Flat Lawning

The snow has finally melted off of our Colorado lawn, it's been about 2 and a half months since we've seen it. While it's good to see our lawn again. . . it's not very attractive as it's trying to recover after all the weight that's been on it. One may, in fact, call it very, very flat.

Which is driving Greg nuts as we had the nicest lawn by far this past summer and one of his favorite pastimes is to obsess over how to make it look better.

So he proclaimed to me last week that perhaps he would get the lawnmower out of the garage and make a few passes over the flat, dead grass to, (and this is a direct quote) "Fluff it up a little".

I said no, that probably wasn't a great idea.

I almost said it with a straight face too.

The Perfect Crime

This is what I awoke to Saturday morning.

Above is a picture of a badly mangled catnip plant. Dirt all over my counter and my sink (not to mention bits of catnip plant joyously sprinkled all over my kitchen), and there, right next to it - my cat's collar with her name tag perfectly visible. This picture was taken exactly as I found the crime scene. Not sure how her collar came off there - but I suppose catnip does crazy things.

It was the perfect crime. . .

If you really didn't want to mess with guessing about which cat was the perpetrator.

Of my Great Expectations. . .

Today was a panicky sort of day.

I woke up this morning as we all do, and I prepared for work. It’s a rather new job, and though I graduated with a degree in Geography and Environmental Studies. . .I’ve managed to work for an oil company and now a defense contractor in my short, rather ironic, professional life. I don’t like this job any more than the last, and am gritting my teeth working here so I can get my masters paid for.

This morning, however, was not a morning full of reason as I realized just how little my job did to make a difference in the world and how much I hated sitting in a cube. I looked at Greg a bit wild-eyed and suggested that perhaps I could join the Army, and train to become a medic, so I could then go to school a while longer while I was out to become a doctor, and THEN after starting a family practice, I could join Doctors without Borders and really make a difference in third-world countries.

He, of course, calmly listened to everything I said and stated if that’s what I wanted to do – he would be OK with it, but today we needed to get to work and if I could please get in the car now…

*sigh*

And then I realized while I’m sitting here at my cube staring at my pink walls and watching silly putty droop off of the side of my computer monitor that I could really go help any of those causes right now, but the courage required to walk away from a steady, good-paying job for something that is emotionally more rewarding and financially foolish… is more than I have.

To a lesser extent I’m too attached to money ( or rather, what it can provide) to just give away quantities (large or small) to these causes…

Heck, I’m not even willing to give up a few hours a week to volunteer in my community…

I suppose my life would be a bit easier if it weren’t so full of contradictions.

Things I'm grateful for

A husband who will go to breakfast with me in the high hopes that we'll start a revolutionary bible study. . . and then who says 'it's not a big deal' when no one shows up.

The travelling fat. . .

The first week of May Greg and I are heading down into the Grand Canyon for a week long backpacking trip. I'm VERY excited about it, and though I'm not overweight, I'm also not incredibly fit, so I've been working on that to prepare for this summer.

Over the past 4 weeks, I've been running, lifting weights, eating healthy, and counting the calories. Rather than start Jan 1st with an unattainable New Years resolution - I started more towards mid-January with a slow beginning that has been picking up speed ever since. I feel healthy, vibrant, and quite victorious as it's steadily becoming habit rather than obligation.

And while I've lost nearly 3 inches off my waist - I've also gained 4 lbs.

And stop with that 'muscle weight' talk. I've heard it before and let's just be honest with each other. As I'm not training for the weight-lifting championships and I'm not drinking muscle builder, 4 lbs is a bit excessive.

But, there's still the issue that I lost 3 inches off my waist.

I have no idea where this fat is deciding to travel to - hopefully here in a few more weeks it will have no choice but to shrink down. Until then - salads ahoy!

Off the Deep End

At work the other day, I met a guy who identified himself to me as a Christian. I myself am a pastor's daughter; and no matter how long and convoluted our past may be together, I still believe in and love God. We're just in the middle (or maybe the beginning) of a long process trying to define what that means.

So I don't attend church regularly - I find it to be stuffy and for the most part not authentic.

I consider myself to be spiritual, and I'm very gun-shy of religious people.

I do read the bible quite a bit, but I also read books from psychics, critics of the bible, books of the bible that weren't canonized, books about the books that weren't canonized, scientific books. . . just about anything and everything that contains scraps of knowledge I read and think about.

And where does this get you?

For the most part it turns your brain into a highly knowledgeable pea soup. A conglomerate of ideas, many of which contradict each other and it makes it difficult to formulate your own ideas. So while I know a lot about many things, I don't have real solid opinions one way or the other.

I don't even know if that's a bad thing. I don't think it is. Seems that too much of our more deplorable world history has been wrapped around people holding too tightly to a solidly held belief.

But, back to my co-worker. We got to talking about Christianity (the rhetoric of which I am too familiar with) and he mentioned that he and his friends wanted to start a bible study here at work where we could start asking some hard questions, toss around ideas. I thought this was a really good idea, and volunteered to help lead it (it is, after all, in my blood). I suggested next Wednesday, as it is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, which I like to observe even though I'm not Catholic. So I threw together an email with some ideas, and it included these paragraphs:

"Maybe these questions are a good place to start:

What unhealthy patterns do I see in my life during the past year?
What relationships need reconciliation or my new or renewed investment?
How can I improve my relationship with God?
In what ways can I join God in healing and restoring the world?

I know we don’t really know each other, so I think our first study should be just a get to know you sort of time. We can throw around these questions, but I also don’t want to get too personal if it makes you uncomfortable. Really, they’re good questions for personal reflection and journaling if you like to do that sort of thing."

Immediately the response was that the questions were too personal, and maybe the only one we should bring up (if even) was the last one.

Now, I don't fault people not wanting to share deeply intimate parts of their lives at a work bible study, but at the same time, if we're not willing to ask those questions - how can we even begin to work on the last one?

Off to War

Well, I'm writing this because my brother, John Craig, has left to go join the fighting in Afghanistan. He's in the Army, 82nd Airborne division and though we all said goodbye in December, I had sort of kept it in the back of my head that I would fly out and say goodbye one more time before he left.

Schedules and money prevented me from doing so, and to be absolutely honest I don't think either he or I really wanted to go through that last goodbye before he left. And so we did it over the phone. When he had landed in Maine. It's funny how conversations like that are so mundane, when really you want to say something much more important . . . but if you say it then you just might be acknowledging just how serious this all really is - and no one wants to do that.

So we talked of books, and of his new address, and how vets were there at the airports handing out phones for our troops to dial home one last time before they left for parts unknown as well as food to keep them comfortable during their flight. Their kindness touched John and his buddies. That these older men would take the time to drive to Maine to say goodbye to younger men they don't even know. . .

And, finally, it was with a heavy heart that I got off the phone with my brother, and said that last 'I love you' and 'Goodbye'. I'mcertain we'll speak again on the phone sometime within the next 16 months while he is there, and I'm also pretty sure that my brother will be safe. But there's something strange about that last goodbye when your loved one is leaving the relative saftey of your home country. Something that has to do with trusting that everything will be OK that makes it especially difficult. Something about knowing that the next time you see him he will be 2 years older than he is right now and that life will have shaped him in ways you will never know about or be able to share with him.