(Mildly) Happy New Year!

My wildest New Years to date was with Rachael, that rock gig smokin' violin chick we all know and love.

Simon the intrepid pup and I were visiting her in Seattle and it was either the milennium (2000) or the real milennium (2001), so we decided to go camping. We took the ferry over to one of the islands and tooled around all day admiring the homes and wishing we were computer geeks so we could afford to live there. I would love to be able to complain about the tourists clogging up the roads and crowding the ferry, to hear the sea at night and imagine it was a belonging, like the carpeting in my cottage home. I would promise not to forget those on the outside looking in, to always hire live musicians and let them in the front door, even.

So it was dark when we pulled into the campground, which was entirely and strangely deserted. We set up camp, started a small fire and got ready to settle in when Simon got all nervous and began backing into our legs while staring out of the circle cast by the firelight. Haha we laughed, ha. Silly Simon the wussy dog, he's afraid of crinkly bags and unusually large mum plants. What does he know about deserted campsites?

I swear we would have made it the whole night. Pinky swear, even. But then this old Mercury purred through the winding loop of the road, past us and back... twice. Then they left. Then we did.

This is the trouble with New Years' Eve. Fun people tend to end up bored and crazy people tend to end up making with the hardcore.

Am I a spaniel-level wuss? Do I have less bravado than a dog who believed swingsets to be of the devil? Maybe.
Yes.
But it's a whole new year, and we will create our own brand of festive on five secure acres near Aumsville, and I will be here to tell you all about it.

So Rock IT, Dick! Send that ball on down, ring it it, Syne the Auld Lang.
Wheeeeeee! (but not too much)

This just in...

... I'm no longer convinced this daily posting thing is such a good idea. And yes, I do realize that I lost my streak on Christmas Day anyway. Too bad I can't just pretend it was some stoic honoring-Christ thing. I just ate too much, drank too much, presented too much with too much family, and forgot a little teeny bit.

I'd like this not to be a This Happened and Then This, and Then, etc type of blog. It would be pleasant to have opinions on the events (and lack thereof) in my daily existance. Opinions, reactions, musings, humorous (low humor, though) thoughts. I'd take any of that stuff over the frenetic nothingness I feel when I'm typing out my experiences with holiday traffic.

Perhaps I'm experiencing a temporary lack of electricity in my brain parts because I've been sitting on my kiester eating cake and watching tv for five days straight. (and Then... ) Anyway, I can understand why people write memes now and also why they watch the news, even though you have to admit both can be a tad depressing.

So in that spirit, how about a list of things I hope I don't write about when I'm hard up for material:
1. Clothing sizes. Unless I'm in a wee one and want to brag.
2. Starbucks. It's so been done.
3. Fights I've had with my spouse. There's a blog or seventeen hundred out there devoted to just this. All I can think is, hello- do you WANT to mess up your claims with the divorce lawyers?
4. Directions I want the blog to take, like what I do or don't want to see myself writing... in the.. uh..

The Grudge: Ju-on

I love scary Japanese movies. I love Japanese movies, period.

We're watching the original Grudge, which is called Ju-on. Like most J-flicks, it moves along just fine for a while- very freaky, very suspenseful. Then SUDDENLY there's a zombie teenaged girl scene with just a little too much screaming, and you can't help but laugh.

Japanese horror has an obsession with the following: long, unkempt hair or clumps therof, pale skin, creepy children, water puddling inexplicably indoors, and highpitched and/or clicky noises. Any one of those things could be pretty annoying in real life, though not necessarily, y'know, deadly. If I were to have a damp, pale, hairy day, one where Toby looked fetchingly at me before terrorizing my, oh, say breasts for example- NO, Wait! I had that day and it didn't kill me off, either, not yet. I did make some highpitched noises, though.

He hasn't bitten in a while- but don't tell him I'm posting that.

The day after yesterday, which I missed.

This is a quickie- I am so falling asleep as soon as I'm done. We are still in the thrall of the Holidays (Capital H because DANG, we do it up RIGHT!) around here, so sleep is a precious gift from baby Jesus Himself. Speaking of, Toby slept 12 hours with no parental interventions on Christmas. Because I'm writing about it here, it may never ever happen again.

