mind the gap.

I'm back. Really.

2010-11-18T22:20:00.004-06:00

I can't believe it's been two years since I last blogged on this blog. So much has happened... I've been lost in a whole lot of transition the since my last post: baby, new job, homeschool changes, etc. Now that things are settling in and we're well into the two-year-old phase with Ashleigh, I'm settling in and finding myself again...

...and trying to find my creative self again. I've been so hungry to write, to create, to sing, to record. I need it, and I deny myself the pleasure more often than not because the day-to-day gets in the way and I fall into an endless cycle of laundry and dishes and retreat to the TV, and I forget that God created me to create. I'm so much happier when I'm doing what He has called me to do.

To that end, I am doing NaNoWriMo this year, albeit quietly and in a very laid-back sort of way (not pressuring myself to keep up the daily word count quotas, but just making sure I show up and write something every day). It's been wonderful. Story sucks, but it's a first draft. Anne Lamott says I can write a crappy first draft. So I am.

David and I have discovered the wonders of Garageband, and he's become quite adept at producing some really great music with it, so we are looking toward recording some new stuff pretty soon. I'm really excited about this; it's really incredible that the type of record that cost us thousands of dollars to produce 10 years ago in a studio is now free and possible to create at home... and then instantly upload them to iTunes and share them with the world.

My goal is to set aside a little time every day to write. I stink at the discipline part of it, so if I can just make myself show up, well... who knows? I may actually crank something out of value someday.

So this is my first stab at what I hope to be a more regular blog, with no expectations on myself to be witty or profound. It's more for my own enjoyment and satisfaction than anything; if people happen to read it and glean something useful from it once in awhile, well, that's great, too.

Now I'm going to bed. More tomorrow...

Since I've been gone...

2008-11-30T17:01:00.002-06:00

Yeah. I really need to write more. I miss it. Thing is, I have no time now... my life is no longer my own. It belongs to a very short person who (very selfishly) needs to eat and poop and who depends on me to make those things happen... I jest. I love every minute of having a new baby again, but I forgot how hard it can be at times.

I'm attempting to be a stay-at-home, work-from-home mom, homeschool my son, and to be sane in the process of it all. It's just sort of working right now. Ashleigh has colic and reflux, so it's been a challenge to get her on much of a schedule, which has made my time to work and do simple things like showering downright unpredictable. And sleep, you ask? We're finally, six weeks on, beginning to only wake with her twice a night (it was every two hours until last week.. which meant that by the time I put her back down, I was sleeping an hour in between feedings. Unfun.) We'll get there... I just discovered the Baby Whisperer and I'm gratefully combing her site for all the amazing resources she has on scheduling and such (and by the way, why is everyone whispering these days? We have the Horse Whisperer, the Dog Whisperer, the Baby Whisperer, and now, I just saw on Discovery, the Shark Whisperer. Is there something special about whispering that I'm missing out on? If I become the Novel Whisperer, will I actually get a novel to cooperate with me and get itself written? The Laundry Whisperer? The Get-Off-Your-Butt-And-Go-Jogging Whisperer? I must research the practice of whispering further).

So I'm stealing a few snatches of time right now while the baby is asleep in her bouncer seat, and feeling guilty for letting her sleep because she's slept all afternoon. Usually I pay for it at night when she sleeps this much, but she has inherited my husband's knack for sleeping like the dead, so any attempt to wake her is usually futile.

Ashleigh is, by the way, amazing. We're at that perfectly cuddly 6-week-old stage. We're starting to get real smiles, and her little personality is emerging. I love this. I can sit for hours and watch her stare at the ceiling fan and smile at it. Everything is new and fascinating to her, and it's sweet to drink in that innocence. There is not enough innocence in the world anymore; working with teenagers in this age is a reminder of that, unfortunately. It's so refreshing to see a perfect little human with no knowledge of evil, or of heartache, or of anger. She is totally trusting, dependent, and willing to learn. I pray daily for the protection of her innocence.

And little Dave is smitten with her. I knew he would love her because he loves kittens and little kids and cute things. But he really, REALLY loves her. I'm so glad for that. He has a tender heart and will be an amazing big brother.

Anyway, I hope to begin falling back into my routine again. I'm slowly getting some things back: running, my dominance over my house clutter, etc. Hopefully things like sleep and writing will come next. We'll see.

mamma mia, here i go again/ABBA back together...

2008-07-05T08:41:00.005-05:00

If only for an evening:

http://tinyurl.com/6okgyv

The four members of ABBA reunited for their first public appearance since 1986, gathering on the red carpet for the Swedish big-screen premiere of "Mamma Mia."

This excites me greatly.

Ok. I admit it. I LOVE ABBA. I love every song. Spandex aside, I actually find artistic merit in the work of Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus...they invented their own unique "Wall of Sound" by stacking and layering every vocal, instrument, and sound that was recorded, and then by slightly "detuning" one of the tracks to create a chorus track. This was done before ProTools and digital recording, before auto-tune, etc. It was all analog, and it was brilliant.

As songwriters, they dominated. They have sold 370 million albums worldwide. Countless hit songs, numerous number ones in countries worldwide. "Fernando" beat out the Beatles "Hey Jude" as the longest running number one song. Call them cheese nuggets, but they were an important part of pop music history in the 70s and 80s.

I grew up on ABBA records. They were my first love musically. As a kid, I would hole up in my room, turn on "The Winner Takes It All," and get lost in the story and the emotion in the lyrics. It was the first time I connected song with soul and realized that music could move a person in a powerful way... and I was only 9. I had no personal experience with heartbreak and lost love at 9 years old, but that song took me there. It so captured the essence of devastating loss that I didn't have to personally experience the emotion to know it and to feel it.

For me, their music was the beginning of connecting emotion to music, specifically as it was so flawlessly and skillfully delivered by the two singers, whose interpretation of the lyrics made you the first person in the story of each song. When I started singing at 13, I unconsciously drew off of these women, my first influences, and it made me the singer that I am today: interpretation is everything. The listener must feel the soul and the emotion of the song. It's everything.

So laugh if you want... but almost everybody secretly likes ABBA. Even Bono says that they were one of the most important bands in modern history.

I'm just happy to see them all together again. Maybe now that they're all on speaking terms again, they can be persuaded to do a reunion tour (they were offered $1 billion for a reunion years ago, but they refused!).... I would fly to Stockholm to see that.

Newspaper Outsourcing Editing to India

2008-06-26T14:57:00.002-05:00

Now here's a fabulous idea.

Because outsourcing customer service call centers have been such a great success...

I know *I'm* always thrilled beyond measure after hanging up from a 3 hour conversation with an overseas, non-English-speaking CSR.

Good call.

I Can't Wait.

2008-06-25T21:51:00.001-05:00

It's official...

2008-06-24T16:05:00.001-05:00

I'm 6 months pregnant today.

That's very exciting.

I want a cracker.

I hate Windows Vista.

2008-06-23T22:36:00.002-05:00

Windows Vista BITES.

I have three computers at work that are cursed with the dreaded Vista OS, and NONE of them ever work...

They especially love to crash just before a church service, sending me scrambling up long flights of stairs to the balcony (lemme tell ya, THAT'S fun when one is 6 months pregnant!) to rescue the computer operator and contol-alt-delete my way through a panic attack...

I HATE Vista. I hate it more than I hate the devil.

Bill Gates should be ashamed of himself for releasing such a shoddy product. It's worse than Windows ME, and that's saying something. I really want to sue him for pain and suffering... Vista constantly interferes with my JOB, makes ME look bad to my superiors, and never works when I need it to. My job performance suffers constantly because of this piece of crap.

I HATE Vista. I hate Windows. I hate Microsoft. Make a product that works, and I'll reconsider.

It's reason 7834212 why I'm a Mac girl.

/end rant.

Snails are faster than Kerrville residents...

2008-06-19T21:49:00.004-05:00

I'm learning to navigate through life in Kerrville, slowly but surely. Really, more slowly than surely, because I'm learning that EVERYTHING in this town is done slowly. Like, death-crawl-slowly. Like, I-want-to-tear-my-eyeballs-out-slowly.

Today, I grabbed Punky from VBS and we were going to take my lunch hour to go to Wendy's and then to Wal-Mart. I'm pretty much already over the whole old people driving in slow motion thing, so getting there wasn't bad. We decided to eat inside Wendy's, something I rarely do, but I didn't want to sit in the Walmart parking lot and eat in the car. We went inside, stood in line, and after literally 10 minutes (and I was only third in line), I finally got up to the front.

Now, during my tenure in line, I noticed people ordering from both registers (I couldn't understand why the line was moving so slow with both registers open, but I did notice the staff behind the counter, numerous though they were, all leisurely strolling through the kitchen. Keep in mind that it was noon, the peak of the lunch hour). I stepped up to the open register, and watched as the staff continued their slow-motion pace. The family who was behind me in line stepped up to the other available register, and a girl immediately walked up to their register and took their order. She looked at me from her register and said, "Hi," and then went back to her order-taking. I stood there, still waiting for someone to come back to the register and take *my* order, since I was there first, but continued to be ignored. After the other family ordered, I said, "Umm, is this register still open?" The girl said, "No," and began to take another order. Umm, okay. So you *saw* me standing there, waiting to order, and you didn't bother to mention that the register... o...k. Sigh.

I stepped behind the people who were ordering at rude girl's register, ordered my food, and then stepped to the side to wait for my order. Most of my order was filled in a miraculous two minutes, but Punky wanted a shake, so we waited. I stood there with my food and watched as an elderly Wendy's employee with very brightly dyed red hair, God love her, slowly began to add the ingredients in his shake, and then she shuffled over to the shake machine and mixed it... slowly (keep in mind that I've now been in line for about 15 minutes. With the drive over to Wendy's, 30 minutes of my lunch hour have now been taken). Then, she slowly put his shake down on the counter next to her, picked up a rag, and began THOROUGHLY cleaning the shake machine. Yeah. From top to bottom. Inside and out. And she was wiping it SLOWLY...savoring every swipe of the rag, probably humming a little tune while she did it. The shake was sitting there next to her on the counter, I was standing there waiting for it, all she had to do was turn around and hand it to me, but no, she decided to pull a Heloise and scour not only the shake machine, but the entire counter surrounding it. Slowly.

At this point, I could feel my chest getting tight, and my breathing becoming shallow, and my blood pressure rising... I toyed with the idea of calling to her and saying, "Ma'am. Ma'am... yes, you, hi. Can I have my shake SO WE CAN EAT OUR FRICKIN' FOOD?!" My eyeballs almost began to shoot blood. But she was old. She was like 70, and she was working at Wendy's. I felt bad. I couldn't berate her for being tidy...

But oh my GOSH!!!! She *finally* turned (slowly) and picked up the shake in her little gnarled hands... and then shuffled SLOWLY over to the other counter, where she gingerly picked up a pair of tongs, got a cherry out of a container, DROPPED IT (I'm about to hyperventilate at this point), got another cherry, put it in the cup, put the lid on (which took another hour), and then shuffled to the counter, where she finally handed me my shake. With a smile. And I resisted the urge to snatch it and run, because I looked into her eyes, and they were kind, and I wanted to cry. She was sweet. She was working at Wendy's. Dangit.

I literally almost collapsed by the time I had the thing in my hands... my nerves were shot. Seriously. 20 minutes after I walked in and stood THIRD PLACE in line, I finally had my food.

We ate and then went to Walmart, which took another 45 minutes to get through... this Walmart here was designed by kindergarteners, apparently, and then I drove back to work, frazzled, my lunch hour over long ago.

I thought Bandera was bad when I lived there... but Kerrville operates on Retired Standard Time. No one is in any hurry to do ANYTHING. I guess I wouldn't be, either, if I had moved to Kerrville to RETIRE... but alas, I live among them, and I will be forced to either slow down and chill out, or I will have a nervous breakdown in about a month.

Just had to share.

Resigned

2008-06-18T21:27:00.003-05:00

I'm resigning myself to the fact:

...that sleeping is going to be merely a nice concept for the next year.

...that no matter how hard I try, I will not be able to resist breads and ice cream during this pregnancy.

...that some people just aren't going to keep in touch, and "busyness" is just an excuse for their lack of interest. However, rekindling old friendships is amazingly easy, and incredibly rewarding, thanks to technology.

...that sleeping in one's contacts is probably not the best idea.

...that someday I will want to write again. Also, I will have time.

...that I really should be playing my cello, and I must get off my duff and practice.

...that both candidates for president have wives that scare the living daylights out of me.

...that, no matter what, I will always crave the wrong things.

...that, in church work, there will always be some who will make it very hard for me to "be Jesus" to them. However, I must constantly remind myself that the three or four who make me cynical do not represent the body of Christ as a whole, and that most people are lovely, beautiful, and caring.

An Open Letter To Aslan

2008-06-12T11:59:00.001-05:00

Found this on McSweeney's... thanks, Ed, for the heads-up. Hilarious for those of us Narnia geeks.

A LETTER
TO HIS IMPERIAL
MAJESTY, ASLAN.
BY MARI NESS

- - - -

To His Imperial Majesty, Aslan, the Great Lion, he who rises from uncomfortable and broken stone tables, son of the Emperor-Over-Sea, with extreme respect:

In the course of talking-animal events, it may become necessary for one animal—or human—or divine being—to come and rescue Narnia from its deepest, darkest hours. We're cool with that. We're just saying ...

Why does it have to be kids?

No offense to your wisdom and such, but, frankly, things don't go so well when they show up. Consider the results so far:

Visit 1

1. The illegal immigration of a dangerous terrorist responsible for annihilating the entire population of her previous world, thanks to the direct assistance of these kids.

2. Criminal disruption of a process critical to national security—namely, you, quietly and then gloriously, singing our magical world into existence, and us, quietly and a lot less gloriously, rising up from the mud, which we consider kind of important, if leading to very puzzling questions about our later biology and ecology.

3. And—oh, yeah—the first entrance of evil into Narnia, which transformed it from a place filled with merry singing to a sometimes dark and scary place filled with kidnappings, sacrifice, and war. (However, some of the signers of this letter wish to note that with evil often comes excellent beer, and they like the beer part, so: not entirely a bad thing.)

Visit 2

1. The sudden and terrible arrests of multiple Narnia residents, stemming entirely from the unauthorized visits of a small child to the forest area.

2. The sudden release of multiple dangerous creatures, who, until then, had been safely imprisoned as stone animals.

3. Your own bloody and demoralizing assassination.

4. The destruction of a valuable ancient stone table.

5. A major battle resulting in the injury and death of several Narnian citizens.

6. Restoration of a nonparticipatory monarchy, headed up by four children with limited education and absolutely no civil governing experience.

Visit 3

1. Eruption of war within days.

2. Major destruction of infrastructure, including a valuable bridge.

3. Multiple incidents of public drunkenness.

Visit 4

1. One kid turned into a dragon. Enough said.

Visit 5

1. Complete destruction of a vast and valuable underground city and mining complex.

Seeing the pattern here?

Frankly, we'd be less concerned were it not for our understanding that your true intentions are less to help us and more to help these children understand their own religion, which, we admit, sounds pretty confusing. End result: the kids get a deeply transforming religious experience, and we get left with shit. Excuse our language, but we're basically animals here.

(As a side note, did your foresight ever suggest recording that creation song? Because, from what we've heard from these kids, you could have made enough money from that recording to completely compensate us for the damages, at least financially. We're just saying.)

So, anyway, here's what we're getting at: Send us a hero. Send us a grownup. Send us someone capable of understanding the complex economic structure underlying Narnia, of understanding why destroying our mines is not exactly a major plus. Just stop sending us kids. And consider this message urgent. We understand that something called a last battle might be coming up soon, and we're a bit afraid that if you send us any more helpful kids they'll end up destroying our entire world. Sure, we could end up in some perfect magical mirror of it, but what are the chances of that?

- -

Wha? oh... hello... where was I?

2008-05-10T08:42:00.002-05:00

So... hi!

I fell off the writing/blogging wagon. It's been crazy-busy around my house(es) and I just haven't had the time to sit down and be a good little writer. We've had several major life events in the past few months, and my computer just hasn't been a priority lately.

To catch up those who are interested:

We're expecting a baby in October. Weird, huh? It's strange being pregnant again after eleven years, and it's even stranger trying to wrap my brain around us having "kids" instead of "a kid." It sounds so... like my parents: "Honey, let's get the kids to bed..." wow. It's been so long with just David, little Dave, and me, just the three of us, that it's hard to fathom having another person joining our household. Little Dave is going to be a great big brother, but I've had so many panic attacks already ("They're going to be 12 years apart! They'll never really know each other!!" and "Omigosh... when little Dave starts driving, the baby will just be entering Kindergarten!" which leads me to, "Holy schneikes, when the baby turns 15, I'll be FIFTY!!!!!").... but it's going to be amazing to start over and have the opportunity to do all of those "firsts" again -- first steps, first words, etc.

So I'm four months into my pregnancy, just starting to feel those little kicks, starting to feel fat, and thoroughly savoring pregnancy this time around. We find out on the 27th of this month (hopefully) if it's a boy or a girl.

Next unexpected life event: we've moved from Boerne to Kerrville, which is something we really were never interested in doing. Funny how God changes things, eh? We just happened upon a great house, and once we did the math and realized how much stinking money we were spending on gas driving 60 miles a day to and from work, it just really made sense. We are five minutes from the church, and, once school ends for little Dave, we'll be saving a LOT of money. Plus, the house is perfect for us, and we needed something a little bigger in light of our growing family. However, for the past month, my life has consisted of packing, boxes, tape, cleaning, and sheer exhaustion as we have moved piece by piece

Finally, at the church, my job has expanded once again to include yet *another* hat to wear: I've taken on the position of interim worship leader. I think that makes the total number of jobs I do come to exactly 9645. But who's counting?

This has been a strange year for me in that regard. Vocationally, I've always been a singer and a musician first, but for the past year, I really hadn't sung a note. I got hired to do technical work, and my job has become the catch-all, "anything-technical-that-no one-else-wants-to-do" job...web design, podcast production, video editing and production, graphics design, book editor, sound operator, mediashout expert, computer network overseer, and "Sarah! Come fix my computer!!!"... all stuff that I was never trained to do, but that I just know how to do because I was a stay-at-home mom with lots of time on my hands and just enough left-brained curiosity that I learned. And that's all cool... I love what I do, and I can't believe they actually pay me to play with tech toys all the time... but it's not what I was CALLED to do.

I was called to be a singer and a writer, and, if I'm really honest, worship leading is specifically the form of singing and writing that God called me to years ago.

It's been YEARS since I led worship, partly because I ran from it for awhile, and partly because I wasn't given the opportunity. God kept me out of it for a long time, made me die to my desire to do it for me (worship leading cannot be an outlet to fulfill your own selfish creative whims and need for recognition, or it is done in the flesh, which is not glorifying to God), and I was dormant in that area and wondering why.

A few months ago, our music minister left, and I was asked to take on the role of leading the contemporary service at church on Sundays. It's been nice, and it feels right, like putting on old shoes...there is something very peaceful about finally being able to walk in the area of my primary gift.

I'm not sure how long this responsibility will last... they are actively seeking another music minister... but I'm honored to have the opportunity as long as it's entrusted to me, and I will learn and grow in this area for however long this season lasts.

Anyway, that's life for now. Hopefully, now that we are a little better settled, I can get back into the writing routine again.

For now, I'm off to put together some furniture we purchased last night from the wonderland that is Ikea. Man I love that place.

Live Blogging American Idol

2008-03-04T19:08:00.002-06:00

So I just found this awesome new widget, and instead of going to the gym, which I am supposed to be doing, I am sitting on my couch being a loser and playing with my new gadget.

I could be liveblogging something meaningful, like the primaries, but I am choosing to be mindless. Call it Guilty Pleasure Night.

Things

2008-02-17T18:04:00.002-06:00

I'm...so... out of shape.

Referring back to a previous post regarding my desire to write, run, and pray more consistently, I am painfully aware of my failure. I'm a slug.

I haven't worked out since October. The miscarriage sent me into a physical slump of laziness. I just didn't have it in me to work out. Then the holidays happened, and chips and queso took over. Ugh.

I haven't written since November. Again, the holidays. But it's almost March. I need to declare an end to my own personal writer's strike now, please. Thank you.

I have been a prayer slug, too... although certain life circumstances of late have caused me to look up a little more often. I am having to walk by faith and not by sight these days, and that is good. Fear creeps in through the tiny cracks of my thinly-paned heart, and I have to constantly bring it back to God. "Do I trust You?....yes. I will trust You."

Changes are afoot. I have to come to hate where I am before I can move forward.

This afternoon, as I was sitting in my room on my laptop, I heard a loud crash in our walk-in closet. I ignored it, too lazy to get up at the time. An hour or so later, I went into the closet to find that the entire shelving unit had come loose from the wall and fell to the floor, dumping our entire wardrobe and rendering the shelf no longer useable. It's going to be an annoyingly large task to fix the mess, and it's going to require new shelves (actually, a total closet makeover, most likely).

The upside of it is that our closet has been disorganized for a long time. This closet disaster is really just what I needed to get off my duff and make a change.

I guess getting fat, forgetting how to write, and getting depressed for lack of prayer are the agents of change I needed as well.

Wish me luck.

Back to Work

2008-01-18T14:51:00.000-06:00

I hate that I am so quick to turn off my creative self. I have been creatively "AWOL" since early November, when the rush of the holidays took me hostage for awhile. Like a miniature tornado, the Christmas season whooshed in and swept me up and away from my novel -- which was coming along splendidly, by the way, thank you very much -- and sucked me in to a swirling blur of play practice, family, youth retreats, wrapping paper, and dishes. And then, just as suddenly as they began, the holidays abruptly fizzled and dissipated, and on January 2, I was left standing in my living room looking around at the mess and wondering where to start trying to get back to doing whatever I was doing. What was that? I forgot.

And then I entered the January vacuum. The "shoulds" attacked: "You really should start thinking about getting back to the gym, fatty." "You should mail those packages." "You should start paying attention to the presidential election and be informed." "You really should be more organized." "You should work out a new budget." "You should be investing in your retirement or you will die poor and angry." All of the "shoulds" hung around my head like shiny trinkets, their sparkle and glitter distracting me, calling to me, teasing me with their pleading little voices. They all demanded my immediate attention. I became restless, wanting change but not knowing where to start.

I finally settled on the organization thing, because, well, that is what one does in January after taking down the Christmas tree, right? It's pretty easy... unlike solving the 2008 housing crisis and figuring out my retirement. The next several weeks involved much sorting, cleaning, dumping, donating, and exploring boxes I forgot existed. I got lost in my garage one day, my closet the next, and I found myself obsessing about shelving and space bags and wanting to spend all my Christmas money at the Container Store.

I wish that Writer Me was as loud and obnoxious as Manic Me. Writer Me is entirely too passive. Writer Me just shrugs, sighs, and retreats when Manic Me starts crazymaking. Every now and then, Writer Me will try to get a word in -- it happened when I was madly cleaning out the garage, going through boxes, and happened upon a large box. I opened it to see if it was a "keep" or a "donate" box, and found that it contained all of my best books. Writer Me came out of hiding briefly, just to give a look of tacit disapproval, and I felt a twinge of combined guilt and epiphany wash over me. It was a reminder. Oh, yes, that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Something with books and words and... oh, yes... writing them. Hmm.

Then I closed the box again and went back to my task. Must....clean...the....garage.

Long story short, we finished the garage and I cleaned my closet and I'm over it now.

So now I think I'm ready to let Writer Me back out and get back to work.

