Random Thoughts: Thursday Night edition

I thought about doing a Currently post, but it turns out the thoughts jumbling through my head aren't easily categorized. So take it for what it's worth :)

It's almost quarter to 9, and this is the first time in three days that I am not already sacked out on the couch. Josh is replaying a Zelda game (Twilight Princess), which I love, and I am reading a book about the Depression, which is quite enjoyable. Even still, for reasons unknown to me, the past two nights I have been minding my own business, reading my book, when I hear Josh's voice telling me to wake up, that it's not even 9:00 yet. Tuesday night I sat up and was awake enough to enjoy an episode of Chopped; last night I was drooling down my arm before I gave up, leaned over on a pillow, and called it a night. Josh and I had a coffee after dinner tonight, and so far it seems to be doing the trick of keeping me conscious.

* * * * *
I wore earrings to work today. I don't wear earrings much as a general rule because a nickel allergy makes it almost impossible. There's nothing attractive about bright red, weeping earlobes. But Zulily had a sale on nickel-free earrings a few weeks ago, and I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a try. I bought 3 pair--2 dangly and 1 hoop--and today I wore the dangly pair that has a blue gemstone in the center. It's funny, too--usually I sit at my desk and assume no one pays much attention to what I wear, which probably isn't completely untrue. But today, three different people complimented my earrings. So maybe I'll have to do this more often.

* * * * *
Speaking of work, the last couple months have been difficult. To make a long story, short, I applied for a job in November and was granted an interview. The hiring manager contacted me, asked for a writing sample, and seemed genuinely interested in me as a candidate. Unfortunately, I ran into a snafu between him and my current manager, and we had to go through HR to resolve it. (I naturally try to avoid conflict, so you can imagine how much fun that was for me...) There were lots of tears, but there was lots of hope. The hiring manager was extremely supportive, and I felt like I was being pursued for the position (he told me my writing sample stood out among the other candidates) and that, in effect, it was mine to lose. The first week in December I went to the interview with my head held high, and after it was over, he told me I'd done an outstanding job. I was on cloud nine.

Two days later, he called my desk phone to tell me they'd offered the position to someone else, someone whose direct experience (not education or writing sample) had edged me out. He promised to keep my information on file and to put in a word for me if I ever applied to a similar job in the company. I thanked him for his offer, hung up the phone, and went to the bathroom where I spent a half hour crying until my head hurt and then tried to pull myself together enough to finish my day.

I know it sounds pathetic, but I am having such a hard time letting it go. I have picked through each of the interview questions and kicked myself for not answering them differently. Each morning I walk by that group's office area and wonder what it would be like to turn there instead of walking back to the same desk I have occupied since 2008. I have wondered why I wasn't good enough, I have been angry at the hiring manager for pursuing me only to tell me no, and I have felt like a fool for ever believing the job was mine for the taking. I have on occasion seen the individual who got the job, and since I can't call it my job, I just refer to her as "the chosen one". She has no idea who I am, but I know who she is, and when I ran into her in the bathroom earlier this week I spent the entire walk back to my desk berating myself for the way I was dressed and wondering if that had anything to do with it. I tell myself there's no point in caring about it now because it's over and done with, but I still care and it still hurts. I am looking forward to the day when it doesn't anymore.

* * * *
That aside about work was a lot longer and more depressing than I had planned.

* * * *
I am getting my hair cut and colored this weekend, and I am so excited about it. I'm not sure what color I'll go with this time, though it's safe to bet I'll be leaning towards whatever shade of color and highlight cover up the grey of which I am too young to have so much.  I'm undecided on the cut, too. This is the longest my hair has been in forever, so I'm not sure I want to completely hack it off. On the other hand, I'm not exactly a wellspring of ideas on how to, you know, style it more than brushing and applying enough serum to keep the baby hairs from sticking up, so maybe long hair isn't the best look for me anyway. You always want what you don't have, I guess. So we'll see what Saturday brings.

* * * *
Tonight I had a fun conversation with Gramma Copes about the memories I have of spending the night at the farm when I was young. I remember the smell of coffee and bacon and toast upon awakening, but mostly I remember the way Grampa would come in from his chores while we ate, wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt and a ball cap. He'd come over, say good morning, and then, with a twinkle in his eye, scrape our cheeks raw with his whiskers. He has been gone from us almost 11 years now, and I find I am missing him in a different way from Grampa Beck, who has been gone almost two. I miss picking up the phone and hearing Grampa Beck's laugh on the other end, and I miss his hugs that smelled like Old Spice. I am sad because he's gone and we don't get to share those moments anymore. But I am sad because Grampa Copes missed so much, and so much of what he missed he would have loved. He died less than a year before I met Josh. He never got to tease him (which was his greatest show of affection, to be sure); he never met Nikki or Lips, either. He never got to see his grandkids get married or to hold his great-grandchildren. He would have loved them all so much, but he left us too soon. There is so much of him with us still--in the breeze at the farm, in our stories of his antics and his love, in the touch of red in Ellie's hair and in her ornery little giggle--I just wish all of him were here, too.

