tails from my recent bible journey

No, I didn’t make a mistake in the title of this post. In fact, I’m proud of my rather creative, attention-grabbing lead-in for this post. I’ve been reading through the bible with my accountability partner for a while now; we started with the New Testament and now we’re working through the Old Testament. Now that we’re in the OT, *yawn* I have trouble concentrating and focusing on my daily reading. Of course, we’re still near the beginning (just starting Deuteronomy), so there’s been a whole lot of rules and numbers and a much higher frequency of references to puss and sores than I’m comfortable with.

But I digress. As we’ve been reading, I’ve recently begun praying a lot to find relevance in the words. I don’t get those biblical smacks that I love so much very often in the OT. But earlier this week, I was reading in Numbers 22 and the story of Balaam’s Donkey really hit me hard. In the text, Balaam is a sooth-sayer who was called in by the king of Moab to curse the Israelites. <insert more events here where Balaam manages to really tick God off> Balaam gets up in the morning, saddles his donkey, and starts to leave with the princes of Moab (who came to summon him).

As they’re riding along the road, the donkey sees an angel of the Lord standing in the road with his sword drawn, so she suddenly turns off the road and into a field. Balaam (who can’t see the angel) beat her to get her back on the road. Again, the angel of the Lord appears standing in a narrow path between two walled-in vineyards. The donkey, seeing the angel again, pressed close to the wall and crushed Balaam’s foot against it. Hurt, he beat her. The donkey sees the angel for a third time in a narrow place. With no room to turn or move to the side, the donkey lay down under Balaam. Angry at her, Balaam beat her a third time with his staff.

So, then, the donkey, yes the donkey, asks Balaam, what have I done to make you beat me three times? So naturally, because she spoke to him, he responded. You made a fool of me! If I had a sword, I’d kill you right now! The talking donkey replies, Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you? As Balaam responded, No, the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes and he finally saw the angel of the Lord standing down the road with his sword drawn. Balaam fell facedown and the angel asked him, Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I come here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one. The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If she had not turned away, I would certainly have killed you by now, but I would have spared her.

This story had a profound impact on me, and I’ve been thinking of it often. In this story, the donkey can be looked at in one of two ways – when related to modern-day life. She was either a car or a pet. Either way, both are pretty good at showing us how sinful we really are. Don’t believe me? Wait until you get cut off and miss a light, your car breaks down, or you’re potty training a puppy. Any of those situations will bring the evil hiding in our hearts bubbling out to the surface. And I could write for hours with example after example of how I can sometimes turn into satan behind the wheel. But I won’t. In all honesty, it’s the second comparison, to a pet, that really hit me hard.

I started to think about how, even though I love my two dogs like they’re my children, there have been situations where I’ve been Balaam. Ok, wait, timeout. I do not, nor have I ever beaten my dogs. (just wanted to clarify that) But I have gotten ridiculously frustrated with them, I’ve yelled at them, I’ve tugged them way too hard on their leashes out of annoyance, I’ve gotten mad at them. I’ve shown them the pure evil that lies in my heart when Jen doesn’t get exactly what Jen wants when she wants it.

The most common display of evil via frustration is when Jersey has to go number two. She’s not like a normal dog. She will sometimes take hours and about 16 trips outside before she’ll go. She cannot have anything moving around her (not grass, not leaves, not cars, not people, not wind, not airplanes, etc). Nothing can move. Then she needs to conduct a full scent analysis of the area. After that, she needs to begin 14 miles of spinning, and when that ritual is complete, she requires a specific amount of resistance on the leash. If you mess up any one of these ridiculous steps, or if something moves, in, like, Zimbabwe, and she finds out about it, forget it. She has to start her process over again.

Usually by the time something has messed up her ritual, I’m either completely drenched in sweat or frozen solid with icicles forming on my hair (depending on the season), or, rather, I’m flat out uncomfortable because standing around outside waiting for Jersey to get around to going potty is not my idea of a good time. So, I get mad at her. BAD DOG! I’ll scream at her, I’ll tug her into the house, paying no mind how hard I’m pulling her, and once she’s inside I’ll slam the door and yell at her again, BAD DOG!

I’m ashamed to admit that, but it’s true. It doesn’t happen all the time, after having her in my life for five years, I’m pretty much used to the routine and it rarely gets the best of me. But sometimes, once in a blue moon, it’ll just grate on my nerves and she’ll just really try my patience and I snap. And the worst part is that, sometimes in my head, I’ll think that it’s not that bad because I didn’t hurt her. I didn’t beat her or kick her or hit her or anything like that. I didn’t do anything to her. Or, did I? I know that when someone I love and trust and admire yells at me, it hurts.

Again, this happens like once in a blue moon, but the blue moon rose last week one night and I just, was SO cold and she wouldn’t even pee and after 73.56 circles I just lost it. And I yelled at her and brought her inside and slammed the door and unhooked her leash. And she just sat there, looking up at me with these big brown eyes and in a twist of a second, my fury turned into this immeasurable guilt and pain. What’s wrong with me? She didn’t deserve that. She’s my responsibility and I love her and I should act like it and take her outside, nicely and let her be a dog. And so, standing there by the front door, I patted the front of my leg, her little sign for “hugs” and waited to see what she would do. When I moved my hand to pat my leg, she cowered. Ouch. She has a history of abuse from before I adopted her and I made her remember that horrible time in her life due to nothing other than my own impatience.

After that, I didn’t think she’d come anywhere near me, but the second she saw my “hugs” signal, she was on her feet, and jumping on me in two seconds flat. Tail wagging. Hugging away. I did not deserve that. I deserved for her maybe to run from me, to bite me, to hurt me back. But the thing with dogs is that they don’t hold a grudge. They demonstrate more of God’s grace than a human ever could. Dogs are loyal, caring, trusting, and loving. They’re not judgmental, they don’t care how fat or skinny or tall or short you are, they don’t care if you have designer brands or shop at discount stores (well, Jersey won’t eat generic brands, but that’s beside the point). Dogs are honest and forgiving. We could all learn a lot from a dog.

