Really, people, I know I haven't written in a long time, but no fewer than three of you have given me grief within the past two weeks about my leave of absence from the blogosphere. So, with nothing more to say, I sit here before the keyboard with a dozen or so writing assignments remaining to do for my grad course before Thursday, and for you, dear ones, I will find some little tidbit to keep me legit enough for you to pop by for the occasional reading visit. Okay?
Better still, I'll throw some possible topics out there and let you readers choose which you'd like me to pursue first. Oh, but wait, that requires that you actually comment, which might put a little pressure on those of you who prefer to be voyeurs. Regardless, you can have fun with the stories you imagine based on my list. How's that?
1. Estate Closing and other fun facts of life and death
2. Kori's Elf and the whole Christmas Thang
3. Gettin my baby fix
4. The pros and cons of having faily living nearby
5. The pros and cons of having family live far away
6. Belief systems, religion, and my acknowledgment of my struggles and delights within them
7. Cleaning house, literally and figuratively
8. On writing, and not-so-much
9. Procrastination tips for the organizationally constricted
10. It just seems like there ought to be ten
How's that for an invitation to return? Let me know which number(s) you'd like for me to explore so you can get deeper in my warped head.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Mercy
I just awoke from a decent night's sleep, considering that today is the first day of school and I have the first day jitters, which I am sooooooo glad to still get after all these many years! Anyway, what awoke me was my dream...
I have always had the most obnoxiously vivid and real dreams: recurring ones, nightmares, freaky morphing from one thing to the next kinds of dreams that I am sure the psychologists would enjoy hyperanalyzing. This is not always a good thing. I honestly can't tell sometimes if something that happened in my dreams happened or not, as they start to grow their own little synapses and mess with my memory... This is not a good sign of things to come, I imagine! And it might be because I watch entirely too much TV, but frequently, one night's dream picks right up where I had left off in the morning, like the next episode in the series. Annoying, almost.
Anyway, after a series of unfortunate events in my dream last night, I awoke this morning because of the way my dream ended...
Imiagine me standing in the middle of the road surrounded by people going about their daily lives. I am standing with my arms in the air and my face to the sky, just like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption, who had just crawled through the river of poo to escape prison and was feeling the rains pour down over him. And I am singing - well, more like bellowing - a song that I think I must have picked up from my momma's gospel eight-tracks back in the day...
God have mercy, mercy on me.
God have mercy, mercy on me.
God have mercy, mercy on me.
The Lord have mercy on me.
Now when I say bellowing, I mean that exhausted crying kind of singing you might hear someone doing and wonder if they are actually an injured cat. This was all accompanied, of course, by me doing some ugly crying (see previous post) so the words had to have been almost unintelligible to my ephemeral companions. If you run into me, ask me to demonstrate. I promise, it wasn't pretty.
So, you know me, I am trying to make sense of this, as it was enough to send me to the computer on this, the first day of school, rather than sneaking in another half hour of rest or a cup of decent joe.
I need me some mercy and I need to give it out, too.
There's some old school prayer that repeats the line "God have mercy on me, a sinner." Mercy is more than forgiveness, it's more than graciousness. There's a sense of compassion, of justice, of wholeness-of-the-Body involved. Now, I am not all into "sin" as a concept that I find troubling. (Another post altogether, I suppose) but I do know that most of us do wrong to each other without truly meaning to cause harm. Okay, I know I do... I won't speak for the rest of you. But I think I need to remember this MERCY thing more often, particularly as the new school year begins.
God have mercy on me as I do my best, which is often not good enough, with my children, my student-children, their parents, my colleagues, my siblings, my proverbial neighbors.
God have mercy on me as I hurt the people I love, the people I don't-really-LIKE, and the people I don't even know.
God have mercy on me as I grow out of my less-wonderful self into the self I hope to be.
God have mercy on me as I learn to show mercy on all the aforementioned parties.
Ahh. Now I feel better equipped to start the year!
I have always had the most obnoxiously vivid and real dreams: recurring ones, nightmares, freaky morphing from one thing to the next kinds of dreams that I am sure the psychologists would enjoy hyperanalyzing. This is not always a good thing. I honestly can't tell sometimes if something that happened in my dreams happened or not, as they start to grow their own little synapses and mess with my memory... This is not a good sign of things to come, I imagine! And it might be because I watch entirely too much TV, but frequently, one night's dream picks right up where I had left off in the morning, like the next episode in the series. Annoying, almost.
