Well, according to the original schedule, the church I'm going to is finished with its study over Armageddon any day now.

But we're not. The most recent schedule promises that Armageddon will go on through February. I'm dying inside, just a little bit... Not a pleasant feeling. And what's worse, I feel like a sneak and a blackguard when I admit or suggest that something's not right here. I feel like a sneak and a blackguard right now. I've tried to post for the last month on the subject, but I chicken out each time. (At least, I think it's chicken outing. Chickening out. Whatever.)

This is the third week of studying different ideas about the rapture, and we haven't even talked about whatever position the pastor thinks is right, just the "wrong ones".

Now I'm debating inside of myself (because I know that I've been a rebel for so long, and old habits are hard to keep killing) whether I'm just rebelling against the preaching of this subject at all, or if there's something deeper that I'm pulling back from. I want to say that it's the latter; I want to say that if a preacher isn't preaching the Truth, he shouldn't be paid (1 Corinthians 9:14). I want to say that if somebody isn't teaching the Truth, that I shouldn't be sticking around (1 Timothy 6:3). But I also want to say (sometimes) that the moon is a great grin on the sky. What I want to say sometimes is just a pretty little story.

In any case, my stomach isn't at peace right now. I want to know what to do.

Anticipation comes in different flavours. Remember the taste of the night before you turned 18? The weekend before your first "real" valentine? Five minutes before the dentist's chair? The second before that poorly-pitched baseball took out your front teeth?

Anticipation. They're all anticipation. Some are sweetly, vibrantly humming—eager anticipation—while others are terrifying, gritty, bitter. I like the first kind better. Also, I don't like the taste of gritty things... Ugh.

Tonight I'm feeling an anticipation which is new each time I feel it: The anticipation of taking my last final. It's new each time because every semester is different; different teachers and classes bring different moods, environments, expectations. I'm used to the fact that it's exciting, but I never actually get used to the excitement.

I like that. Knowing what to expect but being surprised by it anyway. That's a flavour of anticipation that I can really get into.

Knowing exactly who God is, but finding him new every morning.

Vampires may bite your neck, but Oircula will nibble upon your ears!

Brooke has wondered why vampires are so attractive, and Oircula is designed to answer that question!

Okay, I'm getting sick and tired. And also I'm getting sick and tired of trying to figure out a way to say "you" and make it obvious that it's in the plural. I like that "you" can mean either singular or plural, it comes in so handy so often, but sometimes I want to make it specifically one or the other.

In consideration of that, I nominate the word "yiu", pronounced "EEoo", to be the new singular second-person pronoun, and "yius", pronounced "EEoos", to be the plural second-person pronoun. "You", still pronounced the same way, will be the indefinite second-person pronoun. This way, when I speak, everyone can be certain whether I'm speaking just to yiu or all of yius. And I can still talk to you, feeling good about being inclusive but safe in being exclusive, just like I feel right now.

I went to see a friend act in a play at the school tonight (the friend would probably be better described as a "kid friend", she's the ten-year-old daughter of the missionary family that's made Indy their temporary home) and while I know with my head the solutions to many of the horrid painful deadly facts of theatre, and I know with my heart the True Director, by the time I left the school I was fighting a losing battle to not slip back into the lonely, solitary insanity which is what I remember best of the semesters that I was in theatre... I still feel like I might throw up, my stomach is... grouchy... at best.

Working backward through my day, it was probably not wise to go to the Mexican restaurant before going to the theatre. I know my stomach better than that.

I do love my electric blanket.