Memoirs of a Wannabe Gypsy is currently getting a little make-over. I hope you will stay tuned and check back in February for fresh content and a slightly new look (but I’m keeping the purple!). See you in February!
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An Option for the Lazy Home-School Mom
On Thursday, Lukus and I have an appointment to check out a school for Taytem, and I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. I know, I know, we’re devoted home-schoolers, but this isn’t any ordinary school. This is a private, classical academy that only has two school days a week, with the rest of the week completed at home. In a lot of ways, it’s like having the best of both worlds, but I’m still nervous.
See, the thing is, I had this wonderful image in my mind about home-schooling – an image that so many other home-school bloggers present so beautifully. I imagined waking up at 6 a.m. with plenty of time to get my own stuff taken care of: time with God, working-out, a shower AND time to put make-up on, then breakfast ready for my family to wake up to. We’d eat together, Lukus would read some scriptures before heading off to work, then the girls and I would do a couple of chores before heading outside for some sunshine and fresh air. Once we’d expended a bit of outdoor energy and enjoyed some nature, we’d go inside with a pre-planned self-learning activity for Eisley while Taytem and I got through Bible, math and grammar. We’d take a little break for a healthy snack, maybe play outside a bit more, then head back inside for Eisley to take a nap and for Taytem to work on history, science, Spanish and art. Then Taytem would take a nap while I worked on my blog, got some laundry done and a bathroom cleaned. I’d read a chapter in a book, study some photography skills or work on a design project. Then I’d start dinner just as my girls were waking up and they’d get out some of their arts and crafts materials while I cooked a healthy and appetizing chicken bruschetta. A day of wonder!
And it certainly IS a day of wonder – as in “I wonder how I pulled that day off that one time, but not anymore,” or “I wonder if that day will ever happen again?” or “I wonder if that day ever existed at all?”
But because Lukus and I are usually up until 12:30, and I literally cannot function without 8.5 hours of sleep, our day usually looks like this: Lukus gets up at 6 a.m., works-out, then leaves for work at 8:30 before I’m even awake. My alarm clock is Eisley, sitting in her crib saying, “Mama, I eat! Mama, I eat!” with the same annoying urgency as a real alarm clock, except Eisley does not have a snooze button. I drag myself out of bed and instead of taking a shower and changing my clothes, my day starts in p.j.’s changing a poopy diaper. We wrap up “brunch” at 9:30 or 10, and my girls start whining and arguing when I tell them they need to get dressed and go play outside, because I have yet to have a quiet moment to gather my thoughts for the day.
Instead of going outside, they follow me around while I pick up the messes they left the night before, and after a few moments of this, it occurs to me that this is not my job. I tell Taytem to take care of her messes and go clean up her room. She whines. Eisley, in the meantime, is thwarting my efforts and Taytem’s by dumping things out while we’re putting things away. I find Taytem in her room, thirty minutes later, room untouched by cleaning efforts, and Taytem is cutting paper into teeny tiny pieces that will end up all over the floor. Still in my pajamas, I’m about ready to give up on any progress for the day and I get on-line. I check e-mails, waste time on Facebook, delude myself that I’m not wasting time on Pinterest, and read a couple of my favorite blogs – all while my children are telling me that they’re already hungry again. I give them a lunch that is a compromise between healthy and what they’ll actually eat, then I turn on My Friend Rabbit for them to watch while I get the breakfast dishes washed. Finally – one moment of progress!
While my children are occupied, I take the opportunity to start on my blog. But Taytem has a honing device for whenever I’m writing my blog, and she heads upstairs to tell me she’s hungry again. I swear, you’d think my child was Michael Phelps the way she’s constantly famished. I tell her she can find her own snack, and please give me a few minutes to finish my writing. She interrupts eight more times while asking about this or that snack, or if I can help her open something, or if she can just look at my blog. Blogging takes about 5 times longer than it should. It’s finally nap-time, and I manage to get the bottom floor of the house at least picked up, and by then, my 4 o’clock slump sets in that tells me I’m exhausted. My shoulders start to ache and I get desperately sleepy. I insist that there’s no good reason for me to be so exhausted, but my body argues with me and it usually wins. This is a body chemistry issue that is being addressed by my doctor, so hopefully, this will not be the case for much longer. In the meantime, I know I can’t take a nap or I won’t sleep all night, so I “rest” by watching Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, or “pinning” on Pinterest. Then I accidentally fall asleep. Lukus comes home to his wife in bed, just the way he left her that morning, with little evidence that she was ever awake at all.
And because I took a nap, I can’t sleep that night, and the cycle begins anew all over again.
