Cheesehead in Paradise

Travels

Thu, 28 Sep 06 08:14:00 UT

As you all know by now, I have traveled to City by the Sea for a little visit with Songbird and friends. Yesterday was a bit of a whirlwind experience,but the flight was uneventful, the bus trip from Logan was actually quite pleasant, and my time here has been delightful. So far I've seen:

* Princess--lovely girl
* Snowman--quiet, but polite
* Molly-- "Wroo, wroo!" and then she curled up on the couch
with me
* Sam--Barked, checked me out, figured out I was "a lady"
* Hippy Dippy High School--has a very long name
* TFOSongbird'sC--very polite, like his son.
* Small Church, with assorted wonderful members
* Health Food Store
* St Casserole Coffee Grinder
* Large Church--very large indeed
* Solid Gold Volvo

There is a rumor that Pure Luck will make a not-so-surprise appearance later this week. I'll keep you posted.

Legend

Tue, 26 Sep 06 22:26:00 UT

Tonight I sat next to somebody who is a legend. She spoke tonight at the Presbytery meeting. I went tonight for a couple of reasons: to be in the same room with her, and because I had to make a presentation before the same body.

When I spoke this evening, I thanked her for blazing a trail for me. Her last church to serve in active ministry, you see, is my first church to serve. Yes, she pastored St. Stoic for seventeen years.

Try following that act.

She doesn't make a big deal out of what she accomplished. She quietly and without a lot of fanfare (except that which was forced upon her) answered her call to serve God. She is a dignified supporter of the right for all persons to answer the call of God on their lives. She considers the over 4,000 women ordained since October 24, 1956 to be her spiritual daughters.

Cool moment of the night: when I came back to my seat after making my presentation, she high-fived me.

Awesome.

Tomorrow

Tue, 26 Sep 06 08:13:00 UT

Since I have been off these past several days, I have enjoyed the delicious sensation of putting aside my to-do list in favor of saying "Meh. I'll do it tomorrow." I have managed to get everything crossed off my household to-do list this way.

Every drawer that had bugged me since June is organized. My wardrobe is switched over, the discards taken away to Goodwill and the keepers packed away in the basement, in carefully labeled boxes. The linen closet in the hallway is a thing of beauty. The laundry is finally, blessedly, caught up! The dry cleaning has not only been dropped off, but also picked up, taken off those tacky wire hangers, and re-hung on better ones.

I got those things done at the front end of my vacation, because today I'm suspending my vacation for a day to do some important work for the Presbytery and spend some time with some colleagues whose company I enjoy. (Don't worry, I tacked an extra day onto the end of vacay!)

Ah...but tomorrow.

Tomorrow I leave for a few days in City by the Sea. With one of my favorite bloggers.

There's just one thing I forgot to complete. I didn't write my sermon yet for October 1. It's begun, but not finished. ~Oopsies.~ Saturday night is going to be very interesting!

Genetic disposition towards the geeky...

Fri, 22 Sep 06 22:32:00 UT

Wondergirl performed at halftime at the Pretentious High School homecoming game. She is a member of the school's first Flag Corp (we pronounce the "p" here at home, just because we're wierd that way).

Her brother refers to her as a Flag Dork. She takes it in stride. She's happy that flag dorks don't have to freeze their patooties off in short skirts the way cheerleaders and dance team do, nor do they have to wear the 100-year-old band uniforms. They get to wear black dance pants and these cute black and red wrap-style tops with just a little silver sparkly bling stuff on them. Very stylish. And provided by the school! Yay!

Back when I first began this blog, in one of my early entries, I wrote this,

"We are Drama club people, Chess Club people, Mathletes, National Honor Society people, Band geeks, Swing Choir dorks, takers of extra credit assignments, and Rube Goldberg contestants.

My daughter, however, is some of those things, but other things, too. She was on the volleyball team in 6th grade. She never scored one point the whole season--but she stuck it out. She had fun. She tries out for track every year, then remembers that she hates to run and drops out before the first mile is required-- but up until then, every year she has convinced herself that maybe this year she'll like it! So she tries new things. She was told at the first "Pom Clinic" that most newcomers drop out before the second day--but not Wonder Girl. She's fearless that way and absolutely unafraid of challenging generations of genetic disposition towards the geeky. She is my hero."

