Me too God

Despite singing it my whole life, I think this song is just starting to sink in:

Just as I am, without one plea

But that Thy blood was shed for me

And that Thou bidds't me come to Thee

Oh Lamb of God, I come

Just as I am, thy love unknown

Has broken every barrier down

Now to be Thine, yea Thine alone

Oh Lamb of God I come, I come

I think those of us more concerned with rules than risk, while spared some ugly consequences of our actions, take a while longer to feel the gifts of grace, mercy, and unconditional love.

(Just As I am Am - Public Domain - written by Charlotte Elliott and William Batchelder Bradbury)

Monday morning struggle

There has been some concern that my blogging would be missing the seeming lack of linearity that comes with being around me in person. This post will most likely prove that to be very wrong. It’s a Monday morning, and despite actually waking up and getting out of bed at a decent time today (quite the accomplishment!), I’m having a bit of difficulty getting started. So, I’m getting the random thoughts out to make way for the true genius ;-).

First off, the swine flu. I am very concerned and intrigued, but agree that we shouldn’t panic. I gotta say, it does kind of make me finally want to publish that dissertation of mine…

Other random thoughts:
How come the best hairdo’s are those that girls just throw together to put on their make up or do housework? And, how come those are almost impossible to replicate intentionally? Particularly once you put hairspray on them to make them stay and they lose all appearance of being natural? Furthermore, how come these are most easily created with the clips that we don’t wear out in public?

How come nails have to come through on our high heels? What working woman has time to go get her heels repaired all the time? And, I work in a building with a tile floor, so I have to submit to making the nail clicking noises all day, and listen to the same noise being made by all the other women that don’t have time to take their shoes to the one shoe repair place in the whole town (although, the nicest people ever work there!).

I am very intrigued by the conversation our housekeeping staff was having while in my office and outside my door. Evidently, one of them has come to work drinking today. And they all know it and can’t believe she thinks she hides it. And, supposedly, it’s all because of that no-good man. Of course it is…

Final random thoughts of the day: I’m excited for the UA guys in the NFL draft, I’m jealous that my boss is spending the week at space camp, and I’m very thankful for reminder calls from the dentist (cause like I remember an appointment I made 6 months ago!)

The picture is one of the views from my family’s farm. Saturday was a gorgeous day, and I just love being outside there. It may be in the middle of nowhere, but it sure is pretty :-).

Snazzy New Kicks

I inherited a love of sneakers from my father. Loud and proud. A basketball pro and historian, he relished in the first time I asked for a pair of Chuck Taylor’s, and I haven’t known many years of life without at least one pair of Converse. In the late 80s/early 90s, he fostered my healthy appreciation for high-tops, which have starred in some significant life-moments, as I will detail here.

I grew ridiculously fast as a child. Particularly in grades 3-5, there were shoe sizes that I skipped over completely. One day when I was in 5th grade, while getting ready for a family work-related event, my dad realized I was wearing some pretty rough shoes. Of course, this would not do, so he told my mom we were going on an emergency shoe run and he drove me straight to the old Hibbits in Birmingham. We get there, and the sales girl asks what size I wear, and neither one of us have a clue. She sizes me at a 9. The soon to be discarded shoes were a 7, and I had long been frustrated that the other tallest girl in my class wore a 9 and I wasn’t there yet, so I was secretly thrilled. We came out of the store with me wearing some super-duper awesome bright red high-tops. Bright red as in – the entire shoe was red. All of it. Upon seeing this, my mom momentarily started a revolt, but then quickly surrendered. And this is how the father/daughter sneaker shopping began.

A couple of years later, my family moved to Virginia. After being there a couple of months, Daddy and I went to get me some new shoes. We came back with some really awesome black and white basketball shoes very similar to the ones pictured in this post. By this time, I was wearing a women’s 11, and so we succumbed and bought some cool shoes in a boy’s size, no big deal, right? Wrong. In a land of military kids wearing matching surf shop t-shirts I was already an anomaly, so showing up in the hottest guys high-tops didn’t help. I had lost count of the number of jokes and giggles at my expense by the end of homeroom the first day. Finally, one of the top JV football players and most popular guys (that picked on me relentlessly through junior high, but also stood up for me), walked up in front of the whole class and said in the most genuine, not-mocking, letting everybody else know where he stood way, “I really like your shoes. Those are cool.”

I didn’t get as much wear out of those shoes as I normally would, because I was already weird enough in junior high and because it made me sad that a great moment with my dad had been tarnished.

