the day

happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T22:27:00.000-05:00

My Valentine's Day was filled with:

1.) (a.) long conversations about sushi (b.) and plans for sushi outings
2.) a treasure hunt ending in malt, mint, & white chocolate
3.) Sunday afternoon plans, when it's only Tuesday
4.) a small group that puts the "small" in small group, but makes me look forward to Tuesday nights in a very big way

I may not have a "significant other," but I have a few people in my life who are pretty significant, and I love them deeply and am deeply grateful for their love.

raspberry espresso brownies - adapted from here

Happy Valentine's Day. :)

blame it on the buttercream

2012-02-09T22:17:00.001-05:00

Everything was against me.

I didn't have any granulated sugar. (WHAT.)

Then I realized I forgot the bourbon at work. (I bet you don't hear a sentence like that every day.)

Then I was about to run out of gas, so I had to stop at Shell and I didn't even have any Kroger plus points on my card. (My life is terrible.)

Then I realized the recipe for the caramel frosting here needed 4 hours to 1 day to cool, and it was already 7:30 and that is just INSANE. So I had to find another recipe from another trusted source.

Then I burned my caramel and my smoke alarm went off and I gasped through the choking smog to open my windows, turn on my ceiling fans, and disconnect my deafening alarm. (What did we learn here? When the instructions say, "Keep a close eye on the caramel," they are not just being silly.)

Caramel: First batch, pre-"drowning in the swirling river of fog"

Then my feet got cold because it's 30 degrees outside and cold air sinks and my feet are the bottomest part of my body. Therefore: Toes turn to toe-sicles.

Then I realized that over the noise of my heater groaning because of the sudden rush of cold air and the fan on my oven that does nothing but blow hot air in my face, I couldn't hear "LOST," and now I think I've missed something important. Is Ben still the bad guy? I can't keep track.

Then, when frosting the cupcakes, I realized I wasn't going to have enough frosting for all 24 of them. (What did we learn here? When the recipe says, "Make a double batch of icing, because you won't have enough otherwise," they are not just being funny.) But I managed.

They're not this yellow in real life.

Then I started blogging and got tired and now I don't feel like cleaning up.

Scary, dark waters of burnt caramel. Who knows what's down there.

All in all: Chocolate bourbon cupcakes with caramel buttercream frosting = SUCCESS. Seriously so.

based on a true story

2012-02-09T14:58:00.001-05:00

Friday, while working some of the often-times mundane tasks of behind-the-scenes church, I suddenly, as though struck with a peppermint wand by the Peppermint Fairy floating with wings of red and white stripes, wanted a peppermint milkshake. It was as strong as the feeling of wanting to live, wanting to breathe, wanting to love someone other than yourself.

So I did the logical thing. I called Chick-fil-A, Baskin Robbins, and Steak & Shake, but all of them replied with, "Peppermint is only during the holidays."

What an awful thing to say. Why would this be? Why would you put such limitations on flavor? Would anybody ever say, "I'm sorry, you can only breathe in April"? "We apologize, but you can only only love before the sun sets"?

And I knew that grocery stores hardly ever sold peppermint. At least, Wal-Mart never did. At least, the Wal-Mart in Wisconsin never did. Only Piggly Wiggly, which Wisconsites call so caressingly, "The Pig."

So I swallowed my Pigless, peppermintless, Kentucky fate and shed a tear, which, unbeknownst to me, the Peppermint Fairy caught in her magical bottle, to do magical things with that I knew not of.

Saturday I went to Kroger, settling like we so often do for the things in life that don't quite measure up to what will make us truly happy. Maybe some Breyer's mint chocolate chip will give me peace of appetite, I thought. And I walked up and down the glass doors of ice cream and wondered which brand of mint was worth it, when suddenly I gasped. Literally gasped. And every part of me froze and melted at the same time.

She'd done it. The Peppermint Fairy had done it, I just knew it. She took my tear in her magic bottle and made it pink and made it fluffy, with specks and chips of candy cane. It was peppermint ice cream, and it was there for the taking by those who knew that Christmas wasn't the only one who loved it.

I love it, too.

3-bowls worth.

Thanks, Peppermint Fairy.

the message

2012-01-24T18:46:00.000-05:00

I needed to hear this, so I thought you might, too.

Read it slowly.

Marinate in it.

Each line, line by line.

This is what He's saying to you.

But now, God's message,

the God who made you in the first place,

the One who got you started:

Don't be afraid, I've redeemed you.

I've called your name.

You're mine.

When you're in over your head, I'll be there with you.

When you're in rough waters, you will not go down.

When you're between a rock and a hard place, it won't be a dead end--

Because I am God,

your personal God,

the Holy One of Israel,

your Savior.

I paid a huge price for you.

That's how much you mean to me.

That's how much I love you.

I'd sell off the whole world to get you back,

trade the creation just for you.

So don't be afraid: I'm with you.

(Isaiah 43:1-5)

I want to see mountains again, Gandalf

2012-01-16T17:33:00.002-05:00

After much deliberation, I have decided not to go to Denmark.

You have no idea how painful it is for me to type this.

You see, a couple of friends of mine are going to Denmark at the end of January. Saturday night, they invited me to go with them.

Did you know that a round-trip flight to Denmark only costs $750?

There's a big part of me that says, "Screw responsibility & practicality." If Gandalf were here, he would look at me beneath his bushy eyebrows and spit amongst his beard, "Fly, you fools!" It's not even a debate: You are tired, and weary, and you've been staring at pictures of mountains for the past week because you desperately want to have an adventure that does not include figuring out new ways to rearrange your closet and finding a hat you forgot you had.

Then the other part of me says, "You have rent to pay, and you need things like food and gas, and if you take a vacation now, you won't be able to take another vacation for 10 months."

That's the part of me that's kind of winning out a little bit. Today I even tried to console myself by saying to myself, "Heather, if you don't go to Denmark, you can buy something special for yourself. Like those cutting boards at Macy's that you like so much."

Yeah, that'll be cool. I won't go to Denmark, and instead I'll buy some cutting boards. Great suggestion, self. Then whenever I start to feel restless, I'll just take out my cutting boards and...cut some broccoli. Won't that feel better?

Someday I'll go somewhere out of the country.

Someday.

my father's daughter

2012-01-10T22:01:00.001-05:00

My dad made me take sips of his coffee while I was growing up, even though I hated it, because he didn't want to be the only person in the family who drank coffee. Now I love it and he doesn't have to drink alone. I think that was the start of his training me to be like him.

He also taught me to play the guitar.
Me: "Dad, I don't always understand what you're trying to tell me."
Dad: "I said augmented, not diminished, stupid."

Any form of ridiculousness I have comes from him.
Mom: "Are the neighbors who took you in when you were locked out, are their names Peggy and Phil?"
Me, remembering being locked out and walking to the neighbor's in my socks: "Yes."
Mom: "They seem nice."
Me, remembering introducing myself and asking them to use their phone and phonebook in my socks: "They are."
Dad: "They have nice grass."

That's not to say we don't have our differences.

For example, he's not always as affectionate as I am.
My thought processes: "Dad, please adjust your comfort level so that I can be as close to you as I possibly can because in my mind I am still small enough to fit in your recliner with you and I want to always be really really close to you."
His thought processes: "I am happy to be in the same room with you; I do not need you to be breathing so close to my face."
My thought processes: "All right, I will sit over here [and try not to feel hurt that you don't want me really really close to you], but some part of me still needs to be touching you so that I can still feel connected to you in some way."
His thought processes: "Your fingers are so cold I can feel them through my shirt sleeve."
My thought processes: "This is nice, isn't it?"

But he's taught me a lot - about excellence, and hanging pictures straight, and how to love Jesus, and loving people, and using duct tape.

My mom told me that one year when we were kids, she wasn't sure how they were going to afford our Christmas presents. Then she found out that all summer my dad had been collecting things from garage sales and cleaning them up to give to us as presents. I treasure that story as a vivid display of my dad's thoughtfulness, provision, and love. I hope I continue to grow to be more like him in the years to come.

1998

2010

How do you show love to those you love?

newyear schmewyear

2012-01-08T13:48:00.001-05:00

You know when you're really hungry, and you eat something that you didn't really enjoy, so you want to just keep eating because, gosh darn it, even though you're full, you're not really satisfied? This mint chocolate chip ice cream is not really that good...therefore I have to eat the entire carton in order to make up for what a small bowl of really good mint chocolate chip ice cream would've done for me. Right?

That's how I feel about winter.

I'm having a hard time not listening to Christmas music.

I put away my Christmas decorations (they're not very far - there's not really an "away" part of my little apartment) & have strategically placed my Christmas presents in their proper places (which mostly means "my stomach").

I'm watching the Falcons & the Giants, neither of whom I care about, but if I close my eyes and just listen to the crowds, whistles, and audibles, I can pretend it's a few seasons ago when the Colts were actually a team and I used to watch them and they used to win.

It is not cold outside.

It just doesn't feel like winter.

I would like for it to snow. Not the "Oh it's snowing! And now it's 60 degrees" type snow. I want it to snow.

I mean, I'm not saying it has to look like this:

But it wouldn't hurt.

I don't even know what Kentucky would do with that kind of snow.

The sun is great and all, but clouds are also God's creation. And who are we to praise Him for one type of creation over another? I feel gypped.

I mean, I can't even wear my wool socks because my feet are already sweaty most of the time.

GYPPED.

Boo. >:(

happy new year

2012-01-01T20:12:00.000-05:00

from our family to yours

2011-12-27T13:31:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas! from Vineyard Lexington on Vimeo.

hope is alive

2011-12-26T19:44:00.003-05:00

Hello.

How was your Christmas?

Mine looked like this:

December 23rd: Oh What Fun!, a Christmas service for the whole family @VCC. I was an elf, and I found baby Jesus at the end. (He was under the tinsel, garland, and Christmas ornaments.) I went to Wal-Mart afterward, still dressed as an elf, and even amidst all the people walking through the parking lot, the guy selling garland picked me out of the crowd to pester me. I may have pointy shoes, but I'm a person, too. And I don't want your garland.

December 24th: Two Christmas Eve services, six Lindor white chocolate truffles, a nap, and another Christmas Eve service. I loved the darkness of the auditorium and hearing 170 voices sing out, "For He alone is worthy." It was beautiful and intimate, and I fell asleep that night thinking about how blessed I am to be in this church, with these people, and a child of this amazing God.

December 25th: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned (Isa 9:2). I watched White Christmas and ate Raisin Bran in bed before heading out to spend the day with some of my favorite people on this earth. So much to make me laugh, so much to make me full, so many bourbon balls. I will not say I did not miss my family & the traditions I missed having for the first time in 24 years. But I am one blessed cookie to have the people in my life who are in my life.

December 26th: Happy day after merry Christmas day! (To quote Mom.) I went to work for a couple of hours, thought about how practical gas cards are & how I wouldn't be sad to get one, and was surprised by a Speedway card at my desk! And when I pulled into the gas station, my empty light was glowing. It's little things like a full tank of gas that make my entire day glowier. And the fact that I've scrubbed my bathroom and kitchen floors and watched a few episodes of The King of Queens and wrote a poem.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas of experiencing God with us, wherever you were and with whomever you were. I for one hope to continue to experience His nearness in new and dependable ways in the days after Christmas. For He alone is worthy.

Not true, Cinderella

2011-12-20T08:31:00.001-05:00

Last night I had three nasty dreams.

One was that I was dying.

I woke up from that at 1am and fell back asleep to dream that Courtney and I were being attacked by a giant cockroach, with large pincers. It sounds funny, but it was not.

Finally, I dreamed my dad died. In my dream, I thought I was doing okay, until I heard this song and remembered him playing it in our living room on his guitar, and then I crumbled to the floor in tears.

That's when I woke up.

Sometimes I hate dreams.

If you described them to anyone in different terms, they would think you were describing some sort of horror sci-fi movie.

"And then you fall into this trance where you can't consciously control what pictures and images you see, and no matter how much will you might have, you can't stop them from coming."

That sounds GREAT.

And I hate when dreams leave this reside all over you the next day. I'm still trying to shake the awful feeling that my dad is gone.

So I texted him this morning.

me: What doin?
dad: I just sat down to read my bibles.
me: All of it?
dad: ru meaning from Gamiso to Ramilations?

Then I felt a little better.

But not 100%.

my favorite Christmas hymn

2011-12-17T10:33:00.000-05:00

The Ultimate If/Then

2011-12-11T21:11:00.001-05:00

One time two and a half years ago, when I was feeling lonely & tired & stretched pretty thin, my friend (let's call him Mufasa) encouraged me in an email with, "Rest in Jesus."

I read his words and replied, "I don't know how to rest in Jesus."

It's been two and a half years, and I think I finally understand.

At least, maybe a little.

I've always liked the verse that says, "Abide in me, and I will abide in you" (John 15:4). Well, that's what I want, to abide in Jesus. And if abiding in Jesus means He then abides in me, that sounds like the best option out there.

But how the heck do you abide in Jesus?

I've always wanted it to be some sort of feeling, some sort of achievement. Like, hello, I'm abiding in Jesus, can't you see me floating around instead of walking? When someone tells me, "Rest in Jesus," or when Jesus tells me, "Abide in Me," I want to be able to take a deep breath, and, by the time I breathe out, to feel safe & secure & at peace.

It's like when you're about to take a trip and someone tells you, "Be safe." Or when you're really upset and someone tells you, "Calm down." Well, yes. Those are the results I would like to achieve: safety and calmness. But simply saying those words over me isn't going to magically make me safe or make me calm. This isn't Harry Potter, and you can't make me feel okay by pointing a stick at me and saying "feelicus okaytio."

So this morning is when I realized that Jesus' "abide in Me/abide in you" statement is an if/then, and here's what it means, when you break it down (& use visuals). Simply replace the underlined with any mix of words below it:

If I abide in Jesus, then I will have Jesus abiding in me.

memorize peace

pray joy

meditate a defense

remember confidence

sing refuge

praise understanding

etc. & more!

You know when you're lying in bed, and you have the thought, "Ugh, I will never get married," you counter it by thinking, "The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me (Ps. 138:8)," and that's abiding in Jesus. Or when you tape a Bible verse to your dashboard so that whenever you get into your car, you see, "The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer (2 Sam. 22:2)," you're abiding in Jesus. Or when you are getting [justifiably!] annoyed or angry, & instead of commiserating with yourself or someone else, you choose to pray, "Holy Spirit, breathe into my attitude and change me to think more like you," you are SO TOTALLY abiding in Jesus! And when you don't feel at all like singing the same worship song about running into Jesus' arms, because you don't feel at all like the riches of His love will always be enough, but you sing it anyway, that is most especially abiding in Jesus.

So then, you know that moment when nothing has changed - the situation's still shaky, the relationship is still broken, the forecast is still cloudy - yet you have this unexplainable just knowing that everything's going to be okay (even when all fingers point at you & say, "You should be worrying")? That's Jesus abiding in you. Or when you feel compassion toward someone whose suffering you never noticed before, or feel interest in a people group you used to disdain, or feel love for someone you know absolutely nothing about, well, my friend, that's Jesus abiding in you. And when, in the middle of singing that worship song that you don't feel like singing, you suddenly feel very much like running into the arms of Jesus and that His love is so rich that you're not even tasting the amount of a teacup, JESUS is ABIDING in YOU.

True story.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things [abide in Jesus]. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice [abide in Jesus]. And the God of peace will be with you [Jesus will abide in you!!]. (Philippians 4:8-9 [over-excited exclamation points mine])

So...rest in Jesus. Thanks, Mufasa. I think I will.

(For more motivation in this, I recommend reading Secrets of the Secret Place by Bob Sorge, &/or listening to this 10/31/11 sermon from the Vineyard called "Strong Training.")

there's no place like home for the holidays

2011-12-04T10:13:00.001-05:00

I'm back in the great state of Wisconsin. Flying out of Baltimore into Milwaukee, the pilot ended his welcome speech with a pause, then a very mischievous, "Go Bears." I looked around for the big burly man I'd seen earlier, dressed head-to-toe in green and yellow. Luckily we had half the US Army on our flight, so I felt relatively safe. As long as they weren't Green Bay fans. In which case, who would fly the plane once the pilot was dead? So I turned on my iPod and went to sleep. I don't have the energy to worry about these kinds of things.

And who knew Wilmore was so famous in the Louisville airport? Walking through security, the man at the conveyor belt noticed my sweatshirt (it has blaring white letters spelling "ASBURY," made out of the same material as bycicle reflectors, I'm pretty sure) and said, "Ever read A Mighty Rushing Wind?"
What a random question. I'd been thinking about whether or not to take off my shoes and wasn't ready, so I simply answered, "No?" Instead, I wish I would've been more composed so I could've answered, "No. Ever read The Little Red Hen?"
But then he said, "It's about the revival at Asbury in the 70s. Are you familiar with it?"
Why, no! There was a revival at Asbury in the 70s? Instead I simply nodded my head and walked through the laser gate that searched my soul for evil thoughts. I am always terrified of those things, even though I have nothing to hide. I hate being tested. I even hate eye exams when I get my license renewed. I just never want to fail.

But then, the guy on the other side of the soul-reader glanced at my sweatshirt and asked, "Is it true there's no place in Wilmore to get a cigarette?"
WHAT the HECK. The people in the Wal-Mart in Lexington haven't even heard of Asbury. How do these people in the Louisville airport know all about our little university?
I replied, "Um, I don't think I ever tried."
"But you couldn't, if you did, right? And everything's closed on Sundays?"
I just want to put my shoes back on. I smiled and nodded and took my Sketchers to a nearby bench. Then I looked around and noticed I was the only one in line. Poor guys were probably just really bored and lonely. And who doesn't like talking about Wilmore to pass the time?

A picture of my first night home:

Dad and Brother decided to go to a college Christmas concert instead of be home for my first night (Dad tried to make up for it by taping a giant picture of his head in a Santa hat to the passenger seat for when my mom picked me up at the airport, but I was already struggling with abandonment issues), so, to retaliate, I finished Dad's carton of peppermint ice cream. He doesn't know yet.
Then, feeling more full and therefore more generous, I tried to figure out how to wrap Dad's four pounds of Lexington Coffee & Tea coffee so that he couldn't smell it through the wrapping paper. Which is impossible, and my entire room smells like Peruvian coffee beans right now. (One of the most pleasant problems I've ever had.)
Then, I laid down on the couch at eight o'clock while Mom was watching Psych (Mom: "Have you seen this episode before?" Me: "Mom, please." What episode of Psych have I not seen, at least 3 times?) in an attempt to wait for the boys to come home (Me: "It's only seven and I want to go to bed." Mom: "Well it's really eight your time." As if that makes it any less pathetic), and I fell asleep.
Then, Dad and Brother got home, I woke up, told them hello, and then went to bed.
Now they're all at church, and I'm getting ready to put a meatloaf in the oven before I head out to join them.

I want to replace the 1/4 cup milk with eggnog, to show them they can't escape Christmas cheer, or me.

Merry Christmas from Wisconsin.

my dreams turned to pumpkins

2011-11-14T18:01:00.000-05:00

[This post is dedicated to Tim H: Future pastor (though he doesn't know it yet), hide-and-seek player (check your closets), and independent of Brandon R.]

The most amazing thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago.

I got on my work email between church services and ignored all unread emails except one with this subject line:

candy

Just like that.

candy

So I opened it, thinking maybe it had something to do with the Halloween Festival we were about to put on the next day in our parking lot. But this is what the email said (in this font, too):

meijers in hamburg has your zachary pumpkin candy their on a shelf right inside the front door they have candy corn pumpkins and something else i was there saturday nite and bought a bowl and they only had about 5 bowls of pumpkins left so if they run out you may have to wait till they restock the shelf or try a different store around town in case your wondering i live out here in dixie subdivison where vineyard church is and was looking at their website and stumbled on to your blog and read about the candy your looking for so quit reading this email and get to meijers before they sell out

        p.s. dont eat so much that you make yourself

         sick i've already  eaten half a bowl just while

         typing this email        bye  bigjoe

I read it three times, and my eyes actually watered with emotion.

After church I drove out to Hamburg with the same feeling I'm sure I'd have if I'd had many long talks with my boyfriend about marriage and was about to propose, but was still a little afraid of that tiny bit chance he'd say no.

Please marry me, mello creme pumpkins. Please.

And they did.

It was a huge shelf, right inside the doors, and it was filled to the brim with Zachary candies. And Big Joe was right. The pumpkins were there, smiling, orange, happy to be so creamy and delicious and in my paws. And I bought them and took them home with me, and we are so happy together.

Thanks, Big Joe.

Rhett & Scarlett are caught up with emotion, too....

gone, but not forgotten

2011-10-07T08:40:00.003-04:00

It's autumn.

This means that it is time for Zachary to start producing tubs of mello creme pumpkins. Except for that I can't find them anywhere anymore. Last year I wrote that I was going to on a candy pumpkin hunt. This year I figured I'd save the gas and write to Zachary themselves.

