Quote turned title

New Location!

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:05:46 -0400

My blog has a new location. If you haven’t followed me over there, you can do so now:
http://poetsandsaints.wordpress.com

You can also subscribe and receive my blog by email or you can catch it on Facebook. See you there!

Change

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:35:36 -0400

Something switched this week. I woke up to it yesterday morning when the humidity finally broke and the morning air turned cool. Fall is coming; I can see the flowers faded and spent, the ground dry as dust, and everyone braced for the changes that a new season brings. Kids are back to school; schedules resume in that crazy overbooked way.

My calendar shows the same thing as well, because in two weeks, everything switches over to a new schedule. I go back to teaching classes on Monday nights, my church activities start up, and I’m am ending my gig as a babysitter. The babysitting job has been good in so many ways over the last year. It’s given us extra money in a season when we needed it. It’s given my daughter a playmate whom she adores. It’s also taught me how to juggle two kids in various arenas--the park, the library, the car. But I’m looking forward to the change as well. It will free me up during the week to finish some projects. I will be able to focus more on my teaching and writing and spending time with my daughter, at least until the baby comes. And then of course, everything changes again.

Along with all those changes, I’m also going to be making some changes to this blog. I’ve been using Apple’s iWeb to power my blog for a while, but find that it is just too limiting for both me and my readers. In the very near future, I’m going to be changing the location of my blog over to Wordpress. The address is much more user friendly than this one: it’s just the name of my blog, followed by wordpress.com:
http://poetsandsaints.wordpress.com

Don’t worry, I will post the link on here once that change is permanent. I know that change is hard and it’s a pain to change your bookmarks. But bear with me, you’ll like the new features. My old blog isn’t easy to find on the web, it doesn’t offer the user-friendly features that other blogs do, and it’s just not keeping pace with other programs. For those of you that look at our pictures online, they will still be in the same place, only my blog is moving. I think you’ll like the new look and location of my blog and it’s a perfect time for change.

Other great features of my new blog:

--the ability to receive my blog in your email, so that you don’t have to check for new posts--you’ll automatically receive them in your inbox!

--the ability to subscribe to my blog using an RSS feeder

--easier to remember web address (http://poetsandsaints.wordpress.com)

--more features, including my latest links, recipes and more.

--the ability to search using tags and categories--if there’s a particular topic you like reading about, you’ll be able to find more blogs on that particular topic by searching the tags and categories automatically linked to my posts.

You can take a sneak peek at it now and will see some of the same posts that are on this blog. I’ve been trying to get it up and running for a few weeks now and still have a few more changes to make.

I think you and I are going to like this change....

Making Space

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:40:34 -0400

I’ve been sorting and stacking, throwing things out and hoarding things away. It feels good to clean out my closets and get rid of the clutter and baggage and realize how much space there really is. I’m slowly working through them, one at a time, on days where I’m not babysitting or working some other odd job. The results are worth it: less clutter, more room, and the feeling of purging that happens when you donate and throw away bags of stuff. Like many people, I have trouble with the latter. Throwing things away feels a bit too American--a bit too rich and hasty. Can’t I find some use for this old curtain? The other devil-of-a-thought that comes creeping around is I might use it someday.

I’ve found that donating my junk is far more effective. I figure if I can’t get rid of it, then someone else can; that is, if my junk is actually useable and worth making a buck off of.

I stack up these great piles: the donation pile, the throw-away pile, the keep-here pile, the move-to-another-closet pile and the attic pile--the only storage place we have for the occasionally used items. The attic has, unfortunately, become a refuge for all the things I can’t seem to part with, but which don’t have enough use in my everyday life. They are things I might use once a year, or keep for nostalgia’s sake, like old plaques and awards, and even some large crystal bowls I received as wedding gifts. They are gorgeous bowls, but too impractical with young children around the house. I keep them for the day when I might have a special party, maybe something with fancy cheese and a frothy punch recipe. Those types of parties are almost nonexistent when you have small children that need to be in bed by 8:00. But I’d like to think that maybe, just maybe, I’ll be brave enough to have a party like that, even with small children.

My daughter find various odd things to play with as I clean the closets--a rolled up sleeping bag becomes a toy to tackle and roll around on. Candles are stacked and lined up on the floor. Old baby toys get played with briefly, then tossed aside. Forgotten hats get tried out. A string of craft pearls is wrapped around the waist like a belt. Between the mess I’ve created, she creates her own little piles of things tried out and played with. It means going back later and cleaning up after her, but that’s the least I can do since she’s entertained herself while I stack and pile.

