Ramblings Of A Tired Girl

I'm sitting here trying to think of something to post about, and realizing that that's a rather pointless thing to do. However, I've decided I want to write something right now because the idea of going upstairs to read Great Expectations isn't very thrilling right now... and I would like to do something thrilling. Writing is thrilling, you know, at least for me. :D The reason Great Expectations can't be described as thrilling is because Chloe told me how it ends, and it renders me extremely sad, you know, because I don't like it when people can't marry the person they love.

I was reading the Bible yesterday, and I saw in 1 Corinthians (I think it's 1 Corinthians?) the passage that says: "Do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature." I think that's what it says. Anyhow, I was really convicted, because for an extremely long time I did not like the idea of growing up. Can't say that right now it's too appealing, but honestly I was convicted. I want to be a child. I delight in those little childish things. I really love being a girl, and I'm filled with a kind of bliss (ya know... bittersweet...) when I look on all those memories I had from my really early days. I'm still young, but I'm furiously enjoying my youth as passionately as possible, because these days will never come again, and I know that I'll miss them. But that verse convicted me. I do need to be mature in my thinking. I was a child, but I'm growing up, and my thinking needs to grow up with me. I'm not exactly sure how to be mature in one's thinking, but I do think that it can start with studying the Scriptures, and one thing I dearly want to learn is wisdom, which will help me be mature in my thinking.

Do you know, I'm rather sorry that I can't write anything better than that tonight. It's almost impossible you know, for me to do better tonight. I'm in a strange state of mind, and that state of mind is telling me (I don't know which part of me) that I need to go to sleep. And as an end note, I don't like it when my foot goes to sleep, because it means that it's going somewhere that I want to go without me.

Romeo And Juliet Paper Written At Age Nine....

And yes, complete with original spelling and grammar....

Romeo And Juliet (Narration)

There was once a place in Italy. a city in Italy and in this city there lived two Ruel (Note: this is supposed to be royal... :P) familys the Capulets and the montages who lived across from eachother. Thay always had wars small wars in the market place. Romeo, a hansome man, was a Montagu. he loved a girl named Roslind but she did not care for Poor Romeo. As he was camplaining to his freinds, a servent from the Capulets came to them with a list of peapel to go to Lord Capulets huose and feast but as the poor man could not reed Romeo helpd him and who shell he find but Roselinds name at the top of the list. Romeo decided to go to the feast and find Roselind. But when he got there with a mask on he cought sight of a bautifull girl named Juliet. he said something and his vaise was remeberd by a capulet. But as he was to be killed by that capulet Lord Capulet orderd that he did no harm. but the capulet did not listen and draw his sword was banished from the feast. Bothe Romeo and Juliet fell in love.

Romeo, that night climd the capulets wall and he hid in the dark. He heard Juliet winning (whining) for him, Romeo. Then Romeo went from his hiding place and Juliet saw him and was very happy. There was nothing better that Juliet liked than a wedding. So Romeo and Juliet decided to wed. So that after noon thay were mairred secretly in a kind friyers sell. after thay were mareid, Romeo wasmarcet place when A capulet killd Romeos freind and Romeos friend died in Romeos arms with in two mitents Romeo struck the capulet. this capulet was Juliets cusein! Then Romeo was banished from the city of vrenen. Juliet was winning that her cusen was dead but most of all she longd for Romeo. then Juliets Mother and father orderd Juliet to merry a capulet. Juliet did NOT want to merry this capulet. So she went to the friyer and told him her trubles. the kind man gave her some magic potshon. Juliet drank this and fell into a deep sleep. When Juliets maid came into Juliets room and saw her on her bed dead She was horefiyd. Now the monk was sending news to Romeo that he had gave Juliet some magic potshon and Juliet would not die. But bad news travles faster than good news does. And so Romeo decided to go to the city of Vrenen and die with he bautifull wife Juliet. Romeo took along with him poison strong enough to kill twontey men.

When he was there he went to the tomb where Juliet was to be bured. When he got to the tomb he knelt becide the girl and said, I drink to you Juliet. and then he kissed his wife one last time drank the poison and then he, Romeo, died in Juliets tomb. Then when Juliet awoke and yeld in a soft sweet vose, Romeo sweet Romeo I'm here Juliet. but then she saw him dead at her side she said oh Romeo did the fryer not send word to you? but he was dead and cuold not answer. When she saw the poison bottle and she relized he was dead. Then she took it hopeing there was still some poison in it but of course Romeo was not a sloppy drinker so of course there was none left. So she kissed Romeo's lips hopeing he had spilld a little but of course Romeo was not a sloppy drinker so of course there was none left. And so Juliet started to cry as she cryd she grabd Romeos dagger because she could not live without Romeo so she grabd his dagger amed it at her heart stabd herself and gasped. oh Romeo. and died.

