Jon Bovi. Best Band Ever.

(I will try to get Dennis singing Karaoke of "Living on a Prayer"- he's pretty good!)


Anyway, I am blogging. Just not really well. Because I have some mega papers to write. But they are do very soon. And then I want to blog regularly again! And hilarity will ensue!!

What's better than writing a book report?

I have to write a report for This book. It's a good book. I would just rather do so many more things. (It really is a good book, about women in Greco-Roman history.)

But per the title of this post, what is more fun?


LOL Cats. They are always more fun.

updates!

I had a good birthday. I turned 27 on Wednesday. It wasn't as traumatic as my 26th birthday- I got a lot of love this year in the form of cards and online greetings and Dennis took me to a really really nice restaurant (Hawaiian fusion!). My Dad actually sent me flowers. They are gorgeous and moved me, considering the fact that Dad rarely even sends me a birthday card (he has a new girlfriend and I surmise that she is pretty awesome). Unfortunately said flowers have given me serious hayfever and allergic reactions. But I love and cherish them and am really really sad that they can't stay in our living room. (They are hiding in our guest room/office right now because I can't throw them away! My Dad bought me flowers!!)

I did break lent for my birthday but I had already decided that you can't blow candles out of an apple. You can't tell from this photo, but it's a chocolate souffle with a candle. And bananas foster on the side. (I can't even just have a little sugar on my birthday.)

On an unrelated note, we are still seriously talking about moving to Monterrey, Mexico. Don't anyone freak out because it highly depends on Dennis getting accepted to the PhD. program that he is applying for. I think he has good chances. Things like this have increased my stress level and I wonder if I might rename my blog to "ERIN FREAKS OUT ABOUT EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME-BLOG!"

So I'm trying to figure out how to get caught up and organized for life. Right now, school is a priority (one reason my blogs are few and far between and always end up like updates!) I need to make a resume. I registered the other day for my last classes in this degree that has taken FOR-EVER to finish and that was kind of a strange feeling. I imagine that I am not done with school yet, as I have started thinking about getting another degree (in what? not sure!).




Can I put LOL-speak on my resume?

Milestones...

I belong to a forum for diabetics who are women and who are mothers or who want to be mothers. I'm not planning anything right now but it has been motivational for getting my health under control. Anyway, when your diabetes is under control, you tell everyone in the forum and they give you a dancing frog (so under 7.0 A1C). My A1C two weeks ago was a 7.8, which is the best I've ever had. It's a milestone and the forum members awarded me with a tadpole. I've been keeping it on my computer harddrive but I haven't been really keeping up with trying to do better. But posting it here might help me to stay focused (I've caved twice in the past week and had some french fries and I've decided to give up candy and cake, except for Mar.11 bday cake, for lent). I just feel like I have so many goals and things I have to do this year, and I think I've been putting the goal of being healthy on the backburner.

I got this email when I was wasting time on facebook (which very well might steal my soul). I'm going back to Japan so I've been raising money. I've reached my half way point, but I don't know how because I can think of 10 people that I know I need to talk to but that I have put off writing letters too. It's another goal.

I'm also taking Japanese, kind of. I'm sitting in on a class but I'm not really auditing it because I'm not paying for it, because the professor and his department have been really ridiculously graceful and generous. But tomorrow morning, there is an exam. I haven't studied and now I feel like I should talk to the professor and just ask him if I can not worry about this exam? I feel really bad, like I'm already wasting his time and like him grading my exam would be just worse. I feel like a flake.

Which brings me to my 10am midterm tomorrow morning. It's something else I haven't satisfactorily studied for. But I'm paying for this class, and I think I might be smarter if I studied and did well for it. But this is like the story of who I am as a student right now- I'm flaking on my studies and putting things off and hoping that I can just get by. It's not how I want to do things, and I'm probably being too hard on myself. I'm just really tired and stressed out.

