Good and Faithful Servanthood.

Good and Faithful Servanthood.

I feel like the hardest thing absorbing all the reports about New Orleans and the south and Iraq and the Shiites and all the dying and destruction, is that my life is just continuing on, as usual.

That's not right. I feel like I should be suffering too. I should be struggling. I should be putting every ounce of my energy and time into helping these people survive, and if that means my job and house and security are in jeapordy, hey, I'm clearly not the only one. And, scooting back a little to think big picture-ly (yes, that is a new adverb), I should be reducing my dependence on oil. I should be reducing my dependence on clean water. I should be reducing my dependence on non-renewable energy. Each of those things can be done without really connecting with the grit of the situation. An entire city is gone. People are still trapped in a city filled with sewage- and corpse-ridden water, and I took a 15 minute shower this morning involving luxurious bath oils and a sugar scrub that you can actually eat as you use it. No, it's nothing kinky, it just happens to have ayurvedic/food-based ingredients. And here I am in my air conditioned office, sitting in my clean ergonomic desk chair writing technical user manuals that will not help alleviate the suffering in the world right now.

I've been gradually reading (it's taking me a few days, because I am slow and easily distracted) an essay by the great Richard D. Bartlett.

He discusses the concept of meaningful work/career in a way I've never seen it addressed before. Richard writes:

Schumacher's solution (which he identifies as being a Buddhist point of view) is to take "...the function of work to be threefold: to give a man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence."

I found myself strangely comforted by this statement amidst an otherwise bleak commentary on my life (it didn't help that he uses technical writers as his example). I cannot really say if the egoless tasks I am performing here, as a cog in a giant wheel, are actually improving our existence. I work in a strange sector of the semiconductor industry, so technically I'm somehow indirectly contributing to the fact that people can turn on their computers and read this blog or read the news or bank online or google high school classmates or look up porn. But the sad part is that if my town, my house, my photo albums, my bed, my life - if they were all completely flooded with equal numbers of freshly dead and exhumed ancient corpses swirling in the midst of the dirty water, you would probably all still be able to bank online or read blogs or talk on your cell phones. Or even if you couldn't do that, you would still have breath in your lungs and love in your heart, and you could just walk over to your friends' houses and talk to them instead of calling or blogging to them.

On Sunday, a sweet and terminally ill lady at our church was presented with a prayer quilt. Many people had crafted squares with messages or pictures for her, but one struck me, and set me off in a standard Julia crying fit. It just said "Well done, good and faithful servant." I was overwhelmed by the beauty and sadness of the thing. I was overwhelmed thinking about my own life, and whether I would be greeted with that statement at the end of my life. What am I doing that is meaningful? Are all of these cubicle-based contributions to a common task truly meaningful? What would happen to our society if everyone left their office jobs and ran off to work with their hands or help sick children or alleviate world hunger? What if nobody wrote the user manuals? Is it my lot in life? Is it wrong to feel like it is unfair? To be jealous of the people who get to do the true prophetic work of the church? To, out of jealousy, chastise them as egocentric?

I feel like I should quit my job and sell my stock options and possessions to buy a cheap used helicopter from craigslist. After I learned to fly it, I would take my helicopter to New Orleans for a few days and airlift stranded residents and prisoners and homeless people and hospital patients. And then I would buy an old cattle farm and send all the sad cows to Farm Sanctuary and then grow grains in their place using immeasurably less water and energy, and send the staple food items to poor starving countries. But then would I get a "well done, good and faithful servant," or would it be more like, "mehhh, E for effort, egocentric servant"?

But you and I both know that this will not happen. I'm cannot singlehandedly buy a helicopter and learn to fly it and also while flying with one hand, work the airlift contraption with the other hand. I cannot singlehandedly tackle hunger season in Nigeria. I need to be a cog in the wheel. I need to join with other people in the common task. And then it hits me, I am sort of doing that already. That is, in the time remaining after my 9+ hours daily in a concrete box.

There's nothing like a disaster to trigger an existential crisis.

When in Rome.

When in Rome.

Our project intern here is my new favorite chatty girl friend. Easy to talk to, open, approachable, complimentary, good-humored, perfectly liberal, etc. The main problem is that he's a boy. And before you get any naughty thoughts in your head, please remember that this year's crop of interns were born in like, 1983. The turn of the decade at 1980 is, for my generation, such a tidy distinction between adult relationships and like, pedophilia. Or, my little brother, who was also born in 1983. And yes, I was born only a few months shy of the 80s, but damn it, those four months make all the difference. And yes, my husband is five years older than me. I'm a walking double-standard.

