So What Do You Know?

In the past several months, I've met a plethora of Xangans.  Some in real life and others through the unusual (for me) medium of Instant Messaging.  I can tell you that if you are an IM fan, I'm hard to catch.  The demands of my life mean that I'm almost never online at the same time as anyone else, and even when I do show up, I'm not here long. 

Be that as it may, I've noticed a surprising trend.  Talking with these people who have known me only through Xanga, in every case, one of the first questions asked is, "Where did you go to school and what kind of degree do you hold?"  If I were a paranoid person, I'd think that the question was motivated by a desire to put me in an intellectual box from which the person could say, "Oh, well, of course you'd have that opinion, you have a degree in whateverdom."   The context of the question and the follow-ups to it do not support my paranoid theory of the inquiry.  In each and every case, the next question has been along the lines of, "Why on earth would you read Immanuel Kant if you didn't have to?"

Frankly, I'm not terribly impressed by my degree.  I hold a Bachelor's in Business Administration from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville (go Hogs! whooo, Pig, sooooie).  Several years after I completed that degree I moved on to Oklahoma where I began a Master's of Social Work Program at OU.  I dropped out of that program after the first year due to philosophical reasons.  That ended my foray into education for the pursuit of a degree. 

One of my favorite professors at the UofA taught statistics, and programming languages.  Of course, back then we were studying BASIC, Fortran, and COBOL, languages now considered as ancient and incomprehensible to my PC as Sanskrit is to me.  But I have fond memories of Dr. Thibault patiently telling me, "You need to walk before you run!" And shaking his head (he was also my advisor) over some outlandish course request that he would have to sign for me, "You sure don't let school get in the way of your education."  I loved that line and took it to heart. 

While other people in my class graduated with the required number of hours plus maybe an elective or two, I had over 30 hours beyond the degree requirement.  If I saw a course in the catalog that appealed to me, I hunted down the professor and badgered him into allowing me entrance even if there were prerequisites that I had no intention of taking.  I was able to take Middle Eastern Politics and Advanced Soviet American Relations (both senior level poli sci courses) just because Dr. Vanneman liked my attitude.  I weasled my way into Existential Philosophy and Ethics before I took the required Introduction to Philosophy.  And I never went back and picked up "Figure Drawing" which was supposed to be completed before I took Calligraphy.  I had to take calligraphy because you see, I had just read Frank Herbert's Dune, and I needed to have the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear inscribed and framed for my wall.

Thats been my pattern for everything I pick up.  I have a question, or a need so I go looking for information.  Usually, the book that introduces me to the topic only raises more questions so I go on to the next and the next and the next.  I find the books that I want to read from the footnotes and the bibliographies of the interesting sections. 

I have not yet developed my reading list for the summer.  In fact I haven't picked up anything new since February when I devoured the material on the life and work of J R R Tolkien.  I've been doing a lot of writing for the past 3 months and that's taking a great deal of my time and energy.  But I'm noticing that the further I go in time from the periods when I stiumlate myself with challenging ideas and new perspectives, the more I feel that my well is drying up. 

I'm certain that I want to spend some time rereading old favorites.  What better way to enjoy the beach than with Hawking's Brief History of Time, William Barrett's Irrational Man or Jacob Neusner's Judaism in the New Testament?  But in addition to these, I'll need something new, and since George R R Martin is being slow about releasing the next installment of his series, I'm scouting around for interesting selections.  Oh, I know I want to add Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, but that will barely get me through a couple weeks at best. 

So  do you have any suggestions?

Need Versus Want

If you've been reading my blog for the past few days, you are aware that I've become obssessed with losing five pounds.  So far my scale shows a total loss of .5 (be sure to notice that decimal there) pounds total for the past seven days.  I'm sure that there are people among my readers  shaking their heads right now in the sage awareness that it is normal for body weight to fluctuate by as much as a couple pounds per week even if the person isn't trying to lose or gain, so that little half pound isn't so impressive in and of itself.  Now if I were able to maintain that direction of flux so that the scales tipped down another half pound every week, then I'd be onto something.

