Bree Patton

Do any of you use tumblr or twitter? I seem to be more inclined to use those than LJ at the moment.

As some of you may know, my sister Elfin's newest baby, Trey, has been in the hospital for most of his life thus far since his birth on April 3rd. He's had two hernia surgeries and is constantly on oxygen, but he's home for now.

Her two oldest kids, Micah and Joli, earned tickets to Six Flags through a reading program at school, and tomorrow they're cashing in. That leaves my mom and me to watching their 2-year-old, Braeden, along with Trey. It'll be Elfin's first time to leave Trey with anyone, other than at the hospital. He's very difficult to feed since he has reflux, and because of his breathing problems he burns more calories than mommy's milk gives, so all of his bottles have to be fortified.

At some point after lunch/nap time, I plan to take Braeden to see "UP", but the rest of the day should be an interesting experience, to say the least. Pray for safety and sanity for us!

Hey guys. What’s up?

Here I am in yet another attempt to keep up a blog. Not saying it’ll work this time, but I’m trying it again in any case. I think it could be essential in the maintenance of my sanity, since I’m stuck at home quite a bit these days and have little to no daily contact with the outside world. So the purpose of this blog will be:

• to remind others of my existence,
• keep friends updated,
• get encouragement to do things besides procrastinate,
• and keep a log of my activity so I can look back and remember that I’ve done things.

To friends old and new, welcome back to Breeland!

Today, I'm older than I was yesterday.

It's been another year since I've posted on this thing.

How's everyone faring?

So yesterday was my 21st birthday.
My best friend flew in from Hawaii on the 2nd and was hanging out with me and her family here until yesterday. She threw me a surprise party at the coffee shop where I work. All my friends ran out and sprayed silly string all over me. It took me about two hours to get all of it out of my hair. It was awesome.
I got some very cool presents, including a plushroom that I got for myself, along with another one I got for my best friend Cat's belated birthday present. Notice the resemblance?

So I was seeing Cat off at the airport yesterday. It was the Tyler Texas airport. There is one terminal. There were about 12 people there. And you know who one of them was? John Schneider. Being a big Smallville fan, plus knowing he's a Christian, I decided to go talk to him. I didn't talk to him long since I saw he was about to eat lunch, but he asked my name and I told him it was my 21st birthday, and he wished me a happy birthday.
Then I took a picture with him.
I realized that he is very tall, and I am very white. And he's a really nice guy.

It was pretty much my best birthday ever.

So I guess I'll give all of you LJers a bit of a life-update on me!

Let's see... I work at a local coffee shop called "Rockwells," which is pretty cool. I just needed to get out of the house and I thought it would be a good way to meet people.
They have live music on Friday and Saturday nights, and my parents and I sang here a couple of times. The last time we sang, a guy from the Tyler newspaper was here, and he did an article on us (well, mostly on my dad. They were like, kindred spirits).

We're also working on a kid's project called "Play With Me, 1, 2, 3." It's 21 songs, counting from 1 to 20. Each song is about a number, animal, and movement, plus there's the theme song. Things have been working out in our favor, and we're going to be shooting a promotion music video, and our friend has already set us up with distribution in Wal-Mart. I'm hoping we'll get the music videos on one of the kids networks, like Noggin, as in betweens. There's also talk about it turning into a TV show, but we're tying not to get ahead of ourselves.
I'm designing all of the animal characters for the thing, and I'll probably be in all of the videos. My sister is going to be the star.

On other subjects, I'll be turning 21 in a couple of weeks. My best friend Cat is flying in from Hawaii to be here, even though there was a misunderstanding in buying the ticket and she's actually leaving on my birthday, haha. But it'll be great.

Any suggestions on things to do for a 21st birthday that don't involve alcohol or clubs?

This place still exists, yeah.
I have to remind myself of that every few months.

How is everyone?

I'm a little overdue, but here's a bit of an update on my adventures in Hawaii!

I was in fact there for the Big Earthquake (which wasn't as bad as the news made it out to be). I woke up, and my first thought was "somebody's dryer is off balance," and as soon as I remembered they didn't have a dryer, I thought "VOLCANO!" but shortly after that I settled on earthquake, which turned out to be the right choice. It wasn't all that scary, except that my friend Cat's sister called us from Texas and said "There's a tsunami headed your way!" at which point I got a little nervous. Once we realized that was a false alarm, everything was peaches and cream, except for the electricity being off for 11 hours. People in Honolulu do NOT know how to treat an intersection when the lights are out. Four way stop, people!

