Blah Blah Blah...

Okay, enough of the deep thoughts of yesterday. Enough of the stream-of-conscious book reviews, etc. I recognize that my previous posts have gotten a bit too -- well, philosophical -- too far adrift from the original premise of this blog.

This is a blog, after all, not a manifesto!

And it's a blog about going back to college with family (and dog, mortgage, and yard) in tow. It was meant to be fun, light, uplifting. A sort of Erma Bombeck meets Bridgette Jones in the non-traditional students' lounge. Not that I have an audience (except Eric, of course!) to disappoint by my drab mood. But in the spirit of a new year and renewing visions, I've decided to return to my roots.

In that light...

Hubby bought a book for me. Usually I *love* his book gifts. He knows my taste and interests. His timing is usually quite good. When I'm itching to sink my teeth into a juicy novel, he gives me Sarah Dunant. When I'm obsessed with history documentaries, he gives me 1776. He doesn't buy diet books for me (because he values his life) because he knows I buy those for myself.

This book, however, has shaken my confidence in his gift-giving prowess. He bought and presented to me Basic Physics: A Self-Teaching Guide. Gave it to me right after I finished finals. Right as I exited school mode and entered domestic-goddess mode.

I think he planned to wrap it and gift me with it on Christmas morning, but then thought twice about that (so he's not gone totally mad; confidence *mostly* restored.)

I can hear you saying, "I thought she liked physics?" "Why wouldn't she want this book?"

I'm glad you asked.

I do like physics. And I do want this book. I know as much as Hubby does how much I need to read this book. And I will. But right now I'm enjoying not being in school too much to think about what I need to do to prepare to be in school again. I am not in the swing. I jumped out of the swing after my bio final and ran, giggling and screaming in glee like a kid on the playground rushing for the monkey bars. I am so far out of the swing that I can barely remember the difference between an integral and a derivative (not that Mr. Calculus hasn't been trying to remind me!)

I had to take my truck to the dealership to get something fixed. I took this scintillating read, Basic Physics, with me knowing that I'd be doing time in the waiting room. I opened the book and, in true textbook-reading fashion, started at the beginning.

I didn't get past the foreword. Too much noise (and that old western on the television -- which is nicer than the one in my living room, by the way -- was much more interesting.) Too many other people with other interests and voices louder than a whisper (especially the over-stressed grandmother with two small children with her, trying to quiet them with McDonald's and who sighed loudly every time she realized it wasn't working.) Too much stinky-burnt coffee filling the air making me wish I had stopped at Starbucks on the way in. Too easily distracted -- that's me on winter break.

Next thing I know, my name was called, my truck was ready, and Basic Physics was shut for the day.

*sigh* I'll read it this week, as soon as Nate is back in school. As soon as the laundry is done and put away. As soon as I'm done casting around for the next project that I'd rather be doing than reading Basic Physics.

But right now, Basic Physics is so much Blah Blah Blah...

The Problem with Good and Evil

My previous post reminds me of a subject I've been mulling over after reading The Shack (read post here). The subject is good and evil. Actually, the subject is the human heart and judgment.

When I decide what is good and what is evil, I am making a very subjective but very real judgment. I determine whether an event, an opinion, a circumstance, even another person is good or bad based solely on an imperfect set of personal standards. My good is never exactly the same as someone else's. My "good" and my "bad" judgment calls are made based on how something or someone affects me.

Subjective? You bet. Broken? Absolutely.

Now take me and my judgments and place us in a crowd of thousands. Millions. Billions.

On October 12, 1999, the United Nations Population Division estimated that the human population exceeded six billion. That's 6,000,000,000,000 sets of beliefs, values, and principles. Six billion individuals, all with their own subjective list of standards by which they are determining what is good and what is evil. Absolutes are pretty much lost in all that subjectivity. Things like good and evil are no longer penultimate measures, they are opinions. But they are opinions that cause conflicts, wars, and desolation. Opinions that, since they have overwhelmed absolute standards, are baseless and empty. Baseless, empty opinions become death sentences for far too many.

When we decide what is good and what is evil based on our own standards, we make ourselves Judge. Yep, Capital J: We allow ourselves to play God. I'd love to play many roles, but deep in my heart of hearts, I don't want to play God. Only problem is, it's much harder to relinquish my "right" to judge things that affect me according to my standard and let the Holy Spirit guide me.

Israel thinks they are right. Many fundamental Christians think they are right. We Gentile believers are instructed in the Bible to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem." And I do.

But Palestine thinks they are right also. So do the majority of Middle Eastern countries. If one honestly listens to both sides of the argument -- remaining honestly neutral, taking into account culture and background -- one finds there is no right. There is no wrong.

