That's a nice opinion...

Did it come preinstalled or did you upgrade to the TOTAL bitch package?


Some days my "ignore" button doesn't exist.

an interruption

I feel like these posts are jarring. I like the flow of my blog and then I get all petty and mean. But right now I am teeth-grindingly frustrated about something. It might be too much sugar or not enough fat or it might be dehydration, but i'm angry at everyone around me. I'm angry at the walls. I'm angry at the air and the clammy, humid fabric against my back. I'm angry at my job and I want to run away and just spend time being a mother. I'm angry at MDO for potty training kids too early so that my child looks like the odd one out. I'm angry that other people want the world a certain way. I'm angry that I don't feel trusted or important. I'm angry and hurt and sad.

There are deep secrets in the world. In the silence I hear their whispers. In the dark I see their shape. In the stillness I feel their presence. They are near. It is not thought or logic that hunts them down. They cannot be tracked by such bluntness. Stillness of the soul invites them, the leaves of intuition flutter in their wake. They are near. The veil is lightest as the sun rises. Wait for them just before the dawn.

Good days turn to train wrecks in an instant. How do you do this life thing? I think they forgot to ship the manual.

There is but one way for life to proceed. "If" is an illusion... a painful, painful illusion.

If you ask for more patience, be ready to practice lots of self control.

I'm wandering down a path of learning and self-discovery. Driven onward by my INFP tendencies and needs, I find myself deeper and deeper in the woods when others have stopped to make their camp. Most of them dropped off the trail miles before, or took less-desirable paths. Yet here I am, wending my way. Few fellow travelers are not NF types now, and most are NFPs.

It is a comfort to know I will not have to walk alone.

In the community I work in, grandparents buy $250,000+ houses so their grandkids can live in them.... o.O

Guess most people here are too good for bootstraps...

Dear world,

I do not think you know what love is. Love must be taught, it must be practiced, it must be done. Affection is felt. Infatuation "happens." Love is done. Love is the hard work behind affection. Love is the greatest task, in both weight and glory. To love is a very great responsibility.

Best parenting keywords EVER.

Natural consequences and logical solutions. BOOM.

I came out on facebook

It's not really something I'd realized I was keeping a secret. However, to make a point about judging others by our standards and our perception of their failings and sin, I announced to the world that I do not believe in punishing children.

Where do I go from here?

I have an impulse to explain myself, to say things like - I was almost never punished as a child and I'm not a serial killer, or talk about the latest psychological findings in the area, quote books I've read, even point out where in the bible translations, assumptions and culture have marred the very message of our Lord to our hearts. But I don't think I will. Not now, at least.

Suffice to say I think punishment is a sinful desire to control the behavior of another. I have never been punished by my savior or heavenly father, nor have I always been saved from the natural course of my decisions. Christ has taken all my punishment. I am simultaneously worthy and unworthy, guilty and blameless. In this tension, I hope to grow closer to my creator.

Our pastor, Joe, said one day he brought his three children into his study - one by one. His first, his son, he asked "What is the most important thing I've taught you? What is most important about life?" "Always do the right thing," his son answered.

I have failed, Joe thought.

He brought his second son in and asked again. "What is the most important lesson I've taught you about life?" "Always do what's right. Follow the rules," said the second son.

I have failed again.

His youngest, his daughter, came in next. Again he asked, "what is the most important thing?" he asked. "Jesus will always love me," she said.

Truly, I want the most important thing in my son's mind to be that Jesus loves him. I don't want him spending his life trying to mimic the fruit of righteousness. You can paint a rock red and tie it to a vine, but it's a far cry from a ripe tomato. You cannot punish a child into loving God or himself or you or his neighbors you can only punish him into feigning such things. Therefore I hope to disciple my children in the limited ways a sinner can so that they are pointed to God's mercy and love. The world has enough pain to teach the lessons the world demands. Mercy is not taught through a lack of grace.

And that's my opinion.

My flesh is made of song.

tight

When I say things are tight right now and you say "I hear ya!" I don't think you quite understand. Tight is not "on a budget" or even trying to grow your own food. Tight is not cutting back on eating out or saving less than normal. It's not buying one pair of boots instead of three.

