All Geared Up

All geared up and ready to go!

As we speak, Astrid and I are packing for our annual trip westward over the Big Pond next week.  We’ll land first in Michigan for my favorite nephew’s wedding on The Farm, after which we’ll fly to Atlanta to be with my kids, grandson and friends the following 2 weeks.

Without belaboring the point, some of you know my conservative, fundamentalist, Christian, preacher-father family history.  However, in the same kind of way I usually do NOT like to use the gay/lesbian/homosexual words to describe myself, I do NOT like calling myself a Christian, even though I mostly am.  I just don’t like the negative definitions and interpretations that have nothing to do with either.  I’m a lesbian, but…not like that.  I’m a Christian, but…not like that.  And no, it’s not an oxymoron.

Which brings me to dancing at the wedding.  Astrid and I have a daily practice of dancing which is very important to us both.  However, knowing this could be a touchy situation for many in the family (for whom dancing is still relatively new), I wrote Peter to ask his honest druthers about our dancing at his wedding.  This isn’t about us but about him, I said.  Luckily, he generously replied that he and Andrea would be offended if we didn’t!  In fact, her sister will be bringing her girlfriend and plan to dance the night away.

Did I mention this will be the first time most of my extended family will finally meet Astrid (after our 5 years of knowing each other this month)?!  Astrid takes it all in stride.  She doesn’t care if they like and accept her or not.  She is who she is, she says.  Take it or leave it.

I wish I could be so…tame.

Which brings me to the absentee ballot I’ll fill out in Atlanta for the November election.  Who do you think will quicker facilitate Astrid moving back to America with me as my wife?!  As she prepares to retire in the next couple of years, her Euro and my dollar will both go much farther there.  I’d like to think we’ll have that choice once the time comes, even if we decide not to do it. 

I want the possibility.  The option.  Without having to ask.  For all of it…the dancing, the moving.  I don’t really ask for much, do I?  To be honest, I wish I wasn’t even having this conversation!  Do you get as sick and tired of it as I do?

What is it they say to never talk about in a public forum like this:  sex, religion and politics?!  Okay, then.  You didn’t hear any of this from me.

It’s time.  Time for a lot of things.  Time for change?  But for right now, we really are all geared up and ready to go, which is so much better than the alternative, all dressed up and nowhere to go, don’t you think?

Wish us peace.  Wish us shalom.  Life is short (tick tock).  Life is good.  We keep believing all things!

When Mercury Goes Retrograde

Mercury stands atop the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, NL

…ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!

Three to 4 times every year and for approximately 3 weeks at a time, planet Mercury goes retrograde.  That is, it slows down in its orbit around the Sun.  The dates for this year, 2012, are:

March 12 – April 4
July 14 – August 8
November 6 – November 26

Yup, we’re smack-dab in the middle of a Mercury Retrograde (MR) and have almost 2 more weeks to go.  So what?!

Mercury, that mythological Messenger of the Gods, happens to “rule” everything related to communication and transportation, that’s what!  Perception, language, writing, editing, research, speaking, learning, the assessment of data, telecommunications, computing, software, electronic gadgets, cameras(!), the postal service, shipping, couriers, wires, cables, machines with moving parts.

When Mercury retrogrades, it scrambles information and causes static and confusion…which is why it’s not a good time to sign contracts, complete important transactions, make big decisions or purchases, especially electronics (if you don’t want a lemon!).

Everyone in the whole wide world can be affected when Mercury retrogrades but especially Gemini (moi) and Virgos (my wife) who are astrologically “ruled” by the rascal.  Astrid and I always laugh a bit nervously when these times come around because we know we need to PAS OP! (= Pay Attention!).  When we’re driving anywhere, we expect delays/detours and are pleasantly surprised when they don’t happen.  We write everything down to make sure we don’t forget anything.

Once I sheepishly told my preacher dad about MR, not knowing if he’d pooh-pooh me into the ground.  He started laughing and said, “Oh, you mean that’s what happened when Mom and I drove home from Virginia the other day and I had forgotten where I put my glasses!  The next day I found them in the corner of the luggage rack on top of the car!”  Bingo.  Lucky for him, they never fell off during the entire drive to Michigan!

Stupid, crazy, silly, frustrating, befuddling, infuriating, aggravating things happen during MR.  You forget where you put things.  You buy something you regret.  You can’t find the right words to say or write.  Before auto-save happened on the computer, you’d lose whole documents.  [Remember the Jesus Saves computer joke!]  Sometimes you lose your whole computer!  Or your camera falls into the lake.  Or you copy people in e-mails you didn’t mean to.  You press Send before you intend, you lose your comment on FB…. 

Yada Yada Yada.  Been there, done that.

But here’s the GOOD NEWS:  MR is the best time in the world to finish things you’ve already started, so all is not lost!  The closet you started cleaning out, the book you were reading/writing, the trip you were planning, the knitting project, the garden….  When Mercury slows down (like now!), it’s the perfect time to tie up those loose ends.  In fact, Mercury will help you finish them.  He needs calming down himself and would like nothing better than for all of us to just slow down a bit.

Why would the Universe give us Mercury retrograde? Because to move forward it is sometimes necessary to backtrack and reconfigure our paths in life. It is important to reconsider, repair, reflect, and reconnect. Mercury forces us to slow down and fix what's broken, and in so doing, rethink things.  It also gives us time to get to projects we have put on the back-burner.—Susan Miller

Give yourself permission.  You know you want to.  Breathe in, breathe out.

For those of you still rolling your eyes, I bet you believe in the effects of the full moon, right?  I rest my case.

