Midterm: Conquered

So today was a little more productive than yesterday.  I finished cleaning my room, played some neopets (oh dear...yes, I know...but it was just the Mah Jong...I promise) and then took my car in for an oil change and tire rotation and all that jazz.  Something was cracked and some other thing was wearing down or something, and I maybe should ask more questions and learn something about cars, but I decided to just let them fix it all so that I could feel safe when I drive to Missouri this weekend for my friend's wedding.

Then I came home and studied for my midterm, napped, and studied some more.  Then I went and took the midterm, and probably owned it, though I also got massive cramps in my hand.  That was a lot of writing; maybe the most hand-writing I've ever done in college.  It was pretty intense.

The sad thing is that of all the stuff I studied, none of it I learned from this class that I'm taking.  All the stuff I learned was from my religion classes, my Islam class, my high school, junior high, and even elementary school classes, as well as stuff I picked up from the History channel.  This professor is...dismal.

After class, I watched How I Met Your Mother on TV with my mom.

Tomorrow, I'm going to watch Annabelle for the day.  Should be fun and exhausting simultaneously.

<3 spadeALLcross

Quick! The Internet ate my day!

Yeah, today wasn't as productive a day as it could have been...I have a midterm tomorrow evening, so I had planned to study for the better part of the morning and early afternoon, but...you know how me and studying are.  (Hint: not friends.)  So I spent the morning writing blog posts for later, changing my desktop background to one with a direwolf on it, changing my chrome theme to one that matched the direwolf, and pretending I had important emails to answer.  Then I studied for about two hours.  Wuph.

In the afternoon, I took Annabelle to swimming class.  We have a little kiddie pool that we put out on the porch on nice days, and Annabelle really loves it, so I figured swim class at Birchwood would be like the pinnacle of existence for her.  And she did really like bouncing in the water and immediately after her class was over, she wanted to be the teacher (this is a habit of hers; she's a bit of a control freak for one so young) but she was way more scared of water than I remember being at her age.  I guess I probably was, though, because most of the kids in that class were.  And when I think about it, it's completely normal.  I mean, I'm still scared of water, just more rationally.  I have water-in-the-ear problems when I go swimming now, and drowning is one of my biggest fears, and sharks aren't my favorite.  How much more would a little kid be scared of water?  They have no reason to trust it; they haven't been in water long enough to know that they float, and no matter how much we tell them we're going to hold them up and make sure they don't get stuck underwater, why should they believe us?  For all they know, we might not be strong enough to fight the water.

Anyway, Annabelle was not too keen about kicking or scooping or...anything but bouncing and bossing me around, really.  I hope she grows out of that.  She likely will, I think, it just makes me sad to think that she might not.  I loved summers when I was a kid specifically because I could swim in the pool.

So after swim class, we came home and had dinner, and then my mom, Annabelle, and I went to Kohl's to return some of the stuff we got on Sunday and use our Kohl's cash to buy more things!  Yay consumerism!  Then I cleaned my room and my mom and I watched Much Ado About Nothing.

That was Tuesday.  I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought...though I still have a ton of studying to do.

<3 spadeALLcross

Case of the Mondays? Not here.

Woof!  Today I did things!  It was great!

1)   Cleaned my room a bit.  Not completely finished, but major headway has been made, let me tell you.  I hadn't finished cleaning after moving back in for the summer, so...well it's better now.  Let's not dwell on the past.

2)   Went to the library and picked up a couple new books about Homosexuality and Christianity, and also one by Jim Wallis about "an alternative to the Christian Right."  I still have to finish Do Not Ask What Good We Do, so I don't know how quickly I'll get to these.  Also, I have a midterm this week.  We'll just see.

3)   Made Annabelle a time-out glitter timer.  I'm going to post pictures and instructions on my other blog, but I've got to get them off my camera, which means getting up to cross the room and...meh.  Not right now.

4)   Made a thing to hold and display my necklaces and bracelets!  Woo!  I've been needing one for a while, since I used command hooks back in Grand Rapids.  I like this one and may keep it for a while, even when I go back to Michigan.  Again, gonna post pictures and how-tos on my other blog eventually.

5)   Went to class.  Ugh.

6)   Watched four episodes of How I Met Your Mother.  I have never seen a full episode before; I like it more than I thought I would.

Okay, I've got stuff to do tomorrow.  Let's see if it happens.

<3 spadeALLcross

Lazy Sunday, woke up in the...morning...

So, today I did some very interesting things!  Hooray for doing something with my life!

1. I finished reading Game of Thrones!  And later I went out to buy Clash of Kings.  I'm going to be writing a review of GoT soon over on my other blog, but I was too busy to do it today.
2. I wrote a movie review for my other blog, but I'm not posting it until later; I find that I need some time to sit on my opinions before posting them on the internet.
3. I helped make lunch for my family.  It was a feast of appetizers: my mom had wrapped some pineapple in slices of prosciutto, and I grilled some shrimp and some steak and some tomatoes.  That took up most of the afternoon, between the prep and the actual grilling, but I like to think it was worth it; it was really good food.  I am pleasantly surprised that even I can make tasty food when I follow a recipe correctly.  I am slowly (and by slowly I mean with the epic charging speed of a glacier) learning how to cook.  
4. I went to Khol's and bought a dress to wear to the wedding I'm going to this week as well as some jewelry to go with it.  It's so nice to have a disposable income again.
5. I watched Legend of Korra with Ben via skype.
6. I was betrayed by my ally in Diplomacy.  He was playing England, so I sent him a message on facebook:

"When you play the Game of Thrones, either you win or you die."

I can only hope he got the joke.

Anyway, very full day.  And tomorrow has a lot in store for it, as well.  

<3 spadeALLcross

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

So...what's next? [Me: Part V]

So now...the exciting part.  Where do I go from here?  What do all these changes mean to me, and how will they affect me?

Well, my desire to travel has opened up new avenues for me, but because I'm still a little cautious about, in my fervor for adventure, getting in over my head, I'm starting small.  I've wanted to visit Asia for years now, and now that I've been to England, which I thought was my first love, I feel like Asia is next.  I found a company that works with college students, recent graduates, and other like-minded people to install them as English teachers in China and Mongolia for a one- to two-year periods.  They also happen to do a summer camp program in the same countries for a shorter amount of time.  I checked my summer school schedule and my other engagements for next summer, and I found out that it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to take part in that sort of experience.  So...that's on my short-term dream list.

As I've been through the teachers' education program at Calvin, I've learned that I, like many upper-middle class white kids from the suburbs, struggle with stereotypes and prejudices, and I've seen how important it will be for me to break those down if I want to be an effective teacher.  So part of my goal in traveling to China is to immerse myself in another culture, to feel stereotyped, to need to defer to other people and lose myself in the attempt to assimilate.  I had a taste of that in England, and it was eye opening.  I don't think it's healthy to do that, to try to dis-identify with the parts of your life that made you who you are, but I do think it's what many classrooms ask students to do (even students of the racial and ethnic majorities) and I want to better understand the challenges in resisting that so that I can aid my students later on in life.

