strangest “day off” in my short history

Update 10/31

Here’s a list of a few things I did today. I took the day off, for reasons which will become clear, but I still believe it was one of the strangest days I’ve had to date.

Things I Did Yesterday / Today:

• Called the doctor to ask questions about the swine flu. (Anna and Christa have it we discovered this morning–Anna is sleeping a lot and has started on Tamiflu. Christa is riding out the storm without drugs since they weren’t prescribing to low-risk adults.)
• Jump-started my car (thanks to my friend Josh) which was parked a block away at Walgreens.
• Dumped out many buckets of vomit. (Sorry for the detail, but it seems like such a weird task.)
• Played dominoes with Sarah (who strangely is not displaying flu-like symptoms.)
• Ate a Krispy Kreme donut with orange and black sprinkles.
• Replaced the battery on my car using instructions from a manual I got at the public library. So far, no electrocutions.
• Ironed my St. Francis of Assisi Halloween costume. That activity is just “out there”–on multiple levels–if you think about it.
• Cleaned acrylic paint off of paintbrushes, tablecloth, and second born daughter.
• Retrieved the phones from multiple rooms of the house as they seemed to keep moving like migratory birds from dawn till dusk.
• Took Tamiflu myself. (Don’t ask. Evidently with my asthma / breathing issues, I’m at a higher risk even though I haven’t displayed any symptoms thusfar.)
• Made meatloaf (a food I happen to hate) for myself and Sarah because a.) it was available (we’re members of a cooking co-op right now where different people prep meals and deliver them four nights a week) and b.) we needed a semi-healthy dinner after eating donuts and yogurt for breakfast and lunch.
• Wondered at what point of repetition Curious George episodes could break someone’s sanity…
• Taking Sarah to the ER at 1:30 a.m. since she had a raging fever and was having trouble breathing. The doctor thinks she has asthma like her sister which complicates the swine flu symptoms. Her big concern with all of this was missing out on “truck or treating”. She keeps reassuring us that the feels much better.
• Seeing Christa black out and tumble down in the hallway. Thought I was going to be taking my whole family to the ER. She’s OK, just bruised and sore this morning.

Halloween has been real scary so far…but I think we’re all on the road to recovery today. I hope.

october

love it.

out of step with debt

I grew up watching cartoons. One familiar storyline in cartoons is what I call the “stork mixup”. An animal baby gets delivered to the wrong parent. A chicken egg hatches in a nest full of crocodile whelps.  A misappropriated lion grows up thinking he is a sheep.

At times, being back in my “home” culture after 3 years abroad, feels this way–as if I’ve become misplaced. I feel out of step with the prevalent culture around me.

I know that comparisons are dangerous. We all try not to do it. But it’s difficult, especially in a country like the U.S. that is obsessed with financial status. For my family the oddball issue we face is our aversion to the D-word (OK, for clarity’s sake, I’ll say it…debt.)

Christa and I currently have none. No mortgage, no school loans, no credit card balance, nothing. Our bank account is not large, we have a little money tucked into retirement and are investing towards our kid’s education, but there is not really any negative balance associated with our name.

No big investments nor big expenditures right now. That’s not a bad thing, but it feels weird at times. Like we’re the only ones living this way. I know we’re NOT, but I can’t shake the lingering feeling of it.

It wasn’t always this way. I’ve struggled through my fair share of debt and deficit spending. Things have been tight at times and for many years we did live under the weight of large college loans. But we’ve also received a lot. In many ways, we were financially secure for many years as missionaries, due to the kindness / generosity of MANY others. So I don’t feel as if I am morally superior to anyone in this respect. A lot of grace was extended to us that we are grateful for. But we also made a lot of hard decisions along the way to not go into debt. We’re still making those choices today. And I must say, it is almost unequivocally, a choice for most of us U.S. Americans.

Now that we are back in the U.S. and integrating back into the 9 to 5 work-a-day world, I am amazed at how commonplace it has become to live with debt–to excuse, espouse and often glorify it. Our government operates this way and has for many, many years. The economists seem to optimistically expect Americans to continue to live beyond their means in order to “pull” our country out of recession / depression. I am not speaking to any political party or policy. I think it is the POLICY across the board, whether it’s spoken aloud or not. We spend what we don’t have. We borrow until we’re buried in it. We don’t really know how to say No.

Case in point: every U.S. citizen expects to be a homeowner (seeing it almost as a human right) in their mid-20s (most definitely by your mid-30s) regardless of income or spending habits.  The backlash of people losing or short-selling their homes in the last year is evidence enough that that system quickly collapses like a house of cards with rising unemployment or financial struggle. Not to mention how that house can suddenly “own” you very fast…the turnaround can be quick.

Don’t even get me started on entertainment spending or the Christmas shopping craze in this country..

This is just not how the rest of the world lives. Why should our expectations and sense of entitlement be so much higher than our global neighbors’? Is affluence its own justification? I think not. As Christians, how does living luxuriously beyond our means even come close to living and trusting God for our daily bread? How does it exemplify loving our neighbor as we love ourselves? These are tough questions I wrestle with.

Christa and I read Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover when we came back to the States. His ideas about not-living-with-debt resonated with something we’d been living out for a long time. His plan also helped us formulate a budget to help us live even more proficiently within our means. This is not an infomercial for his book, nor is it meant as an indictment on folks who choose another way, but I think it definitely made in impact on how we want to live. It just seems like good common sense.

I’ll close by saying that, sure, I’d like to be a home-owner some day.  A flat-screen sounds nice, too.  And a Hummer…(Haha.) I’m not against houses or buying comfortable things–within reason.  But I hope I’ll also ask myself all the tough questions Jesus asks about security, idolatry, and riches.  I hope I can stay close (in proximity / spirit) to folks who have much less than I so that I don’t start to fit my demographic.  I don’t want to lose touch or blindly follow the cultural norms–especially if it involves diving like lemmings off a cliff.

