Cement Girl

This is from Wednesday:



some days are better than others

last night I told Stephanie when we retreated to our bedrooms that if I should ever oversleep or should my alarm not go off, could she please wake me up when she got up? Well, I jinxed myself because this morning I awoke to Stephanie saying 'Meghan? Meghan?"

"What time is it?'
"It's 6:17"
"holy mother!" and I jumped out of bed.

Thus started my morning. So I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off, ironing pants and eating breakfast and making lunch and definitely not taking a shower. I was so proud of myself when I was ready to go by 6:50. Except then I couldn't find my keys. And after searching frantically for ten minutes (with it being 7am, the time I'm supposed to be at my school) I called my dad who was just coming to work here, and who has my extra key. Lucky me.

I got to school and realized there was mud all over the bottom of one of my pant legs. So it goes, huh? The rest of the school day was fine, but boy, was that an awful first hour to my day.

I came home, entertained myself for a little bit with my accordion, and then headed to class. went to dinner, and went to church, and I just got home. I'm tired.

We're reading Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster for church, and this week's reading was about prayer, a subject that I'm very uncomfortable with because I'm utterly confused by it, I don't know that I want to pray, and I don't know what praying does, and I guess I'm okay with answers like "well, it opens you up to communication with God", but I still struggle with the whole idea of it. Alright. Truth=I'm not okay with answers like that.

Of course this was following our group prayer time in which I prayed out loud about Iraq and hostages civilians on both sides and people I know whose husbands are being sent there, and just asking that our servicemen act with integrity and with actions bent toward peace. And I cried it front of everyone.

It's all so confused in my head. All of it. Teaching fifth graders, discussing Iraq, trying to figure out prayer. They all fit together somehow even though most of the time they seem like completely different and remote things. It's just one of those days.

"Sixteen military wives
thirty-two softly focused brightly colored eyes.
Staring at the natural tan
of thirty-two gently clenching wrinkled little hands.
Seventeen company men
out of which only twelve will make it back again.
Sergeant sends a letter to five
military wives as tears drip from ten little eyes.

Cheer them on to their rivals,
'cause America can, and America can't say no.
And America does if America says it's so, it's so!
And the anchorperson on TV goes
"La-di-da-di-da."

Fifteen celebrity minds,
leading their fifteen sordid wretched checkered lives.
Will they find the solution in time,
using their fifteen pristine moderate liberal minds?
Eighteen Academy Chairs,
out of which only seven really even care,
doling out the garland to five
celebrity minds, they're humbly taken by surprise.

Cheer them on to their rivals,
'cause America can, and America can't so no.
And America does, if America says it's so, it's so!
And the anchorperson on TV goes
"La-di-da-di-da-di-diddy-diddy-da.
La-di-da-di-da-di-diddy-diddy-daaaa."

Fourteen cannibal kings
wondering brightly what the dinner bell will bring.
Fifteen celebrity minds,
served in a leafy bed of sixteen military wives.

Cheer them on to their rivals,
'cause America can, and America can't say no.
And America does if America says it's so, it's so!
And the anchorperson on TV goes,
"La-di-da-di-da-di-diddy-diddy-da." -the decemberists

America is so weird.