musical fruit

I'm one week into my final month of employment, and i have yet to line up another job. Also if i don't get all of my test scores in by October 1, i'll have to put off student teaching yet again. Which will mean that i can work more hours this fall (assuming i get a job), but will also mean that i took this plunge for no real reason.

Well. There is a reason. It's time.

I feel like a baby bird getting nudged out of the nest, and there's going to be that initial elevator-drop-adrenaline-rush-stomach-in-my-throat sensation, and then i'll catch the air and soar away. And i know that i'll look back on this one day as a great adventure. Especially if i have kids, because as hard and scary as it is to contemplate supporting myself for the next however long on my savings account, there's no way i could do something like this if i had to support someone else as well. And what if i have a job in the future that i hate? What if i'm stuck in it, miserable every day, because i can't afford to leave it because of all these whiny gremlins demanding food? I FED YOU YESTERDAY. DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO USE THE STOVE YET?

Yeah. I probably won't have kids.

Hey, speaking of feeding, i'm anticipating a lot less of that in the coming weeks. No more picking up an exotic vegetable or foreign spice just because i'm curious to find out what it tastes like. In fact, if i don't have a job by the end of August, there's a good chance i'll be living on rice and beans for a while. It's not so bad; i've done it before, and you'd be amazed how long it takes you to get tired of really well prepared rice and beans. And i'll try to supplement with some kinds of fruits and veggies daily, and maybe once a week i'll have eggs or a burger or something.

To be honest, it will be kind of great in some ways. It's a little like a cleanse, right? getting rid of all the preservatives and salt and sugar and artificial flavorings i've consumed lately, focusing on clean, whole foods with natural, simple ingredients with very little fat or carbs. And it will be something of a relief to not have to think about recipes for a while. Don't get me wrong: i love recipes. But sometimes, standing in front of a pile of tofu, endives, sweet potatoes, feta, and baby dill pickles (actual current contents of my fridge) and trying to figure out what to make for dinner is more exhausting than it's worth. I'm all for creativity, but i'm also all for calling the Chinese restaurant and shoveling MSG prepared by someone else into my face.

I won't be ordering take-out for a while, though. I won't be going out, either. I was heading home yesterday and it took all my willpower not to drive four blocks to Wendy's. All i could think about was French fries and a bacon cheeseburger. Instead, i made buffalo chicken macaroni at home. It made enough for leftovers, too, which Wendy's would not have, and the ingredients probably cost about the same as the Wendy's would have.

So. It's gonna be lots of rice and beans. Unless i get that job at Trader Joe's, in which case, HELLO EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT ON DELICIOUS FOOD!

one for the history books

First Wendy Davis, then DOMA, and now Prop 8. This is a good day to be an American.

food and faith and feminism and flove (i couldn't think of a "romance" word that started with an f.)

So my boyfriend and i were talking recently, and he made a comment about how my blog's voice has changed to a "feminist tirade". He has a point; i've become more aware of feminist theory and feminist issues lately, and i've been reading feminist blogs (four in particular, whose archives were amazing and from whom i have learned a lot). These things do color my writing, and of course when i am reading lots of feminist blogs all week long and then i do a weekly link roundup, there will be lots of feminist stuff in at least one post every week.

For those of you who have gotten tired of the "feminist tirade", rest assured: i'm about to start working my way through the archives of some cooking blogs. I'm also about to finish my year-long Bible-reading project and start a new Bible/spirituality reading project (more on that below). Both of these things will color my writing. How could they not?

For those of you who like the "feminist tirade", rest assured: that stuff isn't going to go away. I may have finished the archives, but i have added these blogs to my feedly, which means that while the concentration of feminism will be lowered, it will not be eliminated. I am a feminist, and therefore you could say that everything i write is feminist (whether or not it is a tirade is a little more subjective).

For those of you who haven't noticed any change . . . um, thanks for reading, i guess?

What to expect moving forward: Stuff about food. I'm changing the way i think about food, the way i shop, the way i cook, the way i talk about food. It's slow, and if you don't talk to me in person every day you might not even notice it, but i am trying to be more intentional about issues of food. I don't know how much of that will show up here or in what form (recipes and photos? links to other people's recipes and photos? rambling meditations on what i like to eat? mmmmmm, chocolate chip cookies . . .), but there will be more food stuff.

