Toddlers of the Bible: Peter, Jonah, and Sampson

Toddlers

You know those preschooler puzzle toys where there's a plastic box with shaped holes cut in it? And you have all these plastic shapes to fit into the holes? Have you ever watched a kid playing with one of those? Their tiny toddler muscles strain to force the circle block into the flower hole, or their little brains struggle to figure out the right way to turn the star in order to line up all its points. I love watching kids that age play. They are thinking and working so hard, and learning so much, and yet when they return to the same toy the next day, they've forgotten half of what they achieved the day before. I can't help but laugh as they get frustrated and try to beat the pieces into place, or get bored and wander away to another toy. But the best moment is when they finally get everything in the right place and grin, proud of their accomplishment.

I think that's how God is with us sometimes, watching and laughing and letting us figure it out. No matter how hard we shove, the square block is not going to fit into the round hole. And the triangle won't fit in the triangle hole unless you have it turned at the right angle. Sometimes He gets frustrated, thinking to Himself, "We just did this. How can she still not figure out the right work/personal life balance? Why is he still trying to get that promotion instead of going back to grad school? Why won't she just break up with him already? How has he not figured out that he needs to attend church regularly?" And sometimes He gently reaches out and helps us turn the block around, or subtly taps a finger on the right hole for the shape in our hands. And sometimes, when we are getting frustrated or bored or overwhelmed with this confusing shape game, sometimes He is the one who hands us the light-up fire truck, or the singing dinosaur, or the plastic groceries, because sometimes we need a break from trying to fit all those shapes together.

Jonah

God gave Jonah a specific task: go to Nineveh and tell them to repent of their wickedness. Jonah refused, and proceeded to run as far away from Nineveh as he knew how to get. Then God sent a storm, and Jonah offered to die in order to save the lives of everyone else on the boat, and then he was swallowed by a fish. Then he prayed, and God rescued him, and then he went to Nineveh and preached half of God's message, and then the people figured out the other half anyway. And then Jonah got mad at God for doing the thing that He said He would do.

God is God. You can't run far enough in any direction to escape His will. You can even half-ass the things He asks you to do, but guess what? God is more powerful than you. If you think He can't make shit happen in spite of your rebellion, you're forgetting the whole toddler thing above. It doesn't matter how hard that two-year-old tries to shove that star-shaped block into the trapezoid-shaped hole. It's not going in.

Sampson

There's this to say about Jonah: he listened to God enough to know what God wanted him to do, even if he then did the exact opposite. And he did eventually do part of what God asked him for.

You can't really say as much about Sampson.

Sampson was supposed to follow a specific set of vows, and was supposed to rescue his people from the Philistines. He broke every single one of his vows in very quick succession, and although he killed lots of Philistines, he only ever did so to correct wrongs that they had committed against him. He wasn't a champion for his people, only for his own ego.

His story ends with all the Philistine leaders dying by Sampson's hands. But don't get too excited: first he broke his final vow, and then they tortured and humiliated him, and then he asked God to allow him to get revenge, and then he killed himself along with all of them.

So, God's will was done. Yay?

Peter

Oh, Peter. He tried so hard to be a good disciple, but he kept getting sidetracked with his own ideas. Protip: God's ideas are pretty much always better than yours. (Occasionally He decides to kill everyone, and Moses has to talk Him out of it, but by and large you can just assume that He knows what He's doing.)

After all the time spent with Jesus, Peter still didn't really get this. When Jesus tells Peter that Peter will deny Him three times before dawn, Peter argues back. Then Jesus told them all (for like the eight millionth time) that He was going to be betrayed and die, and then He gets arrested, and then Peter cuts off a guy's ear. (I like to think that a better translation of Jesus' words at that point is, "Dude. Seriously? We just talked about this. This is happening. Chill.") You'll never guess what happens next. Peter denies Jesus three times just before dawn.

But he tried. He tried so hard. And let's not forget that it was Peter upon whom Jesus built His church, and Peter who preached the Pentecost sermon. He could barely take a step without tripping over one foot and shoving the other one in his mouth, but when he did take a step, it was with seven-league boots. His incompetence, pride, and general stupidity were no match for the Holy Spirit moving within him.

Me

It took me a long time to be reconciled to my parents' divorce. Actually, let me rephrase that: it's taking me a long time to be reconciled to my parents' divorce. First, i had to be reconciled to the fact that they were never supposed to be together, that they should never have gotten married. Then i wondered what that implied for me: should i never have been born? Was i God's afterthought?

Here's what Sampson and Jonah and Peter have taught me: God's will is going to happen, whether or not we participate, even if we rebel, even if we make mistakes. God always intended for me to be here. He may not have intended for me to arrive under these exact circumstances. but He wasn't about to let my parents' mistake get in the way of what He wanted, and what He wanted was me.

I can't help but think of the background characters in these stories. I think of the Ninevites that Jonah was supposed to redeem. They were hell-bound and didn't even know it, and Jonah did everything he could to keep them headed in that direction. I think of the Israelites who Sampson was supposed to be rescuing from their oppressors. He ignored his people to chase tail, and forgot about anyone who didn't stroke either his ego or his penis. And i think of the other eleven Apostles, of the multitude of Jesus' other followers, of the new Christian converts trying to spread the good news and build churches and figure out this whole religion thing (can we eat bacon? do we have to be circumcised? is it okay to gossip?), and relying on Peter to guide them through all of these heavy questions, not to mention the persecutions and martyrs.

We never get to find out what they were thinking and feeling about all of this nonsense, but i think i have some idea of what it's like to be caught up in the wake of someone else's mess. It sucks to feel like you're a secondary character in someone else's story, like you're just there for set dressing or for a plot twist. But none of us are secondary characters. In each of these stories, all those background people are the whole point.

God sent Jonah to Nineveh for the sake of the Ninevites. God raised up Sampson as a judge for the sake of the Israelites. Jesus called Peter for the sake of the new Christians. All of these people are our secondary characters, our sidekicks, our plot twists. God wants great things for us, and sometimes He uses other people to work His will in our lives.

For those of us who are Peter, take heart: your ability to fuck up does not outweigh God's ability to get shit done.

For those of us who are Jonah or Sampson, take heed: your attempts to rebel will not succeed, and may destroy you.

For those of us simply caught in another's destructive wake, take comfort: God does not hold anyone else's mistakes against you. His will for you is going to happen, no matter what bad decisions are made by the people who are supposed to be rescuing you.

The circle block is only ever going to fit into the circle hole.

it's weird how i'm a complex human person

A friend of mine just posted a long, rambly quote on Facebook about not pursuing any romantic relationships until she finds full satisfaction in God. You see a lot of similar quotes when you and/or many of your friends are young evangelical Christians. Hell, i've even said similar things, and back in high school i broke up with one guy and rejected another because i felt like romantic considerations were distracting me from God.

You also see a lot of almost empowering secular quotes about not pursuing a man until you've found full satisfaction in yourself. You know, graduate from college, get a good career going, pay off some debts, buy some fabulous shoes, pick up a hobby. No one else can love you until you love yourself, after all, and men will like you better if they have to chase you and compete for you with your job and friends and dog or whatever, because of their cavemen genes. Or something. I stopped reading Cosmo a few years ago because of shit like that.

