ok FINE

i've been ordered by several people to post these. i'm SORRY! please forgive me for the damage these will do to your eyes. they were taken in 2002. the fish is named waldo.

ah whiteboard, how we love thee.

very attractive face there, justin.

hear ye hear ye if ye have ears then hear ye

i started a ... cringe at the phrase... scrapbook... this evening, as is appropriate for the eve of school. but i'm still not a scrapbooky scrapbooker, like the ones with stickers and weird "inspirational" or "cheeky" quotes to paste onto the page. but, i'm almost ashamed to say, it was fun. really fun. i'm gonna have to watch it.

i'm in shock

oh wow. i just actually heard this horrifying specimen on a tv ad:

"inner beauty is important, but not as important as outer beauty."

shield your eyes

this may be the last time you hear from me. ever. why? because after i post the following pictures i'm pretty sure someone is going to kill me.

and yes, caitlin and i both won the "biggest dork alive in 2003" award.

so... for a bit of comedy, here you go.

you know, i'm really quite shocked that i just posted this.

the very last first time

my last first day of homeschool is coming up in 5 days. though i've always looked forward to this part of "it", i'm suddenly just sad. and thorougly understanding of the phrases "bittersweet" and "mixed emotion" though they are cliched i realise. i also remembered this one day of school that for some reason stuck in my head - i must have been 7 or 8, and caitlin and i were sitting in the schoolroom together, wearing our favorite dresses which were absolutely horrid (the yellow/pink ones with the upside-down tulips sketches. thank you mamadah for trying so hard to get us to relinquish them.), having an eraser war instead of doing our handwriting.

and this time next year i'll (hopefully) go trotting off to the scary world of college, no longer young enough to hypothetically apply to hogwarts or be a part of one of those 80's highschool movies. the teacher won't take pictures of us, or give us butterfly day picnics, or let us paint our faces like celts and stand on our desks yelling war-cries. but on the bright side... it will be different, it will be exciting. i am excited about new things, i am sad about old things, and they are swirling together like the whipped cream and chocolate in my drink did when my little brother stuck his finger in it just now. ew.

this year of school will be most exciting. the most exciting parts are these:

gileskirk modernity

(oh the wonders of george grant!)

spanish II

teaching company physics course

being done with math FOREVER after this fall!

(maybe not forever, but if i can help it...)

greek!

art history class this spring

the amazing literature course mamadah has planned for me

taking piano for the first time

i'm doing more than this (yeep!) but these are the really exciting parts.

this year i'm going to faithfully take pictures and blog... it seems appropriate. and its probably the best thing to do to keep myself from (horrors!) scrapbooking, which i admit myself to have always kind of wanted to do. not cheesy scrapbooking. pretty scrapbooking. maybe i will. hmm.

95 degree weather, like tears in your throat

yesterday i was driving down abrams and it was so grey and blustery that i thought it was winter for a moment... it reminded me of driving to class in 20 degree weather with the windows rolled down and the wind making my scarf flutter and giving me little-girl shivers. so i rolled down the window, expecting the wonderful shock of chill ... and the hot august air was so heavy it caught in my lungs and suprised me, in a bad way.

i miss fall. i miss winter. summer is so wonderful and lovely, but think of scarves and hot drinks and days when fingerless gloves don't do a thing... of taking walks when its so cold the air makes your eyes water and your stomach to do that funny shaky thing.

come here, little autumn, i miss you!

meet your flight attendant, earnestine

well, i just got home. sunday night turned into monday afternoon, which turned into monday night... which turned into tuesday morning. wow.

so on my flight back from birmingham (free, thanks to my friend! yay dan!) the flight attendant was obviously loving her opportunity to have a microphone and a literally captive audience. she kept making spunky jokes. yech. also... and i'm very curious about this... she thanked us for all wearing clothing ...? oh and right after the part where the flight attendants do their funny security interpretive dance, it got really quiet and this guy behind me's phone went off and it was really loud and it sounded like a dying duck!

cecil and percy say they have felt something akin to locked-in syndrome with me gone so long. i told them they were being dramatic when they said this, but ok, fine. they want sympathy.