A friend recently saw a girl on the quad rocking some high-tops with skinny jeans and looking all the rage, and he said that made him think of me. That made me smile. Last night, outside the Jupiter, I saw a whole group of college girls wearing different-colored fun high-tops with their sundresses. That made me smile too. Maybe I was just ahead of my time, but I love that current girly-girls are styling the basketball shoe of the early 90s.

Last night, the same friend also asked if he was too old to wear his Chucks. As the current owner of 2 pair, I have wondered this myself. Are they a timeless classic or a trend that you shouldn’t wear more than once in life? But, given my history and my dad as a role model, I have decided to never again deprive myself the joy of wearing a good sneaker that makes me smile. Who cares? I have seen my dad contemplate a trendy new pair of basketball shoes and then buy them, wear them to work with khakis for Friday casual day, and have “cool kids” stop him and ask him where he got them with nothing but respect in their eyes. (Granted, my dad is cool. He just is.) I fully expect my dad and I to be shopping for sneakers when he’s 80, and why shouldn’t we? He will always have them. I will always have them.

I’m proud to say that my current Nikes are rocking some great sparkly silver laces. :-)

Hmm...let's just see...

I’ve recently (as in – the past day and a half) considered whether or not I should write a blog. I have some friends that have rather smashing blogs, some that I really enjoy and am inspired and delighted by. But does this mean that I personally should write one? There is a lot to consider here. Including:

Do I have anything worthwhile to write about?

Is it anything anyone would want to read?

Would it make sense, or just be more of my quadriplegic ninja stories (which is not offensive – promise! Just confusing)?

Would it be overly cliché Southern?

In this time of anyone rarely having a true opinion, or feeling like it is safe to express it, is a blog really a good idea? Particularly since we are all dynamic and grow and change and process information. And will what I write here one day be used against me depending on what job or opportunities I may have, as all anybody ever needs is a small sound bite to take out of context?

Will mine be silly, fun, insightful, random, poignant, or all of the above? Or will it just be like the really bad attempts at good writing that are found in high school English classes across the country? I’m a little too old for teen angst, even if it just seems to have hit me recently.

Am I just adding to a self-obsessed culture?

Would I write for a week, and then never revisit it?

Also, despite the fact that I can babble incessantly, I’m actually a pretty private person. So, what does that mean when you put something on the internet for all of the world to read? I mean, I only started using facebook status updates as of recently and am a little afraid of twitter. I was the girl whose teachers forced her on the internet, and who only got on because my fear of bad grades was slightly higher than my dislike of new-fangeldy technology.

And, does anybody really want to hear even more about my dog?

On the other hand, I was a constant writer as a child. You literally couldn’t stop me. Where does that go and why? Why are some of us really unboundedly creative until junior high, and then it all goes kappoey? And, I really did have a for real published newspaper article for a few years, which people actually read, God Bless Them! Then there is that matter of having a slightly excessive amount of education and the fancy diplomas hanging on my office wall to prove it. So – maybe that qualifies me for a blog more than some random folks out there. And, surely it has to be less embarrassing than some of the things people regularly post on YouTube that they don’t even get they should be embarrassed about.

So - it is a quiet Friday afternoon. I felt the need to write and this came out. And, I had recently come up with a new autobiography title (a weird little thing I sometimes do for fun), so why not use it? I really got it from Kristin Chenowith's book. She ends it with the phrase "Life is too short, I'm not." Well, she and I have exactly a foots difference in height, so that phrase doesn't so much apply to me. And, then there is the issue that my life seems to always be having some kind of story or tale, and always true no matter how seemingly far-fetched. Why not use alliteration whenever possible? Oh, and I'm a girl. :-). So, there ya go.

Who else am I? Well, that's a long story. But, I know I really do have a thing for mosquito-borne diseases as has been evidenced by my interest this week in the latest dengue treatment discoveries, the spreading of the chickungunya virus, and the fact that tomorrow is World Malaria Day.

And I'm a Bible-believing Christian-conservative-kind-of-girl that never fails to spark up an instant friendship with a trannie. I can't really explain it other than I'm tall and we often go after fabulous shoes in the same size. And, don't we all need Jesus?

Other than that, I'm trying to see the beauty and make some sense out of the true guts of life. Patchwork families, beloved aging parents (my own and those closest to me), life-callings, and love.

I may have offiically become self-indulgent at this point, so I'll stop. But, we'll see where this thing goes...