playing catch phrase the other night

Jason gets the word, "Mule." He says, "Ooh, Glenn and Tom used to do a skit called this: blank train!"

Everyone stares at him.

Jason, trying again, "Okay. It's another word for donkey."

Everyone screams in unison, "ASS!"

Jason, putting down the game and looking at his team in exasperation, "Yeah. Exactly. Glenn and Tom used to do a skit called Ass Train. Right."

i gotta work it

This graced my life today. Please go view it—it's by far the best thing I've seen on the interweb in a long time.

(And yes, I bought the Hanner Montaner song off iTunes afterwards. This definitely deserves reenactment.)

whoever said spelling isn't fun has never been around cari and me

Cari and I love spelling and grammar. I know we all know this, but because of this when one of us makes a spelling error or grammatical mistake, we make fun of ourselves and each other.

Read about one such instance here.

So this morning, we were chatting online about how freaking cool Word. is this week, and how we both picked our last choice for photos, yet it worked out perfectly. We were discussing what our first choices had been, and she said this: [Note: Henry is Cari's cat, and Home is a novel by Marilynne Robinson]

Cari: I had one of Henry with Home under his foot, and one of a pumpking.
You know, the ruler of all pumpkins.

much needed

Today was ...
a) my first day off in two weeks
b) my first day alone in two weeks
c) the first day of sun in two weeks

I took my time, I took my cameras (digital and film), I took my ipod, and I didn't take my phone. It was good to be outdoors.

I am learning that I am so fifty-fifty. I cherish good alone time, but I miss those I love dearly when it's been too long. The perfect end to the perfect day alone? Natalie making chicken pie and apple crisp for dinner, and eating together and hanging out all night long.

this week

It's cold. For as long as I can remember (don't let that fool you, my memory isn't that great) it's been either drizzling or pouring rain and cold. It's so nice. Tonight Natalie and I left the house just a little before 8 o'clock and we just stood in the driveway for a minute, sniffing autumn and saying, "Ooh, feel how cold! Smell the cold!" It was beautiful. October is one of God's many kindnesses to me.

Lately my mind has been spinning. Watching someone you love grieve jacks with you. I am not sure what you call that ... secondary grief? The thing where your heart grieves for the grief that your loved one feels. It sticks in your throat and it's hard to eat or sleep yet you know that the pain you're feeling for them is minuscule compared to the pain they're feeling, and it's crippling knowing that they are hurting with a pain that you can't even imagine. All you want to do is take it away from them—to take the pain so that they don't have to feel it—but, ironically, that is the one thing that you can't do. It's just not possible. And you feel helpless because you don't know what to do for them, but you know that they feel more helpless because they know that there is nothing that can be done. And the brokenness of humanity and this world starts to feel overwhelming, but then you have the holy spirit inside you reminding you that this isn't all there is, that the world is being redeemed, and you feel so stuck in the middle. Like, you start to celebrate beauty, but then brokenness claws at you and you start to grieve—but you can't fully give yourself over to mourning because there is within you an unmistakable hope. It reminds me of Alli Rogers words, Tonight I feel like Eden—aware of all I am. Tonight I feel good and evil against my skin. Oh, we are always Eden—the day after she fell. We see good and evil ... and choose which one to tell. It's confusing and hollow and blindingly hopeful and all you can do is, like Job, sit down in the ashes and wait for the Lord.

how could i forget?

If anyone wants to see the pictures of Weston's Apple Festival (been ... what ... two and a half weeks now?), they are here. Or click the pic below.

well said

Saturday night Blakely and I were building a sign-up board for a dealio that I'm heading up at church. We had gone to Office Depot to get some clipboards, and then to The Home Depot (it was a night for depots) to get a couple ten-foot two by fours. As we were walking from the lumber section to the checkout aisle, she said with a straight face, "Not a bad Saturday night. You, me, and a couple of studs."

politically savvy

Last night Blakely came over for dinner. As she and Natalie and I sat at the table talking, she said, "Do you guys want to watch the debates?"

We fell silent and I finally said to her, "Do you think I'm somebody else?"

shout out

Most of you know that my great friend and coworker Jordanne is in Germany for six weeks. She's helping some friends of ours out over there, and I must say that after seeing the photos, I'm quite jealous. At first I was all, "Dude, you have to miss October here in Kansas City? That sucks." But now I'm all, "I'm not experiencing October over there with you? Oh dang."

Anyway, click on this freaking sweet picture below to link to her Flickr page.

you learn something new every day

This website has been giving us laughs consistently for a few years now. However, for some reason, tonight when we were playing with it, Jason revealed that he didn't realize the full potential of the site until he saw us typing in random words and phrases to see how the automated British Accent would say it.

Looking over Julie's shoulder he exclaimed, "Really? You type it in and THE MONKEY SAYS IT OUT LOUD? That rocks!"

that's me, the bad-ass

So. I work at a church, right? Which means that I have worked every Sunday (excepting the one that I was in Africa back in March) this whole year. Seeing as my good friend Shibu got married yesterday, and Weston's Apple Festival is only the first weekend in October every year, it left me no choice but to take a vacation day today, skip church, and head up to Weston.

And I talked Cari and Val into joining me.

Around 11:30 this morning, they arrived and I cooked breakfast. Julie was home as well and was in the middle of doing laundry as we sat in the dining room leisurely eating. Julie started into the basement (where the washing machine and dryer are), and after about two steps, screamed, "OH MY GOSH PEOPLE, COME QUICKLY AND BRING LOTS AND LOTS OF SHOES!"

Now, here's the caveat. Julie hates spiders. Actually, Julie hates bugs of almost any sort, and we have crickets in the basement that often make her scream bloody-murder. We are also all familiar with a couple famous stories of spiders in Africa that made her scream so loud that other people came running.

Needless to say, when Julie screamed this morning, Cari and Val jumped up to see what it was, and I just kept eating. I finally made my way to the top of the stairs to watch everyone trying to figure out how to kill a spider that was hanging from the ceiling of the basement. From my distance, it looked small, black, and fairly common. Acting like the bad-ass that I apparently thought I was, I picked up a flip-flop from the top of the stairs, said, "Come on guys," and pushed Val (who was squatted on the stairs) aside with a commanding, "Val. Move." I walked right up to where the spider had been and looked up right as it dropped out of the ceiling about five inches from my face. In that moment I realized it was quarter-sized, light brown and striped, with a huge white sac of nastiness on its belly. Paralyzed, I let out a blood-curdling scream that MUST have lasted thirty seconds or more. I was absolutely terrified. Then I hurled the shoe in its general direction, missing it by a long shot.

It was, by far, the MOST hilarious thing that I have ever witnessed happening in our basement.

And in my defense, once I collected myself I did go down the stairs, pick up the shoe, and squash the spider into a bloody mess that is still on the bottom of whomever's white flip-flop that I used as a murder weapon.

Moral of the story? I am NOT a bad-ass. And I AM scared of spiders.

balance

So, today was a very sad day in the fact that I dropped Melissa off at the airport for her month-long trip to Haiti.

But it was a happy day in the fact that Jordanne (in Germany for six weeks) was online for a few minutes and we got to chat. Oh, such good things can happen on the internet.

Also noteworthy was this tasty morsel in the middle of a long email from Blakely:

"And did you know that until last week Jon thought that LOL meant Lots Of Love? Now that's something to LOL about."

Priceless. Well done, Jon. L for love, baby!