I realized over the past year that a lot of the things i have always taken for granted are not guaranteed. I also realized that i had never really thought about whether or not i personally wanted these things; i just knew that they were good things for some people and assumed they would come to me. Things like marriage and kids, for example. I had always more or less assumed that i would be married by the time i was 25. And then i was dating this amazing man, and we were so in love, and things were going well, and i thought i would marry him some day.

Over the summer, John and i talked about exactly that. We'd talked about marriage before, about how we had some things to work out in our individual lives before we could start making those kinds of plans, and how if/when we did get engaged, it wouldn't be till we were both done with grad school. But during this conversation, John told me he wasn't sure he ever wanted to marry anyone. And then as i thought about it more, i realized that John's grad school schedule meant that, assuming we did get engaged, i couldn't possibly expect to have a ring on my finger until i was 26 or 27. I thought about my options for a few minutes. Do i wait it out with John and see if he wants to get married some day? Do i stay with him even if we never get married? If we do, will i be able to marry him while i'm still young enough to have kids? Do i break up with him and start looking for someone who's a little closer to being ready to settle down? If so, can i get over him, find someone new, and wrangle him to the altar before i hit my quarter century? Where did i get this magic 25, anyway? Wait, do i even want kids?

And then i realized that i simply did not give a single fuck.

Getting married is no longer a goal of mine. If it happens, great, if not, oh well. I do want to do my best to love well those who come into my path. I do want to know that i never abandoned a promising relationship before doing everything i could to make it work. But if i'm on my deathbed, looking at my cats and my post-graduate degrees and my written works (published and unpublished), reflecting on years of hard and satisfying work, surrounded by nieces and nephews and friends, i'm pretty sure i won't be saying, "Damn. If only i had gotten married."

I pursue a relationship with God because i love Him, and because everything in my life seems better when things are good with Him. I pursue other things in my life (school, work, shoes) because i like them and they make me happy. I don't pursue them so i can cross things off of my pre-wedding check-list.

And here's the crux of the whole thing: My relationship with God is pretty solid right now. It could be better, but we'll never get to a point where there's no more room for improvement, because that's not how relationships work. And my personal life is heading in a good direction, and i'm working hard to keep it on that track: working nights and weekends so i can (FINALLY!) finish grad school, getting a new roommate, painting my apartment, and even trying to do a little writing here and there.

Yet two months ago, John and i broke up. I'm not dating anyone else right now, and i'm not looking for anyone else. Mostly because i'm still getting over him, and a little bit because i'm hoping we might still have a future. But big picture? I'm not dating anyone right now because i'm not dating anyone right now. It's not because God is trying to teach me a lesson or because He hasn't brought the right person to me yet. It's not because my many impressive accomplishments intimidate men, or because they see my cat pictures and knitting needles and decide i'm too much of a loser to activate their (bullshit) caveman genetic drive to pursue me. I'm not dating anyone right now because i'm not dating anyone right now.

Life is bigger than bumper stickers or Facebook statuses. It is far more beautiful and complex than Cosmo articles or the imaginary goals we think we're supposed to have. It doesn't mesh all that well with timelines and schedules. And it looks very, very different to each and every person who has it.

If you feel like you need to work out some shit with God before you date anyone, great. Go do that. If you feel like you need to get your career on track before you date anyone, great. Go do that. Me, i'm working hard and having adventures. Sometimes i'm alone, sometimes i'm with friends, and for two years i had a steady partner. Maybe one day i will again. But in the meantime, i'm not trying to get my life lined up so i'll be ready for love when it finds me. I'm trying to get my life lined up because that makes it easier for me to have adventures.

Life is the thing. Don't have a great life so that some guy will want to be a part of it. Have a great life so that YOU can have a great life.

process story

Lately, i've been going through old poems and revising them. I've done this many times before: in high school, i revised poems from middle school; in college, i revised poems from high school; in grad school, i revised poems from college. Now that i'm more or less post-grad school, i'm revising everything.

Usually, this process is largely one of deletion. I'll pull out a line or phrase from a poem that i like and throw the rest away as irredeemable trash. I'll scratch out the main themes of a poem, rearrange the stanzas, and throw out half of it. I'll throw away whole notebooks full of boring and embarrassing scrawls. But as the years go by, i've gotten better. I've trimmed away a lot of the bad stuff and built on a lot of the good. These days, the folder on my flash drive is about 80% potential, with only 20% fluff.

This makes the revision that much harder. When you have a whole sonnet that is absolutely perfect except for one weak line, and you have to fix it without disturbing the meter, and you can't just delete it because then you'd be a line short, it can take weeks and months and even years of work before the poem is solid. Sometimes you put it away for six months or so, and then come back to it with fresh eyes. Sometimes you delete the bad line anyway and decide that the poem makes a stronger statement as a partial sonnet. Sometimes you start dreaming in iambic pentameter and wake up sobbing, declaring that you will only write in free verse from now on.

I'm at the point now where i actually have two poetry folders, one marked "in progress" and one marked "ready". When i want to send in some submissions, i pull from the "ready" folder. In between submission periods, i work on moving things from "in progress" to "ready". Sometimes i find things i'd forgotten about. Sometimes i go looking for something that i can't find, completely forgetting that i renamed it on the last round of revisions. And sometimes, even now, i delete and delete and delete.

It feels strange to be so business-like about editing my work. I mean, my primary goal is simply to make each poem as good as it possibly can be, but i am aware that the better my poetry is, the better chance it has of getting published. And getting published would be pretty sweet. Despite my strong identification with Emily Dickinson, it would be nice to have some recognition while i'm alive, however slight and passing.

It just somehow feels like it should be against the rules or something, you know? It's like i'm grading my own paper. I'm sorting through my poems and reading them and deciding which ones are good enough to edit and which are not, and then i'm editing them and deciding which ones are good enough to publish. I've never had anything published in my life! It's not okay for me to do this! This is supposed to be someone else's job!

I mean, technically, just because i think something is good to go doesn't mean anyone else will ever agree. I've sent things out before that i thought were pretty good, that other people thought were pretty good, that published, award-winning poets told me should be sent out, and had them firmly rejected. So i don't have the deciding vote or anything, but i feel a little bit like the Chief of Staff, deciding what goes on the President's desk and what gets handled by an underling. And i'm like, I just registered to vote yesterday and I can't remember the difference between Congress and the House of Representatives. I really feel like there should be another layer of authority between me and the President. But apparently i'm a grown-up now, and i have to decide these things for myself. So if you see anything published under my name, thank Obama, i guess.

I think i lost track of my metaphor a little bit at the end there.

terrible twos

Hey, so, also: my second anniversary of blogging happened two weeks ago. Woops.

Most popular post: still never settle.

Biggest referring URL is from Frank Viola; biggest referring site is Google. No idea what the difference is between referring URL and referring site.

People have found the blog by googling both "never settle tattoo" and "never settle tattoos". And also "gold body paint", which presumably led them to this.

Russian readership remains strong. As of today, i have had 1,998 visitors from Russia in the last two years, second only to the US's 4,707. Third place is the UK at 269.

