Yes, in fact. I think I will.

I need a break, anyway.

I like puppies. I like cute puppies. But I don’t like some puppies. I don’t like apple-headed, ugly Chihuahuas. I don’t like frilly little Papillons. I don’t like puppies that look like they were bred to do nothing but be unique and sit on some dignitary’s lap–like Chinese Cresteds or Shi-tzus or Pekinese or tiny little Poodles.

I like hardy, hearty puppies who will grow up into strong dogs. I like dogs whose breed was crafted with a purpose. The working dogs, the sporting dogs, the scent and sight hounds. But that doesn’t mean I only like big dogs. On the contrary, I love a scrappy little terrier. They were made to get into tight places and either scare out the animals or catch the animals. They were made for something. Even the Standard Poodle, as fluffy and pretty as that breed is, was bred for a very specific purpose. They were made to be water retrievers. (And that silly haircut that Poodles get, with the pom-poms on the ankles and hips? It was carefully crafted to keep the dog’s joints warm when swimming in cold water.) I like good ol’ mutts. I like herding dogs and guard dogs.

Not frilly little ugly dogs that I might accidentally step on and squish to death.

Now, on to the cuteness! (All pictures are from www.dailypuppy.com)

Wirehaired Pointing Griffon

This is a Corgi. (But the website didn’t say whether it was a Pembroke or a Cardigan.)

Bernese Mountain Dog… isn’t he adorable?!

Ah, a Great Dane puppy. . . my favorite

Dalmatian!

A Shiba Inu puppy named Soren… looks like a fox, huh?

Simone the Boxer pup… so ugly she’s cute!

This cutie is a Basenji pup. Basenji’s don’t bark… they make a yodeling sound!

This little dude’s got a huge name! His breed name is the Petite Basset Griffon Vendeen (PBGV for short)!

Ah, I love Great Danes!

Well, there are some cute puppies… and there are tons more on the Daily Puppy website. Yay puppies!

I read at work for hours. I read when I eat breakfast and lunch. I read in the bath. I read before bed. I read when I’m bored.

These are the books I’ve read so far this summer.

A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer

Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer

Every Living Thing by James Herriot

Charity Girl by Michael Lowenthal

Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard

All Whom I Have Loved by Aharon Appelfeld

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

Adoption Journeys by Carole S. Turner

One Small Boat by Kathy Harrison

The Pumpkin Patch by Margaret L. Schwartz

Bride in Overdrive by Jorie Green Mark

Living Beauty by Bobbi Brown

I want to see how many books I read through the whole summer. Yay books!

I read all of “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.”

And now I’m listening to Elton John’s “Love Songs” album while looking at jewelry on the Tiffany & Co. website.

I make myself sick…

Yes, bumps. Red ones.  Red ones that are raised up and in between the size of a dime and the size of… something about six times bigger than a dime.

They itch. Terribly. Benadryl makes them go away, but they come back as soon as it wears off.

I look like a badly drawn Connect-the-Dots picture.

Corby’s Doctor/Aunt Robin and the friendly neighborhood pharmacists at Albertson’s seem to think that it is an allergic reaction.  To what? I have no idea.  They gave me steroids to take.

I’m just itchy. And polka-dotted.

    You know, for as anti-social as I often am, I’ve realized lately that I truly am a very people-oriented person.

I don’t want a career.  At least, I don’t think I want a career.  I know I don’t want a career that would take me away from investing in my (someday) family.  Long term, Isn’t making an investment in my family a more valuable contribution than making an investment in a 401k?  I think so.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely want to work.  Can you really picture me staying home all day, keeping a perfectly clean house with sparkly dishes and fluffy pillows? Ha.

I’d like to work somewhere where I can be valuable, make a contribution, influence someone’s life.  I don’t want to be just a cog-wheel in some giant corporation-machine.  I don’t want to punch numbers all day.  I don’t want the only personality that shows through at my job to be a 5″x7″ of my family sitting in a cubicle.  I want to make kids laugh with paint smeared on their noses and smocks.  I want to love on animals.  I want to give people the joy of reading.  I want to have pink hair, or dreadlocks, or messy hair stuck in a tangled ponytail.  I want to love. I want to show people Jesus, without ever having to say His name.

