No, it's not another astronut diaper post. I gotta get outta here. Have needed to for quite a while. I'm not stopping blogging (I think), but in order not to do that, I need a change of scenery. Y'all are most welcome to come with me, to my new little place. This blog was kind of like my dreamhouse, my big farmhouse with the wraparound porch. But it's been the scene of some crimes, and the maintenance costs have gotten too high, and coming here doesn't make me happy any more, so I gotta go. I might come back here some day, after some major renovations are done; I don't know. But until I figure that out, I'm moving across town to a little cottage. Fewer bells and whistles, and not much hanging on the walls yet, but with help I'll try to make it homey and welcoming. Thanks for visiting me here. I hope you'll come with me to the new place.

You'll see when you come over, I've moved some old furniture in there. I may eventually move all my old posts there. It's a pain, though, you know? Anyhow, I already have a new post up there.

Why are you still here?

When I'm wrong, I don't mind admitting it. I reported some news here back in February that, turns out, was in error. I really don't want to send you all out into the world with misinformation. So here's the real poop news:

ORLANDO, Fla. - Former astronaut Lisa Nowak didn't wear diapers during her 950-mile road trip to confront a romantic rival, her lawyer said Friday, disputing one of the more bizarre details to emerge from the NASA love triangle.

"The biggest lie in this preposterous tale that has been told is that my client drove from Houston, Texas, to Orlando, Florida, nonstop, wearing a diaper," Donald Lykkebak said after filing motions to suppress evidence in Nowak's criminal case. "That is an absolute fabrication."

The tidbit that Nowak wore diapers during her trip was written in the police report filed after Nowak's arrest in February.

"I then asked Mrs. Nowak why she had baby diapers," according to the charging affidavit written by Officer William "Chris" Becton. "Mrs. Nowak said that she didn't want to stop and use the restroom, so she used the diapers to collect her urine."

There were toddler-size diapers in her car when she was arrested, but they were several years old, Lykkebak said. Nowak and her family had used them when Houston was evacuated in 2005 during Hurricane Rita, he said.

The diaper detail became fodder for late-night TV comics and talk radio and even inspired an episode of the NBC show "Law & Order."

"It jeopardizes our ability to have a fair trial when the accused is the butt of jokes," Lykkebak said.

UPDATE (7/9): Thanks for the guesses. We went to Vermont. More details here in the comments. It will take me a few days to sort through all the pix and get more up on flickr. My flickr badge is still not welcome in my sidebar for some reason, so if you want to check for more photos, just click on any one posted here and it will take you to my flickr place. (I've never invited you to my flickr place before, have I? This is a new level of commitment for us.)

I'm baaaa-aaack. I promised y'all I'd show you some pix and see if you could guess where I went. Slight glitch in that plan. I used a new camera (a gift received over a year ago, and just now getting the energy/wherewithal to really try it) and I didn't know what I was doing, and I ended up with some really bad pix. In fact, I'm quite bummed out about it because we went to a very lovely place and the photos don't do it justice at all. I had the settings screwed up; I hope the new fancy camera will do better when I learn it better. As it stands now, I can take better pix with my 3.3 megapixel dinosaur camera, when I'm drunk, than I can with the new one. End of camera whine. It was a really nice vacation. WTF went along, but only overpowered me for one night and one afternoon. The rest of the time, I maintained the upper hand. So. Here's some of what we saw. You ever seen this place?

Some of the first things we noticed were the unusual (to us) road signs. This is a place where the signs are (mostly) clear and to the point:









OK, the above? That one tickled us. We had never seen it before, but Jif and I understood it, didn't think much of it, didn't comment. LG didn't get it, though:

LG: What is that a picture of?
Jif: What?
LG: They're telling us "do not run over . . ." something, but what is it we're not supposed to run over? What's the other thing on that sign, besides the car?
Jif: No, that's a cocktail. A martini. It means don't drink and drive.
LG: Oooohhhh. I thought it meant, like, don't run over your giant drink. Because if you do, you'll have to clean up the mess. And that is strictly enforced. The clean-up part, I mean.


There are LOTS of these where we went:


And quite a few places to do this:


And lovely farms with rolling hills:


This man made me cry on July 4th, because he read the entire Declaration of Independence, in a clear, passionate voice, and it was very moving. I'd never heard it read before. He said that in the 19th century, no July 4th celebration was complete without a reading of the Declaration. What a great tradition! How have I missed that? Why don't we have more of that?


