Disdain

My husband has pure disdain for this video and (maybe even more so) for my deep, deep love of it. He thinks that I'm only pretending to like it to bother him, but that's just not true. After all, I'm the one with a gerbil named Bea Arthur.

A Date.

I'm pretty sure I went on a date with my husband tonight. He left me a voicemail asking me out while I was in the shower this morning, then made super sure I wanted to go when I got home from work.

We went out to eat at China Buffet. We bought 2009 calendars at Staples. We bought parts to fix our cable at Radio Shack. We watched SpiderMan 3 with our housemate.

I know what you're thinking...you're thinking, "Wow! It sounds like they've been married for four and a half years." But the truth is, this is pretty much like most of our first dates.

I love it.

Thanxgiving

We're kind of having 3 Thanksgivings this year. Two down. One to go.

The first was steaks with Horshes at our house. Ben's mom and dad and younger brother Josh drove out for the first few days of last week. Hanging out with them was good, but involved eating a lot of red meat that I don't really like and later threw up. But between eating the meat and throwing it up we played two rousing games of Jenga and watched A Mighty Wind. It was great!

Thursday we drove up to Zanesville for Thanksgiving with my mom & dad, brothers, sisters in law, three neices and one nephew. Normally mom is really tense during holidays at her house, but for the past few years Ben and I have brought a lieter of White Zinfandel, or "Holiday Cheer," as I've taken to calling it. Things have loosened up. We at too much food all day and then played Win Loose or Draw--the 1980-something edition of the board game based on the TV show. The girls won 25 to 20. I had to draw such classic subjects as "bootleg whiskey," "Arsenic and Old Lace," "The Jungle Book," and "Michale's Navy."

I'm most excited about tomorrow's Thanksgiving, though. We're having a few people over from church who don't have a lot of money or family and throwing them a Thanksgiving party. My friend Anne is bringing a chicken and some pies and rolls. Ben is making his mashed potatoes, and I'm doing dressing and sides--including a super sausage dressing and a vegetarian option.

It will be great.

Let's try this again.

Most of the time, you can click on these images, and it opens a window with a giant, close up version of it. That didn't happen with my apocalyptic battle locust in the last post, so I'm trying to post it agian. This is my favorite part.

What can I say?

It's "A Really Real Looking Bunny."
In fulfillment of my Christmas gift to my niece, Sandra of "a painting of anything you want."
...I love that kid.

Homecoming

I went back to my home church Saturday. I was invited to speak in both morning services about "how North Terrace short term mission trips changed my life."

My general philosophy of living is becoming more and more divergent from this church, and there's a lot of bitching I could do about materialism, america worship, and country-clubish-ness that I'm going to put aside to tell you this:

God used North Terrace to teach me what it means to make disciples. Sunday was the yearly missions rally and it was a great reminder of everything that the church is doing right. Multiple generations of people who have grown up at North Terrace and gone into full time ministry were represented. It was beautiful. My friend Michael preached and my friend Jessie was there representing a Christian school. Michael and I especially could easily point to mission committee members or missionaries present who had intentionally given us opportunities to feel out what we thought God was calling us to vocationally. Our church has an overall philosophy of "you think you could do this? Let's talk about it and then find a way for you to try it!"

I only spoke for about 4 minutes in each service about my experiences and what I'm up to now, but still, over a dozen people came up to me later just to tell me that they were proud of me. It didn't even feel a little patronizing and the more I think about it, the more I realize it's because the church made an investment in me and my friends. They're proud of what I'm doing and they own it because any ministry I have is fruit of the ministry they had with me first.

I also got to see my brother coach his son in a 7th grade football game. Drew looks like a half size version of Lee and acts like it, too. It's good to see my brother turn out to be a good dad.

On Sunday, I picked peppers out of my parent's garden with my brother Charlie and his daughters. They're beautiful and he looks at them in a way he doesn't look at anyone else.

It was good to be home.

Eye Sore

Um...literally.

It hurt like crazy when I took my left contact out last Thursday. As the night wore on, it hurt more and more. My eye was irritated and pink, and felt scratchy. So I rinsed it with saline. And rinsed it. And rinsed it. It didn't do anything, so I looked at my eye closely, shining a flashlight into it and found a little white dent on my iris. I said a white dent on my iris! It's the weirdest thing I've ever had happen to my body. I went to the optometrist the next day, and he said I had a sterile ulcer--as in, my immune system was trying to kill germs on my eye. I guess this happens to some people when they sleep in their contacts. But I know not to sleep in my contacts, so after being reassured that I wasn't going blind, I tried to figure out what the hell happened.

And then I remembered...

The bugs. I usually wear some kind of protective eye wear on bicycle, but I skipped it one day a couple of weeks ago to take a long bike ride at dusk. I couldn't believe how dense the bugs were on the southern part of the bike path. I got so many in my mouth...and my eyes...so many, in fact, that when I woke up the next day, I found one still in my eye.

So I guess the lesson is, try not to kill bugs with your eyes?

Oh, also, our computer crashed the same day I found the dent in my eye ball. This week has been much, much better.

I make the weather

If it rains as much as the weather says it's going to rain over the next few days I'm going to FREAK OUT.

Summer

I think the Summer has been going well. I've taken a few long bike rides and it feels good. I've enjoyed the drought despite my brown, dead yard. I've enjoyed work even though we've been so full that we're turning someone away almost every day. I enjoyed the beautiful orchestra of carnage that is the Athens County Fair Demolition Derby, and I caught Olympic Fever.

So, the painting below is my tribute to summer. It's more luminous in person and I'm sorry that doesn't come across in the digital photo, but I hope you enjoy it nevertheless. Expect Fall, Winter, and Spring to follow.

Good Night

Very good night.

