Stuff Christians Like: are you ready for this?

Oh, dear. This is kind of a hoot. It's an obvious rip-off of Stuff White People Like, but it's a really well-done rip-off. Too many things are spot on for me to ignore.

Page through it in a bookstore or take a look at the blog to see if it would be good coffee table/bathroom reading for you or someone you love. It helps to have grown up in a Protestant church, but people I showed it to who don't really have a church background found it pretty snort-inducing, too.

I really liked the one about the church band not practicing and then blaming their poor performance on Satan attacking them.  And the author's view of what Satan really thinks of it.  Classic.

Not again: pain keeping me awake

The pain woke me up a few nights ago. It sort of slugged me and sneered, "That's all the sleep YOU'RE getting today." It's been bad lately.

As often happens when it gets bad (less sleep, more pain all day), I overcompensate a bit. I seem buoyant, but it's more like a sort of manic cheerfulness or maybe it's a form of reactionary dark humor with a bad accent from a gangster movie. "You think you're gonna get the best of me, do yas? Huh, punk?!" I have less self-control and self-censorship, so I say things I normally wouldn't, and I sometimes appall myself with what comes out.

I kind of wish I could hibernate during bad weeks, but this is a busy bad week, so I can't really just fold now. Or any time in the immediate future. Saved from meltdown by overscheduling? Going to hear a free concert from a Renaissance group I love, writing, working on a book manuscript: beauty and passion can keep you going sometimes. We'll see if they can distract me enough to keep me functioning.

Fingernails (not on a chalkboard)

I was getting a bit more ticked off than was strictly necessary about not hearing back about yet another job application, and I laughed when I realized my ire was fingernail-related, which is somewhat unexpected and out of character for me. I am not a girly-girl.

Usually, I keep my nails cut very short. That way, there's less chance of snagging and chipping and breaking in the wild world of retail. Also, I can't really file them or make them look pretty because of my wrist problems. (I feel that I should add that even if I didn't have wrist problems, I think I still wouldn't do anything with them.)

When I have interviews or concerts, I let my nails grow out to a more professional-looking length. The interviews were supposed to be scheduled two weeks ago. This means my nails were ridiculously long (for me). This was irksome.

I have decided that I am unlikely to get this job. I am too much of a coward to email the person in charge to find out. I cut my nails. I am strangely happier. Maybe this means I'll get a call about an interview tomorrow. :) I'll keep my fingers with their short fingernails crossed.

Going gray gracefully

Do you ever wonder if the amount of gray/white/silver hair you have is normal? I sure do. Mostly I wonder because everyone my age who has any seems to dye their hair. Even my older sister dyes hers (unconfirmed accusation). I have no idea when she started.

My hair started going back in college, but my mom said it was a genetic gift from her mom. I think she said her mom's hair was all white by the time she turned 30. I was kind of looking forward to that because my excessively oily skin makes my face look younger, and white hair with that face would have been startling. It didn't happen, and I'm okay with that.

I can only think of one person I know who let her hair go gray without hiding it. How sad is that? Dye is so expensive I could never afford it, but even if I could, I'm too cheap to spend money on it. (And then agonize about when my face looks old enough that I need to get my hair dyed gray or risk looking really creepy . . .)

Why do you suppose people get so panicky about gray hair? Are you panicky about it?

How do you feel about going gray naturally? Are you planning on doing it?

P.S. Tonight's moon is a lovely silver Cheshire cat smirk.

Why I'm glad I don't drive a tall car

When my parents visited me last spring, they saw deer every day they came to visit me. I am glad my car is tiny and low to the ground because I think the deer wouldn't seem nearly as magical if I saw them every day.

Things not to tell your mom, part 3

A predatory sex offender has moved into my building (or the one next door). Oh, joy. But don't worry, it appears that he prefers to prey on junior high school boys, so I'm safe; though I'm worried about the junior high half a mile up the road.

Keep me (and the kids) in your prayers . . .

