Thrift Score

I love finding unused kits for Christmas gifts. I feel so high after a successful thrift shop experience. I got Ivy this supercute Lucky girl Lucky shoes Chinese beaded slipper kit for 3$$$!!! Never even opened. And for Aley, a giant brand new hardback copy of Babar and His Children, so bright red and beautiful, I nearly choked on my own nostalgia! (Babar is the Elephant King). 50 cents! I bought Ivy a hardback copy of a neat alphabet of incredible American women. Brand new! 50 cents!!
For everyday, I got Ivy two pairs of Keds (pink with beads, and white leather with charms) 2$$ each! Sol got a copy of one of the best kids books out there, People, by Peter Spiers, 10 cents!!! And a Grinch computer game and one awesome game about the Oregon Trail, 2$$ each!
A stuffed Lion rug, So Cute, looks BRAND NEW!, 5$$

And now for the true miracle of the day-the mommy part of my whole experience!
One beautiful, still in great condition, black leather DKNY bag....

wait for it...

1$$!!!

I love thrift stores! For the still unconverted, I might mention the tons of unused, unopened gift baskets people donate, like decorative candles, bath products, usually priced at three to five dollars! These are NEW, unused, and a great bargain. It is a great way to recycle and live simply.
I mean, where else can you shop, at the same time dropping off all your excess clothing, children's toy's, and other treasures?

A Hard Rain Is Already Falling

So our finances are jacked. But in a way, we needed the push-to continue our educations, to live the simple way we want to, to DISCIPLINE (dare I say it out loud) ourselves and spending....however, before I Pollyanna y'all to death, it is hard. So hard. I am going to have to get a part time job (probably at the Greenland McDonalds) and that feels weird, but it will be so nice to have something to put away, to give to my awesome church, to begin using my groovy budget. My whole family needs prayer above all else. I have such a problem with losing my focus and copping to the system of the world. Just flat out getting distracted from my goals, or freaking out! I want to say public bloggily that Amber, Liz, Hannah, and Vanessa, in so many ways you all inspire me, when you are candid, when you are clever, when you open your hearts and stories, when you make 50 cent bread pudding! I feel like I try to hide alot of things, to always seem like I am JUST FINE! I am getting better at all this.
Maybe it's the peer pressure! :)

All These Things

Ivy is seven. We had so much fun at her party! Bubble machine, 11 pm cupcakes, girly goody bags, and all the Hannah Montana music I could stand! And there, in the background, were my friends, encouraging me, complimenting me, laughing along with me. My spirit is lifted whenever I am around these ladies, and I know that for them, this is how they always are, but it really felt like something that kept me afloat and positive.
And I have to give props to our friend (and freindly preacher! :) , Robb Ryerse for saving the day and unlocking the music hall for us. He had already been a great husband the week before to his ailing wife, and then saved the day for me, when his whole being had to be screaming COUCH, BED, SOMETHING!!!!

I saw Hairspray with the lovely-masking-her-true-level-of-sickness-Vanessa, and all I can say is WELCOME TO THE SIXTIES!!!! I looooved it! I havetogetthesoundtrack!!!!

Later today I want to post some of my favorite Ivy quotes. For now, I will simply leave you with the knowledge that for the first five years of her life, she INSISTED on calling her forehead her "one"head, because there ARE NOT four, just ONE!

My New Addiction

OK, so I am sitting here sick in a sudden way, but otherwise I am doing alright. I actually have two new addictions-my new crock pot cookbook (I want to buy, like, four crockpots and have them bubbling all the time with these delicate, savory, kick ass recipes!), and I LOOOOVE Project Runway! I am way behind so I get to watch reruns. It seems like magic, and maybe insanity the way these designers pull up these dresses from long, square fabric!
I have officially gotten Sol hooked (he likes any reality show that has a vote off). He has to skip the over sexy stuff, however. On the last episode we watched, he was critiqueing-"too much add-ons, toomuch fabric, over designing)
Thursday he will offer his deep opinions on Survivor.
Versatile guy, my littl Sol!

Happy things and Thoughts to ponder

Sol told me this morning that all the kids in his class think that I am the coolest mom in the world. I love this, because of how natural and fun it is to hang out with those nutty third graders. I just love that he sees me as cool! (I told my ultra creepy China Doll spooky story at their Halloween party-always a hit, and actually told to me during a power outage in third grade!) I also am going to help their poor teacher do social studies. To me, volunteering is fun, but teaching seems like it might start to suck real fast.

