Joie de vivre

4/4
For the first time I was in a library that was not Quiet. This time it was not only not quiet, it was downright Noisy. They had a crew of guys up on the roof, re-tar-and-graveling it, which apparently involves making noises that sound like jets taking off right over you. I kept expecting to see bits of plaster floating down from the ceiling.

4/5

Ah-hahahahaha. **stifles laughter** Wheeeeeeeeee. Now I seem to be on a roll with tormenting telemarketers. I can't really tell the lastest story, since it's something that just has to be done in person. But it was a person selling security systems, and I told her all about our huge, ferorcious rottweiler. Who's name is Bob and is very nice but he'll rip your arm off if I tell him to.

Bwaha. Such a contrast to our real dog, a sweet-though-wolflike creature.

Now I'm going to go to bed and read Crime and Punishment. Seeing as I've been meaning to read it for ages and just recently a number of my friends-and-aquantences have been reading it, I might as well too.


4/7
Sunday I sat directly behind a hobbit. I swear! He looked like Elijah Wood with brown eyes. Same short height, thick neck, fine features, curly mop of Frodo-hair. It was uncany. And his father was wearing a large ring that looks suspiciously like the One.

Unfortunantly I sat directly in front of someone who pays a little too much attention to me. I dislike sitting in front of him because I'm rather afraid I get more of his attention then the program (And it's always annoying to think someone's staring at your back!). Nevertheless, it wasn't exactly a relief when he went to sleep halfway through and started snoring. **stiffled laughter**


Had various conversations about Fibonacci (yeah, guess who), parallel parking, and other stuff. Oh, and Rebecah totally made my day by informing me that she saw the Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers and she *liked* them!! Last time the subject had been brought up, she was still saying, "ooo, I would NEVER like that!" Bwaha. This is now the third person in church (besides me) who admits to not thinking they're eeeeeevil. Yay. I'm making gains at educating them, no?

In other news, Arby's has changed my beloved Roast Beef sandwich. Argh. Why?? I love those things, fast food or no. Hopefully it's a temporary thing.

4/8
Busy times. Tomorrow night is a birthday party, Friday I have to clean in preparation for guests, who are rather convieniently coming right after I leave for the weekend and leave right before I come back. Hm, I wonder if that was intentional? Anyway, then Saturday morning at an ungodly hour I start out for Calico Rock Arkansas with a group of un-kindred spirited girls for a choir concert. Then the actual good part, I get to come home and be with my bestest friend. In the meantime, I'm preocupied with fulfilling some resolutions I made to myself, dealing with personal emotions, and praying for the above mentioned friend who amazingly seems to share the SAME emotions at the same time. **twinship**

4/11
I should be packing, but I'm not. Instead I'm finishing listening to Andrea Bocelli's Romanza, before I go take a shower and fall into bed. Oh. Except that before falling into bed, I have to finish packing. AND set the VCR to tape a movie that's on tomorrow night (since the rest of my family is tech-i-ly inept).

Argh.

And I don't even *want* to go on this trip. The singing is fun, really it is. But the company...argh! Those silly, empty headed juvaniles.

But--**reminds self**--I'm trying to have a good attitude about it.

AND I get to see a certain someone Sunday night! **bounces**

Btw, this afternoon I was pretty worried about something, and so I spent some time praying. And I felt God pour on my his perfect peace, and I'm just so awed and thankful. He is so much loving then I deserve. I'm so glad my life, my world, my family is in His hands.

4/20

I have been very lazy and not written anything here for a long time. That means that this will doubtless be very random, as so much is currently stored in my brain.

To All Who Had Been Wondering: Sorry to disappoint, but I didn't like Crime and Punishment very much. It was an interesting psycological novel, but very depressing. Plus--why can't all great writers have the good sense to write in English? I hate translations--I want to know that the author chose these particular words for a reason.

