yay for new city!

yay for having an 'own home'!

yay for having space for my beloved to play musics!

yay for working jobs that don't keep us penned up in a stuffy office!


i've been pretty happy recently and hence have not had all that much to say... perhaps as i get more used to having something resembling a predictable schedule i'll have more time to talk to y'all....

i'm debating which of two lines of thought to rant or ramble about...they are both related to our ongoing search for housing in the little white city and both are elements that we have encountered before. perhaps if i bring them out in something resembling a logical fashion (if i can manage to hold the thoughts together through all of my multi-tasking distractions) it will sound less like a rant and more like a protest.

the first is the world at large's dislike of couples. well, let me be more specific: (young and poor) married couples. don't believe me? just try to find a privately rented apartment or a room in a group house that will take you both. when we were looking for a place to live while in grad school last year "sorry no couples" came up in more listings and responses than i care to remember. i guess we expected something different this time around because we're back in the States. but even here a number of places replied to our inquiries saying they didn't want to take couples. those who were willing to take a couple wanted to increase the rent (one by$300!! there is no way even i could take long enough washing my hair to justify that). now i can understand wanting to cover extra utilities expenses or avoid overcrowding or unwanted drama; people like to have personal space and want peace when they come home. but if we weren't married and i just had my boyfriend show up one day with his few things for an indefinite stay or i were to gradually install myself at his place, chances are nothing would be said. there wouldn't be an increase in our share of the rent or utilities. if it were a group house, it might cross someone's mind that the situation is unfair to rest of the people living there, but nothing would be said. that would be rude and pass some sort of judgment on us and we can't have that. but if you want to do things legitimately (and morally) it's nigh impossible to find something reasonably priced.

the other element (factor? issue?) is one of space, or perhaps stuff. westerners have too much of everything - space, stuff, unnecessary things. they have great big houses in which to put all of their many many things. they are sold gizmos on tv to help organized their stuff so they can acquire more of it. and then they rent a unit at the nearby personal storage complex to keep all of the stuff that doesn't fit in their great big house in spite of all of their organizing and space-reducing gizmos. and this is what led to our current economic crisis - greed and envy. lots and lots of people wanting bigger houses and bigger and more expensive things. put everything on the charge card and paying the minimum balance is all that's required. let's everyone live way beyond our means and spend far more than we make! yippee!
thus people expect everyone to have lots of stuff and to want to acquire even more stuff. and if there are two of you that means double the amount of stuff. last year we were turned away several times because "the space isn't big enough for two people". now the room we lived in all last year was no more than 180sq feet, probably less; everything we owned while overseas fit into four suitcases and a couple of backpacks. even after picking everything we had in storage in various places around the country, it will all fit into the bed of a small pick-up truck. so i guess the root of my problem here is the assumption that everyone has lots of stuff and thus a moderately sized space is not big enough for two people.

i heart pandora.... they just played this for me

Friday 13, lights go red, green, in a coffee shop
I'm giving you the look
While someone else
Is fingering your wallet in my pocketbook

It's a mean town but I don't care
Try and steal this
Can't steal happiness

man, limbo sucks...

so i have a job waiting for me in the little white city. i just don't know when it starts, 'cause they want to check up on my past lives before they tell me.

oi...

i ache. my legs ache and are doing that funny prickle thing that they do when i make them do something after doing little to nothing for a good long while. my beloved and i went for a bit of a walk around the neighbourhood this evening. the air had a slight chill and the breeze brought wrapped cool fingers around bits of exposed skin, so we walked briskly. by the time we were a few streets from home my legs were telling me that either i need to do this more often or stop expecting them to do much at all...

so we'll be going for another walk tomorrow evening...

the evening has gotten late. i'm writing in the dining room on a borrowed computer hundreds of miles from the no-where i last wrote, thousands of miles from my old home, half a world away from where i've been observing the goings on of the country. the time has passed oddly for the last few months - quick and slow all at once. i commented that St. Paul's words from the readings at Mass a few weeks ago particularly struck me. at the time i was mainly thinking of post-election and inauguration reactions, mostly on the part of the "right". perhaps my time out of the country has influenced and changed my perspective, but i have found them to be rather overblown and boding little good. this piece from a popular Catholic site rather summed it up for me. the author observes that she has suddenly found herself living in a country that is foreign to her and that this change has seemingly happened overnight. she observes that

"The U.S. has unequivocally, unabashedly and electorally embraced a subjective reality where truth is changeable, depending upon how it can serve our pocketbooks and our uninformed consciences...So where does this leave aliens like me? Totally reliant upon God, and for many of us it will be the first time in our lives. I used to define myself as an American Catholic, but now I realize I am a Catholic in America. The nation I used to depend upon to accept my spiritual composition is gone. No longer does our citizenship agree that our laws are, and should be, based on Judeo-Christian concepts. No longer can a Christian assume his moral beliefs will be given fair representation or even toleration in the public forum."

