Oops

No, I'm not traumatized by the PB election, nor anything of the sort. I've just been crazy busy for the last week. I'm trying to put in a little extra time right now because I'll be out of the office Weds-Sat this week, plus I have to get ready for the ordinations and wedding themselves. Also, living with my parents, while wonderful, takes up more time than living by myself. We've been to a ball game, driven out to my cousin's engagement party (finally - they've been dating for six years), hosted my brother's financial advising welcome event, etc. So when I have had a couple of minutes, they've mostly been devoted to laundry, ironing, cooking, or sleeping.

As to my last post - I'd been highly concerned about how Bishop Jefferts Schori had gotten elected, based on things I'd heard from various sources around Convention the previous couple of days. In the days since, it's become pretty clear to me that the bishops responded to her capacity, leadership, maturity, and clear-headedness rather than pushing for a particular agenda (either right or left), though it's entirely possible that was an element also. I'm still slightly concerned about international ramifications, but mostly I'm just very pleased at their choice.

Not now

I'm entirely too conflicted to comment on the election of Jefferts Schiori as Presiding Bishop right now. I'll try to work something out here later.

For the record

I object to having to get up before 7 more than once in the same week. Really, I'd just as soon be able to sleep until 8 every day and 9 or 10 once every couple of weeks, but I accept that 8:00 services don't really allow that schedule. I just don't think I should have to do it on other days besides Sunday.

I danced!

Tonight, I went back to my old studio and braved the advanced class at my old dance studio. I'm relieved to report that my body still remembers a lot. Mentally, I can still keep up, and physically I'm not even doing all that badly. Am I out of shape? Yes. I'm a little slower, considerably less flexible, and significantly rounder than I was when I stopped dancing. (Although, skinny seems to have gone out of vogue in that studio - I was by no means unusually large for that class, which was both nice and odd.) But my turnout is still as good as my bone structure will allow, I can still pick up combinations about as well as most of the girls (even if it's because I'm paying better attention), and it didn't hurt too much. (I kept going back and forth during barre between wanting to push myself and wanting not to injure myself. Then I pushed my leg a little too high during an arabesque and decided to go for not injuring myself. Hey, I never said I liked being out of shape....) Sadly, the only plain technique class this summer is Tuesdays at 4:15, which is a little tough with work, but I'm told I can come learn choreography for the fall performance and stand in for missing dancers, and there's an adult beginners class, so I should be able to take some classes, anyway. I'm pretty excited about it (can you tell?).

The short version

is that the job is going very well. I've written one newsletter article and started a second, both of which are due Thursday; made two hospital visits; helped with a community meal that the church runs; read book one of Bede's Ecclesiastical History; made a couple of phone calls to parishioners; explained the magic of converting clergy shirts to the office staff; and been to a staff meeting, two liturgies, and a youth pool party. Oh, and my rector is off at General Convention and won't be back until Thursday, so I've been learning the ropes on my own, which has been sort of fun.

Meme

We haven't had a meme here this month... so here's one from Badgering.

5 Items in my Fridge:

1. Hummus
2. Leftover pierogies and peas
3. Leftover peas with no pierogies
4. Lots of yogurt
5. Sam Adams Summertime

5 Items in my Closet:

1. Fun new brown striped summer work pants
2. New turquoise sleeveless blouse with covered buttons that will be a clergy shirt when it grows up
3. New polka-dotted two piece dress outfit (yeah, ok, it looks better than it sounds)
4. New turquoise linen jacket (yay!)
5. New eyelet short-sleeved blouses

5 Items in my Car:

1. Road atlas
2. Box of books to read at work
3. Prayer book/hymnal
4. Collars and electrical tape, for hospital visits
5. Broken hanger pieces (from Thanksgiving still)

5 Items in my Purse:

1. Wallet
2. Sunglasses
3. Burt's Bees Champagne Lip Shimmer
4. Phone
5. Rosary

5 Items on my Desk: I am the Incredible Movable Intern With No Real Desk right now, but on my desk in my room at home I have:

1. Old magazines
2. Sophomore yearbook from high school, because I was looking someone up last time I was home and my parents have decided to store my yearbooks on a high shelf where I can't put it away
3. Orientation CD
4. Diocesan aid form
5. The picture of Yoda that Emily ripped out of her high school ethics textbook for me

5 Items Flowering in my Garden:
1. Little spiky white things
2. Slightly bigger, slightly less spiky, two-toned pink things
3. Little pink things
4. Peonies
5. Roses

In Which Yodabeth Discovers "Summer Clothing"

Growing up, clothing divided into three categories: church/dressy, school, and play. As an adult, that's become: church/dressy, school, and camp. Indeed, church/dressy includes a remarkably well filled out professional wardrobe for someone who's 25 and only ever worked campus ministry and camp jobs. As far as I'm concerned, professional clothing involves blouses, gray/black/chocolate pants (often wool or lined or both), long dark skirts, suits, etc. You have clothes for the academic year, and you have clothes for the camp season. And when you work in a hospital instead of a camp for a summer, you wear the former, because it's a professional (and highly air-conditioned) environment.