I look at this whole college thing, and I love it.  I love learning.  I love hearing people’s thoughts and expressing my own.  I love having my poetry harshly critiqued by a Pulitzer Prize nominated poet.  I love professors who are truly interested in their student’s lives.  I love the books and the writing and the writers.  I love the people part of learning.  When you get right down to it, people are what’s most important.

But I look at this whole college thing, and I don’t know what to do with it.  What does a degree in English, specializing in Creative Writing, focusing in poetry get me?  It gets me a piece of paper that says “English, Creative Writing, poetry.” Yeah, that’s great.  But it will hang on a wall somewhere and gather dust.  That won’t be the important part.  The important part is the people.  Like when my professor compared my writing one day to the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and the next day to Seamus Haney. (Go read “Digging.” You won’t be disappointed.)  I was floored.  I’ll remember when I had to work my ass off for an 89.4 in Dr. Nelson’s history class, and it was the most satisfying grade I’d ever received.

I might not be a poet laureate.  I might not be some award-winning professor at a prestigious university.  I might be just a mom and a wife.  I might be the strange, artsy girl with pink hair who gets funny looks from pedestrians.  I don’t know what I’ll be.  But if I can make my kids laugh by reading Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” in a silly voice, I have succeeded.  If I can foster in someone a love for anything that’s as intense as my love for poetry and literature, I have made a difference.  If my life reflects my love and His love, I will get my “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I want to be happy.  I want to be a wife and a mommy.  I don’t want to make the big bucks; I want to make a big difference, even if it’s just in one person’s life.

And, lastly, here’s a poem I’m turning in tomorrow in my poetry class.  It’s a revision of a poem I turned in earlier in the semester.

Miller Moth 

Fat-bodied insect with wings that smear like powdered pastels,
I see you. My nose pressed to the window,
nostrils leaving smudges, warm breath
against still-cool spring evening.
Each clink against the porch lamp:
a champagne toast to your future success.
You stumble towards the light;
bump, fall, stumble again.
Wings hum at a frequency I can’t quite identify,
stuck, singing, somewhere
between steady timpani and tenuous viola.
Your path winds like a symphony.

Your wings thump the glass.
My pen prods the paper.

I registered for classes today, but I was only able to get 12 of the 15 hours I need.  The other class I was planning on taking is telling me that I have to have departmental permission to enroll.  (I emailed my departmental advisor, asked her “What do I need to do to get permission to take this course?,” and she replied, “What? There’s no permission needed to take that course. Oh, yes there is. I don’t really know who you need to talk to.” UGH! Those of you who know my chronically frustrating advisor know what I’m talking about.)

My anthropology class is canceled for the next week, which is nice and also annoying.  (We didn’t have the class last week, either.)  Our professor had “pre-made travel plans.” So, she puts us into groups of six, assigns us giant books to read, and we have to make presentations on the books sometime in the next two weeks. (But has she assigned us the dates to have our presentations ready by? NO!) Not to mention the fact that she only ordered 3 books for groups of 6.

Corby and I got to go climbing for the first time in 4 months.  It felt great to get back on the wall… if by “great” I really mean, “painful and disappointing.” Not disappointing in a bad way, but it’s always hard to see how out of shape I’ve become after not climbing for a while.  The last time we climbed, back in December, Corby and I were climbing routes that were ranked at 5.10b… now we’re back down to 5.7 and 5.8… but it was really fun to see Sari and to get to use my AMAZING harness that Corbs got me for Christmas! And it’ll be good to start climbing again before our trip to Last Chance Canyon later this month.

By far, the most frustrating part of my day was at work.  I don’t have a lot to do in my office except answer the phone when it rings, so I do a lot of homework and a lot of surfing the web.  Today, I didn’t feel like doing either of those things, so I brought up my paints and all my brushes and some watercolor paper.  I have an art project due in a few weeks, and even though I have the general idea in mind, I still haven’t completely decided what medium I’m going to work in.  I played with the watercolors today, and I really liked the way my painting was turning out.  I had been working on it for almost 4 hours when the nice lady who helps with the orchestra came into the office… and spilled a whole glass of water all over my painting.  It was one of those times when I wanted to be really pissed off, but I had to act polite.  I was able to salvage most of the painting, even though it isn’t as vibrant as it was before it got bathed.  It just felt terrible to see all my hours of work destroyed in half a second.

Oh well, I’ll get over it.

