Last round of papers for the semester

Once again, a student has enlightened me and I must share with you so that you can be enlightened, too:

"In the today's world the male society between the ages of 18 and 25 years old are some of the most observant and intriguing people when it comes to the viewing of women body, and love nothing more than just to sit back and enjoy the great creation that god put on the earth with us."

Aside from the oddly placed words and grammatical errors, there are so so many things that I want to say to this. Unfortunately my poor husband has passed his ability to be observant and intriguing. But then I am stunned by a later sentence:

"The ad makes the male wanted to do nothing but sit around all day and just look at the Hanes magazine and think about how much Hanes stuff he is going to wear next time he goes out at night."

So this is what college has devolved to since I graduated...
And finally,

"Another way that the image catches the attention of the male society is that she is showing a little skin and guys like when girls show a little skin."

I wrote "consider your audience" and "a little problematic in an academic essay." Pretty generous, I think, when I could have written something much more heated (I'll leave you to imagine this).

St. Maarten

Here is a picture from where we have been for the last 10 days or so. We traveled to St. Maarten with my parents and sister and had an absolute blast playing in the sun and on the water, playing cards, and eating lots of delicious food. It was fun to have family time that was (relatively) relaxed and leisurely since we didn't have events to plan for or things to do. Kudos and many thanks to Mom and Dad for a fun trip!

I plan to put up a lot more pictures in the next few weeks, though unfortunately my Cute New Haircut turned into CRAZYHAIR for the whole week and as such, most pictures will be of Thomas or various creatures.

I will also be posting about Christmas and the fun we are having decorating our house for the first time. And I have my last round of papers to grade coming up shortly, so I am sure to have some gems to share.

A Quick Story

Last night I am lying in bed reading and winding down at the end of the day. Thomas was in our "den"/hangout room (we don't really have a good name for it yet) finishing up some work stuff. I'm turning pages, feeling nice and relaxed, when all of a sudden two things dawn on me: 1. I can no longer hear Thomas in the other room and 2. The floor between our room and the hallway is creaking ominously. Taking both of these things into account, I offer up a "Thomas?" in a voice loud enough to be heard in the other room since I am assuming he is still in there. In response I get a meek and mild response of "Yes?" I peer up and over the edge of the bed and lo and behold, there is Thomas, on all fours in the doorway to our room, peering up at me with a grin circa little boyhood. It was an absolutely priceless look and I cracked up immediately. The whole idea of "Look it's me! I'm so cute and lovable!" He then explains that his plan was to crawl to the bed and then leap onto it in order to get the "maximum scare effect." Since I "ruined his plan" by somehow presciently catching on to what was going on, his next house "project" is to rip up the carpet and keep the floorboards from squeaking. While I doubt this will happen, you can be sure that he will figure out a way to be stealthier next time. I am practicing steeling my nerves already.
So, kids--who needs 'em? Not me!

bits from the classroom

Okay faithful reader(s),
It is that time in the semester again. Ah yes, another round of student papers. I am only on my second of 23 (one student has elected to offer a list of cobbled together excuses as to why he has not turned one in instead of actually writing one), but I am reasonably certain that nothing will top paper #2. nothing, nothing, nothing.

Gem #1: " I believe the painting shows an individual taking a hit on the crack pipe." In my comments, my goal is to gently guide the student to an understanding of why you cannot just drop sentences like this into the middle of a paragraph with zero warning and zero analysis. Wish me luck.

Gem #2 (Really, this one is a treasure trove): "The painting definitely suggests that crack is wack."
As I was grading, I instinctively put brackets around the sentence, but I honestly have no clue what to do with this sentence. I'm hoping that inspiration will strike later.

On an up note, I am really starting to enjoy the students in the class and class has been going well. Yesterday there was almost a fist fight* because one student said that all middle easterners filled him with hate and terror, and another student "mildly objected" to this statement, but hey, that's what the classroom is for.

