The Truth Behind us All

Going on a science tangent today.  Please bear with me, because I think many of you might like where this is going.

When the egg and sperm cell first fuse together to create your own unique jumble of DNA that makes you you, the cells go through some immediate replication, creating a ball of cells that stays roughly the same size (the average size of a period printed on a page) but is rather dense in the sheer number of cells now occupying that space.  

The next step in the process is for the cells to shift around a bit, where they indent in and start to form a concave section (called a blastopore) and pushing it further up.  In other words, if you have a piece of play-dough and are working a hole from one end all the way to the other side, that's essentially what happens.  The cells re-shape so that no cell is separated or torn away, but simply moves to accommodate this new arrangement.  Ultimately, this will create openings for the nutrients and waste to flow in and out of, all the while keeping the system as closed as possible.  This path eventually becomes the digestive tract, helping to determine what is inside and what is outside the body.  

Kind of like these weird, slippery toys.

We are in a certain category of creatures called deuterostomes.  This means that the hole that formed first, that becomes part of the digestive tract, will eventually becomes the anus.  

For a brief moment in your life, you were literally just an asshole.  

Whether or not the person that cut you off in traffic has ever grown out of that state, who can say?  But we were all for a short moment only an asshole.

Happy New Year!

Some Christmas Spirit

I'm not sure whether it's the political nature going on right now, actual nature being confusing, or some mixture of all kinds of things, but I've noticed that I'm not the only one that has been struggling to find some Christmas spirit this year.  It took some doing, but we came around to it in the end.  

 We started with cookies at the Big Peterson House.  Decorating cookies was not something in my family tradition growing up, but I've quickly found that this was a tradition I very much enjoy.  

FEAR MY DUCK ARMY, conquering a cookie tray near you.

And some Christmas presents are always lovely.  

Andy needed someone to play with.

...And became the first casualty.  He admits I won the first bout.

Started off at the Big Peterson House, had our church events, went to Indiana, went back to the Big Peterson House, and went to Hopedale so far.  I have another stop this weekend, and Andy and I will both be going to St. Louis after that and then to another friend's house the weekend after that.  I plan to be very stationary the next weekend.

One way or another, Christmas has begun to mean "busy" more than what it ought to mean.  Historically, I've been able to separate it out very well, and there is no doubt in my mind that when I'm actually with my family and friends that I'm glad I came.  However, there is no denying that there are extra plans and responsibilities that come with Christmas now, requiring a great deal of foresight and organizing.  And Andy and I are certainly blessed that we have people who want to spend time with us.  The crux of the question becomes whether I need to change my understanding of what the Christmas Spirit is?  The religious implications haven't changed, but the carefree components and the unrestrained joy/excitement have been ebbing away as the years go on.  

This isn't inherently bad.  It's just a different, older perspective.  What Christmas means to me now just isn't the same that it used to mean me.  It has grown, and so have I.  Christmas didn't feel like Christmas this year more because I was expecting it to feel like it used to.  The last couple of years I've expected it to feel like it used to.  What was different about this year was this is the first year really that I've been able to have a more active role, since the last few Christmases I was more of a passenger--energy is still not where I remember it being, but I have made some wonderful strides, able to actually move from one stop to the next for at least a little while.  Wrapping/buying/bringing presents, plotting destinations, car tetris, coordinating with people, bringing baked goods, and more, there are a few components that require my attention.  

Christmas Spirit wasn't so much missing as overshadowed.  Reminds me of Martha from the Bible, so caught up in the details that she forgets to enjoy Jesus' presence.  I suspect I will have a few more years to figure out how to get better at this.  In the meanwhile, that feeling is here, when I remind myself to stop and simply enjoy.  

...And I'm going to pointedly ignore the fact that two things might have just added to my calendar for this next week and read my new book instead.

Anger, Again

When I sit down to actually create a blog post, I have been thinking about how I want to word things all day, at least.  And I don't stop thinking about it after I've posted it and notified Facebook.  Inevitably there are instances where I make some great connection later or think of six better ways I could have said something or a better piece of evidence I should have brought forward.

Well, I've done it to myself again and I don't want to let this one go.  Besides, I've done it before, where I posted the piece about things that don't love you back and was aghast that I had forgotten to mention celebrity worship as part of that same idea.  In any case, here we go again.

I turned on the news again today and have been thinking further about anger as a motivating force.  I don't deny that it was sparked my initial thoughts on the matter--in fact, I thought that was fairly clear.  But I still have a couple more things to say, it seems.  

Firstly, I want to say upfront that we have Bernie sticker proudly on our car, if you couldn't guess from the constant stream on Andy's Facebook page.  My goal today is not to persuade you to sway to my side politically, though I would welcome a conversation outside of this post or Facebook.  I want to mention something that was pointed out to me the other day.  Bernie is angry.  At first, I had thought "nah, he's passionate," and then I thought about it further.  I could definitely draw that parallel--if nothing else--between his campaign and Trump's campaign.  These are angry men. 

