On Our Way To Crazy

Charlie Brown is very important to my family. My sister has a bit of an obsession, and it’s just not the holidays with out the Peanuts specials. I particularly love the dancing scene in the Christmas special… I wish I could tell you my sister and I have never recorded ourselves recreating their moves, but that would be a lie.

Last night was a pretty crappy night, and today hasn’t started off much better. So, when I came across this video on The Most Awesomest Stuff Ever (which is the most awesomest blog name ever), I was pumped. Just try to have a bad day after watching this.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had new music that I’m really excited about. I’ve been buying a lot of stuff lately, mostly because of the fabulous Amazon MP3 twitter feed, but none of it has really blown me away.

But over the past several weeks a few albums have found their way onto my ipod that I cannot stop listening to. There are 3000 song on that thing, but I’m good with these 40 or so. You should buy them. You will not be disappointed.

1. Barcelona – Absolutes

About a month ago I was browsing the clearance section at the Gap when this song came on. Every time the chorus came around I would stop in my tracks and look up, hoping I would find the band name on the ceiling or something, I guess. When that didn’t work out, I googled the lyrics and found the song, “Stars” by Barcelona. After listening to that one song on repeat for days I finally downloaded the whole record last week. It is so, so good. I read a review that called it the record Keane should have made after Hopes and Fears, and that is exactly right. It’s melodic and flowy and has those building crescendos that make you sit up and pay attention. So good.

2. Jack’s Mannequin – The Glass Passenger

Aaron got me into Jack’s Mannequin a few years ago and for a while there every mix CD I made had “Dark Blue” on it. I love this kid’s voice and his piano playing and his lyrics. I had kind of forgotten about them until I sat down to swipe some music off of Aaron’s itunes and saw that he has a new record out. This one is particularly well done, full of gorgeous piano and sing-a-long choruses. My favorites are “Crashing” and “Hammers and Strings”.

3. Little Joy – Little Joy

My friend Julie gave this one to me. It’s a side project of one of the guys in The Strokes. I don’t know a lot about The Strokes, but I have two of their side projects (this one with Fabrizio Moretti and a solo album by Albert Hammond, Jr) and am completely in love with both of them, so maybe I should check it out. Little Joy has a folksy sound with kind of a bluegrassy twinge and it all sounds like it’s being played through a radio on a porch in the 1940s. It is gorgeous and fresh and fantastic and you should download it immediately.

We survived wedding weekend! Here’s what went down.

Thursday morning I packed up way more clothes than I could possibly wear in three days, rented a sweet Focus and headed out into the spitting rain down I-40 to Greensboro, NC. It was time for Alisa’s wedding and I did not want to be late. And by not late, I mean not by more than my usual half hour or so.

(Sidenote: I bought leggings last week. I wore them on my drive with a long plaid button down and I was so self-conscious every time I stopped that I almost dug into my suitcase for some jeans. My efforts to be cool are so futile.)

I pulled into my hotel with its hallway full of food smells just in time to turn around and run back out for the girls’ dinner and lingerie shower. I love a good lingerie shower… it’s one of the only places a youth pastor can get away with inappropriate comments and I try take full advantage. We made wine charms and told funny wedding stories and ate amaretto cupcakes. It was super fun.

Friday morning I got up and went to the nail salon to discuss yellow nails and R. Kelly themed wedding receptions. Got a manicure just in time to be an hour late picking Scott up from the airport and have the phrase “WATCH THIS HAPPEN” enter my life. We drove around for a thousand hours, made thirty-seven illegal u-turns and finally made it to the non-rehearsal dinner with the Hollands, Trey and Andrea. I had the most delicious chocolate chess pie there has ever been and visited Eugene Street, but I can’t tell you what happened there.

Wedding day! Susan and I got up, got dressed and got ourselves over to Kari’s house to help the girls get ready and ohh and ahh over mustard heels and leopard wedges. Then we drove to the church to ohh and ahh over flower girl dresses and leaf necklaces and work on our Beyonce dance moves before heading out for a quick lunch. And that’s where it all went wrong.

