I did this last year, having gotten the idea from Linda at sundrymourning, and thought it’d be fun to do again this year.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?

I learned that I can, in fact, go running on a regular basis, and love it. I helped raise a puppy.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Here is my 2007 New Year’s Meme. My resolution from 2007 was:

“I think my main resolution for 2007 is to really get in shape. I’ve gotten a good start in the past few months, but I need to keep at it. Also, to find a place where I can ride regularly. Which is scary and intimidating, but I want it to happen badly enough that I can push through that. I hope.”

Well, I did both of those, at one point this year. Yay! I did start to get in shape, and sort of slacked off around the holidays, for a bunch of not-very-good reaseons, but the fact that I started doing it, and found a workout format that I loved (taking the dog running/fast-walking, with the iPod), encourages me that I can get right back into it now that our schedule has sort of calmed down.

I also did find a place to go riding - there’s a stable about an hour from here where the owner made a deal with me to do two hours of barn work in exchange for riding for an hour or two. I’m on a break from that right now, just because it ended up taking 6 hours out of my Saturday (my only full free day each week) - an hour driving, an hour back, two hours of barn work, and then an hour or two of riding - and I felt like I really needed that time to rest and keep the house in order. But I do plan to resume it sometime soon, because it is just so wonderful to be on a horse!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes! My dear friend Elisa, in California, gave birth to a wonderful baby boy named Caden. If y’all think about it, pray for Elisa and her husband, Lee, and for Caden - he (Caden) has had a lot of medical problems since he was born in mid-October, and he’s still in the hospital, which is especially hard this time of year. I think they’re holding up pretty well so far, though.

Edited to add: Caden is home now! As of a few days ago. YAY!!!

Also, Elisa’s sister, Laura, who is another good friend of mine, had Ethan this July. I got to meet him over Christmas, and he has the MOST adorable, expressive facial expressions ever! He also looks just like his daddy, James.

Also also, Shannon and Nat, good friends from our previous life group at church, had baby Graham; Tyler and Carrie had baby Maggie; and Jake and Melissa had baby Sam. (All of these friends are both through church AND through school - some graduated, some not yet.)

4. Did anyone close to you die?

I don’t think so. I mean, I guess I would know, right?

5. What countries did you visit?

None.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?

A calm spirit, more self-discipline.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

I don’t have any in particular, I don’t think.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Two things that are kind of re-stating the first question: I ran two miles straight without stopping and walked VERY briskly another two miles straight without stopping - then did this again several more times over the ensuing weeks. (I also did shorter distances a whole bunch of times, but that two-mile run really felt great.) Also, I re-ordered my schedule around our puppy, Beren. I was afraid that I wouldn’t want to get up and let him out, wouldn’t want to take him on walks, wouldn’t want to deal with him…and while that is sometimes true here and there, overall, I honestly don’t mind giving up some things to take care of him. I never thought I would love him as much as I do. I still don’t do nearly enough for him, but I am very motivated to, which is kind of a victory for me.

9. What was your biggest failure?

This has always been true, but realizing just how big of a sinner I am. (I am trying not to do the beating-myself-up thing where I say my biggest failure was MY ENTIRE LIFE and EVERYTHING IS A FAILURE, because I know objectively it’s not true. It’s just easy to find lots of things that I feel like a failure at, without seeing the things that are victories as well.) I am trying to learn that it’s…well, I was going to say “it’s okay to be a failure” which is true in one sense and not in another, but in the sense that my ultimate destiny does not depend on my success but on the work Jesus has already done on my behalf, it’s okay. It’s not okay in the sense that I need to work a lot harder at things that I am admittedly lazy about…but right now the victory would be more in the direction of admitting that it’s okay not to be perfect, than in the direction of actually BEING more perfect.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I did faceplant on the sidewalk in October. That was unpleasant. I don’t think my nose fully healed, either - it still hurts to touch it. My palms finally did heal, though. I know this is sort of a cliche, but you really DON’T realize how much you need every part of your hadn to work right until it doesn’t. Who knew scraped skin could hurt so much? (Actually, I think I really bruised the heels of my hands pretty hard, which was why it was so bad, but the scrapes were pretty awful, too.)

Although, for once, this ‘injury’ resulted from an actual athletic activity. All but one of the bones I’ve broken have been from stupid stuff, like banging into a door or falling down the porch steps or something. So I’m glad that I got this ‘injury’ from going running.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

The puppy, definitely.

Also, maybe Bare Minerals makeup. (I bought Everyday Minerals last year, and that was great, but Bare Minerals is WAY better, and I LOVE it. I’ve only used it for a couple of weeks, but it’s totally worth getting the starter kit.)

For the record, the puppy is by far much more important than makeup.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Brandon, for taking care of me and putting up with all my issues.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Part of me wants to say Britney Spears, but I haven’t really wasted any actual emotion on that whole ridiculous saga, so maybe I’ll just say ‘nobody.’

14. Where did most of your money go?

AFTER bills and necessities, or before? If before, then rent, phones, GAS (good GRIEF), food…the boring stuff. After that, dog-related things, some physical therapy, clothes, books, cosmetics…

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I am going to sound like a broken record here, but the puppy. We saved and waited for a long time, so it was really fun to meet him when he was so tiny, and to watch him grow up.

Oh, also, having the week between Christmas and New Year’s off was SUCH a thrill. I definitely got inordinately excited about that! (And it was SO worth the excitement. Everything I thought it would be.)

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?

Acres of Hope, Shane & Shane; probably also Labor of Love, by Jill Philliips (well, performed by Jill Phillips, written by Andrew Peterson), ’cause I sang it, and Poor Sinner Dejected With Fear, also ’cause I sang it (twice).