Also: stuff about God. I've always had God-ish posts here and there as something was on my mind, and in the past year i've tried to post at least once a week about my personal faith issues and feelings, and this will continue with a slightly different look and feel. I'm reading the Bible straight through again, but more slowly. I'm also reading more books of theology and philosophy (and i get to decide what counts as "theology and philosophy", so expect some "Year of Living Biblically" and "The Things They Carried" alongside of Henri Nouwen and "The King David Report"). Instead of posting journal entries about my Bible-reading thoughts, i'll be posting journal entries and prayers and meditations and reviews on everything spiritual i am reading and all of the thoughts and feelings i am having.

Also: stuff about my boyfriend. Because he is awesome and reads my blog and talks to me about stuff in my life and loves me and is good to me and is super snuggly and wonderful. But he's also internet-shy, so he won't be on here all the time and he won't be on here in any detail. Because i love him and try to be good to him as well.

What's in a name?

When i first started writing seriously, i decided to use a pen name. I planned to write YA fiction, and at the time i wanted to be a psychologist and to work with teens. I feared that people would think that my work was fictionalized case studies, and in order to draw a firm line between my creative writing and my counseling, i decided to do them each under a different name. After all, even if everyone in the world knew that the two identities were the same, by deliberately giving them each a different label, i would (i hoped) help my readers and clients to compartmentalize my work in the same way i did.

Because obviously, i would be such a famous writer and shrink that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to be unaware of my work in both fields, and if i wasn't up front about my ethical separation of the two, there would be a huge scandal and lots of interviews with Barbara Walters or Tim Russert about my deception of the American public. There is no arrogance quite like that of a fifteen-year-old who is the smartest employee at the sandwich shop. (I worked at a Quizno's in high school. Business was slow, so i would often write during down times. 75% of the other employees were high school dropouts, and the other 25% would probably never even apply to college, so yeah, i was the smartest one. Kind of like being valedictorian of summer school.)

As i began to write more and more and to expand my genres, i started to worry that people would read my poetry only in light of my short stories, or vice versa. Perhaps both were equally good, but people would hate one genre and love the other, simply because they had read my stories first and were disappointed by my poetry simply because it was so different. Or perhaps my poetry would be terrible but it would be published anyway because it had my name on it. (Remember, i was most definitely destined for literary greatness. No question about it. Plus poetry is really easy to publish and people go crazy for it and take it very seriously.)

So i decided to create a different pen name for each genre. At one point, i had about six worked out, and i was practicing signatures for all of them. Because of course i was.

The first pen name i'd picked was very important to me, for personal reasons. And because it was so important, i did not use it when i started this blog, or when i created my twitter account, or when i did various other online/public things. I wanted to reserve it for "real" writing.

And then, as i immersed myself more and more in online writing communities, and as i began sharing about my offline writing projects, i began to feel that i had made a mistake. I also became more and more disenchanted with the idea of multiple pen-names for one life. It all seemed so contrived and artificial. The name 'Diana Lark' in particular could hardly have been more obviously false. What seemed beautiful and interesting and appropriate at seventeen and nineteen seems trite and wrong at twenty-three. And more and more, i find myself returning to that real, important, personal name, and wishing that i had stuck with it from the beginning.

There is a lot wrapped up in a name. There is family history, world history, mythology, poetry, and etymology. There are connotations, different for each person who hears the name. There is the way it looks on the page, typed or hand-written or signed quickly on the inside pages. Name is identity. Name is power. Name is definition. Name is prophecy.

Over the next few weeks, i will be shedding the name Diana Lark in favor of the new one: Judith Elsroad. Thank you for following Diana all this time, and let's get geared up for Judith! It ought to be quite a ride; one of my Twitter followers had a dream last night that my tweets were read on NPR under a different name. So, prophecy?

[searching for a synonym for "fat" that doesn't sound like a synonym for "fat"]

So, yeah. I am "full figured". I am "curvy". I am "voluptuous".

I have big breasts and full hips and thick thighs and a little extra belly fat that made my preschool-aged cousin ask if i was having a baby.

For most of my life, i have fought the word "fat".

Because fat is unhealthy. Fat is unattractive. Fat is gross.

Except that it's not. And i'm not sure when or how or why we came to believe that it was, or how this belief has been sustained for so long. What about Melissa McCarthy? What about Queen Latifah? What about Oprah? What about Christina Hendricks? What about the fact that, even among these women (called "plus-size" and "curvy" and "full-figured" every time they are mentioned), there are few who are actually all that above-average in their weight? Christina Hendricks has larger breasts and smaller waist and hips than me. She's also slightly shorter, and almost certainly weighs less. (Also, i'm about as straight as it's possible for a lady to be, but Christina Hendricks makes me awfully tingly. Hubba hubba, is what i'm saying.) Queen Latifah and Oprah fluctuate in their weight all the time (because they're, you know, human beings), but Queen Latifah still got to be a CoverGirl.

