Tales from Dordt Discovery Days

So I realized I am sadly deficient in the blogging department and thus decided to remedy this.

Today I:

Got to, at Fessler's express command, "get on my hard a-- self". Funny, it came really quite easily. This meant that when very short little junior highers decided to sport some attitude, or heck, just not form straight lines really, really fast -- I got to make them do pushups, situps, leg lifts, and last but not least, run all around the classroom building. Yup. Good fun.

Tomorrow I:

Get to be even more picky. If they neglect to address either Fessler, Ashley, or me as Dr. Fessler, Miss Kaspers, and Miss Tagney, then we get to make them go outside and be miserable.

The strange thing is -- these sadistic boys actually like it, I think. They like sitting up straight and feeling respected because they have to respect others in their speech. It's kinda cool. Course, we'll see how these visions of grandeur I have last....ha.

How will you be defined in the dictionary?

Kirbee -- [adjective]: Pretentiously academian 'How" will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

My summer begins (began?)

It's very strange how much of this summer is like last summer. I'm working here at Dordt again, the same job, only now as a supervisor. I clean Southview and East Campus, which is a lot of work. However, as was the case last year, I am surrounded by really cool people who are just fun to work with and spend the summer with. This makes scrubbing floors in Southview bathrooms and spending my free time on an empty Dordt campus seem much less boring:)

And I'm still dating Nate, but we are at such a different place now. Last year we were just getting to know each other as more than friends. We were spending as much time as we could together (which being summer at Dordt, was quite a lot) and desperately trying to learn about this strange other person. This year, Nate and I are having to learn to say goodbye to each other, a lot. I don't like this lesson, for the record. This whole year we had been able to spend large amounts of time quite close to each other. We saw each other every day, if not several times a day. We chatted about everything, and Nate became my best friend.

Perhaps this wasn't good in a way, because now, after a year, we are learning to not see each other. We are learning not to be able to talk whenever we want about whatever is on our minds. Nate lives only an hour away, but he works and I work. We get up early and go to bed early. If I have a hard day at work, or something silly or fun happens, I can't run and tell him. And he can't tell me. As Nate concluded, we don't realize how very much we miss the other until we see each other again.

But I add to this, as Nate left tonight. The whole night I kept thinking how I wouldn't see him for another night, and I resented all the other people who stole my time with him away. It's not the goodbye that hurts so much, as it is the knowledge of when you next get to say hello.

Auftakt II

Fiddle by Gertrude Degenhardt

The End is Near...

It's been a good semester overall. Certainly the best spring semester I've had while at Dordt. However, I still dread these last two weeks of assignments with absolute dread. I've been able to keep things pretty balanced up until now. I've gotten an average of 7-8 hours of sleep, and it's been nice.

But now I've got an assignment due every day of classes until next Friday. And my poor self is feeling the stilted wheeze of sleep deprivation. And I can just feel the energy draining out of the campus. In my classes, comments become fewer and farther between. In play, there's a sluggishness and lethergy of exhaustion upon exhaustion. In conversation there is a fear of the end of the semester coming -- simply because of everything that must be done before that blissful day of sunshine and roses.

Expectations

Life, you would be better off without them.
Without those infant fantasies of dazzling stars
you would be content with darkness.

Flee those wide-eyed idealizations
of smiling bowing faces
and you would not mind that you've become invisible.

If you could cast off the white knights and castles

you would not weep when he leaves.

Just forget to see your failures your failures your failures

and you will never have the raw pain of memory.

Then life, you'll never notice that you have bled out all your self
on fruitless, ignorant dreams.

In honor of the month and five days since I last posted

I'm posting. Wow. I almost forgot this little blog existed.

