Car trouble

Long story short, my car won't start for love or money. This evening, after much trial and tribulation, it was towed. Sigh. And now I'm a pinioned bird - a dead electrical system pulled out my flight feathers.

Long story long? Let's not go there. Even I don't want to hear the whole thing.

Thank you, God for my car not working anymore. Like Betsie ten Boom thanking you for the fleas, I don't much like this, but I have faith that, somehow, it will glorify you.

Peace.
PP

Texting

Dear Jojo,
Thanks for signing your texts. This way, there is absolutely no chance of mistaking who they're from. To be honest, I sorta wish you had just stuck to calling me on the phone. On the other hand, I'm proud of you for wanting to master the new technology. That makes you pretty BA - and you most definitely get an A+ for effort.
love,
your granddaughter.

The Epics 3

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
This week I read Jane Eyre. It has been a long time since I could not put a book down. What engrossing language, vivid descriptions, real characters! It was full of words I didn't know, passages in French, antique phrasings, and lovely imagery. The ring of truth was a thread that wound its way through every page, leaving no paragraph untinged by its radiance.
Lol. The accent of the writing has got into my head.
Seriously though. One of the things I loved about this book was how it a) stretched my powers of text-comprehension as I read it, b) portrayed real human beings, who lived in accordance with truth and justice as they saw them.
Next up, The Eyre Affair (which is an old favorite, if not an epic).

Talkers

I have a lot of friends who like to talk.

That is good, because I like to listen.

What my talkative friends may forget is that I sometimes like to talk, too.

Often the mark of a close friend in my life is that that person knows how and when to give me space to say my piece.

**************************
In other news...
Why do I even bother cooking? I'm SO much better at baking!
Oh, right, 'cause I have to eat human food, not pure carbs. Riiiight.
Tonight's recipes: Cheesy potatoes (we'll see if they're any good. I mean... can you really go wrong with potatoes and cheese?) and Banana bread (which is AMAZING, if I do say so myself).
Next exciting summer recipe: empanadas. (I have no idea how to make these, I just thought of it just now b/c it combines baking and cooking... kinda) Right after the orange sorbet and mounds of pasta. Ahem.
NEXT exciting summer recipe: orange sorbet, followed by mounds of bowtie pasta with at least 3 different, fascinating sauces. w00t.

The Epics 2

In my list of epics...

Third: Anna and the King
An English woman moves to Siam with her son, Louis, to be schoolteacher to the King's son. In the events that ensue, she makes a school for the King's 68 children, liberates a slave, teaches the King's son about justice and slavery, saves the royal family from certain death (a traitor in the King's court attempts a coup), saving the King's life and enabling him to kill the traitor, falls in love with the King and causes him to fall in love with her. She always speaks her mind, does not depart from her values and standards, and remains upright under pressure. The future of the country is changed because of her presence at the heart of the royal family.

I absolutely loved this movie for its intricacy, complexity, and the verisimilitude of its characters. Also for the way evil and moral decay/decline were bested and defeated at every turn. It reminds me of a quote by C. S. Lewis:
"Real things are sharp and knobbly and complicated and different."

Wrong Answer

My grandparents, my sister and I sat in the restaurant-booth. As we waited for the food to arrive, we conversed with a comparative ease and fluency that surprised me. My sister and I had put off setting a specific date and time for this particular dinner for weeks and weeks, both of us dreading it. You see, the great danger with my mother's parents, is that my grandmother is a monologuer - which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the fact that her favorite subjects tend to be either too boring or too controversial for comfortable conversation. Dinner with her, we expected, would consist of her talking volubly while my grandfather sat sullenly, eating his meal, and we attempted to listen as politely as we could, dutifully returning the love our grandparents were attempting to lavish on us. But that was not how the evening went at all. As I said before, we conversed with comparative ease and fluency, telling stories and teasing one another. And naturally, one of the things my grandfather asked, in a joking sort of way, was what I intended to do after college. After all, he said, college, he'd been told, was the time a person is given to decide what they want to do. So I told him. I said, "Well, I'm going to teach English as a second language." and then, laughingly, "...but I only decided that two weeks ago, so don't ask too many questions yet!" To which my grandmother replied by asking where I would go to work, meaning where in the world. And I, high on having successfully both made my grandfather laugh and avoided an in-depth analysis of my Next Step in Life, replied, with another laugh in my voice, "That's the wrong question." - and immediately thought to myself, "and that was the wrong answer," because my grandmother turned from me, as if I had struck her a blow to the face. We didn't talk about my Future any more.
That wasn't the end of the night, by any means, and I hope I behaved more respectfully for the rest of it. But it made me think. This being equal with adults thing is an extremely hard balance to strike. How do you honor your father and mother, while being autonomous and an adult? What do you do with loving inquiries into matters on which you feel you're coming along just fine, thank-you-very-much? What is the best way to show your family, as an emerging adult, that you love and appreciate them? Despite my grandparents not being the funnest people to be around, I do love them dearly, and I know the feeling is mutual (if not stronger on their part). I was truly privileged tonight to hear many new and different stories from their lives that I had never heard before, and to hear the echoes of the years they have spent together; years spent with my mother and her sisters, my family. I was touched, once again, by their generosity, and how they crave the affection of their grandchildren, and how they want to take care of us, and make sure we will be provided for. They showered us in demonstrations of love. They made great effort to get us to agree to go to dinner with them, to take us out to a nice restaurant, to clean their kitchen; my grandmother even tried making a new kind of cake! They were so kind and generous, and of all the emotions I find within myself after this amazing blessing of a meeting, I am surprised and upset to find shame. Have I loved them well? I don't know that I can satisfactorily answer yes. But I don't want to be that grandchild. You know. The thankless one. I am thankful. But those words are not enough. What to do? Sigh. With this mash of mixed emotions (though mostly grateful ones), I shall go to sleep. Because you can't decide anything properly at one in the morning.
TBC.
PP.

List of...

Things I ought to do in the near future, by urgency:
-Finish/mail my letter to C. (done)
-Finish/mail my letter to A. (done)
-Talk to/catch up with Ashley.
-Ditto for Angelica.
-Go help Ashley and Angelica pack/prep for moving.
-Ask to hang out with Joni & Sarah & Joanna for serious-talk time.
-Find a time to actually hang out with Michelle A. and Melissa.
-Take a "vacation" and see/spend time with my family before they all move away in the fall and I have to roadtrip to see them.
-Make sure I continue to hang out semi-consistently with: Bethaney, Stacey, Rachel, Amber, Michelle, Melissa, Joni, Sarah, Joanna, Lindsey, Ashley, and Angelica.
-Make sure I talk to: Hana, Annalisa, Ann-Phyllis.
-Answer Preston's e-mail
-Determine, once-and-for-all, how I want to overhaul my wardrobe, and what I want to be in it when I'm done.

Things I would like to do:
-To see Amber J's baby.
-Spend a weekend with D&J and little Elijah! That should probably be toward the end of the summer though... plans!
-What about Ellen & co? Could I spend time with them somehow this summer?
Etc. Oh, having a social life. xD