Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Dream-World

Ok, so I like the song "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" even though I don't believe in Santa Claus. And I enjoy"Mele Kaliki Maka" even though I've never so much as been to Hawaii. Similarly, I've always had a wistful sort of affection for "I Am Dreaming of A White Christmas" even though I never really thought I'd get a white Christmas. At least...not here in the Seattle area.

But this Christmas, snow it did and I think every fluffy flake only pushed me into hotter contention for the title of Happiest Girl on Earth.

I feel overwhelmed to serve a God who can make an insignificant sort of half-dream turn into a real-life winter wonderland. Much less a God who was willing to pay a price as high as humanity and everything that meant for...me.

Some of you may be interested to know that I received a GPS system for Christmas.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Sunday, December 16, 2007

And You Thought You Were Faint-Hearted!

Mom hates spiders. I mention this because I don't think it's entirely my fault--my feelings toward spiders, that is. Seriously. Mom hates spiders so much, that a spider actually delayed my arrival into the world. That was because Mom saw a dead spider while she was in full-blown labor with me and it caused her adrenaline level to shoot up and shut down her labor. It's a beautiful world--I guess I'm allowed to dislike the creature bold enough to delay my entrance into it.

The other night, I walked in the house shortly after midnight. It felt rather like the night before Christmas--not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. I headed quietly downstairs, set my stuff down, and turned around to see....

It.

It was a big one. So large, in fact, that my first reaction was to look more closely and make sure it was not one of those fake spiders--the ones my brothers sometimes like to use to get a reaction out of me.

It wasn't.

It was very real. Fortunately, it was also sitting very still which gave me fifteen minutes to unload my car and give some good, serious thought to my options. Finally, everything unloaded, I stood in the middle of the floor to face up to facts and make a decision. I considered my three options.

a) Denial. Let the spider live, hoping that either he would wander away and NEVER be seen again or stay there all night so someone could kill him in the morning. Better yet, maybe he could just die...all on his own.

I realized the impracticability of this option almost immediately. A good night's sleep was on the top of my priority list at the moment. A good sleep and coexistence with a spider are mutually exclusive for me. Besides, how would I live with the wondering when every door was opened or paper turned over if a spider would jump out? Unfortunately, my practical side refused to consider it a real possibility that he would stay in one place all night...or die on his own. I proceeded to option 2.

b) Aggression. Kill the spider.

I have killed a spider or two in my time. But it at least takes courage and usually some very convincing external motivation. For example, a needy camper at summer camp.... No screaming camper seemed likely to appear at twelve-thirty in my quiet Christmas-eve-ish sort of house and the only internal motivation I could come up with was wanting the spider dead. Not enough to face those spider-eyes of his. Any further doubts I may have had as to my levels of courage were swept away when the spider started to move. He looked bigger, moving. And what if he came running towards me when I went to kill him?

c) Cowardice. Wake someone up to kill the spider.

I hate to inconvenience anyone, but...well, it all came by process of elimination. I woke Paul up. He deserves a medal for good-humor (and bravery?). I don't know what I deserve, but it's nothing particularly complimentary.

Monday, December 03, 2007

The Rainy City

Seattle. It's not that wet of a city, really. Natives here know that the bark of our generally rather metallic looking sky is hardly equalled by the bite of its downpours. After all, we aren't even in the competition for "U.S. City With Most Annual Rainfall." So, we smile at the normalcy of our heavy cloud cover and shrug off the determined drizzle that dampens our atmosphere.

And then comes a day like today.

I enjoyed a lovely snowfall last Saturday. It doesn't snow here very often, so it's rather an exciting moment when it does. I wanted to catch and hold every snowflake forever. By the time three or four inches had fallen, our neighborhood looked every inch like the perfect Christmas card. Then we all went out to play and spread boot tracks into all its nooks and crannies.

When it does snow here, it rarely hangs around. This weekend was no exception. By Sunday afternoon it was raining. By the time I woke up this morning to the sound of a waterfall pouring out of the gutters, only a football sized lump of our once respectable snowman remained to eulogize a perfect weekend. I made an unusually brisk dash to the car and arrived only mildly damp. "Today," I smiled to myself, settling back for my twenty minute commute and turning on the windshield wipers, "it is a wet, wet world!"

Ten minutes later, still waiting on line to turn off of my street onto the main road, I started to understand what a scenic sort of day I was going to have. The lake that graced the intersection of my street with the main road even had ripples! Every passing car left a wake like a speed boat. As I carefully navigated the left turn onto the main road, leaving a lovely wake of my own, I shuddered, "It's a wet, wet world!"

One hour and forty minutes afterwards, still having only navigated six miles, I arrived at work. If you were to guess that I had been forced to take a rather tedious and moderately circuitous route to work because of flooding and road closures, you would be guessing correctly.

Safe in the dry building, I discovered I wasn't the only employee late to work. As the morning flew by, all of us were a bit jumpy and held frequent excited discussions about the weather while admiring the speed with which a river could form in our parking lot. In the end, our office building was evacuated by the city and I spent an amazingly tedious three hours and twenty minutes inching along the only remaining route out of the flooding area, through a frustrating maze of various circuitous routes, and, eventually, arrived safely home.

Seattle. It's a wet city after all.