The place where we went is rather well known for its cow products, among other things:


See the little enclosed porch that comes out over the river? We had lunch there! Beautiful and delicious. A famous potter and glass-blower has his shops there.


And this is a gorge. Gorge-ous. Near where we stayed.


Guesses? I'll tell you soon, and I'll put up more (sucky) pix as I get time. Missed you guys. Hope you had a good holiday. xxx

Years ago, I was stopped at a redlight, reading the bumper stickers on the car in front of me. One of them read, "Honk if you love Jesus!" I happily, impulsively honked. And then observed the enthusiastically proffered middle finger of the motorist ahead of me. "Oh," I thought, "must not be your car."

Today I visited Lynn, who also encouraged me to honk if I love Jesus. Sorta. She offered a meme, The Jesus Meme, which is "five things I dig about Jesus." I really like what Lynn did with it, and I decided to give it a try.

1. He speaks to people in their own language. Not Aramaic. I mean, he met people where they were. If you were a farmer, he told you stories about farming. If you were a tax collector, he used money stories. A fisherman, he told you about fishing. He exemplified my Mom's teaching, "You treat the janitor the same as the governor." He spoke to people who were "beneath" him. Because he knew they weren't. And he wasn't afraid to confront people "above" him. Because there's no such person. He showed us how to do these things. God, I love that man.

2. He is steadfast. As a child growing up in an often chaotic environment, this knowledge was one of the things that made me decide to stick to him like glue. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). No need for anyone to wonder what kind of mood he's in, whether he's been drinking, whether he's mad at me today. Steady. Like a rock.

3. He understands what we're going through. This is especially meaningful to me as I continue to endure WTF Disease. I haven't yet found another human who knows what all these various bizarre symptoms feel like. But the one who is both creator and human being, would know (Hebrews 2:14-18, 4:14-16). That comforts me. I'm not alone.

4. Jesus loves me, this I know. I dig that I am unconditionally loved. Humans talk about this, but I don't believe we can pull it off. Oh, we try. And if we really do try, we can manage it a good percentage of the time. But not always. Even parental love, which probably comes closest, is sometimes qualified with the knowledge that if that little (or big) miscreant weren't our own flesh and blood, he or she would sorely test our love ability. There's a condition -- you're my kin. It does me immeasurable good to be loved when I am at my most unlovable. Which, frankly, is most of the time, lately.

Some people talk about Jesus dying -- being beaten, spat on, crucified, as evidence of his love. All the things that were depicted in Mel Gibson's movie (during much of which I buried my face in Jif's shoulder; I'm not interested in seeing the violence). For some people, that is sufficient evidence of this extraordinary, supernatural kind of love. Not for me. Frankly, others have suffered, and do suffer, worse physical afflictions. Some even voluntarily, in the name of love. No, for me, what really made it sink in, what he did for me, was a sermon that I heard when I was eleven years old. I have never heard it presented in quite the same way since. But here's the gist of it: When Christ allowed himself to be killed to pay for the sins of mankind, he took on himself, into himself, those sins. Think of the worst you can think of. Genocides, child abuse . . . the worst. He took all of that onto himself, in our place. And not only those acts. But also the shame that accompanies such acts. And all the suffering that ripples out for generations to come, from such acts. And all the pain that preceded, that set in motion, that created beings who would perpetrate such acts. He became all of that (2 Corinthians 5:21) so that we can be reconciled to a perfect, holy God. For me, it is that unimaginable psychic suffering, soul suffering, that he endured, that speaks much louder of love than any level of physical torture could speak. I choose to believe it happened the way I've read that it happened. And that it meant what that sermon so long ago said that it meant. Greater love has no one, before or since (John 15:12-13) .

5. He is mysterious. Years ago, when LG was in preschool, I invited the children of one of the moms I had befriended, to attend Vacation Bible School with LG. Over the years, we have invited children of various religions and none at all to attend VBS with us. But that particular year, I admit, I was making an assumption about the children we were inviting. The father had a very German name, and the mother had a very Irish name, and I assumed they were Christian. What's more, I assumed either Lutheran or Roman Catholic. I was wrong. She declined my invitation, saying that she didn't want her children to learn the fairy tale of God. She and her husband had decided to be, and raise their children as, atheists, and they wanted no interference with their plan. I confessed to, and apologized for, my assumption. And she allowed that actually, I was right, in terms of how they'd been raised: Lutheran and Roman Catholic. But she said that in college, her husband had done exhaustive intellectual research which led him to the absolute knowledge that God does not exist. Alrighty, then.

