Girly girls vs. manly men

Two entries in one day you ask? This only illustrates the sheer volume of scintillating tasks that must be accomplished this afternoon.  I spent the hour before lunch folding hundreds of letters into perfect thirds. 

The other reason I thought I’d update is because I actually have an update!  The Pittsburgh-Buffalo game was this past Sunday and it was a doozy.  The week leading up to actual event was most enjoyable, as I taunted and teased my VWH and the in-laws about the impending blow-out.  This was probably a bad idea for several reasons:

1)    Pittsburgh tends to play at the level of whatever team they play.

2)    Buffalo had a two-game winning streak.  Now, granted, they were the only two games they’ve won, but it was still a streak of sorts.

3)    We were watching the game AT the in-laws’ house.

4)    They had food there that I wanted to eat.

And the most important reason:

5)    There was a bridal shower going on for my future sister-in-law during the game and I really wasn’t supposed to be watching football at all.

My brain worked overtime all weekend in an effort to sort out my priorities.  It was like a day from my college Philosophical Ethics class.  Pros and cons.  Deontology vs. utilitarianism.

Pros to watching the game:

1)    It’s a match-up we only get once every four years.

2)    I had hyped it up to the point where going to the shower instead was going to be embarrassing.

3)    We were originally supposed to GO to the game and that didn’t happen.

4)    The game started at 1 and the shower at 3 so I would only miss a little bit of the shower.  And hopefully it would be such a blow-out that it wouldn’t even be an issue.  I mean, comon’, it’s Pittsburgh!

5)    My manly in-laws would think I was cool.  (This actually proved to be true.)

Pros for attending the shower:

1)    It’s the only shower my future sis-in-law was ever going to have that I could attend.

2)    They changed the date so I could be there.  (Yeah…that’s a tough one to get around.)

3)    Every time I’ve watched Pittsburgh play on TV this year they’ve lost.

4)    The game started at 1 and the shower at 3 so I would only miss a little bit of the game.  And hopefully it would be such a blow-out that it wouldn’t even be an issue.  I mean, comon’, it’s Pittsburgh!

5)    My womanly in-laws would think I was cool.

The game started and the first half was everything I could have hoped for.  Pittsburgh led at the half 13-0 and controlled the ball for 24 minutes (out of 30).  We were dominating.  It was ugly.  It was sweet. 

Then the “law-of-arrogance” kicked in the third quarter.  The Bills got a field goal.  Then a touchdown.  Then Buffalo decided to tie the game precisely at 3PM.  It’s like they KNEW what I was going through.  As I watched aunts, grandmas, and cousins pull into the driveway (one especially elderly aunt backed right into a sturdy maple tree) I was torn in half.  What to do?  Why did it have to come down to this?

Still convincing myself that the game would be over soon I opted for football.  Well, those stinkin’ Bills had to send it to overtime.  (Really, the Steelers were looking pretty dismal…we’re lucky we pushed it that far.)  The NFL plays sudden-death overtime, which usually means it’s over quickly.  But this was no ordinary overtime.  This overtime consisted of several drives, back and forth.  There were fumbles at the ½ yard line and dropped catches that would have easily ended the growing misery. 

You can probably guess where this is headed.  By the time Pittsburgh finally scrapped together a drive ending in the game-winning field goal it was well after 4:30.  I let out a quick whoop and immediately left the bedroom just in time to see the aunts, grandmas, and cousins pulling out of the driveway.  Wrapping paper littered the floor of the living room and almost all the food was gone.  This was perhaps the worst way things could have ended for me: Pittsburgh wins the game but we really didn’t deserve to.  Bragging rights have been severely minimized.  And yet I still missed the entire shower, leaving my sister-in-law-to-be (SILTB?) less than happy with me.  (I don’t know this for sure, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the smoothest move.) 

I feel bad.  Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to.  If I had to go back and do it again I would choose differently.  Obviously, the moral of this story is: don’t schedule bridal events during football games.  I’m sure VWH will feel the same way when, in a few weeks, he’ll be the best man at the wedding, wishing he knew the score to the Bills game.

Pizza pizza daddio.

Good morning.  In an effort to avoid the computer EATING my blood, sweat, and tears toiling over blog entries, I’ve decided to type them up in a Word document and then copy/paste.  The real advantage of this is that I get to choose wacky, fun fonts that spark my imagination.  My current choice makes me appear as a 5^th grade male failing penmanship class.

Yesterday I worked on my entry off and on during the morning and then posted it shortly after lunch.  Today I may not make it that long as I am out of work and only one hour has passed.  Yesterday’s busyness was due to a number of student visits.  Among them was my brother-in-law.  He is the youngest guy in VWH’s family and, perhaps, the cleverest.  His reading choices, like VWH, include nutritional choices like Ovid, Socrates, and GK Chesterton.  My youngest brother’s literary sources around that age were more along the lines of “Big Noisy Truck Magazine,” “Cymbals and Other Noise-Makers of All Sizes,” and, if he was feeling especially sophisticated, “Calvin and Hobbes.”  So needless to say, brother-in-law made a very good impression yesterday at his admissions interview.  He really hopes to attend CS Lewis College in Massachusetts, a new institution opening in the fall of 2012.  I think he and VWH have visions of symposiums in dark, wooden rooms with pints of ale, pipes, and long academic robes.  They would do that now if it were the least bit socially acceptable.  However, since my mother-in-law works here too and gets free tuition it will be difficult for him to afford such an establishment.  If he did figure out a way to go, I’m sure all of his brothers would live vicariously through his experience.

