Category Archives: Winter Weather

Menstruation. Syllabi. New Leaves.

Posted on 15 April 2009 | Leave a comment

Dear Eve:

Why did you do it? Why did you eat the fruit? I could understand if it would have been a watermelon, a banana, or even some strawberries. Weren’t there pineapples and mangoes growing in the garden? Couldn’t you have just been happy with a coconut now and then?

Apples are just not that good. They are pretty, usually red, and possibly shiny, but you are not a raccoon or a crow. I hope, at least, that it wasn’t a Granny Smith, unless you had some caramel sauce.

Did you have cramps, a headache, a backache, or constipation? How did you stop the flow? Was there at least a hot spring you could relax in?

We got a raw deal,

Every Woman After You

pictureofevesapplemedium2

After getting them back with “this syllabus is incomplete, please resubmit” written on both of them, I turned my syllabi in again. I changed very little, yet I got a decent grade. Weird. I suppose I changed the right few things.

New leaves are slowly uncurling from their tightly packed buds on the trees along the river. They’ve been a long time coming, poking out during the early warmth and then changing their minds during a long cruel stint of winter, returning to retard their progress.

In many ways I feel like those leaves, and I think we all should. I think we are designed to ebb and flow with the seasons, but we can’t do that much anymore because we are too technologically advanced (heat, indoor plumbing, electric lights, etc.) and so wrapped up in monetary productivity. We get up when it’s dark; we come home after it’s dark, all because of work.

How can we expect to feel natural when everything is so unnatural? I am always concerned about how people can get back to nature. Can we remember what it feels like to put our hands in cool, moist dirt? Can we revel in the stars and our place among them? Is there a way, even living in the city, to remain in tune with our natural surroundings? Read this. Or check this out for free. What about this? Or my favorite: Mother Earth News. Beware, though, that if you visit Mother Earth News, your name may or may not go on a government watch list as an environmental terrorist. I just think we should all dig our hands in the dirt every once in a while.

While I was inspecting the newly emerging leaves, I decided to turn over a new leaf, too. I am trying a new wave of positive thinking. So far, it’s working. As I walked this morning, I realized that my favorite time of day, beside spending time with Bec in the evenings, is walking the dogs in the morning. I realized that how I frame my day with that hour determines much of how my day ends up going. I realized that I spend a good portion of everyday harboring ill-feelings or negativity.

I decided to change. I am going to try very hard to transform my thinking and speaking habits into positive ones. I have been told I should read A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, which has to this point seemed like a lot of psychological mumbo-jumbo. I think I will try reading it, though; why not? It seems to roll everything together into one big positive blob. You can hear him talk about it on Speaking of Faith.

Honky Tonk and Midas Touch

Posted on 1 April 2009 | 5 comments

Last Saturday morning, my brother and I got up at 5:30 in the morning in order to drive 6.5 hours to Nashville, TN. We forgot about the time change, which means we could have slept until 6:30. We are both still alive despite getting up before the sun.

Our first stop in Nashville was Opry Mills mall, near Opryland and the Grand Ole Opry. We saw the Operahouse and the hotel from a distance, and I was impressed by their grandeur. I was more impressed with the restaurant that we ate at: Aquarium Restaurant. The middle of the building was a huge aquarium with 7-inch thick glass walls. The restaurant employs five marine biologists who feed the fish, take care of the tank, and who provide educational programming at the sting-ray pool next door.

This is where it got exciting: I got to feed and pet live sting-rays! Most people who know me understand how much I love rays, so this was like a dream come true. I expected rays to feel like sharks or dolphins, but their skin is rubbery and slick. They seemed to have their own individual personalities as they came to the edge of the pool to take the shrimp from our hands. I was never brave enough to hold onto the shrimp long enough to feel the ray take it, but my brother got a huge hickie on his knuckle from the suction of the ray’s mouth.

When we got to downtown Nashville, we drove through the city to get acquainted with the roads and to sort of acclimate to the way the city was situated. Once we dropped everything off at our hotel, we were shuttled back downtown and told to call by 10:30 in order to get a ride back for free. After 10:30, we would have to pay for a taxi. We started off by just walking around and looking at souvenir shops, passing by the bars, and discovering the oddities of the town.

