Sunday! Sundae! Sunday!

Hello, Lovers.

2009-03-16T01:59:00.003-05:00

A year and some change has come and gone since last I updated this blog and three years (how? how is that possible?) since I began.

The problem with being a professional blogger is personal blogging becomes an unexciting prospect. People who drive forklifts for a living rarely are expected to go home and wheel the Hyster around during their free time (a hyster is a brand of jack. Don't ask me how I know this).

So a quick update of my life in the past year:

The fibromyalgia was a misdiagnosis. I have psoriatic arthritis, which is being treated and is almost totally under control. That means I've been living pain-free for the better part of a year and thanks be to God (and Remicade)for that.

School is still puttering along. I'm more than halfway to graduating, thank goodness, but I've still got many a weary mile to go.

The past year I've lost my beloved grandfather; the one man I'll ever truly and unreservedly love, and two of my uncles. I presided over two of the funerals.

My younger brother had testicular cancer which spread into late stage II, but is in remission and aside from a bitchin' scar that zippers up his torso, the kid looks good.

Church:

Well, I've got a key to the building, and they want me to run for vestry next year which I may or may not do. I'm pretty damn burned out, to be completely honest.

I've started singing again in an organized choir. We'll have been together for a year in May. My journey from professional soprano to not singing at all, to folk tunes and back to professional soprano is a long and sweet story for another day, and one with not a small amount of romance, either.

Anyway.

Now that I'm moving away from other online distractions, I will try to give this a go one more time. I'll attempt to update once a week, probably more as Holy Weeks looms large and I need to vent/cry/brag/whatever.

A few housekeeping notes:

This time I am not interested in playing nice. I'm not interested in being in anyone's sandbox (worthy sandboxes though they may be) and I'm especially not interested in being kicked out of one because I don't play by the rules. This is my pony show and --since this is the last vestige of my life not hemmed in my social confines of niceness or gentility-- I plan on defending it until the end, and doing it, in the immortal words of The Chairman, My Way.

That doesn't mean that I won't BE nice; I'm a nice person, that's just how I roll, and I'm certainly not out to offend anybody. BUT I want to make it absolutely clear that Sunday! Sundae! Sunday! has a loving but strict "like it or lump it" policy, starting right now.

Anyone indulging in pearl-clutching outrage and shock is welcome to do so, but will be pointed to a collection of online vendors selling a variety of socks and hosiery, all suitable for following S3 protocol on pearl-clutching (see also: sock in it, putting a damn)

The Prodigal Sundae

2008-01-08T21:56:00.000-06:00

I don't think I need to tell anyone that God is funny, but God is FUNNY.

Since we last spoke I have been formally diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, which I've been battling for the past year and a half but am only now feeling the brunt of.As a result of that and the accompanying fatigue/stress/pain I nearly failed out of college --incompletes, not actual flunking-- and stopped going to church entirely. I knew I needed to get back to church because I always felt so good when I was there, but by the time Sunday would roll around I would be so exhausted from the fibro that I'd just sleep all weekend, so I just didn't go.

I don't think I realized how unhappy I was until I took my vacation. When I found myself driving from Nashville to Richmond and detachedly realizing that I really didn't care if a truck killed me right there on the highway because my dog was safe, I scared myself right back into sanity.

What I didn't know then was that I was terribly ill. Not just with the Fibro, but with some sort of mystery disease combined with good old-fashioned Exhaustion. Not lower-case exhaustion, although I was that as well, but Big E Exhaustion. The sort that lands you in hospitals.

I got sicker and sicker. Christmas came and went and I didn't see or speak to another living person. I lost my voice for several days. Actually, I lost everything for several days since I don't remember much between the 21st and the 29th. I went to the doctor who discovered I was so dehydrated that the RN escorted me next door to the Injection Center, afraid I would collapse if I had to walk alone. I've slowly recovered and have gone back to work, albeit in zombie mode.

Then last Thursday I got an email.

It was an announcement that the 18-week Extended Discovery Class I helped facilitate last year was to start the following Tuesday, and I would be expected to facilitate again. I nearly lost my mind. Then God found it for me.

On Sunday morning I went to church. Not to worship, but because I had a meeting for a refugee ministry I co-chair. I was getting ready to tell George that I couldn't be part of the class when guess who tromps down the stairs and melts my heart?

George. I have a soft spot the size of Texas for George AND he was wearing the silk tie I bought him at Canterbury Cathedral.

Then I had a sudden lightning bolt moment of clarity.

I looked around the lobby at all the folks I hadn't seen in months and realized THIS, THIS is what it's all about. THIS is my life's calling. To love and serve the Lord with all my heart with all my soul and with all my might. It doesn't MATTER if I don't start seminary until I'm 31 instead of 30. I almost died (yes, I said it) this month because I'd let myself get so run down and miserable, and for what? So I could graduate six months earlier? That's ridiculous.

So I've decided to take the semester off. I'm taking time to refocus, get healthy and just put myself back on the path from which --through impatience and vanity-- I strayed. It's the best decision I've made in years.

Oh, and the funny part? You've probably already guessed. Last Sunday when I had my great big realization...that was Epiphany Sunday.

The Further Adventures of a Control Enthusiast

2007-10-15T16:37:00.000-05:00

Today I did not control things that ~~desperately needed controlling by me me no one else but me~~ could be handled by others.

No, I really did. Admittedly it sounds like a small thing, choosing and pricing out a keg of imported beer. But it's huge. I mean, it's the beer. What if it's the wrong beer? What if it doesn't show up at all and we've got 75 people who were promised beer and there is no beer to be had? What if what it what if…BOOM!

Here's the thing, I'm not all that controlling in day to day life, I'm just not that high strung (says the girl who gets electrodes shot into her body three times a week to force her neck to relax) but when it comes to important events --especially parties-- where I am in charge. Oh sweet Jesus, watch out.

I come by it honestly. For the most part I'm the only person I know who has both the genes for good taste and for borderline insane micromanagement. My colleagues with good taste tend to live on the breezy "don't fence me in with your schedules and dates, man" side of life while my colleagues who Get Things Done, angels though they are, all seem to have the aesthetics defined as Early Nurse Ratched.

Plus, I'm judgy. I eye with suspicion anyone who --without good reason-- fails to hang their artwork at the internationally agreed-upon museum standard of "57 inches on center." I do not suppose these people are inherently evil, but I shudder to my very soul at the thought of letting them pick out napkins without appropriate guidance.

Still it must be said in my favor that I do not give vent to my crazy very often. For example, if the person in charge of paper supplies shows up with (shudder) kitty-printed multiple hued paper napkins of the 400 for a dollar variety instead of the respectable and God-fearing plain ivory dinner napkins (artfully arranged into a helix of course) I will not say a word and eventually, with therapy and perhaps a vacation, be able to let it go.

I feel like Jeeves when he retreated into the kitchen in great alarm when Bingo Little --one of Bertie's friends-- was speaking to him. When discovered by Bertie, Jeeves replied "I apologize Sir, I shall be better directly, it's just… that Mr Little's tie ..it has little horseshoes on it. It is sometimes difficult just to shrug these things off, Sir."

Okay okay I'm here, and vain as ever

2007-10-15T14:09:00.000-05:00

Oof, y'all don't even KNOW. It is well that I get paid for writing, because otherwise I'd never do it again. The irony is of course when no one was paying me or when I wasn't getting press, I could not write enough. I crafted perfect marble sentences in my head while I was getting my eyebrows done. Whimsical short stories birthed themselves fully formed out of my noggin while standing in line for Communion. They rolled around perfectly in my head and poured out from my fingers. Now that I've got "Manolo for the Big Girl" and "Ayyyy!" and all my university requirements, well, I'm pretty useless. I'm still writing but only out of necessity.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I did a photoshoot with 666 Photography (disclaimer: they love puppies and children and help old ladies across the street) and here is what Gayla calls "the teaser photo" i.e. the first low res shot of a series.

I can't say I love the jacket --a silk velvet reproduction 20's robe coat-- and the flowers aren't really my style, but she's a great photographer and Lisa is a genius with a make up brush.

A Serious and Thoughtful Entry? Say It Ain't So!

2007-09-25T14:52:00.000-05:00

It never bothered me when my mother and father got divorced, yet when I think about my beloved Anglican Communion splitting up, I find myself on the verge of tears.

Maybe I'm so heartbroken because I'm part of the reason the Communion is tearing itself apart. After all, I'm a woman called to the Presbyterate and the idea of a female priest in the eyes of the Southern Hemisphere Bishops --and many in the north as well-- is repulsive. "These women are not priests, but a new order of transvestites" one man of God so nicely put it.

Um you know what buddy? You're wrong. You can say women can't become priests because we --since we have breasts and ovaries and whatnot-- don't look like Jesus and thus can't become in persona Christi in the act of consecrating the oblations and forgiving sins, but …and I'm just going to step out on a limb here… I'm pretty sure that when Jesus was doing that, he didn't do any of it with his penis. That's crass I know, but the point is valid.

I truly believe that Jesus was both fully God and fully Man, both a ripped Jewish dude named Eoshua, and Christ the Lord, Savior of All Mankind. But y'know…he's been the only one who's been able to pull that off. So it seems to me that the rest of us either have to pick one or the other to imitate and take into our souls and I can't help but think that it's his heavenly, not human, nature we want to replicate and I'm pretty sure that God, the infinite and unknowable, doesn't care if his disciples pee standing up.

Okay, so that's all doctrinal stuff, but what about the practical side?

When a woman loses her child in childbirth, who's going to stand there with her as she rails against God for allowing that to happen? Someone who's never been kicked by the child inside them or even had their body swell with just the possibility of new life? Or when a teenage boy is struggling with his faith because he can't understand why God would allow him to be born gay if that just meant he was going to be cast into Hell?

I don't have the answers, but I have an idea and that idea is there are a lot of experiences in this world thank goodness and no man or woman can have had them all. Maybe instead of focusing on whose hand basket will make it first down to Hell, we should concentrate on finding as many ways to spread the gospel of love to as many people --especially those who are traditionally marginalized-- as possible.

It's just an idea, but I think it's a good one.

The Bag and the Lady

2007-09-21T08:39:00.000-05:00

She's exactly 5 feet tall in striped Ferragamo slippers and Ralph Lauren jeans (she has the hips and waist professionally tailored but she cuts the cuffs off herself and leaves them raw and bedraggled.) What's left of her hair is Vivienne Westwood red.

Her name is G-- and she's quite possibly one of the most fascinating women on the planet. Born 76 years ago in Tasmania she went to boarding school in London and

Switzerland, reputedly took Dali AND Chagall as her lovers, became an art collector, moved to Hawaii, ran a nightclub and a private art gallery. When she retired and moved to Austin she opened up a small shop, which she keeps booby trapped in the most delightful way.

See, she puts out bits of real treasure here and there and uses them to test a potential customer's eye. Spot the exquisite Victorian mourning cameo half-hidden among the handful of pretty but ordinary 1940's ones or the lone Schiaperelli along a wall of other, lesser hats and you instantly become part of her circle. You become someone "who knows" and that is where the fun begins.

When I walked in last night, all I wanted was a pair of earrings.

The dress I was wearing didn't work without them and I didn't feel like going home before traipsing up to The Domain for the unending tedium of an obligatory but all-but-soul crushing boutique crawl.

I found a pair of earrings --freshwater pearl dangles-- and a fun but inexpensive watersnake clutch where the skins faded from dark red to smoky-gray in a very Prada F/W07 sort of way. I was just ready to have her ring me up when I spot what looked like the corner of a 1940's alligator purse poking out from a display behind the counter.

I asked her about it.

Her face lit up. As she revealed it to me, my face did the same. I'd found the biggest easter egg of them all a flawless --and I mean flawless-- alligator handbag. It wasn't Hermes, but it was close and the quality was almost as fine. I have never seen a vintage alligator bag in such pristine condition.

We talked for the next 2 hours. Her romances with various artists, our mutual adoration for Galliano, the blessing and curse of being born with "an eye", and what exactly was wrong with the dress I was wearing.

By the time we'd finished chatting she had knocked several hundred dollars off the alligator, comped the watersnake, the earrings AND the Schiaperelli and promised me a private viewing of her personal collection of art and jewelry.

I'm excited and honored to see her jewelry, but I *can't wait* to hear about Chagall.

The Boy and the Belt

2007-09-17T11:30:00.000-05:00

I am old fashioned in the sense that I think men should be able to Make and Fix things. I enjoy Making and Fixing things too (mostly cocktails) and I believe I've gone on record saying that if the priest thing doesn't work out I'd like to be a mechanic. HOWEVER just because I enjoy something doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy someone else doing it twice a much.

Enter the belt.

Like Style Spy who inspired me I have been lusting after this Mossimo belt since the F/W 07show. Unfortunately, I'd have to strap two of the buggers together to get one to circumnavigate my waist, and I just don't have $3000 to spend on a belt, no matter how divine.

So I did what any red-blooded American girl would do. I threw myself on the mercy of the handiest guy I knew and begged him to make me the damn thing.

Friends, I was pathetic.

I cajoled, I wheedled, I made weapons-grade puppy dog eyes. I even went so far as to offer him cupcakes which is as we all know is one half of the one-two punch guaranteed to get a girl anything she want. The other half --which is not on the table since I'd like to keep at least one platonic male friend-- is not suitable for a family blog.

And because he is with the exception of Jesus and the three Johns --Wayne, Cash and Galliano-- my favorite man to ever have lived, he agreed to make the it for me.

So hurrah. I will soon have a fantastical belt, suitable for all my modernist cage corset needs, which as you know are many. The victory is bittersweet though. See, soon he'll know my real measurements.

…and then he'll have to die.

2007-09-14T02:26:00.000-05:00

It's 2:26 on Friday morning and I cannot go to sleep. I can't concentrate on blogging either, I've just been immersed in trying on different tops which I've cut up and worn back to front with a DVF ballet wrap sweater I just can't seem to make work. I've tried on all my unworn shoes and ate a truly disgusting piece of banana cream pie which I bought --though heaven knows why-- at the grocery store while I was avoiding coming home.

I want to do something to keep my mind off tomorrow, or rather, today because today, Thomas goes to his new family.

This is how it went down. I got a call a week ago from my apartment manager, Steve told me there's a law against potentially aggressive breeds and for some bizarre reason, English Bulldogs are on that list. I needed to "remove the animal" or be evicted.

I'm still not sure that was legal, but my lease did say something about dogs over 55 pounds, which both Thomas and Dozer are, though just barely. I didn't want to risk losing Dozer too, so I did what I had to do. I found Thomas a new home.

I didn't want to do it, of course I didn't want to, I wish I could have said "go ahead, evict me" but I can't have an eviction on my application to seminary. They'd toss me out before I was even let in.

I'll be honest as well; he was too much for me. Too strong, too dominant, too stubborn for someone with a chronic pain problem so debilitating that sometimes I can't move my arms or walk across the room.

Even after six weeks of intensive doggy bootcamp --I only paid for two, but the trainer didn't think Thomas was ready after only two weeks. He was a tough nut to crack-- he obeyed the collar, not me.

I never bonded with Thomas the way I did with Dozer and I know it was my fault. I wasn't aggressive enough with him, didn't have the time to take him to the park every day like I did when Dozer was a pup. I love him SO much. but I failed him. I wasn't strong enough.

His new home will be much better than the one he made with me. He'll have a big family with a mother and a father and two adult boys, a couple of dogs to play with who can wrestle just as hard as he does, and a great big yard and tomorrow after a bath and a brush I'll deliver him there.

G'bye Tonkus, my handsomest hound.

On the Mend!

2007-09-06T00:36:00.000-05:00

So Henry has decided to calm down, which is good news for everyone. It's my own stupid fault I got him though --he's non-bacterial-- so I guess I have to be more diligent about not taking my pain medication on an empty stomach (I know. I forget. Besides it's "just" naproxen.)

In relationship news I was supposed to go on a first date tonight, but didn't feel up to it. I begged off and he was very nice. Instead I ended up talking with The One Who Will Eventually Get Away. He was my high school sweetheart's best friend. I was so into him and he felt the same way but we didn't want to hurt my fella, so nothing happened. We've been pining away for each other off and on for the past 10 years. Very strange thing tonight as he asked me "what would you call us?"

There's no good answer to that question, so I just said "tragic" and we laughed it off. Really it's not all that tragic. I am crazy for him and have been for years, and he's the same for me but realistically it's not going to happen, at least not any time soon --we live 1800 miles away and both have active dating lives-- but every once in a while one of us gets a bit misty and then the "us" questions start. We're not tortured or unhappy because we can't be together but still, it makes one wonder.

Oddly enough, I like this guy I was supposed to go out with tonight because he reminds me so much of my pal. Same mannerisms, same jokes, even the same unusual job.

2007-09-04T15:54:00.000-05:00

I think I really am hungry now. Not just the gnawing feeling from Henry, my newborn ulcer which has laid me out since Saturday night, but actual hunger. It makes sense. I mean all I've had in the past 48 hours have been two pieces of bread with raw Virginia wildflower honey, two cups of vegetable broth with nutritional yeast and a handful of lemon snaps, which I accidentally bought because I though they were gingersnaps, which always make me feel better.

In college when I was having all my tumbly woes (a prolapsed stomach) the only thing that made me feel better was milk mixed with Frangelico and Chambourd and ginger snaps. Now I worry about the acid from the milk and the sugar from everything else.

I'm also very tired. I guess that's not eating. Still, class tonight and drinks at the Roaring Fork after that. Then I can go home and sleep…sitting up.

His Dark Materials: good enough to make me mad.

