Katie and I decided to go out for dinner tonight. We wanted to go somewhere really fancy, so we headed to the restaurant also known as Best Diet Coke On The Planet:

Since it was such a fancy place, Katie fixed her hair all pretty-like. I mean, a side ponytail is fancy, right?

I did my part, too, by wearing my favorite shirt:

Those precious little green things you see are whales. Baby whales. On a tank top. Ever since posting that video a couple of weeks ago where I confess my love for Shamu, I’ve been planning to write a post about why I love that silly whale. I’ve just had other, much more important things to write about.

Really? I have to spell it out for you? Okay… S-u-n-n-y D-e-l-i-g-h-t.

I’ll still do that post sometime because, trust me, I have more whale items. Many, many more.

So, once we got home with our plain cheeseburgers (we always order the same thing), the following conversation occurred:

Katie: “By the way, So-and-So is coming over to study tonight.”

Me: “When is he coming? I need to put on a different shirt than this.”

DING DONG SOMEONE IS AT THE DOOR.

I made a run for it, but it was far too late. In walked Total Hottie and there I stood, trapped in my whale shirt. In his defense, Total Hottie just said hello and acted like everything was normal. I, on the other hand, headed straight to my bedroom.

Which is when I fell. Over my laundry basket. With that Total Hottie sitting right on my couch.

And now, as I type this very line, I’m sitting on the same couch with Total Hottie (don’t worry, Katie’s between us) watching The Office. And I’m still wearing the whale shirt. Because I think it would be pretty obvious if I changed at this point. But don’t think I didn’t consider it.

Sadly, this isn’t even my worst wardrobe malfunction of the day.

This morning, while rushing to get to the office because HELLO IT IS THE LAST DAY OF PROGRAMS AND THERE IS MUCH TO DO, I walked out the door without pants on.

Oh yes I did.

Today is the last day of this semester’s programs.  We ended Twinkle on Monday, Glow on Tuesday and Sparkle will finish up today.  Nine of our ten programs will be on hiatus for the summer; our dessert Bible study for our high school juniors and seniors (we call it Glow At Nite) will continue through the summer with myself and some other Cleveland-based Starlite people leading it. 

We hate having to close the programs for the summer, but since we operate actually in the public schools, we really don’t have a choice.  Also, most of our volunteers go “home” for the summer, leaving just a handful of us to keep things running at the office.  Good thing we have Snuggles and Cuddles around to answer the phones.

My schedule won’t slow down with the programs stopping… it will just be a different schedule.  I’ll be doing a lot of fundraising during the next couple of months as we still haven’t fully funded our ’08-’09 budget yet.  We do our budget oddly — we have a “school year budget” that runs from August to April and a “summer budget” that runs from May to July.  Our biggest challenge (obviously) is funding the school year budget, so I work hard on it during the summer.  I’ll also be doing a bunch of other stuff that gets pushed off to the summer months. 

The other big part of the next few weeks is deciding which new schools we’ll be entering in the fall.  I love it when people tell me that I have the greatest job because I “get summers off.”  The reality is that our programs may be ending this week, but this week also began the first series of meetings about this coming fall.  I’ll write more about this later, but we’re currently looking at 12 additional elementary schools in our area and trying to decide how many to take on this fall. 

Side note: Typing that last sentence was unreal.  I can’t tell you how long we spent trying to find a school, ANY SCHOOL, to let us bring our program into.  The fact that we are now being approached by the schools is a real-life miracle, in my opinion.

One of the ironic things about my job is that, since we’re still a relatively young ministry (entering 6th year this fall) with, um, two staff members, I have to be able to look at both the big picture and still pay attention to the small details too.  A good example of this is figuring out a retention system — how are we going to get our current 3rd grade girls to still be with us when they’re seniors in high school?  Once we’ve got that goal set, I start working with our team to figure out specific ways to keep them with us during the “big transitions” (such as moving from elementary school into middle school and then middle school to high school). 

In the town we’re based out of, we have programs in every single middle school and every single high school.  So, when they’re entering middle or high school, we can automatically know that we’ll be wherever they go next.  If you remember, God gave us the vision for the middle school program first, the high school program next and the elementary school program last.  Until recently, that order has never made sense to us but now it is very clear: if we had of had the elementary school program first and not had any middle school programs, we would have lost that relationship that we would have spent three years building.  I love being able to look back and see how God ordered things perfectly, even if we had no idea what He was up to at the time.

