The past couple years I have not given up anything for Lent. I have a complicated relationship with food in general and giving up any form of junk food leads to me to think more about being skinnier than pursuing Christ, and not eating any type of normal food hampers my athletic training. There's no habits I have that are particularly troublesome or that take away time from spending with God, it's just a lack of discipline in general that gets in the way. Still, I think about it every year.

This morning I was sitting in statistics class with Toni. I had overslept and was still tired and was holding a cup of coffee when I realized that the coffee was something that I depended on instead of Christ. I am not coffee obsessed or caffeine addicted but when I am tired, I think, "A cup of coffee will fix this." And I look forward to my coffee every day. I think about what kind I will brew and when I will drink it. I enjoy how it tastes and smells and its warmth. I am a grad student. This is my fuel.

I think more about coffee during my work day than I do Christ.

How tragic.

And that is why I will not be drinking it during Lent this year. I cannot tell you how much I do not want to give it up. I really want my cup of coffee tomorrow afternoon. If I would have realized that this is what I was going to do, I would have been drinking three cups of coffee a day for the past week, but it just occurred to me this morning. If it were not near midnight I would brew a cup of coffee now and drink it. I will miss it. (Disclaimer: when I go home for spring break, it is tradition for Dad, Victoria, and me to enjoy coffee together, and I will do that because that is not as much of a dependency thing as a family tradition.)

Every time I think about coffee, the most trivial of things, during this Lenten season I will seek to set my mind on Christ, the most significant of things, in my moments of boredom, tiredness, and weakness. May he be honored and adored by this small sacrifice, and may I find joy, satisfaction, and focus as I turn towards him to meet all of my needs.

I got a new cookbook called More with Less, which is a Mennonite cookbook about how to eat simply and considerately of other people. I liked this poem at the beginning of it:

You have heard it said
     that because of hunger in Third World countries
     we should not overeat.
But I say unto you
     that the abuse of your body, mind, and soul
     is never justified.

You have heard it said
     conserve for the sake of the crisis
     because of limited amounts available to us.
But I say unto you
     the only wise use
     is that which brings glory to God.

Let not your hearts be troubled by this kingdom
     but let your bodies and energies be dedicated
     in service to God and man.
Surely you will find
     the future kingdom
     already being fulfilled in your life.

--Martin Penner, Recife, Brazil

Compared to common culture, I think I eat well. I cook most nights and 90% of what I eat is from produce or meat that I've bought instead of from processed foods, and I try to buy in-season, and local, when available. But still, I think that I can live more considerately by eating more considerately. I can use simpler ingredients, save money, and give it away to others. I can reduce the amount of things I eat that are bad for the environment or for people. I'm really looking forward to reading this book, learning from it, and trying out its strategies. I'll let you all know how it goes.

dear upstairs neighbors,

I appreciate you not holding band practice tonight. However, I do not appreciate you throwing a party tonight with loud music and bass that is now nearly shaking my furniture.

I never see you early in the mornings. May I suggest that you shift all of your daily activities forward by approximately two hours? Then, we would never have problems.

love,
lauren

dear upstairs neighbors,

I am also a musician and I understand and support your endeavors to start a band and become musicians. You're not too terribly bad, especially since your lead singer got drastically better over break, or you replaced him with one who could actually sing, or you just stopped trying to sing Kings of Leon, whichever actually happened. At any rate, I admire your persistent, every night practicing, and I can hear your improvement. What I want to know is why I have to hear your improvement at midnight and after. Your neighbors would like to be able to turn on and off the music that they hear, especially when they are trying to sleep...

love,
lauren

sometime over Christmas break or maybe a little before I remembered that music existed.  I mean, I had been listening to music and all, but something, and I don't even remember what, made me remember that music comes from real people and isn't magically generated out of a computer like iTunes makes it out to be.

So, I have decided to remember how to play piano. I didn't practice any over break due to busyness and to not particularly wanting to be heard. But I've been here for a week and have practiced five days. It's been good. I remember more than I thought I would.

