Warning: May Contain Nuts

I’ve always been possessive. It’s just who I am. Once, when I was about three, I was at my grandmother’s house riding a little red tricycle. I had to go inside to eat but I was pretty nervous about leaving the tricycle outside with the other kids who might get on it. You should know that the tricycle was not mine. I hadn’t brought it from home. It was the trike that was always at my grandmother’s house, but I believed it was mine.

Once inside, the kitchen window was open and I could hear the wheels grinding in the gravel of the driveway. It was all I could do to not run out there and kick them off, but, instead, I crawled up on the step stool and yelled out the window “Hey you guys, off my bike!”

Later, someone painted my name in orange on the back of the trike and everyone knows, even now, that it’s mine.

It shouldn’t be so surprising to me that my blood starting boiling yesterday when I drove up into our carport. For over a year now Jud and I have had the same two parking spaces right outside our door. Our neighbor Stacey parks on the end. Jud parks next to her and then my car rounds out the spots. I have no idea what happens in the middle or on the end with the other people’s cars because I don’t need to know. They can park however they’d like, but spots number two and three are ours. Don’t get me wrong; we don’t have assigned parking. When we moved in, we just made sure to ask the landlord if anybody had dibs on any of the spots. He said that Stacey usually parked there by the dumpster but that the other spaces were available. So, we claimed our spots and no one had any problem with it.

Until, of course, some new people moved in. He’s a future DTSer and she’s a nurse. They live on the other side of Stacey (where there is street parking available in front of their door). They have one red car and one maroon car. They have a cat and sometimes we hear a dog barking from inside their place. We don’t really know them at all, but they are infuriating me. They’ve been parking in our spots.

I know. It shouldn’t be such a huge deal. Why can’t I let them just park their cars there? It’s not like they are assigned anyway. But there’s an unwritten rule. And that rule is not “first come first serve” it is “this spot has historically been mine and therefore, until you ask for it, it shall remain mine.” If they were to have a conversation with us about it and give some logical reason as to why they want the spot, I would acquiesce (shut up, yes I would. Maybe not with a happy heart or anything, but I would do it). It’s this passive aggressive stealing that’s driving me insane and I am not going to start a conversation with them about it. No way. They need to initiate it with us. They are the ones usurping our parking positions and they are doing it deliberately.

Yesterday, as I pulled into a different parking spot because the maroon one was in my place, I had visions of Fried Green Tomatoes in my head. Since I’m young and have just okay insurance, I contained myself. I may not be able to keep from containing one primordial yawp of “Hey you guys, outta my space!” or maybe I’ll just paint my name on the ground in a nice bright orange. Seemed to work well before.

Election time is around the corner, and its is extremely important that everyone gets out to vote on November 7. If you’re a Nebraska voter and need to register, make sure to do so before Friday.

With that said, I just want to encourage Nebraska voters to cast their US Senate vote for Pete Ricketts. I really do think that he is someone that would represent Nebraska (and the Midwest) in a much more honest manner. (BTW, Ricketts is financing his entire campaign on his own apart from the NE Republican party.) I really have no idea why Nebraskans have continued to support Ben Nelson as long as they have, I guess it primarily lays in the fact that Nebraskans are very loyal people. If nothing else, Nebraskans should seek to limit the ability for individuals such as Nelson (and Hegal for that matter) to maintain careers as politicians. Enough with my opinions on this, just check out the facts on Ben Nelson and that should say enough.

Just as a side note, Ben Nelson spoke at GU’s commencement in 2003. I have no idea how or why this happened but it was a disgrace to all of the graduating class of 2003 to hear a “go get em’ tiger,” “you can do anything you put your mind to” speech. I suspect that his speaking engagement was a sorry attempt on GU’s part to increase it’s clout with the elitist community of Omaha and in so doing hope to garner more community interest. I can almost guarantee that it was not because Ben Nelson is an model for Christian living (if he is a Christian at all, judging by his opting for a “moment of silence” rather than prayer) and I find it extremely distasteful to use people of prominence regardless of their integrity to represent your institution.