Some more:

The Valley Song, Jars of Clay
All The Miles, Sandra McCracken
Ten Thousand Angels, Caedmon’s Call
Livin’ On A Prayer, Jon Bon Jovi (okay, Rachel and I had a silly car-ride listening to this song and singing along at the top of our lungs, so it’s a fun memory)
Behind These Hazel Eyes, Kelly Clarkson (one of my favorite songs to run to, but it’s hard to keep up that pace!)
Wedding Dress, Matt Nathanson (thanks Michael for pointing him out to me!)
Jessie’s Girl, Rick Springfield (because this was the song playing on my iPod when I bit it on the sidewalk)
The Mixed Tape, Jack’s Mannequin (it was the soundtrack to a fun Office montage video and I’ve loved it ever since)
Blue Sky, Patty Griffin
Heavenly Day, Patty Griffin
Song No One Knows, Elizabeth Foster
San Francisco, Elizabeth Foster
When Your Mind’s Made Up, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
Falling Slowly, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol
Nashville Blues, Cory Morrow
Some Hearts, Carrie Underwood
Starts With Goodbye, Carrie Underwood
Easy Silence, Dixie Chicks
Don’t Stop Believin’, Journey

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

a) Happier, I think. I think. Yeah, I am.
b) Let’s not talk about this one. (Okay, okay. I think I’m fatter. But for a while I was on the way to getting lean!)
c) Richer, I think.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Keep up with my faraway friends. Go running. Find good, new music. Sing and play guitar. Use my energy for thoughtfulness towards others, not just on myself.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Lie around on the couch! Be lazy about training the puppy. Stress out. Procrastinate.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

At home in Charlottesville! So fun. It was very low-key, too, just me and Brandon and my parents and the dog and the cat (who seems to have been okay with the fact that there was a DOG, DOWNSTAIRS!, and who has not, according to my parents, retreated to hide under the bed since her discovery). And we had a lovely dinner of turkey and beef and Yorkshire pudding (YUMMM) and apple pie (again, YUMMM - and even though I made it, I can say that, because the recipes aren’t my own) and other delightful stuff. It was very nice and restful.

21. Did you fall in love in 2007?

I definitely fell more in love with Brandon. Also [broken record alert!], I fell in love with Beren. He’s just so cute and fun!

22. What was your favorite TV program?

The Office, definitely. 24 wasn’t great this year, and American Idol wasn’t as good as last year, either. Top Chef was okay, but The Office was the only one of my shows that felt like it just kept getting better. (Boo Writers’ Strike! I mean, not boo to the strike, I think they have a good point, but boo to the silly networks and production companies who won’t pay their employees. BOO I SAY!)

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Nope.

24. What was the best book you read?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for sure. Man, that was awesome.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Oh, goodness, I don’t know. Maybe Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova? (I can’t do all those funky little things over the letters.) That’s pretty recent, and not so much a discovery as listening to Michael and trying them out (via the movie Once). Also some Matt Nathanson stuff (again through Michael)…goodness, I am really blanking. I will have to check my iTunes to see.

Okay, I checked, and I’ll add Elizabeth Foster and Snow Patrol, maybe Carrie Underwood.

26. What did you want and get?

Lots of things! The Latter Annals of Lystra books (LOVE them so far), The Office Season Three, some clothes, some delightful shoes…

27. What did you want and not get?

I can’t really think of anything, honestly. I mean, there are plenty of things that I want sort of in general, but not that I specifically asked for for Christmas. Well, no wait, can we count birthdays too? The Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea DVDs - they had just been re-released (or maybe released for the first time?) on DVD, and so were ridiculously expensive, so we decided to wait on those. But yeah, that’s all I can think of in particular.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

I don’t know. I liked the Harry Potter movie, and I liked Once, and I liked the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and…oh, I have a terrible memory for this type of thing unless I can look at a list of movies that came out this year. I Am Legend was pretty good, and I really enjoyed Juno and Waitress. Actually, Waitress is probably near the top of my list.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was twenty-FIVE! I am finally a grown-up. Haha.

I went out with some girls from work and church the night before my birthday, went out to dinner with Brandon ON my birthday (which is also his birthday), and got taken out to lunch a couple of times over the next week, as well. It was fun to have it all spread out like that!

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Lack of stress.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?

I still think this question is hysterical. How about “Khakis And Gold Ballet Flats Go With Everything” for work, and “Wind Pants And An A&M T-Shirt Are Comfortable, Okay?” for…not at work.

(I think I dressed pretty well a lot this year, actually, but I definitely got in ruts. So, there were moments of fashion excellence, and long stretches of fashion doldrums.)

32. What kept you sane?

My husband and my dog. And my awesome friends - at work and far away and church.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I think it’s gonna be John Krasinski again, honestly.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

Y’all, I am so bad. I really don’t follow politics enough, so I don’t think I can answer this question.

35. Who did you miss?

Elisa and Rachel and Alisa and Rachel (yes, different E(A)lisas and Rachels, amazingly enough) and Andrea and Elizabeth (’cause even though she lives here, we didn’t hang out nearly enough) - my ‘faraway friends.’ And my family, and Brandon’s family.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

Lauren!

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.

The way you’ve always done things is not necessarily the only right way to do them. (I know, novel, right? But still.)

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

This is going to have to wait…I am having such a hard time with the music questions today!

Preliminarily…

He will allure her
He will pursue her
And call her out
To wilderness with flowers in His hand
She is responding
Beat up and hurting
Deserving death
But offerings of life are found instead

She will sing
She will sing
Oh, to You
She will sing as in the days of youth
As You lead her away
To valleys low
To acres of hope
Acres of hope

How the story ends is
Love and tenderness in Him
Not safe, but worth it
So the valleys up ahead
Or the ones we live
We’ll sing together
We’ll sing together

Coming back later to add - this is still the best song for the year, I think (though all the ones I mentioned above that will make me think of 2007 sum up the year all together as well).

First, as requested by Geof, more puppy pictures (and stories)!

Brandon’s brother Michael visited in August. and had a BLAST with Beren. Here are a few pictures…

Michael had to document the very sad sight of Beren getting a bath:

A present for the puppy: 12th Man jersey! Whoop!

Playing tag

Love the paw here:

Piggy-back ride!

More tag

Michael and Beren

LOVE this one - so secretive! “I don’t think they’ve seen me…I can continue plotting!”