But I don't want to stop with China.  I want to start there because I'm fascinated by Eastern philosophy and cultures, so the actual transitions and logistics of living there may be more enjoyable for me.  But I want to then move to places I'm both less comfortable and less experienced.  There are other international teaching opportunities in Central America and Africa, and I would love the opportunity to get involved there.  I haven't found any available in the Middle East, but there may be other short-term options that I can look into.

Realistically, the timing is not great.  I don't actually have all the time in the world; I have a life in the US I'm excited about living, people I don't want to leave behind for so long, and a teaching certificate that will probably not get shinier the longer I'm away from the US school system.  So I'm definitely still working out the kinks in my plan.  But these are the things I'm excited about.

On a similar note, I don't believe that I can teach to American children without knowing more American children than I already do.  I want to get involved in US cultures and societies vastly different from the ones I grew up learning.  My school has what they call "living-learning residences" on and off campus.  In my freshman and sophomore years, I lived on the Honors floor, which was one of those communities.  There are other dorm floors like my old one--the creation care floor which is involved in environmentalism and the grass roots floor which is involved in social justice and racial and ethnic equality--and there are off-campus houses called Project Neighborhood houses, which are rooted in the community around Grand Rapids, especially the urban communities of downtown.  Many of the houses pair with churches or schools and the residents are required to get involved in those pairings through volunteer opportunities.  They are also "intentional" (a sort of Calvin buzzword) about creating community within each house, with house dinners and communal food...stuff like that.  More than simply six college students living in a house together and sometimes going out for pizza.  It can be really meaningful if the students want it to be, and that's something I think would benefit from.  (If only because I'm a kind of hopeless nerd and I need more social interaction if I ever want to function well in groups of people.)

I love where I'm living now and the people there, but I've been silently frustrated for a while now that my whole community will be changing after this year as so many of my friends graduate and get jobs and maybe even move away, while I'm left here, still in classes.  Not all of my friends are going to leave, certainly, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of my close friends, including my boyfriend, went off to grad school and I was left to fend for myself.  Project neighborhood would keep me involved with people whether I liked it or not, which would be really helpful and maybe even necessary.  I don't know yet; I'm still thinking.

Basically, I just wanted to share that I have some new goals for my life, that my newfound desire to travel and my re-found desire for divinity has given me an excitement for worldly adventuring, from teaching overseas, to living in diverse and different communities, to branching out to people I don't know, to being a generally more open and inviting human being.  None of these things interested me (practically) in the slightest eight months ago.  Some of them haven't interested me for more than a couple days, some for more than a couple hours.  I wanted to share this with you because it's all thrilling to me, and I want to explore it.  As most of the people who read this blog are people I care about and who care about me, I really want to explore it with you most.  Even if you think I'm crazy, even if you're worried that I'm becoming someone you don't want to care about anymore, I want to hear from you if you have something to say.

Stay cool.  You're 2Good2Be4Gotten.  Don't ever change.  And all that stuff.

But really, just live your life.  In the best way you can think of.  If I were someone who tried to literally bless people, like a CRC minister, that's what I would leave you with.

Tune in next time when I'll talk about...maybe cheese.

<3 spadeALLcross

You got a friend in me...

I'll continue with my rant about myself later.  Right now I just want to thank you.

If you're reading this blog, you're probably a friend of mine, and, if I am remembering correctly, the majority of you are rather close friends.  I have recently come to re-realize that I would be nowhere and miserable without all of you.  Thank you for being with me and for me.

<3 spadeALLcross

Who do I want to become? [Me: Part III]

Hey again.  See, I'm good at this keeping up now.  Don't get used to it.

Last post, I talked about how same in myself and lots of dark, depressing feelings forced me to change the way I look at my future.  I decided to take "the high road," if you want to be cliché about it.  I like to think of it more as the road personally mapped out for me specifically by God, a road that no one else can take.

The first step of that road was to get beyond the shameful experience that had brought me there.  Shame, guilt, fear...they're all very useful emotions and shouldn't be discounted or avoided simply because they're unpleasant, but they can cripple us if we let them.  So I had to let them go for now.  In order to do that, I had to begin again with my timeless mantra of "you're special, you're wonderful, you're perfect," but that wasn't going to work now.  I knew that I wasn't perfect, I knew that I had failed.  How could I be loved when I was a failure?  That's the opposite of what I've believed my whole life.

Almost immediately, I realized that love doesn't work that way.  Maybe I knew that before, but it had never meant to me then what it does now.  My mother and my brother especially, but others as well, showed me that I was special and perfect and important because I was loved, not the other way around.  It was their love that made me who I was.

But that's...not ideal.  My mother is an amazing woman and I wouldn't trade my brother for any other brother in the world, but they are just as flawed as I am.  There is a chance--slimmest of the slim, and I only believe this as a philosophical theory of general human nature, not of the love of these people--that something could cause them to stop loving me, and then where would I be?  Back exactly where I was.  I had to find a source of love that was beyond fault, beyond beginnings and endings, that was big enough to cushion me when I failed again, as I would, and strong enough to hold me when no one else would.

And there it was.  My new faith.

I've always believed in God's love, and I've always known in my head that I needed it.  But kind of like you can't describe to someone what it feels like to attempt to balance yourself on a bicycle, when that someone has never ridden one, I did know know what it felt like to believe I needed God's love.  Like I said, up until my realization of my own brokenness, I thought that I was good enough to be loved by God, not that God's love was constantly overcoming my not-good-enoughness.

Again, the transformation sounds like I went from point A to point A, when really it's just...really complicated.  I'm sure there's a lot of psychology or religious jargon that I could toss in here to help my explanation make sense, but I don't know the jargon, and I'm just hoping that there are enough people out there who have been where I was that they will just innately understand.  If you don't understand, please contact me and I can try again.  It's as important to me to learn how to articulate myself in this matter (I am training to be an English Teacher...so...) as it could possibly be for you to understand what I'm saying, so if you're interested enough, please let me know.

Thanks for sticking with me this far.  I hope you're getting something out of reading this as much as I am by writing it and processing it.  But really, if you have questions, concerns, etc., talk to me about them.

<3 spadeALLcross

Interjections (Well!) show excitement (Oh!) or emotion (Hey!)...

I said I'd post every Friday, but I hope I didn't say I'd only post on Friday.  If did, I'm sorry; I lied.

