summer Vacation in April--epilogue

Remember my second-to-last blog entry?--You know, the one about finishing my master's degree and facing the prospect of an additional field of study? Well, here's what happened with that.

The good news is that I have a job next year, and it looks like it will be a full-time one. Of course, who knows what we'll have to do the year after that to stay afloat, but one thing at a time. I am incredibly grateful to God and my school community for doing what they can to keep music in their children's curriculum (and to keep me gainfully employed in facilitating that curriculum).

The bad news, and the impetus behind most of this post, is that I have a bad case of the summertime blues. Summertime blues?! you say, incredulously. Isn't that some sort of oxymoron? you ask. Yes. Yes it is. Nevertheless, I, who, as a teacher, have probably one of the best work schedules ever (it sort of makes up for having one of the lowest paying jobs that require college education--and perpetual college education at that) I, even I, am officially complaining about having a summer vacation. Actually, it would be more descriptive to say that the prospect of two months of unstructured self-indulgence has me feeling as discouraged and lethargic as a person might feel who is facing a recurring two month diet that consists exclusively of chocolate cake. I know that just because the time is unstructured, that it doesn't have to be squandered in self-indulgence. There's no rule that says I have to sleep in every day and spend all my time watching tv shows, reading books, and hopping from friend's house to friend's house in a perpetual orbit around my own empty apartment. I know all that very well. The problem is that right now, I have little hope that it will amount to much else. But I simply can not bear the thought of coming to the other side of this time, this precious gift I have that may never come again, with nothing to look back on but a wasteland of botched resolutions and mental escapes. I can not. I will not. Heaven help me, I've got to find some way to spend my life that truly matters!

(Bet you didn't expect all this drama when you started reading today. Well, sometimes that's all I've got.)

I hate being weak. But you know, I was not meant to stay that way. I was meant to grow, and I am growing, and I will continue to grow, God-willing, until the day I die (and maybe even after that).

So here's to a summer that's unlike any other. Bring it on.

giving my two cents

Hello. I had a thought I wanted to share...now what was it...

Oh yes, now I remember!

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in Sunday School knows the story of the widow's mite. That's the one where Jesus is hanging out with his disciples and they're all watching people put their monetary offerings in the Bible-times equivalent of the offering plate. First a couple of rich guys throw in some bags of money, and then a poor widow puts two little copper coins in after them. And Jesus says to his disciples "That widow gave more than the rich dudes because they gave out of their wealth, but she gave out of her poverty all she had left."

Now, the lesson I've always taken away from this anecdote is that, with God, it's the thought that counts. Of course, this is true. In fact, Jesus is the one who moved the boundaries of accountability inward from actions to the thoughts behind the actions (lusting=adultery, anger=murder and so forth). But it never occurred to me until recently that Jesus was not just being magnanimous to the widow, but stern to the wealthy guys as well, that he was not lowering the bar, he was raising it. Can you imagine how full the ancient offering plate would have been if the wealthy men had followed the widow's example and given all that they had? Hearing this story, I always wondered whether I, if I were ever destitute, would have the moral courage or the faith to give God all that I had left. Now I realize that I have the opportunity to show such moral courage every day of my life. (Oh snap!) I don't have to be poor to give everything to God--I can do that right now. And if I want my life to be as full and rich and effective as possible, that's what I have to do, isn't it? No more invented barriers, no more pushing the inner struggle off to another place or time or circumstance. This is a decision that has to be made now, and again tomorrow, and every day for as long as I breathe. That's what it means to follow Christ. Everyone has a chance to put their all in the metaphorical offering plate (which often includes putting something substantial in the literal offering plate every now and then as well), and every 'all' is appreciated by God, be it a gazillion denarii or two cents.

By the way, that widow's tiny little two-cent life-savings has already affected the lives of millions (billions?) of people, if you think of all the people over the last two thousand years (give or take) who have been touched by her story. Cool.

I didn't mean to get preachy, but every once in a while, I have these 'aha' moments that are either very obvious or very profound (or both), and I can't move on until I've shared them.

So thanks for reading.

Summer Vacation in April!