THE END.

L'auteur Malade Bientôt à être Bien!

Hullo my jolly good readers!

This post is written specifically to inform you (though I do doubt that some of you would hardly care) that I am on the mend, and expect to be completely recovered by Tuesday. As though I could name the day or hour of when my good health will return, but I am only saying that I expect it to return then... And I know I am sounding very confusing right now! As though you would even care whether I am well or ill... But I like to write, and since I can find nothing to write about except the state of my health, I am afraid my honest and highly esteemed readers, if they so choose to read my blog, must read what they find, which is an absolutely dull and droll account of no-one-in-particular's sickness. So, please bear with me.

I have a soar throat, a rather "congested" cough, a stuffy/runny nose, and fits of sneezing and wheezing which aren't that pleasant to those around me. Thankfully I won't die. And that is it. Was that so very bad, my dear patient and constant readers? (Well, for those of you who are constant.)

The only reason I have entitled the last two post names in French is because any other title in English would seem absolutely droll and utterly idiotic. These will be the first... (and perhaps last) of my posts entitled in foreign and unknown (to us that is) languages.

And now forgive the absurdity of this post, but because I am sick, I beg forgiveness of all my fair readers. :-)

I thank you profusely and prodigiously for getting through these unseemly and tedious post.

Goodnight, and farewell!

~Ruby

L'etat D'un Journaliste Malade

Unfortunately, I am laid up in bed. The only reason I'm down in the ghastly basement is to post and tell you why I'm not posting. I have about 100 and some pictures that I have intended to post for your amusement, but regrettably do not have the strength or patience to go through the long tedious process of posting them.

My brother Peter tells me I am sick because I am "teething" as he loves to call it whenever someone has their wisdom teeth coming in. I am of the mind that it is a combination of that, and of the fact that I was working with dust all day Thursday (I can be allergic to dust on occasion) and that I slept in the damp basement for two nights, which I am not accustomed to.

There is this big red thing across my screen at the moment that says "ERROR" and a little yellow triangle outlined in black, with a black exclamation point in the middle at the bottom of the screen, alongside wich there are little red letters that tell me in the kindest language imaginable: "Autosave failed." Lovely.

So, I shall now retire back to my lonely and very hot couch (seeing as the weather is rather humid) to read Vanity Fair, or rather the last 70 pages there are to read. Oh, Vanity of vanity... All is vanity, my dear blog readers, and please never forget that.

(Those are my last words to you in case I should die pretty soon.... I am sick with my own diagnosis, and it usually ends in death... Should that be the case, I love you you all dearly as brothers and sisters in Christ, and will pray for you as Paul did for his beloved brethren. Oh, and please attend my funeral. I am sending all the details to my pastor tomorrow, along with an apology for my absence in services.)

Most Jokingly and Sincerely,

~Ruby Jean Hopkins

I Can't Think of A Title... How Droll

Okay.... So the past few days have been pretty hectic... Well, maybe the past week. On Saturday the Howard's had a huge yard sale, from eight AM to one PM. So Olivia (see here and here) and I got up at five thirty AM and made berry coffee cake for breakfast, then helped set up. Around eleven fifteen, I told Emma that I was going to go lie down for fifteen minutes. The next thing I know Olivia comes in the room and says, "Hey Ruby you might want to wake up... You've been asleep for four hours."

:P

Then on Sunday I took a two hour nap in the library... and on Monday I didn't have a nap because we went to Cabelas! Yay! :) That was so exciting. I'll have pictures up later, but I seriously was impressed, and their fudge is soooooooo wonderful!

That night we also went to Oglebay (I was corrected and told it is pronounced O-GAL-BEE ;) lol) Park. We got tons and tons of pictures by the pond, and Emma and I had loads and loads of fun rolling down this HUGE hill! I tell ya, if you haven't done that yet, do it, even though you might be 58 years old!!!!!! But the second time down, Emma got stung by a bee on her neck. Olivia got stung four or five times on her hip, and I rolled over a few roots of a tree on my way down the hill, which resulted in a huge black and blue and red bruise. Yuck.

