Joie de vivre

There is always something to do. Always. Always too much to do. And of course, I usually focus on what I feel like doing instead of what really needs to be done. Soon I may start working every day two weeks out of the month. What in the world am I going to do when my only free time to Get Things Done is in the evening?

The other day while packing orders at N. 2000, I came across a beautiful name. A Mr. Tadhg O'Mordha placed a large order for suppliments. Isn't that a wonderful name? So...Gaelic. I love Gaelicness. Or perhaps it's Welsh--I love Welshness, too. *grin*

This week is revival meetings at my church, and it's ended up that I've been asked to sing in one form or another for almost half of the meetings. Bwaha. Once as part of a duet, once as part of a trio, once as part of a quartet, and once as a part of a choir. This is...funny. I don't mind, though. I love to sing, and this is a nice way to share it with others. It's just--when did I get so popular?!

God's spoken to me in many ways this past week, even though the preacher isn't exactly my cup of tea. I'm grateful, because of all times that I needed to feel close to God, this is probably one of the times I needed it the most. He is indeed gracious and good, and I hate myself for doubting Him so often. There is so much yet that He needs to teach me. He again showed His faithfulness this afternoon...

Hannah and I (mostly Hannah, lol) have feverishly worked on setting up the file of us singing (mentioned in my last post) so that more then two people can actually hear it. Behold: the new link!

I had fun dog/house sitting this weekend! Who wouldn't, with a day to themselves to watch movies and eat and occasionally feed some dogs and a gigantic cat? And get paid for it? It was a wonderful little break, the only downsides being that I ate entirely too much chocolate and icecream and probably gained a few pounds, and I didn't sleep well. Which is strange, because I can usually sleep ok in unfamiliar surroundings. (Maybe it was because Willy the Cat [Who would name a cat that? Poor thing!] insisted on sleeping in my bed with me.)

Anyway, I had a nice time with Willy, Midnight, and three little black schipperke (?) dogs named Buddy, Sadie, and Woody, who all look exactly alike. That's bad, because I was supposed to feed them all different diets. I have no idea if I got the right dogs!!

I watched Gone With the Wind again while there. I hadn't watched it since...let's see, July 18, 2001. It made me want to read the book yet again, and soon. This time, though, there were actually certain parts where I cringed and realized that no, this isn't a perfect movie. But it's old, so I forgive it. (Some of the dialog is overly dramatic. Ok, a lot of it. But so was the dialog of most movies back then.) I also forgive it because there are other parts that are so perfect they could never be improved upon.

....I'm so glad no one's ever gotten it in their head to do a remake!

I also watched Driving Miss Daisy, which I hadn't seen since I was little, and Dead Poet's Society, which I had never seen, although I've read the book.


***
Ah ha. Note to self: follow advice of this quote.

"Regard your voice as capital in the bank. When you go to sing, do not draw on your bank account. Sing on your interest and your voice will last." -Lauritz Melchior

In other words, Marie dear, do not practice for four hours Sunday afternoon, sing an hour concert that evening, and then go to the recording studio and sing for two and a half hours Monday night. I did almost a month ago and still do not have my voice back properly. I finally spent three days not talking, and that's helped a lot, but it's still not back to normal. It's terribly irritating.

6/21

I realized last night I was back to the old Reading Many Books At Once routine. Argh. So I'm trying to finish them. Wayside School Is Falling Down (Louis Sachar) is easy enough to finish. I've heard about this children's book for a while from several people; it's interestingly clever and offbeat but slightly too simple to hold my attention for too long. "William and Harry" (Ingrid Seward) was much better; I finished it this morning. I'm a sucker for books about the royals, especially when they are (as this one is) NOT comprised of stories gleaned from the tabloids. This was actually a real, serious book about Their Royal Highnesses The Princes William and Harry. Seeing as this is William's 21st birthday, I thought it fitting to read. ; )

Anyway. Am also reading The Screwtape Letters (C. S. Lewis) for the first time. I don't know why I haven't done so sooner; I like it. It's very clever, very clever indeed. And humorous, in a dark way.

