Moved

What Bonnie? Moved?  But you have hardly been here.  I know.  But I have two blogs and have done a poor job with keeping up with both.  So we are putting two into one.  So please, for all future posts, click here:

http://www.conversantlife.com/blogs/bonnie+lewis

Thanks for following me to the new blog!

My New Christmas Career

I LOVE Christmas.  I love to give gifts and I love to open them.  However, the whole process of people getting me gifts makes me stressed out.  I hate telling people "No, I really like the gift, I just maybe would have chosen a different color..." because that really means, "I don't like this gift, but I feel bad for saying it."  And I do. I feel AWFUL for saying it.

When I was 5 my mom bought me a pair of pink cowboy boots.  They were a soft pink leather with a glitter lightening bolt down the side and pink leather fringe.  I kid you not.  I think about them now and one word comes to mind: awesome.  However, at age 5, I opened these boots on Christmas morning and as soon as I saw them I BURST into tears. Bawling. I hated those boots.  But I was not crying because I hated them so much I was crying because I knew I was going to have to tell my mom I hated them.  The whole thing seems a bit odd to me:

Don't you think the tears would have given away my extreme dislike?

Way for me to be an extremely sensitive 5 year old.

Nice style sense Bonnie. What were you thinking? Those things were money.

I feel like if I would have kept those boots I may be a country singer and not a seminary student.

So this Christmas I am bound and determined not to cry because I am afraid someone's feelings will get hurt, but even more I am going to look for a career opportunity in my gifts.  My mom always tells me she wont buy me a surfboard until I learn to surf.  I tell her that it's too much work to rent one, if I just owned  one I would surf the waves like I was born to do it.  So I just feel like this year could be the year, that someone will get me a gift that will just turn my life around, and this is what I asked for:

Gift: Exercise workout DVD               
Career: I am loud enough, I could totally do that


Gift: Hanson Take the Walk Shoes      
Career: Shoe Model. Missionary


Gift: Canon Digital Camera                  
Career: Professional Photographer. Small sales to my mom on Etsy

Gift: Roxy Surf Board                          
Career: Enough said.

Mac Tip #9: Undo and Redo

Sometimes when I am blogging or typing a love letter of sorts I write things and I want to scribble it out and change it and have it still look really professional.  Cause that's what I am: a professional blogger and lover.


So clearly I can not take a sharpie and scribble out the mistakes on my screen, although I did that once when I was three to my mom's friend's new Apple II e.  Oops.

So when I make a mistake and I choose a poorly written word, or I need to just simply start with a clean state after the first paragraph I wrote, I simply push:

"Apple key + Z" and the mistake disappears.

But then, in a moment of sanity when I decide that my word choice, before I deleted it, was actually GENIUS and I am sad that erased the word, or entire page, I simply push:

"Apple key + Y" and what was taken away, is now back!

Editor's tips and tricks.  Easy as pie. Apple pie.

Boys vs. Girls: Tug of War

Hey Ladies.

I have a bit of news for you that the male population would like you to know.  Be it your boyfriend, your dad, your husband, your coworker, your neighbor, your mailman; they all would like this info made known.

If they are: tired, hungry, or sick, they are the most tired, the most hungry, and the sickest that anyone has ever been. Ever. And ever will be.

And in case you think that you could understand the agonizing pain they are in, you can't.  Because you have not been working, going to the store, cooking, or trying to do anything that would cause you to use energy.  No.  Instead you have been lying around all day (every day) sleeping and eating, so you are constantly renewing your energy source and also  by nature "healthy" is your middle name.

So please, when you hear a male say they are really tired, or extremely hungry, or that this time they are so sick you would not understand how much their throat hurts; please do not try to empathize, that's insulting to their pain.  But, take that as a warning and gear up, because this time wont even come close to the discomfort they will be in next time.

Breakfast? I'm sorry I can't, I'm Apparently Not Smart Enough

We got a really awesome toaster oven as a wedding gift and I must admit that I am truly thankful for it.  With regular toasters, I get a little stressed out that they are not actually working.  I have had so many in which it is time for the bread, or pop tart, to do some actual popping, and nothing.  Later I find out that the spring is broken, the bread has been burned and I am cranky.

But one thing really confuses me about this toaster oven.  First of all, it's a toaster and an oven all packaged into one.  That must be why there are about 500 different options for heat, and broiling, and a timer, etc.  Which, let me say, it's small am I really going to be cooking a turkey in there?  Doubt it.

But really I am bitter about the whole thing, because I am beginning to think that my lack of trust for the toaster is not really the device.  I hate to admit it, but I think it's me.  I can't get a freaking piece of bread to be the right consistency no matter what I do.

I always have it at the same setting (mostly because the other ones are too complicated)
I always use the same timer

And one time it will be burnt to the crisp, and other days, like now, I am so disappointed that my english muffin is nothing more than a flimsy warm piece of carbs.  I mean really?  Is this some kind of joke?  Or how about yesterday when I made cheese rolls for Cy and the cheese melted everywhere inside the toaster oven, but no effect on the bread?  What is wrong with that thing?  Or me?

So as I sit and eat my half warmed, non melted buttered, flimsy piece of bread, that I realize there is so much to learn and life and frankly is daunting if I can't even figure out the toaster over.  I'm going to have a zone bar instead, or should I say in addition to?

You Invade

It's been cold and rainy here lately.  I find myself going to sleep with the rain and waking to it as well. I adore it.  There is something about the weather moving and changing, interrupting our lives that reminds me of the existence of something much bigger than my daily life and mundane tasks.

As a little girl I can recall being deathly afraid of the rain.  My mom told me that God was moving the furniture, but as I pictured the giant couch being moved on the floors of heaven, I could not help but still shiver at the loudness of it all.  My fear was quickly replaced with awe as I would watch my dad seat himself in front of the big picture windows we had in Arizona and marvel at the lightening that one only sees in a National Geographic catalogue. This is coming from a man who once watched a tornado pass from the porch a block away, or he who wanted to drive slower so that we may see the green cloud in the Kansas sky turn into that dreaded funnel shape. Later, he took me to see Twister on the big screen.  I loved that date of ours. And he loves the storms.  The lightening had a way of illuminating everything around us, causing the rain to look as though it stopped mid air and for that second, the dark was gone and was replaced with light.

I began to love the rain that night.  Still, I hold a sweet memory of sitting on our plaid couch watching the dessert drops pour down as hard and as much as they want.  It stopped us in our tracks.  It changed the fear in me to wonder.  It illuminated the darkness around me and continually reminds me that always, no matter how dim or bright, the light will always shine in the dark.

So now, as I sit on my leather couch, hundreds of miles away from my dad, and years away from that fear, I am still moved by it all.  We are so blessed to have a God that invades our lives, because they are not really ours in the first place.

Mac Tip #8: Putting Pettiness Aside

I left you in the cold yesterday  Mac users.  I am sorry, I had a final and babysat and yada, yada, yada.  Yes, potentially I could post another tip today, but in light of the Christmas spirit, I chose a video instead.

Enjoy.

p.s. I have no idea what a video has to do with the Christmas spirit. Nothing, in fact.