Wants that Hurt

I've been having trouble posting lately because what I want to write about I'm not sure I want to write about. All through my time in this little blog adventure, I've written about whatever I'm thinking about. Lately, all I think about is the fact that I desperately want to be a parent. That feeling has around a hundred reasons to be there, but it's a bit unfortunate that it's become an obsession of my mind. It means I have trouble coming up with other topics to type about, so many times I just don't. And why don't I want to go down this path? It's easy. I'm afraid of being too open and inviting ridicule into my little world. I like the approval of other people, and I feel like this is such a raw self-misunderstood set of emotions for me that I will likely say things wrong and cause precisely the kinds of comments that I don't want to get.

But I have to figure this out. And with my best friends in the wrong timezones for long discussions of this sort (excepting my husband, but I suppose he tolerates as much of this blabbering as he can handle), I guess that means I have to do it here. Most of the people that read this are childless -- some by choice, some not, and some are just too young (baby sister, that means you!). Regardless, I am not childless by choice, and I have to do some soul-searching to figure out some of what goes with that. So this risk of being attacked is finally low enough compared to the risk of self-implosion that is going to happen without some place to vent. And then I'm guaranteed to never have kids.

To start this introspective journey for all to see, I have to start with my own fears and the reasons for the current desperation. I did recently have a birthday which reminded me that I have less than a decade left of acceptable fertility. Now, my mother got pregnant at 41 without trying (hi, again, baby sister!) and her mom accidentally got pregnant at 44. So, I could probably get pregnant into my forties, but since that is generally considered irresponsible, I've just capped that at 40 in my head. Yes, I know it starts getting harder after about 35, but let's not discuss that I might have even less time than I think, because I believe that would just push me over the edge. I have always imagined myself with lots of kids. Not quite the Duggars, but maybe 3 or 4 of my own and as many of their friends as want to hang out at our place. I am slowly coming to grips that this is probably a pipe dream, but I can't seem to let it go, and that leaves me in a bit of a tumultuous place.

It doesn't help that everyone around me seems to be having babies. Coworkers, friends, etc. I think there have been 6 or 7 in the last 6 months. When this first started, years ago, I was happy for them. Then I was jealous. Now, I'm afraid, I've become a bit unfeeling towards these happy little (or big) families. If you're one of my blog-reading friends with kids, please don't take this the wrong way. I still love you and your gorgeous children. But the pain is becoming almost too much to bear, and out of my most common defense mechanism to employ, I have had to wall off a little piece of my heart so I don't spend every day crying my eyes out. Sometimes, I know that makes me seem callous. Don't think I don't worry whether this little wall is permanent. As often as I can stomach it, I let it down and cry for hours.

Why do I want to have kids? This is such a hard question for me to answer, because there are just so many answers. It has nothing to do with passing on genes or being pregnant or liking babies, and everything to do with being undeniably maternal. I've always been this way, ever since I can remember. My earliest memory is from when I was five and my two-year-old sister was scared about moving to the Philippines and cried herself to sleep most nights. I would crawl over into her bed and just lay there rubbing her back and talking to her about all the wonderful adventures we were going to have and how she wouldn't be alone because we'd be doing this all together. It continued with the birth of my baby sister, who could have been my daughter if I'd been an earlier bloomer. I remember so clearly a weekend when she was six months old and mom was gone for the weekend. She'd gotten some round of shots and was feverish and miserable, and all I could do was rock her and sing to her all night long and I just wanted to take that pain away from her. Course, I felt like an idiot the next morning when dad pointed out that I should have just given her more Tylenol, but I was thirteen and not at all qualified to be her mother and to think of these things. It's not a little kid thing either. When my sister had a bad dose of life and was close to rock bottom, she came to live with me. Those were the most miserable 7 months of my life, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was teen angst and pain and discipline and the uncomfortable growing into responsibility. And regardless of whether she'll ever thank me for the lessons we forced her to learn in those months, I know she's a better adult today because of them. And I know it's not a blood thing. In eighth grade, I joined a program where I was assigned a student from the special education class. My "buddy" was a girl named Cathy who absolutely melted my heart. She functioned on about a 5-year-old level, but I so relished those times we spent working on writing her name and I posted the treasured pictures she colored for me in my locker. I cried when the school was set on fire the next year and destroyed a stuffed dog she'd given me at the end of the previous year. I think I still have that dog in a box in the basement. Maybe it was because I had so little social capital in those years, but I yelled at some kid who made fun of her in the hall and don't even know what they called me, because I just didn't care. I worked day cares and summer camps and babysat excessively and always grew so attached to one or two kids in each class. I remember a little boy named Ian who had colic. He cried all the time, and the day care workers I worked with gave up on him, saying he was just always crying when I started that summer. He became my project. What will soothe him? I tried so many things and finally succeeded with a sort of a hammock I created with his blanket and I swung him in it rather hard, and after about 20 minutes of that, he would settle down and go to sleep. And with sleep, he was much happier in the awake times, and eventually the colic worked itself out and he was a very happy baby. When I came back the next summer, Ian didn't remember me, but he was the favorite of his new teacher.

I just want to love and nurture a child. I want to experience life through their eyes as they learn new things. I want to do some things right and royally screw up some other things and learn more and more to be humble and loving. I want to struggle with being too protective and too distant. I want the pain and joy that can only come from loving another person so completely that you rejoice with their triumphs and ache with their disappointments. I want to expose a child to things that will mold their futures in ways I may never know and I want to enable them to be the best adult member of this world they can be when they get there.

And that's where I'll leave this for now -- the raw reasons I want desperately to be on to the next phase of my life, one that involves children in my house. Oh, and I'm going to stop crying for the evening.

Friday Random Ten

Here is what I was given today by the little iTunes program:

"The Cowboy Rides Away" by George Strait on Greatest Hits Volume II
"Colors of the Wind" from the Pocahontas soundtrack
"Sweet Little Jesus Boy" by Wayne Watson on One Christmas Eve
"What If I Stumble" by dc Talk on Jesus Freak
"Forever Yellow Skies" by The Cranberries on To The Faithful Departed
"Take It To The Limit" by The Eagles on Their Greatest Hits
"You've Really Got A Hold on Me" by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles on Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
"Like a Child" by Jars of Clay* as a recording for iTunes
"I'm Losing You" by John Lennon on The John Lennon Collection
"Sleepytime Cartoon" by Trout Fishing in America* on Truth is Stranger Than Fishin'

And I've got nothing to say to try and wrap it together. It's just a weird list. Maybe you can come up with a clever tie to put it all in a neat package.

* Acts I've seen live.

Trying to Concentrate

I'm having a hard time concentrating on working today. See, there's this wildfire at the top of the mountain I live at the base of, and it's distracting me. You haven't heard about the Santa Barbara County Fire (aka the Zaca Fire)? Well, please allow me to provide you with a few tidbits, courtesy of the local fire deparment.

Mostly it's burning in the Los Padres National Forest. Forests have lots of trees and underbrush suitable for wildfires to thrive on.

The fire is currently 67% contained. That means 33% of it is still completely out of control.

The fire is 127,244 acres large. That's big.

It has cost (so far) $73.4 million to fight. That's even more money than it costs to buy a house in Santa Barbara (which is another post of its own).

It has been burning since the beginning of July, but it's been really close to the top of the mountain since the end of July. Variously we have beautiful clear blue skies that look like there is no trouble brewing over the ridge, and then we have days like today. Today there is this smokey overtone that looks like someone took a sepia-colored paintbrush to the entire visible world. The houses look paler, the trees are grayer, and the sky is brown. You can smell the smoke in the air. It's heavy and gross and potentially really dangerous.

The big concern is regarding the possibility of a sun-downer. These are great windstorms that could blow the fire up over the mountain and right down to the ocean. Apparently, this is what happened with the last big fire to hit this area in the 90s. There was a fire burning on the mountain, and within a day it had burned its way down the mountain destroying all the houses in its path and burned itself out at the ocean. Let's hope history isn't planning to repeat itself quite so soon.

I wouldn't say I'm afraid, but I am trying to get prepared, in case something bad does happen -- even if the "bad" is just that we have no power or water pressure drops to practically zilch. I've seen several disaster preparation checklists, and it just doesn't look like much fun, but these things seldom are. The big thing, right now, is to make sure we have gas in the car and our phones charged up and ready to go. Tonight we'll be doing some assessing of what we'd need to have with us if we needed to evacuate quickly. For now, there is no alert or evacuation order for our area, but you never know until the winds change (quite literally).

With way too many things running through my mind, I'm having trouble actually getting work done. I'm distracted easily and can't concentrate on anything difficult. I've been trying to investigate the same thing for the last two hours, and it should only be a 30-minute thing. You should see how long it's taken me to type this up.

Meanwhile, I had to call the customer that I've been trying to do the investigating for this morning, and they are in Houston with no power because of Tropical Storm Erin. Ah the irony. I love the irony.

Heather is a Heathen?

