A Foul Ball Was A Moral Victory

If you're the praying sort, I can use your help. I have pressing needs but I'm afraid the folks in this tower would hang up on me. I have two requests.
And really, it's not for me, it's for others who mean so much to me.

First, Le Choix is on Sunday and the latest polls have Sego dazed in the corner yelling, "Cut me, Mick!" Or rather, "Couper moi, Mick!" She could use your prayers.

Then there's the matter of the Dodger outfield.

Two of the three starters (Gonzalez and Pierre) are so old (in fact we only have two guys in the field who are under 30) they can't run anything down and the third, Ethier, trys to make the highlight reels every night by making acrobatic dives and ends up turning singles into triples. Their fielding percentages are .974, .975, and .959 respectively. Since many of my readers may be uninitiated, you may be thinking I'm off base by complaining that Ethier only catches 96% of the balls hit his way. Let me drag out the old airline analogy: there are about 87,000 flights per day in US airspace according to NATCA; if NATCA hired Andre Ethier to watch the skies we would have 3,567 crashes every day. That's a lot of RBIs people. I mean if they were hitting over .300 or had a dozen homeruns between them I could overlook this, but that's not the case.

Now, I learned not to pray for something specific, so I don't care if you pray for angels to speed these fielders to the ball, Matt Lawton to be miraculously healed (he's from OKC, and was hitting .429, fielding 1.000 before injury), or for us to simply win. I'm just seeking some intercession here.

I will say it has been fun this year, though. We've been winning a lot and with all the close games it's like watching the legendary teams of the 1960s -- except we don't have this guy, my hero. Go ahead, watch the video; you can spare 1:41 to watch one of the best ever.

Think Blue

My Heart Could Use Some Glasses

Well, I just wrapped up a week of single-dadhood. YHWH attended a week-long retreat at a bucolic haven in western Oklahoma. I'm not sure I ever got a handle on the stated goal of the event and even though it featured two high-profile prophets, I think not being around the rest of us was the ultimate end of the exercise. So to that end, it was highly successful.

At first I was dismayed that such an event would be held for a full week and in the off-season, but later I learned that most of the attendees were pastoral types with irregular work hours. Pastors are quite acquainted with overlooking the well-being of their families for the needs of the flock, so I could see the rationale. It was pretty disruptive to the rest of us but we got a lot of help from Mimi, who came in from out-of-town, and it was only a week and you can do anything for a week. The greatest benefit was that Mimi now understands how complicated our daily lives are.

I was also reassured in my staunch belief that the Catholics are right to have an unmarried clergy, especially monks and nuns, of course. Ya can't serve two masters and all that, ya know. I had to work hard to not be jaded about the whole thing. It seemed really ironic to me that peace and harmony are achieved by disrupting the lives of so many other people. The girls really didn't understand it and were kind of disturbed by it. They got over it, but they just didn't get it. In the end, though, YHWH felt like she needed it, so I'm glad she found what she was looking for.

I was very careful to avoid letting myself whine about it and I tried to take the opportunity to observe and reflect while I was in the middle of it. A nice luxury since most times when your patterns are disrupted you don't have time to plan or you're so busy trying to cope you can't see the forest for the trees. The most powerful insight I gained was a better understanding of the single parent. I'm pretty empathic and Pisces (if you believe) are very good, dangerously good, at being consumed by role-playing and my only respite at times was knowing it would all be over in a week. Real single parents can't say that. The other thing I learned from that was the importance of one's social network. I found myself making contingency plans for contingency plans; if she can't pick up SGK, I'll call him, if he can't, I'll call... Thanks to Mimi I didn't have to use them. I'm glad because I also learned from this that I am very loathe to ask anyone for help. I guess I would get over that quickly if it were for real.

I also feel like I can better understand my mom and therefore my own childhood after this week. For most of my early life, my dad was in route sales and he would leave on Sunday night and come back Friday night. My mom had to be good cop and bad cop, make lunches, get us ready for school, and everything else alone. Some years she worked while we were in school. My dad came home to a hero's welcome every Friday night. I already knew all this, but I took the time to think about how she must have felt during those years; she was probably pretty resentful for one thing and I'm glad she didn't let it color her relationship with us -- too much. This also made me think a lot about the spouses and children of our soldiers, especially with so many Guardsmen having to stay in rotation. One of Killer's classmates has a father on active duty in Iraq and her mother's Guard unit was sent to a base on the east coast. This happened nearly two years ago. She's been living with her grandmother.

Despite all those things, I feel pretty good about saying I could do it if I had to. I guess you figure out something that works, get in a pattern and go with the flow. Build up your social network, don't be too proud to ask for (or accept) help, make contingency plans as best you can, and hold on loosely. Famous last words, huh?

Those Germans Have a Word For Everything

Well, Super Giant Killer did make it. She controlled herself well enough to qualify for a birthday party. Wheww! I was pretty damn sure I didn't have the guts to carry out that threat. I knew it the minute it came out of my mouth. But she was a good soldier for 10 days. This kid impresses me everyday. She elected to give up candy for lent and she has not succumbed to temptation once. If she's not sure, she asks for a ruling, "Do fruit snacks count?" "What about red and whites (starlight mints) - are they a mint or candy". I just say, "What do you think?" and she says, "Better not then." If some unknowing candybearer offers her something she just says, "Can't. Lent." The other two? Well... The Self proclaimed an 11:30 bedtime regimen for the season. It's been honored once or twice and has been famously broken a few times to the tune of some 5:30 am bedtimes. YHWH has given up saying 'yes'. It's been moderately successful.