What I didn't say to her, but what I will say now, is . . . that doesn't work. I am all in favor of intellectual research. In favor of critical thinking. Of skepticism, even. But applying the powers of the intellect to matters of the soul . . . that will always fall short. To me, that is comparable to the difference between understanding the chemical composition of chocolate, and actually feeling that chocolate melt in your mouth, tasting the sweet, the bitter, the creamy. Even if you can recite the chemical composition backwards and forwards, you don't know chocolate through the intellect. It doesn't compute. At least, you don't know it in its entirety. Another example: you can intellectually explore the act of jumping into a clear lake on a hot day. You can understand the physics of how you get there -- the trajectory of the jump, the force required to overcome gravity on your way there . . . and you can understand the physiological, biological changes of the various anatomical systems as your body goes from hot to cool, dry to wet. That's all good. But it's not the same as knowing what it's like to jump into a cool lake on a hot day. You've used the wrong tools, or at least, lesser tools, if you're trying to really know that experience. God -- Jesus -- can be understood through the intellect. But that's not how we're made. God is spirit. Meant to be experienced and understood spiritually. Through faith. Faith is the method through which we best know God. Certainly we should use the other methods -- intellect, emotion, whatever you choose -- but you haven't fully experienced God without doing so via your spirit. Your soul. That's what I believe.

Perhaps this is as good (or bad) a place as any to say something that I often think when I see comments from those who don't believe. Very, very often, since I began blogging, I'll see people comment on the site of a "believer," and say something like, "I wish I had faith like you do," or "I wish I believed in something like you do..." And I think, "Just do it." Let me explain. Some people believe in God (as a Christian, I believe in the mystery of the Trinity -- God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are One) because they "came to believe." That is, a series of life experiences, perhaps even some mystical or miraculous experiences, led them to believe. Many more people, though, choose to believe. They decide to believe. There really is no wishing required. If you want to do it, do it. It is a choice. A decision. I do believe that when people make that decision, it is as a result of the Holy Spirit inviting them. And that can happen in more ways than I can imagine. But bottom line, it's a choice that we have the power and ability and freedom to make. Or not. If you're wondering whether it's for you, I would suggest a test. For a week, behave as though you do believe. See how that works for you.

I don't feel, never have felt, compelled to try to persuade anyone else to believe what I believe. I've never spoken as explicitly on this blog, of (some of) what I believe, as I am speaking here today. And it's fine by me if you don't agree with a word of it. That's between you and God. Or just between you and yourself.

Anyone (religious, not, whatever) is welcome to do the meme. Or leave in the comments here what, if anything, you "dig" about Jesus.

***

And with that, I'm outta here. I have an opportunity (read "invitation requiring very little $") to visit a state I've never visited before, staying in a friend's 200-year-old cottage for the coming week, so I am doing my darnedest to get me and the fam together to go and do just that. Hope to leave some time over the weekend. The place is not near any of you, to my knowledge, or I would have told you. Indeed, I don't think I have ever seen the state represented in my sitemeter stats. So when I get back, I think I'll post some pictures so you can guess where we were. Won't that be FUN? (Shut up.) And the handful of you whom I've told where I'm going, "Shhh!"

I went to a continuing ed. event today, where the presenter asked for volunteers from the audience to be his clients and help demonstrate his therapeutic technique. I have always had mixed feelings about this practice by presenters. On the one hand, we get a birds-eye view of what the therapeutic technique looks like. On the other hand, you never know what sort of volunteer you're going to get. Sometimes you get someone whom you can tell came to this particular seminar in the hopes of getting a free therapy session from such-and-so famous therapist, or worse, someone exhibitionistic who came to get sympathy from a group of her (usually her) peers. Or sometimes, you get someone who is genuinely engaged in the seminar and being altruistic, generous, helpful, in volunteering.

The first time I saw this technique used was shortly after I earned my graduate degree, and it was a distressing, disturbing spectacle. The volunteer was someone who needed much more help than the presenter could provide, and was also someone who fell into the "exhibitionistic" category. And even worse, the presenter was an author of what was then considered the "bible" in its field, but she wasn't a credentialed therapist. She orchestrated a train wreck on the stage, and I don't know what happened to the therapist/client/volunteer. It was truly painful to watch, and ethically atrocious, in my opinion.

Today's presenter was competent, and those who volunteered were doing so out of genuine engagement with the material, and out of altruism, I do believe.

