"With it's roots firmly planted in the earth below"

Just as a preface, I think this is a really dumb question.

Would you rather be wealthy and ugly, wise and sickly, or beautiful and stupid?

I feel it is overly simplistic and moralistic. But it is a prompt and I am grateful for it.

I mean of course I would rather be beautiful and stupid. Those people get everywhere in this world. Our culture is obsessed with quantity over quality so it doesn't matter if I my breasts have nursed four children, it only matters that they are perky and ready for display. It doesn't matter if you've worked the ground to feed your family, rough skin is just unsightly.

And if you're wealthy, you're not really ugly are you? It's only a matter of cash before you can lose that Roman nose or wrinkly knees. What is meant, ugly on the inside or the outside? And not to bash rich people. It simply the correlation of the two for illustration purposes of how 'right' and 'altruistic' your heart is. Get over yourself.

As for wise, and sickly, I believe there is a profound thing that transforms you when your health, viability, and youth cannot be relied on. We will all encounter a place of sickness in our lives. Should the Lord keep you here until your old age, we will all find we don't remember as much as we used to, our joints don't stretch like they used to, we can't see, run, dance, or stay up at late as we used to. Given that time, given the transformative gift that is life, it would be a sad thing to reach the end of your life without a shred of wisdom.

On a happy note, it's totally cozy and wintery here now. No snow but those cozy later fall days that make you want to wear mittens and drink some ho-cho.

Samoy bolshoy den!

P.S ~ I won't post anything like this again. Makes me angry.

*Ya Zn-eye-oo moy moozh ochen sympat-ichni

Bloggity blog.

Life is busy. We are busy. I have resorted to my post-secondary diet of something slathered in peanut butter. That is how I get my daily dose of protein and corn sugar.

(Did you know that they are trying to rename high fructose corn syrup to corn sugar. It's so that people don't panic when they see it in EVERYTHING. Kind of defeats the purpose if you're telling everyone. "It's the same thing we're just calling it something different." They talk in the article about HFCS being no different from sugar nutritionally and that there's nothing fundamental to it that is bad for you. But it's in EVERYTHING and it's never in a reasonable dosage. It's mega syrup in everything from bread to batteries to chocolate milk to soda pop. This is my soapbox.)

We have plans that do not include (or even really accommodate)

anything school related every evening this week. That is rare for us but we are engaging our community, and pushing ourselves out of our shells and good for us and all that. Whew. Good friends, great conversation. Thanksgiving was fun and it already seems like such a long time ago.

Workshopping will start up soon hopefully. I did a really great job of making the snow ball and then setting it down on level ground so nothing has happened as of yet. We'll find a hill somewhere. This is Vancouver. The application to Creative Writing is at the end of March. Let's all be praying for this and I will write my fingers to nubbins in the meantime, yeah?

In Russian today, she talked to us a little bit about major cities in Russia, like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Seeing pictures of the landscape and the cities filled me with this desire to go there so bad. I was at a meet 'n' greety thing last night that was really fun and there was a girl there who taught English in Eastern Europe, specifically Moldova. She said there is such a profound need for people to be invested in those cultures. They are third-world in their economics and their society but they are first-world in their values. It is in that push and pull that everything breaks down. I don't know what I will do when we get to Russia but I believe God has put it on my heart all these years (almost a decade!) for a reason. Apparently, a Russian writer described St. Petersburg as like a lady: a total mess during the day but once the sun sets she shines and stops you dead.

I'm far better at night than I am in the morning too. I totally get it.

"I want you to notice...when I'm not around"

I have my 12 Project picture, I do! September has, needlessly to say, so crazy. Matt and I found ourselves at the bottom of the pool so to speak about part way through September as we tried to balance full-time studies on two accounts, committing to small group, trying to make good on some promises we made regarding our families in the summer, and trying to see each other enough to enjoy it in the process.

But now it is fall. And I am happy.

It smelled like fall the other day, crisp and soundless like I remember of Calgary. The leaves are falling in a magic array of burning. Then yesterday it was so foggy that you couldn't even see the North Shore across the water. This place trips me up. But it's October and I'm still going running in shorts and a t-shirt.

Life has been amazing in the face of the flurry though. We played host three days in a row which I know is laughable to some but today I want to stick my head in a box big time. And the last week has essentially been a bender. I have vowed myself to explicitly water for the next week so make up to my liver a bit. We have some really great friends through small group and church and Regent, all people that love God and want to glorify him in loving each other. Such a cool circle to be a part of.