Julia Cameron inspired me today. I picked up my copy of "The Right to Write" and was thumbing through it, and she says of the writing life, "I like writing to be...portable and flexible. I like writing to be something that fits into cracks and crannies. I don't like it to dominate my life. I like it to fill my life."

Yes.

I get overwhelmed sometimes by the feeling that I must quarantine myself for hours without interruption in order to be effective as a writer. When I slip into this mindset, though, it paralyzes me, because I know I'll never be able to find that time without sacrificing family time or time that should be spent doing something more practical, like cleaning my house. I can't fit it all in, so the writing stops. When the writing stops, I get antsy and detached because I feel like I'm not being a good steward of the gift God has given me.

I like the idea of it filling my life instead of dominating. I can do that.

So this year, my resolution for Writer Me is to shift the thinking. Find nooks and crannies to fill with this glorious gift that God has given me, and let Him glorify Himself through me in this way. I'll take care of the quantity and trust God to take care of the quality. Manic Me may not like it much, but she can get over it. Charles Hummel called it "the tyranny of the urgent," and I'm tired of being ruled by it.

"I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit Himself accomplishes all through me." -- William Blake

Things I Have Noticed

2007-12-19T22:40:00.000-06:00

1. Elderly ladies put everything in ziploc bags.
2. Coffee, while amazing, will always, without exception, keep me up all night. Especially nonfat quad peppermint mochas.
3. Too much television keeps a writer from writing.
4. The holiday season keeps a writer from writing.
5. Presidential races are alternately like cheese, coffee, and morphine.
6. Cedar makes me very ill.
7. Britney Spears is ubiquitous.
8. It is very hard to get to the gym.
9. There are a lot of movies about teachers who change the world through the power of books.
10. Librarians are underrated.

In honor of Nano, an excerpt

2007-11-01T18:46:00.000-05:00

Here is an excerpt from my last year's Nano Novel, just for fun.

(I am feeling compelled to add all sorts of disclaimers at this point, but I'm going to resist. It is what it is.)

Here we go:

Chosen

Chapter 1 excerpt

The cavernous underground room was deathly silent. Over three hundred people stood in rows, uniform in dress and in emotion. Each was clad in a white, gauzelike tunic and loose-fitting white pants, each person barefoot, each without any distinguishing adornment in their hair or on their bodies. Each woman had their hair fashioned into a single braid, and each man had been shaved bald. Each member stood facing the front of the room, solemnly and with a mixture of monastic calm and stoic determination. No one moved; no one dared breathe. A woman near the back of the room began to cry softly and was quickly ushered out. No one among the rows acknowledged the incident. Their training had been thorough, and only the weak dared show emotion or stand out during a meeting. There were no individuals here, only a collective Body.

At the edges of the rows, men and women in black tunics moved silently, carrying trays with paper cups. The women in black carried trays with cups containing water, pausing at each row and handing out cups to be passed down to each member of the row. The men in black passed out smaller cups, each containing one white capsule. The congregants in white also passed these down the rows, faithfully, bravely. Each person had prepared for this moment, this communion, whether consciously or unconsciously, for many months or years.

When the elements were distributed to every member of the Body, the people in black formed single file lines along the side walls of the room and slowly made their way to the front. They then turned and filed across the front, facing the crowd. The tall man in the center of the black-clad ushers spoke:

"Brothers and sisters, we have waited for this beautiful Day since we embarked on our journey together many years ago. As our numbers have increased, our energies and our psyches have been knit together as one. Now is the time of fulfillment and ultimate enlightenment. We have attained greatness on earth; now we will attain the ultimate achievement, the prize. It is time to journey to the next level. Our travel will be swift. In the shedding of our earthly shell, we will achieve a new freedom and a new level of enlightenment. We will truly become melded into one Great Body, and our collective energy will empower our great leader and strengthen him in his continued work here on earth. Let us therefore cast off the bonds of this plane, and partake together in the final Communion of transcendence."

The tall man lifted up his small paper cup containing the capsule. The crowd in white followed suit. As one, they lowered the cup to their lips and partook, following with the cup of water to wash it down. The tall man knelt down on the floor, and the throng followed, each with eyes closed, heads dipped in silence, and there they waited.

In the middle of the sea of white tunics, a young woman also knelt, eyes closed, heart pounding. She did not know why, but she felt that this was not right. She trusted her leaders -- her Leader -- implicitly; still, this seemed too...something. Her gut screamed, "NO!" She had made a split second decision in raising the cup to her lips: she did not allowed the capsule to enter her mouth, but instead, tipped her head back with her lips closed. When the group knelt, she had quietly spilled the capsule out onto the floor, flicking it away as far as she dared without drawing attention.

"What am I doing?" Her breath caught as she realized the gravity of her rebellion. Independent thought was considered the worst of all sins. She had been taught that it caused a rift in the collective energy. She was probably going to be the sole cause of the failure of this journey to the next plane; she knew she was hindering the process for the group.

She didn't dare move, but listened carefully to the breathing of those around her. She wasn't sure what her next steps would be; at the very least, she was buying time. She had discovered early in her tenure here that she did not have the option of leaving. One of her roommates had tried and was "taken care of." A revelation flashed through her like lightning, providing a brief glimpse at a new idea: she was miserable at the Institute, always had been, and she may actually get to leave now. This revelation was quickly replaced with another: where would she go? Surely they would find her as soon as she reached her home.

Towards the front of the room, she began to hear retching. Behind her, someone gasped. She held her breath. Suddenly, the room was filled with a cacophony of death: sounds of labored breathing, and many beginning to convulse and cry out as their hearts began to freeze within them. The white-clad congregants began to drop like common street rats, foaming at the mouth, seizing, bleeding from their nostrils. She could hear it. She was terrified. She dared not open her eyes.

She forced her breathing to become audible now, mimicking that of the people around her. She rocked back and forth and tried her best to blend in with the movement of the room -- she had to pretend she was dying. Her heart was pounding; it was not hard to feign the fear and adrenaline rush. The man on her right side fell into her violently, knocking her sideways to the floor, and she used him to hide as much of her as she could as she deftly maneuvered her way to a prone position on the floor. A long lost memory flashed into her head - she remembered playing "Charlie's Angels" as a kid, and having to pretend that she had been chloroformed, and she wondered why this random memory would surface now. Her past had been erased from her mind in her training here. She wondered if the others were experiencing their former lives flashing before them. She focused on the childhood memory as she lay pinned under the man. She had to think. "Natalie." That was her name. It had been months since she had used it, heard it, needed it.

After many long minutes or hours -- she lost track of all sense of time -- the chaos subsided and a sickening, almost deafening, silence settled over the room. It was a tomb. She was still face down; her head twisted uncomfortably sideways, her cheek pressed against the cold cement floor. The man who had fallen on her was still on top of her, obstructing most of her head and upper body from view. She dared not move a muscle; any twitch, any breath, any indication of life at all would stand out like a sore thumb to anyone who may be watching. She didn't know who was left alive; she wondered about the one they referred to as the Great Leader. Charles Lazalle. In her tenure here at the Institute, she had come to speak his name with love and adoration. They all had. Though the students had never seen him, save for a few telecasts of his shadow that would deliver messages to them from time to time. The body of believers here would watch each telecast with rapt attention, drinking in every word he uttered like sweet honey, so great was the wisdom he proffered to them. As the students grew in their love for him, so grew their desire to please him. Obedience grew out of this love – though sometimes their devotion was enforced by various methods of “correction.” She was sure Lazalle was still alive somewhere, and that he would be watching to make sure that each of the Faithful had followed through with their part of the ritual. To Natalie, as with the others, Lazalle was her father, her friend, her god. She would do anything for him...although at this moment she was struck with the realization that she would not die for him.

Lazalle was a charismatic leader. He had come from California and was a man to whom people were instantly drawn; a visionary who made students and outsiders alike want to passionately participate in his vision. She had always trusted him, cared for him, looked at him with utmost admiration.

Natalie was jolted out of her memory as she heard a door suddenly scrape open in the back of the room. The door was the only entrance into the underground room from the outside. It was also her only possible exit. She froze, breathing ever so slightly, hoping that her fear would not cause her to gasp for air or tremble uncontrollably. She heard footsteps behind her, walking slowly, methodically, throughout the rows and rows of bodies on the floor. She heard a rustling, then a gasp, and a weak voice cried out, "No, please..." Then a gunshot boomed like a cannon. Her ears were instantly filled with a high-pitched whine. She began to panic. Lazalle -- or one of his helpers -- was making sure that there were no survivors.

As her hearing returned, she could hear the footsteps continuing as the unseen assassin slowly worked his way through the room. He was turning over random bodies, weaving in and out of the now haphazard rows. The footsteps approached her, and she held her breath, her lungs exploding with the rush of adrenaline and the need for extra oxygen. She began to pray, desperately, feverishly in her head to anyone who might happen to be listening. The footsteps stopped a few feet where she lay. After a brief but horrific silence, the assassin stepped over her and moved on, patiently working his way back to the door. Satisfied that there were no survivors left, he left, scraping the door closed behind him. She heard a bolt turn.

She waited several more minutes, listening with batlike senses. She could hear nothing but the ringing in her ears and the pounding of her heart, which, at the moment, sounded like a drum corp.

"What am I doing?" The invasive question came to her once again. She shook it off. She had more immediate concerns.

She lay there a few more minutes and relaxed ever so slightly. Whoever had come through the back door was apparently not coming back… at least, not for the moment. She had to get the man off of her. She slid herself out from under his one hundred eighty-plus pounds worth of dead weight, struggling to free her arm, which felt heavy and numb, from under his torso. Finally, she managed to pull free, and stiffly sat up, turning her head from side to side to work out the shooting pain caused by hours of being pinned to the floor. She shook her arm in an attempt to gain feeling in it again, and soon, pins and pricks in her nerve endings told her that it was coming back to life.

She looked around at the scene, taking in for the first time the carnage and the horror that she had heard. The room was a sea of bodies, stark and surreal in their uniformity. She could not see her roommates, but saw many faces of the people she had grown to like and even care about, despite the fact that emotional bonding was discouraged here at the Institute. She didn't know their names or how they came to the Institute, or even what they did in their former lives. They were all nameless souls who had sacrificed themselves to be added to the collective goal. Who were they? "Who am I?" She was not sure anymore.

She was numb to the notion that each of these familiar faces was now lifeless. She could not get her mind around the enormity of the situation. She began to tremble uncontrollably. She was cold. Her mouth was so dry she could hardly swallow. She knew she was close to shock. She had to get up. She had to do something.

She stood shakily, feeling as wobbly as a newborn lamb. Carefully, slowly, she stepped over body after body, almost losing her balance as she tried not to step on one of the lifeless forms at her feet.

Ooohh... I love memes

2007-10-31T20:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, so Marcus tagged me to participate, so here we go:

Quick: what were you doing ten, twenty, and thirty years ago?

Hmmm...

Ten years ago, I was 25, married for two years, had a one-year-old, and was singing in coffeehouses. Lady Jane Grey was in its early days... and I mean very early days: I think, at that point, we had maybe just begun singing songs on our back deck. We were living in a tiny house in Pipe Creek, TX, had no friends, and David was working at a dating service in San Antonio doing telesales. We had no clue what we were doing, what we wanted to do, or where we were going. Oh, and we were poor as Job's turkey. Good times.

Twenty years ago, I was 15 and living in Arlington, TX. My dad had passed away a year earlier from AIDS, and I was picking up the pieces and trying to figure out life as a sophomore in high school. I was thick in the midst of rehearsals: my school daringly decided to take on "A Chorusline" as their spring musical, and I was cast as in the chorus, which required 8 hours of dance practice a week. I loved every minute of it, and I can still remember what the auditorium of Lamar High School smelled like: musty, like old band instruments and carpet.

Thirty years ago, my family had just moved to Texas from Ohio, and I was in the first grade. I was one of the few five-year-olds in my first grade class. Because I was an "October baby" and the schools in Ohio had different birthday requirements fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifor school than Texas schools, I had already completed Kindergarten, and my mom fought tooth and nail for me to be placed in first grade in Texas. Consequently, growing up, I always felt like the baby amongst my friends...always felt like I didn't "get it," like I had yet to be clued in to information the rest of my peers were privy to. I was always a little "behind" everyone else maturity-wise. Sometimes I still feel like the baby among my peers because of this. Maybe that's why I like youth ministry! :)

Okay, so that's it!

I will tag:

Kathy (my sister from another mister... seriously, I think we were separated at birth)

Sarah (my writing soul friend)

Flo (my non-blogging friend... maybe I can convince her to blog with this? ;) )

David (my dear hubby, of course)

And I think that is all.

Good night.

It's that time of year again... (on why I love NaNoWriMo)

2007-10-30T20:54:00.000-05:00

That's right, folks, it's time for NaNoWriMo!

Yep. November 1 is the commencement of National Novel Writing Month.

In short, it's an excuse for us Bipolar/artistic types to have a month long manic episode in which we write like crazy, live in sheer insanity, drink too much coffee, blog about nothing except our novels, obsess about word counts, and try to write a 50,000 word novel in a month's time. It's insane, and why they decided to make NOVEMBER -- the month in which Thanksgiving occurs and the holiday season ramps up in full force -- the month in which one is supposed to accomplish said goal is beyond me. But I do know that it's possible. I did it last year. And I'm going to try it again this year.

Now, for all you haters out there, don't hate. I know that NaNo can be viewed as an event strictly for geeks who write Fan Fic and Emo girls who write vampire novels (and there are certainly many of those present in the NaNo forums), but I think it's an excellent tool for "serious" writers, too.

I do it because it's a month-long excuse to get my butt in the chair. There is a sense of community with the boards and the local write-ins and the podcasts. And there is a healthy, positive peer pressure present (how's that for alliteration!) that spurs me on to get my word count up there... I see my peers' word count graph grow and grow, and I am challenged to keep up.

Anne Lamott, in "Bird By Bird," talks about how, as a writer, you have to only be concerned at first with getting the words on the paper. She says to just get your butt in the chair and "write a sh***y first draft" (her words, not mine). This is why I do NaNo. I have a first draft of a novel from last year, which, incidentally, was my first attempt at writing fiction. I was pleased at the outcome. It needs much revision, but creatively, it was a huge milestone for me.

Last year, I had NO CLUE what I was going to write about until the moment my fingers touched the keyboard the first time. It fascinated me to watch as a story came to me and wrote itself, simply because I allowed myself to get out of the way and let it flow. That is when I fell hopelessly in love with the writing process. I started to view myself as a writer, and I let myself write.

This year, I am a little more prepared: I still have no plot idea, but I have a cast of characters -- rough sketches -- whom I am looking forward to getting to know as the month progresses. Last year's novel was genre fiction, and very plot driven. This year's, I think, will be more character driven.

We shall see.

At any rate, the typing begins on Thursday. I have to write 1667 words a day to stay on pace. Wish me luck.

Oh, and I may be posting excerpts here every now and then... if I feel brave. We'll see about that...

Fire

2007-10-27T23:36:00.001-05:00

We are driving through the Mohave Desert, and I never knew such a barren place could be so rich in color. The pale tans, blues, purples, and a black that is the exact color of cocoa decorate the mountains on the horizon in perfectly layered lines, while the bleached sand in the foreground is dotted with scrubby trees that are surprisingly green, complementing the color palette perfectly. The sky is awash with a pinkish haze – whether from smoke from the fires in California or dust, I don’t know – and it blankets the landscape, softening the edges.

We were in California for 10 days, but as we make our way homeward, I feel as though I am leaving behind a lifetime’s worth of emotion.

When we began our trip, we left home a family of “four”… the three of us and the hopes of a new baby, whom we found out I was carrying the week before we left. Now, on the way home, we return as a family of three, the dreams of a new baby left behind in San Diego.

Having miscarried at the beginning of the trip, I allowed myself to grieve very briefly during the two days of limbo when we didn’t know whether or not I was going to be able to keep the pregnancy. Like King David, I spent those two days crying, praying, and asking God for healing and deliverance… and waiting. I was sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

On Sunday, then news came. It was over. The first four days of our vacation had been colored with worry, fear, and grief. I – we – decided, like King David, to wash our faces, get out of the sackcloth, rise from the ashes, and enjoy the rest of the week. We did so for Punky, because he deserved to have a good vacation, and we did so for ourselves, because we had looked forward to this trip for a year.

After the hospital drama, we enjoyed another day in San Diego, and then the fires came. We were oblivious to the sheer scope of the flames; we frolicked on the rocks of La Jolla cove as the smoke rolled in and masked the sun, turning the sunset a deep tomato red, and we smelled the smoke and wondered at the ash. We had no idea the fires were so close.

As the latter part of our vacation began, we headed up north towards Los Angeles. The fires in San Diego were raging, and when we left the area, we drove through smoke and ash as the hot Santa Ana winds whipped the fires into a frenzy. Evacuations had taken place ahead of us on our route, leaving the middle class suburbs where we stopped for gas and food quiet and empty, like modern-day ghost towns. The freeway route we were traveling literally closed in our wake as we headed north.

We arrived in Fontana where we stayed with my former youth pastor and his wife, Dennis and Karen. Seeing them felt like home. It was so amazing to get to hang out with them and catch up – we’ve seen each other just 3 times in 20 years. We cherished our time together, and it was water to my soul. Dennis and I sat up till 2:30 am our last night there, and when we left yesterday, my heart was breaking.

Last night we stopped by the Grand Canyon at sunset and stayed long enough for the full moon to rise all orange and plump like a pumpkin over the South Rim. And now we are headed home, and I hear that autumn has finally come to South Texas. This year, it rained more than it has in our whole lives, and the Indian Paintbrushes bloomed all the way through September. They say it will be a mild winter. I hope so.

Loss

2007-10-22T12:04:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged in a few weeks because I was pretty busy preparing for a two-week vacation to California. You know how it goes: there's mountains of laundry to be done, cleaning, and then the setting of the office in order so that things will (hopefully) go smoothly while I'm gone.

In the midst of trip preparations, we found out that I was pregnant. We were shocked and excited at the prospect of having a baby after so long (our son is 11 now, so we've not had "baby" on the brain for some time). We started thinking baby thoughts. We started looking at baby clothes. We started thinking about converting our guest room into a nursery. And when we got back from vacation, I was to have my first doctor visit. We were looking forward to that first sonogram and that first heartbeat.

We began our road trip without a hitch and arrived in San Diego on Thursday. I was looking forward to taking Punky around San Diego while David was in his conference. We planned our next few days in the car on the way out to California: one day we'd go to the zoo, one day we'd see downtown, and one day we'd go exotic car hunting in the fancy areas of town.

As soon as we got into the hotel room, though, I had just gotten settled when I noticed that I had started spotting slightly. I immediately began to panic: this didn't happen when I was pregnant with Punky. This can't be good. I called my mother-in-law and she eased my fears a bit. A little spotting is normal. Don't worry about it. I called my doctor in San Antonio, too, and they told me the same thing: Don't worry. Just take it easy, but as long as it doesn't progress, you're fine.

The next day, Punky and I took the train into downtown to look around. I tried to enjoy myself, but in the back of my mind, I was concerned. We walked around for half of the day, and when we returned to the hotel that afternoon, I was exhausted. I laid down for a bit, hoping it would help to be off my feet.

When I got up, though, I knew things weren't right. The spotting had progressed. I went outside to find David, who was waiting at the rental car for AAA — the van had a flat tire! — and told him that we needed to get to the hospital.

So we hired a cab, got to the hospital, and spent exactly 6 hours in the E.R. waiting for the doctor. They took blood, told me to come back in two days to take more blood so that they could compare the levels, told me that I was to be on bed rest, and sent me on my way. Oh, and the doctor said, "If you do miscarry, it will probably happen sometime next week, so you'll need to find another hospital in LA just in case that happens.

I spent all day Saturday in bed, and it was a very low day. Why had God brought us all the way to California for this? Why had we had such a surprise pregnancy — gotten pregnant on the pill, no less — for it to end in miscarriage? Why, when we had spent a year talking about this vacation, looking forward to it, and talking it up to Punky… and now, it seemed, all we were going to be able to do was sit in the hotel room and in hospitals, mourning? Why? My heart was broken.

I picked up my Bible and prayed through Psalm 139. It didn't help. It only made me cry more. I set my Bible in my lap and wept, flipping randomly through the Psalms, asking God for some help.

Then my eyes fell to Psalm 116.

" 1 I LOVE the Lord, because He has heard [and now hears] my voice and my supplications.

2 Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live.

3 The cords and sorrows of death were around me, and the terrors of Sheol (the place of the dead) had laid hold of me; I suffered anguish and grief (trouble and sorrow).

4 Then called I upon the name of the Lord: O Lord, I beseech You, save my life and deliver me!

5 Gracious is the Lord, and [rigidly] righteous; yes, our God is merciful.

6 The Lord preserves the simple; I was brought low, and He helped and saved me.

7 Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

8 For You have delivered my life from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling and falling."

I breathed it in. My self-pity began to vanish. Indeed, God has dealt bountifully with me. And then I read this:

"15 Precious (important and no light matter) in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints (His loving ones)."

Reading this through the lens of Psalm 139 gave me a revelatory perspective on my situation. God saw what was happening to me at that moment. He was right there. He knew, and was grieving with me.

What a relief. I decided at that moment that I was going to trust Him, and whatever He allowed, I would choose to trust in His perfect sovereignty.

And as I gave it to Him and read the rest of the Psalm, I discovered how I needed to respond:

"17 I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call on the name of the Lord.

18 I will pay my vows to the Lord, yes, in the presence of all His people,

19 In the courts of the Lord's house–in the midst of you, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord! (Hallelujah!)"

I had been in bed all day. I made my choice: I got up, washed my face, got dressed, and went to the evening worship service at the National Youth Workers Convention with David. I knew that my going was symbolic act of trust. I went… and I paid my vows to the Lord in the presence of His people. I offered, through an abundance of tears, my sacrifices of thanksgiving to my God. Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.

The next evening we went to the hospital and found out that we had lost the baby.

And while it has filled me with sadness, while I grieve for my lost baby, I know that God has a plan. He is the author of life. I have to trust Him.

While I may never know the whys, I know the Who. And if nothing else, this was a fierce reminder to me that I cannot do anything apart from Him. I am His, He is God, and I am not.

At the conference on Sunday, Steven Iverson led us in Taize-style worship. We sang one line over and over again, and I wept as it penetrated my soul:

"Your way, Your will, Your heart… not mine, Sweet Light, not mine."

Papua New Guinea and Me

2007-09-02T18:15:00.000-05:00

I'm ten years old. It's Wednesday night in the throes of Texas summer, and I am at church. My mother has just delivered me to my classroom where I normally attend Pioneer Girls, a Christian Girl Scout lookalike organization. We all gather Indian-style on the floor to wait for our plan of action for the evening when our teacher, a jolly lady with a moon face, claps her hands and says, "Girls! We have such a treat for you tonight! A missionary is visiting from Wycliffe Bible Translators, and we are all going to join the big people in the sanctuary to watch a movie about the exciting things the Lord is doing in Papua New Guinea!" We all look at each other, trying to decide if this is an exciting development or not. One one hand, it's something different, and it's a movie, and when you got to watch a movie in school it was always fun. On the other hand, it's a movie about missionaries. We aren't really that excited as the realization sinks in that this is probably a "big people" movie, and our "big people" Pioneer Girls leaders are only taking us in to participate because they want to see the "big people" movie; thus we will be bored to tears.

