Birthdays, Old Friends, and Boston!

Today was Claire's birthday, which means I got the day off work. But yesterday, I got to celebrate with her. I brought her a princess balloon, and a bag full of gifts, and a Dora the Explorer card, and we made funfetti cupcakes, and she thanked me about a hundred times for all her gifts. I love that little girl (and her brother) so much! My favorite gift that I gave her was beginner's chopsticks, because she always asks me for two drinking straws and then uses them to stab (very unsuccessfully) at her food and tells me that they are her chopsticks.

Yesterday was also wonderful because Andrew and Sarah came into town! We had a celebratory dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, and then went back to the guys' apartment and reminisced about our college days. Oh, the memories! The best part was most definitely when Scott said, "Well, if we're all done here, I think I'll head over to the Christian Bookstore."

I used today to accomplish a lot of things on my To-Do List. I'm trying to get as many things done as possible before I head off to Boston tomorrow. Yes, that's right, tomorrow night I'm flying out to Boston to visit my oldest and bestest friend: Megan!

So, hurrah, I'll write from Boston!

Love to all!

I babysit Jewish children!

About a week ago, my mom called to inform me that I must go to Biola's bookstore on Thursday, March 25th between 5:00 and 8:00 p.m. in order to purchase my graduation announcements and a cap and gown. After a brief pause, I said, "Oh, I forgot I was graduating." In the all-consuming importance of planning a WEDDING and anticipating MARRIAGE, the celebration of my extremely hard-earned college degree almost got overlooked. Not anymore. Tonight I went to the bookstore and purchased the ridiculously over-priced announcements (which I am looking at as a financial investment, and hoping they will bring in more than I paid for them in the form of congratulatory gifts...) as well as my cap and tassel. I didn't need to procure a gown, since I am going to wear Sarah's. The more I think about it, the happier I am that I am wearing Sarah's gown, it is a small, but important, link to the class that I came in with, and to all of my dear friends with whom I went through college but did not get to graduate. All that to say, now I am feeling really excited about graduation!

I am also feeling really excited about my wedding. Priscilla of Boston called me yesterday to tell me that my shoes and my veil are both (finally) in, and will be shipped to me immediately. This means they either arrived today (I haven't gone home yet to check) or tomorrow! In the midst of the sheer mayhem of wedding planning, it is comforting to know that my wedding garb is taken care of. Everything else might go wrong, but my dress, veil, and shoes are perfect, and thus, I must conclude, the day will be perfect. Also, Sean will be there.

And thanks to Biola's Career Expo which I attended this morning, I am even feeling slightly encouraged about my working status and professional life after college. I might actually get a job that I like and am good at!

But if it all falls through, I know that I still have babysitting...at least for the next few years until it just gets too weird to have a thirty-something woman coming to your house to take care of your kids. I babysat Claire and Nicholas for 7 hours today, and when I left, I had the bouyant realization, "That was easy...and fun." Seven hours of technically hard work, and it flew by, and I enjoyed myself. That is a true sign that I am doing something that I love. I also found out that Claire and Nicholas are a quarter Jewish. For those of you who truly know me, you know how much this means to me. If it was possible, and I highly doubt it that it is, I adore those kids even more now. I spent the day regarding them with nothing short of great awe...Holding Nicholas and thinking, "I am holding a quarter Jewish child..." or feeding Claire lunch and thinking, "I am feeding a child who is a quarter Jewish!" When Claire went down for her nap this afternoon, I got a lot of one on one time with Nicholas, who is almost 9 months old. My mind started to drift (as it normally does) to Harry Potter, so I started telling Nicholas, "You're just a little bit younger than Harry was when he survived/defeated Voldemort for the first time..." I hope his dad wasn't listening too closely from the next room.

Just Registered!

It's so hard to make time to write. Right now I just want to go home, read, take a shower, and sleep for a really long time. I've been at Sean's apartment, working on my resume for most of the evening. I really dislike working on a resume, or should I say, trying to sum up my entire self on a sheet of paper...And even that wouldn't be too hard, except for the fact that the sheet of paper must be perfectly formatted with no grammatical or stylistic errors. There's a career expo at Biola tomorrow, so Sean and I are going to wander around with our resumes in hand, eagerly looking for jobs.

I feel utterly overwhelmed by everything I have to do between now and June 26th. I really hope our wedding is out of this world amazing, otherwise I will be furious that we did not just elope. I have never so many decisions to make in my entire life! I have also never had so many people calling and asking me what they should wear. I am probably in charge of picking out or approving of outfits for at least 30 people on my wedding day.

