such a sweet time of year

Christmas time. Such a sweet time of year--both in emotions and food. I personally have never really thought much of Christmas. As a child, I loved the traditions just as much as any other child; I liked presents, I liked candy, I liked christmas trees and stockings, now, I will be completely honest and say that I love getting presents still, all the other things have no bearing with me.

Many may now be wondering, "What about the birth of Jesus! Does that mean anything to you?"

Of course it does. Because Jesus was born, he lived a perfect life, fulfilled the prophecies, died, rose again, and made it possible to be reconciled to God. And that means a lot to me; however, I find absolutely no reason in the Bible to celebrate His birth (if you have a reason, I'd love to hear it). I admit, I use the lack of Biblical reasons as an excuse to stay emotionless when it come to December 25th. I've just never had that much interest/emotion/excitement over any holidays in the last year -- for me, they are landmarks in time, breaks from school and unneeded work and stress.

Please understand that I am by no means against holidays--I love breaks! But it comes down to the fact that I just don't care about these supposed religious holidays (Christmas and Easter)...perhaps that is something that I should care about, but if that is so...I have no idea of how to begin to care about them!

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus from the virgin Mary. We celebrate it by singing carols that are about this miraculous birth, and also other songs that are seasonally related (about evergreen trees, boughs of holly, Old Saint Nick, etc); we decorate our houses with greenery, red and green colors, trees in stands with lights and various other ornaments; manger scenes up on tables, pianos or whatever else (these scenes always show the three wise men with the shepherds-- never mind the wise men didn't arrive to Bethlehem until Jesus was two years old). It appears to me that a lot of what is associated with Christmas is but traditional decorations and ideas. If you were to strip away all those traditions you would be left with Jesus' birth (never mind we all know He wasn't born in December). Now that we are back to Jesus' birth, would it not be appropriate for Christians to be being thankful for the birth, life, death, and resurrection of their Savior every day? Is it not somewhat similar to the (in)famous analogy of the 'Sunday Christian'? Why reserve two days out of the year to thank God for His Son when you have everyday to do so?

I'm sure many will now say, "Whats wrong with having a huge celebration those two days [Christmas and Easter]?"

Well, I don't think there is a huge problem, unless you've conditioned yourself to be thankful for the greatest Gift of all time only twice a year.

"I don't belong here......"

"Why are you sad Sheba?" Eva asked with a worried look painted strongly on her brown face

Sheba sighes, her breath blew her hair into the air for a second "I'm feeling homesick right now"

"Why? You've been here since the day you were born, how can you be homesick?"

Sheba stared into Eva's brown eyes and softly said, "This is not my home. I don't belong here."

Eva's expression changed from worry into confusion, and Sheba continued, "There was a place that I was at before I was born and came here...that place is my home."

"What does that place look like?"

"I don't remember." Sheba replyed wistfully

Eva tilted her head and asked guardingly, "Then how do you know that that place is your home?"

Sheba pressed her hands on her heart and whispered, "I know because there is a cord from the heavens that is attached to my heart, it does not come out, and that is how I am sure that Heaven is where I belong."

I don't know what to call this...

I figured that its time to write something of an update, or something to fill the achieves of my blog in future bygones (or something similar to that).

The wretched white stuff is here, and it appears that it intends to be hangin' out with us for at least a week more--the idea of enduring whiteness and coldness has me shuddering already. I have never really been into snow for reasons that all rotate around my heh, social life...this year however, that danger isn't as large because all my close friends cluster around their computers just like I do. Unfortunately this snow has meant that the much anticipated hair cut will have to wait until extreme further notice...which has me in tears (but whatevah).

Winter break has given me a good chance to get all sorts of stuff done that I should have been industrious enough to have gotten done who-know-how-long-ago; I've been digging through my vast storage of fabric remains from the many sewing journeys that I have been stupid enough to embark on, and so far I've been rummaging through the collection and throwing my hands up in the air because I have no idea of what to do with a ton of blue satin and miles of silky skirt extras in every color ranging from black to bright pink.

