passing notes

I was at a friend's birthday party last night and chatted briefly with Matt Slocum. While we were talking I remembered that he wrote one of my most favorite song lyrics ever:

"Tension is to be loved when it is like a passing note to a beautiful, beautiful chord."

It was on a Sixpence album a while back but it comes to mind at least a few times a year. I wish I had written it but I am not sure I could have put words to that thought as eloquently as he did. I'm not really one for tension, for dissonance. Dissonance is defined as "a simultaneous combination of tones conventionally accepted as being in a state of unrest and needing completion." I tend to retreat when I sense that conflict is near. In my life tension has often led to brokeness instead of rest. The dissonance of this past year has been anything but loved; I have hated almost every single moment of it. But Slocum's words remind me that the beauty of a chord is fully appreciated when one has experienced the dissonance of its unrest. I find that I am restless, living in the midst of a tension that longs for relief. I think this is what it feels like to hope--to live in a way that anticipates something beautiful, to believe that one day the tight knot will loosen its grip.
t

Kids say the darndest things: #1

I love working with kids. LOVE it. One of my favorite things about talking with kids are the random questions that they ask in the middle of seemingly normal conversations. Here are some of my favorites from this past month:

kid: Did your mom ever go to college?
me: yes she did.
kid: did she just graduate?
me: she graduated a long time ago.
kid: oh....did she go to college to learn how to be a cave-woman?
me: (OMG!!!...PLEASE don't tell me I look old enough to have a cave-woman for a mother!) No, she went to college to be a teacher.
kid: oh...well, I guess that's ok too.

kid: Do you watch TV?
me: yes I do.
kid: Do you watch Dora?
me: nope
kid: Do you watch sponge Bob?
me: no
kid: Do you watch cartoons?
me: not really
kid: well, what DO you watch--the news?
me: I watch shows about cooking and famous people.
kid: like Michael Jackson?
me: no, like Kristin Cavallari.
kid: who?!
me: errr...never mind...yes, I watch the news.

kid: Do you watch TV? (This seems to be a popular question)
me: yes I do.
kid: what do you watch?
me: (sigh)...the news...
kid: like BET?
me: ummm....you mean the channel with music videos on it?
kid: yep.
me: yeah, sometimes I watch BET.
kid: yeah, that's my favorite news channel.
me: (smile)

Yep, some of my favorites. And there's plenty more where that came from...
t

Makin' a comeback

     So, clearly I have not posted in quite a while. 16 months, to be exact. While there are many reasons for this, it all boils down to the fact that my life has been an absolute shitstorm for the past year-and-a-half. When my life gets into shitstorm mode, I am prone to display hermit-like tendencies making it difficult for me to update the masses on my comings and goings. I won't begin to bore you with the minutia of all that has changed since my last post, however, I will say that the most significant update in my life is that I am in the process of getting divorced.  I do not intend on discussing the details of the divorce in this forum, but I can say that this has been the most heartbreaking year of my life--and this includes the year that doctors found dientamoeba fragilis trophozoites floating around my large intestine.
     I am moving forward into a new season of life and already much has changed. In May I graduated from Mars Hill Graduate School, in July I said goodbye to Seattle and reloacted to Nashville, and in August I started a job working as a therapist/case manager at an elementary school in Nashville. Lots to get used to.
     One of the things I missed the most this past year was my ability to write. For the longest time I was unable to find words to put to my loss and confusion. I stopped journaling, I stopped writing music, and I stopped emailing and corresponding with many friends.
     But as my heart has begun to heal I find, once again, that I have things to say. Some of them are sad, some are angry, some are funny, and some still don't make much sense. I'm ok with that. I am greatlful for a handful of close friends who walked with me as I attempted to make sense of the unraveling that this past year has been. For those who have not heard much from me this past year, I am sorry I could not give you more and hope that you can understand my absence.
     That's all from me for now. I am excited to write and I am excited for you to read. So, here's to finding words. It's about time.
    
   

no pain no gain

So, seeing's how our gym attendance has been waning this month, SJY and I decided to get up early on Saturday and attend a class at our gym. I get home from work around midnight, unwind for an hour or 2, then head to bed, so it takes a pretty big deal for me to get up before 10am. For some reason, I figured the 10:15 Center of Attention, taught by Fran, was reason enough. I assumed the class would be 30 minutes of various ab exercises that would motivate me to get in shape for bathing suit season. I couldn't have been more wrong.
I can't even begin to describe the experience we had in the class...but I will say that I never realize how out-of-shape I am until I attend a class with 12 other people who are bearing witness to my extreme out-of-shapeness. It was ridiculous. The class was not a 30-minute deal where we all did crunches on the floor. Ab-solutely not. The class ended up being what I like to call--Pilates on Crack.
Our instructor kept telling us to squat and take energy from the earth and give it to the sun (whatever the heck that means), all the while twisting and twirking my body in various positions. Eventually, my body was in such extreme pain that I gave up trying to look like I was keeping up with everybody else. I looked over at my equally miserable husband (who is less flexible than me--if that's even possible) and as soon as our eyes met, we dissolved into juvenile giggles in the middle of the quiet studio. I did my best to laugh quietly, but that's pretty much impossible when you're trying to suspend your body in mid-air.
On our walk home, we chalked the class up to a decent morning of entertainment and went on about our day. I headed to work but as the evening progressed, I noticed my legs and butt beginning to get sore. By the end of my shift, I was hobbling around like a frickin' geriatric. The next morning, I woke up and some kind of rigor mortis had set in in my legs. I'm not even kidding. After 2 days, I still don't have decent range of motion from my hips to my ankles. This poses a serious problem when attempting to walk. Not that SJY is doing any better. It's like we're living in a retirement community, hobbling around and complaining about our ailments 24/7.
I'm hopeful that in the next couple of days we'll be able to walk down the stairs without the fear of our legs giving out, the rigor mortis will subside, and I'll be able to quit comparing injuries with the old people down the hall. Oh, and in case you're wondering...I'm totally going back next week.