Thanksgiving is next weekend!

Vegan Yum Yum (at right) speaks my language. She interprets needlessly but classically meat centred dishes to be meatless in a

way that makes me wishes I could actually cook as well as I think I can. (I'm also not totally sure whether it's that I can't cook or whether I am an apathetic eater at best.) Holidays with friends are wicked fun. Maybe Thanksgiving in particular. It is a time where you are thankful for all you have and we have so much to be thankful for. And you get to experience the dining habits and traditions of other people. We never had candied sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving because my dad is a purist among other things. I had had them at other get together and never really understood the huge deal. But then last year we did Orphan Thanksgiving with Ange and I had these candied yams that redefined what they could be. No marshmallow gunk on top, not too sweet. Just right. We're doing it with Scott and Jo this year. We both have...compact homes so it will be funny to see how we manage with large quantities of food and multiple guests.

~And how mega cute would stuff like this be to have as some of your serving dishes. One day. When we plan to STAY. Etsy man, it's the place.

~This lady does things with Jell-O that I never thought you could. Reminds me of Cami.

~ I saw this yesterday. Such a great movie! I want to BE Aaron Sorkin sometimes. He writes the best dialogue.

Ya Dvadstat-oden ~ I'm Twenty-one

School is real now I tell ya. I kind of feel like I have been staring at a pretty picture and the Olympics have come and gone. I feel like I'm MISSING things.

We have, so far, successfully traversed the couple friends terrain so far. We have Scott and Jo who are beautiful, authentic, REAL people that have been an unreal blessing to u

s in the past year but we have slowly (on my part, very slowly) integrated ourselves into the community at Regent and Westside and the Lord has brought about such great people. We had our first small group last Thursday which was so fun! It may at some points p

ut a bit of strain on studying and getting homework done but it is absolutely worth it. Westside has this surprising demographic despite being Calvinist and Mennonite, of about 18-35 year olds that make up most of their church. And so most of the people that we're connecting with are of similar life circumstances and times of life and all invested in very different things. I am so excited for small group. There is this one fabulously positive girl in our small group. She, very misguidedly, asked me to cut her hair. I have not acquiesced as of yet. I am reminding her repeatedly (and FOR HER OWN GOOD) that it would be a very bad thing for me to cut her hair. And then we have one girl from Germany. A dancer. A ref

ormed hippie. It's a good mix. It's not really a 'small' group, more of a 'midsize' group with twenty-one people. And they have great snacks. Matt and I are always late though. Hmm.

Last night we went for dinner at the house of one of the pastors at Westside. Their little boy, 18 mts old, is holy smokes the cutest little person I have ever seen. Chad was telling us how they have programmed OCD into him already. Once last night, when their little boy walked up to a plate of crackers and grabbed a handful (which turned out to be 2), Dad says, "Kiel you took two, can you put the other one back?". Kiel looks at Dad, selects his cracker of choice and dextrously places the second cracker back into the exact same place. He pushes his chair in once he's done with it. He goes to get paper towel when he's spilled something on the floor. He's 18 months old.

My man was in fine form last night. I'm not the only one who could pick his brain for hours. There was a rather chirpy debate going on reg

arding women in leadership which is something Westside (being crazy, I think. I think that's the term) doesn't support in their church. It was something that broke my heart a little when I found out about it. The Lord had blown my heart wide open and hadn't let me go when we first went to Westside. Afterwards, after we had moved to Van, I found out about certain stances they have. They are very complimentarian,

which I do not, on many levels, agree with. I am only now, however, beginning to encounter it from a scriptural basis. I prayed a lot about it to wrestle through can I stand for a community that stands for things that I don't? I felt like the Lord said to me, "I am not asking you to confront that right now. I am asking you to trust and believe in what I want to do in you through this place." So after about fifteen minutes of the party line being towed, they quiet down a

nd all kind of look warily over at Matt. He has established a reputation of being the debating type. And then he pretty much takes a deep breath and throws it down. He called it the last form of acceptable discrimination in the church. I kind of felt like I should have had a weave in my hair and fluorescent hi tops with the laces undone, barking at some throwdown behind my man dressed like a white 'Fitty'. But he was AWESOME. (Totally feelin' the caps lock today.)

I love fall. I have said this, no? I recently came upon a freakin' gold mine of fallishness. I have tried to incorporate what I consider fall clothes for the past two weeks and every time I have sweated myself into submission. It is not fall yet. Not even officially. I wear flip flops everyday or else I can't get myself under control. It's really so too bad. But it will get here eventually. November will arrive and everyone will be in such a bad mood that we'll have to bring out the thick socks and wonderful toques.