Got off work today and took my raft out with Anne. We paddled all over Strouds Run. It was so beautiful. We go to see the sunset from the raft on the lake. Just great.
We also saw two creatures that we thought for a moment could be cats. Then we decided they were aquatic mammals. I just looked them up, and they're river otters. We saw otters! and we were like ten feet from them!

Then, I went to the Hannah House and hung out with Dr. George Pickins. He was a prof at my college and my adviser for 2 and a half years. He is leading a work group at Good Works this week. It was so good to catch up. I think he's doing well and all and I told him that life here was good, too. But he's a mentor of mine more than a friend, so really, it was just good to feel like he was proud of me. And even better to hear him say things to that effect. I've been feeling kind of discouraged lately, so it was good to hear someone I trust tell me that I'm on the right track.

Also I ate chocolate chip cookies for dinner.

Yep. It was a good night.

Congratulations

To my friend Julie the med student, who just passed the Boards.
Damn straight Julie.

Big Round Steamy Disapointment.

Do you have a favorite meal? A meal you find so delicious that, given the opportunity, you would eat it once a day every day for years without ceasing?

I do.

A Donatos Mariachi Chicken Pizza.

You can imagine my excitement when I found out months ago that Donatos was moving to Athens. I waited with baited breath until the grand opening today. I drove straight there when I got off work, but the place was totally packed. No spaces in the lot. People parked in places that weren't spaces. Line stretching out the door. I called the number on the letter board thing twice before I left the parking lot and another two times on the way home. Busy.

I gave up. I settled for a Hungry Howie's substitute. I got a medium with chicken, olives, and jalapeños. When I got it home, I discovered that the chicken was cut up chicken finger. It sucked, but I had kind of a crappy day at work and I was feeling really sorry for myself, so I ate half of it alone in the basement.

Yup, feeling really pathetic right now.

These Dreams

I don't often sleep very well, and the good streak of deep sleeps that I had going for about 3 years ended around a year ago.

Sometimes my sleep is bad because I have nightmares. Other times it is bad for no other reason than I've always been a bad sleeper. Last night was more bad sleep, but it was, at least, interesting sleep.

I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm certain that I had several dreams in which a beach-ball-sized chick pea puppet was talking to me...a lot. It wasn't scary or anything, just really vivid.
And that is why I have never, and will likely never need to do illegal drugs.

Day off

Mmmm...I just slept until noon.

Also, this past weekend, Ben and I drove to Virginia to meet our new niece, Josie. She is snuggly like a kitten.

End of an Era

Man. Jenny moved out on Saturday. The house feels super weird. She lived with us for almost 2 years, and it worked out better than I think any of us had hoped it would. But...she got a grown up job and her own apartment a few miles away.

The experience of having a friend live with us was great, and we're looking forward to our friend Amanda moving in to the rooms Jen had rented over the next couple of weeks.

In other news, Ben turned 28 today. I made him a pizza with so many toppings that I think it weighed around 8 pounds. He bought himself a snow plow blade for our Cub Cadet riding mower. We watched the movie Eagle vs. Shark. It was great.

We also went to my family reunion on Saturday in the holler, but that's a post just on its own. It was funny and sad and heart warming. More on that later.

Legit.

So, I heard of 2 occurrences over the past few weeks that I think totally qualify as minor miracles. The first is that a woman I work with had a heart attack in her home, by herself. She was too weak to lift her hand and call 911. She was pretty certain she was going to die when she fell asleep (or passed out) that night. She woke up the next day and went to her doctor who confirmed that she'd had a heart attack. He scheduled an EKG & stress test. She went the next day to a church prayer meeting, where her youth group prayed for her. She goes for the EKG, and it perfectly matches EKGs before the heart attack. There was no damage to her heart whatsoever. Awesome.

The next is, my friends are having a baby. They've been trying to have a kid for years and have used fertility meds to help them conceive. But they totally conceived a kid while they were not taking any such meds. Stellar.

In unrelated news, The Happening is one of the all time worst movies I've ever seen. I'm happy to explain in person why you should not spend money seeing this movie.

Sunday, SUNDAY, Sunday!

Yesterday marked one solid week of my husband's failed attempts to contact our beloved, aged, terminally ill friend, Robert. He did not answer the phone, make his doctor's appointments, or come to the door when Ben pounded on it for 7 days. Feeling distressed, with images of Robert fallen down, bruised and bleeding, passed out, or deceased inside his trailer, Ben called the sheriff. He went through the details of why we were so antsy, and the sheriff's office agreed to check things out and call Ben back...but no call came. Around 10pm, I encouraged Ben to call the sheriff's office back. They told him in not-so-nice terms that they were not sending out a deputy, as they had done so many other times and Robert, who is pretty much a gun-toting nut, had threatened them.

We paced around the house for a few minutes, and decided to drop by the sheriff's office and talk in person. The deputy who we met was much more pleasant face to face. We talked for probably 20 minutes and persuaded him (since he wouldn't give us permission to break into Robert's house) to send a couple of other deputies out with us to check things out. We had to wait to meet the deputies in the AEP parking lot off of Rt. 682, by the railroad tracks so they could follow us out to his house.

That's where I had one of the weirdest, is-this-for-real style moments of my life.

While we were waiting at midnight in the Electric company's parking lot for the sheriff's deputies to take us out to our friend's house to make sure he wasn't dead, I watched a train approach the crossing right next to us at full speed. At first, I didn't think the crossing bars and lights were going to activate, but then they did, right at the last second. The conductor was caught off guard, I think, and "slammed on the breaks" of the train right in front of the intersection. Right at that second, an ambulance pulled up, lights flashing, to the far side of the crossing and had to wait for the train to go by. At the same time, some guy on a bicycle, smoking a cigarette, pedaled up to the crossing right in front of us. He pulled up beside this crappy white car and started giving the passenger directions somewhere. All this while a train is screeching, trying to slow down. And then, as quickly as it formed, the scene dissolved.

