Trying Our Best

My husband and I decided that power couples, more than anything, are two people doing their best. With how many different monkeys we have spinning on plates, I'd say that for us, we aren't doing our best, but we're sure trying. 

This semester I have felt like I was falling to pieces, dissolving into a human puddle person. Between family medical emergencies, computers that crash when you've just finished an 8 page research paper due that day, huge cracks in your windowshield that you could have prevented but didn't quite make it in time, deceased dogs, fat jeans that don't even fit anymore, 50 students, the work to grade of 50 students, 300 pages of required reading a week for my grad classes, and my never-just-40 hour work weeks, I have been barely holding it together. 

Meanwhile, the hubs stopped working full time in order to work full time for no pay at the same place he had been working full time for full pay. Hooray internships!!!! He also took 12 hours of classes on top of that. 

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo you could say that we're a little stretched thin. 

Moments of this semester, I have felt truly thankful and blessed. I love my students. I love them. And I love seeing the students I helped get here around campus, making friends, growing up. 

I have been thankful for the continued life of my grandmother, after she scared us pretty good at Thanksgiving. 

I have been thankful for classmates that I have enjoyed very much in my grad classes this semester. 

I have been thankful for time spent with my brother's family from Atlanta last month. Only seeing them once a year makes me feel like they grow 6 inches and 6 years of maturity each time I see them. I can't believe how much they've grown. 

I've been thankful for time spent in Arizona for my cousin's wedding and the good memories made climbing mountains and laughing with my family. 

and I've been thankful for having my husband as the light at the end of the tunnel of this semester. He makes sure I eat food and take care of myself. And he gives me all the snuggles. Marriage is so hard sometimes with all the stressors of life, but having a human there to love you and bring you shoes when you forget them and bring you snacks to work when you get a meeting scheduled--again--over your lunch break and squeeze you when you're panicking and squeeze you when you have a migraine and try really hard to make you laugh when you're grumpy is the best. He's the best. 

So, at the close of a really hard semester, when I feel like I am dragging my empty body across the finish line by one bloody arm, I can really only be thankful. Anything else might feel justified, but it wouldn't be true. I am loved, I love others, and I am loved by God. At the end of a difficult season, that's the part that's most important. 

First Year's Stones and Waffles

Marriage year one is in the books. There were so many firsts for me in our love story, but they were mostly seconds for Julius. Of course, every experience is different, but it feels really nice to say that our first anniversary was the first wedding anniversary he's ever had as well.

Our first year, I suppose, was very straight-forward. And, in others, not so straightforward. There's no "normal", though, so I guess we were normal.

We kicked it off with a honeymoon at Galveston beach, which is quiet and quirky and perfect for us. Then a week with my family at the lake.

It felt like I left almost as soon as we got home, however. Texas scooped me up for five straight weeks. In the moment, I really like travel season. Months before I start in with the anxiety and dread. Luckily, last year this manifested in packing up meals to freeze. By the time I left, he had a meal for each and every meal that I'd miss. Needless to say, the freezer was packed. Meanwhile, Julius played tennis, went to work, hung out with his friends, and went to graduate classes. I couldn't help but feel he had more fun than I did.

We had our struggles. Like me coming back from travel season to find the dishes not done for 5 weeks and a stench of a bachelor in every room. This was not aided by the old individualistic patterns that had allowed themselves to reinstate in us during our 5 weeks apart.

It took a while, but we got back into a groove. Meals started reappearing with consistency, the floors and bathrooms, dishes, were cleaned, laundry was washed and folded, roles began to establish in terms of who does what.

Winter sunk in, and with it, the darkness. It's hard to go play and do when the world closes in around you even before you leave the office. We learned hard lessons about togetherness and friendships. How, when your work and class schedules dominate your time, sometimes you have to sacrifice additional fun things with non-spouse friends because, well, you haven't seen your spouse in days.

We learned about grace and immediate honesty, how that generally bodes better than eventual honesty. We learned about unlearning.