I've been looking into various diet plans and programs because I would very much like to tip that scale to a lower number.  FIVE pounds lower, that's all I ask (for now.)  I've learned that the difference between minimum requirements and the amount of food I actually eat, is well, you can insert your own analogy for an immense proportion here.  So for someone who wants to trim a little this borders on good news. 

All food is composed of either protein, carbohydrate, or fat with trace minerals riding along as a bonus.  Some foods are purely one category or another, but most are a combination of the three.  The tricky part comes when you try to 'balance' the diet.  I don't know if I'd ever really thought about the term balanced diet except as a vague concept that meant that I had to consume one diet coke for every chocolate truffle I ate.  But I've learned that this is not what the term means.  Go ahead and laugh all you people who actually passed 4th grade health, I was busy with more important stuff that day.  One the assumption that it's never too late to learn, I've looked it up and find that the balance refers to calories consumed = calories expended. 

Everyone burns calories at a different rate.  Our basic resting caloric expediture is combined with the activity caloric expenditure to determine how many calories are required to maintain our current body weight.  Just for exampling purposes, a 30 year old, 200 pound man will have a resting caloric expenditure of around 1800 calories.  Add to that the activity caloric expenditure of about 800, and any exercise (walking at 3.5 miles per hour for 40 minutes uses about 200 calories) and we can approximate the need for 2,800  calories of food to maintain his 200 pounds. 

In other words, my husband can eat just about anything he pleases and he won't gain an ounce.  Or, let him skip that afternoon candy bar, and he'll lose 5 pounds overnight.  But then we figure me into the equation.  For accurate numbers, it's necessary to make an appointment with a Kinethesiologist and be hooked up to expensive equipment to measure caloric expenditure.  I'm not willing to pay for that just to research a Xanga blog, so we'll estimate that I need about 1/2 as much intake to maintain my weight as what it takes for my husband.  So now I have a number to work with in planning my diet.  1,400 calories a day will balance my intake with my output.  (And BTW, that's pretty well dead on with what I've learned by tracking my daily diet against the resulting changes on the scale.)  Below 1,400 calories I lose and above that amount I gain weight. 

So then I start looking for information on planning a specific diet that will give me slightly less than 1,400 calories (I'm shooting for something in the 1,200 range) and will still meet my daily nutritional requirements.  Earlier in the week, I joked that if I limited my daily food intake to one grapefruit, that I might be able to lose that five pounds.  One cup of raw grapefruit (230 grams) contains 73.6 calories.  These calories come from .23 grams of fat, 1.4 grams of protein, and 18.6 grams of carbohydrate.  In addition, grapefruit weighs in with 79.12 mg of Vitamin C which wards off scurvy, 285 (IUs) of Vitamin A and 319 mg of Potassium.  So even after I eat my grapefruit, I still have over 1,000 calories I can eat and still (hypothetically) lose weight. 

Now I want to lose weight quickly, so I want to know what's the minimum I need to consume of the various nutritional elements to avoid malnutrition, loss of lean muscle, beri-beri, scurvy and the like.  I need a minimum of 10 grams of fat for hormone production and absorbtion of fat soluble vitamins.  This is less than one Tablespoon of vegetable oil, which contains 14 grams of fat.

The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA)  for protein for an adult is .8 g/kg body weight. So to figure your protein RDA:

1. Find your body weight.  (If you are hoping to lose, you can plug in your ideal weight here.)
2. Convert pounds to kilograms ( pounds divided by 2.2 = kilograms)
3. Multiply answer to #2 by .8g/kg to get your RDA for protein.

This means I need approximately 45 grams of protein per day.  (And if you take those numbers backward to figure out my weight, I'm telling you now, you are one sadistic puppy.) 