Anyway, after a series of unfortunate events in my dream last night, I awoke this morning because of the way my dream ended...
Imiagine me standing in the middle of the road surrounded by people going about their daily lives. I am standing with my arms in the air and my face to the sky, just like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption, who had just crawled through the river of poo to escape prison and was feeling the rains pour down over him. And I am singing - well, more like bellowing - a song that I think I must have picked up from my momma's gospel eight-tracks back in the day...
God have mercy, mercy on me.
God have mercy, mercy on me.
God have mercy, mercy on me.
The Lord have mercy on me.
Now when I say bellowing, I mean that exhausted crying kind of singing you might hear someone doing and wonder if they are actually an injured cat. This was all accompanied, of course, by me doing some ugly crying (see previous post) so the words had to have been almost unintelligible to my ephemeral companions. If you run into me, ask me to demonstrate. I promise, it wasn't pretty.
So, you know me, I am trying to make sense of this, as it was enough to send me to the computer on this, the first day of school, rather than sneaking in another half hour of rest or a cup of decent joe.
I need me some mercy and I need to give it out, too.
There's some old school prayer that repeats the line "God have mercy on me, a sinner." Mercy is more than forgiveness, it's more than graciousness. There's a sense of compassion, of justice, of wholeness-of-the-Body involved. Now, I am not all into "sin" as a concept that I find troubling. (Another post altogether, I suppose) but I do know that most of us do wrong to each other without truly meaning to cause harm. Okay, I know I do... I won't speak for the rest of you. But I think I need to remember this MERCY thing more often, particularly as the new school year begins.
God have mercy on me as I do my best, which is often not good enough, with my children, my student-children, their parents, my colleagues, my siblings, my proverbial neighbors.
God have mercy on me as I hurt the people I love, the people I don't-really-LIKE, and the people I don't even know.
God have mercy on me as I grow out of my less-wonderful self into the self I hope to be.
God have mercy on me as I learn to show mercy on all the aforementioned parties.
Ahh. Now I feel better equipped to start the year!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Cancer conundrum
I do not want skin cancer. I'm not sure I can think of anyone who actually would want ANY cancer, for that matter, but I am particularly not interested in having skin cancer. It's sneaky. It leaves scars when they cut it out. Favorite TV personalities get killed off their shows with metastatic versions of it. Ick.
But I don't want to be soooooo pasty white that I LOOK like I have cancer. Honestly, I feel like I look ill if the middle of summer arrives and my skin is so pale and semi-transparent that you can see the roots of my leg hairs on my most clean-shaven days.
I figure I have melanin for a reason; why not put it to good use? Yeah, yeah, the doctors all say that no tan is a healthy tan, but I think they're just jealous because they are locked up in the hospital all day and can't sit on the boats we help them buy.
I also do NOT want a sunburn. So I slap on the SPF 70 and hope enough of it wears off to let just a teensy few of the sun's harmful rays stimulate my freckle-production that is the closest I'll ever come to being tan. Sunburn hurts. Tan does not.
This seems awfully petty, now that I read over it. Maybe more than a little vain. I should protect my skin. But hey, I should also lay off the Firefly, ice cream, cheese, and other yummies while taking up a regular and reasonably intense exercise routine.
So, I'm going to keep working on trying to find the balance which gives me an identifiable shade of brown without turning me into a lobster or setting me up for chemo later on. Wish me luck.
But I don't want to be soooooo pasty white that I LOOK like I have cancer. Honestly, I feel like I look ill if the middle of summer arrives and my skin is so pale and semi-transparent that you can see the roots of my leg hairs on my most clean-shaven days.
I figure I have melanin for a reason; why not put it to good use? Yeah, yeah, the doctors all say that no tan is a healthy tan, but I think they're just jealous because they are locked up in the hospital all day and can't sit on the boats we help them buy.
I also do NOT want a sunburn. So I slap on the SPF 70 and hope enough of it wears off to let just a teensy few of the sun's harmful rays stimulate my freckle-production that is the closest I'll ever come to being tan. Sunburn hurts. Tan does not.
This seems awfully petty, now that I read over it. Maybe more than a little vain. I should protect my skin. But hey, I should also lay off the Firefly, ice cream, cheese, and other yummies while taking up a regular and reasonably intense exercise routine.
