Kimchi, not for me

This is Jones, my new dog. Isn't is WEIRD how much she looks like Daive??? I think it is. Ellie, one of the girls in the family I am living with/working for, got her, but it ends up now isn't a very good time for her to have a dog. So Jones is mine. Her and Daive get along very well. They are basically best friends. Jones has a lot of weird issues. For example, I took these pictures with my phone because (I'm SO not making this up) every time I pointed my digital camera at her, she slunk back all afraid and ran and hid under the bed. Bizarre. My dog is afraid of cameras. Whatever though, she's a great dog. I love her.

Ellie got a dog. After much internet searching (and between the two of us, I do mean MUCH) and a few visits to the local animal shelter, we found THE dog for this family. I wish I could share a picture with you, but I unfortunately cannot. Why, you ask? Because the dog is literally afraid of cameras. I don't know if it is the fact that it is something silver and shiny pointed at the poor thing or what, but three times now I've tried to take a picture of her, and she immediately goes and hides under my bed. To describe her though, imagine Daive, put into a morphing machine. The frame of her body is compacted and her legs are made shorter, her entire frame is widened, and then made taller than Daive. Doesn't make any sense at all, does it? Trust me, if you saw her, you'd totally get it. However, at this juncture, it doesn't look like you'll be seeing her anytime soon. A few points of interest though - she somehow ended up at a local animal control center, pregnant. They took her puppies away from her and euthanized them all. She cried for three days straight. When one of the volunteers from the no-kill shelter where we got her from stopped by, the workers at animal control begged her to take the dog. She has such a sweet disposition, and obviously a tender little canine heart. So that is how she came to be at the no-kill shelter. She was a strong heartworm positive, so she was spayed and treated for heartworms. She is afraid of going down stairs (so very very afraid), afraid of being carried, and afraid of men. Oh yes, and afraid of cameras. She loves food, hiding under the bed, and occasionally romping with Daive (before she retreats back to being under the bed again). She is obviously rubbing off on Daive, because just now I couldn't find her, and she was asleep under the papasan chair.

Nonetheless, this dog is such a sweetheart. She has these big brown eyes and floppy ears. She's a jewel. I'll be sure to upload pictures as soon as I'm able to take any. That's all for now.

Well, not so much the pancakes - I mean more the cooking, shopping, trying to stay organized kind of thing. So I got a little creative when I was making dinner tonight. This little heart-shaped pancake turned out nearly perfect, but definitely good enough for me. It was like Rorschach pancake night - there was this one that looked like Mickey Mouse, if Mickey Mouse got one of his ears a little too close to a ceiling fan. Anyway, it obviously doesn't take much to impress me, as this pancake rocked my own socks off. I had eaten earlier, so I wasn't hungry. However, one can't just give one's pancake heart away indiscriminately. I ended up giving it to Jeremiah, as he seemed sufficiently impressed as to deserve said pancake heart.
This is our garden! Abi and I planted this a few weeks ago, and it is coming along quite nicely. I cannot tell you how amazed I was when I saw the first little sprouts! It was an awesome moment! I think this is the first thing I've ever tried to grow.

Close up of the cucumbers.

Close up of the sunflowers.

It's 3:10 AM and I'm still awake. How very unspiritual of me, at least that's what some would say.

It's been an interesting day. An interesting week, too. I'm sure I could go back even more than that, but it would sound overly cryptic and annoy even me.

I'm kind of at this point where I'm trying to figure out what is next. I've heard the famous quote, "Wherever you are, be all there." I'm trying to do that, while at the same time be responsible. The reality is that I am a 26 year old single female (with a really cute dog), a bachelor's degree with no foreseeable usefulness (unless I wanted to go back to Korea to teach again, which I do NOT see happening) but that I really don't regret in the slightest, no established career, and nothing to tie me down after I'm finished here. I'd love to work with animals. Maybe be a vet tech? But I'm really not sure if my stomach can handle gory open wounds. With my experience in Korea, I could probably find a job teaching. I'm just not sure that's what I want to do. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's NOT what I want to do. Like to know the direction I'm leaning at the moment? Medical transcription. I could take online classes, and in nine months have the skills to land a job. Not only a job, but eventually a job where I could even work from home. Then I could have a whole heap of dogs, maybe get connected with a rescue group and foster some dogs. The biggest thing is to get a job where I can make money and work on paying down my student loans. Perhaps by the time they are paid off (around when I retire? Don't laugh, it's a possibility), I can then fulfill what could be a God-given dream to go teach Dalit pastors in India.

Would you like to know the point of this post? It's to share simply that I am feeling a little lost. I don't know the direction of my life at all. And if we could all work hard to spare any trite cliches or advice, I'd appreciate it. I know they would all be offered/given out of love, but I can recite cliches to myself all day long. So far, it's not helping.

Any guidance or advice (that is entirely devoid of said irritating cliches) though, would be most welcome. I love you guys (you know who you are). Sorry for the tone of this post. It's annoying me, actually, but now it is 3:34 AM and I've taken two benadryl and I'm too tired/lazy to go change it.