For most of my life, i have been "fat".

There was a while there when i was a rail-thin little kid, but as i hit puberty and began to feel awkward and uncomfortable in my skin, and as my shape began to change and shift and expand, i put on some extra weight. And since then, i've been on a roller coaster that is familiar to pretty much every female person in the world, and plenty of male persons too. I've tried dieting. I've tried not eating. I've tried exercising. I've tried cutting out meat. I've tried counting calories. And for a while, everything is going great, and then i feel good and i relax and it all comes back and then i hate myself.

I wore hand-me-downs for a long time. When i was in high school and had my first job, i bought myself a pair of jeans. They were daring: low-slung waist, flared leg openings, and fitted smoothly to my thighs and ass (which i was just brave enough to call "butt" in my head, and nowhere near brave enough to even mention to my mom). They were a size 13.

I'm 23 now, and it should be a point of pride to me that i can still fit into a size 13 pair of jeans, except that once again, my body has changed.

There was one change, near the beginning of college, where the jeans i had owned before still fit flawlessly but the new jeans i tried on in stores were way too snug. And this was partly, i think, because fashions had changed since i'd last bought jeans, and they were designed to be tighter than ever, and also they were new and hadn't been broken in yet. But also, i had changed and hadn't noticed it, and this was the beginning of the end.

Since then, i've lost and gained weight over and over every year. And while i can fit into size 13 jeans, i have had to accept that they give me a muffin-top. Regardless of how thin or fat or straight-figured or curvy you are, no one looks good in a muffin-top.

I started noticing this change when i started buying "professional" clothes. Because "professional" clothes, you know, generally fit higher on the waist than casual ones. So when you're wearing low-rise stretch jeans that are really too small for you, you can scrunch them a little lower and button them under your pregnant-like belly and ignore everything until your little cousin starts asking awkward questions. But when you're wearing tweedy dress pants, or a stylish new pencil skirt, it's a lot harder to ignore the fact that you can't even drag the garment over your oh-so-juicy ass, let alone zip it up.

I've tried Spanx. I've tried Spanx with control-top pantyhose. I've tried Spanx with control-top pantyhose and not eating very much. The conclusion was inescapable, and yet i kept searching for a way out.

Recently, i bought a new pair of jeans. I went to Marshalls and tried on lots and lots of pairs. I finally found one by a brand i hadn't heard of (Denizen, by Levi), and was amazed at the comfort and perfection of their fit. I could easily slide into them! I could easily zip them! They didn't give me a muffin top! "It must be this new brand!" i thought. "They must use a different fabric, a more honest measurement, a more attractive cut!"

It wasn't until i got home that i saw the tag: 18. They had been hung on the wrong hanger, sorted into the wrong section. They were not 13/14. They were not even 15/16. These perfectly fitting jeans were an 18.

I almost cried. And i know how shallow and silly and vain and self-involved that is, but if you're a woman i think you understand my deep and visceral and immediate feeling of shame and disgust and disappointment. I wasn't supposed to be an 18. I'm supposed to be a 14 at the most. Buying those size 18 jeans felt like a disgusting failure, like an alcoholic or drug addict falling off of the wagon. I wasn't supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be better than this.

Luckily, this moment came in conjunction with me discovering lots of hilarious and smart and incisive and empowering blogs where all kinds of "women's issues" were discussed. Yes, i've been reading about feminism, and i'm going to start linking to some of these amazing women soon, never fear. And here's the thing: fat is not automatically bad. I know we all think it is, but it's not. You know what is bad? Hating your body. Being disgusted by yourself. Crying because you're ashamed of the size of the jeans that fit you really well and look amazing on you.

Allow me to repeat and elaborate on that point: the jeans i was wearing before made me look five months pregnant. I only had about three shirts i could wear with my old jeans that minimized and hid my protruding belly; all the other ones were too tight and only exacerbated the problem. I was wearing ill-fitting clothes, and they looked bad on me. I found clothes that fit, and nearly cried from the shame of it. It wasn't that i woke up one day and discovered that i had gone up two sizes. I had been an 18 for a few years. I had just continued to buy clothes that were too small. I was crying because i had discovered that, for at least three years now, i had been two sizes larger than i thought. Again: this situation had been going on for a long time! It wasn't sudden and shouldn't have been all that surprising! Also, it was only two sizes, not ten! I'm still pretty healthy, still have a well-defined waist and firm (if meaty) thighs, still feel pretty in jeans and dresses and even naked. I feel exactly the same as i always did. I look different, but mostly because i'm older and i got my hair cut and sometimes i wear eyeliner and i have tattoos and, yeah, my curves are more billowy than they were a few years ago.

