Sick

Whew! I'm back! Please pardon my extended absence... I've been laid out sick all week, which one would think would be just perfect for dreaming up all kinds of new and fantastic blog entries to type up and send into the blogosphere, but really has only been good for creating new and disgusting materials for adding to our world's landfills. Awesome.



Last Saturday morning (early afternoon if I'm being honest) I awoke with a wee scratchy in my throat, and a teensy bubble in my sinuses, and I knew something was a'brewin'. As I went through my day, I noticed watery eyes and lots of sinus pressure start clouding up my head, and I knew something nasty was on the horizon. But how and when did I get sick? I mean, it had struck so suddenly! Friday night I was out on the town, taking a fabulous cooking class feeling healthy as a newborn pup (those are healthy, right?), and then less than 12 hours later I was besieged with sickness! What on earth could have transpired? And then I remembered...

A week before I had been out to lunch with some friends after church, and this lovely man I'm just getting to know was sitting across from me. He's been recovering from the plague that's been sweeping the nation for the past, like, month, and we were all talking and laughing and eating and having a wonderful time when suddenly it happens...

My new friend is telling a story, and right in the middle of it, right as he's expounding on some important point and we're all listening attentively, everything slows and time seems to almost stand still. Suddenly the world dims and I see this teensy, infinitesimal little orb of spit leave his mouth. It's perfectly formed, tiny as a fleck of dust, but sure as the seitan tacos on my plate, it's there. As it leaves his lip, this droplet of disease begins to make its way toward me, its path making a perfect, golden arc, illuminated by the sunshine, straight for my face. I can't look away, I can't stop it, I can't catch it mid-air, all I can do is sit transfixed as it flies toward me through the air, a whirling comet of disease hurling toward me in slow motion. I watch it the whole time, frozen, but then I blink and it's out of my sight. And I know that I know that I KNOW it has landed on my bottom lip.

Time has now resumed just as suddenly as it slowed, and I am now back and sitting with my friends at lunch with a tiny droplet of my new, very sick friend's spit now sitting on my bottom lip. What is the PROTOCOL for such a situation?! Should I have daintily wiped it away? It was so small I could hardly feel where it landed! How does one account for screaming and crying for a disinfecting swab while furiously wiping one's lower lip for no apparent reason in the middle of a new friend's story? And even if I had, would wiping the microscopic, germy dot have done any good after it had landed and already started to seep its disease into my pores? I may never know.

Fast forward to a week later when I'm laid out on the sofa watching Throwdown reruns on the Food Network for the third night in a row, wondering if I've been this sick since I had pneumonia in seventh grade and trying not to think about how much effort it's going to take to blow dry my hair after I actually muster the strength to shower... Oh well.

I knew I was feeling better when I made myself some (freaking amazing, if I do say so myself) pancakes Saturday morning. Pancakes make it all better. Really.



Even being outrageously sick because someone else accidentally spit on you? Yes, even that.

Coming Together

Something is coming together.

Something broken is starting to sing... This low, steady hum that starts in the pit of my chest and moves its bounce to my collarbones-- right beneath where I catch my breath-- and back again.

It didn't happen all at once, this coming together, this peaceful wholeness. But all of a sudden I reached down for pain and bitterness and brokenness, and it wasn't there. My fingers walked the outline of my heart, searching for the cracks and pits and black holes that have made up my life for the past two years... But I couldn't dig my hands in to the loose gravel that my heart has been. What I found as I tapped and reached deep for the old reliable bitterness and hurt was soft balm covering and filling in the jagged veins of brokenness, tender ointment covering the scars that remain of my once-shattered heart.

Something is coming together.

Equalizing Forces

Note: The following is not deep, encouraging, enlightening, or otherwise intellectually stimulating in any way.

So. There’s this girl who lives in the apartment below me, and she is one of the few people in my building I’ve actually seen... She has this big giant dog that I see her taking out for walks all the time, and I can hear banging around in her teensy apartment during the day every once in a while (the dog, not her)... Anyway. She also has a SUPER hot boyfriend. He is truly one of the most legitimately gorgeous people I’ve ever seen up close… Breath-takingly gorgeous. “See-him-walking-down-the-hall-and-the-gasp-gets-stuck-in-your-throat” gorgeous. (For the record, she’s cute, but not THAT cute… Makes one wonder, you know?) ANYWAY.

It just so happens that approximately 9 out of the 10 times I see this gloriously hot man walking around my apartment building, I am looking SERIOUSLY SCHLUMPY. Now, lest you get the impression that I’m being overly humble, I’m not talking about, “Oh fiddlesticks! I forgot to put on my third coat of mascara this morning!” schlumpy. Oh no. I’m talking “This is the worst I’ve looked inside my own apartment—much less in public—in three and a half weeks, and I’m taking great pains not to look in the mirror because my self-esteem really can’t handle this kind of negative visual input right now” schlumpy. These are the moments that seem to cosmically draw Super Hot Boyfriend to me from wherever he is in the universe—almost some kind of equalizing force that senses the incredibly high levels of unattractiveness I'm registering and must bring supernatural hotness to my locale to balance things out. *le sigh*

Like, the morning I decide to dash downstairs to take out my three-week-old trash that smells like rotting fruit and old guacamole wearing my slept-in pajama bottoms and white tank top with the black bra showing through and unshaved armpits… POW! Really Hot Boyfriend is just getting in from his run around the block, and happens to be coming in the door right as I’m going out. Awesome.