One thing about this Lenten season is that it uncovers the weaknesses (I'm sure there are many) of my bad theology and sola scriptura theology in general because SGK asked me what happens if you don't come through on your Lent promise and I realized that I did not know the answer. I was told that you do it to be reminded of Christ's sacrifice, so if you don't come through, then you're making a mockery of Jesus dying on the cross. That's probably a little strong. Failure to comply and the realization of the difficulty of Jesus' choice should be enough, but it seems like the older, more traditional theologies probably have a punishment figured in there somewhere. Any pastors reading this could do a great service to this backslider by providing a ruling here. I have given up candy in support of SGK (though proved unneeded), but where I have really grown is by showing remarkable restraint in not ridiculing The Self for showing an inability to do something hard, that requires giving of oneself, or does not require batteries or an alternating current. YHWH, too. I mean it seems to me you shouldn't offer to give up something which by giving it up you actually benefit, thereby making your life better. It's a sacrifice - not a New Year's Resolution. But no, I have not said a word. OK, but here's the sick thing. I actually feel good that I have 'grown' in this area and shown remarkable restraint and maturity (about time), but then nanoseconds later I feel guilty for feeling good via the failure of others. What a wimp. I really hate religion.

I meant to talk about the birthday party, but I rambled too much. More on that later I guess.

TODAY BY THE NUMBERS
Triumphs via reference mantra: 1
Bugs smashed: 0 (!)
Innings of Indians game listened to: 1
Innings of Dodgers game listened to: 5
Episodes of Sopranos watched: 1
Cups of coffee: 2
Draperies hung: 2
Lawnmowers fixed: 1

They Have Taken My Lord and I Don't Know Where They Laid Him

Well, actually, I do. Down at the county slammer. Not that those earthly bonds could hold him! Yeah, this morning around 10:00 at the Last Public Place in America this dude was escorted out in cuffs by two of OKC's finest (wearing bulletproof vests, I might add). Apparently, a woman was making a call on her cell phone (not a stall call) and this guy, we'll call him ... Jesus, thought she was taking a photograph of him. And so he knocked the phone out of her hand and reminded her that you can't take photos of Jesus. 'Cause he is Jesus. He would know. So Jesus is spending the night in the pokey pending assault charges. I think the part about not taking photos of him was in one of the Gospels that got cut at the last minute. I told the security guard, "well at least he didn't 'know' her." But he didn't get my biblical meaning so it was a wasted gem. Bible quizzers should be getting it about.........now.

The Killer has announced her birthday wishlist. A French Revolution "war set", a Jesus action figure from Archie McPhee, and more mixes for her Easy Bake Oven. I have no idea where to find a French Revolution war set. I'm sure toy guillotines were banned in the 1960s. The kid loves Marat, what can I say?

Have You Any Dreams You'd Like To Sell?

Ew..I just quoted Fleetwood Mac. Actually, that Rumours album is one of my guilty pleasures because it is centered around one of my fondest memories. It was the summer of '75 - the last summer vacation my family ever took. Not because of some tragedy or anything, it was just that for some reason we were too poor after that to go anywhere but the lake. Or as my dad says, "We weren't poor, just broke." We might've even been too poor to have taken the trip we did, I just can't remember. My dad was sent by our mainstream Protestant church to check out the seminary in Louisville with the prospect that they would swap tuition for a committment to lead the congregation. Or something like that. I'm sketchy on that part. Anyway, we headed east in our 1972 Chevy Impala. It was my first time east of the Mississippi River and my first time to see 'big cities' like St. Louis and Evansville and Louisville. Yeah, I lost my urban virginity to St. Louis. OK, ok. I just wanted to say we listened to my sister's Rumours 8-track on an endless loop all across the Ohio Valley. I still have every song memorized. Nothing quite like listening to the line, "Won't you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff" with your parents in the car. They didn't say anything about it, though. That's also the trip where I found out - during a brief radio interlude - that Mrs. Robinson wasn't a Christian song ("Jesus loves you more than you will know").

And no, my dad didn't go to seminary. He joined the previously mentioned bad theology gang - The Fort Lauderdale Five.

Ok, the whole reason I brought any of that up was that after an email exchange with Adjective Queen about dreams I realized I don't remember any of my dreams. I would say I don't dream at all, but 'they' say that everyone dreams at about the same rate. So I don't know whether I'm really getting a good value out of my dreams because if I can't remember them, what good are they? Kind of a tree falling in the forest type thing.

Had a weird evening at The Self's annual Honor Society ceremony. Top 10% and all that. OK, this group of best and brightest had no actual, identifiable nerds in it. I mean no one looked like Bill Gates or Napoleon Dynamite or Eleanor Roosevelt. I just thought the top 1% should at least look nerdy. I'm afraid that rather than being actually smart, they're just rule followers. Sheep. I could tell this by the fact that after the ceremony about 60 kids sat perfectly still while their parents snapped photos and directed their poses. Not one of them acted silly, made a face, stuck fake ears behind someone's head, nothing. That's pretty sad.

Today, one of my co-workers answered a reference question and the caller was on a cell-phone and she actually heard him using the restroom and flushing the toilet. Ewww. Now that's multitasking! There's got to be a word for that. Hmmm, I wonder if I can get Sally Kern to make a law banning people from making a call while eliminating. I mean since she' s already solved all of the other problems in our state.