Tight is leaving a grocery store in tears because you don't have enough money to pay for groceries and have to eat from the dwindling pantry for another week and a half.

Things are tight. You're comfortable.

someday far

one boy never home
in the time mother's door
gave away every mountain
in the last well garden
and dead things' bones
taught fallen boys to sing
to the sea-wind woman
sing with the blood bairn

we've seen winter men
lay broken words down
with hands born in water

God found every mountain
and named the snow river
whose water gave singing
and the words carried time
to face birds in the morning

Music dances in my blood.

not feeling much outside of anger and numbness today. hooray.

a borrowed ear

I log on to social networking sites, but the truth is I don't trust a lot of people anymore.  I don't trust them to not be cruel.  I much prefer the few who know me here, along with any wandering strangers.  It's a mess, you know.  I feel caught in a jacob's ladder of second-guessing others' impressions.  Some days I don't know who or what I am, other days I'm as sure as salt.  I feel as though one mind occupying separate bodies of emotions & concerns.

So friends and strangers.  I'll tell you what I couldn't tell fb or g+:  I'm soaking oatmeal for the morning.  Enough water to cover it and a bit of buttermilk to acidify it should be enough.  I have high hopes for waking up early and fixing it all up before church.  I know my record for high hopes, but I choose to have them regardless.

I greatly enjoyed the act of pulling out my little kitchen scale, the clink of the glass bowl on its glass plate.  I love the word and meaning of tare.  It makes things seem weightless - it seems to mess with the very physics that hold the world together.  Anything can be nothing.  It makes the world feel minorly unsolid.

I like the perfect numbers as well.  One point zero zero.  For a moment it read one zero one, but a generous pinch corrected it's error.

Scraping the smushed oats out of their cardboard cylinder bit by bit.  It's a cousin to the feeling of plunging your hand into a bag of smooth grain, or scooping cool softness of a well-turned bed of earth.

Tomorrow I look forward to folding in dried fruit and pouring maple syrup into the thing and pressing it to the corners of my pyrex pan.

The baby burned his finger today.  Just a little - on a pan that had been out of the oven a couple minutes. He was barely upset & I was glad for a real example of the word "hot."

The past couple weeks have felt so difficult, so full and heavy despite the fact I was off an extra two days.  I feel so wobbly and tired.  Now this house is making noises and it's freaking me out a bit.  

friends.

They're knitting a web.  Close and comfortable.  Private.

It hurts my heart that I'm on the outside.

I don't feel loved.

My son qualifies for early intervention speech therapy.  There isn't much in this world that is more frustrating than being told to get him on medicaid when you've been doing everything you possibly can to make that happen, yet still been denied twice.  The government is just so well run that they make things due on days it's impossible to turn them in.  Like Sunday.  Perhaps the only thing more frustrating is being told to talk to him about everything... when I already do.

I took dev psych, people.

My son could also have a very bad blood disorder.  I don't know because I can't afford the tests without his medicaid.  See, even as he sits here in my lap, the iron in his blood could be building up in his tiny organs, damaging them beyond repair.  There's no cure - just a lifetime of blood transfusions (and the risks associated with those).

It took me a year to get a (free) eye exam.  Because so many other things are more important.

We're getting kicked out of our house.  My husband plays video games instead of packing.  He turns on the TV to dull my child's brain and he dicks around on the computer.  He won't take care of his loans even though all he has to do is make one call to the school to get them to fax one piece of paper.  Then he gets mad at me for not doing my lab time for my spanish class.  I've accepted that part of my classwork is going to suffer because of this move.  Our credit and finances are infinitely more important than 5% of my grade in what is essentially an elective.

I should leave and take my son to the museum.  I should take the modem and his power supplies with me.

He dicks around and wastes time while getting to do what I desperately want to do.  Stay home with my son. I try to convince myself I don't know why I have the dreams I do - but it's a lie.

A cold and spiny creature nests beneath my breastbone.  It pushes my organs aside for a bed, lining it with hatred plucked and gnawed from its body.  When it stirs, I clench my jaw, sending pain through my teeth.  It infects me. Like some horrific fetus fatally misplaced, it writhes if investigated.  So I leave it.  It can't get out.  For now.