I will leave you with a few recommendations in case you find yourself with Christmas cash. Go out and get Little Miss Sunshine, and the following musics: Sufjan Stevens, Laura Gibson, and Pedro the Lion. As always, you should be listening to Gillian Welch, Lyle Lovett, Willie (don't make me say Nelson), Bjork and the Man in Black.

Mwah!

Would they, could they?

What other family would gladly indulge our Dollar Store white elephant game?
Who else's truck driver uncle in law would gladly accept a blue thong with matching pom-poms?
Whose cousins would trade back and forth a slinky, Ty-d-bol, and (Seriously!) a children's book called "Down the Knuckerhole" which we thought paired rather nicely with a packet of off-brand tampons?
Whose father-in-law would enjoy it so much, in fact, that he would feel compelled to actually set off the stink packet doo hickies in Aunt C's perfectly done up, formerly candley scented home?

Mine would!

God bless you and yours, thank God for me and mines.

Love,
Jwards

TTFN

Tomorrow (today- in 4 obscenely early hours) we take off for a week in Big Sky Country.

I am SOOOOOO looking forward to staying in the in-laws warm chaotic noisy comfy home. It will be absolutely packed with folks willing to play with Toby while I take naps, eat bon-bons and soak in the hot tub. Seriously, they HAVE a HOT TUB out on a snowy secluded porch.

I hope it snows a couple hundred feet and we can't leave the house for days a la The Fussys. Except Christmas day, it should clear up enough to let in my biological parents and my only cool blood sister.

On the drive out there I plan to sleep, absorb hip cds through my very pores, cheat on cross words and maybe, just MAYBE write my Christmas cum New Years cum Valentines Day cards. I can't find my address book- three moves in one year will do that- so people will just have to deal while I type it in, print it out and do what I can.

See you on the other side.

Tra-dition!

tra·di·tion (n.)
1. The passing down of elements of a culture from generation to generation, especially by oral communication.
2. a. A mode of thought or behavior followed by a people continuously from generation to generation; a custom or usage.
b. A set of such customs and usages viewed as a coherent body of precedents influencing the present: followed family tradition in dress and manners.
3. A body of unwritten religious precepts.
4. A time-honored practice or set of such practices.

I'm having trouble putting my finger on my own specific holiday traditions. My family tends to be free and flexible, doing whatever works each year. I'd like to have a few Christmas traditions for Frolic, to better provide discussion material for his therapy sessions.

Here are some candidates:

1. The idea of an advent run-up to Christmas appeals to Insanely Homemakery Miriam, but not to the Actually Doing It Miriam, unless we can work out something I don't have to recreate yearly.




2. Some charity service will definitely be part of the deal, but I'm not sure whether it's better to be faithful to one or to serve a bunch. Picking one would teach him to be consistant and emphasize relationship, but serving many would illustrate the depth of needs.




3. I need to go camping. Boy-children are supposed to like that, right? Snowy wilderness + tents and firepits= joyous memories all around!






So, come on. What are your traditions? Which did you like/dread as a kid? How do you give meaning to the holiday bustle?

Standing advice

All the excitement around here has led to a new developmental milestone for Sprout. Here we see him not holding on to anything for balance- he is standing on his own. Long enough for me to notice, look for the camera, wait for the camera to wake up, focus and finally click the shutter. He flopped onto the floor .02983476 seconds after that, so thank goodness it took.

Also, in case anybody is thinking of doing those slides, here's one of mine.



My advice if you're doing these:
*Get the slides at a teacher supply shop.
*Cut a slide-sized hole in a piece of paper so you can evaluate your potential pictures to see what they'll look like in a slide. The image has to be pretty small.
*If the fancy stained glass tape is too spendy (it's about $15) for your taste, why not try that Home Depot duct foil? It should work.
*If you use the real tape, be CAREFUL of your musician fingers. That crap gives nasty papercuts. The slides themselves aren't that sharp, but that expensive tape is vicious.
*Use the thick tape-style magnets because the slide itself is substantial and magnets that can't hold anything but themselves up are lame.

Woo!

Wrap it Up.

Did you wrap your prezzies yet?