I know that after reading the story of Balaam, I just thought about how many times my dogs have taught me about my sinful nature and how many times they’ve set a positive example for me. I thought about how undeserving I was of their pure and unblemished little hearts that they just gave me so freely, no questions asked. I don’t know if they’ve ever saved my life in the literal sense of the word like Balaam’s donkey saved him, but I know that they’ve saved me from myself more times than I can count. When I broke up from my fiancé and thought that the world would end, Jersey spent hours on end curled up in my lap, fur matted with the wetness of tears that I thought would never end. When I’m scared, they’ll flank my sides without being asked and just wait to protect. When I’m sick, they lay at my feet, trying to comfort. Molly will even give me one of her toys when she sees me sitting somewhere alone.

I know that after reading the story of Balaam and his donkey, I have a new, deep-set love and appreciation for Molly and Jersey. And if you’re a dog-owner reading this…do something special for them just ‘cuz.

the infamous roach story

I had plans to include some sort of new year’s-related post on this blog and, while I still might do that, something else relevant to blog about has come up (rather unexpectedly, mind you) and I felt like if I didn’t seize the moment, the post would never be written.

So what happened to deter me from my previously-determined blog plans? What prompted me to venture into some new blog territory? There was a roach. In my office.

A roach.

Yes, a roach.

In January.

Someone out there is shuddering just as violently as I am at the thought. Granted, normal people don’t respond with a level of terror more appropriate for being held at knifepoint when a roach crosses their path, but I’ve never claimed to be completely normal. Besides, there’s always that one person in the office who freaks over a roach. In my office, I’m that one person. And now that it’s out in the open a few of my terrific colleagues have promised to be my roach killers. They’re definitely unsung heroes in my world.

When it comes to creepy crawleys, roaches are usually what will take me down. I can handle spiders, snakes, mice even, but roaches. Yeah. Not so much. I can’t even kill them. It grosses me out, the crunch of them under my shoe – or worse in my hand under the thin layer of 46 paper towels – just sets something off inside me…a repulsion that cannot be paralleled.

Even if I spray bug spray on them and see that they’re clearly dead, I still have to dispose of them. That in and of itself is next to impossible. I mean, once I grab my 46 sheets of paper towels and wad them up, I can’t get a good enough grip to actually pick the roach up. Less paper would mean that I’d feel its little disgusting, putrid body in my hands. I don’t care if it’s just a slight bump under the paper, I know what that bump is and therefore, I cannot touch it. My fingers recoil at the very thought.

For most of my life, I’ve been pretty fortunate to be surrounded by people who were more able and willing to kill roaches than I am. People who can get the job done in a minute or two versus the epic battle it would take me. For a brief time period between April and November of 2007, I had to learn to become a roach-killing warrior. I had no choice. I lived alone. It was either live with the roaches or eradicate them from my home. I went with the second option, especially after snippets from that MTV movie, Joe’s Apartment, started swimming in my head.

With no one there to help me, I became very OCD about calling the apartment office every week for the exterminator to come out. This helped a great deal, but still, every now and again one feisty, but stupid, roach would get in. Then I’d have to deal with it. This one time, as I referenced in my security post, it took me 45 minutes, a cat, and an entire bottle of raid to get rid of one roach.

At the time, I had Zoey still (she was my cat, who now lives with a nice family who actually like cats) and she was the best when it came to dealing with roaches. She’d corner them, bat at them, play with them, pull their legs off, pop a wing off, dismember them, etc. In all honesty, cats are probably the best exterminators there are – at least when it comes to ambitious roaches.

So anyway, this one night, I’m sitting at my dining room table working on my laptop and the girls (Jersey and Zoey) are sleeping on the couch. I see this thing move out of the corner of my eye and I can already feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. You know that primal reaction some people get when there’s danger? I have that, but I call it “bug-dar”. So I do the completely girly thing and pull my feet up off the floor, perch on the chair and slowly turn around to see what offensive little critter is on my carpet.

A roach. A big one. Might have been a palmetto bug. Might have been half rat. Not sure. The thing was huge. It could have eaten me.

I look over, waiting for Zoey to spring to action and save me. There wouldn’t be super cat that night. No way. She was still snoozing. I’d have to handle this one on my own. So, with one eye constantly focused on the rat roach (RR), I jump off my chair and run into the kitchen. RR starts to follow me in that creepy scurry roaches are famous for, though he was sort of tubby for a roach, so his scurry wasn’t as sleek as it could have been. Wait a minute, did I really just call a roach fat? I did. And it was. So there. Maybe I should refer to him as “big boy” for the remainder of this post.

Anyway, I go in the kitchen, grab the can of Raid and arm myself for battle. He comes closer, I spray. And not some sissy spray. I’m talking full out, get a cramp in your finger, long spray. RR looks at me like what did you do, you moron? and scampers away. After him I follow, still spraying him with all that I’ve got. All the while I’m wondering why the Raid isn’t working. Either it’s a bionic roach or the people who made the spray sold me a can of smelly water for $4. Either way, I was screwed.

Oh wait, he’s slowing down. Wait for it, wait for it. He’s gonna die….right…now. And he’s back. Crap.

It went on like that for a few more minutes until, after what I’m assuming was a second wind, RR started scurrying after me with a rather impressive speed for a half-dead rat roach. Of course, like a total girl, I scream.

Super cat wakes up. Score!!! So Zoey rushes to my rescue, corners RR, and beats the snot out of him. I’ve never loved a cat so much as I did at that moment.

But she didn’t stop there. She partially dismembered him. She made sure that RR was really and truly completely dead before she sauntered off to grab a bite to eat or sleep or do whatever it is super cats do after a hard two-minutes work.

