Through a Glass, Darkly

Today is a slow-moving kind of day for me. Too much late-night Oscar watching, I suppose. Honestly, this year, I thought the Oscars were pretty boring. I am guessing that’s at least partly because the people I wanted to win had no chance of winning (*cough*KateWinslet*cough*) and partly because I hadn’t really seen any of the nominated movies. Heck, I haven’t been to the movies since . . . September? And Mike and I haven’t been together since July (although he did get to see a few other movies in the fall, like Garden State and Sky Captain). We never went to the movies very much anyway, but we would often go ahead and buy movies we wanted to see (a lot of DVDs cost about the same as two tickets to the movies). Lack of fundage, however, has eliminated that, and it’s sad to be so out of the loop. I have noticed that I get a little bitter when some of my friends talk about going to the movies all the time. Especially when they go see crappy movies. hehe. However, Mike and I did compete on Oscar picks, and I totally beat him (pounded him), so there is that, at least. We’ll be in Florida next week, and my aunt usually takes us to the movies at least one night while we’re there. We’re hoping to see Sideways.

This weekend I found myself in a few out-of-my-element situations, like a one-year-old’s birthday party and a tea party with a bunch of girls who don’t drink tea. If nothing else, it made me appreciate my friends who are similar to me, the girls who enjoy tea parties (hey, they like coffee, too, but they wouldn’t order it at a tea party) and who think like me when it comes to thinks like being polite to the staff. The birthday party was fun, although it was quite a madhouse. I edited this piece a bit and gave it to my friend as a letter to her daughter, and it went over like gangbusters, which was encouraging. Otherwise, I just enjoyed talking to my other childless friends as we hid in the corner away from the craziness. We always say that events like that make us add another six months to the amount of time we’re waiting until we have kids. At this point, we’re up to about 37.5 more years. hehe.

Every now and then, I like to freak Mike out by referring to myself as “an Economist.” I did that last night. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I said, “Mike, I understand all that. You forget . . . I’m an Economist.” He gave me the look of part-horror, part-revulsion he reserves for such occasions. I’m probably not an Economist under the technical definition of the word, since I am not employed in the field, but my second major in college was Economics. That’s a fact that doesn’t come up all that often.

I knew going into college that I wanted to be a Marketing major, and that never changed. But after taking Macroeconomics (which was required for all Business majors) with Dr. Allen (who looks a little odd in that picture), I asked him to be my advisor, and somewhere in there he convinced me that I should add Econ as my second major. It was just five more classes, he said, and since I was enjoying Macro so much, I should do it. So I did.

Mike doesn’t understand this at all. You should have been an English major, he says. And, when I think about it, I don’t completely understand it myself. I should have been an English major. I get a little jealous now when I see the things he’s reading and discussing for his classes, and how much fun he’s having. I would have enjoyed that a lot, but I only took a couple of English classes . . . I came in with AP English credit, so I missed out on taking English. The second major took up a lot of my extra classes, and by the time I had some free space in my schedule, I was taking things like Jogging, not English where I’d have to write papers on top of my massive Marketing projects.

But, the truth is, I really enjoyed my Econ classes. Mostly. For some reason, Microeconomics and I don’t really get along, but I loved Macro, so that was my concentration. And I made some cool friends in those classes, guys who helped explain some of the stuff I couldn’t ever understand and who were nice to me without hitting on me. The guys in Economics tended to be a lot more laid back than the Marketing and Accounting majors - you know the type, tall, scruffy with old brown sweaters, glasses. And there were some cute British guys I had classes with who were pretty fun. The girls, though, tended to be intensely passionate about Economics and pursuing jobs in Washington, D.C. I never planned on getting an Economics job; I just liked learning about the stuff and being able to better understand the evening news.

When the mail came in here at work today, I checked in The Economist. I was happy when we added it to our library at the end of last year. I always enjoy reading The Economist (and, to be honest, The Wall Street Journal), though I tend to keep it pretty quiet. I guess I think of my interest in Economics as a sort of vice that needs to be hidden. But I do enjoy being able to explain things to Mike every now and then about the Fed and what it means with the raising and the lowering of interest rates. I don’t remember it as well as I used to, but I still have a lot of my textbooks.

My second major in Economics is one of those things where I’m like, “Woah, how did that happen?” But then I remember Dr. Snowden’s class, and how he made Economics come alive for me, and Dr. Leyden’s class (where, most notably, we talked about the best ways to cook chicken with beer. He’s also the guy who told me about The Christmas Mystery), and that time Dr. Brod got so mad at us he stormed out of class and then calmly came back with a glass of Coke in his hand, and I think, “Those were some pretty good times, and even if it’s a little weird to think of myself as an Econ major, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on them.”

I was talking with my friend Marie-Claude shortly after finishing the first draft of this book. She said, “Speaking of encyclopedias, I have to tell you this unreal but true story. You know my friend ——, right? Well, she used to work at Encyclopedia Britannica. She was working on a new edition. And I’ve actually seen this at the library, so I promise you I’m not making this up: On the spine of volume 8, it says Menage-Ottawa. That was her doing. The editors apparently never picked up on it.” I ran to the library to see for myself. -Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

There’s a little photocopy of the spine in the book, but obviously I had to check it out for myself. And it’s true! Our EB has Menage-Ottawa, too! I showed my boss, who couldn’t stop laughing, and he showed the director. Now I am going to get the reputation of a troublemaker. hehehe.

