What I'm Reading...

Well, I gave up on Beloved. Admittedly, I gave up too soon; I hadn't even read ten full pages. I started the book in a too-tired state and just didn't have the guts to pick it up again after that. The next thing I knew, Christmas had come, and I had received a beautiful pile of books that I had asked for, books that I had been wanting, really wanting, to read. So, I removed my bookmark from Beloved, promising to return to it again someday, apologizing for my abandonment, and I picked up Julie & Julia.

I'm about halfway through Julie Powell's memoir of the year she cooked through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and, so far, it is hilarious. Powell is brutally honest and writes with amazing humor. This book is laugh-out-loud funny, and I can't wait to finish it.

What I Just Finished...

I think it may be safe to say that Jodi Picoult is my new favorite author. After reading My Sister's Keeper earlier this year, I knew I had to read more of Picoult's work. Day before yesterday, I started reading Harvesting the Heart, and I finished it today.

I was hooked from the beginning. Picoult has the ability to create riveting fiction with fantastic literary qualities, and the best part is, she doesn't sugar-coat life. She tells real stories of real people. She forces her readers to think critically about life. She presents life's sticky situations in ways I've never considered them before; she makes me think, really think, about things. Novels that make me really think are some of my favorite kinds to read.

I hope to have the opportunity to read the rest of Picoult's books; I imagine they're just as good, if not better, than the two I've already been exposed to.

To learn more about Jodi Picoult and her work go here.

The Prints of my Fingers

On Tuesday, I had my fingerprints taken.

Relax, I didn't do anything illegal to warrant this action. In order to receive my initial teaching license upon graduation, my fingerprints need to be documented and run by the Arkansas State Police, FBI, and Child Protective Services to make sure I'm not a scary criminal.

I can't lie, I was pretty excited about this fingerprinting. So, if you're a wonderer like me and you've never been fingerprinted, I'll tell you what its like.

First of all, it's a little more complicated than it seems. In the event that you're finger printed, you'll be tempted to do it yourself; however, you must be patient and relaxed as the officer twists your fingers around so that they produce the perfect print.

The "stamp pad," if you will, of ink isn't like a stamp pad you and I are used to either. It feels like a cool, almost damp table top. It is red.

So, you let the officer roll your fingers on to the red stamp pad and then press them on to your very own fingerprint sheet. Then, the officer instructs you to wash your hands, and by the time you return, he has placed your fingerprint sheet into a magic drying box and when he retrieves it your fingerprints are no longer red; they've turned black.

It is so cool; I thought it was, anyway.

Well, folks, there you have it. That's how fingerprinting goes down.

This is a photo of a fingerprint sheet that I found on the internet. It looks a lot like mine, except these fingerprints happen to belong to Malcolm X. I wanted to take a picture of my sheet, but I sensed that might annoy the officer, so I refrained from asking.

You know how you don't want something until you can't have it? Well, here's the other thing about fingerprinting: NO LOTION. If you put lotion on your hands, the lotion fills in the lines, and your prints won't take properly. My teacher, Mr. W., had warned us extensively about this, so I was prepared live sans lotion on Tuesday.

But, oh golly goodness, how I longed to have lotion on my hands. Just to clarify, I'm not even a lotion fanatic. I love lotion, yes, but I don't have to use it every day. On Tuesday, though, I needed it. My hands felt dry and itchy and cracky and gross.

I cannot describe to you just how much knowing that I couldn't have lotion that morning made me want to use it, need to use it, even more. Once the fingerprinting was over, my hands felt totally fine and normal; the dryness, itchiness, and crackiness had all miraculously disappeared.

Isn't it weird how we sometimes want the one thing we can't have? I think it's a really funny part of our nature as humans (or at least my nature as a human).

For those of you wondering, I abstained from lotion use before my fingerprinting. =]

I hope you have a Happy Wednesday.

What's In a Name?

I realize that "The Middle Ground" is a difficult blog name to interpret if you were not present upon its creating. I probably should have explained the name of my blog in one of my first posts, but, you know how life is, you do what you can. :)

Anyway, I didn't chose a name like "The Random Thoughts of Jessica" or "A Day in the Life of Jessica" or "I Love Jonathan" or "Welcome to my World," not because any of those names are inherently bad, simply because they just aren't me.

I think that a name, even for a blog, is important. Names are, in a way, a definition, so I chose to give my blog a name that defined my life, one that defined me. After all, my blog doesn't exist to further an agenda that I have; my blog exists for me, for my friends, for my family, and for anyone else who happens upon this pit stop in cyber space. It's about my life, what I'm doing, hearing, seeing, and experiencing. It's about sharing learned information with others. It's about communication. It's about connection.

The name, "The Middle Ground," was the result of a variety of conversations between some of my closest friends and I about our lives. We were laughing and joking that nothing exciting ever happens to us here in Searcy.

The consensus at the conclusion of the conversation went something like this:

"There's the exciting life, the boring life, and the mediocre life. We have mediocre lives. We're the middle ground; not too exciting, but not too boring either."

I decide that I really like the middle ground. My life isn't so exciting that I can't take pleasure in the little things, nor is it so boring that I feel the need to be ashamed of it. My life is in the middle, and I think that's where I'll choose to keep it. Life in the middle ground is beautiful. I am a regular person, not so regular that I can't be an individual, but not so individual that I can't be regular.

I enjoy the life that I lead with my family and friends. We have a great time. Sometimes we're running so fast through life that we can hardly catch our breaths and sometimes the days move so slowly that they feel like years and sometimes we're drowning in the ocean of heartache and sometimes we're having so much fun we can hardly stand it; that's what the middle ground, the mediocre life, is like.

Thus, "The Middle Ground" was born. As a representation of myself and extension of my thoughts and feelings, I thought it only appropriate to honor this blog with a name that described my life so accurately.