That's right! You are reading the blog of a free woman. Well, mostly free. Exactly one week ago, come 8:53 tonight, I turned in my Paper of Doom, a.k.a Curriculum Project, a.k.a the music educator's equivalent to a Master's Thesis. So, assuming I get at least a B on it, I am now a 'Master' of music education (thank you, Boston University and Sallie Mae). Yippee! I really do feel like summer break has come two months early. Fun times are here to stay.

Or are they?

It was a week ago this afternoon that a conversation* took place between my superintendent and me that went something like this:

Sup: Nobody has any money, least of all the State, so we're looking at some potential program cuts for next year.

Me: "Program" means me, right?

Sup: Yes. Yes it does.

Me: I thought so.

...awkward pause...

Sup: You don't happen to have any additional endorsements,** you know, like in another subject, do you?

Me: no.

Sup: Did you take any classes in college that might, in a pinch, be equivalent to one?

Me: Well, sir, I took a year of German when I was a freshman.

It is more than a little ironic that I, who have accumulated something like 230 credits over my four-and-a-quarter years at SPU, really took relatively few classes outside of the core curriculum and my chosen field. I sort of double majored in music education and music composition. You might say that I minored, majored, and now (hopefully) mastered in music. All so that on the day I turn in my last paper, a paper that would mark the completion of an educational journey some twenty-odd years in the making, I could learn that if I want to keep teaching (without having to move back in with my parents) I will have to take more classes. (By the way, props to my dad: a lesser man would have said 'I told you so!' a long time ago.)

One week ago, I called my mom and had a good cry. Today, I have made peace with the fact that I will probably be taking classes of some sort or other until the day I die. I've decided that if I have to branch out, the most interesting area in which to branch would be linguistics (as in 'teaching English as a Second Language'). I've always liked thinking about grammar and semantics and such. And we're still concerned with making and interpreting sounds, so it's bound to have some element of fun to it, right? Maybe I'll finally pin down the ever-elusive logic behind proper comma usage. The only real problem is that more schooling=more school debt, and I've had just about as much of that as a girl can stand. I don't know how anyone could consider it at all fair that ++edited for content: excessive petulance++ Oh well, as Roy O'Bannon says in Shanghai Noon "The justice system's all screwed up."

So that's what's been happening around here. In other news, now that I'm not spending every waking moment researching and writing papers of doom, I have come to realize that if I actually washed all the clothes that I own (most of which have been 'handed down' to me), the combined space available in my dresser and my closet would be insufficient to hold them all. For a person who usually wears the same thing every week, this is ridiculous. Something must be done. Also, my 'recycling' pile is beginning to eat the rest of my kitchen. And I haven't talked to some of my friends in ages.

*sigh*

I wonder if there's anything interesting on hulu.

*This is not verbatim. It has been creatively altered for dramatic effect. My superintendent is a good and kind man who has been saddled with the difficult job of making decisions that no one wants to make, but that everyone is sure they could make better.

**endorsement: teacherspeak for 'little piece of paper that testifies to one's having taken enough of the right classes to be considered sufficiently competent in a subject to get paid for teaching said subject in school'.

Stargate

Having reached a personal goal for the Paper of Doom by which I have been held captive the last few weeks (and will be held captive for another month, at least...Seriously, this is the biggest paper I've ever had to write. Blurg.), I decided to treat myself to an old Stargate Atlantis episode on hulu. It was "the Prodigal," for those of you in the know--the one where Michael comes back and tries to blow up Atlantis, or, as I like to think of it, the one where Ronon stops being a putz, finds love, and writes his first and only mission report. In any case, watching the show brought back fond memories of when I used to drive down to Seattle for Stargate Fridays.

I remember jetting out of Mount Vernon in my little red shoe,* singing along with whatever cd happened to be playing in the car, feeling the cares of teacher-hood peal away with every mile. I would park in the same old patch of grass along one of Seattle's impossibly slender side roads, experience the same momentary panic as I tried to remember which buzzer was Adrienne and Josh's apartment and which was their neighbor's, and hear the same joyous cries of "Sarahdunn!" as I climbed up the stairs. And then, oh joy! Oh rapture! How sweet it was to be in the company of friends, to exchange greetings with people who knew what you were like at 2 in the morning--but liked you anyway, to have impossibly long and intricate conversations about nothing of consequence, to share things of very great consequence and be understood (or at least to have the effort made). Those times were like water to my parched little soul after a dreary week spent all alone in my thin-walled cat-box of an apartment in Marysville.

