The Whistle

I heard it today. The whistle. I was just coming up the stairs to go to bed and I heard it... it wasn't the right tune of course, but I was curious. Who else would whistle on my street, outside my window loud enough that I could hear it half-way down my stairs? Silly single-paned windows. But even though I looked outside with half-hearted earnest (I was prepared for no one to be standing there), a twinge twisted in the sinews of my heart for just a moment and I remembered my little bird, and I missed him.

My little bird... but you are always everywhere. The chasm of everything we don't say to each other keeps filling up because words... words are too small for what we're feeling right now. Most of the time I can  hold in all the words: the moments I wanted to tell you about, the thoughts I had about the book, the film, the smile, the strange encounter - it's been months, but I still have the urge to tell you everything. When I don't think I can take it anymore, and I feel like all the words I'm holding back are going to burst out of me like emotional bulimia, I come here to twist my purging into some weird art.

My little bird... I still see your smile, hear your laugh; I still wonder what you would think about things, the recipe I'm trying, the outfit I'm wearing... would I see a crinkled nose? Would you throw your head back in your enthusiastic way and laugh heartily - I do miss your laugh... it was just like you: genuine and straight from the heart.

Please don't think I don't understand... I do. You see, my heart is lying to me... she's telling me that you could be the most important person in my life, and me to you... she's telling me that we're wasting so much time being apart - if we really love each other, we'll never get these moments back. But she's wrong - what's happening now in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives - these things are important right now. These things are forming us, even this terrible distance, even imagining my little bird outside my window, even understanding that we need this time apart... these things are important. I have to believe this, even if it turns out not to be true, I'm going to believe it because it's terrifying to think that one person not being in my life could ruin my life. Could I give anyone that much power? Not that I'm impervious - oh no - you have power, influence... a lot of it, my dear, but even you won't leave my life a ruin. How could you? You've only done positive things in my heart; only tore down ruins and rebuilt encouragement and love... these edifices stand intact: no ruin here, I assure you.

So I tell myself over and over: you will have all the time you need. And I believe it. And I hope.

So please hope too... the words aren't coming because I'm afraid I'd drown you in the deluge and right now prudence is needed. One day will be a day for words; for now, silence and hope and heart-wrenching little whistles that are not my bird outside my window.  

Free Hearts

I have a winged-heart pendant that I found at a lil shop for about $5. I wear it almost everyday, like if I wear it I'll be more free. Like I'll be showing the world that my heart isn't tied down, that I'm not attached. Not attached to what, you may ask?

That's where I would pause and think for a moment.

You see, the most common idea is that your heart is free from people, but that's not what I want. I want to love and serve my friends and family with all my heart. I don't want to hold back from them.

Yet everything in me yearns for freedom. Like the urge to just get into the middle of nowhere and just run on a wooded track, an open field, the beach... to swim laps up the coast, to dive down deep and lay on the bottom of the pool... to lay on the roof at night and watch the stars. I want to feel a part of the bigness and deepness and fullness of this world.

I want to feel invulnerable to the influences of the powers... I want poisonous media images not to infect me, I want vile name-calling political campaigns to bounce off like a rubber ball... I want to walk with wisdom, not objectivity, since I'm not sure that exists in an individual, but collectively.

I want to let go of my fears... fear of being rejected, fear of being inadequate, fears so big and dark and deep the ocean could fill them... they stab at me in the night, they eat at me in the day. I'm getting better at shrugging them off, pushing them away.

There is something precious in freedom that's fragile and subtle, and there is something ferocious in freedom that bites and barks and refuses to be satisfied. The Yearning for Freedom can come from desperation, like Jenny in Forest Gump, "Dear God, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far, far away from here."

Other times, it is this urge deep inside us not to be attached to things... I went to Mablethorpe on the coast of the North Sea, and at a midnight bonfire, I wandered down the long coast to the water in the middle of the night, in the darkness. I couldn't see anything, it was black on black, with the sand meeting the water meeting the darkness. The wind brushed my face the way that sea breezes do. I stared out into the expanse of the sea, and the Holy Darkness met me. It was like the 3rd day of Creation, me and God's face hovering over the expanse of the waters. It reminded me of Psalm 139: 7-12

Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence? 
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 
If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 
even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast. 
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’, 
even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you. 

God surely is in the darkness for I felt Him there... I felt so terrifyingly free there.