It’s too bad A.J. Jacobs didn’t know about that. I am sure he would have enjoyed that fun fact.

When she told me she was pregnant, I promptly burst into tears.

These weren’t tears of joy or excitement. No, these tears were borne out of loneliness (I was feeling pretty sad about how the relationship with my best friend had deteriorated, so changes in any relationships were hard) and insecurity (all my friends are going somewhere I can’t go . . . motherhood) and fear (that I might lose my friend to aforementioned motherhood). They were selfish tears, and I knew as they poured down my cheeks that I was a selfish friend, taking away from her joy by focusing on my own problems.

And so I watched as she started to show, as we had showers for her, as she made her plans. I guarded my heart, keeping just far enough away from her to protect myself when the inevitable happened - when she had her baby and I couldn’t be a part of her world anymore. I had been through it a few times, so I knew the drill.

On the evening of February 28, when the baby was finally born (a girl, just as I predicted), I didn’t go to the hospital. I didn’t know if I’d be in the way, and one of my biggest fears is that I would be in the way, be a bother. I cried that night as Mike held me, feeling loneliness like never before. I didn’t have that number-one-friend, the person who I know wants me around, and the person who will be around for me. And one of the closest things I had to that kind of a friendship had changed forever. We stopped by the hospital before church the next morning, and I got to meet the baby for the first time. I don’t remember if I held her or not. (Probably not. Newborns are a little scary.) I remember that she was beautiful and that she broke my heart. I was trying to be happy, but I had to fake it more than just a little bit.

Over the next weeks and months, I kept waiting for the contact to end, for the phone calls to fade away, for things to change. To my surprise, they didn’t. My friend seemed to be the same person as before, and I started to be able to give my heart to her daughter. I read to her and played peekaboo and held her and bought her clothes. I talked nonsense to her as she watched me with her big eyes. I watched her grow from an infant to a crawler to an almost-walker. Every time I see her, I try to bribe her into taking some steps for me.

And now she’s almost a year old, and I can’t imagine her not being in my life. I see how, in ways she will probably never know about, she helped heal my heart by giving me another person to love. She needed other people just like I do. She gave me hope and a new sense of wonder as I watched her learn new skills.

I’m not a mother, so I don’t know how strong a mother’s love is, and I wouldn’t claim to feel a motherly love for my friend’s baby. Instead, I feel a profound sense of thankfulness that God can use other people to refine us, even little children who aren’t yet old enough to call us “Aunt Kari” (whether we are technically an aunt or not is not the point). I have seen how the big bad things of the world don’t go away, but beautiful things like babies help balance them out, help us keep them in perspective, help us keep on living.

It seems like this is one of the waiting room times of the year. I want winter to be over, because it’s the end of February, and March should be spring! It should be green grass and flowers starting to bloom and sunny cloudless days where you take off your sweater just because you can (even though it’s not really quite warm enough for that). I get restless for spring in February. It happens every year, even though we don’t get proper spring until . . . probably April. There are enough spring-ish days in March, though, to get me through until April.

If you were to ask me which season is my favorite, it would be hard to tell you. I like my winter clothes the best - wool sweaters and cute skirts and boots. And I like snow days, though we haven’t had any proper ones this year. I like to stay home and drink hot chocolate and watch Pride and Prejudice and The Godfather.

Spring, though, is when things come alive. The baby animals and the dogwoods blooming and the days getting longer. Shedding all that wool for cotton and starting to get out the flip flops. Spring makes me more reflective, and I feel encouraged. Spring can also be Lent, which ties in quite a bit with the reflective attitude. For the past few years, spring has meant Miranda Stone’s Seven Deadly Sins album. I was reading some of the lyrics today, and it’s time to pull it back out.

As a good southern girl, I want my summers hot and humid. The humidity doesn’t bother me like it does some people. I guess you have to be born here for it not to get to you, because it kills Mike every year. Summer is my birthday and fireworks and fireflies and sweaty glasses of iced tea. And hamburgers and long hot evenings, and I love it all.

And then there’s the fall. Doesn’t it make you want to buy school supplies (like a bouquet of freshly-sharpened pencils), or at least a new pair of jeans? Fall is Mike’s favorite time, and he’s helped to increase my appreciation of it. I used to be kind of blasé about fall, but now I look forward to day trips to the mountains to see the leaves, and I appreciate the days cooling off. It feels like things get normal again in the fall, even though I’m not in school anymore. People are around more, since they’re not on vacation so much. Life settles back into its routine.

I am not one of those people who hates the winter or can’t stand summer. I love all of the seasons, and yet at the end of each of them I am desperate for the next. So, right now, what with the lack of actual snow and the days getting longer, I’m itching for spring.

A couple weeks ago, I read a book where the characters were introduced by what their favorite books were. One of the characters liked “the latest John Grisham.” To me that said: white, middle-to-upper-class, reads enough to keep up with whatever the latest John Grisham is. I asked Mike if that’s what he would think as well (my views being prejudiced by library work, placing holds on books, that sort of thing) and he agreed that was the general idea he’d get about a person if he or she was introduced in that way. That’s not to say that other kinds of people can’t read those books, but it does suggest a certain something about a person. And, after learning more about that character, I was basically right. I thought it was a very clever way to introduce all the characters. (And I enjoyed the book, for the record.)