I need help – professional help. As in “someone else needs to help me educate my children at least two days a week because I’m mildly self-destructive and can’t seem to get my act together” kind of help. So our appointment is on Thursday. I’ll let you know if a maid that helps do the laundry and dishes is included in the tuition fees. I’m guessing it’s not, but no one had ever heard of “two-day-a-week school” either, so anything’s possible. Except me getting up at 6 a.m. Apparently, that’s the one thing on earth that’s not possible.
Posted in Happy Home-schooling, Uncategorized
The Oatmeal Pot & The Dumbest Thing a Husband Can Say
My husband still has his nose this morning – but barely. I’ve talked about this nose before, how strong and handsome of a nose he has. I tend to marvel at his nose because noses are not typically a noticeably attractive feature, what with it being surrounded by the “windows to the soul” and “winning smiles” and such. But it’s the thought of his endearing nose that restrains me in those rare moments when I want to give him a good punch.
I’m not a violent person. I’ve only ever hit one person in my life and it was a creepy boy in youth group that kept trying to slide his hand up my leg, so after one very clear warning, I stood up and slapped him square across the face – my one, solitary encounter with physical violence.
But sometimes, the people we love the most can also get under our skin the most, and if they keep crawling under our skin, they eventually find that trigger under our arm that makes us want to haul off and make violent contact with their flesh.
Last night was one of those nights. Lukus and I were both extremely tired, Eisley was being especially difficult as she kept demanding to eat some non-existent chips, and Taytem was stalling on her bedtime. We were barely holding on to patience, with every word being carefully measured out of our mouths. Now, in our early days of marriage, we took every little moody tone as a personal offense, not allowing the other person to ever speak with irritability without taking great offense. After a few years, we learned to extend some grace to one another, that it was not worth taking personally, and to give the other some space until the irritability passed. We’ve been fairly successful too, when the irritability descends into disrespect, to be able to say, “I understand you’re frustrated about something, but please don’t take it out on me,” and the other will say, “You’re right, I’m sorry,” and we move on.
But every now and then…every now and then, someone says or does something so insensitive that it’s almost like they’ve turned into a caricature from Everybody Loves Raymond. Like when a husband has gone to great lengths to provide a romantic evening, and when it comes time to turn the lights down low, the wife puts on her sweat pants and rolls over to go to sleep.
Last night, my husband’s body was momentarily possessed by the spirit of Raymond. I had been working for two days straight on some major cleaning projects around the house. I had carried large pieces of furniture downstairs by myself to complete the project. Not to mention that I had been taking care of my girls all day, cleaned their bathroom, put away some laundry, and actually made our bed for the first time in four months. I had worked really hard that day, and was fairly satisfied with my efforts, hoping that they would be noticed and appreciated. And they were.
By our Korean student.
But in a moment of weakness, in that stressful window between getting home at bedtime with the girls and actually getting them into bed, my husband chose that moment to complain about a pot of day-old oatmeal that was sitting on the kitchen counter. Granted, my husband is very helpful around the house, and he doesn’t ask for much, but he really hates dirty dishes building up on the counter. He often does them voluntarily, and all he asks is that I don’t let the pan of eggs sit until it’s like stripping 40 year old wallpaper, and that I don’t let things like oatmeal turn to glue. It’s a perfectly reasonable request, and I should have taken care of it. But I just hadn’t gotten to it, and it wasn’t like I was expecting him to take care of it.
But I, too, succumbed to tiredness, and with a fair amount of defensiveness, said, “Well, I’m sorry, but I had to change Eisley immediately after breakfast, and then I spent the rest of the day doing those two big cleaning projects, as well as cleaning the girl’s bathroom and putting away laundry, not to mention that the girls kept me pretty busy all day.”
And then, to my astonishment, he said it – something every clear-headed husband knows not to say to his wife. Ever. EVER. ”Yeah, but none of those things are very important. I’ve done all of that before.”
Now, I’m not the kind of gal who bursts into tears when something hurtful is said to me. Instead, I get hot all over, and my eyes settle into an angry stare that makes even me uncomfortable. And I get sort of Incredible Hulk-angry. I waited for Lukus to realize his mishap and to apologize, but he remained stubbornly on the path that he was perfectly justified in what he had said. He said it all very calmly and rationally, which only made me more angry. This is when I started fixating on his nose, trying to remember how much I loved it, so I told him he really needed to leave me alone that instant.
I set myself to taking my anger out on the dishes, scrubbing furiously with scalding hot water, not out of spite, but because, ironically, washing dishes is what I do when I’m very angry and attempting to think rationally and objectively.