2007-08-29T21:24:00.001-05:00

Over a bottle of cava the other night, the lovely and fragrant Style Spy suggested I read the His Dark Materials triology. When she mentioned it, the phrase rang a bell --I first thought it was Milton, but no, of course it was Dante-- but I'd never read them.

Strictly speaking, aside from Victorian fantasy and allegories, I've never been a big fantasy fan. My parents were too into the stuff for their own good and when I was young I watched them lose touch with reality because of it. They preferred the world of Renaissance Festivals and reenactments to the world where they had a daughter and a son. They were young. It happens.

Anyway, I'm now 2/3rds of the way through the series and I'm just not quite sure what to make of it. The books are well written, that's for sure. Not especially elegant though to be fair, I've been spoiled as of late by spending too much time with Jerome K. Jerome, and Alphonse "Cream Rinse" Daudet (pictured below)

To say that the series takes a very dismal view of the Church is an understatement. In his novels --which occur in a series of parallel worlds, each resembling to some extent our own-- the reformation never took place. Instead of rejecting the papacy at Geneva, John Calvin became Pope and moved the whole shebang to Geneva.

There was no mention of the Great Schism either, so in Pulman's world(s) the Church --known as the Magisterium, an interesting if somewhat clumsy reference to the catechism declaring the Bishop of Rome and his pals the only people capable of interpreting the word of God -- is the only game in town. Oh, and they're evil. And they run everything. And did I mention they're evil?

Okay, I can be down with that, that's Scary Catholic Dystopia 101 and who doesn't love a Scary Catholic Dystopia, especially when it's as well-written as this? But God -- known as The Authority-- is also thought of as evil and that...well that I just can't wrap my mind around.

There is no space in my understanding for God as Malevolent Tyrant. I even have a hard time with vengeful. It just doesn't mesh with everything I know about the meaning of Christianity. To me, God is a god of limitless love, infinite forgiveness. Any evil --and yes, there is a lot-- done in his name is done by men and women who allowed the message of love to be corrupted.

I mean, when Jesus said "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it:‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’" I kinda think he meant it.

Anyway, Lord Asriel (do you see what I mean about the naming? It can go one of two ways I think, either straight out Azrael as the Angel of Death/Helper of God or it's a variation on Israel and Azrael, like Caleb in East of Eden was a sort of portmanteau variation on Cain and Abel. I hope it's the latter...or they can go all Islam on my ass, which would be interesting and very unexpected) is fixing to wage war on God.

Wage war on God? Are you kidding me? Assuming I can suspend my disbelief enough to imagine God as Scary Catholic Dude In The Sky, he's GOD. All powerful. That's just how he rolls. And don't get all Hermes Trismegistus/Emerald Tablet "as below so above" on me, because that's horse hockey.

I'm going to start the final book tomorrow and if another person I like gets killed or Mrs Coulter doesn't and there isn't some beautiful but subtle message about God's unchanging love I am gonna be pissed.

...I'm not holding my breath though.

Burden and a Gift

2007-08-21T14:48:00.000-05:00

"It's a blessing and a burden."

How many times do I hear that? How many times do I SAY that?

There are very few gifts that aren't burdens in some way. It makes me think about Kant and how the only intrinsically good thing is a good will. Fair enough, I'll buy that. I'll even extrapolate to say that a good will is never in and of itself a burden.

What else?

A light heart, a good humor. I'm fortunate to have both of those.

…and then there's genius. Number one with a bullet on the All Time Top Burden and Blessing Countdown. Genius is not an especially rare commodity. I know a handful of 'em and with very few exceptions; they seem to spend a lot being miserable, or at least miserable to be around.

I know three who don't: my beloved Professor McG, my grandfather in Nashville, and me. Wait, four, if you count Michael.

Yeah, I'm one too. Textbook polymath: exceptional and rare, but not exceptionally rare. I come by it honestly, my Nashville grandfather is a polymath with an eye towards the sciences and my other one has a true genius for languages. I can do pretty much everything…except for pull-ups.

Being a polymath can be frustrating but it's not as lonely as some of the other types of genius. There's not the feeling of being a one-trick pony. I live in fear of being thought of as "just" a liberal arts writer type. I was well on my way to becoming a field botanist at the top of my class at one of the finer eastern universities when I got the call to ministry. If I couldn't be a scientist I wanted to be a mechanic (still do) or maybe a handy man (I like taking things apart and fixing them).

I never once thought I'd make a living, or at least most of one, as a writer.

Then again, I never thought I'd make one as a priest, either.

I'm Not Even Hung Over

2007-08-11T12:55:00.000-05:00

Wah. I do not want to go to the Newcomers Open House. I want to stay in bed with the lights down listening to Tom Waits and doing some sort of long-format napping.

Full disclosure. for as much as I joke about drinking and being hung over, I don't really drink that much. Just not my style. I have had exactly two hangovers in my life. One was the morning after my 27th birthday party --two bands, two burlesque dancers and many many shots of tequila even though I didn't drink after midnight-- where I woke up the next morning face-down on the carpet, using my own fake hair as a pillow and clutching a giant roll of tin foil I had somehow collected during the evening.

The other was the morning the night Michael and I officially parted ways but had to be at a live DVD recording together. My friends lovingly kept me on one side of the building and Michael on the other. They also "lovingly" made sure that the beer I had in my hand was never empty, thus the two beers I thought I consumed ended up being many, many (many) more. Then two boys from California --one a former punk god with tattoos of monkeys all over his body and one with knuckle tattoos reading "LONG SHOT"-- stopped me from buying a Cadillac sight unseen and took me to have a bagel instead. Thanks boys!

Woo!

2007-08-06T12:20:00.001-05:00

anyone want to guess what my final grade was in my stupid Ethics class?

Wow, I did NOT see that coming.

Of course I should be all pious and reverent and whatnot and say something wise about how good always comes up on the side of right eventually, but seriously...the only thing going through my mind right now is this, directed to my completely unethical groupmates:

Weekend Update

2007-08-06T10:30:00.000-05:00

I cannot tell you how long it's been since I went down to the clubs to see the gang. For someone who was once crowned the Empress of Red River, I sure have been neglecting my royal duties.

Yet Saturday night found me hitting my old beat. It was great.

Initially I was hesitant; Michael's band was playing at Headhunters and I wasn't sure I even wanted to be around.

Michael, if you'll cast your memory back, was my long term whatever who dumped me via instant message after he met this East German Amnesiac to whom he is now married, but seriously y'all, it's been like three years...(two years? Two years I think) and besides, I got Red River and all our friends in the "divorce."

So I tossed on my devastating new black and white dress, which I ripped off of Charles Busch in Die! Mommie! Die! (who in turn ripped off Marilyn Monroe in her unreleased film "Something's Gotta Give" pictured above) grabbed my long suffering shar pei, Dozer, and hit the street.

(Charles Busch in Die! Mommie! Die!)

I didn't end up going into a single club but chatted outside Beerland and Headhunters. It was so nice to see the old Black Cat gang (these are the people who --before Beerland opened-- would hang out at the sadly-incinerated Black Cat Lounge) but also a little bittersweet. I can't say why exactly, only that I miss looking breathlessly forward to the first Saturday of every month, deciding what hair and outfits to wear and dancing like crazy, then going back to Michael's for cocktails and whatnot. That used to be the best day of my month. Now, often as not, I think about going but opt to go to bed early, or do homework . Yawnsville, right?

And now, because every story deserves a happy ending, I walked by Headhunters, peeked in and saw Michael and his new wife and my first thought was a dispassionate "meh." Not excited, not melancholy, just "meh." Frankly, seeing the Crushproof boys (my mechanics) elicited a bigger gut reaction.

I guess I really don't care.

2007-08-02T23:35:00.000-05:00

Clean laundry, fresh sheets, two sleeping dogs at the foot of the bed and no more Ethics class. God's in His Heaven and all's right with the world.

Remind me to show you THE most amazing Dior ankle boots tomorrow. They're breathtaking.

Undead!

2007-08-02T00:23:00.000-05:00

I'm here, no really I am AND I've got a ton of exciting news...none of which I can share quite yet, but let us say that things are looking very rosy in the blogosphere.

There's been a lot of face-peelingly tedious drama recently and I'd just as soon it go away. I know there are people who thrive on that sort of stuff, but I'm not one of them. It makes me tired and I always feel like I should be sitting in the back of the scene, dressed in a black cocktail dress, chain smoking and slugging bourbon from a hip flask. Of course I don't like bourbon and my only flask --a coffin-shaped sterling silver critter-- hasn't been used for years (besides, strapping that thing onto my thigh would totally ruin the line of my dress.

I've got a photo shoot with 666 Photography at the end of September. It's a 1920's concept so I'm trying to source some appropriate gear. I figure it's easier to come prepared and avoid any possible embarrassment with her not having the right sizes for me. I'm thinking a decadently fringed silk and velvet robe chinoise over a simple bias-cut (think Vionnet)black slip. It'll be interesting to see if the hairstylist will put me in pin curls or leave my ringlets, Clara Bow-style. Gayla builds all her own sets and is beyond brilliant, so I know the shots will turn out, but I'm still anxious. I'm also sitting for a local photographer sometime in the fall, but I've no idea what the concept is there, so fiddle dee dee. You'd think she'd find someone better than a tall round girl with crazy hair and a face like a cartoon, but there you have it.

Oh. My. God.

2007-07-26T15:19:00.001-05:00

It just keeps getting better.

The Unethical Ethics group, well two out of the five, decided that they didn't like the paper and are going to rewrite it. Never mind that I've never in my college career gotten anything less than an A on any paper and that their masterpieces which I so CRUELLY violated were the ramblings of a 9th grader whose sole purpose in life was to string together as many logical fallacies and stupid clichés as humanly possible.

At this point I don't even care because I can get a 0 on that paper and still do just fine in the class but there was much pearl clutching and "OH I'M SO HURT" um, a) I don't give a deontological damn and b) you called a "secret meeting" behind my back to railroad me and I still worked my ass off to defend your inherently indefensible judgement. Why? Because I'm a grown up. That is how we roll.

See, apparently the words I used were too big AND I cut too much of the conclusion (which was originally written by a very nice woman who barely speaks English).

I pretty much just told them to do whatever they wanted because I had a final to study for.

I'm getting too old for this #@$%.

Ethics Class: Fin

2007-07-26T10:43:00.000-05:00

I have been awake for 30 hours and 43 minutes. I have been awake for 30 hours and 43 minutes (now 44) because I had to edit the stupid Unethical Ethics paper for my group, who clearly have never written a paper in their collective lives. I thought it would take me two, maybe three hours.

Wrong. Twelve hours. Complete rewrite and it's an A paper. I can feel it in my bones. It's immoral and unethical and did an excellent job of reminding me why it's important that I use my powers for good instead of evil, but I am DONE. Done with that group, done (mostly) with that class. D.O.N.E. DONE.

And for a little celebration --and a total departure from my normal cherub-like demeanor-- I would like to share with you a scene that I dream of re-enacting with my Ethics group...that is, when I actually get a chance to sleep.

(language warning)

Scowls and Slime

2007-07-23T16:39:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling very serious and professorial today in my beige mohair cardie, glasses and hair done up in two little buns. I sort of want to scowl at someone, but I am not a good scowler. The problem is I can't just scowl with my eyes, I have to scowl with my mouth too, except then my mouth goes all funny and pouty and I end up looking like a petulant 6 year old which, while legitimately fearsome in its own way, does not evoke the sort of terror/professional respect I would ordinarily prefer.

***

My ethics class, which concludes next Saturday, cannot possible be over soon enough for my liking. I'm not usually contemptuous of people, but wow, I really am of one member of the group. Thinking of her actually sickens me. It's not just a mistake she's making. People make mistakes all the time, but she's smart enough to know the right thing and is perverting something good and pure into something slimy just to protect herself. Actually, I won't call her slimy. It's an insult to gastropods everywhere.

I know I should be able to suck it up, but somehow I can't get past that people in an ethics class are doing unethical things. I'm not sure if they realize they're unethical or if they know it and are doing it anyway.

I'm not sure which is worse.

Between the Sheets

2007-07-18T22:42:00.000-05:00

When I was sick my grandmother would take care of me. She wasn't coddling exactly, few true nurses are, but she knew precisely what I needed and set about giving it to me in no uncertain terms. It was one of the few times I can remember ever truly being taken care of.

First she would run a cool bath for me in her tub. Using her tub was a treat. Usually I had to use the plain white one across the hall from my room in the bathroom which wa boring blue and white and had no windows, but her bathroom was beautiful, with tiny pink and black tiles on the floor and a view of the oak tree in our wild back yard.

While I soaked, Grandmama would strip my bed, replacing the limp sweaty cotton sheets with the crisp, thick white percale sheets, stiff and clean as her nurses uniform. The comforter stuffed with spun silk would disappear and in its place would be a thin cotton blanket with a thick tape of satin ribbon binding one end, so faded and threadbare that I just knew it had been used to cover her own sick children, all those years ago.

When I was out of the bath she would sit me on the closed lid of the commode and rub my arms and legs with a pale blue bath oil until my pale limbs shone glossy and pink. Once I was sufficiently scrubbed and buffed, she'd send me off with a thermometer under my tongue to wait at the kitchen table until she called "time" and pulled the thin glass pipe from my mouth.

Sometimes she would get me to eat, usually she wouldn't. When anyone fell ill they became involuntary participants in the BRAT diet consisting only of bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. Since I only cared for two of the four components --applesauce and toast-- I would often feign fatigue and beg to be let to take a nap.

There was nothing like sliding into those clean white sheets stretched so tightly across my bed. Do you remember the first time Mr Toad sees a motorcar? "Oh joy" he says "oh bliss" he was transported.

So was I.

I would shimmy out of my clothing, dropping them on a pile on the shiny teak floors and carefully insinuate myself between the sheets, wanting to savor the pristine sensation of those taut sheets stretched perfectly across my bed. I'd lie there eyes closed just breathing, trying to memorize the smell --the combination clorox and detergent and the soap grandmama used and stored in the linen closet. Nothing has ever smelled cleaner or more reassuring than those sheets, and I doubt anything ever will again.

Crickets

2007-07-17T14:36:00.000-05:00

The doldrums are upon us. After 40 days and nights of rain Austin is settling into the slow rhythm that gets us through the long, hot Texas summer. The rivers and lakes are receding back into their shores, but a sudden violent downpour floods the roads, running off the water-logged ground.

The crickets have taken up their summer residence in the cool corners of the sanctuary and only seem to come out during services to serenade the choir or crawl up the back of old ladies' legs. I like the crickets and like to imagine have tiny little homes in the pipe organs where they practice their music all day. Father Cricket wears a mossy green cardigan, threadbare at the elbows, which Mother Cricket fashioned from a bit of woolen sock that had been torn on a nail and given to the women's sewing circle to be mended before joining the great tumble of clothes lying in resigned disrepute under a carefully hand-lettered sign reading:

Donations Here
(God Bless)

Let's hear what Keats has to say.

On the grasshopper and cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the grasshopper's - he takes the lead
In summer luxury, - he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one, in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

Happy Birthday to me.

2007-07-15T01:28:00.000-05:00

And now I'm 28. It was a quiet day, ethics class, lunch and an early dinner with the grandparents, then over to Rio Rita for some truly insane mid-60's French scopitone films featuring covers of American rock or pop songs and French girls with giant hair dancing in fringe bikinis for no discernable reason.

My Nashville grandfather is out of ICU and it looks like my uncle will probably live, which is more than I can say for my couch and ottoman which fell victim to two frustrated dogs this afternoon. I don't have the time, money or energy right now to replace the cushions and reupholster the ottoman, and I really shouldn't buy a new couch since I'm going to be moving SOMEWHERE within the next two years or so.

Speaking of which, after ethics class this morning (where I got an A on my paper and a C+ on the exam I was sure I'd failed) I visited my grandparents for lunch. As we sat down to our soup, I mentioned something about having to move eventually. My grandfather put down his spoon and said

"Don't move."

and I could tell from the tone of his voice that he didn't mean "don't switch apartments" he meant "don't go to seminary away from Austin and leave me all alone."

Actually, it wasn't.

2007-07-13T15:46:00.000-05:00

My comment on the Friday Five wasn't mean spirited, and if the comment was "testy" then so be it, what's wrong with testy?

I'll admit I probably just should have ignored it, but since I usually like the Friday Five and I skipped last week, I didn't. A mistake? Maybe. Wouldn't be my first.

We don’t have to agree to be a community. We don't have to look alike and talk alike and sometimes even walk alike. I didn't like something because it was below what I thought were otherwise excellent standards. I said why I didn't like it and I said that it was the exception.

That's it.

I didn't personally attack anyone, I didn't leave a bitchy anonymous email (ahem) and if I hurt someone's feelings, well, I'm sorry your feelings are hurt, but --to quote one of my editors-- it's not about the person, it's about the product.

I gotta say I'm pretty surprised at all the anonymous emails clutching their collective pearls in horror that I would ever say anything so hateful.

Hateful? Geeze. I don't know how long you have to go without sex to get that uptight, but I'm on year five (and these are good years, while gravity is still working for me, so it's like TWICE as long in regular years) and I'm still nowhere near that tightly wound. --these are the jokes, ladies-- Relax.

Ladies, this is not the sort of stuff that should get our clericals in a bunch. Let's calm down, butch up and move on.

UPDATE: Oh my gosh y'all, I had no idea there was a full fledged kerfuffle going on! Crazy man, crazy.

A (sort of asinine) Friday Five!

