I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

(Abraham Lincoln)

I wanted a cool "Cinco de Mayo" quote and so Google took me to this post which reminded me that today is more than margaritas, it is a patriotic celebration.

So happy Cinco de Mayo! And happy moving day Bird! (Today she is a woman, my sister is moving into her own apartment with her friend L.!!! I'll be there later this week to celebrate the move, Mother's Day and see Kiki, who lives in PA, but not near me.) Multitasking vacations, I love it!

Today is a HUGE day for me. I have appointments from 9:30-8 (just about) and then a East Lib meeting to go to, which the title quote mirrors well.

9:30 Treadmill Lady (whom I adore)
11:45 Meet a potential new therapist
2-4 Last meeting for Summer Reading Committee, with lots of food and fun.
6:00 E. Lib meeting.

I tried watching The Lives of Others (a German flick that two men I like, my dad and someone else, recommended) and gah! I'm just not interested in a movie that is pretty much (as long as I watched it, which might have been a half hour) about the Stasi (East German secret police) doing surveillance on this playwright, whose girlfriend is also dating a Stasi official. I think it must be a guy flick.

Katy and Kiki both gave me encouragement and good thoughts and tips about the resume/cover letter process and Kiki pointed out that most first interviews these days are phone interviews. Ah! Good point.

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The Pens won yesterday!! I don't understand hockey that much, but I like it enough to listen to it on the radio and then listen to the call-in shows afterwards. Oh, it was so exciting, I was screaming in my apartment every time they got a goal. And it even went into overtime. (I'm sure it was on TV too, but I was happily adding links about interviews to my del.icio.us page.)

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Church was good. Eileen and hubby did the music, the songs were not songs we knew, but they reflected E and her husband's personalities well (quieter that the normal OD fare) and the lyrics to the last one ROCKED even if the music was more folksy. And we sang "Come Ye Sinners" which I ADORE.

It fascinates me the dynamics that exist in the Great Hall, this one big room with slant-y floors. People come early and leave early, come late and stay late, cry, laugh, open themselves up, shut down. I am amazed at how easy it is to avoid someone if you don't really want to talk to them--in our small community, there is still so much for us to learn about community, about tiptoeing and stomping. And I've gone beyond talking about me, because even I can't exhibit all those sorts of mood swings in the short span of the two or so hours we spend there. How easy it is to have Facebook lives, to beat someone at Scramble, but not have a word to say to them when you see them face to face. The sermon was really good. I took notes. (Well, and I always do, it helps me listen.) I can't remember what it was about at the moment, but I will later. Ah, it was about the tower at Babel and then the regeneration of language at Pentecost. The speaker was a man who left the OD just as I was coming in, so I never knew him, but he's back now. It was a GREAT sermon, mirroring the two stories. I was glad I took my Bible along. (Our scriptures are on a screen so that you don't need to carry one.)

Slowly I am telling people about my Queens dreams, mostly when they ask me about the car I turn it into, we-ell, I might not need a car after this summer... There are a few people I need to email, as I think they'd like to know before they hear it on the grapevine...but how I'd so much rather tell them in person...with a hug. So maybe I'll wait one more day.

The communion table is supposed to be a place where we experience grace, and last night BJ told us to serve one another, which we generally do, but the wine was at the other end of the table and so the woman next to me was waiting to serve me and the woman on the other side served me with grape juice, because I didn't tell her, I'm already waited on. ACK! I felt horrible, which I know I need to let go of, because hello, it was the LORD's table and if anywhere we are going to experience the life of God, it is there--as I write this out, I think how I have just written about the tapestry of what happens in the Great Hall and how the Eucharist starts out with "on the night he was betrayed." We make it out that communion is this holy wonderful thing and yes, it can be, it should be, but we are human, we screw it up, just like everything.

I remember a paper I wrote in college about a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem that talked about how we screw everything up but ends with that the Holy Ghost is always fresh. And Sister Maureen wrote, why did you end your paper on a sour note, instead of a fresh one, like the poet did? Hold the phone, I'll get the poem. I love me some GMH. God's Grandeur. (I dare not cut and paste, this website really does their HTML, and I'll be editing for hours.) But this is the last line:

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

There is a phrase I love, "dearest freshness deep down things," that reminds me that "nature is never spent," that we think we have screwed up God's world when duh, it is his world. If he wanted us to not screw it up, he would have locked it away. He wants us to hurt and heal. I think we forget that we can't heal until we hurt so bad that we actually get out the peroxide, put on the Band-aid, wait some days or months or years. So I didn't screw up that woman's communion experience just by an inadvertent word. She was already wounded. And I was already good at wounding, by wanting to please everyone. Oh how humbling it is to let things go.

I just finished another "Sisterchicks" book (I adore these, they are fluffy travel books that actually express women's fiction the way I think it should be expressed--and they aren't romances!! If the woman is married, she stays married. If she's single, SHE IS NOT FIXED UP by gettting a man!!!) Sisterchicks in Gondolas (and now I am in the last 15 minutes before running out the door). I'll write more about Sisterchicks in Gondolas later, but the one phrase I love is "shame off you." It takes the shame out and says, let it roll off your back like water off a duck's back.

I think with this walking thing (yesterday I walked to Whole Foods, about a mile) (and back, so two miles) I am expending more calories, so the small amounts of food are not going as far--I had a frozen dinner before church, but after church, I was FAMISHED. And no one was going to the SE, so I went with Jen Weiner (we're now Facebook friends!). (I started re-reading Certain Girls, am picking up the details I missed the first go round.) I had my "usual," Mediterranean Nachos and an iced tea. And I ate the whole thing. Then I went BACK to Whole Foods (I had to buy frozen waffles, which wouldn't have weathered the walk home, esp since I went to Goodwill after I went to Starbucks and Borders.) Then I walked to Walgreens, got their house brand of Claratin on half price, WOO!

Okay, gotta hit "Publish." Have a great day.

It's a great day for hockey!!!!!!!!!!!!