Easter, also Selective Writer’s Block

I hate writer’s block.  Especially when it seems to be selective writer’s block, only specifically blocking the one thing I really, really, really need to be working on right now.  And I was on such a roll this morning before I had to stop to go to my first class.  Why can’t I get back there now?  Arrrgh!

So I’m blogging.  Because that helps with writer’s block, right?  Right?  Well, at least it’s an attempt.  It’s better than reading Veronica Mars recaps on Television Without Pity.  Not that I’m, you know, doing that at the moment or anything.  Though it would be research for when Justin trades me his DVDs of the first two Veronica Mars seasons for the Heroes Season One DVDs I just finished.  (I still like Sylar the best, except for perhaps Mr. Muggles.  Is this wrong?)

Ok, moving on… I had a good Easter break.  I dug the vegetable garden and planted sweet peas and lilies of the valley.  Hopefully the seeds haven’t frozen in the ground by now, what with all the random snowflakes flying around, but they’re cold-weather plants, so I think they can take it.  I think.  It was one of the happiest times of the last couple months digging out in the garden under the wide, open sky.  I forget, during those months when I don’t have access to the ground, how much being outside helping things grow fills me up inside.  I don’t know how people could live in urban concrete jungles with no access to growing things.  I couldn’t do it.  I think part of me would die inside.

The Easter Vigil was fun.  I wore my new peep-toe shoes (Liv: “Peep!  Peep!”), and got to sit next to Eric, who is one of my favorite relatives ever.  (No, really, ever.)  We can’t sit next to each other in church too often.  We find the same offbeat things utterly hilarious, and can’t help pointing them out to one another.  It makes for a very distracting sort of Mass.  The Easter Vigil always starts with the lighting of the new fire, followed by the candlelight procession into the church.  After the Easter proclamation, everyone blows out their candles and sits down to listen to the Bible readings.  There are a lot of them since this is the Easter Vigil.  Eric was fidgeting with his candle during the readings, peeling layers of wax off of it, then breaking it into segments and folding it into a figure 8 which then got reinserted into the paper cuff that’s supposed to catch the wax.  This meant that when the time came to relight the candles later in the Vigil, his candle had two ends we could light.  So we did, giggling silently as we watched them burn down extra quickly.  Then I had to recite him the oh, so apropos Edna St. Vincent Millay poem (“My candle burns at both ends,/ It will not last the night./ But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends,/ It gives a lovely light.”)  That was pretty funny too.

The other fun thing was that I took Liv home with me for Easter dinner.  I love watching her hang out with my family, especially the guys in my family.  The thing is that she’s really, really beautiful.  However, she doesn’t see her own beauty, particularly since she pays little to no attention to her looks whatsoever.  In her book, her blond sister is the beautiful one in the family, and Liv is the tomboy that nobody looks at twice.  Plus, she grew up rough-housing with two little brothers, so she doesn’t quite understand how the same behavior that’s really annoying in an older sister could be, well, really encouraging in a cute young woman sortof your own age.  It’s a kind of innocence.  Mikey is still young enough that they can play together without worries (plus he’s the one she trusts enough to carry her from my car into the house), but it was interesting watching Larry, my oldest brother.  He had just gotten his hair buzzed really short, so she had to rub it (she rubs her little brothers heads when they’ve just gotten a buzz cut).  It was awesome watching his brain melt and dribble out of his skull right there in my aunt’s living room.

And the other good part about Easter?  I got to talk to Joe.  When I was getting ready to leave my aunt’s house I saw that I’d missed a couple of calls, one from Ella, and one from a number I didn’t recognize.  I didn’t really think it was him, but part of me hoped (I’ve been missing him a lot, and it had been over a month since I got his last letter).  So I listened to my messages right then and there.  One of them was from him, telling me that he’s in New Orleans and giving me a number where I’ll be able to contact him from now until May.  Do you know how long it’s been since I had a phone number I could dial and connect with Joe any old time I wanted?  Years.  I mean, first he was in Afghanistan, then world traveling, then sharing a phone with the whole Jesuit novitiate.  It’s been a long time.  I got myself and Liv home as quickly as I could, went directly up to my room and called 14.  We talked a long time, the first time I think we’ve been able to talk ourselves out since he left town a year ago.  Then last night I called him again, just because I could. 

Now I’m trying to finish up school projects, clean the house to make a good impression of the potential roommate who might come visiting this weekend while I’m gone, and getting ready to leave for Boston.  Yup, friends, it’s time for the Boston Tea Party!  I’ve been waiting for this since I came home from my first Tea Party last year.  I’m so excited and nervous and stressed thinking of all the things that have to happen between now and when I fly out of Columbus on Thursday.  Thank goodness this year I have a room in the actual hotel, and if all goes well I’ll actually make it out for Thursday night instead of missing my flight like last year.  I’m also registered to compete in the West Coast Newcomers Jack & Jill.  Also, John Lindo owes me two dances.