Also, my brother is competing in the Boston marathon this year on a hand cycle, my roommates are still terrible but may be leaving soon (which is good for my peace of mind but bad for my blog material), my boyfriend and i are resisting my family's "suggestions" that we get engaged already and having lots of adventures with eating fresh doughnuts and riding trains and snuggling and visiting aquariums and deciding in advance how we will mess up our hypothetical future children. (Most recent idea? Teach them that certain random words are profane ["Jimmy! Never say 'wagon'! Where did you learn that word?! Go to your room!"] but teach them how to use actual swear words really, really well.) God and i are making up, but i'm still mad at a lot of "Christians". But it's a righteous anger, so it's fine. I'm working harder on getting my life together: eating well, getting and staying in shape, making doctor's appointments, budgeting my money, etc. Results vary. I'm getting comments now, which is weird and new, and people are following me on Twitter. In fact, the Bloggess is following me on Twitter, and when you add that to the heartfelt email exchange we had back in November of 2011, we're basically best friends. It's okay to be jealous. In fact, it's encouraged. Also, Neil Gaiman once responded to one of my tweets, and Honest Toddler sometimes favorites my replies to his/her tweets, AND Joshua Malina followed me after i paid him to. The fast lane: i am living in it.

If i had champagne, i'd drink it, but instead i'll celebrate with maple whiskey and root beer, A Game for Good Christians, and maybe some organic cheesy cracker things. Or nachos. Here's to year three!

Lady Problems

So i have a list for this year. I have a list of "responsible adult get my life started" things that i need to do in order to feel like a responsible adult and to start living the life i want to have. They range from the simple and obvious (change my official residence from Maryland to Massachusetts) to the slightly more complex but completely necessary (find some doctors that accept out-of-state insurance and start scheduling check-ups for the first time since 2009) to the specific and expensive (register to take teaching licensure exams).

These items have been on my to-do list since graduating from college in May 2011. Some of them have been postponed because i couldn't afford to do them, some because they were important but not urgent, and some because i forgot. But it's getting more and more important that i figure this shit out. For one thing, i can't do my student teaching until i take and pass my exams, and i can't graduate until i do my student teaching, and i can't get a teaching job and leave my current job until i graduate. So i kinda need to take those exams. And lately i've been having some weird circulation issues that may or may not be indicative of something more serious, so i should probably get some check-ups and whatnot.

Anyway. Tomorrow, i am taking some personal time in the morning to visit the RMV and become a Massachusetts resident. I'm excited -- i like living in Massachusetts, and i've known for about five years now that this day would come eventually, and having that Massachusetts ID will make it a lot easier to get alcohol, but i am NOT enthusiastic about spending time in the RMV (or the DMV, or the MVA, if you live in other parts of the country. Whatever you call it, i think we can all agree that it sucks). But i'll bring a book, and by the time i leave that will be one more thing crossed off of my list. Next item: get my cat fixed. And then get back on birth control.

lenten bucket list

This is the time of year when people use God to guilt themselves into giving up bad habits delve deep into spirituality and self-sacrifice and work on cleansing their daily lives of things that distract them from God and Bible and Prayer and Such. Some people use it as a kick-off for the rest of their lives, like quitting smoking or gluten. They figure that, for 40 days of prayer and meditation and joining in the sufferings of Christ (who actually fasted for 40 days and then was beaten and tortured and horribly killed, so totally the same as you giving up caffeine), they can get a leg up on a better life and look more holy doing it.

In years past, i've given up pizza, sweets, soda, and meat. I actually gave up meat twice; the first time, i mostly just ate lots of bread and cheese. The second time, i worked on finding vegetarian meals that i enjoyed and making more deliberate choices about what i ate, and it was a choice that i carried with me. I now identify as "flexitarian", which means that i often eat vegetarian meals, but have no health/moral objections to eating meat sometimes (one of my favorite meals: veggie burgers wrapped in bacon).

This year, i toyed with giving up meat again, but i just don't eat it often enough for it to be a real sacrifice. I also toyed with adding a positive practice instead of deleting a negative one; i thought about adding another two days to my workout routine. But recent life changes have prompted me to redo the entire routine anyway, and i have no clue how i would fit any extra days in there right now. No need to add religious guilt to my personal health guilt. And then i simultaneously forgot and decided i didn't care this year.

But i do want to make my life better. I do want to take what God has given me (talents, time, resources, etc.) and do good things with them. I do want to live a life to be proud of. I do want to accomplish things. I've already done so many incredible things (spending six months traveling around Europe, graduating from college, a missions trip to Nicaragua, spending a month on a boat in Puerto Rico, moving far away from family and friends, getting tattoos, eating snails and octopus and tofu and weird fried baby fishes and scrapple and cashew fruit, teaching myself different skills, and so on), but there is so much left to do.

This season of loss and lamentation and desperate hope encourages quiet reflection. It also encourages getting off your ass and doing something to improve your life. And this year in particular, when i have been surrounded by so much death and sickness and reminders of mortality, i've been thinking about the things i still want out of life, big and small.

So here goes:

• i want to finish this damned degree
• i want to get a full-time job teaching English in a public high school
• i want to get married
• i want to go to Greece
• i want to learn to make a souffle
• i want to be published
• i want to have kids
• i want to attend a same-sex wedding
• i want to vote for a female candidate for President of the United States
• i want there to be a female President of the United States
• i want to buy a house
• i want to buy an electric/hybrid car
• i want to plant, tend, and compost my own garden
• i want to make money from something i've written
• i want to get a chest freezer
• i want to learn to make my own preserves
• i want to take a shooting course
• i want to take an archery course
• i want to go to Venice
• i want to make my own cheese
• i want to keep bees (NB: this may prove to be an unrealistic goal, in which case i'd like to instead aspire to meet a local bee-keeper and buy all my bee products from him/her)
• i want to go to Ireland
• i want to get back to volunteering with a riding therapy group
• i want to make enough money from writing that i can be a stay-at-home mom/housewife and still contribute significant financial support to my family

Life is fluid. Goals change and move. New desires arise and old ones die out. So this list will likely (hopefully) be continuously updated over the years. But it's a good start.

why my boyfriend is a saint

You guys, i am a fucking handful.

It's not just the bouts of depression and anxiety, or the tendency to lash out in anger at the wrong people, or the habit of rambling on and on long past the point where i've said what i wanted to say, or the constant distractions of the written word, or my tumultuous relationship with my parents, or my penchant for melodramatic hyperbole, or my difficulty with expressing my negative feelings productively, or my flirtations with vegetarianism, or my bizarre affection for my cat (have i mentioned my tendency to ramble unnecessarily?).

All of that is mostly manageable, and mostly improving, and some of it is charming (as i keep trying to explain to him). Even all of it together isn't really all that bad; after all, we all have our flaws, charming or otherwise, we all carry our baggage and our scars, and anyone who gets into a relationship and isn't expecting at least some crap to be flung at their head is either extremely deluded or is in a relationship with a robot, sex doll, or other inanimate object.

But here's the thing: i can't live in the moment.

Some moments, yes. A moment that is particularly thrilling, moving, absorbing. I was completely wrapped up in Les Miserables. I was totally enthralled this morning when taking notes in a class. I am 100% focused during sex. When my brother was shot, i lived in the moment for weeks. I could barely think far enough ahead to go to work and feed myself each day. When something touches the very core of me, i will live in as many moments as it gives me.