He’s…not easy to pick up anymore.

We went to the beach in September, and took Beren. I wish we had pictures of him in the water - he was tentative at first (he barked at the waves! “Where are you going?? WAIT YOU’RE WAY TOO CLOSE RUN AWAY!!!”), but eventually splashed around happily with us. He even learned to swim! Sort of by accident. He was wading with us in about six-inch-deep water, but then a wave came and swept him off his feet. I thought he was going to get bowled over, but he let the wave carry him and started paddling away! He doesn’t paddle very efficiently, though, he sort of slaps at the waves with his front paws. SO CUTE.

Anyway, here are two pictures of him at the beach, even though they’re not the ones I wish I could show you (we didn’t take our camera down to the water):

In his crate in the basement of the beach house (he was good down there, for the most part, but he did bark and cry whenever anyone would come by - “Oh! Oh! Are you coming to see ME!?!? I LOVE YOU BE MY FRIEND! ….where are you going? Don’t LEAVE ME!!!” Very dramatic and pitiful):

On the deck, before one of our early-morning walks (my parents were continually shocked to see me up before 7:00 - I NEVER used to get up that early at the beach, but this time I saw the sunrise almost every day! The beach in the morning is WONDERFUL).

Now, some sad (but funny) pictures. Beren got neutered in November, so we decided that if he had to wear one of those plastic lampshade-things, at least it would be festive!

He was REALLY drugged up - he would just stand in the middle of the floor and sort of stare into space, and blink, until someone walked by him or talked to him or something, then he would sort of give a start and move about six inches. Hehe. Also, if his lampshade bumped into something, he would LEAP back in fright and again, just sort of stand there aimlessly.

This is CONSIDERABLY less energy than he usually displays!

He fell asleep in my lap (though he’s not asleep here) - he NEVER does that. Further proof of how drugged up he was.

Sleeeeeepy.

Now some Christmas pictures!

We tried to get him to wear a Santa hat, but…well, this is how THAT went.

“Nooooooooooo!”

Maybe a treat will convince him…

Almost…

“I supPOSE I will cooperate.”

“Is it gone??”

Just a few more random ones…

He’s learned how to give a “high-five”!

We gave him an empty peanut-butter jar today, and he entertained us for about an hour. For the first little while, he didn’t realize that he could hold the jar in place with his paws or his mouth, so he sort of slowly chased it around the kitchen with his tongue, resulting in a lot of twisting around to get his face in it.

Then it got stuck on his face… “DO NOT WANT!”

Then he decided to start barking at it. (Please excuse our FILTHY floor - it’s been raining all day and we have tracked in all sorts of crap, which I don’t sweep up until the end of the day, because really, why bother?)

That’s all we’ve got for now (not that this isn’t a huge entry on its own…)

More pictures and stories to come!

Beren is SO MUCH FUN. Except for the fact that he seems to be able to drink AND PROCESS THROUGH HIS SYSTEM more water than I thought was canine-ly possible. He’s learning to at least look at the door now when he needs to pee (and he’s fine with letting us know he needs to do…other functions), but usually that look lasts all of 3 seconds and if we don’t catch it or if we’re in the next room, we’re greeted by a small puddle. But he is VERY good at going to the bathroom outside when we take him.

He’s getting used to walking on the leash, too, and is not fighting it the way he did on his first night home. He gets worn out pretty quickly, either from pulling too hard or when his little paw-pads get sore (CUTE!), and usually collapses with his water bowl after a good long walk. He is SO excited to see me in the mornings, and can barely stay still long enough for me to get his collar on and get him outside. He loves tummy rubs and shoulder-stratches and chin-scratches and just general love and cuddles. He really likes to climb into my lap and chew on his rope-bone, which is the only way I can let him in my lap because otherwise he just leaps everywhere and it is kind of overwhelming. But with his bone, he’ll sit quietly in my lap and chew. One evening Brandon and I were both on the floor, and Beren went back and forth between our two laps with his bone. SO cute.

He’s 12 weeks old now (I think? yeah, that’s about right) and is so much fun. Very expressive - our favorite thing is to make him tilt his head to the side in confusion. A lot of things will do this, most notably talking in a different voice than he is used to (more high-pitched voices really do the trick). He is terrified of the mop bucket, LOVES his squeak toy (though see Brandon’s blog for his initial reaction to this toy), loves to play tug-of-war, and has learned to sit. We love him tons and are SO glad we got him!

Some photos:

Beren at 5 weeks, already loving his tummy-rubs

Beren at 7 weeks. This cat was REALLY friendly (it’s Heavensown’s cat), but Beren was kind of unsure.

Beren exhausted on the drive home (10 weeks). He had had a fit of hysterics and FREAKED OUT that we were driving him away - I’m sure being drenched with rain on the way to the car didn’t help, though - and finally exhausted himself and fell almost asleep. He had to keep an eye on me, though.

Beren whined and whimpered pretty much the first 24 hours we had him home, so we cuddled him a lot.

Brandon holding our demon puppy (I’m gonna have to learn how to use red-eye reduction, because Beren has one blue eye that is ALWAYS red in pictures - yes, one blue eye and one brown eye, pretty cool)

Beren finally sleeping in his crate.

The Kulps came over the next day to meet Beren. Celia was a little bit unsure, but Bennett was totally relaxed. She kept reaching for Beren and saying “Pupp-y? Pupp-y!” SO CUTE.

Rachel A. with the puppy the night before she left Charlotte.

Patty T. with Beren - so glad we could see her on her trip before she goes far far away!

This is my FAVORITE picture of him. He’s totally not supposed to climb on the gate (he’s really strong enough to knock it down by now), but this is SO cute and so much his personality.

“I must carefully determine the threat posed by the yellow alien squeaky toy.”

Beren reclining with his water bowl.

“It’s…it’s the spiders…they want me to tap-dance! …I DON’T WANT TO TAP-DANCE.”

Mid-tummy-rub.

TIRED puppy. He still sleeps with his legs out behind him!

