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beemerbob
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Country: United States
State: Oregon
Metro: Portland
Birthday: 10/13/1973
Gender: Female
Interests: * my three children * adoption * travel * reading * exploring the difference between "christianity" and following jesus (i like jesus better) * my husband (fascinating) * writing *
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
2/24/2005
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| I have plenty of time to cut and paste another entry for reasons that will become clear.
Here's the message I just emailed my boss:
Despite how terribly tacky it is to take vacation and then come in late my first day back, I may be in late this morning.
Put the kids to bed on time at 7:00 p.m. After only 4 times getting
out of bed (between the 3 of them - pretty good), they were all
asleep. Definitely a good night! Spoke too soon. At 10:00 p.m., Aden
woke up. Came into our room with a very cheery "Hello!" by which she
apparently meant "now that I've had a 2.5 hour nap, I'm happy to keep
you entertained for the next several hours." At midnight, tired of
repeatedly sending her firmly back to bed, finally locked her door.
Have spent the last 2 hours since then listening to said child cry and
scream and pound on her door. (Have considered looking up exorcists in
the yellow pages due to raging male voice eminating from child.)
Please feel free to turn me in to Child Protective Services for locking
a 3 year old in her room - maybe they'll take me away to someplace
quiet with padded walls where I can sleep.
That said, I may need to sleep in a bit in the morning to feel
functional. I want to give myself the option by turning off my alarm.
Thus the "may be" late. Perhaps I'll wake up right on time and be
ready to go and this will be but a distant memory and I won't want to
shake the baby anymore. (For the record, I haven't yet given in to
that desire - please give me an award, as I feel I've earned it - a
gift certificate to the exorcist would be appropriate.)
Please accept my sincerest apologies for my potentially late arrival.
B
So you can see that things have been quite entertaining around here this evening. Yay for xanga to distract me.
This is what she SHOULD look like right now:
This is what she looks like when she starts hearing "the voices":
This is what she DOES look like right now:
(OK that one wasn't really her, but it's symbolic.)
This is what the she'll look like with Tantrum Hangover in the morning:
And this is why no one believes that she has tantrums:
"Would an angel like me throw a tantrum? NEVER!"
Well, it's now 2:15 a.m. west coast time and I haven't heard a sound
from her room for about 5 minutes - longest stretch in 4 hours.
So I'm going to bed to (knock on wood) sleep.
'Nite y'all.
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| I like musicals. I admit it. I sing at the top of my lungs
and pretend I sound just like Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins or the
Sound of Music or like Ariel in the Little Mermaid.
Hell, none of you can hear me... I DO sound just like Julie Andrews.
That's me, when I did Sound of Music.
Bad hair, but I'm still a hottie. Fun times.
I was chatting today with my good friend Jody (who also lives with my family and helps us with the kids - yay, Jody!).
Jody has some fabulous ideas about life. My favorite idea of hers
so far is that life should be just like musicals. In fact, she's
decided that when she converts to Mormonism (she's considering it,
since they get to have their own planets when they die AND they wear
super hip holy underwear like this...)
that she's going to require people on her planet to live life like a
musical. Now, she still has some major questions about Mormonism
like... will the planet really be hers or will it be her
husband's? If it's her husband's and he has other wives, will she
still be able to be in charge of decorating the planet? What
exactly is required to acquire one's own planet? And how
comfortable is the holy underwear?
(Belated Disclaimer: Now that it's too late and I've stuck my
foot in my mouth, which is very typical of those related to me, like my
brother jefu, but not like my sister-in-law incheonlovemachine who
was blessed with tact, I'd like to say that I have Mormon friends who I
love very much and who will undoubtedly find this entry amusing, since
they know I also make fun of my own "labels" and beliefs. If,
however, you don't know me well, I understand the above could come off
as offensive and condescending. It's not meant to be either, I
promise! My brother and sis-in-law, though incommunicado at the
moment, *will* back me up eventually!)
So back to Jody's plan...
She's decided that everyone on her planet will be required to live life like a musical.
