A Summer of Ambiguity

Just like Voldemort learned when he had his body back that life is messy and complicated and that killing people doesn't make them like you, it just makes them dead, I learned some things this summer. This being the second year of the blog, I figured it's time to start some traditions. A Summer Well... Spent meet A Summer of Ambiguity. But I can't make you a nice list because this summer wasn't like that. And this post might be helpful to no one but me. To address that possibility, please scroll down to the last comment and pray for me, that I may be a more faithful disciple who doesn't need an entire summer to learn to love again.

If there's one thing that I've learned, it's that I like to define my life and that my life likes to defy definition. What would I want to call this summer? "The half-summer", where I spent some time being me at home and some time being me at college? "The summer of continuations", where I let go of nothing and simply held on tightly to all the wonderful things that have passed my way? "The summer where I took that online class, when I went to Tennessee and took two trips to Boone, when I stayed half at home and half in Chapel Hill and got to see kids from the camp I used to work at"? Yeah, that'll fly. That's a great definition. But that's not what the summer is, it's just the events that make it up. "The summer when I watched the all the episodes of The Office and bought a subatomic physics book thinking that I'd actually excel at a physics class for once. Hahahahah. Hahah. Hah."

Maybe "The summer when I learned how to depend on people." I stayed with a wonderful roommate when I came back to Chapel Hill, a sister of mine who waited patiently on the rent and woke up in the middle of the night for a panicked text and let me play Zelda all the time. The apartment was in Glen Lennox which is far enough from campus to depend on a bus or on rides from other people. It's weird how it gets easier and easier to ask people for things even though you know you can't repay them. It's frustrating how easy it is to take money even when I don't need it to get by, just to allow me to have the same level of luxury that I've had in the past. Yeah, things would have been tight this summer, but they should have been tighter. I should have been better. I've been depending on people's kindness for rides places, for shower curtains and white shoes, for mouthpieces and shorts and shirts and all those random little things that you don't even know that you forgot. I need to be more responsible, but at the same time, I am uniquely blessed by wonderful friends who gave me the opportunity to learn these lessons without ever seriously endangering myself.

Or maybe "The summer when I learned about home." I learned a little bit about where I'm coming from this summer. I love my bed at home, have I ever mentioned that? I talk about it a lot. It's my substitute lover- I always look forward to sleeping with it. I love my room with the glow in the dark stars that me and my brothers put up back when it was their room. I love love love having my own bathroom and my own space and I love my horribly out of tune piano that I got from my church and the dresser and vanity that I got from my relatives in Pennsylvania and I love how my room really seems like it would be my room. I love my creaky old house (I'm going to sound like the "I like my whole house!" girl for a little bit) and I love my yard and I love my family and I love my church and I secretly love how it sounds like that place I'm from and not the place where I am. And I love Camp Joy. But you all knew that. I also had to a community profile project for my education class and so I drove around and took pictures of places around the area and learned that Hildebran connects to Connely Springs and I did not know many of these things beforehand. I also found these awesome abandoned houses out in the middle of nowhere. One day, when I'm a photographer/writer and still living in my parents' attic since the basement is taken, I'm going to go back and take pictures and make book out of them:

These kinda don't have much to do with back home, but sometimes when I think about my life, I think about these old dead houses. At first, I was really angry when I saw them, thinking, "Who let people let their houses fall into disrepair like this? Who didn't value the beauty they'd been given to leave the paint to bleach and chip away and the land to care for itself? Why are these houses here?" Then I started to imagine the things you could do in houses like this- there's maybe ten or twelve abandoned houses in the middle of nowhere by a body of water. You could go fishing or play an epic game of hide-and-go-seek or sardines or tell ghost stories in the dark houses at night before running outside to take solace and comfort in the stories of the stars above. In short, it could be wonderful, if you were in the mind to let it be. And then I thought of what these houses might be like restored and I wondered who was at work here and if they were serious about the signs they left up. Then again, it was Burke county, so they were probably waiting for me and my green minivan to pull away quickly and so I remembered that no matter what something can be, you can't separate it from what it is now. And I don't like stories about falling, I like stories about redemption, about how people are a work in progress. And so I think I stared at these dead houses with a fascination that one can only have when looking at oneself and I drove away because I couldn't see anyone working.

