Staffing for JHYM

I haven't staffed at sessions since about 2004, when I first
staffed for childcare. I'm excited and honored to be working with the
junior high kids along with getting back into the rhythm of going to
NEYM Yearly Sessions. I haven't been since 2005, right before going
on a life-changing trip to England and attending the World Gathering
of Young Friends (for adults 18-35). I have no expectations other than
to get spiritually fulfilled, and I wish that my husband was going with
me, but unfortunately we both can't afford to go, and someone has to
watch our two cats. I'm looking forward to working with the other
more seasoned staff that have previously worked with the junior high
kids, getting reacquainted with old F/friends, meeting new people
and having fun!

Relay for Life

This past weekend, May 29-30, I did Relay for Life! Relay for Life is a walk put on by the American Cancer Society and involves fundraising either just for fun, or fundraising to reach a specific goal. Most individuals and teams that participate set a goal for how much they hope to collect in donations. The next step is to put on some comfortable walking shoes or other foot wear and start walking around the track.

We had rainy weather for part of last Friday, so by the time the walk started at 6pm, the track was covered with puddles and pretty muddy. Over the course of the night, the mud started to dissipate with all of the people walking over it. At about 2:30am or so, drizzling commenced, continuing and getting heavier as it got towards sunrise. By that time, I had reached to about the 13 or 14 mile mark.

Circling around the track as it got closer towards the end, I could smell the breakfast that the Rotary Club members were preparing for the participants, and it motivated me to continue on walking, knowing that cooked food was soon going to be served. As I walked more, I had to take more frequent breaks, due to developing a blister on my left foot. Every time I rested, it felt wonderful, but when I tried to get back up, it was as if my whole body from the waist down was paralyzed. I could barely move after standing back up and my feet and legs ached like I had been walking for days, not hours.
By the time I had completed 21 1/4 miles, I decided just to do three more laps to get to 22 miles, despite originally trying to get to 24 miles. I kept track of my miles with beads, an on-site fundraiser one of the other teams was doing. You get a length of string by giving them three dollars and it has a starter bead on it. These were whitish colored glow-in-the-dark beads. For every time you go around 1/4 of a mile, you get another glow-in-the-dark bead. For each mile, you pick out a colored one, and each colored one represented a different type of cancer-pink for breast cancer, royal blue for colon cancer, and green for kidney cancer, etc. Some people that were doing this had just one color for the colored ones, like for instance, pink. I at first was going to do a color for that represented the type of cancer that each person I was related to had. Green for my father-in-law, who had kidney cancer; royal blue for my mother-in-law, who had colon cancer; light blue for my husband's grandfather, who had prostate cancer; and pearl for my grandmother, who had lung cancer. I then decided just to use all of the colors, instead of just those four.

At the end of 22 miles, at 10:30am, an hour and a half before the end of the event, I stopped walking and had a string of beads a foot and a half long. I was so exhausted that I lay down on the ground with a blanket over me and slept until five minutes before the end of the event, missing all of the closing ceremony. A lot of people were surprised about how many miles I had done, including my husband and father-in-law.

Obama in Bangor!

I can still remember the first two presidential rallies that I attended before the 2004 Presidential Elections. I went up to the University of Maine (at Orono) campus on a chilly October day to hear Senator John Edwards speak about his ideas for the country and for change within the American public and society in general. It was somewhat windy that day, but despite that, I attended while clothed in multiple layers of clothing.

Then a few months later in December, I attended another rally with Elizabeth Edwards at the Sea Dog Restaurant on the waterfront in Bangor. For that one, we actually had to get tickets, which were free, but required to get in through the doors and to the conference room where the gala was being held. That was during finals week at the end of the fall semester then, and I went from University College of Bangor on the city bus to get downtown between two finals to attend.

Today will be my third presidential candidate rally, and I'm within walking distance of this one, as it is being held at the Bangor Auditorium, only three short blocks from my apartment on Sidney Street. The great thing is that I can get there by walking a mere ten minutes, so I have no excuse not to attend. I am so excited about going! I have been watching the newsfeed link on facebook.com about it, so I already know of quite a few people that I know who are planning on attending, and some are even QUAKERS! WOW! I'll have more to post after the rally! It starts at 2:30pm, and I don't know how long it's supposed to last, so I probably won't have a chance to post anything until tonight.

http://www.bangordailynews.com/news/t/city.aspx?articleid=159924&zoneid=176

Spiritual death

I'm experiencing a spiritual crisis. The type where your soul is snatched out of your body and stomped on, mangled, obliterated, mutilated, ripped apart and set on fire!