2007-07-13T09:24:00.000-05:00

1. Former U.S. First Lady "Lady Bird" Johnson died this week. In honor of her love of the land and the environment, share your favorite flower or wildflower.
Lady Bird was a member of our parish, she was married at my church and our rector gave her communion regularly. I am praying for him, as he is almost certainly the one presiding over the funeral and memorial services.

Lady Bird's legacy lives on, not just in her beautiful Wildflower Center, but along the lonesome highways of central Texas where every spring, the roadsides burst into bloom with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush. My favorite flower is dogwood, which isn't found in my part of the Lone Star state, but a close second is Lady Bird's beloved bluebonnet. Here's a picture my friend took of me on the side of the road one spring.

2. A man flew almost 200 miles in a lawn chair, held aloft by helium balloons. Share something zany you'd like to try someday.
I don't know about pre-meditated zaniness, doesn't it sort of defeat the point? On the other hand, there is a cute Australian movie called Danny Deckchair about a very similar prank.

3. Do you have an iPhone? If not, would you want one?
Why would I spend $300 on a piece of technology which, even in the unlikely event that it doesn't get sat on/dropped into a pool/chewed by a dog/driven over by a Cadillac or left in the Neiman Marcus dressing room, would be out of date in a year and a half? I could spend it on something sensible like a lovely pair of basic Jimmy Choo sandals in the buttery soft leather of dead baby angel skins and with proper care will last for-ev-er.

On sale for $307.50 (orig. $615) at Net-a-Porter.com.

It's about investment, people.

4. Speaking of which, Blendtec Blenders put an iPhone in one of their super-duper blenders as part of their "Will It Blend?" series. What would YOU like to see ground up, whizzed up or otherwise pulverized in a blender?
Seriously? A Will It Blend question? As long as it prevents scurvy and tastes good with tequila, I'm easy to please.

5. According to News of the Weird, a jury in Weld County, Colo., declined to hold Kathleen Ensz accountable for leaving a flier containing her dog's droppings on the doorstep of U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, apparently agreeing with Ensz that she was merely exercising free speech. What do you think? Is doggy doo-doo protected by the First Amendment?
Poop in light of Constitutional Law? Y'all, this is beneath RevGals. I'm not answering it.

For the record, I did not like either of these Friday Five options. They didn't exactly allow much room for introspection.

Update in bullet format!

2007-07-12T16:50:00.001-05:00

Much has been going on in Chateau Ste. Sundae.

*My grandfather in Nashville has been in the ICU for a week and a half now. He's getting much better, but still, bad scene.

*My uncle, who is a notorious druggie, has contracted FLESH EATING BACTERIA and it has moved from his arm into his chest cavity. I haven't seen him in years. Also, bad scene.

*It is distinctly possible that I got a D on my ethics midterm. This is not because I lack ethics, I've got ethics out the wazoo, but the professor had some tricky true or false questions and I screwed up at least two definitions. I'll find out Saturday.

*In other ethics news, I am fighting with my ethics group. I know I've got particularly stringent ethics and not everyone is willing to put aside their comfort for their own personal integrity (this isn't blowing my own horn, if I didn't live by my ethics, I'd hate myself so really I'm just avoiding discomfort).

*I turn 28 on Saturday, and in all the hubbub of work and school and this new blogging gig, I have not planned a single thing. LAST YEAR I had two bands, burlesque dancers and drink tickets. This year: bupkiss.

*Please pray for the Johnson family, and for my rector, who is almost certainly presiding over the funeral. I'll miss Lady Bird, she was a hell of a girl.

Super Fantastic!

2007-07-06T16:26:00.000-05:00

I'm the newest addition to Manolo The Shoe Blogger's haute couture harem!

No, I won't be writing in his distinctive patois, but famous internet fashion guru just offered me a job and I accepted.

The new fashion blog will launch in the next two weeks and will focus a humorous yet informative eye on economy in fashion how women can be super-fantastic above a size 10.

My vision --aside from fighting the tyranny of false economics in bargain shopping-- is to help women view fashion the way my grandmothers did. You knew what suited you and built a core wardrobe out of high-end timeless, flattering pieces and kept them modern --without being too trendy-- by judicious application of accessories and popular, affordable pieces.

Of course there will be the funny stuff as well, y'all know I can't write long without cracking a joke or tattling on myself for some stupid thing I've done or said (no shortage of material there).

Anyway, I just wanted to share the good news.
I'll post another bulletin right before the launch, I hope y'all will say hi to me over there.

Confidential to G:

2007-06-29T16:59:00.000-05:00

Welcome back pal, you've been missed.

The Manolo is recruiting.

2007-06-29T12:45:00.000-05:00

So the Manolo has posted a help-wanted for new bloggers to run his next blog, Manolo for the Big Girl and I'm thinking of applying.

I've missed professional blogging since my gig at the newpaper ended, I've got a strong and popular voice. Our main competish, The Austin Chronicle wrote that "Rhiannon [Lastname]'s refreshingly snarky "Miss Adventure," [is] regularly featured in the weekly entertainment insert XL, often providing the liveliest element of a section that frequently reads like a poorly researched Zagat guide." and Jen Lancaster, author of "Bitter is the New Black" wrote on her old blog she wished she wrote like I did.

Then there's the fashion stuff. I've got a great eye. True I'm not always crazy on big trends but that's because there's just not enough restrain and discipline of line in the current plus-size world for my taste, and that, second only to confidence, is what we larger than life gal needs more than anything.

What do y'all think?

It's Madlibs! It's Liturgy! It's THE CRANMERIZER!

2007-06-29T11:26:00.000-05:00

You might THINK that perhaps I'm trying to avoid doing any actual work today, but the truth of the matter is...um...that I'm trying to avoid doing any actual work today.

So I've come up with this little build-your-own collect dohickey. Amaze your friends, impress your clergy, it's the Cranmerizer!

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SIZE IMAGE

Friday Five: Time, Talents and Tests

2007-06-29T11:24:00.000-05:00

1. Personality tests; love them or hate them?
Well, there are personality tests and personality tests. I've got a good deal of faith in Myers Briggs-y sort of thingums, but my faith waivers just a little in the scientific basis of those "what sort of kisser are you?" creations.

Would you describe yourself as practical, creative, intellectual or a mixture?
Y'all, I'm as practical as jumper cables and five times as fun.

I'm creative (e.g.: the time I was told to bring something creative to my pal Torvald's shindig and I brought a taxidermied armadillo full of home-made cookies) and intellectual (functionally bisexual Greek dudes, unhappy German men with moustaches and Mommy Issues, I can talk about 'em all!) but I don't think I get enough credit for my practical side. I'm in school full time, I work full time, I've got a full schedule of volunteering and ministry and I try to keep an active social life and, for good or ill, I do this mostly without a close support system. I couldn't do what I do without the grace of God, but then again I couldn't do it if I were just a silly girl teetering around in Manolos, either.

3. It is said that everyone has their 15 minutes of fame; have you had your yet? If so what was it, if not dream away what would you like it to be?
The moral of this story is be careful what you wish for. I worked my tail off when I moved to Austin to become a beloved fixture, and between my blog for the newspaper and my turns at go-go dancing and clubbing on Red River, I succeeded. Maybe too well. I stayed in bed over Memorial Day weekend because every single time. I went out the previous week, I mean no matter where I was --dry cleaners, Mexican grocers on the wrong side of town, dog park bent over picking up excretia, someone there knew me and wanted to talk. As an introvert (what? I totally am.) that was just a little too much for me to bear. I just vanted to be left alone.

4. If you were given a 2 year sabbatical ( oh the dream of it) to create something would it be music, literature, art.....something completely different...share your dream with us...
I'm not sure what it would be, but I think I know where it would be. the small windblown island of Lindisfarne calls me back just as surely as any siren ever did. I miss it with my whole heart.

5. Describe a talent you would like to develop, but that seems completely beyond you.
Extemporaneous prayer. My goodness am I crap at that. I mean there are a bunch of other talents that I'd love to have, but I'd never be called to use…playing boogie woogie piano springs to mind…but let's face it, I'm going to be called on to pray on the fly EVENTUALLY and it fills me with dread. I think I'm going to start memorizing collects tomorrow.

Hold on Darlings, I've Got a Plank in my Eye

2007-06-26T12:48:00.000-05:00

It would be a lot easier to make fun of these people if I didn't just email our seminarian telling her I can't break down dinner tables tonight because I'm wearing my Atwood D'orsays.

I Walk (and Draw) The Line

2007-06-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

That is IT! NO. MORE. SHOES. I just bought my first pair of Blahniks and now I have all the nice shoes I need (well except for the perfect black pump)I am not going to buy any more investment shoes for a Very Long Time Indeed. I have my blush and my mocha python pumps I got while I was in London, I have my ridiculous show girl pumps that my friend Biscuit said came from "Fredericks of Bangkok" and now I have these Manolos. I am calling a ceasefire.

When I first saw them I whimpered a little. Then I discovered that there was only one pair left at Neimanmarcus.com and it turns out that one pair was in my IN MY GIGANTOR YETI SIZE. Then I discovered they were more than half off AND I had a coupon code.

You know I'm not one to use the Lord for my own sordid purposes, but friends, I'm pretty sure Jesus really wanted me to have these shooz.

Reminds me of this Harvey Nicks ad...looks like it'll be beans on toast (the Texas translation is breakfast tacos) for the next month for me.

You want some crazy with those eggs?

2007-06-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

I'm rather neutral on the après Church brunch experience.

It's one of those things like working out or cleaning the kitchen: it's not so bad once you actually do it, but you still not-so-secretly wish you were in bed, covered up to the chin with fluffy comforters and watching Tennessee Williams movies and rewinding the parts where Marlon Brando or Paul Newman take off their shirts (um, so I've heard.)

However, in the spirit of good fellowship I've been brunching with handful of folks from our 20's/30's group and friends, it's driving me crazy.

To be fair, I like most of the people, there's Lee, the old-fashioned southern boy and Torvald the only Dutch boy I've never --not even once-- been tempted to kill in his sleep. In fact, I like the majority of the folks with whom I've brunched. Plus a passel of peeps who are otherwise very nice.

But then there are the Others.

The Others range from the mildly maladjusted to the full-on wackaloons, and frankly, I just do not want to put up with that sort of nutjobbery on the one day I have specially reserved for rest and re-creation.

I will gladly spend time with the Others any other day of the week, at any time. I mean, that's the Christian thing, right? Love the unloveable.

Want to talk my ear off on Saturday night about how depressed you are and how your therapist Just Doesn't Understand? Fine. Need someone to morally support you in uncomfortable conversations with your parents who are just as horrible as you? I'm your gal. Want to insult me to your passive/aggressive heart's content because (not so) deep down you resent the hell out of me for living "your" dream even though I've worked my tail off to get here and you've done nothing but mope? Bring it on.

Just don't sit there and insult me, or even worse, patronize me, during the few hours I have designated for plain old uncomplicated relaxation. I won't snap (usually) but it's hard to observe my own personal Sabbath when my one overriding desire is to slap you with a fish.

Whew, that was deep. I guess it's time for a little palate cleanser. I give you a vintage Paul Newman from his underrated turn in Tennessee William's Sweet Bird of Youth

Summertime Friday Five: Racing, Recipes and Rock'n'Roll

2007-06-22T10:21:00.000-05:00

Favorite summer beverage

We never knew when it would happen, but on the very best days of summer my brother and I would hurry home from school, open the avocado green refrigerator that was older than the two of us put together and see that beige Tupperware pitcher sitting on the top shelf that meant Grandmama had made Russian Tea. Russian tea was a sort of non-alcoholic Planter's Punch. We'd spring into action. William would run outside to get some fresh mint from the side garden and I'd get out the glasses. With quivering arms (the pitcher was a little too heavy for me to lift as a wee bairn) I'd pour two tall glasses. Sometimes in our haste we'd forget to wash the mint and a little big or dirt would get into the glass, we didn't care. It was Russian tea. It was summer.

2. Song that says "summer" to you.
One good nostalgic turn deserves another. Mungo Jerry singing "In the Summertime" (youtube link. If you don't know this song you MUST click) my little brother and I used to pull our shirts up over our bellies and dance around like Baloo from the Jungle Book, slapping our stomachs to the rhythm and making what we thought were grunting bear sounds I am not positive, but I bet if William and I were in the same room this very moment and this song came on we'd start bellyslapping just out of habit.

3. A childhood summer memory
When my grandfather brought home The First Car I Ever Loved, an ultra-rare 1984 flatbody Conquest. I must have been five years old and I'd stand in the white cobbled driveway (it had oyster shells in it! so cool!) in front of the car. As the sun set I'd raise my arms and the headlights would magically pop up! then I'd lower my arms and they'd close their eyes. Years later that Conquest would finally become mine, and I'd spend all my time and money taking it to meets and races. Then the night of this race (click here to watch me driving up to the starting line) I blew my manifold housing, since I couldn't afford to have parts forged, I had to sell my sweet baby to a jet mechanic. So long Buckaroo!

4. An adult summer memory
I'll give you two for the price of one. The location is the same, the wild rooftop garden of a crayon-colored townhouse in Washington DC that had been converted to a hostel.
Scene 1: July, 18 1998. I had turned 19 years old that week and was truly in love for the first time. He was Dutch and looked like a tall, blonde Leonardo DiCaprio. Most importantly, he had moved across the ocean to be with me. Earlier that day we'd pounded the pavement of my former hometown and as night fell we sat on an old couch, my head resting on his lap, his left hand idly playing with the strap of my pale green dress.

I knew it wasn't going to work.
He knew it wasn't going to work out.

It didn't matter. We were two young kids, drunk on freedom and wild honeysuckle, and we were in love.

Scene 2: July 16, 1999.
One year and one ugly break up later I had returned to India House which strangely enough was being run by a bunch of young Irish girls. The man was John, a Belgian soccer player and all around good guy. I don't have many regrets, but I regret the way I treated him. He was a rebound for me, pure and simple. Arno, the Dutch Guy, hated Belgians, so out of spite I found myself a Belgian and set about making him mine. Unfortunately, he was also the only man I think who ever truly loved me. God, I was an idiot.

As the girls sat in the house, glued to the small television as the story of JFK Jr.'s plane crash unfolded, John and I were outside looking at the moon. It was bright enough to reveal the hidden faces of statuary that had been long overtaken by honeysuckle and ivy and the fireflies floated in the air flashing their mating call in pale green and yellow. I was on my back in the grass as John propped himself up on his elbows next to me. I told him that the moon was the other direction. He looked at me seriously with those dark handsome eyes that couldn't have been more different from Arno's blond and blue, and said "Dilleke, I like your snout."

5. Describe a wonderful summer day you'd like to have in the near future.
In Texas, summer is a battle. It's not something fun or relaxing, it's you against the weather. Every once in a while you get a break with a night that's just a little bit cooler. If I could, I'd like to take one of those almost-cool nights, throw a picnic basket in the convertible, grab some friends and drive into the country. We could build a small campfire, someone could bring a guitar and we's sing and look at the stars until the embers died down. Then I'd pile the folks back into Stella and drive home in silence while my tired friends sleep, quiet and happy.

**BONUS**

Recipe for my Grandmama's Russian Tea

4 cups triple-strength black tea, cooled
1 forty-six ounce can unsweetened pineapple/grapefruit juice
1 can orange juice concetrate, diluted with water (or maybe rum? -ed.)
1/2 cup lemon juice
sugar if needed

Directions: mix all together, chill and serve with fresh mint.

Rhiannon's Modified Russian Tea
4 cups triple-strength black tea, brewed with slices of ginger, cooled
1 forty-six ounce can unsweetened pineapple/grapefruit juice
1 can orange juice concentrate, not diluted
750ml limoncello or white rum
juice of 3 fresh squeezed limes

Directions: mix all together, chill and serve with fresh mint and two aspirin.

For Your Listening Pleasure

2007-06-20T12:28:00.000-05:00

It's raining here in Texas, a real gullywasher. My hair is still wet from the mad dash from the parking lot 4 hours ago and I've been listening to my Rainy Day Mix, which I have thoughtfully uploaded for your enjoyment.

A Dream - John Cale. A reading from Andy Warhol's diary off the John Cale/Lou Reed album "Songs for Drella"

Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone - Al Green. A great cover of the Bill Withers' classic.

Apocalypse - Wyclef Jean from "The Carnival" the smartest, most orchestrally beautiful hip hop album I've ever heard. The haunting cuban-flavored soprano vocalizations are chilling.

Black Coffee - Peggy Lee. From the 1956 album of the same name. What happens when the Fever cools down.

Black Winds- Little John and The Monks. Spooky 1965 B-side from the only single this little-known Pacific Northwest garage band released.

Blister 2000- Violent Femmes. Bouncy horn-filled revisioning of their 1982 indie pop hit, Blister in the Sun.

Bossa Nova (Luckiest Girl) - Shivaree. An arch bossa nova from tremble-voiced darling, Ambrosia Paisley.

Cold-Blooded Old Times - Smog. Catchy lo-fi gem from Bill Callahan's alter-ego.

Falling is Like This- Ani DiFranco. Sweet, lyrical effort from everyone's favorite "righteous babe".

Gone Til November- Wyclef Jean. Another turn from the once and future Fugee. Before I was a good girl I had a very odd night at one of his after parties. Very odd.

I'm Wrong About Everything"- John Wesley Harding. A wry little folk-noir ditty. Come on, we've all been there.

Let My Love Open the Door (e. cola mix)- Pete Townshend. The second of three tracks on this mix also found on the Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack. A great remix of an otherwise borderline-schmaltzy song from the king of the windmills. If I ever did a contemporary worship service, this would be the recessional.

