FundyNutter

And then her time in the Coast Guard started. The child in Shannon throve on the requirements and the regulations and the guidelines. By some fluke of the system she spent almost the whole four years stationed in the Seattle area working on the Icebreakers. She loved the work. Loved the isolated beauty of the icebergs they were sent to cleave. But, barring one dramatic rescue in her first year, the whole thing would be a most boring story.

She did fall in love. Because she was 19 and they served together. He was her commanding officer during the great rescue, as she called it. A family was ship wrecked on a small island in the Orcas system, Canadian side of the border. Nothing much to write home about at first glance. But the mother of the family was pregnant
and had gone into labor during the crash. A toddler had been knocked unconscious and the father had broken both of his legs. The coast guard was called in because of the extremely isolated nature of the island and because each member of the stranded family were in such serious and precarious conditions. They saved everyone, even the unborn baby.

The officer she fell in love with was tall and blue eyed and severe. He was young, maybe twenty-five but seemed like an older man. He took her out quite a bit that year. He showed her a good time but he didn’t try to compromise her convictions. And then he was stationed in Hawaii and she never heard from him again. She pined for him for a long time and wrote to her mom about it.

Dion was relieved that her daughter hadn’t been seduced by the unscrupulous military man. He was clearly a part of the uncentered dark that the government represented. “Guard your heart my love. I will pray for the right man for you. You will find love. But guard your heart. It is not your time yet.”

It was such an unsatisfying letter, so filled with weird Coushay Life Center-isms that Shannon tore it up and burned it in an ash tray. And then, for the first time in her life she wrote a letter to Jenny.

Jenny was thrilled by the letter. She showed it to all her friends. She had a new part of this kind and distant husband of hers. Some of her jealousy of Dion was quieted. For a few years she and Terry had tried to have a baby. As it would turn out, he needed to be home more to get her pregnant. Every time she would have been able to conceive he was in Seattle with Dion’s child. With his child. You never own a man fully until you have his child.

She carried the letter with her in her purse for a month before it occurred to her to write Shannon a letter back. That began a friendly correspondence. They exchanged letters every two months or so. Jenny learned about the isolated beauty of the icebergs and the nightlife in Seattle for Coast Guard personnel. Shannon stayed in the service an additional two years. She didn’t tell anyone why. But she couldn’t bear to go back home. Her mom still hadn’t left the seminary. There was no one to go home to.

In their correspondence Shannon learned about Jenny’s home town, a place called Clovis, Oregon. Jenny, Alex, and Sammy went there for two weeks every summer. Jenny’s family had moved to Los Angeles when Jenny started college. But they all liked to go back for vacation. It was hot and golden. Fields of ripe wheat swaying in the breeze. Free range cattle roaming aimlessly and content. A small downtown strip with a Mercantile, a Mexican restaurant, hardware store, feed store, library. It sounded quaint and charming. It seemed like, if Shannon went to Clovis, she could see her dad, her dad’s family. Maybe quell some of her jealousy for Alex and Sammy, the girls she assumed her dad had raised.

Shannon took her honorable discharge and her small savings. She bought a Jetta and drove to Clovis. Drove home.

That year, Alex made the cheerleading nationals and the small family went to Chicago. They went there instead of Clovis. Shannon wrote Jenny from Clovis. To surprise her.

Jenny was surprised. She called. She apologized to Shannon for being in Chicago. But although she apologized, she didn’t know what this girl thought she was doing. There wasn’t work or school in Clovis. Just a bunch of farms and Mexicans and mosquitoes. It never occurred to Jenny to say “Why don’t you come stay with us in L.A.?” Instead she said, “Why don’t you go to your mom in Edmonton?”

Shannon cried herself to sleep that night. Her landlady heard her and began to worry.

It was intense, the orphaned feeling that Shannon had. She didn’t want to be a trucker or a preacher or a teacher or a nurse. And her imagination stalled out there. What could she do? Anything. How did she decide what to do? The Mexican restaurant seemed lively the night she checked it out. It was a really nice place. She applied to wait tables, to make an income while she reassessed her life. To fit in where this stranger, this Jenny woman, had said she would fail. She didn’t hear back from the owner. She figured he felt she lacked the necessary experience. Which, she supposed she did. There wasn’t much about her life with the radio equipment, her time as a Coast Guard Communications Specialist on board an ice breaker that met the needs of a restaurant.

Shannon was still young, and though grieving, optimistic. She thought, a little time, maybe a year here in Clovis. Then Jenny will see that I can do whatever I set my mind to. And I can save some money up and when I leave I can go anywhere I want and do anything I want.

One night she ordered the correspondence course in bartending that she saw on TV. “Perhaps,” she thought “this will impress Mario Gomez enough to take me on in his nice restaurant.” And if it didn’t she thought she could find a bar somewhere near enough to work at. Every town has a place to drink.

