Glory to God in the highest!

Sing sweet and low your lullaby
till angels sing, "Amen."
A mother tonight is rocking
A cradle in Bethlehem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And I celebrate the day
that You were born to die
so I might one day pray for You to save my life.

the eve of our Saviour's birth

I'm sitting in the kitchen surrounded by sugar cookies and gingerbread boys dotted with little red candies. I sit here because through the glass doors in the kitchen I can see the snow falling. I love the snow. What is it about snow that makes me feel such a quiet gladness? What is it about walking through the snow, watching the snow, lying in the snow, that makes me feel such a still happiness? The war movie-watcher in me remembers scenes of battles in the snow, frost bite and gunfire and exploding shells breaking the silence and peace of the snow. The numbness in my fingers and toes while shoveling the driveway gives me just a taste of what those men must have felt, and forces me to respect and admiration and gratefulness. The writer in me tries to document and analyze the feeling I have at the sight of snow. It's always a futile attempt.

Still, still, still one can hear the falling snow. For all is hushed, the world is sleeping; Holy Star is vigil keeping. Still, still, still, one can hear the falling snow.

This year Christmas has been more about Jesus than is has all the years before. The focus hasn't been so much on presents and traditions, since parts of my family are absent and the traditions have sort of shattered and been swept under the rug. So Christmas morning won't be spent waiting at the top of the stairs for Dad to get his camera ready, like the previous 21 years of Christmases. Instead of the bustle of wrapping paper flying and telling Kitty to stop eating the ribbons, I can spend more time thinking about why Christmas even exists. "'The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel'—which means, 'God with us.'"

My anticipatory prayer on the eve of our Savior's birth: O come, o come Immanuel!

"thanks" doesn't even come close

Tonight I sat in the Methodist church downtown Wilmore as a brass band played Christmas carols and ribboned wreaths hung on the walls. I thought of the fact that this was my third year sitting in this church, letting my hands and feet warm after long walks up and down the street, ducking in and out of shops to eat cookies and drink hot chocolate. The last line of Bing Crosby singing "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" came to my mind, and I agreed: Sure, it's Christmas once more.

Afterward, I turned on the Christmas lights in my room and curled up on my couch, listening to my "Solemn Christmas Music" playlist. Mannheim Steamroller's "Still, Still, Still" came on, and I was reminded of what Christmas really is. Buttons and signs in peoples' yards declare "Jesus is the reason for the season!" but how often I forget the solemnity of Christmas.

Still, still, still
tis the eve of our Savior's birth

It reminds me of Psalm 46:10, "Be still, and know that I am God." Still. Jesus commanded the wind and the waves to Quiet! be still, but I think He also commands us to be still. Just be still. Amidst the Christmas carols and traditions and foods and shopping and movies....be still, and know who Jesus is. "'The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel'—which means, 'God with us'" (Matthew 1:23).

I love when the angel appears to the shepherds in Luke 2, and in verses 13-14 it says, "Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.'" I can't imagine being those shepherds when that heavenly host appeared praising God. It reminds me of the heavenly host in Revelation 5:11-12, "Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousands times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they sang, 'Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!'"

I just love that we join in with that. The shepherds joined in with that then, we join in with that now, and when we get to heaven, we will join in with that!

Ding dong merrily on high, in the heaven the bells are ringing
Ding dong merrily the sky is riven with angels singing
Gloria, hosanna in excelsis!
Even so, here below, below, let steeple bell be swungen,
and i-o, i-o, i-o by priest and people sungen!
Gloria, hosanna in excelsis!

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).

an allegory

Once upon a time there lived a young, naive girl who was leaving her family on a long, dangerous adventure. She packed her bags, and as she stepped foot out of her door and into the world, her mother gave her a precious gift. "Use this," she said, "when you most need it." The young girl saw what it was. It had been in the family for many, many years, and by taking it with her, she felt as if a part of her home was with her as she set out on her journey. When she needed it most, it was there to be used, and she felt the warmth of her home with every use.

A few weeks later someone stole it. Moral of the story: I want my iron back. Whoever has it, I will find you, and if it turns out you have my watch, my book light, and my Macy's gloves, I will shoot you in the knees, Die Hard style.

Do you think it's just coincidence that Bruce Willis and Bruce Wayne have such similar names?

get behind me, Satan

I feel like I'm trying to quit smoking and people keep blowing cigarette smoke in my face. I'm not sure if I've ever been this tempted to listen to Christmas music this early in the year. I keep listening to soundtracks from The Family Stone and Little Women in attempts to assuage my needy Christmas spirit. My mom just sent me my favorite cookies (which we always bake at Christmastime) and Holiday Inn (Irving Berlin's debut of "White Christmas" - but it doesn't count as a Christmas movie). I am going to eat and watch and think about how there are only 27 days until Thanksgiving break.

bleat

"...the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes....they exchanged their Glory for something disgraceful....they have deserted the Lord....they are unfaithful to their God....The Israelites are stubborn, like a stubborn heifer. How then can the Lord pasture them like lambs in a meadow?" (Hosea 3:1; 4:7, 10, 12, 16).

I wrote in the margins of my Bible: It is completely the choice of the Israelites to be far from God. God is the one loving them, He is not the one deserting them, He is not the one being unfaithful, He is not the one being stubborn. He wants to pasture them like lambs in a meadow. Look at Isaiah 40:11, "He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart." All we have to do is let Him. Do you ever feel like you want to be strong for God? That He's disappointed if you're weak? I do. All the time. But that's not at all what He wants. How can He carry the lamb close to his heart - which is where I want to be - if the lamb keeps kicking and struggling to prove how capable it is? It takes will to be far from God, but surrender to be near Him. I need to be reminded that He actually wants me to be near Him: "But now, this is what the Lord says--he who created you, he who formed you: 'Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine'" (Isaiah 43:1).

Who could love you, desire you, miss you, know you, want you, more than He who created you?

Please forgive me for time that I've wasted
I'm a doubting Thomas
I'll take Your promise
Though I know nothing's safe
Oh me of little faith
~ Nickel Creek

musings

It makes me sad that someone stole my iron. My last name is printed in big purple letters down the side, so unless someone else has the same big purple last name as I do and took it by mistake, there is no reason why he should have stolen my iron.

It also makes me sad that the books the library sold in their book sale had "DISCARD" stamped in the inside cover. It's like going to an orphanage and stamping "DISCARD" all over the children. How would you like it blatantly printed across your forehead that you're not wanted?

It makes me happy that this weekend I'm going "home" to see my parents and my friends, the latter of which I haven't seen since May and don't know when I'll see again. Next weekend is Vineyard Community Church's "Vinefest" (with hay rides and tackle football and grilled foods), and the weekend after that is a possible Chicago trip with Leiza. Yay.

It also makes me happy that it's autumn, and I wrote an ode to the way the football field looks when the sun is setting on it and casts shadows to the 30-yard line. Glistening helmets, spiraling pigskins, you look happy to meet me.

The chapel speaker yesterday tried to convince us that a relationship with God is not enough, and we, as humans, need human relationships. I was not pleased as he continuously looked out at the auditorium and stated, "God is not enough!" If that's the case, what kind of God is He, who can't fulfill all our needs with only Himself? Not a god I'd want to serve.

Epitomes of autumn in which I have to this moment participated:
~ Anne of Green Gables
~ homemade apple pie
~ ubiquitous pumpkin
~ the marriage of cinnamon and my senses
~ leaf crunching
~ football
~ season premieres of Pushing Daisies, The Office, and House
~ blue skies smiling at me; nothing but blue skies do I see

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns. ~ George Elliot

((Not quite as good as my ode to football...but okay nonetheless.))

sometimes nothing's a pretty cool hand

I think it's one of the saddest days in history.























January 26, 1925 - September 26, 2008

the fall of man

Fall is in the air. Can you feel it? I can't. But here's proof:

~ Starbucks has begun to serve pumpkin spice lattes again.
~ Olay is reissuing their Winter Retreat body wash that disappeared during the summer, but makes my arms (and probably feet, too, but I tend to notice it less) smell like vanilla.
~ Shane & Shane sang "Oh Holy Night" off their in-the-works Christmas album at their "free fall concert" in front of the seminary last night. Shane & Shane and Christmas music is an ethereal combination.
~ Game 1 of football season was Thursday night. Tomorrow promises to be a good day.
~ It's not 90 degrees today.

My good friend Sarah taught me a valuable lesson the other day. I merely asked her one lesson God taught her while she served in Africa this summer, and she answered, "God is good." I don't know about you, but I've heard that far too often.
Pastor: God is good--
Congregation: --all the time!
And I think my problem stems from the situations in which I've heard people say it. "God really pulled me through it. He is so good." But what if He hadn't pulled you through it? What if you had died, or been maimed, or lost your house or family or shelves of books? Would God still have been good?