Only opinions. That's a problem.

Hope?

I was almost in tears by this, definitely inspired. Regardless of governmental conflicts and disagreements, Palestinian and Israeli doctors are working together to perform life-saving heart surgeries for children free of charge.



It's all too easy to let a flicker of hope be quenched, however. After watching the video I scrolled down to user comments, as I normally do (you can get quite a laugh out of some of those posts!) There I found Palestinian and Israeli citizens flinging arguments at each other. Thankfully they were not in the same physical room, else they'd be flinging more than words. There was no room in their minds, crowded with anger and hurt, for reason or rational thought. The conflict is so long-standing, so ingrained, that it's MUCH easier to envision continued war and destruction than peace. Of course, the hard road is the best one to take. Hopefully the thousands of babies saved by this medical collaboration will remember the peaceful hands of cooperation that saved them when other hands in their countries wanted to kill.

Woman in Between

I get the Victoria's Secret catalog in the mail regularly. The swimsuit issue came yesterday, promptly, just like every January. Needing a bikini in January in Texas isn't so unbelievable, but I know that the same mailing goes out to customers in New York and Wisconsin (for all you naughty members of the local polar-bear winters-swim clubs!)

I read an article recently that stated Fashion (big F = the industry) wasn't quite so out-of-touch anymore and is no longer assuming that we're all rich and leisurely needing a new bikini for a winter's holiday in the Mediterranean. Well, maybe that was a forward-thinking Fashion article.

Anyway. That's not the subject of this post.

About midway through the annual VS swim catalog, I find several pages of the Pink line of bathing suits and casual clothing, all worn by teenage girls. Not even college-aged, but early high-school girls. It was all playful, not pouty and seductive like the more "mature" VS models (those in their 20s) that populate the rest of the catalog. But it still left me feeling very --

-- old. And without a place.

Where do women My Age shop for bathing suits and lingerie?

By My Age I mean in between. No longer young and lithe, but damned sure not old (and determined never to be old.) Working hard to remain fit and fabulous even while knocking on 40's door. Still fun and flirty, fashionably relevant, yet with the depth and diversity of interests brought by experience. Not willing to settle with St. John's Bay and Eddie Bauer, not willing to give my firstborn for Armani, and definitely not willing to shop the racks of flimsy pieces alongside, like, the teenage clientele at Buckle and Papaya.

These days my look says, "I'm too busy to spend a lot of time shopping." I'd rather my look would confidently state, "I am in control," but I'll settle for anything that doesn't say, "I'm trying too hard to look like those two decades younger than me," or, "I gave up mirrors when I turned 35."

Being surrounded by traditional college coeds all day doesn't really help my dilemma, either. My fashion sense is a tad skewed toward frayed jeans and graphic tees, since that's what I see day in, day out. I used to wear sleek suits and stylish heels. *sigh* Ha, try trudging up the hill twice a day dressed like that! My peers wear flip flops and house shoes to class, making my Pumas and Sketchers look formal. Still, I'd love the chance to dress My Age more, if only I weren't so confused as to how My Age should dress.

And now my lingerie catalog -- where I buy things to, well you know, help me feel like a woman -- is marketing to kids.

Whoever is in charge of dumbing down America seems to be younging us down as well.

Homecare

After one day back at school in 2009, Nate is home sick today. He somehow contracted strep throat over the holidays, fully manifesting at 3:00 pm Christmas Eve. I was fortunate to find a lone doctor on call, still in the office doing paperwork, though they had closed for the holiday at noon. He kindly waited for us to get there, around 4:30, like Santa with a stethoscope and a prescription pad.

Fortunately we weren't on the road for Christmas this year as we usually are. We're the only members of our family that live in our area; our closest relatives live no less than a three hours' drive away. In years past, when I would agonize in mother-guilt about the kids never being in their home to open their gifts on Christmas morning, Nate excitedly informed me that our holiday tradition was to always be at a different grandparent's house when Santa visits. It was like we offered St. Nick his annual challenge: To figure out where to find the boys and which chimney to come down with their gifts. Actually, he continued with a big grin, it's more of a challenge to figure out how to get to us at home, since we don't have a chimney!

Nate's always been a joker.

Anyway, they let me know, when we began discussing traveling plans for this year's holidays, that they'd like to be home this year. Our plans to travel to California fell through, so they got their wish. And then Nate got his semiannual bout of strep. A bit providential, I tend to think.

