Christmas

I’m writing from my new laptop. My boyfriend gave it to me for Christmas. Even though I knew I was getting it, I was still surprised. I wasn’t sure how he’d feel if I opened it in front of my family. Other presents from things like my birthday were like shopping sprees. For my birthday he took my shopping at Victoria’s Secret, with a limit of $150. He works  out of town on pipeline and doesn’t spend a lot on himself. When he does it will be on a new car, probably in about six months. See if he keeps that one clean. J

 

So this new laptop is pretty sweet. My sister actually went half on one for her with my parents earlier this month, but altogether they ended up spending a little over 1000. I thought this was ridiculous. She insisted on getting a Dell Inspiron because she was able to get it in ‘sunshine yellow’. My thoughts on this basically went with the idea that, hold on, she’s paying how much to get a yellow laptop, when you can get any laptop for like 700, equipped with the basic things that a college student needs. Personally, my boyfriend told me that mine is actually a refurbished laptop that he got for less than 500. It has Microsoft office 2007, Limewire, Itunes, and an antivirus program on here. He put the last three on it before he actually gave it to me, so its just about ready to use, with no setup to worry about on my part. It’s a Toshiba and black, although it is a shiny black. When I opened it, he said, ‘It was the shiniest one I could find!’ It was pretty funny.

 

I got a few great things this year, besides my laptop. My parents got me two outfits, and all the clothes actually fits me. I also got a ring from James Avery that is downright beautiful. I also got some Chucks from my sister, and a belt and blouse from my other sister.

Anywho, enough about presents. I hate talking about them because I’m accidentally spoiled. Like when my mom asked for my christmas list, I wrote down things like, sunglasses, jeans, the James Avery ring. I threw in some big stuff, like Lasik surgery. But there was nothing I really wanted besides a little bit of jewelry. Of course, then I was loaded down with stuff from my parents and it turned out really nice. But I didn’t expect to get so much. One thing I was really looking forward to was seeing how everyone liked the presents I got them. For example, we got my mom a Coach purse she’d been eyeing, and she loved it. I also got her a necklace, not very expensive, but she had told us she’d like more of them. Funny thing was that I had already bought it when she told us that. Then one of my sisters is into art, and she loves dangly earrings, so I bought her some pastels and a cute pair of earrings. My other sister has some vans with the Ramones on them, but she never really listened to them, so I bought her a greatest hits cd to upload onto her ipod, and this really cute shirt that I knew she’d like. I got my other sister a hoodie she really wanted from the school bookstore, and I got my dad the new Indiana Jones movie that he’d been wanting to see, and an Academy gift card so he could buy himself a fishing rod. I got my brother a really nice pair of dress pants from Calvin Klein, and Elise got him a belt, so now he can just pick out a shirt and he’s got a full outfit.

Either way, gifts or no gifts, it was an enjoyable couple of days. I love Christmas, and I’m just glad that we weren’t hit so bad as far as the recession goes. We’ll make it…No worries.

  

Christmas Eve

Each year on Christmas Eve, my sisters and I, and sometimes my mom, will buy a bunch of baking stuff and bake sweets. Some we take with us to the Christmas Eve party at my grandmother's house at night, but most we make plates out of and hand out to our neighbors. Seeing as how we've been in this house for 30 years, we know a lot of them and can remember when there have been changes in residence.

The one that I wish were still around was Mr. January. He was like our farmer neighbor. Grew tomatoes in his backyard. I remember him showing us how the vines grew onto other objects like poles or little fences. He had an awesome old barber's chair, with metal detail and a white cushion. It also had the foot pedal that moved it around, although I'm not sure if it worked. He also had an old school icebox that always had the individual vanilla ice creams in it. We got one every time we went by. My mom said that around the time when I was born was when she started getting to know him. He was an elderly widower whose daughter was never around, and he was lonely. So he and my mom grew the kind of bond that he might have had with his daughter. He liked to carve things, like a wooden reindeer to put on the porch, or a penguin that we still have hanging in the kitchen. You set it up on a counter and it peeks down at you while you work. He also made us a squirrel feeder.

He wood carve and paint these things for us, and he was just one of those wonderful people you meet once in your life. Old school, but intelligent. Hard working. Someone who understood what hard work used to mean.

He started moving to smaller towns around Texas, like Vidor, Baytown, Lampasas. We went to see him a few times, but he passed away at least 3 years ago.

My other neighbors across the street are an older couple who have young men living with them, either sons or nephews. Those guys can cause some trouble, but when it comes down to it, they're the same as us and we've known them for years. They always get a plate. They also helped us out before Hurricane Ike hit us, giving us plywood because we waited too late to get some at the store.

We also gave one to the man who owns a gas station nearby. He's a young Pakistani man named Sam. He's really nice, and definitely hardworking. I have real respect for him because he is a Pakistani in the gas station business, and its got to be hard. He also speaks at least four languages, which anyone CAN do, but I think it shows dedication to your job. He knows Pakistani (i'm not sure what the language is called) and then English and Spanish, and then a different dialect from his town back home. He was definately touched when we gave him that plate. Made us feel great giving it to him.

A new addition to our list is someone named Junior who lives down the street. We don't know him that well, and didn't really talk to him before last year. But he runs a roofing and construction business, and we've had this old shed in the back yard for years. My parents have always had big plans for it, but have moved slowly when it came down to it. He filled in walls and put in windows and a real roof on it, as compared to the doorways without doors and aluminum roof. And when we were hit by Ike in September and a massive pine branch fell through the roof, he repaired it within days for less then 100 dollars. He also gave us plywood before the hurricane to cover our windows, and helped us put it up.

