Times Change

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I’ve been writing in my paper and leather journal quite a bit more recently, and over the last few years. I haven’t even written everything there that I could have because life has been flowing by, full of experiences. Also, I don’t think that a personal blog is a good genre for me. What is the use or beauty of a personal, journal-style job in which I will never be frank in an uncensored way? Personal, censored ramblings are boring and one-in-a-million to those who don’t know me. Nothing unique. Hardly more interesting to those who know me. The truth is, I am now a public figure in a very small way since I am a teacher. My private life does not need to be on display for students, parents, administration, acquaintances, and random strangers. There is nothing wrong with my private life other than the sin that plagues the human race in general and all of us in particular. But now I am a professional, and there are boundaries in professional life and behavior that are best obeyed.

This entry explains for my readers (you might stumble on this in a few years or never) why I’m no longer writing a blog (no one asked). Also, I didn’t want the last entry I wrote to be my last.

So, I have choices.

1. Change the blog title and make it focused on something personal but not private. Books. Reading.
2. Start a new blog. Focus on teaching and post about what I do in the classroom. Why should I bother? My favorite teacher bloggers have it covered.
3. Forget about blogging and recognize it for the fun time period it was. Focus on other things that I’d rather do more.

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Is it just me?

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James McAvoy, look alikes, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus

James McAvoy

A few weeks ago, one of my pastors was explaining something about Roman culture. He showed us several pictures of various Caesars, and as soon as I saw this Germanicus guy, I thought he looked like the actor who played Tumnus the Faun in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Tom in Becoming Jane. I’ve had Nero’s name in my Bible ever since, and have finally gotten around to blogging about it. Is it just me, or do these dudes look like they could be brothers?

It’s flying by…

14 days of student teaching
3 days to write the last TPA

Those are the bald chronological facts.

By this time next month, I’ll have been finished with the credential year for nearly a week. Between now and then, there are a myriad of details to take care of. I’m not worried. It will all come together, as it always does. I’m looking for jobs and dreaming of teaching overseas for a year in Japan as I do when I want some adventure…because I’m not the biggest homebody you’ll ever meet or the type of person who is happy to curl up and read a book all day! 🙂

After this is all over in three weeks and I’ve “recovered” for a few weeks, I know that I’ll miss seeing my credential peeps in class and will miss my little 1st graders as much as I miss my 6th graders. But that will all be in three-plus weeks. For now, I am trying not to strain through the present because I can taste summer and am ready to feel the thrill of success and realized dreams.

There haven’t been any new blog posts for so long because I’ve been too caught up in work and other activities. It’s also because so many little and big things have happened that it was hard to know how to distill the information and to share the essence of all the experiences of the last couple of months. Today seemed a little simpler. Three more colloquium meetings. Three more weeks of teaching. Then it’s over. It’s so close to the end.

Now I Saw in My Dream

On Wednesday I started a fieldwork assignment in N—— School. This assignment is for my Practicum class from the teaching credential program at M——.

Since I dropped out of a credential program last fall, I’ve had plenty to keep me busy. We spruced up and packed our too numerous belongings and moved “into town”. After moving in, we settled as quickly as possible and started throwing things out.

Then my elderly grandparents moved in with us to receive more care. No one realized it, but Grandma was already suffering with her last illness. She spent a few weeks with us, visited the hospital, came back, and then after another 10 days at the hospital, went to meet Jesus face to face. We were able to spend her last hours surrounding her bedside, holding hands, praying, singing, and telling her how much we loved her. After the memorial service, Grandpa moved back to the city that he’d spent his entire life in so that he could be close to Grandma’s grave.

It still seems unreal at times. You see a living, breathing person in front of you. Any second they could stop breathing and die but they don’t let go until all their children arrive and say goodbye. The breaths become shallower and choked while the monitors beep warningly. Finally, it seems like that is the last breath. But there is one more and then then the red thread on the screen flatlines, reads zero, and cries a steady tone. You look back, and the body that was a person one second earlier, has turned into a shell–obviously empty. The face is empty, the glazed eyes are covered over, the mouth hangs open and can’t be closed. The body is already decaying and in a week more is hidden in the earth. The person left behind trinkets, books, and clothes, but it seems strange that the things are still here since the former owner isn’t. The owner has simply vanished in an instant, and cannot be found anywhere on earth. But to be absent from the body and hidden from our sight means that she is present with the Lord and sees Him revealed in all His glory.

Through the summer, we’ve continued to get rid of things and to try to live with not much more than what we use on a daily or weekly basis. Except for the books, of course, there is still a bookcase in most rooms. We read. I worked at the pool again this summer– something I said I wouldn’t do. From the outside, my life looks like it’s in exactly the same spot as it was a year ago. Just finishing up a summer of lifeguarding and hoping I won’t be back, starting a credential program, thinking I’ll graduate in a year and be able to get a teaching job. Sometimes I still wonder if I shouldn’t have just stuck it out for two more quarters and have finished already, with all the classmates I’ve known for years. But those are just momentary twinges.