Saturday our first stop was Fort Nashborough. I think I would have liked to live there, then. On our way back to 2nd street from the fort, we passed by Coyote Ugly, and although I wanted to go in, we thought better of it. We then went to a bar called the Stage on Broadway. No cover charge. $14 for a Maker’s and Coke and a Jack and Coke. There was the cover charge. The Stage was next door to Jack’s Bar-B-Que where we went for dinner. We stood in line for what seemed like forever, and the barbecue was good so it wasn’t disappointing. That night we ended up at the Big Bang, a dueling piano bar. I had a first gin and tonic and a Sam Adam’s Lager. Adam had a gin and tonic and a martini, then he sang ALL of Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby with the pianist. It only would have been better if he could have gone up on stage.

On Sunday, we got up early and went across the street to Starbucks for breakfast. Our first stop was the Parthenon, which was closed on Sundays. Of course, none of our tourist information told us it was closed, because we would have gone there on Saturday when we first got to Nashville. So, we walked around the perimeter and then headed back to buy the souvenirs/gifts we wanted. For lunch, we went to the Nashville Farmer’s Market and had braised oxtail, pineapple sweet potatoes, fried plantains, johnny cakes, and ginger beer at a restaurant called Jamaicaway. We then explored the market/flea market and bought a few things at their International Market. After that we went back to the hotel for a few minutes, then headed back downtown to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts . That Sunday was family day, so admission was free and there were people dressed in Medeival dress to celebrate the opening of an exhibit of Medieval art that was on loan from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The best exhibit was a collaborative exhibit with a local homeless shelter. When we left Frist, we went to the Stage again. I had a $4 Pabst Blue Ribbon, and we listened to a band that was pretty bad for about an hour while we killed time before we were supposed to meet for our ghost tour. We chose to go on the Haunted Tavern Tour. We visited three pubs: Past Present, McFaddin’s, and Buffalo Billiards. I think we had drinks at two of them, and there was no “ghost tour discount.” Certainly, Nashville makes their money by charging too much for beer. After walking all over Nashville, we finished out the night at Big River Brewery with nachos and salads. Big River reminded me a lot of Rock Bottom Brewery in Indianapolis. The food was good. We were exhausted.

When Monday morninng came, we had to say good-bye. Sadly. We got up early and went out of Nashville to Loveless Cafe where, song of the south, I had BBQ for breakfast! Talk about my fantasy come true. After I ordered my breakfast, I sort of worried for a minute that it would be some lame-ass breakfast barbecue, but when our waitress brought it out nestled between two soft-fried eggs on two tiny corn pancakes, I was pleased as punch to see that it was genuine pulled-pork BBQ! I have never had such a delicious breakfast. Grits, BBQ, biscuits, and eggs. Completed only with a nice, steaming mug of coffee. On our way home we stopped at Jungle Jim’s to look around. We bought a few things and then headed to Indy to get Adam’s computer. By the time he dropped me off at my house at 8:30 or 9, I was beat. I fell asleep pretty quickly and woke up sick.

One of the things I bought at Jungle Jim’s was beer. I know you are surprised. I got five porters and a Dogfish Head ale. Last night I drank the first two with some of Bec’s homemade spaghetti sauce. While I was gone, she made beef potpies and spaghetti sauce. Am I lucky woman or what?! Anyway, I had Dead Reckoning Porter by Troegs Brewery. It was dark with a nice cream-colored head that faded pretty quickly. The flavor was dark with a little hint of coffee and a little bite. It wasn’t my favorite, but it wasn’t my least favorite either. I am not sure what some people at Beer Advocate were drinking, but I am pretty sure it wasn’t the same beer I had. One guy said the head was long-lasting. Mine faded after about five minutes. The other beer I had is one of my new favorites: Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch. It has a nice pour, with a pure white head on top of nice, bright yellow lacey body. The head fades really quickly, and you are left with the bubbly goodness of muscat grapes, honey, barley, and saffron. You can definitely taste the grapes, which made this beer more like a mead. Fine with me. Yum.