She still is.

After we watched her perform tonight, I told her, "You corped better than anybody ever corped in the history of corping."

She laughed, but I think she got it. She takes my breath away.

Dog update

Wed, 20 Sep 06 08:44:00 UT

He's fine.

He had some stomach thing, the etiology of which is still undetermined (I love it when I get to drag out my old clinical lingo! Let's face it, it's hard to drop "squamous" into a conversation gracefully.)

I have been faithfully preparing for him his new favorite thing in the world: the doggie bland diet, which is a mixture of boiled ground beef and rice. No vomit since he's been eating that.

In other news...

New water heater is being installed as I type this--a better, bigger, faster one. I am calling it the "Bionic Water Heater". Now I can enjoy my Jacuzzi twice a week if I want instead of once. Good times...

Oh, did I forget to mention...I AM ON VACATION FOR THE REST OF THE MONTH! One week from today I will be in City by the Sea visiting one of my favorite bloggers.

Life is good.

How my Monday is stacking up...

Mon, 18 Sep 06 05:29:00 UT

* No hot water, due to water heater leaking like a mother-fireplacer. (That's the new f-word, y'know.)

* Sick dog.

* Four hour drive to Corn Kingdom

* Memorial for Sturdy Grandmother, in-laws included.

* Four hour drive home.

* Pray dog is still alive when we get here.

* Did I mention a crew of in-laws who hate me?

For Tuesday, first day of my vacation:

Go to church, work my fireplacing arse off, catching up.

Yet Another Reason to love The Clooney

Fri, 15 Sep 06 08:17:00 UT

In Friday Five I outed myself and my schoolgirl crush on George Clooney. Read this and you'll probably agree, even if you don't agree he's dreamy.

Random Bullets of Catching Up

Fri, 15 Sep 06 07:56:00 UT

I'm glad the Friday Five was good. it got me back in the blogging saddle. This is why this has been a quiet place lately:

* Meetings and more meetings. And I had to moderate every. single. one.

* At one of those meetings, I have a colleague who is, as my grandmother would say, a pistol. He just loves to throw little grenades of hostility to see if anyone will walk over, pick it up, and get their hands blown off. I no longer will play with him, so his tactics have become more elaborate. I try to give him positive attention instead, like one would with a puppy or a toddler. It's not working yet. And it is exhausting.

* The end-stage of Sturdy Grandmother's life. My in-laws, having discovered e-mail, do not really communicate with us by phone any more. I know when the end comes, they will e-mail the news to us instead. Yeah, I know. I'm checking it every half-hour when I'm not in meetings.

* I'm back in the fitness saddle again. The treasurer of St. Stoic competed in his first Ironman competition this past Sunday, and finished! (That's two miles of swimming, 110 miles of cycling, and then a fuill marathon to top off your day.) He took his first step of training one year ago this month. I'm really inspired by his story. At least enough to get my butt up off the couch and get back to the gym, that is. No Ironperson competition in my future!

Friday Five: Brushes with Greatness

Fri, 15 Sep 06 07:27:00 UT

reverendmother writes:

David Letterman used to have a feature on his show called "Brushes with Greatness." Members of the audience would share stories of encounters with famous people. And so...

1. Tell us about a time you met someone famous.
When I was eighteen I was chosen by the chamber of commerce of my little home town for a trip to Dallas, Texas to meet with other student "achievers" from all over the country for a conference. The boy who was chosen was the "Student Athlete of the Year" for our county and I was the "Student Scholar of the Year" for the same county. (Remember, county: pop. 20,000 or so. Boony-ville.)

The night of the big banquet, I was sitting there in my prom dress, as were all the girls, an empty seat next to me. (Even back then, I sat front row center if there was going to be a speech involved.) About halfway into the evening, a short, balding man came and sat next to me. I was turned to see the speaker, so I couldn't see this man's face. The keynoter for the eveng was introduced and the man stood up and walked to the podium. It was Ed Asner. I had been sitting for twenty minutes next to "Lou Grant", completely unaware.

Oh, and Anne Lamott was my neighbor in California, but I'll save that story for another time...