Wal-Mart has stopped selling your mello creme candy pumpkins, and I don't know what to do. I've looked other places, but I still can't find them. I've tried Brach's, but they don't even compare. I love the creamy honey texture of Zachary candy pumpkins, and I look for them every fall, but I can't find them. Please help. I'm contemplating driving the 4 hours up to Frankfort, IN, just to buy them. Watching football is not the same without a tub of candy pumpkins on my lap. I'm not saying I need them, but I do really, really desire them. Thanks.

I was hoping they'd offer to send me a free tub because of my profuse gushing of my love for them. Instead, they emailed me this response:

Heather,

Thank you for your interest in Zachary Confections! I'm so sorry you're having difficulty finding our product. We do however have some options for you. Currently you can find the mello crème pumpkins online at George Howe and the link is below.

http://www.georgehowe.com/fall-candy/

I will keep searching and if I find any in your area I will let you know!

Have a great day!

Beth Randall
Zachary Confections

In which case, with shipping, it would cost me $9 for an 18-oz bag. At Wal-Mart, they were $1.88. So I'm putting out an alert.

Have You Seen Me?

I am an creamy mixture of honey and sugar shaped like a pumpkin. If you have information as to my whereabouts, please alert your local pumpkin connoisseur [that'd be ME] immediately. Also, do not mistaken me for Brach's, or you will never be trusted again.

I miss you.

come back to center

2011-10-06T08:38:00.001-04:00

There is a woman in my building who drives a yellow station wagon, somewhat the color of a melted banana popsicle. She has a license plate on the front of her car that says "Namaste" in the same letters as Disney uses for Aladdin. All I know about "namaste" is that the woman in the yoga videos on FitTV says it at the end of her yoga episodes. Namaste to you, too, yoga lady.

Well, one evening, Banana Popsicle Station Wagon Woman, pretty close to the start of my residence in my apartment building, took up two parking spaces with her bananamobile. And they were the two parking spaces closest to the dumpster, which may sound unappealing, but they're my favorite parking spaces because they're so easily accessible.

And she took up both of them.

It's okay, I told myself. It's a weekend. I'll give her some slack because she was probably drunk when she tried to park.

But then it happened again.

And again.

And I'm telling you, she does it almost every time, weekend or weekday.

So the other morning I looked out my window and caught her little station wagon in its crime.

Proof.

That's not even like an "Oops I accidentally leaned across the white line a little but oh well I'll just leave it for now" parking job. That's like a "Take THAT apartment dwellers, now you can't use EITHER of these spaces! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha I am evil" parking job. How does she think that this is okay?

Next time she does it I'm going to write a little note and stick it in her windshield wiper.

Dear Resident,
       I am a quadriplegic who also suffers from epilepsy and ADHD. The closer I can park to my front door, the easier it is for me. Please stop taking up these parking spaces, as you put my life in jeopardy each time you do. And if I die I will come back and haunt you.
       Hanging on by a thread,
               A fellow resident

Namaste my eye.

with them we praise & curse

2011-09-17T09:11:00.004-04:00

Remember that part in Hamlet where Hamlet is reading a book, and some dude (I don't remember who it was) asks him what he's reading? Hamlet replies, "Words, words, words." He's such a smarty pants. Or, I guess, back then it would've been smarty tights. Smarty leggings?

When I was in youth group, my youth pastor, Josh, told us all to stop being so sarcastic and negative to one another, and instead to tell each other what we appreciated about one another. Of course, obviously, we then made fun of him. I distinctly remember turning to my friend Erin and saying with an overly-genuine lilt in my voice, "You're a bright young woman, Erin. I appreciate you."

Once on a retreat, Josh had us all sit in a circle. Then he gave one of us a ball, and told us to, without saying a name, describe what we appreciated about another person in the room. When we were done, we threw the ball to that person, often surprising them that the kind words that were just spoken were directed at them.

I've been pondering the power of words. A young lady I worked with in the food pantry in Salt Lake City a couple of summers ago was volunteering there to fulfill court-appointed hours. She had a daughter and lived with her mom. Sometimes she just made poor decisions.

One day I told her how much I enjoyed her company; how genuine and thoughtful she was; how much I liked her. A few weeks later I'd forgotten I'd even said anything to her. To me, I was just speaking my opinion. (I do this a lot.) But she came in to work and told me she'd been having a horrible day the day before, but she remembered my words to her, and they changed her entire day.

WORDS have POWER.

And not just the words we speak to others. I've also been thinking about the words I think about others.

During my spring break trip to Atlanta last spring, our group of twelve college students sat in a circle in a small attic room that we couldn't even stand upright in. One group member sat in the middle, and sporadically people spoke words of encouragement to that person. Good things we saw in that person. What impact that person has had on our week/team/lives. We were supposed to be in there for an hour and a half; we finally emerged three hours later. And after sitting in a room where nothing but encouragement, good, and positive was spoken, my entire thought processes were changed as to what I thought about my teammates. We were all different, and some of us had more in common than others. But either way, when we focused on the good, we saw more good.

WORDS can be LIFE.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. - Ephesians 4:29

This is a challenge to me. Let it be a challenge to you, too!

Why I Had a Great Birthday

2011-09-12T18:07:00.001-04:00

The pastors at VCC gave me an edible arrangement. I've ALWAYS wanted one. And they didn't even know it!

This is me feeling very loved.

See those things that look like marshmallows? Those are white-and milk chocolate-covered bananas. See all those empty protruding white spears sticking out? That's where more white-and milk chocolate-covered bananas used to be. I ate them.

See that sheet of paper on my desk? That's the receipt for my edible arrangement that I have to file. The perks of being an administrative assistant. (What you don't see on the receipt, because they happened later, are the smudges of white and milk chocolate because I accidentally dropped a banana on it.)

Then, later in the afternoon, Leiza sent me ANOTHER edible arrangement! Because I've ALWAYS wanted one, and she knew it. It was a veritable orchard of strawberries and chocolate-covered apples and pineapples. There's not a picture of that one, though, because I didn't unwrap it until I got home. Then Katie helped me eat it, while talking about prayer and watching the Packers game. (The two were unrelated.)

Let's just say I have basically filed a restraining order against scurvy for the next 10 years, at least.

It was a great birthday.

And I'm 24 now. When my mom was 24, she was pregnant. When my grandmother was 24, she'd been married for seven years. This morning I accidentally started dancing in my car when Jackson 5 came on my iPod, and the man in his car next to me at the red light looked at me like I was probably mentally unstable.

I'm pretty content with where I am.

cuppycake day

2011-09-06T11:03:00.000-04:00

This morning I woke up at 6:45. My alarm is called "Voices of Nature," which is a lovely mix of a soothing (as soothing as computerized music notes can be) melody and birds chirping in a rainforest. So if you're wondering what Nature's voice sounds like, LG has captured it and put it in my phone.

However, when I looked outside (my "I don't have Internet or cable so this is how I check the weather" technique) I saw that it was windy, rainy, and cold. Autumn is coming! Autumn is coming! But not the most inviting conditions imaginable for an early-morning jaunt.

So I decided to do Pilates instead. (Don't be too impressed. I do Pilates just often enough so that my muscles are sore for the next three days & make me feel like I've gotten a really good workout in ["Boy my arms hurt...I AM SO FIT RIGHT NOW"], but not often enough to be of any actual benefit for my body. ["If you did this more regularly, we wouldn't be screaming out in pain every three days. Sincerely, What Are Trying to be Your Abdominals."]) The thing about Pilates, though, is that sometimes I love it, and sometimes I hate it. Today I hated it.

Lara Hudson, sitting with legs splayed like a road-killed frog: "Slowly turn to your right, bend at the waist and lift your arms, flipping up your palms...."
Me, hugging my knees with 3-lb weights on the floor next to me: "I don't want to do this."

Then I remembered it's meeting day at VCC, and I decided to bake cupcakes.

They are possibly my new favorite thing in this world. That's not true, I like a lot of things more than these cupcakes. But if you like chai, you will love these little buttercream babies. Now to get an actual frosting piper so I can stop cutting holes in my Ziploc bags, and so that my frosting doesn't come out looking like those enormous grubs that Timon eats in The Lion King.

Frosting, anyone?

Happy almost-birthday & VCC Meeting Day.

today I met the dress I'm going to marry

2011-09-01T09:43:00.005-04:00

I went to Goodwill last night with my fellow Vineyardite, Karen. Amidst the yellow shirts with billowy lacy sleeves and the Noah's Ark-embroidered jumpers, I found my wedding dress. The sparkly beads and sequins along the neckline were what captured my eye. The yards of stiff fabric bunched into jellyfish-like sleeves and an enormous bow on the back that stretched the entire width of the butt were only bonuses. I walked out of the dressing room, giggling, and called to Karen across the store.

"That's cute," a woman from behind me said.

I giggled some more and poked the inner tube of fabric around my waist. "This part is my favorite."

"You only laugh because it's different," she said. "But it fits you perfectly." Karen arrived in time to hear the woman add, "You'd have to wear different underwear, though."

Okay, look, lady. Number one, no one would seriously consider buying this dress for any serious occasion. Number two, my fashion sense is not restricted enough to think that the purple plaid bra straps showing in the back were an acceptable addition to this outfit. I didn't particularly come to Goodwill thinking about what undergarments might go well with whatever sea creature I happened to try on that evening.

Karen and I mocked the dress for a while, until finally I turned to go back into the dressing room. I passed the lady and she sighed, "It looks like it was made for you."

Nothing flatters your waistline like wearing an enormous doughnut on it.

Maybe she was right.

Now to find a groom with broader shoulders than mine.

unbridled spirit

2011-08-30T11:15:00.002-04:00

My car is an official Kentuckian. I was going to join him in this identity transfer, but then the car inspector wrote down my Wisconsin driver's license number and talked about how Wisconsin and Florida have the longest license numbers, and then I felt bad going and changing my driver's license after all the work he just put into write down its number. So I'm still a Wisconsin resident for a little bit longer. This makes me feel a little more legitimized when I get excited to watch a Packers game, because, hey, I'm legally a Cheesehead.

And guess what: The Packers are throwing a celebratory game in my honor on Thursday, September 8th, to kick off football season and my 24th year of birth. Just watch and see if Aaron Rodgers doesn't throw a touchdown and then throw his arms up in the air and shout, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEATHER!" Because it's all about me.

As I waited in line at the county clerk's office to register Dule (my car - he's named after Dule Hill, which I don't know if the real Dule Hill would appreciate), I stood sandwiched between a guy who kept turning around and smiling at me, and a girl who looked like she'd share her entire life story with me if I merely made eye-contact with her.

Finally I said, "Great way to spend an afternoon, isn't it?"
The guy started speaking rapidly in a thick Spanish accent, and I, not understanding any of it, smiled and chuckled and then said, "Yeah."

This is always my default position when I don't understand what people are saying. This is going to bite me one day in a very scarring way, I'm sure. Like the time I was at a Mexican restaurant with a friend and, after my friend, let's call him Fred, went to the bathroom, our waiter pounced on me like a hungry leopard.
"Is he your boyfriend or your brother?" He asked.
Oh. Um...."Well, neither."
The waiter, let's call him Manuel, smiled. "He looks like he could be your brother." Translation: You shouldn't consider dating him. DATE ME!
I chuckled. "He does sort of look like my brother."
Here's where the indistinguishable part of our conversation came in, and, not understanding what he just said, I just smiled with closed lips and shook my head.

WHAT POSSESSES ME TO DO THIS? Why do I feel it's okay to answer people when I haven't even heard their question?

Manuel, taking my shaking head to mean that I actually heard his question and was honestly answering him, looked me in the eye and said, "Too bad." Then he walked away.

What do you think he could've asked? Whatever it was, I think I unintentionally led him to believe I was off the market. Which is a blessing, because I didn't particularly feel like going out with my waiter from the Mexican restaurant. But this time I was spared; what if next time I accidentally agree to something?

"Mumble mumble mumble mumble."
"Heh, heh, yeah."
"Really? Okay, pick you up at 8!"
"Wait, what?"
"Bring your castanets!"

Back at the county clerk's office: The clerk who helped me with my paperwork was friendly enough, but she never really made eye contact with me.
She asked, "Which license plate do you want?"
I looked at the two license plates pictured on the window, one that said "Unbridled Spirit" under the picture of the Kentucky horse, and one that said, "In God We Trust." I chose the unbridled spirit one, because, though I trust in God, I think it's a little presumptuous to assume that all of Kentucky does.
I tried to say "Unbridled Spirit" as inspiringly passionate as I could, like William Wallace maybe, but the woman simply smiled accommodatingly and went about her business.
Well, of course I accepted this as a challenge to make her day brighter. I waited in silence for an opportune moment, watching her float from left to right as she grabbed papers, stapled them, ripped others, tossed some, filed those, stamped here, all in one fluid motion. I looked at her in captivated awe.
"Wow," I said. "It's like a dance."
Her face relaxed and she smiled a genuine smile and chuckled.
I'm in! "You've got this down."
"Oh yeah," she said.
When she handed me my papers, she looked me in the eye and smiled. I smiled back. Day brighter.

Then I noticed she put my "Fayette County" sticker on my license plate completely crooked.

After all we'd been through.

that September in the rain

2011-08-27T13:42:00.001-04:00

It’s almost my birthday.

The night before I turned eighteen, I lay on the bathroom floor listening to the first fifteen seconds of “I Saw Her Standing There” by the Beatles over and over again.

Well she was just seventeen, if you know what I mean….

Well she was….

I did not want to turn eighteen. The idea of being legally able to sign my own important documents without my parents was pretty terrifying to me. Next you were going to tell me that I could call and set up my own dentist appointments. WHAT? Let’s not get crazy.

Now I’m getting ready to turn twenty-four. Isn’t that the age that Paul McCartney wrote “When I’m Sixty-Four”? My future ahead is so bright, it’s blinding.

To celebrate my birthday, I plan to bake these vanilla chai cupcakes. Then I plan to eat them. My plans do not extend further than that, except maybe a trip to Barnes & Noble, because, most of the time, if you want to bring me to pure delight, take me to Barnes & Noble, and let me just smell the books at my own leisure. When you have come to please me in this way, you have secured a place in my heart forever.

I'm at Panera Bread right now, and there is a woman sitting at the table beside me with another woman. I tuned into their conversation just in time for her to say that, when given lemons, “It’s an old adage: You can make lemon cookies, lemon bars, lemon meringue pie, lemon muffins….”

Wow, usually people just make lemonade. Obviously this woman has more culinary knowledge than the rest of the world.

Also, happy football season.

2 more weeks till Heather's birthday.

to grape-nuts

2011-08-19T14:17:00.000-04:00

O grape-nuts, how do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.
I love thee with milk, cinnamon, and honey,
and peaches, ripe,
and juices running.
I love thee soggy, soaked, and warm,
I love thee cold and crunchy in form.
I love thee with berries, blue or straw,
icy and frozen,
or mushy with thaw.
I love thee together with Raisin Bran,
flakes and buds, hand-in-hand.
I love thee upon the rise of the sun,
I love thee after the day is done.
I love thee while I'm young, and bequeath:
I'll love thee when I have false teeth.

only the lonely

2011-07-07T17:30:00.001-04:00

I have had an empty bottle of Ahava in my shower for 2 weeks, and I cannot bring myself to throw it away.

I am not good at saying goodbye.

oh, to grace how great a debtor

2011-06-15T10:47:00.001-04:00

Recently my friend Irene and I tried to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew. First we tried to dig out the cork with a screwdriver, but the cork broke in half. Then we screwed a screw into the remainder of cork, and tried to pull the cork out with pliers.

Get it, Irene.

But the cork kept deteriorating. Those little boogers are really packed in there.

So then we wrapped the spout of the bottle in a towel, put it in the sink, and hit it with a hammer. (And by "we," I mean Irene did so, and I stood on the other side of the counter with my hands protecting my head like they teach you on an airplane in case of a crash. I was one floatation device short of the Southwest safety catalog.)

But the bottle didn't break. So finally we had to suck it up and go to Kroger and buy a corkscrew, for seven dollars. Come on, Kroger. I'm probably never even going to use this thing again. Anybody want a corkscrew? I will sell it to you for $6.99. It's quality.

This morning I was reading in John 8, and in verse 31, Jesus says, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples."

I think this would be a pretty easy verse to just breeze over. Right, obviously, in order to be a disciple of Jesus, we have to hold to His teaching. Duh. Moving right along.

But this verse really stuck out to me. (About this time you're probably wondering, What the hairy does a bottle of wine have to do with Jesus? Patience, grasshopper.) I thought, What exactly is Jesus' teaching? What is He referring to that we must hold to in order to be His disciple? Do I hold to His teaching in the way I live my life?

I prayed, "Lord, penetrate my heart with your teaching and convict me of the things I need to change."

Then I thought, "Whoa, that is a heavy prayer." You don't pray words like "penetrate" and "convict" unless you're really serious. Am I willong to go through what that prayer may bring about?

And that's when the image of the wine bottle came to my mind. I realized as I prayed, that my prayer was basically asking God to take a hammer to me and crush me, in order to make me into what He wanted. ("But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him" [Jeremiah 18:4]).

Scary.

But I saw God's grace like that towel that Irene wrapped around that bottle. Breaking, yes. But gently. Wrapped in God's grace. Sweetly broken. Maybe Jeremy Riddle wasn't exactly picturing smashing a wine bottle wrapped in a kitchen towel with a hammer when he wrote that song, but I am.

And if that's what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus, that's what I want. A disciple, not just a Christian. And I think it's great that Justin's going to be preaching about being a disciple this weekend. (Saturday at 5:30pm, and Sunday at 9am, 10:30am, and noon. Shameless plug for the Vineyard? Yes.) I'm looking forward to hearing what he says.

C-I-T-Y, you can see why

2011-06-13T16:40:00.000-04:00

I haven't met many of my neighbors, though I've caught glimpses of them. They're like those butterfly clams we used to catch on our vacations to Florida, who would stick their little pink tongues out until they realized they were in our hands, and then they'd swiftly retreat and pretend like no one was inside their pretty pastel shells. Unlike those clams, however, I can't pry open my neighbor's homes and reveal their lying fleshy bodies. Or make necklaces out of their walls.

The other day I went to my car to retrieve my iPod, however, and noticed a man sitting in his suburban (I had to google image that to make sure that's what it was - and I was right!), just chilling out. That's okay, I often like to sit in my car with the windows down in 90-degree weather next to the dumpster that smells like dead raccoons (as a friend of mine so eloquently put it). When I pulled my head out of the backseat, his suburban had used some sort of stealth mode to creep up behind my car, and he was leaning out of his window. "Excuse me," he said, "I just moved here, and I'm looking into Internet providers. I've been asking around as people come out of the building...."

In my mind I was thinking several things.

1. Do not stand too close to his car.
2. Be helpful and friendly, but not too helpful and friendly.
3. I wonder if this guy is a creeper.
4. Well, if he's telling the truth, maybe he'll find a good Internet provider and he can tell me about it and then I won't have to do any of the annoying research.
5. Wait until he is gone before going into my apartment, so he doesn't know which one's mine.

Since then I've seen this fellow talking with several other apartment-dwellers, so I feel pretty convinced he was just taking some quiet time to himself out in the parking lot, meditating on Internet providers. Ommmmm....Windstream....

I've seen several attractive men riding bicycles, but fortunately for me I don't have to worry about them hitting on me, because the only time I see them is when I, too, am exercising, and we all know how freakish I look when I exercise. Thankfully my hair is short enough that, after sweating and running into the wind, my hair sticks up straight in the front, a la Roxanne Ritchie.

Who wouldn't want to hit on this?

I've also noticed that men don't honk at me when I walk down the street. I think it's because females are much more common here in the city than they are in the country, and to see one walking down the street is not worth honking at. Life's so different far from cow country!

I've been making a lot of different foods, too, now that I'm not living at home where the men like meat and potatoes at every meal. At first I thought the spinach and artichoke hummus on my sandwich was gross because it looked like mold, but now I think it'll be a good way to keep other people from eating my food.

Random coworker: "Do those cheese puffs have mold on them? Yuck! I'm definitely not eating those."
Me: "Bwa-hahaha, THEY'RE ALL MINE." (My imaginary dialogue is always so believable, isn't it? Especially since spinach and artichoke hummus goes great with cheese puffs, and as we all know, very rarely am I seen without a cheese puff in my paw.)

Perhaps I will try this "slathering of green goop" method on other things that I don't want people to use. Like my sharpies. And the little lever that I stuck double-sided tape onto that keeps the paper cutter at the perfect measurement for cutting weekend handouts.

"Can I move this lever from 5 1/2 inches...why is there green goop all over this?"

Don't move my lever.

P.S. I confess to riding my bike multiple times without a helmet.

someday my prince will come

2011-06-04T11:12:00.000-04:00

This past week I was sitting at a red light. I had my windows down and I was singing loudly with the Beatles. I looked to my right and saw the car sitting next to me, a man probably in his 50s at the wheel. He looked at me, and I looked casually away as if my head was simply vacillating like a fan in the summertime. But then I grabbed my cell phone and took a picture.

Yes, that is a car covered entirely in fake flowers and Disney princess stickers.

Snow White and Belle seemed to be his chosen favorites.

I have no idea why.

