yet again i find myself a victim of what one might call escaped time. so many hours in a day, a week, a month, yet i still find there´s never enough in the end. how am i spending each and every one of them?, i suppose i should ask myself... could i spend them more wisely? all i know is that i´m trying the best that i possibly can right now to get by day after day and i find that i´m still alive, so i must be doing at least the right things for the time being. graduation arrives in about 80 days or so and i only have two more weeks in the placement i was once having quite a few difficulties with but now find it to be the challenge that perhaps i will see as quite useful one day.
this past week brought about a very unpleasant surprise as grandma reynolds passed away just about a week or two after the notice that she was terminally ill with cancer that had already spread to too much of her body, and she would like have 3 to 6 months. not a happy thought when we´ve never known cancer to be on that side of the family, and not a happy thought when we think that we just lost grandpa last year. actually, not a happy thought all the way around. i think about my dad and the fact that he has lost both of his parents in a period of 15 months and i just can´t imagine how he´s feeling. i know that i am thankful as can be that i had the opportunity to drive home for the funeral on friday and be with family this weekend. i think i spent the majority of the time absolutely swamped in yellow spanish test, grading grading and grading some more and wishing to never have this death wished upon me at any point in my life (meaning this death of having to grade fifty thousand items that only seems to accumulate even more after getting half of them done... i think most of you know what i´m talking about). yeah. let´s see how that goes.
and what says love. dare i share? for those of you who´ve surfed into facebook and taken a look at that all revealing ¨status¨ message of mine that says ¨in a relationship,¨ ´tis true. strange, but true... or at least strange to the extent that it seems unreal and it seems like it´s been forever since my last relationship and it seems as though it´d be forever longer until my next one. meet arturo contreras, a great friend from guanajuato, mexico, whom i met through a mutual friend or two when i was studying there in fall of 2005. we kept in touch a bit, met up again when i returned in january, and then lost touch until i got back from my very brief trip to gto where i hadn´t seen him at all. just one email to him rekindled the friendship we´d begun when i was there and before we knew it the depth of honesty and sincerity in the friendship, paired together with a mutual understanding of life, future, dreams, and love, finds us questioning if a relationship might not be a bad thing for us to consider. it goes like this: he thinks i´m wonderful, and i don´t know why he´d choose me. (i mean, don´t get me wrong, i´m frickin´awesome and all, but the first thing i think of goes something like... now wouldnt you want somebody who has more than half of the spanish dictionary memorized so as to communicate a bit more rapidly and effectively?, but evidently this hasn´t been an issue and it actually hasn´t slown down communication by any means, a definite blessing to both of us.) and then, i think he´s wonderful, and he doesn´t know why i´d choose him. (good grief, because he´s amazing, punto.) consider the sort: a writer, an intellectual, a thinker and ponderer, a man of sentiments, somebody who´s not afraid to cry and not afraid to express, a romantic, the most loyal of friends. prefers green tea over coffee, loves long walks and people-observing, enjoys late-night conversations, exploring the interior of the human heart (no, not as a surgeon), and to top off this list that just hardly brushes the arturo surface, he´s a christian, that is, the non-catholic sort. this means one really big thing: faith to him is not an issue of tradition as it is so often in roman catholic mexico, to him, rather, it´s something personal, and it´s something he lives and believes daily. and to top that off, he´s against any man who lives life as a machista and believes that´s a sign of selfish frustration, and (oh now here´s the biggie and another ¨holy cow is he really a young mexican male?¨kicker) he´s not a hop-into-the-sack sort by any means. quite innocent, he is, and let me assure you that finding this sort of young man all wrapped up into one bundle in the middle of mexico is not the most comman occurence in the world if you want to consider every stereotype of mexicanos that are unfortunately based upon a whole lot of truth. but we found each other and indeed, we want to keep each other for the time being. (i know i´ll want to keep him for longer than just the time being, and he feels the same about me, but i don´t want to do that whole girly ¨oh i just know he´s the one, he´s so perfect, he´s so... blah blah blah¨... with rose-colored glasses on, you know? trying to remain realistic. and realistically speaking, i´m one lucky duck.)
intakes are continuing to happen with the YAV position for next year and it looks like it´ll be between tucson and-or binational position just over the border in nogales, and guatemala. miami and hollywood (think gang-filled, low socioeconomic status hollywood, not happy hollywood sign and lights and film hollywood) remain possibilities full of urban ministry and hispanic ministry opps, but they are lower on the list. in almost one month i will have received my official placement for the year to come. i can´t believe it´s time already!!!!!! in one month i´ll know.........
friends at school help keep me sane day after day. i can´t thank the people enough who´ve done tons of grading for me (aka MARI!!!) and have helped me in other ways. i work with the most amazing group of RA´s and an amazing RD, a group i love dearly. i´ve considered leaving my ra position just due to being so darn busy and not having the time and energy to put into being the good RA that i should really be in a position like this, but the one thing that keeps me hanging in there is simply my group of co-workers and the community we´ve built together, and those tuesday night meetings, a form of support group to me. i could never imagine myself saying to tasha that i´d have to leave her staff, and never imagine facing my amazing co-RA´s and telling them that i´ll be leaving them, too. i know life would go on for everyone but it´s something about the support they´ve given me that makes me believe i need to hang in there, and make it through. so that´s what i´m doing. i´m sticking with it.
lots of love and peace to all my readers. thank you for the support, and the thoughts.
and... rest in peace, dear grandma reynolds.