Maybe it's "The summer when I learned things about myself." I learned which things mean something to me and the things that mean something to you are indicators of who you are.I also learned what's on the periphery of my life. I love random sci-fi shows. I watched all of Firefly and then Serenity (WASH!) and then I watched all of the revived series of Doctor Who and some of the older ones and I learned that these things are not vital to me. I love them, but I can live without them. I visited camp and I worked at a camp and I went on tour and I like reprisal roles. I like doing things again, I like being familiar, I like having that power of knowledge that makes me in some ways better than you and in some ways not. I like having keys, but I like doors that are open better.I like ice cream. I hate scooping ice cream. I love to talk, but silence was wonderful for me. The longest conversation I had with God was on the rock face side of a mountain, interrupted by a woman trying to steal my flip flops and a kid walking more boldly toward the edge than I ever will. The conversation ended abruptly with worry over a friend's ankle but I was kinda okay with that. I must be the only person to climb a mountain and feel like a giant.

Give me the stars and I don't feel small. I know I am, but I don't feel it. I watch my shadow stretch down the grey of the mountain and my soul shrinks in shame because my pride swells as the area of land that I block from the light grows. I didn't read any this summer and I learned that I am a snob when it comes to the difference between movies and TV and books. I feel much less accomplished than last summer. I'm sure no one else is inwardly squirming when they say that they had a good summer. I just don't want to look at myself after this summer. And that's something to know about yourself as well.

Listen, it's all tied up in a mess, you know? I am inextricably connected to people who I may never see again in a web that's just as complicated as convoluted group of connections that makes up my daily acquaintance. And I'm never going to look at the sky and just see lights ever again, because there's so much up there that people have seen and then beyond that, there are just things that we can't see, that we have to tell machines to look at for us because these things had to be revealed to us in time and I can't decide if this was all good, but it must be. I might not be able to tell you how I have such faith that despite everything, there is still good and so much good, but I imagine that it's the same way that Toulouse knows about love.

I think you can learn from everything. I leave you with an extended football analogy (spoilers), because summer ends, as it always does, with fall. Sometimes you spend months being excited about something only to find out that it's not as great as you thought it would be. Maybe someone ruined it for you. Maybe things continued to get worse, until something like this is really the only thing that can make you laugh about the whole situation (dear goodness, and it was made by a State fan, so you know my soul has to be dead for me to be able to share that). Still, through all of this insanity and all of this doubt, you still stick with it, because, hey, it's Carolina. You are not proud of what's happened, you wish that someone would have told these people what was expected of them when they agreed to wear that blue jersey, but what else can you do? You hop on a bus to Atlanta knowing that you're missing ten starters, fully aware that you're probably shucky-darn out of luck. No, you probably don't deserve a miracle. You expect less and less from the team as the day goes on. At the end of the first half, you want to pull out your hair and the one sane part of you wonders what football demon has possessed you because you probably scared your freshmen out of their minds. But really, 3 touchdowns in 6 minutes? I don't care if the entire defense had to stay in Chapel Hill, you must have played football at least once in your life, you ridiculous... And so you shut down for the third quarter, because if you can't say something nice, you better stop yourself from screeching obscenities.

And then, after a scoreless quarter, there is a beautiful score. You hold your breath, because light is peaking through again. Oh, by the name of everything that is beautiful, they score again. And by some kind smile from above, they get the ball back and it's close enough and you don't dare breathe because then they might not pull it out. Part of me wants to leave you there, on the six yard line with less than ten seconds on the clock. I don't want to let you see the ball slip through Pinalto's hands because that doesn't make a great story. But you have to know that that's how the game ends, 30-24, with a one in the loss column and a long trip back home. But the score isn't the point here. The point is that people deserve to have their faith rewarded. The point is that you should focus not on the people who've let you down, but on the people who lifted you up. Because somewhere out there, there are people who are going to renew your faith in the good things in this world and though you might feel dead on the inside and sick and tired of all of the mud that is slung around, you need to know that people, though imperfect, don't have to be bad and that they can get better. They can surprise you with wonderful things.