Time out for a few more numbers.  Fats have 9 calories per gram so 9 x 10 = 90.  Proteins have 4 calories per gram so 45 x 4 = 180 grams.  (That's about 4.5 cans of tuna or almost 1 pound of extremely extra lean beef).  Now I have 270 of my 1200 calories.  That leaves 900 calories of carbohydrate, protein, fat mixtures.  Since carbs are also 4 calories per gram thats approximately 225 grams of carb.  You may recall that the cup of grapefruit was 230 grams, so why wouldn't the grapefruit alone fit the bill?  A cup of grapefruit has about 200 grams of calorie-free water.  It would take about ten cups of grapefruit to equal the calories I'm trying to work into my diet.  That would get really tiresome about midday. 

You can see why high protein diets have such appeal.  In the first place we actually need a lot of protein to repair and maintain our muscles.  In the second place, in terms of nutritional return, Carbs aren't nearly so valuable.  Carbohydrates are needed mainly for the associated vitamins and fiber.  

Now I'm a do-it-yourself-er through and through, so I'm reading nutrition labels and experimenting in the kitchen like some lunatic bio-chemist to develop a diet I can lose with*.  If you'd prefer to skip that and subscribe to a plan where someone else has done the work, you really can't go wrong with Weight Watchers.  They have done all the charts and graphs and translated the numbers into easy to calculate formulas that you can take into the restaurant or grocery store of your choice. 

The first thing you will discover when you start looking at diet plans for weight loss is that we Americans have no idea what a 'normal' portion size looks like.  We eat out in restaurants that serve us the nutritional requirements of a small African nation with every super-sized value meal.  We buy convenience foods that are loaded with salt, fat and sugar rather than flavored with nutritionally neutral herbs and spices.  There is no magic pill that will allow us to eat as much as we want while ignoring the limit of what we need.  With our body weight, just like every other decision in life, we are only in control if we are able to exercise self-restraint and appreciate that enough is enough.

*The Ideal diet includes at least one chocolate truffle per day. 

I'm Going to Atlanta -

I've been humming a little ditty to the tune of going to the chapel ~ 'going to Atlanta and I'm gonna get ______" only I can't thing of a good fill in for the blank.  Nothing funny comes to mind, and if it's not funny, why bother?  Well, it is a catchy tune and there's a chance if I hum it often enough, something will occur to me.  

But, yes, in real life I am going to Atlanta for Memorial Day weekend.  I'll be visiting with friends, and doing some work, but mostly I expect to have fun.  I only made it about an hour on my "don't eat anything more than one grapefruit per day" diet plan yesterday, so it's unlikely that I'll lose the five pounds I'd like to drop before I get there.  I don't know why those five pounds are so important.  (Pause while the little voice in the back of my mind argues with me about that last statement.)  Okay, maybe I have a hint of why I'd like to be done with them.  See Fugitive has lost 65 pounds, so I figure if she can lose that much, SURELY I could lose five stinking measly pounds. 

Did I mention that Fugitive will be there?  Oh, yes.  She's coming to Atlanta on entirely different business.  So we are planning to touch base while we're there.  Not just touch base, I'm planning to meet her at her hotel and swim.  In a swim suit.  In a swimsuit that will reveal that I have NOT lost the five stinking pounds I want to lose. 

I have no idea what Tim and the boys will be doing while I'm out of town.  Last time I left them for the weekend, Tim took one look into their room and declared that it was Home Ec seminar time.  I'm trying to supervise them (okay, I'm bullying them) into getting their room cleaned up before I leave.  So he'll have to go to Plan B.  The boys are hoping it will involve bowling.  I know that technically it's a weekend, but I expect they will also do some kind of lessons while I'm gone.  We've figured out that days without lessons are days in which the boys have too much time on their hands to fill with mischief. 

The kids and I are winding down the school year, which doesn't mean that we are closing our books but rather that we are moving into the next phase.  We've just about completed the textbooks, so we will be moving into the kind of study that I generally think of as "extracurricular" for the summer months.  Music and art dominate with nature studies a close second.  We are also doing free form kinds of learning arising from the situations of everyday life.  Right now I'm focusing on the why behind our health and hygiene rules.  It's one thing to tell a kid, "you must wash your hands before you eat", it's another thing entirely to do a scrape and let the kid view the germs from his own hand under the microscope.

