American Idol

I'm sitting here watching the 2-hour season premier of American Idol...and am laughing at all of humanity. After I re-gain my composure from my hysterical laughter I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when it dawns on me that there are THIS many people year after year that put on an obnoxious show for the judges with a mis-guided impression that they have talent. Do those jokes realize that the people that actually make it through to Hollywood are the ones that are mature and calm and NORMAL during their audition? All I can say is thank you Fox for the added touch of slow motion film and an array of background music precisely fitting every possible scenario that unfolds. The extra mile you've gone vastly enhances my viewing experience...it's downright hysterical.

Let's look at a few things we can learn from this stage of American Idol.

1. It's important to surround ourselves with people who can speak truth into our lives...preferably people that are credible to speak truth. If there is an area you are interested in improving in, find a mentor. Learn. Listen. Grow. Get your reality check.

2. You can't be good at everything. Some, and by some I mean MOST, of the people in these auditions are horrible. It's okay to have a hobby. It's okay to completely enjoy something. But sometimes there's a cap to what we can accomplish.

3. You can't be best friends with everyone. I like Simon. Sometimes I think people need to be put on suicide watch after leaving the auditions, but I do like Simon. If I were auditioning for American Idol my conflict would not be with Simon...but with the other contestants. Particularly the weird ones. While it's necessary to be nice and courteous to everyone, sometimes that's the extent of what will develop.

And that's all for now. Excuse me while I mop myself up off the floor after thinking back to that sweet 16 year old girl at the beginning of the show who was 1 of 11 siblings...3 of which are down syndrome kids. She made it through to Hollywood and has an opportunity to accomplish her dreams...Tear!...it's so touching!

Uh oh...another 16-year-old girl with a grandma who has Alzheimer's....I feel another sob session coming on!

Trading in my Scandinavian Heritage

Besides my insatiable appetite for tacos,
Hispanic culture is becoming more of a part of my life these days, making me regret not continuing Spanish classes in college.

It all started when I got my job with the national Girls Ministries Department at the Assemblies of God headquarters. My boss is Hispanic and fluent in Spanish and English — she's our life savor with some of the hard-to-understand phone calls we get from the field.

The other day she was out of the office but had forwarded me an email to take care of. The email was in Spanish. I cracked my knuckles and set in to interpret the email AND respond in Spanish. I was gunna make my boss proud of me.

I had been having a hard time getting the right combinations of keys to work on the keyboard to get all of the accent marks over the letters that are so commonly used in the Spanish language, so after several frustrating attempts I decided to leave it as it was and hoped the woman I was emailing would "get it." I finished my paragraph, beaming with pride of basically being on the road to fluently speaking Spanish, and copied and pasted it all into freetranslations.com...just to make sure I wasn't accidently cursing at her in anything I was saying.

That's when I learned something. Apparently there are a few words in the Spanish language that actually change their meaning when you don't include the appropriate accent marks. The word "años" is one such word. I was trying to tell this woman that I had taken 5 years of Spanish. Without the seemingly insignificant squiggle above the n, "ñ", I said something about...5 anuses.

Needless to say, flustered and blushing, I quickly hit the backspace key as fast as I could to clear that from my email.

Another hint of "Español" that I have in my life now is that our new house is on W. La Casa. I know the "W." kinda un-Spanish-ifies it, but the point is, a majority of my street name is Spanish.

The final hint is that Nick and I are going to be parents — to a tiny, white, fluffy maltipoo puppy we've named Luna, which is Spanish for "moon". We are SO excited! In case you're not connecting the dots yet, that is her in the picture above. She still lives with the breeder in Iowa because she's only 3 weeks old, but she'll be ours on Saturday, February 13th. What's funny and actually really pathetic, is that I'm completely in love with her already and I've never met her. I liken it to what pregnant mothers feel when they see their baby on an ultrasound for the first time — they unconditioally love someone they've never even met yet. I'm in no way saying I feel that to the SAME extent as I would my ACTUAL baby, but just a hint :) It's a dog, people, I understand.

And now, in light of this conversation, I'm going to make shredded chicken tacos tonight. I think that sounds good :)