But in every day life, i'm too eager. When things are going well, i want to run ahead and climb the next hill, because i can't wait to see how much better life will be. When things are going badly, i want to run away and over the next hill, because i can't wait for things to change. I can't just sit and let my bad feelings simmer and mellow. I can't just sit and let my good feelings deepen and expand. I have to get to the next thing.

This is especially apparent in my relationship.

John is very much about the moment. He rarely makes plans more than three weeks in advance. So when i'm trying to make plans for Valentine's day (just over three weeks away) or our anniversary (just over three months away) or Thanksgiving (hey, i told you i had a problem), his eyes are glazing over and he's saying, "It's January 23rd. How about if we make plans for the weekend?" And i'm like, "Okay, and then we can make plans for our 47th wedding anniversary!"

And that's the crux of the issue. I don't really know how to be someone's girlfriend.

I know how to be a friend. I know how to be someone's flirty friend who secretly has a crush on them and on whom they secretly have a crush. I know how to do the early stages of the relationship, where you're still a little awkward, still figuring out the rhythms of conversation and kissing, still testing your boundaries. And i know that the end game is marriage. Honestly, there has never been a point in my life where i seriously doubted whether i would ever get married. I always knew that i would some day, and i obviously knew that i would be dating the guy for a while first. But in my head, the fantasy was like, meet a guy in the library, flirt shamelessly for a few weeks, go on some coffee dates, go on some dinner dates, go to some concerts and plays, attend some events (like weddings and parties), meet the families, fall more and more in love, and then get married.

And we've done all that. We've seen plays and concerts, we've gone to a wedding, we've met the families, we're in love, we've done birthdays and Christmases and we're approaching our second anniversary. We've hit all the milestones, passed all the standards. So now my brain is telling me that the next step is to get married.

And that's true, to an extent. The next major thing that John and i do will either be to get married or break up. That's just how relationships go. But when i say "next thing", i don't necessarily mean "tomorrow" or "next week". Maybe next year, but that's still a long way away, and is by no means definite.

There are still questions i have to answer about him, and questions he has to answer about me. We've both seen things in the other person that we're not sure we want in our life partner. We've both seen a lack of things in the other person that we think we might want in our life partner. We've both seen things that are not necessarily issues or deficits, but are differences between us that may not be reconcilable. Logically, i know that we are not ready to get married yet. I need to finish my M. Ed. and get a job, he needs to get into and complete a master's program of his own, we need to find an apartment and a church, i need to get my budget under control, he needs to pick a book for Bible study . . . Logically, i know we are not ready to get married yet. I just don't know what to do right now, how to be his serious, long-term girlfriend without pressing him to move forward.

But he still puts up with me. His eyes may (definitely) glaze over when i start talking about wedding crap, but he lets me ramble. I may ask him every other day (or six times every day) what he wants to do for our anniversary, but he is still patient and gentle when he says, "I don't know. It's still three months away." He may get a little scared sometimes and give me a quick lecture on managing my expectations, but he doesn't run away. In fact, he is still excited to see me every day, still wants to snuggle me closer, still wants to make plans with me and dream dreams with me and anticipate a future with me, even if that future only extends three weeks from now. So i try to keep a tight grip on my horses and look around me a little more, because this moment i'm in right now? It's pretty damn amazing, and i want to make sure i cherish it.

New Year, New Obsession

I mentioned before that i'm trying to be healthier. Let's talk about how that's going.

I have been faithfully going to the gym three times a week for an hour each time for the last week and a half, except for one time when i gave up after forty minutes because the elliptical was hard to use. Don't laugh. It's tough to find your rhythm at first. Plus my knee was really hurting and i wanted to cry. But i still made it through forty minutes, so suck it.

Originally, i was planning to switch between the treadmill and the elliptical. The elliptical is better for my knees, because it's a lower-impact machine, but for that same reason it's not as good for muscle tone and bone strength. When you're forcing your bones and muscles to propel you forward and hold you upright, they get better at doing it, and then when you're old you won't have to worry so much about things like osteoporosis or becoming feeble. But i've noticed that i turn my right foot slightly outwards, which is probably why my right knee hurts way more than my left one. This tendency is easier to see and correct on the elliptical, so i'm mostly sticking to that now.

I'm using this app called My Fitness Pal to keep track of how i'm doing. It's pretty easy, and i like it a lot. Instead of one of those programs that tells you to eat four cups of steamed broccoli and do sixty crunches, this program is just a way to track what you're already doing and how successful your efforts are. When you set up your profile, you tell it things about your current status (weight, age, health conditions, etc.) and your goals (faster, stronger, thinner, etc.). You also put in your fitness plans (run thirty minutes every day or whatever.). Based on your age, weight, sex, lifestyle (as in, are you a sedentary office worker like me?), and fitness goals, it gives you a recommendation for net calories and an estimate for when you'll reach your goal. Each day, you input what you've eaten and what you've done, and it tells you what your net calories are. It also tells you how well you're matching your fitness goals by saying things like, "If every day is like this one, you'll lose one pound a week!" or "If every day is like this one, you'll be down to 214 pounds in five weeks!" (NB: they didn't ask me to write a review or anything, and the app is free. I highly recommend it.)

I usually eat very well, so the only real difference is that i'm being faithful about going to the gym three times a week, and that i'm giving myself less leeway for things like snacking. It used to be that i would sometimes get hungry in the afternoon and run over to the school store for some chips and a candy bar, to keep up my strength in the two hours remaining until dinner. (Go ahead and roll your eyes at me. I rolled my eyes at myself every time, but i did it anyway.) Now, when i want a snack, i eat something healthy, or i just stay hungry. I mean, i live in the USA, and i have a job and a home. I can live for five hours without food. I need to stop being such a drama queen about hunger, when i'm so much luckier in that regard than so many other people.

But let's take a minute to talk about my healthy snacks.

Have you ever eaten roasted salted almonds? Not chocolate covered almonds, or almonds crushed up in ice cream or a candy bar, or almonds coated in toffee or honey and cinnamon. Just plain, roasted almonds, lightly dusted with sea salt.

Did you know that they taste like cream?

One of my roommates was mildly obsessed with almonds for a while and ate them every day. But she ate, like, wasabi almonds, or chocolate mint dusted almonds, or whatever. They were all dressed up in other flavors. I don't know why anyone, having tasted what a plain almond is like, would ever want to mask that flavor. All i want to do is pair it with other amazing things, like dried cherries. Dried cherries! Why would anyone eat dried cranberries or raisins when there are tart, spicy, wine-like dried cherries in the world?! Dried cherries or dried apricots with plain almonds can render me speechless. Pair with a tiny bite of dark chocolate and it's hard to imagine anything more mind-meltingly delicious. (Of course, i say things like that and then i hear Tina Fey's voice in my head saying, "I don't know. Have you ever put a doughnut in the microwave?")

And then there's raw honey.