Too often I base the character of God off of what I am going through. I feel alone, so God is far. I feel sad, so God has abandoned me. But just because I am scared doesn't mean God isn't comfort. Just because I am unhappy doesn't mean God isn't joy. "God is good" is a fact that doesn't change with the way I feel. It's like a tree, firmly planted in the soil, whose leaves change every fall and spring. Just because the leaves turn orange and fall off doesn't mean the tree has changed in any way. It's the leaves who change, not the tree. God is good. It's who God is, not the circumstance or situation with which I am dealing.

God loves us, wants to heal us, save us, be near us, and because of this I think I think I deserve those things. Why won't You heal me? Why won't You save me? But I've come to realize, it isn't about me. The people in the Old Testament seem to grasp this concept and that of God's goodness, even before Jesus. In 1 Chronicles 20, Joab is about to attack the Ammonites, and he tells his men in verse 12, "Be strong and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our God. The Lord will do what is good in his sight."

That's it! They trust the Lord to do what is good in his sight. They might not understand why. They might die! But it isn't up to them. It's up to the Lord. They accept that. And whatever happens, is good. Like Shane Bernard shared last night, Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego told Nebuchadnezzar, "'If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up'" (Daniel 3:17-18). Even if he does not! It's not about US, they're saying. It's about the true King, about His plans, His reign, worshiping Him.

To me, it seems that we should serve God simply because He is Creator and majestic and a thousand other adjectives. But He is also loving and good and wants to be in relationship with us. But that doesn't mean everything will always go our way. Jesus said in John 16, "'In this world you will have trouble.'" WILL! Not may, or could, or perhaps will, but will. "'In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.'" The verse preceeding that declares that Jesus has told us this so that, in Him, we may have peace. In Him, not in this world. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).

I don't know if any of this makes sense. I praise God for who He is, not for what good is going on in my life. I praise God for who He is, not because I'm happy right now. "God is good" doesn't mean "everything in my life is going good right now" (excuse the incorrect grammar). God is good, period. God is good.

I don't feel like doing homework.

invasion of the body snatchers

I've learned a lot about myself this summer that I didn't really know before, or maybe just didn't realize. I've learned that

+ I like the color pink.
+ I have a favorite author. (Three, actually: E.M. Forster's dialog leaves me wanting an entire novel of nothing but, Jerry Spinelli creates prose and characters like God created butterflies (effortlessly, colorfully, and so real), and Louisa May Alcott taps into every emotion my little heart beats.)
+ I don't like bugs. (I've always considered myself a fairly reasonable female, not flighty or fidgety around crawly things, but one night I lay in bed looking at my bookshelves before turning off the light (I often do this), when a spot on the wall caught my eye. "Mommyyyyy," I called in a whiny voice to my mother, who was on the computer down the hall, "there's a spider on my ceiling." She replied, "Your father is going to have to get it." Dad had gone to bed already and his door was closed. I considered this a moment, then called whiningly, "Dadddyyyyy." He didn't stir, so my mom eventually came and got it. I thought my reluctance to get rid of the spider might disclose a hidden dislike for insects, but if that didn't, the invasion last night certainly did. My room was the Hurtgen Forest, with speedy black beetles crawling all over instead of Germans. They kept crawling over my blankets as I lay in bed reading, and I kept calling Mom into my room to dispose of them. Once I leaped out of bed as one raced towards my pillow, and as I stood in the doorway waiting for Mom, one flew - flew! - onto my bedspread. Needless to say, I slept in the guest room feeling like a Polish refugee escaping Hitler's troops. I dreamed I opened my eyes and there were beetles crawling all over the ceiling. I woke up standing in the middle of the room with my heart thumping. Today as I relayed the story to Dad (who should have been my Russian liberators, but instead was slumbering safely in his own room), he asked, "How many were there? Two?" "Uh, two??" I said. "Try six." "Oh," he said, ever wittily, "because there are four right there on the wall." Ha, ha, Dad. John, Paul, George, and Ringo aren't squashable, Beatle though they be.)
+ I love, love, love Chicago. (On State Street, that great street, I just wanna say: They do things that they don't do on Broadway.)
+ I like baseball. It seems to epitomize summer.
+ I miss Ohio.

I've discovered a few things and people this summer, too. My discoveries include

+ A young, swoon-inducing Frank Sinatra.
+ Malted milk powder.
+ Helen Forrest's big band era.
+ 1950s & 60s Jack Lemmon. (He sends me into fits of giggles and sighs.)
+ Jerry Spinelli's other books.
+ John Keats's pathetic fallacy! (The sun kissed away the morning's tears. You don't get much more pathetically fallicilic than that.)
+ A Humphrey Bogart movie I actually like. (I want to join the mob.)

Meanwhile

+ I still love Turner Classic Movies more than...almost anything.
+ I am recognized at the Plymouth Public Library.
+ It's football season again.
+ Summer's over, and to quote Siggy from What About Bob?, "Summer, fall, time to go...."

slice of life, a la mode

My dad handed me an article today about a hand held device where one can access the Internet and buy books online, reading them on the tiny screen. I felt my insides being wrung like a dishcloth. The day books are replaced with computers I will hang myself from the nearest library's roof. Half the enjoyment of reading a book is holding it in your hands, smelling the pages, feeling the cover fluctuate in your hands like a wave in the ocean, noticing accidental ink splotches in the margins. There's something about seeing words on paper that makes me feel as though something has just been created that didn't exist before. One can write, "There once lived a man named Joe," and all of a sudden Joe once lived, where before he didn't. A new character and personality exists, who has likes and dislikes and a family, if you write one for him. It's not just a collection of books I have on my bookshelves. I have a bookshelf of lives between bindings. Computers are the end of life as we know it.

"'What shall I do with all my books?' was the question; and the answer, 'Read them,' sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will...If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition." ~ Winston Churchill

I'm drinking coffee, and it just passed that perfect temperature where it's not hot enough anymore to singe off the flavor, but isn't cool enough to fail to warm your toes. It's reaching the latter stage and I still have half a mug left.

The cat slept with me last night for the first time since September. She jumped up on my bed without so much as a meow of inquiry, then felt around on my blankets as if she had every right, and laid down before I had a chance to protest. "Kitty," I said, lowering my Steve Kluger book (who added a homosexual character to his latest novel and therefore makes it very difficult for me to enjoy), "what are you doing?" She didn't even look at me, but if she were to answer I imagine she would've said something like, "What?" with an attitude.

I've decided to live the life of Jo March, and inherit a large estate from a cranky aunt to fill with raucous boys who give me lots of grist for the writing mill, when I'm not teaching them wise lessons and punishing them for their scrapes by tying them to the bedpost. (Actually it was Nan, a little girl, whom Jo tied to the bedpost. But still.) "I really don't know which I like best, writing or boys" (Little Men, chapter 3).

farewell to you Indian Summer

Yesterday I stepped into the shower with dirty feet from running through the grass barefooted, and I remembered drawing brown designs on the bathtub floor with my toe as a kid when my feet were dirty. The water stung the tiny cuts on my elbows from the grass when I did a somersault to retrieve a Frisbee. My fingers were swollen from the heat and my ball glove, making my hands sweat and smell like leather. It was humid and hot and the sun made my face red and my legs sticky. This was summer.

I'm sorry to see it go. I seem to be having attacks of Christmas anticipation - accidentally hearing the first few bars of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," smelling cinnamon pumpkin spiced candles, observing the clerk in Hobby Lobby string white lights on their faux pine trees - and I find myself wishing the last few weeks of this summer away. How have I spent it? Sick, at a funeral, dodging mosquitoes, avoiding the heat, working over 40 hours a week in a windowless basement. It's easy to wish for football and pumpkin pie season when the windows are closed and the air conditioning is blasting, but I realized I've missed all the beauties of summer. Is this what being an adult means? I'm not willing to give up dirtied feet so I can be grown up. Is adulthood one long winter?

I do look forward to winter. In fact, I prefer December to August. I think it's more of a realization of passing time that bothers me, that unsatisfied feeling I have at the end of the summer that no relationships were strengthened and only a handful of books were read, none of them while lying out in the sun with a sprinkler squirting a droplet or two in my direction. I ate a piece of banana cake today and found it flavorless, so I ate a little more as if quantity would somehow make up for quality. That's how I feel about this summer. It has lacked, and I want to drag it out as if with just a little more of it I'll find what was missing and feel completed.