Eeek!  Just thinking about it makes me nervous.  Breathe, Bernadette, breathe.  Ok.  I’m going to take another stab at that paper writing, and if that doesn’t work, I’m doing laundry.

Jenn just messaged me that K-Mart is selling roses for cheap!   Maybe I’ll have my rose garden after all!

 

Seven Is The Perfect Number

I got tagged by the lovely Amber of danceprimer.com!

Here are the rules:
1 – Link to the blog who tagged you (above)
2 – Post the rules on your blog
3 – Share seven random and/or weird things about yourself.
4 – Tag seven people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5 – Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Seven Random Things About Me:

1. I actually like getting tagged in memes like this. I enjoy the challenge to my creativity. Plus, it shows me that other people are reading what I write and actually want to hear more! That’s exciting.

2. I love roses. There’s something about them, with their many soft petals gracefully unfolding around the secret, fragrant heart. I love every color of rose, but I particularly love the soft, pastel roses brushed with many colors all at once. They enchant me. I also love climbing roses. I have a theory that any outdoor structure could be aesthetically improved by the addition of a climbing rose. I once amused myself on a long car trip by imagining how you could grow climbing roses up over the St. Louis Arch. This included a scheme of hanging platforms for them to could grow on and an irrigation system. It was pretty sweet. I’ve always said that if I ever get married, my husband will be a lucky man. If he does something stupid, all he has to do is bring me home roses and all will be well. Of course, that depends on exactly how stupid he’s been.

3. I’m becoming a bit addicted to sugar-free drink mix powders. I used to scorn them as the quintessence of over-commercialized, over-packaged, artificial suburban lifestyles. An unnecessary product with absolutely no nutritional value, packaged in single serving portions, designed to be added to another unnecessary product (bottled water – when the stuff that comes out of the tap is perfectly good). I didn’t go so far as avert my eyes when I passed them in the supermarket aisle, but it was close. Then my boss bought a box and didn’t care for the flavor. So she passed them on to me, and, well, I couldn’t let them go to waste, could I? (God forbid I should actually throw something out!) And… they tasted good. And I started drinking more water. And they had Vitamin C in them. Now the box is almost completely used up and I’m contemplating actually (eek!) spending my own money to buy another box. Sigh.

4. Lately I’ve also been getting a little addicted to the Pieces of Flair application on facebook. I resisted it as long as I could. I always looked down on applications like this as faddish clutter – annoying and teeny-bopper-ish. Then my friends started using it, first Sue, then Lori, then Stella. They kept sending me stuff, and talking about what they’d sent. Finally I couldn’t hold out any longer, and with true convert-fervor started flair-ing all over the place. Maybe there’s a 12-step program I can join…

5. There’s a chance I might get to go to Australia for World Youth Day this summer. It seems that there is a certain organization sending a delegation which has acquired a sponsor eager to pay all expenses for young adults who otherwise could not dream of going. As far as I can tell they’ll pay for everything, and in exchange you help work their booth promoting vocations. As soon as I heard of it I sent back an e-mail saying essentially, “Oh, me! Pick me! Pick me!” They say they want to meet with me, and then… we’ll see what happens. Here’s the funny thing – the acronym for the organization I’d be going with is SPORCH. Which, if you squint at it a little, is like SPORK. Which is a lot like The Tick’s battle cry of, “SPOON!” I find this endlessly amusing. Liv says that we should pass out metal sporks engraved with vocations information, and then people would remember us. I pointed out that all of the meals provided to us at World Youth Day will come with their own sporks as it is, so perhaps extra ones won’t be so memorable. And then, it seems that, since this is an organization promoting religious vocations, most of the other young adults on the trip will be guys discerning vocations to the priesthood. Considering my strict (sortof) no-dating-wannabe-priests policy (and what does it say about my life that I have to have such a policy?), this is more proof that God has a seriously twisted sense of humor. Fortunately, so do I.

6. I am currently watching the season one DVDs of Heroes. Justin found out that I like the show, but hadn’t watched the first season (besides the two episodes that were still upon the NBC website), so he lent them to me. So far I’m almost more a fan of Sylar than any of the other characters. There’s something about a really good villain. They appeal to the same part of me that likes guys who ride motorcycles and have five o’clock shadow. Maybe this is also why I like Dexter so much… Although Mark challenged me the other week on how I, the Theology Major, could justify watching a show celebrating a serial killer. He’s got a point.

