One periphrastic tatterdemalion

Wedding update 2012

2012-01-04T09:03:00.007-06:00

Alright!

I realize that no posting is better than sporadic posting when it comes to blogs, but I can't bring myself to give it up just yet. I love my blog, even if I neglect it. I'm not quite ready to let it go.

Wedding planning update:

As D and I have schemed and thought and planned, we've discovered that we have a lot of trouble being serious or sentimental about anything. Weddings are (generally) serious and sentimental events. Trying to develop a ceremony that didn't make me want to roll my eyes and snicker has proved to be a challenge.

My dear Aunt Pauline is officiating. At some point me dad sent me a list of distant (distant) relatives to send wedding announcements to. The list was accompanied by thoughtful comments like, "My aunt Judy's second son", or "Don't worry, he won't come because he doesn't approve of women in ministry". At this point in the planning we were a bit overwhelmed by the number of people on our guest list (we got over it), and figured that this was a perfect way to knock down those numbers a bit. Commit offense. How could we offend the most number of people in one go? Black face, obviously, and D wearing a dress, probably. Instead of favors, tell everyone we made a donation to LAMBDA legal (we still probably will do this) in their names, OR give out condoms with "Ellie and Drew, Holy Matrimony, 3/10/12" on the wrappers. We came up with lots of ideas. We are very clever.

At another point in wedding planning we bought a wedding magazine featuring "real weddings. We noticed an interesting trend in modern "real weddings": there is the overwhelming leaning towards gathering up what the rest of the world would call trash (old suitcases, birdcages, vintage window frames, broken, rusted, or discolored anything) and calling it decor. There seems to be an obligation to decorate your guest book table with a big pile of trash. So, we went to a yard sale and collected the following, which will be proudly displayed on our guest book table: A foot-high, plastic batman bank, a framed illustration of a cow, a large, wooden number three, a ceramic rabbit salt shaker, and a plastic hippopotamus. If you see these things on a table, go leave us a note!

I also spent an embarrassing amount of time agonizing over what to have people throw at us as we leave the wedding. Herbs like lavender and fennel seem to be in and are eco-freindly, birdseed works, bubbles are nice, etc. etc. etc.

And then I thought of the number one thing I would like to see thrown at a wedding: googly eyes. In a perfect world, googly eyes would be biodegradable and, since we're getting married at night, would glow in the dark.

Instead, we are going with sparklers.

We moved over the Christmas holidays and so I am feeling a little behind on planning. I have a to-do list that is so long, but must wait until I actually unpack all those things that I need to do. Guh, wedding planning is not that fun, guys. It's just not.

I recently returned my ear holes to 00 gauge. I have a number of pretty (and fairly expensive) wooden earrings that I have bought over the years in 00 gauge, and I'd like to wear them. So, now that my ears are back where they should be, I have started the search for wedding earrings. I found this.

Firstly, she is adorable and I want to look like her. Secondly, she does custom work, which means I get one of a kind earrings for my wedding. Pretty sweet. You should go look at her page and buy her earrings. Because they are very fun.

My cousin got engaged recently. We're both on pinterest and she is using it to catalogue her wedding thoughts. It's fun to see someone else's wedding take shape and I have realized that we are very different people and that these two family weddings in one year are going to show off the full spectrum of what weddings can be. That's pretty cool, I think.

bells on a hill

2011-11-03T21:03:00.003-05:00

The more wedding planning we do, the less normal I feel.

We went to a bridal expo and came out feeling like the world of wedding planning is full of crazy people.

Or maybe I'm the crazy one.

But are potted plants crazier than cut flowers? And what's wrong with an ipod for music? And so what if I am planning on wearing a $10 skirt from the gap with a bodice I intend to make out of a sheet? The sheet is pretty and I already own it. This is my time, and I intend to take advantage of it by living my dream. Which looks something like this:
Also, how do we feel about fake eye lashes?

ain't it strange that I can dream?

2011-09-02T19:10:00.003-05:00

So! My life has changed.

Firstly, I got a new job. It is at a whisky distillery where I work very hard putting whisky in bottles, then corks in bottles, then labels on bottles, then wax seals on bottles, then shrink wrap on bottles, then bottles in boxes. It may not sound fun, but it actually is. And we drink the whole time. As in drink whisky. And it is seriously hot in there and I come home smelling awful.

I am sure I will have numerous stories to tell about whisky in the future, as it is incredibly interesting and scientific and math, however, I have bigger things to talk about.

Secondly, I am getting married! That's right! Yay!

D proposed last Friday with a bougainvillea bush and the proposal from Pride and Prejudice (oh gracious, how cute is he?), and then we went to BJ's and got gluten free pizza, and gluten free pizookie (Pizza cookies! Gluten free pizza cookies!).

how great is this life?

2011-08-24T10:31:00.004-05:00

My life is super good right now. Or would be, if I hadn't woken up with some kind of burrowing rodent inside my skull. My head hurts. All I want right now is a reese's blizzard from DQ. Is that too much to ask?

I am and hour and a half and a half day away from being done with this job forever.

I also am newly employed at the coolest possible place. We taste the whiskey while we work, people. I start Monday.

Also, I have every reason to believe that I will have even more to celebrate by the end of this week.

I'll get back to you then, when my head stops hurting.

Save money: make it yourself, the queso fresco edition

2011-08-16T10:34:00.004-05:00

To continue the theme of "making stuff", I want to disabuse you of the notion that mozzarella is the easiest cheese to make at home. It is, in fact, not. Easiest cheese? Queso Fresco.

Do you know what I love about the internet? The fact that you can type something like, "how to make queso fresco" into your computer and it will return results. God, I love google.

Anyway, I am not going to pretend that I did anything other than simply type in "how to make queso fresco", and then followed the instructions, but I am going to share my experience following those instructions with you here.

As I said in a previous post, D and I are attempting to live off my SNAP benefits. One of the struggles with this is the fact that I love cheese. Like, love to eat cheese on top of everything, or love to eat just slices of cheese and pretend that that is a balanced meal. This becomes a problem when cheese costs upwards of $6 a pound, and you are out of SNAP benefits and you still have two weeks left in the month. I had found a lovely recipe on how to make saag paneer on the gluten free girls website (seriously, who doesn't love her?), and that was fairly easy (seriously). This put the notion into my head that making queso fresco to sprinkle on our tacos (which are our go-to, end-of-the-month meals) might be equally easy.

How easy, you ask? So easy.

Lets talk about making cheese for a second. Confession: I don't really get it. How in the hell are they taking milk and making glorious cheddary goodness? Couldn't tell you. Science, I assume. To make mozzarella, the "easiest of cheeses" (lies!), you have to purchase rennet off the internet. Who even knows what that is?!? I for sures do not.

So yes, paneer and queso fresco. Here is what you do. Ready? Because it's gonna be crazy.

Boil milk.

Add acid (for paneer it's lemon juice, for queso fresco, it's vinegar).

stir so you are gathering curds together.

pour through a cheese cloth.

let it drain.

You've got cheese.

Seriously. It's that easy. Queso fresco is supposed to be a salty cheese so I suggest you add a bunch of salt to the milk before you boil it. Also, I have used however much milk I had left in the gallon, or however much fit in the pot, with no regard to measurement and it's turned out perfectly every time. Just add your acid until you see curds forming. For 8 cups of milk, they suggest at least 1/4 cup of lemon juice or three tablespoons of vinegar. I added about 1 tablespoon of salt to the queso fresco, but would suggest using more if you try it.

And you should. TRY IT!

Ode to the farm.

2011-08-10T14:24:00.008-05:00

The worst part about the present is that it becomes the past and then you have these completely glorified memories upon completely glorified memories on top of memories of the totally shitty times that you're super glad are over.

For absolutely no reason, Hot tubbin' on the late night popped into my head today. My first reaction was, "Man! That shit's still funny!" even though I haven't actually watched it in over two years. So then, I'm thinking, is it still funny? But I don't want to watch it in case it isn't and it causes me to have to go back and re-write my memories of living in the lodge.

When I first started living at the lodge, I very nearly wept for joy almost every day. Jessica and I did most of the move in by ourselves because the guys were somewhere (where?), and we slept on her full size mattress on the floor in the dining room because we were painting our room and we didn't have electricity yet, and it was hot, and we only had like two candles.

Initially we named it the "Hiewismordinka House" in honor of us all having last names (we're clever like that), but TJ, being the recognized genius that he is, wrote a lovely song involving a Lodge and getting crunked up and for some reason this translated into the most obvious choice for our home.

We hung a clothes line. And TJ made our counters for us because there were none in that tiny house. And we got chickens, and named them, and then stopped naming them when they started becoming the victims of ruthless late-night raccoon and opossum attacks. And we made a garden in the front yard that I contributed to not at all but still got to mooch off of and eat out of.

And we spent time together. We went on trips to Austin (one in which we stumbled across a happenin' bar called "The Lodge"). We hung out at the farm. We went to church together. We started a church together. We had a dance party, and a ninja party, and an 80's Christmas party. We recorded music. We read books and poetry and wrote them too. We did our laundry at the laundromat together and hung it out to dry in the back yard under the pecan tree and I remember thinking, "Dear God, please let me live like this always."

Obviously, we don't live like that anymore. Jessica got married and moved to Pennsylvania to be a farmer. TJ moved to Boston to go to school and be a poet and be the Beloved of the Universe. Kris moved to New York to work and to live and to be far away from here. And I stayed here.

Things weren't perfect in the Lodge. We fought a lot towards the end, which is a thing I think roommates do, but if there is a time in my life that I want to remember to my children, it is this time. The farm and the lodge.

At the farm I found who I am, as an adult, as a worker, as a member of a community and a contributor. That was invaluable.

If you know me, you know that I have journeyed. I have stepped out and gone places and done things all by myself and I have been deeply unhappy and homesick. I think I had lost myself at some point in my childhood and meandered into adulthood feeling very insecure. You have to have some self to be sure of. I didn't. I embarked on my time at the farm feeling unsure of my ability to succeed at anything (you can read about it here, on this blog), but, for some reason, found in it an amazing contentment in all things.

What glory.

I am who I am today because of that place and that time. Whatever confidence life had leeched from me was presented to me every day to be grasped and drunk in. I was gifted companionship's more than friendships, connections more than conversations, laughter and love and epic, snapshot moments. We worked very hard and were often very tired, and very dirty, but we danced under the stars. We walked, as the sun rose, with mugs of coffee steaming in our gloved hands, towards frosty fields ripe with harvest. We sat and read under that grand old cotton wood, dappled by its leaves. We lived some life that our time has forgotten, and we lived it together, in love.

Wuh. This is making me all mushy inside.

Dear farm from 2008, I miss you. Thanks for loving me. Maybe someday I will write a book about you.

Save money: make it yourself

2011-08-10T12:29:00.006-05:00

This year, while doing AmeriCorps, I have had the wonderful experience of qualifying for federal benefits in the form of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, or Food Stamps. Federal benefits, in general, are confusing. Qualifying for them is confusing and the paper work is confusing and the actual tangible benefits to the user are often so small as to make the whole thing not really seem worth it. Some little old ladies only get $28 a month after having to fax something like 30 pieces of paper, from bank statements, to rent bills, to medical expenses. It becomes rather daunting.

Now, I realize that some people have issues with federal benefits. I don't want to get into that at all on this blog. To see why SNAP is a good thing for a struggling economy, go read this article.

What I do want to talk about is how D and I have been striving to live off my food stamp allotment for the last couple of months. We cheat, in that we go out to eat, but for the most part we are trying to use up all the food we have in new and creative ways and to save ourselves as much money as possible.

I am awarded $200 every month, and it hits my account on the 13th. Which means, as of right now, the fridge is looking pretty empty. And yes, we did go to the store to buy a gallon of milk yesterday with money that didn't come off of the Lone Star Card, and yes, we did go out to lunch today, and yes, we are going to a friends house for dinner tonight, but mostly, I think we're doing pretty well.

One of my new pet projects has been making my own tortilla chips. Corn tortillas are hellacheap and can be bought 90 at a time and frozen. I know tortilla chips aren't that expensive, but I firmly believe that home made, fresh, baked instead of fried, tortilla chips are just an all around better idea than buying a bag at the store. And they have to be cheaper. They just have to be.

Here is how I make them:

I line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and preheat the oven to about 350. You might want to make this not as hot, since my chips always turn out a little browner than D likes. Maybe 300?

Then I put a little olive oil in a bowl with some salt. You can add other spices if you like. One gluten free cook book that I own suggested some lime juice and cumin. Those were pretty tasty too. Yesterday I just tossed some garlic salt in with the oil.

Then I tear up my tortillas. If you have kitchen scissors, I'm sure this will be super easy, but I don't and they tear so easily that I don't even worry about it.

Then, using a basting brush thingy, coat them in oil and cook for about 10 - 15 minutes. You might want to turn them half way through, you might not.

Obviously, my recipe is not exact. I think I actually suck at recipes, but I like to try stuff myself.

Make your own salsa

2011-08-04T09:29:00.007-05:00

You really should.

D and I eat a lot of chips and salsa. Like, a real lot. And I am constantly trying to find ways to make things cheaper/making things myself. I once briefly worked in a restaurant that made their own fresh salsa and squirreled away their recipe for use in my daily life. It's totally easy. You can do it too.

All you need is:

Vinegar (regular white, though apple cider might work too.)

Tomatoes (fresh, canned, whole, diced, whole, whatever.)

Cilantro

Jalapeno (or two if you like it spicy)

Garlic

Onions

Spices

And a blender.

We use Spike brand spices because that is what they used in the restaurant I worked in. Also, Spike has like a 37 ingredient list on the back, all of which are amazing, and none of which I have in my every day spice cabinet. Plus, it tastes awesome.

We usually make an entire blender full. We use one bunch of cilantro, two smallish white onions, four or five cloves of garlic (because we like it!), one seeded jalapeno (because I don't like it), two small cans of whole tomatoes, and one large can of diced tomatoes (this ratio changes depending on what we have/remember to buy), a healthy dollop of vinegar, and a nice big sprinkle of Spike. Ta-da! Salsa! Then we freeze half of it to be eaten later (usually later this week, if we're honest).

I was trying to calculate how much this costs us, but I'm not very good at this whole "math" stuff. Jalapeno, 3 cents. Cilantro, 24 cents. Cans of tomatoes, buck fifty. Onions . . . a dollar? Garlic, nothing? A couple of cents? How much does a garlic clove cost? Spike is pricey, about 4 dollars, but you're only using a little at a time, so it doesn't really effect the thriftiness of this recipe. I'm going to say under $3. And it makes a ton. Plus, its super good.

I think God is closer than that

2011-08-02T13:22:00.002-05:00

Woof.

Some days just kind of . . . hit. Hard. I am a by product of someone else's "spring cleaning of the soul". And that's always fun. That's okay. It doesn't make any difference, especially not now, but it does make me wonder. I might have been immature. I might have let things fester, linger, and turn sour. I might have talked behind peoples backs, thought nothing of it, and forgotten it. I might. We were so awful back then. All of us. So terribly dramatic. And so destructively proud of ourselves. I wouldn't give everything to never have to do that again. It is, for sure, for the best, that we let this go. There isn't any way to patch our memories. Best to just let them go.

I've been reading. Just finished Cranford, and started Steve Martin's Shopgirl. Before that? I read . . . some books? I can't remember. I read Mary Doria Russells Dreamers of the Day, which I liked. She is superb, though it is, of course, no Sparrow or Children of God. I read The Little House on the Praire books, and have been putting myself to sleep with sporadic, comforting readings from Anne's House of Dreams. I started the BFG, and carried around The Shipping News for a couple of days, just in case I decided to pick it up again.

I have also successfully made yogurt several times and feel pretty skilled in that regard.

I made a gf banana bread with my sister this weekend. I didn't have corn flour so simply substituted the next gf flour that I have been curious about: buckwheat. The results were an interesting, dense banana bread. Sara and I decided it was "earthy", but we ate more than half of it so it wasn't exactly bad.

I spent last weekend in Dallas with my family. My best friend from High School was in town with his glorious wife and wonderful baby and I was blessed to spend some precious hours with them. Frankie is the softest, roundest baby, and I just want to kiss her all the time. Going back and forth between Frankie and my Aluxton was a test of my ability to make anything that is directly in front of me my "favorite". I managed it, however, and had plenty of quality time with both my favorite babies. Aluxton was making some tottering attempts at upright mobility and we are so proud.

Today I get to be in a movie! My friend Donnell makes a short film with her nephew every summer and this year there is a part for me! I get to be the butler and am very excited.

Books, yes! Bombs, no!

2011-07-21T14:03:00.002-05:00

The job hunt has begun! I will only be a slave to my volunteerism for another five weeks (36 days, according to my calendar), and am hoping to be gainfully employed by the time that magical day, August 27th, rolls around. Perfect job description: Full time. With benefits. NOT at a desk. Optional out-of-doors work. Lax dress code (no hats or visors, please!). Coworkers with the potential to become friends. The opportunity to learn new things. Doesn't require at-home, off-hours work (I don't want to be a teacher).

I've applied at: The Gap, Books-a-million, Petco, Justice, Maurices, LOFT, and the Balcones Whiskey Distillery. I am deeply hopeful that the distillery will call me any moment now. Please, please, please, please. Can you imagine? I am going to now wait a week (or so) for these places to call me back before I start a second round of applications with my B string choices. Books-a-million, I'm looking at you! Hire me! RIGHT NOW.

Soap boxes

2011-07-11T10:33:00.004-05:00

I was recently asked to write a guest blog for the new website wacofork.com. Wacofork.com is a new restaurant review website for my town, and my friend is one of the co-founders. The request for a guest blog was in response to my questions about having some sort of symbol or designation for restaurants who are gluten-free friendly. Chad responded by asking me to write about it. Now, if you read this blog you realize that I am not a very "professional" writer. I don't follow any rules (except for the attempt to convey sarcasm through the internet as often as possible. It's a rule.), have terrible grammar, and can't usually follow a thought to completion. However, I wanted to try, mostly because I like to have people pay attention to me and this was one more outlet for that.

Once I started writing I realized a couple of things. One, I'm not actually very knowledgeable about eating gluten free, or, more specifically, eating out gluten free, and two, I desperately needed an editor. Even with the magics that are (is) the spellchecks, I still misspell things. Also, I often create my own words and my own unique sentence structures. It's a gift. Luckily, I have a very best friend who is more highly educated than me and has a willingness to correct me lovingly (the only way I like to be corrected).

Rereading this guest blog, I'm not entirely sure I knew what I was talking about. I haven't been living gluten free for very long. I'm not even sure on the hyphen that I some times place (and sometimes don't place) between the words "gluten" and "free". Is it necessary? Did you know there is gluten in some envelope paste? Lick them cautiously.

I've been thinking a lot about how a glutenless life is different from a normal life. I think something interesting, especially regarding restaurant eating, is that before the goal of going out was to eat something special, that you couldn't make for yourself. Now, the goal is to find something as close to what I make for myself at home because then I know it's safe.

I realized this when we went to Food for Thought the other day. It's been years since I've been to this restaurant because I worked there (briefly) and I knew for a fact that everything there can be easily recreated at home for much, much cheaper (also, I didn't like working there very much and was begrudging them my patronage. I am an adult!). Now, however, I am thrilled to be able to find food (like nachos?) that are close to what I would make for myself if I had time to run home at lunch and make my own food. Even if it does cost $10. But really, what doesn't cost $10 these days? Has anyone else noticed that? Lunch anywhere? $10. I think that is ridiculous. Taco Cabana? $10. Bangkok Royal? $10. The difference in quality? ASTRONOMICAL. I keep trying to impress this on D. We go out to lunch a lot (but are going to cut back. We promise.) and I pull for Bangkok almost every time. Yes, it is a sit down restaurant. Yes, it could, conceivably, take longer than your 45 minute lunch break. Has it ever? No. No, it hasn't, because no one eats there at lunch. Do you get to get a drink for $10? No, not really. And you have to tip. But the food is incredible and I love it.

Okay, this was not intended to be a rant about Bangkok versus Taco C. Still, I think I am right. And lunch is overpriced.

On a semi-connected note, I was listening to NPR this morning as they talked about the Shuttle Program (this is connected to lunch prices, I promise). Does anyone else think it is hilarious that we ever thought (and some still think?) that space travel was going to become as common as airline travel? Where did those scientists in the 70's think all those resources were going to come from? Things, historically, have only become more expensive and rare, not less. In the future, which we, presumably, are barreling towards, we are all going to have personal hover cars. We will have holographic televisions. We will have machines in our living rooms that scan our retinas and produce the snacks we are craving. And when I say "we" I mean the same 1% of the United States population that is currently hoarding all the wealth. Everyone else? We will be dead. Or living underground in community hovels where we eat our recycles waste. There is no way that there are enough resources to promote scientific advancement to that level. Do you know what there are enough resources for? Sustainable, agrarian, communal lifestyles. Everyone living sustainable, agrarian, communal lifestyles. Or everyone in underground hovels eating recycled waste. See how this ties into lunch?

I also believe that our grandchildren will never fly on planes. We can't really afford air travel (and I don't mean tickets. I mean the industry.) as it is.

Soap boxes!!!

I just started reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. So, you know.

I went to a really fun, farm wedding this weekend. It was outside and it was hot, but no body died and we all had a blast. Favorite part: during the vows, Jonathan repeated "For richer or for poorer" as "For richer, but probably poorer." Ah, farms.

Also, the republic of South Sudan is officially three days old today. Happy birthday, baby country. We're rooting for you.

Jammin' on the one

2011-07-05T13:06:00.005-05:00

In the past couple of weeks we went to Austin for Roller Derby. Roller Derby in Austin is one of my favorite things. In fact, it is currently diverting me from writing this post which means this post may go the way of many before it - right into the "drafts" folder.

I am currently trying to set a record for number of blogs written without actually posting anything. I have no idea where you would find number on that, but I'll bet I'd be way up there in the rankings.

