*hand above water, waving to you*

The title is the mental image of what's going on with me at the moment.

Wedding planning, I'm realizing, is all about working hard for months so that I won't have to on November 3rd through 10th.  I'm ok with that idea. I like planning and I like not stressing on important days, so... plan, I shall!!

While simultaneously taking a chemistry class... Yeah, yall, this is not my jam.  Where are the mommies and babies in "calculate the standard free energy change for the formation of NO(g) from N2(g) and O2(g) at 298K?"  No mommies and babies there.  Nope. But I have to learn it in order to get to maternal and child nutrition, so I'm muscling through... *sigh*

So!  In order to have some chill time tonight, I'm taking a detox bath!  Epsom salts, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), essential oils, and maybe some ginger.  Soak for 40 minutes while drinking PLENTY of water, and then sleep soundly for several hours.  Amen.  I may even play some Enya and light a candle, yall.  I expect to feel like a fully rested superhero tomorrow morning.

Ok--fun wedding stuff that the dudes should be involved in: venue picking (some have opinions here), registering (but only for 1 hour), groomsmen's attire, honeymoon stuff (all of it--just let him do it all), hiring the "getaway car," meeting the photographer, and helping to pick the food.  Everything else, I've learned, goes so much smoother if it just magically happens for him.

It goes smoother because he thinks it's fun and easy, and that makes a world of difference :)

PS, I miss this.  But priorities right now are crazy leaning toward other things, so I'll keep updating as is possible!

Blogging and Journaling Observations

Now, before anybody gets their britches in a wad, this is not a definitive "how to" on journaling and blogging. Rather it is a collection of observations that I have made about my own blogging experiences and journal adventures. Yours may (and possibly SHOULD) look very different from mine. But this is a ME-centered blog. So I'm gonna talk about ME.

Me.

So! Journal experiences first. I journaled before I knew what blogging was, so it only seems fair. I have found that I must make guidelines to follow that will shape and somewhat format the entries in my journals. For instance, with my current Leather Bound Journal (LBJ) I have the following "rules" (not really rules, don't let that throw you off):

-  all entries have the date and time recorded
-  entries are directed at the journal, not at myself or another reader (unless otherwise noted)
-  I may certainly write letters to others, but those others don't get to read them
-  known exceptions: prayers (God has that omniscience thing going for Him), and letters to my someday hubs. He will get to read those once he claims his title. Can't be showing his letters to some poser!
-  I do not do not do not have to write every day. Ever. And I don't have to write just once a day. Writing frequency it totally an up-to-me kind of thing. I've scared myself off from journaling for weeks at a time because I set high standards for my journal keeping and it was too much to handle.

Ok the whole point of these guidelines is to make my journal a safe place for me. I can exhale onto paper without thinking about who I am writing to, who may see it, and how much I'm responsible for writing. It's really nice. The only problem that I run into is when there's so much to write that I don't write anything for too long, and then I don't know how to record it all without missing something. I want to do it all justice, but I can only write so much in one sitting.

That happens with blogging, too (segue!).

The India trip, for example.  SO MUCH HAPPENED that I have no idea how to tell you exactly what happened.  There's another post brewing that will be a "this is what we DID" rather than a "this is how I FELT" kind of post.  Still brewing because I'm still trying to lucidly sort all that out.  Maybe I never will, though, and I should just go ahead and blog it out. Hm.

Anywho.  Blogging guidelines!  Not rules, not regulations, not for everybody, but they've helped make this blogging experience a better one for me (and possibly for you.  Unless you don't enjoy reading these posts.  In which case, why have you read this much?  You're lying to yourself.  You love my blog.  You can't get enough of it.  Embrace the love).

