Category: Random

I don’t know where to file these posts.

Ambushed

in·sid·i·ous \in-?si-d?-?s\adj. (Latin, from insidiae ambush)

1. gradual, cumulative, and treacherous in effect

2. developing inconspicuously, with seeming innocuousness, as to belie its grave effect

That’s the thing about depression, isn’t it?

Deuteronomy 25:11-12

I mightily offended a friend of mine yesterday.

This friend is a born-again Christian, but she also has a snarky wit.  (I’m making those things sound like mutually exclusive qualities, aren’t I? Well….) Moreover, she has an easy laugh, even about difficult topics. We’ve had any number of theological discussions. She has always been understanding and generous in the face of my doubts.

When the topic of acceptance of homosexuality came up, her argument was that she couldn’t “pick and choose which parts of the Bible to believe in”. So I posted this internet meme that’s been making the rounds on Facebook and tagged her. I thought she’d find it hilarious. I certainly did. My favorite part:

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

My friend accused me of trying to persuade her not to believe in God, being disrespectful, and antagonizing her.

(…Naturally, I freaked out that SOMEBODY WAS MAD AT ME—ACK! and apologized profusely. She accepted my apology, and then a funny thing happened.

I got pissed. A swirling rage gurgled up inside of me, and I had no idea what was generating it. So I sat on it for a day. Here’s what I came up with:

I was really offended—oh, the irony!—by her accusations. I mean, I was upset that she could even interpret my action in that way. She clearly thought that I had malicious intent, and I was taken aback that a friend of mine could believe that of me.

At that point, I had some very middle-schooly thoughts.)

My point was—my POINT was, we do pick and choose which parts of the Bible to believe in. Lots of people smarter than me have said this before, but the Bible was written centuries after the death of Jesus Christ (a dude I believe existed, a dude I believe was totally righteous, a dude I believe wasn’t the son of God—sorry—but you can believe that! Rock on ’til the break o’ dawn!) by folks who may have been inspired by their Creator but who were also products of their era and geographical setting.

Thus, we might-could extrapolate the messages presented in the Bible and apply them as appropriate in our own time and place.

Anyway.

I really did think she would laugh.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

P.S. Both a friend and my brother worried aloud to me today that I might get dooced.

Of course I might. I think about it all the time.

But what I told both of them is that I value my self-expression more than I value any job. This blog has been transformational for me over the last year. (By the way, my blogiversary is coming up! Gifts welcome! I’m registered at Lord & Taylor! No I’m not!) So if I get fired because of what I’ve written here, well, that will suck big hairy goat balls, but so be it.

Digs

I’ll write about my trip in a minute, but I was just at the grocery store and figured out that two twelve-packs of canned dog food would take me to the end of my time in this house.

Wah. I love my house.

I mean, come ON. How cute is that?

But I’m trying to think positively about my new place. Here’s what’s great about it:

  • 5.6 miles from my sister
  • 2 miles from my new job
  • Very close to many friends, including 4 blocks(!) from Sam
  • Less than one mile from the dog park
  • Two bedrooms and one-and-a-half bathrooms
  • Built in 1949, but completely rehabbed—new refrigerator, stove, deck, fence
  • IT HAS A DISHWASHER. A BRAND NEW DISHWASHER.
  • It’s in Durham, where I need to be, want to be; it will allow me to be spontaneously social.

The “eh” parts:

  • It’s six blocks from a pawn shop.
  • It’s about 100 square feet smaller than my one-bedroom-one-bath.
  • On a good day, you might call it a “bungalow-style” house; on a bad day, you might say it looked like a “double-wide” that had been “turned perpendicular to the street”.

I’m going to invest in some flowering shrubbery.

Revive

I’m about to go on vacation, which means that posts may be infrequent and sporadic for the next twelve days. Headed up to Massachusetts, or as they say where I’m from, Massatoosis. (You know, I was born and raised on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, and I heard many a folk from Watauga County talk about chewing food and dining room sets. I don’t know why they couldn’t say Massa-chew-sets.)