Awesome. RR is dead. Yes! But…oh no! I have to get rid of its corpse! Now what? Yes, I know, grab a paper towel, pick it up, throw it away. Yeah, not it my house when I’m the only human. No way, Jose. That’s just not happening.

I should probably also take this side moment to admit that I have this fear about where to dispose of roaches. I’m scared to flush them…they might come back, and I’m scared to just throw them away because there’s always this tiny fear in the back of my mind that even though the cat quartered them, they might magically reconnect or make like worms and sprout new bodies and then I’d have four roaches on my hands instead of one. Completely illogical and silly, I know, but there you have it.

So given the whole disposal fear I have, I’m standing there staring at dead RR trying to figure out what to do with it. I decide that flushing is probably better than the trash can, but how do I pick it up to get it in the toilet. Idea! I can use the little scooper thing that I use for the litter box. It’s the only tool (can we call it a tool?) that I had in the apartment that I could use to pick up the offensive little creature that I wouldn’t be tempted to throw away when I was done. So I get the scooper, and try to scoop up the roach. This process alone took about 10 minutes.

Finally, success, I get RR on the scooper and make my way to the bathroom. I walk very slowly for fear that one false move and I might fall or something and have to, like, touch the thing. Not happening. So I’m shuffling across the floor (to go the, maybe 7 feet to the bathroom), and I look down and RR is MOVING. Like moving, like doing the Macarena kind of moving. What the hell? He was just dead!?

Needless to say, I pull the girly shriek again, drop the scooper and run away. Super cat saunters back in the room, looks at me with chagrin, and goes to inspect the now scattered remains of RR. She knows its dead. I do too, but really, it moved. What else was I supposed to do? Ask it if it was interested in doing the electric slide next?

I realize in that moment, that if the cat was capable of rolling her eyes at me, she would have. Grow up, Jen. You can do this. Just pick it up, toss it in the toilet follow it up with a jug of bleach and go on with your evening. My internal reasoning must have worked. I scoop up RR again, in only about 7 minutes this time, and make my way into the bathroom and flush him without additional incident.

It took me two weeks to quit double checking the bowl every time I had to pee. But you probably didn’t need to know that.

addiction

So I’m going to deviate a bit from the happy-go-lightly nature of my recent posts to give some attention to the concept of addiction. It’s a tough thing to write about, to think about, to watch. I can’t imagine living it.

As many of you know, my little brother is an addict. And I’m not ashamed of him. There seems to be such a stigma in our society about addicts…the word is rarely uttered without a hush and a whisper. I’m not going to whisper in condemnation. I refuse to.

I also refuse to ignore this underlying force that has irrevocably changed the dynamics of my family. In keeping my with naturally inquisitive nature, I have to learn more about addiction…what it is, how it works, how it has affected my brother on a personal and spiritual level. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately talking to him and reading some of his writing/journals/letters…all as a means to understand.

Based on my apparently insatiable appetite for information (whether I want it or not), my brother suggested I try reading the Narcotics Anonymous (NA) book. He even picked up a copy of the book and highlighted relevant passages for me (can anyone else tell he and I are related?) I just started reading through it today and there are some passages about addiction that really resonated with me. Individually, they might not be that surprising, but collectively they paint a picture that is simultaneously horrific and somewhat hopeful.

Who is an addict?

• We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive illness whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions, and death.
• We did not choose to become addicts.
• Hostile, resentful, self-centered, and self-seeking, we cut ourselves off from the outside world. Anything not completely familiar became alien and dangerous. Our world shrank and isolation became our life.
• We used in order to survive. It was the only way of life that we knew.
• We had to have drugs, regardless of the cost.
• One aspect of our addiction was our inability to deal with life on life’s terms.
• We “forgot” about the times when we sat alone and were consumed by fear and self-pity. We fell into a pattern of selective thinking.
• Higher mental and emotional functions, such as conscience and the ability to love, were sharply affected by our use of drugs. Living skills were reduced to animal level.
• Our spirit was broken.
• Our capacity to feel human was lost.
• We acquired strange habits and mannerisms. We forgot how to work; we forgot how to play; we forgot how to express ourselves and how to show concern for others. We forgot how to feel.
• We went from a state of drugged success and well-being to complete spiritual, mental, and emotional bankruptcy.
• We realize that we are never cured, and that we carry the disease within us for the rest of our lives. We have a disease, but we do recover. Each day we are given another chance.

[Note: the passages above were pulled from the 4^th edition of the Narcotics Anonymous book. If you've stumbled onto this page and need more information about addiction and recovery, visit www.na.org.]

The seriousness of this disease cannot be denied. However, the humanity of it is often ignored. And that breaks my heart.

this morning, satan was a fifty year old woman who stole my fan

I need to make a confession. I’m technically on weight watchers. I’ve been working out like a fiend and doing everything I can to really try to be a healthier me. But last night, I was bad, so very bad. It involved fettuccini alfredo, reduced fat eggnog, and about 5 bite-sized chocolate chip cookies. And then I opted to skip the gym. For Shame.

So as I’m working around my apartment trying to get some Christmas gifts wrapped and packaged and all that fun stuff, I’m thinking about how horribly pathetic I’ve acted in the nutrition department. So I decide that, as punishment, I should get up early and – don’t miss this – add a morning workout to my Tuesday schedule. Yes, that would be in addition to the evening workout that was already scheduled. So the alarm goes off at quarter to 5. I get up, turn it off, and crawl back in bed.

Duh. What would you do? Jump up and thrill at the thought of donning your sneakers and a hoodie and venturing out in the 28* ridiculous cold? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

So, five minutes later, after unsuccessfully determining which one of my seven alarm clocks I forgot to turn off, I remembered why I was up at this ungodly hour. The gym. Don’t get me wrong, I love the gym as much as the next work out freak. I do not, however, love the gym – or anything other than blanket, pillow, mattress, at five o’clock in the morning. Roosters are still snoozing for pete’s sake.

