Is it really Friday again already?

~~ 1 ~~

In the last week, I've decided on and purchased all my Christmas presents except one. Yay for me! The other one is a joint present that I am still waiting for confirmation on before I buy it. (If you're reading this, and you know what I'm talking about, and you owe me an email, email me!)

~~ 2 ~~

A lot of my homework that I mentioned last week has turned out to not be necessary: I don't have to turn in the first draft of my thesis, and I don't have to do more lab work. Yay! Of course, the reduced stress has caused me to procrastinate. But my current project (a play about John Keats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, creative genius, inspiration, and bipolar disorder) has captured my interest. I hope to have that finished tonight and focus on my 20-page paper over the weekend.

~~ 3 ~~

I have been Facebook-less for about a week now. Do I miss it? Yes, and no. I find myself wanting my Facebook back when I am bored, procrastinating, or depressed. When I am happy or doing something worthwhile, I never even think about it. This just confirms my belief that Facebook isn't good for my soul, because I seem to use it as a sort of short-term narcotic. (I think of soma from Brave New World.)

~~ 4 ~~

One exception: I also wish I could post to Facebook when I read an article that I want to share with the world. I was a page admin on What We're Reading, a page where we'd all post the cool articles we'd stumbled across. It was pretty cool. I just discovered when I went to look up the link that you can read this page without even having a Facebook account. So much for the little productivity I had left! But seriously, go check it out. We're all interested in different things so it's a fairly eclectic (that's the polite word for random, right?) bunch of stuff.

~~ 5 ~~

I need to go to the grocery store....I decided not to go yesterday so I could go to a Mass in a language I don't speak with liturgical dancers. But it's supposed to snow tomorrow. I guess it will be a bus grocery store trip! I would wait for better weather, but looking at the weather forecast, I think I'd run out of food and starve before the weather got better. Also if I don't go before Sunday the flyer will change over and I will have to make a new shopping list. I hate making grocery lists, so this is good motivation.

~~ 6 ~~

About that Mass, no, it's totally not my normal style. So why was I there? It was a Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe. My friend invited me to go with him. He tells me that Hispanic culture has a tradition of dancing as worship. I take his word on this; I'm not Hispanic. So I wanted to see what it was like. While I see that the style could be a form of worship, I think it was badly integrated into this particular Mass; they just stuck some dancing before the presentation of the gifts. Since it didn't accompany any actual liturgical action, it really felt like a performance. Disappointing. The music was also disappointing; the balance between singing and accompaniment was off and the microphones were terribly distorting.

~~ 7 ~~

On a side note, I totally get now why some people don't like Mass in Latin. I've never been in a Mass where I had so little orientation as to what was happening. On the other hand, if I had had the text and translation, as well as a crash course in how to pronounce Spanish, I think it would've been fine.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Seven Quick Takes: Mostly Cooking and Cleaning

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I take back what I said about next semester being easy. I just put it all into an actual weekly calendar with colored in blocks (the only way schedules make sense to me) and there's a LOT of color and not very much white space. (Well, right now there's a lot of white space, but I know most of that is going to be colored in once I finish scheduling lab and work hours.) I guess I'll buy a crock pot and learn how to make crock pot meals that last for a week! Just kidding.

~~ 2 ~~

Actually, speaking of cooking, I'm going to try going gluten free this summer and see what happens. My sister has just gone gluten free and it's made a big difference to her overall health. That kind of stuff tends to run in families, we are (suspected identical) twins, and I have a lot of the same symptoms. For the record, I hope the experiment totally fails because I LOVE NOODLES and I don't want to stop eating them.

~~ 3 ~~

I'm also on the lookout for recipes that are easy to make ahead of time and then pack. I'm lactose intolerant, so combined with the gluten experiment, my old strategy of cheese sandwich is going to need to be rethought, as will my "noodles and cheese" strategy. Suggestions welcome. Easy and cheap suggestions very welcome.

~~ 4 ~~

I'm in the middle of tidying for move-out. For some reason that I don't quite get, our rooms are supposed to be ready for inspection (i.e., reasonably tidy and posters down) by Sunday night. Inspections are on Thursday. Are they just trying to make sure we get things done in time? I don't know. Whatever! Saves me some of the last minute rush to turn my disaster of a room into neatly stacked boxes. (Of course, I'll create a different last minute rush. That's just how I roll.)

~~ 5 ~~

Speaking of mess, packing, and rushing, what's the best organization book you've ever read? I have trouble staying organized and I finally figured out one big reason why: I like to have things where I can see them. If I can't see something, I won't remember it. So things that I need to remember to use on a regular basis, such as medication and toothbrushes, need to be visible. Something can only stay hidden if I only need it when I know I need it (e.g., Tylenol, spoons). But if I just set things around on top of tables and shelves, I start putting everything I have on there until my horizontal surfaces are piles of mess. Is anyone else like this? What do you do about it?