Broken

So, what do you call it when your parents are married, but they don't live in the same city
and they don't talk to each other
and they don't love each other
and you can't remember a time when they actually did?

And how do you continue to listen as complaints are filed
and lines are drawn
and fingers are pointed
and denial is rampant?

And how are you supposed to deal with the fact that they have been at it like this for years
and the family is in a constant state of trauma
and there's no indication that things will be different
anytime soon?

t

little drummer boy

So, I think it's safe to say that I have a pretty crappy track record with upstairs neighbors. In Nashville, my upstairs neighbor would bang on her floor (my ceiling) if I or any of my roommates used any water between the hours of 7-8:30am...which just so happens to be when 90% of America gets ready for work. I worked the night shift at the time and, without fail, right when I would fall asleep in the morning, the banging on my ceiling would begin. We actually had about 4 house meetings with her to address the 'banging', but we never got anywhere. Needless to say, she was an idiot.
Then, I moved to Seattle and had the unfortunate experience of living underneath 1 human and 2 pugs. All I heard, 24 hours a day, was the clickety clack of little pug toenails on the linoleum floor above me...and all night long the pugs would run back and forth, from one end of the apartment to the other, barking and wrestling until their owner dragged her drunk self home at 5am. I worked up the nerve and wrote a nasty note telling my neighbor that I had better things to do at 4am than listen to her pugs run around like wild banshees. Of course, I finally gave it to her a week before i moved out so it didn't do much good.
My current upstairs neighbor takes the cake. Apparently, he's learning how to play the drums. I hate to say it, but every day sounds like it's his first lesson. SJY and I were gonna give him a month before putting yellow post-it notes all over his front door with "You SUCK!" written all over them, but then we found out he was only 15 and we didn't want to be solely responsible for shattering his shalom. So now, usually about 3 or 4 days a week, we are privy to some of the most god-awful sounds that I have ever heard...the other day I think he was even playing along to a John Cougar Mellencamp song, which is just heinous in and of itself!
I'm currently home with the flu, and have not left my apartment in a few days. My whole body hurts, I'm blowing ungoldy amounts of snot out of my nose, and I'm exhausted. This afternoon Miss Dottie and I had just settled onto the couch for a little catnap, when all of a sudden...bam, chink, bam, bam, chink, thud, thud, (unrecognizable sound), bam, chink...totally ruined any chance of relaxation. The flu has turned my appearance into one that closely resembles Cruella Deville, so there was no way I was gonna go upstairs and kindly ask him to shut the f&%* up. There's no sense in traumatizing the poor kid. But I have decided that maybe the post-it notes weren't such a bad idea after all...

Newlywed Cooking mishap #57: The Monkey Bread Debacle

Since getting married, I have been trying my hand in the kitchen in attempts to improve my cooking/baking skills. Much to the continued amusement of SJY, I have been more like a worthless Paris Hilton in the kitchen than the Giada De Laurentiis vibe I was going for. First there were the chocolate chip cookies that I made with course sea salt because I didn't have any fine-grained cooking salt. I figured, salt is salt, right? Wrong. The salt didn't absorb evenly into the cookie dough, instead every 3 bites or so, unfortunate taste testers would suddenly get a burst of waaay-to-salty nastiness. They were so bad I actually threw out the entire batch...SJY tried to fight me on it, but I'm pretty sure he was just desperate for a cookie.
There were also the chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that somehow came out as crispy as a triscuit, the banana bread that required an electric knife for slicing, the hockey puck yeast rolls...I mean, the list is endless, people. I've been insisting that I'm still getting used to a gas oven, but I think SJY is convinced there are bigger issues at hand.
Nonetheless, tonight was a mishap for the record books. I made yeast rolls for Easter lunch yesterday, and today decided to make monkey bread out of the leftover dough. I defrosted the extra dough all day, got a recipe off Cookinglight.com and anticipated the accolades I would receive for my award-deserving monkey bread. Keeping in mind all of the 'issues' I seem to be having in the kitchen (and the fact that I'd never actually made monkey bread before) I followed the recipe word for word.
The timer dinged, I pulled the soft, warm monkey bread out of the oven, and let SJY have the inaugural bite. I should have anticipated his immediate look of horror...

SJY: Ugh, this tastes like straight-up alcohol.
me: That's impossible--it's monkey bread! I told you this gas oven is unreliable!!
SJY: We could get full and drunk at the same time!
me: (sigh)

I took a bite and, sure enough, it tasted like I had just tossed back a shot of really nasty cough-syrup-flavored booze. I couldn't even hold back a grimace. I guess all the dough, sugar and yeast somehow combusted to make an alcoholic...umm...beverage?
In spite of another unsuccessful evening in the kitchen, I remain upbeat. I'm pretty sure I just created SJY's new favorite food: alcohol-infused-yeast-bread--his two favorite flavors melded into one. Although he currently won't go near the monkey bread, I'm sure that with a little tweaking, I could totally make it not taste like poison. I just need a little time...and an Easy-Bake oven.