Makes me sad

I gave my manager a notice that i will be leaving my store at the end of the month.  I decided that it would be nice to have the month of April off so that I can study for exams and get everything done for moving.  I am moving back up home to my parents place for the summer.  At first I wasn't too excited about the idea because I hate that town, but I'm getting more excited as time goes by, if there is any time of year that that area is nice, it's during the summer.  My mom's garden, especially, is beautiful.  There are flowers everywhere, a gazebo with comfy chairs and a firpit in the middle.  There are trees everywhere and a pond with a waterfall that constantly tinkles.  I can't wait to help my mom with it as well and dig around in the soil again.

I also have set up a project for myself to paint a mural in my parents kitchen.  It will be of a spanish courtyard with red tiled roofs in the background going all the way down to the sea.  I think that the picture that I'll be making makes my mom think of her days back in Colombia.  I hope it turns out and doesn't look too cartoony.

I'll also get to hang around with princesses once again, who I haven't seen in a long, long time. 

I will miss my friends here, however, some of them will visit me during the summer, they promise.  I will miss the river valley, and princess island park in the summer.  I will miss walking down Stephen Avenue and working at my teeny tiny little store.  I will miss McNally Robinson, especially since it will be closed by the time I come back to Calgary.  I will miss William, but whether I stay in Calgary or go back home I will miss William as he is going home for the summer.  

I won't particularly miss this basement suite.  Don't get me wrong, I love it and how we've fixed it to make it our home, but most of the things that are special about it we'll take with us to our next home. 

Only a week until Easter.  I'm excited about that.

I want to get into the habit of writing in this thing again because I remember the glory days of talking to a bunch of different people that I enjoy frequently while keeping this blog updated.  Not to mention that I enjoyed letting all my stewed up thoughts out so that they aren't plaguing me anymore. (Yeah, my blog was I guess kind of like Dumbledores penseive (was that the name of it?  You Harry Potter geeks (I mean, awesome people) know what I"m talking about at any rate, yeah, that's what a blog is for me.)

I guess I kind of ran out of things to say.  My life has been so consistantly filled by school, work, boyfriend, and friends that I really don't feel like I have any information to let out.

I guess we are here in the midst of lent, and that should give me some good contemplative words.  To tell you the truth, I never understood preparation times like advent or lent growing up.  I mean, we are supposed to be drawing closer to God, contemplating him and preparing for the celebration of Jesus' birth and death, respectively, or so I heard.  But as a Christian I thought that we were always supposed to be spending time contemplating him and getting rid of the gross things in our lives.  So what is this all about?

This is where the blog comes in handy because now I'm suddenly coming up with answers.  I don't know how right they are but at least I'm spinning the cogs.  I guess to go further than all this, if we are supposed to be constantly in celebration and mourning and contemplation of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, than why do we have days set aside for Christmas and Easter?

I guess the reason that I most love celebrating those two holidays on the days they fall (unless you are on the other half of the world where Christmas is on a completely different day) is because I love knowing that there are Christians everywhere celebrating that day, with me in spirit if not in flesh.  Millions of us together celebrating.  That is something to reckon with.  Also, I think it's helpful to me that those days are set aside in the calendar because it's easier to really connect the humanity of Jesus as he had a birthday (even if it's a made up one) and a death day (even if he came back to life) like every other human. 

Can I take these thoughts and follow them back to the idea of lent and advent?  I guess it is helpful to know that while I am humbling myself and preparing for the celebration of birth or death of Jesus that millions of others also are.   Many others are reading what I"m reading and thinking what I'm thinking (Pinky and the Brain here) and focussing on what I am focussing on.  That is, unless they forget, like I so often do.  As for the historisticity (that's really not a word is it?  Maybe I should put my blog through spellcheck like K does)  of lent and advent I don't know what to say, maybe one of you out there does.  I don't think Jesus prepared 40 days to be born (his preparation was much longer than that).  I don't think that he only spent the amount of days of lent preparing for his death (and the disciples definitely were not prepared for that death) but I do enjoy the tradition of it.  I'm kind of a sucker for traditions sometimes so I guess this is it again.

Though I know that we go through the different prayers of advent and that many of us give up different items for lent I do mourn the Evangelical church because I know that most of us have no idea what to do with either lent or advent.  I'm kind of glad that we have an Anglican pastor at chapel who leads us through these days. 

And that's that for this week.

It's Valentines Day

My first Valentines Day with a boyfriend, actually.  I've never been in the Valentines Day spirit (I guess you call that) and still am not.  I enjoy my boyfriend, and every other day of the year am glad to be with him (maybe a slight exaggeration) but Valentines Day still gets me. 

My sister and I had a discussion last week about singles day.  Why is there no day celebrating singles?  If we are celebrating couples then it seems like an emphasis in our society is that everyone should have the very pretentious sounding "significant other".  That makes me sad as I loved being single and didn't understand this push that some people have to have a date for Valentines Day.  To feel pathetic if they didn't.  I am lucky enough to have some very strong single women in my life who enjoy it and won't let Valentines Day defeat them and feel substandard.  I know it never made me feel substandard.

I'm not saying that it is the main goal of Valentines Day to make single people feel bad about themselves, but there seems to be that result more often than not.  If they don't feel bad then they feel bitter.  My sister was one who had year after year of case studies of people who rent movies on Valentines day.  She said that either you get the cutesy couple who are all over each other right in front of you or you get the bitter angry people who just want to rent a movie and hide away from the world for Valentines day.

I think of the previous missed opportunities I have had for Valentines day as a single woman.  I could have gone out to a restaraunt on Valentines Day, alone, and treated myself to something tasty, and ordered desert.  Never once feeling bad about being in my single state.  Why didn't I do that?  A demonstration of not letting society dictate whether or not I should date and if I do, when. 

I'm on the other side this year. I do have a boyfriend, we are doing something, but away from people so that we don't seem like annoying smug couple.  This is also his first Valentines day with someone so he has no expectations.  He knows my feelings about the day, for the most part, at least, and as much as he calls himself a sheep, he doesn't mind straying from the crowd.  As much as he says he is not very compassionate, he doesn't like hurting others with unthinking actions.  I don't mind celebrating being with him at least a little bit.  And if I'm a little less enthused about it on this day, the other days make up for it. 

On another note, we're going to Three Hills from Saturday until Tuesday!  I'm so excited to see friends and family while I"m there.  I'm so excited to breathe the fresh air, and I'm so excited to set my heart to rest and relax in the feeling of being home.  As much as I love Calgary, my home feeling always is generated when I catch sight of that blue water tower.

Another junk mail too funny to resist