Where'd she go?

April 27, 2008 01:42:52 pm

I have spent the last 8 months exploring a career path that I've decided isn't really for me. So I'm going to fall back on what I know, writing quips about my daily experiences and ignoring my kids.

While I fantasize about other possible career paths.

And recover from the nightmare, which my brain has already started to repress.

My three year old just bound my legs at my knees. Perhaps I should stop ignoring her for today. It might be more difficult to get back to this than I had anticipated.

Blue Like Jazz

October 25, 2007 11:09:55 pm

Three years ago a radical Christian friend of mine recommended Blue Like Jazz because he thought I could use a new perspective on the faith. I'm not sure if I was so transparent that he really knew what he was saying or if he really thought that there was this Christian fundamentalist just now coming to church at 23 having lived in the area for 6 years. I like to think he knew what he was doing.

I balked it for awhile because I truly believed that the bible was all that I needed on Christianity and really why do I need a book to further the dialog in my mind about God and Jesus?

It's like it has been calling to me for the last three years though and less than a week ago I was in a book store and I thumbed through a copy on the counter, realized it was 15 bucks and set it back down. The cashier informed me that if I had my rewards card everything on the counter was five dollars. I said I was pretty sure that I didn't have one and she said well if you want to give us your email address we can get you signed up. It turned out I did have a rewards card, and it was right behind my debit card.

So I bought the book.

That afternoon after I put my 19 month old down my three year old crawled over on the couch next to me and told me that she was going to need a pillow and a blanket because it was nap time.

I read for an hour. A whole, real, intact, hour. No crying, no water breaks, no pee breaks, a whole hour. A friend of mine walked into the sun room of our house to find me in a trance drinking in this book. She commented on how she wished her house could be this peaceful.

She has one child.

It is now 6 days after I bought the book and I have finished it. And I think I get it. And I totally think that if I had read it three years ago it would have had a symbols clanging, mixed message kind of "not in rhythm with my life" kind of feel to it. Because three years ago any one who drank was the enemy. It was hard for me to step outside of black and white because when you're in the dark gray matter doesn't help much.

And when you have between 2 and 5 kids running around it doesn't help much either, but it's different. It's reassuring. It's like knowing that I'm not alone in My Crazy has made it all the more interesting.

And I wish that I could recommend this book for everyone but it's not...some people are baby Christians and they need the bible and set fundamental rules and toddler Christians need structure and focus and by the time you are a tween you need involvement in committees. I think I'm up to the point of rebellious teenager Christian because I don't like my church very much these days but just like when I was a real teenager I just don't have the energy or the belief that anyone else wants change enough to do anything, so I run away when I don't like what I see. And I think about how this is going to be my way of teaching my kids that worship happens anywhere that multiple people gather to share talent and fellowship.

And then I remember that kids need stability so we drag back to "old church" and my kids are pacified for another month or so.

This book is definitely for rebellious teenager Christian.

Just because you're paranoid...

October 22, 2007 09:31:37 pm

I'm watching TV and I see this commercial for a bladder enlarging medicine or something. There is this panicked woman who is afraid that all of her friends will know...know what?! What exactly is so awful about having a tiny bladder? To me this is another case of marketing basically being reduced to inducing paranoia and insecurity in people so that they will purchase their product and when drug companies do it I think it's criminal.

Maybe I'm in the minority within a minority, but I pee like every twenty minutes, every 10 when I'm pregnant and never once have I been all...oh no, some one might know! I normally announce on my third trip to the bathroom in an hour that I have a small bladder. Because you are only judged on your bladder when you do not control it.

This has been more a fear of mine throughout my life, but that I have also learned to control.

It's bad enough that Secret is poisoning our entire gender with excessive aluminum. But the impact of aluminum on Alzheimer's is debatable. I can't think of any earthly reason why someone would want to add a chemical into their body that would inhibit the proper functioning of their system. Unless of course media had led them to believe that it was an issue.

To me, this is up there with Ford's "get your swerve on" advertisement that went off after someone pointed out to them that they're making a drunk driving reference.

I hate advertising.

Adventures in Housekeeping Part XI

September 19, 2007 09:57:31 pm

A few days ago in a more productive moment I decided that I would clean the filter in my vacuum cleaner. I think it’s a hepa filter. The accordion one. In the Hoover Windtunnel.

