happiness and cheer

I'll write an extended, more detailed blog later about all the things I'm grateful for, but since Christmasing is always exhausting, I'll sum up:

I'm grateful for my family and for how cool they are. I'm grateful for my sister and that we've liked each other since we were little babies cooing "Go in nursery and eat cookies" and "I'll help you, Bizzy" at each other. I'm grateful for the sense of humor our extended family possesses and that it has trickled down the generations. I'm grateful for my mom's painfully good looks, and my dad running down the driveway behind my training-wheel-less bike, and their delightfully dated, oversized glasses.

I'm grateful for books about supremely nerdy things like punctuation and Shakespeare and Mary Poppins, and people in my life who know me well enough to actually buy them for me.

I'm grateful for good taste in jewelry. Any future husband of mine has a lot to live up to, given the standard my dad has set.

I'm grateful for dear, dear friends who send me texts, emails, IMs, and facebook messages, wishing me a merry Christmas, telling me they miss me, and informing me how grateful they are for me in their lives on this day. I'm grateful for singular "friend language" and funny poetry and extreme obsession/dissection of the excrusiating minutia of our lives. I'm unspeakably grateful for the support and encouragement I receive practically on a daily basis, though it's probably annoying and somewhat unfounded.

I'm grateful for Judy Garland and Gene Kelly.

I'm grateful for history and for places far away from here, where I aspire to belong.

I'm grateful for Jelly Bean, Bonny, and Sprout.

I'm grateful that I am no longer stuck in awkward 6-10th grade physicality, though I do mourn the passing of my golden "cute years" (apparently I peaked at age-4, mullet and all).

I'm so grateful for Pop Apricot colored glittery nail polish, since I haven't been able to paint my nails ALL SEMESTER!

I'm grateful for sweet, cute boys who probably don't even know it when they're being sweet and cute, and who keep my spirits up, just by their cuteness.

I'm grateful for my BYU experience, and also grateful that it's quickly coming to a close. Also terrified, but mostly grateful. I'm grateful for the potential and probability of eventually moving on in a big way. I'm so grateful for my major. I'm grateful for the British Renaissance and Restoration, for Queen Elizabeth I (and II, for that matter), for Westminster Abbey, for the early-modernist and modernist periods, for the Church of England, for Jacobean and Restoration drama, for creative non-fiction and essays, and GRAMMAR (because, contrary to the opinions of some, I do know how to speak/write).

I'm grateful I was able to retrieve every document, every picture, and every song I've ever downloaded when my computer was pronounced dead beyond repair last week. I'm grateful for a shiny new external hard drive.

I'm grateful for four years worth of A Christmas Carol and all the many people involved in it each year. I'm grateful to have come into a very successful year with it, and to go out on the same note. I'm grateful for beautiful dresses and another excuse to wear a corset. I'm grateful for such good friends, old and new, and to share the experience with them. I'm grateful for a nice, supportive Jeremy to play my husband, even though we had our share of silly misunderstandings and fake real marital problems. I'm grateful to have shared the stage with both my mom and my sister again.

I'm grateful for the 1988 church movie Luke II that is less than 5 minutes long, that we watch on Christmas Eve every year. I'm grateful for the spirit it captures with Joseph's warm eyes and the king's trembling lip and the donkey drooling and the sheep bleeting, and especially the tiny little voice at the end singing, "Let Earth receive her King."

I am so grateful Earth has receiceved her King, and will receive Him again someday. He is the reason I can be grateful for anything else in my life. I'm overwhelmed by His love and steady hand, even when I can't see Him guiding me. I love Him.

jane austen fan club

Confession: I love Jane Austen. I love Jane Austen books, I love Jane Austen movies, I love BBC Jane Austen. Sometimes I watch Pride & Prejudice 1.5 times in a row when it's on Oxygen because I forget how much I love it but then it's on and I love it and I can't turn away except to turn off the part when Darcy stretches his hand because it's so much my favorite part that I can't even stand to watch it, which makes complete sense, doesn't it? I can't say that I go so far as to stand in the second-floor window at Shakepeare's birthplace and have a "Jane Austen moment," looking out into the garden, but absolutely she pierces me to the core. Give me Darcy! Give me Tilney! GIVE ME CAPTAIN WENTWORTH!!!!

There, I said it.

cubed

There is a cube sitting in the middle of a desert. It isn't very large-- probably about a square foot or so-- and made of shiny glass. The glass is thick and durable. A ring of displaced sand surrounds the cube, like maybe it fell from somewhere and plopped down with a muted thud, but who knows where it came from? There are mountains far, far in the background, the tops of trees at the foot of them. Maybe there's an oasis? Around the cube there are tiny desert weed seedlings, twigs flicking around in the wind that blows from the right, and the spray of sand on the cube is not harsh but it is constant and one side of the cube and its edges are starting to become scratched and dulled by all those tiny tiny flecks of rock.

Then there is a straight ladder. It stands perfectly balanced, weighted in the sand and supported by an unseen force. It is wood and carved, simply but prettily, and stained dark brown-- not painted, but stained. It's become dull and worn with time, so it looks antique, but it probably should be sanded and stained again. It stands a few yards from the cube like a Dali painting, thirteen rungs high, just standing and standing and bound and unmoving, unmovable.

