Katdish.net

How much attention do you pay to the sidebar(s) when you read someone’s blog? I will typically check them out the first couple of times I read someone’s blog, then pretty much ignore them. Unless, of course they have a jukebox. Then I immediately find the blasted thing and turn it off. Then I may have to get up and clean the dog piddle off my leg, depending upon what song is playing and how loud I have my speakers up on my computer.

If you are the type to look at the sidebar, you may have noticed a quote by me and a picture of some of my home improvement handiwork. Well, the following post is what inspired that quote. I have included some of the comments from that post, including the comment that inspired that quote:

The New Math:
Well, it’s Saturday and I am hard at work in my soon-to-be uber fantastical studio/escape from the world. I am taking a brief respite from the task at hand to give you a brief peek into the glamorous life of me. (Sure, don’t mention it.)

Here’s a new mathematical equation to ponder:

Okay, yeah. This is a repost of an earlier post. I originally wrote this way back in May of last year. But it’s kind of cool for me to reflect on it now at a distance. Specifically the part where I say “Distracted by all the things going on in my life right now…” because part of “all of the things” was that we were knee deep in the early stages of planting a church and had been thrown a few curve balls in the process. What a difference a few months can make. I know I said this yesterday, but it bears repeating: God is very, very good! BTW – I never did write a post about Hebrews, but if you haven’t read it in awhile, it is an awesomely good book.

Truth be told, this entry was going to be about Hebrews. I even have a rough draft floating around in my head somewhere and a title, “Why I’m loving’ me some Hebrews”. But every time I sit down to write about it, I end up going down several rabbit trails and have difficulty staying on topic. (Yes, shocking, I know.) I promise I’ll write about it soon, because I AM loving me some Hebrews!

(Subtitled: Why my laundry still isn’t finished.)

1. With the full understanding that leaving the house today is on the agenda, you decide to wear something a bit more formal than the fuzzy polka dot pajama pants and the bright green “Whose Your Daddy?” t-shirt.
   
2. Attempts to find a pair of clean jeans prove futile. Instead, you hastily decide on a pair of red cotton capris circa 2001 and a peasant type t-shirt the same color as Oscar the Grouch. A gigantic claw hair clip and black flip flops complete the ensemble. Make a mental note that the laundry fairy has ignored numerous requests. Drastic measures must be taken.
   
3. After “errands”, i.e. – getting your kids out of the house before they drive you to drink, you reluctantly return home and begin tackling the huge piles of laundry.
   
4. Lots of random things happen, you manage to wash and dry 2 loads of whites and 2 loads of jeans. Hang up jeans and begin sorting underwear and socks.
   
5. End up with an inordinately high number of mismatched socks. Suspect the dog has found a “special place” for their sock mates.
   
   
6. Decide to put the socks in a basket on top of the dryer. Hate this idea because how are you supposed to remember which socks are in there? You may throw their sockmate right in the same basket, and that ain’t right.
7. Begin to feel bad for the socks. Serenade the socks with the 3 Dog Night Hit, “One”. “One…..is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know. Two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number one, Ahhhh Ewwww!”
   
   
8. Frustrated that you have no fabulous ideas about how to store the socks until reunited with their drawer mates, your mind begins to wander…
   
9. You notice a metal sign that you bought at Ross on the clearance aisle a couple of months ago. It says “Children are the anchors that hold a mother’s heart.” Which you hate, because it reminds you of that children’s book “The Giving Tree”, which makes you want to leg drop that selfish little kid/man in that book. But, it was 2 bucks, and there’s no law saying you have to keep that dumb saying on there once you own it free and clear, now is there?
   
10. Get the Goo-Off and scraper from your handy dandy tool bag and get to gettin’ on that quote. Oh, yeah. At this point, the wheels are turning in that little ADD mind of yours. You have begun the actual labor portion of the creative process.
    
    
11. While the Goo-Off soaks in a bit, you manage to get the SWSO’s (socks with significant others) and the miscellaneous unmentionables (underwear) safely to their assigned drawers. (HA! Underwear humor.)
    
12. Over the next 2 days, hem and haw over what kind of lettering you want to use on your “sock sign”. Waste an incredible amount of time and energy on this.
    
