just try not to think about where that seatbelt's been...

a holiday company in germany - ah, good ol' germany - is about to begin offering it's first "nudist flights" for those of the nudist persuasion traveling by air. it's a niche in the market that's been overlooked by mainstream airlines, and they plan to capitalize on it. apparently, the nudist lifestyle, or "free body culture" as it's known in germany, is a thriving one. of course, for safety reasons, the pilots & crew members will remain clothed.

just imagine it for a moment. think how close you are packed in beside random strangers, and how uncomfortable it is even when you're clothed. nevermind things like body hair, body odor & who gets the armrest...

thanks, dad!

i am going to florida! hooray! hooray! thanks to the sponsorship of my dad (hollaahhh, big steve!) i am going with my dear dear friend to be moral support while she takes her big daddy board exams! and then we are going to sit on the beach and drink virgin daquari's brought to us by cabana boys...or maybe just diet pepsi out of our sandy beach bags, i'm not really sure... :) but i am super psyched!! i've never gone on a trip with just a girlfriend - tragic!! it's about freakin' time! :) let the good times roll!

plus, i used to live in south florida, so it's gonna be a little trip down memory lane...whee!

it breaks my heart.

on the one hand, i'm glad i couldn't link you to the picture. it was in an msn slideshow this morning about the sag awards last night, the last picture of the bunch. it shows a young woman holding up two very large signs. the first, along with a photograph says, "Heath is in Hell", and the second says, "God hates the world". Then, just off to the side is a man with a small sign that said, "I'm sorry for them. RIP Heath." let me just be clear that this isn't about heath ledger to me, tho his death was an unwarranted tragedy. this is about people, claiming to be christians - Jesus followers - who are so completely wrongheaded about what that means. who is being more like Jesus? the girl announcing God's hatred for the world, or the man seeking forgiveness on her behalf? i would hope that he's from a different church, but he's probably not. but i will tell you this - i believe nothing breaks God's heart more than his "followers" proclaiming his hate & hell to a broken world. God is love - unfailing, unchanging, unassailable love. "For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." (john 3:17) john also says, we have not seen God, but the son - that would be Jesus - who is himself God reveals him to us. so pick a one of the stories of Jesus. any story. show me where he shows us how God is hate. show me. show me where he wounds the broken, refuses the lonely, praises the powerful, treats a sinner harshly. show me. show me where it says that God hates the world.

God help us.

monday monday

well, here we are, friends. monday again. it never fails, huh?

we did something so...grown up & responsible this weekend. we took our rising 6th grader to a "fair" of magnet middle schools, looking to see if there was a good choice out there for her. we found one, and put her name in the lottery, and now we wait til the end of march...

in other news, tomorrow is curtis' birthday! hooray! he even has the day off work, so we should probably find something fun to do...any suggestions? i wish it were warm - we could go to the beach or something...

neorxewange

paradise!

that's right - it's time for us all to learn a new word... actually, a very old word! my charming, and too smart to be tied down to one subject brother is taking old english, and is very likely going to do graduate work in said field! (to what end no one is really sure, but hey - at least he has a plan!) and as a bonus to me, and trickling down to all of you, he is teaching me old english words! the first one i want to pass on to you is OE for 'paradise' or 'garden'... neorxewange! what? you can't figure out how to pronounce that? here, let me help you... NAY-org-sah-wong-a. fairly trips off the tongue, doesn't it? :)

once again, can i say i'm not with them?

i've been slack, huh? sorry about that. it's been ... real ... around here.

reading the news this morning, came across this. some crazy church that plans to protest heath ledger's memorial because he played a gay man in 'brokeback mountain'. apparently, this is the same church that protests funerals of soldiers killed in iraq. it makes me so mad. so. mad. i want to tell these people to go spend some time reading their bibles before they get up on their high horses. how about 1 john 4:20,21? "If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating (his fellow man), thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both." (msg.)

