The Dish and the Spoon - 3

Distant, she had said. That is what she said she feels I am these days.

I watched the ground some as I chewed these thoughts in my mind, trying to process everything. Maybe I was, probably I was. It was something I hated to face, didn't want to believe.

The beads of asphalt continued to race past beneath me as I churned the pedals of the bicycle, moving ever onward. I squinted back up into the freezing winds, gripping the rubber of the handle bars tighter with fingers that were turning blue. The weather had grown older since I left the coffee shop and had matured from nipping to biting. The winds blowing helped neither the temperatures nor my ride, but it hardly mattered. Nothing really seemed to be helping right now except every step in the right direction.

As usual, that was the real question.

I looked back into the sky but still couldn’t yet see it. As late as it was growing, it was still too early. It would not be long, though. It wouldn’t be long.

It’s been a long time, she had said.

I sighed. It hurt. I was in no state to be mulling this over. I was tired and weak and sore, but then again, I also had a job to do. My eyes hurt, but were no longer tired. My body ached but was no longer dead.

I leaned to the right, into the turn as I just caught the light.

It wouldn’t be long now at all.












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Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey!

Happy day, everybody!
I'm in Florida at my grandparents' farm for the first time in almost two years to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family. As per our own tradition, every year we come down here to the panhandle in the Bonifay area and my aunts and uncles on my dad's side all gather together to stay at "Grandma and Grandpa's."

Last night was our first full day and we filled the morning with catch, mudpies, croquet and kite flying. I'd quite forgotten I still knew how to put an old piece of canvas into the air, and how much fun it is, in that take it easy kind of way. Also forgot how much fun it is to throw a baseball back and forth and talk about nothing.

That evening, we lit a bonfire to challenge the star-painted sky and roasted hot dogs and smores. I taught my little brother the perfect way to make sure that the dog is cooked all the way through and not burned on the outside and how to make the marshmellows puff up without catching fire, and enjoyed some of the best campfire food ever with my family. We opened up the famous firework drawer and shot bottle rockets and whistlers into the sky, along with a few extra, special shows, just enough to delight and excite the kids from age 7 to 70. We opened a box of 100 sparklers and let my little cousins and siblings run around with them for ten minutes, running back to us every time they ran out so that they could get another one, two, or handful and fill the night air with sparks and lights and laughter.

This morning we woke up to few the horses and begin the laborious duty of cooking and entertaining ourselves. The girls made colorful place cards for everyone and the grownups went out with the guns to shoot clay disks out of the air and black circles out of targets, just for fun. I was the only one to a dent in the half dollar with the pistol. It's been a while since I've gotten to get out to shoot - Dad took me to school for most of the sharp-shooting.

Don't worry though, we all got back inside to help Grandma set the table and finish with the food!

When everything was ready, we all gathered together and I thanked God for the food, the family, the house, and everything, and we asked His Blessing on all of us. Then, the feast began, each thanking Grandma or Maddie or me or whomever for their wonderful work and the excellent food. I sat at the kids table again this year, to take care of them and keep things in order. The called me the BFG ("Big Friendly Giant" - from Roald Dahl's book) on my name card and I taught them Italian to their joy.

We've been napping ever since, and still haven't told the kids about dessert yet, just so that we could all rest happily! Thankfully, in their excitement, they've all run off and are reading or playing games about the place. We'll come back to it later tonight and play card games late into the night...

I'm thankful for my family - for each little member and each big one too. I'm thankful for all the weird traditions we have, like sending the kids off to collect the sticks left behind by the fireworks and thumping one another on the head and in the belly. I'm thankful for them even when they accidentally throw leftover fireworks into the bonfire and when they have old grudges against the beaver population of North Florida. I'm especially thankful for them when they teach me how to hold a baseball bat and sit straight on a horse and shoot a gun standing up. I'm thankful for every influence they have had on my life.

I'm thankful for my friends - for every time when we're hanging out they'll say or do something totally stupid and 100% worth it, for the times they scare me and for the times they make me proud. I'm thankful for my chance to know them and the times we get to spend together. I'm thankful for the long talks and the deep and meaningful conversation, for the hugs and the sighs, for the five hour phone calls and deep secrets and the things we will only share between or amongst us. I'm thankful for the memories that will stamp time and our hearts forever.

I'm thankful for my life - the opportunity, the ability, the time, the days, the air, the strength, every part of it. It has given me both joy and pain, and I'm thankful for both.

I'm thankful for food, and for shelter, and for clothes.

I'm thankful for laughter.

I'm thankful for sunsets and red leaves and warm ocean waves and the smell of cut grass and the stars of city lights from an airplane and feather pillows and hot chocolate stirred with a candy cane.

I'm thankful for Love.

I'm thankful for God.