I allowed myself to cycle through all of the angry things I wanted to say, all of the self-justification, and then, I eventually slipped into mindless scrubbing. When my thoughts turned back on, I began to consider how to be objective. I was definitely hurt by what I interpreted as ungratefulness and lack of respect for what I do every single day, so I knew it wasn’t something I could just let go of. So I set about trying to find the healthiest way to express my hurt, because I have an innate tendency to want to argue a case, and I’m very good at arguing a case – stacking up the facts, what was said, making comparisons about why my position is more right and his is wrong. I’m very, very good at it, possibly because I watched a lot of Law & Order growing up.
But I remembered a marriage seminar we had attended last year, and how they talked about that the facts don’t matter – the feelings do. Stating a case like a lawyer only makes the other person feel like they’re on trial, and people are always prepared to defend themselves when they’re on trial. The most effective and honest way to handle those hurtful moments with someone is to simply tell them how you interpreted their words, and how that made you feel. Simple enough, right?
At least it should be. But when you’re angry at someone, it’s one of the hardest things to do to be vulnerable and simply say, “I’m hurting right now.” Women seem to be a little more capable of this than men, but I seem to be one of only a few women that was born on Mars rather than Venus, so I tend to dislike gender generalizations. Getting angry is what is instinctive to me, and it’s also what’s instinctive to Lukus, so we have to work extra hard sometimes because we don’t always naturally balance each other out.
Still angry, I went to find him to tell him how I felt: that I felt like I had worked very hard that day, and he hadn’t noticed my progress. That his complaint had been annoying, but even more so, to say that nothing I had done that day was important was very hurtful. He was already waiting with an apology; but I had just scrubbed a sink-full of dishes trying to figure out my approach, and I couldn’t let him off that easy, so there were a few sarcastic comments from my corner of the living room before I let myself simply be honest. But he heard me, and the spirit of Raymond left him, and Lukus returned to his senses without losing his beautiful nose.
And I had washed the oatmeal pot.
But tomorrow, tomorrow I will be calling around about the cost of outsourcing for just dishwashing.
Posted in Blissful Families, Uncategorized
My Top 5 Home Goals for 2012
So yeah, I realize that it was only yesterday that I was saying that I’m not a “home blogger”, and yet here I am, about to talk about my house. I’m flaky, get over it. But I do positively adore home design, and after all, we are in the midst of a major renovation over here – though I’m not sure if “in the midst” still applies after a year and half of doing nothing about the exposed beams and bare concrete, but I prefer to pretend that we are still being productive rather than watching long chunks of Mad Men episodes late into the night.
The Nester posted her 2012 Home Goals today, so I’m linking up to share what I *hope* Lukus and I will be able to accomplish this year. Though finishing our kitchen was my “home goal” last year…
And this is all the progress we’ve made so far…
Clearly, we got very little done on our house last year, and it doesn’t look like those lime-green countertops are going anywhere anytime soon. With Lukus finishing up his master’s degree, some health issues on my part, and opening our home to two international students, our home has definitely been put on the back burner. In fact, our only completed projects on this house are still just our master bathroom…
and our pantry…
But I’m feeling good ‘n healthy these days, and the dust has settled with getting our students situated, so I’m ready to start tackling some projects head on once again.
#1 – Of upmost importance to me on the homefront this year is to learn how to take better photos of my home (and everything else that happens to be in front of my camera – like two little blonde rascals I know). I’ve been doing a little self-study, and I plan to attend the Blissdom Conference for bloggers in February to hopefully gain some more tips on photo-taking. Plus, we’re trying to stay a little budget conscious this first quarter, so taking pictures is a nice, free way start out this year’s approach to my home.
#2 – I need to get organized.
Gee, that’s embarrassing. When our two students moved in with us (Hyung Kun from Korea, and Rusul from Saudi Arabia, both young 20′s males), it really made this big house feel more like a home with more people filling it out (the extra money for room and board didn’t hurt either). But since the student English program requires that they each have their own room, emptying out closets and built-in bookshelves to make room for their stuff meant a serious loss of storage. Which brings me to my next goal…
#3 – Have a garage sale! Can you believe I’ve never had a garage sale?! I’m a total garage sale virgin, but considering that all of this stuff:
is currently shoved into my garage, while I have that monstrous pile on my desk, I think we’re gonna have to make some more room around here.
#4 – I want to turn my living room, which looks like this…
…into a little more something like this….
I want to cover our black floors in cork, get an enormous plushy rug, a rustic coffee table (possibly a DIY?), and just have an overall infusion of warmth, softness and comfort. I mean, sure, our kitchen still has lime-green countertops, exposed concrete, five large paint swatches that I have yet to choose from, and no backsplash – but it’s the living room that bugs me most. I want to walk into my living room and feel like it’s the most comfortable place on earth to curl up with a book, or wrestle with my girls, or snuggle with my husband during a movie. Right now, it’s just one, big, unenthusiastic, “Meh.”
