Ingenuity reigneth

I absolutely hate coffee.

But the soda machine wasn't working, and I was standing desperately in need of caffeine.

Thus, ergo, q.e.d., I have invented Sugarsludge (TM): one part coffee to eight parts granulated white sugar. Stir; enjoy.

Well, they say necessity is the mother of invention.

Stop and smell the pumpkin spice cookies

I'm slowly learning that God often writes us love letters when we least expect them. I was stressed to the limit today, with my final dress rehearsal tonight (my lines being far more shaky than they ought to be), about thirty papers on The Red Badge of Courage left to grade by tomorrow, and functioning (as has been the norm for the last several years) on about two hours of sleep and two liters of Mountain Dew.

Then, along came one of my drama students into my study hall. "Miss S., I brought you a cookie!"

A yummy, delicious, homemade pumpkin spice cookie. Singularly delicious. I just finished it.

Yep. Unmistakably a love letter from the divine Pen. There's an old platitude that says something like "courage is just fear which has held on one moment longer"; as a corollary, I'm rapidly learning that joy is just angst which has taken a nap.

Pensees

So, it's official.

I'm directing A Midsummer Night's Dream. Again. Performing in December. That'll make twice in 2006 alone. Oi vey.

I'm also utterly exhausted. The Miracle Worker opens on Friday night, and I've been at the theater every night for the past pretty much... forever.

Life is hectic.

Today (8/28) is the feast day of St. Augustine, which means Joe and I got engaged two years ago today. It's sort of a weird, trippy feeling. I've been missing him a lot lately, for the first time in a long time.

I'm beginning to realize how desperately I've been trying to supplant Joe in my life for the last thirteen-odd months, and moreover, how silly and futile that is. I opened one of my C. S. Lewis books yesterday at random and stumbled upon a passage about how we often refuse to take happiness on its own terms -- how, as human beings, we tend to stubbornly fixate on some point in the long-distant past, telling ourselves that that is happiness, and that anything which is not that cannot possibly make us happy. In this way, we self-destruct and sabotage the gifts God sends us which do not come in the packaging which we expected.

Two years ago, being engaged to Joe made me happy. Right now, this moment, in Atlanta, Georgia, that is not what God wants for me. That is not what He's trying to give me.

What is he trying to give me? That's the real question.

And more importantly, why am I not accepting it?

If the idle mind is the devil's playground...

I must be approaching all sorts of new heights of sanctity.

Busy.

Busy Busy Busy.

Pray for me.

Some days, even your lucky rocketship underpants don't help.

I needed to give the kids in my Theatre Production and Creative Writing classes syllabuses (err, syllabi) for tomorrow.

Which you'd think wouldn't be so hard.

Donna was dead to begin with. Dead as a doornail. She had been chaperoning a retreat at school, and high school girls being high school girls, they decided to stay up until 6 in the morning.

So, I got three hours of sleep. I'm running on empty. I need these syllabi for my first period class in the morning.

But my printer is in Virginia at my old roommate's house, and I don't have a jump drive.

So I thought, that's fine, I'll just do them at school while I'm there chaperoning the retreat.

Only our server is down, so I couldn't print them at school.

And I don't have the access code to the photocopier at school.

So then I think, it's okay, I'll go to Staples and Xerox them this afternoon.

So the retreat's over and done with, I go home. Can't find a Staples. Anywhere. Apparently Atlantans don't believe in them -- at least South Atlantans don't.

Then I think, fine. I'll go to Best Buy and buy a printer.

But Best Buy is all out of the two models I can afford.

Then I have to rush to play practice, an hour and fifteen minutes away. The theatre has a photocopying machine, so I ask my director, hey, can I use it? Why, sure, says my kindly neighborhood director.

But the photocopying machine is broken.

Finally, in despair, I crash a friend's parents' house down the street from my apartment at 10:15 p. m. after an exhausting rehearsal (the big fight scene between Annie and Helen - I'm covered in bruises) begging to use their printer ...

To which they kindly agreed.

But the black ink just ran out.

So I've had it. My drama kids can just deal with having green syllabi.

Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will, and in the worst possible way.

My new favorite quote

"The fact that the world is a thousand times more scandalized when a Catholic does something wrong is only proof that the world expected so much more." (Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen)

A happy kind of exhaustion

I'm really not ignoring all of you, I promise. :)

I don't have internet in my apartment, I wake up at 5:45, I drive to school, I teach, I sign out at 3:30, I drive home, I eat, I drive to play practice (1 hr 15 minutes away), I plan lessons, I crash on my air mattress in my non-furnished apartment at midnight, and then I start the whole thing over again. Tonight I'm helping with an event at school.

It's crazy, it's busy, it's scary, it's new, but it's awesome. I'm loving it so much.

Oh, and thanks for all the birthday wishes from everybody.

Except for John, who was two days late with his and has incurred my eternal and undying wrath, and all the rest of you who forgot. :-p

How well do you REALLY know Donna?

Go to... http://seekinghisface.friendtest.com.

I'm...

exhausted, that drained-good kind of exhausted.

But I love my job.

I love the other teachers.

I love my play.

I love my friends.

I love fresh starts at life. "To make a beginning is to make an end - the end is where you start from."

I'm so glad I'm here. Huzzah for life 'way down yonder on the Chattahoochee.'

Epiphanies

To take a page out of Jen's book -- these are my discoveries of the day.

1) My boss is the most awesome one ever.

2) It is a feat of no small impressiveness to navigate Atlanta traffic in a pastel-colored dress while eating Taco Bell.

3) Sleep is my favorite thing ever. I will miss it sorely this year.

4) Loving people is much more important than charming them.

5) When all's said and done, in spite of everything, la vita e bella.

Just to remind myself...

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved." (Helen Keller)

My Show :)

Meant to Live - Switchfoot

Fumbling his confidence
And wondering why the world has passed him by
Hoping that he's bid for more than arguments
And failed attempts to fly, fly

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside
Somewhere we live inside
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside

Dreaming about Providence
And whether mice or men have second tries
Maybe we've been living with our eyes half open
Maybe we're bent and broken, broken

We want more than this world's got to offer
We want more than this world's got to offer
We want more than the wars of our fathers
And everything inside screams for second life, yeah

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
We were meant to live
We were meant to live