Arkansas was not as bad as expected, Sunday night and Monday were tremendous, and apparently I pretended rather well that I was an adoring mother with the protection of a burly JMM as Joseph. (No, that's not John Michael Montgomery. Heehee) At least, we got a lot of comments after the Easter program that we looked like a great couple, and I was told I looked very serene. Ha. I was just praying that Brooke (yes, baby Jesus was a girl this year) wouldn't start crying.

As an aside, last night I made my dad laugh harder then I think he ever has. =D All because I talked to a telemarketer in the same accent she had herself! Apparently my own self and a southern belle accent (Ah say, yo-uh want'a sell me sihdin' for mah house?) seem incongruitus. ; )

1/23

Confession time. I bought eight more books the other day from the library's discard pile. My mother nearly had a fit. =) Only about a month ago I moved a second bookshelf in my room and it's nearly full already.....but these were such loverly books, and so cheap! Got several by Elizabeth Borton el Treviño (never read her, but they look all right), one about Alexander the Great, Bride of Lammermoor (Sir Walter Scott), Doctor Thorne (Trollope) and three other sort of incidental ones. I wish I just had the time to read them now! I must have twenty I've bought that I haven't ever read. It's very sad. But I have been reading ever so many that I borrowed from the library, and I'm reading the Silmarillion again (third time!).....

Well, must get back to painting the cabnets in the kitchen. I'm doing the inside in a lovely dark/bright blue....very New-England-Cape-House-ey.

1/26
Life is funny. Life can be VERY funny when my mom's in a good mood.

Yesterday she answered the phone in German.

It was a black telemarketer. (Yes, you can often tell this through the phonelines) This completely flummuxed him...COMPLETELY. We've decided this is the way to get rid of unwanted calls from now on. She'll bombard them with German and I'll try to sound like a native of Mexico City. (Let's just hope I don't happen to pick up on a telemarketer that actually *is* a native of Mexico City.)

If that fails, I plan to speak to them in Old English. Probably this will confuse them more then the Spanish will. (Forsooth, methinks thy phone line crackleth. Many pardons do I beg for my rudness in hangth-ing up on thou!)

1/27
I'm looking over my List of Books Read for the last two years. Pretty interesting, I'd forgotten about some of these. Like the Rex Stout books--I started reading those when Rush Limbaugh recommended them. I should pick up one again. I also noticed I tend to go in cycles....a string of John Grisham books, then Lillian Jackson Braun (The Cat Who Played Brahms, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, THe Cat Who Went Underground, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern, etc.) Then there's the Jean Plaidy books, which I remember fondly. Good old historical fiction. Er, not historical fiction. Whatdaya call it? When they write novels about historical events and people. THEN there was the Mafia string of books, which I can explain in that I was researching for a term paper. They were also very interesting, but not for the....ah....squeamish.

And I re-read a lot of my childhood favorites. All the Pooh books, Paddington books, Mary Poppins, Five Little Peppers, The Lion's Paw, the Secret Garden, The Little Princess...

And there was the humor phase. Robert Benchly, Clarence Day, Will Rogers....Then the science fiction phase, with the Foundation Trilogy and various Star Wars and Star Trek books. (Gotta read Heir to the Empire again, just cause Timothy Zhan is such an awsome writer). And after that the Daphne du Maurier string of books, which are (mostly) magnificent.

And then Poe. No more needs be said. =) I stayed in a happy state of depression and horror for several weeks.

Oh! The Olive Oil Companion! Marvelous book, that. And the Van Cliburn Ledgend (Abram Chassins). And all of the Joan Aiken books--and The Spy Wore Red and The Spy Went Dancing, both by Aline, Countess of Romanones. (True stories of her career in espiange during WWII). And the Father Brown stories of G. K. Chesterton (recommended by Quinton).

Arrrgggghhh. I want the time to read the ALL AGAIN!

1/31
Uhh.....Life. Is....Not easy. Got possible bad news today about the health of (another) grandparent. I'm grateful that they're all old and ready to die, but it's like, how much more can I handle? It's now within the realm of possibility that all four may die within a year and a half of each other.

