Bring a dish/appetizer/dessert to share.

In normal time, I don't really mind this request. However, I find it really annoying this time of year, simply because I just can't keep up. I've skipped a few things simply because I don't have the energy to come up with anything to bring, let alone make it. There are or will be seven events in 2.5 weeks that fall into this category. Two thoughts about the two that are left:

1. Ghiradelli (I can't spell) brownie mix
2. Various wonderings about if it's possible to somehow use the Annual Christmas Deluge of Parishioner Foodstuffs in this capacity without too many ramifications.

Pictured is the Mr's Sour Cream Pound Cake... Yum!
***
Book #51: The First Christmas, Borg and Crossman. It's pretty good. I read it and realized how little I know about Roman history and mythology (or, rather, how much they know). Also helpful for Advent 4/Annuniciation sermons, First Sunday after Christmas sermons (chapter on archetype on light and darkness), and Second Sunday after Christmas sermons (massacre and/or magi).

I have a draft of The Christmas Eve sermon. It's a little wordy, but now I have something to revise, which is infinitely easier than pulling something out of my brain in the first place.

Book #52: The Audacity of Hope, Obama. He definitely wrote this; he writes just how he talks. I enjoyed reading it. It was sitting in my in-laws' living room over Thanksgiving, and I was pretty sure they weren't actually reading it but just had it out for show. I borrowed it, in partial passive aggressive retailiation for this incident. My suspicisons have been confirmed; they would be asking about it if they missed it.

Book #53: The Wonder Years. AAP's thoughts of different facets of childhood development.

I'm now reading Birthing from Within.
***
I feel better, mainly due to readjusted expectations. I'm now wearing this wildly attractive item, whose usefulness outweighs its annoyingness, much to my dismay. Don't be jealous. The way this model is... modeling this reminds me of the guy in my high school ballet class who accidentally wore his dance belt (think ballet jock strap) over instead of under his tights.

I've started feeling faint, short of breath, and generally exhausted. I called the OB this morning, and apparently the blood work they did on me last week was all normal, which I suppose means there's nothing wrong with me other than the fact that I'm pregnant. Crap. I was really hoping they could just give me some iron pills or something.

I have lots to do today. I can't seem to remember what I have to do, except for my 10:30 and 12 noon appointments-- the only two I managed to write down.

***
The Mr's Dad: "The Mr can't borrow that book (on the father's role in childhood development) yet, because I want to read it."
me: "Are you kidding?"
MD: "No."
me: "So you're going to read a book in the next month or two hat you've had for the past thirty years but still haven't read for a job you've already done."
MD: "Yeah."
me: "Right."

It was probably written at the earliest in the 70s anyhow and thus is ridiculously dated. But still.

***
Book #50: Taking Care of Your Baby and Young Child, Ages 0-5, AAP. It's hard to judge things that I don't know much about yet. Guess I'm about to get a crash course in about 14 weeks or so, give or take a few.

Books

• #48: Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood. I normally find Atwood's work a little strange in a good way. In this novel, the weird factor is off the charts.
• #49: Time Traveler's Wife. It's a romance, just not the bodice-ripping kind. Good, fast read.

Bullets:

• Did I mention living in a swing state is surprisingly gratifying? Feeling like your vote counts is really weird. My county went blue for the president for the first time since... since I don't know when. I've felt the need to be somewhat mum about my political leanings, being in a relatively small city (not tiny, but this is not a metro area, either).
• Things at work are still completely insane but may be looking up. Somewhat.
  
• I'm 23 weeks pregnant (full term is 40-ish or so). I wore maternity pants for the first time yesterday. I've been doing the whole bella band thing, but suddenly, everything just felt way too tight all over the place (and was really dirty and wrinkly to boot).
• We've been doing lots of cleaning up and out. Jeff is refinishing some stuff, building bookcases, and such. I cleaned out a desk this past weekend. I did a lot of our Christmas shopping for our families online. I love shopping online.

Reading Challenge:

• Book #43: FDR, Jean Edward Smith. You know I like biographies. FDR was a complicated man and his political record is much more uneven than I knew. Also, I didn't know there are only two photos that they've been able to find of him in his wheelchair.
• Book #44: Baby Bargains: I read it in day and am now terrified that I'm going to kill the baby with a faulty crib or something. It made me add and take a whole bunch of stuff off of my registry, though, so that's a good thing.
• Book #45: Paris to the Moon: This had been recommended to me by several people. It was written in the late 90s, though, and some chapters feel quite dated.
• Book #46: Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. Good. I felt like I needed to read it after I recommended it (flippantly, not thinking he would do anything like actually buy the book) to my therapist and he loved it. I could have written part of it. How'd he get there first?
• Book #47: The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. This is normally referred to La Leche League's baby. It gave me a taste of a- how difficult breastfeeding can be at first b- some of the crap that I'll have to get used to for going back to work.
  

Remember when you were a kid and didn't want to go to school? I feel that way about work today. I don't wanna go. It's more than likely because I let the parish administrator go yesterday and don't feel like hearing about it. Apparently, accepting mediocrity/incompetence from other employees is what some people want.