Why I love my father

He calls me to say
he's in the car
driving and listening
to a CD, and it reminded him

of the time years ago
when I moved away
to graduate school.
He tells me the album.

"Wow, what an album! We
listened to it when
we were driving through
Wisconsin. Anyway,

it made me think of you,
so I called to say hi
and I love you."

Why I shouldn't read business books

I was skimming through some business books about how to improve employee morale, and it was kind of depressing. There were so many easy-to-implement, common-sense ways to improve morale. The most important thing, they all said, is clear communication.

Clear communication is what I've been fighting for in our store for the last several years, and it's the last thing my boss wants to do. Momentarily, I wondered if this is because she's self-conscious about her poor grammar (and the fact that she knows we notice it). That can't be why, though, because she writes and distributes long, confusing, unhelpful memos frequently.

Man, I sound a tad bitter, don't I?

The main problem with our situation is that all the books I've looked at are about what management can do to improve morale, not what employees can do to improve morale when the boss is against it (by her actions).

Does anyone know of any resources for that type of situation (other than the zen-y ones that tell you to put a positive spin on the bad situations you can't control and can't stand)?

Am I passive-aggressive?

I have been accused of being passive-aggressive for writing letters to my bosses when there are specific issues I feel need to be addressed (and no one else will talk to management about them because they're smart enough to know management doesn't care).  I'm a little confused by the way this term is used.

From what I understand, a passive-aggressive response to, say, her terrible, are-you-seriously-a-college-graduate constant grammar/spelling/syntax errors would be to put a stack of hilarious and difficult to understand memos and emails on her chair with grammar and style comments marked in red and place a copy of "I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar" on top of the pile.

I consider writing an essay with bullet points and formatting designed to clearly communicate problems and proposed solutions to be a form of properly documented alternative conflict resolution.  (Except that it never works because getting any kind of response in writing is impossible, thus making the whole exercise pointless.)

Am I really being passive aggressive?  Is the only correct way to air grievances (especially to an illogical, combative, defensive, incompetent boss) to have a conversation that escalates into a shouting match that could get me fired?  If it is, I'd rather be passive aggressive and have all those letters formally on file for my defense should the time come.

In your opinion, where is the line for passive-aggressive behavior?

The best exit

If
I had not misjudged
the location
of the flashing lights,
if
I had not chosen
this wrong exit
for my impromptu detour,
I
would not have seen
this moon
monstrously misshapen
grotesque eerie orange
a celestial cheddar souffle
just above the horizon
failing to rise
perfectly.

If I had not chosen
this wrong exit,
I would not have seen
this moon.

Winter Prayer of Contentment

God may not have given me
the job I need to pay off
my bills or good health

or freedom from pain or
any of the important
things I want (but

have never been promised
by God in the first place), but
He did give me

a perfect twilight
four deer in the yard
across the street

no traffic
so I could sit
in the middle

of the road and stare
at the deer
staring at me,

and He never promised
me that, either, but
sometimes, like today,

it's more than enough.

Revenge of the virus

I was trying to drown and bore to death whatever virus I picked up, and my plan is not working.  In fact, I think the virus is out for revenge.  I have been coughing so hard and so long for the past ten days that I somehow managed to pull the muscles on the left side of my neck.  Is that even possible?!

Yes, apparently, it is.  Grar.  I'm taking this virus to the doctor next week if it doesn't clear up.  It's already cost me a solo (the last one I might get to do in the little cathedral we sing at every semester), and I don't even know if I'll be able to do the concert, since the beauty of the stone and stained glass doesn't match the ugly and distracting sound of me coughing with such hopeless abandon every three minutes. 

I would like to at least make it through the concert.  They need my A flat in the lovely chant piece "we're" doing . . .


On the upside, one of the jerk bosses at work feels pretty sorry for me in my helpless misery, so he's been a lot less annoying lately.  See, there is indeed a silver lining.

Sparrow tree

On my way home, sometimes I pass this tree that looks like one of those round sparkly fireworks that explode with long streamers in all directions. 