Summer, you old Indian summer,
You're the tear that comes after June-time laughter
You see so many dreams that don't come true
Dreams we fashioned when summertime was new

They're writing songs of love, but not for me

I glanced at the calendar in the kitchen today to see that my grandparents will celebrate their 73rd wedding anniversary this month. 73 years! How many people even live that long?

Curious, I dug through a box of photos, and found so many that had me smiling, and a few that made my heart sad, to see how youth has turned to old age, to see their faces and know just a little of how their lives were lived and what was in their hearts.

My grandmother, Festna, in 1942. She wrote everything on the backs of her pictures, and on this one she wrote: "Festna Lawrence, taken at the 2nd turn in the road from the house going toward Diamond Springs Elizabeth, Ark. Age 24. Taken in Baxter Co." I wonder what she found so fascinating about the rocks.

"Homer Lawrence, Pfc. Jewell L. Lawrence 37257154. Camp Shelby, Miss, just home on a furlough, from Alaska. Taken in June 1945 at Arthur Green's place at Beedeville Ark." My grandpa's the one on the left. The "L" stands for Lee, which is what he goes by. He would've been 32 in this picture.

Left: "Mrs. Festna Lawrence. Taken in 1945. I sent this to Lee while serving in the US Army in Germany." She's a large part Native American. Can you tell?

Right: My grandfather holding my mother, my uncle Curt on the left and my uncle Jerry on the right, in 1956.

My grandma married my grandpa when she was 17 to escape her abusive father, and my grandpa, at 22 and growing up with a hobo father who taught him how to jump trains, simply wanted someone to take care of his home. They were married 10 years before having any children, and while in France during WWII, my grandfather wanted to divorce my grandma for a woman he met in Paris. He didn't; I figured it out one summer sleeping in my mother's old room at my grandparents' house, and my uncle Jerry was born 9 months exactly after my grandpa returned home from the war.

I used to sit next to my grandpa on the couch and watch Wheel of Fortune with him, work on crossword puzzles, ride with him into town for a newspaper in his white pickup truck. I used to sit on the edge of his bed, his room smelling of mothballs and dust, as he finger picked "Silent Night" on his guitar. Now my grandpa, at 95 this August, doesn't remember who my mother is, or that he was ever in a war. I hate the time that passes.

Hymn to the Fallen

This morning feels very, very long ago indeed. I went to bed at 12:30 last night, waking 3 hours later to take my parents and brother to the Milwaukee airport, where they flew to Idaho to visit my oldest brother, whom I have seen once for a few hours in the past 3 years. It's been a day to romanticize about, starting with a sunrise through the van windows that I described in my journal as making me feel "touched by God's fingertips just as the clouds were with rays of light. To be such dusky blue and filled with pink and peach and glorious white is a transformation of sheer brilliance, and I marveled at it, both in myself and the sky....God somehow seems nearer in that peaceful transition, the calm before the day begins. I love His nearness."

After leaving my family at the airport, I drove to Bayshore Town Center and parked behind the Cheesecake Factory in anticipation of its opening at 11 a.m. Five hours was a long time to wait, but Milwaukee is almost an hour away and I wanted to take advantage of my being there, for "I shall not pass this way again." (If this blog were a Barnes & Noble Classic, it would have a little asterisk next to that quote and a footnote explaining that it derives from a poem I don't even remember reading, save for that one line. Only B&N would go into more detail than that. Once in Persuasion they defined the word "graceful." Uh, if the reader doesn't know the definition of graceful, he probably shouldn't be reading Jane Austen.)

Speaking of Barnes & Noble, it was about 20 steps down from the Cheesecake Factory, and opened 2 hours earlier! So only to wait from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., I read my Bible (the boys in Acts amaze me to no end), took a nap in the back of the van with my pillow and blanket (you'd think after 3 hours of sleep I would've slept longer than a half an hour, but I think the radiance from the Factory flowed through my veins), journaled, and emerged from the van at 8:30 to meander around the town center. I browsed Kohl's (it being the only thing open), telling the cashier, "I wasn't going to buy anything, but then I saw how bored you were and thought I better," then turned the corner at 9:03 to enter Barnes & Noble. I wish I could explain the joy that fills my heart upon beholding B&N. My breath caught in my throat when I realized it was two stories. The utter joy.

I sat with my knees and back resting against opposite arms of a cushy chair by a second story window, the morning light streaming onto the floor. A lady sat down next to me, a man a few chairs away, and a pre-teen boy and teenage girl across from me. I could only read a chapter before the high-pitched chatter of the girl on her cell phone drove me to distraction, and I abandoned my relaxation to purchase my items and retreat. (Didn't I sound like Jane Austen just then? What does "relaxation" mean??) I walked out with Barnes & Noble Classics of Howards End (I think E.M. Forster is vast becoming a favorite of mine), Wives and Daughters (I had no intentions of buying Elizabeth Gaskell's unfinished novel [she died before she could finish it], but it was so luscious and pink that I couldn't put it back on the shelf), and Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, to me, is like those chocolate chip cookies that you don't really like, but you keep eating them anyway, and you never find out why. What does "cookies" mean??). I love "buy 2 get the 3rd free" days at Barnes & Noble.

Trader Joe's was next on my list, where I resisted organic fruit and spinach lasagna and grabbed a bag of whole grain pretzels I first sampled at Annie's apartment in May. I decided to pass on the chocolate covered soybeans, though. Sorry, Annie.

Upon passing Bath & Body Works, from somewhere in the deep cavernous recesses of my mind I pulled the memory of Mrs. Jespersen's hand soap, which I remember loving the smell of over spring break. So I entered the store, not remembering what it was and smelling every bottle I came across until I recognized the scent of Japanese Cherry Blossom. Rubbing it on my hands brought back chocolate cake and singing by the piano and Enchanted and overflowing toilets and tired feet after hours of walking around big, cold, and windy cities. Of course, on the path of finding Cherry Blossom, I also found Plumeria, which was sweet and feminine and summery, and made me think of pink parasols and canoes, for some reason. I couldn't choose between the scent of memories made and the scent of memories to be made, so I resolved to shell out the cabbage for both bottles. Turns out they were on sale (wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles) and I saved a whopping $11. Golly gee whiz Pete cow Sam Hill.

So with my Connecticut in a Bottle and Scent of 1910 (which I affectionately nicknamed them) in tow, I finally entered the Cheesecake Factory. I took my piece of heaven and carefully tucked it into my pre-prepared cooler in the van with the care of buckling a little child into a car seat, and headed for home. I thought about my day, and remembered the tragic sight at 4:15 this morning when we'd pulled out: my dad had stuffed our old G.I. Joe case we've stored our plastic toys in since the womb into the green garbage can at the end of the driveway. I had fretted over its demise, wishing I would've known it was there earlier so I could've saved it to store journals or letters or simply save a box of memories from being tossed into a landfill. So when I remembered it on my drive home, I suddenly became anxious to return home before the garbage men had their way with it. I wondered how the police officer would take it when I explained the reason I was speeding was to dig a wooden case with a G.I. Joe decal on it out of our trash. "Ah," he'd respond, "American heroes." Of course he'd understand. Policemen themselves are American heroes.

Still a ways from my house, I saw that trash cans and bags were still piled at the end of peoples' driveways. I've never been so happy to see garbage before. I wasn't soothed until I had pulled into my driveway and plucked the dusty, worn, half-falling-apart case from its plastic green coffin. I opened it for nostalgia's sake, releasing the scent of Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spider-Men and G.I. Joes, though it was empty now of all but a few dust balls and cobwebs. I'll clean it off and find something to put in it, and I'll remember the sound and feel of our childhood hands rustling over their plastic action figure bodies with loose joints at the knees and worn paint on their feet and hands, as we searched for the right sword or torch or mask to equip our men. I'm not a pack rat, by any means, but there are some things that should just not be gotten rid of.

However romantic my day has been, I sit here now in an empty house pitying my loneliness. My cheesecake was eaten to a Jimmy Stewart movie, and the cat won't answer my conversation starters. ("Wouldn't it stink if I fell down the stairs? No one would know I was here." "I'm going downstairs. The DVD player won't work." "I will not feed you tuna fish, so don't bother asking.") I guess listening to war movie themes (We Were Soldiers is probably the most depressing) and songs like "Alone Again, Naturally" and "Mr. Lonely" doesn't help my mood much. I don't think I was meant to be alone. And this is only day 1 of 11.

My hands smell like spring break.

