This is another post without a cohesive theme.

How I would love to gossip with you, internets, about the particulars of my social interactions, and I do think they would be fascinating to you, but prudence interferes. Long, long sigh.

I can't even talk about tv with you, because I haven't gotten to my first love in awhile. What am I doing with my time!?!

Oh, here's something. I saw 'Coraline' at the cheapo movies. It was terrifying. I was really surprised the kids in the movie theater were not crying. Very good: terrifying.

And I hung out at the independent hip coffeehouse in my neighborhood on sunday, which is not as carefree an activity as you'd assume. The place gets so crowded you have to stand and hover until someone leaves their table. But the stars were aligned and my friends had grabbed a whole COUCH , which we occupied for some hours, much to the consternation of the hover-ers.

Then I got pregnant, moved in with Joey, and married Ross. FINALLY.

I am practicing GUITAR a lot. I can really only strum down. The songs I practice are: The Times They are A-Changing, As Cool as I am, Casey Jones, Gotta Get Drunk, When You Were Mine, and Waltz No. 2. Some of these songs- particularly Waltz No. 2- are too ambitious for someone who can't strum up. But this effort is for ME, and I won't be constricted by the supposed guitar authorities.

Obviously I am blogging more.

And that is what is up with me on 3/30/2009.

Die Grain, Die!

John 12:24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

This was one of the readings today at church, and the way my pastor talked about death and rebirth was really moving to me. He talked about death and rebirth in political work. And how the new things that God is doing are not the bits of the old things that were good- they are altogether new. The old things have to die completely, even their good parts, for the new things God has in store to get born.

But of course, when other people are talking about justice, I am thinking about myself, and I was thinking how clearly the good things in my life have sprung from deaths of other good things. Well, mixed bag things. And when those mixed bag things have died, I have fought their dying tooth and nail, and really exhausted myself fighting those deaths. But I couldn't have skipped fighting so hard. Because it wasn't just that the old plans had to get out of the way for the new plans, it was that the new plans came out of my fighting.

Does that make sense? Maybe not?

I think I've written about the theme of rebirth a lot lot lot on this blog. Well, that's because change makes me really agitated, and I resist it really hard, so by the time change can push itself through in my life it has been one hell of a birth. I mean, ripping, screaming, slapping mid-wives across the face kind of births.

You can keep tabs on when things are getting really hard for me by when I stop posting here, BT Dubs. This was a long winter for me. A lot of that was the rage of Lake Michigan, a lot of that was forcing a transformation which was not going to happen, a lot of that was getting to know the northern suburbs so intimately. And having the end of those processes in sight feels great, but what's really valuable is having gone through it.

And I guess while I'm writing cheesy things, how about this one: if you aren't failing, you're not trying hard enough. Also a penny borrowed is a penny saved. Never look at the mouth you're giving a horse. Play it cool boy.



Well, of all the advice to give in all the world, "Bust cool!" sums it all up.

Ho-Hum

Life keeps humming along. Meeting nice people, making major life decisions, drinking coffee, listening to country. Everything is new and dramatic and much like what has happened before.

I am not bored right now. Nor am I worried right now. I thought maybe I was a worrywart, but no, I am very calm and stoic.

Every so often I get so freaked out about how big the world is that I try to cram myself into a little box- THIS is what I should be good at, THEY are who I should be friends with, THAT is what I should move towards.

The first month in the box is great. And then the box becomes a terrible place to be, and I cry and wail and burn up all my friendships by complaining about how awful it is to live in the box and how I can't get out of it.

And then one day I am reminded that I made the box, and then it dissolves. And the month after the box dissolves is also a wonderful time. And a couple months from now I will get scared and the cycle will repeat, and when that happens, I will inform you by blog post.

"The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all."

- Barbara Ehrenreich

The Power of Hanging Out

I love hanging out. I love socializing. I love listening to other people's jokes. I love making small talk. I love asking about people's kids. I love asking about recipes.

I just came from some really high-quality hanging out. Thank God for high quality hanging out. Thank God for nothing accomplished, nothing doing time together.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up. - Anne Lamott

Life is great because...

...I have a job.
...I made bread.
...I have a church.
...I have great friends.
...I am healthy.
...I have good cd's in my car.
...my car is working great.
...the city I live in is a lot of fun now that winter is over.
...Beyonce still exists.

Free Time for Free People

Last friday someone asked me what public policy I would most want to institute or change. And because the labor Borg have incorporated me into their massive hurtling cube, I said I'd institute single payer healthcare first, and then employee free choice.

In retrospect, I wasn't thinking big enough. If I could change any public policy in this country, I would require employers to offer full benefits at 20 hours and time and a half for anything over that. If we had a 20 hours work week the world would be an amazing place, and we'd all be amazing people.

Re: the environment:
- half the molded plastic crap would be manufactured and sold
- all meals could be eaten at home, saving ga-ja-billions of food wrappers from sitting in our landfills and eventually leaching their plastic and ink into our water supply

Re: health of us all:
- 20 hours a week to play on company softball teams, if that's your bag! 20 hours to go on bike rides or work on your garden. 20 hours to teach your kid a sport, like the do in commercials.
- Time to nap

Re: the fulfillment of human potential:
- Every single person gets to have a serious hobby. Everyone gets to be an artist, or novelist, or historian, or master scrapbooker. Everyone!
- More time to nap and have serious hobbies will make people less irritable and therefore less violent. Less kicking the dog, less road rage, all crumbling the pyramid of rage that leads to Toby Keith war anthems

Re: God:
- With all that extra time, nearly everyone would get into a faith community, just to have something to do. The atheists would get serious about being organized. Some people would take on multiple faith traditions just cause they're interested!
- God would be pleased and bestow upon us many blessings.

Re: the children (please think of them!)
- Kids would get time around both mom and dad! Daddy issues would become a historical oddity.
- No more working to pay the daycare!

This has to be the direction the human race is supposed to move in.

This is the Title of this Post

I think part of the reason I can't write very often now is because the NYTimes is so depressing. Day in and day out they have a front page story that makes me extremely anxious for my future wellbeing. Tent cities, droves of out of work volunteers, and old people telling young people about the depression! Ack! And then I am in no mood to tell you about my insightful insights on the privileged meandering that is life on the North Side of Chicago.

Maybe I could do some light research and present some useful information to you. Like I could write about scientific developments, or....oh heck, I can't even get it together to list some areas of general knowledge. I'm not Dewey, and he was supposedly a racist anyway. Info has never been the function of this blog. This blog is supposed to be as info-free as an episode of Guiding Light. This blog is supposed to be as thought-provoking as a granola bar. This blog is supposed to be as useful as a scented candle.

Shit is fucked, ladies and gentlemen. I can't tell you why, or what to do about it.

One thing is, we could all be grateful for the little things. The roof over our head, the food in our fridge, the sunlight on our window. But that is so obnoxious.

Oh yeah, it's St. Patrick's Day. Who's up for getting some shamrock face tattoos?

Employee Free Choice on the Rachel Maddow show

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Employee Free Choice Act returns us to the process we had before the 70's, when the Republicans thought up this process that encourages companies to harass and bully their employees.

Yeah, I'm in the Maddow cult now too. I held out for a little bit, just to be contrarian, but she's cool.