I'm almost done. Every year, the first couple packages look like a second grader did them. By the end, I can almost hear the Elgar going as I become eligible to just about move on to seventh grade.

OH NOOOO! I am watching tv and posting because Toby is sleeping and I must cram in as much pretending I'm in charge as possible, and they have SICKO's on. With, like, two-foot long fingernails and six inch long TOE NAILS. There are not enough capital letters in the world. Gag.

Anyway, how about some little tips on wrapping cheaply, mmm-kay?

1. Buy some of that brown paper in the shipping section of whatever store you hate the least. Seriously, this time of year I am so crotchety with the Man. Freddies overcharges and hires buttheads, Target has a new crappy return policy, Walmart panders to socialists and is far away, Albertsons is ghetto and half the food is expired. See? I'm like, 90 years old or something.

2. Wrap everything as cleanly/simply as possible. Try to keep tabs on your environment as you work. Don't let the toddler escape, injure itself, eat paper you will later need, etc.

3. Embellish with foil tape from Home Depot. You can find it in the duct aisle and it's super cheap, like $2.50.

4. Add feathers ($1.49) from a craft shop and write whatever you want on the foil with sharpies.

Voila!

Inspired Giving

On Sunday, Imago did a big advent thingy.

We were meant to focus on our relationships this season, and avoid spending money on impersonal extraneous gifts. Where possible, we were challenged to avoid spending in order to give a financial gift to our church's Advent initiative. Tonight we get to go get an assignment of stuff to buy, wrap and deliver to different areas of local need. Isn't that a great way for a church to spend that tithe money?

One of the things I'm simultaneously compelled by and failing at lately is a daily scripture reading schedule, along the lines of the Liturgical year. The idea of getting back to the real purpose of Advent, and using it to bring immediacy & depth to the season appeals to me.

Another excellent idea, along the lines of the super radical World Vision gift catalog, is the charity my buddy K is supporting in honor of all her family and friends this year instead of buying gifts. Remember that Seinfeld where George made out cards that said he was donating, but he really wasn't? Like that, except without the sadness.

Incidentally, K is also my printmaking friend and she burned tasteful indie CDs with screenprinted jewel boxes designed by her equally talented husband- do you think one human should be allowed to be so hip? I would be so intimidated if she hadn't admitted that she...uh well, maybe I am just a little intimidated, because I can't think of any flaws at the moment. Anyway, check out Play Pumps, because it looks to be a worthy organization.

Rock it like the Star you are, Frolic-child.

I've GOT it!
The spirit has taken me and I am READY for Christmas.

It may have something to do with my beeg seester coming, or us going to Montana. (Is there a Christmassier state? No, there is not.)

And Toby was so flirting with me alllll morning. Giggle, flirt, wrists up under the chin with head tilted coyly down, cackling in the corner playing with his singing car toy. His arms would flail happily whenever I caught his eye. I mean, if I had to hear The Muffin Man one more time I myself may have begun flinging whatever I had to hand, but thank Rudolph that one more time never came.

I wonder if he knows we aren't buying him any Christmas gifts. He may be working the wrong house, if you know what I mean. My finely honed psychic power tells me he's going to get too many anyway and we can just let him assume we gave him whatever the Grandparents get. My power tells me he likes them better anyway.

So anyway, bring out the mistletoe, light the Yule Log (or eat it?), let's get jingly with it. (Rachael is a) Ho Ho HO!

Tonight's Theme.

Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.
-NCAA basketball coach Lou Holtz

I have had just about all I can take of myself.
-American Playwrite S. N. Behrman

People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
-William Faulkner

Close-up

I am a mess.

I love to cook, and get the whole house messy when I do it. My favorite part of cooking is combining stuff, mixing it all up. Watching it all mush together and putting some muscle into stirring are so satisfying. I've taken to wearing an apron lately because otherwise I would have to do the dishes AND the laundry.

I had friends over this week to make the wedding truffles for some neighbors and churchy folks, and Hilary brought the stuff to make Peppermint Bark. This is one of those most excellent of recipes in which there is only nuking and mixing (One package candy canes, one package white chocolate bark. Plus you get to hit the canes with a hammer, which is always fun.

