Deck the Halls Hysteria and my face-ache.

Highlights of the day after our backyard concert with Photoside Café (I need more time to collect my thoughts on the actual concert itself):

• Waking up at 5:00am after about 4 1/2hrs. of sleep and making breakfast for the sleeping musicians. The drummer, Jason – who is single-handedly the reason why the entire band had to leave by 7:00am (something about harvesting corn) – opened his door and was startled to see me busy in the kitchen.

Jason, “Oh, you’re up already?!”

Me, “Yeah.” Um, Jason, I would still be sleeping if the corn could wait a few more hours!

• Sleeping for another 3 1/2hrs. after the boys took off. Those 3 1/2hrs. felt like a month.
• Soaking up sun on my new stage, um, I mean deck and reading my Bible.
• Lazily piecing together a puzzle in total silence.
• Catching up with my little brother, Joey, who is getting married in eleven days! I swear I took two hours to cut his hair. Every. Snip. Counted. Additionally, he’s just so daggone interesting; and I had him all to myself so I subconsciously dragged the service out.
• Joey INITIATED AND GAVE ME PERMISSION to get him Christmas decorations for a wedding gift. Oooooooooooh, man. This just got interesting. Square Piece followers, unless you know me outside of cyberspace, you have no idea what a freak I turn into when it comes to Christmas. I think my obsession might count as a medical condition. Oh Holy Night Deficiency? Deck the Halls Hysteria? Away in a Manger Syndrome? The only cure is… well, one more Christmas tree. And now, not only do I abuse this holiday in my own household, I now have another outlet! I AM THE REASON stores have Christmas goodies out in September. I am so sorry.  (Fast forward here.)
• When my trainer was running behind for the third appointment in a row, I suggested that we reschedule and left because I had somewhere to be. This is a highlight because I have NO backbone. Normally I’d just accept the fact that this would create a domino effect of a backed up schedule. But my courage was fueled by the fact that I actually had somewhere to be, so I was able to politely communicate that consistently running 15 minutes behind isn’t always okay.
• That “somewhere to be” was a new church small group. OhMyGoodness. I’m always the nerd in the group that absolutely LOVES both mixers and games. Being terribly competitive, I took this Two Truths and a Lie game quite seriously. The point is to state three things about yourself, one of them being a lie. The group has to guess which statement they believe is the lie. My face contorts when I lie so, with all my strength mustered, I stared hard at the back of my scrap Target receipt (on which I made my notes) and stated 1) I was a suspect in a gas station robbery, 2) I have 4 tattoos that I got at Body Art Tattoo studio in Berryville, VA, 3) I met my husband at WalMart. Do you know which is the lie? This night was so enjoyable that my face hurt from laughing by the end of it. And if the skin on your face feels like it has its own weird headache (I guess that’d be a face-ache), that’s a nice reason to have.