that September in the rain

It’s almost my birthday.

The night before I turned eighteen, I lay on the bathroom floor listening to the first fifteen seconds of “I Saw Her Standing There” by the Beatles over and over again.

Well she was just seventeen, if you know what I mean….

Well she was just seventeen, if you know what I mean….

Well she was….

I did not want to turn eighteen. The idea of being legally able to sign my own important documents without my parents was pretty terrifying to me. Next you were going to tell me that I could call and set up my own dentist appointments. WHAT? Let’s not get crazy.

Now I’m getting ready to turn twenty-four. Isn’t that the age that Paul McCartney wrote “When I’m Sixty-Four”? My future ahead is so bright, it’s blinding.

To celebrate my birthday, I plan to bake these vanilla chai cupcakes. Then I plan to eat them. My plans do not extend further than that, except maybe a trip to Barnes & Noble, because, most of the time, if you want to bring me to pure delight, take me to Barnes & Noble, and let me just smell the books at my own leisure. When you have come to please me in this way, you have secured a place in my heart forever.

I'm at Panera Bread right now, and there is a woman sitting at the table beside me with another woman. I tuned into their conversation just in time for her to say that, when given lemons, “It’s an old adage: You can make lemon cookies, lemon bars, lemon meringue pie, lemon muffins….”

Wow, usually people just make lemonade. Obviously this woman has more culinary knowledge than the rest of the world.

Also, happy football season.

2 more weeks till Heather's birthday.

*** ALERT *** ALERT ***

Sometimes on the news they'll flash "ALERT ALERT" on the bottom of the screen, in this odd red graphic that sort of throbs like a dying heart, and I'll think that something life-changing is about to be announced. Like WWIII, or that Skynet has become self-aware, or that Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves. Then they end up telling us that Maxwell House is raising its prices for the THIRD time this year. Good Lord, because we all know that "rising coffee prices" are a sign mentioned in Revelation that the apocalypse is just around the corner.

"ALERT ALERT (throb throb), BREAKING NEWS: Jesus seen descending from clouds with cup of coffee, proclaiming, 'Beans, beans, to those far and near,' while the silver trumpets blasted, 'The best part of being raptured up is Folgers in your cup.'"

Alert THIS, Fox News: I finished a book.

CHEERS, BALLOONS, CUPCAKES!

I finished Louisa May Alcott's biography, and it was like a defibrillator to my reader's (and writer's) heart. I feel like I've gotten to know so much better the author of my favorite novel. Sometimes while reading, I forgot I was reading about a famous literary figure. I was reading about just a woman, who had aspirations and ambition and talent and so much character. So I would think, "Wow! She was friends with Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, and Longfellow!" And then I would remember that she is, in fact, Louisa May Alcott.

Did you know she didn't even want to write Little Women, but did it because her publisher wanted a "girl's book," and Louisa needed the money? Even after Little Women made Louisa rich and adored, she kept writing with the intent of producing "one good book."

Hello. You just wrote one of the most beautiful books in literary history, that will live on for hundreds of years through movies and on Broadway and through eyes and hearts soaking in your words time and time again on book's pages. Ms. Alcott, your one good book has been written.

So now the question is, what do I read next? Any suggestions? My brain is alive with juices like wine, and I'm hungry like the wolf.

come on skinny love, what happened here?

I feel I need to confess:  I haven't read a book in its entirety since October. And before that, it was July.

I'm so ashamed.

I feel like something in my mind has broken. Somehow the words my eyes take in never make it all the way to my brain, but get lost along the way. Something about the wiring, I think. So my brain gets bored and starts to play outside while my eyes desperately plead, "We're losing him! Focus!"

But no matter how hard I furrow my brow or how many times I reread the same paragraph, my mind is already frolicking through the grass squealing "Weeeeee!" while my eyes turn to jelly in their sockets.

This is not a pretty thing.

Last night I watched a teenage girl read a book unwaveringly through the entire church service. The preaching wasn't there, her arguing sisters next to her weren't there, and the only time she looked up was, I'm pretty sure, when she felt me watching her. I of course looked away very quickly and nodded at the pastor as if I'd been listening the whole time. Ah yes, grace. Grace and Jesus. Jesus is gracious. Preach it brother man. Amen.