We had wanted to get a dog sometime this fall, but after Brandon’s trip to Germany was cancelled, we decided to move it up a bit. Brandon found Heavensown Aussies online, and we set up an appointment to go visit and pick out a puppy. After playing with them all for almost two hours, we decided on this one:

(Photos taken by Donna Fowler)

We’ve named him Beren (from the tale of Beren and Luthien, in Lord of the Rings), and we think he’s adorable. I think the above pictures were taken by the breeder when he wasn’t more than a week old or so. We have a bunch of pictures that we took when we went to go out and visit for the first time, when he was about four weeks old, and some more from last Saturday when we went to visit again (we want him to get to know us a little bit before we take him home). The latest ones are on the computer at home, but here are a few more:

Here I believe he was ferociously attacking a towel. Quite the fighter is our little puppy! (Actually not. He’s the most laid-back one of the bunch. This was more of a snuffle than an attack on the towel.)

Cutest thing ever - Beren really likes to sleep with his back legs stretched out. We have another picture of this from this past week, but again, on the home computer…

Beren with his brother, “Prince Charming.” They were licking each other when this was taken. SO cute.

Puppies enjoying a good meal! This was right after Tinkerbell (Momma) ROLLED OVER while the puppies were mid-nurse, all still attached. They all sort of flew up into the air and then settled on the other side, unconcerned.

We’re REALLY excited. We get to take him home after he turns 9 weeks, and since that’s when we’re planning to be in Virginia, we’re gonna get him sometime the second week of July, maybe the 9th or 10th. Yay!

A word about the skirt Rachel’s borrowing: I LOVE lending things to people. Especially things that I myself love very much. This is most apparent in my love for lending my favorite books: I want my friends to enjoy all my favorite books as much as I have, as well as wanting them to know the part of me that loves that book. I find that as people read (and love) books that I’ve read and loved, they know me a little better. And I am always seeking for my favorite people to know me a little better.

I don’t think I’d thought about this, but it turns out it’s the same way with clothes. I was SO excited for Rachel to borrow something of mine. I wanted to be able to share the part of me that just LOVES that white skirt (the one she borrowed…it’s white cotton, below the knee, sort of fitted at the top but flared about halfway down, sewn together in panels – gores? – that start out narrow and then flare out) with Rachel. The best part was that she also borrowed one of my favorite tops – black strapless, with a lace overlay and a ribbon that went under the bust and tied in a little bow – and one of my favorite necklaces (chunky green beads of various sizes). It’s a SUPER cute outfit on her, and it just made me so happy to be able to let her wear it (instead of buying a whole new outfit for the rehearsal dinner she has to go to).

Anyway, Rachel came over on Monday to try on all of my dressy clothes, and decided on the white-skirt/black-top combo, but I happened to be WEARING the white skirt to work that day (I changed into sweatpants while she was trying things on, never fear – I was not pantsless for my entire lunch break!), so I had to bring it to her yesterday. The plan was for me to drop it off at her house on my way home from physical therapy, ‘cause my route went very near her street, but then I realized that we should have dinner, and we decided to meet at Zaxby’s.

Now, Rachel had never been to Zaxby’s. I was excited – yet another chance for me to share something I love with a friend! Y’all, I REALLY love Zaxby’s. I don’t crave it too often, just ‘cause it’s SO heavy and I feel full for about five days after I eat there, but I LOVE it. The closest one is over by Rachel, and it’s not a shopping center we go to very often, so we just…don’t get a lot of Zaxby’s. But like I said…I LOVE it. I always order the Big Zax Snack, which is a piece of Texas toast, three chicken fingers, and some fries. Their honey mustard is awesome, too, so I usually dip the chicken fingers AND the fries in the honey mustard. And if I don’t get a drink, which I don’t often do these days (yay for my Nalgene!), it’s not expensive at all - $4.32 total for an incredibly filling meal.

Rachel got the Zaxby’s club, and enjoyed it greatly. I was so excited to have been able to share THAT with her too! I may have been TOO excited, actually, ‘cause I was just a wee bit punchy. We both got a great deal of amusement in my telling the story of making a fool of myself the week before at physical therapy (it involved jumping on and off of a stool, which apparently I am incapable of doing without a little sort of kick and flap of my arms…I believe “butterfly princess” were the exact words used to describe it), and then in my sort of dancing along to “Hey Ya” by Outkast (I did a little head-jerk at certain points, to emphasize various lyrics in this incredibly deep and poetic song).

It was just a lot of fun. I did manage to remember to give her the skirt (I kept imagining myself forgetting it and having to drive all the way back home and all the way back out to give it to her, since she’s leaving town tomorrow and has to work right up until when she’s leaving), which was kind of a victory for me, since I’m not great at staying on top of those kinds of things. I even managed to get home in time to watch American Idol, which: Jordin = awesome, Blake = not quite so awesome, and the winning ‘original song’ = sounding exactly like “How Great Is Our God,” by Chris Tomlin. And then Brandon came home, the mighty conqueror of the daunting Hebrews-Revelation exam, and I presented him with a celebratory cinnamon roll purchased from Fresh Market.

All in all, it was a very good evening. And tomorrow, I have the day off, ‘cause I’ll be working most of Saturday, helping with graduation. I have a huge list of house-projects I want to do tomorrow, and I’m trying to be excited about completing them but not to the point that I’ll beat myself up if I don’t get them done. And we’ll probably go out to dinner tomorrow night to celebrate the end of the semester and of most of Brandon’s seminary work, and then Pirates of the Caribbean 3 comes out on Friday, and we’re thinking of going to see that, and then graduation (and maybe riding?) on Saturday, and then life group cookout on Sunday, and then Monday is Memorial Day! All in all, a good next few days coming up for the Cozart household!

I had a great weekend in Charleston, filled with sun time, beach time, ocean time, downtown Charleston time, seafood time, good church time, Mother’s Day time, ice cream time, walking on the Battery time…tons of great stuff. And yet I just don’t feel like recapping all of it. Maybe because I know that if I get into all of it I’ll just go on and on and ON and on and write an entry to rival the length of my entry about my trip to Orlando. So maybe I’ll just put in a few notes, instead of narrating the entire trip from start to finish.

