An Anomaly

I'm so excited because I'm hosting two of my favorite things this weekend: a mystery party for kids at church and a tea party for Book Club at Ferguson Tea Room in Hurricane. The weirdness about my obsessive love for the Tea Room is that I cannot stand tea! Yuck... I hate the taste of it. Even with a quarter cup of sugar in the fruitiest of flavors. But yet the Ferguson Tea Room is my happiest of happy places. (To use an SAT-type analogy, The Ferguson Tea Room is to Denise Ash as Tiffany's was to Holly Golightly. And if you do not get my analogy, PLEASE do us both a favor and rent Breakfast at Tiffany's!!! It's awesome. And, just to continue the parenthetical--it's a real word; I just looked it up to make sure--rambling, I have a cousin named Holly Golightly, which has always made me laugh since my Aunt Pam had no clue that there was a famous movie character with the same name!)

You can ask Cindy. If you see her, which I doubt since she lives ALL THE WAY IN BECKLEY. LOL! Anyway, I turn into another person when I enter the Tea Room. Not an entirely different person, just a much less stressed version of Denise. It's wonderful. I don't worry about Marshall's losses or WVU's wins or work or ANYTHING. I just enjoy the company of my female friends and sip on fruity tea (very small sips, supplemented by lots of H2O) and eat lavender scones, finger sandwiches, and tea desserts. And when I'm there, life is good... Life is always good, but life is not always Tea Room Good. :-)

If you haven't been to the Ferguson Tea Room in Hurricane, you need to go. And if you go and don't invite me, I'll be really mad. LOL! HAPPY FRIDAY!

Not that anybody's reading but...

I just want to quickly blog and say I had the absolute best time today. Three of my very best friends (Danielle, Julie, and Marisa) and I piled into Marisa's van, along with Julie's adorable son Tripp and Danielle's two wonderful children, Owen and Hannah. We drove to my best friend Cindy's house in Beckley where we got to see Cindy and her husband Chris, as well as Izzy and Sophie (her two fun and hilarious kids) and her new 1-month old little girl, Suzi. :-) I also got to meet Becky and Andy Nutter, who were very nice.

Anyway, we swam in Cindy's fantastic pool and we talked about old times and how amazed we were at how fast time flies. It was a fantastic day!

But honestly, it zapped me. I've been fighting sleep since 8:00 p.m.!!! And so I'm no longer fighting it. I'm going to sleep. But I'm thankful for the amazing day that I had!!! And I'm thankful for my wonderful friends!

Conflict Free Living...

I'm reading a book by Joyce Meyer called "Conflict Free Living" and I've been looking at the book for a long time now and passed it up every time. (As a bargain shopper, $24 is a lot to pay for a book. LOL!) But it turns out it was well worth every penny of it... Since beginning reading it (and I'm not finished yet), I've been consciously trying to take a Biblical approach to conflict.

Is it easy? Um, no. But is it rewarding? Absolutely! There's something I've come to realize since reading it, though (and I highly recommend it to you and would be glad to loan it out when I'm done). Whenever people are argumentative and always full of strife and conflict, my first reaction has always been one of two things: argue back or try to make them happy. (Sometimes I've even kind of done both of these at once, oddly enough!) Anyway, what I realize now that I really SHOULD have known all along is that I cannot control that person. What I can control is my reaction to that person. And that has changed me. It really has. I don't get upset when my dad flies off the handle anymore; I just calmly ignore him until his tirade ends. (This drives him even more insane, which might just be worth the $24 in itself. LOL!)

So, what I've come to learn over the past few days is that I prefer my drama from this guy:

A few exciting updates to post:

Cindy had her baby on June 22. She was a 7 pound, 7 ounce (I think) beautiful baby girl and while they had a little scare with her breathing, it seems like she's doing just fine now. Her name is Suzi (Suzannah Riley Liberty Raines). :-) CONGRATULATIONS, CINDY, CHRIS, IZZY, AND SOPHIE (and Grandma Norma and Grandpa Ray and Aunts Micki and Crystal and the rest of the extended family!!!).

