Leaving Home


Originally uploaded by beelerspace.

The CPH had had a dream about a sad little jellyfish who had to leave his home. He drew this when he woke up. It has now become my desktop picture. So sad, but beautiful at the same time.

Geron over at Whywouldwecare asked for humpday haikus. Here was my contribution

Only three more days
Till I am in near-heaven
I can hardly wait.

Of course i’ll be in TN in like 2 and 1/2 days, but i won’t be, you know, in near-heaven until saturday around noon.

you should go over there and contribute as well. go on.

The SMWB is leaving what has been home to him for two years now in about 10 minutes. Let’s all wish him happy thought for the next day or two, okay?
You can see pictures of his going away party here.

Someone has been visiting my page from New Delhi. I don’t think I know anyone there, except, wait… Roshin, is that you?

Look at me – assuming the only Indian I know is visiting New Delhi and visiting my blog.

I’m such an assumer.

Two years ago, I had just started living in Indianapolis and my CPH was still tying up loose ends in Tennessee. I drove back to visit him for the Fourth of July weekend and I got to spend the weekend saying goodbye to friends one more time. Some of my best memories of that weekend were at the M*’s house. I remember sitting on the roof of the garage smoking and watching D* beg T* to call him Uncle Davey. I remember holding sparklers in the driveway and trying to write our names with the fire. Last summer, I didn’t go back to Tennessee. Instead, I took the weekend to go see (some of the same, plus a few more) close friends in Boston. Lying on my back and watching the silhouettes of my friends back against the fireworks on the Charles River will be etched on my memory forever.
I’m going back to Tennessee this weekend and while I’m sad that not everyone will be back together, I’m comforted to know that Thanksgiving is only4 months and some odd days away.

When the CPH and I lived in TN, someone once told us that we dressed like midwesterners. This past saturday, we were walking back to our house from DQ (so nice having one within walking distance, especially on days like Saturday) and one of our friends saw us and said we were totally east coasters. He said this because it felt like (at least) 90 degrees in the shade and both CPH and I were wearing jeans.
i like my legs, I just don’t like shorts. i’ve never been a big short wearer. I like to wear skirts, but I just think it’s so hard to make a pair of shorts look stylish.

Got my hair cut and colored this morning. Go here for pictures

T*’s mom sent this to me. She made this cake for his birthday.
Awesome, yes?
One more thing I’ll have to get better at before I have kids….

The SMWB is leaving Boston next week and heading south to begin work on his phd. I’m super excited for him. And I’m proud of him too. I can’t imagine moving to a place where I knew absolutely no one. He’s a brave boy.

I meant to post this earlier thsi week, but then, forgot. But here it is.

As predicted, the weekend was nice and relaxing. Our camera is broken (and was shipped out last week thanks to the warranty), but CPH’s parents had theirs. You can see their pictures here.

Also, an old friend from EKU has started a blog. Let’s see if he can keep it up.

Half-price margaritas does not a good movie make. Especially this one.

There’s this friend of mine who has a crush on another friend of mine. It’s just one of those adoring from far away crushes, though. You know the kind. One friend meets another friend of a friend and the first friend can’t stop talking about the friend of the friend to the friend. The first friend will never do anything about this crush (save telling him that she crushed on him the night before she leaves the country). She will move far away and never come back to visit but she will email you on a fairly regular basis (she is your friend, afterall) and she will ask about this friend on whom she is still crushing. I will gladly tell her about her crush because I absolutely love to keep this cycle going. I absolutely love these kind of crushes. These kind of crushes remind me of the reason that I want to someday again work with junior high girls. God, I love that age.

An old friend (J Roddy Walston and the Business) stopped in town yesterday for a show. The turnout was horrible, but they played with all their might. It was great seeing Rod. He told me that he’s seen this site a few times when he does vanity searches (googling himself in rock star talk). It was nice to see someone who had moved away from TN. When I first moved away, I was sure that I’d never be as happy as I was there, but seeing one of my friends who moved much further away than I did and seeing that he’s doing ok (a little lonely, but still ok) was encouraging. If you want to hear what they sound like email me (popularstrangerATgmail.com) and i’ll send you a song.

Running from pool robot


Originally uploaded by The Thaggards.

If memory serves me correctly, T* turns five today!



Happy Birthday T*.

IMG_1787


Originally uploaded by zinserbeeler.

Happy late birthday to D*!

If you’re sitting bored at a computer and you want to look like you’re working but, really, want to read something that’s not horribly boring, then check out this. (sorry it’s pdf).
It’s a book written by Ryan Cragun, a close friend of the CPH’s brother. It’s licensed under Creative Commons. So don’t make it angry and kiss it’s daughter while you guys are at the drive-in, ok?

The CPH and I are headed to Brown County this weekend with his folks. We rented this lake house for his mom as a Mother’s Day Present. It’s something she’s been wanting to do for a while now. I’m excited. I’m bringing lots of books and we’re packing the car with board games.
I think I’ll come back relaxed.
If anyone’s reading this from Indy. Make sure you make the J-Roddy show in the Underground at the Harrison Center for the Arts on Sunday Night (8pm).