I've been a Lutheran all my life. My dad's a Lutheran pastor, and he graduated from the seminary when I was 5. His first call was to be a missionary in the Philippines, and so my earliest memories are of church on our front porch and Sunday School songs in the garden. I still know some of them, though there aren't a lot of occasions to start singing songs like this one:

Basit saka, basit emah, basit na ping-ping, nasamit na esem.
Matah, lapayag, ken toy pusok, ku kwah ahmen nee Jesus.
Dai dai ahwen dai ti Dios, dai dai ahwen dai ti Dios!
Basit saka, basit emah, basit na ping-ping, nasamit na esem.

which is a little song about all of the parts of the body being there to praise God. Being able to pray in Ilocano isn't very useful either, but I still periodically have this one jump into my head:

Niambag ti Dios, niandaklan ti Dios
Agyaman tai-ee kaduhgatee kahnen tayoh.

which is the common "God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food." (Please pardon my spelling if you actually know Ilocano -- I never learned to write it, so my spelling is a bit rudimentary and is completely phonetic). I can count, too, but that's out of the scope of this entry.

Suffice it to say, that when we got back to the US, church life continued to be important to me. I've played piano for VBS, led Youth Bible studies, sang with choirs, played with brass groups and handbell groups, sat on parochial school boards, and, most recently, directed a praise band. There were times in high school that if I hadn't had church activities to be involved with, I would have had a lot more time to contemplate the myriad reasons I had no friends and the subsequent invitations to do things with them. Besides the social aspect to it (which cannot be discounted in this day and age where no one seems to live near family or the friends they grew up with), I found wonderfully encouraging people and groups that constantly blessed me and encouraged me to study more deeply and grow more in my relationship with my Lord and Savior.

And then we moved to Santa Barbara, and I tried to find a new church home out here.

One Sunday I went to a Catholic church where they waved incense around and chanted everything and prayed for nearly 20 minutes for the Pope. And that's after half the sermon was about how great he is. Now, I'm Lutheran, so Catholics all over the world hate me anyway, but I hope I don't make them madder: I don't really like Pope Benedict. When he issued a statement reminding us how the Catholic church is sure they're the only group getting to heaven, and while I know not all Catholics feel that way, I really dislike a church leader that's more interested in dividing the believers up and discarding them rather than seeking out non-believers. I only tolerated him before, so this was an easy straw to break my back. I think I would just need a less Catholic Catholic church.

Another Sunday I tried a Lutheran church where the pastor was mad at his congregation. They had, apparently, decided to spend $500K on redoing their parking lot, much to his dismay. Now I don't know what parking lot resurfacings normally cost, but their's was in significant need of a revitalization of some sort. I wasn't actually sure I was still going to have all the pieces of the underside of my vehicle after I'd driven through it. Their sound system was having trouble, too, so that just added to the atmosphere of the fire-and-brimstone sermon the pastor was preaching about how many poor people half a million dollars could have fed and what business did they have pouring (ha!) that into asphalt? Now, I don't know how decisions are made at that church, but in most of the decisions I've ever seen made at a church, there is usually a vote, and the pastor is invited to said voting meeting. Couldn't he have said his piece there, rather than on a Sunday morning with visitors and kids and stuff?

Then I tried an Episcopal church. The first time I went they had a guest pastor. She wasn't a very good speaker, but it was, apparently, her first-ever sermon. It sounded like the kind of sermon *I* could have given -- with no ministerial training whatsoever. I also sat in a pew where two ladies came in half-way through the service and climbed over me to sit in the pew and then proceeded to climb out and back in 3 times over the next 20 minutes. Oh, and one of them sat on me when we came back from communion. I know I'm skinny, but that's a bit much to be quite that ignored. I was willing to chalk it up to just being a bad service, so I went back when the regular guy was preaching. He preached an entire sermon without a single Biblical reference, and I just don't understand how you do that. He was preaching on the social responsibility we have to the environment. I've heard several of these in my life, and they've always been tied to the creation story in that God created our world perfect and humans messed it up or to Jesus' parable of the talents and how God has entrusted us with this planet and it's our job to take care of it in a God-pleasing way. It's not hard, people. I don't think I can go to a church where the Bible doesn't even have a seat and has to stand in a corner in the back.

Then I tried another Lutheran church. This one had one of those pastors that puts 4 or 5 syllables in the name "Jesus". I felt like I was back in a rural Southern Baptist church, and I giggled a lot throughout the service. He also felt the need to emphasize the word-of-the-day. It was Ascension Sunday, which I remember because everytime he said "ascension" he accented it and stretched it out. He also told the congregation to do so when that word, or a variant, showed up in the text we were speaking aloud. I remember nothing else about the service because the accenting was so annoying. Not very faith-challenging if you can't even notice the rest of the service for the distractions. I decided that one wasn't going to work, either.

About this time, I started to get discouraged. I just didn't go to church the next Sunday. I don't have many Sundays in my life where I just didn't go. I've missed for illness or travel or visting relatives or friends that do not go to church. Very seldom, however, do I just not go. The next week I was vacationing with my parents in Wisconsin, and my dad has a habit of not going to church when he's on vacation. That meant I didn't go for either Sunday on the two sides of that week. Then I got back and identified a new church to try out, but I must've gotten the address or time wrong, because when I got there they were just finishing the service. I found myself depressed. Some of you coming from the backgrounds you do may think that was guilt, but that would be less than 10% of the overall feeling. Mostly I was just feeling depleted from not having been fed spiritually for several months. No Christian friends out here to talk to, people constantly bringing me down about being a Christian -- it starts to be really draining. And, as the experiences I'd found were significantly less than stellar, I was starting to wonder how hard it really was going to be to be a Christian in California.

But, I'm nothing, if not persistent. So, I went back to the one that I'd tried -- and failed -- to go to before, except this time I got the address right. The music was great, the sermon was great, and it was one of those churches that feels more like 50 or 75 people are in the service instead of 150 -- so friendly and relaxed and completely unpretentious. I was so impressed with the sermon (it was basically a challenge to spend time in God's word every day as the top priority), but I wasn't ready to make any decisions, since there were two pastors, and I'd only heard one. So, I went back the next week to hear the other pastor. Wait -- his sermon was good, too (on why it's important and God-pleasing to be persistent in your prayer life). I hardly knew what to do with myself. But, I think what sealed it for me was an illustration he used from when he lived in the Philippines. It turns out he and his family lived there from '65 to '77. It's a bit before we were there, but that was enough to help make me feel like I'd picked the right place. Visit number 3 was another success, and I'm headed back this morning. Maybe I'll actually be able to settle in and have a Christian community again. Good thing, too, because I don't think I'm cut out to be a heathen.

Saturday Morning Random Ten

My Friday sort of got away from me yesterday. But I got up early this morning to do the random ten! Okay, I get up early every morning, but let me pretend it was just for this.

"Unforgetful You" by Jars of Clay* on If I Left The Zoo
"I Will Not Go Quietly" by Don Henley on The End Of The Innocence
"Sometimes By Step" by Rich Mullins* on The World As Best As I Remember It, Vol. 2
"After You've Gone" by Trout Fishing In America* on Closer To The Truth
"Another Time, Another Place" by Sandi Patty and Wayne Watson on Another Time, Another Place
"Miss Otis Regrets" by Bette Midler on Experience The Divine
"It's All Too Much" by Joe Jackson on Laughter & Lust
"Trouble Among the Yearlings" on Country Cooking
"Four Rows of Jacks" by Mannheim Steamroller on Fresh Aire IV
"The Way That I Miss You" by Wayne Watson on A Beautiful Place

In looking at this list, I am reminded of the day I won the A Beautiful Place album from the radio station I listened to at the time. I was in high school, and I had no money to buy much of anything. They were running a contest where you had to identify a sound and what Bible story that sound went with. I called in, got through, and got the right answer (it was the sound of the curtain to the Holy of Holies in the temple ripping from top to bottom when Jesus died), and they mailed me the tape. I only ever won two tapes off radio contests, and they were both Wayne Watson tapes. I've since purchased this one on CD to have it be in iTunes, but I've never replaced the other one, which is weird, because it's one of my favorite albums with a song on it that always makes me cry. I think it's because I loved that tape. It was my first, and was during the phase where my dad hated my music choices and didn't even want to be reminded what I listened to, much less to allow me to purchase my own music. It was a good thing I won this one. At some point I had a tape player that tried to eat this tape, and to get it out of the player I ended up breaking the tape, and most of it spooled out of the case. I spent hours winding one side of the tape back into the case and more hours with a toothpick with some tape on the end trying to fish the other end back out of the depths of the case. Once I had it all unkinked and threaded correctly, I taped the tear together on the back side, and hoped against all hope that it would still play. Success! It does still play, even though there's a little irregularity in the middle of the song on either side when it has to play over that repair. And now I wonder if I'll consider those two songs "damaged" if I were to get a crisp new CD that played them perfectly.

Well, I think I've talked myself into a purchase. Gotta go do that now!

* Acts I've seen live

Comparing Santa Barbara to Austin, From a Cyclist's Perspective

Okay. I've gotten lazy again. It's hard when your days are spent at home, and then working at home, and then at home pretty much every day. I sort of seems like I don't have much to write about. I know that's never stopped me before, but there it is. Anyway, I promised you all just a few posts, and I should get back to them.

While the Mini was out of commission for a week, we had no car at all. My husband has been riding to work most every day anyway, but while we had no car, all errands had to be run on the bicycle. During that week, I had to go to the bank, we went out to eat, and I had to go to the grocery store several times. Nothing earth-shattering, but all required taking to the bike.

Santa Barbara is a heavily biked town. Certainly there is the professional cyclist crowd, but the vast majority of the folks on bikes are using those two wheels as their primary mode of transportation. I thought there were lots of cyclists in Austin, but I was wrong.