In the meantime, I have a preliminary appointment with a pediatrician this morning. Whoo.

In more southern news, the Mr. and I went to the county fair last week. He grew up going to them. I couldn't go because of ballet during the week and because my mom refused to go on the weekends because she didn't want to see her students.

Of note at this fair:

• If you ever want to win a prize for something you've made, enter something to your county fair. A vast majority of the crafts I saw had a prize, with one major exception being this extremely sad little store bought hand towel whose only claim to craftiness was that someone stitched a rather small red Christmas stocking onto it.
• Surprisingly entertaining--> duck racing. How's that for a mental image?
  

***
It's possible that I'm up since 3 a.m. because we have the ultrasound at 8:45 a.m., and I'm nervous/excited/hungry. In other pregnant news, I apparently have a first trimester symptom-- food tasting really weird. Work now knows. They seem to be excited. I don't know that I can handle all the excitement.

***
Book #41: Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Written from the perspective of a 15yo boy with autism. It's pretty good.
Book #42: Moby Dick. I listened to this book for hours on end (as in, more than 24 hours total) in the car. I didn't like it. I think it may not lend itself to the audiobook format. Alternatively, I just didn't like it.

GIT

I discovered (for myself if no one else) the likely situation in which the southern word "git" originated.

When I got home last night, there was a possum hanging out in our carport. "GIT!" I yelled instinctively. The possum hurried away in terror, probably more from my car's headlights than my uncharacteristic southern outburst.

Should I submit it to the OED for word derivation?

PS "Git" in the south is a verb that means "get along"/"get out of here."

I finally did one of those things I've been saying I'm going to be do for awhile now: I actually read one of the books I heard about NPR (don't be jealous of my life). Of course, the library here often doesn't have some of the books they recommend, so I'm often SOL.

Book #39: City of Thieves, David Benioff. Two strangers during the WWII siege of St. Petersburg are sent on a mission to find... a dozen eggs. It's easy-to-read and thoughtful, not arrogant. I definitely recommend it.

Book #40: Love is a Mix Tape, Rob Sheffield. This book took me back to mix tapes my friends made for me in high school and college. Interestingly, it also has some of the most straightforward discussions of grief that I've read in awhile.

i think i may be in love....

aren't they are lustworthy? don't they make you tear up just a bit? i'm currently living in fear that my feet will get bigger and never return to their original size, so i hesitate to get them.

I haven't written a sermon since August (I wrote two September sermons at the preaching conference; I preached the last one yesterday). Now I'm preaching every Sunday save one in October. I'm trying to even imagine ramping back up for it, and I barely can do even that, let alone write. Maybe Mondays is a bad day to try to contemplate ramping back up anything. Maybe it's time to call it a day.

Dear Lord,

Why do I work with people? I find them so incredibly frustrating a vast majority of the time.

• The self-righteousness
• The pettiness
• The patronizing
• The gossiping
• The laziness

I've dealt with all five and more in the past 2.5 hours.

I hope someone surprises me out of my funk by doing something so not able to be described by any of the above this week.

• Do you know what's really expensive? Paper. We go through scads of it at work, what with bulletins, announcements, newsletters, etc etc etc. I had to order some yesterday because the parish administrator is gone. The order was something like $500, and most of that was regular old paper. I'd say maybe $60 was the colorful, fun stuff.
• So, I, of course, think I'm being all coy with this not being publicly pregnant yet gig. And some woman I don't know comes up to me at the gym and says, "You're working out through your pregnancy? That's great." I laughed really loudly because it made me nervous (note: not all my loud laughs are because I'm nervous, but this one definitely was).
• I'm disturbed by our country and the elections. When I heard Palin was the VP candidate for McCain, I thought, "No one's going to fall for that!" I'm beginning to wonder if I gave America too much credit.
• I went to the dentist on Wednesday. We couldn't make my next six month appointment six months out because it would have been a day before my due date. I stared at the hygenist in horror and disbelief.
  

***
Book Update:

I was hoping to reach fifty books for the year. I think I'll just barely do it. What's that, about three a month (for the months I have left, I mean)? Work has basically exploded. A significant number of people seem to have lost their mind/cool/health/live all at the same time. We've done four funerals in the past three weeks, and the list of people in critical pastoral care situations is abnormally high for us. Plus the rector is gone next week on continuing education. I've kept my schedule relatively clear next week, knowing that there will be more than enough to do even if all remains somewhat calm.

• Book #33: The Art of Eating, MFK Fischer. Collection of food writings for early twentieth century important food writer. I loved her recollections of what different meals had meant in her own life in the section "The Gastronomical Me."
• Book #34: Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver. Read it in two days. The story's set in the Appalachians, and the characters are well written.
• Book #35: Garden Spell, Sarah Addison Allen. New author from NC. Again, fiction set in western NC. It was about the relationships of some people around my age, so it was interesting. Not this most thought provoking read in the world, but I enjoyed reading it.
• Lots of pregnancy related stuff: #36: What to Expect When You're Expecting (no), #37: The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy (eh-- some of it liked, some of it was garbage), #38: The Mayo Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy (good).