But I wondered, what happened to me? I used to be that girl. I used to come back from Christmas breaks and answer the questions of what I'd done by listing off how many books I'd read. I used to make the world disappear and come back to reality smelling like pages and ink. I used to read.

What. happened. to. me.

So today when I took my parents to O'Hare, I decided I was going to stop in Milwaukee on my way back and kneel at the altar of Barnes & Noble until my heart was right with the printed word. Shed the tears of repentance on the green carpet of forgiveness. You dig it? Oh Book Land, take me back.

But when I got there, I didn't even know where to go. Fiction? Nonfiction? Journals?

I went to the bathroom. Like a bride who steps up to the long aisle runner of the sanctuary and then veers off to fix her veil in the lobby mirror. There's nothing wrong with her veil. She's just a coward.

When I walked into the bathroom, a tiny girl with thin blond curls stood against the wall, looking worried. She held her hands, coated in soap suds, in front of her, like a surgeon freshly-scrubbed and ready to take an unexploded grenade out of a North Korean soldier. (I take most my facts about doctor life and behavior from episodes of M*A*S*H.) Her mother stood next to the sink with the water running. She was pregnant and clean-looking, like she shopped in the maternity section at GAP. She glanced at me briefly when I walked in, then looked back at her daughter.

"Is it the water?" She asked. I gathered she was trying to figure out why her daughter, who looked like her name was Daisy or Phoebe or something else dainty and fragile, was having a breakdown. "Do you want a towel? Can you tell me what's wrong?"

I went into a stall as she patiently asked more questions. The little girl continued to answer her mother with absent whimpers, like she couldn't remember why she was crying and had already begun to think of other things, but still needed to be upset because she'd already started to be. If she couldn't explain what was going on inside, the only option was to keep up appearances on the outside.

I get you, Daisy.

I walked around Barnes & Noble four times, then walked out the door feeling as though the store and I were strangers, when once we dwelt together in familiar communion. I left like a dried sponge where once I soaked my parched mind.

Good news is that the world is ending on May 21 (according to the people on the street corner with a big sign saying "JUDGMENT DAY"), so I won't have to worry about finding the little lost fibers of brain that have detached themselves from their cranial epicenter. Come back, little fellas. I miss feeling whole.

"dear" old books

I walked into the used bookstore that my coworker Ashley had called "odd." I had only been there a couple of times before and hadn't noticed anything particularly odd about it. But I remembered Ashley's statement yesterday as I stepped inside.
"Hi," I greeted the lady at the wooden counter just inside the door. Her salt and pepper hair fluffed out on the sides like Christopher Lloyd. "My dad brought in a bunch of boxes of my books the other day and said I had some store credit."
"Oh, yes," the woman said. "You have tons of it. They were in such good condition. You take very good care of your books."
I smiled at her. I know, thought Inner Me. When I was in high school I carried Sense and Sensibility in a Ziploc bag.
She shuffled through some papers in a drawer and found my sheet. "Yup. You have tons." She closed the drawer and looked up at me.

At this point in the story, I would like to introduce you to Inner Me. Inner Me is very blunt, honest, and feeling. Sometimes I wish Inner Me would smother Outer Me with a rag soaked in chloroform, and take over the conversation. Instead, Outer Me's composed, polite, homeschooled interaction takes the form of the following visit to Dear Old Books.

Umm...."Could you tell me how much?"
She shuffled through the papers again and said, "It's a ton. Like $80. Oh, it's not quite that much. $57.50."
"Okay, thanks!"

I walked down the aisles of books. I didn't want more books. The reason I painfully gave away my own books was because I have, in the words of Christopher Lloyd, tons of them. I don't need more books I want to have read but don't want to read sitting on my shelves.

But as I sat on a footstool in the classics section and stared at the books in front of me, there, my own bindings looked back at me with betrayed and lonely faces. I felt what a mother must feel when she hands her baby over to be adopted. How could I explain to them that I couldn't care for them anymore? That hopefully they'd go to a good home with someone who loved them more than I could?