I'm fat, basically. I have more fat on my body than i need to have to survive. I mean, i do live in New England, but i'm not a polar bear or a whale or something. I don't need insulation from the frigid temperatures. I have a space heater and a cat. I will survive. But i'm also not a marathon runner or a body builder or something else where i need to trim my body fat down to zero. I'm allowed to have full, rich curves. I'm allowed to jiggle a little when i walk.

I could be healthier than i am, and i'd like to be. I could be less jiggly than i am, and i'd like to be. I could trim myself back down to a size 13, and i'd like to do that, but mostly because i don't want to buy a whole new wardrobe, because i'm lazy and broke. I probably will lose a lot of weight this fall and winter, when i am student teaching and therefore a) can't afford lots of fancy food and snacks and will eat lots of beans and rice and tofu and drink water and tea and b) will spend lots more time walking around and lots less time sitting. I'm losing weight now, as i work out semi-regularly and am more aware of what i eat. But really, truly, in my heart-of-hearts, i don't care that much about being thin. Which is good, because i have a naturally large and full frame and want to have kids some day, so without drastic surgery including things like bone-shaving (is that really a thing? i've always been too afraid to find out), i'll never be what the world calls "thin". 

But i have curves that make women jealous and men drool, and i have to admit that i like them, too. I like the fullness of my breasts, even though they constantly get in my way. I like the curves of my ass, even though it's hard to zip into a pencil skirt. I like my heavy thighs, even though they rub together when i walk, ensuring that my jeans always wear out in the crotch. I like my roundness and fullness and ripeness. I like the way my body looks, naked or clothed. I like the way it feels to be in my skin. I like the way it feels when my boyfriend looks at my body, or runs his hands over it, or talks about how much he loves it. And if looking and feeling the way that i do means that i have to wear a size 18, then that's what i'll do. After all, there are worse things in the world than being incredibly sexy. The only thing i have to get over now is the word "fat". But i'm a writer. I'll find a way to make it work.

vocabulary lesson: mourning

We say some weird shit to people when someone dies.

Like, "I'm sorry." I used to hate this one. I always thought, "Sorry for what? You didn't kill them." Of course, what they mean is, "I feel sad that you are sad," but that's an awkward thing to say. Maybe just don't say anything? Maybe just give them a hug and bake them cookies or something? Because a huge part of caring about another person is being sad that they are sad. Which means that, when someone dies, it's sort of implied in the nature of your relationship that you feel sad that they are sad. So maybe instead of making awkward and incomplete statements about your feelings, just put your feelings on display. Show, don't tell. And if you're not so close that you hurt when they hurt, maybe just say something like, "That's so sad."

Another weird one is when you (the mourner) are crying/distracted/otherwise upset, and you apologize. I was talking about this one with my pastor yesterday, actually. He was saying how messed up it is that when someone you love dies and you express appropriate emotion over that fact, you somehow feel like you have to apologize to the people around you, who presumably didn't have a relationship with the deceased, or they would be crying too and would therefore require no apology? It's so weird! Like, "I'm sad because of something in my life that doesn't really touch you, and I'm sorry that --" What? Sorry that I'm sad? Sorry that i'm expressing my feelings? Sorry that i have feelings that you are not a part of? There is nothing to apologize for. So my pastor has decided that he won't be apologizing for that anymore, and neither will i.

Here's my favorite: the empathetic backdoor . . . It's not really a backdoor brag, i guess, but it's a backdoor something. Like this morning, when i was talking to some people in my office about taking time off of work to go to Bryan's funeral. One of the people i had to talk to outranks me, but isn't my boss exactly, but she runs campus visits and i sit at the front desk, so when i'm out and people visit it's awkward. So we were talking, and she knew Bryan a little, so she was like, "I didn't even know he was sick, it's so sad, blah blah blah." And i'm like, "Yeah, he was diagnosed about a year and a half, two years ago. Colon cancer. It was stage 4 when they found it, so we knew he probably wouldn't make it." And she's like, "Yeah, I have a friend who was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, too, about a year and a half ago. And they did all kinds of treatments, and chemo and surgery and everything, and they ended up removing most of her liver. Because the cancer had spread to her liver. But, you know, she made it, and she's doing okay now." Um. Congratulations on your friend being on the other side of the statistic? What the fuck is the point of telling me this story?

Let people have their grief, okay? If you want to let them know that you know what they're going through, just say, "I know what you're going through," and don't elaborate. Especially if your story demonstrates that you DON'T, that you CAN'T, know what they're going through.