A dark brown horse with a black mane runs past, far away with a trail of dust behind him, running, running, but blink! and he is next to the cube, standing to the right as an indirect protection from the wind and sand. The horse is calm and looks at the cube, curious but only mildly interested, yet it holds his focus. He watches the cube, the unpolished side having become smooth again, and stamps once.

distractamondo

I would do well to stick to focus and concentrate on these four prompts I've got to study for my British drama class. My final tomorrow is going to be one of these questions, and all I have to do is write an essay about it. Just one essay, about one question, from a possible four questions-- no identification, no extrapolating. You'd think I would have had this done hours ago, since I started studying around 11am. You'd be wrong.

Things Distracting Me
1. I am going to see Light in the Piazza tomorrow night. Clearly this will require me to get a new pair of tights and a new, dressy top (preferably in dark green), but I don't know when I'll have time to swing by Forever 21 (since I know it won't fail me). Clearly I need to set aside time to plan my day around a shopping trip tomorrow afternoon.

2. I haven't spoken to Marie in weeks and weeks, and lo and behold, there she is on facebook at the same time as me! Friends before Finals, I always say. (I always say it.)

3. I'm supposed to somehow teach a class in my friend's AP English class tomorrow morning, thereby providing me experience to write a 10-page final paper, at the same time I'm supposed to be in a final for the class that requires the 10-page paper. This overlapping of schedules would not have been a problem except that my professor rescheduled our final meeting time (wherein we will eat breakfast food and discuss our final projects, not actually take an exam...) and now I'm in the most sticky catch-22 of all time. And unlike Michael Scott, I use the phrase meaningfully.

4. I feel like I don't write very much anymore. Not to say that this lame post is writing of great quality, per se, but it does help to just dump out my brain every once in a while. My goal is to write some good things over Christmas break.

5. I'm worried by how my pants are (or aren't) fitting these days.

6. My laptop is busted, so I'm at home using the dusty old desktop, and it's freezing in this office. I have little extra clothing to choose from, to say nothing of warmth, since all of my clothes are at my house by campus where I actually live. The computer thing is a REALLY big problem, but so are my slowly-freezing fingers.

7. Tuesday will be the 1-year anniversary of when Bonny went away. I miss her. Having Sprouty here makes it easier, though.

8. Someone I've known for 7.5 years is in a secret gay relationship. It is, but shouldn't be, morbidly amusing. Who wants to read about old, be-wigged dead guys and their thoughts on sexuality when I've got sexual mores in my own life to study!

9. People keep complimenting me this week and being all nice and flattering-- and I have no idea what to say to them, mostly because I'm not convinced of their flatteries myself. I'm not saying they're liars or that they're playing any angle in being nice to me, but it's very difficult to accept compliments when you look at pictures of yourself and think, "Wow. This picture actually exists...?" And I probably sound like a real compliment whore, but I'm definitely not asking people to say nice things about me right now. It's just awkward when other peoples' views don't seem to line up with the view you have of yourself.

10. Maybe I want to teach English? Maybe Anna's school is going to be hiring teachers for next year and they don't require a license at the time of hire? Maybe I'm going to show up to class on my first day and have all the girls tell me their names are incorrect on the roll and that their names are actually things like "Alice B. Heind" and then I'll open my desk drawer and a garden snake will slither out?

11. No, no-- I still want to be an actor, and go to England where they produce all these lovely Restoration plays that I'm supposed to be studying right this second.

12. Passive-aggressiveness is not an attractive trait even if supposedly I have to forgive it and chalk it up to young age and inexperience in others. It is frustrating. And annoying. Mostly annoying.

13. I'm anxious to try out my new amathyst-colored eye shadow which was an unintended, but not exactly regrettable, point of purchase.

14. I'm so so so excited for finals to be over so I can go spend money on other people this weekend. I like Christmas shopping. You know, people complain about the commercial side to Christmas, and I get that, but I like spending money on other people and giving them thoughtful presents that maybe somehow convey a little bit of the love I have for them.

15. I hope I get the Will & Grace series box-set for Christmas so I can watch Seasons 6-8 since I've basically exhausted Seasons 1-5. Yes, this is actually something I'm thinking about at the moment instead of Aphra Behn and The Rover.

And that, my friends, is what is distracting me.

unexpected success

It's been a long, drawn-out weekend. My nerves have been tested-- my confidence has soared, was quickly destroyed, and then brought to some kind of neutral indifference (though of course I'm not actually indifferent). And it's not over. I'm not sure when it'll be all settled and decided, but here's the thing:

No matter what happens, or how everything turns out, I've been overwhelmed by the amount of support and encouragement I've received from so many people. I have never felt such an out-pouring of love from so many dear friends, family, and people I don't even know very well. I can't begin to express my gratitude for all the sweet texts, hugs, smiles, etc., etc., from namely--

-JL, AN, AB, NJ, MS, KF, ED, M, D, SB, JW, JS, CM, EG, NS, JG, RG, DD, SM, JM, SH, SL, HR, RW, TW, MG, MM, JG, CC, HC, JA, VW, JG-

For verily I say unto you, that great things await you.
-D&C 45:62-