I've been slowly editing my Senegal blog because I have this idea that maybe I could someday try to publish it. It's weird to reread my life from only two years ago, because I was such an optimistic, balls-busting kid. I was going to change the world! My life path was so obvious!
And now I'm back to mystery and confusion. I want to pat my past self on the head, with a little bit of condesension and a little bit of jealousy.
The editing plus a few other things have gotten me on a creative kick, so I've decided to every once in a while take the writing prompts I use for library Young Author clubs and write some stuff myself!
Results beneath the cut.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The Fault in Our Stars
What is this!? John Green (DFTBA!) has just released a new book, and like the awesome librarian and nerdfighter I am, I preordered it, knowing he was signing all the preordered copies. All 150,000 of them. The man is a champion.
Anyway, it's this book about cancer, about still living life and being funny and being sad and maybe falling in love. I am only 31 pages in, and already I am beside myself. The way he can make life more meaningful with the power of his words astounds me. Oh, and also? The narrator is a girl. A super believable girl. If I weren't so aware of the fact that John Green wrote The Fault in Our Stars, I would have assumed a woman wrote it.
There have been several phrases or sentences that I wanted to quote, but finally I cracked. After Augustus (hot boy who is shaping up to be the love interest) tells his story of battling cancer by relating it to a mutual friend, Hazel (girl with an oxygen tank who goes to support groups to mock things but also feel a little bit better), thinks this:
"I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin."
John Green, what are you doing!? A voice that makes my skin feel more like skin? How do you describe those emotions and experiences with such perfection? Do you have a copyright on the English language, because sir, you deserve it.
Smart kids falling in love while dying of cancer. THIS BOOK IS GOING TO SLAY ME.
Nerdfighter, and proud of it.
Anyway, it's this book about cancer, about still living life and being funny and being sad and maybe falling in love. I am only 31 pages in, and already I am beside myself. The way he can make life more meaningful with the power of his words astounds me. Oh, and also? The narrator is a girl. A super believable girl. If I weren't so aware of the fact that John Green wrote The Fault in Our Stars, I would have assumed a woman wrote it.
There have been several phrases or sentences that I wanted to quote, but finally I cracked. After Augustus (hot boy who is shaping up to be the love interest) tells his story of battling cancer by relating it to a mutual friend, Hazel (girl with an oxygen tank who goes to support groups to mock things but also feel a little bit better), thinks this:
"I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin."
John Green, what are you doing!? A voice that makes my skin feel more like skin? How do you describe those emotions and experiences with such perfection? Do you have a copyright on the English language, because sir, you deserve it.
Smart kids falling in love while dying of cancer. THIS BOOK IS GOING TO SLAY ME.
Nerdfighter, and proud of it.
Things I Love: Gg
The Gambler by Fun.
This song! It is perfect. It has tied with The Luckiest by Ben Folds as the most romantic song in the whole world (this is a huge feat....The Luckiest was uncontested for six years).
I am sometimes in the mood for schmaltzy gooey love songs. I am ALWAYS in the mood for life story love songs, about problems and pains and falling in love and children and getting old. It is hard to have all of that in one song, but Fun. manages to do it, with an awesome trippy happy beat as well.
Select lyrics from the falling in love beginning:
We were barely 18 when we'd crossed collective hearts.
It was cold, but it got warm when you'd barely crossed my eye.
and then you turned, put out your hand,
and you asked me to dance.
I knew nothing of romance, but it was love at second sight.
Select lyrics from the being in love much later ending:
You come home from work and you kiss me on the eye
You curse the dogs and say that I should never feed them what is ours
and the kids are coming home
I'll set the table
You can make the fire.
MY HEART IS SLAIN.
Gilmore Girls
I have a weird relationship with this show. When I'm watching it, I completely adore it. It's the best of the best! But a couple months later, I think of it with ambivalence. Then something will trigger my desire to watch a specific episode, and several hours later I am marathoning through the season. I don't know why its awesomeness doesn't stay in my brain, because it should.
Rory is my TV kindred spirit. She is probably the most like me of all TV characters (minus her ability to attract super hot guys who fall all over themselves trying to win her heart--how does she do it!?). She is a bit quiet, pretty smart, and mostly awkward. She can be witty, but she doesn't steal any spotlights. She's passionate about what she believes in, and she hates failing. Rory = me.
...Until this last time I was watching, and I noticed that I've picked up some of Lorelai's characteristics. When I'm feisty, I'm Lorelai, with her open-mouthed grin and teasing and dramatic hand gestures and flair for the weird. Have I grown up on my own, or have multiple rewatchs subconsciously morphed me into her? Weird.
