How do you forget things? Let me count the ways.

Read this first.


Then look at this picture taken tonight. You see that black speck to the left of the printer and above the piece of paper? Ya that's right. That's that same mosquito that Marc drew the line around on May 18!!! I don't know how many times I've told him to take that thing off the wall. But there it stands(?), lies(?), squooshes(?).

I know, I could wipe it off myself. But I won't. Because I asked him. And because he needs to learn. Because there is a piece of looseleaf with wiring notes folded four times and stuck with a thumb tack to the ceiling of our bedroom that has been there since this (oh, that's actually longer than the mosquito!). Because there are measurement lines that have been in our son's room since we put up pictures for him in about January. And last but not least, there is a 6 inch pencil line (another measurement) that has been sticking proudly up above the telephone in our bedroom since the day we moved into our house on August 23, 2002!! It is for all of these reasons that I'm not removing the dead, and really quite gross, mosquito.

I'm really not bitter. It's actually becoming quite comical. But it must stop.

Jesus: My Lord, My Guru

My current read is The Story We Find Ourselves In (by none other than Brian McLaren -- I'm not obsessed, he's just an easy read and saying some things I need to hear at the moment). I'm about halfway through the book and he's talking about the "revolution of God", as a new way of describing how Jesus came to set up the "Kingdom of God" -- that it was a revolutionary way of acting, thinking, and was radical compared to 1st century Jewish culture.

Then he talked about Jesus as "Lord". "It doesn't mean so much 'master' in reference to a slave, but master in the sense of... a master of martial arts, for example, or a master crastmen or a violin master... A violin master is someone who can take an instrument of wood and wire and horsehair and play it so that it yields music more beautiful than anyone else can play. And for the disciples to call Jesus 'master' would mean... that no one else could take the raw materials of life -- skin and bone and blood and space and time and words and deeds and waking and sleeping and eating and walking -- and elicit from them a beautiful song of truth and goodness, as Jesus did." (121)

So I got to thinking about Jesus as my master, my guru. How when I look back at how Jesus spent His time on earth it is pretty different than how I spend my time. Last year I had an epiphany. There's that verse in 2 Corinthians 10 that talks about "taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ"", and I thought what if I (or we all) were to take every minute, every second captive, to really think about what we're doing at every moment and to "make it obedient to Christ". I guess another way of looking at it is to make every moment have "eternal significance", but that sounds like "Christianese" in some sense, though not necessarily. Carpe diem for Christ?

We all want to make the most of our time, but this is hard; it takes discipline. I guess that was what I was talking about in my It always happens on vacation post. And I get frustrated because I'm so far from where I want to be. But it's a journey right? We work at it the best we can, and maybe tomorrow I'll do better. And if I screw things up for a bit, I can try again.

The other hard thing for me to deal with is that making my time obedient to Christ, living my life as Christ lived, does not necessarily mean that I'll be downtown witnessing to the prostitutes (though, on the otherhand, it may). But if you look at Jesus' life as a whole you see a very different mindset than we Westerners have. Sure, he was a carpenter, but that didn't define entirely who he was. He didn't have a set agenda of where he was going to be or what he had to do. He let people bother him and interrupt his day. He didn't have to prove himself to anybody, but rather, in many ways, kept his (acts of) divinity quiet. And on and on I could go.

There is so much here that I'm not doing. But the first step is recognition, I guess. And it all starts at home. And about that... I realized that the commandment "Love your neighbour as yourself" presupposes that you actually know who your neighbour is... hmm... better get on that.

The Toilet Brush

So yesterday I was going through our clothes to give away. I was sitting on the floor going through my pyjamas, when Madeline remembered her new favourite toy -- the toilet brush in our bedroom closet. "What?" you say. Well, my mom found a neat bathroom set (tooth brush holder, soap dispenser and toilet brush) all in a cool design, and we're going to use it when we redo our bathroom. I've been meaning to put it somewhere else for a few weeks now, and I think Madeline's antics yesterday are the catalyst to get me to put that thing away (unfortunately, I'm sure it won't be the catalyst for Marc to redo the bathroom...)

Anyway, I'm sitting on the floor for quite a while, and Madeline proceeds to brush my hair with the (thankfully, never-used) toilet brush. I kept saying "Ouch, Madeline. That hurts. Please stop that." But she kept saying "I'm getting you ready for church, mommy." I was distracted enough that she kept doing it, but finally she stopped and wanted me to brush her hair. After one gentle brushing she said "Ouch!!" and there ended our toilet-brush hair brushing experience.