This current week has been really busy, but not because of homework, which is confusing my brain. I get done with the day totally drained because I've been running all over the campus, not because I've been writing papers for hours. I don't know which kind of exhausted I like better. Regardless, though, that all changes next week, when I have quite a bit of writing to do. I'll survive, though. My room is so full of chocolate and junkfood, it's crazy. This apartment is going to be quite fat by the end of this year. Fudge, cookies, bars, cakes, and pies have all been baked by myself and roomies since this weekend. Sigh.

I got my rough draft back on a paper I'm writing on the "Contrasting Perspectives on the Role of Epidemics in Shaping Global History." I like the title. It makes me feel academic. Basically it gives me an excuse to learn all about gross symptoms and other gory details. Hopefully, in the midst of sloshing around in my books I'll actually come to some coherent conclusions on the topic.

Spring and a Break

Hard to imagine that spring break starts for me (and the rest of tour people) tomorrow. I feel like spring snuck up on us and pounced on an unsuspecting and very wintry Iowa. It happened so fast there's still monstrous piles of filthy gritty snow scattered all around. I looked out my window this morning and realized that winter's bitter edge is gone. Sure, we may still get a cold snap, but there will be nothing like the storms and icy wind we've had the past few months. Very likely spring break could include the last gasps of winter, and even those will be finished by our return in a few weeks.

I think the calm weather today has made me, in part, wish that spring break could be more restful that filled. It will be great traveling around, playing and bonding with friends. Yet I also wish I could go somewhere very quiet and spend time with myself and God.

Oh well. Maybe I'll get that job up in northern Minnesota or one like it for the summer. Then I'll have no choice but to spend time with myself;)

Ooohh. Last post was really girly. Definitely need to write more, umm, guy-y? That makes no sense. But neither does the good mood I've been in this week. The weather of course has helped. It's all sunny and melty and warm and awesome. I've had so much fun making up excuses to go outside. It's a lovely change from the chill of winter.

And this weekend I was able to just spend time fixing myself up mentally after a really ugly last week. I let myself get too stressed, and distanced from God. I was poorly handling everything. But, now this is a new week, and already half over! In honor of this week -- which is strange, yet good -- I'm putting up an equally strange picture.

Valentine's Day!

I love this day. Michelle and I were talking this morning about how much we've always loved Valentines. Way before we had boyfriends, we just loved giving cards, eating candy, smiling and laughing. Valentine's should most definitly not just be for couples. It's when you show your love for your friends too! Unfortuntately, our roommates do not believe us, because we are dating, so "of course you like Valentine's Day!" Silly girls. Oh well. In retaliation, Michelle and I put up our "KISS ME" heart pillows around the apartment. Ha!

The moral of the story -- enjoy the people you love and the people who love you. Cause it's fun!

Tea in the Windy Sahara

Hot tea is truly the most amazing invention.
Especially when one has a sore throat.
Cold wind, though, is not an amazing invention.
Unless you're in the Sahara.
Looking for ironclads.

Gray

Today I feel colorless. Silly little things have made me feel like curling up and either reading compusively or just crying. Some days it's just discouraging to see oneself saying and doing what is so contrary to the perfect image Christ gave us.

The past two days...

Nate and I got stuck in the snow with his jeep last night.
It was ridiculously funny after we got unstuck.

And before that we went to Barnes and Noble where I bought a book with no words in it (how silly is that?), and saw a ton of Dordt peoples.

And before that we ate dinner at Ruby Tuesdays, where I ate huge portebella mushrooms on my salad, ate a tasty barbeque burger, and had a totally amazing strawberry lemonade with mint and fizzy water and fresh strawberries.

And before that we went to the best used bookstore in Sioux Falls, which has amazing books covering all the most important subjects (theology and horses), and where we learned that Nate has a bit shorter attention span than I do.

And before that we went to an antique store rated best in Sioux Falls. I found a vase that matches my wicked awesome blue salt and pepper shakers (but resisted temptation to buy;), a lovely inlaid brass box (which Nate spoke reason to me and said I didn't really need), watched Nate slobber over old cameras, and pranced around in a really warm and fuzzy mink stole.

