4th of July aka if this neighborhood kid doesn’t stop with that firecracker…

When I was a little, little kid we lived in Pensacola between the Air Force base and the Navy base.  I’m from a mixed marriage:  Mom was active Navy and Dad was active Air Force.  They met in school while training to be meteorologists for their prospective fields of duty and married over Christmas leave 6 weeks after they met.  So Pensacola is a good a place as any because the bases are only about 70 miles apart and we lived in the middle in a little apartment complex.

Northern Florida is much like southern Georgia: it’s populated by a whole lot of stupid white people.  The whole upper half of GA is metro Atlanta but there’s a line right around the Macon area where you enter the twilight zone of the South.  We’re not just talking gun-toting conservative Christian racists – we’re talking about flatland and swamp folks whose general education level is around the 4th grade.  Around cities or military bases, it’s better, but still – there’s a reason we drive straight through the night when we go to FL (southeastern part.)  That reason is that people from the interstate are only good for two things:  buying pecans and advertising the greased pig festival so that you can sell em more pecans.

I know a lot of people who love south GA and northern FL, but hey, I’m a mountain girl.  I don’t trust flat places and if you’ve got to drive more than 30 minutes to reach the closest Wal-Mart, you’re too far out in the sticks.

Back on topic:  we lived in Pensacola and while base towns are normally more diverse, you still have asshole rednecks with guns and too much liquor.  You get those folks everywhere, they’re just called different things.  At this point, I’m about 3 years old and my brother was a baby and Mom had just sat us all down for dinner on the 4th of July.  Next thing you know, a bullet comes down through the ceiling and lands in the middle of the kitchen table.  Turned out one of our hell-raising neighbors decided to shoot off his .22 pistol in celebration of being free for another year.  This is not a good idea!

I have no idea what happens next.  This is the part of the story where my mom’s voice trails off and you get the idea that my Dad probably returned that bullet to its owner by shoving it straight up his ass.

Every July right about this time of year, we heard this story and as a kid, you start to duck when you hear firecrackers.  This is doubly true when you realize that until 2 years ago, any sort of firework or firecracker was illegal in the state of GA.  People would drive out of state to buy em, but still, it was a precious commodity and you only set em off after dark on the 4th when every one else was too.  Otherwise, setting off a firecracker was about the quickest way to have a handful of cops on your front porch and a whole lot of pissed off neighbors.

Firecrackers still startle me, but now that we live on the edge of some private hunting land, it’s not as bad.  We normally hear a couple of rifle shots a day during hunting season and during the summer, we hear the race cars down at Road Atlanta and Lanier Raceway.  Imports at Road ATL during the day, hot rods at Lanier Raceway at night.  In the spring, you hear the cows making their mating calls from a few properties away.  The mountains have a way of amplifying sounds, so we get it all, and it all becomes background noise.

We moved here exactly 9 years ago over the 4th of July weekend.  It’s a nice little starter-home community where you have an actual piece of land located in between two major interstates but it’s still out in the country enough to not be right on top of people.  It was a quiet little place in the very back of a quiet neighborhood with quiet neighbors who liked quiet things.  Now, there’s a school right across the street and a whole lot of development in every direction.  That means a whole lot of people who moved in around the same time we did either moved out of county or moved into one of the hundred McMansion subdivisions where you could reach out your window and touch your neighbor’s house.   Our direct neighbors are nice enough, but a few houses down some people with teenage boys moved in.

Teenage boys have two paths in life:  they either have something to do or they terrorize the neighborhood.  Apparently, these folks couldn’t find their kids something to do, so we have been terrorized.  Our house and cars have been egged, they’ve thrown stuff at our dogs (after coming onto OUR property where our dogs are fenced in), they ride up and down the streets at all hours on a 4 wheeler, and generally act like little ass-hats.

And now fireworks are legal in GA.

These boys are about to have a Come to Jesus moment if they don’t stop with the firecrackers.  It started about a week ago and they scare the shit out of our oldest dog.  Abbie, our German Shepherd/Lab mix was abused as a puppy with cigarettes so anything that smells like smoke scares the living shit out of her.  Shaun couldn’t even get in the bed last night because she crawled in the bed on his side and glued herself to me and just shook all night, even after she got her puppy chill pills.  Cali and Nola don’t like the firecrackers either, but they’d rather bark at the little shithead than hide behind me.

Last year, they shot off one of those little bottle rocket things and it hit one of our trees during a motherfucking drought!  At least ammo is so scarce these days, none of our local crazies decided to shoot off their guns last night.  The crazies are probably the only ones with ammo since they’re stocking up for the apocalypse, forming a militia, and are ready to defend their homeland from terrorists.

