It seems that 2006 has come and gone before I could even call out its name and scream “Wait! Hang on a second!” The entire year I have felt like I was behind—behind in my school, in my writing, in my responsibilities, in my life. I was that kid pushing the merry-go-round who could never quite run fast enough to swing her legs up over the side.

Of course, maybe this is more a characteristic of my life than it is simply this year. Only time will tell.

A lot of “things” have happened this year. I started this blog. I fell in love with photography. I broke up with Elijah. My brother got married and my car got stolen (and recovered). I turned eighteen and started college. But those are only particulars. By looking at them you will only understand my whole year as well as the blind men could understand the whole elephant from feeling its trunk, its legs, and its tusks.

The real character of my 2006 can be found not in individual events, but in the intangible, overriding growth that has taken hold of my life and used every experience, good or bad, as an opportunity to say, “You’re not as great as you think you are. Now you must learn to deal.” And although much of me is screaming and pounding the ground with her fists while being dragged by her ankles toward “maturity,” another smaller, hopefully more important part of me wants more than anything to shed this childishness.

Here in my blog, I have mostly recorded the positive or silly things that have happened to me throughout the year. But 2006 had its share of bumps and bruises that never made their way into this little history book. Heartache, unhappiness, friends and family whose lives as they knew them are over—life packs a punch, a fact of which every day makes me more acutely aware. I suppose this is part of growing up.

I would love to tell you that this year’s events and all of its growth has left me with some kind of beautiful clarity about the nature of the universe and my minuscule place in it. But the truth is that in boarding the train to depart 2006, my bags are packed with much more confusion and many more questions than they were when I arrived. (I’ve heard that Gutenberg will do that to you.)

But my questions are good questions, I think, and the journey to finding good answers is a good one too. Also, I am blessed with a family, a community, a school, and friends who are fellow journeyers.

So long, 2006. You’ve been good, if not always fun. Here’s hoping that 2007 will be a year in which we can all come to terms with ourselves and this crazy world and build character through our experiences, good and bad.

(P.S. Thank you, especially, readers, for being here this year. I hope you have enjoyed reading; without your encouragement I never would have kept writing. You are greatly appreciated. )

Don’t let me down, camera.

Don’t let me down, weather.

Don’t let me down, mind.

Don’t let me down, hands.

Don’t let me down, eyes.

Wish me luck, all.

(P.S. Figures I would pick today to majorly break out. At least I’ll be on the right side of the camera, eh?)

Tonight at work I had the distinct pleasure of meeting a very well-spoken woman.

I discovered this fact about her as I was ringing up some dog paraphernalia she was purchasing. She informed me that the dogs on the cards and ornaments she was buying were called Westies. “I have a Westie at home,” she said, “and she’s very aunry.”

I stopped and stared.

“What did you just say?”

“She’s very aunry.”

I still remember the day I discovered the controversy surrounding the word ‘ornery’. I must have been only nine or ten, sitting hunched over my little Performa, furiously tapping away at some undoubtedly eloquent prose.

That’s when it happened: I tried to call someone or something in whatever I was writing ‘aunry.’ I was usually good at spelling, but for some reason I could not call to mind the spelling of this word. I suddenly realized that I had never actually seen it in print. I knew exactly what it meant—stubborn, willful, unpleasant—because I had been called ‘aunry’ by somebody at least once every day for the first seven years of my existence—but I hadn’t the foggiest idea how to spell it.

I figured I would be able to sound it out phonetically. I tried ‘aunry’, ‘onry’, ‘aunrie’, ‘onrie’, each attempt looking more ridiculous than the one before. After several minutes of quiet consternation, I finally asked my mom, the resident expert on the English language, how it was spelled.

“ORNERY?” I exclaimed, sounding out the strange syllables after she showed me the word in the dictionary. How could a word pronounced ‘aunry’ be spelled ‘ORNERY’? This did not make any sense to my ten-year-old brain.

But growing older (and hopefully wiser) means coming to terms with the fact that your own family’s idiosyncrasies are not the only way to do things. Alternatively, it means coming to terms with the fact that everyone in the world except your family does things wrong. I chose the latter route.

Ever since that fateful discovery I have refused to succumb to my friends’ insidious suggestion that ‘ornery’ might actually be pronounced just like it is spelled. I am not sure where my family picked up ‘aunry’—I can only assume it is southern in origin—but now that I have grown up with it I WILL NOT BE TURNED.