The truffles turned out nicely and I made one batch with mint Oreos, then drizzled them with a little of the white bark and dipped them in some green sugar I had lying around. Yum!

Anyway, making those recipes, having nothing to post about and talking to my print-making friend got me thinking about inspiration.

The best stuff I come up with usually comes from something I've had nearby for a while. My dream house is full of repurposed stuff, not because it's envirocool but because it turns me on. I get excited seeing a night stand made from a fire hydrant, or what have you. Incidentally, this summer's discovery that those suckers are way too heavy was seriously depressing to me. I know where to buy old ones by the pound but who can lift them, let alone add trusses to her home in order to put one next to the guest bed?

Anyway, there is something about having an eclectic melange of junk in your daily environment. I need it. It would be nice if some small corner of my home might fit in one of those Simple Living on $7,000,000,000 a Year magazines, but that is unlikely to happen outside of the desperate make-over edition. We aren't cluttered, exactly, but we have a hard time containing our verve, so to speak. Take, for example, the Christmas wrapping area:





















Tobias clearly benefits from this hippified atmosphere. Look what he did with his fridge letters, and he's not even 11 months old:















Here's some stuff sitting at the bottom of our stairs:








At first glance, you might say, "Why Miriam! What has happened to your housekeeping skill? Your spartan, monk-like approach to the things of this world?" To which I would of course reply, "I'm sorry- you must have the wrong house. Have a truffle." And then I'd go outside to spray paint something and plant some herbs while worrying about how much I'm not practicing the viola. You could go home and read all about it on my blog later.

Hey! I uh... hey.

. ..... .................... ..............(morse code for Uhhhhhhhhhhh.)

My, this post is shaping up nicely- welcome to my captivating writing style brought about by months (years?) of daily posting challenges. Went to church (zzzzz- guest speaker- zzzzz). I can happily report that they have replaced the actual lit candles carried by the children last year with those battery-type candle-esque devices. So presumably they all still have their hair tonight, which is nice.

Um, I guess this is an historic moment.

Not only am I losing my actual voice, I have nothing more to say to you, internet.


Meanwhile, enjoy this picture where Toby appears to be admiring Julian's eyelash-bedecked peepers and the pokable shininess thereof. He appears that way because he loves to poke her in the eye. Boys never know how to say I love you, do they.

And that really is all I'm gonna say about it.

Amen.

If you could pick one day out of the year to represent it in your memory, which would it be?

Today was so relaxed and cozy, I would like to put it in a bottle. I think today might be the capsule day. It's not that a million wonderful things happened, though several did, it's just that I was able to really enjoy nearly every minute of it.

J spent the best portion of the day watching Toby so I could get out and do a few fun things on my own. Our church had a free clothing shop, where you bring some things you don't want anymore and see if somebody else has brought some you'd like to take home. I got rid of a huge box of obsolete but nice stuff and found a super cool skirt and shirt to call my own. So that felt nice. Honestly, I was worried that all the clothes would be five sizes too small for me, but both my finds said "M" on the tags, so maybe I just need a little therapy and to ease up a bit on the beer.

Then I stopped by my artist friend's place and she let me use her silk screening stuff. We used her Gocco printmaker and I did some notecards and a few onesies with designs she had already burned into screens. It was sweet to hang out with a likeminded person- her husband said, "Oh, it makes sense that you're buddies. You both know what deckling is." (It's that torn-edged look you get in hand made papers.)

We also had a great conversation and discovered that she and I have a lot in common in terms of our approach to and life before church. You'd like her.

Driving home from her house I was for some reason trying to imagine what I would feel like right now if I hadn't had a kid this year. I'm so glad we have Tobias. Trite? Maybe. But really, truly, he is the kind of important where you look at all other input from the world and it's colored by his existance and his need for protection.

Every day he becomes himself more- laughs more, reacts more, goofs off. He's started to dig making us laugh, which I love. I know it will get us into trouble later, but who cares. For now, when he starts cackling out of nowhere in the backseat, or babbles and then laughs while babbling like some businessman trying to get through his own joke, it absolutely makes my day. I can't believe we get him.

When I walked in the door- I'd been gone over five hours- he was laughing with his dad over a toy they were spinning on the low windowsill in our living room. Wierd stuff like that always gets him going- like parent, like kid, no?