Someone forgot to tell them that their two little teenage twits are the only terrorists I’ve met in our little corner of suburbia.  I ought to just put the dogs on a leash and walk down there to remind them that their good, quiet neighbors would appreciate them not spooking the cattle.

If I get really pissed off, I’ll let the dogs poop in their yard.  What do you think?  It may just be better to invite them over for beer and then throw the cats at em when they least expect it.

Groceries

It’s hard to believe today isn’t Saturday.  It just feels like the weekend but tomorrow will probably be spent chilling out in the house or in our yard.  We could go to Chateau Elan or out to the Lake Lanier but that would take getting there at about 9 am to get a decent spot and dealing with the sticky heat, no good place to potty, then not getting home until 2 am because traffic gets murdered on both 85 and 9-85 and every single road that is in between the two. Next year, we may have to save up some money to get a suite inside the Chateau hotel and just chill out there all day.  On the other hand, we could stay at the resort at Lake Lanier Islands, but folks get a little crazy out near the lake.  Apparently beer and boats and too much sunshine make regular people turn into idiots.

I need to go get a bath and do the grocery shopping today.  I don’t feel too bad this morning, even though I didn’t sleep a lot last night.  Alyssa slept in the bed with me because we’re trying out this co-sleeping to form relationships thing.  It’s like a way to get used to each other in a very no stress fashion.  We hadn’t been able to try it until they were adopted and I’m hoping it helps to repair this mutual animosity between the two of us.  Watching her last night, I realized how much like me she is even in sleep.  It’s hard seeing her as a little person who is not just “me at that age.”  I see so much of myself in her that I forget she’s her own person with her own personality.

I’m realizing how hard it was and is on my dad to have two daughters who are so much like him and a son who is so much like his mom.  He makes that comment a lot.  “It’s strange that my daughters ended up like me and Bob takes after Kim.”  He watches us in that detached sort of analytical way that I catch myself using on Alyssa.

I need to spend some time thinking on what I want for her and if that really has any effect on what she actually wants for herself.  I want her to have the best education she can get to keep her crazy intelligence busy.  I can provide that with the charter school nearby until she’s in middle school – after that, she’s going to have to use her own ambition to select the classes that will either challenge her or will just get her through.

I want her to grow into a woman who is practical with the real world, without being so hardened to it the way I was.  With my generation, it’s hard to be an idealist when so much has happened to us as a culture.  Much of our idealism had to come from denial of the world as it exists.  I also don’t want her to be like the sheltered kids I knew in school and in church who never really understood the other side of the cultural equation.

I want her to be healthy and fit in body and mind.  Here’s where I struggle.  She’s definitely got the “fat gene” and I keep visualizing the only pic I have of her bio-mom… and it’s not pretty.  It’s not even close to “fluffy” or “sturdy.”  Right now, I’d say A is sturdy with some baby chunks.  Her legs are crazy muscular but she carries her softness in the middle.  The doctors have already scared the crap out of me about that:  childhood diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems.

She’s a big girl and it’s easy to see that when she’s around her classmates.  She’s taller, bigger boned, thicker.  She’s also more athletic and her hair and fingernails are much healthier.  I look at the other little fine-haired wormy looking kids and I have to admit I have that parental bias towards her.  I also look at the pictures we have from when she first moved in and she’s a lot healthier now that she’s on the “athlete diet” my mom always had us on.  It just works a lot better on her and E than it does me.

I keep picturing this girl I went to school with who was always so fat and her mom would send her to school with a plain salad with ranch dressing.  It was like singling her out as “the kid on the diet.”  I want Alyssa to know enough about nutrition and how to limit herself before she goes to school and gets exposed to all that crap.  Food takes up so much of our time that it’s ridiculous.  If she’s out of my sight, she’s begging people for extras.  At one point, she had a pre-K teacher feeding her 3 lunches a day!

I remember my mom yelling at my aunt to not feed us crap on the sly.  My aunt would yell back that kids needed sugar and fat in order to be kids.  Now that I’m grown – and I’m serious – weight is still talked about all the flipping time and the grown ups around me are flat out nuts.  My mom is 5′ 8″ and 135 lbs.  She hates being over 130.  She stands naked in the mirror and glares at her hips.  I know she’s not as slender as she was in high school or in the Navy!  She’s almost 50!  In school and in the Navy, she was a champion swimmer and would spend hours a day in the pool.  If she wasn’t in the pool, she was running track.  No one can keep up that kind of training regimen and actually have a real life.  Still, if you walk by and pat her on the butt, you’re liable to break your hand.  She’s got the hardest, most muscled body I’ve ever seen on a woman her age.