Yvonne the landlady saw Shannon not eating; she saw her pining in her heart for family. She saw her staying in the house where she rented a room day after day. And then the package from the correspondence course came. Yvonne had seen those commercials too. That kind of scam doesn’t come cheaply. But all of this asceticism that Yvonne noted in Shannon wasn’t lack of means. It was nerves. And it was fear and it was the honest heartache of a young person who didn’t see anyone who cared about her success or failure.

Only two days after the bartending package arrived, Mario called. And a good thing to, as it had taken Shannon about half a moment to realize she had fallen for a scam. While it hadn’t been all her savings, it had been a few hundred dollars. Not a sum anyone wants to throw away for pleasure. Mario called and he told her what she needed to hear.

“We are really very busy right now and I will need you full time. I can only pay a little but the tips, they are good. You should rather work for me than another restaurant because I would like to train someone to do most everything, maybe not cook right away, but to serve is most important and I will teach you to serve others and to do well in a restaurant.”

His voice was beautiful, deep, resonant, and saying exactly what she wanted to hear. She thanked him and thanked him and was not once late for work.

And that was what Mario first loved about her. She was determined to do good work no matter what circumstances she was under. He saw quickly that she was a very good woman.

So many ideas, so little money for grad school!

I recently read Arabian Nights. It was a pretty standard translation. It was fairly old and was taken from the French translation. According to the introduction (and wikipedia) the French translation was the first that put these folk tales into a Western language.

I loved it.

The mysteries were mesmerizing. The stories seemed infinitely more interesting than Hans Christian Anderson’s faery tales. Perhaps the translation was just that much better than Anderson’s translation.

But really I think the stories themselves were what I loved. I would love to find a long version that didn’t skip any of the tales. So many of the mysteries went unsolved in the book I read. And yet I think perhaps they go unsolved on purpose.

So fairy tales. Yeah. Where is the thesis in that?

England and France were bowled over, amazed by these stories. The stories raced across the cultural imaginations like wildfire. They could not get enough of them.

Could they be blamed? Evil Genii, handsome princes, beautiful princesses, magic fountains, talking animals, people who became animals, instant justice for wrong doing. And then there was Sinbad. **sigh**. That Sinbad. He had shipwrecks, desert Islands with mysterious trapdoors, inescapable fate, riches immeasurable, giant deadly monsters.

What, did you say Lost? Indeed, no. I said Sinbad. But therein lies the Thesis, no?

It was clear to me after reading Arabian Nights, that the writers of Lost are a literate bunch with their thumbs on what gets people excited about stories.

I would love to get University credit in a Master’s program for comparing and contrasting Lost with Arabian Nights as stories and as Cultural Phenomenon. I would like to learn why people still respond enthusiastically to these stories.

Well that’s it. I can’t get to it this year, so If you are in grad school looking for something cool to study you are welcome to it. Just send me a copy when you are done. I would love to know what you find out.

“Do you like school?” Shannon asked her young stepsisters.

One said yes, the other said no. Shannon couldn’t remember which of the small blonde almost teenagers was which and so dropped the question. Similarly, no one taught Jenny how to ask on open ended question.

“Was boot camp hard?” she asked Shannon.

“Oh yes!’ Shannon said. Longing to be enthusiastic, entertaining. Family.

But Dion, she was charming as ever. She helped the time pass more smoothly. She helped people laugh.

“I should say it was hard! You had to cut your hair. I never had a harder job then getting you to sit down and get a haircut.” Her face dimpled, her eyes sparked. Terry laughed, knowingly, though he never participated in any kind of hair cut.

“When you went on Sailor Bill’s Cartoon Schooner, you remember, you were 6? I wanted you to have Shirley Temple curls so bad. First, I tried to do it at home, with my sponge rollers and my hair dryer. You were in your karate phase and with a very deft hand blocked every attempt to put a roller in your hair. So I ran as fast as I could to Aunt Suzanne’s salon. She got you in the chair and started to put the apron around you. You were sure she was going to cut off your hair so you kicked her! You kicked your Aunt Suzanne. I couldn’t believe it.”

And then, because Dion was a very good story teller and knew how to include her audience, she turned to the young girls and said, “Terry’s sister Suzanne is a very good stylist. But she has MS and walks with a cane. I was never more mortified in my life than when I saw my sweet tempered, darling six year old kicking a woman with a cane. The one person on earth who loved Shae-shae as much as mommy and daddy did having her cane kicked right out from under her. That day, I almost became a spanking mom.”

Dion didn’t find a new husband when she divorced Terry. She dated a few men, mostly from bars. As she had thought when she first loved Terry, a man as good as him was hard to find. Dion’s mother, still a force to be reckoned with, advised her that nice men aren’t found in bars.

“Men in bars are after one thing and that is not your security or well being. Men worth having in your life are not found among them. Those men who want the best for you are only found in church. You come with me on Sunday and you will see.” Lucille was ardent and adamant.

“Oh mom, we aren’t church people. What would I do with a church man?”

