The bells are ringing.

James 4 verse 14
It's less than an hour to midnight. The last hour of the last day of 2008. So, what is a year. It was made of moments and experiences, hopes and failures, emotions and drudgery; all that makes up a life, broken down into time. Moments become days, days become months, months become a year, years become decades, decades become centuries and centuries become millenia. It's all a little surreal really, and if it becomes more than surreal, it can become overwhelming, being part of relentless march of time. Is it relentless, or is it a gift? It has been a strange year. I completely changed my life. New job, new city, new home, new.... new sounds... the church bells are ringing down the block.

I don't enjoy the tone of these bells, but I do find the very fact of them reassuring. They make me feel connected. They have been ringing for a very long time and before these ones, others rang out the call; not just here, but in cathedrals everywhere. Actually, as I listen, I realize that tonight they are ringing a different tune. It's a little melancholy, or maybe that's just me; it's actually a more melodic tune than they normally have, strangely juxtaposed against the drunkenness going on just outside my door and the steady thump of the bass from the house party beside me. It makes me want to be outside. Not with the revelers, but just outside, where I can feel the air and taste the rain. However, when I let all of the noise in my own head stop, I find that I am content to be half inside and half out.

The Christmas tree is on, and the only other light is the candle burning at the table.

I have my glass of wine, my book and I'm sitting beside the open window where I can actually feel the rain and taste the air, which on a night like this, is probably better than the other way around. I've turned off the t.v. finally, just so I could spend the last hour of the year with God, but found I needed to say something to myself first. I'm pretty sure it's just to remind myself that there is substance and there is life. There, they've started again and will probably go on intermittently till midnight. I'm glad.

Stolen survey

1. Pick 15 of your favourite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Fill in the film title once it's guessed.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.

1.It's K-K-K-Ken c-c-c-coming to k-k-k-kill me.
2. It's important to think. It's what separates us from lentils.
3. Those giraffes you sold me, they won't mate. They just walk around, eating, and not mating. You sold me... queer giraffes. I want my money back.
4.+ "You're a fucking *psycho*.
-"Don't rush to judgment on something like that until all the facts are in.
5.There'll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say "screw all those people"! Anybody could make a case, a hell of a good case, against your getting married. The arguments are so obvious that nobody has to make them. But you're two wonderful people who happened to fall in love and happened to have a pigmentation problem, and I think that now, no matter what kind of a case some bastard could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse, and that would be if - knowing what you two are and knowing what you two have and knowing what you two feel- you didn't get married. Well, Tillie, when the hell are we gonna get some dinner?
6.I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

This one is for J'aime!
7.You tell him, and I will smack you. I will smack you like a bad, bad donkey, okay!

This is my favourite quote from a movie ever. makes me laugh my head off every time. Of course you have to see it to get how funny it actually is, otherwise it just sounds...well, bad.
8. No, I'm not okay! Do I look okay? The fucker shot me! What the fuck-ass fuck of a bum-fuck shithole town is this?
I defy any of you yankee folk to know #9
9.How do you forget about 400 pounds of defecating menace?
10. +We pumped your mother's stomach.
- Yeah, it was an accident.
+: How did she accidentally chug half a bottle of sleeping pills.
- She was cleaning them up.
+: With her mouth?
11.Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.
12. Shelves in the closet; happy thought indeed.
13.Wendell, I'd like full and docile co-operation on every topic.
14. It was like he was wearing a suit...an edgar suit.
15.I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight... razor... and surviving.

O.k. I think it was more fun for me looking up old movies and seeing all the quotes for them. It was really hard to pick the ones I liked best.

Happy Valentine's Day Dad.

So, the other day was the anniversary of my Dad's death. It is a day after Valentines Day and it always makes me very reflective. This year was no different. I wasn't sad in particular. It was a day without him, and this year, a day without my daughter as well, which was weird but getting more normal I suppose. 

My family and close friends know that my Dad was not an easy man. He was moody and cranky and there was a gulf between us. However, I have good things to look back on and be grateful for. One of them was Valentine's Day. I'll back up a sec to say that no matter what the holiday was - Christmas, Hallowe'en, Easter, St. Patrick's Day, or Valentine's, my Dad went out of his way to be in a good mood all day and to really make the duration of the holiday special. This is a huge legacy he left because I don't have too many cliché hang ups about holidays being all awful and full of family angst etc.

It's just that in our family Valentine's day wasn't so much about romance as it was about family. It wasn't so much about the evening out as it was about a special breakfast setting. Throughout the rest of the year, the norm rather than the exception was to eat breakfast separately. We all had different schedules etc. so it wasn't very often (i'm sure that a lot of families experience this) that we shared the breaking of the morning fast. 

So back to the hole that is left by my Dad at Valentine's day. Every day since I was a little girl, when I woke up in the morning and saw the breakfast table laid out with all of our plates there, there would always be a heart shaped box of chocolates for me as well as for my Mom. He never let me feel left out of this holiday shaped by the world to be about romantic love. I didn't have it and there was no one else to place the box there but him. He never missed one. Except the last day. Just a box of chocolates, just one day a year. Looking back it meant the world.

Thanks Dad.

That present malady

Why do we persist in accepting the mediocre in life?

Why have we forgotten about radical change, radical growth? Or do we just not think that kind of shift belongs to us. It's for other people; is that the way we have started to believe?

We do it in our families.... "Well, I can't tell her/him how I feel about that, it's just the way they are. We've always had that relationship and I just don't see it changing... and, my beliefs, views pain, it is just not what they want to hear about." Why doesn't it matter enough that you could reach farther into their hearts and truly know them , to take the risk of being exactly who you are with them and let them truly be who they are with you. That means mother to daughter, daughter to mother, sister to sister, aunt to nephew, niece to uncle, cousin to cousin. We were put in our families for a reason and they are a testing ground for how we relate to the world. Why do we lose all our courage here in this landscape?

We have friendships that we just let disappear and fade into time and others that we maintain but how much is real and how much is just a facade?  How many of your friends really know you?  And it's not how many friends would stand beside you in a crisis, it's how many of them would you ask? How many of them would you let in?

Romantic relationships end and instead of making new friends out of the person we have just ended it with, or honouring them, we live in culture that just expects things to get bad or worse or just be nothing... is that person nothing?




I am horrified at the little we accept, at the mediocre and lukewarm prayers we pray. We allow our well-worn and time honoured traditions around communication and lifestyles to rule us. We truly let molehills become mountains in our lives by refusing to step out in faith and courage.
I am sick to death of the mediocre in me. I want to slam it into a wall and never let it up again. I want to rise to every challenge God puts in my way, even if the challenge is learning how to be grateful. I don't want to accept a mediocre gratitude from myself, I don't want to pay lip service to anything I do. My church, my neighbourhood, my country, my world is in bed with mediocrity and I know there are some righteous souls out there kicking lukewarm in the ass and winning and I want to be a part of that.
What about you?

Things you may or may not know about me

• I have a huge phobia around bubbles. I am not afraid of them however, I find them repulsive.
• I am a pool shark - I can beat most of all y'all.
• I cannot eat anything that is too mushy - whipped cream and mashed potatoes are out. Also, no milkshakes, this is just mushy plus bubbles which is doubly disgusting.
• I love bunnies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• I have read War and Peace several times and I love it.
• I didn't know my Dad's real first name till I was nine. His name was Keith but my Mother called him Mike. Actually I have many many family members who we call things other than their real names.
• When I was 7 I was convinced I knew exactly how to build a fully operational replica of the Loch Ness Monster.