Made it through the Storm

Well, last night was tense and mostly sleepless until first light for me, but we're fine. My county wasn't under quite as severe warnings as so many other places, and Irene pulled out toward the Atlantic. I could hear the wind whipping around the house, the rain pounding (it made me have to go to the bathroom like every hour), my heart pounding....

The big shade tree I had worried about it fine. The butterfly bushes are a little droopy but intact. I haven't walked around and looked at the outside of the house yet but nothing seems damaged.

However, there was about 9 inches of water in the basement. I was lucky and got to sleep in, but when I got out of bed we thought to check the basement and sure enough, water. I'd had this gut feeling that there would be water in the basement by the end of this, I even went down there a couple of times to check how things were arranged. Mostly plastic bins, some shelves keep a few things up off the floor. I had wrestled with the idea of carrying things up to the living room but decided I would let the plastic bins do their jobs and only truly worry when the power went out.

We actually never lost power throughout the night! The sump pump simply couldn't keep up with the amount of water coming down during the height of the storm. So I never officially freaked out because we had power every minute.

We'd filled the tub in the upstairs hall bathroom with water in case the power went out. I heard my nearly 3 year-old son so upstairs, and after a minute I followed him. He opened the bathroom door and was giving his baby, Mr. Penguin, a bath in the tub! He looked at me like "see mom?" It was pretty stinkin' adorable, I have to say.

Irene's Approach.....

It's been raining since about noon (it's 10pm now) and there are some small puddles around the yard. Since I haven't even lived here a month yet I don't know the local flood-prone spots. I can hear the wind picking up, and in about 4 hours it'll be right over me.

I've been anxious all day. The service I was to preach at tonight was cancelled because of the hurricane.

For one thing, it's been dark all day, and it would seem like any other gross, rainy day except that everyone knows WHY it's so gloomy outside and that it's about to get a lot worse. It's like being forced to sit and wait to have surgery you don't want, like a nose job or something. You know it's going to suck and then there's the aftermath: recovering, trying to get back to normal but things just aren't normal. Like maybe Monday it will be sunny as they predict, but there's gonna be trees down and water all over the yard and roads and power still out.

The power is trying to go out. Sigh. I keep thinking about the basement flooding, the food in the fridge (like the delicious pasta salad with chicken that I made yesterday--yum!). I filled the bathtub. Got matches and candles around the house. I've been anxiously eating, which is NOT a good thing. Too bad I haven't been anxiously doing exercises too! And you know how arthritis and injuries are affected by cold, moisture, and low-pressure systems? My knees have been bothering me all week. I'm 30!

I have some library books to read, one is a book I've been chasing down in paperback for at least two months but it hasn't been released in the United States yet. The other is a mystery. But I've been too anxious to sit and read!

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech thee, of thy great goodness, to restrain those immoderate rains, wherewith thou hast afflicted us. And we pray thee to send us such seasonable weather, that the earth may, in due time, yield her increase for our use and benefit; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Here Comes Irene

Okay, I'm from the Midwest. I just experienced my first earthquake this week, and yes it was puny. Now we're bracing for Hurricane Irene.

I really don't know what to expect.

I get that people get used to earthquakes and that in California they're laughing at the east coast. But hey, old monuments that are steeped in our great nation's history were damaged! That's expensive and frustrating. Weather is scarier or less scary based on what you're used to. I started tuning out the tornado sirens a little bit when living in west Tennessee. Don't get me wrong, I had a weather radio that was programmed to my local counties and I lost sleep for sure. But I got used to the idea of tornadoes, though I still had nightmares about them.

So Irene is coming and we went to the store yesterday. Canned goods, gallons of water, got candles here and lighters, flashlights, chocolate-chip cookies. It's hard to know the exact path or strength of Irene yet, so we're playing some things by ear for this weekend. Guess the state fair won't be a good idea!