And so, summer begins for me at 5:01 p.m. today, right as the last middle school girl heads out the door.  I’ll miss all of our girls, but I’m also looking forward to having more time to work on the administrative side of the ministry. 

Okay, you caught me.  I’m really just looking forward to having a break from the processed nacho cheese.

After I posted my list of 100 things about me a few weeks ago, I had a few comments from people about the fact that I admitted that I like to do laundry. My laundry, my roommate’s laundry, even my ex-boyfriend’s laundry — I like it all.

Side note: yesterday was my ex’s birthday. Naturally, I got him a gift and dropped it by his office. What can I say? My love language is giving gifts. When I came home and casually mentioned this to Katie, her jaw hit the ground. She informed me that you aren’t supposed to give birthday gifts to people you used to date. And then she told me that I’m no longer allowed to have any interaction with any male without first checking with her to make sure I’m not being ridiculous. And, to tell you the truth, I think it would be in all of our best interests if I did exactly what she tells me to do when it comes to the male species.

Moving on.

I’ve been a bit behind on laundry over the last week, mainly because I was out shopping for birthday gifts for all my ex’s busy getting ready for our last event. After putting a load of clothes into the wash, I came upstairs to find the following happening in my bedroom:

That’s right — Snuggles had turned over my laundry basket, climbed inside, and fallen asleep. After I took a few hundred pictures, I made him get out so I could get another load ready. When I came back upstairs, I found him in a new place:

Good thing my mother doesn’t read my blog or she’d be having a fit over the height of that pile of laundry.

I have also given up making my bed as Cuddles, my other puppy, seems to enjoy pulling my comforter off the bed and creating a little habitat for himself:

I can only hope that they’ll crawl into a vat of processed nacho cheese soon so I can quit doing that chore, too.

After last night’s serious post, I figured we’d mix things up a bit on this Well Said Wednesday. I shot the following video while driving to the Starlite office this past Saturday morning to meet up with our team to head out of town. In the video, I discuss why I’m 24 minutes late getting there, what two items I brought with me to make the trip go along quickly and why I wanted to have good hair for Jesus that day. Oh, and I also get a little frustrated with the guy driving in front of me.

Make sure you watch until the end… there’s a little message to all the MinSoFab interlings.

Oh, and remember: the camera always adds 2,374 pounds.

Today was the last day of classes at our university (I’m not a student anymore, but I still think of myself as one). Katie’s had a pretty tough semester of classes, so I thought we’d celebrate tonight. I stopped by the grocery store on my way home and picked out some things to make for our Thank God Katie’s Classes Are Over dinner.

When I got home, she had just gotten out of the shower. I told her to hurry up and get ready because I was going to cook us dinner. Instead of fainting as I expected her to, Katie’s eyes got big and she said the fatal words “Don’t you remember that I’m going to a formal with Eric tonight?”

I had somehow completely forgotten about it, so away the groceries went and out came the supportive comments as she did her hair and make-up. She was rushed for time and spilled her bottle of pink nail polish all over her bathroom sink. I started cleaning it up while she frantically dried her hair. We both laughed at how Cinderella-ish the whole ordeal was becoming.

Before long, she slipped into her pretty dress, put on her high heels and headed out the door. As the door slammed shut, I realized that it would be just me and the puppies tonight. I sat down on the living room floor to play with them, but they were more interested in playing with each other. And, of course, with one of my socks.

As I fixed dinner for myself, I tried to ignore the fact that tears were very close to the surface. But as I reached for one plate, one glass, and one fork, another “one” happened: one tear ran down my cheek.

It is hard to write or talk about being single in a public setting because a lot of people say things that end up being hurtful, even if they were never meant that way. “Bloom where you’re planted.” “You’re too young to worry about this!” “You need to seek God first, young lady.” And then there’s my favorite one, the one that would be unbelievable if I hadn’t heard it quite a few times: “Well, maybe if you lost some weight…” The comments all snowball into one big feeling of being wrong for wanting to be with someone.

Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to be single or not to be single; it shouldn’t be a surprise that I do as well. Most of my reasons for so looking forward to that phase of my life probably stem from my childhood experience of coming from a broken home. Even though my parents didn’t divorce until I was 5, I have no memory of ever living in a house with two parents under the roof. This, of course, isn’t the only reason I’m excited to go from a Miss to a Mrs one day, but I don’t think you really want to read that list, right?

It is on nights like this that I have to chose to remember that I am not my own. God has His reasons for designing my life in the way He has — and I believe that He hasn’t placed desires in my heart only to never fulfill them. He’s in control. I may not have it all together, but He sure does.