#5 – This is much less of a tangible goal than the others, but because we now house students, we host a Bible study, have family and friends over, and we often have political groups come over for campaign strategizing, I want our home to develop that tangible sense of “welcome”. Have you ever watched the show Parenthood? I just feel like the grandparents’ home has that peaceful, welcome vibe that I want; I can smell the pie in the oven and the popcorn through the t.v. screen. That’s probably the entire reason I watch the show, because honestly, nothing ever really happens on the show. But I just know that if I stepped through that screen and entered one of the guest bedrooms, there would be a good book ready to read on the nightstand, some plush towels for my bath, and my favorite watermelon jelly beans in a dish on the dresser. It would be ready for me.
More than anything, that’s how I want my house to feel. I want to have a pantry full of snacks for our students and for little friends that come over to play. I want to have coffee ready for those late night meetings, or wine for when friends talk until 2 a.m. I want artisan soap in my guest bathrooms, a fire going on chilly nights, or all the windows open on a pretty day. I want my house to say to my family, to my friends, and to all who enter, “I’ve been waiting for you! Come on in and feel loved.” It’s what people try to create through make-overs and renovations, but really, I think it’s much easier than that. It’s having thoughtful, little things at the ready. But even more so, no matter how tired I am, or how much I’m in need of some quiet, it’s opening the door with a sincere, bright-eyed smile and a really good hug, and saying, “Come in! Have you eaten yet?”
Of course, I’d like to build a real dining room table (instead of the 6′ fold up table we currently use), DIY some concrete countertops for the kitchen, strip the black and gold wallpaper in the downstairs bath and repaint EVERYTHING in that room, make-over our laundry room, rip out all of the landscaping around the house and put in hardy desert succulents, repaint the exterior….and on and on. But let’s see how things go, shall we?
Posted in Artful Homes
Figuring It Out
I was quite surprised at the number of hits I got on yesterday’s post, more than any other post I’ve ever written in fact, and oddly enough, it made me realize that I just don’t want to write about politics anymore. For one thing, that letter helped me pretty much get off my chest a lot of things I’ve been wanting to say for quite some time, and all my previous efforts to write about my political philosophy felt like I was trying to capture a greased pig (which I’ve tried before; it isn’t easy). For another thing, as much as I enjoy discussing politics, I much prefer the typical face-to-face talks over coffee or fighting about it over Thanksgiving dinner – like normal people. But treatise-writing is not my bag of chips, possibly because I write things like “not my bag of chips.” I don’t think Thomas Jefferson would have used a phrase like that in any of his essays.
The reason why I tried to force the political commentary here was because I didn’t want to be a “mom blogger” or a “home blogger”. I greatly admire those genres of blogging, but I wanted my blog to be for the mom who stands doing dishes while pondering how to solve the world’s problems – like I do. Or for the woman who would rather talk about immigration than cloth vs. store bought diapers. Those blogs are already out there, and I read them sometimes and enjoy them. But as much as I love being a stay-at-home mom, when I spend all day every day with my children, they kind of tend to be the last thing I want to talk about when I get the chance to talk to other adults. I blog to share my heart and to engage in community, and there’s more in my heart than just my children and how to stencil my entryway.
But I don’t have it figured out. I don’t know what this blog is supposed to be, but I know I love doing it. I haven’t figured out all of the cool photography tricks, or how to change some of my graphics, but I’m learning. My blog is a year-and-a-half old this month, and like human one-and-a-half year olds, it’s still just toddling around bumping into things and drooling on itself as it speaks in broken sentences.
To be honest, it’s hard not to get discouraged when you’ve been at something for some time and it hasn’t had it’s breakthrough moment yet, you know what I mean? I just know there are those of you out there that have been working so hard at developing your own business, or ministry, or are trying to homeschool, or what have you, and you love it, and it’s like your baby, but it’s still a constant battle to stay above water with it. Or you’re the mom whose child is just fighting you on the same thing every. single. day. and you just keep plugging through, trusting that at some point, peace and resolution will come. Or you’ve just moved to a new town – three years ago – and you still haven’t been able to make those close friends, or feel quite at home, but you just know that you’re where you’re supposed to be, but nothing’s happening yet.
So collectively, we wait, we hope, we groan a little, then give ourselves a little pep talk. We remind ourselves that for others that it came so easily to, that that is their story, and we have a story of our own to write, and hopefully, it will be so much more interesting than “easy”. We pray, we continue moving ever so slowly forward, we make corrections. We learn new skills and new approaches, we introduce ourselves to new people. We maybe say “no” to some of the things that we have emotional attachments to, but were holding us back. We take a risk, close our eyes, and cross our fingers that it works. We choose to trust that eventually, something will click, or something will change, and no matter what, we’ll be okay.