The deputies arrived a few minutes later and followed us to our friend's house. A TV was on in his trailer that hadn't been on earlier, and they had Ben pound and pound on the door. I pounded on the side of building, too. Eventually, we hear rustling near the room with the TV glow. Robert managed to hobble, shirtless and disoriented, to the front door. I thanked the deputies and sent them on their way. Ben talked with Robert and discovered that his phone was broken. We're pretty sure that Robert was unconscious for a lot of the past week, but he's the kind of stubborn SOB who doesn't accept things like ambulance rides, so we promised to help him sort out his phone problem and went home to bed.

Family in law

The inlaws visited this weekend from Maryland. It was good. My mother-in-law is writing a children's book about how she got her cat, Simon (ridiculous, I know). We had schemes of sitting down and doing some pen & water color illustrations on Sunday afternoon, but it didn't happen...because I was puking. Jenny had just been through the plague the day before, so I knew it was coming, but that doesn't make it any more fun. I barfed so hard my nose bled. I deserve a medal.

The next day we went to my mom & dad's to eat grilled meats and check out their pictures of the grand canyon. The grilling was good, but the digital photos of Arizona all looked the same. And they took each picture 5 times. Then, they took it 5 more times, because they went with my mom's 4 brothers and sisters and everyone needed a shot of everyone else. So there were lots of pictures of the bleak desert, then a picture of each couple in front of each not-so-different desert landscape. And my mom and her siblings all look alike, so it really looks like the same person wearing different clothes in front of a brown blob. There were over 200 pictures. It was a marathon.

Any way, the in-laws are back in MD. I think I'm still going to draw some cat cartoons. It should be fun. Corney, but fun.

Faithfulness

I've been thinking a lot this weekend about keeping commitments to people you love, and caring for people when it's painful. We sang this song together this morning, and it reminded me of why followers of Christ will always follow him into sad places, but carry hope with them while they do.

You are the God of the broken
The friend of the weak
You wash the feet of the weary
Embrace the ones in need
And I want to be like You Jesus
To have this heart in me
You are the God of the humble
You are the humble King

Neighborhood

I did this drawing of our neighbor Robert this week. Robert does interesting things like grow habanero peppers, fire guns, and tell stories about hookers. Robert is also frequently shockingly sincere. The guy lives in the middle of dueling hells of chronic pain and severe mental illness, but still has the perspective to be grateful about so much. I like Robert.

Bad day, eh?

I felt crappy when I got up yesterday, so I called in sick, as I had felt crappy all weekend and needed an extra day of rest. Turned out to be a pretty good day. I took naps. I took pseudophed. I watched TV. I washed clothes and dishes. Good day.

Today started off way better--I felt better when I woke up, and gladly went to work, where my coworkers are dropping like flies. Anne was clearly sicker than me, but because she has a sense of obligation, came to work anyway, and by afternoon, another one of our coworkers had gone home sick. Before I left work, the lady who's kid spread her cold germs to everyone in the house asked me why everyone was edgy. I not too graciously explained that it's hard not to be when everyone has the cold that her kid passed around. (This was far from my proudest moment and I think I owe her an apology.)

Got home, at tacos, hugged Ben. The day is getting better.

Went out with friends to see the movie: Constantine's Sword. This film was excellent. I highly recommend it for 1. any Christian who feels remorseful about the history of the violence of the church, 2. any Christian who is down with just war, or 3. any non-Christian who is pissed about killing in the name of God. It was just great. I would be happy to offer all of my thoughts, but they're mostly super sad, and I have more to report on.

We were recovering from the terrible sins of the Church we love by eating eating ice cream at Coldstone when my dear, good, alcoholic friend called me drunk, asking for a ride home. I'm more than happy to let many people suffer consequences for their actions, but we were moved to give my friend a ride, so we did. I can't express how sad it is to see friends at their worst and most pathetic.

So we dropped off my friend, came home, told sick, tired Anne that she should sleep on our couch, and thought about settling in for the night, when I found a wet spot on our carpet. No leak from above...and it's really, really wet...I tried sopping it up with a towel, but the wetness was coming up from the poured slab floor, though the padding and carpet. Crap. The sump pump. Yesterday, I discovered that the sump pump had not been running, maybe all day, and had, in fact, filled to brim and begun overflowing just slightly into Jenny's office/guest room. The plug had been loose, and when I plugged it back in, it seemed to work normally. Today, I reached my hand in to see if the little floaty switch was working, and got shocked. Not super badly, but my hand was tingly for a while. The switch was not working right. I finally got it to switch on and drain the well, but it doesn't switch off any more, which means that it could easily overheat, kick off, and leave the downstairs to get even more soggy.


In short, we need to replace our sump pump in the morning if we don't want our downstairs carpet to get all ruined. Also? I think I might be staying up most of the night to plug in the sump pump and run it from time to time. I'm really, really, really hoping that the steady stream will slow to a drip and I will be able to just sleep and sleep and sleep. Yes. Sleep.

And then a brand new day which would surely be better, right?

Responsibility

I have this dilemma going on inside myself. I've been praying for a long time about a couple of areas of my life in which I think I might have some giftings, but haven't explored their use in the kingdom of God much. Specifically, these areas are painting and public speaking (sometimes taking the form of preaching or teaching or leading).

So far in life, I would call these hobbies, interests, or pursuits that are not central to who I am. In the past year, though, I find them being pushed right into the center of my field of vision. To tell you the truth, I am nervous as hell about this. I'm nervous about the idea of things that I do for fun becoming regular obligations. I don't want the accountability that comes with saying, "Yes, these are things I do for God."

