meanwhile, back in the country's middle...

This summer I enjoyed the particularly intriguing taste of transition to adulthood. I got my own job, paid my own rent, planned a few camping trips on the weekends, and kept myself alive and healthy. Of course, I was far from being completely independent, but it was a big step. I worked 44-60 hours a week at two separate jobs, and spent 10-12 hours each week at the track or in the weight room. The three summer months dragged along, slowed by a job with few qualifications but somewhat redeemed by a paycheck of a gratifying size. However, those three humid months are over at last, and my last few days have been a sweaty blizzard of college tasks.

I learned, this past weekend, that moving two blocks away is just as much work as moving two states away. Fortunately, I have a man with a strong back, a reliable car, and an enduring servant's heart, so the moving process only took about three hours. However, between RA retreats, seminars, and obligations, it took me three days to unpack and settle into my new apartment. I've not quite completed the finishing touches, but today I unpacked the last box, tidied, and managed to make my living space a bit more habitable. My previously bare walls now have the beginnings of a wardrobe. In one corner, above my desk, are some refreshing cutouts from a magazine about the Pacific Northwest:


On the wall above my bed is a photo collage of the people and places dearest to my heart:


And on the doors of every apartment on my floor are my afternoon and evening's work--name labels in tasteful hippie designs (complete with hemp bows!):




As the fall athletes move in tomorrow morning, as three-a-day volleyball practices kick off with the ferocious timed mile, as new students arrive and are ushered through orientation, and as my last year of undergrad classes begin, I fall back into my familiar student's routine. I take comfort in the fact that I'm not graduating yet, and I won't be rushed into full adult responsibilities until spring. Not yet, mom. Nine more months before I really do need to be an adult. Nine more months...

i can't say i'm not biased, but...

"Date a girl who reads, who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. She will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop. That’s the reader, [who] can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

"Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Let her know that you understand that words are love.

"Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book.

"[A girl who reads understands that] behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. [Miscommunication] will not be the end of the world. A girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. All things will come to [an] end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop.

"If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

"You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick.

"You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

"Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

"Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

-Rosemarie Urquico

until i have deeper thoughts, a story:

This morning I woke up after three days of illness and constant class-skipping and sleeping. The sun was shining, I felt remarkably healthy, and I had an email from my professor cancelling my 9:00 class. My morning began so well, and made me smile all day long.

HOWEVER, as I sprinkled cinnamon on my oatmeal this morning, the perforated sprinkle-lid sneakily clamped itself to the inside of the screw-on lid. As I shook cinnamon onto my breakfast, I looked out the window at the gorgeous morning and inadvertently flooded my oatmeal with about half a gallon of cinnamon. After some diligent work with a plastic bag and a spoon, my oatmeal was revived to the point of being barely palatable.

These good mornings... they definitely keep you on your toes.

Speaking of toes, I just painted mine after their long winter nudity--spring approaches! I know because I wore shorts outside after an outdoor practice (though my criminally white legs slightly dampened the mood). Here's to a high near 70 tomorrow, to healthy bodies and sunshine, and to the plastic bag of renegade cinnamon that will flavor my oatmeal tomorrow morning.

contagious delight

I firmly believe that God has graced me with a gift of delight. So many things catch my eye, thrill my soul, and make me smile! I realized today how much I want to spread that joy to others, to splash a little sunlight into the worlds of those around me. Because I believe that the world, though badly broken, is still beautiful, and that even the darkest parts are softened by the healing light of Christ.

One of my friends shared this quote from a textbook she is reading for young adult literature, and it tugged at me. Perhaps egotistically, but desperately nonetheless, I want this sentiment to be true of me.

"She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.

She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timid, introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life.

She saw things. I had not known there was so much to see...."

-Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl