calling all fans

Not mine of course. Tomorrow is Gilmore Girls season finale, but rumor has spread rampantly that GG got canceled, despite its planned one last season, thus turning tomorrow night's Luke and Lorelai reunion into the SERIES finale. I wanted to check on this rumor to see for myself from a reliable source, but my computer lab has blocked the Gilmore Girls link on the WB website. Of all the sites to block! Does anyone know if this is true? What I mean by that, is go check the website, darn it, and tell me before I implode!

smoke

So, it turns out, if a smoke detector anywhere in my building is set off, all the blazing fire alarms break forth into demonic heraldry. And the only thing that can stop them is the authority of the much-delayed fire department. If it were anything but my pot-smoking neighbors, I'd have burned alive in my bed, because, forget evacuating, I stuffed my ears with orange plugs and tried to sleep despite the noise. My only concern was, if I did have to flee the burning ruin of my every earthly possession, would I have time to grab my thumb drive?

What can I say? I'm a girl who knows her priorities.

crazy afraid

The crazy people of Austin's drag constantly make me uncomfortable. There is the deaf woman who rants to herself in sign language. The man who cut the crotch out of his pants for who knows what reason, and much to my horror. The girl who wears all white, including painting her body, but neglecting a bra. Then there are all those who are crazy in the normal been-on-drugs-too-long kinda way. But today I felt frightened, really truly.

When he showed up at the bus stop I immediately felt nervous. Perhaps because he kept staring at me with an unfocused gaze, such as when Joyce stares at your neck like Dracula during Lent. I make jokes, but he was strange, a scary strange, and he kept edging closer, shifting this blue beer cooler by his feet and stroking his stomach with his fingertips.

Not being an idiot, I planned to let this man board a bus first, but when the 5:42 came I sprinted toward it: it was safer than the bus stop because it was full of people. Full to the breaking point. That was the problem. The bus driver waved me away from the doors and pointed to the next bus which was completely empty. They were all switching buses. Crazy man was looking the other way and a torrent of mishandled bus passengers were following me, so I went ahead and boarded the second bus. First aboard. And before many others came the man clutching the blue cooler and walking with his body leaning forward. The entire bus sat open for the taking and he took the seat next to me before I could move to the aisle to block him.

For a few blocks I told myself I was being judgmental, that he was crazy but harmless, that I was letting my discomfort out of my control. But soon I didn't have the presence of mind to talk myself out of being afraid. He kept leaning closer, the kind of close that only Kevin has a right to be near me. He stared quite openly, rocking slightly, raking me with his eyes. I tried to keep my eyes focused out the window, tried to fit my body into the crack between my seat and the glass. Tried to escape the nearness of the crazy next to me.

I don't know what finally cracked me. But extreme fear flooded over me. I was on a crowded public bus (so crowded in fact that I could not have taken another seat) so this man could do nothing to me there. But I knew that he wasn't going to leave this bus before I did, and I could not get off alone to have him follow me away from the many passengers. The man shifted in his seat and I almost screamed. The rational side of my brain told me in a shaky voice that I could talk to the bus driver if the man was still on the bus when we neared my stop. I knew he would be. My fear bordered on hysteria, albeit behind a calm, bored commuter expression. I am not this afraid. Ever.

Then my mind grasped onto the Lord. I remembered the Stripling Warriors, thanks to breakfast time reading (my primary president would be so proud) and I prayed for protection. I thought on how he kept them from death and I knew God could keep me safe too. Please protect me, Father! I cried. Don't let him harm me!

Immediately the lid burst from the man's beer cooler, spilling ice onto the floor of the bus. Whatever else he carried inside stayed there, despite the jostling the cooler received on the floor. At the noise, the man jumped, as though being attacked, grabbed his cooler protectively under his arm and fled, racing from the bus, pushing open the doors himself. He did not stop running when he disembarked. My heart raced too.

Another stranger took his seat and could not have been much further than the crazy head been. Yet I felt safe afterward. And glad, very glad, that nothing happened.

consider the lillies

The night that the all-evil MasterCard SOBs decided to steal my money and break my heart (all legal according to the contract we'd signed years prior--Satan was the arbiter), I knelt to pray to my Heavenly Father. I did not ask for comfort, because I did not feel I deserved it. I did not ask for help, because I knew I didn't deserve that. Instead I said I was sorry. I said I was sorry for eighty-four-thousand things. For not listening. For telling Him what I had planned. For slapping away His gifts.

That last one was the biggest. How could I ask for help, I wondered, when He had already helped me before? I was thinking of Utah. My problems there, of the financial order, were tuition and paying off my debt. The Lord gave me the gift of government money, the hard-earned money of tax-payers everywhere, of which I was not yet one. The VA benefits were enough to pay my tuition, books and debt in two years' time. What a generous gift! It only applied, however, as long as I stayed in school. And four months ago, I left school.

The decision to move to Texas was mine. I made sure Heavenly Father didn't disapprove, but I pretty much worded it this way: Father, I want to go to Austin. I can do it, if You'll come too and take care of me. He agreed with a subtle reference to Matthew 6.

