more snippets of the life of me

This past weekend I went away to Manning Park for a church youth retreat. It was lots of fun, and even though it was a huge disappointment that Aaron couldn't go at the last minute, I'm really glad I went. The youth were very fun to hang out with. I miss them, I don't get to hang out with them too much now that I work full-time. One of the junior divas said I was very pretty, so that felt pretty cool. It did not feel cool when the youth pastor (my brother-in-law) threw an apple and hit me in the head. I still have a bruise, but it was an accident because he thought I was looking. A smaller group of us went for a walk to the river and played with some vividly green slimy stuff, and it was gross and fun. There were pretty leaves, lots of bright yellow ones. But it was sad to see all the dead trees that the pine beetle killed. In some sections of the park, I can confidently say that 90% of the trees were dead. In the areas where there wasn't so much pine, it obviously wasn't as bad as that.

Yesterday I took a walk downtown and I saw a bright plum-purple garden hose at a nursery. I also saw a baby, well, just the leg of a baby that was sticking up and out of its stroller. It was wearing white pyjama-type things with feet, and the foot part of the PJ's was pulled a fair ways off the end of the baby's foot, and it looked like a little truce flag sticking out of the stroller.

You may remember me mentioning that I only have two recurring themes in my dreams. One is that of being late, and the other is that of losing my teeth. Well, last night my tooth dream was taken to another level. Not only did I have that incredibly tangible sensation of my teeth getting wiggly and having the roots poke into my gums and the squishy place that is left once they've fallen out...no, in this dream I actually went to the dentist and said, "I keep having these recurring dreams about my teeth falling out, and now it's become real! What do I do? Can you put my teeth back in?" In the words of Strongbad, WEIRDED OUT!!!