I love you but...

This person draws pictures to go with different "I love you but's"
I Love You, But...

Like a Baby

Sometimes I wish I still possesed the ability that babies have that allows them to put all their energy into crying. Just long enough to open my mouth and let it all out.

Moving On

So...we signed the lease today for the little lovely house that shall soon become our home!!
We move this week! I'm so excited!
It's sappy, but I'm still in that stage where everything new that Kyle and I do is so exciting! Hee hee!
Housey!

10 hours a day?

The crazy upstairs people do nothing but play Guitar Hero for 10 hours a day. The bass comes through the floor and unto my head. These weird, one-track folk only play a variety of 5-9 songs, so needless to say, I am sick and tired of it.
How absurd is it to spend HOURS playing that game?

Here's to (hopefully!!) moving!

my head

will be a combination of these.
If I keep on growing growing my hairs out and resist temptation to chop chop.

red and orange and green

When I signed up for my photography class, I was expecting a "traditional" digital photography class (I know, traditional and digital can't exactly be in the same room as each other.). As soon as I was sitting in the first class of the semester, I knew that wasn't going to be the case. I love my photog class! It feels more like an art class than a photog class.

Right now we're doing a joint project with the Drawing I class. Each day we have a "theme" like "form and color." They give us a material (exp, yesterday they gave us metal), which we then have to create a "drawing" out of and take pictures of. We then collect some other material (fiber), create another "drawing" and take pictures. Then we bag up the new material and pass it off to the drawing class for them create an actual drawing from. And so it goes in a cycle. At the end of this, our collective materials and art will be displayed. Isn't that cool? I love it. This is definitely increasing my desire to take more art classes, not just along the lines of photography, but in other areas like sculpture and printmaking.

I'll get pictures from this project up here soon. My work computer hates my external drive and refuses to work with Ext. She feels that Ext is too much a player, going from computer to computer and connecting with each one. I can understand I suppose.

Why I Write Agape

Today is the 2nd Annual To Write Love on Her Arms Day. If you're not already familiar with TWLOHA, it's an organization that seeks to help those struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide. The incredible story of how it all became is on their website. Today is a day where they seek to spread awareness and support by people writing "love" on their arm. I decided to write agape.

Agape is the love of God. Natural, inclusive, unconditional and yet voluntary. And the definition of the English adjective of agape (rhymes with grape, as in: Her mouth was agape.) is "wide open." (Hurrah for tangent link following!) Those two things, love and wide open, perfectly express the type of Christian love I want to exemplify--a wide open love for those I know and don't know.

I think that having different verbs to expresses the different nuances is a splendid thing. It's easy to say "love" in relation to so many things. Which makes the word over-used and maybe even not as meaningful.

And that, is why I wrote "agape."

"[Agape is] An intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being." -Thomas Jay Oord

Love and Money

While I wasn’t raised with Amish values, I was raised rather conservatively. That obviously affects me, my standards and thoughts in relation to different things. As I’ve widened my world, I’ve adapted my beliefs and standards based on where I’ve been lead and shown by God and other people who I respect greatly.
One of those conservative tendencies that I was raised with is that when you get married (and deciding who you marry is another exhaustive process), the husband is the sole provider for the family. I’d always planned on working even when I’m married, but I had expectations of still being completely materialistically provided for by my husband. As ridiculous as this sounds, one of my realistic fears before Kyle and I got married was that I would end up making more money then him once I’ve gotten my degree and moved up the ladder some. That didn’t feel right to me at all! Regardless of equal responsibility that we base our finances on, the fact that I might possibly be the highest wage earner bothered me. Kyle told me I was ridiculous, but when you’ve been raised with certain expectations, it’s difficult to change them quickly, even when you know you should.
That was about 7 months ago. A couple nights ago however, I was struck with incredible knowledge! Materialistic provision isn’t what really matters (I’m not saying that living in a hole in the wall eating chips for dinner is alright), it’s the emotional, intellectual support and provision. Kyle gives me the love, devotion, care (physically and emotionally), support and all those other good things that I need on the intimate level from my provider. It wouldn’t matter to me if he was giving me a large house, fast car, life of ease if he was not providing for me emotionally. And as it stands now, with his emotional support and love, I could live in a hole in the wall eating chips for dinner and be content and happy.
Like Kyle said, money is artificial. It’s not an original element of love. I think too often money is incorporated into love. If there’s not enough money, the love isn’t allowed to be or falls apart.
It doesn’t matter to me anymore who makes the most. Kyle gives me what no other one person can, and that’s all the sole provision I desire!

It's a Coffee Morning!

Ah, coffee! Kyle and I have been favoring tea over coffee lately. Mostly due to the fact that I don't have time in the morning to drink it, and Kyle has become immune to the effects of morning coffee, and the weather has been very Fall like. So today is probably the first day in about a week or so that we've had coffee. And ah man! it is good!!

I gently uprooted the gorilla plant that has been growing in my fig trees pot this morning. It's a peanut plant! It still has the complete shell from which 3 little peanut plants are growing and you can see the remnants of the actual nuts themselves still hanging on to the plant stalks. So, I plopped it down into another pot and hope that it'll keep growing. Now all I wonder is how did a peanut get into my pot to start with? My only theory is that it somehow was in the potting soil.

Well..we're off to frolic on the parkway and discover glorious food in Asheville.

Happy Fall!!

So, I have grand dreams of creation and genius. Glorious plans of self expression via writing, sewing, wonderful food craft, occaisional beading, acquisition of knowledge and the application thereof.
And yet, when I'm done with the "necessary" actions of my day: school, school work, and work, I sit my lovely ass down, warm my legs with my laptop, and drift away into the world of improv and sitcoms.

I hope this isn't the path the rest of my free time takes...I don't fear the future. Good times and energy will come again.

and so

I'm surprised at Life.

It is going on, almost regularly. There are the expected twangs and pangs. But still, it's going on.

It doesn't seem quite right to even have the ability to go on in this sometimes unaffected way.

But still...here I am. Going on regular.