it's almost springtime, right?

a SNOWSTORM? tomorrow?

gahhhhh. I think I'm about ready to throw in the towel with Michigan. Since coming to college, I have despised the cold like never before. I used to LIKE winter. My parents used to have to force me to come inside for fear of me getting frostbitten. I loved the cold and the snow, and sledding, and making snowmen, and ice-skating in the ditches and swamps around my house, and building complex igloos (complete with ice shelves, chairs, and refrigerators. booyah) and making snow ice cream, and even snowshoeing.

But then I came to school, and now winter means trudging slowly through the snow to class and headaches from the cold and wind. My body reacts differently to cold than it used to, too-- I am now a violent, violent shiverer. I shake intensely and my teeth chatter. And wearing boots-- I mean, dressy boots are great, but wearing boots because you have to just stinks. My boots (which are in the 3% of non-Ugg boots on campus) have already been glued back together once. Slush and salt are nasty catalysts to shoe wear-and-tear, and I have several pairs to prove it.

Slush is also fantastic in the way it changes everyone's walk. My roommate and I noticed in December that our winter walks look hilarious and ridiculously abnormal. We don't use normal, relaxed leg and feet motions. We both kinda tense up our legs, clench our knees still at a slight angle, and simply pull each leg in front of the other. Hunched over, hands in the pockets... It's kind of amusing to watch people you know well move around in the winter, because we all age about 60 years and appear to be afflicted with temporary arthritis.

I just want it to be warm. Forever.

academia slapped me in the FACE

You know that friend you never see?

The one you used to see several times a week, or even several times a day, but somehow now their days are filled with things you didn't even know they did? And when you finally get ahold of them, it's like, "Oh, well-- this week I'm available on...oh, wait, no. I could do Thursday between 7:30-8:00 in the morning. Coffee?"

I'm very reluctantly going to predict that this might be me this semester.

I have never been a particularly busy person. And never, ever, ever before has school required me putting forth actual effort. I blogged about this when I first began writing on here before... (http://emilyfluck.blogspot.com/2009/10/philosophy-of-apathy.html)

(And no, sorry to disappoint-- I don't know how to do fancy links yet. Someday i'll be a sophisticated blogger. But it is not this day! This day we...*cough*)

But yeah. I'm not used to feeling consumed by schoolwork. And here we are on day two of Spring Semester 2010, and I already want to cry at how much work I have to do tonight. All of my current classes are structured in a way that my usual study habits (or lack thereof) just won't cut it. I'll probably total about 2 hours of reading per day for various classes. I'll have assignments due on a daily basis. Basically, every day, I'll be spending more time doing schoolwork than I would in a week last semester. Or ever, for that matter. Seriously you guys, I don't know who I AM after yesterday and today! I really think I have to be diligent, and studious, and disciplined, and all of those qualities good students have that I never cared to attain for myself.

For real, academia gave me a good slap in the face today. My schedule was CRAMMED. I worked a shift early this morning, went to class for 4 hours, took a few hours to babysit, had dinner, and am now sitting down, finally, to do my work. I even have a big-girl, real-world planner now, into which I have already copied all of my work times, class times, exams, syllabus dates, etc. And it is FULL. And there's nothing I can drop.

I totally recognize that this could be a huge growing experience for me. This sort of coercion towards improvement is something I've seen God do in my life before. I think it's possible that humans- at least I- can thrive in this sort of situation, being between a rock and a hard place and really going through times of sacrifice and humility while working towards something you didn't even want or realize you needed. I would never be driven towards academic discipline unless it was absolutely necessary. Like now.

So I guess that's the joy I've found in this situation so far! I mean, God certainly promised to draw his people towards completion, to constantly transform them. Which is wonderful, and I'm grateful and full of praise for my constant, unchanging, perfect God who wants me to be like him. But I'm not exactly all smiles about how this semester is looking, and so if you're so inclined, prayers for a peaceful heart and perseverance in discipline this semester would be awesome.

And if it's mid-February and I haven't seen you since December and you want to get coffee at 7:30 am on a Thursday, let me know. :)

[insert color here]

I don't know about the rest of you-- but I already knew that breast cancer existed. And that, it seems to me, is the only thing it's possible for Facebook's post-your-bra-color-in-your-status phenomenon to "raise awareness" about. I'm not learning anything new about breast cancer: no interesting statistics, no prevention tips, nothing about donating to non-profits.

The only thing I am learning is what color your bra is. Which likely provokes a mental image of you, whoever you are, in your bra. And while the majority of facebook users wouldn't care at all, I have at least a few good guy friends who work hard at keeping their minds pure, and probably don't appreciate fighting off all of these mental images of girls they are friends with.