Which brings me to my whole life right now. I finish school finally in December. My husband doesn't have a job and the US economy is not providing him with anything. We are talking about moving back to Chile or to another country, in general. Which freaks me out. The thought of moving to another country and changing my life so dramatically all by myself (with Dennis), so freaks me out that I feel like I'm almost paralyzed. It's like I'm sabotaging myself physically, spiritually, and scholastically because I'm terrified of the real world, of moving away, of the very very unknown. It's not that I don't have faith in God or in Dennis or in myself. It's that I'm just so anxious about this that I can't even concentrate properly. Me, who has to two hours early for a flight when they say be one hour early. Me, who has to show up 15-30min. early for a movie just because I want to pick the best seats possible. I turn into Godzilla if we miss one preview. Not knowing, not having a clue, not having any control.

I realize, as I type this, that this is what I'm doing. I'm so freaking out that I'm sabotaging myself. Which is absurd because I, of all people, know how amazing God is and how much things can change in one year. In less!

I am a banana in pajamas.

Let me rejoice in this glorious time, when I can be in pajamas for most of the week and blame it on my status as a graduate student. I had a big retreat on Friday and Saturday for Japan and now I have nothing until Thursday morning. Which means I celebrated Martin Luther King in my pajamas perusing facebook. And while I did indeed watch the presidential ceremonies today and I did tear up and fall in love with the Obama daughters, etc., I did also return to bed after I saw George W. board the helicopter.

I do have more important things to do. I can get dressed, go for a walk, do the dishes, clean our apartment or do the laundry, or take out the trash... Or really more importantly, I could do my homework. I have some reading to do, especially for all of the many book reviews that are due at the end of the semester AKA in two months. And if I did do my homework, it would certainly lend credence to any of my arguments when they do happen, with Dennis about just how busy I am as a graduate student. (As in "hey, I work really hard! I'm a full-time graduate student!")

I think that this is my last year to use this excuse. I am finishing classes in December and while I expect for the comprehensive exams to be really tough (the ones I must pass in order to get my degree in April of 2010...), I know that a year from now I am going to be worrying more about my resume (which I still need to write...) and all of the real grown up stuff that comes along with GROWING UP.

I'm rejoicing. And freaking out.

With one minute to spare...

On an unrelated note, I have discovered that there is a problem with my body clock. One week ago, I was able to without a clock, wake up at 6 or 7am. Now, because I have to be in class at 8am, I am automatically exhausted and cannot wake up on time. I woke up at 7:59 for my 8am class today. I did not wear my pajamas. Exactly. (I wore jeans and a sweater).


And here is a blog post you should read as it had me thinking about our daughters (our collectively as a people, but also Dennis's daughters and the girls that I teach in Sunday school and see around at church): Real Girls, Real Pressure. Let's not reinforce old and bad habits, mmkay?

vacation is ending :(

Winter break always goes by so fast! And this is probably my last one as a student! I've spent most of the break blissfully doing nothing and school starts back up this Wednesday. I have a few tasks to do before things get crazy (i have to write some fundraising letters and there are like 3 greeting cards that need to be composed and sent to Japan and Chile).

As mentioned, I was sick for most of the past few days (since Christmas). But today i felt pretty good (pretty normal) and I really don't have any excuses. I'm still in pajamas and all but I really don't have any excuses for not going out. It's a good thing that I didn't resolve to go to the gym (I make resolutions I know I can do).

But yeah, I've been getting out of bed in stages.

mental housekeeping...

there are some things I need to get down in words.

First, the facebook photo situation has been resolved: My nephew complained that he hates this photo. I can relate. People have photos of me tagged where I look like a fat cow. But maybe I was looking at this from the most selfish of all angles. My nephew is a young college kid who needs as many facebook photos of himself where he looks cool as he can get, because he is a young kid in college. It all makes perfect sense. So, I have conceded. I removed his name from the photo and he is no longer tagged. But I keep my photo online. Those are my terms and we are no longer in negotiations. (At least, I'm no longer negotiating).

Second, my brain is mush. I have finals this upcoming week and while these are mainly papers, this is where my focus of attention is resting. I need this week, at least until after Tuesday at midnight, to focus on school. Hence, the following open letter is necessary:
Dear husband,
Apologies, because I cannot be bothered until I finish my assignments. I have, literally five brain cells and they are all on school. So this means I am not going to have time to clean out the spare bedroom so my brother is at home when he visits on Friday. It will get done but maybe not to your satisfaction. Oh well. My brother is quite possibly the messiest bachelor ever so I'm sure he will not mind.