What does this mean in reality? Well, first off, whenever the
mood comes upon you, you'll be able to break out into song. When
someone says something like, "hey, can you grab my laptop cord and plug
it in?" and your mind goes straight to the Glade commercial and you
want to sing, "plug it in, plug it in," you CAN while still maintaining
your socially appropriate standing. How great is that??
What's more, you'll be able to break out into song and dance that's
been perfectly choreographed to your surroundings and those around you
will take part, acting as your chorus for the major scenes in life -
the marriages, births, deaths and firings.
There will also be numbers that happen in a vacuum while the rest of
the world moves on around you - duets between you and another player in
your life,
or, the BEST part, which will be inner monologue portions... those
times when the lights dim, the spotlight shines directly on you and you
sing your heart out while everyone around you ignores the fact that
you're spilling your guts.
How fun would that be??
PLUS you'd get to learn how to do that all-important dance move where
you jauntily skip onto a ladder-back chair with one foot on the seat
and the other on the back, shifting your weight gradually to the back,
until the chair tips and you spring off the other end looking
oh-so-coordinated and athletic, much like Ellen Degeneres in that
American Express commercial.
Seriously, how cool would that be?
Answer: super cool!
Do you get to choose whose planet you live on? I want to live on Jody's planet! | | |
| I hereby mostly promise that my next post will be humorous rather than heavy. Mostly because I could change my mind. 
I've been reading on others' blogs some interesting things about death
lately - perspectives on tragedy. Here's what I've got...
Death, the big Why.
Here's a little background. I started losing people close to
me
when I was young. Because of that, I developed a fairly jaded
perspective on the whole issue. I never rejected or denied my
faith in God, but I did reject the idea that God regularly intercedes
in this world. In fact, I came to believe that, while miracles do
occasionally happen, you could pretty much count on God NOT interceding
and depend on shit happening. God would be there to comfort you
and that's about it.
I've lost so many friends, I've honestly lost count. That's what
happens when you grow up in more dangerous parts of the world, with
family and friends working in dangerous occupations like missions and
relief work.
In August, I lost another friend - one I'd frankly lost direct contact
with since high school, but I stayed up to date on the happenings in
his and his wife's lives, as they'd become missionaries in the place we
grew up together. He was a helicopter pilot doing relief work in
remote parts of the Indonesian jungle. His helicopter crashed and
he left behind his wife and two children age two and under.
I started in with my "well, this happens" bad attitude. But
something about Neil's death was different. Maybe God's been
working on me these 20+ years.
Here's some processing I did a few months back on the subject. It's LONG - forewarned is forearmed.
I've spent the past week thinking of little else and crying
intermittently (which is a challenge at work!) It's amazing what an
effect Neil's death and Sandy's grief has had. I haven't seen Neil or
Sandy
since we were at Faith Academy, and yet the combination of growing up
at Sentani International School with Neil, going to Faith with both,
being in a dorm with Sandy and then the fact that they've been serving
at "home" for me, flying with pilots I grew up with - it's all hit so
close to home.
Neil's death brings up every other loss of life I've
experienced - so many pilots I know who're gone, people who've died so
young. And I find myself identifying so strongly with Sandy, as a
mother of little ones now set to live a life she couldn't have
anticipated. It's just been a gut-wrenching experience. Thus the
question about plans Stateside for a memorial service. I don't know
whether or not it'll be a comfort to Sandy to have lots of people
come, but I've felt a strong pull to be in the presence of others who
are experiencing this, too. It's rare, among mission field tragedies,
to get to be with people when this happens and I'm weary of
experiencing death and tragedy alone.
I'm finding that Neil's death is challenging a lot of my typical
responses to death and is making me look at "tragedy" differently.
I've had death issues for years - really ever since losing Gary
Willems to a plane crash in Irian when I was in 8th grade. Our
families were very close. It was the first time I had absolute faith
that God would heal him, but God didn't intervene in that way. I
remember sitting with his wife Kathy in that private room in Sentani
within an hour of learning her husband was gone. I remember her shock
and yet I also remember her comforting and reaching out to me.