Anyway, so these are my plans for tomorrow. Get up, WAKE up, start cleaning up, wake up my sisters, and get to baking. Then we'll start walking up and down the street, passing out our trays to our neighbors.

Merry Christmas.

Bad Dreams

I hate when you have dreams and the people who are in it are familiar in the dream, but once you wake up you have no idea who they are. Its like their faces are blurred out or you may have never looked them in the eye throughout the dream so you therefore never saw the face, which means that you can't remember who it was without remembering their voice and mannerisms. This happens fairly often, in my dreams and others.

I can be at a party cuddling with the same person all night but when I wake up and try to think of who it was, I can't remember for the life of me.

My dream last night was sorta cool, to start with. My family and I were at this field that we apparently owned, and in this field was a gorgeous lake where we could vacation and relax and forget about the world. I left the lake to go into the city for the afternoon, which was a cross between California and Venice, and hung out with a man who is a blur and a girl i went to high school with named Katie. The reason I say Venice is because we were sitting on a bridge that served as a walkway over a 'street'.

While I was here talking to my friends, another friend from work came up and acted really concerned and sat next to me, and told me softly that my dad was killed. A stranger had shown up at the lake, they trusted him and let him stay, and he was apparently strapped with bombs, and blew himself up. The only one to die was my dad.

I began to mourn in my dream. I remembered how gruff he is at times, compared to his moments of sweetness and love. Speaking to him on the phone where he addresses me as honey and tells me he loves me. Knowing that I'll never speak to him again at all, and hear him sound like that when he says goodbye, and be careful.

That's when my sister woke me up. I'm pretty sure I was crying when I woke up, but either way, it was the first thing I did when I sat up. I continued to mourn the dream death of my father, and then remember that nothing happened and got ready for the day.

Later I was listening to the radio and a song came on that had no words. The classic rock station is pretty good with playing songs for their amazing ness instead of catchy radio spot-ness. So instead of the usual catchy phrase songs that play on top 40 stations, I got this song that was based on the guitar playing. I've always loved music for music, so I really appreciated it and even thought, Wow, who is this?

Turns out it was Stevie Ray Vaughan, who is one of my father's favorite musicians. We have bonded many a time over music, so to hear this song today really made me misty, so I called my dad to tell him how neat it was to hear that song and think of him.

He naturally said it was cool, then asked me to run to the store for him before it closed. And he didn't forget to say, 'Thanks, honey. I'll see you later. Be careful.'

And that's the Gospel Truth!

So lately the entire country has been bombarded by the issue of gay marriage and equal rights for gay couples. I totally understand the importance of it to most sides involved, but I have to say this somewhere--

The Bible is definately a key factor in historians' assessments of the world and majorly important in determining what sin is and is also a perfectly good way to figure out basic guidelines for life. But when it comes to something as hardhitting and immense as gay marriage, I honestly do not think it should be trusted.

The books in the Bible are always opened with a phrase like, "From a Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians." For one thing, this is not necessarily scholarly work. As stated, it is a letter to a community about something that Paul thought was really important. I don't doubt that it was true and I don't think that Paul had any reason to lie or write stories about Jesus or prophets. I just think that, being a letter, it will almost inevitably be a letter of persuasion or a call to action. I also happen to know that Nero ( I think it was Nero) made a major difference when it came to religion. I haven't read my book on Christianity recently (yes I own one), but I am entirely certain that a Roman emperor took the Bible apart and chose what should be included. This was done to benefit the emperor himself or to benefit his empire. This is one major reason I don't think the Bible should be an authority on something as major as gay marriage.

Another idea-
When Scary Palin lady was in the vice presidential debate, she basically said, 'Yes we will make sure legal rights are given, but we don't want to challenge the traditional definition of marriage.'

While this is not a direct quote, I assure you, it is very close. What's unfortunate is that Biden said the same thing.

What gets me here is that they don't want to challenge what they say is 'the traditional definition of marriage.' This bugs me a whole lot because marriage happens to be one of those things that changes from culture to culture and time period to another, and even between present day countries. There has been polygamy, there has been the 2 person couple, there has been the English way of and older gent marrying a preteen. In less advanced times, the point of these marriages was to result in a high number of children, because children died at a very high rate at childbirth, as did women. But to say that they do not desire to challenge a definition is laughable considering the fact that marriages that consist of a man and a woman already tear apart this definition just fine as heterosexuals. They have had affairs, and they have had divorces. There are estrangements, and there is a reversal of roles in the home, such as men playing housekeeper and women playing breadwinner.

I wrote an article about this topic (on the veep debate) for my school paper. It wasn't published, but I will not say that it wasn't published because of my views. I know that other people are taking a class that publishes the paper, and those have to be printed. I am also aware that I am not as experienced a writer as others are. And there is always one or two election pieces that are picked up from other universities, and they might not have wanted a third. Either way, I was upset that it wasn't published because it is an important topic to me. Important in the sense that while I am Catholic and do believe in many things that this religion proclaims, I also try to keep my head and remember that almost everything in my religion was thought up by a man. Jesus happened to break bread and drink wine at his last supper, but he didn't tell us to do the same. He didn't tell us to take the tree idea from the pagans and give gifts on Christmas day. All we do is follow the example of those in the Bible, which I have already stated as being less then the bottom line. I believe what was said to have taken place, such as the Crucifixion and even His rise from the dead, but as I believe, I remember that it was really just Paul, or Mark, or Ruth, or Job, or John, or Luke who was telling someone else what happened. These people never meant for their words to become law.

Except maybe Paul, who became the first Pope.

Hope you found this interesting and enlightening.