Also awkward is all of the euphemisms we use. I know that just saying "He died" is too harsh, too abrupt, but sometimes the euphemisms make you downright incomprehensible. When we got the news about Bryan, i texted one of his friends to let her know. At a loss for words, i said, "Bryan went home." "Home?" she asked. "His forever home," i clarified. On the other side of it, i once wrote a Facebook status update about my brother's progress in the hospital, and i said that he had passed a test, and someone told me that i scared them because they saw "Adam passed" and thought he was dead. Do all of these death euphemisms actually make people feel better? And if so, why? Which one is the best? "Passed, passed on, gone, gone home, passed over, left us, no longer with us, gone on," etc., etc.?

I mean, that's the reality, is that they're dead. And honestly, some of these euphemisms are almost worse. Bryan went home, huh? I know that theologically it's sound, but it's also kind of a shitty sentiment: was he so out of place here that it wasn't a home for him at all? Ever? Not even a little bit? Was there no moment in 27 years when he thought, "I belong here"? Or when we say that someone has passed, i always think of ghost stories where they talk about spirits passing over. It seems creepy and impersonal. Death is so black-and-white, so cut-and-dried, and i find that comforting. There's no room for equivocation, no room for political correctness or white lies or tact or passive-aggression. It simply is what it is. Everything else in life is so fraught and angsty and layered, but death is just death.

In other words, it's been one hell of a month, and i have lost the ability to talk about it "appropriately". The vocabulary i use and the stories i hear or tell don't change my feelings, and it's not my job to protect anyone else's feelings from reality.

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.

saving me (revolution)

Find something new, something that excites you. Find something old, something that bothers you. Find something you want to change. Find a change being made that you want to get behind. Find something you want to oppose. Find something you want to support. Find something to be passionate about. Revolt. And in so doing, revolt against the darkness.

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.

23

In my apartment, birthdays are extravagant affairs. You can expect anywhere between 30 and 100 people to show up. The agenda is simple: get drunk, get drunker, play drinking games, drink. The more the merrier, since more people = more booze, which makes for more hilarity and crazy pictures and stories for the next day. Plus, you might get laid. Open invitations are issued, and friends-of-friends think nothing of showing up with three of their own friends. It's all a little overwhelming for an introvert, and i usually stay long enough to get a buzz before disappearing to my own bedroom, or my boyfriend's apartment, or a deserted corner of the porch.

I don't really do birthday parties for myself. When i was younger, my mom helped me organize and plan parties; i remember an American Girl Doll party complete with tea and games. She suggested people for me to invite, hoping both to make other girls feel included and, i think, to get me out of my shell a little. But as i grew older and more autonomous (and more socially anxious), i invited fewer and fewer people and became less and less enthusiastic about the prospect of a party with me as the main focus. My best friends and i got together for a party at least once a month, and there were never more than six people involved. Because the parties were regular and rotated in location, and because they were organized around the Orange and Blu Kidz Club (a whole series of blog posts there), no one person was ever the center of attention. These were fun, and made the transition to birthday time easy: i invited the same group of people, hosted everyone at my house, and the only difference between that and our normal monthly meetings was that everyone brought me a gift.

My last real party was when i was fifteen. I had expanded the group slightly, and although there were no guests that i hadn't known for at least five years, i was painfully anxious and uncomfortable for the whole evening. The planning and preparation was exhausting, even for such a simple party, and the things i wanted to do were drastically different from the things other girls my age enjoyed, leaving me with an awkward choice to make: please myself and bore everyone else, or turn my own birthday party into a party for other people and leave myself sad and bored and slightly resentful? I settled on a compromise that mostly worked, but that was the last time i had any enthusiasm for a birthday party, and the events of my 21st birthday cemented those feelings pretty firmly.

But this year, i decided i was ready for another party-type thing. My initial thought was to schedule it somewhere away from my house, so that when i was ready for everyone to go away i could just go home. So i picked a restaurant (Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage; visit if you're ever in Boston!), sketched out a preliminary guest list, and picked a date. Then i got ambitious.

We will be going to Bartley's, and then perhaps we will shop for books (the Harvard bookstore is right next to Bartley's; have i mentioned how much i love Boston?), and then back to my house for Cards Against Humanity. There are a few people that i invited out of obligation, but most of them are unable to come. I created a Facebook event for it and made it closed and invite only to keep it manageable, and then started sending out invites.

