A productive week

My first announcement, unrelated to the topic of this post: Kurt has a family! Thank you, God! I will post more details as I learn them, if his family permits me.

I'm on spring break this week, so I've been home. A lot of this week has been spent relaxing and hanging out with my family. It's been nice. We've been doing a lot of the early, big-picture stages of wedding planning. (Due to my failure as a blogger, there was no official announcement, but yes, I'm engaged.) We have good leads on reception places, I've talked to a priest a little bit, and I've got a dress! (No, no pictures yet--K reads this blog. Sorry. Check back in June or July 2014.) Sophie and I have got some plans for bridesmaid dresses, which are also not at the publicly revealable stage.

J realized this week that my getting married means that I will be changing my last name and moving into a different house. Tears were narrowly averted. She's not the only one who's had to face some unpleasant news: in the last few days, I've suddenly realized that I have a LOT of stuff to sort out in between now and moving into my own real house. (I'm moving off campus next year, but that totally doesn't count, right? Right?) I have several drawers and shelves full of stuff. And wayyyy too many books I haven't read. (The solution, of course, is to read more, not get rid of books.)

In poking through some of my drawers to see exactly how bad things are, I found an old knitted skirt that I started my senior year of high school and never finished. This skirt had been languishing for years thanks to my mistaken belief that acrylic can't be blocked. I thought the poor thing was forever doomed to look like this:

That's not really a skirt, of course. That's one of the swatches I made to test out a couple different ways of blocking. The skirt, the Luminarie skirt by Annie Modesitt, is made of entrelac blocks of that pattern. You can look at my project page on Ravelry. It doesn't have photos up right now because I don't have any of the actual skirt. But rest assured it looks a lot like that picture, just bigger.

Anyway, so I recently discovered that acrylic can indeed be blocked. It just needs to be steamed, not wet blocked. I also discovered that you can "kill" or melt acrylic. So I knitted two little blocks. I steamed one and killed the other to see which I liked more. The result was clear, although the pictures don't show it very well.

See how the stitches of the one on the top (the killed one) have kind of blurred together? I don't like that as much as the regular steam blocked one (on the bottom), where each stitch retains its individuality and the texture stands out more. So I'll be steaming the actual skirt once I have done the crocheted border. (Side note, I had to buy a crochet hook, and I found six at JoAnn's for three dollars. Why aren't knitting needles that cheap?)

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that these swatches are the first things I've ever blocked. One difficulty I was not aware of is that blocking really does shape your knitting. In those pictures, the knitting is pinned down, but both pieces retained the not-quite-rectangular shapes I had pinned them to even after the pins came out. When I block the real skirt, I'm going to have to be careful of the edges.

So this project is well on its way to completion. I will be home again briefly over Easter break, and before then I hope to have this skirt and Kurt's blanket completely done. That's one border, some finishing, and two blocking jobs in two weeks--eminently reasonable if I can keep myself disciplined. Of course, I also have two papers and a grant proposal due before then. Wish me luck!

Seven Quick Takes: My Random Sick Thoughts

~~ 1 ~~

I am sick, and I do not respond well to decongestants. This morning, I've already caught myself mixing up who's and whose and thinking that $456 + $4 = $500. So be warned, and be charitable. :p

~~ 2 ~~

If I were a better person, I would write a post about how my sickness is nothing compared to the suffering of waiting orphans, or the grief of families who have lost children, or something like that. But I'm me, so I'm just going to say boy, do I hate being sick.

~~ 3 ~~

Aisha made it over her $1000 goal! Thanks so much to everyone who contributed! If you still want to contribute, you can do so, or you can pick one of the many children who are still far away from their goal. Donations can be made here. (Speaking of which, there's currently a bump match--for every child that gets bumped over $500, one child will get bumped over $1000, up to a total of $3000 donated.)

~~ 4 ~~

Still looking for Christmas presents? Look at Sevenly.org. They choose a different charity every week and sell clothing. $7 of every item sold goes to the chosen charity. This week's charity is Reece's Rainbow! The goal is to reach $25,000 raised by December 24th. The shirts are pretty cool-looking--I'd buy one if I weren't broke.