Freedom from this world, from fear, from anxiety and worry and social pressures is what God calls us to. He wants us to experience this freedom of throwing all of our love into our community, but not being bound by the results. To be invested, but not enslaved. I am convinced the answer is NOT to be indifferent, but to be so grounded in God's love and power, that you can be careless with your heart. It is nestled safely under the shadow of his wings, so you can spread this love around your community lavishly. I am trying to learn the discipline of freedom. I feel like this is going to be a long journey. 

"Please don't Talk to Me"

Living in a London, you learn the "rules" of the city... Londoners can be really friendly and sociable at bars and parties, but there are places they don't want you to chat to them including buses, trains, the street, etc.

Being the friendly girl that I am, I've gotten blanked plenty of times trying to start up friendly chat, usually when something particularly humorous is going on...

OK to Chat:
On train around 7pm, drunk man enters, swaying and leaning, sits on a few strangers laps, tries chatting to them, stands up, almost swinging out of the then open door. Almost gets his arm smashed in the door. Meanwhile, the entire train carriage is making meaningful eyes at each other of "Can you believe this guy?" I'm hiding behind my paper dying of laughter, hoping he doesn't hear me snorting. All passengers share sigh of relief when he gets off.

OK to Chat:
Two train passengers reading the same book. (Much of my train/cafe chat has been about books)

OK to Chat:
One Saturday morning I got on the Central line and sat down... only to have something soak through my jeans and I stood up trying to figure out if it was coke or pee. (It was fanta). Standing, many other people tried to sit in that seat, and I kept trying to keep them from sitting down. Most of them blanked me at first, but soon our whole section of seats was helping me deter people from an unhappy, wet-bottomed fate.

Not OK to Chat:
So Friday evening, around 730pm, I get off at Canning Town, which is a bit dodgy in the daylight and now it's evening. I'm trying to find a friend's house and I completely forget which road to take so I'm wandering but trying to look purposeful about where I'm walking. I get on a side road and have already made one bad turn and turn around, relocate myself, when this guy with a hood up is walking behind me. He's walking really close. There are no street lamps on the road. No close houses. No people I can see or hear. He's so close that I move over, thinking he might want to pass me, even though there's a wide side walk and he takes the opportunity to sidle up next to me and ask me how I am. He's a middle-aged black guy, sturdy build... and I don't want to assume that he's nefarious, but really? I contemplate blowing him off, but, if he gets mad, there will be no witnesses, so I try to be quietly friendly. I try to keep the conversation on him. I try to not reveal any information. And when I reach what I think is my friends house (which turns out NOT to be), I make sure he knows I don't live here (cause, yes, he asked). I gave him a fake name... (cause he asked that too) and when I rang the door and realised it wasn't my friends house, and he's not answering his phone, I walked the other way till I couldn't see him any more just in case he was still around.

I'm sure he's a very nice person, but it's just not a good idea to chat to young girls in dark alleys on misty early spring nights... 

Words to Live By...

This is a HORRID pic of Kant...  

The moral philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote some pretty cool stuff I debated in my moral philosophy class a few years ago... though we couldn't rest with surety on everything he said, I did come away with a pretty good idea of his categorical imperative... 

A categorical imperative is basically a mantra which you should live by morally IF and ONLY IF it could be followed in EVERY circumstance. 

Philosophers LOVE to think about every possible circumstance, and they like breaking the rules of physics to do so... 

On a slight tangent, my favorite question, which hasn't been answered, was posed by both Mel Gibson, and  my philosophy of religion teacher... Why is BLOOD the vehicle by which God forgives sins? He could have chosen ANYTHING, and He chose BlOOD... 

Anyway, I am a word collector in many ways... whether it's old words that should come back into play, or what I consider words to live by, whether or not they may classify as a categorical imperative, here are some people and sayings that get me going in a good way. 

Much nicer... he has kind eyes... or he's checking you out ;)