Family was new again, as well. His who had been used to him living with them now had to share and relinquish. Mine who is used to me showing up often had to anticipate me less and for shorter periods of time. I experienced what only-child holidays are like, and he learned to cope with what I'm sure felt like repeat scenes from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

We discovered that we get along best if I drive. He also learned the importance of packing snacks. Always.

Probably hardest was finding the balance between roommate and romance. He was used to coming home and disappearing away to be by himself for hours. I was used to coming home to a happy house of introvert women I loved with all my heart. Even if I was alone in my room, best friends were right outside. Marriage changed both those things. Julius had to learn to communicate with another person when he got home--and that coming home is an essential part of that equation. Meanwhile, I was alone. How does a reclusive introvert with an open office layout day job make friends and engage with others when she leaves work if she comes home to an empty house? How do you not attack your husband with love and a desperate need to connect when he arrives home exhausted and uninterested in connection? Where do those needs find balance?

At the end of the year, two very strong-willed, hot-tempered people found ways to compromise, to learn, and to love one another. We threw stones, we made waffles, we figured it out.

The Orange Ceiling

It's been three weeks since the election results, and I still can't come to grips with what has happened.

I woke up on November 9th feeling lost and grieved. Texts from friends across the world flooded my phone with fear and empathy and horror. Oh God, what have we done?

In my office and in my family, I hear people talk of his policies. That's how they justified casting their vote for the Grabber. At best, I hear the phrase, "lesser of two evils." At worst, I hear actual praise of him. My heart is grieved to its very core that this is who we've become.

They say it's not about who they are as a person; it's about what they will do in policy.

In my job, I am known as the "face" of the university.
I dress, walk, talk, and make myself think as such. No matter where I go, no matter what I do--especially when I am on the job--I am conscious of  that responsibility.
I may be the best at my job, the most thorough and practically compassionate, but if my words and behavior are ugly, then that is what people see and what people will believe the university I stand for is.

In the same way, the principle is true across the globe. They see him first. They hear him first. My God, follow the man on Twitter if you don't understand my point. We are being led by a hissy-fit of a man.

My Hispanic minority friends are afraid.
My LGBTQ minority friends are afraid.
My foreign friends are afraid.
My female friends are afraid.

Just before the election, I was in a Walmart and was sexually harassed. These guys just followed me through the whole store cat-calling and making comments and laughing to themselves because they saw how clearly uncomfortable they were making me.

When I got back in the car, I had myself a long, angry rant. Right now, we have a president who has made decisions I do not always agree with, but I know, at the end of the day, he is a good man who promotes kindness and mutual respect.
The man who is now our president elect has been caught on camera bragging about how he can do whatever he wants to women because he is a powerful man.

Any God-fearing man who can imagine himself explaining what "grabbing [a woman] by the pu**y" to their young daughter means when she asks and can still put himself behind that man is a disgrace.

Adults should know better. They may use a truly awful man to justify their choices, but kids don't know any better. The leaders of our country help shape who they become. We now have chosen a model for behavior that communicates to them that sexual misconduct and disrespect is normal and acceptable in society, just as long as you're in the power seat.

We have a Republican house and senate. They hate Hillary enough that they would have curbed anything nutty. Now, though, we have an absolute whack-job in the hot seat of the same party. A man who got grounded from his Twitter account in the final days of the election because he was making a fool of himself is now in charge of the nuclear codes.

I hope to God I am wrong. I hope his unbelievably horrendous behavior is beaten out of him as the reality of this new position sinks in. Until then, we pray, we seek peace, we choose not to completely lose it in political conversations with our families, and we hope tomorrow will be different.

Struggles to Human

Let's talk plainly about social anxiety.

Personally, I find it frustrating.
Yes, also debilitating at times, but frustrating.

For me, I gt so angry with social anxiety because social anxiety feels selfish to me.
There's an event, usually very casual, that's designed to be fun and easy and you, because you just can't handle it and just can't help it, make it about you.

At the same time, I recognize that it isn't something that I can think myself out of, though I have indeed tried.

