Thursday, December 29, 2011

Merry Christmas!

.... I'm not late. I have until at least 6 January to celebrate Christmas and if I'm feeling _very_ energetic or very behind on the sending of Christmas presents, I have until February 2nd. So there.
December has gone by in a bit of a blur due to scheduling demands. Nightshift does weird things to your brain. For me it gave me very, very vivid and strange dreams when I slept during daylight hours. It also contributed a bit to my uncharitable thoughts about my neighbors (yelling during hours of daylight) and apartment maintenance (leafblowing in the afternoon...seriously not cool).
I spent my nights off awake and a little bored. A lot of things that I think should be open are closed at night, such as shops, museums, aquariums, movie theaters, and restaurants. I discovered the handful of 24 hour places, mainly 2 Walmarts, 2 IHOPs, a Subway and a Denny's. I know some people can do 'extra long days' and switch to daytime hours for their off time but I knew that wouldn't work for me. Once I switched to nights I had to make a serious commitment and I did. It worked pretty well. I was blessed to have Christmas off and was able to go to my favourie local liturgy. Looks like I'll also have New Year's off, and my glorious plan for that day is to pack like someone who's forgotten how to pack smart in anticipation of visiting Tbro and sister-in-law. It occurs to me that I either don't have a nickname for her or I have forgotten it... either way, I shall have to come up with something.

In other news, I have (sort of) come to terms with the fact that I have curly hair. This isn't exactly a revelation, but since my earliest days I have had difficulty coping with what Nature has seen fit to bless me with. I have only saved myself from years of heat-damage from straightening irons because I have been afraid of burning my ears. I have only saved myself from damaging my hair with scary, industrial strength chemicals because I am cheap and couldn't justify paying THAT MUCH for something that might result in my hair becoming brittle and breaking like...graham crackers. Or something. Graham crackers doesn't seem to be quite apt but it'll do for now.
Anyway, point being, my hair is relatively healthy and quite definitely curly. I've decided to start respecting it more. To this end, I'm experimenting with a better way to clean and condition it than the products I'm currently using. I'm just starting to think though how drastically different my life might have been if I'd figured this out as a teenager instead of going around with poofy, dried-out and unhappy hair. Well, you live and you learn. Thinking about going with a dramatically shorter haircut that respects my curls. Not sure if I can pull this off properly considering uniform requirements. Just read the regs governing hair again and I think the biggest problem might be the two inch rule plus the fact that curls are no symmetrical.
Still thinking.
Anyway... Things to clean, stuff to make ready, etc. Literally 24 hours left of work until leave!

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Nanowrimo Ate My November...

Which is why I haven't posted on here at all, all month.
Anyway.
Happy feast of St. Andrew to my several friends named Andrew. St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and also apparently of reformed prostitutes. Who knew?

So, novel. No, I'm not going to post it here... I think most of it will never see the light of day in its current form. It needs several years of research and I need to learn German, Hungarian and Slovak... Or at least two out of the three.
Anyway, to make up for no posts all month, I will post the haikus from my novel. These haikus were found using a haiku finder. For a novel of this length (just over 50k), there are a fair number of haikus. For a while I had one about every ten pages. And then at about the same time that the plot went alternate universe, most of the haikus dried up. Oh well.
Haikus below!

“What happened?” I asked.
I didn’t like the way everyone
was staring at me.

He looked miserable,
but I had no idea
what he was saying.

When the last notes had
died away, we all sat still
for a few minutes.

"Nothing but an itch,"
he muttered, scratching his back
where it bothered him.

E-even with all
the propaganda, the truth
will out by what isn’t said!

I could see nothing.
Complete and total darkness
obscured my vision.

Haiku finder here-http://mrfeinberg.com/haikufinder/

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Another year older...

not sure how much wiser and not really feeling older yet. Ten years ago I couldn't imagine I'd be where I am now so I'm not going to try to figure out where I'll be ten years from now! Younger selves, whether from just last year or from half a lifetime ago, seem so much younger and sillier than our present clever selves.
So, every year is a gift from God. It's like a new notebook or blank canvas. It's meant to be filled, and I'm looking forward to that in the months ahead. No idea what it's going to be like really, I'm not even going to try to guess.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Not Alone