So I reluctantly pull myself out of bed, put my gym clothes on, take dogs out, brush teeth, and finish other necessary morning activities. I get there, have a great workout, and head to the locker room to shower and get ready for work. And therein lies the problem.

For whatever reason, the people in control of the thermostat at the gym thought it would be fun to make the locker room the equivalent of a muggy August afternoon in, like Charleston or Orlando. Terrific. I’ll be applying makeup with one hand while sponging the sweat off with the other.

But then I caught sight of this beautiful and glorious thing: a fan. There’s a metal floor fan that sits under one of the vanity counters. Some women turn them on and stand in front of them to combat the heat while they’re getting ready. So, with no one to fight me for it, I turned it on, aimed it at me, and went about my business.

An eye shadow and mascara application later, I go to wash my hands, come back and the fan has moved to under the vanity and pointed in the opposite direction…as in directly underfoot for where I’d need to stand to effectively blow-dry my hair. I look around, one lady is sitting nearby, pretty much oblivious to what’s going on. So I pick up the fan and move it back to where I had it. I hear laughter behind me, I turn around and there’s this older lady and her friend, she informs me that she moved the fan so others could benefit from it. That’s fine, I didn’t know there was a problem, and I don’t mind sharing as long as it’s not under foot. So she goes back and puts the fan where it’s directed at the center of the locker room. Not one single soul was in wind-distance of that fan. Not one. The sink was surely getting a cool-down though.

This lady, after taking my fan and making a big fuss about it, retreats to the locker area of the room (as in, the other side of the room from the fan where there is no chance at all that any of the wind from the fan could potentially even remotely think of maybe brushing against her) and starts talking about me. How I’m a fan hog, etc.

Whoa. Yes. I am definitely a fan hog. And no one else was using it. Guilty as charged.

So she’s standing around on the other side of the room talking about me, I’m standing two feet from the fan, sweating, half tempted to really give her something to talk about when I look in the mirror and see my shirt. I was wearing a Newspring tshirt. Crap. So much for taking the fan back and telling her where she can go. Did I just think that? Crap! I did! Stop it, stop it, stop it!

So I spent the rest of hair-styling time trying to convince myself to not leave a bad impression of my church and do or say something that I’d later regret. I noticed that the lady did not – not even for a minute – leave the shelter of the locker area and go anywhere near the fan. It’s like she just made a bit to-do about moving it for fun.

So I go and change into my work clothes, pack my stuff up and walk out of the locker room…proud of myself for being the bigger person. As I’m walking out, I look to my left and notice that fan-thief-police has taken over an entire bench, sit-down vanity, and vanity counter. And she’s concerned because I used a fan when no one else was around? Really. As I opened the door, I hear her wish me a good bye and a great day.

I didn’t answer. I just walked out. Because if I did answer, it wouldn’t have been pretty. It would have resembled something similar to what happens after you give a cat a bath. I’m not sure if she would have survived. And I’m not sure that I would have survived my conscience afterwards.

This morning, Satan was a middle-aged, cranky, fan-thieving, woman. And he almost beat me.

Let me clarify that, for a minute. I’m not directly calling fan-thief Satan, Lucifer, or Leader of the Damned. Rather, I’m referencing how Satan can use anything to tempt us and manipulate us into doing something that God really doesn’t want us to do. It’s silly, really, how something as simple as some lady stealing my fan then laughing about it could really tempt me to sin as much as it did.

In fact, even though I didn’t fall to the temptation to go up to her in her little locker hiding place, and tell her, for someone who wanted the fan so badly, don’t you think you should either go use it or quit acting like a two year old?, I’m still not comfortable with the way I reacted to that situation.

I mean, first, it took every single ounce of strength I had to not respond back with the fervor of a thirteen year old boy on a playground fight. I stood there, blowdryer in one hand, just praying that I could keep my mouth shut, and praying for God to make Satan knock it off. Praying that I wouldn’t let it get the best of me.

But still. I had an opportunity there. An opportunity to respond well, to set an example, to really exemplify what being a Christian is all about. And I totally blew it. Granted, ignoring her goodbye and giving her a not-so-nice could have been way worse, but they weren’t the best either. I’m ashamed of myself for that.

But that’s how Satan works…one thing at a time…each one chips into our Christian exterior. This morning’s events nicked me up a little, but didn’t leave a major dent. Some things do, though, and that’s when it’s most important to look up and shut up. BEG God to keep you focused. It’s like with my diet. I ate a cookie last night, it put a nick in my points. It was ok, easy to overcome. But then, I ate four more and that knick turned into a dent that was harder to work my way out of. For the record, it took an hour of hills on medium/high resistance on an elliptical to work off those extra cookie calories. But, in other areas of life, Satan’s dents can take more than an hour of sweat to counteract.

Sometimes it takes groveling, humbling, and a whole slew of other really uncomfortable things. Sometimes we can’t fix it. But God can. And that’s what I’m really thankful for this holiday season… Grace. Forgiveness. Christ.

the anti-granny’s guide to dating and marriage

So I should have seen it coming. Really. This is ALL my fault. I have no one to blame but myself.

You’re probably wondering, *Gasp* “What did she do!?” right about now, aren’t you? Would you believe me if I told you the answer was as simple as making the decision to call my grandmother for ten minutes over the weekend to check in on her? Well, it’s the truth. I called grandma and it was a terrible mistake.

You know that stereotypical granny? The cute, sweet little thing who gives away baked goods and knits all the time? Yeah…this isn’t a story about her. This is a story about someone who is more like the anti-granny (AG).

Our conversation, after the opening how-do-you-do, started to quickly work its way downhill. It’s never good when, after she asks how work is, and I tell her, her follow-up question is, “have you met any young, single engineers yet?” No, sorry grandma, I’ve only met married engineers, except for that one single one, who, really, let’s be honest, there’s a reason why he’s single. Of course, I didn’t really give her that answer, I just politely said ‘no’.

