I can't believe it's the last day of November. In retrospect, it's astonishing to realize I actually wrote 32 bog posts over the course of the month (plus around eight more drafts, which may or may not be posted, or posted only in bits and pieces, as some of the are insanely lengthy). It almost made the month seem longer, but not necessarily in a bad way.
Misfortunate morning aside, my day actually went pretty well once I got to school. I hung out with Leah, Abby, Lydia, Andrew, Chris, a girl named Lucinda (for a few minutes) and a guy known only to me as Bob, which I'm pretty sure is not his real name. We had lots of fun, and then we went to class, where we experienced this piece of sheer awesomeness, discussed two essays called "Meatless Days" and "How I Started To Write", got our annotated bibliography drafts back (149 out of 150 points! So exciting). Then I had a deep and thought-provoking debate with Abby, renovated my blog, and did simple interest problems in math (which I got out of 25 minutes early, not like it really matters since I take the bus) and had a Twix bar.
Only three and a half weeks left of the semester! Hurrah!
I plan to keep posting pretty regularly, possibly every day, in December in beyond. I seriously can't believe that we only have 31 days left before we're into the second decade of the 2000s. Makes me feel old (yes, I know, that's a blasphemous thing for an 18-year-old to say).
So, goodnight, sleep tight, may all your dreams come true... (This is a joke, fyi. At least five of my blog readers should get it.)
Happy birthday to my uber awesome dad (I'll be a good daughter and not divulge his age ;). Love you lots!
(Also, in case anyone was curious, a denouement is the last half of a Greek-style tragedy, after the hero's reversal of fortune. It can also mean the end of something in a not-as-tragic sense, which is the context in which I'm using it here. Sorry. I'm rambling on in my geekiness.)
(Funny, that this came up up right after Emily decides to start researching different faiths and viewpoints. *Time Lord.*)
So, I was having this interesting discussion today with Abby (a girl from my honors classes. She's super nice and really smart—in the math geek sort of way—and I like her a lot). Recently we've started hanging out together during our breaks in the afternoon Tuesday and Thursday, between our Honors English and respective math classes. Today we were talking about school, grades, stress (normalcy), and the discussion of stress sort of naturally drifted into the topic of prayer —> God —> the Bible, and then we started talking about different denominations of Christianity. This then led into the revelation that I'm neo-charismatic nondenominational, and she's Reformed—thus meaning, for the two of us at least, that I believe in free will and she believes in predestination. This prefaced a forty-minute, somewhat intense, mutually respectful, highly engaging debate.
I believe that Christ died for everyone, and that every individual is, during the course of their life here on earth, presented with the choice to accept that salvation, and thus enter a personal relationship with Jesus and eventually go to heaven. Abby believes that at creation, God chose certain people to be saved and others to not be saved, and that Christ died for only those God predestined. As she explained it to me, this means that every "chosen" individual "accepts" Christ because they're already saved, like an outward expression of gratitude. (Am I making sense? I think this is it in a nutshell. I had to ask her to explain it a couple of times.) She also said that she believes someone who is chosen has to accept Christ, no two ways about it, and someone who isn't predestined can never accept Christ.
After a long exchange (cut short—at least for the time being, depending on whether she wants to take it up agin later—by her departure to Calculus), we established that what it basically came down to is this: we both believe that man is created in God's image; the difference lies in that I believe the Fall distorted or corrupted that image, but that there is still a part of every human that longs for God whether they know it or not; and she believes that god's image was erased form humankind in the Fall, and thus that humans are incapable of choosing God over sin without divine intervention ("being forced into it" by predestination, as she put it).
I guess where I get hung up is that it definitely states in the Bible that God doesn't want anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9; I'm not absolutely positive of the context, but still, I think that verse states God's love pretty explicitly). If that's true, why would He only choose some people to be saved? If salvation is irresistible for the chosen, why wouldn't He force salvation on everyone? Abby specifically said that she doesn't believe the Father's love extends to every human being; I don't understand this either. If God is love, how can he create something and not love it?
Anyhow, I don't know if we'll continue this discourse later or not. Definitely neither of us were convincing the other, which is okay. We were friends having a conversation (even if it did get a bit...lively, haha.). But I, at least, found it a fascinating discussion. I've never actually talked to a live Calvinist about their beliefs before. i've read about it, certainly, but it always sounded pretty far out. When Abby laid it out, I could sort of see where she's coming from (it doesn't sound as good in print); I just can't agree with it. I totally see why people take courses on theology. Even if you can't agree with everything—and even if nobody can know all of the answers for sure this side of heaven—I still think it's one of the most thought-provoking things on the planet.