In no particular order:

- Man, I love she-crab soup. I don’t know if I’d had it before, except maybe from one of the sample people at Harris Teeter. But my mom got some at dinner on Saturday night, and I had a bite, and then I got some of my own. I also had a crab cake sandwich, which was pretty good, and which usually would have been my favorite part of the meal, but dang, that soup, it was AWESOME. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. (And you know how you get such a huge appetite after being outside in the water all day? I was insanely hungry by the time we got downtown and ate, and somehow I was happy to have something hot and sort of stick-to-your-ribs even though it was hot outside.)

- Isle of Palms is GREAT. This is the third time I’ve been now, and it’s just been lovely each time (except for the first time, with the sun and my stupidity resulting in me getting sun poisoning on my face…eww. But even so it was still lovely). It’s a really clean beach, and since our friend Leven tipped us off to the free parking a little bit farther down from the public area of the beach, we were able to get a nice spot without eight other blankets’ worth of people breathing down our necks. Seriously, it was crazy – the tide came up REALLY far, and since the storm the week before had apparently deposited a huge amount of…I guess it was reeds, or something, on the sand, you could only move your stuff so far up the beach before you were either on the reeds (uncomfortable) or on the dunes (slanty). We had enough space that we could keep moving back as the tide came in, but when we took a walk down toward the pier later in the day, we saw people basically all on top of each other, with some peoples’ stuff just IN the water almost. I mean, not floating away, but coolers being lapped by the waves, chairs in the water, that kind of thing. INSANELY crowded.

But the water was perfectly cool-but-not-too-cool, and we got in and enjoyed it immensely. Lots of bobbing around just past the breakers. Except when Rachel and I saw two…fins…on unidentified marine creatures, and weren’t sure enough that it wasn’t something disagreeable to stick around. Actually we pretty much ran squealing out of the water and stood on the beach shaking, but whatever. (I know it wasn’t a shark, ‘cause don’t sharks travel alone? And there were definitely TWO fins. And they weren’t big enough to be dolphins, I don’t think, unless my depth perception is WAY off and they were much farther away than I thought…the fins looked like they were about six inches tall, big enough that whatever they were attached to was certainly no minnow, but not big enough for a nice safe fun dolphin. Unless it was two BABY dolphins, in which case, AWWWW! And so sad that we couldn’t play with them.

At any rate, we had phenomenal weather, which was especially wonderful given that all week the forecast sort of hovered around “partly cloudy, with a 40% chance of thunderstorms.” It was clear and blue, with hardly any humidity, and about 80-85 degrees. See? Lovely.

- Sweet cream ice cream with raspberries mixed in, from Cold Stone, is the nectar of the gods. I never order mixins (or whatever they call them at Cold Stone) – I don’t like chewy or crunchy things interrupting the smoothness of the ice cream (same way I don’t like nuts in my baked goods – the interruptors themselves aren’t necessarily abhorrent, I just would rather my baked goods or my ice cream to be…uninterrupted). But my mom ordered hers with raspberries, and I didn’t even know they HAD raspberries, and hot damn, I am ordering that more often because it is GOOD. It is SO good. It is especially good when you’re eating it in the hot sun, walking around downtown Charleston and looking in the windows of all the cute shops.

- Redeemer Presbyterian Church (I think that’s what it was called?) in downtown Charleston is a super cool church. Being as critical as I am, theologically and worship-music-ally and ecclesiastically, it’s rare that I walk into an unfamiliar church and don’t feel any discomfort at all during the service, but that’s how I felt at Redeemer. It helped that we bumped into some of my church friends (and an old boss! All in the same family) from Charlotte down there, visiting their daughter, and ALSO discovered that one of the RTS students goes there, AND discovered that the people in front of us knew Leven, the guy in whose house we were staying (it was his church, too – he couldn’t go, he had to work, at SIX-THIRTY AM after getting in from CHINA at ELEVEN AT NIGHT, poor guy). But it wasn’t just that the people were friendly and/or familiar. The music was really well done – the senior pastor was also apparently the worship leader, and he played the piano, and there was a choir made up of mostly people my age (which is kind of rare in a church choir, huh?), and a guy on an unamplified guitar, and maybe someone on djembes. And on a few songs, someone on a trumpet, and someone on a recorder. But…having the choir basically lead the worship was really cool. I was afraid it would be cheesy, but it was pretty awesome. Their harmonies were good, and they just sounded…sincere without, again, being cheesy. The sermon was good, and the liturgy was good, and it was just…I really liked it a lot. We’ll DEFINITELY have to go back the next time we’re in Charleston. And oh yes, there will be a next time.

- How in the WORLD did all those old-timey ladies wear SO MANY CLOTHES? It is HOT down there. Even right on the battery, even in the face of a storm, with a nice stiff breeze, it’s HOT. In May. Can you imagine living in one of those houses farther back inland, without the benefit of the sea breeze, in July? No wonder so many women fainted all the time. They weren’t pansies, they were getting constant heat exhaustion!

Those are about all of the just random thoughts I can come up with, but I think you can get a good idea of what the trip was like from those.

Unless someone WANTS a thirty-five page essay on the minute-by-minute details…no, I take it back, I won’t write it even if someone wants it.

They’re probably “duh” statements to everyone else, but a lightbulb really went on for me about a few things. And it’s helped me be so much more content and less frustrated with other people. (It’s really the same realization applied to two different situations, now that I think about it.)

The first one was this. I realized that just like I can’t understand people who don’t care anything about their appearance, there are people who can’t understand ME because I don’t care what kind of car I drive or what my car looks like.

And I don’t. I was thinking the other day, “Why do people spend so much money on a status car? Why does it matter what it looks like as long as it works okay?” Now, I would like to insert a disclaimer here that I’m not saying that I wouldn’t care at ALL if my car was a puke-green rattletrap with a bad paint job, but like, I don’t care that I have a ’98 Chevy Cavalier instead of something newer or cooler. I just don’t care. I’ll admire a cool car that someone else has, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that I don’t have one.