Our World is Not Flat

…and other Big-Fish stories.

As Archangel Michael is my witness and to the best of my memory, such as it is, these following stories stand exactly as they happened all those years ago:

• I was 8, almost 9, ready to move from Town A to Town B in Michigan where Dad had received a new pastorate call.  One early dawn morning, as I sat on the toilet looking out the window to my right, I saw what I instinctively knew was an angel, wings drawn back the full length of its body, hovering 6 inches above the roofline of the nearby shed.  It scared me so much, I flew off the toilet and raced back to the bedroom without pulling up my panties.
  
  Within days, a series of almost simultaneous, unfortunate events happened to me, including a ruptured appendix, polio, and mumps...before, during and after the move.  Years later Mom and Dad told me my angel story was more for them than for me.  They needed it.
  
  
  

• Add 10 years, this time while at university.  I walked to church from campus one beautiful, quiet Sunday morning.  Approaching the intersection to turn left, as I always did, a car passing ahead of me in my same direction honked and stopped.  “Would you like a ride?” the church friend yelled.  “Sure!” And just like that, without thinking, I bounded off the sidewalk across the street towards the car.
  
  Another car driving towards me suddenly screeched in front of me with a woman yelling at the top of her lungs, “ARE YOU CRAZY?!”  The car-out-of-nowhere was ready to mow me down.  Stupid (and dead!) me!  Of course I always look before crossing!
  
  But just as my bounding, forward momentum broke the plane of the curb, I bumped into an invisible something so strong and padded it threw me backwards onto the sidewalk.  The rest of the day I walked around dazed, in a stupor....
  
  

• Another few years later, son Mark, age 3, was with Bill and me in the front, bench seat of a friend’s old station wagon we had to borrow for a day.  He was sitting by the passenger door playing with the door handle…a chrome open-ended beauty from those good ol’ days.  No worries because I had locked the door…but didn’t remember that if you moved the handle, it would pop the lock.  Within seconds, the door swung open and flung Mark out onto the Pasadena Freeway, at 70 mph.
  
  Bill’s first reaction was to look into the rearview mirror.  Mine was to just stare at Mark, stunned, and do nothing…until I realized he was still hanging onto the handle!  In an instant, I reached over and pulled him back into the car.  A nurse behind us stopped and said his head never touched the asphalt pavement.  The doctor who x-rayed him said nothing was dislocated and then swore it was a miracle.
  
  While Mark took a 4-hour (!) nap that afternoon, Bill and I shook in our boots.  Not even an adult could have hung onto a slippery, open-ended handle while being dragged on the freeway, let alone a 3-yr-old kid.  Someone was holding his hand!  “Though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand” was the Psalm Bill randomly found during a meditation later.
  
  

Forgive the analogy but guardian angels for me are a bit like good big-fish stories.  Just as real, outlandish, embellished and totally believable!  And I bet we all have them. 

Kinda makes me want to go fishing again!  You?

[The windmill is taken through a 3cm clear-glass oculus and then turned upside down.]

WTMI

WTMI = Way Too Much Information

For 12 years I lived with someone who often said to me, “I would never say that!”  So, of all the people in the world to write about this subject....  HA!  Guilty as charged! 

That’s probably why I bought this 5½ x 3 inch brass plaque at an open-air flea market in Brussels years ago, hung it in our Atlanta bathroom, and then chose to bring it in my move to the Netherlands, after selling almost everything else I owned.  This was not leaving my sight!

I love stuff like this.  If you can’t take a joke, right?!  Or do only women think the above quote is funny?  Do men squirm a bit after reading it?

The other day I saw a poster on Facebook (FB) that said, “Sharks have been spotted in this pool.  They come out when they smell pee.”  Do you think kids get the joke or only adults?  Does it make kids appreciate and “obey” the warning more when given in a humorous way?  (Are the chief culprits even old enough to read it?)

Speaking of FB, in the beginning I just didn’t get it.  Actually, the part I still don’t get is the WTMI part…but not necessarily in a who-in-the-world-could-possibly-care sort of way.  Rather, in a this-is-way-too-personal sort of way.  When two people are expressing their love to each other in very intimate ways, out there for all their Friends to see, somehow even I cringe.  It crosses a different WTMI line for me. 

So, where is the sense and sensibility when it comes to WTMI?  Privacy and stolen-identity issues aside, is there an unwritten etiquette somewhere about what we should or should not share or say publicly?  Are there proprieties….

Or is this the fodder for the comedians amongst us!  No holds barred?

There’s almost always more than one way to say something, of course.  You can be a strict disciplinarian with ruler/belt in hand, barking out orders for unquestioning obedience.  Or you can be instead a leader who manages allegiance in such humorous ways no one can refuse. 

Which reminds me of son Mark when he was little and had a hard time keeping his bedroom straightened up.  I’d awaken him several mornings in a row singing “Good morning to you, you live in a zoo; but then so do monkeys, good morning to you.”  He’d wake up laughing and a few days later…ha!  He’d clean up his room. 

Tell me just about anything with even a weird sense of humor and I’ll probably laugh on the spot.  Maybe I have an extra funny bone, I don’t know.  Say something in enough of a different way that doesn’t go too far over the line and you’ll have me hook, line and sinker.

In that regard, you can say I’m a sucker for WTMI.  Well, as long as it’s funny and not at anyone’s expense, if you know what I mean.

And while I’m at it, I promise never to put anything into your toilet that doesn’t belong there.  But for those of us old enough, aren’t you glad those days are over?!!!