It’s hard to feel Oxfordian when your font looks nothing of England or even adulthood.

I don’t usually feel Oxfordian anyway.  While my literary choices at the age of 17 did not include comic books, they also didn’t usually include manuscripts in foreign languages.  I liked to think that I read fairly advanced books for my age until I met VWH.  All of the sudden, if I hadn’t read the Brothers Karamazov in elementary school I was behind the times.  I thought I was a good reader when I was little—I got my name in the newspaper for being one of a very few individuals to finish the local library’s summer reading program.  (Don’t even get me started about what it was like to get the stomach flu and miss the end-of-summer pizza party.)  Apparently the VWH’s family had some kind of accelerated reading program in their elementary school.  Each subsequent brother set the new world record for that program, blowing the previous one out of the water.  This led to such accolades as designing your own school day, newspaper interviews, and visiting international dignitaries. 

VWH assures me that I am smart and make him a better person.  Then he sticks his nose back into the Illiad in the original Greek.  (You think I’m joking.) 

I take my revenge in the kitchen.  VWH may be able to take his Greek Bible to church and keep up with the rest of us and our plain ol’ NIVs, but his culinary successes are minimal.  Pizza dough is his downfall.  VWH loves pizza.  He would prefer to wearing a toga in the reclining position (again, you think I’m kidding), but he would still take pizza over the more authentic dates, honey, and pita bread.

VWH has attempted pizza dough on those days when I was either very late returning from the long day’s work (hee hee) or too tired to make something that time-consuming.  The results have been mixed.  To his credit, a couple of times it’s worked out just fine, but interspersed with the successes are batches of hard, clumpy mess or watery, unrisen goop.  These failed attempts, combined with questions like “how do you use this can opener?” encourage me and give me hope that my contributions DO matter to our marriage.  I may not know ancient languages, but I can open a can, daggone it!

Permissum nos planto pizza!

(VWH says it should be translated “pittam facemus.”  So much for my translation skills.)

The busy season is upon us. No, wait…strike that.

Ahh, Thanksgiving has passed.  Christmas is coming.  The hustle and bustle of the season—the mad rush in stores for bargain shopping, the decorating and baking, the family gatherings.  What delightful images on which to dwell.

…as I sit at my desk. 

Yes, that time of year so often crazed and crammed for the normal person is shaping up to be rather lacking here at work.  The “busy” season apparently ends in early November, leaving in its wake a quiet, lazy atmosphere.  This is all well and good if you’re quiet and lazy.  I hope not to be lumped in either of those categories.

I chatted with the VWH on the journey back from Thanksgiving celebrations and he offered the most unlikely of suggestions for an activity to fill my time.  I was expecting something along the lines of, “learn a new language,” or “improve your vocabulary,” or even “learn all the Bach cantatas aurally.”  His answer?  Write a Christian romance novel. 

You have to understand that the aforementioned books are the subject of much ridicule in our household.  My brother refers to them as “those dirty Amish books.”  He further clarified that the mere notion of kissing before the wedding day makes them evil…to which my Mennonite-raised grandmother retorted, “You think that’s dirty?  Haven’t you ever heard of bundling?!?” 

Those dirty Amish books have been the source of many jokes in my family.  The same brother came up with a number of Amish soap opera titles to reflect their dramatic effect.  These include and are not limited to:

As the Buggy Wheel Turns

General One-Room Schoolhouse

Guiding Gas-lit Lantern

All My Children (that one needed no editing)

The Young and the Pacifists

So when VWH, with all seriousness, informed me that this would be a beneficial way to pass the time, I immediately jumped to the following conclusions:

1.       VWH has no faith whatsoever in my intelligence.

2.       VWH had a wee bit too much food and beverage on Thanksgiving.

3.       VWH finally realized that if we pursue something other than music  performance we might actually make some money.

Turns out that number 3 was the closest.  “At the very least, you spend a few hours doodling around with some ideas and never come back to it.  At the very most, Zondervan publishes it and you make thousands of dollars!”  He has a point…

Still, it’s a compromise.  I mean, the last book I read of the Christian novel genre opened with the text message, “Emergency, Parker!  Come quickly!”  Seriously…when it’s an emergency, who uses capitalization and commas?

But I don’t intend this to be a bitter diatribe against all Christian novelists.  I shed me some good tears over quite a few of those books during my growing-up years, and I don’t mind saying that the average declaration of love in "Waiting for Love’s  Deliverance" (made-up title) is probably much easier for mothers of such weepy adolescent girls to swallow.  It’s just writing chapters and chapters of it that makes my head spin.