A perfect moment captured.

Guest Post: The lamest pickup line: A Giles Day Restrospective

Since I have already recounted my memories of Giles' Day, I asked Josh to write a guest post for me from his point of view. 

It was a cold and blustery night in Dekalb Illinois 10 years ago, when I took my usual classroom perch in the back corner near the windows.  For reasons I will never understand, that back window was propped open, letting the bitter cold seep in.    My first thought?  “What kind of idiot props open a window in winter?"

I spied a petite, attractive young woman, quietly keeping to herself and looking decidedly cozy compared to me on the other side of the classroom.  For the only time in my life I can ever recall doing it, I chose to sit next to her based solely on the way she looked.  In a word: foxy. 

“Sorry for playing musical chairs,” I announced dryly. “But it’s cold over there by that window.”  And therein became the most unassuming, unintended, yet successful pickup line in the history of college pickups.  Or so says a loving husband 10 years later.  At the time, I probably said it more to convince myself (poorly) that I moved for warmth not because of the obvious physical attraction.

Was this love at first sight?

Hardly.  This is the where the fairy tale unravels.  Amanda was no Disney princess waiting for the handsome, noble aristocrat to sweep her away to a fairy tale life. The real truth is dirty and frayed, sort of like the ugly second-hand coat I was wearing that night.  

Little did I know that the cute little grad student, looking so stoic and confident, was coming off the most painful, soul-sapping year of her life.  She would later tell me that her prior year in Nashville was an unforgettable year of hell from which she wondered if she would ever recover.  She was still too hurt and guarded to fall in love with some disheveled, unshaven man who sat next to her on the second day of Giles's African American Literature class, armed with nothing more than an empty wallet, a big mouth, and a pained soul that he wore on his sleeve like a badge of honor.

If she had an ideal husband in mind, it wasn’t Bearded Musical Chair man, who she would later admit she mistook for Middle-Eastern rather than American born Latino.

And if it was love at first sight, you could not have convinced me.  I was at the wise old age of 23 convinced that love was little more than a social construct.  Love was for the weak-willed.  Love was a product of human nature + proximity.  Fulfilling monogamous marriage was a cruel myth.  That was my “caveman” mantra, and for at least 6 years, I had convinced myself and anyone who know me of my commitment to this mantra.  Some people even called me Caveman.

Unwilling to acknowledge my own loneliness, I had mutilated what little purity was left in my soul, that little spark of pure me still untainted by the world.  I found my inner-light, and I slayed it over and over again everyday, welcoming the darkness in to take its place.

Everything was going perfect until that cold night 10 years ago.  I was going to graduate, move to a snow-covered solitary mountain (with what money I now ask?), and write books until either somebody could hear the cry of my soul, or until I died a broken, defeated, tortured man that the world forgot before it ever knew.

And then that damn open window 10 Januarys ago had to go and ruin my whole tortured, self-flagellatory fantasy.  There would be no mountain, no novels, no isolation, no soul mutilation, no cold death on the mountain.

Instead, there was a foxy young lady named Amanda with a warm open chair next to her, and the beginning of the rest of my life awaiting me. 

Was it love at first sight?  Not by a long shot.  Neither Amanda nor I thought ourselves worthy of love.  Neither of us even knew how to love ourselves.  How then could we let someone else love us?

Within little more than two months we indeed were in deep, deep cock-eyed stupid love.  Ridiculous, goofy love that would make the same world throw up that I once wanted to abandon.  And so would begin the year we now call the Giles phase, in honor of the class in which we first met 10 years ago. 

All because I did something that I thought so many others were shallow for doing; I sat next to a woman based solely on the way  she looked.  Shallow?  You betcha.  If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.  Well maybe one thing.  I may come up with a better pick up line.

Parents of innocent daughters beware.  You might want your daughter to marry the boy next door who used to cut your grass when he was ten, but the cold reality is that love usually isn’t that safe.  Love is unpredictable.  Dangerous.  Transforming.  

Sometimes love starts with that bearded creep who sits next to your daughter in college because on a whim he decides he wants to sit next to a cute girl. 

