Coincidence? I think not.

it just occurred to me that i seem to like posting on mondays. i think this proves there is a pattern in my posting habits. wow. try that one on for depth.

dad is driving to nashville. he will be back on wednesday night and then a plane with take him back to his home in CA.

at this point in my life, parents make things seem so full and empty at the same time.
(not like that makes any sense at all...)

i want them to be physically present in my life. when they are it is wonderful to have hugs and kisses and walks and talks. when they are it is not wonderful to have added things that i have to do and my whole routine gets shifted all around. heartless? maybe. honest? yes. sticking foot in mouth? preferable.

i think i have reached a place in my life where i need to live not under the same roof as my parents. which, of course, is what i am currently doing. a whole new realm of responsibility and ownership is daily opened up to me and i rather like it. in fact, i love it. challenging? yes. fulfilling? very.

i now know for sure that i do things because i want to do them. take church for an example. i drive myself to church every sunday because i want to. i go to bible study every week because i want to. i read my bible because i want to. i pray because i want to. point? getting there. any thought that i once did those things because it would please my parents is now gone. mommy's eyes in the back of her head aren't looking at me each sunday. it feels good to have confirmation of my intentions. hey. i like that word. intentions.

of course, God knew all of this before i would think about posting about it on this monday. God knew that anna and i needed to live by ourselves. God knew that chris needed one on one time with mom and dad. God knows it all. i don't. He does. exciting? very. comforting? very. humbling? very.

i love it how beautiful things can be when i am in His will. it feels right to be in His arms. it feels so wrong to not be in His will. but being in that beautiful will is easier said than done. much easier. it seems to me that other people in my life make it hard to be in that will. a cop out? probably. while it is usually me that keeps me from what God wants to bless me with... i can be brought down by other people. people can be such jerks. you? yes. me? yes. mother theresa? a some point i am sure that she was. sometimes i just look up into the sky and beg God to send another flood. point? you better be glad that i am not God.

God is showing me right now that i have great value in His eyes that i shouldn't put up with some of the junk that people like to dish out. value. i like that word as well. people just need to love each other and show each other that they care. cheesy? yes. true? yes. ignored? yes!

ok. i am done. this is way too long. i am hungry.

my dad is home

there is nothing quite like a daddy hug.
he owes me a lot.

today was the first day in college algebra class (aka: foreign language class) that I actually REALLY learned how to do something that mrs. cho chung ling ding sun lo chow (i have no idea what real her name is…) has been “teaching”. in fact, i think i will always know how to do it. work through stat plots on my $150 calculator? no problem! i will pass the valuable knowledge onto my kids when it comes time. we will have a “stat plot party” and all talk in broken english.

in all honesty, the course has been frustrating. i knew this officially since class two: mrs. cho chung walked in class and started lecturing from her advanced trigonometry class. after at least five minutes of this i finally raised my head and asked her where we were in the book. of course that pointed out her problem but she went on to explain how her mistake was a good one because we will need to know everything in advance trig anyways and we might as well learn it now. let me think about that one for a second… um…how about NO!  there are some of us out there who have chosen to live a happy-advanced-trigonometry-free life. (and when i say “some”… i mean “most”)

hannah, a friend who is also in the class, got wind from someone that we were allowed to use formula sheets during the quizzes and tests. we went up and asked mrs. ling ding if this was true. turns out that it is. i am making a B in the class. fine. but having a formula sheet in front of me during the other fifty million tests and quizzes would have brought me up to an A. yes, i am soooo thankful that i can use this sheet for my test on wednesday and then my final…but i feel as if that is something that should have been suggested to us at the beginning of the term.

today, i signed up for my calculus class at the university of memphis.

be looking for another post like this come fall.  

my roommate is a user. oddly, this fact does not surprise me.

mom asked me to get some papers out of dad's office for their taxes.
i did find the papers but i also found something that i lost myself in.

mom apparently has been keeping many file folders worth of memorabilia from my life:

pictures that i colored
awards that i got
newspaper clips that i was in
about one hundred speech and debate related papers of achievement (yeah, i counted)
my karate papers of achievements
letters that i wrote to people in the government
stories that i wrote
old school pictures

everything that mom saved in those folders is 100% lizz, or rather, elizabeth. i do remember being that young... but honestly, i don't at the same time. it is like a different world. like i am looking into the life of a ten year old little girl who knew hardly anything about boys, corruption, politics, evil. the result is an interesting feeling of seeing that i am no longer a little girl who let boys chase her around the playground. memories. wow. well, here i go. here are pictures of my memories.

these were from germantown elementary school. it looks like i have always enjoyed expressing myself through drawing and painting.

i got a giggle out of this paper. i think i wrote it in the third grade.

i do remember that this sticker was a scratch-n-sniff. therefore, success literally had a sweet smell to it.

according to the file, i was student of the month three times. once for each year starting in second grade.

one of my favorite pieces of paper out of this treasure file was a letter from bill clinton. i guess i wrote him saying that what he did with monica was wrong and this is what he said:

hahaha. poor billy. trying to explain to a fourth grader that he was a bad, bad man.

the last thing that i have are all of my certificates of rank for each belt that i earned. i have twenty four of these pieces of paper. yes, that means twenty-four belts... which works out of be five years of shotokan-ing my head off.

((thank you, mom))