My poof...in all it's glory.

It's hot...but it has also been beautiful. It's finally starting to cool off right now...summer evenings are the best part about this time of year, in my opinion. That and the pretty pictures you can take.


  

  

  

  


I started a painting of Laurel. Well, all i have is the drawing. But i like that, so far.





(there's another painting underneath it)

Over the weekend i went to a retreat in Oakbridge, San DIego. It was wonderful and confusing and strange for me. Perhaps i will go into it later. It was nice to see Nicole and Jeff and the rest of his family and all those people i never get to see but once a year or so. Even though i was my usual antisocial self. o well.
If they ever send me pictures, i'll post them too.

i wish i could get myself to be more creative. invent stories...draw pictures...write songs...
It seems like all i'm surrounded by is inspiration...why do i feel so dull?

i should go work on my painting.

THANK YOU SARAH

my sister is weird.
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She made the post below...i do not have a thing for Ethan Hawke.

But it was too funny to delete.
just clearing that up.

Ethan

I have come to the conclusion that I love Ethan Hawke more than anyone else.
This realization has prompted me to announce it to the entire world...yes... I am telling everyone.
He is handsome, talented, sensitive, and he likes Lord of the Rings.

I am going to name all of my children Ethan.


feel free to make a comment or two.

Well...

it seems, as i am wont to do, that now that i'm on break i'm getting less sleep than i did when i was in school.


  

As i type this, wrapped in a quilt on the couch in the living room, staring out the huge glass window into the bright, cool morning, i have trouble placing my thoughts...

Sarah Laurel and i have been taking turns at night this week being grandma's help. Our night nurse, Mele, injured her arm at her hospital job. Yesterday i showered grandma...i used to do it before we even had caregivers coming here...before we even moved here. I don't know what it is...but the act of helping another person become clean is a feeling altogether unique.

Yesterday evening my family came face to face with a very dark spiritual reality...
Last night mom was talking to grandma at her bedside before she went to sleep and grandma told her that grandpa had been coming to visit her at night. May i just quickly say that my family is not at all unfamiliar with the forces of the enemy and his ways of manipulating our lives...we weren't necessarily taken aback, we've experienced stranger things...nor were we unsure of what to do.

Mom and dad told her immediately that what she was experiencing was not the presence of my grandfather. We explained to her that grandpa was in heaven...he is with the Lord...he can't come back. He wouldn't WANT to come back! Mom told her she wasn't to invite "him" to come into her room anymore. "In Jesus' name, leave me now" is what we told her to say. Not to converse with it...the last thing this family needs is just one foothold to put this house in even deeper darkness. We all gathered around her and prayed. It's strange that i'm not more afraid...actally i'm not afraid at all. After having already dealt with so much spiritual warfare in my own life it's not in my nature to be terrified...worried and disturbed, yes...but not fearful. We have a power in Christ greater than that of the enemy...

Just in general, grandma has been declining...physically and mentally. If it wasn't for other members of my family having felt a real sense of spiritual oppression this week, we might have just brushed last night off as something merely within my grandma's mind...but none of us got that sense from what she was saying.

Laurel Sarah and i stayed up long afterwards talking...well, i talked a little and then mostly listened to the other two as i drifted in and out of sleep until about 2am. now here i am.


  

We finished Laurel's engagement announcements yesterday. I started a painting of her. We've been having a Miyazaki marathon. Last night we started Princess Mononoke.

I'm very tired. All these goings-on have been the icing on an already many-layered cake of biittersweetness i've been consuming in the past few weeks.

maybe i'll try to sleep a little more...out morning caregiver should be here any minute.

if you like, you can pray for us. Of prayer, there can never be too much.

my inner child...?

Your Inner Child Is Sad

You're a very sensitive soul. You haven't grown that thick skin that most adults have. Easily hurt, you tend to retreat to your comfort zone. You don't let many people in - unless you've trusted them for a long time.

How Is Your Inner Child?

pretty accurate, actually.
maybe it's just the mood i'm in today...

that illustration is a bit pathetic...

Guess who got here yesterday...?

Laurel!! hooray!
She arrived last night around 8 just in time for prayer meeting, after which she, Sarah, Pip and i went for a night walk around the neighborhood and into the hills. it was lovely...we walked all the way up to Art Center before turning around.
Then Sarah Laurel and i drove down to my apartment in Orange because i had to be at school today to paint. This is Sarah and Laurel sitting on the couch...Laurel in one of her "ridiculous dresses" (as she called them)...


  


So they came to my class with me...and watched me paint! They entertained themselves with weird stories and reading and drawing, etc. in fact, here's a picture of Laurel telling a surely very enthralling tale (as most of hers are...)



  

and looking intelligent (as she always does...)


