Sunday, January 26, 2014

Thanks for the Rosehips

I love rosehips. Truly, they are one of my favorite things about autumn.
I'm aware that it's winter.
But actually our winter was friday, now it's gone.
Still, it's not quite spring.
So I'm thinking about autumn.

Let me back up.

When I left Germany I had a jar of rosehips.
I eventually had to throw them away.
They dried out, kind of started to rot...

More background.

Listening to a sad, emotional song (not for the sake of melancholy, it's just in the playlist.)
Watching a video that makes you cry (again, I didn't know it was coming.)
It would be easy to just sink into it.

But then you remember about rosehips.
On every walk there are those things you see, special rocks, feathers, flowers, rosehips.
(If you're wondering which of these are best, let me give you a hint: rosehips. Always rosehips. Seaglass too. Always seaglass. Same principle.)

So in life, there are rosehips too.
Something someone says. An old treasured memory. A special, spontaneous, parking-lot group-hug. A loud dinner party that goes late and stays happy. Remembering something from a book you read as a child, that makes you laugh out loud. God's hand at work.

So to the people who carry the rosehips in, thank you.
Life's rosehips never dry out.





Sunday, January 19, 2014

Ben's List

{Twelfth Grade English Edition}

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love - Marlowe
The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd - Raleigh
#130: My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun  - Shakespeare
Utopia - Sir Thomas Moore
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning - Donne
Death Be Not Proud - Donne
Batter My Heart - Donne
Meditation 17 - Donne
Of Studies - Sir Francis Bacon
On My First Son - Ben Johnson
Areopagitica - Milton
When I Consider How my Light is Spent - Milton
The Spectator 249 -Addison
A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
School for Scandal - Richard Sheridan
Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Coleridge
The Poison Tree - Blake
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey - Wordsworth
The World Is Too Much With Us - Wordsworth
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: "Storm in the Alps" - Byron
England in 1819 - Shelley
On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer - Keats
When I Have Fears - Keats
Vindication on the Rights of Women - Wollstonecraft
The Lady of Shallot - Tennyson
The Memoriam - Tennyson
Home Thoughts, From Abroad - Robert Browning
My Last Duchess - Browning
Preludes - T.S. Eliot
The Door in the Wall - H.G. Wells
The Rocking Horse Winner - D.H. Lawrence
Across the Bridge - Graham Greene
The Garden Party - Katherine Mansfield
Shooting an Elephant - Orwell
A Room of Her Own - Virginia Woolf
Paradise Lost - Milton
The Ballad of Reading Gaol - Wilde
Miss Youghal's Sais - Kipling

When I finished my senior year I was throwing away paper. My friend, Ben, caught me throwing away my English notes. He was obviously aghast. All those poems; whoosh. All those notes; gone
So to keep him from freaking out, I wrote this list of things that would be worth revisiting in later years. Some I did revisit, in the one college English course I shall ever take. (At least, that's the plan.) I think I should revisit a few more.
More recently, I had the opportunity of landing back in my old English classroom. Shalyn, another relanded alumni, requested Ben's List. So here it is for anyone who wants it. And for good measure, a picture of me and Shalyn revisiting Miss Young and causing (not too much) trouble.



Wednesday, January 15, 2014

20 words about my self

homework turned introspective

  • talkative
  • outgoing
  • ambiverted
  • optimist
  • assertive
  • fragmented
  • (sometimes) numb
  • deep-feeler
  • connector
  • planner
  • creative
  • quirky
  • procrastinator
  • learner
  • night-owl
  • dreamer
  • lover-of-stillness
  • list-maker
  • seeking-out [life flavors, friends, etc...]
  • contented

Monday, January 13, 2014

back again | January, darling | list of 10

So I'm back. Yes, I've been gone from here forever. I'm so sorry. There was break and painting and writing and not getting things done to be done. 

~~~

Dear January, 
hello, my darling. You have a lovely name. I always forget that I love you. I hope you never do. I thought I would wish you to bring snow. You haven't, but I'm not disappointed. The warmish Texan winds, Virginian drizzly days, and German fogs have been perfect so far. Thanks.
Yours,
Kit 
xoxo

~~~

I was thinking today about jumping right back into school. My tired brain wasn't truly ready for this leap. I should really go to bed now and perhaps avoid the dreary feeling coming back tomorrow. I've somehow managed to leave my family scattered back over the globe and I miss them already. 
So, thought I don't do New Years Resolutions, here is a list. 

10 things to do to keep from going crazy as you start nursing school: 
1. stay totally open to amending this list.
2. dance in the living room.
3. practice french.
4. call your family and friends.
5. paint. 
6. roommates.
7. prayer.
8. don't let work run away with itself. 
9. watch your favorite films.
10. reorganize