Update

FYI, I've regained my will to live.
I know. I'm relieved, too.

I'm a person of pretty level moods, and usually good health, but rain does me in. It robs me of my will to live and I just let the germs take over. But the sun was out today and I buoyed enough energy to fight off my head cold.

If you're thinking now that you need to caution me to never, ever move to say, Seatle, don't worry. I won't. I lived in swamp land Kentucky for 5 years, where it never snows and only rains and is 33 degrees and wet all winter. I just barely got out alive.

SO sleepy

This morning, I woke up about 5 minutes before my alarm was going to go off, as usual...except today, I thought it was, like, 2 hours before my alarm was going to go off, so I had just given myself permission to sleep for a good, long time when the damned machine started going crazy. I was tired all day. I spent most of the day slumped at my desk checking emails. I felt out of it and pathetic. I don't think I even washed my own lunch dishes. I just abandoned them in the kitchen. Thanks, whoever had enough will to live today to wash my dishes. It was probably Anne. Thanks Anne.

Maybe I'm sick or depressed. I hope not. This is several days of feeling sleepy in a row. Maybe it's just the awful, awful gray weather. And the terrible darkness that comes in the middle of the day, before I get off work. Shit. I'll bet that's it. Bummer.

I know adding this photo to this post makes it out like I'm some depressed teenager, but here's the zombie table top I painted for my friend, Kevin.

The severed head is painted inside the drawer...I know, I'm sick.

Life is on Fire

I finished this yesterday. It's acrylic on canvas, approximately 3ft by 4ft.
Don't paint a lot of flowers, but it's for a friend.

Gratis

So, we had 2 Thanksgivings. The first was at our house with our 2 rather odd middle aged friends, and the second was the normal Thanksgiving with mom & dad, the brothers, the sisters in law, and the nieces and nephews. The normal Thanksgiving was super enjoyable and ended with delicious rasberry pie made from berries that grow in my mom & dad's yard.

That first Wednesday night Thanksgiving though...

Matt, Ben and myself sat down at the dinner table, and Robert (our very sick older neighbor who has, among other things, organic brain disease) begins talking in the middle of a sentence and proceeds to tell the three of us about the one and only time he hired a prostitute. It went something like this,

"It was the first time I had called one of those escort services, and we went to a hotel. And I wanted to make it nice, a somewhat romantic time...so I asked this girl, how much of this money goes to you and how much goes to the pimp? Anyway, I was kind to her, and she said, 'For you, none of it,' and she didn't charge me. That was the first and only time I ever did that and I didn't have to pay for it."

Something to be thankful for.

Sick day & Thanksgiving.

I had a personal day yesterday and accidentally slept until 11:30am. Last night, during our book discussion group on Shaine Claiborn's "The Irresistible Revolution," I got tired. By 10pm I was downright lethargic, then, by midnight, I was just plain sick. Bummer. I felt achy all over. As the night wore on, I felt grosser and grosser. Thought I might barf but didn't. I think the experience would best be described as "flu like symptoms with stomach cramps." By 5am I didn't feel like barfing any more, so I could finally sleep. I woke up at 8:45am to call in sick, then slept until 1pm. Got up to eat some rice, slept from 2:30pm to 5pm. Took some Tylenol and I'm feelin' fine.

I prefer, if I'm sick and I know I'm not contagious, to just go to work sick. I use these sick days at work to do things I hate, like well over due paperwork, or cleaning my desk. There are 2 benefits: 1. I don't use a sick day. And 2. I have all of the negative experiences all at once--only one day is ruined.

After I felt better today, I made 2 kinds of stuffing (dressing, really, as I'm not cramming it into the ass of any dead birds). Ben and I are having 2 older (46 and 50 something) friends over tomorrow night for Thanksgiving dinner who are pretty broke, so we're treating them. One of them is a vegetarian, so I made stuffing with a bunch of herbs, garlic, celery, butter, veggie stock, and almonds for him. It tastes great and I wish I had made more. The meat stuffing for the other three of us is approximately half sausage. This, in my opinion, is the only way to live. I am so looking forward to this dinner. Ben and I are trying hard to take Christ's advice about inviting people who can't repay you to your feasts. So far, Jesus is right, and we're being rewarded in ways that encompass a lot more than food and money.

Insular

Some people live rustically on purpose. It's trendy. My friend Matthew built a big one room house with a nice shower and super efficient washer and dryer. Nice big one room house with an out house instead of a toilet. On purpose. Way to be sustainable, Matthew.

Others are just hacks. Unfortunately, that's what I must assume about the incompetents who have lived in the house we bought for the last 30 years. Last winter, it wasn't unusual for our thermostat to read 55 degrees inside our home. We knew from our home inspection that the place needed some extra insulating. Last winter, Ben went into the small storage room under our entry way to insulate it, and he could see LOTS of day light. Even after we insulated our basement, the house was still freezing. So this week, Ben dug out the extension ladder and peeked up above the entry way of our house...guess what? No insulation. No insulation over our entire entry way. It's like a 10 by 15 foot room with no insulation. All of our heat, expensive, polluting heat was rising up from our downstairs and going straight through the roof of our entry way.