We also went to see Tree of Life at the Alamo Drafthouse. The Alamo Drafthouse has delicious popcorn. I'm just saying. And it is one of the cheapest things on the menu. I want to tell you how I liked Tree of Life and how you should go see it but I'm pretty sure you won't like it. As far as I can tell no one has liked it but me so far. Drew liked it, but he likes all Terrence Malicks films. We prepared for Tree of Life by watching The New World a couple of days before. I had seen it when it came out in 2004, however there was a huge chunk in the middle that I didn't recall at all so I think I must have slept through it. Malick just doesn't value the same things other film makers (or other people in general) seem to value. Like continuity. And dialogue. He makes beautiful, painful, sweeping, moving films in which not a lot happens. Plus, he was born in Waco and went to Lake Waco Montessori school right down the street from my house. Tree of life was filmed largely in Waco (accept for the parts that were filmed in space, or are of volcanoes, sharks, or dinosaurs. We don't have those here) and it made me feel warm and fuzzy to see it with Brad Pitt standing in the middle of our antiquated downtown. Waco look's like the 1950's, people. Come film your movies here.

Also, D and I bought a stationary bicycle at goodwill last week for $140 dollars. Then we went to Academy and thought we might have been ripped off a little since they have stationary bicycles for $100. Whatever. We're happy with it. And I've ridden something like 25 miles in the last week.

We went bowling with some friends who we are trying to get to know better. They invited a third couple that they were nervous they wouldn't like, using D and I as a buffer couple. This didn't work. Never mind that we didn't mingle at all, nor that they were a good 10 years younger than us, I'm pretty sure they were bummed that we were there at all, getting in the way of their quality time with the afore mentioned friends. Whatever. Bowling is awesome. During our first game I scored 38 points. That is 38 points in 10 frames. I think I have some magic in me somewhere. D scored 158. I did better in subsequent games, but never broke 100.

2011-06-21T09:26:00.004-05:00

I finally made yogurt.

And it was totally easy and turned out perfectly. At least, it was totally easy after I realized that 1 gallon is not the same thing as 2 liters and 180 degrees Fahrenheit does exist on my thermometer it's just the smaller inside numbers because this thermometer is primarily in Celsius. So yes. Once I got all of that sorted, it was easy. And I have been eating yogurt every day for the last three days. It is delicious. I like to add honey or maple syrup and blueberries which I splurged and bought from the store. I think they are from Chile or something.

I try, for the most part, to buy Texan produce. It isn't easy and where I can't buy Texan I try to buy organic. But it is fits and spurts. No one is perfect, I assume, which takes some of the pressure off.

This weekend D and I also experimented in making avocado fries with siracha lemon mayo dipping sauce. We were incredible proud of ourselves, though I was a little concerned that our home cooking is turning towards deep frying our foods in oils. We were successful. That is what matters.

We drove an hour south on Sunday to watch a filmed version of Stephen Sondheim's Company in the movie theaters. This version stars Stephen Colbert, Neil Patrick Harris, John Cryer, Patti Lupone, Christina Hendricks, and a bunch of others. Admittedly, we are not theater people. We didn't know anything about Company, nor could we name a single other Sondheim musical without looking it up on the internet (Sweeney Todd and Into the woods). We were going to see Stephen Colbert and Neil Patrick Harris sing and dance. We really, really enjoyed this. It was hilarious and well done and I liked it very much.

After Company, we drove up and met a friend for dinner at BJ's. BJ's is a restaurant that serves gluten free pizza. I think they serve other things too, but I wasn't particularly interested in those things. What I wanted was pizza. It was SO GOOD. Oh gracious. I now feel that we should make the 30 minute drive to BJ's often. I ate the left over half of my pizza for lunch yesterday and it was superb. I have eaten gluten free pizza in a restaurant before, just once, and it was fine. Not great, but fine. It almost made me miss pizza more. But this, this was something else entirely. This is magic.

Some friends of mine are getting married in a couple of weeks. I was looking at their registry the other day. They are using The Alternative Gift Registry. The alternative gift registry allows you to make a very specific gift registry, including items from smaller, local sellers, or in this case, they asked for people to gift 10 minutes of their time during the reception to wash dishes. I love this. I intend to try to remember to wash dishes during their wedding reception. Because that's the kind of gift I can afford right now.

I've also been spending quite a lot of time on pintrest.com. It is my new time waster, but I think it also stirs up a bit of rebellion in me. The majority of people on pintrest seem to be mom's, who want to be skinnier and feel the need to post their motivational pictures on the internet, as well as their crafts, their idea baby items, and their "style" goals. Essentially, it is all the photographs from every mommy blog ever. However, it is also a collection of the most bizarre shit on the internet. And I like it. You can look at my pins here.

Also, Attack the Block now has a US release date sometime in late July. I know you all were being driven absolutely batty by your inability to see it. Now you can. Probably. So long as your town has an arty theater of some kind. Look for it!

a pursuit of self

2011-06-17T09:50:00.006-05:00

Every now and then I get really introspective. I start examining my life and my dissatisfied points and then I make wish lists. Or to do lists. Or bucket lists.

A couple of days ago D and I had a big talk about how we spend our time. I made some comment about how he doesn't seem to try all that hard to be interested in what I am interested in. Honestly, he replied, it's hard because your interests change. Yogurt making? Lotion making? Crocheting?

I have excuses for everything. Regardless, yesterday when he was done with work he found me practicing the ukulele. And I intend to make yogurt this weekend. Also, I found this cool tutorial for making crochet rugs out of sheets. Which I intend to do. But I have to buy a giant crochet hook first.

See?

Yesterday I discovered Hilda by Duane Bryers. Hilda is, I suppose, pin up art, which I am generally not a great fan of. However, I am making an exception for Hilda because, honestly, I want to be her. She is funny and clumsy and, as far as I can tell, lives alone but never wears real clothes.

Hilda art is apparently rare and rather hard to find, which makes me sad. I'd love a Hilda calendar.

On my wish/bucket/to do list is to figure out how to have a real garden next year. Even if it is just a window sill herb garden, I'd like to grow something I can eat next year. I was in charge of watering my landlords garden this last week and a half and I realized that I really do like gardens and could probably bring myself to like gardening if I tried hard enough. I feel at this is the first step in any number of other things I'd like to do someday. Canning and preserving being some of them. I have infinite resources for this sort of thing, but haven't taken advantage of them for one reason or another. Mostly I am lazy. One step at a time, I suppose.

the innocence mission

2011-06-15T11:17:00.001-05:00

Hang my head low, so low.
Don't see me only as I am but
see me how I long to be.
Shining like a flowering tree
under a gray Pennsylvania sky.
Look for me as you go by.
Hang my head low, so low.
Every burden shall be lifted.
Every stone upon your back slide into the sea.
It's me for you and you for me.

It's my birthday

2011-06-03T13:37:00.015-05:00

Today is my birthday. I am 28 and remarkably similar to myself at 27. At least so far. Since I've been sick all week and mostly feeling crummy, I don't have any plans for my birthday except eating Thai food and going to see x men. This is fine. This is a plenny-good plan for my birthday. However, if I had all the time and energy and money and connections in the world and could plan the ultimate shindig, I would do it. Actually, I would probably save it until I was 30. But, I think you understand.

Since I was physically unable to plan said shindig this year, I will, instead, utilize the glory of the internet and show you, here, my internet crafted approximation. Guess what? It's gonna be

awesome!

Guess what else? You're invited!

First of all, there will be dancing. And I am hopeful that Bjork will be there. And if she wants to bring her husbandcat, then SO MUCH THE BETTER!

Just so you all know, this is from one of the best music videos of all time. Also, take note of the part where Bjork tries to do a "cat dance (at least, that is my interpretation of what is happening. She's cleaning herself. Like a cat. Right?) and the cat, in trying to copy her, looks totally crazy, like he's slow motion swimming or something.

Also, Greta Gerwig would be there. With cake.

For me. Probably, at this party, I would also be able to eat the cake. So we will assume its gluten free, but also delicious, because I don't even really dig cake all that much under normal

circumstances, so if it is gf, it has all sorts of

things stacked against it.

If you don't know who Greta Gerwig is YOU ARE MAKING ME SAD. And it's my birthday, so I suggest you stop. She is my new favorite actress. Also, she is adorable. And wearing a crown. And a dress that looks like it is an ostrich. She was also born in 1983 which means two things. One) we are year twins, and Two) she is much more accomplished than I. And yet, I still want her at my party.

I am also hopeful that something like this will transpire. I found this picture on the internet by googling "giraffe people." I kid you not. If you don't believe me, you can go try it for yourself. If you are surprised that I would be googling "giraffe people", then you maybe don't know me as well as you think. It is my birthday, after all.

There is something incredibly dirty about the words "fig" and "cocktail" as a compound word but, wonderfully, when combined they create an amazing actual thing. A fig cocktail. I've never had one, but I am entirely convinced that they are my favorite beverage. Mostly because of the color. I think.

Some other party happenings:

This is Chan Marshall of Cat Power SNUGGLING into the beard of Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio. I'm sorry. WHAT? This exists in the world, and has happened at least once and I was not told of it! Fixed. They will come to my party and do this. Done.

Dear Mr. Cosby, night and day, please.

And this. Of course.

Attack the block

2011-05-26T12:46:00.003-05:00

Last night we drove to Dallas for a special pre-screening of Attack the Block, a new British alien film that hasn't been released in the U.S. yet.

Executive produced by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the dead, hot fuzz, Scott Pilgrim), Attack the Block is, quite simply, awesome. I'm not sure if my taste in movies is changing the longer I date D, or if this movie is so genuinely good that I would suggest it to my best friend with full confidence that she would like it. This is maybe something interesting to ponder. Haley, do you want to watch this movie and then let me know?

Things I love about this movie:

It is scary and gross but not too scary or too gross. I didn't have to close my eyes for any of it.

It isn't afraid to center on characters who you feel dubious about. A gang of teenage thugs who mug a woman in the opening scene? They're our heroes?

There are a number of women in the cast, of varying ages and races, almost all with good lines and interesting dialogue. And, possible spoiler alert, none of them die. This, in the world of man-boy sci fi, is a miraculous feat. And I love it.

There are numerous references to American culture (the FBI, the feds, etc.) that, with admirable subtly, illuminate the source of these thugs terrible attitudes. Hint: it's us.

It's actually a story of inner city redemption without all the terrible cheesiness that is The Blindside. Or Freedom Writers. Or Take the lead. Or any other story where white people come in and help black people not be so poor/downtrodden/drug addicted/undisciplined/bad at school, etc. Racist. This movie is wonderfully un-racist and, in fact, more about community than anything else. This movie is awesome.

Now that I have you salivating for it, I regret to inform you that this movie hasn't been released in the states yet. Suckers. But I suggest you keep your eyes out for it, should it surface in theaters or, more likely, just appear on Netflix instant watch sometime next year.

Famblies

2011-05-25T13:52:00.006-05:00

My sister, Katie, lives in Atlanta. We see her once a year, usually, during Christmas, sometimes twice a year, if we're lucky. Katie is one of my favorite people in the world. She was my best friend through all of high school and most of what we shall call "college". She came to Dallas this weekend to visit with our relatively newly minted nephew. He is a delight and our time together was precious. Our family is scattered around the world and we don't get to spend time together very often, and when you have such a young member of the family, frequent interaction is essential or you turn around and there is an unrecognizable young man where your baby nephew should be.

We went to Ikea. I'd never been there before and am now a grateful convert. I felt as if I had stumbled out of the middle ages into a futuristic wonderland. My brother and sister-in-law might have found me a little embarrassing, what with all the exclamations over seemingly mundane objects like lamps and wine glasses (6 for 4.99!!!), but it couldn't be helped. I was in the midst of a conversion experience. Sweden, you're the shit. Way to go.

One of the awesome things about me is that I never remember to take my camera anywhere and, even when I do, I rarely remember to use it. So I didn't take my camera with me to this wonderful mini family reunion, and you don't get any pictures. Deal with it.

We met up with some old friends and their beautiful children at the Ikea, and the next day went to dinner with some other old friends and their beautiful children. Friends with beautiful children. This is my life. You could do worse.

I have read a number of books since I last mentioned reading books. My friends Chris and Donnell loaned me a stack of books which I have gratefully devoured. Mostly they are scifi-dystopian, which I dig, though some are fantasy. I don't usually read fantasy, though perhaps this statement is a lie. I'm not sure there is anything I don't read. There are some things that I like less than others, but in general, if you give me a book I will read it. Probably.

Okay, this maybe is a dull post. So be it!

A hammer and some nails

2011-05-13T13:33:00.003-05:00

I am not entirely sure how people do it. The internet has led me to believe that people can have real jobs, cook from scratch, and implement newly learn skills, like say, yogurt making, into their daily lives and still actually feel like they are living daily lives. The internet tells lies. Or, perhaps, I am over enthused and attempting too much at one time. Or, perhaps, I am sub par.

That might be the truth.

Yesterday, I did a hundred pounds of laundry, spent an hour weeding the garden, took the dog on an hour long run/walk, then made home made hummus and gf crackers (can anyone give me some helpful hints on how to grind flax seed at home?), and watched Mean Girls while I took a bath. I am so totally super productive and awesome. Never mind that I was the grumpiest by the end. No I wasn't! Stop talking trash. You can't prove that shit.

I might still be grumpy.

So, I don't have a rolling pin, which is, actually, kind of crucial to making crackers. So I used a bottle of my friends homemade root beer. Which worked, until the root beer started seeping. Then I used another bottle. The crackers are . . . good? Sort of. I took a recipe off the internet and tweaked it, i.e. replaced almost every major ingredient with another, sort of similar ingredient. For example, my new gf flour mixture for almond flour, flax seeds for sesame seeds, safflower oil for grapeseed oil, etc. Interesting results: Something that still looked just like flour only slightly wetter but definitely nowhere near dough of any kind. So I added more oil and more eggs and some water and then it looked pretty okay and rolled out alright. Other interesting results: flax seed, when whole, is encased in a totally indigestible hull that gets stuck in your teeth and then, since it's wet in your mouth, starts to gum up a little bit and create what the internet likes to call a "slurry" between your teeth. It's pleasant. Again, does anyone have any advice on grinding flax seed at home? Because I would like it. And will use it.

I also made hummus. That turned out better. And tastes good. Like garlic. I like garbanzo beans and cook with them all the time. I tried to sprout them last week, with interesting, foamy, sour results. We won't talk about that.

It's a process.

I want to grind my own grains. Does anyone have a grinder they want to sell/give to me? I'll bet I could grind flax seeds in it too, couldn't I.

My kitchen is not that big. My entire apartment is not that big (19 by 25 of my feet laid end on end), but since moving in I have acquired a blender, toaster, yogurt maker, coffee maker, and tiny food processor. Does anyone need a coffee maker? Because I don't use mine. I'll trade you for a grain grinder.

What else is going on? I only have three months left of my VISTA year. And I am super stoked. People are starting to ask me what I am going to do in September and I really don't know, having not thought about it at all. I want to be apprenticed somewhere. Like at a mill. (Get it? Because they grind grain at mills? Is this funny yet?) Or maybe I will go work at Jimmy Johns. (Which we now have in Waco. Go eat there. This instant!).

2011-05-02T13:36:00.003-05:00

I went to the doctor on Wednesday via my incredible cleverness. It's a long story, but lets just say my "insurance" isn't really insurance but rather a government funded "benefits plan" and therefore some cleverness is required. I can go see any doctor for $5 provided it is for something previously undiagnosed. Like a cold or a sinus infection. Or, in my case, this mysterious lump on my collar bone that I worry about and then don't worry about in turns. However, there are no rules that say that, while there, I can't have him refill my thyroid medicine prescription, check out my eczema issues, and give me some advice on my headaches. 45 minutes later, I had eight prescriptions waiting for me (I just love competing with the elderly ladies in line to see who needs the most bags) at my local Walgreens and, interestingly enough, no longer have eczema. Instead I have psoriasis. This is interesting because it means several things. 1) I have been misdiagnosed my whole life, 2) all medications I have ever used were only minimally effective because they were prescribed for the wrong disease, 3) I don't have severe eczema, but rather mild psoriasis, and finally, 4) I have, essentially, a doctors note to go to a tanning salon. Sunlight, and that wonderful vitamin D, are one of the best ways to combat psoriasis. Tanning! Sunlight! I am pleased. Also, there appear to be very well documented connections between psoriasis and gluten intolerance. So there's that too.

My doctor also gave me several samples of migraine pills to try out to see if any of them worked out better than the stuff he has prescribed me before. If "worked out better" means an immediate and ridiculous high while at work, then yes. Yes they did. I took a pill right before going into a meeting and spent the whole meeting trying to turn peoples speech into haiku. My notes from the meeting are intelligible. At one point, I got up to go to the bathroom and checked my pupils. They were there, alright, though they seemed to have crowded out my irises. It was a little intense and I was grateful that my office-boss let me go home to sleep it off after lunch.

In other news, I spent the last hour or so at work looking up the British Royal Family. Quiz me. I know all the answers. Except for maybe order of succession. That confuses me.

Also, we've killed Osama Bin Laden.

Obviously this is an amazingly complex issue, and the wars won't stop, and we aren't any safer, but can't we all agree that it was necessary and a great accomplishment of one of our national goals? Instead, fuhbook-the-all-expressive is lit up today with incredibly sanctimonious Bible quotations.

To share a few:

‎"Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice". Proverbs 24:17 (NIV)

For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live! Ezekiel 18:32

I'm not against this. The Bible does say all these things. What bothers me is when people ignore these issues in our every day activities as a country (oh, I don't know, increasing our defense budget while decreasing our social services), and then whip out the Bible when it's time to be glib towards the government. Ridiculous. Stop using the Bible only when it is convenient, you smug bastards!

I did it!

2011-04-27T09:42:00.002-05:00

I made gluten-free muffins! From scratch! By myself! I was a little bit of a crazy person, stuffing muffin after muffin into my mouth. Amazing! Delicious!

A life I have

2011-04-19T11:57:00.006-05:00

I have decided that being a VISTA is one part job and two parts manipulative, grabby non-profit forces trying to squeeze every ounce of volunteer-ism out of you before you shrug off their grasp at the end of your term. How anyone serves two terms is beyond me. In the VISTA job description (Volunteer assignment description, or VAD, which they really to refer to as VAD all the time, as in, "Lets look at your VAD to see how well you are doing your job". I want to tell them that no one gets to look at my VAD without at least taking me to dinner first!) it says something about how VISTA's are not guaranteed 9-5 jobs because many aspects of our VAD (see?) may require us to work nights or weekends. What this translates to is us never being able to say no. Ever. This is one of the reasons they encourage VISTAs to relocate, I feel. If you relocate you don't have friends or family or A LIFE. Well, guess what AmeriCorps? I do have all of these things. I have a life and you are not it.

Guh.

Speaking of a life, this weekend we went to Little Rock, AR for D's little brother's wedding. Little Rock is an awesome town, and I was totally surprised by it. We stayed in a nice hotel downtown (thanks to D's parents) within walking distance of the river and found a good book store, a good vegetarian restaurant with gluten-free options, and an amazingly cool public park with this awesome playground that had underground tunnels and climbing rocks. The weather was awesome, if a little cold, and we spent Saturday morning at the Little Rock Zoo, shivering and taking pictures of bears. We love zoos (zooz?) and this one was awesome. I'm not sure how they did it (something in the water?) but so many of their animals seemed very aware of us, and even interacted with us a little bit. It is so fun to feel like you have a relationship with a gorilla.

D has this terrible habit of attempting to touch all of the animals in the zoo. Including bears. And bush dogs. He has had some incredible run ins with animals over the course of his life and it has built up this ridiculous confidence that I am afraid is going to get him mauled. He once befriended a sea lion in the wild and carried a hummingbird in his hand and so he is perfectly confident that he is Dr. Doolittle.

Our zoo visits end up with me saying, "Please don't do that! Please don't do that!" just over and over while D holds hands with monkeys.

At the Little Rock zoo, that moment happened with this guy. This is a Sun Bear. They are tree-dwelling bears who live mostly in Malaysia and other parts of South East Asia. They eat mostly roots and berries, but some insects and some small mammals. This one was leaning dramatically far over the abyss that separated us and sniffing intently.

Before this trip I would have said that I wasn't a very fearful person. I realize that being terrified of a mostly herbivorous arboreal bear is maybe ridiculous, but that is what happened. D, on the other hand, was leaning out as far as he could (which is pretty far. He's tall.) and stretching out his fairly long arms trying to touch this terrifying bear.

Seriously? It's a bear. Look at it's claws? Are you insane?

So yes. Someday I may lose him to a freak zoo mauling. And it will be all his own damn fault and I will have told him so. Geez.

Our weekend in Little Rock was incredibly fun. Full of laughter, and family, and food. Gorgeous weather, beautiful river views. And the only pictures I took were at the zoo. And of animals. I am awesome at documenting my life.

In other, sort of related news, at the rehearsal dinner in Little Rock I decided to splurge and eat a cookie. It was a wedding, after all. I have been completely gluten-free for two months now, and have seriously reduced my intake of corn, dairy, and sugar, though if you asked someone who actually eats with me (ahem, D, ahem), they would tell you that I am not very good with those last ones. In those two months my chronic eczema, which I have talked about on here before, was healing and starting to fade. I was really pleased with it and felt pretty good about appearing in pictures at the wedding. However, I ate a cookie on Friday night and woke up Saturday morning absolutely covered in bright red, stingy welts of eczema. Unbelievable. I had D take a picture of my arms on Monday, a full three days after to cookie eating, just so that I could have a "before" picture. Good gracious. I wore a sweater all day just so no one would feel the need to call the CDC. Still so red and so very everywhere. However, and this may seem ridiculous, I kind of feel like this was the reaction I needed to see to really commit to going totally gf. Up until this point I still hadn't been entirely sold on the idea. Nothing like severe discomfort to kick you in the pants.

So yesterday I went out an bought myself a digital kitchen scale. I am committing. I will learn how to bake gluten free. I will teach myself to cook. I will eat foods I am not allergic to and I will THRIVE. Damn it.

