moodiness

Now Playing: Loreena McKennitt, "The Book of Secrets". Track 1, "Prologue".

January 10, 2008.

I let myself stay in bed until nine o’clock this morning, though I woke up when Emmaline did, at eight. In some ways it felt good just to lie still and breathe, but the heater at the head of my bed was on, and as a result my head was hot, and my feet were cold, so with some amusement I eventually bounced out of bed, dressed, and did my devotions. Emmaline and I ate breakfast together at about nine-thirty and spent the morning studying. I sat at the foot of my bed with my laptop and wrote endless e-mails and Facebook posts, while she sat on her bed in a nest of papers and studied. When I finished my correspondence, I sat on the cushions in the window and worked on finishing God’s Ultimate Purpose by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Emmaline played Disney favorites and snips of musicals on her laptop.

At one o’clock, Catherine came tripping (in the graceful, not the noisy, sense of the word) downstairs so that the three of us could go out to lunch together. She confessed to me that she'd slept in until half-twelve, about which she was humorously embarrassed. The three of us walked up Elmwood Avenue and then up the Lisburn Road, past Tesco, to Doorsteps, the sandwich shop where Rachel and I had gone for lunch on the Monday after term ended. It's a fair walk, at least fifteen or twenty minutes. Because of all the rain, the uneven sidewalk was full of puddles. Catherine bounced over them, squealing every time she did, until Emmaline started to make fun of her, which only made Catherine laugh. On our way, we passed Steven, who works at a photography place up the Lisburn Road. He looked at Emmaline with an expression which Emmaline described as, "What is my cousin up to now?" Catherine and Emmaline discussed people, especially Catherine herself and Renwick people, subjects on which Catherine never tires.

We finally reached the sandwich shop, which was as crowded as it had been the day when Rachel and I visited it. Emmaline, Catherine, and I squeezed in the door and stood at the end of a line curving along the counter. The menu was chalked on a blackboard on the wall behind the counter: over fifty kinds of sandwiches, a pretty awesome selection. The four or five workers were busy behind the counter, scooping and dabbing and daubing and slicing, taking ingredients out of an array of containers under the glass countertop. Emmaline, Catherine, and I needed the full wait to decide what kind of sandwich we'd get. I ordered a chicken salsa sandwich; Catherine ordered a club sandwich, and Emmaline ordered a duck sandwich. Catherine's took longer to make since it was hot, so the three of us pushed through the small, crowded restaurant to find a place to sit. We cleared a place for ourselves at a little round table, where everyone had to push past us, but there wasn't much help for that. The deep leather sofas along the wall were occupied by rather large businessmen; the tables by the window had been descended upon by highschool-aged school girls, resembling starlings both in their dark jackets and in their incessant twittering. When Catherine's sandwich arrived, it turned out to be a massive two-tier with a piece of potato bread separating the chicken on bottom and the bacon on top, and mounds of lettuce. Catherine's face was a study, and Emmaline and I both burst out laughing. Emmaline gave thanks, and we ate, Catherine pulling off little bits at a time with her knife and fork. My sandwich was delicious, the spice of the (authentic) salsa balanced by the smooth creaminess of guacamole. Emmaline didn't much like her sandiwch: "I don't like cold meat, but I always forget until after I've ordered it," she sighed. We sat and munched away. The restaurant cleared out pretty quickly, actually, at one-thirty, and we were left at the little table on the edge of a pool of latte-colored sunshine streaming in through the low windows over the dark floor.

When we'd finished eating, we walked back to Renwick, stopping on the way at the Starbucks at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and the Lisburn Road to buy dessert and hot drinks. I just had a cookie--one of the small reminders of life in the States, a real soft chocolate chip cookie. None of this biscuit business for me. :o) Back in Renwick, Emmaline and Catherine stood around in the kitchen while I made tea. Andy M. was eating his lunch and was surprisingly talkative. Catherine started to complain about going upstairs. "You know it's dangerous to go upstairs after lunch," Andy told her. "Really?" she asked, her eyes widening. "Yes. Your body's circadian rhythms slow down for about ten minutes every day. So you're more likely to trip and fall if you go upstairs now." That made Emmaline laugh.

When it was safe (!), we went upstairs. I settled down in the window again with my cookie and cup of tea. Half of the cookie managed to see me through the rest of God's Ultimate Purpose, while Emmaline sat at her desk, drinking coffee and eating a banana muffin, and studying French. At about three-thirty, I changed clothes and walked to the gym to go running. In the gym, I ran into Andy L., who is part of a program similar to ROTC, and goes to the gym to work out (as Emmaline said, he's about the last person you'd want to run into in the gym). I listened to one of Pastor Parnell's sermons, on irresistable grace, while I ran, and went on the stationary bike. By the time I left the gym, it was nearly dark, and the gates to the Gardens were closed. I had to walk around through the Holylands, which are the neighborhoods behind the Gardens. The afternoon exams had just let out, and I had to struggle through crowds of talking students. The Holylands can be fairly dangerous at night, but it wasn't late enough, and there were enough other students around to make it safe.

Back at Renwick, I showered. Emmaline was still studying.... I sat on my bed and wrote notes about the things I'd read, both for my Old English exam and in Lloyd-Jones. Emmaline and I chatted some. She sat on her bed, working on math, and singing along with "The Best of Broadway", while I chuckled at her. We talked silliness sometimes, and sat quietly sometimes. She drew spirals on her papers and signed one of the "pieces of artwork" for me. At about seven o'clock, Emmaline ran upstairs to see if Catherine wanted any tea (that's supper to you on the other side of the ocean). I kept writing away quietly--until I heard them come thundering down the stairs again, Catherine chasing Emmaline, and both of them screaming and laughing at the tops of their lungs. It turned out, once the racket died down, that Catherine didn't want any tea after all, so Emmaline and I went down to the kitchen and fixed ourselves pizza. The Dumwoody boys came in with Chinese take-out, and we joked around with them.

After we'd washed our dishes, I made myself a cup of Mrs. West's mandarin orange green tea, and took it upstairs. I sat down with my computer to get on the internet and see if anyone had replied to my e-mails; Emmaline sat down at her desk to work on French studying. I started to fiddle around with my blog (in case some of you couldn't tell), trying to find something new, and trying to get the picture to stretch all the way across the top (despite an evening's worth of searching through the html code, I couldn't find the code for the picture size). I found an e-mail from Mrs. Knorr with an update on Amy (you can read these updates yourself here or by going to the RUF Tulsa link in the sidebar) , and all my frustration, worry, concern seemed to come crashing down around my ears. I sat in a very miserable huddle on my bed, trying to make a card for Amy, though of course it probably won't reach the hospital in time.

This was my state of mind when Claire suddenly came into the room. She'd apparently been working in the common room since five o'clock on an online application, but since I hadn't gone into the common room, I had had no idea she'd been in the house. Emmaline and I were both happy to see her. She flopped down on the cushions in the window and talked lazily with Emmaline about exams. I tried to pay attention but was too frazzled to do more than sit dully, watching them. After Claire left, I finished the card for Amy. My concentration could only last so long: Trying to hold myself together, I was finally on the edge of tears. Emmaline and I prayed together and spent about an hour talking about Christ and the church, which helped both of us, I think, in the midst of our stresses. We were in bed by midnight, though as soon as the lights were out, Emmaline got hyper. I was too drained to do much more than giggle in reply as she talked away on the other side of the room, and eventually we both went to sleep.