fried ice cream snowmen

I have five things on today's to-do list. They are all huge undertakings. I haven't done any of them. And my brain is exhausted. Maybe if I do just a leeeetle bit of each of the tasks, it'll count.

Let the countdown begin. The kind of countdown that doesn't really require counting. As long as there are days left in this semester, there are too many and too few.

Possibly inspired by my frosty-wintry looking door wreath, I have the second half of "Winter Wonderland" in my head. It will forever stick out in my mind as the Christmas holiday winter song from my childhood. And to think, I didn't really understand some of the lyrics then. This was me:

in the meadow, we can build a snowman / and pretend that he is parson brown (what kind of color is parson brown?) / he'll say, "are you married?" / we'll say, "no, man / but you can do the job when you're in town." (what job? i don't get it. what job?) / later on, we'll conspire (transpire, aspire, perspire) / as we dream by the fire / to face unafraid (this made no sense to me. now i know it was because we should've been singing an adverb instead of an adjective) / the plans that we made / walking in a winter wonderland

L-E-T-T-E-R-S

I have a list of letters I need to write.

Like the kind you fold up and put in an envelope (other acceptable variations: the kind you fold up and put in a Christmas card and then put in an envelope, the kind you type into a text box interface thingy and click send).

Then there are the single little shapes that, if you clump them together, make words. And if you clump enough of the words together, you get whole ideas. And if those letters, words, and ideas proliferate so that you can clump, arrange, and tweak them a bit, you end up with things like a research paper, a teachable unit plan, an eight-page paper about what I learned from doing a project, a revised short story, and if you're lucky, a decent blog entry.

Oh, how lucky.

A picture of God

I've said it a hundred times over. I want to be a writer. And though I may not demostrate it very well here, I can work with words pretty well. The problem, though, is that a writer must have something to write about. Words are nothing unless they're wrapped around an idea, some beautiful truth, right? But I'm learning to see the beauty and truth in the experiences of every day. It's real and it's not foreign.

Tonight, Sara Groves was singing about a song that beauty and why it matters in our lives, about how the story God's telling us and putting us in is beautiful. And the end of that song goes, "Like a single cup of water / How it matters." And it reminded me:

When I worked at Hart lab on Sunday nights a couple semesters ago, there was a non-trad lady who would be there every time. I guess I didn't notice her at first, but one day, she came in the Applied Science lab where I worked throughout the week. I worked with her for about an hour, trying to see if she could edit a PDF. We never figured it out, but she was grateful nevertheless.

I suppose it was after that day that I began to notice her in Hart. She had set up camp in that lab, often leaving her belongings (textbooks, project materials she'd been working on for countless hours, whatever) spread out around her workstation while she would be gone for extended amounts of time. I guess she had faith in the other students, that they wouldn't take her things.

One time when she had left for nearly half an hour, she came back in the door with a bag from Fast Track. And she handed it to me. "For me?" I asked her. "Yes, I thought you might be hungry." She was serious. So I took the plastic sack from her, thanked her, and sat there at my computer, dumbfounded. She smiled and went back to her work.

I opened the bag, and inside was a red apple, a small package of peanut butter and crackers, and an ice cream. I wasn't hungry and it was against the rules to eat in the lab (and I, being the lab supervisor), but I ate the crackers and the apple (the ice cream was already kind of melty) out of sheer gratitude. I don't know if she had money on her meal plan left over and bought these items with me in mind or if she got full and decided to give me the rest of her meal or just what. I have no idea. But she gave it to me, and I know (if I know anything) that it was with love. And that is true love -- perplexing, uncommon, and beautiful love. Love like a cup of cold, fresh water when you're thirsty.

It's been just over a week since the woman known to many as Nana -- known only to me as the kind lady who gave me a sack of food from Fast Track out of the goodness of her heart -- was killed in a hideous accident. When I heard her name in the news, I did not recognize it, but it was still very sad to me. It broke my heart. And it had crossed my mind that the victim of the hit-and-run was the woman from Hart. It was confirmed to me yesterday when I saw her face on the front page of the Murray State News.

In the front-page article and in a piece on the opinion page, people gave testimony of Nadia Shahin's pure spirit, her kindness, her gratefulness. And I knew it was true. She had shown both her kindness and gratefulness to me. When I had deserved neither. That is love. That is beauty. She gave me a single cup of water. And now in shadow of her death, I can see how it mattered -- to me and to everyone else around her.

the least i could do

It's been a while, sooo here I am.

Today was Wednesday-like, as Wednesdays often are. We workshopped my story in fiction. That went well. I always have mixed feelings about my stories. It's so hard for me to see a story as it is as opposed to how I think I've written it. I got some great compliments and some very constructive suggestions. And Hovie says I've grown as a writer. That's all that matters.

I had fabulousthanksgivingdinner at Winslow tonight with Holly. And tomorrow night, we're consummating our love (for Harry Potter, that is) and going to the midnight showing of Goblet of Fire. Oh, and this weekend is the Jars of Clay and Sara Groves concert featuring Donald Miller. I'm very excited about that. It all makes for a fine weekend.

I'm also going to try to get ahead on some end-o'-the-semester stuff. Yes, I hear it now. Your (my) snickering and doubt is tangible. But I've got a ten-page research paper, a twenty-page unit plan, a linguistic term project, and a revised writing porfolio all due in three weeks-ish. I think I've already picked my research paper topic. I've looked up some sources, and I checked two books out of the library today. Let's hope I can actually start the doing process. It's such a foreign concept to me, getting things done started halfway early, that I don't know what to do with myself.

Next week, as far as school goes, is going to be gloriously short. It'll be like waking up early and realizing that I can go back to sleep for two more hours. There's hardly anything more beautiful.

A testament to the times

Someone mentioned having to bring in some sort of cultural artifact -- like clothes, art, food -- from a Spanish speaking country for their class. And it reminded me of the day, just a few days before I left Spain, that Lola taught me how to make tortilla española. Now, I am craving it. I think I'm going to run to a nearby grocery and get some potatoes so I can make tortilla española.

It's practically the end of the semester. Final papers and projects have been assigned. Final exams have been spoken of. (So far, I'm going to have at least two open-book exams. That's new.) That means it's time for me to start wasting my time in hyper mode. I'll probably be working up a new blog design soon. A testament to the times.