I've seen cars stop and treat a bicycle as an actual vehicle, waiting for them to pass an intersection before making a turn. In Austin, the car would speed up and cut the bike off trying to make the turn before the bike and losing those 5 precious seconds while the cyclist crosses the street.

Every business in town that I've been to has a post out front specifically for cyclists to lock their bikes up to. In Austin, you were always looking for some fence or signpost or something to rig up a place to lock up your bike.

There are bike lanes everywhere here -- on major thouroughfares in town, and even on the highway. It's amazing. In Austin, I was petrified to ride on Lamar (a similar-sized street to State Street, the main drag here), since you really have to ride in the car lane, and people get annoyed with you. Here, I can just plug along in the bike lane on State with no issues.

Because of the sheer numbers of cyclists, though, I have also seen more accidents than I ever saw in Austin. True, that's 1 in SB and 0 in Austin, but that's still an infinite number more than I saw before.

All of this hasn't resulted in me biking everywhere, however. Partly, I just have days where I'm lazy or have too much to do. But also, grocery shopping is really hard when you have to fit everything you're buying into a backpack. The gallon of milk and the paper towels will pretty much take up the whole space, and then you can't really eat that for dinner, you know. Also, more delicate things like bread and eggs and strawberries require special packing in order not to get smushed in the ride home. While we were carless, though, it took me 3 hours to get $100 worth of groceries with the multiple trips, and that just seems like a massive waste of time to do regularly. It is interesting to see how you really only get what you *need* when the weight and space constraint is there.

Biking, however, seems to make my husband want to bike more. He's currently trying to figure out how to manage a trip to Oregon on a bicycle. Hmmmm. We'll just have to wait and see if this is one of his wild hairs or something he really tries to make happen. If it does, though, I'll be sure to chronicle it from my easy-riding spot behind the wheel of the SAG wagon. For our purposes, that would likely look a heckuva lot like a blue Mini.

Friday Random Ten

This week, here's what I was given:

"The Fly" by U2 on Achtung Baby
"Something Going On" by When In Rome on When In Rome
"Heartbreak Hotel" by Stan Freberg on Dr. Demento's 25th Anniversary Collection
"Whatever Get You Thru The Night" by John Lennon on The John Lennon Collection
"Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks on The Hits
"Rock Around with Ollie Vee" by Buddy Holly & The Crickets on From The Original Master Tapes
"Keeping My Eyes On Him" by Geoff Moore & The Distance* on Pure and Simple
"Private Investigations" by Dire Straits on Money for Nothing
"Open Up the Sky" by FFH on Have I Ever Told You
"Over My Head" by Fleetwood Mac on Greatest Hits

Wow. A whole pile of lackluster songs. The only good one in the batch is the little FFH number. It's especially apropos today, while it rains ash from the nearby wildfire that was supposed to be contained and then wasn't. You'd think it was snow, but it's 22 degrees (Celsius -- that's about 71 Fahrenheit, folks) outside, so I'm pretty sure that's not it. Maybe I'll take a picture of one of the grayed-out grape leaves and post it so you can see how much is really falling. It's icky, and I don't think I'll be going for a run this afternoon.

*Groups I've seen live

Friday Random (a Few More Than) Ten

I stole this from Monica, and thought it might bring a fun little change to the Random Ten format. For this week only:

MUSIC SHUFFLE SURVEY:
Put your music player on shuffle.
Press forward for each question.
Use the song title as the answer to the question.

Will I get far in life? "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" by the Eurythmics on Greatest Hits
I guess I'll get far by dreaming. And I always thought you had to act on your dreams to turn them into success.

How do my friends see me? "Fight" by PFR on Them
Oh, my, this is depressing. My friends think I'm just struggling to make it through life, unloved and overwhelmed? Maybe at one time, but not now. Keep up, people!

What is the story of my life? "The Scotsman" by Brian Bowers
I think this means I'm a drunk. Hmmm. I may have to work on that one. Nevermind. I'm heading to happy hour. I do promise, however, not to get so drunk that I fall asleep on the side of the road so two girls tie a ribbon around my male member. If you've never heard this song before, you should look for it.

What was high school like? "Morning Has Broken" by Cat Stevens on Greatest Hits
This appears to be the answer to why I'm a morning person!

How can I get ahead in life? "Anatevka" from Fiddler On The Roof
Apparently I need to move. Didn't I just do that?

What is the best thing about me? "The Keeper" by Geoff Moore and the Distance on Pure and Simple
I hope my relationship with God can be like the grandma in this song prays for her grandson's to be, who then grows up to pray the same request for his son.

How is today going to be? "Jesus & the California Kid" by Audio Adrenaline on Don't Censor Me
Well, I do live in CA, and Jesus did die for me, but I'm not sure how that describes my day today.

What is in store for this weekend? "Another Time, Another Place" by Sandi Patty and Wayne Watson on Another Time, Another Place
Maybe I'm going to heaven this weekend? Or singing a duet in pretty harmonies? Not sure, here.

What song describes my parents? "When You're Not Around" by Joe Jackson on Laughter & Lust
It would be sweet if my parents actually felt this way about each other. Sometimes, I think they just might.

How is my life going? "El Shaddai" by Amy Grant on The Collection
Not bad -- the first one that truly makes no sense at all with the question.

What song will they play at my funeral?: "This Land" from The Lion King
I doubt it, somehow.

How does the world see me? "There Is A Greater Love" by Wayne Watson on How Time Flies
I hope that I can show that purest of loves for people hurting.

Will I have a happy life? "Believe" by Elizabeth Donihoo on Believe
If I'm optimistic then I will. Or maybe, since she recently got engaged, I'm supposed to go with that general assumed good feeling?

What do my friends really think of me? "Gambler's Blues" by B.B. King on B.B. King Anthology
So, earlier I'm a drunk, and now I'm a gambler? Make up your minds people! Or, maybe my friends think I am that soulful bass player in the band. That's so nice of you!

Do people secretly lust after me? "52:10" by Rich Mullins on A Liturgy, A Legacy & A Ragamuffin Band
Isaiah 52:10 is "The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God." I think that means no.

What should I do with my life: "Lady Of The Valley" by White Lion on Pride
What branch of medicine do I study if I'm supposed to figure out how to bring slain soldiers back to life? No doubt it would be valuable, but I'm not sure where to start.

What is some good advice? "I Can Be Friends With You" by MxPx on Never Say Dinosaur
It's good to be friends with God.

What is my signature dancing song? "The Other Me" by Joe Jackson on Laughter & Lust
Go look at my evil twin for dancing.

What do I think my current theme song is? "Wounds of Love" by Rich Mullins on Brother's Keeper
Not a bad selection for me, iTunes. And I wouldn't give back a single one of those wounds.

What does everyone else think my current theme song is? "One Brand of Truth" by Geoff Moore & the Distance on Pure and Simple
Prolly true.

What type of men/women do you like? "Here In America" by Rich Mullins on A Liturgy, A Legacy & A Ragamuffin Band
I'm not real picky, you know. Personally I wouldn't say I'd limit the list to Americans.

Is Heather a Mini Murderer or Just a Maimer?

"Heather, you are charged with the murder of a blue Mini Cooper, named Fred. How do you plead?"

"Not guilty, Your Honor."

"The prosecution may call its first witness."

"Sir, we would like to call the plaintiff, Heather, to the stand. Heather, how old is the vehicle in question?"

"Two and a half years old, sir."

"And how many miles does it have on it?"

"Just 25,0000."

"Whose car is it?"

"It's my husband's. I mean, we both pay for it..."

"Thank you! If you can answer only the question asked of you, that will do. Please refrain from any sort of extracurricular rigamarole. Do you admit to writing this account of a power steering problem that occurred in April?"

"Yes."

"Who was driving the car when this problem occurred?"

"I was."

"Where was your husband?"

"He was out of town on a vacation."

"So, while your husband was gone, you decided to take the opportunity to attack Fred and try to kill him?"

"No -- I didn't do anything -- it just happened! The shop says this sort of thing happens to these cars a lot!"

"After this attack in April, have you ever been driving Fred when other sorts of things happened to him?"

"It wasn't an attack in April."

"The witness is instructed to answer the question."

"Last week, I went to pick up my husband after he returned from Hawaii. I drove 10 miles to pick him up, and on the way back, the car started making funny noises. Within a block, there was white smoke pouring out of under the hood. I stopped the car and rolled it downhill to park it against the curb."

"While your husband was with you, he wasn't driving?"

"It was late, and he'd been traveling all day. He was tired, and it was easier for me just to stay in the driver's seat for the short trip home."

"Did you offer to let him drive his own car, his friend, Fred?"

"No. Didn't seem to make sense to do so."

"And how is Fred doing now?"

"Well, the serpentine belt went out. That was the noise that led to the billowing smoke. It was towed to the dealer, 80 miles away, and has been repaired. We're supposed to pick it up today."

(Gasps from the gallery.)

The judge speaks up, "It appears the charges brought here were faulty -- the car is fixed and working now?"

"It appears so. We won't really know until we get to the shop and drive it around a bit, but it should be fine. It was still under warranty, so the repairs don't even cost anything."

"So there isn't any lasting damage?"

"Well, you know how a repaired car is, sir. It probably will rattle or squeak or otherwise not still be in mint condition, but it should work just fine."

"That's good to hear."

The prosecution is still concerned, and says, "But what about the future of Fred? This murderer will continue her attacks on this poor car any time her husband goes away. She is obviously a danger to Fred, and he should be brought into protective custody for his own safety."

