Diary of a Ramblin' man
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fun websites..........

Prophylaxis

Look Ma, no cavities! Got my teeth cleaned today by my touchy feely dental hygenist. I don't mind her but I imagine she might be a little much for most. She always touches me a lot while I'm getting my teeth cleaned but this time she kept patting my boob instead of my shoulder by accident. That made me giggle and then she'd want to know what was so funny but I didn't want her to know, so I would just say something funny and she'd laugh and pat me some more - it was like this weird cycle. It took her just a bit longer to clean my teeth than normal I think. She was also very excited about the idea of me getting married so she wanted to ask me lots of questions about that while her hands were in my mouth. You know how that goes....
Hygenist: "So where are you going to have the wedding?"
Me:"uh hunnh. aaaahhhhhhhhhhh aayyyuuuhhh!"
Hygenist: "where?" - takes her hands out of my mouth-
Me: "Grand Rapids".
Hygenist: "Oh, that will be beautiful! What kind of dress do you want to wear?"
Me: "uh aaayrryaahhu aaaaahhhhayyuuuuuhrraaaaaaa."
Hygenist: "huh?" - takes hands out of my mouth-
Me: "I don't really know yet."
Hygenist: "OH!!" (pats me on the boob again, puts her hands back in my mouth)
Me: "aa haa ha haaaa haaa!!"
Hygenist: "What's so funny?" -takes her hands out of my mouth-
Me, grabbing desperately for the first funny phrase I could think of: "Maybe I could have this bib when we're done and use it for a veil!"
Hygenist: "haha ya, that'd be great!" (doubles over with laughter and pats me on the boob some more)

Ya, so you get the idea.

To Do List

I read today about a japanese translator getting hung up with "ix-nay". Apparently Pig Latin is hard to translate into Japanese. Good to know.

Ok, now this is funny too.
ALMOST the other dullest blog.
ToDo.org.uk

Water Water Everywhere

I set a record this morning. 5 sneezes in a row. First time ever for me. Something to be proud of. That's enough work for one day, isn't it?
Didn't sleep very much last night. That sorta sucked because I need the sleep and want to get over this stinking cold.

My "spidey sense" was tingling at around 2AM so I prayed a lot for CJ and Sister and TP girl. I did eventually get back to sleep 3 hours later. And dreamed about spiders. The alarm clock rescued me from that nightmare.

Before I woke up at 2AM I was dreaming a dream where it was dark and there was water everywhere. I was on a boat, sort of, but there was really no distinction between land and boat and water so there was this dangerous, uneasy undercurrent to the whole scene. I was carrying a child and was going to put her to bed for the night. Half way up the stairs I realized she was too heavy/tall/awkward for me to carry. I was carrying her anyway and it was just weird. She didn't seem to have a problem with it but I felt confused and embarassment/shame for not having a natural sense of children or how to take care of them.

Inspiration

I'd like to give credit to the guy who writes The dullest blog in the world. (see link on the left, I'm too lazy to link this right now)
I'm truly inspired.
seriously.
And last night I read http://datinggod.blogspot.com/ the title was What Does It Murmur?
Great entry - ya baby! again -- too lazy. note to self: link this later.

Ok so ya, lately I think I'm stuck. none of my own words seem to wrk but I keep finding other people's words describe better than my own how I think/feel. Somehow that don't fayl raht. Must get unstuck.

So, I'm doing laundry right now. I'm staring at the grain in the wood floor and finding not another thing to say so I think I'll just go fold clothes.

Font-Wanting

Better font? I like this one better. Just figured out how to change it.

Today someone told me about what she thought my dress should look like for my wedding. And again I thought "why do you care?". This is not someone who has ever shown any inkling of an interest in me as a person. Maybe a tiny bit, but hardly any. She even had ideas about my hair. My wedding is a ways off and I haven't discussed much of this stuff or even come up with many of my own ideas yet but here's someone I didn't think gave much of a rip telling me her image of me as a bride. Very interesting.
And she was dead on. I mean - she has my sense of style down. Which I found to be a good thing because it means she knows me better than I thought. Kevin and I talked about that last night - how amazing it is one can feel so disconnected from people and then in a time like this find out they actually DO think about you and/or care.
hm.
Ok. Now do I invite her to my wedding?

And THEN...........

I've linkedthis imploding heart in my links - go check it out if you have time. Fun stuff. She has a cold too.

Belly Buttons

I'm finding out at age 33 I'm not the only person in the world with a
belly button. People say "Well of COURSE! I have one too! SEE?" And I say "OH, my goodness you DO! Right there in the same spot as mine! How wonderful!"

And l thought I was just weird.