I really should be more relaxed than this, considering that Sean and I spent the weekend at his house, and I took at least three bubble baths a day. We also registered at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, which was not as awful an experience as I expected, but wasn't exactly great fun either. We registered for five pages of stuff. Then we asked the lady how much most people register for. She rolled her eyes and said she's printed off registries at least fifty-six pages long...that's fifty one pages longer than ours, which made me feel a lot better...I sure felt like a moronic materialist monster wandering around the store and zapping anything I wanted with my scan gun, so that other people can buy it for me. Sean's mantra for the excursion was, "I will not sell out." This enabled him to resist the inevitable temptation of registering for things we absolutely do not need, and it helped us keep a levelheaded approach to the somewhat heady, mind-altering experience of being let loose in a store to pick out whatever your heart desires. By far the most expensive thing for which we registered was the tangerine colored Kitchenaid Mixer, weighing in at a hefty $300, but that was also just about the only thing I wanted. Why? Because I know I will use it. Because I know it will last. And because my childhood development can be measured by my growing ability to engage my own mother's Kitchenaid Mixer. Suffice it to say, the sturdy Kitchenaid mixer is an uncompromisable domestic asset which I really do feel my kitchen (and my life!) would be incomplete without. Other than the Kitchenaid mixer, the only other thing I got really excited about was towels...This is also due to my childhood, but in the reverse manner--meaning that growing up we never had enough towels for our burgeoning family, and I have made it my mission to have a plentiful amount of large, fluffy towels in my future home...even if I have very little else. So, from the way it's looking, Sean and I will be setting up house with plenty of books, towels, and of course, love. What more could we ask for?

Recap!

I just awoke from a wonderful nap in which I was at a grand old city library, that not only had books galore, but also had clothes from every year in the past century for sale. Needless to say, it was heaven! Books and vintage clothes in the same location! Unfortunately, I also dreamed that a Winnie the Pooh movie was released in which Christopher Robin commits suicide at the end, much to the trauma of American children.

Well, it's been quite a few days for Sean and I. Right now we are up in Foster City visiting Sean's parents. We got in last night, when we flew in stand-by from Los Angeles. Kendrick drove us to the airport at sunset, cruising along the 105-West, listening to Coldplay. We were blessed to get on the first flight, and about an hour later we landed at SFO. It's so lovely to have a few days off just to relax. I made sure to take a very long bubble bath last night, reading the back issues of People magazine and my latest midwifery chronicle.


Today we had lunch with Sean's friend and mentor, Tom, who is officiating our wedding. It's really exciting to start seeing even the smaller details of the wedding come together. Last night I went to the Book of Common Prayer online and copied and pasted the traditional ceremony into a Word document and then edited it to get it exactly how we want it. I think it's going to be a beautiful ceremony.

Anyway, like I said, it's been a busy week. On Tuesday night, my cousin Lisa was in town visiting from Raleigh, North Carolina. Sean and I drove down to Long Beach to meet up with her and have dinner. Meeting up with her was the easy part, as we found her quite quickly, picking her up from Long Beach Memorial Medical Center (where her dad is staying right now), but finding a place to eat proved to be more difficult. Lisa's iPhone's GPS kept insisting that we were in Colorado as Sean and I struggled to follow his friend's directions to Long Beach's downtown district. Anyway, after an hour and a half of driving around, we finally ended up in the Shoreline area and ate dinner at The Rock Bottom Brewery, which Sean really loved because "rock bottoming" people is one of Sean's favorite phrases. It was so fun to see a familiar face all the way out here in California. I had forgotten how much fun Lisa is to hang out with, and since I haven't seen her since the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college, we had quite a lot of catching up to do!

On Wednesday, I spent the day with Emily Moothart and her three adorable boys. In the morning, while the boys were having Quiet Time, she and I got to talk a lot, and once the boys got up we made Clover Rolls in honor of St. Patrick's Day. I've been thinking a lot about my future...you know, career options, grad school, stuff like that. But being in their home, and making bread with those precocious little boys confirmed all of my deepest convictions that what I want more than anything is to be a wife and mom. Forget fancy degrees, I know that I will be happy as a clam if I have enough children to keep me busy, and, of course, if I get to share life with Sean every day.

Wednesday night I babysat for Madison and Taylor. We watched Finding Nemo, which made me cry, and then Disney Princess Sing Along Songs. SO GOOD! Madison went into her room to put on her Belle dress--to get in character for the sing-along--and I asked her if she needed help. "No, I can do it by myself. I need some pri-acy," she told me in no uncertain terms. Never mind that she cannot yet pronounce the word "privacy" correctly, she is most decidedly an independent little girl.