The judge, however, had had enough. "Go try a real case with a real live victim, son. Case dismissed!"

Friday Random Ten

The Friday Ten is back with a vengeance. Here is what iTunes served up for me today.

"Rescue Me" by Geoff Moore and The Distance*, Pure And Simple
"Hat Tamale Baby" by Clifton Chenier, Zydeco Essentials
"J'ai Deux Amours" by Madeleine Peyroux, Careless Love
"To Life" from the Fiddler on the Roof* soundtrack
"Didn't He" by PFR*, Pray for Rain
"You Are the Best Part of Me" by Neil Diamond, The Essential Neil Diamond
"A Whole New World" from the Aladdin soundtrack
"Prom Night in Pig Town" by Trout Fishing in America*, Truth Is Stranger Than Fishin'
"Daffodil Lament" by The Cranberries, No Need To Argue
"Tears In Heaven" by Eric Clapton, from the Rush soundtrack

It has been a tough week in Heatherville, so this was a great combination of songs, especially "Rescue Me", "To Life", and "Didn't He", to jerk me up by my bootstraps and keep going. It's funny how the iTunes library does things in cycles, and I ended up with three songs from movies this week. More exciting, though, is the debut of Trout Fishing in America on The Ten. I was introduced to these guys by an old boyfriend in college who took me to a concert, and I was immediately hooked. I love hearing a band for the first time in concert. It just gives you a whole different appreciation for the music that you don't get from just hearing the songs. They are so funny to watch perfom. The band is just two guys -- Keith and Ezra -- but they sound like they have a whole band playing with them. Keith is a short guy (5'5"ish) who plays the upright bass, while Ezra is a tall guy (6'8"ish) who plays electric guitar. The contrast of these two guys standing next to each other with their ill-fitting instruments made me laugh the first time I saw them. And then you listen to their music and you can't stop laughing. They seemed to load that concert with their kids songs, and those are all funny. Great mental images created, so much so, that I'd bet they'd make nice illustrated chidren's books. The adult songs are generally still funny, but in a drier and more subtle way, while some are downright poignant and depressing. The particular song that made The Ten this week is a recreation of a prom night as most of us are familiar with from high school. But here, the pigs aren't graduating from high school -- they are getting ready to be butchered. Not sure if these guys are vegetarians, but it does seem they are trying to tell us something here.

* Acts I've seen live. I counted Fiddler on the Roof because I saw a live performance of it as a kid. Not really an act, but live, nonetheless.

Coincidental Stranger Remeetings

I like James' suggestion that this could make for a good band or album name. Once I get to where I can play and am ready to do the band thing, I'll pull this little gem out of the recesses of my mind. Unless I forget, which seems to happen quite a bit these days.

I was traveling a bit recently, and ended up on a red-eye from LAX. I could start a rant now about how much I hate LAX -- how that was considered during our decision process on moving to Santa Barbara, because we'd have to use it as our primary jumping off point. We still moved here, but LAX was definitely on the "Con" list. But I won't do that. Suffice it to say it's one of my least favorite airports, and the lines are nearly unbearable. I was in the security line at 9:30 for a 12:30 flight, and it's a good thing, too. Took me 2 hours to get through that line.

Standing in line for 2 hours gives you a lot of time to people watch. Late at night, most of the people you have available to you to watch are the folks in line around you, especially when you are traveling alone and have no companions to talk to nor your iPod to listen to.

There was the girl who had decided she wanted to visit all the places she wanted to go by the time she was 30. She was probably 25, from New York. She was headed to China this trip and had gotten back from New Zealand on her last trip, or vice versa, but she had 10 more places she wanted to go before that self-imposed deadline. After that, she figured she'd make a new list of places she wanted to go or go back to the places she especially liked. Nice goal, I figure. The world could use a few more people that are knowledgeable about other cultures, and what better way to learn about them then to go there and experience them?

There was the 40-ish lady with her daughter and the daughter's friend. The kids were probably 8 or 9, and they were playing the one-up game. Each was trying to show how they, or someone they knew, were better. Everything from boys they thought liked them to how many DVDs they had to how expensive their cell phones were to what their dads did. I never did figure out where they were traveling to, but I did wonder how long a combative friendship like that can last.

There was the family with two small kids, probably 1 and 3. The parents spoke Spanish or Portuguese -- couldn't really tell since they talked so fast. Well, that, and the fact that I don't speak either language. The older boy had obviously been asleep for a while, but the crying of his younger sibling woke him up and then he was cranky. The younger kid was hungry, so the mom was breastfeeding him there in line. As they got closer to the screening station, she tried to stop, but the baby became hysterical almost instantly. So the father and the older boy put the stroller and luggage through the machine, while the mother kept feeding and stepped out of line for a while. What shocked me most was that while they were obviously stressed they weren't fighting. If it were my parents with my sister and I at that age, they'd have been out of control.

Right in front of me were two couples that didn't really talk about their destination, but did talk about small towns and how backward they can be. For close to two hours. Except when they were laughing and pointing at the poor family struggling with their little kids. I would have thought they were terrible people, and ignored them for the rest of the line time, but one of the guys looked so much like someone I knew that I remained interested. I knew it wasn't the person in question, but I really admire the guy this stranger reminded me of. The guy I know is a customer of ours, with 5 kids where the oldest is 6. There is a set of twins there, but he is so jealous that his wife gets to stay home with the younger ones. His oldest goes to 1st grade across the street from his office, and he eats lunch with her at least 4 times a week ("Sometimes I like to go out with the folks in the office, but not too often."). Just a great guy with his priorities straight. He's very short with glasses and a shaved head. So, to find a guy in line that looked like this had me thinking about the other guy. Don't bother me with the irony that a make-fun-of-the-family guy reminded me of a real family guy. Whatever -- purely a physical likeness.

Regardless, because I noticed this guy while in line, I noticed him again when I got to my gate. Apparently he's on my flight to Minneapolis. And because I noticed him there, I noticed him again after we boarded, as he was sitting on my row. It made me wonder how often we re-meet strangers but never know it because we didn't notice them the first time or even the second or subsequent times. It was a very it's-a-small-world moment for me. I'm sure this happens more when we're involved in other stuff at the time, but it has to happen quite a bit when we never notice it. Especially, it would seem, in airports.

When I got back from my trip, we had a new movie in the mailbox (I love Netflix). It was called 11:14, and it tied into this whole thought process so nicely. This is a story about 5 different story lines that all come together at precisely 11:14pm. Sort of a similar vein as Babel, except this movie was less about the far-reaching impact of one's actions, and more about pure coincidence. You've got the drunk driver, the protective dad, the desperate boyfriend, the joyriding teens, the harried policeman, and they all keep running into each other, but not knowing that their paths will ultimately cross in a way only we movie watchers may really ever know. It is a brilliantly done movie, with spectacular attention to detial, and I'd defintely suggest it. Nice thought-provoking cinema on a story line I'd just started to really think about.

Trader Joe's Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be

As we started telling people we were moving to California, the unsolicited commentary seemed to be that we were embarking on the coolest of grocery-ing phenomena: Trader Joe's. After a few brief months in this state, I can safely say I don't get it.

I will admit that they have one of the most extensive and tastiest selections of dried fruits and nuts. I think I'm already addicted to the black pepper cashews and the granny smith dried apples. But beyond that, I don't see much reason to shop there.

The produce is of poor quality and overpriced. Similarly, the meat (unless you need kosher meat -- I guess they have a decent selection then), is of poor grade and too expensive. The selection of general grocery needs is minimal. I walked over there one day because I really wanted to bake cookies, but I needed baking powder. After staring at the baking shelf (they had flour, sugar, etc.), and giving up, I asked someone, and they told me they don't carry baking powder. Really? So, I walked back by a drugstore, and bought my baking powder there and baked my cookies anyway.

Then, I'm a scotch snob. I'll readily admit it. And more than that, I'm a fan of Macallan, as you'd be able to tell by the 4 bottles of various years of the stuff in my liquor cabinet. Trader Joe's seems to be in some sort of bottling agreement with my favorite of whiskies, and they bottle 12 year old Macallan in Trader Joe's bottles. I can't bring myself to buy one to see if it's the same stuff on the inside of the bottle as they seem to claim on the outside of the bottle, because it costs exactly as much as the real thing! Honestly, why would anyone buy a "Rolex" from a street vendor in NY for the same price as a real one? Obviously, someone (or a lot of someones) are doing this, since they seem to keep having this stuff on their shelves.

Anyway, just seems like a lot of hype for something that, like a lot of other hyped things, isn't all that.

Why I Shouldn't Have to Ever Attend Another Family Reunion

Last weekend I attended a reunion of the Johnson side of my family. That would be my great-grandparents on my mother's maternal side and all their kids and their kids and their kids. This is the only family on either of our sides that still holds family reunions, and they do them approximately every 3 years. The last one I attended was in 1990, and seventeen years later seemed an appropriate amount of time to be skipping them. Also, Grandma is my last living grandparent, and her health seems to be getting worse all the time. I thought it was a good chance to see her for her birthday, stick around for the reunion, and then not be expected to be seen at one of these for a while.

