It's Possible that I'm Losing My Mind

So far today:

6:50 a.m. The time that my first alarm went off.

7:10 a.m. The time that I should have gotten out of bed.

7:21 a.m. The time I got out of bed.

7:26 a.m. The time that I left my house wearing my pajamas and a Columbia fleece.

7:30 a.m. The time that I paid a dollar to park in the Elm Street Garage.

7:32 a.m. The time that I arrived at Catlett for Jazz Band Rehearsal.

8:24 a.m. The time I left Catlett and headed home for a nap.

8:48 a.m. The time I remembered that I had a class at 9:30 in addition to my class at 10:30.

9:05 a.m. The time that I should have left my house if I were walking to my 9:30 class.

9:17 a.m. The time that I should have left my house if I were driving to my 9:30 class.

9:18 a.m The time that I made plans to watch Glee with friends at 8:30 tonight.

9:25 a.m. The time that I left my house to drive to my 9:30 class.

9:27 a.m. The time that I realized I needed to park in the Union garage to make it to my class on time.

9:28 a.m. The time that I pulled into the Union Parking Garage.

9:29 a.m. The time that I realized I had left my wallet at home and that I had no money to get out of the Union Parking Garage.

9:34 a.m. The time I arrived at my 9:30 class.

10:05 a.m. The time that I texted Briana to see if she was on campus and had any money with her so I could retrieve my car.

10:16 a.m. The time that I found Briana and discovered that she had left her wallet at home as well.

10:19 a.m. The time that I coincidentally ran into Claire Zeorlin and embarrassingly asked her if she had any money with her so I could retrieve my car.

10:26 a.m. The time I accepted temporary defeat and went to class.

10:32 a.m. The time that I stopped paying attention in my 10:30 class.

10:50 a.m. The time that Laura offered to bring my wallet to campus.

11:46 a.m. The time that I remembered I have a group project meeting at 8:30 tonight and cannot watch Glee at that time.

12:28 p.m. The time that my parking garage tab reached $8.00.

12:29 p.m. The time that I left in the middle of my 27 person class to meet Laura outside to retrieve my wallet.

1:21 p.m. The time I finally drove my trapped car out of the parking garage.

1:24 p.m. The time I decided I had time to go home for lunch before I met Doug at 2:00.

1:36 p.m. The time that I sat down to eat my lunch.

1:40 p.m. The time Doug texted me telling me he was waiting because I was supposed to meet him at 1:30.

1:48 p.m. The time I arrived at Plaid to meet Doug.

2:45 p.m. The time that I should have left Plaid to get to class on time.

2:55 p.m. The time that I left Plaid and decided I had to pay to park again.

3:02 p.m. The time that I payed my tenth dollar of the day to park.

3:06 p.m. The time that I arrived at my 3:00 class and wondered how this day had gotten so completely out of control.

Children are a Hoot and a Holler

Things that are awesome about my job:

1. I get to play 16 hours a week. It's almost like being a part time kid. Getting back to my roots. Mm, yeah.

2. Last week, two of the boys at the middle school who have nicknames for each other decided they wanted to give me a nickname. Ratchet and Captain Harmony tried to learn things about me so they could find a nickname that would fit. After deciding they liked the military theme they had begun with the Captain, and finding that one of my top interests was music, they settled on calling me "Lieutenant Symphony."

3. On Monday I got to sing Kelly Clarkson, Hannah Montana, HSM, and Avril Lavigne songs with my middle school girls -- karaoke style.

4. Monday night at the elementary school we performed 17 major veterinary surgeries on 12 beanie babies, 3 stuffed animals, and 4 humans. Our tools for this included a pair of scissors and a plastic hammer, among standard medical instruments.

5. Tuesday night at the elementary school we formed a marching band and paraded our plastic drums, bells, tambourines, and egg shakers by the thousands around the gym for 45 minutes.

6. Tomorrow night we get to have a Girls Only pajama and movie party at our office - complete with all the slumber party essentials - but I still get to go home at 10 and sleep in my own bed. ;)

7. Last night we played a form of the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors" that was instead "Gorilla, Man, Gun," in which the Gorilla beats the Man, Man beats the Gun, Gun beats the Gorilla, and if you Tie, you Die. One of our students, who tends to be fairly emotional (much like the kid in the pool who cries when a leaf comes near him - usually unnecessary and over-dramatized) burst into tears in the corner because of the illogical nature of the fact that the "Man" is found superior to the "Gun," and he had thought himself on the winning side of that equation in his partner match. (Exclaiming between sobs: "She lied to mee....the man can't beat the gunnnn....*sobs*).

I'll try to remember to post more of these awesome things that the kids say and do, it's almost too fantastic for the blogosphere to be able to handle.

Two Perspectives on the Same World

At the beginning of September, I began working through Americorps at the Center for Children and Families here in Norman, OK.

I am working in their Neighborhood Centers program, which is an after school program that works in four different schools here in Norman. We work at two elementary schools and two middle schools four days a week.

Apart from my stint in the service of the Chick-fil-A half dozen, as well as a few brief weeks at Vacation Bible Schools galore, my experience with groups of children has been surprisingly little. High school age kids: yes, I'm all over that. I know how to handle those problems and how to interact appropriately. But I never had the camp counselor experience that so many of my friends have had, and so this consistent and regular interaction with littlest people is way out of the category of skills I would consider my "strong suits."

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not bad with kids. They don't cry when they see me or suffer physical or emotional trauma every time we interact. I am inexperienced, but I have enough experience with people in general that knowing how to translate these tactics to be effective in handling little sized people is just a work in progress.

But as I was preparing for this year I knew that I wanted to accomplish two things: I wanted to serve other people and I wanted to grow in skill and experience.