So then I started thinking, what does my favorite book say about me? I’m old-fashioned, I have a sense of humor, I like a bit of romance, I like Colin Firth . . . that’s what I would guess, but I don’t know for sure what other people think. Some people don’t care all that much for Jane Austen, so maybe they think I’m stuffy and boring for liking her. (To those people, I say, I don’t care much for John Grisham, but I was able to be objective about his readers.)

Then, you know, I was driving in my car talking on my cell phone, and I thought, “What does this say about me?” I mean, I drive a pretty . . . yuppie . . . car, don’t you think? And I’m a little blonde chick, driving this car, chatting on the phone . . . it makes me sound different than I picture myself. It makes me sound more like a sorority chick than I think I am (not that there’s anything wrong with being a sorority chick, you know, just that it’s not who I am). And then I think about some of the really sad music I listen to, Sam Phillips and Patty Griffin, and I wonder what that says about me. And what I eat for lunch (often granny smith apples and cheddar cheese), what magazines I read (Real Simple, Our State, Entertainment Weekly), the dishes that are in my cupboard (Fiestaware), the t-shirt I ordered online, and the movies I watch over and over (too many to list). What about the sports teams I like (in no particular order: UNC, Atlanta Braves, Carolina Hurricanes, Carolina Panthers), my favorite jeans (from Old Navy), those Doc Martens I defiled, the Diet Coke I drink. I like eating raw cookie dough. I prefer skim milk. I personally think you can’t beat brownies as far as dessert goes. I read more fiction than non-fiction, and I like straws. Given a choice, I use black ballpoint pens (not red, not blue).

It’s funny to me that all those different tastes and preferences make up Kari, a complex and often inconsistent person (the Diet Coke goes with the car pretty well, and the Docs with the new t-shirt, but all four of them aren’t necessarily compatible . . . kind of like me being such a sports-fan girly girl doesn’t really make sense), and yet you can tell so much (but not everything) about me just by knowing my favorite book. I am more than the sum of my inconsistent preferences, even if each of them is a little piece of me.

“I should infinitely prefer a book.” -Mary Bennet

While not technically the weekend, Friday morning I stabbed myself in the palm of my hand with a knife as I was trying to cut an apple in half. Much hilarity ensued as Mike and I desperately tried to get it to stop bleeding. We have very nice knives. I was running cold water over it, and I said, “I can’t feel my fingers!” Mike looked extremely concerned, so I added, “Because of the cold water, not the loss of blood.” heh. (For the record, it’s much better now.)

Saturday I worked, and then we went to my parents’ house for my dad’s birthday party. Lots of my parents’ friends were there, and it was neat to see them. I told Brian yesterday, it was cool to think that a lot of those people have known me since I was born. And I literally mean, “since I was born,” because I know at least two of them were in the waiting room at the hospital when my mom was giving birth. I looked at all these people I’ve known for so long, and I realized that my parents’ relationships with them have really influenced the way that I see my own friendships. It explains a lot about why I am so neurotic about having long-time friends to walk with . . . I have seen how important it’s been for my parents, and I crave it for myself. I hope that one day I’ll be able to have a party with friends I have known for 30 years, who were there when my kids were born (even if they weren’t physically present at the hospital . . . as long as they are physically present in our lives), who have helped us through hard times and taken vacations with us and our kids all know each other (even if they aren’t particularly close, because I am definitely not close to any of those kids at this point). I want to have friends that we share life with.

Yesterday we skipped Sunday School because I had a few things I needed to talk about instead, but that was fun, too. Church was good, and an offhand remark from Mike on the way home sent me straight into CrazyCleaning!Kari mode and cleaned out two closets and our pantry. They were in disarray, but no longer! Things are much more organized now.

They say that, sometimes, when a person gets organized in the outward things, it’s because she feels that her life is out of control. I don’t know that my life is out of control, but I have been increasing my organization a lot lately. I am not the most organized person in the world - I can’t keep a clean desk, for example, but I always know where things are, and my house is usually picked up and straight even if I haven’t dusted or the floor needs to be swept. Lately, though, I have been getting more organized. I have been using my Palm Pilot more, taking notes and using the planner. And I’ve changed a lot of things about the processes here at work, which are helping things be more organized. All that to say . . . I am getting better at keeping closets organized than I used to be, partly because we have so much more closet space. That makes it a lot easier.

I goofed off most of the afternoon, got some cleaning done, that kind of thing. Mike did homework, and then we watched Desperate Housewives while I ironed. Just after DH, my friend Kelly called with a library question. She was at the UNCW library, and she couldn’t find what she needed. I got online and looked up the information in the UNCW catalog for her, hopefully pointing her in the right direction. She said that I’m like that doctor friend that everyone calls to get free advice. hehe. After I solved her problem for her, we went to bed.

It was a good weekend, if a little short.

Sometimes you’re in a relationship with someone (not a relationship-relationship, just a friendship sort of thing) for a long time, and something will happen that makes you realize, “This person doesn’t know me at all.”

I don’t think I am a terribly difficult person to get to know. I have walls, definitely, and I know how to distract people from what’s really going wrong in my life by talking about other, smaller, less-personal problems. But I think I am fairly good at letting people in, at least when they want to know me. So, in cases like these, the question becomes . . . did I keep this person from getting to know me, or were they just not interested?