I've been learning more about honey and bees, because i'm worried about Colony Collapse Disorder (Google it. It's terrifying.) and what it means for the future of the planet, and i'm interested in healthy, natural foods that taste amazing, and i want to support local apiarists who treat their bees well, and i want to be exposed to real honey, not the processed clover crap that comes from a plastic bear. (Apparently, apiarists who make clover honey tend to treat their bees very poorly.) Bee Raw has shown me things about honey that i never thought possible. Their Florida orange blossom honey tastes like floral green tea. Their Maine wild raspberry honey tastes like butter. And the orange blossom honey with aged cheddar cheese and fresh bread is like manna from Heaven. Did you know that you could eat honey with cheese? Did you know that when you do, it will change your life? Did you know that raw honey can help reduce or eliminate suffering from seasonal allergies? Did you know that raw honey blends smoothly into even cold liquid, unlike processed honey, which tends to sink to the bottom stubbornly? Did you know that raw honey, whisked together with lime juice and a little mustard, makes a low-calorie salad dressing or marinade that is better than anything you could buy in the store? (Except Ranch, obviously. Nothing is better than Ranch.)

Don't worry. This isn't about to become a health and fitness blog. It will always be the bizarre hodgepodge you've come to know and love: bitching about my roommates or work or money, gushing sappy garbage about my boyfriend, talking about my mental illness(es), updating you on my comic book, reflecting on my daily devotions, and making absolute statements about education and writing and civil rights and the economy and politics and so forth. But sometimes, i will also talk about honey or the gym or salads. I'm growing as a person. It's beautiful and magical, so come with me on this crazy journey of life or shut up and read someone else's blog.

scars, 1

I attended a writing retreat last January. One of the workshops was about writing biographies and memoirs, and the woman leading the workshop gave us several prompts. One of those prompts was to write about how we got our scars. This is what i wrote that day:

The scar on my left index finger was incurred during an unbelievable bout of stupidity. I had been painstakingly whittling something for weeks, despite having no whittling talent or training and nothing but a battered Swiss Army knife to work with.

But it was my latest obsession, and i took any and every opportunity to work on it.

One day, we were at a stoplight. I knew it was a long light, so i pulled out my tools. So engrossed was i in my work that i didn't see the light change. The old Ford Windstar minivan started moving with a lurch, and the knife blade slid smoothly into my finger.

I stared at it for a moment, watching the blood bubble up around the blade. It had gone in horizontally and lay under my skin. Then it clicked: i had a knife in my finger and it hurt.

I don't remember what i said to my dad to alert him to the emergency. I do remember him yelling at me as he tried to find a place to pull over. Our first aid kit was empty except for Band-aid wrappers and some calamine lotion. Dad found an old Sunday school paper to wrap around my finger until we got home.

I never finished whittling that thing. I think it was going to be a doll. I've long since lost both the block of wood and the knife, but the scar is still visible as a pale, slightly curved line on my left index finger.

grass and sky

When i was a kid, i couldn't get enough of the Great Outdoors. I would explore the soybean field behind out house, picking goldenrod from the wild grass at the edges. I would climb the mountain across the street, claiming each grassy foothill as my own. I would run through our yard when the grass grew long, searching for the fat, bright pieces that were so sweet to eat. I would go down the road, to empty lots high on the hill by the ditch, and lie in the grass that had never been cut.

When i was on the foothills of our mountain, lying in the dark green, soft grasses, all i could see above me was sky. When i flopped on my back in the dry, faded grasses near the ditch, all i could see above me was sky. When i wandered through the goldenrod and leftover soybean stalks and looked up, all i could see was sky.

I could erase all boundaries, all constraints, all restrictions, and simply be open. People talk sometimes about one particular place or another being "God's country". If you ask me, God's country is anywhere that you can lie in the grass and see the sky.

Find a fat, clean stalk with a bright, juicy end. Chew gently. Some may be bitter, but most will be sweet and juicy and will put gourmet salads to shame. Who needs handcrafted dressings when you have sunshine and air? Lie on your back in heavy grass. Don't worry about grass stains, about mud, about bugs. Glance around first for dog poop or spiders, but then stop thinking about it. Look at the fringe of grass around you, and look up at the sky.

Here there is no prejudice, because there are no other people around. There is no anger, greed, or fear. No jealousy, pride, or judgment. There is no dishonesty, no discrimination, no hatred. There is only grass and sky, only you and God. This is God's country.

I'm not twelve anymore, and i don't live in farmland. I live in the city, where i have a job and friends and responsibilities and shopping and museums and restaurants. I have to deal with coworkers and visitors, phone calls and meetings, email chains and disgruntled roommates and terrible drivers and pedestrians. There is a serious lack of grass, and what grass can be found is sparse and dry and dirty. The ground underneath is hard, and above are telephone poles and airplanes and tall buildings. It's hard to find that place again, to escape to grass and sky and just breathe.

But i don't want to live entirely without the city. It's hard to walk the line between civilization and God's country, between the culture and flavor and color and noise that i love, and the peace that i crave. I'm finding compromises: swimming laps in the ocean or bay, keeping wildflowers in a jar by my bed, pausing to notice snails. Some books can take me there as well: the Sandman comics, the Little House series, Pablo Neruda or Emily Dickinson poems, even my own poetry. I carry some of it in my memory, in my soul: images of grass and sky, sensory memories of prickles in my back and the scent of outdoors, old photos of old places. I sometimes have an adventure: i take a long walk by the beach, or eat lunch outside in the sun, or take a long drive with the windows open.

I crave grass and sky, especially in times like these. When i hear news reports of hate and discrimination, of shootings, when i see Facebook posts supporting cruelty and anger and fear, when i overhear a conversation, i feel my soul contract, shrinking into itself, desperate for air.

There is no real substitute for grass and sky, nothing else quite like that endless blue, that sweet embrace. There are lots of things in my life that make me happy, lots of things that bring me peace and rest, lots of things that are good for my soul. But there is a serious lack of grass and sky, and i am beginning to feel it.

not sure where this is going

So.

Seven years ago, i started writing a fairy tale. I had intended it to be novel length (which, according to the almighty Google, should be somewhere above 200 pages). When my little masterpiece was all neatly typed and edited in Microsoft Word, it was 25 pages. But in the meantime, i had written several more fairy tales.

The first one, begun in the back of my diary on a slow night at the Quiznos where i worked, was supposed to be a stand-alone project. Over the next few years, the stories were written in Quiznos, in church, in my bedroom, in airplanes, in German living rooms, in Spanish kitchens, in English dorm rooms, in Italian hotels, and in the great outdoors. And as i wrote, i began to see connections between my stories, places of contact where the smaller pieces could be woven into a compelling whole.

Can't you just picture cute forest
animals helping her bake a pie?

I began editing in different colors of ink, writing and rewriting by hand until there was an established shape and structure to my narrative. I filled whole notebooks with studies on races, languages, geographical features, economic structures, histories, and diplomatic relations between countries i had invented. I drew maps, illustrating shipping ports, mountains, areas of high magical concentration, types of commerce and industry, and major cities. I created charters for magical societies, drew family trees, and studied existing fairy tales and fantasy novels for clues about battle, magic, sociology, layered meanings, and how to create an original fairy tale that was recognizably a fairy tale. When i had writer's block, i found a popular fairy tale and re-wrote it to fit the history of my own stories (Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White all got this treatment. I also wrote an outline of an alternate Snow White narrative where this snow-white-skin-ebony-black-hair-blood-red-lips girl was a modern Goth teenager). 


