Music is a wonderful thing. I love how it can transport you to somewhere else, how it can somehow move you in a way much deeper than mere words.

So, I just have to say that while it is definitely a girly movie, You've Got Mail is definitely up there in the movie world. And I love the music. I'm listening to it right now and it makes me feel reminiscent. About what, I'm not quite sure. But it does make me happy. It makes me think of daisies and witty monologues about pencils and butterflies on metros and you've just got to love about a million things about that movie. Hmm....

Well, I don't actually have much to say, but I do think the guy who did the music, George somebody, is a genius, as is the playwright. Oh, I just finished the music. :-) I guess on to other things.

the cat sitter

It is strange, but it seems that over the past week I've become a bit of a cat sitter. Last weekend a friend (Julie) who was taking care of another friend's cat (the Tanzies) asked me if I could take care of the cat (Calabaza) until Bekah (another friend) got home to take over. Bekah got home and was exhausted so I offered to continue the cat duty.

That was pretty uneventful. I fed the kitty, cleaned the litter box, played with the kitty a little, borrowed some books (which were gems), found some very old and moldy coffee that the nice people who stayed at their house while they were gone had left behind (most likely because it didn't cross their mind that in two weeks no one else would likely be making coffee and clean it out).

So, Bekah left yesterday to go visit a friend for a week. Her cat Bailey somehow got a virus of some sort and she took him to the vet yesterday only to find out that he was really sick. So we took him again today for a checkup and to get some blood tested. Fortunately my friend Beth and her little boy (a year old) Lucas went with us.

We arrived at Bekah and Bailey's house, which was a bit warm despite the two fans going. We tried to coax Bailey out from under the couch, but then had to lift the couch and pull him out all while trying to hang on to a one year old who wanted to stick his hand in the fan, pull over anything heavy, or basically head toward anything that yelled danger. In a one bedroom, little tiny apartment that is not baby-proof finding danger is quite easy. So we coax Bailey out, Beth (my friend) inspects the litter box and smells the clump there to make sure she knows what it is. Yuck. We try to get him to eat or drink something, but to no avail. We took off.

Of course the first thing Bailey did was pee in the carrying case which we had to carry about 10 blocks (not really that far). We got there and the vet recognized Bailey from yesterday, but seemed to think his name was Baby instead of Bailey. I tried to correct him, but it seemed unimportant and a fairly lost cause. Fortunately the vet was nice and explained everything he did and fortunately Beth was taking care of Bailey while I entertained Lucas.

First the vet said that Bailey was fairly dehydrated and that it looked bad. He showed us his yellow skin and teeth to verify that he was sick and dehydrated. Then it was time to take blood. So he put this horrible homemade looking tourniquet on (which as I said before, it was a good thing that he was nice and explaining things because it looked odd). It was a rubber band synched tight with a clamp of sorts. Since Bailey didn't seem to care, I relaxed a bit. Then he had to shave the hair off the arm to search for the vein. (I'm thinking in the States that the vet tends to do this without you standing there. But it has been a long time since I was last in a vet's office.) He filled two vials with blood and then gave Bailey a saline drip, a shot of antibiotics, something else, and B vitamins. Bailey didn't seem to notice.

He then gave me instructions and some special cat food (which he said he probably wouldn't eat) and told me to try to give him food every two hours. Fortunately I live right around the corner and since Bailey isn't actually eating and I do have other things to be doing, I did it a little less frequently.

Tonight as I went back over after giving Bekah an update on her kitty, he actually came out (unlike the rest of the day where I had to drag him out from under the couch only to put food in his face and water too, none of which he would touch. I rubbed him awhile and tried to leave about five times, but couldn't seem to do it since he looked so pathetically lethargic and would meow when I tried to leave. If I weren't actually allergic to him, I might have spent the night, which I'm hoping my roommate might actually do when she returns tomorrow.

So that is the saga of the kitties. Hopefully Bailey will get better soon and my stint as a cat sitter will soon be over. I do actually like cats, but much prefer the cats we had growing up, cats that are healthy, and cats that don't make my throat hurt. And I would much rather take care of a sick person than a sick animal.

the rest of God

“Sanctifying some time adds richness to all time, just as an hour with the one you love brings light and levity to the hours that follow. To spend time with the object of your desire is to emerge, not sullen and peevish, but elated and refreshed. you come away filled, not depleted.

The Greeks understood. Embedded in their language, expressed in two distinct words for ‘time,’ is an intuition about the possibility of sanctified time. Time, they knew, has two faces, two natures. It exists in two separate realms,...One is sacred time, the other profane.

