who does that?

This afternoon I was so tired that as I was getting into the car, I forgot to get all hands and feet into the vehicle like they tell you to do on amusement park rides.

My left foot was moving more slowly than my brain, so I closed the car door before my chaco-clad foot was out of the way, and I totally crunched my foot. Hard enough to warrant a choice cussword.

As Julie (my friend the medical professional) ran her hand over the indention that was starting to turn a pale shade of blue, she said laughing, "Oh well. That doesn't look good."

and that's when i laughed so hard that i couldn't breathe ... again

As Cari was walking out the door I caught her, remembering that I was supposed to send waffles home with her for Julie to have when she comes home tomorrow morning after the night shift at her job. Cari came back in and was right behind me as I was putting some waffles on a plate and getting the aluminum foil around them. I got the plate wrapped up and grabbed a bottle of syrup, then turned around to give it to Cari ... but she wasn't there.

I stood there, confused, holding a plate of waffles and a bottle of syrup looking around the entire room. I said out loud, "Where'd she go?"

Cari, who was exactly where she had been, only bent down petting the dog, said (knowingly), "Who?"

Surprised, I exclaimed, "You!!" (And yes, I exclaimed it with two exclamation points.)

that's one way to spice up an evening

Two days ago I kept noticing a smell, a bad smell, and when I undressed for the night, I realized it was my shirt. Ugh. So I smelled some things, like the strap of my bag and my cat (things that had been in close contact with my shirt) to see what had made me smell so bad. It was the cat.

Dear goodness I have no idea what this smell was, but it was unholy. And I know that cats clean themselves and so I just waited it out. However, when I got home last night, he still smelled, so I decided that I had to bite the bullet. I had to give Sam the Cat his first bath since he was a small kitten and happened to jump in the toilet.

This was a terrible and hilarious ordeal, and thankfully Caley was home and my friend (Person-Sam) was over hanging out. I commandeered them and into the bathroom we went. Caley video'd the entire thing, and Person-Sam helped me hold Cat-Sam.

And it took three tries. The first unsuccessful attempt was in the bathtub, and I just didn't do a good enough job. I used shampoo on a small section of his back and then rinsed him off. He smelled great in the area that I'd managed to shampoo, but the rest of him still smelled. So I tried a second time, and I got his entire back and his hind-quarters, but his neck area still smelled. Person-Sam reminded me that the third time's a charm, so we went for it again. This time in the kitchen sink.

By this time we'd gotten the entire process down a little better, so Person-Sam held him firmly and I took the bar of soap and washed him down like a dog. And I used a pitcher to pour water over him to rinse him. Much better than trying to shove him under the faucet in the tub. He let out every octave of howling and meowing, and thank the good Lord he doesn't have claws because Person-Sam would've been shredded to bits.



Despite the fact that Cat-Sam sounded like a torture-victim, when we were done he wouldn't let go of my neck as if to say, "Oh thank goodness I'm alive. Did you know I just escaped death? I love you." Then he commenced to licking himself all over until he was dry. Here's a picture of Buddy helping him out with his tail.



And I am glad to report that this morning he is a fluffy, clean, good-smelling cat. This was his first activity this morning, digging in the dirt of the herbs, because everyone knows that the one thing a clean cat wants to do is get dirty.

realization of the heart

I finished reading Gilead a couple weeks ago, but words from that book are still swirling around in my brain. I keep having conversations with others who have read it, getting all excited and talking over one another in fact, because we're both so excited that someone else was affected in the same way by this part or that.

I think what gripped me so much about this book is the thought process of the main character, John Ames. He is unassuming from the core, and knows himself intimately—the good and the bad, and is honest. He sees beauty in the simplest of things, and I think we'd all do well to be a bit more like him.

I underlined the following words, and then read and re-read them many times to try and make them part of my inner landscape.

I have decided the two choices open to me are (1) to torment myself or (2) to trust the Lord. There is no earthly solution to the problems that confront me. But I can add to my problems, as I believe I have done, by dwelling on them. So no more of that.

This has been perhaps one of the biggest struggles in my life, the thought that if I don't do everything perfectly then all is lost. I think something was written on my heart as a child, something that I don't remember, that has made me (wrongly) assume that I must be perfect in order to be. And it exhausts me and debilitates me and makes me a captive to anxiety and comparison. I have long defined myself by the degree that I am less smart, less talented, less pretty, less sought-after than so-n-so. Or, even worse, smarter, more talented, prettier, more sought-after than so-n-so.