"it feels like we're really doing it, jim! it feels like we're finally having an adventure!"

so... i love last minute plans. lots. lots o love in my heart for those.

in exactly 2 hours my plane will be taking off! i go to see a bunch of my dearest friends in the world!! tonight i'll be at the blevins, then spend the weekend with the greens. yay!

and yes i do love flying almost as much as boats. airports are FUN! honestly i even think airport security is exciting, with the cool x-ray boxes and funny talkative security ladies. whoop!

those somalian pirates were visually disappointing. no eyepatches?

i want a boat. not just any boat... a smallish, beautiful, blue and white and brown wooden sailboat. with fancy ropes that i can pull, and a mop that i can swab the deck with, and one of those fancy helms. i'm just feeling the need to go a'boating today. i've only been on a few boats in my life, but all these experiences have been marvelous. one time in historical jamestown i got to walk around on a really big frigate replica, and it rocked around and creaked and was wonderful and i felt like it was finally adventure time, and that i might do anything... go off to some amazing place or do something incredible and historical that nobody else could have done. and then the tour guide came running over and made me stop weighing anchor. bah! where was his sense of adventure?

yeep, squeep!

last night after writing what i wrote i had a strange and disturbing dream. i dreamt of being chased around by this creepy old lady who called everyone "deary" or "my love" in this scaaary squeaky quivery voice. and she had a basket of measuring tapes that when you picked them up turned into really scary talking snakes.

i started "the weight of glory" by C.S. Lewis last night - he is definitely brilliant. i've read 1/4 of it now and do suggest reading it, but with caution. he says brilliant brilliant things, and most of it is sound and good, but remember that he differs greatly from PBs in his views on salvation, and this does affect so much of his thinkings.

and as i've done ever so many things this morning but have somehow neither finished any of them nor seen mamadah... which is strange... i shall bid you adieu.

oodlesnifflewoozleschnitzel.

so, i was sitting here at my desk, reading my email, writing in my not-really-a-journal-but-lets-call-it-that-anyway, and wondering who invented legal pads and may i jump backwards in history and say 'oh thank you!' ? and i got a great hankering to go a'posting. so here we go a'posting amang the leaves sae greene. lovely day for a picnic! anyway so i really wanted to, but couldn't think of any particular thing i wanted to say, and so counted on making it up as i went on.

why am i up? well i took a nap this afternoon- NOT a good idea for me. as always, it was supposed to be about 30 minutes to 1 hour - ish, but that turned into 4:30 to 10 pm. aah! thats more sleep than einstein got! and why, you may ask, was i taking a nap? because i went to the rich mountain association in arkansas this weekend and we drove back home after saturday night services, getting home around 3 am. it was a really good meeting...er... association. yeah, i didn't really know what to expect, having never been to an association before, and rather expected something along the lines of the U.N. , with a big table up front and preachers walking around with legal pads, discussing things. needless to say it was nothing like the U.N. of course having never been to the U.N. either, my image of that may be messed up, because all i know of it comes from a few things in the news about it and The Interpreter (which is a good movie, btw).

