New Year's Resolutions are harder in July, in case you were curious.

    I recently returned from a weekend retreat--"church camp"--with Willow Creek Community Church's high school youth ministry and discovered that I had undergone a lot of change in four days.  Through my small group, I grew closer to people and more open in general (which should make my transition to school in the fall a bit easier, or at least that's my hope), through the speakers, I grew closer to God and gained something of a new enlightenment in that area, and through my small group leader, I grew closer to eating healthy.  Kind of odd...but it's true.

    Rachel's husband, Ted, has ulcerative colitis, and so to combat it, he has taken up a gluten-, dairy-, and sugar-free diet and Rachel has adopted it too, for solidarity.  At meal times during camp, she would talk to us, gesturing rather wildly with a fork-speared cucumber, telling us about how much better the diet made her feel.  She had more energy, fewer random cravings, and had even lost some weight.  

    This got me thinking, I don't eat unhealthily really, but I certainly don't really pay attention to what I eat.  Whatever is put in front of me, I eat gladly, and whenever I'm hungry, I'll go searching for something suitable on which to munch.  What kind of difference could it make in my life if I stopped that and made a choice, like Rachel's, perhaps to pay more respect to my body.  I only get one, after all.

    The ulcerative colitis diet was my first thought, but realizing that that would mean giving up pizza and town house crackers and ham and cheese sandwiches, and struggling to find anything to eat but salad at restaurants and the dining hall at school, I decided to bring it back and just cut out added sugars.  

   I got home from camp on the 14th, and have done my best to go easy on the Pepsi, so to speak.  It was relatively simple at first: just say no to candy and soda and the like and I was in the clear.  But over the past eight days, some meals have caught me off guard with their sugar's ninja stealth skills.

   Ketchup, teriyaki, barbeque, some fruit juices, some chips, energy bars, some popcorn seasonings...all things that I have had to duck and cover at the very last second (sometimes at too late an hour) to avoid.  Things you'd never realize, things that make you question what sugar is really for....

   Anyway, my life has suddenly become much more interesting.  Every meal is an adventure, every snack an epic battle.  I went to Dominick's today and bought some lovely organic fruit leather, and tomorrow I'm going to experiment with pureeing my own tomatoes so I can have Bratwurst with the family.  

    Pray for me please.  This is very tiring work, and I have nothing to eat to give me a quick boost.

<3 spadeALLcross

If I were materialistic...

    My mother told me that, before we leave for Colorado at the end of this week, my room has to be completely spotless.  I'm not exactly an Adrian Monk but I like to think I can hold my own in the world of the neat and tidy.  My mother does not agree, though, so this past week has been a reenactment of The Scouring of the Shire.

    In going through my mass amounts of stuff I have acquired over the years without bothering to throw any of it away, I have found a plethora (tee hee) of cool things.  Since I'm trying to avoid the narrows of my room located in the closet (it takes more courage than I have to try to brave that mess) I think I'll list said cool things here.

10 - Nick Vujicic Wall Calendar

       Nick is a man who was born without arms or legs.  He has an amazing and inspiring life story you should check out...but I digress.  I got this calendar in the mail as a thank you for being part of his online group or something.  It has pictures (like this one) of him on tour around the world sharing his story and the Gospel of Christ in a way that only he can.  There is one picture of him in an airplane overhead compartment that I wish I could post here, but I can't find a copy of that online...

9 - My sister Fairies

      Every year, my family goes down to my grandmother's lake house in the Ozarks (of Missouri, in case you didn't know).  We stay there for a week in the spring usually, and while we're there, we try to visit this small, scenic town of Eureka Springs, where there are all these little shops (any man reading this just sighed and scrolled down, saying, "What is it with women and their 'Little Shops'?") filled with awesome stuff, like Moonglimmer and Delphina,
bought on two separate occasions, from two different Faerie Glen collections, but they look so much alike, I dubbed them related.  Sadly, one of Moonglimmer's wings broke off, but I'll glue that back together today.

8 - Crazy + creepy owl-shaped lantern
      When my grandmother moved out of her enormous, old house, the whole family made a summer of going through all the hoards of stuff she had there, deciding what to keep and where to keep it.  I was lucky enough to snag a few Boxer figurines, my uncle's old art project, and, among others, this tin lantern.  This was back when I was still going through my Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, magic and wonderment obsession, so this little number fit right into my style.  Several years later, I found it (in a similar room-cleaning period) and stuck some dried flowers in it's head, thus refitting it to my style.  Let this be a lesson to you: I may be a pack rat, but I have a talent for it.  Some might call it a spiritual gift...?

7 - A purple felt scarf with the phrases, "do you KICKAPOO?" and "Think before you Drink" on it

      The High School youth ministry at my church does a winter retreat every year called "Blast."  We go to Camp Wonderland and spend a weekend competing with other "house groups" (a.k.a. high schools) and worshiping God.  Two years in a row, my small group of about ten girls found ourselves in a wonderful little cabin called "Kickapoo."  Several hundred jokes ensued.  Camp Wonderland is a wonderful facility, maintained by the Salvation Army, complete with working bathrooms and good cafeteria food, but sadly, it's well water is not one of it's high spots.  My grandmother's (aforementioned) house in Barrington ran on well water, so I'm not a novice at the taste...but this was no well water I had ever experienced before.  It smelled like sulfur, thus earning itself the affectionate title, "egg water."  

6 - Dried flowers in ten IZZE bottles

      These exceptionally photogenic bottles make for great decorations, in many fashions.  Try it yourself!  I have dozens of these things filled with flowers all over my room.

