Baptist Easter

I was nervous about my first Easter in Baptist Country.  Come to find out, it was just me being a pessimist.  Big surprise.  I was wrong.  My Easter was very good!  Even if no one responded when I called, "He is risen!"

Sometimes when you live in a dorm room you forget what it's like to live in a house.  You forget what it's like to not be able to swipe your card and get a (maybe) hot meal but instead have a fully stocked pantry.
Lunch on Friday was a challenge.  I can't really call it "lunch."  A more accurate term may be: the massive amounts of bizarre food consumed around mid-day.  It was Good Friday, so I couldn't eat meat and I don't eat Ramen (so many college students live on Ramen noodles that it's my goal to graduate without eating them), Elizabeth can't cook anything except mac & cheese and there wasn't any, Jennifer only wanted cereal, and Emily only likes food that begins with the letter "c" and won't eat food that begins with "p."  Thus our lunch dilemma.  We ate: Ramen (not me), rice and cinnamon, cereal, cantaloupe, applesauce, pudding, and string cheese.  Don't tell Mrs. Mary.  :-)

When you live in a house you have to remember that the blurry red lights across the bedroom aren't just there to be annoying but to someone they reveal the time in the middle of the night...
Something you may not know about me: I am a bad bed partner.  I talk, I kick, I really hate sleeping on the top bunk without a safety bar because, well, I use the whole bed and sometimes more.  When I learned Elizabeth and I were going to be sharing a double bed for five nights I was scared... for her sake.  Even if I only kicked her once every night that would still leave five painful bruises on her legs.  As it turns out, I never kicked her but instead I took an elbow to the face in the middle of the night.  Thanks, friend.  She said it's because I stole the covers.  I told her if she would have asked nicely I would have given them back but nooooo she had to get violent on me.  :-)

In a home, everything has a place and the only thing out of place is Bananagrams, the most frequently played game in the house.
When I close my eyes to go to sleep at night, I see Bananagrams letters.  I'm kind of experiencing withdrawals being back on campus.  It's a word game kind of like Scrabble but better; we played for hours every day.  This is marvelous for word-lovers like me.  Not so great for the weird math-lovers like my future roommate Jennifer or friend Chris.  No one is still quite sure how Andy was able to play Bananagrams with one hand and look up spellings in the dictionary with the other.  Either way his "n comes after m" got really annoying... If you can't use a word in a sentence, define it, or spell it then you can't use it!

When you live on campus sometimes you forget driving can actually be faster than walking...
Since I wasn't home for Easter, some traditions had to be broken... like sitting in a dark closet for three hours on Friday afternoon to commemorate Jesus' time on the cross.  One tradition I refused to sacrifice was the Good Friday Service of Darkness.  It's an incredibly powerful service for Jesus reflecting on the seven things He said from the cross.  I forced Chris, Andy, and Elizabeth into funeral clothes and to the Lutheran church down the road (not to be confused with the funeral home).  We were teasing about the five cars outside and all of us leaving wearing black; people were going to start calling asking who died.  Jesus did.  Well, we walked into church and the first person we saw was wearing bright green scrubs.  Another person was wearing an Easter bonnet.  And there we were all dressed in black... So maybe this Lutheran church is a bit different than mine.  My three Baptist friends were good sports about it, though.

When you live in a house you forget that in some places of the world there are commitments before 8am.
Including Elizabeth and her two sisters, Andy, and me there were five of us fighting for one bathroom.  We were really expecting this to be a huge problem Easter morning, but it actually wasn't too bad!  For the first time in years we made it to the Sonrise service on time!  I'd never been to a Sonrise service, so it was a cool experience to stand in the parking lot and put flowers on the cross.  It a beautiful tradition and it works in Baptist Country, but it wouldn't work in place where a white Easter is feasible.

When you live in a house you have real dishes and nice china, too.
This Easter was the first holiday without my family.  I handled it a lot better than I anticipated... until Mrs. Mary asked me to set the table and handed me a set of plates.  The china pattern was the exact same as my mom's.  Our also rarely-used good china was being placed around a rarely used dining room table 900 miles away where, according to an earlier text from my sister, a place had been set for me.  I think I'm going to be late...

All in all, my Easter was great!

Care for some quotes for good measure?
Emily: What's the lowest note you can sing?
Andy: Um... I think a seven.
Emily: Will you do it?

Andy walks in carrying a heap of blankets
Elizabeth: What's that?
Andy: My gardening utensils.

