I missed the party!! ACK!! and other thoughts about life...

So yesternight was the party for BJ and his lovely wife. BJ graduates this week from seminary--WOO HOO--he's been going for a very long time...and Kat turned 29+. Anyways, it was the party of the year, This Side of Eve was gonna play, EVERYONE was gonna be there, I even borrowed NH Sally's nice bowl for the chips and guacamole that I was taking. It's one of those that has a place for chips and then a place for dip. KEWL. So I called my parents when I got home from work, as we had not talked in ages (well 36-48 hours) and I got my mother. Who is not worried that her Mother's Day card isn't even in the mail yet. (Have I mentioned that she's The Best?)

I told her I was going to lie down for a bit and then go to the party. As soon as I hung up, I remembered I hadn't told them I GOT MY 5 YEAR PIN so I called right back and got my dad. Who was very congratulatory.

Then I lay down and had all sorts of dreams about driving in New York City (but somehow it couldn't have really been NYC because it was actually pleasurable to drive...) and at one point woke up enough to realize CRAP! It's probably past eleven! (When the party ended.)

I awoke again just recently, took my bedtime pills, which means I'll be a little off today...

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I've started subscribing to Word of Hope e-devos and right now they're going through Ecclesiastes (all is dust, nothing is good under the sun, etc. etc.) This devo is specifically on Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 and the list of all the toys King Solomon bought himself to make himself happy. (He who dies with the most toys wins, n'at.) Since I wouldn't know, I've always sort of skipped over this part. I mean, who cares about a king who had all this stuff, the best stuff, etc, etc. Then your mind glosses over to wouldn't it be nice to have thus and such... (well mine does.)

Aside: clearly I'll be needing cough meds again, today.

Anyways, so I'm half-heartedly reading the verses, and the devo, when the devo writer hits me with the punchline, a prayer.

"Father, thank you for all good things. May we not use pleasure to avoid facing important questions. Amen."

OH.

Even in my spare (and yet cluttered) garret, I do that. I mean, who WOULDN'T rather watch SATC reruns than pay the bills or think about important questions? It made me think about Reese Witherspoon's acceptance speech for the Oscar for Walk the Line: quoting June Carter Cash, she said, "I'm just trying to matter."

Well, me too. I'm just trying to matter.

But it's so easy to forget that, to think about how many books I can add to my LibraryThing account, or when am I going to finish all this laundry and not think about:

What will be my legacy?

I certainly don't want to get to the end of my days and be like King Solomon:

"I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my work,
and this was the reward for all my labor.

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11, NIV)

(I did look up The Message, but somehow I need the word "meaningless" to be in there...)

Laundry, in the end? Meaningless. It's a task that's never ever done.

(This is where if I had the energy, I'd list all the meaninglessness in my life.)

And this is where my English teacher, Dr. (I can't remember her name right now, but yes, she was my high school English teacher and a DR!!) would say, "weak conclusion." I'm good at the meat, but I have weak conclusions.

Oh, but like in the end, is it really important that I missed the party last night? Or that I have lots more books to add to my LibraryThing account?

Yeah, I'm sorry, my conclusion stinks. Can I go back to bed now?

Oh, and I read Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl yesterday. WOW. (Although Maniac Magee is still my favorite, um, of the two JS books I've read.) Oh, and Love, Stargirl is coming out in August.