So then she asked about my part-time job. It’s a retail position I have on the weekends to help me save up some extra money for grad school/pay off existing debt. It’s not glamorous. She asked me if I met anyone nice through there. When I reminded her that I really didn’t want to date someone whose career ambition was stocking shelves and occasionally running a cash register, she asked me about our customers. Surely there are some nice, young men who come through my line and I could date one of them. Holy cow! It’s work, it’s not speed-dating, and I really don’t think that I’d be able to make an accurate judgment about a man I could potentially date based on the contents of his basket and his reply to “will that be debit or credit?” Oooh, he said debit, AND he bought Christmas wrapping paper, he’s a keeper! Let’s call mom.

Once again, I bite my tongue and politely remind her about why I didn’t feel like that particular brand of coworker or customer would be a good idea for me to pursue for a future relationship. I think she didn’t want to admit that I had a point, but in the end my very compelling argument won and she moved on.

You didn’t really think she moved on…to another topic did you? No way! What’s the fun in that? I’m her only single grandchild after all. I think she’s taken it on as her mission in life to make sure I have a mate and soon…like, while she’s still mobile enough to ruin my wedding. Apparently, as AG, that’s her duty. She has a history of causing scenes at weddings, I wouldn’t expect mine to be any different. What scares me is she could potentially use mine as her finale. Lord help us all.

So, anyway, she moves on after realizing that I actually go to work to work and not to participate in some off-form of cubicle speed-dating. So she reminded me that I need to make sure to dedicate some time to finding a husband. I’m almost thirty after all and I don’t want to become an old maid.

Oh yes, granny brought out the “you’re almost thirty” and “you’ll be an old maid” cards IN ONE SENTENCE. Wow, triple-word score, 97 points, she wins, I lose. Now, if I were smart, I would have just faked poor reception and got off the phone. But no, I’m masochistic and stayed on the line and endured more torment. What’s worse is that I actually tried to reason with her. I should have known better.

Usually I don’t let her get to me, but this time, I just couldn’t help it. I just sort of figuratively stood there with wide eyes, frozen, as a train barreled towards me. It’s a touchy topic for sure. Ask any girl in my age bracket…there’s definitely an element of fear there. We’ve been around long enough to have a pretty good idea of what we do and don’t want. We’ve established a life on our own.

We don’t want to settle on the first boy who wanders across our path. We want to hold out for a man we can respect, someone who has similar beliefs and goals and aspirations. Is that so freaking wrong? But at the same time, all of our friends are getting married and mating and there’s this tiny glimmer of fear in the back of our heads that we’re going to be that friend. The one who is 40 and still single and people secretly think she might be gay “cuz omg how does she not have a husband by now?”

I was kidding about that last part, by the way.

The whole thing with anti-granny just really frustrated me because I personally believe that I serve a really HUGE God. And He has someone amazing out there for me. And I don’t need to just blurt out an “I do” to some random guy just because I’m on the brink of 30. And – by the way – I’m only 26. I’m NOT on the brink of 30, thankyouverymuch.  A lot can happen in four years, in four months, even.

But really, everything about life seems to scream at late twenty somethings that they have to marry, mate, and procreate right away. The last thing I need is my family…even if it is only anti-granny…trying to drive that point home even harder. And what hurts my ego the most, is that I actually let her get to me.

See? I told you I deserved it. I never should have hit the little green send button on the cell phone. Next time, you can bet your bottom dollar I’m going to fake poor reception and end the call.

Now you should all go and call your grandma…if nothing else, to thank her for not being the anti-granny.

34x random – holiday edition

I did a post similar to this one a while back, called 93x random, and, in it, I promised to include more of them…with totally random numbers and at random times. Given that I’ve been on a crazy blogging streak, I wanted to keep up my streak…and I needed a small break from the long narratives I’ve been writing lately.

So in the spirit of the holidays, here are 34 totally random facts about me related to the holidays.