“You don’t “do” with a church man, Dion. You marry them.”

So Dion went to church with Lucille. At first it was just on the weekends that Terry had Shannon. Eventually she was at the Coushay Life Ministry Center as much as she possibly could be. Around the same time that Terry found Jenny, Dion found religion.

She spent her “free” weekends at conferences and spirit filled retreats. She spent her weeknights having experience quests to find the center of her balance. She was finally able to put aside her loneliness and start to seek her lone path. She forgave Terry for being away at work their whole marriage. She forgave him for letting her divorce him. And she forgave him for finding love again.

And she pitied him because he lacked all spiritual insight or drive for enlightenment. She found love at The Center. Love of the Eternal Spirit of Man, and love of Self. And she found a fine replacement for getting married.

She began to think and eat and breathe her new goal—to become an ordained Minister of the Faith. She was ready to go to Alberta where the ministry of the Coushay family originated. She would attend their seminary so she could serve others the way they had served her. She only had to wait for her one daughter to graduate high school.

Terry was up for Shannon’s high school graduation. But the girls were still in school so Jenny stayed home in Los Angeles with them.

Terry’s eyes filled with tears as his poised and gracious daughter walked across the stage. She had a gold scarf over her shoulders that only a handful of the graduates were wearing. So it must have meant that she was special.

He found her in the crush after the ceremony and swept her up in a great fatherly hug. “Good job Shae-Shae! Well done!” He kissed her on each cheek and let her go. “We are so proud of you. Jenny sent this.” He handed her a box of chocolates and a card.

“Thanks Daddy,” She grinned from ear to ear. Today Shannon was done with relying on people who were always somewhere else. With precocious maturity she looked at her father, was sad for him, happy for herself and glad to be free all at the same time.

“When do you hit the road?” He asked her. He didn’t love the idea of his daughter joining the Coat Guard. She tried to sell it as a way to save money on college. He told her and told her they had plenty of money for her college. And he was pretty sure he did. But the war with Iraq
hadn’t started yet, so no mention of danger could possibly sway her.

“I leave for basic training in two weeks.” She could hardly stand still. She wanted to bound around the auditorium with her friends, young and free and alive.

“Well take care. I’ll bring everyone out for your graduation from basic, okay? We’ll all be there.”

It was a funny idea to Shannon, to first meet the three other women in his life after they had been family for almost a decade. She laughed and dimpled and shone with the glorious freedom of youth and graduation. “Do that, Dad. That’ll be great.”

And then Terry got back in his rig to drive home. No stopping on the way as the fruit needs of the I5 corridor had already been met that week, on the Northern drive.

Dion and Shannon celebrated at Starbucks with hot expensive decaf bistro drinks and cheesecake from behind the glass display.

“I love you so much kiddo. And I am so proud of you. I can only imagine the amazing things you will experience. The travel and the adventure. You will remember to write to me?” Dion drank slowly from her coffee, enjoying the experience of being with her newly made adult daughter. There was so much to tell a young person on a night like tonight.

“Oh of course, mom. Of course. I’ll write. You think I won’t write just because, what? Because I’ll learn to shoot a gun?” Shannon baited her mom. She wanted to get the lecture over with so she could enjoy the rest of her night.

“I wish you wouldn’t honey–work with arms. I really do. I understand the need to follow your own path. And I pray that you will find one eventually that leads to peace. There is just so much aggression and darkness in the military machine. You write me if the darkness is too deep for you, please.” She would never stop fighting against the darkness on behalf of her daughter. It was the job of a mother.

“Mom. It’s the Coast Guard. I’ll be rescuing boaters. I’ll be…a part of the light. Don’t worry.” Shannon displayed her aptitude for the adolescent eye roll and deep sigh and she said this to her mom.

“Well. I’m just saying. I know I could get you a position at the Coushay Seminary in Edmonton
with me.”

“Okay mom. Really. Seminary is your stuff. Just let me do my stuff.” The coffee tasted burnt and the cheesecake was cloying in the back of her throat. Shannon never went to the Life Center with her mom and her grandma. She found the sisters and brothers who came by the house for fellowship experience embarrassing and strange. She hated seeing her beautiful, charming mother shuffling around with these effusive, jargon spewing, well…cult members.

The next morning Shannon made real coffee and sat down to her bowl of cereal. Her mom bounded down the stairs, dark hair shining, her whole body filled with the same excitement Shannon had had the night before.

She kissed her daughter on top of her head. “I love you so much!” She cried out.

“Oh mom.” Shannon shrugged but was delighted by the love. She was always delighted by affection.

“I love you. Don’t forget to write.” Dion dropped the keys to the house on the table. “Wish me luck?”

“Luck?” Shannon raised an eyebrow at her mom. She was pretty sure luck was a concept they didn’t encourage.

“Ahh well, I suppose even the most centered believer could use a little luck.”