Today I discovered that not all clothing falls into the binary division of "fall/winter" or "camp". Today, I sat (figuratively) at my mother's knee and learned of a thing called "summer clothing." Today, my parents and I went to the outlets, where I acquired things like sleeveless and short-sleeved blouses, knee length skirts with bright colors, and ankle-length pants (some of which are pale). Today, my mother and Jane came very close to convincing me that a long black linen skirt with a nice top (not a blouse!) will be an entirely professional outfit for my first day at my internship parish tomorrow. I still have my suspicions, but since I am not yet permitted to retreat into clericals, I will wear this outfit, and I will act professional enough that there will be no doubt as to whether I ought to be working there. (Admittedly, the action/speech part is the more important part of the professionalism equation even in indubitably professional clothing.) I am informed that in the 21st century, a suit on a summer Sunday, or even a more formal blouse, will be overdoing it, even for an intern on her first Sunday at the church.

I am now trying to accustom myself to this new reality. My camp wardrobe is in a camping pack in the basement. My winter clothes are (mostly) in Evanston. Instead of either, the closet contains things suitable for summer work wear. (Ok, so it also has most of my blouses and a lot of my winter pants. I change slowly.)

Tune in tomorrow night to find out what happens when I show up in the aforementioned suit-free outfit!

Arrived

I've made it back to the Cleveland area, gone to my father's retirement party, and am now settling in at my parents' house.

Say hey hey...

While cleaning and packing today, I found the disk of 2004 camp pictures and loaded them onto my computer. I just took a few minutes to look at them again, and I'd forgotten just how much fun that summer was. Yes, the summer had its disasters and its crazy-making parts - for instance, camp pictures should by all rights exclude scenes of me sitting at my computer working in the office. But 2004, especially for Core Camp, we had the best camp staff I've ever ever worked with, and there was no way it was not going to be fun. You could make a lot of camp brochures with happy and capable-looking staff out of the pictures from that summer. I know I'm doing what I need to do for this summer, but I suspect it won't include hysterical scenes of the staff trying to relearn handstands or make marshmallow taffy with our hands or form a crew of Cereal Pirates. I miss my traveling circus!!!

Green trees around us
Blue skies above
Friends all around us
In a world filled with love
Taps sounding softly
Hearts beating true
As we all say
Goodnight to you....

Popping in...

No, I'm not still stuck in the paper. Yes, I finished it. Yes, I have my doubts about it, but I'm not enumerating them here where my professor can read my doubts before my paper. Yes, we've finished both classes and graduation. I've also done three parties, one Official Trustee Dinner, and an ordination; tomorrow I'll go to an installation, Monday a curriculum meeting and lunch, Tuesday a lunch meeting about my field ed, games with Pippa, and Tuesday night dinner... etc. I leave for Cleveland-y parts on Friday, then Saturday I go shopping for summer clothes that aren't camp-appropriate, and Sunday I start my internship - which is an 11-week parish gig.

So while I think I'll be around more starting tomorrow (heck, I haven't even read blogs since Wednesday, I don't think) - if I'm not, you'll know why.

crap.

I've been plugging right along on my Matthew paper, and was feeling encouraged that this was really going to happen in the time remaining before the due date without too much blood and tears. But now I'm stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck. I'm about a quarter of the way down page 12 of what I think will be 17 pages, and I'm stuck. I've got an outline that tells me what I'm supposed to talk about, but suddenly none of it makes sense to me anymore. I have nothing to say. Where did all my thoughts go??? When I left at 5:30, I was totally into the paper. Now, nothing. Grr.

Hot, hot, hot

This won't be news to anyone who reads the paper or watches TV news, or who lives up this way, but it's HOT. 92 degrees Fahrenheit (at 7:30 pm!) is not exactly paper-writing weather. It's not exactly what I think of as May weather, either. Have I mentioned that I'm really excited to be living in air-conditioning this summer? I've still got my windows shut in the common room, because I'm pretty sure it's actually still hotter outside than in here, but it's not what I'd call comfortable either. I think this is a good time to run down to the library and find that footnote I'm missing.