~~ 6 ~~

Did you see that the Boy Scouts now allow gay boys to be scouts? They still require leaders to be heterosexual. I will write a more in-depth post about this later, but I think this was a wise move pastorally.

~~ 7 ~~

Lastly, in orphan news (you thought I would have a SQT without orphans, didn't you? Ha, not likely): Recent negotiations with Russia have not yielded any results, and Russia will not reopen to American adoption in the foreseeable future. (Of course, with international adoption, the future is always uncertain.) Because of this, Reece's Rainbow decided to give the grants of waiting Russian children to children in other countries. Because she was my Christmas child, I got to decide which child would receive Aisha's grant. I was asked to give her grant to a child with DS who was in greater need, and I chose Mark in Latin America. He already had a significant grant, so his adoption is now nearly half paid for. He needs a family quickly--he is an older boy, and he has leukemia as well as Down syndrome. I have absolutely no idea what conditions are like in his country; I hope he is getting treatment for his cancer. But he still needs a family.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

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!

Religious education

This article (link to Google cache, as the original seems to have been deleted) on Fr. Simon's blog has gotten me thinking about religious education. I have taught CCD for two years in local parishes, and I mentioned briefly a while back that I have some issues with the curriculum I used last year, and would post about catechesis later. It's officially later. So here goes.

I think there's something terribly wrong with our current religious education system. Some anecdotes: I was confirmed with eighth graders who went to Mass every Sunday (and still do, as far as I know), but did not know what day Jesus died on. (Was it Ash Wednesday?--No, of course not, it was Easter.) I have seen children in white dresses and suits raise their hands to answer during the homily and announce clearly that it's not really Jesus, it's just bread--and then be admitted to First Communion!

Clearly, this is a problem. It saddens me to say this, but I suspect that religious education, for many children, simply does not make a difference. I know that for some kids, religion class is the only exposure they had to religion, and that for some kids, that is enough to make the difference. I'm not suggesting cutting out religion class.

But I will say that I have had 13 years of religion class, using different books from different publishers, including some very highly recommended ones, and not one moment of any of it has ever made me want to be Catholic. I have had college classes that made me want to be Catholic, and conversations with people I love that made me want to be Catholic, and experiences of God that made me want to be Catholic. But if it all came down to religion class? I think I'd be an atheist. Religion textbooks were saccharine and shallow, filled with tacky pictures and lame essay prompts. ("Look at this picture of a bird flying across a sunset. Write a prayer to the Holy Spirit.") If this is the best the Catholic Church can come up with, what does that say about her?

So I see two big problems with the current state of religious education. It doesn't effectively convey the factual information it is intended to teach, and it doesn't effectively convey the beauty of the Church. What can be done about this? I don't know. I wish I did. I would be a better CCD teacher if I did. Here are some ideas. I'd love comments on them.

• Go back to catechism-based instruction. I do not remember anything from first grade religion class except for the following: Who made us?--God made us.--How did God make us?--In His own image and likeness.--Why did God make us?--To know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. I'm not saying we should turn religion class into children memorizing by rote phrases that they do not understand, but I believe we underestimate the importance of simply being able to state definitions. (What is a sacrament?--It's uh like this special thing that happens like at church? And uh you need a priest? Surely this is not our goal, but this is what we achieve when we water things down too much.)
• Get rid of the link between sacraments and age. If four-year-olds and eight-year-olds are both common at First Communions, the pressure to "pass" unprepared children will be lower.
• Involve parents. What if CCD classes involved family homework? "CCD is supposed to be fun, so we don't give homework." No offense, but that's garbage. Religion is not supposed to be easy. If you have to read a Bible story with your mother and talk about it with her, it's not going to kill you. Or her. Obviously it is better to evangelize children through their parents than parents through their children. But I think something like this actually does both. (How to get parents to actually do this is another question entirely. At the church I last taught at, the parents were invited in to join the class for prayer at the last five minutes of class. I usually had two or maybe three parents, out of a class of ten, bother to come five minutes early.)
• Focus on beauty. (Please don't tell me this contradicts my first suggestion. I will cry if you do.) Teach the kids to sing chant. Introduce them to old prayers. Show them paintings. As a commenter said at a post on Little Catholic Bubble, "Start by seeking the Beautiful. This will lead you to the Good. Eventually you'll end up at the Truth. Then you can dive into all the rules you want."

So those are my initial thoughts on what the problems are and some ways to move towards fixing them. Please tell me what you think, even if you totally disagree. In your experience, what works? What doesn't?

(Side note: In the interests of avoiding self-plagiarism, I feel obliged to state that some of this post, content-wise, has been on my Facebook page, and some of the text is actually just a copy-and-paste.)