The people that WOULD be bothered by that probably think I’m nuts. “How can she not CARE?? Doesn’t she realize the image she’s projecting by driving something so pedestrian and boring and old??”

And I have a similar lack of understanding towards people who don’t care about their personal appearance. On top of that, if I had the money, I would willingly spend $200-$300 on a Coach purse, because I love how it looks and it’s sort of a “status” thing. (I have a fake Coach right now, not a knock-off made to look real with the logo and everything, but a purse that took a Coach design and changed it some and isn’t trying to look like it’s real but is sort of…channeling the design, if that makes sense. I get embarrassed a little bit when I’m in line in a store, for example, and there’s someone in front of me who has the actual Coach purse that my purse got the design idea from, and I have this urge to say “I know mine’s not real, I’m not trying to pass it off as the real thing.”) So it’s really sort of the same thing as spending a lot of money on a ‘status’ car, for the image.

The other realization I had was in relation to music and movies. On the board, some people were discussing how much they didn’t like X-Men 3 and Spiderman 3, and which one was worse, and why they were both bad, etc. I really liked both of those movies (though, as I said on the board, I never read the comics, so inconsistencies with the ‘real’ storyline don’t bother me – they’re just fun movies). A lot of the complaints people had were with things like continuity – there’s one scene in X-Men 3 where in one shot it’s daytime and in the next shot it’s night-time, completely inexplicably. And a lot of people are mentioning the bad acting in Spiderman 3. And…I didn’t notice any of that. Now that I think about it, I remember the day/night thing in X-Men 3, but I don’t think I can even recognize good acting when I see it (only rarely), and can only recognize bad acting when it kicks me in the face. It’s just not something I care about. I end up liking a movie, or not, because of the story, because of what it said and the themes and sometimes the likability of the characters, not because of the cinematography or the acting or whatever. (Though I know from seeing stuff that people say is good cinematography or acting that I do tend to enjoy movies that have that…I just don’t notice it and BAD cinematography or acting or lack of continuity or whatever won’t keep me from enjoying a movie.)

Then I realized…maybe some people are like this about music. I’ve had several rants about American Idol lately, how I hated that people were making a mockery of it by voting for Sanjaya, and how as a singer, it’s really hard to see the people who are deserving of winning it not be recognized and honored for their talent. And it bothered me that other people didn’t always see it that way, that they didn’t care whether the person had vocal ability, but cared more about whether they were a good performer or had a good personality or whatever. But then I got it – maybe these people feel about music (vocal ability in particular – everyone has an opinion about music, it seems) the way I feel about cinematography and continuity: they just don’t care if it’s good or not. Other things are more important to them. Maybe they don’t have the background to be able to tell if someone is vocally excellent, the way I don’t have the background to be able to tell if a movie is skillfully shot or edited. Maybe not caring about those things helps them enjoy the performance as a whole more than I can, because I’m nit-picking about the flat note there and the shrillness here.

Both of these realizations were very helpful to me. It’s nice to begin to understand other people a little bit better, you know?

Piano Man, Billy Joel
Blessed Be Your Name, Matt Redman
Received, Shane Barnard
Catch 22, Andrew Peterson
Truth No. 2, Dixie Chicks
Free, Patty Griffin
Ticket Home, Sandra McCracken
In The Light, dc Talk (hmmm.)
When You Say Nothing At All, Allison Krauss + Union Station
My, Oh My, The Wreckers
Three Fine Daughters of Farmer Brown, Eddie From Ohio
Brown-Eyed Girl, Everclear (I love the Van Morrison version, but I love this one too)
Head Over Heel, Sandra McCracken
Creepin’ In, Norah Jones & Dolly Parton
Walk With Me, Caedmon’s Call (this is turning out to be a pretty good mix!)
O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings To Zion, Handel’s Messiah (I almost skipped it, but remembered that I actually really love this)
Isn’t It Love, Andrew Peterson
Out Of My League, Stephen Speaks
Mystery of Mercy, Caedmon’s Call
More Love, Dixie Chicks
Judas Kiss, Sandra McCracken
Thy Mercy, My God, Sandra McCracken (hmmm, I’ve got a lot of her on here, I think)
If You’re Gone, Matchbox Twenty
In My Own Eyes, Brandi Carlile

Anyway, I realized that when songs by my favorite artists come up in the shuffle, I get excited, even if they’re not my favorite songs by those artists. For example: I don’t love Ticket Home, but I do love Sandra, and I got excited when it came up, as if Sandra was being played on the radio, or something. Which is good, because it makes me listen to the songs I don’t listen to as much (Free is another one of those – no problem with it, just not a favorite), and then I discover I like them more than I thought I did.

Now I’m wondering, maybe iTunes chooses from the songs I listen to most? Or something? ‘Cause nothing has come up that I really hate, or just never listen to. (I don’t really have that much stuff that I really hate on this computer, anyway, or in general, but you know, there are some songs on albums I’ve ripped to this computer that I just really don’t like. And none of those have come up yet. Fabulous! I need to do this shuffle thing more often.

*****

Yesterday, with all of the call-room furniture and all of the furniture in what will be Angela’s office spread out in the hall, students kept asking whether we were having a yard sale, and whether they could just take a rejected lamp and/or a computer. At one point, the carrels in the call-room were moved halfway out into the hall, and to even just walk down the hall you had to lose at least fifteen pounds so you could squeeze through the gap. Good thing we didn’t have a lot of prospective students visiting yesterday (well, one, but the carrels were back in the call-room when he came), or they would have felt less-than-welcomed.

Some of the guys just came and helped move some of the stuff back in, though, so that’s nice. Now I have to get all of the books out of my boss’s office and put them back on the shelves. YAY! Perfect Friday afternoon activity, if you ask me.