This morning in Church, we digested Matthew 6:24-34 --

24“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Do Not Worry
25“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life^b?
28“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

--and the speaker (I don't yet know what all the different positions are in the Anglican church) made a point of reminding us that God considers each of us as his treasure, his most cherished piece of creation, and that we could never fathom how much love he has for us.  If we did know, we would never get the impulse to worry, because we would know that we were completely safe in his love. She pointed to several individuals in the audience, saying, "You are his treasured creation, more loved and important to him than you could know. And you.  And you."

I think it's a struggle for many, if not most people to remember this day to day.  We know we're not perfect, we know the worst parts of ourselves, and we see ourselves in a constantly revolving state of failure.  Sometimes it's hard enough for us to believe that the people in our lives who say they love us really do; we wonder if our parents would rather they hadn't had children, if our spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends are quietly growing more and more distant because they're not really in it anymore and just don't know how to say it, if our friends, roommates, siblings, cousins, would, at any given moment, rather be with someone else than with us.  And these people aren't in touch with a whole world made up of billions of people who are easily more interesting, hard working, beautiful, smart, and just better than us.  God is.  How could he love us this much?

But the point is he does.

However, he doesn't just love us.  He loves everyone.  He loves each person in the world (and throughout the universe, I feel safe in presuming) as much as he loves us.  He loves Mahatma Ghandi as much as he loves me, and he loves Mother Theresa as much as he loves me, but he also loves Paris Hilton as much as he loves me, he loves haters on YouTube as much as he loves me.  He even loves Hitler as much as he loves me.

That's something that I have troubles with, far more than with the "he loves me" bit.  Because even though I can't get to the 100% knowledge of his love, there are moments when I feel it, and aspects of my life that affirm it's truth.  But the knowledge of his love for everyone is less reflexive and self-evident, and more of a muscles that must be continuously flexed.

I'm putting this post here so that, some day, when the need arises, I can return to it and remember.

<3 spadeALLcross

Hey ho, the wind and the rain...

Fun fact: 


Did you know that "trivia" is a latin word that literally means "three roads"? It encapsulates the idea that in a place where three roads meet, people often get together and talk...mostly about meaningless or pointless things, like gossip and...TRIVIA. Yes, yes, it's all very exciting.


So, I have some housekeeping items to get out of the way before I deliver a proper post.  


One is that I'm currently in a 100-year war with iPhoto and it's fancy-pants internet photo publisher doohickey that allows me to easily and quickly publish my photos to facebook and flikr.  Rather, it's supposed to allow me to do so easily and quickly, but my current struggle with it is that it's doing this rather clumsily and slowly and jumbling everything up like a big jigsaw puzzle, evidently just for kicks.  Please bear with me as I attempt to fix this.


Another thing is that I'm going to try to make a schedule for my snidgets so that I stop doing them just because I'm bored or procrastinating.  I'm thinking once a week, generally on Fridays.  Does anyone have any better ideas?  Are Fridays too weekendy for anyone?  My other thought was Wednesdays...  


I also think I'm going to try to update this blog once a week now, definitely on Fridays, because I have this huge awkward break between my two courses on Fridays around this time, and I'd like to fill it with something less scholarly than Boudica.  But there might be weeks when I don't post at all due to the need to do actual work (because Dreaming the Serpent Spear isn't going to read itself).  


No one ever really comments on what I say here, except to say, "Good job," or "Sweet photos," or "I liek ur stuphh, plzz chexzors out mi hott pixx at www.nakeyLOLcatzz.com!" so I don't know if asking for you to comment will ever really work...


Not that I don't appreciate the comments I do get!  I love knowing that people actually read this.  It's always a surprise and a joy, and you're all so supportive.  So thanks.  


...or should I say...Cheers!


No.  I don't think I should say that.


< / housekeeping >


< real post >


This week went much more quickly than the last, and it was both more satisfying and less.  It was more satisfying because I feel far less cripplingly homesick now, and I'm actually beginning to really enjoy the prospect of being here for four months, and I'm even getting the (sadistically excellent) sinking feeling that four months is actually too short a time to spend in this amazing country and on this amazing continent.  I'm definitely going to have to plan an extended stay in Europe after I graduate college, or between my senior and super senior years.  There's just so much to see and do here, and so little time right now in which to see and do it.


It was less satisfying because the stabilization of a routine has allowed me to settle into my good old self; content to be alone, happy to stay in my room all night, and shoving homework and exciting prospects of England off to the side.  In my heart of hearts, I really want to go out into the city and explore what life is really like here, but I'm really comfortable and really enjoying not doing so.  


In order to counterbalance my natural tendencies (which I'm not spurning, just pushing aside for now), my goals for the coming week are as follows:

1. Do at least 80% of the homework assigned to me.
2. Get to know some of the other people from Calvin and go out with them for an evening
3. Leave open the door to my room to better facilitate conversations with my flatmates
4. Buy fricking A4 folders in order to get my life organized

So, with you, Internet, as my witness, I swear to do these.  After all, there is no try.


I and a few of my Calvin-based friends went together to Manchester on Monday, since none of us have class then.  Manchester was an exciting city, much bigger than York.  It felt to be just a bit smaller than Chicago, but not quite so squished together with the buildings.  It was incredibly windy; Ae Hee, the smallest among us, almost got blown away.


We went to the Manchester Museum, got lost a bunch of times, attempted to use the free shuttle-bus system and failed miserably, and brunch and dinner, went on the Wheel of Manchester, and visited the John Rylands Library, which was a fantastic and nerdy experience, at least for me.


The rest of the week was pretty mellow.  My flatmates had a bit of a raucus party on Tuesday evening that went until Wednesday morning at around 8:30...which wasn't my favorite.  But they did apologize about it later, and I didn't feel terribly tired Wednesday, so it was generally not a terrible experience.


Wednesday we went as a class to the Yorkshire museum which had a ton of exhibits that told about the Roman history we're actually studying, so that's cool.  It's nice to be able to put faces (albeit without noses in most cases) to the names and eras we're learning about.


It's been very hard this week being away from my friends and family in America, though not because of homesickness so much as just feeling useless over here.  I want to be doing life with them--celebrating the good times and consoling in the bad--which is actually kind of ironic, considering I was never very good about doing that when I was with them, and I'm not really trying to do that with the people I'm with now.  But this distance has made me realize how little I involve myself in others' lives, and how much I owe to those people who have involved themselves in mine.


For those of you struggling this week/month/year with various world-suck, and for those of you enjoying this week/month/year of excitements and treasures, I hope you know I wish I could be there with you.  It probably doesn't mean very much, considering I'm going to post this and then go off to do my own thing, but we cannot always be torn in two.  We must be one and whole.


But know that I am praying for you.  That is one thing I've actually accomplished over here, as far as life-goals go.  I've finally started really praying, especially for the people I can't see daily.


I must be off now.  Ta!


<3 spadeALLcross

All I know is that the world looks beautiful, the world look so damn beautiful...