John 21:21-22 tells us not to compare ourselves to one another, and 1 Peter 5:6-7 tells us not to worry. How I've tried to convince myself that perfectionism is a good and noble thing, while knowing full well in my heart that it is something very wrong: in a word, pride. The fact is, just like John Ames says, we are not perfect, and we never will be. So I can torment myself trying to be, or rest in the fact that God has made irrelevant the fact that I am not perfect.

I have thought for years that everyone is against me. Not out to get me persay, but always slightly disappointed in who I am. I have been convinced that people have merely put up with me, endured me quietly, and befriended me out of pity or convenience. So I have spent most of these thirty-two years trying to defend myself and to prove myself, even though I am a disappointment. It has been very hard, fruitless work.

But over the past couple years, I have been surrounded by people who are actually for me, and I have been growing closer to a God who loves me unconditionally—not because of or in spite of my performance—but simply because I exist.

And this has confused me profoundly.

I have written off the love of people around me with the excuse of, "They don't really know me." And I have written off the love of God as a patient, enduring love ... a love that is boring for him instead of a love that pursues me and delights in me and is giddy and wild and passionate.

But lately, I am realizing that these people who love me dearly, they do know me. Intimately. And God has been showing me that his love is anything but boring; instead it is relentless and willing to do anything to get my attention.

How silly I have been. All this love and all this beauty and I've been closing my eyes and clasping my hands over my ears saying, "No, you don't understand. I won't have it!"

The other day my friend Aaron said to me over breakfast, You are an extremely gifted person, and you walk around oblivious to it most of the time. He meant, in context, that I can do plenty well. That I am not the general let-down that I think I am. That statement knocked me down. It was as if I'd been wearing these glasses that distorted my view of the way everyone sees me, and with that statement he slapped those glasses off of my face.

So to my friends, and to God, I am so sorry for never fully receiving your love. It is such a beautiful honor, and I apologize for writing it off as if it were anything less than the intense blessing that it is. And I know that even if I could be perfect, you could not love me any more or any less, because your love is real—and by real I mean unconditional. It is, to quote Gilead again, my existence you love me for.

um.

Our air conditioning is broken.

[Update on 8/17: Maintenance fixed it; it is working now. I think it is particularly hilarious that our air conditioning went out when the bank sign said 107. Especially considering this, oh irony of ironies.]

of last fall

Lately it's been too hot. Yesterday for awhile Julie and I were in the car and for a good five miles all we did was complain about the heat and express our disdain for August. It's reached (and passed) one hundred degrees for as many days as I can remember. Today it's supposed to reach one hundred, though right now it is eighty-seven.

I read outside for a couple hours, with the phone turned off, which was nice. In the shade of the screened porch it felt nice, like a day in late spring or early fall. Once the wind blew and it was actually cool. It reminded me to come inside and look up Weston's Apple Festival on the internet so I could put it on my calendar.

I remember last year's fall, all surreal and magical. I had no job for September and October, and it was the nicest gift in the world. My friends the Tuckers went for an extended holiday and I watched their house from mid-September to mid-October. It was a wonder, no doubt. I had all the windows open to the outdoors and they let me bring my cat Sam with me. I would spend my mornings with coffee and oatmeal in the massive flower garden watching Sam chase bugs. And the master bedroom had a canopy bed and a fireplace, so I'd read late into the nights with Sam at my side, feeling like I was in a cottage nestled somewhere in rural New England.

A lot of us were without jobs last fall. Katie, and Aaron, and Caley, and Cari, and me. I may even be forgetting someone. We called it "The Autumn of Unemployment" and we loved it. Aaron and I drove a long way during that time, all the way to South Carolina and back, although I dropped him in Nashville and picked him up on the way back. That night in Nashville on the way back was nice, my long-lost friend Shannon and I sat outside on the patio of a bar and ate good food and drank good beer. I hadn't seen her in years yet it was as if we hadn't skipped one moment. I believe we talked until three in the morning. Then I got to sleep on her couch curled up with her cat Joey.

In Gilead, Ames writes to his son (concerning the whole of humanity), "In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence."

I agree with him I think, or if I don't agree fully, I at least think the concept is a beautiful one. Sadly beautiful, though. It seems true enough, the idea that we are secrets from each other, all of us. I think that is one thing that is kind about friendship, that while we have a separate language, aesthetics, and jurisprudence about us, we find in some a similarity enough of those things to understand one another (or appreciate, at the least) and we become friends.