Live and Let Die- Guns and Roses. Shut up okay? Just shut up.

Nobody But You- Lou Reed. Also off "Songs for Drella", Nobody But You is a poppy little bossa about Andy Warhol's hangers on.

Satellite- Dave Matthews Band. As a high school student in Virginia in the mid 90's, "Under the Table and Dreaming" was practically issued to everyone with a learner's permit.

Say Yes- Elliott Smith. Beautiful wistful song off "Either/Or"

Stormy Weather- Etta James. Listen. What else is there to say?

Sometimes You Just Can't Win- Mouse and The Traps. A bittersweet ballad from an underappreciated 1960's garage band.

Bonus Track

The "C" Word

2007-06-18T15:36:00.001-05:00

I love children, Dear God do I love children. In a perfect world I would have a whole litter of them. I'd give them baths and take them to the zoo and I'd let them have all the adventures they could ever hope to have. Sadly, this isn't a perfect world.

Marriages fail; not just sometimes, most of the time and while I'd LIKE to think I'd be married forever, I have no reason to believe it would happen.

Realistically, I can't see myself as a kick-ass minister if I'm also the primary caregiver to my child. I'd need a work-at-home husband who would be the primary caregiver amd surprising emotionally-balanced men who are willing to dedicate themselves to fat, funny Anglican ministers-to-be with a penchant for hotrods and boys with tattoos are few and far between.

I know, I'm as shocked as you are.

Anyway, all of that was just to say this. I just had to have The Talk with a great guy, and it was all about children.

Let me tell you how awful THAT was.

He's been the first serious contender since Michael and I'm just crazy for him. I'm not in love with him, but I could be very easily. He would be the perfect husband and father and we would have been great together.

Except he wants kids.

Right now.

Yesterday.

And I can't do that. I suppose if I had wanted to I could have kept him hanging on with the promise of "maybe" but that wouldn't have been fair. I don't REALLY know if I want to have kids. If I did know, if I could give him a timeline maybe things would have been different, but "maybe" also means "maybe not" and for me the odds are 50/50. I couldn't let someone else stake their happiness on 50/50 odds.

So there I was, just sitting there KNOWING it was probably one of the biggest mistakes I'd make in my life, telling him "I'm sorry; it's just not going to work out." It's killing me to even think about it, but I know it was the right thing.

He's going to be a great husband someday and an even better father. Too bad it's not with me.

Tagged for the Very First Time!

2007-06-14T17:15:00.000-05:00

Here we go:

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Now my 8 things.

1) I have a terror, a positive terror of the sound of a garage door opening, especially if I'm in bed. I came by it honestly but I would rather have a snake slither across my foot than hear a garage door open while I'm all tucked in.

2) I dated a bona fide punk rock legend for about six months (five and a half months longer than I should have). No I don't kiss and tell.

3) The only way I can be as outgoing as I am is to spend as much time alone as possible.

4) This song is about me written by a popular musician who I won't name because of google. He was a former friend's ex-boyfriend. It took me a year and a half to actually listen to it all the way through. It's a pretty little song. In the spirit of full disclosure I'm fairly certain he actually got the tattoo, but I never endorsed it (the song either for that matter) nor have I seen it.

5) I'm abstinent, even though no one believes me.

6) I secretly want to be a mechanic. I want to own my own garage and restore classic cars. I'm actually pretty brilliant at fixing things.. No one believes this either.

7) There is one person in each generation of my family who can just naturally understand almost any language just by listening to them for a while. My mother was the one in her generation; her father was the one in his (he spoke seven Asian dialects fluently). I'm the linguist in mine even though I rarely let on.

8) I also secretly want to be a pioneer/survivalist. I love nothing more than chopping wood, hauling water and eating apples off the tree on the side of some mountain in Virginia. Also? I know how to build traps and shoot.

Let's see, whom shall I tag? Okay. EK aaaand, anyone else who wants to play!

Booty Hooty Hoo. Seriously.

2007-06-12T10:02:00.000-05:00

Friends, this is a plea for moral support. I feel almost totally beaten. Please send whatever prayers and good thoughts you can afford my way.

It takes a lot to make me feel really beaten down by life, but wow yesterday got me. Aside from a mysteriously "returned" rent check that's going to cost me an additional 115.00 in fees and two papers that needed to be written last night but never made it beyond the notes stage I had to have Stella towed because the parking complex is repaving the parking lot and didn't figure people needed more than a day's notice.

9:00 p.m. Called AAA with every last shred of information about what I needed and what company I wanted to use (I had made arrangements with the company --who had towed stella before-- earlier that day). including the company's internal dispatch code. Given an eta of 12:00. Fine, no big deal, I can work until then.

12:30 Called AAA. Discovered somehow my call had been cancelled, and then the towing company shut it down for the night. Asked why but they couldn't tell me because the system was down. He'd call back in a half an hour. Meanwhile I called the towing company directly. No answer.

1:00 a.m: No call back from Systems Down guy or answer from towing company so I call AAA again. New person. Said that the order had NOT been cancelled and that he personally just spoke to the guy himself who assured me he was no more than 25 minutes away.

1:30 No one shows. I call AAA again get a new person again. I beg that they just send someone, anyone as long as they had a flat bed. Stella is a 20 foot long 5000 pound car with rear wheel drive and nothing holding on the front wheel. I cannot use a wrecker.

2:30 A wrecker shows up. Wrecker guy was very creepy and actually made me feel unsafe. Kept grabbing his crotch and spitting and invading my body space. He calls his manager who has a flat bed and is about 30 miles south of Austin. He wants to see it before he will agree to tow it away.

3:00 Call AAA again, get a new person, tell them that I will not use these guys and to please, please send me a new truck. A flatbed this time. For reals.

3:45 HURRAH. John from Lamott Bros. towing shows up, freaks out at the car, makes me sign a waiver. Very nice man.

4:15 a.m.: After a half hour of machinations, WD40 (mine, not his) and prayer, it's on the flatbed.

4:30 a.m.: Stop in the middle of 5th street. Apparently car jumped when going over a bump. Had to tighten her down even more. I freak out silently in my head.

5:15 a.m.: Bliss. Car is unloaded safe and sound at Crushproof. Tip John profusely.

5:40 a.m.: in bed, finally.

8:00 a.m.: wake up.

This morning I get a call from my landlord saying my rent check was returned (bank error, but that doesn't help me) He will need a 925.16 money order (rent plus $50 returned check fee plus $25 initial "late" fee plus $5/day additional late fees) by tomorrow.

Paper STILL isn't written. Take home test STILL not completed. Class in 7 hours and a full day of work.

HAIRPAT ME PEOPLE!

She Tells Me What I Want, What I Really REALLY Want

2007-06-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Is there any surer sign of delicious things to come than being abused by a hundred-fifty year old Vietnamese woman?

I was craving a noodle bowl, so I headed to what people optimistically call "Little Saigon" aka, the strip mall off the interstate next to Target.

My regular noodle house was closed but Sunflower, just across the parking lot, was open.

After about ten minutes of playing with a cute little Vietnamese girl who kept showing me magic tricks wherein she would make starlight mints vanish and reappear ("you keep looking there, I'll be right back") an ancient woman with a note pad came up to me and asked what I wanted.

"I would like the crispy tofu. Number 71."

"No, no salt. No good"

I explained to her that the no salt thing was okay, and that I'd still like it. She then explained to me that no, I wouldn't still like it. Instead, I wanted the number 77, crispy tofu with mixed pickled vegetables and salt.

I tried one more time for the plain tofu, but after she made an awful face, I demurred and let her bring me the 77.

My God, it was the most delicious Vietnamese food I'd ever had. Perfect crispy tofu without any sour or bitter flavor, crunchy pickled carrots, purple cabbage and onion shreds with fresh tomato slices and topped with a pile of cilantro. There was a little bowl of some manner of fish sauce with a hot sauce floated on top and on the side, a small bowl of sea salt mixed with black pepper and garlic.

It was so good I liketa died.

I told the lady how good it was. She seemed partially pleased but mostly confused as to why I'd given her trouble in the first place.

As I left and she was sweeping up with a broom that had no discernable handle, just a ribbon tying the straws together, she yelled

"next time you come back, I give you something GOOD!"

Friday Five: Escape to Truth or Consequences

2007-06-08T16:08:00.000-05:00

Even though I've only just returned from my real dream vacation, I'm yearning for the simpler pleasures of my vacations of old. One girl, one car, and one destination: Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

I used to go twice a year and stay in a little hostel right on an offshoot of the Rio Grande. The hostel hasn't changed much, the tubs are still bricked-in minnow baths and the main structure is a shabby, low set adobe rancher, but now the money-hungry son is running it and the prices have tripled since I first crashed-landed in TorC, on a impossibly starry night in 2003.

1) What book(s) will you bring?
I always bring a well-loved book to give away during my stay, and I always am given a book that changes my life in return. It's never failed me. Once I gave away "The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge" by mushroom-enthusiast Carlos Castaneda. Another time I got "Man and Superman" a play by George Bernard Shaw. I devoured it and it remains tied with Our Town for my favorite English language play.

2) What music accompanies you?
There's a long lonely stretch of Interstate 10 where even radio waves don't roam. Typically I make my own "mood mixes" I have a disc for driving through a storm in the desert. I have a disc for when I'm heading through El Paso (there are a LOT of songs about El Paso) I have a disc for feeling homesick and a disc for being a wanderer. Mostly though I just have a hand-held tape recorder, a whole mess of blank tapes and my own silly voice recording thoughts as they bubble up and burst along the long, empty highway.

3) What essentials of everyday living must you take (as in the health and beauty aids aisle variety)?
Sunscreen, Aleve, Lip Balm and two cases of Ozarka water. That is all ye know and that is all ye need to know. I travel light. Well, except for the water.

4) What technological gadgets if any, will you take with you or do you leave it all behind?
I'll take my cell phone out of necessity --a girl alone on a road trip to nowhere needs to take precautions-- and my hand-held tape recorder. I wouldn't dream of bringing a laptop or an iPod. They're the electro-fruits of the devil.

5) What culinary delights will you partake in while there?
I'm rarely hungry on vacation. Usually I'll live on smoothies and whatever fresh fruit I brought from Texas. But I had one of the finest meals I can remember while in T or C at a crazy steak house that didn't seem to realize it wasn't 1973 any more.

It was a place out of time, all brown leather and wrought iron and dark wood. The menu was as dated as the décor: red meat, clams casino and brandy alexanders. Once inside I fell victim to some sort of time warp and ordered not only a steak, but the clams casino AND a brandy alexander for dessert. Immaculate. Strange, yes. But immaculate.

One last thing about Truth or Consequences. The stars. The stars. There are stars upon stars. So many stars that it's impossible not to feel dizzy and insignificant and entirely amazed at the wonderment of God's own glory. As a young girl in Washington DC I used to spend a lot of time in our school's planetarium. For a special treat, Mrs. Howell would turn down the setting on the projector and show us what it would be like on a perfect, lightless, cloudless night.

That setting, even at its darkest and most breathtaking couldn't even compare to the glory of the stars above Truth or Consequences.

I Smell a Rat

2007-06-07T17:36:00.000-05:00

Friends, there is only so much organic oatmeal a girl can eat. Personally, I've eaten enough of the stuff that I could probably consume an entire pig-sty worth of bacon in one sitting and my cholesterol would still be enviably low.

But even with my special delicious add-ins --chopped dried tropical fruits, wheat germ, flax, turbinado sugar-- there comes a time when a girls soul (and by soul I mean stomach) yearns for something that doesn't look like something out of an all-Carmen Miranda production of Oliver Twist.

So you see, I NEEDED cheese. In fact, as I perused the fancy fromage section of my local prohibitively expensive market, I discovered that I needed SIX cheeses.

First I needed some Blue Stilton. Aside from haggis, Stilton was the only good food I had in England and I had been craving the stuff since setting foot back on American soil. Unfortunately I couldn't find just plain Blue Stilton, so I picked up a Huntsman (pictured above) which is like a layer cake of Blue Stilton and glorious Double Glouscester.

I also picked up a gorgeous pot of ewe's milk soft curd cheese from France, a sort of Spanish triple-crème Brie, a bit of a Pecorino Toscano, some Camembert/Gorgonzola and a gorgeous slice of cave-aged Roquefort, still covered in leaves.

The handsome checkout man from Istanbul rang them up, along with the French rolls and dried apricots to go with it, at $50.00. Yikes.

My plan, because I am above all a Girl with a Plan, was to set the cheeses up on a nice plate and eat off of them with whatever fresh fruit and bread I brought to lunch that day. There was no reason that plate shouldn't last me 10 days. So, feeling slightly better about my budget (I'm perfectly willing to spend $5 a day for a gorgeous lunch) I headed back to work, arranged my cheeses nicely, took a bit of each and wrapped the plate, slapped my initials on in big green letters and tossed it in the fridge to wait it out until lunchtime the next day.

However, when lunchtime the next day arrived, there was something amiss. Someone had unwrapped my plate, and …wait for it…cut out all the Double Glouscester from the Huntsman, leaving the Stilton sitting there like a debutante without a date.

Can you believe the nerve? I've had problems with people stealing my food in the past, but that was when I forgot to label it, so I could only get so mad. But THIS time not only did they know it didn't belong to them, they didn't even have the decency to appreciate what they were stealing. It would have been one thing to steal the $30/lb Roquefort or the unusual Spanish triple-crème but NO, they just went for the yellow cheese. They probably thought it was Velveeta.

So, today I typed out a small sign, mounted it on cardboard and taped it on top of the plastic wrapping:

Please Do Not Steal Any More of My Cheese
(I have licked all the pieces, anyway)

I Ain't Talkin' Mississippi

2007-06-02T19:10:00.000-05:00

So Oxford, maybe.

I know this is a textbook case of cart-before-horse but I'm less than two years away from graduation and provided all goes well with my discernment process I need to start thinking about Seminary.

Until recently the plan had been to go to ETSS. It's an excellent school, my favorite seminary by far, and has the added bonus of being less than two miles from my apartment. I know the retired provost, the retired dean, several seminarians and a good chunk of the professorial staff. In fact, that's just the problem.

It seems like I know everyone in this town.

I was barely 20 years old when I moved to Austin. Aside from my grandparents I didn't know a soul. Now seven years later the door guys at punk clubs know my dogs by name and I can't go to the grocery store or sit down for brunch without running into some guy or gal I know.

It's not like I'm pulling a Garbo. I don't vant to be left alone (that was the line, btw, not I vant to BE alone) I LOVE Austin, this is MY town. I've spent years making it my town. Plus the people are great, where else can you get a church usher who will offer you a gin and tonic before the 11:15 service or a burly tattooed door guy offer you homedic remedies for your shar pei's dry skin? This place is practically paradise...and yet.

And yet it's all just getting a little claustrophobic for me. I need to get out. I need a change, big time. I need to be someplace I've never been before. That's where Oxford comes in.

If I do a two-year stint at Wycliffe Hall seminary at Oxford I could fulfill my dream of living abroad, I would be able to come back to Austin refreshed, finish with a year at ETSS and be ordained --and happily serve-- in the Diocese of Texas.

The Diocese would then have an Oxford-educated priest on their bench, I'd have a big leg up when applying for future positions, and if I ever do make the permanent move to the other side of the pond I'll have more of a footing there.

Wishin' and Hopin' Friday Five: Now with Disclaimers!

2007-06-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

**Disclaimer: It is mating season for all God's creatures. Even for those young lovelies such as myself whose springs remain flingless, one does tend to get a bit of spring fever. That being said, please note that whatever crazy romantic, nostalgic and possibly scandalous stuff entailed in the following blog is strictly the result of hormones and three consecutive weeks of being cooped-up inside my apartment from the rain**

1. Think back to the time you left High School, what were your hopes visions and dreams for your life/ for the world?

My high school sweetheart and I would be blissfully married in a little 19th century farmhouse outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Each Spring as soon as the fawns were born in the wild woods beyond our garden gate we'd get out the ladders and buckets, I'd tie my hair back in a red and white kerchief and he'd don his oldest t-shirt --doubtless some grey and threadbare number from our alma-mater and current employer the University of Virginia-- and we'd scrub the winter sleep off the old house, tending to the gutters (mind the wrens nests!) and coating each wall with white wash, rubbing our fingers over the pockmarked surface, blemished to perfection by time and the scars of civil war muskets.

We would drink lemony cold Russian tea with mint from the garden and work well into the afternoon. Then, leaving a trail of dirty garden gloves and crumpled socks, we'd head to the shower. He'd let me go first --I always take longer-- then, scrubbed clean in new cotton shirts, we'd head out to the nearby mountains with a horse blanket and tinny old radio. I'd tell him the stories of the constellations and he'd make silly jokes. Finally, we'd fall into a comfortable silence, count the fireflies and just wait for the shooting stars.

2. Have those hopes visions and dreams changed a lot, or are some of them still alive and kicking? (share one if you can)

That still sounds good to me right now. Maybe not the high school sweet heart --although he was the singularly kindest man I've had the good fortune to kiss with tongues-- but everything else sounds about perfect. Even the Virginia part.

It's strange. I love Texas. I would die for Texas just as my ancestors did. It would be an honor. I will never forget that the blood that coursed through Ben Milam's veins as he led his men to victory in the legendary Siege of Bexar is the same that pumps through mine. Yet I am feeling called away. Called "back" to Virginia, or maybe even Britain.

Then reality sets in and I know I'm bound to my diocese. I've got to dance with the one who brung me, and that means three years in seminary and possibly another three years in the diocese. That makes me feel a little claustrophobic. Of course I'm fortunate enough to be in the financial situation where I can afford to go to seminary anywhere in the world and after all, it's not unheard of to do two years at Cambridge or Oxford and then finish with a year stateside.

