The Latest

Bwah! How does a week go by so quickly?!!!!

So I spent all of last week in Auckland driving the DTS around while they were staying there. It was nice to be in the city, but frustrating to be a driver who knew just enough to be an accidental middle-man (middle-woman!) sometimes between the DTS students and staff. Luckily I had my friend Daniel to hang out with and also to run away with sometimes. Also, I got to sit in on lectures with Winkie Pratney, which I really was excited for. They were really great and refreshing-- he was talking about the character and nature of God and how that is reflected in art and how it could be reflected in art in the future, and it was cool stuff. So. There you go.

I also found out last week that coming back into New Zealand after my time in Scotland and at home is going to be more complicated than I had thought and hoped. Which, of course, has got my mind going a mile a minute. What can I do to get back here? What SHOULD I do? Is God wanting me to be finished here? Is God even telling me something or is this a choose-your-own-adventure kind of situation? What if I'm missing something? AAAAAHHHHH!!!!

All that panic is well and good, but actually not super helpful. So for now, I am trying to breathe deeply and enjoy my time here, and serve the best I know how to, and wait for the next bit of direction. Oy. This morning, I was still kind of freaking out on the inside (don't worry-- on the outside, I am the epitome of calm, cool, and collected), and read my Bible verses for the day as prescribed by my Celtic daily prayer book. They were all good verses, and actually had quite a bit to do with direction and trusting God for specific situations. But what really spoke to me was the last one, I think because it reminded me to just do what I know to do right now. To follow God and be faithful, and not freak out. I get so easily caught up in doing the right thing that I often forget that my character-- who I am choosing to BE-- counts. So here's Colossians 3:12-15 (ish) from the Message:

"So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness."

So... I have a long way to go. But somehow, it's good. I have peace, again, and unreasonably. And now I'm going to sleep.

Posting Poetry Makes Me Nervous, It Turns Out.

Okay, I have a kind of confession to make: I am a closet poet. I am not saying that it is good poetry that I write. In fact, you might go so far as to call me a "poet." With quotes. But the thing is, sometimes I feel like it takes a lot of words to express what I want to say. And with a poem, I can use less words, and if nobody understands what I am trying to say, it's okay, because that expression is somehow now art.

I am not claiming to be a "logician."

And to be honest, my poems probably still have more words than necessary. But what I am really trying to say here is that today I drove one of our guest speakers home, and I spent something like 6 hours in a van, and my brain had plenty of time to run wild, and I wrote something as a result of my long drive. I am not really looking for literary critique so much as trying to give you a little window into my mind. Proceed at your own risk...


Unrest
Is apparent in a late-night drive
Along a well-traveled highway.
My co-pilot sleeps,
Her head nodding against the fogged window.
Music blares loudly;
It will not silence the questions that stretch before me,
Brighter in my mind than the expanse of reflectors
In the middle of the road...

I don’t want to be middle-of-the-road.

A sigh breathes my unspoken queries:
How many more times will I drive this route?
What else is out there for me?
I want to turn around
And go somewhere where expectations are low
And familiarity is earned
And being taken for granted is understood as a profound irony.

Responsibility propels me along my reflector-guided path;
Providence directs my gaze to the moonlight-drenched fields around me...

For satisfaction of what carelessly crafted desire
Would I miss this beauty that surpasses selfishness?
For what would I deny myself the quickly drawn breath
That I take in as I see shadowed trees cut into the star-riddled sky
And a moon that reminisces the brilliance of sunlight
With a wistful humility…

Pieces of plastic on the road lead me dutifully,
But the luminous Reflector of the night sky paints a bigger picture.

And even as my questions hang thick in the air,
I know peace.

This Explains Everything

Okay, so I spent yesterday in bed, because I feel terrible. Which is ridiculous, because it has been absolutely beautiful outside for the last two days. But... well, whatever. This is what happens when you live in close proximity to a lot of other people, and some of them get sick.

This morning I got up and decided to do some work in the office, so I headed over there, and then I needed to mail something, so I pulled some stamps out of the stamp drawer. I couldn't find the right denomination of stamp for a while, so had to search around for a bit, and I suddenly realized that there was something a little bit strange about the international postcard stamps that we have. I blinked a couple of times, and then decided that it was not the sickness that was messing with my head. No, the truth is, the postcard stamps have pictures of rats on them. Yes, I said RATS. This made absolutely no sense to me, so I inspected them more closely. First of all, the caption on the stamps say something like, "New Zealand Pocket Pals," which made me gag a little. And then I noticed some Chinese characters, and realized that it also said "The Year of the Rat."

Eureka! This totally explains all of my rat problems. You cannot name a year "The Year of the Rat," and then expect to have no encounters with rats. Right? Okay, but here's my question: why is the Chinese year of the rat featured on NEW ZEALAND postal stamps? This does not actually make any sense to me. And also... well... just, why? When does the Chinese year end, anyway? I'm already sick of the year of the rat. I hope that next year is the year of some sort of baby animal, like a puppy or a foal. That would be cuter. Or something obscure, like the Sasquatch. I would like to see one of those, for sure. As long as it doesn't eat me or anything.

One last thing

Okay, I also have to mention that today I saw a man mowing a lawn wearing a Speedo. I was with my friend Scotty, and we looked at each other and were totally like, "undies!" If you don't understand why this was so funny to us, you should really watch the commercial I posted a couple of weeks ago. What I would really like is for the man who was mowing the lawn to watch the commercial. The end.

