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.

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.

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

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

Driving

Things heard, that somehow make logical sense now that I'm here.


"I'm not sure, because I've been a lot of ways home."
"Can't we just go the way we came?
"Oh. This is the way to the golden tulip."
"The zoo entrance is up here on the right I think."
"Guys, I don't think this should be this hard."
"I think I recognize this. I think we can go straight or left."
"There's the zoo entrance."
"Guys, we came this way. This should really not be this hard."
"The light is red!"
"I thought that didn't matter?"
"It doesn't matter, unless you're American."
"This is the way we came."
"Oh yeah those are the gates. Turn right."
"Left."
"You can't go this way this is a one way."
"Come on!"
"Yeah it should be fine."
"There are cars coming. This is not going to work. Well, you can't turn left again."
"Mais, si."
"There we go. Now right."
"Don't all these signs look French? You can tell it wasn't the Germans who came. They have different signs."
"There's the golden tulip."
"Where? I don't see it."
"I think I'm actually doing pretty well. Sometime I should tell him the way to get to the house and see if I can get it right."
"I really don't get why we can't just go the way we came."
"Go straight but not over that big bump."
"I think this was the bump we were trying to miss."
"No, this is a pothole. She was talking about that bridge."
"Just squeeze between these two."
"Mom, you told me that meant right. I've been saying left."
"So now just right here."
"Oh yeah, this is right. Because we passed that Happy Birthday graffiti on the way here."
"I actually knew that one. Because of the napkins."
"This actually is hopping during the day."
"Sometimes the carpenters block the door. Once I left and there were two. I came back and there were five. Can't you see I'm running errands."
"See you tomorrow. We'll text you to check your messages."
"During the day there aren't really any rules, but since it's night I don't think we can turn left here."
"I still don't see why we can't go the way we came."
"Well this isn't a road."
"We're home."
"Oh. I didn't realize it was so close."

Frost!

There was frost on the knoll next to the apartamento this morning! What is happening to Texas?

Happy Finals Week everyone! Drive safely on your journeys home.

Hello December!

Hello December! Hello Christmas, and Hannah, and travel, and parents!
Hello cold, and snow (maybe), and singing carols.
Hello to winter, lovely and frosty.
I cannot wait for all of you.