Today was fun, exhausting but fun. I actually did get some work done too which was amazing. My co workers are all so geeked for me, which is great fun. Jenny stopped by and brought me a card from her family - with a baby rattle on the front!! ha. It was the only congratulations card in the box she said.

I read something yesterday that I liked.
from Robert Fulghum's Maybe (Maybe Not) He was referring to a friend of his who's father had died at age 82. He respected his father but they had a distant relationship not an intimate one. He went through his things and he found his father's "junk drawer" ---> "And in a flat cigar tin, wrapped in tissue paper, there were tiny teeth neatly glued to a card, with a date under each one in the father's handwriting. Human teeth.
This find was a bit of a shock.
His father was the Tooth Fairy.
All these years he'd thought it was his mom.
Not all the family secrets are bad news."

I really liked that. Because we tend to talk about the bad news but there is good stuff there too. And everyone is full of suprises. It's a sad story, but it's also happy.
My dad and I had a pretty rocky history - not an especially close relationship but as I started to grow up a little more and learn that he was human and that I could let him off the hook of my judgement a little bit we started finding ways to connect. One of the things we did was with a golf ball. I don't remember how this started but we began hiding a bright yellow golf ball places where the other one would be sure to find it -- eventually. Once I put it in the back of his pickup truck so that when he drove around corners it would roll around back there and make lots of noise! I also knew he was just like me and that he'd get annoyed with the rattle in the back of the truck. And I knew that once he parked the truck he'd forget about it again until he was driving around the next corner and heard that irritating sound of something rolling around loose in the back of the truck! I would find it all sorts of places too. Once he even left it in a plant in my apartment when he was visiting, another time he duct taped it to the back of one of my dresser drawers so that I couldn't shut the drawer all the way. It was quite a puzzle until I took the drawer out to investigate! We mostly didn't say anything to each other about it. We talked to my mom about it though, so she got to hear it from both sides and enjoyed our game too. It was an unspoken conversation, a quiet game we had for maybe three years or more. Sometimes one or the other of us would have it for a good long time, trying to think up an even more creative place to hide it. When he died we found the golf ball in his desk drawer and I still have it. He was probably scheming up another great place to suprise me with it! I kept it because it's a reminder that we were trying, we had found a little thing to make each other smile and we were trying to connect. It was a great start.

Kevin and I are engaged!!!

He proposed yesterday afternoon on a small quiet beach somewhere between Saugatuck and Holland, and of course I said YES!
We haven't set a date, but it'll be in the spring sometime.

AHOY!

HappyTalk Like a Pirate Day
This morning I was in the coffee shop getting a bagel and the guy next to me growled AAARRRRRR!! I jumped, then realized what day it was and laughed. What fun!

Whyblog?
Well, I decided to write an entry about why I'm writing this blog. Since I clearly do not know what I'm doing yet - I thought it might be nice to explain. Every writing teacher I ever had said write a journal and write write write write - about what you know - and you'll get better over time. And I never did. So I started a dream journal a bit ago and that was fun for a while -- then I kept a diary online and that was fun too but it got to be too weird trying to keep them both up.

A friend recommended Tall Skinny Kiwi and begain linking to other blogs and suddenly it seemed cool. Having previously been impressed with Salon.com, especially Anne Lamott, I thought I'd give it a shot. Not that I thought ever "Oh I can do that!" Just that I thought hm that might be good to do. So I am. Hoping that once in a while a friend or two might find it interesting. Not that I want to be ingrown about the whole thing either. Sometimes getting analytical/philosophical/allegorical about my whole life gets to be annoying even to myself. So I don't expect a big fan base, but it did get me really excited when I found that 2 people had visited my site today!
Anyway, if you end up reading this entry ever - thanks for stopping by and I hope you had a good time.

Fancy Footwork

Was talking with a friend this morning and she reminded me of me. And I remembered this story:

Once upon a time I had just gone through a thing, and I was telling a friend of mine who had seen me go through this thing about a lot of times already, "I just don't know how this happened!" "I sure didn't MEAN for this to happen" "I sure didn't see THAT coming" "WHY do I keep DOING THIS?!" and blah blah blah...... all that.
She said "You do know how it happened and you maybe didn't exactly MEAN for it to happen but you didn't really mean for it not to happen either. I don't want to keep having this conversation with you for 10 more years so how bout we just cut the crap here." I said "uh........... um....... er........" she said "What is it exactly that you want from me?" I said "uh....... um....... er.........."
She was on to me.