I'm not too interested in censoring my art or my speech, or, for that matter, in developing a consciousness about either. I love speaking my mind, and what I can't say, I love to put on a canvass or draw out all over paper. I love having that to myself. I'm feeling pretty possessive about it all, but I'm trying to hard to turn these things over. To start giving with them instead of just taking satisfaction from them.

But I don't like responsibility. I don't really care much for making commitments. I'm getting what I've been praying for, and I'm being reassured by reassuring people, but it's stressing me out. I've been asking, "God, what am I supposed to do with this?" and God, of course has been saying, "Use it!"

My aversion to anything that feels like an obligation is sucking some of the joy out of these pursuits. I think maybe the next step is to start praying for maturity to gladly follow the leading of the Spirit.

Yeah. I'll bet that's it.

I wouldn't exactly say that I love flowers...

but I can appreciate beauty, and I do love to paint. I did this painting this week. It's 20'x24'. We're shipping it to Ben's grandparents in Hawaii as a "thank for flying us out to visit you" gift. Hopefully it will inspire them to fly us out again and again and again. It's an orchid that I photographed at the botanical gardens. Like I said--the photos are much more interesting to me than the actual plant.

Eclectic

These, in order, are the main events of my day:
Brewed coffee
Drank said coffee until the very last second before I...
Played inter mural soccer
Showered in a rush
Wore a skirt to...
The wedding of my co-workers, Ken and Sherilyn
Saw the groom's mother pray in tongues during the wedding (a wedding first for me)
Came home
Ate pizza
Wrote out the message that I'm giving at church tomorrow
Napped
Went out to Strouds Run to smoke cigars with friends
Blogged.
Good day.

Magritte (aka, "This is not a Beer)

I barter. I did this painting in exchange for hard cider that my friend brewed. Soooooo gooooood. The picture of beer as his head is in honor of the Belgian Surrealist, Magritte. You're familiar with his work, even if you don't recognize his name. I promise.

What delicacies do you possess that you would prefer to exchange for oh-so-classy paintings? Jackson Pollock used to buy groceries with his paintings.

Back Home

Yup. I decided that although Hawaii is beautiful and contains family, fresh fish, and is surrounded by the sea, I want to keep living in Athens. My friends are here. My church is here. My life is here. This might sound crazy, but I missed work while I was away. More specifically, I missed the people that I meet at work. I missed the character. Vacations are insulating. They're an escape from reality. I don't think I like that. I like reality. I like real people. I want them in my life, and I don't think I like the idea of escaping from this poor place on purpose. So, I want to move my job and all of my poor friends to Hawaii. I am open to suggestions for how to make this work.

I also decided that this place--Secret Beach--is the most beautiful place I've ever been.

I took this week off of work, too. I am 2 days into this second vacation and I know already that it will not be long enough. I have a long list of things to paint and write. So far, I can only cross off one thing--an underwater fish painting for my 12 year-old nephew. We haven't unpacked our camera yet, or I would be posting a photo. Sorry. Anyway, it's not especially good, but it is especially fun, which I think is what 12 year-olds care about.

Tomorrow I'm spending a lot of my day in the prayer cabin at Good Works. I like the cabin. I think I'll need to build a fire. It's only supposed to be 54.

Gardening.

I really, really love studying the details of remarkable flowers. For example, Ben's grandpa grows birds of paradise in his garden. These are amazing and colorful. I like looking at them because the details make me contemplate concepts like God knowing the number of hairs on our heads. Also, I like to think about how I would paint various flowers. This is because I love God and I love painting. I also like to hear people who really, really love flowers talk about why they really, really love them. I think this is because I like to hear people talk about what they love.

I do not love flowers. I do not love shrubs or other plants. I love enormous trees--the ones big enough to really climb, or the kind that five people need to hold hands around to encompass them. I like the concept of nature and I love to observe the big picture. I love the forest, enormous stones, and the sea.

I say this to tell you that Ben waisted $20 taking me to the botanical gardens yesterday. I would have been interested in many of the flowers there if someone had lined them all up in a row, but because we had to walk a mile and a half to see just a few varieties, I was too bored to notice any of them. The only flowers I saw were the ones Ben pointed out. I don't mean to sound ungrateful or unappreciative. I tried as hard as I could to force myself to get interested in all the plants, but I failed.

My favorite parts of the botanical gardens were the trolly ride there and back, and the volcanic rocks. My least favorite parts were the mosquito bites and the plants.

So, now we have lots of photos of flowers, which are infinitely more interesting to me that the real flower bushes, and lots of photos of me standing with my arms crossed, bored out of my mind.

Poor Ben. I hope I didn't ruin his day.

Directions

Hawaii is great. I can't, right now, remember the reasons we don't just live here. There is family, and jobs of all sorts. Wait. It's coming back to me now. Something about a calling to work with poor people. Oh yeah.

There have been 2 major hilights from our trip so far. The first is Ben's awesome grandpa. We had an hour and a half long conversation about mental illnesses and deamon posession the other night. It got late and he had to go to bed. Instead of saying, "Well, that's enough of that," he said, "to be continued..." Geez. Bob loves to talk about politics, religion, and money. Loves it. I'm game. And I do mean talk, not argue. It's great.

The second hilight was our hike on Monday. 2 years ago we cruised by the hanging valleys--the awesome shore line at the begining of Jurasic Park. Monday, we took a 6 or 7 mile hike out onto the top of one. The view was so amazing, and the sides of the trail were sheer in some places.

The biggest downer of the trip has been the really very crapy head cold that I have. It was at its worst during our 7 mile hike and made my head throb for the second (uphill) half.

I got a voicemail from Jen saying she's stranded in Athens with no knowledge of how to use our DVD player with the TV. Jen, here are direction. Everyone else, stop reading now. It's mind numbing.