Adventures in Laundering

Funny thing is, I have no adventures in laundering. Not even a funny anecdote. I go to work at 12, I work for 8 1/2 hours until my feet hurt so bad I can hardly stand, and I come home and go to bed. I pass my time at work while folding towels (whose rough exteriors are scraping the fingerprints off my thumbs) by singing songs and imagining novel characters and making up a new set of 7 dwarfs with my coworkers (because I have those now). (If you see a new Disney movie out starring Baldy, Drippy, Sniffly, Blingy, Krispy, and a few others, you know someone famous.)

I spend my time before work watching the Food Network (and shows I recorded off of Food Network the night before), watching movies (Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart seem to be common threads in the movie-themed bedspread of my life), reading books (out of the four Jane Austen books I've read, Persuasion was the only one I didn't find boring, so that's the one I'm reading again), and being off my feet as much as possible. On my days off, I bake (bran muffins and an Alton Brown-inspired cheesecake that turned out terribly wrong) and watch more movies and read more books.

But I can now fold a fitted sheet like nobody's business. King size is my favorite, because I'm king size, if you know what I'm sayin'. (I don't.)

Back to Jimmy Stewart: his birthday was a few weeks ago. He would've been 100. I remember when he died, we were in a hotel on our way to Florida for vacation. Dad had bought mango ice cream and Mom was upset because why did he always have to try unusual things? She's a vanilla kind of gal. We were watching the news and I thought how unfortunate it was that he had died. But I was only 10, so the sadness didn't linger long. I liked the mango ice cream.

I have Born to Dance recorded off of TCM from sometime last summer, and I watch this scene over and over, because it just thrills me. (My favorite part is: "The way they chase after me, babe, it's a crime, and the way I make love is an art. So let's find a corner and start. What'd'ya say?")
I watched Destry Rides Again the other day for the first time since probably 10th grade. Herr showed it to us in German class, though I'm not sure why. The only thing German about it is Marlene Dietrich, who sings absolutely atrociously. Have a listen, and cringe. The movie's fantastic, though.

I'm also in love with Frank Sinatra. But I think I've already mentioned that a few times. The library is fast becoming a place of worship with dozens of classic movies at the tip of my library card. And when I can't make it, I simply worship at home with TCM. (My, aren't I being sacrilegious this morning?)

I've been reading quite a few books that are either about or take place during WWII. In Steve Kluger's Yank, he includes actual letters from soldiers to the magazine Yank. This one is my personal favorite thus far:

I don't know who started this idea if pinups, but they say that it is supposed to help keep up the morale of the servicemen, or something like that. Here is my idea of the help it is. In the first place, I would say that 24 out of 25 of the men in the service are either married or have a girl at home whom they respect and intend to marry as soon as this war is over....How many of you GIs would like to go home and find the room of your wife or girlfriend covered with pictures of a guy stepping out of a bathtub, draped only in a skimpy little towel, or see the walls covered with the pictures of a shorts advertisement or such pictures? None of you would. Then why keep a lot of junk hanging around and kid yourself about keeping up morale?...I would much rather wake up in the morning and see a picture of a P-51 or 39 hanging above my bed or over the picture of my wife, whom I think is the best-looking girl in the world, than of some dame who has been kidded into or highly paid for posing for these pictures.
-Pfc. Joseph H. Saling
Myrtle Beach AAF, South Carolina

Pour in the blue of a June night

Dad asked last night if I wanted to make him French toast this morning. I told him I've never made French toast before, but that didn't phase him. "Better you experiment with me than your first husband," he said. That's true. My father will eat anything. Many times my brother and I have pulled things out of the refrigerator, asking Mom, "Is this still good?" Dad replies, "I'd eat it," which gives us no indication of its edibility, and we proceed to throw it away. However, I wasn't lying when I told him I'd never made French toast before. I awoke at 5:54 this morning after dreaming I'd made a delectable dish of French toast with spices and seasonings that left Dad in awe of my culinary talents. He'd told me last night that he was leaving for work at 6:45 this morning, so I left myself plenty of time to add dashes of nutmeg and cinnamon and vanilla. He didn't get up until 6:45, and when I put the bread on the skillet it formed a thick, barrier-like coat of egg around the bread. I gave it to my dad with a warning (he probably wasn't expecting to have to march around the toast 7 times and blow a trumpet before eating it), cooking up the next piece of toast. He drowned it in syrup. I could hear its warbled cries. Then, what made it worse was his thinking it would be fun to pretend he was critiquing my dish on a Food Network show.
"This side is a little burnt," he said judgmentally. "It has a bit of a burnt flavor."
I didn't laugh. He tried to figure out what I'd done wrong. "Well, let's see. You added milk..."
"Oh," I said. "Was I supposed to add milk?"
He looked at me as if trying to read any joke lines in my smile, but all that was there was an ironic, slightly embarrassed grin that promised next time I would remember the milk.
"Did you butter the pan?" He asked. No, I hadn't buttered the pan. "Well, it's better you make me eat this than your first husband," he said again.
"First?" Will my French toast be so bad that no husband will remain married to me long? Next time I'm going to add honey and not tell him. Dubious.

Yesterday I mowed the lawn - or the pathetic attempt grass has made at growing amidst straw and stones - in the syrupy warmth of the late afternoon sun. The palms of my hands are internally bruised from pushing the mower through the stubborn stalks of wiry weeds with leaves like elephant ears. Wisconsin is a foreign country, I'm telling you. when I went to bed last night, the air was completely still. My curtains hung limp in front of my open window, and I turned on my ceiling fan to circulate the stale air. This morning the thin, cold wind won't stop blowing, and my curtains remained at a 90-degree angle from the wall until I closed my window with chills. Now it howls through the cracks of the house.

I fell asleep last night to the occasional "moo" of cows at the farm across the street, a pleasant, summery sound that added bass to a tenor and baritone choir of crickets and frogs, respectively. This morning, however, the moos are overlapping themselves in their frequency, and I'm curious to know whether something is happening over at that farm that perhaps I don't want to know about.

This song has me dreaming....

The view from the end of my street on a June evening:


Be this sunset one for keeping
This June bug street sings low and lovely ~ Iron and Wine

humor me

Yesterday while sitting in a coffee shop with my dad reading Of Mice and Men and drinking a bitter brew of some sort of nutty coffee, two young high school guys came in. One of them held a battered Snow White folder with duct tape around the edges. (At this point I wasn't really reading, if you couldn't tell.) They stood around awkwardly until a cute girl their same age came in.
"Hey," they greeted her. Boys that age are so suave.
"Hey," the girl replied. Class.
"How are you?"
"Good."
Then another guy came in. The girl greeted him enthusiastically with a hug. One of the boys who had already been there complained, "Why didn't I get a hug?"
The girl stammered, "You...have facial hair."
Oh, truthful adolescence.

We passed this sign in Sheboygan the other day, and for some reason I find it funny:

Smile
May is mental
health month
call 211 for help

Dad came up with this at dinner one night, and it's just ridiculous enough to be funny, in a pitiful sort of way:

What fruit does a monkey sleep on?
An ape-ricot!

Dad informed me this morning at breakfast that he knows a man who recently planted a church in a town called Northpoint. They rented a board on which to advertise their church, but because each letter cost money, they wanted to abbreviate their title. It read, "Join us at No. Point Church."

This is why I love the 1940s: Glenn Miller. Fred Astaire has nothing on those Nicholas Brothers!

And speaking of the 1940s, today is the 64th anniversary of D-Day. I should watch The Longest Day to commemorate, but that, in fact, is the longest movie. So I simply remember what I never experienced, in my small way of honoring unimaginable sacrifices.

"No, you get out and knock those Germans out, and then you can have a cup of tea." ~ An English D-Day veteran on the History Channel

paying with trees

The goods:

The 1940s are eating me alive, and I like it. I've been listening to the early years of Frank Sinatra (A Voice in Time [1939-1952]), and I am in love with him. You can listen to him here. I thought Jo Stafford sang the most romantic version of "Embraceable You," but I cannot resist young Sinatra. He reminds me of the mocha cheesecake I baked Wednesday night: rich, creamy, delicious, and mm-mm good. No one can sing "it's not that you're attractive" and make homeliness sound appealing like Frankie.

I am 280 pages into The Count of Monte Cristo. I could be so much farther, and I am ashamed of my lack of motivation to read.

My room is finished! Except that Paul Newman keeps falling off my wall, the painting (and re-painting a lovely Summer Afternoon - smother, Chickery Chick!) is finished, my Gone with the Wind wall is in order (more like my GWTW room is in order - how did I acquire so much Windy paraphernalia? I blame Sarah), and I have only a few odds and ends that still need to be nailed and taped. Paul, stop falling off the wall in the middle of the night. You are loud and getting bent.