On to other things. You know, I feel that I'm very boring here in LJ world. I have so little excitment to write about. Lol.


2/4
**sigh**

I'm tired. And I have a headache. I should go to bed, but I guess I'll take a little time to relate my growing experience of the day....

Namely, that I drove my dad's truck. We were going somewhere together this afternoon and he just said, "How about you driving?" This is...amazing. I didn't like it much, actually. The only thing I've ever driven is the little car, which I zip around in. Going from it to this was freaky. For one thing, it's a man-sized truck and I'm on the verge of being a little bitty thing of a girl...er, woman. I had to sit on the edge of the seat, and I couldn't even begin to see out of the rearview mirror. It *did* give a feeling of power, though. ; )

2/13

Haven't written for a while, partly because life was boring in the things I'd share here, and I was busy. I need to unwind now, though, and I don't feel like taking the time to write in longhand in my personal diary. It's so sloooow now that I'm used to typing. =P

This afternoon I cooked. All afternoon. It was splendid fun--had the house to myself (well, mostly) so I turned up the oldies station and had a blast. Somehow, music from the 60s is what's fits me most when I cook. I made a couple loaves of French bread, the cake part of the Boston Cream Pie, and a cranberry salad. This is all for my dinner tomorrow, in honor of Valentines day and my parents 22nd anniversary. We're going to have a nice, elegant, cultured dinner. Candlelight, china, the whole deal. I like this sort of thing, especially as it's a capital excuse for more elaberate preparation for the food then normal. Silly me, but fancy food tastes twice as good.

Oh, and I'm making ravioli. =D No one has had ravioli until they've tried mine! I die of happyness everytime I eat it. Too bad it takes so long to make.

I'd better stop talking about food. I can hear a certain person muttering about being "too Italian" as they read this. =D

I've been busy with other stuff, too. Worked two days last week, made lots of money, agreed to clean Debbie's house occasionally.....everyone that knows me at all will laugh at this, but just because I'm not a totally *neat* person doesn't mean I can't clean decently. **shrug** Hey,it's not my favorite thing, but I'll do it for the money. Well, you know, I kinda like that green stuff. It buys a lot of books, mmm?


Even though I've been busy, I'm making time to re-read the Emerald Ballad series. I think those are the books that started my Ireland craze (which has abated to some extent, but will never be entirely extingued, me thinks). I used to read them every few months, seriously. It's probably been about two years since my last reading, though. It's a little odd going back to them after this much time. I feel almost tratorous that now I'm noticing all these flaws with the writing. **sigh** Darn, being a writer isn't that great if it makes you stop just enjoying a story!
Anyway. This time they're sort of randomly making me cry. I don't know why....I've read them so many times and I don't think I ever cried before. Somehow reading about the fall of Morgan Fitzgerald just really made the tears well up. Maybe my hormones are just wackey or I'm too stressed about other stuff.

Sometimes I wish I was a kid again, just because I never worried about stuff. It seems that ever since I've started to really feel and (mostly) act like an adult life has been full of pain and trouble and worry. Or maybe that's what made me an adult, who knows. Cavolo! CavolocavolocavoloCAVOLO!

(Note: for the uninformed, this is Marie-speak for...well, actually it's Italian for "cabbage". It's an expression of...disgust.)

2/14 Memories and other things

To quote the words of the wonderful Bethwen, long, long ago in the Hobbit Hole: "When will the one true guy ever come?!" It's true, the older I get the more I wonder. ; ) Valentines days do of course bring this out more.

I just browsed through some old entries in my 'real' diary. I don't do this very often. It usually makes me depressed and sad. I'm not known for putting my happy thoughs on paper very often. But I found a few interesting things I'd forgotten: like the time I got mistaken for a mannequin. For about two years I worked for a woman who had a moble clothing store. She and I hauled a trailer full of clothing to all sorts of nursing homes, etc. so that people who couldn't get out themselves could have a place to shop. We would haul in twenty some racks and set them up; once that was done there was often nothing much to do until people started getting done shopping. One day, while I was just leaning quietly against a wall, waiting for when I was needed, this nicely dressed little old lady came walking by me. She peered closely at me, so I smiled at her...and she jumped and said, "You scared me! I thought you were a mannequin and I was looking at your clothes and jewelry and then you *moved*!"