But once I got here, I let myself become unhappy. Heavenly Father took care of me, I reasoned, when He found me a job. Then the work was up to me. The hours put in, the careful budgeting, the anal payment of bills. I had enough-ish. At least I made no credit-card purchases, even if the balances stubbornly refused to shrink. And when I became bored with my job, I told myself to look past that to the next paycheck and the bills it would pay. When I missed school, I reasoned that if I kept up with my boring job and kept paying my bills then someday I could go back to school. But enough isn't always enough, and I got down on myself for being unsatisfied, and I felt sadness and remorse in addition to loneliness and dead dreams. And I thought it was all my fault and my well-deserved lot.

Then, when on my knees that fateful day, I got a gentle admonition. Quite a lecture, about many things, actually. One part of it (for I refuse to tell all) was, were I to put it in my less charitable words: stop playing a martyr and ask. It was as though Heavenly Father looked at me sternly and said, I never said you couldn't have more blessings; that was your thought. I cried to Him, that I thought I didn't deserve another chance because I had refused His great gifts before. You asked me to come with you. Now ask.

I bowed my head in shame, and were it not for His all-hearing ears He might not have caught the mumble. If I could get one of those 0% Interest credit card offers on balance transfers, then I could transfer my highest interest card over and more easily pay off my credit. It was a humble enough plea. But I felt right away my Father's pleasure that I had asked. So then I simply told Him I loved Him, and I didn't know how to fix my situation, but that I'd really like His help. I felt His love, even if it came with a message from Him saying, It's about time!

Two days later the credit card offer came. The job followed within a week.

The benefits of my new job are many. The money difference, will for instance enable me to pay off my debt by December--the same date I could have paid it off in Utah, even though I now have the added debt from the move--and still have a considerable (for me) savings.

Oh, and my company will pay for school too.

auld lang sine

I was reminded this morning that today is New Year's Day, the day to which I looked forward last year, the day in which I failed two years ago. But like last year, this day I feel more in limbo, in the process of turning the bend in the road. I am not at the apex. Though, if I think about it, I never have been in March. Even that awful day, two years ago, didn't end everything. That came on April 20th. If the date means nothing, then at least the fact that it was the last day of finals should. The last day of finals last year had me toasting Emilie at PF Changs and singing Rainy Days and Mondays. So while I feel a little crumbly and somewhat adrift today, I will wait and see how I feel in a month.

grocery shopping the audrey way

I once received this piece of advice from a friend: never, ever use a shopping cart when you have to walk home with your groceries. Oh, would that I had listened! Not until I began placing my selected item on the conveyor belt did I begin to think that they looked a little...massive.

Sure enough, carrying it all home seemed a little comical and somewhat painful. My arms were strained and sore from moving the day prior and my hands were scratched, blistered and bruised. As I stumbled home along the rather busy four-lane road, I wished that I could just look enough like a bag woman that no one would pay me any mind. Oh, just don't look at me, I prayed. Embarrassingly enough, I had to stop and re-situate the load once or twice under the stares of passing motorists.

Humiliation never did seem to peak. In my parking lot a bag ripped, spilling cans and bottles at my feet. What sort of bagger puts all the cans in one bag and leaves another bearing only three ramen noodles?! I placed the expelled groceries into my purse and continued on from there, while two very able-bodied boys watched from where they stood talking by their new sports car.

For one heavenly moment I placed all the bags on the ground while I unlocked the pedestrian gate into my complex (and yes, I have a complex now), but as I hoisted the load I stepped onto the lawn, sliding my flip-flops through slippery new mud. Crash! Down I went, breaking the strap of my new purse and my fall, by landing on my recently acquired food. Did I land on the eggs or the tomatoes, I asked myself dryly. The eggs.

As comfortable as flip-flops can be, there is a downside to them. When they get dirty, so do your feet. I stomped the last fifty yards to my door with a clump of black clay clinging to my toes. I unloaded my groceries on my porch and bound my feet in the plastic bags before entering. Plastic rustled with each step I took, back and forth from the door to the kitchen putting away groceries. Between fits of tears and giggles, I washed my toes and thought how very much my style that whole afternoon had been.

list almost lost

My mom asked me to email her a paper I wrote in Family History about Bob's family. She has asked me this countless times since I wrote it in April. I finally put forth the effort to get it to her and couldn't find it on my U drive. My only other thought was the flash drive that sometimes works. And there it was. Along with other little treasures. The papers were mostly composed for my Personal History class, pages about my family, my childhood and adopting Step-Bob. Where they fall short in facts they are rich in truth.

And there was one last paper titled simply List. I wrote it on March 28th, the anniversary of the day I began to Fail. The list has 101 things I learned in the year prior, my way of turning my Failure into a success.

Some of the list includes things that are rather random: my hair makes me look like a cockatoo in the morning, Star Wars III was a let down. Snape is still on the side of good….yes he is!

Some are more proverbial: being honest means more than telling the truth, laughing cures everything…except when it doesn’t, and crying in front of other people is okay--In fact, it’s nicer than crying alone.

There are practical discoveries: Jet Blue is my favorite airline, and How to drive stick-shift .

Personal Growth: I can bear seeing my dad cry, I can write a complete novel, and I can get a good GPA.

I have personal testimony and long-term goals. There are things that are changing about me all the time, and things that will always, always stay the same. I have a unicorn.