Thankfully, I was wrong, and I do have some things to blog about today. I have room to get deep, though, since I covered most of the "here's what I did today" blogging on Wednesday.
First, the
Friday Five: The News.
1. What is your preferred trusted news source? I get my news from various places: the
Washington Post, whatever comes up in the Yahoo!News headlines in my email, and occasionally the (PG County)
Gazette, tv news, or the
Diamondback.
2. What is a news source that you will never trust? I rarely read the
Diamondback due to the bad copy editing. Most of you will know that I tested to be a copy editor last winter and didn't get the job. I tried to make a difference, it didn't work, and I stopped reading it. (Not because I didn't get the job, but because "syllabi" is not spelled with an O.)
3. What is the news topic during the last calendar year that you feel got the worst coverage? I'm not big on the intelligent design coverage. They always seem to think any people with religious convictions are stupid backwoods country folk, which I am not.
4. What news item do you feel got too much coverage in the last calendar year? If I paid more attention to what was covered and what wasn't, I might have an opinion.
5. If you had complete control of your favored news source(s) (answer to question 1), what would you do with it that is not already being done? I'm not big on news, like I said. News and politics just aren't my thing. The last presidential election was dizzying enough.
I'm so glad my assignment at Regulus is over. I like having the chance to earn money in short spurts over breaks, but I could use something more interesting. Or at least closer to home. I'm pretty sure my car couldn't take commuting to school; driving to work every day isn't easy on her, either. I was tired of running through all those batteries in my CD player, and tired of listening to CDs over and over. I like the radio because I like my music random. Right now, I have
MediaMonkey playing every song I have on my computer in random order. It's very telling that I just heard two Switchfoot songs in a row.
Anyway, the last couple of days weren't quite as bad as last week. There was so little work left on Wednesday, they let me go early, so I was home by about 2pm. It was a nice break, and I got to drive home in full sunlight and everything. The same thing happened on Thursday, but I went to adoration at St. Mary's before I came home. I'd never been there before, but I looked them up on
MassTimes and saw they have adoration a lot. I hadn't done it since I left campus for break, and I missed it, so I wanted to go. I got lost trying to find the right chapel (we had the same problem with Ryan's baptism at St. Ignatius), but I asked a man I came across and he showed me where to go. There was an older man there when I came in, but he left around 3, so it was just me and the Eucharist for a little while. Two other men came in after about ten more minutes, and then I left. I'm pretty sure I drove out the part marked "entrance only," but there was no other way to go, I saw another woman leaving the same way, and the road was clear. I stand by my choice.
On Thursday, when I was waiting for my afternoon break to end, this black guy came over and started talking to me. He asked me what my name was, and I told him, and he replied, "That's a white girl name." I was so offended. First off, even if he thought that, he shouldn't have said it. Not, you know, "That's a pretty name." Not, "How do you spell it?" Not even, "Oh, okay." It's true that I've never met another black girl named Lindsay, but I thought of Kelvin as a black name until I met a white Kelvin in astro lab last spring. I, however, had sense enough not to say, "That's a black name." I remember telling him that I knew a black guy with his name, but it definitely wasn't as condescending as that guy. I have enough issues with feeling whitewashed; I do not need a stranger commenting on my name. I love my name.
Speaking of being whitewashed, I was at the Facebook profile of a girl I knew in high school named Stephanie -- another black girl with a "white girl name"? I like looking at the groups people belong to, and found that Hampton has two groups I
loved: "I Don't Talk White, I Talk Right" and "I Ain't Gonna Lie... I Jam To a Few White Folk Songs!" I just joined the UMD version of the former, but we don't have one of the latter. I think we should. I love *NSync and my brown-skinned self is not afraid to admit it.
This morning, my mom permed my hair for me. I hate getting my hair permed, so I avoid it for as long as possible. The frizz was starting to take over. It's such an awkward process, and she only did the new growth, so the bottom is still fairly frizzy. It'll even out eventually... I hope. It got so tangled, though, I wanted to cut it all off. If I weren't so afraid it'd never grow back, I'd do it. But as of yet, I'm still fighting with nineteen years worth of hair every morning. I was getting frustrated when i neared the end of the
fourth hour of the process, by which time my stomach was growling audibly since I usually have lunch on weekends at least by 2pm. I did finish getting dressed eventually, though I was not going to go through putting on my makeup after all that with my hair.