And so I have a choice tonight. I get to choose whether I’ll be grateful for the season He and I are in or if I’ll instead wish I could go on to some other time in my life. I get to choose whether I’m going to do well at the tasks He’s given to me for this season or if I’d rather fail them miserably while asking for new assignments. And, hard as it may be, I’ll get to make those same choices again tomorrow as the sun starts to rise.

I’m constantly reminded that it so matters that I make the next right decision whether it be a small decision or a large one. Everything has an impact; some just aren’t seen until generations down the road. I firmly believe that what I am choosing now, at age 23, directly affects what my children will experience one day. Some of the seeds that I’m sowing now won’t be reaped until I’m long gone.

And that’s why, today, I’m going to choose life. Even if it is single life. Even if it hard. Even if it is lonely. It still is the next right decision.

Now, if only I could decide what to wear tomorrow.

Guess what I found hanging in my office this afternoon?

Some of the girls at one of our schools made it for me. It is purposely blurry to block out names, but the general message from all of the girls is “Thank you for starting Twinkle. And thank you for the crafts. And thank you for the food.”

You’re welcome, girls. You’re very, very welcome.

(I guess I’ll wait awhile to tell them that we’ll never be making foam jewelry again.)

Yesterday was the last day of our Twinkle programs for this semester. Even though public schools aren’t out for another month, our volunteers are in finals week and packing to leave early next week. There’s no way we can run 10 programs without our college volunteers, especially since many of our programs run simultaneously. The processed nacho cheese and I can only be in one place at a time, ya’ll.

All semester long, my Twinkle girls have begged me to bring a craft that involved making jewelry. Never mind that we have made tissue paper butterflies, princess picture frames and even paper bag puppets — they wanted jewelry.

Unfortunately, I’ve had a bit on my mind recently and forgot about the jewelry craft request until approximately one hour before Twinkle was scheduled to start. I jumped in my car and went to a few different stores looking for enough jewelry making kits for all four of our Twinkle programs that were ending yesterday. I figured that if my Twinkle girls wanted craft jewelry, the girls at the other three elementary schools couldn’t be too different.

I finally found what I was looking for at a price we could afford. The store had the exact amount of kits I needed, so I loaded them up in my arms and headed for the register. And that is right about the time I dropped one of the kits and watched as 250 foam beads rolled across the floor.

Fabulous.

The store clerk offered to clean up the mess after I left, but after I explained that I had to pick them up because I needed ALL of the foam beads in order to make sure ALL the little girls got to make bracelets. The clerk just shook her head sadly and walked away while I began to crawl around on the floor to retrieve my 250 foam beads.

After several awkward moments on the floor, I had gathered all the beads (I think) and made my way to the front of the store. I was two steps away from the register when I dropped another container of 250 foam beads.

I’ll skip boring you with the details of how I — once again — crawled around the floor picking up foam hearts and circles and triangles. I will, however, say that I had an excellent lesson in humility right there on that cold, hard floor.

The REAL struggle, however, came when I actually arrived at my Twinkle program. After snack, we let the girls each pick out 10 foam beads for their bracelets. Let me suggest to you that it isn’t the best idea to pour out 1,000 foam beads in front of a bunch of elementary school girls. We literally had to have a time limit on the foam-bead-choosing-process.

We handed out the string and told the girls to start beading away. After about 3.7 seconds, we realized that we had A Major Problem on our hands: the foam bead kit required the use of a plastic needle to thread the beads onto the strings.

Even just typing that makes me a bit sick to my stomach.

And so, for the next hour, I and the rest of our volunteers used plastic needles to thread brightly colored beads onto purple string while a bunch of girls surrounded us saying “My bracelet next!” followed by “No, mine!”

Hundreds of foam beads, ya’ll. Hundreds.

At one point, I looked up and caught Katie’s eye from across a couple of tables. She immediately mouthed a loving sentiment to me that looked a little like “I hate foam beads but, right now, I hate you more.”

I totally must have misunderstood what she was mouthing to me because how could she not love someone who brought 1,000 foam beads to be threaded in less than an hour? I know, right?

But by the end of the foam beading festival, I had lost my warmfuzzy-ness and was definitely on my way to becoming a cold prickly. In fact, I took a picture of myself at this point just so I could share it with you:

Oh, I’m kidding. I didn’t have time to take a picture because I was still threading foam hearts onto string.

Ministry is so glamorous, no?

Don’t forget to enter the contest for 12 free hair products — that’s right, I miscounted the first time around and there were more products than I thought!

