Graduation!

I am now officially a college graduate! Here are some photos my lovely siblings took from the weekend.

 Me receiving my diploma from the dean of the School of Philosophy, Dr. McCarthy.

 Me receiving my University Scholar award from President Garvey.

 Our awesome university mace bearer, Dr. Druart, who was also my academic adviser for two years.

 Me in the procession in.

 My father in the procession in. See the hat? We gave it to him for his birthday.

 Me and J.

 Me and my friend Annie.

 Me and Kevin.

Almost all the soon-to-be graduates of the School of Philosophy, waiting to process in. This picture was taken by the university photographer, not by siblings.

The weather was lovely, and it was a great day. Terrible traffic on the Beltway meant that we didn't get into South Bend until 2:30 in the morning, but we persevered through it all. I will post the pictures from Teresa's graduation in a separate post.

It is finished

(Is that blasphemous? I hope not. I don't mean it that way.)

I just turned in my last paper and my last final exam. I'm finished with college. I graduate a week from Saturday, and get married a month from yesterday.

I guess this makes me an adult?

This is all kind of surreal.

I'm engaged!

I got engaged last Wednesday!

Everyone always wants to hear the story, so here it is.

We went to Mass. We left, and on the way to the car, under a beautiful oak tree (which we couldn't see because the sun had set already), Kevin asked, "Will you marry me?" Of course I said yes!

My ring is silver with an amethyst. I'm not really a diamond person, but my favorite color is purple, so Kevin decided to get a purple ring instead. (I don't wear gold.) And no, I'm not sure why my skin looks like an elephant's ankles.

Inside, it says "friendship which has been set on fire" in ancient Greek.

We're hoping to be able to pull off a double wedding with my twin sister next summer.

Catch-up

Sorry I fell off the face of the earth there. I went on vacation (which I didn't want to announce in advance for privacy/security reasons) and then I got sick again. My bizarre stomach pain from a few months ago came back, so I missed my last first day of classes sitting in the ER. Oh well. (Again, no conclusive diagnosis. I googled, and there are pages and pages of people who have similar symptoms and a huge array of tests turns up nothing. I'm going to an OBGYN to get an ovarian cyst ruled out, and if that's not it I'll probably drop it.)

This semester should be extremely busy. I'm doing individual tutoring, drop-in tutoring, skills tutoring, working in the costume shop, and babysitting. I'm also taking three undergraduate philosophy classes, one honors theology class, and a graduate philosophy class. And I have to write my grad school writing sample.

No senioritis allowed for me!

A bittersweet goodbye

Last Friday, I saw my friend Maggie for the last time in quite some time. This Thursday, meaning tomorrow, on the feast of the Assumption, she will join the Nashville Dominicans as a postulant.

Maggie was my freshman year roommate. Unbeknownst to me at the time, she was very skeptical about us getting along well. She was freaked out by the fact that I was one of seven, sewed my own clothes, and had been homeschooled. On the other hand, I was a little concerned by the fact that she suggested bringing a fridge and a TV, both of which I thought were thoroughly unnecessary.

 Luckily, we soon discovered that we had more in common than we had thought. I realize that becoming really good friends with your freshman year roommate in college is a total cliche, second only to the roommate from hell, but in my case it was actually true.

 I wasn't really sure what to write in this blogpost. There's so much I could say about Maggie, but I'm trying to avoid the overly sentimental.

 Maggie is always there for you, and you can tell her anything. Even if she highly disapproves of it, she will find a way to help you that doesn't just leave you feeling condemned. She can be amazingly tactful given how blunt she naturally is. (Bluntness, let me note, is a wonderful quality in a roommate, because you don't have to play mindgames to figure out if your piles of mess are annoying her--she will just tell you.)

 Maggie's family doesn't go to church as often as mine does, but her faith is stronger than mine is. Without the example of my family, I don't know where I would be today--certainly not where Maggie is. I consider her an inspiration.

 Maggie has an amazing sense of humor, and can also be amazingly naive. She can take anything in stride, and work with whatever life throws at her. She can share your sadness or your joy in equal measure. Anything I try to say about her seems to me to be falling short of who Maggie actually is.

 If the things that we love tell us who we are (footnote: T-Money Aquinas), then Maggie is a part of who I am, and it breaks my heart that she is leaving CUA.

I take some comfort, though, in knowing that she is not abandoning us, because she will be praying for us, and she is not going alone, because we will be praying for her. You can bet that the minute she is allowed to receive visitors who aren't related to her, I will be standing on her doorstep with a bag of M&Ms and the Sixtus CD. Maggie will be greatly missed, but I cannot doubt that she will be happy as she follows the will of God.

 

 Do not trust the stars that sparkle,

Stars will blink and fade away.

Do not trust the scent of roses,

Roses bloom and then decay.

Put your trust instead in someone

Who will always be sincere.

Sharing in your every smile,

Sharing, too, in every tear.

Happy 4th?

I have a rather complicated identity when it comes to nationality. I have dual citizenship: US and Canadian. I spent three of the first eight years of my life in two different foreign countries: Canada and Germany. I have never had any other passport than a US one, and I've had four passports.

As a child, I was constantly called un-American by my friends. Some of their reasons were completely trivial (I didn't like cheeseburgers when I was younger) and some were more substantial (I refused--and still do--to say the Pledge of Allegiance). From the ages of, oh, nine to eleven, I identified more with the Canadian side of me. It's easier to agree that no, you aren't really American than it is to fight back. Then we moved back to Germany, and I became an American again. If you normally live in America, and you have an American passport, you count as American to the Germans.