We enter the sanctuary quietly, herded in by our leader who is shushing us all the way down the aisle, and file, giggling and whispering into the only remaining row -- the front row. The sanctuary looks weird to me, because it is dark and cool, the narrow windows blacked out by fabric, the late summer evening glow still oozing through the gaps like liquid gold.

The movie, projected on a portable reel-to-reel machine, flickers the story of this lone missionary woman who lives with the natives in Papua New Guinea, learning their strange language that has no written form. This missionary's job is to learn the language, and then to create an alphabet and a written language for them so that the Bible can be translated into their language and, ultimately, they can be taught to read about Jesus.

The missionary is a wisp in the tribe. She is small, and ghostly white against the beautiful espresso-black of the people she is trying to reach. The grainy film sputters and stutters as it shows her eating with them -- grubs and ants and some sort of white paste out of a leaf -- and walking among them, holding their children, listening to their stories, trying to understand their tongue. The language barrier is great, but she manages to live as a fairly accepted citizen among these strangers. She stands out in her missionary clothes, a long skirt and a long-sleeved canvas shirt, while loincloths and black breasts and naked little children's buttocks fill the movie screen. We giggle at the nudity. Breasts being shown in church! We are embarrassed because we know our parents are somewhere in the room. They know we have seen the naked people. We squirm at the thought.

"The lack of common language can be frustrating and often heartbreaking," says the missionary in a voice-over. "One night, I was awakened by the sound of wailing. Neemaw, a grandmother, has been sick with fever. Her family was now wailing in the night in the hut next to mine. I rushed out of my hut and asked what was happening." The movie shows half-naked women weeping and wailing and the white lady trying to communicate, but they are not hearing her. She continues, "One of the women finally told me that Neemaw had died, and they must bury her. I rushed over to where Neemaw was lying, and, upon closer look find that she was still alive, but in a deep coma. She was certainly breathing. I tell this to the women, but they do not listen, but continue to cry for Neemaw."

The movie shows pandemonium as the crowd presses in, a sea of people crying and mourning as they place Neemaw on a stretcher and raise her still-alive body on a makeshift stretcher. She is haphazardly waving one of her hands around like some sort of crazy conductor, directing the throng as they wail their funeral song, delirious, eyes lolling back in her head, mouth open and drooling, obviously still alive. Then the movie depicts, to my horror, the whole crowd lowering Neemaw into a hole in the ground, Neemaw still flailing her hands around, the missionary woman in the back of the tribe screaming, desperately begging them to understand that she is alive. The crowd doesn't listen, but begins to throw dirt into the hole, covering Neemaw's face and body, until her hand stops moving. Soon she is completely covered with dirt and still. The missionary woman is crying and tearing her way into the center of the crowd, but she is too late.

The movie screen cuts to black as the missionary narrates the horrible words:

"...and Neemaw...was buried....alive."

I am sickened, horrified, my young mind terrorized by the travesty of Neemaw and by the savage stupidity of these naked natives on the missionary's film. I look down the row at my fellow Pioneer Girls; some are sleeping, some are giggling, one is drawing on an offering envelope. I feel guilty and weird at my reaction to the film. I am, apparently, the only one who is really bothered by Neemaw and her mean family.

This is one of those moments in which a tiny sliver of the slab of childhood is chipped away, another part of innocence lost forever; this, the process by which we become adults. When enough of the marble has been chiseled and cracked and broken off throughout our childhood, we find that underneath is an adult person who has been both hewn and uncovered by this process. Sometimes it is brutal; other times it's just mildly shocking.

Many of my moments of "minor" chiseling came from films like these: bad 1970's church films about the Rapture; "safety" films at school about fiery bus crashes and about predators who wanted to sell us all LSD-laced Mickey Mouse stickers that would make us jump out of windows and kill ourselves; horror films I was forced to watch while spending the night with friends; that made-for-TV movie called "The Day After" that came out when I was in 5th grade about the Commies nuking us; and Driver's Ed films from the Ohio Highway Patrol that depicted bad drivers ending up in fiery crashes with steering wheels impaling their bodies. It was very traumatic growing up during the 80's -- the adult world was apparently obsessed with all things apocalyptic, and felt it was necessary to frighten us all into good behavior. I was constantly ambushed by these films, and they surprised and traumatized my feeble, trusting, sheltered mind each time. It's a wonder that I didn't turn out to be, at worst, a psychotic lunatic bent on mass destruction, and at best, an anxiety-riddled freak afraid of her own shadow (well, okay, maybe the last part is true). Each scene stole another tiny piece of my innocence, and each time, I came away feeling sick and regretful...as well as a little ticked off that I had been duped again. And these movies certainly didn't help my already-neurotic, anxiety-ridden thoughts which had begun to plague me at that time in my life due to my father's battle with an unknown illness.

Punky is wired like me -- innocent, wide-eyed, and not a little fearful of disastrous things. I see the same chipping away at his marble slab happening before my very eyes these days. As an adult who experienced the same innocent horrors of childhood, I am torn between wanting to constantly cover his eyes and wondering if too much sheltering could turn him into a weirdo later. We do our best to balance his fears by instilling faith in God, but he still hasn't quite figured out how his faith will protect him from tornadoes and Osama Bin Laden. I don't think that component in our faith walk comes into play until later, maybe, and the small chiselings are baby steps in faith; maybe in realizing that our house is not going to be taken over by Islamic terrorists who come through our bedroom windows at night and steal our toys, we learn to trust in God with the real stuff. Maybe by the time we get to the real stuff, we're ready for it because our faith has been hewn out of the stuff of apocalyptic-missionary-Driver's Ed-films, and as adults, our fear of the unreal is replaced by a faith in that which is Real. It's a confusing way to grow up: having to practice trust in an unseen-yet-real God while trying to understand that all the rest of the stuff we worry about is imaginary, unrealistic, and unlikely.

My childish fears were quickly replaced by the harsh realities of life when I turned 11 and found out that my dad was going to die. Neemaw and the Rapture films quickly became impotent against the very real knowledge that my very worst fear was coming true, and I was thrust into the deep waters of trusting God, sink or swim. I can't help but think, though, that Neemaw and her cinematic cronies were early lessons in faith for a fearful swimmer like me.

portrait in salt water

2007-08-24T21:35:00.001-05:00

portrait in salt water, originally uploaded by LadyJaneGrey.

So check it: we're driving home from a funeral in Kerrville at 3 pm on Saturday, and we're trying to figure out what to do. We've tossed around going to Boerne City Lake and flying kites, going to a movie, and other ideas that just aren't hitting us.

So right around Comfort, I look at David and say, "You know what we *could* do..." and he goes, "Hmm... you're right. Two hours... can we make it before sunset?" I say, "Heck yeah!"

So we drove to the beach, stayed for an hour, and came home.

It was great.

Ghosts and Monsters

2007-07-21T19:17:00.000-05:00

I've had a Monster in my closet for 13 years.

The Monster was turned loose upon me by its master 13 years ago. I was completely taken aback by its attack. It was completely unexpected, unleashed upon my by someone I trusted wholeheartedly. The attack was violent and swift, and the Monster was vicious and angry and spewed fire and venom, clawing me to shreds, leaving me ripped apart, exposed, and bleeding. It ate into to the very core of my being, stripping me of my identity, my dignity, my dreams, and my faith. I was pinned under its huge talons and too weak to fight back; it then stalked the perimeter of my life, holding me captive in its dungeon, chasing away my friends and my family, isolating me, making me feel like a freak and an outcast. I lived in shame and guilt and utter despair; I was completely alone.

Then it lied to me and told me it was all my fault. It made me believe that I was the one who was the monster, that it was inside of me. It made me hate who I had become. It made me feel guilt and shame and self-loathing...and then it made me wish that I was dead. It made me wonder where God went, and why He had let this happen to me. The Monster told me that God had let it happen to me because I was bad. It told me that I was ugly and undeserving of love. It destroyed everything I knew to be true... it twisted Truth and made it a lie.

But time passed, and the trauma of the initial attack began to fade. One day, I was able to force the Monster into the closet: at least it was hidden from plain view. That worked for a short while, but the Monster didn't like its new home, and it would scream and bellow from the recesses of the closet, striking fear and horror in my soul. I was constantly reminded that, even though I couldn't see the Monster, it was still living in my home. Every now and then, when the Monster was still, I would go near the door of the closet and listen, just to see if it was still alive. Sensing my presence, it would rage and claw at the door, spewing its threats and accusations once again, and I would tremble and wither on the floor in fear as the memories of its vicious attack came flooding back.

Over the years, as I kept the Monster locked away in the closet, its screams weakened and its threats became less insidious. I eventually learned to stop thinking about the Monster all the time, and it began to shrink. Sometimes, though, I would find comfort in the Monster's presence. It was easy to keep it around, and I grew accustomed to it. It became a crutch, and excuse for closing off those around me.

Every so often I would run across someone else who had been victim of the same Monster -- and in fact, its same master -- and I began to feel vindicated, understanding that it was not just me who had been targeted. I became a little more brave, and soon I came to understand that I needed to begin to forgive the master for sending me the Monster. I began to understand that living with bitterness and unforgiveness towards its master was not hurting its master, as I wanted so desperately, but was, in fact, feeding the Monster and allowing it to prey on me still. I learned that the only way to truly slay the Monster was to release its master from the debt he incurred upon me; to forgive this man and wish him well.

And so, one day, I got on my face before God, and He and I did serious battle with the Monster. I chose to walk away from the anger and hatred and began to look at the attack in a new light: it didn't happen because I was "bad" or because I was undeserving of love, but God had allowed it to happen to me, and because of it, I was forced to change courses. If I hadn't been pursued by the Monster, I would not have run the other way, thus finding my true family -- my husband and my son. And with this revelation, I was led back to my faith, knowing that God, while allowing the attack, had me in the palm of His hand the entire time. That day, in my bedroom, I chose to forgive, and in doing so, I chose to allow God to slay the Monster.

Then God began to restore me. He gave me back my music, something that the Monster had forced me to let go of for years. He began to speak Truth to me, telling me that I was loved, I was accepted, and I was safe. The Monster no longer dictated my actions and my plans. I began to come back to life. That was seven years ago.

Over the years, I have always just accepted the fact that I would not finish the old business with the Monster's master, and that was okay. I had closed the adjoining door on the past that we shared, even though this man had left his door open. And sometimes, through the door, I could hear the Monster's ghost whispering its old lies to me. I would walk away, unharmed, but irritated that it was still trying to talk to me.

But two days ago, out of the blue, I received a letter from the man who unleashed the Monster on me. I opened the letter, not knowing who it was from. The man identified himself in the first line of the letter, and I began to tremble. I read on, not knowing what to expect, but I was surprised and shaken at his words: "Please forgive me. My actions towards you were evil. I was wrong. I hope you can forgive me."

The end.

Closure.

It was the letter every victim of such abuse longs to receive. I had prayed to receive such a letter in the years following the attack, because I thought I would find healing through those words. God knew better. He knew that I had to forgive without condition, without any guarantee that I would ever receive an apology. That is where I found true forgiveness and healing.

This letter marked the end of the Monster once and for all. Though long dead, its ghost no longer has the ability to haunt me. I've lived with it for 13 years, and now it is gone, and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to react. It's indescribable. It is a gift. And it is, once again, a testament of God's perfect will, His perfect timing, and His perfect love.

Live Earth's Massive Carbon Footprint

2007-07-07T14:17:00.000-05:00

From the Daily Mail:

"A Daily Mail investigation has revealed that far from saving the planet, the extravaganza will generate a huge fuel bill, acres of garbage, thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions, and a mileage total equal to the movement of an army.

The most conservative assessment of the flights being taken by its superstars is that they are flying an extraordinary 222,623.63 miles between them to get to the various concerts - nearly nine times the circumference of the world. The true environmental cost, as they transport their technicians, dancers and support staff, is likely to be far higher.

The total carbon footprint of the event, taking into account the artists' and spectators' travel to the concert, and the energy consumption on the day, is likely to be at least 31,500 tonnes of carbon emissions, according to John Buckley of Carbonfootprint.com, who specialises in such calculations.

Throw in the television audience and it comes to a staggering 74,500 tonnes. In comparison, the average Briton produces ten tonnes in a year.

The concert will also generate some 1,025 tonnes of waste at the concert stadiums - much of which will go directly into landfill sites.

Moreover, the pop stars headlining the concerts are the absolute antithesis of the message they promote - with Madonna leading the pack of the worst individual rock star polluters in the world.

Supermodel Kate Moss, another profligate polluter through her use of private jets, is producing a T-shirt for the event. Yet, Gore is touting the concerts as 'carbon neutral'. So how can that be?

Let us start with some facts. Worldwide, an audience of around 1,268,500 is expected to attend the concerts - making it one of the largest global events in history.

Dr Andrea Collins, an expert in sustainability from Cardiff University, has researched the impact of such mass gatherings on the environment.

"An event of this size at Wembley - which holds 65,000 at a rock concert, will generate around 59 tonnes of waste," she says. "That is largely composed of the rubbish from food and drink consumption."

She found that a Wembley-sized football match generated an 'ecological footprint' of 3,000 global hectares - an area the size of 4,166 football pitches. This is the amount of bioproductive land required to absorb the C02 emissions produced by such an event.

Dr Collins estimates that the global audience for Live Earth will generate some 1,025 tonnes of waste. An extraordinary one million people are expected at the free concert at Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach, featuring Lenny Kravitz, Macy Gray and Pharrell Williams.

Other venues including the Coca-Cola Dome in Johannesburg - where Joss Stone is performing - will cater for audiences of tens of thousands.

Live Earth say that they will recycle much of the waste generated. Fine talk, but in fact some of the concert venues are struggling to keep up with their commitments.

A spokesman for Wembley says they only have the capacity to recycle around a third of waste produced - the rest will go into landfill sites.

Travel forms the vast majority of the 'carbon footprint' talked of by ecological campaigners - contributing up to 90 per cent of the environmental 'cost'.

Collins says: "It is patently absurd to claim that travel of this nature doesn't have an impact. Each person attending the event will have to make a return journey to the venue, be it by air, rail, bus or car. This burns fossil fuel - precisely what we are trying to reduce.

"There is also the environmental cost of these artists flying around the world - that is absolutely huge."

Indeed, an audit of the lifestyles of the A-list performers appearing at Live Earth, reveals that they are among the worst individual polluters in the world, as their world tours and private jets billow thousands of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. One hour in a Gulfstream jet burns as much fuel as driving a family car for a year.

The Daily Mail has found that five of the top performing acts together have an annual output of almost 2,000 carbon tonnes. Madonna alone has an annual carbon footprint of 1,018 tonnes, according to John Buckley.

Remember, the average Briton produces just ten tonnes.

The veteran pop singer's Confessions tour last year produced 440 tonnes of carbon pollution in just four months, simply in flights between venues. This does not include the trucks required to transport equipment, the power needed to stage each show, or the transport for fans travelling to each concert.

Rock group Genesis re-formed last year and are in the middle of their European tour. The three-man band will fit their Live Earth performance into a tour of at least 47 locations across the world. Their carbon footprint last year totalled 195 tonnes.

James Blunt, another Wembley performer, completed his world tour of the U.S. last year, racking up a carbon footprint of 195 tonnes.

American band Red Hot Chili Peppers have, like Madonna, flown in to Wembley from the U.S.. They have produced 220 tonnes of carbon dioxide with their private jet alone over the last six months.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has learnt that Bon Jovi left the UK this week to travel back by private jet to the U.S. to perform at the New York stadium for the American leg of Live Earth.

Music impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber's ex-wife Sarah Brightman is being flown out to sing at the Shanghai concert in China. This is a distance of 5,679.95 miles, producing one tonne of carbon dioxide pollution.

Two other acts have already been criticised for being paid to promote fuel-guzzling cars. John Legend is featured in a Lexus advert, while Sheryl Crow's hit Everyday Is A Winding Road is used to sell Subaru 4WDs.

Razorlight frontman Johnny Borrell has been criticised for urging people to drive electric eco-scooters - but buying a 1,000cc Moto Guzzi bike - described as 'a monster-revving beast'.

Such is the level of disquiet felt about Live Earth in New Zealand, that a pressure group called the Climaction Coalition, is urging people to protest against it on July 7. Radiohead, who are pioneers in eco-friendly performing, have refused to appear. Of course, Live Earth is doing its utmost to ensure the event is 'green' in appearance at least - stars will be ferried between the stage and dressing room by energy-efficient Smart Cars and biodiesel fuelled Mercedes.

A proposal for Gore to appear at concerts in Britain and America on the same day - something that Phil Collins, the Genesis drummer and singer, was able to do at the original Live Aid in 1985, courtesy of Concorde - has been dropped because of the anger that the 'gas-guzzling' flight would provoke.

Andrea Robinson, Live Earth's green manager, says her message to celebrities is: "Leave the Learjet at home - fly commercial."

Wembley Stadium will be lit using low energy fluorescent lightbulbs, while the backdrop is composed of recycled tyres and oil drums. The organisers tried to introduce re-usable cups for interval refreshments, but found that - like many green strategies - this was not practical on such a huge scale.

Some bio-produced plastic, made from corn, will be used, and artists' changing rooms will be fitted with energy-saving lightbulbs - all rather a drop in the ocean compared to the pollution generated by fans traveling across the UK to the concert or using the stadium's 2,618 toilets. Plans to ask the British public to turn off their electrical appliances during the Live Earth broadcast were scuppered when the National Grid pointed out that as everyone switched on again, a giant power surge could cripple the country.

Read the entire article here.

Bottom line: Al Gore's junk science-based initiative is producing a whole heck of a lot of hot air... a lot more than the average person's "carbon footprint."

Pair this with this weeks study from Greenland's ice core samples that told scientist that the earth was much warmer 120,000 years ago than it is today (read that article here), and it sure makes Al's agenda look pretty lame.

But what do you expect from a guy who wants us "developed" countries to cut our carbon usage by 90 percent, but "developing countries" like China, the world’s leading producer of carbon, and India, another nation that has a low Environmental Performance Index rating (47.7) ranking it 118 out of 133 nations by the World Economic Forum) would not be required to cut their usage. And what do you expect from a man who wants us to cut our carbon usage, but who refuses to give up his private jet-setting and his gargantuan Belle Meade house that sucks up 20 times more electricity and fossil fuel than the average American.

Hypocrisy abounds in Gore's world.

So spare me all the preaching from the stage of the Live Earth concerts. These artists who traveled by private jet to their respective locations to perform these shows did so because it was a good career move, and that's that. At least Radiohead had the moral decency to stand up for what they believe and refused to appear because they saw the hypocrisy behind it all. I can handle environmentalists if they walk the talk. I can't handle self-righteous, preachy politicians who don't... but hey, it's Al Gore. It just reaffirms why I didn't vote for him.

For all you SNL fans...

2007-05-11T11:54:00.000-05:00

A parody of the SNL digital short "Dear Sister" (watch the original here)

I Stink At Blogging

2007-05-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it was February since I last blogged. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't written a word worth reading since then. Life circumstances have drastically caused my schedule to change, and due to undisclosable reasons I am no longer physically able to get up at 5:00 am to write, run, and pray. I hope to fix this soon; I really miss my mornings!

On a happy note, I've been trying to become a "runner" (as in, one who REALLY runs as opposed to one who tries to run and fails miserably and ends up walking during most of the training session) for about three years now, and my biggest benchmark was always the ability to run continuously for 30 minutes. I actually achieved this goal last week for the first time in my life. That is huge! I've done it twice now, which assures me that it wasn't some freakish momentary superhuman burst of adrenaline that allowed me to do it the first time. It feels good to have actually reached a goal that I had previously assumed was unattainable.

While not on the treadmill, I have been spending much of my time on my beloved Mac (whose commercials, by the way, are brilliant), having recently just finally figured out the lovely goodness that is iLife. True to my nature as a late-bloomer, I'm finally caught up on the basics of podcasting (welcome to 2005, Sarah) and I'm thoroughly enjoying not only exploring the world of podcast discovery, but also the joys of creating them. I've also redesigned several websites (here, here, and here, as well as this blog... still works-in-progress) in the past few weeks. Now if I can just get Misty to teach me how to remix in Garageband, my life will be complete and I will never have to leave the soothing blueish glow of my computer screen...

...except to watch Lost. Holy schneikies, I am obsessed. The writing this season has really gelled, and it has been an incredible run of episodes... a perfect blend of answering questions and continuing the arc and the mythology. I have officially crossed the threshold from casual fan to an easter-egg-seeking, podcast-listening, spoiler-reading nerd. I justify this by separating myself from the real geeks -- those who actually call in to the podcasts and leave their theories, or who post 254 post in 90 days on the bulletin boards of abc.com. I'm not an addict. I can stop anytime I want. Really. Although I will be taking large doses of prozac once the season ends in two weeks.

Today is my day off, and I've been a loser so far. I must get off of the computer so I won't blow my motivation to go to the gym and do laundry....

For now, my three loyal readers, you are officially caught up on my life. More tomorrow.

Writing Assignment - Black and White Photograph

2007-02-04T21:00:00.000-06:00

I found the photograph in a box after her funeral. It lay there amidst a stack of old, curling, sepia-toned pictures, silent testimonies of another time. I had only recently grown to appreciate my grandmother, but my coming-of-age desire to know her came too late. There were stories still to be told, conversations left unsaid, and now I only possessed photographs by which to study her, as well as regret that I had not taken the time to listen to her stories while she was still alive.

She was put into a retirement home against her will, her husband, my grandfather, no longer having the mental faculties to live without constant supervision, and she no longer able to give it. A proud woman, she insisted that they were fine, that she could handle him. "But he keeps wandering off," we said. They found him a few weeks earlier across town, confused, lost, apparently on some forgotten errand. "He can't keep doing this," we said. "It just isn't safe."

So my mother flew up to Ohio to help them pack up their things. My grandmother was beside herself. Her car! Her house! Her dishes! Her things! All gone. All given away, or sold, to distant family and strangers. She had already lost so much in recent years: my father, her only child and the light of her life, was cruelly taken by AIDS a few years before. This move away from everything she had ever known was, in my mind, so unfair. So wrong. She took it gracefully, because she was a lady. But she was angry.

Once in the retirement home, they separated my grandparents soon after; grandpa was in need of the nursing facilities, his Alzheimer's rapidly sucking away his mind. Grandma kept on, but we soon discovered that she, too, was slipping into the darkness. It had started to manifest while they still lived at home, but she covered it well. My brother and I, while playing in the basement one day, discovered that she left the iron turned on. It had been left on for days, and had we not found it when we did, God only knows what would have happened. In the nursing home, she kept a good front, but she had begun to repeat stories over and over, she became forgetful, and the nurses told us that the scourge of Alzheimer's was upon her as well.

We didn't see my grandparents often: once a year at Christmas when we came up to visit from Texas, and maybe in the summer. I remember going for a visit when I was fifteen. Grandma and Grandpa planned to meet my mother, my brother, and I for dinner in the retirement home dining room. We all walked together down the hospital-smelling halls, which they had tried to disguise as a grand hotel, the florescent institutional lights betraying the illusion. Before we entered the dining room, my grandmother, proud and particular about her appearance, reached into her purse and pulled out a lipstick. I remember how she carefully took off the lid, rolled up the color, and in her trademark way dabbed ever so gingerly the red stain on her thin lips. This small gesture was profound to me, for it spoke volumes about my Grandmother that day. It told me that she still cared, she still had her pride, she was still a lady, and though we may have taken away her things, we could not take away her essence.