Just an opinion. Feel free to debate me on this one. And please, if you're reading this and participated, please don't think I am condemning you, or think less of you. At ALLLL. I'm absolutely not. I guess I'm just encouraging putting thought into what you do with your facebook page: Where did this phenomenon come from? Is it really helping anything?

My friend Mike Nichols said this in a recent Facebook status conversation: "A cure for breast cancer is a wonderful cause and I think we should raise money for it, but there's got to be a better way. What organization is putting it on? How do we know that they're legit? What if some teenage guy or dirty old man thought that it would be a good idea to find a way to get girls to post their bra colors? I mean, what legit organization would risk their reputation on such a ploy? I would believe it if it's a company that makes bras. That would be a clever way to gain product information. But honestly...if breast cancer is the only motivation for this idea, I would be very surprised. It would be pragmatism at its best/worst."

but you promised!

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of promise.

We have a God who makes a lot of promises to us. Seriously, the Bible is fulllllll of them! Promises of forgiveness, eternal salvation, peace, deliverance in days of trouble...He promises that he will never leave us or forsake us. Intense, huh? And we can be assured that he is an unwavering, good, and perfect God, and that his promises are finite and sound. They will not be forgotten. He will not fail to deliver those promises to each and every one of us.

So then I realized: People make a lottttttt of promises, too. In the form of spoken words, yeah...but they come from everywhere. A hug, a smile, a repeated action, a gift, emotional and physical intimacy. Stuff like this can feel like a promise, I think, even if that wasn't the intent. We're always making promises to family and friends, and to ourselves, and sometimes to God.

And so I'm wondering: How did we, human beings-- broken, faulty, flawed creatures-- create this concept of human promise? Because to be frank, our promises SUCK. They cannot even really be promises, can they? If, as the dictionary says, a promise is "a declaration that something will or will not be done; an express assurance on which expectation is to be based," then I'm wondering if humans even have the capacity to make promises. How can we declare that something WILL be done? How can we tell someone "I promise to..." or "I swear I will..." and ask them to base their expectation and hope on our word? We're imperfect, we're sinful, and we certainly aren't all-knowing or all-powerful. What can a promise be apart from God?

Human promises are shaky, shaky things. And we allow them have a lot of weight in our lives. We make serious decisions based on promises we've made and promises others have made to us. Relationships are the framework for pretty much every venture we'll ever make-- and each relationship inevitably springs from promises, whether they're stated explicitly or just implied. Somtimes, broken promises break relationships, and then entire lives can feel broken.

I don't think all this means we shouldn't make promises. It doesn't mean we shouldn't accept promises from others, either. People certainly merit our trust and optimism, and we have such great opportunity to glorify God when we do follow through on a promise. And I'm thinking it'd be hard to get through life without the web of human promises we're all involved in.

But I do think it means we realize the brokenness of people. I think it means we see God and his Godly standard for promise, but hold humans to human standards. It means we offer people grace and love and forgiveness when they break promises. And it means that if you have ever broken a promise, that Jesus offers never-ending forgiveness to you.

I think ultimately, it means that if we claim to follow Christ, then we acknowledge that he CAN and DOES make "a declaration that something will or will not be done; an express assurance on which expectation is to be based." We remember his promises, and we place every ounce of hope we have in him alone. And we absolutely rejoice in this. :)

carrying capacity

So, this isn't the blog I want to be posting. Last week, I was finally writing one that I had been thinking about for about a month, when my beloved macbook, for the first time since we began our blissful and spotless relationship, FROZE! and restarted itself. Boooo. My blog was gone forever. I'll re-write it soon. But here's a thought I had today...

Earlier this fall, I had a conversation with the lovely Kelly Hamelin that continues to creep into my thoughts regularly. Both of us were feeling overwhelmed by the number of friendships we were attempting to develop, maintain, and enjoy. We were kind of lamenting the fact that humans have such a limited capacity for relationships. Think about how many people you know that you'd love to be able to share every day with. There are just too many stinkin' people, and they are all too fantastic!

So often, I have a brief interaction with someone and walk away thinking that I want to pursue a friendship with them. But I just can't. No one can. We just can't constantly add new besties while maintaining every other relationship. It's like we have a carrying capacity. We're kind of like a plane, or a boat, or...I think I'll be a rollercoaster. We're always adding and losing people, bringing some closer, watching some drift away. There's certainly no solid number, not even close...and things like jobs and school and seasons of life make the carrying capacity fluctuate.

We meet so many delightful and beautiful and broken people, and in the midst of running around trying to love everyone, relationships develop without even trying. This world is so temporary; the only things with eternal possibilities are human beings. Relationships have intense purposes in our lives here on earth, and the idea of being intentional in friendship is something I've really enjoyed learning about over the past year.