I'm also not in a position to care about cooking. I'm eating a salad and that alone deserves applause. Do NOT give me "that" look when I eat a few oreos. I'm stressing out majorly and a few oreos are not going to kill me. Yes, I know I had a panic attack last week about how I was feeling fat and I'm such an idiot for not caring better about what I eat. And I fully expect you to react as you did last week, by being supportive and helpful. Do not act like the food police when I decide to binge and have 3 oreo cookies as a reaction to my body's natural cortisol production as a response to stress.

Also, don't freak out because I am also coincidentally very absentminded right now. As I said, I have FIVE brain cells functioning right now. So if I mess up dates and times or forget words, lay off.

Finally, keep on with the supportive hugs and such. You are the best ever and the source of my sanity.

Much love,
your wife, who wishes she was really always right.

'Tis the Season...

'Tis the season for stressing out about papers. I have two papers that I have procrastinated on and one is due tomorrow evening. I have faith in myself, but I can't sleep because my papers are one thing that is going through my mind right now despite the sleep aids. This is what happened last night. I started freaking out about my term papers, especially the one due before Thanksgiving, and I spent the night working on it instead of sleeping.

Which has led me to believe and come to terms with the fact that I'm 26 and not 20 and that all-nighters are no longer feasible for me. I've also been thinking about how my undergraduate classmates stress so much about their grades. And I'm reminded that I really could care less about grades I received years ago so it doesn't really matter. The problem that I face is that in recognizing that my grades don't determine my self-worth, I find myself sometimes sliding into an apathetic and unmotivated academic attitude. If it doesn't really matter, why should I stress myself out. Unfortunately, stressing myself out at the last minute for things like papers is the key to my academic success. I always seem to triumph or at least slide by if I work up to the 11th hour.

My apathy towards school is really a symptom of a larger picture. Quite frankly, I have bigger issues in my life. Dennis isn't working, my hormones are freaking out, I'm worried about my dad, etc. And I am starting to think about life after school, where they really don't care what grade you got on a certain paper. I just don't want my apathy to turn into laziness and apathy in other aspects of my life.

So, I've been stressing myself out and thus I feel like garbage. Trying to pull an all-nighter didn't work and made me feel sick. So I was lying in bed listening to the rain outside, thinking instead about all the things that worry me. I'm worried about school. I'm worried about our future after I graduate. I'm worried about my diabetes. We want to have children, eventually, and I want to be healthy when we do that. In realizing that we will be moving a year from now, I am also realizing that "right around graduation" was when we keep telling people we will start trying to pop out kids. Which means I can no longer procrastinate and not take things like my blood sugars seriously. I have to care. So I find myself caring more about things like my diabetes than I do about my Old Testament Pentateuch class.

I can't sleep so much that I am actually trying to think of things to make for Thanksgiving. Typically, we get invited to a local family's house for the meal. Not family but church friends. This year we don't have invites and I'm actually a little relieved because in our early married years, we went to Denny's for Thanksgiving. A part of me (the part of me that is pushing towards being a real grown up), wants to make something on Thanksgiving. Not a turkey (we wouldn't eat it) but maybe some comfort foods (I'm thinking about deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, stuffing and a small small ham of sorts.) I'm debating on whether or not desert should be included as I am the only one who really eats sweets and Dennis isn't a big pumpkin fan. I'll figure it out but this is what is keeping me up at night.

Or my mind wanders to the stuff our church is doing for the poor people in the area and when they travel to Mexico. They have asked for blankets and I think I am going to give a bunch of blankets away. I came from a family that never ever through away blankets. I don't know why but blankets were just always valuable, even second-hand ugly and outdated ones. We have a few that we never use and don't need. I'm trying to downsize everything we own whenever I get the opportunity because as I've hinted earlier, we are probably moving.

According to Dennis, we will ideally stay in Southern California. It's the easiest way to move. He is looking at jobs in Florida and in Texas. If he cannot find any jobs, we are considering moving back to Chile. In Chile, Dennis can work as an online professor for a school in the states and get a job in Chile. Chile, as in every other place in the world, is economically freaking out. Someone needs to give my husband a job. We need health care and he needs to feel like he is providing again.