• "I am most myself when I am loving others." - Pastor Greg Hill 
• "The universe is so vast and so ageless that the life of one man can only be justified by the measure of his sacrifice." 
• "Your spiritual life is never just for you...but for the healing of the nations...that we might be part of God's world." - Archie Coates (Pastor at HTB)
• "The opposite of love isn't hatred, it's the using of another as a means to an end." --Christopher West 
• "It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness." - Leo Tolstoy
• "Step back and decide how important your opinions are verses the people you claim to love." ~ Bill Johnson
• "Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value." ~ Arthur Miller
• ‘You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the amount that it is attacked.’--Gustave Flaubert
• "Christians need to have soft hearts and hard feet" ~ Jackie Pullinger
• "Safety isn't found in the absence of danger, but in the presence of God" - Simon Guillebaud
• "The language of Friendship is not words but meanings. It is an intelligence above language." - Henry David Thoreau
• "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T.S. Elliot
• "Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
• "Anything less than this complete trust...would not be love, anything less than pure trust would be a kind of careful negotiation. A careful negotiation isn't love. A person must be willing to be dashed on the rocks or made the fool in exchange for a relationship in order for pure love to take place." Donald Miller "Searching for God Knows What" 
• "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." ~ from "Ulysses," A.L. Tennyson 
• "What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other?" ~ George Eliot
• The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. He has accepted God's estimate of his own life: In himself, nothing; In God, everything. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring.-- A.W. Tozer
• "Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day that simply says 'I will try again tomorrow.'" ~ Pope Benedict XVI
• "It is not our abilities that show who we truly are. It is our choices." - Albus Dumbledore
• "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”-- Anais Nin
• "If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you also have to believe that no one was ever improved by a book (or a play or a movie). You have to believe ... that all art is morally trivial and that all education is morally irrelevant." ~ Irving Kristol
• "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

These amazing words, full of courage, stamina, grace and truth... these words were set into contexts which I've forgotten. And context, I think adds power and meaning to these words, not the other way around. The Jackie Pullinger quote, for example, comes from over 40 years of missionary work in Hong Kong's tough heroine/prostitution rings... talk about hard feet living there! Somehow working in East London doesn't seem so bad. 

I've been in a season of reading lately. My life seems to come in seasons... never finding the balance, something always takes the majority of my attention, whether it's writing, reading, dancing, working, meeting with friends, praying, etc... right now it's reading. (soon I'll be editing, I promise). There are so many books that I want to read, books I want to re-read, books I think I should have read when I was a child... lifetimes of books! Sometimes it's maddeningly depressing, other times, I stare at the wonder of my goodreads to-read list, or my amazon wishlist, and just think it's a miracle that so many awesome sounding books have been published. 

It gives me hope and utter despair. 

Sorry for the tangent... 

But getting back to context, these words, from other worlds and societies and contexts... they speak to my context... they meet me here and breathe life into me here. 

And I think to myself, I hope anything that I write or say does the same to others... 

Hope. Despair. Caught in an unbearable tension... So I hope they do you some good. 

I've noticed that...

healthily-minded people have been referring to foods by their nutritional value, not by the actual standard name for the food.

For example, in normal conversation, I'll hear a woman say "Wow, I could really go for some carbs right now... I know I shouldn't, but I'm just craving them." (frenchfries, chips, pretzels, pasta, rice... whatever)

"I need to add more protein to my diet." (staring at lentil curry, or sushi, or bean stew, or steak, or roast chicken, or cheese)

"I haven't had too much sugar today" (brownie on plate, coke in hand, or... both). The thing is, that this doesn't always make sense to me cause there are healthy and unhealthy options of all the main TYPES of food. I could want protein and eat an entire wedge of brie with like 2000 calories in it, or I could have a glass of milk, a cup of yogurt, a basket of chicken wings, or a grilled steak... all at varying health levels.


Also that random foods which haven't gotten much play are randomly appearing everywhere because someone somewhere has deemed them "super." Like kale... which until this autumn, I wasn't even sure what it was... I thought it might be some kind of seafood... carp, kelp, kale... whatever...

Now I see kale salads, buttered kale, kale omlettes... blah, blah, blah... and quinoa... which is pronounced KEEN-wah... NOT kin-O-ah... like I thought.

And grocery stores are beginning to bank in on this too... forever blueberries were all expensive... now one article from Livestrong.org about how raspberries are awesome too and blueberries are 2 for 3, and raspberries are back to "normal price"... <-- SO not impressed, since I LOVE raspberries... not so keen on blueberries, even if they are so SUPER.

I don't want to hear any nonsense about how it's January and berries are out of season... it's a plot I tell you! A PLOT!

Food should be enjoyed, not merely dissected into nutritional values and absorbed... while I think being healthy and being aware of what one is eating is important, just call food by their real names... and not the category off of the food pyramid please... ok, good talk. Over and Out.

Groundhog Day... is not alone...

So in class today, I educated my international students on Groundhog day. Usually my English students stare at me in disbelief... "So... you're telling me that Americans think fat rodents can tell the seasons?"... umm yes, and it's awesome.

Instead, my Polish and Lithuanian students said, "Ah yes, we do the same in... Poland and Lithuania...only it's a... a... (they were looking for the word beaver)... (awesome motioning of fangs, to mean the teeth).

Really?