-  remember the audience.  Write knowing that your grandmom, little sister, professors, best friends, that person you want to talk about, and your future boss are all reading.  I'm (almost) too afraid to blog about the embarrassing story associated with the hard lesson behind that guideline because I'm afraid that it's still applicable.  Here's a hint:
-  don't blog during class and write about how you're blogging in class.  If you choose to ignore this advice, then do not subsequently give your blog address to the professor of said class, then requiring you to run frantically to the nearest computer to delete all said class-blogging entries.
-  that being said, write as yourself.  Don't create a fake voice--write as YOU, knowing that those who know and love you may be reading, and those who don't know and love you are GETTING to know you by reading.
-  read other blogs, be inspired by them, and encourage others to blog
-  please, for the love of all things good in the world, do not whine on your blog. 
-  unless it is side-splittingly hilarious.  Then whine all day.
-  if you provide a link in your blog, explain what it is.  This doesn't make me want to click here no matter how awesome it is.  Comprende?

Brilliant.  Now go start a blog, update your own, buy a journal, or just pick it up again.

I love ya like the Pioneer Woman loves her luggage :)

That Terrifying Question...

We're coming up on 100 posts, folks.  Just a couple more posts and we've made it to some centenarian postage.  This party's just getting started.

Also, 52 days to graduation.

Can we just talk about how flippin exiting that is?

And flippin terrifying?

Ok let me ask you something--if it's rude/uncomfortable/socially inappropriate to ask how old someone is, whether a child was a "surprise" or not, whether someone is a Republican or a Democrat, etc...  Then how is it possible that the following question is considered totally normal:

"So what's next for you after graduation?"

What a mean question.  If I do know, do you really care?  What if it's really boring?  Or totally outside of your realm of thinking?  What if you disapprove?  Do you still want to know?

And if I DON'T know...  WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO??  FREAK ME OUT???

Good job.  It's working.

Because, no.  I don't have a post-graduation 5-year plan.  I barely have a PRE-graduation next-2-weeks plan.  Those of you who know me well know that this is kinda bizarre.  I like plans.  And structure.  And bulleted lists of things to do.  I like to have an idea of where I'm heading with a general timeline pointing to an ultimate goal.

And it is a GIANT challenge to not have that in my life right now.

God's pushing me to lean on Him--not on a plan that I make.  To trust that He's going to take care of me.  To trust that He has a plan and he's going to fill me in on it--in His sweet time.  To help me to see that my life is merely a vessel for His Glory--not a means for Cole's glory.

As uncomfortable as I am without my own plan, there is an INCREDIBLE amount of comfort in resting in the knowledge that God's plan trumps anything that I could make up on my own without His guidance.

For example - the ONLY plan that I have for post-graduation is to go to India on a short mission trip.  That's the only post-graduation plan that I have, and at the moment that is the most comforting, exciting, fulfilling plan I can imagine having.  Nothing else that I "test out" in my head (I do what could be called "statistical daydreaming") feels as right, urgent, and real as that mission trip.  I know without a doubt that I am meant to go on that trip.  Shoutout to old-school hymn - "Blessed Assurance."

Now.  The flip side.  I'm still praying that God shows me something else that feels as providential as that India trip feels to me now.  Something that has life-long implications.  I'm fully aware that the mission trip is 10 days long.  That's not very long.  Post-graduation plans usually involve something a little more long-term than just to the end of the next month.  I feel like God's going to use this trip somehow to show me something (oh hai, vagueness), but obviously I don't know what that is yet.

It's kinda a roundabout anxiety/comfort/excitement/anticipation/anxiety/comfort/ excitement cycle.

And how do you explain THAT to someone when they ask that terrifying question...

"So what's your plan for when you graduate?"

Today:

Let me tell you a little about my day.

1.  I've fallen in love with hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com.

You will too.  Just try it out.

2.  I'm stinky.  I need a shower.  I had dance class today, and it was rough and tumble.  My hips are going to feel that tomorrow.  Leg swings.  Rolling around on the floor.  WHEW.

3.  My tolerance is diminishing in a particular type of social situation.  I'm gearing up for a big explanitory blog post.  Keep your ears up.  Meanwhile, see number 1.

4.  I dislike it when my professors have such severe and obvious chips on their shoulders (when it's plural it sounds like there's a stack of pringles hanging out on somebody's shoulder) about Jesus Christ. I understand that not everybody is a believer--oh trust me, I understand--but when that same professor speaks respectfully of all other faiths under the sun, it tells me that s/he has a personal and almost child-like rebellion from Christ.