He just finished his round of antibiotics on Monday. On Tuesday at 3:45, he came in the front door and collapsed, exhausted from the returning rigors of sixth grade. Today, when he woke up, he announced that he felt like he weighed two tons, was extremely dizzy with a headache and sore throat -- again. Low-grade temperature. He goes back to bed, and I go to set an appointment with his doctor. We see her later this afternoon.

Part of me wonders if this is because of school. He confided in frustration about a month ago that he still wasn't adjusting to middle school very well, still feeling insecure, overwhelmed, and having some trouble with bullies. I asked him last night about the bullying situation. He said it was probably going to be better this semester, since he's been reporting it, and the teachers announced a stricter anti-bullying program yesterday. But still...

Granted, that's just a small part of me. His temp has climbed past 100 since this morning. His symptoms are real. I know the mind is a powerful thing, capable of convincing us that we're sick when we're not, but I'm sure it can't cause a fever by unconscious anxiety.

I wonder why I still tend to approach my kid's medical needs like a mother and not like a doctor. I always thought that, once I started off towards a career in medicine, that I'd start diagnosing and treating my family, avoiding doctors that make the kids uncomfortable or who office way across town, avoiding co-pays and ridiculous insurance issues. Back to reality, Corey -- you're still in undergrad! Not even a medical STUDENT yet, much less a physician. How are you going to do the pediatrician's job?! Besides, I'll always be their mom. Mom will always be my first title. Even when I'm a doctor, I'll be Dr. Mom. That's a given. I can see a whole village of kids calling me Dr. Mom in their native tongue, whatever that is. Hopefully it's Dr. Mom and not "dumb white woman," or "she who thinks she can help."

I need to get started preparing for the killer-I-mean-challenging semester of classes ahead of me. I have a physics refresher book waiting on my bookshelf for me to read before I start classes in a couple of weeks. Only it'll be a primer for me, not a refresher, as I've never taken a physics class before. I need to decide if I will drop one of the (ahem) *challenging* classes I've signed up for in favor of a lighter political science that I still need to pick up, one that will better fit my day without having to put the family through scheduling gymnastics. And of course, I still need to attempt to set up physician shadowing. But there's a little boy in my bathtub right now, caught between puberty and Pokemon, battling a bug that we can't see, feeling off balance physically and a bit emotionally by the changes surrounding him and taking over. Whether or not he will regularly admit it -- at least not as regularly as he admits how weird his parents are -- his face tells me he needs me today.

So while I can hear physics prep work calling me, and I can feel the semester's preparations -- textbook buying, schedule perfecting -- tugging on my conscience, I am Mom today. And I will always be Mom.

Nothing satisfies me more.

Bigger than Theology

I find myself needing to express something that I don't fully comprehend. I have come to my blog in a stream-of-conscious state of mind. I may not make much sense, and part of me thinks that's okay; after all, what difference does my sense make, anyway?

I try to avoid trends and fads, bandwagons and following the crowd. At least I like to think that I stand on my own feet, make my own decisions, form my own opinions. But in a world full of messages -- advertising in print and television, film and fiction -- and opinions flying about, from friends well-intentioned and pretend-friends with a product to sell, I wonder if I can actually call that the truth. I don't follow fashion trends to a tee (but I watch trends and adopt what I like.) I don't blindly take advice (unless I've decided to do so in advance.) I try to sift all information through my critical-thinking filter.

Sounds a little sceptical, even a tad cynical. I guess it is. Even when I'm not trying to be, I guess I'm a bit of the "I'll be the judge of that" persuasion. When books and movies are recommended to me, for example, I can sometimes feel a jade wall crop up in front of my eyes, upon which, "That's good for you, maybe..." is written. Recipes and fad diets are even more suspect. But perhaps the thing that renders me most uncertain and unreceptive is a spiritual recommendation. By that I mean must-read books and gotta-hear messages and ministers. The more often I hear about a book or a message, the further I retreat into my own fortress of resistance. I tell myself or the recommender that I intend to get around to it, but I really don't. In other words, I try to avoid bandwagons, big or small. The more persistent a trend is, the further I tend to run. I don't know why, I just do.

I have friends who rave about a life-changing work every time I see them. In fact, they rave about it to everyone, even those they're just meeting. I trust these friends, I respect them and their faithwalk. So you'd think I'd take the recommendation, right? I gave the mandatory response, "I keep meaning to buy that book." I never did.

Finally, sitting around their table at a New Year's Eve gathering, the question came up again:

"Have you read The Shack yet?"

"Not yet," I respond. "I will."

My friend got up from her seat, disappeared into her room, and emerged to place a paperback book on the table in front of me. As if to say, "There, now you have no excuse -- you must read this."

