March 2004 Archives
About two weeks ago there was a ladybug stuck in the bus.
OK, I don't actually know if it was stuck. Maybe it was choosing to ride the bus in order to reduce traffic congestion. But it looked stuck. It was wandering around on the window and seemed a little disoriented. So I caught it and got off a stop early so I could let it go in some nice grass and I went on about my business.
This afternoon as I was waiting for a bus, a ladybug landed on my head. I said "Excuse me, please don't sit on my head" and threw it up into the air and it flew away.
This evening I made the ridiculous decision to go grocery shopping after sunset. In the evening, the #3 bus only runs every half hour and the northbound and southbound routes are staggered perfectly to make sure I have to wait for-fucking-ever at the corner of Burnet and Koenig in the dark when I'm done shopping. So I knew I was setting myself up for problems, I admit.
After buying more groceries than I should have been carrying, I crossed Burnet Road, then almost popped my shoulder out of joint or alignment or maybe even being attached to my body while setting the grocery bags down at the bus stop. Ow. And the next bus wasn't due to arrive for 25 minutes, and it was too dark to read and getting cold and y'all don't know what it's like...
...and then the bus arrived. It was the previous northbound bus, that I should have missed by 4 minutes, except that it was running late. I stepped into my apartment 1 hour and 5 minutes after leaving, and now I have fresh produce and yogurt and frozen Amy's pizza and cereal and tortillas.
I want the universe to always work like this.
The Dog is paying no attention whatsoever to the infomercial about becoming a qualified automotive technician. I fear that she will never pursue a career.
My ex-husband would have gotten a lot more action in college if he liked boys as well as girls. So many boys wanted him. Sadly for them, he always maintained that he was "straight until proven otherwise"...that is to say, he wouldn't rule it out, but he was doubtful he would ever meet a man to whom he would be attracted sexually.
This year, my ex-husband threw a party near Valentine's Day to celebrate the new love of his life, and it's a man.
The new love of his life is Johnny Depp.
The news that my ex-husband has finally found a man to whom he is prepared to give himself would undoubtedly cause gnashing of teeth and rending of garments among men who have desired him in the past. This news would be so shocking that I would argue it might cause them to question whether the earth is going to continue on its current axis or spin off into space - so numerous were the men who would have slept with my ex-husband if given half a chance, and so resolutely (though politely) did he continue pronouncing his straightness.
All I have to say is, my ex-husband needs to go see Secret Window.
Then he will know the error of his Depp-loving ways, he can reclaim his previous sexual orientation, the world can rest comfortably on its axis, and the entertainment industry can revel in more ill-gotten gains.
[UPDATE: 9:12 p.m. My ex-husband wishes to point out that it was Pirates of the Caribbean and Once Upon a Time in Mexico that sold him. He didn't just wake up one afternoon and say "Hey, I want to sleep with Johnny Depp." Although who hasn't had that thought? Except for people who have tried to sit through Secret Window, that is.]
[UPDATE: 9:14 p.m. My ex-husband also wishes to point out that he never actually got around to throwing the party. But as far as I knew when I wrote the above, it had transpired. Isn't instant messaging wonderful? You can learn so much so quickly...]
I suppose I can't blame The Dog for flinching away from my hand today, since earlier I dropped a tupperware container full of cheese on her back.
But I would like to point out that if the container had come open, she would have regarded it as a mozzarella miracle and begun worshipping something. Me, or possibly tupperware. Something.
There is a limit to multitasking. I cannot type my bank account number into a web form and spell my last name out loud to a Customer Service Rep on the phone at the same time.
It's just not possible.
Definite: My hair requires brushing more than once per day.
Definite: When coming home after dark on days when it has rained, I am going to step on snails no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
Possible: People you like don't always like you back, and you don't always get to know why.
Jeanne D'Arc points out an intriguing bit of information: Mel Gibson thinks his wife is going to hell.
My question: is this really unique to Mel Gibson's freaky brand of Catholicism?
I had an email exchange recently with a very nice young man who saw my online personal ad and thought we might get along, but who had marked "Christian - Protestant" as his religion on his profile. Usually when I get pings from men who are any flavor of Christian, they are so grossly inappropriate for me in so many ways that I don't feel compelled to respond (i.e. they hunt, vote Republican...it's obvious that they just looked at the picture, rather than read anything I had to say.) But this guy was vegan, and talked about playing Scrabble, and was very polite and well-spoken.
The religion part of the conversation went something like this:
The Princess: So what's up with this Christian thing?
Prospective Suitor: I see that you take issue with the "my way or the highway" types, but I'm relaxed and groovy about it.
The Princess: So how do you square "In order to go to Heaven, you have to accept Jesus" with "relaxed and groovy"? Would you marry someone who didn't accept Jesus as her lord and savior and was therefore going to hell?