  

we took an overly long break for Lunch, met with a friend from school, and i showed them aroud the campus. Here are Sarah and Laurel walking around the sculpture area (along with some...er...sculptures)


  



  

Oh, and here is a hillside, "so Chad can see what the hills look like here", said Laurel.


  

...
After class we drove back to Pasadena, Sarah went to class, and Laurel and i made Trader Joe's fajitas (very good) and watched Howl's Moving Castle...

very strange...but also very good. Miyazaki is my hero...for any of you people out there that may not already know that.

Then back down to Laguna again on Friday for a meeting about the Europe trip...i'm starting to get a little tired of driving so much...especially with gas at $3.49 a gallon.

it is now time for me to begin the long process of going to bed. Actually, a shower sounds pretty good right now.

a little hello to

Acacia

...we were thinking about you today. (:

Cool

Working Hard

There are some areas in the garden waaaaay out in the backyard that haven't been touched for years. So after a lovely breakfast with mom and Sarah we spent the rest of the afternoon out pulling ivy, hacking bamboo, uprooting zillions of Chinese Elms, and hoeing, raking, etc etc...
After hiking with Pip on Wednesday, running yesterday, and hours of work today, my muscles are feeling the satisfying soreness of exercise and activity. Not to mention legs and shoulders considerably rosier than they were a few days ago! The best thing about summer is i'm always more active...i feel better and take better care of myself.

Mom being awesome...


Oh, i made some awesome guacamole and we had it with chips for lunch.

...

The emotional air in the house has been swinging madly between loving happiness and ruthless despair in the past week or so...God is doing some mysterious things right now. I'm not sure what is going on, but i'm trying to trust him.

love.

IM A SUPER BIG GEEK

aaah

School is done! Well, for the most part. I still haven't finished my figure painting so some of us are arranging for another day with the model next week. But other than that...mmmm. Sweet Relief!

3 things i'm excited about...

~Doing my own artwork
~sleeping in
~X-MEN!

later gators...

Highway 133

The drive to school was so beautiful the past few weeks...the hills are blanketed in yellow wildflowers...i'm actually looking forward to a little warm weather.

I'll be at school painting again tomorrow and Monday...and then i'm done!!! aaahhhhhh...

Weird week. The little sleep i got was light and troubled...two nights were especially bad. sometimes i really hate living alone. I don't know why i was under such attack...

anyway, i'm better now after a good sleep-in back at home. Last night Sarah and i watched Monsoon Wedding...i loved it. Films that make you really feel the substance and importance of another culture have such a huge impact on me.

oh...i adjusted the comments box so you can leave a little note even if you're not a member of blogger.

Hope everyone is faring well!

I wish i could see better

I'm sitting here at school, preparing for the drive home and the long night ahead of me. There's a western movie playing on the TV.

Saturday night Pip and Jeff played a show and i got to see

Half Handed Cloud!

That was awesome. A musician named Vollmar played, too, which i also enjoyed. There's nothing like seeing any of those guys live. I bought a tour EP and was thoroughly and utterly happy about it.

Yesterday in class (yes i was at school all day on Sunday) someone told me that when i cut my hair i should donate it. I said that that's what i was planning on doing. Lance, (my...uh...painting teacher) who was listening from the sidelines said to me:
"You can't cut your hair! You have ONE good quality and you're going to get rid of it??" I was eating a dehydrated peach slice and i threw it at his head. Nick and Omar chuckled sympathetically. I sat down and continued my painting. A minute or so later i heard him say, "wait...that didn't come out right..." Yeah, uh-huh, thanks a LOT! I thought it was funny.

I'm reading Lewis' "The Problem of Pain"...and I can't even express my appreciation for his wit and wisdom...one of my favorite excerpts being:

"If you choose to say 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it', you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words 'God can'...It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even if we talk it about God."

Nothing is more frustrating to me these days than people who can't stand to settle for not knowing everything there is to know about anything there is a possibility of knowing anything about. One of the greatest and most beautiful things to me about God is the mystery, the trust i have to have in Him, the impossibility of my own insignificant little life that He chooses to let go on anyway. I guess it's just insecurity...some man just knocked another guy into a water trough on TV.

It's a fantastic book. I've felt so chaotic lately...and right now i'm so tired. It's nice to be able to settle into something with a ring of truth and some semblance or real divine inspiration. It's like taking a cold shower after a long hard day in the dirt. I felt the same way when i read "Walking on Water", by Madeleine L'Engle. It was as if i had just sat down with her and told her all the stuff i had been thinking about and struggling with, and she knew exactly how to encourage me. Exactly how to reassure the things i was doubting in myself. It was a little bit like i sat down with God Himself. He really blessed those two authors with extraordinary gifts.

Well, i'm fading. i almost don't even want to push the "publish" button because i feel like i'm writing like a drunk elephant who just inhaled too much clove oil and paint thinner...well, part of that is actually true.

Laurel, dear, i am praying for you...