My sister is exactly the same way: former athlete who now bitches about being 125. My aunt: same way.  She was a swimmer and in the Army, but she at least doesn’t bitch until she hits 160.

And you know what, I’m the same way too.  I’m much shorter than them and I’m built for comfort instead of speed (my mom says I’m “dainty”) but still when I hit 130, my heart goes nuts with nervousness.  I was 129 at the doctor on Friday, but my mom informed me that since I still had a uterus that it was ok for this week to be about 5 lbs off.

I know after all these years of conditioning to eat a certain way and if the scale gets too high, to stress the fuck out, that I really have one mindset that bothers me:  I don’t respect fat people.  Why should they be allowed to not work as hard as I have?  If I ate what they did, I’d be fat like them but I’m not.  It’s not that hard, you just can’t eat that trash with all those toxins and fats. Try a glass of whole milk if you need some fat – at least it’s not processed into grease and you’ll get some of those complex dairy proteins.  And yeah – let’s talk about the protein that you’re not going to find in a chicken nugget.  Not that hard, people.  How about some fruit? Pay attention to what you put in your pie hole.  Seriously, now.

But is that better for me than actually being overweight?  Does it really make a difference?  When it comes down to it, I’m not on insulin but I am on 3 or 4 other prescription drugs.  That little thought in my head that says “at least I didn’t do it to myself” really bugs me because really – I do feel like it’s a trade off.  I could probably chill on the meds if I had this MVP diet down pat with no caffeine, plenty of water, and 60% organics or if I regularly took the omega-complex supplements, the CoQ10, the extra B, D, and E vitamins, and the extra magnesium and zinc like I’m supposed to.  I really don’t take care of myself “like I’m supposed to.”

In all honesty, I could easily be a vegetarian.  I just don’t like meat that much but my body gets to craving it because I have to have those extra meat proteins to keep the connective tissues that work the heart valves healthy.  I’d love to eat summer veggies and jasmine rice, pasta, and couscous with fruit all the time but if I do, I end up in the hospital with doctors staring at me like I’m stupid because my heart went nuts and I passed out in public.

So we’ve established that I’m nuts in regards to myself.  Is it any surprise I’m hard on Alyssa?  Is she going to absorb it from the extended family anyways?  If I do let up on her, will she hate herself for the way she looks?  Can she actually overcome the cravings without becoming anal-retentive?

So I need to go grocery shopping.  Yay.

What’s a girl got to do to get some ammo?

I’m just chillin out, reading blogs today because my boys are grounded and I’ve got time on my hands.  I’m forming this opinion that boys are just born brain damaged.

I came across this post:  http://pepperspray.me/2009/03/gangster-vs-bum

Now, I wanna know where the bum got ammo for his .38!  I need to put in some time at the range, and I’ve only got like 10 bullets.  Damn gun nuts have bought up all the ammo – even the target rounds – since Obama got elected and I gave the only box I could find to my dad for father’s day.

How not to use Jedi mind tricks

I’ve only been pulled over once in my driving career.

That’s not to say, I haven’t been carefully prepared on how to react when being pulled over or that I have a symbiotic relationship with the local police.  Neither is true.  I just am not blessed with the ability to have normal things happen to me. It must be genetic, because neither my brother nor sister can get in trouble for normal things either.

I had taken my sister to the hospital for complications with her pregnancy.  She was going into labor way too soon – like months too soon – and was in a ton of pain.  So my dad watched my nephew and I took Shaun’s car to escort Sister to the hospital.

This was soon after we had gotten my two youngest who were 2 and 3 at the time (they were born in the same year) and traded in my Grand Am for my gas-guzzling American SUV, which could hold two car seats.  Yeah – you try to put two car seats in a Grand Am.

Now, you have to remember that Shaun and I were not planning on adopting toddlers.  The agency had their ages wrong in the file, so we had to trick out some of our old gear to compensate.  This includes one of my bookbags that has this print on it:  Gun, c.1982 Print by Andy Warhol This bag is the perfect diaper bag – plenty of pockets, easy to carry, has a very sturdy quick release clasp on it, is lined with waterproof material, and the entire front velcroes down so the crap doesn’t fall out if you drop it. It just has pictures of .38 pistols all over it.

My sister calls, I head out and pick up my bag, which I kept my ID and keys in because there’s no reason to carry two bags especially when you have TWO toddlers.  I didn’t even think about it.  I tossed it in the back of Shaun’s car – a black Honda Accord that looks like every single black Honda Accord in the world – and went to get Sister.

We did the hospital thing, where they did what they could and got her out of pain, and then we walked (she waddled) out to the car.  Toss the bag in the back, while listening to her bitch about needing nicotine and food, and get the car on the road.

