Wink, wink, amen

I just realized that me saying "wink, wink, amen," will be funny to the approximately two people who remember the prayer in which that was said. To the rest of you, I'm sorry. You had to be there.

But I've been pondering recently a rather odd phenomenon. Odd by nature because I don't find it odd. Allow me to explain.

I'm rather old-fashioned at heart. When I say that I don't mean I have an ivory bedroom set with lace bed curtains, but rather that I tend to err on the side of that-was-inappropriate-100-years-and-it-should-still-be-that-way. Which is why it's very odd that I don't freak out more negatively when dudes flirt with me.

Sure, I give them the stink eye (I've perfected it, and taught fellow-sisters how to glare just so, in order to properly discourage the fellow), but I'm not appalled like I think maybe I should be. I was driving home from work this week when an older gentleman decided to pull his car directly beside mine and wave and blow me kisses. I looked away.

However, once I was out of his sight (well, I could still see him waving out the window all the way up the block) I laughed hysterically. He was at least eighty, no joke.

Then (once the laughter had run its course) I stopped to consider that perhaps that shouldn't be funny to me at all. Instead of laughing, perhaps I should have remarked that "a not-so-distinguished-looking gentleman in a rusty-looking horseless carriage shocked me with a scandalous display of blown kisses and outright googly-eyes." I think he was crazy and appalling, but I didn't go home and sob in my journal that I was mistaken for a woman who was interested in a stranger's advances (I can tell you right now, though, my stink eye usually does a lot to ward off those advances).

So what gives? Has it just become acceptable that men act untowardly towards women they've never met? When did that become OK? And why don't I trouble myself about it?

Actually, I think I don't worry about it because there's nothing I can do about it. I certainly don't encourage it (my face of steel and the one-eyebrow lift is enough for them to realize that I don't think it's funny), and I typically don't initiate such things. Apparently there was some time when I flirted with the waiter at a restaurant (I still maintain my innocence), but in general I don't make a habit of waving at strange fellows for no reason.

I just wish I had a T-shirt that echoed my sentiments. What shall it say, "Class Non-Flirt?" I can't decide if that would draw the boys in that we-love-a-challenge way or repel them in that um-whatever kind of way.

To all the hearts I've troubled with my own errors, however, I wish I could apologize. To that dude in the restaurant in Chicago, I'm sorry I flirted. Seriously, I just wanted you to bring me my soup while it was still hot.

Humble Pie

I read an interesting quip this morning. It effectively goes as follows: We should not be humbled by pondering our sins and failures, but rather by the work of the cross and Christ's sacrifice for us.

Tru dat.

I tend to pause, all too often, on my own failures. I've failed more than I'll ever let on (I'm that type of person, sorry), but the fact of the matter is, that's just another way of being self-centered. It's not furthering my relationship with the Lord to think back to the fact that my fleshly self sins way too often. It's not bringing Him glory. It's not doing anything productive, in fact.

So instead I should look more to the cross, and beyond, to the completed work of my risen Saviour. Through His death and resurrection I have been made whole, I have been redeemed, and I have been given a new life. There's no sense looking back through my rear-view mirror, so to speak, and dwell on that old life. But rather look forward through the large windshield in front of me and face my every tomorrow knowing that I come to my knees in gratitude and humility only because His work shines more greatly than my frailty ever will.

I am awed, and humbled, by the Life He lived. And Gave. For me.

Road trippage

I simultaneously love and dislike road trips. I dislike them because they mean you're not there yet (yes, I'm about six), and also because road trips indicate a need to come back home again when the fun is over.

I love, them, however, because they have the immense potential to be hilarious. I've had some good road trips in my day, I'm telling you. There were road trips I had "back in the day" when I used to travel with a certain pack of people, and we generally chose to drive through the night, for some reason. I was usually voted co-pilot, due to my never having anything pressing the following day, so I got very good at keeping drivers awake.