Tuesday we went school supply shopping. I can't believe that season is almost here! You see, I stopped math this past Spring in the middle of a math problem and lesson. :P Bad me... But I am excited, because I want to go shop for binders and notebooks, etc., etc.. Yay! *excited*

Today was nothing eventful... We went on our daily walk (we've been walking 1-4 miles every day--no hyperboly) and took care of the kids and did the dishes, and made dishcloths, and then the Howard's dropped me off here! (At the Clarkes). Tomorrow morning I'll travel to Solon with Mr. Clarke, and my family will pick me up there at Mr. Clarke's office probably around lunchtime! I am so excited! But I thoroughly enjoyed my time here, and I think it was very good for me. :)

I will definitely be getting some pictures up for those of you who care... :P

~Ruby Jean

The Joy of the Lord

Have you guys ever felt so happy that you could just burst or sing really loud so the whole neighborhood could hear you? Well, that's how I'm feeling right now. SO happy, that I feel like I could read through the entire Bible, and sing all the way through the Trinity Hymnal, and memorize every word of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. But... "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

Nehemiah 8:10 says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." In the past hour and a half, this has been proven to me so much. I am no longer "lethargic" as mommy says I am (and it is completely true) and I so happy and joyful and like I have all the strength in the world!

Even though the following could set me down...

1. The van is broken... again. And we need a new one.
   
2. We may not be able to go see Batman tomorrow.
3. A good friend lost a baby.
4. We are all exhausted and stressed out from our trip.
   
5. Some of us are getting over being sick.
6. Peter might not be able to come in September.
   
7. We didn't get to see the Shepherd's in New Wilmington.
8. Daddy has a gig on my birthday.
9. Miscellaneous.

So you see, all these things could make me feel rather down. Very down, I might say. But I am so happy, I am bursting with joy and happiness, and I feel like I cannot express it!

There wasn't a point to this post, I was just so happy I had to say something.

Might As Well Make Use Of My Time....

Hello World....

It's 1:20 A.M. and I can't sleep. So instead of pacing our bedroom floor, I came down here to post about something. I'm not sure what it is. I think I'll tell the dream I had last night..... or, the night before, because it was Friday night...

Anyway, mommy had a baby. It was the sweetest little girl I had ever seen. Sweet, healthy, etc.. And she had the roundest face. Mommy put her into my arms as Chloe and daddy helped her with something. I forgot about everything in my life except that little newborn baby, gazing up into my eyes, and I marveled at God's creation. "Behold, I am fearfully and wonderfully made." It was amazing how those tiny little fingers grasped my pinkie, how those little tiny feet kicked and squirmed, how those eyes sparkled and shone. I thought, as tears came to my eyes, "This baby is real. This is not a dream. At last it's not a dream!" You see, the past few months (when the would-have-been- birthdate for the poor little baby was near) I've been having dreams that mommy has had a baby, or got pregnant, or something along those lines, and my thought was always, "This must be a dream. It's too good." This time it was, "It's too real and good to be a dream." I can still feel the warm, soft skin of the baby that I was holding in my arms, and I see her sparkling eyes as vividly as though it actually happened. It was the strangest dream I've ever had. We named her Cassandra, and it suited her perfectly round face and eyes wonderfully.
The rest of the dream is vague and incoherent. But that one part.... I forgot everything, everyone, except that little baby girl I was holding, that was the only part that was clear, and remains vivid in my mind, and that I can still feel in my arms.

Okay, I think I'll go read now....

Praise the Lord!

The whole story started like this.... A year and a half ago I started writing Travels to Inverness, which is supposed to be a 400 paged novel. (Something like that.) A very good friend gave me a laptop last October, and I was so happy that I had it, because I needed something to write on other than the computer that everyone else needed to use. Lately the laptop has started shutting down on me right in the middle of writing, and the screen clouds over and stuff like that. Also it isn't connected to the internet, which I need because I have a lot of research to do, especially since I recently decided to put a war in my book.

Well, obviously I can't afford the expensive laptop that I need, and I don't really want to use the one I have now for fear of its shutting down and never starting up again, and then my whole book will be lost, as I don't have it anywhere else. Daddy and Mommy decided that until God provides a new Macbook laptop, I should write on a different computer and make do with what I have. Since I didn't have an Ethernet hookup, or a flashdrive, I had to type the whole thing out. I started doing this and I was so happy because I can edit as I go along, and in the first four pages I added several things, changed several things, and really made drastic changes.

Well.....

Later that night, Gabriel was cleaning out the hard drive on the computer, and it broke. Every single bit of information was completely lost, and gone. The computer couldn't restart, or do anything. It was completely broken. Of course I was upset. I was furious. I was too upset to cry. I couldn't remember any of the changes I made, my school papers that I had studied so hard for on John Smith, Christopher Columbus, and others, and four pages worth of notes on the Reformation and the Renaissance were all deleted. Plus a few poems which I hadn't copied yet, and I couldn't remember. I was too frustrated and mad and upset to even think about trying to make every possible change that was necessary, though it was different from the previous ones I made. I was really wondering what God was trying to show me. This whole incident completely ruined my entire day, and I got really tired and stressed out, had to go to bed early, and couldn't sleep.