I mean, has he ever seen Pocahontas?

hair, and the people who cut it, pt. II

2011-05-28T15:31:00.000-04:00

The last time a man cut my hair, he twisted it on the top, snipped, and said, "Oops." Then he started singing along with the radio, as if I would mistaken his blunder for a song lyric. There was no mistake. I wore a knitted hat on my head for days. And then when it started to grow out, a guy I knew said, "Yay, pretty Heather's back again!"

Note to any guys reading this: No girl likes to be told she is conditionally pretty.

Note to any girls reading this: Do not go to Super Cuts on 68 next to Kroger, even if you get a coupon in the mail.

But when I called Studio 19 the other day and asked to make an appointment "today or tomorrow," the guy on the phone said it this way: "I could take you today, or you could go with someone else tomorrow."

Okay, well, great. Now I'm stuck, because if I say, "Ummmmm I think I'll go tomorrow," then he's gonna know that I don't want him to cut my hair. And I don't have anything against male stylists, I just don't want them to cut my hair.

So I inhaled abruptly and said, "SureIcancomeintoday."

So I sat in the chair in front of the giant mirrors and he asked, "What are we thinking today?" Well, I was thinking that he smells a lot like Chinese food, but instead I answered, fingering my hair, "I'm not diggin' this nasty mullet thing goin' on in the back..." And that's when I realized that he, indeed, had a mullet. I briefly rethought what I'd just said, noting that I'd used the word "nasty" to describe "mullet." Well, I could cover it up by saying, "You know, they're fine on guys, but...." However, I do not think mullets are fine on guys. So that would be a lie. So I just kept talking.

It's okay, though, because he got me back. I told him my "Oops at Super Cuts" story, and just as he stepped in front of me to cut my bangs, he let out a, "Whoops!"

Heather - 1, Deep Fried Egg Roll - 1

Then he laughed it off with, "Heh heh, just kidding. I just thought you needed to lighten up."

Note to any guys reading this: Things not to tell girls: "Lighten up," "You look tired," "Yay, you're pretty again."

Note to any girls reading this: Do not go to Studio 19 on Sir Barton Way, even though you get a 10% discount online.

Really, the haircut was fine. Mostly I just didn't want to look like Justin Bieber anymore. And I always enjoy new experiences. Oops! Forgot to tip you. Heh, heh, just kidding.

a bicycle built for one

2011-05-23T20:00:00.001-04:00

My bike is leaning against a wall in my bedroom. Every time I walk in the room we have this stare-down, and he just looks at me with this blank expression that anyone else would overlook, but I know what he wants.

I can't, I tell him. I don't have a helmet.
You don't need a helmet.
Yes I do, Bike.
I want to go outside.
I know. And I want to take you outside, but--
Just this once.
All it takes is once.
Lots of people ride bikes without helmets.
Do you remember the story Miss Hammond told me in 11th grade?
That won't happen to you.
Some innocent little girl--
Please.
--wasn't wearing a helmet--
All I do is sit here.
--and she fell off her bike and hit her head--
It's so nice outside.
--and she was brain dead.
...I'll protect you.
You can't protect me.
Yes, I will protect you.
You think that, but you are actually incapable of protecting me. What would you do if a garbage truck came hurtling toward us?
I am invincible.
You are starting to rust.
What?
Under there.
Stop it.
Listen, my Schwinn, I want nothing more than to ride down to Orange Leaf--
Yes, let's go to Orange Leaf.
--but I can't. Not until I have a helmet.
Is a helmet really going to make that much of a difference.
...Yes.
You hesitated.
Don't talk to me anymore, Bike.

I actually have to sleep facing the opposite wall, because I think he watches me while I sleep. And I'm beginning to bend, like, maybe it wouldn't be so bad, if I rode on the sidewalks, in residential neighborhoods. Or just down to the library. It's only 2 blocks. Lots of people do it, right?

Maybe I should cover him with a sheet.

tidbits

2011-05-22T16:55:00.000-04:00

Bill O'Reilly never sent me a signed copy of his book, so I stopped watching his show. (It also may be because I don't have cable anymore, and when I do have access to the Internet, I watch clips on billoreilly.com. So no, I don't really have any principles, thanks for asking.) It's probably for the best, because if he had acknowledged me on his show, some producer probably would've been awestruck by my brilliance and beauty, and then I would've become another one of those "discovered on YouTube" stars. I'm trying to keep it classy, like Doris Day. I can't imagine Doris Day ever making a YouTube video.

I was sitting in Panera Bread with my laptop, because I don't have Internet in my apartment, when all of a sudden his (and by "his," I mean my laptop, because he has a gender, and it is male) screen went blank and he lost consciousness. I can't restart him, and so now not only do I not have Internet or cable in my apartment, but now I can't even listen to music or type anything.

So let's recap: Bill O'Reilly ignored me, and I can't watch TV, get on the Internet, write, or listen to music. The "entertainment" category in my life right now is pretty low.

I guess this means I should pick up Gone with the Wind again, which I packed away in my move and in which still have 500 pages left to read. Or I could whip out my notebook and write with a pen, like writers used to do. Or I could journal, which I haven't done in weeks, because talking to people is much more fun. Instead, I rented The A-Team from RedBox at Kroger and stopped it halfway through because it was stupid, and I was tired.

I went to the gym to inquire about a gym membership, too, and talked to the woman for 45 minutes about youth, family, beauty, jobs, and her boyfriend. She was very friendly, and I enjoyed talking to her, but now I feel bad that I don't want to join her gym. I don't like letting people down. I have already come up with many excuses as to why I can't join her gym.

"Hi, Julie? It's Heather. Um, I'm sorry, but I was walking down the stairs the other day and....my tibia snapped in half. Yes, my tibia. And then...my fibula. And then my clavicle...which I know is nowhere near my tibia and fibula, but...it just all happened...at once...and the bones were just all snapping...so many bones snapping...so I can't work out...please don't be mad at me."

I'm not good at losing friends.

My laptop has been fixed (so much happens in the space between paragraphs, doesn't it?), but now I can't figure out how to change him back to the way I had him before. You know, like if you have this husband who made all these habits over the 25 years that you were married, and then he has a brain injury and forgets everything, and he has to relearn these things all over again. No, Compy, you go to sleep when I TELL you to go to sleep! (Okay, so it's not quite like having a brain-injured husband....) Moral of the story: When someone tells you that something could be so much better, just say, "No, thank you, I like things the way they are." Words to live by.

Papa Bear

2011-04-30T12:50:00.000-04:00

Dad and I watch The O'Reilly Factor almost every night. Some guy wrote O'Reilly a 4-line poem, and Mr. O sent him a signed copy of his book Pinheads & Patriots. So I wrote him a song. I want a signed copy of Pinheads & Patriots.

Your suits look nice

they complement your shoulders

Sitting behind your desk

have you gotten any older?

Surely all the these pinheads

would make your hair turn gray

but perhaps Dennis Miller

has scoffed that threat away

'cause the spin stops here

and the Factor is lookin out for you

You need have no fear

when O’Reilly is on every weeknight, on Fox News

So I’m spouting off

from anywhere in the world

name & town, name & town, name & town

and the word of the day is “chortled”

‘cause you held your own on The View

and you’re number one in cable news

without you, where would be the Talking Points memo?

caution: you’ve just entered the no-spin zone

blessed is this life & I'm going to celebrate being alive

2011-04-29T17:21:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I see jobs that I never, ever want to have, and I start thinking about how horrible it would be if I was forced to have them, if I didn't have a choice. Yesterday I was looking at the fashion section in the Wall Street Journal and I started to panic, because what if I was forced to be a super model on the runway? What if I was forced to wear makeup on my eyes like scary space raccoons, grease my hair onto my head like a skullcap of snot, and wear a swarm of fake butterflies around my head to complement the runway's "nature" motif? Then, when I saw these shoes, I started to hyperventilate:

"Help us! We are trapped in giant mole heads!" - Feet

I had to close the newspaper and watch the Weather Channel to get my mind on something else. I would never, ever want to be a runway model. I like my hip bones softly enfolded in revolt of the vegan lifestyle, and not protruding from my body like permanent javelins.

I had a what-if-I-had-to-have-that-job panic attack a few days ago, too, when I starting thinking, What if I had to work in a daycare for the rest of my life? I have loved a few small children in my life, this being one of them:

"William, can you do Down Dog?"

But in mass numbers, little tots are not my favorite thing. People like to tell me, "It's different when you have your own." After watching several episodes of SuperNanny, however, the only difference I see is that, when it's your own kid, you're allowed to lock him in the basement after he's colored on the walls with a permanent marker because you told him he couldn't have more animal crackers, whereas if you were just the daycare provider, you'd get fired & sued. (Note: Locking in basement has never been a Super Nanny approach. I myself do not recommend this approach on a human, but it works very well with demon cats.)

I have actually been thinking a lot of jobs recently. I've been thinking about the talents and gifts God has given us, and the ones He hasn't. One of the RDs at Asbury spoke this in chapel a couple of years ago:

Don't you know that I have made you in my image? Anytime you degrade yourself, you degrade me. Anytime you deny or misuse the gifts that I have given you, you are no better than the one who hid his talent in the ground and waited for the master's return. Will I not bestow on you the same fate as him? Why do you compare yourself to others upon whom I have given other talents? Don't you know that all that I have is yours if you will just open your hands, heart, mind, and soul to receive them? When you hide the ways I bless you, you fail to expose me. No amount of false humility or religious jargon will hide these facts from me. You honor me by living life to its fullest. You honor me by speaking truth about how I have kept you. You honor me by being who I have created you to be, and I called you to be you, not [anyone else]. It doesn't matter how much you have felt you messed up things or failed in the past. You fail to humble yourself when you refuse to acknowledge how I have redeemed you. You refuse to be humble when you meditate on your insufficiency, and not on me.

I have learned this, and it has made all the difference. For the longest time I thought I had to try to be someone who would please the Lord, to change myself into someone who could be a servant of the Lord. But now I see He is most pleased when I live in the fullness of all He has created me to be, and I serve Him best when I use the very talents He has given me.

This week I am getting ready to begin a new job at one of my favorite places on earth. I feel incredibly blessed and humbled to be a part of the VCC team. And I am thankful that, when we give everything to the Lord in surrender, He gives right back to us even better.

"This morning was...great. We went to the Vineyard again, and for the first time I lost self-consciousness and felt longing to reach God. See, the sermon explained Jesus' purpose and what he did in a better way than I've ever heard, and when we began to sing "Jesus Paid it All" I felt engulfed in praise to Jesus....Wow. I simply walk into the sanctuary and I feel the presence of the Lord. I don't know if it's I who's changed...or is it the church? But Jesus seems so much more real...alive...close." - journal entry from Sunday, December 2, 2007

And 3 1/2 years later, I get to work there. :)

Vinefest, 2008

perspective

2011-04-27T14:17:00.000-04:00

trampling over death by death

2011-04-23T11:13:00.003-04:00

To put it succinctly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor and a theologian in Germany who was involved in a conspiracy to kill Hitler. He was arrested by the Nazis and, over a year later, executed 3 weeks before the war ended, and 2 weeks before his prison camp was liberated by the Allies. As he walked out of his prison cell to be hanged, he turned to his prison mate and said, "This is the end--for me, the beginning of life."

As I read the account of Bonhoeffer's last days, I saw him living - and dying - with complete and unquestioning faith in the incredible gift Jesus has given us:

He has given us life.

He has conquered death

We have nothing to fear.

We will be with Him, the Creator of the universe, forever.

Death shows that the world is not what it should be, but that it needs redemption. Christ alone overcomes death. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: 'Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades." - Revelation 1:17-18

HE IS RISEN!

And because He's alive, I live.

jellicle songs for jellicle cats

2011-04-16T14:58:00.000-04:00

I do not have a good history with cats.

Cooper hated me, probably because I put him in the closet once and forgot about him for many hours. Or because I liked to hold him like a baby, aww, da wittle beebee Coopy. He used to hide behind corners and attack my legs when I walked past. Once he bit me and then I grabbed him and bit him back. I got a mouthful of fur and he walked away like he was smarter than I was.

Dinah did love me, until I had her declawed and spayed. Then she didn't like when I touched her, as though she held me personally responsible for her loss of womanhood. I imagined her thinking something like, "I like to think you will disappear someday when I open my eyes." Instead I made her disappear.

The cat we have now we never named, because we couldn't think of one. We've had her for 7 years and she's fat with a little head and little legs that spread far apart when she sits down, because there's so much fat in between them. "Kitty, sit like a lady," I tell her. She looks at me, legs apart, and then I say, "Kitty, you're stupid." I call her Stupid now. Especially when she meows directly outside my door at 6:30 in the morning because she wants to be fed. As if she needs food. "Kitty, you are fat," I tell her, poking her belly with my toe as she lay on the floor. One time Brother tried to feed her tuna juice with a turkey baster, cradling her in his arm like a newborns. One time I smushed her face with my hands so that her ears were over her eyes like little awnings and her cheeks scrunched up around her eyes and made them all squinty, and then I proceeded to laugh so hard that the tears streamed down my cheeks. I don't really like her very much. "Kitty, I don't like you very much," I tell her, as she walks into my room. Then I throw in for good measure, "Stupid."

Then let's not forget Demon Cat who, just yesterday, attacked my arm in the same place where the scar from his previous savagery still lingers, a light purple reminder of how precious life is and how quickly it can be taken away by a bengal spy cat.

But even with my unfortunate past with kitties, I want one. I want it to be a boy and I have several literary characters' names listed out to name him, depending on what he looks like and what his personality is like. Dad won't let me get one, because he knows I'll be leaving sometime and he doesn't want to get stuck with another cat. But I want one, as soon as I move out and have enough money to support us, me and my feline refugee. We are going to be best friends, and he is going to sleep on my bed and purr, and his breath is not going to smell like Meow Mix, and when I say, "Who wants a fresher house?" he is going to raise his paw. Because my cat is going to be perfect.

true story

2011-04-08T22:02:00.000-04:00

So there's this girl. Let's call her Eleanor. (I've been naming a lot of things Eleanor lately. And by "a lot of things," I mean myself when I pretend to be a famous actress being interviewed in my bathroom mirror.) She's a pretty outgoing young woman, and pretty active in the community. She has to be, you see, because she's an only child, and her father is an extremely busy military leader, so she gets lonely. She's an extrovert, you see, and we extroverts need people in our lives, because when we don't have them we resort to pretending to be famous actresses being interviewed in our bathroom mirror.

So Eleanor teaches dance. That's what she does for a living. That and probably she's a baker. Maybe a seamstress, too. She's young, but girls like her know a lot of trades. She's pretty liked in town, because she's honest and genuine, and she has a fun spirit. People like girls with fun spirits. At least that's what my pretend interviewer says when he interviews me about my latest movie, in which I play a girl with a fun spirit. Aw, shucks.

But Eleanor isn't bashful. Nooo, not at all. She's a strong young woman. How has she not been married off yet? She has thick, dark curly hair, and dark skin, and brown eyes the color of molasses. A guy could get lost in those tresses and all-consuming brown eyes. Have you ever tried to escape a pit of molasses? It's impossible. Point proven.

But she wants to be married. Not in a "gimmee gimmee gimmee a man after midnight" kind of way, but it's a resigned desire that she keeps close to her heart while she's teaching couples to dance for their wedding receptions. And she wants it, even more than she loves dancing and baking and sewing, though she's great at all those things. It's her one desire. And she knows it's coming. She just knows that she has to wait, and it'll come.

And it's not like she's completely alone. She and her father are pretty close. For all his military maneuverability, he's a loving, doting father. His name is Jephthah. Whoa, what? Yeah. His mom had just had 4 teeth pulled before Jep was born, so her mouth was still numb and full of cotton balls when the nurse asked her what she wanted to name him. Really she wanted to name him Harry. It got lost in translation.

Jephthah and Eleanor have a pretty strong bond. They get each other. He loves her like no other, because his wife is absent from the picture, and Jep used to take Eleanor on these grand adventures, riding camels and swimming in oases and generally being the apple of his eye. He'd do anything for her, like pay $9000 for a wedding dress because she was a former Miss Delaware. (If the government's looking for some money, they should check Say Yes to the Dress.) He'd had a rough life, too. His mom was a woman of ill repute (and unkempt teeth, apparently) because his father evidently had no self control. And Jep's brothers from another mother were kind of jerks, the hoity toity type, and they chased Jep away saying, "No inheritance for you!"

Well for the past few months Jep has been at war, and this is a big war. If he wins this war, he becomes general of the whole kit and kaboodle. (That's what they call armies where Jep comes from.) And today Eleanor happens to be rehearsing the "I want to be in America, la la la la in America" scene from West Side Story, which the local theater has asked her to choreograph for their spring production of the torrential musical. So to get in the mood before class, she blasts the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack on her stereo and dances around the house.Then she opens her front door, her swooshy skirt piled high on her thigh in Latino flair, and there's her father, Jephthah, walking towards the house, looking bedraggled.

Eleanor's first reaction is to greet her father with an enthusiastic "Daddy!" and throw her arms around him with daughterly affection. But before she can, he falls to his knees, rips open his shirt, scattering buttons everywhere, and throws his hands up in the air in agony, like that scene from Platoon with Willem Defoe.

Eleanor stops dancing and stares at her father. He's in tears, literally weeping into the ground, and Eleanor thinks that the only other time she's seen her father cry was when Goose dies in Top Gun, and that emotion paled in comparison to what she was witnessing now.

"Why'd you have to do it?" He asks.
"Do what?" Eleanor asks, genuinely afraid, curious, and concerned for her father as she would be for a wounded wild animal.
"I made a vow to the Lord that, if He helped me win this war, I would sacrifice the first thing that come out of my house when I came home."

Now, my response to this would be, "You WHAT?! I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO LIVES HERE, who'd you think was going to come out of your house?! DID YOU EVEN THINK THIS THROUGH??" Or maybe I would have been coy and said, "So...how'dya do?" Or maybe I just would've taken off running very, very fast, and never looked back.

But Eleanor and I are very different. She squares her jaw and looks at her father and says, "Do what you promised." Then she walks through the city and says goodbye to all the people who love her, and she comes to terms with the fact that she'll never be a wife, or a mother, or have any of the things she dreamed about having, and she lets her father offer her as a human sacrifice to the Lord.

The end.

Just kidding!

No but seriously, that's where it ends. Read Judges 11 if you don't believe me.

Sometimes I don't understand the Old Testament.

rainboots

2011-04-03T17:49:00.008-04:00

I took my rainboots for a walk.
I knew that they would never talk to me
the way I wished somebody would,
but as I stood out in the wind & rain I knew
I wouldn't hear them if they could.

I wanted them to see the day,
to present them to the world
& say, "Here we are! my rainboots and I."

Did they know what it felt like to fly
on a swing, grasping cold iron rings in your hands
& leaving your fingers to smell like rust?

Or swap the dust of the diamond
for puddles like lakes of fallen sky
& mud that suctions you to the ground?

Could they hear the thunder, humming
like the strumming of God's bass vocal chords
& resounding promise of His presence?

Did they understand what it meant
that the ice is being sent into the earth
& what worth there is in a tiny crocus bud?

But silly me! they are just rainboots;
their skin is made of rubber flesh
& they cannot soak in a poetic life,
so I did it for them, ad hoc,
and wrote this poem on a walk with my rainboots.

"I suppose that's how it looks in prose. But it's very different if you look at it through poetry...and I think it's nicer...to look at it through poetry." - Anne of Avonlea

the eating habits of dragons

2011-03-27T11:16:00.000-04:00

I like to listen to sermons when I jog. And now that I have access to a treadmill where I nanny 3 days a week, I am packing in the sermons. Podcasts are da bomb.

Sometimes, though, I get scared that someone is going to break into the house while I'm jogging in the basement, perfectly content with my ear buds in and the sweat dripping down my back. (I am not a delicate exerciser. It is an unpleasant thing to behold. In the weight room in college, I was running on the treadmill and a guy walked past, looked at me, then looked again, his eyebrows coming together in a very concerned wrinkle. Yes, I'm fine. It's natural that my face looks this way. This is why I'm thankful the treadmill I now use is in a basement, where there are no windows.)

But then, after I think, "What if someone breaks in?" I assuage myself with the image of the intruder stopping at the top of the basement stairs and listening for signs of life. He would hear:

thump

BAHAHAHA

thump

Then he would assume that, like Rochester, these people were keeping an insane person locked away in their house, and he would flee in fear. But not before RAJAH THE NINJA CAT takes him out with one swift swipe of his devil claws! Because there's nothing so fulfilling as combining Charlotte Bronte with 21st century spy drama.

Meanwhile I am in the basement, thudding away on the treadmill, listening to a sermon from the Vineyard. If you haven't listened to a sermon from VCC, I highly encourage you to extract your carving knife from whatever drawer you keep it in and carve out some time to listen. They've just finished a series on generosity, and the last sermon had me in stitches as I ran my 4.8 miles per hour.

It also had me contemplating, as all VCC sermons do, my own heart. If Mr. Burglar stood long enough at the top of the stairs, he also would have heard me exclaim, "Amen," and possibly, "Yeah, Heather," because sometimes the wiser part of me feels like the stupider part of me really needs to grasp certain concepts. Oh, Wiser Me, you're so wise. Love, Stupider Me.