two things bothered me about this article. the first was an underlying tone that seemed to say that if the other party had won the election the country's moral ground would be fundamentally different. considering the margin that they lost by perhaps one could make that argument. however i doubt that it would have signaled much of a difference; it would have simply taken longer to realize. my problem with this tone is that the author comes off sounding as though she was simply unaware of the actual current moral standing of the country. the author's tone seems to say, as long as the people in power were favorable to some of our positions things couldn't be that bad. perhaps if the moral quagmire had been noticed to the degree that it is being harped upon here the new administration would not have needed to be elected. in reality it was fully apparent, all one had to do was look around. instead, she is like someone just raising her head from out of the sand and realizing that the world she is living in is not what she thought it was.

the second was her presentation of Catholics' future course of action during this newly realized era. i did not have any difficulties with the actual substance of her suggestions. i actually found them to be quite good. my trouble with it was that there was little to no mention of the fact that this is how we as Catholics should have been living all along. again, if American Catholics had been living vibrantly Catholic lives perhaps the course of recent history would have been different. we as Catholics (and as responsible citizens) ought to have held the leaders whom we elected accountable to us as their constituents, demanding they truly represent us. rather we remained content with the scraps thrown to us in the corner we'd been backed into. a few pro-life bills here and there throughout the last 8 years; but that was essentially it. the whole of Catholic social teaching was what, condensed? prioritised? realistically approached? or just plain compromised? "give us just this and we'll be happy to help keep you in power" seems to have been the running theme of the "conservative" voting block throughout the whole of my politically conscious life. and the politicians took us all at our word; they gave us just that and then not very well. but nothing is said of this in the article; it's not even hinted at.

in summation, yes i agree that our country is moving into a new era and that it is not likely to be an easy one for Catholics. but frankly, this life is not supposed to be easy and if it is becoming so then it is time to re-examine how we are living in relation to the world around us.

you know, train whistles do sound lonesome...

the train line runs right past our motel in the little junction town we rolled into at one in the morning. we'd not gotten as far as initially planned, but that was all right. the important thing was to get past the big city's influence on traffic and out of range of the weather system moving in off the coast. an open truck bed, piled high with boxes and suitcases, and rain do not mix...

this sentiment has been kicking around in my head for the past few weeks and was put into words in the reading from Mass this past week:

"For the world in its present form is passing away." (I Corinthians 7:31)

i'll expand on the events inspiring soon...

what is it about some events that sears them into your memory? they remain vivid and alive for years - feelings emotions scents sounds the way the light was falling the touch of the wind - all returning in an instant. where other memories, equally as precious, if not more so, seem to fade or only return with effort.

the wind is trying to fill the vast openness. it's cold, freezing; the snow falls steadily.

and remembering other times you've remembered, echoes of memories, making other events stand out not for their own sake but because of something entirely unconnected.

the air in this small room is still and warm, almost to the point of being stifling. the green of the trees outside the window seems almost unreal, because in my mind there is snow on the ground.

how? or perhaps more importantly, why?

you know something, there are so many neat people out there. i'd love to meet them and say "let's be friends!" like little kids do...
i've spent the last, what hour and a half? (sheesh) wandering through random blogs. it started off with me looking for a chocolate chip cooking recipe that calls for raw sugar ('cause that's what i've got) and one page lead to another. it's a little like wandering from kitchen to kitchen, hearing snatches of conversation, then out to the back porch and through the living room, then on to the next one. just enough to give you the slightest feeling of connection and "you know, we probably like a lot of the same books" or something similar. then you get to the bottom of the page and have to decide whether to keep peering into their lives or to move onto something different...

*sigh*
...virtual reality...

this vid was passed along to me, and i wanted to share it with ya'll. while i don't agree with catholicvote.org's (tacit?) endorsement of the gop candidates, the point they make with this video is a valid one. as catholics we have a duty to be active citizens and as americans that means voting.i'm interested in hearing what you think...

cookery is my therapy... did you know that 8800something-ish words comes out to about 20 pages of writing? i turned in what was in my mind an obscenely long assignment for only being 40% of the grade by 1pm yesterday, which left me with a mostly-free afternoon.

so i made beef, barley and vegetable soup (inspired by this), green tea oatmeal sugar cookies (inspired by this), and nectarine sauce (from here). they all came out really well - next time i'll get my bh to take some photos...

it was a good afternoon.

so last week while at the grocery i compulsively picked up three winter pears - they looked soo good. the thing was they weren't ripe yet...so i dropped them in a brown paper bag, tucked them in a safe out-of-the-way place and pretty much forgot about them. fast forward a week and the pears have gone past the nice juicy stage and into "i'm going to disintegrate in your hands when you pick me up" stage. which leaves you with only one thing to do: make sauce.

