Just click your heels together three times

and say "There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

It is a rather glorious thing to be home. Five people plus a dog for a whole week was lovely and got really hard there at the end; that was when we squeezed into a car for two days. But now I am home. And even if it's not a nice as my parents' place, it's my place with my stuff. It's not having to feel like you're in someone else's kitchen trying to cook but not knowing where all the supplies you need are.

A different kind of Eucharist

I don't take communion with the bread and the wine (or the dry cracker and thimble of grape juice as it is presented in most of the houses of worship I frequent these days). Not in the normal course of events of my life at any rate. When I was little I would gladly take it with my family, kneeling up at the altar of whatever church we were attending at the time. I wasn't raised with any qualifications to taking communion, it was just something that we would do together as a family once a month or once a quarter whenever the church celebrated it. When we moved to Kansas and attended Quaker churches where physical communion isn't practiced I just stopped for a long time. I do remember that once when I was about 8 or so I took communion automatically when I visited my relatives' church with them. My cousin asked me if I had been baptized (No) and was told that you weren't supposed to take communion if you hadn't been baptized. To a young Hannita that seemed really odd.

I have friends that love the Eucharist, the symbolism, the ritual, and would happily take it every day. I think it's something best done with family, biological or otherwise. It is terribly lonely to partake of communion when it's just one's self, did you know? I just don't think it was meant to be that way. And I think, if we're not careful, we can cheapen it by making it rote, by making it something that's just Done.

Yesterday I went to the lake. The sky and water were so blue. There were people flying kites and walking dogs. It was just so lovely. After walking for a while I took some time to close my eyes and listen to the waves. Then I took some time to watch the waves. As I watched them it occurred to me that somehow, these waves that I was watching were like Eucharist. The waves come up onto the sand and bring something with it, more sand, small rocks, bits of glass tumbled by the waves. And as the waves wash back out into the lake they take things with them. The beach is never the same, the objects left, the texture of the sand, it is constantly changing. In some ways, this is how we are with Christ and the Eucharist. When we are in a relationship with God, he washes over us, brings us new things, fills up some of the holes that others or we ourselves might have dug, and he takes away with him those parts that we no longer need or should be taken away. We are constantly changed, always new. We are like that when we remember Christ, reflecting on a broken body and blood spilled; there is no choice, we are changed.

Has anybody seen my sleep?

Item 1) I should stop watching Law and Order before I go to bed. The story lines just mess with my head.
Item 2) I should kick the cats out of my room.
Item 3) I should install the window air conditioning unit in my bedroom for the nights when it is 85 - both in temperature and humidity.
Item 4) While crafting is fun, perhaps I should start earlier in the evening rather than waiting until 8 to get started on a project. That way, when a reasonable bedtime arrives, I might be more likely to actually try to sleep instead of say, iron quilt blocks.

I'm not sleeping well. And when I do, it's involved some wacked out dreams. But, I've got some fabric cut for a baby quilt that I want to make.

Ain't Community Grand?

Crazy happenings at my old church. Really good, and, I think, for folks still there, really hard. But it makes me wonder if I might be able to go a-visiting after a year and a half of not thinking I would be able to do that yet. We'll see. Seeing my friend R. last week, and not having communicated much with her at all during that time, really made me miss (all over again) this huge group of people that I just love. A lot. So we'll see.

Also, I have a meeting tonight with the new assistant pastor at the place I'm attending now regarding music. I want to be realistic and honest but charitable and not lay too much at his feet or on his shoulders. But then again I want to be realistic and honest. It should be interesting.

Hey! This is post number four-hundred and eighty! That seems kind of impossible. So look for a big extravaganza maybe when I hit 500, 'cause that would be way exciting.

Because the day just isn't mine

Grades hadn't been posted yet for that last class where I wasn't doing too well. My professor was off teaching a class about camping (no, seriously, it's a class they offer at the seminary here) and faith and it has taken a good long while to get that grade posted.

Guess what? I just checked. I passed, but not spectacularly, or even above average-ly.
And now, I just want to go bury my head in my (pukey) bed and cry a little cry. This was Not what I wanted out of that class. I don't think it's reflective of what I put in, either. I just wonder how it is that I learned so much in that class but ended up with such a crappy grade?

Anyone want to give me a little perspective here? Because I think I've suddenly lost some depth perception.

