This Is Scary

What book or movie is it in which some piano virtuoso comes back to a piano after years away and is afraid to play again? I have this vivid picture in my head of him (or her, I can only picture the hands) opening and closing his hands as the pianist musters up courage to touch the keys.

That's how I feel. (Because I used to be a blogger virtuoso, of course!)

I haven't posted in a really long time.

I know you poor souls are all going to look at this because it is going to come up as a new post on Aaron's blog list.

I feel powerful.

Why is it that I feel compelled to tell you how I feel?

......

How many of you can instantly recall what you are wearing without looking to see? I frequently have a hard time remembering. "Oh, you like my skirt? Just a minute while I look to see which one it is." Perhaps this is a warning sign of Alzheimers?

Thanks

I really appreciate all of you who have prayed for me during the last month or so. This year at Bible School seems to be off to quite an auspicious start and already has blown first year out of the water.

My fellow upperclassmen (woohoo!) are incredible.

Our focus on the Gospel in class has fed me richly.

God is teaching me to rest.

I can even be on meals by myself with confidence!

God is good.

I just hope that He helps me to successfully "convert" my eighty-year-old-grandfather-who-has-just-been-diagnosed-with-cancer-and-has-one-month-
to-live (played by Uncle Neil) tomorrow. Hooray for personal evangelism!

End of Summer

Many times this summer I have signed into blogger and almost begun a post entitled, "Bria Comes Through in the Clutch!" This post would, of course, be about my experiences learning to drive stick shift this summer. ("Do you mind if I hide under the seat?") However, I couldn't quite bring myself to use such a terrible pun. And maybe the memories are still a bit painful...

How odd...I wonder how many times I've typed my name out in a sentence, as above. I've typed it out at the beginning of papers and at the end of emails, but I am pretty sure I've not typed it into a sentence myself. I felt strange when I typed it.

* (Report of learning incident that doesn't really fit into this post.)
Do you know what the word "amok," or "amuck," as it can be spelled, means? I had always thought it had something to do with running aground or with things generally going wrong. Last night, as Elizabeth was reading the Iliad aloud to me, while I arranged pennies in order of date, she read a sentence containing the word that made it very clear that it did not mean what I thought it meant. We looked it up and got these definitions:

(among members of certain Southeast Asian cultures) a psychic disturbance characterized by depression followed by a manic urge to murder.

3. run or go amuck,
a. to rush about in a murderous frenzy: The maniac ran amuck in the crowd, shooting at random.
b. to rush about wildly; lose self-control: When the nightclub caught fire the patrons ran amuck, blocking the exits.

Live and learn.
*

I'm off tomorrow morning to Fairwood to work. Will I be blogging from there? Probably not, but anything's possible. Perhaps I will write a nice retrospective post about the clutch-burning days of summer...

My courage for another year is quite good, but I wouldn't mind if any of you guys thought to pray for me.

Happy blogging!

Last Words

"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do."
~Oscar Wilde

I heard this quote for the first time while listening to NPR with Claire a few weeks ago. We pronounced it blogworthy.

Thus this post.

I was considering letting this be my last post before I head back to Fairwood, but now that I'm faced with the looming prospect of summer work I'm becoming more and more attached to this poor neglected blog.

Such is life.

Perhaps I will yet post again.

Overachieving, anyone?

I have been organizing all my papers, attempting to balance my account (it takes me awhile), organizing my "library", packing to go back to Fairwood, reading Don Quixote, berating myself for not practicing my violin, wasting time on blogs, reading In This House of Brede for the second time (It's scary how much Catholicism appeals to me), beginning a study of Latin, preparing to brush up on my French, thinking about studying Aristotle's Rhetoric, not participating in color week, doing laundry, and thinking that perhaps Lord Peter Wimsey would be just the husband for me.

And I'm happy because I don't feel obligated to finish most of the above "tasks." The illusion of business is enough to make me happy.

"Be still and know that I am God."

Okay.

Overheard in the S------d Household

At the dinner table:

Mother to Offspring X: Offspring Y will probably be president someday, he's so used to ridicule.
Offspring X: Mom, I'm not nearly as bad as Nancy Pelosi!
Offspring Y: Don't worry, I'll make you the Secretary of Defense.
Offspring X: Didn't JFK make his brother something?
Offspring Z, irrelevantly: Yeah, but he died, too!