I went to St. Charles (that's the mall, not a church) with my mom this evening. I got new jeans and this year's Valentine's Day shirt in Old Navy. I can never resist those $5 seasonal t-shirts. And my jeans are a size smaller than I usually wear, a phenomenon I still can't explain. We looked for shoes in Kohl's. My mom was down the aisle looking at pair and said, "Do you want to try these on your feet?" I said, "Where else would I try them on? Did you think I'd put the shoe on my ear, or what?" I'm not quite sure what's wrong with my family, but my grandma does ridiculous things in public, too, so it's a hereditary defect. And that pair felt weird when I walked, so we pretty much caused a small scene for no reason. Then we went to Target, where my mom commented on how all the Targets must be undergoing renovations, and I reminded her that we'd been in that same Target a few weeks ago. Ryan's our only hope for normalcy at this point. And I got him Cinnabon gift certificates for his birthday, which I know he'll love, so I'm not even sure about him.
I've been thinking a lot lately. Going back to church has led me on this course of figuring out how to live my faith. I pray more, I go to Mass a lot (three times a week in the latter part of last semester, which would have been unthinkable even a year ago), and I read the Bible and
meditations from The Word Among Us every day. Of course, it's not just about internalizing the sit-stand-kneel routine. Christianity in general has a lot to say about dating, sex, and marriage. After Maura and Cary,
If You Really Loved Me, and Greg, there's so much to ponder. Breaking up with Greg indirectly led me back to church, though religion isn't why we broke up. He has his issues with Catholicism, though. I can say with almost complete certainty that I would not have gone back to church if we'd kept dating. In the last year, the time since our breakup, we've fought almost every time we talked, either about our relationship or about religion. I was sucked into a fight in his LiveJournal with his friend Rachael over religion one night after he posted part of the AIM conversation we were having. I wasn't prepared to argue like that, so it was really taxing for me. I can't help talking about God a lot. That's a big part of who I am now. But that really isn't the best topic for us to venture into right now, with our history. We had something of an emotional divorce, but now, I think we've finally
both moved on.
The question for me is where I'm going. I broke up with him, but that doesn't mean I didn't feel any pain. In some ways, I'm still recovering. There was only Mark before Greg, and I still debate to this day whether he counted. Now, I've fallen into this rut of discernment. I subscribe by email to
Boundless, a really good webzine from Focus on the Family. (They're evangelical Protestant and I'm Catholic, but it's all Christian.) There have been several articles lately on marriage and singleness: whether one can be too content with singleness, whether delaying marriage is selfish, the problems with intimate male-female friendships that don't lead to marriage, and so on. Of course, since they're Protestant, none of these writers ever talk about celibate vocations other than single life. (Crash course for the uninformed: In Roman Catholicism, there is the concept of religious vocations. The only non-celibate vocation is marriage. The others are the priesthood, religious life (brothers and sisters, usually known as monks and nuns), and single life.) I'm the world's worst decision maker, so I imagine discernment is going to be a really long process for me. That's what I do at adoration. I know it's supposed to be about... well, adoring Jesus, but if I don't think about something, my mind will wander. It's more about focused prayer for me, "at" something (someone?) specific instead of "at" everywhere. Omnipresence is annoying sometimes.
It feels weird to share all this. Most of the people that I know read my blog already knew about my discerning, but not everyone. I'm ready for it to not be a secret, though. It's still personal, and it's still totally between me and God, but I don't feel like it has to be completely private anymore. If I am called to marriage, my future husband's out there somewhere. Maybe he's someone I've already met, maybe not, but that is pondering for another day. (Also, today is the feast day of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr -- at twelve years old, mind you -- so perhaps that's a nudge from the Holy Spirit.)
My goal for this semester is to increase my faith and Biblical literacy, and to work on discernment. And to not get so many B's. I've fallen below my own standards. And next semester, I've got classes and my job, which I'm pretty sure will mean I have to rearrange the schedule that was tricky to assemble in the first place. If you're so inclined, pray for me that I'll keep growing in faith and be focused this semester, on God and on school.