3. Hebrews 11:1 " Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. " Comforting, challenging or frustrating?

Ah lahk mah scriptures lahk Ah lahk mah mey-uhn: challenging, comforting and strong. Oh, and able to open jam jars.

4. If resources were unlimited, and you had free reign to pursue a vision what would it be?

My gosh I don't know, I'm 27 years old! Don't fence me in! There are so many.

I want to run a small bakery on a British Costal town.
I want to be some parish's beloved but kicky vicar.
I want to spend my life documenting mystical experiences.
I want to do tequila shots off all the male characters of the television program
Friday Night Lights with special emphasis on the big dumb troubled-but-hot one even though in he's not even remotely my type.

5. Finally with summer upon us- and not to make this too heavy- share your dream holiday....where, when and who with...

Well the troubled-but-hot guy is still really working for me, so let's take that, toss him in my Cadillac, fill the trunk with Lone Star and clean underwear, drop the top and cruise Route 66 all the way to San Bernardino. Days on the road buying cheap sunglasses and stopping at all the roadside attractions and nights nursing lonestars in old mom 'n' pop motels. Paradise.

And now, because you know you love it, I present The Friday Hotness:

Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins, the aforementioned troubled-but-hot football player from Friday Night Lights. Because, you know, in Texas ALL high school fullbacks are 26-year old underwear models.

You know what? I'm a dork

2007-05-29T15:40:00.000-05:00

and I don't care. Seriously, at this very moment THIS is the funniest thing I have ever seen. It's lolcats meets early American history.

Friday Five: Ritual de lo Habitual

2007-05-25T09:56:00.000-05:00

1. Have you ever successfully quit a bad habit, or gotten a good habit established? Tell us about how you did it.
Well I never smoked or drank or dated boys with tattoos (okay that's not true, I have dated boys with good tattoos and given the opportunity would do so again) but I did used to be the work bank-balance manager/bill payer in the known universe. Most of it was just being young and ignorant in the ways of personal finance, but then, through the miracle of Online Banking and its best friend Bill Pay, I haven't missed a bill or seriously overdrawn my account in years.

2. "If only there were a 12-step program for _________________!"
Procrastination. Actually, there probably is, but knowing me I'd put off going to all the meetings and then try to cram steps 1 through 11 into the night before the last session

3. Share one of your healthy "obsessions" with us.
I'm obsessed with making people feel welcome and comfortable in social situations, especially when I'm the hostess. Also, I'm obsessed with letter writing and the proper form thereof. I would simply dah (that's die in a thick Blanche DuBois accent) if I had to send a note on anything but my own engraved stationery. And because we mentioned Blanche DuBois and obsession, it's only fair to show a picture of a 27 year old Marlon Brando. Warning, do not look directly AT the hotness, because the hotness, it burns.

4. Share the habit of a spouse, friend or loved one that drives you C-R-A-Z-Y.
Never. Even if there was, and I'm not saying there is, I'm not about to go about blabbering them onto the innardnet. I will, however, reveal that when I was on Holy Island in the UK, the female Methodist Minister kept making this hmmMMMmmm noise which sounded halfway between an "oh don't you think YOU'RE something" and that inexorably creepy sound made by the evil Skeksis in Jim Henson's child-nightmare-giving film, The Dark Crystal.

5. "I'd love to get into the habit of ___________________."
Getting a full ten hours of sleep a night. Yes, that's right, I said ten. It's really what I need and I suffer for it physically if I don't. I'm still my normal cheery self no matter how much shut eye I get (usually 3 to 6 hours a night) but my stupid Fibromyalgia flares up if I'm poorly rested which is, of course, always.

You're Lucky I'm Church of England!

2007-05-23T12:30:00.000-05:00

my very own set of virtual knuckle tattoos, courtesy of my pal Nathan Black at knuckletattoos.com

A Very Scary Sunday

2007-05-21T00:41:00.001-05:00

I've just come from three hours on the side Mo Pac, a lucky victim of a blown-off hubcap. I say lucky because I pulled over when my hupcap flew off. It was only when I stopped and looked at the car that I realized ALL THE BOLTS of the tire were completely gone and that there was nothing holding on my front driver's wheel except for dirt and faith.

So I called AAA, taking advantage of my free towing, told them what was going on and nestled in the back seat of the caddy, enjoying the beautiful evening and occasionally peeping my head up to see if the tow truck had arrived.

I whistled, I sang (Erasure mostly, What? Don't laugh.) and then I got a little philosophical. All these cars whizzing by me, whizzing by each other. Each one of these cars carries lives that are as rich and complex as we can imagine, but as they pass by it's just a blur. I won't know these people. They won't know each other, and yet we're mere inches from each other, constantly.

I started saying small prayers of thanksgiving, and in the distance, headed the opposite direction, was an ambulance in full siren mode. I said a special prayer for them and whoever the poor mortal bastard they were on their way to help.

Well, as it turns out, the poor mortal bastard was me. Someone saw a girl lying in the back of a car on the side of the road and called EMS. The rescue workers, wearing Scary Blue Gloves of Death, came to have a look at me. I had a look at them. They asked me if I needed help. I asked them if they knew anything about finding hubcaps or --motioning to my textbook on the seat next to me-- physical anthropology. By the time the Scary Blue Glove Guys wandered off the tow truck arrived and thus began the great adventure.

Michael was young, I'd say 22 at the most, with tight wiry muscles and a Tom Sawyer face. His once and almost definitely future girlfriend, Jessica, was riding with him. Tom clenched his jaw. He walked around, swore a little bit and stood there with intense focus. I won't bore you with the details, but it took nearly two hours of jaw clenching and mechanical brilliance for this man to get Stella on the truck, but he did it it -- lifted her up, removed the tire and the brake drum, set them under her sideways so as to not have the car crash down. I was struck by his intensity but also the tenderness with which he treated Stella. He knew this wasn't some old Ford Fiesta and thought long and hard --really, you could see him do it-- about each move he was going to make.

After an hour and a half of the previously mentioned jaw-clenching and mechanically wizardry, Stella found herself firmly ensconced on the flat bed trailer and Jessica, Michael and I were on our way back to my apartment. I wanted to do something nice for these guys. I knew from what Jessica had told me that he was just recovering from a rather embarrassing mistake at work and that they were having troubles because they never got to see each other. Obviously I was going to write a letter to his boss, but if only I had some cash to tip him, or a pack of cigarettes or something, but I came up empty.

That was, until I looked in the folds of mypocket liturgial secretary and found two large unused gift card to a nice Italian restaurant I had received the week before. Once Stella was nestled in the safe confines of my parking lot I handed over the gift cards with the admonition that they should go to the restaurant, order a couple of bottles of good wine and eat something stuffed with lobster.

Michael did the funny clench-jaw thing, which I suspect was his form of showing emotion. He gave Jessica the sweetest puppy dog look then re-clenching he swallowed hard and as he announced that "I'm really not supposed to do this" gave me the strongest, sweetest most embarrassed and awkward man-hug I've had in a good long while.

Those crazy kids. I hope they make it.

As for Stella...I hope she makes it too.

Falwell

2007-05-16T01:44:00.000-05:00

I did not like Jerry Falwell. I'm not going to pretend I did, and really my first emotions upon hearing he started a new and exciting career as daisy fertilizer were not ones of deep garment-rending sorrow.

Still, he has a family who grieves him, and people who knew him away from the cameras and unbelievable soundbites. They knew him when the gun he held --the one with which he shot himself, and by extension Christians in the foot-- was unloaded and put away. What was that Jerry Falwell like? I don't know --my closest brush with him was in high school when Liberty University was breathlessly chasing after anyone with a pulse and a triple-digit SAT score-- maybe he was a nice man. All I can say for him is that he seemed to truly have loved the God of his understanding, and maybe if there's something positive to learn from a man who outwardly (at least to me) seemed to be a cartoon of the worst of Christian stereotypes is that perhaps we all ought to seek to serve the God of OUR understanding (which, one hopes, is not a God who sends jumbo jets into office buildings because he has a problem with the ACLU or hot guy-on-guy action) with such fervor.

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

2007-04-29T09:03:00.000-05:00

I WENT TO CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL TODAY!

Oh. My. GOD. y'all don't even know.

I woke up early this morning in terrible cramping pain in my arms and my feet (and in my head, but that's because I konked it on the top bunk) and a very very sore throat. Par for the course following a long plane trip.

I got dressed in the dark and started on my walk to the Cathedral. It was raining, not really raining much but a sort of steady sprinkle and I got dripped on more from the lilacs and wisteria that seem to grow from every ledge than from the rain itself. By the time I arrived at the gate --just as the Matins were beginning-- I was feeling very sick and miserable indeed. I was sweating but chilled.

Then the matins began. There were only a handful of people, no tourists, in the quire which was much smaller than I expected to be, which was a good thing because I cried and cried and KEPT crying just out of happiness and relief and every other pent up emotion until I literally ran dry. It's a good thing I'm a quiet sobber.

After the small service I walked out very meek, not wanting to disrupt the half dozen clergy chatting in the nave. However, the tallest one came up to me and grabbed my hand --strangely the softest hands I've ever felt on a man-- and introduced himself as the dean of the cathedral (!!!). We chatted for a few moments and the upshot was that

a) he would love to have me back for one of their impossible-to-get-into summer sessions for seminarians when the time is right

b) he hoped I would come for drinks after the 11:00 Eucharist.

c) that I was to have free range of the cathedral until then.

I'm not sure what the anglican version of plotzing is, but I plotzed so hard that I barely got away before the tears started AGAIN.

The Eucharistic service was lovely (if long) and Robert (the dean) said a special welcome to all the vistors and tour groups and then he said a special welcome to ME and pointed to ME and remembered my name (which is no big surprise since the Archbishop's daughter is Rhiannon as well) and announced me as an aspiring ordinand from Texas and THEN THEY ALL CLAPPED.

PEOPLE CLAPPED FOR ME IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL!!!! I could not believe it. I mean, the English don't clap anyway, and I couldn't imagine anyone clapping in church. We don't even do that here. Maybe they were doing it just to be polite or to humor the Dean (who is now tied with my rector as Second Favorite Anglican Ever) but it was wonderful and I was so shocked I didn't even cry.

The service proceeded as usual, and then it was time for the reading of the new testament lesson. And it was Revelations 7 which I'd never actually heard read before. It's not one of the greatest hits

I literally gasped.

That's the verse that was written in my first bible, the one presented to me by my godmother when I was baptized after going through a hellish scene with my family about becoming a Christian.

"These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

and yep, I cried again.

Okay, only 3 minutes left on the internet. I went to drinks after the service. When they said drinks they meant it. Wine and mimosas. I had to beg the woman to let me have a plain glass of juice.

That's all for today. I'm off to The Holy Island of Lindisfarne tomorrow.

Psycho Dog!

2007-04-25T08:52:00.000-05:00

I love Thomas, my possibly intoxicated English Bulldog puppy I mentioned a few posts ago. I do, and I even let him sleep in my bed as long as he stays above the covers and doesn't drool. However, every relationship has an invisible line in the proverbial sand and last night Thomas trampled all over it. Background story? But of course.

I typically shower with the door closed and locked. Of course I live alone so it's pretty irrational, but chalk it up to having seen "Psycho" at too impressionable an age. Last night, or properly this morning since I didn't get home from my "End of The Semester Paper-Writing Jamboree" until 2:00 a.m. I threw caution to the wind and showered with the bathroom door open.

Bad idea.

See Thomas, loves two things. Water and Me. Well, three things really if you include "destroying anything Rhiannon likes or needs" and he came gallumphing into the bathroom and launched all fifty pounds of head and slobber into the tub, bringing the shower curtain crashing down and knocking down all my froofy girly stuff.

In the aftermath, with the curtain and rod around my knees and all my expensive conditioner swirling the drain there's Thomas, panting heavily and smiling up, a bottle of body wash in his jaws.

What a...

2007-04-22T18:49:00.000-05:00

So just a quick survey. When confronted with The Most Unpleasant Church-Visitor in God's Green Garden, it's never okay to respond to a statement with the phrase "well fuck you, too" is it?

No? Well, it was worth a shot.

Every Sunday evening those of us who participate in the last Eucharist of the day gather for dinner and fellowship in the refectory. Usually it's lovely, with clergy and seminarians and just plain ole goofballs like me all sitting around a table or two, discussing whatever's on our mind.

Today we had a visitor. Usually I am all in favor for visitors because even though we're a huge parish --the 16th largest Episcopal parish in the country-- everyone should be made to feel welcome, whether they're first timers or lifers. Because I tend to be a bit, um, effervescent, (that's a nice way to say loud-mouthed and overly friendly) I'm usually the one woman welcome wagon.

"So are you a new member or are you visiting?"

"I hope I'm just visiting, I hate Texas"

"Oh, well this is Austin, it's not like the rest of Texas"

"Blah blah blah Austin are egomaniacs, this place isn't special, blah blah blah death rates"

and it just went on. He hated everything, knew more about everything than everyone, and even though I felt pity in my heart for someone who so clearly was looking for an external fix (if he can just move to the right place he'll be happy) for internal misery he just made me want to give him a sock in the nose.

Still, you should be proud. I didn't say anything.

Well, except for that he should write Hallmark cards.

My dog is drunk and I'm going to Scotland.

2007-04-22T18:38:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure which dog is drunk, I suspect it's Thomas (English Bulldogs just look like they'd be heavy drinkers)but one of them got into a gigantic bottle of almond extract (how? How does this happen? I don't just leave bottles of almond extract around.)and now it is all gone. That's a 6 ounce bottle and 35% alcohol, so that's what...three shots of 70 proof hooch? Way to GO Thomas.

Anyway, I've sadly had to curtail my trip to Wales because it really is just out of the way. So instead I'm going to Edinburgh or somewhere thereabout for a day, so it seems that this time at least Good Scotch (and hopefully bad Scots, if you know what I mean and I think you do.) wins over church. But then again, I'm Anglican, so really...not much of a difference.

So Guinnesspresso?

2007-04-15T23:16:00.000-05:00

A shot of espresso poured into Guinness just went from a brilliant idea to a Very Bad Idea Indeed. Headache, good Lord the Headache. Not hangover, not drunk, just very very dehydrating. Must go drink the swimming pool and go to bed.

Incidentally, I miss having a boyfriend. Not because I want to share my emotions or my life or blah blah blah (which by the way I do, but that's immaterial) but because I have a knot in my right shoulder the size of a cadillac eldorado and I can't reach to rub it out.

Speaking of Cadillac Eldorados, here's a pretty picture of Stella, and the Dutch Astrophysicist (L) and Hungover Mississippi Farm Boy (R) who "fixed" Stella. Cute huh?

Friday Five: Dental

2007-04-13T15:05:00.000-05:00

1. Are you a regular patron of dentists' offices? Or, do you go
a) faithfully, as long as you have insurance, or
b) every few years or so, whether you need it or not, or
c) dentist? what is this "dentist" thing you speak of?

I avoided my dentist for two years because every time I went in the dental hygienist tried to set me up with her son. I mean EVERY TIME for SEVEN YEARS. He sounded nice enough "a nationally ranked cyclist" and 6'4", but I was in a relationship or just not up to going on a blind date. So late last year I agreed to let her give him my number. Did he call? No, he MYSPACED me. Lame. Second, was he in fact a "nationally ranked cyclist"? No, he is a grown man who competes in BMX BIKE races.

Still, out of kindness and because You Just Never Know, I agreed to meet him --making sure to have a back-up date (the super cute stand-up bass player for a band that played at my birthday party)-- did he show up? NO. Why? Because he "doesn't go out much" and got invited to a birthday party that "sounded a lot more fun."

Social skills, anyone?

2. Whatever became of your wisdom teeth?
Had them pulled out a few years ago. I don't remember much, other than getting wheeled to the car with my arms straight out, singing the theme to Rocky. I think perhaps I was on drugs.

3. Favorite thing to eat that's BAAAAAD for your teeth.
Extra-Hot Atomic Fireballs! I had to instate an Fireball Embargo a few years ago because I love them so much I'd just suck on them all day. One day I had like, 10 in a row or something and lost feeling in my chin for an hour!

4. Ever had oral surgery? Commiserate with me.
Just the reg'lar wisdom teeth extraction. Oh, and I had my tongue pierced back when I was 19. Stupid. It didn't really hurt getting it done, but after? Owch.

5. "I'd rather have a root canal than _________________."
Have a rotting tooth? Honestly I love my dentist so much I trust him not to hurt me. He's the B.E.S.T. best.

Bonus: Does your dentist recommend Trident?
I don't know because I don't chew gum. He did suggest that I switch to some sugar-free life savers when I was dealing with my Atomic Fireball withdrawal, but I went cold turkey.

And, lest you forget, Steve Martin's brilliant turn as the Dentist from Little Shop of Horrors:

Holy Week Recap

2007-04-12T09:08:00.000-05:00

It was a short Lent but a long Holy Week, particularly the Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Even. It was also the first time I've done the whole dog-and-pony show and it wore.me.out.

Don't get me wrong, I loved it. I was moved to tears on more than one occasion...it was just long.

Loooooong.

Like, Wagner's-Ring-Cycle-as-performed-by-an-opera-company-wherein-the-entire
-cast-was-under-the-influence-of-Quaaludes long.