1. My all-time favorite Christmas decoration is my stocking. It’s an officially NHL regulated Tampa Bay Lightning stocking. It’ll barely hold a candy cane, but I love it just the same.
2. I also have a stocking my step-mom made for me. Unlike the Lightning one, this one will hold a TON of stuff. I like to cheat and use both at Christmas.
3. When I was little, I loved being a divorced kid because I got two Christmases every other year (when life hands you lemons…)
4. I absolutely hate the commercialism that comes with the holidays. Especially now that I’ve got a part-time second job at a retail store. It amazes me how many people will argue about a seventy-five cent coupon…when their bill is over $100. I mean, really people. What the heck?
5. My dogs have reindeer antlers. They’re not very fond of them.
6. Homemade gifts are the best. Especially when they aren’t food. Don’t get me wrong, I love to eat as much as the next fat girl, but I’m trying to lose weight and high-fat, sugary gifts are just too hard to resist.
7. The one thing I want the most for Christmas this year is to see my sister. But I’ll have to wait until February. I’m ok with that.
8. My favorite church-y Christmas song is Silent Night. Otherwise, my favorite is Jingle Bell Rock.
9. When I was little we had beer cheese soup for Christmas Eve dinner with French bread. I miss those meals SO much. As an adult, I’ve tried to recreate them, but the soup is never the same.
10. Fruitcake. Really? Who, besides my grandmother, will eat the stuff?
11. I have friends whose families have these big Christmas parties/dinners/get-togethers and I’m so jealous of that. I always wished my family were large and connected enough to have something like that.
12. At the very top of my very selfish Christmas list this year is a new speedo. I’m down to one that fits me, and at the rate I’m losing weight, it won’t fit for long. Plus, the more you wear them, the more they stretch out, and when you swim 3-4 days a week, it helps to have more than one suit to work from.
13. My goal is to one day have a real tree that my dog won’t be able to take out with one wag of her tail.
14. Most of my Christmas decorations are blue and silver. I’m aiming for an entire selection of blue/silver/white snowflakey goodness.
15. New goggles are also on my Christmas list. Problem is, other than the brand, I don’t know what they are so there’s no way for me to get the same pair. It’s not like I can email a jpg to speedo and say “I want another pair of these.”
16. It just doesn’t feel like Christmas without snow. I ridiculously geek-out over snow. I recently begged a friend to FedEx me a jarful. She never did. Meany-head.
17. The song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” makes me want to beat things up.
18. The Grinch and a Charlie Brown Christmas are the best ever movies. And when I say Grinch, I mean the old school cartoon version. Not that the other one isn’t good too, it’s just not the same.
19. Barney’s Santa’s White Christmas coffee. Holy Cow. It’s like heaven in a coffee cup.
20. I really hate traditional red and green decorations…variations like maroon and hunter green are awesome, but the bright candy apple red with bright green. Eek. Not so much.
21. My Uncle Fran and Aunt Sharon used to mail my brother and I these HUGE boxes full of Christmas gifts every year. They never spent tons and tons of money, but they’d always give us really creative things, and wrap up every tiny piece. For example, one year they got these plastic toolboxes and filled them up (like could barely close them fill them up) with stuff. My toolbox was purple and it was filled with lip gloss, nail polish, little trinkets, jewelry, pens, pencils, notepads, perfume, etc…every single thing was individually wrapped. It’d take hours to open those up. I looooved it. As an adult I can look back on those gifts and think about how long it must have taken my aunt to wrap all those gifts. It’s really humbling thinking about how sweet she was to me and how little I appreciated it until, well, now.
22. I really want to go get my picture taken with Santa but I can’t find a friend to go with me and geek-out too. Any takers???
23. It’s not Christmas until I’ve seen the original Home Alone movie. (AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!) Oh ‘comon, you dig. I can tell.
24. I wish it were more socially acceptable to donate money to a good cause rather than have to buy gifts for everyone. I read on a message board somewhere that this girl, every year on her birthday will sponsor a cat at her local shelter. She said she’s in college and poor so she can’t afford a lot, but she’ll sponsor one of the old cats with, like $25, just to keep him/her alive a little longer. I think that’s a great tradition and I’m thinking I’m going to copy that awesome idea. I just have to figure out which charity…
25. Jill told me about how she and a group of her friends are doing a used gift exchange where everyone brings something they own, but don’t use anymore (the requirement is nice stuff, in good condition, of course) and do a dirty santa kind of gift exchange with it. I think it’s an awesome idea instead of wasting money on things that no one really wants.
26. Megan’s mom’s recipe for sugar cookies is insanely delicious. It is rivaled only by the peanut butter cup cookies my babysitter made when I was in kindergarden. Yes, it was that long ago and I still remember them…they were that good (think kind of like two sugar cookies that are chocolate and actually cooked together with this creamy peanut buttery filling on the inside). And I just gained 2 lbs thinking about them. Terrific.
27. The worst thing ever is when you get stuck with a roll of ribbon that just won’t curl. You know, the kind that just turns flat and straight and kind of snarled and soggy after one once-over with the scissors…
28. It’s really hard to get tinsel out of a fake tree.
29. I don’t really have any traditions that I’d love to continue year after year. I can’t even think of any childhood ones (unless you count the soup) that are really special to me. That makes me sort of sad.
30. One sort of tradition, I guess you could call it, is that my dogs are ALWAYS included in Christmas baking. I make them fruity pebbles biscuits and candy cane cookies. (they’re special recipes just for dogs, I even have little bone and paw shaped cookie cutters).
31. One year, when I was a kid, the Christmas tree kept falling over and so my then-step-dad used rope and nailed it to the wall. Nice, huh? Someone hung the Christmas tree. It was scarring. We got a fake tree the next year, if I remember correctly.
32. There’s an elf hat at Target. I want to buy it for Molly (my black lab).
33. Two words: egg nog
34. This is my first adult, credit-card-free, cash-only Christmas. Thank you, Joe Sangl.

security

There are a few things in this world that are really important to a single girl. A safe and secure home is definitely one of them. You know safe from big burly bad guys, safe from those really skinny rodent-looking burglars, safe from the torment of things that go crawl and bump in the night…Safety is crucial. We don’t have some hot shot husband to kill spiders, flush roaches, and double check to make sure the patio door is locked. We’re on our own. And I don’t care how independent a girl is…there is something that will take her down. Usually it’s of the insect variety. Somehow it’s just not socially acceptable to arm yourself with a butcher knife and a baseball bat to try to kill them. People will just think you’re weird.

(Side note: someone remind me to tell you guys about the time it took a can of raid, a shovel, a cat, and about 45 minutes for me to dispose of a roach. Yes, I’m serious and no, you won’t be disappointed.)

As you already know, I have trouble with my upstairs neighbor (link to post here); trouble with has sadly gotten worse since my last post. One time I found myself dressed in shorts and a tee banging on their door in 30* weather at 1am begging them to turn down their music. They quizzed me before allowing me to state my problem. Yes, a quiz, along the lines of “who are you and what do you want?” Gee, it’s the middle of the night, it’s cold, I’m in my pajamas, my slipper is leaking cold air, I can’t feel my knees anymore, and your radio is on so loud its interfering with the satellite feeds at the space station, what do you think I’m doing out here? Asking for the time? Puh-lease.

But wait, folks! It gets better! My apartment complex has this referral policy…you know the type. If you refer someone, you get money off your rent. What a fantabulous method of getting more obnoxious people in the complex. Why didn’t I think of that? Doesn’t everyone want their upstairs arsonist’s friends to move in too?

Do you see where this is going? You do, don’t you?