Over the next two years, my grandmother began to quietly slip away, deteriorating more rapidly than my grandfather, who seemed to be in Alzheimer's limbo, stuck somewhere between World War II and 1978. I didn't see my grandmother again until I was seventeen and about to graduate. We were visiting Ohio in the summer, and my mother told me that my grandmother was essentially a vegetable and probably would not know us. I was shocked at how quickly she had fallen into the darkness; apparently she had given up. We went to the nursing home, dreading the visit, dreading the long, awkward silence, dreading that horrid discomfort of sitting uncomfortably silent with a catatonic loved one and not knowing what to say.

We entered the lobby and sat down to wait. "Sarah, just remember, she didn't know who I was. Don't expect much. She probably won't recognize you," my mother reiterated. I braced myself.

Soon a wheelchair bearing my grandmother's frail form appeared in the doorway behind us, a nurse pushing her, clucking and cooing to her -- as if to a baby -- as they walked. Though prepared to see her, I crumbled at the sight of her once-perfect posture now slumped over sideways in the chair, her head lolling to the side, her thin black curls matted on one side from her pillow. My heart broke in half at the realization that someone -- a thoughtful nurse, likely -- had applied the familiar red stain to her lips. Someone knew Helen Hoover well enough to know that she didn't go out without her lipstick.

The nurse wheeled her to my side and said, "Helen, your grandkids are here to see you." I held my breath. The tears began to pool in my eyes as I looked at her face. Slowly, shakily, she lifted her face, looked straight into my eyes, and immediately broke into an enormous grin. Her entire face lit up with recognition, and she reached out her feeble hand and grabbed mine. She was trembling. I began to cry, and she just sat there, gripping my hand, smiling her giant smile at me.

She knew me. She remembered. And I knew in that moment that I was loved fiercely by this woman. Alzheimer's had stolen her life and her mind, but it had not taken away her love. She still possessed what was most precious to her. And then I sobbed as I came to understand the unconditional love which still lived within her: despite my absence, despite my lack of correspondence over the years, she was very, very proud of me. Her face said it all, and I will never forget how she looked in that moment. I said nothing, because there were no words necessary. She knew. I knew. It was enough.

I said goodbye, knowing it would be the last time I would see her. She passed away a year later. From what I am told, my grandfather, who lived in a separate wing of the hospital, woke up suddenly the night she died and asked for her.

At her funeral, my aunt Faye gave me my grandmother's red coat and some of her jewelry. "She would have wanted you to have it," she said. "Your grandma was so proud of you."

Later that day, my mother and I went through photographs that my mother found in my grandmother's attic. My mother had never looked at them, and neither had I, and we passed them to each other and smiled at the various snapshots from my grandparents' life together. They were high school sweethearts, and the photos chronicled their growing up together. I looked at the photos, regretting that I would never hear the stories behind those pictures, regretting that I had not taken more time to write or to call.

We found in the stack of photos a series of pictures of my grandmother as a young woman, probably around my age, taken on a summer day. She is sitting in a rowboat, posing for the camera, trying to look as grown up as possible. I smiled, wondering what she was thinking, wondering what her life was like in 1934. And then I came to a photo that shocked me: it was a side profile shot, and my breath caught as I realized I was seeing myself in that picture. The resemblance was astounding. My family always told me that I look like her. I had never seen it until now. It almost frightened me -- it was like looking at myself in a previous life. I knew that look in her eye; I could almost feel what she was feeling. She was me.

The black and white rowboat picture of my grandmother still hangs on my wall. It is a poor representation of her; the red lipstick does not show through the two-dimensional shades of grey that captured her likeness on that summer day. But there is life in her eyes, and pride. It is the same pride I saw as I looked into her eyes that last day in the nursing home, and it is the same expression that I see every now and then in my own eyes. I hope I can wear it well.

I'm A Freaking Weirdo. But you knew that....

2007-02-04T17:41:00.000-06:00

I was tagged to do this by Stephanie. This should be interesting.

The rules are as follows: Each person who gets tagged needs to write a blog post telling 6 weird things about themself… as well as clearly state the rules. After you state your 6 weird things, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you're tagged" in their comments and tell them to read your blog for information as to what it means.

__________________________________

1. I am extremely creeped out by things that you are not "supposed" to see...such as the insides of things, or things that are hidden for a reason. For example, if I were riding Space Mountain at Disney World, and the lights were to suddenly come on, and I could see the cement floor and the ceiling tiles the walls and all the tracks, I would have a breakdown. It gives me the creeps even thinking about it. Other things that fall into this category would be the inside of our steeple at church, attics, and the inside of an Etch-A-Sketch (if you rub away all the stuff on the screen, you can see the guts of the Etch-A-Sketch, and this really freaks me out.)

2. I absolutely hate mouth noises. When people smack their gum, I go cross-eyed. When my son's friend rides with us and sucks his candy in the back seat, I want to jump out the window. When I stir macaroni and cheese and it makes the same sound, I clench my teeth in agony. I hate mouth noises.

3. There are certain songs to which I react physically when I hear them. Shawn Colvin's "Round of Blues" and David Gray's White Ladder album make me want to bite the wall because I like them so much. When I hear Jerry Douglas' dobro, it makes me literally thirsty. I guess that must be the only way my body can express how much I love these songs... I want to physically eat them. Yeah, okay, I'm a freak. But I know this, okay?

4. I have always been able to visualize numbers... not necessarily the number itself, but (ech, how do I explain this one?) where the number is in space and time. Numbers have always had locations for me, and where they are located on the number line determines how light or dark they are. For example, one through seven are relatively dark, but around eight and nine they start becoming light. Ten is bright, and the numbers increase in lightness through the teens, then they get dark again around twenty. (Gah! The more I type this stuff, the more I'm thinking that I really need some mental help.) Then, the numbers stay dark until around ninety, at which point they begin to get bright again.

5. I was on MTV when I was in 8th grade. I was in a kids' group called Powersource, and we did this song and video called "Dear Mr. Jesus" that was about a little girl whose parents hit her. It was picked up by a Dallas radio station, eventually became the most requested song in radio history, and spread across the nation like wildfire. MTV picked it up, and we ended up one night at a Dallas club opening for Expose.

6. I am a Calvinist who loves Joyce Meyer, Rob Bell, and Donald Miller as much as R.C. Sproul and Francis Schaeffer. Go figure.

Done! I'm tagging:

David

Jenn

Ed

Megan

Chris

Sarah

Bored/Sick

2007-02-04T15:21:00.000-06:00

I have been in bed for twenty-four hours now.

It's been heaven. I have watched dumb movies (Stepford Wives -- the new one), hung out on myspace, texted various people, written long, loping morning pages, and watched Fit TV, longing to get out of bed and make up for the last two days missed at the gym. I've set up my Tivo to tape all the shows that are back this week (most notably "Lost"), discovered that Patty Griffin has a new CD coming out Tuesday (hello iTunes!), washed my pillows, eaten Ramen noodles (they sounded good for my sore throat. I regretted eating them afterward), read over old blogs, drunk a ton of fresh orange juice from the juicer, taken lots of drugs, and slept a little.

So yeah. It's been nice. I think next on my big sick-day agenda will be to read. I'm halfway through "The Stand," although reading a story about a killer virus whilst in bed sick with a virus may be a little much. Oh well... realism can be fun.

Hmmmm. I think I'll have coffee now.

Ciao.

Writing Assignment - Lazarus

2006-12-09T11:11:00.000-06:00

He stepped out of the pickup and the bright, hot winds surrounded him, an oven of scorched air and burnt sand. His thirst consumed him; it had been his only thought for miles, and now that his truck lay dead in a heap, the feeling of helpless isolation magnified his leathered tongue all the more.

He walked to the back of the pickup and lowered the tailgate, its metal skin burning his hands. A wind gust picked up a bucketful of desert sand and threw it unmercifully into his eyes. He swore as his hands flew to his eyes. Nature was exacting some sort of revenge, although he did not know what he had done to deserve such treatment.

The relentless onslaught of wind and sand whipped at him, and he shielded his eyes with his arm and used his free hand to drag the small ice chest toward him. One warm bottle of water remained inside, floating in a small, dirty pool of water. He grabbed the bottle from its home and, in a desperate attempt to cool his overheated body, dumped the water that remained in the cooler over his head.

Relief swept through him for a brief moment, but was quickly replaced by regret: the infernal heat robbed him of all moisture as soon as the water hit his skin, and he realized that he had just wasted half of his already meager water supply. He cursed his stupidity and returned to the cab of the truck, slamming the door against the barrage of the desert.

Uncapping the water, he resisted the urge to guzzle down the entire bottle, instead allowing himself one small sip. Water had never tasted so decadent; he suddenly understood the parable of the rich man in hell who begged for one drop of water to cool his tongue. He took another sip and relished its wetness.

He had to get out of here. He scanned the horizon, sizing up his situation. Before him lay an endless sea of sand and sky, uniform in color and texture. His options were limited: he could wait for someone to chance upon him, which, gauging scope of the terrain, could take days or weeks; or he could walk, which seemed equally futile.

He leaned back into the seat and settled in for a long wait. He would remain here until he could do so no longer.

Home Stretch

2006-11-25T17:47:00.000-06:00

I have reached that frustrating point in NaNoWriMo in which I am so close, yet so far away.

I now have 3452 words left until I am an official nanowrimo winner. Technically, I can finish tonight -- if I really push myself and write like mad for the next several hours.

But I'm also at the point in the story where the climax needs to be good, not crappy, and I'm afraid that if I push through just to get it done, it will suck. I'm driven to hit that 50,000 mark as soon as possible, and seeing my little blue progress bar so close to the finish is making me nuts.

So I've forced myself to stop, take a break, go work out and process some things, and come back fresh for the finish tomorrow.

It's funny how things work when you are writing. I don't know if it's a matter of paying better attention to the universe, being tuned in, so to speak, or if it's just Divine help, but as I've been going about my day, I've had some nuggets of help for my story. For example, my MC lost her brother when she was five years old. This afternoon, over lunch, I picked up my December issue of Self magazine -- a fitness magazine, of all things -- and there was an article written by a woman reflecting on the death of her older brother when she was a kid. Well.

Even as I sit here and type, I am restraining myself from opening my Word document and jumping back into the story. I really, really, really want to.

It will be better tomorrow. Maybe I will make an event out of it tomorrow... I think of the main character in "Misery," who has his post-writing ritual of one cigarette, a glass of wine, and something else. Maybe I'll have a piece of chocolate, some coffee, and download a song I've been coveting. Wait... that's my "during-writing" ritual. Hmmm.

Well, whatever.

Cheer me on... I need some friendly faces at that finish line! :)

Dickens and the Idea of Christmas

2006-11-24T21:03:00.000-06:00

So we went to Dickens on Main tonight in downtown Boerne. It was fun. It's my favorite part of living in Boerne, when they block off main street, the quaint little main street shops stay open late, and the whole town comes out to walk the street and drink coffee and socialize. The streets are lined with Christmas lights and snow machines which blow snow every hour on the hour, they blare Christmas music, and it's fabulously cozy. It's small town life at its best. It was a great way to kick off the Christmas season.

Today has been a good day for me. I've been a little self-possessed lately with this business of book writing, and I did get my writing in this morning, but today was my day to catch up with friends whom I haven't seen in awhile. I went to a small get-together at Flo's house this morning and had fun catching up with her, her daughters, and my friend Sarah Hinton, whom I haven't seen in a couple of years. This afternoon, Sarah Dowling came over for coffee and we had a great time catching up. It was nice to connect again. I don't get to do that very often.

I am 6000 and change from finishing my NaNovel. I am looking at different ways to wrap it up, and hoping I can do so in 6000 words. Actually, I'm sort of forcing myself to do that, because, from what I understand, a 50,000 word rough draft is good since you end up adding around 30,000 words during the revision process. It will be really great to finish -- I never thought I'd get this far -- but I am completely in love with writing now, so I am afraid I'm going to feel a little lost for a few days when it's over.

stalling

2006-11-22T09:29:00.000-06:00

Off of work for the next four days. I am hoping that it will give me opportunities to really beef up my word count, if not finish completely. I'd love to be able to validate my nanonovel by Saturday! I am looking forward to hitting the 50k mark, but I really don't want it to end, because the act of writing has been so exhilarating.

But my "carrot" that I am dangling before myself is a subscription to Writer's Village, an internet writing school for which I will sign up at the end of this crazy project. I'm hungry, I have a lot to learn, and I think it will be a good way to "fill the well" again.

I'm going to schedule a few sprints today in between other activities, setting the timer and writing as many words as I can in twenty minute bursts.

Off to the races....

Thirty-two Thousand

2006-11-20T10:47:00.000-06:00

I am two-thirds done!!

This experience has been the most fulfilling, most liberating experience I have ever taken on creatively. I am reveling in the process, not caring about the crappy prose or the loose ends that are falling off of the pages in a huge, beautiful mess. This experience has taught me that I can do it if I just get my butt in the chair and write. What a concept!

So I have no idea if this novel will ever be read by anyone... I don't know if I want it to be read by anyone. It's enough for me to know that I tried, I did it, and it's the first step towards something I never dreamed I could do. I'm in love with the process! I haven't felt this creatively fulfilled since we recorded our last CD -- actually, in many ways, I feel more fulfilled now than I did then.

Sorry to gush. Just had to get it out.

words are numbers.

2006-11-17T19:34:00.000-06:00

geez louise.

i've almost reached the 28,000 mark in my nano. i have never written anything this long before. it's nuts.

so i have become stuck. my mc is losing her marbles and has taken the other character hostage, and the villain has just entered the scene. i'm really wrestling with not making him too cliche. all i keep finding myself writing instinctively are the cliche scenes in every james bond movie, where the villain, who is always dressed in black slacks and a black turtleneck, swishes his scotch in his glass and says, "well, well, well, mr. bond. how nice of you to drop in." my villain REALLY wants to do that. he is not going to have the opportunity. but i'm stuck in the meantime. maybe i'll have him dance a jig while he's waiting on my to come up with something earth-shaking.

overload

2006-11-10T21:28:00.000-06:00

i have written 5863 words today. i am tired. brain is fried. must...go...read something.

Nanowrimo Synchronicity

2006-11-03T06:41:00.000-06:00

So I'm beginning my third day as a Freshman Nanowrimo novelist. It's cool. I am right at my daily word goal, and I have more material in my morning pages that just need a home within the novel. Morning Pages have been very effective these past couple of days, because they afford the opportunity to work out plots and ideas without having to commit everything to the novel right away. Fabulous.

The biggest thing, so far, that I have noticed as I have been settling in on my story, is that it seems like the Universe is cooperating with my efforts and giving me little nuggets to help me along. For example, my character had no name for the first six pages. I came to a point in my story where she met someone and actually had to introduce herself, and I couldn't settle on a name. That day, I heard the name "Natalie" at least six times in various settings and situations -- a caller on the radio talk show I was listening to, on the phone with someone, on myspace, in passing at Starbucks. It was an obvious "nudge" that that was the name my character was supposed to have.

And my story takes place in England... the main character is there as an expatriate of sorts, and I am having to rely on my memories of England from ten years ago as I'm writing. Yesterday, I went with everyone from the office to a place for lunch in Ingram, and it was, of all things, an English tea room. It couldn't have been more authentic. And for lunch, we were served high tea, so I was literally given this amazing setting with all the trappings of England, and with all the nuances of the very English decor that most Americans just can't duplicate well, right in the middle of my day yesterday. It was crazy. It couldn't have been more authentic had I hopped a plane, landed in Birmingham, driven to Stow-on-the-Wold, and written from a tea room there. Brilliant.

So I feel as if I am being "guided" as I write this thing, and it feels good. It's been a great start. I am looking forward to having a block of time today to really devote to my Nano... hopefully I can get ahead of the word count quota today.

nanowrimo

2006-11-01T23:47:00.000-06:00

So I have undertaken this ridiculous venture of attempting to write an entire novel in one month.

This is ludicrous for several reasons:

1. I do not have time to write a novel... especially not in November.
2. I have never written a novel.
3. I do not know the first thing about writing novels.
4. People will think that I suck.

I am actually encouraged, though. I told myself that, if nothing else, I will have a really crappy first draft, which is what Anne Lamott says that you have to get on paper first. So I am giving myself permission to just write, not edit, not worry about plot. Just write.

I am 3300-plus words into this thing, and already my censors are screaming.

"YOU HAVE NOTHING INTERESTING TO SAY!"

"THIS IS THE MOST BORING PIECE OF WASTED PAPER THAT ANYONE COULD EVER READ!"

"YOU ARE A TOTAL AND COMPLETE FAILURE. ALSO, A MORON."

I am choosing to ignore. I will write. The goal is to get 50,000 words out by November 30. That will be the longest thing I have ever written. That, in and of itself, is an accomplishment, I think.

Revision can happen later. I'm going to write a novel. It may totally suck. I'm going to do it anyway. Better to do it badly than to never have done it at all.

good enough.

2006-10-30T21:38:00.000-06:00

All of my life I've been told that I'm not good enough. It began, really, when I was 14. My dad had just died, my grades slipped, and what was formerly parental concern became parental criticism in the harshest of ways. I wasn't given room for my "reactionary C's" -- I was, instead, yelled at, belittled, grounded, treated unfairly. What could have been normal discipline was taken to the extreme. It got out of hand.

From there, The Voice began to criticize everything I did. If I wanted to sing (which I did, all the time; it was my newfound talent and therefore my newest passion), I was criticized because singers never made any money. How would I support myself? If I wanted to be with friends or talk on the phone, I wasn't spending enough time with my family. If I wanted to go to church, I was judged and told that I was only going for social reasons. If I made a decision at church or went down to the altar to pray, I was criticized for "making some sort of decision and not living up to it" if I happened to get impatient with my brother on the way home in the car.

Nothing I ever did was right. I tried so hard. I didn't want to please The Voice -- I had learned that that was futile -- but I tried my very best to please God. The Voice had plenty to say about that, too.

So I learned to "go stealth" with my inner life. I learned to close off to my family, because I couldn't trust them. I learned that if I let them see what was going on between God and me, it would be belittled, criticized, mocked. Something would be wrong with what I was doing. I had to protect the very precious relationship that was growing between God and me. And so it became *just* God and me, and that was okay.

To this day, I have a very, very hard time living out my faith in front of my husband. I feel uncomfortable praying in front of other people. The Voice still haunts me. I hear it daily.

The Voice affected me in other ways, too; the most obvious "thorn in my flesh" that has resulted from the influence of The Voice is that I never feel that anything I do measures up. I don't even know who I am trying to please; all I know is that everything I put my hand to, be it writing, singing, acting, my faith, my marriage, my parenting skills, my relationship with God, my relationships with others, is constantly under the scrutiny of The Voice. I have always felt that I am sub-par, that I will never be good enough. Other people have more talent, more drive, more discipline, more support. I don't have those things, and never will, so I'll never amount to anything. I'm doomed to be known as the girl who was "almost good" at what she did, but never could quite attain the level of skill needed to succeed.

It is a bleak outlook, I know. It has handicapped me my entire life. Sometimes it is a convenient excuse; other times it is a curse. I compare myself, my work, my success, to others, and am filled with self-loathing and despair. I'll never be good enough. I'll never make it. The Voice was right.

I had a revelation this morning. It was lovely: When I see my inadequacies, when I see the line in each area of my life where my talent ends, the line that I feel I can never get past, I have always been blinded by that line. And I was struck by the fact that everyone has a line; no one has limitless talent. The people I am constantly using as a measuring rod to chalk up my failures also have a line where their talent ends. I just can't see their line. Only they can. And only I can see my line. I have always felt that my line is big and black, obvious to all. It's not, just like theirs is not obvious to me.

I have been forgetting (or choosing to ignore) Who stands on the other side of that line to pick up the slack. Where my talent ends, the limitless resources of God begin. I can't, and He never said I could. But He can, and has always said that He would. And when I learn to embrace my wretchedness, my unworthiness, my inability, that is when His worthiness and ability can take over.

Philippians 4:13 in the Amplified Bible puts it this way:

"I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ's sufficiency]."

What a relief! God gave me my talents and abilities, but He never expected me to be perfect, or even "good enough." He knows I can't. I pray that I can learn to hear His Voice above the paralyzing Voice of the enemy.

Hillbilly Fit Club

2006-10-27T08:42:00.000-05:00

I've become a workout junkie of late; it happens every couple of years, when, after living a lifestyle that consists mostly of eating out, I step on the scale and nearly pass out from the shock at how much I've gained.

This scale shock happened to me about a year ago, but due to my crazy schedule, I was unable to do much about it. That, and I was on the verge of committing harey-carey, and when one is in such a mental state, one does not want to exercise.

When I took the new job in August, one of the perks was a corporate membership at a health club. I had already begun running again, but I decided that I would use the health club to do my weight training as well as a backup if I wasn't able to run on a particular day.

After signing up, I was excited about having access to treadmills, spinning classes, free weights, etc., so I packed my gym bag and went for my first workout.

Now, I've been a member at other health clubs, so I know the drill. My last membership was at Gold's Gym, where all the women are tiny and wear makeup to their workout class, and all the guys are young, muscle-bound, and use the gym as a place to prove their manly strength. They are the guys who, when you meet them on the street, manage to work into the conversation, "Yeah, I work out." (Duh. I couldn't tell from your obnoxiously huge pecs...or by the simple fact that you are wearing bicycle shorts.)

The health club in Kerrville, however, is a bit different. Kerrville is predominantly a retirement community; therefore, the gym at noon is literally filled to the brim with elderly people. It's weird. I walked into the club expecting to be (as usual) intimidated by the little girls with no thighs who walk around in their sports bras. I was surprised to find it filled instead with old men wearing shorts, black socks, and loafers on the treadmills, old women in swimsuits (eek!), and working class guys upstairs in the weight room in jeans and, yes, believe it or not, cowboy boots. COWBOY BOOTS! I looked around and thought, "What have I stepped into?" Many of my body image issues immediately vanished. Relief ensued.

And then, it happened: I went into the locker room.

God help us all.

I am not sure if it happens with age, but at some point, there is a threshold that is obviously reached with old women at which they no longer care who sees them in whatever state of undress they may be. Apparently, when I entered the locker room, I did so at a time when a class had recently let out, and so it was wall to wall with old women walking around COMPLETELY UNCLOTHED. It was a nightmare.

I had to take a shower. I was growing increasingly uncomfortable. Obviously, the protocol here is blatant, unabashed nudity. I am not into this. I walk around fully covered in my own house when I am all alone. I have always been a modest, if not just plain prudish, person. My routine in the locker room is to take a shower, dry off, wrap up in a towel, get dressed under my towel behind the curtain... I do not want to make anyone suffer with having to see any more of me than I would want to see of myself, which is really not much more than an elbow. To me, it's common courtesy. Really, I'm doing everyone a public service. Good manners and all that.

These women... good gosh. You know the Seinfeld episode in which Jerry and George discuss "good naked" and "bad naked?" Yeah. Not only are these women parading themselves around, talking to their best friends while (gulp) bending over to dry off, but then they sit down on the benches buck naked and put on their clothes, because they are too old to get dressed standing up. I vowed then and there never to touch or set anything of my personal belongings on those benches.

I made it through my getting-ready routine, grabbed my bag, and ran for dear life to the nearest exit. My eyes still haven't recovered.

I was sharing my woes with my boss, who is a fitness junkie like me, and telling him how icky I felt after leaving the health club each time. He graciously invited me to join his club in Boerne, and hooked me up with a three month membership. I have been rescued. Fitness in Boerne is a stark contrast to the perils of the club in Kerrville. No naked old ladies. No bubbas in cowboy boots. It's yuppies galore, and, praise God, I'll trade skinny, makeup-clad rich women with more collagen than Joan Rivers any day for the trauma I endured in Kerrville.