1. Turn on the TV, DVD player, and stereo receiver.

2. Insert DVD.

3. Look at the rown of buttons on the stereo. One of them says "video 3." Push that button.

4. Get the old TV remote--the big gray one, not the colorful Direct TV remote.

5. To the right of the up/down chanel buttons is a small, round input/av button. If you can't find this button on the remote, you can also use the button on the front of the TV by the power & volume buttons that looks like a button you would never, ever need to push. Both buttons do the same thing. Hit this button until you get to a screen that says "a/v 2."

6. You should now be able to see & hear your DVD.

7. If you CAN'T hear it or see it, try hitting "video 2" on the stereo.

8. If you can HEAR IT BUT NOT SEE IT, hit that input/av button on the remote until the right screen comes up.

9. TO WATCH TV AGAIN, turn off the stereo and DVD player and hit the input/av button until you come to the screen called "s-video." This in the Direct TV screen, and you can now switch back to the normal, colorful, familiar remote.

I realize this is complicated, but wow! it really sounds like you're in the movie!

Kauai

In about 26 hours, Ben and I are driving to Port Columbus and flying here:


This is Kauai. It's one of the the northernmost islands that make up Hawaii. Ben's grandparents live there. They're flying us out so we can spend some time with them over Ben's spring break.

I must say, I'm pretty excited.

Mapled!

Uh huh.

So, my brother Charlie is a lumberjack mountain man of a construction worker. He has a lot of maple trees in his yard, and has tapped them all this year. Last night he gave me about 3 gallons of sap, which I'm boiling down right now so I can have home-made maple syrup. I tried Charlie's last night and it was awesome.

Waffles for dinner. Soon. You're invited.

Oh yes...

Tiny bears.

So, I know this is inane, and maybe a waste of words, but I love miniature things. I love them so much that I keep these two gerbils as miniature pets. They stand on their teeny tiny back legs a lot, and when they do, they look like little kangaroos, or sometimes tiny circus bears.

Just wanted to let you know what's on my mind right now.

Also, sometimes, for days at a time, I get songs stuck in my head. Pop songs. Except they're sung by a cat chorus, like the Meow Mix theme.

Yup. Pretty deep.

Billy Jean

Sometimes, every great once in a while, I have a day where I feel like Michael Jackson in the Billy Jean video--like every step I take lights up. Half of today was like that.

At church this morning, I got to play airplane with a little kid for like 20 minutes. It was amazing. This kid frequently screams through all of church, so discovering that she loved airplane was a small miracle.

Tonight, my volunteers were stranded in Columbus, so I had to work their shift. This shift was great. I ate pizza. I hung out with people I don't get to talk to often, and my pastor had this open time of discussion about faith with anyone who wanted to come. 3 former residents came--it was great. I though they had just come by to see if they had mail, but they stayed for an hour long conversation about who the Holy Spirit is. Unreal. This shows that all the energy and love we've been pouring into these folks is sinking in. And these are people we've been tough on, too. We let them know when they're slacking off or being foolish, and they still come around. I'm so glad.

The not so lights on the floor part of my day was staying up 'til 3 am, taking a super crappy nap, and waking up from it with a sinus headache, but that was easily overcome by medicine and coffee. I also had a former resident tell me I was mean for being hard on him. That was a bummer, but I can understand his perspective.

Yeah, lights on the floor.

Voting

I'm not voting today.  I don't know who to vote for and I'm exceptionally discouraged by political talk that doesn't ever add up to anything.  I couldn't work out in my conscience how I should decide which candidate's fake promises to endorse.  I feel like voting is a big deal, especially if you live in Ohio.  I don't take it lightly and I'm not blowing it off.  I'm deliberately abstaining from practicing my right to vote today, just like I'm deliberately abstaining from my right to bear arms.  I think it would be dangerous to do so, and I'm not willing to pick up ballot or a gun in the hopes of producing change today.  I'm not sure if or when my feelings on the matter will change.

I am glad so many people are voting today.  I'm glad people are feeling good about it and, in this most economically depressed part of the state, taking action that they believe will lead to a better life.  Good for them.  

Feel free to descend upon me with anger and fits of rage--I can hack it.

In the mean time, read this article about Southeast Ohio in the Chicago Tribune.  

Like no sleep...

I'm going on like no sleep.  For a few months, I've had problems falling asleep, then problems staying asleep, and also problems waking up too early and not being able to fall back to sleep.  That pretty much adds up to no sleep.  

Today I came in to work 2 hours late because I did not sleep during the night and could not get up in the morning.  I couldn't make my brain work, so I dozed for an extra 2 hours, during which I also did not really sleep.  

This sucks.

I had the worst insomnia my whole life.  It got better for a while after I got married, but it sucks again now.  

The Dump

This morning was my first trip to the Athens/Hocking Reclamation Center.

On Saturday afternoon, Ben helped a friend of ours who lives way out in the sticks pull scrap metal and tires out of the muck in his yard. I wasn't there, but I hear it was quite an ordeal. Ben put our truck in 4 wheel drive and tried to get out of the yard, but ended up burying the suspension up to the axles and sliding sideways so that our truck was resting against our friend's house. By the time our friend's sister hauled our truck out of the mud with her gargantuan diesel one million horse power truck, the dump was closed. When I saw that the load was not very large, my first thought was, "Oh, we should just throw that into the woods behind out house," but the eco-friendly part of me overpowered the trashy part and I didn't suggest it out loud.

So I drove our truck full of half a tractor tire, the back half of a TV, a spare tire, long strips of jagged, rusty metal, shards of glass, and a tattered seat from a small car to the dump this morning. Jenny came along, as I am currently her ride to work and class. I confessed my blue collar desire to start a dump of my own in our woods. She laughed.

Let me say, I grew up next to a junk yard. As in, I could see the junk yard from my bedroom window. My dad is a mechanic and we took regular trips there together in our galoshes, work pants, and flannel shirts. I am perfectly at home in a smoky trailer that serves as an office. I used all my junk yard skills this morning.