Yesterday, for example, we had to run to the store and the kids asked for a new breakfast cereal.  They started in with their assault on Mom's standards.  "The cousins have Crunchy Choco Sugar Bombs at THEIR house!"  And the ever popular, "This box has a PRIZE in it!"  I looked into their conniving little eyes and thought of a different way to do it.  I showed them the nutrition label.  They've been working with gram weights in math so they have a rough idea of how much a gram is.  I told them they had to pick a cereal with fewer than 10 grams of sugar per serving.  They whooped it up certain that 10 grams was such a huge amount that well, they expected that virtually every cereal on the aisle would be acceptable.  Then they started looking at the boxes.  14 grams, 16 grams, 13 grams, nothing was fitting Mom's standard. 

I didn't hurry them, I let them see for themselves how difficult it was to find a cereal that wasn't mostly sugar.  They finally chose Honey Bunches of Oats (6 grams per serving).  I like that one (it also has 1.5 grams of fat as opposed to many other cereals with three and four times that amount).  I would probably have headed for it straight away under normal circumstances, but then they would have argued all the way to the checkout, trying to persuade me that just this once it wouldn't hurt to have a cereal comprised of 50% sugar by weight. 

This morning (of course) they didn't want to have cereal for breakfast.  Michael helped me make biscuits which we served with sliced strawberries, shortcake style.  Now I'm back thinking about food again.  This could be why I can't seem to drop those pounds.  My cousin reminded me yesterday that I still have three weeks before we hit the beach, and I should surely be able to lose the weight by then. 

We had a good talk, I haven't talked to her or heard from her in a couple months.  So it was nice to catch up.  She expressed her envy that Fugitive and I will get to see each other with no kids, no husbands, no distractions.  Then she asked, "How is it that you convince Tim to babysit while you do these things?"  That was bad enough, but then she said, "Don't you feel guilty leaving them for the weekend?"

I felt my eye twitch. 

Tim and I see it this way.  Our children have two parents.  Whenever Tim is alone with the kids, it isn't babysitting, it's parenting.  So when I have something to do, the question is not whether Tim is available to babysit.  The question is whether Tim is available period.  Unless he has a work obligation that will interfere, his availability for parenting is assumed.  My kids are not being neglected or deprived in anyway due to the fact that both their parents have interests and obligations that frequently require their father, and occasionally require their mother, to be away from them.   

So I'm going to Atlanta.

Vacation Planning

Just about two months ago, I posted a blog about planning for the vacation we'll take this summer.  I had a checklist of items to do in advance.  This morning I realized that it's exactly three weeks until D-Day, so I thought I'd take a second look at that list and see how I'm doing.

1. Music with surf sounds embedded - check  (now if I can just remember where I put that CD, I'm sure it was in my zipper pouch before I took out all the 'easy' music and replaced it with up-beat music for exercising.)
2. Flippy little beach skirt - check
3. Swimsuit purchased - check
4. Diet to lose enough weight that swimsuit won't fit properly - check  (I started the diet, then I had a bad day and ate a pound of chocolate, so I started the diet again, then I had a bad day and ate a quart of ice cream, so I started the diet again...)
5. Second swimsuit scoped for when behind reaches that magically smaller proportion - check.  (If I eat nothing more than a grapefruit per day for the next 21 days, I MAY have a smaller behind.)
6. Kids indoctrinated to say "I much prefer that we have dinner at a grown-up restaurant than McDonalds" - (Success at last!  Tucker has begun to regularly ask for Chinese Buffet, and Michael has discovered how much he likes Chili's and TGIFridays!  Whooo HOOOOOO!)
7. Husband indoctrinated to say "I think that if you really like those earrings, you should have 2 pairs" - (Husband more likely to say, "If you like them all that well, why don't you just make a pair?")
8. Emergency beach reading sealed to insure I don't read it before I get there - when DOES George R R Martin's next installment come out? (George R R Martin's next book has been delayed again.  We've had so many rainy indoor days that I've read the letters off the cereal boxes.  All emergency non-read-yet books have been read twice.  Move this item to top of list.)
9. Husband indoctrinated to say "You girls look like you could use an evening out, why don't I stay here with the four boys while ya'll go party?" -
10. Sister indoctrinated to say "Hey, you guys look like you could use a night out, why don't I stay here with the four boys while ya'll go party?" -