As we leave the hospital parking lot, we picked up a tail.  It was an all black city cruiser.  It’s ok, I tell myself, they’re everywhere. This is kind of a rough part of town.  I’ll just drive extra safe.  A mile down the road, we pulled in to the Taco Bell and the cruiser pulled into a hotel parking lot across the street.

This is when Sister says “something’s going on.  I’ll bet you a dollar they’re calling in the plates right now while we’re getting drive through.”  My sister is much more experienced in police matters than I am, but I took the bet anyways.  We got our food and took a left out of the Taco Bell and pulled into the left turning lane to get on the road that takes us back to the interstate. I even used my turn signals.

Sure as hell, the cruiser pulled into the lane behind us and as soon as we made the left turn, the blue lights came on.  Sister says “you didn’t do anything wrong, they’re looking for something or someone.  I hope my Taco Bell doesn’t get cold.”

I roll down the window, place my hands on the steering wheel, and look straight ahead until the officer arrives.  (See, I’ve been trained for this.)  Sister sits calmly, hands in plain sight on top of her tummy.

There are several rules when you get pulled over.  Always keep your hands in sight.  Always call the officer sir or ma’am.  Don’t talk his ear off or offer excuses.  Don’t say that you know or are related to so-and-so who works at so-and-so city office.  Don’t get out of the car unless he tells you to.  Don’t move for the console, the dashboard, under the seat or for a bag without asking for permission.  Tell the truth (lies are too easy to uncover and by this point the cop already knows.)  Got it?  Got it.

The officer walked up like you see in the movies, one hand on his holster with his gun side facing away from the car so that he’s standing kinda sideways, the other holding a flash light, and stops right next to the B column of the car.  Tall, skinny dude about my age.  He looked a little stressed out, from what I could tell with the light in my face and only being able to see him from my driver’s side mirror.  He shone the light around in the car and asked me for my license and the registration on the car.

I said “my license is in the bag in the seat behind me, and I’m not sure where the registration is – this isn’t my car.  Do you mind if we look?”

“Do you have any weapons in the vehicle, ma’am?”

“No, sir.”  At this point my sister reaches into the back seat, picks up my bag, and sets it in my lap.  There is a point in high stress situations where shit just gets ridiculous, and here it was.  I have a so-called diaper bag covered with an Andy Warhol print of .38 pistols (which is the only gun I have registered in my name) in my lap, a nervous cop, a pregnant lady in the car, no idea where the registration this damn clone of a car is, and cooling tacos in the center console.

I ripped open the velcro on the bag, pulled out my wallet, and handed the license to the cop.  Then I sent a silent “thank you” to God that I had on a hoodie and my freshly-inked arson tattoo was covered.  He shone his light on my license and said “is this your valid address?”

“Yes sir.”

“Ms. Dollins, have you ever been in trouble before?”

“No sir, this is actually the first time I’ve EVER been pulled over.”

This is when my sister pipes up.  “Sir, what’s going on?  As you can see, I’m pregnant and I went into labor too soon so my sister took my to the hospital.”  My sister looks a lot more innocent than she is. I look a lot less innocent than I am.

He shone the light in on her, who is sitting with the paperwork for the car – service records, owner’s manual, receipts for the brake job my dad did a few weeks before – and said “we’ve received a report that a black Honda Accord was stolen from the hospital parking lot.  Did you locate the registration?”

I look at her for confirmation and tell him, that no – we have no idea where the registration is.  Sister held up the receipt for the brake job and said “we have this.  It shows that her husband paid for service on this car not too long ago.”

He asked who the car belonged to and I told him that it belonged to my husband and confirmed that he has the same last name and lives at the same address that I do.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes, ladies.  Please stay in the car.”

As soon as we see he’s gotten back in the cruiser we both bust out laughing and Sister demanded her dollar.  I told her that I wasn’t taking her pregnant ass anywhere else, if this was the kind of shit she gets into.  In just a few hours, I’ve transformed from a cute yet non-traditional foster parent of two into a gun-toting, tattoo wielding, car thief!

He came back and handed me back my license and said “you two stay out of trouble tonight, you hear me?”  We laughed and said yessir, we were going straight home.  He laughed and told us we were free to go.  I cranked the car and we left, Sister digging into the Taco Bell bag.

Half-way through that taco, we pulled up to a road-block manned by 8 cruisers and a couple of the fancy-schmancy police SUVs with the light bars in the grills.  There are cops all over the road, and since I’ve already got my wallet in my lap, I have my ID ready. Sister has tossed the gun-diaper-bag in the back seat.