It always happens on vacation

Yes. I'm alive. We just got back from our 2 week holiday Sunday night. We had a great time. But it always happens on vacation that Marc and I start saying "when we get home we're going to start doing 'x'." I think this trip it was we're going to "keep the house clean" (we always say this every time the house is clean, but it only last about half a day); "take time every evening to relax, read spiritual classics, pray together and separately"; "volunteer with something in the community" (like the Foodbank or a soup kitchen); "go back to the healthy eating we started before the trip"; "exercise consistently" (I might even join Curves for 3 months to get rid of this baby fat once and for all -- until the next baby comes, and Marc has developed some bizarre new snoring habits which I'm convinced are from his excess weight); "get the kids out playing with other kids a bit more".

So, nothing too extreme, just common sense stuff. And on the drive home we felt like we could do these things, and our mind was filled with idealistic images of cozy evenings reading with the kids on our laps while we read to them, having them play at our feet while we sip tea, read and discuss theology, and of course our newly in-shape bodies are sitting on a couch in a house that is spotless.

Well, you know how it goes... The house was clean until we started to unpack, and so I spent the first two days unpacking and trying to find room for the things (though not many) that we bought on the trip. And as I do this I get bogged down with all the crap that is filling our house that I want to get rid of, and my time is spent dealing with all the stuff instead of reading, and after 2 days I'm already too tired to even want to think of going to a gym... plus my two year old is being mouthy instead of playing quietly at my feet while I type this!

But what do I expect? It takes discipline to live the life that you want to live, and you can't expect to have a radical tranformation of every area of your life in the course of a few days. It will take time and patience and the willingness to work on things one at a time. So first we'll deal with Marc's weight...

(just kidding)


(sort of)




(no, I'm really kidding)

Have you been in these situations?

You're trying to open up some plastic packaging (like on a cd or something) and use every reasonably sharp object within reach (like a pen, etc) instead of getting up and walking the 5 feet to get the scissors. It will take you 5 minutes to open it instead of 30 sec, but you still don't get up to get them.

Instead of looking up someone's name in the phone book you scroll through the 60 names on your call display, and the name you're looking for is about the 50th call in.

It's the middle of the night and you wake up completely parched. You lay there for about 15 minutes deliberating about whether or not to get out of the bed to fill your glass of water, where if you'd just gotten up in the first place, you'd be back to sleep already.

We're all dumb sometimes, no?

Got any more like this? (I feel like I should say, "if you've been in these situations, pass this on to at least 10 friends, so they'll realize their folly too. If you don't expect to do more things like this...")

I wonder if anyone's ever said...

boy, the kids sure are growing up slowly.

Odd/Inappropriate Childhood Memories #4

Moral of the day: Cheaters never prosper, but readers often do.

In grade 3 I was in Mrs. Mossman's science class. Once we were finished our tests she told us we could read quietly and if we happened to remember any answers we couldn't remember during the test we could ask for the test back and put in our answer. Well... honestly, are you thinking what I was thinking at the age of 8? Ya, that's right. I read the textbook!! Any answers I forgot were quickly "remembered" upon that reading. Brilliant, no? Dishonest, yes? Cheating? Well, not technically...

And this leads me into grade 4 and Mr. Wendland's health class. Back in those days (I'm not sure if it's the same now... I doubt it), you had to have parental written permission in grades 4 through 6 to take Sex Ed. If you were not allowed to take the class, you were supposed to go to the libary and study and work on a little report instead. Once I found this out I went home and told my mom to "not allow" me to participate in the class. Why would I want to sit in a class when I could be doing my own thing in the library. And I was the only one in the class who figured that out!! I remember vividly sitting in the resource room off the library and "working" on my report on apartheid in South Africa. To let you know how much work I did and was required of me... I handed the report in in grade 5.

I'm sorry.

Madeline just got up from her nap a few minutes ago. She was sitting on my lap on her bed and out of the blue turned to me and said to me "Don't you want to say sorry for getting mad at me?" I thought I had misunderstood her and said "Do you want to say sorry?", to which she replied "No. Do you?!"

Well, how could you say no. So I said I was sorry for getting mad at her (it had been a bit of a "struggle" to get her to go to sleep today"), but I quickly made her say "I'm sorry for not listening to you, mommy."

I'm not that much of a pushover. And we all need to recognize our mistakes sometimes in front of our kids.

Odd/Inappropriate Childhood Memories #3 (just a quick one)

I just remembered the other day that I used to try to get money out of my parents when I was a kid. "What kid doesn't?" you say. Well, my mom tells me that this started at a very early age. And then I started remembering certain things. Like making elaborate, lengthy lists of things that my parents owed me money for: work I had done for them, things that I had bought for myself that I thought they should have bought for me, or if I used dad's Coop number and thought I should get the dividend for my purchase(!). I was such a brat. That's all.