I like practicing here. The practice rooms are warm. The upright pianos let me play more comfortably and expressively than the baby grands did at Winthrop (yeah, I'm weird). And so far I haven't heard anyone else practicing who was exquisitely good at piano like I did in the practice rooms at Winthrop. That makes it a whole lot less intimidating to sit down and play as I want to, mistakes and all. And it's more enjoyable since when I sit down at the piano I don't have to panic about having to play this for anyone else if I don't want to. There's no teacher looking for my mistakes, no jury at the end of the semester asking me to play the one scale that I can't remember, and no expectation that I have my pieces perfected and memorized in 15 weeks. I'm on my own schedule and I'm my own worst critic.

I'm working on getting Chopin's Nocturne in C# minor back to well-polished (and I'm pretty close). I really would like to finish the rest of Mozart's Twelve Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star--I play probably five or six of the twelve variations well and I'd like to learn the two I skipped and get the remaining variations to the point where I play them well. I have no interest into returning to the two Bach inventions I learned, haha. After I get those two pieces down I'll probably polish up the Granados Danza Espanola No. 2.

I'd like to start a new piece or two as well. Probably one at a time for now. I'd really like to eventually attempt Granados' Valses Poeticos but I think it's a bit beyond my skill level right now, as is his Danza Espanola No. 8, which no one in the world seems to have recorded except perhaps Ms. de Larrocha, and I can't find a link for her (excellent in my opinion) rendition anywhere. So we'll skip the Granados for now. I'm thinking about finally learning the rest of Mozart's Sonata K545 that I've known the first bit of for forever. I've got a book of Clementi sonatinas that might be another potential option, or I might just pick something out of my big book of classics. I'd like to play Debussy's Arabesque No. 1 but all those triplets over eighths might kill me. We'll see. I just need to find something the right difficulty level--challenging enough to increase my skill but easy enough that I won't get frustrated with it.

I'm going to try to be disciplined and practice at least three times a week. I can spare a half-hour three times a week and that'll work wonders. Hopefully my academic schedule won't be chaotic enough to stop me.

mk that's all for now.

about the fellowship

I get angry sometimes when I talk to people about my fellowship. I'm really thankful for it and most days I think it's too good to be true. But when talking about it, people say things like, "Oh, you got lucky!", to which I think, it's not like NSF rolled dice and happened to come up with my number. But that's not so bad because we toss around luck to mean a lot of things. The ones that really get me are the true statements. "Oh, well, because you applied to Clemson and that's a smaller school in the south and they're worried about geographic distribution you had a better chance," and "Because you're a woman your proposal was considered for two funding options!"

Both true. But can't I have also just flat out earned it? Is it inconceivable that my proposal was actually good and that NSF thought that I had the intellecual merit and the broader impacts that all the other fellowship recipients did, male or female, undergraduate or graduate, from MIT or from some tiny school in the south?

I am thankful that NSF tries to make things fair and I think that's good. And I know that people saying this to me mean nothing by what they're saying, but it feels like they're trying to explain away any of my effort and attribute the award to qualifications I really had no control over. It's just irritating to have worked really hard for something and to have that work totally discounted.

The end.

I think this is wonderful.

http://www.blogher.com/2009-swimsuit-brigade-honest-photos-0

I'm even considering participating. I believe so strongly that every person should have the right to feel comfortable in his or her own body.

Dealing with body image is such a terrible game to play. The solution is not to buy better clothes, get a makeover, pamper yourself, or even to lose weight. I'm fifty pounds lighter than five years ago, and honestly, I think I'm more self-conscious now than I was then. I've resolved to not speak badly about my body and to not encourage or allow that kind of conversation around my friends. And overall, I really am okay with how I look and how healthy I am. But somewhere in my mind there is still this image that I measure myself against, and I end up scolding myself for eating cookies, skipping the workout when I'm sick, or drinking a soda. Recently I have realized that this is stupid, and that the image I'm comparing myself to it's an impossible image for the way my body is built.

One of the things I enjoy the most about going to the gym is seeing the variety of people who are there. When I'm working out I watch people. Not in a creepy stalker way, just in a this is what real people look like kind of way. There are old people and young people, people smaller than me, people bigger than me, muscular people, frail-looking people, stick-thin people and people with curves. And I don't think any less or any more of any of them for their appearance. This is the best kind of therapy for the impossibility that exists in my mind--seeing other people and telling myself that these are real people, not the sickly, atrophied preteen-esque people living in the media and in my head, and that I don't view them any differently for their appearances, so other people probably don't view me differently either.

bedtime. on a related note, this was also heartwarming (warning, the model is covered but only wearing her underwear).