The bads:

I have officially applied for six jobs, and I think it's rotten. Starbucks was probably my favorite application. They asked me, "What do you like about coffee?" I like that it smells like roasted winter mornings, that it reminds me of my father, that it complements 8 o'clock lectures so well, that it's the color of warmth and security....Would any of these things make me more eligible for a job brewing and serving and smelling like beans? Then they asked me, "Have you ever been to a Starbucks before?" ...Are you kidding me? Um, no! What are star bucks? How much are they worth in American currency?

Yesterday Mom tricked me by telling me I should apply at Kohler, then dragged me (and I mean dragged me; I have never said "No" so firmly to my mother in all my life) into their showroom where they displayed three floors of toilets, sinks, faucets, and bathtubs. Couples and threesomes of old ladies walked around admiring the lovely painted and marble productions. I couldn't swallow an 8,000-dollar bathtub, even if it did look divinely inspired.

I'm tired of trying to sell myself to places at which I don't even really want to work. If it weren't for workers, they wouldn't have a business at all, so why aren't they the ones trying so hard to get us, instead of the other way around? I'm bitter. If anyone needs a nanny, I'm good with kids, I like apples, and I know a great little place with three floors of bathroom fixtures where we can spend hours....

I'm-a gonna raise a fuss, I'm-a gonna raise a holler
about workin' all summer just to try to earn a dollar....
Sometimes I wonder what I'm-a gonna do
but there ain't no cure for the summertime blues....

in the summertime, when the weather is fine

My forearms are speckled with yellow paint. I told Mom I wanted Lemon Curd, but she said it was too bright, so I settled for Chickery Chick. If I had gone with Lemon Curd, I think it would have been like staring into the sun, because as it is, I feel as though I have captured a Pedestrian Crossing street sign and smeared it all over my walls. Mom tells me that it won't be so bad when I put up all my posters, and so I give thanks for Mom, who saved me from Lemon Curd, and for Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra, Aragorn, and Scarlett and Rhett, who will be shielding my sensitive eyes from the brightness of my walls.

My side muscles (I'm sure there is a much more accurate medical term for those, but I think "side muscles" is sufficiently descriptive) are sore. Yesterday Dad and I took a 2-mile hike on the Ice Age Trails, a hilly, rocky, woodland formed from glaciers many moons ago. The sky was contentedly blue and the air was tinted green with leaf-filtered sunlight. Dad made me use a pair of his hiking poles, and at first I hoped against hope that we wouldn't pass anyone on the trails, but after about a half a mile I hoped the guy we saw noticed with what ease I used the helpful sticks, leaping down hills and climbing rocky terrain with speed and efficiency. It was lovely with white flowers off the path bobbing their heads to a 65-degree breeze. I think my poles deserve to be named, after we bonded so mightily in our adventures yesterday. I'll give that some thought.

Yesterday I baked a banana cake for Dad's 59th birthday. Grandma Krauss made the best banana cakes, and its her recipe. I have a picture of us frosting a banana cake, me wearing a pink skirt and matching pink shirt that used to be white until Mom washed it with the reds. I've made banana cakes at least three times before, but this time we didn't have buttermilk. I knew, somehow I just knew deep down, as though the Holy Spirit was whispering to my heart, how important that buttermilk was. But Mom said to try regular milk. Oh, why did I listen? Why didn't I forgo the project or run next door to ask a neighbor? Who couldn't spare 2/3 cup buttermilk? And we all know how friendly Peggy and Phil are, after I "locked" myself out of the house over Thanksgiving break. But I didn't listen to the Holy Spirit, if it really was Him caring about my buttermilk. I used 1% milk. And it's probably the most pitiful cake I've ever made. It broke apart like I imagine those glaciers did that formed the Ice Age Trail. It all sort of sunk in in the middle, slumped like a tired soldier's shoulders at the end of the day. So pitiful! The frosting didn't even make it all the way around the cake. Dad says it still tastes good, but I feel as though my child graduated college with a bachelor's degree in biology and hopes of medical school, but then lives in my basement eating chocolate covered peanuts and watching MythBusters. It was capable of so much more.

I have three major books on my "To-Read" list, and I am counting on you to keep me accountable. This summer, I want to complete Robinson Crusoe, The Count of Monte Cristo, and at least one Jules Verne novel (I have about four to choose from). After those, I have some books I want to re-read, like To Kill a Mockingbird (only for the 4th time) and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I wonder how much of this I will accomplish this summer. I wonder when my parents are going to realize I haven't applied for any jobs yet. I wonder if my retinas will slowly sizzle every time I open my eyes in my newly painted room.

The past two nights have proved an interesting - and I hope not a habitual - experience. Around seven or eight in the evening, a wind blows in from somewhere and blows harder and longer than I have ever felt or seen wind blow. The temperature drops and suddenly the smell of cow manure fills the air. I understand Wisconsin is America's Dairyland (or so say our license plates), but this haunting wind of invisible death makes me want to shove towels in the cracks of the doors and light cinnamon candles until winter comes. I'll be sure to mark "day 3" in my journal of fertilizing habits if it happens again tonight, and if you don't hear from me again, the cold fingers of odorous farm winds have choked me to death. Think of me when next you enjoy a bowl of ice cream or a glass of milk. Your dairy products were the cause of my demise.

so say goodbye

"You leave town for a couple of decades and they change everything." Or so says Phoebus from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And I must say I agree with him. I don't know about you, but I have no idea how I lived in Marietta for 11 years without a Bar-b-Cutie. And what with the new Wendy's, I'm tempted to return to high school simply for the easy access. Except I think I'd rather eat fish out of the Ohio River than return to high school for anything. Who's up for an evening service at the new Nazarene church on Front Street? Afterwards we can eat Putnam chocolates and stare into the vacant windows of Brownies.

Isn't it silly the way time passes? Audrey's married and Gretchen's getting married and Erin's getting engaged and Annie's living on her own and Tanya's moving to Florida and Sarah's moving to Utah and I...I just sit back and watch all my friends disperse, write them letters in my head, wish they were sitting back with me around a campfire smelling summer like so many youth groups so many years ago. Playing football in the mud and sledding in the snow and chicken fights in the pool, sticking leaves in our hair while hiding from flashlights and illegally spraying our tents with bug spray, volleyball and frisbee golf and eating Tootsie Pops and playing Mac computer games....

And now what? How do so many years of being teenagers fade into adulthood? How do so many careless, barefooted romps through the grass turn into responsibly accepting your diploma into life?

I heave a huge sigh and sit back and watch. I'm always up for a campfire.

road trip

I hate
how clever detours think they are
people who have passionate love affairs with my bumper
gas, and the way it is required to drive one's car

I love
Steak and Shake
Steak and Shake (oops, did I already mention that one?)
the street I passed in either Ohio or Indiana called "Needmore Road"
the sign in Illinoise welcoming you to the tollway. As if we chose to pay to drive on a slab of concrete. "If you drive a car car, I'll tax the street." George Harrison knew what he was saying. I bet it was a tollbooth worker who snuck into his house and stabbed him.
Steak and Shake

William Wallace

I am done.

What does that feel like? It feels like driving 2 1/2 hours in the pouring rain and dark (the dark was pouring, too) to Annie's apartment in Dayton, where she fed me chocolate covered soy beans (what the heck?) and let me sleep on her floor. It feels like curling up on the couch with a blanket smelling of clean laundry, the rainy air coming in through the open window and pink apple blossoms quivering in the breeze. It feels like waking up in the morning and just lying there...just lying there...just lying there. It feels like walking to Rita's with Sarah through green suburban neighborhoods with fields of dandelions and eating a mango Italian Ice, and taking a nap on Sarah's couch even after 9 full hours of sleep.

Asbury College can take our lives, but they can never take our freedom.

Isabel says (or, rather, sings) in Scrooge that "happiness is whatever you want it to be." I think summer suits me pretty well right now as my definition of happiness. Though I have yet to be home since classes ended almost a week ago, I am muchly contended with friend-visiting while I have the chance. Chris in the movie Into the Wild said something about joy not only being found in human relationships, but in the creation God has placed around us. That's true, to a great extent...but I think I would prefer my human relationships over my relationships with trees. Somehow having my plant strapped into the passenger side of my car as I journey around the Midwest is not as fulfilling as, say, a friend.

I am rambling, because a.) Annie is gone and I'm lonely (the tree is not talking back), b.) cigarette smoke is filtering in through her walls and I feel like lung cancer, and c.) somehow my body thought it was funny to tease me with the prospect of a nap and then get excited about being awake. To you, body, I say: Poo.

