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7/1

Mm. **is a happy girl** I'm enjoying the taste of Really Good chocolate (from Switzerland!) and I have a bottle of water from Italy sitting here next to me, and I'm still pleasantly high on the Starbucks Caffe Americano I had earlier.

More importantly, mom's last post-op visit was today and she's doing great. Whew. Congratulate me, though, today I did NOT sit and worry the entire time she was seeing the doctor. Don't laugh--old habits are hard to break!

I'm also happy because I made it through my first Big City driving experience and WE'RE STILL ALIVE. Lol. It wasn't too bad, honestly, and I have to learn to drive in lots of traffic (and merges, lane changes, and Maniac Drivers) sometime. I've been driving with a permit for about a year now, but mostly in our smaller local towns, and the nice easy highways.

Heehee, I'm so odd. Most of the people I know still haven't gotten over how I'm handling driving. I waited to get my permit until I was 18 (due mostly to odd laws regarding what homeschoolers have to do in my area to qualify for a permit), and it's looking more and more like I won't be getting my license until I'm 21, unless I get a job that requires me to drive to work everyday. I'm really blessed that my two part time jobs are really close to my house! Anyway, that's due to the fact that insurance rates are *terrible* here, and since I don't NEED my license now, I don't feel right asking my parents to pay more then double the insurance cost just so I can toodle off to things on my own. And I sure don't want to pay for it myself. ; )

I'm also not going to college. Odd thing number three.


7/3

My heart is so squeezed up in love I can barely think straight. I'm so full of excitement and love and other happy emotions. How could God have blessed me with so wonderful a friend?

7/5

Amazingly enough, it's two days later and I'm still really happy! A list of things that are making me happy and generally content with life at the moment:

*The mail just came, and I got my paycheck. More money towards the plane tickets for:

*Going to see Gwenyth in December! I'm so excited. =) I'll get to see Return of the King with her, and go to the New Years Eve ball--even dance, if I can learn quickly enough ; )--and finally meet her sisters and parents and the Bachelors and Monique & Jeff and everyone else I've heard so much about.

*But before that, I have an almost-positively-sure trip planed to see someone else. The end of August SHOULD find me happily posting from savetheolives house. (She has a cable modem. I don't. And I'm hopefully going to be there long enough to be able to tear myself away from her for a few minutes to keep up on my email [thanks to Juno's webmail] and LJ)

*My room is clean and tidy. I feel more relaxed when it is so, although I guess if it made me really happy I'd keep it clean all the time.

*I have another idea for a short story set in Arthurian times. I've been trying to come up with something else ever since I was so pleased with how Knight of Truth turned out. Finally inspiration has struck. Yay for me. You know, it may be that I never show these little works to anyone else, but I feel such a sense of accomplishment at having completed something I like, plus it sharpens my writing skills immensely so that I can better produce articles that publications are looking for.

*I have CHOCOLATE.

*I have wonderful friends, and my acquaintances aren't half bad. =D Heehee.

7/15

My dog is jealous of a two and a half pound ball of fluff. My really BIG dog is jealous of something barely a tenth her size--but she probably has reason to be. ; ) My new kitten, which showed up basically out of nowhere, it the cutest thing God ever created (barring me. Um, that was a joke.) He's misty grey with white paws and nose and neck, and he's fluffy, and super tiny. By general consensus we named him Kuzco, for no other reason then we've just watched The Emperor's New Groove four times in about a week. (_haydee_, I think I'm finally getting closer to being able to quote TENG as well as you and savetheolives. At least, my brothers and I have been quoting whole passages during meal times, with appropriate voices. Our favorite one to mimic is "Is that my voice? Is that MY voice?")

Also had my first cavity-filling today; am not pleased with 1) appearance of the fillings (I swear, they must use JB Weld =P) 2) the taste of the nice cinnamon stuff and 3)the feeling of a numb mouth. It paralyzed the muscles around my mouth and I couldn't wiggle my nose.

BUT I have finished what I think it my favorite Arthurian novel yet. Hurray for Persia Woolley for creating a realistic Gwenivere!

7/16

Now I'm not so elated about the kitten. I'm scared he's going to die, so I almost wish we hadn't gotten him. =\ I found a hole in the base of his throat that I'm pretty sure is caused by a maggot or other type of worm-parasite...it's this little round black hole that goes what looks like forever into his little throat, and now and then I can see what looks like a tiny white worm. As soon as I get close to it with a tweezers, it jerks back inside the hole again. I don't know what to do, and I feel like crying. =\ We tried pouring hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, and iodine into it, but I don't know if that'll do any good, or how to tell if it DOES help. And I'm afraid that if the worm doesn't kill him, then all the stuff we're using to try to get rid of it will.

**tries to think of something cheerful**

Well, Friday's my birthday. Last year I was 18 on the 18th--too bad I can't move my birthday up one day and be 19 on the 19th. I like things like that.

And Monday I'm going to get to have my first recording experience with what will hopefully be a cooperating rest-of-the-choir. I'm excited. And it was kind of neat to be able to tell Mona that I couldn't work late on Monday because I had to be at the recording studio by 6:00. =D

Thoughts on Humility

Humility has always been a sticky topic for me. What is it? How do I be truly humble? Should I always pass of complements to someone who deserves them more--say someone tells me that I made a very good loaf of bread. Should I say that it was because of my mother's excellent teaching, or the good type of flour, or just because I followed the directions to the letter? Or do I just say that oh, I really didn't think it was very good at all?

I've had people do these very things when I said something complementary to them, and it's really disconcerting. I've always been taught that the proper way to receive a complement was to graciously accept it and say "thank you." But THAT sure doesn't seem very humble.

Or, does being humble mean that I should belittle myself, never thinking that what I can do is of any significant value? How can I be humble if I honestly know I can do a certain thing well?

Then there's the problem of being TOO humble. How easy it is for me to fall into this trap, as so wonderfully expressed in this quote: "[He] has become humble...all virtues are less formidable [...] once the man is aware of them, but this is especially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By Jove! I'm being humble!', and almost immediately pride--pride at his own humility--will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt--and so on, through as many stages as you please."

That's from C. S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters". I'm just now reading it for the first time, and chapter 14 has given me so much to think about on this subject. It has also helped me see that having a low opinion of myself in an attempt to feel "humble" is a lie from Satan. Another Lewis quote:

"Let him think of [humility] not as a self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. [...] Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be...By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible."

But finally I'm getting a grasp on what true humility means--turning my attention from myself and what I can do to God and to the people around me. I sure don't practice it, and it seems almost impossible. But at least I have something to strive for. More from "The Screwtape Letters":

"[God] wants to bring man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it then he would be if it had been done by another. [God] wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall...[God] would rather that the man thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one."

(no subject)

I just got my hands on HP#5!! Yay!

(Did I get it before you did, savetheolives?)