"A Double Life: Newly Discovered Thrillers of Lousia May Alcott" is also interesting, but more for the fact that this is the author of Little Women writing then for the stories themselves (horribly sensationalized and rather cheap).

I'm also reading Feet Of Clay and The Last Jihad (Whoo! More on that once I finish it...)

I also bought some books Thursday. Found a Dorothy Sayers mystery--Five Red Herrings--and for some reason a picked up a college textbook about speech problems and corrections. Um, I don't know why. Hey, it was .25 cents.


6/23

I have practice tonight with Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Talley (the music teachers for RHS) in preparation for the recording in July. Hopefully they can push us up a notch on the performance level....Hopefully everyone who intends to come to the recording session will show up tonight. It will Severely Annoy me if they don't. I wish everyone could take this as seriously as I do. "It's history, man, history we're making!" If we do badly on this, our kids are going to laugh their heads off at it one day. Heh heh, they probably will anyway. ; )

I can't wait. **squiggles** I think deep down I've always had a longing to Do Something in music, even something this small. =) Whee!


6/24
Mmmm. While waiting for mom to finish shopping, I browsed the magazine rack and came upon some movie magazine with a picture of the Perpetually Wide-Eyed Frodo on the cover. Heehee. They had a sneak peek of Return of the King, which is great because I've somehow seen precious little about it yet. (They didn't release a preview of it towards the end of the theatre run of TTT, did they?) I can barely wait to see more Eowyn. Yay. =)

I wish hot weather didn't affect me so. The last three days (all upper 90s) I've felt lazy, listless, and totally without energy. And I've had a headache for part of each day, though that's due more to the fact that I've been reading too long.

Oh! The Last Jihad. Yes, yes, yes. That is a great book. Tom Clancy without the bad language, or so I imagine, having not actually read a Clancy book. I'm so glad I'm now over being terrified by nuclear disaster/apocalyptic type things, so I could enjoy this. It's very well written, and you know it's gripping because I finished it in one day. About four hours of reading. ; ) My dad doesn't believe that I actually understood it, reading so fast, but hey. I did. I'm just a quick reader.

Another things that's wonderful about The Last Jihad is that it's a well-written, interesting, and non-preachy book written by a Christian. I'm rather pessimistic about "Christian" literature in general; sadly it seems to be, on the whole, of a far lesser quality then most mainstream writers. People usually look at me oddly when I admit that I rarely read any of the popular Christian books. But in the battle between "books I know will be free from foul language, sex, and other moral badness because the writer was a Christian, but are poorly written and in general end up being banal fluff" and "well written books where there is the possibility of unpleasant stuff because this is a secular writer", I usually choose the secular. I wish it weren't so. Why is it that (IMO) things labeled Christian--in books and music especially--are of a poorer quality then that which the "world" produces? Shouldn't we be more inspired?

**sigh** I tell you, I think the Janette Okes of the world do almost more to give Christianity a bad name then anything else.

Tonight on the news I saw the newly-released video of the astronauts on the Columbia space shuttle a day or two before they died. It made me so sad. It was almost sickening to see it, actually. It seems terribly macabre to see these people floating around, laughing and playing with the zero gravity, while you know they died shortly afterward in such a horrible way.

I think too much.

6/25

A couple of days ago mom had to be gone for most of the day, and somehow I ended up doing a whole host of domestic-type things--I cleaned, cut, and canned 7 quarts of green beans, dug and cleaned a basket of potatoes, picked and brewed mint tea, pulled, cleaned, blanched and froze a huge amount of carrots, washed multitudes of dishes, cooked lunch, and did some cleaning.

All this mundane stuff made me start thinking. Six months ago I wondered how in the world girls my age could be getting married (which several were). I thought, "I could never handle a household of my own!" Suddenly, since I've taken over many more of the duties while mom hasn't been well, and sometimes taken over everything all together, I began to see that yes, I am capable of this.