Then there’s the great moving of the piles, where I employ my husband’s help to take a stack to the attic, and another to the trunk of my car, where it will be dropped off at the back door of a Goodwill store. The drop off point is at the back of a strip mall where the truck deliveries are made and the dumpsters are stacked high with last week’s trash. The sign outside says, “please ring the bell” and it feels a bit like I’m making an illegal transaction with the mob when I park at the back door in an empty lot, ringing a solitary bell against a windowless building, except that the mob wouldn’t be that polite and have a sign posted, there would just be a secret knock before Vinny, the mob’s bouncer, shows up. Then the door swings open and the mob scene disperses as quickly as it formed, with the hubbub of the sorting room at the Goodwill store. A lanky older man with a friendly face takes my junk without comment, hands a form to me, and lets the door swing shut. All the sorting and piling ends quickly, with my trunk’s slam, and I return home.

When I open the door of my newly cleaned closet, I feel lighter, as if the junk I removed from the closet was the same junk I’ve been carrying around on my own shoulders the last few years. Life seems a little simpler with less stuff. Less to hang on to, less to worry about, and more space to fill up with life. It’s realizing that every time I give away, the more space I have for people--not things. A recently cleaned closet will make room for a new baby’s clothes. A bared shelf becomes a storage place for some handmade presents. A cleaned out pantry allows for extra treats to feed friends. Making more space in my life for others is part of this process of cleaning out and rearranging. It’s making room for what really matters, one garbage bag at a time.

The Twist

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:34:28 -0400

On Wednesdays nights, we venture over to the local park for a free outdoor concert. We ride our bikes, plant ourselves in the back of the concert so that our two-year-old can run around in the back with all the other wound up toddlers. It works quite well, actually. We lay on our blanket in the newly mowed clover and listen to the hits of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Any band named “Nostalgia” had better do oldies. Last week they even played an oldie from my era. It’s always a sad realization when the music I love becomes part of the oldie play list. It means that I, too, must be nearing some ancient age when young adults will no longer see me as cool anymore. I probably passed that threshold a long time ago, but don’t we all see ourselves as cool, way past the point where we really are cool?

The people-watching is almost as interesting as the concert itself. There are people with dogs, and people with bikes, and people with picnics, and people with camp chairs with built-in footrests. Then there is the group of people who come from the home for adults with mental disabilities. I normally might not even notice this group, except for the fact that on a regular basis, they travel up to the stage and stand right in front of the performers and dance. And I mean, dance, with no inhibitions and no realization that three hundred people can see them. Or maybe with every realization that three hundred people can see them. Sometimes they even turn around and face the crowd, as if they are the performers, and there is this look on their faces, this far-away, I-have-a-dream-of performing-on-stage look. Once they were even given tambourines, which, upon first glance, was a hit because they got to be part of the band. A few minutes later, however, everyone seemed to realize that when you get five people banging the tambourine to their own drum beat, that it might start to overshadow the real drumbeat. And it did. The music started to have this quality of a preschool class banging percussion to a Laurie Berkner song. It is a valiant effort, but it doesn’t quite add to the song.

But the best night of all was when the band started to play The Twist, and one young gentlemen from the home, wearing his grey sweatpants pulled high over his rotund waist, began twisting with such enthusiasm, I thought he might fall over. It was the most inspired twist I have ever seen; with such wild abandonment, even Chubby Checker couldn’t compete. And for that moment, I think that we were all enjoying his enthusiasm; maybe we were even envying him for the fact that he really didn’t care what people thought.

Unlike this young man, there are few times, other than childhood, that I can really say I have danced (or lived, for that matter) without fear of judgement. That is the way most of us live our lives--in fear of what people think. Instead, we do what is safe, normal, and even expected. No wonder our lives have this stale quality. Sometimes it even crosses over into relationships, our churches, and our creativity. We worry more about image, than who we truly are, than who we were made to be and what we were made to do.

I’m still trying to work through this myself and I’m thankful for the friends and family who gracefully accept me, flaws and all. I’m lucky to serve a God who loves me, despite my flaws, despite the fact that most of my life is not lived with the enthusiasm I want. In some ways, I’m still learning to dance.