Chivalry is not dead.

A wizened old man with wrinkled tattooes, lots of stubble, and a veteran's cap opened a door for me at the post office today before effortlessly got around me to open the next one for me. I'd like to see some young ATI guy do better. "They don't make'em like they used to."

Something I've Been Pondering

What if you and I see the color we both call "blue" differently?

Say I see it as the color you call green.

We would never know, because we would both consistently call it the same name and identify it with the same objects.

My brain hurts.

"Old Buddha"

is a song title from Mum's cd, "The Best of the Imperials," given to her by her sister in memory of their good ol' Campus Crusade days at UConn. This song amuses me so much with its unabashed unPCness that I am going to break my self-imposed rule of never blogging about song lyrics to share this one with you.

Well, old Buddha was a man
And I'm sure that he did well,
But I pray for his disciples
Lest they end up in hell,
And I'm sure that old Mohammed
Was sure he knew the way,
But it won't be Hari Krishna
We stand before on judgment day.

Chorus:
But it won't be old Buddha
That's sitting on the throne,
And it won't be old Mohammed
That's calling me home,
And it won't be Hari Krishna
That plays that trumpet tune,
And we're going to see the Son,
Not Reverend Moon!

Well, I don't hate anybody,
So please don't take me wrong,
But there really is a message
In this simple song,
See, there's only one way--Jesus,
If eternal life is your goal,
And meditation of the mind, it won't save your soul.

chorus

Well, you can call yourself a Baptist
And not be born again,
A Presbyterian or a Methodist
And still die in your sin,
You can even be Charismatic,
Shout and dance and jump a pew,
But if you hate your brother,
You won't be of the chosen few!

New Chorus:
'Cause it won't be a Baptist
That's sitting on the throne,
A Presbyterian or a Methodist
That's calling me home,
And it won't be a Charismatic
That plays that trumpet tune,
So let's all just live for Jesus,
'Cause He's coming back real soon!


That Reverend Moon bit gets me every time...

Peak

Know what? God is wicked good to me. Even when I refuse to talk to Him. Even when I don't believe He knows what He's doing. Even when I'm all grumpy and whiny and depressed.

Today I'm not grumpy and whiny and depressed, and I am amazed at how much He does for me. You'd think He loves me or something!

Look at all my blessings:

~Visits with friends at the FamCon.
~True blue friends with whom to visit
~Hours in the car by myself
~Beautiful weather
~Ice cream with friends
~KATHERINE!
~Flowers and herbs and things
~Lots of work hours
~Ice cream and flowers and music in Portsmouth with my ENTIRE family!
~Lindsay
~Peace
~Joy
~The discovery that slightly cooler than boiling water makes green tea so much better
~The remembering that God wants me personally, something I often lose sight of.
~Ecclesiastes--somehow it's ministering to me this year

The clouds are breaking, and, what do you know, God has been good all along. Weird.

I love Him.

In Praise of Camellia sinensis

Tea! thou soft, sober, sage and venerable liquid;-
thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing,
heart-opening, wink-tippling cordial, to whose
glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate.

Unfortunately, these lines are not original to myself, but they do express my sentiments quite well.

Where would I be without tea? Dead, probably. My hot pot in my room at Fairwood saved my sanity multiple times. The powers of a steaming cuppa on a frazzled girl are not to be underestimated. By said cuppa hands are warmed, sinuses are cleared, thirst is quenched, cells are antioxidized, mind is sharpened, soul is soothed.

"Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?-how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea." ~Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

Seriously, a cup of tea really does bring a lot of comfort to me. And no, caffeine isn't the reason. Herbal tisanes make me happy, too.

You, gentle reader, should also like tea. Here's why:

~Tea tastes good. Really. Especially when quality tea leaves are brewed correctly. Most varieties don't even need sugar. (George Orwell and I are united in this opinion.) I usually prefer slightly bitter or earthy tasting teas, but fruity teas, coffeeish teas, and sweet teas exist in abundance for every taste.

~Tea is beautiful. Check out some pictures of tea leaves.