I also don’t want to start dropping my Entitlement Visa on the counter every chance I get. Maybe that makes me unpopular, self-righteous, or eccentric. But I’ll happily take the ugly duckling role, among swans, if it means I can swim around the pond debt-free. 

p.s. As with most systemic problems this post is not aimed at individuals but at our society as a whole. These opinions are my own and no offense was intended. A lot of my good friends are swans and I love them.

shots on goal

Courtesy of Laura B. Thanks for being the photographer for the day. Sarah played another good game. She had another shot on goal that would have went in had it not gone right to the goalie. Her team scored about 7 goals on the opposing Storm Troopers and continued their reign of dominance in week 2. Wonder if next week will provide a little more competition?

bullet briefs – highs and lows

A lot has been happening lately. Thought I would share, in brief…

• Sarah’s first soccer game. As a non soccer lover, it was awesome. There are two “ringers” on Sarah’s U6 team (Blue Lightning) which will make for a fun season. Sarah holds her own and had a shot on goal that was only about a foot from scoring. Game two, later today.
• 3 a.m. fire drill at our apartment complex. Nothing like being abruptly awakened in the middle of the night by a policeman banging on your bedroom window. We live on the ground floor in case you were wondering. The positive side: this was not a real fire. Someone left something burning on the stove.
• Completed MFA application process to 4 schools–really I did. A friend bailed me out by providing a final reference letter after one referral flaked out on me. Thanks, Ben! The waiting begins.
• Got my first MFA denial letter. Ouch! I knew it would probably happen, but it still stung (just a little.) Three more chances…
• Spontaneous dinner at the Ram with the Guyz. Nice re-connecting with my Rory’s crowd.
• Nice date night out with my wife. Went to the Artwalk in Ballard (although the art was hard to come by) and enjoyed a delicious meal at an Italian restaurant.
• A friend got stabbed in the back 7 times. This happened in broad daylight in his suburban neighborhood–not far from here. Scary. He’s recovered, but he spent 2 weeks in the hospital after four hours of surgery. The perpetrator is out on bail awaiting court date (I guess).
• Beginning to plan services for Advent season with a small group of people from our church. Excited about getting creative and involved in the worship. Nice to be asked to be included in this way.

the battle begins again, oh rats

Taking the car in for an oil change is always an act of bravery for me.

I never go in expecting that I’ll pay less than 100 bucks because our car is used and apparently was driven pretty hard before we bought it. Not the most mechancially minded person in the world (to be generous) I know full well that I am outside of my element. I don’t know what a car needs and when. When discussing the state of my car with a mechanic, I do the male thing; nod, grimace, groan hmmmm, and grunt approval when it seems appropriate. But I’m always suspicious, of course, that the boys down at Grease Monkey are trained to push additional filters, services, and mile-centric recommendations.

With temperatures dropping, having avoided the inevitable for a few months too long, I decided it was time for the quarterly oil change.

The monkeys went to work as I sat trying to read a novel in the waiting room. Within minutes, a blue jump-suited gentlemen came in lugging an air filter. Ah, here it comes. I braced myself.

“Looks like you’ve got a little problem,” he says empathetically. Revealing the square filter lined with be-smudged white rows.

“Yeah…?”

“You need to go down to the auto shop and buy some pellets.” The filter, I notice, was pock-marked with quarter-sized bits of gray fuzz. Splotched throughout, the bits looked like lint removed from a commercial dryer.  “Looks like you’ve had a rat in your engine…”

Rat!?!

In an instance I’m whisked down surreal corridors of time, through immigration stations, luggage counters, buses, planes, and taxis. I’m back in the People’s Republic, biding my time in the coal-room in Jianzha, twirling a long bow-staff, jumping at the shadows, as the rat hordes taunt and torture me from their demonic enclaves. I see traps, poison, decapitations, shovels whacking down on their rodent spines. That all happens in an instant, causing me to question reality, and scrutinize the face of this oil-patron like he might be some glitch in the “matrix”.

“Yeah, it’s quite common,” he says. “They crawl up into your car because it’s warm in there and they’ll build a nest. The pellets will kill them though. Just spread them on your engine…”

“Rat?!? Really?” I can’t keep up with this conversation, still struggling with belief that any of this is real. “So, they crawl under you car in the evening and then they just leave during the daytime?” I sound a bit like a kindergardener now, the macho-male persona quickly evaporated.

“Or they just stay in there,” the man says matter-of-fact, “We’ve opened the hood to some cars before and a few rats have just jumped out!”

“What?!?” I’m wondering about our apartment parking lot now. Bewildered at the lack of garbage, clutter, or other rat-friendly environs. I’ve never set eyes on a rat since leaving China. I’ve been writing extensively about rats over the past few months though–working on my MFA application manuscript. It’s all been about rat-hunting and rat-species data. Now all those pages of research and writing are stoking my superstitious nature.

What if by writing about them, I’ve somehow resurrected these rats into my conscious waking world? It’s voodoo. Magic. Dark arts. In putting these words on the page I’ve given life to the very beasts that haunted me all those months in Jianzha…

“So do you want to get a new filter then…?” the oil-monkey scratches his face and stares at me as if I’ve suddenly grown a long tale and long whiskers.

“Yeah, yeah. Of course.  Wow. Rats.” I’m back in the room, but I feel pale, transparent, ghostly. The battle, once thought to be over, begins again.

Climbing back into my car, the words of Charlie Brown murmur through the closets of my mind, “Oh, rats…”

Rats.