I began typing and transcribing and editing further. I re-drew my maps. I sent pieces of stories to friends for review and suggestions. I put my notebooks and flash drive away for months at a time to focus on school. I pulled them out again to do more editing and transcribing and dreaming.

A few weeks ago, the final story was transcribed. All that was left was the final editing of the overall structure and the story would be complete and ready for publication.

Except that, as i worked on these stories, i realized something important: they suck. I know: it's shocking that a fifteen-year-old writing in the back room of a Quiznos between the dinner rush and the dirtbag rush didn't come up with a literary masterpiece, but somehow this was the case.

However, there are still elements worth redeeming. But i'm not sure that short stories or novels are really my "thing". In the interest of preserving the good parts and replacing the bad parts with more good parts, i'm looking into what can be done to "save" this endeavor. And here is my thought: graphic novel. See, the parts that i suck at the most are the descriptions. I can do dialogue, and i can do exposition, and i can do romance and humor and tragedy and all that crap. But i can't show you what's happening, and we all know that the cardinal rule of writing is "show, don't tell".

As i have been reading graphic novels and comic books, i have seen that they are a really great shortcut for the "showing" part of writing. With the exception of very early comic books (X-Men, i'm looking at you), works in these genres let the images do the showing, allowing the writers to concentrate on the other parts of the writing. I've learned that writing a graphic novel is a little like writing a TV show/movie/play: what the writer produces is, in fact, called a script. It has things like dialogue and exposition, but it also has things like, "Full body shot of girl in a skimpy blue negligee. She has choppy blonde hair and is thin, but painfully so, like she's malnourished. She is facing the reader, but is gazing at nothing -- zoned out." The writer collaborates with artists, inkers, letterers, and colorists (these may not all the the technical terms) to produce a beautiful, fascinating, cohesive work of art and literature.

I want to do that, please.

Catch 1: i can't draw. Like, at all.

Catch 2: the people i know who can draw can't draw like what's in my head when i write these stories, and i don't want to do this if i can't do it right.

Catch 3: being a broke blogger/aspiring poet/grad student/administrative assistant with ZERO experience with any actual publication, any novel/short story writing, or any real publishing credits to my name, i don't have anything to convince a real comic book/graphic novel artist to work with me. For free. With no guarantee of compensation.

Catch 4: the limited Google research i did before writing this post has led me to conclude that publishers won't look at a graphic novel script. They only want to see a polished manuscript complete with artwork. If you're someone with some clout, like an employee of a comic publisher or Neil Gaiman, you can announce that you'd like to create a graphic novel and someone will probably respond. If you're me, i don't know what you do.

So.

I plan to continue editing/polishing/writing, possibly creating two copies of this book (one written as a traditional text novel and one as a script for a graphic novel). I plan to continue blogging/writing poems and being too scared to submit them anywhere/working toward my education degree/answering phones. And one day, maybe i'll meet someone who has always dreamed of creating a graphic novel of original fairy tales, but hasn't found anyone to write a script that matches the glorious images in his or her head.

And then magic will happen.

rain

I've written before about my history with thunderstorms, how the pounding raindrops and crashing thunder are something of a lullaby. I haven't written before that the first time i made out with a boy was in a thunderstorm, when the power went out and we were left in total darkness. I also haven't written that on days like this, my mother used to love to make a big pot of tea and put on an old movie, something with Jimmy Stewart or one of the Hepburns. We're a distant cousin of Katharine, you know.

I still like to put on something black-and-white when it rains, though these days my tea likely as not has a shot of whiskey in it. To ward off the flu, of course. I like to put on slubby old clothes and snuggle with John and watch the old stories over again. There's nothing like Cary Grant on a rainy day. There's nothing like Cary Grant any day. Maybe George Clooney.

It looks like it may rain all day today, and i'm stuck at work. I'll be sneaking peeks of Sandman, of course; i recently got the fourth and fifth volumes and have ordered the sixth and seventh. I'll work hard: emails, voicemails, transcripts, and letters. Two of our office assistants are on vacation, so i'm handling their workloads. Maybe at lunch i'll watch an episode of Mad Men, the next best thing to a black-and-white film. After work, i'll put on slubby old clothes and wash a load of laundry and drink some tea. My black and white cat will nap on my bed while Breakfast at Tiffany's or Philadelphia Story plays in the background. I might even take a nap today.

I wish i had a porch with a swing and a grandmother on it. I wish i could call out "rainy day" from work, but they don't have a code for that in the accrued hours. Days like this will be so much fun for teaching.

Days like this almost make me wish i was fifteen again (except that no one in their right minds would ever want to go back to that age). I want to have no responsibilities, to be able to wear pajamas all day and spend the morning in bed with a stack of novels. I want to eat two bowls of cereal for breakfast and spend the afternoon snacking on fruit that someone else paid for while Audrey Hepburn wafts across the screen in some glamorous, tiny gown. I want my biggest annoyance to be that my cat has fallen asleep half on my arm and half on my open book.

But when i was fifteen, i didn't have a cat. I didn't even know about Sandman then. And most of the movies in the house belonged to my parents. I would have been watching in the living room, in the midst of a swirl of chaos, instead of in my cozy, still room.

Growing up isn't really moving forward. It's more like moving sideways, or at least diagonally. Some things are better, some things are worse. Mostly, things are just different. We trade some responsibilities for others. We trade some freedoms for others. When i was fifteen, i didn't have to pay bills, but i couldn't put whiskey in my tea.

elephants

When i was younger, i used to collect collections.

I have been a huge nerd for my entire life, and when i was younger i used to think that if i had some cool "thing", i would become cool by default.

Having only a very tenuous grasp of the concept of "coolness" and of what things could be labeled cool, i decided that a really awesome collection of some kind would really seal the deal for me. The trouble is, i could never decide which collection was the coolest one. (That wasn't really the trouble. But it was the thing that precipitated this story.)

I tried collecting stamps, keys, coins, rocks, pieces of wood, stuffed animals, old books, beads, erasers, safety pins, buttons, shells, sea glass, and marbles. (This is not a complete list.) Please take note of the lack of coolness for basically every item on the list. And lest you be tempted to argue, thinking that some of these things sound like they might make really impressive collections, allow me to disenchant you. I was young, and had no money, and my town had extremely limited access to everything but soybean fields. So my collection of, for example, stamps, was not some colorful album full of rare, expensive pieces of miniature postage art. It was more an envelope full of regular stamps that we had recently received. Our exchange students did afford me access to some international stamps, but by and large my collection lacked value, interest, and diversity.

"I meant what I said,
And I said what I meant.
An elephant's faithful
One hundred percent!"

The weird thing about collecting is that you'll find something you like, pick up maybe half a dozen really awesome representations of that one thing, and then suddenly everyone you've ever met starts inundating you with more of that thing, because they want to help you with your collection. While this is really nice and helpful, i tended to be pretty fickle with my collections and too nice to tell people that, so when someone came up to me in the church parking lot with a handful of used stamps, i didn't know how to tell them that i wasn't really collecting stamps anymore. And i tend not to throw things away, especially when they were gifts, so my room is often cluttered with things i never wanted belonging to collections i am no longer interested in. Every year or so, i purge, but things still seem to pile up somehow.

This brings us to the elephants.

