Last Intent!!

I INTENTED TO BELOVED FIRST TRUTH LAST NIGHT!!

I am so stinking HAPPY and excited. Households are something I'll have to explain later, it's one of those exclusively Franciscan phenomenas that seems outrageously weird until you get surrounded day in and day out by them.

This has possibly been the longest week of my life. In other news I leave for Ecuador tommorrow night at midnight. I'm gonna try and get a picture of THAT shirt up today too.

Love and Marriage

YES, I did miss Valentine's Day, but here's some sentimental wedding pictures anyway! I'm re-working a ton of photos with all the new techniques I'm learning in photoshop. These are samples from the portfolio WEBSITE I'm working on. It will hopefully be up by the end of the semester.

Return of the JPeg

Drumroll please for the return of PHOTOGRAPHS to my shoulda-been photos only blog. Dr. Gan's Jedi ways are getting to me, hence the nerd title. He says that once you start working in the field, it's only a matter of time until you're no longer able to stand the things you used to do for leisure. The man can barely watch movies without driving his wife crazy, (Please God no! Not me!)

I am taking FIVE stinking comm. arts classes this semester, pretty much trying to absorb 3 different Adobe programs at once right now. I was feeling weirdly guilty as I photoshopped these pics, like I should have been photoshopping something for class instead.....

Anyway. Consider these the accompaniment to the previous blog about Birthdays. It feels really good to have a camera back....

Twenty-two Blues.

If there's one thing I have, it is honesty about my own demeanor.

"You're being overdramatic."

- direct quote from my mom. (On maybe a weekly basis.)

Yup. It's been known to happen.

Which is why when my 22nd birthday sucked, I did the logical thing and assumed it was ME, letting my personal sense of melodrama get in the way of reality.

Canadian roommate (photographically referenced as Good Looking Roommate #1) celebrated her 22nd b-day yesterday. HER demeanor, especially in comparison to mine, can only be described as buoyant. But as we ended what was otherwise a typical Tuesday at school with some brownies iced with red and white maple leaves, she described the weird, lonely feeling that had been nagging at her most of the day.

I could relate.

I walked around on my 22nd birthday feeling old. The phrase "Eight years 'til I'm thirty" kept flashing through my head. I almost expected some peppy young freshmen running around campus to come offer me an arm while I crossed the street.

22 is a weird age. You've just come off pretty much the biggest birthday of your life the year before, and that celebration is still fresh, (or maybe mostly fuzzy) in your head. You experience 22 and realize you've done it. You've hit all the ages you couldn't WAIT to hit. What comes next? 55 to start receiving AARP benefits?? 25 to legally drive a rental car off the lot?? (Not even applicable in all 50 states...)

It felt like the beginning....of the end......OF MY YOUTH.

Maybe coming up next is all the stuff that gets sandwiched between 22 and 55. The responsibility, house, kids, job kind of stuff. But there's no definite birthday for that.

That's why I've decided that 23 is the next kick-ass birthday. Me and EVERYONE I can rally with me is gonna grab that number by its sweet curves and angles and party...not like rough, green, inexperienced 21 year olds, but like the seasoned, tasteful veterans that we are.

Don't let 22 get you down. Just do whatever you have to do to make it through the miserable year.

RECLAIM 23. Embrace it. TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

To-Do

So its officially been a new decade for 13 days.

I have owned my VERY FIRST CAR EVER for 6 days.

And I've been back at school in Steubenville for 4.

Good to at least have the numbers straightened out.

Owning a car is sort of crazy. On the responsibility scale it falls closer to having a pet than a baby, but I still feel like I've spent my first days back in school being dragged around by my ever expanding to-do list. I'm staring at my STILL not unpacked suitcase, duffel bag and extra box sitting on my floor, (sorry good looking roommate #2.)

Know what I did today? I went through and offloaded almost SIX THOUSAND photographs from my poor groaning laptop onto a removable hard drive. They dated back to the tail end of 2007 and ended with the loss of my camera this winter. They covered a lot of ground.

It's hard for me to do something like that and not get caught up. There's no businesslike way for me to sift through perfectly reproduced images of the poignant moments in my life throughout the past 2 years.

I guess that this was a pretty good time for me to do it though.

In the past three years I've moved around like someone was chasing me. In a lot of ways I think I felt chased, and was desperate to put some space (ANY space) between myself and experiences at school in San Diego. There's a sense of "permanence" about me being in this school that leaves me feeling threatened sometimes. It could be just the opposite- that all the radical change finally caught up to me last semester and caused my brain to go into rebellion over the thought of starting over AGAIN.

But watching myself (in photos) go from Arkansas to San Diego, to Pasadena, to Arkansas again, to St. Louis and now to Ohio gave me a real sense of "where I've been" for lack of a more subtle phrase. There are a lot of great things and people in my past right now that I'd be happy to define myself by if the need came to take a snapshot of Me- the package deal- heading into 2010.

In less introspective public soul searching news I picked up my OLD, less snazzy, literally held together by rubber bands camera while home over break.

So the photos will be back on, and hopefully not TOO much shabbier. :)

The Photo-Less Post.

I am distraught.

My camera is missing. I really REALLY hope it didn't get stolen. I'm trying not to lose hope and trust that St. Anthony is going to get it back for me!!

PLEASE PLEASE if you love me at all put in a good word for me with him too by saying this prayer for me.

Thank you all!!

Unfailing Prayer to St. Anthony

"Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints" O Holy St. Anthony, gentlest of Saints, your love for God and Charity for His creatures, made you worthy, when on earth, to possess miraculous powers. Encouraged by this thought, I implore you to obtain for me (request). O gentle and loving St. Anthony, whose heart was ever full of human sympathy, whisper my petition into the ears of the sweet Infant Jesus, who loved to be folded in your arms; and the gratitude of my heart will ever be yours. Amen.

Cringing my way to Praise and Worship

If you had asked me a few months ago what my opinions on Catholic Praise and Worship were, you likely would have received some serious cringe faces in response.

Despite not having much first hand experience with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, my traditional upbringing and naturally skeptical demeanor has always led me to steer far clear of any hand lifting / tongue speaking / 'Jesus' wailing behavior. I didn't have any sort of hard dogmatic reasoning AGAINST Charismatic worship, just a general feeling that any such displays in the name of Religion were for overly emotional expressive types. Or else Catholics who sorta just wished they could be Protestants. Or phonies. In short- NOT for me.

Growing up in my family, Religion was serious business. Make a scene in Church? Not even an option.

Especially not for anyone hoping to politely request post-mass donuts.

Religion classes were always a big part of my education, and I got a better doctrinal foundation before high school than most Catholics.

By the time I was rolling up to Steubenville's campus at the end of August, I knew how to talk the Catholic talk. I walked the Catholic walk, (with admitted detours and sidetrips,) as best I could. I knew how to sing like a Catholic- (silently mouth the words the choir sings.)

What I didn't even realize was that I had no clue how to worship like a Catholic. I couldn't even identify what it might feel like to actually WORSHIP something or someone. The idea of overpowering, intense, all-consuming love never crossed paths with my idea of "Religion."

That IS what it's about though. That is the kind of love Christ feels for us. You don't die for somebody because you've studied theological reasons to do so. Christ died for us because of the mad, passionate, perfect love He has for each of us.

If you're willing and open to it, that is what Praise and Worship can expose you to. A little taste of that love Christ feels for you, and chance to try and reciprocate your own imperfect version of love to Him.

It doesn't make you the perfect Catholic.

It might take you a little while to get used to it.

But there's nobody that it's NOT for.