On Thursday, Sean and I got to have lunch with Dr. and Mrs. Corey...in the President's office! It was really awesome! Each time Sean tells the story to other people, it grows a little more absurd..."We ate lobster that the President caught with his bare hands that very morning..." But in all seriousness, it was a delicious catered lunch, and we got to tell them how we met, and about our Biola experiences, and our plans for the future, as well as hear advice from them about marriage and stuff. It really helped me to realize just how much I've loved Biola and been blessed by it.

Thursday afternoon, Sean came with me to babysit Claire and Nicholas, since he didn't have classes due to Missions Conference. We took them on a walk to the park, and picked dandelions and went down the slides and played basketball, and just had a great time. On the walk back to their house, Sean was carrying Claire, and she asked him if he was my daddy. He said no, so she asked him if he was my little boy! Hahaha! When we left three and a half hours later, Sean was like, "Care, how do you do it? That is such hard work!"

So, for now we are going to keep enjoying our time up here as much as possible before we have to go back to L.A. and back to work and back to the books. But I'm enjoying our little respite up in the Bay Area!

Earthquake!!!

So apparently the possibility of an earthquake has not yet entered my still seemingly Floridian mentality. The first earthquake I experienced was last year, while I was visiting Sean in his dorm room at Horton. The room started shaking, all the furniture was vibrating, and it never crossed my mind that this could be due to an earthquake, I simply said, "Sean! Stop shaking the room!" To which he replied, "I'm not doing anything!" And I dogmatically refused to believe him.

This morning, I was awakened around 4:00 a.m. to my bed shaking, the entire room shaking quite violently. In my half asleep state, I sat up in bed and saw my roommate Shaya sitting up in her bed, and I promptly felt intense amounts of anger towards her as I thought, "Why on earth is Shaya shaking the room like this?! I wish she would stop!" Then I went back to sleep. It was only this morning upon talking to my cousin Lisa who is visiting from North Carolina that I realized an actual earthquake occurred last night.

Spring is here! As much as I loathe the fact of losing an hour of sleep, I love the longer days, the extra rays of sunlight, and I am greatly enjoying the warmer weather. Yesterday Claire, Nicholas and I played outside all afternoon: drawing with sidewalk chalk, filling up cups of water with the hose and then pouring them out into the grass, visiting with the neighbor kids Shelby and Chase, going for wagon rides around the block, and just having a grand time. We lost electricity at their house around 4:00 p.m., so when I laid Claire down for a nap at 5:30, I took Nicholas outside. We sat outside in the gathering twilight, and watched the sun go down, watched the airplanes making vapor trails across the sky, and watched the setting sun turn those vapor trails to ribbons of gold. The neighborhood was delightful and peaceful in the cool of evening. Families were talking outside, the kids playing and riding bikes in the street. I held Nicholas in my lap, wrapped up in a baby blanket to keep him warm, and his chubby little baby body felt so cozy and warm in my arms. He sat so quietly, he didn't make a sound the whole time, just sat sucking contentedly on his pacifier and watching everything going on with his big brown eyes.

Canker sores

I haven't been writing much. I actually haven't been doing much of anything, except what I absolutely have to. This is because I have am laid up with what has to be one of the most annoying afflictions of all times: the canker sore. I don't know about other people, but I have gotten canker sores so bad that I can't get out of bed. Who knew that a little sore with a diameter of maybe a centimeter could cause such intense pain? My current sore is located on the back of my throat, which makes things like talking, eating, breathing, and swallowing quite unpleasant activities. So I'm not saying much these days, which has helped me to realize just how much I talk sometimes. Sleep is about the only thing that brings relief, and since many canker sores are actually caused by stress, I figure that sleeping may in fact help to cure it as well as relieve some of the pain. Possibly because I am reading yet another book on midwifery, I keep wondering how I am ever going to survive labor if one tiny canker sore seems completely capable of overpowering me. My theory is this: there is productive pain--pain which leads to something, is for a purpose, is necessary in order to bring something about; and then there's just pointless pain, which is almost mentally unbearable. I can handle the pain of getting a tattoo or a piercing, because at the end of it I have some new body art that looks great, and I'm happy. I really believe I can handle the pain of labor because the reward is a precious baby. All that to say, I hope this canker sore goes away really really soon.

"I'm not a doggie, I'm a friend!"

