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Green. Grass. Lawn.

I went over to my sisters' apartment on Saturday.  She lives across our back lawn in an apartment just like ours, except it has another room, and all the alley is like that. It's only a hundred-fifty more a month, and the move wouldn’t be too hard. I say I want the bigger apartment because I like having people over and want the room to hold them.  Jill says I just say that to cover up my materialism. Then she tells me I need to get rid of some more of my clothes. Which I do.  I have way too many clothes.  I keep thinking I will finally get some self-control and lose weight.  I have been thinking this for eight years now.

I love our back lawn.  It is a shallow taco shell of grass the size of a football field.  The grass is greener than a lawn that I would take care of myself.  I would not mow it often enough, and would forget to buy fertilizer.  This is one of the reasons I don’t really want to buy a house -- I think I would fail at upkeep and get a nasty notice from the city every month or so.  I am not the only person who thinks it is about the size of a football field. Every Sunday, while I am running the Ptolus D&D game, a group of thirty guys plays football there.  They like to shout as they play.  We thought there might have been a fight going on the first time we heard them. Nick says they know how to block like real football players. When I used to substitute teach gym, the guys would call me Coach sometimes.  "Hey Coach, can we go play basketball?" they would say. I do not think I would make a good Coach.  I am too laid back. Coaching involves a lot of being tough and yelling.  And having a philosophy of life that doesn't change.  Mine changes too often.  I’m always learning new stuff about God and then switching up what I think about the world.  Besides calling me Coach, they also assumed I played football in high school. I think this is because I am fat, and if you’re in a locker room anywhere in the world, and you’re fat, you are either a football player or a sumo wrestler. In American locker rooms, it's only football players.  They would say, "You used to play football, Coach. You know what I’m talking about."  And I would say, "Nope.  I did theatre in high school."  And then they would realize that football was not the cause of me being fat.  This would not stop them from calling me Coach.

When I talk about the fact that I did theatre in high school, I like to add "all nine shows" to show how dedicated I was to the theatre experience. Like it is something I could put on a resume.  I do this a lot; telling people things like they're on my resume: I taught at Turner High School from August 05 – May 06.  I graded and planned, and had to do hall duty.  I ran a class of 25 freshman for five hours a day.  Sometime I had to break up fights. Maybe the people I tell this to will hire me.  But from what I’ve seen, classroom management and lesson planning skills aren't very appreciated in the corporate world.

The taco lawn is a perilous athletic environment.  A drain with an iron grate over it pokes up right at the fifty yard line. I would not want to get tackled on the grate. Once, it rained so hard that the drain backed up and we had a view out our back window of a newly formed lake with raging rivers and streams flowing down into it from all sides.  I hate whenever the rain shuts off.  I like the rhythm it lulls me into.  Like a techno drumbeat in your headphones that makes it easier to concentrate on work. It also feels like I'm overcoming something oppressive when I'm in the rain.  Take that, rain, I’m going where I want, when I want.  And I'm not even going to take an umbrella, so ha.  When rain stops, I feel ripped off.  Like my focus and triumph are getting stolen. I hate in movies when it rains really hard in a good emotional moment, and then it doesn’t stop raining until the scene changes.  My emotional rain moments always get spoiled by sunshine.  Maybe I should move to Seattle.

The rain stopping was even worse for me when the drain was backed up.  I was curious to see how bad it would get. A little higher, and maybe the lake would start spilling into the woods and down onto the road.

Sometimes I don't do something I should, just to see the negative consequences.  Some people would call this self-destructive behavior.  I prefer the term 'curiosity,' but I am probably wrong. Not that there was anything I could do to stop the lake from forming and pouring onto the road.  I just wanted to see what would happen.  Like in high school when I wanted to melt a pen in a bowl over a Bunsen burner.  I knew what was going to happen, and so did anyone I suggested it to.  That didn't mean I didn't want to actually have the experience.

The drain is not the only peril of the taco lawn.  The side of the lawn near our apartment is high enough that is a good rolling down hill if you aren't too afraid of rolling through dog crap once in a great while.  Amanda is the sort of person that has a hard time walking by a good rolling down hill. She also has a hard time passing up playing in the rain.  The hill makes it dangerous to run, you could turn your ankle.  Another ankle turning peril is just to the left of a straight line between our place and the girls' place. There is a two-foot long hole that you can’t see because of the grass.  My mom twisted her ankle in the hole once.  She gave us a bag of potting soil to fill it in.  I haven't done it yet.  There are times when there is something pretty easy to do that I don’t want to do for no good reason.  I think the reason is my inherent rebellion.  Or curiosity.

Jill had a birthday party on Saturday. After I got back from buying a bunch of food and an amount of alcohol that I would consider to be moderate for such a large party, I tossed on my sandals and walked across the lawn to the girls' place to talk to Amanda, like I said earlier. I wish I remember what it was we talked about, but my brai'’s been forgetting easy details like that all this week.  I was feeling good afterwards, and excited for the party, so I jogged back over the field to our place.  This minor athletic endeavor brought about two future annoyances.  First, a few hours later, I noticed an enormous amount of dog crap on my sandal.  The party was starting, so I just tossed both sandals out into the alley.  They’re still there.  I would clean it up, but I’m lazy.  My wish is that ants would come along and eat all the crap.  This will not happen.  I like those sandals, so I hope no one with less of a problem with cleaning dog crap off of things doesn’t come by and need a pair.  I think that if someone wanted my pair of sandals that bad, though, I would gladly give them to him.