Adventures in Babysitting

Last night, I babysat for three children-- ages 8, 5, and 3. Their parents were gone for the night, so I stayed with them.

Parents of the world: I commend you. I have not gotten so little sleep in a long time. Crying children were crawling into my bed at all hours of the night, and then totally taking over. I was like, um, I am the adult here, so you should be taking up less space than me, three-year-old. But no. Also, if I moved to a new bed, there was more crying.

Mom and Dad, are you laughing at me right now? I am pretty sure that I spent a lot of nights as a kid taking over my parents' bed. But, in my own defense, I went from no kids to three kids in only one night. Of course, now I'm back to no kids, so I guess I can't complain too much. Well, no kids, but one rat. Actually, maybe the rat is gone-- I wasn't here last night, so it's totally possible that the poison was working while I was lying awake last night.

Okay, but don't get me wrong. I do like kids. I even like those particular kids. I was just a little bit sad about... you know. Not sleeping. This is why, if I have kids, I hope to kind of ease into it... one at a time, instead of three sudden ones. And also to have a husband, who can wake up instead of me. If it's your own kid, do you feel a little better about letting him or her cry a little? That's what I wondered about in the wee hours of the morning today.

In other news, I also bought a ticket to Scotland yesterday! I'm really excited. It was harder than I thought to do it. The problem is that there was no perfect ticket-- only tickets that would get me there kind of close to the time I wanted. And so, eventually, I just chose one. And now I'm going. Yay!

And now it's time for bed. I wonder how many words I can get in my crossword puzzle tonight before I fall asleep. I'm thinking not many.

Rodent Update # 2

Today is the day of reckoning for the rats. Ross came and put poison at all the places that a rat could have gotten into the wall. Take that, rats! And also, please die outside, and not inside my house.

Well, other than that, things are pretty uneventful for me. Office work as usual, and hanging out with Sam, my little buddy, and... well, that's it. Maybe something exciting will happen this afternoon that I can tell you about. Maybe.

Tuesday

Rodent update: I do not actually have a mouse in my room. What I have is a rat in my wall. And ceiling. Is that better? On the one hand, at least it is not actually in my room. On the other hand, a rat is much bigger than a mouse. And it could actually get into my room whenever it wants, I'm thinking. I could try to poison it. But then, what if it dies IN the wall, and starts to stink up the house? Gross.

So, other than over-thinking my rat problem, I have been pretty busy in the last couple of days. It's been nice to not be in lectures with the school... but instead I have been working on the computer, answering questions and emailing prospective students and trying to download photos for the website, etc. It has been surprisingly time-consuming. And very rainy. A combination that makes me sleepy. So I think I'll go to bed. After one last round of Text Twist and a crossword puzzle! There is nothing like a crossword puzzle to distract a person from thinking about rats. I'm pretty sure this is a proven fact.

Oh, Rats

Okay, so here's a question: is it coincidence that the same day that I watched Ratatouille, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a rodent in my room? Seriously. I liked the movie, but I had a hard time getting over the whole rats in the kitchen thing. Especially when they walked on all four paws. It just kind of made me shiver. And then, last night, I woke up to the sound of rustling and gnawing. They will not leave me alone!

The thing is, I have been on outreach several times and slept perfectly soundly, knowing full well that there are rats and mice in the building with me. And I've even slept on the floor in those places. But there is something about them in your own room that is just disturbing. For me, it goes back to Little House on the Prairie... which in my family is apparently the sum of all fears. Well, the fear of mice. And also the fear of the KKK, which I had nightmares about when I was smaller, although I think that one is actually because of Father Murphy, which I think was a Little House spin-off. And also my brother hated the show because of one episode where Laura thought Mrs. Olsen's head got cut off and my brother had bad dreams about it. ANYWAY, there was this one time that mice ate Pa's hair in the night while he was sleeping. This may have actually been in the book, not the TV show. But maybe both. But the point is that I really don't want mice to eat my hair in the night, and so I don't like having mice in my room. And that is why I set out my trusty peanut butter trap this morning. The end.

This Week

Oh, how the time flies. This week has been pretty busy for me, which is NOT what I was planning on when I said I was not staffing this school. But there is a serious lack of drivers to take them places, which is sad because it means I spend a lot of time driving people around, but good because I have gotten to go to cool places for free.

For example, this week I drove to the nearby waterfall to go swimming, which was very cold, but also beautiful. And then I drove to Kai Iwi Lakes, which is a really amazing and beautiful place north of here. The school went camping for a couple of days, and I also camped in my awesome tent, which was given to me by one of the staff who just left, Ben. I love that tent. It is only big enough for me and my stuff... I guess you could fit two people and no stuff, but it would definitely be squished. Anyway, it was great, and the lakes were also great, and pretty warm, and clear, and refreshing. We got back Thursday, and yesterday I cooked lunch and dinner for everyone in between all the things I was trying to do in the office, which did not get finished, by the way. And also, do not talk to me about the ridiculous quiche-making experience I had yesterday. I will say only this: do not underestimate the amount of time needed when making a gigantic quiche.

Today I drove to Whangarei so that the students could experience the booming metropolis of Northland. Also, we went to see The Bucket List. It was entertaining and enjoyable. Embarrassingly, I cried in one part, and the girl next to me pointed it out to everyone. Sigh. I never thought a movie with Jack Nicholson in it would make me cry. Go figure.

Anyway, that's my week in a nutshell. I'm sure I will have some deep and meaningful reflections to share later. But for now, I'm going to bed. Good night!