I admit that I looked at my own books more than I looked at possible purchases. I wanted to collect all my lost children and take them back again. "I've made a mistake," I could say. "They weren't supposed to go. I was weak!"

I finally picked up John Steinbeck and went to the counter. A man was there instead, and he looked up my information on his cream-colored computer, in true 90s condition.
"That'll be $3.50," he said.
I slung my purse over my shoulder and froze. What? "But...the credit doesn't count?"
"It takes off half. So a 6-dollar book is $3.50."
"Oh. Oh I see." I looked up at the crack where the wall meets the ceiling and pretending to be calculating something, when inside Inner Me was seething, Are you kidding me? You want me to give you my books AND pay for yours?
"Well, in that case, I don't think I want this book," I said kindly.
He just looked at me.
"Is that okay?" I offered meekly. Is that okay?? You don't need his permission to not be cheated.
He nodded.
"Do you want me to put this back? I know where it was."
"Would you mind?"
YOU ARE A SWINDLER!
I put the book back and walked out the front door, saying, "Thank you," though I have no idea for what. Thank you for taking my books and being willing to take my money, too. Thank you for being rude and having very bad people skills. Thank you for making me want to cry because I am very sensitive to people who look at me with annoyed expressions. By the time I reached my car, Inner Me and Outer Me had melded into one, and I replayed the scenario in my head again, only this time with me demanding all my books back and telling them they are a lame establishment.

The only thing that gets me through it is imagining that my Barnes & Noble classics will go to good homes, maybe to a teenage girl who will obsess over keeping them as pristine as I did, or, better yet, someone who will wear out their covers with repetitive reads.

Ashley was right. And I am never, ever going back into that store. On principle.

And they lived lonely women, for all eternity.

I don't like Jane Austen. And I've read 4 1/2 of her novels, and only liked one (see below), so I have a right to this opinion. Perhaps I'm lacking in proper breeding, or intelligence, or a heart. Whatever the reason, I don't like her.

And I feel the same for the movies made about her books or about her. Do modern-day women have no better use of their time than to use it swooning over men in ruffles who fall in love with women who aren't even lovable? And, according to Jane Austen, in order to make a truly great story:

1. If anything drastic is to happen in the plot, it must be raining.
2. The most honorable, respectable, and noble men must have very, very wicked relatives.
3. An annoying woman who talks too much is necessary to say uncomfortable things at awkward moments.
4. Some sort of secret about the hero must be revealed that threatens the heroine's happiness with him!
5. But all will be cleared up in the end so that the hero comes out even more heroic than before.
6. The heroine has no wealth, and this is a great conundrum as to whether the hero can love her anyway. Which he either does, or doesn't and therefore is not the hero and the hero swoops in gallantly at the end and the heroine realizes she's loved him all along.

However, I have to confess that I have been watching - and reading - a lot of Jane Austen recently. Yes, I know. I have nothing better to do with my time than swoon over men in ruffles who fall in love with women who aren't even lovable. And I have been doing a lot of swooning, especially over this ruffled man:

Here Mr. Tilney is saying, "I am sarcastic and mocking, but also capable of great emotion and passion. Love me."

I like Northanger Abbey so much because it's funny. The whole novel is basically poking fun at itself. And if any other man had played Mr. Tilney in the movie, I don't know if I would enjoy it so much. I say "enjoy" because watching the movie is an ongoing process for me. Like a remote-control all-you-can-eat buffet of witticisms.

There are great dangers in watching/reading too much Jane Austen, I've discovered. One (and by "one," I mean single females, like me) will begin to expect reality to follow the rules of Jane Austen, instead of the rules of, well, reality. According to Jane Austen, in my life I should expect:

1. A man, possibly up to 20 years older than me, will ride 50 miles on horseback to confess his undying love for me even while having no idea if I return his affections.
2. If I have curls around my face and am seen by candlelight, men will love me without knowing anything about my personality.
3. Poetic thoughts will be narrated in a British accent while I look at the landscape and heavily sigh. "Life will never be the same, but hopefully my heart will mend. Oh, will I ever see Philip again?" ("Philip" being the name of the argyle sock I can't find. Its mate, Rosalind, is lonely, and my feet are cold.)