I went to bed around 11:15ish, was up and down a bit until 11:45ish, finally slumbered off around 1:30 and woke up at 5:13 to the pattering of rain and the cold air in between me and my blankets and the buzzing of a housefly caught in my hair (!) and an iPod that has done yet one more unfathomably dumb thing it's supposedly not designed to do. The rain was nice; everything else...I could potentially have lived without and been quite content. Tea, food, a shower. I can't believe I spent a whole eight and a half months starting school every morning at this time. My bus rides and my four-hour afternoon break are definitely going to double up as naptime today...
I was going to write a sentence about something else, but I can't write it in the active voice without it sounding ridiculous and I can't write it in the passive voice without ending the sentence with a preposition. So if I remember, I might just write an entire post on it.
(Emily—I'm five episodes into Season 3.)
So, my day was long. And relatively boring. I went really early to school so I could figure out why the KVCC website wouldn't let me pay my tuition. Due to my ride-hijacking arrangement with my mother, in order to get to school early at all, I had to go three hours early. And then it took all of 20 seconds to get it worked out, so I could have done it in the 10 spare minutes I had before class if I'd gone at my normal time. And I forgot to bring a snack, so I didn't eat all afternoon until about half an hour ago. And then I sat through two hours of talking about the Romantics and the Realists and the Impressionists and the Modernists and Academic Art (basically, a LOT of 19th-century European painting). I actually find all of it fairly interesting, but today my mind was off somewhere north of Jupiter's moons. I hope i took enough notes to pass the exam the day after tomorrow. Then I went to the library to meet with my group for a group project we're doing this week, and only one other guy showed up. (We got it worked out after class, though...I'm putting together the portions of the paper everyone is writing. The other guys are doing the PowerPoint, even though it turns out i'm the only one who's actually used PP before...but one guy was like, "You wanna be a writer? Girl, this is RIGHT UP YO' ALLEY!") (The group for this project [business protocol in Italy] consists of me, this middle-aged divorced smoker, and two crazy black guys. It's interesting...) I also found out that the KVCC library is shelved according the Library of Congress system, which has been bugging me for a while. Now I know why all the books have eight to ten-digit call numbers. I also found out that they have a special career section, which explains the random lone bookshelf in the middle of the library thirty feet away from all the other bookshelves. (I checked out Careers for Introverts and Other Solitary Types, and Careers for Perfectionists and Other Meticulous Types. Wow, that combination makes me sound like such a standoffishly boring person, hahaha.) So. Then I caught the bus, listened to a This American Life podcast, made a cup of tea, read my friends' blog posts, and am now going to bed because I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep in several days and I'm exhausted. Yech.
(Also, one of my fellow honors students Facebooked me to ask if I'd proofread his English essay for him. Oo, I feel a slight shade of awesome. But mostly just still tired.)
How many times can I change in a minute? Is it any wonder I seem to lack vision, that what was fertile seems to have withered and died, shriveling from wondrous warm black sogginess into dry papery beige dust? I can't even agree with myself on what flavor of ice cream is my favorite for five minutes (yellow cake batter is a longstanding love, but I'm also partial to moose tracks, lemon custard, and seventeen or so other options—yes, I'm a nightmare in a busy ice cream parlor); how can I possibly make decisions regarding life and identity and future? Who would want me to? (Most people, apparently.) I'm moody and neurotic and indecisive. I put things off. In the space of a moment, how much can I change? And if I change so much in small space, how much little am I thus changing in a bigger sense? If the leaves on the tree turn from green to gold to red, it's still a maple tree. If Kiersten is angry or sad or happy or excited or sleepy or just plain stuffed full of idiosyncrasies, she's still the same old Kiersten. (Like I've said before, Relient K describes my life.) It's really hard to stay sane long enough to make myself a better person.
{My mom's secret to happiness: buy an extra can of sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving so you can make another dish after your oldest daughter wolfs down all the leftovers.}
I'm considering giving my blog a makeover. I know, bad form, I've only had it for three months plus a few days. I played with all the colors to death when I first made it, and I was rather okay with it, and now i'm unsure I that like it all that much, except for the background and sort of the general color scheme. But I think it looks sort of slapdash, not in the good way (ish). So if you come back someday soon and it look different, this is why. I am exercising my power of creative creationer's license over my blog template. Woo. I don't know. perhaps I will leave it as is, in its stately Latin poster-like condition. Perhaps I will tweak it a bit. Perhaps I will...not.
