the drift

...

Monday, July 28, 2008

heh, something Jay said

we were talking about some stuff and he told me, "But Sarah, you're just not a romantic."
to which i replied, "I guess."
then later, not able to let sleeping dogs lie, I said, "I can't believe you don't think I'm a romantic."
(note: nor am i an emotional bully. hehe.)
"Well, you're a romantic...but, you're a rational romantic." (Borrowing something from his own rational mysticism ethos.)
"Hmm. No, hon, I'm a conscientious romantic." (Borrowing something from the conscientious objectors in war time. how fitting.)
But, really, I gotta give it to him. He's right. I'm no romantic. I'm a sentimentalist. Vastly different approaches to the world even if the same kind of fantasy is involved.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

kids are the innocent bystanders. think hard before you have them.

that thought came ringing loud and true in many a conversation this week. it's been kind of sad. seeing some really wonderful children lose their family, in more than one way.
on Friday morning, I was emailing my best friend from high school about coming to Ro's bday. Then, I decided it had been a long while since I'd heard any progress on our friend Brad Selock who we grew up with and who'd been diagnosed with cardiac angiosarcoma, stage 4 actually by the time it was diagnosed in January of this year. I got on the web site the family has been keeping up, with photos and updates on his progress, pictures of his beautiful son and daughter. Though I hadn't kept in touch with him, I was really pulling for him and felt the connection come back that we'd had as kids as I looked through the photos. It had been passed along to me years ago that he had indeed settled down with a nice girl and had two kids with whom he could often be seen out and about in our little hometown. Sadly, I hadn't made it to our 10 year reunion or I'd have gotten some good stories first hand. Anyway, I was looking through the updates and saw that Brad was going to be coming home. I popped back to gmail and there was a message from Dad stating Brad had in fact died overnight. Now, I don't know if it's that he and I were at the same stage in our lives, or if that connection we had as kids just came back like that, or I was mourning the futility of life or what, but if that news didn't hit me hard. The first boy I ever held hands with. The first one I thought highly of in fact. Basically just a kind soul -- something I could recognize at 11 years old then all but forgot not too long thereafter. He got a bum wrap. Left the world like that. Left a wife a lot like me with kids just a few years older than our own. I couldn't stop considering the devastation. I've worked with grieving children in the past, in situations ranging from a parent leaving to go to war, to divorce, to long terminal illnesses of a parent or sibling....their little inner worlds are just unbelievable -- the combination of resiliency be way of general misunderstandings mixed with moments of otherworldly clarity. Being so much closer to the life source, children can spook you with their grasp of the eternal. So, when people give me that shit of "oh, they'll be fine, they're young" I know that's because they don't know what else to say, and considering the devastation of a child's psyche is too much to bear. Especially if the speaker has some responsibility to protect that young psyche. But it's real; it's real.
Brad didn't have a choice, but plenty of us do, I just think when we decide to have kids, you know, our lives are not really ever again our own. Our choices become their consequences. Our paths, with all those bumps, result in their bruises. Our psychodramas become their emotional baggage. Our lack of self-knowledge, their neuroses. It's a lot to toil under, that responsibility, and with such a high bar, failure on some level is inevitable. I suppose what I can give my children, when some day they come to me with the emotional scars of being my children, will be to tell them with a true heart, that I made the best choice for them as I understood it. Not the best choice for me, but for them. If I can say that without equivocation or qualification, then I've succeeded. There is no bigger trauma for a child than to be made to feel irrelevant or inconvenient. I truly believe that.
But...it's a sad, sad world.
Ain't that the truth.
(that link makes me question this whole new-found mother earth connectedness that i've been tapping into. because i really thot that douche was the real deal. go figure.)