I was astonished to realize that there are now more than ten people that i really want to spend an evening with. In fact, there are more than fifteen people that i would like to invite, but some of them live too far away to attend. It is astonishing to me to realize that i like that many people enough to want to spend an evening with them in my home. I never anticipated being that sociable, even in high school, when i so desperately wanted to be different than i was. I never thought i could worry about finding enough seats for everyone in my apartment. I never imagined being sad that more than five people lived too far to invite, while simultaneously being glad that two-thirds of my best-loved ones would attend.

I guess what i'm saying is, this level of personal growth combined with the staggering number of good friends is such a wonderful gift already, and y'all damn well better give me something pretty anyway. It's my birthday, bitches.

Acts 14-21

You know what's awesome about Acts? Besides all the miracles and shit? The women.

We did see a few women involved in Jesus' ministry: prostitutes, his mother, Peter's mother-in-law, Mary and Martha. And women were the first to see the empty tomb and the resurrected Christ, the first to preach the good news that He was risen. Jesus brought about a new order wherein women were a vital part of the ministry, and the disciples continued that trend after he was gone.

Granted, women are not nearly as prominent as men. Fewer of them are mentioned by name, or mentioned at all, but tucked in here and there are stories of women serving the Lord, and kicking ass and taking names.

In Acts 16:14-15, we see Lydia. The text calls her a "seller of purple", and without going into the historical and cultural details, we know that this means that she was pretty wealthy. Her husband is not mentioned; she may have been a widow, or she may have been married and her husband was simply inconsequential to her business success or her conversion.

We know that she was wealthy and independent. We know that her name was Lydia. And we know that she and her whole household were baptized, and that she opened her home to all the disciples of the Lord, whenever they were in the area.

In Acts 17:4, no one is mentioned by name. But as Paul and Silas preached in Greece, we are told that "a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas." (emphasis mine)

Now, they were Greek, so the culture was different. But the women are still mentioned apart from the men, and are still called "leading women". Their authority was recognized by the author of Acts, despite the different culture, and their conversion was considered significant. In those days, you worshiped whatever god or gods your husband worshiped. If he converted, so did you. If you came from a different country where different gods were followed, you left them behind. Granted, many women kept small idols or shrines or rites or other scraps of their home religions, worshiping in secret as they could, but it was assumed that their devotion was to their husband first, and their god or gods second. This is an idea that unfortunately has won some ground in certain "Christian" circles. I actually read a book that explained (with helpful diagrams to assist the comprehension of the poor little ladies who were struggling to read anything longer than a cupcake recipe) how a woman is able to serve and worship God through her husband. Man was made for God, the book said (and illustrated with diagrams), and woman was made for man.

Bull. Shit.

These women converted on their own. They didn't go home and talk to their husbands, they didn't follow the practices of their husbands, some of them may even have been unmarried or widowed. They converted because they believed. They came before the throne of God of their own volition, and they surrendered their own wills to Him, and not to anyone else.

This is the kingdom of God on earth. This is the new order. This is what Christianity should look like. Tell your friends.

first second birthday

You know, Monday was the one-year anniversary of my brother getting blown up. It's been a long year of miracles and setbacks. The doctors said he'd never wake up from the coma and (after a long period of hallucinations and semi-consciousness) he did. They said he'd never regain control of his bladder bowels and he (mostly) has. They said he'd never walk and (after the amputation of his left leg) he did.

He's still in the hospital. They're still monitoring and treating his nerve pain. They're still testing his reflexes, vision, and cognitive function. They're still helping him learn to walk again, in the hopes that he'll be able to run again. He's still testing his limits, still hitting brick walls, still sorting through the shards of the possibilities before him. He'll be in the hospital for a long time.

He's started his own blog. He's buying a car and looking at colleges. He's climbing rock walls. He's sending me mocking text messages.

Last year, he celebrated his twentieth birthday in the hospital, still in a state of fuzzy semi-consciousness. This year, he'll be able to come home for Thanksgiving and birthday festivities. And this year, i'll get to travel down there to be with him.

On Monday, the first anniversary of his life, both of my sisters wrote Facebook notes about their feelings. My mom traveled to be with him in the hospital barracks. I stayed in bed and tried to sleep off this flu. I thought of Adam periodically throughout the day, though. It was all sort of anti-climactic. Because that's what you never see in inspirational movies about wounded Marines overcoming great odds: the time. It takes a hell of a lot of time to recover from something like this. A year later and he's still in the hospital, and now they're talking about more surgeries and procedures to help relieve the nerve pain. He's been upgraded to a more permanent prosthetic socket, but he's still working on finding a leg he can run on. He's put a down payment on a car, but he hasn't yet been totally cleared to drive. And he hasn't received his discharge from the Marines yet. He's still technically in active service. Granted, at the rate he's going, it's possible that he'll complete his term of service in the hospital barracks, but i have to assume that he's owed an honorable discharge.