Youth Specialties Part 1

2006-10-07T07:54:00.000-05:00

I promised myself I would take the time to blog during the Youth Specialties conference this year. I promised myself the same last year and never got around to it. Since I have my own laptop this time, it's a little easier.

We got here yesterday, and are (thankfully) staying in the hotel adjacent to the convention center. We brought Punky with us, so the ability to come back to the room often is really nice.

We are learning that there are four types of youth pastors. It's pretty comical, actually -- it's like they went to a class to learn how to be that particular "flavor." What's funny is that I know one of every type, so every time we see someone that matches the "type," we look at each other and say, "Look, there's Andrew again," or, "Look, there goes Blake!" The Four Types are as follows:

First, there's Shaved Head Youth Pastor. This guy is actually not a youth pastor, but a "Minister To Students." His favorite clothier is Old Navy. Flip flops are a staple in his wardrobe. Backpacks and baseball caps are the favored accessories. Loves David Crowder and Chris Tomlin. Generally this guy is Baptist. David cringes every time he sees Shaved Head Guy, falling into a deep depression because he feels that he looks like every other Shaved Head Guy out there.

Next, there's Portly-But-Hip Youth Pastor. This fellow is, well, we'll say "cornfed," but without the cornfield. Generally this youth pastor enjoys cool, trendy shoes, cargo pants, Christian T-shirts that say edgy things, trucker hats, and watches with extremely wide bands. Facial hair in any form is acceptable and welcome. This guy is generally either Presbyterian or Lutheran. Third Day is a staple in the CD player in his Bronco.

Thirdly, there's X-TREME!!!!! youth pastor. He is non-denominational, and his church generally enjoys his X-TREME!!!!! personality. This guy is all fuel, says "stinkin'" a lot, and does wacky things. He is an outdoorsman, loves skydiving and bungee jumping, and never sleeps.

Lastly is Mr. Hardcore. He has many tattoos, has incredibly intense facial hair, and has giant holes in his ears that have been manipulated by extreme piercing and stretching. He may even have an eyebrow or a septum ring. This guy loves Tooth and Nail Records, takes his youth group to Cornerstone, and has a Hardcore pirate Christian radio station. He is mostly Charismatic or Willow Creek.

Every single guy here fits into one of these four categories. It's hilarious.

But it's been a good conference so far. Crowder rocks my socks. I won an iPod Nano. Tomorrow I am planning to go to the prayer labrynth at some point. I hope that I can shut up enough to let God speak to me in cool ways.

Mike Pilavachi spoke tonight. He's hilarious. Bible stories are always funnier when told in a British accent. But he said something profound: "It's messy in the nursery. It's neat and tidy in the graveyard. Let's choose to exist in the nursery."

The "D" Word

2006-09-25T09:15:00.000-05:00

I want the body of an athlete, the mind of a poet, the soul of a pilgrim.

Instead, I have the body of a sloth, the mind of a dullard, and the soul of an amoeba.

I need to be more disciplined. I try, I really do. My new routine is supposed to be to rise at five o'clock in the morning, pray for half an hour, write my morning pages for half an hour, and then go running. It's a nice thought. When I do it, I enjoy it. I mostly want to sleep, though. It's very difficult to get my runner self, my writer self, and my disciple self to agree to getting out of bed all at once. It is amazing the bargaining I can do with them when I am in a semi-conscious state.

This was the conversation I had with myself this morning when my alarm sounded:

Runner Sarah: "Ugh. 5:00 already? Okay, just...hit the snooze. Just once."
Disciple Sarah: "But if you sleep for nine more minutes, that cuts into prayer time."
Runner Sarah: "It's just nine extra minutes. And anyway, I really don't know if I can run today. I mean, I am pretty tired. I was sick on Friday, and well, my body is still probably trying to recover. I probably should take it easy."
Writer Sarah: "Gah! Shut up! I'm trying to sleep! How can I be brilliant if my subconscious isn't allowed to process? Just chill out!"
Runner Sarah: "...and anyway, you haven't done laundry all weekend, so there's no telling where your running clothes are. You'll probably spend all your time looking for them. You really aren't going to have time to run today..."

So lucid, reasoning Sarah takes control, tosses off the covers, and puts both feet on the floor. That's the only thing that makes the other three shut up. That, and the promise of coffee.

So now I am up, and my coffee is in hand, and I am two-thirds of the way through my morning ritual. My inner selves are still whining, though they tend to taper off as I accomplish my tasks. Writer Sarah stops whining and is happy the moment I begin writing my Morning Pages. Runner Sarah will continue to whine throughout the run, until I finish and she says, "See? Now don't you feel great?" Even now, as I am writing, she is whining. Time to go run.

8:45 am

And so I forced Runner Sarah to put on her shoes and get out there. "But I'll get blisters," she protested, "and you know how much it hurts when I get blisters mid-run..." "Tie your shoes," I ordered.

Walking out the door, hand on the knob, she said, "It's going to be cold. I'm going to get cold!" I retorted, "Well, won't it be nice not to die of heat exhaustion for once?" I forced the headphones onto Runner Sarah's head, tightened up the arm band on the mp3 player (she complained about the music, of course), and pushed play. The first song was "Since You've Been Gone" (so okay, it's my nine-year-old's mp3 player) and Runner Sarah was off, fueled by the angst in the song. The run was very good.

I am not a disciplined person. I really just want to do whatever feels good at the moment. Sleeping feels good; running does not. Eating feels good; dieting does not. Wandering aimlessly feels good; praying does not. Watching TV feels good; writing does not. There are so many things in life that just don't sound fun when the time comes for me to have to do them, but I am learning that once I set my mind to it -- determine in my heart that I am going to participate -- I feel so great afterwards. The first two hours of my day are filled with such activities. I hate drudgery, and sometimes these activities seem like drudgery at first. But the reward is in the consistency. I have remained a spiritual infant for ten years because of inconsistency in my devotional life. I haven't written a thing worth mentioning because I've never committed myself to my gift and made the choice to write every day. I'm getting fatter by the month because I can't keep an exercise routine going.

I had a counselor tell me once that I needed to pick one area of my life and bring discipline to it. I melted into a pile. As an artist, I hate discipline. He told me that he goes running every day -- and he admitted to hating to run -- because he found that if he disciplined himself in one area, it seemed to bleed over into other areas of his life quite naturally. I am finding this to be true. One foot in front of the other; one pen stroke after the next; one prayer at a time. I may not ever become FloJo or Elizabeth Bishop or C.S. Lewis, but the reward is in the process, and in the knowledge that my Creator is pleased with my meager efforts.

2006-08-26T11:52:00.000-05:00

Slo-Mo Home Depot

I quit my job...

2006-08-03T10:10:00.000-05:00

....and it was good.

This job was great in many aspects: the money, the people, my coworkers (most of whom have become real friends to me), the books (oh, the books. I love books), the growth I experienced.

But Christmas almost killed me. I don't think I've ever been that miserable in a job -- wait, okay, yes, the dating service was worse. Waaaay worse. Rephrasing that: I haven't been that miserable in a job since the dating service job. I desperately wanted out. I begged and pleaded and bargained with God to get me out (ironic that I was begging God to get me out of a Christian bookstore!). He didn't get me out. I've managed to make it six more months, and I know why now: if I had quit when I wanted to, I wouldn't have had a certain "chance" encounter with someone, which would thus change the course of David's and my life (I'll expound more on that thought tonight. I am not at liberty to reveal certain details until later).

So because of said encounter, I now have a new job, which will begin on August 14. I am so excited. I will be doing a job that is more closely aligned with my gifts as well as the things I've been doing for years with LJG -- building websites, promotion and marketing, *writing*... God is good. I put in my notice at my current job yesterday. I can't believe I'm out of there in less than two weeks!

A good friend has always told me that God never takes us out of a situation until we have learned to be content there. I believe she is right. It took me a several months to give up and say, "Okay, God, wherever You want me..." when my flesh was screaming to walk out that door. But I finally got there, and was willing to stay even if I it meant I ended up being there years longer. That's when the blessed door of hope opened, and yesterday I gladly cartwheeled on through.

2006-08-03T09:02:00.000-05:00

Last night we told our kids that we were leaving them because David has taken another job somewhere. It was such a hard thing to do, like telling your young son or daughter that you're sorry, but you just can't raise them anymore, and that they will have to go and live in a foster home in Portland, and they can't take their pet hamster, and you're sorry but this is just the way it has to be. What's so painful about it is that they really are *our* kids. We have spent the last two years pouring ourselves into them, and they have opened up like little flowers and have been so dear and trusting and accepting of us. To many we've been like second parents to them, and we'd adopt any one of them without reservation. We love these kids so very, very much.

This is obviously a part of being in ministry that we haven't had to learn to do yet, and I'm not sure it ever gets any easier. When God tells you to go and opens up all the right paths for your journey, you don't argue. But leaving behind such precious faces, full of hope and life and love, is a gut-wrenching struggle they can't prepare you for in even the best seminaries or training schools.

I know, beyond all doubt, that God is taking us to a new church, a new leg of the journey that we began two years ago. The circumstances surrounding this are too obviously God-ordained.

I was at work one day when a well-known San Antonio pastor, who recently had retired from one of the largest churches in the city, came in to buy a set of reference books. Asserting my managerial privileges, I gave him a discount since he was spending so much on these books. We began talking, and I mentioned that my husband was a youth pastor in Pipe Creek. He immediately brightened and said, "I've heard about your husband and the youth group there in Pipe Creek. I've heard great things about what he's doing there." He mentioned to me that had come out of retirement and was pastoring a church in Kerrville and was in need of a good youth pastor, wink, wink. I smiled and waved him off, saying, "Well, I'm sure God will lead you to the right guy." He thanked me for the discount and we parted ways.

But he kept coming in and asking me if David was ready to be his youth pastor yet, and each time, I'd play along and say, Oh sure! We'll be right over, and we'd chuckle, and he'd buy books and leave.

Then one day he came in with his business card, and handed it to me, and, with a serious look in his eye, said, "I'm here specifically to see you. Tell your husband to call me. I really do need a youth pastor." I gulped, and said, "Okay," knowing that this was different, and that this was probably right. Sometimes you just know when God is beginning to make things shift a little off your center of gravity.

I took David the card, and he immediately said, "This is so far-fetched. I don't want a new job. I don't want to leave my kids. I'm happy here in Pipe Creek." But we have also learned that with God you have to be open to any possibility, and so he agreed to pray about it.

And so we prayed and fasted and prayed some more. We talked with people around us who we trust to give us objective and wise counsel. They all heartily encouraged us to explore the possibility, and said that it sounded like the right thing for us.

Last Tuesday a formal offer was made, not only to David, but to me as well; David as youth pastor, me as media coordinator for the church and assistant to the pastor, who is a writer, and who wants me to assist him in his book-writing. And we have this fabulous opportunity to work under, and be mentored by, this incredible man of God who has 50 years of experience and is well-respected by people all over the world. We prayed and fasted some more. The answer came: it's time to go.

And so, last night, we dropped the bomb on our kids. We all cried. Hard. We hugged. We prayed. Some are hurt, some are just sad, some are angry. This isn't easy. I hate this. I know that God is going to take care of them, but half of me -- actually, most of me -- keeps screaming, "But what about all the fun we've had? What about the growing and discipling they still want and need?" They're so fragile and my heart is breaking, knowing that we're hurting them by leaving. Many of them have had histories of abandonment by parents and other important people, and I know how they feel, and I don't want to be another adult who has left them. But in the end, I know that God is sovereign, and that He knows what He's doing, and He has a plan for them as well. And we are not going to stop loving them just because we're moving churches. They will always be our kids. We will continue to be available to love them and watch them grow.

I believe that this is a good thing for all of us. David and I have a wonderful opportunity ahead of us, and I believe that our kids do as well. Barbara, my comanager at work, said that if we were to stay with our kids, we would be blocking the way for the next person who is supposed to come in and love them like we have, probably better than we ever could. I just have to trust that God is going to give them someone amazing. I know He will.

2006-07-28T05:44:00.000-05:00

I am hoping I can sleep tonight; I've not had a good track record this week.

Tuesday night I was up all night. We have some major impending changes and Tuesday night was the night everything was solidified. I was at the point of drifting off to sleep many times, but was quickly jolted awake by my psychotic thoughts each time. I never did look at the clock, because I've learned not to torture myself with the "Omigosh, it's 4:48 and I'm should be sleeping!"

I didn't have insomnia until about five years ago. I think that's when my life as a lonely, isolated stay-at-home-mom began to change and I started to venture out into the world of people again. I began collecting friends and issues (and friends with issues) and other mental and emotional items like bits of yarn, and then I tried weaving them all together into a mismatched, wacky, frenetic quilt. I can make a pretty decent quilt, and match all the edges for the most part, but sometimes when I'm trying to sleep, I lay awake thinking about what a tangled mess I've actually made, and how I'll never be able to unravel the darn thing enough to actually make sense of it, and how everyone will laugh and laugh at my ugly, messy quilt. It tortures me -- not the whole thing, mind you, but the little, ugly, wiry ends that stick out and don't quite have a place to fit. When I'm least expecting it, I'll be jolted awake by a random, "What the heck was I thinking," or a, "I STINK at this," or, better (in my mom's voice), "Sarah, that's just stupid. You can't do anything right."

And once the self-flagellation starts, I am guaranteed to be up all night with variations on the theme. My quilt comes to life when I'm drowsing and devours me with its yarn-y teeth for six hours, and I get up at daylight bleary-eyed, headachey, and hungover.

I've tried everything the experts say to do: relaxation exercises, Valerian root, reading a book, watching TV, getting a drink, praying, journaling. None of them work. Actually, Tuesday night I took three Valerian roots, read, drank water, and watched TV all at the same time. I figured I'd condense four trips out of bed into one. It didn't work. I got up at 7:30 after finally falling asleep at 6:00, and my first word was, "Dangit."

So that was my Tuesday night.

Last night was better. I slept for most of the night, but David was "quilting" in his sleep last night, and he actually talks out loud to his quilt, so I was awakened several times to random speech and much thrashing around. I've learned to tuck earplugs under my pillow for such an occasion. I just wish they worked well enough to block out my thoughts when I need it. Or that we could coordinate our insomnia to fall on the same nights. Then we could have a virtual quilting bee.

Tonight will be better. I hope. With this looming threat of insomnia striking on any given night, I tend to approach bedtime with dread. I'll let you know how it works out.

Heroes

2006-07-13T21:24:00.000-05:00

I am not sure why it is innate in each one of us to idolize, or at our most mature state, to admire someone. Perhaps it is misplaced worship of our Creator: we were created to worship Him, and since we are fallen and have a difficult time worshipping Someone unseen, we turn our attention to those visible to us who portray to us the character of God we crave and admire.

When I was a child, I idolized Wonder Woman (actually, I still do, just in a more tongue-and-cheek fashion). I watched Lynda Carter every day. I pretended I was her in my room, spinning around till I was dizzy, hoping if I did it long enough that cool "pow" would happen and Id miraculously change into someone with superpowers and a cool lasso. My idol worship was immature and fanciful, yet there was something that attracted me to Wonder Woman her strength, her beauty, the fact that she always kicked the bad guys butts and had great comeback lines while doing so. She had it all, and I wanted that sort of confidence.

In Jr. High, Wonder Woman got relegated to the attic, and my idols were the girls I couldn't be: the girls who got to wear makeup in fifth grade, who had all the boyfriends, who were popular. I wanted to be them. They had it all confidence, poise, top position on the food chain, and everyone liked them. I wanted to be liked. Instead, I was the geek who got pinned down and fed baby food at parties. It was as if everyone around me got the joke but me.

When my dad died my thirteenth year, I didn't care about those girls anymore. I went inward, turned to God, found my confidence, and began to sing about it. And my idolization changed then, because I had learned to worship the only One who deserved to be worshiped. But I still had a few who I admired, mainly musicians who were doing what I felt I was called to do, and I modeled myself after them. They were the benchmark for me they represented the goal.

In college, after the typical disillusionment and honing and shaping and refining that typically happens when you are coming of age one thousand miles from home, I was flailing about wondering what the heck had happened to my dreams. The music I had always made wasn't doing it for me anymore; I knew there had to be something else. I was going through a lot of self-discovery, actually coming out of the roughest part of it all, and a friend of mine called one day to tell me about his recent jaunt on tour with Don Williams:

"Sarah, wow, you have to hear this amazing CD that I heard while I was on the road. It's an artist named Mary Black, and the CD is called 'Babes in the Wood,' and wow. It's incredible. The sound guy played it every night as the pre-show music. You have to come over and hear it!!!"

So one day while I was at my friends house, I gave Mary Black a listen. My world was instantly turned upside down. It was one of those CDs that comes at just the right time in your life, like you've been prepared for it your entire life, and it hits you right where you are. I was blown away. I "got" it. I was spellbound. It touched me to the core her voice, her delivery, the songs -- it was everything I'd ever wanted to be as a singer and a songwriter. It all came together in that moment, and the next day I went out and bought a guitar and started to write. I was re-inspired.

I had the opportunity to see Mary Black live a year or so later, and it was amazing. I felt like I had been to church. It was the most beautiful, stirring show I'd ever experienced. Yes! my spirit cried. I want to be her! I must do that. I have to. It's what I was made for, and now I know it!

So I began to fumble towards my dream, and in the process, got married, and began to share the gift with my husband. What a privilege. And our little hobby that began as baby steps, banging out songs on the back deck of our house in the middle of nowhere, grew into a CD, and then soon we started planning for a second CD.

We happened onto a producer who was the brother of the studio owner. He had the credentials, and when we talked on the phone, he mentioned Mary Black and a few other artists I loved. "This guy obviously gets it," I told David. "He actually knows who Mary Black is. He must be the right guy for the job!"

So we went ahead with our plans to record, and picked our songs for the album. We decided to record one of Mary's songs from that first CD that had changed my life as a nod to her for essentially mentoring me. We recorded the vocals for the song late one night after the rest of the band had gone home, and when I was finished with my take, I came into the control room to have a listen.

When the song finished, the producer sighed and said, "Wow, that song just blows me away. That whole Mary Black CD is one of my all-time favorites. In fact, 10 years ago, when I was running sound on the Don Williams tour, I used to play that CD as pre-show music."

I literally almost fell out of my chair. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My head began to spin.

I think I actually pointed at him and yelled, "YOU!" It was all I could say. I think I frightened him. "You?" I cried. "You were the sound guy that played the Mary Black CD on the Don Williams tour? That was freaking YOU?!"

I explained to him that because he played that CD on that tour, my friend got me hooked on Mary Black, which changed the course of my entire life. We sat in silence for several minutes soaking that in what are the odds that that very sound guy would just happen to end up producing our record? I couldn't have tracked down that sound guy if I tried, and here he was, sitting next to me, producing our record.

I knew in that moment that we were doing exactly what we were meant to be doing, recording the album that we were meant to record. It was such a beautiful moment of being able to see directly into Gods plan, to see that all this time, when I thought I had gotten so off track, He was guiding me.

A friend of mine from Wales recently went to a Mary Black concert in England and handed her our CD. Having met Mary a few times, I know her to be down-to-earth and interested in her fans, and so theres a decent chance that shell actually give it a listen. Besides, her guitar player played on the record, so there's some added interest there. It's a strange and amazingly cool thing to be able to give your hero the person who has been the single greatest influence on you as an artist your art. Its one of those privileges unique to musicians, I think, to be able to give as tangible evidence of someone's influence a piece of music that will now become part of their lives like their art became a part of yours. It's a cosmic giving-back, and it's such an amazing blessing to have the honor of being able to hand them your art and say, "Thank you. You are why I did this." I don't really know how to explain it, but it is one of the most fulfilling experiences in life. I am a huge believer in thanking one's mentors, giving credit where credit is due. Of course, ALL glory goes to the Creator, the author of all creativity, but there is something necessary in also "paying it backwards" to those He uses in our lives to spur us on.

So Mary has our CD, and I have it on good authority that she really likes the cover. She may hate the music, and use the CD as a coaster, and if so, that's okay. At least it's out there, the karmic "thank you" whispered to my hero. Mission accomplished.

Bored

2006-06-12T21:51:00.000-05:00

I am merely showing up at the page tonight. I have no subject matter.

I am happy for Anne Lamott, who takes the mystery out of writing, who makes me realize that I am normal. I may be a freak, but I am normal as a writer. Every writer goes through this.

I’d love to grasp onto some beautiful idea and expound poetically, but I’m really tired. Maybe fatigue is good… it makes my inner censor go away because she’s too lazy and sleep-deprived to care.

But I’ve just sat here for the past two minutes in a daze, biting my nails, wasting precious writing time. Maybe I’ll spend the next hour writing about nothing. Or maybe at the very end of my work session (see how I called it “work,” as if I’m some fancy writer who actually does this for a living?) I’ll stumble onto something brilliant and go to bed terribly satisfied and feeling prolific and profound.

Probably not.

It would help if I had a proper desk. I’ve been dreaming about getting my writing office all set up for two weeks now, but somehow it never works out. The desk is at least in the room now. That’s a start.

Then I have to carefully place my most treasured books all around me on the shelves, which makes me feel profound and prolific and well read. Because, after all, profound and prolific writers are well read.

Then I really must get the laundry out of here. Right now it’s a good stopping place, being the room adjacent to the laundry room. Usually I dump it with the intention of folding it, and then the shiny bluish glow of my computer distracts me. My laundry pile is quite substantial today.

Someday I’ll have an organized office. Someday all my laundry will be done. Someday I’ll have all my books out of boxes, sitting prettily on my bookcases. And then I will write. I will be a brilliant and prolific writer and will write the great American novel, and everyone will love me. Someday.

I realized today that I am a visionary… a big-picture person. Not detail-oriented. I get all these big, fine ideas, and then get really excited, and then get bored trying to hammer out the details and give up. This was a revelation to me, blessedly dropped on my head as I was taking trash out to the dumpster at the bookstore. It’s my management style there: figure out what the place should look like, and then delegate everyone else to do it. That works well in a team setting, such as at the bookstore.

When you are a writer and don’t have eight brains to which you can delegate the piddly details of hammering out a book, it makes for a rough time. No wonder I never finish a project! I get sick of hoeing the same row for days at a time, trying to break up the fallow ground so that I can eventually get the dang thing to grow something (hopefully something good), and so I quit and move on to the next project or idea. That’s why I don’t write fiction. I’m trying to quit that mentality; trying even now as I sit here and write about not writing. Maybe someday I’ll recover enough that I will actually sit down and write something with a plot that tracks all the way through a book. Just a thought.

In the meantime, I’m just going to keep at it, sitting on the floor of my office with my keyboard in my lap, piles of clothing around me, thinking about what my books would look like along the walls, and hope that something good happens eventually. I think it’s worth it. At the very least, in the end, I’ll have a killer journal.

Lost

2006-05-11T20:14:00.000-05:00

I know, I haven't been around here for awhile.

I have had the most hellacious of weeks the past few weeks. Work has been awful. It was so bad last week that I broke down and got a massage Monday night. Now I need another one. The stress has been terrible; I haven't ever been tempted to walk out of any job, ever. I am about there now... I won't follow through with that action, of course, but I think last week my "fight or flight" was set a little more to "flight."