That doesn't mean I'm totally ready for marriage, but I'm glad to see evidence that I am growing closer to it in some ways. Now, I just hope that God has someone out there for me--and that I will have the brains to know who he is when he comes along!


6/27

I suddenly realized I have very clear memories of a museum I once visited--but I have no idea when it was, where it was, or who I was with. This is disturbing. I think my brain is going to explode from trying too hard to remember.

Mmm. I love playing with pictures and cool photo software: I just made a wallpaper with a picture of the Lady of Shallot from http://www.artmagick.com/ (which I found due to a random comment by....amea, I think) and a brocade background and one stanza from the Tennyson poem--

"Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side'
'The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shallot.

I memorized most of that poem once, and it has a special way of thrilling my soul, for some reason. I love the last part (Lancelot speaking):

He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in His mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shallot."

6/29

Bwaha. I just realized that I have books from two of Stephen R. Donaldson's trilogies--I have books one and two of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, and books one and two of The Second Chronicals of Thomas Covenent. I have the conslusion of neither. What's even funnier is that I've never even read any of this series's yet, so I don't know why I keep buying them. Except that for a quarter (which is what I paid for all of these, at various points) I'll buy almost anything that looks good.

I did read one of his other books which I also bought for a quarter, a gargantuan novel aproximately the size of a New York City telephone book. Thankfully the print was fairly large, which meant it didn't go as slowly as all that. It was pretty good, or at least passable (my memory has dulled with time), but unfortunantly was *again* just the beginning of a series. So if anyone sees the conclusion, titled A Man Rides Through, let me know. But only, of course, if I can buy it for a quarter. ; )

Ahhhh. I love being able to get cheap books. That is, good books cheaply, not...."cheap" books.

I also bought a bio of the daughter of Sam Giancana~highly facinating for anyone who has a peculiar facination with the Mafia as I do. I bought North and South, too. Too bad it wasn't Wives and Daughters. =P

7/1

It's JULY! Hurray! Even though it's often the hottest month, I like the month of July. Especially since today means I'm only 18 days away from turning 19. (Is it 18 days? Or 17? I guess it depends if you count today or not.) I feel the need to be older now, since I spent most of yesterday being called "little one" by Mona. Bwaha.

3/30
I've decided to take more time to really get to know the Bible stories I teach in my Sundays school inside and out. I'm beginning to notice just how much my little kids enjoy them--the one time when they are mostly quiet during class time! When they're quiet I know I have their full attention. ; ) They enjoy it so much more when I have it memorized and don't have to look at my guide, and when I relate it to something in their lives. And I'm getting less inhibited about acting it out and using different voices and stuff.

Ok, now I just have to conquer my procrastination and study it more then just on Saturday night!

3/31
Argh, I could kick myself. I'm so embarrassed. I just made the most horrible gramatical error: nevermind that the person I was talking to didn't even come close to catching it. She asked how many of our family was going to be coming with her, and I answered, "Just mom and I." **cringes** I know, I know. All you English majors can beat me up now.

Let's see...I heard the music of Norah Jones for the first time today. Easy to listen to but--it seemed to me--without substance. Music that never makes you sit up and take notice bothers me...in large quatities. Like when the whole dang CD is that way.

I also saw Amalia again...apparently she's healed from the car accident fairly well. At least, she was back cleaning at Kay's. I love how she sings in Spanish as she works.

Oh, and Paul (mentioned two posts down) may be coming home this week. I'm really surprised--maybe the burns weren't as bad as I thought, or the treatment is just better. He had skin graphs last week.

And, lastly, I must extol the virtues of vitamin E. No, not to take internally! I've been puncturing the gel capsuls and rubbing the stuff into my skin. And it really does seem to work at getting things to heal better, faster, and with less scarring! I love it. I get a lot of burns, cuts and scrapes on my hands working in the kitchen, and for some reason my skin just doesn't heal very well. It takes forever, and usually leaves a prominent dark scar for quite a while. Since my skin is so light they show up terribly. Lol, I remember I had a dark scar on my leg for at least a year from the first time I really cut myself shaving. (I did finally find a cream that will fade out scars, but it's expensive! I guess it's better to prevent them in the first place.)