Of course, the great-grandparents are dead. Great-grandfather came over on the boat from Sweden in the early 1900s, and great-grandmother had 11 kids in 12 years -- go figure she died young. Of the eleven kids in my Grandma's generation, only 5 are left. In my mom's generation, there were 75 cousins. Who knows how many they are in my generation. Here's a picture of those of us (just in my generation) that were at the reunion this year:
Even if you know me, good luck finding me in that pile of people. The vast majority of the families still live in Minnesota, with a few that have branched out to North Dakota, Wisconsin, or (gasp!) Iowa.

I give you this background, not because I think you will want to know it for some reason, but to give you an idea that this is a large family. And there are a lot of them I just don't know, since we haven't lived in the midwest in years and years and years. Of the tiny fraction of the family that came to the reunion (150 people), I knew a grand total of 14 of them, including my mom, dad, and little sister. And that's if I really stretch my memory back a long ways. All that family does is drink and play games, so that's what we did all weekend long. Yowsers. Well, I drank. If anyone offers me one more Windsor and water ("your grandma likes 'em, so you must, too"), I'll smack 'em. Oh, and quit acting like you're telling me some big secret when you point out my grandparents anniversary date and my mother's birthdate. Really? You think I didn't figure that out when I was ten? We played a trivia game, and my mother had submitted trivia about me, and I couldn't even figure out which statement was supposed to apply to me -- lotta help I was to my team.

Anyway, it's a special family, and they have some plusses somewhere (give me a second while I dig for them -- oh right, that's where I got my ability to hold my liquor). I just figure that if I wait another 17 years before I go to another one, all the members in my grandmother's generation will be dead, and they won't actually still be holding these things anymore. And that would be fine by me.

Explaining the Unexplained Absence

I kinda fell off the face of the blogosphere for a bit. I apologize, wholeheartedly. I know that now that I moved halfway across the country, this is one of the only ways most of my friends know what's up with me. I've spent all day trying to explain why I've gone missing of late. Here are some of the stories I came up with.

-- I threw myself into bass playing, joined a band and started touring. I'm thinking about quitting my job and doing this full-time.
-- My job has gotten so busy that I'm working 18 hours of every day, and I don't have time to do anything except sleep and work.
-- I died. Wait -- who'd be writing this post, then?
-- I got pregnant, and the morning sickness has me hiding in my bed in a fetal position all day long.

But of course, all of these are completely bogus. Not even a shred of truth to any of them. The truth is that I got sucked into an online game, and haven't hardly surfaced in a long time. Pathetic, isn't it? Aren't those for 15-year-old boys or older guys with no ability to interact with the real world? Why yes, yes they are. You'll have to decide which of these I've become. I haven't completely crawled into a hole to die, though. These are some of the posts that I will be writing up and posting over the next few days as I extricate myself from this crazy game.

Is Heather a Mini Murderer or Just a Maimer?
Why I Shouldn't Have to Ever Attend Another Family Reunion
Comparing Santa Barbara to Austin, From a Cyclist's Perspective
Trader Joe's Isn't All It's Cracked Up To Be
Heather is a Heathen
Coincidental Stranger Remeetings

Please let me know which of these you'd like to see me write up first. I will do my best to comply. Thank you in advance for your forgiveness for my lackadaisical attitude. I do hope not to repeat it. At least for a while. Or if we go to war in my game.

Friday Random Ten

Here is what iTunes served me up this afternoon.

"Don't Be Shy" by Cat Stevens, Footsteps In The Dark
"Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around the World" by U2, Achtung Baby
"This Is the Life" by Weird Al Yankovic*, Dare To Be Stupid
"Rose Colored Stained Glass Windows" by Jars of Clay*, Never Say Dinosaur
"Armadillo Breakdown" by various bluegrass artists, Country Cooking
"April Come She Will" by Simon & Garfunkel, The Concert In Central Park
"California Girls" by The Beach Boys, The Greatest Hits, Vol. 1
"Callin' Baton Rouge" by Garth Brooks, The Hits
"The Wild West Is Where I Want To Be" by Tom Lehrer, Songs & More Songs
"Shop Around" by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles

This was apparently a week for oldies. I didn't even remember I had that Beach Boys album, and Smokey Robinson and Simon & Garfunkel made appearances, as well. Also, my favorite song from my favorite album took its turn on the random ten. Never Say Dinosaur is one of those tribute albums where different artists take a song from the original group and cover it. This album is a tribute to Petra, the Christian rock band that defined Christian rock bands, and there is not a slacker track on the thing. This song by JoC, a favorite from whom I have so many albums from that it would be silly for them not to show up every week, was one I never remembered from Petra. However, the words are phenomenal, about churches that put up the blinders about the world outside their walls, refusing to acknowledge the pain of people and being that much poorer for the ignorance.

* Acts I've seen live.

A Climbing Meme

So James thought it would be fun to make me do this little meme. And I, always a sucker, am obliging.

My Rules (Okay, so they're someone else's):

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. (You’re not the boss of me!)
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

My Random Facts:

1. I grew four inches after I got to college. You hear of this happening with guys, but I've never heard of another girl who did so much growing after turning 18. I actually was looking at applying to West Point, but I was too short at the time to be allowed in. Now look at what they're missing!

2. I have a nearly perfect heart-shaped birthmark on my thigh. It's a reverse birthmark, so you can only see it when I have a tan and the heart stays white. Kids in elementary school teased me for having put a heart-shaped sticker on my leg and gotten a tan around it. Honestly, what kid has that much diligence to do that every time they go outside in shorts?

3. I have moved a lot. I had lived in 13 houses (11 cities, 3 countries) by the time I graduated from highschool. After graduation, my parents calmed down, and have only moved twice since. I, however, have moved to 8 more locations in that time.

4. My eyes are different colors: one is green and one is brown. You can tell which is which, but I can't, because the brown one is blind. I didn't know they were different colors until high school, when a guy friend pointed it out. My parents never noticed, and there are no pictures of me as a kid where I don't have red-eye or a patch on an eye or something, so I have no idea if they've always been this way, or changed over time.

5. I love to climb trees. Always have. As a kid I climbed coconut trees, which you must climb barefoot, so I'm really a barefoot climber. I may have done this in the past at parties as almost a parlor trick, but I can't say for sure. I don't do it as often anymore, but just last week I climbed the orange tree in the backyard to do some harvesting of the higher branches.

6. I skipped a grade and repeated a grade. Well, sort of. In April or May of my second grade year, I was moving to my fourth school for the year. My parents figured my second grade education was mostly shot anyway, so they convinced my new school to put me in the combined 3rd/4th grade class with my uncle, so I would know somebody. However, jumping to the end of 3rd grade was hard without the preliminary stuff for that year. The next year, I did 3rd grade for real, and multiplication was a lot easier that way.

7. I stalked a basketball player in college. It was the beginning of my basketball obsession, and this player seemed to be very affected by the mood of the fans. In order for the team to play well, he needed to play well. So I figured out where he lived, his email address, his phone number, and I would call or send an email before and/or after most games to wish him good luck and let him know he had a fan in the stands. He played better when I'd called him before the game, so I kept doing it. He wasn't real bright, though, so I don't think he realized I was the same person who called the last time. Is it really stalking if they don't notice?

8. I'm a terrible klutz. I trip over everything, including a completely flat, smooth floor. Stairs are absolutely the worst. I remember a time when my future husband and I had been dating a couple of months, and we got to the top of a flight of stairs, and he just stopped, jaw dropped, staring at me. He said, "That's the first time I've ever seen you climb a set of stairs without tripping."

My Victims:

Justin
Natasha
Mike
Amy
Kyle
Monica, if you're still out there, you're tagged.
Stephanie -- use this as your foray into the blogging world!
Matt already did this, but since I have no other readers that I know of, this one will have to count in my 8.

Oh, and if you're a reader who doesn't comment, just let me know you're alive and clinging to every word I write. Plus, that way I can check out your blog, too!

Friday Random Ten

Here is this week's ten piles of randomness.

"The Thunder Rolls" by Garth Brooks, The Hits
"Spinnin' Round" by PFR*, Goldie's Last Day
"What Have I Done To Deserve This?" by Pet Shop Boy, Discography: The Complete Singles Collection
"Imagination" by Erasure, The Innocents
"Piano Sonata #21 in C" played by Wilhelm Kempff, Beethoven: Klaviersonaten
"Me-Stew" by Shel Silverstein, Where The Sidewalk Ends
"I'm Alright" by Jars of Clay*, If I Left the Zoo
"In The Likeness of You" by Petra, Unseen Power
"Scarborough Fair" by Simon & Garfunkel, The Concert In Central Park
"Let Mercy Lead" by Rich Mullins*, Brother's Keeper

I remember the first time I saw Jars of Clay. I actually went to see PFR, and Jars was opening for them. The show was in a church in Fort Worth, and some friends of mine and I drove up from college attend. It was a capacity crowd, at just about 300 people. Jars did their entire set acoustically, and were touring that year with a violin and cello which worked well in the small venue. I was instantly in love with their sound. When it took 45 minutes for PFR to have their stuff set up to go on afterwards, I even tried to convince my friends we could leave any time -- no need to see the main act. We stayed, and it was completely worth it, but I was set after just seeing Jars. And a new fan was born. I guess that's why there are opening acts at concerts.

* Acts I've seen live.

Friday Random Ten

We have an earlier than normal random ten today, since I'll be uninternetted this afternoon and evening.