In Lithuania, they supposedly use a hedgehog... "the one with spikes Miss... (showed them picture of a porcupine and I got Nos, so then pic of a hedgehog went up to cheers from the Lithuanian students.)

I'm somehow really glad that the US isn't the only country that tries to guess the weather by using rodents... and here we thought we were all original or something. Then again, maybe they were messing with me... but until then, I'm going to believe news crews in Poland crowd to wooded rivers to see if the family of local beavers will come out of their dams, see their shadows and scurry back inside... 

So I thought you needed something in your bed...

... so I got you a stuffed animal.

I've never really been a stuffed animal girl. I had a few when I was a little kid... I had a dolphin I almost stole from Sea World when I was 2... but another story for another day.

Other than the dolphin, I didn't really have any stuffed animals till college, where on the first day, my new roommate offered me a stuffed jaguar. It's a perfect snuggly kitty to guard my bed. He's been there since college, but I thought it was a lone stuffed animal thing. Not too creepy... I'm not the girl with tons of stuffed animals in her room... till now.

The past few years, people have begun buying me stuffed animals. Since my jaguar offering 2002, my bed was a single animal bed... in 2010 a friend sent me a Crush (from Finding Nemo)... then my mom got me a National Geographic snow leopard which has a noise pack and growls... another bed guard.

Finally, at Christmas, my brother got me a larger-than-life size owl. (shown above).

While this owl, (I've named him Galileo), is awesome,... I feel like people are filling my bed up with stuffed animals to keep me company...

I don't feel like married women or women with committed boyfriends get offered stuffed animals as gifts... unless it's for their dogs or children.

Not that I'm not totally appreciative of my growing army of bed guards, but if I need to get something or someone out of my bed, I'll use a taser ;)

American Foods (which I Love), which will probably kill me

So in England, I tend to eat quite healthy there with fewer processed foods. But I grew up on some amazingly beautiful "foods" that I splurge on when I'm home. Here's the list in no particular order:

• Beefaroni: you all know the song "We're having beefaroni! Beef and macaroni!" I LOVE this stuff! 
• Tasty Cakes: Specifically the Peanut butter Kandy kakes (in my lunch every day of school!)
• Vlasic Kosher Baby Dill Pickles
• Stewart's Rootbeer 
• Hazelnut Flavored Coffeemate...mmmmm 
• Cow tales... cause who doesn't love icing filled caramel? NOT ME!!! 
• Every time I'm home, it is imperative I visit Wawa multiple times for coffee and subs, and many other smaller restaurants for all the horrific goodness! Sigh... it never gets old. 

Becoming Owl Girl

So almost anyone who knows me understands that I like owls. I've always had a thing for animals of all kinds, but the fascination with owls runs deep: I've always been a bit of a bookworm, and owls are associated with Knowledge. Owls are also linked with wisdom, loyalty, and cunning... for some reason, other animals that I adore also seem cunning and predatorial like foxes, wolves, lynx, and many birds of prey.

Of course, owls have become very popular the last few years, from Harry Potter to Hello Kitty. It's far cry from the days of Stanford Achievement Tests with the little owl emblem on the bottom of each page. Everyone always thought they were so cheesy.

With an affluence of owl paraphernalia to choose from, gift occasions have become owl showerings. This Christmas I received no less than 11 owl gifts from jewelry to stuffed animals to bags to candle holders and clothes! Whenever someone sees an owl gift, "Oh I didn't know you love owls!" and next gift is another owl, which I love. :)

But owls have a symbology all to themselves, and unlike butterflies and roses, (even with the War of the Roses), the symbolism and meanings are not always cheerful. It's not a bright and maybe even lady-like thing to be the girl who loves owls.

Owls are clever in many cultures, especially the Greeks, linking them with Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom. We often associate Archimedes with having a pet owl, although this may have been popularized by the cartoon The Sword in the Stone, with Merlin's pet owl, Archimedes. (<-- yes, I totally went there).

But in many other cultures, like Eqyptian and many Asian cultures as well as Native American cultures, Owls, being nocturnal, were guardians of the underworld, harbingers of death, the companions of witches and demons, and even sometimes, witches themselves.

Other Native American cultures also associate owls with being the keepers of secret knowledge, wisdom, and some are thought of as oracles.

Even in the Bible, owls represent birds of destruction, linked with Ravens most places, inhabitants of places destroyed by God. They may also represent survivors in desolation...

Isaiah 34:11
But the hawk and the porcupine shall possess it, the owl and the raven shall dwell in it. He shall stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness.