Since the last time I wrote, I have finished one book, read through a second, and started a third. I finished The Summer of the Great Grandmother by Madeleine L'Engle on Thursday evening, as Adria was practicing the hymns for our wedding on the Parsonage's piano. I was pretty sick this weekend, which left me plenty of time to read Giving Birth by Catherine Taylor, which has only fueled my conviction that midwives and home births are awesome. And tonight I started The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for a few months, but which I was inspired to finally pick up after watching most of Food, Inc. on Thursday night. So, that is a snapshot of my current reading life...My reading life, which I obsess over in the same way that some people obsess over their sex lives, their food lives, or their dating lives.

A lot has been going on recently. Thursday I got my permanent crown put on by Dr. Wong. At this point I am so weary of all my dental woes and slightly overwhelmed by my mounting dental debt, that I usually sit in the dentist's chair staring at the bland artwork and feeling utterly sorry for myself. I always force myself to pull out of it, and to be thankful that I live in the 21st century where we can do complex procedures like root canals and crowns painlessly instead of having a sore tooth yanked out by the local barber after a strong, but mostly ineffective, shot of whiskey. I am also thankful that I live in America with its (mostly) state of the art dental practitioners, clean clinics, and impeccable care. Lastly, I am thankful to have been blessed enough to be able to afford the dental care my mouth has needed this past year. That is something that should never be taken for granted.

Thursday night I went to the midnight showing of Alice in Wonderland with Adria and some of her friends. This was exciting because most midnight showings are contagiously fun, and I enjoyed myself. The most serendipitous event of the night was the guy in the coffee shop who agreed to pop the two bags of microwave popcorn that I happened to have in my purse. Free movie popcorn!

Friday brought about the much anticipated meeting between Sean and Claire and Nicholas (the two kids I babysit for during the week). I've been talking Sean's ear off about them since August, so it seemed high time that he finally meet these two unreasonably adorable kids. We played a lot, went for a walk, picked dandelions and sent their little seeds flying into the wind...At one point Sean responded to something Claire said by saying, "Ok, dawg..." (a frequent refrain of his) to which Claire responded quite solemnly, "I'm not a doggie...I'm a friend." Sean immediately amended his statement to, "Ok, friend!"

Friday night I babysat the three Moothart boys, the oldest of whom Sean and I teach in preschool Sunday School at our church. As I was putting the boys to bed, Jonathan, who's been in class with Sean and I for the past three weeks, told me, "I really like your dad." For a second my mind was blank, before I realized that he though Sean was my dad! Before I could say anything, he added, "Yeah, I like how he colors." I thought this was very observant of him, because Sean does put incredible effort into his coloring pages each week, and then brings them home and hangs them on the fridge in his apartment.

I spent all Friday night playing games with Jason, Dan, and Lewis. We had so much fun...played Banana Grams, Quiddler, more Banana Grams, and Hearts...and made some of Jason's famous, delicious homemade guacamole, that I swear is the best in the world.

On Saturday morning at 8:00 I got a text from Jaclynn inviting me to come with her to try on wedding dresses in Fullerton in an hour. Not many things will pull me from my warm, cozy bed early on a Saturday morning, but getting to watch my roommate from freshman year and dear friend try on wedding dresses is one of them! I hopped out of bed and made it to The Dresser in Fullerton by 9:00, where I met up with Jac, her mom Shelli, and Darren's mom, Marisa. We watched Jaclynn try on dresses for the next hour, and when she made her decision and went to the back of the store to purchase the dress, we watched all the other girls trying on their dresses...I could've sat there all day!

Saturday afternoon Sean and I went to our first premarital counseling session with Father David, and a mentoring couple named Monica and Matthew. I am always slightly apprehensive about counseling sessions, they can be so unpredictable, uncomfortable, and downright painful. But talking with them was so wonderful and peaceful and they all possess so much wisdom that it was just a delight, and an hour and a half flew by.

Sunday I spent all day in bed sick, except for when Sean took me to Berry Cool for some frozen yogurt for my throat. As of this morning I was sufficiently recovered to babysit C. and N., which was, as always, a pure pleasure. And now I am listening to Sean snore, as I write this at his desk, and he sleeps in his bed. I am praying that he will stop snoring by the time we get married. Oh dear.

Who wrote the NIV?