For a year, maybe, for me, the church has been Carolina football. I've been frustrated, excited, disappointed, angry, all of these things. And now, I'm hopeful. The problem with having to see God through the church is that the church can really suck it up sometimes and the entire world will mock it or be angry at it and you have no good defense for it, and you loose sight of the Good Things. I've wandered and I've waited and now, I'm ready to see Good Things again. I'm even ready to work for them. So even if this summer was only purposed for me to see this analogy, I'm glad it happened.

Sorry to be selfish.

Quotes

I'm practicing for my day of silent meditation on Saturday which I am surprisingly pumped for. I know you're probably waiting for words that are from me and not from anybody else, but as I just realized, every other word of mine currently is the word awesome, so I clearly need a break to stop the chaos. But. Quotations abound in my life and a friend of a friend of mine (Ah Facebook!) had several wonderful quotes that I figured I'd share. And, since I'm revamping my quote section of that book of faces (hahah did anyone see that episode of The Office where Jim wrote book on his face and Darryl didn't get it so he said, "Yes, I am popular social networking site, known as BookFace"? ... And that's why I suck at telling jokes) I'm going to put mine on here as well, with the open invitation for anyone to share other awesome ones. The end. Well, except not really. But you know what I mean. And cut.

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“I love UNC. I love the quad in the spring and the arboretum in the fall. I love the Pit on a sunny day and Graham Memorial Lounge on a rainy one. I love Roy [Williams] all the time. But what makes UNC truly special is not our beautiful campus, our distinguished reputation or even our basketball team. It’s us—the student body—who make UNC what it is.”
- Eve Carson

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
-Marianne Williamson

I believe in Christianity as i believe that the sun has risen, not because i see, but by it I see everything else. - C.S. Lewis

Don't be wishing you were somplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God's place for you, live and love and obey and believe right there. - 1 Corinthians 7:17

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
-scarlet letter


“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” -Einstein

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly …”
Theodore Roosevelt
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Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
Romans 11:33

And this life sentence that I'm serving,
I admit that I'm every bit deserving
But the beauty of Grace
Is that it makes life not fair.
-Relient K

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. They've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
-Neil Gaiman

In essentials we have unity, in nonessentials liberty and in all things we have charity (love).
-John Wesley

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

George: I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing this.
Rube: Well, if somebody else were supposed to be doing this, I’d be sitting here talking to somebody else.
George: But I don’t know anything. About anything!
Rube: You think I know anything? When I’m supposed to know something, I’ll know it. When you’re supposed to know something, you’ll know it. Be patient, you’re learning. Just smell some roses already.
-Dead Like Me

Maybe it's easier to like someone else's life, and live vicariously through it, than take some responsibility to change our lives into lives we might like.-Tish Grier

A phrase of great power, and wisdom, and consolation to the soul in times of need. Allons-y! -the Tenth Doctor

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
-Moulin Rouge!

When life gives you lemons, make grape juice and let the world wonder how you did it.

When life kicks you, let it kick you forward.
-Kay Yow (1942-2009)

Me: I think my Prince Charming fell off a cliff, so I'm not expecting much.
Nick: Eh... you've still got one... he's just slightly
deformed

Come on, we're gonna take on the world today!
-Sarah Henson
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I Had the Theme Song for The Office in My Head While I Wrote This (and I can play it on the piano)

So today I went to the church to make copies of the lyrics for the songs for Crossflame tour (expect daily updates over tour- I'm going to hang out with the cool kids who stay up late and do bed checks at 12 [also, apparently I'm lame because I never left my room after the chaperons had gone to bed when I was on tour back in the day...] so I'm going to need something to keep me conscious after a full day of high school drama [so. bad. How did I stand myself when I was a high schooler? How does anyone stand kids who are in high school? Ugh] and other exciting times and I figure keeping up with my weblog is a choice way of doing that) which really entails at least an hour of standing at the copier in the church office and stapling.