• There was a woman whose young teen daughter had been abducted for a period of several hours, and had kept that a secret for years.
• There was a woman whose daughter had physically abused her son (the daughter's little brother) for years.
• There was a woman whose son was suicidal and currently hospitalized.
• There was a woman whose sister had recently died.
• There was a woman whose husband was deployed to Iraq as her children hit their teens, and his return was causing adjustment problems within the family.
• There was a woman whose husband had been wounded in Iraq, and is being maltreated now by the military. He suffers from depression and inability to support his family financially, now.

Photo, kindness of OddMix

Sunday Post ~ "As much as we need a prosperous economy, we also need a prosperity of kindness and decency." -- Caroline Kennedy Schlossburg

Hebrews 13:1-2

file under: &Sunday Post

I love my work. I thank God I'm still well enough to do it as much as I do. And some days, where I work, it's too much, and we just look at each other and shake our heads, like, "Are you believing this?" I had just gotten off the phone, taking an application for our waiting list, a family in need of a counselor. I walked out of the office to see my colleagues looking a bit the worse for wear, and I handed the application to the director, and a copy to the other clinical supervisor.

Lydia: How do you say this name, the mom? Ki-nee?
Susie: No, it's pronounced, Ki-NAY, see I wrote it phonetically right there...
Donna: And the daughter, is that Ky-mee-ah?
Susie: No, it's more like Kuh-mee-uh.
Lydia: As in, C'meah? C'mere! C'mere, C'meah!
Susie: That's right, it's expedient. See, you don't even have to say c'mere! You just say C'meah, and she knows you mean, c'mere, C'meah!

We're laughing, now. We're starting to lose it. The front door is locked, we're sprawled in chairs in the waiting room.

Donna: The boy, what is his name, Cry-on?
Susie: It looks like cry-on, but it's pronounced Koran. Like a holy book.
Lydia: Lemme see. That's not Koran. That's . . . Carry-on.
Susie: Yea, the kid is baggage, so she named him Carry-on. "C'meah, and bring Carry-on!"

We're howling, now.

Donna: Yea, and his brother is Satchel . . .

PWAHAHAAAAAAA

Susie (can barely get it out, we're laughing so hard): And the older sister is Valise!

The bell rings and we look toward the door. Lydia opens it and in comes her client, a single Mom with her little boy, who has Asperger's. Lydia greets the Mom, finds out how her week has been, while the little boy shows Donna and me what he's been shooting on his VideoNow camera. Lydia walks them both to her office, Donna goes to get the ringing phone, and I return the call to the man who couldn't talk because he was at work earlier, but now he can so he tells me that Child Protective Services told him to call us after his 8-year-old showed up at school with the man's handprint on his face. The school where the man's wife, the boy's mom, teaches. Back to work, silly girls.

How can you tell when you're ready for a vacation?

file under: &Work &Can't Make This Stuff Up

Every time I encounter this, I feel the need to say something, to shout something, about it. But I haven't before. I've just encountered it again. I'm saying something.

I have to say this, not to criticize those who have already done it -- that's not productive -- but to plead with those who are thinking about doing it, to those who are convincing themselves that it will be OK. IT WON'T BE OK. And even if there were a slim chance that it would, the risk is too great.

I have seen them in the media, and I have met them in real life. Over and over and over again. Those women (usually it's women) who were sexually violated during childhood by family members. When these women grow up, they convince themselves that their own children will be safe around those same family members.

"He's old now, he doesn't think like that."
"I forgave him, and we have moved past that."
"I told him what will happen if he does, and he's promised me that he won't."
"He knows how much it hurt me; he would never do that to his grandchild."

GET. REAL. I understand that you wish all those things were true. It's only normal that you would wish they were true. I wish it for you. But God didn't entrust your child to wishes. God entrusted that child to you. It is your job to keep her or him safe. When you delude yourself enough to put your child in that situation, and what you have convinced yourself won't happen, happens . . . You are the one who knew better. Not your child, not even the perpetrator, who may have convinced himself he wouldn't do it again. No, you are the one whose job it was to keep that child safe, and you, better than anyone, know that his promises aren't true. They weren't then, and they aren't now. How many times were you promised it wouldn't happen any more? Or told that it was OK? That is was normal? And all the other lies that just now disgust me too much to even write them here?