2. Tell us about a celebrity you'd like to meet.
Does a hopeless schoolgirl crush on George Clooney count? No? I got nothin'.

3. Tell us about someone great who's *not* famous that you think everyone oughta have a chance to meet.
I have a new clergy friend who I think would fit in just wonderfully with the RGBP. Unfortunately, blogging does not fit into her life right now. You'd all think she was wonderful!

4. Do you have any autographs of famous people?
No, but my kids have Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis. My son sort of snuck onto a movie set in the small California town where Semi-Famous Theological School is located, while they were filming the movie "Bandits". He even has video of them. Why nobody tried to stop a fourteen-year-old with a video camera, I don't know. (I live through my kids, obviously.)

5. If you were to become famous, what would you want to become famous for?
Mom of Chief Supreme Court Justice Wondergirl A. Cheesehead.

Bonus: Whose 15 minutes of fame was up long, long ago? Paris/Nicole/Lindsay What's-her-bucket.

Oy!

Tue, 12 Sep 06 23:25:00 UT

Tonight my son, Mr. He-Who-Thinks-He-Can-Live-On-His-Own came to visit us for about five minutes. Yes, he drove his roommate's car 20 miles each way to visit us for five minutes.

To pick up a length of coaxial cable. And his mail.

These are the words I actually spoke to him upon seeing him for the first time in nine days:

"You're so thin and pale! Are you eating?"

Shoulda, coulda, woulda been a great Jewish mother.

Where I was

Mon, 11 Sep 06 20:59:00 UT

My son must have awakened early that day. He knocked on the door and asked me, "Mom, did somebody attack the World Trade Center?" Rousing from half-sleep, I said, "That was years ago." After a few seconds of silence he quitely said, "Mom, turn on the tv."

I reached over into the other half of the bed, discovering that my husband had gone into the shower already. With the school year just begun, the drive to Sausalito was back to its ridiculous 75 minutes each morning, and he needed to get a much earlier start to his long day.

I reached over to the dresser near his side of the bed, found the remote, and turned on the little tv perched on the dresser at the foot of the bed. One of the towers was on fire. As I watched in horror, that image we all saw hundreds of times over the next weeks and months came onto the screen: bright silver metal against blue sky, then red flames and black smoke. The newscasters were visibly shaken. I was riveted and terrified at the same time.

I wasn't sure what to do. I called out my husband's name, but he couldn't hear me. I went into the bathroom, pulled open the shower curtain and just blurted it out. "The country is under attack. Somebody is attacking us."

I'm pretty sure he thought I'd had a bad dream, because he said "Let me get out of here and dry off and you can tell me about it."

"I don't know what to do." I answered. "Should I send the kids to school?" Then I pulled the shower curtain closed again and went to wake up my daughter--after turning off all the televisions. She was ten years old.

A few weeks later, during reading week, I went into the city for a day of trying to distract myself. Bags carried by ferry passangers were now inspected. While walking down Market Street on a gorgeous autumn day, I heard an airplane above me, and looked up to carefully watch its path, just in case they had Done It Again.

Tanks and Marines carrying M16s became part of the familiar landscape at each end of the Very Famous Orange Bridge. I remember wondering what good an M16 would be against a bomb or an airplane. I was glad that we didn't have to cross that bridge very often.

I didn't know anyone killed by the attacks. My closest story is that one of my seminary colleagues was on a plane home from Florida to San Francisco when the attacks happened. They made an emergency landing in Atlanta, where she and a plane full of strangers shared hotel rooms and borrowed contact solution and toothpaste from each other until the skies opened back up again.

I didn't even know anyone...and still this event triggered more panic attacks in me than any other event, until I was told the terrible news of the murder of my friend one month ago today.

Friday Five: Simple Pleasures

Fri, 8 Sep 06 15:49:00 UT

This Friday Five is Fairly Simple. Name five things you have enjoyed this week:

1. Preaching last Sunday

2. Having Monday off

3. Project Runway

4. Sleeping

5. Getting my tire fixed (More accurately, driving on a tire that I'm not afraid will blow at any second!)

Long Distance

Fri, 8 Sep 06 14:05:00 UT

Despite the awkward technical difficulties
fifteen minutes in,I felt as if an
impossibly long cord
connected us.