“Well then, luck to you, mom. I love you.” Sat down her coffee mug and got up. She wrapped her arms tight around her mom. Four years wasn’t that long. She’d be out of the Coast guard in four years and have her mommy back.

Dion gave her a big motherly smooch on the cheek. Then she loaded her bags and herself into the Rabbit, top down. She blew a kiss to her darling and drove off North to her future. Shannon finished her cereal at her table in the house that was all hers for the next two delicious free weeks. It felt very good.

Those two weeks went quickly. Shannon had one big party with her friends from school and some boys got in a fight and broke a window. Shannon’s cool factor was greatly increased. She called her mom on the spot and got a credit card number to buy a new window. Shannon new she could get away with this. Despite her great excitement, Dion felt guilty for leaving her daughter. Kids had figured Shannon was just like them before, but the post graduation party with the broken window and the credit card number and no punishment whatsoever catapulted her out of the atmosphere. She was as close as they would ever get to a brat packer–all privilege and no responsibility.

Why WriMo if no one will ever ReaMo?

Here is the first installment of The Restaurante, a National Novel Writing Month novel by Traci Hilton. It’s the first public airing, so to speak. Content unedited though typos and general errors have been given a little attention. Enjoy.

Mario and Shannon had been friends a long time now. Most everyone they knew figured they were already lovers. But that wasn’t Mario’s style. And Shannon wasn’t interested in love.

In their town Mario was considered an expert. He was a successful business man. He had been a young entrepreneur. He went away to college and yet he returned to Clovis to open his restaurant. It was not many native sons who returned home after their taste of the city. And while Mario was not in the least a real native son in Clovis, Oregon his charm, good looks and success made most everyone forget that small detail.

He offered his insights into business, cooking, managing, building, and gardening to anyone who asked. And despite the failed marriage of his youth and his failure to win Shannon, he offered relationship advice to anyone who asked. And his advice on all these things was good. Advisors are many, but good advice paired with willing labor is rare. And for that Mario was a very popular man. Shannon hated to lean on Mario the way the rest of the town did. She hated to do it because she loved him. Because she loved him and she didn’t want to lead him on. At least not very much.

Shannon moved into town in the late 1990’s. It was shortly after she left the military but before she started Bartending School. The school was a correspondence course. Not much to brag home about, but Shannon hoped a step towards a more fulfilling future. With her mom away, Shannon was really at loose ends when she left the military. But everyone in town loved Shannon. She was so generally well thought of that it was agreed if she decided to leave the Military it was the government’s loss. And AWOL must have been the only course of action, if she chose it. “After all,” the town’s proud veterans of world wars said “It’s just the Coast Guard. And that’s hardly military anyway.” They said this with cagily, with shifty eyes hoping their friends and colleagues from the Coast Guard didn’t hear them. Shannon was just too easy to love and too hard to blame.

When Mario first heard that the big eyed ingénue of an ex-coastguardsman had sent away the last of her last paycheck for a correspondence course in bartending and drink mixing he was dumbfounded. She seemed to be the last person on Earth to fall for an old time scam like that. Without deciding to, he took her wholeheartedly into his life and his business.

He told Shannon what he needed was someone to wait tables and learn the business from him. He told her. “I need you now. Business is very good right now. Take this apron and learn from me the business of a restaurant.” And he took her under his wing and onto his staff at Mario’s Restaurante the same way he had added Bernie as a janitor and Yvonne in the kitchen. The Restaurante didn’t need them. But they needed Mario’s and they needed Mario.

Shannon couldn’t be called a dreamer. Her feet were firmly on the ground. But everyone who lived in Clovis for any length of time had some kind of other dream for themselves. Mario’s dream was of Shannon. Bernie’s dream was of a 20 acre place he could farm on the weekends. Yvonne just wanted her kids to want her to move to the city, nearer them and the grandkids.

These days Shannon had any number of ideas. She wasn’t in a hurry to pick one, but she mulled them over constantly. She could go to the next town over and buy the Bar. Tony told her he was tired of the business, wanted to sell. He just couldn’t keep up with the old place anymore. Or she could go back to the city. She had the GI Bill. Funny this thing, small town gossip. When Shannon didn’t tell everyone all about her years in the Coast Guard because, quite simply, it was mind numbingly dull, they all gladly assumed the worst. Shannon could do anything with that money. She could study languages and become a professor. Or she could study math and go into finance. She liked art and the idea of art education. Even art education in a place like Clovis fascinated her. Anything.

After her first month waiting tables and mixing drinks for Mario she started to talk a little about the things she might like to do. And Mario would offer back his sage and sought after advice. She started to look forward eagerly, for the conversations and the guidance, and the opportunity to be unabashedly self-centered.

After the second month Mario found his advice started to lean more and more towards things that would keep those big eyes and small hands in Clovis. Near him. And as you could imagine it didn’t take Shannon long to see that either. It is very flattering when someone falls in love with you, when that someone is the proverbial smoldering Latino lover it is more than flattering. It is down right polarizing. And so Shannon was still in Clovis. But she had never fallen in love with Mario, at least not that he could tell. She had been his part-time bartender and sole waitress for ten years. He had loved her dearly for five of those.