"No More" by Madeleine Peyroux, Careless Love
"Creed" by Rich Mullins*, A Liturgy, A Legacy, & A Ragamuffin Band
"She Blinded Me With Science" by Thomas Dolby, Living in Oblivion
"Dying Man" by PFR*, Goldie's Last Day
"French Rockin' Boogie" by Geno Delafose, Zydeco Essentials
"Miracle Child" by Newsboys, Take Me To Your Leader
"Deeper Than The Holler" by Randy Travis, Greatest Hits Vol. 1
"F.O.D." by Green Day, Dookie
"Radically Saved" by Carman, The Absolute Best
"My Turn Now" by Stephen Curtis Chapman, The Live Adventure

A rather eclectic pile of music from country to rock to '80s to blues. It was nice, but the highlight was the hammered dulcimer from Rich Mullins. At the concert I went to, he pulled that instrument out and sat on the stage barefoot and played it, and I was smitten -- not with the 45-year-old man, but with the instrument. I've seen a few since then in stores, and I've seriously considered getting one. One my date the other night, my husband mentioned that while he got me a fancy new digital camera for the anniversary, what he really has wanted to get me was a hammered dulcimer. He says it's been his first choice for me for every gift-giving occasion, but he just hasn't found one he liked yet. It's nice to know he does listen when I'm talking about bizarre instruments that interest me. And I think it's hard to look for a bass teacher -- imagine trying to find a hammered dulcimer teacher!

* Acts I've seen live. Go figure -- even with as few concerts as I've been to, two of those artists showed up today on the random ten.

Not a Random Nine

Today marks the ninth anniversary of that glorious day that we can only just barely remember with the help of the wedding pictures. Where are those things, anyway? Hmmm... I guess I won't be remembering that day anytime soon.

Growing up, I moved a lot. I mean, a lot. Thirteen houses, eleven cities and three countries by the time I graduated highschool. When you move that much, the relationship you have with your family becomes that much stronger. Those are the only folks who really know where you're coming from. Regardless of how much my crazy sister drives me crazy, I know I can mention climbing trees to harvest coconuts or Mrs. Noyd or eating yellow wood sorrel when we pretended to run away from home, and she knows exactly what I'm talking about. No long story needed -- she gets it, because she experienced it, too.

Now, my life has changed such that my husband is the person with whom I have the most shared experiences that come in handy. I have friends that I've known longer than him, but a friendship is different than the spousal relationship. This man and I know more about each other than we'd probably care to admit (regardless of how often his mother tries to explain to me what he's like -- I think I get it). Reflecting on how long we've been together, I feel like I'm mere minutes from being one of those old ladies who puts her teeth in a glass before going to bed. And then I remember that one of the benefits of getting married *really* young is that we are here at the 9-year point in the prime of our life. Obviously, our relationship is different now than it was then, but we've gotten here together, and that is the stuff that other people can't really understand, regardless of how many stories one tells.

So, excuse me while I go get ready to go out and enjoy some time with the man who continue to makes me smile (most days) this far from that wedding day bliss that now seems silly and almost foolish. I have a very important date, and I can't be late.

Learning at Thirty

Since I purchased my bass guitar, I have been practicing as much as my little fingers will allow. Who knew you needed so much left pinky strength to play? And such big hands to reach all the frets at the same time?

At this point, I know which string is which, and I can play that bastion of musical prowess, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in the keys of D and E. I can also play the bass line to the verses of Big Bad John, but the chorus still eludes me at this point. I'm trying to have the discipline to spend a few minutes on hand strength, a few minutes on fundamental pattern learning, and a few minutes on fun stuff each practice session -- playing along with iTunes, trying to figure out which notes fit and so forth. However, my expectation is that my resolve will weaken in the coming weeks, after the initial newness wears off.

So, I'm going to be looking for a teacher. It may seem like a copout, but I figure I need to learn some basics pretty quickly, and I'd rather learn them right than spend years doing things wrong and then having to unlearn those bad habits. Being an adult looking for a music teacher is going to be a bit different than looking for one while a student. I have a couple of sources that I think I can look at for teachers, but I feel like I should interview one and figure out if I'm going to hate them before signing up. But I find I have no idea what to ask in an interview of a potential bass teacher. Any ideas?

Friday Random Ten

With a short week, I almost forgot that today was Friday, and time to add in the random 10. Without further ado, this is what I got.

"When You Are Old And Gray" by Tom Lehrer, Songs & More Songs
"Tears In Heaven" by Eric Clapton, Rush soundtrack
"Send Out A Prayer" by Anointed, The Call
"Be Still" by Newsboys, Going Public
"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" by Tom Lehrer, Songs & More Songs
"I Want To Live In A Wigwam" by Cat Stevens, Footsteps In The Dark
"Lyin' Eyes" by The Eagles, Their Greatest Hits
"Breathe" by The Newsboys, Take Me To Your Leader
"Lobachevsky" by Tom Lehrer, Songs & More Songs
"Weary By Now" by Ron David Moore, The Vision's Clear

I never get over how Tom Lehrer is able to fit so many words in a single musical measure, but what's up with a random set of songs with three songs from the same album? Doesn't that violate some sort of law of randomness, or something? When "Send Out a Prayer" started, I was sure that my iTunes had goofed and started "Tears in Heaven" again. Who knew a song by a Gospel/R&B group could sound like the former Cream frontman? Or maybe it's more surprising that the former Cream frontman could sound like a Gospel/R&B group. It was funny to remember that Cat Stevens pronounced "wigwam" so that it rhymed with "caravan". Ah, the things you forget when you haven't heard a song in a gazillion years. Overall, a pretty mellow set. "Breathe" was the closest to something that had a nifty bass line to listen too (and I'm pretty sure I heard the use of a distortion pedal at one point -- mmmmm, maybe one day). Perhaps my focus is shifted based (ha!) on my recent purchase.

*Acts I've seen live. Oh right -- I haven't seen any of these folks live.

I'm Not Usually Impulsive, But...

I have thought for a long time that it was time for Heather to learn to play a new instrument. I took eight years of piano lessons and three years of French horn lessons, all decidedly classical in nature. I don't have a French horn (do you have any idea how much those things cost??), but I love my baby grand piano. Over the last few years, I've been trying to switch my piano playing style to allow for more flexibility with what's written, and to try to improvise more to what's going on around me. This is a necessary skill to learn if one wants to play with a group of other musicians. This need came up while I was trying to play keyboard with the praise team at my church. You try playing with guitarists, drummers, bass players and vocalists of varying skill levels and tell me you don't have to improvise! I can't say I'm particularly good at it, but I have gotten better over time.

So this brings me around to the next instrument for me to learn. I thought about soliciting suggestions from my readers here, but you'll have to reread this post's title. I decided that I would learn to play guitar. It seems to be easy enough to pick up a few chord fingerings and a few strum patterns, and be able to play some common tunes, but certainly complicated enough to provide years of further learning and technique refinement. I knew I wanted one with a pickup, so I'd be able to easily be mic'd one day when I might need it, but not an electric guitar, so I'd still be able to play acoustically. This was my plan.

I went to a guitar store here in town and asked a bunch of questions and held several guitars and generally was a pest for about an hour. The folks there were very patient, answering my questions and explaining lots of stuff to me. At the end of it, it appeared I had more research and deciding to do, so I thanked them and headed home. I decided that I didn't want to mess with trying to learn classical guitar (note the eleven years of classical music training described above, and what it's done for me). After a few hours of research, I felt armed enough to dive into the craigslist waters. And what would you know, I found one that seemed to fit the bill -- a Stella blues guitar from the 1950s. I love my 1927 mahogany piano, and figured I could continue the trend of having instruments older than myself. I called the guy and found that it had been retrofitted with a pickup, and was ready for me to come check it out. I went that afternoon to a warehouse where, apparently, all the local bands practice. I walked in and picked up the guitar, and everything fell apart. See the guy is selling three guitars, and no one wants old ones, so he figured I was calling about this other one, but the one I was thinking I wanted is a parlor guitar (not full-sized) and has no pickup. While it was one cool little instrument, it wasn't what I was expecting, and I chose to walk away.

My husband suggested eBay, but after my experience, I decided I didn't want to buy a guitar that I couldn't hold in my hands first. Down, but not out, I went back to craigslist. On a whim, I searched for a bass guitar, instead. I found a lovely bass, being sold by someone who obviously needed the cash. I had thought, flippantly, in the past about learning to play the bass, but I had lots of excuses. It's hard to sing along with at a campfire. I'm not cool enough to play bass. I would be relegating myself to playing harmony. My husband won't be able to fight off all the drooling men when I become one of those hot bass playing women. Oh well. I called the dude selling the guitar, played it a bit in a park, and walked away with a sweet new instrument to learn to play. Oh, and I got a good deal, so maybe I'll still get a regular guitar one day.

And now I just have to figure out how to play it. And I have to get an amp. Anyone have any pointers they can give me to good information for learning to play this little four-stringed wonder?

Festivilities

This weekend we made multiple-daily trips over to the Old Mission's parking lot. Why would we go, repeatedly to a section of asphalt? Because this weekend was the I Madonnari street painting festival. It was a lot of fun to watch the progression of the various chalk masterpiecens. I went over on Friday afternoon as the painters were taping off their areas and sketching out their grid or the general shapes of their planned project. On Saturday, you could see segments of pictures be completed, and Sunday and Monday added more parts. It was neat to see the artists at work, wondering what they were doing with certain colors, and seeing how their art took form. It almost allowed us outside viewers an insight into how the creative mind works.

