Winter blaaaaah

Ugh. I am a big blob of negative non-productiveness.
I want junk food.
I want my sidewalk to shovel itself.
I want to feel in control of my life again. As in, able to fulfill my obligations. I am falling short left, right, and centre. I am behind with school reading, my house is a mess, my volunteer stuff is going nowhere, and I am resenting EVERYTHING I have committed to.
That is not true. I committed to James. I am not resenting him. He is being incredibly gracious as I sleep and cry and not contribute to anything.
I want cookies. And chicken wings. And pizza.
I want to be able to buy a plane ticket.

I want to stop wanting. Maybe I'll wish, instead?
I wish I was good at acting on the things that I know would help.
I wish I was better at spending time in prayer. I'm pretty sure it would help.
I wish I knew how people manage a full course load, part time jobs, sports teams and other extra curricular stuff, and remain sane and get good grades.
I wish I could stop comparing myself.

All Things New

Apparently I have typed that phrase into some text box somewhere before, because it popped up automatically as I started. I guess not all things are new. At least I'm dependable.
I am sitting in the sunny solarium at school, with a fresh pile of book beside me. It's easy to be positive about academia after a long break, and before a pile of deadlines. These books look inviting even. We'll see how long that lasts...
I am looking forward to this semester, though. I am taking three (I hope) courses. Maybe four. Because of some of my changes due to the lack of trip to Prague, I may be short a course toward my Global Studies degree. I'm hoping that I can beg for the mercy of the Global Studies department to count one of my other courses toward the GS degree. It would save me a day of driving to school, and the time, obviously. The courses I am taking are "The Individualized World", "Islam Culture and Society" and "Indigenous Writers in English." Hopefully the content is as good as the titles...
Beyond this semester, I am looking forward to this year in general. This is my last semester, and I am excited to see what happens after graduation. I have my eyes on what looks to be a fantastic job, that I'm in no way qualified for but will apply for anyway. We're hoping to finish updating our little house, one room at a time. James will hopefully be done school by the end of the year as well, so it's definitely a time of transition for us.
We'll see what happens!

Christmas Letter

James and I have written our first ever Christmas letter. We've decided to go paperless so as to save a tree or two.

It can be found here.

Merry Christmas!

Here goes...

I am going to wrap this complaint in something I am thankful for. I am thankful that this is the last Christmas of my undergrad degree. I am thankful that I have only one semester left, and that soon this will be over.
But, for now...
I hate paper writing!
mmmm...not completely true. I hate writing on things that I am not passionate about.
I have two papers to write right now...one due Tuesday, one due Thursday. The Thursday one is incredibly exciting, life giving, even. I feel so energized as I sift through my material and put things together. I think it's the first assignment in my entire undergrad career that I have truly enjoyed.
The only problem is, between now and working on that, I should really finish (start) the other one which is totally uninspiring. It's to be written in first-person, in character, based on a mock negotiation I participated in last week regarding the Caledonia land claim. So, it's this weird mix of research and in character opinion and just....gah. A frustrating class in general.
And, I think I might have Seasonal Affective Disorder. Or I'm just seriously avoiding this schoolwork, but, I have just been a big blob the past few days, and it's not a good thing. I am feeling so unproductive and paralyzed, and then getting frustrated with myself for being unproductive, and it's just a ridiculous cycle. I was supposed to get groceries this morning and then hunker down to get writing, and it took me until 2:00 this afternoon to get my errands done, then home and everything put away, then lunch, then...well, now.
So, I still have a lot of writing to do. And I promised my dog (well, myself really, on his behalf) that we would walk today, and all I want to do is curl up in bed. Gah.

Psalm 23

"The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want." Ps 23:1

"I shall not want." Is that a fact? A certainty based on the truth that the LORD is my shepherd?

But I still want...

Perhaps it is a determination - "I shall NOT want!" - I won't allow myself? I will trust despite wanting?

But I still want...

Want what?

Perhaps I am not yet being shepherded. Perhaps, what I want is to know in my experience the Lord as my shepherd.
Or, perhaps, I do not understand just how significant it is that the Lord is my shepherd. Perhaps, if I realized the extent of his love, the vastness of his provision, I would be able to rest, to not want.

So. What does it really mean? The LORD is my shepherd...?

The LORD

- Yahweh, the creator of the universe, the provider of the garden...the ram...the exodus...the manna...the lamb of God.

Yes. That Lord

Is

This is his very nature! He says "I AM"; "I will be who I will be." This sentence could be just as powerful if it stopped there - The LORD is.

But it doesn't. It goes on. The LORD is my...

My. Me. A personal God.

The LORD is my...

shepherd - one who leads, feeds, shelters protects.

The LORD is my shepherd!

I shall not want.

So. There are a million-and-one things I could fill this box with right now. I shall try to condense, and pick things that may be relevant or interesting to the rest of the world.
So - car-free experiment. It went pretty well. Other than going to class in Waterloo, I think I only used the car twice. The first time was to bring dinner to friends in Burlington who had just had a BABY! :-D And I think that's a good enough excuse. The second was to go to *cough*costco*cough*. Which may not be as good. But, here's my thing: Yes, big box = bad. I understand the issues around it. I also understand that 4 litres of milk at Costco is $3.95, as opposed to $5.47 at my neighbourhood No Frills. And my deoderant is cheaper. and...and...ya, I dunno. I love the idea of buying everything from nice little local shops, but, the student budget is going to continue buying milk from Costco. Next time I'll try to take the bus.

Random-crazy-event of the week.
Yesterday, Charlie did his usual thing when the mailman came: he went nuts. (As I said, this is usual). He runs to the door, barks like mad, and jumps up to see out the window. Unusual: yesterday he actually broke the window when he jumped up. I am glad I am not my mailman (and am feeling incredibly AWFUL that his happened), and am going to put a nice country-style mailbox on a post at the end of my porch to protect my gracious and forgiving mailman from future events resulting in shards of glass flying in many directions. Did I mention there was lots of glass? And my dog involved? Yeah, as well as a trip to the vet, 4 stitches under anesthetic, and a hefty vet bill. Oh, yeah, and did I mention that I have a large hole in my door? Apparently that is not energy efficient. Or cheap to fix. Joy.

Speaking of joy...I have been absolutely loving hosting a Growth Group (Bible study, home church, whatever you want to call it) from our church. We have been meeting to study Ephesians on Monday nights, and it has been lovely. It's really great to be learning from a variety of people who all have different life experience and insight. I have also been learning about meditation, from Richard Foster's book Celebration of Discipline and a related study guide. It's great.
So, this morning I was spending some time with Psalm 23. Well, the first verse of Psalm 23.
"The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want."
Here's some of the things that came out of that time:
You know what? I think I'll make this a separate post. I don't want it to get lost at the bottom of crazy ramblings.

BAH!

So, my computer just up and died.
And I have a presentation tomorrow.
And all of the stuff I need for the presentation is on the computer.
I can't even ad lib it, because the reading it is based on was on reserve in the library, so I only have my notes...on my computer.
And I could come up with all kinds of other interesting and intelligent things this afternoon.
Except that I'm working from 3-11, which means that I have to go in about a half an hour.
And seeing as I need to leave the house at 7:15 tomorrow to get to my class, I would like to go to bed when I get home from work tonight.
Oh, our technology dependent lives. When will I learn to back up my work...?