And I think that they have every right to be.  I'm angry about a lot of things going on in our world and in our country, too.  But here we see the two sides:  Trump's anger is unrestrained and lashes out in all kinds of negative directions.  Bernie, well, he uses his anger to fuel change, certainly riled up but not dissolving to ad hominem/straw-man/**insert your favorite logical fallacy here**.  For some of Bernie's own words on staying angry, feel free to check out this interview with rapper Killer Mike (the post also has some highlights at the bottom).  Otherwise, for a brief comparison, check out this short complication with Barbara Walters.

That being said, not every time Trump opens his mouth is purely ill-used anger and not everything Bernie has done was necessarily the coolest solution to the situation, but I think that there is a much better balance on Bernie's side of using that anger toward productive means.  It's a spectrum, when you're balancing between logic and emotion and some of those best solutions should have elements of both.  

So that's the emotion part and using it to fuel.  Let's talk about that logic part.  There's a poll floating around (HuffPost, Washington Post, and Time for starters) where a significant percentage of people are in support of bombing Agrabah.  Yes, Agrabah.  Which is a fictional city from Disney's Aladdin.  That as an example of the many, many things that get passed around the internet with many people reading the headline and sending it along its merry way.  

There are some new rumors floating around, and I don't know what to make of them yet.  The story is that there was a Trump supporter that was reported to the police, who then took three days to investigate, and ultimately found bombs in this person's home, with the express intent of bombing mosques.  I have been having a hard time finding good resources for this, but there are enough important stories that we know don't receive adequate coverage anyway, so I'm not sure if this is an example of "we're just not going to talk about this" collectively decided by the powers that be (such as Bernie's endorsement by Anonymous) or a probable rumor.  Because when we look at the inflammatory rhetoric and the tension floating around right now, let's be honest--this is a very probable rumor.  

Court TV has taught me that it can be hard to pin down someone for inciting other people to incite violence or very easy, depending on where the drama takes me next.  I have no real legal understanding of what kinds of charges can or cannot be made.  I do know that that kind of hate speech has no quarter in my life.  Freedom of speech means that people can say what they want, sure, but when it infringes upon the liberty and safety of others, that's where things get squiffy.  I'm not talking about hurt feelings--and just because you can say whatever the hell you want does not mean I have to a) agree with you or b) even listen to you--but putting the whole "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" part up to question.  When people are scared for their lives, something is wrong.  

So where I seem to be coming together with this train of thought is that anger is not inherently bad, but we certainly need to put a stop to it when it is used to legitimately hurt people.  Are we using that energy as a force for good or to propagate more negativity, in its various forms?

Holding Together

Last night, our community held a candlelight vigil on the steps of the Old Courthouse in Downtown Bloomington to show our solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters.  All told, at least 200 people came--I'm terrible at guessing numbers or I might give you a more precise amount, but at least 200 were there.  

It was cold, but our hearts were warm as people passed light to one another and even handed out cookies.  Most everyone had bundled up, except for a handful of folks who joined in on the fly.  We heard from a rabbi, a Presbyterian pastor, a leader from the mosque in town, and the Bloomington mayor, if I don't misremember.  The general message was thus:  we will not allow fear to divide our community, nor bigotry to be tolerated in our midst.  

With all of the bullshit flying around in the media and on facebook and all else, it was nice to have a reminder that there are those who will not stand for the hate and fear-mongering.  There are other people out there that recognize others as people first and realize that we have more commonalities than differences.  I've been so disheartened lately by all the hateful rhetoric, that this event was something that I sorely need.  Thank you, people of Bloomington-Normal, for coming out in support of one another.

Anger as a Motivating Force

I was on the road again this last week.  It was a long trip as most work trips tend to be, but at least I had a coworker with me this time to share a meal with and have some company.  Still, after completing the training on day two, I had a three hour drive back home, just to turn around a go right to choir practice.  So I was struggling to stay focused on the drive back.  

I stopped for coffee, but that wasn't enough.  From there, I went for the radio.  Having no luck finding something that I could sing along with or that otherwise struck my mind, I found a news channel.  But once things started to cycle again to the same talking points, I found something else, out of desperation:  I found something that made me angry.  

I found a radio station that was talking about how Islam is not a peaceful religion and how we should ban all Muslims from entering the US.  

I was frustrated and angry enough that I stayed well-awake for the rest of the way home.

In a nutshell, I'm thoroughly disgusted by a lot the rhetoric floating around.  If you can tell the difference between the KKK or the WBC and the United Methodist Church (as an example), then you can tell the difference between these extremists and the majority of Muslims.  In fact, these are the people that the Syrian refugees are trying to get away from, for goodness sake.  And this fear mongering is EXACTLY what ISIS wants.  If the people caught in the crossfire stay there, you have hostages and you have skilled persons and you have relief resources pouring in; it is lucrative to keep them there.  ISIS wants us to be distrustful and fearful of all persons because hate will perpetuate more hate and add more fuel to all kinds of fires.  

If you are reading an article or listening to an opinion, try this litmus test:  replace "Muslim" with "Jew" then ask yourself "Does this person sound like a Nazi?"  There were articles going around in World War II asking if we should be taking any European (and particularly Jewish) immigrants in, especially from Germany and we are well aware now of what they were trying to escape from.  