I need to stop watching these things because I'm beginning to think like this, and this is bad. If only I had a rich relative or relation to take me under his or her wing to some foreign place for a few months so I could be introduced to good and bad people that will alter my life and fortunes forever.....Is that too much to ask?

book review

I have a problem with children's books. I have a difficult time when someone mentions Goodnight Moon and a chorus of "I love that book!" arises. What about that book is so lovable? How is saying goodnight to inanimate objects at all captivating, adventurous, or even endearing? It requires no imagination, whatsoever. My child and I can easily say goodnight to everything in our room without paying $12.99.

The 11-month-old I nanny has two favorite books. Now, to be fair, I don't remember what books (if any) interested me as an 11-month-old. I do remember, as a little girl, loving certain books. I would crawl up on my grandmother's lap and have her read The Little Red Hen to me, which taught me to have helping hands. (I can still hear my grandmother's voice reading that book, so many years later.) I also loved The Grouchy Lady Bug, which was colorful, and taught me how to tell time. If You Give a Moose a Muffin had me in stitches, I would giggle so hard. It also made me imagine sometimes that I had a moose. My favorite of all time was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. But that wasn't until high school.

But William's two favorite books are Trucks! and Cat. The titles say it all, I think. And perhaps you'd think, in the fashion of Goodnight Moon, they'd be painfully simple and redundant. Well, they are redundant. But instead of opening Trucks! and telling William to point out the semi truck, or the pickup truck, I have to turn the page and say in a cutesie voice, "Can you find the giant excavator, Will? Ooh, where's the skid steer? Yep, that's the backhoe loader! Good boy!" Puh-leeze. What happened to Make Way for Ducklings?

Then comes his book about cats. I like cats. This book has pictures of real cats, and it rhymes, too. I like rhymes. And on each page it shows cats doing things, with descriptions like, "Cool cat, copy cat, furry cat, bald cat," and more. But then, I turned the page and I saw this:

I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or shut the book and bury it in the backyard. That is one of the most terrifying images I've ever seen. I would've had nightmares had I seen this. In fact, I think I do have nightmares because of this. I'm having one right now, and it gets worse every time I scroll up.

All right, perhaps I'm being a tad unjust. I mean, the book about trucks has little windows that William likes to open, and some of the cats's tails are fluffy. I understand that babies probably could not sit through a reading of Where the Wild Things Are if there was not something to tangibly discover. Their little minds aren't apt to discover things within them, yet. But also to be fair, anyone could write a children's book. I'm going to write one about a little boy who died from eating sand. It'll be textured and everything. And maybe then William will stop eating sand.

"A fellow can't live on books."

Ah, but Theodore Laurence, he can try.

Over the past four years, I have tried to squeeze in desired pages of desired texts over Christmas breaks and summer breaks, and sometimes over no breaks at all, which left me feeling guilty and slightly ill-prepared when the test rolled around. But now, nobody is telling me what to read, and I have two full bookshelves, the contents of which I've only probably read one-third.

The logical side of me tells myself to read something I haven't before. But a wise friend once told me that life's too short to read something you don't want to just because "you should." So I'm going to read all of my favorites again. Some I can't remember why they're my favorites, because it's been so long since I last read them. Others I would forget only if someone beheaded me. So...never, let's hope.

Here's my list of favorites-to-read-again. And autumn is the perfect time to begin a new (or old) read.