“And when God played with your hair,
and moved it between your eyes and mine,
who was I to think I could
dare move it back,
to see you?” – my CPH, 1996
One of the first things that I fell in love with was the way that his words, when written down in poetry form, were easy for me to understand. See, usually, I don’t like poetry. Most of the time, I just can’t get it. The words are there and I can read them but putting them together to understand the writer’s meaning is like looking at a car engine and telling you how it works. But after I read that first poem he wrote for me (he left it on my car windshield along with a stick of gum), I got it. He just wrote another one recently and I read it and I still get it. I realize that I am able to understand the meaning because I was there when he was talking to a friend about the abundance of plastic bags in our kitchen and what that meant to him. But that’s what’s so great – I get it because I get him. I understand it because I understand him. I can read it because I can read him. I like that.

About a year before my cousin decided to give up, he sent me a letter. I still have his letter. I, at first, kept it as a reminder to write him back. He was serving, at the time of his letter, in Iraq and I’m sure he loved hearing from family members. I now keep it as a reminder of how much I need to work on keeping in contact with those I love but are far away. For some reason, as soon as I got it, I folded it back up and put it inside one of my copies of Franny and Zooey. This past week, I pulled the book out to begin to re-read it and found Jared’s letter. He tells me, in the letter, that one of the first things he learned while serving in Iraq was that you don’t volunteer for things. He then proceeds to tell me, in his own way, that this advice is pretty much bullshit because he had just recently missed out on a pretty great assignment.
I don’t have a hard time volunteering for things. In fact, I usually find myself stressed out because of all the things that I have promised others that I would do to help them out. But still, when I read Jared’s words I am motivated to do more.
Friday night, someone asked a porch full of party goers if anyone had any extra room to house a band from California for the IMAF that was going on the next day. In my half drunken state, I agreed. Saturday night, the CPH and I brought home four Californian’s from Molly Zenobia’s band. They stayed with us until Monday morning and I didn’t want them to leave. Sometimes you just click with people, you know? We were already making plans to go visit them in LA before we had spent 24 hours with them.
So yeah, it was a great time and I learned that sometimes it’s good to volunteer for things if only in fear that you might just miss out on some great assigment.

The IMAF seemed to be a success. Tons of people. Lots of music. Not many flowers sold, but I’m okay with that. They turned out to not fare well in the humidity of Indy and were falling apart by the end of the day.
I was a little discouraged, but now I’m researching how to hold them together better.

It was 76 degrees before I left for work this morning. The high today – 91. Have I ever told you how much I hate hot weather?

Give me snow AND rain AND wind any day over this sticky, sweltering, heat.

Blegh.

So, I’m selling my flower pins at IMAF this weekend and I need great idea of how to display the flowers.
Suggestions so far:
-Large felt board with flowers pinned onto painted stems in a garden of flower pins.
-Coat hangers wrapped with green tissue paper to look like stems with the flowers pinned to them and planted in pots.

Any other ideas? The winning idea gets a free flower pin.

Eh, Eh?

AIH


Originally uploaded by beelerspace.

Went up to my favorite venue last night to see Architecture in Helsinki. It was a good show and the crowd was a little thin due to a Pixies concert on the same night. The opening bands were not horrible, but the AIH portion of the night was amazing. Isobel (trumpet extrodianaire) now has one of my flower pins and if you see her wearing it, hug her tight.

It’s true. I like television. I can pretty much watch anything if it’s on the television. But still there are some shows that I fall in love with. And, unfortunately, these are usually the shows that die well before their time i.e are viciously murdered. Take for example:
Once and Again
Joan of Arcardia
G VS E
Firefly
and
Dead Like Me
But the latest fatality that has really affected me is Carnivale. We’ve known for nearly a month now that HBO did not renew this utterly amazing series, but we didn’t watch the last episode until a few nights ago.
Not only was this show one of the few shows around today that I was actually excited to see the next installment, this show made me think. It made me think about history, about the Depression Era – About how some people were so desperate during that time that they were willing to sell their daughters to lonely men.
There’s a few scenes that, even though it may have not been the intention of the directors and writers, of the show, have made me think of Christ. There’s this great scene where the main character heals one of the fellow carnival workers after he has been tarred and feathered. The man had also always, or at least since he was a young man, walked with a limp. After being healed from the burns, he also realizes that he is no longer walking with a limp. He pulls the brace off of his leg and begins running through the barren desert.
And I can’t help but wonder if this is how people reacted when Jesus healed them. The CPH and I were talking and we decided that the gospels (because they are written with Christ as the lead actor), often times, don’t express the joy and excitement that the healed felt. Instead, we see Christ healing and the healed person worshipping the healer. We dont’ see the parties afterward. We see the gratitude that the healed feels for the healer, but what we don’t see is the gratitude that the healed feels for a renewed life in general.
I absolutely loved how this show made me think.
And this isn’t unusual in the shows that I love. But why is it that the shows that serve much more than entertainment purposes are the ones that get cancelled?