Or is it something else entirely? Is it one of those things where people can’t really get to know one another because we’re all blinded by our own fears and insecurities and we don’t even know it? Is it projecting? Are we too similar? Just too different? Is there anything I can do about the problem, or should I just let the relationship go at some point? How much do I do this to other people - only paying attention to them in the ways that they are like me . . . or the ways that I think they are like me?

Pragmatic Kari says that if we haven’t gotten past this yet, we probably won’t, but there are parts of me that want to be more hopeful and to believe that this is the last obstacle, and after we get over this we can finally have the relationship I thought we could have.

Who knows which side will win out?

Mike brought my attention to this clip from The Daily Show in which Stephen Colbert (aka Ted Hitler) makes a case for bloggers as journalists. (The clip is related to the recent James Guckert/Jeff Gannon controversy, which I didn’t know anything about, because I have been sick and haven’t been paying attention to anything but, well, Gilmore Girls.

Pertinent quote:

“John, the vast majority of bloggers out there are responsible correspondents doing fine work in niche reporting fields like Gilmore Girl fanfiction or cute things their cats do or photoshop images of the Gilmore Girls as cats.”

So, Stephen Colbert has been reading my blog. Eeeeeexcellent.

On our first Valentine’s Day together, Mike and I bought a bread machine instead of doing anything fancy. We haven’t used it lately, but it was a good purchase. What says love more than warm bread, I ask you?

Our second Valentine’s Day was, I believe, when Mike cooked for me at his apartment. Steak and shrimp and salad and tasty beverages. I think I had to work that night, or I had a late class or group meeting or something, because I remember it being dark outside.

Valentine’s the third was my senior year of college, and our first married Valentine’s Day. And I had a big test that night. I didn’t even have night classes, and I still had to come in for that test. So we went to the Melting Pot on the 13th instead, and used a coupon. It was, without a doubt, the worst Melting Pot experience ever. We were in the corner, and our waitress kept coming by and seeing that our glasses weren’t filled, and she said, “I’ll send someone to fill them.” She kept saying that, thinking, I suppose, that we were just very thirsty. In actuality, our glasses went unfilled for 45 minutes. She didn’t get much of a tip. (I got an A on the test, by the way.)

Our fourth Valentine’s Day, is, unfortunately, lost to my memory. I wonder what we did. It was a Thursday night, my first year in grad school . . . it’s not ringing a bell. I hope we had fun. Oh, wait! That might be the time when Mike had to be out of town for work, so we met at Chili’s and he brought a candle. I don’t think it was, but it might have been. Maybe Mike remembers.

Our fifth Valentine’s Day was one of my favorites. I made Mike’s present, working very hard on it, and he cooked dinner, and we ate off our china and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It was really nice. He loved my present, and I was proud of being so creative for once. (No, I won’t tell you what I made him.)

Last year, we went to Chuck E. Cheese for the evening and ate pizza and played skee ball until they closed. That was awesome. I won the bonus on the tickets, because I am the skee ball queen. Last year was probably the most “us” of any Valentine’s Day. We decided what we have fun doing, and we went and did that.

This year, we had planned to go out to Chili’s since we had a giftcard we could use there, but since I was sick, Mike whipped up some of his homemade pasta sauce and moved the TV into our room (I don’t normally allow TV in our room) and we had spaghetti in our pajamas while sitting on the bed watching season 2 episodes of Gilmore Girls.

As you can see, we don’t have one thing that we always do. Which is okay with me, because I am not the hugest fan of Valentine’s Day. As we ate our spaghetti, I looked over at the man I love, happy to be with him even in those not-so-romantic circumstances.

Winter means cold season, which means the same old battle is being fought at our house: showering vs. sweating.

When I was growing up, if we got sick, my mom would make us take a shower. She said, “It’ll help you feel better to be clean.” In addition, if you have a chest cold, the steam can help loosen you up. It’s true that in most cases I do feel better after I take a shower when I’m sick. The only exception to that was when I had mono, because I was too sick to shower (Mike knew I was really sick just from that).

Mike’s family had the idea that if you were sick, you should pile under as many blankets as you could and “sweat it out.” This does seem to work for Mike when he has a cold or the flu . . . it seems to help his fever break. I tried it once, when I had strep, and it just caused my fever to skyrocket and made me feel really crummy. So I went and took a shower, and then I felt much better.

When we first got married, this was one of the things we didn’t know about each other. I knew that Mike liked to pile under blankets when he was sick, but I thought that was because he just got cold. I guess Mike just thought I had cleanliness issues. hehe. When he would get sick, I would insist he should shower, and when I would get sick he’d keep trying to cover me with blankets. We were both trying to love each other the best way we knew how, but we had to learn what the other needed, which was different than what we expected. Now, though, I only tell him to shower at the end of the day, before he goes to bed (because I for one don’t want to share a bed with a sweaty sick man), and he only half-heartedly tries to get me to snuggle under more blankets.

At this point, the battle is more like a skirmish, but wait until we have kids and we are each trying to enforce our own remedy. Those will be good times, and the battle will resume wholeheartedly. hehe.

This week I was listening to a sermon on CD that a friend lent to me, and the opening anecdote had something to do with science fairs. The pastor said that, instead of fundraisers like candy bars, the school should just offer to let the parents pay $45 not to create a science fair project, and millions would be raised.

I came home and asked Mike if he had ever done a science fair project. He said he remembered his brother’s project - the traditional vinegar-and-baking-soda volcano, and that he was pretty sure that he made one that had something to do with the solar system. I remember Joseph and Dad working on his projects (although I can’t remember what any of them were). I remember projects in The Baby-Sitters Club books (seeing how classical music affects plants). But I never made a science fair project.