7. I am the third daughter of my mother, who is also named Bernadette, and who is also the third daughter in her family. If I ever have kids, I’ll have to have three daughters so I can name the third one Bernadette.

And that’s what I have for you today! And I hereby tag… Mames (again), Polly (also again), Stuart, Kjirstin, Allison, Kenzie, and Zaph (turnabout is fair play!).

 

Damn, I’m Good!

So last night I had this, “Damn, I’m good!” moment (I was going to write “Dang” but then I decided that the moment was fully worth the swear word). This is what happened: This semester I’m taking a class on Thomas Aquinas (the Big Bad Boy of Catholic theology), and on Tuesday I gave a presentation on part of the Summa (Aquinas’s master work). It went rather well, and I was excited about it. Last night while I was dancing with Pierce he asked me how my week had been. I told him about my presentation. He asked more. I told him more. By the time we were done I had explained all of Part I, Question 105, Article 4 of the Summa Theologica (“Whether God can move the created will?”), complete with Objections, Respondeo, and Answers to the Objections. All of this while doing Lindy and neither missing a step nor failing to follow a single move. Also wrapping it up before the song was done. And I’m pretty sure Pierce understood it.

I can’t believe I did that.

Damn, I’m good!

Of course, having done something like this, I then had to find someone who could fully appreciate my Mighty Deed. This would require a fellow theologian who can dance. There are none that I know of, but I couldn’t wait until I saw Justin tonight so I could tell him all about it.

Also last night, for the first time my dancing was praised by another dancer. I don’t mean that I haven’t gotten compliments before. There’s always the cute little old people who come out for the live swing bands in the summer and just love watching the swing dancers, or beginners who don’t know what good dancing looks like yet. It has been fun watching the number of leads who want to dance with me increase, and I’ve gotten admiring looks or words of praise for individual cool moves. Dancers whose opinions I trust have told me that I’ve improved a lot in different areas. Still, I’ve never felt like my dancing was of a quality that another dancer would get pleasure from watching me. Last night I danced some Westie with Trey, and later Lyle couldn’t get over how amazing the two of us had been. He was in awe at our musicality, the moves we had done, and the way we had mirrored one another: “There was this move right at the beginning that was like a sugar push, but not! And then you both kicked your foot out to the side at exactly the same moment! It was so awesome! I just love watching you two!” It was a little humbling, especially since I didn’t remember doing some of the moves that so impressed him. I’m sure I did them, but, well, for me it had been just another dance with a better than average lead.

Maybe I’m better at this than I think I am.

 

It Might Work…

Today in my Anthropology 150 class, the Professor was talking about various marriage customs around the world.  There’s your good old monogamy (the ostensible custom of choice for most of the Western world, also my personal favorite), and various forms of polygamy, from polygyny (one man married to more than one woman ala harems) to polyandry (one woman married to more than one man).  There can be different benefits to the different kinds of marriage, like having more workers to carry on subsistence farming in the case of polygyny.  In fact, this kind of polygamy is so popular that when we say the word “polygamy,” everyone assumes that we’re talking polygyny.  But there are benefits to polyandry too, and it is the norm in some parts of the world.  In Tibet, where land is incredibly scarce and birth rates must be kept down to ensure survival, often one woman will marry all of the brothers from a family, ensuring that the family land will be inherited intact instead of split up between the brothers.  While to us the idea of one woman being married to more than one man seems sorta perverted, the kind of thing guys write letters to Playboy about, for these Tibetans, it’s a simple matter of sensible economics.

The class was a little boring, and my mind started to wander.  I started thinking, if I were to be married to more than one guy, who would I marry?  It was purely theoretical, so I considered all the guys I know, even the ones who are already taken.  Most of the guys from dancing were immediately dismissed.  Joe was definitely on the list, and Justin, a theology grad student who’s been showing up on my radar lately (he told me the most awesomely geeky joke the other day).  I considered Trey , and then crossed him off.  For one thing, I can’t imagine him living in the same house with Joe and Justin, much less sharing a wife with them.  For another, I still don’t want to have to care in any way what Trey does or doesn’t do.  As a friend, he’s fun.  As one of my primary relationships, he would make my life miserable.  Then I thought of Rudy, the smoothest Lindy Hopper I’ve ever danced with.  He parties a little too much, and drinks more than is perhaps healthy, but he’s been happily linked with his girl through some major ups and downs for a couple of years now.  And he likes to think about things.  And he’s got a lot more maturity under his belt than most of the guys I know.  I think I could get along with him just fine.  And he would definitely be fun to dance with!

So, you know, just in case the world is suddenly transformed into the sort of place where polyandry makes sense, and if the Catholic Church would suddenly decide that this was a good idea, and if they were all suddenly available, Joe, Justin and Rudy are mine.  Dibs!