I have often wondered why we love the people that we do, and perhaps it is that simple. And for all that simplicity, it almost seems more beautiful.

well said

Gretchen, watching her 12-year old son play with her 1-year old son: "Be careful with him, Jack. He's just a baby."

Jack: "Yeah, a baby MAN!"

stop the presses

Tonight a handful (okay, a couple handfuls, about 20) of us were out for Becky's birthday shindig, and we were all sitting around a big table having dinner. My new friend Dave said to me, "You know, Amy, I meant to tell you this last night. You always just say the right thing."

He wasn't finished talking, but I put my hand up to stop him and said, "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

He repeated, "You always just say the right thing."

I looked across the table at my friend Jason (who has known me for years and been present for oh, say, 95% of the completely inappropriate things that have accidentally fallen out of my mouth over the last few years) to make sure he was paying attention and said to Dave, "Can you repeat that for Jason?"

So he said it again, more loudly, "Amy always just says the right thing."

The whole table got quiet all of a sudden and everyone looked at Dave. I asked him to actually repeat it AGAIN for everyone. So he did.

Then after a good twenty seconds of everyone looking at him in silent disbelief, Jason finally said matter-of-factly, "He obviously just doesn't know you."





[Turns out, Dave meant that I always say the right thing to encourage someone. And while that isn't always true, I mean I could be better at it, it is much more believable than what I thought he was saying. Because we all know that I usually, in general, always say the exact wrong thing.]

my new favorite website

This has taken up more of my time than eating or sleeping lately. I literally just CAN'T STOP. This is Caley and myself. You should make your own. I think I've done a fair job of defiling everyone I know with this, or at least everyone that I know and also happen to have a picture of.

This may be the greatest site since the Fat Dutchman.

instant messaging hilarity

Me: Aw. Good think I told you that, then.

I mean, good thinG.

Jason: I fikured so.

welcome home, justin

Justin went to Africa for two months and what are we most fascinated by upon his return? His new keytar. He got it for three bucks at a flea market in Philadelphia, where he decompressed for a week with two of his closest friends before returning home.

Video number one: Justin introducing Mike to the keytar. (0:41)
Notable quote: "Is this ... video?"



Video number two: Justin shows off keytar for Mike. Even offers to let him play it. (1:49)
Notable quote: "This bad boy runs on six Double A's." "Yes, yes it does."

wouldn't THAT be the super-power to have

Tonight (which was seasonably hot and humid) my friend Dan and I were at Sheridan's sharing a Snickers And Reece's Peanut Butter Cup Concrete. It was good, really good, especially as I made fun of Dave for having a Peach Concrete.

[I said to him, "Peach? Really? Are you a GIRL?" It was fairly immature and obnoxious, I'll admit. But later, he redeemed himself as we reminisced about the old Toyota commercials that had the song that went Oh what a feeling! Toyota! and as they sang, "Toyota!" the person or people standing beside the car would jump in the air and the commercial would freeze-frame. I said, "How old are you?" He replied, "Thirty one," and I said, "Put it here," and we high-fived. Then we started talking about 80's movies, and he said, "Do you remember that one? That good one? The wrestling movie?" and I said, "Dave, I'm a GIRL." So it kind of came full-circle.]

Anyway, so as Dan and I were chomping down on this concrete full of chocolate and peanuts and peanut butter, he said, "Now I wish I had some water. You know what they need? They need a cooler of water out here with cups." As he motioned around showing where they should have a cooler of water with cups, we noticed, yes that's right, a big blue cooler of water with a tall stack of cups.

And we COULD NOT STOP laughing.

since he has the gift of reading minds and stuff

Cari and Kevin and I were talking about songlines that are often misunderstood. They are universally called mondegreens ("upon the green"), but my friend Christine always calls them amanshupucks.

So I was telling Cari and Kevin why she calls them that—because when she was little and heard the Elvis song All Shook Up, she thought it was, "Amanshupuck. Uh huh oh!" Which, I thought was hilarious, considering the NAME OF THE SONG was All. Shook. Up. Plain and simple.

But anyway, as I was explaining this, Cari said, "Oh I have an Elvis song that I always misunderstood, too. It was something about Saturday or something." Kevin and I cocked our heads to the left and started thinking intently about which song that could be. We started throwing some ideas out when Cari shook her head and said, "Oh, don't even try. This is probably like associate."

So Kevin, being funny, said, "Yeah, you'll finally remember it and it won't even be about Saturday, it'll be about December or something."

Cari declared, "That's it! It's Return December!"

"Wow. That. Just. Happened. And we didn't even need a phone book."