Everyone who has ever traveled I-95 knows that, to quote Obi-Wan, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than the highways surrounding the Metropolitan DC area. Last year, my then-seven-year-old niece, Violet, the four-month-old Redford, and I spent four hours in that bitch of a parking lot, and not at rush hour either. I called my brother to have him Matrix me out of that mess, but the signs were so confusing I ended up driving right into the zone that his Googlemaps had marked red.

On the way home, I got wise—threw my niece (gently, of course, Wa) and dogs into the car at 8:00pm, set the cruise to nine miles an hour over, and hit Durham at 8:00 in the morning. Then I passed out, natch.

So I’m going to try the all-nighter on the way up this time. I seemed to remember having a sample of Vivarin in my first aid box, so I just dug it out. Stamped on the side of the pouch was “EXP 04 99”. Meh. I’ll try it anyway. I mean, the worst that can happen is that it can not wake me up, right? It won’t make me grow chest hair or anything, will it? Or rupture my spleen? Or give me some sort of palsy?

On second thought, maybe I’ll buy some new.

Love & Marriage

Yesterday, since I was in the neighborhood, I stopped by my friends’ new house. C and K live there with their 3-year-old son and 3-and-a-half-month-old twins, and I tell ya, you walk in and the atmosphere just brims with love.

First of all, C and K have one of those relationships that, were they to break up, you would doubt your whole existence. That’s how perfect they are for each other. Each is affectionate and kind to the other. C clearly thinks K is the funniest person on the planet (arguably true). K was just mentioning how ridiculously supportive C is, that C would support her getting a forehead tattoo, if that’s what K wanted. The other day, all three kids were down for a nap, so they went out in the front yard, in the rain, and played whiffle ball together.

And their kids! I told a friend of mine recently that their 3-year-old is one of my favorite people. Not one of my favorite kids, one of my favorite people. He’s just a ball o’ energetic sweetness, and he repeats every question you ask in statement form. Me: “Do you want to sit up here next to me and snuggle on the couch?” Him: “I want to sit up here next to you and snuggle on the couch.” And he asks about me when I’m not around. I’m smitten.

So are C and K. They love their son and their twins so much. And they are just wonderful parents.

Remind me again why they’re not married? Oh, right, because our government says that, because they’re both female, they’re not allowed to.

The Pigness

Yesterday I was to be floating down the Dan River in an inner tube (by the way, woot!—so awesome), and I was going to miss the pick-up time for my CSA produce. I emailed Friday night and asked if anyone would be at the farm earlier. No, came the reply, just go on into the walk-in refrigerator—the produce boxes are under the tarp.

My Subaru bounced along the gravel driveway, past a passel of sleepy pigs. I was reminded of Joel Salatin, the farmer in Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food Inc., who urges his fellow humans to “honor the pigness of the pig”. In the book and movie, his words are juxtaposed against the CAFOs of the midwest and the kill floors of the Smithfield processing plant, which slaughters 2,000 pigs an hour.

The pigs at the farm up the road from my house are clearly honored, raised in the woods, flopping around in mud, hanging out with their porcine pals. I took a moment to honor them myself, and felt a little guilty for having feasted on four strips of bacon the prior evening.

I pulled around past the greenhouses. Four sentries sprinted out to meet me. First, the two herding dogs that I always see trotting around, yoked together by the stick each grasps in his mouth. Today they were emboldened by their comrades—they charged up to the car and barked. One of their peers was a big yellow dog, a labradoodle maybe, shaved down to his patchy skin, and the other a white lamb with a black face. All of them circled the Outback, sounding the alarm. Well, except the lamby; he was quiet.

I disembarked and patted each animal on his fuzzy head. The produce boxes were, indeed, right there in the walk-in under the tarp. As I got back in the car, the lamb tried to join me. Tempting. He was so cute! But I would be traveling this coming week, and my two beasts are already handful enough. Not sure how my mom’s family would respond to having a baby sheep resting on their feet under the dinner table. Plus, I don’t know shit about taking care of farm animals. I would not be able to honor the lambness of the lamb.

The herding dogs honored their herding-dogness by escorting my four-wheeled pack animal back down the driveway for a ways, woofing and nipping at my hubcaps. A black kitty bounded through the brush on the side of the road.