this is why i have dogs

So I'm sitting on the couch wasting time in my usual ways while my ever diligent husband works on God knows what on his own little macbook on the kitchen counter. (You can always tell work has gotten serious when it moves to the kitchen counter. That is when Greer stays quiet and far-ish [it's a small apartment... "far" is relative] away.) And relatively out of nowhere I start having a mild "oh-my-goodness-i'm-basically-an-adult-no-wait-i-AM-an-adult-and-my-life-is-changing-and-so-are-my-friends-etc." kind of anxiety moment. Maybe it was talking to Katie about baptism dresses... maybe it was going to see HSM3 (shut it) with a bunch of girlfriends and realizing how much we brought up the average age in the theatre... maybe it was looking at the blog of an old McAlisters buddy and seeing how grown up and mature and... well... ADULT she looks and sounds... but whatever. It happens.

And then I turned around and looked behind me on the couch.

And Freak Dog was sitting there panting with his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. And he has some kind of pimple type thing on his nose (yes, we are considering actually changing his name to Medical Mystery... or Vet Bill... but Freak Dog works for now) which makes him look even more like a goober. And Wonder Dog was sitting in front of him alternating between licking said bump on Freak Dog's nose (gross, I know) and chewing on his ear. And they both looked so freaking happy about it.

And I laughed. And that is why dogs make life ok.

start praying, folks...

Because the world is ending. My father joined facebook. And has flair. And joined a group called "I Heart My Prius". The email requesting that I be my father's "friend" was quite enough. But seriously, Dad... flair?

Oh, and then my "aunt" Karen decided to join and befriend him. Her joining was definitely the more shocking of the two (at least I know that my Dad has always been hip to the latest technology trends... so it was kind of bound to happen...).

And now they write on each others' walls.

resolved

I am not the type to get "touched" by a scripture reading at church. I usually listen to them and read along and think about them and analyze them the way we used to do in my New Testament class in college, but they don't usually resonate with me. I am also not really the type to make New Year's resolutions. In this blog entry, I am going to go against both of those in one fell swoop. Prepare ye.

Christmas Eve was a bipolar kind of affair for my family. It's usually one of my favorite parts of the holiday since it is when my mother makes her kick-butt spaghetti sauce and danish cucumbers and all of the family is together and we dress up and go listen to harp music at church. It's always lovely, it's always calming, and I always find the holiday spirit in many ways that night. For the most part that was all still true this year, but we did have some unexpected drama that kind of put a damper on the evening. Let's just say that some of the adults behaved a bit more like teenagers than might be appropriate. And not in an "OMG it's Christmas" kind of way, but in a "I'm going to kill you because you drive me crazy so let's yell about it" kind of way. Fun times. But anyway, we all managed to sit down for our spaghetti without anyone pulling out anyone's hair, and we all dutifully trooped to church and sat near the front (my family is kind of snobby about their church seats). I felt that it was good for us to be at church. First of all, no one had to talk. Second, we could take the time to reflect on why we were all here together in the first place. The first reading (the epistle) seemed to fit right in with what I wanted to get from the service and I felt as if God had put it there for me and my family as a reminder. And for once I didn't brush off that feeling or scoff at myself for being "mushy" or whatever. I re-read the passage and pointed out the part that struck me to my mother, who rolled it up and brought it home. (PS- I saw that she had torn that sections out and put it in her bathroom. I guess God talked to her too.)

I went back a few days later after even more (and much more serious) drama occured and re-read the passage, expecting that it would have lost some of its sparkle. I was surpirsed to find that a different part of the reading grabbed me and again resonated somewhere inside of me. So I decided to take this little snippet into my heart and make it my resolution for the year of sorts... here is the passage so that I can make this make better sense (it's from Titus)...

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope an the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds."

The first part that struck me (on Christmas Eve) is the bold section. I had never thought of "self-controlled" as a trait that God would specifically want us to strive for, but it makes complete sense. So this year, I'm applying that to my eating and exercise habits, the amount I sleep in every morning, and trying to plan my classes and my choreography so that I am getting the most out of myself and the people I work with. Upright will manifest itself in the way I handle myself in disagreements and when I get frustrated in my classes, and godly in my relationships within our new church and my attention to God.