Of course, I thought about taking this challenge on in a future year. I've worked with pastels before, and I wasn't too bad. And then I realized there is a reason I work with computers. It's because I hate kneeling on the concrete for three days straight.

Bravo to all the madonnaras of this year's festival! I really enjoyed watching you work!

Rules are Made to be Broken

I have long known that I am a rule follower. I also create new rules for myself all the time. One of my personal rules is that I read every post by a particular blogger before I decide to add links to them off this page. I've alluded to this rule of mine before, so it's not like this is something new in my brain.

However, in every growing, changing organism, one must step out of one's comfort zone and try new things. So, in my own little way, I've now linked to two blogs without reading every entry ever posted. I'm not sure if Tom and George should be flattered that I accepted their blogs without having to read it all, or offended that I didn't spend the time to read all that they'd spent time to write. All I can say for myself is that some of the politically-targeted posts become a little harder to "get" when you're not in that particular climate anymore, and they've both been posting for a long time. Regardless, you should all go read their blogs. Now.

And while Matt didn't get a whole blog post announcing his arrival to the HIAHS world of link-worthy blogs, I did try to point you to his site when I added his site. And he's only been posting since January, so you have no reason not to be able to read the whole posted history there. And you should, so you can celebrate with them one day when they get to have a baby.

Friday Random Ten

Today's random ten has a little more variety than last week's, but I still have a lot of music to load into my iTunes land. I'm not sure when I'll get to that -- I have to go all the way from the second floor to the basement to get to the rest of the CDs, and two flights of stairs are apparently difficult for someone doing a triathlon in two weeks.

Forever Yellow Skies by The Cranberries, To The Faithful Departed
Leader of the Laundromat by The Detergents, Dr Demento 25th Anniversity Collection
Los Peces En El Rio by Mannheim Steamroller, Christmas Live
Scum Sweetheart by Audio Adrenaline, Don't Censor Me
Nightlife (Live) by B.B. King, Live At the Apollo
You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome by Madeleine Peyroux, Careless Love
Hard Times by Wayne Watson, A Beautiful Place
Crazy Times by Jars of Clay*, Much Afraid
For All You're Worth by Petra, No Doubt
I Am...I Said by Neil Diamond, The Essential Neil Diamond

The one novelty song on the list is a parody of "The Leader of the Pack" from the '60s, which I've blogged about before. This version, even though the laundromateer throws the singer's clothes in front of a garbage truck upon being dumped, did not cause me any tears and sadness. The Christmas song in the group didn't sound Christmassy at all, so it wasn't disjointing. Otherwise, I really enjoyed the transition from B.B. King's strong, deep voice to Madeleine Peyroux's light, sweet one. And I liked the irony of having a song about hard times and crazy times next to each other, when we're living through hard times in a crazy world now.

*Acts I've seen live. I haven't been to many concerts in my life, but if Jars of Clay keeps showing up in the list, I'll keep having asterisks to put in place.

Lease on Life

Moving from the Austin housing market to the Santa Barbara housing market made this an easy choice for us. When you can't buy, you have to rent. Closed case. This wouldn't have been our first choice, but there are a couple of things we had forgotten about renting, and we have become reacquainted with those benefits.

The biggest benefit is the house maintenance, or the lack thereof. When we moved in there was a non-working furnace. Since then we've had poles fall over in the back yard, a mouse infestation, and a garbage can mishap. In every case we just call the landlady and magically people fix things without expecting money from us. It's been shockingly great. We haven't had to dig through the phone book to find someone that is (hopefully) reputable, and we just generally haven't had to worry about anything. I did change one light bulb once, but that's about it in the maintenance department.

Then, since it's not our house, the owner is the one who is responsible for the yard. I can't remember the last weekend when we didn't need to work in the yard. Not that we worked in the yard every weekend by any means, but we needed to. Now, we don't. A gardening trio comes every other Monday to make the yard beautiful, and we just eat the ginger and the oranges that grow there. And the grapes, once those are ready. We're not even responsible for the water bill. Crazy, I tell you!

Renting is phenomenally cheaper than buying in this town. We are living in a much more expensive part of town than we could afford to buy in, and we're sort of getting spoiled. We have a bigger place than we did in Austin, but we're still putting away a decent amount each month. How weird is that? By the way, we love this part of town -- anyone want to donate to the Help-Heather-Buy-The-House-She-Lives-In fund? Nobody buy this house while we're working on building up that fund, okay? Fat chance, I know. Our furniture has made this place seriously appealling and it's starting to annoy me. If one more realtor tells me how great our furniture looks in the house (grrrr)...but back to the point at hand...

With all the time and money we save not working on the house or in the yard, we can actually enjoy our weekends. Some of this comes from my fancy schedule where I'm done working at 3pm and have this whole giant afternoon to do the stuff that has to get done, but some of it is that there is just less stuff to be done. This weekend we went to the Botanic Gardens, and figured out what that nifty tree we saw on our first hike was. It had this dark, smooth bark, and these light green leaves, and the almost backward-ness of this coloring was really pretty. Well, now we know it was a variety of manzanita. And now we've seen about 30 more varieties from groundcovers to bushes to trees, some with berries and some without, and I believe I am smitten. Then we drove to the top of La Cumbre peak. It's only 4000 feet, but next time we go to the top of that mountain, it'll be on bikes.

Next weekend we have an appointment with the chalk-drawing festival that goes down on the grounds of the Old Mission. No worries -- you'll get an update of that, but I'm looking forward to it. The great weekend excursion opportunities make me want to cancel that trip to Texas in a couple of weeks for the company summer party and the annual triathlon of the women in my family. But I won't -- it'll just make me enjoy the weekends when I'm in town that much more.

Friday Random Ten

After realizing that all the cool kids are doing it, I decided to try it out. Well, some of the folks that blog regularly that I read, anyway. Most of my CDs ended up in storage before I could get them all uploaded into my iTunes library, so I have a limited selection. It's also old, and not too many unknowns in my pile of stuff. I'll have to work on that. In the meantime, here is my first edition of the 10 random songs that iTunes gave me to work with on a Friday afternoon.

Liquid by Jars of Clay*, Jars of Clay
Heart To God, Hand To Man by Geoff Moore & The Distance*, Evolution
Babka Breakdown, Country Cooking (random bluegrass instrumentals)
No Need to Argue by The Cranberries, No Need To Argue
Particle Man by They Might Be Giants, Dr. Demento 25th Anniversary Collection
Crash Into Me by Dave Matthews Band, Crash
I'm Gonna Fly by Amy Grant, The Collection
Night On Disco Mountain by David Shire, Saturday Night Fever
Dancin' Fool by Frank Zappa, Dr. Demento 20th Anniversary Collection
Maybe Tomorrow by Sixpence None The Richer, This Beautiful Mess

This was a very jarring set -- from upbeat bluegrass to low-key Cranberry-land to Dr. Demento. And what's up with two different novelty songs ending up getting thrown at me? It sure was nice to end with Leigh (Bingham) Nash's airy vocals, and that made me want to go relisten to that whole album.

*Acts I've seen live. I haven't been to many concerts in my life, so you won't see too many of these asterisk thingies in the random 10.

"We Bleed Maroon"

I'm not a big fan of country in general, but I did go to Texas A&M. That means if you want to go out, you'll have to listen to country music. And I have to admit that I like a good two-step with a good strong dance lead. I have one country CD in my collection, and it's a Garth Brooks collection. When my husband and I started overlaying our CD collections, this was the only duplicate -- and his only CD in the country genre as well. It's one of those silly coincidences that seems more important than it really is.

So, country music always intrinsically reminds me of A&M. And then a friend sent me a link to a song called "We Bleed Maroon" by Granger Smith who recently graduated from A&M. He's, apparently, already an established country singer, and this was his tribute to A&M, the kids that died in the bonfire accident a few years back, and to the Aggies that have fought and died in various wars. It's the most overtly Aggie song I've heard since I quit living on campus. I really enjoyed it in a sentimentally sad sort of way, and I hope you like it, too. I can't say every part of the song will make sense to folks who didn't attend this institution, but I think parts of it are universal.

Let me know what you think. I'm curious to know if it translates to non-Aggies.

Big Plans

Last night, on my flight back home, I ended up sitting next to a little girl. It was a long flight, and she was obviously bored (I can't remember how many times she read the airplane safety card from the seat pocket in front of her), so she started telling me about herself. She's 14, but she'll be 15 soon. Her mom lives in Texas and her dad lives in California, so she travels back and forth a lot. She generally spends a couple months with one parent and then switches to the other. As a result, she doesn't go to school much. It takes them a while to figure out how long she's staying and then they get around to getting her enrolled, and then she leaves again. She's been in Texas since February, but since it's May and school's almost over, she won't bother going again until the fall. She also has a boyfriend that she's been with since she was 9. They are getting married when she turns 18 -- she already has a ring. She has two older brothers who are really good friends with this guy, and everyone approves of their plan. Her mom just wants to make sure she waits until she's married before she has kids, so this seems the best way to do that. Once they get married they'll honeymoon in Amsterdam before they settle in Colorado, because it's pretty there.

Now, I realize I got all this information from her perspective, so some of it may be off, but it still scares me. I'm not planning to write about how her family is failing her from a gazillion directions. Instead, I'm more concerned with all the plans she's made and how set she is on them and how devastated she'll be if things don't go according to them. And, let's face it -- that seems likely. This is pretty forefront in my brain, since I just divulged how I had these plans about imaginary children on a very real timeline. I hadn't figured out what schools they'd go to or which sports they'd participate in or anything like that, but I still had enough figured out in my brain to be disappointed when my expectations were delayed again and again.