Status messages

Middler student: "five more days of torture"

Senior student: "1 blessed week until graduation!"


Ah, perspective....

Except not really...

Ok, I really am about to go finish a paper, but I was just looking at Commencement pictures on Smith's website (trying originally to find a picture of Davis Center to link to), and I had to share. There is a picture of the '81 alums in the Ivy Day parade that shows one holding a sign on which is printed "'81: When the greatest risk of sex was pregnancy."

Um. Wow. Ok. I know this is a women's college, and there are fewer occurrences of STDs on women's college campuses than on coed campuses, partly because lesbian sex tends to be a little safer as far as diseases go - but is she serious? Just because you thought the greatest risk was pregnancy doesn't mean it was true, woman - STDs have been around for years and years and years - and especially now that we know way more about sex, disease, and the early 80s than anyone did then, why on earth would you make such a claim?

I think I'm glad the picture doesn't show the face of the woman holding that sign. Ugh.

Long time passing...

I've been away a few days, and I'll probably be away a few more. It's that time of the term, and finishing off the Awards Night service last night really only means it's time to buckle down hard* and finish off the last couple of papers (which unfortunately are more sizeable than most papers here). I've just scheduled out every hour between now and Wednesday morning, and blogging doesn't make an appearance.**

*What Seabury needs is Davis Center. That is, not really, because I'm probably much healthier for not having easy access to Davis french fries and Seattle's Best Coffee, but in an ideal world. (And yes, I know that Smith no longer has Davis either, which is a travesty, and that NU's Norris Center is not that far away, but Norris doesn't have quite the charm that Davis Center had, not being located in a big yellow 19th century New England house with a ballroom upstairs.)

**Well, every hour between 8:30 this morning and next Wednesday - I refuse to count the next two hours as real time, since by all rights I ought to be asleep. I am, however, about to go see what I can magically accomplish in that time on no sleep.

Books! More of them!

I'll post my own thoughts in response to this later, but for now here's an interesting link to a post about the question "What's the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years?"

Cabbages and Kings

Center of Gravitas has an excellent post today about misogyny, from the recent Burger King ad to disgusting behavior by a local classroom king. It's worth a read.

(By the way, does anyone else find it odd that the fast food chain airing that ad is also the only one with a decent veggie burger?)

Go. Now.

Many of you will already have seen this link on AKMA's blog, but if you haven't, go now and read Holyoffice's Very Short Guide to Christianity. Don't miss the christology addendum in the comments. (2005 GOE takers will be pleased to note that he begins by defining premillenialism.)

Mothers and fathers...

So, I've got mixed feelings about Mother's Day, for a lot of the usual reasons - I love my mother and my grandmothers and like having a day to celebrate them, but I know any number of people for whom it's a day to miss their mothers or to wish they had different relationships with their mothers, or who can't have children, or who are raising them under problematic circumstances, or children who never had a mother to begin with, or, or.... This is especially true as I get further into adulthood and have to ponder the chances of ever being a mother myself.

Still, I like Mother's Day and Father's Day as long as I don't think too hard about it. If I didn't have two significant papers looming, I'd be working on a project that's in the back of my head - an art piece using images from my family's history - both sides, pieces we'd rather not think about (plantations, for instance), pieces we're proud of (signing the Declaration, Lucretia Coffin Mott, etc). If I could pull it off well, it would make a good mother's/father's day gift to my parents. I might try my hand at it this summer when I'm home, even though it will be badly timed for a gift.

Instead - well, I was going to offer a Mother's Day song. But I can't find the lyrics anywhere and I don't myself own the recording (my mother does). So, um, happy Mother's Day, everyone.

Alleluia

So, I passed the one-year mark of good health a month ago, and didn't really think much of it. Too busy, I guess, plus good physical health has been something I've mostly taken for granted throughout my life.

Tonight, though, I realized something else about the last year - that I've only experienced one or two flashbacks all year, and that the ones I have had have been pretty minor and I've coped with them in really healthy ways - writing, researching, talking, drawing, etc. And I realized that I don't even feel guilty about it, because it's not because I've really thought any less about Emily. I guess I've just felt safe enough this year to process not only the event, but the associated grief. I've been able to do things this year that I imagine more successful therapy experiences might have helped me to do before.

So tonight, I'm thankful - and I'm celebrating a little. I'm celebrating the fact that I'm starting to be able to remember Emily with less pain and guilt. I'm celebrating the fact that I can recognize and assess more of the pain and guilt that is there. I'm celebrating the fact that I have friends who are willing to hear about both the pain and the healing. I'm celebrating the realization that there's actual healing happening here and not just repression.

Thanks be to God - alleluia, alleluia.