I really do like elephants. I think they look majestic and solemn and beautiful, and the little ones are insanely cute. They're generally considered faithful, responsible, patient, and lucky. Maybe that's why Dr. Seuss's Horton, who took care of someone else's egg through terrible winter storms and who almost died protecting people too small to be seen, was an elephant.

Anyway, i started collecting elephants some time in middle school, i think. And after a while, though i still liked them and would occasionally buy elephant things, i wasn't really interested in my collection.

And yet, it grows.

When my roommate went on a trip, the present she brought back to me was a hand-carved elephant (with a baby elephant inside! Insane!) I hadn't said anything about my elephant collection to her; she had just seen it in my room and decided to contribute. My mom bought me elephant earrings one year for Christmas. My sister gave me a whole family of bright orange elephant figurines.

But my brother has been the biggest supporter of my collection over the years. A few years ago, just as my collection fever was starting to wane, he gave me an elephant figurine the size of a cat. Then he went on a trip to Luray Caverns in Virginia and brought me an elephant carved of glossy gray stone. When he went to Italy, he brought me a glass elephant. When he went to a toy store, he brought me a plastic elephant.

This past weekend, at my sister's graduation party, Adam brought me a jade elephant. He walked up to the table where i was picking crabs, placed it in front of me without a word, and sat down.
"Oh, wow!" i said, trying to figure out if he was giving it to me or just showing it to me. "This is pretty sweet!"
"Some Asian lady was selling these in the hospital, and it was cheap, so I picked one up," he said nonchalantly, and then started eating crabs. (It was, in fact, a gift for me. Adam is thoughtful and sweet, but doesn't like to actually say out loud anything that might indicate that fact.)

penultimate

Today is the next to last class i will have to take for my degree (i hope). I'm at work, frantically trying to finish an assessment portfolio for a unit on fairy tales. Yes, fairy tales. Don't you wish i was your teacher? (No, because i'm a tough grader and you don't want to participate in a Socratic seminar on the feminist critique of fairy tales or create a picture book detailing all the graphic violence and darkness in the original tales.)

Anyway, i have this class today and one on Monday, and then i'm done with classwork. I still have observations and student teaching, but i'm essentially done.

I don't have time or mental energy to write much more right now, because i'm still trying to finish this thing, but i just wanted to say that i'm almost done with my M.Ed. And i still don't know if that's the correct abbreviation for it.

Reasons to Live With my Boyfriend

I've been posting individual list items on this topic for a while now. Some of them were humorous, but all were serious, in that we both have really terrible roommates.

However, i am currently paying $400/month in rent, and my utilities are only about another hundred. You can't beat that deal in the Boston area, unless you want to live in a rat-infested shoebox in a bad neighborhood. His rent is a little higher than mine, but still pretty good. I recently saw a one-bedroom apartment advertised for $1100/month, not including utilities. Next spring, i will be starting my student teaching, which will involve one whole semester of full-time, unpaid teaching. I'm looking for federal grants and part-time work, but i'll mostly be living off of my savings. Unless i find an insanely cheap apartment (like, less than $500/month including utilities) by September, there's no way i can fork up first/last/security and pack up again. It just won't be worth it.

But the time has come. John and i have reached a place in our relationship where we need more time for one another, need more attention from one another, but we can't always give it. He gets home at 3:00 and spends a few hours doing laundry, or eating, or doing the chores his roommates haven't, or lesson planning. I get home at 5:00 and spend a few hours cooking, cleaning, and doing homework. Once rush hour traffic has settled down, he heads over to my town for a choir rehearsal. Then i head to a 4-hour class. By the time we are both done with our day, all we have the energy to do is fall asleep, so that he can get up at 5:30 and get to school in time.

We see each other almost every day, but we spend very little time together. One of us is always in the middle of something: i am doing homework, or he is paying bills, or i haven't eaten all day and am too hungry to think straight, or he is talking to his parents about his dad's health, or he is looking at apartments and i am doing laundry. Even the weekends are usually filled with all the errands we didn't have time to do during the week.

This is the point in the relationship when most people would get married, but we've only been together 13 months, and we've really only known each other for about 17. We still need to find a church that we can go to together. We still need to finish our masters' programs. Have you ever moved in with someone who was a close friend, and within two months you could barely stand the sight of them? We need to make sure that doesn't happen with us. We've seen many, many, many couples who jumped into marriage, and while they married the right person, their speed put unnecessary strain on the relationship and they are now struggling and doubting. We have the rest of our lives to be married. We can take our time with the steps in between.

In the meantime, we miss each other. We need a mutual place that we can come to. We need to do the hard work of orienting our lives around one another. We need to share the space in the refrigerator, in the closet, in the garage, in the bathroom. We need to spend Saturday morning in bed, snuggling and having tickle-fights, because no one needs to get up and go home to do laundry. The laundry is right here, and we can put a load in the washer and get right back in bed. We need to argue about whose turn it is to buy milk, about which direction to hang the toilet paper, about which dishes go in the dishwasher and which are hand-wash only.

You say that your heart is mine. This, then, is love: i have learned to be at home in you, and in so doing, i have found myself at home in me.

If I Won the Lottery

The first thing i would do would probably be a shopping spree on Amazon, buying every book and DVD i have ever wanted. Then i'd start looking for my dream house. I'd be able to actually hire movers this time, instead of making friends with people who have trucks and/or vans. I'd be out of Beer Street, and my boyfriend and i could move in together.

Then i'd pay off my school loans. All of them. I'd give my two weeks' notice at my job, train my replacement, and leave to focus on school. I'd be able to do my student teaching (one whole semester of unpaid, full-time classroom instruction) without worrying about bills.

I'd give to my church and my school. I'd be their new favorite alum.

I'd put most of it into my savings account, for future emergencies and kids and more grad school.

Oh, grad school . . . I'd definitely go back, again and again and again. I'd get an MFA in poetry, a Ph.D. in developmental psychology, maybe something in theology or Biblical studies or history. Or all of them.

I'd teach for a while, until John and i were ready to start having kids. I wouldn't mind being a stay-at-home mom, as long as we could pay the bills without too much stress. And i could write. Between the diapers and the Cheerios and wiping off the kitchen table and kissing boo-boos and hiding the cookies and the endless nursery rhymes and laundry and wiping off the table again, that is. I could blog, and i could write poetry, and i could get back to my secret novel, and i could write journals for my kids, and i could Tweet, and i could write letters to my congressman, and i could doodle on my own skin and paint words on the walls of my home and write labels for our organizational plastic bins and copy out my mother's best recipes and transcribe quotes and update my Facebook status and scribble letters to my brother and sisters and put love notes in my husband's and kids' lunchboxes and go through my old diaries and frame my thoughts anew.

Oh, the writing i would do!

I'd give to charities. I'd give away my car and buy a hybrid. I'd sponsor and foster and adopt kids. I'd fund microloans. I'd install solar panels on my roof and plant my own vegetables. I'd plant trees. I'd buy organic.

I'd teach part-time, here and there. I'd only take the jobs i really wanted, though. I'd teach English and psychology and life skills and writing and decent behavior to others and kindness and unconditional love and developmental reading and poetry and patience and assertiveness and looking out for others and philosophy and journalism and close reading and literary analysis and humor and surrender and romance and practicality and interview skills and research skills and debunking internet myths and budgeting your money.