But of course there is always comic relief in the midst of the crap. Monday morning I walked onto the sales floor from the back office to hear a youngish woman in tattered clothing pulling a black suitcase on wheels. She was literally yelling on her cell phone... and she was yelling every obscenity I've ever heard. She walked all over the store with her cell phone, having some sort of fight with whomever she was speaking, dropping "F-bombs" all over my Christian bookstore. Loudly. After about five minutes of this, an older gentleman from down the shopping center came in and said, "She was in my store doing the same thing. I've already called the police." She continued to yell and scream and finally walked behind a man at the counter who was standing there with a "what in the world is happening right now" look on his face. After the 56th F-word, he got fed up and turned around and took the cell phone out of her hand and hung it up. She went ballistic. I found out later that it was his phone -- she had borrowed it under the pretense that there was some kind of emergency. I told her she needed to leave the store, and she called me a f-ing Christian and how dare I throw her out and if I only knew what she was going through, etc. She walked out the door, and as soon as she got outside, she let out a bloodcurdling scream. I guess she must have gone into the Sprint store next door and used their phones, because an hour later the Sprint guys came in to buy drinks from us and told us about the crazy woman who was talking on all their demo phones and cussing out their customers. They escorted her out of their store, too.

What's amazingly creepy is that yesterday one of the Sprint people came in to buy a drink, and said that after she left the store last week, he checked the call logs on the phones she had been using. There were no calls made during that time. She wasn't talking to anyone.

This is our, like, 5th paranoid schizophrenic to frequent the store. Four days after baggage lady, another woman walked in and asked to talk to our "staff minister." She stayed in the store till close, and then walked out talking to herself.

Did someone leave the doors open at the funny farm?

In other news, I PASSED MY TEACHING EXAM!!!!!! I can be a teacher! Yaaay!

In other bad news, we are supposed to be moving tomorrow, and now we're not. I should be at home packing up my house, and I'm not. I should be using my brand-new dishwasher in my brand-new kitchen tomorrow night, but I'm not. Why, you ask? Because KBHome SUCKS.

We've spent the past, oh, nine months planning to move into our new home. We've gone over to the site every day to check the progress. Everything was great until yesterday, when our landlords went to close on the house. They showed up ready to sign papers and get the keys, and KB told them, "Oh, well, see, here's the thing. The Boerne building inspector won't allow the house to pass inspection because the house was built in the wrong place on the lot." Apparently there is supposed to be five feet between houses in the neighborhood, and some bonehead didn't use a measuring tape when they laid the foundation for our house, so there is only three feet between houses. How stupid do you have to be? Hello! So because of KB's mistake, we can't move in. Maybe not for another month, maybe not ever. If Boerne decides to play hardball, they may actually have to tear down the house and rebuild it in the proper place, two feet over.

Can you believe it? Yeah. Oh well. If it's not God's will for us to be in that house, I have to believe that there's something better for us out there, and I'll surrender to that.

But I really was looking forward to having space, and a dishwasher, and a garage, and closets, and a fenced-in backyard.

That's the news from Lake Woebegone. I'm going to go home and crash.

Deal or no deal

2006-04-15T10:13:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it's April. I feel like these days my life is spent running from one appointment to the next, and I am constantly breathless and exhausted. I'm spinning so many plates right now, trying to keep them all going, and while I'm okay with the frenetic pace of it all, I keep thinking that a slowing-down is just around the corner. Problem is, that never seems to be the case.

We are set to move into our new house in a couple of weeks, and I haven't even thought of packing. Well, actually, I have thought about packing, but not enough to actually follow through with the action of doing so. That's pretty much the story of my life: I think about doing a lot of things (writing a letter to Grandma, exercising my increasingly flabby body, not missing friends' birthdays, writing, cleaning, sleeping) but when it comes down to putting action behind thought, I fail miserably. If I just didn't have to sleep; well, that would be fabulous.

I am in the process of working on my teacher certification. I took my big, scary ExCET exam last Saturday, and will get the results May 5. I haven't taken a test in 12 years, and this one was a doozy. The 90 multiple choice questions were hellish; they don't test you on your knowledge of English, grammar, literature, etc.; they want to know about your teaching methods. However, if you have never taught in public school before, you wouldn't know about said teaching methods, because the answers they are looking for are not common sense, real-world answers, but instead these lofty, idealistic, P.C., "let's-include-everyone-so-that-none-feels-out" answers. God was smiling on me that day, though: half of my score is an essay I had to write comparing and contrasting two texts of the state's choice. The brilliant part of it all was that the two texts selected for me that day were "To Kill a Mockingbird," which I've read and studied a thousand times, and "House of Mirth," a Victorian text, which was my specialized area of study in college. No problem. We'll see exactly how brilliant I am on May 5... I very well might have failed the whole dang thing. My brain was literally mush when I walked out of there 5 hours later.

So if I pass the beast, I will be on the road to teaching high school English. That will give me an opportunity to do something I love, invest in some lives, and have summers and holidays free and on the same schedule as my family.

Or, God could pull the rug out from under the whole thing, and that would be okay, too. I'm all about going with what He wants for me, and I'm trying very hard to listen to what He has to say about all of this. I've made so many choices that I've ended up really regretting because I impulsively chose to do what was right in my own eyes rather than listening for His cues, and I really want to be done wasting time with that.

In other news, I think I have truly found musical nirvana. David took me to our new HearMusic store last night, where you can listen to over a million songs at one of the many listening stations, compile all of your favorites, and burn a CD right there in the store. It's fabulous. David made a compilation of his essential metalhead music, and I found many CDs that I wanted, but ended up with Frances Black's "How High the Moon." I haven't been able to find her music around here, and they actually had it in their catalog. I was pleased, to say the least. It's a beautiful CD. What I found ironic, though, was that HearMusic, which boasts a fairly comprehensive catalog, didn't include any of Frances' sister's (Mary) CDs. Go figure.

It was a great experience, though... you can listen to full CDs, not 30-second snippets, and we listened for about 2 hours. I left full of music and inspiration (and excitement over my newly-burned treasure), but was also mad at myself for not discovering some true gems earlier than last night. I listened to Peter Gabriel's latest CD, and was blown away. I delved into Neko Case's latest and was drooling. I browsed through Joseph Arthur's first CD and fell in love all over again. I have a very long list of CDs that I must possess, and it feels good to be hungry for music again.

HearMusic is going to be very, very dangerous for me.

Well, I have probably wasted enough of my day off sitting here on the computer, so I must fly. Time to do more thinking about packing and such.

Fog

2006-02-18T13:22:00.000-06:00

It is cold today, and quiet; the boys are taking a nap, having had a late night last night. I, unable to nap, am enjoying the stillness and a cup of Earl Grey, which smells like England.

I wonder why God built me with such an intense desire to travel when I so rarely am able to do so? I have a friend who would be content to stay home, cocooned in her house in Pipe Creek forever. For her, anything north of the Red River is considered "yankee," and anyone who lives in "yankee territory" is a freak of nature. We have joked often about her having a prejudice for non-Texans, and she has no desire to visit anyplace that isn't small-town Texas. Every so often I ask her, "But don't you want to see Europe? Australia? Ecuador? Oklahoma?" "No thanks," she says. It freaks me out. I am sure she is not well emotionally. She probably needs hypnotherapy. She must have some blocked childhood alien abduction issues or something. She would rather just stay home. The tragedy of it all to me is that she has the financial means and the opportunity to see the world many times over, literally. It simply does not interest her. I cannot fathom such an insular existence. To each his own, right?

I have an intense need to go, to see new things, to breathe in new places and people and flavors and sounds. I crave the British Isles. I must see Australia before I die. I need to go to Belize just once. And oh, how I miss Wyoming! At times I ache so badly for the mountains that I feel that my heart will burst. Last year, when we went to Colorado, I cried at first sight of the Sangre de Christo range. It had been ten years since I had seen real mountains. I don't know how I made it so long without them.

All it takes is a tiny thing, like the smell of Earl Grey tea, to set me off. As I sit at my desk on this cold, damp, cloudy day sipping my tea, I am pining away for Oxford. When I was in college, I took a two-week course over Christmas break with some classmates and my favorite Lit professor, Dr. Smith. On one of our free days, Dr. Smith took some of us on a day trip to Oxford. Dr. Smith and three of us broke off from the group to go exploring. It was Sunday and the town was mostly closed, but we walked around Magdalen College, wandering through courtyards and peeking in windows and talking about C.S. Lewis, in awe that we were walking the very grounds he walked, amazed at the history of it all. Through one of the courtyards, we found a hidden gate, rusty and ancient and wise, and behind it a walking path along the perfectly emerald-green river. It was magical and secret, and utterly peaceful. I remember being impressed with how green the grass was for December, and we watched the mallards idle by in the river and Dr. Smith recited Shelley and Wordsworth and we sighed at the beauty of it all. It was marvelous. I was so full of England and poetry and history and life that it was almost too much. We remained there as long as we could, knowing that this was one of those "moments," and we soaked it in.

Around 3:30, we decided to head back to the city centre for tea. It was getting dark and we had an hour or so before we had to catch the train, so we ducked into a little cafe and ordered our cream tea. It was close to closing time, so the four of us were the only people in the place. We doctored up our tea, laughed at Dr. Smith, who always put exactly two drops of half-and-half in her tea, and thoroughly enjoyed our scones with clotted cream and jam. We were still high from our walk, and as we talked about how amazing and wonderful the day had been, the Eagles came on the radio. We sang "Take It Easy" over scones and tea, laughed at the fact that our Victorian Lit professor who regularly wore Laura Ashley knew every word to an Eagles song, and we were having this classic rock "moment" together in Oxford. It was surreal and yet somehow fitting, and the four of us savored it, knowing that our perfect day was quickly coming to an end.

I grew and learned so much about the world those two weeks in England, developing a fondness for other cultures, an appreciation for history, and a passion for knowledge (not to mention a voracious appetite for books). I discovered how to navigate a huge, foreign city without getting lost, and how not to be the "stupid American." Invaluable life lessons came packaged neatly in a two-week course. My eyes were opened a little more to the world and my life changed dramatically after that.

(Incidentally, it was also on that trip that a painting hanging quietly in the National Gallery rocked my world and became inspiration for a huge part of my life as a musician. That story will be told another time.)

This year I don't have big fine travel plans (except for camp in Colorado with 30 teenagers, but that's more like work than play), and it makes me feel trapped and claustrophobic. I haven't decided yet if this need to always explore is a character flaw or a gift; perhaps a little of both. But I am learning that the landlocked, provincial life in which I currently find myself is okay, it is just a season, and it's not forever. I am learning to be content with where God has me (which is no small task for the Teacher or the student), and in the midst of this, learning to appreciate the little things: that my 40-hour-a-week job involves being surrounded by books (not to mention comic relief due to the occasional freakishness of the public); that despite the craziness of my schedule, the gigs are coming in again and we are once again playing music; that I have rediscovered writing, though I've had to fight for time to do it, but I've never been more inspired.

So when that incredible ache comes over me on a day like today, and I feel that I simply must hop on a plane or I shall surely die, I allow myself to pine a little, and then I whisper in my spirit, "...but not my will, but Yours...." I am learning the art of surrender. I am thankful for the lesson. And I hope "the urge for going" stays prominent in my heart as a reminder to me of where I've been, of where I am, and of what's in store.

Just words

2006-02-13T19:27:00.000-06:00

Valentines Day has always been the stalest of holidays for me. I've never really liked it much. Maybe it's all the pink. I've never been a pink person; I've rather always been more of a brown person or an olive drab person or, perhaps, a burnt umber person, but pink makes me feel funny. Uncomfortable. Itchy. Nauseous. I associate it with candy conversation hearts, which I never liked, except for the yellow ones, but ate anyway and went home from school feeling queasy and lonely. I never had boyfriends, and thus never got "good" valentines like all the popular girls like Nikki Burke and Michelle Palmer did: teddy bears and roses and chocolates and all sorts of other lavish items from their football boyfriends. The conversation hearts were never really special, always very standard -- everyone gave and got conversation hearts stuffed inside the little tiny envelopes that held the generic valentines. We only ate them because they were candy and Valentine's Day was the only day past Christmas you could have candy in school. But you knew they were given in an almost obligatory way, given to you by random people who really weren't even your friends, and that added to the pointlessness of it all.

And so the candy hearts were eaten in the same obligatory manner in which they were given, and I would go home with my queasy stomach and dump out all my generic valentines on my bed and read them all.

"To: Sarah
From: Diana"

"To: Sarah
From: Amy"

"To: Shara
From: Chad"

"To: Sahara
From: Jason W."
(the boys always spelled my name wrong)

I had about fifty-seven valentines stuffed in my little bag, none of them expressing any sentiment at all, and I only actually knew about four of the people that gave them to me. And only two of those people were in my clique, but I knew they didn't really like me much. After aimlessly shuffling through the little cards, I would stuff them in a drawer in my desk in my room and forget about them -- I would feel guilty if I threw them away.

When I got to college, I decided that I wouldn't be a victim of Valentine's Day, that I would overcome the staleness with rebellion. I went to a small Southern Baptist school where there was a fair share of girls who wore bows in their hair and had boyfriends that they were going to marry and have a thousand kids with, and the bowheads spent Valentine's Day carrying gigantic balloon bouquets with teddy bears in them from class to class and squealing to their friends about how he must be "The One," and I just couldn't take it. Therefore, "Black Day" was instituted: my friends and I made it tradition to wear all black on Valentine's Day.

My second year in Nashville, Valentine's Day struck back. I had driven out to my friends' Lang and Renee's house for the evening, and on the way back home, it started to snow. It was about 11:30 pm, and as I was coming off the freeway in the worst part of Nashville (read: racial tension and reverse discrimination towards white people like me), my Chevy Celebrity decided to break down. It was freezing. I was dressed up in my black with a thin black overcoat on, and had to walk to the nearest gas station from the freeway. Within seconds of the commencement of my journey, a loud, dented, creepy pickup truck stopped alongside me, and the passenger window rolled down to reveal two men of African-American descent, reeking of booze and Pall Malls, gold teeth glinting in the half-light. The driver, who looked like Flava Flav on crack, said, "Awwww, you need a ride? Hop in, we'll carry you to the gas station!" I muttered, "Umm, nothanksthatsokayI'llbefine" and kept walking. But Flav insisted: "C'mon, it's cool! We're cool! You can't walk all by yourself!" and so I reluctantly agreed to hop into the bed of the truck, reasoning that it was only 3 blocks and I could always jump if things got scary. They "carried" me to the gas station safe and sound and drove off. The attendant at the gas station, a 45-year-old video gamer who probably still lived with his mom, refused to let me in to use the phone (it was after midnight now and the doors were locked, leaving me to communicate my plight through the little mechanical drawer under the window), citing safety concerns (my black poet's shirt must have appeared threatening). I was then forced to walk another four blocks in the snow to another gas station, this time wishing Flav and his gold-toothed friend would come back and fetch me. I finally reached the gas station and called two guy friends back at school for help, and they came and pushed my car all the way back to Belmont in the snow.

In spite of my determination to stay away from the male species that night, I thanked God for Flav, Gold-tooth, and my two friends who ended up becoming my Valentine's dates that night.

At least they didn't give me any conversation hearts.

Even now, as a married woman, having found the love of my life and soulmate, Valentines falls flat. David feels the same way I do, and he's a romantic (far beyond me, in fact). It's the empty sense of mindless obligation that comes with the day that we both despise: because it's Valentine's day, we all have to make reservations, have a "romantic" dinner at an overcrowded restaurant, buy flowers, give a goofy card, etc. It's all so unoriginal. It's a Hallmark holiday. It's stale. So we usually end up playing somewhere (because the cello is so romantic, apparently, and in high demand on such a day), enjoying a nice meal after we've worked, and choose another night that isn't so programmed to go out and enjoy each other. This year is no exception. We are playing at our favorite restaurant in Fredericksburg, so we'll be working. We even decided we wouldn't do any gift-giving because we're trying to save for furniture for our new house. We are merely observers today, which is always fun and interesting.

Maybe I'll wear black for old-times' sake.

What the....?

2006-01-27T21:34:00.000-06:00

Fiery Darts

2006-01-19T19:10:00.000-06:00

This has certainly been my week for "fiery darts."

First the ugly friend blowup (now resolved, thank God, *sigh*, all better now).

Then yesterday I had a certifiable psycho-woman call me to complain about how one of my employees treated her on Saturday (my employee didn't mistreat her; the woman literally came running into the store screaming that someone needed to call the police because a car was being broken into, yet there was not a soul in the parking lot at the time; it all went downhill from there because she is nuts, as you will see), and after ranting and raving at me on the phone, I calmly said, "Ma'am..." and she screamed, "I can't talk to you with you screaming in my ear like this!" I said (even more calmly and much quieter), "Ma'am, I'm not screaming at you." She said, "YES YOU ARE! YOU HAVE SCREAMED AT ME FOR THE LAST TIME!!!" and I said, "Ma'am, I don't think I've raised my voice at all." She screamed, "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK, IT MATTERS WHAT I THINK BECAUSE I'M THE CUSTOMER!" Wow. It was awesome. She even threatened to call the owner to complain about my "screaming"... after which I had to repeat the Waco store number to her 7 times because she kept interrupting me to yell that she couldn't understand me and that I was breaking up and why was I giving her so many numbers? I finally had to repeat the phone number like this:

"Ma'am, please write down the numbers as I tell you and don't interrupt me. Ready? OK.

"2."

"5."

"4."

"7."

"7."

"2."

"9."

"2."

"2."

"5."

I paused for about 3 whole seconds between each number just to make sure she got it. She must have, because she hung up when I said, "5." She proceeded to call the main store and ask for the owner, who wasn't there, so she was passed of to his "assistant." His "assistant" called me 10 minutes later to say, "Wow, what a psycho." Anyway, yeah, that was fun. Can we do it again?

And then yesterday David and I had another situation upon which I won't elaborate because it's so ridiculous, but it was yet another case of someone not being mature (or loving, or grace-centered) enough to come to us with the problem, but instead choosing to attack us in an underhanded way.

I've been dealing with conflict all week (!) but I should probably get used to it... it goes with the job. Being in leadership makes me the prime target for any and all attacks, valid or baseless (most are actually baseless, I'm finding), and I'm learning how to hang in there with it and not let it defeat or demoralize me. I have always been weak in that area; I grew up with a lot of criticism, where nothing I did was ever good enough, and I tend to avoid conflict and tend to be more of a people-pleaser because of that. I think the biggest issue I have in dealing with conflict and criticism is not being given enough credit, not being given the benefit of the doubt. So many issues in friendship, in the church, in life, could be avoided altogether if people would just learn to approach each other in love instead of jumping to conclusions. I know this sounds so obvious and easy, but apparently it's a lost art. Three times in the past week I've been attacked by people who have refused to give me the benefit of the doubt, refused to come to me and give me a little credit, refused to take the time to consider things from another perspective. It's just really getting on my nerves, and I'm just venting here because I'm among friends. And I am learning what James meant when he said, "count it all joy...knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." I am grateful for the lesson and for the thicker skin I'm developing... and in the meantime, I'm trying very hard to to get ghetto on people!

The Art of Losing (or The Anatomy of a Breakup)

2006-01-15T15:19:00.000-06:00

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

I think I have mastered the art of losing friends. It seems to be a theme in my life. Sometimes it is by wrongdoing on my part, sometimes it is just time to part ways, then there are those (rare) instances where the breakup hits out of nowhere, sudden and violent, blindsiding me and leaving me trembling in shock and sheer lack of comprehension. Such is the carnage I have experienced this week.

I have a friendship of nearly five years that has been, well, unique. It has been the most demanding friendship I've ever experienced, due to issues upon which I won't elaborate, but the bottom line is that over the past five years I have poured much of myself into my friend -- we're talking blood, sweat, tears, prayer, fasting, sleepless nights, countless hours of counseling her, listening, etc. Used to be that we were inseparable, but our time has been scarce since I've been working full time. As far as I knew, however, everything was fine and dandy.

Last week, however, what started out as (what I thought) a simple misunderstanding turned into a battle of catastrophic proportions. And I'm still scratching my head, incredulous, thinking, "What the heck...?" I literally had no idea there was a problem. I'm still not sure what happened. All I know is that on Sunday, everything was great, and by Tuesday I was the most hated individual on the planet.

After regaining my senses after the initial shock, I realized that my friend had just shown me, in one 3-minute phone call, her true feelings about me and about our friendship. Knowing that I have been stressed to the max, she created a situation for me that not only has now added to my stress, but she has also decided to go out of her way to hurt me deeply in the process. I have always suspected, and others have told me for years, that this friendship was rather one-sided and that I was doing most of the work. It was unhealthy, but my fear of losing the friendship trumped my desire for sanity, so I kept spinning my wheels trying to make it work. On Tuesday, I realized that I had been given the truth in neon lights that I couldn't ignore, and so I made the decision to walk away, cut my losses, learn from it, and move on.

And so now I am left pulling out the shrapnel and readjusting my focus. I've done this before, so it's not quite as horrific as it was the first time, but it is so very much like breaking up with a significant other. I live in a small town. We have the same friends. It's only a matter of time before I run into her at Walmart or HEB. It's only a matter of time before our mutual friends start asking me for my side of the story (and for once, I don't feel the need to give it. I don't need to be justified. I know in my heart and before God that I have done absolutely nothing wrong, which is why this situation is so absurd). It's only a matter of time before casual acquaintances ask me how she's doing. These things are always awkward. They are never easy. I have had that fluttery knot in my stomach and sweaty palms for a week now because I hate conflict and because it's just weird. I find gifts that she's given me over the years and want to smash them to pieces because they seem to mock me now. I find myself muttering "should-have-said-phrases" like George Costanza: "Oh yeah? Well, the jerk store called..." I keep finding myself forgetting that she is gone from my life, and I'll think, "Oh, I need to tell her about that thing I saw today...." and then I realize that I can't. And when do I take her off of my speed dial? When do I erase the text messages? It happened so suddenly -- one minute we were friends and the next we were enemies -- but those old friendship habits and patterns don't immediately die when the friendship does.

I'm okay with it, though, really. Maybe I'm still in shock and I'll shed some tears once reality hits. I don't mean to sound callous. I just think that it was time to move on, time to get healthy, and God allowed this to happen to get me off my butt and get on with it. I feel free and really have peace about it. I wish things could have ended a little more gracefully, but how do you end a friendship gracefully? ("You know, everything seems great between us, and I've had a blast being your friend for five years, but I'm really feeling like it's time to stop being friends now. Thanks for all you've done. I really appreciate it.") Maybe we'll talk at some point and there will be some closure, but I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to having more time to spend on my husband, my other friends, and my writing. Life is good.

A Picture Share!

2006-01-01T19:04:00.000-06:00

We decorated christmas cookies, and I am so *over* Christmas! What? Aliens can celebrate christmas too...

Need For Speed

2005-11-19T12:17:00.000-06:00

Well, my house is still standing.

Last night was Punky's birthday party, and we had his school friends and their parents over to our (very small) house for cake and queso and pizza pockets. There were 13 kids all crammed into Punky's room, and the room was literally pulsating with the kinetic mayhem that resulted from sugar, adrenaline, and the delirousness that happens naturally after a week of being cooped up in school. Dana and Elisabeth were jumping up and down. Quintyn and Turner were running and sliding into the walls in their socks, taking full advantage of the hardwood floors. Christian, Dylan, and Brandon played with cars in the corner. Colette and a few others systematically popped every single balloon with tacks. It was great. After much cake and 4 dozen pizza pockets, they all went outside and rode their bikes while the parents gathered around our fire pit and attempted to police the bike carnage. Then the girls left, and the boys were invited to spend the night, 5 boys in all including Punky, because Turner decided to go home after Quintyn hit him on the head with a golf ball.