So, inspired by Kevin's sermon, I was thinking about generosity, gratefulness, contentedness, etc. I remember my VCC small group leader a couple of years ago making the comment, "When was the last time you saw a commercial that said, 'Everything you have is okay; just keep what you have'?" It is very true that, no matter how much stuff I have, I am always looking for what else could be mine.

Mmm, I want those seasons of Chuck.

Oooh, I want a First Aid Kit CD.

Ahhh, I want a new skirt for spring.

MORE AHAVA.

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day (it's not that impressive - I only read the Personal Journal section, and even then I usually choose the articles with the biggest pictures) about happiness vs. purpose. Research shows that those who pursue happiness are actually less likely to be happy than those who pursue purpose. Ironic! Those with purpose in life live longer, are less prone to diseases like Alzheimer’s, and report more of an over-all sense of well-being. The article talked about people desiring the feeling of watching a great movie or eating a great meal, versus people who work with the homeless or are family-oriented.

That's the part that really got me.

College-aged kids experience more emotional and psychological problems today than they did 100 years ago, because the focus of life has shifted from relationships, family, and community, to material things, possessions, and achievement.

I've been there. I know what it's like to search for happiness, and that search is always going to come up fruitless. Happiness doesn't last; it will always run out, end, or slip through our fingers. And then we're left with that empty feeling that shoots us on another quest to fill it. But I've been thinking about ending the search for "more" and instead living in gratitude for what I have. I think it's there that we find purpose. And underlying purpose is that steady joy and confidence that God gives, because He never runs out, ends, or slips through our fingers.

So, instead of making a list of "I want," what's my list of "I'm grateful for"?

When you live in gratitude, it is really, really hard to live in sin. - Jon Weece

P.S. This post had nothing to do with dragons or what they eat...but I was afraid if I titled it something like "What I'm Learning About God," nobody would read it. People are much more likely to read about what I'm learning about dragons.

ode

2011-03-26T12:55:00.002-04:00

Excuse me while I rub my legs together like a mute cricket. This could go on for a while.

My mom and dad spent a couple weeks in Israel, and upon their return they brought Ahava.

...Do you hear that? I think angels are singing.

False alarm, it was just my legs. Aaaaahaaaavaaaa.

Ahava is a brand of skin care products made with minerals from the Dead Sea. Ma & Da brought some body wash and lotion back for the family to experience...but it may or may not have yet to leave my shower cubby.

Do you ever wonder what it'd be like if God covered our bones and muscle with silk instead of skin? It would be like this, my friends. It would be exactly like this.

It's pretty expensive, so once these precious little bottles run out, I probably won't be experiencing this miracle of life until I am old and retired, when I decide to buy bottles of Ahava instead of a sports car.

Though, I wonder if I name my first born Ahava, could I get free stuff? And if I name my second born Avaha, does that warrant a lifetime supply? What if I name my third born Dead Sea?

I bet when we walk into our mansions in heaven, God will have stocked our bathrooms with gift baskets full of Ahava. And I bet our sheets will be Egyptian cotton, too.

* ALERT * ALERT ***

2011-03-23T19:34:00.005-04:00

Sometimes on the news they'll flash "ALERT ALERT" on the bottom of the screen, in this odd red graphic that sort of throbs like a dying heart, and I'll think that something life-changing is about to be announced. Like WWIII, or that Skynet has become self-aware, or that Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves. Then they end up telling us that Maxwell House is raising its prices for the THIRD time this year. Good Lord, because we all know that "rising coffee prices" are a sign mentioned in Revelation that the apocalypse is just around the corner.

"ALERT ALERT (throb throb), BREAKING NEWS: Jesus seen descending from clouds with cup of coffee, proclaiming, 'Beans, beans, to those far and near,' while the silver trumpets blasted, 'The best part of being raptured up is Folgers in your cup.'"

Alert THIS, Fox News: I finished a book.

CHEERS, BALLOONS, CUPCAKES!

I finished Louisa May Alcott's biography, and it was like a defibrillator to my reader's (and writer's) heart. I feel like I've gotten to know so much better the author of my favorite novel. Sometimes while reading, I forgot I was reading about a famous literary figure. I was reading about just a woman, who had aspirations and ambition and talent and so much character. So I would think, "Wow! She was friends with Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, and Longfellow!" And then I would remember that she is, in fact, Louisa May Alcott.

Did you know she didn't even want to write Little Women, but did it because her publisher wanted a "girl's book," and Louisa needed the money? Even after Little Women made Louisa rich and adored, she kept writing with the intent of producing "one good book."

Hello. You just wrote one of the most beautiful books in literary history, that will live on for hundreds of years through movies and on Broadway and through eyes and hearts soaking in your words time and time again on book's pages. Ms. Alcott, your one good book has been written.

So now the question is, what do I read next? Any suggestions? My brain is alive with juices like wine, and I'm hungry like the wolf.

I think we would've been best friends

2011-03-19T12:27:00.000-04:00

A Sample of our Lessons
"What virtues do you wish more of?" asks Mr. L.
I answer--
Patience, Love, Silence,
Obedience, Generosity, Perseverance,
Industry, Respect, Self-Denial.
"What vices less of?"
Idleness, Willfulness, Vanity,
Impatience, Impudence, Pride,
Selfishness, Activity, Love of Cats.

- Louisa May Alcott's journal, age 12.

an essay

2011-03-15T19:17:00.004-04:00

What I Did on Spring Break
by Heather K
March 15, 2011

On one spring break I went to New England with my best friend. Her name is Courtney, and she has brown hair, like mine, but hers is long, which mine isn't, but we're still friends. We went on a plane that left before the sun was even in the sky, and the night before we ate an entire package of Oreos because if we didn't they would've gone bad. But we didn't think about our stomachs going bad, which they did after we ate the whole package of Oreos.

When we were in Connecticut we did a lot of things like eat M&Ms and eat chocolate cake and eat chocolate cookies that came out wrong but still tasted good. When we were in Massachusetts we also did a lot of things like eat fudge and when we were in Rhode Island we did lots of things like eat Dunkin' Doughnuts. But there are a lot of other things in New England besides chocolate that we did.

Like for instance we spent a long time in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where a lot of famous writers are buried and got a big surprise when they found out about God, because they were Transcendentalists. Woops! Courtney and I tried to find a bathroom, but evidently dead people don't pee, so we had to find one in one of the shops downtown (a bathroom, not a dead person). But before we left I got to see where my favorite author was buried, Louisa May Alcott, and I got to tell her how much she means to me, even though she probably couldn't hear me. But that was pretty special. And then we saw a tombstone where someone's name was "BLOOD" and that made us laugh.

We were supposed to go to Boston but we ended up spending all day in Concord and that was okay with me because I also got to see the place where the Revolutionary War started. It started because there was a gunshot, and the people in red thought the people with farm equipment fired it while the people with farm equipment thought the people in red fired it, so there was war. This is why you always tell the truth and don't try to cover up what you did wrong, because what if the guy who fired the shot did it on accident, but was too scared to admit it because he didn't want to get in trouble? I know that's happened to me and if it weren't for my brother my parents never would have found out about the stain in the basement where we spilled ink and I tried to cover it with a rug.

We also got to pretend to be people in the war, except I think maybe I was a viking at one point. I'm not sure if there were vikings in the Revolutionary War, but New England's by an ocean, so there might've been.

One of my favorite things that we did was go to the Yankee Candle Factory, because there was a lot of stuff to play with even though we probably weren't supposed to play with it, like a horn we pretended was from Gondor and some candles that were supposed to smell like your wedding day. We also stole some fudge but it was an accident. Well, not really, but we tried really really hard not to, so it was kind of an accident. I got peanut butter and I don't remember why kind Courtney got.

Some other fun things we did were go to Yale and accidentally join a tour group (this time it really was an accident), but we just pretended we were actually interested in going to Yale and nobody suspected we were impostors. This time I did not pretend like I was a viking. But on our way to Yale we played 20 questions and it was Courtney's dad's turn to pick something for us to guess, and when he did my first guess was "jaws of life" and it was right. I am really good at playing games.

One day I got to go with Courtney to her barn where her horse lives with some other very angry horses, and I got to put hay in the field for them but then I had to run very fast because they were running toward me very very fast. This was before Courtney got the whip out.

Also one day we played on the rocks in Rhode Island by the Vanderbilts' summer cottege which is one million times bigger than my house which I live in all of the seasons. We pretended like we were mermaids and sang "Part of Your World" while the waves came up around the rocks, because obviously we are like fish compared to people like the Vanderbilts.

As you can see, Courtney and I did a lot of things on spring break, and a lot more things that are not recounted here (just like Jesus in the Bible). Like when we watched Australia and I don't remember anything about it except there was a stampede of cows, and I only remember that because Courtney and I still laugh about it. Or when Courtney thought one of the stores was "Balloons and Bosoms" when really it was "Balloons and Blossoms." Or when a woman held up a porcelain bunny in an antique shop and asked Courtney if she'd pay that much for it, and Courtney said, "Maybe if it was a bigger bunny." Or the time we went ice skating and Courtney looked very graceful, and I was very graceful too, but Courtney was graceful on her feet while I was graceful more on my stomach.

And that is what I did on my spring break. The end.

Newport, Rhode Island, March 15, 2009

come on skinny love, what happened here?

2011-03-13T19:34:00.003-04:00

I feel I need to confess: I haven't read a book in its entirety since October. And before that, it was July.

I'm so ashamed.

I feel like something in my mind has broken. Somehow the words my eyes take in never make it all the way to my brain, but get lost along the way. Something about the wiring, I think. So my brain gets bored and starts to play outside while my eyes desperately plead, "We're losing him! Focus!"

But no matter how hard I furrow my brow or how many times I reread the same paragraph, my mind is already frolicking through the grass squealing "Weeeeee!" while my eyes turn to jelly in their sockets.

This is not a pretty thing.

Last night I watched a teenage girl read a book unwaveringly through the entire church service. The preaching wasn't there, her arguing sisters next to her weren't there, and the only time she looked up was, I'm pretty sure, when she felt me watching her. I of course looked away very quickly and nodded at the pastor as if I'd been listening the whole time. Ah yes, grace. Grace and Jesus. Jesus is gracious. Preach it brother man. Amen.

But I wondered, what happened to me? I used to be that girl. I used to come back from Christmas breaks and answer the questions of what I'd done by listing off how many books I'd read. I used to make the world disappear and come back to reality smelling like pages and ink. I used to read.

What. happened. to. me.

So today when I took my parents to O'Hare, I decided I was going to stop in Milwaukee on my way back and kneel at the altar of Barnes & Noble until my heart was right with the printed word. Shed the tears of repentance on the green carpet of forgiveness. You dig it? Oh Book Land, take me back.

But when I got there, I didn't even know where to go. Fiction? Nonfiction? Journals?

I went to the bathroom. Like a bride who steps up to the long aisle runner of the sanctuary and then veers off to fix her veil in the lobby mirror. There's nothing wrong with her veil. She's just a coward.

When I walked into the bathroom, a tiny girl with thin blond curls stood against the wall, looking worried. She held her hands, coated in soap suds, in front of her, like a surgeon freshly-scrubbed and ready to take an unexploded grenade out of a North Korean soldier. (I take most my facts about doctor life and behavior from episodes of M*A*S*H.) Her mother stood next to the sink with the water running. She was pregnant and clean-looking, like she shopped in the maternity section at GAP. She glanced at me briefly when I walked in, then looked back at her daughter.

"Is it the water?" She asked. I gathered she was trying to figure out why her daughter, who looked like her name was Daisy or Phoebe or something else dainty and fragile, was having a breakdown. "Do you want a towel? Can you tell me what's wrong?"

I went into a stall as she patiently asked more questions. The little girl continued to answer her mother with absent whimpers, like she couldn't remember why she was crying and had already begun to think of other things, but still needed to be upset because she'd already started to be. If she couldn't explain what was going on inside, the only option was to keep up appearances on the outside.

I get you, Daisy.

I walked around Barnes & Noble four times, then walked out the door feeling as though the store and I were strangers, when once we dwelt together in familiar communion. I left like a dried sponge where once I soaked my parched mind.

Good news is that the world is ending on May 21 (according to the people on the street corner with a big sign saying "JUDGMENT DAY"), so I won't have to worry about finding the little lost fibers of brain that have detached themselves from their cranial epicenter. Come back, little fellas. I miss feeling whole.

Heather vs. Spy Cat 2.0

2011-03-11T21:38:00.001-05:00

I think the cat where I nanny is a spy.

See, I've been watching a lot of Chuck recently. The framework of my mind is extremely malleable, and sometimes I get confused as to what's real and what's not. One time I watched Goodfellas and the next day when I was driving and saw a helicopter, I thought it was following me because the government was busting me on drug dealing.

I'm not even a little bit being facetious.

So yesterday when the cat, whom we'll call Shir Kahn because every spy has a cover name, peeped out of his cardboard house with his eyes all glassy and green and looking around like when Gollum's looking out of his cave talking about how he "forgot the taste of bread," I became suspicious.

Here's why:

1.) Sometimes when Shir Kahn's cleaning himself, I think he's really talking into a bug wired in his fur. Plus he won't let me cuddle him, and who denies cuddling with me unless he's trying to hide a secret spy device? (At least that's what I tell myself. "Why won't [insert male name here] flirt with me? Ah, he must be a secret spy agent man.")

2.) From what I gather from Chuck, there are two main ways to extract information from your subject: Torture and seduction. Shir Kahn has already left scars on my arm and hand and used my leg as a scratching post, so he knows that torture only results in me kicking his ribcage or shining one of those red laser lights in his eyes. The only thing left is seduction, and I should've known when yesterday he jumped up on the couch and looked at me as if to say, "Eh-hem. I've come to sit on your lap. So...purr. Purr." I looked at him unmoved and said, "You don't look like you really want it, buddy." He wouldn't make eye contact with me and then walked away. He's not very good at seducing.

3.) I think he has somehow connived my 16-month-old ward into working for him. Yesterday William very deliberately took my hand and tried to shove it through the hole in Shir Kahn's cardboard house where Kahn likes to devour the little furry mouse that wriggles around helplessly from a stick. I was not okay with this. Also, today while watching the Fox News, Bret Baier had just mentioned something about President Obama declaring Libya a no-fly zone, and William laughed out loud. Who laughs out loud at Libya? Evil spy people, that's who.

4.) I really have been watching a lot of Chuck. Last night I woke up shaking my leg because I was dreaming I was being chased by spies and one of them had grabbed onto my ankle. Luckily I didn't have my pepper spray by my bed or my sheets probably would've gotten maced. (Yes, I have pepper spray and have on more than one occasion slept with it next to my bed.)

I don't know what Shir Kahn could possibly want from me, or who he's working for, but I'm onto him. His "woe is me, I'm coughing up a fur ball" bit is not fooling anyone. And the kid may be impressionable, but he also eats crayons and likes to show people his belly button. So I probably wouldn't count him as an asset.

stay where you're at & I'll come where you're to

2011-03-07T14:43:00.007-05:00

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a super hero named Captian Question Mark? He could spell his name like this:

Captain?

You pronounce the question mark.

He could have his own television show, called The Grammatical Conundrums of Captain?. If that doesn't draw the younger demographic, I don't know what will. And he could have a theme song. Like this:

Captain?,
is that a comma splice? Hark!
Dangling participles make him cry;
Split Infinitive's a bad guy;
using poor grammar only reveals that
ending a sentence with a preposition proves your low intelligence...at.

Try humming your little tyke to sleep with that one.

In each episode, Captain? can show how urgently one should understand proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

For example, in one episode, Captain?'s arch nemesis Split Infinitive (notorious for misusing the English language and leading a gang of rebellious high school drop-outs, who named themselves "Slang," in removing the apostrophe from the Handbook of Vital Punctuation, and also for using run-on sentences), has been locked in a bunker full of explosives, and in a shocking state of humility (and possibly desperation), texts Captain? for help. Captain?, of course, being good-spirited, compassionate, and an overall very nice super hero, agrees to help. Let's take a peek at the rest of the conversation:

SI: Thx cpt? your gr8
C?: My great what?
SI: no. . .your great
C?: My great...grandmother? My great sense of style? My great ideas on exploding cigarettes, so that when people toss them from their car windows it results in immediate consequences? "Your great" is not a complete sentence.
SI: Look I foot have time 2 argue about grammar rite now
C?: I understand. In which case, the most important thing to remember so you don't die is.
SI: Is what???
C?: What?
SI: u didnt text me a complete sentence
C?: Well neither did you, so I suppose we're even.

Kids will learn several things from this episode:
1.) T9 is not reliable, so always proofread your texts.
2.) Compassion only goes as far as a willingness to speak and write properly.
3.) Proper punctuation and spelling are worth the extra effort, because otherwise you might blow up. (Also, I would stay away from throwing your cigarettes out the car window, just in case that idea actually came to fruition.)

Maybe Captain? can have a girlfriend, too. She can be a princess named Pun. She writes songs using word play and has a lot of folksy emotional baggage. Or is that Jason Mraz?

You see, every epic tale is only one worth telling if it is grammatically correct. Would Frodo have destroyed the Ring if Elrond had said, "It must be thrown into the fiery chasm from whence it came from"? No way would Frodo have accepted a mission from a guy who used two of the same prepositions in his sentence. Keep that in mind for the future, and remember: The future is only ours as long as the apostrophe still makes things possessive.

(That's how Captain? ends his shows, after he addresses the audience about how only you can prevent punctuation mutilation.)

strange things are afoot at the Circle K

2011-03-04T20:53:00.004-05:00

Don't you hate it when you're in a public bathroom and, as you're trying to open the door with your foot, someone walks in?

I sure do.

Today I was at my favorite exit on I-65. Exit 172. It's the last Chick-fil-A if you're coming from Kentucky, but I guess it's the first if you're coming from Wisconsin. Kind of a glass-half-empty/glass-half-full kind of outlook, isn't it? I like to stop at the Circle K, because it has the cheapest gas, though not the cleanest bathroom. Life is full of decisions such as these.

This bathroom has toilets that look like they haven't been replaced since 1980, and the toilet paper is definitely one-ply and probably We-R-Cheap brand. The faucet is no longer silver, but that spotted-texture that your faucet gets when you brush your teeth and the toothpaste sprinkles the mirror and sink. Only imagine that 300 people [a day] have brushed their teeth and flung toothpaste specks all over your bathroom [for the past 30 years]. And they were all using Arm & Hammer.

These spots were definitely not toothpaste residue, however, but probably tiny spores that would grow inside my lungs if I breathed them in. And then I would mutate. Into a gas station attendant.

Of course this bathroom would have a hand blow-dryer instead of paper towels, leaving me to figure out how to open the door after I've washed my hands. I am strictly opposed to the use-your-sleeve-as-your-hand technique, because, hello, my sleeve is still attached to my body. And what if I rest my sleeve against my cheek later on, after I've forgotten I used it to open a spore-covered door handle? I may as well rub my face all over the bathroom floor.

And of course trying to pull at one-ply toilet paper with wet hands is a form of torture they implement in Pacific prison camps.

"I can't...grab...the toilet paper...it keeps...disintegrating...IT'S ALL OVER MY FINGERS...."

So the only option left is to use your foot. Right? Can we all agree that that's a sane move to make?

I had just raised my leg in a ballerina-esque pose, attempting to artfully slip my toe through the handle and pull downward using all the grace and poise of a swan craning its neck to drink from a crystal-like lake. Then the door pushed open and this girl leaned back, startled, as if I had just tried to decapitate her with my calf.
She said, "Oh!"
I said, "Sorry!"
Then I laughed awkwardly and, with dripping hands, said, "Thanks!" and ran very quickly out the door.

Maybe she didn't notice my leg in the air?

At least I didn't have to touch the door handle.

operation: fly north

2011-02-25T08:58:00.000-05:00

Spring keeps knocking on my door.

"Listen, Spring," I tell it, "I have nothing against you. You have a lot of things going for you. But I just don't love you...like that. Please stop coming."

But it doesn't listen.

It's already gotten inside the minds of the community. Boys playing basketball in their driveways. Girls riding their bikes down the street. Mothers yelling out their doors for their children to find their shoes and come inside for dinner.

They have no resistance!

And I don't know how much longer I can hold out.

Kroger is selling lilies and hyacinths and lilacs and, I would still be okay, but then I saw them.

The daffodils.

Spring is so sneaky! Blast its yellow-petaled tactics, like drops of sweet, syruppy sunlight, smiling, laughing, bobbing their heads under a bright blue sky...so happy....

There's only one option for me: I have to flee.

I tell people it's because I can't find a job (which I can't), or because I'm hoping to go to grad school this fall anyway (which I am), but the real reason I am packing up all of my things and moving back to Wisconsin is because, well,

Winter is still there.

Winter and I have had a very long love affair that goes through months of turmoil every year. People often shake their fists at the wintry sky and ask, "Why must you snow?" But, you see, Winter and I, we understand one another. I understand why it must snow. And, in the same way, it understands why I want it to snow. But we can't explain it to you. You wouldn't understand.

I wonder if it knows how much I'm struggling right now.

And I have to hurry, because now tulips are beginning to grow right outside my front door.