~~ 5 ~~

I am home for Christmas, and it is good to be home. I have almost all my Christmas presents bought and wrapped.

~~ 6 ~~

Speaking of presents, I stupidly left half the supplies I need to finish K's Christmas present in my dorm. Oh well. I will have at least a week to finish in between getting back to school and seeing him.

~~ 7 ~~

Please pray that Russia does not finalize the ban on international adoption that they are working on passing right now. This would be devastating to so many people, most of all the orphans.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Seven Quick Takes

~~ 1 ~~

To follow up from week before last, the visit went great and I am happy about it. Missing K terribly now. I did not anticipate the distance being so tough. My last long distance relationship was nowhere near this hard. I take it this is a good sign?

~~ 2 ~~

My friend sent me a link to a secular website promoting the Creighton method of NFP over artificial contraception. I was pleased, but at the same time it makes me slightly sad. The voices that say, "Don't use contraception, avoid children this way instead!" are so much louder than the voices that say, "It's okay to have eight kids," even in religious circles. (I do know there are legitimate reasons to limit family size so please don't get insulted.)

~~ 3 ~~

My little sister's friend from a play she is in died on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning sometime. It was completely unexpected, and as I write this, I don't know what the cause of death was. Please pray for him and his family.

~~ 4 ~~

I started writing this post on Wednesday and never got around to finishing it until today. Sigh.

~~ 5 ~~

Check out this article: 10 Great Tips to Help You Pray, Not Just Say, the Rosary. Much of the advice is transferable to other prayers as well.

~~ 6 ~~

I have not been doing much knitting lately, and I miss it.

~~ 7 ~~

I've been watching the BBC Sherlock with my family. It's interesting and well-done. I recommend it. (Warning: It would be more accurate to say that it is inspired by Doyle's Sherlock Holmes storied than that it is an adaptation for film. If you can't get over that, don't see it.)

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

A Burden to Society? (On Friendship and Love)

Ellen at Love That Max recently wrote a post called My child with special needs is not a burden to society. In this post she (very rightly) combats the idea that only people who are "productive" members of society are valuable to it.

Should you argue that these [famous people] are men who contribute more to the world than my son ever will, well then I say that's an incredibly narrow-minded way of looking at life.

(I encourage you to go read the whole post. It's very good, as is the blog as a whole.)

I am now playing the what-if-I-had-written-this-post game, and I must say that I think I would have written a very different post than Ellen did. Before I continue, I want to add a few disclaimers. Firstly, I am not a parent of children with special needs, or even a parent at all. So, although I don't intend to speak about parenting per se, or to say anything that's super controversial, I will, just in case, quote Clare Coffey on another subject and say "if anything I say seems presumptuous, unrealistic, or stupid, just chuckle." Disclaimer number two is that while it's going to look like I disagree with Ellen, I actually don't think I do. I think what looks like a disagreement is a semantic question, in that she and I mean different things when we say "burden". Ellen says:

Burden? My child? Expensive, yes. Demanding, yes. Emotionally draining at times, yes. "Deadweight/encumbrance/misfortune" (all synonyms for "burden"): NO.

In this sense, I 100% agree, children with special needs are not burdens. But here's why I would have written a different post: when I hear someone say, "So-and-so is a burden," my gut response is not "No, he's not," but "Yeah, so what? So are you."

When I say that something is a burden, I don't mean that the trouble it causes outweighs its benefits (I think this is Ellen's idea of what it means to be a burden). I mean simply that the thing in question causes a lot of trouble. This is roughly the sense that Merriam-Webster online gives. And in this sense, yes, beautiful, amazing Max is a burden. Every child with special needs is a burden. Every child on Reece's Rainbow is a burden. But so is every typical child. So are you. And so am I.