I have a lot more ranting points that I could go into, but that's not the main message that I want to focus on today.  There is a lot of anger out there right now and a lot of fear.  We can use anger.  We have seen so many examples where anger is used to fuel poor decisions--lashing out, shootings, etc.--but what if we could fuel that into something productive?  We can choose to use it well or poorly.  I used it to keep me awake.  I've used anger at my body's situation to work on making it better.  

Anger isn't itself a negative thing, but it is often used as an excuse to do negative things.  I've seen people get mad and channel that energy into writing letters, starting a campaign, picketing, protecting other people, creating events, educating people, and a number of other options.  What you do with those emotions is going to have a huge impact, one way or the other.  Back when your sibling or a neighbor picked on you when you were growing up, someone might have told you to "just ignore them."  Sometimes, when they couldn't draw a reaction out of you, they escalated the antagonism or they lost interest.  When someone deeply offends you, your reaction can make it better or make it worse or it could not matter at all.  I feel it is better to not make things worse, such as inadvertently justifying the cause of the other side.  But I know many people who cannot let some things go.  

Anger itself is not the problem, but the choices that are made in its wake, those powered by a strong, emotional backing, that is where we will be judged next by our peers and enemies alike.  Not because we were angry but because of how we responded to that anger.  This involves keeping a cool head while simultaneously feeling your hackles rise, a wonderfully paradoxical idea.  Weighing reason and emotion together to approach the situation as best it can be met sounds equally difficult, but we're facing a lot of tough decisions as a country and even as individuals--don't these problems deserve our best responses rather than ill-informed sources and knee-jerk responses?

Christmas Lights(aber)

We're getting more in the spirit here, in the Little Peterson household.  After claiming out tree from storage, it is up and glowing.  Most of our Christmas shopping is done and wrapped, except for a few more still in transit.  

Of course we have a music theme

However, there has been something else glowing in our house...

I have the two moods represented here.  To the right, serious face, the "I am a badass and have a lightsaber" face.  To the left, the giddy "I have an awesome, shiny new toy" face.  In fact, owning a lightsaber apparently involves a lot more prancing than I had expected.  Every so often now, I hear the PISSAH starting sound and giggling coming from the other room.  Andy has taken to using his lightsaber as a flashlight, rather than turning on a light in a room as he moves around the house.  And then serious face will come back as he takes a couple swings at some invisible foe, the blade making the appropriate noises.  

It's another thing that makes our house what it is, allowing our geeky side to come out.  No big soapbox today; just wanted to share that with you.

Assessment of Goals

As with all goals, it is important to check in with what progress has been made.  This process validates the effort that has been made, can mark the goal as complete, and otherwise can inspire you to keep going.

I had a post about a month ago outlining some of my ideas of what I wanted to work on.  

I have posted eleven out of my proposed fifteen posts for November.  No, I didn't meet that goal, but that was pretty damn good considering all of the other things that we had going on that month.  It was validating regardless.  It also showed me that I don't have to step quite so hard on the soapbox every time--I've had a tendency to think that I need to turn things into a big philosophic point each time.  Some things lend themselves that way, sometimes I need to let things be what they are, and sometimes what I've come to say doesn't need it.  This opens the door to say other things.  This also takes away some of the pressure of coming up with a good idea, which even though my mind knows is okay the rest of me still needs that occasional reminder.  

Piano lessons are moving along.  I have been working on a piece that I would not have been brave enough to try a few months ago.  

At work I have certified in another module and am moving closer to a promotion--just a couple more pieces to finish there.

What sticks out most though is that I have been going to the gym more regularly.  Typically, I've been going at least twice a week, now, usually trying to swing some combination of a personal training appointment if possible, a yoga class, and a some swimming.  Have I lost any weight?  Nope.  But I'm not disappointed by that.  Firstly, weight is just a number, an indicator rather than the end all and be all.  However, I can swim a mile much more easily than I had a month and a half ago.  In fact, I can swim that mile and then go run errands.  I can make it all the way through my personal training appointment without having to stop and sit down.  My endurance is not showing physically, but am feeling enough of a small difference to be optimistic and keep trying.  We also got Wii Fit U, which has been encouraging me to walk more if nothing else.  Nutrition has always been a touchy subject for me because I know that my rules are not mainstream and always in flux as far as what I can eat.  I am considering some different ideas in this area, but am not ready to talk about them much as of yet.  Got a bit of research to do still.  

So, in short, progress is there.  

It's easy to get disheartened, when changes are drastic or when goals aren't met precisely.  When I have a bad day health-wise, it's easy to fall back into that way of thinking that says "if I really loved myself, I would stick with my eating/exercise plan even though I'm feeling this way."  Still working on that one, sometimes.  The real trick I've found, though, is to give yourself goals that you can actually measure and you can actually meet.  

The "meet" portion is a little more obvious, except perhaps in the time spectrum.  Give yourself enough time to meet your goals, accounting for those bad days in there and with enough leeway in your self-judgement.