Spring.

Curse you and your cheerfulness.

if they knew sweet little you

2011-02-24T14:59:00.003-05:00

My neighbors have adopted an elephant.

It's nocturnal, because it has the most energy after midnight.

I picture it as a very sad elephant, too, because it cries, nay wails, a lot during the day. Maybe because it can't sleep?

I'm assuming it's a baby elephant, because otherwise it wouldn't be able to fit in their side of the duplex, let alone run from room to room, which it does, which makes all of my walls vibrate.

And I think it's female, because sometimes I hear it singing, and it's a very high-pitched, little-elephant-like voice.

I wonder if it has little pink ribbons tied around its ears?

And guess what: It's Russian. I know this because my neighbors speak to it in Russian, nay, yell at it in Russian, at 1 o'clock in the morning, when it's beating its trunk against the wall that borders my room. Maybe it just came over on the boat from Russia, and that's why it's nocturnal. At midnight here, it's only 11 a.m. there. Is it thinking that it's time for tea?

There is no tea in my wall, no matter how many times you beat it with your trunk.

I wonder if it misses being in the wild?

Are elephants like turtles, which only grow to the size of their cage? Because once this elephant, which I imagine is named something like Anitchka (which means "Grace," how fitting for the little tot), starts to grow, that apartment is not going to be big enough.

Sometimes I get pretty angry, around 3 o'clock in the morning, that there is so much stomping, pounding, yelling, and shaking going on in the duplex next to me. But then I just try to remember that bringing a new baby elephant into the family is not easy, and I should try to have compassion on them.

I would want them to have compassion on me if I adopted, say, a poison dart gun. I mean, what if I accidentally rested it on their windowsill and then my finger twitched and shot a poison dart into their elephant's rump? I would want them to understand, as Anitchka lay silent and unconscious on their bedroom floor, that there's an adjustment period when bringing a new member into one's family. So I should try to be understanding of them, too.

And I do understand.

But if their nocturnal elephant does not learn new sleep patterns and lighter walking techniques, I am going to adopt a velociraptor, which know how to open doors and take down very large animals.

All in the spirit of growing my family in love, of course. Just like my neighbors.

good news! great joy!

2011-02-20T11:07:00.004-05:00

I love Turner Classic Movies. Their website is even one of my little tabbies on the top of my web browser. I made magnets out of their logo, which are on the refrigerator right now. At one point I even kept records of what classic movies I'd seen, categorized by actor and listed by year. I stopped tallying in 2008, but at that point (according to my documents), I had seen 19 Cary Grant movies, 24 Jimmy Stewart movies, 17 Paul Newman movies, 16 Fred Astaire movies, 12 Bing Crosby movies, 14 Ginger Roger movies, 10 Doris Day movies, and the list goes on. And on.

And on.

I was kind of a nerd in high school. Not the "study hard and wear too-short jeans" kind of nerd, but the "hanging pictures of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on my wall" kind of nerd. In fact, they're there, even now. Hey, Fred.

I wanted the TCM Scene-It game for my birthday, until I realized, who would play it with me?

Dear Robert Osborne,
I realize you are a very important and busy man, what with being the host and face of TCM. But I was wondering if you would play Scene-It with me. Then maybe Glenn Miller DDR.
Love, Heather

For 3 1/2 years I have gotten on TCM's website and requested they replay a certain film. It isn't on DVD yet, so I occasionally change my e-mail so I can vote they put it on DVD. And on their "recommend a film" page I change my name and location so they think many people all over the country are requesting the same movie.

Please play Pillow to Post again. I think it's fabulous!
Beth/Kansas City

OMG i just luv this movei! plz play it agan
Brittany/CA

My mother just died from a 7-year battle with cancer. When I was a little girl we used to watch this movie at night when I couldn't sleep. Also there were puppies involved. Please show this movie.
June/Hartford

Then I wondered if they could track my posts from the same computer, and all the men in the tech center at TCM headquarters were probably looking at each other with enormous and very official headphones on their ears thinking, "Why does this woman keep messaging us as fake people? We know you're only one person!"

Because I want to see this movie! Please just show this movie again!

And guess what. They are. THEY FINALLY ARE!

March 25 at 11:45 p.m.

Thank you to all my split personalities who contributed to make this moment possible.

Why don't movie posters look like this anymore?

my funny valentine

2011-02-14T08:51:00.001-05:00

Wisconsin, I think it's time I told you.

I love you.

I know we haven't known each other that long.

I know we aren't always the same.

I know that sometimes the novelty of this feeling wears off,
and we can't remember how exactly it felt in the beginning,
and all that's left is this vague, shadowy idea of what we thought it was going to be,
but isn't.
And our eyes grow dull to one another.
And all we see is the bitterness and the dryness and the cracking skin.

But that won't happen with us.

I know this because I miss you when I'm not with you.
And I think about you, even when I'm in other parts of the world,
and I only want to be here,
with you.

So wrap me in your rosy pink arms when the setting sun reflects off the silos.
Capture me with puffs of breath that disappear over white fields.
Send me snowflakes through the air like storms of lacy love letters.
Sing me the echoing song of frozen trees popping in the wind.
Leave me deep red kisses on my cheeks from the unabashed breezes.
Write me poems the color of the sky when it looks like ice in the mornings.

Promise me you won't forget me when my footprints melt away.

Because, Wisconsin, I love you.

And if you give me a chance, I think we could be great friends for a long time.

And I've felt like this for a while, but I didn't know how to tell you.

So I just did.

And now I feel better.

with love, from me to you

2011-02-11T16:42:00.004-05:00

To celebrate the Beatles coming to America 47 years ago (and Valentine's Day), I baked these:

What you can't see in this picture are the outcast-cupcakes with frosting smeared on their little bald heads like comb-overs, 'cause I got tired of filling the little decorative bottle with an opening the size of a quarter. How do you neatly fit gobs of frosting in there without getting it all over your hands, clothes, and counter? You don't. Which leads to a lot of unofficial frosting-licking.

Oh Taste of Home, I want you so much to like me.

they don't mine

2011-02-10T12:29:00.004-05:00

The dictionary describes the word "know" this way:

to be or feel certain of the truth or accuracy of
to be acquainted or familiar with
to understand, be aware of, or perceive
to experience, especially deeply

Jesus says, "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3).

Do all those definitions of "know" describe what your relationship of knowing God looks like?

They don't mine.

But I desperately want them to.

Do you?

Something to think about.

***EDIT***

A quote from Dana Candler's twitter on February 11:

Missing Him is part of loving Him. Loving Him is fruit of knowing Him. Knowing Him is eternal life (Jn 17:3).

Perfect.

hail to thee, Mayberry

2011-02-08T00:10:00.007-05:00

I remember being a little girl and walking into the living room while my brothers were watching football. I asked them, "Who are the bad guys?" Translation: Which team are we wanting to win? My brothers less-than-patiently (supposedly I asked this question more than once) told me that "there are no bad guys." That's just how my little mind, fed on Disney movies, interpreted things. Good guys, bad guys. Aladdin, Jafar. We want the good guys to win, to ride away on a magic carpet with a woman wearing a very fluttery pant-suit made of sheer Arabian fabric. Just tell me who the good guys are so I can appropriately pray for them to succeed. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it! Amen and amen.

Since then I've learned a tad bit more about football (though there are still bad guys...at least, that's how my mind, still fed on Disney movies, interprets things). I also pretend to know more than I do. I'll teach you a good strategy: The less you say, the more it appears you know. Maybe even keep a notepad near you during the game, so when you have comments to make, you can jot them down and read them over later to yourself, and either agree or disagree with them. That way it seems like you're having a conversation with somebody, but it's really just yourself. And that way nobody else really has to know that you still don't really understand the differences in neutral zone infraction, encroachment, and off-sides, but you like the first one the best because it sounds more technical and complicated.

"Ohhhh neutral zone infraction! That's because his neutral zone has been infracted. Don't infract his neutral zone, buddy!" (These are the kinds of things you will write in your notepad.)

I still love football, for all I do understand. And for the first time, I got to be in the state whose team went to the Super Bowl.

the G stands for Greatness

My Monday morning breakfast prayer (featuring Dad):
"Dear God, thank you for Mom for making these pancakes--"
"Mm-hmm."
"--thanks that I got to be home for a little while--"
"Mm-hmm."
"--please provide me with a job--"
"Mm-hmm."
"--andthankyouthatthePackerswontheSuperBowlamen."
"MMMMMMMMMMM."

And it just so happens I had scraps of fabric in green and yellow lying around:

this G stands for Gosh this took me a long time

This pillow says, "I watched Sports Center in between A Little Princess and The Secret Garden." Which I did.

Congrats, Super Bowl XLV champs.

Oh Sunday afternoons, how will I spend thee now?

taking the cannoli, part II

2011-02-03T11:55:00.001-05:00

As Man on Center Yellow Line (Holding Pole) taught us earlier, you're not crazy as long as you love what you do. And I realized a few days ago that that is also the moral of The Godfather.

Other possible morals are: 1.) It's okay to murder other people if you're doing it for your familiy; 2.) It's okay to murder your family if you're doing it for other parts of your family; 3.) Love never dies, except when it is murdered - by your family, for your family, or because of your family.

But the one I want to focus on is the first one. You're not crazy as long as you love what you do.

For example, I apparently like to flap my legs and screech like a baby dinosaur. I didn't know this about myself until a few days ago, when I was sitting in Courtney's car and I, indeed, flapped my knees and screeched like a baby dinosaur. Courtney sighed, "You always do that."

Well. I was not aware that I "always" flap and screech like a baby dinosaur. Hopefully I was never sitting in a lecture and randomly began flapping and calling out, "Screeeeee!" But if I did, and my professor looked at me with a concerned and shocked expression, I would calmly have said,

"I love, therefore I'm not crazy."

You're not crazy as long as you love what you do.

leave the gun; take the cannoli

2011-02-01T20:04:00.003-05:00

Today I saw a man standing on the yellow center line on 1268. He was holding a pole. I had just rounded a curve and he caught me off-guard. I expected him to move over, or wave me by, or maybe look up into the sky, nod, and be beamed back up to his mother ship. Instead he just stood there, in the middle of the road, holding his pole.

So I slowly drove up beside him, eying him as I passed him by, wondering if he would step backwards, or ask me to turn around, or tap his pole on the roof of my car and turn me into something unnatural. He didn't even make eye-contact with me until the very last minute, and he smiled at me. It said, "I know exactly what you're thinking, but I don't have to explain myself." On the other side of him, I laughed.

I know now that when I feel crazy for wearing red tights or headbands with flowers on them or my pink jelly shoes because, come on, Heather, you're 23, not eight, I will think of Man on Center Yellow Line (Holding Pole). You're not crazy as long as you love what you do, no matter what anybody else thinks.

"Why mind the fashion? Wear a big hat, and be comfortable!" - Laurie, Little Women

once a lonely catterpillar sat and cried

2011-01-30T12:13:00.004-05:00

I used to not like Valentine's Day. As evidenced by this journal entry I wrote my freshman year of college:

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I don't know why it should bother me so much; it's just another day. I guess Valentine's Day is like a magnifying glass to enlargen what loneliness I have that I could otherwise overlook. I live every day single, and most of the time I'm happy with it. But Valentine's Day finds that itty bitty speck of "I want something more" and points at it, laughing. I hate the microscope of Valentine's Day, magnifying my imperfect and flawed emotions and relationships. I don't have a man. I don't have someone to send me flowers through CPO and tell me my hair smells good. There is no masculine arm around my shoulders and no one looks dreamily into my eyes across a plate of chicken nuggets in the cafeteria. I am single. And on Valentine's Day I feel like couples look on me with pity, as if I have the plague.
"Look at the leper," Brenda Sue says to Maurice.
"Don't touch," Maurice says, holding Brenda's hand. "She's one of them."
Then I can hear Brenda Sue distastefully click her tongue and mutter "poor thing" as they turn away to gorge themselves on candy hearts.
I'm single. Saying that on Valentine's Day carries the same ring to it as walking down the streets proclaiming, "Unclean!" What can I do to comfort myself on Valentine's Day?

Following this entry is a tiny candy heart drawn in the corner, with the words written in it, "YOU SUCK."

If Present Me were to visit Past Me (who, at the time would be Present Me and Present Me would be Future Me), Past/Present Me would think Present/Future Me was some sort of pastry-puff shell filled with fluffy cream filling, because I, Future Me then who is now Present Me, like Valentine's Day.

Some people, and with every right, think Valentine's Day is a bunch of hooey. They argue, why have a single day to celebrate love when every day should be an example of cherishing one another? I think this is true. We should live every day in appreciation of our loved ones, showing them how much we treasure them with little post-its on their mirrors and flower petals by their cereal bowls. Aw.

But there's a day to sit down and be thankful, when shouldn't we be thankful all year round? And there's a day to celebrate Jesus' birth and His resurrection, when shouldn't we be celebrating Immanuel, He's ALIVE, all year round?

We are, and we do, in fact. But these days let us do it with a little more pizazz, and a lot more food.

So I like Valentine's Day. Maybe because it's just another excuse to bake cupcakes and make pink frosting, like people use St. Patrick's Day as an excuse to get drunk on green beer. I like love. I like hearts. I like sugar.

Past Me is writhing on the floor clasping her throat in agony, as with every word I kill just a little bit more of her.

I don't have a significant other, and, actually, I never have over Valentine's Day. But I do have people I love, and I do have a heart, so why not put it on paper and send it off? Who says V-Day has to be specifically saved for romance?

(Actually I think "romance" is in the very definition of Valentine, but life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter, so don't bring around a cloud and rain on my parade.)

From now until Valentine's Day I plan to think of all the things and people I love, and why I love them and am grateful for them, and I will do it all while eating heart-shaped cookies. WITH SPRINKLES.

the war

2011-01-27T11:33:00.002-05:00

forgotten baking powder + no non-stick spray + an oven that doesn't read correctly =

Cinnamon Mocha Coffee Cake, 2011

I call it "Blitzkrieg Bread."

See the resemblence?:

Weilun, Poland, 1939

Oh, Taste of Home, please don't be disappointed in me.

they'll know we are Christians by our love

2011-01-26T23:52:00.007-05:00

This week I’ve been nannying for twin 6-month-olds. On my route, I pass a junk yard with a big yellow and red sign that says,

WARNING
JESUS IS COMING SOON
GET READY

Do people in junk yards have some correspondence with God that we folk living on the other side of the rusty fence don’t?

Scene: Junk yard.

Man in overalls sits on a chipped blue pickup, eating Vienna sausages.

Voice of God: "Bert, I'm coming on June 3rd. No one else knows. Send a vague message about it to the world. Use red and yellow paint, if possible."

Little known fact: When Jesus came the first time, the angels appeared to the shepherds with signs that said,

WARNING

GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY

GET READY

warn
–verb (used with object)
to give notice, advice, or intimation to (a person, group, etc.) of danger, impending evil, possible harm, or anything else unfavorable

Ah ha, precisely the method I'd use to describe this man's coming who died for us his first time around because he loved us so much. And this collaborates well with the billboard on I-65 that says,

HELL IS REAL

So we know it’s a fact. And that's a comforting thought.

Let's just skim over all the 365 times in the Bible that God tells us not to fear.

Because the parking is limited on the street where I work, I’ve had to park in the closest parking I could find: A Presbyterian church’s parking lot. I’m thankful for church’s generosity and charity and general open-arm-ed-ness. I’ve never felt unwelcome at a church I’ve visited.

Except for today. I found this on my windshield:

#1, there were 2 inches of snow on the ground and ZERO cars in the parking lot. ZERO.

#2, it wasn’t a Sunday, or a Wednesday night, and did I mention there were ZERO cars in the parking lot?

#3, orange is such an abrasive color, as if I could hear them shouting at me and being angry.

Scene: Church secretary’s office.

Enter: Pastor in tweed suit with leather elbow patches, feeling bored and territorial.

“Hey Barb.”

Secretary with horn-rimmed glasses looks up from her typewriter and snorts.

“Have you seen that car that parks itself out in our parking lot?”

“You mean the only one out there, where otherwise there would be absolutely no vehicles except for that one?”
“Yes. Put a note under the windshield wiper that this lot is for church parking only.”

The secretary’s acrylic nails start typing.

“Oh and Barb?”

Snort.

“Make it orange.”

So far this week, the Christians I've come in contact with from afar have made me feel a.) very afraid of Jesus, and b.) very afraid of churches. Little known fact: After Jesus told His disciples to go into the world and make disciples of all nations, He actually ended by saying, "And if at all possible, make them never, ever want to have anything to do with Me."

we'll follow the Old Man wherever He wants to go

2011-01-17T23:18:00.002-05:00

I cried a lot before, during, and after graduation. There are several pictures of me during the ceremony that my brother took across the aisle, where I'm looking despondent and sad. He thought my forlorn expression was funny. I don't remember anything the commencement speaker said, not because he was boring (which he was), but because I was graduating, and I didn't want to be, and no speaker however entertaining would have captivated my attention.

On my way to the playground at camp this summer, a woman from behind me asked if I went to Asbury. The draw-string bag with "ASBURY COLLEGE" written on the back must've given it away. I told her I had just graduated, and she said she graduated in 1991.

"Did you love it?" She asked.

"I did. I was sad to leave."

She looked very serious and somewhat absent as she said, "Yeah, the year after I graduated I was just sort of lost."

I smiled empathetically. "Yeah, I'm afraid nothing will ever be as good as college."

She looked even more absent as she said, "Hmm," and nothing more.

I was not encouraged.

I realized as I sat on my bed (which is on the floor and much closer to the spiders, I realized yesterday (and so did the spider)) that I am lost. People have been asking me, "What are you doing back in Wilmore?" And I truthfully answer them, "I don't know." I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going. I have no goals or ambitions or ideas. I thought about that woman's words at camp and I realized I, too, in the year after graduation, am lost.

At first this realization scared me. As if I was taking a stroll with my head down, watching my feet step one in front of the other, and when I looked up nothing was familiar, and I realized I'd lost my way. And maybe night was falling, and it was getting colder, and the wind made my voice disappear as soon as I opened my mouth. Lost.

Then I started thinking of other times I've gotten lost. The time Courtney and I were in Massachusetts and took a wrong street that ended up leading us to an antique book store where I found an 1868-edition of a Louisa May Alcott novel that matched two others I owned. Or the time five of us traveled on foot in suburban Boston in search of our car, and shared a ride with a sweet old lady and an Arab named Milton on their way home from church. Or when Courtney and I had no idea where the road through the center of Concord led and ended up parking across the street from Old North Bridge, where the Revolutionary War began, and I stood on the very ground I had read about in history class.

The things you most remember about trips are the things you hadn't planned on, the things that went "wrong," the things that forced you to be innovative and creative, and made you realize it's much more fun when things aren't what you expected.

I don't know where I'm going. But I intend to enjoy it as much as I can, because one promising thing about the times I've been lost: I either always arrive home again, or someplace new becomes home to me. Either way, I come home.

“Courtney and I are most at home when we have no idea where we’re going.” – journal entry, 3/21/2009

the land of if only

2011-01-14T12:51:00.001-05:00

Now that she's not here anymore, I miss cooking and baking with my mom. I miss being in her kitchen and feeling like it was my kitchen, too, that it was ours together, with the difference that she had decades of experience and knowledge to pass down to me. I miss learning from her and creating with her.

Now that he's not here anymore, I miss playing my guitar with my dad. I miss hearing him say, "Can I show you something?" and then taking my guitar from me to show me what 45 years of playing can do to my fingers. I miss hearing our guitars play together on Sunday mornings, and feeling proud that he taught me.

I think I can hear my neighbor snoring at night. I'm not sure, but there's a grinding sound that comes through the wall at regular intervals, and I know it's an older couple who lives next door, so I think it's a very likely possibility.

Which adds a nice bass line to the soprano schizophrenic cat that sits exactly below my window and meows, just meows, meows, until I open my window and it scampers off. The other night it growled for about 10 minutes. Just because. I don't know what the voices inside its head are telling it. And I don't know why it has to sit beneath my window while it has these conversations with itself.

I can't really say why everybody wishes they were somewhere else
but in the end, the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself
- The Weepies

I think that last part is baloney, because I don't think I would be able to take many steps by myself. But it's true that wherever I am I seem to want to be somewhere else, only to look over my shoulder and wish I was back where I came from.

I don't want to do this anymore.

New Year's resolution (2 weeks late): I want to have eyes that look for the good things I have in my life, wherever I am. I want to recognize the blessings I have and give thanks for them. I want to not want so much.

"Only he who gives thanks for the little things receives the big things. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I, 65, take you, Heather....

2011-01-07T19:06:00.001-05:00

I cried as I said goodbye to my family yesterday. At first it was because I was leaving home and people I love. But then I started thinking about all the soldiers who have left their families and homes and I started crying even harder. Outer Me: "Bye, Mom." Inner Me: "All those men in World War II lost their lives!"

I've been watching a lot of WWII documentaries and movies recently.

On my drive, I hit traffic just on the other side of Chicago. Then I saw a sign - you know, the kind that look like giant Lite-Brites - that said,

CRASH
I-65 CLOSED
USE ALTERNATE ROUTE

I thought maybe it was overreacting, so I continued to I-65. There were a bunch of people driving the same direction, so I conveniently forgot the warning sign and based my actions on what everyone else was doing (a wise way to live life).