I’m really excited to start classes on Monday and see what happens through the next year. It’s weird to sit in a classroom and not know anybody but that will change in a few weeks. One of the students happens to be a girl I knew when we were both children. The professors prayed before we started the orientation meeting and also encouraged us to dress professionally and modestly so as to preserved a good testimony of the gospel to teachers in schools who may never have known a real Christian. Fancy that! It was like a dream!

After a long week of working at the pool,  traveling down to the school, and getting up early and going to bed late, I am exhausted. I’m already getting used to waking up at 5am, though, and I like the early morning more than I used to. I went to the chiropractor Friday afternoon and fell asleep during a mechanical exercise that has you lay on a table and use the device for 10 minutes. I was actually dreaming and startled awake when the timer went off.

Now I see many things in a dream…some past events feel like a dream, I dream when I’m too tired, and I dream of things to come.

Four Twins Laughing

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video, youtube

Spring Ring

Tags

handbells, Johnny Rocket's, Spring Ring

All the Ringers went to Spring Ring on Saturday. We had an hour-and-a-half commute both ways and it was tremendous fun. On the way there, we were zombies. Then we arrived, set up the pads, cloths, and bells, and practiced for hours. We played in the little concert and shared our solo piece. The time went by so fast. It’s amazing how the hours fly when you’re playing handbells. 🙂 Then came Johnny Rocket’s, a 50’s style diner for dinner, and then the ride home. By that time, we were all exhausted. I discovered that people I normally consider rather serious and practical become silly gigglers when they’re tired. Everything is funnier when you’re tired. We had some of the lamest running jokes going you’ve ever heard. They involved coffee, bananas, pygmies, Disneyland, and “And then they died!”. Yep. Oh, and the pastor’s son has a new nickname. Strappy!

I can’t wait until the next Spring Ring!

53 Read/14 On the List

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

1) Copy and paste into a note of your own. Delete my answers.
2) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
3) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
4) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
5) Tally your total at the bottom.
6) Put in a note with your total in the subject

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen X+
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte X+
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling X+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee X+
6 The Bible X+
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens X+
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott X+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X some, * all
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger *
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot X+
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell X+
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens *
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy *
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Addams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh X
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky X+
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck *
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame X+
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy X+
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens X+
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis X+
34 Emma – Jane Austen X+
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen X+
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis X+
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne X+
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell X+
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins X
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery X+
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy *
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding X
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan X
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons X+
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen X+
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens X+
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tart
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas X+
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens X+
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker *
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett X+
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce *
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath *
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession – AS Byatt X
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens X+
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro X+
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert *
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White X+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X+
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad *
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint Exupery *
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare X+
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo X

Warning: Boring Post Ahead

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survey

Every few years, I give in and post one of these survey thingamajigs. (Wow! Side note here….spell check recognizes “thingamajigs” but not “thimgamajigers”. ) Up ahead…trivia. Get ready for lots of little-known facts. Some things that I normally keep close to the chest. Like, um, I’ve never told anyone that I’m left-handed before. 🙂

65 Things People May or May Not Know About Me— interesting title, by the way, with just the right amount of that intriguing vagueness of promised thrills that draws so many readers into the next bestselling novel!

1. What is your middle name? Marie

2. How big is your bed? twin

3. What are you listening to right now? silence

4. Whats your favorite number?no idea

5. What was the last thing you ate? plain yogurt

6. Last person who drove you somewhere? Ronda

7. How is the weather right now? abominably freezing

8. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? Ronda

9. The first thing you notice about the opposite sex? face

10. Favorite type of Food? healthy

11. Do you want children? yes

12. Ever get so drunk you don’t remember the entire night? I’ve never been drunk

13. Hair color? dark brown

14. Eye color? brown

15. Do you wear contacts? no

16. Favorite holiday? Thanksgiving

17. Favorite Season? end of spring, beginning of fall, summer, and not winter

18. Have you ever cried over a girl/boy? probably

19. Last TV show you watched? don’t laugh– The Bachelor

20. What books are you reading? The Private Patient, A Little Princess

21. Piercing? one in each earlobe

22. Favorite Movie? many favorites but near the top are Anne of Green Gables, Wives and Daughters, You’ve Got Mail

23. Favorite college football Team? yep

24. What were you doing before this? reading

25. Any pets? we have a family dog (Anna Von Schmidt), and a few cats that wave their wild tails where they will (Mom calls them “feral cats”, like it’s one word. haha!)