1. The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins. I read this three Christmases ago. It's 600 pages; I read it in three days. Besides the fact that I couldn't put it down, I remember very little about it. This warrants another late-night binge on 19th-century mystery.
2. Howard's End, by E.M. Forster. This book instantly made Forster one of my favorite authors. I devour his dialogue and wonder at his display of human nature. He's so real.
3. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Once, in high school, I finished this book, then flipped back to page one and started it all over again. I love that Harper Lee only wrote one book. She had a story to tell, and she told it. She wasn't writing for the masses. And that makes her story beautifully, meaningfully, and simply told.
4. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Of course. How could this book not be on this list? Yesterday I told the 11-month-old I was babysitting, "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again! No, nor any of my folk!" And that's when I knew it was time for another GWtW reading.
5. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkein. I read The Lord of the Rings once a year, for four years straight. I sat in front of the fireplace and tuned out planet earth for the Middle one. This year's reading of TLotR was for a class and gave the reading a little different taste. But I haven't touched The Hobbit in years, and another fireplace-adventure with Tolkein is in order.
6. I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. I was so delighted in this book that I couldn't believe it wasn't more popular. It's funny, adventurous, and somewhat philosophical.
7. An Absolute Gentleman, by R.M. Kinder. This book is seriously weird, and horrible, and yet so incredibly good that I could not put it down. Well, it's about a serial killer, from inside the  head of the serial killer. So, not so good. But the author is incredible. And after you read it (if you read it), look up the author online. She is not who you'd imagine to write a book like this. 
8. My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du'Maurier. Another of my favorite authors. I recently reread Rebecca, and her genius in crafting such a story just amazes me. Maybe you think I'm silly for thinking so. But I love her, and I think she's genius.
9. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. I wish I could explain in a convincing way why this book is my favorite book, above all. A million little things that add up to one big love. Right now I'm reading a copy printed in 1880, merely 12 years after it was originally published. Can you believe it? Collectors would probably tell me to put it on a shelf so as not to lessen its worth. But it was meant to be read, and I can't help loving the smell that wafts up to me when I turn a page. Inside is inscribed, "Emma L. Greenbery from Santa Claus 1892." How could I not hold this in my hands? I like pretending I'm reading it after it's first come out. And I love this story so, so much.

So there you go. Read away. And happy autumn, again.

there once was love

I've rediscovered some loves. Not of Double Stuf Oreos, which I have consumed 8 of while sitting here at my computer. Not of a clean bathroom, which I daydream about every time I shower in my flipflops and try to roll up my pant legs when I put them on so they don't dip in the puddles of sand on the bathroom floor. Not even of those days when sweat isn't dripping off my face and making my thighs stick together when I walk. I never lost or forgot those loves, so I don't need to rediscover them. Here are some loves I have rediscovered, though, and it's like seeing my husband return from a long trip, having forgotten how handsome he was and how much I missed his smell:

+ Creation. Not true: I have never forgotten how much I love God's creation. But I had forgotten how much I love being completely engulfed and consumed by it morning through night. Last week was Backcountry Camp, and amidst the rivers, woods, rainy nights, and campfires, I found myself being filled with beauty like an empty balloon filled with helium, until all it can do is soar into the sky and pop for lack of a better release. Sometimes I forget not only how much God's love is revealed through His creation, but also that I am His created one, as well. It's so easy to look at a perfectly pure river and not wonder why God delights in His creation, but He delights in us as His creation, too, and our voices give Him even more pleasure than the voices of the perfectly pure river.

+ Writing. To save myself from soaring into the sky and popping, I've rediscovered why I write. After years of creative writing classes and assignments, I was pretty sure I'd lost whatever desire to write I'd had when I entered into college. Both my journal pages and my mind grew blank of creativity. But I realized as I sat on a damp rock beneath a waterfall why I write. I don't write because I should or because I'm required to. I write because I want to capture, I want to preserve, I want to remember. I write because I have to, or else my mind and heart will become so full that I either pop, or I spring several leaks and everything seeps out without any record of it. I'd forgotten what it was like to need writing, like needing food or sleep. Writing is a reaction to me. What would the trees do if they couldn't rustle when the wind blew?