Do you believe in Santa Claus? (if so this doesn't apply to you)

If NOT, does hearing someone talk about believing in Santa make you angry? Are you so vehemently against the belief in Santa? No. That seems a ridiculous way to respond. It's just that the whole thing isn't something you believe in. You don't feel the need to slam little kids who believe in Santa. Being angrily opposed to Christianity makes me wonder if maybe you are actually angry with God. It's mighty hard to be angry at someone you really don't think exists... Follow my logic?

That doesn't apply to everyone who doesn't follow Christ. But it's pretty clear that that's what's going on with a couple of my profs.

5. I'm about to watch the The Wizard of Oz with my dear friend Meg. So happy about that. :D

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Please note that I had to edit out some weird formatting stuff from earlier.  Sorry about that.  Silly Blogger-droid.

The Day

You know what I'm talking about. It's The Day when the world seems like its conspiring against you. It's The Day when nobody's doing ya any favors. It's The Day when you feel hard as a rock, pushing through, cynical as all get-out.

Paper due tomorrow. Take-home exam due tomorrow. Neither completed (or close to it).

But I'm going to see family tomorrow :) That's a lovely light at the end of the tunnel.

I'll make it through these silly assignments. I'll grab some food and next thing I know it'll be finished. This time tomorrow, I'll be turning in that exam and peaceing out to go get a hug from my sister.

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Criminology Catch-22

Crime on campus is going to happen. Some of it will be reported. If the college campus works diligently, as they are told to do, to report every single crime (as per the Clary Act, which you should wiki. Seriously), their crime numbers are quite high, but they're honest, and it speaks to the campus' awareness of crime (which often means they're taking action to improve safety) and the students' ease with reporting crime. If the college just copy/pastes the numbers that the police department says happened in the boundaries of the campus, they're missing so much information (especially if that college likes to "take care" of those problems themselves). And then there's 45% of campuses that report no crime at all (Utopia University?). What the hell does THAT mean? No crime reported? No crime at all?  Really?

My point is this—we look at statistics for crime on campus, and we have no clue what that really means. We see that University of California at Davis has 62 sexual assaults out of 30,000 people, and University of California at San Diego has 2 sexual assaults out of 27,000 people in the same year. Any parent (or student for that matter) would see those numbers and think, "Holy moly! Davis must be FREAKIN DANGEROUS! Um… I like not being sexually harassed, kthanks." But UC Davis has taken the Clary Act seriously and works diligently to try to account for every crime, to respond to it, and to work to help students know where to go to go/who to seek out when these crimes happen. Because of this, yes, their numbers are higher, but boy would I feel safer there (and I've been there—it really does kinda feel like Utopia University) than, say, at UC San Diego which is in a bigger city, and which said there was virtually no crime. They clearly underreported the sexual assault that (sadly) certainly happened.

On the other hand, high numbers could ALSO reflect a more dangerous campus. At least that's what we're trained to think. We're told to trust the statistics, to find comfort in knowing those numbers. Or to find discomfort in it. High sexual assault here, none over here—sounds like a person with half a peanut brain could figure that out. But what if the "none over here" campus is lying through their teeth because they don't want to hurt admission rates. We end up trusting in their made-up crap.
 
So what do we do? How do we tell, then? Guys, you're not going to like this—we can't fully know. There are too many nuances. We may never hear about the time that the quiet girl got harassed by that group of drunk guys. We may never know that 3 people reported the same crime because none of them knew that the others were reporting it. We may never know if that burglary was assault as well, but just reported as an assault or if it was both, and maybe a hate crime on top of it. Crime numbers are crap. They don't give us any real information, like they pretend to do. It's assumption (or a long-nosed lie) playing dress-up as cold, hard fact.

There may be typos.  I was typing this while listening/taking notes.