After work she spent many evenings at Mario’s home above the Restaurante eating amazing tamales.

“Shannon, mi Madre taught me how to make these and I will not teach you. I taught my wife. But she ran away from me and she took my recipe and my mother’s trust in me. I can’t teach you my recipe because all you talk about is what you will do when you leave.”

“I suppose I’m stuck here forever since I can’t get these fine tamales anywhere else. Wait a second, unless of course I find your wife and get the recipe from her.” Our Shannon, her eyes sparked. She loved his food and his friendship and didn’t hesitate to hurt him when he stepped over that uncomfortable line. “Anyway Mario. I can’t leave today; I have to go to work tomorrow. You worry about your tamales some other time, maybe when that boss gives me a vacation.” And then she wiped her fingers off one by one on a napkin that had migrated upstairs from the Restaurante linen closet.

She picked up her purse and put a kiss on top of his head, “And far be if for me to get between a mamma and her boy.”

She walked out the back and down the stairs to her car. Mario could feel the kiss on top of his head. Why did she do that to him? After all this time she made him crazy—almost like she was doing it on purpose.

Shannon drove the five minutes across town to her quiet street by the grade school. She kissed him on top of his head almost every night because she didn’t want him to fall in love with anyone else. And she hated the way his bristly, course hair felt which helped keep her from falling in love with him.

Shannon had one of the cutest houses in town. A 1902 original. One of the founder’s four room summer cottages “in the country.” It was a mere three miles to the south of the original Main Street, but the early days in town had been heady with optimist. It had a white picket fence and a steep roof. Like a misplaced cape cod, it had a center door nicely framed by two windows. A few years back Shannon had made a little investment in her home and exchanged her windows, the aluminum travesties of the 60’s for a nice pair or vinyl windows. She went with the charming nine pain style that matched the originals.

It was the kind of thing she did. Keep things nice. Put her money to good use. Her lawn was tidy but there were no family heirloom plants in the flower garden. No deceased pets out back under flowering trees. Just the careful upkeep you give a place when you are fond of it and want to sell for a profit some day.

It was, of course, quite a contrast to Mario’s apartment above Mario’s. His home had those lingering scents of frijoles and enchilada sauce. It had the décor—the flotsam and jetsam–of a man’s home after the wife left in a hurry. The carpets were still mauve and the sofa was still the rosy floral pattern. Though he hadn’t changed anything, time had passed. His bookshelves had gathered dust and screwdrivers and receipts. The coffee table had earned an impressive collection of water rings. And though she never asked, Shannon was sure the thing in the corner next to the TV was part of some car’s insides. It was an apartment full of man clutter but very good food and very good company. Mario was her best friend.

Shannon’s journey to Clovis had been well thought out. It was the culmination of a lonely but not uneventful growing up. Her early life had been a fine example of the norm of American tragedy. Just enough sadness to send you to therapy but not enough to set you apart from your peers. You may recognize the story. She was an only child and her parents divorced when she was seven. Her father drove truck for a Californian fruit company and was gone five days a week. Her mother was tired of being alone and decided to try again. To find a husband—and a father—who would be a real partner in her life. She didn’t find one.

Shannon’s father Terry was proud of his role in bringing fresh fruit year round to the children of America. He was proud of being a Teamster. He was proud of his smart and beautiful wife and his charming, talented daughter. He was truly disappointed that he had to divorce, but quickly found that it didn’t much change his way of life.

The friendly divorce terms allowed him two weekends a month with his daughter and as much participation in her life as he could fit in. So, as before the divorce, he came home to Seattle on the weekends. Two of those weekends Shannon would stay over with him in his apartment and the other two weekends he would go to whatever recitals and games and activities that were scheduled. He was quite pleased to find himself just as good a father after the divorce as he had been before.

Then he remarried. A lovely woman called Jenny in Los Angeles who had two small daughters. Terry had gained some seniority by this time, with his fruit company, and arranged for a route with two weekends in Seattle and two weekends in Los Angeles. And so Jenny and Jenny’s girls had less of Terry than Dion had had. But they were pleased as he made good money and was kind to them when he came home. He was pleased to find himself just as good a stepfather as he was a father. So Terry continued as always, a happy man well satisfied with his life, doing what good he could find.

Shannon loved him like you love a distant uncle, or Santa Claus. And she loved him a little bit the way you love a father. Or, like you love the father from your favorite classic story book. A fictional character you were proud of and wished you could have living in your home.

At her graduation from basic training, when she was 18, Terry, Jenny, the girls Alex and Sammy, now in junior high, and Dion all attended the ceremony. Afterward they celebrated at a pizza parlor. Shannon was glad to meet Jenny and Alex and Sammy. They had seemed as though they would be very nice and it turns out they were.