Not that its all been bad, I designed my own bag (it took me an hour to figure out the dimensions and make a pattern), and I'm considering carrying it around at school for a place to stash my friends who look like knitting needles, crochet hooks, and yarn balls --now wouldn't that look positively nerdy? Also, I used quite a lot of this linen something-or-other fabric that was left over from a broomstick skirt that I never wear by making it into a handbag of sorts that I wouldn't be caught dead carrying around...heh. And then today, I cut out something that is akin to a scarf, out of this white embroidered fabric that has billions of clear plastic sequins sewed all over it, and then I tightly zig-zagged the edges so it wouldn't fray into a million threads after wearing it once.

Also when I was rummaging through my sewing basket, I unburied the beginnings of a sweater vest that I attempted to knit a couple of years ago but quit after the yarn broke for some unknown reason to me. After briefly looking at the pattern the other day, I promptly decided that the idea of that sweater vest was absolutely ridiculous and a total waste of soft pipe-cleaner maroon yarn. So instead, I've used one skein by making an unphotogenic hat that I couldn't describe for the life of me. But before the unphotogenic hat, I crocheted a very photogenic hat with multi-colored yarn that had been sitting around collecting dust for the past century.

Today, I also did the inevitable of actually vacuuming under by bed. This procedure involved actually going out into the cold whiteness to fetch the shop vac that was chillin' in the freezing garage. So I bundled up, borrowed some one's boots and trudged through six inches of snow and lugged the monster into my room and vacuumed up all yesterday's hair balls and black spiders. I felt very hard working this morning. :)

For the past week and a half (more or less) I've been reading a book titled Nothing Feels Good (titles like that intrigue me) by some Spin dude named Andy Greenwald. The book is about the emo subculture and its quite...heh heh...fascinating (if you like Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday, Thursday and Dashboard Confessional that is). I intend to mutter more on here about emo-ness later on after I've digested all the ideas that have been shelved in my brain right along with Brave New World.

"Oh they love us American boys"

Why is it that American boys love the thought of war? If you look back in history around every war period that involves America, all the men/boys were uber excited about the prospect of enduring extremely hard periods of time in training, filthy living conditions and the opportunity to blast some poor fellow human being who unfortunately happens to be a soldier on the opposite side of the fight. As a girl, I guess I just don't get what is so fascinating about carrying around weapons and using them to blast their fellow human beings into oblivion!

Are all guys attracted to violence? Almost every guy that I know is super into some sort of intense strategy game, whether its WOW(or any other video game), paintball, etc...and it makes me wonder if those guys consider war to just be another intense strategy game where they get to flex their muscles and use their brain power to manipulate the results that effect the entire world.

Or does the love of war come from some sort of nationalistic pride? If that is correct, I'm inclined to think that they are basing that nationalistic pride in a country/idea that doesn't deserve any one's pride. Where does this nationalistic pride some from anyway? I'm inclined to think that it comes from the myth of the "American Dream" and America's reputation as being the "Land of the free". Unfortunately both of those reasons are not worth any amount of people being separated from their families and potentially being killed in someone else's lunge for political power.

The "American Dream" is a myth that can be easily shelved right next to the optimistic Utopian worldview, thus making both ideas impossible because of the law of entropy. If everyone were to stop hallucinating about the "American Dream" and a worldwide utopia straight out of Brave New World its quite possible that more people could/would be happy.

America is not the "Land of the free" because people are still being enslaved in many different aspects right now. The worldwide slave trade is larger than it was pre-Civil War, and it by no means excludes the United States (Trafficking In Persons Report 2008). Plus, almost every American is mentally if not physically enslaved to the consumerist culture that rules our nation with great glee.

Its odd that America's negative characteristics are a lot more credible than its positive ones. As for the negative characteristics--such as: "Bush is an idiot", etc--they appear to all stem from the fact that there is a war goin' on baby. Everyone has a different reason for hating President Bush's foreign and domestic policies. I've got two responses to all that nonsensical hatred: Where is your respect for your elected leader? and do you seriously think you could do any better? If you hate Bush for whatever he did/didn't do to you please think about those for a minute.

So with all the hoopla, bumperstickers, and chain emails sporting the rather...boastful declaration, "I'm proud to be American", my usual response would be *manical laughter*, *deletes chain message because it said at the bottom that I'm a moran if I don't forward it to all my contacts*. It all comes down to the fact that I'm NOT proud to be an American because America is nothing to be proud of. Entropy will decimate anyone's dreams of a perfect nation filled with personal freedom, and I'm much more interested in the everlasting kingdom of Heaven.