So, we bought $700 worth of insulation and Ben's been installing it all weekend. Our house is so much warmer already. I can feel my hands. It's great.

communion

This is a pastel I did last night of an old woman from my church...sort of. It's kind of about communion and the love feast. I don't know. I hate talking about things like this, hence my expression of ideas as images instead of words.

Anyway, I know it looks like a drunk at a bar...that's about half on purpose.

Thoughts?

Warmth

So, I started this drawing Sunday night and finished it last night. It's in oil pastel, which you can draw with and paint with.


Here's a closer view of the central figure. I hate talking about this kind of thing, but this is about a kid from my church. Her mom is like, 17 and doesn't take the best care of her all the time. I think she's just trying to make it herself, let alone care for a kid. Anyway, I pray a lot that God would fill this family with hope...that's kind of what this is about.

Mmm good.

Over the summer, when it was around 95 degrees, I made a crock pot full of French onion soup for a work function. Not wanting to spill a gallon of soup onto the floor board of my truck, I taped the lid onto the crock pot, placed it on the most level part of my floor, and held onto the top of it with my hand as I drove the 1 mile to work. At the first big corner, the crock pot slipped out from under my hand and up-ended itself, spilling nearly every drop of my delicious (and I do mean delicious) soup onto the floor mat. When I arrived at work, I had just enough time to fold my floor mat into a scoop and heave a few throws of it into the yard before we departed for 6 hours. I did have the presence of mind to leave the crock pot and my floor mat sitting on the ground under my truck instead of in it, but nevertheless, I was unprepared for the slap in the face of hot, stinky onion and beef when I returned to my vehicle that afternoon. I can't even describe it. I shampooed my upholstery and floor mats, and well as the floor of the truck. I scrubbed it. I scrubbed the hell out of it. That was months ago, and the smell is still there. It hit me in the face this morning, even though it was only about 50 degrees. Other people say they can't smell it, or that it's not bad...they're wrong. Maybe they think that smell is BO, or that I deliver pizza for a living...but I know it's soup. I think this smell may have ruined me on French onion soup. I hope not, but I'm having trouble recovering.

Anybody ever tell you....

That they're a prophet of God?
That they know God made them a horse and a lot of other animals?
That people who don't go to church are stabled?
That they have lights in their eyes?
That they won't eat any GODDAMNED MEAT or take any pills?
Or that people are following them everywhere?

We met with a woman today who was really paranoid. Really, really paranoid and delusional. She scared me for a minute. Every couple of months, I meet a person insane or drunk enough to make me wonder, "Is there a gun in that bag? I guess I wouldn't know until it was too late..." This woman is that ill.

We could not house her; she's far too sick right now. So after we talked to her, we just prayed for a while. It didn't seem like there was anything else to do. Through a series of events, she came back to the house later and we called her a cab. I offered to pay for it if she would take it to the hospital to get a psych evaluation, but she declined, quite angrily.

God is faithful, though, and I think he looks out for people. I just talked to a woman who does psych evals at the hospital, and they are admitting the paranoid woman from this afternoon. I'm glad. We prayed that she would have a place to go and that she would get help. Seems like it's working out.

They COULD amputate...

My inlaws are in town. This is a good thing. I like my inlaws. They are kind. They are concerned with our lives but don't butt in or give unsolicited advice. They're never snotty or judgemental, and they're really generous. Right now, they're downstairs with Ben watching "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a movie that I only sort of like and definitly can't stay awake through. So, I update.

Any way, because my inlaws are in town, we had my brother Charlie and his wife and kids down. The kids are ages 6, 5, and 3, so it was a little nuts in our not so child proof house. Abby, the 5 year-old is autistic, and therefore doesn't have the best concept of empathy or understanding of small creatures as delicate, living things. Our 2 gerbils only weigh ounces and have very tiny teeth that don't even hurt when they bite and therefore are rather defenseless against creatures as large as 5 year-olds. So, no one was that surprised when Abby loaded one into their plastic gerbil ball and threw her accross the room. Well, I guess the gerbil was probably surprized. Poor, dumb animal. Poor, dumb, helpless, limping animal. I think she'll be fine, she's just favoring her right, rear paw. When I pointed this out to my husband, he immediately googled "broken+paw+gerbil," and said, "As long as it's eating food and the wound isn't open, it should heal and be OK. If it gets infected, you can take it to the vet and they can amputate."
"Amputate? What would that look like?"
"They can make it on 3 legs."
"I know they can make it on 3 legs, but what on earth would they do to amputate? Oh well. We'll cross that bridge when we get there."
Hmmm...I like my pets. Maybe I even love my pets, but, not to be cold hearted...they only cost $5. I'm not sure trips to the vet are in our gerbils' future.

In unrelated news, my mom is in Haiti for the 3rd time. She's there with a surgical team doing outpatient procedures. She arrived 2 days ago and have already done 2 or 3 cases, and have many more coming up next week.
Way to go mom.