I didn't do any of the things that I said I would do...Big surprise there.

Things are getting exciting in my life.  In four days, I'll take an eight-hour plane ride and lose five hours of my life that I won't get back until June.  This is my last weekend in the only world I've ever known...to put it dramatically.  Well, it's 12:32 am.  Who isn't overdramatic right now?

I'm pretty psyched by now.  It took me a long time to get to the psyched: I was mostly scared up until a couple weeks ago or so, and I was worried and sad last week, but all those things have mostly shed by now to properly reveal the excitement that's been there, waiting in the wings for the past year and a half.

The United States has a lot of things and people that I'm going to miss.  For instance...do they sell mozzarella sticks in the UK?

Anyway, in order to keep up with the people over here whom I love and will miss, I'll be trying to keep at least a semi-regular travel-vlog on YouTube (a practice that is evidently requisite of all college students studying abroad these days...?).  I've already got a few trial episodes up there, just testing out soft- and hardware and trying to figure out what I want to use the thing for...but you can't see those unless I've already shown them to you.  Sorry about that.

But I'll probably have one up by next week, and I'll try to at least semi-update this blog every time I upload a video, so you can keep updated on those.  My YouTube account is "PKsDancingGirl," so feel free to subscribe (if you've got a google account).

Anyway...

A lot of the excitement is flavored with a bit of...I don't know what to call it.  An oversimplified way to put it is "fear of the unknown," but that's not wholly it.  Like I said, I'm not really scared anymore, not worried so much, but I just feel so unprepared, and I don't particularly like that feeling...ever in life.  My element is a rather small cave with a very narrow entrance that opens to an eternally stormy inlet, and when I get out of my element, I quickly feel uncomfortable.

Basically, I'm just warning you, that if the culture shock is bad, there might be a few angsty posts during the first few weeks.  Probably no reason for alarm.

I'm not making any promises on the vlog or blog, by the way: I plan on living my life...though I do love the internet.

<3 spadeALLcross

I refuse to stuff stockings.

I am now going to proceed to do none of the things that I promised I would do.
Don't worry; there's still time.

What I want to talk about now is some random Christmas and family stuff.

I love my family.  I love each and every one of the whole lot.  We're spread out around the country, and I love that, because it makes every meet-up a destination-vacation, without even trying.  Getting together to see family is never just an afternoon's worth of an ordeal.  We span days, sometimes weeks, and we always inevitably see too much of each other for our own collective good, but I personally never get sick of anyone.  That's all the old-folks' jobs.

That's another interesting piece of revelation I've recently had about my family.  We're all pretty old, and we've all been old.  Now, I guess I should clarify that when I say, "we" and "old," I mean them in the most general senses: I am not old, nor would I really call most of my family "old," but when we get together, so much of the conversations revolve around "us" being "old" and how none of us can stand it.

My aunts and my mother complain about their faces getting wrinkly, my cousins and I complain about college being harder than high school and how we don't want to become adults.  My uncles and father complain about how they can't hear or see (well, no, they complain that everyone talks so quietly and writes so small) and my sisters complain that their children are growing up.

My question is this: is there ever a moment after our seventh birthdays when we're content to be swept along in the progression of time?  Holding on to our childhoods, fearing the discomforts of what's to come...or, like when we're kids, wishing we were older, with big-kid privileges?

Or, better question: is there a way that a person can just learn to be happy where they are, knowing that they aren't going anywhere faster than sixty-seconds in a minute, and that's how it's always going to be?  I feel like, after the hustle to get to college and the scramble to feel like an adult, I've reached a point where I'm getting sick of looking ahead, and bored of watching my back.  I know there were high times and hard times in the past, and I know there are more of both to come.  I don't think dwelling on either of those eras of my life is very productive for the moment in which I am actually living.

I firmly believe I'm only as old as I want to be.  (Of course, you're going to tell me that that's because I'm 21).  My body may deteriorate slowly, and I may not be able to do the things I used to, and I may not enjoy them.  But every phase of life can be full of excitement and...well, life.  Sometimes, I'll see it immediately, and other times you might have to look around a bit.

Insecurity about your age is one of the worst kinds of insecurity, since it is the hardest to even pretend to control.  When you're insecure about your body weight, you can eat healthier or exercise.  When you're insecure about your singing voice, you can take lessons, or lip sync.  When you're insecure because you're too old or too young, you can't change to improve your confidence--you'll only act more foolish if you try--so you end up worrying about it constantly.  Why not work to let it go?

That turned into a rant.  Scwhoops.

But anyway, back to my family and Christmas.  We're not all together this year, which is upsetting, I think, to everyone.  For some of us, this year has been full of pains and fears, and we wish we could have each other to bring us out of them.  For others of us, it's been a really great year, and we want to get together to celebrate.  But for all of us, our desire to be with family this year is not being wholly fulfilled, as we're all celebrating Christmas in our own abodes around the country.

It almost doesn't feel like Christmas because of that.  I'm scared it will be just like any other day.

But I get to see my brothers, my aunts, my uncle, my mom, my niece, my sisters and their families, my grandmother, and her caretaker.  It will be a full room tomorrow, as we gather around the tree, opening presents.

You know, I hate the commercialization of Christmas, and I refuse to buy meaningless gifts for people just because 'tis the season, but there really is something...strangely magical about sitting together with hoards of family, opening gifts and stockings, and eating eggs and sausage.

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes.


<3 spadeALLcross

...and the winner is...!

ME!



That's right, ladies and germs, I FINISHED MY NOVEL A DAY EARLY!

PWNED.

FTW.

YOWZA.

ALL OTHER CONCEIVABLE REJOICING PHRASES HERE!

And to put the topping on the cake, I will herein unfold the last chapter I wrote, including the last 1K words, which were specifically for one Kathy Rittenhouse (EDIT: for those of you who bet on my progress for NaNoWriMo and can't remember what you bet, you can find the details here):

The men and Uma came back to camp around the same time, each man carrying at least a brace of conies, if not some form of larger or more plentiful game.  Tony, now practically a member of the married women’s quilting circle,  he was introduced to all the husbands and children, and the women, particularly Rachel and Polonia, vouched for him with their families, saying that he was an asset to the camp and that they would gladly accept them into their homes if he needed a place to sleep that was more fitting than Uma’s tiny hovel.

And although the sensible and level-headed Poplar seemed to actually like Tony by now, Toleman did not seemed wholly convinced that it was safe to have him in camp.

“How do we know this isn’t some elaborate ruse and that he’s really trying to pull one over on us so he can slaughter us in our sleep.”

“The man could barely chop scallions,” Therese said, rolling her eyes in what Tony had discovered was her characteristic way.  “We would have to be a sorry excuse for a camp indeed if we could not defend ourselves against the likes of him.”