Two days later, during my holiday-cleanup, before I dived further into my extensive list of things to do, my body felt as if it were pressed into the floor. I became an energy void. My head began to ache, my nose and sinuses pounding. My joints stiffened almost imperceptibly. I looked at my husband, who had been nursing what the doctor later that day determined was a virus, with questioning-and-blaming eyes, to ask him again, "What are your symptoms?" He goes down the list. Yep, you've infected me. (Thanks, hon.)

Around 1:30 pm, when I should have been at the grocery store or sweeping or toting decoration boxes back up into the attic, I retired to my bed, the only place of comfort in my whole house. Lying there in misery I looked around with a moan on my lips, and saw that little book, The Shack, next to me.

Sometimes it takes a bit of incapacitation to make us sit still long enough to receive a gift, or something we need. Sometimes a virus is a blessing, a way to make us stop our frenzied life long enough to let our bodies and minds rest and our spirits heal. This time it took a wee little bug invading my body to make me seek solace in a good story.

I was pulled in and entranced straightaway. I have a friend who described Paradise Lost as such a good read, one that resonated with points of spiritual poignancy so vividly that she had to constantly remind herself it was fiction and not Scripture. While there is much in the personification of God in The Shack that doesn't encompass all of God's immensity, (what human words actually could?) I experienced that same resonance that my friend described within this new work's pages.

I'm sure that I will write more about it as I process it further, but I will end this post with a hearty recommendation. Any open heart that reads The Shack will close it in the end with a heart full of wonder and joy, and an overwhelming desire to know God in his mystery and splendor. If there's a better purpose to pursue in life, one that fully satisfies a person and everything/one that he/she touches, I haven't discovered it yet. Knowing God is bigger than doctrine, deeper than theology. Knowing God is having a relationship with God -- a real, vibrant, living and loving intimacy. One in which we know Him like He knows us.

So. My stream-of-conscious led to a book recommendation. I don't expect anyone to blindly accept it. But I know it wouldn't hurt. And I sure don't regret it. Not just for the reading, but for the conversation that the reading is sparking between me and my God. Any room on that bandwagon for more? I'm sure there is.

Christmas and Calculus

Okay, so it's New Year's Eve, but it's still the holidays -- which happen to be, in the section of my brain still heavily influenced by public-school education -- categorized under Christmas Break.

And yet hubby sits downstairs earnestly completing a calculus assignment. He's in the second half of a calculus I course that he's taking by correspondence through UT. This second half is actually his absolutely last month that he has to complete the class. He signed up in February, applied for and received an extension in October, took his midterm in December, and is now cramming the last half of the course into six weeks in order to meet a drop-deadline at the end of January.

This is why I'm not enrolled at University of Phoenix or any other online, self-paced school. Self-paced, for me, is a slow crawl, interrupted at regular intervals by domestic distractions and daydreaming. It's interrupted and slowed for him, too, but by professional concerns such as managing service engineers, travelling to visit clients all over the country, and wanting to spend time with our family. But one thing I know: his calculus experience is a perfect picture of why I attend traditional classes. My butt has to be in a seat in front of a lecturer, or else my self-pace will get me nowhere. And I have much further to go than hubby; at least he finished his undergrad -- I'm still slogging along in search of my degree. But I think it's good to know a thing or two about one's self, such as what kind of a student/learner you are: do you learn by traditional means (re: a teacher and deadlines) or can you teach yourself?

I have a friend, a former boss and mentor actually, that marvelled I was able to complete calculus with a passing grade at all, let alone a B. She was even more faint with unbelief when I told her this was calculus II -- and the course meant for engineers rather than biologists -- and I had aced calculus I. Which made me wonder how my former self-concept had been communicated to those around me.

Maybe what we know about ourselves is transient and subject to change. It would definitely seem to be the case when it comes to me, math and the sciences, and what I can and cannot do. I am discovering that my limits are there to be tested, pushed, and run over flat as I proceed past them, onward toward higher and greater goals.

So far this blog has seemed to be a chronicle of these self-concepts and the process of overcoming them. I'm a science geek, an eclectic art lover and amateur artist, a reader, a philosopher, a mother, a wife, a lover, a daughter, a gourmand... I am many things. And centered at my core is this insecurity to settle on one thing to be. Maybe that's good -- it keeps me from getting comfortable, keeps me reaching for more, keeps me from settling for second best.

Maybe putting my butt in a seat in front of a lecturer was key in discovering that I am yet to be fully discovered. And calculus was a big part of that, to which I am thankful.

I'm also thankful I don't have to cram in a half-semester of that crazy class over the holidays, and I can actually call this a break!

Merry Christmas to me!