So thank you in advance to those who choose to stick around through the clumsy toddler stage, and the awkward puberty stage, to the fully-grown only slightly immature adult stage of this blog. I truly appreciate your company.
Posted in Gypsy Souls
Happy Thanksgiving!
Perhaps it’s a bad time to take a whole week off of blogging – right when I could be posting all kinds of Thanksgiving tips and pics, just like a zillion other bloggers right now. But I’m gonna go ahead and take the week off, read some of those zillion other bloggers and their tips and pics. I’m going to read a novel and eat an alarming amount of stuffing and my specialty: brandy apple pie. I’m going to drink wine with friends and play with my children. And I’m going to spend the week writing for next week. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving to you!
But if you want, you can always read a great love story – which just so happens to be mine – right here.
Posted in Uncategorized
The Year of the Tortoise
Haha! Happy New Year, from my munchkins (who can’t sit still long enough for one stinking picture) to you! This is my first sad effort of one of my resolutions to “Take more pictures for my blog.” I must say that New Year’s is my fah-fah-favorite holiday. More than Thanksgiving, more than Christmas. Something about the massive selection of pretty/whimsical/funny calendars just gets me all giddy and hopeful. I’ve had a calendar on my desk for three months that I’ve just been waiting to crack open. Lukus considers this a disease. The cynic.
Every year, I get sucked into the naive idea that things can change, life can get a little bit better, and I can make some progress in bettering myself. Naive, yes, but I can’t help but believe the same for this year – even IF the statistics show that 80% of people have dropped their resolutions by February, and the rest within a few months.
Usually, I go all Type A and make a huge, categorized list of my goals for each area of my life, steps to attain those goals, and then a schedule that will help me live it all out.
And then I become one of the 80%.
But not this year. This year, I’m taking a much simpler approach: make each day a little better than the one before. Rather than burst through the gate with 10,000 changes, I’m going to allow myself to ease into the year with small steps – slow and steady, like the infamous race-winning tortoise. If I take a 15 minute walk today, I’ll make it 20 tomorrow. If I don’t get dinner on the table tonight, I’ll at least cook up some Mac N’ Cheese tomorrow night, and maybe, by the end of the year, I’ll have gone through Pioneer Woman’s whole cookbook.
It’s all very conveniently vague, but utterly liberating for me.
The only resolution I have actually pinned down in my head (besides the blog-photo thing) is to spend one night a week just hanging-out with a friend. It’s so easy to just let friendships subsist on encounters after church, a bit of Facebook interaction, or a children’s play group rather than taking the time to do the things that encourage a friendship to actually grow – like taking a raw foods preparation class with my dear friend, Hannah, or driving up to Tulsa to see a couple of my best college buds. So there it is, my one resolution for 2012: Be a better friend.
Oh, and I want to move forward toward becoming an interior designer.
And I really want to get back to my reading list.
And of course, I still have 10 pounds to lose….
Breathe, Elle. Tortoise steps. Tortoise steps. Tortoise steps.
Do you believe in New Year’s resolutions? Did you make any this year? Have you ever fulfilled a resolution you’ve made, or are you one of the 80%, like me?
Posted in Gypsy Souls
Punching Life in the Face
Did anyone else out there have a really crappy Christmas? To be quite honest, I did. We didn’t have very big plans this year, just a small, simple Christmas at home. I was extremely fatigued the week leading up to Christmas, and a lot of my gift projects (which I’ll share in a later post), didn’t get completed until the last minute. My dad came for a visit and we got into an argument, the girls were so restless during our Christmas eve service that we had to leave in the middle, then on Christmas morning, I awoke with the worst case of strep throat I’ve ever had. I literally blacked-out trying to get out of bed. It was just terrific.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but we have international students living with us – one from South Korea, and one from Saudi Arabia – and they were to be spending Christmas with us (as well as another Saudi student who had lived with us & gotten his own apartment).
Aren’t they cute? I love our students. For our Saudi students, it was to be their first Christmas ever, and I really wanted it to be special for them. But by the time I was able to drag my faint and dizzy body out of bed on Christmas morning at the crack of 11, all we managed to do was open a few presents, then it was off to bed for me, and everyone went their separate ways. I felt so bad for our students, who were probably left wondering what the big frickin’ deal is about Christmas.
To make matters, well, not any better at all, the next day I had to go in for an MRI to check on some pain in my right side. The morning after that, I got a scary freaking phone call saying that my doctor wanted me to come in right away to get several CT scans done. No explanation, just a receptionist telling me that the MRI showed something and I needed to come in THAT day and they would find a way to squeeze me in. Great. Urgent CT scans needed. I was officially freaked out. I was already feeling sick as a dog with strep, and now I had to go get inside some big scary machine that I’d only ever seen on Grey’s Anatomy. Let me tell you, they are bigger and scarier in person.