“All the same, I’ll not let him within twenty paces of my cabin.”

“You’re cabin is even smaller than mine,” Uma said with a sharp laugh.  “We wouldn’t want your help anyway.”

Toleman looked hurt by Uma’s words, and Tony realized in that split second of silence where he looked at Toleman’s expression of both longing and sadness when he looked at Uma, that if he really did want to woo Uma, he’d have to fight for her.

And then, with a pop that sounded like a central-vacuum turning on and opening, everything around Tony froze, and out of nowhere, the strange, long-haired, invisible-eyed witchy woman appeared right next to Uma, leaning on her shoulder.  

“Well well well,” she said, her voice on the brink of laughter, “what have we here?  It seems that Mr. Graduate Degree in Narcissism has actually found someone he can love as much as himself.  Is that true, or do mine eyes deceive me?”

Tony blinked and looked around, confused, at the frozen world.  It was as if his life was a television screen and someone had pressed pause.  “Okay, that’s it.  Who are you?”

The woman smiled, stood up, and thrust her hand out in front of her, as if to prompt Tony to shake it.  “My name is Bonjo, damsel of distress.  It’s really has been a pleasure working with you thus far.”

Tony just looked at her hand.  “What?”

“I specialize in tomfoolery, have a degree in ballyhoo, work part-time for mayhem, and generally thrive on total chaos.”  She saluted him eagerly.  “You’ve been one of my pet projects for the past couple days.  I’ve really enjoyed the progress you’ve made so far, but I’m afraid that it might be because of the unfamiliarity of your environment.”

“What do you mean, I’ve been your pet project?”

“Well, you have obviously figured out by now that I am the one who brought you here, right?”

“Yeah, that incident with the field and the wolves and the random treadmill  in the middle of nowhere kind of tipped me off on that one.”

“I’m proud of your observational skills.”  She nodded sagely.  “I did all of this for your benefit.  You see, you are, what we call in the business, an ‘orderly.’  You try to organize too much of your life, putting yourself into a dangerous box that keeps you from realizing your full potential.  I brought you here to take you out of that box.”

Tony raised an eyebrow.  “Excuse me?” 

Bonjo shook her head, as if she were mourning something.  “This conversation is a result of your self-imposed box.  If you would just let go of your death-grip on reality, let yourself go a little bit, give in to the imagination and spontaneity you were born to have, you would have a lot easier time believing me and moving on with your life, if you had any reason to talk to me at all.”

“So, basically, you’re trying to make me as crazy as you are?”

“Oh, gaawwd no,” Bonjo said exaggeratedly.  “I am the last thing I want  you to be.  If I were human, I would be so out of balance, I would hardly be able to breathe.  I simply want you to be more chaotic than you are, since right now, you are more lawful than you need to be.”

“Wait, you’re not human?”

“I’m technically only half a being,” she sighed.  “But you’re getting off topic.  This is not about me.  This is about you and your little female friend over there.”

“Who?” Tony asked feigning innocence.

“Let’s not try to play that game,” she said, raising an eyebrow.  “Little Uma over there is a real person, with real feelings and a real brother and all that.  Just because you think you’re in some sort of dream doesn’t mean you can treat her as if she’s a fictional character.”

Tony narrowed his eyes.  “Okay, I actually don’t know what you’re talking about now.”

“You’ve been doing a pretty good job since yesterday of keeping up with all the hitches I’ve thrown at you, from the wolves and the treadmill, to that walk through the cave, to the breakfast club this morning.  That dance epic while belting out Gloria Gaynor was quite the show, I must say.”

“Hey, now—“

“But I’m growing more and more leery that your seeming comfort with all of this is simply due to the fact that you’re convinced that all of this is fake, that you’re in some sort of dream state and are imagining all of this.”  She shook her head sadly again.  “It happens with my clients a lot, actually.  I throw too much at them at once and they get overwhelmed, and just blot everything out.  It’s one thing to become a balanced, contributing member of society in a fantasy dream world.  It’s another thing entirely to translate that way of life into your reality.”

Tony laughed.  “Okay, so you’re basically saying that I’m screwing up, but it’s your fault.”

“Oh, I certainly misjudged you, yes.  But you’re the idiot who thinks all of this is fake.”

“Well, what am I supposed to think when you’re messing with everything going on around me?  How could you do that if it weren’t fake?”

Bonjo laughed a high-pitched clear sound like tiny bells on a Christmas wreath decoration.  “You think I’ve waited until just recently to start interfering with your life?”  

Like a wave of color and fabric was washing over her, her shape changed into that of the woman at the coffee shop whom he had argued with for five consecutive days about the way he brewed her drinks.

“Recognize me?”

Tony didn’t say anything.  He just stared.

Then a second wave passed over her and she turned into his landlord, who he had been ripping off for the past six months by paying him in singles and leaving out at least $150 every month because he knew the man didn’t own a cash-counting machine and he secretly didn’t believe he could actually count for himself.

“Do you feel bad yet, for the way you treat people?”

“Not if that man was you the whole time.”

She rippled back into herself with a jolt like lightening and launched herself at him, tackling him to the ground and pinning his neck under her forearms.  “I told you,” she said, hissing into his ear, “these are real people.  You can’t just mess around with them and think there aren’t any consequences.”

He pushed her off of him with surprising ease and choked out, “Hey, it’s your involvement that’s got me thinking they’re fake—“

“I never said I became them.  I only manipulated them to affect you.”

“Oh, so it’s okay for you to manipulate people, but it’s not—“

“I told you, I’m not human.”

“So you’re above the law?”

“I am the law!” Her black dress turned into a flowing judge’s robe and her hair turned into a long, white powdered wig.

Tony deadpanned.

Her face cracked from a stern, even angry expression to an irrepressible grin instantly.  “Bah ha ha,” she blurted out, clapping her hand over her mouth.  “I couldn’t help it.  It was just so perfect,” she said from between her fingers.”

Her appearance returned to its original state, and she brushed herself off while clearing her throat.  “Anyway, this is all just to say that I think you need some continued intensive work.”  She snapped her fingers and everything around them fell away as if the Earth had dropped out from under them, leaving nothing but one of those vast white rooms that seems to go on forever that they use for car commercials and the Matrix movies.

“Wait,” Tony yelled, lunging at the empty space where Uma had just been seconds before.  He stumbled and fell onto his knees.  “What did you do?”

To his horror, Bonjo smiled.  “I see my plan is working,” she said, her voice soft.  “I just have a little test for you, and then you and your little lady friend can be merrily on your ways, galavanting about the world, having a gay old time.”

“What sort of test?” Tony asked, looking up at her from the ground.  

She didn’t say anything, but made a dramatic move with her hand, bringing it around and over her head, while bringing the other one down near her waist, and shaping her fingers in the poise of two snaps.  

