My decision to go Vegetarian

Well, I've been giving it a lot of thought...
And I decided that I was going to become a vegetarian. It struck me as odd for the longest time why anyone would want to do this. I personally like the taste of chicken, and think that women who are pregnant or planning to become so should eat meat to provide enough iron for themselves. But I have weighed the pros and cons and this is what I have decided.

1. That I don't trust the meat packaging industry. How old is our food exactly? How cleanly prepared, and how many preservatives have they stuffed our food with? You can never read "the Jungle" and be the same. Plus, I happen to hate artificial food and unnatural things. (like high-fructose corn syrup Spawn of the devil!)

2. That this is a form of fasting of me, giving up something I actually like, and will hopefully put a curb on my rather glutinous appetite.

3. It's cheaper
seriously. I checked out our monthly grocery bill, and it's almost 800 dollars a month for 8 people. HOLY COW! that is 100 dollars a month per person in my family. I figured out that cutting out meat is an easy to reduce costs in my family's budget. I also figured that if we bought bulk rice and beans and nuts, and other good things like that, we could eliminate all the awful fake food my mom buys for my little brothers. Unfortunately, they shot down that Idea.

So, here I am, a vegetarian. Let's see how this goes!

God Provides

As some of you may know, I was desperate for a job this summer, and then I got one and I was really hesitant about it. Well, i took the job, and it consisted of watching a young girl with Downs-syndrome for 5 dollars an hour. I know that this doesn't sound like much, and I thought so too. Well, it turned out being alot of fun and good experience by the end of August. And then I was approached with the oppertunity of working in a nursing home. Pays 9 dollars an hour, they will let me work on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and all because I have experience working with the mentally impaired. God, thank you. What I thought was going to be a terrible experience turned out to pave the way towards me attaining this new job. Praise him!

Biking is my life

I love biking.

I would do it all day if I could.

I costs nothing (except routine check-up fees) and is great exercise.

I feel free, like I'm flying on a bike.

But....

It is a hassle to try and bike the 17.5 miles to volleyball practice, and then get back in time for work. It usually takes me an hour to bike to school in the morning, but that is only 10-12 miles and that is when I'm rested. Thank God I won't have to deal with the Montreal hill, or the Lillydale State Park hills, or the Delaware Hills, but the distance is formidable. And I will have to go over the longest bridge in the Twin Cities. Not only that, but after volleyball practice, I will be pooped and I only have an hour to get back home to wait for my charge at the bus stop! Can I do it?

We'll see.

Of course, a solution is to leave volleyball practice early.

We'll see.

A Father's Jurisdiction

How much right does a father have over his daughter's dates? Well, I do live in his house, legally under his jurisdiction, and will be for another year still. (actually, 1 year and 2 months) Thus I should be dutiful and adhere to the standards he sets out for me, including with whom and how often I spend my time.

Still...

Doesn't only being able to see your special person once a week kind of... well, words fail me. I mean, only three months till he is off to college, so with this present plan I will only see him 12 times this summer! No! This does not seem at all just. I am sorely tempted to sneak out behind my parent's back, but this is a grave violation of trust, and then I would really not deserve to even see him once this summer. My loyalties must still remain with my father. EVEN SO!

Not allowing us to learn swing-dancing together, from our high-school teacher, boils my blood a little.

16 years old... Why am I in the class of 2009? Younger than all my class mates, and with less freedom than any of them.

But as I have learned many times, true freedom is not absence of restrictions. And I know my dad has the best in mind for me. The real question here is... Is appropriate for me to be in an exclusive dating relationship with a man who is leaving in three months? My good friend told me that many people she knows have been able to keep up their relationship by correspondence, but the bigger question is, what does God want? Where will he take my life in the next year? The next two years?

I am being driven insane.

Responsibility

Responsibility,

Who wants it?

I just watched Narnia and was reminded of the reality that we as humans are called to live in our own world. We have learned from our childhood dreams all we can, and now we must learn to live.

Depressing!

I wrote some poetry about this same reality last month and it seemed so appropriate to the moment

Waking up is hard.

To untangle one's self from the sticky web of dreams,

To lift from one's mind the fog of drowsiness,

Is the hard task of living.

The dreams that run through our subconscious minds

are just that, dreams.

They can not sustain us,

nor can they live by themselves.

It is our task to live.

To be human is to have all the capacities in the world carefully knit into our being,

All the incomprehensible wonders of the universe,

All the incredible burden of being awake.

In the garden we were fully awake.

It is what made us and separates us from our fellow creatures,

That we have the capacity to be awake.

We saw, as one alert and alive.

Now we see but through a glass darkly.

It is so hard to wake up,

And so easy to forget the reality of our situation.