I have relatives asking me for my Christmas list. I swear, this gets harder to draw up every year. I used to just keep a running tab throughout the year, and then by the time November rolled around I would just add and subtract a couple of things, print it off, and voilà — a fancy shmancy beautifully formatted Christmas list, replete with all the heart and soul of an American girl. But two years or so ago, I stopped updating it year-round, and now I have to start from scratch. I have about eight things on my list. Music and a book or two. It's really somewhat depressing. I know there are things I want, but when I go to write them down, my brain fizzles out. My zones of interest have been narrowing bit by bit, year by year. I have all of three hobbies, and they're hobbies that several million other people are also semi-obsessed with.. I don't even knit anymore. So what am I supposed to put on this list? As much as I love new music, I don't want only stacks of that. I don't really care about owning more books so much because I wouldn't ask for something I haven't read, and once I've read something once it's probably months and months before I reread it, so the pleasure is gone after a day. I can ask for hats. I can ask for clothes, but since Dad discovered Goodwill I really do not need any more of those. I want a hamster, but that's been ruled out for some time. I kind of want a snake, but that was never even under consideration. I want a surprise. Surprise me. How hard can that be? I'm among the most surprisable people in existence. I just don't know what to ask for anymore...is that good or bad?
I think we must be the only family in all of Michigan that had no pumpkin pie or snow over Thanksgiving.
I don't know what to write about; I don't. I spent all day sleeping and playing video games. (I finally got my Legendary Regulator and Marksman in Star Wars Battlefront II – epic win day.) I woke up this morning to find the flash drive i've been missing for a week sitting on my stomach (extra unfathomable, because I'd been doing a lot of tossing and turning this morning before really waking up). I haven't yet done either of the two (2) things on my to-do list for today. Do you ever have the feeling where you have a holiday with no urgent things to do and you feel guilty for not being unproductive even though there's nothing to put off? I've been feeling like that today. i used to just have the time of my life being lazy and now all its zest has been sucked away. even though I've been spending some quality time with my siblings.
Speaking of which, I think we're going to do a family movie night (The Iron Giant, a movie I have never seen but whose goodness Emily and Tori have been raving about. i'm rather excited).
Once, on the twenty-fifth day of the penultimate month of the last year of the first decade of the second millennium, there was a national holiday. There was a girl who slept late and got up just in time to eat giant cinnamon rolls with her family and watch the Macy's parade. She wore jeans that smelled like salt and a very purple sweater with a cowl, kindly knitted for her by her grandmother. She helped make the sweet potato casserole for dinner, and set the table, and played video games with two of her younger brothers. They turned on the invincibility cheat codes and shot down a few hectomabobs of droids who were trying to invade the Galactic Republic. She got the Tarzan soundtrack stuck in her head and listened to Enya on her iPod, and explained what a glottal stop was to her family, who don't like Regina Spektor's music. Then she ate one plate of scrumptious edibles, plus an extra serving of yams and marshmallows. Her father, oldest younger brother, and she had an in-depth discourse on the fall of historical Prussia, and an argument about past-perfect verb tense. She and her sister watched the National Dog Show. She pined after the wire terrier and the Irish setter and the blue-eyed Akita husky. After sitting around and thinking for a while, she did a tad bit of writing (felicitously, not homework). She grossly flouted American rules of punctuation in favor of the British rules. Then she watched the season 2 finale of Doctor Who, glared daggers at her brother for what was probably a good reason, if she could only recall what it was five minutes afterwards, and fain read her friends' NaBloPoMo updates. The day after that very long-windedly-titled day is called Tomorrow, also known as Friday, and is bound by the laws of the universe to arrive in about nine minutes.
The girl wrote a story.
The very long-windedly-titled day was temporarily nicknamed Today, and a pretty first-class day it was, in the unsnowy mitten-shaped land where the girl lived.
(Especially the sweet potatoes.)
The girl was very thankful for a long list of things, and she spent some time shutting her eyes and clenching her fists and hoping very hard that she will remember to be just as thankful tomorrow, and maybe for the rest of her life.
