Santa … aka Sarah

When I was a kid, I have no idea what my mom got for Christmas.  That is, other than the precious-only-to-mothers handmade crafts I made at school or church.  The reason I say this is because over the years I have gradually taken on the responsibility of buying most of my mom’s Christmas presents with an understanding of reimbursal from my dad.  We’ll just say that gift giving is not my dad’s love language.  Quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, physical touch … all there.  Gift giving?  No.  I think the only present that he ever picked out and purchased for me himself was a $5 wind it yourself alarm clock from the grocery store … and that’s only because he hates waking me up.  So it’s just understood in our house that if a Christmas present says “From Daddy” either I or my mother actually picked, purchased, and wrapped it.

This year, however, the word is out about my present picking abilities.  Not only am I buying for my mom, but now I have been commissioned to buy for my brother, my father, my four girl cousins, and funny enough, myself.  My brother requested any and all things “Lost,” which you can really only find online, and much like my parents like to avoid traffic in “big cities” so they also are averse to online shopping.  So my brother is getting a t-shirt he requested that says, “I’m a complicated guy, Sweetheart.  – Sawyer”  Does anyone else see the potential for middle school cruelty there?  I wanted to get him the shirt with a picture of Evangeline Lilly that said, “I’d get lost with Kate” but alas, there were none in his size.  I’ll refrain from mentioning any more gifts given the potential for spoiled surprises, that is except for the presents I ordered myself.

Now while I was online ordering my brother’s presents, I thought it might save my mom a little time and stress to just go ahead and order a couple books I’d been eyeing for Christmas and have them sent to my house.  At least this way, she gets them in the mail and can wrap them up for me.  So I ordered Gordon MacDonald’s “Ordering Your Private World” as well as Joel Kilpatrick’s “A Field Guide to Evangelicals and Their Habitat.”  The former was on the pastor recommended shelf at my church (kinda like the “staff picks” at a video rental store) and seemed apropos considering the new year and all, not to mention my desire to be a little more settled and organized before hopefully beginning a new phase in life next fall.  The latter was reviewed in Relevant awhile back, and I recently heard about in a Wired Parrish podcast.  Totally my new favorite website is LarkNews. 

So last night I went to get coffee with a friend, and surprise to me, there was a present in my car seat (wrapped in mossy oak wrapping paper I believe).  Unwrapping it, what did I find?  That’s right, “A Field Guide to Evangelicals and Their Natural Habitat.”  Now that’s the mark of a good present … already having bought it for yourself. 

In other Christmas news, I am thoroughly enjoying the Sufjan Stevens Christmas album.  Or is it albums?  I don’t know; there are like forty songs on it.  I had to get it off iTunes (which I hate to do because I love liner notes so much, and there’s just something about having the pretty CD in your hand) because Randy’s was sold out and Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and Target don’t even carry it.  Anyway, I love, love, love his version of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” which happens to be my favorite Christmas song of all time.  So I’m throwing it out there in a fiendish plea for comments … what’s your favorite Christmas song?

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!

It all comes out in Moron.

So I had sort of an epiphany the other day, and if Xanga is good for anything it’s expounding upon epiphanies.  In 11th grade my history teacher told me she thought one of my strongest intelligences (of the seven) was my knowledge of self, and I think she’s probably right.  I tend to be pretty introspective and incredibly analytical in regard to self.  So I was surprised the other day to realize something about myself that had never really risen to the level of conscious thought.  It suddenly hit me that I am incredibly unskilled at male interaction.

 

Now it’s not like I thought I was some grand master with the fellas up until said epiphany.  No, it’s more like I never really gave much thought to it at all.  I have always been a girls’ girl.  I can’t even name one good guy friend I had growing up.  Sure I had a few camp flings and one real boyfriend in high school, but as a whole I just wasn’t around guys in social settings very much.  I had my close girl friends, and I was content.

 

Actually, looking back I suppose I did have a few guy friends in high school … a few college guys from my church.  Youth interns, Sunday School teachers, and ski trip companions: these were my friends.  However, they were not my peers, a point I will bring out more in a moment.

 

My college social experience disappointingly varied little from high school.  I seemed to be really good at developing female friendships (some of which are still best friends to this day) but really deficient when it came to boys.  It didn’t help that I was an RA in an all female residence hall my sophomore and junior year.  Any male interaction outside of class came by way of friends’ friends, boyfriends, or husbands.  I do remember wishing I had guy friends; I just didn’t know how to get them.

 

Graduation came and went, and then thankfully a new job.  Now while job-wise I didn’t move far from my stint as an RA (hall directing an all female residence hall) I did meet two new friends, and much to my delight, they were boys!  Married boys, but still boys nonetheless.  My first year as a hall director I developed very close friendships with those boys, and I learned quite a bit. 

 

About two years ago, I started visiting a church with a fairly large group of 20 something singles (honestly one of the appeals).  It was great to meet people (guys included) my own age (aka, no longer in college) and there were always lots of opportunities for interaction.  I began developing some surface level friend/acquaintanceships with guys.  Yay for Sarah!  However, I still found the interaction difficult and oftentimes awkward.  Why is it that I had so much ease with the married boys, but so much difficulty with the singles?  Aha!  Epiphany!