At dinner at the nearby brewery, J and I talked about all sorts of things then took each other to Starbucks and Barnes and Holy Cow Have you Seen What they want for Books these Days? But we did have fun picking on the art photography magazines and letting Toby flirt with all the women. He really does- completely shameless. Must've learned it from his faaather.

Some days, for no good reason, I just can't believe I get all this. Thank you.

Ha! Hahahahaha! Ha!

Not that I'm the type to convert those around me. I'll even cook it for you.

But I most certainly AM the type to GLOAT!!

Discmas

Music imparts such a great portion of the mood in a space. This is even more true during those times of year associated with memories from childhood, like Christmas. Music and candles. The scent of Juniper, snowflakes on eyelashes and patient, courteous drivers. Must be Christmas! Or, drugs.

I have always loved the Brandenburg Concertos (Bach), Vivaldi's entire catalog unless it involves hack flutes with thin sounds, and of course Handel's Messiah. A good friend just this week told me how very much she hates to play the Messiah because OUCH! string players need better physical therapists. As a violist, I love it. I love the way Handel writes string parts, and there's something so satisfyingly Puritan-work-ethical about making it through the whole thing. I like to have it on while I'm cleaning so I can sing all the parts- I do that with (to, really) the Mozart Requiem as well.

Then there's the non-legit stuff.
1. I like the White Album. (Crosby, Bing: Christmas, White) 'Nuff said.

2. That AIDs benefit CD called A Very Special Christmas, with Keith Haring's art on the jacket that was a yearly staple until mine was stolen by a crappy subletter in Baltimore. Who steals a Christmas benefit cd in the middle of the summer? A law student, that's who.

3. In need of no description. The king lives with me.






4. I love the new Sarah McLachlan cd. It came in a set with her live 2-discer and they are on a lot around here. If you visited, you'd think you walked right into Starbucks, I swear. Except everything here's cheaper. And we have a changing table.

While we're talking about Christmassy moods, I would be remiss if I were to fail at mentioning Rudolph et al. Claymation is, in general, very very creepy. HOWEVER! The classics are grandfathered in because familiarity breeds childlike love and sentimental devotion.

Road Killaday Greetings!

Traffic is a dumb and lumbering damaged animal.

It posseses even docile All-State customer type people, turning them into drooling pawns of aggression. Tonight, there was this one car- a zippy Jeep diesel- and the right hand of the driveratrix found itself attached to the horn for the ENtire Seven Second Honk of Indignation (famous throughout Wisconsin and parts of Maryland). Now this honk was, at one time, a source of great consternation and annoyance for said Jeepstress. Give her one stupid drive on a night where WIND (Oh Portland, it's just W.I.N.D!) was the cause of warnings all OVER the news, slowing down every single vehicle, even the parked ones. This is what you get: hooooooooooooonk.

Merry Christmas, I-5! Happy Holidays, 217 North!! Flippy Flahbadies, power outaged traffic lights less than a quarter mile AKA 40 minutes from home!!!

DJ!

This weekend we went to our first dress-up party for J's work. It felt peculiarly adult. I do realize that in reality at 33,000,000 years of age I have been an adult for some time now. It has, however, taken my brain a while to get hold of the concept.

I went expecting to have a lot of stiff conversations and time to sit quietly smiling without showing my teeth and trying not to slouch. Gah- it used to be so easy for me to socialize. Now I'm just hoping somebody will say something interesting so I will at least be able to blog about it later.

We spent most of the evening talking to a couple of guys I met at the last firm event. They are singing in the Portland Gay Men's Chorus holiday concerts this weekend. Apparently the shows are excellent, and we're planning to go unless it sells out before we get tickets like last time.

So, that's my unsubtle way of working into this post that our buddies are gay. Because it is important that you understand that when I tell you which one of us got the compliments on his outfit Saturday night. Guess! Hah! I am so going to jump on the 'gay men have a strangle hold on any discussion of style/ clothes/ interior decor' even though that's just a conspiracy propagated by people with boxes they'd like you to crawl into. But! My man can dress.

See?

Sprout

Need I say more? I will anyway.