Psalm 102:6
I am like a desert owl of the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places;

All of these centuries of meaning seem quite a lot for one person to take on to herself. With the recent popularity of owls in positive and negative ways, I think dark symbolism is being replaced in our minds with visions of Hedwig nibbling playfully at Harry Potter, and Pig whizzing around the room annoying Ron. The Legend of the Guardians shows us gorgeous owl worlds, protecting the Kingdom of the Owls :)

With these large-eyed guardians as votive holders, book ends, and hand bags, are we covering ourselves with harbingers of death? Probably not. We're tapping into the quiet and sometimes hidden wisdom which we associate with these majestic creatures.

Should we stay ignorant of the global associations linked to the things we love, I think not. But nor should we turn away from beautiful things we love merely because of some ancient opinions.

We must ever hold the two in tension as we live in the world we've been plopped into.

Still, while I love owls, I love other animals as well... nearly all animals, but especially: dragonflies, lynx, foxes, stags, bats and spiders (yes I'm a weird one). Any animals really will do... And Thank you so much to everyone for helping me establish my owl parliament and my animal menagerie of glass, clay, wood and cloth.

Running Advice from a Non-Runner

Running is in... ask anyone! Everyone runs... except maybe for me. I'm definitely a newbie when it comes to this fitness craze. I've heard of marathon runners and ultra-marathon runners and it's all very inspiring until I get out of the door and can't seem to get around the block... jk. 

But seriously, this post is for those of you (and me) who want to run, who want to be more fit, but who find it difficult to get started. 

When I first decided I wanted to run a few years ago, I found loads of advice online and from friends who are runners, but it all seemed a bit mad to me, to be honest. 

All of a sudden, running had to be something I did everyday, in all weathers, and I had to have all the latest gear, which, by the way, costs a lot of money. I didn't even have an ipod arm-band back then! 

So here are some running tips for neophytes: 

1. If you find treadmills difficult to run on because of the boredom factor, (like me) count things... anything, as you're going along. It does help... and turn your music up super loud and dance while you're treadmilling it up :) (arm movements, etc) 
2. If you run on a track find it difficult to run in circles (because, like me, you lose count of how many times you've gone around), count on your fingers as you go along. It totally helps! 
3. If you have bad knees (mine aren't the greatest), try running on grass... the pavement is VERY hard on your knees and running is high impact... so go gingerly on them. You can also have running shoe specialists look at your stride and get you amazing shoes (but it's expensive). 
4. If you get bored, zig-zag through trees, run around benches, intermittently do sets of jumping jacks in your run (it keeps the heart rate up!) and sprint at squirrels, do cartwheels, or anything else that gets you out of the monotonous running motion. 
5. I love running to music, but my ipod armband broke, so I scotch-tape it to my upper arm... #don'tjudgeme
6. In the running world, people can be VERY competitive... push yourself, if you want, but don't over-do it. I run for fun, to be fit, and my runs tend to be sporadic, fairly short, and at medium-speeds... I prefer dance and zumba for cardio, personally... 
7. I run in light clothes that are fairly tight... loose clothes tend to not work for running. 
8. Try to smile while running... depending on my music, I sometimes sing and laugh too... I once heard a comedian say no one who's running looks happy "If I see someone running who's happy, I'll run after them." 

I would just like to say...

that the Birds Eye Polar Bear is super creepy...

The deep voice, the awkward head movements, and the terrified looks of the women in the commercials make him seem like a sex offender in training... SUPER CREEPY...

On the other hand...
I <3 the PG Tips Monkey...

First of all, he's knitted! He knows how to make proper tea. He understands English weather. He isn't rude and doesn't tell you off like the creepy polar bear. He makes tea for you... Basically, he's just all around a superior hand puppet spokesperson... the best one on TV unless Elmo is trying to sell something.

Orienting Myself by the Heavens

I've always been interested (obsessed) with different types of mythology and at a young age became interested in stars, the zodiac, and the stories behind the constellations in the heavens.

Orion, The Hunter

Growing up in New Jersey, the countryside boasts less light pollution than London, and those who know me well, will know if I am out of doors, my eyes are turned upward, regardless of the time of day, finding shapes in clouds, remarking colors, textures, finding birds in trees, and, in the night, seeking my friends in the stars. 

During my teen years I would climb out onto the roof with a blanket and stare straight up. Our house is surrounded by trees, so the sky space seems small, and the roof boasts the best view. Getting out of the car at night, Orion always met me and, in my mind, tipped his hat to me on his hunt. 