If I could take back one moment of the weekend, it would be this one. I have the most adorable pair of grey round toe stacked heels in the world that I had never worn. I’d put on my sensible flats in the morning, but thought I would put on my fancy shoes before lunch. BIG MISTAKE. Everyone always says you get what you pay for with cheap shoes. But what they don’t tell you is what those cheap shoes are made of – plastic and SHARP ROCKS. We ate lunch and headed back to the church where I was to begin my guestbook duty. By the time all the guests were seated and I made my way into the church I had lost all feeling in my toes.

The wedding was beautiful, of course, and Alisa and the girls looked fantastic. I cried where I always do at weddings, when the dad gives the bride away and during the vows. It ended, we got up and I limped and winced my way to the reception which was full of photo booths and crossword puzzles and seriously delicious apple pie. We had a great time, she tossed the bouquet, we blew bubbles at them as they made their way to the ice cream (!) covered car. I have never been so happy in all my life as I was when I finally pulled those sensible flats out of the trunk of my car and slipped them onto my feet.

After the party is the after party! (R. Kelly! What up!) These are the things you need to know about the after party: there was beer. There was delicious pizza. There were ex-girlfriend stories and Iranian boss stories and moldable plastic frames. There was a trip to the Sprint store (that was almost VERY embarrassing for me) and Target (who hates me) that included a “Conquest” singalong that made me laugh until I cried. There was moonshine and football and a big white fan.

After the after party is the after after party! Everyone cleared out and four of us sat around and talked until FOUR IN THE MORNING. Four! You guys! I have not seen four a.m. from that side in a thousand years. But it was fun and cathartic and enlightening and I didn’t need that sleep anyway. Even though when we left it was so cold outside I wanted to cry frozen tears.

Biscuits the size of your face.

I drove to Greensboro alone, but I got to ride most of the way back with Susan. Susan is awesome because she knows all the words to “Lovefool” and “We Danced Anyway” and she will unwrap your Dilly Bar for you on the windy roads and she knows what you mean when you talk about how much you love Jack’s Mannequin. We talked about old boyfriends and inappropriate crushes and whether or not it is a good move to put someone you know in real life on your list.

It was a great weekend.

Sometimes you work really really hard to plan a youth event and it all works out exactly the way you wanted – the kids have fun and bond and no one feels left out and all the details fall right into place.

But sometimes you work really really hard to plan a youth event and it all works out… just okay. You have some clique-y division within the group, there’s drama, and the details you thought would run smoothly turn out to be kind of a mess.

I had the second kind of event this weekend. Coming off of our missions camp, the kids were really fired up to put what they learned into action at home. So we started a program called Second Saturday, where the kids will serve in different capacities around town on the second Saturday of each month. To kick it off, we had sleepovers on Friday night before we all went out to the food pantry together on Saturday morning.

And it was… fine. The boys’ sleepover went really well, but the girls’ was pretty high drama. Lots of new girls and a pretty good dose of attitude added up to a big ol headache for me. The food pantry wasn’t quite ready for the number of kids we brought and we were done with everything about an hour before parents came to pick them up. The directions that got everyone else there in plenty of time somehow got me so lost that someone had to come get me and my 6th grade girls. I was dealing with drama drama drama right up until the last parent car pulled out of the parking lot.

Lots of good stuff happened, too, of course. The girls in my car were all first-timers and we had quite the adventure together. The kids brought a lot of food to donate to the pantry and were able to get some big projects done for them. We spent the last hour at the food pantry playing games in the parking lot and it was a blast. But I wanted so much for this weekend to be a homerun, and it just wasn’t. And I know that it’s okay, and that in reality no one really knows about the issues but me. But I know. And I don’t like it.

I love love love my job. I love that carving pumpkins and making up silly songs and stealth hugging are all things that I get paid to do. But sometimes it really wears me out. I hate working so hard and creating so much build up and energy only to be let down when it’s all over.

But the kids had a good time. They helped out. And we are working hard to make service just something they do. It’s something we really value and that can make a difference in a lot of lives, including theirs, for a long time.

And all of that is more important than how I feel about how it happens.

Jonathan posted this on his excellent blog today. It originally came from Rob Bell on Twitter. It’s a modern retelling of the beatitudes in 140 characters or less.

I really love this. It’s worded so well and really hit me in the right place today. I don’t generally like to just copy and paste from other places, but sometimes you need some encouragement and all your extra words just get in the way.

