Been kinda sick for about a week. Guess what you'd call the "common cold." Meh. I don't like being common, and I don't like having a cold. Luckily though it hasn't progressed into anything worse....glad I got my flu shot! Whatever I have, I probably got it from all those sickly, germy kids at the pharmacy. I tell ya, we should have a face mask bouncer at the door before people are allowed in.

Anyway, not too much besides being sick this past week. Christmas is coming up and I'm trying to get everybody's gifts. Since last post, I managed to go to the mall again on a Wednesday, and the results were much better. In fact, all I have left to buy for are my mom and my brother-in-law.

This weekend I'm off work, but we're having a Christmas party at a co-worker's house. We're all bringing hors d'oeuvres and we'll be playing dirty Santa...you know where you swap gifts and then you can steal them from each other. Get your mind out of the gutter. Before that though I want to try (again) to exercise Nick...my neglected camera. We'll see.

Good night you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.

M. JONES

Rain Rain Go Away

So, my big plans for the day were to go out taking pictures with my awesome camera Nick the Nikon (I know, very original). Well, that changes when I woke up and noticed is was raining...not just rain, but really really cold rain. It's different.

What were my alternate plans? Being lazy. But then I realized I have 0/10 Christmas gifts I have to buy, so decided to go to the mall and try to knock some of those out. Bad idea.

At about a 1 mile radius from the mall, the traffic was at a standstill. 10 minutes later, I finally made it to the mall parking lot, and it took another 10 mins to find a spot. Once inside, just walking around was a nightmare. Couldn't even move without touching somebody. The concept of personal space does not exist in the box monsters during the holidays. I needed some Xanax! Needless to say, I couldn't handle it and left about 30 minutes later. The day wasn't completely wasted though, I did get one gift and also ran into my cousin-in-law, so that was nice.

Tonight for supper we had grits, eggs, bacon, and rolls. Get excited. You know you love breakfast for supper. Just having it any other time besides the A.M. makes it exponentially better. Now to top it all off I'm about to watch X-Men: Origins while sippin' on some coffee. Yum.

The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire.

M. Jones

Changes

Um, yeah...so it's been like 5 months since I last updated! Ha, guess I'm not much of a blogger. I'll try to fix that...

To be honest, I kinda felt like my blog had no purpose, no direction, no set path. Just a bunch of rambling. But then I realized, hey that's the title! So I guess it's ok. Maybe.

So what have I been doing the last half-year? Good question. It seems my life has been nothing but a lot of changes lately. (As I'm sure anyone would also say for oneself) I'm still working full time, but on top of that I'm also taking classes at ABAC half-time. After working hard in undergrad, taking pre-med classes, studying my butt off, taking the MCAT, spending tons of money on said test and applications, interviewing at a couple schools and being waitlisted only to find out I didn't get into med school...I kinda got burned out. Then I decided, hey let's do nursing. So that's where I am, and to be honest, I feel really good about it, at peace.

Anyway, before I can start the actual nursing program I have to do a few prereqs I didn't take at undergrad. So this semester I've had Anatomy and Physiology and Nursing Pharmacology. In fact I'm in the middle of finals now. So far I've already taken the A&P lab final and pharm final, and I have A's in both of those. All that's left is A&P lecture, which is on Wednesday.

Next Spring I'll take A&P II and a random intro to computers class. And then I can start the nursing program in the Fall! It takes 4 semesters, so I should graduate Spring '12. Whoa that looks weird...makes me think of 1912 haha.

Speaking of history, on this day in 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." -Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto That you did Iso, that you did...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAITLIN

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Stress, Stress, Stress

Uhh. Just need to vent. Here's what's making me stressed out at the moment.

-Registration. Blah. Registering for classes always makes me stressed in general, but this time even more so. The ONE class I need, and HAVE to take now so I can start the nursing program on time, Anatamy and Physiology, is closed. All 10 sections. Every one. And it's not like I've been a slacker and just now decided to register. I did as soon as I could. Um, problem.

-Credtis. Speaking of classes, ABAC tranfered a lot of my credit from Mercer. Everything was pretty much ok, but they're trying to jip me on some stuff. They transferred my Intro to Bio classes as some lower-level credits at ABAC. Excuse me, and no offense, but I think my Bio credits at a prestigious 4-year university is at least equivalant and probably trumps the Bio at a 2-year community college. Just saying. Oh, and they also won't give me credit for the 300 level art class I took to take the place of their 100 level art class required. Logical? No. Anyway, I'll be meeting with the Registrar soon to sort this all out.

-Bills. So, all of a sudden these bill collectors started calling me saying I was delinquent on my student loan payments. At first I thought they maybe had the wrong number, because I always make my payments. Turns out, they applied both of my two loan payments to only one loan instead of two separate payments for the different loans, therefore putting one of my loans in delinquent status. Not cool. Now I have bill collectors calling me, and my credit's probably going to get screwed. And they STILL HAVEN'T GOT IT FIXED. Honestly, is this how you treat people who actually pay bills on time?!?

Eschewing all Grace

I'm going to write a book (ok, maybe just an essay) one day with that being the title. It will be about my views of God and relationship with him (or non-relationship) growing up, before a very climactic change in college.

Ha, that's all I really have to say....just wanted to write that down before I forgot it!

And yeah, I really love this pic...would be a great book cover.

the nature of grace

This is something I've been struggling with a lot lately. How do you reconcile grace/freedom with discipline/conviction/guilt? I really don't know the answer, and I haven't talked to someone who does. I think a lot of it has to do with my legalistic upbringing, always doing things "right."

Sometimes I just hate myself because I feel like a failure at Christianity. I try to make myself be good, go through the motions, thinking it's better to try than not. In the end though I'm left with guilt and feeling very dehumanizing.

So, I decided to try something.

I stopped reading my Bible. I got to a point where I was reading it regularly, but when occaisionally fogot/didn't have time/didn't want to, I felt super bad. Also, I was so legalistic about it. For me, reading the Bible is like studying for an exam. I have to extract everything from it that I can and memorize everything. Not much room for the Holy Spirit to work...I felt like I shouldn't be imprisonating myself in something as good and holy as God's word. It's not that I don't want to read it, because I still do sometimes, or that I don't want to learn from it.

I just feel like I have so many old, legalistic habits to un-do before I can truly live free.

But where does that leave me? Aren't I supposed to feel convicted when I sin? And when/where/how does grace fit in? I know, these are deep questions.