Other than the fantastic two leads, there is witty banter, and a loving relationship between mother and dauther, and the only depiction of a small town that I've wanted to live in, and awesome best friends, and oh yeah, all those super hot boys.
Gift Cards
Present-exchanging events can be stressful! I've never mastered the smart habit of buying friend-related items whenever I see them, keeping them until their birthday or Christmas. Instead, a week before that special event, I run around trying to find anything that vaguely resembles something they might enjoy. I have a feeling most people can tell.
And you know what? Sometimes I can too! What is the answer for such thoughtless giving (besides the aforementioned smart pre-buying)? Gift cards!
Even if you don't know of a THING your friend might like, I bet you know a place they like to shop or eat or drink at. So why not give them a gift card, and let them spend the money themselves? Unless you're a total tool and you buy me a gift card to Menards, I'm going to be happy.
Personal gifts are always best. But if you can't think of something personal and awesome, go with a gift card, not some generic crap that will sit on a shelf for a month before being thrown away.
Green Grass
This might sound stupid, until I tell you that 1) I did double alliteration TWICE in this post, and 2) I lived in Senegal for five months. I had a lot of fun there, but it was one of the ugliest places in the world (everything was brown! the ground, the houses, the sky!). After a couple months, it wore on my soul. I'm not even exaggerating. Apparently beauty and aesthetics mean a whole lot to my psychological well-being. That is also why I like Apple products.
Once when we went to Dakar, I saw a patch of grass beside an ATM machine. I begged Kim to pull over, and I promptly took off my Chacos and blissfully sank my toes into sweet growing grass. Later, when my time in Senegal was up, I flew into Chicago's airport. I had the aisle seat, but I basically fell all over the woman by the window, drinking up the blue sky and green grass around the airport. She finally called me out on my invasion of her personal space, and I said, "I'm sorry, but it's just so beautiful!" She gave me a weird look and replied, "The strips of grass between runways? ....Okay."
This might be why Mongolia is one of my favorite, most beautiful places in the world.
Gender Studies
I majored in sociology, but I'll be honest, the first few classes were not overwhelming awesome. I liked deciding that I was a symbolic interactionist, but a lot of social theory was only mildly interesting. Then I took my Gender and Sexuality class.
It blew my mind! I made posters on pornography, happily read extra essays, and gleefully learned about how gender effects everything! The scale of feminine to masculine is far more fluid than our vocabulary allows. One of my favorite quotes from one of our textbooks (which I read for fun) was that the difference between an average man and an average woman is far smaller than the difference between a masculine woman and a feminine woman.
Basically, gender and sex are two very different things. One is biological, the other is a social construct. FASCINATING oh my gosh, I'm wanting to find my textbook and reread it. Kids can be traumatized by parents enforcing gender boundaries too harshly. Adults can be shamed by not fitting into our tiny boxes of gender identity.
I love the idea of letting people be people. I am feminine. I like to get dressed up, I like to feel pretty, I like to support people and empathize, I like to feel emotions. But I am also masculine. I'm not particuarly attached to kids, I like getting dirty, I like to be independent.
And if you thought, "Hey, that's not femininity (or masculinity)!" then you're right. There's no hard and fast rules of what gender really means. It's fluid and social, and for that exact reason, forcing people into boxes is stupid.
This song! It is perfect. It has tied with The Luckiest by Ben Folds as the most romantic song in the whole world (this is a huge feat....The Luckiest was uncontested for six years).
I am sometimes in the mood for schmaltzy gooey love songs. I am ALWAYS in the mood for life story love songs, about problems and pains and falling in love and children and getting old. It is hard to have all of that in one song, but Fun. manages to do it, with an awesome trippy happy beat as well.
Select lyrics from the falling in love beginning:
We were barely 18 when we'd crossed collective hearts.
It was cold, but it got warm when you'd barely crossed my eye.
and then you turned, put out your hand,
and you asked me to dance.
I knew nothing of romance, but it was love at second sight.
Select lyrics from the being in love much later ending:
You come home from work and you kiss me on the eye
You curse the dogs and say that I should never feed them what is ours
and the kids are coming home
I'll set the table
You can make the fire.
MY HEART IS SLAIN.
Gilmore Girls
I have a weird relationship with this show. When I'm watching it, I completely adore it. It's the best of the best! But a couple months later, I think of it with ambivalence. Then something will trigger my desire to watch a specific episode, and several hours later I am marathoning through the season. I don't know why its awesomeness doesn't stay in my brain, because it should.