4/1
I have "He Bore It All" stuck in my head. It's the best Stamps and Baxter hymn out there. It's fast, it's breath-taking (literally, I end up gasping by the time we're done), and it's twice--no, two hundred times better then any lift-your-hands-to-the-Lord-and-repeat-the-same-phrase-ten-times-in-a-row praise and worship song. And it has three parts singing all at once, but with different words and different timings, which is what makes it very bad to have it stuck in my head. Because I can't sing it to myself. I try to sing all the parts at once because it doesn't sound right otherwise and it turns into a jumbled mess. Actually, I can't just sing one part all alone. I can't. I can only sing it when I'm not concentrating: when I'm focused on how the whole sounds. It's not a song to be divided into parts. It just IS.

But the good news is that we (the choir) get to sing it at the Community Easter Program. Yay. I love performing it, because people are always rather awed that a group of girls like us can produce something that complicated.

Then I think we're to finish off the night with "How Beautiful" in sign language. Apparently no one remembers that we also did it last year at the CEP. Or maybe they just really, really like it. For some reason it makes people cry; I haven't a clue why. I'm just worried I'll forget some of the signs. We haven't done it in a while.

How. Beautiful. Heart. Bled. Took. All. Sins. Bore. Instead.

I hope there aren't any real deaf people there, we leave out so many words. It makes it more flowing and ornamental but less understandable, lol. Oh well, otherwise we'd have to sign so fast to keep up with the music that no one would see a thing anyhow.

4/2
Good day, comparitively. (Comparative to what it could have been, that is.) I was done with work an hour eariler then usual, I did *not* get a headache as usual, and although I sneezed a lot and my voice got weirdly low, my lungs aren't tight from the dust and I can still breath without feeling bad. I wore a mask almost the whole time, hopefully that cut down on what I inhaled. Curses on being sensitive to respiratory problems.

Unfortunantly mom spend the entire way home telling me about a bad phone call she got today. It's too long and complicated to go into the whole thing, but I have an aunt who has MS, but won't accept it or do anything about it. Finally it's gotten so that she can barely move at all and is having trouble breathing--THEN she went to the hospital. It's a bad situation and she's made it ten times worse then it could have been.

4/3 Fun with telemarketers

"Hello, is this the homeowner?"
"Yes sir, it is." (Blatant lie #1)
"Ma'am, have you ever been to Branson?"
"No, I haven't."
"Well, ma'am, do you know where Branson is?"
"Of course I do. I did very well with geography in school." (That's probably blatant lie #2)
"Well, would you like to go there?"
"No, I don't believe so. It doesn't fit with my personality type very well."
"Oh. Well. How about Los Vegas?"
"Sir, that fits my personality even less."
"Oh...well, ma'am, how about you tell me where you'd like to go?"
"Umm...Rome, Italy. But I doubt you offer that, do you?"
"No ma'am, you're right. Is there anywhere in the UNITED STATES you'd like to go?"
"Not really. I like where I am just fine. What's there to see in the US, anyway?"
"Uhh, goodbye, ma'am.I'm sorry I couldn't help you."
"Bye."

Lol. I love it when I feel like conversing with them instead of just hanging up.

I took a sissors to my purty dog today. I hate that we have to cut her hair in the summer, but she's a thick-haired wolf/Alaskan sled dog type, so she gets really hot. Last year the boys cut it at absolutely butchered her, and it took most of the summer to grow it out enough to look decent. I'm trying, but it's still kinda sad looking. =\ There's just no way to cut it smooth, especially when she keeps wanting to move around. It's kinda cute, though, we leave a large mane of hair around her neck, and her big fluffy tail. She's yellow, too, so she looks a bit like a smallish circus tiger or something.