I think when you grow up with a crazy life, you think there is some right way, some mirage in the distance where everyone is waiting for you to "get it". Imagine my surprise at the humanity and vulnerability of all of us! I am trying to dig my hands deep in the soil of my life, instead of transplanting all the time.

There's some good stuff at the roots!

"Everything in nature bespeaks the mother."
-Kahlil Gibran

Feeling Like a Kite

I feel like I am loose in the wind. I was saying to Cheyne yesterday that our kiddos are nice grounding for me, because I am always thinking or singing or praying (the desperate frantic waited til the lastsec to deal with that one kind of prayers.) But recently I realized how temporal and flawed it is to count on ANYTHING external or, dare I say, earthly to pull us back to this fine place we dwell on. So that is what I am meditating on, praying about, and trying to conceive right now. Trying to pin down the elusive peace, at least a scrap. I want to be more trusting, more deep, less flighty, way more self confident, less needy, etc, etc, etc......but I have finally gotten that I cannot give myself those things. I can change my behavior, write down my dreams, keep an open mind, lose 10 pounds, practice affirmations-still, I have to finally surrender. To my Maker. I have to trust Him in a way I have never been able to trust anyone. And I know alot of folks feel that, but I mean it literally. I have to know He Has my back, someone is with me, I am not alone.

This is the BIG STUFF work of my life.

Pray for me!

Why I love Sesame Street

Ok, so I was a latchkey kid, in a pretty cold home, with borderline abusive punishment, and no exposure to the wide world around. Enter Sesame Street into my life. In fact, enter PBS in general. From Sesame Street I learned to count to ten in Spanish, learned what c-o-o-p-e-r-a-t-i-o-n was, saw hundreds of jobs, Captain Vegetable, and learned that I was valuable and lovable. Sometimes Mr. Rogers was literally the only adult in my life who said "It's YOU I like-not the clothes you wear, or the color of your hair, But YOU I like." He was just a phenomenal human being, as was the incredible Jim Henson. It may sound silly, but I was one of those kids who it really mattered to, changing who I thought I could be, what the possibilities were for my life.

On This American Life, a great radio program from NPR, this grown man talked about how when he and his brother were young, their mother, who was blind and often ill, had a hard time caring for them. They wrote a letter to Mr. Rogers telling him about it. He invited the boy's entire family to his beach house for this long vacation with his family. The boys had no dad, and Mr. Rogers played and horsed around with them, something they were missing so much. The man remembered all the puppets being there, from the land of make believe, but Mr. Rogers corrected him (they have a sweet phone call during the program), saying he never did keep the puppets at the beach house, he just acted out the voices.
The powerful part of this whole story is that Mr. Rogers didn't remember this family. You see, he did this all the time. He felt it was his ministry in the world, and he loved it and soaked up every second.

I stand humbled by his generosity and child like spirit. I watched him roller skate for the first time on his show in his seventies. That is a hero!

We watched the highlights of the early seasons of Sesame Street from Netflix, and one highlight stands out. A very young Jesse Jackson is standing in front of a huge crowd of children, doing this call and response. He would say, "I am somebody" and the children would call it back.
So repeat after me.
" I am somebody."
"I may be poor."
"I may be young."
I may be on welfare."
"But I am somebody."
"I am God's child."
I will close with this quote from Jim Henson, but be sure to scroll down and read the little Kermit poem as well.
"Life is meant to be fun, and joyous, and fulfilling. May each of yours be that-having each of you as a child of mine has certainly been one of the good things in my life. Know that I've always loved each of you with an eternal, bottomless love. A love that has nothing to do with each other, for I feel my love for each of you is total and all encompassing.
Please watch out for each other and love and forgive everybody. It's a good life, enjoy it."

What I Wish I Said

Yesterday my mouth opened before my brain could catch up when talking about how God has been working in my life over the last year and through my church, Vintage Fellowship. I just was never able to throw my whole self into being a Christian, at least not since some heady youth group days. What I feel at Vintage is what I hoped for all along my journey-true community. We hit our speed bumps, but I am not ridiculed for dancing to my own drum, or chastised for my political party, although honest, family style discussions and gentle debates are par for the course, I think.

Robb, one of my preachers and friends, said that the best definition of Shalom is restoration of the world "when everything is as it is supposed to be." or intended to be, or was in the beginning. I have tasted that in deep conversations about loss and the Holy Spirit-or singing with the worship team, or hearing my friends husband tell the whole church he wants to be a better husband, or watching my husband decide to plunge right in, to be baptized into a faith he had only experienced in a very narrow way-I like these glimpses.