*verbal, not literal. Thank goodness.

an observation

You know you married someone from Clemson when....









you could do an entire load of laundry for orange items.

fall merriment

Here is a picture of Thomas from Halloween two years ago. Notice the wide grin and FIRE. We are hosting a Halloween party this year (my how things change in a short amount of time!), and Thomas' first contribution to party planning was "Well it's a good thing that we have a nice wide street in front of the house. And lots of lighters. That way, we can easily light everyone's pumpkin on fire in the street!"
This is how I understand it: pumpkins=fun.
anything+ fire= lots and lots of fun

I'll be happy to let him handle that part...I will just enjoy playing with the goopy pumpkin stuff and probably do mature things like pretending it's alive, eating my hands, etc.




On a completely unrelated note, I just finished chewing 7 pieces of gum. In one hour. And each piece was divided in half. (you do the math).
Yikes. I think this is why I usually don't buy gum. My jaw would probably go on strike if I did (can't you just see all the muscles and tendons holding tiny picket signs?)

Big Fish

This picture of my handsome man is from several months ago when he went on a manly fishing trip.
I'm just glad that he had washed his hands by the time I saw him.

Consider your audience...

I am by no means a "feminist" in the culturally connoted sense of this word, but there are times when people still shock me.
I am in the midst of grading my students' first big paper assignment, an arduous process with occasional glimmers of good writing, thoughtful analysis, or downright hilarity.
For instance, I just finished a paper that includes the following sentences:
"Education is a major reason this country has as much power as does. (not as IT does, just as does)
It takes smart men to get us this far in the world and it will take more smart men to take us even further."
SERIOUSLY? To a female instructor? C'mon buddy, consider that two people in the entire world will read this paper and one of them is the girl WHO WILL GIVE YOU YOUR GRADE.
Don't worry, I am not going to give him a low grade for this sentence. Rather, he has earned a low grade based on the other three pages of the paper that are filled with gems like "Teach this, teach that, learn this, learn that, it could go on forever."

Jack!

This is Jack. Thomas brought home craft supplies tonight in an effort to fulfill the desires of my occasionally craft-ing heart.
We are going to display him for a while and then (shhh) we are going to make him into pumpkin pie.

Setting the record straight

For anyone who might think that a graduate degree in English/American literature means that all I do is read great volumes of ponderous classics, I just wanted to let you know that in the last 3 days, I have read the following:
The Phantom Tollbooth
Two Ramona books (Beverly Cleary)
Four Mrs. Pigglewiggle books

Thomas asked me last night what is so appealing about these "return to childhood" books. I told him it was because I love how straightforward all of the problems are--though life is never perfect, everything is fixable. I spend so much time reading about the various dimensions our fallen world takes and the weighty problems that existence brings about that it is very refreshing to "change it up" when I can. I guess it doesn't hurt that reading a Ramona book takes almost no brainpower and makes me laugh my head off to boot.

What if...

...in all the things we considered in buying this house, we ended up in a "no dog neighborhood?!"

While Thomas and I are not ready or excited about buying a dog just yet, some incidents that have occurred while dogsitting for two friends' dachschunds have made us ask this question.
At 6:45 this morning, we let out the two dogs so they could go to the bathroom, sniff the morning air and generally just enjoy being a dog on a beautiful fall morning. Well, apparently they were a little too exuberant (read: barking a lot) and we got into trouble for this. Someone who lives in the apartments behind our wooded buffer took it upon himself to scream out the window that he was sleeping and the dogs were annoying him. Hearing a (cranky!)voice out of the trees was startling, but we quickly picked up the dogs and hurried them inside. About 30 seconds later, our sleepy and slightly disheveled next door neighbor rang our doorbell to inform us that his bedroom is on the corner and that the dogs have woken him up on the last two mornings. He was very nice about it, which made it all the more embarrassing to us.

We certainly did not blame either of the disgruntled people for being, well, disgruntled about the volume and quantity of dog barks, but in considering the lack of dogs around us, Thomas and I are a little nervous about what will happen when we do want a dog.

Typing this post took great effort.

Scene: My yearly trip to the eye doctor this morning at 8:45.
Eye Doctor: Yes, I have to dilate your eyes. Otherwise I can't shine glaringly uncomfortable lights into them that will make them water uncontrollably. If I don't do this, then the stock we own in Kleenex will dip down and we won't have the money to buy all this fancy equipment that ultimately just results in me saying "option 1 or option 2? Is it option 3, or 4?"
But don't worry, they will undilate in 2 hours, 3 at the absolute outside. You will be perfectly safe to drive, but just allow for "plenty of time to get anywhere." We certainly don't want you to be unsafe.