Cleaning Out

My mom sent boxes of both my childhood and my college years with my in-laws last weekend. She didn't tell me she was going to, which didn't please me. Fortunately, I'm getting the want to clean out symptom. I'm predisposed anyhow, but I'm also now living in fear of the loads of stuff that new people (particularly small ones that seem to require lots of equipment) inevitably bring into any household. Plus I live with an unrepentant pack rat who I have been able to convince that at least the stuff you don't really use needs to be packed away, not taking up valuable real estate space, and I prefer to stay consistent when I can.

Anyhow, I'd guess I'm getting rid of at least three-fourths of what she sent. But then there are those things that are question marks:

• Should I bother to send the perfect attendance dance trophy and Westminster Presbyterian Midget Girls II basketball participation trophy to Goodwill, or do I save them the trouble and immediately throw them away?
• What do I do with nicely mounted awards from high school? Can I throw those away? What about the framed governor's school diplomas (summer programs)? What do I do with those?
  
• Will I really ever look at that comparative economics systems/stats/money & banking textbook again (realizing that I gave about half of them away)?
  
• My granny picked up painting pottery in her 70s (which is pretty cool). She got on this Santa Claus kick for about twelve years. Every family member (and, mind you, I'm one of ... a dozen grandchildren and half a dozen great grandchildren) has gobs of it. I picked out my four or five favorites (White and Gold Santa, Toy Holding/Flouncy Skirt Santa, Noah's Ark Santa, Kitten Santa, and Quilting Santa) to keep and bring out at Christmas time, which seems like more than enough Santa Claus for any reasonable person, with a bit of a buffer if two or three break. I packed up the rest to give away. If the church ladies can figure out how to get my name off the bottom of them, I'll bet they'll sell beautifully at the Christmas Bazaar. I don't feel that bad about giving them away, which kind of makes me wonder about myself. I know my grandmother would absolutely flip her lid if she knew. I plan on never telling her.
  

Hurricane Hanna was pretty much a big tease for us. It got really windy, but we hardly got any rain at all.

• I did not like the movie Tropics of Thunder, not b/c it's not-PC, just b/c I didn't think it was as funny as it could have been.
  
• The Mr and I caved and got iPhones. Our contracts were up with Veriz0n. He adores his. I am not yet fully convinced. I think it's because I'm not quite sure yet how to use the darn thing.
  
• NC farmer market discovery: collard green tamales. The outside is a collard green instead of a corn husk. The inside is normal-- corn meal and meat (pork or chicken). They're awesome. Coupled with sour cream and habenero sauce... a very tasty treat for $1.50.
  
• I dropped the communion kit today in my office. I love it when I spill wine all over the place.
  

In case you don't want to read pregnant lady stuff, I ghettoized it:

• The in-laws were in town this weekend, and it was basically what I feared-- a bevy of unsolicited advice. Have I told you about me and unsolicited advice? I don't do well with it. That is one of the reasons I'm trying to hide the pregnancy from most people at work as long as possible. That, and, though I would like for people here to be excited, I also just want to do my job.
  
• I called the sister in the Land Far, Far Away yesterday. Guess what. She's pregnant with her first child and is due about ten days after I am. My parents still don't know yet.
• It's beginning to look like "as long as possible" means about three more weeks or so. All these "I didn't show until my fifth month" people... when you haven't gained all that much weight anywhere except your lower abdomen, that looks suspicious, if you're a woman my age. Vestments are a beautiful thing for hiding in, though.
  

I'm twelve weeks pregnant.
We've told our parents (as of yesterday).
I've told some friends (as of a month ago).
I still haven't told the church.
I'm due right smack dab in the middle of Lent.

Letters I'd Like to Write Right Now

Dear Mom and Dad,

I'd like to thank you for your surprisingly similar reactions to the past few month's weight gain. Eying me and saying, "Are you still working out?" is subtle, real subtle.

P.S. Bite me.

***
Dear NBC,

Gymnastics should not be on so late. I don't care if it's live.

***
Dear Constipation,

Go away. Take your friend Insomnia with you.

***
(***WARNING: Staggering unoriginality ahead):
Dear John Edw@rds,

The best you can say is, my wife was in remission? Really?
***
Dear YCWs,

Y'all are awesome. Miss you already. For your viewing pleasure, I saw these shoes while shopping in DC with Alex, prastflickan, Jenny, and Susan. They're beautiful:

I was in the UK for about two weeks with the choir. We did evensongs at St. George's, Windsor, Christ Church, Oxford, and Canterbury Cathedral, along with some necessary touristy stuff. I'll say this:
1) I have a whole new appreciation for the choir and how hard they work.
2) I will not be going on an organized tour of anything for a very long time if I can help it, particularly not with an intergenerational crowd. Some people actually want to sit on a bus for hours and would rather see from a bus than walk. Maybe I'll understand one day, but at this point it's unfathomable to me. I would rather spend a small amount of time in one place walking around rather than see a whole lot.