Dion had not found a new husband. But she had found religion and so was “at peace” and able to celebrate with her husband’s new family. The girls, Alex and Sammy, were giddy with excitement because they on vacation with their stepfather, a man they also saw as a friendly Santa Claus, almost too good to be true and mostly living in their imaginations.

I was reading Anne’s House of Dreams last night and feeling sentimental. I was sad that Captain Jim died and I was thinking fondly of adolescence and reading the Anne books for the first time.
My train of thought chugged onward to that precarious stage of late teens. The moments left to prove that you were Something Special were ticking away. Come an evening in May, with everyone in matching red robes, the rest of what you could accomplish in life might show you were bright, but you would never again get to be a prodigy.

My set of friends longed greatly for prodigy. The forces in motion in those days gave the wordy types of us a brand new outlet. A dream of recognition. There was a new big thing on the horizon that would separate the average from the special. It was the ‘zine.

There was a new place in town called Kinko’s and everyone had a personal computer. A teenager could type anything she wanted and cut and past it into a 5×7 booklet. The truly special could add their own pen and ink illustrations. Then they could drive to Kinkos and make copies. The average price for distribution was $2. With bated breath we hoped that our ‘zines would stand out in the crowd. That local independent booksellers would keep them on their counters. Or–could we dare hope–sell them from the rack with with other magazines.

Armed with a personal computer less powerful than the phone in my purse right now, a large and loud photocopier that lived in the basement of my parents house, a pair of scissors and scotch tape I was going to join the fray. My friend and I met in the room lovingly called “the dungeon” to hash out our own ‘zine. I wanted to call it Zilpah. A title that would show the world right off who we were. Young, clever, well read Christian grrrls.

My friend wanted to call it Purple.

Nothing wrong with Purple. But it made apparent the differences in out literary ambitions. My ‘zining was over before it began

The days when I could have been a prodigy slipped away. I mourned my lost potential as any self-centered teenager should.

My twenties are not much more than a shadow now. My husband has been classifying me with the “in their 30’s crowd” for two years now. (Guess how old he is?)

I was just wondering…is there a steam-punk ‘zine movement out there, fueled by sentimental 30-somethings and with their scissors and scotch tape?

I do not believe that God gives wealth, health, happiness or prosperity to people because they follow him. I believe that all good things come from the Father of Lights. And I believe that sometimes those good things will be wealth, health, happiness or prosperity. But not always. And they are not the exclusive property of people who praise God. Our Pastor’s email update spoke a little bit about this. But what makes me think about it right now is my impulsive decision to get a minivan.

I keep comparing this new purchase (and the Dave Ramsey disapproval that comes with it) to our decision as a church body to build a new building.

Our church leadership and congregation made the decision to build a new church for many of the same reasons we got a new car this week. The other one is old. (The church is ten times older than the car, or course.) The oldness means there are aggravating maintenance issues. Some of those issues are a real concern when you think about the building/car functioning for the next number of years. Both were too small for our projected family growth. Both keep falling apart around our ears. The church has plumbing, electrical, and design troubles. The car had electrical problems (fixed those) and design flaws. We can’t open the drivers side door of the car and it has already been “fixed” twice.

As a church we decided that God would and could provide our small, lower middle class congregation with the 2+ million dollars it would cost to build a new building. Two million dollars. And it won’t even have a finished kitchen or Sunday School classes. We all recognize that that much money is small potatoes to God, even the the most frequent prayer request shared is un and underemployment.

I am on board with the building because…I have to be part of the team. I am scared of the project and question the wisdom of it. It seems to me that a God that can give us lots of money can also make our hundred year old building last a thousand years. It seems to me just as easy to do the one as the other. And it seems a very American thing to expect the money answer and not the preservation answer. It sometimes seems like we are building the new building because the old one is just plain aggravation.

And speaking of aggravating, that was the old car. I was pretty impulsive, purchasing the minivan. I did it because I had had it with accepting God’s provision of my little car. It is a perfectly acceptable form of transportation for my family as my family exists right now. It runs just fine. I did not have cash to buy the car.

I am not foling myself and thinking “God gave me a good buy so I had to do it!” I don’t think, “God will always provide enough for us to make the payments on this car ’till it is paid off.” I do not think that a new car will make our lives better. It does make it less aggravating though.

I do think, “there will be things that we can’t do now, because we have a car payment.” One of those things might be pre-school for my daughter next year. Another is certainly the building fund. As a part of accepting that the church was going through with the project I had committed in may heart to give generously to it. I want to see it all-the-way finished. Are payment are comfortable, if not small. But they do cut into our ability to give.

I’m just processing the process I started. I am keenly aware of the irony that exists with my attitude about the building project and my jumping into a new (to me) car. I have five more days to make up my mind about it. But I am sure we will keep it. I am not sure that it is the wisest thing to do. I am sure it is the American thing to do. Wise and American don’t always go hand in hand. Wise and Me don’t always go hand in hand either.