“Ida Rango!” she said, then snapped twice, doing some sort of seductive salsa dance move with her hands and stomping her feet, and with a loud crack that echoed throughout the endless room, she was gone.

Tony sighed heavily and pushed himself to his feet.  By the time the soles of both his shoes were planted firmly and flatly on the ground, the starkly white room was replaced by a stage floor filled with fake fog and reaching arms whose bodies he could barely make out beyond the limited visibility of the fog.  There was scaffolding all around the perimeter of the stage, and women were dancing in cages hovering dozens of feet in the air  

He turned behind him and looked out beyond the blinding lights into the house, and he could make out the shapes of what had to be hundreds of people sitting in plush red velvet chairs.  He looked down at his own body and saw that he was wearing tightly fitting white pants that had artistically place rips along the thighs and shins, and he had a sort of torn sash barely covering a diagonal strip from his shoulder to his opposite hip.  He felt a headband constricting the flow of blood to his head, and felt sweat beading up on his arms, chest, and face.

It was his worst nightmare; he had been thrust into some perverted disco movie, and he knew in his heart, the only way to escape was to dance his way to freedom.

Suddenly, the thudding dance music that had been playing grew stormy, and Tony watched a spotlight move from him to a place up stage onto one of the scaffoldings.  There, sliding down banisters and suggestively wrapping slender athletic legs around poles and hand rails, was Uma, dressed in a red sequence unitard with a glittering gold headband around curly brown hair Tony hadn’t seen before.  Though the movements of her body were fluid, graceful, and beautiful, her face looked horrified.

Evidently, this was her worst nightmare too.  

“Curse you, Bonjo,” Tony said under his breath.  “I thought you said this was a test for me.  Why did you have to pull her into it?”

She came to a break in the scaffolding, and, held at the wrist by two men dressed like dominatrixes, began gyrating heavily, thrusting her pelvis at angles not seen in nature.

Tony was surprised by how calm he felt about all of this.  Not only was he not freaking out at the idea of being on a stage and being expected to perform dance feats he’d never even tried to imagine pulling off, but he was not even remotely turned on by Uma’s seductive dance movements.

The men holding her lowered her knees on to his shoulders.  He turned her slowly around and slid her slowly to the ground, where she gave him a quick look of terror, before taking off backwards into the fog with long, dancing steps.  

Tony chased after her like a panther stalking his prey, but he tried to convey to her with his face that he was just following a script already set out for him, that he didn’t want to scare her, and that he wasn’t any better at dancing than she was.

He grabbed her arm and spun her close to him, and they danced and lept together across the stage, before she did an amazing back bend and he followed the curve of her body with his chin.  Then they both stood up and he spun her again before dragging her off behind him slowly and rhythmically.  He whispered into her ear, trying to keep his ragged breaths even enough so that she would understand him.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I swear I’m going to get you out of this.”

She broke away from him and dance forward on gazelle-like toes, and they chased each other flirtatiously in an elegant game of cat-and-mouse.  When they met at center stage, he held her in another fierce backbend, and then spun her through the air in a sweeping circle, as if she were a banner he were waving for the whole world to see.  He held her on his back while she did slow, strong kicks in the air, and as the music grew in momentum, the zombie chorus dancers popped up out of the smoke like daisies and began pulsating like waves crashing against rocks on the beach.  

Uma made a violent dancing gesture that Tony couldn’t have described if he had been asked to, and disappeared.  Tony leapt like a frolicking white-tailed deer around the stage looking for her, and while he was standing in one corner, he was accosted by a woman who jumped on to his leg and began swinging herself around his pelvis.  If he hadn’t been caught by surprised and slightly revolted, he might have enjoyed it.  While she sat there on top of him, more of the zombie dancing women gathered around him and he felt compelled to push her off so that he could jump out of the crowd and skip across the front of the stage, spinning and dancing all the way.  Another zombie woman jumped him when he got there, but he fended her off with the grace and poise of a love-struck swan prince, and turned to find Uma running at him.  

She broke into his arms and he spun her around in the air again, letting her hips gyrate unnaturally again, and supporting her as she did nauseating backbends in his hands.  She kicked her leg high into the air, stood up, and ran off into a sea of zombie woman dancers, then turned around and ran at Tony.  

This was it.  The part he was most afraid of.  The part he’d seen in a couple dozen dance-related movies from the eighties that completely wowed him and made him awfully glad not to be a male dancer.

She leapt into his arms, and he caught her with his right arm, vaulting her into the air above his head while she held onto his shoulders and stretched her legs out behind her.  Then, as the drums in the song beat the final cataclysmic cascade of bass beats, he dropped her onto the ground, holding her back with his hands and looking down at her sweaty, frightened face.  Her eyes were squeezed shut in a wince, expecting the worst.

After a moment that seemed to Tony to last a lifetime (wherein he envisioned himself growing old and adopting two sets of twins whom he would name Reggie, Martha, Pongo, and Perdita) the unseen audience began to clap and cheer, and he felt the breath return to his lungs.  

Unlike his counterpart of the silver screen, Tony did not attempt to kiss his dancing partner.  He just looked down at her and smiled.  “It’s going to be okay now,” he whispered to her.  “It’s all almost over.  I just have to strut a little bit, and then we’re done.”

Then the clapping stopped, the stage disappeared, and Tony and Uma were standing in their sweaty dance uniforms in the middle of Kings Cross Station, between platforms nine and ten.  Bonjo was standing awkwardly close to them, her face pushing in between theirs.

“Good job,” she whispered, her voice light and clear like the ringing bells.  “You both passed.”  She then walked slowly away, and Tony and Uma were left to deal with the dozens of confused Britons who were staring at them.

I believe all (but one) bets have come to their respective ends at this point.  If you owe me money based on our wagers, click the monkey to the right and follow his instructions.

If you're Ben and your wager with me technically goes until tomorrow...don't fear.  Your turn will come soon.

If you just want to donate, I'm still open for that, for sure.  Click the monkey and follow his wise words.

Stay tuned in the next couple of days when I will update my NaNo merit badges (I've earned four more since the last update...) and tell you more about my NaNo experience.  But now I've got to shower.

Thanks for all your support this past month!

<3 spadeALLcross

Turkey Day!

If you're reading this blog, I almost guarantee that I am thankful for you today!

Have a great weekend.  Eat until you've eaten so much that you'll never be able to eat again!  Sometime in the next couple days, I'll come around to changing the layout to Christmasy, including the music.  You'll love it, trust me.

Oh man, so excited for the holiday season!  It's the most wonderful time of the year!  


<3 spadeALLcross

NaNo Bucks

Herein sits a list of the donation/wager standings to date:

Straight-up donations:

• $35 -- Thanks to my mom and my best buddy, Cari!