Then I saw another Lite-Brite, and when I looked in my rear view mirror, there were absolutely no cars behind me. I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie and either zombies were coming to get me, or I was a zombie, or the rapture had happened. So I decided to do what I always do in time of crisis: I called my mother. She looked up an alternate route (and told me the rapture had not occurred), and I got off somewhere in Indiana. I reached for the GPS my father had named Betty and had given to me because he got a better one, and programmed in my route. Betty kept trying to get me back on I-65, and I kept telling her No, moron, I'm trying to avoid I-65!

Mom told me to take 2 to 231 and rejoin I-65 in 40 miles. Seems simple enough, doesn't it? It did until my dyslexic mind somehow translated 231 to 321, and I traveled a couple of miles in some direction hoping to see a sign. I looked over at the GPS and the little blue triangle that was supposed to be my car just spun in circles while flashing, **OFF ROAD**. I just shook my head and sighed, "Oh, Betty."

Luckily I had just created a playlist before leaving home entitled, "It's Okay That It's 2011," because I was sad to put away all my Christmas music. Doris Day and Frank Sinatra could make getting lost in Mordor a desired experience.

Doris: It's a lovely day today, so if you're going to be destroying a Ring, I'd be so happy to be doing it with you....

At one point as I sat at a red light and opened up a Reese's peanut butter cup, a mac truck turned onto my road and nearly clobbered my car. I actually had the thought, "At least I would have died eating a Reese's peanut butter cup." I would've wanted that as my epitaph.

And at a Flying J somewhere on 231, I discovered my mom had snuck a gift card to Panera into my wallet. Oh boy! I will always remember you, Flying J in Indiana, for that special moment. For the cleanliness of your bathrooms, however, not so much.

When I finally took the ramp to get back on the interstate, I wimpered, "65, I've missed you so much!" I rejoined just in time to drive through the stretch I like to call Whither the Windmill, and they waved goodbye to me as if they knew I was leaving for good.

My car (whom I named Dule, after Dule Hill, from Psych, of course), does not have cruise control. After it had gotten dark and I was only a couple hours from my destination, I passed a cop sitting on the side of the road and glanced at my speed to see I was going 15 over the speed limit. I assure you, this was completely accidental, and must have just developed, because I was very careful to maintain a proper speed the entire way. I resigned myself to getting pulled over, and imagined how the conversation would go:

Policeman Paul ('cause once when my mom thought someone was breaking into our house at 2 a.m., she called the cops and one of the officers that came had a nameplate that said P. Thomas, and he was very attractive, so I decided as I sat in my pajamas while he looked through our house that his name was Paul, and if I had to get pulled over, I would want it to be by him): Do you know how fast you were going, Ma'am?
Me: Yes, sir.
Policeman Paul: Could I see your license and registration, please?
At this point I would start crying, because

a.) the car wasn't registered in my name yet, since I had just bought it and didn't have the chance to change it,
b.) I don't even know where the registration is!
c.) my leg was aching after driving for 8 hours, and I'm scared of getting a blood clot,
d.) I've just left home for the first time, and
e.) so many men died in WWII.

Then Policeman Paul would let me off with a warning, since I'd never gotten a ticket before, and because he took pity on my poor little emotional self. He'd probably leave me by patting the roof of my car and saying, "Get yourself some help." Then I would drive off sniffling and vowing to buy war bonds.

I checked my rear view mirror for at least 15 minutes to make sure the cop wasn't tailing me to pounce just when I thought I was safe. But he didn't, and I escaped without a ticket. Dule breathed a sigh of relief.

Note to self: When alone in a new place feeling homesick and scared about the future, it is not a good idea to watch a war movie. I don't think war has ever been a suggested cure for anxiety.

more than auld lang syne

2011-01-02T00:22:00.001-05:00

I think I only wrote my grandmother two letters while I was in college, but she loved them. She told people who came to visit her that they were beautiful letters. At my grandfather's funeral, one woman I'd never met told me that my grandma was so proud of me.

I wish I had written her more letters.

I realized in her last couple of years that I had wasted so much time I could've spent with her. And I tried to make up for it in the few visits I had with her, sitting at the feet of her recliner and asking her questions about growing up, meeting Grandpa, and the Great Depression.

I wish I had started a lot sooner.

When my grandmother died in 2009, the part of history that was her life was buried next to my grandfather in a cemetery in Ohio. Nobody felt with her heart or saw with her eyes. Nobody experienced the joy, pain, fear, and triumph she experienced, because nobody lived her life but her.

I wish I had gotten to know her better.

I don't know what good writing about history will do. I don't know how it'll help further the kingdom of God, or how it will bring people to Jesus. I struggle with the intense desire I have to write the stories of those in the past - in an attempt to hear a heartbeat that ended before we had the chance to know its rhythm - and the intense desire I have to follow Jesus into the present world of hurting people who need His light and truth.

What do you do with two so completely different desires?

How do you tell people that, while you got your degree in Creative Writing & History, you'd rather go to seminary than write a novel?

And how do you tell yourself the same thing, when suddenly you realize you want both?

So I begin my 23rd new year just as confused as ever about what I'm supposed to do with my life. Though these things I cling to for stability, that the Lord will fulfill His purpose for me (Psalm138:8), and that tomorrow there will be football.

emotional commotion

2010-12-29T19:44:00.001-05:00

I have been crying a lot lately, and only sometimes for very legitimate reasons.

On Christmas Eve, with hundreds of candles lit in the darkness, and singing "Silent Night," I thought of my grandpa. I used to sit on his musty tan bedspread beside him and listen to him pluck out the notes and chords on his guitar. I wondered if heaven is any different on Christmas, and I imagined my grandpa in the very presence of Jesus, while we sang about Immanuel.

But sometimes my crying is not so legitimate. The other day I cried at an episode of "Say Yes to the Dress." (Her mom left her when she was very young, and she was just the sweetest and wanted to please her future mother-in-law, who was like a mother to her. You had to be there.) And on a completely different day I cried while watching "Super Nanny." (The father - who was a Navy Seal! - was just really supportive, okay?) And yesterday when I saw that the gas prices had risen, my eyes teared up. (I have no excuse.)

And that's when I knew I was getting ridiculous.

I don't know what's wrong with me. It used to be that I only cried in very extreme circumstances, like when Boromir died in The Fellowship of the Ring. Now I cry when people simply love each other. I cry when I think about sadness - it doesn't even have to be a sad thing in particular, just knowing someone is sad makes me cry. I even have dreams where I am crying.

Today I watched an episode of The Office and my chin quivered.

Possible reasons for this recent emotional outlet in tear-form:

My Christmas lights blew out on Christmas morning, as if to say, "It's over, buddy. Pack up the holiday cheer and move back to Normalville."

The snow is beginning to melt, and there is nothing more depressing than patches of dead grass flattened by weeks of snow, singing with sorrowful, muffled voices, "Where once was light, now darkness falls...."

I broke the 2 on my keyboard. Now it's just a little black stubby thing.

And if that demon cat attacks me one more time, I am going to shove it down an ice-fishing hole and then plug up the hole. Last time I checked, "Heather Flesh" was not on the market at Pet Smart.

I know none of these are the reasons, because I was crying a lot before Christmastime. I think the real reason is that I am going insane. And I'm okay with that, as long as I don't know I'm insane when I finally go insane. My mother's grandmother went insane and sang hymns non-stop, clapping and dancing up and down the halls. I would like to be that kind of insane. Actually, that kind of sounds like me, anyway. So...I guess that's it, then. Either that or I've been abducted by aliens. Either option sounds pretty probable.

reason to rejoice

2010-12-24T11:41:00.001-05:00

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. - 1 Peter 1:3-9

a man in a santa beard playing christmas carols on his saxophone.

snowflakes softly and coldly landing on my cheek.

the smell of cinnamon from german pretzel vendors.

i'm not capitalizing any of my words because that's what artsy creative people do.

and because my hair is short now i feel i should be more artsily creative.

therefore i'm going to start making up words.

like artsily.

my favorite picture of my family, because why is mom looking off into the distance?

Merry Christmas Eve to all.

welcome, welcome, fa hoo ray moos

2010-12-10T22:21:00.002-05:00

Next week is going to be great.

Tuesday I'm getting my hair cut, short. To the guys who have told me that girls with short hair are unattractive, I say, just wait.

Wednesday are double brand new episodes of Psych. USA. 10/9c. Wait for iiiiiiiit.

Thursday I'm taking my parents into Chicago to see White Christmas on Broadway. HOW. STOKED. AM. I. Dad doesn't know yet. I told him to clear his schedule for Thursday, and sometimes I pretend to slip up and accidentally give away the surprise. "I hope the weather's nice for when we go skiing next week - oops!" He has no idea the stemming and the plotzing and the shushing that's in store.

Next weekend I'm taking my final trip to KY to pick up my car and move the rest of my stuff into my duplex, affectionately nicknamed Mab (shortened from Mabsoot Manor, "mabsoot" meaning "happy" in Hebrew), before the final move-in after New Year's. Sometimes I very much wish I were still eight and adulthood is a long way off. Then other times I remember times like these and I'm ready:

And on my way back from KY I'm stopping by someone I haven't seen in far too long, for some quality Christmas cheer and friendship. We're going to go ice skating, hold hands, build gingerbread houses, and then...we'll snuggle.

I cannot wait.

"dear" old books

2010-12-02T12:11:00.002-05:00

I walked into the used bookstore that my coworker Ashley had called "odd." I had only been there a couple of times before and hadn't noticed anything particularly odd about it. But I remembered Ashley's statement yesterday as I stepped inside.
"Hi," I greeted the lady at the wooden counter just inside the door. Her salt and pepper hair fluffed out on the sides like Christopher Lloyd. "My dad brought in a bunch of boxes of my books the other day and said I had some store credit."
"Oh, yes," the woman said. "You have tons of it. They were in such good condition. You take very good care of your books."
I smiled at her. I know, thought Inner Me. When I was in high school I carried Sense and Sensibility in a Ziploc bag.
She shuffled through some papers in a drawer and found my sheet. "Yup. You have tons." She closed the drawer and looked up at me.

At this point in the story, I would like to introduce you to Inner Me. Inner Me is very blunt, honest, and feeling. Sometimes I wish Inner Me would smother Outer Me with a rag soaked in chloroform, and take over the conversation. Instead, Outer Me's composed, polite, homeschooled interaction takes the form of the following visit to Dear Old Books.

Umm...."Could you tell me how much?"
She shuffled through the papers again and said, "It's a ton. Like $80. Oh, it's not quite that much. $57.50."
"Okay, thanks!"

I walked down the aisles of books. I didn't want more books. The reason I painfully gave away my own books was because I have, in the words of Christopher Lloyd, tons of them. I don't need more books I want to have read but don't want to read sitting on my shelves.

But as I sat on a footstool in the classics section and stared at the books in front of me, there, my own bindings looked back at me with betrayed and lonely faces. I felt what a mother must feel when she hands her baby over to be adopted. How could I explain to them that I couldn't care for them anymore? That hopefully they'd go to a good home with someone who loved them more than I could?

I admit that I looked at my own books more than I looked at possible purchases. I wanted to collect all my lost children and take them back again. "I've made a mistake," I could say. "They weren't supposed to go. I was weak!"

I finally picked up John Steinbeck and went to the counter. A man was there instead, and he looked up my information on his cream-colored computer, in true 90s condition.
"That'll be $3.50," he said.
I slung my purse over my shoulder and froze. What? "But...the credit doesn't count?"
"It takes off half. So a 6-dollar book is $3.50."
"Oh. Oh I see." I looked up at the crack where the wall meets the ceiling and pretending to be calculating something, when inside Inner Me was seething, Are you kidding me? You want me to give you my books AND pay for yours?
"Well, in that case, I don't think I want this book," I said kindly.
He just looked at me.
"Is that okay?" I offered meekly. Is that okay?? You don't need his permission to not be cheated.
He nodded.
"Do you want me to put this back? I know where it was."
"Would you mind?"
YOU ARE A SWINDLER!
I put the book back and walked out the front door, saying, "Thank you," though I have no idea for what. Thank you for taking my books and being willing to take my money, too. Thank you for being rude and having very bad people skills. Thank you for making me want to cry because I am very sensitive to people who look at me with annoyed expressions. By the time I reached my car, Inner Me and Outer Me had melded into one, and I replayed the scenario in my head again, only this time with me demanding all my books back and telling them they are a lame establishment.

The only thing that gets me through it is imagining that my Barnes & Noble classics will go to good homes, maybe to a teenage girl who will obsess over keeping them as pristine as I did, or, better yet, someone who will wear out their covers with repetitive reads.

Ashley was right. And I am never, ever going back into that store. On principle.

Christmas lists

2010-11-30T18:26:00.002-05:00

Men I Would Marry

1. Alton Brown - Not only did he whip up a sweet potato pie in 60 seconds, but he dressed up like a pilgrim and sat on the giant turkey float at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. I admire this about him, as well as the fact that he is brilliant and makes molecules out of Styrofoam and advocates grape juice. Plus he's hilarious.

2. Burton Guster - He plays pretend and goes on adventures for a living, and that is the kind of living I want to be doing. And he can tap dance. And he's hilarious.

I'm not inclined to resign to maturity.

3. Aaron Rodgers - Any man who can maintain his manliness with his face shrouded in yellow deserves a doting wife. Also, according to Sunday's commentator, he's cool like the other side of the pillow. I have no intimation of his current state of sense of humor.

I am manly, even in yellow.

Professions I'd Profess

1. Radio City Rockette - Because they are beautiful and smiley and everything Christmas is wrapped up in their synchronized kicking legs. I particularly loved this year's outfits.

I want legs like these.

2. Foot model - I have particularly lovely feet (once the scars from summer camp heal), and they are way underappreciated by being shoed and socked most of the year.

3. Cheerful tollbooth operator - I usually have to work up the nerve to roll down my window at a tollbooth, because I just know the person I am rolling down my window to is probably not going to make eye-contact with me, and will most likely mumble and take my money with as much joy as if they were taking my kidney stone. I want to be a cheerful tollbooth operator so I can smile at people and wish them a good day and make their long trip seem a little bit shorter.

Places I Would Be

1. Whoville - Because only when living in a snowflake can dressing like candy-canes be every-day attire.

2. The Pie Hole - It's colorful, I love pie, it's probably snowing there, and I think the Pie Maker is a dreamboat.

I am a dreamboat.

3. Wilmore Old Fashioned Christmas - I have spent the past 4 Christmases walking down shop-lined Main Street, watching the tree lighting in the cold, drinking hot chocolate and eating homemade cookies, and singing the Hallelujah Chorus in a giant stain-glass church. This year I will only be there in my heart.

sock day

2010-11-11T18:16:00.001-05:00

Today Wigwam had a sock sale in Sheboygan.

Apparently this is a biannual event that all of eastern Wisconsin knows about. My parents got in on this tradition two years ago and I ended up stealing most of my mom's socks to claim them for my own. They are warm and beautiful and comfortable and my feet toast champagne in celebration whenever I put them on.

So I ventured into Sheboygan to find this sock sale, all by myself. Google maps told me where to go, but when I pulled into the parking lot, I stopped the car in front of a giant warehouse and bent my head to peer out the windshield. A steady stream of people exited through a door with no handle on the outside, all of them carrying unmarked brown paper bags. I watched them for a few seconds, to make sure they didn't look like they were brainwashed or zombies or pale (a sure indication that a vampire had just feasted on them). They looked normal enough.

I parked and walked toward the entrance. An old lady, waddling and wearing a fleece jacket with pastel wolves on it, walked in front of me and I used her as a source of comfort, because nobody would attack me or kidnap me or try to suck my blud if I stood close enough to an old lady. (My reasoning is just flawless.)

I walked through the door and down a hallway, where I felt like muttering, "Walkin' the Mile, walkin' the Green Mile," and hoped I did not meet the same end. And when the hallway ended, I stopped and my eyebrows said to my hairline, "I'm coming to meet you." Aisles formed by open boxes filled a large, hallow warehouse, and dozens of people filed up and down the aisles, stopping occasionally to bend at the waist and dig through piles of socks.

I laughed.

And then I dove in.

If you have never dug through a cardboard box full of wool socks, I suggest you do so. It is a humbling yet strangely satisfying experience, much akin to what I assume pigs feel when they hunt for truffles. I've never asked one. But next time I see one, wearing my Wigwam socks, I know we'll exchange glances, and I'll smile, and the pig will nod, and we'll walk away with a bond that anyone who has not dug for socks or truffles will not understand.

At first I was too self conscious to dunk my head in a box, and casually walked down the aisles, surveying the piles from a safe distance. I stopped in front of one, and bent a little to swish some socks around noncommittally. Everyone else had their own individual boxes to fill with socks. And people walked around like chickens trying to decide which coup they wanted to nest in. And when I realized that I couldn't possibly look more ridiculous than the rest of these people, and that the women wearing shirts with cupcakes made from puffy paint weren't going to judge me, I stooped my head into a box and dug with claws of a raptor.

And with my head in a box, I listened to the conversations of the people around me.
"Do you think Tommy would fit into a large?" One lady said.
Another couple walking side-by-side surveyed their box. "I've already got enough for the kids...." Oh, what a happy Christmas those children are going to have.

Dear Santa,
This Christmas I would really like some socks. I will be an extra good boy if you can make them Wigwam. Please give the skateboard and iPod Touch to some other child with less ambition. Sincerely, Johnny

One young lady shuffled through a box of socks and frustratedly said into her cell phone, "Well how is he supposed to keep his job if he forgets to tell people what's wrong with their ears?"

I hope "he" is not a doctor, and that I have never gone to him.

In the end I walked out of the door with no handle on the outside, carrying an unmarked brown paper bag full of socks. I feel like a true Eastern Wisconsinite. And my feet are pouring the bubbly as we speak.

predicaments of people persons

2010-11-03T23:27:00.001-04:00

Sometimes when I'm driving by myself, I make friends with other drivers to lessen my loneliness. I pick a car to caravan with and pretend that it shares in mutual companionship. Sometimes I name it.

Today I passed a purple semi and it tooted a few abrupt honks at me. This is not the first time I have been honked at by a semi. It happens at least once a road trip. I can never understand why. Is my tire flat? Is my gas lid indecent? Is there a tuxedoed man clinging to the roof of my car? I assume that must be it, because only truck drivers from their perched altitude could have such a clear view of the top of my car, right? It certainly cannot be that they're honking at me flirtatiously, because today as I sat in my Camry listening to Michael Buble in my plaid pajamas and with my stuffed bear sitting on my lap, I'm pretty sure I did not give off the "hey, I'm flirty" vibe.

I realized about 45 minutes later, however, that that purple semi was still in my rearview mirror. I had faithfully employed cruise control the entire time, so my speed never left 75, but the purple semi, whom I decided to name Grape, was fluctuating in speed. He came up beside me and passed in front of me. I didn't mind, since I was lonely and Michael Buble ONLY sings about being in love. (I think "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You" is a horrible concept.)

However, Grape's speed remained inconsistent, and I eventually pulled out to pass him again. Again, he honked. Okay. What's the deal? Is there toilet paper sticking out of my tailpipe? He couldn't possibly see into my car from his height, and think that I'm an attractive lass. Maybe he's lonely, too, I thought, and recognizes that we're in a caravan! I've never had another car actually acknowledge our automotive symbiosis. This was so special.

I had just drunk 3/4 of a tall Starbucks's Thanksgiving blend, and my bladder was ripe. But if I got off to pee, I wouldn't be driving with Grape anymore. Mom called, and I asked her if semi trucks ever honked randomly at her. She said no, that she had never been honked at by a semi. I still thought innocently that Grape was just honking in communion, when he drove up on my left to pass me. I looked over and he waved at me in an odd way, wiggling his fingers as if he was telling me to fall behind. I pretended it was a friendly wave and hung up with my mom.

I am incredibly ignorant and this is all very embarrassing. I am going to die at a very, very young age, unless I stop believing that everyone sees life as innocent frolics through meadows of daffodils, like I do.

Well, the lanes widened into 3, and Grape pulled up with a lane in between us, so that when I looked over at him, he said something (I can't read lips, bucko), and motioned backwards with his thumb. I, in confusion, and to myself, said, "What?" Then a truck sidled up in between us, and I pretended that I tragically got swept away in traffic, separating us after over an hour of driving together. Really I stepped on the gas and maneuvered through cars in an attempt to get very, very far away. Then my brother called, who had apparently been told by my mother that I'd made a friend with a trucker.

"Actually, he tried to talk to me, so I drove away," I explained. I could still see him in my rearview mirror, several cars behind me.
"Yeah. Have you ever seen Joy Ride?" Brandon said. "The trucker tracks him down--"
"But his truck is purple." Nothing associated with purple could be threatening! Barnie, Asbury University, eggplant....
"--and he rips off his jaw."
The tips of my eyebrows had met in the center of my forehead. "Now I'm scared."
"Yeah."
"He seemed friendly!"
"They all do."