Sometimes we get ourselves so tangled up we can't get out. God loves us anyway and is patient. We can't help it and we can help it and we won't and we could and we couldn't and things aren't always either/or. They are both/and sometimes. I sometimes confess "I was wrong" and I sometimes also feel compelled to add "I am/was so wounded/needy how can anyone blame me" and I beg for understanding. What crazy footwork I do when I don't want to look like a fool when I've done a foolish thing so I play the fool and say I didn't know.....
The other day I fell down the stairs and it hurt pretty bad. I felt really really dumb and frustrated because I WAS being careful and I fell anyway. It was so embarassing also because Pat said "are you OK?" And I said Ya. and then couldn't stop crying so I stayed in the bathroom until I could pretend again that everything was OK.

All this to say that apparently I do still feel the need to act like I have my shit together when I don't.

Perplexing Times

About Me

I like to write
--- don't claim to be exceptional at it but this is one outlet for me and it's fun, people keep reading it and I like that so I keep on doing it.

I'm a MWF (as of 5/8/04) age 34 no kids 2 cats.

Job for pay: Office Manager for a small software development company.

Education: Bachelor of Music, emphasis on Performance.......Which gives me the right to say without bragging that I'm a very good flutist.

I can play other instrments not so well but I have a lot of fun trying.

Like many people, I'm not using my degree to earn a living.

Am conservative in some ways, liberal in others, I have no specific political affiliations and mostly try to keep my mouth shut on political matters since I often don't know what the heck I'm talking about and we're all happier if I just don't try too hard to sound like an expert in this area!

I'm a follower of Jesus - or at least I try my best, so I call myself a Christian. Again, if I don't try too hard to sound like an expert in this area, most conversations about the topic of spirituality are much more tolerable! Currently I am in the process of kinda "de-constructing" and "re-constructing" much of what I have always thought in terms of what it means to be a Christian and Who God Is and allathat.

Likes: Words, Beauty, Reading, Learning, Discovering, Cooking, Exploring Music, Playing Music, Travelling, COFFEE!, blogging, playing Age of Empire games.

Have recently been forced to admit that I am a Closet Martha Stewart.
Hopefully I'm less annoying than many people find her to be and I also hope to stay out of court at least a lot longer than she did.

I recently learned that curling my eyelashes is a great thing.

I love mangos but am super allergic to the oil in the skin. So if you ever want to give me a great gift, peel me a mango and hand it to me on a platter with a fork (or chopsticks).

I prefer chocolate malts to chocolate shakes.

I keep a dream journal. If you're into that - you can get one too at Dream Journal

It happened again today. Like yesterday, I got up way too early. The clock was messed up from the other day when the electricity was out. So I got up at 5:10 yesterday and tried fixing the alarm clock to the right time but apparently I made it worse because I got up at 4:10 today. AM. My routine is to get up and get right in the shower so I normally don't have any awareness of time until I step into the kitchen and head for the coffee pot.
It occurred to me just now as I was writing that - I like my routine. This is what I do these days: Wake up, maybe hit snooze. Maybe not. Pee. Get in the shower - get dressed, do the whole face routine and the hair foofoo thing and then go down the stairs directly past go collect no salary try not to trip over the cat and get a cup of coffee. The coffee pot's on a timer and it is usually done brewing by then. The very first decision of the day is which cup to use. I've been expanding my horizons lately and trying new cups but mostly it's the same routine each day. Then I head for the back porch - which faces the east. During the summer it was nice to watch the sunrise but now that it's Fall - I'm watching the sunrise more on the drive than during Porch Time. Pat is usually already up or getting up about then and we drink coffee together. Talk about our dreams the previous night. Or God, or work, or life. Sometimes we say not much at all. I've been living there 4 months now, and still that is my favorite time of day. Between Babette and Pat I daresay I've been successfully converted to Mornings. At least for now.
Last night I had dinner w/ Ki Soon at her house. We had what she called Korean rolls or something like that. Way good - a little like roll your own sushi. So we "rolled our own" together and ate and had a groovy time.
Then on the way home, Jenny called and said hey can I hitch a ride home with you and then back in the AM? So I said sure and she rode with me to GR. We had a good talk on the drive over so that was cool.
Had a thought the other day and Jenny said she thought it was pretty cool too so I thought I'd write it down before I fergit it. I realize I must not be the first to think along these lines, and maybe it will gel more later but here's the first draft: There's a "knowledge" that comes with sin, a knowing that wasn't there before. And this knowledge is death. It is a curse, although I think we can be freed from the power of the sin itself. The "knowing" is a consequence, and stays with us. So God wasn't kidding when he said to Adam and Eve "If you eat of THAT tree, you will die." And Satan said "Surely you will not die." So they ate. And they didn't die. But they did. And I have eaten and I didn't die. But I did.
So lately, I've been valuing wisdom more. And I think innocence is something to value as well - which is not valued in our culture, it is laughed at, scorned, rejected. I have been so wrong to join in that.

First time ever. My very own Blog. wow.