26. AIM? google talk

27. Favorite Flower? pansies, roses, tulips

28. Have you ever loved someone? family, friends

29. Who would you like to see right now? Dad

30. Last time you cried? a few days ago

31. Do you like to travel by plane? I guess so. I haven’t been on a plane since I was about four years old.

32. Right-handed or Left-handed? This one is WAY too personal.

33. If you could go to any place right now where would you go? Israel

34. Are you missing someone? nobody that I won’t see again fairly soon

35. Do you have a tattoo? no

36. Do you still watch cartoons on Saturday mornings? never did

37. Have you ever hidden something? of course

38. What color are your sheets? This is a random question with absolutely no interest value.

39. What is the wallpaper on your cell phone? snow from that historic precipitation a few months ago

40. Did you get enough sleep last night? not really

41. What is the first thing you thought about this morning? “why am I waking up?” although that can’t really count for actual thought.

42. What do you have handy at your bedside? books, reading light, chapstick

43. Grilled or Fried? grilled

44. When is the last time you saw your best friend(s)? last week

45. Are you afraid of the dark? No, but I do prefer not to step barefoot on a toad in the dark.

46. Four people you couldn’t live without, or wouldn’t want to? I can’t narrow it down to less than nine.

47. First thing you would buy if you were given 50 thousand dollars? I’d pay off my car loan and buy tuition to Master’s College

49. What are you most afraid of? It’s not something I’m really, really scared about, but I am concerned to grow spiritually. If nothing else happens in my life, I want to reach the end of my life way more godly and mature than I am now.

50. Are you a giver or a taker? honestly, I’m probably more of a taker. Yuck.

51. What do people call you…like a nickname? I don’t really have nicknames. A few people call me Missy Lissy or Missa Lissa sometimes.

54. Stuck on a deserted island and could bring four things? guns, a plane wreck, mysterious changes of clothes, and innumerable beat-up water bottles

56. Who’s your cell phone provider? at&t

57. Person you would want to meet that is dead? Jane Austen, Esther, William Wilberforce

58. Favorite color(s)? purple, red, black

59. What are some things you ALWAYS bring with you? book, wallet, water

60. What did you want to be when you were a kid? writer, nurse, teacher, mom

61. What do you usually do when the clock turns 7am? if I have somewhere I need to go then I’m up. If there are no appointments, I sleep.

62. What color are your bedroom walls? very pale/bright green

63. Person you would want to meet that is alive? Jesus, face to face

64. Do you have any regrets? of course– nothing too major, but there are always things you did that you shouldn’t or didn’t that you should have

65. What do you think about right before you fall asleep at night? “I stayed up late, again.”

No Variation

Tags

family, God, thanksgiving

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. ~James 1:17

There is no variation with God. He is uniformly good and gracious. We’re having holiday festivities at home today, so it feels like Thanksgiving.

• God’s grace– It’s raining down on me. I am showered with more than I need and certainly more than I deserve. He never gives up on me, even when I’m stubborn and recalcitrant.
• Family– I know there are tons of great families out there but I’m pretty sure God put me in the best one! 🙂 Dad works so hard to provide for us and is full of wisdom. Mom’s love never fails. The siblings are good friends and lots of fun to talk and kid around with.
• Friends– It’s nice to know that there are people that you care about and who care about you. It’s also been great to have old friends back in the area and to get to know new people.
• School– I’m thankful that there are choices available. Not many people have the freedom to get the kind of education they’d like.
• Work– I’m thankful for what I’ve learned over the past five years in the work-place and that God has always provided a job for me.

After Election Day

I am disappointed. It is no surprise that Obama won but it I kept hoping that somehow, McCain would win. McCain, while not perfect, would be so much better than Obama. I get the feeling that we haven’t seen the real Obama yet. It doesn’t seem like he understands the gravity of the ideological Isalamsim threats. A lot of people seem to think that Obama is going to be America’s savior. There’s this clip on some of the talk radio shows from a citizen interview. A woman says she’s not going to have to worry about putting gas in her car, paying her mortgage, etc… Huh?? Where has she been? Not in the real world, that’s for sure.

The bright spot is that Proposition 8 passed. That was a nice surprise. Could have something to do with the record numbers of black voters, generally against homosexual marriage, that turned out to vote for Obama.

It’s tempting to worry about the bleak forcast, but ultimately, it’s God that sets leaders up and causes them to fall and I can’t put my faith in princes whether I think they will do a good job or not.

On another note, it was fun to vote in such a historical election and to participate in the election excitement, whether positive or negative. This is one I might be telling the grandkids about someday.

Psalm 146- The Happiness of Those Whose Help Is the Lord

Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord, O my soul!

While I live I will praise the Lord;

I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

Do not put your trust in princes,

Nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help.

His spirit departs, he returns to his earth;

In that very day his plans perish.

Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help,

Whose hope is in the Lord his God,

Who made heaven and earth,

The sea and all that is in them;

Who keeps truth forever,

Who executes justice for the oppressed,

Who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners.

The Lord opens the eyes of the blind;

The Lord raises those who are bowed down;

The Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord watches over the strangers;

He relieves the fatherless and widow;

But the way of the wicked He turns upside down.

The Lord shall reign forever—

Your God, O Zion, to all generations.

Praise the Lord!