My mom is the Childcare Coordinator at my church, so I know pretty much everyone in the office. They're some of my favorite people. I routinely lost everything from shoes to glasses when I was a kid, so I know exactly where the lost and found is and still check it every time I walk into the office. I know where the first aid kit is and I know where the janitor's closet is. In every building. I don't spend a lot of time in the Family Life Center where the kitchen and Fellowship hall are, or the youth building anymore. Really, I spend most of my time at church between the choir room, the sanctuary and the children's building and I normally just run in and out of the office. It was a little weird to just be chilling in there.

I printed up the 14 pages of lyrics and started copying them back to front. I was on page two, I think, when this guy came up with a paper in his hand and just kinda stood in front of the front desk. I smiled and went back to my copier (it was still on copy 27 of 50) and then walked over to the table where I was sorting the copies and picked up one of the books that was there waiting to be picked up for a bible study group. 23 copies later I picked up my original and asked if he needed the copier, since he was looking super expectant and rather impatient, and he said no, thanks. It was superbly civil. A page and a half later, he walked into the secretary's office and dropped off his resume for some position at the church. Darn copier lid. The only thing I heard was, "Are you still taking applications for [slam]?" Not helpful. And I probably could have just asked the secretary since she's probably the most awesome person ever, but I think I'll just do some detective work later.

Next exciting happenstance: One of the ladies in the church came up with the idea of sending handmade dolls to kids in Haiti after the earthquake. They just finished another batch and they're going down with a missionary group tomorrow, I think, so we had a blessing for them today. I was on page six when I got invited to go to the blessing which was being held in the sanctuary. So four of us and one of the pastors walk over to the sanctuary and there are the dolls, lined up on the steps to the chancel, right in front of the altar. They're mostly brown and black, but there's a red one, a yellow one, and, my personal favorite, a purple one with blonde hair. Best. Doll. Ever. There were also a couple with rainbow colored hair and a pair of twins, made by the pastor's wife, right on the front row. Our church likes giving away stuffed things for kids to play with- our youth director makes Build-A-Bears to give to kids in hospitals that we're taking on tour with us this next week. Spreading joy one snuggly face at a time. Or 79 at time. Whichever. So we blessed the dolls and prayed them a safe journey and I walked back over to the office.

One of the real chaperones for tour came in to get a form notarized and I failingly pitched my idea of getting reusable water bottles for the kids in choir so we could save the environment from the tons of plastic water bottles that we're going to drink over the next week (most of which aren't even going to be empty by the time they're thrown away... Chapel Hill has given me a recycling eye twitch). Hydration is important. So is having a planet for my epic and awesome grandkids. (I know they're going to be awesome. Hello. They're my grandkids) Anyway. I got all the pages copied and was working on stapling them together (maybe about 20 out of the 50) when Sunshine came in.

Thursday, and I always forget this, is Christian Aid day at the church. People bring in whatever they need help with and we see what we can do. I hate being the object of someone's generosity, but one day I'm going to grow a soul and I'm going to treat everyone like a normal person and not look at my feet when I walk down the hall past people who have the sense to ask for help when they need it. Anyway, Sunshine, who is a recently-hired waitress at IHOP (and now I can never tell my IHOP joke again... darn) is having some medical problems so she asked us to pray for her. One of our pastors was on his way out (annual conference is this weekend- party at Lake Junaluska! Goodness, I love my conference) but he stopped and pulled everyone in the office together in a circle to pray for Sunshine. She stayed and talked a little more with us after the prayer and said that her goal was to put some more positive back in the world, since there's so much negative out there. That is one of my problems. I can totally see the negative, but I never put any positive back in. So I'll be praying for Sunshine.