(Somebody remind me of this in about 20 years when my own daughters drag home their own lost man puppy from college and want to introduce him as “that guy I met in Giles class.”  Better yet, don’ say anything.  I prefer to live in a Pollyanna dream world on this one.)

Where we are

Six months have passed since we left our church. Sometimes, six months feels like forever, and sometimes, I wonder if we have left our church, or the church. The former springs from the ache of a still-healing heart. The latter, for better or for worse, is still being decided.

There are so many things I miss about what we left. I miss the schedule of Sunday mornings, of gathering up dresses and bows and tights for the girls, of checking the clock to see how much time we had for snacks and Food Network before piling in the car. I miss the warm smiles and handshakes that greeted us every week. I miss the hard pews and the smell of the hymnals from our early years, and, more recently, the quiet mocking of the inevitable Chris Tomlin songs that Josh and I shared. I miss the familiar rhythm of song and prayer and preaching. I miss knowing things for sure.

After all this time, most Sundays are still a struggle, and most Sunday mornings, a big part of my heart is just...sad. I find myself checking the clock, only to realize that right now there's nowhere we have to be. I second-guess our decision to leave, even though it has repeatedly been confirmed as the right one. Josh and I talk about where to go, when to go, if we should go, but the answers are murky and hard and sometimes I feel like we're stuck at the same spot we were when we walked out of Northwoods in August. I try to put on a brave face when I feel like crumbling. I try unsuccessfully not to dwell on the feeling that I am a disappointment to so many people I love, that I cannot articulate why this healing is taking so much time, that I'm not failing my daughters, that I haven't given up on God or Christianity but that right now not giving up means not sitting in a building for an hour and a half once a week.

Last week, after a particularly trying day, I broke down in tears and told Josh sometimes I just want my old life back, when things weren't hard and the answers were clear. But they're not, and it's hard.

But I'm not giving up. We're not giving up.

Ever the optimist as I am, even though my heart is still hurting (and honestly, so is Josh's, though in a different way), we are trying to find ways to experience God's presence in our lives, and to make His presence known in the lives of our daughters. Josh calls them "thin places", when the divine somehow seems closer, when God's face seems just a breath away. The more we are aware of thin places, the more we seem to find them. They are in Ellie's belly laugh and in Elaina's tenderhearted words. They are in a dance to a Charlie Brown song and in the rumbling purr of Chappu at the end of the night. They are in prayers whispered at bedtime and songs sung in the morning. I have found that the less I know of God, the more I love Him. There is beauty in the mystery, and I am learning to embrace it, and to experience it in ways I never did when I had all the answers.

Experiencing God has become our theme for 2015, the year we have dubbed "The Year of the Yes". We want to live fully, to fully experience what life has to offer. We want our girls to feel dirt under their nails and the sun on their back and tell them that this thrumming around them is God around them. The Gospel of Thomas quotes Jesus as saying, "Look under the rock. There I am." So we are uncovering rocks. We are planning trips to go camping, to hike to see waterfalls. We are talking about how we can give to those who have less, how we can love everyone even when it's not the easy thing to do. We are trying new recipes and making time for our passions--Josh sees God in his garden; I see God through the lens of my camera. We are taking the time to stop by the river when the sunrise is spectacularly pink, even if it makes us a minute or two late for work. Last week, we bought a piano, because music is part of the soul, too.

On Sunday morning, after giving Elaina an impromptu lesson, I sat at the keyboard and opened the hymnal Mom loaned me several months ago. As I plunked out the familiar melodies, my heart was happy and sad all at once. And that is where we are now, I guess. Excited but scared. Happy but sad. Tired, but moving forward.

And never giving up.

Say Cheese

I'd like to come up with some clever way to start this post, but all of my pleas of brain, don't fail me now aren't working. I have a case of Friday afternoon brain on Sunday night. This does not bode well for work tomorrow morning, but instead of worrying about it, I'm choosing to roll with it and mindlessly enjoy Worst Cooks in America while I "write."

Watching a contestant serve a slice of avocado that included a slice of the pit is also helping me not think about the fact I have to go to the dentist tomorrow afternoon. My dentist is a nice, nice man, and not harsh and judgey about the fact I haven't been there in far too long. Last month, he was my personal hero. I got the skin of a popcorn kernel stuck between my teeth and was convinced I'd given myself a gum infection trying to get it out. And because my worries are of the go big or go home variety, I was sure I would lose all of the teeth on my lower left jaw and be horribly disfigured for the rest of my life and how would I smile in a way where no one would notice I was missing all of my teeth. I donned the paper bib with pounding heart, when he and his assistant came in, took one look in my mouth, and pulled the offending skin out and that was that. No infection, no lost tooth, just an appointment for a teeth cleaning and exam for this month.