He was so easy to find that I'd call him "my man"... and I'd go out on the roof and speak to the heavens, to Orion, the hunter in the trees, silently protecting the house and waiting for me to get home to speak to him (in my wild imagination). Sigh. 

Cassiopeia, The Queen

Now in London, I'm a few degrees north latitudinally, and so, Orion is still in my eyesight, but not directly overhead like before. 

No, my new companion is Cassiopeia, the vain queen, and she is a constant, though less fanciful companion. 

It figures when I traded my country home for the city that I would have to say goodbye to my Hunter. Cassiopeia, though constant, is a proper city girl, just bright enough to make her out on my walk home from the train station. 

But my biggest regret, is how much I miss those whimsical sisters, the Pleiades, who were so easy to find in my Jersey countryside, but are seen only on particularly cloudless and clear nights in London Town. 

These sassy sisters, small and bright in the sky, remind me of family, no matter where I am, seeing them so faintly, so high in the sky, knowing I can see them 5,000 miles away on the Jersey coast, to have them smiling down on me from their sad home in Taurus, is comforting. 

The Pleiades and their Mom, Pleione

After moving to London, I used to say that anywhere where I could find a good book shop and good coffee and where I could tell a joke would be home. Now, I think, I've discovered that this heavenly scope has made a difference in me. While books are constant companions and coffee is always a comforting and jazzy drink, looking up at night and not knowing where I am is a bit disconcerting. Looking up, finding my orientation, finding a friend in the stars I've come to know is something I can't let go of and something that until recently I did unconsciously. Maybe I just need to find a clear night and head out to the countryside to get to know the sky from this angle/latitude and make some new friends in the heavens. 

The Pleiades, Girl Night in the Celestial Party Zone!

Rollerblading Rocks!

So, my new passion is rollerblading, refound from my 12th birthday when I first loved this awesome activity.

So while there's a lot of cheese associated with rollerblading, spandex and neon, I'm going to give you the top 5 fabulous reasons to rollerblade.

1. It's super fun! 
2. It burns loads of calories (285 per 30 mins at a steady pace and more if you increase speed) 
3. It helps increase your balance, aerobic and anaerobic health. 
4. It gets you outside to enjoy the park, boardwalk, or your neighborhood. Vitamin D! 
5. You can do it solo or with friends and there are loads of local classes becoming available to hone your skills and stay safe. 

Misconceptions and Annoyances 

1. You do not need to wear spandex. I often blade it up in jeans, shorts, or even my bathing suit. 
2. Safety is sexy, (says Eve in Whip it) so don't forget your wrist guards and knee pads at the minimum :) 
3. The funnest thing ever (sarcasm) is rollerblading down the path and people dive in front of me because they are trying to get out of the way. Seeing their deer in headlights look and then have them run the wrong way is hilarious/frustrating because I usually end up throwing myself up on the grass or out of the way to not hit them. 

Battle Cry

I'm watching the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup, New Zealand vs Australia, and I'm just reminded of all the battle analogies, and even the Maori haka they used at the start of the match (this is from a previous match).  Even this advert by Guiness boasts a war theme.

Anthropologically speaking, war games were used for just that, to prepare young men for battle. In America, the natives played what we now call Lacrosse, and across the globe, drills, matches, competitions, even faux battles and tournaments (in England and France especially), caused heroes to battle for real women locked in towers, etc.

I also know that National Sports Teams tend to be supported by the armed services, and in England especially the Army vs Navy rugby match is a classic sporting endeavor in the UK.

So are sport freaks just men who should have gone into the military? The feeling of belonging to something bigger, of fighting a historical battle, of being reliant on team members to achieve glory? All the best and worst moments of sporting mimic the metaphors of battle, but those in the armed forces would probably rarely compare war to a game.

In an episode of Bones, Brennan reminds Booth of this, that sport mad men are merely boys who haven't graduated to adulthood... they are stuck in the adolescence of war games instead of war.

Booth, however, is a Ranger and has seen war, but in a sense, is she correct? Do sport mad men just need to grow up a bit? 

Feedback

So I've been writing stories and poems and, yes, song lyrics, since I was a little girl. In the 7th grade, I was so entranced with mythology that I created my own cosmos and romances with all my gods and goddesses and lords and ladies.

What I wouldn't pay to somehow have those notebooks full of writing from 1996.

Even now, I'm writing in a genre I can't even describe properly to people, stories in a format I can't really explain, and the writing all is so clear in my head... but I can't tell if what is in my head is portraying itself accurately on the page.