And Pastor Bill walked in to pick up something he had printed out earlier and his wife talked to the lady at the front desk while other conversations went on and I hummed the tunes to the lyrics I was looking at over and over again. It was a chill, sociable moment where I rehearsed again the back from college speech: "Oh, school's great, it's out for the semester!"; or "Yeah, it's nice to be home and take a break from classes. I'm a physics major, you know." "Oh, really? Wow." and small talk about physics; or "Yeah, I'm at Carolina. Oh, your son/daughter went there? Small world! I love it!" Those are the main variations. I avoid the "what are you going to do with that?" question like the plague. Free advice from one pastor: Go work for a while. Get out in the real world, see some things, do some things. You'll be better off for it. The plot thickens. And then people left to head out to the conference and I stopped humming because there wasn't anybody to cover up my voice.

I finished the copies and decided that the nicer thing to do would be to put them in the choir room because 1) we wouldn't leave them if I put them in an already packed crate and 2) I don't think they'd actually fit in the choir director's box in the office. So I borrowed keys (one of the goals of my life is make it so that the doors of a church don't have to be locked. Really? It's a church. Are you trying to keep Jesus out or in? I'm thinking locked cabinets for sound/ AV equipment and a locked closet for musical things that don't need to be stolen. Like pastor's offices and the sacristy, OK, sure, lock that mess up when no one's around, but I think we'd be OK if someone stole a pew bible. Geeze. *looks guilty but feels much better*) and I walked over to the choir room. Two cool points for Ron- he already has the sheet music packed up. So I put the lyrics in the sheet music crate and decided to cut back through the sanctuary to return the keys and get back to my bag.

Now, the sanctuary we have now is not the old sanctuary, it's the new sanctuary. The old sanctuary had the ugliest green carpet you've seen in your life, no middle aisle and these awesome stained glass windows. I loved it. I'm getting to love the new one, but I honestly probably liked it better when it was under construction and me and my little brother could go play around in it when we were supposed to be in big church... oops. Anyway, the new sanctuary is super super tall, with this ginormous cross up behind the choir back behind the chancel and this large dove stained glass window up above the balcony that only the choir and the pastors get to see on a Sunday morning. Why do you think I'm in the choir? Lord knows I can't sing and they don't need a flute/french horn player every Sunday.

I walked around the chancel and came to the first pew and leaned up against the little wall we have between the congregation and the rest of the church and looked up at the ginormous cross. Now, some people see God in nature, some in the stars, some in the faces of other people. I see God in buildings. Corners of buildings, actually. High corners of buildings, so I love me some cathedrals. I can't explain it, I don't know why, so don't ask me. It's not like God isn't in the other things, it's just that if you asked me what God looked like, I wouldn't say a sunset, I would say the ceiling of the cathedral in Dunblane. Anyway, me and God haven't been particularly tight because all I can ever think to pray about is what I'm going to do with my life and that's a touchy subject, so I really just end up walking away angrily. So I'm looking up at the cross and I notice that there's this little gap of white wall between where the brown behind the cross starts and the ceiling. I guess all that houses the pipes of the organ because the bigger, more impressive pipes are up by the cross and you can kinda see through it. They won't let me up there. Anyway, I found God and started talking about my future, but it quickly transitioned to Crossflame. I was pleasantly surprised.

And then it kinda hit me that the reason that I couldn't pray about anything other than my future is because I hadn't been caring enough about anything else to pray for it. Since November. It's amazing how God's got your back even when you're one of the bigger jerks in recent history. Sometimes, I don't think you need to pray for God's blessings, because He's already given it. Then sometimes I think that you should probably ask anyway.

And it's kinda crazy how the things that are driving you insane are the things that stop you from being insane. It's going to be a great tour.