For the past 18 years - I can't believe it's been that long - I've
struggled with death, with its purpose, with God's role in death. I
try to be jaded, and yet I'm finding that jaded isn't serving me well
these days. I used to have a flippant, bitter response and this
attitude that, while God doesn't cause bad things to happen, God chose
not to stop it either, so the responsibility for the grief and sorrow
can be laid at God's feet all the same. I don't know if I'm finally
gaining some of the maturity that other Christians seem to have a lot
younger than me, but I do feel that God is teaching me things this
week through Neil's death that I've been unable or unwilling to learn
in the past.
I've been thinking a lot about cost. Something that an old dormmate
wrote at the Faith website really caught me. She wrote about the
woman who poured the expensive perfume over Christ's head to annoint
him and about the people who told her she shouldn't've wasted the
perfume that way. And Christ's response that the people were making
the mistake of paying attention to cost and not to him.
Neil's death, Gary's death, my girlfriend Gloria's death two years ago - the list
goes on with so many more, but these are the most personally
significant at the moment - the cost is so very high. All of the
three I mentioned were in their early 30's. All were serving God
actively and had so much to give a hurting world. Neil and Gary left
behind wives who need them. And Neil left behind those two precious
little ones who need their Daddy. All of them spent most of their
lives training for their work for God's own glory, only to do that
work for a matter of months. The cost just seems too great to lose
them.
And yet, I believe I've been mistaken all these years paying
attention to the cost of these events and failing to look at the glory
that's
been given to God in the process. If showing the world who God
REALLY is is the most important thing, and that's been accomplished,
isn't that where my sights should be set? If God is there to
sustain, hold up,
strengthen us who experience these things and God fulfills all of his
promises, who am I to stand here for 18 years arguing with God about
the price we've had to pay?
It's a new thought and strangely
comforting. We still pay the price - just like the woman still had to
pay for the perfume - and the grief is deep and hard and painful - and
yet the price yields a beautiful product. Perhaps I'm just more
willing to live in the "gray" of the world - the place where Neil's,
Gloria's and Gary's deaths have tragedy *and* beauty, rather than the
black and white that this feels only wrong.
The ironic thing is that, in the past, death has made me hold those I
love with a closed fist, as though if I love them fiercely enough, God
won't take them from me. Neil's death and all the emotional/spiritual
processing that's come with it is allowing me to hold those I love
with a more open hand, trusting them more to God, knowing that I could
have them for only a short time, but trusting that God's will is
sufficient and that his love will sustain me no matter what comes. I
love them just as much, but with less fear.
The older I get, the more beautiful and near Heaven seems, too - and
the promise that we'll all be together again without this pain and
these tears and the knowledge that we'll never lose each other again
is more precious. We always joke that "Gloria's gone to prepare a
place for us," but it's not so much a joke as a truth that we believe
that Jesus is allowing Gloria and Gary, and now Neil, to participate
in that great work. And I can just see them, when we arrive in
Heaven, Neil taking Sandy and his children to show them the home he
and Christ have been working on together.
This is really quite silly, but at my brother and Kim's going away
party last night (they're headed to South Korea on Thursday for a
year), we all watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, where a father
and his eight kids, who'd lost their wife/mom unexpectedly 4 years
ago, had a group of people come in and build them a dream home.
They'd been living in a 3 bedroom house - 4 kids per room - and the 16
year old daughter had been primarily responsible for all the cooking,
chores, etc. and maintaining her GPA hoping to get a scholarship for
college some day. They were such a tight, Christian family, and I
couldn't believe that the TV station was showing the way that their
church - all of the members - were contributing to redoing this house
for the family.
It was such an amazing testimony to God, the way that
this father was raising his children with the help of the church
community and what a church community can be to someone in need. Of
course I spent the entire show bawling, thinking about how God was
being faithful to this family who'd lost so much in their mom's death
- and thinking that the same God is with Sandy, Kaila and Micah right
now in Papua. I can't help but think that Heaven is like the ultimate
Extreme Makeover - we get new perfect bodies, new homes to be with
those we love forever and a faithful community of believers along with
the God who sustains us with the ultimate happy ending. Cheesy, I
know, but I'm not so much caring that I'm cheesy these days. | | |
| Leaving tomorrow early morning for a family wedding. Yay for
cousins who are super smart and get married in places like Whistler so
I get to go cool places!