My friend Jeri is pregnant and found out last week that she is having a boy. Congratulations, Jeri and Sean!

My sister Terri is moving to a new (bigger) house and quitting her job to be a full-time mom. I think that's awesome.

My mom, sister, and I are taking a beach trip in September. I cannot WAIT!!! :-)

Happy July 4th, everyone. I'm going to try to post a patriotic blog later in the day!

Cowen...

Cowen is always a wow for me. This time the campers were challenged to be "HEROES" for God. Some of them stepped right up to the challenge, but I'll tell you about them in a minute. For now, though, let me say that spending 7 days with 248 junior high school children is an experience that can only be politely described as "interesting". :-) Here's a picture of the entire camp (the largest one yet at Cowen)...

Anyway, one of the heroes of the week to me was Kevin Freeland. He is a 15-year old with an inoperable brain tumor and all I can say about Kevin is, "WOW"! Kevin has had 30 surgeries in 5 years, he currently has a broken hip and is wheelchair-bound, which makes it hard for him to get around like other kids his age. He has had a tracheotomy, which makes it hard for him to communicate like other kids his age. But let me assure of something about Kevin: he is NOTHING at all like other kids his age. He is amazing and inspiring to youth and adults alike. In spite of all of his physical problems, he was probably the most positive and uplifting teenager at camp! Every time he saw one of his friends (and he was able to count most of the 300+ people at camp as his friends by the end of the week), he would give us a fist bump and say, "YOU ROCK!" He brought smiles to people's faces who I could tell hadn't smiled in a while. And Friday night at campfire, Kevin spoke to the whole group. He told them about his tumors and his surgeries, but he also told about all of the people he'd been able to share Jesus with throughout the course of his ordeal. And he said that he feels like his situation has been more of a blessing than a curse because he has met so many people and been able to try to really make a difference in this world.

When I got home, I wanted to blog about Kevin and his radiant smile and winning attitude, but I couldn't remember his last name right off. So instead of walking into the next room to get the camp list, I did some Googling. I thought I'd give it a shot, after all I'd just walked nonstop for a week--I needed some rest. Anyway, I found out that Kevin really is making more of a difference than I knew. This year, Kevin earned $15,574 for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. Over the last three years, he's earned almost $50,000! That is so awesome. So if anyone ever (EVER) says they can't do anything to change the world because they're too young, tell them to talk to Kevin. He'll set them straight and then he'll let them know that...THEY ROCK! :-)

Then there were some heroes that didn't surprise me at all. Three girls I had in Sunday School (Brooke, Sarah, and Maria, last names unnecessary but if you know them, you'll know you know them) were heroes last week. All around camp they kept awesome attitudes and were friends to the friendless. More specifically, though, they had the courage to let me know about a camper who was wanting to harm herself. They have no idea how much that impressed me (along with their willingness to play hard, work hard, and get along with everyone) this week.

And how can I leave out some of my favorite guys? :-) In addition to the aforementioned girls (who were in my cabin), I got to see some old friends from PRBC (I MISS YOU GUYS!!!): Luke, Matt, Zach, Bill, and Austin (I also met a new friend from PRBC--Ryan). Anyway, they were great all week as usual and I have to brag and let you know that Bill is the 2008 Junior High 2 Four Square CHAMPION! :-) Go, Bill!

And I will leave you with the Kevin Freeland philosophy: YOU ROCK!

Miscellany

That's a fun word, isn't it? I recently bought my friend Danielle a book called Jane Austen Miscellany. (If I haven't mentioned it a million times before, I love Jane Austen!) :-)

Anyway, there are a couple of exciting things going on. My friend Cindy is about to have a baby girl. And I mean ANY DAY NOW. Tomorrow at the absolute latest! HOORAY!