I'm about to leave again for a preaching conference and for "vacation" with my dad and parts of his family. I'm nervous about the latter, as it'll be my stepmother and all her various and sundry offspring (two adult children and some of their kids). It's very weird for me to see my father relate to a child as his grandchild that I feel no connection to whatsoever.

Book update:
Book #25 Inhuman Bondage. A book on the history of slavery. Excellent. Singular complaint: I listened to this book while driving. The reader said "hueman" New-Jersey style, a pronunciation that makes me crazy for no good, but some very real, reason.
Book #26 Those Preaching Women! 4th ed. Pretty good sermon collection, as far as sermon collections go.
Book#27 Ladies of Liberty, Cokie Roberts. About influential women during early presidencies, not including Martha Washington. Pretty good. Grammatical errors in book, which annoy me. Do your job, editor.
Book #28 : Predictably Irrational. I really liked this book, probably because I majored in economics and always wondered if assuming people behave rationally is the best assumption to make.
Book #29 : Suite Francaise. Thought it was really good. I feel like all I hear is French Resistance this, French Resistance that, when, clearly, most people just rolled over.
Book #30: Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. Wu is a lawyer, through and through, and writes as if he is one. I enjoyed the book but don't know that I was looking for as much depth as he gave.
Book #31 : A Briefer History of Time, Stephen Hawkings. A parishioner gave this to me after I preached on Einstein's theory of general relativity. It's good, though still hard to understand, even though it's supposed to be easier to understand.
Book #32 : Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Amy Rosenthal. eh.

Side Note: On this England trip, I discovered my mother basically no longer reads. This disturbed me to my very core.

Other side note: The thought of fiction has left a bad taste in my mouth as of late(besides Suite Francaise). I think I've had some traumatic experiences...? .

Books

Per Erica and Pastor Peters...

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives. They’ve come up with this list of the top 100 books, using criteria they don’t explain, and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these. So, we are encouraged to:

1) Look at the list and bold those we have read.
2) Italicize those we intend to read.
3) Underline the books we LOVE (I’ve used an asterisk)
4) Reprint this list in our own blogs

Here goes…What about you?

(note: I haven't been able to confirm that this list is indeed from the organization that it says that it is, but I suppose I'll play along anyhow).

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien*
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling*
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*
6 The Bible*
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman*
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott*
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot*
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll*
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis*
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis*
37 The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini*
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (started it. didn't like it)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery*
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood*
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement- Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett*
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White*
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (I absolutely refuse to read this book, and its presence makes me question the entire list. I started one of his other saccharine "books," and I despised it.)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (if the complete works is on here, why is this one?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl*
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

***

Sursum Corda

Alex tagged me...

Ten things I am grateful for:

1) the mr
2) good colleagues at work
3) the cat
4) our home
5) laughter
6) words (great books, good poetry, good sermons, Scripture)
7) running water (which i don't have right now)
8) the gym
9) modern technology making it somewhat easier to keep in touch with friends and family
10) the women of tycwp

I tag Sarah, pastor peters, and erica, with no worries whatsoever if you're not in the mood.

I eat Lean Cuisine's "spa classics," which claim to have two servings of veggies (because, hey, a girl needs all the help she can get) at least twice a week. In other words, I am no stranger to the processed foodstuffs (shout out to my sister doing the local food thang). This did not prevent me from microwaving today's entree in the box (pause for applause).

This past weekend, I officiated at a wedding of two of the mr's freshmen dormmates. I made the prayerbook language more God-orientated and less Trinity-ish at their request. I'm still pondering how I feel about that.

Book #24: Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times. Two thumbs up, if you like biographies. I find myself increasingly unenthralled with the visual bookshelf on f@ceb00k. It recommends based on what I read, not on what I've said that I've liked that I've read. Grrr. Is goodre@ds actually, well, you know, good (or at least better than visual bookshelf)?

• there's an update on ridiculously stale work blog
  
• can i just say that i both want to lose at least some of the weight that i've gained and yet that i'm tired of being at war with my own body and thus with myself.
• my naval piercing is gone. the skin holding it in had worn really thin, and when i was trying to clean it really well, it gave. i think my body was rejecting it as the foreign object it is (took it a while, but whatever). it was so gross. my belly button feels very neked and looks lonely.
  

• One would think that living in the Carolinas is living in the Carolinas, that there aren't significant regional variations within this small region. I often find myself thinking the same thing. Then I see things like this, which feels much more like home to me than being below the fall line with the sandy soil and the flat land. Sigh.
• Some of you may not have had the opportunity to fill out this survey about what it's appropriate for clergy to wear.
  
• I heart Google Apps Calendar. Registered nonprofits, such as churches, can apply for the beefed up version (aka the educational version) for free.
  
• I got a water bottle that doesn't leak the stuff into the water. I can't help but wonder how this one is going to kill me.
  

I thought I was exaggerating when I jokingly told someone that I couldn't remember the last time I had both Friday and Saturday off while being in town (France aside). Sadly, I wasn't. That'll change for the summer, fortunately. However, I'm beginning to wonder how long I can keep it up. I need to learn to work smarter, I guess. Or something.