One of the things that amused me greatly about all this furniture in the hall is that there was one desk/table type thing (a very 80s-looking thing, with a medium-dark fake-wood top and chrome legs…classy) in the hall that was missing two legs. Like, both on one end. So it’s sort of…kneeling on the ground. I told Elizabeth it reminded me of a kneeling donkey, and she looked at me funny and then said in a VERY exaggerated British accent “Oh it’s a WOUNDED donkey! It’s KNEELING in the hall!” You probably had to be there, but I keep chuckling as I walk by the kneeling-donkey-desk. It really looks like that to me, y’all. If I had a camera I’d take a picture. Maybe I can draw one on Paint.

Okay, it’s harder than I thought to get the angles right so you can really see what it looks like. Hmmm.

All right, there we go. Please feel free to laugh at my horrible lack of artistry, but you get the idea.

Now, doesn’t it look like a kneeling donkey?

It doesn’t?

WELL LOOK AT THE TIME.

I’m currently eating a little…I guess it’s a lemon tartlet? left over from coffee chapel this morning. (I just looked over my archives and it looks like I haven’t written about coffee chapel, which is kind of shocking to me. It’s a very important part of my work-week! So let me back up a little bit.)

Coffee chapel is a half-hour time of fellowship over coffee and donuts that’s built into the Wednesday morning class schedule. On Tuesdays, we have chapel from 10:00-11:00, and on Thursdays we have prayer chapel from 10:30 to 11:00, so it was only natural to name our coffee fellowship time on Wednesday a ‘chapel’ time too. I mean, the guys probably talk about God and stuff when they’re fellowshipping, right? So it totally counts.

I usually help Tari and Jennifer get everything together about 45 minutes beforehand. Tari gets a really good deal on donuts from the Entenmann’s outlet in Gastonia, so what we do most of the time is put out several boxes’ worth of various donuts (chocolate-covered, cake, glazed, powdered) on trays, cut up some danishes (usually cheese and raspberry), put the trays out, make about 10 pots of coffee (from Caribou, which is a Wednesday-only specialty), put out all the fixin’s, put out some hot water and tea bags, and then wait for the hordes of students to descend upon us.

Jennifer and Tari and I have developed QUITE the competition over who gets to serve the most coffee. Instead of having the students serve themselves, we will ask them what they want (“Caf or decaf?”) and then fill their cup for them. Sometimes the competition gets a little stiff, and all of us will have a completely full cup of hot coffee ready to thrust at the next hapless student, who has to decide which of us is least likely to dump coffee on him if he refuses our offer. (Each of us have loyal customers who order coffee only from us – mine is graduating, though, so this was my last week of having a constant, guaranteed customer.)

It’s really nice that it’s built into the schedule, because it allows the students time to talk about what they’re learning, or just catch up with each other, or ask questions of professors. Sometimes wives and kids will come, too – on nice days, it’s common to see a bunch of strollers parked outside the lobby and lots of kids running around.

This morning’s coffee chapel was different because instead of the usual Entenmann’s donuts, we had some leftovers from the dessert social Women of RTS had on Monday night (which I very horribly FORGOT to go to!). There were mini cheesecake bites, the aforementioned lemon tartlets (and what looked like some raspberry tartlets, too), some cookies, and the piece de resistance (I can’t make those accent thingies work right!) – cream puffs

Oh, how I love me some cream puffs. As I told several people this morning, mini cream puffs from Sam’s were the only dessert that I required we serve at our wedding reception (in addition to cake, of course), mostly because I wanted an excuse to have some. These things are SO. GOOD. I may have had…well, a rather large number of them this morning. Ahem.

I think this is going to be a cooking-heavy week for me. I cooked up some taco meat last night (which reminds me of that awesome commercial for…I don’t even remember, something ESPN-related, I think? Anyway, where they’re playing Pictionary, and the person is clearly drawing the University of Texas logo [or is he drawing Bevo? I don’t remember], and they want the other guy to guess “Hook’em Horns!” or “Longhorns!” or “Bevo!” or whatever, but as soon as the guy [who is wearing a Texas A&M shirt] realizes what it is, he just refuses to give the right answer, and says stuff like “Cow” and then mutters “Taco meat.” It’s AWESOME. Maybe you have to see it yourself though), so that the work for having tacos tonight would be mostly done, and also so that I could have taco salad myself for dinner last night and lunch today. (My recipe, as opposed to Brandon’s family recipe, for taco salad is as follows: crush up a whole bunch of tortilla chips, enough to cover a dinner plate. Sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese across chips. Toss a few spoonfuls of seasoned taco beef over the chips and cheese. Top with half of a diced tomato and several generous spoonfuls of salsa. Mix well. SO good.) Then tonight after dinner, I’m going to buy some groceries for and make chicken tetrazzini, Brandon’s mom’s recipe, for us and for Shannon and Nat, since they just had a baby (by C-section!) and Shannon is still recovering and Nat is about to enter finals here at the seminary. And then I might also make Puppy Chow this Friday with my mom so that Brandon has something to munch on while we’re gone (though that might not be necessary, ‘cause my mom mentioned making an entire turkey breast just for Brandon and bringing it down. Turkey and Puppy Chow, ideal brain food!).

(Apologies for the abrupt topic shifts here…I don’t have any specific point to this post. Unlike most of my other OH-SO-COHESIVE posts.)

Have I mentioned that they’re doing some construction in and around my office? Because they are. Knocking down a wall, even. The secret hallway has finally been revealed, and a doorjamb installed, and the adjoining office to mine has been painted. For the past several days. They’ve kept the door closed, but the fumes, they are still reaching me. I’ve been having lovely visions of dancing pink elephants and flying unicorns, though, so I’ll be a little sad when they’re done painting. They’re also going to install new carpet in both adjoining offices, which means that the ‘call room’ (where the student workers…work) needed to be completely emptied. The workmen said they’d move the furniture, but one of my workers had to empty all of the shelves and stack everything up in the hall and in my boss’s office. The chaos around here is really quite something, but I know it’ll be worth it once Angela moves in next door and the call room is revamped and everything. We’re actually getting new furniture in there, too, to make it look a little less un-decorated and messy.

Alright, time to go back to hoping and praying that the weather will clear up for our Charleston trip!