oh another good movie, mamadah and i went and saw Julie and Julia last weekend and its quite good. i was really happy to see a movie that showed really good marriages. so many movies recently have tried to be all edgy or whatever by showing "the other side of the american dream" or some such NONSENSE and i don't know why more people aren't sick of it. here's the thing- yes, we believe that man is sinful and prone to evil. this does of course affect every aspect of our lives... there is sin in our relationships, in our marriages. but because we know this sin is there, and are fighting against it, there can be nothing good about focusing on the sin and the fallenness, or in wallowing in our sorrow about it. i think sometimes people use their knowledge of depravity as an excuse for depression and half-heartedness. seeing only the sadness and starting to believe that there is no hope for our relationships because of sin - that is what the devil wants. he would love for christians to become downtrodden and depressed. the fact is that we have been saved. it already happened... we're living in a post-resurrection world, can we accept it and live our lives accordingly? God has already seen our sin, Jesus has already saved us. living our lives as though we haven't already been saved will not bring thanks to him for this incredible gift. heres an analogy. lets say you really really needed a washing machine, because you were doing all your laundry by hand. if someone saw that need and gave you a washing machine because they loved you, would you then go on washing your clothes by hand? no! that would be silly, and it wouldn't bring joy to the person who gave you the washer. the best thanks you could give that person would be to use that washer. thats what the giver wanted.

oh be joyful, oh be jubilant
put your sorrows far away
come rejoice and sing together
this holy day!

oh john wayne, you comic you

"Life is tough; its tougher if you're stupid."

- John Wayne

nerdy penguin

you may all be pleased to know that cecil has quite recovered from his depression of health and spirits. don't tell him i told you, but i overheard him singing " 'gin a bodie meet a bodie comin thrae th' rye" at the top of his lungs this morning. it startled me, i thought rodney was in one of his moods again.

remember robert dickens, my penguin scholar friend? last night he and i got a bee in our respective bonnets (its just a phrase, silly, do stop picturing me in a pioneer bonnet. i mean it! Stop!!) to study up on the kings and queens of merrie olde england. we feel ever so much smarter now. we went all the way back to the house of tudor and made our way through the tudors, stuarts, hanovers, saxe-coburg and gotha, and finally windsor (did you know that george v changed the family name to windsor because of european prejudice against the germans?). it was a long study, and quite interesting. seeing all the past drama that nobody cares about now, really, makes one feel a bit better about today. this, too, shall pass. also we discovered the longest family name EVER. the house of schleswig-holstein-sonderburg-glucksburg. "you don't see that cross-stitched on a pillow!"

my love is like a red, red rose

i'm so glad... glad seems such a meagre, human word... i'm so vibranted to the very depths that i have Jesus' love and pursuit. this business of Him seeing something in us to love... it really is all we are worth, isn't it? its very nature is redemptive, not just in our eternal salvation, but in how it goes to the prickles of our sorrow and insecurity and turns those thorns into ... oh i don't know, roses, or something shining and beautiful, not as hard as a star but not as small as a rose... like a huge, billowy, shining silver cloud, made of our sin and sorrow to begin with but turned into this glorious blooming thing inside our hearts, inside our ribcages just straining to fill our beings with its grandness and burst out into every action or word of ours.

good sense is so refreshing

"Some day we'll awake, have a reformation of the heart, teach our kids honor and kill a few sex psychologists, put boys in high schools to themselves with men teachers (not sissies), close all the girls finishing schools, shoot all the efficiency experts and become a nation of God's people once more."

-President Truman, in his diary

quothe he, "h'aatchoo!"

poor old cecil has a Great Cold. percy has tried to cheer him by bringing marigolds, violets, and a large turnip from his garden, but these only ease the spirits. so, we have got him tucked away with a hot water bottle (gnomes have special ones of these, shaped to fit their hats, of course), a large cup of honey'd lemony tea, and dickens. nay, not the works of dickens, dickens himself. robert dickens, penguin, scholar, devoted husband, and expert on german philosophical theory. his dear wife lucy, to whom he is devoted with such sincerity of feeling as can only come from a penguine heart, is administering crumpets and hearth-fires, as is her way. i find the only way i have of helping is to keep the hot water bottle hot, listen to his grumblings, and keep our favorite compositions playing. the three of us have decided on our favorite to listen to together. we do so love the unaccompanied cello suites by bach, especially no. 1 in G major. cecil loves the quiet beginning, percy the brilliant ending, and i the whole.