I do not want to wake up most days.

I lay in bed and wish that I could spend all my years forgetting who I am,

to sink into the delightful realms of oblivion,

and forget that reality knocks on my soul.

To be asleep is to lose one's self in the vast and restful words of emptiness.

I am not challenged by my dreams.

They are all in my mind, and can not hurt me.

In the darkness behind my eyelids I can imagine all I want to.

It is so easy to be nothing more than the subconscious.

We have no cares, no obligations, for we have forsaken responsibility.

To live is to recognize the faces that peer through the windows of your dreams;

To hear the voices that scream their messages in hushed whispers.

We can not drug ourselves without consequence,

the lethargy of our dreams are a dying fantasy, empty as our own existance.

What comes of our dreams?

Nothing.
We are as our dreams, floating in and out of oblivion,

We are as ones lost in blissful forgetfulness.

There is some part of us that rebells against it,

That is restless to move, to breath, to escape the confines of the pillow.

There is a part of us all that is searching to escape the chains of our dreams.

Awake O sleeper, arise from death!

Abandon the shadows of night!

The Wind of the spirit shall be your breath, and the Light of heaven your sun.

To date or not to date...

Well, the dilemma has finally come.

As a young girl I swore that I would not date until I was in college, or at least a senior in high-school. I mean, dating is preparation for marriage! Am I old enough, emotionally, spiritually, and financially ready for marriage? Heck no! 

And yet, I was asked out.

I mean, I never even considered the possibility of that happening! I always imagined myself in college and meeting someone in the philosophy department or the music arena and being great friends first, but at the same time having a complete and total understanding between us. Most importantly, I always imagined he would be the same age as me.

A senior, packing off to college, 18 years old, whom I have known only since I was in 10th grade has asked me out.

?

Do not get me wrong! I love this person dearly. He has probably been the most important male person to me after my Dad and my cousin (we are as close as twins). But I am very very apprehensive and in some senses scared. But in all things I must remember the most important thing.

To Pray!

Muses of a Poetic Soul

The background of this poem is a dream I had where there was a traveler from one world where no night existed. He traveled to a different world and arrived there at night when the sun had just gone down, and was so terrified by the darkness he began to panic, that is, until the stars came out.

Surely, for I am a stranger

In vain my own road I have sought,

I have come upon the realm of the gods,

Who rule in this world I know not.

About and below me lies nothing,

But darkness incessant and vast,

A nothingness stretching eternally on, into

Undying black, unsurpassed.

A wind from the north blows about me,

And seizes my lungs with its breath,

Clean  and as clear as the mountainous rain,

Yet cold as the stalking of death.

Then suddenly high overhead me,

I see something flash into life,

White fire that burns for a moment in time,

Like the gleam on the blade of a knife.

My eyes now are open to witness

As suddenly they come to see,

Beauty brought forth from a desolate waste,

As Venus was born from the sea,

The spell of some heavenly jeweler,

Hath shown me his ebony plaque,

Diamonds lie glittering where they are cast,

Against the rich velvet of black.

Placed by the hands of a master,

They frame a pristine orb of light,

A pearl from the depths of a starless abyss

The moon in her glory and might.

She shines like a pendent of silver,

Stephanite etched in her gleam

 She hangs by her chain just eluding my grasp,

The wish of some fast fading dream.

What god have I met in my travels,

Who’s art can arise to compare?

For beauty is wielded by beings divine,

And never were such things so fair.

My soul is at rest in my breast,

Relax now my roamings can I,

For mine eyes hath witnessed the gems of a God.

Awake in a desolate sky.

Oral reports

Hello Hard-core studying.
I have often wondered why my friends from public-school always fret about their final exams, why they spend countless hours studying for a test that sums up their year. Now I know. So far, all I have accomplished in this small coffee shop is a fair amount of worrying and slaving over my mat-lab code, trying to imagine what Hooke's Law and Archimede's Principle are doing on the same assignment, and trying to stay sane while I examine the fine points of this silly code. I can not seem to concentrate, even though I left my house and all possible distractions behind me when I came here. My house is the least conducive place to studying I think on the face of this planet. Five noisy siblings running around, (God bless them), and hard working parents with short tempers. I must say, my parents have far more patience than I could ever hope to have. Now to tackle Humane Letter's Orals, reviewing Sophocles, Aristotle, Augustine, the Illiad, the Odyssey, Aeschylus, Athanasius, Plato's Dialogues, the Republic, Gorgias, and Thucydides. I love philosophy, but my brain is going to crack under all this stress shortly. O, and I just found out I forgot to turn in my Calculus project, and my Boyle's Law lab, and my notes from Global Issues.
...
Summer will just have to wait another week.