+ Reading. Four literature classes and two history classes last semester had me convinced that I was done reading, unless menus at PF Chang and Olive Garden counted. But all summer I've played ball, I've gone swimming, I've hiked, I've climbed, I've jet-skied and tubed and paint-balled...but I haven't gotten completely lost in a lecture or a chapter so that minutes pass and I forget to stop thinking. I miss this. Thanks to miss Laura's blog, I'm now reading A Separate Peace. I love words, and I'd forgotten this until I was surrounded by a lack of them.

me and Bali in the middle of the Youghiogheny River in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania.

just a day

I'm reading a Donald Miller book, and reading Donald Miller always makes me want to write. Of course, when I write after I read something that makes me want to write, I usually end up writing like whatever it is I've just read. It's like when I listen to Doris Day, I then sing everything like Doris Day.

Today Dad took me for a ride in his blue, '85 convertible. I put my arms up in the air, straight above my head, just because I could. "Isn't this nice?" Dad said. "Just being out in it all?" Then we hit a thick patch of manure-infused Wisconsin air, Dad started coughing, and I laughed.

This afternoon I found myself standing on the deck thinking about absolutely nothing but how the warmth from the deck on my feet met the warmth from the sun on my shoulders somewhere around my middle and made me want to take a nap standing up. I like moments like that.

I like Wisconsin summers. I sometimes start to feel a little sad that I won't be here...until I remember that I like Ohio summers even better. Right now I'm drinking coffee and listening to a tractor across the street. Weeks like this one, frozen in-between times, will be rare from now on. I'm going to cherish this one.

story

I spent my early teen years consuming Robin Jones Gunn novels, in which events would happen not to make the novel realistic, but keep the reader's attention. I used to pine for occurrences like the ones in RJG books to happen in my own life. Rereading them as an adult, I would find one of my eyes squinting beneath furrowed eyebrows as I tell the pages, "That would never happen."

This year has proved that opinion very wrong. So many things that have happened in the last 12 months might be considered unbelievable and unrealistic, but I look over my shoulder at them and know that they happened. I have their lessons tucked in my pockets or sprinkled across my heart, some like scars and some merely freckles or pleasantly-colored berry stains. And I know it isn't over. If my story were to end right now, it would look something like this:

"And she graduated single, grateful for all that had come to pass, sad to leave the Kentucky grass she'd walked barefoot in for four years with those she most loved, but hopeful that the Lord would provide for her the way He had so faithfully through the past."

But it doesn't end here. I don't have to end hopeful. Like Abraham who "did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised" (Romans 4:20-21). I know He will provide for me. I know He will give me what I need, even when I don't know I need it. He's done it over the past 12 months. He will continue to do it. Hope does not disappoint (Romans 5:5), because the Lord will fulfill His purpose for me! (Proverbs 13:12)

I think He waits in expectation for certain parts of His plot to be revealed on my journey, like when the author watches a reader get to a certain part in the novel to see his reaction. I know it has not been all sunbeams and yellow butterflies, and will not always be, but I have received so much unexpected goodness out of the unexpected badness that started as unexpected goodness. I'm grateful for the unexpected! I'm grateful for what has been given me that I never could have planned for myself. And it makes me wonder, what if what is unbelievably improbable is the kind of normalcy God wants us to live in? What if "coincidences" are more reality than when life is predictable or even just...believable?

The God I serve is more creative than a cheesy Christian fiction writer. Why shouldn't real life be unrealistic?

feeding your inner-introvert

Extroverts are like those huge trees in Florida whose roots lay on top of the ground like monstrous wooded Octopus tentacles, sprawling out for human interaction. The sunshine of people's presences and the mist of retirement communities's sprinkler systems is enough to feed and water them. (I actually know nothing about these trees, so I hope no horticulturalists are reading this, disapprovingly clicking their tongues at me. I can't take disapproving tongue-clicks!) Their roots soak up the environment around them like scaly reptiles in the sun. Sssssssssss.

Introverts, however, are more like trees whose roots are buried deep in the soil. They need gulps of flood water to penetrate the soil, or else the heat of the sun scorches their leaves and leaves them wilted and pitiful.

I am an introverted tree who has been trying to water my roots like a gargantuan Floridian tree, and now my leaves are wilting. I love the sun for its chlorophyll and vitamin D, but without water I'm scorching, and the sprinkler systems of the extroverted world are not enough.