shout out to my baby bro

it's martin luther king jr. day so my girls are home from school. and it's TWENTY ONE degrees here. *sigh* i hate the cold. hate hate hate. and one of the things it means today is that there will be no sending the girls outside to cure their cabin fever... i hated very few things about growing up in my household, but one of them was definitely when my mom would force me out into the cold for "at least an hour!" - i hated it. so i am not going to inflict that on my girls. of course, ask me tomorrow afternoon, when they've been home for their 4th day in a row and everything is bicker-bicker, battle-battle. we always swear we won't become our parents, but....

but it reminded me this morning of the last time my mom forced me outside - i think it was what started my deep friendship with my little brother, Vincent. i was visiting calgary from miami in the dead cold of february, and had just miscarried our first baby. i was devastated. and one night - a dark cold night, she "told" me to go for a walk. i protested, but she seemed to me almost vicious about it, so i began bundling up against the cold when v said to me, "i'll come with you". he was 16, and i was 22 and had been gone from the house since he was 12. but we walked down the road to the local pet shop, which was open, warm & didn't mind 'just looking, thanks'. as we walked, we talked... about the baby and how i was coping, and he gently defended mom to me. i think he probably even held my hand while i railed against the world. and you know what i love? he still is that boy... mostly. :) big love, baby.

now i should go figure out a way to keep the girls occupied...

saturday

grouchy grouchy grouchy.

God in the Dock, Fern-seeds & Elephants, The Weight of Glory

I've been reading a book of excerpts & selections from the writings of c.s. lewis, and it has prompted me to buy three books of his that i've never read, or even heard of, really. i am drawn to his incredible intelligence and thoughtfulness, and awed by his ability to communicate the deeper things in an accessible way. i admire his refusal to soften the blow, hedge the truth, or tiptoe around for the sake of the reader's sensibility. and he is just plain engaging. here is my quote of the day for you... an important one!

"it is important to realize that there is some really fatal flaw in you: something which gives the others just that same feeling of despair which their flaws give you. and it is almost certainly something you don't know about."

eep!

those of you whom i've spoken to at all in the last 12 - 18 months know that i am on a personal journey of trying to learn how to really Love....what it looks like to really live following Jesus and let all the religious "add-ons" fall away. this quote addresses the hardest part of living Love - loving people who hurt you, make you crazy, make you feel small and insignificant... somehow, somewhere, i am doing that to someone else. and i would like mercy for that, so i need to learn how to offer mercy. lewis says elsewhere, act loving and you will begin to feel loving. that "love" doesn't mean "affection" but rather finding yourself being "for" the other person. so i am thinking about that today - that i make some people feel despair. God help me, i want to learn how to live so it won't be so...

what?

you know what's missing from my life? a leopard print, mp3 playing stun gun. obviously.

such exciting news!!

i am being sent a free copy of a book by a publisher for review here on my blog!! those of you who know me well know i am an avid reader, and when the opportunity arose, i leapt! the the publisher said they would send me a copy even though my blog isn't a "book blog"! hooray! i will keep you up to date so you can read my erudite dissection of the text once i have thoroughly digested it! :)

happy saturday!

may be my theme for the new year....

i love this, from c.s. lewis, on learning to live more and more like Jesus...learning to be more fully who we are meant to be...

"it is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder - in fact, it is impossible. it may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. we are like eggs at present. and you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. we must be hatched or go bad." ( mere christianity)

lewis had a gift for taking the deepest ideas and making them so accessible... i don't want to be just a 'decent egg'. for all the work it will take, i want to be hatched and learn to fly.

i hope i can be the "meanest mom", too

this woman dubbed herself the "meanest mom" for selling her 19 year old sons car when she found booze under the passenger seat. the ad she took out to sell the car was this: "OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don't love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet."