Already not a good morning

Last night I wrangled my cat into a position so that I could clip his hind claws (he was de-clawed in the front when I got him so you can just put that hate mail away right now) and check out some of his bald patches. I also needed to get him close enough and still enough to put his fancy new collar on him. The other cat was also interested in what was happening. Perhaps because I bribed them with treats. I 'm not above that.
Aww, doesn't he look pathetic?
Here he is, trying to kill me with his laser beam eyes. =(
I left it on him all night and got another few shots this morning. He was trying to get the collar off still. Oooh, a movie. You should watch, it's pretty funny.



And then, while I was brushing my teeth I heard *something* and came back to find him drinking out of the fishbowl. So he had navigated around well enough with this stupid collar on to figure out how to get the top off the fishbowl and then decided that he didn't really want at the fish, but wanted to drink the water instead.

Five minutes later he had puked all over my bed. And the collar-so I had to take it off of him and rise it. Oh, and move the fish, because if he got in once, well, there's nothing to stop him now. Right before I left for work.

Guess what I get to do as soon as I get home tonight? If you said laundry you'd be right.

Say Hello...

To Felix!He came to live with me and the boys on Friday and got all settled in on Saturday. In the picture above he looks very shiny and lots of crazy colors. He is reddish and blueish but the picture below seems to have caught his coloring a little more accurately, he's got some white or clear bits to him, with dashes of color, particularly his front and bottom fins. What's the bottom fin called? It's not his dorsal fin, that's the top. I picked him out because he was feisty. All swimmy and angry at the pet store for putting him in that tiny bowl.

I almost bought a naked rat too. Actually, I was nowhere close to buying a naked rat, the salesgirl said they had just gotten them in and wanted to get them out so I said, OK, I'll be interested in a naked rat for a small while so you can play with it. While I would never have a rat as a pet, I can understand why some would, they are supposed to be quite the smart creatures. But I wouldn't be able to get past the tail. It was a great little pet store though. After being at Petco and seeing their sad fish, I was glad to see a place where the animals seemed much better cared for and enjoyed.
Leo could care less about Felix. But Judah likes him quite a bit, and although you may not be able to tell in this picture, likes to watch him swim. Hopefully I'll still have a fish when I get home tonight.

Happy

For some reason this afternoon I'm happy that my brother is coming to visit me at the end of July. Sure, he's bringing his girlfriend and they'll spend most of their time here at Lolapalooza, but I get to see him and spend time Chicago-ing with him. If only the end of July would get here sooner...

I can stop anytime

Fairly often I wake up on Sunday mornings with a raging headache, a headache that, if I have no other commitments, I am happy to suffer through in my pajamas all day. It is only recently that I've started associating this headache with my caffeine habit. I enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning at work. Sometimes I even make it. I even bought powdered creamer so that I could have creamer because I like my coffee the color of buckskin. Sometimes, if I haven't had coffee before lunch time I'll order a massive (caffeinated) soda. The honest truth is that I don't really think about these things as a way to ingest caffeine, it just happens. When I really do want the help waking up it's usually not at a time when I can have coffee (before singing usually). But on Saturdays, more often than not, I'll forgo coffee - usually because I don't have creamer or milk on hand - and I'm fine for the entire day. But I pay for not drinking the caffeine the next morning. Last Sunday was such a day where I paid the entire day for not having that regular caffeine.

I can stop anytime, really. I'm just not ready to yet...

And now for some cats

I know, at one point I ranted about not being a cat person. It's very true, I'm not. But I do love my kitties. So when I saw this little set of four porcelain cats I had to have them. And at 45 cents each, what's the harm?They are sitting atop a yellow, aluminum bowl that I found at the same store. It seemed to work well as a pedestal. I think I like the first one best of all. That's how my kitty Judah approaches me all the time, with one paw up, eyes very entreating, and every so often he'll bat at me softly as if to say "Hi. Will you pet me, please?"And, unless I'm trying to sleep, I usually do. But, poor kitty, he's got something going on that is distressing us both. He keeps licking himself and has licked off most of his belly hair, the backs of his hind haunches and is now working up the outsides of his legs and belly. So, in an effort to keep him from licking I ordered him a couple Elizabethan collars today. I'm worried that it was an allergic reaction to the wet food I started feeding them once or twice a week and that even if I stop feeding it to them, it has turned into a compulsion. Apparently it is a somewhat compulsive sort of a behavior. It can also be an indication of boredom or nervousness or allergies or... He is getting older so maybe male pattern baldness? Anyways, please think good thoughts for my Judah kitty.