This list of things going on in my mind could go on forever. One of the things that I've been hearing again and again and trying to process is this idea of "God's timing". God waited until Sarah was 90 something before letting her have a baby. He waited YEARS before he got his people out of the desert to the actual Promised Land. And even after they arrived, they still had to fight for YEARS more to actually get the land. Things that happen in one or two verses in the Bible actually take a lot longer in real life. And so I'm told to be patient. God is all powerful and all knowing and has control and I just need to wait and have faith. It's just easier said than done. I can see, looking back on my life, times that I have felt God acting slowly and now those times seem to have gone by so fast. A week or even a year flies by and the person I was a year ago and the place we are in our life is just so different. But just every once in a while, it would be so nice to know for sure what is going to happen. More than what grades I'm going to get- where are we going to live? What will we be doing professionally? When will be start a family? I wish I could see God's plan instead of passively waiting on Him to act. It's frustrating and challenging and ever so easy to ask out loud "God, where are you? What are you doing? What is the point of this??"

Okay. I need to try to go back to sleep. I have to wake up early tomorrow to write this stupid paper.

On God's Wisdom...

Rarely, I actually read something required for class that makes me feel really good about God.
This is from my Systematic Theology Professor's book:

"Viewing the other attributes from the perspective of God's wisdom enriches them, and wisdom in turn is enriched by them. For a "love" without wisdom would be no more than sentiment without effect. And wisdom without love would be reduced to craftiness without morality. Grace without understanding would be but whimsical indulgence, and understanding without grace rises only to the level of cold calculation. An unwise mercy does more harm than good by its clumsy kindness, whereas wisdom without mercy surveys suffering heartlessly. Patience without wisdom inspires no confidence of success. But wisdom without patience inspires terror. While in his righteousness God always does right, in his wisdom he always does the best. And for the loving God, the right thing and the best thing are always the same. In his holiness, God maintains his unique being in all his acts, and in his wisdom he acts in ways that will accomplish his will in all things. God is always wise in his holy acts, and always holy in his wise deeds.

God is infinitely wise in all he does because he is wisdom itself. For in his triune life, God is God in the most perfect way. God is not God automatically and unconsciously, but freely. God is not on a journey of self-discovery in which he comes gradually to understand his nature and learns how to act as God more effectively. God knows hot to be God. God knows the why, the how, and the wherefore of his deity. He knows, therefore, how to be God in relationship to his creation. He is "the only wise God" (Rom.16:27), and he deserves glory and wisdom and power forever and ever."

From page 220.

Why Angelina Jolie hate?

So apparently, no one likes Angelina Jolie! I'm a little surprised! (A little.) I think that Brad is kind of annoying personally (actually he does a lot of good things). I just don't like him because to me, This is a massive cop-out. (Or a massive win for Brad, who has the cow and the milk for free).

Anyway, this is me today. I'm not sick just completely tired and unmotivated as far as school. It's just a lack of energy- I don't want to wake up for the 8am class I'm auditing and I don't want to read for my other classes. This will lead to panic in the coming weeks as two papers are due before thanksgiving which is approaching fast.


On a side note, Dennis and I are working with two other guys who may go with us to Japan next summer (fingers crossed that the timing works and we all have the ability to do what we are planning!) We made dinner and talked about it tonight with them and things look really good but I realized that once again I have a big mouth and I am very intrusive. God, I'm such a girl. I hope that we can work as a team without me interfering as an annoying female who wants to know marriage plans and medical histories. I know that Dennis, rightly so perhaps, says that I talk to much and I probably embarrass him. I've never met someone who is so closely the epitome of a meddling chatterbox, as I am myself.

*On another side note, this is like the 4th time this semester that Dennis and I have had a dinner for students/undergraduates. We are very old married couple mentorly aren't we. :) It's not heavy cooking- I made a frozen lasagna tonight.

Osmosis.

because I've been pretty exhausted for the past five days or so. not studying as much as I'd like....

(Seriously. I've noticed a new self-diagnosed ridiculous monthly body symtom. I'm comatose for 5-7 days. I have NO energy. I slept more than I was awake this weekend!)

my brain is fried.

As in "KFC sad bowl of chicken/mashed potatoes/mac 'n cheese/gravy" Fried.