Hyperbole and a Half has recently reintroduced me to laughing so hard I herniate something.

This girl is like my age too and her stick drawings are AWESOME (Again? Totally). She has a post on Social Terrorism that is soooooooooo true. The Four Levels of Social Entrapment. The one I saw first was why I'll never be an adult which contained the 'go the the bank like a motherf***king adult' thing. But it gets so much better. I think she probably draws all of her stuff on Paint but she's got such freakin' skills I can't contain myself. Blogs and humidity WILL be my demise.

OMG Baby paraphernalia

In the spirit of positive thinking, when I look at my propensity towards ...procrastination, I think of it as a largely negative (albeit unavoidable) piece to my personality. But there's always a pony in there somewhere*.

Our lovely friend Emily in Victoria is having a baby! She told us right before we moved. And way back then, in late May, I told her that I wanted to crochet her little baby things. And I meant it. There is mega cuteness out there when it comes to baby handicrafts ('for' not 'by'). There are also mega cheesy ones. Anyway. I feel somewhat vindicated in my procrastination because way back in June there is no way I could have made anything I think is so babytastic as this:

This is a mishmash, stashbuster of adorableness. And the pompom is of considerable size.

Emily didn't know at the time of our leaving if it was a boy or a girl so both I tried my best to be gender neutral. This brings to play people's ideas of gender performance, concepts of socialized femininity and masculinity, and appropriate baby shower gifts. I chose instead to consult my yarn stash and breed inspiration from there. When we were in Calgary last month, I took to Value Village with Pam, who has the gods of secondhand awesomeness on her side and found a score of perfect little yarn balls (don't be rude!) packaged in a huge bag (don't be rude!) for my consumption.

These baby booties are the sweetest. And the easiest. I can finish a pair in fifteen minutes (and that's while being distracted by the TV). So easy. And just because I was dressed in lace, pink satin and iridescent beading as an infant doesn't mean that all little girls will. Do baby booties have to be a showpiece. They are the cutest thing on the planet just by virtue of being small. Like seriously! Or THIS. Little Peanut Snuggle Sack. The marketing around baby is so nauseatingly effective.

The pompom was hilarious fun. I think I may actually take up pom bomb. I (not surprisingly) caused harm to myself while making that pompom which is kind of like hurting yourself shopping for down comforters. I have an extremely complex love hate relationship with band-aids.

School starts tomorrow which requires a big breath. I'm all signed up for the orientation potpourri and that's really the only thing making me nervous. I'm...NOT an orientation person. Froshing, team building, all that garbage is so far from anything I find entertaining or conducive towards meeting people/making friends. I never come away from those things recognizing people and a meaningful connection. It's always 'you're the heavy girl that couldn't get over the Storm wall' or 'you're the dude that threw up hot dogs all the way from the stage back to his seat'. Awesome. Orientation has always been a day of awkward eye contact and droning messages from Student Union presidents and Deans about 'Your best year ever!'

But I'm all signed up. Because I'm a transfer student, I'm in the orientation programming with all of the other transfer students in the Bachelor of Arts department. So I'm not going to be stuck making conversation in line with a I get to meet my profs, other students from the same department and make connections for work co-op. And I will force myself to like it if I have to.

Official classes start Wednesday. Matt and I have been feebly attempting to try and get ourselves onto some kind of schedule resembling that of people doing things with their lives. We had a whole month of waking up whenever we wanted to. Like going to bed at 2am and wondering why when 8am boot camps me I end up sleeping until 1130. But making yourself get up for a hypothetical schedule as opposed to getting up for the class you went in debt for is a totally different story. I'm PUMPED for my classes. Getting back in a place where I'm writing for a challenge is always a great place. Sometimes I don't write well IN that place but I always write well AFTER that place.

And I'm taking Russian which is sweeeet. It's gonna be fur hats and lots of vodka from this point out.

Happy September!

*This is in reference to a finding the silver lining story of Mama D's. Two sisters: one's a pessimist and the other is an incessantly positive thinker. Like girls do, they always would ask for a pony for Christmas. So one Christmas, in an effort to bring out some positive thinking in the negative one, the parents said they had a surprise, there was a pony outside. The girls rush outside to see a huge pile of poop on the driveway. The negative sister stands on the side, uncomfortably eyeing the pile saying, "Where's the pony?" The other sister jumps into it and begins to dig around screaming, "There must be a pony in here somewhere!"