17 more days

Summer has officially arrived in my mind. No matter that I still have papers and projects and classes...I'm done. I've set aside Supercapitalism and In Search of the Indo-Europeans for Last Days of Summer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I spend my evenings watching The Sandlot on YouTube (it's all there, in 10 parts) and feeling guilty for not doing schoolwork. The problem with going home three weeks before classes are over is that your brain tastes freedom and it likes it. "Wow, this is really good," it says. "I think I'll stay here." Meanwhile I'm still sitting in my dorm room with a stack of books about the history of the alphabet and a stack of "to-dos" that will never get "to-done." If I stopped doing anything for the rest of the semester, I wonder how much my grades would be affected? (Insert maniacal twirl of mustache and raise of eyebrow with black stovepipe hat and girl tied up on railroad tracks here.)

Don't you think it's a little presumptuous for signs to thank you for doing or feeling things before you've even fully digested what the sign is restricting you to do in the first place? For example, five hours and a bottle of water after I started driving back to Kentucky from Wisconsin two weekends ago, I had to loosen the seatbelt so it wouldn't press too firmly on my overly ripe abdomen. Pulling over at a rest stop, I walked into the building to see a sign on the bathroom door that said, "Temporarily closed for cleaning. Thank you for your patience." Temporarily closed for cleaning?? My de-seeded watermelon of a bladder will burst at any moment and you're thanking me for being patient? It would have been more accurate if it had read, "Temporarily closed for cleaning. Please put your knife away and step away from the janitor."

I want very much to be done with classes for the summer, and the 75-degree blue skies and sunshine is not helping me sit in the library with my nose in my laptop. I'm almost done, and I cannot wait to be home eating Mom's banana bread and baking until my fingers turn to powder that I accidentally sift into the flour. I don't even care that I'll probably be working at a cheese factory from 12 a.m. to 8 a.m. and sleeping all day until dinner, then going back to work again, leaving no time to read anything but the nutrition labels I'm watching a machine slap on slabs of cheese. Wisconsin's state motto: "Smell our dairy-air."

"Always go to other peoples' funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours." ~ Yogi Berra

4/9/08

One thing Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a lot about was "this-worldliness." He didn't want Christians to be so focused on being pious and holy that they completely abandoned their place on this earth, focusing so much on heaven that they didn't live in the world. This is what I wrote in my journal last week, while struggling with being invaded by worldliness:

The problem with Bonhoeffer's "this-worldly" theology is that living completely in this world risks the minds, souls, and emotions of those whose faith is weak. I don't think I am strong enough to stand up against the pressures of this world. I am weak. I back down, I give up, I crumble under the weight and flatten when pressed from all sides. I cannot do it.

I cannot do it. The key to living in this world is to abide in Christ, and He in me. The key to living in this world is dying to it. That's how Christ succeeded. The key to living in this world is realizing there is ultimate truth, and we must fill our minds with it. The key to living in this world is looking at it through heavenly eyes. Not "being above it," but living in it as Christ did, and seeing it through the eyes of the Father. Not condescending, but relating. Not judging, but loving.

How are we alone expected to fight off the things the world feeds us as truths, ways to live, things to be? We aren't expected to. Not alone. Jesus, without the divine, could not have done it with merely His humanity. Humanity is frail, and bends to this world. Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus. (Phil. 2:5-11.)

In emptying himself of humanity, the divine was able to fulfill His calling. Jesus tells us in John 15, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love."

What do you think?

29 more days

"Only he who gives thanks for the little things receives the big things...."

When I was eight years old I had a pair of pink jelly shoes with white daisies on the toes. This morning I found out they are back in style. I want a pair; it'd be like walking around in my childhood all summer.

I recognize my priorities, so you can look at my spring break pictures here. They're not as intense as, say, Karissa's pictures, but these give you a taste of the way my mind works. And it's pretty salty.

I have lots of plans for the summer already. I have a list of books to read that grows every day, a list of things to sew that don't seem to hinge on my capabilities (or lack thereof), and a list of moments to cherish, like walks with my dad in the cool cool cool of the evening, or movie nights with my brother, or decorating the house with my mom. I'm going home this weekend and it's supposed to snow. I think God's doing it just for me.

"....How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

tragedy at Glide 107

At approximately 9 a.m. this morning, six mugs were involved in the collapse of a shelf, followed by a head-on collision with the wall. While three of the mugs escaped without injury, the remaining three suffered moderate to severe injuries, and all three remain in intensive care. Two of the mugs are expected to recover with minimized use of their appendages, while the third will never fully regain its former capacity. We ask that your prayers be with the friends and family of the mugs as they deal with the loss of their coffee, tea, and hot chocolate containers.



















Special thanks goes to Emily Fischbach, who responded quickly at the scene of the accident with a vacuum cleaner, a trash bag, and band aids when the owner of the mugs slice open her thumb on a shard of porcelain while cleaning up their remains.

The Houses

Do you realize when you stand on his front porch, you're standing where Mark Twain once stood? When you step around the table you're taking the same steps he took, animatedly telling stories to his guests. Dragging your hand along the railing up the stairs in the same path his hand once dragged. This bed was the very bed in which he wrote his autobiography. I could see him leaning over his billiards table, cigar in mouth (he smoked 20 a day!), the very billiards table he leaned against up to 8 hours a day. I could see him sitting at his desk in the corner, away from the windows so he wouldn't get distracted as he wrote. To think that I was looking at the very desk where characters like Tom Sawyer came to his mind made me wonder if perhaps some of his imaginative genius was still floating around above his pool table. I wonder if simply by being in the same room where he imagined, some of his genius could leak in through my ears and eyes, so that I would walk away thinking a little more like Mark Twain.

I stood next to the very desk where Louisa May Alcott penned Little Women. I lightly rested my fingertips on the desk, realizing that her fingertips rested on this desk. I looked out the windows on either side, wondering what she saw instead of the paved road and line of parked cars. As people began filing out of the room, I looked over and saw a picture of Louisa at her desk, writing. I realized I was standing in the exact spot where she was sitting, in front of the same bookshelf that was there in 1868. To be standing exactly where she sat in that picture sucked all of the air out of me. The heart that flowed through a pen to create such beautiful words was beating where my heart was beating. Wow, how cheesy does that sound?
Walking through the rest of the house was like dodging ghosts. Between these walls that I now stood echoed the voices of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Standing in the room where Louisa's oldest sister was married, I felt as though I was spying on their happy and solemn ceremony. I could feel the tearful joy they must have felt at such an occasion! I must sound insanely superstitious, or at least a tad too imaginative. Perhaps it's that part of Mark Twain's brain that came in through my ears.

42 more days

I just looked down and noticed there's jelly on my chair. I wonder how long it's been there? (Rhymes! I smell poetry.) The last time I ate jelly was before spring break. I wonder how long it could remain there? Maybe I'll write a story about a blob of jelly that lives on the rocking part of my chair, and all its grand adventures rocking to and fro...back and forth....The excitement.

I put up a list of some DVDs for sale on the bulletin board in CPO a couple of weeks ago. Somebody thought it was pretty funny to cut off my DVDs so that all my sign said was, "FOR SALE, Heather ext. 5107" Oh, college students are so funny. And I still didn't get any takers!

Please try to incorporate "jot and tittle" into your every day vocabulary. Phrases like that can only brighten someone's day.

Yesterday I went to a luncheon in the Dougherty Room of the cafeteria where Jan Watson, a Christian fiction authoress, spoke about her journey to becoming a writer. There were probably 50 women in the room (and somehow a man), a few being college students but the majority being older women with gray hair and skirts with matching suit jackets. The centerpieces were brightly colored daisies in brightly colored watering cans that made me want to water the world with bright colors, and everything was proper and formal with soup spoons and lap napkins and water goblets. I felt out of place, but tried my best to keep from bumping my table neighbor and keep my elbows off the table.

Before our main course was served, I spied a plate of three crackers just for me. Next to those crackers I saw two blocks of cheese. I didn't want the crackers, so I just picked up a block of cheese and bit into it. It was soft and room temperature. Maybe it was bre. It didn't taste very good. I didn't like bre. A fellow classmate at the end of the table glanced at me as I took a bite, then glanced away as if she didn't want me to know she had glanced at me. I put my cheese back on my cracker plate and elegantly swigged some water from my goblet. (I like the word "elegantly" describing the word "swigged.")

Many minutes later, after seeing a woman spreading her "cheese" on her cracker, I realized that it wasn't cheese at all, but butter. I felt ridiculous next to coffee-drinking elders with names like Ruth and Marianne, while I had a block of butter on my plate with teeth-marks in it. I tried to make a joke of it to let the other women at my table know that I wasn't some savage butter-eating beast. When you think about it, why would our cafeteria serve bre?