The high point, of course, was Easter Vigil. Why didn't anyone tell me how kick-you-in-the-face fantastic Easter Vigil was? It's bloody brilliant. There's a processional WITH FIRE and you can bring your own bell and ring the hell out of it when the Resurrection is declared plus baptisms PLUS getting spritzed by holy water on a rosemary OUT OF NOWHERE (okay, I could have done with some warning on that one, I squealed like a frightened spider monkey). It's fantastic, even for austere, Benedictine me.

However, there are no short vigils and I was getting mighty antsy as we rolled through the second hour of service. Visions of pancakes and warm beds danced in my head...and then Alleluia! The Lord Has Risen Indeed! and it was all worth it. It's like the last sixteen minutes of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The whole piece is beautiful and about oh, forty hours long --okay, 74 minutes-- but my God, is the ending worth it

Live Cheap...um, about that...

2007-04-09T15:23:00.000-05:00

ohmygodyall, "Live Cheap" is NOT GOING WELL. Someone needs to take my computer away from me.

I was trying to find a place to stay in London my last night in the UK, and I thought

Thought 1: "I need a place to stay my one night in London, I'll probably be really tired, what with all the praying and sleeping in spartan quarters and so on, and I've got that transatlantic flight the next day...I should probably get a private room instead of sleeping in a hostel dorm."

Thought 2: "Well, you know even the cheap hostel private rooms are still $90.00 I bet I could get a fairly nice room for a little bit more. I mean, it's my first time to London, and a girl's gotta have a little fun, right?"

Thought 3: "I really CAN'T go to London for the first time and just not DO anything...I wonder if I could get a ticket to some West End show."

Thought 4: "You know, these are all pretty expensive, and a girl only gets her West End cherry popped once...I might as well see if I can get a ticket to Equus."

Thought 5: "Ouch, that's a lot of money to see Harry Potter drop trou. Still, I love Richard Griffiths and if I'm going to do it, I might as well do it right."

Thought 6 "...so I might as well get Grand Dress Circle seats."

Thought 7 "...and I bet I could get a package hotel for not-that-much-more"

Thought 8 "oooh, this one used to be the Vanderbilt's London residence, my grandfather in Nashville s a Vanderbilt man...I sort of OWE it to him to stay there."

Thought 9 "credit card, where's my credit card? Oh there it is! Clicketyclickety ENTER"

Thought 10"oh...Live Cheap...whoops"

Live Cheap Challenge

2007-04-09T13:58:00.000-05:00

Today marks Day One of my Eastertide "Live Cheap Challenge" wherein I spend as little money as humanly possible in a noble attempt to not run out of dough on my top-secret pilgrimage to Canterbury at the end of the month.

That means tightening ye olde purse strings and actually eating at home once in a while which is just a big ole draggity drag. On the other hand, it affords me the chance to get my food shopping at my favorite Secret Shameful Shopping Spot: Big Lots.

Go ahead you judgey judgers. I have one word for you:

Sprats.

They're tiny little smoked fish, somewhere between herring and heaven, they're delicious and notoriously hard to find on a regular basis. In fact, they inspire such a cultish devotion that there is a real-life, no-foolin' Sprats Index online where sprat-lovers everywhere can report where they most recently found the sprats, when they bought them and how much they paid. There's the brilliance, too. They're only a dollar a tin and a tin --when paired with a few nice fat slices of black bread and maybe a beer, makes the finest stick-to-your-ribs, reasonably heart-healthy meal I can conjure in my sticky little brain.

2007-04-03T20:03:00.000-05:00

Okay, I don't know what's going on with me. It seems like everything is just crumpling around me. I'm behind on my school work, my work-work, I'm nauseated, I'm not sleeping properly, I'm angry at my dogs, and I just can't seem to get a break. I took today off from work to theoretically sleep and get a paper done that was due a week and a half ago, except when I woke up (almost 20 hours after I went to bed) I was so sick that I passed out in the church bathroom and then laid on the floor for an hour (wanted to puke, couldn't. Burped a lot)

My apartment is a wreck, truly a wreck, and it's making me miserable but I don't have the energy to clean.

Then it's a lot of little things, Thomas chewed the cord to my laptop ac adapter, and the back cover to a text book, my debit card got rejected today and I don't know why.

Also, I have no friends. My bff emeritus has never been one for much emotional support, my until-a-few-weeks-ago bff and I broke up, and my guy pal who can always make me laugh has, once again, gotten with a girlfriend who doesn't let him talk to me, even though we live 2000 miles away.

ALSO my grandparents and I are in a fight because my grandfather, frustrated by his blindness, has just been needlessly cruel.

I used to have problems with depression several years ago, but have been okeydokey for at least 2 years. I really do NOT want it to come back.

and now the icing: Lupus.

Le Parapluie de Austin, Texas

2007-03-30T12:23:00.000-05:00

Rain is all well and good when you can stay home snuggling with your sweetie, watching old French movies and maybe breaking out the fondue pot because you're both in the mood for something Gallic, and you've got nothing left in your house but a chunk of gruyere, some bread that's on the verge of crouton-dom and a few not-quite-dead apples. Rain isn't even so bad when you're single and you can stay home, reading books in bed and napping on and off until you decide to wake up and accomplish some mundane task that's needed doing. But when you're stuck at work, and the paperwork is high as an elephant's eye and the only joy you have during your normal day --driving around during lunch with the top down-- is cruelly ripped away from you because it's been raining Noah-style for the past three weeks, well then rain is NOT okay.

It must be stopped.

Friday Five: Holy Week, Batman!

2007-03-30T11:44:00.000-05:00

1. Will this Sunday be Palms only, Passion only, or hyphenated?
According to my pocket liturgical calendar (without which I simply could not survive because I am a dork like that) it's The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday. I like it because it acknowledges the Palm Sunday tradition that we know and love, but pulls the focus to where it truly belongs.

2. Maundy Thursday Footwashing: Discuss.
Oh honey no, I'm Episcopalian, we don't do pastoral pedi's. Not that I would mind washing someone else's feet, but unless your last name is Nguyen or Kim and I'm paying you good money, you're not laying a finger on my toes.

3. Share a particularly meaningful Good Friday worship experience.
Last year was especially moving as it was a sort of passion play --the first one I've attended. I have a difficult time going to Good Friday services because I'm so emotionally worn down by Maundy Thursday, which I can never escape without bawling my eyes out.

4. Easter Sunrise Services--choose one:
a) "Resurrection tradition par excellence!"
b) "Eh. As long as it's sunrise with coffee, I can live with it."
c) "[Yawn] Can't Jesus stay in the tomb just five more minutes, Mom?!?"

I used to do sunrise service as a youth group leader in college and I suppose that when I'm ordained, if it's REALLY important to some folks, I'll haul myself out of bed and do it for them. Personally I don't get anything from the whole thing and it makes me feel like I should be sitting in the back, chain smoking gauloises and drinking Bloody Mary's out of a thermos.

5. Complete this sentence: It just isn't Easter without...
A hat…and gloves. And Jesus too, I suppose, but while Jesus is with me all year long, I can only get away with white gloves a few times a year.

Easter Card from a Hooker

2007-03-27T17:18:00.000-05:00

First of all, did anyone get the Tom Waits joke? I have problems judging my audience in this blog. Y'all like Tom Waits, right? If not, more for me. I'm sure he'd be an excellent clergy spouse. Rroowr. ANYWAY.

Once or twice a year I toss around with the idea of wearing nail polish on my fingers. I rarely wear the stuff because my fingernails are nice and strong, plus I'm a fundamentally cheap and clumsy person, so I hate the idea of paying 15 dollars for a manicure that will last anywhere between one and three hours before it begins to chip.

A few nights ago Walgreens offered two-for-one Rimmel products, so I bought two nailcolors, one was a light lavender, which despite being named Orgasm was interesting but demnure, and the other --Pillar Box-- was a bright red. I figured I'd use this on my toes for when I'm feeling, if you'll pardon the pun-- kicky, yet in a fit of pique I lacquered some on my fingernails this afternoon. Bad idea.

Sadly Pillar Box, which I foolishly thought would be pillar box-colored, was in reality a sort of hot fuchsia pink of the variety you'd most often find on hookers from the fine state of New Jersey.

This in itself wouldn't be so bad, but I am out of nail polish remover (used it to clean my toaster or something) and have to teach my Extended Discovery class at the church in two hours.

Off for an emergency mani!

It's all over now, baby blue

2007-03-24T02:21:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, friendships have to end.
Tonight one ended for me.

It was strange. We had been best friends, boon companions, for five (or something) years although I can say I checked out of the relationship months ago. We just grew apart (there's a cliche for you). I came to the point where I needed a grown-up friend, and she needed someone who appreciated her and loved her as she is. We weren't getting that from each other. In fact I suspect we stayed together out of nostalgia.

My wish for her, one I hoped I could have seen come true while we were friends, was for her to find self-esteem. Now I think she's found some. Hopefully she'll be able to use it to find a person who can love her and accept her the way we both wished I could have. So she has her freedom.

And what do I have?

The knowledge that I gave a frightened girl who deserved something better than me the permission to go out and finally get it. Keeping someone in a cage, even if it's a pretty one they made themselves, is wrong.

And boy can it suck, being right.

Love is in the Air

2007-03-20T12:54:00.000-05:00

Spring has sprung and I am in love. Yes, little bluebirds are flitting around my head and I'm floating in a daze of happy delirium because my otherwise glamorous life is finally complete and now all I want to do is spend the day making out with my new gorgeous hulking beast of a boyfriend. And by "making out" naturally I mean "throwing things into" and by "gorgeous hulking etc. new boyfriend" I mean "brand new 45 gallon trash can complete with wheels(!!!)"

You all feel really sad for me right now, don't you?

Vacation All I Ever Wanted

2007-03-19T14:39:00.000-05:00

So plans for my very exciting First! Trip! Abroad! are coming together nicely. I'll be in Canterbury in April, which according to Chaucer is just the time to do the pilgrimage thing. After three days staying on the Cathedral grounds --and hopefully running into my future BFF, Captain Alphabet (The Archbishop of Canterbury)-- I'll make my way to Lindisfarne, aka Holy Island (pictured), one of the most mystical places on earth, to spend five days on the little tidal island in quiet meditation and prayer. Then it's arrive in London and head immediately to Canterbury Cathedral where hopefully I'll spend two days on the cathedral grounds soaking up all manner of martyr-y goodness, then it's off to Wales to visit St David's Cathedral in Pembrokeshire to visit the cathedral my parish is named for.

Very excited. Woo!

A little preemptive, but...

2007-03-10T13:34:00.000-06:00

Thoughts on a Friday: Career Change

2007-03-09T16:51:00.000-06:00

You know, if the whole ordained ministry thing doesn't work out, I think I'd be a good Feudal Lord, or maybe some manner of Robber Baron. I bet my serfs would like me. I'm merciful and good at accounting.

Okay, off to Evening prayer. Not sure if I'm the officiant or the lector. Guess we'll find out soon enough.

RIP Cujo Poindexter

2007-03-06T10:26:00.000-06:00

Cujo Poindexter, my spite-filled adding machine, died today. He went to his death doing what he loved most in life: screwing with me and trying to take my fingers off at the knuckle. Prior to his demise he had been involved in a long-term relationship with Stacy from Accounts Payable. The two separated last year. Funeral arrangements will be held in the black trashbin by my desk. The family asks you send toner in leiu of flowers.

Lovely Pram

2007-03-05T16:01:00.000-06:00

Do y'all know the concept of "lovely pram?" It's something along the lines of damning with faint praise. If, for example, a woman friend of yours is wheeling her hideous, suet-faced new baby directly at you, waiting for you to ooh and ahh over the adorableness of said uggo. Now, y'all know that not all babies are pretty babies. I was not a pretty baby, nor was my brother. I looked like a cone head, he looked like Ross Perot.

You've got to say something though, so instead of complimenting the baby, you remark --quite honestly-- about what a nice stroller she has. That's the proverbial lovely pram.

Anyway my grandmother, who is well known to have a soul made of eels and black stuff, just saw the Cadillac today, which was sitting happily in the parking lot with the top down.
"Must be nice when it rains" she said,
"It's got a top, Grandmama" I said
"Holey, I suspect" she replied.

It wasn't and I told her so. We chatted a little bit, I'm not sure what my grandfather told her, but I'm sure it wasn't the total truth. Finally she lowered her old-lady sunglasses, --you know, those giant creatures that fit over a pair of regular specs-- peered at the card with those clear blue eyes that haven't known joy or tenderness since Ike was in office, sniffed and said:

"Well, it's certainly a long car, isn't it?

It's like driving the state of Connecticut

2007-03-02T17:48:00.000-06:00

Ask me how glad I am to have Stella, my 1972 Cadillac Eldorado convertible back from the hotrod shop? Go ahead, ask. I'll tell you. I am SO GLAD. Like, Britney after she dumped K.Fed but before she did every other single stupid thing she's done in the past several months (not that I would know because I don't really follow that stuff, but I DO notice when someone doesn't have any hair. Can't slip that one by me, Brit!) glad. I could just spit with glee. I won't, because I'm a lady, but I COULD.

Anyway, I bought my gorgeous, sexy, make-out-with-tongues-able caddy a month or so ago, but because the stray family member might accidentally stumble upon this humble blog, I didn't say anything because I had not yet told my grandparents who --out of the loving kindess of their hearts-- have blessed me with a series of Volvo station wagons.

Well, now I've told Dada and his main concern is that we never tell my grandmother. Typically I would balk at this, but you know what? They've been married 60 years. Whatever they're doing works for them. Anyway, I can talk about Stella now, and so I shall!

Look at her. I defy you to describe this car and not use the phrase "land yacht"

Also? And this is a little joke for the Anglicans in the audience. It's our most common liturgical color! Let's hear it for Ordinary Time Green!

A Glitter and Glue Friday Five!

2007-03-02T09:09:00.000-06:00

1. Would you call yourself "creative"? Why or why not?
Creative, slightly touched in the head…potato potahto. I actually had a bit of a cottage industry going on with custom handbags made from vintage posters. javascript:void(0)
PublishThey were gorgeous and incredible, but prohibitively time and money-consuming to produce. To even recoup my expenses, these little boutiques wanted to sell them for $300 to $500. I didn't want that because that meant people like me --who can't afford to drop several hundred bucks on frivolous a handbag, no matter how gorgeous-- couldn't own them.

2. Share a creative or artistic pursuit you currently do that you'd like to develop further.
Ha! hahaaahahahaaha! Oh, my sides, they hurt from the laughing. Unless trying to figure out the exact right way to configure my body so that the four and a half hours of sleep I get a night are not interrupted by painfully enthusiastic nibbles from my beloved puppy, Saint Thomas Bulldog counts as a creative pursuit. Incidentally, I no longer have the chance to do anything creative because --to quote Alice's Humpty Dumpty "here's glory for you"-- I'm spending all of my previously-free time earning a degree in…Creative Writing and Rhetoric!

3. Share a creative or artistic pursuit you have never done but would like to try.
There aren't many that I've wanted to pursue but haven't tried, although just off the top of my head I wouldn't mind giving a go at stained glass. Or something with wood. I like the idea of working with wood, it's very satisfying, taking something rough and through time and patience and many small movements it becomes polished and reveals its inner beauty, there's something poignant about that (plus a nice Biblical tradition, even though I'm pretty sure they're like, three trees in the whole of Galilee).

4. Complete this sentence: "I am in awe of people who can _____________."
Pee standing up. Okay, no seriously (although still, that's a neat trick) people who can make lace --which for the record I have no desire to do-- or people who can sew well (Hello lovely seamstresses! You're pretty! Will you make me a cassock for no money? I love you!). Knitting doesn't impress me because, seriously, I live in Texas, how many scarves do I need?

5. Share about a person who has encouraged your creativity, who has "called you to your best self."
Um, no one? It's not like I've been actively discouraged or anything, but I've always been such a kook that I didn't really need encouragement. Heck, I probably should have been taped to the walls. I have, on the other hand, received a lot of pressure to use my creativity "You know you're a genius" says my grandfather who is only now beginning to accept that I want to be a priest, not a famous author "what you need to do is just write a book and sell it"

Oh! Is that all!

Update finally

2007-03-01T12:46:00.000-06:00

I have a feeling that I'm going through one of those stupid growth periods where I get my butt handed to me on a daily basis just to keep me humble. I'm calling it a growth period because I'm an optimist and something good has to come out of this, because butt-handing for butt-handing's sake is a bit more than my delicate psyche can handle right now. I'm a fragile flower y'all.

School is taking its toll; I get very little sleep, twenty hours during the week maybe? All I know is now when I frown, my forehead wrinkles and when I unfrown, the wrinkles stay. Need to drink more water. Also need to drink more beer, but not as a form of wrinkle defense, it just sounds good right now.

Also, here's one for the books. I think I dislike someone...one of my professors, actually. From his nostril-singeing "sex panther" cologne to his self-impressed masturbatory post post-modern writing, this yahoo does the pachanga on each and every one of my nerves. He's a blowdried Fitzgerald, to my (less talented) Hemingway. Also, I suspect he pees sitting down.

On the work front, all is not quiet, in fact I have a feeling that red poppies may soon be growing over my workblog. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I haven't enjoyed the workblog in about a year for various reasons which discretion (what? I have discretion!) prevents me from relating, but I'd hate for it to go out like this.

Church life is in the doldrums and I feel that I am just muddling through. That's fine. I don't mind muddling. We Anglicans come from a great tradition of muddling (and I don't just mean the limes in our gin and tonics), but I've found myself getting a bit irritated with people whose schedules are freer than mine, not doing what they said they would. Welcome to the party, I suppose.