Help needed on several fronts

The Hansen family needs your prayers! Their daughter Maia is in intensive care. I don't know enough medical terminology to be able to explain what is wrong, but it involves seizures, neurosurgeons, and fluid buildup in her brain. The link is to the family's blog, where you can read updates from Maia's parents.

Ksenia needs your help. Look at the change in her from the picture on the right to the picture on the left. She was unlisted on Reece's Rainbow recently and we all thought she had died. But she's back. RR doesn't have enough information about her to collect money, unfortunately. She can also only be adopted by Canadians right now due to the rules in her country. Please pray like crazy, and share her with your friends--even if they aren't Canadian, their friends might be.

As always, keep praying for Kurt! Please consider giving him money. I found his guardian angel, and am hoping that we can work together on a fundraiser. (Do I have any ideas? Possibly. Not really. Yet.)

In personal news, I'm home from school. It's good to be with the family. I hope to start posting more regularly (how many times have I said that now?). Maybe I'll weigh in on the bikini argument floating around the blogosphere; I posted a link on my Facebook page and my friends brought up some really interesting points. Or maybe I won't. I'm not sure that I have anything to add.

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.

If I don't watch out, this blog might become a diary. I don't want that to happen.

Today has been better than yesterday, mood-wise. I don't know why though. I wound up working on my paper for a while last night and have now got about a half-page single spaced. Nowhere near an 8-page paper, but it's a start. I am not confident that I am on the right track, though, which is a complicating factor.

I taught my CCD class today. It's a first grade class. This is something I really enjoy, although I dislike certain aspects of the curriculum and entire attitude towards religion inherent in the classes. That's a subject for its own post though. We covered baptism today, and they remembered much more than they have been in previous lessons. I only wish I knew why! (I suspect I'm not a very good teacher.)

I also had adoration today. I'm not sure how I feel about adoration. I have never been into it, but I signed up for a shift at one of the chapels this semester. I think it's good for me, but I feel like I'm doing it wrong.

I'm watching a TV show with my friends this evening (Smash--anyone else watching it? It looks like fun based on the pilot episode). However, I also have to do some reading/writing for tomorrow. One of my professors did not email the readings around, and I didn't think to Google them until today. So by tomorrow at 11am I should have read the articles and emailed in a reflection. I have work at 7am tomorrow, so I don't want to be up super late. So I should probably stop writing this post and get to work. Ah the life of a college student.

I had an interesting conversation with my friend J at dinner, which I think may be relevant to some thoughts I was having on my own earlier. Once these thoughts are more thoroughly percolated, I will probably be coming up with a post about attachment, insecurity, and third culture kids. Check back in if you want to read my thoughts, or if you don't know what some of those are. (Who am I kidding--I know no one reads this blog!)

Today has not been a good day

I have been feeling angry and irritable all day for no reason. This has been happening more than I would like recently, and I am thinking it may be a sign of depression coming back. The reason why I hesitate to say this is because the sun has been shining more than usual over the past week, which usually correlates to a better mood for me. I also haven't been having anxiety problems, which is usually a more reliable way for me to track depression than depression symptoms themselves, which (in my opinion) are more subtle. On the other hand, I've had to take a 2.5 week break from running due to a hip injury. So maybe those balance out. Anyway, something to keep an eye on--I really hate feeling this way and would like to nail down and eliminate the cause.

I was going to do homework with friends with the super bowl on in the background, but plans fell through. So I was going to do homework alone (I have a paper due this week on top of my normal workload), but so far I have done nothing since dinner. Go Patriots, I guess, since I have family from New England. Can you tell how much of a football fan I am? (I have never watched a super bowl.)

About my hip: I've been having pain in my right hip joint/groin since about the middle of Christmas break. I was initially diagnosed with a hip strain by university health services, but after two weeks of rest and naproxen (an NSAID) didn't fix it, they are looking for another answer. It appears to be something muscular rather than structural (pressure hurts), so they scheduled an ultrasound for Thursday. The good news is that since running didn't seem to bring on pain, and stopping running didn't help much, I have official doctor go-ahead to run. So I went running this evening, only for 20 minutes, but still. I went a little over two miles, which is a decent pace for me (I know I'm slow). In terms of long-term running goals, I think the half-marathon I was planning to run at the end of March is out of the question at this point. So maybe I'll run the 10k they have at the same event.

Lastly, more good news: I've officially been matched with a child to pray for on Reece's Rainbow! Reece's Rainbow is an organization that helps to facilitate international adoption of children with special needs (with a focus on Down Syndrome). One of the ways to help, if you can't adopt or donate money, is to offer to pray specifically for one child every day. I emailed them, and they gave me Kurt. He's four and a half, and he has mild CP. That's him on the left. Isn't he cute? I kind of want him to be mine, but of course hope that he has a family by the time I'm old enough to have any children of my own.

Well, I need to go take a shower and then work on my philosophy paper. It's about Descartes, whom I happen to dislike very much. :/