fundamentals of manliness

This ambiguous piece of metal in my hand is a device I’ve been using on my bike to give it a little more go for less go on my part. It’s about the most rudimentary mo-ped you can get. This afternoon I dismantled it from my mountain bike to prepare it for the Cohutta Springs Triathlon on Sunday (me using a motor for the triathlon would justafiably result in me getting run off the road). I got greasy and smelled like gasoline and the sun burnt my neck while I was trying unsuccessfully not to de-thread the screws holding my bike in the glorified weedwacker’s jaws. Being a terrifyingly independent American girl, I had to chuckle at my new step in the direction of self-sufficiency. That would be step number six-tampering with a motorized apparatus that afterwards leaves you smelling like gasoline. That’s right after steps four and five-investing in a cordless drill and setting up your own surround sound system for the DVD player in the living room. Oh well, at any rate, afterward I promptly went into the kitchen and cooked a casserole to cleanse and purify.

Kitten, you have a wild soul

At the outset, an adorable bundle of love, affection and helpless dependence, this frail creature's muddy eyes, silent, squeaky voicebox and shaky, crooked back leg, all rolled up in one pathetic vagabond, struck a cord in my being. The glory of my existence as a woman is to nurture to independence little ones just such as this. Me being a glutton for crooning and cuddling, you'd think that this kitten would be a ball of sugar and sweet, but despite all unconscious efforts to powder-puff him, kitten's soul has surfaced and it is rigidly untamed. That is the way it is going to be. I, rubbing his belly and calling him cutie pie, he, lion-heartedly attacking my hand without using claws or teeth (once in awhile his eyes shift to a look of Africa and he forgets where he is and lays a tooth too deep). Despite my tendancy to teach him to be Mr. Gentle and Kind, his wild psychosis makes me blush and sigh knowing that the world is still alive with wonder and valor. Kitten you have a wild soul.

Information Overload

In short, being a christian person, one who finds no other more rapturous joy than to show gratitude to her Creator, I find myself eager to share how Jesus has changed my life. I have found a weird thing. I've found that during that conversation on the plane or while talking to random person A, telling him\her that they need Jesus-while I know its true and there may be a no more significant thing to coax to his\her mind, that it has come to be cheap. How kind of me to tell you how it is. How it is. I know how it is. Don't we all. Here I come swooping down on angel's wings to give you the answer. All those other 10,000 ways you've tried reaching the climmax of life's existence were the wrong ways and congratulations you now have the answer via the overflow of my devotion to Jesus (insert knife to slice sarcasm here). I could go to your door and leave a flower and Bible verse but I find myslef only leaving the flower just so you know that you and I have no agenda and answer to life's problems number 10,001 isn't going to come from me. Just take the flower. How did sharing Jesus get cheap? I don't know, but it has. Jesus was(is) a revolutionary thinker, what would He do? Because that is what I want to do.

the sweater!!!!! 

amanda, I walked the whole promenade during a morning class change! 

southern goodness

I really have no reason to have a blog; I'm not a missionary, nor am I in any particularly glamorous situation that others would be interested in reading about. I must then resort to the unthinkable. I must take the small amount of adventure and drama in my day to day, and grotesquely embellish it without hope of reform. The trip to the post office is now the brush with death, the kitten in the garage is now the little white lie that is getting bigger and hopelessly out of control, and the humid tennessee air is now southern goodness growing thick.