He's met the President. Twice. He's received medals. He's been taken on guided tours of the White House and Pentagon. He's been promoted.

And he's still in the damn hospital.

Here's hoping that his second second birthday will take place after his full and complete discharge from everything.

Acts 6-13

All of chapter 10, but especially verses 15, 34-35, and 44-48.

15: And a voice spoke to him again the second time, "What God has cleaned you must not call common."
34-35: Then Peter opened his mouth and said: "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him."
44-48: While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word. And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God. Then Peter answered, "Can anyone forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then they asked him to stay a few days.

Last week, my pastor preached on this text. Then i read it in my personal devotions. Next week, we're covering it in Bible study. That's how it goes sometimes.

The early Church had a problem: were they another sect of Judaism, or were they a new religion? Jesus was Jewish, and He was the Messiah they'd been waiting for. So maybe they were still Jews, but they had just recognized a truth that no one else had seen yet? This meant that a Gentile could convert here and there, but they would have to be circumcised and stop eating bacon-wrapped shrimp and observe their holy days and ritual washings. But then the Jews said, "No, you guys are not one of us. The Messiah hasn't come yet. If you want to worship Jesus, you're worshiping another god and we want nothing to do with you."

So do new converts have to be circumcised? Do they have to observe Passover? Do they have to observe the Sabbath?

Much of Acts deals with these questions -- the book is half Three Stooges/James Bond miracles and prison escapes, and half church meeting reports -- so we'll spend a lot of time talking and thinking about this stuff. What does it mean to be Christian? What are the rules? What do you have to do to be saved? And, having been saved, what do you have to do to stay that way?

what's saving me (illustrations)

I've been in free-fall a little bit for the last few weeks. It's not a total plunge toward rock bottom, but i can feel it coming. Lately, the thing that's been saving me is my new desk. My wonderful boyfriend helped me haul it up to the second floor from the basement. The stairs were narrow and twisty, the ceiling was low, it was late at night, and we both ended up with scraped knuckles. And my shin was pretty badly skinned, too.

Since then, i've been settling into the corner of my room, arranging pencils and notebooks and drinking rum and coke with peaches. And then i spent a lot of time decoupaging.

I found an old dictionary and thesaurus set and did a little tearing and cutting and coloring. I left plenty of room for things i might want to decoupage in the future, but i'm pretty happy with it so far.

The old orange desk that i keep on the corner was the perfect canvas for a selection of illustrations i cut from the dictionary. I went letter by letter, finding illustrations i liked. Not all letters had illustrations, and not all of the illustrations were memorable. But here's what i ended up with:

Plenty of room for movie tickets, stickers, fabric scraps, and so on. But it's a great start -- both to my workspace and to saving myself again and again.

Call for Artists

Guys, this is for serious. Everyone in my office is on their staff retreat right now, so i'm basically writing nonstop at my desk. This is great, because i don't have a desk at home, so it's very hard for me to write when i'm there. I've been very productive yesterday and today, and the book is really coming into focus.

And it has to be comics.

Until i started reading comics, it would never in a trillion years have occurred to me to write one. I don't write superhero stories, i can't draw, and i'm not interested in attending conventions with people dressed as Spock or Batman. I didn't know that it was possible to write comics outside of those parameters. I thought that comics necessarily equaled superheroes and loner nerds.

Sandman has proved me wrong. V for Vendetta has proved me wrong. Hell, even Batman and X-Men have proved me wrong. Suddenly, i get why people like these things, why comics have endured for generations, why kids can grow up reading comics and be no less in love with them as they approach (or even pass) middle age.

And now, the book i've been struggling to write for over seven years makes sense. It needs to be a comic.

But i still can't draw. I still need an artist.

So if anyone reading this is a comics artist, or knows someone who is a comics artist, or has a cousin whose ex-husband works with a guy whose daughter's college roommate is a comics artist, send them my way. It's going to take a while for this whole thing to be ready to roll, but with everything suddenly making so much sense in my head and on paper, i don't want to delay any more than i have to.