The "measure" portion is one of those duh moments when you think about it, but I've talked to more than one person that when frustrated with his or her goals, I pointed out that maybe they need to define and potentially change what they're measuring by.  Are you giving yourself a fair measuring stick?  When my goal for a long time was just "to get better," I was continually frustrated--that goal was so vague that I had no way to actually mark any progress.  Pick a specific step or "try X for # of times in a month" as a goal rather than the whole thing.  Your progress needs to be measurable and to an extent defined.  Otherwise, it's much, much harder to keep going on that main goal.  

Thank you for holding me accountable for what I set out to do.  Thank you for your encouragement along the way.  I hope I can repay it in kind.  Keep heart and press on, my friends.  

Invisible Battles

It's funny to me on occasion when we're not always necessarily aware of what we should be aware of.  For example, I nearly forgot that it was Crohn's and Colitis Awareness week.  So I wasn't aware that I was supposed to be aware and wanted you to be aware of that and aware of it with me.  Or something like that.

But this is something that's just been a part of my life now for more than half of my life that I can't NOT be aware of it.  I was diagnosed with Crohn's when I was twelve years old, more than half my life now.  There was a short period of time in high school when I wasn't on medication, but otherwise I have always been on some kind of medication, have to plan around the bathroom, or am otherwise always thinking in the back of my mind that need to budget my energy.  Sometimes that medication means that I get to give myself an injection, that I have to make sure on vacation that I have kept the syringes cold, like a diabetic.  Currently, I'm back to planning a trip to the hospital to get an IV infusion of my medication every eight weeks, which I'm very grateful that my job has been very flexible in working around.  I'm still at a point where if I don't eat when I'm hungry, I get very sick.  And I don't always travel well.  And when my body tells me to stop, I really do need to listen.  And there are many, many other things that I have to consider and keep in the back of my head whenever I go out to eat or plan my day or just try to live my daily life.  

It is always there, in the back of nearly every decision.  Even in buying something as innocuous as a sweater--"Can I have this nice, new thing, or should I save money for when [not if, mind you] my body is going to break again?"  

I don't mean to pull sympathy, but I do seek understanding.  If you're someone that does not live with a chronic illness, this is a world that you don't completely understand.  There are elements that are identifiable, certainly, but a real understanding, constantly thinking about it, and dealing with the physical elements, too, that's a reality that I hope that people don't experience.  

That being said, you wouldn't look at me and know that this is my reality.  I don't think I look sick.  In fact, I look remarkably well-fed, even though my body doesn't absorb nutrients very well, which I find amusing and depressing at the same time.  I also don't feel as though anyone can tell from my disposition.  

But I have an invitation with Crohn's and Colitis Awareness Week.  I am very open about my experience with Crohn's, but I still wait for that invitation.  I need someone to ask me how I am and be interested in the answer.  I need people to check in on me.  I need people to give me that leeway when I need it and take me at my word when I say that I cannot stay a little while longer.  I don't want people to look at me and see my disease, but I want people to know that I'm working through something.

And I am certainly not the only one.  Crohn's is one of many, many invisible ailments.  A cancer patient or someone with a broken limb, those are more obvious.  Mental illness can have absolutely no external markers, but rest assured that individual has not forgotten it's there.  

This week, there's some extra focus on awareness for those with Crohn's and Colitis and those that love people with Crohn's and Colitis.  Take the opportunity to educate people wherever you can.  Remember to push for legislation that can help those suffering from chronic illness of all kind (caps on pharmaceutical pricing, for example).  But what I would really want to push for and see carried past this week:  grant people some extra grace.  Just because you cannot see that someone is struggling does not mean that they're not fighting some kind of an invisible battle.  Consider that when the fast food worker is slow with your burger or someone cuts you off in traffic.  I'm not saying assume that everyone has an excuse, but that people have reasons for why they are they way they are and why they do what they do.  Reasons are not excuses, but that understanding can give you the right kind of perspective to address the situation in a way that won't make things worse.  

Be gracious to one another.  And hug a Crohnie this week.

Zen

I have said many times that I would rather swim a mile than run a mile.  I do not like running.  I have too many moving pieces to enjoy running, thanks.  I have heard that eventually you space out enough that you relax in a way, that while you work out somehow you're disconnected from your body in good ways.  Yeah, I cannot get much past the pain in my chest, feet, back, etc.  

However, I can do that in swimming.  My mind is wandering off in different directions as I make it down to the other end again.  I can pick a few things I want to focus on as far as working on my stroke, but I think more about which lap I'm on, arguing whether it was the twelfth or thirteenth, until I need to worry about whether it was the thirteenth or fourteenth.  I spend enough time arguing with myself that I'm the right kind of distracted and still making good time.  

What I think I like most is that I can carry that feeling with me for the next couple of hours outside of swimming my laps.  Part of it is knowing that I did something good for myself, certainly, but that right kind of detached calm, I find that it makes the exercise feel worth it for longer than I was expecting.  