No one is perfect. Even those of us who are physically and cognitively "perfect" (I put the term in scare quotes because I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding the use of terms like perfect or normal and I do not intend offense; I use the word because it conveys my point) are not morally perfect. And our moral imperfections are burdens to others.

When I lose my temper and yell at my friends, it's burdensome. When I forgot my driver's license and couldn't help drive on our road trip, it was burdensome. When I have a day bad enough that my friend cancels his plans because he doesn't think leaving me alone is a good idea (yes, I know that the rain wasn't the real reason you spent the evening with me), it's burdensome.

Of course not everything I do is burdensome. I have also cancelled plans to help friends. I make pretty things. I write papers that make my professors happy. I am not a 100% burden, but a mixed bag of burdens and joys. Sometimes the balance tips one way, and sometimes the other. This is true of everyone, including children with special needs, who bring more challenges than typical children, but most of the same joys, as well as joys unique to them.

But my friends have not run an analysis and decided that, on balance, the joy I cause outweighs the burdens I cause. They are not my friends halfheartedly, putting up with the bad for the sake of the good. My friends know that I am a burden, and they accept that burden itself; gladly, even joyfully, accept it. "I love talking to you," A once said, right after he had spent about half an hour chiseling away at a black pit of my despair while I sat on his futon and cried. "Even if what you have to say might hurt me, tell me anyway because I need to know in order to love you more," K said to me early in our relationship. My friends, in short, know that I can be a burden to them, and choose to make me their burden.

Isn't that love? When you take someone who is a burden to you and choose to make him your burden? If I am a burden to you, you try to get rid of me, try to minimize the damage that I cause to you. Sure, you might be okay with having me around later, when I'm not being such a pain in the neck, but right now, I'm an obstacle to your happiness. If I am your burden, you accept me and care for me, and thereby truly love me (in the Thomistic "willing the good of another" sense of the word). (Conversely, allowing yourself to be loved means allowing yourself to become someone else's burden--admitting that you impose on others, and you need them to let you do so.)

So are children with special needs burdens to society? In the sense in which I've been using the word, sure. They make noise in places where it would be better if they were quiet. They have tantrums in stores. They are unable to do things their parents wish they could do. Typical children do these things too, and adults, while most of us outgrow throwing tantrums in stores, have their own problematic behaviors: We talk when it would be better to listen, we are short with cashiers, and now we fail to live up to our own expectations as well as our parents'. Yes, they are burdens to society, but not worse burdens than we are. And maybe we'd all be better off if we were willing to let them, and us, become society's burdens instead.

Easter!

I need to post here more regularly.....

Easter was wonderful. My mother and my sisters S (my twin) and J (8yo) came up to visit. So did K. Most of my friends stayed on campus for Easter, and we had a relaxed and prayerful weekend. Not much homework was done.

My school does a really good job with Easter. We have morning prayer for the Triduum, the normal Triduum liturgies (Holy Thursday/Good Friday/Stations), Tenebrae, Easter Vigil (with 7 OT readings), and four Easter Sunday Masses. The regular Sunday evening Vespers are especially solemn on Easter. Our main church has several choirs, which are really good, and the liturgical style is very solemn, respectful, and prayerful. I spent a lot of time in church this weekend (6.5 hours in church or church-related things on Friday alone :o). At the last minute K was able to stay for the Easter Vigil--his first ever!

This was a socially and spiritually productive weekend for me. My family got to know my friends a bit better, and got to meet K for the first time. (Verdict: Mutual like and desire to get to know better. Yay!) I got to know K better and spend time with him. (I do not think I get to do this enough. Stupid four hours.) And I think I grew in faith.

It's interesting to me how my relationships teach me about God. This weekend this was most clear in the cases of J and K. I was sitting next to J thinking about how much I loved her, and it occurred to me that if I, an imperfect creature, can love someone this much despite her imperfection, then God, Who is perfect love, must be able to love me too. Obvious? Probably, but this idea that God loves me does not come naturally to me. As for K, the fact that he's mine when I have done nothing to deserve him makes it easier to believe in grace. How do religions where God isn't a person make themselves believable?