There were road trips I used to take with my best friends down to Florida every year. For some reason they were never hilarious (though full of the Lord's mercies, due to weather and me not knowing how to drive very well) but they were just... nice. I remember one year we left North Carolina in the morning to head down to Florida and talked non-stop almost the entire way. Ooh, and once we went to Savannah, in honor of Savannah from Savannah. We took pictures with the books and everything.

There's one road trip I took with my best friend wherein we drove all through the night in time to arrive for a morning funeral. We pretty much just drove in our pajamas and did whatever we wanted. Again, it was of the Lord's mercies that we arrived in one piece, due to no gas stations being open (New York is retarded....), but He provided.

And there was the time when we had a van full (too full, actually, we had about three more people than seat belts) of people and were trying to get across the Canadian border. The Lord ended up sending along someone we knew to the gas station we were stopped at before the border (have I mentioned anything about the Lord's mercies?) and we shuffled around and it was fine, but we brought our binoculars so we could scope out a nice-looking border guard whose booth we wanted to hit, and we "spied" at the border, which was hilarious. Same trip, we were coming home and managed to joke around with our border guard. He thought we were pretty funny.

And the time I famously told the border guard (another trip, by the way) that we didn't have any food to declare, only some "samiches." He thought I was either crazy or hilarious, I'm not sure which.

I could have a lot of border crossing stories, but that's not what I'm getting at.

What I'm actually getting at is that I took a road trip with my brother and cousin this weekend, and it was awesome. Some road trips are nice, you know, where there's some talking, some sleeping, some reading, and it's all cool. This one had some sleeping and reading, but the talking was just brilliant.

We were traveling normally until I decided that we just had to play "Hey Cows" from the highway.

Interjection: Hey Cows is a game where you yell "Hey, cows" at a field of cattle, and if any of them look at you (or look like they're looking at you), then you "win." Of course, you don't win anything, and it's not really a game, but it's sort of hilarious if you're in the right mindset.

Anyhow, we Hey Cow'd for a while (and Hey Horse'd, and some other Heys, I forget what) and then started waving at truck drivers, so as to hear them honk. Then we transferred to waving at just regular-type drivers. And then we started making up stories about the drivers we were passing. Then we started talking in accents, and then it was all down-hill from there.

The stories we concocted were over the top. We were suddenly all really old for some reason (I'm not talking 103, I'm talking alive-during the civil war, had a crush on John Quincy Adams, used to live in England when they didn't have cars type of old), and my cousin was a school teacher who rode crocodiles to work every day (you know, the first version of crocs), and taught children nothing but how to dodge the things she threw at them. I had the crush on John Quincy Adams, and when I went to school, I learned useless words like effulgence and erroneous. I'd never been married, but my cousin had been married about seven times (I guess when you're as old as we were, your husbands are liable to die), most of whom she didn't like. Elgin was one of her favorites, and Elgin was pretty famous, apparently, since there was a whole town named after him.

Anyhow, the car was filled with this nonsense for at least two hours, until we arrived (I think my brother was extra-thankful to get there) and had to converse with polity society again. Both of us were talking with a vaguely old-timey accent for sort of a while, but it wore off.

Times like that remind me, though, that even if you don't make the journey about the stopping points (we get gas. And that's all), you can enjoy it none the less. Granted, I'd still prefer to break through the time/space continuum and get there (there meaning everywhere) in about .7 seconds, but I think I'm fine with the journey.

Plus, I'm used to it. I mean, I did travel with Lewis and Clark, after all.

Stop and let me... read

I have sort of a habit of reading a lot. My lunch break is about 3 and a half minutes of eating and 21 and a half minutes of reading. I read in the bank drive-through, I read standing in line to buy boxes at Home Depot. I read when I'm alone, and when I'm surrounded by people. I read in cars, on planes, and on trains. If books were green eggs and ham, and I were Sam, I'd have to give a resounding "Yes" every time I were asked if I'd read it.