This is a big deal because I swore, over and over, that I would never have chocolates in the candy bowl. (I think I’ve written about the candy bowl before – it sits on my desk, right by the door, and students come by and grab a piece of candy and say hi to me, and make me feel generally very popular.) I knew that if I had something that was appealing to me, I’d end up eating the entire bowl all the way down to the bottom, and then not only would there be no candy for the masses, I would also be a humongous pig.

But then! Then we bought a bag of assorted Easter candy a few days after Easter, for something like seventy-five cents, and it had mini Kit-Kat bars, mini Reeses cups (one of my favorite things ever – don’t like the big ones, but the mini ones are delectable), and caramel Hershey’s kisses. We’ve eaten everything but the kisses, because neither of us really like caramel all that much. I’ve been meaning to bring them to work for days, and finally remembered, and have a feeling I will be VERY popular very soon.

I pretty much hate caramel, actually – “not liking it all that much” is kind of a mild way to express my distaste for caramel flavors. So it’s actually quite safe to have them on my desk, because I have no desire whatsoever to eat them.

If it were mini Dove dark chocolates, now, that would be a serious issue. But caramel kisses are okay.

I’m hoping it doesn’t stay sort of half-heartedly dreary out. Sunday and yesterday were GORGEOUS, and now today it’s…eh. It’s not bad, it’s just not that great. Probably because of the storm off the East coast right now. At least it’s not raining. It rained enough last week that I started to just feel sort of soggy around the edges, especially with my cold, and was very excited to see the sun come out during church Sunday morning. I did still get to ride on Saturday (the barn is really a lovely place to be in the rain) – there’s a covered arena there that’s big enough to do some good bending work, serpentines and things. I actually did a warmup and started to head out into the big uncovered arena when Gianni felt the raindrops and turned right the heck around and back under the shelter. He’s usually not quite that obviously disobedient, but I didn’t mind because I definitely agreed with him.

We ended up not turning the horses out at the end of the day because it was still raining, and there was a forecast for thunderstorms, and the horses would just be out in the middle of a field unprotected and that could be dangerous. You could tell they were all pretty restless, though, ‘cause they’d just been inside all day with not much to do. Some of them play with their food or water buckets when they’re bored (to the point that they break them, and are no longer allowed to have buckets), some crib (where they grab onto a piece of wood with their teeth and take this grunting inhale of breath – pretty strange), and some just drool all over the place (one horse in particular, it’s quite disgusting). I felt bad for all of them – I knew they just wanted to run out to the pasture and kick up their heels, and they were in their stalls. Oh well – at least Sunday was nice so I knew they’d enjoy themselves then.

I had another be-at-the-church-at-DAWN worship rehearsal Sunday morning, which wasn’t nearly as bad as the one last week because I think I actually slept Saturday night. My cold is clearing up, for the most part (there’s the odd sniffle here and there, but that’s all), and I’ve finally gotten some energy back. We went to see Spiderman 3 with Melissa and Jake on Saturday night, but we went to a super-early show, so it didn’t keep me out too late or anything (yes, I am 86 years old, and have to be in bed by 10 if I get up that early). I didn’t even take a nap on Sunday! Alisa will be SO PROUD. Hehe.

Actually, if it hadn’t been so lovely outside, I probably would have, but I wanted to jump on my chance to spend some time at the pool and get a little sun before going to the beach this weekend (which now looks like it will be a stormy and rainy experience…BOO!). Lindsay came over after a little while and kept me company. It was great to just be able to sit out in the sun and not be too hot – it wasn’t more than 75 out and NO humidity, just a nice breeze. It was even warm enough for me to get in, verrrry slowly and with many squeakings at the chilliness of the water. Once I got in up to about my waist, though, it was great, and I enjoyed standing there talking to Lindsay for quite a while.

We ended up sort of cobbling together a dinner from what we all had, which was, on her and Ben’s part, chicken salad and buns to make sandwiches, and on our part…not a lot. Hehe. So we went to Fresh Market and got some potatoes to bake, and some spinach and artichoke dip and some awesome chips. And a dessert from the bakery for each of us. The boys crawled out from under their studying rocks long enough to join us, and we had a great time just sitting around the table eating and talking. It was a very relaxing day.

Except for the fact that I got QUITE the sunburn. I was very frustrated about it, too, since I had used lots of sunscreen and re-applied a couple of times, but it turns out that sunscreen expires after a year, and mine was probably at LEAST a year old, if not two. Hence the pinkness. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, and the part that hurts the worst is actually on my left shin going down onto the top of my foot (as opposed to my shoulders), so I’m not really in any discomfort throughout the day. I have also used what amounts to a small inland ocean’s worth of aloe vera gel in a desperate attempt to keep from peeling, but I’m not sure it’s going to work. I’d really like to be just…tan this weekend, instead of multicolored and covered in flakes of dead skin. (TASTY!) (I just grossed myself out. But I admit it IS fun when you’re peeling huge sheets of skin off…I just don’t love the mottled effect it leaves.)

Thinking about it now, I realize it was a really good, low-key weekend. Brandon got a lot of study time in, what with me going riding and being at the pool, but we also did some stuff with friends. I don’t know why, but we just don’t go out and do stuff with couples very often, and it was fun to do something we were going to do anyway – go see Spiderman 3 – WITH other people. Why is this a new concept for me? I do not know.

I really did used to be a lot more social than I am now. I know part of it is because I am tired all the time, and part of it is because Brandon has to study a lot, so we can’t do too many couple-things, because he needs the evenings and the weekends to study so he can go to class and work during the week. Maybe that’ll change a little bit next semester, since he’s only taking I think five hours this fall (WOW), and about six next spring, and then he’ll be done. He’ll be working a lot more, but that won’t be so much in the evenings and the weekends.

It just made me want to be more aware to include other people in the stuff that we are planning to do anyway, like going to Borders and having coffee and reading books, or going to the puppy store, or going to Chick-Fil-A. Not all the time, because we want to have our own dates and stuff, too, but some of the time…more of the time than we do now.