Sunday, March 04, 2007

My brain is Purple

Your Brain is Purple

Of all the brain types, yours is the most idealistic.
You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense.
Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries.

You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself.

A Little Bit Of Everything

Here's a sampling of some of the posts I've mentally written over the last week or two. Sorry I can't remember more. Unfortunately, even when I have time, I can no longer access my blog from work. For some reason (notice the touch of sarcasm) the school I work at thinks blogs are too dangerous for our youth to read at school and has blocked out all blogging websites.

Anyway, here are the aforementioned posts.

2/24/07 LUCKY CHARM

Move over Cy! My JBP is the new mascot of the Iowa State Women's Basketball team. At least when they're playing K-State in Manhattan.

Last night we traveled to Manhattan to attend the game between ISU and K-State today. We had intended to make it a day trip, but threats of blizzard-type weather changed our minds for us. Said weather never developed in our part of the country.

The game was great. One of those nail-biters from nearly beginning to end. Anyone who's not an Iowa State fan may not have thought so. But then, they would've been quite surprised by the end! The Cyclones got out to a slow start, falling behind by as many as 14 at one point in the first half. But, they kept climbing back into the game. They finally tied it up with just 2:00 left, then took the lead for good at :27 left in the game.


During the warm-ups before the game, a couple of the assistant coaches let JBP join them on the bench. One even walked him out onto the court so he could get a picture of the ladies warming up. They also shared Skittles with him and gave him a pop.

Afterward we were talking with the same coaches about the exciting finish and it came to our ttention this was the first time we'd won at Manhattan since 2002! The coaches then went on to declare JBP to be their new good luck charm and demand that he must attend all ISU games at K-State, sit on the bench during warm ups, share skittles and drink a Sierra Mist!

Jocks and their superstitions! But JBP was eating it up.


3/1/07 PERSPECTIVE

Tonight, as I was leaving Wal-Mart after a quick grocery trip, a woman came up to me in the parking lot asking for money to fuel up her car.

As she was walking up to me I could tell she was going to ask me for something and all I wanted to do was, quick! get my stuff in the van and get out of there before she reached me.

But, when she started talking something said I should help. I had no cash, and in general don't like to give cash but things, so I said if they'd follow me to the gas station I'd fuel their car up the same time I fueled up the van.

When we got the station and I started swiping my credit card at the pumps, I noticed the woman was walking a little strange and repeatedly putting her hand to her stomach as if she were holding it. I suddenly realized she must be pregnant. She later told me she was six months along.

She kept thanking me, saying at least now they could keep the car running for heat overnight. They had nowhere else to go. At this point I felt the need to do more than just fuel up their car so I rummaged through my grocery bags and found some food they could keep in the car and eat without heating up. Not much, but some. I also told them about our church's Dorcas program and when and where it was operated.

As I left I still had the feeling I could've/should've done more to help. But what? I'm not the only "owner" of my house so it's not up to me to invite folks home without checking with my husband. I didn't think of the idea of at least getting them a night (or a week) at a motel until after I'd left. Nor did I think of going back to the grocery store and buying them some more food until it was too late.

All I know is by the time I got home and found myself scraping my son's half-eaten supper into the trash I felt the waste in a way I haven't in years.

We have so much, even when we think we don't. We've got a house and two cars we wouldn't lose even if both of us were fired this week. We've got enough food we could eat for a couple of weeks without ever going to the store, yet we go shopping at least once, sometimes two or three times a week. We can afford cross-country trips for basketball games.

All this couple had was their car, the clothing on their backs and a baby on the way.

I've spent a lot of time since praying that they find the help they need. And if there's anyway I can, or should, help them more that they find their way back to me.


3/3/07 REJECTION

One reason I haven't blogged a lot lately is a general depression I've been suffering. Although many good things have happened to me in the last year they've been generally outweighed by the bad and difficult to handle things.

Part of depression for me, I've found, is a regression to emotional responses I thought I'd left behind along with my teens. Among them a horrible self body image and a tendency to interpret any and all negative comments as a personal rejection of me. I know conciously that my reactions aren't logical. But, that doesn't mean I can stop having them.

This hasn't been helped by recent events in my life.

For example, getting in an argument with a lady from church over how I raise my son. She was upset that I wasn't helping him through the line at potluck. This, despite the fact I hadn't been helping him, because he hadn't needed help, for several months.

In the process things were said that I took quite personally, such as:

"That's because he's stubborn and does it anyway."
"As a responsible parent I always...."
"I was just trying to get you to help your son!"

(her emphases, not mine)

Then, Der Deutscher nearly lost it this morning when Nimitz got upset with us for not getting up to let him out at his regular time and urinated on some dirty clothes on my closet floor.

I don't think I've ever seen Der Deutscher that mad before.

My first reaction, and still lingering one, was to take it as a personal rejection. Nimitz is 13.5 years old. He's an old man. When he says he needs to go out, we need to let him out or suffer the consequences.

When Sedona aged, got sick and was eventually dying, Der Deutscher never got furious about any mess. He just calmly got the needed materials and cleaned it all up.

So it was hard not to take this morning's reaction as a personal indictment against me.

It wasn't until much later in the day I realized the date and it's significance. March 3rd was my mother-in-law's birthday (she died last September). An emotionally significant date for my husband who's extremely tied to such anniversarial celebrations (as well as gifts).

But even knowing that hasn't completely changed my gut reaction to the incident.

Then, during Sabbath School today, one of the participants basically called everything I'd said or brought up a "dangerous distraction" from biblical content.

We'd been discussing the flood and questions were raised such as:

"What about the dinosaurs?"
"What does it mean when it says 'sons of God' and 'daughters of men'?"
"How did they do that?", etc.

I brought up some theories that I have heard and studied, never implying that they were the definitive answer or that we would ever have the definitive answer.

But then one of the other members came out with a whole soliloquy on how it's essentially dangerous to speculate on what's not explicitly stated in the Bible as that can be a distraction from the essential truth we're supposed to learn from it. What was important was what Moses wrote in Genesis, not what he left out.

I'd basically had enough and packed up my stuff and left. I still haven't decided if I'll return to that class.

Add that to the fact that that was the first time I'd been to church since the second week of January and only One Person from the congregation had ever checked on me, and you can see why I'm dealing with some major rejection issues right now.

Nimitz' Lady