So thanks for the love Vintage! I love you right back!

OK so HERE is my fave!

"Love doesen't just sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new."
-Ursula K LeGuin

What is your definition?

LOVE IS....

"the principle of existence and its only end." "a trembling happiness"
-Benjamin Disraeli -Kahlil Gibran

"the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of abeginning, all fear of an end."
-Madame de Stael

"the dawn of civility and grace."
-Ralph waldo Emerson

" to the moral nature what the sun is to the earth."
-Balzac
Love seems elusive - I know I feel it, but for me it seems so hard to define, so tied into my faith and the love Christ showed, but by no means do I think I have pegged it down. I see love in such broken people and it is like a brief ray of sun between the clouds-like all the possibilities for that person shine through in that microscopic moment. My greatest hope is love. I place all my bets with love, and very little with law, and rules. My reasoning is that, in the beginning, God loved us into existence. We write rules and try to find a way to empower ourselves with them-and that is good and in a way, how it should be. But if those rules are rooted in anything but love, they will fall. So, for me, law is fine, when practiced with love, but sure to miss the mark, when practiced with fear-of the unknown, the new, the pioneering territory.

What do y'all think?

What is your definition?

Happy Birthday

Today is Cheyne's birthday.
I feel so grateful.

He is the love of my life.

Random thoughts and Ruminations

So, I feel like I have the coolest church in the world. First of all, I love my sista-friends, but I also like the humanity, transparency, and heartfulness that I always feel. You see, I was an outcast most of my time in the church. Oh, I could shine it on -I joined the drill team-but ultimately I always felt exposed as some sort of fraud: the girl who had gay friends, who dyed her hair purple, who listened to rock. Mind you, I was certainly not the only rebel, I was simply the only one wearing it on the outside, the only one taking them seriously when they said, "any questions?"

Very little of what I did could be considered sin. But the alienation turned my face somewhere else. I remained extremely spiritual, always looking for a path I could fit on. But I missed Jesus. I missed him so much. I felt, because of the way the folks at church treated me, that He didn't want me. And that did lead to sinful choices, and feeling cynical and lost for so long.

All of this is to say, that my belief is that a church that would ask folks to cover up tattoos, to take out piercings, to BE SOMEONE ELSE, someone more mainstream, more "like them", is missing the point, and losing folks like me who have such a heart for God, such a desire to be authentic that we don't know how to shake it,
even though we have tried to be more pretentious.
Pretense is not piety!
I have a Savior who knows me, likes me, and wants me.
Not someone else's version of who I am.
And I am thankful!

Facing the Pain

So, like years ago I was diagnosed with the lovely fibromyalgia, and I've been able to use my usual weapon against illness-denial. So today I woke up so miserable with muscle pain that I had to face the truth. Time to develop a plan of attack. Cheyne took me to get a one hour massage, and that helped alot-although just being in a room so still and quiet and zen made me almost pass out and miss the whole experience! But the symptoms are tension headaches as well as migraines, extreme fatigue and muscle pain, mental confusion, and depression. My mama has it, too, and has her own little pharmocopia going, but I think I am going to have to pursue the alternatives, at least first.

Here is the serious downer-I have to give up caffeine.

RIP mocha everything. You have been my energy source for many years.

Oh well-Arsaga's has neat little teapots of herbal tea.

Thank you to my friends who posted-I just LOVE y'all!

Ness, feel free to introduce me.

OH! The one upside is that massage is one of the number one things that they say helps! Maybe some of my gal pals can come along and get one with me for moral support!

Well, I had a lovely coffee night with my amazing and diverse circle of women friends last night. Sometime I feel so new to the whole Christian thing, and coupled with the knowledge of how wacky and abstract I am, I get afraid that I am going to " mess up" and sy the wrong thing. The silliest part of all this is that these are the coolest, finest ladies this side of the whole Christian thang! Still, i feel like I am young Grasshopper. Which leads to nervous energy, and me speaking in metaphors and too loud and too much. This fear is rooted in my weird (too much so to get in to) childhood. It is sufficient to say that the two women I was closest to growing up never really got me, felt threatened by me, and I ditto for them, for years. So it feels like I am in a dangerous sea, and my boat could capsize at any moment. Lucky for me, these sweet ladies are the perfect companions for this thrilling new adventure-amazing friends.

It all comes down to self esteem and faith.

Anyone who doesen't quite get my metaphors, I refer you to Hannah.