It’s our turn to get searched and the cop – a shorter, bearded man – shines the flashlight through the car and spots my sister chowing down on her taco (seriously, cops don’t phase my sister) and cracks up laughing.  I said…

No, seriously, I didn’t even think before I said it.  I am just THIS geeky.

“This is not the black Honda Accord you are looking for.”

My sister choked on her taco and the cop looked at me kinda funny.  I explained that we’d already been pulled over about the stolen car and asked if he’d like to see my ID.  He told me it was ok, then shined the light on my damn diaper bag in the back seat.  “With a bag like that, it’s no wonder you don’t get pulled over more often.”  By this time a couple of other cops had come up to join in the laughter and they all agreed and waved us through. My sister was already on the phone telling everyone we knew that her sister was an armed car theif who used Jedi mind-tricks on the police.

Thankfully, we made it home without being stopped again, where my sister gleefully told my dad that for once SHE was the good child.  Now, with her help, this story has become a regular in the list of “shit Cyndi did” that gets told to every new person who encounters the family right along the time in school that I unintentionally beat up a fat kid.  Thanks, Sister.

And the literary field puts me back in perspective

I was so excited I finally got Richard North Patterson’s* The Race in paperback the other day.  So. Excited.

I started and finished it today in the bathtub, thinking “what a damn good book.  How does Mr. North Patterson always tend to be so oddly prophetic and honest with his novels?”  I thanked God again for the blessing of finally finding the book and being able to read it as I tied on my robe and left the bathroom.

I dried my hair, pet Spooks, and turned around to face a brand new hardback version of The Race neatly shelved on the bottom row of bookshelves.

There are too many self-flagellating analogies right now for me to even think about including:

• I have so much wealth in just literature that I can misplace an entire novel for a long enough period to get excited about it again the next time it’s published.
• I should really stop expecting the next best and re-examine the contents of my bookshelves (and household) and find new ways to love them all over again.
• I better not invite anyone involved with the local fire code over any time soon because the next additions to my collection are going to force triple-shelving situations.**

*Dear Mr. North Patterson, if you or anyone affiliated with you were to read this humble entry, please take this one statement to heart:  Please get a real website. Someone as prolific as you should have enough clout to get have a site that is not built on your publisher’s template and hosted on their server.  If you need two or three candidates who are professional advertising web designers who recently got laid off and have time to give you some energy, just send me an email.  I can also recommend a good hosting client.

** I have a surreal love for words that end in -ion today.  I guess they just feel nice rolling around in my brain although it does bring to mind this rather unfortunate incident of internet culture.

Girl Stuff

Dudes may not want to read this post. Fair warning.

I finally called the doctor today about getting my uterus removed.  It’s pretty useless to have a reproductive organ that doesn’t actually reproduce, but now it’s trying to kill me.  I still had that stupid, stupid hope that somehow after or during the adoption, something would magically happen to get me pregnant.

But now I have three kids and they’re mine like, forever, and stuff.

I just know that it would be dumb of me to wait as long as my mom did to get rid of this nuisance.  It’s another fun part of my great genetics – not only do I not ovulate, my body missed the memo on how during my period, I’m only supposed to lose a small amount of the lining that builds up.

When my sister finally had to have hers taken out after a failed ablation, then infection, the doctor was just flummoxed.  It happened to my mom in her 30’s too – it just won’t stop bleeding. I’ve been tested for von Willebrand’s, my sister was tested for hemmoragic infection, and all our horomone levels have been checked like 100 times.  There’s just something wrong that makes no sense.

I was in the bath for like 45 mins last night and soaked a super-plus tampon and when I pulled it out, it was like pulling the plug in a bathtub.  I seriously grossed myself out for the first time in forever. Then this morning, I woke up covered in blood like some weird pyscho horror movie.  At least the way I was laying, it didn’t get on the light color sheets – that happened last month and I’m sure our mattress pad could do without any more stains.

I’ve reached the point of not hoping for any miracles.  My 3 babies are miracle enough, even though they didn’t come from this fucked up uterus and I’ll never know what they were like as infants.  I’m giving up thinking of embryo adoption or even trying other treatments that we didn’t get to before the migraines started.  I’m giving up on hoping that my sister will donate her eggs, because mine suck when my body does decide to ovulate.

Why am I so upset?  It’s not like I WANT a 4th child or even feel an overwhelming need to be pregnant.  I saw how hard it was on my sister and her birth to her son was way more than enough to want me to ever give birth.  It’s just a chapter of my life that’s officially over.  I’m no longer in the process of family-building.  Now, I’m part of a family.

God, when you said fearfully and wonderfully made, why’d you forget my uterus?

Fun with public service blogs

On Friday nights, I get a little tipsy and watch old Ray Stevens videos.