Romeo, Save Me

We will return to your regularly scheduled blog at some time in the near future mostly because I know no one wants to read my complaints about the patheticness (which should totally be a word, spellchecker) of my life and partially because I've finished watching all the episodes of The Office and won't be faced with the distracting romantic known as Jim Halpert every day. So really, I'll return to normal (which is apparently an enormous hatred of all men-kind, according to my roommate) after I get this all out.

First off, universe, what is with all of the marriage hints invading my life? No, really, I want answers. OK, part of that's my fault because there have to be at least 4 weddings in The Office (by the way, the first episode I saw was Jim and Pam's wedding and I had no clue what was going on; so much better the second time; LOVE!) but, really? I counted 12 status updates that had to do with marriages, I have two awesome friends who are getting married and are definitely not at fault here at all, I've heard marriage hints on the radio and then there's this site, LoveGivesMeHope. It's like MLIA, except super sweet. I can't call it pathetic, but it's the kind of stuff that you read when you either want to cry and/or make that awwww noise that you make around babies or small cute creatures such as hedgehogs. You laugh, but really, hedgehogs, the cutest things ever. Anyway, half of the stories on this are cute old couples and I cry when I read about old people who've been together their whole lives. The worst one? Actual tears on my keyboard over this one:

My grandpa is 85 years old.

Today, I just found out that ever since his wife, his true love, had died, he put roses on her grave every Sunday.

The drive is 2 hours away from where he lives. She was 29 when she died.


Listen, I want that. Well, I don't particularly want to die when I'm 29, but if I got to live with that kind of love for whatever amount of time, I wouldn't mind. The worst days of my life are the days when I'm afraid that I'll be alone for the rest of my life or will live out my days with a husband I don't really love. I can see that happening, too, that's maybe the worst part. I can imagine a future alone. I can't see a future with anyone. There has to be something wrong with me because your answer to "Where will you be in five years?" shouldn't be "Alone."

It's just frustrating. I know I'm not old. I know that I don't need to worry about stuff like this. Some people go to college expecting to find "the one" (oh, no, I just became one of those people who puts quotes around "the one") but I also know that plenty of people don't get married straight out of college like plenty of people don't get married straight out of high school. You wait for your professional career to settle down, or you wait until you find somebody who makes you change that around. People meet people in grad school or at work or just going out somewhere... it happens all the time and you just have to be patient.

At the same time, though, you wonder what you're doing wrong. I mean, should I try harder to find someone, really put myself out there? I could dress up more, expand my wardrobe to something beyond jeans and a t-shirt and stop buying shirts from the guy's sections (but really, the best shirts are from there- my cookie monster shirt, my Led Zeppelin shirt, my glow-in-the-dark Batman shirt, my Star Wars shirt), wear make-up more often, actually care about my hair... smile at a guy every one in a while. It's just that there really hasn't been anyone (loml excluded, but really, eventually I'm going to have to stop lying to myself) worth dressing up over. I mean, I do go to Carolina, and while the gender ratio isn't that bad, once you take out the athletes, the frat boys, the guys who are taken and the guys who remove themselves and other guys from the dating pool, it's slim pickings. I just don't think learning to walk in heels is going to help that much.

Most of the time I complain about being single so that people will contradict it and make me feel better about myself. It's one of like three things that I do this for. You know, I like being independent. I like having my own space, my own thoughts, my own feelings, no matter what they are. I like being able to choose to do whatever I want to on Friday night without having to consult someone. I like having complete use of my phone without having to text somebody super frequently or, worse, call them (idea-since no one really uses italics anymore, can they just be the universal sarcasm indicator? Because then the whole last sentence would have to be in italics). I like having something to talk about other than my relationships. It makes me a deeper person and people can hear about the things I'm really interested in, not just some boy they've never met and don't care to know about. Really. It's great. And it totally gives me time to practice my witty comebacks and piercing remarks that I'll need in case I ever have to have a heated discussion over something significant, like the best kind of coffee or the proper placement of a television with limited available spacing. Why would anyone ever give this up?