New party game

Marc and I tend to get giddy and talkative on the nights that we end up going to bed too late and need to get a good night's sleep for whatever we have on the next day. First you should know that one of my hobbies (one of my "bits" really, but I'm not a stand-up comedian) is to make up funny name combinations for people... like Randall and Lauralea, I hope one of your daughters marries a guy who's last name is Mabunssoff.

So, on one of those late, giddy nights when we should have been sleeping, we (well, I thought it up, and then we did it together) created the Frankly family.

This is how it works. Give it a try sometime for fun, or during one of those really awkward pauses in a conversation with someone you hardly know, or like I said, as a party game.

It started off by me imagining that "Quite Frankly" was a person's name. Then we began to imagine the members of his family.

Quit Frankly - the brother that always gives up on everything
Quip Frankly - the one who gives all the one-liners
Quick Frankly - the fast Frankly
Quiet Frankly - obvious, the quiet one in the family
Quark Frankly - the science guy
Quack Frankly - he's crazy
etc, etc, etc with most one-syllable (and some two syllable) "q" words.

Then you can extend it to "c" and "k" words if you get really giddy, you know like Crap Frankly, etc. Half of the fun is thinking of really witty descriptions of the family members too, which I haven't really bothered to do (I'm a bit too busy these days, as the lack of posts has indicated).

So give it a whirl. And if you think of some really good ones, post them under comments!!

Looking forward to meeting all of your Franklies, quite frankly.

No Equality for the Devil

I have never been much for political correctness. In fact, I got in trouble from one of my Religious Studies profs in university for referring to God as "He" in a paper. Although, this should not surprise me, since Marc and I later referred to this prof as an "Nazi Eco-feminist" -- we're cruel sometimes. But I've always assumed "He" to be an easy way of saying "He/She", at least when referring to God. And I've always thought it kind of lame when people refer to God as "She" just to make a point. But then yesterday I started wondering what feminists, or whoever, would do if everyone just started referring to Satan as "she"... Think about it.

Read the fine print

This morning my aunt from Victoria came over. Now, she has the most amazing yard and is an incredible gardener, so I took her around the yard hoping to get some help with a few spots in the garden that I didn't know what to do with. I showed her what plants I had left over and she told me where they'd work best.

I showed her a cell pack of 4 larkspur, and asked if those would work in a particular spot. She said, "larkspur... those are beautiful, and they get nice and tall." I said, "but these ones only go to 3 to 5 inches, see I put them in the border over here." She said, "No, no, that's 3 to 5 feet!" Amazing how one extra line next to a 5 can make such a big difference.

I will be replanting that larkspur. Can you imagine a 5 foot plant standing boldly at the front of the garden in the middle of a bunch of 8 to 10 inch plants?! Good thing you came over Auntie Marion!

Link between McLaren and Osbourne?

A few weeks back I thought I would do a post on "Why Brian McLaren is full of sh*t". I finished A New Kind of Christian a few weeks back and am 15 pages shy of finishing A Generous Orthodoxy. However, through the course of reading Orthodoxy this book has almost been pooped on and vomitted on. Now, some people would see this as an appropriate response to McLaren's writing, but since it was my 2.5 month old I thought nothing of it. However, one night we heard something fall in our bedroom. We thought nothing of it, but in the morning I noticed that A Generous Orthodoxy had somehow fallen into the garbage can by my bedside table.

Now I've heard of people burning all of their "secular" cds once they become Christians, and I've heard that Ozzy Osbourne cds or tapes will not burn, or that everything else will burn but his face or something. But the opposite seems to be happening with Brian McLaren. Is this an indicator of the future of the Emergent Church? Who knows what will happen during these last 15 pages?!

Tradition!! (to be said like Topol from "Fiddler on the Roof")

"The circle of tradition is not closed, for the Spirit's ecclesial Work is not done. Traditional doctrine develops as Christ and the gospel are viewed in ever-fresh perspective. Old formulations are corrected, and what is passed on is enriched. The open-endedness, however, does not overthrow the ancient landmarks. As tradition is a gift of the Spirit, its trajectory moves in the right direction, although it has not arrived at its destination."

Gabriel Fackre

"Website gains acclaim"

Well, I've officially made it! I'm now linked here. Did I mention Marc isn't? So, ha!

It's a proud day for VanderMeander. Thanks Lauralea!!

(I know I'm linked here and here and here, but so is Marc...)