I am so tired of being sick.

So I will keep you updated, in case you are curious. Let us preemptively add my name to the list of gf success stories, shall we?

2011-04-12T13:15:00.003-05:00

Oh my goodness, blogs are too much work. Half of the time I am convinced that I am wildly clever and quirky and every passing thought I have is hilarious and worth publishing for the world to see. The other half of the time I think that no matter what I do it will be less polished than 99% of the internet and anyone who wants to know anything about me can just Google things like, "lack of time management", "yellow", "sleep deficiency", "spider solitaire", and "do it (cut your hair, make your own (clothes, lotion, smoothies, laundry detergent)) yourself" and come up with a reasonable approximation of me. Good luck with that.

Otherwise, it is Spring and I am spending a large portion of my waking life trying to be healthy. For serious. Just when I think that I have kind of gotten a handle on something, something else crops up and I think, yeah, that probably is because I've been sick for X amount of years (the X might be a million), and my body is crapping out on me in any and every fashion available to it. It is kind of awesome. But not really.

Yesterday my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came to visit. They live about an hour north of me and rarely have time off or choose to leave their circle and life and home. I felt totally honored that they would choose to spend a day off with me.

I love this little man.

This is a busy month at work, with special events every weekend (not the least of which is Holy Week), and I feel busy. D's brother gets married in Little Rock, Arkansas this weekend so we will be driving there on Friday. I hope we get to hit up the Bill Clinton Museum. That would be amazing.

Also, we went to see both Hanna and Arthur this weekend and both were awesome. Way to go movies! AND, we finally are going to go see Jane Eyre on Thursday night when we drive up to Dallas. I am so excited I feel the need to write in bold.

In other news, since the passing of Brian Jacques I felt the need to read the Redwall books. I never read them as a child and our library helpfully carries all of them. I am loving these books. They are fabulous. They are deep, and gritty, wonderfully funny, full of community and hard work, accepting of all kinds, sizes, and types of animals. So worth reading. Especially if you are a seven year old boy.

Buh. The end!

books.

2011-04-01T08:36:00.002-05:00

I moved my book case from one wall to the other.

It was a process. I have a lot of books.

Movie review Wednesday!

2011-03-23T10:18:00.005-05:00

I know I have mentioned this before that D and I watch a lot of movies. We have a year (a literal year) full of Fridays at the movies to look forward to. I have made the mistake (twice now) of asking him what movie comes out this Friday. This starts him on reading The List. The List is a list of select movies opening every Friday from now through some time in August. This is D's year. D's year at the movies. I actually kind of wish he were here right now so that he could relay the list to you. That way you could fully understand. Regardless, Sucker Punch comes out this Friday, and Paul came out last Friday, and, slightly shockingly, Jane Eyre was the movie that made The List the Friday before that (Never mind that Jane Eyre didn't actually come out anywhere and still hasn't made it to our town. The fact that it made the list at all pacifies my heart).

We watch a lot of main stream, well attended films. However, we also watch a lot of incredibly great, tragically overlooked films. I am going to talk about two of them today.

Number One: Monsters.
Monsters is an alien movie. A wonderful, beautiful, socially conscious alien movie. It was filmed on location with a minimum amount of set creation, and with only two hired actors. Other than the films two leads, everyone in the film was found on location (though there are some U.S. soldiers in the film, so I am not sure this is 100% true) and are uncredited.

Monsters is set in present day. An alien infestation has contaminated most of Mexico and parts of South Texas. The movie centers around a photojournalist and the daughter of the man who owns the paper trying to make their way through the infected zone, back to the United States. The story focuses on effects of the infestation on the lives of the native peoples, and on the relationships that have developed/altered due to this new menace. They show very little of the actual monsters, and when they do the monsters are breathtakingly beautiful. This movie is not scary, but rather suspenseful. It is wonderfully filmed, and highlights some of the most beautiful parts of Central America. It also was shot, in part, in devastated Galveston, TX. My sister and I went to Galveston a couple of months after Hurricane Rita, and I recognized it in this film. Kudos to movie makers for utilizing existing devastation rather than spending millions to simulate it.

I suggest this movie for everyone. Whether you like sci-fi or not. It is a fabulous, epic, classy, glorious film.

Movie Number Two: Mic Macs.

For anyone who enjoyed Amelie, or City of Lost Children, or A Very Long Engagement, or any of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's wonderful films, Mic Macs is your new favorite movie. It is in French (because he is French and makes French movies) and, while I know foreign language films deter people often, I think that is silly.

It is a film about an unassuming man whose entire life has been shaped by two major weapons manufacturers in his town. He is adopted by a troupe of eccentrics living together in a garbage dump and, together, using their skills, they decide to wage war on the two men responsible for all these weapons.

If you have seen any of Jeunet's other films you know that he has a panache for gadgetry. He likes sight gags, jokes, and puns. He employs actors for their unusual abilities (or faces) and uses them in his films to the best possible outcome. This movie is silly, and hilarious, and moving, and wonderful.

So, there you are. Movies reviewed and suggested for your pleasure.

2011-03-18T12:29:00.002-05:00

Every now and then, usually well into my thirteen thousandth game of spider solitaire, I think to myself, "BOOK! I have book to read! I LIKE TO READ!!" Then I realize that I work in a cubix where anyone who wants to see me can and, in a totally typically universally quixotic way, playing spider solitaire is more allowable because at least it sounds like I am working.

Oh my god. My head hurts. And I left my generic brand migraine headache medicine on the left side of my bed on top of the pile of clothes that I sleep with because I have decided that a bed is a better place to keep clothes than a closet.

I might be a mess.

I really want you to think that I sometimes actually do work.

Yesterday I did a number of interesting things. I went to the monthly nonprofit networking breakfast, which is usually not interesting, but yesterday we had a professional advocate (read: lobbiest) from Austin who explained the Texas state deficit using blocks. Fun! By the end of the workshop I was imagining myself as an emaciated nun, giving moldy bread to the orphans to dip in their very watered down milk. Did I mention I am reading a book about Italians sheltering Jews during the end of the second world war? Fully 55% of our state budget goes to public education. We have a 27 billion dollar estimated deficit. We are all totally screwed. In the words of the immortal Gene Wilder, "Are we in it." (Name the movie. I'll be proud of you.)

Politics astound me. The fact that any group of people can be so totally irresponsible and can be so totally in charge irritates me. And I'm a democrat. Probably. Also, watching many hours of the West Wing has lead me to believe that the people in power should be so much smarter than they seem to be.

I was also introduced to a brand new masterpiece theater mini- series (Thank you, Lauren!) called Downton Abby and had the singular pleasure of passing it on to my best friend who, as she said herself, thought she had watched all the mini-series there are.

2011-03-16T08:45:00.004-05:00

'Bout damn time.

Anne Lamott and Donald Miller came to Baylor last night. They sat on the stage in this big, beautiful room and answered questions about faith and writing and how the two converge. I love Anne. This is the second time we have been in the same room, and my favorite. The first time, in Chicago, I went to see her read from Plan B, her second book on faith and faith-like thoughts. Reading from a book is different from answering questions, and she is so neurotic and honest and strange.

Also, incredibly, there were protesters. What the cabbage? Anyone who has actually read Anne Lamott should know so much better than to protest. Which makes me think they hadn't actually read her, but were just a part of a campus pro-life club. Narrow.

Anne has just come out with a new novel, the third Rosie book. In it, apparently, Rosie is a teenager and hooked on drugs. No! Rosie!

Drew reminded me that I don't love Anne's fiction (which is a ridiculous thing to remind someone of when they are in the the throes of despair over the wrong choices of a character they think they love), which made me determined to reread it. I used to have several of her novels, though I have no idea where they've gone.

After the Q&A in the beautiful room we went to the Mayborn Museum to watch an exciting pre-screening of Blue Like Jazz: The Movie. Only, they didn't actually have to movie there so we just watched clips of Steve Taylor's lap top while Don Miller explained making a movie out of a book with no narrative. This was hilarious. And the movie looks better than it has any right to be. I hope it gets shown in your town. I hope you go see it.

Other things:
Yesterday, I got a package in the mail. My parents bought me a yogurt maker. This is AWESOME. I'm going to make all the yogurt! And then eat it all.

I watched the original Planet of the Apes movie for the first time last week.

I found a newer Mary Doria Russell novel in a half price books in Austin. I am a little more than half way through and I think it is astonishingly good. So very, very good. It is set during the latter part of World War II, and revolves around the Italian underground, which is beautiful. Before reading this I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which is also about World War II and comic books. I need a book not about World War II after this, please.

A lot of the time I can't remember my own zip code. This can't be normal.

2011-03-03T12:19:00.006-06:00

Yes!
I've had an epiphany. Sometimes I feel totally unprepared for the effort that it takes to write blog entries. Then I realized that I spend my entire day sifting the tube and posting things to fuh-book. I could easily start posting things here instead. See how smart I am?

So I have replaced my desk chair with an exercise ball, as promised. I found this article on why you should. I will admit, I was googling "exercise balls as desk chairs" to see if the shooting pain I feel in my left side is normal, but since it apparently isn't, I am going to pretend that I don't feel it. Problem solved.

So far, today on the internet I have read this article about how Charlie Sheen's rants just sound like David Bowie lyrics, and I created a totally superfluous wedding registry on Williams Sonoma because I found a blog contest that wins you 150 Williams Sonoma dollars, which I would use to buy these beauties. I feel a little bit like I am cheating with the registry thing, but the contest rules didn't say you couldn't make up a totally fictitious fiance named Thor Bullionbarg just to try to win a gift card. If I win I will consider sharing it with Thor.

Also, on the radio this morning NPR (my only real news source) told me that Providence, Rhode Island fired ALL of it's teachers. Also, blogger doesn't recognize the word "Rhode" in Rhode Island as being a real word. What the lump? The most interesting part about that story was, to me, the realization that Providence is a major urban center with 80% of it's students being black or Hispanic. I don't know what bubble of ignorance I've been living in, but this is what I pictured all of Rhode Island to look like:

So now, I suppose, in my head it looks more like this:
But without the teacher. Lame, Providence, Rhode Island. Super lame.

I did end up going to the small group on Tuesday instead of making the beautiful Nourished Kitchen molasses custard. I am not totally sure I made the right choice. I was griping about church etc. with the woman who is in charge of me in my office. She said something insightful, which was rare enough and sort of made me listen up. She said, "Sometimes it isn't about what you are getting out if it, it is about being obedient." This is a totally generic, christianese thing to say but, despite all of that, it is true, and I suppose I needed to hear it. Regardless, I don't think this small group thing is for me. At least not right now. Instead, I am going to attempt to use that time away from D to do the other things I want to do. Like learning how to make marzipan, and perfecting the lotion making, and sewing. And watching lots and lots of bbc miniseries.

Yoga Thurs . . . er . . . Tuesday!

2011-03-01T09:22:00.004-06:00

I recently found a copy of Yoga Journal in the bathroom of the house that I sit (I house sit sometimes). I like yoga. My friend, Heidi, and I were reminiscing recently about that one time, four years ago, when I lived in an apartment that was perfect for nothing except being a yoga studio. We didn't have any furniture, and the rooms were large, well lit, poorly heated, and with beautiful wood floors. We were avid fans of yogatoday.com, back when it was 100% free for a new one hour lesson every day. Heidi assures me that they give one free lesson a week now, and that that is plenty (and considering I don't even do that much, my bitterness at their sell out is totally misplaced). We really did get pretty good at yoga.

Which is a hilarious statement.

Regardless, I miss doing yoga. I miss being headache free, back pain free, and flexible. So, I am going to start doing it again. The yoga journal website helpfully lets you plan your own yoga sequences, which I am currently doing at work. I like this.

I am not such a big fan of the chakra mumbo-jumbo, but some things just go together. Yoga and mumbo-jumbo. I suppose this is a little amusing considering that I am a pretty big proponent for acupuncture and acupressure. Also, I just took this chakra test online. I have very under-active root and heart chakras, apparently, both of which have to do with feeling safe, grounded, able to love freely (I am supposed to chant LAM to open up the root chakra and YAM for the heart). Isn't that interesting? Mom, are you nervous about my spirituality yet?

The issue that I happened to pick up also has an amazing recipes for dosa, sambar, and potato masala, which are maybe the best foods in the world. I am going to photo copy them, and then go on a hunt for all the strange ingredients. Chances of finding them in my town? I'd say less than 20%. Still, I can make a spicy lentil soup and call it "sambar" or "dahl" or really anything I want. And I can make dosa from the packet that I secreted back from Malaysia this summer, and worry about finding split gram beans to ferment at a later date. YUM.

D and I have started to going to church together. After dating for a year and a half we thought we would broach this landmine of an issue. We decided to go to the church that he went to all through college. I have always kind of hated this church, though that is perhaps too strong of a word. I have issues with church all around, though I don't feel like going to go into all that here. I have many issues with this particular church, but kind of feel like I would be faced with similar issues no matter where we chose to go, so I might as well not fight about this. Issues. Key word here: Issues. However, there is also this small group that we are going to go to, or, more accurately, have gone to once. It meets tonight. Blerg. I can't bring myself to want to go! I need to think about this some more. Perhaps it has something to do with my under-active chakras.

Maybe tonight I can stay home, make dosa, and molasses custard (wonderfully gluten free), and do yoga. That sounds better. Did I mention I have issues?

I suggest

2011-02-23T14:25:00.010-06:00

Sometimes I do crazy things. Like drink several cups of coffee the day after I was miserably sick to my stomach because I drank too much coffee. At least, that is why I think I was miserably sick. It might of been because I was licking the salt lamp. Some friends of ours were gifted a lamp that they didn't like. They gave it to us. I think it is very pretty. It is also made of a giant piece of Himalayan salt. Yeah, so I spent some time licking it. Whatever.

Anyway, the coffee drinking. I get a bit worked up when I drink that much coffee. The words coming out of my mouth, though words that I would say, are not the words that I meant to say. I find myself giving in to that secret inner belief that I am the foremost authority on anything and everything that could possibly come up in conversation. I am a talker. And I've had several cups of coffee today.

I wanted to expand a little on one of the books in my "what you should read right now" column. Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow is just one of the best books ever. Like, ever. It is set in "the future" (2019? The soon-to-be-upon-us future) and it is wonderful, intelligent, reverent sci-fi. D is reading it right now (sort of) as a result of one of those conversations that go, "You never read female writers. What are you? Sexist or something?", and then he points to the Zadie Smith books on his shelf (two), and says that women don't write the kinds of books that he likes (sci-fi). Mary Doria Russell is a physicist, and adult convert to Judaism. The protagonist of the novel is a Jesuit priest/linguist.
I am the child of a linguist. I will admit to having a bias towards linguisticy-smarts. Sandoz is a wonderful, brilliant, loving main character.
The book follows the linguist/priest Sandoz as life is discovered on Alpha Centauri and the Jesuits decide to go. I want to quote the prologue to you here, just because it is so good I don't believe anyone could not want to read the book afterward.

"It was predicatable, in hindsight. Everything about the history of the Society of Jesus bespoke deft and efficient action, exploration and research. During what the Europeans were pleased to call the Age of Discovery , Jesuit priests were never more than a year or two behind the men who made initial contact with previously unknown peoples; indeed, Jesuits were often the vanguard of exploration.
The United Nations required years to come to a decision that the Society of Jesus reached in ten days. In New York, diplomats debated long and hard, with many recesses and tablings of the issue, whether and why human resources should be expended in an attempt to contact the world that would become known as Rakhat when there were so many pressing needs on earth. In Rome, the questions were not whether or why but how soon the mission could be attempted and whom to send.
The Society asked leave of no temporal government. It acted on its own principals, with its own assets, on Papal authority. The mission to Rakhat was undertaken not so much secretly as privately - a fine distinction but one that the Society felt no compulsion to explain or justify when the news broke several years later.
The Jesuit scientists went to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God's other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the farthest frontiers of human exploration. They went ad majorem Dei gloriam: for the greater glory of God.
They meant no harm."

Go read this freaking book. I just, oh, it gives me chills and I want to read it again. There is a sequel, which is important and equally wonderful. I have lately started finding them cropping up in used bookstores. I don't know what was wrong with their previous owners, but I suggest you profit from their imbecility.

Also, this woman is my current favorite person on the internet. I've been reading a lot of blogs lately and people are - how do I put this delicately? - mostly humorless bores. Or prigs. Or preposterously self-obsessed pretentious people. Which doesn't mean I don't subscribe to their blogs and eat up every bit of ridiculous advice on (insert appropriate topic here) as if they really are the experts they think they are. Shauna, at glutenfreegirl.com, however, is lovely. And normal looking. And a really talented writer. And genuinely not trying to be anything she isn't. And she makes amazing gluten-free everythings. Gluten-free everythings that I feel capable of reproducing in my own kitchen. And I like her. She is today's internet crush.

Fridays are sauce days!

2011-02-18T09:51:00.002-06:00

Unfortunately, the only sauce anyone is seeing today is being kept in my sinuses by way of a tissue shoved forcibly up my nose. Sorry if that was gross. But really, it is. It is gross. You just get to share it with me now.
I have felt terrible all week. Sore throat, tiredy, runny nosed. The building we work in used to be some kind of automotive shop where they also kept harmful chemicals of many kinds, apparently. I am horribly allergic to this working environment. Red, itchy eyes, sneezing, coughing, you name it! I thought this job was my way out of the unhealthy working environment that was Starbucks. Wrong! I now work in a chemical filled death trap. Awesome.

Also, having a wad of tissue in my nose is a serious handicap on my spider solitaire game.

I have things to make, sew, prepare, and photograph. As well as a zoo to visit, soup to make, and friends to be quality timed with.

This water is expired

2011-02-17T10:48:00.004-06:00

I am officed in a food pantry. I have worked here about six months now and have gained - oh, just hundreds - of pounds. That might be an exaggeration. Slightly. It feels, however, like God's own truth. I have been struggling to come up with good ways to make this phenomenon a nonphenomenon (new favorite thing to say, nonphenomenon nonphenomenon nonphenomenon). I have the following excuses:

before I worked at Starbucks, which meant that I was on me feet, moving, and, more often than not, sweating several hours every day.
working in a pantry means near constant access to cookies. And chips. And lemon bunt cake. And donuts. And sugary beverages.
I have zero reasons to leave my desk during the day. Other than going to the bathroom.

So. Combating the phenomenon. What do I do? Obviously, ignore the free foods. Because, really, they aren't actually food at all. Secondly, get up every hour and run up and down the stairs a couple of times. Thirdly, I try to swim several times a week. In reality I swim about once a month. So, that one isn't really working. I have been considering replacing my desk chair with one of those exercise balls. I've heard that helps strengthen your core.

Dishearteningly, I think it has something to do with my illness. This is an abnormal amount of weight gain. Even more dishearteningly, it looks like exercise is the name of the game. Bleh.

I am taking suggestions for creative ways to be active in an office. Preferably without attracting too much attention.

Movie Monday!

2011-02-14T14:02:00.005-06:00

Monday.

For all of my life up until this year I have worked erratic and ridiculous jobs. These jobs sort of, kind of destroyed the idea of weekends and, with weekends, the idea of a "case of the Muuuundays" kind of Monday. If your weekends aren't too good-to-be-true, hold-on-to-every-last-drop kind of days, Mondays seem kind of okay in comparison. Especially if sometimes you get them off. Which I did.

However, now I work a very mundane 9-5 (or 8:20-ish to 4 if we're honest), which makes weekends simple shine. Which, in turn, makes Mondays just that much bleaker. I don't love Mondays. I do not.

D and I watch movies. More movies than you do, trust me. And we are better at it. Probably. For the sake of being superior I am going to pretend that we only watch movies on the weekends because we live well balanced and structured lives. Then, on Mondays, I am going to talk about the movies we watched over the weekend. If it sounds like we watched more movies than could fit in a weekend and you want to start having sneaky thoughts about how I might be lying to you about when we watch movies (like all the time, maybe), you are probably wrong and, actually, kind of nosy for being so interested in our movie watching habits. So. Without further adieu, here are some movie thoughts.

So we borrow movies from the library mostly. When I say "we" I mean Drew. We watch movies at his house because it is currently much warmer, bigger, and better outfitted. This means we watch movies he picks/owns, unless I have been very clever/employed a lot of forethought. We instigated a trade-off system where he picks one and then I pick one, which sometimes works. Like when we watched the 2007 version of Persuasion staring Sally Hawkins, and the actress who plays Lady Russell also plays the Queen of the Borg in the 1996 film "Star Trek: First Contact", inspiring us to watch that as well. So yes. See? It works.

Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes films have sequels. Sometimes netflix movies overlap with library movies and we have to watch certain films quickly in order to get them all back on time. Sometimes it is October and all we are allowed to watch, apparently, are Evil Dead, Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead versions. Which is really, really not fine. Sometimes I've been wanting to see a certain film but, because it is scary, don't want to watch it by myself and then, because I request it, it becomes my pick. Usually this results in me making Drew watch five hours of something British when my turn does roll around again. Systems. The key to peace.

I am tired of talking about movies. We got a great gift of a cook book this weekend. We are making soups. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Friday's are sauce days?

2011-02-11T12:59:00.007-06:00

I think I need some structure to help me post things in a blog. I feel a certain responsibility to this here blog, and sometimes I feel guilty for neglecting it. Which is ridiculous. If there is anything in my life I don't need it is internet guilt.
Regardless, I have been thinking about blog structure, and by that I mean a set schedule of some kind, which would make the refracted bits of me that are blog entries a bit more manageable. I have no intentions of developing a blog that will make me money or become my day job or anything like that, but I would like it to serve some purpose other being my own pretend world. I will continue to give this thought.

I read the wonderful postings at Nourished Kitchen. Today she posted this recipe for preserved lemon and mint allioli. What the what? This sounds amazing, never mind that I have no idea what an allioli is, let alone a preserved lemon. Turns out it is a sauce. Of some kind. Probably. (See the lovely photo from her website?)