I also have recorded quite a number of very vivid dreams. I still get them occasionally--the kind that when I wake up, I have to ask myself "was this a dream, or did it really happen?" They are so extrordinarily real. Mostly they're happy dreams, but there have been a few that have kept me in terror and fear for weeks. (Say what you will, a dream like that isn't easily dismissed.) They can be about the oddest things...one featured a guy who looked just like Joe Montagne--if that's how you spell his last name. I always think of him as a gangster (thus the attraction to him) although I only saw a very little bit of The Last Don, where he *played* a gangster. I did see all of Airspeed, which he's in as a non-gangster type, but that was at 3:00 in the morning and it was a pretty pitiful movie even for that time of night.

Another dream was the shocking one of my friend Quinton, who's very dark haired, showing up in a bookshop where I was buying Tolkien books with his hair dyed blond. A la the short lived hair style of Tiger Woods.

I also found the memory of the Bible School I helped with two or three years ago, the one for inner-city poor kids...who could forget the sweet little Ryan, shyly whispering, "I've never done this before!" and kissing my cheek. That's the kind of memory that makes me doubly ready to scoop up all the unloved, unwanted, abandoned kids in the world and adopt them all. I'd start with little Sarah Elizabeth, if I could. She's been with the a couple a church, a short-term foster family, for several months now. She's gained so much weight, it's amazing. Before they got her, she was in the hospital for a month due to malnutrition....ie, being starved almost to death. That makes me want to both adopt all kids like her AND do some severe bodily harm to the so called 'parents' who could do that to their kid.

2/15

Strange how certain days stick in your memory. Sept. 11, of course, but smaller things as well. The day I found out that Rush had gone deaf. Chris (AKA the Book Guy)'s wedding. The 12 incredibly uncomfortable hours at the Relatives. When Marty told me he thought I was a woman with uncommonly deep thoughts behind my reserved attitude. (Had a good laugh over that one.) Yes, the night that the computer was reformatted, and the meal shared, the topics discussed (who knew?). The time Sarah surprised me by showing up at church totally unannouced and made me scream...The day I brought my laptop home. The night I realized I loved performing in song...the day I met the Italian men of Red Wine! And the day I opened the picture packet and realized that, if only for the moment of that picture, I was beautiful.

2/18
I'm feeling suddenly disatisfied with my life. (I'm sure it's only a momentary thing, but it makes me think.) I've always been the type of person who said "I don't need anyone else" but the fact is, I do. I HATE saying that, but I do. I have three of the greatest close friends ever, and one that I wouldn't part with for anything, but they all live hundreds of miles away, and I need social friends, too. People HERE, to do inconsiquential things together. I have my deep friends, my real friends, but suddenly I just want some people to hang out with.

....Like that's gonna happen. Lol. I'm just odd enough that people don't really like/understand me much unless they're the type that develop into those deep friends. All the same, I'm thinking of getting into some activities or something. The fact is, I don't know that many people aside from church (who are siblings in Christ but NOT my "kind of people," amazingly!). I have interesting relationships with my librarians and bookstore owner, but beyond that...

So I'm thinking. I've been wanting to join the Community Choir for a while--I'd love another place to sing. Love LOVE to sing. And I'm going to ask if the library sponsers or knows of any writing groups around this area. I kind of doubt there are any I'd fit into, but you never know.

This all means I should hurry up and get my drivers licence so I can get myself places without help. =P I could have months ago, but I want to be really, really good and comfortable first. The idea of driving with the ex-cop instructer without knowing precisly what I'm doing kind of freaks me out. I've been driving with a permit (and parents) for...well, since September.

2/19
I've finally added to my interests. Enjoy. Lol. =D