Spring break would take all together too long to describe in one sitting, so perhaps I'll make little contributions here and there. Not to be mistaken with contribution margin, which is in fact sales minus variable costs. It looks like this:

S-VC=CM

I have an accounting exam tomorrow. It looks like this:

Heather+Accounting=Brain vessels bursting

Please know I'm wearing my Boston sweatshirt as I write this, which I so eagerly, anticipatedly alluded to in previous entries. Stay tuned for more tidbits from Spring Break '08.........

humility and cakes

I am invincible.

Today I worked as a "runner" in the cafeteria, those people who magically appear with refills whenever the mashed potatoes run out. I find cafeteria workers to be very helpful, about 3 seconds too late. There are two "hot boxes" where the food is stored. Upon running out of Philly cheese steak, I opened the first hot box to find some more. I didn't find any, so I closed the door to open the other hot box.
"What are you looking for?" Asked a helpful cafeteria worker, whom we shall name Mrs. White.
"Cheese steak," I said.
"It's in the other hot box," Mrs. White said.
Well, yes, I know that now that I've already looked in the first hot box. Thank you. I'd appreciate it if you could just read my mind and tell me which hot box the food I need is in before I have to open anything.

Once, we ran out of the chicken cacciatore. I looked in the first hot box, and when it wasn't there I went to look in the second one. (Sounding vaguely familiar, eh? So goes my employment.) Suddenly a helpful cafeteria worker whom we shall name Mr. Black approaches me.
"What are you looking for?" He asks.
"Um...I don't know what it's called. Is it jambalaya?"
He looks at me like I've accidentally mistaken his son for a girl. "Noooooo."
Mrs. White comes up from behind. "What's going on?"
What is this, a national emergency?? Just let me look in the second hot box!
"She's looking for something, but she doesn't know what it is," Mr. Black says, like they're going to have to call a meeting of all helpful cafeteria workers to solve this mystery. Oh, come on! You know what I'm referring to. It looks just like jambalaya, it smells just like jambalaya...use your deductive reasoning!
"I know what it looks like," I say, trying to imply that if I could just look in the second hot box I would be able to get it myself.
"What does it look like?" Asks Mr. Black.
"It's got..." I motion with my hands.
"Oh," he says. Yes, "got" is a very descriptive word. He reaches in the second hot box (oh, is THAT where it's kept?) and pulls it out.
"So what's it called?" I ask.
"Chicken cacciatore," says Mr. Black.

Later while I was wiping down one of the lines, two students walked by. "Oh, jambalaya!" One of the students said. "My favorite."

On my first day washing pots and pans last week, the supervisor told me to take the trays to the conveyor belt. I didn't know where that was, so after turning on the water to fill up one of my tubs, I picked up the trays and approached Mr. Black. "Where do I put these?" I asked.
"Once they've been cleaned, you can put them on the cart."
Evidently he didn't know about the conveyor belt. "Yes, but isn't there a place to put them--"
"Once they don't have any junk on 'em anymore, there's usually a cart here to put them on."
Okay. Yes. I know I have to clean the trays. I took the trays back to my station and set them on the counter. "I'm not stupid," I mumbled to myself. Then I turned around and realized I hadn't put the stopper in the sink, so the hot water had been running down the drain for a good 7 minutes. I felt very stupid.

You know you have the Holy Spirit in you not when you speak in tongues or bear good fruit, but when you gain spiritual insight out of a Backstreet Boys song.

I don't care who you are
Where you're from
What you did
As long as you love me

Today while my accounting tutor explained cost pools and cost drivers to me with the analogy of cakes made at a bakery, I decided to drop out of college and go to baking school. Alton Brown graduated from the New England Culinary Institute, and I can graduate with an associates degree in baking and pastry arts.























I think it's sad that Asbury College students need signs to let them know what certain substances are. Just in case you weren't aware, that brown soupy stuff on the ground is, indeed, mud.

March fools!

This growing up thing has got to stop. The world is a bitter, bitter place that I was not exposed to under the protective feathers of my parents' wings. I thought stamps just magically appeared from my mom's purse, I didn't know they cost money. Seven bucks for three pairs of underwear, people. Hanes her way, my eye. And laundry detergent does not replenish itself, nor is it cheap. Who knew life cost so much?

I am now employed at the cafeteria. They call my position "pots and pans." I feel very much like Scarlett O'Hara, hiding her once-white and soft hands from Rhett Butler. My hands are dry and cut, my nails are frail and breaking, and by the end of my 3-hour shift my fingers resemble little sausages swollen and wrinkled with water. I have dreams about elbow-length, squeaky yellow rubber gloves. I just keep telling myself I'll be thankful for these pots and pans when I'm sporting a sweatshirt from Boston and walking through Louisa May Alcott's house. My magnet shaped like Mark Twain's head and the bread bowl of authentic New England clam chowder will make the accidental drop of bleach on my jeans and the way my hair smells like it's been fried in oil every Wednesday and Friday all worth while.

A little pick-me-up:
"Life's tough, then you die." ~ Dr. Anderson's fatalistic bumper sticker

Or if that didn't do it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=3LVXjB_VUfk

it's a new day

February is almost over, and I'm glad. There's something about this month that I don't like. It kind of feels like the mud that remains after the snow of Christmas melts, and the flowers of Easter have yet to bloom. Plus, once it's March, spring break is just around the corner, and then it's Boston and Mark Twain for 10 days.

My parents are sending me a package in the mail, full of coffee supplies and holiday treats. ("The Valentine's stuff I got for half off, because I went in the day after Valentine's Day." My mom's such the little money-saver.) It'll be the first package they've ever sent me in my year and a half of college life. I'm so excited. ("There's a package in this box that wasn't supposed to be opened, but Dad didn't know that and helped himself. But I'm sending it anyway.") She's also sending me Toy Story, upon request, and finally my addiction-like desire to watch that movie can subside. No wonder so many alcoholics fall off the wagon.

I've been getting up early every other day to "run" on the elliptical machine at the Luce. I love the quiet mornings before the campus has awoken. The sky looks so pale and fresh, like a pastel fleece baby blanket before it's been soiled or worn. The whole day is like freshly fallen snow, with no footprints in it and endless possibilities of snow forts and snowmen. Wow, the similes are abounding this morning.

The best part of waking up, is similes in your cup.

the pro bowl

"You do not often see a Bengal and a Brown high-five each other in the endzone."

This is what I love about the pro bowl. The fact that Derek Anderson is calling in plays to Peyton Manning (my two favorite fellas!), and Peyton Manning is throwing touchdowns to Braylon Edwards, and Braylon Edwards is high-fiving TJ Houshmandzadeh. It's like heaven, when the lion will lay down with the lamb. This is my last time to see my boys play before the long, cold off-season. It may be summer, but Sunday afternoons blow with a bitter chill that I don't understand until I remember there's no football.

we need a good assassination

When my alarm went off at 7:00 yesterday morning I thought back to Christmas morning when, after going to bed at midnight, I woke up at 6:15 and eagerly bounced out of bed. Now I was struggling to get out of bed after 8 hours of sleep, and I delayed until my roommate's alarm went off at 7:30 before finally venturing out of my 100% Egyptian cotton sheets. There's such a difference between getting up to eat Stollen and sit by a fire while my cat toys with the ribbons on our presents and sitting for an hour and a half in my economics class while it's raining outside.

It's also interesting how much I didn't want to get up at 1:30 in the morning to sit in the basement during a tornado, as opposed to how excited I'd be to get up at 1:30 in the morning to, say, rise with all the saints at Jesus' second coming. I can just imagine Sam coming into my room and saying calmly, "Heather, Emily, you need to wake up. Jesus is coming back." I'm sure silver trumpets would be a much better awakening than tornado sirens. Though I think there's a special bonding that occurs between girls who are scrunched in the hall of a basement, wearing pajamas and sharing blankets, girls without makeup or contacts, wearing glasses and retainers. It's funny to see what people thought to bring when in a hurry to flee from a tornado. I thought about what I would miss if our dorm was destroyed and all of the contents of my room strewn across campus. And the one thing I thought about wasn't the 60 DVDs or my pristine complete history of WWII book or even my guitar. I began wishing I had brought down my teddy bear. I'd be sorry to ever be without Gilbert.