Have you ever seen me on a clear, dark night? I get left by the people I'm walking with because I can't tear my eyes away from the sky. It's kinda pathetic, but I love looking at the stars, drinking in as much of the sight as I can before clouds take it away or dawn comes to remove it more permanently. I can see why people in love stare at each other. And I know that there's more to love than what we've made it into, more than mushy Valentine's Day crap. It's something fierce, it's supposed to change you, it's supposed to bring out the heroic, the best parts of humanity and make life on Earth something worth living, not just something you have to sit through until you get to the next good thing. It doesn't belong just with the lovers, it carries throughout the world into families, through the Church, through people helping people, caring for people, making a difference, loving the planet we're all stuck on, dreaming up ways to make this whole place better, making it the way it could be, not just the way it is. Love isn't some intangible thing that just floats around, waiting for a breeze to blow it into the hearts of unsuspecting young people high on hormones, it's this crazy combination of emotions and determination that drives you to become someone worth becoming, to bring people up with you, to lift us up where we belong, regardless of who we are.

I don't know who lost that, or when, but I want it back.

Painting

So I'm down visiting my grandparents with my little brother, down in the Villages in Florida, a little working vacation. It's like the Disney World of retirement communities- they have their own golf course, you can drive your golf carts wherever, their pool has a waterfall (that's broken this week, sadly) and there's every kind of club you can imagine. I believe my grandmother helped start the genealogy club and like six Scrabble clubs, goodness knows. So I've been getting an education down here, learning about my great grandparents and my dad and watching movies (ironically, my grandfather, who is taller than my little brother [who is like 6'4"] and used to coach high school football, absolutely loves Mama Mia) and eating a ton. It's about ten times more food than I consumed in the whole of the two exam weeks. Lovely.

A couple of days ago, Jackson was watching The Office. Now, I'm not really one of those people who plans evenings off to watch TV shows. I gave up on Heroes in high school because it came on TV on a day of the week that I wasn't home (pick a day, really) so I'm not that devoted to my television. And people would always ask if I've seen such and such a show and I'd have to say no, because I don't really watch that much TV. When I relax, I watch reruns of TNG or SG-1 on Scyfy or Hulu. Yup, that upped my nerd quota considerably. (PS- If you're a friend of mine and you haven't seen Star Wars *coughcoughChristinecoughcough* we need to plan a Star Wars marathon, at least the classic 3.) So you've got to believe me when I say that I've seen at most a combined 3/4 of an episode of The Office (and that one was Jim and Pam's wedding, so I had no clue what's going on).

Well, with that in mind, knowing the ending before I start, I'm perfectly happy to become an Office addict. Since I know it's going to end happily, I love watching Jim and Pam flirt and swear that they're just friends (now, more and more I'm think that Harry from When Harry Met Sally is right) and I love watching the pranks they play on Dwight. I'm not so much a fan of Michael, just because awkward and almost assuredly inappropriate humor isn't my thing, but I think Jim makes up for that. Anyhoo, I'm kinda loving The Office and plan on getting through the rest of the season in my month off. I'm almost to the end of Season 2. It's getting to be a problem, really.

We also introduce my grandmother to Skype (which she attempted to call Scalp just now... scalp? Really? like Last of the Mohicans I'm going to take your hair as a battle prize for a form of communication? Pleasant) so we talked to my mother for a bit and scared the dog down here by showing her on the webcam the dogs up in North Carolina. Now my grandmother is all prepared to have around the world communication with her children and grandchildren of various locations. She's amazed that her laptop has a webcam and is convinced that mine must also have it, I just haven't found it. Meanwhile, my real computer is sitting up at ITS because they decided that a broken fan cover, a lost hard drive cover and an ill-attached screen required a longer stay and a warranty sign off. Should have just dealt with the helicopter. Anyway. So my computer's up at ITS and I have this old Dell that I got my senior year that has so many viruses on it, programs running in DOS could go faster. Definitely no webcam. No speaker, no microphone, nothing.