Wagers:

1. Ben - He'll donate $30 if I get the 1,667 daily word goal every day, but I'll owe him $5 for every day I miss (not to exceed $30)
   
2. Katri - $0.50 on every 1K words
   
3. Kathy - $1 for every 1K words, plus a free bonus $25 if I write 1K words specifically about the movie Staying Alive.  (I'm going to have to get a copy and watch it, probably...)

Also, more of my friends than I thought are doing NaNoWriMo this year.  Two of my housemates, and at least one of our mutual friends (though I haven't found his username on the website yet, so I can't check in on his progress.)  Plus, as the scoreboard currently shows, I'm 8% over Chris Baty, the Executive Director of The Office of Letters and Light.  So, booyah.

For those of you who try to avoid giving money to strangers, you can go here to find how OLL uses donations (an exercise in patience, since their servers have been struggling to keep up with the demand for bandwidth).  Most of the money is needed for operating costs, like salaries, server upkeep, etc.

Thanks for all your support!  Current wordcount = 5,988
And my main character spent most of the last chapter dancing around her apartment in her underwear to Ke$ha.  I wish I could say that I planned that.  This book is chock full of surprises...

<3 spadeALLcross

Does that make me cRaZy?

In short, yes.

It's that time of the year, yet again, friends and family.  November is just around the corner...as in...it starts tomorrow.  And with november comes National Novel Writing Month and my participation in a little thing called NaNoWriMo, affectionately called around here "Insanity Epitomized."  I will be attempting (and hopefully succeeding) in writing a 50,000 word novel in one month, between midnight on November 1 and 11:59 on November 30.

I did this last year, as some might recall, and I "won" (meaning I reached the 50K goal within the time limit...there's not like a limited number of winners or anything).  It was an exhilarating month, and I am really excited to do it again...even though I don't really have a rock solid idea for what I'm going to write about.

In preparation, I've been reading this book.

It gives a lot of tips on what to do to make sure that the novel actually gets written, and that I don't chicken out and back away from my goal.  One of those tips is straight up gambling.  I'm not usually the betting woman; I think it's a good way to waste money fast.

But NaNoWriMo stands for a lot of things that are important to me, including global literacy (through their book drives for BetterWorldBooks.com) and exciting writing programs for both children and adults through schools and libraries around the world.  Because of this, I'm ready and willing to waste good money fast, as long as it's on their behalf.  And they've given me a great way to do that!

This links to my personal donation page for NaNoWriMo.  Here's how this is going to go.

Certainly anyone is allowed to donate free of nefarious connotations: just go to the page and donate and I'll be happy, and you'll be happy, and writers around the country and world will be happy, too.  Everyone wins.

But if you're of a more competitive spirit, or you don't think I can do what I say I'm going to do, or if you want to keep me honest, then let's set up a little wager, shall we?

There are many benchmarks for NaNoWriMo that we could put some money on.  There's the obvious one, 50K by the end of the month.  There're also the challenges of getting 1,667 words/day, or 11,669 words/week, or staying above someone else's daily word count, i.e. Chris Baty (the head of NaNoWriMo.org).  The wagers set thereon would work as follows:

You bet, say $50, that I don't make the 50K by the end of the month.  If I do, then you donate that $50 to NaNoWriMo.  If I don't, then I donate it to an organization of your choosing.  Any organization: NaNoWriMo, the NRA, Scientology, or even your own checking account.

The same goes for any benchmark.  I'm going to ask that there be a $1 maximum wager made for every 1,000 words expected for the benchmark, because I'm not made of money, and I'm sure you're not either.

If you accept any of these wagers, or if you want to donate just for the good of the cause, let me know in a comment below, or an email, or a text, or via facebook, or any other of the numerous ways people can reach me these days...

Happy Halloween!  And Happy National Novel Writing Month!

<3 spadeALLcross

We gotta stop meeting like this, hun.

Another crazy dream, not as terrible as the last, but still kind of hard to stomach in places. Americans had been enslaved, I think by some European nations, and we had pretty much given up hope of ever being rescued, since we'd never been very nice to anyone but the Europeans, I guess. Anyway, there was a class system among the slaves, and one guy in his twenties or thirties had a lot of "money" that he had used to build himself a really nice hut that stayed out of the heat, and a little corral for his car. He had also used it to buy one of the slaves; I think it was Megan Dincher. He had her stay in his hut all day while everyone was working, because he was afraid of this other slave who was in love with her and might have tried to steal her.

Meanwhile, Ben Verhulst, Ben Niewenhuis, Carley, and I watched all of our friends die off one by one [in a weird movie-like montage] from a plague that the slaves were all prone to for some reason. We carried of J$ and Jasmine, Breems and Luke, some of my more remote high school friends, etc. And then the four of us were all relocated and we thought we'd never see each other again.

I got to hang out with all the old people and the little tykes, which was creepy, because this wrinkly old woman [whom I shared a sleeping bag with because the nights got really cold] was evidently a very...excited lesbian. Then, one day, while working, I came across Megan Dincher's prison hut, and saw that there was a guy trying to break into it. I went to go stop him, and found Ben, Ben, and Carley, as well as some more of my remote high school friends had already tried to stop him.

Eventually, we were all crammed into this little hut, and I some how figured out that it was this guy who was in love with Megan (though she did not reciprocate) who had bought her prison hut and everything, by giving Megan's owner all the money he needed.

We decided that instead of turning the one guy in, we'd all try to escape. Somehow we made it to South America in a matter of a couple hours of a train ride. But there was still slavery down there; there were training camps for children who would one day be old enough to be slaves. We got stuck in one of those; they were going to hold us there until one of the camp overseers could come and pick us up and take us back to the states. So we tunneled our way out of there, and discovered all these wonderful places, including a place where Chilean children chase penguins into ice caves. We were all really scared that someone would find us, so we were soaking up as much of the landscape as we could, since it was much more temperate in Chile than it was in America, where it had gotten unbearably hot.

Then my phone went off and I decided it was not a good idea to try to go back to sleep in a dystopian society.

Other than that, today went pretty well. I washed off my new bookcase, packed up my car, finger painted with Annabelle, showered, watched some Royal Pains with Dennis and my mom, watched the beginning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, ate dinner, then left Illinois. I listened to the tail end of The Prisoner of Azkaban and then switched to music for the last 45 minutes of the trip. Now I'm back in my Michigan room that smells like Thai Dragon Fruit or something like that. And I'm not dying of heat exhaustion. Life is good.

Goodnight, World.

<3 spadeALLcross

Peter swam across the water, found it on a beach.