After I spoke at a women’s event a few months ago, one of the attendees (who owns a salon) sent a box of brand new hair and nail products to our office as a surprise for me.  I would love to tell you just how excited I got over the box ‘o products, but I think it would be a bit embarrassing to admit I almost wet my pants right here in the Starlite office.

Ooops.

Anyway, I had so much fun giving away 100 items a few weeks ago that I knew we’d definitely participate in the Giveaway Carnival going on this week.  I considered offering up several things such as some processed nacho cheese, one of our ministry leaders (I’m not naming any names) or my puppies.

Oh, I’m just kidding about the nacho cheese and puppies.

Anyway, I have finally come to face the cold, hard facts: I need to share the hair product wealth with the interlings.  And so, I am prepared to give away:

Here’s what the prize package includes:

Sebastian Concentrate Gel; Matrix Biolage Gelee; Joico Leave-In Detangler; Redkin Rewind Pliable Styling Paste; Biosilk Silk Thearpy Cure; Matrix Biolage Firm Hold Gel; Redkin Water Wax; Redkin Full Frame Mousse; Wella Polish Cream; Paul Mitchell Thicken Up; OPI Nail Lacquer in Niagra Falls and OPI Nail Lacquer in Not So Bora-Bora-ing Pink.

That’s right — 11 full-size products!  Here’s the simple rules: only one entry per person; shipping address must be in the US as I’m paying shipping.  I’ll leave the comments on this post open until Friday at 5 p.m. EST.  I’ll choose a winner at random.  This contest is not open to current Starlite leaders and volunteers.

Go forth and have great hair, interlings.  

You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t totally make sense in this post. This could be for one of the following reasons:

A. I can’t think straight after having spent the weekend saying “Go. To. BED.” about a trizillion times. And the high school girls were hard to get to sleep, too.

B. I got up way too stinking early because I was scheduled to speak at the church we were at. The morning after a lock-in. Because that is excellent scheduling, no? Who doesn’t like someone falling asleep on stage while holding a microphone?

C. I have just woken up from a four hour nap.

D. All of the above.

If you chose option D, you’re correct! And now, in order to give you all the details, I embrace the list format:

1. Those girls were so cute. I mean, SO CUTE. A small group of them, including one girl who had never been to one of our events before, sat and talked hair with me for a very long time. When I got up to leave, I overheard one of the girls say “See, I told you Amy Beth is awesome. She knows hair.” to the new girl. And yes, a tear came to my eye.

2. Instead of taking our 11 member band (we even have a violinist — jealous much?), we went acoustic and low-key. One bright spotlight on the stage; the rest of the room’s lighting came via candlelight. And it was excellent.

3. During the night, the girls sneaked out of the room (literally stepping over the Starlite volunteer who was asleep right in front of the door). Their reason? To take all the free sanitary items out of the women’s bathroom and decorate the room very… creatively.

Note to self: call church first thing tomorrow and offer reimbursement for, um, that stuff.

I actually took some video for you. I woke up about an hour before our alarm (for the leaders and volunteers to get up) and recorded myself sneaking to the light switch and then flipping it on while singing my very own rendition of “Good Morning To You, Sweet Starlite Volunteers.” Unfortunately, this video will not be airing on MinSoFab as not only did all of my leaders threaten to quit Starlite if I showed a public video of them with morning hair but also because a certain Starlite leader (cough, Laura, cough) might have uttered a few naughty words directed a yours truly.

What can I say? I seek to serve.

And so, another fabulous weekend has ended. On the way home, one of our leaders and I were talking about the inevitable “let-down” feeling that we always experience on our way home from events. This one is particularly hard to “get over” because the girls we were serving this weekend are from a economic background that is unlike what you and I are used to. During the worship time last night, I prayed with a 15 year old girl who has horrible, vile things happen to her. Things that aren’t fair to her, to anyone. And yet right before she climbed onto the bus to go home today, she kept thanking me over and over again for taking them to McDonald’s for lunch yesterday. What is normal to me — mundane, even — is a treat to them.

And so we had McDonald’s for breakfast again today. McDonald’s twice in 24 hours definitely equals Best Event Ever in teenagers’ eyes, especially when they’re not paying for it.

As for me, I’m skipping dinner. I just woke up long enough to tell you about the event, answer the 14 text messages I missed during my nap and get a cold glass of Sunny Delight. And now that all of that is accomplished, I’m going back to bed.

I can only hope they’ll be no video cameras rolling when I wake up in the morning.