Morning Mumblings

Isn't the whole point of summer sleeping in?

I guess at 23 I have officially outgrown that phase of life, but I can at least remember it with longing when my alarm goes off at 6 AM.

Any person I have ever roomed with can attest to the fact that I am not a morning person. My morning routine includes waking up enough to reset my alarm (for some reason, I've never used 'snooze'), sleeping ten more minutes, and then sitting up in bed and staring blankly at the wall for fifteen minutes. You can attempt to talk to me during this time, I'm not grumpy, but I'm so incoherent that it's all pretty pointless. I never answer the phone if it wakes me up, not out of some sort of passive-aggressive protest against the caller, but because even if I wake up and realize in time that it is the phone that is making that obnoxious noise, when I answer about all I can manage is some variant of "mmmmmerrrrrrghfffffff," which, quite frankly, never makes for a good opening line.

But my strong aversion to the early morning hours does not take away from the fact that I rather enjoy the job for which I've been waking up so early. Due to some extenuating circumstances (out of town weddings, pre-field training, etc), my schedule is rather erratic over the next few months, which means that no sane employer would hire me, and, let's just be honest, the idea of working for an insane employer is rather off-putting. So out of the kindness of their hearts, my parents have agreed to employ me themselves. For the next few months, yours truly has been hired as a part time gardener.

I have absolutely no qualifications when it comes to gardening, other than the fact that I once owned a Wal-Mart bought bonsai tree that I named Henry and watered faithfully until he turned into a dead twig a few years later. However, it's something in which I've always been interested, and my dad has proved to be an excellent educator (imagine that). So for the past week I've been spending most of my time sitting on the ground warding off bugs and digging through the mud - and I love it. While I enjoy academic pursuits (within certain bounds), there's something extremely satisfying about working with your hands. Until you break a nail. That's just annoying.

However, I will say this. I had no idea flowers could be so expensive! Holy cow! $17 for a pot of Jasmine! I suppose that in and of itself isn't that bad, but if you plan on planting several whole flower beds, it can really add up. Of course you could just do a whole bed of pansies and marigolds, but I ask you - where's the fun in that? Give me a garden of calla lilies and platinum flowerpots!

So while I might be a bit on the sleepy side, at least I'm earning money and have a nice tan. And isn't that what life's all about?

It's the middle of the night, and I can't sleep.

Do you ever feel small?

There's a whole world out there that needs changing, and I'm only one little girl.

I have nothing to offer but my willingness to try.

I suppose that's something.

Moving Forward

So, apparently I'm not very good at updating this blog, but I'm determined! I will not give up! Soon you won't be able to keep up with all the mad-blogging I'll be doing.

I suppose a huge part of the reason I've been so silent on this front is because for the past few months, I have literally felt like I was drowning in school work. But no more! Because low and behold...



Holy Crap, I can't believe they actually let me graduate. I had actually convinced myself that I would never make it out of that place alive, and so the whole experience felt unreal. Until I had to say goodbye to one of my best friends, and started bawling. That sucked. But the rest of it was great.



I'm so proud of both my brother and my mom. David is 6 years older than me, but since he and his wife got married so young (he was 19), they couldn't afford for them both to be attending school at the same time. So she attended, they worked hard to pay off their debts, and then he went back to school. My mom got her Associates (which is why her cap and gown are a different color) by taking one class at a time per semester. She never got her Bachelors, because like my brother and sister-in-law, she and dad married young, and then they left for the missions field (Chile, to be more specific) as soon as he finished school. I greatly respect people who go back to school after taking time away, because that takes real determination and strength of will.



Because my dad is a professor at the college from which we all graduated, he was the one who handed us our diplomas as we walked across stage. So the only member of my family who wasn't in the ceremony was my sister-in-law. This isn't a particularly great picture of any of us, but I still like it.



I've never been so happy and so sad that something was over at the same time. Something about it all seems so final, and I can't believe that some of my best friends, who I've spent so much of my life with over the past five years, are people that I will now see only rarely, if ever. I feel so small and inadequate in the face of what is to come, and yet I feel so excited to be a part of something bigger than myself. School is over, and now it's time for real life, and I have no idea what that means or if I'll even be good at it, but while I'm terrified out of my mind, I'm thrilled at the opportunities that lie ahead of me.

Class dismissed.

Thanatopsis

Today I watched a woman bury her husband. She trembled as she stood beside the casket, as though the sheer weight of her grief would cause her to collapse. He was a good man, and in the wake of his passing she has been left scathingly alone. She said goodbye to a part of herself today, and all I could do was stand and watch.

