Photo by Randy Stewart
I’ve been worrying all week about my ugly hair and my chubby face and generally being all Charlie Brownish about my appearance because I’m going on a business trip to where all the Beautiful People are.
And then I look at pictures like this and I’m all, “Giiiirl, you are HAWT!”
Way to make us look good, Randy!
I’ve been working about 25 hours a week at Lilipip since the New Year, helping out with various project management and operations tasks.
It’s been seven years since I last did this – wore something different every day, put on make-up, left the house before nine… you know, the USUAL.
It’s been a hard couple of weeks. I’m tired, and I miss my friends. My body is getting used to sitting at a computer again. But I know without a doubt this is what I’m supposed to be doing right now.
Several friends recently asked me how it was going, tolerating Bryan all day at work in addition to tolerating him all evening at home.
(Well, they didn’t word it that way EXACTLY.)
Working together is probably the best thing that ever happened to us. I can’t imagine doing anything else, now, and it’s only been two weeks.
I always figured at some point I’d go back to work, at least part time, and I worried. I didn’t worry about the transition from home life to work life; I didn’t worry about an identity crisis; I didn’t worry about missing my kids.
I worried about living in a divided household. I worried about going in one direction while my husband went in another. I worried about having Things To Do and Goals To Meet that were completely separate from Bryan’s goals and lists.
Maybe that sounds like I don’t have dreams, goals, or a life of my own, but that’s not how I look at it. When Bryan and I joined our lives together, we jumped into the same boat – and as the song says, sometimes it’s a Strange Boat.
We are much happier and healthier as a family when we’re sailing in the same Strange Boat, working toward the same Strange Goal. I hope we get to do this forever.
Ruthie, drawing a picture: “This is mom & dad.”
Thomas: “When they got out of jail?”
Ruthie: “Yeah. And mom is pregnant.”
Wha-?
Yesterday there was a TenYearsAgo meme going around twitter, and it got me thinking.
During the late nineties, my Christian faith ceased being a religious set of rules to follow and became a relationship with Jesus Christ. This meant I could finally enjoy certain freedoms in this life such as rated R movies, really great music, and vodka.
My eyes were opened to all the extra rules I’d been following that I thought made me a better Christian. I thought if I listened to a certain kind of music, or attended prayer meetings before work every morning, or was only friends with other Christians that Jesus would love me more.
As it turns out, nothing I do or say will make Jesus love me more. He just loves me.
A young man once addressed this issue with Jesus in the book of Matthew:
And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law? And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:35-40, ESV).
I’m called to love God first, above all other things, and then I’m to love my neighbor second. Out of these two commands flow all the other answers to life.
For instance, if I need to drink all day long to cope with life, then I’m loving booze more than Jesus. If I’m flaunting my ability to enjoy a drink around my friend who struggles with a drinking problem, then I’m not loving my neighbor.
Freedoms are freedoms, not rights.
I’m thankful to Jesus for using this last decade to prune the unnecessary laws from my faith and graft me in to a new life of faith.
Me: “So was that the best movie of the year or WHAT?”
Him: “Meh.”
Me: “Wha-? You didn’t like it?!”
Him: “It was a little mellow dramatic at times.”
Me: “You’re such an asshole.”
Him: “I take it you liked it, then?”
“A fool thinks mischief is fun, but a mindful person relishes wisdom.” Proverbs 10:23.
I quote this verse constantly to Ruthie because she gets a total high off pushing people’s buttons. I often catch her smirking… SMIRKING… as she’s, oh I don’t know… kicking my chair over and over at breakfast, let’s say.
This morning as she smirkingly pushed buttons I was all, “Seriously? SERIOUSLY?” and told her to go write down three specific ways she could honor her mom today.
So far she has two, but can’t think of another one.
LOL – Oh, the joys of parenting.
I hate feeling like I “survived” Christmas, but that about sums it up.
Regular life typically feels overwhelming to me, particularly during the depressing rainy months. Christmas adds more errands, more spending, more pressure to perform, and more guilt when it all falls short.
I know what the season is about – Joy, Peace, and the Gift God gave in his Son who redeems us. This is what I treasure about Christmas.
Is it possible to embrace the MEANING of Christmas, but still hate Christmas?