Sometimes I feel like God is tapping me upside the head, very gently. “Hey. I’m here. I’m listening. You can talk to me, you know…”
And then sometimes suddenly, unexpectedly He taps me upside the heart, when I’m definitely not expecting it, and all of a sudden I fall apart during a particularly sappy/charismatic song. Yes, me of the Gregorian chant and the mysteries of the East and the Great Doxology and etc. “Do not be afraid I am with you” suddenly hits me. I cried to the point that I was reaching for tissues but realised I didn’t have any. So, I ducked out to fix myself, which took a few minutes and I ended up missing the Consecration in the process as I was still pulling myself together in the bathroom… oops. That was decidedly not cool, but I had seriously hit the point where I was a distraction to myself and others and I did HAVE to leave. But I sorted myself out to the point that I could go back up to the church directly after the Consecration and receive etc. At which point I almost had another meltdown. Sometimes I hate being me. I really don’t have any kind of nervous hysteria usually and I am firmly resolved to never cry in uniform but I honestly don’t know what brought all of that on.
Maybe I do. “Do not be afraid I AM with you”. Intellectually it’s possible to know that God is everywhere- present in all places and filling all things as the liturgy says. But how often do we think about that? When I’m having a bad moment it almost _never_ occurs to me that God is right there with me. Because I tend to think of God the Father as a stern judge etc. sometimes I think I’d rather not have Him right there with me. And when something awful is happening it’s hard to see how a loving Father could let that happen, so I tend to assume I’m alone without even examining the thought. And even when I do take time and think “You know, I’m not really alone. God’s with me even in this” all I can think about is how insubstantial He seems to be at the moment in question when I could really do with a hug. But every so often, He’ll surprise me with a reminder that reduces me to tears of relief, I think, that I am not alone. I’m used to tears of sadness, frustration, anger, disappointment and very rarely exhaustion. I am not at all used to tears of relief that I am not on my own.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Cheap Historical Reenactment

(Written in the Atlanta airport after a half-day of braindraining classes and barely edited, so you can't say you weren't warned...)

So you want to be a reenactor, but don’t want to spend a lot of money on your outfit or equipment, or worry that you can’t get the look right? I have discovered an awesome budget option! In a few easy steps, you too can re-enact!
Step One- Go to the thrift store to find your outfit. Find a cheap, badly-made suit in a dark colour and clunky, uncomfortable looking shoes. If you’re feeling more blue-collar, find coveralls or very well-used jeans and a denim jacket. Make sure everything you’re wearing is either two sizes too big or two sizes too small.
Step Two- Men: Grow some facial hair. Women: Wear either no makeup at all or something that does not go with your complexion.
Step Three- Stand in line at airport security in Atlanta, keeping a tight hold on your ID and boarding pass. Wait, wait, and wait some more. Get harangued by a security guard for the very-nearly-capital-offense of sneezing but watch someone else cut through three lines of people with no consequences. Hear everyone around you talk about how 1. It could be worse and 2. They feel safer even if this extra screening is a little annoying.
Step Four- Despite all your careful packing/forethought either get pulled out of line for extra-personal screening or have your bag opened and your life analysed by someone who is convinced that you are an enemy of the state.
Step Five- Declare loudly that you too, feel very safe because of all this extra screening which is sure to stop those who wish to do our glorious country harm. Address the screeners as ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ at every possible opportunity and thank them for the work they do keeping us safe.
Step Six- Get where you’re going and unpack the luggage you weren’t allowed to lock. Discover stuff is missing. Profess horror or irritation but no shock at the loss.
Congrats! You’ve re-enacted life as a citizen of a police state! Depending on how much time and effort you put in to your thrift-store costume you can be from any time between 1940-1990 in one of many different countries!

***
I thought of some more stuff to put in there too but the time has passed and I'm just going to leave it as is...

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Rant Warning

Maybe I should give up FB…
So this was going to start out as an injunction to others to be careful what they post on FB, and not just in the mundane security senses ie, never post “I’m going on vacation for the next three weeks and I’m leaving the key under the mat so that the person who waters my exotic plants and feeds my expensive cat can get in” unless you want someone to nick both your plants and the cat… and the more I started thinking the more I began to think that maybe the problem wasn’t the other people it was me. Or FB. Or something. Probably mainly me and a bit FB too.
On a tangentially related topic- related because I saw it on FB- I followed a link from a FB-friend to an article talking about how even nominal Christians were engaging in premarital ‘relations’ at a rate pretty much on par with their secular counterparts of the same age and gender. What my FB-friend had commented on it (on FB not on the post which had a hilariously flame-filled comments section btw) was ‘Get married earlier. Seriously. What’s the worst that could happen, you’d be poor?’ I felt as though someone had prodded me in the stomach with the ‘it’s-all-your-fault-western-civilization-is-failing’ stick…

What.

The.

Hell.

Really?? Obviously, that’s the answer, get married younger! You! Lovey-dovey young people! Get your rears in gear and get yourselves properly wedded! Quick! Better to marry than to burn! You must be afraid of poverty but DON’T worry, God will provide! And if He doesn’t at least there’s WIC so you won’t starve!

The fb-friend in question is someone I’ve never met in real life. She’s married to a guy I went to college with. I felt like posting back words to the effect of “I’d love to get married but I’m just not as fortunate at getting a guy as you are, Mrs. Jones.”

One of her other friends shortly thereafter did post something like ‘Takes two to tango’ and I had to like that instead of posting what I wanted to…

I would _happily_ have accepted poverty, a crappy place to live, no car and a stack of student loans if it meant marrying Mr. RightForMe (Writing it all down like that though looks a bit wrong-headed…). Unfortunately he hasn’t turned up yet and I am assuming he must either be somewhere with lousy GPS reception or he’s got his map the wrong way around… so until he does show up, I will *gaspshockhorror* have to manage on my own. Which, by the way, means having student loans steadily getting paid off, living in a decent place and working a decent job which is practically a vocation. I’m getting debt-free and sorting my life out. There are worse places and ways to do it than this.