The first word is chronos... It is the time of clock and calendar, time as a gauntlet, time as a forced march. The word derives from one of the gods in the Greek pantheon. Chronos was a nasty minor deity, a glutton and a cannibal who gorged himself on his own children. He was always consuming, never consummated. Goya depicted him in his work ‘Chronos Devouring His Children.’ In the painting, Chronos is gaunt and ravenous, wild-eyed with hunger. He crams a naked, bloody-stumped figure into his gaping mouth. peter Paul Rubens depicted Chronos even more alarmingly: a father viciously biting into his son’s chest and tearing the flesh away, the boy arching backward in shock and pain.

Chronos is the presiding deity of the driven.

The second Greek word is kairos. This is time as gift, as opportunity, as season. It is time pregnant with purpose. In kairos time you ask, not ‘What time is it?’ but ‘What is this time FOR?’ Kairos is the servant of holy purpose. ‘There is a time for everything,’ Ecclesiastes says, ‘and a season for every activity under heaven.’ 

‘A time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot, ...
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,...
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace, (3:1-2, 5-8)...” (p. 36-37)



“The Chinese join two characters to form a single pictograph for busyness: heart and killing. That is stunningly incisive. The heart of the place the busy life exacts its steepest toll...

One measure for whether or not you’re rested enough... is to ask yourself this: How much do I care about the things I care about? When we lose concern for people,...when we cease to laugh...or weep; when we hear news of trouble among our neighbors and our first thought is that we hope it isn’t going to involve us-- when we stop caring about the things we care about-- that’s a signal we’re too busy. We have let ourselves be consumed by the things that feed the ego but starve the soul.

Busyness kills the heart... Busyness makes us stop caring about the things we care about. And not only that. Busyness also robs us of knowing God the way we might... other facets of God we discover only through stillness. ‘Be still,’ the psalm instructs,’and know that I am God’ (Ps. 46:10)” (p.45, 48, 49)

Excerpts taken from "The Rest of God" by Mark Buchanan

"The key to the joyful Christian life is having a clear understanding of who God really is.

It's not about me. I cannot fix myself...Only God can. Even my ability to have faith and believe God for great things is nothing more than a mere symptom of my view of God... What we believe to be true about God's character affects every aspect of our lives. God, and God alone is the issue." Forward to Discover God Bible Study Nº1

"He does not derive His power from any other source; all power has always been His and will continue to be His for eternity. Any power that we have comes ultimately from God." Bill Bright, Discover God

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of GOd was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light." Genesis 1.1-3

remember

1 : to bring to mind or think of again
2 archaic a : bethink 1b b : remind
3 a : to keep in mind for attention or consideration b : reward
4 : to retain in the memory
5 : to convey greetings from
6 : record, commemorateintransitive verb 1 : to exercise or have the power of memory
2 : to have a recollection or remembrance

— re·mem·ber·abil·i·ty \-ˌmem-b(ə-)rə-ˈbi-lə-tē\ noun

— re·mem·ber·able \-ˈmem-b(ə-)rə-bəl\ adjective

— re·mem·ber·er \-bər-ər\ noun
synonyms remember, recollect, recall, remind, reminisce mean to bring an image or idea from the past into the mind. remember implies a keeping in memory that may be effortless or unwilled (remembers that day as though it were yesterday). recollect implies a bringing back to mind what is lost or scattered (as near as I can recollect). recall suggests an effort to bring back to mind and often to re-create in speech (can't recall the words of the song). remind suggests a jogging of one's memory by an association or similarity (that reminds me of a story). reminisce implies a casual often nostalgic recalling of experiences long past and gone (old college friends like to reminisce).

a quiet sunday

I've been enjoying a few relaxing days after having had the stomach flu. And while I hate being sick, I love being forced to rest - completely. And since I had time (since I was supposed to be out of town) and didn't want to relapse, I did in fact rest well.

Since then I've been getting around to a few projects around the house, such as finally staining the dining room chairs to match the table - a dark walnut. The look very nice by the way. I've also gotten the desire to change a few things, to redecorate the living room and rearrange my room (which is going to be a challenge since everything presently fits perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle).

Some friend are out of town, so I'm feeding and taking care of their kitty. They have an amazing library, so I'm borrowing a few books. And since they return in a week, I need to get reading. One of the books I borrowed is a collection of C.S. Lewis writings, specifically The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Miracles, The Case for Christianity and Christian Behaviour. I just started the Screwtape Letters and was struck by a quote in the preface:

We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment. This, to begin with.

I'll probably add some more quotes here as I continue my way through these and several other books I have on loan from friends, or which I've been waiting way to long to read.

Another one from the preface, which by the way, is quite good:

Bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two motives. THe first is fear of punishment... Their second motive is a kind of hunger. I feign that devils can, in a spiritual sense, eat one another; and us. Even in human life we have seen the passion to dominate, almost to digest, one's fellow; to make his whole intellectual an devotional life merely an extension of one's own -- to hate one's hatreds and resent one's grievances and indulge one's egoism through him as well as through oneself. HIs own little store of passion must of course be suppressed to make room for ours. If he resists this suppression he is being selfish.