The slumber party was a milestone. It was Punky's first slumber party, and for several of these boys, the first time they've ever spent the night with someone other than Grandma. I thoroughly enjoyed being a fly on the wall. Their little conversations were priceless:

Punky: Brandon! You broke the hydraulics off of my car! Why'd you do that?
Brandon: I'm sorry... it was a accident. I didn't mean to.

They were silent for a bit while they continued crashing cars, and then:

Brandon: Punky, am I still your best friend in the world, even if I broke your car?
Punky: Of course... how could you even ask that? You're my best friend ever.

Brandon is in the second grade, and Punky is the oldest in the 3rd grade, so there is almost a 2-year age difference between them. Brandon is very small, and is very much like Piglet: meek, cute, fearful. But Punky has always been very kind to younger kids, and is not much of a rough-and-tumble boy like some of the others in his class, so I am sure this is why the two of them get on so well. We laid out pallets for them in the living room and turned off the lights and put "Robotz" in the DVD player, and Brandon snuggled up to Punky like a baby brother and went to sleep. Precious.

I think they went to sleep around 12:30, after lots of giggling and fart noises and butt jokes and other random boy stuff, and then, as if someone flipped a switch, they were all instantly awake and jumping again at 6:30 am. No coffee necessary with these boys. I got up to make my coffee when I heard them, and the moment they saw me, one of them asked, "Can we go outside and ride our bikes?" It was 6:30 am and cold outside and they hadn't been awake 5 minutes. I told them to wait until after pancakes, and at that, I think collectively they ate 6 bites and were dressed and out the door, where they played on their bikes and in the dust with cars, until their parents came at noon.

I am so happy to see Punky outside with friends. We isolated him so much last year, and while he did okay with the homeschool/new church/no friends thing, I always felt lonely for him. He is a very social person, more so than me or David...no, rather, he hasn't yet been scarred for life by the cruelty of his peers, thus causing him to retreat into the hermitlike existence we have come to seek. There is such innocence in his relating to others. It's all out there, take it or leave it, with nothing to hide and no innate need to do so. I am learning from him to come back out of my shell and to be human and to not run from human contact. Typically, I do not want to be friends; Punky craves new friends and will talk to (and accept) anyone he happens to meet. I avoid eye contact unless absolutely necessary. He will walk all the way across Walmart to say hi to a random church member he spots while I am ducking behind the canned goods hoping no one will see me. I'm such a psycho. It's not that I think myself better than anyone, or that I don't like people... I've just gotten so used to hiding, protecting, cocooning, that it's habit.

So these birthday parties are good for me, because it forces me to open my home and my heart to people I really don't know very well, and to spend time with them simply because our kids are friends, and to learn that other people aren't really so scary after all, and that making small talk isn't really that bad. It's good to watch my son with his friends, because it reminds me of my kid self before things went bad, and how playing, dreaming, exploring, and observing in the presence of friends is a really beautiful thing.

A Picture Share!

2005-11-06T09:21:00.000-06:00

A four-year-old after my own heart.

A Picture Share!

2005-11-04T08:01:00.000-06:00

Writing is life.

Phrases I Am Sick Of

2005-11-01T21:06:00.000-06:00

"In the wake of"
"Don't hate, appreciate"
"storm-ravaged areas"
"oil for food"
"bird flu"
"Forewarn Stormteam Chief Meteorologist Jennifer Broom"
"extra value meal"
"basal cell carcinoma"
"no more late fees"
"I need to return this"
"I need to speak to your manager"
"Inspiral Carpets"
"your truth is whatever you want it to be"
"cedar season"
"there is no safe cigarette"
"I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please"
"the desperately needy country of Mauritania"
"ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies"
"git'r done"

A Picture Share!

2005-10-31T20:15:00.000-06:00

The result of a halloween costume gone horribly wrong...

A Picture Share!

2005-10-29T23:04:00.000-05:00

I went as scully for our costume party tonite... Wasn't much of a stretch really...Just me in a black suit with an fbi badge!

Patience

2005-10-27T08:09:00.001-05:00

We have been in this house for nearly a month now, and I still feel like we haven't moved in. Of course, this place is just a temporary stopping-place, and we will be moving into our more permanent residence in about 6 months, but I just hate the unfinished business of boxes and endless searching for that random item that I haven't needed in 3 years but just happen to need today. I hate boxes! My life has become solely about endless mounds of corrugated madness and everything therein for the past month or so. At home I'm tripping over them, have no place to put them, really don't want to unpack much more because I'm just going to have to pack them back up again very soon. At work, Daddy Warbucks brings trailers full of them, and they stack up and I'm tripping over them there, and just when we have unpacked the last box, he shows up with more. And then Friday night I was at work until 9:00 pm packing up infinite numbers of books into boxes. I am so very sick of cardboard.

But it's okay, really... cardboard has come to mean transition, change, growth and expansion. It's a mirror of my internal self: unpacking certain items, truths, that have been long since forgotten or hidden away, and boxing up or discarding old pieces that no longer have use or relevance. Compartmentalizing certain areas -- "No, I can't get into that box now. There's no place to put all that stuff. There will be time for that later..." -- putting some things on hold knowing that God can take better care of them than I at this point.

I'm trying to be patient with all the unfinished business around and inside of me. I am exactly one-half neat freak and one-half pack rat, depending on the mood I'm in. I like to carry stuff around, but only for so long, and then it starts to drive me nuts and I toss it. So as I'm tripping over things in my house and getting irritated and wanting to do crazy things with the boxes that just don't fit anywhere right now (can I just throw away the box that has my china in it? There's nowhere to put it for the next 6 months! Oh, wait, I like my china.), I'm trying to have patience and not let the neat freak freak out too much, trying to remember that it's just a season, we're in transition, and soon we will have a large place in which to spread out and unpack all that stuff. Maybe not today, and maybe it's okay for stuff to look messy and unkempt... there's a process behind the mess. My neat freak self will just have to let go and live in the process instead of trying to control it.

But come April, I never want to see another box again.

drink

2005-10-26T08:04:00.000-05:00

I love autumn. I am so happy that the air is just a bit crisper, that it's time for pumpkin muffins and spicy flavored coffee, for less time inside and more time spent soaking up the quiet of the moment surrounded by nature and God.

When it begins to show little hints of autumn outside, I instinctively want to get a little quieter in my soul, go more inward, listen more, talk less; take in instead of dole out... the world could probably use a little less of my opinions anyway. It is so hard to find the time to actually go there these days, and my pursuit of quiet must be purposeful or the opportunity will be missed. The change in seasons creates the desire for change in me, and the choice is mine whether or not to follow through.

I have been in such a season of hustle and bustle and urgency over things that just really don't matter much. I have not been able to really create (to rest, to dream, to try) in so long that I think I have forgotten how. But I am feeling the pull, the call to come away and be and do what I was created to do; in the image of my Creator, I was created to create. And I am not fulfilled when I am not doing what I was created to do... and how easily I forget this truth. I don't want to live a flat, stale, one-dimensional life spent in pursuit of comfort and status-quo-middle-class existence, because it becomes just that: existence, not living.

But why is it so hard? Why do I have to be so vigilant to keep the focus? Why do I have to try so hard to stay awake and not fall into the slumber of the mundane, everyday existence? I don't need fireworks, I just want to live and breathe and know that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, learning what I'm supposed to be learning, listening instead of glazing over. Time is so short. I just don't want to miss it...

Anne Lamott is my hero.

2005-10-25T20:27:00.000-05:00

I was snooping around and found this 2003 article on Anne.

I'm even more intrigued in her knowing now that she loves Joyce Meyer.

What a nut! I love her. I want to be like Anne Lamott when I grow up.

Jack?

2005-10-24T20:36:00.000-05:00

From annerice.com

NOTES FROM ANNE ON CHRIST THE LORD: Out of Egypt

"Dear Ones --- As many of you know, my new novel will be published in about a month. I've not said very much on this because perhaps there is so much to say. But let me make a few introductory remarks now. Christ the Lord -- Out of Egypt is a novel about Jesus as a child, a boy of seven. And the story is told from his point of view. The research for this book has been endless and thrilling and at times confusing. I'll post more about the research, the sources in all fields, including archaeology, social history of the first century, Jewish history, Jewish law and customs, New Testament studies, etc., as time goes on. An entire bibliography of works consulted would be very simply impossible. -- What I want to say here is this: every effort has been made to make the entire world of this book accurate according to all the records we possess. This is the Jesus who was born in Bethlehem, celebrated by angels, visited by shepherds, and the Magi. This is the Christ of the four gospels in whom I believe. -- In a way, the novel is the story of Christmas told in a new way -- from the point of view of Jesus Himself when he is old enough to start talking seriously about the mysteries surrounding His birth. --- My life has led to this book.

Love, Anne."

(Thanks to Shane for the heads up.)

So, wow. That's amazing. What's even more amazing is that she posted Brian McLaren's review of her new book on her site. That's the weirdest collision of worlds, like, ever.

It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out... Whether it will be a huge "Last Temptation of Christ"/"DaVinci Code" type controversy or if people will actually be open to what the book says. It apparently opens with the apocryphal story of Jesus as a boy killing a playmate just to see if he could resurrect him, so right away it's not based on canonist Scripture and leaves a lot of room for fanciness, but we'll see, now, won't we?

A Picture Share!

2005-10-22T15:21:00.000-05:00

At the corn maze..

mom, can i go outside?

2005-10-22T10:26:00.000-05:00

can you see me, mom?

fruity monster

2005-10-22T08:58:00.000-05:00

I am tired.

Yesterday I worked a 12-hour shift. Not by choice, mind you, but oh well... I guess I made up for the day I was sick last week.

Daddy warbucks came down for the weekly visit, and ended up pulling a gazillion books right at 5:00. Susan and I ended up having to box them all up and get them ready to go, which we finished doing at 8:45. eeejole.

Oh well.

Today we are taking the youth to the Hondo Corn Maze today. Should be fun, although my homebody self is longing to stay here and do all the laundry I have to do. It's become a mountain. I feel like we've just sort of moved in, but not completely, and I hate the unfinished aspect of it all. Of course, I never have enough of a block of time to actually finish any project these days, and it really irritates me. By the time I finally finish getting settled here in this house, we're going to be moving again. I'm trying not to think about it.

I still have yet to think about Halloween. I need to find a costume for myself and for Punkster. He wants to be a cop. That should be easy. I don't know what I'll do. We're having a "We Don't Celebrate Halloween" party for the youth, and then we're going trick-or-treating in David's sister's neighborhood on the 31st. With two opportunities to dress up as something, it should be fun, but I am clueless as to what to do. Maybe I should go as a Compass employee.

Actually, we at the Compass are having a big Narnia day in December right before the movie opens, and we're all going to dress up as Narnia people. I think CJ needs to come back and be Susan Pevensie. CJ is Susan. :) I want to be a Dryad.

See? Narnia is becoming my own personal Star Wars. I can become a total geek and stand in line for a month at the theater in costume! Cool! New hobby!

Oh yeah, I don't have time. I forgot.

Okay. Must go make coffee. Again.

Straight out of the X-files

2005-10-20T22:46:00.000-05:00

I just read an article at Salon.com about the soldier of the future, who will be aided by nanotechnology and turned into, in essence, a supersoldier. Whoa...

"Based simply on the projects posted for public consumption, the ISN is busy creating a soldier of the future who will be protected by an impregnable exoskeleton. This 21st century armor will also impart superhuman strength, reflexes and endurance. It will sense its environment with molecular precision and administer chemicals, pharmaceuticals and other potions directly to the human inside based on pre-programmed stimuli or other command and control signals (global satellite phone link to headquarters ... a battle computer in geosynchronous orbit ... HAL?). It kind of makes one long for the old 'mineshaft gap' of the Cold War."

Ugly

2005-10-20T11:06:00.000-05:00

This is the beast that tried to attack us on our hike.

Disco

2005-10-18T21:02:00.000-05:00

I have found aural heaven, and it is XM.

So I went to Target yesterday to use my birthday money to get more clothes. I actually found pants that fit me, which is unusual because Target pants are made for girls with no hips and I definitely have hips. So I was about to buy said pants when I impulsively stopped by the electronics department. I found a XM Roady2 receiver for $49 and instantly forgot about the pants!

Today I activated my receiver, and when I got home I installed it in my car. I was pretty proud of myself... I ran the wires all by myself, which required running antenna wire under the weather stripping and through the trunk and under the carpet and such. Now I'm all XM'd! There are so many good channels I can't stand it. O, the sheer bliss! O, the ecstasy! I don't have to listen to San Antonio crap radio anymore!!

I met a female FBI agent yesterday. She came in the store. She rekindled my FBI pipe dream... after talking to her, it doesn't sound as impossible as before. Maybe there's still a chance. Maybe I'm stupid, too. That's entirely possible. But I guess I owe it to myself to at least check it out, right? I just want one of those cool FBI flashlights... is that so wrong?

Guess I better get to running again. I'm all out of shape and stuff.

There is absolutely no good TV. I've resorted to watching Sex In The City reruns on WB. We don't have our satellite hooked up yet, so all we get clearly is WB. The only good thing about that is that they are showing Season 1 of 24 on Saturdays, and it's been awesome to watch Season 1 again. There's so much I don't remember! I do remember Kim being stupid, but I had totally forgotten about the other stupid CTU girl who looks like she's wearing a wig.

I need to get a life. Oh yeah, I don't have time.

Ok, must go do dishes now. I've been putting them off. We moved into a house without a dishwasher [sob] and now it sucks to do dishes.

Goodbye, cruel world.

CJ and Jeff, stop fighting over my blog.

:)

2005-10-15T16:37:00.000-05:00

I have exactly 10 minutes before I have to get ready for our gig.

We're playing at Fralo's in Leon Springs tonight. I hope my friends make it. That will be fun.

I went hiking today. Got stung by a bee. Ticked off a tarantula. He ran towards me with his butt in the air. All I did was take a picture of him. Geez... Not a good day for nature. Apparently nature was in a bad mood. Didn't get enough coffee or something.

So okay. now I must go shower.

Birthday

2005-10-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

My lands, has it really been 6 months since my last post? No wonder people keep calling to poke me with a proverbial stick to see if I'm alive.

I have been in a season of sheer insanity. Working full time retail (I'm now managing the Compass... yikes), of course all the while still trying to maintain a full time job as mom and wife, and then working with the youth at church and attempting to play LJG gigs from time to time. Oh, and in the midst of it all, we've just moved. Just finally got settled (sort of) in Boerne, where we're still tripping over boxes but fully enjoying the life of city dwellers -- first time in 10 years that we've actually had modern conveniences like pizza delivery and a corner store within rock-throwing distance from the house.

And we did away with our phone at home at the old house the last three months we were there. Initially we got rid of it because we were finally able to get DSL, so we no longer needed the land line (we've gone almost exclusively cellular) for anything. And then we found out we had to move, and so I've been without internet for a long, long time.

It's been really great, though... I have spent my (miniscule) free time reading. I have discovered some really amazing books that have revolutionized my world and have thus inspired me to write again. This summer I read "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller, and while I was, as usual, late to the party concerning my discovery of Donald Miller, it came at just the right time.

I just finished Anne Lamott's "Traveling Mercies," and I have decided that I have found my favorite writer in Lamott. Reading her book was like a cool drink of water for me. I was inspired by her journey, her real-ness, her view of God that sometimes makes me wince a little but challenges my formulaic view of Christianity.

That's the road I'm currently on... I think God is breaking down some of the formulas, some of the "pat-ness" of my thinking, not that Truth is any less Truth, but I think that I have been taught to believe in a very small God, one who we have tried to fit in a tidy little box because it's easier for us to manage, and He doesn't fit in a tidy little box at all. I am learning how big and other He is, His ways are not my ways and His thoughts are not my thoughts, and while it blows my mind, it is comforting to let go and to surrender to this huge Other and know that I don't necessarily have to figure Him out. And the beauty of that is that it opens me up to find Him in lots of new places, to not be limited to my usual American conservative right-wing consumer-driven perspective, but to be more open to the fact that He is not limited to my narrowness. There is so much more of Him to find.

I will continue this track later... I have to go to work. I'm 33 today. Wow. Maybe I'll get a muffin.

House of Duchovny

2005-04-29T22:58:00.000-05:00

Just got home. David and I went and saw "House of D" at the Bijou in SA. The venue was very cool... I can't believe we've never been there! It's truly a best kept secret. No one was there, and we had a great time soaking in the art and the experience. I didn't feel like I was in San Antonio for a brief moment, which means something pretty significant.

Anyway, I'll post a full review tomorrow, because right now I'm tired and drunk on the emotion of the movie and can't be as objective as I should be. But wow. It was great. It had it all... I laughed because Duchovny's familiar wit was ever-present, and that's just so endearing to me... but I cried too because it's a sweetly melancholic story. I loved it. Definitely go see it. It was innocent and beautiful.

So I got my hair all cut off today. It was strangely liberating, especially since I woke up every hour last night freaking out about whether or not I really wanted to chop it. My friend Cat cut it... she did great. I love it, and most importantly, David does too. He's not one of those, "You-can-never-cut-your-hair" guys, and he agreed it was a nice change.

I'm listening to "White Ladder" for the first time in 2 years... I was totally addicted to that record and finally had to put it away because it was getting out of hand. But I guess the last copy I owned was the UK version that didn't include "Nightblindness, " because I can't remember it being part of the one I owned. Can't remember what was in its place though. But omigosh, what a great record. It is still at the top of my list as one of my Desert Island Discs.

Okay, I must sleep now, lest I drown in all this inspiration and art.

I will blog more after I run in the morning.

Love and sausages.

dreadfully busy

2005-04-26T15:45:00.000-05:00

Hello. Thank you. I have been exceedingly bad at blogging lately. Smack my hiney! I have been so busy that I just realized that I hadn't spoken to my mother in 6 weeks. I'm a bad blogger, and an even worse daughter. Bad. Bad.

So, okay. Much to catch up on. I just stumbled onto David Duchovny's blog. I love him. He is fabulous. I am dying to see "house of d" and I really hope it comes to S.A. Although I would drive to Austin to see it. It looks great.

I finally cleaned out my office last night and have my Mac up and running again. Got iTunes going and, for the first time, actually bought a song (Coldplay's new one). I'm so in! Anyway, now I'm itching for an iPod. Or an iPod mini, even. I will possess the iPod. I need it for when I run, anyway.

Speaking of running, I'm up to 1.5 miles a day now. This is a big accomplishment because I've NEVER been able to run distances, ever. Flo has been my inspiration... I watched her run off 125 pounds, and I am thus empowered. My goal is to hit the 3 mile mark. That's do-able. But I must have an iPod.

So we bought a new truck (loving it!) -- a Trailblazer -- and promptly wrecked our other car Friday night. Blasted deer ran out in front of us on the way home from August E's. It did about $2500 in damage. I'll post pics in a bit. They're beautiful. We kept the deer guts on the car for evidence, plus we thought it would make a good meal later.

I am very, very sad today. Stinkin' Tivo didn't record 24!!!! What the @#*&$*%# is up with that?! It records it EVERY WEEK! And in looking at the record schedule, it is set to record next Monday night, but for some weird reason it skipped last night. We realized it at 8:45, so I hit record and got the last 15 minutes of the show. I don't have the heart to even watch. What's the point? And President Palmer (a.k.a the Allstate Man) was going to be on. I am just sick about it all. Have I told you how much I hate Dish Network? We are so ready to switch over to Direct TV.

I have to go to the store today. Ugh. I hate going to the store. I always end up running into about half of Pipe Creek when I go, and while I love my peeps, I just really don't want to stand around and talk. I want to get in and out. Therefore, I hate going to the store, because I can never just get in and out. Ugh.

I must go now. Go see House of D. Let me know how it is, you fortunate people who get to see it right now. Please. I'm dyin' here!

Word to your mom.

2005-03-30T11:18:00.000-06:00

Alien in a capsule. Very X-Files. He talked and made weird noises. Not very X-Files. But it reminded me of the alien embryo in the jar that Scully found.

2005-03-30T11:16:00.000-06:00

2005-03-30T11:14:00.000-06:00

This is a Coke machine on Main.

2005-03-30T11:12:00.000-06:00

2005-03-30T11:10:00.000-06:00

This is a model of the alien autopsy. It came from the set of a movie and the producer donated it to the museum.

2005-03-30T11:09:00.001-06:00

In the UFO Museum

2005-03-30T11:09:00.000-06:00

More cheese. This is on Main St.

2005-03-30T10:59:00.000-06:00

Punkster and I at the UFO Museum...

2005-03-30T10:56:00.000-06:00

Roswell is so cheesy. It's great.

2005-03-30T10:54:00.000-06:00

The truth is here.

24 and American idol

2005-03-29T19:03:00.000-06:00

So I haven't blogged in awhile... I'm sitting here watching American Idol while dinner is cooking in the oven.

Bo Bice rocks. Simon Cowell sucks. He just said Bo's song sounded like something that would be sung at a wedding. No. Not true. Sometimes I think he has to dis something just to be "simon."

Omigosh... I think Paula Abdul is totally drunk. She's all spacey and slurry. Totally bombed.

I am currently downloading software that will allow me to upload pics to the blog. That way, I can share our photos from Roswell and such. Anyway, that's coming later tonight.

Jack got away really easily last night on 24. I was expecting him to at least die once or something. He didn't really even get beat up. What's up with that? I can't tell if it's because I'm watching it from week to week for the first time or what, but this season doesn't seem as riveting as the past years. Of course, when one has the luxury of watching 4 hours at a time, one gets pretty involved. It's still the best show on television.

So Dina Araz is dead... or is she? I knew she was gonna bite it when they showed her walking away from Behrooz last week, but as I was thinking about it yesterday, they didn't actually show her getting shot, which can mean anything in the world of 24.

I am loving that Michelle is back. I am not loving Chloe, though. I'm glad they brought her back, but she is annoying... all that political bickering she and Edgar are doing is stupid.

I think Michelle and Tony will end up getting back together, though. They're already softening toward one another.

They're doing a great job of making the bad guy really bad... he's been invincible so far... outwitting CTU at every turn. Jack will handle him, though.

Okay, and Audrey is starting to get on my nerves. I'm glad Chloe fronted her out about the Paul/Jack thing. She needs to make up her mind. I have a feeling, just because Jack is a tragic character, that she'll end up going with Paul. Nothing ever goes Jack's way in love and life. He can kick butt in the field, but life just sucks for Jack.

I don't know what to think about Behrooz... probably won't die, but I don't know for sure. It's a toss-up. He's the Kim of this season... young and stupid but somehow manages to survive.

Okay, I'm ready for food now. I'll blog with pics later.

Word.

Roswell

2005-03-07T07:09:00.000-06:00

I promised Shane I would blog when I could, so I'm taking advantage of the early hour here in Roswell. I think this may be the only place that has internet while we're on our trip, but we'll be back here on Thursday night for an extended stay in Roswell.

Yesterday's drive was a breeze. I had routed our trip on Rand McNally and it gave us absolutely perfect directions, but when it calculated the mileage and how long it would take to get here, the map said it was a 10 hour drive to Roswell. We got on the road and I realized that that didn't sound right, so I calculated it myself and got 7 hours. Apparently they were calculating mileage at a speed of 52.5 miles an hour (who drives 52.5? Especially in West Texas? We were pleasantly surprised! And we gained still another hour at the border when we got into the Mountain Time Zone, so instead of getting here at 11:30 like we thought, we got here at 8! That was so great!