I don't really have a big grand final point or conclusion to this post. I just was struck again this week by how many wonderful people I know, and how badly I want to spend time with all of them. And that's all. :)

irrational fears of foxes and ladders

In fourth grade, my teacher shared with the class that as a young girl, she had been terrified that a fox dwelled under her bed and lurked there in the dark, waiting to snap its teeth at her toes when she got into bed. She was, of course, telling us this to highlight the irrationality of this fear. But my 10-year-old mind couldn't shake the possibility that this was true, and so for the next year or so, I took a grand flying leap into bed every night.

Around that time, I was also terrified of mirrors in the dark. My friends loved to go in the bathroom, turn off the lights, and chant creepy songs in front of the mirror. I became convinced that Bloody Mary (and no, I wasn’t aware of the grimy history of King Henry VIII. I thought we were talking about Jesus’ mommy. No wonder I was disturbed) lived inside and was about to murder us or suck our souls out or something. This fear transferred to mirrors in my home, and at night, I would dart past the one in the hallway and cover up my bedroom mirror with a t-shirt before going to bed.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because a new irrational fear has been dominating my thoughts. My current sleeping situation involves a 9-foot high loft bed. Every night since August, I’ve climbed up the sturdy wooden ladder to go to sleep. And I’ve been just fine. But recently, I re-watched a YouTube video that I saw last fall…



Suddenly, I’ve become terrified that as I’m climbing up the ladder, my feet will slip between the wooden rungs, I’ll fall backwards, and my leg will snap in the middle of my shin. I almost think I’m worse off with this fear. It makes me nervous as I climb up the ladder, and my feet feel even closer to slipping off.

Sometimes irrationality is relative. Sometimes it’s absolute. Maybe my fourth grade teacher had legitimate reason to believe a fox was waiting under her bed to gnash at her toes. I probably did not. I could be wrong here, but I’d say it’s irrational for everyone to believe that evil spirits live inside of mirrors. Thankfully, my fear of the fox died out a while ago; although to be honest, I still hate mirrors at night. Additionally, I’m afraid of seagulls and spiders, and I hate driving over bridges. Like we decided at CTG a few weeks ago, every girl is afraid of “the man with a gun”…and I can’t even think about the expanse of the ocean without shuddering.

Unfortunately, the ladder thing might be kinda rational. I could break my leg as I cimb up to bed…there’s not a lot I can do about this fear. I think I’ll just be reaaaally happy when I don’t have to sleep 9 feet off the ground anymore.

the panda says NO!

Have you ever read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves?

If you have, did you find it hilarious and wildly entertaining?

If the answer to either of those questions is no, you might not enjoy this post. Just a warning.

So, I just logged onto Facebook and, upon surveying the new and significantly creepier "Live News Feed", saw that a friend had joined a group called "Real Men Don't Lie To, Cheat On, or Abuse Woman." I imagined someone making this statement in a very adamant caveman-like voice and giggled...and then realized I was laughing at group for domestic abuse.

But seriously. This wouldn't necessarily be a group I'd join anyway, but if nothing else, I would refuse to join it because of the yucky grammar mistake. Grammar snob? I guess. Yup.

On a sidewalk in East Lansing, there's a silver electrical box that sports some very irritating graffiti. "Working hard or hadly working?" it asks. Now, author of this message: Were you perhaps going for a Boston accent? Fail. Pick a dialect! Either put an "r" into "hardly", or take the "r" out of "hard." I'm sorry, but you cannot have both. Watch out, electrical box. Someday my Sharpie and I will get you.

Last week, my resident mentor put up some cheery Halloween signs in our hallway. Nice glittery exclamations of "BOO!" and "HAPPY HALLOWEEN!" dotted our walls. And then there was one that said, "Quiditch anyone?" Mmm. Oh dear. I felt very disgruntled. I got out a marker and squeezed an extra "d" in there, and went back later to add the appropriate comma. "Quidditch, anyone?" Much better.

If I was a superhero, I bet my superpower (unfortunately, sadly, but truthfully) would have something to do with grammar. I felt like I was righting some massive injustice in the world with that Sharpie and my grammar knowledge.

But seriously, as I was writing this, I thought to myself, "Congratulations. You are CRAZY. Please just stop caring about this stuff! Please?" Without doubt, getting upset over the misspelling of Quidditch and being angry at electrical boxes points to some level of eccentricity. It's taken me a while to realize that I care about grammar in disgusting excess, and anger over misplaced commas just isn't prime conversation for most people. In an attempt at pleasantry, I'm learning to refrain from grumbling when I notice mistakes on fliers, menus, and street signs. And I just realized that there's a good chance that me correcting that sign made my RA feel bad. Eeeek.

But even if I learn to control my words with this one, I'll absolutely still be a stickler at heart. It's important sometimes, I swear! Life or death, even. I'll leave you with the example from the back cover of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. (Which you should pick up, by the way, if you can at all relate to my grammar-snobbery.)

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly-punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots, and leaves."