April is going to be a fun and busy month, methinks.  I’m going to Ft. Davis over Easter weekend to hang out with Corby and his family. I have to learn the new AnyCast system that’s replacing my nice, easy Trinity system for Paradigm On-Air graphics. (But, dude, that AnyCast is INSANELY cool!)  Corby and I are going rock climbing with the TTU Outdoor Pursuits Center later this month… and then I’ve got a huge paper due May 1st.

It amazes me how fast this year is speeding by!

You pick some books that are collecting dust on your shelves, books that you aren’t planning to read again (or ever), you register these books on the website, write their personal number/site address in the book, and “set the books free” out in the world… on park benches, store shelves, classrooms, doctors’ offices… anywhere.  Whoever finds the book goes to the website, posts a journal entry about the book, and then passes it on again.  This creates a log of everywhere the book has traveled and everyone who has read it.  It’s a really interesting concept… at least to me.

Tomorrow, I’ll be releasing two books… The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth… and Seeking Enlightenment Hat by Hat, by Nevada Barr.  I read the first book in class a few semesters ago, and the second book is one I bought from a bargain bin for $0.49 and will probably never get around to reading.

Look at BookCrossing.com… register if you want… because promoting reading is something that I’m all for!

Happy reading!

I’ve read four (almost five) books in the last two weeks. I started out with a book called I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith. It’s set in 1930′s rural England, and it’s the journal of a girl who’s the daughter of a famous author who can’t write anymore. They live in a huge castle… and then there’s a lot of love and deceit and stuff, too. I liked the book a lot, but I enjoyed watching the movie more.

The next book I read is called Out of the Bulrushes, and it’s by Mona McElderry. It’s about Romanian adoptions during the first couple of years that international adoption was even a feasible option for American parents. It’s really great reading from a Christian perspective, and it makes me very glad that international adoption agencies have improved exponentially in the last 20 years!

Next, I read two (almost three) books by Amy Tan. She’s a Chinese-American author who writes fiction about the experiences of Chinese women. The first book I read by her is called The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and the second one is called The Joy Luck Club. They were both great. I recommend them to anyone who has any interest in China. The third book I started reading by Amy Tan was called Saving Fish From Drowning. It started out with an amazing vignette/legend that I still can’t get out of my head, but the actual story wasn’t as interesting as I thought it might be. I didn’t finish it.

Now, I’m returning to my roots. When I was in elementary school, I started reading the Redwall book series by Brian Jacques. I love everything about these books. The way good always triumphs over evil in the end (which seems like it would get boring, but it doesn’t). The amazing descriptions of huge feasts and epic battles. Everything. These are the books I want to read out loud to my kiddos someday. I read them all until about my Junior year of highschool, and then I just got behind. I’ve read the first 15 books in the series, but I need to catch up on the three that I haven’t read. So, today I went to Mahon Library (my very favorite of all the Lubbock libraries… even if it does have creepy people hanging out and sleeping everywhere), and I got the last three books… Loamhedge, Rakkety Tam and High Rhulain. I saw all of Kelly’s Redwall books when Corby and I visited College Station, and seeing them made me want to read all the books again!

I really didn’t mean for this entry to be a book review, but I guess that’s what it turned into!

It is perfect.

It’s dark red brick with white trim, a beautiful white front door, and white columns.  There’s ivy growing up the walls (Yes, bad for the brick… but beautiful!), and …. it’s just adorable.

And it’s for rent.

The house next to it is beautiful, too, and for sale. But it’s more conventional. “My” house looks a lot more loved.

However, my family has forbidden me from inquiring about this beautiful house.  It’s about 2 blocks south of First Baptist (which would make my life so easy! Walk to work, walk to class… I’d still have to drive to Corby’s though lol).  No, the neighborhood isn’t great… but it COULD be if enough people would move in who would be willing to take care of the houses and make them pretty and love them and take care of the neighborhood.  But, alas, my love for the house is all for naught.  I am not allowed to live there, thanks to the parents.

It’s not even like I can say, “Oh, that’s a cute house, but I can’t live there, so I might as well forget it.” Nope, I have to drive by the house at least twice every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. (I say “have to,” but it’s just the fastest way to get to work.  I could go another way if I really wanted to.)  I keep thinking maybe the “For Rent” sign will get taken down so I don’t have to think about it anymore.

I don’t even know how much the rent is, not to mention bills.  Anyone want to live in my adorable house with me? (Oh yeah, I can’t live there…)

*sigh* I’ll take a picture next time I drive by and post it.