So, I'm going to keep working on trying to find the balance which gives me an identifiable shade of brown without turning me into a lobster or setting me up for chemo later on. Wish me luck.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Ugly Crying
I've always been a weepy sensitive chick, which I am sure some of you will find not at all surprising and others will find beyond shocking, but I am easily moved by both the awesome beauty and heartwrenching ugliness of this world of ours. I can remember being a young teenager and crying as one of the little girls in our church played her violin. No trip to volunteer at the Special Olympics was complete without a good boohoo. Little House on the Prairie episodes, Kodak commercials, whatever. I'm a weeper. Heck, one of the ever-so-many reasons I avoid church of late is that I can't make it through a service without a good weep caused by my haint of a momma. (Yes, "haint." That old woman haunts me.)
So imagine the Hays Party of 4 watching "Marley and Me" this weekend. I have avoided this movie with all of my being because I had heard about its tearjerking ending and just didn't feel like playing. I for SURE wasn't about to go see it at the movie theater where I might not be able to make it out of the theater unassisted.
Now y'all know I love my Casey. And I still ache, years after their deaths, for my firstborn, Esther, and my bulldog, Abby. So I knew pretty quickly into the film that this was going to get ugly. I was doing fine, enjoying the humor and all that stuff, until a scene early in the film where Jennifer Anniston was comforted by her pooch. All too real. I was transported to a rotten spring day in 1996 when my dear muttbaby was exactly who I needed to overcome a little woe-is-me grief. I started crying and laughed at my fool self and said to my Jimmy, "Oh, this is going to get ugly."
All through the movie, Austin, who had already seen it, kept checking on me to see whether I was moved by the same parts that bothered him. At some point, Kori and Austin were both snuggled face first into Caseydog on the couch. I found myself reaching for her every now and then. WE all progressed from touched to weeping to sobbing uncontrollably. By the end, Kori, also a weeper, was an ugly mess, just like her momma. We're talking snot-bubble producing, upper-body trembling, can't even talk, laughing oddly at yourself kind of ugly cry.
And boy, did it feel good. I don't think I've had that kind of totally cathartic, completely cleansing, make your gut hurt kind of cry in a long while. Not even with the events of the past few years. I needed it, I think. Puts everything in perspective. Reminds you how good life is. Makes you see the people you love and remember to hold them gently and enjoy them fully.
Great movie. Cry and all. If you've never known the genuine love of a good dog, you won't get it, I don't think. But if you have, you'll give thanks for their companionship, their unfailing love, their model for humanity. Go rent it. Grab a hankie. Watch it with someone you love, the furrier the better.
So imagine the Hays Party of 4 watching "Marley and Me" this weekend. I have avoided this movie with all of my being because I had heard about its tearjerking ending and just didn't feel like playing. I for SURE wasn't about to go see it at the movie theater where I might not be able to make it out of the theater unassisted.
Now y'all know I love my Casey. And I still ache, years after their deaths, for my firstborn, Esther, and my bulldog, Abby. So I knew pretty quickly into the film that this was going to get ugly. I was doing fine, enjoying the humor and all that stuff, until a scene early in the film where Jennifer Anniston was comforted by her pooch. All too real. I was transported to a rotten spring day in 1996 when my dear muttbaby was exactly who I needed to overcome a little woe-is-me grief. I started crying and laughed at my fool self and said to my Jimmy, "Oh, this is going to get ugly."
All through the movie, Austin, who had already seen it, kept checking on me to see whether I was moved by the same parts that bothered him. At some point, Kori and Austin were both snuggled face first into Caseydog on the couch. I found myself reaching for her every now and then. WE all progressed from touched to weeping to sobbing uncontrollably. By the end, Kori, also a weeper, was an ugly mess, just like her momma. We're talking snot-bubble producing, upper-body trembling, can't even talk, laughing oddly at yourself kind of ugly cry.
And boy, did it feel good. I don't think I've had that kind of totally cathartic, completely cleansing, make your gut hurt kind of cry in a long while. Not even with the events of the past few years. I needed it, I think. Puts everything in perspective. Reminds you how good life is. Makes you see the people you love and remember to hold them gently and enjoy them fully.
Great movie. Cry and all. If you've never known the genuine love of a good dog, you won't get it, I don't think. But if you have, you'll give thanks for their companionship, their unfailing love, their model for humanity. Go rent it. Grab a hankie. Watch it with someone you love, the furrier the better.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Playing with the background
Man, I want to learn to edit html so I can create my very own blog template. Meanwhile, I'm toying with some ready-made ones. Of course, my widgets are all gone, so I'll be forced (ouch!) to tinker with those another day.
And truly, I should be reading right now.
Anyway, enjoy all the ridiculous changes I throw out here over the next little while.