I can’t figure out how this happened. Aren’t they usually required? I have a couple of theories. One is that, in the 5th grade, I was in a 5/6 combination class, so I got to change classes like the 6th graders, and I might have missed out on traditional things like the Science Fair. The other theory is that, during my middle school years, my school was torn down (it was a K-8 school that my grandparents had gone to, so it was very old) and we were in trailers for much of the time. Maybe they didn’t do a Science Fair since we didn’t have an auditorium, just a gym. (I’m pretty sure that second one isn’t true, because I have a vague memory of Joseph’s projects being set up in that very gym.)

Both of those theories sound like junk to me, but it’s all I can think of. And it’s not as if I just forgot. I honestly never made one. I remember my enormous project on the USSR that I got 100 on, and that my teacher requested I bring back the next year, after the Soviet Union had split up. I remember the math project on base 4. I remember Joseph’s project on Georgia, where Mom took an orange Nerf ball and put a long stitch into one side of it to create a peach. I remember Joseph’s Pinewood Derby cars, and those Saturdays spent at the Fire Department watching him race them. They always seemed to fall on a Saturday when there was a big basketball game, and I would hang out with the men who kept sneaking outside to check the score on the radio. I remember projets on the Incas, and on North Carolina, and on Farmer McBroom. And all of those were before high school.

Anyway, if I were to do a project, I have always been interested to see how that Baby-Sitters Club thing really did work, and to play classical music for plants. Not very original, I know. But it’s the closest I ever got to the Science Fair. So, tell me about your Science Fair experiences. I want to hear about what you did, and what prizes you won, and that time you had to set your project that you were a little embarassed about next to the kid who is probably well on his way to winning the Nobel Prize.

*beep*

“Hey, Kari, it’s your dad. I just wanted you to know, your team is GOING DOWN!!!”

*beep*

“Hey, Dad, it’s me. I got your message, and I just wanted to let you know that I am not going to say anything about how my team is going to beat your team, because, when my team wins, the victory will be that much sweeter, because I will know I rose above it. So I’m not going to threaten you that my team will win by 38 million points. I’m just going to say . . . have a good evening.”

Rats. I thought it might work. (My dad is the only person I talk trash with before the game. hehe.)

At small group on Monday we were talking about forgiveness, and although I did not contribute anything to the discussion, I did have a thought.

I think forgiveness is often overwhelming for me because of wrong things I believe about God. If I feel that God isn’t interested in me, that he doesn’t like me (which is different than loving me), that he’s paying attention to everyone else while I’m sitting in the corner being ignored, then of course it’s harder to be forgiving. I feel that someone has to look out for me, to make sure the wrongs in my life are accounted for, and if God’s not going to do it, I guess it falls to me. So I’m not going to forgive, because I’m taking care of myself, nursing my wounds, making sure the wrongs against me are remembered.

This is wrong on all kinds of levels, but it is interesting insight as to how my mind works, and it’s interesting to see how one wrong idea can affect me so deeply.

100 things to love about Gilmore Girls.

(My favorites? I could give you a list of numbers, but let’s just say that anything that has to do with Luke is probably on my list. hehe. But there’s not really anything on that list I don’t like. Except maybe Norman Mailer. And Christopher. *evil death glare*)

I finished The Lord of the Rings on my lunch break today. That was my fifth time through, and it took me a while. This time through the books, I had to take a couple of breaks to read other things, but I am amazed at how much more I understood this time of the story. Each time, everything seems clearer, and it’s clearer to me how much depth there was that couldn’t be included in the movies. Each time I read the books, I resent the changes to Faramir and Aragorn (falling off a cliff?!) and Arwen a little more. But there were so many things they did right . . . I don’t want to complain too much.

For me, no reading of The Lord of the Rings is complete without checking the appendices to see how our friends ended up. I know some people never read those bits, but honestly they are some of my favorite parts. There are parts of the actual story that bring me to tears (most notably King Theoden’s charge), but nothing more than the final conclusion of all the stories.

But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lorien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent.

There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.

The movie touched on Arwen’s fate a bit, but if you didn’t read the story of Arwen and Aragorn in Appendix A, you really should. Everything happened just as Elrond said it would in the movie, and I loved that they worked that part of the story in.

We have heard tell that Legolas took Gimli Gloin’s son with him because of their great friendship, greater than any that has been between Elf and Dwarf. If this is true, then it is strange indeed: that a Dwarf should be willing to leave Middle-earth for any love, of that the Eldar should receive him, or that the Lord of the West should permit it. But it is said that Gimli went also out of desire to see again the beauty of Galadriel; and it may be that she, being mighty among the Eldar, obtained this grace for him. More cannot be said of this matter.

I think that Gimli really got short shrift in the movies. He was reduced to comic relief, which meant that at times his courage and endurance were minimized in order to make a joke. His adoration of Galadriel was also cut . . . you get an idea of it in the extended editions, but nothing like in the book. Which means you also miss out on the great understanding that grows between Legolas and Gimli. It makes me happy to think that they were able to take that last journey together.

1482 On September 22 Master Samwise rides out from Bag End. He comes to the Tower Hills, and is last seen by Elanor, to whom he gives the Red Book afterwards kept by the Fairbairns. Among them the tradition is handed down from Elanor that Samwise passed the Towers, and went to the Grey Havens, and passed over Sea, last of the Ring-bearers.