So you can imagine my joy this evening, while standing behind the cash register of the anonymous retail location employing me, when that wonderful woman up and said “AUNRY.” Oh, that wonderful woman, and her wonderful, aunry, aunry Westie. I felt like I was facing a long lost relative. Stars danced in front of my eyes, somewhere a band of fiddles struck up, and I reached across the counter and embraced her as I squealed, “Auntie May, you’ve come HOME!”

Just kidding. Actually, I just kind of stood there staring at her until we both felt awkward and then I finally sputtered “You… you say that word right!”

She laughed politely, then turned equally politely away from the counter and started looking at more merchandise, obviously unwilling to acknowledge the fact that there was any other way to say that word. My kind of woman.

I reluctantly continued ringing up and bagging her merchandise, all notions of bringing her back to the farm to bake pies with us slowly slipping from my mind.

But I will always remember her—the woman who proved once and for all how the word ‘ornery’ is correctly pronounced. And don’t any of you try to tell me any different.

Christmas has come and gone. We had a lovely little celebration with our family, from which I will eventually post pictures. In the meantime, please enjoy this column which I wrote for 20Below about Christmas. It was published in the paper today, and you can read it online. But I am also copying it into my blog so that it will be saved if that link ever breaks.

Here it is:

One night, when I was about 7 or 8, I sat in the back seat of our family car with my nose pressed against the cold glass. It was a long drive home, and I occupied myself by staring at the headlights of the oncoming cars, watching them creep closer and closer to our car until WHOOSH! they were gone behind us into the night.

Somehow, this reminded me of looking forward to something. You waited and watched as the special event crept ever closer, and then suddenly in the blink of an eye it was gone.

That is exactly how I experienced Christmas. Around Thanksgiving I would start to realize that my favorite holiday was right around the corner, waiting for me at the end of a torturously long month. As the big day approached, my parents and my brother and I would put up decorations, get a Christmas tree, watch our sputtering VHS tape full of cartoon Christmas specials, and count the days on our Advent calendar.

Finally, I would find myself lying in bed on Christmas Eve, clutching my comforter and squeezing my eyes shut, trying desperately to stop thinking about the next morning so it would just be here.

Christmas was simple back then. Our traditions were comfortingly familiar, year after year. It was never something to worry about it was only something to enjoy. But, like most things in life, Christmas has become more complicated as I have grown older.

Some of the complications are small: my older brother, who used to enforce our Christmas traditions like they were scripture, has moved out and become married. And while we love his wife and her family, watching him start to separate his traditions from ours is bittersweet.

What’s more, my brother and his wife may be moving to another state next year, and I probably will have moved away from home. Next Christmas, our family’s landscape will be completely different. And even though these changes are good, they tug at the heartstrings of that little girl who loved sitting around the tree on Christmas morning with her family.

But some of the complications are more significant. I don’t know whether the world has really become sadder since I was little, or whether I am only now beginning to really see and understand it. I suspect it is the latter. In either case, many of my dearest friends and family have sadness and struggles in their lives—illness, family tensions, loneliness problems that will not magically disappear because of Christmas.

As a child, I heard about people who didn’t get excited about Christmas. They were the reason that the “Whos down in Who-ville” had to reach out to the Grinch—the reason that Tiny Tim had to melt Scrooge’s heart. But I never understood how anyone could actually feel that way.

Now, in light of our messy lives, and the changes and struggles that come at all of us throughout the year, I understand that we could all use some encouragement at Christmastime.

Of course, some things never change. I really do still enjoy Christmas I still love the decorations, the music, the times I get to spend with my family. And Christmas still feels like a car speeding past us in the night.

But now, with a few years of perspective, I can see that while Christmas is an exciting, wonderful time, it is not as simple as I used to believe. And now, more than ever, I appreciate the story of the baby born so long ago in Bethlehem. It is a story that should bring hope to us all, no matter what our Christmas looks like this year.

Because, as Linus put it, “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

My long-time friend Hope made me this lovely garment for Christmas:

Freakin’ Sweet.

(A Christmas post is a’comin. In the meantime, Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope that Santa brought you exactly what you wanted, or if he didn’t that you take this opportunity to build some good, solid character out of the whole experience.)