The second part that struck me was the last phrase: "zealous for good deeds". Not that we perform works of good, but that we actively seek them out and are excited to peform them. That we celebrate not only the action of performing acts of kindness, but the opportunities to do so. I hope that I can be that way in the coming year. And in every year for that matter.

Happy New Year!

flip baby flip

Merry Christmas and almost Happy New Year! My favorite Christmas gift this year was a Flip video camera that I got from my parents. So I decided to become even more of a blogger-type-internet-loving-techno-geek and start my own youtube channel (the camera can upload them directly onto the site for you, so I figured why not?). It took me a while to figure everything out, but I have uploaded my first video from the holidays, mostly of my sisters and I being silly at the ice forum. What can I say... I've got mad skills. Or is it "skillz"?

ying and yang

I found a small part of our home together that serves as an excellent illustration of the difference between me and my husband. And why I sometimes want to kill him.

This is my bedside table.


And this is Joe's.

nostalgia

I found myself in a certain mood the other afternoon that requires looking at old pictures and reading old letters. There's a box that I keep in my closet just for when I get in these kinds of moods. Mostly, it has my London memorabilia in it (posters, letters from friends, programs, my IDS portfolio). I found my travel journal that I actually did a pretty decent job of keeping up with for my semester abroad, and I have been reading it for the past day or so now. It's funny to read about things that I did as though it was someone else that did it... I guess the passage of time can do that. The strangest parts to read are when I write about little details or funny things that happened that I don't really remember. I guess that is why I kept a journal. But anyway, I had a written a note to myself (what an odd concept... "dear future me, check this out!") to look up a certain poem that I discovered while in London. I couldn't remember much about it, nor had I written it anywhere in the journal (other than the title and author) so I googled it. I still love the poem... maybe even more now because of the feelings and the memories it brings with it. Here it is:

Possibilities

By Wislawa Szymborska

From "Nothing Twice", 1997
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

FDX, baby!

This weekend Libby and I went to our first flyball tournament, the Jingle Bell Jump in Talladega, Alabama. We carpooled down with the captain of our flyball team (Double Dog Dare), Dana, and one of the other long time members, Angie. Between the two of them they have SIX dogs: Josie the greyhound, Huey and Dustin the whippets, Siren the staffie mix, Bailey the american eskimo, and Ivy the border collie. Angie also owns Rooster (who is Libby's twin, except he is a red heeler mix instead of blue) but he didn't come to this tournament. If you go here, you can see the dogs. Rooster is in the far right column. Anyway.

So in our van there were 3 people and 7 (SEVEN!) dogs. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. Dana had taken out all of the seats in the back except for one captain's chair in the middle. Three dogs were in their kennels in the far back and the rest were loose. They all behaved very well.

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that I had pretty low expectations for Libby. Everyone had said that the dogs usually freak out at their first tournament. It's loud and crazy, with about 200 or so dogs all in one big room barking their little heads off. Plus, the days are long with racing usually starting at about 7am and going as late as 8:30pm.

But Libby was a CHAMP! Her first race she didn't do too hot, but still better than I would have thought. She was definitely excited and knew that her goal was to get the ball and come bring it back to mom. She was really calm in her kennel, but barking and howling like crazy in the ring waiting to run. She never balked at the hurdles on the way down, but we had to pull her halfway through the first race because she kept skipping the jumps on the way back. Fortunately, though, she stayed in our teams' lane and still came right back to me. She just didn't want to jump. I would have been happy if that was all she did- she was focused on the ball, she didn't even notice the other dogs or people, she came right back to me and would stay with me and wait for her next run... it was way more than I had hoped for!

For warm-ups later, we put a gate up by the box to make sure she would come back over the jumps. The next two races she ran PERFECTLY in all 5 heats per race. The first one got her her first title (FD). The next ones she ran got her her SECOND title (FDX)! We figured out that for some reason she only skipped jumps on the way back in the left lane, and unfortunately her last race of the weekend was in the left and she had to get pulled again. And unfortunately, a lot of other dogs were having meltdowns on our team, so it was kind of a disaster near the end of the weekend anyway. But I was super excited that she had gotten two titles her first weekend (apparently that is really rare and everyone was really impressed). Hopefully we'll be going to our second tournament in January. If we can fix the left lane problem, she'll be up for her third title!

So for now you can call her Libby Caldwell, FDX.