i hope i can be the meanest mom, too. i hope that i will remember that it is my job to parent, not befriend, my girls. i mean, i hope with my whole heart our friendship will develop as they grow, but the minute i start worrying that they won't "like" me is the minute that i cease to be an effective guide. i'm the parent - that means it's going to have to be me who teaches them that actions have consequences, small decisions can make a big difference, and that some things are never acceptable. no one else will teach them that. my job is to help The Girls develop into adults who can live in society as a productive, fully engaged & contributing human beings. if they are coddled, protected & given free reign without appropriate discipline, the odds of that happening go way, way down.

so - you go, mean mom! hopefully the fruit of this lesson will continue to be borne throughout your sons life. you did the right, very uncool, thing.

and now i will get down off my soapbox. :)

i was walking through k-roger yesterday, picking up a few things, when something caught my eye. something from my childhood - cream of wheat. i didn't know they still made cream of wheat, and i got all excited! i remembered eating it, all warm with sticky, melted pools of brown sugar & milk, and couldn't resist - i bought the big box! (EW - MY CAT JUST FARTED BESIDE ME....GACK!) i had cream of wheat for lunch yesterday, and it was just like i recalled - brown sugary goodness, warm and thick and comforting. and wikipedia just told me it's been around since 1893! i am eating a piece of history, people!

the beginning of what i think will be many quotes from the remarkable pen of c.s.lewis...

"...it would seem that God finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. we are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us; like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. we are far too easily pleased."

oooo - tragic how i want one...

who knew a laptop could not only meet my blogging & email needs, but also my beauty needs!

productivity feels SO good....

one of the reason i love our house in the big, built-in bookshelf in our bedroom, because i am a passionate reader! but for the last 2 years - every time i've gotten a book off my shelf, or even walked past the shelf into the master bathroom, i have cringed & covered my eyes. a thick layer of dust covered the upper shelves (the stuff we never read but can't get rid off), paperbacks were thrown helter skelter behind full rows, and clutter (burnt out matches, buttons, pennies & guitar picks) filled every edge & corner. appalling. no matter how clean the rest of my room was, i felt overwhelmed and horrified by what can only be called the disaster of my bookshelves.

BUT...

today was the day i could take no more! i spent 2 hours, dusting every book individually, wiping the shelves down, windexing the pictures in their frames, reorganizing the books, and culling the ones i would never read again for donation to the public library. i feel so good! my room is really, really clean! my books aren't a source of pain anymore! and i found a few gems that got lost in the chaos, and that's a treat!

and purely as a bonus, it's 70 outside, and i'm going for a walk now. it's a glorious monday.

my humblest apologies...

...for my slack blogging. there's so much going on here, and yet, not a lot going on. i haven't known what to say - and, yes, i know that is somewhat shocking. :) so this is my sunday night apology, hopefully to be followed by a more faithful week of posts. thanks for not giving up on me! :)

her mother's daughter

at kyra's birthday dinner, we went around the table and each of us had to say something we loved about kyra. there were many things to choose from! at the end, once everyone had had their say, meg held up her hands and said, with vigor, "now everyone has to say FIVE things they love about ME!"

the birthday!

oh, such festivities!!

first, we went to lunch at the very cool Elmo's Diner, where she had "the grilled cheese sandwich to end all sandwiches!" (her own words), then to the mall where her soft little earlobes were pierced through with cz daisy's (tremendously cute), and then it was off to a cookie from mrs. field's (for bravery), barnes & noble to get a book ("Zamba - the true story of the greatest lion that ever lived", an adult selection from the 'nature' section), then home, where her first ever flower delivery arrived (from mimi & papa) and it even has balloons on it! whoohoo! and we're not done yet! i am making her choice of dinner (cheesy bacon pasta) and then birthday cake (funfetti!) wow! turning 10 must be a big deal!

the years fly by

tomorrow, january 2, is my daughter's 10th birthday. 10 years ago, this little black haired, wrinkly little peanut was laid in my arms, after brief concerns over her breathing. it was a miracle to me, and her little feet & fingers and how my heart just seemed to open up...as cliched as it sounds, like a flower in spring.

i've already forgotten more than i remember about her first 10 years, but the things i remember are wonderful. she is one of God's gifts to me.

happy birthday, baby!