The following conversation was recorded INSIDE MY HEAD last night at approximately 12:30 am:

“Ummph. I can’t sleep. Why can’t I sleep? I’m tired. My room is dark. It’s quiet. I didn’t drink caffeine today. I’ve tried counting camera lenses that I want and everything. What’s the problem?”

The problem is probably that your hyperactive brain won’t shut down for the night. You should try rolling over to the side on which you normally sleep. Maybe it will get the hint.

*rolls over *

“AGH! The pain! In my abdomen! What was that? Why did it only hurt when I rolled over?? Am I dying???”

Uh oh, here it comes. Here comes the senseless worrying. The countless scenarios spun out past all probability. Please, let’s just avoid all of that and go to sleep.

“But, I mean, what could it be? It couldn’t be, like, my ribs poking into my heart, could it? I couldn’t be internally bleeding right now, could I? Or could I be… having a heart attack?”

No, that’s silly. Good grief, don’t let the darkness and your fatigue get the better of your common sense. You know everything seems scarier at night. It’s probably nothing, anyway. Remember that one time when you were like eight and you were in the shopping mall with your dad and brother and kept screaming, “My tummy hurts SOOOO bad! Dad, I feel AWFUL!” And he said back to you, “Erin, it’s probably just GAS.” Do you remember how that shut you up? Do you remember how crimson your face turned? Well, that is probably what is happening to you right now. So I recommend that you forget about it and go to sleep.

“I suppose you’re right. But, now that you’ve got me thinking about it… isn’t it scary to imagine all the little things that could go wrong in your body? I mean, if any one of the hundreds of tiny processes that sustain your body stop working, it could very easily cause a chain reaction leading to your death—or, at the very least, your severe discomfort.”

Oh please. Don’t start with that one again. You did enough of that in your Biology class.

“No, but really, think about it! There are so many things that could go wrong! How can you possibly just go on existing without trembling in fear?”

Hold on there. Don’t forget who’s controlling this whole operation: it’s not you, and it’s not nobody. It’s God, and He is a whole lot better at it than you ever could be. So if He says your body’s going to keep on working, it’s going to keep on working. And if He says it’s not going to, then it’s not going to. And remember, this world is not what it’s all about, anyway. Death and discomfort are not the worst things that can happen to you.

“Thanks. I needed that. Sorry for whining… the dark must have addled my brain.”

Told you so.

“Well, goodnight, then.”

Pleasant dreams.

*zzZZZZzzzzZZZZzzzz… *

So, I got myself a new toy.

Because I am not only a poor, starving college student, I am a poor, starving, college student in desperate need of her photography fix.

It is the ridiculously inexpensive Canon 50mm 1.8 lens, which translates into sharper pictures with a shallower depth of field than either of my other lenses could hope to accomplish. Oh, and also it means better pictures in lower light. Yay for me!

I can’t wait to try out some portraits with this baby.

1. My hair was doing that thing again. I threw it into a ponytail approximately 0.5 seconds before I had to be in my car driving to work, took one look at the way that it was coiling and flipping all around itself like some kind of mad snake and said, “All right, hair. You win this round.”
2. I poured super glue all over my hands in such a way that for the greater part of the evening my palms felt like sandpaper. I was actually on the phone when it happened… and in my fidgety way I happened to pick up a tube of super glue which happened to be slightly unscrewed and happened to spill out all over my hands and my apron and the floor while I mouthed silent terror at it. Now the patches of dried glue are finally starting to wear off, but it makes typing a little awkward.
3. I forgot to brush my teeth this morning. That’s bad enough—it meant that I had bad breath today. But you know what’s worse? Brace yourself—I didn’t brush them last night, either! How could such a travesty happen to a human being, you ask? The answer is too complicated. Suffice to say, that was enough to elevate my breath from bad to super-gosh-awful bad. I’m sure the customers appreciated that.
4. I am getting a cold. This is probably the optimum thing I could wish to happen, ever! Especially during Christmas break. But it led to the rather unintentionally funny side effect of my not being able to talk for the first half of today. I just tried, and… not much came out. I managed to interact with customers, but it probably sounded like I was standing on the other side of the room. Inside an aquarium.
5. But only for the first half of the day. Because, later, as I was standing in the back room drinking from my mug of warm tea, a funny thing happened. I discovered that the reason I could not talk was not actually because of my sore throat, but because a GIANT WAD of PHLEGM had wedged itself in my throat—a fact that I only discovered as I SWALLOWED said giant wad of phlegm. Which inevitably led me to the realization that there is nothing quite like the feeling of having just swallowed a giant wad of phlegm that you did not even know was in your throat. And, yes, you are welcome for that mental image.