So, seriously. If you know anyone who might want to collaborate with a stranger on the internet who claims to have a great story for a comic book and has never been published before, send them my way. But do it discreetly, because anyone who reads that last sentence and thinks, "This sounds like a wonderful and totally legitimate business opportunity!" may not be someone i want to work with.

scars, 3

My mother is in the unfortunate position of being differently intelligent than her children and her ex-husband. Let me be clear: she is fiercely intelligent in ways that we are not. But in the ways that allow you to show off while watching Jeopardy, in the ways that genuinely enjoy intellectual pursuits for their own sakes, in the ways that allow you to write brilliant books and papers and achieve good grades without effort and have your intelligence be immediately apparent to anyone who meets you, she is lacking. And there's nothing wrong with that, except that it can be a little awkward at times.

For my mother, it is more than awkward. She is dismissive and contemptuous of us one moment and jealous the next. For years, she praised my intelligence, so that even in the depths of my high school depression, even when i planned my suicide, even when i felt that almost nothing about me was redeemable or worthy of notice or interesting or in any way mattered, i knew that i was intelligent. I knew that i was more intelligent than most, and that if all else failed, i could cling to that. It was the one thing i was sure of, the one part of me the value of which i never doubted. And then she began to tell me that intelligence was not enough, that i needed to change who i was to succeed in the world. She told me that my type of intelligence, like my dad's, was one that she did not understand and did not always like. She disparaged my accomplishments and dismissed my efforts.

She accelerated this with my sister, telling her that she had no reason to be proud of straight As, because she didn't have to study. Accomplishments only mattered, only had any worth, if you had to work for them. Things that came naturally didn't count.

Any time that any of us find something in ourselves to be proud of, she finds a way to devalue it. And we are not a naturally confident bunch with lots of things we like about ourselves. We mostly don't like ourselves very much, so when we finally find something we're okay with, that is something to celebrate and cherish.

But my mother has a very hard time looking favorably on anything that is different from her, especially if it's not something she can readily understand. She has no patience with or understanding of mental illness (despite having been surrounded by it, experiencing it herself, and taking many psych classes while attaining her three post-graduate degrees). She thinks that people who are good and smart and beautiful, people who are healthy and loved, people who have a lot going for them, have no reason to be mentally ill. She thinks that depression only happens to people who don't have anything else to distinguish them, people whose lives are empty and difficult. She thinks that anyone who has a good, full, happy life has no reason to be depressed, and that the chemical imbalance in their brains can be corrected through a determination to be happy and the simple decision to "get over it".

She is her own standard of correctness and perfection, her own yardstick of health and normalcy. If someone disagrees with her, they are wrong. If someone thinks differently from her, they are weird. If someone's skill set is different from hers, they need to adapt and change in order to succeed. If someone has accomplished more than her, they were lucky. If someone is happier than her, they are lying to themselves.

I was fed a steady stream of these messages for twenty years. When i got my first tattoo, in addition to all of the beautiful and uplifting messages about family and heritage and goals and love and connections and roots and wings, it was my way of saying that i was done with all that bullshit. When i turned twenty, i turned a corner in my life. I decided that no one else got to decide my worth, that only i got to place any kind of value on my self. I decided that it was time to pick up the parts of my mother that were uplifting and encouraging, the parts that i loved and felt connected to, and leave the rest behind.

A tattoo is like a scar, but it is not accidental and it does not come from someone else. A tattoo is a sign that you will accept no one else's marks on yourself, that only you will decide what will stay with you and what will be brushed off. A tattoo is a reminder that you have the final say in who you are.

There are still things that are beyond my control. The scars from my mother are still healing, still bleeding, still hurting. I still have weeks and months where i fall from the high wire. But now, my mother is not my partner or my safety net. I have built my own arena, my own circus ring. I have choreographed my own act, chosen my own partners. I am dancing above the abyss, and while i know that i may fall, i also know i will not be falling forever. There is rest to be found. There are places of safety. There are times of stability. And in the meantime, i am learning to dance, free and fearless, on the tightrope of my sanity. Because if you're going to be up there anyway, you might as well make something beautiful of it.

sorry i'm not sorry

Hello, readers! I'm making another announcement about upcoming changes here.

As you may have noticed in some of my recent posts, money is on my mind. More and more, i am coming to hate my job; this past week was supremely shitty, and i'm starting to look elsewhere for employment.

In the meantime, i am not too proud to take money where i can find it. Therefore, i have just applied for an AdSense account. It will take 48 hours for the application to process, so it will be Sunday evening before you see any changes.

I know how much ads suck, and i will work hard to keep them from becoming intrusive or distracting. And if i find that they are just too overwhelming or inappropriate, or if they're not making as much money as i'd like, i will discontinue the service.

Please let me know if you are at all bothered by the change, or if there are specific ads you'd rather not see. I want to work with my readers to make sure we all have a great experience here.

Thanks and have a great weekend :)

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.

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.