Or the evening I’m getting back from my walk around the neighborhood, ratty, muffin-top-enhancing jeans and 3 year old sneakers on and my (unwashed) hair sticking to my (unwashed) forehead… KABLOW! Extremely Hot Boyfriend is doing his sweetie a favor and getting her mail right as I walk in. Great.

And then there’s today. No makeup. Deep, deep circles under my eyes from getting too much sleep last night. Hair looking like my cat did it with crazy sweat curls that have yet to see a brush making a Jerry Seinfeld-esque mullet against my neck while my bangs are curling into some sort of 1988 mall rat wave on my forehead, and the only reason I even CONSIDERED leaving the house looking this (truly) horrifying was because I was craving a kombucha REAL bad, and I figured the granola heads at Whole Foods wouldn’t care… (I was wrong. The checkout girl looked at me like I was homeless.) I’m walking up the steps to the front door, fingertips brushing the underside of my nose because I think I can feel a lurker creeping down the side of nostril #1, and… BAM! Super Hot Boyfriend standing in the lobby talking on his cell phone, stretching before heading out for a run.

Perfect.

What makes it all even worse is that he seems very sweet—he always flashes his gorgeous grin and politely says hello, and all I can do is blink my smudgy eyes and try not to smile so wide he can smell my (inevitably) unbrushed teeth as I try to figure out how to get upstairs, take a shower, put on a full face of makeup and come back down within the next three milliseconds.

This morning I couldn’t even look at him, but I felt his gleaming smile flicker at me as I hurried past him up the stairs, desperately fighting the urge to scream, “I’m hot too! You just NEVER see it!”

Ugh.

Love

There's something about Valentine's Day that always makes me soft and velvety inside. I've never had a Valentine in the traditional sense of the word... Mom always made us little baskets like Easter preludes with a few chocolate goodies (always a Reese heart for me) and a little gifty tidbit inside. Sometimes I got flowers... There was never anything big or striking or extravagant, just a sweet little day marked by pretty little things.



In my teenage years, there were several Valentines that I despised-- a season when everything about the American landmark day for romance repulsed me... Always a true romantic at heart, I was utterly disgusted by the realization that the candy hearts and paper cut-outs and pink-wrapped Hershey kisses mass-marketed and filling my local Target's shelves were being equated with the grandiose, epic, soul-stirring force that is Love. The fact that February 14th is essentially National Date Night, how every man in a romantic relationship is societally obligated to buy plastic-wrapped chocolates and red roses at Safeway before taking his partner out to a reserved dinner at Black Angus, or otherwise shuffle his feet to jump a set of hurdles pre-set, stirred a deep loathing in me.

Deep. Loathing.

Apparently it still does, because I'm getting pretty grossed out.

I always said I'd NEVER ask or expect my beloved to do anything for Valentine's Day. I considered it an aberration of true romance to celebrate this commercialized bastardization of love and affection. "No flowers and dinner for me, thank you! I'll take it any other day, but not THAT day! Not when everybody else is doing it just because they have to..."

But then something changed. I don't know when, but there has been a softening in my heart to this heart of all holidays. Sure it's cheap and commercialized and preys on the emotions and expectations of people in love (and I use that term lightly... I sometimes wonder how many couples I know are truly in love). But just because this day cheapens love for so many, doesn't mean it cheapens love itself.

I don't know if I'll ever celebrate Valentine's Day with a man I love besides my father. But I'd like to hope that it would be a warm, soft day, full of easy surprises and lots of kisses. Not because the day dictates we should, but because it reminds us of what we know already... That we love each other. And want to care for one another. And want to delight the other.

Until that day I will enjoy my soft, sweet times alone... With flowers from Dad and a quiet dinner for one at my favorite spot. I'll sit at my table, velvety pink scarf tucked around my neck, and wait. And in that waiting know that I am satisfied. I am at rest. I am loved. I will eat my dinner alone and know that it is enough. The love I have is enough.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Goodness

I just need to say how completely and utterly mindblown I am at God's goodness in my new spiritual family. Last night we worshipped, studied, prayed, and then talked into the wee hours. I didn't know church could be this good.

This must be what it's like to fall in love.

Just in Case You Wondered

When my tall, gorgeous, cooler-than-the-ice-cream-in-my-spoon Auntie asks me to keep the quiz chain going... I answer.