The party has expanded to the point now that I think we can get group discounts at about every place we go.  It's going to be so cooool!  My friend Maureen and her daughter Kate will be joining us.  We already had plans to meet Fugitive and her two kids in Pensacola, and I've got every hope that my brother who is in the process of being discharged from the Army will make it home in time to hit the beach too.  I'm so excited I can hardly stand it to think of two weeks with my favorite people in my favorite place.  To add icing to the cake, my sister in law - Amy (wave to the people Amy) has learned that she will be giving birth (it's a scheduled induction) a couple days before we arrive so there will be a new baby to cuddle and coo over.  Isn't that nice of her that she's working around our vacation plans?

Crafting -

Yesterday I wrote about my recent foray into a new craft.  TheJohn left a marvelous comment:

What you have pictured above is good stuff. But I wonder why make stuff that you really don't need? Are these crafts consistent with your attempt to live a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle?  I also wonder why not stick with one craft, one medium to express yourself and not abandon this medium until you have truly explored its essence. Frugality is not so much living without as it is getting the most out of what we consume. If we jump from one craft to another are we really getting the most out of any of them?

These are very good questions and go right to the heart of what it means to live a simple lifestyle.  As he points out, a simple life-style has very little to do with depriving ourselves of things we want, it's about the attitude of maximizing what we have. 

I think I picked up crafting as a life-style and addiction from my grandparents.  I can't think of anything they ever wanted to do that they didn't figure out some way to do it themselves, up to and including the building of their house.  When I decided to raise goats, I realized that I could either hire someone who knew what they were doing to build me a barn for the animals, or I could figure out how to do it for myself.  So instead of paying out several thousand dollars to have the work done, I bought a circular saw, built myself some sawhorses and went to work.  (I also skipped right over the picking-up-lumber-at-Home-Depot part and build my barn out of roughs I got from the lumber yard for $2 a pick-up truck load.)  In the end, I had the barn I needed for the cost of a power tool, and approximately $150 in hardware and items than I absolutely couldn't make for myself.  I've since been able to get use of the tools I bought in building rabbit hutches, nesting boxes, bird houses, and other around the yard projects.

When I quilt, sew, crochet, garden, and preserve food - all the product of that crafting labor is used by my family.  I quilt the way my grandmother did, using scraps of fabric from the things I sew for myself and my kids.  Many of my crafts are a means of getting 'extra' from the materials on hand either by stretching them to new uses or preserving them.  

I also work on some crafts that are on the borderline of utility.  I started scrapbooking because I had box after box of photographs that no one ever looked at.  My scrapbooking hobby, contrary to most I hear about, is inexpensive.  I don't buy pre-cut, pre-formed, or pre-printed anything.  I do have some high quality stencils which I can use over and over to decorate my pages.  I buy inexpensive scrapbooks at Walmart and use acid free paper from Michael's that I can get for about $3 per 50 sheets.  It's tempting when I see the wide array of fancy scrapbooking items available to forget that my purpose is to preserve my photos.  I've seen gorgeous books with pop-up pages and incredible layouts, but to me those things distract from the photos so I stick to simpler designs.  I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with making elaborate books, I enjoy and appreciate the artistry of creative layout and design.  I've seen beautiful books that have no photos in them, but they are the result of a different creative purpose than I bring to bear.