In 2003, after three years of owning this vacuum in a house with three cats and one schizophrenic with an affinity to sanding walls I realized that there were several filters in it that needed to be changed/cleaned, with some level of frequency. I almost threw the vacuum away.

I cleaned it out and resolved to do this more than once a year.

Last week I realized that I hadn’t done it since we moved into our new house, maybe this could be apart of this cleaning binge.

I’m thinking that it was my lack of patience with waiting for the filters to dry before reinserting them into the vacuum that might have caused it to loose suction, but there was also this theory that I was working on that there might be a clog. Which could have been related to the wet filter, since wet dust makes a particularly offensive barrier.

Like any good Sociologist, I develop lots of cracked up illogical theories and test them, with reckless disregard for correlation possibilities. So I let the vacuum dry for a few days and try to forget about it. But I wasn’t giving up on it.

Last night when I was running on the steam of that cleaning bug I decided to pull out the vacuum and get to work. The debris on the floor was disappearing, but I couldn’t see anything in the bagless chamber. So I decided, not to change the belts, not to see if there was a caked up clog somewhere from the moisture, but to send a line in so we could see what was going on in the chamber.

Because string is known for going up a vacuum cleaner with very little resistance from say, the beater bar?

So I hop on over to my sewing cabinet in search of my ball of twine. As I may have mentioned I was losing steam, so when I did not immediately find my twine I decided that a spool of pink ribbon was just the same.

After locating the hole in the bottom of the machine I turned it on, and held the ribbon close to where I determined air should be sucking into the vacuum. After several seconds of ribbon bouncing around I decided I would try to encourage it to go closer to the hole, which would either suck the ribbon into the bagless chamber or confirm my suspicion that there was a clog.

And these were the only two possibilities that I saw.

Because a spindle full of pink ribbon blowing out every belt in the vacuum and burning up in less time than it takes for me to throw down the vacuum and turn it off just didn’t even cross my radar screen as a possibility.

I used a Bissel three-way over at one of my friend’s houses and had kicked around the idea of buying one so that Addy could vacuum with me…and to have a lightweight vacuum upstairs so that I would vacuum up there more than once a year.

Now I have one, because I need a working vacuum and lack the patience to cut up the ribbon, let alone change the belts and then determine what was the original problem.

Perhaps industry skips a generation...

September 16, 2007 08:29:44 pm

Last week my father and my uncle delivered my old piano and a dining room table to my house. Take it from me, nothing will ever make you feel like an ungrateful sloth like watching a man with a cane carry one end of a dining room table while you hold a door. There’s just nothing like it.

My father insisted that my uncle not help with the piano, but I was told to insist that my father not help with the piano either. And he didn’t listen.

Yesterday they brought everything that they didn’t fit into the truck, kind of as an excuse to drive up to visit again.

I asked my dad how he would go about moving a redbud tree that we have up against our deck and he said he would start by pruning it, which I asked if he would show me how to do. And as I walked to the garage said something about “let’s you go ahead and do that.” Which is normally what I think but don’t say out loud.

He had been explaining to me since the inspection on the home how to trim up the maple “bush” that was also up against the deck in back but I hadn’t yet done it.

So I watched him hack away at the red bud and turn it into a really attractive piece of landscaping and then he explained how to transplant it. I shuffled into the house to start dinner around the time that clean up started with the branches. Another classical move of mine.

I have to say I was Less than Surprised when I came outside twenty minutes later to announce an estimate time on dinner and I had a maple tree…an eighth of the size of the maple “bush” that I had previously used for shade. My dad was standing there with the saw and looked up and asked “was this okay?” And my first thought was “praise God I don’t have to rake leaves!!”

When I first looked at what was left I was kind of dumbfounded because it had been such a full, vibrant…thing…but once I remembered that maples are supposed to be trees, I realized that he had done an amazing job. I don’t know why I’m surprised; this is kind of his hobby.

Today the girls and I had a wonderful time filling yard bags with twigs and leaves and sticks. Watching my 18 month old run with a bundle of leafy twigs is amazing, especially when she’s running to throw them in a yard waste bag for me. I love having kids.

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