A tribute to my mother (That she will never read)

Hello.


Yes, it is a Sunday today. A day of rest, a day for spending time with friends and family, and of going to church.

And yet I found myself in Delta Gama Sorrority where I served brunch for a total of 120 sorority girls and their mothers. We made cucumber, egg salad and chicken salad tea sandwiches along with chocolate dipped Strawberries and lemon bars. Everything looked beautiful.

Yes, everything looked beautiful including all of the Sorority girls and their mothers as they flooded the dining room with every kind of aroma of every kind of perfume known to man, fancy frilly dresses, mounds of makeup and their noses turned up at the sign above the dish bin that states: "please rinse your own dishes." (This is a sign that was put up to help alleviate the amount of crusty dishes that appear in mountain sized stacks in the morning that take an hour a piece to wash because of whatever was left their the night before that they did not rinse off their plate.)

As usual at work, I silently observe the madness around me as I frantically attempt to get all of the food in it's proper place at the proper time. This morning I came to a different understanding of the sorority girl life.

I want to talk about their mothers. The mothers who probably all drive BMW's and wear suits to work and call themselves career women. The kind of mothers who are driven to make money so that they might give their children the luxury of paying for their college expenses along with their sorority membership so that they can get fed every meal without lifting a finger, and their house will be spotless all the time due to the relentless work of Mindy, the house cleaner.

These are the kind of mothers who want the best for their daughters- the best kind of food the best kind of luxury, the best that all this material world can give them.

Well, I'll be darned, I love my mother the best. I think about her: the mother who never held a job, who worked hard all her life for things that money cannot buy. The mother that barley wears makeup except for special occasions, who has a beauty that is more deep and rich and meaningful than makeup and fine things can bring. She is the woman who'se hands have been withered by years of creating beautiful pieces of art; the same hands I remember often being covered with flour and kneading dough.

She is the mother who quietly waters her lawn, bakes cookies, and rides her bike to the seaside to sit quietly by herself to think and just be, who drives a 1997 Ford explorer and shops at thrift shops, who loves sitting and talking for hours with her family.

Every pain I have felt because of my mother has been a profound experience that has caused my life to be richer and deeper and more meaningful. (I feel this way about alot of different types of pain I have gone through, but for now I am just speaking of my mother).

I think about these sorority girls and whatever pain they might feel inside toward their mothers. They have one great thing that is different than I have had in my life: They can cover up their troubles with money.

During my stormy adolescent years, I had friends, I had other family, I had God and church. I did not have money.

I am not sure how to end this, except to say that my mother is by no means a perfect person, but I came to realize today how grateful that I am that I have the one that I do. And that I hope that people with money can find meaningful ways to spend it.

Grrrr

Hi.

After three years of silence in the painting arena of my life, my friend from college has asked me to paint him a real painting. I am now staring mortified at this piece of wood that is to become something beautiful, or rather powerful and spectacular. (He asked me to do something having to do with the resurrection of Jesus.) It seems as though I have lost all capabilities to paint. I am waaaayyyyyy out of it. Like totally out of it! I have to paint this, because the money he paid me was the last bit I needed to buy my camera lens. (Which I have really only had the chance to use one time to shoot a married couple in an orchard). So.....Pictures to come, eventually!


I just needed to vent about this and the computer was on, and my man went to the bank to deposit a bunch of checks into our banking account. I am going to go now.

Bye Bye!

Camera Lens

I should be receiving my new Canon 24-105 L lens in the mail today. I am so excited that I feel like staying home from work just to wait for its arrival. I have been saving up since October of 2007 for this very day. It was the scariest thing in the world to spend that amount of money on one thing.

Anyway, I don't usually enjoy subjecting people to these types of ramblings, but I am excited about something new, and very useful to me and I can't hold it in. That's why I turned the computer on to share about this phenomenon.

Dear Dear reader

Isaiah and I have decided to join the teachings of herold camping.......Okay well Isaiah just told me that I musn't say this because random people might look up his website and believe that we have gone nutty. I was merely trying to make a joke of somesort....... But I guess he is right, not everyone in the whole world will understand my humor on a blog.

Anyhow, Harold believes that the lord Jesus Christ is going to return to collect his redeemed on October 11, 2011. The only problem is that his redeemed are the ones who follow the radio station "Family Radio" which in turn follows a strict interpretation of biblical understanding to which only Harold can translate. To top it all off, he believes that all churches are not really Christian and that we all have to abandon them and follow the radio station only.

Anyway, I think Isaiah doesn't know why I am writing this blog. He wants me to get off the computer, and he is letting me know by reading his comic books. I should go now. It has been fun writing this and all, but sometimes the husband just needs a bit of attention at times when you want to write a blog, and you have to recognize what's really more important.

Snow Day in Eugene

Oh no here they come again!

Don't worry Baby, Mamma will protect you from those scary men.
Maybe we'll run away and join those hitch-hikers over there.

But then again there is a scary homeless man waiting on that bench near the hitch-hikers. Oh wait, that's Jo Anna's husband!


Wow, it looks like he is leaving anyway. He is getting into the car with the early 90's due. (the one where African Americans shaved all sides of their head and only had poofy curls ontop.)

Eugene in January?

The Library

As odd as it may seem, I actually love the library. I
should hate it. No, I take that back, I should
despise it, after my two years serving in the
university library system during my college studies I
should have some sort of unplesant feelings that rise
out of me. At that time, I believed that I had
actually died and been sent to the purgatory of green
science scholarly journals.

My job was to put them in their place.

I am not exaggerating: It took over a century to walk
from one end of the third floor of the Dirac Science
library to the other. Rows and Rows and Rows and Rows
of eternal green books that were forever waiting in
silence, for someone to come and open them up and
uncode their ecryptic scientific messages. Blech.

I remember walking up and down Isle after Isle not
quite sure why the call number had suddenly changed as
I realized that there was no place for it and I had
read the number backwards after looking for the number
over and over again in the shelves. I hate numbers.

Anyway, mind you this was only the third floor. There
were two other floors in which I was required to
conquer. ADD patient VS. Deslexia in my brain.
Panic overcomes. I start to daydream. My favorite
game was taking the carts and pretending that they
were grocerie shopping carts and that I was given 5
min to get anything I want for free. I think I
planned my entire wedding, future house decor,
thesis's for my art history papers, what I would do
if boogie men came into my house and I had to jump
them and many other things.

That is what gave me a ray of hope in the endless
tunnel of darkness of the Dirac Science library.
That, and frequent visits by Russell Brun who would
come late in the evening and not even looking to make
sure that no one was watching jumped on the book carts
and had me push him around like a kid and laughing
giddily. I was amazed at what a little laughter could
do.

Then there were the days when I would sneak down to
the bottom floor which is where I found endless rows
of cookbooks and photography books that I found
entirely too wonderful. I found books on every kind
of way to make just about any kind of food imaginable.
If anyone knows me well, they ought to believe that
what actually happened was that I went from purgatory
(on the top floor) and someone (bless their soul)
prayed me out of purgatory and now I am in Joanna
heaven

Then there were my co- workers