I can't tell you how many times in the last couple of years I have bemoaned my inability to make sauces. It usually sounds something like, "Man, I wish I was French!", and usually has something to do with the fact that it is my turn to make dinner again and all I have is rice/lentils/quinoa and I can't think of anything to go with them and then I panic just make soup. So. One of my goals for my future life is to learn how to make sauces from scratch. Drew likes sauces to a kind of ridiculous degree. It has spawned fights. Really, I should make him learn how to make sauces. That will be the next step.
So! I need your help! I have a list of three or maybe four sauces that I think I can tackle right off the bat, but would love, love some slightly more exotic ones. I'm not certain about that allioli just yet. We'll tackle the issue with preserved lemons first and then maybe we will see.
List:
Mayo
Peanut sauce
Salsa varieties
yellow curry

What else?

Lotion attempt #1

2011-02-02T13:31:00.007-06:00

Work was, hilariously, delayed yesterday. We opened late and left early. Why? Because it was cold. Pretty cold. Not even very cold. In the 20's cold.

Living in Texas is unique for so many reasons.

Well, I made body moisturizer per my previous intentions.
Here are my handwritten instructions. My internet at home is spotty at best, and I felt it was safer to have the instructions readily available.

Bethel found my bee's wax, which had been stored on the top of Jen's fridge for the last almost year. Apparently Kris rescued it for me when we all moved out of stillwater farms, and that is where it ended up. A giant block of bee's wax
I am so grateful for all the free things I get in my life. If you stop and think about it, so many things are just gifts. Like the jar's salsa comes in. I know, technically, that isn't free because you are paying for it, but really, all I wanted was salsa and what I got was this awesome jar.
Also, this blender was a gift from my sister, who is in Asia.

I added my oatmeal powder to the water. I know it looks kind of gross, but it seemed to work fine and was completely dissolved.

I chose to use coconut oil for this experiment because a) I had it and b) it is super good for your skin.
I think this may have been a mistake.

I don't have any pictures of the finished product because I haven't quite finished it. I stupidly, didn't think about the fact that coconut oil is solid at room temperature and only oily at warmer temperatures. The body lotion that I ended up with has the consistency of a crayon unless I sit it in front of the space heater for a few minutes. Then it is pretty much just coconut oil again.

Oops. I will try again.
Things I learned:

Wax is hard to get off of dishes and dangerous to put down the sink. This was stressful for me.
My blender, though wonderfully free, isn't that great. Varying speeds preferred.
add extra wax to be on the safe side. It will never ever thicken into anything resembling lotion if you don't put in enough wax.

So. A little bit of research into substitute oils will be done and another try will be had. After all, I have five pounds of bee's wax to use up.

homemade is well-made

2011-01-26T12:22:00.006-06:00

I have been notified that my camera is shipped! Hurray!

I wandered into some very cool things the other day. Firstly, I found this blog which I find sometimes very silly and sometimes wuuuuuunderfully helpful. The most wonderful of the wonderful finds was this post on making your own body lotion. Amazing. I have adult eczema which, I assure you, is a pain in the ass, and I spend just all of my money on expensive lotions and moisturizers. To have the ability to make them myself?! And for an extremely cheap amount of money!? Glory be. Also, I recently acquired a lotion specifically meant for eczema treatment, meaning it is 1% colloidal oatmeal. This particular lotion is upwards of $13 for 8 oz. That is ridiculous. So I found this: how to make your own oatmeal bath (on babyparenting.com, obviously, because that is who has eczema. Babies.). This teaches you how to make colloidal oatmeal in your blender which you can then (I imagine) easily add to your homemade moisturizer.

I will let you know how this goes. Or, maybe I won't and you will just receive a surprise gift of homemade moisturizer in your mailbox.

Also, through some friends blogs, I found this gem of a gluten-free blog. Flat bread recipe looks amazing, though I'm not sure my hand-me-down blender is entirely up for the job.

In other news, I got my hair cut. At the mall. I have been needing a hair cut for months now. About five, I'd say. Maybe eight (how long ago did you move, Haley?). I cut it myself (see something in a previous post about self hair cuttery), with minimal success (I mean, it was shorter) but have recently been craving a real, stylized, posh sort of hairs on my head. D and I have a friend who works in the mall. His girlfriend also works in the mall and cuts hair. Well. Plus, since she is a friend (or friend of a friend) she made it so that I can actually afford getting my hair cut at the mall. And, I like it. A lot.

Do it yourownself, dammit.

2011-01-24T09:53:00.007-06:00

Hi. Again.

So I spend a lot of my internet time looking at DIY wedding sites. It is a hobby of mine which I have indulged in for years. I also like to read the wedding magazines in B&N whenever I find myself there.

I love this one.

I really like weddings. Really really. I will go to almost any wedding if I can snag an invitation. I'm not entirely sure of my motives for the wedding loving. The obvious is probably true; that I am a wedding-craving girl-loony. I hope that there is more to it than that. I like to think that I am incredibly crafty and that plumbing the depths of the wild world web will help me to perfect my craft.
Confession: I am not actually crafty.
I'm not sure what I am exactly, but it isn't crafty. I think I am more . . . spontaneous. Or dauntless. Whatever word means recklessly optimistic. Like cutting my own hair, or turning some clothing into other clothing. I'm 100% certain I can do it, regardless of the end product. Hair grows, you know. Always. I have bins full of half completed attempts at turning pants into skirts. Does this stop me from starting another pant/skirt transformation? No. No it does not.

However, true crafts thwart me. Case in point: damn paper cranes. Oh sure, they are crane-like, completed and replete across the back of my printer, but are they crisp and clean looking? Would you want them anywhere where some-other actually had to look that them? No. No, most definitely not. Of course, I am using recycled printer paper from my recycle drawer. I like to think that origami paper would slide into its corners in a much more graceful manner. Don't you think?

Regardless, weddings. Weddings are wonderful. I was glad to learn that Drew likes weddings too. We're actually totally snobby. We sit and critique choices in music, food, colors, flowers, blah blah blah. Which is a little bit hilarious, if you think about it. We are unmarried and snide. I think we would make a wonderful wedding planning team. We are eclectic and strange. So, I guess, if our wedding should ever roll around, you all should strive to be there. Because it will be awesome. I will make thousands of paper cranes, just promise not to look at them too closely.

This is my favorite new thing on www.soyoureengayged.com. Click it. I think I would get married just so I could get a nice letter from Obama. That might be an understatement. I might sell my kidneys for a nice letter from Obama. You know how that goes.

EDIT: I mentioned my "crafting" tendencies to Drew, namely the skirt/pants/skirt/pants cycle, and his response was, "Isn't that one of the clear definitions of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting the outcome to change?"
So. Yeah.

2011-01-21T11:31:00.003-06:00

I might have just, in a moment of weakness, bought myself this.

Now I need to buy a memory card.

2011-01-19T15:01:00.003-06:00

As a part of my work I maintain a website. I've been working here for almost five months and just learned how to do this last week. I feel like Mark Zuckerberg, only sans the genius and math parts. We watched The Social Network the other day and I came away with two major observations:

Mark Zuckerberg is an evil genius,
Justin Timberlake is one seriously homely fellow.

I guess I'd never really looked at him before when he wasn't doing something else really well, like dancing or being hilarious on SNL. When he is just standing there his mish-mash of a face is a little disconcerting. In many ways, I find this hopeful. Americans buy fame with their faces so often. It's nice to see someone whose talent merits the hoopla.

Website management and (sigh) newsletter creation are awful. I am thrilled, of course, to have something of the "work" variety to do here, at my desk, on my refurbished computer, in my cave of a crowded, windowless office (redundant so you get it). Considering no one calls me (except for Kevin. Hi, Kevin!), visits me, or needs me, I was starting to go a little nuts. This, at least, is a reason to be chained here and strongly discouraged from leaving. It feels wuuuuuuunderful.

These endless preceding months have enabled me to develop my mad-savy intertube (that's my cutesy nickname for the world wide web. We're close like that.) sifting skills. I find all sorts of interesting crap on the internet! I have my websites, mostly humor based, which I frequent. For a while I had a contest that I entered every day (and I am considering entering the search for contests into my daily intertube routine), and I, of course, am incredibly versed in which celebrities have various deformities. That's an incredible use of the internet right there.

I am starting to wish that I had a digital camera. I've never really wanted one before, but I live alone now, and have been convinced by everyone else's blog-led lives that I am at least as clever/artsy/snide as anyone else. I just need a camera to prove it. Also I want to learn how to make marzipan. And fabric flowers.

You are probably wondering why blog posts have been so few and far between if I am spending as much time as claimed swimming the internet. I have no explanation for you. As far as I can tell, I am lazy.

Since acquiring a boyfriendother, my productivity has plummeted. I'm pretty sure it is his fault. I used to do . . . something. Stuff? I had friends, maybe. I am sure I did. Whatever, regardless, yesterday I decided to make good on my time. Things I did yesterday:

sewed a button on D's shirt
hemmed a pocket
swept my apt.
did some dishes
tore the seam out of some pillowcases (they will eventually be a skirt)
sorted my laundry (thought it all ended up back in the same basket since I only have one laundry basket and I didn't actually do laundry yesterday).
made up my mind to go swimming today.

I will go swimming today.

If anyone still reads this, I hereby promise to be here more often, waiting for your visits.

2010-12-20T10:58:00.002-06:00

This is super cliche and a little sad, but I've been thinking, and mostly, it doesn't feel like Christmas because I've been so "busy". It doesn't help that it is supposed to be 81 degrees tomorrow. You have to make room, to push things aside and find the expectation of what is coming. Advent is so very necessary.

I have lost so much of the expectation of things in my life these days. I am not nearly as busy as I have been in my life and I am filling my extra hours with . . . nothing? Things? Expectation.

I have come to the conclusion that gluten is maybe not the culprit. I don't feel much, if any, better having removed it (nearly) completely from my life. I still have headaches, though the traction exercises are helping a lot, and I am still tired, but I suppose that is what comes with having a thyroid that can't make up its mind to simply work.

I am struggling with my present. Slightly dissatisfied. Always.

Seeking comfort and joy.

2010-11-30T13:39:00.005-06:00

I'm not eating gluten in an attempt to feel (much) better. Ideally. I'm also not taking my thyroid medicine (shhh!) because I'm pretty sure we have suppressed it to the point of under production. I'm not a doctor or anything and sometimes I feel guilty and take it. But mostly I don't. I went to a new doctor, a holistic health center doctor in Austin, who tested me for any number of things and decided it was probably gluten and hypothyroidism. Holla. Gluten free bread, as far as I can tell, is spongy even when toasted. That is okay. Corn tortillas taste better than flour. Garbanzo beans and squash and black beans and quinoa, all of these are okay. These are good. This is initially just for 30 days, though I anticipate having to learn how to really cook sans gluten.

I have been reading a lot lately. Drew gives me books to read and they are (generally) easier, faster reads than my usual (war and peace) choices. I feel voracious as I tear through novel after novel. Some of them I really hate during the reading, but appreciate it when its all done. Like The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, which is a dense, sad, awful novel and totally worth reading. Some of them are brilliant through and through like Yann Martel's Self, or Jonathan Safran Foers Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Some people are amazing with voices. I just started Little Children by Tom Perrotta and don't want to put it down. Not at all. Already a book that I like/will like.

We have spent a lot of time in cities not our own these last few months. Dallas to Austin to Dallas to Austin. We have such good friends.

My brother and his wife have had a baby. A baby that I can't keep my hands off. I want to make loving this little boy my job. Somebody pay me. Seriously? Look at that face!

I can't quite handle how adorable he is.

It is strange to have my family grow and merge like this. Thanksgiving was spent at my brother's new house with his wife's family. My family is, of course, across the world. Are your siblings in-laws your in-laws? If they aren't technically, they should be. Families are so incredibly fascinating, especially now as families grow and deviate and reunite. My brother and his wife have an older son, who was adopted by a great family in Houston who they have a relationship with. I wish there were true titles to explain how my parents, as the not-birth-but-adopted parents of my brother, get to be grandparents to his birth-but-adopted-out son. Complicated.

Drew and I went to the Homestead Heritage children's fair with our friends, Chris and Donnell, this last weekend. Drew had never been to Homestead, so I felt like this was the time to remedy it. Of course, a fair is not a truly accurate representation of Homestead, but it is more fun. We pet goats and held baby rabbits and chicks. We watched a sheep dog demonstrate his skills, and we got a nice talking to about bees. I would love to keep bees. I do a lot of relaxed research on the internet about bee keeping, and was able to practice a little when I lived on the farm. I am ashamed to say I have never participated in a honey harvest there, however. I miss it every time. Maybe this year will be my year. A friend of mine sent me a great present the other day, this wonderful bee brooch. It's one of my favorite pieces of jewelry, so I might as well give her a shout out. Thanks so much, Jessie. This is my next tattoo, you all. The bee, (not the squares) in several locations.

Also, I have been doing a lot of reading this magazine online. It's been one of my favorites since I lived on the farm. It was founded by one of the members of Adbusters which is, of course, another fabulous Canadian periodical. Oh man, Canada. And Mennonites. Just love 'em. Anyway, one of my former classmates and friends from when we lived in Guatemala, Tim Hoiland, recently was published in Geez, which brought it back to my attention. Way to go, Tim. Its such a cool magazine.

I am always so jealous of my motivated and successful friends. Where do they get it from? Gorgeous souls finding outlet in writing and family building and farming and teaching and seeking and being. Community dwellers, soil tillers, truth researchers, people lovers. I am so freaking proud to know you.

breath deep, seek peace

2010-11-09T11:03:00.003-06:00

I have messed up bones.

I got into a for reals fight this weekend. Angry and angry and sad and sad. We are all okay now.

Sometimes I try to compartmentalize my headhurt and imagine what a life without it would be like. How much more I could accomplish. How much more likely I would be to actually docreatesingdanceplaybuildsewswimdrawwritemakepantssingcookbakecalltalkchatconnect than I am generally.

I have this vision of the future. In it I wear an apron, though I am not sure anything I am doing necessitates in. In it, the windows are open, the wind blows, my feet get to be bare, it isn't too hot or too cold, and my headhurt is gone.

I am not entirely sure about this, but the tiredness that sets in whenever I think about having to do things, like call my former doctors, for example, or mail a package, or even when I think about all the work that people must have done to put on the library book fair, or when I see a house overgrown with weeds, this tiredness can't be normal, must be a part of the headhurt.

Anyway, I've stopped writing in this intertubal journal because of this tiredness. I can't seem to formulate anything that tells a story.

2010-10-06T12:51:00.002-05:00

From far away, you can't see the blue. You see the green right away, and then the orange tufts between the greens, but you don't see the berries. I've learned so much about trees in the last three years.

Look at the birds swarm. I'd've sworn it was a pecan tree, though obviously it is not. Watch those grackles move like hummingbirds. But then, those aren't grackles either. What are they? Midsized brown birds. They frighten off in waves. One wave. After another. After another.

Today I went home for lunch and sat on my porch. Shadows of squirrels on the lines amuse me when I am in my kitchen. It is a little different when I am outside. Knowing, by shadow, that there is a small mammal on a line three feet above your head and slightly behind you is, in fact, terrifying.

I have solved a problem. The problem of dressy earrings for gauged ears is, granted, not a huge, universal problem, but it is one none the less. Clip on earrings. Thank you to all the old ladies of the world and to Salvation Army for selling huge, audacious earrings for $2.

I am struggling to remember that money is finite. It runs out. I eat rice and beans. It is awesome.

New home, new job

2010-09-07T09:46:00.000-05:00

The home:

I live in a garage apartment behind the home of some friends. They are graciously allowing me to work for them to pay off some (ideally all) of my rent. I walk the dog and watch their kids and, yesterday, got into a brutal battle of the wills with a nasty patch of morning glories.

The apartment is exactly the right size for me, which continually surprises me. I keep expecting to feel lonely in space all to myself, but I don't. Or I expect to feel cramped and, other than having boxes everywhere, I don't. It is a bathroom, bedroom, living room, and kitchen, all absolutely full of furniture.

The woman who lived there before me graciously left me a number of household items that I would have been bereft without. Like silverware. And bowls. However, she also painted the walls a metallic pale blue, and replaced any number of fixtures with nickle plated monstrosities. I am slowly adjusting, either by their removal or acceptance.

The job:
I am the new AmeriCorps VISTA (volunteer in service to America) at the McLennan County Hunger Coalition. I have been this for one week and feel a little lost. What am I actually supposed to be doing? I crave further definition.

Essentially, as far as I can gather, I am the point person for the coalition. I organize our events, create our newsletter, manage our website, interact with local pantries, collaborate with BU's poverty initiative in all things, contribute my thoughts and presence to the Urban Gardening Coalition, the Homeless Coalition, and the Food Planning Task Force (whatever that might look like and/or mean), and I spend many an hour here, at my desk, on the internet, researching local and national hunger alleviation efforts.

Should be a good year.

I have my SNAP benefits interview this afternoon at 3. Wish me luck. As of right now I have about $100 to my name.

2010-08-23T21:39:00.002-05:00

I think I want to move to Albuquerque. Hang the expense! Weather does make a life.

I have a yellow tea kettle and a green toaster. My favorite things acquired since coming home.

Have worked my last 5am open and my last 11pm close. Hopefully for all time.

I cannot wait for this to feel like my life. Maybe next year, americorps Albuquerque instead? There are needs here too, I'm certain. And Indian food. And Thai food. And a small scale amusement park called "Carl's".

Also, should you need to know, the ABQ zoo is amazing, if a little confusing in layout, and the ABQ aquarium is not amazing. The Heritage farm in the bio park is also pretty great. Pretty damn great.

2010-08-04T02:40:00.003-05:00

Last day in Penang.

I start my 48 hour trek home tomorrow morning. Air travel is crazy. My taxi (or Teksi, as it is spelled here) comes at 5:30 tomorrow morning, then I catch a 7:40 flight to Hong Kong where I will spend the majority of Thursday. My flight leaves Hong Kong at 24:30, which gives me 12 full hours in the Hong Kong airport. I am flying business again, so I intend to sprawl in the business lounge eating noodles and drinking free alcohol. I will also probably sleep a lot in anticipation of losing a day somewhere in here. I get two 5ths of August and two 6th, apparently. Then we fly to Vancouver, where I don't think I get off the plane, and then on to JFK. Then I have five hours to get to LaGuardia, and from there it is four hours to home.

I cannot wait.

Today, we did not get dosai for breakfast. This is a big deal since we have gotten dosai for breakfast the last three days. I suppose, technically, I had roti bom for breakfast yesterday, but we did walk across the street to S.A.B. and my dad got dosai so it counts. Dosai is maybe my current favorite thing. I am going to miss it.

An explanation!
Here, at least, there are essentially two different options for Indian breakfasts. Roti and dosai. Roti is a wheat flat cake and dosai is a flat cake made of rice and/or fermented lentils. Think of it as sourdough. If you've ever had Ethiopian sourdough then you are thinking of the right sort of thing. It's crispy though, not spongy. Both are cooked on a large, flat grill-like surface. You can, of course, get them lots of different ways. Roti canai (pronounced CHa-nai, in Malaysia C = CH) is the basic flat cake. We usually get roti celur (which may or may not be spelled like that) which is roti with egg. They're sort of scrambled together usually and it is amazing. At S.A.B. the egg seems to be poached in the middle of the roti, which is strange. I only recently discovered roti bom, which saddens me. Somehow, they make the roti and then, as it cooks on the grill they fill it with sweetened condensed milk so that it sort of puffs up. The insides are sticky and gooey and the outsides are fried crispy and the whole thing makes me want to die. It is incredible.
Dosai is larger, usually just fried on one side and then looped over in a delicious cylindrical shape. I enjoy dosai made with ghee, which is clarified butter and tastes amazing. Both dosai and roti are served with dahl which, depending on the place, can be the best part.

Ah, breakfast.

Today is rained outrageously. I went to the pool and swam my half mile before the heavens opened up and the earth was soaked. I was supposed to go get some major henna done this evening, in expectation of my departure (and to come home looking like an Indian bride, apparently. They were quite taken with that idea), but they've had to cancel so I will have to do without. Goodbye Indian friends! All in all, this last day isn't looking like I thought it would However, all said and done and told, a good last day.

thirteen

2010-07-30T10:30:00.002-05:00

So! Only one week until I come home! Every time I attempt to write in here I get all distracted by how little time I actually have left! So little time! I have been so deeply grateful for this time here, and I think I needed it. I needed to not work or worry for a while and, thanks to my parents and their great generosity, I have had it.
The opportunity to live daily with ones parents as an adult for two whole months is something miraculous. The relationships that make up immediate family fade to phone callas and e mails as we become adults and distance ourselves from each other. I should have seen clearly from the beginning that this time has been a gift. I will never live with my whole family again. I raced from it years ago (nine years?), which I wonder if I still would do knowing that it is something to never be again. Something about it speaks to the swiftness of life. We live so quickly and so much without each other. My parents are older than I like to remember or think. Older and living so very far away. Yes, I am deeply grateful for this time with them. Time to live together as adults. My parents are fabulously aware of who I really am. I think that is incredibly rare as well.

We are quickly trying to accomplish all those touristy things that people should see and do. We are so not prone to that sort of thing. Again, my parents are being very kind to me in going out of their way. We went to see the reclining buddha, which was a little ridiculous and disappointing. I took some pictures. I'll consider putting them up here sometime so you can see and judge for yourself. We wandered through little India and I bought some brass bells and a dosai mix so I can try to make it for myself at home. I've bought all my presents, and have started packing it all. I hope it will all fit in one bag. I don't want to lug more than that from one NY airport to the other.

Home! In a little more than five days!

twelve

2010-07-25T08:25:00.003-05:00

We visited the Butterfly farm yesterday. It's a pretty big tourist attraction here on Penang and it was quite busy.

They have lots of other interesting insects as well. Cool six inch leaf bugs.

And Asiatic Horned Toads.

Penang is beautiful.