I'd buy lots of really comfortable, flattering clothes, like jeans and cardigans and ballet flats. I'd get Lasik eye surgery, and maybe laser hair removal. I'd go to the doctor more often. I'd be able to go back on birth control. I'd buy myself a really long strand of real pearls. I'd buy myself some chocolate. I'd buy one set of really nice underwear from Victoria's Secret, and then go back to Marshalls for the rest of it.

I'd pay for my sisters' college, and any of my brother's bills not covered by the VA and the Marines. I'd give generous loans to my siblings, to college students, to my own students and friends, when they needed help, because i've been on the other side of that before and likely will be again. I'd take college students out for dinner, because sometimes they can't afford food and are too proud and self-sufficient to ask. I've been there, too.

I'd give to local homeless relief efforts. I'd make socks for clothing drives. I'd feed my kids' friends who maybe couldn't always count on a meal at home. I'd buy Christmas presents for children of prisoners, kids in orphanages, kids in homeless shelters, kids in institutions and rehabs, kids in dingy apartments far from home.

I'd save, not so that my kids never had to work hard or worry, because these things are good. I'd save so that i would always be in a position to offer them a safety net or a hand up in times of absolute emergency, because these things are good, too. I'd save for my retirement. I'd save for if (when) the economy falters again. I'd save because how could i ever spend that much money in one lifetime?

Oh, the things i could do if i ever won the lottery . . . Unfortunately, i understand that you have to actually buy a ticket to win. The odds are stacked pretty high against you either way, but they do improve marginally when you participate. I guess i'll just keep holding out hope that one day, someone will give me a ticket that will turn out to be the mega-million-jackpot winner. Until then, i'll keep on working and saving and trying not to worry too much.

Adulthood 101

To bring in a little extra cash and to practice for my future job, i do a little grading for one of my former professors. She recently brought me a stack of papers to look over for her. In sorting through them together, we discovered one handwritten piece with no name.

"Well, someone is going to be squawking about their grade, and I'll have to look through a whole file of assignments with no names to find it, and then I'll have to change their grade, and . . . " she trailed off, exhausted by the mere prospect of the work ahead.

Here's the thing, people: PUT YOUR NAME ON SHIT. For the love of all that is holy, when you have done an assignment for a class and are ready to turn it in, PUT YOUR NAME ON IT.

If your name is not on it, you cannot receive credit for it. If you do not receive credit for it, your grade will be lower than you may have hoped for. If you do not talk to your professor about why your grade is low, you may not discover that there is one very easy solution for your troubles: putting your name on your paper.

I'm in classes with graduate students who don't do this. Do you think the professor is psychic? Were you confused by the absence of a line saying "name" under it? We just assumed that, by the time you had graduated high school, you would be able to find a spot somewhere near the top to cram your name in. We assumed you would have the intelligence and good sense to put your name on your work, ensuring that you get credit for it.

Put your name on EVERYTHING except anonymous surveys. Take credit for your work. Make sure everyone knows who did this amazing work. And if it's less than amazing, guess what? Still your fault. Write your name on it.

Adulthood means taking credit and/or responsibility for all that you do. It means exercising common sense. It means asking questions when you feel you haven't gotten full credit for your accomplishments.

There will be a pop quiz on this. Many times. For the rest of your life.

first

I've never had a relationship anniversary before. Neither has John. This relationship has already lasted longer than any previous relationship for either of us, so we've had a lot to celebrate along the way, but a year is still a big milestone.

I usually lose interest after a few months. I get weirded out by the closeness, or i get jealous, or he gets jealous, or things just sort of fall apart.

I don't know what a relationship is supposed to look like at this point. I don't know how we are supposed to behave together, how i am supposed to feel, what is supposed to come next. I don't know what to expect.

I never expected that i would be happier with him every day. I never expected that simply walking down the street and holding his hand would fill me with such joy that i would start to skip. (Not hyperbole, by the way. This has actually happened.) I never expected to miss him so intensely. I never expected that the best part of my day would be falling asleep at his side.

But i'm also filled with a sense of panic and impending doom. Because i don't know what a relationship is supposed to look like at this point. I am excited to be with him in this moment, but i'm also excited for the moments to come, and shouldn't we be in the next moment already? How am i supposed to behave? How am i supposed to feel? What is supposed to come next? Are we going too fast? Are we going too slow?

Fortunately, John is patient enough and loves me enough to handle all the crazy i throw at him. And here's the thing: he doesn't know what the relationship is supposed to look like at this point, either. The difference between us is that he sees this as a time of excitement and adventure, where every day is something new and unpredictable and we get to decide what comes next. I see this as a time with enormous potential for me to screw up in a big way.

I've said it before and i'll say it again: thank God for John. He is brave enough and patient enough and loves me enough to not run in the opposite direction when i start getting freaked out about this stuff. He gently and lovingly helps me talk through my fears and concerns and reassures me in his commitment and affection. After all, i may not know what our relationship is supposed to look like at this point, but neither does he. How will he know if i'm screwing something up?

It's not so much a question of doing things "right", but more a question of making him happy. And so far, he's happy just to be around me. All he wants from me is me. I worry that the day might come when i will not be enough and i will have nothing more to give. I worry that the day might come that i will be too much. But it's been a year and there has been a lot of crazy and he's not running yet. It may be that he actually knows what he's getting himself into and really does want me. That is humbling and exciting and terrifying and awe-inspiring and very, very beautiful. Either way, he is so happy in this moment that he is content just to stay here a while longer.

I'm learning to find that contentment. I still want to run ahead, but i make sure to loop back occasionally to walk at his side for a while, to stroll in silence holding his hand. And then i take off running again, because i have faith that he will still be there when i loop back the next time.

I love everything you are with everything i am, my dearest. Here's to year two.

a little less hope

Have you ever met one of those couples that, when you look at them, you think, "That's it. That's the real thing."? Every time you see them together, you have a little more hope in relationships. You know that love is real, and that love lasts.

Have you ever seen that couple ripped apart by infidelity and lies?

My star couple fell in love in a matter of weeks. They spent every minute together. They were best friends. I lived with her two summers in a row. One of those summers was right before her wedding in August.

I went to their wedding. They were the first couple that John and i went on a double date with. I saw them at events, helped her plan an elaborate birthday party for him, watched their life together grow for nearly three years.

Then the truth was revealed: during their engagement, he had cheated on her twice. Scared and disoriented by the speed at which their relationship was progressing, he panicked and did something terrible.

He had also been addicted to prescription pain killers and pornography for nearly their entire relationship. While she knew that he had had these struggles in the past, he had assured her that it was all over. Five months after they started dating, it all started again. He even stole pills from members of her family.

They're in counseling, but they don't know yet where they will end up. She wants to leave, but she feels that the right thing to do is to give it one last try.

Last night, she got very drunk, made out with a stranger, and ended up in the ER. Her husband met us there and drove us home. She asked him to put her rings back on her hand. It may mean nothing, or it may mean everything. A bond like theirs can withstand a lot. But it has taken a pretty heavy blow. Even if they survive this, we all know now that things like this can happen. Grief like this can come to any of us. Love is not all you need.

I still have hope in them, in love. It's just a little bit less.

Reason #10 Why I Should Live With My Boyfriend

So that i can take care of him when he is sick.