There are other things that illicit that kind of calm for me.  I have my desktop at work set to pictures of the Aurora.  When I catch a glimpse of that, I take a deep breath involuntarily and feel a similar wave of peace.  

I can remember having a conversation with a friend of mine once about how different people can connect better to different environments.  My father and I, there's something about water that touches us.  Something about sailing with the wind and the water together soothes my soul and mind in a very unique way that I know I need once in a while.  My friend pulls energy from desert environments and has since moved to New Mexico.  I know a  few people that find it in the trees and some others that love mountains.  Some of that is how you connect to nature, and it is different for different people.  Either way, I would argue that the sense of calm and peace is the same.  

The real trick is learning how to bring it with you.  I can cheat a bit by going swimming, mixing that zen from water and the exercise high together, which is more successful some days than others.  But how can I take it with me when I'm not in a comparable space?  

I haven't figured out how to do it all of the time, yet, but I think collectively we could use a little more of it, particularly as the full flurry of the season begins to settle upon us.  I find those moments of calm wherever I can--I've got a feeling that I'm going to need it, for reasons I'm not even completely sure of yet.  I would encourage anyone to take a moment of self reflection to learn how to reach that space, if you're not sure how to find it, and otherwise exercise taking that kind of zen with you.  Find your peace and hold onto it.

Secret World

So, as I may have mentioned before, living with my husband is a barrel of laughs.  

When we both get tired, we get punchy and ridiculous.  

As an example, Andy went to tickle me the other night.  I turned around to tickle him back immediately and he yelps and cries, "Ah!  Don't tickle me back!  This was supposed to be one-way!  I didn't think things through!"  I have to admit it was an effective strategy because I was laughing too hard to continue.  

Or another night, I don't remember how this was relevant to the conversation, but I brought up gazpacho.  Andy asked, "What, like the Italian mafia?  No, wait, the mafia is Italian."  I replied, "Honey, I think you're thinking of 'gestapo,' and that's German.  And that is still not gazpacho."

This is not to say that I have never had a ridiculous moment or several, but I have conveniently forgotten them just now...

These are just a couple examples of the things that make us laugh in our house.  There are many, many things that take far too much time to explain, are prime examples of "you just had to be there," or are not appropriate for *ahem* polite conversation.  On occasion, I do wish that I could remember or otherwise share because spending time with Andy brings me joy.  On the other hand, we have our own secret world and there is something beautiful about that.  How we act outside of the house?  We really do act about the same, only at a higher concentration with the appropriate amount of lazy because, hey, we're at home.  There are some things that we don't talk about in earnest until we're at home--like not criticizing the service until we've left the restaurant because the kinds of problems weren't worth talking about at the table--but both of us are authentic to ourselves outside of these walls.

So many secrets...

I think everyone's secret world is different.  Mostly because all people are different, yes, but there are also different kinds of strategies for decompressing, maintaining a house, managing bills, etc.  And each house works differently and hopefully works in a healthy way.  Otherwise, we only see what people choose to show us.  Some people match their mask closely, some do not.  I argue that either way, the mask is there.  If masks don't work for you, I like filters as an analogy even better.  Home, I am darn-near unfiltered.  In certain company, I have a certain filter--"me" is still coming through, but select parts of "me" that are appropriate for the situation.  How much we allow people to see, sometimes it depends on how hard you push or how you ask.  Truly, some people may choose to never open up to you and that is okay--there are some well-meaning people that you may still not want to spill all your life secrets out to.  

Andy and I find that complete strangers will open up to us on occasion.  Sometimes, we'll be able to stop everything and listen to the person in question and remember that we're all human and need to have that moment.  Other times, we're trying to find the most polite way to extradite ourselves.  I'm not sure specifically what it is about us that makes us trustworthy to strangers and friends.  Maybe it's just as simple as being good listeners?  Bearing that in mind, do some people have more access to secret worlds than others?

Either way, over this long weekend I've had a lot of time to think about how much I enjoy just spending time with my husband.  I'm really thankful for our little world, full of spontaneous songs, ridiculous stories, moments of rest, and whatever trouble we get into next.  

...and you thought you were done with the Thanksgiving sugar coma, didn't you?

Winter Carols

Inevitably, there are persons who turn on their Grinch face to anything Christmas until after Thanksgiving.  There's an odd self-righteous attitude when said person (maybe it's you) tries to enforce that Christmas decorations should not go up until Thanksgiving.  Firstly, I have worked retail enough to know that this is a losing battle.  Secondly, I will sing Christmas carols at ANY time of the year and no scolding has stopped it yet nor does it seem likely to.  

I don't just celebrate being alive on my birthday, so I don't see the sense in not watching a Christmas movie or feeling the Christmas spirit just because it's not cold enough outside.  

However, if you have a particularly Scrooge-y soul that does not want to hear Christmas Carols except for the month of December, I present you with a wonderful, wonderful loophole.  

There are a number of Winter Carols, songs that get lumped in as Christmas Carols, but don't actually have anything to do with Christmas.  

