Bragging Rights

My cousin Nathaniel and his friends put this together. The footage is fantastic.

I have never been this cool, nor will I ever be. My cousin is the one that is playing the guitar in the beginning and rockin' the plaid shorts. I could never rock the plaid shorts. I was hoping that by having this on my blog, some of his awesomeocity would rub off on me. Geez, I certainly hope it doesn't backfire and my old-person-ocity rubs off on him by association. But I did ask his permission to post it, and he knew the risks. (Maybe I should have had him sign a waiver too, poor guy.)

The Smart Brothers

We're going to see these guys at the beach this weekend.  Have a listen. This is great stuff.

Fragile

I was re-reading an old yoga book the other day and the yogi, Rodney Yee, was conversing with the writer, Nina Zolotow, about why she practices yoga. You can see the conversation here on page 4. Essentially, the writer wanted to feel more confident and less fragile, and the yogi asks, Why? So I've been thinking about that.

Why don't I like feeling fragile? Babies don't mind being fragile. Strip 'em down to their nakey, and they glee up like it's Christmas. But of course, they don't know they're fragile. Can I go back to not knowing I'm fragile? In the conversation, Yee says that yoga isn't to keep you from feeling fragile, but to let you be fully mindful of your fragility but okay with it. I haven't practiced yoga long enough to say whether he's right or not, but I have been a Christian for a while, and I think I can see how faith in God would make me okay with fragility. Maybe eventually. Not today obviously.

Two things recently have increased my awareness of my fragility (and of course it's my own fragility that really bothers me, not any one else's, sadly): I re-watched Louis Giglio's talk about the size of the universe and the complexity of creation, and my papa died. Now, Giglio's talk you're just going to have to see for yourself. A-stound-ing. I usually love when God explodes out of the box I keep trying to cram him in, but this time it was uncomfortable. I wanted to get out the super glue and try to piece together the shattered box again. Just watch it. You'll see.

But the Papa thing didn't shatter the box, it shattered me.

I am one of the very few people my age who, up until a few months ago, still had all four grandparents. My parents are still married, as were all the grandparents. Crazy, eh? I grew up in a ridiculously loving and supportive home and family, and though people hate me for it and say I'm a loser because I didn't suffer enough as a child, I'm not sorry one bit. But a few months ago, my dad's dad got sick enough to tell the doctors and nurses he was going to head home to heaven. He's was getting a new body --his had just broke-on-down. Now, I love that this guy was my heritage, and I fully intend to get my sassy pants on in the same way when I'm old, but I wasn't ready to say good-bye. So I spent a while stuck in a black hole of self comforting and self medicating. I over-slept, over-ate, procrastinated, made excuses, and drank a few extra. It was pitiful and disgusting, and I just kept it up, watching myself be pitiful and disgusting.

It doesn't really make sense either. I certainly know better. In the Christian tradition, you don't really lose anyone unless they reject God's love completely. The gospels even allude to a "great cloud of witnesses" around us -- those who turned in the earth suit -- so the whole dying thing has really become more of a re-arranging of dimensions for me. Whether I see him in the earth suit again doesn't matter; I will see him again, regardless. But I was fighting that fragile notion.

So here are the real questions. Am I not fragile and just get convinced that I am? Should I be ending this post with this declaration? The truth is, I am not fragile. Not at all. I'm created in the image of God for crying out loud. Or is that declaration just an effort not to feel fragile?

At least the porch gets watered

Inch by inch, row by row

Gonna make this garden grow

All it takes is a rake and a hoe

And a piece of fertile ground

Inch by inch, row by row

Someone bless these seeds I sow

Someone warm them from below

Till the rain comes tumbling down

Party Girl Turns One

Maria and I shared our first birthday together yesterday. Well, the first one was last year, of course, but that was no party.  So, yesteday, she turned one and I turned hmphmrddff.  She wore a party dress for the first bit, but because it was a thousand degrees here yesterday and the party dress is a little bit vintage and appeared to be a ruffled blend of polyester and styrofoam (with possibly some MSG thrown in), we changed her out of it real quick-like. Here is the official oooooh photo:

She unwrapped her presents and did the obligatory wrapper munching and paper ripping that all one-year-olds seem to love. 

She roughed up her cupcake like godzilla on Tokyo.  I will try to include some video later, so you can get the full effect of the carnage. 

Then, she had a skin reaction to whatever garbage they're putting in cupcakes these days, so she totally lost her sugar buzz when mommy swashed her all around in the bathtub to get the frosting off.  But thankfully, she was fine. She finished off her first year only a little blotchy and buzzin and went to bed with a tummy happily filled with cupcake, milk, and gift wrap. 

I'm a podrishioner

I have long appreciated the thoughts of Greg Boyd, the sometimes controversial pastor from St. Paul. We enjoyed his sermons at Woodland Hills so much that I've continued to download them as a "podrishioner" for the years since we moved from Minnesota.  Their online community, called The Bridge, has also been enjoyable.  Here is his recent interview on biologos.org.

Pomp and Smartypants

Anna has graduated from pre-K. Holla.

She was grinning the entire ceremony, waving one-armed jazz hands at us so often that she almost missed her part in the alphabet and had to dash to the microphone to go, "X is for Xylophone," and dash back to her seat to continue her waving and grinning. Of course, we were in the audience doing the same thing right back at her.

And in an unrelated news story: Infants Look Hilarious in Naked Bath Pictures

She may talk a lot about prince charming, but daddy's still the king

For a little over a year now, Steve and Anna have been hitting the Build and Grow workshops together on Saturdays at Lowe's. It makes for good father-daughter time, plus Anna gets to pound something other than mommy's last nerve, and daddy gets to hang out at at Lowe's, where the mother ship has called him home.

Like any true princess, she has an outfit for the event. She doesn't always wear her face like this. This one was special for mommy:

She gets a patch for every project she completes, and mommy gets to sew them on the work apron for her (which kind of hurts mommy's fingers, but mommy keeps her big mouth shut):

Anna's a confident girl, and her outings with daddy at Lowe's are a big part of that. She says things like, "I'm good at building," which is true, but it sorta doesn't matter that it is. It only matters that she thinks it is. If any of those losers at pre-K say something stupid like "You're not that great" (or something that pre-Kers would actually say...), she has a pumpkin, a time capsule, a jewelry organizer, a gingerbread house, a fire truck, a helicopter, and a race car that all say otherwise. Not to mention an attentive daddy who loves her a heckuvalot more than his remotes or tools.

Here's the most recently finished project. They did race cars in honor of whatever big racing event thingy happened this weekend (that's telling, eh?), but Anna doesn't care why they made race cars. She likes her race car because she made it, and she got her daddy all to herself the whole time. What more could a princess want?

Au Naturel

We've been playing in the sunshine. Anna sang you a song, and Maria took full advantage of the naked Wednesdays policy.

"Adder" by Papergirl

A good friend of mine listens to this every morning. She has been sober 632 days. May we never forget our dear ones who are fighting this same fight for their very lives. May we constantly remind them they are not alone.