13. Finally decide on the size and type of lettering. Print out new quote, and put on sign using a stylus and transfer paper. Fill in letters with paint pen. Clear coat.
    
14. Hot glue clothespins to sign.
    
15. Hang sign above dryer, hang sock singles on clothespins.
    
16. Stand back and admire your work. You are pleased, but something is missing.
    
17. More random things happen — New Year’s Eve party, etc.
    
18. Friends come over for dinner. You show them your work. Since they are weird like you, they like the sign very much.
    
19. Moments later, one of your friends gives you an idea that will be the “piece de la resistance” to your sock sign.
    
20. After your friends leave, you immediately begin working on the final piece of your sign. It takes only a few minutes, but you are well pleased.
    
    

    As a matter of fact, you’d go so far as to say that it was…

SOCKTACULAR!

The following is basically a blow by blow of yesterday’s events in my little corner of the world:

6:00 a.m. –
Woke up on couch. (Removed dog from bed and moved to couch on previous night because DH had to get up early for work. DH could not get to sleep because the dog had the “jiggy leg”.)

6:30 a.m. –
Gentle wake up reminder for children.

6:45 a.m. –
Son in shower. Pull the “Santa card” on daughter in order to get her out of bed.

6:49 a.m. –
Turn on computer, get a cup of coffee, and put cereal on table.

6:55 a.m. –
Receive a prayer request via email from “Clare”. (Names have been changed to protect those whom I have not received permission from to recount story.)
I am simultaneously alarmed and confused as sender has requested prayer for a condition that “is sort of acting like Maria”. Wondering who “Maria” might be, as I assume the Hispanic population in this particular area is as common place as the Caucasian population. Finish my coffee and then brilliantly deduce that “Clare” must have meant “malaria”. Now am very concerned. Send reply asking for confirmation of condition.

7:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. –
Son leaves for bus stop. Put daughter in car, drive over posted legal speed limit through neighborhood and cut the bus off at the pass. Daughter gets on the bus. Return home at legal posted speed.

7:30 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –
Write a brief blog post explaining the need to pray today. Check email for any additional updates. There are none.

8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. –
Attempt to pray, but am too distracted. Decide to use an old stand-by — keeping my hands busy so that my mind can focus on God. Put third coat of wood filler on the home improvement project run amok and begin to pray again. Much more focused this time.

9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. –
Continue to pray while I begin to paint the baseboards in my soon to be uber fantastical studio/escape from the world.

10:00 a.m. – Noon –
Am comforted by prayer, but am wanting to check on the status of “Clare”. Temporarily defer my ADD to status in order to go into full OCD mode. (This process will be fully outlined in just a moment.) Check email and gmail again. Words of comfort and encouragement from friends, but no update on status.

Noon –
Decide to eat something. (I come from a long line of stress eaters, when all else fails: stuff your face.) I heat up some Hungarian chicken taco soup and proceed to inhale it.

1:00 p.m. –
Can’t stand it anymore. Check Facebook for any possible news. Read “Clare’s” Facebook wall. It says: “has taken proper meds, will be fine, just not fun.”

Immediately post the following rambling comment on “Clare’s” Wall:

So, I post another comment:

1:30 p.m. –
Close Facebook. Read a new email from “Clare”. Am greatly relieved that she is okay. Thank God. Back in full ADD mode.

1:45 p.m. –
Having gone a full 6-1/2 hours without making a sarcastic remark on anyone’s blog, I decide to venture out a bit…..(your welcome).

The rest of the day goes on as “normal” (whatever that is.)

I had high hopes for yesterday. Really, I did. I completed my last painting gig of the year on Monday, with the exception of a couple of at home projects that don’t need to be finished until the first of the year. Heck, I’ve got weeks to procrastinate those! (If you’re reading this Roberta, I’m only kidding – kind of.) My schedule was clear. My DH worked from 7:00 am to well after 10:00 pm the day before so that he could devote time yesterday to help me install the base moulding over the new laminate floors in my studio. We’ve been meaning to get this finished for weeks, but we’ve both been super busy with work.