5 - 100 "bubble" lights

      Most of them aren't really bubbley, but when I first started my collection, they all were.  Most of them came from Cost Plus World Market (my all-time favorite store), but some have deeper stories, like the trip I took down to China town in the city with my mom, and Buddha Tree lights from a shop in a town near Denver, CO, and plastic lobsters from my aunt in Rhode Island...

4 - Pirate Ship made out of cards

     My best friend and I have the hardest time finding gifts for each other because we know so much about the other person that there's a bottle neck of ideas...most of which don't really fall into an acceptable price range.  But one year, for my birthday, she came over, bringing with her a kit to make a ship, and we spent two hours putting it together.  One of the best birthdays I can remember to date.

3 - The complete, unabridged Shakespeare Collection
     I got this for Christmas one year from a friend who found it in a second-hand book store for ten dollars.  Considering the excellent condition it's in, and the prices similar pieces are going for, ten dollars was as close to the five finger discount as anyone was ever going to get.

2 - Silly Putty 
     a.k.a. God's gift to mankind as an apology for the rubik's cube

1 - Harvey Maglia

     Given to me by the above Shakespeare friend (who happens to be Jewish), this little guy has brought me hours of entertainment (total, not consecutive...I'm not that simple-minded).  Sadly, I have to turn him off when the above pirate ship friend comes over because her high-pitched laugh makes him go off every couple minutes...and though he is pretty awesome, he can get annoying.

So that's it.  Contents of a Dead Woman's Room.  Now I have to go slay the monster that is my closet.  What can I say?  It's a tornado's world; I'm just cleaning up after it.

<3 spadeALLcross

Convinced by Thunderstorms

Last weekend, I was on a God High. This weekend, I've been kind of posted in front of the television...but I'm really okay with it because I kind of think I'm learning a lot this way...

Let me 'splain. No...there is too much. Let me sum up.

The season(/series maybe, I'm not sure) finale of "Avatar:The Last Airbender" aired on Nickelodeon last night. I had friends over so I couldn't watch it until midnight when they left, but it was totally worth the wait.

You see the show is about a young (and yet exceptionally old) boy named Aang whose destiny it is to restore balance to a broken world plagued by war under the rule of a tyrant Firelord, Ozai. I can't possibly summarize the entire show in one blog, so why don't you go to www.watchavatar.com and I'll meet you back here in a week or so.

Throughout the whole two-hour episode special, Aang is having an inward struggle because he doesn't think he can kill The Firelord after having lived and learned as an Air Nomad (who are a lot like Hindus in their beleif in the sacredness of any form of life). It's quite an advanced idea for an American kid's TV show.

I don't think I have the apathy to tell you what he decides or how the thing ends, so seriously go watch it and then leabe us a comment and we'll chat. But let me tell you that it is the best possible ending to any show ever. I used to be a little embarrassed that I watched a kids' cartoon, but as you can see by my PDA of it this morning, I am no longer. I love that show and I wish it didn't have to end.

Because it's about everything a show should be about--inner battles, deep-seated family problems, adventures that seem more like suicide missions, the real meaning of bravery, rescourcefulness,...you name it. And all that without some stupid side plot of whose best freind is sleeping with whose husband or who is pregnant with whose son's baby or who is selling drugs to whom. We watch television to escape from the world's problems, even if it's only for a little while, or at least, that's why I watch it. So why, then, would we run to watch shows like One Tree Hill or Law and Order where the character's problems are our problems, or could be our problems should we find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don't get me wrong: Gilmore Girls and The West Wing were two of my favorite shows when they were on the air, and they were riddled with some of the worst of the world's problems. But now, having watched Avatar, where even sexual tension is a rarity, and feeling the buzz off of what I know is pure, unadulterated happiness for the way the story turned out and the way the characters' lives ended up (unlike with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows =\ Sorry, J.K....you just really dropped the ball) I don't understand why anyone would watch shows with worldly problems.

Unless, of course, there's a hero involved. And I'm not talking about a gray-fox DA with a less-than-worthy attorney sidekick who brings disgrace to the name of actress or an attention-starved group of kids straight out of The Outsiders. If it's not a true story, I want a larger-than-life, greater-than-true hero to save these characters from their problems. It's the one thing that separates us from them. Otherwise they're just like us, relying on other flawed and dying humans without much to their names.

I watched Batman Begins tonight. Bruce Wayne is the kind of Hero (yes indeed) that I'm talking about. Robin Hood, David Webb, Elessar...the list goes on: they're clever, strong, brave, sometimes reckless, always driven individuals. Individuals. I think it's key that these guys (usually they're guys...I can't think of a female hero who's ever really seemed all that powerful on her own. It came close once, but even Hermione had Harry and Ron) work alone. Sure, Aragorn had that whole Fellowship deal, but when the time came for the big boss battle, he was leading what was left of Gondor into battle...alone...and he became King...alone. And Robin Hood's merry men were kind of at a loss without him, whereas he could take the Sheriff single-handedly if the opportunity arose. And Aang was destined to fight the Firelord mono e mono. Full circle.

I feel like I may be losing you at this point, so I'll try to bring this to a point:

I think there's a reason human nature seeks for supernatural heros, sacrificing their social lives, their true loves, their passions, and their futures for the sake of the cause: I think it's because we already have one.



Romans 8:18



Now seriously. Go watch Avatar. Unless you eat gratuitous sex and violence for its nutritious value, I'm sure you won't regret it.


<3 spadeALLcross