1. "Jingle Bells"  This is actually a Thanksgiving song.  See if you can find a line that implies differently.
2. "Let it Snow"  This song is about the weather and staying inside where it's warm.  It's more a love song than it is a Christmas song.
3. "I've got my Love to Keep me Warm."  Same vein as the former.
4. "Baby, it's Cold Outside" Ditto, even though it can get a little creepy.
5. "Sleigh Ride" Just about the exhilaration of a sleigh ride
6. "Winter Wonderland"
7. "Frosty the Snowman"
8. "Over the River and through the Woods"
9. "Marshmallow World"
10. And Andy tells me that there's a song called "Suzy Snowflake" that I actually haven't heard of

If you want to get technical, "The 12 Days of Christmas" continues after Christmas itself if someone is trying to shut down carols after New Years.  And if we want to get super technical, you could be singing "We Three Kings" for a long time, since the wise men were actually not at the nativity.  

There we have it, some carols that you can get away with all through February at least.  

One of my Favorite Things

So this weekend saw one of my favorite things happen once again:  The Festival of Trees.  This event has sparked off the Christmas season in my mind for a few years now, that first genuine hint of real holiday wonder and excitement all in one space.  This year, I made it there twice, once with my parents and a car-full from their new church and another time with a few of Andy and my friends that had not experienced it before.  I have been telling random strangers about it the whole week leading up to it.

For those that haven't heard of Festival of Trees, it has been going on for twenty-two years now, brought to the Baby Fold by Ralph Dude, God rest him.  People and groups will take a tree, full-sized or short, and decorate it.  Some are really classy, some take a theme and go off running with it--the year that Frozen came out, there were at least three Frozen-themed trees--and some are in honor some a person or a cause.  In addition to the trees, there are now table settings, wreaths, art pieces, gingerbread houses, signed memorabilia, and more.  Sometimes, the trees come with tickets to an event or a spa day or one year a plumbing company decorated a tree and threw in a free toilet and sink.  All of these donations are then bid on, all of the money going to the Baby Fold.  What's really cool, too, was that these things have been donated, even by the celebrity factor, at the simple asking.  We saw large donations volunteered just at the asking on opening night.  It's amazing what can happen when you just ask.

And it is truly a worthy cause.  The Baby Fold is an organization that helps with adoption services, foster care, family counseling, care for wards of the state and students with special needs, and more.  I have known many people touched by the work of this organization.  

So there you have it--great cause and super, happy, holiday factor.  I will share a few of my favorites with you from this year.  

A well done gingerbread house, done by an 11-year old, if I remember correctly

Elegance

Stylish, classy theme

And a well-executed whimsical theme

And some weird themes that can work

Cthulhu Santa demands your cheer.

The Cinnamon Roll Test

My boss has brought in these wonderful, fluffy cinnamon rolls to work before and I had asked him for his recipe, hoping to bring those to Grandma's house for dinner.  I made up Dad's bread dough recipe the night before and let it rise.  This is the part I've done many times before.  

Then the directions got a little fuzzy.  "Combine milk and brown sugar until it's spreadable."  I made a brown sugar and milk slurry.  Evidently, there was too much milk.  It looked fine on the bread dough rolled out.  I make a pumpkin roll usually a few times every holiday, which involves rolling a cake in a flour sack, letting it cool, unrolling it, smothering it in frosting, re-rolling it up, and slicing it to serve in these beautiful little pinwheels of deliciousness.  Ergo, rolling the cinnamon rolls up and then slicing them into individual rounds made sense.  

The problem came in the rolling.  

As I started to roll it up, the slurry started to move in slow, sloppy wave with it.  And it didn't stay in a round kind of roll, instead falling like a deflated tire, more of the slurry oozing out the ends.  

This was the "pretty" pan.

This resulted in some urgency in the slicing, where it was a race to a) cut it before everything oozed out and b) get it over to the pan without more of it dripping on to the floor, since the only place there was room for the pans was on the counter behind me.  Some of the rolls dissolved into a sad puddle.  I picked those up, squeezed some of the brown sugar and milk slurry off, and made some cinnamon crescent rolls instead (featured in the bottom of that picture). 

However, this left the pool of slurry on my counter.  It was viscous enough that I could take sweep it up and cup a few handfuls over into the sink.  Three times, no less, taking handfuls of brown sludge over to the sink, remarkably not dripping much at all.  

Thankfully, everything was water soluble, but it really did take about as much time to clean that up as it did to bake them, once they had some time to rise again.  

So, about those slurry puddles that formed around my rolls?  Yeah, that made a kind of caramel at the bottom of my pans.  I found that the pan I started prying up from first was much easier than the second one I did, since it had a little more time to cool.  It did not make the chewy, stretchy kind of caramel--it was rock hard once it cooled.  There were many effort noises as I tried to pull them up in one piece AND not fling them up to the ceiling by accident because goodness knows that they would have stuck there, with the way my luck was going.  

Note sticky outlines.