The dump was like the worst parts of the junk yard times 1000. Even with a small load, they have you drive straight back about a mile, right up to the edge of the pit that used to be a hill. There were two enormous bulldozers pushing piles of garbage into the pit, and one normal sized bulldozer trying hard to keep the 5 t0 10 inches of mud from becoming the kind of disaster that swallows men whole. I couldn't believe the size of the pit. It looked like someone had ripped a hole out of a huge hill, and was slowly but surely filling it in. Amazing. When I pulled up, the only instruction I got was from the man in the closest giant bulldozer. From my truck, I gestured to ask if I was in his way, but he just pointed at a small pile of trash (maybe 10 by 10 by 30 foot), as in, drop your crap here.

So I backed up to it and heaved my garbage onto the pile. Jenny was full of horror at wonder at the whole mess. I felt at home. I'm not sure what the dump is reclaiming. I know eventually, my garbage will be covered in a few dozen feet of soil, and grass will be planted on it. Eventually, people will forget it was a dump, and they will build houses and plant trees there. Garbage is different when you think of it terms of what you want your grandkids to build their house on, or what you want the hills on the countryside to be made of.

The Tragically Cloistered Homeschooler's Guild of Athens

Last night I was supposed to speak about poverty at an event that a servant-hood-based Christian student group had planned and promoted. Chapters of this groups exist at many different schools, and I've had excellent experiences with one or two others, so I was glad to do it. The student I spoke with on the phone said they were planning for 100 people, and that the dress was "business casual." He said he may wear a suit. From his voice and plans to over-dress for the occasion, I thought perhaps he was a go-getter business major and that I was maybe a rung or two below the quality of speaker he was expecting. It especially made me nervous when he asked me if I required payment for coming. I wondered what I had gotten myself into with this very professional young man.

The answer, as it turns out, was a club of people who had been severely sheltered from life by their hard-core home-schooling parents, who now had found one another away at college. These kids struggled to converse with each other and with me, and I could have a conversation with a tree stump if you told me it was lonely. I realized immediately that our conversation had not been formal, just awkward.

When half an hour went by and no one had arrived for the event, I asked how they promoted it. He said, "Oh, we facebooked the international students. Word of mouth, mostly." He pointed across the room at a woman of ambiguous age wearing a black dress, "She put up flyers." I later talked to the girl in the black dress. She said she didn't really like being around people her own age, and missed "all the little kids and grown-ups."

It was sad.

There was one diamond in the rough, though. An Indian student named Bobby, who I talked with for a good 15 minutes. It was great and he was great, so I'm glad I went. But, it did leave me wondering how on earth you help a person who is now an adult learn to compensate for only ever having conversations with parent and aunts and uncles growing up.

The Holler

This is Salt Gum Holler, as recreated by Google Earth. This is the land my great, great grandfather Simon settled when he immigrated to Ohio from Germany. His son John built the house that my grandfather, father, and brother lived in at different points in their life. My aunt and uncle live in it now. My dad's aunt and her brood live in the branch of the holler that leads off to the right--they are the rebellious drunken side of the family. My aunt's (the one who lives in the homestead) inlaws live down the left fork. My dad's brother lives at the bottom of the picture, across the street from his cousin. My cousin lives in one of the trailers at the top left, and his aunt and cousin live in the other trailer.

The fields just above the fork in the road are fields my family farmed and plowed for generations and generations, only ceasing in the last few decades. My great grandfather built the barn on the homestead with logs he pulled from the Muskingum River during the great flood in the 1920s. Down the hill there is a machine shop where my grandfather kept an ancient lathe, as well as a root cellar, and a shack that has housed a nanny goat for I don't know how many years.

This is where I spent my summers growing up. My parents worked, but my aunts and grandparents didn't, and I would spend all day with them on the front porch swing of the homestead, looking down into the valley out over the beautiful countryside and going for walks.

This piece of land and the people who live on it are an awfully big part of who I am. They are the reason I love country music and listen to it when I'm alone. They teach me what faithfulness and loyalty mean. They remind me to treat poor people well, and to take care of people you care about. This place is everything that holds us back, and everything that comforts and defines us. This has been home for 200 years.

Characters

My life is full of characters. And by "character," I mean, interesting, wily, one-of-a-kind people who stick in your mind.

Our newest resident is one such character. I met her when I was 19. I was visiting Good Works in the spring of my sophomore year of college and spent an evening hanging out at the Timothy House. I was pretty wide-eyed and felt a lot like a tourist. I ate dinner with Mindy (not her real name), who I learned was an alcoholic. She seemed really nice and put me at ease. When it was time for me to go back to the Hannah House (where interns stay) that night, Jessi, the staff member who was driving me gave Mindy a ride to work on the way. I remember being really surprised that Mindy had a job and also being full of wonderment at riding in a car with a homeless woman. I thought something like, I'll bet my life will never be the same after this! Wide-eyed, like I said.

The next time I saw Mindy, she had dug her way out of the cycle of alcoholism....

and fallen straight into the cycle of domestic violence. 2 and 1/2 years ago, she showed up at the shelter escorted by a short man with no fingers on his right hand, mean, clear blue eyes, and white stubble on his face. They were looking to get some kind of reference letter from us. He spoke in clipped words and only gestured with his lesser hand; every bit of his communication was an attempt to intimidate. I was working with my friend, Rosenna, and we both knew immediately that he was a wife-beater. They did not get what they were looking for.

Neither of us was surprised when Mindy called for shelter a year later. She was still sober and was on the run from the short man with the missing fingers. She did OK at the shelter, but left to return to her abuser.