On the bright side:

My gorgeous '72 Caddy --after two weeks at the hotrod spa-- should be fit as a fiddle and ready for love next weekend. Yes, it's to the tune of $750, but for new brakes and a cleaned-out gas tank, I can't complain.

My Lenten discipline of doing one truly generous thing a day is going well, and I feel my soul embiggened all the time.

I am getting a 90 minute massage on Saturday and after that I plan on taking a nap and cleaning my apartment.

I'm back here again!

Aww, old folks.

2007-02-04T03:06:00.000-06:00

Aww, lookit my sweet grandparents! Eighty one years old and crazy as the day is long, and I love them so much. This was taken at their 60th Wedding Anniversary.

Polar bears and red pens

2007-02-01T12:30:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time, and by that I mean Monday, I made a giant ass of myself. I will pause a moment while you all stand back and gasp in the shock of that confession.

I have a professor. Since he is the head of my particular department and my departmental advisor, I will call him Professor Bossofme. I am taking a writing course from Prof. Bossofme; it's my first college writing class as a matter of fact. Monday night was our second meeting; he treated us to the first public reading of his new textbook. He started, of course, at the introduction. We were discussing leads -those first few attention-grabbing lines of any text-- that night and he wanted to explain how it was done. Well, it was very poetic and compelling for a history book.

It also had a huge, roaring error, smackdab in the middle of line two. He said something the equivalent of "it's midnight in Antarctica, and we're waiting for the polar bears" (it was a different area and a different animal, but we've got to be Google-concious in this crazy world).

So, because I'm a jerk with no internal censor, I waited until after class and jokingly pointed out that there were no polar bears in Antarctica. Then I ran down three flights of stairs in embarrassment.

Last night I get an email from Prof. Bossofme. He mentioned he reads my workblog. "You have a real talent" he says, and then....

he offers me a job as an editor.

Tuesday is alright for blogging

2007-01-30T13:50:00.000-06:00

Okay, it's Tuesday. On Tuesdays and Thursday I post here, plus the Friday Five if I can do it. Right. So, hi. How are y'all (and by y'all I mean no one since no one reads this anymore)?

School: School is going swimmingly one --swimmingly like a salmon trying to flip flip flip his way up a waterfall. Taking 15 or 18 credits (I can't remember right now) while working more-than-fulltime has sucked my brains out with a straw. I'm feeling good about keeping my 4.0 untarnished because I am going to graduate summa cum laude if it kills me. I'm trying to prepare myself in the unfortunate event I am not seen as seminary material and have to go to Yale Divinity as a back-up.

When Yale is your back-up, you need that 4.0.

Work: Work is hard. I suppose that's why it's called work instead of "getting paid to jerk around on the internet." I have taken on a new responsibility which is currently a bit more than I can chew, and I've got a big mouth so that's saying something.

Church: Feeling pretty good, in fact my very first ho'made (pretty much) liturgy is going to have its debut tonight at this extended discovery class I'm co-facilitating. The class itself isn't going especially well in my opinion, it's a little dry. Next week my church is hosting the diocesan convention and I'm giving myself permission to not do a damn thing about it. So there.

Litany of the calendar

2007-01-23T23:23:00.000-06:00

Oh my gosh y'all, I am worn out. In fact, I wouldn't even be blogging if I had the energy to get off the couch, slug down a few Aleve and go to bed. So here's what's going on with me. I'm taking 18 credits this semester, which is a lot. I couldn't swing 18 credits the first time I was in college and didn't have a job or pets or a life outside the gilded halls of my Almost Mater. Of course I'm still working my reg'lar 40+ hour work-week, AND doing all my church stuff AND taking care of my new puppy and my slightly more grown up puppy, neither of which see the appeal of peeing outside (perhaps I've overshared).

So here's the deal. I will blog here Tuesday and Thursdays and do the RevGal Friday Five either on Friday or sometime during the weekend. That's all, that's all I can do.

I've still got my regular work-blog, Miss Adventure, where I have resolved to blog on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Friends, I just can't do any more writing. Cannot.

My wonderful rector says he stays sane by making sure to obey the litany of the calendar, so this is my litany.

Now I'm going to sleep.

A Rainy Sunday

2007-01-14T12:28:00.000-06:00

My dogs are more sophisticated than I am, or at least more glamourous. This should come as no surprise to anyone as my Chinese Shar-Pei and English Bulldog are both better bred than I. THEY are lounging on a gorgeous 19th century canopy bed watching Capote. I, on the other hand, am scrunched up on my well-loved (and well-used) red couch, typing away. Doing homework, getting my columns ready for next week, trying to get a jump on this semester's reading.

In happier news, I have availed myself of Torrid.com's clearance sale. Once upon a time they used to carry great rockabilly clothes, especially dresses. Now, not so much, but I did pick up four lovely tunic-length (which means "regular length" for long-waisted me) angora-esque sweaters in mulberry, cadet blue, grey and some other color I can't remember at this precise moment. Oh! My order says I ordered one in loganberry (not mulberry) and another of a slightly different style in purple.

It says "Look! I'm compassionate yet age-appropriate and fun! You can pair me with a nice skirt for a meeting, jeans for Bible study, or your 50's bad-girl denim capris and kitten heels for beer and bands at Beerland! Just throw on some of yjavascript:viewDetail();our favorite vintage jewelry and go!"

Then I hopped right over to Sizeappeal.com, which, despite having a terrible name and very hit and miss clothing (lots of useless ruffles and hoochiewear) occasionally has something so slap-you-in-the-face fabulous that you cannot imagine how you ever lived without it, like the bateau neck, 3/4 sleeve, just-below-the-knee black wiggle dress I just purchased, which can be dressed up, down or even worn with pants if you're into that sort of thing.

Of course, all sensible-clothes and no play makes Rhiannon a dull girl so I nabbed a subtle skull-print bandana to wear a hair-scarf/headband, a pair of earrings with revolvers danging from them to wear during target practice at Red's Indoor Range (Monday is Ladies Night! Free gun rental and half-price range-time!) and a nice silver flying swallow keychain to use in conjunction with the keys to a car I hope to pick up next Saturday, weather permitting.

Sex, drugs and Leonard Cohen

2007-01-09T11:46:00.000-06:00

Hello pals, please excuse my lapse in posting. It won't happen again --at least not without warning--

I'm sitting at my desk, watched over by Checks and Balances (my two folk-art vultures) and listening to Leonard Cohen. I feel badly about Leonard Cohen. He could have been a mystic, but he couldn't get past the sex. Jung wrote that a drug user is a failed mystic. I say anyone called to greatness who trades the divine intoxicant for an earthly one is failed, too.

I once knew a failed man. He could have been great, a great mystic and priest but there was something in the blur of skin and smoke that took him away from the divine. To ask him, he saw the divine in those lungfuls of smoke and handfuls of flesh. That may be true, but I suspect it's cowardice. It's peeking through slightly spread fingers because the movie has gotten too scary or the sun has gotten too bright.

I've been abstinent for five years. It's a constant struggle but God has given me considerable gifts, gifts which terrify and humble me. I don't want to be another failed mystic. I don't want to turn around and realize I'm 50 years old with nothing to show for my faith but dog-eared copies of Kierkegaard, a husband with a leash and a great enthusiasm for an après dinner bong hit.

Harrumph

2006-12-29T15:54:00.000-06:00

First go here. Then come back.
Frankly I'm feeling a bit stroppy myself for some reason. I think it's the holidays and I'm worn out. Plus it's going to be New Year's Eve and I don't have A Boy To Kiss, which is just a little frustrating…not frustrating enough to actually do anything about it --pull one out of the bullpen if you will-- but just irksome enough to make me a tad bit grouchier on an already grouchy rainy day.

I'm also frustrated that no matter how I try to censor myself into just the meekest little lamb that ever lived, it just never works. To my credit, I am the same person pretty much all the time and there are few things that come out of my mouth that would be inappropriate for the bishop's ears. Well...more or less.

Still, as part of my continuing War on Self-Expression I have decided to spend the weekend Bishop-proofing my blog, the beginnings of which has already happened (if you notice, the entry about boobies, blue-footed and otherwise, has been deleted). Not that it's necessary, because

a) My bishop couldn't be cooler if she were made out of Diet Coke and Mentos

b) My "real" blog, Miss Adventure, is much more risqué and easier to find, considering it
lands on her doorstep each Thursday morning as part of the newspaper.

RevGals Friday Five: Dreams

2006-12-29T15:04:00.000-06:00

1) a dream you remember from childhood
It was the summer of second grade and one of the hottest, muggiest Augusts on record. My room was so hot I would go down to the basement and fall asleep on the floor trying to press as much of my body against the cold green concrete floors. One night, I slept on the floor and had this amazing dream where I was on an ice floe that had been turned into a sort of party barge. There was snow everywhere, Snow in the flowerboxes, snow on the tables. My grandfather appeared, except he was a giant grey seal wearing an English sailor's cap and an orange and blue horizontally striped polo shirt stretched tight against his stomach. There were polar bears doing handstands and everyone was rejoicing. I woke up, in the words of Tennessee Williams from his movie Babydoll feeling "cool and comfortable for the first time in my life"

2) a recurring or significant dream
I was in my studio apartment downtown when all of the sudden, these two horrible people came in and started taking over my life, going through my possessions and generally taking up all the oxygen in the room. Apparently I thought they had some control over me, but then I put my foot down, told them both to get out of my home and what do you know? They did.

3) a nightmare
Oh just your run of the mill teeth-falling-out dreams. Since I lucid dream I'm fortunate enough to be able to put the kibosh on anything too scary before it even begins.

4) a favorite daydream
A perfect day in May of 9th grade I was sitting in English class while to the football coach read Romeo and Juliet aloud to us in his broad New York accent. I was humming to myself "Imagine me and you, I do…" as I watched the dust particles float in the light of the window. I know there must have been other people in the room, but I don't remember it, and my mind just floated off…I was in the same room in the 1973 and as I looked out I saw a girl about my age, dressed in bellbottoms, peace beads and John Lennon glasses walk across the quad. It was my mother. She had gone to the same high school I did, and must have looked out the same window. I guess I just dreamed a stitch in time, only I stitched backwards.

5) a dream for the New Year
I dream of an entire day without this stupid pain.

How is this even possible?

2006-12-26T09:50:00.000-06:00

Riddle me this dear readers, how is it possible to have a morning after without a night before? Aside from communion wine and one small "toddy for the body" in the form of an Irish Cream consumed on Christmas Eve afternoon, I have had a hooch-free holiday.

And yet I seem to have awoken with the sort of hangover headache that inspires one to start the day with the word "mother" before rapidly descending into odalisques of profanity that would make longshoremen weep. It's a puzzlement.

As a rule I do not get hangovers. Mostly this is because I rarely drink. Even the morning after my gigantic birthday party where I woke up face-down on living room carpet, clasping a roll of tin foil
(don't ask) I was merely headachey for a few hours. Yet somehow I am sitting here, stock still and barely capable of sentence structure, wishing people wouldn’t blink so (deleted scene of colorful-yet-unimaginable verbal violence) loudly.

It's not Christmas 'til someone makes you cry

2006-12-24T11:51:00.000-06:00

There's no dramamonger like a familial dramamonger and there's no time like the holidays for said familial dramamonger (FDM) to just take complete leave of their senses and start spewing all sorts of nonsense everywhichway, during their annual War On Functional Interpersonal Relationships.

Of course I let myself get sucked into it today because apparently learning from mistakes is for chumps. Had I been smart --which sadly I am not-- I would have said to the FDM that I just did not have time to deal with their special extra-robust houseblend of dysfunction today. I should have taken a rain check and promised to listen to two hours of emotional blackmail, inappropriate acting-out and the litany of Why You Ruin Everything some other time, when I didn't have to get up and talk in front of close to 2000 people.

Even as I was descending into the maelstrom of Crazy, I was just too tired to do it. I mean, this wasn't just regular Crazy, either. It was Holiday Crazy, which is like a super-concentrated, smokeable rock form of Crazy. It was Crazy that shook my very foundations of belief as to who these people are, what they value and how they think of me.

And yes, it hurt, and it's going to hurt some more before it's through, but tonight I'm going to fiddle dee dee. They're not going to ruin my Christmas. They're not going to make yet another holiday All About Them.

I hope.

In that vein and for your enjoyment I give you The Truest Secular Christmas Song Ever Written: Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas From The Family"

St Thomas Bulldog, my new baby.

2006-12-21T12:30:00.000-06:00

The Further Adventures of St Thomas Bulldog

Après moi, le déluge.

2006-12-18T10:19:00.000-06:00

Friends, I'm worried about Virginia. The Diocese of Virginia is the largest diocese in The United States and one of the richest --historically and financially. It was also my first diocese and will in some way always be my spiritual home. It was where I first discerned my call to ministry.

Now it's probable that eight Virginia parishes, including two extremely wealthy and historic (George Washington served on their vestry) parishes, will be leaving The Episcopal Church for the extremely conservative Anglican Church in Nigeria, Rwanda or Bolivia. Dozens --at least-- of other parishes are watching what happens to Virginia. If and when they do leave, I suspect many others will follow their lead and the Episcopal Church will be split forever.

The title of this post, for those of you who don't know, is paraphrased from King Louis XV of France who, foretelling the French Revolution and the end of the monarchy said "après moi, le déluge"

"After me, the flood."

Lightbulb!

2006-12-15T00:54:00.000-06:00

Feeling a bit better today. My jaw is still clenched and is showing no signs of releasing its deathgrip on my face, but at least that gordian knot in my chest has subsided. Knowing I have healthy food in the house helped --I bought two cartons of mixed field greens, two broccoli crowns and some dried cranberries at the market this evening-- but what really dropped my blood pressure was finally putting a finger on what it is that I've been avoiding.

I'm going to see my mother for the first time in almost ten years.

It's like meeting an mildly bad ex-boyfriend, 20 years after he broke your heart. No matter how ugly the breakup was, the statute of limitations have expired. I just can't be angry. However, that doesn't mean I especially want her back in my life.

PeaceBang had mentioned something about a "self-care team" --I think I need to wrangle one-- I used to get bi-monthly massages, working out a trade with a RMT I knew. I baked, she massaged. It was great, but then she went on Atkins and I've been a mess.

What I really need to do is hie myself unto Red's Indoor Gun range for a theraputic hour with a .38 special. What? It works.

Rabbit's tale.

2006-12-13T22:21:00.000-06:00

Maryanne! Fetch me my gloves Maryanne!

I feel like the white rabbit, forever running and not getting much rest. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it up. For the past three nights I've tried to sleep. I've tucked myself in bed a full 12 hours before I needed to be awake again, and yet the hours would roll by and soon it would be three o'clock in the morning.

I know I'm not taking proper care of myself. My apartment isn't as clean as I'd like it to be, I'm eating on a screwy schedule --handful of walnuts for breakfast in the car, whatever the lunch runner brings me for a midday meal (usually a chef salad) and whatever I have on hand at home for dinner. Ritz crackers, smoked herring, nutella on a spoon, I've been guilty of them all in the past few weeks. My laundry is far overdue and there's a check in my purse that's needed cashing for the past nine days.

I know part of it was the stress from finals --speaking of which, my term grades just posted. 4.0 thankyouverymuch-- and there's a lot of tension surrounding the retrospectively not-so-big but still scary meeting with my rector.

Another part is the pain. I don't talk about it much, but I'm in constant physical pain and I know much of it is stress-related muscle tension.

I'm not unhappy. I'm just in a holding pattern. Things that need to be done are being left undone (where have I heard that before?) and I'm not living up to my potential joy.

I feel as if I'm trying to avoid something, but I can't figure out what it is. I hope I snap out of it soon. This isn't who I'm supposed to be.

Scary part two

2006-12-12T18:27:00.000-06:00

Today I had my scary formal meeting with my rector --the first official step of approximately 45 towards ordaination. As it turned out, it wasn't actually the scary formal meeting, but an equally scary PRE-meeting, involving quesadillas which I would have enjoyed had I not been nervous unto puking.

I've been told to seek out a spiritual director (groovy yet possibly expensive)have a chat with a member of the ordained diaconate (not as groovy, but possibly interesting and also free) and start going to therapy as many clergy in my parish choose to do (groovy in that our priests see a shrink, possibly groovy in my having to go personally, definitely expensive)

Then, in a month, I have the REAL scary formal meeting.

***

I'm beginning to see the process a little more clearly, and apparently I'm not going to have to start the full-metal process --complete with the Committee on Judging You-- until six months before graduation, so basically a year from now which, if you recall, is when I said I was EXPECTING to have this meeting.

The good news: In the past three years, everyone my church has "raised up" to ministry has been approved for seminary.

The bad news: I feel like I'm being encouraged to go for the diaconate, which isn't what I want. I know it's not Jr League Priest, but it sort of feels like it.

Really! Big! News!

2006-12-12T00:11:00.000-06:00

Dear Diary,

In 11 hours 30 minutes I have my first discernment meeting with the rector. I am terrified. Will he think I'm called to pursue ordained ministry or will we have to have that conversation that scares me so much I can't even bring myself to think about it...the one where he says "I don't think it would be a right fit for you."

God, creator of all things beautiful and terrible, fix my eyes so that I may see the goals you have for me and strengthen my heart with the courage to reach them. Let me not stray through pride or indifference, but guide me gently so that I may serve you in all my actions until on that final day, I may rejoice with you and the communion of saints in life everlasting. Amen.