After urgent attempts by me and Lukus to get a hold of my doctor to see what was going on, he finally called back. The MRI had showed a spot on my lung, and he wanted to check it out. Shouldn’t be a big deal, and he was sorry he hadn’t gotten back to me sooner. Yeah, thanks doc. I was just planning my will is all.
I wasn’t allowed to eat all day (which is just wonderful for someone who’s also hypoglycemic), but they did let me drink a chalky “berry” concoction to illuminate my insides for the scans. I was disappointed that I couldn’t see my veins glow in the dark like I’d hoped. And I love how the hospital staff just assumes that you already know you’re going to have an I.V. put in too.
As I got onto the table to get the scans done, with a machine telling me when to inhale and when to exhale, I couldn’t help but think how ridiculous it all was; that I’m too young for this crap, and I should only know what a CT machine looks like from Grey’s Anatomy and not from experience; that it was the week of Christmas and New Year’s, and I was already sick, and couldn’t I catch a break?
But Life doesn’t work that way does it? Life isn’t on the same schedule you are. Life doesn’t take holidays, and Life doesn’t feel sorry for you and cut you a break because you’d already had a bad day. Life doesn’t care that you’re scared because you’ve already buried your mom too young, which has brought you to the realization that you have no control over pretty much anything. Sometimes Life is beautiful and generous, and sometimes she hits you with a powerful right hook, and as you lie there, you just have to follow instructions from a machine telling you: “inhale”, “exhale”.
That night, after the tests were over with, Lukus and I got dressed up and went to a wedding. The bride was beautiful, as brides always are in their own unique way when they’re full of hope and love. We had some laughs with family members, and I danced with my husband, who had to hold me extra tight since I still wasn’t feeling my best. I have yet to hear back from my doctor, which I’m assuming is good news. But I’m learning that this is how it goes: weddings follow CT scans, a bright new year follows a crappy Christmas, hope follows fear, and as soon as you’ve got your strength back, it feels pretty damn good to plant your feet on the ground, clench your fist, and swing back at Life with everything you’ve got. So to everyone else who may have had a lousy, no-good, sorry little Christmas, I wish you a bright and merry ordinary Tuesday, full of wonder, beauty, happiness and hope!
Posted in Gypsy Souls
How a Nerd Spends a Tuesday Night
Did anyone else watch the Iowa caucuses last night? No? You’re not a nerd, you say? You have a life, you say? Well, I am a proud nerd, who, with my fellow nerds, attended an Iowa watch party last night with a bunch of other Ron Paul fans. There was beer, if that makes it any less nerdy to those of you rolling your eyes right now. It was fascinating. To see the way our system still runs off of the quaint hand-written-name-on-a-paper-ballot, then human beings counting the piles of names and recounting them is utterly charming in my mind.
And if that’s not nerdy enough for ya, this is what my husband and I were up to just 8 days before Christmas:
Isn’t my hubby handsome? I’m incredibly proud of him for the amazing rally he put together. Not only was he able to get several prominent local leaders to speak, but he actually got the nationally-known radio personality and activist, Adam Kokesh, to fly out from D.C. to speak.
Five years ago, you couldn’t have gotten three sentences out of my husband about politics. He was completely jaded by our system and by all politicians. But there’s a saying among the Ron Paul crowd: ”Ron Paul cured my apathy.” I know that a lot of people like to chock it up to a cult-personality following, but to be honest, Ron Paul himself is just not interesting enough to inspire a cult-following. It’s the ideas. And once those ideas penetrate your understanding, there is no going back. There’s no going back to playing the game of “electability,” or falling for who has the best hair, or who has the best campaign slogan. There’s no going back to calculating your one or two pet issues and finding the candidate that happens to line up “for the most part,” regardless of how heinous their other stances are.
The issue is liberty, pure and simple. Does government have the right to play parent and tell people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies? No. Does the government have the right to forcibly take your hard-earned money and just give it to someone else? No. Does the government have the right to spy on you and detain you indefinitely without you being charged with a crime? No. Does our government have the right to try to boss around the rest of the world or else? No. Basically, if you don’t have the right to do it to your neighbor, then the government doesn’t have the right to do it to you.
More and more people are waking up to this message of liberty – the message that Ron Paul has been consistently preaching for the last 30 years. It’s the same message that sparked the American Revolution, the Civil Rights Movement, and now a whole new movement that recognizes that tyranny and oppression can be overcome when people stop clinging to comfort and stand up for an idea. It’s the idea that men and women are at their best when they are free. So often we have thought of government as some faceless entity that has our best interest at heart, rather than an entity made up entirely of human beings who are vying for their own personal power and position. But many are beginning to recognize that those who lead this country need the strong reins of the Constitution to keep them on course. This message, based on sound logic and the inherent value of human beings, when it truly penetrates the heart and mind, cannot help but bring a giddy hope and an endless energy to fight for the cause of liberty.