~Tea is good for you. Research has shown some varieties of tea to be rich in antioxidants and lots of good stuff.

~Tea has much less caffeine than coffee, and that caffeine is much milder than coffee's. Herbals of course don't contain any caffeine.

~Tea is soothing. Steadies the nerves and warms the body and soul.

~Tea exudes romance (in the adventurous sense of the word). The very names in themselves are lessons in geography and culture:...sencha, genmai cha, gyokuro, darjeeling, assam, ceylon, jasmine, oolong. They call forth visions of clipper ships sailing to the Far East, of "plantations of ripening tea/ All from tuppence," of the British Empire at its height, and of exotic lands and peoples.

~All real teas come from the same species. The distinctly different flavors of black, oolong, white, green teas and their many varieties are results of differences in processing and location grown.

~C.S. Lewis liked tea. "You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."

~Tea goes well with books. It just does.

Convinced yet? If not, try some white tea with blueberries. (Make sure it isn't just blueberry flavors.) If you still don't like it, consider the following statement: "If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty." Turn from the folly of your ways while there is still time!

"My smelling salts!"

This morning, for the first time ever, I blacked out.

Even before I climbed out of bed it was a rough morning. I had repeated a dream all night and early morning long. This dream consisted mainlyof a sudden remembrance that I was on dinner at Fairwood and had forgotten all about it. I would start to frantically plan one and then would realize that it was too late to talk to Mary about it. Punctuating this nightmare at regular intervals was an embarrassing incident. I would be drinking a glass of water while I worried about dinner and talked to various students. Every few sips I would somehow miss my mouth with the cup and dump water over myself, and TJ would be walking through the kitchen and would laugh at me. (Unfortunately, as some of you may know, that this has some basis in real life. Distraction is fatal to me while I am drinking...I either have a near death experience or become very damp if my mind is elsewhere. Oh, and TJ does usually seem to notice and does usually let me know that he has noticed, but usually I am amused myself and not at all bothered. In this dream, however, I was quite distressed by his teasing.)

So it was from a not so pleasant sleep that my alarm awoke me. I decided I was too tired to get up and dozed on, ignoring the music. However, after many guilty glances at the clock, I decided I should get up after all. I had no reason to be as tired as I felt, because I had had plenty of sleep.

I dragged myself out of bed and started into my five minute stretch/exercise wake-up routine. Barely had I been moving for three minutes, when I began to feel quite hot. Instead of waking up as I exercised, I was becoming more and more tired. While I was doing some tricep presses at my bed I began to feel quite dizzy, in fact. I pulled myself up onto the bed and noticed that I was having an extraordinarily bad head rush. As everything got darker and darker I decided to sit on the floor and put my head down. (As I slid off the bed I recalled Brandon had told us that this was no longer the recommended procedure for preventing fainting, but I couldn't remember anything else, so I was happy to put my head on my knees and close my eyes.)

I wish I could remember what my dreams had been when I came back to a minute or so later. All I could recall was a vague voice talking lots. I think they had something to do with whatever NPR voice was coming over my radio. I did know for certain that I felt wicked sick, really, really hot, and that my ears were ringing loudly.

After a minute or so on my bed and a few minutes on the couch under my parents' observation, I felt fine, but a bit sleepy. Got to sleep for a couple more hours, and had a normal day after that. Weird, wot?

Maybe I have a weird disease that is going to randomly knock me dead.

Hehe...I keep remembering fainting scenes from books and movies...

"I'm an uncle!" Remember the guy in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers who
faints dead away?

"Wilbur, I forbid you to faint!"-Charlotte the spider

The girl that Anne Shirley was teaching who fainted when the firecrackers
where in the stove.

I seem to be in pretty good company.

She announces in a very small voice that she has returned.

To get you up to speed in my life:

My first year at FBI is done! 'Twas good, God blessed it, but I'm glad for a vacation. The last semester was very difficult, and I thought I would die of stress the last week, but I didn't. Three cheers for the Holy Spirit!

"The most practical thing about a man is still his view of the universe."
G.K.Chesterton is my new hero.

I might do kickboxing this summer. Aunt Beth would be proud of me.

Do I really want to start blogging again? we'll see.