear ear plugs at night is because the people upstairs are noisy.

The longer I'm here, the more I realize how miserable I was living in Utah. I met amazing and wonderful people, and made some of the best friends that I'll know, but I hated the place itself. I am so glad to be home.

2) I got a job. It's not really anything to do with my degree, but it is a job. I currently work at a call center and do tech support for Playstation 3 in English and French. It's interesting, if nothing else, and I'm a lot more fluent with my French than I ever have been before. The pay is good because of my unique bilingual ability (imagine if I could use Hebrew!), and it's been amazing to actually be able to buy a new pair of pants without having to starve for a month or two.

3) I killed my car. That's right, I accidently murdered my little blue Geo. I guess that would be considered Manslaughter, right? Or I guess it would be Carslaughter.

The story? Ok, here goes... Every year we have our Family Outing with all the relatives on my Mom's side. I usually drive because my car gets great gas mileage. Sarah and my sister-in-law April were in the car with me. Well, we were headed up to the campground, on Highway 20, and my car started acting a little funny. We were just about to go up Ashton Hill (which, really, is the ascent into the mountains) and it made me nervous that my car wasn't behaving. The road up there is not very conducive to breakdowns. There are a lot of semi trucks that use it and there aren't many pulloffs. Well, for some reason I thought that I had shifted into a lower gear to aid the climbing process. Believing this to be the situation, I shifted into what I thought was drive (the Geo was an automatic and had the gears drive, 2, and 1). Unfortunately, I was already in drive and somehow I pushed in the button on the gear shift and skipped over neutral right into reverse. Going 70mph. Yeah, bad.

Now, I am not your typical blond when it comes to cars. I'm not extremely knowledgable, but I know that you SHOULD NEVER put the car in reverse when you're going forward. Needless to say, I had a miniature nervous breakdown. It wasn't pleasant. But God is good and sees to things like this. My brother Wayne and his wife Jamie were headed up and picked us up along the way. They had plenty of space for our stuff since they were driving both their vehicles. We were able to get my car towed home without too much trouble. And I even got a new car a couple of days after we got home from camping. I tell ya, God loves me.

So now I'm driving a dark purple 1998 Dodge Neon. It's the first car I've owned that wasn't blue. It's taken some adjusting, but I do love my new car. I miss the sunroof in my Geo, but things are great with the Neon. I ended up buying it from my cousin, too. It's in good condition and didn't cost too much. And since I have a job, I'm having no problems paying for the loan.

That's another thing I discovered with this little adventure: I have excellent credit! I had no idea. In fact, I thought that my credit was really bad. How surprised was I when the credit union gave me my credit score! It's nice to know.

4) My best friend's mom died. That one has been hard. A lot harder than I ever would have guessed. It happened pretty suddenly and was a huge blow to the family. Anyone that knows the Landons knows that they are extremely close and nine times out of ten would choose spending time together over anything else. So to lose one of the key players was devastating. Even thinking of it now, I want to break down.

Most of my pain comes from knowing how much pain Shelle and her family are in right now. Life will never, ever be the same. It's only been a few weeks since it happened, but as the cocoon of surreality comes away and life continues on for everyone else things only get worse. I pray for all of them several times a day, and try to be there for Shelle whenever I can. It's not much, but that's really all that I can do. I wish I could do more.

It's been so strange to think of Jenny (Shelle's mom) being gone. For the first several weeks it just didn't seem real. And it felt like there was some kind of black hole that had appeared in the universe. I can't even imagine what her family is going through. They would all tell you how blessed they've been, how God has given them so many tender mercies, how much peace they feel. But I know it still hurts in a way that's completely undescribable.

So, that's basically what has been happening with me. Life consists of work and home for the most part. There is the occasional excursion to the movies (oh, how I miss the dollar theater!) with my sister, sister-in-law, and/or cousin Teri - all of whom I love being with. And I now have a Netflix account, so I have plenty to keep me entertained. I'm just trying to figure out what the next step should be. I'll try to be better about keeping up to date with my blogs. No promises, though. :)