5 minutes later, I am driving down the road at granny speed, sunglasses glued to my eyes and eyes almost shut against the September sun, which seems to be reflecting even more intensely than usual. Somehow I made it home, accident-free, and went to find the darkest room in the house possible. With my sunglasses on.

3.5 hours later, my pupils are still the size of dinner plates and reading is still a struggle. Good thing my livelihood doesn't depend on it. O wait...

On a happier note, I have now made it in and out of 3 types of doctors for yearly check ups. I think that this almost qualifies me as an adult.

The one about the kitchen sink

I have noticed something funny about our new house (our beautiful new home that we are so so happy to be in!). I am hoping that this serves as an excuse for why I have not been blogging recently. Moving across town and starting school again proved to be too much for my new blogging self.
The faucet of our kitchen sink has two settings. The first is a gentle but steady amount of water that increases or decreases as you raise and lower the handle. It is more than capable of cleaning our dishes, hands, and whatever else might fall in it. The other setting is Niagara falls. You press the little button, and all of a sudden the gentle/steady flow turns into a deluge of epic proportions. You become instantly soaked as the water sprays uncontrollably off of whatever object it happens to come into contact with--especially if said item is tilted at any sort of angle.
If you recall my post about being on a boat going 40 mph in a rainstorm, you can apply similar ideas here.
Having observed these facts about our sink, I have also observed that the little buttons that create each setting may as well be labeled M and F. I think that my preference for the first setting is fairly obvious at this point, so it follows that Thomas never uses the sink without pressing the other button. He appears happy to leave the kitchen looking like he has just stepped off of Noah's Ark, marveling at the speed at which he completed the dishwashing because of the "amazing water pressure."
So, if you come to our house, be warned. If Thomas was the last one at the helm in the kitchen, you will get soaked (and quickly!)

A List

Ways that I can see God's provision and blessing in my life right now (and reasons why I haven't been blogging much in the past few weeks!)

1. We are closing on our first house this Wednesday! This has felt like quite a process and we are so excited to get settled into a community and more importantly NOT TO HAVE TO MOVE AGAIN for a few years. yes! If you see smoke rising in the north Mt. Pleasant area this weekend, we might be having a huge bonfire of moving boxes (although we might not want to make the HOA mad in our first week there...)
2. School starts again on Thursday! Year Number Two of the Commute/Finishing up the Degree. I will be taking three classes and teaching one section of English 101 in the oh-so-lovely Welsh Humanities Building. This building vies for the prize of ugliest building on campus--and it really is a lovely campus--but sadly the Humanities Building blueprints must have been mixed up with a prison's. Anyways, I am excited to only be driving two days a week this semester.
3. My 24th birthday is on Friday! This will be my first birthday to celebrate as Ashley Grooms, and a fun way to start off the Weekend of Craziness.
4. The Weekend of Craziness involves moving galore, hosting both families ("hosting" is a loose term since we are asking them to bring their own towels, bedding and food :)) and leaving behind our first home. We have enjoyed a truly nice apartment for the last year or so.

...of ships and shoes and sealing wax

So it has been a few weeks...I apologize. Thomas and I have been sucked into the time-consuming vortex of Trying to Buy a House. Due to various factors beyond our control, we are now the poster children for our realtor of unsuccessful/crazy short sales. Thus, we have eliminated all short sales and are sticking with regular buyin' and sellin.'
I came across this passage during some wonderful down time this weekend and thought it was worth sharing with whomever reads this:

"To the degree that [one] seeks life from the creation, [one] will be dissatisfied and angry with God. Change will only take place as [we] recognize the god-replacements that rule [our] hearts, condition [our] emotions and control [our] behavior."
Instruments in the Redeemer's Hand, Paul David Tripp.

sand + laundry= sandry?