I used to go to Quaker meetings fairly frequently in high school, then in college I rarely went. Now I can say that I haven't been to a Quaker meeting in almost two years. The last time I went to more than one meeting in a given time period was nearly two years ago when I attended the World Gathering of Young Friends in England from August 16-24, 2005. Since then, something in me has changed where as I don't even have an urge to go to Quaker Meeting anymore. Maybe this is connected to my recently higher anxiety levels and the fact that I now have to take medications for it.

I now spend my life working and staying at home sitting around the house in a semi-vegetative state. I tend to get bored with activities more easily and get annoyed more easily too.

About my husband

What? You're Married? Who are you married to? How did you meet him? Who's Rolf? What's he like? Why did you decide to get married? What do you really like about him?

These are some of the questions that I have been receiving from various people since last May 5, when I got married to Rolf Staples. I met him in September 2005 when I was working at Burger King. He got promoted to manager a few weeks later. When I quit working at Burger King last March and then got fired from my second job the next day, he helped me pay my rent and bills. He also helped me move my belongings out of my apartment in Old Town last May.

Rolf and I have very similar personalities. We are both partly outgoing. We enjoy going out to the movies (which we haven't done recently), going out to eat, walking in the Bangor City Forest and on the Orono Bog Boardwalk, looking at and shopping for antiques, reading, and playing computer games.

We decided to get married because we love each other so much. When I was a little girl, I always wanted to get married when I was an adult. I really like everything about Rolf except for his sarcasm and stubbornness. I'm sarcastic and stubborn sometimes too though, so I guess I can't complain too much.

The day we got married, it was a beautiful spring day. It was sunny out and the flowers were all in bloom. Our wedding colors were blue and white. We had white decorations and a white cake with pretty blue flowers. In the floral centerpiece were irises, white carnations and roses, baby's breath and another white flower that I don't happen to know the name of.

After the ceremony, we had photos taken in our yard and down on the Bangor waterfront by the Penobscot River.

We currently live in an apartment in Bangor with my father-in-law, five cats, and two fish. My mother-in-law passed away last year right before Christmas. She helped my husband and I plan our wedding last year: making sure we had a cheese and cracker platter, fruit platter, finger sandwiches, a vegetable platter, and a beautiful wedding cake. She took me with her the day she went to buy the decorations and cake topper. She even bought me a pretty light blue garter with a white ribbon and lace.

Autumn has arrived.

Too soon does autumn arrive after summer. Getting
colder outside at night first, then during the day.
Blustery winds whip around buildings and through the
trees. Leaves on trees turn from green, to bright
yellow, then vibrant oranges, and reds, and finally
brown. The rustle of leaves on the canopy of trees.
The shaking of branches as they lose their leaves.
The rattling tree once the leaves are gone. Enormous
piles of leaves for raking, only to be demolished
by children jumping in them.

It's hard to believe it's already August. The scary
thing is that next month is September and the weather
only gets colder from there. I'm not looking forward
to fall coming, because that means summer will be over, and I'm certainly not looking forward to winter at all. About the only place I've gone this summer besides the Bangor State Fair on August 2, is to my aunt and uncle's house on the Fourth of July for a family cookout. I haven't even gotten to go to the beach yet because of working a lot and lack of finances to drive there. Oh well, maybe next year.

On the other hand, I can't complain about not going anywhere or doing much of anything last summer. Last summer I went to the beach once, for the Fourth of July, in Castine. That was quite fun, though I got sunburned. I also attended New England Yearly Meeting sessions (Quaker) for five days and then jumped a plane to England for thirteen days, spending most of one day just getting to Heathrow Airport in London and then a three hour train ride to Bradford-on-Avon after getting on the wrong trains four times on advice of Londoners. I then spent eight days in Lancaster at the World Gathering of Young Friends, a gathering for Quakers from around the world, from all branches of Quakerism and all walks of life. That was the first time I have ever been off the continent of North America.

The only other times that I have been out of the country is to go to Canada six times, and to the Bahamas for a two night one day cruise in February 2005.