I will give time - to what I do, to who I am, and to who I love. I'll give time to those who need to be loved the most, and to those who don't deserve it.

I'll give my wonderful cake recipe, and the knowledge of how to juggle. I'll teach what I can to those who ask. I'll give my memories and my stories, my ideas and my imaginations. I'll give my joys. I'll give a boost to a friend or a little brother to climb a tree or a hand to pull someone back up on their roller skates.

I'll give my love, because it's one of the few things that are wholly and completely mine, and because I can chose what to do with it. I'll give it to God, and I'll give it in turn to everyone else.

I'll give my life.

I'm Jonathon and this is my life.
Happy Thanksgiving!










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Only a Little Dysfunctional

Hello All!

This week has been a particularly good one, but also unbelievably full and stressful =P
I don't know who is the one who first told me this (probably my own dear mother) but I am very good at not being bored because I can consistently come up with something new and time-consuming to do. However, I'm also very good at being in that position where I am doing about three or four things that require 100% of my attention and energy...at the same time.

Us working together on boxes!

The first and best of this week is Operation Christmas Child. For those of you who don't know, OCC is something that Samaritan's Purse does every year right around this time. What they do is encourage people to make 'shoe box' gifts of shoe boxes filled with toys, school supplies, clothes, hygiene items, et cetera for a boy or girl between the ages of 1 and 14 (actual age is specified on box) and they deliver them en masse to children in third world and needy countries all over the world. I am in a student group called Project Hope on campus and I encouraged them to help me put together the effort to do the project on campus as well.
This past Wednesday, I talked my Blount family into going out with me and about $200 I have saved up over the past several months to shop for things and make boxes ourselves. Stretching that money, we made seven boxes together and are including pictures and a letter signed by everyone in each. Through PH with only about a week of PR, we collected some $100 in donations and five more boxes just from individual people.

Next year, we're starting much earlier. A lot of people got really excited when they heard about it. I love Operation Christmas Child.

I have another art project on its way to being due. It will be my fourth and final for this semester, and I have a pretty good idea of what to do in mind. I just have to get my hands on the materials. I know that as much as I have loved the class and as inspiring as it has been, my budget will be a lot happier to see me put it behind me. I've had to put off building my bed loft indefinitely, start eating dining hall food exclusively, and don't think I've bought anything that I simply just wanted to in months. I'm not complaining though, because it's certainly good for you, understanding value and sacrificing what you need to.

And please, every need I've ever had is being cared for, so everything is good.

The show choir performance is only a week and a half away, and I am practicing when I can. There are still three dances that I really know almost not at all, and we just started learning the last song. I still have to go over all my music on the piano before fall break and then probably spend all break working on the dances on top of studying for chemistry and calculus. I'll be partially very glad to see the show over with, but I think I'll really enjoy show night.

And finally, the Blount Winter Formal is coming up soon. Blount is the name of the liberal arts program that I am in, and also the living-learning community dorm on campus. A lot of the dorm has been abuzz with the approaching date and all the great dramatous saga of who is asking who is unfolding. I've had it in mind to ask a friend of mine for the past while, but I have been spending the last week or two working on a 'treasure hunt' style adventure all over campus for her down memory lane. So today I gave her the first message and sent her off, letting her find the other clues and chase the whole thing all over her favorite memories and spots while I got ready. I've been sick for the past week with a cold or something and getting progressively less sleep, which wasn't helping the fact that I had a full-scale four hour course to plan out and execute perfectly across the entire university, but for all its dysfunctionalities on my part, it went perfect and she doesn't even know that it went wrong at all.
Last part, I was waiting outside her window for her to get all the way done and asked her balcony-scene style if she would go to the dance with me. She gladly said yes. Only regret? I've now made every other boy who has already asked look bad. I was very late in asking - which made me worry someone else might ask her - but at I put a lot into it.

I've slept from about four this afternoon till 10, and am only up because I had to eat something and thought to post. Heading to bed again now and off to church in the morning. Been a blessing of a week, if a really long one. Hey, God is good.

I'm Jonathon, and this is my life.

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The Dish and the Spoon - 2

I’ll always have a great deal of respect for the power of forward physical motion in tapping the stowed tanks of energy and keeping you going, even when the main valve is running on fumes or just the memory of fumes at all. Of course, caffeine also helps. I took another sip of my vanilla Frappuccino and decided that if today was not my day to be manly, I might as well make it my day to be cool, drinking the rich flavors that inspired artists, musicians, poets, and the like.

There is nothing ‘cool’ about sissy coffee… I thought back to myself, sighing.

“It’s not sissy coffee!” said the voice of my friend David in my mind. Oh David…you make my life simultaneously more exciting and more complicated… I smiled.