It looks like a candied apple on a stick with chopped peanuts, although the peanuts are actually adrenalin junkie sparrows who gather there and wait for my car to pass so they can explode into planned random motion in a mad dash to reach some previously agreed on point on the other side of the street that always requires them to fly directly in front of my car. 

It's a good wake-up call if I am feeling tired, let me tell you . . .

Do you remember cassette tapes?

Remember them?  I sill have some.  And a tape recorder to play them on.  Some of those albums still aren't available on CD.  Someone really needs to go out there and get all those orphan albums and make them available online legally, so I can get rid of these cassette tapes and stop worrying about the music gods demanding my beloved ones as sacrifices . . .

Here's John Scalzi, waxing nostalgic about all old technology and other relics of the past that he won't miss at all.

"Cassette tapes wore out even more quickly, their sonic reproduction was even worse, and they would get randomly eaten by your Walkman as a sacrifice to the music gods, and it was always your beloved music, not that Poison cassette your great aunt got you because she knows as much about your musical tastes as she knows anything else about you. I would have gladly sacrificed Look What the Cat Dragged In to the music gods, in their mercy. But it didn’t work that way. It never works that way."

I really don't miss people smoking everywhere. :X

Are there any other no-longer-common things you are glad to see gone?

Are you safe?

God calls us to abundant lives, not safe lives.  I wonder if we think about what that means enough.  Here's a great video clip that illustrates how we live most of the time.

Yep, that about says it.  Your thoughts?

Ugly church art

We were part of a big service at a gorgeous neo-Gothic church, and I spent much of the service while we were not singing contemplating an absolutely hideous four-sided monstrosity of a tapestry hanging directly beneath the bell tower and blocking out too much of the light from the copious stained glass windows.

The church itself was beautiful.  It had a devoted art gallery and lots of lovely (and less-than-lovely) art works in different forms on walls and in alcoves throughout its labyrinthine corridors.  So why was there such a tacky, ineffably ugly, and more than a little incomprehensible piece in the heart of the church sanctuary destroying the beauty all around it?

The world may never know.

How's the state of the art in your church?

I'll take snice any day

We were supposed to get More Snow, but instead, it appeared that a legion of tiny snow fairies descended on the area and frosted everything with a thin coating of snice.  The sun was mostly hidden behind thin, smudgy clouds, and when it broke through, for a few seconds, the beauty made me want the world to stop.

I wanted to skip work to take pictures of ice and fairy-frosted trees all around town, but I am too responsible.  Sigh.

How listening to John Tavener is like faith

Sometimes it's hard to listen to John Tavener's music.  He likes dissonance.  It hurts, especially when you're listening to a piece at orchestra volume.  You have to resist the temptation to turn it down to avoid hearing the brokenness, the grating ugliness that scrapes your ears raw.

If you're going to be able to leave the volume where it should be, you have to believe that Tavener's music is going somewhere so beautiful that all the pain will be for something.  If you hear the ugliness that loudly, the beauty is like sudden relief from suffering, like sweet cessation of pain, like the joy of something inexpressible welling up inside you.

Anyway, you must have faith that the pain is worth it, or you'll miss the fullness of the beauty. 

Deer on the brain and other hazards of being too literal

I saw a billboard late one night on my way home, but since I've had deer on the brain, I sort of misinterpreted the text on the sign, which talks about a "bare-knuckled bucket of does," and my brain just sort of stuttered and stopped as I tried really hard (it was past my bed time) to figure out if deer or buckets even have knuckles and what a bucket of female deer would even try to possibly mean. 

Needless to say, I have no idea what product was being advertised.

It's past time for bed now, too.

Mailboxes and terror (also, deer)

How long has it been since I saw that nice young buck on the side of the road?  When am I going to stop jumping at every mailbox covered in new snow (thus taking on an unexpected shape that sets my panic about deer alert off)?  There are still months of new snow to come.  This could get tiresome . . .  :)