There have been some methods of coping that I have learned and have imparted to other of my socially anxious friends. Things such as going to check out that restaurant/school/baseball field/shopping mall before you have to go there with a friend or date.
Things like searching on the internet for a campus map if you're visiting a university friend or a museum or a hospital.
Knowing the name of the person you're dropping by to see: "Hi! I'm here to drop off materials for Angie Smith".
Doing anything to get acclimated to the new surrounding.

For me, a lot of my social anxiety is over-stimulation.
I can handle brand new location if I'm with someone I'm very comfortable with.
Or, I can handle a brand new person if I'm in a location I'm comfortable in.
I can even handle brand new location with brand new people so long as I have one solid person I know.

It's when everything is new, everything is unstructured, everyone is new that my ears drown and I can't hear what anyone is saying to me and I can't differentiate shapes and shadows and my heart starts racing and my nails start sinking into my palms and I have missed that gap in time where I can recover and cope and have disappeared into the dark place where I need to run away and cry and find solitude and silence.

It's embarrassing. It's selfish. And yet, at the same time, it isn't intentional even a bit, which is a key aspect of selfishness I think. More than anything, we'd like to feel like we were a part of the wallpaper, able to observe without the pressure of engagement. Able to exist without being noticed too much but still kind of noticed. Noticed enough.

It's a struggle I sometimes feel I've learned to manage.
And it's a struggle that still knocks me completely flat and bepuddled when it isn't on my radar to prepare for.

Mind Your Mind

Today at work, it was my turn to do the devotion.

It is not my habit to sign up, but someone was covering a college fair for me, so I took his devotion day for him.

It is also my intent to choose a day for devotions in which I am feeling particularly holy.
This is not that week.

It has been nearly 7 days of stress and frustration.
Overlapping travel planning with the final details of student move-in is a lot more work than you might think. There are also people everywhere, and my introverted self is just not used to it.

I could give a series of excuses, but the end of the story is that I'm just being short with people because I feel a little overwhelmed.

Yesterday was really bad.

Work was bad, tried to go to yoga and came across an unexpected face so I left before it started, went to a girls' night with some people I didn't know, then ended up just going out with friends.
There didn't seem to be any sources of relief for anxiety.

So I wake up, right, and I have to come up with something inspiring and holy to say.

First, I checked Oswald Chambers, but that just wasn't really apt, so I glanced through my bookshelf and found Jill Briscoe and a section in one of her devotions entitled "Doing Yesterday".

It fit.

My devotion of the morning, using her words, was about the tendency of ours to replay yesterday over and over and over again, how we could have done different and said different and all the bad things. We avoid God and just try to talk with ourselves, knowing full well we do so just to avoid the words we know are coming to us from God.

It's over.
Move on.

As a writer, I recognize the capacity of one chapter to be six different things depending on perspective. I can change the entire story just by giving it a revision of outlook.

In the same way, each day we are given the opportunity to look back on our words and actions and the words and actions imparted to us. We are given the opportunity to filter them, judge them, color them however we do so choose.

I can look back on yesterday and see the aggravations and set-backs or I can look back on the hidden pieces--like the gem of a student who appeared last-minute and, despite his financial setbacks, is going to make college happen. Or like my sweet housemates who have become to me inseparable friends and confidantes. Or like church friends who seek me out. Or my sweet boyfriend who is willing to be gracious and give me the benefit of the doubt when my hurt communicates messages I don't intend them to mean.

In any situation, there is so much good underlying.

Jill's prayer is for the Lord to help her mind her mind and for the Lord to mind her heart.
It is up to us not to forget and move on or push out of our minds but actively choose to see the world just a little differently and revise our yesterdays just a bit more constructively.

Change what you can change, apologize for any misplaced words or actions, learn what you can, then look forward.

Wish Says, 'Gotta Keep Movin'

My Aunt Joycie used to be integral to the coordination of an event in Tulsa called the Wish Lemons run.