Sometimes I wish I could just hook up a USB to my brain and into Word and have it all work out gorgeously with my writing style and the correct form and wording intact... but... writing is a process for a reason.

Sometimes I seem to get lost. Sub-plots crop up and turn into stories and new characters take over, and my characters seem to develop these desires I never thought they'd have...

It's a mess really... I wish it could be like when I was in school and someone could tell me if I was doing this right.

And really, I have let some people read excerpts... I've read aloud to people sometimes as well... but I don't feel like I'm getting feedback, but just general "Oh it's good. I like this part" comments...

I know I won't be the next J.K. Rowling... and honestly, I don't think I'd want to be. I don't think I'll ever be a famous writer. But I want these characters to have a life outside of my head. I want their stories to be told. I want them to be real to someone other than just me and for that to happen, I need to get them out of my head...

On top of all of it, I'm terrified of getting real "criticism" because I don't know what my reaction will be if it's bad...

I might just cry, or I might infuriatingly defend myself... who knows? Whatever I do, I don't want it to crush my passion for writing out of me. I want to move forward... I just need to find a way to get constructive feedback... 

Disney Romance... Oh How I LOVE It!

So for years I've been reading about how Disney has ruined women's expectations of men, and yet so many women fight this yearning that their lives were meant to be something more.

Like Belle, Ariel, Pocahontas, Kidagakash, Jasmine, etc... we want more. We want more, not because we're women and unreasonable, but because life is glorious and meant to be lived.

Sometimes, I want to give in to it... that voice that says my expectations are too high, I'm just being unreasonable, I should just settle, or even as Becca put it in her article "Disney is Ruining My Life," "I'm not settling for, but rather, I'm settling in."

What disturbs me most about this concept is that it presumes that adjusting to "adult life" means letting go of the "fantasies of youth." "Adult life" just feels like this, and it's ok... NO!!!

There are certain things about adult life that I could do without: the fact that humidity ruins my hair now matters, being the bigger person in relationships counts more, and now I usually do know better.

But being mature doesn't have to mean settling for the status quo or just convincing myself that "adult life" just feels like this. Adults don't have to lose their child-like nature, their wanderlust, their innocence or love of fun.

Secondly, the concept of "just being rescued" in Disney movies is not necessarily the case. In Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, yes... Snow White and Aurora are asleep, ergo, someone needs to rescue them. But they are kind and good and reckless a bit, and worth rescuing... are you?

In later Disney movies, the female characters usually suffer some sort of domestic trouble, from Belle looking after her mad-inventor Father and being pressured to marry Gaston, Cinderella is enslaved by her Stepmother, and Rapunzel being kidnapped and psychologically manipulated her entire life. And Disney "Princes" aren't usually all-dat-and-a-bag-of-chips either... Aladdin lies and steals, Beast has anger-management issues, Prince Charming has an over-bearing father and lacks commitment, Peter Pan refuses to grow up, Tramp hates responsibility, Robin Hood is an outlaw, etc. I'm fairly certain the only functional family we see is Pongo and Perdita in 101 Dalmatians.

The point of Disney romance is that we rescue each other from our own faults and situations. We help each other get out of our own way, or out of the tragic situations we've found ourselves in. Aladdin has to learn to stop lying and see the value in himself. Tarzan helps Jane out of her own societal issues, she teaches him about modern society and companionship. Flynn breaks the cycle of Rapunzel being used for her hair, she loves him for who he is. Cinderella is sweet enough to win the heart of a Prince. Eric finds a woman as wild and joyous as the sea he loves. Hercules is faithful to Meg, and she sees through the muscle to the heart of the man.

Since I am not married, nor have I ever been, maybe you're sitting there thinking my post is idealistic poppycock, but I have actually been in relationships where guys saw through my bulls*** and I saw through theirs and we helped each other grow.

So they didn't end up being "the" guy, but that doesn't mean the entire philosophy is crap. I don't necessarily need someone to save me from my life, but I want someone who'd try, and I'd try to save him from himself... cause God-knows he'll need it. Disney men aren't perfect, and neither are the women--they just reach a point where they decide that love is better than their hang ups, and they make a change for each other, for themselves, for the sake of love. What's so stupid about that?

Different "kinds" of People

So I've been confronted with "desert" people in the last few days. I often wonder how to break down our good, old world and organize it. Race and religion don't seem sufficient enough... I think the real clincher is what kind of environment one grows up in...

Is it tropical? Do you get storms? What's the weather like? Rainy, wet, low altitude, high altitude? Land locked?