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Blessed are those who don’t have it all together.

The gospel is the counter-intuitive, joyous, exuberant news that Jesus has brought the unending, limitless, stunning love of God to even us.

Amen.

I am obsessed with redoing things these days. My hair, my wardrobe, my youth programming. I have bought both skinny jeans and leggings in the past few weeks. I don’t even know who i am anymore.

But my most intense obsession right now is my bedroom.

What I really want to do is add onto our house. Build a master bedroom and bathroom, a big-ish den type living room and some kind of laundry/mudroom. But since that costs lots of dollars and I have no dollars, redoing the bedroom is going to have to suffice.

Redoing is a bit of a misnomer… doing is more like it. We never really decorated the bedroom when we moved in. It’s kind of a mismatch of art, patterns and the blandest of bland paint colors that I just can’t take anymore. The bed is too big for the room, there is no storage and the whole thing has to go.

I want this room:

AB Chao has the coolest house I’ve ever seen. I want to clone the whole place and move it up to Nashville. Every detail is interesting and thoughtful and AWESOME.

It wouldn’t take much… we already have white bedding, so all I would need is the paint, some vintage-y side tables and a couple of great throw pillows. Oh, and some huge windows so that the paint doesn’t darken the room so much we can’t even see each other.

I get this bug fairly often. I overwhelm myself with design blogs and furniture websites and instructions on how to reupholster pillows and I feel the need to overhaul my entire house, room by room. I’m over the polka dot paintings in the livingroom. I want to turn the dining room into a library (and then the library into a dining room). I want to paint my bedroom Down Pipe and cut some big holes in the walls to make new windows.

I get stuck on the idea that something needs to change. For the first few years we were married, we changed jobs or cars or homes or churches every year. But now we are entering our third year with everything being the same. And it’s all really really good. Really. But I need to shake things up, and I think my bedroom is going to feel it this time. Want to help me paint?

Sept 1 – This video made its way into my life.
Sept 2 – Our fall kickoff cookout was great fun.
Sept 3 – Went to go see the Toadies for free with a friend. It was a great night for an outside show, even if the show itself kind of sucked.
Sept 4 – Aaron went out of town and I watched Post Grad and two Kate Winslet movies.
Sept 5 – The band played for 60,000 people in South Dakota. I wasn’t there, but it was still good.
Sept 6 – Listened to a lot of David Gray.
Sept 7 – Labor Day cookout with good friends. Almost killed myself on a trampoline.
Sept 8 – I packed everything I own for a three day trip to Florida.
Sept 9 – We saw a really sweet mullet on the airport shuttle.
Sept 10 – I spent most of the day by the pool.
Sept 11 – I spent half the day by the pool and the other half at Universal Studios watching the band play and riding crazy roller coasters.
Sept 12 – We got to sleep in at the hotel and eat Dunkin Donuts.
Sept 13 – We had a potluck lunch for youth families after church and it was fantastic.
Sept 14 – Happy birthday, Mom!
Sept 15 – Homemade thai peanut noodles. So delicious.
Sept 16 – Rainy day. Canceled meetings. Work from home in pajamas.
Sept 17 – Acafellas entered my life.
Sept 18 – Super fun girl date with Susan to Mad Platter and WICKED!!
Sept 19 – Sold the last of our old furniture on craigslist.
Sept 20 – I wore real shoes for the first time in ages. Fall is on the way.
Sept 21 – New David Gray record!
Sept 22 – Our local NPR station went to all talk during the day. Excellent for all the afternoon driving around I do.
Sept 23 – Our first Wednesday night with new programming was successful.
Sept 24 – Glee made me laugh so hard I cried, then made me actually cry.
Sept 25 – Spent the afternoon at the movies with Anna Wintour.
Sept 26 – Date night – It Might Get Loud and Zumi Sushi. Excellent.
Sept 27 – Care group! At someone else’s house! That we didn’t have to clean!
Sept 28 – I cleaned out a bunch of attic boxes and found a lot of awesome and embarrassing things from high school and college.
Sept 29 – Great meeting about volunteering at the church.
Sept 30 – Successfully helped one of my kids with his geometry homework. I can’t believe that stuff was still in my head.