I would like to not post something about tonight's political debate. It seems that there are loads of possible drinking games that one could create in this particular race. But I don't have any alcohol and I don't like getting drunk and sick. So instead, I offer this:


it's a bonus because this guy was referenced by my boss a few days ago and it made me think of authority figures who have talked to me with this exact voice (I'm thinking of someone in particular and this is that line, where you don't know how specific you can be because you know that your blog is public enough to hurt people's feelings. But there is a certain "authority figure" that definitely reminds me of this guy from "Office Space" that I deal with on a fairly regular basis... (Not you, Dave).

senioritis

I've got senior-itis. Which is fine when you are a senior in HIGH School or even undergrad. I have one more year, officially. And I have formally decided that stressing, or atleast stressing about certain classes, is just not worth it to me.

I have this ONE annoying beyond annoying class. It's the last one in an area that I need to have completed- I need this class. But the professor wants us to "respond" in an online message board, to our readings TWENTY FOUR HOURS before class. And he said that he cares about whether or not we are late, as far as grades. I think this is retarded. I think it is retarded that you as a professor are so worried that I won't do the reading before class that you are enforcing a 24hr deadline before class to post a summary about the chapters. Most of your students have lives. They read but they usually read until right before class. That's just the way it is. Also, it is incredibly LAME and retarded that you are requiring us to either pay for $60 book because it has three essays that you decided would be good a week before the semester started.


I suppose my senioritis comes from the revelation that I am growing old and these rules just seem to be pointless. It is my free choice to not post but to instead spend time with Dennis and to study Japanese, which I chose to audit this semester and which is much more fun and interesting.

update! update!

ugh. I know. I've been a lazy blogger. Not very good at posting anything. In a nutshell, I got distracted and then I got stressed and I've been very lazy.

I started school on Monday and I fear based on first impressions that this will be one of those semesters of Graduate work that I've got really paid for. Sometimes, because a lot of my classes are with undergrads, I feel like I can kind of skate through things. I'm pretty good at procrastinating and such and I've polished my skills at writing thing last minute or pretending I've read the text.

Also, when the Professor is asking you to read the first five chapters of the Gospel of John, and you've read those devotionally at random different times in different chunks and/or you've heard at least one sermon on them, you feel (or I feel, atleast) like I can just kind of figure out what I'm supposed to know.

This semester I'm taking a class on God and Providence and we are going to be reading ancient scholars and German scholars. It is a lot of words and I'm not really a reader and there are big theological words and concepts. It's an important class- the first of three that I need to take for my degree- and I am happy to know that I will be smarter for them. But these are daunting books and not only do I need to read them but I need to talk about them in class and write substantially on them.

I'm also taking a class on the first five books of the Bible, which shouldn't be as bad per se, but I do need to respond in writing to the required reading and there will be a paper and (ahem...)work.

What I am counting on, as fun, will be the Japanese class that I'm auditing. I'm enjoying it but I'm not paying for it, except in time and in the cost of the text books. I think it will be like yoga for my brain.

Dennis is teaching online for Kaiser College in Florida (I know not alot of this school so google it.) And he is looking for work, everywhere (like every place on earth that is hiring. But I refuse to move to Dubai, for example.)

So at the moment, I don't have an opinion on much outside of the little bubble of myself and Dennis and school. I don't even care about the whole president thing anymore.

Friday night! Woo!!

see more crazy cat pics
ah. Summer school has officially started and my Hebrew prof started class on Monday by saying "seriously. Hebrew will be your life this month. I wasn't kidding when I said that."
Also, God Bless Malibu. Because I'm registered to be a juror in Malibu, I was able to escape jury duty. I have nothing against it but it was poor timing and I'm lucky that there aren't big hijacks on PCH and Topanga Canyon. Although I would have liked a Britney trial. Which gives me an idea...



So I'm not blogging so much.

By the way, my Hebrew Professor also mentioned that an LOLZ cats version of the Lord's Prayer exists. I would like to see that, so if anyone finds it, let me know? kthxbai.

It ended up okay, actually.

Well, here is the deal.

I didn't study and I woke up twenty minutes later than I hoped. So I spent an hour trying to find parking. But I did study while I played with facebook and watched "America's Next Top Model" at work. (I also did some work, BTW.) I got in at 9am and thought "well, I have until 11:30". At 11:15am, I looked at my blackberry. Which is supposed to remind me.