Today I watched a young man bury his father. His voice wavered as he spoke that final goodbye, though his dignity and strength were steady and strong. He spoke of fond memories, the distant echoes of a way of life which would never be again. As he looked at the golden wood of that cruel box which held the hollow shell of his world and spoke that final “I love you”, all I could do was stand back and watch.

Today I watched my father bury his friend. A small smile crossed his face as he mentioned past camaraderie and laughter, though his eyes reflected sorrow. His inner turmoil remained unseen as he grieved for the loss of a brother, and he stood strong in order to allow the grief of others to flow freely. Haunting memories whispered in his ear, memories of other goodbyes quietly demanding to be heard, and all I could do was stand back and watch.

Today I buried a man. I wept openly from where I sat; wept for the family, wept for the friends, wept for myself. I wept out of empathy for the pain of those who had been left behind. I wept out of fear of one day saying goodbye to those whom I love. I wept out of my own silent pain, wanting so badly to forget those cherished memories which silently bind me to another casket.

Yet for all the tears, memories, and pain, there is hope. We have placed our faith in the One who is faithful, and the day will come when our tears will be no more. But until that day comes, we wait and we grieve for those relationships which have been cut so cruelly short. We grieve for those whose pain is so real and overwhelming. We grieve for we were not made for this. The day will come when the Almighty will overthrow death and the evil one by His own power. The day has already passed when He died in our place, and by His stripes we have been healed. He saw what we had done to ourselves, the tears and pain we had inflicted upon ourselves, and He took it upon Himself to intervene and give us the gift of hope.

I am so glad He did not just stand back and watch.

Public Displays of Incompetence

Sometimes in life you do something without even thinking about it, only to later realize what seemed so rational at the time was, in fact, rather silly.

For example, when I go to the gym, I always take my car key off the key ring, place it in my pocket (along with my Y membership card), and then lock my purse in the trunk of my car. It just makes more sense to me to do things this way, rather than getting a locker.

Yesterday when I went to the gym, I locked my purse in the trunk and trotted inside to have my card swiped before heading upstairs, where they keep the treadmills. After the nice lady behind the desk swiped my card, I went to put both the card and they key into my pants pocket, only to discover that the pocket wasn't there. Upon further inspection, I was quick to discover that I had come to the gym with my pants on inside-out. How embarrassing. You'd think after 23 years, I would have learned how to dress myself properly.

Another example. Today I was thinking about this blog, and how the background image does not, in fact, truly fit with the blog. When I log on to the site via my desktop computer, everything shows up just fine, but when I use my dad's laptop, the image of Taipei is scrunched over to one side with a big white bar streaking its way down the right side of the screen.

This is the part where I confess a weakness of mine. You ready for this?

I honestly know next to nothing about web design.

This wouldn't be so embarrassing if you didn't realize that I've been keeping random blogs for some 7 or 8 years now. I've tinkered around with plenty of html and other coding stuff, but I've never fiddled with anything long enough to become truly proficient. So when the layout of this blog was going bonkers, I really had no idea 1) why it was doing that, or 2) how to fix it. So today, after reading the latest entry at this website, and pondering how much I like her layout, I impulsively logged in to blogger and changed mine to the simplest, cleanest one I could find. Ideally, I would love to have 1) Heather's mad photoshop skills, and 2) even a vague idea of how to make my blog look remotely like that. But this new white template seemed to be the closest I could get, so I took it.

After changing my template, I quickly checked the site itself to see how it looked. Imagine my surprise when I saw "1 comments" written below my last entry, clicked to see who'd been scoping out my tiny corner of cyberspace, and read these words...

"I love the picture of Taipei that you're using..."

This is the part where I feel like an idiot. And, due to my lack of higher brain functions, I don't even remember how I got the blog to look that way in the first place. Le sigh.

My apologies, Jen. My changing of the layout was in no way connected to your comment. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go make sure that all my clothes are turned right-side out.

Haha!

You all thought I'd disappeared! But here I am.

The reason for the lack of posting is because every time I'd think about writing in here, I'd tell myself "Ya know, you really shouldn't post anything until you get some pictures up so people can see stuff from the trip." So I would make a note to get around to that, and then promptly do something else.

Well here they are at last! Pictures from India. This is just enough to give you a flavor of what our trip was like. We took over 1,000 pics, and there's only 28 up there. But hopefully you'll enjoy them just the same.

Coming soon! Pictures from London...no really, I promise.