I just think it would be really hard to have a desert person and a beach person to mix. Yes both deal with sand to some extent, but the amount of water, the feeling of it beneath your feet, the smell, the critters involved, etc.

In some ways, we adapt to the climate we grow up in. I have always lived at low altitude (on the shore basically) and fairly mild climates. We get frequent thunderstorms, nor-easters, hurricanes and tropical storms at times. Surrounded by a flood plain, some swamps and forests, I can drive through rain, deal with insects and flooding and snow.

I get nosebleeds when it's dry or if I'm in a high altitude city.

I just don't think I could cope, but humidity... no sweat! (maybe not literally, but I can handle it).

Mountain people, too, might be a bit much for me. I love mountains and forests, but living on one, most likely away from the beach, I think it would be quite hard. I'm unaccustomed to noticing the signs of danger, or what might even happen before an avalanche, a mud-slide, or an earth quake.

Sure all of these places fascinate me, they are stunning, but, let's just say the lack of foliage in the desert makes it a place I would only vacation at, and maybe between trips to other places.

I think in the grand scheme of island people, mountain people, plains people, desert people, forest people, beach people, city people, and ice/snow people, I am forest/beach... like the color wheel or the zodiac, there will be people I mix with better, people I can adapt to easier, and people I won't mix with.

Opinionate. 

I read my news in gulps

Living in England, one of the things I really wanted to stay on top of was the US news. Not that I ever really paid attention to the news when I lived in the US, but anyway. I got online with NYTimes and discovered the weekly updates... and I became a monster. I am now subscribed to the politics, opinions, daily headlines, lesson plans, education, books and literature, and writing and writers emails... and there are about 250 of them in my nice little gmail news label unread.

Every 3 months or so, I'll go through and read through the headlines of all the lesson plans and delete useless emails. I'll skim through the opinion headlines and email myself articles I'm interested in and then maybe a month later get to read them. I've given up on staying on top of the education emails, only getting to them every 4-5 months or so, and today's headlines are usually deleted before they're even opened...

It's sad, I know, but there's only so much I can read at one time. At one point, I didn't have a laptop and I printed off the articles at work and carried them around and read them on the train... I think I got more read that way.

A lot of my friends who love reading seem to go through anti-reading phases, where they just find it impossible to work all day and come home and read anything. It's all they can do to drag themselves home, make some food, and turn on the television.

Sometimes I go through these phases, watching episode after episode of tvshows on dvd, but I always make it back to my books, finding it nearly impossible to walk around without at least 1 in my purse at all times.

So do I find out the gist of everything going on in the news... sure... just maybe 3-6 months after everyone else.

Articles have come out about the inundation of information in our society today. Sometimes I'm inclined to think that ignorance is bliss, but curiosity always gets the better of me and back to the books, articles, and newspapers I go.

Hence, I read my news in gulps. 

Something Fantastic...

Mrs. Fox: I know what it’s like to feel different

Ash: I’m not different, am I?

Mrs. Fox: We all are. Especially him (pointing to Mr. Fox), but there’s something fantastic about that, isn’t there? 

Yes... there is... 

Beach Rules

After a life time of hitting the Jersey Shore (the real one, not the one on the TV show)... I have some advice for anyone trying to have a great day at the beach. Most of my experience comes from Ocean City, NJ, a dry family-oriented town on the south shore. 

1. Thou shalt listen to beach jams on the way to the shore with the windows down, and usually arms (and/or) legs out the window... the stinky sweet smell of the marsh before you hit the bridge is epic. 

2. Thou shalt wear sunscreen, and apply it on the sidewalk before you get to the sand (lol). 

3. Thou shalt find free parking and if possible the free beach. If you can't find the free beach or it's far away, you should have at least 2-3 beach tags per 5 people or the high schoolers who "monitor" the beach might jack you up against a locker and take your lunch money (no Mack-n-Mancos!!!!) 

4. Thou shalt EITHER visit WaWa for lunch OR hit the boardwalk for lunch (preferably Stewarts or Mack-n-Manco's)... 

5. Thou shalt eat custard 

6. Thou shalt NOT walk on blankets with sandy feet... this will ensure you get invited BACK to the shore 

7. Thou shalt stay hydrated... nunya friends wanna drag yo sweaty ass across the sand... 

8. Thou shalt NOT boogie board into people's heads 

9. Thou shalt NOT make inappropriate comments loudly about speedo's in front of the life guards no matter how hilarious it might be 

10. Thou shalt nap the sun-stupid out of you before operating any heavy machinery 

Enjoy :)