Fear had heightened my need to pee, but I was terrified of getting off at an exit with Grape still in sight. I seriously thought about whether I could drive the remaining 2 1/2 hours home in a wet seat, if I just peed where I sat. I would rather have to buy an entirely new car because it smelled like urinated Thanksgiving blend than to die.

I kept driving, and eventually I lost sight of Grape. He was long gone, as far as I could tell, and I got off at a stop to use the bathroom, scanning lines of semi trucks to make sure Grape wasn't one of them. I drove home thinking a few things. 1.) What kind of desperate person tries to hook up with a random person on the highway, from two different vehicles? (It gives a whole new meaning to speed dating. ha, I just came up with that.) 2.) What kind of naive person thinks that when a trucker honks at her, he's simply delighted to have a driving buddy? 3.) There is a time and a place for friendliness, imagination, and child-like faith in the human race. It is not while driving alone through Chicago next to a semi truck driven by a strange man.

And they lived lonely women, for all eternity.

2010-10-25T20:43:00.002-04:00

I don't like Jane Austen. And I've read 4 1/2 of her novels, and only liked one (see below), so I have a right to this opinion. Perhaps I'm lacking in proper breeding, or intelligence, or a heart. Whatever the reason, I don't like her.

And I feel the same for the movies made about her books or about her. Do modern-day women have no better use of their time than to use it swooning over men in ruffles who fall in love with women who aren't even lovable? And, according to Jane Austen, in order to make a truly great story:

If anything drastic is to happen in the plot, it must be raining.
The most honorable, respectable, and noble men must have very, very wicked relatives.
An annoying woman who talks too much is necessary to say uncomfortable things at awkward moments.
Some sort of secret about the hero must be revealed that threatens the heroine's happiness with him!
But all will be cleared up in the end so that the hero comes out even more heroic than before.
The heroine has no wealth, and this is a great conundrum as to whether the hero can love her anyway. Which he either does, or doesn't and therefore is not the hero and the hero swoops in gallantly at the end and the heroine realizes she's loved him all along.

However, I have to confess that I have been watching - and reading - a lot of Jane Austen recently. Yes, I know. I have nothing better to do with my time than swoon over men in ruffles who fall in love with women who aren't even lovable. And I have been doing a lot of swooning, especially over this ruffled man:

Here Mr. Tilney is saying, "I am sarcastic and mocking, but also capable of great emotion and passion. Love me."

I like Northanger Abbey so much because it's funny. The whole novel is basically poking fun at itself. And if any other man had played Mr. Tilney in the movie, I don't know if I would enjoy it so much. I say "enjoy" because watching the movie is an ongoing process for me. Like a remote-control all-you-can-eat buffet of witticisms.

There are great dangers in watching/reading too much Jane Austen, I've discovered. One (and by "one," I mean single females, like me) will begin to expect reality to follow the rules of Jane Austen, instead of the rules of, well, reality. According to Jane Austen, in my life I should expect:

A man, possibly up to 20 years older than me, will ride 50 miles on horseback to confess his undying love for me even while having no idea if I return his affections.
If I have curls around my face and am seen by candlelight, men will love me without knowing anything about my personality.
Poetic thoughts will be narrated in a British accent while I look at the landscape and heavily sigh. "Life will never be the same, but hopefully my heart will mend. Oh, will I ever see Philip again?" ("Philip" being the name of the argyle sock I can't find. Its mate, Rosalind, is lonely, and my feet are cold.)

I need to stop watching these things because I'm beginning to think like this, and this is bad. If only I had a rich relative or relation to take me under his or her wing to some foreign place for a few months so I could be introduced to good and bad people that will alter my life and fortunes forever.....Is that too much to ask?

adventures in nannying

2010-10-19T16:00:00.001-04:00

I saw this as my friend's Facebook status today:

"An adventure is only an inconvenience, rightly considered. And an inconvenience is only an adventure, wrongly considered." -G.K. Chesterton

I would say that yesterday was an inconvenience that I rightly considered, but then I realized it was more than an adventure. It was a harrowing escapade.

The day started as any other. William got up from his nap, giggled when I used cold wet-wipes on his bum, and cheerily waved his hands in the air as I put him in his high-chair to eat some sliced strawberries. Then the doorbell rang. The doorbell has never rung, and as I walked toward the door, the first thing I saw through the window was a badge. For some reason I automatically racked my brain for anything that I could be in trouble for. The only thing I could think of was that I was parked on the grass. Am I getting a citation for parking on the grass? But it's our grass!

It was the sheriff, and I propped the door open with my foot as he asked if I'd heard any strange noises last night. Reason number one for watching too many detective shows: My thoughts weren't gasping at what crime might've taken place last night, but instead were occupied with why this "sheriff" didn't seem to have better people skills, and whether he was really the criminal in disguise trying to decifer if there'd been any witnesses to his crime.

I told him I was just babysitting, and he'd have to come back later to ask the real residents.
"What is their last name?" He whipped open his pad of paper and tucked his badge away.
I told him, hoping I wasn't spelling out their death.
Then Rajah, their bengal cat (which is half domesticated cat and half leopard, in case you didn't know), bolted out the door between my legs.
"Rajah!" I called in distress, as if he would stop running at the sound of his name and return sulkingly, muttering under his breath, "Nobody ever lets me do want I want to do...."

So, in turn, I bolted out after him. I whisked past the sheriff on the front steps, running through the neighbor's grass in my socks, in 50-degree weather.

"Don't chase him, he'll come back!" The sheriff called after me. My thoughts weren't rationalizing, "Maybe he's' right," but instead, "I hope he doesn't steal William, and I hope William isn't choking on strawberries."

I didn't know what to do! Rajah just kept running farther and farther away, and the pine needles in the grass poked my thinly-covered feet. So I came back to the house, and apologized to the sheriff for running away. He apologized for making me let the cat out, and we ended on good terms. As he turned to leave, I asked after him, "Is there anything we should be concerned about?"

"No, no," he said, because policemen usually have a habit of wanting you to feel safe, even when you aren't. "It was a car parked outside...the street...it had nothing to do with the house." I nodded, as if I understood what he was trying to say. Again with the people skills. What was a car parked outside? Which street? This house? In other words, he could've smiled politely, tipped an invisible cowboy hat, and said, "You needn't worry your pretty little head, ma'am. I'm not going to tell you anything."

When I got back inside, William's hand was halfway in his mouth and his bib splattered with strawberry juice. He looked at me as if to say, "Whatcha been doin'?" So I put my shoes on and ran out the back door. I found Rajah a couple yards away, his head stuck in a pile of brush. I grabbed him from behind and tucked him under my arm.

Then he growled at me, and hissed angrily, and turned around and attacked my forearm with his teeth. I think saying "ow" is probably the stupidest habit the human race has passed on through the years, because what does "ow" even signify? Nonetheless, I shouted, "OW!" and tried to keep his undomesticated teeth from piercing my flesh any more.

"Rajah is an evil cat," I told William, walking in the house. William looked unconcerned. I opened the basement door and threw Rajah down the steps. "You think about what you've done!" I told him. I surveyed the scratches on my arm, two of which were drawing blood. If I get cat-scratch fever and die, I want this blog entry read at my funeral.

After the strawberries, William and I went to the park. On the way there, I made him repeat after me. "I will not eat sand," I said. William gurgled. I considered it good enough.

But William did eat sand, and reason number 2 for having watched too many detective shows: The jeep parked on the street by the park gave me the heeby-jeebies, and I imagined some guy finding out the police had talked to me about last night and was now waiting to pounce. I walked past the jeep on the way back to the house, and a lone man sat inside with a bluetooth in his ear. I imagined he probably said something like, "She's leaving the park now. I'm in pursuit." Do criminals use cop-terms? I only ever hear these things from the detective standpoint, so I don't know. But the entire walk home I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't following me.

Today nothing was remiss, and my cat wounds show no signs of gangrene. And William and I even dressed alike. Does this mean we spend too much time together? Or that 23-year-olds shouldn't wear overalls?

prudent microscopes

2010-10-17T10:18:00.000-04:00

I came across my writing notebooks from sophomore and junior years. Reading through them made me miss my writing classes, and the things they made me squeeze out of my imagination like paste that doesn't look appealing, but ends up adding a bounty of flavor to the main dish.

I don't know what the prompt was for this poem, but I don't remember writing it a'tall, and it makes me giggle:

(written April 2008)

Back on Uranus,
we eat squirrel.
On earth, they're cute and furry.
I saw a girl
run over a squirrel
with her car
while using my laser vision
to toast my albino squirrel
(the white meat is healthier).
From within closed windows
I heard her scream
and saw the tires
absorb the shock
of the little lifeless body.
She kept driving,
I assume she cried,
and I retrieved
the dead squirrel for dessert.

I usually write much more serious poetry, on my own. But for writing classes I always wrote goofy things, because I was too afraid of criticism. Once I wrote a poem I absolutely loved, and was told I had to change everything about it because of "pathetic fallacy" and "archaic language." Why must there be rules to poetry?

This is the most original version of the poem I could find, having edited it to death to please the masses (aka my writing professor). I wish I still had the original, as it was my favorite. But this one will have to do:

On A February Walk (written February, 2008)

A tree branch creaks a sad, sullen moan,
a lone, tired voice in the midst of a roar.
Blustered and blown, the clouds, thick above
are sick with a gray that drifts down in small pellets
of snow that won't stick to a ground, soggy brown,
so they circle around, in careless, cold dances.

The branches are bare, with not even a coat
of ice that would care, in its unfeeling way,
to lend beauty in bleakness to a sad, creaking tree
that, in its meekness, creaks not to be heard,
but to let out the pain of its old, wooden joints
that burns with cold fire and subsides to rekindle.

Oh, winter, with winds that brutally blow,
lend me some snow in what compassion you own
to coat all that's ugly in a blanket of white
and mute my trite groans, lonely and bitter.
For somehow, to tread upon glistening flakes
makes the walk less despondent to take.

If you want, you can visit the place this poem was written. Just take a jaunt to Wilmore (some of you may already be there) and hop on my favorite college campus. The tree's the big one right in front of the steps of Morrison and, when the leaves aren't there to rustle when the wind blows, you can hear the branches creaking so sadly that the tree deserves a poem written about him. (Yes, poet scholars, I referred to the tree as he.) I listened to it on my way to class and sat on a bench with cold fingers gripping the pencil as I jotted down lines to remember later, when I was warmer and could write more.

I miss being a writer.

summer, fall, time to go

2010-10-13T20:20:00.000-04:00

Today I sat on a bench in the middle of a park behind my house. I've walked through this park when the summer sun is turning everything green through the flesh of the leaves, and when the parking lot is frozen over with ice so thick I could skate on it in my boots. (And I have.) Today the ground was covered in brown crunchy leaves, and the naked trees rattled in the wind. I thought about seasons.

I had just gotten off the phone with my dear friend and sister, calling from Namibia, Africa. We've been through a lot of seasons together, from summers spent watching The Office while eating brownies or hiking up mountains in Utah, to traipsing through Columbus strung in Christmas lights and watching Little Women off-Broadway. Different seasons bring different things.

I was introduced to "chider" last week, or half chai and half apple cider. It is my new comfort drink. And it goes perfectly with autumn. I just drank a mugful and my tummy is now satisfyingly plump. Also, I am missing Zachary's candy pumpkins. I used to buy them by the carton for $1.88 at Nicholasville's Wal-Mart, but last year they weren't there, and I have yet to find my favorite football-watching snack anywhere. Don't even try to replace them with Brach's. Ick, Brach's. It's a Zachary pumpkin or it's no pumpkin at all.

THIS JUST IN. I'm going on a candy pumpkin hunt tomorrow. I'll let you know if it's fruitful.

The only thing I do not like about autumn is Halloween. In fact, I hate it. I could give you some religious lecture about the origins of Halloween being pagan and evil, but, frankly, I don't know the origins of Halloween. I've heard mutterings of them over the years. But even if I knew nothing about them at all, Halloween, to me, is unpleasant. Why graveyards and witches and spiderwebs seem fun, I don't know. Why people string orange lights from their houses and hang ghosts from their trees, I do not understand.

And Monday as I rode my bike back from the gas station with a gallon of milk making my fingers go numb, the little 4-year-old boy in my neighborhood rode his in front of my house.
"Can you ride with me back to my house?" He asked me. "There's something on my porch that's scary and I don't like going home alone."
So I rode with him down the street, and on his porch was a tall zombie skeleton in a black cloak hanging from the ceiling. The little boy eyed it warily as he parked his bike. Why does anyone want to celebrate things like that? If you celebrate Halloween, tell me why. I want to know the appeal.

breathe on me, breath of God

2010-10-09T18:45:00.000-04:00

This is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. I've never even seen Blood Diamond, because the one time I sat down to watch it, I fell asleep. But today as I baked a banana cake with the TV on in the background, this scene made me still myself in the middle of my kitchen.

I don't know what Blood Diamond is about, other than that it takes place in Africa. I do know that the African man traveling with Leonardo DiCaprio had his son kidnapped, who was then made to believe that his father was the enemy. So at this point in the movie, his son pulls a gun on the two of them, and his father just looks at him. "Look at me," he says to his son. And, when he has his attention - this is the part that captivated me - he tells him with complete authority and conviction, looking straight into his eyes, exactly who he is.

"You are Dia Vandy," he says, "of the proud Mende tribe. You are a good boy, who loves soccer and school. Your mother loves you so much. She waits by the fire making plantanes and red palm oil stew with your sister N'Yanda and the new baby. The cows wait for you. And Babu, the wild dog who minds no one but you. I know they made you do bad things, but you are not a bad boy. I am your father who loves you. And you will come home with me and be my son again."

I love this. I feel like this is what God wants with each one of us. He wants to look us in the eye and tell us exactly who we are. Can you imagine what that moment would be like? To have the God who created you stand in front of you and say, "This is who you are." How different would it be from our image of ourselves and others's images of us? To live only hearing the voice of God speaking the truth of your identity into you like breath into lungs. I want to live like that.

"The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice." - John 10:3-5

book review

2010-10-06T16:20:00.001-04:00

I have a problem with children's books. I have a difficult time when someone mentions Goodnight Moon and a chorus of "I love that book!" arises. What about that book is so lovable? How is saying goodnight to inanimate objects at all captivating, adventurous, or even endearing? It requires no imagination, whatsoever. My child and I can easily say goodnight to everything in our room without paying $12.99.

The 11-month-old I nanny has two favorite books. Now, to be fair, I don't remember what books (if any) interested me as an 11-month-old. I do remember, as a little girl, loving certain books. I would crawl up on my grandmother's lap and have her read The Little Red Hen to me, which taught me to have helping hands. (I can still hear my grandmother's voice reading that book, so many years later.) I also loved The Grouchy Lady Bug, which was colorful, and taught me how to tell time. If You Give a Moose a Muffin had me in stitches, I would giggle so hard. It also made me imagine sometimes that I had a moose. My favorite of all time was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. But that wasn't until high school.

But William's two favorite books are Trucks! and Cat. The titles say it all, I think. And perhaps you'd think, in the fashion of Goodnight Moon, they'd be painfully simple and redundant. Well, they are redundant. But instead of opening Trucks! and telling William to point out the semi truck, or the pickup truck, I have to turn the page and say in a cutesie voice, "Can you find the giant excavator, Will? Ooh, where's the skid steer? Yep, that's the backhoe loader! Good boy!" Puh-leeze. What happened to Make Way for Ducklings?

Then comes his book about cats. I like cats. This book has pictures of real cats, and it rhymes, too. I like rhymes. And on each page it shows cats doing things, with descriptions like, "Cool cat, copy cat, furry cat, bald cat," and more. But then, I turned the page and I saw this:

I wasn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or shut the book and bury it in the backyard. That is one of the most terrifying images I've ever seen. I would've had nightmares had I seen this. In fact, I think I do have nightmares because of this. I'm having one right now, and it gets worse every time I scroll up.

All right, perhaps I'm being a tad unjust. I mean, the book about trucks has little windows that William likes to open, and some of the cats's tails are fluffy. I understand that babies probably could not sit through a reading of Where the Wild Things Are if there was not something to tangibly discover. Their little minds aren't apt to discover things within them, yet. But also to be fair, anyone could write a children's book. I'm going to write one about a little boy who died from eating sand. It'll be textured and everything. And maybe then William will stop eating sand.

"A fellow can't live on books."

2010-10-02T09:17:00.002-04:00

Ah, but Theodore Laurence, he can try.

Over the past four years, I have tried to squeeze in desired pages of desired texts over Christmas breaks and summer breaks, and sometimes over no breaks at all, which left me feeling guilty and slightly ill-prepared when the test rolled around. But now, nobody is telling me what to read, and I have two full bookshelves, the contents of which I've only probably read one-third.

The logical side of me tells myself to read something I haven't before. But a wise friend once told me that life's too short to read something you don't want to just because "you should." So I'm going to read all of my favorites again. Some I can't remember why they're my favorites, because it's been so long since I last read them. Others I would forget only if someone beheaded me. So...never, let's hope.

Here's my list of favorites-to-read-again. And autumn is the perfect time to begin a new (or old) read.

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins. I read this three Christmases ago. It's 600 pages; I read it in three days. Besides the fact that I couldn't put it down, I remember very little about it. This warrants another late-night binge on 19th-century mystery.
Howard's End, by E.M. Forster. This book instantly made Forster one of my favorite authors. I devour his dialogue and wonder at his display of human nature. He's so real.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Once, in high school, I finished this book, then flipped back to page one and started it all over again. I love that Harper Lee only wrote one book. She had a story to tell, and she told it. She wasn't writing for the masses. And that makes her story beautifully, meaningfully, and simply told.
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. Of course. How could this book not be on this list? Yesterday I told the 11-month-old I was babysitting, "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again! No, nor any of my folk!" And that's when I knew it was time for another GWtW reading.
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkein. I read The Lord of the Rings once a year, for four years straight. I sat in front of the fireplace and tuned out planet earth for the Middle one. This year's reading of TLotR was for a class and gave the reading a little different taste. But I haven't touched The Hobbit in years, and another fireplace-adventure with Tolkein is in order.
I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. I was so delighted in this book that I couldn't believe it wasn't more popular. It's funny, adventurous, and somewhat philosophical.
An Absolute Gentleman, by R.M. Kinder. This book is seriously weird, and horrible, and yet so incredibly good that I could not put it down. Well, it's about a serial killer, from inside the head of the serial killer. So, not so good. But the author is incredible. And after you read it (if you read it), look up the author online. She is not who you'd imagine to write a book like this.
My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du'Maurier. Another of my favorite authors. I recently reread Rebecca, and her genius in crafting such a story just amazes me. Maybe you think I'm silly for thinking so. But I love her, and I think she's genius.
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. I wish I could explain in a convincing way why this book is my favorite book, above all. A million little things that add up to one big love. Right now I'm reading a copy printed in 1880, merely 12 years after it was originally published. Can you believe it? Collectors would probably tell me to put it on a shelf so as not to lessen its worth. But it was meant to be read, and I can't help loving the smell that wafts up to me when I turn a page. Inside is inscribed, "Emma L. Greenbery from Santa Claus 1892." How could I not hold this in my hands? I like pretending I'm reading it after it's first come out. And I love this story so, so much.

So there you go. Read away. And happy autumn, again.

happy first day of autumn

2010-09-25T10:42:00.002-04:00

In the following paper, I will prove that it is, indeed, autumn.

First, the leaves are changing. Leaves do not usually change unless it is autumn. Or unless they're dying. Which is what they're doing during autumn, only first they turn pretty red, yellow, and orange colors. That is what they're doing now.

Secondly, some nights I have to wear my bed socks. My bed socks are orange and thick, and they sit by my bed because I often have trouble sleeping when my feet are cold. During the summertime, sometimes I saran wrap ice around my feet so I can sleep. But I can always tell it's becoming winter when my feet get cold on their own. Just kidding about that first part.

And speaking of bed, thirdly: I put my penguin flannel sheets on. You know it's getting cold at night if I pull out the flannel sheets - and the ones with penguins on them, no less! (They're drinking hot chocolate and ice fishing. It's adorable.)

Fourthly, I have the intense desire to watch movies like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. If you've never listened to the Little Women soundtrack, you must. I'm pretty sure Thomas Newman took the music from falling leaves to create the first track.

I consider The Family Stone a precursor to the Christmas season, and I usually have my first viewing (I say "first" because I have many viewings in the last few months of the year) in October, and it's almost October. So, fifthly, it's almost time to watch The Family Stone, which means it's almost the Christmas season, and what comes right before the Christmas season? Autumn.

Sixth: Tea. Drinking tea makes me think of sitting in literature classes and wearing scarves. My favorite teas right now are Good Earth's, because of their fragrance, flavor, and inspirational quotes in each tea package. I recently had one that said, "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. Rodin (1840-1917)" God speaks through tea.

And finally, on the seventh, God rested, because it's football season. The word "autumn" in Nflese roughly translates to "pig skin sailing through crisp blue skies." There is no greater feeling than sitting in one's pajamas in front of a football game on a Sunday afternoon. Wrong; there are several greater feelings. But this one is really good.