I woke up resolved to finish the task at hand. I got the kids to the bus stop and walked back home. By the time I got back, he was already on the phone. I should give you a little background here. My husband works for a company that owns and builds natural gas storage facilities, pipelines, etc. He has been managing a pretty big project for the better part of two years. They are in drilling mode right now. This means drilling several natural gas wells to supply the facilities. Having worked in the operations (drilling/production) segment of the oil and gas industry for several years (that’s how we met), I have a true appreciation for Murphy’s Law. Once you get a drilling rig (especially a horizontal drilling rig) on location, every time something goes wrong (which is often), it is costing the company money — big money — $100,000 a day for the rig alone not to mention the numerous subcontractors involved money. This project has been kind of, as he puts it, “snake bit from the get go”. Adding to the frustration is the fact that he is trying to manage the location from home and communications with all the players involved has been less than awesome. (That’s my terminology, not his.)

Still, I waited patiently for a break in the phone action to ask how I could help with our little project. It’s not that I can’t do home improvement projects by myself — I’ve done my fair share. But when it comes to figuring out angles to miter woodwork and running a compound miter saw, I have to pass. WAY too much multi-step action going on for my little ADD brain. To occupy myself while I waited, I started a load of laundry, plopped down at my laptop and checked my email, my blog, and everyone else’s blogs. Eight o’clock passed; then 10, then 11. By noon, he was still on the phone and I could tell by snippets of overheard conversation that things were not going well. He reluctantly made the decision that he needed to be on location — the sooner the better. He was extremely apologetic and I totally understood. While we have very different personalities, we do share a common work ethic. You do what you need to do to insure the best possible outcome – whether it’s painting a metallic gold and orange dining room for a guy who doesn’t know what he wants but knows what he “doesn’t want”, or managing a multi-million dollar gas storage project. I was disappointed, but not upset. I helped him get his things together and he was out the door within an hour.

So…what to do? It’s been so long since I’ve not had anything scheduled and I was relishing the fact that I didn’t have to be anywhere until 3:30 in the afternoon. Can you guess what I did? Yah, huh…I spent almost the entire day glued to my computer. I did manage to get a few loads of laundry done, empty the dishwasher, briefly visit with some friends (live and in person) and take the dog out occasionally. I am, after all, a multi-tasker. But for the most part, I sat on my butt and surfed the blogosphere. If it wasn’t for the fact that I have carpool duty this week, I might have never pulled myself away. I gotta admit, it was a guilty pleasure being so completely unproductive. And it’s not as if I got nothing accomplished. I was able to help Helen with some technical issues and provide Sherri with some much needed spiritual counseling. Plus, thanks to the lovely and talented Jamie, I found out that my profile view was blocked so nobody could access this site from other sites. (If you’ve tried before and failed — sorry about that! Hopefully, I won’t accidentally block my profile view again.) And while it’s not something I would feel good about doing on a regular basis, I’m feeling relatively guilt-free about my self-indulgent, slacktacular day. However, if by chance I ever do decide to become a full time, lap top couch potato, I really gotta get me a slanket!

Here’s how I looked at yesterday at 6:00 AM, noon and 2:00 PM:

So, I got an email last week from Jon Acuff. Actually, it was a reply to an email that I sent him earlier which, among other things, shamlessly hyperlinked a post I wrote about Sky Mall Catalog. Anyway…his reply was to let me know that he would be linking that post to his post, The hate mail mongoose (Or the pastor’s gift guide). Needless to say, I was pretty excited about the possibility of all those hits on my blog. (Why I would be excited about such self-aggrandizement* is something I should probably pray about.) But regardless, I began to think of ways to write a post that would be more “Jon Acuffish”. But then it occurred to me that the reason I like “Stuff Christians Like” so much is that it’s Jon being Jon. Funny, transparent, often profound, often gooberish Jon. So, for me, trying to write something like an SCL post would be as pathetic as the knock-off grocery store margarines trying to imitate “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!” with products like “You’d Think It’s Butter!”, or “Butter, It’s Not!”, or “Tastes Like Butter!”, or, my new personal favorite from my peeps on my mother’s side of the family: “Unbelieveable…This is not butter!” (Note the extra “e” in “unbelieveable” –That just CRACKS ME UP!) Sorry, I’m easliy amused.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the blog post. In the end, I just decided to do what I always do, which is write about whatever I happen to be thinking about at the time, which was, not surprisingly, Sky Mall. It wasn’t my favorite of the series, but I worked all day (painting for a new client) and I was tired and it really takes me a long time to cut and paste all those pictures (waa, waa, waa). I probably should have just left well enough alone — I actually really liked “Diary of a Mad Black Wiener Dog”, the post from the day before. (Which, incidentally I wrote in Google Docs, posted to my blog then immediately saved it as a draft because I wanted to schedule it for the following morning.) I only tell you that as an amusing (or not) aside because my crazy friend Helen managed to post a comment within the nano-second it was up on my blog that was funnier than the original post. But I digress…