This is his brother Leo and me relaxing one day. I love how, if he's not sitting on top of me, he always seems to just put a paw out and touch my arm or foot as if to confirm that I'm there and haven't wandered off without him. Here he's sitting on the back of the sofa and he's got his little paw on my shoulder. (And he's the "mean" one)

Odds and Ends

Sunday afternoon this happened to my car:
It 's a little easier to see what the damage is from the inside.
Fantastic, eh?
I keep wanting to scream "stupid little shits!" because I know it was a group of kids in my neighborhood. I actually heard this happen but didn't actually think it was my car, I thought it was a bottle breaking (there are lots of those in my neighborhood too). It wasn't until a day later that I noticed that my awesome Buick hood ornament was missing. My best guess is that someone took a bat to the hood ornament and it hit the windshield. Broad daylight, 3:30 or so on a Sunday afternoon. If there is a silver lining in all of this it's that the cracks are on the passenger's side and don't look like they'll spread over to the driver's side.

But, spring has finally hit Chicago and the flowers are all bloomy. The tulips have already come and gone but the iris and peonies and lilacs are all out and that is a lovely thing. All of these flowers make me think of my grandma. Yesterday when I was getting dressed and finding the earrings that I needed for my outfit one of her rings fell out of the little bowl where I sometimes keep smaller bits of jewelry. So I said hi to my grandma and put on the ring.
Yesterday was the last day with the red hair. It was time. I'm just too lazy to refresh the color every week and then scrub down the bathroom to keep it from turning pink. So today it's mostly auburn-ish.

Speaking of the red hair. I just need to get this out in the universe:
Not everyone with unnaturally colored hair is starving for attention.

When I was in Ohio I visited a church service that is specifically designed for people in and around their twenties. There might have been a few hundred people there (I'm horrible at estimating numbers of people) but no one else with odd hair, which, frankly, in and of itself, seemed odd in that demographic. Afterward my friend wanted to chat a bit with the guy who spoke and then mentioned that I needed prayer because I hadn't gone up when the speaker mentioned the hurty knees and I have hurty knees (have since 4th grade folks). So besides wanting to injure my friend I had to stand there through the awkwardness of the whole "Can I touch it while I pray for you?" "No" conversation. (Standard practice in the V-yard when you're praying for healing - touch the person or part that you are praying for. I just don't like people touching me when they pray because it's Distracting! Especially those people that pat or rub. Even worse)

Aaaanyways, short story long, this guy starts out with a whole thing about how his first impression of me was that I just really needed to know that God sees me and know that I'm important to him and blah blah blah. Which I thought was silly. And then later, in the car ride home I realized that was his interpretation of the unnaturally colored hair. Clearly I was a desperate soul who needed attention with hair like this. Yeah, not so much. But I think I'm over it now that I've gotten it out there. I'll move on.

To this:This is the top of my big ol' trunk in my living room. The red-mouthed deal holds DVDs right now. It came home with me in September. My parents had it for a few years. I think they got it at an auction in the Dallas area at some point. But the turtle and the lady are new, found thrifting this last week. The lady cost less than a dollar. The turtle was four dollars. I like them. I found some great stuff last night. Is it weird that I buy toys for my friends' children while I'm thrifting? They're all wooden toys but I keep wondering if it's odd and if my friends would think it's weird. Like last night I found a yellow bus that I think Elliot would like since he like buses, a fact I didn't know before last weekend. I mean, if it's weird, I think they're cute so I'll keep them so it's not all a waste. But what do you think?

Phew. That was a lot of stuff. Congratulations you if you've made it this far!

Show and Tell #432 (not really)

I'm not exactly sure how I got away from Ohio with not taking a picture of Isaiah on his new quilt, but I didn't. I know his mom got some pictures the last day I was there and Elliot and I discussed the zebras that were on it. And Isaiah also wore the pear onesie, but no pictures of him in said onesie. Clearly my mind was not in the picture taking game.

But this was a project I worked on about two years ago for Elliot. I can't remember whether I got it done in time for the baby shower but it did get done and is now on round two. Doesn't it look snuggly?