A week ago, the intern and I were discussing his recent boys' trip to Italy, and the fact that they ran out of money and slept on some famous steps of some famous building in Rome, blah blah blah.

I said, "No way! A friend of mine [WHO DID AND SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS] had sex on some famous steps of some famous building in some famous city in Italy. Maybe it was the same step."

Thankfully glossing over how un-special of a coincidence that would be, he then fired off such questions as, "So, who was it with? Some Italian guy? A tourist? Older? Younger? What time of day was it?" and so on. After I told him that I didn't really ask those kind of questions, he gave me a disappointed look and said, "Oh come ON. Details! I always ask for details."

I feel like a failure to the greater sisterhood of girl friends everywhere.

***

Also, someday I will write a deep post again, and that may or may not be a promise. I have plenty of fodder right now, however. For example, we are currently reading a book about reclaiming the Book of Revelation from the fundamentalists, and it has lots of big words and big thoughts, and our tiny little group spent most of tonight's grouping session reading paragraphs aloud and shaking our heads and laughing nervously and feeling a little lower-intellect-ed (okay, maybe that was just me). And then we realized that the book sounds exactly like a Bill Mahedy sermon. You probably don't know this man, but imagine someone giving a sermon on reclaiming [insert Christian thought]from [someone bastardizing that thought] and making you feel simultaneously inspired, faithful, enraged, empowered, and at least 25% sheepish.

So, until then, it's yellow fridges and girl-ish interns for you.

A match made in a mental hospital.

A match made in a mental hospital.

Sometimes it occurs to me that Erik and I are really bad at fighting because we don't do it that often. And we don't fight that often because we always seem to agree on big things like politics and priorities and what have you. This can sometimes make things boring, and as I mentioned, when something really big does come up, we have had little-to-no practice and resort to childish means like cussing and saying things like, "I wish we weren't having Christmas AT ALL."

I was contemplating how agreeable we can be on the drive home tonight, and a snippet of a conversation from a few minutes earlier popped into mind. We were talking about trying to find plain-looking appliances that were enamel, rather than textured plastic or stainless, lest they look ridiculous in our little old house. This way, we could use enamel-y paints and fix them up however we want. Erik had done some appliance-store-hopping earlier in the day, and had found an enamel fridge.

I then asked him, "so, we can paint it yellow?"
Erik said, "yeah."

Okay. Let's pause for a minute.

WTF, mate. Who wants to paint a fridge yellow?
And why are there two of us?

Bung hole.

Bung hole

I've recently fine tuned my bungalow snobbery with the addition of the American Bungalow Magazine message boards to my list of time sucks.

We're currently faced with a quandary. Two, in fact, but both revolve around the same theme: kitchen and bathroom restoration in light of my burgeoning old house snobbery. Today, we're talking about the bathroom, however, which we will call the Bung Hole Bathroom. Originally, when we first looked in the bathroom before buying the house, we were kind of disgusted. "Ugh," Erik's mother and I fizzed in union. We scoured bungalow and craftsman books and resources to try to get ideas for touching it up. The sad part is that only a few things have been modified from the original 1929 bathroom. The wall tiles are still there, the hex tile floor is perfect, the pedestal tub is original and the medicine cabinet is still there.



Why is this sad, you ask?

Well, a previous owner "remuddled" the bathroom fixtures a little. They replaced the sink, but just spackled in the wall mount holes in the tiles.



They replaced the faucet, shower head, and soap dish in the tub/shower. In doing so, I'm guessing, they weakened the tile and it has eventually formed giant cracks pointing down in a giant evil V shape towards the new soap dish and what have you. The tile will need replacing, which is good because dudes, it's pink tile. It may be original, but that doesn't mean the bathroom designers in the late 20s and 30s had good taste.



We have always, always had our little hearts set on a claw foot tub. You know, with one of those metal pole shower heads and curtain rails. I even found a perfectly cheap one on craigslist and am so close to making a deal. However, despite my general disagreement with the direction bathroom style started to go at the tail end of the twenties and into the thirties, I don't know if I can bring myself to rip out the tub.

Like I said, we are keeping the floor. It's beautiful. We will be retiling the walls up to the same height with white glazed "subway" brick tile.


picture from subwaytile.com

It is highly doubtful that there would be hex tile beneath the existing tub. We had considered this, and decided that we would build a small riser, a pedestal step thing, cover it with subway tiles (to match the walls), and put a claw foot tub on there. A tiled riser would look something like this step:


picture from subwaytile.com

What would you do? I love the claw-foot-tub-on-a-tiled-riser-idea, but it just seems so traitorous to 1929 and our original bathtub. Also, keeping the original bathtub will save us many pennies. TALK ME DOWN.