So, basically, this afternoon I was a messy-haired, super-glue-handed, bad-breathed, mute, phlegmy-throated employee.
*sigh*

I can’t wait for the Google searches on that one.

NEWSFLASH: Everything they ever told you about college finals week is TRUE.

Well. Maybe not everything. (I don’t know what they told you.) But the ramp up to my very first finals at Gutenberg College was an entirely singular experience—I have never been through anything quite like it before.

It’s not that I’ve never been under a major deadline before. It’s just that throwing a stew made of my own tendency to procrastinate and my perfectionism into the pressure cooker that is Gutenberg during dead week… well, let’s just say that free time, sleep, and peace of mind ran dangerously low while surliness, procrastination, and worrying ran dangerously high.

I had some pretty dark moments this week—moments when I felt sure that Gutenberg should never have accepted me and that I was going to fail the whole program. Now that I’m on the other side, I can see how irrational I was being. (Although, no promises on the “not failing” part—I haven’t gotten my grades yet. ) My tests went better than I expected and, although I am not satisfied with my papers, I did get most of them turned in.
Unfortunately, I do have a few late papers that I have to finish in the next day or so. So I’m not even completely done yet. But I am a lot closer than I ever thought I would be this time LAST week.

And, of course, once I AM done I will still be busy. But right now, juggling Christmas shopping and web and photography jobs and hours at my undisclosed retail location sound a lot more attractive than writing another paper about Plato.

(Oh, and I appreciated the break from blogging, too. From now on, I hope to blog, if not every day, at least more often than… ‘never’. How’s that for a promise? )

By now, most of you have figured out why, for the last month, I broke my usual blogging pattern and posted EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. But in case you haven’t heard, I will explain.

In the month of November, I participated in NaBloPoMo, or “National Blog Posting Month.”

I know this may have seemed like a poor choice, considering how swamped I was feeling by schoolwork, but as November approached I decided to join for a number of reasons. One, I just really wanted to blog more. I felt like a lot of things were happening that I never recorded anywhere, and that I would eventually forget about entirely. Two, I really wanted to prove to myself that I could actually do something… that I could make a commitment like that to myself and actually stick it out.

I also decided, as I was beginning this challenge, that I wouldn’t tell y’all about it—at least not right away. I have a bad habit of announcing things that I’m going to do and then not doing them. So, here I am, not telling you that I’m going to do NaBloPoMo, but that I did it. Ever so much more satisfying.

So, I did it, but was it a success? I’m not exactly sure. This challenge surprised me in a lot of ways. I think the easiest way to debrief will be a simple list of Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• I wrote every day. I really did have to exercise the discipline that I talked about above.
• Readers had fresh content every single day.
• I recorded a lot of little moments that I would have forgotten about otherwise.
• I gained new readers. I’ve noticed several new faces around, probably people who found me through the NaBloPoMo Randomizer. I hope you stick around, folks!

Cons:

• I wrote every day. It was not very many days into November before blogging started to feel like a real chore.
• Readers had fresh content every single day. Honestly, I think this was probably a little overwhelming. Because I have so little time to read blogs, I usually prefer when they update every couple of days. But maybe that’s just me.
• My posts dropped in quality. Often I had to write my posts in the ten minutes before I went to bed, and usually I was grasping at straws to find topics. All of this made me feel like I was giving you scribbles instead of finished paintings.
• Readers (understandably) left fewer comments because there was less time to digest each individual post.
• The posts in turn seemed to lose a little bit of their unique identity, becoming instead “part of NaBloPoMo.”

Oh, I forgot one big “Pro”: I captured one month of my first quarter at College in a time capsule. I can only imagine what it will be like to look at this two, three, twenty years down the road.
All in all, I think it was a good experience.

But I’m sure as heck not doing it in December.

In fact, starting tonight, I am taking a week-long hiatus from the internet. Finals are next week, and in order to help me concentrate, I will not be checking my bloglines feeds, checking MySpace or Facebook, surfing the web, or getting on at all except to check my email. I’m already starting to feel a little bit twitchy from withdrawal, but I think it will be good for me.

See you next week.