Good Friday

The theme for today is death and resurrection.  I take other people's death very seriously.  I have lost friends and family, and I grieve their absence.  I'm not worried about my own death.  It isn't that I don't think I'm going to die, but really, I don't expect that once I'm dead I'll be too worried about what I'm missing.  I'm not looking forward to the process, but the end result just doesn't bother me.

My dad and I have done a lot of genealogical research.  He has files with close to ten thousand records of people (mostly dead) who are related to me in one way or another.  We've spent a lot of time in cemeteries.  I kind of like cemeteries.  They are peaceful quiet places even if they are located in the middle of town.  Nobody in a cemetery is in a hurry.  Nobody is frustrated at having to wait their turn.  Nobody is shoving me aside to reach for the last bag of gummy bears on the shelf at Walmart.  Nobody is threatening to sue me because I bit their arm.

I've picked out the tombstone I want to mark my grave site when I die.  I stopped off this morning and took pictures of it.  What do you think?  Is it me?

Maybe you need to see it from a different angle . . .

Now that's a fine use of granite.

Some people talk about the point of Christianity being the promise of a resurrection at the end of time and life eternal in Heaven.  I suppose that's well enough.  If God works it out that way, I'm cool with that plan, if He doesn't, well, what am I gonna do - complain to a higher authority?

I'm not so much concerned with whether I'll be alive then, as I am with whether I'm alive right now.  The possibility of a bodily resurrection is an interesting theological discussion and I love theological discussion.  But, real theology doesn't hinge on whether or not there is a future resurrection.  It's how do I relate to God today, in this moment.  It's whether or not I'm able to remember that my neighbor IS myself.

Remember that old Reese's cup slogan "there's no wrong way to eat a Reese's"?  That may be true.  But there's only ONE way to properly eat a Gummy Bear.

Head first.  Anyone who eats it any other way . . . well let's just say there's a place where God sends people like you.

If there's a theme of the day, it's saturation.  The ground is thoroughly saturated after weeks of almost continual rain (the sun broke through yesterday, but it's been heavy clouds and intermittent showers today). 

I started on Monday teaching Tucker to read.  I had tried introducing him to reading last Fall, but it quickly became apparent that he just was not ready.  Now he is.  Last Fall we worked almost a week before we could complete a single lesson.  This week, he has gone through two lessons a day and would have done more if I'd let him.  I worry about saturation though.  How many new ideas can a mind retain at one time?  (Not to mention that there are only 100 lessons in this book and I want it to last until we take our Summer break in June.)

I've been thinking heavy thoughts for about a week.  I've been on the problem of the mind and consciousness.  I haven't worked quite through it all yet, but when I do, I'll be sure to let someone know.  I think there will be a Nobel prize in the deal and I could use the money.

I'm frustrated on the part of my SIMS people.  They have such a meaningless existence.  They work and earn money, so they can buy stuff, so they can be comfortable and happy, so they have the energy to go to work.  They could be said to have purpose only in that they give me pleasure, but how sad is that?  I'm an indifferent deity to say the least.  I've been known to delete little lives and restart them if they didn't develop the way I thought they should go.  Sometimes I let the run without my interference for hours just to see what they will do on their own but they never manage to break out of the cycle.  They never experience transcendence.

Little Natasha Simdilius is having a grand time.  She still refuses to go to work, but I've made something of a contract with this character that I'll let her do her thing pretty much as she wishes.  Of all the characters in the simulation she comes closest to actually having free will.    She has used her free will to spend her days alternately reading books and soaking in the hot tub.

She has a secret room with a crystal ball and a magic djinni lamp.  She had a little voodoo doll for a while, but the djinni waved his hands and changed her personality to the maximum of nice points.  So no more poking pins in Roberto when he displeases her.  Although, she has been known to wake him up in the middle of the night and make him move to the couch.  I haven't figured that out.  None of my other little Sims do that.   

I'm not saturated with Sims yet.  This is still the most fun I've had since I played dolls with my sisters as a child.  Of course, Cheryl played beautician until Barbie didn't have hair anymore - just dots.  Only one of my Sims is bald, and I followed all Daffodilious' rules in designing his look.  He is quite buff. 

Many thanks to you all for the reading suggestions.  Barnes and Noble thanks you as well, their stock should rise with the quarterly earnings report. 

I'm making up for my lazy day yesterday.  It's not quite 7:30 and I'm showered, dressed, and have completed a reading lesson with Tucker.  (I've also grounded him from Nintendo for the day, which has a lot to do with why I'm so productive so early - it's self defense.)

It has come to my attention that certain persons read my Xanga blogs to be evidence that I am a moody individual.  They pointed out to me that I will write one or two fairly intelligent sounding entries and then there will be three or for days of silliness and kid stories.  I must defend myself, this is not moodiness, this is laziness.  There is a profound difference.