And truly, I should be reading right now.
Anyway, enjoy all the ridiculous changes I throw out here over the next little while.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Killing trees
New printer cartridge - $20
Pack of Office grade printer paper - $5
Saving trees by printing double sided - priceless.
Here's the problem with Blackboard, the online resource for college classes these days: Instead of students buying a good old Kinko's/Copytron coursepack like we did back in the day, some poor graduate assistant sap has to scan and upload a gazillion documents for students to access. Sounds pretty earth-friendly, eco-happy, tree-loving, yes?
Turns out you have to print most of this junk anyway to be able to use it in the class, mark it up with margin notes and highlighters (yes, I am so old school like that), or access it later in life with ease.
During the school year, I usually laser-print it all double-sided at school (don't tell the district, eh?) but with summer here, I figured I'd be responsible and do it at home.
Mind you, I've now invested $30 for this session's printing extravaganza, plus the $3 for a binder to put all this in. My trusty HP deskjet only has a manual double-sided feature (alas). So, here I sit, clicking and printing and turning pages and clicking and printing and so on until I grow too weary of this tedium or finish, whichever comes first. but I'm saving trees. Sort of. Right?
Pack of Office grade printer paper - $5
Saving trees by printing double sided - priceless.
Here's the problem with Blackboard, the online resource for college classes these days: Instead of students buying a good old Kinko's/Copytron coursepack like we did back in the day, some poor graduate assistant sap has to scan and upload a gazillion documents for students to access. Sounds pretty earth-friendly, eco-happy, tree-loving, yes?
Turns out you have to print most of this junk anyway to be able to use it in the class, mark it up with margin notes and highlighters (yes, I am so old school like that), or access it later in life with ease.
During the school year, I usually laser-print it all double-sided at school (don't tell the district, eh?) but with summer here, I figured I'd be responsible and do it at home.
Mind you, I've now invested $30 for this session's printing extravaganza, plus the $3 for a binder to put all this in. My trusty HP deskjet only has a manual double-sided feature (alas). So, here I sit, clicking and printing and turning pages and clicking and printing and so on until I grow too weary of this tedium or finish, whichever comes first. but I'm saving trees. Sort of. Right?
Sunday, May 17, 2009
No TV
About an hour and a half ago, our entirely-too-large flat screen TV went black. Husband has been messing with it since then, and has determined that we have a power issue with it. It will reset and work for a few seconds, then go black again. DVR is fine...it's the TV.
Dangit! I missed the Housewives and will have to watch them online tomorrow, I reckon, if the TV hasn't been been off long enough by then to be all better.
And it sure seems quiet in here.
Because TV is a family value around here, paying the bills and all, we tend to think nothing of having it on all the time. Heck, in Arkansas, we had more TV's than we had people in our house. We only have three now - one in the living room, one in the playroom, and one in our bedroom (yeah, whatever, all you perfect people out there). We LIKE our shows - is that so wrong?
What is wrong, I guess, is that it is on all the time (hence the power issue?) whether we are really watching something in particular or not. I'm already anticipating summer and all the Nicke-fricke-lodeon to which my poor brain will be exposed, not to mention those of my little people. Maybe this will be a good opportunity for us to examine those values and consider NOT repairing or replacing the TV immediately.
Or maybe we'll all just spend more time in our rooms.
Either way, the dryer is beeping (still not used to that, but that's another post altogether) and I should go hang some clothes on my way to bed.
Then I think I might just have to see what's on before I go to sleep, eh?
Dangit! I missed the Housewives and will have to watch them online tomorrow, I reckon, if the TV hasn't been been off long enough by then to be all better.
And it sure seems quiet in here.
Because TV is a family value around here, paying the bills and all, we tend to think nothing of having it on all the time. Heck, in Arkansas, we had more TV's than we had people in our house. We only have three now - one in the living room, one in the playroom, and one in our bedroom (yeah, whatever, all you perfect people out there). We LIKE our shows - is that so wrong?
What is wrong, I guess, is that it is on all the time (hence the power issue?) whether we are really watching something in particular or not. I'm already anticipating summer and all the Nicke-fricke-lodeon to which my poor brain will be exposed, not to mention those of my little people. Maybe this will be a good opportunity for us to examine those values and consider NOT repairing or replacing the TV immediately.
Or maybe we'll all just spend more time in our rooms.
Either way, the dryer is beeping (still not used to that, but that's another post altogether) and I should go hang some clothes on my way to bed.
Then I think I might just have to see what's on before I go to sleep, eh?
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