Favorite Apple:
Honeycrisp (so crunchy it almost hurts). But a Gala will do.

Elvis, Costello or Presley?

Presley I suppose-- if only for the fried peanut butter sandwich association-- but to be honest neither Elvis really tickles me.

Last time you sent a letter (actually had to have stamp sent through the mail):
My dear, sweet, wonderful redheaded Alabaman mommy has her birthday this month.

Combine 3 men to make the perfect man:
Just THREE?! Okay... Okay...

1- Daniel Craig in James Bond 

(strong, smart, brooding, exciting machismo with a touch of sensitivity. He could throw me around-- in a good way.)

2- Hugh Jackman 

(charming but not sleazy, funny but not a dope, nice but not a goody-two-shoes... A perfect gentleman. And have you seen him?!)

3- Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man 

(a strong but tender family man who would do anything to fight for his family and what he knows is right)

If you had a horse, what would you name it?
Ava Gardner

What time in the past do you think you should have lived?
I think I'm alive right now for a reason, but the 40s-60s would have been pretty great.

One place you would like to visit before you die?

The Sistine Chapel

I wish I would have written that:
"If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski..."
-Faulkner

If you HAD to BE a character from a Drew Barrymore movie, who would it be:
Josie Geller in Never Been Kissed. No. Contest.

What did you want to be when you were 10 years old:
A ballerina or a movie star.

Favorite line or scene from a movie:

Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy coming through the mists in the early morning. I can't talk about it.

Or, "You are the champion of my heart." -Renee Zellweiger in Cinderella Man.  Oy.

What are your signature colors?
Something about pink just makes me sparkle inside, but I think the champagne shimmer of my hair is my true signature color.

If the talent Fairy came to your house tonight, what talent would you like her to bestow?
Singing and dancing (for musical theater... or anything really)

The Escaped Inescapable

There are nights when I drive down these city streets, stereo humming, lights on the street whizzing by, the whole world and nothing at all right at my doorstep. These are the times I think, “Whatever happened to that quite little life I never wanted?”



I press the accelerator down and listen to the steady rhythm of my tire tracks on the seams in the road—this bump, that bump, pothole, and again. The tendons of my heart, weary and slack-jawed from battle, seem to gaze with longing, lustful eyes at the life I once thought I couldn’t escape and now don’t think I’ll ever inhabit. A world of baby showers and tea parties and quiet nights spent at home. A world of 2+2=4, and get-togethers, and cooking dinner while on the phone.

It’s not that I don’t want to get married or have babies, it’s that the quiet life I always assumed I’d have is now clearly and utterly beyond my reach. Sure, I'd always had visions of great halls and magnificent journeys and seeing lands and shaking hands my friends at home had never dreamed of, but on these lonely nights when the boulevard stretches in front of me and I find myself weary from a hard-day’s fight, I think of what my life could have been. Quiet. Steady. Happy, in a confined sort of way.



This is not to say that my beautiful friends’ lives that are married with children and living at home aren’t full of unpredictability and adventure… I know their lives are great in their own way. It’s just different. Maybe I long for the days that will never come-- the days when I would get married right out of school and settle down and have our one bedroom apartment and go into the ministry, or have children and stay home and cook while the nice man who matches me goes out to work each day-- because I know I'm finally safe from them. All my life I squirmed and writhed at the idea that that life was inescapable, my wild heart chafed at the idea of walking into what I saw before me. “You need to be TAMED,” one woman said. I thought those days couldn’t be helped, and I nearly went crazy at the thought. Now I mourn for them.

All I’ve ever seen of adulthood are locked doors at night and one bedroom apartments and women as wives, and now I find myself in this distant land of studio apartments and auditions, feeling the labor pains as I birth this dream and destiny I’ve been carrying around in my heart all this time. I’m journeying to the kingdom, to the seat my Father has prepared for me. But there are moments as I’m wrestling through the thickets outside the palace walls, passion surging as I battle day and night against the legions that seem set against me, that my weary heart turns to home.

I can never go back.

More Introductions

Okay, enough of that foolishness.  Seriously, after such a long absence followed by clear evidence that I have too much time on my hands, I'm surprised there's any of you left here at all.  But I'm so glad you are!

And since we're in the mood for introductions (you are still in the mood, aren't you?) I am gut-bustingly proud to introduce the latest love of my life, Nathaniel David.



While we have yet to meet, I spend so many hundreds and hundreds of milliseconds each day gazing into his dark squinty eyes, that I'm sure it will be nothing but magic when I get to kiss his dark and furrowed brow for real.  Is it just me, or does he seem to hold all the secrets of the universe in his steely glare?

Man, I love babies.  Scratch that, I love pretty happy babies that like me. And as of Wednesday, my best friend's babies.

I also love cake.  But we covered that already, didn't we?

Greetings!

Hi!  I just wanted to properly introduce myself...

(The first few minutes are a real snooze-fest, but stay with me)

Desperate Desire

More later, but for now...