And yet, for all of that chaos, they tasted well enough.  Dad's dough has been a favorite for a long time, and my boss's recommendations for how to make them cinnamon rolls was pretty good, if not any kind of precise (with all kinds of love, Chuck!).  I have a few ideas on how I'm going to make this better next time, including not flattening out the bread dough quite that far and using a LOT less milk in making my brown sugar spread.  It was still edible and enjoyed.  And we've officially gotten to the "well, that was pretty hilarious" space, recounting the adventure and the sheer mess of what I made in the kitchen.  I have left the scraping of those pans for another day, thanks.  

Hipster Mentality

It happens every now and again that I have a well-meaning person suggest something to me enough that I decide I never want to try it.  As an example, the Final Fantasy series.  The more that something has been touted to me, the less inclined that I am to want to try it.  A trusted source suggests something?  Sure, I'll put it on my list.  The whole world is singing its praises?  I don't want much anything to do with it, thanks.  Football and iPhones are on that list of things I don't really care for and mostly because they're so popular.  (As an aside, I like being with people and going to events, so I will go to a game, but I don't choose to watch a football game on my own.)  At first, I just called this "being stubborn," but my brother has informed me that I have a hipster mentality.  

It's the glasses, isn't it?

The thing is, I cannot decide if this a good thing or a bad thing.  If I finally do try something that has had its praised up and down, there are two ways it can go:  
1.  It's not all that great.  My expectations are set so high at the point because everyone has been talking about it or one person has not stopped talking about it, that it is actually impossible for said thing to meet those expectations.  As an example, Avatar.  It's a pretty movie, I'll give it that, but it's Dances with Smurfs--it's the colonization narrative told in the same way and didn't do anything new to it except get distracted by its own world.  And the ending?  Total cop-out.  Want a well-done story that tackles similar themes?  Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is really well done.  I'm harsh on this movie for a few reasons, but one of them was because the world was so caught up in it that I couldn't escape hearing about it.
2.  It's actually pretty awesome.  The best example I can think of this one is Firefly.  I had heard about this series from a few people and was not quite to the point of resisting when I finally saw it.  It lived up to the expectations.   

So on the one hand, I can be protected by not suckering in to something just because it's popular, but on the other, I can miss out on something that I might really enjoy.  That is not to say that I don't like things that happen to by popular--in fact, I don't have a really good theory as to what makes some things go one way or the other, but I have narrowed down some commonalities.  

• If I have already happened upon said thing before it becomes a big thing, then it's okay to still like it.
• I have certain sources that I trust because we have similar tastes and their recommendations have proven solid in the past.  The opinion of these sources can cut through some of the hype.  
• Pure exposure--the more I hear about it, the more I push against it.
• The verbage in how something is pushed plays into it, too.  Anything that is touted as the "best thing ever" or something that will "change my life" either directly stated or wholly implied is an instant turn off.  

It has occurred to me more than once that this is not specifically fair, because when you like something, you want to share it, yet some people are just better at persuading than others.  We're bombarded with advertising all of the time that it's tiring, too, to sort through all of the things we should be trying or buying that deciding what I want to spend my money and energy on is difficult enough.  

I have an open mind about many, many things, but I do not have time for everything.  The line has to be drawn somewhere.  I just hadn't put a name to some of my own decision making process.  But hipster is mainstream now anyway so I'm confused enough as it is.

Kings and Centipedes (Or "Another Another Song Stuck in my Head")

Yes, centipedes.  We see them every now and again in our house, and it another reason that I'm hoping for a cold winter, to make sure that they are at least mostly wiped out again.  They pop up every now and again, some small black moving thing just in the corner of your eye, more startling than terrifying.  There was a particular incident last week where I had taken my glasses off and was about to turn the water on for the shower when I saw a fuzzy black blob moving in the tub:  suddenly, I was very awake, and when I put on my eyes again, it was officially the biggest centipede I had seen yet.  Andy's beard shampoo (yes, it is a special shampoo for his beard) was the closest blunt object I could find.  

Thank you for your sacrifice.

I had a proper icky-dance after that one, all the same.  So, suffice to say, I don't have a high opinion of centipedes.  So the title of this song caught me off guard in any case.  

But click here and check out the song for yourself:  "Kings and Centipedes" by Stepdad.

I've put another of their songs up here before, "Must Land Running," for those that might recall, and this is definitely more of that Stepdad flair.  "Kings and Centipedes" starts off without much real warning--it is bright and rolling and a few flavors of upbeat that can catch you off-guard if you're not expecting it.  It definitely falls into that category of "songs that I have a hard time NOT dancing to."  

As with many songs, the chorus drew me in:

"Rise to your feet my god, you must maintain your dignity
Rise to your feet my god, what have you got to prove to me?
Rise to your feel my god, you must maintain your dignity
There's lots of middle ground between the kings and centipedes."

Particularly that last line.  That was the real hook for me.  This one was of those songs that I listened to over and over and couldn't immediately figure out why it touched me.  "There's lots of middle ground between the kings and centipedes," has always meant to me that there is room between the very best and the very worst.  It's easy to polarize opinions of yourself, where we get into a rut of I'm really good at X and really bad at Y.  For some reason, we don't give ourselves any middle ground whatsoever.  I tell you truly, you don't have to be the very best in order to be good at something.  If you are not the very best, that does not mean that you are the worst at it.  