Letter #3:

My dear Wormwood,
I am very pleased by what you tell me about this man's relations with his mother. But you must press your advantage. The Enemy will be working from the centre outwards, gradually bringing more and more of the patient's conduct under the new standard, and may reach his behaviour to the old lady at any moment. You want to get in first. Keep in close touch with our colleague Glubose who is in charge of the mother, and build up between you in that house a good settled habit of mutual annoyance; daily pinpricks. The following methods are useful.
1. Keep his mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind-- or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.
2. It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very "spiritual", that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages will follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother - the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling form his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment's notice from impassioned prayer for a wife's or son's "soul" to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.
3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy - if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of that assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, that is easily managed
4. In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itslef by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but the tone of voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother's utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: "I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper." Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken....
Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape

In reading this letter, it is sad how close to reality this actually can be, in my life with roommates more often than i wish. Thank God that the Holy Spirit is present to bring truth to light and to bring about clarity of vision and conviction, so that while I am way too often blind, I do at some point see.

my bout with the stomach flu

Time for a story, although unfortunately a story with some gross details, so be warned...

The middle to end of July I went on the Camino and then went to the beach two days with a friend in beautiful Galicia, where my knee started to hurt excruciatingly bad. I'll have to blog about the Camino another time, but Maria (my olympic marathon running friend) and I went to meet her family at their beach "house" after we finished the Camino. We got there, walked along the beach a bit, which is just right down from their beachfront property, which is where they park their RV for the summer and have an outdoor sort of house, with an attachment, like a tent, for the living room (and guestroom), a little shed outside which houses the kitchen (equipped with a fridge, stove, sink) and then the kitchen table is outside in between the two, as is the grill. Not to mention that it all is up on a little hill directly above the beach. Nice. While we were on the beach the sun was warm, the water cold (but nice since the sun was hot), and there was a continual cool breeze. I wasn't ever hot, nor cold, just perfect.

So, we wandered around the coast (Rias Baixas) and enjoyed the beach the first day. We, of course, went for a run on the beach which was nice, other than feeling my knee a little and that my body had taken a toll from walking 10 days with a backpack probably a bit heavier than it should have been and from the last two days without much stretching and a lot of running around (literally) to try to take care of everyone else who was hurting. (At that point I felt just fine.) That night we went to another coastal town for some incredible seafood and then wandered around a bit in a beautiful little place that reminded me a bit of the grecian islands. The next day we took off for one of the islands closeby in Southern Galicia / Rias Baixas (still NW Spain) to do some hiking and then sunbathing. We started off just fine. I was a little disappointed with the vegetation, as I've been missing the lush greens of Missouri/Pennsylvania/much of the US, but the coastline was gorgeous with the crashing waves and such. We walked around, at the lunches we'd packed, went past a camp of kids on the island, and my knee started to hurt with a vengeance. I tried to just ignore it and kept going, slowing down a little. We then went down a somewhat large and steep hill. Fine, okay now I was limping and the pain really was excruciating. Maria asked how I was doing and I said not too good. Ironically some other people went by at this time and one of the guys said (obviously in spanish), "If you go to Santiago, don't tell me I didn't warn you." Maria then yelled back, "That's where she just came from."

So my walking is now pathetic. I'm trying not to put pressure on my left leg, but also not to make any quick movements. Maria convinces me to make it down to the beach below to put my leg in the cold water of the ocean while she goes off in search of some ice. It's a pretty rocky coast, so I just stop at the first pool of water I find, which only comes up to my calf when I'm sitting down, but it works a bit. Maria comes back with ice that we put on my knee, while she massages my leg with the remaining pieces. She also convinces me to take the medicine, since it is excruciating pain. (I'm not a huge fan of medicine, particularly when it's just to cover up the pain, or in this case when I don't actually know what I'm taking.) In fact I take two, which Maria assures me her mom does nearly everyday.

We stay there for awhile, alternating between icing my leg a couple times or submerging myself in freezing cold water, and laying out in the sun. It was a pretty beach. The other little glitch was that somehow in all our concern about the looming clouds and possible rain, and thus the rain ponchos from the camino, we had forgotten to bring a towel - not even one. So we laid out the bright yellow ponchos as our towels. That worked alright, although I still ended up a bit sand covered, until we went to re-ice my leg-knee. I was icing my knee and enjoying actually not having pain, while Maria was wandering around the rocks. One of the many seagulls began to peck at the yellow poncho. Maria went to shush him away. I was now laying on the nice cool rocks. Now the seagull was back with the poncho and now looking in my backpack. Maria ran back to shush him away, pack up the ponchos and came back. He was back once more, now looking in the bag for the ponchos. Maria made a pile of stuff so that he couldn't get into the bag nor see anything yellow. Pretty humorous.