There is a shorthand of
grief, loss, regret--
languages I wish I didn't speak
and wish you didn't, either.

I wish we were both so unfamiliar
with these that we had to speak slowly,
in elaborate explanations,
agonizing over nuances.

Instead, since we are
inexplicably bound,
I hope my gratitude
is crystal clear.

for a new/old friend

Old Tapes

Thu, 7 Sep 06 22:45:00 UT

In my work with my therapist, we have been talking about the tapes that play in my head. You know the ones. Those messages we send ourselves without even thinking about it, that running dialogue (or sometimes a monologue) that we keep thinking speaks truth just because it is so darn loud, or persistant, or sometimes both.

I told Doc yesterday that I wanted to make some of the tapes stop, so that I can do a kind of mental "reset". (I suppose if I owned an iPod I would've used the term "shuffle".) I expected him to tell me how to do that, or at least ask me why I wanted to. (He's great with the questions, y'know.) Instead he asked me if I could try, just for now, to hear the voices of pain, frustration, disappointment, anxiety, and inadequacy--just stop and listen to the inner messages without adopting them as gospel. He asked me to try to keep the ones that were true, and to acknowledge the others but move on beyond them.

I told him that I was afraid--that I had relied on the tapes for so long as my soundtrack of sorts, that I wasn't sure what would happen if I heard them but didn't believe them. Would I stop trusting the parts of me that really are true?

He told me, "You'll learn to know what is true, what is right. You'll be able to tell the difference between habitual negativity and thoughtful sensitivity. Trust yourself for that."

At my clergy group tonight, I got some feedback from the colleagues who had come to the funeral I did last month, for the woman from my congregation whom we tragically lost. (They didn't come to evaluate me, but to be there in solidarity with me. The crowd was so large that I didn't even see two of them.)

As they began telling me about what it was like, how my words effected them, the expressions of tenderness in the face of tragedy they witnessed between me and this crowd of 400 people, I felt and heard them--those old tapes. I recognized some of them right away, like a musical score I can hum mindlessly while driving just from sheer muscle memory.

But I forced myself to listen. And to hear the pain and fear in those messages. And then I reminded myself that most of those just aren't true, not anymore. I have a choice of what to believe, and I can recognize the truth when I hear it.

Someday me and my heart are going to make beautiful music together.

The web

Thu, 7 Sep 06 14:54:00 UT

I looked out my dining room window this morning to see if Wondergirl had gotten on her bus. She doesn't know it, but I've been doing this for many years, ever since she began school.

In the place where we lived when she was in Kindergarten, she got on the bus at the same stop as her brother, just at the top of the cul-de-sac where we lived. There was a bully there who liked to pick on her brother. No amount of discussion with the mother of said bully ("He should just learn to take it and not be such a sissy or to fight back" Yes, against a kid three years older and fifty pounds heavier! Right.) brought about any change. When I complained to the principal of the school, it was suggested that I drive my kids every day, if I didn't want my son to get beaten up. I did for awhile, out of desperation.

From then on the habit was ingrained. I surrepticiously keep watch, glancing now and again until she is safely on the bus.

This morning as I looked out, the most incredible sight caught my eye. We have a streetlamp-type light in our front yard. All the houses have them; my spouse is even on the "light committee" that sends out notices to homeowners whose lights are burnt out. (Hey, its a way to get involved that does't require meetings.) about two feet to the left of the lamp post was this enormous spider. When I looked closer I noticed that the spider was suspended in the middle of this beautiful, picture-perfect web, and that a string of web extended all the way to the tree that is about seven feet away.

I went upstairs and got my spouse to come down and look at it, because the dining room window gave the best angle, with the dew shimmering off the web. Otherwise you could not tell that the spider had somehow woven this wonderful thing between two structures.

I feel sometimes as though my connection to my children is as fragile as that web I saw this morning. It shimmers with dew drops on it, but moves with the slightlest breeze, and nobody really understands the lengths to which I have had to labor to build the conenctions and keep them in place.

When I came home to do some work here this afternoon, the web, and the spider are gone. I hope both were successful at what needed to be done. I hope my connection to my son holds, and has done what it needed to do even though it cannot be seen in the same light anymore.

I think I'll keep watching out the dining room window each morning. For a little while longer.