This has created some rather bad habits, however. For instance, stoplights are one of my bad habits. Around where I live and work, I know exactly which lights are long enough to read at, and which ones aren't. And if I have a book (and I usually do) and happen to be at one of the long-enough lights, I'll read. No harm has been done thus far, due to the fact that I'm usually fairly tuned into to when the other cars begin their trek across the intersection, but I keep on thinking that I should stop. Not just stop at the red light (I do that, trust me), but stop reading while I am stopped.

But it feels useless to do nothing at a light, is my thing. I like to listen to music in the car, but I don't like to just sit and do nothing while listening. I always joke that I'm better at listening to music than I am at watching movies. Thing is, with radio, you can make dinner, and do dishes, and drive, and do other things that require eyes. With a video, you're looking, and that's about it. Unless you knit while you watch. That would be clever.

But back to the book thing. I just find it so aimless to waste quality quiet time just sitting. Hence my stoplight habit. When my brother couldn't yet drive, but really wished he could, I would put him to good use and read without a thought for the road, because my brother would alert me to the green when it came.

For a while I took my sheet of Bible memorization in the car and would work on that during stoplights, but then I kept on trying to read it while I was driving, which ended up being a little frightening.

So if you ever see little ol' me stopped at a stoplight long after the red changed to green, make sure to honk a little. Chances are I'm engrossed in the pages of my current book.

We See Jesus

This past weekend (Easter, good times), there was a lot of talk about making Jesus the focus of our lives. And I needed that. It's so easy it get bogged down in the little things of life, and even easy to get bogged down in the small details of what this particular verse or doctrine might really mean. But you know what? We see Jesus.

He's the Author and Finisher of our faith. The One Who upholdeth all things with His power. The First, Last, Beginning, and the End. There's no variableness or shadow of dwelling in Him, He never changes.

When we stop to realize that, it puts things into perspective. The focus should be on Him, and Him alone. If I remember nothing else for the entirety of today, I still will have been encouraged, because I can remember the simple verse from Hebrews.

But we see Jesus.

To throw, or not to throw

I'm currently (with the help of my brother) packing up my grandparent's house. It's been sort of a large job, and not exactly getting smaller, in addition to the fact that we don't have a lot of time in which to work. But we go over, put in a few hours here and there, and it's a pretty good system.

One thing that we've been doing, that I'm not sure my grandparents really had in mind when they suggested this job to us, is throwing away stuff. Fake flowers? Chuck them. Broken toys? Toss. Things that look odd and we don't know how to label? Adios.

Now, to our credit, we're pretty familiar with my grandparents and their wishes/tastes. When I throw things away I think 1) will they miss this? and 2) would they miss this if they knew about it? I've pretty much decided that using those two simple questions, I should be safe.

But my brother and I have had many interesting conversations about what we'd keep and throw away in our own home, should our parents pass away and leave the cleaning-out job to us. (My brother, just last night: "We'd be able to pay the property taxes, right?" For some reason that struck me as funny.) The thing is, our house has a ton of books. Loads. I don't even know what we'd do with them, or how we'd divvy them amongst our siblings, or whether we'd just pack them into storage. But my brother and I were talking about the books, most of all. The other things in our house, apparently, have almost no relevance to us. We don't like our couches, though, so they'd have to be tossed.

Anyhow, I must admit, I don't intend on ever having to sort through my parent's things, due to the rapture, but I find it interesting to take a step back and ponder what's really important, apparently, to my brother and I.

Books.

I'm not all that surprised.

Ahh, the day of fools

One year on April the 1st I called my friend Deuteronomy and told her that I was "praying about dating" a certain guy we both knew. She fell for it, hook, line, and sinker, and still hasn't quite forgiven me.

So worth it.

Today I wanted to pretend to quit my job, but was afriad it would open a can of worms I didn't want to deal with. I think I'll tell my brother I got engaged or something.

PS, Google's joke is awesome. I took the test, though, and I'm too normal to be a Mars explorer. Bummer. Maybe next year?