Before my mind, three months have passed me by.  Not a word, not a thought.  I've lost focus, I've lost the plot. 

Sometimes I just feel like I'm waiting for my life to begin, like this is just being stuck in limbo, a step in the right direction.  But when you're not sure which direction you're taking, how do you know it's the right one?  I could be taking a step away, just making one more to go when I find the right one. 

It's easy for me to find a plan for my life when I'm looking ahead.  I can say for sure that I want to spend my time serving the Lord, to live for him day in and out, whatever I'm doing.  But when it comes down to it, I say, that's my plan for the future.  As for now, it's the little things that get me down.  My coworker being more annoying than usual that gets me so pissed off that I actually swear at him.  I thought I had conquered that.  Not once, but twice, three, four times I did, and he even called me an asshole several times.  Oh what a night.  It's the little things, just a comment, just an event like totalling my sister's car, like being omitted amoung friends, like being late to work twice in one week because the car breaks down, and then your ride gets the wrong directions.  And every little bit is a test.  Ravi Zacharias said that you never have an occasion to be unkind (I Isaac take thee Rebekah) and that's something I'm struggling with.  Rick Warren reminds us in the Purpose-Driven Life that God is always watching your responses.  He sees when you slip up, when you fall.  He doesn't love you any less, but he still hurts.

I was driving home last night listening to Ten Shekel Shirt's new CD when it hit me.

And for all eternity...

I know where I'll be.

Location: Te Anau, Fiordland, New Zealand.

Activity: Wasting time until my bus comes for MILFORD SOUND!!

I'm beginning to think that I can only spend a week alone with myself.  After that I get bored.  Yesterday I was sick and coughy and sniffly, very unpleasant.  Luckily it was rainy and cold all day, so it gave me a reason to just stay inside and sleep and read.  I journalled, too.  I've been keeping a journal of my adventures, and trying to do it daily, but it doesn't go that way.  I journalled like 20 pages.  Trying to catch up and feeling lonely and reminiscing.  Nothing makes you feel alone like being sick alone.  I was just wishing I was at home (where I'll be in a week, finally!!) lying on my parents' bed, watching Pride & Prejudice with my Mom as her work visa was cancelled and she can't do anything, and drinking hot milo or hot tea despite it being 90 degrees outside.  Nothing beats being sick when your mum's around to take care of you.  Except I haven't had that for over 18 months.  I was thinking about last Christmas, and how I just had it with Chandra.

She had to work Christmas Day, so I trudged through the snowstorm a kilometer downhill until I reached the Hyltons' house.  Then I threw my snow-wet clothes in the dryer and wrapped myself up in a giant quilt and tried not to think how dirty, disgusting, and messy their house was.  I slept and read Chronicles of Narnia and Anne books all day while it snowed about 14 or 15 inches.  Ahh, New York in winter!!  Then my sister picked me up at 8 pm when her shift was over and we went home.  Nothing like Christmas Day without your family.  So basically break was full of missing my family oh-so-much, and working and lovely Friendly's.  You'd think it being winter with several feet of snow piled up, no one would come to get ice cream.  Wrong.  This is America we're talking about, where people like to be cold and like, more than anything, to get fat.  Sometimes we'd even get lines at the To Go window.  Not too often, but one line at the To Go window in the dead of winter is too much, I say.  Christmas really wasn't so bad, until I got back to school.  Then I had to face things like:

"Look at the seventeen million clothes I got for Christmas!!"

"I got a brand-new car!"

"My thirty-thousand relatives came over and we had fourteen different kinds of pie!!"

I didn't have pie.  I didn't get clothes, I didn't get a car.  That's not important, and that doesn't bother me so much as all that, then,

"What did you do for Christmas, Shona?"

I know Chandra tried hard to make Christmas nice for me, and I tried hard by being cheery even when I really didn't want to.  Especially as we were both sick.  And I didn't want to sound pathetic, so the only answer was to be vague--very vague.

"Not much."

Which of course, was true.  We didn't have the turkey and all the trimmings.  We didn't have the American six million presents, though that wasn't important.  We didn't have any family within 3000 miles.  And that was the hardest part.  Being poor doesn't bug me until I see poor Polly through Fanny's diamond glasses (An Old-Fashioned Girl)  Being poor doesn't bug me until it keeps me from being with my family.  And being back at school was harder, knowing that everyone ELSE got to be with their families, and everyone ELSE got to stuff themselves until they couldn't walk for three days, and everyone ELSE was exactly where they wanted to be, while where I wanted to be was 13,000 miles away, halfway around the world.  Oh, to be home!! 

Yesterday was the first time I ever admitted to myself how I felt last Christmas.  I guess it came with thinking about this Christmas and how much better it will be.  I can just be thankful that at least last year I had Chandra, and even more thankful that this year I will have ALL my family!

Ahh, the semester is officially over and I only flunked one exam!  I think I can safely say I ACED my last one, and did pretty decent on the one before.  I'm out of Hamilton tonight, thank God! 

Unusual things I've done this year so far:

-taken a bite of a goat's kidney

-spent 36 of my last 48 hours on the east coast in DC

-Gone to New Zealand!

-Sheared a sheep (not really, but it's on my to do list)

-told someone I was a free-lance photographer and as a result got taken up to a great suite in a hotel so that I could take pictures!  I am a liar!!  (but it did happen)

-broken up with a boy (that is unusual, because it was a first.  Amazingly, it was nearly ten months ago.  How time flies!!)

-got stuck overnight in Rotorua the day before my last exam and had to come back at 325 am, six hours before my exam

-used my sexuality as a weapon (hey, it got my lawn mowed and my keyboard fixed, for free!).  Yes, it was a first!!  But unintentional, really.  Well, the keyboard was unintentional, but the lawn was not.  Unfortunately the lawn guy was taken, and the computer guy was not.  Sometimes life is so ironic, don't you think?

 Third World Views (for Grenada)
~Jean Binta Breeze ~

for me
no empty bagasse pages
of their lies
no hammered voices
falsetto smooth
covering war cries
but
the salt sea spray
of an island's tears
that burn me
acid
and the wind
the wind that sings in echoes of their bombs
the wind that sings contralto tremors
of their bombs

would that nutmeg

choke their obeah
and the dust of cinnamon
lift their prints
as evidence
for babes now growing
in an island's belly

how third world my blues
of oceans bending backwards
to make ends meet
of mountains rising up to misty tears
of mothers
patching pieces of sky
to cover the winded bellies
of their babies cry
how third world my blues

Currently Reading Old Men at Midnight (Ballantine Reader's Circle) By Chaim Potok see related

reading some good poetry lately.

DANCING