I"m cleaning up around my bedside table this morning.  In the past two weeks I have reduced the pile of "to-be-read" books by at least 8.  I have finished reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Colin McGinn's The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World, Schiffman's Who was a Jew?, Molly Truman Marshall Green Marshall (I hear she's changing her name again to be less confusing) - anyway, her dissertation titled No Salvation Outside the Church?, Abraham Joshua Heschel's, Man is Not Alone, and Jane Feather's Bride trilogy.

I ordered new books for the kids yesterday, (and I must say, I'm shocked that Captain Underpants is as widely known and appreciated as to have a following among the Xanganites.)  Today I'm shopping for new material for me to read, I'm in the market for fiction, but not just any fiction.  It has to be well-written, have a happy ending, and require no analysis.  Generally, I pick up Romance - but none of my favorite authors have anything new out at the moment.  So I'll probably settle for Science Fiction or Fantasy on this trip.  I don't think I've read anything of that genre for most of the past year, so if you know of recent worthy offerings, I'm open to suggestions.

I still have quite pile of theology, history, and philosophy next to my bed, but I need some good snacking books to balance that diet.

Anybody read any good books lately?  I've started teaching my five year old to read.  It's such fun to see their little eyes light up in comprehension when they start to recognize words on the page.  I was given a task this morning, get online and order the next "Captain Underpants" book.  My guys have read the first four until some of them are in ragged condition, so this morning I ordered "Captain Underpants and The Wicked Wedgie Woman."  Blessings upon Barnes and Noble Online.  I'd hate to have to go into a store and ask for that one.

It's another rainy, dark and dreary day in Indiana.  I'm still wearing my pajamas and it's almost 2 pm.  Maybe sometime later when I work up the energy to get dressed I'll write a real blog.  Then again, maybe later, if I work up the energy to get dressed I'll do something really productive, like tracking down zoodom to find out why she hasn't posted anything new since Judith's teeth last Friday. 

Nothing much new happened in my SIMS game recently.  Little Tim Verrette got a promotion - he's up from Bungee jump instructor and white water guide to Mountain Climber.  Not a lot of money in climbing mountains, but he wears these really sexy little khaki shorts around the house with a gold lame thong - oh no, wait, that's the real Tim, no that's the Sim Tim, no that's AAaaaaaaaiiiiiiiihhhhh - I've got to start drinking more caffeine.

Rain Rain - go away
Xanga's calling "Come and play"
See what your friends
Have done today
Words and pictures on display.

It's dripping rain off the roof again.  So I'm writing this offline in hopes that I'll be able to post before the modem shuts down again.  We had a quiet weekend here on the hill.  The boys started soccer practice on Saturday.  That was an experience.  I'm starting to think that there is something to the notion that little kids participate in a hive mind.  It was funny to see that little wad of arms and legs all chasing the ball around the field. 

I added characters to my SIMS game in honor of Daffodilius' birthday.  The little Simdilius family is off to a good start.  Little Roberto took a position as a policeman.  He's turning out to be a rather stodgy little guy except that he has a preference for running around the nieghborhood with no shirt showing off his manly chest. 

Little Natasha is happily unemployed at the moment.  She checks the listings but none of the opportunities so far have appealed to her.  So she reads a lot and throws parties while Roberto is at work.  She has made a lot of friends, but it remains to be seen whether they will be true friends or if they are just hanging out to ogle her and mine for gossip.

Since I've given you the info for the Simdilius family, you might wonder what the little Simulated Verrette's are up to.  Well, little Terri is a Congresswoman.  I restarted the Verrette's on Friday because I wanted to make little Terri be nicer, more like the real me (the original version of simulated Terri was an unkind people user.)  Apparently, it is little Sim-Terri's destiny to be in Congress because she rose through the political ranks with unprecedented speed.  Little Sim-Tim was a doctor before the great do-over.  Now he preferes to spend his days working out on the weight bench and has taken a position as a white-water rafting guide.

Shades of Blue

Okay, there is a story about that wall.  It's a great story.  It's not really blue, it's purple.  It was a trick of bad lighting and the camera flash that makes it look blue.  I'll see if I can find a better photo to really capture the purpleness of it.

I bought the paint at Home Depot and the color is called "eclectic."  At the same time I purchased a very pale shade of lavender from the same color family that was just the shade of shadows at dusk.  The very pale shade was to go on the wall and the dark color was to be used to paint the trim. 

The summer we moved into our house I worked like crazy to do all the painting while my baby spent a week at Fugitive's house.  Only, the baby got homesick, and I didn't finish the job before it came time to go get him.  A few months later I took the boys to my parents' for a couple weeks and Tim decided to surprise me by finishing up the painting.  You guessed it.  He got the colors mixed up and painted the wall the trim color. 

