You know you're from Alabama when...

You know you're from Alabama when...

a group of shopping girls becomes a football commercial

you can imagine high school classmates doing this to each other in 30 years

every other commercial on television involves football

every radio announcer says something about football on game day

if you go shopping on game day 90% of the people will be wearing their team's colors or shirt

you don't understand why people are surprised a girl will watch football

Roll Tide.

leash training

Our dog has the capacity to drive me crazy.
I've been trying off and on to train him on a leash. (and yes, I hear all you dog whisperes out there...that's the problem. You're not being consistent.)
The biggest problem? Buster thinks EVERYTHING is a game.
Put the leash on him? No problem.
Start to walk?  Not so much a problem.
Keep walking? Then he throws himself up in the air, flips, grabs the leash with both front paws and WILL NOT LET GO. If I pull him up, he won't flip over, but just lets it hang himself. If I keep walking, he just lets me drag him on the ground. It's not fun. By the time we were finished last night my joints were KILLING me and I was so mad at both the dog and my husband that it wasn't even funny.
And we get to do it again today. I think I'd rather go to the dentist (which I also hate beyond measure).

breaking news

The reason for drop in egg production has been discovered. Pics to come Saturday. Pulling out the incubator - again!

Panera Bread

Back when I was a working girl, most of my colleagues went out to eat at least once a week. Many of them went out every single day. Two of the ladies were fast drivers, and their favorite thing to do was race to the next town of Cary so we could eat at Panera Bread. We would rush their, semi-slowly eat our food, then fly back and try not to laugh as someone got onto us for taking too long on our lunch break. (My justification note: she would go out with the pastors once a month and be gone 2 hours AND unlike the upper staff we had to clock in and out for lunch so we weren't shorting the church of their time and money as we would work 5-10 minutes later if needed to get all our time in). Granted, we didn't do that often, but still those are fun memories.

I was reminded of those days today as I got a survey in my inbox from Panera Bread. I'm not going to fill it out, as I couldn't tell you when the last time I ate there was. I love their food, but it's not something I get to have very often, and it's not something I would drive to Cary or Raleigh to eat by myself. And somehow I don't think it's the place Bobby would like to eat. He's more of a Toot-N-Tell or Carolina BBQ kind of guy.

And speaking of food, our microwave has died. It will run, but it won't heat or defrost anything. We've looked at a few, but I'm now seriously considering how important is it that we replace it. At the current moment using a scale of 1 being not at all and 10 being do it today, I'm a little over 5. I might not think it's such a big deal now, but by mid-October when I'm coming home late and needing to heat up leftovers for supper, I may really want that quick convenience the microwave offers. And I've had a microwave since I was in the 4th grade. It's hard to think of life without on, but we've done it for the last week now and been okay. It's really making me stop and think about how much I use it.

the hushed conversations

We normally think about conversations as things that happen over the phone, through e-mail, or in the hallway at church or the aisle near the Targer pharmacy or in passing at the gym. (Yeah, I do live a schedule life.) But lately I've been thinking a lot about the conversations we should be having, but don't. And I've come to the conclusion that it's because these topics are often hushed due to the emotional impact they have. So here's what my brain's been hopping around a lot the last few months.