Or, I could just be bitter that she has so much confidence that this will all work out and I wish I could still have that kind of hope. Instead, I find myself rewriting plans in my head all the time with caveats and alternate paths and worst case scenarios. I hope this girl's can be the kind of hope that turns a person into an eternal optimist.

Happy Mother's Day?

Mother's Day has become an increasingly difficult holiday for me. In my more naive years, I assumed that getting married at 21 meant we'd start having kids by 25, and have a nice trio by 31. Three months from my 31st birthday that picture is clearly out of synch with the real world. Recently, I was playing with a friend's 3-year-old who announced, "You're a mommy like my mommy." They must have been talking about how mommies are adult women and daddies are adult men in daycare or something, and I seemed to fit the bill of a woman. Then, kids are one thing, but for some reason I had two women that sent me emails towards the end of last week signed off with "Happy Mother's Day!" I guess they thought they were being friendly, but it was depressing and hurtful instead.

Let me just try to be real clear here -- don't wish women Happy Mother's Day if they don't have kids. It's not Happy Woman's Day, and it's not the time to try to motivate people to reciprocate in kind just because you're so happy you're a mother. This is a holiday for people who actually are, or have been, responsible for the raising of a child. It's a time to thank your mother for how she helped you become the person you are today. It's also, unfortunately, a time to remind people who don't have kids that it's not a day for them.

I completely understand that some people don't want children, and are happy to have no part in this holiday (I doubt they want to be wished a Happy Mother's Day either). Others aren't in a place in their lives to be ready for that leap into parenthood. No problem. Some of us, however, wish we did, and would prefer not to be reminded that we're not there yet.

I've actually been reading blogs from a few folks struggling with infertility, some for a while now. Not that I'm actually dealing with the same sorts of medical issues that they are, but because I'm struggling with some of the same emotional issues. I'm ready for all the joys and pains that come with parenthood, and parenthood isn't ready for me. It's not easy to talk about, because it's not like we have any clinical fertility issues that we know of. I can't even bring myself to write about it here, but suffice it to say that we don't need an RE, we need a psychiatrist. So, we're not ready to go down any procreation paths. But I want to. Really. So quit trying to make me feel bad, and let me just celebrate this holiday as a daughter.

Back in Austin

I know, I know -- I've only just barely been gone from Austin, and I'm already back for a visit? Well, it's true. I can't help it if I still work for a company based in Austin (we had a work retreat this past weekend) and if my best friend decided to still have her baby here where she lives (silly people having babies in the town they live in).

So, I'm back for a week and a half, and it's been interesting. I haven't really missed Austin -- I've missed seeing people I love, but not really the city. Coming back didn't really feel like I was coming home -- I really feel like I'm visiting. I know I don't belong here. I couldn't even bring myself to tell someone to avoid a traffic trap I knew would be there, because maybe it's changed since I left. I've only been gone for six weeks, but it was like I was visiting a town I lived in in elementary school. However, I really don't think it has anything to do with not having liked Austin -- I loved it here. I think, instead, it comes from all the moving I've done growing up, and how easily the concept of "home" shifts for me. Austin just isn't home anymore, regardless of how long it used to hold that moniker.

No judgement, just an attempt at an honest look at my motivations and reactions. I love family and friends, and they make "home" for me -- not the place or the buildings or the restaurants.

However, if they could open a Chuy's in Santa Barbara, I really wouldn't mind. I even promise to act nostalgic when I eat there.

Working From Home

I officially work from home now. I have moved somewhere where my company doesn't have an office (read, outside of Austin), so I'm working out of my house. This is a new thing for me: I wake up in the morning, walk upstairs and start my workday. I'm still working my same Central time schedule, so I start my day at 6am, and am finished by 3 or 3:30.

This has plusses and minuses, as does everything, I know. The biggest plus is that I have all the time in the afternoon, all to myself. This will become a minus at some point in the future, but for now I'm really enjoying it. Here are the kinds of things I've been doing with my 3-5 hours before my husband gets home.

Running I go out my front door and I'm running in the foothills of the mountains. The Texas Hill Country has it's name for a reason, but out here I'm doing more hill work than I ever did in Austin. The first day I went out running I pretty much died after just 3K. Pathetic. And I thought I was training for a marathon at one point? I'm getting better, with a solid 5K yesterday, but the effort is more significant than all the people who pointed out I'd be running at sea level made it sound. I guess they didn't realize I'd be running from sea level to 600 or 700 feet in a very short run. One thing is sure -- I'll be in good shape if I keep this up. Also, I think my GPS running partner thingy has an elevation setting. I'll have to check that out.

Yoga Alternating with my running, I've been doing a surprising amount of yoga practices in my living room. I can really see my flexibility getting better, but mostly I just do it because it keeps me from being sore after the running, and my back is killing me sitting in the crappy chairs we have for me to work from (to be corrected very soon, I promise you).

Movies Some afternoons I just want to watch a movie I really like. I had forgotten how certain story lines went, so I had to rewatch them. My husband likes to buy movies that were good for some reason, but then they often sit on the shelf, never to be watched again. I like to buy movies that elicit emotion or are thought-provoking or for some other reason are rewatchable. And then I watch them a lot. I can't tell you how many times I've seen Gattaca at this point in my life. What do you mean you've never seen it? Go rent it now!!

Crafting The box that was the most lethal to my unpacking endeavors was the one with all my craft stuff in it -- needlework projects and sewing projects and crocheting and knitting projects. Pretty much all of my in-progress projects had a bit more work done on them. None of them are done, but then you spend time on ten different projects, and see how close you get to finishing any of them. Who am I kidding -- the most fun is starting a project, not finishing it!

Shopping For those of you who know me well, this probably makes you think I've really become a Californian and decided I like shoes and clothing. Ha! I have three grocery stores in walking/biking distance, and one or more see me three times a week or so. For some reason I really like going to the grocery store because....

Cooking I've always enjoyed feeding people, but now I'm really enjoying cooking. I've made some elaborate meals -- curried chicken from scratch with lamb samosas and lentil soup; twice cooked pork with green peppers; ginger soy salmon with stir-fried asparagus; fajitas with spanish rice and refried black beans, which are surprisingly easy to make; ragu from scratch; etc., etc., etc. We've only eaten out a few times since our kitchen gear arrived in the moving truck, and those few excursions have further made us resolve to eat at home. We've eaten really well, and we've got more leftovers than any refrigerator should have to have. One of my goals with all the cooking is to not let any food go bad. This has required more trips to the store for odd ingredients to complete certain meals, and has also made me have to be creative with what's left over. Who knew the sourdough bread I made that didn't turn out so well would make great bases for a little pasta sauce, cheese and parsley all melted and toasted in the oven?

Baking Going along with the cooking, I've had this desire to start baking again. I've made bread, cookies, rhubarb pie, cupcakes, and more. Part of this has to do with the fact that my husband started biking to work most days, and that means he has 33Km round trip of biking exercise every day. My husband's a skinny guy, and since I can't have him wasting away, I have been having lavish snack spreads for him when he gets home at night.

I know, I know -- it sounds like I've become all domestic or something, but I'm really enjoying it all. Mostly I'm enjoying the time to just discover and rediscover things on my own. My husband is such a homebody that I used to never be at the house by myself unless he was out of town. This has been a great reversal for us, and one I, for one, am enjoying so far.

Making Lemonade

We're pretty well settled into our new place out here, and we're figuring out the working from home/biking to work stuff. We're also living in a house that is on the market, and that has led to some interesting challenges.

Since I work at home, that means I have to plan to be out of the house anytime they want to show it. This is the house.

There. Now it's been shown. Then, once a month, we have to be gone all afternoon for an open house. Why did we take a lease with those kinds of requirements? We really like the area, and wouldn't otherwise be able to live in this part of town. Oh, and this is the backyard. You can't see the orange trees, but if you were here you could smell them.

We really like the house. Also, we think the owner is asking way too much for it, and we don't think it'll sell.

Conveniently, they have to give decent notice for these inconveniences, so we're making the best of it. I plan trips to the grocery store when they show the house during the day. This past weekend was the first open house that we had to be gone for, so we decided to do more than go run errands.

We drove up to Ojai and went hiking in the mountains. The goal of the hike were the waterfalls in Matilija Canyon, but we didn't quite make it. The views were beautiful, with these dormant purple trees mixed in with the green ones up and down the mountain sides. The river made for pretty stop-offs and cool, relaxing breaks. And then we came to the spot along the river that meant we wouldn't make it to the waterfalls. We found a large, deep pool, and we had no choice -- it was time for a swim. We jumped in the nice cold water and enjoyed the sun through the trees. It was indulgent. Afterwards we laid on the rocks drying out and then headed back.

We did pass someone who was returning from the waterfalls, and he said they were the most beautiful he'd ever seen. But we just didn't have time. We'll have to go back, and make it an overnight trip next time. I'd be up for that. I mean, really, who could pass up the most beautiful waterfalls? We just got sidetracked by a great pool, and didn't quite make it. It was still a great hike -- about 6 hours, and we were glad we went.

There appear to be lots of these great hikes around here, so we'll have to make sure to see more of them.