Lists for You

Hey folks :)
Recipes I'm thinking about:

1. Pumpkin pie
2. Grilled eggplant with crab meat and a creamy sauce (inspired by Louisiana Lagniappe in Alabama)
3. Butternut squash spice cake
4. Fall vegetable lasagna
5. Some sort of a homemade soup

Movies that I'd like to see:

1. Lovely, Still
2. Bran Nue Dae (maybe)
3. Jack Goes Boating

Things I'm reading [for school]:

1. Jacques Ellul on the "Betrayal of Technology" (look it up on youtube if you want an exciting brain exercise. Don't worry—there are subtitles)
2. Cultural Criminology: An Invitation AND Cultural Criminology: Unleashed (for those of you interested in questioning The Man and media's perpetuated assumptions about crime)
3. Readings on the Social Animal (social psychology – flipping fascinating)

Things that are really embarrassing:

1. Talking, rather awkwardly, with a classmate, and then ROYALLY inhaling a bucketful of water, thus coughing like mad and having to leave the room (it burns…)
2. Missing an answer to an absurd degree, proving without a doubt that the reading was not read.
3. Not knowing a) how many cylinders in my car b) for certain the year of my car ["I think it's an '04…] and c) how to explain what's wrong with my car any other way but through sound effects ["It's kinda like 'BDRUMBUMBUMBUM…bumbumbum…' Does that make sense?"]

Have a lovely day, you J

Mean Girls and Salesmen

Every generation that goes through maturation in our society has to learn this one particular lesson: true friendships do not emerge from dispositional compliance.

Mkay I felt your eyes glaze over for a sec. No need for that. "Dispositional compliance" is another word for peer pressure, essentially. It's doing some people-pleasing act in order to gain favor from someone that you don't have a history with or loyalty to.

Example: every compromising act in Mean Girls. Every time the pre-alcoholic Lindsay Lohan does something that she doesn't agree with in order to gain access to the world of the plastics, she is engaging in dispositional compliance.

The vast majority of us are people-pleasers. We want people to like us. Even people that we don't know. For example, the Asch conformity experiments showed that many people would answer questions incorrectly if those around them answered incorrectly, even though they knew the right answer and had answered it correctly before. Why? They wanted these complete strangers to like them.

Salesmen are aware of this phenomenon. But they make it even harder to avoid the compliance, because they try to make you like them. Then you feel emotionally invested in them, and you're less likely to turn them down.

Which is why I'm mean to salesmen and employees who work on commission.

(Apologies for the poor grammar and spelling. Blogging in class means only half of my brain is engaged. More on the failures of "multitasking" later)

Obligatory Back To School Post

Yes, I'm brilliantly excited. But I also know that everybody and their mama is writing about the first day back to school.

Or maybe I should follow fewer mom blogs.

But dooce is so FABULOUS!

So anyway.

I want to go to Spain. And Switzerland. And India. Not in that order.

There are about 100 other places just off the top of my head. I want to go with my beau. And I want to go right after graduation. Ok, maybe right after the India mission trip :)

I think about this because college is kinda like a zoo right now, but with more gladiator sandals and gym shorts than your standard zoo.

Deep southern sense of humor: life's good. It's just hard. Ya gotta make it funny sometimes.

Fun fact: today is happy syllabus day. Also known as "tears of freshmen day". There's a lot of anxiety going on on campus right now. Not me though :) Though I do really need a back rub. Knots like CRAZY.

Ready for my beau to get back and ready for my new bike to move in at my place :)

Worst fear

Since childhood, my worst fear has been throwing up.

Spiders? Psh. I smoosh them.
Snakes? Some of them do good things. I avoid them all, but no overall hatred.
Things under my bed? Ok, so that's pretty scary, but that's for another post.

Throwing up, though... Trembling, paralyzing fear.

It doesn't happen often at all (praise God for that incredible blessing), but the very idea that it may happen has the power to ruin my day.

So the girl sitting next to me comes into class late, looking pale and frail. She looks at the professor and explains with hand motions and mouthing words that she is sick. That throw up kind of sick. But she, being the academic martyr that she is, has braved the natural elements to grace us all with her infected presence.

This is so incredibly not ok with me. Please, for the grace of God, if you are sick, do not--DO NOOOOOOOT--come to class sick.

My weak unrested body is not prepared to fight off throw up. It's 5 days til finals week, miss. You infect me, and you will pay for your ill deeds. Now go home.