And what did we do with all the time?

A whole lot of home improvement.


New storm door
New raised panel vinyl shutters
Ah, that sense of accomplishment that eludes me with my nebulous work.

Oh. And the new Indi@na Jones? Mediocre.

Book #22: Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, Margaret Farley. Good, but only applicable for adults.

Book # 23: Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. You know, I thought I didn't like One Hundred Years of Solitutude because I read it in Kenya, and that was a weird setting for that book. It was very him. I don't know if I liked it or not.

Book #20: Into the Wild. Jon Kr@kauer. Swoon. Major, major swoon. Singular complaint: I read his other two books in audiobook form, and he read the other two himself. This one was some other guy.

Book #21: Pillars of the Earth. Someone please tell me why this book is such a big deal.

The Mr and I just bought some midnight blue raised panel shutters "to update the exterior of our home" (I looked for a picture to post, but they're all a little off). They're midnight blue, so we're painting all the outside doors to match.

Other than that, I've been... well, working (and reading, apparently). We've had some turnover in staff, and I was made the priest in charge of administration about a month ago to help with the transition, etc. etc. I can't figure out if I'm incredibly inefficient or if there is just a whole lot of work to be done.

Okay, so I'm pretty boring right now. How are you?

the long overdue post

You know how when you don't update for a while then the thought of updating becomes overwhelming? Yeah.

Voici a pic from the top of Notre Dome, taken on the long awaited, and highly enjoyable, Paris trip. It was so wonderful I resolved to take all of my vacation this year, rest of the staff be damned (I work with a former Franciscan who I actually really like but who doesn't take half of his vacation). I thought that jet lag, etc. would cancel out all restorative vacation benefits. Thankfully, I was incredibly wrong. This is also one of the first major vacations we've taken that didn't revolve around family. We forfeited two graduations to go on this vacation, and we definitely made the right decision, though some of the family, which is full of teachers, forgets that not everyone has three plus months off (my time off is generous; the mr's is not). Anyhow.

I have a writer crush on Jon Krakauer right now. I finished Into Thin Air recently (book #19), about the 1996 Mt Everest climb. It was fantastic. I'm just a huge sucker for someone who teaches me something while entertaining me at the same time. Next is definitely Into the Wild.

In other news, I said the invocation at a local women's grant giving organization. I purposefully wrote an inclusive one, as I thought the occasion warranted. I may have received some passive aggressive backlash from the president of the organization, who picked a question to ask the guest speaker-- a famous country music singer-- if she felt the need not to talk about Jesus. I may use this occasion to restart my very, very stale work blog.

books #17 & 18: Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and A Movable Feast. The former seemed like a whole lot of name dropping at first. The Mr. thinks I didn't like it b/c Hemingway is a "man's writer." However, after reading the latter (over the course of one day waiting as a potential juror), I appreciated his stripped style much more. I don't think I could process it in audio book format (which is how I "read" The Sun).

• book #whatever: a cook's tour: in search of the perfect meal. not the most brilliant writing in the world, but i enjoyed it.
• i have to answer a jury summons today around noon. if they pick me, i can't even tell you how screwed i am.
  
• related to the above: a popular refrain around the church of late seems to be, "ms. rev or not can do it!" i exploded wednesday night. "NO. i'm not taking on one more thing. i CANNOT do everything. find someone else."
  

• you know how sometimes you really want to go to bed but can't manage to peel yourself off the couch in order to do it? i'm totally there right now.
• the mr's parents were here this past weekend. it was like his mom took all of her annoying habits and cranked them up, just for fun.
• i'm pretty sure the above two bullet points are related.
  

• book #15: Heloise and Abelard: A New Biography. I had it lying around and had never read it.
• I have spring fever, as in, I really want it to be warm again. I want to wear dresses and skirts and to go to the beach on day trips again.

post

• how stale is my blog?
  
• holy week and easter were really pretty good... less tiring, too, i think because i knew what to expect from this community.
  
• i recently returned from a mission trip with the high school students. new orleans is still in pretty bad shape in many parts.
  
• book #13: memoir of a race traitor by mab segrest (organizing against klan/neo-nazi activities in NC in the 80s... interesting for me since i live here)
• book #14: paris: a secret history... for rapidly approaching trip!!! a narrative that speaks of people histories tend to leave out (lower classes, thieves, prostitutes, working peeps, etc. aka anyone not nobility). only makes sense if you have the original framework of history to hang it on. otherwise, hard to make sense of (i was familiar with some time periods and really enjoyed those chapters and was a little more lost in the other ones).
  

Book #12: I recently finished Jim Wallis' The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America. I kept having stirrings that reminded me of what Carol wrote about her emerging church conference experience in that I just think it's weird that some people are just figuring about that Christianity and social justice have something to do with each other (I'm not talking about Jim Wallis himself. I think he's the real deal). I also wonder what's supposed to be so different about this generation's idealism compared with others; will it not go away as they/we grow older?

***
I have bangs now. I haven't had bangs for about fifteen years. Back then, I had mall bangs... you know what I mean. I'm adjusting.