“Rebekah flew by Luke in a rage of unrequited love.  How could he ask Rachel home from the singing bee in his new, shiny buggy after all they had been through?  She collapsed in a heap under the largest maple tree beyond the eastern corn field and sobbed until her tears were gone.  Then, after splashing cool water on her face from the brook, she readjusted her apron and returned to the Yoder farmhouse, where she threw herself into canning tomatoes with her five sisters, Mary, Martha, Deborah, Elizabeth, and Dorcas.”

As you can see, I’m apparently a natural.

The eve of Thanksgiving eve

Dear Blog,

I just wrote a very forced, not very good entry and the computer ate it up.  I am not happy. 

I'm hungry Mother. Really I am.

I just had the most delicious lunch break.  And, ironically, it didn't involve food.  I'm not overly fond of using food words like 'delicious', 'scruptious', 'delectable', 'savory', etc to describe other areas of life.  I'm not even fond of using them to describe food...reading my Quick Cooking magazine is always a balance of searching for helpful recipes while dodging the gag-me-with-a-spoon, overly-flowery descriptions.  Still, delicious actually works in this instance.  I got to talk with my mom for a whole hour (while eating popcorn). 

Mom and I have had quite the interesting relationship.  She was my teacher for 13 years of homeschooling, my piano teacher for 9, plus all the other roles mothers have.  As the oldest child of an oldest child, she's a perfectionist to boot.  She's completely gorgeous (if I look half as good as she does when I'm her age I'll consider myself a lucky gal), good at just about everything she does, and has an incredible marriage with my dad.  She also has a willpower that defies anyone to tell her she can't do something.  Once, when I was little, she watched a bunch of us chillins attempting, unsuccessfully, to walk on stilts.  She teased us about our lack of ability, to which we retorted we were doing way better than she could.  (Bad move.)  She marched over, took the stilts, and proudly marched all around the backyard before returning, hopping off, and sticking out her tongue.  I later learned that she had never walked on stilts before in her life.  That memory still brings a smile to my face.

Still, we haven't always gotten along.  As the oldest of the oldest of the oldest, I am also a perfectionist.  The thing is, Mom and I could never quite agree on what we needed to be perfectionistic over.  So while I worked hard at acing homework assignments, sports, and AWANA verses, she emphasized the necessity of dusting, vacuuming, washing floors, cooking, and practicing my instruments.  Oh the Saturday afternoons when, once again, I had cut corners dusting and, once again, got caught...it wasn't pretty.

When I was really little (couldn't have been more than 5) I came to the conclusion that if I boldly declared that my life was totally unfair and ran out of the room, ala Marsha Brady, Mom would be forced to see my point.  This did not work...not even a little bit.  (It worked in the Brady Bunch and Little House on the Prairie--what went wrong??)  Now it's probably one of my most embarrassing moments...especially since I chose to pitch my fit with company in the house.

Now I'm married and living in another state.  Our conversations are becoming more rare as I work full-time.  She does much of her private teaching in the evening, so lining up our schedules is difficult.  When we are blessed with time to talk, I marvel at just how wise she is.  She sees things for how they are, how they actually work.  Mom looks for the good in people and seeks to build them up however she can.  We grow closer every year.  I depend on her for so much now, and no longer take for granted the hundreds of thousands of hours she took to raise us, train us, and slowly let us become independent adults.  Now that I'm independent, there are times when all I want is to be her little girl again. 

All of that to say, spending an hour with my mom is an incredible blessing, and I positively delight in being her daughter.

Freedom to blog

For the first time in 2 weeks I'm blogging!  We had a rush of work flood the office and, while it wasn't especially stimulating, it was time-consuming.  It was nice this afternoon to eat lunch at a normal pace, not have the phone ringing every 30 seconds, and chat with the office workers.  I realize, however, that the storm was a blessing...soon I will be back to writing in you once more, every day, dearest blog. 

Well, I figured out that in order to get all the practicing in that I feel my instruments need right now I'd need to put in 5 hours a day.  (Night, really, since I don't get back until after 5.)  I don't have 5 hours a night.  I haven't felt the need to practice this much since my freshman year in college, when I was balancing two instruments.  I chose the flute sophomore year to cut back on the load.  Well, the load was lightened temporarily, but it turns out that you can make way more money on piano as an accompanist than a free-lance flute gigger.  (I can't say I'm surprised.)  So the recital requests pour in and the literature I have to learn mounts.  Unfortunately, piano music takes four times as long to learn as flute music.  Maybe even longer.  I do love to practice piano though.

The answer to my time-crunching problems?  We need a piano so I don't have to drive somewhere to practice.  Oh VWH---are you listening???

In other news, my collection of Friends DVDs has become the hot commodity of the greater Rochester area.  Of the 10 seasons I think I have about 4 in my cabinet at home.  I might need to think about library fines...if the VWH were borrowing I'd make a killing!

Just kidding...sort of.