Eleven

2010-07-15T06:00:00.004-05:00

Well!

My parents baby sat for a couple of hours the other day. The kids had the sticker sheet on the right. There is one specific typo. Can you see it? It had me giggling for a long time. I'll give you a hint, it isn't the cat tiger, though heaven knows what that is.

I got the job. I got a job that isn't Starbucks. Praises be.
For the next year, at least (possibly two years if they'll have me), I will be the VISTA intern at the Mclennan County Hunger Coalition, or MCHC. As far as I can tell AmeriCorps gives beginning nonprofits who can't afford staff the opportunity to bring in a VISTA to do all the stuff that a paid staff member would do, but on the governments tab. A VISTA grant is given for three years which, I assume, is how long they think it should take a hard working nonprofit to build to the point where they can hire staff. So, ideally, if I do my job right, at the end of this there should be an organization with the means and inclination to give me a real forever job. At least, that is going to be my goal.

The more I understand the job, the more I am excited about it. It looks like there is a lot to do initially, and then the opportunity to build endlessly on the coalitions member base. This will keep me busy, which is a lot of what I need in life. And considering that a lot of the job involves working alongside the Farm, I think I will be pretty happy.

Of course, it is a government funded volunteer opportunity, which means that they looked at the average poverty-rate income of our area and decided that that is how much I get paid. It is quite a bit less than I made last year, which is a tad anxiety inducing, but I am determined to accomplish this and to do it with some flare. So if you see me digging through peoples trash or something, it is probably safe to assume that I am doing it with the aim of saving money somewhere. This will be the first time I have ever been on a set salary, albeit a small one, but I am determined to view this time as a gift, and train myself to budget. I'd like to start saving, if at all possible. I do have a savings account. I think. I also think it has eleven dollars in it.
So that is my big exciting good news. I will hopefully be working at Starbucks for the two weeks directly after I get back in an attempt to make the best of my employment there, and then I will be heading to Albuquerque, NM for a couple days of training, and then I will be a VISTA member!

I also accomplished my goal of swimming a mile yesterday. I am slow and it gets dull, but I realized that I wasn't actually tired and could easily finish. So I did. You can safely assume that pretty much everyone got prayed for. 84 lengths of the pool is a lot of repetitions. I bought real goggles today, like a real swimmer.

swim, swam, swum. (10!)

2010-07-12T01:36:00.005-05:00

Swimming makes me tired. And hungry. And then super tired some more. Exercise doesn't take energy, it makes energy. Right? Sure. I have developed a system. As I swim, I repeat the Jesus Prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I say this simple prayer over and over as I swim. Then I change it up a little and start inserting other things like, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on this job interview that I'm nervous about." This is working for me for a number of reasons. I have assigned different needs/worries/fears to different laps, which makes the laps easier to keep track of. I don't have to count. I just have to remember that I was on my Benjamin laps, but had only done one, I have one more to go. Also, it helps me to finish my half mile because if I don't not everyone gets prayed for and then I feel guilty.
It is, obviously, not a terribly mature way to pray, but I don't feel terribly mature in my prayer life. Or like I have a prayer life at all. You have to start somewhere. Recently things have started to weigh pretty heavily on me and rather than fretting or ignoring them, I am choosing to pray rote prayers about them. My best friend's new little boy has downs syndrome, my brother and his wife discovered, at 21 weeks, that they are pregnant, and my beloved godson lives far away and is growing up without me. In all these things, it is better to pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy.

I have been thinking often, though not deeply, about my very own spirituality. On my long flight from Dallas to Japan I wrote this:

It is not Jesus I am unsure of; it is church services and prayer and pastors and worship leaders and missionaries and republicans. It is eternity and individualism and materialism and ownership and salvation. Will God judge me for having read Charles Williams and altered my life not at all? And a better question; Will I be accepted anyway?

I think often, but not deeply, about my friends conversions to Catholicism. How Protestants are never taught any form of discipline, grow up believing anything is acceptable, and then, when grown, don't believe anything at all. My catholic friends are beautiful examples of steady, thoughtful, intentionally worshipful people. My Protestant friends are often, though of course not always, cynical and negative with arbitrarily assigned beliefs. We are just as likely to learn our doctrine from society or poetry as from anywhere else. We have no grounding. Myownself as a resounding example. We learn more of God as we grow. Our view of him changes. But he shouldn't change. He shouldn't grow to look more like us.
I've edited my book list, removing what I've finished reading. I will admit to taking a serious detour and reading all of my mothers Mitford Series books. Trite, silly things. I read them quickly, I promise. They do make me cry. I intend to reread The Man Who Was Thursday next, and then plow ahead with War and Peace. I'm something like 30 pages in, having started it before I left. I have decided to save The Grapes of Wrath for the plane home, knowing that I will love it, and that it is ginormous. When I read East of Eden it was on a 28 hour overnight bus ride from Atlanta to Waco, and it is an experience that I treasure. A twelve hour layover in Hong Kong and then an overnight plane ride from Hong Kong to New York's JFK is just the ticket.

We are preparing for a storm. The weather man says three days of 50-60 mph winds and 9 ft waves. Thrilling.

nine

2010-07-08T05:32:00.016-05:00

Yesterday was the first annual celebration of Penang Heritage Day. UNISCO named Georgetown, (Penang's largest, possibly only city) a heritage site last year, and so they have created a holiday. SUPER fun day. Well done Penang.

We were initially invited by our new Indian friends to participate in a heritage walk yesterday morning. Essentially it was a tour and study of the various shop house styles which have been preserved over the years. I like to call it the "shutter tour". Dating from 1800 onward, these shutter styles tell the tale of Penang's importance as a port and the various occupations that resulted. I think the shutters are so beautiful. Though the history was a little over my head. Its hard when you know nothing about an areas past. We wandered and wandered, in hilarious circles passing the same block several times.

This was fun because we ride the bus a lot and it just flies past these beautiful temples, and shops, and houses and things, and it is so rare that we stop and look at things.
But yesterday, we got the chance to stop and looked at quite a few things. It was great.

After two breakfasts (Dim Sum before the tour, and Roti Channai after) we went home and napped. Then, at four we headed back into town for tea with our new Indian friends. They had prepared a Nyonya tea, which, as far as I can gather means Chinese-Malay. It was a bunch of sweets with the texture of tapioca, all made with coconut milk in some form or another, and some sweet, wild rice soup mix of some kind. It was, quite honestly, gross. Which is pretty much how I feel about Dim Sum and possibly all Chinese food. Sad. But true.
Regardless, we headed back into the fray, the whole downtown area was set up with little stages and various cultural performances including Lion Dancers.Who are adorable children in giant lion costumes. Very fun, very festive.
They were doing demonstrations in batik, and teh tarik (my favorite), and henna. Abby, the niece of our new Indian friends assures me she has a friend who does henna for cheaper so we're going to do that before I go home in a couple of weeks. They had opened up the mosques for tours, and some members of the Bejing Opera were present doing demonstrations and, supposedly snippets of the Monkey King, though we didn't get to see it. However we did get to see some pretty good examples of modern Indian dance and drumming.

I sat next to Amy, who is 24, and she kept saying things like, "For Indians, it is all about color, all about spice, all about dance." Indians are fun. And she's right. They are all about color, spice, and dance. Indian food enlivens our life here. We ate tandoori chicken at our favorite new place, Kapitan's, in Little India for dinner. Tandoori chicken is the fabulous shade of red and it stains your fingers and you smell like it for hours. It's heavenly. And you get a Mango Lassi to go along with it, all sweet and creamy, and it is the best. What am I going to do when I go home? Indian food so far away and so expensive. Sigh. I live a hard life. :)

I'm including this picture on the left just because I was told by Amy that the boy in the front is the ex boyfriend of one of her friends and, she assures me, he is a liar. Hilarious.

The last performance that we watched was Traditional Indian dance, which changed my life a little bit. It is gloriously classy, like ballet, and it was so beautiful. I loved it and want to learn. Is there any way in the world for that to happen? In Texas? In Waco? Probably not. I would love it though. I danced when I was a little, little girl, and am silly about it still.

I've moved into a nice schedule here. I get up when I wake up, and lounge around with a glass of Teh Tarik from a powder packet (it's no where near as good as the real thing but I intend to buy just a million packets to bring home and drink it as long as my supply lasts) while I wait for Drew to skype me from work. After we talk I usually lie around reading a book until it dawns on me that I can lounge around reading a book by the pool, and that there is a much better chance of me getting in the pool if I am by the pool. Then I swim. I've managed to swim a half mile three times now, and am getting better at it. I'm tan and feeling pretty good. Then I take a nap, or sit and read, and eat some kind of lunch. Eventually we eat dinner and watch a movie, the three of us on my parents bed. Tonight it is Julie and Julia which I saw in the theater. I'd forgotten how much I like it.

I miss you all. I am faithfully reading your blogs, loving watching your babies, gardens, chickens, quilts, crafts, etc. grow. I wish I could be with you. You are all so very impressive and precious.

eight

2010-07-06T07:37:00.004-05:00

Well, it seems to have struck us all at once that I will only be here for a couple more weeks (four!), and so we've started to pick up the pace a little. On Sunday we went to church, then wandered around little India, ending up buying some pretty things. Tomorrow morning (early!) we are participating in Heritage Day, which is a national holiday, by going on a Heritage walk (I'll take pictures) with our Indian friends from church. Friday is an engagement party for the daughter of some friends of my parents, and then Saturday we're going to Batu Ferengi, which is the more touristy area, for one of those fish pedicures that are illegal in the states these days, and some shopping, which I've been putting off. Presents, you know.

Next week I am hoping to get to see the reclining Buddha, which is supposed to be something like 35 feet long, and, if I can convince my parents, I'd like to go the snake temple too. Then we're going to the butterfly gardens.

So, busy. Yes.

I've gotten up to swimming a half a mile pretty regularly. I do at least a quarter mile, and then sometimes quit if it's sunny.

Being here this long has been good. I've settled into a very nice lack of schedule and am enjoying it. I miss home, and I miss Drew, and I am looking forward to my new fall-life, with my new apartment and, hopefully, new job. I think I can last another month.

Oh, and by the way, I'm going to be an Aunt. :)

seven

2010-06-29T11:03:00.003-05:00

As evidenced by the list on the left, I brought books to read. It was a somewhat haphazard process, motivated in main part by my desire not to have very heavy bags, and also a bit by the fact that I was carting quite a few books to my parents for their purposes, and has resulted in that somewhat haphazard list. I have been reading Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem, but am finding it rather long and dark and possibly without redemptive ending in sight. I have broken into its reading with Blessings, a much lighter, much more trivial novel about redemption and family that was given to me by Drew's mom for my birthday. This is wryly amusing because Drew and I had a conversation about books before I left, one which touches on this experience I am having. We talked about the difference between "guys books" and "girls books", how there are books that seem to have been written for male audiences and books which have been written for female audiences, and how few people seem to be able to stomach reading both.
We didn't talk about it but I think we acknowledged in our "not saying" that there are novels which obviously reject and surpass this assumption. There are novels like Giliad, Anna Karenina, The Moon and Sixpence, Brideshead Revisited, and Jurassic Park, novels from everywhere, written about everything, with varying levels of skill and style and movement made apparent in them, that are novels for everyone and recognized as novels for everyone. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is one such book.
However there are other authors who only seem to be able to write one way or another. I am finding Lethem to be a pervasively masculine author. He writes about classically male things; sex, drugs, rites of passage, comic books, music, etc. and he writes well, but is, frankly, grosser than I can comfortably handle. I have only read a novel and a half at this point, and feel a little vulnerable making him my example, but by comparison to "neutral" novels or "feminine" novels, he stands as firmly male in my mind.
In contrast, Blessings is a feminine novel, a novel to which I can retreat when Lethem's crass realism is too much. Blessings is about an old lady regretting her past, a young man given a chance to be better than his circumstances, and a baby. This sounds like a woman's novel to me. Unfortunately, Blessings is also kind of crappy, definitely inferior to Fortress of Solitude in quality.
I get frustrated occasionally as a person who reads and reads avidly when my friends refuse to consider a book based on its gender leaning. Friends of both genders do it, though more examples of male refusal spring readily to mind, perhaps because I am a woman. Jane Austin is my best example. A wonderful author who wrote funny, insightful books that should be considered gender neutral, but are not. I don't understand how it is acceptable even within our friendships for a novel by a woman, perceived to be about women, insightfully full of anecdotes of a certain time and a certain society, gets treated like something not worth men's time. Doesn't that seem insulting to you? I understand that there is a lot of total trash written with women as their intended audience. Nicolas Sparks springs to mind, as do the thousands upon thousands of romance authors. But this doesn't make the things that appeal to women trash.
As I read, I have been made aware of the myriad reasons I do read. I read to be entertained, to be comforted, to be moved. But I also read to be changed, to be informed, or adjusted, or enlightened. I will persevere through Lethem because he writes well and with feeling, even if it is darker than I would like, or crasser than I would have felt to need to be if I were him. And in the end, I will be different for the reading.
Isn't that the point?

Six

2010-06-25T07:12:00.001-05:00

We went to Singapore. It was a great vacation. Singapore is clean and modern and very expensive. We stayed in this hilariously small hotel which made me think of that room that the muppets say in in The Great Muppet Caper with the bed that folds out of the wall.

We spent the first day sight seeing and wandering until it was time for the Night Safari. The night safari is essentially a zoo, at night, full of nocturnal animals. I really enjoyed it, though it is hard to see the animals in the dark. They have some lighting close up in the enclosures, but if the animal aren't there, then you're out of luck. We were really close to a lot of animals, like a fishing cat, some binturong, asian otters, a tapir, and then we got to walk through a bat enclosure where the bats were all around us. Including Malaysian Flying Foxes which are huge and lovely.

The next day we spent mostly in the botanical gardens. If I lived in Singapore, this is where I would spend all my time. Its a huge public park full of thousands of giant trees.

And then there are the orchids. In the middle of the botanical gardens there is an orchid garden with thousands and thousands of orchids. Gorgeous.

Fiver

2010-06-21T09:02:00.006-05:00

I am finding it hard to balance pictures and writing. The picture posting, due to our questionable internets, takes way more time and effort than it would normally. By the time I get them all loaded, I forget what I was going to say and end up simply captioning the photos. I suppose that is okay.

We have fallen into a very nice routine of doing very little. My parents both have jobs that involve international travel and computer work. Very little of it actually involves leaving the apartment. Considering the length of my trip, this has been pretty alright with me so far. Our tempos match. They are 60ish, and I just feel like I am. This trip is long enough that I have no fear of missing out on seeing things. Taking it easy.

On Sunday we attended church. It is a mostly Chinese congregation with some Indian families. They had a special guest performance of the Boys Brigade, which I gather is the Methodist boy scouts. A drum and bagpipe corps.
I giggled, but managed to keep my laughter pretty much contained. The absolute last thing I expected to encounter in a Malaysian Methodist Church was bagpipes, yet, here they are.

After church we went to Lau Sher, a tea shop that my parents have visited a couple of times before. My mom was reasonably
confident that she remembered the general rules of how to serve the tea, but was corrected rather sternly a couple of times by the tea shop proprietress.
We had lunch there and it was amazing.

Today it poured. All day. I will admit to feeling a little homesick.

My mom managed to find the last of the seasons Mangosteen at the market this morning. Aren't they cute? Like something someone would make and sell on Etsy? Sorry this first one is a little blurry. Blame it on the camera.

I finished Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell last night. A big, dark, very good book. I liked it a lot. I have moved on the Jonathan Lethems, Fortress of Solitude.

Four

2010-06-18T06:02:00.001-05:00

Here are some pictures for you. :)
A nice view of the Apartment living room:

And one of my mothers gardenia which she believes is deaf. She yells questions at it on a regular basis.

This is where I sit to read and/or watch the weather roll in.

Some weather!

And the pool where I swim everyday. Do be jealous. It's quite nice and almost always entirely mine.

That's all for now. I've been swimming every day, like I said, and have decided that I am working up to swimming a mile.

Three

2010-06-16T22:47:00.005-05:00

This island seems to be entirely sky scrapers. At least from what I can see off our balcony. From what my dad says I gather that they are mostly apartment buildings. Lots and lots of apartments, with more going up all the time.

Everywhere I look I see laundry flying. Ten stories up and the windowsills are full of clothing on hangers. That would make me nervous. There is the odd article on the tin roof of the car park below. Amazingly most of it seems to stay where it is put. Or gets blown too far away to be recovered.

Yesterday morning on our walk to the market my mother and I waded through a pack of mangy dogs with unhealthy green goo in their eyes. They were incredibly pitiable, but also hilarious in a cartoonish sort of way. Elongated maws filled with sharp little teeth, gnawing on fish heads. Dogs are unclean to Muslims and generally neglected the world over. Sometimes I forget because where I am from dogs get anti-anxiety medicine and pedicures.

Malaysia is populated by many people groups, but three primarily; Malays, Chinese, and Tamils. The Island of Penang, where we live, is mostly Chinese, but the restaurants seem to mostly be Indian. At least the ones we eat at.

Malays eat with a fork and a spoon, like Thai people. Indians eat with their right hands. And Chinese eat with chop sticks

From our apartment you can see a mosque and a Hindu temple. You pass a Buddhist temple on the walk to the market. It is interesting and strange to speculate on peoples religious beliefs based on their ethnicity. According to law, all Malays are born Muslim. My mom found a website that sells burquini's, Muslim swimwear. Fascinating.

I've been swimming everyday and have decided that a mile is my goal. Setting small goals for myself seems important. I don't have much expected of me here and it is good to have some reason to get out of bed.

I found out today that the job I thought I had lined up at Habitat for Humanity isn't mine after all. This is okay, though a little disappointing. I have spent most of today working on my resume and searching through various ISD websites. Anyone know of a nice, full-time clerical position opening up in the fall? Hook a sister up.

Post Number Two

2010-06-12T01:23:00.002-05:00

This is a short one. Today we went the mall, which is like any mall anywhere. McDonald's, Famous Amos, Auntie Anne's, etc. etc. etc. Also a Big apple donuts. Where I got . . .

A donut with cheese! That's white chocolate icing with imported New Zealand cheese. Actually quite delicious. Cheese is considered a sweet in most parts of Asia, which I suppose is why you don't see it very often in Asian food restaurants.

Also we went to a pet store (or more like a pet kiosk) where I got to pet super fuzzy bunnies, and poke at sugar gliders, and I gave a sweet little hedgehog a leg up when he got stuck.

My parents have been super sweet and adorable about me being here. My dad says that there is pretty much one restaurant per person on Penang, so our eating out options are pretty limitless. We've planned our days so far based on where to eat. Love it.

I do miss home, and I miss talking to people. Skype me! We are 13 hours ahead of you here, so mornings and evenings tend to work out best. I am almost always online. I'd love you talk to you. elliejlewis@gmail.com

Well, Hello there, Malaysia

2010-06-11T01:38:00.005-05:00

Official blog of Ellie's 2010 trip to Asia; Entry numero uno.

I wrote a rather lengthy e mail to the boy from the guest house in Japan, so rather than rewrite it all, I am simply going to copy and paste parts of it. I probably won't tell you when I am doing that. So don't worry. Just don't worry about it.

I flew business class. Business class is like some kind of amazing, classy restaurant. You are waited on constantly, with champagne waiting for you (who in their right mind would ever sit waiting on a runway without champagne? Seems ludicrous.) and the flight attendants know your name (they cheat with a seating chart), ask you if you’ve gotten a chance to look over the menu and which of the four (four!) dinner choices you would like, and bring you refills on your wine. Which I drank lots of. Tried both whites and both reds by the time the trip was over. However, this is a very special restaurant due to the fact that you are also seated in your bed (think, "The Itis", boondocks episode #10), get to watch movies while you eat, are being taken to a far off place, say, Japan.

They also provide you with little travel kits. Presents everywhere. Socks, eye masks, toothbrushes and toothpaste, burts bees lip balm and lotion, and ear plugs (not that you need them because they hand out those fabulous noise reducing headphones). I spent some of the flight sleeping and the rest of the flight distracted by the myriad films and television shows at my fingertips. Loved it. Ate three great meals, watched two pretty good movies, plus some Wizards of Waverly place, all while wearing airline issue socks and snuggling under a warm, grey duvet cover.

American Airlines 777's have business class seats the recline completely. Totally horizontal. What could they possibly have in first class that makes it better than business? I couldn't even begin to guess.

Narita airport, Tokyo was a bit of a different story. The signs are confusing, no one, but no one really speaks English (you ask and they say, “A rittle bit”, kind of like how I say, “Un poquito.” But would never be able to give you directions to an ATM, internet lounge, or train station), and the thing is massive. Very big. Very confusing. Very Japanese. I wasn't terribly worried seeing as how I had 18 hours before my next flight. I figured I could take my time figuring out where to go and how to get there. Boy howdy, did I.

So here is what happened:

After I made it through immigration, got my luggage, found and ATM, took out some JYen, and stored my luggage, I went in search of a train to my guest house. I knew the guest house was in Chiba. What I didn’t know is that Chiba is a state (whose capital city is Chiba), and Narita is not only an airport, but a city nearby and the home of my guest house. I bought my ticket to Chiba (JYen 650), and rode the train there. I was getting a little nervous because the guest house website said it was just one short stop from the airport, 7 - 10 minutes. Chiba was definitely seven or eight stops, 45 minutes at least. I got out and showed a nice man my booking confirmation for International Guesthouse Azure Narita. He did not speak English but kindly pointed out that I needed Narita, not Chiba. I got back on the train. I got off at Narita and realized that I had NO IDEA where this guesthouse was. None. Hadn’t printed the map, you see. I spent a few hapless minutes attempting to ask for help, then I tried to use a pay phone to call the guest house but couldn't figure that out, so finally I bought a new train ticket back to the airport (JYen 180 because it was the cheapest possible fare and since I had no idea what I was doing I thought that was safest), got off at the airport but couldn’t get into the airport because I didn’t have enough money on my ticket (JYen 10. Really?). I was pointed to an internet lounge (JYEN 100 for ten minutes), where I looked up the guesthouse map which was all in Japanese. Helpful, not so much. I drew myself a rough map, scribbled down some listed landmarks, and took off for Narita again.