Much more important things that that are going on, but my brain is checking out.

book #11: reading challenge 2008

These short little biography Penguin classics are total cheating, but I don't care, because they've been pretty good. I read George Balachine's last year and recently finished Charles Dickens'. Now that was a productive man. In addition to his novels, he did all these public readings of his work, including the murder since in Oliver Twist. He also guarded his private life towards the end so virulently that it's still not clear whether or not he had a mistress and whether or not he had a child with her. One of the most famous men of his time was somehow able to keep secrets. Hmm.

Speaking of being productive (not being secretive), I tried really hard today to be so. I cleaned the bathroom; I vacuumed; I washed every single thing (coveree thing, sheets, blankets, and quilt) on our bed; I washed the towels; I washed the darks; I installed a brand new expandable silverware tray; I took our taxes by the accountant's office: I recycled some magazines and put a few aside to leave at the gym. I cooked fagoli soup and made brownies. I also went to the gym and did the elliptical and took a yoga class. I guess I'm writing this because I still feel like... like, wait, what did I do all day? I'm the type of person who has to write out what she does after she does in order to cross it off so I'll feel like I did something. I guess I just did it publicly today.

The Mr., who just moved back here last week from training in nearby-but-still 1.5 hrs away- place, is still not home yet from work (it's 9 p.m. on Friday). Since I cooked supper (see above), I feel indigent.

the post about tupperware

at first i was completely discouraged by you, you who cleaned out closets while on maternity leave. me, i'm not sporting even one kid, let alone three, and my closets are awful. my only defense is that the mr is something of a packrat, and i've yet to bypass him and throw stuff out without his knowledge. somehow, the clouds parted, and i woke up saturday morning totally inspired. the stars in my crown would be the organization of the massive amount of tupperware that used to make me crazy, facilitated by some stuff from linens n things. we put away sheets and towels from the linen closet into senselessly empty trunks. i rearranged the kitchen cabinets so we could get to the stuff we use. i even enticed the mr. to give away some clothes that i've never seen him wear. hoorah! that, and i actually felt like we had a social life briefly. we had a couple over friday night and went out saturday night. maybe there's hope for a clergy person to make friends? maybe?

okay, i'll stop teasing. i know this picture is what you really came to see. ta-dah! they're rather bright (particularly against my really, really white legs), so i've been wearing them with gray, black, khaki, and blue (aka what i normally wear). they're so wonderfully comfortable. they're rather casual, which doesn't bother me, but might bum others out. i'm wearing them to officiate at compline tonight. mwhaha... dark night services...!!

another miscellaneous post

• 

• I listened to Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith on the way back from DC. The chapters switch between some contemporary fundamentalist Mormon communities (FLDS) and the history of Mormonism. He notes that any religion can and does breed extremism, and even violence, but looks particularly at what it is about the LDS church that seems to encourage separatism (ah, the dangers of direct revelations from God for those who are mentally ill). The book also made me think about what religious freedom in the US does and does not entail. I'd recommend it (beware the grisly parts).

• The shoes came. I am so in love with them. They are fabulous, funky, and comfortable. I will post a pic soon.
• Turning into annoying married person alert: I meet my brother's new girlfriend, and I want to tell him that I like her and not to mess it up.
• I don't mind working with children and youth. They're great. It's their parents that make me crazy.
• As much as I like preaching, which I do (it's one of my favorite parts of the job), scheduling the deacon, DRE, and a youth preacher so that I'm only preaching one Sunday in March and one in May allows one to get some much needed administrative work done.
  
• Other good part of job: being able to consider community work work time. I'm on a task force to end chronic homelessness in the county. This committee helps me feel less like a cog/less like a pacifier (believe it or not). I'm also getting to learn lots about homelessness in different communities.
  

according to microsoft word...

..."Triduum" is not a word. The suggested changes are atrium, iridium, and tritium.

Nice.

latest shoe obsession

i'm so used to being a student that i still act like one sometimes, spending wise, more or less (except for that whole "mortgage" and "extravagant trip to paris"). during grad school, the bottleneck had gotten somewhat severe. when the mr and i both started having incomes about 1.5 years ago, i shopped more. however, the practical streak knows it's better to do other things with our money, things like paying off student loans, that kinda fun stuff.

i don't think i've bought accessories, shoes, or clothes for about three months. this really isn't that big of a feat since there was christmas in the middle of it, in which i received a great purple jacket and some new fun earrings. but i have been avoiding target, so that's something.

and then. this morning when i went to recycle the garnet hill catalog, because i didn't want to get anything and because thought there wouldn't be anything in there that would interest me anyhow since i'm not yet 40, it fell open to this page.

lust at first sight. ah, you kicky orange mary janes. why must you torture me?

what think ye, fair reader?

book #9: reading challenge 2008

Zadie Smith's On Beauty addresses a lot of issues fairly well, particularly marriage, race, class, and ethnicity, though it does so a bit self-consciously. Overall, it's a pretty good read. I hope to pick up White Teeth, her first novel, at some point this year.

I've now read the same amount of books that most American women read in an entire year. I'm officially somewhat scared.