Now, she's running from him again. During our meeting with her today, she said something about guns and alcohol not mixing well. We all agreed, and were cautious, but happy to move her back in, but most people who are the victim of such problems move in with a few of their own. Mindy has already accused everyone in the house of stealing a pouch of tobacco from her things, as well as a cigarette roller. She's asked the staff to rip the house apart looking for it. We said no, so now she's trying to start fights with her 2 roommates. I wished my night shift guy good luck refereeing the cat fight.

Welcome back Mindy. Sincerely.

In Dreams

Do you have a cough due to cold? Yes Forest. I called in sick today and slept until 1:30pm. I'm feeling better now.

Last night, Kevin called me and my squeegee into the Timothy House for an emergency. The creepy, dungeon-like basement was flooding. Part of the old part of the basement wall was leaky and the sump pump in that room, as I discovered upon arrival, was not working properly. It just churned and churned the well of murky black water, but didn't suck anything up. Hmmm...must be clogged, I thought. So, I crouched down and dug into the water past my elbow and this is what I pulled out:

2 disposable pudding serving cups
2 rotted rolls of electrical tape
1 rotted roll of duct tape
3 shards of plastic
1 straw
1 spray bottle cap

Did you know that electrical tape rots? me neither. While the excavation was satisfying, it didn't unclog the sump pump, which overflowed numerous times today while I was out sick. It had to be replaced.

While I was sleeping, I had two opposing dreams. In the first dream, I discovered that my gerbils (named Bea Arthur and Gena Davis in real life) were not both female, and had reproduced the most adorable, tiny baby gerbils. I was so happy and played with them for hours.

Then, the gerbil dream ended abruptly, and I found myself in a nightmare in which I had been abducted by a serial killer. I was being held hostage, tied up to a chair in his creepy apartment. In my dream, the apartment was Lindsey McDonald's house, but not really (not relevant if you don't know Lindsey). Anyway, the killer went to find a scalpel to torture me, but I managed to get out of the ropes that were tying me down. I silently crept over to a book shelf and found a big, heavy Greek Lexicon and hid behind a doorway waiting for him. When he came around the corner, I jacked him in the face with it and then beat him unconscious and escaped.

Yeah, I have really vivid, intense dreams. Always in color. Always weird.

Don't worry.

Sorry if I alarmed anyone with my exhaust leak. Ben is super duper responsible, and we got the leak fixed the day after I posted about it. My throbbing headaches cleared up immediately.

Last weekend, my "girls from college" weekend was great. We got things off our chests during this awesome, spontaneous time of confession and prayer. I realize that's not everyone's idea of a good time--screw it. It's healthy and therapeutic and pleasing to God and we loved it. Living with those girls was one of best times of my life, and it is excellent to be reminded why. Part of our time involved a State of the Union style report. I was glad to be able to say that I've been happier this year than I think I've ever been. My marriage is out of the honey moon phase, work has been intense, and everything costs more money than we usually have, but I feel good. I feel good about life with Ben. I feel good about painting. I feel good about work. There have been things to grieve over in past year, but I think I've been able to do that and experience closure and move on. Yes. Life is good.

Major Events

2 of the events I look forward to most all year are going down tomorrow. The Walk for the Homeless is in the morning and my awesome girls-i-went-to-college with reunion tour is happening in Indiana. I could hardly sleep last night, I'm so excited.

I hate being awake early, but tomorrow, I'll jump out of bed at 6am to make it to work in plenty of time to get ready for the "Kid's Walk" that's going straight through the Timothy House. I love the Walk. I love it because it's such and encouraging show of solidarity. It makes me want to become a Steinbeck style union organizer, or some kind of powerful writer. We don't get a whole lot of "thank yous" at the Timothy House, and I feel like this is our community saying "thanks."

Then, immediately after the Walk, I'm driving up to Indy to hang out with these terrific friends from college. They are all teachers or in ministry, too, and I feel at home there. We'll catch up and eat each other's great cooking, they will inevitably drag me shopping, and I will attempt to put the kibosh on their plans for a "makeover night," and we'll encourage each other and pray. I can't wait.

Fumes & Propaganda

My dad & husband installed a tub surround in our downstairs shower on Saturday morning. This shower had previously just had drywall and wall paper in the shower--a bad idea, I know. So, as you can immagine, there were some issues witht the drywall, namely that the joint compound all the way around where the tub joins the wall was cracked and falling off. So, my husband the science teacher and my father the mechanic decided to replace the cracked plaster with quick drying BONDO. Bondo, if you're not familiar, is the stronger than steel, toxic putty type substance that is used to patch the body of cars. At any rate, the bondo filled the whole house with raucous fumes. Although we opened all of the windows for hours in the cold that afternoon, some of the fumes are still lingering and ruining my lung capacity. I feel sluggish and not so bright. Oh, and did I mention that we've been driving around in a car with an exhaust leak? Apparently, in my toxic haze I left Jenny a rambling, nonsensical voicemail telling her the fumes were cleared out and it was OK to come home. I think maybe I was wrong, as the message made perfect sense to me as I was leaving it.

While dad & Ben were Bondo-ing the shower, I was in the Kroger mezanine (read cart coral) with an intern, Hank, promoting the Walk for the Homeless. Hank and I both enjoy talking, so I would say this went well. I am that person you know to whom complete strangers feel compelled to share their entire life story, and some of krogering townspeople who stopped to talk did so. I continue to be entertained by this phenomenon. I'm also going to KCU on Tuesday and Wednesday to represent Good Works and recruit interns at the missions fair. I hope this goes well. If you have youth group kids or know people who go to KCU, please tell them to come by and see me...I think I know one student who's still there.

Thinking

I've been staying up kind of late recently, thinking about a lot of things. This pastel is about a friend of mine and the things that hold him down. These things are primarily addiction and location. When I say addiction, I mean he's hooked on a little bit too much of everything. When I say location, I mean he was born here and he's too poor and ignorant to move away, or to ever desire to do so. Plus, this is home. The pastel isn't quite done yet, but it illustrates what I'm thinking about better than my words likely can.