The next day was better. I made a few changes, and daddy said the computer could be fixed, although Gabriel called the Apple store and they said we would have to get a new part which would cost 300 dollars. That was not an option. I didn't work on my book for a few days. I became happier, especially since a lot of people said that it could be fixed, though it wasn't easy at all. And then....

Today Gabriel decided to work on the computer. And he fixed it! He got all the information back, and the computer works great now, without any new parts or anything! Praise God! I can't tell you people how happy I was. Chloe had gently tried to tell me that I "shouldn't get all worried about it" the day the computer broke. I yelled, "If you were a writer then YOU would be worried!" :P But I see now that there was no cause for saying that, or being worried at all. I see that it was all a lesson in trust and faith in God. And praise God that I have all my information and poetry and papers back!!!!!

Extremely Excited,

~Ruby

A New Blog

ruby-hopkins.blogspot.com

This is a new blog where I will post short stories, poems, and miscellaneous things that I've written. Hope you enjoy it.

A Fun Parody

Chloe and Duncan made up this parody a few months ago... I thought it was rather clever, hence my posting it...

The original song was Johnny Cash's Cry Cry Cry, which doesn't necessarily have the best lyrics... But just so you know, the first verse and chorus (to the original) goes like this...

Everybody knows where you go when the sun goes down
I think you only live to see the lights of town
I wasted my time when I would try try try
'Cos when the lights have lost their glow you'll cry cry cry.

(Next Verse)

You're gonna cry cry cry and you'll cry alone
When everyone's forgotten and you're left on your own
You're gonna cry, cry, cry.

Here's the parody...

I think we all agree that feasting 's lots of fun
But it seems we only live to get the dishes done
For every pan that mama uses to fry fry fry
I scrub it clean and then he wipes it dry dry dry.

We're gonna dry dry dry
And we'll dry some more
Until the counter sparkles and there's nuttin on the floor
We're gonna dry, dry, dry....

Clever?

Simply A Post

Sometimes the days go by and one simply cannot think of what to say on his or her blog. It can really be the most disappointing and frustrating thing at times, especially when certain parties are begging the person to post about something when quite often the person doesn't know of anything that would be amusing or of interest to his or her audience. And now I find myself in this same position. Well, well, well, I suppose that I must write something, and I hope that whatever it is, my readers will enjoy it. Frankly, I myself would ramble for forever and a day, if I could, about anything, but I must not. And I hope, and am quite sure, that this will be the first and last of this kind of posts, however much enjoyment my readers may find in it.

And now I must be sensible. Speaking of that word, I used to believe that "sensible" and "sensibility" meant the same thing, only, they were used differently, depending on how the sentence was built. But by way of a dictionary, I was proved quite wrong. Sensible means "aware of" or "informed" as in, 'I am sensible of the difficulties;' whereas "sensibility" means the ability to appreciate or respond to complex emotional or aesthetic influences. As in the beloved movie when Mrs. Dashwood remarks to Marianne, "I think that might be carrying your romantic sensibilities a little too far." And now I ask my reader... Do I have any idea of what I am speaking of? Because I am quite sure that I do not know. Just an interesting thought... Although I daresay that my reader may not have found it quite so interesting as I did, and they are most likely "bored to death" like Lady Dedlock, who, in the end, did die. (But most certainly not of boredom... Read the book. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens.) Goodnight and God Bless!

Poetry!

As many of you already know, poetry is one of my passions. To begin this blog, I will start with this poem that I wrote back in October of 2007.

Wind and Rum

From East to West, from North to South,
There blows a wind that bites the mouth
It gnaws the lip and chews the gum
And the only remedy is rum.
It blows across the hard, rock floors
Of Scotland and her wide bleak moors
I felt the sting of this wind on my face
As I herded my sheep 'cross that wide bleak space
And the only comfort for me red, raw gums
Was a beaker of that strong, hot rum.
It warms the spirit, it melts the snow!
It heats the blood from head to toe!
In the glow of the kitchen I heard that sound
Of the furious wind whipping 'round and 'round.
But I laughed at the wind and drank my brew
Enough to fill a whole ships' crew.
I awoke at dawn the next dark morn
And remembered nothing of the day before
But the only clue 'tis not a fable
Is the empty beaker on the table.
And still I hear that endless sound
Of the furious wind whipping 'round and 'round.

The End.