I don’t want to even get started on Texas politics. Needless to say, politicians here have multiple hands in multiple pockets and it doesn’t matter their party affiliation. In fact, I wish I could use my vote to go against certain individuals rather than for a specific candidate.

Yesterday at work, fourteen of us went on a field trip. Here is my report:

The field trip to ________ was fun. First we all got into the cars and got on a toll road. This was fine with me because no one wanted me to drive and I did not have to pay any tolls. We drove way up north, which reminded me of all of the trips we go on to see our family who live far away. I wished that the cars would not stop and that we would drive all the way to my family, but they didn’t.

Before we went to the _______ _________ we had lunch. Usually on field trips you have to bring a sack lunch and sit on the curb to eat your sandwich before you go into a museum or something, but yesterday we got to go into a restaurant. A fancy one. Chilis. The food tasted just like Chilis food and I didn’t have to pay for it because our class leader said “one check” and then we all got to order whatever we wanted. It was great.

While we waited for our food, we talked. I was sitting with two people who are from foreign countries (both countries are on the continent of Asia) and three people who are Americans. Somehow we started talking about how funny it is that we don’t call countries by the name they call themselves. One of the foreigners said she didn’t understand. I gave an example “like how we call it Germany but the Germans call their country Deutschland.” She is from a country in the far north of Asia and she was all “No. That’s right. In my country we call it ger-man-ee.” It took about five minutes for me to explain that her country calls them by a different name too. I was glad when my food came and I could eat.

After lunch, we got back into the cars and drove a short distance to the __________. We know the people who work there because they buy the stuff my company makes and resell it to other people who then sell it to end users. That’s a lot of buying and selling but that’s the way it works. We walked around and saw our stuff on their shelves and they told us how they find the stuff, get the stuff, repackage the stuff and then ship the stuff to the buyers. It didn’t take too long, but it was kind of hot in there and I was sweating. It was a good thing that I stopped on my way to work that morning to buy deodorant after forgetting to put some on at home. Now I have deodorant in my desk at work so that I don’t ever have to stink when I sweat.

At the end of our tour, some high up people from _________ came into a conference room to tell us how much they like us. It was kind of weird. Then they gave us bags of candy (I ate my Sweetarts right away) and we drove back to work. Lots of stuff had happened while we were away and then I couldn’t leave until late.

I’m not sure why we went on a field trip, but I sure liked those Sweetarts.

I’m obviously not updating this thing the way I have before and there are good reasons for it, the largest one revolving around the idea that I feel a bit more secretive about our life plans right now. We’ve been contemplating what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and where we’re doing it and all of those sorts of things that you probably would have an opinion about if I drug that laundry out in the open for you to examine. I’m just not so sure that I want a lot of opinions right now. All the voices saying all the things that they are thinking can really clutter up the mind and muck up the gears. Sometimes it’s better to keep your trap shut. So, in a sense, that’s what we’ve done. We’ve battened down the hatches and have gone to silent running.

But, of course, you know I can’t stay completely silent. It’s just not in my genes. There’s been tons of stuff to tell you about, but I just haven’t given much thought to all of these great things because of all of the weighty ones pushing them out of my mind. I’ve decided to brush off the cobwebs and let you in on some pieces of our life. The good pieces. The pieces for which we’re grateful.

On Sunday, we went to our church’s annual meeting. I was especially excited when I saw that there was a vast array of baked goods to eat during the meeting. My favorite little hotdog in a roll thing that Texans refer to as kolaches (or sometimes they call them sausage rolls, which I very much prefer given that the brief definition of a kolache is “a bun of yeast dough with a depression or pocket for filling, generally with a fruit jam” – yeah, not quite a hot-dog-style pig-in-a-roll-type-blanket) were there. I grabbed two of them. Jud went for some sticky buns (think Monkey Bread). The food was a great surprise.

