Oh, to be three... I spent much of my afternoon and evening with the three-year-old daughter of some friends of mine while they attended an event to benefit her pre-school. Kids that age amaze me. They're more than willing to ask you any question that pops into their little heads. They're totally unaware of boundaries and modesty. They're just kids. She spent a long period of time telling me all about her favorite things: animals, fruit, ice cream flavors, crafts. And she remembered that I had told her my favorite color is green. She looked at me while we were drawing pictures with crayons and said, "And here's a green one. I know how much you like green." No kidding. Later, when we were writing letters on her Magna-Doodle, she asked me to tell her the letters to write to spell my name. When I told her that the first letter is "S" she looked and me and asked me if I would write it, saying, "S is very difficult." There's nothing that'll get your mind off of whatever is bogging it down like spending time with a small child.

Today's Weather: Hmm. Cooler and windy tonight. They say it'll be cold tomorrow as well.
Song going through my head: A jumble of nursery-rhyme songs, thanks largely to the time spent with a preschooler tonight. (=  ¶ 9:30 PM (0) comments

  A random rant... It's raining today in Chapel Hill. Again. That's four days in a row. It was really hard to motivate myself to get out of the house and onto campus for management this morning. After class, which had a CPA as a guest speaker to teach us about accounting (sound dull? it was actually all right, for a talk about accounting.), I rode the bus home. I have about a block to walk along Airport Road (NC 86) from the bus stop to my house. Normally I walk on the dirt past the bike lane on the road so I won't interfere with bike traffic. I figure that today there aren't many bikes out since it's pouring, and since the dirt has been transformed to a muddy mess, I tried walking at the outside of the bike lane. Bad plan. I nearly got run off the road by about three different SUVs. I mean, I know they're big vehicles. I did drive one for a long time. Even so, I never had nearly as much trouble staying in my lane. I started counting. Of the approximately 16 cars that passed me during my 1.5 block walk, four strayed over the line into the bike lane. Almost all were barreling by at a speed much greater than the posted 35 mph. One honked its horn, though I don't think it was at me.

When did we all go and get in so much of a hurry that we forgot how to be courteous? What happened to sidewalks? There are plenty of them in this town, just not along my stretch of road. They're all in the rich white neighborhoods and downtown. For a city with such a nice public transportation system, we don't do much to ensure that riders won't be mowed down on their way home. Argh.

Today's Weather: Rainy and cold. See above.
Song going through my head: Some old CCR stuff. How random is my brain?  ¶ 12:36 PM (0) comments

  Blog slacker... I am going to keep up with this thing, if it kills me. Someone told me recently that it takes 90 days to create a new habit and internalize it.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to think of anything interesting to write today. I've been a little morose. I keep pondering things. I keep wondering about things like how long it takes people to get over significant events before they don't become the primary focus anymore. I suppose it's really different for different people. The fact remains that I've been dwelling excessively on something that happened almost 13 years ago. I always wonder if the rest of the world does this. I don't like feeling irritable, but that's definitely my state of mind as of late. I have trouble remembering that all of the things I'm feeling at any given second are eventually going to pass. I get myself stuck thinking that things will never be any different than they are right this moment.


Today's Weather: Rainy. it sucks.
  ¶ 10:42 PM (0) comments

  Ahh, spring break... So technically this week has been my spring break. So far, I've worked more than I work in a normal week. I've filled in for people who couldn't make it to work for various reasons, and I've spent my normal amount of time there. But not today. Today I took off the 1.5 hours that I normally work before my evening class. Today I got up early and drove three hours to the ocean. Specifically, to Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. I had never been there and wasn't certain I wasn't going to get horrifically lost somewhere in eastern NC. But I didn't, and I got there around 11 a.m. On the way, I passed through several eastern NC towns and small cities, and then I began to notice the way that the vegetation and architecture begin to change as one approaches the coast. I guess it's the same everywhere. I knew I was getting closer to the beach when the land flattened out (duh!), the tall pines began to be replaced by shorter scrubby trees, and the houses began to have fewer chimneys and more clapboard. Soon I'm crossing more bridges that span creeks and tidal rivers, and I'm seeing more and more water towers and summer homes boarded up for winter. Then I'm there.