I had my first surfing experience. I managed to stand up after a few tries, but promptly fell down again. I wanted to give it another go, but we didn't get another chance while I was there.
Cat and I climbed up Diamond Head, which was fun. We went snorkeling at Hanama Bay and took an underwater camera - pretty fishies! Oh, and the COOLEST thing ever: one of the guys from Cat's church used to work at the Honolulu zoo, so he got us behind-the-scenes and we got to pet KOMODO DRAGONS! IT WAS SO AWESOME. There were three females, and they were so pretty and colorful; green, yellow and orange (they'd just finished shedding and were shiny and clean). It was my favorite part of my trip, although, being complete idiots we forgot to bring a camera.
Oh, and we got free Dip N Dots icecream because the guy thought we were VIPs, hehe!

I also got a couple of people interested in my art, which was cool. I did an Archie comic for one guy, and another guy who had a t-shirt company was interested in having me do some designs for them. We'll see if anything comes of that.

Anyway, I had many other adventures while I was there, and it was a grand ol' time. Definitely need to make that an annual trip.

I can't remember if I had been keeping LJ updated with my grandma who had cancer, but she died today. It was actually really peaceful; she just went to sleep and her body slowly turned off. The cancer had come back attacking her pituitary gland.
Her and my grandpa were great adventurers, taking my sister and I on trips across country while they hauled cars. Adventures we'll never forget. My childhood was like a dream spent seeing so many new things, spending time on their property in upstate New York fishing on their lake, watching the deer, and making cotton-filled nylon dolls with painted on faces with her. I was always excited to see their big blue truck with the trailer on the back, because it meant adventure.
She was a woman of prayer; she always prayed for me when I was sick or in need. When my uncle was a toddler, he was climbing up a tall shelf in the garage and fell off, smashing in his skull, and my grandma prayed for him and his head healed before her eyes, and he went right back to playing. My sister once had her tiny hand crushed in a heavy truck door, which the Lord also healed with my grandma's prayer. I probably don't even know a fraction of the people she has blessed with her prayer, but I'm sure the world is a little worse off without her.
I'll always remember one of the last few phone conversations I had with her, when she told me how much she loved me and respected me, because I was a woman of God. She inspired me to be a woman of God.
I'll miss you madly, Granny-Guts. I wish I had spent more time telling you how dear you were to me.


Joanne Durnal
sister, wife, prayer-warrior, mother to 3, yet mother to all.

So Cat has internet now!
We've been having a blast here in Honolulu. She has to work at Red Lobster some nights, but the people from church have been so nice, and invite me out with them even when Cat's not there. A girl named Christina who goes to UH invited me to go to a play that she had to see for school. It was a pirate play. Let me tell you, I felt like I was 5 years old again. I was laughing and singing along to "Up She Rises" with the best of them. The Captain even commented that he had heard us singing, and that we had nice voices (haha!). Of course being the blustering idiot that I am, I tried to make a joke about something which came out VERY wrong, and got a crude comment from him about "rocking the boat" in return. I was so embarrassed.
So far as touristy things go, we've been to the beach and the zoo, climbed Diamond Head crater, went to a sushi bar (it's so cool with the rotating plates), and on Saturday Cat is going to teach me how to surf. Or so she thinks. We'll see how that goes.
I've also played softball with the church a couple of times. It didn't go as badly as I had anticipated. I could quite possibly be the world's worst catcher, though.

I'm going to be sad to return home to my hermit-like seclusion of East Texas. The people here are so nice, and I'm kind of enjoying being social on a regular basis. But you do what you gotta do, I guess.

About to pass out, but still packing for the 10 hour flight to Hawaii tomorrow (paired with the 2 hour drive to the airport; my but is going to be sore).
My friend Cat is trying to get her internet hooked up right now, but if you don't hear from me then you'll know she failed.
Oh yeah
Finished season 2 of Lost
AHHGG
Don't know if I can wait another year before the next season comes out on DVD.

See you all on October 20th. :)

Not the end of the dog story after all.
My mom found the two adults chasing a deer across the road while she was on her way to work.
Now, I have to ponder this for a moment. Maybe dog food isn't as tasty as venison, but if I were a dog, and I had the option of steady meals or chasing down dear, I'd pick the former.
When the male heard my mom's voice, he immediately ran over to the car, and when she got out he was so happy he was jumping up on her (which is something, since he's usually waaay laid back). Mom brought them back home again, we fed 'em up, and they're happily lulling in the dirt. But no puppies.

