the rose of kiev

Several reasons. First: I've become an obsessive drafter. I have many ideas at various levels of conception in my blog cache, and I've only satisfactorily completed and published a fraction of them. Second: Graduating from college has snuck up on me, and it has included things like exit counseling for loans and repayment plans and figuring out how to take care of health insurance. It's a bunch of strangely adult and dead-dry boring tasks. Third: The past three weeks in particular have been devoted to a new writing project, something I'm hoping to put up here in chunks as it matures. When my grandmother began dying May 10th, I immediately began to take careful notes. She passed away the following Sunday, and I continued to take notes until long after my family privately wept over her urn that Friday. The project will be book-sized, and it will be an attempt to photograph my Dad's side of the family in that two week period. There are three motivations to this project:...

something about the near-together circumstances of Nana dying and Jeannie quitting, and how it's a reminder that life is not totally in our control.

I have ridden the bus almost every weekday for the past four years. I first moved out the fall of 2006 into a house 7 blocks from High Street. I would get up early, pack my bookbag for the average 15-hour absence, and plod downhill on Arcadia, past the football field and the high school, and the park area at the corner where the homeless people and drug users would sit on slatted benches and catcall at me. My cheerful rebuffs, and the nearby busy street, were always defense enough. Rain, snow, and high humidity I would cross the street when the sign flashed into a little white man. Sometimes I'd jaywalk, bag thumping from my sprint, if the bus came rolling up too soon. I've always lived on the east side of High Street, and the northbound bus for my morning commute has, obviously, always been on the west side. There've been days I've watched my bus pass by less than 20 feet away just because I was on the wrong side of the street. Infuriating. In 2006, I would drop six qu...

I'm generally comfortable in my own skin and satisfied to be myself. But if there's one thing I don't have, and am morose to be without, it's discernment. Dictionary.com describes it as "acuteness of judgment and understanding". Some of its synonyms are "shrewd" and "astute". My favorite synonym is "perspicacity". Solomon asked for discernment when God came to him in a dream and offered him anything he wanted. Proverbs can't stop yapping about those who are discerning ( here , here , here and then some). A man of discernment is considered knowledgable and wise . I have some friends that are perspicacious. I want to be a perspicacious person. And I am not. I wish that weren't the case, but that's just the fact of the matter. One of my dear friends has been going through some difficulties in her life over the past few months. The problems are all knotted up and intertwined, the strands gummed together and fraying, almost...

My hamster is dead. Two days ago I skipped class to do some badly-needed cleaning around the house, starting with the turd-sprinkled hamster cage. Strangely, I'd come to enjoy the process of cleaning his cage, of improving the life of the creature I love. After removing the black mesh top and engaging in the perfunctory chase, beneath the water bottle and through the cardboard tunnel and behind the plastic green wheel, I scooped up my wriggling pet and stuffed him into his little plastic running ball. He kept running into my feet and legs as I removed the elements of his cage and scooped out his shavings with the leaf of a cardboard box. I giggled as he rammed into my calf again, and with my phone I videotaped him as he hurtled around the room. I was playing a Paul Simon cd that my stepfather bought me for Christmas and sang "Love Me Like A Rock" to him as he careened around the apartment. He'd been warming up to his plastic ball more and more. At first he would get p...

My girlfriends like to bother me about when Dave and I will have a baby. Their eyes light up at the thought of having a small wriggling creature to play with...and the ability to give it back to me when that creature diarheeas down both chubby thighs. So for anyone wondering when that blessed event will even begin to be a possibility, here's a checklist of things to look for: 1) 2 college degrees hanging in frames on the wall. Emphasis on framed , not just received. Just because the tassel's on the other side of the hat does not mean we are suddenly in a hurry. 2) A diminishment in my present glee every time I refill my Ocella prescription. 3) A time when our sink spends more time clean and empty than as a neon-moldy scientific experiment. 4) A clear floor, when we would no longer have to hike over the hills and dales of laundry baskets and bookbags. At this point, we'd have to stack the crib on top of the hamster cage. 5) A trip to the grocery store that isn't determin...

The past 4 weeks of my life have been non-stop chaos since I started working for Ohio State's student newspaper, The Lantern . Not just because I work for The Lantern (a privilege I pay Ohio State for), but because I also work 17 hours a week, have two other classes plus homework, 3 church meetings a week, a home to care for (which is looking distinctly neglected), a husband to love, and this apparently insignificant thing called a social life. I have been crying, ranting, angry, and clawing to keep my head above water, but I think I'm finally catching the quick stride. In all the madness, I've learned I LOVE the process of writing articles, every single thing about it. I love researching and drafting the questions to ask, having an excuse to talk to such interesting people, the delight of scribbling down very real and beautiful quotes, and the process of assembling it all into an article. It is the most wonderful combination of humanity and the art of writing. Here are 8 t...