Rory is my TV kindred spirit. She is probably the most like me of all TV characters (minus her ability to attract super hot guys who fall all over themselves trying to win her heart--how does she do it!?). She is a bit quiet, pretty smart, and mostly awkward. She can be witty, but she doesn't steal any spotlights. She's passionate about what she believes in, and she hates failing. Rory = me.
...Until this last time I was watching, and I noticed that I've picked up some of Lorelai's characteristics. When I'm feisty, I'm Lorelai, with her open-mouthed grin and teasing and dramatic hand gestures and flair for the weird. Have I grown up on my own, or have multiple rewatchs subconsciously morphed me into her? Weird.
Other than the fantastic two leads, there is witty banter, and a loving relationship between mother and dauther, and the only depiction of a small town that I've wanted to live in, and awesome best friends, and oh yeah, all those super hot boys.
Gift Cards
Present-exchanging events can be stressful! I've never mastered the smart habit of buying friend-related items whenever I see them, keeping them until their birthday or Christmas. Instead, a week before that special event, I run around trying to find anything that vaguely resembles something they might enjoy. I have a feeling most people can tell.
And you know what? Sometimes I can too! What is the answer for such thoughtless giving (besides the aforementioned smart pre-buying)? Gift cards!
Even if you don't know of a THING your friend might like, I bet you know a place they like to shop or eat or drink at. So why not give them a gift card, and let them spend the money themselves? Unless you're a total tool and you buy me a gift card to Menards, I'm going to be happy.
Personal gifts are always best. But if you can't think of something personal and awesome, go with a gift card, not some generic crap that will sit on a shelf for a month before being thrown away.
Green Grass
This might sound stupid, until I tell you that 1) I did double alliteration TWICE in this post, and 2) I lived in Senegal for five months. I had a lot of fun there, but it was one of the ugliest places in the world (everything was brown! the ground, the houses, the sky!). After a couple months, it wore on my soul. I'm not even exaggerating. Apparently beauty and aesthetics mean a whole lot to my psychological well-being. That is also why I like Apple products.
Once when we went to Dakar, I saw a patch of grass beside an ATM machine. I begged Kim to pull over, and I promptly took off my Chacos and blissfully sank my toes into sweet growing grass. Later, when my time in Senegal was up, I flew into Chicago's airport. I had the aisle seat, but I basically fell all over the woman by the window, drinking up the blue sky and green grass around the airport. She finally called me out on my invasion of her personal space, and I said, "I'm sorry, but it's just so beautiful!" She gave me a weird look and replied, "The strips of grass between runways? ....Okay."
This might be why Mongolia is one of my favorite, most beautiful places in the world.
Sure, Usukhbayar is adorable, but look at those rolling green hills!
I majored in sociology, but I'll be honest, the first few classes were not overwhelming awesome. I liked deciding that I was a symbolic interactionist, but a lot of social theory was only mildly interesting. Then I took my Gender and Sexuality class.
It blew my mind! I made posters on pornography, happily read extra essays, and gleefully learned about how gender effects everything! The scale of feminine to masculine is far more fluid than our vocabulary allows. One of my favorite quotes from one of our textbooks (which I read for fun) was that the difference between an average man and an average woman is far smaller than the difference between a masculine woman and a feminine woman.
Basically, gender and sex are two very different things. One is biological, the other is a social construct. FASCINATING oh my gosh, I'm wanting to find my textbook and reread it. Kids can be traumatized by parents enforcing gender boundaries too harshly. Adults can be shamed by not fitting into our tiny boxes of gender identity.
I love the idea of letting people be people. I am feminine. I like to get dressed up, I like to feel pretty, I like to support people and empathize, I like to feel emotions. But I am also masculine. I'm not particuarly attached to kids, I like getting dirty, I like to be independent.
And if you thought, "Hey, that's not femininity (or masculinity)!" then you're right. There's no hard and fast rules of what gender really means. It's fluid and social, and for that exact reason, forcing people into boxes is stupid.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Books and God and Me
A while ago I took Cheryl's test that tells you.....something spiritual. I don't remember the exact term, but what I learned is that when I want to take steps toward reigniting passion for God, I should read.
LOL SURPRISE.
But really, it was kind of cool to see that reading is how my soul and mind and heart get spurred to action. So when I'm in a spiritual funk, the easiest way for me to get out of it is to read a book about God and spirituality (for other people, listening to music or enjoying nature can do the trick).