At the same time, I look like a total slob. I'm covered in paint (never get me to paint anything for you- I'll look like a reverse Dalmatian and you'll have pretty well covered walls... and floors, if we don't put down paper) and I lost my hair ties in the ocean two days ago, so my hair's up in the best messy bun that a rubber band can afford (note to self, carry around extra hair ties at all times), not to mention I've got a little Cruella de Ville going on with a streak yellow paint from yesterday stuck in my hair. I have one earring in and an awesome sun burn that's brilliantly displayed by my red painting shirt. Needless to say, I'm as far from cute as possible.

We're painting the walls in my grandparents' bedroom and since it's small and packed with furniture, we're doing one wall at a time. I'm doing the baseboard since I'm the shortest and I can bend down that far, so I get the privilege of feeling like Cinderella again as I bend down on my hands and my knees in my skirt (it's the only comfortable short thing I've got- I can't wear pants with the sun-poisoning I've got on my legs), cleaning the baseboard and painting the bottom part of the wall before slapping a coat on the bottom border of the wall. We're doing it in shifts- Pancakes is painting the top part of the walls with the roller (since he's tall and a man) and I'm going in after he's done. Then he comes back in and moves the furniture and starts again. I think we're headed home after we're done, so he's in a hurry to go.

I figure that my breaks are perfect times to watch The Office, since the rest of today I won't have any internets as we drive back up I-95. Since Jackson won't let me drive, I'll have to read. Ugh. And I finished Northanger Abbey (I swear, I am Catherin, Morland) so all I've got left are the semi-academic books that I carry around to look smart. Great. So I'm making my brain as much mush as I possibly can before subjecting it to thinking. It's gotta have something to beat into shape. So here I sit, watching The Office with one headphone in and the other out, listening for someone to yell for me to come help. Sure enough, my grandmother comes in and says, "It's ready for you, Addie Jo. So come in, but you can finish your conversation first."

My conversation? 'Scuse? I'm confused, what? And then I realize that the screen that the show is playing on is about the same size as the Skype window and that it's been on one of those documentary parts where people just stand in front of the camera for a bit and talk. So now my grandmother thinks that I'm Skyping Jim from The Office. And I'm not one to correct her. Forget the fact that I look terrible and don't actually have the capability to on my computer. If my grandmother thinks I'm attractive enough to be Skyping someone attractive enough to be on TV, I'm not going to take that delusion from her.

I guess I've got to get over this whole negative outlook on my appearance. It's just not good for confidence levels. But I don't want to go around with the knowledge that I'm pretty. That'll only end in disappointment. I'd much rather be pleasantly surprised when a guy likes the way I look. And believe you me, I'd be surprised. It's been a long year, with lomls and whatnot, and it's hard to build confidence when you're shooting for the impossible. I did learn something at the beach, though. 1) Never wear your sunglasses in the waves. 2) I don't tan the way I used to. 3) I always want to jump farther. And I don't mean that I always want more (even though I do; you can't take that back) but I mean that I always want to do more than I can. OK, I've mastered riding these tiny little close to shore waves. Let me please please go out among the big waves and see what I can do out there. I have the principles down, surely I can do that. Look, I can walk across the room. A marathon surely isn't out of reach.

And it isn't. Just not today. You know, I love watching guys who are already in love. The only reason I watch romantic comedies is to watch the guys and watch their facial expressions when the girl they love tears their heart up or makes them the happiest man in the world or the stolen glances or that stereotypical moment where one of them looks up and looks down and the other one looks up and looks down and you just wait for the second when they're both going to look up and then look down, super embarrassed. It's precious. I love it. So you can see why I love The Office, because Jim's already in love with Pam and it's kinda the most precious thing ever.

I won't need a musical number or just the right moment to know. I'm studying, you know. I'll know. It might never happen, but I'm prepared nonetheless. Who knows? Maybe someone will see me hanging out the window as I try desperately to keep the side mirror on the van because the duct tape's failing and the paint won't much matter to him. We'll see.