Random things in my life right now...

I spent most of this weekend home alone.  My house was quiet, empty, and I was happy with that.  I haven't spent much time alone--like where I felt like I was alone all around me, like no matter what I did, no one would get in the way.  It's not like the people in my life often get in my way, but it was a novel feeling, and I'm not even sure when the last time I felt like that was.  It could have been painful or lonely or any number of other unpleasantnesses, but it was welcome this weekend.

***

In procrastinating writing a couple papers, I came across this thing I wrote in a letter to someone once.  It resonated with me and I wanted to share it with you.

I remember when I would have a bad dream at night, I would be too scared to get up and go to my mom, because I’m deathly afraid of the dark.  You probably know this…  So anyway, I’d yell for her, “Mom!  Mommy!  Mahhhhhhm!” and I’d hear her hurried footsteps, and I’d just pray over and over again that the monster or burglar or maniac killer wouldn’t jump into my room and close the door before she could get there.  I never realized that, if any of those things was lurking outside my room, she would fall prey just as much as I would.  I just thought she was too strong for them, that they would be scared of her immense power.  
My mom always seemed powerful to me.  She was above everything.  And she would come in and take me out of my crib and sit with me on the couch that was in my room and we’d point out pictures in the shadows on the wall cast by the streetlight outside my room, or by the cars as they drove by.  And when I was older she would come in and sit on my bed, and if I was really frightened, she would hold me as I cried and then sometimes I would ask her to sleep in my bed with me so if I had another bad dream she could be there right away.  And I always fell asleep and stayed asleep after that, and then I’d wake up in the morning and she’d be gone.

***


My sister wrote me on Friday.  I haven't written her back yet.  But I intend to soon.  I like our pen-pal-ship.  I'm happy it's still afloat (badumchhh).


On her blog, she wrote this.  It resonated with me, too.



 I tried to remind myself this morning that God told the world that he was pleased with his son without him even having to do anything. I couldn’t seem to remember that it also applies to me. I don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love. I don’t have to do anything at all to be the apple of his eye.
I am who God has made to me to be. It is not so far away.


***


On Thursday night, Ben and I stayed up late watching Star Trek: Voyager and making granola.  I spilled oil on a chair in his dining room and he put more honey in than he wanted to.  Now I'm sitting with my bowl of that granola on my lap...and the raisins keep rolling around and look like bugs out of the corner of my eye.  But I love the granola and the making-of-it experience anyway.


That's my life right now...this moment anyway.


Hope yours is swell!


<3 spadeALLcross

I walked around Paris for an entire day...in shorts and sandals, what's more.

Okay, so today was Paris. It was the quintessential Paris day; we saw everything that everyone else sees (excepting the inside of the Museé de Louvre, or whatever, but that is on the schedule for tomorrow) but we did it at our own pace and had a fantastic time. I really enjoyed it. I'm covered from head to foot in an extra layer of dust now…but c'est la vie. You can't win 'em all.

So, since I don't have to throw those mundane details at you, I'll expound on some of my more internal experiences of the past few days.

Those of you who watch my snidgets on YouTube know that I'm all about culture shock. And I swear I didn't even know the word until I came to a country that doesn't speak my language or have any desire to try. The people are [generally] lovely and friendly and many of them do speak enough English for our conversations to be relatively painless, but we're on their turf, and when there is an issue with the language barrier, I'm likely to think of it as "our fault," rather than theirs, which is an acute and new feeling.

But I've found that barrier to be a useful protection as well. Lea and I will often speak to each other in English in public about things we would normally wait to say until we're in private company. Not rude or mean things, but when we're uncomfortable with a situation, or when we think some French thing is strange, or something like that. This didn't really happen much in Paris today because of the percentage of people around us who also spoke French, but on the trains and in Tours, I at least felt much less likely to be overheard and understood.

This, naturally, is a double-edge sword, as those people here who speak other languages can do the same thing right back to us. There was that group of boys on the train to Paris last night who made kissy noises at us and talked about us to each other without bothering to keep quiet about it, and some men at a cash register in one of the shops we went into today talked to a colleague, laughing about "Americans" as he dealt with our custom.

It's funny how, within my culture shock, I've begun to cling shamelessly to pieces of France that are somehow connected to America, or even to Britain in order to feel more comfortable. I saw a bagpiper today in a manner very similar to one I saw in London a few weeks ago, and I felt so happy being able to hear his music for hundreds of meters around as it carried over the river. And yesterday in the taxi to the train station, the driver (who spoke very little English) was listening to French radio and randomly, "I've Had the Time of My Life" (the original, from Dirty Dancing, not the Black Eyed Peas version) came on, and I was moved in spite of myself. I'm not even a huge fan of that song, but just hearing it settled me down a bit.

However, being blatantly slapped in the face by my own nationality does not have the same effect. When we were visiting Chateau de Chenonceau, we sat near a large group of American high school students on the train, and we saw them later at the site. I found myself wanting to separate myself from them (although this might have been because they were being a bit obnoxious) and I even once slipped into speaking German when I was standing near them and trying to point out something to Lea. This was embarrassing.

In general, France has managed to bring out the worst in me. It has made me passive, paranoid, proud, prejudiced, and all sorts of other p-related Jane-Austen-y negatives. I hope that at least my noticing them has had some reversing affect, and that maybe I can prevent them from continuing or growing.

Some interesting Etimological tidbits that France has brought to my attention:

- the word for "tip" as in what you add to a bill in a restaurant or on cab fare in both French and German translates directly to "drink money." Where did this idea come from? My hypothesis is that, back in the day (whenever the day was that the word for "tip" was born) the tip was the money you gave someone when you benefited enough from their services that you wanted to reward them with money to go out drinking. As I have limited internet access, I can't verify this for a while. If you would like to do so and let me know the results of your research, please let me know in the comments section.

- the French word for pomegranate is "grenade." Did this come before or after the English word for the hand-held explosive, and did it influence it at all? Because pomegranates are about the same size as grenades, as I recall, and they can be explosively juicy…

- the French word for honey moon is directly translated to "moon of honey." Where did this idea come from? Why do we call the period after a wedding a honeymoon? Did it start in France and work its way out after English and French had split up, perhaps due to the supposition that French is the most romantic of the Romance languages, or did the word come from before the two languages were separate and so just follow so many other words over to English? Do other languages call it the equivalent thing? (The German word for honeymoon is "Flitterwochen" a compound of the word "wochen" which means week, and "flitter," which I'm not sure means anything—it's not included in my pocket German/English dictionary, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.)

That's all for now. I'm mostly caught up. We'll see if I can easily wore the rest of these pre-written bullet points into future posts.

<3 spadeALLcross

And I get to kiss you baby, just because I can...

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

Still they were beautiful, everyone's beautiful, all of us crawling on hands and knees in need of you...

I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark.

Just quotes for you to think about this week.

I don't have much to say, but I just saw a movie about a blogger so I wanted to post something.

Yeah...

Hey, tons of monkey points to the first person to correctly name all of the bolded pop-culture references in this post without using a search engine.  You can ask anyone you like, just no Yahoo, Google, or anything else like that.  I'd really love to meet the person who thinks like me.

<3 spadeALLcross