Discarding the now empty cup and making a face at the feeling of all that cream and ice in my stomach, I threw a leg over my bicycle, pausing to pull my bag snug against my shoulder blades. I could feel the wind pick up again and looked off behind my shoulder as one hand grabbed the brakes, keeping me steady. Beyond the flickering bulb of the streetlamp above my head, I still couldn’t yet see it. I shook my head, kicking off the ground. I had left the speed on the highest gear, so the start was arduous and against the wind, but I pedaled fiercely out of the sidewalk foyer and around the corner, climbing the hill as cars passed me, honking while they rode by.

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The Dish and the Spoon - 1

There I sat, listening to the soft humming sound of the vacuum cleaner as the man in the gray shirt pushed it along, cleaning the carpet of the dining area. The windows became translucent mirrors around us as the last rays of sunlight turned into the blackness of the falling twilight and sleepy frustrated students massaged their temples before the glowing screens of their laptops and the stationary papers scattered across the tables before them. There was a strange collectively calm aura sitting upon the air, a kind of conclusive knowingness that permeated the night air as it drifted through the window panes.

I was paddling my own boat up a creek without a paddle, drifting away between the soreness of my bones for having supported my weight standing for so long and the heaviness of my eyes as they watched their thirtieth hour tick slowly by. They had known no rest, save sporadic breaks and dozing, since I began this project.

No…since this project had been due. I started weeks ago. My inability to follow through and finish something quickly is and will always be my greatest vice.

I pushed the little wisps of hair behind my ear, not because they bothered me but because I knew they were there and needed something productive to do. As if that were true… I knew, or thought I knew, subconsciously, where I needed to be. I thought I might have an idea who I needed to see too. If nothing else, I had to talk to her.

But that would have to wait.

I stood up, packing my things and opened the double door into the cool evening air.

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A Few Adventures Later

Hello!

Well, so a part of me hoped to keep better consistency of this blog thing, but the other knows that no harm is done in my persistent procrastination just as long as the project completed by the due date is awesome and I am not dead.
Sigh...yes, I have the 'project' mindset right now: just got off of a few of them!

Quick input on Halloween: it was fun! No, neither spectacular nor candy-filled, but we enjoyed dressing up for classes. I was my classic Captain Jack Sparrow (much to the awe of a lot of my classmates!) by day and then changed that evening to partner costume with a friend of mine: she was Christine and I was the Phantom of the Opera. Nothing more than a lot of pictures and a little bit of running around like silly people on All Hallows Even; the most fun was putting together the costumes together!

Anyway, as I was saying about the projects, I just turned in an art and an engineering project. The first was a kind of 'reaction' to something else I had done, only I wanted it to be more destructive and more chaotic. Here's the picture of the first one and the second, so you can see what I mean...

This is the first project, a giant puzzle that in the viewer's eye slowly and controlledly comes together to form a solid cube structure.

And here's the second! The opposing response, chaotic, explosive outward, but with a similar theme of the shapes and colors to connect it back to the original.













Both of these were done with wood in my 3D design class.






That took a lot of time in it's own right, but also this past weekend, we completed a month-long project in my engineering class to design and construct a scale model of our football stadium out of cake. Yes, it was an independent and original project, and it actually turned out pretty well! We spent the month testing cake recipes, figuring out dimensions, doing PR to get the word out so we could sell pieces for charity, the whole nine yards, and then this weekend we actually baked and built the whole thing. Granted, not a one of us has ever decorated a cake before (and all but one or two of us had never baked anything at all ever before) but it turned out alright. It was a job that you look at and say "Wow, these guys are completely inept at cake decorating, but they put so much into this that I kind of like it!"

Anyway, pictures of that too!

This took almost 12 hours straight of sculpting and icing... We never got a total cake weight, but it took no less than two people to move.



We decided on an apple-cinnamon spice cake recipe (an invention of our own culmination!) as the best in taste, structural integrity, and sculptability.




We were expected to have 2-3 hours to try to sell pieces to fans coming for the football game, but it was so popular and tasted so good, our poor cake barely lasted more than an hour!

We raised $500 for the food drive!




And now, I hardly have an off-week! The show choir performance is coming up at the end of the month, so we're all practicing hard for that, and I'm working hard to make sure that my grades are all superb. And then, like a doofus, I decided that this was going to be the year I actually participate in National Novel Writing Month. Not to mention I'm still working on that cure for cancer...

Sigh, busy month I guess. They happen!
Hahahahahahahaha ANYway, that's all for now, everything is going pretty mostly a whole lot of well. Got a few tests this week, but all should be well there too. Still looking off into the nether future to finals, but...you can only take so many scares at once. Matthew 6:34, ya know? If not, you should =]

I'm Jonathon, and this is my life.





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