Something else I should mention about my husband, he doesn't think walls should be any color other than white.  We had a agreement when we moved into this house that I could paint whatever color I wanted in half the house as long as the living/dining room and our bedroom were white.  So for him to put color on a wall went against everything he prefers, but out of love for me, he was willing to use this outlandish purple.

This is my favorite wall and room in the house.

Show and Tell

When we did all the upgrades to the computer - I moved our desks.  We now have an "office" set up in our family room.  I'm pleased.  So I'm showing off pix of my work space.

And I'm right next to the fireplace.

Wow that was cool.  I'm used to having an upload take long enough that I can go brew a pot of coffee or take a shower while it's in process.  Both those photos loaded faster than I could get back from the fridge with a fresh diet coke.  Look out Xanga - I'm thinking that photos are on the way!

Tim is back.  Poor guy, between Monday morning and yesterday afternoon, he had only 5 hours of sleep and three of them were on the return flight.  I'm just thankful he was able to drive home from the airport without incident.  But, life has returned to normal around the Verrette house.  My brief rebellion against my routine is over.  This morning I'm back to "short-order" cook.  The kids are full of ham and cheese omelet and preparing to start their lessons. 

(They did indeed get popcorn for dinner on Monday evening, with a side of apple slices and cheese cubes.  Hey, corn is a vegetable, right?) 

The weather here has been atrocious this week.  We've had slow earth-saturating rain for days on end.  Whenever we have more than two days of rain in a row, we begin to have erratic phone service.  I can place calls, sometimes.  People frequently are unable to call me, though.  And we have horrible static on the line.  Static enough to cause the modem to disconnect without warning.  <Heavy Sigh>

The sky is clear today, and I'm online while I have the chance.  So why did I want to move out to the middle of nowhere?  Because I have to admit, it was MY idea that we'd buy a farm in the country.  Why would anyone want to move to a place with no cable modem, no pizza delivery, and only one Chinese restaurant in the whole four county region?

I grew up in a small southern town in a moderately sized Baptist church.  When I left home for college, I left behind my "Christian" roots and immersed myself in all kinds of philosophy and exploration of beliefs about the nature of reality.  I took a hard look at the Chirstians I knew and I judged that they didn't really believe what they preached.  They certainly didn't live like they believed.  The problem could either be with every single individual Christian that I knew, or the problem could lie with the religion they professed.  At that time, I decided that the problem was with their religion.  And you know what?  I still believe that.

I'm not a big supporter of religion.  Religion means rules, institutions, hierarchy, tradition, superstition and dogma.  I wanted no part of that.  On the other hand, I kept having these experiences with something that I can only describe as transcendence.  Everytime I thought that I knew what I believed, I experienced a reality that pushed the envelope just a little further and a little further.  Now, I could either judge myself to be psychotic, or I had to enlarge my worldview to encompass the possibility of an infinite beyond.  You have no dobt noticed that I've started using weird sounding phrases.  I'm avoiding the use of the word God, because I'm talking about a Godness that was so far beyond my conception of God that I could not relate my experience to my previous understanding.

I'll skip over the months and years of this process and get right to the bottom line.  I found that the whole God thing isn't about religion, it's about relationship, and it's very difficult to communicate relationship.  Although I can talk about my husband all day long, I can never communicate the nuances of that experiential relationship.  But, when I talk about my husband I have an advantage in that people at least realize that they can see him, touch him, hear his voice.  (I stopped short of smelling him because I don't want to imply something that might get me in trouble later.   ) 

I see, touch, hear, taste and smell transcendence.  I know it experientially.  But, I'm frustrated in my attempts of communicate my experience.  It is as though some people have eyes that see and others simply have eyes that perceive light within a specific measurable bandwidth.  The only thing I can do is live my life in the fullness of relationship at let people draw what conclusions they may from what they see.  As I do that, I find myself in places I never expected to be, doing things I never expected to do, because the reality of transcendence shapes and informs my decisions.

Transcendence informs me that there is no difference between myself and my neighbor.  I cannot be free of the limitations of self unless I am ready to embrace the other.  To be a little less abstract, my relationship with God tells me that I need to live debt free and unencumbered so that I'm free to give my time, my skills, my hugs, and my money to purposes that have nothing to do with my own pleasure and security. 

With our income, if we are to have freedom to act with justice and compassion, we could either buy a small house on a postage stamp lot in a neighborhood with "character."  Or we could have a 6 1/2 acre place on the end of a gravel road with a 2,000 square foot house.  As sacrificial living goes, putting up with irregular phone service and an hour drive to nice restaurants is not impressive compared with the great sacrifices of the saints through the ages, but it's where my relationship has led me.