So, Thomas and I were lucky enough to hit up the beach twice this weekend (the joys of living on the coast!) embarrassingly enough for pretty much the first time this summer. Better late than never I suppose.
As glorious as the beach is--waves! swimming! interesting sea critters! sun! sand!--cleaning up from it is a pain. After coming home with approximately 622 bags/pieces of clothing/various beach items, we promptly dumped them into the laundry room and went off to relax (appreciate the irony of relaxing after a beach afternoon here). Washing all of the sandy stuff is not a problem. Rather, it is the 435993534875 particles of sand that get EVERYWHERE in 2. 5 seconds that creates the major problem. I was less than pleased today when I dumped a clean, dry load of clothes into a laundry basket that was coated with a fine layer of sand on the bottom. Definitely a doh! moment. So, if you find sand in your nice clean clothes this week Thomas, just think of it as a nice exfoliating treatment and remember the nifty star fish* you found and smile.

*T. discovered a star fish in a little tidal pool and brought it over to me to look at. On our way back to the tidal pool, he lost a leg trying to escape. It was totally bizarre--one minute the leg was there, the next minute, plop! into the sand. Operation Rescue was otherwise successful though.

of mice and men

This morning I trotted off to the Toyota dealership for a routine oil change and tire rotation--aka Pay a Lot, Wait a Lot, and Expect lots of Little Extra Charges. "Well, m'am we have found (insert x problem here) and if you don't pay money and fix it right now, your car will probably explode into 80 million pieces. But otherwise, it's totally up to you. "
Today was no different.
An hour and a half after giving them my keys, the gentleman helping me brings over some sort of air filter from the car. Only instead of just being dirty and gross, there was a NEST in it. Little bits of twig and hair and FUR. Mouse fur was the expert guess of the Toyota guy. He followed up with a few questions about if I park in a garage, and then advised me to switch around my parking place since sometimes mice can cause "wiring problems." Not to mention general GROSSNESS and smelliness. So my problem is that I park somewhere different every day....leaving my overactive imagination to wonder where this SuperMouse is living. Where will he pop up next?

book club bonanza

"Only as we see our story enfolded in the larger story of redemption will we begin to live God-honoring lives. Lasting change begins when our identity, purpose, and sense of direction are defined by God's story."
Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands, Paul David Tripp--July's book club selection

We all have our limits...

...but how often do we actually encounter them? In my experience, things happen that I don't care for or that I wish were not happening, but it is rare for me to actually feel and know that I am at the edge of what I know myself to be capable of handling. Cue Cold Mountain and a 4th of July backpacking trip.
The trip itself was mostly delightful--Thomas and I met up with a dear dear friend from college (Alli) and her PT school friend Betsy. The food was great, the weather was beautiful, everyone was healthy...and the hike kicked my butt! We were in the Pisgah region of the Blue Ridge and hiked up to 6030 feet, the top of Cold Mountain (yes, the one from the book and the movie). It was an arduous climb and descent to say the least, and I am even more grateful now for a loving and encouraging husband who responded in appropriately supportive ways to me when I said little gems like "Just leave me here" and "I'm never going backpacking again." Needless to say, I am happy to laugh at myself for being a drama queen and delighted to know that the Lord is truly the one who sustains us. And seeing Alli was truly wonderful. :)
Oh, and in another stellar move from the weekend, I almost caused us to run out of gas. in the middle of nowhere, NC. on windy mountain roads. near campgrounds displaying as much dixie paraphenalia as they can fit. oy vey. It's good to be home!

various and sundry items

I have a longer post in mind for this week, but for now...
note to self:

If something falls on my head, get it checked out IMMEDIATELY. Do not go to sleep, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
(Also, when the Billy Mays news first "broke," my first thought was Billy Mays, the baseball player? Whoops...got it now)

thin indeed

We went to Aiken, SC this weekend to visit Thomas' parents. This morning at church, I got a kick out of a typo in the powerpoint of song lyrics:

make me THIN indeed

perhaps a cultural Freudian slip--how much more often do we wish to be "thin" instead of "thine."

mrs. fly

pilates update: no unfortuante incidents with the instructor's pants today, thank goodness! She does use some odd phrases--as in, instead of "way to go" or "good job," her favorite thing to say is "yay-rah." It certainly gets the point across, but it is a new phrase to me.