I know a whole lot of people all over the world read “Stuff Christians Like”, but I had NO IDEA how many hits that hyperlink would generate! Now, I have enough of a grasp on reality to realize that the vast majority of people either read the post and said, “Eh…”, or saw my half-face profile view and said, “Oh no, not THAT smart *ss!” But for those of you who liked the post enough to be back for more today, I just want to say:

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P. S. – For the record, if you’re wondering which of the Sky Mall posts was my favorite, I’ll tell you. Honestly, I like the first four very much. Like a mother with more than one child I would have to say, “they’re all my favorites for different reasons.” But if I were pressed, I would have to say that the Creepy Elvis post was my favorite for two reasons. The first being that for Sky Mall to promote that product is akin to leaving an ice cream truck unattended at a Weight Watchers convention — way too tempting. They were practically begging me to make fun of it. But the main reason I love that post is because it also featured another product called “The Slanket” and frankly, I LOVE saying that word! Slanket, slanket, SLANKET! (Like I said, I’m easily amused.)

P. P. S. – Angela, if you’re reading this, I’m afraid this post might edge out yours for the most hyperlink codes in a single blog post. And because you were the lone SCL commenter who came to my rescue in my hour of need, you deserve all the credit or the blame — depending on your perspective.

*A big shout out to Tim Keller for introducing me to the word “self-aggrandizement”. Cause I’m pretty sure he reads my blog…(yeeee-ah, right.)

Okay…that’s all I got. Thanks for your time. I know you’ve got other blogs to read! If you’re looking for some really good ones, just check out the ones on my sidebar — I dig ’em the most!

Atheism:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too — for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist — in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless — I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality — namely my idea of justice — was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

I don’t care who you are, that’s some good stuff, there. And I’m pretty sure Lewis has his hand on his head in the above picture because his brain is hurting. Have an awesome Sunday; you’re in my prayers.

Lately I’ve been feeling pretty convicted about how wasteful I am. I’m constantly getting rid of things that I probably shouldn’t have bought in the first place — for me, for the kids, for the house — whatever. I think the thing that gets wasted most in this house is food. I’m the only one that really likes leftovers. It’s hard to gauge how much to cook because sometimes my kids eat like birds, and sometimes they eat like starving wildebeests. But as long as I get the spoiled food out of the fridge and into the garbage on trash pick up day, I don’t give it another thought. I know it doesn’t disappear. I know that there are landfills overflowing with all of our nasty crap. Truth be told, I don’t want to think about it.

I guess I’m thinking about it now because a) reading Mare’s Blog reminds me of just how much more we have in comparison to other parts of the world, and b) reading Matt’s Blog (The Church of No People) reminded me of an episode of Dirty Jobs that is, in a word, unforgettable. (Please note that Matt’s blog post had absolutely nothing to do with being wasteful, he just mentioned Mike Rowe and my ADD mind lead me here.) I’m not a squeamish person. But there was something about the following video that literally made me shudder. Like the farmer says in the video, “You get a whole new appreciation for the term: Waste not, want not.” Enjoy the video. It is equal parts disgusting and hilarious. Also, Mike Rowe is pretty dreamy, even if he is covered in pig slop.
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P. S. – Just as an indication of how truly immature I am, I tivoed this episode and watched it over and over again like some 13 year old boy watching reruns of “Jack*ss”. Furthermore, if someone came over, I would make them watch it. My introduction would go something like this: “This is totally disgusting. You have to see it!…Wait, do you want to watch it again?”