For a while, I was convinced that this was how the movie should end - that viewers should know that Sam gets to go over the Sea as the last of the ringbearers. I did like how the movie ended (except I wished it had been Frodo’s door instead of some random hobbit-hole), but I had to go home and read the appendices after I saw it.

1484 It was heard after that Master Meriadoc came to Edoras and was with King Eomer before he died in that autumn, Then he and Thain Peregrin went to Gondor and passed what short years were left to them in that realm, until they died and were laid in Rath Dinen among the great of Gondor.

Merry and Pippin were laid to rest, and when Aragorn passed away, he was laid beside them. Merry had become the Master of Buckland, Pippin was the Thain, and Sam, of course, was elected mayor seven times. Pippin’s son Faramir marries Sam’s daughter Goldilocks.

Mr. Tolkien was an incredibly detailed man, and though some would say that he should have let his story be, I appreciate that he included the “where are they now” information at the end. For me, the story wouldn’t be the same without knowing what happens to all of them, especially Sam.

But for now, I’ll leave these characters for another year or so. (Maybe this year I’ll finally get the endurance to make it through The Silmarillion!)

If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. Stories about food show a strong connection. Wistful silences demonstrate unfinished business. The more a daughter knows the details of her mother’s life - without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter. - The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

When I think of my mother, the first image that pops into my head is from the kitchen. I am a teenager, sitting on a stool at the bar, eating chips and salsa and talking about my day at school. My mom is either sitting with me or starting to fix dinner. I didn’t help so much with the cooking, but I did help with setting the table and cleaning up. We spent hours and hours like that, just talking about life and my friends and church and what I was reading and . . . everything.

My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I was ten years old and my brother was eight, at which time she went back to teaching. We had moved to Siler City by that time, and my brother and I could stay at my grandparents’ house after school instead of being latchkey kids. So we were treated to pizza rolls and fritos, double solitaire and homework help instead of being left alone in the afternoons. Those were good times. But when I was in high school and Joseph started at the middle school in town, my mom quit teaching and stayed at home to help my dad with his business. I remember telling one of the teachers that my mom was cooking us breakfast again! When she was teaching, my dad usually cooked breakfast for us. The teacher asked if I could bring breakfast for him, because he didn’t even make it for himself. I got her a little card that said, “So richly blessed is the heart of a child who has a stay-at-home mom.” I think it’s still on her refrigerator.

I think about my mom sometimes when I’m cooking. As much time as I spent with her in the kitchen, she didn’t really teach me all that much about how to cook. Especially breakfast foods. I remember her teaching me how to scramble eggs (she likes them soft-scrambled), but somewhere in my teenage years I developed a dislike for the smell of scrambled eggs, so I don’t cook those anymore. When I cook bacon in the microwave, it never turns out correctly. Mike had to remind me how to know when to flip the pancakes, because I had forgotten. I have a huge fear that I will be a terrible mom, because I don’t know how to fix my kids breakfast. I have her soup recipes and her chili recipe, but I don’t feel like I cook a lot of the same things she did. Last week we were talking with some friends about how Mike can just whip up something from whatever’s in the pantry. My mom can do that, but I didn’t get that skill.

I don’t feel that I am very much like my mom. I am much more similar to my dad, in temperment and eating habits and body type and, oh, pretty much everything. People tell me that I look like my mom, but I don’t really see it. Our closeness doesn’t look like the things that mothers and daughters are often thought to do together. We don’t watch movies together or go out for coffee. We shop rarely. I have never shared an alcoholic beverage with my mom. I do feel very close to her, though, and we talk on the phone probably five or six times a week. We have boundaries, though - I don’t talk smack about Mike to her, because that would be inappropriate. She’s been good about offering support when I ask for it and staying out of things otherwise. I am way more into pop culture than she is, and while she likes to read, she is by no means the voracious reader that I am. But she has always been supportive of whatever I wanted to do, as evidenced by the fact that she came to my book club discussion for The Red Tent. It was fun to talk about women and their relationships with their mothers while my mom was in the room.

Despite our differences, I see her in so much of what I do - the way that I put politeness before everything else (as any good Southern woman would), the way I grocery shop (store brands), the way I order in restaurants (inexpensive, and often not including red meat), the way I pull for my basketball team (passionately), the way I approach my faith (with clear eyes, unafraid to ask questions), the way I dress. This morning I noticed that I have several white shirts - long-sleeved, long-sleeved button-down, sleeveless, tank tops, the list goes on and on. One of the things I used to tease my mom about was how many white shirts she had. She would buy a new white shirt at any given opportunity, because, “You never know when you’re going to need it.” I tend to dress in a way that is similar to my mom - slightly more conservative and preppy than a lot of my friends.

A few days ago, a friend and I were talking about the support of our parents and how much it has meant. My parents came to my basketball games, though I was on the third string, and to my softball games and to my Quiz Bowl competitions. My mom was the one who finally got me to admit my interest in librarianship, and who encouraged me to pursue it as a career. I see such a difference in my life and my confidence as compared to people I know who didn’t have that same support.

Last night I watched my mom groove out to Paul McCartney as my dad teased her, and I thought about how great she is. I don’t know what these very disorganized thoughts say about my relationship with her, but I thought I’d share them nonetheless.