Across the hall neighbor moved out. They were quiet. I liked them. They didn’t steal my parking spot either. New across the hall neighbor moved in…and…just when you think it can’t get any worse…it’s like those cheesy horror movies where the blond girl with the big boobs keeps running upstairs to escape the killer. You know what’s going to happen before you even decide which Jason movie to watch. Just like that…I say “new neighbor” and “apartment” in the same blog post and you know it’s coming.

So new across the hall neighbor(s) move in. I’m not sure if they both live there or not. It’s a young couple, maybe about 14 years old. They can’t possibly be legal, they’re tiny… like Tiny Timmy kind of tiny. And they smoke a lot of weed. And I mean so much that mushroom clouds escape their apartment every time they open the front door. The spider webs on the siding outside their door are even starting to look kind of psychedelic.

They share a truck. It’s huge. HUGE. Maybe the truck compared to their heights is messing up the proportions in my head. But it’s all red-necked out, I think my face is even with the top of the tires. It’s red, they like to back it into parking spots. I think they do that because the whole bed of the truck is full of massive tires. Maybe they’re spare tires. I’m not sure. But I think they don’t want their tire collection to be stolen. Because it’s a travesty, I mean someone could want to put their car up in the air 5 feet.

I might do that to my car…see my little SUV rolling around town on 5 foot tires. Hang on, sorry, got lost in the dream. *cough* Can someone mail me a confederate flag to stick in my back window?

So their car in and of itself is an eyesore that brings down the property value of my entire neighborhood. I try to not judge. Really I do. I’ve got no problem with people who can’t afford to have pretty, shiny new cars. What I have a problem with is people who at one point actually had a pretty, shiny new car and chose to redneck it out. Please. There are people starving in third world countries…there are people starving here in America, and these bozos blew their money on five foot tires, do-it-yourself window tint, and a great big antenna.

At first, across the hall neighbors didn’t really give me anything to dislike other than the fear I endured having to park anywhere near their monstrosity. One foul look and that truck could take my car OUT. My car is far from being paid for and that would be bad. So I’ve been trying to just avoid their car and park somewhere where my car will be safe if they decide to get stoned and play demolition derby in the parking lot.

But then I get this note on my front door from my apartment complex. I learned two interesting things from this letter: (1) apparently there is a crime problem in our neighborhood and we should be more vigilant in locking our doors and reporting suspicious activity and (2) we have a new property manager and her name is Cinnamon. *Cough* Great, I feel protected now.

So immediately this affects my already difficult nighttime routine…I already fear that there’s a meth lab upstairs, now I can be scared that the only thing I have to protect me from the robberies and other “unstated crime” in the area is some woman named Cinnamon. What sort of freak show is this?

After work yesterday, there were cop cars, (yes, cars, as in plural) outside of my building. I immediately get excited…why wouldn’t I? Surely they’ve busted the meth operation upstairs and now I don’t have to be terrified every night that my home will explode. But, no, the cops weren’t at upstairs neighbor’s place. They were across the hall. Maybe they’re growing pot. Or dealing the meth that upstairs neighbor brews.

I am officially living in the prison rehab wing of my building and didn’t know it. Why am I always the last to know?

And whatever happened to the whole “background checking people before they move in” thing? Maybe Cinnamon has been so busy fighting crime that she hasn’t had a chance to run them yet.

*Sneeze*

Who wants to help me move when my lease is up?

cinderella

I grabbed the familiar, battered step stool and methodically placed it in front of the kitchen sink. In an almost singular, tempestuous leap, I was standing on the stool and running warm soapy water into a sink full of dishes.

Of course none of my own dishes were present in that sink. They’d long been washed and put away. That knowledge…that I was spending all of my time cleaning up after others, after adult others no less, would just eat at me. I’d work and quietly sing under my breath…”Cinderelly, Cinderelly…night and day its Cinderelly…make the fire, fix the breakfast, wash the dishes, do the mopping…”

Naturally, there wasn’t much else my young mind could come up with in that little fit of anger. The pile of dishes might change, but still, it was a weekly ritual. Saturday would come, mom would head to work, and I’d be left at home with my then-step-dad where I think I was better known as “dishwasher” than “jen”. It’s a hard life being a grade school servant.

No, it really wasn’t that bad. It was just that there was a wicked dichotomy between the treatment of my brother and I. He’d be allowed to do pretty much anything he wanted. Anything. Usually it would involve cookies, pickles, candy, and free reign over the tv. To escape the unfairness – and to a kid the concept that “life aint fair” is a hard thing to wrap your head around whether you’re living it or not – I lived my life vicariously through the members of the Babysitters Club, the Wakefield twins (sweet valley high), Judy Blume characters, or anything else I could grab from the local library.

I guess, looking back, it makes sense that things turned out the way they did. I still try to live, if only a small portion of my life, through character extensions and fictitious places found in novels. I read for escape, for passion, for fun. And, my brother…he’s still fighting his childhood tendency to overindulge. Though long gone are the sugar highs and candy gorges. He’s moved onto bigger things, like heroin.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. It’s something my family has been struggling with for the better part of five years. Maybe longer. It seems like an eternity. Relapse followed by relapse. I fight the urge to completely engross myself in novel after novel (though, lets be real, there’s hardly a better place to live than in Forks with Edward and Bella, but I digress) and find myself in so many ways still cleaning up after him. But the messes are bigger than soggy crumbs and ketchup stains. No longer do I feel in control when equipped with a step stool and sponge. I can’t clean up the mess. No matter how hard I try.

And, really, it’s not my mess to clean up.

Apparently, you can take the girl out of dish-washer-hood, but she’ll always be Cinderelly on the inside. Trying to save the world one perpetual mess at a time. It’s second nature to me to try to take care of everyone, fix everything, take care of everything. It’s so hard to let go.

Exodus 14:14: “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

For those of you who hadn’t put two and two together, that’s the verse tattooed on the back of my neck. Perhaps I should have put it on my forehead instead. Maybe the message would hit home quicker. I thought that it might work its way through my thick skull by osmosis. Apparently, that didn’t work any better than sleeping with my history notes under my pillow before that big test in fifth grade. Dang it. I thought I was onto something.