The meeting itself was interesting as they were attempting to change, in my opinion, a rather important part of their constitution. Currently, all pastoral staff is voted in and out by the congregation. Sounds good. As someone who was on staff at a church and who was voted into a position there, I know how important it was to have the confidence of a congregational vote behind me. I knew I had a heap of people who wanted me there, who had confidence in my ability and who were pledging to help me succeed in my leadership. That’s important information. Had I been asked to tenure my resignation for reasons like impropriety or lack of performance or just sheer ‘we don’t like you anymore’ I would have done that. I would have resigned, if the board had asked and that would have been that because I believed (and still do) that the unity of the church family is more important than my job or my ‘rights’ or my anything. Any sane, rational person would agree to do the same. The only time when actual dismissal would need to happen would involve a nut job…a crazy person who would have slight megalomaniac tendencies. This person’s pride would be what forces a congregational vote upon their dismissal. It would be appropriate for the person’s nuttiness to be explained to the congregation. Apart from that scenario, there won’t be a congregational vote to remove someone. Normal people step down when the writing is on the wall.

The change proposed is for the supporting pastoral staff (aka all of them except the senior pastor) to be hired and fired by the elders without congregational approval. Made me shiver. We’re not members, so we couldn’t vote, but we prayed that the people would see the wisdom in keeping a little say in the matter. Guess we’ll find out soon!

After church, I went home to get my food ready for a baby shower. Hansy (of Martin & Hansy fame) gave birth to a beautiful little girl in August and we were finally getting around to throwing her a shower. I cut my tortilla-roll-ups, plated my cheese ball and made sure my presents were together. It was a little before 2 when my phone rang. It was Jenn, as I thought it would be, (she did the bulk of the shower planning and organizing and such because she is totally awesome at those things and loves to make things beautiful and does a great job of it too). I thought she was calling to say “I’m on my way, are you ready to decorate?” But she was really calling to say, “Where are you, crazy late woman! This shin-dig is at 2:00!” I’d thought 3:00. I’d written it down as three o’clock in my planner. I was an hour off.

When I got there, frazzled and feeling like a schmutz, everything looked beautiful (props to Daniel on the chocolate shavings for the trifle) and women were milling about nicely. I put the food out and joined the groups talking, trying to ignore the sweat beads on my back from the mad dash. The baby slept through most of the shower, but her big sister got up when presents were being opened and added a good deal of levity to the process. It was a lovely shower! I hope Hansy enjoyed it too.

As I pulled into the carport, trying to decide if it would be a bad idea to eat the rest of the cheese ball in one day, Jud came out to let me know that we were late, very late, for a football party with our Sunday school class. I suddenly remembered writing our name next to “Salad” on the “Who’s Brining What” list. Crud. Late again. In the same day. I didn’t have a salad made. I didn’t have the energy to get there. I didn’t have the ability to stand in front of more people and laugh about my mistake. My humor was totally gone.

So, instead, I went inside, changed out my church clothes, and laid down. It was all I could do.

I was busy. And tired. And possibly thinking of ways to call these in, because typing was starting to seem so old school.

But here I am. Typing. And not as tired. And about to give you some enjoyment from the week. Hang on.
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Last Saturday, when our little counter finally reached zero for the game, Jud and I held our breath together during the first drive of the NE game. We quickly exhaled when the points went up fast and the offense appeared to be clicking in much the same way as they had in the first few games. It was reassuring and warm and a bit like the smell of your grandma’s house out of sheer familiarity.

But then our hearts started to crumble with the pass offense and we were tortured for the rest of the game. What would go wrong next? Who would loose the ball this time? Are we going to pull out of this with a win? We were starting to loose our poop.

Overtime came and a touchdown scored and the world allowed those few puzzle pieces to fall into the right places one more time.

The Iowa State game has me sweating. I’m going to have to loosen up before it starts or I may pass out from the stress of it all. Don’t forget your red today!

[In other football related news, our stats for this site jumped up by a eleventy-million when a popular sports jersey site gave us a mention for this post. Here’s the site that gave us the traffic (control F and type in AHMO to see the exact mention), in case you are needing some tips on your sporting attire.]

PS – Today is the Red River shootout, which is literally just down the street from us. Although neither OU nor TX would ever rank in my ‘teams for which I cheer’ category, today I just can’t cheer for burnt orange. So, um, I guess, I’m hoping to hear Boomer Sooner a million times today. I know. I know! I’m sorry.