So, in that case, working at a job where I don't feel like I know exactly what I'm doing is accomplishing the last half of that. It's granting me the opportunity to learn from people who are more experienced and to learn how to do things myself. And I mean, working with children is useful in essentially every possible business realm that I could enter in to -- because either you're interacting with children or you're interacting with adults who behave like children. From that perspective, this experience is invaluable.

But one thing that's been especially fascinating for me to observe so far is this: This summer in Seattle, I was working with youth ages 13-24. The only part of their story that I knew was their current circumstance - that they were homeless. Sometimes I knew about substance abuse, sometimes I knew about significant others. In rare cases, I knew some background of their past or some of their hopes and dreams for the future. But one of the questions I had in my mind most of the summer was where their stories had diverged from mine. Where had they started acting out in anger when I was being taught to forgive? Where had they stopped communicating with their parents when I was getting to know mine better? When did they spend their first night sleeping out of doors?

Working in the schools that we are, we see children from some of the lower income neighborhoods of Norman. I'm not suggesting that in 10 years these children will be homeless. But I do recognize that some of them are angry and violent with one another - at 10 years old. Some of them have absolutely no regard or respect for adults or for one another. Some of them make sexual or drug references in conversation - at 7 years old. We know that some of them have witnessed or been victim to domestic violence in their homes - at 5 years old.

And through these observations -- even in just the first week that I have been working -- I feel that I am starting to get some answers to my summer-long question. The anger didn't appear overnight. They didn't get upset over the outcome of a football game, punch someone in the face, and spiral downwards from there. Their lives have been more difficult than I could ever imagine from the moment they were born. They have encountered evils that I can only shudder at and try to push from my mind.

People are hurting. Children are hurting. Teenagers are hurting. College students, adults, parents, me. I can't heal the children I see twice a week. I can't "fix" the broken hearts of the youth I spent a summer with. I also can't repair the church, RUF, or my own heart.

This can be disheartening. It can be discouraging. But it can make us yearn for the day when all of this world will be healed - when "everything sad is going to come untrue." Freedom is coming, friends. Every morning brings us closer.

Unimaginable Coincidence

An unintentional reference to the subject of the current "Homewrecker" fiasco, for those of you who know to what I am referring. If you don't, ask for the story immediately.

http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=6568265790217108712&searchType=ALL&txtKeywords=&label=Camp+Boyfriend

The Last First Time

If you know me well, you know that there a few things in my life that I treasure above most other things. For now, we're call these the four Fs.

Faith

Family

Friends

and Football

There has not generally been much need to give explanation for the first three on that list, but for many, my love and adoration of this hot and sweaty pigskin toss has been difficult to comprehend.

Example 1

As freshmen, my roommate and dearest compadre, Jena, and I would attend each and every home football game, cheering wholeheartedly until the final seconds ticked off the game clock. One of Jena's favorite stories to recount of these days is that as soon as we would return to our cozy dormitory in Cate Center, I would open up my (now much older and greyish) creamy white Apple Macbook, click my toolbar bookmark to college football on ESPN.com, and proceed to read every bit of review, commentary, and highlight reel that I could find. On the game we had just watched. Yes, it was possibly a little over the top.

Example 2

I have travelled nearly 5000 miles to watch the Sooners play, and have watched them lose on each of those trips (three separate occasions in three separate locations in three separate seasons). Somehow, I am still planning to travel for at least three games this season, and a possible 4th if the bowl game we make is in any way desirable.

Example 3

I have sat through rain, blistering heat, snow and sunburns both big and small for this team. I'm essentially as dedicated to them as their mailman.

All this to say, this season, I got to watch the Sooners play their last first game of the season with me as a student. I can't believe how the time has flown by! I have never missed a home game, and don't plan to start this season. I have watched us win big and watched us suffer through tragic losses. I got to be Sam Bradford's facebook friend for about a year and a half until he removed his facebook account. I got to witness OU's most recent National Championship opportunity. It's been a good run.

I'm Sooner Born, and Sooner Bred. When I die, I'll be Sooner dead. Rah Oklahoma.

Distractions Come Easy to Me

Generally, I am a fairly organized person.

I arrive to things on time, I don't miss appointments, I don't forget homework.

However, there is definitely a dichotomy in the things that I do during any given week. There are things in my life that I feel I have to do, and things that I enjoy and want to do.

When these two categories intersect: bliss. But it seems that more often than not (and especially lately) these options come more and more in conflict with one another as they battle for my time, energy, and attention.

And so daily, I have to make choices. I am definitely finding that I have heaped more onto my plate this semester than will be easy to handle, and so I have to keep to schedules and regularly decide what can stay and what can go. I can't participate in five different Bible studies -- however much I want to. I do have to make time for class amidst all the hours of work each week, even though that's the first thing I would want to cut from my list, normally.

But recently I've been noticing that I have been creating projects for myself to work on that, in general, are keeping me from getting other things done or (even worse) are keeping me from the sleep that these days is as precious as gold.

But instead of finishing up these projects in quick time, I just keep adding more and more to the "fun" pile, without allowing space in any other area for these things to actually get done. So I paint 3D tree paintings. I buy bikes that need work to fix up. I have band rehearsal and write songs and plan to record. I buy books by the hundreds.

And now it's getting to the point in the semester where these "harmless hobbies" are beginning to be my outlet for the time and energy I should be putting in to studying, resting, fixing things at the house, and being with my roommates. So I feel guilty about painting my tree painting! But....I would just really rather paint than read Comm research journals.

Maybe this is senioritis. Maybe it's just the constant tension between work and play that I will experience all my life. Maybe I'm just looking for some distraction.

Whatever it is, I'll probably just keep missing sleep so I can keep my hobbies intact. Because if art, music, literature, roommates, bikes and sleep can't coexist, well, I'd rather be distracted than live without them.