I'm currently listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on my drives to and from work. Today I drove home crying over that beloved little house elf, Dobby. I also spent a good deal of time thinking about the importance and symbolism of Harry digging Dobby's grave by hand, and what happens to him while he is down in the earth. While he is in the ground, he realizes a lot of things, and when he comes back to the surface, he has released his obsession with the Hallows. He experiences a death--the death of his hope for the Hallows, and his hope to be Master of Death. He has released his hope that he can defeat death by never dying, and he instead turns back to pursuing the horcruxes--the quest Dumbledore bequeathed him--which will ultimately lead to the laying down of his own life. He resists the temptation to defeat Death by becoming it's Master, and makes the first step in the process of defeating Death by dying. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Harry's temptation to use the Hallows reminds me of the temptation of Christ. Last week was Temptation Sunday (the first Sunday of Lent) so this subject is fresh in my mind. Satan comes to Jesus and basically offers him the easy way of accomplishing what he was sent to do. He can save the world by not dying...He just needs to bow down to Satan, and then all the kingdoms of the earth shall be his. In the same way, Harry is offered the opportunity to defeat Voldemort by not laying down his life. But it must be through death that death is conquered.

I was telling Sean some of these ideas at dinner tonight, and he listened, and agreed with me, and then said, "But Care, you forget, you shouldn't be reading Harry Potter, all it teaches is sorcery and witchcraft." Sean has recently taken to looking up websites and YouTube videos by KJV-only activists, who insist that the NIV was written by the Antichrist and should be called the HIV, because it spreads infectious disease. They also believe that television is "Hellevision," that Beauty and the Beast condones bestiality, that the Pope is the Vicar of Hell, and, of course, that Harry Potter is Satan himself. At best these sincere people take themselves just a bit too seriously.

Tonight, Sean, Matt, and I went to the Little Old Bookshop on Greenleaf in Whittier. We got an email saying that the bookstore is struggling to stay in business and they were having a sale this week in hopes of staying afloat. The email--written by a Torrey chum--ended by saying that every time a bookstore closes, a piece of Western civilization dies. Although I am fully able to recognize the melodrama of this statement, I can also see the kernel of truth which it contains. So, we went off happily to do our small part in saving Western Civilization, and bought $60.00 worth of books.

Arms overflowing with books, we ran down Greenleaf to the car, and sped away in order to make it back in time for Lost. Sean made some questionable driving moves, including--but not limited to--passing someone on Biola Avenue...but we made it back in time, and ran like madmen (and women) into the apartment in time to see, "Previously on Lost..." But in Lost news, I am feeling quite deserted, abandoned. Sayid Jarrah has been my Rock for five seasons of this roller coaster of a television show, and tonight, the Rock crumbled--the ground was taken out from beneath my feet. Who do I trust now?!?!

For the Life of the World

I've been thinking for awhile that I need to start a blog. A blog that I will love, and actually write in. And I will write in it because it is important. I had a LiveJournal all through high school, and half of college. Then I fell into a horrible depression, and lost not only the desire to write, but the ability to enjoy life. Thankfully, that period of time has passed. Too much time has passed since then, and so many things have happened. Now I find myself on the brink of graduating from college and getting married, and I find myself in awe of the beautiful little things that happen every day, and I need a place to record all of it.

Of course, all the little events of each day matter. And why? In a rather fortuitous turn of events, I picked up a book this very day that put into words why life, the world, time, space, and ordinary events matter. Alexander Schmemann, the great Russian Orthodox theologian, writes in his book For the Life of the World, that the dichotomy we have created between the spiritual and the secular is entirely false, and ultimately a result of the Fall. There are no separate categories for the sacred, and the profane...Rather all that is about us, all that fills the world, all that we know in physical time and space have been created by God to bring us into communion with him. All that surrounds us is whole, is Love, is a divine gift, and it is through this knowledge that we worship God. I like it. Not only does it sound like good theology, but it resonates with everything I have ever known to be true at the deepest level of my being. It appeals to my intellect, but it far surpasses my intellect and penetrates the essence of all that is. Of course, I can't say it even half as well as Father Alexander, whose words I have underlined in bright red ink because I will never be able to say it as well as he has (and I do not need to), and because I stand in awe of people who are able to put truth into just the right words at the precisely right time. Surely, it is an act of grace, a gift of God.

But I do not believe it to be a coincidence that the book I decided to start reading today provided, in essence, the mission statement of my writing: to know God, to thank him, praise him, and bless him through the world that surrounds me. To do this requires great strength, and I am at best a weakling. To know, see, and experience God in everything, at every moment is for now a distant dream to me. It is much easier to slide through life on a lazy river, paying little attention to what surrounds us, and giving even less thought to the meaning of all that we see. So, to put it plainly, this blog is to build muscle. It is to be a daily exercise in truly seeing, and truly appreciating the world which God has to given to us in order for us to know him. I hope that given time I can strengthen my eyes, my heart, my soul to see more and more of the glory of the Lord.

So, it's a start. A very meager beginning. But a humble beginning is better than a brilliant nothing.