 

My whole life I have been drawn to male relationships that are “safe.”  In high school it was the college boys.  Now it’s the married boys.  There is so much potential for friendship, because there is no question of relationship.  I don’t have to worry about what they think of me (as I do with guys I’m interested in) nor do I have to worry about unreciprocated feelings (as I do with guys I’m not interested in).  Nice and safe.

 

So currently in my interactions with single males, I tend to behave in one of two awful ways:

1) If I have interest or feelings for the guy, I get obnoxious.  It’s hard to describe, really, but overall I feel like I become immature.  I show off.  I say stupid things.  I try too hard.  On an episode of Gilmore Girls there’s this moment when Rory’s freaking out over this guy she likes and she tells Lorelai that she doesn’t want to “do or say anything else that’s gonna be remotely moronic.”  Lorelai responds, “I’m afraid once your heart is involved, it all comes out in Moron.”  And while I am not sixteen years old, I am equally as susceptible to freak outs and moron-speak.

2) If I don’t have any interest in dating the guy, and if I pick up on any interest on his part, I act cold.  I generally try to act friendly toward everyone, but in the case of those unreciprocated feelings, I have to play the cold card.  See, it’s not like I have the token “Sorry, I have a boyfriend” response ready to dole out.  It has been my experience that the slightest bit of attention you pay to one of these guys will only hurt them in the end.  It encourages their unwelcomed advances.  If I even get the slightest inkling that a guy may like me (and I don’t want him to) I do everything I can to avoid interaction with this person.  Honestly I would rather treat someone coldly as a preemptive measure than have that awkward rejection conversation later on down the road.  Cruel to be kind. 

 

But back to the epiphany … I am socially retarded when it comes to guys.  But I think that there’s a solution.  First of all, I need to grow a back bone.  Yes, there is a time to pull back so as not to encourage further advances from what I call “the ickies.”  However, I need to be much more open to friendships with guys that I’m not really interested in dating.  I think that I’m afraid I won’t have the nerve or tact to turn someone down graciously, and that I might end up leading someone on out of fear of confrontation.  However, there is so much to learn from all sorts of different people, and I am robbing myself of diverse and fruitful friendships.  Second of all, I need to calm down.  I need to quit faking confidence and learn to be confident.  I can’t allow myself to be intimidated by guys I’m interested in.  I know there will always be some inevitable moron-speak, but elevating any person to a level that in turn puts me on a lower level is just ridiculous. 

 

And now comes the hard part.  I can’t look in the mirror and forget what I look like.  Time to embrace my newfound realizations and be open.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

12.07.06

It’s after three in the morning, and here I am in my office trying to finish up some work, plodding along with my iTunes on shuffle.  I’m about to wrap things up as a lovely song begins to play.  And I think, there’s no better time to update my Xanga.

So here are some pretty words from said lovely song:

I’ve never been good with my thoughts
And even worse with my words
But you read like familiar poetry
That I have never heard…
I wish I could tell you…but I just can’t find the words

I am all at once courageous
I am all at once afraid
It came over me like nightfall
Like a freight train
I can’t seem to hold it in
But I can’t seem to run away

Springtime Indiana
You are starting to wake
And I am laden with the thoughts
Of everything I mean to say
I wish I could tell you,
But I just can’t find the words.

12.01.06

Yesterday as I began to put some Neosporin on a recently aquired “cardboard cut” on my finger, I thought to myself, “Hmm, I wonder when this expires.”  Flipping the tube over, I saw stamped in tiny print “EXP 2/2002.”  There are several things I cling to from my college days; little did I know that Neosporin was one of them.

Today is the second in a line of snow days for the university.  Snow days are both bad and good for hall directors … bad in that we are considered essential staff and therefore have to be on call for our respective buildings, good in that the rest of the university is closed which drastically reduces the amount of email/phonecalls I have to mess with, not to mention the fact that I don’t technically have to be in my office.  However for students, snow days produce nothing short of jubilation.  It’s been fun to witness the screaming down the halls, “Classes are cancelled tomorrow!” and see the red faces of those just in from sledding on trash bags or air matresses. 

I, too, was looking forward to Thursday once I heard the university was closed.  My intent was to sleep in a little that morning and then get some major organizing/catching up/cleaning done in my office that afternoon.  Ha.  Instead, I was paged at 8:30 that morning to come and take care of an “incident.”  Some day when there’s a little more distance between myself and my HD days, I will have to write some sort of memoir about all such “incidents,” but for now I’ll just leave it at that.  The rest of my day was spent preparing for “Hanks for the Memories.”

A little background: A few years ago at a small gathering of high school friends over some sort of college break, my friend Amanda mentioned a movie marathon that she had particpated in a few weeks before.  Some friends of hers had began hosting twenty four hour movie marathons with those who stayed awake the whole time winning commemorative t-shirts.  That year they made it a Tom Hanks tribute and called it “Hanks for the Memories.”  Now considering that I rarely have an original idea for a program, I decided to copy this fabulous event and two years ago West Hall hosted its own very first HFTM. 

So it’s Hanks time again this year, and just look at the adorable t-shirt girls will get for sticking it out the whole 24 hours!

As a disclaimer, nowhere in this post did I say that we would actually be watching movies, much less mention any specific flick.  You know, copyright and all.

 So after risking my life and the lives of three of my RAs to finish getting all HFTM supplies yesterday amidst the sleet, snow, and cold, I am happy to report that all is ready for the big event.  And with it being a snow day and all, I even got to sleep in this morning.