***
I couldn't give two shits about Valentine's Day, except for the fact that my mom makes these insanely good valentine's day cookies. They're your basic sugar cookies with frosting and sprinkles, but somehow, they're absolutely amazing. She's mailed them to me when I lived in Durham, Boston, Dallas, and New Haven. This year, I checked even the front porch when I came home. I gave literal and metaphorical meaning to the phrase "No cookies."

miscellany

book #8: reading challenge

Rowan Williams' Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement. Typical Rowan--very dense. My brain isn't as used to scholarly discourse anymore, being out of school and all. He deconstructs "choice" well, though, and for that, I'm grateful.

***

Last week I felt ready to throw in the towel. I hated my job. I was so frustrated, frustrated by self-centeredness, complacency, unwillingness, my own and everyone else's. This job can feel like such a joke sometime. I was almost in tears most of the week. The wear and tear of the emotional taxation of a job was showing up on my face and my body. Several parishioners took one look at me and told me to take a break. When I didn't, because I couldn't-- a funeral, Ash Wednesday, and Lent were approaching relentlessly-- several days later, a woman whose father I buried forced the phone into my hand and dialed a masseuse's number for me. I asked if she had any openings for Friday afternoon. 2:30. Fine. I hung up. I showed up to my massage on Friday (I haven't had one in about two years) to discover that one of my parishioners had beat me there to pay for it. I was nearly in tears again, this time for a totally different reason.

book #7: reading challenge 2008

This is the book that the interminable movie "The Christmas Story" is based on (I realize that sentence is grammatically bad, but I'm so not in the mood to fix it). The Mr's family loves the movie, and his aunt gave it to me for Christmas. The tone is rather prairie home companion-esque. I need something light to read before I go to sleep, and this was that. Not bad, just not go out and buy this book, unless you happen to love books about the Depression (what is it with me and Depression books lately?). The fact that I knew most of the stories already made the read anticlimactic; I don't feel that way about all stories I already know, but I do this one.

***
Can I tell you how happy I am this day is over? I'm so very happy.

ash wednesday? what?!

i bought plane tickets to go to paris for a week in late april! YES!!

in other news, being awake at 7 a.m. is perfectly fine. officiating and preaching at a 7 a.m. service is not fine, as was evidenced by the massive amount of stumbling over words.

ms rev or not's shrove tuesday planner

8:30 a.m. coffee with the rector. finalized sunday and weekday preaching through the end of may
10:00 a.m. emails re: great litany, premarriage counseling. sunday bulletin proofing
11:00 a.m. nursing home communion
12:00 p.m. finalized funeral homily, checked church set-up
1:00 p.m. funeral and reception for woman with severe alzeheimer's; first funeral homily of someone i didn't sort of kinda know
3:00 p.m. transition to independence subcommittee for task force to end chronic homelessness... realizing i should be on public awareness committee (the op-ed writers)
5:30 p.m. pancake supper/burning of the palms

the acting altar guild head made me get out the phone book and stood beside me while i called a masseuse.

***
re: the dean. being a dean is not a big deal in some ways. it's like being head of the county. i convene people. the fancy title is to make me feel better about the extra work, i suppose.

***
ash wednesday. ash wednesday. ash wednesday. ash wednesday. 4 services. one at 7 a.m. going to bed now.

it's odd

how sitting down all day can make you tired.

ah, convention.

tomorrow i will be the very rev ms rev or not... the diocese's newest dean, sent in to break up the boys' club.

So I have a wee bit of writer's block.

Last year, I preached an Ash Wednesday sermon that just all came together. I went back and read it, which was a mistake, I might add, and wondered how on earth I wrote it. It worked on a number of levels and was profound and funny and true.

A few years ago, I also did some extensive work with the lectionary text from Genesis assigned for Lent 1. Now that sermon had some good things going for it, but all the time and research and questions I asked about the text are still there, though I have some different ones this time around. I'm preaching then, too (and we have convention this weekend, so I'm trying to get a jumpstart on all this).

I haven't had too many multiple encounters with texts to preach yet; I'm still too new. The next time around has a different feel to it, and, right now, it feels a little off. I'm not quite sure how to work that all out yet.

Is the thrill already gone?

books #5 and #6

When is one actually done with a book of poetry? I'm not really "done" with it, but I have indeed read all the poems in Billy Collins' "The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems." Actually, to be totally honest, and this is definitely more than anyone needs to know, I kept the book on the back of the toilet to read at my leisure (magazine articles are too long, imho). But you know what? I think Billy Collins would get a kick out of that. So there.

