ramblerambleramble

Facebook is very boring to me right now.  The internet in general is not filling my heart with joy these days.  (Though it is worth pointing out that the internet has never filled my heart with joy.  The internet has sucked away many hours of my life in a happy, mindless blur is a more accurate description.)

Had a very feminine chat at work with the boss about weight and how much we'd like to loose and how she wishes she looked like me and I wish I looked like her.  I felt very normal and girly for a bit there.  I never have those sort of chats, you know.

Feeling drab.  Although I must say, I actually like my hair right now.  Finally I think I have a semi-flattering cut.  Wouldn't it be nice if, at the age of 20, I got my grooming act together?  I'd like to be somewhat in control of my appearance by the time I turn 21. Which is in May.  Gah.

I feel like the year whizzed by.  Really.  Like I was just whining about turning twenty, and here I am on the brink of true, alcoholic adulthood.  It's all very distressing. I was somewhat consoled yesterday when a guy in my history class said, "You're like 17, aren't you?" He might have been exaggerating or fibbing or misled by my naive behavior and general clumbsiness or something, but it still made me feel better.  Why I should be glad not to look my age is a question I honestly can't answer.  I don't feel old enough to be twenty - I guess I'm just glad I don't look it either.

So! Here's something good and solid - I am going in for an advising appointment at my soon to be uni on monday.  Big-time planning of my future will, I think, be on the agenda.
You, my dear blog, know as much as anybody how I've struggled over choosing a major.  You've lent a weary ear many a time to my whining on the subject.  My knickers, to use a slightly vulgar but completely appropriate phrase, have been in a twist over it for about five years.  I don't want to get all pomp and ceremony about this, but I think I finally know what I'm going to do.  Art - illustration emphasis probably. Might double major in English because I practically have the degree already and want to take English classes anyways.  A French minor is under consideration.
So... yep. That's the plan.

Goodnight.

These trees are everywhere here in old Ar-Kansas. They were much lovelier in real life than they look here.  If only I wanted to learn how to use cameras.  I'm sorry to say that lenses and f-stops do no interest me in the least.

This is our first Arkansas spring.  Lovely, so far.  I think I like seasons very much.  

A lot of things are swirling around in my head right now, good and bad.  I want to whine and blather, but have decided to consider the pear trees instead.  

Jumpology

"When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping, and the mask falls, so that the real person appears."

I want to be here:

That's all, really.  I'm dying to go to an evening Latin lesson or take a ukulele class.  Why, why, why was I not born in England?

My sister is going to be a movie star or something.  

This is her formal dress and - can you believe this? - my mom sewed it.  In these rather crummy pics, she was trying it on for the first time.  You should have seen it when it was finished and pressed.

How classy is this kid?  16, and she wants a dress like this. The formal has a hollywood theme, and Cee decided she wanted to do a sort of Audrey Hepburn dress.  She drew a picture and they found a pattern that matched.  The white part is actually the top of dress E from the pattern, the black is dress C. Mom figured out how to mix the two together.  You should see it up close - it looks like a piece of couture.  The lining is incredible.  I am so in awe of her sweet sewing skills.  She's made some awesome halloween costumes for us - but this goes way, way beyond my Annie dress and Cee's Sandy suit.

I'm wickedly excited to see what my sister is like in about five years.  She's about a million times classier and smarter than I was at her age.  Darn cool is she.  Cooler shall she become.  (I wrote that in a Yoda voice, by the way.  I'm sort of appalled that "Yoda" doesn't bother my spell check, but "Beatles" does.)
I'm lucky to be her sister.  Plus, if she becomes a movie star, I can be a hanger-on in her entourage and attain one of my old career dreams.  Yessss.

Buddy Holly

Why: He had a charming head, and wrote lots of very catchy songs like, "Everyday."  He also was a big influence for the young Beatles.  That's a solid reason to be grateful that someone existed right there.