As it turns out, the test started at 10:30. I SHOWED UP AN HOUR LATE FOR THE FINAL EXAM! I got some weird looks and one guy said "you can do it, Erin!". My professor was not giving the exam but I think that he would have understood my tardiness and he would have been as forgiving as the girl who proctored the exam. It helps that said girl is one of my friends :)

Anyway, it turns out that not having time to cram five minutes before the test helped me out, and I focused because I was under pressure. I finished ten minutes before the time limit and two other guys were still working on it. It was a hard exam and I deserve any points deducted for carelessness, but it was a good exam and left me feeling satisfied about the class.

It also left me mentally exhausted. It's that time when you have finally finished the semester and you just collapse. I had a pretty intense nap after I came home. (well, actually, I came home and ate lunch and shredded some bills. And then I had some intense nappage.)

God is good, for providing the feeling of just finishing a semester, and for finally feeling like rest will come your way.

This is probably going to haunt me...

Or come back and bite me. You choose the metaphor.


I have decided that I cannot concentrate tonight on my Old Testament final exam. I am going to "in theory" wake up early tomorrow and study, instead. I just can't formulate in my mind the significance of the Davidic covenant even through the sins of David and Solomon, and the separation and exiles of Israel. I can't go into why the dating in the Old Testament is so bizarre and contradicts things like Babylonian inscriptions, or why the kings are sometimes listed in a funky way. I think I'm supposed to pay attention to why the kings like Hezekiah and Josiah are important as models and why the kings like Jeroboam and Ahab and that other guy are important as models of what not to do. All that I just typed in this blog post is all that I can fit into my brain right now.

On a brighter note, I got the third highest grade on the Hebrew final I took yesterday. I was behind a graduating senior undergrad who is shy of genius and a girl who grew up in Israel. Needless to say, last night I was pretty excited. Getting a good grade after crying and praying and studying for a class you know you won't use after grad school, was validating. Especially in light of my academic advisor suggesting last semester that maybe I was having problems because I have told myself I'm bad at languages.

Clearly, I'm not bad at languages. I know to languages that people actually use, and now I can kind of read 2 dead languages. My dad asked me to say something to him in Greek and in Hebrew yesterday. I said "I loosed the slave" in Greek and "good morning" in Hebrew.

Dennis is currently driving me nuts, by the way, because he is singing this pet commercial song:
"There ain't no bugs on me,
There ain't no bugs on me,
There may be bugs on nananan...
But there ain't no bugs on me."


Payback, my dear husband, is that I do indeed blog about it when you do silly annoying things like this.

This is a NO

Soo. Lent being over, I can go back to Go Fug Yourself, I can see ugly fashion all over the place and be thankful that I choose to stick to un glamorous t-shirts and sweats.

Because This definitely does not ooze glamour. The top could work with some other bottoms. These pants/toungue/upside down sweatshirt look a)like something a little girl would wear b)like something a little girl would wear when she is on a sugar high.

The toungue flap thing in front. What the hell is that? It's an unnecessary placement of lips, hiding her legs. Again, it looks like she put her legs into the arms of a pink and white striped sweatshirt. Shouldn't the pants fit? Like fit her legs? Even if the toungue wasn't there, they are too baggy. It's just a big mess of badness.


Now, I will go back to scheduled studying of something in 2Kings.

Thankfulness...

I got an email from my Hebrew Prof saying he is sick tomorrow and class is canceled. (He even put in a "NO FOOLING" clause because tomorrow is the day for playing pranks.)

I am thankful for this holy grail of emails that gives me the chance to sleep an hour longer.

I would like to add that I'm slightly in fear of April Fool's Day, because Dennis is merciless. I would like to go on record to say that if I have no eyebrows this time tomorrow, it is because tomorrow is April Fool's Day. I actually thought today was April Fool's Day and thought "oh I'm so clever! I will totally surprise Dennis!!" I went to him in the morning with breakfast and said "Oh Honey! What's on your head??!!!" (To give the impression he had something on his forehead). He "had to get up anyway" and so he DID go to the bathroom mirror to check, giving ME opportunity to say "April Fool's!!!"

And then giving HIM opportunity to say "It's March 31st!!"

PS: Great song.