Prospective Suitor: Well, it's just a difference of opinion, really, and no one's going to know who's right until we all die.
Errrr, what? He didn't say "that doesn't mean she's not going to hell." He said "we won't know for sure that I'm right that she's going to hell until after we die."
The story that Jeanne D'Arc links to, by a professor of theology at Notre Dame, seems to say that Vatican II changed the Catholic rules a bit to say that "Some people who aren't us aren't going to hell, even though we're right." At least, that's how I'm reading this:
The Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism put it even more strongly. While non-Catholic Christians may not enjoy "full" communion with the Catholic Church, they do enjoy some "degree" of communion, enough to connect them spiritually with Christ's redemptive work.
And in its Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, the council noted that salvation is available to non-Christians as well, without prejudice to the truth of the church's own faith.
But what of those who don't believe in Christ's redemptive work? What of those who believe that a man called Jesus Christ was an extremely gifted healer, teacher, and speaker of truth who had an amazing power to reach people's higher selves and make them really think about the kind of world they wanted to create and live in...but who don't think he was God?
I had a conversation with my mother when I was young, probably when I was in junior high. I asked her what would happen to the people that never heard about Jesus, since accepting him was the only way to go to Heaven. She said that God made it so that everyone had a chance to hear about Jesus. It didn't seem fair to me that some people would get just once chance and have to rely on that.
I had many more chances than that, and I have read the entire Bible, and I still don't see how you can square a religion that claims a monopoly on the path to salvation with religious tolerance, expressed clumsily by the Prospective Suitor above as being unconcerned by a "difference of opinion." And there aren't many flavors of Christianity that I'm aware of that don't claim a monopoly. How non-monopolistic can it be to say that "you must accept" Jesus as your lord and savior? Is there not an implied "or else"? Or is there an implied "only if you want to"?
Skittles are not medicine.
Thank you,
The Management
Duties to include dog walking, preparation of nutritious lunches and dinners, picking up around the apartment, laundry, and renting me some movies I haven't already seen 500 times.
Duration: as long as I have this cold.
Alternately, I could just do this stuff myself since I'm not dying or bedridden or anything, but where's the fun in that?
We'll call her Anna for this post, and she turns 3 in October.
We're calling her Anna not so much to protect her identity as to avoid having to see the word "niece" over and over again, since it always looks like it's spelled wrong.
My sister: Anna, why are you talking in my other ear? (pause) Do you want to talk to Auntie S.?
Anna: Yeah!
My sister: OK, I'm going to let her talk, just for a minute.
The Princess: Great!
Anna: Hi.
The Princess: Hi Anna!
Anna: Hi.
The Princess: Are you eating carrots?
Anna: Yeah.
The Princess: Are they yummy?
Anna: Yeah.
The Princess: Good! Can I talk to your mommy again?
Anna: Yeah.
The Princess: Thank you.
Anna: I love you grandma.
The Princess: I love you too, baby.
To be fair, she did then tell me she loved me again and addressed me as Auntie S., and I don't think my sister prompted her, because she was too busy laughing her head off that her daughter just called me grandma.
Lord Jeffrey (as quoted in Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe by Martin Rees):
Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better one myself.
So I had a lovely date last night with a charming, droll fellow who made me laugh and think and remember what the "ooh" feeling can be all about.
When you meet someone online through a matchmaking-type service, it is considered acceptable to quiz them on aspects of their online profile. So I asked him, lightly and jokingly, "Hey, you didn't fill in the checkboxes for have kids and want kids, anything I should know?"
His response: "Hmm, I thought I had filled those out. Well, kids yay, and I swear I would know if I had any (laugh)...but y'know, I'm 31, and I am nowhere near ready to have kids."
I brought this up to A. this morning, because she is wise, and she flinched when I told her. Her response to his response: "What's sad is that feeling that way is so not an option for women that age who want to have kids." [in context, "have kids" meant "biological kids"]
So I set about mentally ignoring the quasi-red flag, in order to retain the shiny feeling a bit longer, and even told someone about my date and claimed there weren't any red flags.
Then I saw this, posted at Compound Interest in response to a book that Mary felt was proposing bad things:
[it is grossly false that] ...we have any control over whether our menfolk want to settle down and raise children....who [is it] that we're supposed to be marrying in our early to mid-twenties[?] Surely not men in that age range, who from my own experiences in the dating world, are empathically NOT interested in getting married and making babies any time soon. My male peers realize they have decades to postpone reproduction. One young man I used to date told me he was interested in having children "some day."
"When would that be?" I asked.
"In my forties," he replied.
Obviously he didn't intend to have them with a woman his own age.
Serves me right for attempted denial. I'm not claiming to actually know his mind from one casual comment, but ignoring evidence serves me not.
Damn reality.