Which is why, in spite of a ghastly cold, I sat with my friends watching the results of the Iowa caucuses coming in. Not only did he come in at a strong 3rd place spot (though with the lack of funds & organization, Santorum won’t be in 2nd place for long) Ron Paul, in spite of being old, short and not even that great of a speaker, brought in 48% of the votes among Iowans aged 17-25, he consistently has twice the amount of support from active duty military than all other candidates (including Obama) COMBINED, and is consistently polling at 48% among independents. Looks like the good Dr. Paul is still curing apathy after all these years.
So did you watch the caucuses? What’s your take on it all? Who are you rooting for this election?
Posted in Vibrant Minds
Polite Title: Post-Holidays at Home – Real Title: Ungrateful Hag of an Ugly Jerk-House
Whelp, the big, dramatic, sexy, six-month make-over of The Ugly House is still a year and a half in progress, and so far, it feels like all we’ve done is remove a hairy mole when we’ve still got an entire facelift, hairstyling, butt-firming, and Paula Abdul teeth whitening to do. Figuratively speaking. I honestly don’t know how some of those DIY/Home bloggers (which I’m not) turn their houses around so quickly, but it quite disgusts me. And it doesn’t help that I live with a messy (though he makes up for it in good looks) husband, two college boys, and two small girls who could find a way to make a bigger mess out of a hurricane-ravished site. At least our two international students aren’t messy (though I’m possibly in denial because I haven’t stepped foot in their bathroom all week). I just keep reminding myself that the extra income from housing them, as well as their cute faces, make it worth it. The cute faces of my girls though, are starting to wear thin.
After the chaos of Christmas and me being sick for over a week, this is what our house looked (okay, still looks) like:
Wop-wop-wop. How does anyone get any major projects done (like building an arched wall to cover the exposed beams in our dining room, or DIY-ing some concrete countertops, etc.) in the midst of THIS? I feel like I’m constantly falling behind – constantly picking up after children, constantly fighting a mountain of laundry, constantly having to rearrange rooms to accommodate a new student, constantly hanging up my husband’s jacket from off the dining room table….the list goes on.
If it just felt like normal chores – like cleaning a bathroom, or mopping the floors – it would be one thing. Those things can go at least a week without HAVING to be done again. It’s the dailiness of the massive messes that gets to me; feeling like there’s always a pile of SOMETHING that needs to be faced down. And those piles are always telling me in such a snarky way, “You can’t even manage to face me, how do you think you’re ever gonna get another real house project done?” It’s like trying to offer a complete make-over to a bitter, ungrateful hag. If only my house knew what I was trying to do for it – give her a lighter feel, an updated look, a new self-esteem to compete with all the younger, thinner houses out in the suburbs. But no, every time I try to detox my house and get it on a healthy diet of regular sweeping, bathroom cleaning and dish-scrubbing, I turn around to find my house gorging on piles of junk.
But no more! I am NOT going to let those piles intimidate me anymore. I’m goin’ Jillian Michaels all UP in their bidness. Either the piles go, or the piles go ignored and I start on my big projects anyway. We’ll turn this ungrateful hag of a house into a charming Taylor Swift of a house whatever it takes.
Please tell me there are others of you out there with rebellious houses that refuse to clean up after themselves and put on a nice smile for company? Lie to me if you have to, but please tell me, that in spite of all the amazing blogs I see each week where they’ve renovated an entire kitchen in 4.5 minutes, or built a beautiful wrap-around deck with paperclips and recycled cardboard while blindfolded, that I am not too painfully slow and a total failure at keeping house? I can’t let this Ugly House get to me.
Posted in Artful Homes
An Open Letter to Christian Conservative Voters
As a former “Christian Conservative Voter,” this is what I believe they need to hear, though there are parts of this letter that, honestly, is not language I would use in my personal vocabulary today. I had to tap into my former self and my previous mindset in order to convey the overall message that I believe in today.
Dear Christian Conservative Voter,
There is a problem with the moral decay of our nation. This is something we all know as Christians, as conservatives, and as political activists, and we’ve been preaching it for decades now. The problem is, if we are to be quite honest, we are losing the battle for the soul of this nation, and I think our problem just might be, please listen to me: Us.
WE know that abortion is murder. WE know that homosexuality is a sin, nay, an abomination. WE know that the culture of our children is becoming more and more perverse with each passing MTV award night. And yet, we keep doing what we’ve always done, and we keep getting nowhere in transforming society.