I realized last night that loving people does not mean that I can be around them all the time. All the energy I have I would love to spill onto them, but so many things are taking up my energy that I'm drawing on reserves to give to people until I am slowly being depleted. And this leaves me no time to replenish what I've lost, if every spare moment I'm looking for more ways to BE WITH PEOPLE. It's a balance system I have not mastered, and still don't understand. I hope my future occupation is working with people, so that they can have my energy.

Ways to recover and feed my introvertedness in order to rejuvenate and de-stress:

• My favorite part of the day is walking to class down my street in the mornings. The sky is always so early, unmarred, and glassy, like a cold pool without the ripples of the day in it yet. I need to relish this more and spend it in praise to the God who created it.
• Black Beauty. Ultimate relaxing, everything-will-be-all-right movie. What is more serene than watching butterflies land on pink flowers to the music of Danny Elfman?
• Participating in unimportant - yet not unproductive - things, like watching curling. There is something peaceful about that sport, like golf - except they don't yell at each other in golf ("YUP! YUP!"), and curling is a lot more technical (Team USA: "I'd say you gave it a 7-8. It landed on the button." Me: "Ah, yes, a 7-8. Precisely. You conquered that button").
• Reading, and realizing I'm not missing out on the world by reading. I'm reading The Professor's House for my American Novel class, and for some reason I'm really enjoying it. When I got to class today, Dr. Vincent began it with, "This novel is about someone experiencing a crisis." Oh. Well, maybe that's why.
  
• Spend time with the Lord. Be still, He says. Cease striving, and know that I am God. Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. (Psalm 46:10 NASB & Isaiah 30:15 NLT, respectively.)
  

every day is a resolution

Things I have quit:

1. Ballet (age 4)
2. Gymnastics (age 8)
3. Band (age 12)
4. Show choir (age 15)
5. Business Management minor (age 20)
   
6. All the King's Men (age 22)
   

I'm sitting in the silence of an empty house, in my sage-green chair my dad pulled from the end of someone's driveway two summers ago. I'm currently reading The Rise of Silas Lapham, because I've taken a break from AtKM. (I say "taking a break," though I'm not 42- or even 27-percent sure I'll finish it before break is over.) I've already read Housekeeping (another American Novel novel) in this break within Christmas break. Part II of AtKM to be continued....

The silence has been nice. No TV, no radio, just the occasional sigh from the cat sleeping on my bed or a car passing on the slushy street outside my window. I found my mind wandering, however, even amidst the enjoyment of my book. The string of large-bulbed Christmas lights strung haphazardly across my room (Dad thinks my room looks like a trashy Christmas tree lot) makes me think of the Christmasses past. And the red snowman mug of Earl Gray tea beside me smells like fruity pebbles. I can't drink it anymore.

But speaking of quitting, New Year's resolutions are a ridiculous concept to me. Much like cookie jars (like cookies even last that long) and the hooks my dad put on the inside of the bathroom door to hang our bathrobes on, when no one in my family has a bathrobe. I make resolutions all throughout the year and don't need an entirely new one to encourage them to stick. I wonder if January ever feels used, like it's just a month in which people acknowledge how to improve themselves?

So as we approach the front stoop of the new year, what do I have planned? My New Year's resolution is to stop resolving and to fall into the hands of God, because if there's anything I've learned in the past year of my life, it's that human plans never, ever, ever go the way you think they will.

"I am the LORD. Those who hope in me will not be disappointed." - Isaiah 49:23

All the King's Men, pt 1

Prologue

My eyebrows hurt from frowning so much while I read this book. Half the time I don't understand what has happened, is happening, or will happen, and the other half I don't understand why what I understand to be happening needs to happen in this story. So I've decided, to aid myself and any others who have trouble with this book, to summarize, in story form. I shall include in bold, to the best of my ability, the words Robert Penn Warren uses that I don't know and had to look up. And the parts I didn't understand or forgot, I will make up.

Part One

Why hello. I am your supposedly-college-educated narrator who still has terrible grammar, Jack Burden. I am opening this story in the back of a 1930s nightclub owned by Slade, then introduce you to Sadie so quickly that you think it's the same person until suddenly about fifty pages later I use the pronoun "she" in Sadie's description and then the entire mental image you've concocted of him (now her) is obliterated, she not being Slade and all.