Jennifer: Will you hold my Nerds? And don't tell me I am what I eat!

Elizabeth: I feel like a limp noodle!

Andy: Emily, can I put this pig in your speed bump?

<>< Katie

The War is Over

Thankful for the three layers under her red winter jacket, she sits in a rocking chair on the front porch. The cars cruise down the highway, most of them obliviously to her obscure location.

Wishing she'd opted for the hot chocolate instead, she attempts to maneuver her gloved hand around the spoon in her McFlurry. Her dinner, a Taco Bell Chulupa with chicken, sits in her lap forgotten. Not unlike she is.

"You want to let me in?" she calls on her cell phone.

"Oh... uh... shoot... well... see... uh... um... we're still at the grocery store," explains the voice on the other end. "We're on our way back," he lies.

The clock tower lets out a chime. It's 5:45. According to the invitation, the Superbowl party in the boys' dorm started fifteen minutes earlier. For the first time in her life, she's glad she didn't arrive on time.

The ice cream in her cup does not threaten to melt, but she's slowly losing feeling in her fingers as she touches the plastic spoon to her lips.

"He begged me to come," she said aloud to herself, remembering the pleading facebook messages asking her to ditch the Superbowl party in her apartment to attend his. Now he's failed to arrive at his own party and left her sitting in the cold.

Ten minutes later, the ice cream is gone; she is still waiting. Suddenly, the door behind her pops open revealing the morgue turned boy's dorm as her party host bursts out into the chilling winter night. She glances at her watch and starts up at him.

"We have chips," he says with a sly smile.

Of course, chips make her frost bite worthwhile because now instead of begging for mercy, he'll beg for grace, and he'll want it in the form of cheese chip dip. Yet she'll give it. If only in the name of forgiveness and familial love.
-------
Dear Mr. Kevin Kassakatis,
I was not going to update my blog twice today. However, your tasteless, rude behavior this evening left me no choice. I have considered this your forfeiting the war and will being my victory dance as soon as I thaw.
Kind regards,
<>< Katie Ax
PS: But I still love you.

Sweet Suitemates

Reason number 5,602 why I love my suitemates

Yesterday in the car in the Sonic parking lot:
"Amy, do you want hand sanitizer?" Nikki asked.
"No, I'm good," Amy responded.
"Amy's going to get swine flu," I taunted. Swine flu doesn't scare me. Seven people living in close quarters, and one of them being sick scares me.
"Nikki," Amy said giving me a dirty look, "Can I have the hand sanitizer?"

Two minutes later:
"Does anyone care if I drive while eating my burger?" Elizabeth asked. "Katie?"
"As long as you're still safe," I told her. Gosh, they know me too well. :-)

Ten minutes later:
"Anyone want my last cheese stick?" Nikki asked the car. "They're just too big to shove in the last one. The last fry, no problem, but that last cheese stick is too heavy."
"I'll take it. I was watching you eat them before thinking about how good they looked, but I wasn't going to ask for on because you only get like six, so it's perfect that you offered the last one," I said smiling as I ate a mozzarella stick.
"How perfect. Oh, and you shouldn't have been afraid to ask me for the cheese stick because I love you more than I love cheese sticks. And you love cheese."
"Yeah, and I need to watch how much cheese I eat."
"We'll get you some fiber cereal, too."
Thanks, girls.

Reason Number 5,603
Today Allyson and I walked out of our bedrooms at the same time and smiled at each other across the kitchen. Her hand was in the air and she was kind of posed. Most girls probably would have snapped her hand down quickly and turned red, embarrassed she was just caught. Not Allyson. For the next ten minutes, she and I danced around the living room to "Desert Song" by Hillsong.

Reason Number 5,604
We cleaned together today. Sounds pretty basic but for an hour this afternoon our apartment was a cleaning machine! It needed to be done, and six of us were around to do it (Amy was exempt because she was home for the weekend). We've kind of envisioned Sunday afternoon cleaning as a suite but in the six months we've lived together it had yet to come to fruition. Today it finally did! Most of us just did the chores that we enjoy, but some of us did chores we don't like (yay, Eizabeth!). We listened to each other, got out of each others' way, and even organized the honkin' huge closet.
"Let me know if I'm in your way."
"No, you let ME know if I'm in YOUR way."

God's placed some great girls in this apartment, and I feel incredibly blessed.

<>< Katie
Reason number 5,605
My suitemates are currently licking all of the silverware and putting it back in the drawer just so I have to rewash everything before I eat here again.