The run was designed to raise money for missions, and it fit Wish well because he himself was an avid runner. On all the cups and t-shirt designs, his mantra, "Gotta Keep Movin'" made you feel like you could actually accomplish something.

Moving isn't running, isn't sprinting, isn't jogging. Moving is determined progress in an intentional direction.

You may be wondering if this is a post about running (it isn't, but I'll get there), since I've mentioned my running progress more than once recently, though I did, in fact, complete a 5K with my coworkers without walking once:

It was on the coast of Florida, and it felt like I was chewing my oxygen.

My stamina is pretty pathetic generally.
It took two months of training with the Couch to 5K app to be able to do it.
Have I run since?
No.
Running is the worst.

More to the point, though, building stamina through slow determination and a time-oriented goal can be really helpful.

If I had been asked to run a 5K in a week's time, I would have been miserable. Miserable miserable miserable. There would have been shin splints, vomit, walking, stopping, and a lot more complaining. Because I hadn't run in multiple years really. At least not with any consistency.

The app started me slow. Lots of walking, with spurts of running, just short enough that they were doable, but just long enough that they winded you.

By the end, I could do it. I did do it.

Reading is something that has been important to be since long before I could actually read. Words, movement of language, poetry, the poetry of communication, the communication of poetic experience. I love it. I have felt more known by books and language than by other people for most of my life. It's interwoven with my identity.

Then it was tidal waved out of my life.

There comes a point of fear when we realize that what we thought was a temporary phase of complacent mediocrity has become a sturdy "normal".

My diet of philosophy, history, historical fiction, modern poetry, creative nonfiction, and science fiction became replaced by pinterest, twitter, and facebook status updates. Neither my eyes nor my attention span could hold on for much longer than 8 or so seconds.

Scroll scroll scroll.
I missed movement, but I couldn't move.
Depression robs you of all you love.
Worse, it  makes you feel as though you weren't robbed but rather have made a choice to abandon.

Perhaps because that's easier than admitting the truth. It's better, you think, to claim you have power, even if in doing so you're communicating that you knowingly want to make the choices that your life is now characterized by.
For me, that's been lethargy, apathy, and mass consumption of the digital world.

Where I had read nearly 60 books in 4 months, the next 4 were only 20, reduced to 8 in the 8-9 months after.
I can't even tell you how many more I started and failed to progress past the first chapter. Didn't even make it through the first chapter, actually.

My pen was just as dusty as my bookshelf. I used to fill pages a day with thoughts and curiosity and updates.

There's not a record of the existence of this past year. I have nothing to say.

Frustration with myself grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.

Is there a point in frustration that frustration becomes your new identity?
Where your words about your inabilities become who you are?

Yeah.

There is.

I also wasn't being very fair to myself.
The books I was choosing were either far above my "reading level" or so far below that they were children's books that I had already read.
Neither are something to build momentum on.

Then, I don't know, I chose one that looked fun and easy, but it was new and interesting, too.
And I finished it.
In two weeks.

After that, I finished A General Theory of Love, which I had started in October and a bunch more technical. The next day.

Two days after that, I finished a book on the history of JBU, which I had started a year to the day that I had started both the book and my work at JBU.

Then I started a totally new one last Thursday, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. And finished it yesterday.

That's more consistent reading than I have done in more than a year.
My pen has been more active, too, beginning to fill up the final pages of a tiny journal that's taken me more than a year to fill a quarter of.

It's now been a year since I moved back to The States.
This is the first time in that space or even more than I have begun to feel a return out of the ditches of my dead mindedness and back to me. I'm starting to feel ebbing relief in knowing that the part of me I love most isn't lost for good.

I no longer feel defeated. I feel like moving.

Remember Your Editor

I have now worked at JBU for exactly a year.

It's fitting that today I should find myself helping to train our new counselor: sending her informational emails/templates/codes, helping her learn the day to day and mark her calendar for different fairs and school events.