I would like to emulate this famous person's creativity and style.  I like the funny way he sings.  I also like his teeth, though I already emulate him in that area. 

A rather painful confession. This is going to be a lot of talking.

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."  C.S. Lewis

I've been reading Mere Christianity these past couple of days.  I could dither happily about a hundred different things I got out of it, but right now I'd like to talk about ME.  Because I never, ever talk about MYSELF on here.

I promise not to whine about once a week on here, to no avail.  Every once in a while, I go through and delete a lot of sulky, meaningless posts that I've written. I do not enjoy the whiny side of my character.  I don't want to see the self-centred part.  But it is still very much there.

 I worry about what others think of me.  I worry that I am not interesting or original.  C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, says that vanity, always looking for the approval of others is rather pathetic, but that at least the vain person still retains some humanity because they still care about what other people think of them (as opposed to a prideful person who finds himself so fine that he doesn't care what others think).  I agree, but I'm not sure that I fall into this "humble fault" category anymore.

I compare myself to others obsessively.  It's ruining my life.  I get all despondent - "Oh, I'll never be any good at this" - and decide not to even try.  I get all worked up about how I'm stuck in a rut and don't actually move anywhere as a result.  Worry does nothing good for me.

So, I am seriously, SERIOUSLY going to try (praying like mad) to change this particular part of my character.  If anything will pull me down in life, this is it.

This is rather minor, but I think one way I can take a step in the right direction is by using this blog as a place to talk about things I enjoy.  Things outside myself, as opposed to imagined inferiorities within.  I would much rather read a blog about music or books or crazy things that happen at somebody's job (it's like a soap opera, I'm telling you) than the rather greasy whining of some lower-middle-class American who is being held back by nothing but her own timidity.

The other day, at a church thingy, a lovely, lovely woman told me (in her adorable broken English), "My son, he worked at an oil refinery.  He would come home just covered... black.  But one day, his boss saw him and told him to come talk at his office.  So my son goes.  And they say they will pay for him to go to college.  He was forty years old.  Now he train the new workers." Then she asked me how old I was.  She looked at me, and held out a hand. "Twenty? You have the world in the palm of your hand. You don't worry about what will happen.  You get wherever you are meant to go."

famous people I am fond of

Have recently been doodling pictures of people I admire.  I'm igeneration, I will share.  I'm also going to say why I like the person.

William Shakespeare

Why:  He wrote stuff like "two star-cross'd lovers, take their life" "Oh brave new world" and other similarly famous and pleasant things.  He wrote characters like King Lear and Hamlet that are difficult and interesting. He wrote plays, like Twelfth Night, which are funny.  Also, reading his work is rather challenging, which makes it more fun when you get it.  Also, when you get it, you can feel very superior and mock actors who obviously don't understand what they're saying.

I would like to emulate this famous person's writing skills.  I would like to be able to understand the human mind as well as he seemed to do.  I would also like to be good at poetry.

be mine

I heard this story the other day.  The sunday before Valentine's day, actually.   I was going to post it then, but I forgot.  The telling was better than this version, and who knows if a shred of it is true, but I liked it.

Now, back many years ago, there lived in Rome a young priest named Valentine.   In those days, Roman soldiers were forbidden to marry, for it was thought that the distractions of marriage would make them weak and vulnerable.  But this young priest defied the emperor's decree and performed marriages in secret.   When his actions were discovered, Valentine was thrown into prison.  He befriended his guard.  One day, the guard brought his blind daughter to Valentine, and asked him to heal her.  What Valentine did then is unknown, but, however it happened, he restored sight to the girl.  Valentine was taken before the emperor, to be tried.  As he defended himself, the emperor began to take a liking to Valentine.  But when Valentine tried to convert the emperor, any benevolent feelings he had vanished.  He ordered Valentine to be executed. As a last request, Valentine asked for a piece of paper, and on it he wrote a note to the guard's daughter.  For, you see, they had fallen in love.  The note read, "From your Valentine."