I swear I must have come from the ocean. I love the beach, especially this time of year. I don't actually care much for swimming in the ocean, just watching it. There was an older couple walking down the deserted beach when I arrived, hand in hand, looking at shells. There are so many more nice shells on the beach before it's raided by tourists and summer people. I walked for about an hour, staked out a nice spot in the sand, and sat on my blanket to watch the surf. I brought along a notebook to write in. I spent about two hours doing that. I watched the few people who walked past, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, often with a dog. Mostly, I just took some time for myself, listening to the waves crash on the shore. I miss living near the water. I'll have to go back more often. It's been a long time since I just took some time out for myself.

Today's Weather: It was sunny and about 62 at the coast today. Another cold front moves in tonight, though.
Song going through my head: White Flag, by Dido.   ¶ 7:34 PM

  So, last night I'm driving home, and I see lightning over Chapel Hill. I think to myself, "Geez, that's weird. A thunderstorm in March." And I keep driving home. I call my mother, and as we're talking, I hear what I assume is the downpour starting. It sounds like a lot of rain. So I look out my little diamond-shaped door window, and I realize that it's not rain. It's wind. And not just any wind, it's the strongest, loudest wind I've ever heard. Right up there with hurricanes. The tall pines around my house are swaying violently, and I'm worried that another one will end up through my roof, just like during the ice storm last year. But no trees fall on my house. The good thing about the ice storm was that it got rid of all but the strongest trees and limbs, so when the hurricane came though last summer and now with this windstorm, only smaller branches fell (at least on my house), and the damage wasn't as severe as it could have been. Once again, there are lots of people here cursing Duke Power as they sit in their dark houses. I should also note that the folks that live in the nice neighborhoods and country clubs here get their power restored immediately, while those of us who live in trailers and not-so-expensive houses have to wait. Go figure, since the folks in the fancy-schmancy neighborhoods probably all have generators anyway. I guess I can't complain, though. My power is on. I'm just reminded of the 10 days I spent without it during the ice storm. At least it isn't freezing outside.

Today's Weather: The wind has died down, and it's sunny and about 45 degrees. That was some cold front.
Song going through my head: Some of the fast music that we play here at Curves for people working out. It's amazing how, when you spend your days listening to music that's all 140 beats per minute, everything else starts sounding slow. (=  ¶ 1:50 PM (0) comments

  Just when I think my life is hard... Today I met Fernando. I was sitting at the bus stop, waiting to catch the bus home, and I'd already missed the one at 11:12, so I was waiting for the 12:02, reading the Daily Tar Heel. A man sits down next to me. I keep reading, until he asks me, in heavily accented English, if I am a student. I tell him that I am. He smiles, and tells me that he needs to learn English. Something in me tells me to go ahead and talk to this guy, despite my feeling weird. I ask him if he is taking any classes in English - they're offered free of charge all over the place here. He says that he has just come from his class at a local church.
He asks me my name, my age, and if I am married. I felt a little weird about the last one, but then it occurred to me that he was practicing. These are standard sentences that they've learned in his ESL class. It reminds me of when I was learning French and we had to interview each other like we were shopping in a department store or ordering in a restaurant.
We continue to talk, and I learn a little about Fernando. He is 27 years old. He moved here in November from Mexico. I was guessing that he'd been here much longer, given how well he was speaking and comparing that to my experience with students at the middle school who take ESL every day. He had never seen snow before in his life, and he thinks it is beautiful. He hails from Veracruz, which is near the ocean. He tells me that I should visit Mexico if I get the chance, because it is a lovely place. He loves learning English and he loves America. He wants to learn the names of all of his groceries in English so he can talk to the checkout clerk. He wishes that more people at his job would speak English so he could practice.
Fernando asks me about every few words whether his pronunciation is corrent. He struggles with the word "thirty" more than any other word so far, he says. Then we start to go back and forth, saying words in both languages, with his knowledge of English and my knowledge of Spanish being about equal. He thinks it's funny that we don't pronounce the "L" in "walk" and "talk". I remember trying to get used to saying that I had 26 years rather than that I am 26 years old. I don't know the Spanish word for peaches, and he doesn't know what unas (there's an accent over the n) translates to. It's fingernails.