My biggest fears are the basement flooding, windows breaking, that gorgeous tree out back falling on the house. I like storms, they are pretty neat to watch. So much power and fractal beauty in lightning....And yes, if we evacuate I am taking the cats :) I like to over-think things instead of under-think them and be surprised and not know how to begin dealing. I'm not a control freak, I just think that knowledge is power.

Despite the physical preparations, I have this psychological cloud hanging over me. I dreamed about something dark and threatening last night, although I am still on Prednisone so that has definitely affected my dreams. Updates will certainly follow!

Wedding Gifts

This is something I've thought about that is making the generation gap more apparent.

So a new trend that really drives the older generations mad is asking for money as a wedding gift. This is in lieu of material goods for a household, and generally this happens because a couple has been cohabiting or the couple is simply a little older and together they have everything they need for a household already.

The couple doesn't really need dishes, a blender, and 500 thread-count Egyptian Cotton sheets to begin their life of wedded bliss. So they don't do what's been standard for a least a few decades and create a registry full of things they don't need.

Etiquette says one doesn't include where one is registered within the actual wedding invitation (I personally find the great big formal invites an incredible waste of paper what with multiple envelopes, etc.), but rather you rely on word-of-mouth and the bridesmaids, mother of the bride, and so forth to make the couple's wishes known. Some people even think a registry is rude, as requesting specific items makes one greedy apparently. Really, you can buy someone whatever you want to buy them for a wedding gift, it doesn't matter whether you stick to the registry or wander a bit. You might buy them a nicer version of what they registered for and I'm sure they'd happily accept. A registry also helps guests figure out what kinds of gifts have already been purchased (assuming they all use the registry correctly), thus steering their purchase decision.

But back to the point: what about asking for money, such as for a honeymoon or a down payment on a house? I'm young, but I don't think this is rude so long as it is not done within the wedding invitation itself.    I think people have a right to prefer one thing over another. A guest's taste is not always close to what the newlyweds would choose. Of course they can make do, but don't you enjoy giving someone something they truly like?

In many cultures, money is the wedding gift of choice. Chinese weddings involve a red bridal gown and gifts of money in red envelopes. No one else dare wear red at a Chinese wedding! And no one besides the bride should wear white to an American wedding is this author's opinion. Although I don't see a problem with non-white wedding gowns either. Anyway, I wouldn't go so far as to make up a cute little poem to include in the invite as a way of saving face if a couple IS asking for money....again, that draws attention to the expectation of gifts. If the couple does blow it and specifically asks for money in their invite, the guest need not be rude in return and gossip about the couple's preferences. If it's such a problem, don't go. Send a card.

Fashion for the Underaged

This blew my mind today: an article about push-up bras for teenage girls and how ten year-old model Thylane Blondeau posed wearing sexy clothes and makeup in a sexy pose on the cover of Vogue. There are so many problems with all of this! 

First, we are idealizing a certain body type and a certain age. Younger girls must look older to fit into this idealized 18-24 age bracket, and women who have passed this resort to ridiculous and sometimes fatal procedures to appear much younger than they truly are. I turned 30 this year but look several years younger, and I feel pressured to look young and vibrant. This pressure isn't coming from my loved ones, but from media. I can't walk by certain stores at the mall without wishing I could have a 5'10" size 2 frame (with normal-sized feet, like a 7B instead of a 5.5WW). I've seen many articles on the airbrushing and photoshopping that accompanies almost every magazine cover shoot. Curvy Kim Kardashian was airbrushed  so her thighs would appear tighter and her hips were trimmed. Rail-thin celebrities (think Cameron Diaz) are enhanced in the chest, so that we all think it's possible to have a 20 inch waist with abs of steel and yet sport a D cup. 

Second, pedophiles are already treating children as sexual beings. So why are their own parents??? Doesn't dressing a 6 year-old like she's 18 encourage creepy people to stare at her? We have access to websites that tell us the locations of registered pedophiles within so many miles of an input address. We know registered pedophiles are around, how many haven't been caught yet and remain unregistered? We really don't know who is looking at our children. I know that ideally, a woman (or girl) should be able to wear whatever she wants and walk down a dark alley and be safe. That's simply not the world we live in. Clothing choice creates talk, particularly in high school. Kids are known for being cruel to each other for no good reason (such as picking on a classmate with bad acne or for liking Pokemon). But a girl who is allowed out of the house regularly dressed in very short shorts can get a reputation even though she hasn't done anything. She may suffer abuse from guys who think she's easy. And she may not even understand this until she's older! Some never do, read advice columns. 