I get all sorts of Me time all for myself. I get to sleep in (a natural consequence from my girls fitful sleep.) I get to read as much fiction as I want. I get to write as much fiction as I want. Or non fiction. Or blog. I get to spend hours online (it would be less time online but I suffer from dial up internet.) My husband is supportive of anything I attempt and believes that I can do anything I want. And he wants me to do anything I want. I get girls nights out, babysitters during Bible Study, and I have playdates coming out of me ears, and more playdates just waiting for me to initiate. According to woman’s magazine culture I have the perfect recipe for a fulfilled and satisfying life. Me time. And lots of it.

Yet I am not satisfied. I am very frequently exhausted, worn down, stressed, disappointed in myself, discouraged in my parenting and lacking a sense of meaning in life. I think the paragraph above makes the reason for my troubles clear. If I am stressed and exhausted and all of those other bad descriptors it must be because I have too much of something. I need to read through the above paragraph and highlight whatever it is that occurs to often.

I get all sorts of Me time all for myself. I get to sleep in (very important since the girls don’t sleep through the night.) I get to read as much fiction as I want. I get to write as much fiction as I want. Or I can write non fiction. Or I can blog. I get to spend hours online (it would be less time online but I suffer from dial up internet.) My husband is supportive of anything I attempt and believes that I can do anything I want. And he wants me to do anything I want. I get girls nights out, babysitters during Bible Study, and I have playdates coming out of me ears, and more playdates just waiting for me to initiate. According to woman’s magazine cutlure I have the perfect recipe for a fullfilled and satisfying life. Me time. And lots of it.

This paragraph seems to center all around on person. Myself. I am leading a very self-centered life. Self-centered and not so satisfying. I am doing things that are fun but not productive, and enjoyable but not refreshing.

All by myself it would be impossible to address and change my whole self-centered life style at once. Fortunately, I don’t have to do things all by myself. I have the Holy Spirit to guide and help. Praise the Lord because I need the help.

I was reading a book about mommy stress that brought this all up for me. One small section was about getting me-time in a busy schedule. I have the least busy schedule I know of and the most mommy time I can imagine. So I gave thought to the kind of mommy-time the author was suggesting. That was when I saw where I had gone wrong.

The way to heal my personal case of selfishness-induced-dismay is relatively easy. Especially with the writer’s strike on. (I pray the Lord will give me strength to continue once Lost returns on air.)

I sleep in to compensate for a broken night’s sleep. That means I get up when Daniel leaves for work, eat breakfast at the computer, shower while the girls watch Sesame Street and get a pretty late start on the day. Because I am cranky and worn down I don’t take anytime with God in all of that.

Even I can see that that is not the healthy way to deal with a stress I have come to expect nightly. I need to, and did for the last two nights, go to bed earlier. (That’s why the writer’s strike helps. Who wants to watch TV when nothing is on?)

Can you guess what comes next? I thought so. To bed early means waking up earlier as well. And waking up earlier means taking time with God, reading the Bible, contemplating it’s meaning and praying before I start anything else.

Most any fundy would tell you this is the only way to start the day. As a confirmed non-morning person I have always denied that this was necessary. But it is.

I need to and am convinced that I can, start my day off focusing on God instead of myself. We will see what this does to my ability to cope with a three year old, a one year old and a constantly getting messy house. I think it will make all the difference.

The author of the book I was reading would call getting to bed early and reading the Bible necessary me-time for a mommy. I think, in my life, it is important to make a differentiation. Getting to bed early is healthy me-time, yes. Making time for the Bible and prayer is God time. And I need it.

Today at Life Group we are discussing Chapter 21. Oh yes. We finally made it all the way here. Everyone is nervous and edgy, even the group leader. One couple would have been thrilled to elucidate us on the topic but they have a new baby and are sleep deprived. They are the only ones who were looking forward to it and they may not make it.

Early on I said I would just stay home for Chapter 21. For a while I thought maybe I’d be up to discussing it. But no, I can always trust my first reaction. There is no way I could possibly participate in a discussion of Chapter 21. There are just some things nice girls don’t do.

I knew I wouldn’t have to twist his arm, as Daniel no more wants to sit there with all of our friends and talk about Chapter 21 either. That’s none of their business. And frankly, I don’t need to think about their Chapter 21 either.

The church Daniel’s boss goes to got into a lot of heat in the neighborhood and the media for their sermon series on…well, Chapter 21. I don’t think the sermons were considered inappropriate. But nobody liked the big sign on the main road near the High School that said umm…Chapter 21 in five foot letters. And can I blame them? No. I wouldn’t want to drive my kids to school past a big fat Chapter 21 sign either.

Some people think my aversion to Chapter 21 is a kind of hypocrisy. To them I can only say this: All of my jokes and such on the topic are firmly rooted in an adolescent level of immaturity brought on by discomfort at the topic. So there.