The thing is, I haven't been reading many Christian books lately. Ever since I found out the IL award nominated books were being voted on in February, I have been killing myself trying to read and review them all (20 picture books, 20 middle grade books, and 42 novels). Added to that the regular books that I want to read for fun, and....I've been a bit tied up, book-wise.
Finally today a bunch of guilt things and study things came together and I realized I needed to read a Christian book or I would be overtly ignoring God's nudgings. I started Radical Together by David Platt (his follow-up to Radical) and after ten pages I was flailing in the break room, making notes on napkins and thinking up ways to serve God better.
It's annoying when I ignore the solution to a problem for so long, and when I finally use the solution, it works in like, five seconds. Way to be stubborn and stupid, me.
I recommend the book, though. It's reinvigorated me like nothing has for the past several months. THANK GOODNESS. I was beginning to think I was broken. Turns out I just needed a purpose and a challenge.
LOL SURPRISE.
But really, it was kind of cool to see that reading is how my soul and mind and heart get spurred to action. So when I'm in a spiritual funk, the easiest way for me to get out of it is to read a book about God and spirituality (for other people, listening to music or enjoying nature can do the trick).
The thing is, I haven't been reading many Christian books lately. Ever since I found out the IL award nominated books were being voted on in February, I have been killing myself trying to read and review them all (20 picture books, 20 middle grade books, and 42 novels). Added to that the regular books that I want to read for fun, and....I've been a bit tied up, book-wise.
Finally today a bunch of guilt things and study things came together and I realized I needed to read a Christian book or I would be overtly ignoring God's nudgings. I started Radical Together by David Platt (his follow-up to Radical) and after ten pages I was flailing in the break room, making notes on napkins and thinking up ways to serve God better.
It's annoying when I ignore the solution to a problem for so long, and when I finally use the solution, it works in like, five seconds. Way to be stubborn and stupid, me.
I recommend the book, though. It's reinvigorated me like nothing has for the past several months. THANK GOODNESS. I was beginning to think I was broken. Turns out I just needed a purpose and a challenge.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Can't We All Just Get Along
I am the sort of person who reads marriage books, who wants something deeper than happiness, who thinks way too much about something that is not in my near future. No from self-pity or anything. I find marriage fascinating. It is the most complex, hardest, most stressful, and most rewarding relationship I think two humans can have.
I was told today that there is a book that says marriage is how you best understand God, relate to God, or something along those lines. And I just? No.
Obviously that is distressing for a perpetually single girl. Granted, 23 is not old maid town, but there's always the possibility I'll always be single. Again, not self pity. All possibilities are possible.
And that could be fine! I've heard the opposite argument, that you can't really serve God unless you're single, and I think that is also wrong. If these are circumstances beyond our control, why would our relationship with God be based on them? I think God is bigger than any human relationship or lack thereof.
Can you understand the character of God's love more easily after committing to spend your ife with someone who sometimes fails and disappoints you but you stay with them anyway? Sure. An you learn to rely on God alone and trust him and follow him more easily if you're single? Sure.
Different relationships show us different facets of God's character, but I don't believe that one is better than another.
Why not look at our current stage of life, our current relationships, and ask, "God, what are you teaching me? What can I learn about you right now?" God is no nearer or further from us at any point in our life.
So yeah, marriage is great and scary and can reveal a lot about God. But please don't tell me that you can learn more about God by being married. Society already tells me I'm a loser for being single. Don't make my spirituality second-class too.
I was told today that there is a book that says marriage is how you best understand God, relate to God, or something along those lines. And I just? No.
Obviously that is distressing for a perpetually single girl. Granted, 23 is not old maid town, but there's always the possibility I'll always be single. Again, not self pity. All possibilities are possible.
And that could be fine! I've heard the opposite argument, that you can't really serve God unless you're single, and I think that is also wrong. If these are circumstances beyond our control, why would our relationship with God be based on them? I think God is bigger than any human relationship or lack thereof.
Can you understand the character of God's love more easily after committing to spend your ife with someone who sometimes fails and disappoints you but you stay with them anyway? Sure. An you learn to rely on God alone and trust him and follow him more easily if you're single? Sure.
Different relationships show us different facets of God's character, but I don't believe that one is better than another.
Why not look at our current stage of life, our current relationships, and ask, "God, what are you teaching me? What can I learn about you right now?" God is no nearer or further from us at any point in our life.
So yeah, marriage is great and scary and can reveal a lot about God. But please don't tell me that you can learn more about God by being married. Society already tells me I'm a loser for being single. Don't make my spirituality second-class too.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Spelling Bees
Today at work I got to be a reader for the local home school group's spelling bee. I learned again how true it is that being on the authority side of trauma is gleefully fun.