I figured out today who it is Toby reminds me of. This here's the Jolly Green Giant's sidekick, Sprout. Remember him? Yeah, I didn't think I did either, until I was spacing out on the couch and that thought sprang to life and I swear I hadn't been smoking anything at all.

I don't understand why nobody likes Brussel Sprouts. We steam them in broth and slather them in sour cream. I could eat just about anything prepared like that- as long as it's not one of the few* things I don't eat.

*Nuts of any kind but hey did you know cashews and peanuts are legumes? but you should avoid them while breastfeeding? so all nuts and nutlike objects, meat that is fleshy so not fishes but definitely pork & cow and stuff, stone fruits, chicken, and now- for a limited time only- sugar! Because Rachael's a whore and I will not let her think she is better than me, even if she did play on the Evanescence cd, because at least I beat her at... uh... contraceptual failure. So.. hah!

Mom wore me out today making me drive all over town for those *&@!%$ microscope slides, which is what lead to me vegging (GET IT???!!! """Sprout""") on the couch. She's a slavedriver for her crafts, man. We finally wised up and called one of those teacher supply stores, and bingo! Nifty little boxes of 72 slides for nine bucks. The silver tape was kind of spendy,14 dollars, at the stained glass shop, though I think if we lived closer together we could have shared a roll. Though I would NOT want to arm wrestle that woman for the last piece. She eats her spinach, if you know what I mean. When I was 27 I told her I was too old for her to be able to spank me, and so she did. This whole blog and yeeeears of therapy later, I think I'm beginning to recover.

Here's hoping I have enough energy and patience to make these picture-slide things in the next week and a half. Guess I better eat my veggies, can I get a what, what? What?!

Failure Five Ways

There are certain skills as a homemaker I have failed to acquire.

Any advice would be appreciated, especially if you want to let me know I shouldn't feel inadequate and that I deserve bonbons straight away.

1. Fondue is waaay harder than it looks. Literally, that stuff I tried this weekend was disturbing; the glob of cheddar sulked at the bottom and refused to mingle with the Stout beer liquid layer. Damn you, Epicurious recipe.

2. I don't own an iron because I don't wear the dress shirts in this relationship. Do you think I could make no-sew projects with fusible tape and a curling iron? In the microwave?




3. That bleach cleaning spray won't dissolve your skin after it has dried, will it? Because if it will, you might want to bring some of those paper toilet seat guards on your next visit to Rancho Miriamo. Who has time to clean off the cleaner?




4. Baby feet, like button noses and teeny armpits, are free from adult bacteria, aren't they? Which accounts for the lack of stink? So there's no problem reusing wee socks a couple times? Because it is anybody's guess whether those suckers choose to emerge from the laundry or disappear forever, and sadly there's no discount for their itty bittiness.




5. Do you think it's wierd that I put our Christmas tree on the porch to avoid an Infant Destructive Incident (IDI)? J does, but his opinion doesn't count nearly as much as random strangers reading this on screens many miles away. So let us know who's right, wouldja?

Craft 1: Slide Glass Magnets

Here are more detailed instructions for those photo + micro glass magnets. Start with raw ingredients and end up with artsy gifts. Thanks to the woman who donated the info for the Imago Dei craft idea fair.

You will need:
*Microscope slides or other small, same-sized pieces of glass. Try a lab supplier (our science museum has them) or possibly a hobby shop or glass place.
*Silver tape, which you can find at stained glass supply shops or crafts stores.
*Neat-o photos or phrases or bits of fabric cut to the size of the glass.
*Double stick magnet tape. It's everywhere.

Madison House Christmas Fair

I stopped by the Madison House today. The director let me take pictures of the rooms to get ideas to help decorate, and I got to sit & chat with some of the women. An artist from church did this sweet mural.

Across the street from the house our church was sponsoring a Christmas craft fair thingy, and in the parking lot was a benefit tree sale for the House.
Don't you love the expression on that tree-shopping dude's face?


The craft fair wasn't the kind where people make toilet seat covers and such to sell. It was full of artsy hip ideas for what to make your loved ones for Christmas. People set up demos and gave out instruction sheets on how to do Christmas without buying anything but a few art supplies. I loved the idea and I'm planning on making these microscope slide photo magnet thingies. Don't tell the 99% of my blog readership that is my family.