Mom and Dad are getting 12 inches of snow today in Wisconsin, and Dad woke Mom up this morning to make him pancakes. I sat in semi-darkness this morning at 7:15 eating cereal I stole from the cafeteria, and though I enjoy raisins and granola and bran, I wish I could have traded in my groggy munching for Mom's homemade buttermilk pancakes and Perkins' apricot syrup. I'm not quite ready to forgo my sweaters and argyle socks, but if it's going to be 65 degrees and thunderstorm anyway, I'd rather it be summer so I could go home and eat pancakes. Weather, get your act together.

I miss doing this....

back in the salad again

Have you ever been singing a song in your head while you're thinking about, writing, talking about, watching, or doing something else, and you realize you're singing the wrong words? Today as I searched for my Microeconomics class in Reasoner 319 (you'd think after a year and a half I'd know which building is which) I sang "Back in the Saddle Again" in my head, only I realized, since I wasn't really paying attention, I was singing, "Back in the salad again." I've never been in the salad, but I think I'd rather be there than in the saddle.

Coming to college reminds me of going off to war, only I can't shoot myself in the foot to be taken off the front-line. "First day of classes" carries the same ring to it as "England declared war on Germany." Papers, books, and tests all mean the same to me as tanks, grenades, and rifles. I think it's funny how I always bring back books from home to school with me, thinking I'll have time to read them. And they always sit on my shelf, with a thin layer of dust on their tops by the time I pack them up to take back home with me. I wonder if, when I signed that "I will not drink, smoke, curse, or dance" contract at the beginning of my college career, the words "or have a life" were at the bottom of the page.

I shouldn't be so pessimistic and depressed. After all, there are so many people who have it worse than I - cross-cultural students who can't go home all year, students who can only go home once a year, and students who can't even come to college. What a privilege, honor, and blessing it is for me to be sitting in these classes and my chapel seat. I'll try to see it that way from now on.

Meanwhile football season is practically over...and...I wonder how many times I've mentioned "football" and "war" in the past few entries. I'll make an effort to mention more things about happiness in the future.

reflections of a college student on break

I feel like I'm on death row. I'm trying to get shove all this stuff in before my time is up. I've set a reading limit of 200 pages a day so I can finish The Woman in White before I go back to school. (It's a phenomenal book, by the way. I just can't sing its praises enough.) I'm eating all I can because I know once I get back to school it's Cheerios and stolen milk from the cafeteria. What's that? Someone just gave us home-shot deer sausage? I'm not hungry, it's ten o'clock at night, I've eaten an entire continent already today...but give it to me anyway. (It was phenomenal. Praises, praises, praises.) Maybe I should start setting my alarm at intervals during the night so I can wake up and eat. Deer.

What do you think zebra tastes like?

I think the best part about staying in your pajamas all day is that you don't have to change into them again at night. You're already in them. And if you fall asleep during the day and confuse the night with the day...it doesn't matter. You're in your pajamas.

I met a man at the bank today who made me pretty excited to be opening an account there, if you know what I'm sayin'.

The other day my dad began asking my advice on a dilemma he's facing at work as I sat on my makeshift window seat (my grandpa's WWII army chest that is now home to notebooks full of poetry and pretty stationary with bunnies having tea on it instead of the kraut lugers and bullet-dented helmets it once housed [actually not really, my grandpa was a dentist stationed in Pennsylvania during WWII, but unfortunately the bunnies having tea on my stationary really is a reality]), but I accidentally drifted off, looking at my books on my bookshelf. I heard the majority of what he said but I didn't have any response for him when he stopped talking.
He looked at me in mock belittling. "Are you 21 yet? Do you know anything?"
I simply shook my head. But boy, I can't wait for all that knowledge that comes with turning 21. (These days "knowledge" is code for alcohol, most likely.) 9 more months until I can down a pint of knowledge.

Today my mom came home from wherever it was she went (I'm dazed most of the day, except for when I'm eating) and asked if I'd heard the sirens.
"No..." I said, looking at her over my book. I had just woken up from a nap, and apparently slept through a house on fire down the street. I probably would have slept through our own house on fire, and only mildly complained out of my delirium for Mom to turn the heat down. Except she can't. Because I'm on fire. But at least I got a good nap in. And I'm already in my pajamas! So even death isn't really that bad.

One day between Christmas and New Year's we went to the Chinese restaurant and my fortune in my fortune cookie said, "You will step on the soils of many countries." I liked that fortune. THAT'S a fortune, not those stupid things that say like, "Beauty is red like a rose bleeding love." What the heck. (I just made that up. But I wonder if you can submit fortunes to be put into cookies, because that's a winner.) My brother and/or dad (they're interchangeable sometimes) said that I was stepping on foreign soil right now because the employees had mud from China on their shoes and had tracked it across the floor...anyway. The next week we went to the Chinese restaurant again (our arteries weren't crying loud enough for us to hear) and my fortune from my fortune cookie said, "You will step on the soils of many countries." What do you think that means? Can God speak through fortune cookies?

I also think it's fantastic when you're watching a foreign movie with English subtitles and you can't hear what they're saying so you turn up the volume. It doesn't matter, though. They're speaking Japanese. You can't understand them, anyway.

Taking pills labeled "colon flush" makes me nervous.

I'm tired, and luckily I'm already in my pajamas. I planned ahead this morning when I considered getting dressed. I thought, "No, because I'll be going to bed tonight." Always thinking ahead.

What is leave?

- A pause that only makes everything after it so much worse. ((All Quiet on the Western Front))

It's raining outside, and the occasional rumble of thunder makes it feel more like a foggy spring morning than the first week of the new year. The air is tinted a strange yellow color through the raindrops on my window screen. The snow started melting drastically a couple days ago, about the same time our tree refused to light. It's as if Christmas has gone and is now reaching back to pluck away whatever remnants it left behind. Mom even threw away a tin of Christmas cookies that Dad and I weren't quite finished with.

Some might enjoy the warmer weather. Dad went out without a coat on the other day, excited that the temperature had reached 30 degrees. I, on the other hand, rather like turning on my heating blanket to a toasty 8 and falling asleep while my toes search out the warm spots in my bed. I almost prefer the cold of the bathroom linoleum on my bare feet; it makes the reward of crawling back in bed so much more worth it.

I think the mornings are definitely my favorite, while Mom's still in bed and Dad's at work. I lie on the love seat with my book (first All Quiet on the Western Front, then The Good Soldier, and now A Room with a View), my subconscious listening to the tick of the grandfather clock while I'm completely absorbed in the black letters on the page. And I hear the clock strike 8...then 9...and I realize that while my body has been lying on the love seat this whole time, my mind and emotions have been racing through Germany and England and Italy with characters deep, pensive, and true.

Why is it that I only seem to find the books I want to read when I've so little time left? Now that second semester swiftly approaches, I have a good 5 books in my sight that I want to read with less than a week left to read them. I'm sure if I devoted myself to only that, I could do it. But I get distracted by the sounds of the football game and the warmth of the blanket and the sleep that beckons me after a long Sunday morning. Only a month left of football season. Why must everything come to an end?

Things that don't have to come to an end, no matter the season: Lindt white chocolate truffles, the Glenn Miller orchestra, House marathons, friendships, knitting projects, my list of "to read"....

Why, I remember on that afternoon I saw a brown cow hitch its horns under the stomach of a black and white animal and the black and white one was thrown right into the middle of a narrow stream. I burst out laughing....I chuckled over it from time to time for the whole rest of the day. Because it does look very funny, you know, to see a black and white cow land on its back in the middle of a stream. It is just so exactly what one doesn't expect from a cow. ((The Good Soldier))

goodbyes

I feel like Frodo Baggins at the end of The Return of the King: "It's gone. It's done." (Except I'm not standing on a rock surrounded by lava on Mount Doom, in need of a shower and a new index finger.) I never liked New Year's. Sure, as far back as playing Jeopardy on Brandon's Playstation at Y2K I can remember spending New Year's with my family and friends, watching the ball drop, eating shrimp, going to bed to Frank Sinatra's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and wondering where the season went. This year I spent 4 hours with a group of people I didn't know, was too tired to eat shrimp when I came home, dismissed the ball-dropping because it had dropped an hour earlier, and went to bed a little after midnight without any Christmas lights on. I have yet to have that "one last time"-listen to "White Christmas."

The snow has been lovely, as has the time with my family. The traditions haven't stopped just because we're in a new house, but they feel different. Is that possible? Yes, I know it is. In a sense I feel very homeless, because school isn't home, and this isn't home. I love being with my family...but it's possible to feel out of place even when they're here.

Well my friends, it's time to say goodbye to Christmas and wish you all a happy beginning to 2008. I wonder what the year will bring? What things will be different this time next year?

We sing His praise this day of days and pray this time next year
we'll all be near to share the cheer of a Christmas auld lang syne