Some crafts I work on for purely esthetic reasons.  I've cross-stitched a hundred different patterns, mostly given as gifts, although some hang on my wall, for the joy of creating something beautiful.  I've made bathsalts and candles, but I quickly learned that I could purchase those items far cheaper than I could make them so I don't make them as a regular hobby.

In addition to crafting as a way to maximize or preserve my possessions, it maximizes my time.  If I have a rainy day to spend indoors, I'd rather read a book or work on a craft than watch tv.  My grandmother's day always ended with at least an hour of quiet stitching.  Now Grandma was a bit legalistic about it.  She had scathing remarks for people who didn't apply themselves to industrious production of one type or another.  Her highest praise for anyone was that they were a "hard worker."  As a child I accepted her habit as just the way things should be.  As an adult I wonder if she really enjoyed the work, or if it was a means of escape from the condemning voice that drove her to spend her entire life trying to prove to herself that she wasn't lazy.

My husband likes to sculpt with polymer clay.  His specialty is figurines, but lately he's become interested in making more abstract pieces and items that could be utilized as jewelry.  He's not interested in learning about the jewelry making process, he just wants to make the fancy beads.  I don't need jewelry.  At the rate we're going, I'm soon going to have to find a market for the things I'm making to keep from accumulating items in excess of what I could wear even if I had a coordinated set of jewelry for every outfit in my closet.  Luckily, I have a large extended family and Christmas will be here before they know it. 

New Hobbies

I'm a sucker for crafts, hobbies and do-it-yourself projects.  The weakness existed in my character from as far back as I remember, but it didn't become a full time addiction until I moved to Minnesota.  In a land where six months out of every year have to be spent indoors, anyone without a hobby is toast.  Everyone has a basement with a workroom and anyone who doesn't spend January building something marvelous is considered a total slacker.

Plus, I have no inner voice that tells me that I have no business trying to do whatever that guy on the New Yankee Workshop is up to today.  I figure if he makes it look easy, that's because it IS easy.  Over the years I've accumulated two closets full of crafting materials in addition to a storage-shed-come-workshop that houses the power tools.  So when Tucker gave me a Christmas gift that required a foray into an untried crafting path, I should have known I was a goner. 

It didn't look like a ticking bomb.  Just a few glass beads and some charms.  A kit to make a bracelet.  I got some advice from Terri Emerson on how to tie a proper square knot and that should have ended it right there.  But you see, there were left-over supplies from that kit.  A pair of wire cutters, and some string.  I knew that in my sewing box I had several packages of seed beads from a cross stitch project several years ago and I got thinking ... Tim uses wire in his sculpey modeling, so I played a little with his stuff, nothing serious, just one pair of earrings. 

The final straw was last weekend.  I saw a piece of jewelry and instead of thinking to myself, I'd like to have that.  My first thought was Hey, I could MAKE that.  That's all it took.  I've been happily playing with beads and wire and knots and clasps.  Fugitive has never been the voice of sweet reason ever, and she said, "Oh, would you make ME one?"  For that project I had to actually go to a crafting store to pick up more supplies because I finally ran out of the stuff left over from the Christmas kit.

What am I making?  Necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and most of all foot jewelry.  I had this idea you see for a toe ring that would be connected by a beaded strand to an ankle bracelet.  Perfect for anytime you are planning to run around in barefeet.  (Which for me is a lot of the time.) 

You might think that my husband would exercise a bit of restraint here.  After all, hobbies are expensive and it isn't as though I'm lacking in unfinished projects to keep me busy.  But no.  He said, "Hmmmm, that looks really good with your tan ..."

********

In other news, my grandmother's condition remains unchanged.  She continues to lose a little ground each day but the waiting isn't over yet.  Thank you for your prayers.  I've said it before, the hardest thing I can imagine, is watching someone die.  Your support an encouragement are appreciated more than I could possibliy say.

And in other other news ~ many of you have asked about Fugitive.  She is sleek and sassy these days.  Starting in January, she's been steadily losing weight and as of this morning is down by 65 pounds.  She is going to look FINE on that beach next month.  I'll take pictures. 