The Socially Inept Chronicles of Youth.

The Socially Inept Chronicles of Youth.

Sometimes I honestly can't believe young Julia was the same person as me. Other times, I am shamefully aware that we're totally the same person. Sure, I was a good person. All people are good, and the rotten ones are simply misguided. I was hugely self-conscious, obsessed about what everyone thought of me, and completely socially useless. Maybe not useless, but at the very least awkward and inappropriate, and had very little of what we call a "filter."

Instead of awaiting embarassing anecdotes to rear their ugly heads when spending time with old high school or college friends (that's you, Kashkouli, you charming bitch you), I am going to pre-empt all of that and launch a new and unscheduled series here chronicalling the most awkward and telling moments in my youth.

So there. I totally warned you.

---

The Socially Inept Chronicles of Julia's Youth, Part One:
I Was A Mean Girl (but not in the good-looking and popular way).

I had successfully forgotten this moment, but was painfully reminded thereof while having late night, post-Bikram's yoga hot chocolate (no, not exactly rehydrating) with a dear old friend, Ali, who was my high school boyfriend Nick's best friend, but then became a very close friend on his own dime when we went to college together.

In high school, we always ate lunch right outside the science classrooms. I sometimes had to force myself to go and sit with my only three girl friends in the main quad, because being around Nick's friends was always constantly entertaining. The group ebbed and flowed, but for the most part, the usual suspects always showed up to the little grassy man-made hill between Mr. Nuthall and Mrs. Rankin's rooms, the AP science teachers and academic league coaches.

Those people were my friends. I was not one of those people. The underlying environment was that, sure, I was a smart girl, but I was probably the dumbest of the group of friends. Someone always has to be the dumbest in any given group, so I felt like it was my lot in life right then. I stepped up. I took one for the team. I took classes like "oceanography" and "zoology" and "band" while everyone else sat captivated by Nuthall in AP physics and Mrs. Rankin in AP chem and bio and then went back for more of the same at academic league practices after school.

That said, they were not nerds. Sure, some of them might have been on the golf team, and some might have their varsity letters in marching band, and, like I said, they were ON ACADEMIC LEAGUE, but for the most part, it was a cross section of normal teenagers with normal foul language, hyperactive and sometimes mostly-fulfilled sex drives, and a penchant for fine large-breasted women, video games, and laser tag. All of them were very handsome, and their girlfriends were beautiful and of similar intellect and wit. They just happened to love school and be geniuses.

I had recently met a girl, Illian, from another local high school at honor band. We hit it off and started hanging out together. She was head-turningly beautiful. She was also incredibly musically gifted, and, in addition to her french horn skills, she could also tear it up on classical guitar whilst sporting the most elaborate fake nails a classical guitar has ever known. She was also single, and at the time, I totally couldn't fathom this. Yesterday, we went sailing with our church youth group, and I overheard one 13 year old girl say, "I've been single for like a whole YEAR, gosh!" and I laughed at her. Then, I realized that I WAS TOTALLY LIKE THAT, except that I had, however, never been single for a whole year straight from 13 on. Technically I was worse. Anyway, enter Neema. Also single. Also head-turningly beautiful. He was part of the science building grassy knoll lunch crowd.

One day, I had this great idea to play matchmaker for Neema and Illian. I was telling him about her at lunch, and sweet Ali overheard. I need to interject a brief history of Ali. This young man is quite possibly the most charming person you'll ever meet. He was also mildly awkward and was mid-growth spurt at the time. For some reason, and Ali constantly complained about this during college, most girls were instantly at ease around him and became fast friends. Just friends. It was the bane of his heterosexual existence. Now that he's older, a Hot Doctor, and getting some on at least an intermittent basis, I'm more comfortable admitting that I never really thought of Ali as a member of the opposite sex. Sorry dude. Granted, I always thought he was cute. I honestly do not know where my next painful line of dialogue came from. Hopefully I was just wittier than I or anyone else gave me credit for back then, and this was just a teasing jab.

As I told Neema he should go out with Illian, Ali butted in. "What about me, dude!"

My response? "No, she only likes tall and good looking people."

After unearthing this brief moment in my dark history of underdeveloped social skills, logic thoroughly evades the fact that Ali and I still have each other's phone numbers memorized. Also memorized by Ali? The entire global mythological catalog in chronological and regional order and this exact story down to the most minute details. For shame, Julia. For shame.

I algebra you.

I algebra you.