We've figured out from their behavior that the female is the wanderer. We're calling her Gypsy. When she disappeared the first time, it was the male that went out and got her and brought her and the puppies back to the house. The next morning, when the mom and pups were gone, he didn't leave until my mom had already gotten up and said hello to him. He clearly knows a good thing when he sees it, but he's also completely devoted to Gypsy.
They're quite literally a pack of dogs, but he goes against the whole "Alpha Male" thing. Sure, he takes the first two bites when we feed them, but after that he lays down and waits until Gypsy is done before he'll eat. This morning, Gypsy chased one of our cats, and while my sister was scolding her, the male physically forced himself between Gypsy and her, and began licking my sister's hand, as if in apology. It's clear that he takes very good care of her, and that he's very smart. We're calling him Orson, after the super-intelligent black lab mix from Dean Koontz's "Seize the Night."

Unfortunately, we don't know what to do about the puppies. We think they must have them stashed in a den somewhere, but we're not sure why they brought them here the first time or if they'll do it again. We're hesitant to restrain either of the parents, because we don't know what would happen to the puppies if we did. We don't want to find them a home without knowing where the puppies are.
I'd really, really really like to keep them, but we can't afford a fence, and I don't see any other way to keep Gypsy from wandering, and when she wanders, Orson goes out to find her and take care of her.
So the best we can hope and pray for is that they bring the puppies back here, at which point we can restrain Gypsy on a lead line or something until we can find them all a home with a fence.
This is just getting hilariously out of hand. Who's writing this story, and why am I in it?

Apparently we misunderstood the dog's gesture of bringing their puppies over to our house. We thought they had decided to move in, but it appears that it was more along the lines of introducing us to the Rest Of The Family before heading out, 'cause they all left yesterday morning and haven't been back since. It's possible that they'll be back, and the mom and pop both have collars with rabies tags on them now, so who knows? Maybe they just needed a little tender love'n care before going on their merry way. I just hope wherever they're headed is a good home that loves them!

On a totally different note: LOST SEASON 2 ON DVD YAY. <3

So a funny thing happened.

A week ago, last Saturday, my sister Lorien was out walking by the road. While she was out she spotted two dogs, a black lab-looking male and a yellow female by the side of the road. They shied away at fist, but as soon as she started talking to them they came up to her. Without any more encouraging, they proceeded to follow her all the way home.
They were both extremely skinny, and had obviously been strays (probably drop-offs; people always drop off dogs in the country side) for some time. We noticed right away that they were very friendly towards people and towards each other. Even though they were both bags of bones, when we fed them in one bowl the male would always wait until the female was done eating before he would eat.
The weird thing about them was that every morning when we woke up they would both be gone, and wouldn't return until late in the morning, sometimes 11 or noon. After that they would stay all day until the next morning, when they'd disappear again.
It was a holiday weekend, so on Tuesday when the vet opened we took them in to get checked up. We got 'em shots and some worming medicine, and we put up a "Free to a Good Home" poster.
The next morning, only the male came back.
We weren't sure if something had happened to her, or if maybe she was just more of a wandering soul than the male was, but Wednesday, Thursday and Friday passed without a sign of her.
This morning, the male was gone again when we woke up. We figured he was just on his daily rounds, but at about 11:30 or 12 I heard my mom shout from outside, "The female's back! And she brought two more dogs with her!" and we all ran outside to check it out.
And what did we find? Not only the male and the female, but two roughly five-month old male puppies, one black, and one yellow.
"She went to go get her puppies!" somebody cried. We were all amazed.
Slowly we began piecing things together. "When they left every morning..." one said, "...they must have been going to check on their puppies!" another finished.
So we all stood outside for some time, cooing and feeding this happy family of four who had trusted us enough to move their family into our front lawn.

Splitting them up is out of the question, but finding all four a home together will be a challenge. Unless my dad actually allows us to keep them.

This started out as a comment on simplechristian's journal entry here: Saved = Sinner No More?, but ended up being way, WAY longer than I anticipated and turned into a kind of theological rambling, so I decided to post it here.

( Love and Sin: definitions and theological thoughts )

For so few questions, the complete results were surprisingly accurate.


My Personality

Neuroticism	37
Extraversion	35
Openness To Experience	29
Agreeableness	89
Conscientiousness	66

Test Yourself Compare Yourself View Full Report Bebo, MySpace Layouts and hi5 by Pulseware Survey Software

Like everyone else, I was terribly sorry to hear of the death of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20349888-2,00.html
Poor guy. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I haven't seen rain at my house in months. Since spring, maybe. If I wasn't already dressed for work, I'd go dance in it.