Fernando asks me what I'm studying, and I tell him Library Science. He smiles, and tells me that in Mexico, he was preparing to be an engineer. Then he tells me that here in America he works in housekeeping, where he makes approximately 150% of what he made as a professional in Veracruz. It makes me want to cry. All of the assumptions I could have made about this man were incorrect and perhaps even ignorant. When the bus comes to his stop, Fernando turns to me and says, "adios!" I say that it was nice to meet him. I hope that I run into Fernando on the bus again someday. I really admire his courage. I take so many things for granted.

Today's Weather: 80 degrees. I'm not kidding. I sat out in the sun between class and work.
  ¶ 2:48 PM (0) comments

  One more thing... I read some very disturbing statistics today, and I wanted to process them a little.

The new statistic is that 1 out of every 3 women will be sexually assaulted by the time they reach adulthood. I was already pretty messed up over the 1 in 4 that I'm used to hearing.

Perhaps even more disturbing is that the same percentage of teenagers will contract an STD by the time they are 16. This is not a "kids these days" moment. This is absolutely horrendous. I am so appalled by this that I don't even know how to begin processing it. What exactly is it that makes that many children (and yes, despite being hormonally active, they are still children.) feel like they need to be engaging in such risky behavior. I honestly don't think that I'm being monumentally naive when I say that it wasn't like that just over a decade ago when I was their age. There were kids, but they were definitely in the minority. Not anymore, apparently. I just don't know what to think.
  ¶ 10:54 PM (0) comments

  Wow. So what's the hot topic of the day?

I went to see The Passion of the Christ on Saturday with a friend. Said friend is as much of a card-carrying Christian as I am a card-carrying non-Christian. That didn't cause any sort of awkwardness, because the film had a strong impact on each of us, although for different reasons. I think that for her, the reason was pretty straightforward. For me, not so much. I think that basically, the film is pretty powerful, regardless of your belief. For me, it really made me think. First, I felt very strange in the theater. In that sort of "they're going to find out you're an imposter" way that I always had when I went to church. yet, I really wanted to see the film. Next, I wondered if I would be able to discuss the film openly with my friends of the Christian persuasion without feeling defensive about my own beliefs or making them feel defensive about theirs. Most of the discussions I've had with Christians about faith haven't turned out well. I don't feel the need to defend my position. In my brain, what works for me doesn't have to work for you, and vice versa. So I never understand it when someone wants me to prove what I think to them. I don't want their proof, either, and often they seem all to compelled to give it. Regardless, I've been thinking about spiritual stuff.

Mostly, what kept occurring to me after watching the film was that, although I knew the ending already, I kept hoping that something would change to alter the way the story goes. JC is up there with Pilate, and I kept finding myself thinking, "maybe he'll let him go." JC is being brutally beaten by the Romans, and I'm thinking, "why does he let it go on so long? He could just stay down, and they'd stop." I found myself having little moments like this throughout. I must be a product of a generation that expects a happy ending every time. I suppose that were I a follower of that religion, that I would consider the actual ending happy. That's sort of the whole basis behind the religion. Instead, I found myself empathizing with a man who truly believed that by sacrificing himself he was saving people. And not just people, all people for all time. I couldn't really wrap my brain around it. I have always admired people whose faith is so strong that they don't question it. I have relatives who possess it, and friends, but it is not something I have myself. I can't imagine the kind of faith it requires to do such a thing , believing and trusting in an outcome that can't be pedicted, much less seen. Its magnitude is practically overwhelming.

I'm sure there will be more on this later.

Today's Weather: Gorgeous! 70 and sunny!
Song going through my head: the Sheryl Crow remake of "The First Cut is the Deepest"  ¶ 8:53 AM (0) comments