And what we’ve always done has been to try to elect pro-life candidates, pass amendments protecting traditional marriage, and try to regulate things like the entertainment industry, drugs, and all other forms of immoral behavior. And it seems like no matter how pro-life, anti-gay marriage, born-again Christian of a candidate we try to elect, somehow, we are not seeing the restoration of Christian values into our society.
So perhaps it is time to reassess our strategy. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that our efforts to legislate morality might actually be debilitating the effectiveness of Christianity in today’s culture. No matter how many laws we pass, no matter how “born-again”, “spirit-filled” of a believer we elect to the White House, people WILL find a way to sin and society will continue to decay, because the fact of the matter is this: the failures of the Church cannot be rectified by the government, because we are not saved by works of the law.
As Christians, we know this in the salvation sense, but we don’t seem to quite get it in the societal sense. We know that we as individuals are not saved by how good we are, but by grace through faith in Jesus alone. But we fail to recognize that the same applies to society as a whole. We have forgotten that Old Testament nation of Israel failed to measure up to God’s standard, in spite of their much more stringent national laws, and yet we have tried over and over again to reinstitute a modern day version of Old Testament Israel in America. We have allowed ourselves to be taken in by a fantasy of an outwardly righteous nation that upholds things like prayer in schools and the 10 Commandments in every courtroom, and failed to recognize that those things are merely an illusion of Godliness in society. We have been pursuing outward, fleshly changes rather than the beating hearts of sinful, hurting people.
While we have been blaming liberals for their obvious attempts to remove God from government, we ourselves have swung to an equally dangerous side of trying to fashion government into a form of Godliness.
If we truly desire to have a Christian nation, we have but one remaining strategy: Love & Liberty. Love is what came down from heaven and rescued our own wicked hearts, and Love is the tool we’ve been given to change the hearts of others and to change this world. The influence of our votes is nothing compared to the influence of our Love.
Love is not fighting the gay community about their rights – Love addresses the wounded hearts of individuals who have a skewed view of sexuality. Love does not sit and wait for the reversal of Roe v. Wade – Love rescues the frightened pregnant girl and buys her baby clothes. Love does not put drug addicts in prison – Love releases the power of Jesus into an addicted life to set them free. Love does not arrest the prostitute – Jesus showed us exactly how to address a prostitute. Love does not try to make people be good without God, and legislation is no substitute for Love. Government is the use of Force, Love is the antithesis of Force. And where there is Love, there is no fear of Liberty.
God Himself bestowed mankind with the ability to choose right and wrong, to follow Him or to reject Him, and we can do no better by infringing upon individual’s personal liberties. Yes, we must speak the truth, and we must contend for what is right, but our efforts must be through example and persuasion, and not legislation. If we stop insisting that it is part of government’s job to make men more moral, and rather that it is only the work of the Holy Spirit, we must let go of the notion that government has the right to determine who can marry and who can’t, or whether or not a person can use cocaine, or gamble, or sleep with a prostitute. Laws do not make men more moral, they never have. Allowing liberty is the risk that Christians must take in order to walk out Love, because forcing others to adhere to our moral codes without Christ in their hearts is not Love. We want people to leave immoral lifestyles because they have chosen something better, rather than simply to revert to either hiding their actions, or fight to overcome us by a majority vote.
If we are truly interested in changing our nation at the heart level, then we must choose the path of Liberty rather than the path of moralistic force. In this election cycle, we have a unique window of opportunity to change our strategy, and to begin to use Love and Liberty as our guides. While only Jesus can ultimately give us the ability to love, there is also a rare presidential candidate who understands that love and liberty are mutually dependent upon one another, and that is Ron Paul. Unlike candidates like Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, Ron Paul understands that a Christianized version of Sharia law does not make us a more godly nation. And unlike candidates like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, Ron Paul has actually lived out his Christian faith with quiet integrity and constancy. Ron Paul does not like abortion, drugs, prostitution or gay marriage, but he understands that those vices are the responsibility of the Church to address, and not the government.
Another thing that Ron Paul understands is that you cannot fight religious and spiritual wars with physical weapons, you cannot sow war and reap peace, you cannot share the gospel at the point of a gun, and that killing in the name of democracy or killing in the name of Allah is still just killing. Love and Liberty should be the weapons of our warfare, because the believer knows that perfect Love casts out fear, terror and hatred, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty.
As a Christian, my hope is in God and Him alone. Ron Paul is not Jesus – he’s not even close. He will make mistakes, and may not complete everything that must be done as president. But I do believe he is THE man for such a time as this, because he understands that Liberty and Love conquer legislation every single time. He knows that Liberty and Love conquer terrorism every single time. Ron Paul is the only candidate that knows that Liberty and Love are our last and final hope. Put your hope in God, but vote for Ron Paul!
Posted in Thriving Spirits
