on my own

So, Brent is in Florida all this week for the Stephen Ministries training. I think this is a great thing and I'm really glad that Brent has been asked to help do it. But this is the first time I've ever stayed behind while he went off on a trip. I've been to OR twice to visit A & J up there, for a week each time, and left Brent behind. That was fine...but it sucks to be the one left at home. As I'm finding out, 2 hours into the deal. This place is so echoingly empty.

Thank goodness my cool Lutheran neighbors get back today from their vacationing so I'll have someone to hang out with when I get super lonely. In the meantime, I've got the cat. And LOTS of books to read. Up for this week:
the last few pages of H. Richard Niebuhr's The Responsible Self
Plato, The Republic
Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle
Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (hopefully it arrives soon)

Of these, I've read Niebuhr before (and am almost finished with it anyway--will probably knock it out on the train into Brooklyn for church later today) and also the Republic. But I haven't read the Republic since 10th grade, except for a couple of times in various classes over the last decade where the Allegory of the Cave was excerpted. But I am so glad that I have read it. James Cockerell, wherever you are, bless you! It took some balls to put Platonic philosophy on a 10th grade reading list. But you did, and I read it, and now I'm reading it again...for a PhD comprehensive exam in philosophy & theology. Way to think ahead! Way to prepare us 10th grade self-absorbed neo-hippie deadbeats for our potentially bright futures!

Of course, this also means my copy of Plato is seriously and embarrassingly doodled all over with everything from sunbursts to "I love ..."! I really might find myself compelled to get another copy, especially if it turns out that there's agonizingly adolescent marginalia. I find margin notes from college embarrassing at this point now; I can't imagine what 10th grade notes are going to be like. And I was never one to write in pencil. (What's frightening about all that is, I remember doing it, and I feel exactly as mature now as I remember feeling then. So the question is, is this feeling of mature selfhood a total illusion? Or is that I'm doomed to fifteen-year-old consciousness for the rest of my life? Or am I reading back my own self-awareness now into my memories from then?)

So. Here am I, on my own for a week. What am I going to do? Probably watch a lot of movies, and Gilmore Girls re-runs instead of annoying Dr. Phil at 5:00 pm every day. Maybe finally change that flat on my bike and enjoy some of this awesome sunny hot weather we've been having. Start a new knitting project. Hit the West Windsor Library and check out some more sci fi. (I can justify this: I'm looking for sci fi writers who incorporate ideas about the posthuman into their fiction, for later use or reference in the dissertation. Any of you who read sci fi and are interested, send me recommendations.) Study for comps. Finish editing vH's mss. Bake some bread. Eat lots of things I like that Brent doesn't like. Make some strawberry jam (2 quarts from the farm this week! Wow). Call my parents 'cause I'm lonely (already). Blog overtime 'cause I'm lonely. Go to bed early so I can get up early maybe and do yoga. Maybe make some progress on that long overdue to-do list...