But I still don't want to go. I hate the taste of latex gloves. I hate the spit sucker that always manages to suck up part of my lip. I hate the poking around looking for cavities, even though I understand the importance of getting them fixed (see: not having to figure out how to smile without several teeth missing.) I hate novocaine and shots in the gum. I hate having to answer the "how often do you floss" question, because saying "when I have corn on the cob" doesn't seem to satisfy them. I just don't want to go.

Really, I blame Dr. Madrill, my orthodontist. My childhood dentist, Dr. Spolar, was a nice man whom we called Magnum P.I. because of his uncanny resemblance to Tom Sellack. But even nice Dr. Spolar could not fix the travesty that adult teeth, an underbite, a crossbite, and unfortunate gaps did to my smile. So off to the orthodontist I went.

The particular office we went to had two orthodontists. Dr. Borden had brown hair that was noticeably too dark for all of the wrinkles on his face, but he made the unenviable experience of tightening brackets and adjusting headgears bearable. He even offered a variety of flavors when impressions had to be made--bubble gum seemed to be a bit of a mean-spirited option when I couldn't actually chew it--but the grape was tolerable--as tolerable as a thick paste shoved in your mouth that dried your throat could be.

Dr. Madrill, on the other hand, had a reputation for being mean, harsh, and loud when his patients didn't follow the letter of his law. He had stark white hair and big ham hands and never, ever smiled. And he yelled. A lot. Maybe he thought public shaming was the most effective way to get his patients to floss properly, I don't know. He once went off on a patient so loudly while I was waiting for my turn that I am pretty sure I spent the next 10 minutes praying that I had brushed thoroughly enough to avoid a similar public lashing. I was terrified of him. When the braces came off and many months later I lost the top of my retainer and my dog ate the bottom, I never went back.

And so, scarred, I have avoided the dentist as much and for as long as I could. (This included not getting my wisdom teeth taken out until I was 27.)  Other experiences as an adult did not help encourage my return to regular dental care, like the time I went in for a filling in Rockford and the dentist numbed my gum, left, and was gone so long that the numbing started to wear off, which he neglected to check before he started drilling.  But after the popcorn kernel fiasco reminded me in no uncertain terms that I do care about my teeth, I made an appointment. And Dr. Rao is a nice man. And he isn't going to yell at me, even if I deserve it.

And so I'm going to go. But don't expect me to be excited about it.

Memories of warmer days

Memory is a funny thing.

As I was walking out of work today, I was thinking of late last May, when I took a day off of work to (1) not be at the office and (2) organize the disaster that was our unfinished storage space. The morning started off relatively pleasant, and I was comfortable to do my work with the window open and '90s country blaring on Pandora. I think I even complimented myself for choosing such a beautiful late spring day for vacation. As the day wore on, though, the temperature continued to climb. After lunch, not even the quiet breeze which in the morning had even seemed a bit cool could help. My lovely working area became a sauna, and I slogged through the rest of my task, complete with red-faced puffing and sweat rolling in places it just shouldn't roll. 

It made me think of the upstairs duplex Josh and I lived in when we were first married. It wasn't in the best neighborhood, but the streets were lined with lovely trees. I loved it as soon as we walked in. The layout was open and airy. There were several large windows in every room and a three season porch and the kind of charm you get with post-WWII architecture. Things you don't get with post-WWII architecture, however, are more modern conveniences, like air conditioning. We got married in June, moved blissfully into the duplex, and then learned that the brick that had given it even more charm also transformed it into an oven in the heat of summer. We spent the second month of our marriage sleeping on a futon mattress in the dining room, because it was the only room with a window large enough to hold the enormous air conditioner that our landlord had wrestled up from 1983 to keep his new tenants from melting into puddles. Heat blanketed everything. Potatoes liquified under our kitchen sink. And Josh and I tried not to move, because even blinking caused sweat.

Memory is funny, because if I close my eyes, I can remember tiny details of those moments. I remember thinking in May that if I kept my jeans on, since it felt like a sauna, maybe I'd be able to sweat off a few extra pounds. (Update: nope.) I remember taking a cold shower in our duplex because it was the thought of hot water made me want to cry. My mind can go there, but my body can't. I can only experience those moments in one way.

Which is a shame, I thought, as I walked out of work today. Today, when the high was somewhere around 12. And tomorrow, when I'm going to have to take Yuna out with a windchill somewhere between -25 and -35. When the "high" temperature is -5. When all I will be able to think is this:

At least one of us will be happy.