We had X-Files-like weather just after Pecos, TX. It was totally flat for miles... we could literally see forever. It was beautifully rugged terrain with Joshua Trees and a bed of yellow flowers on the desert floor, and we could see a band of rain showers hanging like a curtain in the distance ahead. The sunset was just behind the rain, giving it an orange-and-gray-streaked cast, each fold of the rain-curtain painted a different shade. It was absolutely gorgeous. Occasionally lightning would streak through the gray part of the curtain. It was a classic desert storm.

We got into it suddenly, and for 5 minutes drops the size of golf balls pelted the car. Then, just as suddenly, we were through the curtain and the sun was setting and the sky was clearing. We looked behind us, and the back side of the storm displayed the most beautiful rainbow we have ever seen. It was a complete arc, from the desert floor on our side of the highway, reaching all the way to the opposite side of the highway and landing on the ground over there. We could literally see the rainbow's end melting into the ground. And the colors were so vivid that each was pronounced and we could even see the indigo and violet. Just above it, another more faint rainbow hung, its colors just opposite of its companion.

We stopped to snap some quick pictures, and weren't back on the road 2 minutes when the car began to slide on what looked like sand that had been spread all across the road. I thought that the rain had washed the sand from the desert across the road in that particular spot. Then we realized that it was ice! Two inches of ice had been dumped from the clouds, and we were going 75 mph! David slid a bit and then regained control, and then, suddenly, the ice was gone, the roads were dry, and we were on our way as if the storm had never happened.

I love random acts of nature. They remind me that our Creator has a sense of humor and creativity.

Last night we got to the hotel, which has an indoor pool, and I went to look at the facilities, only to find 8-9 German men swimming, all wearing Speedos and sitting in the hot tub together. No. That was not necessary. That's a random act of nature I really could do without.

I'm looking forward to seeing Roswell in the daylight. We'll leave here around 10 and head north to the mountains. I can't wait.

Meow

2005-03-05T08:07:00.000-06:00

I am going hiking today, hooray, hooray. I have skipped many workouts this week, and I don't like myself very much for it. I ran monday, lifted weights on Tuesday, and then I don't know what happened, but I just never got around to it again. And I was so proud of myself... I actually ran and completed my workout exactly as i planned. Cool.

So I figure hiking 6 1/2 miles will make up for it...

Yippety Craycox

2005-03-04T20:42:00.000-06:00

Well it's Friday night and I'm actually free. So I'm sitting at home watching "numbers" on CBS... I never watch CBS. But I think it's odd that Numbers' main characters are a redhead and and a guy that looks strangely like Mulder and they are partners in the FBI. X-Files has created a formula, for sure.

Oh... this is the pilot. Hmmm... well, I can't involve myself in another show. Oh, wait, 24 reference... they are using the boxes... the divided screen.

Well, okay, good for them.

I'm almost packed for our excursion. I'm at that "what am I forgetting?" stage. My suitcase is overloaded already, but I keep finding things that I just really need.

I can't wait to go to Roswell. I don't care if there's nothing there but the UFO museum. That's enough for me.

I had a lady come into work today, and she came up to me and said, "Do you have things about a nurse?" I was like, "Ummm... what sort of things? Books? Plaques? Figurines? Cards? Bibles? Candy? Stories?" I'm finding that most people cannot communicate. A couple of weeks ago, a lady asked me, "Are those the same ones?" and pointed to a bunch of boxes at the top of a bookshelf. I said, "The sames ones as what?" (because generally when one uses a comparative statement, one has to include something with which to actually compare it.) "CARDS! ARE THEY CARDS?!" she spat, acting as if I had greatly insulted her. Yes. Thank you. I never realized that I was so stupid until I started working with the public.

I really need to get a brain.

Actually, I need to go and pack now.

Good night.

24 Musings

2005-03-01T08:15:00.000-06:00

Last night Jack got to stick it to Paul, whom he suspected was operating as a hostile. Jack's so cool. Who else would resort to yanking out lamp wires as a makeshift questioning tool? That's brilliant. He really should have sent Audrey out... She was horrified at seeing the "real" Jack and I suspect is having feelings of sympathy and pity for Paul. That can't be good for Jack.

Although, David had a good point: she can't be too shocked. After all, her father is the Sec. Of State. She has to know that these types of actions are necessary in a crisis. She seems smart... We'll see if she can withstand the stress and hang tough with Jack or not. She doesn't deserve him if she can't hang. Terri was tough, and thinking back to her, she seemed more way more prepared to handle the crises than Audrey is. Interesting.

Curtis, amazingly, isn't dead. Haven't these terrorists learned that if you don't kill the CTU people on the spot, they're going to escape? Didn't they watch the last seasons? Curtis proves to be pretty bad-to-the-bone... he killed those dudes with his bare hands. Jack would be so proud! :)

So Curtis, proving to be better equipped in the field than Almeda was last year, kicks butt and takes names and manages to escape. Jack's questioning leads to the same building, to the same guy, Marwan. Hmmm....

I was reminded, as Tony was questioning Dina, of Jack's handling of Nina in Season 2. Only Tony didn't kick over any tables. Hmm... Dina... Nina.... maybe the spirit of Nina lives on after all. Nina, however, didn't have a weakness like Dina does with her son.

Okay, and Driscoll's daughter... I'm really tired of that story line. I kept thinking throughout the episode that the daughter was going to end up stabbing someone on the CTU floor, namely Driscoll herself. Put the dadgum daughter in a state hospital, dangit! Why is she at CTU? Again, don't these people watch the show? They have to know that any random outsider is ALWAYS going to wreak havoc.

Oh, I get it. Daughter offs herself. Erin seems mildly upset. She's very cold... even Jack would have freaked out more if it had been Kim. That just proves my point that Erin is a Vulcan and incapable of showing emotion. So now what? Erin leaves, and Jack/Tony will be the "temporary" head of CTU again. It's about time.

You know what is absent from this season of CTU? The ever-dreaded "Division" threat. In every previous year, the bad bureaucrats from Division have always shown up and put the hurt on whoever is in charge. I guess since Jack killed Chapelle and since George died in season 2, they've learned not to mess with CTU. Although Erin, being a Vulcan, plays by the book, so they've had no reason to interfere. Just wait till Tony takes over again.....

President Keening is still flying around. He's been in the air for 11 hours now. What a wimp. I'm always shocked, but he sounds SO much like John Kerry. I really think that was intentional. He's so hands-off... I miss Palmer.

Oh, and look, Jack found the override device. Curtis and Edgar have effectively saved the world. Wait, it's only 6:00! We have like 13 more hours! Marwan has escaped dressed as a CTU officer. Crap. Now what? I can't take it! I'm going to be in freaking ROSWELL next week and won't get to see it! Oh, TIVO, don't fail me now.....

Fried Rice

2005-02-20T22:15:00.000-06:00

So wow... I haven't blogged in a long time. This past week got away from me again. Let's see... to catch up:

Tuesday of last week I woke up and my eyes were completely stuck shut. Completely (one of the kids in my youth group asked, "So how did you know you were awake?"). I unstuck them, staggered into the bathroom to look at what was going on, and was alarmed to find that the whites of my eyes were sticking out like little bubbles past my eyelids. I freaked: I was having my very own personal X-Files episode in my bathroom. Cool. I then proceeded to awake my husband, tell him to get up and take me to the doctor (he had to drive since my eyes would not accept my contacts at the moment), and got dressed. On my way into town, I did some research on the web, thanks to my ever-faithful Treo, and found that I had allergy-related conjunctivitis, which is a fancy word for "pinkeye." I told David that I really didn't want to go to a doctor, sit for an hour, and pay $150 for him to tell me the same information I had just gotten from the web, especially since there's really nothing they can give you for it, so we went to HEB instead to get some antihistamine drops.

So picture this: I'm at HEB all slummed out, having not showered and properly dressed for the day in my haste to get medical help. My eyes are tearing up excessively. I have my glasses on, which are cool but less than attractive, and the prescription is 10 years old and so I really have to squint like Mr. Magoo to see properly out of them. David had dropped me off and was next door at Half Price Books. I decided to get all my groceries while I was there, so I was standing in the laundry aisle when I hear someone coming towards me from behind. I was in NO WAY obstructing the aisle -- there was plenty of room to pass. But as this guy passes me, he reaches out and (key "Psycho" music) GRABS MY BUTT!!!! Not like, "oops, I just accidentally brushed it, sorry," but, "I am totally going to cop a major feel because I'm entitled." He GRABBED MY BUTT!!! It took me off guard, and I mumbled, "Excuse me" or something, and as he left the aisle, the realization struck me that, omigosh, he did that on purpose! I went down another aisle, and a few seconds later, I see Mr. Creepy coming toward me again. I move to another aisle, just to make sure that we're not just going in the same direction coincidentally, and I see him lurking on that aisle. Thing is, he's not buying anything. He has nothing in his hands, but he's strangely studious of anything on the shelves that happen to be within 15 feet of me. So at this point, I realize that he is stalking me, and I get on the phone and call David, who is literally at my side within 32.8 seconds. And he's ticked. Mr. Creepy, meantime, who couldn't find me because I dodged him and went to the front of the store to wait for David, had headed over to the produce and was intently perusing an orange or something. David walked over to him and gave him the ol' fisheye for about 5 minutes, long enough for him to understand that he was being watched, and then David rejoined me on the other side of the store. Mr. Creepy, I noticed, was following David, presumably to verify whether or not David was with me, and when that fact was cofirmed, he promptly disappeared. He never did buy any groceries. Funny, that.

I'm just really glad David was there. I couldn't have left HEB with that going on.

Sucka.

Okay, so I figured out why I was so blooming hungry all the time... I had my calories calculated based on a moderate exercise level, and when I added up all my workouts for the past few weeks, I should have been calculating calories for an active level of activity. So I wasn't getting enough calories! Yaaayy!! I get to eat more! It was REALLY hard to stay under a calorie limit of 1600-1700 a day. Now I get 1800-1900, and it feels like I'm pigging out! But I did lose 3 pounds last week. Happy.

I went hiking yesterday because I was tired of waiting to find someone to go with me. So I just up and went, in the rain, by myself, and it was fun. I burned like 1083 calories. And then got to celebrate last night at the Pasta Bar downtown. Yum.

I finally watched the Grammys today. They were good, except for J-Lo. Wow. And I don't know what it is, but Kanye West just really irritates me. I have never seen such a baby... he totally acts like a spoiled brat who thinks he deserves special treatment, and his attitude just really irks me. Loretta Lynn and Jack White were hilarious.

Okay. Carpal Tunnel is bothering me and I need to go wash my face.

Feed the world.

Jeff....

2005-02-10T22:44:00.000-06:00

Whoa. I just saw your comment on the dumb people at CTU after I launched my diatribe against them. We are on the same wavelength! Whoa.

I forgot about the girl from season 1.

Random 24 Musings (again)

2005-02-10T22:01:00.000-06:00

I can't believe it's already Thursday. This week has gotten away from me... I meant to post about Monday's ep much, much sooner than this.

So Tony Almeda is a drunk, angry bum. I loved the "let's catch up the viewers" game that he and Jack played in the car... "Jack, you got me out of prison, Michelle left me, and I have no job." Thanks, Tony. Because I was wondering about all three of those questions. Seemed a little too easy, though. I miss Michelle. I really began to like her last season.

Why was Tony watching Mexican soccer? In Spanish?

oooooh, Aisha Tyler is getting on my nerves. They really have a way of making the bad women really easy to hate. She's not a Sherry Palmer and certainly not a Nina, but she'll do in a pinch. I'm glad they busted her.

I still think Erin belongs on Star Trek commanding Voyager or one of those B-grade, WB spin-offs. She just screams "Vulcan."

What's up with CTU hiring these borderline autistic people (e.g. Chloe, Edgar)? Edgar is really close to being Rainman. Must be that quirky computer nerd thing. At least he won't bring a random baby into CTU and try to hide it... at least, I hope not.

Dina and Behrooz are screwed, basically. They'll end up finding Jack somehow, I'm sure. But we'll be watching many a near miss with them for the next, oh, 8 eps, most likely.

OK, where the heck is President Kerry-sound-alike -- sorry, Keeler -- going? He's been in the air for ummm....(counting on fingers)... 8 hours now. Is he just flying all the way around the globe because he can? Or are they keeping him and his peeps in the air for security reasons? Not clear, Mr. Writer. Not clear at all.

Are we actually going to get to see Kim this season? As stupid as she is, I can't imagine that she'll just live an off-screen, Season-8-Mulder-like existence the whole season.

Man, I miss X-Files. But I digress....

I've noticed that with 24, things tend to build and build and climax, and then there's an episode of rest before the tension begins to build again. This was that episode. Not too action-packed, new situations developing... man, I'm brain dead. I've forgotten how to use English. I had to think for a minute before the word "developing" came to me. Wow.

I started my new "get unfat" program this week... so in addition to cutting calories way back, I've been excercising like a fool. Running every day, lifting weights, yoga, etc. Problem is, I'm freaking STARVING all the time. I can't tell if my body is just adjusting to not overeating all the time, or if I need to add more calories in since I'm working out more... I guess I'll wait a week and see. When I get hungry, though, I get stupid. Can't function the ole' reasoning center of my brain.

My moment of realization happened last Sunday when I stepped on my mother-in-law's scale (I don't own one of those things... I'd be too depressed if I did) and realized that I've gained like 15 pounds since summer. 'Course, I was swimming every day last summer. And now I'm not. But I will be skiing in a couple of weeks, Lord willing. Oh yes, I can't wait.

Meow.

I want a smoothie.

2005-02-04T21:15:00.000-06:00

Ugh. I shouldn't have eaten that chicken fried steak. Vegetarian type people should not indulge and eat chicken fried steak. My tummy hurts.

See, I only eat vegetarian because I feel better when I do. I'm not one of those, "Oh, the poor chickens" type people. I adore animals of all kinds, but I refuse to be a militant paint-throwing animal rights person because it's just not my scene. But my body is happier when I eat vegetarian... which is evidenced by my situation with the chicken fried steak. It just sounded so good.

Yesterday was the day of creepy customers. They come in waves, I find. We'll go a long time without them, and then in one day we get 8. Yesterday, there were two guys in there who come in all the time, carry stuff around for an hour, and then never buy anything. Except yesterday they decided to actually break down and make a purchase, and when I stepped up to the register to help one of them, it smelled, umm, less than fresh. Wow. I walked into a cloud of death. People need to learn to not rip gnarly ones in my store. Please. For the love of fresh air. And it was so rank that it got in my nose and I smelled it all day. Why me? What did I do?

Then, after I got back from an errand, I walked in and this guy was acting very shady... dodging me every time I looked at him, hiding behind stuff in the gift area, just generally lurking in the gift area, where men NEVER hang around, and when I asked him if he needed help with anything he responding (much too quickly), "No, I'm fine." CJ and Phillip also caught on and felt like he was acting suspiciously as well, so we all followed him around and let him know he was being watched. I'm not sure if he got away with anything -- we couldn't approach him and say, "Hey, dude, whatcha been sticking in your pockets?" But he was mighty shady. Mighty shady, indeed.

Then another woman tried to use a stolen credit card. Hmmmm. Must have been thieves' day out.

I would have a much better time understanding the kleptos if I didn't work in a Christian bookstore.

Why can't people just ACT NICE? Just be nice. Just do what's right. Is that so hard?

And don't fart in my store. Please.

Tomorrow we are going to Galveston for a gig. That should be fun. I'm looking forward to getting out of town for a spell.

I was thinking today about how much traveling it looks like we're going to be doing this year. It's about time. I LOVE traveling. It's been a long time since I've been out of state! I cannot wait for Colorado. The mountains are my happy place.

Oh, and I was watching a thing on the History Channel today... it seems that the part of southern CO where we'll be is a hotbed of UFO activity. We're already stopping in Roswell on the way up there, but maybe we'll see ET in Colorado too.

"Mulder, you are acting BIZARRE!"

Jeff, I'll bring you a t-shirt.

I am not remotely tired. It's 9:15 and I should be getting sleepy. We have to leave at 8:00am tomorrow. My family does not know what that time of day looks like. We are vampires. 8:00 is ugly. So I know I should go to bed soon, but alas, I am not ready. Looks like it's going to be a valerian root night for me.

carrot cake

2005-02-03T22:00:00.000-06:00

we are hanging at the blue cactus cafe right now... just got done with our set and now i'm watching david play electric and keys with the sinners. it makes me want to do more with ljg. we have lots of options but we never use them!

the whole cibolo creek gang is here...gotta love cibolo. chris is so blessed to have a church that supports him as much as they do.

well i'm gonna sign off...my contacts suck today and it hurts to look at anything up close...

chowder...

Random 24 musings...

2005-02-02T08:14:00.000-06:00

I have SO been meaning to blog about 24, the best show currently on television, but I'm usually exhausted Monday nights and want to go to sleep after being riveted for a full hour by 24, the best show currently on television.

So... anyone watching 24 right now? No one gets it. You HAVE to watch 24. You are compelled to watch 24. It is the best show currently on television.

Here's the deal. David and I have always waited till the season comes out on DVD, and then, as you know, we watch 8 eps in a row because it is so freaking addictive, and then I am a blithering idiot for days until I can get my fix. It's like heroin. It really is.

But this time we are watching the 4th season as they air it, and I don't think I can take it! One episode at a time SUCKS! Thanks to TIVO, though, it's nice to skip through commercials and also to know that we won't miss an episode. You can't miss an episode with 24.

I couldn't believe my eyes Monday night.... TONY is back! I missed Tony. They cleared out every last character from the previous 3 seasons, and some I missed, and others (like stupid Kim) I didn't. So it was really cool to see Almeda swooping in and saving the day. But the obvious questions arise: He's supposed to be in prison. How the heck did he get out? Where is Michelle? And Tony was never a field agent, so how is he suddenly superman (he got shot the moment he went out in the field last season).

Okay, oh, and this is my other complaint. Every season, for some reason, they allow some random civilian to come into CTU during a crisis, and that random person ends up causing all sorts of trouble. Last season it was Gayel's wife, who then shot the main terrorist guy. This season it's Erin's schizo daughter, who's going to go nuts shortly, I'm sure. Oh, and Audrey's ex-husband. Why is he still hanging around CTU? I don't trust him.

See, if this were truly a government agency, civilians would NOT be allowed on the CTU floor. They would (if they were allowed in at all) be contained to an area where they could not see, know, or interfere with the operations of CTU. Because CTU's operations are supposedly critical and crucial to national security. That would never happen in real life.

Does anyone else think that Dina Araz is a man?

Behrooz has replaced Kim as the dumbest person on the show this season.

I think Chloe is coming back.

I think it's sad to see President Palmer doing Allstate commercials now. Poor President Palmer. He was so good.

Is it just me, or does this new president sound suspiciously like John Kerry when he talks? And what's the deal with the airplane? He's been in the air for like 7 hours now.

Erin Driscoll looks like she needs to be on Star Trek. She just really suits that part. I can totally see her in a Star Trek uniform.

I don't know if I like Jack's girlfriend. She's so different from Terri. And even Nina for that matter. Gosh, I miss Nina. She was such a great bad guy.

Alright. I think that's all. I must go make waffles for Punky. Back to reality.

Do not bray.

2005-02-01T20:56:00.000-06:00

I do not like February.

I have never liked it. It is an ugly month. It's not the holidays anymore, but it's always grey and drizzly. There are always really stale things going on around town... nothing really exciting. Globetrotters, Monster Trucks, stock shows... I have generally always hated anything that happens at convention centers. Especially in February. Especially when it's drizzly. And I can't ever get myself motivated to do anything because it's so blah outside. And I really hate pink, and February is all about pink doilies. I don't like doilies.

So there. Is it March yet?

I am so excited about March. We are going skiing!!! YAAAAAAAY! I haven't been to Colorado in 13 years. David and Punky have never been. Punky has never seen snow. It is going to ROCK!

I am such a mountain person. I feel so close to God in the mountains. I have craved the Rockies for 13 years, and it is so exciting to be able to go again.

But let me tell you, this trip is going to be very, very weird for me.

22 years ago, when I was about 9, my family went to a family camp with our church in Colorado. That was the last trip we took as a normal family. My dad got sick at the end of the trip, had to be hospitalized the day after we got back, and contracted HIV through a blood transfusion. The next several years were hell... and he passed away in '86.

That Colorado trip is my most vivid childhood memory. It's the last time I really remember doing things with my dad. I remember the lodge we stayed in vividly, from the snow tubing hill to skiing at Monarch to playing "Pit" with Missy Davidson in the Crow's Nest at the lodge to ice skating in the outdoor rink. There are so many memories of that week, and then everything became one giant blur after that as I tried my best as a kid to deal with a terminally ill parent. My childhood basically ended when that ski trip ended.

God works in crazy ways. Crazy! Last fall, when we went to Youth Specialties, I was walking through the exhibit hall and happened to pass a booth for this place in Colorado called Horn Creek. The woman I talked to invited us up for a "pastoral retreat" and mentioned that they also have summer camp for youth there. So we decided to take the pastoral retreat (and later take the youth) as our vacation and go skiing and just hang in the mountains.

But the more I thought about Horn Creek, which is near Monarch Ski resort, the more I kept thinking about that family camp 20 years ago. I knew it was going to be weird skiing at Monarch again, and that sent me down memory lane as I thought about it.

Today I talked to my mom and found out that the camp we went to 20 years ago was in fact HORN CREEK! Can you imagine? What are the odds? I couldn't have found the place if I tried, but here I just "happened" to stumble onto their booth at a conference in Dallas.

So it's going to be really strange going back to Horn Creek with my husband and son. My life has come full circle, and it will be very healing to revisit that moment of my childhood, the last bastion of innocence and joy before everything changed so very drastically. There are memories that have come up today that have been locked away for years and years. I am looking forward to unlocking more.

Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burnin', burnin', burnin'

2005-01-22T00:05:00.000-06:00

FOXNews.com - Foxlife - SpongeBob Accused of Promoting Homosexuality

Okay. Now look. Everyone needs to settle down. Spongebob is a CARTOON. Gimme a break.

Y'know, it's people like this that make people like me look bad. Please please please don't lump me in with these folks. Please.

I thought he was saying good luck...

2005-01-15T01:27:00.000-06:00

yes, okay, so i misspoke.

In my last post, I said, "24 is the best show on TV, ever."

I was drunk on the season 3 finale adrenaline rush. yes, I love 24 more than any show that's currently on.

But what I truly meant to say, yea and verily, was, "24 is the best show on TV after the X-files."

Because nothing will ever replace the X-Files for me ever. ever.

There. I said it.

It's 1:30 and I'm fighting sleep. I'm trying to work on hammering out a new press kit for tomorrow... sounds like we're going to have some pretty big industry heavyweights at the show tomorrow. So i want to be prepared. Problem is, every time I *have* to get something done for an important event, my computer decides not to cooperate with me, and a task that should take 1 hour ends up taking all day. Ugh.

Hopefully that won't happen, because i'm on my mac. Hopefully my mac feels my warm and fuzzy vibes towards it, and it's going to love me back. We shall see.

My PC is shot. I'm at the point right now where I can't do anything at ALL with it. It won't go to secure websites. It won't open any of my word documents. It won't autorun when I want to install a CD. It won't do windows update because I'm mysteriously missing .dll files. I have always wondered how .dll files suddenly decide to go AWOL? And where do they go? Are they with my missing socks that disappear in the dryer? Is it dryer or drier? Dryer looks right.

Golly ned, I need to go to sleep.

Good night, fair chickens.

I am loopy.