And before that Nate took me away from Eryn, because we were late getting back from our very late breakfast, but right on time lunch at Butlers, where we had the most tasty chicken rasberry vinegrette pannini, aztec chicken tortilla soup, and a cinnamon carmel mocha. End result: to very talkative, distracted, and highly caffeinated girls.

And before that I got up at 10:45, and Eryn came by fifteen minutes later, and amused herself while I got ready by reading my beauty book written by former Miss Universes.

And before that I woke up at 7:00 to say goodbye to Cassie. Which was sad. But I consoled myself by knowing that I will see her face all over American Idol next year.

And before that I went to bed at 1:00 after laughing so hard with my roommates I thought I might hurt myself or just fall over. And I told Cassie she had to leave because she made scandelous comments about Nate and her pajamas.

And before that I walked to David and Rita's with Nate and Eryn, because potbag insisted on walking in chilly burrness. But he was a good gentleman and carried my ten different kinds of root beer over so we could all have a root beer tasting. We all became super snobs of root beer and also very sick of the stuff. (btw -- Mug is disgusting, and Virgils and Frost Top are the best. But if in a fix, A&W is bearable. Under no conditions whatsoever should you drink the horror known as Santa Cruz organic root beer beverage. It's clear and scary tasting).

And before that I went to the choir concert, where the guys made the show by singing Old Mink Farm.

Yup. It has been a weekend of amazing adventures.

An Early Rising, Rhyming Vampire

It's a sad day in my life when I wake up at 7:15 and feel refreshed and awake. Sigh. I hate my body liking mornings now. I want night, and dark.

I disturbed Cassie when we were going to bed last night by telling her my aspirations of becoming a vampire. She promised to record her experiences someday in a book entitled "I Lived to Tell the Tale". I love my roommates. I'm going to miss that crazy girl. She read aloud to us last night from her book, and then we all three talked in rhymes to each other for a good twenty minutes straight. Highly amusing.

And then my alarm went off at 7:30 and I was ready to get up, because I'd been awake for 15 minutes in bed. Sigh. That's what I get for going to bed at 11:00.

Que est sapientia?

-- What is wisdom?

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.

And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.

1 Corinthians 3:18-20

Gratitude

How can I be so ungrateful for all that I have been given?

The nights may be long, and the stress hard, but what I face is nothing. Nothing.

As I finish a historical research paper on Confederate women journaling, I read this:

“Here I sit alone, rocking, rocking, rocking – with the few embers in the grate my only reflection to the thousand thoughts which crowd my poor, clouded mind – oh! for sleep, deep sleep to relieve me.”

At first my selfish mind thought, 'Oh yes, I understand. I feel that way, 'cause boy life stinks right now.'

God forbid that I let myself think such egotistical foolishness.

These women faced the breakdown of their entire lives. Their world was never the same, and they could sense it. How unimaginably terrifying. And I had the ridiculous audacity to equate a few late nights with papers with what they looked at.

I guess this means that I should just close my mouth, thank the dear Father who has blessed me far, far beyond deserving, and work to preserve what these women felt. Felt so terribly deeply.

Lord, continue to keep me thankful, and let me never forget the immense grace I am daily given. Please, please, please.

Drawing to an end

With a long deep breath she pulled the thin
white threads of steam inside her --

Her shoulders rounded low
as she let out a shivering sigh --

She passed a dry winter-starved
hand over her forehead in a vain
attempt to wipe away the weariness
etching its way under her eyes
and at the corners of her lips --

She closed those eyes tightly
in one last bracing gesture --

Then brought the tall cup to those lips
and drank long and hard

What happens when the will to do is gone? How does one keep moving and going forward, when all I desire is to curl up and wait. For a long, long time. It's no longer a question of motivation and initiative, but of surrender. I would be content to never write another paper, take another text, or read another essay. How do I finish what I wish I'd never started? How do I push myself to complete what I won't even touch?