It was a good party.  There were a lot of people.   Nobody got drunk (as far as I could tell) and nobody who was underage tried to drink.  I was concerned about that, especially when the donations from the partygoers more than doubled the booze (our fridge is still very full).  But I heard a sermon where the guy mentioned that Jesus was called a drunkard and a glutton, and it’s funny how people who are really following him today hardly ever get called those things.  But I talked to God about the situation, and he seemd to be fine with a party with booze, and everything turned out ok.  I think everyone had a good time.  Jill got lots of good presents.  A vintage dress for one.  She loves those.  And a pig cookie jar filled with something we’d really been wanting to invest in, but hadn't had the money for lately: golf tees.  And two DVDs: Mystery Men (which we’d loaned out years ago, and never got back) and Waking Ned Devine (which she watched last night while I was at One Night with the King (which I liked, but thought was very poorly done.  Wait for the DVD.)).  And a bunch of other good stuff, including gift cards and cash, which I have to be really careful about, or she’ll spend them on things she needs, rather than things she wants.  She's trying to get people to donate to charity for her for Christmas, so she's got to get full use out of her presents now, says I.

Towards the end of the party, as we were playing Super Smash Brothers, my right foot started hurting.  It does that sometimes; I’ve got a weak arch.  But it didn't stop the next morning like it usually would.  So I limped all through Sunday and Monday, and went to Dr. Miller right after work. Turns out I ripped a tendon or tore a ligament (I can’t remember which -- like I said, brain's been acting up lately --  I really should cut out the caffeine again).  I can walk about 20 steps perfectly, and then my foot just starts hurting a ton.  I’ve got it wrapped, and it should heal soon.  But it still hurts whenever I walk for more than a few steps. Stupid lawn.

That's what she said. Or he said.

It's been far too long since I've blogged.  I'd do some Hail Marys and whatnot, but I identify too closely with a movement that protested that system a while back.

Finished the second series of the British The Office last night. Not nearly as good as the American.  Besides the fact that it's funnier to my American comedic sensibilities, I think it comes down to pathos.  Last night's episode was a great example of the pathos of the show, what with the bird and all.  We care about Michael even though it seems like he doesn't care for the people around him because he's sympathetic.

On the surface, David and Michael are so similar – lonely, self-centered, obnoxious, insecure, over-promoted, etc.  But I think the key difference is that in Jr. High, David would have been the short kid who smoked out back of the school with the older kids, and waited for other kids to walk by so he could trip them.  He would have been the butt of all the jokes within that group, but he was still in it.  Michael was the kid who got tripped. 

I find that I don't watch the American The Office for the humor.  By this point, it's the characters.  I want them to do well.  I want Pam and Jim to be happy -- with each other or not. I want Michael to be loved.  Heck, I want Oscar to have a good vacation.  Something about the combination of the documentary nature of the program, the writing, and the particular uncomfortable humor leads to really caring about these characters. More than other comedies.  Sure, I'd like to see Earl mark stuff off of his list, and find happiness with that professor, or Catalina, but it's not a big deal.  I've got emotions tied up in The Office.  The show isn't real, but it's true.  It explains why things are the way they are in our workplaces:  people are imperfect, but looking for happiness. But the system is set up to magnify our imperfections, and decrease our happiness.  So in that way, it's myth.

I think myth resonates so strongly in us because God wants us to know the really important stories are the ones that tell us why.  Whats and whos and wheres and whens are good and important, but they're pretty easy questions to answer: rock beats paper; cereal and an orange, last Thursday, God made it, etc.  The why is the catch.  Why did that guy keep hitting his kid?  Why is the sky blue? Why am I lonely?  Why can't I get the chips I want from the vending machine?  Because these questions take you to the deep mysteries.  They make you search.  Why are we here?  Why are people broken?  It's the searching that's important.  And the search to answer the deep mysteries leads you to the easier questions like who made us, and what's the answer to life, the univers  . . .42, and what I should do with my life.

Which leads me to where I am now.  I've been temping at this great company for almost 6 weeks now doing data entry and database cleanup.  And I've really been enjoying the rest of my life.  Teaching was wonderful, but it ate up all of my time.  It was easy to enjoy, but I hated the rest of my life.  I loved the people I got to hang out with and teach every day, but every moment I wasn't at work was a moment I could doing work.  Now, I've been leaving work at work every day.  And I don't even have to think about what I needed to bring with me to work on a given day (except for pot-luck Italian lunch day: Crockpot, seasoning packet, chicken, tomato paste, stewed tomatoes).  But this isn't a career.  Even if I got hired on full time, it would just be a job. 

When I was 12 or 13, there was a church service where they asked if anyone wanted to come up and dedicate their lives to the ministry.  The guy said it wasn't an easy choice, and you should come up unless you really meant it.  Because God would hold you to it. Only two of us went up, me and a girl a year younger than me.  I know now that God isn't really in the business of making deals like that.  But all the same, I have always felt since then a tug to work for God.  I've been looking for something I'm passionate about to do with my life.  Something I feel driven about.  Teaching was something I felt strongly about, and I got jazzed by working with the students, but the vocation wasn't for me, I think.  I don't think that you have to love your job, but it would be helpful to have a job that it's easy to get motivated to work hard at.  I'm not very easily motivated, on the whole

I had lunch with my dad on Wednesday, and after a great conversation about God, on the way back to work, I realized that one of the few things I really get jazzed about is talking about God.  So I'm going to explore God as a vocation.  And if not a vocation, I think I want to spend more time in the ministry.  Even if I've got a full-time job somewhere, I could still do that with a lot of the rest of my time. Maybe he just wants me to do that, and to dedicate a lot of my outside-of-work time to him, but, maybe, I can go to work for God every day and know that what I'm doing vocationally is not only worthwhile but also something I love doing.  And believe me, paper distribution is not it.

The end of a week not long enough. But don't be sad, Petrie. Many things do not fly.

As an update, I find it lacking.