Let me say that again:  if you are not the very best, that does not mean that you are, by default, terrible.  

There is so much middle ground there; can we allow ourselves that luxury?  Creative careers have a real problem with this especially, where if you have not won a Pulitzer or sold your art somehow we start thinking that our art isn't good enough.  If you're not a best-seller, why are you writing?  It's hard to keep creating when you don't feel recognized.  Do we have enough heart to keep pressing on even when no one tells us it's good?  Can we believe in ourselves enough to know a) it has goodness in it and b) it doesn't matter anyway?  

For the first part of the chorus, "Rise to your feet my god, you must maintain your dignity," I haven't decided whether it's an exclamation from an encouraging source--Get up, for the love of Pete!--or if someone is talking to their inner ego.  Either way, the voice is commanding that they keep pressing forward, even through the circumstances of whatever has brought that figure down.  

And then another call to take heart and stand up again with the reminder "What have you got to prove to me?"  What are you trying to prove?  Who are you trying to prove it to?  And why do we hold ourselves to impossible standards of all or nothing?

The verses reinforce the idea of pushing past these walls we've created, with the repeating order to "Bang the Timpanis!" either to create a rhythm to trudge forward again or in celebration and otherwise recognizing some of the weight on the world pulling the figure down.  I like to think of it as a conversation with a good friend or with yourself, finding the courage to start up again after a low moment.  There's another area of focus in the verse "Dying to know how do the rumors lock up your majesty and will the new ones set you free?" as well as "Did I really change the way you think about everything?" The opinions of others really can factor strongly into how much or how soon we want to jump back up and try again.  

But the key point that I want to really hammer home is that I hope you will give yourself the leeway to not be the best or the worst.  Talent is on a scale rather than a yes/no checkbox.  How good you are at your job is not based off of how good someone else is at their job.  Doing the best that you can do and being the best that you can be is more important that being THE best.  Love yourself enough to allow you to be who you are and to celebrate that.

And get yourself a Burger King crown to make yourself feel better if you need to.

Intellectual Grieving

There are a lot of major problems in the world right now, with violence in Lebanon, Beirut, and, of course, France.  I've been distracted, however, with some sudden illness in my family.  

If anyone tells you that an AC outlet is a useless accessory, they clearly have not thought about driving with a crock-pot.  

We brought food to my aunt and cousins in the hospital, cooking on the way up.  We were hearing only snatches and scattered updates the day before with enough information to be concerned, but certainly not to understand what was actually happening with my uncle.  So I turned my mind instead to logistics.  Andy and I decided quickly that it wasn't a question of "if" we were going to visit my family but "when," and I did not want to come up empty-handed.  I know that it's easy for family members and friends to forget to eat when you're worried about someone you love, so I had a ready distraction for the day, thinking through the logistics of setting up soup for the back of the car.  We had it in a box with a towel on top all belted down, a layer of foil underneath the lid, all in all managing to not spill the whole, full batch in our backseat.  Next time though, we would definitely leave it on Low instead of Warm.  

Thinking of something else can help me get through some of the initial reactions to a traumatic event, but I was reminded that there is certainly a point where we should re-engage the mind again.  One of the hardest parts for my family right now is trying to piece together what actually happened.  In the worst game of telephone ever, where originally we were told car accident, and then other theories have been working through as everyone, and especially my uncle, is trying to piece together something that we'll never have the full truth of (unless someone wants to confess to video cameras in my aunt and uncle's house).  

But until we can piece together at least some working theories, the emotional coping is a little stuck.  I hadn't realized that other people have to walk through cognitive understanding  as part of the coping process.  As part of my coping with illness and life, I specifically have had to dive in to some biological understanding of what my body is doing and the pharmacology to help find that grounding.  However, I thought perhaps I was a special little snowflake because I've run across so many people that can't explain their condition to me or certainly cannot tell me why they take a specific medication, that, of course, assuming that they can pronounce or even list what their medications are.  

I tend to wrap my intellectual understanding on "how?" but there are many people that prefer to put their attention more on "why?"  The question of "how?" is on the science spectrum; the question of "why?" leans more toward theology or otherwise looking at your predicament in the larger spectrum.  When trying to rationalize a situation, it can take the same kind of energy.  Some people need to do both, some people might not want to do either, but some kind of understanding seems necessary in the grieving process--we cannot treat real acceptance like the iTunes user agreement.  

Everyone grieves differently, and all too often the pressure seems to be to simply ignore grief instead of work through it.  There are different components of that process, all of which vary in importance by the situation and by the day.  It's easy to get caught in a trap, too, where someone helping you through a situation (or yourself) can focus on only one component of the healing, whether it's emotional (including relationships), spiritual, intellectual, or physical.  However, if you've recovered in one or some of these areas but not all, the process is not complete or as complete as it's going to be for now.  

The hardest part is figuring out which you need and when you need it.  That takes time and self-awareness.  But it is a necessary thing.  Take the time and energy to grieve how and in all the ways that you need to, as healthfully as possible.  

And have some comfort food in the meanwhile.