Kidding aside, and roughly translated, this verse means, “back off Jen, this isn’t your battle.” But translated into life, what does that look like? How does that work in motion? While I believe in God, how do I find the patience to take the step between believing in him and straight up believing him when it comes to my family and brother-related drama, in particular?

It’s a constant struggle for me to remember that I can’t clean up everyone’s messes. The thing that frustrates me is that I really, sincerely, don’t want to continue to be the figurative maid in so many of my relationships. The problem is that I just don’t know how to stop. I feel selfish when I try to back out and just focus on myself.

I wonder, do we ever have the capability to completely overcome who we’ve become over the years? Or is it always going to be a constant struggle?

I’ve got at least four different answers to that question. Initially, I want to be pessimistic and say that no, we can’t completely overcome; we’ll struggle and then die. But that’s not true. That’s the easy way out…to say “eh, it’s how I was born, I can’t do anything about it.” I think the more accurate answer would be to acknowledge that – in my case – I serve a BIG God and the only thing I really need to focus on is patience.

And maybe I should devote a little more time to a good book. Live vicariously through a few more characters. Read Twilight again. Something.

my “i really want to read this” list

In the spirit of my last post, and just for fun, I’m including a completely non-comprehensive short list of some novels I want to read. Some of them I’ve already read, but most are just works that I plan to get around to one day. Given my strange penchant for organization, I’ve even divided them up into sub-lists.

From the top-100 list:

• Ulysses, James Joyce
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
• Emma, Jane Austen
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
• Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
• The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
• Madam Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

Other books on my list:

• Winesburg Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck
• Losing Jonathan, Robert & Linda Waxler
• The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
• Mere Christianity, CS Lewis
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
• The Princess Bride, William Goldman
• Villette, Charlotte Bronte
• Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
• Persuasion, Jane Austen
• Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

i’m an english major, of course i’m well-read

It’s kind of obvious isn’t it?…a safe assumption that after a BA and an MA in English, I’d be extremely well-read and able to talk about any literary topic at length (while simultaneously acting bored and spouting regurgitated cliffsnotes-esque commentary). After all, it’s what we English people do. We also like to walk around looking slightly emo, drinking lattes, and pushing our poetry on tangled crowds at open mic nights.

Ouch that touched a nerve, didn’t it?

Fortunately for me, I’m none of those things. I read a lot, but by my own standards, I wouldn’t call myself well-read. Granted, I think it’s a safe assumption to say that the vast majority of English majors out there do not fit the stereotype described above. And that’s a good thing, because the cost of lattes would sky-rocket and entirely too many oddly-dressed people would be talking in pentameter. We won’t think about the potential mayhem that could ensue if the hardback versus paperback debate was stirred amongst the stereotypes. Egad.

Personally, I don’t know which side would win in that debate. I mean, on the one hand, hardback books provide that glorious opportunity to crack the spine. And they look so much better on a book shelf. I think they smell better too. But on the other hand, let’s be real, they weigh about 1400 lbs and are completely and obtusely non-portable. And I don’t feel as guilty dog-earing paperbacks as I do hardbacks. That’s kind of weird, huh?

Sarcasm and strange tangents aside, a recent conversation reminded me of this goal I had when I was younger. I wanted to find a list (ha! as if there were only one) of the top one hundred novels ever written and then read them all. (My thoughts of grandeur always tickle me in retrospect.) So, of course, I went to the omniscient god of the universe, google, and found not one, but about six hundred thousand lists. I looked at quite a few of them – Time, NY Times, Random House, etc, but they were all different and the subjectivity of selecting from the series of subjective list started to make my eyes cross.

Obviously, I needed a method to pick a list; so I quickly decided at my prerequisite would be that my two favorite books (Jane Eyre and Lord of the Flies) must be on the list. It just wouldn’t be right in my biased little world if they weren’t. So that helped a little, but still, I was overwhelmed and starting to have that same anxious feeling I get in the DVD aisle at Walmart when I’m trying to pick out the correct Hannah Montana DVD for my little sister’s birthday.

Then it happened…google took pity on me and handed me a link to a page so perfect it might as well have had a little silver bow on it…it’s a book-related blog called BookWise where the author compiled her own list of the top 100-novels using a mathematical method to sift through the rankings of the top six lists. Genius.

So there I sat with my new somewhat subjective scientifically-contrived list of novels. The first book is The Great Gatsby, check! But then, it sort of went down hill from there. After reading through the list about four times, I realized that I’ve read only 17 of the novels. There are another six or seven that I’ve either partially read or think I might possibly have been assigned to read it in school but never actually did. I was tempted to include these in my count of books read – shoot, 24 looks a heck of a lot better and more sophisticated than 17. But that would be a lie. And then I’m sure there’s some weird literary curse out there and I wouldn’t want to subject myself to that by fibbing over something as trivial as the number of books on a list that I’ve read.

But really the number did throw me. Surely with all the years of college, all the AP and advanced English classes in high school, all the book club books and extracurricular reading, I would have more than 17, like a quarter of them or something. I love classics. How have I not read more? It’s a humbling thing. And I don’t even consider myself well-read. What if I did? Imagine that let down.

Regardless, I looked over the vast sections of black spaces where there was no “hurray I read this one” check mark next to the title and I realized two things. (1) the majority of books on my mental “I really want to read this” list are on the top novels list, so I could get myself really close to reading the whole thing without setting that silly goal and (2) there’s another Joseph Conrad book on the list…as if having to read Heart of Darkness 18 times during my college career wasn’t enough…which pretty much means that I should throw out the goal now or suck it up and hold onto a dwindling thread of hope that Nostromo will be less painful than Heart of Darkness.

Hmm, decisions, decisions. I might have to ponder this issue over a nonfat latte.