Apparently, on Tuesday nights, I get a little tipsy and read blogs from our esteemed policemen, firemen, and EMTs.  (women too!)   I come from a long line of warped military and police people (and while the Navy is still trying to recruit me to be a chaplin even though I can’t pass the medical and I’m NOT ORDAINED) and I just love to read the shit people put them through.

The best part is that my husband is not so familiarly inclined and tends to be a belligerent twit when he’s pulled over and/or talking about being pulled over. Now that he’s a suburban professional dude who is over the age of 24 and has been married for almost 10 years, he’s good with our public servants. Back before we were married, he was one of those punk-ass little shits I stare down at the trailer park playground.  This means that I can send him blogs and totally laugh at him while he laughs at the blog…  about people who have gotten caught doing the same things he did as a younger version of his awesome self.

Like this one time out here in the boonies, there was this scare about a fake policeman in a fake police car pulling over female drivers late at night and raping them.  The advice was (for female drivers who drove alone at night) to pull over in a well lit and trafficked area, like a gas station or restaurant.  So, a cop pulls over Shaun for speeding on the interstate, and Shaun slows down to a crawl, and very slowly drives off the interstate, off the exit ramp, takes a right, and pulls into the BP.

If you’ve seen the pictures of my husband, you’ll understand me 100% when you’d agree that you’d give the fucker a ticket too.  Now, me, I could have gotten away with that “I was afraid you weren’t a real police officer, sir” excuse being I kinda fit the target profile, but I would have taken the ticket like a trooper and thanked the cop for being a real cop (as opposed to an imaginary cop) while he was at it.  If I didn’t and survived, my dad and my uncle would both line up to take jabs at my mental acuity.*  But my husband is a guy who is 6 ft tall, 300 lbs, and was (at the time) a funny looking goth kid and is from DAYTON, OHIO.  If I were his size, I’d take on that lowly rapist with the stolen lightbar and tell all my buddies at the biker bar how bad-ass I was while picking my teeth with his bones and wiping my ass with the tires off his Crown Vic.

Fuck yeah!

Being that I’ve made shameless fun of my husband while drinking the mojito he so wonderfully made for me, I hereby give him the right to rag on me in his blog.  I’ll also promise that tomorrow I’ll write about how my only time EVER getting pulled over *knock on wood* was for stealing a (his) Black Honda Accord from the hospital parking lot with an 8 month pregnant lady in premature labor in the passenger seat and Taco Bell take out in the center console.  I got pulled over TWICE that night too!  My story is way more eventful, although his stories of getting pulled over are more plentiful.

* More than likely, my mom would have kicked my ass and made me get another stripe on my black belt, followed by my dad buying me another gun and making me get certified as a marksman in shooting it, and my uncle would say “Cyndi, that wasn’t very smart” and give me a stern look.   Here’s the listing of service:  Mom was Navy, Dad was Air Force, and my Uncle Chris is a police officer.  I’m most scared of my mom. You’d probably be most scared of my dad, but really, Mom is the one who’ll get you.

a witness to my own hypocrisy

I just saw that Jesse Duplantis is scheduled to preach on July 19th at the Free Chapel.  I have to call my mom!  We love Mr. Jesse (even through his & the Free Chapel’s darned prosperity theology ways…)

It’s gonna be like taking my mom to a rock concert where she actually knows the words!

The Issue of Church, part 2

Following up from part 1, where I probably scared most people into hitting the back button on the first point, here are 5 more points dedicated to unraveling my mental logjam.  I kinda feel sorry for the other 4 points that are forced to share a virtual canvas with point #1.  They don’t get nearly as much attention because their older sister is louder and more controversial.

I promise to be more tame than point #1.  If you couldn’t tell, that’s my most loaded reason and I had to get it out there.  So, hey, if you’re still with me then you’re a pretty cool dude and I think I love you.  Srsly.

6.  I don’t like unconsciously rebel against the idea of “spiritual authority”

I have a spiritual authority.  Really, I do.  I picked him out all by myself at the Spiritual Authority store right next to Sports Authority at the Mall.  His name is Jesus and his last name is Christ and if you’re not Jesus Christ then you are not my spiritual authority.

I have no idea where churches got this stupid idea from that there are people who are “authorities” and we have to submit to them.  Can we say abuse of position and abuse of power?  Hey,  you want to get together on Saturday?  No, I can’t, my spiritual authority said I had to wash her car. Or even worse… “It’s ok if I touch you there, God put me in charge of you.”

It’s like some super-natural parent where not only do you not get to pick who your “authority” is, you must blindly follow in their “classes” regardless of their education or ability to actually maintain some respect.