When I was in fourth grade, Mrs. Carter told me she wanted me to be in the spelling bee. I said no thank you. She said she would talk to my mom. When I got home, I received a lecture on the importance of doing things you don't want to do, because that's how it works in the Real World. What a horrible image of growing up. No wonder I still recoil at the idea of being an adult.
I probably cried to get out of it, but my mother and my second favorite teacher had hearts of stone. They went fake tears, of course. I was genuinely terrified of speaking and worse, performing, in front of the entire grade school. On a stage. Like an oral exam with everyone watching.
I studied words like mad. I did not want to fail publicly. I didn't even want to win; I just didn't want to fail.
The day came, and I got through six rounds. There were only twelve of us left, though I don't remember how many we numbered at the beginning. I walked up to the microphone and heard the word "buffalo." Easy enough. I was so nervous I blurted letters without thinking. "B-u-f-f-l-o."
I turned to sit down, assuming I'd spoken correctly. Nope. I was out. I couldn't believe I'd gotten out on "buffalo." Shame on the house of McGarrahs! All my fears were confirmed. Everyone would forever think of me as an idiot, and no one would ever want me to make signs for zoo animals.
This experience was so traumatizing that, in addition to remembering so many details about that day fifteen years ago, I completely learned my lesson. When the middle school geography bee cropped up in seventh grade, I made sure I missed enough answers on the qualifying test to insure I still looked smart but wouldn't pass me through to the public competition.
A lifetime of slacking and avoiding the spotlight was firmly established.
When I was in fourth grade, Mrs. Carter told me she wanted me to be in the spelling bee. I said no thank you. She said she would talk to my mom. When I got home, I received a lecture on the importance of doing things you don't want to do, because that's how it works in the Real World. What a horrible image of growing up. No wonder I still recoil at the idea of being an adult.
I probably cried to get out of it, but my mother and my second favorite teacher had hearts of stone. They went fake tears, of course. I was genuinely terrified of speaking and worse, performing, in front of the entire grade school. On a stage. Like an oral exam with everyone watching.
I studied words like mad. I did not want to fail publicly. I didn't even want to win; I just didn't want to fail.
The day came, and I got through six rounds. There were only twelve of us left, though I don't remember how many we numbered at the beginning. I walked up to the microphone and heard the word "buffalo." Easy enough. I was so nervous I blurted letters without thinking. "B-u-f-f-l-o."
I turned to sit down, assuming I'd spoken correctly. Nope. I was out. I couldn't believe I'd gotten out on "buffalo." Shame on the house of McGarrahs! All my fears were confirmed. Everyone would forever think of me as an idiot, and no one would ever want me to make signs for zoo animals.
This experience was so traumatizing that, in addition to remembering so many details about that day fifteen years ago, I completely learned my lesson. When the middle school geography bee cropped up in seventh grade, I made sure I missed enough answers on the qualifying test to insure I still looked smart but wouldn't pass me through to the public competition.
A lifetime of slacking and avoiding the spotlight was firmly established.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Roller Coasters
Setting: Turkish restaurant in Dallas, TX. Liz and I sit on one side of a table, across from a former Journeygirl to Turkey and her friend. They are on their way to a New Years Eve wedding.
Liz: I like the idea of having a huge long party after the wedding, because you'll never get to have all your favorite people in one place again.
Me: Yeah! A giant sleepover.
Friends: Um, but what about...
Liz and Me: Psh. You've waited that long to have sex. One more night won't hurt.
Friends: *dubious*
Married Friend: Sex is like a roller coaster. It's big and scary, and you're torn between wanting to ride it and being too scared. But then you get in line, and the longer you're in line the more exciting it gets. By the time it's your turn, you've waited so long that you are determined to ride that roller coaster no matter what!
Liz: That is a perfect comparison.
Me: But...I don't ride roller coasters.
Liz: I like the idea of having a huge long party after the wedding, because you'll never get to have all your favorite people in one place again.
Me: Yeah! A giant sleepover.
Friends: Um, but what about...
Liz and Me: Psh. You've waited that long to have sex. One more night won't hurt.
Friends: *dubious*
Married Friend: Sex is like a roller coaster. It's big and scary, and you're torn between wanting to ride it and being too scared. But then you get in line, and the longer you're in line the more exciting it gets. By the time it's your turn, you've waited so long that you are determined to ride that roller coaster no matter what!
Liz: That is a perfect comparison.
Me: But...I don't ride roller coasters.
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