K came to visit me!

K was here this weekend. We had a lot of fun hanging out. Church, confession, hanging out, walking around the lakes, staying up too late, making dinner, watching movies. Neither of us did much homework, which is why I'm still up at 2 now.

I'm researching for a paper on reactive attachment disorder. The more I learn about attachment the more I realize that this is an issue I struggle with. Potential senior thesis topic: Relationship between attachment and faith. No idea how this would be done, but it would be super interesting. Hmm.

On Life

Sorry for the lack of posting. It's midterms week! I'm taking a break from writing my final midterm, a logic takehome, to post this because I don't think I'll get a chance to post over the next week.

This logic midterm is stretching my brain in a good way. It doesn't have very much to do with what we're doing in class, and requires a lot of thinking about stuff that's essentially new. My modern philosophy midterm, also a takehome, was kind of fun to write, but not nearly as intellectually exciting. Psych and Greek were not fun or exciting to study for or to take. I got a 92 on Greek, we'll see what happens with psych.

My friends and I are going on a road trip over spring break. We're hitting up A's house, P's house, B's house, and my house. I'm really looking forward to it, but also somewhat worried because I'm going into it sleep deprived. I am pretty introverted and need some time to myself every now and then, and if I don't get that over this trip, which I'm not sure I'm going to, I'm going to lose my mind somewhere around Monday. My friends tend to assume that I'm withdrawing because I'm not okay, though, and then they come talk to me. I may just have to say look guys, I am okay at the moment but if you don't give me some space I will soon not be. Another sad thing is that I'll probably have less time than I do now to talk to K.

K is an awesome boyfriend. We have skyped for almost eight hours over the course of the last five days (I know, I know), and he's writing me a letter. We always end our Skype sessions with a prayer (except once when we forgot). K makes these prayers up on the spot and they kind of make me want to cry because he always thanks God for me. His faith is just so amazing. He makes me want to be closer to God. He also got me to clean up my room. All around a great guy.

Very good news

K just asked me out, and I said yes. :)

Good news and bad news

Bad news: I'm under self-observation for possibly developing bipolar disorder. My school's counseling center offers 15-minute, low-key walk-ins with psychologists for people who have quick questions or one-time problems and don't want to go through the whole intake process to get therapy. I went to talk to a psychologist about my crazy weekend. (The whole episode, by the way, wound up lasting about 48 hours, with the worst part lasting about 24.) He agreed with me that it was hypomania, and asked about a family history of bipolar disorder or depression. And yes, I have a family history of both on both sides. So I've been instructed not to worry about it for now (yeah right), and not to jump to a diagnosis, but if anything like this happens again, to go to the counseling center. Hopefully this was a one-off thing; but the psychologist said he hadn't heard of hypomania happening without a cause. I'm pretty freaked out by this, obviously. Ever since I was little, I have been scared of going crazy. At least I have good friends and a supportive family. Prayers would be appreciated.
Good news: K and I have been texting every day. Yesterday he called me because he had a funny story to tell me that wouldn't fit into a text message. I was watching a movie with friends, but I said he could call me. And we wound up talking for 2.5 hours! The only reason we even stopped then was that his phone battery was dying. (I think I may have gone over my cell phone minutes this month. Oops. Hopefully it's not too expensive.) We talked about a lot of stuff, including some decently personal stuff (life aspirations, etc.). And he said he'd call me tomorrow! (That is, today.) I texted him to say let's skype instead, and he agreed. I'll be going to Mass at 4:30, then dinner, then Vespers at church. After that I think my whole evening's free, so hopefully that works for him. B and R also get back from R's house tonight, so I may spend time with them.

Me and Madness?

I was kind of crazy on Friday night when K was here. I was overtired to begin with, and quickly got overstimulated. This is a really bad combination. I got hyper. When we were outside, I was running and sliding on the ice. A and K were getting freaked out that I was going to fall and hurt myself, but I could not walk slowly. If I had stopped sliding, I would have had to run, spin, or do something. Later I was seriously having trouble watching the movie. I literally could not sit still. I was moving around, resettling myself, getting a drink just so I could walk around some, etc. When I was still, I was flapping my hands, chewing on my jacket sleeve, kicking the table, etc. (I said to K, "I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me, I don't actually have ADD....")