and, on a semi-related note:
I was thinking back to other horrifying/odd incidents with teachers, and a fourth grade memory popped up--at least one reader of this blog will remember this, I think. We had a substitute teacher one day, and, horror of all horrors, her fly was down. all afternoon. The zipper wasn't just a little bit down; it was the whole shebang, lacy underwear and all. Now, the mature, non-4th grade way to approach this situation would have been to simply let her know so that she could remedy the situation. Instead, I am now ashamed to admit, we laughed shamelessly all afternoon. As well as for weeks afterward...I have no memory of this woman's name, only that we called her Mrs. Fly.
And given my chosen career path (English 101 instructor, coming soon to a USC theater near you), I am now terrified that something equally dreadful will happen to me! Karma, after all, demands it.

books and such

In Tim Keller's The Reason for God, I came across the following this morning:
"Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him."
I find this to be a spectacularly simple way of understanding our sin nature and also the pervasiveness of sin in our lives. Self identity is of the greatest value in our culture--everyone is always trying to find themselves or adopt a new/changed identity--and if we find our identity in anything other than our relationship and service to God, we will be inherently unstable.
Later on, Keller (in response to Kierkegaard) talks about sin as the making of good things into ultimate things. So, if I root my identity solely in my occupation as a student or as a wife or anything else (no matter how "good" those things are), I am turning good things into ultimate things. I am locating the significance of my existence outside of where it truly belongs.
phew, heavy stuff!

In other news, I just finished Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Terrific read--the language in particular is incredible.
No man is an Island, entire of it selfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine...
any mans death
diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee. (J. Donne)

23...

...is how many beavers (stuffed animals, figurines, etc) that I can see in our room. Perhaps we can get one new one every year to correspond with how old I am...

...is how many times I thought we might be struck by lightning while out boating in the harbor yesterday. Our friend Tony took Thomas and me (along with 3 other friends, Kate, Jimmy and Meghan) on an initially lovely Sunday afternoon boat ride. We left from the marina downtown, picked up K and J at Red's on Shem Creek, and then headed up the Intercoastal Waterway. It was beautiful, sunny and idyllic. Maggie, Tony's beautiful golden retriever, skittered around the boat on her toenails and drooled a lot. Then a storm started to roll in...quickly. Within five minutes of the initial raindrops, we were in a downpour, complete with thunder and lightning. Have you ever been in a boat going 35 miles per hour in a thunderstorm? The raindrops feel like tiny pins poking any piece of exposed flesh. Maggie began to give us her saddest possible face as she dug her toenails into whatever she was lying on--boat, legs, she didn't discriminate. Anyways, first mate Thomas and captain Tony successfully brought us through the storm and into the marina with no permanent damage done. Although we'll see how Maggie responds next time Tony wants to take her out on the boat....

and we're off!

So, blogging is something that I have been considering for awhile. My major concerns were: a creative blog name, that my life is not interesting enough (aka I'm not abroad and not a mom with 10 kids running around the house saying cute things), lack of time, etc. Thomas has sweetly been encouraging me to overcome these potential obstacles, and today, in the midst of pilates class, inspiration struck in the form of a blog title and my thoughts snowballed from there.
And when I say "snowballed," I mean literally, since the blog name is inspired by skiing. I wanted a name that would reflect my beloved Colorado roots while at the same time embracing my new-ish last name. So if you were thinking (fearing) that this blog is going to be a daily report on our shower habits, you can now relax. My actual plan is to work within the constructs of two quotations. The first is from Laura Ingalls Wilder...

"I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all."

...and the second is from an 18th century writer named George Herbert:
"Though I fail, I weep;
Though I halt in pace
Yet I creep
To the throne of grace."

Profoundly simple and profoundly true--these thoughts demarcate the edges of my world view (sorry for the rhyme) and I hope to build on these in future posts.

BUT, lest you fear that all posts will be serious and quotation-driven, here is a little anecdote from this morning.
My Pilates instructor, a dear, sweet older woman, chose to wear a pair of hip-hugging spandex pants to class this morning. She pulled off the outfit well, even impressively, but then disaster struck. In the middle of a roll up exercise (lying on the floor, limbs fully extended in a straight line, you roll from your back into a seated position), these limegreen pants somehow slippped down. And I saw her entire rear end every time I rolled up. It was horrifying and hilarious at the same time. Fortunately she realized it eventually and gave a semi-discrete tug. I pretended like I didn't notice, but I was DYING to know if others around me noticed the great fall.