In conclusion, it's autumn. You may not feel it wherever you are, but the calendar says it is, and so do I.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. - George Eliot

do not tell me what I can and cannot do when I rock

2010-09-18T18:42:00.001-04:00

Three days ago I sat at a traffic light in Lexington, blasting Lifehouse's "Everything" from my speakers, because a.) I love that song, and b.) my windows were down and I wanted to drown out the city sounds. Suddenly out of my peripheral ear I heard a guy's voice, and I looked up to see said guy leaning out of his truck window next to me. I thought it might be a repeat of the time I met my future husband, but it wasn't. This guy was shouting at me, "You have a flat tire."
"I have a flat tire?" I questioned, as if some strange man would lean out his window and shout at me, "Hey, that lady three cars down has a flat tire."
He answered affirmatively, and I thanked him without a good attitude, then drove over to a neighborhood street and called my dad.

Since the tire obviously wasn't completely flat (seeing as how I didn't even notice it was lacking air), Dad told me to take it to a gas station and fill it with air, then drive to a Wal-Mart or some other mechanical place and ask them to fix it. So I pulled up to a Shell gas station and saw a big sign that said, "Air, 75 cents." George Harrison was not kidding when he wrote "Taxman." It's air. It's all around us. We breathe it every day; sometimes more than once. I should've just placed my mouth over the nozzle on the tire and exhaled really hard. (You can tell I know very little about cars, and it's about to get a great deal more obvious.)

As I lifted the gun (because it had a trigger), I saw a sign warning, "Injury may occur. If overfilled, tire may explode." I stared at the sign with the weapon in my hand, my eyes wide, watching a slideshow in my mind of the possible ways I could be decapitated or permanently blinded by my exploding tire.

Did you know they make gauges to determine how much air needs to be in a tire? I didn't.

I kept one hand in front of my face, as if that would protect me from the rubbery shrapnel, and squeezed air into the tire, occasionally stepping back to measure its rotundness against the other healthy tires. "Eyeballing" is a very accurate method that will soon make it into all the indexes of university science textbooks.

Wal-Mart's tire service was closed, but the greasy people there told me to try Chevron.
"I don't know where that is," I replied.
"Across from KFC."
"We have a KFC?"

On my way down the street Dad called, and I told him I filled the tire with air and was on my way to Chevron.
"Did you use the gauge to see how much air you put in?" Dad asked.
Suddenly I remembered that long proby thing with numbers up and down it that I used to use in the car when I was bored and pretending to be a doctor. But I very slowly answered, "No." He could've told me that that was for checking air BEFORE I checked the air.

I found the Chevron (and the KFC), whose sign was almost unreadable behind the grime. I pulled up to the garage and stepped out of my car as a tattooed man with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth and a gut that made his pants sag walked up to me. I should learn to at least pretend like I know what I'm doing in situations like this, but instead I said something like, "I don't know what I'm doing." I probably mentioned that my dad told me to come here, too, and anytime a girl mentions that her dad told her to do something, the potential to be hit on or treated like a child increases by a baker's dozen.

Cigarette Man (shortened to Cig) felt my tire, measured the tire pressure with a gauge (glad somebody told him), and said, "You got a leak, baby girl." Baby girl? Yeah, I definitely shouldn't have mentioned my dad. He took off my tire, chatting amiably in an equally grimy southern accent (I found out he hates Wisconsin and that he was in "the service," though which service I'm not really sure). Then he sprayed soapy water on the tire to find out where the leak was, and I was fascinated by the spewing bubbles coming from the hole. Finally he stuffed a large metal probe into the hole to make it bigger (seems counter-productive, doesn't it?), before twisting a long soggy cloth that looked like a pre-chewed Slim Jim around some plyers and shoving it into the hole. Problem solved.

Cig put my tire back on and told me, "I'll give this to you for ten instead of fifteen," he said.
"Oh, okay," I said, taken off'guard. "Thanks!" Yeah, definitely a good idea to mention my dad.

But when I went to pay for the tire, the lady at the front desk heard what I'd gotten done and said, "Ten dollars, sweetie." Really. Ten instead of fifteen, huh, Cig? I'm sure.

end rant

2010-09-14T17:14:00.001-04:00

Turns out I didn't have to wait very long to be noticed, and after our eyes met in the parking lot of Kroger, the Man from Church (so much more romantic than "The Man from Snowy River") recognized the treasure I am and asked me out. But I knew that "Do you like coffee?" was his way of asking "Will you make me coffee every morning for the rest of our lives?" It's only a matter of time before we name our first child Laurence (for three reasons: 1.) It's my mother's maiden name, and I like her side of the family; 2.) Laurence comes from my favorite book, Little Women, which I'm in the process of reading for the 6th time; 3.) Joshua Laurence Chamberlain won the battle of Little Roundtop at Gettysburg, and he's my favorite character in The Killer Angels) and move into a cute townhouse with floral wallpaper. I may as well start sewing my aprons while I have all this free time!

Just kidding. About all of it. (Except why I want to name my son Laurence.) We don't even have a Kroger. But I'm thinking of adding some fictional elements to my blog posts from now on, to make them more interesting and entertaining. Also, the apple pie turned out fine and my family has consumed almost all of it.

rant

2010-09-12T15:29:00.001-04:00

I enjoy being a girl, most of the time. Like when I can wear frilly dresses and headbands with fabric flowers on them, and sew and knit and bake and watch Gilmore Girls and swoon over how tall Dean is. And when I get to smell like plumeria body lotion and paint my fingernails and sing Ingrid Michaelson songs on my guitar. These things, and many more, I enjoy about being a girl.

But sometimes I don't enjoy being a girl. Like when it's 90 degrees outside and my shirt is soaked with sweat while all the guys romp around half naked. Or when we're camping, and it's raining outside the adirondack, and it's 3 o'clock in the morning, and I have to pee. But mostly, I don't enjoy being a girl when I have to sit there and just wait for some guy to notice me and, even more importantly, do something about it.

I was thinking about this today before church and, I confess, continued to think about it during worship (even though I was helping lead...is that a sin?). My brother had just been telling me about the guy at church that he thinks would be good for me, and all I could do was sit there and say, "Well isn't that nice?" Because whether I agree with him or not, there's nothing I can do about it. Guys may complain that it's nerve racking to ask a girl out, but, in our defense, it's also awfully difficult to sit there and wait. And sometimes we wait for a long time.

I love gender roles. But if man's role is "the pursuer" and woman's is "the pursued" but the man isn't pursing, then the woman can't fulfill her role, and she's left sitting in a church pew sighing because there's nothing she can do about it. Pretty helpless, huh. At least when a guy decides he likes a girl, he can ask her out. When a girl likes a guy....

I came home from church and baked an apple pie. It looked perfect - till I dropped it on the floor. Then I sat in a slump in my frilly dress and painted fingernails next to the mass of apples and cinnamon and wanted to cry. Maybe I should become a feminist.

domesticity

2010-09-05T17:29:00.000-04:00

"Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and...he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma...." - Genesis 8:20-21a

The sacrifice:

The pleasing aroma:

And this is just the beginning.

starting out small

2010-09-04T11:25:00.004-04:00

Recently I've been making a few trips on my bike to the post office (literally a few backyards away from my house). The man there is probably the sweetest man I've ever met. He deserves a blog post all his own, and maybe one day I'll write one about him. He also deserves some baked goods. Something with zucchini, maybe?

One day when I rode my bike to the post office, I decided to explore. I rode down a road surrounded by cornfields and farms (which describes most of Wisconsin and is directionally useless). But straight ahead of me the road went up, I'm pretty sure at a 90-degree angle. At least, it looked mountainous to me. So I turned around and came back.

But today I drove to the post office, in my pajamas and Asbury U sweatshirt (because it's Saturday, it's cold outside, and my packages were too big to fit on my bike), and decided to see what was beyond this mountain. I drove past a couple of kids in knitted hats playing football in their front yard (swelling my heart with unquenchable joy) and pushed the gas peddle down to keep my speedometer's needle from slowly falling, which it did anyway. And when I reached the top, I decided I was going to conquer that hill. On my bike.

I've already checked a few things off my bucket list, which I only add to when I realize there's something I want to do and have the ability to do it. I try to keep it to things I deem possible. And I only started it this summer, so I've actually only added and crossed off two things so far:

1.) Ride a tandem bike
2.) Stand outside Asbury's "awkward relational goodbyes" card door with a boy

And now,

3.) Ride my bike up Mocking Mountain

As I drove on, I planned my training regimen to conquer this mountain before winter. You may think that's plenty of time, but the sky is already turning wintry, and the wind is cold even when the sun is warm. The clouds are great, white, massive fellows with bulbous dark underbellies. And as I topped another hill in my car, I saw the street name, "Pleasant View," and then turned my eyes on one of the pleasantest views I've ever seen.

Hills of grass and corn, sunlit and shadowed by those autumnal clouds, and in the distance, windmills. Dozens of them. It was absolutely beautiful, and I felt inspired to write a poem or read a poem or at least watch Anne of Green Gables. My capacity for beauty is too small for the abundance of creation that God has to offer, and I feel the need to spill it over onto something so my seams don't break. Consider yourself spilled upon.

Training regimen begins TODAY. I'm coming for you, Mocking Mountain.

last night's sunset from the end of my street

"Would you like an adventure now,

2010-09-03T19:12:00.001-04:00

or would you like to have your tea first?" - Peter Pan

August always seems to take forever to end. It's probably because I'm always waiting for something in August. I'm never sad to see it go. This August was no exception.

With one difference: This time I was ending something without beginning something else. I've been fighting "being okay" with this for many months now. Hence all the posts on adventure, by trying to sooth my desire for stability and assurance with prospects of adventure. I realized my desire had not been assuaged* when I watched the series finale of Gilmore Girls today and cried. For one, Gilmore Girls has been over for over three years. Secondly, I didn't even cry the first time I watched the series finale. I can't help that I'm emotional, but even more so** I can't help that I hate goodbyes and endings. Who knows how many arks I could float with my tears the next time I watch The Return of the King. And, like Wendy, John, and Michael, I'm tempted to have my tea first. The truth is, I'm quaking in my boots at the same time I'm praying for adventure.

The woman whose 9-month-old little boy I watch gave me a zucchini today. I can't wait to hack it up and bake it in something. Muffins? Brownies? Bread? The possibilities are endless and my fingers are twitching with glee.

"Peter had seen many tragedies, but he had forgotten them all. He was less sorry than Wendy for Tiger Lily: it was two against one that angered him, and he meant to save her. An easy way would have been to wait until the pirates had gone, but he was never one to choose the easy way."

* Assuaged, along with ardent and sanguine, are some of my favorite words.
** WHY isn't "more so" one word but "nevertheless" is?

what's in an adventure? pt. 2

2010-08-30T09:38:00.001-04:00

Yesterday one of my friends asked me, "What adventures are you engaged in these days?" At the time I had answered that I was in the middle of two fantasy football drafts (Peyton Manning's my QB for both of them - Double Stuf Oreos, anyone?), which is pretty darn adventurous. But if he was asking if I was in the middle of standing atop a mountain in Utah or crashing a jet ski on Lake Erie or spending a homeless day in Atlanta, I wasn't. And I'm not. I think my adventures these days are going to look a lot different than they have for my life in the past.

Adventurous challenge #1: Change.

Then I went down to the potter's house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. Then the word of the LORD came to me saying, "Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel."- Jeremiah 18:3-6

I've only been home for a week, but God is already shining His light into the dark places of my life and character. This is humbling and difficult. Hebrews 12:2 tells us to "fix our eyes on Jesus," and in one of my Bibles I have written next to that verse, "Every morning, wake up and pray, 'Lord, make me more like Jesus. Have mercy on me, because I'm not like Jesus.'" I think I wrote that in one of my theology classes with Dr. Anderson, or maybe at a Vineyard church service. I realize, though, that there is a lot in me that needs to change. And change is an adventure, whether it's happening to you or in you.

And so the first thing I want to challenge you with is to practice. A few months ago I was praying for a relationship to be restored, when it occurred to me that no amount of restoration with an earthly relationship was going to make me feel fulfilled if my Heavenly relationship was off-kilter. The same occurred to me this morning when I read 1 Peter 1:14, which says, "As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance." This came at an interesting moment, since just last night before I fell asleep, another friend of mine asked what was challenging about being home, and I replied, "It's humbling to be obedient to my parents again." But I realized that, as I pray for the Lord to lead me and change me, I can practice obedience to Him with my parents. I can practice selflessness to Him and laying down my pride before Him with those I am least likely to feel selfless and most likely to feel prideful around. How can I be expected to love Jesus if I don't even love those who live in the same rooms as I do? Practice your relationship with Jesus in your relationships with others.

Not easy. But adventures are not easy, right? Not all pony rides in May sunshine. But they're worth it, aren't they?

somebody loves me, I wonder who?

2010-08-26T08:32:00.003-04:00

I woke up at 6 this morning, and now that it's 7:30 I'm thinking about taking a nap. Mom put lavender-colored sheets on my bed, and for some reason they are more appealing to sleep in than those of a different color. Pretty soon it'll be time to put on my flannel sheets with little penguins on them, drinking hot chocolate and going ice fishing, and for this I cannot wait. My teddy bear, Gilbert, also cannot wait. This year marks our eighth anniversary of sharing a bed. Dad took him out of the car upon my arrival home on Monday and said, "He's getting flat." Yes, well, he's lived an adventurous life. Adventures tend to flatten us out over time.

Speaking of adventures, the other day Courtney and I were driving down Broadway, coming out of Lexington on our way back from church. We had our windows down and my arm was casually strewn out the passenger-side window, riding the wind like a seal with wings. I turned my head just in time to see a middle-aged man with a gotee lift his own hand in a friendly wave as his car passed ours. I waved back and said, "Hello." Then I turned to Courtney and asked, "Why did that man just wave at us?"
"I don't know," Courtney answered.
"Do you think it's because I have my hand out the window, and he has his hand out the window?"
"Yeah, it was probably like a mutual 'we both have our hands out the window' type wave."

You know, like when motorcyclists wave as they pass each other, because somehow just because you're both on motorcycles, you have a bond. From now on I'm going to wave at people I walk past, because, Hey! I have legs, and you have legs, and we're both walking on them! What are the odds.

Sometimes Courtney and I are willingly naive.

Well, I picked up Courtney's cell phone to change the background to say something that she'd remember me by, and as I did so, I heard a male voice shout, "859-2415!" I looked up to see Mid-Life Crisis Guy's car beside ours. It was a security vehicle. He was shouting his number out his window. I laughed somewhat shocked, nervous, and delighted all at the same time. He called it out again, and this time I called back, "Are you rich?" He veered right for the turning lane as he called back, "I could be!"

Well. See? All those people who tell you that you don't have to find your mate in college were right. They could be driving down the street in a security vehicle right now, just waiting to desperately shout their phone number into your car. I'm keeping my windows down at all times from now on.

k...now what?

2010-08-23T21:22:00.009-04:00

After driving 9 hours on 2 hours of sleep with an entire summer of non-stop child-caring-adventure behind me, I'm back in Wisconsin. When I pulled into the driveway, Mom came out to tell me there was spaghetti on the stove, Dad came out to tell me my room was the one on the left at the end of the hall, and then they went back inside and I carried all my stuff in while my brother watched football and said hello to me every time I walked passed the room. Welcome home.

Classes started today, and for the first time in four years, I wasn't sitting in a white classroom looking at pastel sheets of paper with the next 4 months of my life printed on them. Graduating is an odd thing. I didn’t ask to graduate. I didn’t really particularly want to graduate. It’s as if you’re sitting down to dinner one day, and some strange person walks into your kitchen and takes the plate of delicious food away from you, and then says, “Congratulations!” And then he walks away, and you’re left sitting there staring at the blank table in front of you, thinking, “Oh. Well…thank you?”

Sometimes I feel kind of numb, sort of frozen, like those dreams that you wake up from and have to figure out whether they were real or not. And when you realize you aren’t really pregnant or your teeth haven’t really fallen out, you feel such a sense of relief and thankfulness that you’re willing to devote your life to playing with children or something else humane in sheer gratefulness for being alive with teeth. Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and realize it was all a dream, and I still have two years left, and I will be flooded with that relief and thankfulness. But I’ve woken up in the morning several dozen times since May 8^th, and I have yet to discover it was a dream. And so I try to figure out how to leave something I never really wanted to end, and live a completely different life, when I really loved the one I had.

I don’t really know how to do that.

I know college is just a chapter, and if the entirety of The Hobbit was one long chapter of Bilbo making tea in Bag End, not only would that be boring and a waste of paper, but then the volumes of adventure to follow never would have been written. The hard part is turning that last page of The Two Towers before the chapter titled, "The Breaking of the Fellowship." I don't know how to face it. And frankly, I feel very much like that giant stone man in The Never Ending Story, who stares down at his empty hands after the huge wind storm carries away the kids he was holding and says, "They slipped right through my fingers." And I don't know how to move on from here.

what's in an adventure?

2010-08-17T09:43:00.004-04:00

A trip by any other name might sound as sweet....but won't be.

I was thinking about adventures this morning as I sat with God at my college roommates' kitchen table. (I can say things like this now, because we have graduated from college, and they're no longer my roommates. Don't I sound adult?) I had just eaten a peanut butter granola bar for breakfast (thanks, former college roomies) and was waiting for God to say something. He sat there, verbally silent, but looking at me with that look on His face like, "You already know what I'm going to say, so I'm just going to raise one eyebrow at you and wait until you sigh resignedly and write it in your journal." You can tell God and I have this "conversation" a lot.

I've been on a few adventures. Enough, anyway, that I've begun to realize what classifies an experience as an adventure. Is it the circumstances? The destination? The people?

I think the only thing that determines what is an adventure and what isn't, is the attitude of the adventurer. Some qualities of an adventurous attitude:

willingness
flexibility
determination
whatever characteristic ducks have when water rolls of their backs
laid-backedness
joy
optimism
chocolate covered raisins

An experience without those things is just something to trudge through, withstand, or tolerate. Experiences with those things are pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. You come out of adventures with nuggets - and scars - that you'll take with you for the rest of your life, changing you and shaping you.

I can't say, like Johnny Cash, that I've been everywhere, man. But where I go doesn't determine my adventure. My cousin Christine, married and with two kids, told me yesterday that she envied my situation. I can go wherever and do whatever, for however long, with whomever. It makes me want to pack all my stuff and move to Wyoming or Maine or Canada, since they have free health care.

But this is where God's knowing expression comes in. And I sigh and write in my journal, because I realize why I'm depressed as I think about the un-stability of my life instead of being excited about its adventure. I answer people's questions with, "I have no idea what I'm doing with my life." And therein lies the splinter in my finger, the gaping gorge I'm balancing precariously on the side of and ready to plunge into at the slightest tremor:

It isn't my life.

I realized that for the past 6 months I've been trying to find a vocation that I'd enjoy but would still be serving God. I'm good at that, AND God's involved! I can go there, AND be with my friends AND serve God! But I have it backwards. If my hands are too full of my life, I can't hold onto His robe. If my ears are too full of my own plans, I can't hear His voice calling to me. I need to surrender my plans, my desires, my will, and then the REAL adventure can begin.

He called Andrew to leave his nets.

He called Peter to walk on water.

Talk about adventure!

Bilbo said it best when he said in The Hobbit that adventures are not all pony-rides in May sunshine. And, as my 12-year-old camper from Africa sang in the sweetest voice I've ever heard, it's not going to be easy to leave. But I feel like Moses in Exodus 33, when he tells the Lord, "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us from here." I'm banking on the Lord's answer here being His same promise to me:

"My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."

pardon me while I chug a gallon of orange juice

2010-08-09T19:55:00.007-04:00

I'm sick. It's the last week of camp, and I'm sick. The doctor today asked me what my symptoms were, and I was expecting her to coddle me and maybe coo a little, or at least put her arm around me and rub my arm. Instead she shoved a swab down my throat to check for strep. I miss my mom.

"Are you congested?"
"Yes."
"All right, let me take a look." Looking. "Yes, it sounds like you're a little stuffy."

Well, yes, I wouldn't have lied.

"Um, yes, a swordfish severed my spine and is stuck between my third and fourth vertebrae."
"Are you lying?"
"Yes. But do you believe that I'm congested?"

On year ago today, I was here:

Dear Utah,
I miss your luscious green hiking trails, blue-faced mountainsides, cool breezes, icy snow-melted water, fields of wildflowers, Presbyterian churches, frozen yogurt shops, symmetrical street numbering system, and best friend:

This afternoon I ventured out of my bed to dinner after a 2-hour nap (my third one of the day). Someone asked me, "Heather, what does this fall bring for you?" I thought that was probably the most adventuresome, expectant, optimistic question I've ever been asked. I like it a lot better than, "What are you doing after this?" What does this fall bring for you? Who knows? I like adventures.

This is me trying to feel optimistic, while feeling very sore-throated, light-headed, homesick, and a little like Huckleberry Finn might've felt when he discovered he was on a boat with a bunch of murderers. I'd rather be with the Widow Douglas, if I had a choice.

I also had a creepy dream the other night that all my campers were sitting in my room waiting to have devotions, and I thought that I had napped through the whole thing. I think it's time for a break now.