My friends and my theology are the topics of my thoughts. I have an awful lot to say on the subject, but I think I'll keep the majority of it for some kind of essay or short book. The short of it is, well...

I used to think that the world is the way it's supposed to be for now, and heaven, or "The Kingdom Of God," (which really means the reign of God--like, his dominion and the working out of his will) would be like taking the earth and turning the whole thing inside out and upside down. And the inside out way would be the way "heaven" was supposed to be. I used to think that there was some kind of eye-for-an-eye justice going down on earth, and that things were, for the most part, quite ordered and proper. I thought bad things that happened were aberrations; small moth holes in a fabric that was otherwise intact. I thought those holes were "evil," or maybe "sin."

During that time, I was sometimes depressed and lonely, I certainly didn't treat people around me very nicely, I was a Young Republican, and I sincerely believed that Jesus was, too. I was in the middle class, and all of my friends were, too.

Jump ahead and I've had a couple of epiphanies. The first was that I wasn't the center of the universe. The second was that God is not cool with me treating people like shit. And the third was that, rather than treating people like shit, it would be way cooler with God to treat them well on purpose, especially people who no one else wanted to treat well.

Move ahead a couple more years, and I'm feeling great about working at a homeless shelter. This is some reaching down to the poor. Like, full time balls to the wall charity-is-my-job kind of reaching out. I was at a staff meeting and my boss suggests to everyone that there's something out there much better than charity. He suggests that we should give our social lives over to God, and that if we did so, God would probably give us poor and lonely people to hang out with. I was not OK with this suggestion and let God know it. I think I told him something like, "I need down time. I need my friends to be like me so I can blow off steam with them. If you want me to spend my free time with poor and crazy people, too, then you're going to have to make me feel differently about it."

God said something back like, "OK." And through events and people he's erased my previous notions of what it meant to be cool and have cool friends. It felt like the day you looked around and realized that neon pink,teal were not it any more, and that they had been replaced with flannel and Kurt Cobain t-shirts.

So my husband and I have been hanging out with people, like my friend with the mullet, who are broken and lonely, and cool as hell. The more I hang out with these guys, the more I realize that world is upside down now. Things aren't at all the way they should be. The whole thing is the mess. The fabric is bad--it's a heavy curtain and it's the moth holes that are good, and let us see through the curtain to God.

Being upside down friends with my broke neighbors opened my eyes to what was actually happening around me. People who aren't poor look at my poor friends like animals at a zoo, or like ET just waddled off the space ship. Almost all of my poor friends have cell phones. I used to think it was because their priorities were messed up, then I realized it was easier to get a cell phone than it was to get necessities like food stamps, or health care, or a steady place to live. Lots of my poor friends have cable. I used to think that was bad prioritizing, too. Then I realized that tensions run so high in relationships between people who are right on the edge that TV is a welcome distraction, but poor substitute for working things out.

Things are upside down. In the kingdom of God, you get what you need, not the shady substitute. With Jesus, you get healing, not the bandaid. You get the new family, not cable. You get food instead of distracting toys. I wish things were that way now. I think that's what it means to pray, "your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven..."

Maybe I'm rambling because rain makes me sad and I feel like I have to get things off my chest. Maybe it's because I watched the movie Sicko last night and was so bummed that I couldn't think straight. I don't know.

Waiting

I got up at the ungodly hour of 7am today so I could shower and be ready to wait for the TV repairman, who was to arrive at our home between the hours of 8am and 5pm. The Sears TV guy, Mark, actually woke me up. "I'm not sure where you live. I have down here Athens, KY." Hmmm...I'm still waiting. I hope he finds out house before I have to leave for work.

In the mean time, the American Electric Power guys are cutting trees down and chipping them into dust in our neighbors' yard. These beautiful, 20 year-old pines provided a lot of blockage between our lot and the road. I miss them already. In my mind, I march over to the AEP guys and have an imaginary argument with them. I ask them who they think they are, and why they can't just trim the trees. I ask them what they're going to do with all the wood, and why they have to cut it up, when they're clearly cutting down lots of pines and poplars the same size to make electric poles. Then, in my head, they look at me with sad, tired eyes and apologize. They tell me the don't hate trees, but they need the money. They tell me they use all the materials for things like mulch, and they apologize more. They tell me this is the best job they could find, and I know it to be true and feel like an ass for being the 50th person to bitch at them this week without even saying hello, and in my head, I feel badly about the interaction. So, I keep it in my head.

Skype

Have you heard of this? Skype? My inlaws got us this magic, Logitech webcam for Christmas. As it turns out, this little ditty is pretty great. We have a subscription to Sype, an online communications tool that allows free phone calls via computer to other people with the service, as well as free VIDEO PHONE conversations. We just got off the phone with Ben's grandparents in Hawaii. This is the technology we were promised as children. Next step? Teleporter.

So, I was working out today with dumbbells and did a lift that I do probably 3 times a week, and my neck and shoulder went crazy. The whole muscle group is tight, but it doesn't hurt so badly that I'm crying anymore. My shoulder problems stem from a youth group water skiing trip. It was, like, 10th grade and I was in an inner tube behind Dr. Allen's boat, The Fellowship Hull 2, when I went over a wake and felt a rather intense snap under my right scapula. I'm pretty sure I broke a rib, and certainly tore up some connective tissue. Any way, I couldn't take a deep breath for over a week, but didn't go see a doctor, either, for fear of my mother. So now, a couple of times a year, I move just so and am in intense, stabbing pain for about a day. I'm treating my injury with red wine, Tension Tamer Tea, and motrin. Oh, and human growth hormone, of course.