Thanksgiving weekend we took a day trip into the mountains with some friends to chop down a Christmas tree. Mind you, this was no froo froo tree farm with hot cocoa and carolers… this was THE MOUNTAINS.
(As we’ve discovered before, when the Zugs do something we go all the way).
We bought a $10 permit from the forest service and wound our way up one of their treacherous, winding roads in our ’95 Honda Odyssey with two wheel drive and questionable tire traction, following along behind our two friends in their identical Subaru 4 wheel drives.
I’m not going to lie to you – IZE TERRIFIED of that drive. Somewhere between now and my daring twenties I lost my chops and everything makes me nervous. Maybe the closer you get to 40 the more aware you are of your mortality, but let me just admit that I was NOT TRUSTING JESUS as we fishtailed around those hairpin turns with only a snow bank to keep us from employing the local search party operation.
But alas. we soon met a stalled car on the road in front of us and couldn’t gain our traction again in the snow. We had to abandon ship and hop into one of the Subarus.
The kids and I waited in the back of our friend’s car a few dozen yards up the road while the men heaved and pushed our minivan to the side of the road. I felt much better there, not able to witness whether or not Bryan would end up at the bottom of a ravine.
I prefer my tragedies to surprise me.
It was exhilarating to play in the snow. At one point Ruthie and I had to tromp off to find a bush *cough* and stepped into a snow drift up to my waist.
Wow. I mean, I’m the kid who used to JUMP off my roof into a pile of snow. Now I’m the middle aged mom who FALLS into a drift while trying to not pee her pants.
Chopping down a tree from the side of the mountain challenges one’s perspective. I kept pointing out THAT ONE! WHAT ABOUT THAT ONE? IS THAT ONE GOOD? Because I was all, “Whassamattah? We have nine foot ceilings!”
But, yeah. Check out our itty bitty TEN FOOT TREE next to its ginormous counterpart:
Our friends think they may have scared us away, but we’re totally going again next year. We had a great time, and this was the healthiest, cutest tree we’ve ever had.
Bleh.
That’s how I feel.
Bleh.
Four days before Christmas and I feel Bleh.
We managed to get a tree, we managed to decorate, and despite a very frustrating iTunes issue that threatens to end my marriage, I managed to gain access to a few Christmas songs.
But?
Bleh.
If you want fun and good cheer and a chuckle or two, you’ll have to visit my humor slash cute blog over at Babysaur. I put on a good face for the Cheezburger crowd.
Or, you can get a good chuckle out of Thomas and Ruthie watching Bryan put Christmas lights on the tree. As you can see, they were pretty into it.
Bryan turned The Big 40 on December 10th, so I threw him a big party in Seattle this weekend for all his friends to celebrate with us. I want to give a big shout out to our friends, Nate & Beth Grigg for hosting the party in their lovely home! Apparently it was a practice run for them since they both turn 40 next month.
(oops, did I say that OUT LOUD Nate?)
The highlight of the evening was the Good Things Rapid Discovery Slam in which a few of us presented cool things inspired by or that remind us of Bryan (detailed explanation here). I read the following essay, written especially for this occassion:
On making an entrance into my life
You came to a BBQ at a house filled with single women, setting out your green salad with mandarin oranges, almonds, and a poppy seed dressing. Sitting there next to the bags of chips and buckets of KFC brought by lesser men, that salad made its first move on your behalf.
You get there first, and you make an entrance.
You came to the office for a meeting one day, and stopped by my desk to say hello. I mentioned we were all going to a show next month, and did you want us to get you a ticket.
“I’d love to take a beautiful woman to a show,” you said, and before I knew it, the group outing became a date.
You get there first, and you make an entrance.
And then I remember sitting at a table across from you in a loud, smokey room, drinking something pink and eating something wrapped, feeling that familiar panic of what-if’s and how-do-you-know’s. I’d pushed back on lesser men before, and they all went away into history, leaving behind affirmations of fear.
But when I pushed back on you with my what-if’s and how-do-you-know’s, you anchored me with you eyes, and said you’d keep asking until I said no.
You get there first, and you make an entrance.