It was a kind of flippant comment for the woman in question to make but she underlined it by saying ‘no seriously’… seriously… Okay lady. Seriously. You go out there and find some eligible guys for me, club them over the head a few times and convince them that they have to marry me in order to save western civilization... Because I’m not going to be chasing anyone. Goes against my everything.

Oh, and I read the linked article, I found it hilarious in its unimaginativeness. There was a line in there that said something about ‘People waiting into their twenties and thirties- what do we tell them, keep waiting?’… Duh.
Ooh…and my other favourite line was a quote from a subject matter expert who was talking about how in biblical times people married young and didn’t really play the field prior to marriage due to that.

So…marry young hm? Setting aside for a moment the (for some poor unfortunates) insurmountable obstacle of NOT KNOWING MR/MS RIGHT, at what age should people be getting married?

And this is what really gets under my skin and burrows around like a creepy horrible bug… This line of thought ‘Better to marry than to burn, quick marry ‘em off before they disgrace themselves/us’ is unpleasantly familiar sounding. Now where have I heard that before? Oh right. From crazed ayatollahs. From people who say it’s okay to marry an eight year old as long as you promise not to consummate the marriage until she’s 12….

Now, no Christians would do something crazy like that, right? … Right? …

I feel as though there is a distant but shrill and hysterical chorus of people chanting an angry chant at ‘heretical’ successful young single women of the faith. “Misguided Women with Feminist Leanings! Marriage and babies! Western Civilisation depends on YOU! Marriage and babies! Repent and be married and have lots of babies!”
Not quite as distant/shrill/hysterical is the burbling of newly-marrieds “We’re pregnant! Life is awesome when you’re married! We’re awesome and happily married! Did we mention we’re pregnant? Life! Maternity! We’re pregnant again!”

And realistically I know that these women are artfully leaving out the messy/squick moments of marriage/pregnancy/childrearing. And I know that. But they are in the enviable position where the segments of society that we actually care about- ie friends/family/Church-at-Large approve of them. The working single women are looked upon by the same segments as a bit unfortunate and secular coworkers are apt to mistake ‘doesn’t do casual relationships’ for ‘never gets out and don’t bother trying to get to know her’.

Marginalized by one and ignored by the other. Lovely.

Thankfully I know some sane marrieds with sweet kid/s and they are awesome. There aren’t as many of them as there are of the other type, but nonetheless, they are awesome.

End Rant...

Friday, September 16, 2011

So, me not posting anything for a long time isn't AT ALL unusual, although I have a rather better than usual excuse for this particular six months of absolutely nothing on this blog. And I was going to write this awesome post because I just got inspired standing in line at Panera but unfortunately I didn't manage to pack MacAlister's powercord... go me... I packed _sunscreen_ and not the power cord. But seriously if it's the only thing I forget this weekend, I'm doing pretty darn outstanding!

So right, inspiration in line at Panera. A post elsewhere entitled 'Can't Even Go to the Park' by a homeschooling mom talking about PDA in the park has been ticking over in the back of my brain. I was trying to think of where I was on the spectrum. I don't have kids yet so obviously my POV on PDA levels is quite different. And the PDA I couldn't help but see in line at Panera was obviously het. It still made me throw up in my mouth a little, which, right before a good meal is seriously suboptimal.

It wasn't gropey making-out or anything terribly obnoxious but it still provoked a reaction from me. It was hand holding, body holding, hand kissing, shoulder-kissing(??) and it made me think about what was and what wasn't acceptable PDA in public. Prior to this evening I had thought that I was pretty much okay with everything up to kissing in public. A peck on the cheek, okay. And these were just pecks but there were a LOT of them. And before I get any accusations of being some kind of voyuer I will repeat, I really couldn't help but see them. I did eventually stare at the sign over their head and roll my eyes theatrically. I did manage to stop myself from sighing audibly but it was a near run thing.

I realise acceptable PDA levels are different in different cultures, but sometimes I think it's just incredibly insensitive of couples to be so wrapped up in themselves and expressing their LURVE for each other at all times and in all places. I'm starting to think I've been in uniform for too long- if you SHOULDN'T do it in uniform you probably SHOULDN'T do it in public at all....

And on that, note that I said 'shouldn't' not 'can't' because I realise there are dumb people out there who 'do' anyway... and at least in my tiny corner of the world they can get masted for it.

Am I an evil grumpy single? Yup. Don't inflict your coupleness on the world, couples of the world!

(Sidenote: Would I be happy in an Islamic theocracy that prohibits PDA on pain of pain? Hell no. Because I believe that being able to choose to do the right thing is far superior to being FORCED to do the right thing...)
(Additional sidenote- link to the homeschooling mom's post will be provided at a later date and time when I have a powercord...)
Dedicated to: The couple in front of me in line at Panera that I will quite likely never, ever see again.
Coming soon! Catholic-bashing conversation overheard at Panera! Praying for infidels instead of overturning their soup bowls on their heads! (Why is it that the correct thing and the thing that would be entertaining are rarely the same?)