It's amazing how motivativating the sky is.

Sometimes, you can't quite find the right picture to go along with your thoughts. This is close. I think my friend Nicole took this one awhile back. I love the clouds in it. It feels similar to today in that I look at it and know, 'summer is coming'. That's half the battle sometimes.

The other half of the battle is the bloody part. Related to that, I am happy to report that I only have one more paper, one other assignment and 5 exams. In one week, it will all be over--not without some metaphoric blood spilt. Everything has its price you know. The groans of my muscle and bones testify with my budget. Que sera sera!

And then what? Then I am going to write about a girl named Jullanar who loves to fly and a man named Caelum who grew up under the stars.

Belated.

I had a very wonderful birthday. It wasn't my first choice of events. My birthday often gets overlooked because February always ends sooner than people expect and the first week of March comes in seemingly unannounced. Also, I have hitherto spent my life in the rat race that is education with the full knowledge that March is about one thing: surviving until spring break. This year was extra set against birthday festivities in that I couldn't receive calls because my phone was broken and I had an evening class that day. I really didn't have the time to celebrate my birthday.

All the same. I felt loved. It was the little things, the roommate breakfast and egg curry. The boyfriend flowers and necklace. Texts from my family and attempted phone calls from Dallas and other places. A few belated wishes because, hey, we all have days and weeks and, well, years where we forget. It'll be my turn next if I haven't done so already.

Anyway, this post is really about the cake I made and kind of pieced together between classes. Keep in mind that I'm gluten free so if I'm going to go to the trouble of making cake...it's going to be the best damn cake that's ever been made...or close to it. Photographing it was an interesting challenge and lighting sparklers as my candle on my piece turned out to be less tasty than I anticipated (though just as awesome). Unfortunately there are no photos of the sparkler going that I care to put up because it's my birthday and if I don't want to put up pictures of me in my sweats with my hair not brushed staring in excitement and just a little terror at my firework cake, well no one can make me. :) That said, here are my belated photos including a very bad one of my flowers(...but what can I say? I really love flowers. All of them.):

Waiting for the Exhale.

I cannot tell you with what great agony I begin yet another paper.

I have been diligent. I have been as focused as my body will allow. I have been committed. And yet, I still only have 3 days to read about and write a rather large paper on the book of Revelation. I finished a different large paper yesterday and turned it in. Today is a new day! And a new paper.

My mind is explosive.

I have exactly the minimum amount of time to do this. If I use my time well...if I keep trying...if I push hard, I can do this and all the other tasks which demand my attention.

But there are tasks which will never make such demands. Those are my favorites. They are not pushy because they are fragile and will quickly be trampled and drowned if they assert their own importance in the ocean of errands. They are kind, giving me more than they ever take away. They do not seek to be my master and they know only a little of discipline, of struggle, and of pain. They are polite...always respecting whatever decisions I make and never holding my lack of wisdom against me.

These tasks are labors of love and imagination. They are not concrete or physical and they cannot give me a leg up in the world. What they can give me is all that I want and it pains me to deny them space and time to be. I make empty promises which I hope to be able to fill knowing that merely wishing it were so changes nothing.

These empty promises grow hungry and gnaw upon me from the inside.

I become vacuous.

What was once going to explode begins to shift, turn inward, and give me new fears. The mass of my hopes, fears, and promises may be enough to draw me tightly to my core in one final inhale as I implode.

I'm just waiting for tomorrow, whenever tomorrow comes.

I got a taste of summer.

And it sent me reeling. Many of my best memories are of summer. Many of my favorite people only exist inside those memories anymore. Many of the times where I felt most like I was a better version of myself only exist there. It's a sort of sacred place, summer.

I got a taste of summer and every summer past came crashing back to mind along with every hope of who I will become.

But then it left.

And now, I have lot to think about

--but not very much time.

I count down to things.

Actually, I count down to just about everything.

It's part of feeling the weight and whirl of time, even if I am helpless against it. I keep track compulsively and I try to trap bits of sand-time into the cracks of my life that will fail if they do not receiver added support soon. But time is a slippery, trickling thing; the larger the crack, the sooner it will require more sand so keep the cold and the dark out.

I have slowed my count down so that I have space in my head for other things. (It is very difficult to spend time wisely and actually build with the sand you have, if you get hypnotized or paralyzed by its constant departure.) Still, the count is there.

For graduation, it is not so much in days that I am counting, nor weeks, nor hours.

11 more required chapel attendances
10 more exams
( I feel like there should be 9 more of something, but the countdown within the countdown was incidental)
8 more papers
7 more chapters of Grudem to be read
6 more required textbooks to finish...

Anyway, you get the idea. It's not a perfect system, but it feeds my need to feel like I am moving in a definitive direction and it keeps me focused on what remains to be done while holding 'senior-itis' at bay.

And then what? And then I hope to be a better person. I hope to write. I hope to grow plants. I hope to stretch and take care of this body I've been neglecting. And I hope to learn things that no university can teach me. Like how to bake pies or convert certain recipes into allergy sensitive goodness. I hope to explore a few waterfalls and lay down in at least a few fields with a good book...perhaps even some of the books I picked up while I was here in school. I want to have the time to let everything I learned in university change me. And I want to learn to be a better woman.

I hope to learn how to function as an adult with a job and balance all of the things I just mentioned with that.
But mostly, I hope to have time to celebrate having made it farther than I ever actually believed I would... or should. And I hope that if I forget all of the things that I want, writing them here will help ensure that I stumble over them again.

There'll be days like this.

"There are good days and there are bad days."

I find things like this scrawled in my sketch books, in the margins of my science notes, and in other much more illogical places. I used to wake up holding crumpled sticky notes with a faint memory of having such an important thought that it could not wait until morning because, well, what if I let go of such a revelation? I used to wake up with nonsense smeared across my hands because I wrote ...something... on my skin, in the dark, in a fit of desperate trying to remember what it feels like to wonder in the dark at a universe so much bigger but not quite threatening.

Always, when I find them later, I am disappointed by my own simplicity. If I do not keep a careful eye upon  myself, I find the most basic ideas to be revolutionary. I am not just easily amused, I am easily motivated... and just as easily lost.

These fragments

These fragments genuinely console me when I find them, before the disappointment and the intellectualism kick in. There are good days and there are bad days.

I have to remember that sometimes.

Those bad days can be so shocking that I forget that I ever had a good day. Those bad days can come in swarms so thick that I forget that they had a beginning. Those bad days can last so long that I forget what it feels like not to be... heavy.

But those good days...

Those good days can end so abruptly that I wonder at their truth. Those good days can get so comfortable that I forget I am being allowed to rest and will be expected to leave. Those good days can restore so much that I forget what I was taught in the dark and broken places.

There are bad days and there are good days and it is no small thing to hold onto both.

Oh Friday. You feel like a hug.

I wanted to put up something pretty. My blog has been all words and far too few pictures. This is a throw back to the days when all I was armed with was my Powershot A80, whom I still miss. His name was Evelyn. I'm sure this dates to 2006 or something when I was younger and still convinced I could learn 6 or so languages in the next ten (ish) years. It's ok to let some dreams go after all.