Sundae cooking

2006-12-11T15:06:00.000-06:00

My grandfather celebrated his 81st birthday this week. In celebration, I created a lovely lactose-free variation of a 19th century Parisian recipe. The French have specific names for their cakes --you've probably heard of Clichy and L'Opera--

This one was simply called "Le Cake" because it was a French interpretation of a traditional English wedding cake which is similar to a modern white fruitcake. The one I made benefited from the addition of carrots --Dada loves carrot cake-- and a tropical dried-fruit medley.

Here's the recipe. Remember, since it's a French cake; it's small. One 10" pan.

Le Carrot Cake

325 degrees.

Ingredients:
1 Cup sugar
3/4 Cup vegetable oil
2 Eggs
1.5 C grated carrots (about a half pound)
1.5 C flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp grated or ground
1 C dried chopped fruit, plumped and drained.
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Glaze:
1/2 C apricot or peach preserves, melted

Directions:
Grease a 10" cake pan, line bottom of pan with waxed paper, grease the paper and flour.

In small bowl, stir together dry ingredients. Set aside. In large bowl beat sugar and oil together until well blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating well. Gently fold in dry ingredients, mixing until just blended and no streaks of white flour are visible. Stir in fruit, nuts and carrots.

Bake for 50 minutes or until golden brown and springy-firm in the center. Turn onto cooling rack, remove waxed paper and brush with melted preserves. Top with a few pretty walnut halves.

RevGal's Friday Five

2006-12-08T11:08:00.000-06:00

1. A favorite 'secular' Christmas song.
Fairytale of New York. The Pogues featuring Kirsty McColl. The first time I heard it I was listening to a CD someone had sent me and was moved to tears right there in the car, waiting for the light to change. It's a little slow to warm up, but it's amazing. Watch this live recording. You won't regret it.

2. Christmas song that chokes you up (maybe even in spite of yourself--the cheesier the better)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas as sung by Judy Garland from a live concert.

It's such a song of lost innocence and threadbare hope and you can hear Judy wanting to believe it.

Things are bad now, you're alone now, you're an adult and you're never going to have a golden, innocent Christmas again. But someday it might get better. It's not a promise. It's just a possibility. And that sliver of hope is enough to hold on to for one more year.

3. Christmas song that makes you want to stuff your ears with chestnuts roasted on an open fire.

Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time by Paul McCartney. Oh how I hate this song. In fact, I'm not entirely sure this one crime does not invalidate at least one, possibly all, of his releases with The Beatles.

4. The Twelve Days of Christmas: is there *any* redeeming value to that song? Discuss.

Of course there is redeeming value to this song. Aside from it being an excellent test to see if you've had too much to drink --"ooon the firsht day of Chrisssshmush…ANDLETMETELLYOUANOTHERTHING!" it's a lot of fun to sing with kids.

5. A favorite Christmas album

World Market released a few good Christmas albums last year, but right now I'm totally grooving on "Holiday Swing" which I got for $1 at Big Lots. Also, how could I forget RuPaul's Christmas Album "Ho Ho Ho"?

Lessons and Carols

2006-12-05T14:03:00.000-06:00

Lessons and Carols --our particularly Anglican form of Midnight Mass-- takes place Christmas Eve and I've been invited to participate as a lector by reading one of the nine appointed lessons all of which lead up to the birth of Christ. I am, of course, incredibly honored. I'm also moved because it is such a stark contrast from my most vivid Christmas Eve memory, 8 years ago.

I was 19 and miserable.

I had been miserable for years and had no idea that I wouldn't be miserable forever. I was living alone in my small college town in the mountains, suffering from my first broken heart and living on nightly fry-ups of onions and potatoes. It was all I could afford on the $5.20 an hour I made at the local bookstore. It was also my first Christmas alone.

I had to work on Christmas Eve and again the day after Christmas, but one of my uncles was scheduled to pick me up from the bookstore--I had no car at that point-- and take me to the big family celebration in Annapolis, a few hours away. I got a series of calls saying he would be late. But he never showed up. Retrospect tells me he had been drinking, and that it was ridiculous to volunteer to get me in the first place, especially as the rain that had fallen earlier in the morning was quickly turning to ice.

I had been holding it all together --just barely-- trying to get through 'til Christmas and when I realized I had been either forgotten or neglected (other family members swear this isn't true, and that's fine. It doesn't matter now) I just lost it. I had kept going, kept my spirit in tact just by sheer will for months and finally I crumbled.

I felt the overwhelming need to go to church. I had only been to the local Episcopal church a few times before, and never did I feel especially welcome.

I remember I wore black velvet heels and a long black wool cape that I'd been given and which had always embarrassed me because well, it was a cape. Wrapped up and sobbing uncontrollably I negotiated the two miles of icy hills and empty streets in the dark.

Everything was dark. I was dark, the sky was dark, and the streets were dark because there were no students left in town. I arrived at Emmanuel a shivering, snotty, quivering mess and as I got to the door I was greeted by two old priests decked in bright red vestments and capes just like mine.

I don't know why that made me so happy, the fact that we were wearing the exact same capes, but it did. I felt welcome. I felt like I was part of something.

The church was lit up in all its glory, there were evergreen boughs stuffed into every corner and candles burning on every flat surface. Incense --frankincense and myrrh plumed in the slightly over-warmed sanctuary. People were bustling and chatting and there was a buzz of excitement. It was then that I caught the first true whiff of Christmas.

Brain soup and big blessings

2006-12-05T09:55:00.000-06:00

The hot and sour soup at Wanfu has magical "smartening" properties and is not to be trifled with. Last night --or rather very early this morning-- I made a journey to the late-night Chinese diner for a big bowl of brain soup, hoping against hope that I'd be able to do some much-needed work on a spiritual analysis paper I have due tomorrow.

At 2:00 a.m. the place was getting ready to close. The dining room was empty except for two cops eating "lunch" and me. When I went up to the counter to pay, I quietly told the young woman that I would like to pay for their meals as well.

At first she didn't believe me, which saddened me because this sort of thing ought not to be so out of place as to provoke disbelief. Eventually she forked over the bill and stood there, dumbfounded as if I were signing away a kidney, not a few bucks for some Orange Chicken.

I paid, left a note saying "Thank you, Merry Christmas and God Bless You" and signed it "a grateful Austinite" and went on my merry way.

As I pulled out of the parking lot I could see through the window the waitress showing the police officers the note. The big blonde one --visibly touched-- smiled from ear to ear and ran his hand through his hair as if he were embarrassed or at a loss for words. The small one smiled gently as he read the note.

well, I'm a big baby --which should surprise no one-- and I cried right there.

I'm not telling you this because I want to show off how good and generous I am, because really I'm not that good OR generous. I'm saying that for a cheap dinner --I think all three of our meals plus a nice tip was under 25 bucks, money I would have blown on something frivolous anyway-- I was able to share in an incredible moment of warmth and grace with three total strangers on one of the coldest nights of the year, and I will remember that waitress's confused look, the blonde cop's illuminated grin, the darker one's small smile for the rest of my life.

It's a Christmas blessing, mine for a bargain price.

Bloody hell!

2006-12-04T03:14:00.000-06:00

I can't decide whether I want to shout "Is this semester over yet?!" or "is this semester over already?!" but what I do know is that I've got quite a large paper due by Wednesday that isn't quite as completed as I'd like to be. In fact, some people might --not inaccurately-- describe it as not yet entirely begun.

For some strange reason I had it in my mind that final paper wouldn't be due until the end of December, a theory which didn't hold up to rigorous testing since I discovered on Friday the paper was to be turned in complete and unabridged on December 6th.

My good intentions to put a great and glorious dent in it this weekend also folded under societal pressures as I had to bake some cookies for my grandmother's bible study group and spend a lot of time addressing Christmas cards, thinking about how much I like advent and wondering what sort of hot rod I ought to buy if and when I ever come into a big wad of extra cash.

Advent!

2006-12-03T11:51:00.000-06:00

Happy first Sunday in Advent y'all. I love Advent. Love it, love it, love it, and love it some more. It used to be that my favorite season was Lent, but for the past two years it's been Advent.

A funny thought just occurred to me. Whenever we talk about seasons, in my head it's always liturgical seasons. Just like the word "collect" is pronounced first and foremost in my head as "CALL-ect."

I'm not sure if anyone reads this blog anymore, but if you do, I'd like to wish you a season of great joy, hope and anticipation.

Dreary Monday

2006-11-27T22:54:00.000-06:00

You know what? It's been a sad day and sometimes the sad just wins.

I woke up sad for no real reason, got wave after wave of sad (or in the case of Michael getting married tomorrow, icky) news and continue to feel sad right now. I'll probably feel sad when I go to sleep tonight. I can't tell you the last time I had a truly melancholy day, but it's been a while.

It's the worst sort of melancholy too, because it's bittersweet. So much is changing --today my Harvard grandfather even said he wanted me to go to Yale-- and it's not that I'm unhappy now. I'm actually happier than I've ever been in my life, but there's no security. I never see my friends anymore and I'm having a hard time making new ones because I have to keep an emotional distance from the people I see at church as to avoid the dreaded "prophet in his hometown" mess again

.Also, there's a lot of pressure I wasn't expecting to feel for another few years, like the fellow parishoners who come to me with serious spiritual angst. I don't do any real counseling, but I listen and that's a heavy burden. Today I had an older lady call me during what should have been my dinner time. She's a good lady. I know she wanteds me to invite her over to my apartment, she lives within walking distance, but I didn't invite her over.

I just couldn't stand to deal with more gloom today.

Pilgrim's progress

2006-11-23T22:59:00.000-06:00

On December 13th I will have my official meeting with the rector to discuss discerning my call to ministry. This frightens the pants off of me which actually wouldn't be so bad since I'm wearing my"cooking jeans" which are two sizes too big, cropped to mid-calf with kitchen shears and never have been outside my apartment.

I expected to have the discernment chat about this time next year. The first pseudo-chat was a year ago with another priest and I didn't think it went awfully well, I was a newcomer to the parish.

At any rate my relationship with the rector is much stronger now so I'm hoping to be encouraged to pursue ordained ministry. It's not that I think any of the other forms of minstry are less important, it's just I feel called to clergy and I think I have been blessed with the gifts to make a good priest.

Still, it's frightening. This is becoming so Real. I'm constantly feeling myself being pulled away from secular life and it's very odd. I don't want to be an ivory tower pastor and I don't think I could be if I tried since I'm such a gregarious goofball. I'd rather be in the work of nuturing souls on their journey to God than do anything else in the world, and I suspect that's exactly what I'm called out to do.

Also, I'm pleased to announce that on November 19th, 2006 I was confirmed as a member of the Anglican Communion in a lovely ceremony by our lovely female bishop. In celebration of that, I think we ought to look at the "to do" list posted and do some line drawing!

~~Get Confirmed~~
~~Become beloved, loyal and faithful member of church>~~
Graduate college
Convince committee on Holy Orders and Bishop that I would be a good priest
Go to seminary
Graduate seminary
Become junior woodchuck priest
Get assigned to a church (I think)
Fulfill mission from God.

Blind leading the blind

2006-11-23T17:08:00.000-06:00

Strange things have been a brewin' and all of the sudden it seems as if things are becoming Real. Much of what is happening I can't talk about because it involves other people and their struggles. I always knew it was a burden and a gift to care for people, but I don't think I understood what an awesome responsibility it is when someone places their spiritual well-being or troubles in your hands and says "help."

Here's the thing though, I can't help. Not yet, not the way they want or need me to. I'm not a trained therapist, I haven't been to divinity school. I'm just another yahoo who is muddling through.

and yet.

And yet I think I will be able to help these people someday, and I think they see that. Next semester I'm taking a psych course for those who are in spiritual care-giving occupations and boy howdy do I need it. I want to be a good pastor, but right now I need to focus on doing what I can to help these folks, but also getting through college, not slacking off at work and really taking care of myself. I don't want to burn out, and I could see how that could happen.

I'm going on vacation...and to hell.

2006-10-27T19:42:00.000-05:00

I'm going on vacation and where I'm going doesn't have running water, much less the internets.

So, if y'all have written me and I haven't responded to you by the time you're reading this, you're probably not going to hear back from me until November 6th or somewhere thereabouts, although please know that I am keeping each and every one of you in the warm, fuzzy sub-cockle region of my heart.

In other news. I was told by a cubemate and otherwise nice, intellegent girl that not only was there a literal hell, but I was going there because I didn't believe the Bible was the inerrant word of God. She's a good woman with a strong faith, but doesn't seem to understand that the Bible wasn't created in a vacuum, and it's certainly not translated or interpreted in a vacuum. For example, there are a lot of outside documents that didn't make it into the bible just because they were too wordy (the didache). She also believes that all pagans and all traditions outside what we would identify as Fundamentalist Christianity are "bad. Completely bad." and no good can come of them. This whole conversation started because she asked me how I could like Halloween and love Jesus at the same time. I started talking with her about the origins of our modern holidays, and a lot of the traditions which surround them are "pagan" holidays because well...they had them first.

It really surprised me, and she was gentle about it, like she wanted me not to go to hell. Still, it me when she said

"There's a lot of good people in hell."

Yikes.

Revgals Friday Five: Word Association

2006-10-20T15:34:00.000-05:00

The Revgals are doing a Friday 5 word association with words found in Job. Here's my offering.

Whirlwind. In light of recent events (i.e. the impending nuptials of my ex and his girlfriend) it reminds me of the phrase "whirlwind romance" which is what Michael used to describe his relationship with her the day he dumped me. It's amazing how many whirlwinds we get caught in, from day to day to year to year…we get swept up in something, some cause or some person and they become the center of our lives for good and ill.

Whirlwinds are exciting, but they're also dangerous. Especially if you're guilty --as I have been so many times-- of whirling around something unhealthy. Not the easy targets like drugs or alcohol but of far more insidious storms, like gossip and jadedness.

Foundation. I've been reading PeaceBang's Beauty Tips for Ministers, so foundation made me think of make-up, which I rarely wear. I'm lucky enough to be young with good skin and a dramatic face so I slap on some lip gloss and I'm good to go. I can do the full-metal makeup too, including false eyelashes, fake hair and the whole mess, but I don't really look that different. The left picture is my dear friend Betty Ca$h celebrating my gigantic Birthday Throwdown, where I was wearing the works. On the right Betty and I take a shot together after a night of mechanical bullriding where I had a bit of lipgloss and maybe some brow pencil (can't remember). See, not much difference.

Anyway, I've been trying to revamp my image from "tongue-in-cheek retro goth darling" to something a little more palatable to service in church. I decided I needed a look. I can't wear suits because they look matronly and I can't quite get away with the eccentric garb many women of a certain age wear with such aplomb. So I decided on a theme of dark colors and soft, luxe fabrics, kept interesting by unusual earrings or accessories. I've got a dramatic face and a very big presence so monochrome suits me. Bright colors --which tend to look good on me as well-- can be much of a muchness. Last night I bought the staples of what will be my fall and winter wardrobe: three pairs of light wale corduroys in black, chocolate and hunter green with a modern, flattering boot cut shape and two light weight cashmere blend cable sweaters with a flattering deep v-neck and 3/4 sleeves, which are both slimming and very soft.

To top it all off I also bought two pairs of shoes because I did not own a single pair of church appropriate, comfortable shoes. I bought two pairs of loafer/mules in a very conservative cut but…and get this…one pair's purple and the other one's green.

Lightning. I love lightning. I love the electric feel in the air before a big storm. I love it streaking to the ground. When I was young and my grandfather took me out on the Chesapeake we'd occasionally run into a freak storm. He'd make me go below deck and lie on the bed, looking up through the skylight at the lightning coursing through the sky. I always wanted to be at the bow, calling it on. "Come on! Come on!" I'd scream. Daring for it to hit me. This is a storm on the Chesapeake, right by our old house.

Den. Of sin, of cubs, of thieves.

Prey. We prey and we pray and we prey again. It is always so. Lord forgive us.

Mawwiage is what brings us togevuh today

2006-10-20T11:46:00.000-05:00

So Michael and the Strudel are getting married. Does that make him Mister Strudel? It's no surprise since when he broke it off with me, after knowing her a week, he said he wanted to marry her. I found out the recent news through a girlfriend who was thoughtful enough to call me and let me know so I didn't find out in some weird way.

My first thoughts? Eh.

At this point I'd probably be expected to either to talk about both of their many flaws and hop the trolley to Bittersville or to paint on an unconvincingly glad face and say things like "great! I hope they're really happy!"

I'm not really in either of those places.

My only true feeling at the moment is sort of mild annoyance because I'm going to spend the next few days thinking about it. Not even exciting thinking like "oh I wish it had been me" (y'all know I don't think that) and "I'm going to wind up old and alone and unhappy and no one will ever love me." (nope, not this one either) No, I'm just thinking, and it bugs me because I'd rather be thinking about something else.

Not thinking about Michael has been one of the great luxuries of the past six months. I've hardly thought about him with any depth since my grandfather went into the hospital. There's nothing unresolved and I'm not angry, I'm just…done. Different priorities.

True it's uncomfortable to see them together because it's hard watching someone I used to respect and love act like a fool, what with the public displays of affection that border on public displays of impregnation. Mostly when I see him I just think "wow. There's a train wreck I was lucky to escape. I worry about that poor crazy girl."

As far as wishing them well, I do but it's in a very passive way. Truth is, I just don't care. Sure I want them to be happy but if they're not…eh. I know that's not quite loving my neighbor (we're all neighbors, right?) but I'm working on it.

Honestly, from what I know of him and the little I know of her, I can't imagine it's going to be a healthy relationship, but --and I have to keep telling myself this because y'all know I've never met a hurt little puppy I didn't want to rescue-- it's not my place, problem or right to say anything.

...as long as they don't get married at Beerland.