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Whoomp! There it is!

driving home from the awesomest yoga class ever which included an impromptu back massage (sounds creepy i know but trust me it was great), such a great class actually that i could feel my brain firing on all cylinders, the cosmic antennae reaching into the the ether for nuggets of universal truths. i also happened to be behind a white Jetta with an Obama '08 sticker as i cruised down Metcalf. And it hit me. Whoomp! There it is! is the most genius campaign theme song for Obama '08. i could go into the intricate details of just why this would be a masterful choice, but suffice to say, Tag Team is loooong due for a comeback. Tag Team could truly unite America again, for what other song could unite soccer moms and ballers...factory workers and college cheerleaders...millionaire heiresses and immigrant workers...Turner and Hooch? all the class wars of American pop culture could dissipate in one chorus.
that's my moment of brilliance for today. thanks for listening.

here's hoping i don't fart

pom reports on a universal fear among yoga beginners. i'm going to yoga today and haven't been since before the first baby was born. waaay before. like my 2 month of pregnancy or something. but i'm very excited to maybe get in some better shape. and sweat out the massive amount of salt i've been eating. it's crazy when salt actually forms where your sweat was once you cool off. that's happened on many occasions to me.
this week i'm also going to start writing down the food i eat.

in other news, tomorrow is Jay's birthday. wish him a happy one, would ya?

Saturday, July 19, 2008

luxury items

it's something i like to do on occasion, when i find a really great little site somewhere that i'd never heard of. like this one: www.bodenusa.com.
this is the kind of stuff i would love to dress my children in, like little mini-poshbex offspring. in a good 10 mins of shopping i filled my virtual cart with over 700.00 in clothing. i felt a strange satisfaction with that number, like knowing that my taste in wonderful things hasn't suffered even as my pocketbook continues to do so. i could never do this in real life. some overly-angular salesgirl would be hovering about. asking if i need help. ruining my sick shopping buzz.
no, not like this though. ahhhh, window shopping online is a beautiful thing.

also a beautiful thing. The latest Helio Sequence. i don't know about their earlier stuff, but this album puts me in the mind of Factory Records c. 1988 or so. very stone roses with some newer vibes thrown in, maybe interpol esque. love it.

and for mash up fans, i'm touching myself inappropriately over this Girl Talk cd. some truly fun stuff on there.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

vivid

many of you are going to think this post absolutely nuts. eh, so what. here goes.
so i've been struggling almost daily with the decision to stay home with the kids. is it better to extend our time of financial toil in life, possibly affecting the kids' futures and education opportunities, or is it better to be home daily with them giving them (hopefully) a sense of emotional security that I didn't really have. it's constant, this questioning, and it's quite intense. i feel like everything relies on my decision here. but, something i'm actually feeling in the last few weeks is this tug at my soul, like, whatever happens, God wants you home right now with these kids. This feeling of something quite specific being requested of me from God. Uh, wow, that's a new one for me. Point is, the few times in life i've felt something like this, my spiritual ears perk up. and i'm feeling this. more and more all the time. even as the bills pile up and credit card companies call constantly...i have this voice saying, you're not doing this for you. you're doing this for me. stick with it. you're making a tough call but trust me to stick it out. i'll let you know when you're done here.
i know, it's a little nutty sounding. again, even though i've felt the hand of God here and there in life, i've never felt it so vividly.
Also, i've been going to a mom's group where we are reading books that i would've never picked up on my own, and they are centering around being a Christian wife and mother and woman. and, to my complete surprise, i feel like i'm getting some powerful stuff out of this.
Anyway, 4 or 5 days ago, I was dreaming about my grandma being brought back to life by this weird Re-animator-esque Svengali type. It was creepy and pretty weird and just hard to understand. then, like a title frame in a movie, black text on white background, comes across my pov and it says Romans 4:35. ok, well there isn't a Romans 4:35 but there is a Romans 4:3-5. THe text was just so vivid and I'm Catholic ok, I don't really 'know' the Bible. I've never seen something like that in a dream of mine. One, to have words, two to remember them and have them stuck when I wake up. In my mother's group the other night we looked it up together. It talks about Abraham benefiting from his faith and the motif Paul uses is that of a worker and his wages. Essentially stating that faith, believing the instruction given you from God, not works heh or working, is the measure of righteousness in the eyes of God. As we read it, I kid you not, we all got goosebumps. I've never felt this level of personal connection with God. Having kids man, it's heavy, serious shit. That responsibility entrusted to you as a parent to care for these little children of God, it's nothing to be trifled with -- and when something so vivid comes across telling you so, telling you that indeed you're on the path, such a direct invitation to set your mind at ease with your decision, that's powerful, powerful stuff. i actually kind of equate this with asking God for a sign that he exists and him actually like setting a bush on fire and talking to you with it. i mean, i never asked for a sign of any kind. that's totally out of my purview. it wouldn't have occurred to me to ask such a thing. that kind of thing strikes me as sort of, i dunno, spiritually stunted. Jay is not overly impressed by any of this. He said he would be impressed if the bible verse were burned into my forehead when I woke. Sure, that would be impressive an X-Files kind of way, but so is seeing a bible verse flash across your dream cam. Someone who has never actually even read the whole Bible. I mean, it's actually kind of shaking up my sometimes overly logical approach to spirituality. it's that vivid for me. it hasn't killed off my wish to go back to work, to be able to afford stuff i like, or wish to make financial progress in life. it's just that i have this great certainty now that those material wishes are pretty much irrelevant to the path my life is on. that's extremely liberating.