In this year, I have learned a lot.
Basics such as how to look like a professional (still a work in progress), how to plan for travel season, how to fill my desk days. I've also learned how to make a shower floor shine white, how to plan a weekly food menu, and how to solve my lava-hot room problem by picking out functional (and cute) thermal curtains.

It's been a good chapter, but it didn't start out that way.

During the first draft, there were late mornings, nose rings, frozen chimichangas, late nights, and a lot of energetic flailing.

Each month, each chapter section, brought changes wrought by many editors: my bosses, my housemates, my family, my friends, my God, and myself.

A good writer recognizes the reality of the "shitty first draft". The SFD is the first go-round of thoughts in the book writing process, and usually the most excitable.
Ink pours out of you, as new characters, setting details, and big picture ideas spurt into your right brain.

There's all this stuff!! All this new!! And for a while, you think it's the best thing ever brought into creation.
Until you meet your editor.

Enter: opposition.

They give you feedback you usually aren't ready to accept graciously (or at all), and you emotionally recoil and fight back vehemently, defending your paragraphs like a banshee.

All alone later, though, you take a look back at what you've created.
There's been enough distance now that, "Oh gosh...my editor was right", and you start implementing their corrections, awkwardly at first until you learn to merge your voice with their ideas. You practice and you correct till it begins to feel natural, as though it had been you all along.

We finish and we forget: this chapter isn't ours.
Without our editors, we would have pages full of microwaveable Mexican food, unprofessional-ism, the wrong addresses, lethargy, loneliness, and exhaustion.

Our editors bring with them momentary anxiety, frustration, pain, and sometimes embarrassment, but they are the ones who turn our outlines into books.

Reimagined Dragons

Tiny humans are the worst.

Not short people, though I'm sure there are some terrible short people, and I don't appreciate it when two heightless people stand on either side of me and talk. I can't hear a dang thing up here in the troposphere. 

I'm talking about small children. 

Walmart/Aldi/Movie Theaters/Parks/Pools just all the things. They're sticky, they scream (oh Lord they scream), and they decide that your approaching car is the perfect moment to run into the street. 

Sometimes, I think, "Parenthood, that sounds like a thing I want in on someday." 

Then I go to the grocery store and see a mom with four tiny monsters running around shrieking like they're being kidnapped because they can't buy a box of sugar-based breakfast food (because they need more energy reserves) and bless God for my current celibacy. 

After my most recent run-in (run from) involving the small jam-covered ones, I decided to re-brand them. 

You know what I think are cute? Dragons. They're adorable. Have you ever seen "Dragon Tales" or "How to Train Your Dragon"? Just the cutest. Baby dragons are all bumping around, accidentally breathing fire, shrieky, and clumsy. Precious. 

Since then, I've started pretending that horrible little children are just baby dragons, and they have become so much more tolerable to me. 

Sometimes, it takes a change of perspective. 

You'll never catch those grammar errors in your paper, you've been looking too long. Change the font and try again. 

You never noticed the homeless people in your own city before but change the venue and they're everywhere. 

It's easier, I think, to notice and to have compassion for that which we have had little exposure to, like the irony in "The Help" where the white women are raising money for the starving children in Africa but neglect to recognize as barely even human the black folk who serve them. 

It isn't right, and it isn't fair, but you may not even recognize the disparity in your thinking. That doesn't give you an excuse, but it does help give some context to what may appear to others as hypocritical. 

I know my baby dragon theory is fanciful and silly, but occasionally, re-branding the familiar (even to whimsical levels) can help you appreciate or "see" just a little bit more clearly. 

I've Got Bins

This past weekend was absolutely a thrill. My housemate Liz is moving to Oregon at the end of the month, so my moving gift to her (really, it was a thinly veiled gift to myself) was helping her go through all of her belongings in every room and dividing them into keep, trash, and sell piles.

It felt like I was living out my dream of being a member of the "Clean Sweep" team. The most wrongly cancelled program ever. It was like crack for the OCD. I loved it.

You take a room (or two) jack crammed full of clutter from all the years and transform spaces. *chills*

It took us probably around 18-20 hours to get it all done, and we still have some more to price and organize for Saturday's garage sale.