So I followed you off into the sunset, knowing our destination lies somewhere between limitless possibilities and certain painful death. But as they say in our song:
We’re sailing on a strange sea
blown by a strange wind
Carrying the strangest crew
that ever sinnedWe’re living in a strange time
working for a strange goal
We’re turning flesh and body
into soul
You set our course on this Strange Boat way back during those salad days. I didn’t know it then, but I know you knew it, because that’s how you roll in this set-up upset reset life.
So I raise a glass to you, Bryan Zug, on this, your 40th birthday. Thank you for setting our course as we follow after that Strange Star.
Maybe others came this way before you, but you got here first, and you made an entrance.
The creative mischief never ends at our house, and it seems I have two children destined for tattoos in their future. Some might prefer I be more concerned about this, but I just can’t seem to get worked up over a little ink.
It washes off. Usually.
Our Thanksgiving weekend was thankfully free of horror stories. I just heard one that involved three different drama-filled family gatherings & an unmedicated schizophrenic cousin. So yeah. We were drama free and appropriately medicated.
We ate a lot, slept a lot, adventured a lot, and watched tv a lot, and we did it all together, and WE LIKED IT.
That last point is directed at me, who typically feels a tad DONE with the kids after too much togetherness. But even I, selfish grouch that I am, enjoyed four days of family bliss.
Ruthie, now a first grader, is fully into reading and writing. This sounded exciting and adventurous at the outset, but I quickly realized literacy provides one more way to express defiance.
I should have stayed content with slamming doors.
I feel like I’m depressed again. I have that overwhelmed, I just want to stay in my pajamas, can’t handle more than what’s in front of me kinda thing going on. I wake up, put out fires, and go to bed. I feel unfocused, unproductive, and unlovely.
I have a case of the Uns.
But to be honest, I’m really busy, too, and I have a low tolerance for busy.
Busy makes me shut down. Busy makes me cling to things like my husband and my couch and my bowl of cereal. Busy makes me say no to fun things because it’s too much work to have fun.
So now I wonder, have I picked my sliver well?
I think it’s time to regroup, refresh, and reset my priorities.
Nothing cures a case of the Uns like a dose of the Re’s, amiright?
I was looking back through my archives for something and came across this post. It made me laugh that two years later he’s still fighting the Sock Battle. The original post can be found here, in December 2007.
—
Every year when the weather turns, Bryan goes into Paranoid Sock Police Mode. It’s not uncommon to hear things around our house like, “The reason you got sick, Ruthie, is cuz you’re not wearing your socks!” and “Thomas! You just coughed because you’re not wearing your socks! Where are your socks?”
Maintaining this level of Sock Security was easy with Ruthie because he just made her wear tights every day. But because Boys Don’t Wear Tights, he’s had a tougher go of it with Thomas. Apparently, as you see in the picture, he thinks pulling Thomas’ socks way up high will help keep them on. Tucking his p.j.’s into the socks also helps, and will increase Thomas’ chance of finding a wife.
I just roll my eyes at the insanity. The kids go all day with bare feet because I have bigger fish to fry than trying to find discarded socks throughout the house. But as soon as Bryan gets home from work he’s on Sock Patrol. I figure, if he wants to spend his energy policing bare feet, then so be it. I usually just end up sweeping random socks into a laundry pile at the end of the day.
In a related story, Bryan has also been known to wear socks with his sandals during cooler summer evenings, and even into fall. I have requested he not do this while in my presence, but I am not obeyed. “My feet are cold,” he always says. To which my normally irrational mind rationally thinks, “Then wear shoes…”
This piece of logic escapes a man with a Sock Blind Spot.
I recently laughed at him when he sent Thomas downstairs in these ridiculous black knee socks, and told him I was so blogging about it. He was all, Fine, but you should watch this commercial first, because socks are a NORTHWEST thing.
Yeah, baby. Sure they are.
Last night the kids and I drove a friend into Seattle. It was dark, we’d had a long day, it was getting close to bedtime. The kids were feeling snuggly, but Thomas didn’t have his trusted blankie.
Out of the silence he says, “Mommy, can I have your phone because I took a picture of my bwankie and I want to wook at it.”
I didn’t answer right away.
Did he just say he took a picture of his blankie? With my phone? And now he wants to snuggle with that picture as a representation of his actual blankie?!
I can’t teach this stuff – IT JUST HAPPENS.
He’s so brilliant he’ll support me in my old age (so maybe I shouldn’t burn the stinky blankie after all).