I'm not sure what was up. It was a sensory issue to some degree, I think, but it had some seriously freaky features. I could not stop my mind. We went back to our rooms around 4am, and I lay awake in bed with my mind racing till at least 5am. I was awake at 7am (I'm not sure when I fell asleep), and stayed awake until 8:15, at which point I gave up and got out of bed. It's now 4:30pm, and I have slept less than two hours since 6:30am on Friday. I'm only slightly tired, and my mind is still going faster than I want it to.

I looked up the definition of hypomania out of a vague memory of relevance, and these are the diagnostic criteria (from Wikipedia):

The DSM-IV-TR defines a hypomanic episode as including, over the course of at least four days, elevated mood plus three of the following symptoms OR irritable mood plus four of the following symptoms:

• pressured speech
• inflated self-esteem or grandiosity
• decreased need for sleep
• flight of ideas or the subjective experience that thoughts are racing
• easy distractibility and attention-deficit similar to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
• increase in psychomotor agitation
• involvement in pleasurable activities that may have a high potential for negative psycho-social or physical consequences (e.g., the person engages in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, reckless driving, or foolish business investments).

I put the ones I was experiencing in green. Five where three are required, and the elevated mood. The only thing missing for a hypomanic episode is the time span.
From farther down the page:

When a patient presents with a history of one or more hypomanic episodes and one or more depressive episodes that meet the criteria for a major depressive episode, bipolar II disorder is diagnosed.

This is kind of freaky to me, because I've had a major depressive episode (atypical, I believe related to seasonal affective disorder). The only thing separating me from bipolar II disorder is that this episode only lasted about 24 hours. Edit from later: I thought I was back to normal when I wrote this, but it actually wound up being about 48 hours until I was really back to my usual self. The peak was about 24 hours though. Bipolar disorder has a genetic component, and it is present in my family history. So that's not super cheering to me.

Now obviously I don't have bipolar disorder in a way that affects my life enough to require treatment (if I did, I would know). I don't even fit the diagnostic criteria. But it does concern me how close I come. Something to keep an eye on, I suppose.

I probably shouldn't post this....

It's almost certainly premature to post this, but no one I know reads this blog (because no one reads this blog), so I'll throw it out there. Yesterday R's friend K from high school came to visit her at college overnight. A little backstory: I was the initial catalyst for B and R getting to know each other and an enzyme in their starting dating. (I hope I'm getting my chemistry metaphors right....I introduced them and encouraged him to ask her out when it was clear they liked each other.) This was shortly after I broke up with my long-term boyfriend J. R and B decided that in return for setting them up, they should set me up. But they couldn't think of a guy. R thought K would be a good option, except that he and I go to college four hours apart, live 600 miles apart, and are both very down on the idea of long-distance relationships generally due to the fact that we both had recent bad experiences in which distance was a factor. So R said that if K and I were still single when we graduated, she was going to try to set us up.

Weeellllllll.......so K came to visit.

We (me, B, R, A, P, and K) played cards (I won), had a piggyback kicking battle (first person to fall off loses. K and I lost. Twice.), and watched The Sound of Music. K and I really hit it off. There was some serious chemistry. Touching, laughing, eye contact. I think he's awesome, I think he's cute, I think he's a great guy, and I really want to get to know him more. I'm rather obsessed. And he likes me too, R and B say.

This is new to me. I've never liked a guy I didn't already know before. I had a long honest conversation with R and B about his and my strengths and failings. I think in a lot of ways, we'd be good for each other. That said, this is nowhere near settled. We are both very skeptical/anti-distance. We don't know each other all that well. We haven't talked about this. (He did give me his number.) Who knows what will happen? But oh geez, he and I hit it off like I have never hit it off with any guy before.