John and I seem to have been fighting a lot recently. John is my coworker and one of my best friends ever, and is only marginally aware of how many stories internet strangers hear about him. The fights are ridiculously stupid stuff, of course, the kinds of things you're embarassed to even vent about because the battles are so worthless. And, since he's male, the fights are fast and over as soon as I decide to get over them and stop holding a grudge. But regardless, I think we've both been overwhelmed with our own lives lately, and because of that, haven't really had much time to spend together or hang out like we used to. Things have just felt strained and I miss my friend.

Friday afternoon, after a bickery lunch, I was rushing around, flustered and frustrated, to get out of work early. Erik was whisking me off to LA to the Rufus/Ben Folds show, and I promise I didn't google the entire social calendar in Los Angeles to figure out what my surprise was. Yeah, that's another story. I was running about an hour and a half late at this point, and on my way out, I walked by a machine that I'll be documenting first thing Monday morning. John flagged me down and started making fun of me in his usual harmless way, and finally, I just couldn't take it anymore. Being epitomically girlish, I whined at him to stop it and that I needed a hug instead. Of course, John isn't much of a public hugger and I certainly didn't expect this to change standing around machines and technicians.

However, he then hugged a nearby giant tank of liquid nitrogen (don't try this at home kids!) and recited an "(a+b)" distributive property or pythagorean something or other equation in his best BBC children's programming voice and hugged me via algebra. My heart, warmed by factorials.

Math is totally the new love.

Birthday me.

Birthday me.



We got the house. A 1929 Craftsman on a large corner lot in the Morley Field area of North Park. Hot damn. Walking distance to our favorite restaurants and coffee houses. One block away from Balboa Park. Beautiful unscathed and unpainted gumwood interior trim and built-ins. An old four chime doorbell with the chimes hanging next to the door. Fugly kitchen and bathroom. Even fuglier 70s addition room with bright green carpet and wood panel walls.




I always felt like such a poser at all the Craftsman heritage weekends and tours we go to, fresh from our 1998 condo. Now we can actually buy fixtures and cabinet hardware from the booths and sellers in the convention halls, rather than just walk by and dream.

Our first post-closing, pre-moving project will be to restore the bathroom to it's original end-of-the-Craftsman-era glory, with mini unglazed hex tiles on the floor and sweet little latches on the sleek white cabinetry. Then there'll be a kitchen to restore, and by restore, I mean, completely rip up the 60s remodel monstrosity and start over. The project list is very long but not at all daunting. And believe you me, you'll be hearing all about it here. Good times.

But still, daunting project list or not: holy crap. Hold me.

Disconnected.

Disconnected.

These days, I feel like I'm constantly disconnected to my faith. I can't say what it is that I'm doing wrong or what I'm not doing - I don't even know. I'm barely getting by God-wise.

It's actually a completely bizarre time to feel separate from God. Life is truly wonderful, and I am constantly thankful to God for providing me such richness of my surroundings - completely priceless friendships, a loving partner, and the nature around me. Prayer is also looking better for me. I find myself subconsciously slipping into silent prayer when I see that someone is nervous, stumbling over speech, or looking dejected or uncomfortable. This is huge for me, because prayer, especially extemporaneous prayer, has always been a battle and has always felt forced.

My favorite line in scripture, which I have blogged about before, is Micah 6:8. "...and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?". Again, sorry for getting all Bibly.

I feel like I'm getting the first two items on Micah's little to-do list (a man after my own heart, of course). It's that last bit. And dude, I'm trying the walking humbly part as hard as possibly can try. It's those pesky "with your God" words that are challenging me the most. Yes, here I am being subconsciously thankful for the gifts that I am so generously given by God, and subconsciously aware of the presence of God, but I just feel like I'm walking next to God, not with God. Maybe a few shoulder widths apart even. Before we go any further, please all of you get the god-awful image of the "Footsteps" poem cheesy artwork out of your head right now. God and I are TOTALLY NOT WALKING ON THE BEACH, and there's certainly no pinkish yellow sunset behind us. We're in like, downtown Los Angeles or somewhere. Okay, got it?

So there's Julia and God, in LA, walking humbly, etc. We're doing all of these great things for each other, but there's just not that feeling of with-ness. I want God to be holding my hand. I don't care if I'm wandering aimlessly or am lost, but I just want to be more spiritually present and feel God more deeply. And I don't know what to do. I feel powerless to change and I can't get Cat Power out of my head.

Lots.

Lots.

Last night, we had a rocking party at our house. It's my birthday in a few days, so we decided to commemorate the occasion by throwing a giant bash. It was probably the biggest turn out of our party throwing history.