Before that, best book on spirituality EVER = Blue Like Jazz by Donald
Miller. Another cousin recommended it and it's amazing.
What could possibly be so amazing about a book on spirituality?
What could possibly make it interesting? The fact that it's
nonreligious and TRUE and funny. Like deep down to the bone
honest. Like the kind of honest where everyone secretly picks
their nose, but it's in private so you don't have to ever admit it, but
then someone does admit it and you laugh 'cause you know you do it,
too. And it really explores the idea that you can follow Jesus -
the real one from the Bible, as opposed to the one that's been used to
spiritually abuse people over the millenia - while also being an
authentic person who loves people more than you love the idea of
converting them.
My fabulous sister-in-law, incheonlovemachine, talks about this idea in her blog entry from Feb 26. Check it out. It's worth your time and it's another explanation of what I'm talking about. Authentic living. Being real.
Here's what you get with Blue Like Jazz: stories about *ahem*
interesting topics like penguin sex, the best way to read the Bible
(which is while eating chocolate and smoking a cigarette), a super cool
picture of who God is and who we could be, a story about a sexy carrot,
and how to make interesting "hmmm" noises during Romeo and Juliet so
your date will dig you. There's more, but I don't want to wreck
it for you.
I'll just quote the bit before the book starts, the Author's Note, so
as to not ruin any of the fun discovery "surprises" for you:
"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But
I was outside the Baghdad Theatre in Portland one night when I saw a
man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and
he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love
it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I
used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was
before any of this happened."
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| Now moving completely on to a TOTALLY different topic...
I noticed that MunchkinMama gave me only one eprop for my last (and first) post.
That's unacceptable.
Unfortunately, it's my fault.
She's quite right. Recycling old material for a first post = poor
form. In my defense, I was on the phone long distance to S. Korea
under a TREMENDOUS amount of pressure from jefu to
perform. Because she's so familiar with my personal situation and
the fact that I do, indeed, get a 9 hour break from my children every
day under the guise of "going to work," she has every right to demand
more.
Let me take a moment and explain the fact that I do, in fact, have an
actual job in the "real" workplace. I work in the admissions
office of a prestigious, private university, which is a high-paced,
high-pressure environment. Nevertheless, for those of you working
parents out there (and by "working," I mean stay-at-home parents,
because let's just be honest and admit that that's the real work), you
know that those of us who take jobs outside the home are getting off
easy. After being a stay-at-home mom for 5 years (hardest job of
my life), I finally copped out and got a job. Absolutely can't
BELIEVE all the people who now ask me "how do you *do* it?"
Seriously, where were all those people when I had three kids 24/7, no
breaks?? I don't know how I did THAT!
That said, and despite the fact that my 3 year old is, at this very
moment, moaning in bed (having digressed from howling) because she
wants out, I love being a mom. I love it even more now.
There are different kinds of parents in this world. There are
parents who mourn the loss of every stage, crying as a child moves from
crawling to walking or from preschool to kindergarten. I'm not
that kind.
I'm the kind who takes pictures of things like the chalkboard below. Scroll to the bottom of the board.
See those pink letters at the bottom? Let me help. That's
S-T-U-O-P-D-D-A-D-D-Y. Or for those of you less literate than
parents of a child learning to read and write "Stuopd Daddy" or Stupid
Daddy.
Abby, my eldest, is learning to read and write. We're so
proud! She's at the top of her first grade class in the best
reading group. She's kind and well behaved at school. She's
also very much like me and a complete snot when she wants to be, a fact
I admit I find amusing. My biggest challenge as a parent is being
stern when I'd really much rather laugh. This particular spelling
episode was precipitated by Abby's Dad, my husband, giving her a time
out for mouthing off (I mentioned she's much like me, didn't I?).
Abby chose writing to express her feelings.
I love this picture. Makes me laugh every time.
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