honeyed pear polenta
(yes i know i said sauce, trust me on this)

* very ripe pear
* water
* honey
* cinnamon
* cornmeal, coarse is probably better

depending on how ripe your pear is either chop into desired size pieces or scoop pear mush into small-ish pot. add some water, enough to cover the pear. add some honey, three or four spoonfuls. depends on how sweet your pears are and how sweet you want this to turn out. add corresponding amount of cinnamon. bring to a low boil and let simmer for a long while; stir often enough that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. once the pear starts to break down, add some cornmeal, maybe three or four cupped handfuls. add more water and stir until the stuff stops spitting at you. add more water and repeat. add just a bit more water and let cook for a bit longer, again stirring to keep from sticking/burning. it should be pretty much done at this point. eat warm or cold.

happiness is:
having your beloved home after a (very long) week.
seeing all of the pretty pictures he took while he was away.
actually wanting to cook again.

now if i could only get past these allergies...

where does it go?
the muse i mean, the spark and fire that leaves the mind ablaze with words and thoughts and feelings that simply must take form, be embodied on a page, that little bit of something or other that allows you to put down and encase in black and white the passing nothings moving between the ears and eyes and causing an ache in the heart and soul, what socrates decided was from the gods...

my thoughts sound like so many dry leaves scraping across the ground, feel like empty husks...



*hmph*



do you need any more proof that i am young?

but it doesn't make the ache go away

the sounds coming through the open window have taken on an evening/night time quality - a little quieter, but cleaner and clearer than sounds you hear during the day. thick looking clouds are quickly swallowing up the last bits of daylight still left in the sky. it's getting chilly.
and i'm by myself.

my bh left this morning for a week long field trip out on the furthest island in the gulf. you'd think that after spending the greater part of a year separated, six days would be simple. heh, not so much. the man comprises a large extent of my whole world, six hours apart from him is a long time. and i've been spoiled for the last few months, with the class schedule we have we're always together. which is lovely - who wouldn't want to spend all of their time with their best friend? i've been not-looking-forward to today for weeks.

*megh*

in other news, i'm feeling a bit less like one of these poor fellows. last week was pretty mis...er... intense. three assignments due, none of them something to be sneezed at. they were all handed in to their respective assigners without too much ado. it's nine days until the next one is due, so i suppose it's a good thing i can't shake the feeling that there is something i'm supposed to be working on or paying attention to. but it is rather distracting when you're trying to relax (ie read something fun) or forget that you have only yourself to cook for for the rest of the week...

the streetlights have come on, reflecting orange-yellow off the building across the carpark and casting grainy shadows on my one white wall. the twilight sky peers though breaks in the clouds, nearly seven and it's still a bit light out. is good - the winter's been long in leaving. daylight savings kicks in next week and i want all the extra light i can get before it starts getting dark in the mornings again. i guess i'll make myself some supper after the russians are done - it's really quite awkward weaving around a very small kitchen between two people speaking very animatedly in another language pointedly ignoring you...

update: my brother is home and doing well. praise God.

thank you all who were praying for him. i know that it was thanks to all of the prayers and sacrifices being offered for him that he was able to return home so soon.

please pray for my brother. he is in the hospital right now in stable but serious condition after loosing about 40% of his blood because of complications after surgery.

i'm frustrated.

i finished the last book in the house this morning (well, my last book any ways; there are lots of random books left around the building in stacks, but most of them look to the be the sort i wouldn't read no matter how desperate i was). this leaves me with nothing to do but work on my paper. which i have been, slowly painfully. i don't understand why ideas and words seem so eager to run out of my head and onto the screen in neat rows when i'm looking at this screen, but immediately freeze when i open up a word screen. i wonder if i could trick myself into writing by putting it all here first... perhaps i should spare you all the boredom.
of course there are always blogs to read, but you can only check so many with the dribble of an internet connection we have at the moment before conscience catches up and scolds you back to doing what you/i am supposed to be doing.

i'm having a hard time synthesizing all of the material i've read for this paper - 15 odd journal articles. i have a general idea of what they say and arguments and what i want to take from them and vaguely what i want to do with it. but working out how all of it goes together in my paper is causing hang-up in my poor over/under caffeinated brain.

and it's a beautiful day outside; it seems that it's always a beautiful day when i most need to just stay put and not think about it.

so very frustrating...

while doing some blog wandering (i've just discovered that authors have blogs too...and they unlike me post lots. i wonder what it would be like to be that verbally prolific? hmmm...)

oh yes, blog wandering, i found this gentleman who in turn lead me to this interesting article. and i thought we were the only ones for whom abortion was the be-all and end-all issue come election time.
guess i was wrong.


what does that say about our country?