My sweet friend Melanie brought a rowdier party mix which stealthily replaced our hand-crafted West Indian Girl/Frou Frou/Moby-esque mix package towards the end of the night. The mojitos were delicious, so by then I was quite mojito'ed and dancing broke out. In our living room, right in front of our dancefloor-ready ~15" television. Awesome.

There were emails sent from my account circa 2am this morning. I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THIS.

I recently found a new perfume, Keiko Mecheri's magically concocted "Damascena" scent. It's one of the more beautiful things I've ever laid nose upon. I now like a total of two women's fragrances in the world, Ann Taylor's "Ann," and this one. The Damascena is significantly harder to find, however, and is not for sale anywhere in San Diego. I promise you I was not dropping hints at all, but my in-laws picked up a bottle from the sweet Catalina boutique gift shop and coffeehouse, CC Gallagher. This last weekend, I would go in there twice a day for lattes or miscellaneous treats, and spritz the gorgeous stuff on my wrists as often as possible. I didn't buy the bottle, and have been kicking myself all week for my misguided moment of sensible frugality. The in-laws showed up this weekend with a bottle. I am happy and very fragrant.

We put an offer on an old craftsman bungalow today in one of the most glorious parts of town. Holy fuck. Hold me please. I might puke or something.

Heh. I could go on and on with much bulleted nonsense, but I kind of like the drama of leaving you there. So that's all for now. We shall not speak of the house until our completely low-ball offer is accepted.

War!

Yay! War!

One of the writers in our group has an oversized George W. Bush photo calendar. A few days ago, Jade, our only male writer and one of my most favoritest people ever, asked me quietly, "dude, did you see August?"

Sure enough, August is a giant blown up picture of GWB giving the thumbs-up.

I'm completely finished having any kind of political discussion with said writer, as she'll always just say, "you're joking!" to every serious statement I say. So Jade and I have taken to silently making fun of the calendar by giving each other the thumbs up sign.

Sometimes, when we're giving each other the GWB August Thumbs Up, we whisper, all enthusiastically: "War!"

Drunkblogging.

Drunkblogging

Tonight, after going to a newly-acquainted coworker's party WHEREIN HE MIRACULOUSLY MADE TWO EARRINGS APPEAR, we went to my sweet Casbah to see West Indian Girl and Turin Brakes.

I might have suggested that my coworker might have had less-than-honorable intentions with your kind and innocent blogger here, but that was all debunked the second he snuck away to his bedroom only to bring back a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) textbook to show off to Erik. Hey, I'm right here! Pay attention to ME! Both of you! Anyway. After things got wild and crazy with the geography textbooks, we had to rush away, but got there right as West Indian Girl was wrapping up.

Turin Brakes was fantastic. We're long time fans, and it was pretty incredible to see them in such a divey small shack of a venue. My ears are still ringing. And so is my body, thanks to the Korean saki I donated to my coworker's house but then drank 1/3 of myself. Mmm, rubbing alcohol. Anyway, this paragraph lets me off the hook for any uncomfortable sentence structure, spellings, or word choices included in this drunkpost.

So, tomorrow, I'm going to dedicate at least an hour's worth of our drive to the Long Beach ferry terminal to West Indian Girl, since we missed their set. And then we're off to Catalina for a long weekend of napping in the sun, pretending to kayak, and hiking as far as we can go. The in-laws will be there, including my sister-in-law's new-ish boyfriend who is about to be shipped off to Iraq. All I know is that he's younger than me but was quoting Star Trek when I first met him, and even though I've never really watched a full Star Trek episode in my life, he totally won me over right then.

See you all soon. Must briefly sleep and detox.

You're my favorite thing that I hate.

You're my favorite thing that I hate.

Last week, we went to a Padres baseball game and managed to sit near the type of guys who actually go out of their way to be rowdy and annoying. I overheard them swapping "kicked out of ballpark" stories.

We were also with a group of Cardinals fans (FOR SHAME, I know), so this fueled their little annoying baseball fan act.

At one point, the Cardinals made several phenomenal double plays in a row, all courtesy of their shortstop, #22.

The rowdiest fan yelled out, "I HATE YOU NUMBER 22!" And then, maybe catching himself on his negativism and the fact that the neural pathways associated with anger, hatred, and negative thought were being reinforced as permanent bridges rendering him less able to undergo positive thought and love-type emotions (according to What The Bleep Do We Know, which I just watched last night) he yelled out a second time: "NUMBER 22, YOU'RE MY FAVORITE THING THAT I HATE."

Sentences like that never fail to make my day.