"What's a Wonderwall anyway?"

Just about every morning on my way to work, Oasis comes on the radio and gets in my head. Not an unpleasant experience by any means, but 'tis starting to get old.

I accidently saw the Budweiser Clydsdales (sp?) on both Wednesday and Thursday. I think they're overrated and look very uncomfortable.

Cliff and I are going to the NEW BUSCH STADIUM on Wednesday. Pujols is back in the game and it's gonna be a party. Go Cards!!!

Here and now

I'm not the kind of woman who is easily satisfied with the present tense. In fact, I've spent most of my life yearning for some point in the distance, some magic date upon which the world of toil I currently occupy will melt away into paradise. I pretend I know these dates and I look forward to them with great anticipation. My made-up dates come and go, never delivering on their promises, and so I ascribe mystical properties to yet another date and sit and wait and let life pass me by.

No more.

In recent weeks, I've had a revelation. Life, right now, is good. I no longer wish for some future point on the horizon but enjoy the present for all it's worth. I have a job I love and a man who meets my persistent attention needs while refusing to spoil me. I smile and laugh more than I have any right to. I can honestly characterize my life with joy.

And I don't say that because everything is going my way. I'm still frustrated by the drudge of life and feelings of inadequacy. Yet I know that God has my future in His hands and He's given me the present as a lavish gift.

There are a few dates on my horizon to which I look forward (most notably a long-awaited Cardinals game at the NEW Busch Stadium), but I no longer pin on them utopian properties they cannot possibly fulfill. Instead, I let tomorrow worry about itself. This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be GLAD IN IT.

"The world's a roller coaster and I am not strapped in"

Sometimes life is an absolute party.

Holiday World. Now that's a great place. Basically, Holiday World is my childhood. It's an amusement park in the middle of NoWheresVille, IN (actually Santa Claus, IN). You drive through random cornfields and all of a sudden there's this huge parking lot and a lake and a roller coaster. You enter the park and its an extravaganza of fattening food and holiday-themed delights. Oh, and there's also a waterpark... the largest in Indiana. Oh man.

Yesterday Cliff and I indulged in a day at the park, lunch, and unlimited free soft drinks/sunscreen on his employer's dime. Nice. We rode the new roller coaster (a bit long for my taste... it's pretty bad when you get bored on a roller coaster and want it to end) and all the water slides. My favorite was Zinga, where an enclosed slide spits you out into this funnel-like pipe. We got hit by a mid-afternoon rain shower while waiting for one slide, but we were wet anyway, so no big.

The wildest part of the day came toward the end when we decided to make one more go on the classic Frightful Falls. This ride has been around for as long as I've been going to Holiday World and is basically just a 20 or so ft. drop. As our log-shaped vessel began its coveyer ascent, we heard this nasty pop and the ride shut down. Ride attendants and security guards started running to our rescue, all while the song "Celebrate" blasted from a nearby speakerbox. No one got hurt and it was more funny/ironic than scary.

Hooray for summer!

"Ladies, it ain't easy bein' independent"

In this morning's Courier & Press, I read a rather disturbing AP piece on some feminists take on the career move of ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas. In the article, Jocelyn Noveck reports the reactions of a few agenda-driven women to Vargas' decision to focus on her family. Their take: the prospect that a powerful, successful woman cannot balance a career and family must mean that women of today still cannot "have it all." Poor babies.

I consider myself a feminist in the traditional sense. I believe women should have the right to equal pay and respect if they so choose to enter the workforce. I also believe a woman's decision to stay home for the good of her family should be respected and not subjected to conspiratorial scrutiny from a small but very vocal sect of feminists.

The feminists noted in the piece claimed Vargas was forced to step down by higher ups (although they had no evidence of this and Vargas herself denies it). President of the so-called Feminist Majority Foundation Eleanor Smeal bemoans the vestiges of patriarchal oppression calling Vargas' move "a demotion" and asking, "Is this a return to the days when it was tougher for women to get ahead?"

The answer, Ms. Smeal, is no. Vargas herself proves that getting ahead as a woman is not impossible. Success is difficult for anyone, but if you're going to make a broad statement like that, please account for the successes of Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and the countless other women I see in cable news anchor seats. The truth is that many women value relationships over the corporate ladder. When the time comes to decide between the two (and I know from experience that high-track journalism and family cannot coexist in an egalitarian partnership), these women choose family not because Patriarchy made them do it but because, get this, they want to.

Mistaken identity

Shock and grief all over again. I rejoice for the Ceraks but WEEP for the VanRyns. Please follow this Taylor Web site link because I can't process this fast enough to expound.

Pray.

Back to the grind

I broke down and bought a coffee grinder yesterday. It was bound to happen eventually. This morning after a lovely breakfast with my boy, I sat down with my first homemade cup of joe in three weeks.

See, I'd been using my apartmentmate's grinder for the whole school year (thank you, Lane), but cellar apt living is long over and she moved her grinder home a week before school ended anyway. Therefore, for the past several weeks I've relied on the DC, Starbucks, church and (blah!) McD's to fill my cup.

So I did it. I went to WalMart and purchased a grinder. It was on sale and as I fetched the box from a high shelf an elderly woman in a motorized wheelchair paid me a nice compliment. All in all it was a delightful WalMart experience.

And what's more... next week I'll begin filling my grinder with my mark-out pound of Starbucks coffee per week! Oh, the joys of employment.

"For what it's worth, it was worth all the while"

Fortunately for my wallet and waistline, Ivanhoe’s addiction is not a requisite to the Taylor University experience. Although admissions counselors may claim otherwise, life in Upland does not revolve around this famous ice cream vendor. In fact, during my last four years I rarely sampled its cold confections, only discovering my favorite shake in the last semester of my senior year.

“Try the chocolate peanut butter pretzel shake with Peanut Butter Iditarod ice cream instead of the soft serve,” my friend Jess advised. “It’s orgasmic.”

And she was right.

So after four years at University of the Corn Fields, I can at last name my favorite Ivanhoe’s shake. But that’s not all.

My undergraduate career ended a week ago tomorrow on a sunny football field in north central Indiana. My family came to cheer me on and buy me lunch. My gratitude goes to them for enduring the three hour ceremony perched upon ancient bleachers which faced toward the sun. At approximately 12:45 p.m., I claimed my bachelor of arts degree and shifted my tassel to the opposite side of my cap, thereby officially joining the ranks of thousands of Taylor alumni.

It’s hard to look toward the future right now as my prospects remain hazy. Instead, I find it much more comforting to reflect on the past and know that the last four years were not a waste. No, I may never use my degree in exactly the way I thought I would in the fall of 2002, but at that time I didn’t know what I know now. My time in Upland, in Maryland, in Washington, D.C., in Hong Kong, in Ireland, in Finland/Estonia, and in Evansville produced valuable lessons that stretched, pained, and developed me into the woman I am today. The thing is, I’m still learning. I may have graduated from Taylor, but I remain enrolled University of Life.

The term “commencement” signifies new beginning. What is this new road on which I tread? Will I falter? Will I persevere? Only time will tell, but in the meantime, I’ll trade in my Ivanhoe’s spoon for a G.D. Ritzy’s cone. Their cookie dough ice cream is pretty amazing.