Purging.

Like me, Liz is very sentimental. Her purge involved going through not just her bedroom and crap boxes but the large bins in the garage, the place where memories hide.

Notes, tiny gifts, trinkets, pieces of clothes that don't really fit anymore.
Paper, stuffed bears, keychains, that kind of ugly sweater. If you found it in someone else's closet,  you'd want to toss it immediately. None of them are valuable in and of themselves.

Because it doesn't have much to do with the object.
It's the adventure you were on with your family when you found the keychain, the dark place you were in when you received the note, the love that gave you the bear, the sweater that you and your best friend discovered in a thrift store.

We miss the person/place/era. It's a memento from a pin in time that you won't be able to get back to.

Weekends are no longer meant for best friend slumber parties.
Summers are no longer meant for extended family vacations with just your immediate family. You probably don't all fit in the van the same way (babies, wives, husbands).
Hidden presents in your locker from that cute boy you've got a crush on don't happen anymore.
There's just not a reason for ironically ugly matching sweater sets.

We miss our pasts, and when we keep all the crap from them, it's like our way of keeping them just a little bit alive.

The thing is, they're not alive. They keep your present from living and fill your garage with piles of useless, heavy bins.

Throw it away, recycle it, bag it up and take it to Goodwill.
Still too fresh? That's okay. Just be judicious in how much you allow yourself to keep.

"But maybe I'll use this paperwork in the future!!!"
How long have you had it? Have you used it in that time? No? Recycle.

"But I love all the memorabilia I kept from that vacation!!"
Cool. Stick in a jar and make it decor for your home. It can't stay in a box.

You don't have to throw away everything that means something to you, but learn to emotionally distance yourself and let yourself move on. Make practical what you can, take pictures of sweet notes or paste them on to the back of a picture of that friend, make a quilt of old t-shirts, give a cousin/friend the clothes you like best.

Repeat the purge every spring--don't wait for the next moving process (you'll be super overwhelmed)

It's time to let go.

Caged Human Survival Treatise

Unless they reach the point of desperation or brokenness, caged animals will not go to the bathroom. Or, if they do, they confine their "messes" to the same area. The reason for this is because, whether or not they like it, that cage is their habitat, their den. It helps them retain their wee animalial dignity to keep their area livable. I would venture to say that it also helps keep them from going completely wild.

A clean den is a happy den.

Caged humans need clean dens, too.

Unhealthy situation: caged human sleeps in late, spends all day in comfy sleep-like clothes/clothes he or she slept in, does homework or watches movies or reads all day in bed, goes out of room to fetch some sort of easy food, leaves dishes and clothes strewn about, returns to den, waits until bedtime, and goes to sleep. Repeat daily.

Healthy situation: Caged human wakes up at a set time, gets out of bed, makes it, puts on publicly acceptable clothes, leaves room, does something, anything productive, makes food and also cleans up kitchen and other living rooms, uses mind constructively, interacts socially in some facet, waits until bedtime, and goes to sleep. Repeat daily.

I am going to avoid situation one with one minor adjustment. Jasmine pants are clearly an acceptable form of clothing.

My actual den (or cave, if you will) is the C.S. Lewis Study room.

Super delicious quesadilla I made for dinner. It was just so pretty I needed to show someone. 

It's been a really good alone day.

I have a few survival tips for anyone ever considering self-inflicted international isolation:

1. Embrace the fact that parts of every day are going to feel like the worst possible, most hopeless moments you have ever experienced. They might actually be.
2. Self-judgement isn't going to get you anywhere. Other than God, you're the only person around, so it doesn't matter if you freak out every once in a while.
3. Speaking of freaking out, sometimes that's really helpful. If you feel a bout of absolute panic coming on, and you know it's unavoidable, here are some pointers.
----Run up and down the stairs, dance, or do some other physical activity.
----Use your mind. Something like a puzzle or sudoku would be good. Listen to a sermon or some uplifting music at the same time.
----Tactile activities. Start crafting something, play Jenga, cut up and freeze fruit, make a meal.
----Distract, distract, distract. Leave wherever you are. Pick up around the house, organize a pantry or freezer, vacuum, iron, fold laundry. Create a mess in order to clean the mess.
----Scream. Talk out loud to God (not yourself. bad road). Sing as loudly as you can. Play the djembe. Play scales on the piano. Pretend you know how to play the guitar.
----Cry. Have a nice hard cry. That may feel like the opposite of good (and if you stay crying and defeated for multiple hours, it will become the opposite of good), but it can actually be really healthy. Suppressing emotion or pretending it doesn't exist will actually create insanity. You are feeling what you are feeling and it's okay. So have yourself a nice wee cry and then get on with your life.
4. When you can, get outside.
5. Build in fun into every day.
6. Create a "thankfulness" list.
7. Get a social outlet. It can be a daily walk down to the grocery store or a chat with a barista or a text sesh with your best friend or a skype call or, if you don't have legs or technology, a letter written to a friend, but you absolutely must keep connected.

 I have decided to embrace the fact that each day is going to be an entirely different experience for me. One good day doesn't mean that all my days are going to be good. And, conversely, a bad day doesn't mean all my days will be bad.

I still can't allow myself to think beyond the day (or hour) at hand, but I have every assurance that I will be given the exact measure of what I need to life fully and well each day.

How many people are given the opportunity to have a very long, very thorough detox session with the Lord?

This is absolutely going to suck, and I am going to get pretty desperate here as soon as the newness and almost fun, game-like quality comes to a close, but at the end of this, there ain't no way I'm going to be the same person as when I started. Amen to that.

Merry Happy

December, Day 3. The students are gone. 

The cooks leave tomorrow night. 

That leaves Lainey and me. We chat about once a day around 22:30. Okay so maybe I wait up for her a little bit...

But everything is going to be OK! I have a plan (ha! I don't feel like finding the link to it, but that does remind me of John Kerry's presidential campaign. Never did find out what his "very good plan" was.) My plan is called, "Loneliness and Solitude are Two Things Not to Get Confused." 

Mostly it involves a self-structured schedule, crafts, projects, cleaning, homework, writing, and old people. And Puzzles. lots and lots of puzzling. 

This is my first day of self-scheduling. So far, it's going rather well. I got up an hour after I intended (which I had also accounted for in my schedule. Know thyself...), made tea, got dressed and ready for the day, then headed off to research. However, David (house fix-it extraordinaire) asked me to Christmas the house. We brought in all the boxes of Christmas supplies, and I set about organising. 

 The result is a disastrous foyer (yay! saving that cleaning project for a rainy day!), a garlanded bannister, some random wee trinkets here and there, and  three trees in silver, red, and gold. They're nothing like my ma's Christmas tree whisperer skills could have produced, but they are cheery and I like them.

Next up on my agenda is scavenging for food and then actually doing a bit of research before I head out to a church event tonight.

This is good.

My survival plot just experienced a minor setback in that I've just gotten word that my friend Adam (visiting the UK) is no longer coming to Belfast, so there's that. But...no. yeah. There's that. ha.

Challenges. But challenges are also opportunities. And this could be my opportunity to finally, you know, do something like memorise the encyclopaedia or something.

It's amusing, really, this obscene amount of free and alone time, especially in comparison to my senior year of college. I was literally scheduled every single day from 9 am (ain't nobody talk to me before 9 unless you've got coffee in your hands for me) until 10:30 pm. To get in my planner, you had to ask for a slot a week ahead of time.

This did mean that I missed out on a lot of the random "being there" stuff, eating food other than nachos, pb &j, and cucumbers, and spending time with the people I actually wanted to spend time with in a time slot other than "post 10:30", but I liked it. If I could go back, I'd probably end up doing it really similarly.

Except that last part. I fell asleep during many a night hangout. That doesn't make people feel very valued. ha. It was good for me, that very structured business. I wonder if my friends would have chosen my living ways differently, though. Was it as good for them as it was for me? Or did they feel that I didn't care for them because I just wasn't around or made them into a task of the day?