I work for a governor who I call "The Boss" for most of the story. Back when he was simply Willie Stark, he was somewhat naive and married a school teacher named Lucy. She was also naive. I met Willie when he was running for governor and I was covering the story as a reporter. Sadie, who is reminiscent of that girl on The Hudsucker Proxy who pretends to be a Muncie girl, very dramatically calls Willie a sap and tells him he's being played, and that he'll never be a governor. Willie gets drunk and for a few pages I describe the way Sadie stands over Willie's unconscious body and stares down at him.

Willie goes to law school and gets learned up real good, then comes back with gubernatorial flare to win the office. I quit my job and Sadie, who's working for Willie, tells me to come work for "The Boss." I do, even though he's a sap. But he's a more powerful sap now.

He's very intimidating, and whenever you see three asterisks (***) between paragraphs the time shifts, so sometimes it's 1939 and sometimes it's 1933 and once it was 1914, but one often feels like he is being flushed down a chronological toilet and all the dates are swirling around as you drown in wordy water.

I knew Anne and Adam Stanton back when I was a child. I say about 50 times that Adam won't go fishing with me anymore, and I used to love Anne, though she wasn't very pretty. I married Lois, who was prettier than Anne, but I haven't explained yet what happened to her. Maybe in part two. In part one, however, I have dinner with Anne several times, and Adam is a fancy schmancy surgeon with oleaginous hair (as most people had in the 30s).

Willie, after becoming somewhat successful, has an affair with a girl on skates in Chicago, and upon finding out, Sadie cries into my chest and laments about having the small pox when she was young which left pock marks in her face. Apparently she thinks Willie owes her something, and just two-timed her. I'm not very good with women, so I just awkwardly pat her on the back and tell her to get over it. I should've said something like, "I ain't noticed Mr. Willie askin' fer ta marry ya," but not all books written during the 30s and 40s can be as poignant as Gone with the Wind.

Before I worked for the Boss and was a journalist, I was a grad student studying history. For about 75 pages I read my ancestor Cass Mastern's journal about having an affair with a woman named Annabelle, whose husband, Duncan Trice, shot himself. Then Cass leaves Annabelle and frees all his slaves, then dies during the Civil War. I am left pondering this all and the reader is left wondering, "What the crap does this have to do with anything?"

End part one.

reading lists

Tomorrow I'm going to begin reading for real. Like when you're 11 and you promise you're not going to trick your gullible friend, and each time you trick him and then promise again, and your friend says, "You said that last time," and you answer, "But this time I mean it." This time I mean it. Tomorrow I'm going to start reading for real. I've uncommittedly begun All the King's Men for my American Novel class next semester, but tomorrow I'm going to dig my heels in the sand and, come tidal wave, come land shark, come Peyton Manning walking down the beach with a come-hither look, I shall read.

I'm also re-reading Entirety by Dana Candler. I read it for the first time over the summer, as I sat in a bedroom in a Salt Lake City mansion that nestled comfortably between the shoulder blades of a wealthy mountain. Those mornings were quiet, and my heart would fill with God's intimate love for me like the room filled with curtain-filtered, golden-yellow early-morning sunlight. I am loving the romance, as Misty Edwards's forward puts it, of leaving all behind in order to cling to Him in greater measure.

Have you ever had a book beckon to you? I have an entire author beckoning to me. Louisa May Alcott is sitting on the edge of my top-most bookshelf, swinging her pantalooned legs and sighing in that "oh, all my words, like eggs, are spoiling in the refrigerator of disregard" sort of way that makes me want to leap to one of her books and consume and ingest as many of her words as possible. Incentive: As soon as I finish All the King's Men, I can read one of L.M.'s novels. In the meantime I'll need earplugs while I sleep so I won't hear her sighs.

I begin this blog on Christmas break, Anno Domini 2009, with the vow to write regularly, ponder often, and avoid getting sugar cookie crumbs in my laptop's keyboard. Amen and Amen.