• The "even if...still" passages of the Bible. I don't think I've ever heard a sermon on these verses. Actually, now that I think about it, it would be a very short sermon, so maybe that's why. But in all honesty, why are we so scared to think about or discuss the phrases where ancient believers boldly asserted God could do the "impossible", but then went even further to say "but even if God doesn't do this, I'll still serve/worship/honor Him."?  I'm thinking of Job and the 3 Hebrews in the fiery furnace here. And I'm also thinking of the 6+ blogs I'm following of family & friends fighting serious illnesses and hardships. It scares me so much to read statements like "I WILL walk to my son's high school graduation. I have faith." (when her son is 5 and she has an illness that no one has yet survived).  So what happens when her faith doesn't give her what she wants? Does that make her faith any less real or valid? When my husband broke his neck 32 years ago, a well-meaning believer informed him they knew God would heal him because he lived a righteous life. (People and churches in the area were praying around the clock that first month for healing.) And when God chose not to heal him this side of heaven, that person cut off fellowship. Their theology wasn't compatible with day to day reality, so they simply tried to shut out reality. It scares me when believers confuse our relationship with God with our relationship with Santa Claus.
• "I want my child to be in God's will, but..."  I have heard this SO much lately, where well-meaning believers pray that God will call their child to preach or to a life of full-time Christian service. I rank that right up there with these Dads who push their child in a sport because they desire for them to be in the NBA or major leagues. There's no encouragement for them to seek out their God-given talents, to develop into who GOD wants them to be. It's just the personal desires of the parents that they seek for their child. Maybe that's too harsh, but I do wonder would they be just as happy for their child if they came home and said "I want to be a plumber." Would they enourage them to be the godliest plumber in town? Perhaps my parents emphasized too much the passage that "whatever you do, do it all to God's glory" so much that I don't see more honor in one job than another. We're all laboring together for the same purpose, or at least we should be.
• Marriage. As I watch my oldest niece struggle through the insane mating rituals of a conservative Christian college (at my graduation from same college, the administration from the college felt compelled to comment that our class was one of the unusual ones because half the class was neither engaged nor married), I want to know why we're not discussing healthy ways to truly get to know people, marriage statistics in the church (and how GLBT community is using those and plan to use those in the future as a way of saying churches don't adhere to biblical principles anyway so we can't exclude them on such grounds), and how to make a healthy marriage. How many young people would rush into an engagement or marriage if they were told that "Marriage is having a forever roommate."?  We talk about the awesomeness of marriage, but not it's heavy responsibilities. I fear we push/encourage marriage before young people are truly ready. Case in point: Why do we ask a young man if he's bought a ring yet for his longtime girlfriend before he's even held a steady job longer than 4 months? How is that encouraging a healthy marriage?

And I'll get off my soapbox for now. But those are the things I ponder, and only occasionally hear another believer quietly mention. And then I know I'm not alone in all my crazy ponderings.

Duke gardens, post 2

I finally got around to charging the battery in my camera and downloading my photos. WHOhooo!
And I'm going to warn you, in case you didn't already know, my view of cool photos doesn't always match everyone else's. :)

 Banana trees (but I don't know if they're the kind that bear fruit or not). I just thought they were cool because they were so tall and yet the leaves allowed sunlight through. Would they make a better  barrier on the property line than a magnolia tree?

 A bamboo fence! I think this was one of my favorite things in the Asian garden.



And another view of the coolest of cool fences.

 

 Lotus plants...this part of the Asian garden made me feel like I was back in China. Bobby was amazed at how far out one plant spreads (the big leaf pads and the smaller leaf pads are all connected at the center where one big white lotus flower grows).

 And this area located in the exotic plants section and named after a botanist, made me feel as if I had stepped back into Narnia. Okay, maybe it was the overhead canopy combined with the humidity, but it had that eery yet exciting feel to it.

And the stone steps that made a shortcut in front of the building in the pic above. I dared Bobby to take his wheelchair across it. He said only if I went first, and we all know he'd push me in! :)

 

 And here you can see the smallest amount of water peeping up through the algae. Yep, all that stuff you thought was grass was just algae sitting on top of water. Pretty gross, huh? Maybe that's why it had such a Narnia feel...it appeared to be forgotten ruins.

But not all was dead nor forgotten. Two algae covered turtles were sunbathing and were sitting so still you'd have thought they were stone statues...no joke!

Obviously I didn't take pictures of all the beautiful and nice scenes we saw, but I did want to show you the cool ones. :)

cave day

Within the first few years of marriage, my husband calmly looked at me and said without any condemnation, "I think if caves had electricity, you'd be happy living in one, far away from people." or something to that effect.
And there have been many days I've met him at the door or called him at work and semi-jokingly asked "Do you have my cave ready?"
It doesn't mean that my day has been bad, or that I'm upset with anyone.
It simply means some days I find humanity overwhelming.
As in I stay off Facebook because I'm tired of all the comments trivializing the important and maximizing the trivial.
As in I long to hear/read international news and all we hear in American media is a rehashing of the same old problems that we've yet to solve.
As in I hear a lecture with a group of people, and I'm the only one who didn't find it awesome.
As in I feel out of sorts in my world, as if I'm the square peg for a board that only has round holes.
But those feelings don't enable me to clean up the kitchen, or finish another load of laundry, or give me a burst of energy to deal with my crazy dog. And as much as I love rainy days, I don't think my joints would care for living in a damp cave.
So I'm offering up a prayer of thanks for our airy, spacious house, and am very thankful that today I'm not a Chinese woman living with my husband, small child, and elderly in-laws in a one bedroom 900 sq. foot apartment. Their bathrooms are "squat pots" (rubber skids on either side of the floor over a horizontal urinal...you squat over it and pull a string -think old time light fixture strings - to make it flush), so there's no such thing as escaping to the bathroom for privacy.
Yes, there are much worse things than a hermit not having a cave.