Dark Ramblings

Have you been through a dark night?  You'll know if you have, although you can't describe it.  What words would you use to share the utter lack of all feeling?  In the dark night, all sensation dissipates.  All physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual senses are silenced.  No one can enter the dark night with you, no one can help you face it.  It is the place of utter existential aloneness. 

Mystics, saints and sages have from time to time voluntarily entered this place apart.  Ragged in spirit they journey through time and space where the cold fire of deprivation burns away the ego and the mask leaving a raw molten purity.  

If you haven't been there, you can't understand it.  Once you've come through to the dawn, you can't discuss it.  Everyone has a dark night at some point.  Those who've made it through recognize each other on a viseral level.  No verbal claim to have been there need be offered, the experience is stamped in your eyes, in the tilt of your head, and in the movement of your hand.

There is a false dawn that deceives and lures the unsuspecting to despair.  In this time between night and true dawn, anger, grief, confusion, and fear crowd in around you and say, "It's all over now, you feel again."  But they lie.  It isn't over as long as you remain in the place apart.  The temptation is strong to believe them, in the same way that we believe the tingle of awakening nerves after sensation has been deadened.  We may say, oh, thank God, I have feeling in my hand.  Not noticing that the hand remains contorted and dysfunctional.  It's only after the tingle passes and the nerves are calm that the experience has ended.

With deadened nerves the push of biochemical chain reactions guarantees that once the process of sensing begins, it will continue until the part that was 'asleep' resumes it's normal state.  With emotions the push is not a chain reaction.  It's the movement of will.  Unless you will yourself past anger, past grief, and past all fear, there is no guarantee you will emerge from the night.  The very emotions which seem to indicate a return to the arena of the living in fact prolong the aloneness which is the defining characteristic of the darkness.

The end of the journey is not solitude, but communion.   True community begins with the vulnerability of one heart to another.  Anger, fear, and grief subvert and prevent vulnerability.  They form a crust over the lava of purity that prevents the healing flow from one heart to the next.  The lava of purity flows in tears of joy, and sorrow.  Tears fall like the rays of dawn into the black of night.  Then it's over. 

*************************  

Doesn't that sound almost poetic?  Much better than, I'm having a bad day, so I'm planning to eat a pound of chocolate then cry myself to sleep.  Which I'm not actually planning, BTW.  I don't have more than a half pound of chocolate in the house. 

I thought I would provide a more recent picture of my sister.  This was taken on the night I got married but Terri still looks the same today as she did then.

(she is the one NOT in the wedding dress.)

  After reading her "self image" post below I couldn't help but 'hack' her site to add my 2 cents worth. 

I spent my childhood sitting on the side of the bathtub completely captivated while she brushed and curled her hair and delicately applied makeup to her near flawless skin.  She has always been more dark complected than the rest of us and she has beautiful black, thich, wavy hair.  She is petite and fine boned with a wonderful posture and facial structure.  I on the other hand have always been big boned, broad shouldered, and cursed with 'almost' red curly hair and hideous freckles.  I can remember looking in the mirror and wishing there was a way I could scrub my freckles off and look more like Terri. 

To me - she has always been the definition of "beautiful"

love you Sissy!  ~  Fugitive

My Bad High School Self

Mel asked "Now how could you go and tell this story and not post the picture??  What are we going to do with you, Terri!"

Well, I really hate to disappoint anyone.  My scanner hasn't been working for some time, but I do have a digital camera ... So without further ado ...

Yep, that's me in the letter sweater standing in front of Ronda.  The girl in the back row next to the tree is the one who told me in that phone call that I was "tiny."

Singing for some assembly or another, I would be the short one.  Mr Parham hated it that I rolled my tee shirt sleeves, told me it made me look like a 'hood' so of course, I rolled 'em right up. 

And finally, the closest thing to a full-length photo I could find,  the picture of me and Scott.  It's too bad he has his head turned down like that and you can't see his great smile. 

The God Fountain

~ Happy Mother's Day to All ~