Oh, jeesh. I just realized that I am leaving you a little in the dark. The Chapter 21 I am referring to is in Covenant Marriage by Gary Chapman (not the Gary Chapman that Amy Grant abandoned.) It’s a reasonably good book if you over look things like Chapter 21 and the wooden dialogue he uses in his example situations.

We will be boycotting group tonight. I plan to spend the newly freed time making Christmas tree ornaments for my preschool Sunday Schoolers. Daniel, frankly, may be hoping to get some Chapter 21. And that’s fine. As long as I don’t have to tell anyone about it afterwards.

For most of the last few years (how is that for precise?) Daniel, who is both my husband and the one who came up with the name fundynutter, has been teaching at the community college. He only teaches during the fall. If, as a teacher, you were to pick one quarter to teach, the fall is the obvious choice. You set the tone for the year. You don’t have to be aware of what the last teacher taught. For his program he doesn’t have to coordinate the first half of the huge two-quarter student project. Or the second half of it either.

But for the wife of the teacher it is not the best quarter to teach. Prep begins in August and fills up September, the two prettiest months in our region. Classes take up one of his days off every week all the way up to Christmas.

I’m not all together thrilled with any three month period where Daniel works six day work weeks. But I am especially not in love with it during the few weeks before Christmas.

The reasons are probably obvious. I’d like to share them anyway. Sometimes a girl needs to share.

1. It gives me only the evenings after a long day with the kids, in the dark and rain, after feeding them, cleaning up the mes and putting them to bed, to go out and shop for Christmas gifts for them.

2. I have to take the kids all by myself to all of the family and church holiday festivities. This has been going on long enough now I wonder if my cousins might be worried about our marriage.

3. It gives us Sunday afternoon, after church, lunch, and the baby’s nap (so around three o’ clock in the afternoon) to do any kind of family holiday fun. And of course about three o’ clock is when Miss Three Years Old gets tired and cranky.

4. All of the above and the pathos of most Christmas music work together to make me lonely.

It feels good to get that off of my chest.

So good, in fact, to give my complaints a permanent place in the universe, that I feel like counting my blessings.

1. A husband who has work.

2. Two healthy kids I can buy gifts for.

3. A family that gets together for holiday events every year.

4. A church that teaches the Truth.

5. A bunch of girlfriends at said church who understand and listen and keep me company when I am lonely.

6. A bunch of on-line girlfriends who understand and listen and keep me company when I am lonely.

7. A couple of girls who cross over from online girlfriends to friends in my home.

8. A Savior who descended from unimaginable heights to the lowliest of lows, becoming a person so that I could become his friend. So that I wouldn’t have to live eternally separated from Him. That’s a love story more romantic than meeting Daniel.

I feel this lonely when I only get one day a week with Daniel–and all the hardest thing I ever did for him was deliver his babies. It may be beyond trite, but it brings to mind how lonely my Savior who gave up glory in heaven to live in the hot and terrible desert, die in shame on a cross, and then raise again to be rejected over and over by his creation, must feel when I only give him one day a week.

So this post is sort of rambling and will probably be edited more than once. I am thinking of ending it with some scripture and thoughts on what it means to have the Holy Spirit here as our comforter. But I need to go back and read and think on it some. I don’t want to talk about it lightly, as I think God was trying to teach me something as I wrote this post.

And now must fulfill my obligation by sharing 7 unusual facts about myself.

1. I’ve slept in more churches that I could count on my fingers. Churches in two states and four countries. I am a church sleep-over fool.

2. I have a love hate relationship with O. Henry. I love him because of his inventive use of language and his pursuing literature outside of the academic world. I hate him for his racism and his use of racial stereotypes to further plot. And yet, can he be blamed? It was the world he lived in. And yet, the world as a whole was wrong, so we should blame all of them. Which I do. And yet I love it. The twists, the predictable unpredictability. The lovable rogues.

3. Robin Hood is my favorite Disney cartoon. And yet if I watch it one more time I might go brain dead, as it is currently one of my 20 month olds favorites also.

4. I’ve been wearing corrective orthotics in my shoes since I was 12 and find shoe shopping to be the most discouraging and pointless activities in the world. And yet, I have to do it kind of frequently as worn out shoes lead to lots of aches and pains.

5. Chuck reminds me of my husband except that his personal computer brain is almost exclusively for song lyrics and he has, umm…minimal computer skills. But he looks really cute in a white button down shirt, with a tie. Wait, that’s kind of about my husband. But let’s just say it’s about me because of the comparison between the two being in my head.

6. I have a terrible time remembering if you eat dessert or desert.

7. I have an accordion folder full of unproduced and unpublished one act plays that I think are brilliant.

And now who to tag? I think everyone I know has been tagged. Except for Ruth Alvarez, so Ruth, I tag you. And I think I’ll tell you in person this afternoon since I’ve never been to your blog.

Blisses,
Traci