5 Comments

Posted in Beer, Food, Just for Fun, Relationships, Winter Weather

The Thursday After Ash Wednesday

Posted on 26 February 2009 | 1 comment

It’s Lent. I am not fasting. I am not sure I care.

An alternate title for this post could be: “Just Like Any Other Thursday.”

Let me try to explain. As much as Tom the homeless guy has no physical house, as much as he walks around talking to people that no one else can see, and as much as he has no creature comforts like thick wool socks and gloves that match to keep his hands warm, I have no spiritual place.

I don’t feel like Agape could ever be my church “home.” I go there. I like most of the people. However, I am also pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, not sure I believe in hell, non-fundamentalist, mostly non-evengelical, and unable to commit to the idea that there will be a second-coming of Christ. And I don’t base every decision I make or belief I hold on the “Inerrant Word of God(t).”

“How did you make it through seminary?” you might ask.

“Good question,” I would respond.

Like Tom, I find myself (although not literally) talking to people that no one else can see. I have been on a manic rush—learning that I could be slightly manic came free with my seminary tuition via the psychological evaluations they made us take—for about three weeks now, and although I talk to people who really exist, I am not sure they understand me. I talk too fast. I space out. I jumble my thoughts. God bless Debbie for bearing with me through my independent study with her. And Becky deserves a badge for putting up with me right now.

It isn’t that I haven’t slept in three weeks, because I have, but it is the fact that my sleep comes in small spurts, filled with fitful/unsettling dreams. I would say my last night of good sleep happened before I went to Chicago, before I had my current “am I doing the right thing with my life” crisis, and before I had this, my third round of the amazing English department head and chest cold.

And, about talking to people I can’t see, I sometimes think I have some strange, otherworldly perception. I frequently see little flashes of what I perceive to be people or spirits lingering about me. I haven’t seen as many in the house we live in, but I think my ability to sense what other people are feeling has increased, and I keep having a recurring dream about one of my professors.

In it, she is trapped in a house that is slowly crumbling and there is no way out. Even though the walls keep falling down, she can never get out. Each time she thinks she is able to get out another wall is standing in her path. Then it crumbles, and she has to run to another part of the house to find another way out. She can’t just leave through the crumbling wall because the actual pieces of the wall are detrimental to her safety. I get the sense that there is heat or a gas building up around her as well. She screams, but I can’t hear what she is screaming. All I can do is watch her suffer. I have tried to re-dream, so that I can get into the dream with her and help her out of the house, but it won’t work.

I am not sure I have ever had a dream like this before about someone I know so superficially. I did have a weird dream about my Aunt Winnie. I dreamed she died on the actual night she died. And, the other night I had a dream about one of my former students. The next day I received an email from her, which wouldn’t be weird if I had conversations with her regularly. But, I don’t. In fact, I haven’t heard from her since I had her in class two semesters ago.

This dream about my professor is different, though, I have had it for about two weeks straight, and then I stopped having it, but I had it again last night. Weird. So that’s my version of talking to people who aren’t actually there. I just have weird dreams and sensations about real people, which are particularly obvious and happen increasingly when I cannot sleep well. Or when, as the professor who read my psych. report said, I am “slightly manic.”

Back to my analogy about Tom’s physical homelessness and my spiritual homelessness, I don’t have the creature comforts that come with finding a perfect spiritual home. I have never been to a church where I feel completely comfortable. I know the point of church isn’t my personal comfort, but I want to be able to be who I am in Christ. I don’t want to have to mask or hide any part of myself in order to feel accepted. It isn’t that I don’t recognize that all of us have areas of spiritual growth and development; it is that I think differently about what those areas might be than the ways other people perceive them.

We know what our behaviors are. We know the bible says. We know where they don’t line up. Church should be about giving grace to people until they do line up, not about doling out condemnation because they don’t align. I don’t believe in tough love; I believe in grace.

For example, I know I should spend more time contemplating scripture. How do I know this? One quick example is Psalm 1: “But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.” I do not meditate on this law day and night. I barely even look at my bible, nor do I memorize scripture. How then can I meditate day and night? My behavior does not align with what I perceive to be an overarching theme of the Biblical text. I know what I need to do to fix it, now I need the church to provide me with the support to do it.