I don't know what exactly I expect from my church, but I keep wondering whether I'm going to get it there. At the event today I saw about 5 people I know, talked to a friendly crafter, yet somehow I still left feeling absolutely unconnected. The average member of our church is such a cutting edge, young alterna-hippie-portlander thing. In my worst moods, I get pissy and assume they're all pretentious and judgmental, that I am not liberal, young, on-fire, or laid-back enough for them. My sense is that this church is the most politically liberal church perhaps in the entire world. The Church needs a church like this one, so I don't mind even though (SHHHHHHH! They'll take away my blog!!!) I am not liberal. I love the general church sentiment and especially the intentional arts emphasis, the recognition that Creation and Creativity reflect the Creator.

Every time I begin to feel this way, sooner of later I come to the realization that we have missed a lot of services lately. So it's not them, it's me. Unless it is them...

I do wish there was a way for them to be more welcoming to outsiders without being those creepy church people. Maybe they should hand out Peppermint Roca. Seriously, have you tried it yet? MMmmmmmm.

Solicitation

Wanted:
*Writing Prompts
*Pictures you'd like me to post (email them or tell me what to shoot)
*Sites you think will put a bee in my bonnet (good or bad)

Can't I keep you?

One of the many reasons I am blurting out posts here is the lack of naked friends in my life. Not clothes-naked (not with these babies- and this here- and that area around back, and so forth) but formal social boundary-naked. I've happily assembled a comely group of acquaintances; coffee friends, churchy friends and suchlike, but there is a distinct absence of people I can let my freak flag fly around.

My naked friend Rachael came to town yesterday for a Transiberian Orchestra gig and stayed over to work on perfecting her imitation of the band's dance moves. She sadly failed in that endeavor, but we rocked the house and put up some christmas santa lights anyway. Who else can I call dirty names without fear of offense? Who will eat cookie dough at 2am? She and I can, nay- must, spur one another to the fringe of reason and breathless laughter. It probably makes J ill, but at least he gets cookie dough for hanging in there.

I can't just go calling my current buddies the c-word without fear of permanent damage to their opinion, if you know what I mean. There are a couple of promising candidates (see photo) but we aren't quite there yet, and they're Nazarenes, so the c-word may not impress them much anyway. Wesley would be unlikely to approve.

See how Toby and I are simultaneously performing the universal hand signal for Rock Star? Rad, huh.

It sucks that the times you need a good true friend are often the exact same times you don't have the resources to make one. Moving, popping out kids, teetering on sugar addiction, fighting doldrums- these are battles no one should take on alone. I want to run free, unencumbered, strange and proud and completely, utterly, un-jigglingly nude.

Who will join me? Hippie commune metaphors all around!

It's still the seventh in Alaska...

...and I'm reclaiming my residency for these 25 minutes. Send my dividend check right away, please.




I'm feeling a little under the keyboard just now. Please check back momentarily.

Yes, Tobinia, there is a...

Santa Claus. Trust no one.

This is a season ruled by, and possibly created for, fearmongers. Maybe the KGB, concievably Bush or Clinton. Definitely not Bono.
Observe:







That just about sums it up. In the unlikely event you may need a little more evidence, consider the following:


Santa Claus has given my friend Rachael the gift of never again being able to look a pickle in the eye:
As explained on Satan's website (And OOHH, am I hoping I get traffic here from people googling that):
Another story tells of three theological students, traveling on their way to study in Athens. A wicked innkeeper robbed and murdered them, hiding their remains in a large pickling tub. It so happened that Bishop Nicholas, traveling along the same route, stopped at this very inn. In the night he dreamed of the crime, got up, and summoned the innkeeper. As Nicholas prayed earnestly to God the three boys were restored to life and wholeness. In France the story is told of three small children, wandering in their play until lost, lured, and captured by an evil butcher. St. Nicholas appears and appeals to God to return them to life and to their families. And so St. Nicholas is the patron and protector of children.

Santa: innocent bystander coincidentally available for reverse-picklings or psycho dismembering killer? Kids have such a sense about these things.