Also, if you want to get some really weird looks, might I recommend taking Cornel West's "Race Matters" to read at the gym, particularly in eastern North Carolina, particularly if you're white? I thought it was good; he doesn't really let much of anyone off the hook. I found the essay "The Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning" particularly compelling.

book #4: reading challenge 2008

the great thing about this reading challenge is always having something to blog about (something about which to blog).

i almost feel sorry for people who write the great american novel, you know? then you have to live up to yourself, which is way worse than trying to live up to someone else.

yesterday i finished don delillo's "falling man," which is certainly no "underworld." basically, it's the story of family in nyc after 9-11 (i'm not good at summarizing). it's not the kind of fiction that just flows effortlessly; it's the kind that forces you to slow down and pay attention. fortunately, it's worth the effort, or at least it was for me.

book #3: reading challenge 2008

I finished "Queen Victoria: A Personal History" today. I wanted to read it because A- I like biographies and B- I'm interested in the stereotype of the Victorian period as being so sexually repressive. This book obviously wasn't about that, but:

• She and PA certainly didn't seem to shy away from sex. They had eight kids. Supposedly, she got mad at her doctor when he suggested they didn't have more kids (because of her depression), as she thought he was asking her to "give up her fun in bed."
  
• Prince Albert, her husband and the Prince Consort, was, however, very morally upright, so to speak. He died (at the age of 41!) shortly after discovering their oldest son was sexually involved with some random woman. The general consensus is that he wasn't all that sick but had no will to live.
  
• Victoria also didn't let any person in her household be alone with someone of the opposite sex (or something to that effect). When her children became engaged, they were still not allowed to be alone with their fiance/e. Honestly, I think that was partially a control freak thing; she hated losing her ladies in waiting/her children to marriage.

All of this is to say, I still don't know anything.

The book really lived up to its subtitle. I was hoping to learn a little more about the history of the period, but the book was very focused on Queen Victoria's life; events that directly influenced her, or that she was intimately involved in, were detailed but not much else. That's okay. I found out other random stuff: like she reigned for 64 years, that all European royalty is related by blood or marriage, and that the Kaiser was HM's grandson (!), and that Queen Victoria was the one who said, "We are not amused."

Anyhow.

***

Last night I cooked a split pea soup, and tonight I made tuna casserole. Both are great ways to use up random veggies in the fridge that are threatening to go bad. I also baked a pumpkin pie and vacuumed yesterday. All of this domesticity is not entirely in character, but I got to thinking. I often clean when someone is about to come over, but I really enjoy the place more when it's clean. Why always do something for someone else? Deep thoughts, by me.

***

I am ready for all the interlopers at the gym to give up on their new year's resolutions so I can workout in peace again.

has anyone else ever wondered about the fact

that the category "foreign" movie is not only viable but apparently an acceptable one? the only thing "foreign" movies seem to have in common is the fact that i'm going to be reading subtitles. couldn't someone come up with something slightly more descriptive? just curious.

Book #2: Tobacco Road

Where I live, all the women are in a book club.

I was here a year before someone invited me to join their book club. I don't think it's me; I think people don't think of clergy people socially sometimes, the same way kids don't think about teachers as real humans and thus have mini-meltdowns when they see their teacher in the grocery store.

Anyhow.

In about two weeks, I'm going to go to a book club to discuss Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road. Now. Apparently, this is some sort of "classic;" one of the women who works the front desk said it used to be required reading when she was growing up. Set during the Depression in Georgia, the story revolves around a family of farmers who are no longer able to farm, due to lack of credit and technology. The characters are lacking in every way possible but particularly, and most unfortunately, in things like good sense, imagination, and the ability to adapt.

This is not the story I've heard of the Depression in the South. The story I've heard goes a little more like this:

We were already living so hand to mouth when the Depression came, we couldn't tell that much of a difference. We quit selling crops and grew stuff to feed ourselves instead. The biggest difference was we didn't have new shoes. We would resole shoes with old tires from around the farm.

I wonder what my granny, who I'm paraphrasing above, would think of this book.

If you're in the market for a life is short and brutal type novel, go for it. If not, do not touch with a ten foot pole.

Book #1: Alexander Hamilton

My friend and fellow YCW board member Alex brought to my (and others) attention the paltry reading habits of American adults. Honestly, though, I didn't know people read as much as they supposedly do. I think they lied on the survey. It's like when you go to the eye doctor and you tell them you don't sleep in your contacts.

This is, of course, all coming from an insufferable, elitist prig, who read about thirty books last year (that'd be me). Whatever. I bet most of you reading this read more than I did.

Anyhow.

Book #1: Reading Challenge 2008

Ron Chernow's (creatively named) Alexander Hamilton. Before I read this, I thought of Hamilton as that slightly snobbish guy who wrote the Federalist papers and died in a duel with Aaron Burr. The reality is (as always) much more complex. For starters, though he's often labeled an aristocrat due to his association with the newly forming Federalist party, Hamilton was largely a self-made man, born in the West Indies as an illegitimate orphan. He eventually came to the US for college and then found himself as Washington's chief of staff during the Revolution. He was incredibly productive, prolific, and responsible throughout most of his life (that affair with a married woman was the exception, not the rule). He's probably the most influential American politician who was never president (besides perhaps Ben Franklin). He was highly instrumental in the Constitution being ratified, our national banking system, executive power/privelege, etc.

The book is completely and totally massive (whenever a new person was introduced, Chern0w apparently felt obliged to give them a little mini-biography, which added to the book's 731 page length), but if you like biographies, it's a pretty good one.