Every year on Super Bowl Sunday, our church has a “male bakeoff.” After church, the congregation meets in the fellowship hall for chili and soup and man-made desserts (mothers and wives and sisters and grandmothers and aunts cannot help at all). There are first, second, and third prize trophies (yes, actual trophies) in each age group (boys, youth, men) and other random awards like “Best Chocolate,” “Best Non-Chocolate,” “Best Burnt Offering” (for the worst one), “Best 1st time entry,” “Most Biblical,” so on and so forth. Basically, most of the people who enter get something.

Last year we went for the chili part but did not stay for the awards. This year, though, Mike decided to enter. He worked very hard yesterday on a Chocolate Irish Cream Cake. Yes, it did include alcohol. Yes, it is a Baptist church. (No, his was not the only alcohol-themed entry. hehe.) I was hugely impressed with his creation, and made him pose for a picture before we headed off to church.

The fellowship hall was decorated with footballs and football players and red, white, and blue tablecloths. The chili was delicious, with lots of toppings available. We sat with some friends and talked about movies and their baby that’s on the way and stuff that’s happening at church. It was a good time. When they finally announced the winners, Mike won best 1st time entry (too bad he wouldn’t let me bring the camera to church) and one of the guys we were sitting with won something like “Most Unusual” for his chocolate cake that included sauerkraut. Mike was very proud of his trophy, and will display it prominently (along with the rest of the cake) at our Super Bowl party. Highlights of the awards included the “Burnt Offering” award going to a man who just joined the church today (he got a lot of cheers) and this comment during the “Most Biblical” award: “Does anyone remember last year when we didn’t have any Biblical entries so we had to give this one to a Lord of the Rings cake?” The Deacon Chair had gone without winning anything for 11 years, so there were also a lot of cheers when he finally claimed a trophy.

In Sunday School, one of the ministers mentioned that the male bakeoff is one of the most popular events at the church - that more people come for that than do a lot of other things. I think it’s because it’s so celebratory - I mean, Mike now has an actual trophy that says he won the best 1st time entry. It’s fun to get together and be silly and for the guys of all ages to get awards. I know I talk a lot about our church and how important the community there is for me, but this afternoon was a very real picture of that for me. So many photographs taken, so many families where the fathers and sons all had entries, so much good-natured teasing and laughter - it makes me glad to be part of this small corner of the Church.

I slept better last night, only waking up when Mike came to bed and said, “Wake won!” I might have said, “Good,” or I might have just gone back to sleep. I have no idea.

So far this morning, my coworker and I have swapped vomit stories (my entire small group has some kind of stomach virus, but Mike and I seem to have miraculously escaped) and talked about how much more joyful mail was when we were children. When I was a little girl, my grandma would send me a card almost every week. I look back and think, “You know, those cards weren’t very interesting,” but they meant a lot anyway. She’d tell me things like, “I gave the calves their bottles today,” and what she made for lunch and what was growing in the garden and what the weather was like when she put the laundry on the clothesline. I still have some of those letters, and despite their lack of content, I still treasure them. I loved the calves, you see, so I wanted to know how they were doing. And I liked helping in the garden with the planting and the picking. And Grandma’s food is the best food of all.

Mail also brought books from Great-aunt Margaret, who was friends with E.B. White and would send me things like my treasured copy of Charlotte’s Web. The note that came with that told me how special I was to her, and how much she wanted to share one of her favorite books with me. One time my Aunt Nancy had to mail my favorite stuffed animal to me after I left it at her house. I remember checking the mail every day, being so afraid that Diney would get lost. He arrived safe and sound, with a note explaining all his adventures. He had missed me, it said, but he enjoyed meeting new friends at my cousin’s house. Diney’s handwriting was suspiciously like Aunt Nancy’s, but I didn’t mind so much.

I used to write a lot of letters, too. You see, kids, I grew up in the days before email, and my closest friends lived long-distance (this was also before the prominence of cell phones), so I couldn’t afford to call very often. I had to write letters. After we moved from Charlotte, I wrote to my friend Kim all the time (who just got back from a stint in Turkmenistan with the Peace Corps and who I am going to see tomorrow). In high school, I wrote to many of my friends I met at Governor’s School. Now I just send lots of email. (And thank-you notes. I do send thank-you notes.) I still enjoy sending letters, but when I do, I invariably talk to the person before they actually get the card or note, and then there’s that awkwardness of, “Do I address what I talked about in the card?”

I don’t have kids yet, but if I ever do, and then become a grandmother one day, I hope I remember how special Grandma’s letters were to me. I learned how to write letters and cards from my Grandma. I try to remember that now when I send an occasional note to my niece. Letter-writing, to me, is about the wonder of the mundane. It’s about letting people know how important they are to you, and about having something to open that’s not just a bill or a church newsletter. It’s a dying art, they say, which is a shame, but I don’t think it’s completely gone yet.

Sometimes things that we thought were over and dealt with pop up again and blindside us. I have been dealing with something the past couple of days that I thought had been put to rest. Instead, that chokey almost-crying feeling is keeping me up at all hours of the night as my mind runs circles around itself.