This is a ridiculous story. Long and with a very basic point which could be expressed much more concisely.

I got lost in Japan.
But managed to figure it out for myself.

I asked a lot of directions.

The guest house was awesome and I suggest it. Can't remember the website just now, but it was really nice. I slept pretty soon after I got there but woke up often and had jittery dreams about missing my flight. It's didn't help that the sun rose at 4:15 am and scared the crap out of me. Thought I'd set my clock wrong.

Eventually I made it back to the airport, and to the business class lounge. This has got to be the nicest thing in the world. Especially since I ate nothing but granola bars the whole time I was in Japan. The lounge has breakfast of all kinds, and little sandwiches, with coffee and tea and fruit and a whole range of liquor which, hilariously, most of the business men partook of. At 8 in the morning. Rough life. I tell you. I did drink champagne on the runway that time, even though it was 10 am. Told myself it was like half a mimosa and that is acceptable.

To make this long story short, I made it to Hong Kong (flying over a crystal clear and breath takingly beautiful Mt. Fuji) and from there to Penang where I was met by my fabulous parents. So far I seem to be adjusting to the time difference pretty well, and I think my long flights helped a lot with that.

My parents took me for roti this morning, which is something like a pancake but fried really thin and with eggs, at a great little, street side restaurant and I had the best tea ever. I promise to find out the real names for everything so I don't just say things like "indian pancake" and "great tea" all the time. Then we swam and had lunch and now it's nap time.

Here are some pictures. I didn't bring a camera, though my parents assure me I can borrow theirs of questionable quality, so I used my Mac. Therefore all the pictures are from inside our apt.

Here is one of the views from my bedroom. Mac's reverse everything in photo, so it's confusing, but my window looks West, and these are the Mountains S/W of us. As if you were looking left out the window.

And this is the view head on, with the Strait of Malacca on the left (though in reality it's the right).

And this is the view to the right, with the water.

This is off the balcony.

And this is a dragon fruit and what is, I think really, called a "hairy eyeball", only in Malay. I think the dragon fruit is so pretty. Like a bright pink artichoke. We bought them this morning at the market.

2010-06-10T01:10:00.002-05:00

My relaxing summer in Asia has begun. Just so you know. I think I will make use of this space to document my travels. Maybe.

But not just yet. I am in Hong Kong with a plane to catch. Stay tuned . . .

a nice relaxing summer in Asia

2010-03-29T20:50:00.003-05:00

I don't seem to like the proposed platform. This little box they have set up for me to type in saps my strength. Daunting it is.

I am starting to shy away from this online world of "blogging" for reasons that should have been clear and obvious from the beginning. It is ridiculous. This assumption that I actually have anything to say, any observance that is somehow lasting and important, is arrogant in the extreme. And other peoples arrogance irks me even more. Your blogs are starting to bother me. This is not entirely true. Your blog either bothers me with your forced profundity (it's not really any of you that read this that do this, none the less I feel the need to vent), or I am so twisted by jealousy of your beautiful lives and a deep homesickness to be near you, that it takes almost all joy from the reading. I have always wanted to be you.

That said, let me be forcibly profound about some every day mundane things. Baylor University, which I never attended and hold no allegiance towards, has some very good basketball teams. They advanced incredibly far this year. This is interesting only because, quite suddenly, everyone I know is an avid sports fan. I walk downstairs for dinner and the game is playing on the radio. The game is playing on the radio. Whose house did I stumble into? Drew and I were preparing to spend an evening together when, suddenly (and totally beyond my ability to understand) he turns on the television and we proceed to spend the next forty minutes or so watching basketball. We. Watched basketball. On television.

Now, I like basketball. I do. And these were some very close, very exciting games, but really? I was pretty grumpy about it. Drew said something like, if you were dating any other guy he'd spend a lot more time watching sports. This is an interesting statement. Simply put, I probably would not be dating that guy. At least I've managed not to so far.

Anyway.

I am covered in eczema. Eczema is this interesting genetic/allergic/random pain in the ass disease. Love it. Can't even tell you. Makes me miserable all the time, and there is, in a wonderful, literal way, nothing I can do about it. When I say I am covered in eczema what I mean is I have had this my entire life and have never seen anything like this. It is in my ears, for the love.

I have been putting off going to the doctor out of some, probably misplaced, loyalty towards my acupuncturist who has, thus far, been very helpful. We're working on my eczema through a variety of herbal approaches, including supplements and this strange smelling herbal wash that I essentially bath in twice daily. These are not really working. Putting off going to the doctor seemed like a good idea because

A) all eczema treatments are topical and I really don't want another prescription especially when it is one that I have to rub all over my entire body, and

B) I am already paying to see an acupuncturist, may as well take advantage of her services in this area as well, and

C) he isn't a dermatologist and will probably send me to one and I have too many doctor bills to keep up with as it is.

All this to say that I am going to the doctor this week. Maybe he will give me a Cortizone shot like they do for poison ivy. That would be awesome. All herbal healing aside, an itchy rash on your face and in your ears is not to be born.

So. There.

I have started to nanny for that family with those kids again. It is not my favorite job, but it is a fine, easy, well paying one and every day I spend with them is a day closer to a nice, relaxing summer in Asia. A nice, relaxing summer in Asia.

2010-03-21T13:18:00.003-05:00

I am ill a good deal these days. And the rest of the time, humming Rilo Kiley's "Better son or daughter" under my breath, I am considering Sylvia and the crawl space. All that to say:

My dad procured me a ticket to Penang. I leave June 8th, fly many miles and hours, and land in Tokyo on the 10th. Then to Hong Kong and to Penang. Then I have two full months to do nothing in the care of my parents.

Google assures me it will look like this:

2010-02-03T10:45:00.010-06:00

My best friend gets to stay home with her son these days. It is good because we live here. And he looks like this.

There is something unbelievably therapeutic in the idea of family stay-at-home time.

Haley and I are starting out on an adventure. One in which we spend these last couple of months living together and making things. Our first project is butter.
We are excited about this. I have found a spectacular butter website. Called Butter through the ages. We are going to attempt butter and then ghee and possible some yogurts and cheeses. I think we can do this. We are clever, reasonably capable women, who enjoy each other and don't really mind making messes. We do, however, both like being successful in our small endeavors. Hopefully we can manage.

It was brought to my attention recently by my acupuncturist that I should not be eating soy. At. All. With my thyroid problems. Soy is high in estrogen and, as far as balancing your hormonal system goes, that is not helpful. Also not terribly helpful is the fact that every store bought baked good is made with soybean oil (or Canola oil which is to be avoided on principal). This has made my life a little bit more . . . whats the right word? Difficult, certainly. Interesting, probably. Quite by the grace of God, I live with at least one man (and more often four men) who bake. They are marvels, really. They bake. John is a phenom in the cookie department. Kris experiments with pies of all sorts, cream ones lately. TJ has been known to make hamburger buns, calzones, pizza dough, and breads. And Daniel. Well, Daniel makes bread. Daniel is some kind of bread genius. He makes artisan loaves for dinner. He is a giver of grace.

My acupuncturist has, in her waiting room, a copy of the Natural Healing Wisdom and Know-How book. Many of my friends and roommates and former roommates have had the Country Wisdom and Know-How book, which is a wonderful resource for all things homesteady and earthen. This wonderful gem is a complete guide to wellness as I see it. Wellness as I long for it. A not-very-expensive book on amazon that I am contemplating purchasing.

I am interested in the slow move to raw food in my life, in yoga as do-it-yourself massage, in acupuncture instead of surgery, and in herbs as food and medicine.

My acupuncturist also mentioned the connection between my adrenal gland and my thyroid. As I understand it, your thyroid regulates any number of hormones in your body. Some of these hormones work with your adrenal glad. Your adrenal glad is your bodies stress coping gland, enabling you to absorb and adjust to stress. When your adrenal gland is not working correctly your body stops dealing with stress correctly. This can lead to what I like to call my "Sylvia Plath moments", breakdowns in which your life and its problems seem slightly too overwhelming to be dealt with. I have had several of these in the last couple of weeks and am comforted to know that they are physical rather than purely emotional or mental (ah, Sylvia). However, the surest way to relax an over worked adrenal gland is to actually relax, and de-stress your life. This process of scaling down my life, of learning to ask for help when I need it, prioritizing my time, and saying "no" when I have to, is a large part of what seems so overwhelming in the first place. I'd rather simply duck out.

Also, I got a catalogue in the mail from fieldforest.net. It's a beautiful catalogue an it brings me joy. It reminded me that I own golden oyster mushroom spores, that I purchased nearly two years ago and that if I had been diligent and planted them I would currently be the proud cultivator and harvester of these beauties. Aren't they lovely? I have no earthly idea what they taste like, living in Waco as I do and not frequenting any sort of specialty stores or farmers markets, but I am enamoured with their beauty. That, and the fact that they are supposed to be incredibly easy to cultivate. A good beginners mushroom, they are.

I need beauty and idealism.

Haley and I have been making time to watch Masterpiece Theater's new Emma miniseries. It's a wonderful version and we agreed that if all the BBC and Masterpiece Theater want to do is remake Jane Austin miniseries over and over, we are thrilled.

how you put one on disguises

2010-01-17T00:31:00.004-06:00

Today, though a day which ended, unfortunately, with work as so many must, was a drastically lazy day and should have been a simple pleasure. I found myself, instead, unwilling to rise from bed, though sleep had been hard to come by. Unwilling to dress once I emerged from the shower, preferring instead to sit still and do nothing. Unwilling. The somethings seem too much.

And I wonder how much of it is a head that weighs an astronomical amount. A head that makes getting out of bed physically more trying than I care to try. A head that is full, sure, metaphorically quite full and busy and, unfortunately, never been quite well or normal, but is also, quite purely and physically heavy. And diseased. Mostly diseased.

Here's the thing. I can't help being sad. Sad in ways that make me think I have felt this way all the time, all my life. Which can't be true. Sad, in ways that make me wonder if I will be like this always. Sad in self aware ways. Ways that don't go away. A black hole.

My head aches.

Christus mansionem bendicat

2010-01-06T00:19:00.003-06:00

In this aching cold, I carry burt's bees in my pajama pocket. I cover myself in any soothing lotion I can lay my hands on. I wear layers of things with no regard to color or coordination. I am often seen wearing large socks in small shoes. It is an error and a pain to remove oneself from the sanctity that is ones Empire Strikes Back flannel sheets.

Let the new, post Christmas life begin. The kings have come, epiphany has been brought. May Christ bless this house.

Neuralgia Bugbear

2009-12-17T12:31:00.006-06:00

I am keeping The Empire Strikes Back as background noise while I watch baby B. I think it is important to indoctrinate them young.

The sad arrival, and not so sad diagnosis and treatment, of migraines this week unfortunately coincides with a forty hour week at Starbucks. Coincidence? Possible.

Migraines are something entirely foreign to me. Like, well, like this.

I can feel them coming, lurking in the back of my head, and then they move in, take over my sensory organs and make me want to die.

This is also the week where H and D both work full days every day. We are passing the afore mentioned B around. This fills every spare hour of my life. I did the math and, though not to be trusted coming from me, it looks like I am working (if hanging out with my infant friend can be called working) in and around 63 hours this week. If I were a better person I imagine this would be invigorating.

In the grips of what I imagine to be a pre-migraine headache, I walked B down to the fence to visit the sheep. They were at the watering trough when we set out but, startled by our approach, they moved back. Still, this was the closest I'd ever been. I think they like B. We sat in the grass and I thought bitterly about Texas sticker burrs and fire ants and how nice it is to sit in the grass and try not to worry about all that. B studied the plant life around us. It is amazing to me that we say "grass" and it is supposed to mean the plethora of enthusiastic species in our backyard. B touched and picked up any number of grasses and leaves (and didn't put a single one in his mouth). He then proceeded to try to climb the fence. This child is amazing to me. The Samson of babies. He pulled himself to a standing position, grabbed the third rung and pulled himself up, stepping on the first rung, and hanging there, striving for a higher rung. I had my hand on his back, watching in amazement. As we walked across the lawn B spotted a dandelion in the midst of its death throes. The death of a dandelion. Or its genesis. We need a word that means both. The Aloha of the dandelion.
He loved it. Giant smile and a quest to find them all. We're still working on blowing. He hasn't quite mastered the skill.

Yes, my head hurts. It makes every instant of my life difficult and pricey. I want someone to invent a machine that scans your body and broadcasts your real age. Maybe people would expect less of me if they knew that I was really at least 70.
Yes, I work too much and dislike almost all of it. I am overworked, tired, and poor. All of which make me question the realization of any kind of Biblical rest in my life.
Yes, I am daily adding ailments to my already very long list of ailments, all of which are costing me monetarily as well as physically and mentally and, as I mentioned before I am poor.

But. I have The Empire Strikes Back. I have a very nice, working, washer and dryer. I have several people who love me enough to be angry for me. I have sheep in my backyard. I have the sense to appreciate moments with grasses. I have an infant best friend. And I have the Aloha of dandelions.

endings are beginnings

2009-12-02T15:11:00.002-06:00

Today is my last day of classes for this semester and, as it turns out, the next one too. It was a fairly unthoughtful decision, as I was simply too sick and tired to maneuver my way through the bullshit that is registering for classes.

That sounded dramatic. It really isn't that hard, I just have been feeling pretty poorly.

Regardless, no class next semester. I am going to take the time to be well, to work, to visit an acupuncturist, to participate in good things like church and mentoring, to do yoga and go swimming, and to spend time with my friends. That sounds like a very full life to me, thank you very much.

Christmas is fast approaching and I had a realization at some point that the holidays are just another period of busyness. Enforced busyness because its family and you cannot say no. Also, every friend who has left town now returns to town to visit their families, and you have to make time to see them too. Because they are your friends. I managed to avoid this enforced busyness during Thanksgiving by simply forgetting to call anyone back. This is legitimate. I simply forgot, and as a result spend my Thanksgiving doing nothing. Not even anything at all.

I am still having frequent headaches. Not every day (thank you, random seizure medicine), but often enough to make me feel crappy. I may have sabotaged myself a bit by starting to drink coffee again. I kind of, sort of decided that, maybe, since I was on blood pressure medicine a cup of coffee wouldn't hurt me. And, headaches. I guess I will go off them again. HEADACHES.

It is finally cold today. With a promise of snow on Friday. I am coated, but unfortunately not gloved or scarfed or hatted. Cold.

Thats the way we get by, oh, way

2009-11-16T17:59:00.005-06:00

I am highly medicated. I also feel like I have maxed out on my freak out allowance. Poor Drew. The dear. I have been a little shamed by my ridiculousness; my unexpected tears and completely unfounded dire predictions. I am not usually like this.

However, when mentioned to Noah on the phone he said, "Really, Ellie? That is who you are." So I am thinking that my hard-worked for stoic facade is a total wash. They all know me, apparently. It is I who am being fooled.

We went to the book fair this weekend and I bought both Bridgette Jones books for a dollar. I have been reading this book, fairly compulsively, and find that I like it for all the reasons that I like the movies, and dislike to for all the reasons I dislike the movies. I am starting to think that Helen Fielding hates women. Or wants other people to hate women. There is this incredibly likable honesty to these books. Bridgette is ridiculous, but not bad. She is a mess, but only in her head, in her own home, and sometimes in her choices. However there is this horrific focus on Bridgette's weight. I know we do this, but at no point in this book is she over 132 lbs. In a chapter I just read, Bridge hits 119 and declares, "I am thin." This makes me crazy. I realize that this is a farce of some kind, a satire directed towards women, but it is just too too stupid and unbelievable.

I was reading and listening to music and The Innocence Missions "Lakes of Canada" came on and I was totally overwhelmed by the impulse to toss the book from me. You can't read common nonsense and listen to something wonderfully good.

I am often scheduled to close on Sunday nights and open on Monday mornings. The schedule maker at work doesn't catch slip ups between weeks like that and my boss doesn't catch them very often either. My availability somehow lends itself to this as well. During the week I can only work Monday and Wednesday mornings, which means, come Monday morning at five am you will find me making peoples coffee. And because I can work whenever all weekend, I get a lot of the crappier shifts, like closing every night. Last night I had the option of five hours of sleep but, due to fitfulness and itchiness which my paranoia tells me is directly related to random combinations of prescriptions, I slept about two and a half. After work today I headed home to take a nap, in an attempt to survive this day. I slept from 1:15 to about 5:15, which is great since I had a class at 2:30. Awesome.

I've been struggling a bit these last couple days. Both superiorly irritated by everyone/everything, and completely unable to motivate myself to actually get out of bed and do anything. It feels, actually, now that I think about it, like a real depression. There is nothing actually wrong, I just can't seem to see the point in getting out of bed at all, ever. And by ever I mean all the time, not just when I am actually in a position to get up. It seems to be every day/all day, any breathing time leads to this sinking, a staring into space that is crippling.

So that is where I am these days. Fine. Medicated. Generally feeling better. Struggling a little with whatever it is that I am struggling with.

We be busy

2009-11-02T14:22:00.002-06:00

Welcome back, health insurance. Two doctors appointments down, two more scheduled for next week. My doctor was mildly horrified that I hadn't gotten my thyroid issues cared for just yet. "Your bones will turn to mush!", he said. Yes. Those words came out of his mouth. He asked me with concern about whether or not my eyes had been popping out. No, sir. They haven't. Until now that had been my major concern. Now, it's my bones. Yes. Mushy bones. Hell. A bit of a stressful morning, really. He gave me a prescription for nerve pain, hoping it would help out with my headaches. Nerve pain meds. Mushy bones. Geez. My endocrinologist appointment is next Tuesday. We will get this taken care of.

I am a tired, over worked little girl, but it looks like I won't be sick too much longer. Yeah. I've been invited by Drew's mom to go to their house for thanksgiving. That is a nice thing. I don't know what my work schedule will be (Starbucks stays open on thanksgiving, you know), but if I can I'd like to go.

School has been close to impossible this semester. There are not enough hours in the week. Maybe school is just close to impossible for everyone always. I don't know. I'm too old maybe. I can't work like I work and live like I live and study. Can't. Can not.

Drew and I went with some friends to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with actors, prop bags, and call back scripts. More fun than I have had in a long time. Raunchy, kitschy, late night fun. I laughed really hard and was really tired.

This weekend is Pumpkin Jam, a baby shower, and an out of town birthday party.

search your heart

2009-10-09T13:55:00.004-05:00

When Texas gets rain it changes everything. Our clay soil absorbs nothing and our burgeoning corn fields become rice paddies, streaked with light. It is amazing how water reflects the sky. I am aware that this is a commonly known fact, but I am so struck by it on days like today, when the sky is gray and limiting, and yet it is still brighter than the rain soaked ground. Brilliant, silver flashes catching my eye, enlivening my life.

I watched some red wigglers get washed out of the grass, to pool on the side walk. I stopped and scooped handfuls of worms up of the concrete and flung them in the grass. Handful after handful. I was yelled at for being weird.

I've been feeling pretty crappy these days. It is getting harder and harder to live the lively life I have set up for myself. I write poetry when I'm tired like this. It is hilariously maudlin. I write it down and keep it safe because poetry is supposed to be maudlin and maybe someone will pay me for it someday.

I am currently cramming as much information about the metabolic pathways into my head as is possible. I have until Monday to do this.

I am cold. Isn't that wonderful?

Here. Some poem:

I have often wanted to be reborn
as sea kelp. Placid and maternal,
vibrantly alive, slowly stretching
to encompass the world in my arms.

I love egrets
as insubstantial as filigree
beneath the edifice of cows.

I was like a statue at most

2009-09-23T13:19:00.007-05:00

So, I'm not very good at writing in here these days. The internet has been restored at our home, so this should be made easier.

What? It's been raining and raining and raining and things are wonderfully wet. Grayness makes me sad-ish, if I let it. I'm trying not to. I am enjoying the days at home with the baby. Being in our big, widowed house and watching the rain startle our chickens has a sort of cathartic affect. It's nice of weather to do that for me. In Benjamin, I am learning how to love. Amazing how infants change your life.

I am still busy, still learning, still trying to be better everyday. Mostly failing at that last bit. I am getting comfortable with my failings, you know.

I am also continually making new friends. This is exhausting. I have one, single free evening a week and there are too many people in the rotation. If I never see you again, this is why.

I am going to two really great shows in the next week and a half. Ben Folds and Sunny Day Real Estate. Worth all the trouble, schedule shifting, and class missing. So worth it.

I want to go to Tennessee next month to visit a friend. I feel like Tennessee is worth seeing in October. I am trying to deduce whether its worth the effort and effort and effort. I think it is.

I am still relationshipped. And I have created a new word. This is an interesting experience for me. Drew and I have been friends for years, and we were really close before we started dating, but I am realizing now that we have created two interesting dilemmas by the way in which we started our relationship.
Firstly, we were common participants in only one specific group of people before we dated. This is fine, however now, we have so many people that do not overlap. It makes life awkward. Secondly, we bonded so well prior to dating partially because we both filled the same specific role within that previously stated group of friends. We are the jokesters. This is fine, and fun, and a nice beginning, but as we grow as boyfriendy/girlfriendy, it is obviously not enough. There has to be seriousness and challenges and discussions. We're learning this.
It has been interesting, at 26, to see how much of myself I have created in the last couple of years. They have been immeasurably formative. In contact with Drew - another strong, self aware individual - it has become clear that, in not knowing each other these last couple years, we have missed out on a lot. It's amazing to see how people grow, and how people must grow together.

Anyway, I am happy and well. For the most part. Thyroid issues remain as they have been. I go to the endocrinologist next month.

Funnily, in spell checking this entry, I am made aware of how very many words I create and use commonly. I am altering our language.

Put those boots back on.

2009-09-02T13:03:00.002-05:00

My life looks different. Let me show you.

