I get by with a little help from my friends

This is not a good start, I didn't blog last week. I promise to make it up to everyone by posting one more time this week if we can all just pretend that this blog post was posted yesterday! Horray! now that we're all in agreement, I don't really have anything else to say. I've been feeling pretty down lately, but in that sadness, there has been great consolation. It's weird, because even when I'm hiding from life and feeling crappy, I also strongly feel the arms of my Father wrapped around me. He's been particularly blessing me with lots of quality time with one of my beautiful roommates who has been such a joy to me this past week. As well, there's been a few jam sessions so that's helping that particular goal be fulfilled. I'm adding one more to the list-that is to get back into the habit of going to mass one other day of the week (besides Sunday). I've been lacking that in the last two weeks and I can tangibly see and feel how it is affecting me. The graces received by participating in the Eucharist are INCREDIBLE! So after you read this, GO TO MASS!!! hahaha, that's exactly what I'm going to be doing :)

goals

ok, i haven't written in over a month, albeit, an extremely crazy month, but still no excuse is a good excuse. So I thought I would start off this year right with a few new resolutions, aka goals for 2011:

1. Write in this blog at least once a week. This gives me an outlet from the craziness of school and life and is not as personal as my prayer journal. this blog is where i can vent some of the "non" important aspects in life so i had better use it

2. do my readings for class. it's important, i'm in fourth year (eep) so i should just stay on top of them.

3. get my drivers license. this is a long time coming and i'm sure it will make many people happy

4.play more music. i got a flute for christmas so i need to practice it more to remember everything. but in this as well, not be afraid to make mistakes when im just jamming with friends. who cares if i don't know how to do something? my friends don't so why should i?

there. now they're out in the open so i can't reneg on them. wish me luck my friends.

In Class

I am in class right now....zzzz....school is almost done and I'm starting to get cagey. Wednesday I have an exam, Friday I have a paper due....I have to find sometime to work in there as well. And see my friends. and eat, and sleep, and breathe....and of course, pray. prayer is really one of the few things keeping me afloat lately. Knowing and feeling my Father's arms around me, dragging me back to the surface of sanity. can i write a poem about this? stay tuned, i gotta get back to listening to the count...

how many have you read?

This looked interesting so I did it... I have only read 23/100 of the most popular books... hmm should get on that. Including partially read I'm at 35/100. Not too bad.

P.S. I haven't attempted to verify whether BBC said this or not, but I thought it'd be fun.

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (in French)

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hug

discipline

I debated posting today, but I have a few reasons to do so. First, procrastination. Second, which flows from the first is that I have been greatly lacking in discipline lately. The art of self-discipline and self-control has always been a major battle for me. Over the past few days, however, the struggle has been mounting. The battle starts early in the day when I must choose to get out of bed. Lately, it has been after hitting the snooze button, 3 or 4 or 5 or up to 9 times before I even consider extracting myself from my cocoon of blankets. That is just the beginning. Throughout the day I have to constantly fight of a culture that says, "indulge! You deserve this!" I pass by coffee shops, clothing stores, chocolate bars and think...hmm I think I need a little pick me up. Without a thought of the cost (or the calories in some cases) I have purchased an unnecessary item. *sigh*
I stay up too late with friends, neglect my homework and then stay up late reading, always trying to convince myself that this is the last chapter before I turn off the light at 5 am.

God, oh God, I am so sorry
I wanted to be strong so you would be proud
I didn't know that it was me who longed for glory
My strength has become my fall

The remorse I feel for things left undone
words, unsaid
engulfs my heart like a tide does the shore
I'm sorry, so sorry

So consumed by my self hate I don't hear
You call my name
My eyes shut out Your shining face
Not feeling your embrace

Hold me now Jesus
My strength, my weakness
My weakness, Your strength
Holding me now

What's a girl to do?

This morning I woke up nice and early to get ready to go to my early morning class. My alarm didn't go off but fortunately, Roommate likes to use the fan in the bathroom while she showers. Now, this fan is something else. It screeches and squeals in an almost unholy fashion. My room shares a wall with the bathroom. Normally I groan and pull a pillow over my head to stifle the noise, but this morning it was a Godsend because, as I said, I neglected to assure the accuracy of my alarm the night before.

No worries there, but then my other Roomie comes down, spazzing because she also needed to shower before heading to work. I'm quite pleased with myself because I showered the night before so I didn't need the bathroom...I was wrong.

So I prepared by breakfast of muffin and smoothie (coffee was out of the question because there is a travel mug gremlin at our house) when I realized I needed to brush my teeth and apply some deodorant. No problem...until I realize Roomie #2 has already snatched the bathroom.

I have several options

1. Do nothing. Just go to school sans clean teeth and pit stick free

2. Forget about the teeth, just apply ample amounts of perfume and hope it lasts for the day

3. Buy some gum on the way to school

I settled on neither of these and just asked Rommie #2 if I could sneak in and grab my things which I did and ran off to school with fresh breath and armpits

God bless and Godspeed

Creator and Sustainer

The greatness of God is not dependent on me
I can't exist without His will
His love is what creates me
His love is what sustains me

My words seem so simple
words on a page
line by line
do nothing to add to Your praise

How can I know Your beauty?
my eyes behold it everyday, hidden
Your majesty set in Your child's eyes
each one that I meet

I raise my hands
I stand and sing
but hands tremble and voices fade...
You last forever

_____________________________________________________________________

That is how I feel today

God bless and Godspeed