People who are not my spiritual authority:

1.  My husband (he’s my spiritual PARTNER)

2.  The pastor

3.  The youth group leader

4.  The small group leader

5.  You

People who have legitimate claims to be my spiritual authority:

1.  Jesus & his cohorts in the trinity

2.  My mom

3.  My dad

7.  Churches should be better at therapy than potlucks

“I’ll pray for you” and potato salad have never been enough to get me through an issue.  C’mon people, aren’t you kinda trained to help people?  No… oh, my mistake.

But seriously – why aren’t you?  Why aren’t churches hosting training classes for people to be effective human beings in the world?  By that, I don’t mean “how to save the masses” or any of that evangelical stuff – I mean “recognizing domestic abuse,” “becoming a court appointed advocate for children in the court systems,”  “parenting special needs children.”  You know, stuff that actually has a practical difference in the lives of the people around us.  If our life is made up of our sphere of influence, then why aren’t we making the sphere a better one?

Hey people up there in the pews!  Us people down here in the trenches need help with ministry not evangelizing!  You know – ministering to people.  Church should be in the streets, not inside a building.

8.  There is a thought in the church that people with chronic illnesses must not be good enough Christians

No one is going to plain out say it, but if you have a chronic illness and you don’t get miraculously healed at the prayer meeting – then shut up about the illness.  This is not the case, apparently, for the older church members who have eaten themselves into a triple bypass.

If you have a chronic illness, you are a whiner, complainer, negative, bringing folks down, and basically ruining the illusion that church is a happy place where people eat and get healthy and rich and happy.

That leads right into #9:

9.  Prosperity Theology

How to be good stewards of God’s money and still own that Cadillac.  (really?)  I can’t even get myself to type out why I think this is ridiculous.  This will sum it up.

10.  There’s a point when even the flies are tired of your honeypot

I’m tired of water sweetened with honey and vinegar slipped to you while you’re not paying attention.  Let’s be like Paul and ask for some meat on those ole Christian bones.

The world we live in is one of information overload – the slogans of the 80s aren’t going to get through.  Give us some information!  Original content!  Something thoughtful and heartfelt!  Something that hasn’t been through the corporate spinner and market testing.  Can’t we just get a little truth?

The Issue of Church

I talked to my mom today, just catching up.  We chatted about how in less than a month, I’ll be married for 10 YEARS.  We talked about the husbands and kids and how they were doing and all our recent doctors appts.  We made plans for LJ to spend the night on Sunday.  We talked about E and how he hates to have his hair washed, fixing toilets, and general household stuff.  You know, normal mom & daughter things like we’ve been doing for all the years we haven’t lived in the same house.

Which has been since I married Shaun at 18 because my mother and I can be best friends as long as we don’t live in the same house.  We’re both alpha females and neither of us backs down, so it was prudent for my wish to continue breathing to move out.

Then she did something that hardly ever happens.  She asked if I would mind bringing the kids to their (my mom and my grandma’s) church on Wednesdays for Children’s Church.  Apparently, grandmommy and great-grandmommy are very eager to show off their new additions.  This is fine – it’s absolutely wonderful!  This is what I wanted for the kids – family who was excited and proud to be related to them.

But…  I’ve been avoiding the whole church thing for like 3 years now.  It’s got its own “thing” compartment in my brain for “topics I actively pretend don’t exist.”  It’s not so much the theology, or the ideas, or any of that “stuff” that gets to me.  It’s the leadership (visible and otherwise) whose job it is to “put on church” for the members.

What happens when I think about this is that all my thoughts collide like a train-wreck and my rational decision making skills just give up and let the straight-up emotional part of me go “nope, not thinking about that.  Everyone stop – it’s time to think about… chocolate.  Yes, chocolate.  Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.”

That’s about how long it takes for me to find something else to think about and the active willful repression continues.  Like just now, I changed the birds’ water, pet a couple of cats, checked on the kids, then went pee.  Only this blog post is keeping me on topic.

Let’s see if we can untangle this train with a list.  That’s nice and rational, right?  Here it goes:

The Top 10 Issues I Have With The Idea of Church

1.  I am firmly pro-choice

This isn’t really so bad as I believe I can respect their ideas while still holding my own beliefs.   Hey, other people have to believe other things otherwise I wouldn’t have anyone to debate with and that wouldn’t be any fun.  The problem comes in when I am (or the beliefs I have are) cordoned off into an “toxic waste section” because they aren’t going to try and CHANGE my mind, they’ll just IGNORE my mind while disassociating themselves from the heresy.

This comes from being about 14 years old and I went to Sunday School with a friend in a church that was a different domination from the one I had been raised with.  Which denominations they were are largely irrelevant.  I learned something very important that day:  Sunday School teachers of small groups have no fear in saying things that even the pastor would not say under his breath in an empty bathroom.