I was over ambitious in my scheduling of this fall, which is fine and typical and manageable, but has resulted in me falling asleep before nine on all nights when it is possible to do so. I haven't been reading books like I'm used to and this makes me feel . . . lonely. Isn't that odd? Class is going to be fine, though studenthood has gotten no less time consuming in the last five years, and homework may kill me. Being up and away from home from 4 am to 9 pm twice a week is a vicious, sad way to spend the days, but its just two days a week, and I get two more where I am home, home, and home to make up for it.

Have a boy in my life who loves music (much more than I) means that my life is filling with new sounds, and names, and feelings. Songs with your name in them make good presents.

My brother is getting married. It is going to be a wonderful thing.

Uh, thats all the time I have. Thats it. Talk to you later.

2009-08-26T13:46:00.001-05:00

So.
Home. And everything changes. It is usual for the world to hold exactly still while I leave. Waco sits and stays, and then I return and everything is exactly where and how I left it. This didn't happen this time around. Three weeks away, three great, full, slow, fun weeks; Five days spent driving across the deep western half of our country; seeking, finding, reveling, and I am home. Home in my big house with my dear, precious roommates, with their loud laughter and avid life giving. Home with my best friends, one of whom I missed enough to make a boyfriend upon my return. Home.

We have sheep now. Four timid, ridiculous sheep, all named for characters from Harry Potter.

And I am in school now. At MCC where there is no one even remotely similar to me in attendance. I'm going to be fine. I am going to splendid their socks off.

And I watch the baby boy now. Tuesday and Thursdays from 7:45 to 5:30 you can find us playing mad games of peek-a-boo.

Right now I am at the end of 21 hours of work (with a brief four hour sleep break in the middle) and am about to embark on 7 hours of school. I'm pretty good at filling a life. But its a good life. A good, full life.

I miss my far away friends. I need you in my life.

I carry your heart with me

2009-08-04T13:19:00.002-05:00

One of the many strange things about genetics is this aspect of love. I keep thinking about what e. e. cummings said about . . .

(carrying) your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

Almost literally I carry these people's hearts with me in my heart.

We are about to leave, having been here for seventeen days. My cousin, Joey, would have been 26 today. If he hadn't died 23 years ago. I carry his heart with me. Too. I carry it in my heart.

At the mercy of the tides

2009-07-25T15:10:00.005-05:00

Almost one week of beach living and I have forgotten all pressing worries from my real home life. This is miraculous. And a little scary. This morning, while sitting on the end of my uncles dock, allowing the subtle northwestern sun to brown my shoulders, I looked at my sister and said, "Do I still owe you money?", having completely forgotten. Realizing this morning that I forgot to call my doctor, endocrinologist, and dentist, and that it was Saturday again, so I'd have to wait, is a little unnerving. That I could forget my life so completely is terrifyingly wonderful.

This place. It is eight or so acres of wooded hillside sloping down into the bay. It is a beautiful, rocky beach, with stretch island (of stretch island fruit leather) clearly visible and a five minute walk across the bay when the tide is out. It is the family trust, the family property, already parcelled out, claimed, and built upon. It is tiny orchards of two or three green apple trees, cherry trees, kiwis, and wild blackberries everywhere.

Interesting to sit, with your sisters on either side, and have every aunt, uncle, and cousin look at you quizzically, heads tilted to the side, "I'm just trying to figure out where you fit.". Who do we look like, anyway? And how do they look like each other so strongly on some days and so not at all on others. And how is it that no one looks like Grandma. Those Christinsen genes, so strong, so unrepresented in this generation. Every now and then a photograph surfaces, Great Grandpa Theodore and how much Uncle Jed is visible in that face. Family is so crazy. Also, there are just so many of us. So many. And now that we are all adults we take up so much more space. So many large personalities and persons, all gathered together making awkward lunges toward commonality.

In the quest for identity, this place confuses me. I have no job here, no friends outside of blood relatives, no responsibilities, and therefore I have trouble letting it have any formative power on my life. No hold.

It's a vacation. I know that. A vacation. I sleep late, let my mom cook my meals, laugh with my cousins, and tan on the dock. As far as vacations go, this is a good one.

also, this is one of my favorite things ever. Check it out. The Waste-Not Wagon.

alice's jealous talons

2009-07-09T14:19:00.003-05:00

So in the last couple of days the medical community has pretty much amazed me with their efficiency. Blood test Monday. Check. Results back Tuesday. Check. Referral to an Endocrinologist Wednesday. Check. Radio Iodine scan scheduled Thursday. Check. To be completely honest, this rapidity is somewhat overwhelming. I haven't really absorbed any information at all. Though I am very grateful. I am developing worsening symptoms which I think are 9/10ths psyco somatic. Tender neck, sore throat. Tired. The sooner we get this identified fully and treated the better I suppose.

My health seems to be my all consuming interest at this point in my life. I've gotten to see a lot of good friends lately, even if only briefly, and I am learning to be very grateful for the depth of these friendships. Very grateful.

My parents are happily in the greater Seattle area and I am anxiously counting the days until I will get to be there too. Wearing sweaters. Drinking tea.

Or, I suppose not drinking tea. Since my doctor says I can't. Geez.

Also I have had four days off in as many weeks. Which makes me feel crazy.

2009-07-06T10:16:00.003-05:00

I went to doctor this morning to have my thyroid looked at. There is something wrong, of this we are certain. Blood taken, blood work being done, and ultrasound scheduled. There are just one or two options, regardless of what turns out to be wrong. We medicate my symptoms, give me some pills to slow my heart rate, stop the headaches, ease the swelling, essentially putting off treatment. Or we treat it now. And I lose my thyroid and go on hormone replacement therapy for the rest of my life. I am only 26. I am thinking. It's interesting that this doesn't really change anything about my life at all. I've had this problem for a while now, they think, and am alright. I've been living with it, I will continue to live with it. I will be fine. I think I am going to opt out of medicating the symptoms. It just seems that treating the problem rather than the visible signs would be all around a better idea.

Of course, it could be cancer. Then we've got a whole other set of problems. That's not at all likely.

Anyway, the should get my blood work back in a couple of days and schedule me for an ultrasound and we will figure out whats going on.

On a totally unrelated note, drank beer with some good, old friends last night. There is something so rightfeeling about low lighting, laughter, and beer. My life being as it is, I could use more evenings such.

I like my scattered friendships. I wish we weren't so scattered.

2009-06-29T12:23:00.003-05:00

I spend a lot of time thinking about my own well being. I spend all of my time in my being and find it difficult to shift my focus anywhere else. Lately I've been dwelling somewhere substandard, subterranean possibly, where malaise is the norm and ennui is a casual friend. The other day I passed a math test. It was an easy test of the basic math skills, but I had been worried. In passing I established myself as a competent adult who can take for-credit college pre-algebra. This is much better than any of the many not-for-credit math classes that they offer. This minor, un-momentous success was enough to boost me up from my underground ponderings into a very good day. A very good day, indeed. That lasted until Friday. Then I worked all weekend and started thinking, again, about my well being and how telling it is that one small math test which I barely passed was able to make my life significantly better. Conversely, closing all weekend long has the ability to not.

My parents are moving on Wednesday. This is incredibly strange. We've lived in Texas for 13 years now, the longest we've ever been anywhere, and I think I had begun to be used to it. I am looking forward to three weeks in the Pacific Northwest this summer, but I am unsure how I feel about saying goodbye. Many and multiple goodbye's. It is throwing an all together new light on my life here in Waco.

Today I am spending eight hours with the these kids. Then I have an hour off and three and a half hours at Starbucks. Days like today make me wonder. Oh Lord. Today is going to kill me. These kids. An hour of math. An hour of reading. Thirty minutes of piano. Thirty minutes of trumpet for him. Thirty minutes of flute for her (split into ten minute increments). Tennis for him at 4:30. Swimming for her at 5. Gracious.

Also, season 3 of Battlestar awaits me at home and that is all I want to be doing with my life.

A song for someone who needs somewhere to long for.

2009-06-17T14:00:00.000-05:00

There isn't any true and simple way to explain the state that I am in these days. It is a heavy place; a folded in, tucked under place that is hard to come out of. I have been compiling a soundtrack to this time in my head. It goes like this:

Homesick by Kings of Convenience.

I'll lose some sales and my boss won't be happy,
But I can't stop listening to the sound
Of two soft voices
Blended in perfection
From the reels of this record that I've found.
Every day there's a boy in the mirror asking me...
What are you doing here?
Finding all my previous motives
Growing increasingly unclear.
I've traveled far and I've burned all the bridges
I believed as soon as I hit land
All the other options held before me,
Would wither in the light of my plan.
So I'll lose some sales and my boss won't be happy,
But there's only one thing on my mind
Searching boxes underneath the counter,
On a chance that on a tape I'd find...
A song for someone who needs somewhere to long for.
Homesick.
Because I no longer know where home is.

And,

Your New Twin Sized Bed by Death Cab For Cutie

You look so defeated lying there in your new twin size bed.
With a single pillow underneath your single head.
I guess you decided that that old queen holds more space than you would need.
Now it's in the alley behind your apartment with a sign that says it's free.
And I hope you have more luck with this than me.
You used to think that someone would come along.
And lay beside you in a space that they belong.
But the other side of the mattress and box springs stayed like new.
What's the point of holding onto what never gets used?
Other than a sick desire for self-abuse.
And I try not to worry, but you've got me terrified.
It's like your some kind of hurry to say goodbye.
You look so defeated lying there in your new twin size bed.

I'm sure there will be more, but for now, read into that as you will.

I am making changes in my life because I must. Because I dislike what I see and do not wish to be what I dislike. I've grown up with a picture of my future self residing in my fantastic plans. I'm sure you have too. It's like I am living inside a choose-your-own-adventure and I haven't come out where I thought I would. It isn't quite the, "You turn left, running into a dead-end alley. The Egyptian jewel thieves catch you. You die.", but it also isn't, "You go on and, at the next turning, run into the arms of your uncle Charles. He is dangling from a ladder attached to a helicopter. He grabs your arm, hands you the magic crystal, and signals the pilot. You fly off to safety." It's more like, you decide to call your mom and have her wire you the money to go home. You do, she does, you arrive safely and go back to working at starbucks.

In a choose-your-own-adventure you can always go back and make a different choice. That is deceptive.

2009-06-14T12:15:00.000-05:00

My baby roommate is growing so quickly! He's sitting up, starting solid food, and listening excitedly to stories. Babies need constant replacing in my opinion.

I have been studying math. It isn't any easier now than it was ten years ago. I have to take a test in order to go to school in the fall. Apparently if you've been out of high school more than five years you need to prove that you can do elementary math before they will allow you to take college math. This annoys me greatly. Mostly because I'm not sure I can do elementary math.

"Lift high the roof beam carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man."

I am liking living in this new house but am, if anything, busier than I was before. This places me nearly constantly in a sad place. I am tired, and a little left out, and starting, once again, to question the choices that have brought me here. Instead of . . . there. That looks so great from where I am sitting. I want to love my life and am currently unsure of how to do that. Things change. And change. And change again.

My parents are moving to Seattle on July 1st, and then Malaysia in September. I went to collect some of my belongings last night. Belonging.

Reap what we sow

2009-06-04T18:27:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about issues of forgiveness lately. Things in my life have a tendency to be cohesive, ever present.

We all well know
we're gonna reap what we sow
but Grace, we all know,
can take the place of all we owe
so why no let's forgive
everyone
everywhere
everything
all the time?

In the fine words of mewithoutYou, we all reap what we sow.

I'm thinking about it.

Lordy.

2009-05-19T23:58:00.000-05:00

I've had no time to think these last couple weeks let alone blog... as it were. I fill my life. I'm sure I've said that before. As it is, I am packing. We are road tripping cross country tomorrow, to North Carolina, because friends are moving there. My aunt and uncle live in NC. I haven't contacted them. Plans change and change and change and I feel incapable of keeping everyone updated.

Regardless of all that, I have officially be up and alert and aware and embusied (I made that word up), for the last 21 hours. I am doing laundry. I will sleep soon. There are so many beautiful things, you know?

I will be gone for a full week and am not taking my computer nor am I intending to go out of my way to find one while I am gone. I think this will be relaxing. I also think I may be underestimating my dependency on my internet stress relievers. Oh, facebook.

Tonight we watched the first thirty minutes of Rocky Horror Picture show because Justin and I had never seen it and we both are avid re-readers of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Kim and Drew both own copies. We watched Kim's. Then we were alerted to the fact that the movers decided to unchange their minds and move us tomorrow after all, instead of Thursday. This necessitates frantic packing. And laundry doing. And leaving of Dr. Franken-furter behind.

Sleep beckons. All will be well.

New House, Cloud Castle, and Rainbow Valley (not that there's anything wrong with that)

2009-05-08T13:32:00.000-05:00

So I've moved into our new house out in the far reaches of China Spring. It's a long, windy road, many left-right-left-right-left turns, and endless fields of corn between here and Waco proper, but I am currently looking at a long, slow slope, twenty-two pecan trees with just a glimpse of the river through their leafy promises, and 12 happy chickens, while bouncing a slightly fussy, very tired baby (go to sleep, Benjamin! For crying out loud! The simplest solutions are often the best ones, dear. You'd know this if you weren't just a baby.) with my foot. There are eight of us (including Benjamin who doesn't take up that much space but is currently taking up a ridiculous amount of attention) and we are going to make good of this time and this place.

Busyness seemingly never passes. I have to-do lists that crowd my pockets, each entry being replaced as soon as it gets crossed off (I love crossing things off to-do lists. Sometimes I write things down after I've already done them just so I can cross them off.), and tightly scheduled days which stress me out. I don't like feeling like that ever.

Tomorrow is my churches block party and I am in charge, not only of the block party (partially to be fair), but of running a gardening table. Hooh. I have about fifty small, sad looking tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, and squash that the farm graciously donated to my cause. They need some serious attention before tomorrow but Benjamin, thankfully, fell asleep, enabling me to spend a few minutes with some baby plants that also need care.

Also, I got some tattoos yesterday.

So, these pictures look kind of dumb, but this is me an hour ago, taken by my Mac whilst rocking Benjamin with my foot in my new house. They are the Hebrew words "Shalom", "Mishpat", on my collar bones, and "Chesed"on my ring finger.

Shalom is peace, or more correctly wholeness and rightness, Mishpat is justice or judgement, and Chesed, when translated right, is something deeper, sturdier, more steadfast than love.

Beets, Bears, Battlestar Galactica

2009-05-04T16:47:00.000-05:00

I think I might be gaining some sympathies for Dwight Shrute. On the topics of bears and Battlestar, we are in agreement.

We are almost entirely moved into the new house. I cannot seem to do all the things I want to do in one day. I, very much like a robotic life form of some kind, simply shut down after a certain number of in-use hours. Therefore today, instead of moving furniture and going with my friends to Zumba class, I took a nap. We will move furniture tomorrow.

You know, its not too late fro Zumba. That would be a better decision.

Piggy Pox or how to survive the approaching pandemic

2009-04-25T14:32:00.000-05:00

Well, the much anticipated Pandemic (it gets capitalized simply because we've been talking about it so much) seems to be on the horizon. This morning at about 5:30am a coworker held up the New York Times. If you haven't seen it, the NYT has, as its classic front page photo, a picture of several Mexican citizens wearing the now archetypal SARS masks, huddled under umbrellas on a park bench. The corresponding article mentioned that the Mexican government discovered late Thursday evening that the influenza-like disease that had been flooding their hospitals was a new kind of flu which mixes two strains of avian flu (Well hello, bird flu! Welcome back!), swine flu, and two different strains of human flu (they really did call it human flu in at least one of the articles I've read today). It has infected anywhere from 1,000 to 80,000 people in somewhere close to 15 Mexican states (Reliable information is hard to find, and every article says something different), and resulted in close to 70 deaths in the last day and a half. Studying the virus they have decided that it has mutated past its animal to animal stage, (hence the appearance of human flu components) as well as past the animal to human stage, (which is where bird flu stopped), and is now in the human to human stage. They are calling it the H1N1 flu virus (this is, consequently, the same strain as the Spanish Flu which killed anywhere from 20 - 100 million in 18 months from 1918-1919). As of yesterday 8 cases were reported in the United States. Six in San Diego, CA and two in San Antonio, TX (It's Texas! Also, it seems to be targeting Spanish named American cities. Could this virus have an agenda?). This morning a school in Queens, NY reported 75 students ill with flu-like symptoms. Within an hour it was 150. Some of the students had just returned from a trip to Mexico. So far no Americans have died. According to the WHO this virus has "Pandemic potential" and most airports are considering putting all travelers from Mexico in quarantine. This particular strain of flu is dissimilar from your regular old, run of the mill flu in many ways, one of which is that not one of the fatalities thus far has been over 60 or under 3. This is similar to the Spanish Flu and they suspect that the Cytokine Storms which have been blamed for the extreme number of fatalities in that case are present in this one as well. Click on it to learn more.

Here is my proposed pandemic relief plan. Stock up on water, rice, beans, and dried fruits and veggies. A lot of water. At least a couple of months worth. Get out of the city to some place where fruits and vegetables are grown. Stay there. Grow fruits and vegetables. Wash your hands often. Avoid crowds. Don't go to Mexico.

However, it probably won't come to that. And even if it does, if it is your time to go you probably will. So, with that in mind, be loving. Care for the orphaned. Feed the hungry. Give shelter and comfort.

In case you were interested (and I am. Avidly.) here is a list of pandemics throughout history.

Also, I've become a really big fan of Micachu lately. Strange, British music. Likes.

2009-04-15T11:39:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I went with the other members of the ad hoc committee dedicated to planning the SMC gathering in October (you don't really need to know what any of this means) to look at Calvary Baptist Church. Calvary is gracious, large, and an easy walk from the small meeting house where our small church has its gatherings, making it an ideal place to house and feed our October gathering, which will be large. As I pulled into the parking lot a young, beautiful dog, looking like some mix of a bulldog and a pit bull, ran across the street and into the parking lot with me. I parked and looked at the dog with some small amount of trepidation. Dogs can be viscious. As it turns out, she wasn't. As I got out of my car she gleefully came up to me, wagging her entire back end with such delight that she ended up writhing on the ground at my feet. She ended up following me to the church door where I told her to sit and stay. She mostly did this and I went inside where we informed the church office that they had a very friendly pit-mix inhabiting their parking lot. The man from the church went outside, brought our lovely dog inside, and called the number on her collar. When her owner showed up we were informed that Bailey was actually a very rare breed of English bulldog and worth a substantial amount of money. She was only a couple months old and the breeder was letting this woman raise her and would give Bailey to her after two litters of puppies. Bailey sat and grinned at us with her joker smile in her mushed, bulldog face. The woman was very grateful.

I applied to a social work program today. Discovered it, applied for it, and applied for financial aid all within an hour and a half. This is how I make decisions. Maybe an undergraduate degree is possible. We'll see.

Waking up before six five days in a row is exhausting. I'm only on day three, but I am assuming I will be exhausted by Friday.

2009-04-05T15:07:00.000-05:00

I'm in Atlanta visiting my sister. I do this fairly often. Annually, if not biannually, and it feels like a home of sorts. Not really my home, not really. A home though. They live all mushed together, sharing a car (singular), and money, and lives. It stresses me out a little bit more than I would like to admit to think of living thus. The year I spent in Chicago was dreadfully hard and exhausting and lot of aspects of this life here remind me of that life there. Public transportation, and dependence on it, makes my chest tight and this odd feeling of panic well up. Also, for some reason it makes me think about how I haven't made any significant choices lately, that I am coasting, that I haven't decided to be anything yet or do anything major. This pushes me into the beginnings of panic as well. I am beginning to think that you are settled simply when you decide you are. Maybe that sounds obvious. I think that maybe being "settled" has nothing to do with education, marital status, or financial stability. Perhaps it is simply committing to things regardless of time or time limits. When you go to your job, and pay your rent, and befriend your friends simply because they are there, with no thought to what you will do next, then settlement happens.
I am never very sure that I want settlement to happen. I am never very sure where this pressure to decide, to do, to choose comes from. I don't enjoy being coerced into feeling guilty because I am not settled. The word "settled" is starting to lose meaning since I've used it so much already. It is starting to require quotation marks. I wasn't to clear about what I meant to begin with. This isn't a new confusion. I haven't learned anything new about it.

Anyway, Atlanta is a visiting home for me. I love my sister and I like her roommates and I am starting to get over some of my old aversions to this crazy, overcrowded, ramshackle city. Over the last couple of years I have discovered that my aversion is to cities in general, not Atlanta in particular. Therefore I am not as disappointed when I come here. I expect this level of discomfort. I walked the length of the Atlanta airport instead of taking the train. This is the second time I have done this. I'm not sure why it took me two times to understand what was going on there. You can walk the length of the Atlanta airport because the terminals come one after another, E to D to C to B to A to something called T to the baggage claim, but when you do this you are walking a sold mile and a half. I think in the past I have flown on airlines that arrive at B or A terminals, and the walk to the baggage claim is brief and unremarkable. However, when you fly into E or D, as I did this time, the walk is something of an experience. There is a train that runs, but the train is very crowded and the airport was stifling and hot and I felt like walking made more sense. It took me much longer than is reasonable. Anyway, I walked and my sister waited. Which I appreciated.

I am reading Kite Runner, looking forward to two days of rain and a solid freeze, and enjoying a week of no responsibility at all.

Kudzu is oppressive. Even when it is dead.

2009-03-23T12:50:00.001-05:00

I watch a lot of movies. It isn't the most intellectual hobby, nor is it the most productive, and more often than not I am a little ashamed of it, but I love it. I find the need to defend it. I have come up with a lot of pretty good reasons in my defensiveness, though I hadn't stopped to really examine it until recently. With the introduction of hulu and netflix watch instantly to my life, I have been given access to more movies of dubious quality than ever before. And I watch them. I will watch almost anything, it seems, if it is free and streaming over the Internet. It has been interesting to see, in this overload of stories, which moments stand out. I have found some beautiful, poignant, haunting moments nestled in some of the worst, most incoherent, and wandering of movies.
I like to collect stories. I love to read and will read almost anything (lately especially), and I think that same concept of story telling, of life-truth represented through myth, through the tale, is here in these terrible films.