Tim is out of town.  He had to fly to Sacramento to help a client.  Bummer for me and the kids.  The kids are used to having him here to read bedtime stories.  After months of Daddy's voice lulling them to sleep with The Adventures of Captain Underpants, Mom just isn't adequate.  My attempts at cute voices as I read from the Book of Virtues, just don't quite cut it.

Tucker was watching cartoons this afternoon and got an idea he had to try out immediately.  "I'm going to hypnotize you, Mom."  Of course I played along.  He's adorable with his imagination play and I try to encourage him.  After the "you're eyes are getting heavy, you feel very sleepy" part, he got straight to the point.  "You will obey my voice, Mommy.  You will get me a straw-cherry and put a LOT of ice cream under it."

Yeah - right.

So what am I up to with Tim out of town?  Well, today I did SEVEN loads of laundry.  I've made it clear to the kids that it's plenty warm enough outside (its at least 40 degrees), I expect them to go naked for a couple of days to give me a break before I have to do this again.  I did NOT cook.  Michael woke up this morning and ordered a ham and cheese omelet.  Yeah - right.  He got cereal.  For lunch Tucker ordered chicken alfredo with spinach salad (yes, I actually serve these kind of things as a general rule) he got ravioli from a can with applesauce on the side.  They are both eyeing me with trepidation as the dinner hour approaches.  Muwwwaaaaaah!  They'll be lucky to get microwave popcorn.    I'm having yogurt (mixed berry) with granola. 

I'm planning to let the kids watch a DVD this evening while I curl up with a book, a Michael Bolton Cd and a diet coke.  I have another confession on the music thing.  When I was pregnant with my oldest son, I had a really difficult time.  I spent the last two months on bedrest, which is a horrible way to live.  My sweet husband brought me Michael Bolton cd's and told me to listen to them while he was at work and be reminded how much he loved me.  So whenever I listen to Michael Bolton, I SEE my husband.  It doesn't matter that he looks nothing like Michael Bolton and is a bass besides.  As far as my brain is concerned that's Tim Verrette singing. 

Those of you who know Tim Verrette are probably wondering so I'll just be frank - I do NOT let him sing Michael Bolton songs around the house.  The man has a mental problem that causes him to take perfectly wonderful songs and change the words into lyrics that Weird Al wouldn't claim.  He's dangerous in church.  I'm constantly on the alert for his attention to wander from the hymnal.  The second he looks away from the printed page he'll forget what the words are supposed to be and start singing what is in his head.  It's just as likely to be a line from Captain Underpants as Martin Luther at that point.  Scary.

"Rainy day people always seem to know when it's time to call,
Rainy day people never talk they just listen til they've heard it all."

I don't remember the first time I heard Godon Lightfoot's song, but I immediately wanted to be the comfortable friend for those wet days.  Unfortunately, I've been told that I'm not a good companion when it's damp and drippy.  I wallow in melancholy.  I play Enya and Clannad until my husband threatens to kill himself.  I'm NOT a rainy day person.

I'm a happy romantic.  I love Michael Bolton, Air Supply, Peter, Paul and Mary and Abba.  I think the most romantic song I've ever heard is Harry Belafonte's "Skin to Skin" - but you have to get the version from the Paradise in Gazankulu album, the live version from his PBS special doesn't give me chills or make me cry like that wonderful studio mix with Jennifer Warnes.

Give me Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen and Bob Marley any day.  I love Alison Krause and Twila Paris.  Michael Card's album Unveiled, based on the poetry of the book of Revelation is sheer genius.  I love Rebecca St. James, Steve Green and Paul Wilbur.  I discovered Sweet Honey in the Rock during an episode of Reading Rainbow and they've become good friends.  Oh, and who can resist the ABC song as performed by Ladysmith Balck Mambazo on Sesame Street?  You just can't beat Vivaldi, Mendelson, Tchaikovsky, Handel, Bach, Beethoven, or Mahler for good drive music - unless you have a copy of Mannheim Steamroller's "7" album.

I don't know if it's art, I just know what I like.  I like music that catches me up in the joy of moments.  I like bubble gum beats and orchestral majesty.  So in answer Daffodilius' challenge to reveal musical tastes, I've seen your music and I raise you - trashy reading material. 

The shelves in my living room are filled with philosophy, theology, science and history.  Plutarch's Lives and Caesar's Conquest of Gaul, rest secure in their place of honor.  But under the guest bed in the purple room - you'll find Jane Feather, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Linda Howell, Kathleen  Eagle, Betina Krahn, and Jayne Ann Krentz (including her historical romances published under the name Amanda Quick).  I have Anne McCaffrey, Frank Herbert, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Stephen R. Donaldson, Katherine Kurtz, and David Eddings.  It's a test, any princess who can sleep with all that treasure at hand is no princess that MY little prince will marry.