Goodbye little red car!! Have fun building homes!

Last week the Habitat for Humanity peeps came and picked up my car. I donated it to their Cars for Homes program. I wasn’t as sad as I thought I would be to see it go. Actually, I was kind of relieved after all the fun and good times I’d had at the DMV the week before trying to get the title changed over into my name. But most of you have already heard that story. Or maybe the sadness wasn’t there because I’d been driving my new car for over a month and all things red and Ford had completely been erased from my mind and been replaced with blue and Honda. Who knows?

What I do know is that I loved that car! It took me and my friends all over the country and it never let me down. It came close to rear ending other cars about 237 times, but not once did it not stop just in time. It had a few scratches from its encounters with many a pole in the FDIC garage, but never complained. And it even laughed along with me when I locked my keys in it again and again. A car doesn’t get any better than that!

I had a great time cleaning it out last week and reminiscing about all the people who had been in and out of it throughout the years. The friends, the boyfriends, the family members, the girls I baby sit for who got such a kick out of the manual windows. I found a comb that belonged to cute Jeff who is a member of the “God uses cute guys to draw Anne closer to Himself” club. And lots of great mixed tapes that my friends made for me back in the middle and high school days. And my favorite find was a note from a French family at our church who saw my France sticker on the back of my car and wrote “Vous etes Francais aussi!” They thought I was French and that makes me very happy! Thankfully, I went back to Europe in 2005 and bought the same sticker at the exact same shop in Monaco (because I just didn’t want to by it in France), anticipating the fact that I’d soon have a new car and would need another France sticker. Now I have to find it so I can stick it on the Honda.

Anyway, the last 7.5 years and 83,808 miles were quite a fun ride! Can't wait to see where I'll be when I've got that many miles on the new car. Probably pushing forty, which is a crazy thought!

Let Go and Let God

Say your 10 year high school reunion is coming up in November and you'd really like to lose 5 pounds. Six months out, you tell yourself you'll work out 3-4 times a week and stop eating all the brownie mix. A few months go by and you realize you've gone through spurts of working out and eating well, followed by spurts of sitting on the couch and eating brownie mix. But you think to yourself "That's ok! I still have 3 months. And fall is here! Perfect for long jogs and bike rides outside." Then all of the sudden November rolls around and you discover that you weigh the exact same thing you have weighed for what feels like forever down to the .6 that always seems to follow the 1xx. So you say "whatever" about the whole losing weight idea and decide you'll wow your former high school peeps with your super personality and Liza Minnelli moves. Well, let me just tell you (because I am living proof) this is the exact moment that God steps in and makes you violently ill the week before your reunion. You spend the early part of the week returning (in a not so fun way) all the food you enjoyed over the weekend. And for the next three days you live off of Gatorade and saltines. You try to eat a banana one day because you really really want a banana, but this is not a good idea. So it's back to the saltines. When you finally get the energy to stand up without feeling dizzy, you get on the scale et voila! A number lower than you've seen in quite some time. So you laugh a little about how funny God can be. Then you say a little prayer that you'll actually make it to your reunion without passing out from all the fever.

Anne with an "E"

Some of you have left comments lately about the name of my blog so I think I need to set the record straight on where the name originated from. While I do love and appreciate Anne of Green Gables, my being Anne with and “E” came to be long before I knew who Anne Shirley was. Actually (and I think any Anne will attest to this) before I was even old enough to write my own name, I knew I was Anne with an “E” because I’d heard my Mom say it at to the receptionist at the dentist or pediatrician’s office or I received random birthday cards from little old ladies at my church who’d forgotten the “E” and I was smart enough to know that “Ann” was not my name. All that being said, I have proudly been an Anne with an “E” for as long as I can remember.

During my elementary years, I read several of the Anne of Green Gables books (can’t say that I’ve read them all) and certainly felt like Anne Shirley and I were kindred spirits. And of course now I own the first two movies. But then something amazing happened in my life sometime during the middle school years. I discovered Liza! I’ve talked about my Liza obsession before, so I won’t bore you with it now, but I will say that when Liza came into my life (sounds a bit like a conversion story, doesn’t it? haha) so did the song Liza with a “Z” (which was written for the made for TV concert of the same name). And you bet I could relate to Liza always having to tell everyone her name was Liza with a “Z” not Lisa with an “S” and although Ann without an “E” is not pronounced differently, it’s still annoying to always have to tell people.

Well, being the wannabe performer that I am, I decided that I would one day have a show (and theme song) called Anne with an “E” that would open on Broadway. To date, the show has only opened in my head, but I still have high hopes.

So here we are today with the Anne with an “E” blog. I’ve been thinking that the quote at the top doesn’t really give any information as to who I am, other than the fact that I love Jesus. So I’ve been toying around with what we’ll call a mission statement for my blog. My church’s mission statement is “Spreading a passion to love God and people above all else.” This of course comes from Matthew 2:36-40:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Somehow, the discussion that followed between Jesus and the Pharisees about the importance of finding some type of super star in the entertainment industry to obsess over (preferably one of the Broadway ilk) was left out of the Bible. I’m really not sure how this was overlooked, but who am I to question the Lord?

So I’m working on some kind of mission statement/blog theme sentence which you’ll hopefully see in the near future. It will be something along the lines of loving God, people and Liza above all else, but I need to make it catchier than that. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment! And go out and download some Liza tunes today!