We wandered back to the port, I'm actually walking normally now, careful, but normally, and thrilled about that fact. We make it back to the café alongside the pier, wait for our ferry back and head home. That night and then the next morning I take another pill of her mom's pain killers, thinking, "I just need to get back to Madrid and then can go to the chiropractor and get this taken care of." Both that night and then again the next morning it occurred to me that my mind was not as clear as normal and that I felt a little out of it. I mentioned to Maria that I thought these pain killers were pretty strong medicine. She didn't seem concerned.

They drove me to Santiago to catch my plane back to Madrid that morning and I got carsick on the way there, right as we get to the airport and I opened the door. It was a hot, poorly ventilated car with curvy coastal roads, no big deal. Not normal, but not to worry. Maria's parents scold me for not having told them sooner and I explain that it happened all really quickly at the very end. Her dad insists on carrying my backpack and walking with me in. I sit down and say goodbye. Later I check in and am noticing that I still don't feel 100%. I definitely feel nauseous, but probably just need some air, to walk a bit, some water on my face, something... I make my way to the gate, eat the lunch Maria's mom sent with me, read a bit, fan myself as I still feel a bit flush, and wait. We board the plane and all is well until about a half an hour before the landing, major turbulence. At this point, I start to think, "Dawn, you can make it, it's' just a little turbulence before landing. Just go to sleep." But the turbulence went on longer than a normal, turbulent landing. At this point, I think, "Okay, if I need it, I still have the bag from my lunch." Time passes, I ask the tall gal next to me to please open the vent a bit more to let some air come in. She can't seem to figure it out and I am fading. The horrible flush feeling starts to descend over me, I empty the bag of the tupperware and unfortunately throw up several times. I apologize to the people next to me. The turbulence continues awhile longer. The flight attendant comes by and takes my bag, which I then think, "Aren't you going to give me something else just in case?" He comes back, gives me three paper towels and hurries off. The kind girls next to me are saying, "Don't worry about it. Just relax." We land and of course it seems like an eternity getting off the plane. We get off and head to baggage claim.

As I wait for my backpack, I get a call from my ride (who I'd called that morning since I wasn't sure about hiking across town on the metro with my camino backpack, my bad knee, and the nausea). He said he was sorry, but he was locked out of his apartment and car and that his wife was far enough away that it didn't make sense for me to wait. It would be at least a couple hours before he could get there. I told him not to worry about it and that I would probably just take a taxi, which I mainly said to put him at ease.

After I got off the phone I found my backpack and walking stick and thought through my options... taxi, bus and metro, or just metro. Generally the second would have been my choice, since it's the quickest and easiest and cheapest of the latter two. But any moving object like a car or bus didn't sound that great in my physical state and since my knee didn't hurt too bad, I figured I'd try the long trek on the metro, even though it involved much more walking. I'd just go slow. So that's what I did and it was fine thanks in part to the smooth metros of Madrid.

So, I got home Tuesday afternoon and went immediately to the chiropractor, who was amazing, slept all day Wednesday, or almost, and tried to just kind of lay low getting ready for the Second Camino trip which left Sunday at 4am and weighing the pros and cons considering that my knee was still in a decent amount of pain, now without any medicine in my bloodstream.

Thursday I talked to my good friend Ruth who said that if worse came to worse I could just drive between places and see them in the evening, which sounded kind of lame. Time alone, yes, but not at all ideal for the camino. I met up with everyone going on Friday for lunch. They were super-excited about going and since they consider me an expert on the Camino the bombarded me with questions. We left and I went to pick up a smaller backpack and a couple other things from Decathlon, kind of like an REI but cheaper. We actually ended up going all together and it occurred to me that my knee hurt more when it was stationary too much time and that I felt more nauseous than before, particularly after eating. So I went home and after flip-flopping back and forth about a million times finally decided not to go. It was now Saturday and they had made me promise that I'd at least come over on Saturday night for awhile, even if I decided not to go. So, I grabbed my keys to leave and boom, I felt awful. Nauseous, weak, horrible headache, the works. I laid down, sent Ruth a message, and despite wanting to go, ended up staying home. Yuck. The next day I slept almost the entire day, with flu-like symptoms, a hurting knee, aching all over, a horrible headache, nausea, etc., I forced myself to go walk a bit and to ice my knee, but that was it. That lasted about a day and a half and then I actually got hungry and began to eat again. And thanks to a great chiropractor and some resting, my knee feels almost fine and I am dreaming of running. (A friend told me to wait a bit, but I may try out a short run sometime this week.)