For what does the scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." A worker's wage is credited not as a gift, but as something due. But when one does not work, yet believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

Also note, this same sentiment is repeated throughout the Bible and especially in the New Testament, so why this passage in Romans of all places? With this employment motif. this is a unique passage in that way.

Monday, July 14, 2008

sucked in to this greatness

i heard a piece about this show Mad Men ages ago on NPR and made a mental note that i promptly forgot. then, somehow stumbled on it while wandering the On Demand channels on Time Warner. It's really great stuff. They use actual advertising accounts in the plot lines. And some pretty great stuff relating to secretaries and the alpha male culture of the time. Also, a time capsule of a time before the application of metatext and the fruits of psychoanalysis were commonplace in advertising. fun.

Friday, July 11, 2008

answer to a call for KC's most blighted areas

Submitted for your consideration:
I call this: Panties on a Fence. Indian Springs Mall 2008.



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Wednesday, July 09, 2008

bebe is asleep in my arms

my checking account is hemorrhaging.
i'm going to sleep with the hope that it will have worked itself out by tomorrow.
i can't go back to work and leave this beautiful being with a stranger. She's mine.
I mean, can i?

One thing in the world that's mine to keep.
i can't let her down.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Next generation BJ and the Bear

"Roman, meet Toonces."
"Toonces, this is Roman."
"Toonces, look out!"

If only you'd watched SNL in the 80s ...

also, this is a funny face.

she got baptized on Sunday. all the photos of me are horrific so this is all you'll see for now.

Friday, July 04, 2008

the horror continues

as i'm watching a Korean horror flick that centers on aborted fetuses haunting uteri and coming back to kill the mothers that aborted them (what an awesomely horrific and awful premise that would never play even in ultra-conservative US and A) it occurred to me that my usage was wrong in the previous post. It would be severed penises and not dismembered penises. Wait, is it penises or peni? At any rate, the horror of horrors fest continues ...
I''m pretty sure Sarah Michelle Gellar doesn't want any part of an American version of this one.

postscript: In searching for the movie web site, I found the tragic tale of the female lead in the film.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

my life quota of dismembered penises

Apparently, that roughly translates to uh, one.
Just having wrapped up Teeth (www.teeththemovie.com) I think I can safely say that it is not a movie for date rapists or those with any kind of blood squeamishness. Very funny and over all, not a well-made or well-realized vision, but well worth it for anyone who's ever fought off an overly-handsy drunken douchbag.
I give it four lamprey teeth for clumsy feminism, high-handed Greek mythology references and 3, count em 3, dismembered penises.