The same would hold true for an alcoholic. Or a liar. Or a stern parent. Or a woman of ill-repute.

Typically, churches are so consumed with their own agenda (abortion, homosexuality, blah, blah, blah) that they can’t pay any attention to helping their parishioners foster the close relationship with God that is paramount in Christian life. Would we need to talk about abortion if everyone was willing to help an impoverished or single mother raise her child? Would we need to talk about it if we provided birth control education to teenagers? When was the last time you heard a sermon or had a small-group that focused on how we are to keep God’s words hidden in our hearts, so that it can inform our behavior and shape our lives? Come on. Be honest.

This might be a message of grace: through your understanding of and meditation on God’s words, your relationship with [Them] will be strengthened. In turn, you will better understand what God’s love means in this world, and you will be able to pour God’s love out to other people. I mean, if I was a pastor, I would preach about this. This would be the thick wool socks and matching, warm gloves I would give to my congregation.

So, all this to say, I feel like a spiritual homeless person. Does anyone know of any good shelters that will take me in? Mess that I am.

1 Comment

Posted in Grace, Politics, Queer, Relationships, Religion, Winter Weather

MLK Day. Toni Morrison. Jog-tastic.

Posted on 19 January 2009 | 1 comment

Today is a day that is set aside for education, service, and remembrance. Every year I look forward to attending the Martin Luther King, Jr. service at one of our local churches. This year, though, I am spending the day running and studying. I think I am going to skip the church service.

Today I am reading Playing in the Dark: Whiteness in the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison and Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom: The Escape of William and Mary Craft from Slavery by William and Ellen Craft. I am, as always, amazed by the literary prowess of Morrison. I find myself underlining, nodding my head, and, at times, verbally agreeing with her writing.

I also plan to run today. According to the plan, I am still jogging for three minutes and walking for two. Today I repeat it seven times. Wednesday I repeat it seven times. Friday I repeat it until I complete four miles. I like this plan. It seems to be working better than the couch potato to 5K plan I tried before.

I refuse to run inside. Unless the temperature is below zero, my happy ass is running outside. I read a blog by a woman in Green Bay who runs outside in twenty below zero weather. Her eyelashes were frozen together at the end of the run. That is too much. I am not that extreme. I hope I am never that extreme.

1 Comment

Posted in Reading, Running, Winter Weather

Freakishly Cold

Posted on 16 January 2009 | 3 comments

I went to Irving Gym yesterday for a cross-training day. I rode the bike. I rode for half an hour on the most uncomfortable stationary exercise bike I have ever met. I generally ride a mountain bike, so the bike I rode was the touring bike from hell. Riding it was like riding to Florida on a unicycle with no seat. It was bad. Like this:

Not only was it uncomfortable, but it was fucking boring! Riding in one place for half an hour watching at the same muscle-bound frat boys lift weights incorrectly is not high on my list of “Top Ten Things to Do Before I Die”—right up there with watching skinny little girls reading fashion magazines, barely pedaling with their bikes set on a tension of two, and flirting with the frat boys.

Apparently, to watch yourself in the mirror while doing inclined sit-ups holding a medicine ball is the new wave of exercise coolness. I might make it into a game of peek-a-boo. (Up, look in the mirror: I see you. Down, look serious and cool: Where’s Corby?) I am sure abdominal work like that would make me sea-sick. I would need a dimenhydrinate drip to make it through the workout.

There is a whole psychology to the gym. One that fucks me up a little every time I go there.

Possibly, I need a thorazine drip after leaving the gym.

I absolutely despise exercising indoors, unless I am swimming. Then I like being indoors, unless I can be in the ocean. I hate that I don’t have to work hard at all to break a sweat while riding the stationery bike or walking on a treadmill. Yesterday, I rode the hell out of that little stationary bike. I only got seven miles, a t-shirt neck sweat-ring the size of China, a further damaged hymen, and the inside track on undergraduate mating rituals.

The sad part of all of this is that it looks like I will get to go to the gym again today, since it is 10 below zero right now. At least the sun is shining. Maybe I will wait until this afternoon and attempt to jog outside. In the sun. By the river. n20722047_35977626_1544