As I have grown older, I have become more and more ok with the idea of being an American. And rightly, I think, because I *am* an American. There are many ways of being an American, and everyone who has American citizenship is an American. Two years ago, a friend said, of my opinion on a certain political matter, "Oh, you're just saying that because you're Canadian." I told him in no uncertain terms that I was 100% an American citizen and had every bit as much right as he did to have political views that differed from his and my opinions deserved exactly as much respect as his did, and then I walked out. No one has ever said anything like that to me since. For a while, I was secure and happy in my American-ness.

But now, I'm feeling conflicted again. I am willing to be an American, I want to be an American, but I am a Catholic first. And it's looking more and more like America doesn't want Catholics to be Americans. I can't support killing children with drones, a government that seems set on destroying the family, and a disturbing lack of religious freedom and conscience clauses. If being an American and being a Catholic aren't compatible, or if they soon won't be, then what? (Certainly Canadian citizenship won't help me here!)

To this day, I have never regretted not saying the Pledge of Allegiance. But over the past few weeks, I have become even more thankful that something held me back from it as an eight year old. The trend is a disturbing one, and unless things change, this will not be an America I want to be pledged to.

7 quick takes, volume 10

1. Thank you all for the prayers! The final diagnosis was an infection/inflammation of the intestines which my body was fighting off on its own. Therefore, no medical interventions were needed (except a pain drug which is illegal in the US. Ha.)

2. I am now on a temporary diet of easy to digest food. On a lactose and gluten-free diet, that basically means rice, applesauce, and carrots. Yay. However, I think it also includes Fanta, because soda is the easiest thing to keep down if you're sick to your stomach, so it must be easy to digest. And also the doctor left it up to my discretion how long I should follow this diet for.

3. A little over half the people in my program are going home this weekend, which is sad, especially since a lot of the ones I got along best with are leaving. But I suppose this is life, and I will make the best of it. I now have offers of free places to stay all over the US. Road trip, anyone?

4. We had a goodbye party yesterday. I was voted "most likely to have a dozen children" and Kevin and I were voted "most likely to get married."

5. We held our party at the Seepark, where there are so many waterfowl. Since it's summer, there were oodles of baby waterfowl. I saw baby coots, grebes, mallards, and one cygnet. Possibly also a nest of baby moorhens--they were red on top like moorhens, but it looked like a coot was taking care of them.

6. and 7. Pictures of baby birds!

 Not all baby birds are cute. Some look like space aliens.

 A baby coot watching while its parent dives.

 A mama mallard sitting on her babies.

 Coots have strange, strange feet.

 This poor cygnet. He is so clearly going through puberty.

 Baby mallard!

 I threw in this random sparrow for good measure.

 A grebe. They are hard to photograph because they don't stay on the water for very long.

 Two baby coots fighting over an apple.

A baby grebe. They're striped!

Head over to Conversion Diary for the rest of the takes!

7 quick gluten-free takes

1. Here are seven tips for starting a trial to see if you are gluten intolerant. I wrote them for my sister, and thought I would share them publicly as well. Note that I wrote them with her in mind--so this is a list for people who suspect a gluten intolerance and want to run a test to see if they have one. I'm sure the process is different for people who start out with a diagnosis of celiac. I don't know how long the test process takes. I noticed results immediately and it was clear to me within two weeks that I wasn't going back.

2. For the first few weeks, the test weeks, stick entirely to things that are normally gluten-free and also normal foods. Don't buy gluten free bread, and don't buy xantham gum. Eat potatoes, rice, vegetables, nuts, and meat/dairy if you do those. Keep it simple or you will get overwhelmed. I promise you will spend those weeks noticing other people's food and realizing that if this fixes your problems you will never have X again. That is more than enough to worry about without mixing tapioca starch with rice flour in a special ratio.

3. Don't cheat at all, so you can be sure that you are getting accurate results. I don't worry right now about eating moderate amounts of things that "may contain traces of gluten" or of taking the occasional bite of a glutenous thing, but during my trial I definitely did. (If I do turn out to have celiac, I guess I will have to start worrying again.)

4. Google is your friend. If you can't (or don't want to) read all the ingredients of something you already have, google "is X gluten free." I have never failed to get an answer about a product that is sold in the US this way. (Off-brands from German Aldi often remain mysterious.)

5. Keep track of your calories. I lost six pounds in six weeks by accident. I did track calories for a while, but when I came up continually short, I assumed that I just needed fewer calories. I traveled all the way across town to access the only scale I know the location of after I noticed all my clothes were too big and I had lost over an inch from my waist.

6. With that said, don't let the calorie website bully you. I assume that when eating gluten-free, I will be eating fewer carbs and more fat. I don't worry about that, because most of the fat is from healthy things like nuts and olive oil. However, the website I use wants me to eat what I consider a ridiculously low amount of sugar. I can't eat fruit and stay under the sugar goal. One banana and one apple put me way over. I think this is crazy. I only use the calorie part to check that I am eating enough.

7. Expect that your friends will continually offer you food you can't eat and will constantly forget that you don't eat gluten or what things have gluten in them. Recently, a friend invited me over for pasta, followed by fried dough! (This is a situation where it might be good to buy something like pre-made gluten free noodles, because then you can just cook them in a different pot and share the same sauce.)


(Bonus 8th take: I have some good gluten free recipes, if people besides Teresa are interested I can put their links in a post instead of an email.)

Head over to Conversion Diary to see other quick takes!

Welcome, and what is this blog?

Hi all. Or hi nobody, as the case may be.

What is this blog? This is a place for me to blog about whatever I want. It might include travel pictures, it might include religious thoughts, it might include jokes, it might include sewing posts. I want a space where I can turn over my ideas in public, and work out thoughts by typing them. I don't imagine what I have to say is anything special, but I have often wanted to have a blog where, unlike my other blog, I wasn't tied to a particular topic.

This blog will not have any post rhythm. Some months I will post lots, some months not at all. We'll see.