Conditionment

I think I have a severe case of Endofquarteritis.

Tomorrow is the very last day of school until sometime in early January. Those three weeks after tomorrow and before January will be very interesting...I'm going to be stuck with uber slow dial-up for three weeks and let me tell you the very thought of that has me miffed. Its ironic really that after the entire summer and past life I haven't had that much of a frustration with the home internets and now that I'm conditioned to high speed I think dial-up is slower than a slug stuck in molassas in January. I try to convince myself that the internet at home actually has gotten worse, but really, I think its just me. And then I get to thinking about how much our culture relies on the fasted and "best" of everything, like we think we need fast computers and whatnot to do anything; plus, because of that tendency we condition ourselves to the point where we blow up when the internet won't connect decently after the first try.

Anyway, in the next three weeks I might not post much because of my ridiculous frustration with being patient for more than 3 seconds.

December is here...

Man, I feel bad that I haven't written a blog post in a while, but its finals week (which should convince you that I have absolutely no time...). I decided that today I need to bite the bullet, close down youtube and all those other awesome time wasting sites and put something semi-logical into words. And I have about 30/45/60 minutes to do it. Sucrose!

So, as you all know, there is only about 20 days left of wonderful 2008. I've been thinking back on the last year, going over the highlights and all that, and I thought I would write about a few of them on here. (just another boring list about the last year :P)

Things I've learned:

• I've that running away from something just because its painful or unpleasant is stupid and I won't get anywhere doing that. I've always tended to avoid things if I thought I might embarrass myself or if it was too hard for me to do comfortably. God has been showing me that he wants his children to do things that aren't exactly "easy" and if I learn to do them now without complaining it might be much easier when I'm older when I potentially have to make more important decisions than the ones I'm making now.

• I've learned that "it is better to trust in the LORD, than to put confidence in princes" (Psalms 118:9). I have, and sometimes still do tend to put my trust in people I know, people I admire etc, when really they are just humans like me and they will disappoint me because they cannot be my ultimate guide in life, only God can!

• I have learned to choose "belief over misery". Over the last few years I've had times when I've gotten really depressed, and sometimes I don't make the right choices on how to deal with that sadness. As of this year I have not been depressed anywhere near as much as I have been before, probably because I have learned to take my sadness to God, to get the sadness out and then get over it. These last few months its been more like it only lasts for a day instead of weeks. And for that I am extremely grateful.

• I've learned that telling my friends the truth when its needed is a lot better for us than turning the blind eye to the way the friendship is going just because I don't want to deal with it.

• I've learned that if I want an in depth relationship with my parents and siblings I need to make an effort to spend time talking to them. Something that doesn't come easily to me, especially now that I'm gone all the time, but I have been able to develop relatively close relationships with my siblings that are close to my age.

Things I've gotten to do in the last year:

• I went to Creation Northwest with my dad last July and I didn't really like the festival itself, probably because I didn't know anyone there and the only band I really liked that played that day was Switchfoot. We went to see Switchfoot, and it was incredible. I even was crazy enough to stand in a super long line for over an hour just to meet them and get my poster signed (funny story on the poster: Chad and Drew signed their names on Romy's piano....I don't think they were paying attention to what they were doing! typical rock stars...). Also, in the super long line, I met two uber Relient K fans and another guy who likes pretty much every Christian band on the planet except Flyleaf. Us four were talking a lot to pass the waiting time, and one of the RK fan girls asked the guy if I was his sister *scratched head*....twas rather odd.

• Plus, if I should still be on the earth next summer (I'm kinda leaning toward being raptured sometime soon...haha...), and if I can cough up enough money, and if my parents let me, I just might go back to Creation with at least two of my friends for the whole caboodle instead of just one day.

• I'm going to college this year. I'm really glad for that because I want to get college done as soon as possible...I just have to decide what I'm going to

• This last quarter at college I've been able to meet up again with two of my childhood friends, which is awesome. One of the girls I was actually in Cubbies with when we were 4. And the other one was my sister's best friend back when we went to PACE (the good ole days of being below 10 years old :P)

I'm sure there are more things, but I'm not thinking of them right now!

*Claps*

I'd like to make honorable mention to my dear friend Sarah, who was so kind to joyously create the beautiful graphic on the top of my blog (You are the best!).

*hums "Hold fast till the break of daylight...."