Now we're spread out a little farther than before. Our lives are growing out like tree branches, and it makes me wistful. I really don't call or write half as much as I wish I did. I just read your blogs and smile when I think of you. Sometimes I tell the friends I've made here stories about you (good ones). But I'm so grateful to know you, and to have such a rich store of memories made with you that watching sci-fi reruns becomes like looking through a picture album in my heart.

I look forward to seeing you again, and adding more pictures.

Thanks, friends.

*'Little Red Shoe' is the name of my car. It was a gift from my Grandma (the name, not the car).

I probably should have just gone to bed.

They never tell you that having an adventure involves a whole heck of a lot of discomfort, that you'll be cold and wet and hungry, that you'll see unbelievable sights and do incredible things and nobody else will understand. They never talk about the singular difficulty of caring about personal hygiene when one has been battling monsters all day and sleeping in the woods at night. There's no mention of bug bites, blisters, sore backs, ungrateful villagers, ambivalent princes, and hours upon hours of trudging here and there and everywhere in between. Alone.

Of course they never put that stuff in stories.

Who would want to hear it?

Time Warp!

Let's pretend that it's still November.

I wrote this entry over the Thanksgiving holiday, but since I was at my uncle's house (where internet moves at a glacial pace) I wrote it in Word and forgot about it.  I just found it today when I was poking around on my computer.  So here you are.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.  My very favoritest is Easter.  I love the rush of celebrating the resurrection, and all the busy newness of spring.  Everything is growing.  Everything is so full of potential, like the breathless pause before the symphony begins, or the boundless possibilities of a blank page.  I guess you could say that Thanksgiving is the other end of that thought.  It’s the time when things come to completion, when crops have been harvested, when nature lays down to rest after all the fun and frenzy of greener days.  I like that feeling of exhausted satisfaction, as at the end of a productive day, when you look around and take stock of all that you have.  You can’t help feeling grateful.  I like gratefulness because it involves seeing the value of what you’ve been given, and because it means that you are not alone.  When you appreciate something or someone, you are acknowledging that the object of your appreciation somehow makes your life better, and that means that you are not a complete universe unto yourself, but a small piece of an interconnected world.  Now it is possible that only a few of you, dear readers, have ever lost sleep because you were worried that you really were entirely self-sufficient, but those of us who worry about everything are all mighty grateful for our own finiteness.  I'm glad for my neediness, for my loneliness, because it means I was meant for relationship, for adventure and completion.  And if God means for me to be complete (and I believe He does), then who knows what marvelous things will happen to bring it about?

So thanks, everyone, for being part of the adventure that is my life.  I am grateful for you.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Enjoy gorging yourself on Turkey and football.

*Ahem*

...and now we return you to your regularly scheduled program.

For Adrienne. Merry Christmas!

Ten ways to know if you are a minor character in a movie/tv show...

-Your conversations consist largely of random expository information (How've you been, Bob, since your wife died in mysterious circumstances last winter?)

-You have only one name

-You are the third fastest pilot/driver/draw/etc. (the second fastest is usually the villain)

-You face off against the hero after his initial ignominious defeat and before the climactic battle

-Your backstory can be explained in a single sentence

-You say things like "There are four of us and one of you..."

-Your bullets are proven ineffective against the monster and you just keep shooting

-You are the only girl, boy, foreigner, rocket scientist, person with a cool accent, person in a wheelchair, or lonely martian in the group

-You are defined by a single endearing quirk, and you find and fall in love with a person possessing that same quirk with only a significant look, a word or two, and thirty seconds of 'bowmp-chicka-wow-wow' music

-Your only line is 'Grrr!'/'Aaaaaah!'

So there you go.
Merry Christmas all!

(Tune in next time for the Minor Character's Survival Guide)