Something that has surprised me lately is that I have started exercising and eating fairly healthily. I've lost 12.5 in 4 weeks and I am so very proud of myself!!! :-) Anyway, I've been doing Weight Watchers online and also trying to do either Zumba or a Latin dance moves DVD I bought every day. It's quite a workout, but I can really tell a difference in my life. And I figure, hey, if I put it out to the whole world that I'm trying to lose weight then I'll continue trying! Accountability, folks. LOL! Anyway, this is probably the longest I've stuck with a diet and exercise program since high school...

NEXT...

I'm helping to plan our class reunion, which is a total surprise since I didn't even go to our 10-year reunion (we didn't have a 15) and now we're two years away from our 20th reunion! The funny thing is that as I communicate with people I can't help but think how in some ways nothing has changed, but in other ways everything has changed about us.

I'm so proud of some of my best friends from school. They're wonderful successes. Kairy Barazi is a retinal surgeon in Washington, DC. My friend Chris Byrd is a Major in the US Army. Jamie Martin is a partner in a North Carolina law firm. Jody Driggs is one of the best architects in the state of West Virginia. Stacey Smith is a podiatrist in St. Albans.

While I'm only a person who helps lawyers use their computers, though, I feel like I'm a success, too. Not necessarily at my job (though I'm proud of the job I do and I work hard), but at life. I've come to know myself since high school. I'm secure in who I am and (maybe more importantly) who I am not. Did it take a while? Of course it did. It took YEARS! I certainly wasn't this self-aware in college. And another reason I count myself as successful is because I have some of the most amazing friends you could ever imagine. Luckily I have had very few reasons to lean on them over the years, but when I have they have been my rocks.

So, I quote the Golden Girls to close:

Thank you for being a friend

We've traveled down the road and back again

Your heart is true your a pal and a confidante

And if you threw a party

And invited everyone you ever knew

You would see the biggest gift would be from me

And the card attached would say thank you for being a friend.

Blogging

Okay. Here's the thing. I don't normally blog unless I have something that's really weighing on my mind. But now I have a digital camera, so maybe I'll try to get better like my friends Leigh Ann, Cindy, Kathy, and Erin. No promises, but I'l try!

Today I do have a few things weighing on my mind, but I'll put them in a separate blog! :-)

Here goes...

Hi! I'm going to try this blogging thing because my friend Leigh Ann says it's fun and my friends Beki and Cindy also seem to be really enthralled with it. I've tried blogging before, but I'm not really all that great at it. Mainly because I didn't really feel like anyone would care much to hear what I had to say. :-) While that is probably still very true, I'm giving it a shot. Why not?

I have a question. Have you ever had a moment (just a single moment) in your day that you wished could last forever? I had one today and I'd almost forgotten how great they were. Isn't it funny, too, how those moments are almost always the SIMPLEST of things?!?! This afternoon I went to wake my husband up from a nap because we were meeting a friend for dinner. I laid quietly on the bed beside him and grabbed his hand. As we laid in silence (well, except for the barking dogs in the background) it just felt so good that I wanted the moment to last forever.

I love the way life works sometimes!

Also, and I know I've said this on myspace, but I totally love Jane Austen, her books, movies adapted from her books, and the lifestyle about which she writes. I've been asked the question (in surveys, not conversationally) which place and time I would choose to live in if I could. It's tough for me because I would choose one of the following options:

• England during the court of King Henry VIII or Elizabeth I (however, NOT as one of Henry's wives, thank you very much)
• A country estate in England during Jane Austen's era
• Antebellum Virginia

I haven't ever thought of it until now, but I really believe that the common thread that runs through these three decisions is that they were times in history where manners mattered. I was at a function last night where I got to see some of my dearest friends, but I was appalled at the mannerless behavior of some of the people who I don't know very well... I will not mention any particulars since this is a public blog, but I'm glad I have friends with manners even though I don't live in any of the time frames mentioned above...

PS--Okay, you've caught me! Half of why I want to live in those time frames is because I love, love, love the fashions from that time! :-)