What were my priorities? What were my motivations? Are they the same now as they were then?
Guess I've got a lot of uninterrupted time to think about it.

Gettin' Wild

If anyone out there thought, at any point, that I was cool or normal, I need you to lay that high-minded idea to rest.

I am a thick glasses wearing, accidental hand inking, snort laughing nerd. Bookworm by day, wordsmith by night.

I tell you this  because I am going to nerd out for a moment. I've been working on an organization project. There were three full, full bookshelves in the library that were left to us and so totally unorganized. And, because organization happens to give me chills of joy and I needed to see if any of my coursebooks were hiding in those shelves, I gained permission to overhaul.

The Result of 3 days' work:

Far Left Case (starting from the top): 

• Bibles of all sorts
• Hymnals and books about hymns
• Derick Bingham (the deceased library's owner and prolific author)
• Religious books
• Bottom shelf are all Bible reference books

Middle case:

• General reference books about words and writing
• Books on Britain and travel
• Books on Ireland
• Fun books
• Poetry

Far Right Case:

• Art and history
• Bronte
• Tolkein and Tolstoy
• CS Lewis
• Winston Churchill
• Biographies

You're like, who cares, Jamie? You're in Ireland and all you can blog about are some dusty old books? I care! I love books and libraries and what they tell you about someone. 

For instance, I learned about Professor Bingham that he was enraptured by the Bronte sisters and Da Vinci and the story of the Irish people. He also had a thing for CS Lewis, but who doesn't? Not everyone has a book of his in Korean, though. Just sayin'. 

Yes Man.

Yes Woman to be precise.

My new plan is to say yes where I normally would say no. Okay, so last night's saying yes to the museum poetry discussion then backing out last minute was kind of antithetical to this plan, but today, while I was cheerily organizing the library bookshelves (my current project), Elaine asked if I'd like to join her to Lisburn.

"No thanks."

Then, despite my desire to not put on outing-acceptable clothing, I went. It was very good for me, I think. I spent a bit of time with Elaine, got out of Belfast in something other than a bus, and it was out of my comfort zone.

In Lisburn, I walked about the shopping area then found the words "Castle Gardens" on a sign-post heading up the road. Those are two words I like.

 Lisburn

 Garden and sunken gate

Why yes, sunken gate, I will enter you! 

It was approaching the time when I needed to head back to meet Elaine, but there is always time for a bakery...

I'm not all sure what was in this, but my best guess is lemon-caramel cupcake with chocolate drizzle and caramel popcorn topping. It was both odd and delectable, a sweet end to my outing. 

I've a Stash. Shhh!

Good evening! And greetings to all of you who do not have the pleasure of living in the beautiful land of Norn Iron.

Although some of you reading may actually be residents here, I wouldn't know. I may not even know who all of you are.

Cheers all around, then! Welcome, welcome.

I think it's high time we have a good chat on tea, don't you?

As you can tell by my windowsill, tea and I are having a smashing tryst with one another. On average, I go through three to four cups of tea a day. It's the solution to cold, exhaustion, extroversion, sleepiness, need-to-get-sleepiness, and boredom and the perfect companion to a nice chat with a friend, a movie, or a book. Today it joined me while I finished-up PS I Love You.

Once you down a cuppa tea, though, and have snuggled down deep into a den of warmth, you are faced with a problem: the cup. Therein lies my current windowsill issue. I hoard my dishes and hide them with the curtain.

This is particularly ironic considering the fact that I am the one responsible for house tidiness and keep my students vigilant about their dish clean-up. Thus, the curtain.

But I ask you, my dear friends and compatriots, when faced with the task of maintaining a proper body heat for survival and you've finally regained feeling in your hands--minus your fingers. a lost cause, that one--would you venture into the frozen tundra that is your bedroom, hallway, and kitchen, to return a wee mug? I should think not.

I shudder to consider the alternative.