Woke up late today, no weird dreams that I recall, worked off and on all day on some stuff for D&D, photoshopped [terribly] a picture for my mom, and visited with the family as they came and went. Patrick was the best man in a wedding today, and he needed our help to get into his three piece suit (complete with cufflinks, suspenders, and those stupid little fancy buttons), so I helped him with that. Then, at nine, we all went to a restaurant/bar in downtown Palatine for Dennis' show. About halfway through, most of the place cleared out, and these three women walked in. They were probably already inebriated from a previous excursion, or else they are just very... exuberant people in general. They put on more of a show than Dennis did. And I got to see Andi Kauth again; haven't seen/heard from her in probably years. It made me miss the old poetry slams, and Writer's Week. I feel like my later high school years were when I had the most energy for life, and writing, and everything. I've mellowed so much in the past three years...it changes day to day whether I like that or not.

Tomorrow is more family time, putting air in my tires, cleaning off a bookcase for me to bring to school, and then going back to Michigan.

<3 spadeALLcross

I need some sleep, I can't go on like this...

I've been having troubles staying asleep past five or six hours for the past few weeks, and the past couple of days it's been really catching up to me; I've been falling asleep at friends' houses, while using my computer, and even while eating. It hasn't been a whole lot of fun, so I decided when I got home last night, that I would try to catch up on all that "lost" (I went through most of the past school years on five to six hours of sleep a night without any problems, so I don't know why I can't now) sleep. I went to bed at 10:00ish and promised myself not to get out of bed until at least 9:00.

That failed. I woke up at 1:00 just long enough to look at the clock and roll my eyes. Then I woke up again at 5:30. If I had gotten up then, I would have gotten almost exactly 7 hours of sleep, and my body definitely wanted to get up then. My mind started churning about stuff I had to do today, expecting me to get up and start doing it. But I refused, and eventually, though it took a while, I got back to sleep.

Mistake. I had the worst dream of my entire life between 5:30 and 7:30 this morning.

In the dream, my mom and I went to a movie together. My mom had suggested we see it because she'd heard it was revolutionary film with a lot of really poignant social commentary, etc etc. (In real life, my mom would not recommend that kind of movie: if a movie is depressing, she doesn't want to see it. More and more, I'm finding that that is my view too. Revolutionize me with real life, don't make my escapism tragic) Anyway, so we went. But while we were watching the movie, we were in the movie. It was weird, and no one questioned it; dreams are like that.

In the movie, the US was going to war with Egypt for what ever reason, and the president had decided to fire a nuke at them. So, we fired one, and then everyone started preparations for someone to fire one back at us. The president went into his bunker and a bunch of people kind of stowed away with him (not the Vice President, oddly. He decided to stay above ground). My mom and I got into the bunker, somehow, and the First Lady showed us around, since she had been in charge of the décor.

For what ever reason, there were windows facing DC (which suddenly had rolling hills of open fields and camels...?) and holes in the ground to, as the First Lady said, "Let the smell out," whatever that meant. We were all milling about in the giant bunker, just kind of chilling. This part was funny; it felt like Dr. Strangelove a little bit; when dealing with the end of the world, all these people could do was fuss about the stylish curtains in the fallout shelters. While dreaming, I was thinking, yeah, this is quite the social commentary. Good movie, I thought. People should see how ignorant we all look.

Then the first bomb hit. We watched it out the window. For a dream full of surrealism and an American President of a different color, it got everything about nuclear warfare spot on. At least, the bomb that exploded maybe three miles away from the windows in our bunker acted exactly like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did, according to all the reports I've read. We watched from safety as the camels and random people who didn't have an in with the President were instantly incinerated, and the shockwaves tore at the landscape. Then the ground beneath us started to heat up, and (this part I'm not sure is realistic) the molten crust of the earth below the bunker started to boil and pop into the holes in the floor that the First Lady had been so proud of. There was a little boy there, I'm not sure who he was, but I grabbed him and he and I lay on the floor, my back to the lava pits that we were all too close to, me screaming in pain and promising him I would protect him. My mom got too close to one as it bubbled and popped and the skin on her arms...well it was gross. Then Ben's roommate, Luke Breems jumped into one of the holes. I'm...not sure why. Breems is probably one of the most sane people in that house he lives in...but it was a dream after all.

It was very gruesome, very vivid, and for a while, I forgot it was a movie. The President was scheming with his staffers on some way to escape the lava, and they recommended he lock himself away in the sub-bunker (that looked suspiciously like the fallout shelter from Blast From the Past) and he agreed to do so. Meanwhile, all the people who's started to burn alive were turning rapid, including the little boy in my arms, the First Lady, Breems, and my mother. I started yelling at my mom that I'd had enough, that I wanted to leave the theater, that I didn't care how revolutionary the rest of the movie was, I didn't want to see it or live through it. her eyes went wild and she bared her teeth at me and I started hitting her with pillows and trying to escape.

When I woke up, I started crying immediately and groggily made my way downstairs to my mom on the couch and started the slow process of forgetting the dream. But it's still as vivid to me now as it was when I was in it.

...

Aaaanyway...

After that whole fiasco, and while I battled the inevitable exhaustion that comes from waking up mid-REM-cycle, today was a full, fun day. I went out shopping with my mom, my aunt, and my niece: three generations of Rittenhouse women. We went to Meijer (yup...that's the fourth time this week) and then to the mall to visit the Apple store, f.y.e., Sam Goodie (or whatever...I wasn't there for that), and to let Annabelle play in their little play area.

Then we went home, put Annabelle down for a nap, and began watching the movie, Where the Heart Is, with Natalie Portman, among others. We didn't finish before my mom had to go to a party of a friend of hers who moved to Texas a while back, but is in town for a little while.

While she was gone, my aunt and I went to Barnes&Noble's, where I had an old gift card, and I bought far too many books...but they were all worth it. ... Hopefully. I really hate spending money, especially on books. It's all very counter intuitive, I know, because I love having books, and I love earning money so I can spend it. I struggle with the whole have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too thing. But boy, being around all those books, and holding them, carrying them around the store with me, smelling them, talking to them and about them to myself...it just put me in the best mood. And it smelled like fall outside; I love fall. I'm excited for when it decides to come and stay.

Then she and I went to Starbuck's, checked the air in my tires to discover that I may need to fill one of them up tomorrow, and came home. I played with Annabelle a bit, then put her down to bed, and my mom eventually got home in time for us to finish watching the movie. Very good movie; definitely recommend it. It's a chick-flick, but by no means a shallow, two-bit one.

Now I'm going to bed, with a full mind and sagging eyelids.

<3 spadeALLcross

omgairconditioningbbq!!!1!!1!

Woke up, did some banking stuff, took a shower, yadda yadda, went to Mitchell's and played Mario Kart with Mitchell and Luke, then took Luke back to Calvin on my way out of town. I decided to wait on getting my paperwork done until I'm back on campus Tuesday, because I wanted to get on the road in time to avoid all possible rush hours.

Was in a car for three + hours. Listened to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Got home. Am tired. Going to bed soon.

<3 spadeALLcross