You know better. If you don't do better, then you are an accomplice. Please don't sacrifice your child in the name of family relationships, or saving face, or an inheritance, or forgiveness, or writing a happy ending to your story, or any other of the dozens of things that can't compare to your child's safety.

Some resources for help or more information: SOAR (Speaking Out About Rape), RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), and MAVAW(Men Against Violence Against Women).

file under: &Work &Partial Nudity

Sunday Post ~ "He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it." -- Clarence Budington Kelland (speaking of his father)

Ephesians 6:4

Happy Father's Day to the Dads, brothers, uncles, single Moms with double duty, and all those whom someone is watching how you live. That's pretty much everyone.

file under: &Sunday Post

He didn't really freak out. Because 1)it was a fake butterfly and B)he has no eyeholes, so he didn't even know it was there.

Have a happy weekend, Ratsasstafarians. Wish us success (survival?) with LG's graduation party!

file under: &Biscuit

Blog. The fancy schmancy one just plain broke. So until it gets back from the repair shop, or I get a loan to buy a new fancy one, I will be driving this one. I couldn't believe the emails I got, from people I never even knew about, looking for the blog and being unable to see it. First, I was so flattered that people were looking for it, and second, I felt terrible that they had to go to such trouble. So here we are. I hope no one has trouble seeing this one.

WTF. The symptoms, which have been described here in various posts, are really flaring. And I'm even having nightmares about them, in which they're worse, but I actually wake up feeling the choking, the pain, etc., worse than when I went to sleep. This is truly a revoltin' development, because all these months, sleep has been a welcome escape. Now, not so much. Please hurry up with a plan, Toxicdoc.

Sammiched. This week I am acutely aware of my position as a hunk o' baloney in the so-called "sandwich generation." I am struggling to plan a fifth-grade graduation pool party for my child, having just learned that my mother (84) is now incapable of living in her own home and will need to move some place where she can have help. And I, with WTF and a graduate-to-be, am trying to be of some assistance to my mother, from 500 miles away.

Work. I continue to work a few hours a week, supervising graduate student interns. Today, my boss buzzed me to tell me that my clients were there. I said something like, "I don't have any clients..." Then I went downstairs to see these alleged clients. Never saw them before in my life, except that I'd walked past them maybe five times in the preceding half hour as I visited with other staffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff (OK, here's a "EFFING" aside: my F key gets stuck, because I don't have ENOUGH EFFING troubles without THAT SHIT.) Ahem, where was I? Yea, so I introduce myself, and the mother (family of four, mom, dad, two little girls) tells me her name and that she's there to see Susan. Duuuhh... "I'm sorry, I don't know you." Geez, Louise, these people were clients of another supervisor's intern, who was graduating. They were in no shape to be "terminated," so I agreed to see them for her. That was like 6 weeks ago, and I had COMPLETELY forgotten. Of course I apologized like Brenda Lee. And then, as I told Jif later, I gave them 45 minutes of the best damned family therapy anybody's ever had because they went in thinking I was a freakin' nutcase, and I knew I'd better show them something. I therapized them all together, in pairs and individually. I don't have words to convey how mortified I was. My forte (back when I had one, that is), is putting people at ease immediately. And here I could not have made these poor folks more ill-at-ease if I'd walked up and slapped them on sight. SIGH. I think I got them hooked enough to continue as long as they need to.

So that's my sorry tale tail. What's up with you?

file under: &WTF Disease &Family &Work &Meta-blogging

Over the weekend, I received some emails from people who were trying to read "What Was I Thinking?" but couldn't. Best I can tell, people who use Internet Explorer have been barred from the premises. So, I'm posting this to say, "Hey, let me know if you can't read this." But how much sense does that make?

So how about this: if you're reading this in some other browser, but you have access to IE, will you check it out and see if that is, indeed, the problem? And then -- because while I am known to exaggerate every now and again, I assure you that when I say I'm a techno-dunce, I am being kind to myself -- and then, if you have any hint of a sign of a clue about what might have gone wrong or how one might fix it, I would welcome your suggestions.

I did request help from Blogger, but based on prior history with Blogger problems, the internet will be extinct by the time I get a helpful response from them.

UPDATE: I installed IE7, and now I can see the blog, BUT if I refresh it in IE7, it disappears again and won't reappear until I leave the site and come back. This may be a vast right-wing (left-wing? chicken wing?) conspiracy.

file under: &Meta-blogging

Sunday Post ~ "...hope is a revolutionary patience...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

Isaiah 43:18-19

file under: &Sunday Post