Last night I tried to distract myself by thinking about things to blog about. Using Brian’s entry as a springboard, I considered who my most influential teachers have been. There was Mrs. McGee, my second-grade teacher (who, I heard a few years ago, sadly passed away), and Mrs. Lopossay, my middle-school English teacher who didn’t laugh at me for reading A Tale of Two Cities and Anna Karenina when I was 13. (I only read them because we had started doing Accelerated Reader, and I wanted to read the books that had the most points. It earned me a bunch of candy, let me tell you.) In high school, there was Coach Stutts, who let us play Risk during the last few days of class, which I won. Even beating him. Mr. Ray, the best Trigonometry/Advanced Math/Calculus teacher a girl could want.

And, since this is my blog, I would like to take a minute to let you know about some of the negative teachers, too. The librarian at my elementary school in Charlotte, who shamed me in front of my entire class for an honest misunderstanding. Mrs. Brown, my third-grade teacher, who gave me a D on a test that included questions like, “How long does it take to eat an apple?” and, “How long does it take to swim a lap in pool?” and, “How long would it take Susie to read a 40-page book that had pictures on every other page?” Can I just say that I am a notoriously slow apple-eater but a very fast reader? I’m still mad about that one, in case you can’t tell. Those things were both over 15 years ago, which proves how influential teachers are. At last I can have my revenge! hehe.

But, far and away, the most influential teacher I had was Mrs. Pate. I have mentioned her before, as the librarian who made me read The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. She influenced more than my reading, though - my freshman year, she convinced me to try out for the Quiz Bowl team, which shaped my social interactions for those four years. She even gave me rides home from practice when my parents weren’t able to come pick me up. She made the library a place we could go to seek sanctuary from the bustle and backstabbing of high school life. She expected a lot of us, but she was always there to listen when we were having a hard time. She let me complain about my social status (or lack thereof). She didn’t push me to talk when I broke up with my boyfriend (another Quiz Bowl team member). She helped me with my speech for graduation, and she helped us all practice for our college interviews. She had us over to her house for practices and for a fancy dinner before the prom. She gave up Saturdays to take us to meets, all in the hope that we could make it to the televised round, which we never did. But we sure had fun trying. One year, we did especially poorly at district, and after we had gotten dejectedly back into the van, she turned around and said, “I don’t want you to think I’m disappointed in you. How could I be disappointed in you not knowing the answers to questions as stupid as those?” She was tough, but always on our side.

One of my favorite memories of her is from the day I found out about my scholarship to UNCG. I had gone for interviews the week before, so we knew the letter was coming to let me know the results. The day it actually came, my parents were home, and I had given them permission to open it as soon as it arrived. I got called to the office just after lunch, and there were my parents with the letter and some roses, congratulating me. They were so proud - I had gotten enough to cover everything, and college wouldn’t cost a cent. It was a great moment. I was a little overwhelmed, and after they left, I went to Mrs. Pate’s office to tell her about it, and I just cried for several minutes as she hugged me. She made a joke about it, “This is a good thing, you know that, right?” but she knew I didn’t want to have to take out loans to go to college. (Eventually, I went back to Mr. Ray’s class, and everyone congratulated me. I would like to point out that one of the advantages of being a “good kid” is that I was allowed to roam the halls freely at this point. Should I have been in class? You betcha. Did anyone care? Apparently not so much.)

Last week, before he left for Connecticut, my brother went to see Mrs. Pate. I try to stop by and see her as often as I can, which isn’t very often anymore. But in the past few years, she has started going to my grandparents’ church, so I hear how she and her family are doing from time to time. I know that she is pleased that I have become a librarian . . . but with an influence like her, how could I have done anything else with my life?

Thoughts of Mrs. Pate didn’t help me drift off to sleep, but they did keep the crying at bay for a while longer.

Making both sides of the conversation
Sometimes, I don’t know what to do
Don’t start talking inside my head
If you’re a dead man then stick to being dead -Sam Phillips (who else?)

Today has been much better than yesterday. Yesterday I was busy working on the lease plan (of the devil) and sorting through three enormous boxes of donation books (hardcover science-fiction, so good news for us) and the computers were down (or very very slow) for most of the day. Between the three boxes of books, the box of bookclub books I needed to return, and the 80-something lease books currently on the floor of my office waiting to be returned, things were a little crowded in my cubicle. People kept passing by and just looking at me like, “How the hell did you create such a mess?” I kept threatening to start building a fort so no one could get in to give me more to do. And then I could throw snowballs at my coworkers over the top, just like Calvin and Hobbes.

Today, though, I’ve managed to dig my way out of most of that mess, so things are looking up. Here are some things I’ve been thinking about today:

-Laundry. I love laundry. I love having clean clothes. And getting out stains. And having my laundry room be straight. I don’t love folding the clothes or ironing, but I have been a lot more efficient about both lately. It used to be that I’d just put the pants or the shirt unironed into my closet (a lot of this had to do with the teeny tiny closets we had, I think), but now I am getting everything ironed beforehand, and I’m so organized and I can hardly stand it. I ironed today before work! Laundry makes me happy.

-Mike’s English class. Mike has English 101 or something, and you should see his face light up when he talks about it. There’s a paper he’s been writing, and he’s been working on it at every available minute. It’s fun to see him so excited about it. I keep encouraging him to post parts of it on his blog, because I learned some things I hadn’t known about him before, and I think it would be of interest to his readers. (Go bug him about it.)

-Gilmore Girls. The 100th episode is next week. The promos make me feel a little . . . distraught. Just ask Mike, who is about to put me on a ban from speaking about the girls for the next few weeks.

-Dinner. I’m getting hungry. hehe.