Yesterday was sister-in-law’s birthday. I was a little busy on making flowers, but I didn’t forget. I just didn’t have time to find a picture and write a post.
We didn’t have any single shots of her, but I’m sneaky and I stole this one off of her flickr account.

Friday night, we went with B* and P* to see a play at the Phoenix Theatre. It was called Cabfare for the Common Man and while it wasn’t a great set of acts, it was entertaining. There was one particular actor that I thoroughly enjoyed and hope to go back next time I hear he is acting again (and as soon as I remember his name).
The CPH and I (along with a few of our other friends) drove south to Bloomington to see this man on Saturday night. He is amazingly creative and his talent is evident as soon as he steps onto stage. I bought a t-shirt. I’ve been to quite a few shows in the past month or so and I’ve become fascinated with buying concert tees. This weekend was the first time I gave in and actually bought one. It’s a fairly plain shirt. The color is primary green with an outlined white image from his most recent album.
Sunday, after church, there was an artist talk by a couple of guys from Grand Rapids who are a part of a collaboration called Dynamite. Their current project is something called Potential Energy. Read about it, it’ll get your mind working.
Sunday night, I worked on some flower pins. Kyle asked me to help him man his booth at the IMAF this weekend. And he said that I could sell my flowers. So exciting! I’m hoping to make enough money to get me and my CPH tickets to this.

I talked to my friend C* last night. He and his wife have been out of the country for a year and half. They are starting their trek home in November. I’ve never actually met his wife, but i’ve talked to her a few times and I’m uber excited to finally get to meet her. I think they’ll only be living about 2 hours away from us. I have dreams of the CPH and I going to visit them and our babies playing with their babies. It’s a nice dream to have.

Yeah, I know, I’m sad. Wanna know what makes me happy? When my friend, the SMWB, comes to see me (or when I get to go see him). Click here for pictures of his most recent visit.

Yesterday was a hard day. Today is not much better.
Let me explain.
Yesterday, i was perusing the hometown newspaper, much like I do, every 3 months or so, and I saw that my best friend from high school just had her first baby. When I saw the news, I cried. I’ve continued to cry on a pretty regular basis since finding out.
I’m jealous as all get out. I can’t believe the amounts of people that successfully have babies. I don’t understand why I couldn’t be one of those people. I do understand that the probability of my next pregnancy turning out okay is good. But that does not help me be less afraid.
All that aside, I am extremely excited for my friend. And I’m sure it’s perfectly healthy for me to be insanely jealous and extremely excited for one person at one time. Right?

Last night, after dinner, we walked over to Dairy Queen to get some dessert. As I was waiting for the CPH to bring over my vanilla cone, I sat in a patch of grass, plucked a piece out of the ground, put in between my hands (palms facing out) and remembered my friend. I remember this friend everytime I pick up a piece of grass and try to make the whistling sound that he taught me some 12 years ago.
His name was Jeremy Volk. He lived about two blocks from my dad’s house. We were in the same youth group and we went to high school together. I had a crush on him for a good solid semester. I remember one time riding home in the bus and he was sitting in the seat behind me and I had my hand in between the edge of the seat and the inside side of the bus. My hand was there as an invitation and Jeremy accepted. We only held hands that one time.
I remember one time going running with Jeremy (he was a competitive runner, he ran cross country for the high school). I remember that we barely made it down the hill of our subdivision before I nearly passed out. He loved to run, but as we walked back up the hill to hang out in my front yard, I could tell that he was giving up running, if even for that night, to be with me.
One time, I walked over to his house and we were sitting in his front yard (his mom wasn’t home and girls weren’t allowed in his house if his mom wasn’t home). He plucked up a piece of grass and put it between his hands and on his lips. He made a whistling sound and I was amazed. I spent the next half hour or so (enough time for his mom to return from her errand) watching him whistle with grass and tried to learn how to do it. I think I must have succeeded once, because I distinctly remember the nearly unbearable tickling feeling that i got when the piece of grass vibrated against my lips.
I went away to college and Jeremy and I lost touch. I still remember that day that my friend called me and told me the story that makes it so hard for me to forget him to this day. After high school, Tammy told me, Jeremy learned that he liked the taste and the effect of alcohol a bit more than we ever expected he would. A few weeks prior, Jeremy and his girlfriend were driving home from a party. Jeremy was drinking at this party and made the poor judgment of driving. They crashed that night and his girlfriend was killed.
Jeremy had been hosptialized, but was now home making his recovery. There was charges being pressed and he faced time in jail.
Tammy suggested that she pick me up and we would go for a visit. I remember walking into his house and feeling a bit odd that I was there while his mother wasn’t. As if his mother’s rule of no girls in the house would still be applicable now. I can still see his face with cuts and the bruises on his arms. More importantly, I remember the sadness and hopelessness on Jeremy’s face. I remember his quietness.
We sat and watched the Long Kiss Goodnight. I think we talked a little bit, but I don’t remember what we talked about. I only remember the silence. And the sadness.
I don’t think we ever talked again after that day. I wrote him a letter a few years later and sent it to his mom’s address. I’m not sure if he ever got it.
But every single time I sit in a patch of grass, I pick up a piece and try my hardest not to forget my friend.