For example: I watched a movie called Birds of America which came out sometime last year, with Matthew Perry. It is a confusing, somewhat angry story. However, there is this subplot with his sister, who is beautiful, promiscuous and flighty, her ex-boyfriend, who is in a wheelchair after an accident he had while driving drunk because she left him, and his new fiance, who is a kind, bubbly, overweight person who you only meet really briefly. For some reason this story line, a minor one in the movie, stuck with me and was all I could think about for a couple of days.

There was another movie, And Then She Found Me, with Helen Hunt, in which a woman who was adopted as a baby loses her mother and is left by her husband within twenty four hours. It's a sort of convoluted, slightly unbelievable story as she finds love, of sorts, and is reunited with her birth mother, and then single mindedly attempts to have a baby. However, the movie revolves really strongly around the Judaism of its main character, building to a scene where she is prompted by her birth mother to pray before they attempt to artificially inseminated her. She refuses, saying something about being angry with God. She changes her mind in the last minute, and proceeds to pray beautifully. "Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad." The Lord our God is one. She then explains it to her birth mother. "The God of hope. The God of fear. The Lord our God is one." Which made me weep.

Things I think about.

We are moving soon. There is a certain delicious stress to moving. It is a sense of unknowing, of hoping, of stretching and planting and beginning again. You get to unmake what it is you do not like and make anew things which bring you joy. I do not enjoy the sorting, cleaning, and throwing away that of necessity accompanies this, but it is as everything else in life. The good comes with the bad. I am stock piling boxes.

2009-02-11T11:18:00.000-06:00

I will try again to post that link, but it looks like "voting", in whatever form it is going to take, won't start until March 2nd. It's confusing. Thankfully I have friends who read the fine print when I do not. Here's the link. I will post it again later. Promise I'm not an idiot.

We had one of our lovely, large storms last night, causing all sorts of damage all over town. We were spared most of it, which is nice, but poor Oklahoma (which is hard to feel sorry for) got hit pretty hard. I wonder if it sucks so bad because of the horrendous weather, or if the horrendous weather is some kind of punishment for being a terrible place. I am not a fan of Oklahoma.

We absentmindedly allowed some of our broccoli and poc choi to bolt. Broccoli flowers are some kind of ridiculous delicacy and are decently tasty. However, I prefer what has been happening: the bees are making use of them. I love the idea of broccoli honey. Cotton honey is delicious and creamy, mesquite honey is slightly spicy, what wonders would broccoli honey hold? Wish we could find out.

Both of my male roommates are overseas for the next couple weeks. TJ is visiting his sister in Germany and Kris is digging wells in Kenya. I miss them. While they are gone I am supposed to be recording escort listings on craigslist and eros.com for Kris. I suck at this. I am supposed to check both websites for four different cities every evening at about the same time and record the number of listings for that day. It's totally easy and mindless but I have forgotten it six times in the last two weeks. For some reason if you go back the next day none of the numbers on eros. com are the same. I suck. I am going to write myself a big reminder message somewhere. Like on my pillowcase.

Tomorrow is Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday and will be attending an awesome party to celebrate. NPR has been doing a bunch of stuff on Darwin because this week is his 200th birthday as well. Who knew they were the same age? Cute.

Baby Benjamin was successfully birthed Sunday night at about 8pm. I was one of the fortunate few who got to go visit him the next day in the hospital. He is a beautiful, strong, dark haired baby. I've spent so much time with him over the last nine months that this felt like some sort of reunion. Strange. I kept tearing up every time I looked at him. Like a silly girl. The family is taking this first week to be alone and bond and all those good things, but Haley is my best friend who I hang out with almost daily, and I am starting to miss her.

Every now and then I can hear a rooster crowing somewhere in our neighborhood. We have hens, but no roosters. The fact that someone else has them somewhere nearby amuses me.

This contest . . .

2009-02-08T17:25:00.000-06:00

It's something silly, but I have applied for a "job" with Tourism Queensland. It's more like a contest that you enter by making and submitting a video, which I have done. They will pick ten winners and then an eleventh based on some sort of voting for the videos. I would like to humbly request your votes. Since I can't get a link to work (what the?), feel free to cut and paste, please.

Go to : http://islandreefjob.com/#/applicants/watch/n76l5Cmg06c

2009-02-07T08:44:00.000-06:00

"We laugh to remind ourselves that we are not machines. . . Laughter is our very protest against a tragic world. . . ."

So much happens in just a few days around here. We have co-mingled lives and they are heavy and poignant. So much happens.

The Beehive Collective came, represented by David. The turn out was small at the actual presentation but the experience was perfect and I think enough people came. Our little knot of individuals sat close and nodded vigorously. My sister, brother, and his girlfriend came down. I don't think that they actually enjoyed or agreed very much at all, but it was nice to see them and, actually, kind of nice to have a dissenting voice. Later, David wandered Waco. We showed him the farm and he spent a while talking with our village store interns who were really excited about selling posters and things. This is good. After that, TJ took him out to the remains of the branch davidians, who are apparently living and well. And fascinating.

THEN, we all met at Bangkok (the favorite restaurant), all thirty of us, and waited for Justin to show up with Jessica which he did. And then he proposed. And they are engaged. And we all celebrated with dinner. And good times.

Then, I met up with my new friend Matt for what, it turns out, was our first date. Or something similar. I am pondering this new situation.

Then! I got a text message very early this morning saying my best friend had just gone into labor with her first child. No word yet on that one. I've heard these things can take time. But, ideally, by tonight we will have a new baby boy to celebrate.

This has been a heavy, busy two days and it promises to be a similarly crazy weekend.

Life! We are living.

2009-01-19T16:29:00.000-06:00

I am proving myself to be incapable of inactivity. I am a busy-minded person and I am finding it exhausting. I spend a good deal of my life behind a counter, wearing an apron, making milk based beverages for the masses. I am beginning to think that I hate this job. I am very proud of my friends who have gotten out and are moving on with their lives. I feel hypocritical for my continual employment. I suppose this is why people go to college in the first place.

None of my friends who went to school had time to read books for fun.

Can't have that.

All this to say that I am busy and creative expression of any kind (even the basest) seems excessive. I would like to sit in silence more and interact less. It is a surreal kind of life when all the things that were once enjoyable become tiresome and the people that you love become burdensome. All because I don't seem to be able to function at the same level as the normal individual. Perhaps if I stopped reading several books at a time, and journaling, and planning out a short film, and working two jobs (one of which requires keeping the schedules of two very prodigious young people straight as they participate in basketball and tennis and swimming and piano), and not working a third job (which weighs heavily on ones mind), and planning a baby shower, and booking the beehive collective, and serving on the church missions committee, and participating in our Tuesday night discussion group, and attempting to live communally with as many as eight other people, I would feel better.

Then again, probably not. This is my head, in all its fullness and madness, and I think it would always be overwhelmed with efforts. I am proud of these particular ones. I am proud of this over crowdedness.

It felt nice to type all that out, a sort of mental organizational tool. I apologize that you had to participate. I sometimes abuse the internet, using it for my own aims.

Anyway, it's time for work.

Update update update update update.

2009-01-11T23:02:00.000-06:00

That last post is fairly unattractive. I suppose I should bump it off. Since its been a while, we shall do a brief recap/update in list form.

- I am reading The Once and Future King and enjoying it.
- Haley and I invested many hours in the BBC miniseries "Bleak House" and loved every minute of it. We were disappointed (possibly more than could reasonably be expected) when it was over. There were extenuating circumstances.
- Haley is going to have her baby boy sometime in the very near future. He keeps twisting around in there, surfacing every so often very much like Nessie.
- I am on my the missions committee for my church and we had our first meeting on Saturday. I am excited about being a part of planning the every-so-often gathering of the four Shalom Missions communities in October.
- The Beehive Collective is officially coming to Waco on February 4th and presenting at Common Grounds. I need to begin promoting it.
- I am working close to 35 hours at my primary job this next week. However, they do not start until Wednesday.
- It is darling Sharons birthday and we are celebrating with a dinner party tomorrow night. We have spent several fun hours together this week while she is in limbo between her pre-bachelor degree life and her post-bachelor degree life. We mostly watch videos on youtube and laugh until we cry. I need more of this in my life.
- It seems that many of my friends are having babies. It seems like this has been a steady fact for the past six years.
- I realized that this blog was born of my boredom during last Christmas break but was not contributed to at all during this Christmas break.
- Our house has become the house where all the boys play video games. It started with the game cube and has moved to various interactive computer based games. We have become the popular hang out place as a result. If playing video/computer games can be considered hanging out.
- I went with my future roommate, Grace, to the dollar movies this evening and was joined by current roommate and current roommates boyfriend. We saw Australia. Grace and I enjoyed it. Jessica and Justin did not. It was pretty much the plot of Out of Africa which is a favorite of mine. Terrific.

Blessed are the . . . ?

2009-01-04T14:15:00.000-06:00

Found some versions of the bible that I thought were pretty interesting. "The Peacemakers" New Testament is possibly my favorite, what with its represented SWAT team members and all, though I am pretty fond of the "Heart of the Outdoors" bible that has images of hunters and fishers. The others are also new testaments. "Road to victory", which talks with winning christian athletes and "Answering the Call" which, as far as I can tell is about fire men and 911.
Not to be snide, or anything.

Beehive's and such (behave).

2008-12-12T13:18:00.000-06:00

The Beehive Collective is on tour. They're coming to Waco sometime at the end of January and I am quite excited about this. I'm not a hundred percent knowledgeable when it comes to these
bees, and so am thrilled to get this opportunity to listen to them for myself. We have three of their posters up on our house currently, and the provide a lot of opportunity for discussion. If you live in the area, you should consider coming to have a listen.
Also, if you happen to live in Austin and have any hook ups, their looking for a show there as well. Let me know.

Other than that:
It is cold, especially in my house.
We have a Christmas tree (a Noble Fir. Always trust Kris Hiew on matters of ornamental trees).
We were given use of TJ's dad Star's tickets and Kris, TJ, Sara, and I were able to go watch the Coyote's kick the Star's asses once again. One of my favorite things.
I have to get a root canal redone, which should be fun.
I am possibly moving to the country next year.
I read Jane Eyre for the first time.
Pushing Daisies is winding down to its last few episodes. It is still, however, more entertaining than anything else on television.

Oh, City by Jayber Crow

2008-11-15T11:22:00.000-06:00

Oh, City I am leaving you.
In these dying days of my golden youth.
I'm too young to speak of settling.
My feet are not yet weak and fit for the walking.

Oh, City I don't understand,
This dirty air, this covered land.
Neith starless skys no child should sleep,
Nor have some false horizon tow'ring within reach.

Oh, City I don't know how to stay.
There's nowhere to plant in this paved place.
I only see stems with no nourishment,
they lie all dead and dry scattered on the cement

So, City I am leaving you.
These dying days of my golden youth.
I'm too young to speak of settling.
My feet are not yet weak and fit for the walking.
I'll walk away.

Too young to speak of settling.
My feet are not yet weak and fit for the walking.
My knees bend with the breeze and call for traveling.
My legs and conscience beg for all the road will bring.

(many thanks to Jon West).

The Fall

2008-11-07T09:22:00.000-06:00

There are a lot of things going on.
Since I last posted:
Starbucks transitioned to Christmas (or half transitioned. We're brewing "thanksgiving blend". Christmas blend comes in about twenty days.).
I was sick for five days.
I got over being sick just in time to watch us get a new President. I cried a little and got laughed at a little. I am thrilled.

Now comes the decision about what to do with my HOPE posters. I always intended to take them down if Obama was elected because I am not one to have pictures of a government figure up in my house. Unless it is in jest, I suppose. I would definitely have pictures of government figures up in my house in jest. I am that kind. I suppose he was always a government figure as well, albeit a minor one. But now! Now he is a major government figure and I should take the posters down. However, the posters have morphed a little and one now boasts the head of Samuel L. Jackson, and this is hilarious and a glorious display of my own cleverness. If I take down the other two, this third does not make sense. But if I leave up the other two I look like a fanatic. I've always liked the posters a lot. That may be understating it. I harbor a secret love for these posters, but not necessarily because of who they are representing. Many people have not liked them so much, saying they looked like communist leader posters, which is unnerving for some reason, or that its audacious to attach the word "hope" to someone other than Christ. I would be thrilled if they looked slightly more like communist propaganda, and especially if they had some sort of non sequiter face attached. Like Paul Bunyan. Or Kierkegaard. Or Dame Maggie Smith. I think I would absolutely, with no reservations or secrets, love those posters. Hence the transition to Samuel L. I used to tell people that I wished they had three different faces on them; Barack Obama, Samuel L. Jackson, and Morgan Freeman. That would make them perfect in my eyes.

That is not what I wanted to talk about. Not it at all.

What I wanted to talk about was a movie.
When I was sick this last week my friend Justin graciously loaned me his copy of season one of Pushing Daisies. It pretty much saved my sanity. I would suggest Pushing Daisies to pretty much any and everyone. If you like pretty, fanciful, Witty, amusing, heartwarming television full of whimsy this is the show for you. Its fantastic. Rarely do I suggest television as there are so many other lovely and constructive ways to spend your time and interact with the world but in this case I make a suggestion.
To get to the point, Pushing Daisies stars the incredibly talented Lee Pace. In searching through his career I discovered a reference to the film "The Fall" which came out this past summer but which nobody ever heard about. I was intrigued. We rented "The Fall" and watched it two evenings ago. I will try to explain.

Quite simply, there are things in life that encourage you simply because the exist. Leaves that change colors and swirl; hot oatmeal on cold mornings, Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, laughter, when you can see your breath, etc. These are things that, though small and seemingly insignificant, you live for; things that make life worth it. I would argue, and please do not think me over dramatic, that The Fall belongs on this list. The very fact of its existence makes life slightly more worthwhile.
It is a huge, sweeping film in which the lines between fantasy and reality are very clearly drawn but in which the story wavers back and forth. Its beautiful, sad, glorious, hilarious, and intense.

There are a lot of things that I want to say about it, but wont because I want you to watch it and love it on your own. Please do. Its rated R for some undisclosed reason. Absolutely undeserved.

After we were done watching it my roommate (who has been trying to get me to watch The Rock for a while now) looked at me and said,
"Well, if you loved this you'll love The Rock. Its all about stunts too."
"Stunts!?" I said incredulously, "You think this movie was about stunts?!?"
"Lots of them, yes." He said.
"Were we watching the same film? It was about love," I said. "And courage, and self knowledge!"
"Love and stunts are like two sides of the same coin." TJ offered.
"Yeah," Said Kris, "Toss it up, catch it when it comes down. Whats it going to be? Love? Cool. Stunts? Awesome."
"Two sides of the same coin." TJ said.

We celebrate our sense of each other

2008-10-31T10:09:00.000-05:00

We watched the Corporation at the farm on Monday. A strong, smart, difficult documentary. Watch it. Think new things. I am.

I have been playing guitar for hours daily. I have been complaining for months now about needing a new hobby. I had one all along. Thankfully, TJ is gone a lot which means I have free access to his instrument.

We had a wonderful house meeting on Tuesday. Our house +. I'm not sure what to call it. We are going to do this more and I am so glad.

Sufjan Stevens changes everyones lives. I often selfishly wish I was the only one who felt this way. He speaks true things.

"Use my hands to use my heart.
Even if I died alone.
Even if I died
alone."

The Lodge

2008-10-27T11:27:00.000-05:00

Current temperature: 56 degrees
Number of hours of wakefulness: 6.5
Number or hot beverages consumed: 3

I think I have listened to and liked music my entire life. I remember the first small show I ever attended. It changed my interests entirely. I have never been the same. Live music is something I have been very passionate about ever since. However, after nearly thirteen years of going to shows, watching bands, meeting people, being disappointed, I have developed a cynicism that I am not entirely proud of. Shows are rarely fun for me and I think I have figured out the slightly shameful reason why.

All those years of shows have spoiled me dreadfully. Not only did I attend shows, I also put on shows (with the help of the very best of friends). I didn't just listen to the bands music, I also knew the bands. They stayed at my house. They ate dinner with my family. We kept up after they went back on the road and, in a select few cases, we went to visit them and stayed at their houses. This is not normal but it became normal. Now, when ever I go to a good show, I can't help thinking that, though I love the music, I would much rather be sitting, talking over a pot of soup.

That said, I was given free tickets to see Ray Lamontagne on Saturday. TJ and I drove down to Austin very last minute and caught almost the entirety of his set. It was a strange show with strange attendees, strange seats, and strange sound, but it was also beautiful. The sound was perfect and, because we were sitting in an old theater very far from Ray, it was very much like listening to his records. Mostly, I realized, I would like to sit down with Mr. Lamontagne and talk agriculture, though I was thrilled to get to see him live (the tickets were about $40, a price I find fairly inconceivable). He is a beautiful, complicated, and very talented man.

Afterward, TJ and I decided to walk down 6th street and find a bar that he remembered and have a drink before heading home. We walked and walked and walked and then finally heard a man yelling, "$2 drinks at THE LODGE!"

You may not know this, but The Lodge is one of our favorite places. Not long ago TJ wrote the beginnings of a rap song about going to The Lodge. He figured that a Lodge was the furthest thing from a club and it was about time someone cornered that niche in the market. It goes something like, "Going to the club, gonna crunk you up. Going to the Lodge, gonna sex you up. . ." etc. We aren't quite sure what he means by all this. Nevertheless, it has been amusing us for a while now. Back in the end of August we spent a night in Fredricksburg (ten of us) and stayed in a small motel which we affectionately named "The Lodge". At some point on that trip it was decided that our house could have no other name. Hiewismordinka House or Fun House, neither could compete with The Lodge.

So, back in Austin, this opportunity could not be passed up. We entered The Lodge, ordered our $2 beverages, and stood in awe of the stuffed moose, longhorn, and bison heads which adorned the walls. The antler chandeliers were a personal favorite. It is not, in general, a very impressing place, but the very fact that The Lodge does in fact exist as something other than our small yellow house, makes it worth frequenting. I was briefly (ever so briefly) a little sad that I didn't live in Austin.

On the drive TJ and I discussed our respective futures. I don't much like discussing the future. It makes it hard to see or breathe. However, I have been doing some thinking. I think I might like to farm. I'm not very sure of this statement. Farming is much harder than I would like my life to be. However, I think it might be the most just thing that I could choose to do. A conscious choice to be poor, to work harder than your returns, to care for the neglected bounty of the land. Farming is a dying art. The average age of farmers in America is 50. If young people do not shoulder the hard, often thankless job of agriculture, some day soon we wont have any. As the bumper sticker says, "Where would we be without Agriculture? Naked and hungry." I think there should be a program of worker "adoption" created to address this issue. Farming is hip right now and being brought to more and more peoples (specifically young peoples) attention. If a program which partnered willing young farmers with already established farms and farmers existed, this problem could begin to be addressed. Here is what I propose: A young person such as myself (though more decided and dedicated ideally) is "adopted" on to a farm. They work side by side with the existing farmer, being paid wages, or sharing in the produce, or whatever, until the time when the existing farmer desires to retire (be it five years or twenty five). Then the farm passes on to the well trained, now quite experienced, new farmer. This way existing farms continue to exist, knowledge of the land and crops and all other necessary farming things gets passed down, and there is no need for this willing and probably poor young person to slave away under debt after buying their own land, which is scarce and expensive.

I will leave you with this from Tolstoy:

" To his disciples Jesus says, Choose to be poor; bear all things without resistance to evil, even though you thereby bring upon yourself persecution, suffering, and death.
Prepared to suffer death rather than resist evil, he reproved the resentment of Peter, and died exhorting his followers not to resist and to remain always faithful to his doctrine. The early disciples observed this rule, and passed their lives in misery and persecution, without rendering evil for evil.
It seems, then, that Jesus meant precisely what he said. We may declare the practice of such a rule to be very difficult; we may deny that he who follows it will find happiness; we may say with the unbelievers that Jesus was a dreamer, an idealist who propounded impractical maxims; gut it is impossible not to admit that he expressed in a manner at once clear and precise what he wished to say; that is, that according to his doctrine a man must not resist evil, and, consequently, that whoever adopts his doctrine will not resist evil. And yet neither believers nor unbelievers will admit this simple and clear interpretation of Jesus' words."

Autumnal

2008-10-22T22:16:00.000-05:00

I am sleeping under blankets again. Weather is so fluxiuary in Texas (take that Steven Colbert or G.W. Bush). It was 80 degrees at 2pm today and then by 4:30pm it was 61. It is the season of multiple light layers or a change of clothes constantly on hand.

There are a lot of small things happening. Joyful dances, good dinners, intentional communing, harvests, funerals (a raccoon got one of our chickens), homecomings, blossoms, bees, bounty, color, space, laughter, children, and wind. Lots of small things. My life is an obvious sum of its parts. I am very glad. I think a lot of people strive for that sort of life.

I am finding a lot of joy in freerice.com. They have several trivia type pages which allow you to donate rice through the UN by your right answers. One of the trivia pages is on artistic masterpieces. It may sound silly but even this small addition to my life makes me deeply joyful. These paintings have been speaking to peoples souls for hundreds of years. They speak to mine now. I am learning.

Roommate Kris is home from California finally. I missed him. We are still working our research job for Baylor with very little enthusiasm. Its a disheartening project. We will keep on, I suppose.

All of the sudden I see myself with adult friends. I know this sounds silly. I am twenty five. My friends have three, four, and five year old children. We quite obviously have been adults for a while. It is just recently that I feel like an adult in my church, and adult in my work (at least one of them), and an adult within my friends.

I'm not going to talk about politics, though I feel like I could. There is a lot of dissension amongst the people that I love. I am voting early, voting strongly, feeling very content in my choice, but I am hoping that, once this is all over in a couple weeks, we wont have to talk about it anymore.