(This line of thought collides into the line of thought where “spiritual authorities” in the church are a bad idea.  Back on topic, though.)

I can tell you right now, that if a SS teacher said to one of my children that “women who have abortions and doctors who perform them are going to burn in hell” in the same lesson as “once saved by Jesus, you are always saved and forgiven” (neither of which I believe is an accurate statement based on the Bible) I would immediately sprout another head and a few more arms…  I don’t have it planned past that, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be pleasant.

I was told that stuff above (seriously, that’s about word for word what was burned into my memory) as a 14 year old because I questioned the teacher on where exactly it said that bullshit in the Bible.  The only thing worse than SS teachers is 14 year old girls that have been indoctrinated by this SS teacher for the past 10 years while being sheltered from the real world by over-indulgent middle class suburban parents.  I understood persecution that day.

It still didn’t change my mind, because even with all the nonsense they flung at me, no one could come up with a reasoned, scriptural answer or anything resembling compassion for women who are in the situation where they have to make a choice.

Also, really, how many of those girls in there went on to adopt the children that were born and then went on to be ignored/abused/neglected.  How many of them are foster parents?  How many of them work with the poor and homeless children whose parents are substance abusers?  How many of them work with the children who have a home, but come to the shelter because it beats going home to a relative’s boyfriend who is likely to abuse them?

Come on, now.  If you’re going to preach a philosophy that says children are sacred and should be protected then actually HAVE A FUCKING PLAN OF WHAT TO DO WITH THIS EXTRA POPULATION AFTER THEY’RE FUCKING BORN!  Because, boy, living in the United States with all these churches and all these kids who have never been helped by a the church who is working so hard on foreign missions work that they forgot all about those kids they insisted not be murdered.  Can’t we just focus on the children that are already here and already in pain?

(I suspect it may take vodka and/or a cigarette to make it through this post without smashing my keyboard.)

2.  I am unable to be a professional pew-warmer

I’ve tried – I really have tried – to just not have feedback for the speaker.  I’ve also tried to have feedback but just keep it to myself.  I really would like to be one of those people who goes to church to enjoy the ambiance and the hugs where your torso doesn’t touch theirs and to shake the pastor’s hand and have a fake conversation with his wife, then the family goes to El Sombrero and talks about local sports teams.

I was almost there once.  Almost!  I had friends that we sat with.  We went to lunch.  We had little faux dinner parties.  Then two things happened:  they had babies, and I didn’t AND I didn’t keep my mouth shut about what I thought about “keep on praying and it will happen.”

After that, I just backed off the whole relationship with people and churches thing and hid in my house and stopped answering the phone.  When I’m really honest with myself, I also realize that one of the friends’ husbands had a problem with my past and that made me very uncomfortable and upset. That leads to #3.

3.  When I get uncomfortable or too close to the “inner circle,” I freak out and back off

This always comes with finding faults, making excuses, and forgetting to charge my phone.  It also comes with not believing other people can help me get through grief or a hard spot or that anyone would even want to.  This is what I refer to as my “spiritual reactive attachment disorder.”

4.  I don’t blend in and I really have no wish to

a.k.a.  “people with tattoos can’t go to heaven” and “Leviticus says tattoos and gays are bad, and I forgot the rest.”

Which leads directly into number 5.

5.  I’m very well educated on the philosophy and belief system I subscribe to

Seriously, if you’ve read the Gospels and the letters of Paul, you’re ahead of probably 50% of the “Christians” sitting in the pews.  My mom is a bible scholar and living in her house, you could not turn around without seeing the scripture taped to the bathroom mirror, the pantry door, the place where you set the car keys near the front door.  She also asks for birthday gifts like “I’d like for you to read the Old Testament for me and write a “sermon” based on something you learned.”  You live with my momma, you learn the Bible.

With my natural curiousity, I’ve read the Bible in at least 7 different translations (The Word on The Street being my favorite) and own approximately 500 books on world faiths and spirituality.  Yes, I’ve read them.  If you do this, you start to see a lot of commonality and realize how people can talk about “one world, one faith.”  Also, combining that thought with the idea that memories and instincts are passed down through mitochondrial DNA, you can see how the world religions share a common mythology.

Anyways, most pastors I’ve met either don’t believe that I’m capable of that amount of thought or are somehow threatened by a young woman having comparable knowledge to what it took them years in seminary to learn.  (Granted, they know more about church history and apologetics than I do.  I haven’t explored that side of theology as much.)

I’ll have to put the next 5 into a part 2.  The kids are hungry and so am I.  I also need to regain my internal center of balance before writing more.