Odd/Inappropriate Childhood Memories #2

Today's moral is:
Recognize that toddlers can be keenly aware of social injustice... at least towards themselves.

My parents (well, really my mom) took over a Christian bookstore when I was about 2 or 3 years old. As a result, they tried to put me in daycare or preschool for a few days a week so that I wouldn't be wandering all over the place during the day.

In my memory I think I only went to the daycare for a few days total. And I'm sure that by the first day I was aware of the injustice of it all. We were forced to lay on exercise mats and sleep at the will and whim of the daycare owner. Now, I think this happens in every daycare, but... at this day care the owner's son did not have to take a nap, but instead got to play Lego. (For all I know, the son may have been a few years older than me and that's why he didn't have to nap -- he was just hanging out at the daycare.)

I was enraged and told my parents that I would not be returning to that daycare unless I was treated the same way as the owner's son and would not have to take a nap. Well I must have been quite fiesty about it all, because I didn't have to go back.

So instead I spent my days either kissing my granny inappropriately, or asking the customers at my mom's store, in my 2 year old voice, "can I help you find anything?", or hiding in the closet or colouring underneath my dad's desk at his law office ease-dropping on his appointments.

That's right. I'm a daycare/preschool drop-out.

I don't mean to be disingenous, but...

Do any people besides the ladies of "The View" use the word disingenuous on a daily basis?

I don't know... that's one word I did not grow up hearing and rarely hear now, except when I watch "The View".

Morning Mother Musings

Marc phoned just after 11am to see how my morning was going, and if Madeline's mood had cheered up from her grumpy-whininess of 8am. I said that she was fine, and confessed that I had slept in until 10am and was still in my pyjamas, having just finished getting the kids fed, changed and dressed for the day. I sat down to read the mail and the Lung Association came by to canvas. So there I am in my pyjamas with no bra holding Luke, and Madeline rambling on to the man about the rain storm and how she had to run to her bed to get out of the storm and on and on...

I managed to give him a cheque without too much crying from Luke, although he was slowly sliding out of his chair. I could tell it was time for Luke to go down for his sleep, but when I put him in his crib he started crying like he was in a bit of pain. I told Madeline to go pick out a story from her room and we'd all read it in Luke's room. She comes back with a book of quotations on motherhood with pictures of moms with their kids. About halfway into it Luke finally barfs all over my arm and onto his shirt, but he's still not settled. Luckily one more little barf would settle him. However in the middle of this we reached the page in the book where a little girl is upside down in the grass, and Madeline always turns it upside down to look at her. However, today she decided to turn to the "next" page with it still upside down. So we went back to the page we were just on, and then she turned the book the right way up to look at that picture, but then turned to go to the next page and low and behold there's the upside down girl again! So she turns it over again, and then turns to the "next" page again. Well this went on about 6 or 7 times, all the while Luke was either fidgety-crying or barfing on me, and Madeline insisting that I "read it mommy!" those two pages over and over again...

And I'm still in my pyjamas...

Professional Cymbal Players

Marc asked me the other day about whether or not there are professional cymbal players, thinking it was bizarre that a person could spend his or her life being a professional musician and banging 2 cymbals together once or twice, maybe 3 times in a song (unless it's the Nutcracker Suite). I said that usually they are percussionists, and thus could play any of the other instruments, as well.

But, for the most part being a percussionist is a pretty sweet deal. I was always the timpani player, so I had a bit more work to do, as I was quite the expressive little drummer. (I would roll up the sleeves on my band sweater, bend really close to the timpani, always double checking my tuning, and stepping back and forth waiting to "pounce", if you will, and play my roll or whatever with great expression and gusto -- my body rising the louder I played. My band teacher would get even more excited in his conducting when he saw me get really into it, but sometimes he'd look at me in the middle of a song like I was a whack job.)

But even then I would say that the hardest part of being a percussionist in a band is not losing your count of the bars between the times you have to play. It really is hard!! (Especially when you spend that time talking to the tuba, trumpet, and trombone players -- right Carl?)

Mittens in Summer: On Faith

Yesterday was a beautiful, hot day. As I was getting Madeline ready, putting on a summer dress and a hat, she noticed a pair of mittens in her drawer and said "Mommy, can I wear these mittens today?" I said "Yes". She proceeded to put them on and said "Then I will wear them, and then it will snow!"

It made me think is part of the "faith of a child" that Jesus talked about? As adults we wait for it to snow (metaphorically speaking) before we get bundled up, but maybe we should have the faith to put on our winter gear knowing that "then it will snow".

Of course, it didn't snow yesterday... but you get my point.