And he screams back, "You're a cow, give me some milk or else go home!"

Today is the big day. Semester number two. The beginning of what should be my hardest semester. The beginning of some more mental health threats. Please pray for me to be disciplined when you think of it. I am nervous.

I forgot to mention that I got a 92 on that last Biostatistics final. I ended up with a B in the class, which was great, considering the previous exam grade of 62. This semester my classes will be Epidemiology Introduction and Methods, Maternal and Child Health Systems, Community Health Policy and Advocacy, and Research Methods. It doesn't sound very interesting or anthropological at all. Hopefully, I'll have at least a few interesting pieces of information to share with and discuss with you.

I used our "Attitude is Everything" mug for my coffee this morning, and thought about the little saying slightly longer than usual. This will all be over before I know it. The nights of only a couple hours of sleep and days of torturing myself for being a bad mother and worrying about making horrible presentations and failing tests is temporary. It's like running. You hurt really badly (if you push yourself or sprint) and you can't breathe, but you know that if you can just push through, you will forget you ever even felt any pain at all. It will be gone, and you'll just be high on endorphins, proud of yourself, feeling energized and refreshed. I just pumped myself up so much that I feel like going doing some sprints, which I actually hate.

I've had a craving to blog for a few days now. I had all these good ideas and thoughts, and of course, I can't remember them as usual. All I can think about is this nervous energy I feel. All these worries and thoughts of things I need to remember and do. I am suffering from the typical "fight or flight symptoms" -- upset stomach, lack of appetite, peeing every ten minutes, jumping around. I'll try to get down my previous blog ideas just so I won't have them stuck in my head.

On Sunday we sat in the same aisle with a woman who has a tiny baby who likes like she has Downs Syndrome. The baby is absolutely adorable--soft, tiny, pink, wide-eyed, and gentle-looking. I couldn't help but stare at her the whole service. And the mom looks like she is absolutely in love with her tiny daughter. We were singing some praise music, which reminds me that I want to write about that stuff, and I realized the song had the lyrics "in your arms of love." All the sudden I could understand what God's arms of love are like much better, just watching that mother hold her soft-looking, pink-outfitted baby with so much pride and tenderness. The baby fell asleep on her mom's chest during the service.

I think the part that was most interesting was that I have always worried about having children, in part because I imagined that I would have a child with mental handicaps, specifically Downs Syndrome. Seeing that mom who was so in love with her child made some of those worries melt away a little more.

Now on to modern Christian worship music. I don't like most of it. It's so hard for me to "get into it." I keep thinking this will change, but part of me doesn't want it to. I love so many things about our church, but some of the lyrics from these repetitive songs just seem dumb and weird and annoying. On Sunday our church does a pretty good job of choosing good music, but I recently went to a service where they sang a song with the lyrics, "I could sing of your love forever." That is such a dumb lyric to me. If you COULD sing of God's love forever, why don't you? Prove it! Or, intstead, why don't you stop bragging about what you COULD do, and really sing something from your heart? Annoying. And yes, I know I am cynical, pessimistic, and overly critical. But some of these songs with meaningless lyrics have got to go. I just can't "get into it" when I am thinking about how dumb the lyrics are the whole time. Why don't they at least use something from the Bible? Okay, I'll end this rant right now. It seems a little unnecessary. I do love singing songs to Jesus. I am just pretty picky about what I want to sing.

I wanted to let you know that the couple made it to China. They are there now. After over 30 years of waiting. I actually found out that they had been renting their home for the last 17 years, probably because they were never sure when they would be leaving.

Sophia loves listening to this singer called Raffi. She smiles and starts to dance when she hears it. She bends her legs into a sort of sitting position, and bobs up and down. She twirls around in circles, slowly, in case she loses her balance. She holds her arms over her head and makes a long, low, monotone singing sound. My favorite Raffi song has the lyric, "All I really need is a song in my heart, food in my belly, and love in my family." The melody is awesome too. Just singing it in my head makes me happy. No wonder children seem so much happier than grown-ups. That is the kind of music they listen to. I love Elliot Smith as much as the next person, but imagine how great it would have been if he covered that song of Raffi's. The idea of Elliot Smith singing, "All I really need is a song in my heart," puts a song in my heart. I also like that the lyric ISN'T overly optimistic--it covers poverty too. You do need some fundamentals in order to be able to be happy--it's hard to have joy when you are starving. Goodness, I could critique Raffi music all day.