Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Merry Christmas!

 A very merry Christmas from Our family to yours!  we would have sent you a Christmas card, if we could be bothered to send Christmas cards anymore. We stopped when I was about ten, mostly because in America you put a picture of your family on your card, and, let's be honest, we haven't taken a good family picture in years. So instead of looking at pictures of my family, why don't you just listen to the King's College Choir, so much better anyway. 

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

7 Quick Takes (Because it's Tuesday Night or Wednesday Morning)

1
I'm sorry for not keeping you all updated on this, but baby Caroline is now a healthy six week old! She had surgery almost immediately after she was born, but it all went well and she was able to go home much earlier than originally anticipated! I now shamelessly creep on her parents' facebooks because she is such a cutie! Thank you all so much for your prayers, and if you are at all able please donate to the Caroline Reedy Fund, which will help defray the cost of all her medical care!

2
Motivation is running awfully low here at Bag End after our Thanksgiving break. We're currently justifying our utter sloth by having a who-can-put-up-the-most-Christmas-decorations contest with the boys next door. They may have lights on their porch, but dadgum we have a pine tree scented candle and an advent calendar with milk chocolate behind every door! 

3
I have two research papers due in a week, and I've even started one of them! Words on a page is progress, and, they're even real words! I didn't just whack my head repeatedly on my keyboard. Hey, at this point in the semester this is a real accomplishment. 

4
Recently I've really been missing the Pope. Not Rome. Not Italy. Not even Gelato. Just the Pope. Everytime I get on twitter and see the papal tweets (in three languages, for some reason I can't figure out), I get super weepy and emotional, and if someone even mentions Pope Benedict, I'm gone. This is probably the most bizarre case of "homesickness" I've ever had.

5
The weather is Texas is more indecisive than a bipolar pregnant lady. It was freezing for two weeks: absolutely freezing, and I had no winter clothes. So I spent two weeks shivering and miserable, but when I finally go home and get all my winter clothes what happens? Texas decides to have a week of 70 degree weather. Thanks, Texas. 
6
 My favorite part of the fall semester, intramural softball, is over. Not that I play or anything. I've had far too many accidents with these so-called sports to get anywhere close to those bats, but I am a great groupie. I really love going to watch all my friends play, and no matter what the score is, they're still may favorite team. (Okay, let's be real, I go to the games to socialize with my other non-athletic friends, but the game is a good excuse to, oh, I don't know, not write papers...)

7
I started making a books-I would-really-really-like-for-Christmas list, and shall we say it's getting a little long. As in, it may or may not be longer than the afore mentioned research paper. I have this great plan for getting a ton of reading done over break, but if previous breaks are any indicator, we'll just have to see what happens. 

Monday, December 2, 2013

The Blues, Thanksgiving, and Advent

I've really had the blues lately. No, I haven't been depressed; I, um, well, I don't know how to put this. I managed to dye myself blue. You may well be wondering how I managed to perform such a tremendous feat. You know all those tags on new, dark wash jeans that say the dye may rub off on lighter surfaces? You know how gingers have notoriously pale legs? Yep. I was that lighter surface. My legs are blue, and I'm not exactly sure what to do about it. I'll get back to you on this one.

Before I dyed myself an unnatural shade, I had a really great Thanksgiving with my family. I flew from TX to TN, and maybe I'm the only person who feels this way, but whenever I'm in an airport, surrounded by hundreds of people I'll never see again, I am always tempted to pretend my life is about seven hundred times more interesting than it is. I'm so tempted to pick up my phone and pretend that I'm talking to, oh, you know, my personal assistant because I obviously started a huge company in my dorm room. Or to tell some utter sob story about how unfortunate my life is. Am I the only person who feels this way? Please tell me, I am not the only person who desperately wants to tell horrendous lies to total strangers just to see what it would be like to have a different life? But I digress...

Anyway, I had a really awesome time with my family. We ate a lot and watched a lot of football, which is the most American thing I can think of. I have to admit that until this weekend, I had absolutely no idea how football worked. I mean, there are big dudes with an egg-shaped ball; I got that far. But have you ever watched football? They stop every other minute, and the announcer says something like, "74th and down at the 43rd and a 1/2 yard line," and you're just like, "Uh, huh. Okay. Sure." I never saw the appeal of football until I spent about eight straight hours watching it with my grandma, and by the end I was the hardest core football fan you'd ever seen. I was yelling at the TV, for Pete's sake, like I actually had a clue what was going on. I'm not quite sure what happened to me...

But actually the best part of Thanksgiving was having my entire family together for the first time in a very long time. Not only were the cousins I hadn't seen in ages there, but we also got to facetime with my cousin who is currently deployed. I'm not usually one to get all emotional about things, but that was probably one of the top ten best moments of my life. Rarely have I been so grateful for all the things I have: all the things that people have died to protect. I was so grateful for the sacrifices people make so that our country can be free, and I'm so thankful that I've never had to be so far removed from all my loved ones.

This break was also a good chance for me to reevaluate what I'm doing with my life, or at least what I think I'm doing with my life, and what with the start of Advent, now seems like a good time to refocus on the things that are really important in my life. Firstly, I'm definitely trying to get my spiritual life back on track, so I'm going to be reading the Bible and saying a rosary everyday this Advent. I'm also going to procrastinate less on my school and housework, and finally I'm going to be more active in achieving my goals (you want to be a writer, maybe you should update your blog). We'll see how all this goes; I mean, if I can't buy pants without severe mishap something tells me that this is going to be a long process.