Third, apparently there's a shortage of models who are old enough to grace the cover of Vogue! (there is great need for a sarcasm font). This nation really got into letting kids be kids. No more working in the mines. No more unsupervised time at home if they're too young. They have some chores to do, maybe get an allowance, go to piano lessons and soccer practice, all that good stuff. But now kids are being shown how be sexy before they even have The Talk with their parents. They're sexting, which technically is distributing child pornography--and we have yet to see exactly how the courts will decide to deal with this.

They are children. They are beautiful, especially to us, their parents, but we must protect them. We have the power of wardrobe veto. 

Vegetarianism

Have you ever heard the joke “If we’re not supposed to eat animals, then why are they made of meat?” I’ve made this joke several times.

Of course, vegetarians who have studied biology can answer that people were not made to eat meat: the appendix and other organs (the spleen?) which appear to be nearly useless in modern people (particularly Americans, lol), which demonstrates that people were originally vegetarians. Is this evolution at odds with Creationism? I don’t think so. If we look at Genesis we see that God made humans and gave them all of Creation. Adam and Eve were to be the stewards of all the plants and animals God had made. Genesis 1:26-30 tells us that mankind was given “dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (NRSV is what I’m referencing here for Gen 1:27). In verse 28 God tells Adam and Eve to fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over every living thing on earth. What will every living thing, including Adam and Eve, eat? Verse 29 answers this for us: God said He gave them every plant yielding seed that is all over the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; also every beast and bird and everything that creeps, everything with the breath of life shall receive every green plant for food.

To me this sounds like the end, as described in Isaiah 11, when the wolf will lie down with the lamb. A wolf could only do that if it was not a carnivore. Clearly here, when the world was young, every animal and every human were herbivores. But obviously we were given permission to eat meat at some point, otherwise 1) God wouldn’t require animal sacrifices from us (with the priests and people consuming portions of the sacrifices), and 2) God would have struck people down for killing animals as food. Fast-forward to Genesis 9 and we read that God tells Noah to fill the earth, and then “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and just as gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” Genesis 1 to Genesis 9 seems pretty fast; in my version of the bible it takes only about seven and a half pages to detail everything in between. But the time that passes between chapters is as follows:

Adam’s age when Seth was born 130 +

Seth’s age when Enosh was born 105 +

Enosh’s age when Kenan was born 90+

Kenan’s age when Mahalalel was born 70+

Mahalalel’s age when Jared was born 65+

Jared’s age when Enoch was born 162+

Enoch’s age when Methuselah was born 65+

Methuselah, the oldest man in the Bible, died the same year the Flood came. We can assume that since he was a righteous man, so blessed with the longest life of anyone, that he died shortly before the Flood. Noah was 600 when the Flood came, and Methuselah was 969 years old (for those not following along in a Bible, Methuselah was 187 when his son Lamech was born, and Lamech was 182 when Noah was born). Adding another 369 years for the difference between Methuselah and Noah, and the amount of time Noah was in the Ark (rain plus the time it took the water to recede so that dry land was exposed was less than a year), and we arrive at the number of years people were vegetarians/vegans before given permission to eat meat: 1,657. And why would people suddenly have permission to eat meat? Everything was destroyed in the Flood! No fruit trees or green plants were edible after being destroyed and/or under water for that long! But saving the animals in the ark wouldn’t have worked if the animals that are now carnivores were killing the other animals while they bobbed along in the ark. It’s not exactly saving each species if they’re eating each other. Sure, there were a few plants once Noah and crew unloaded, but not enough to feed Noah and his wife, his 3 sons and 3 daughters-in-law, and every animal on the ark.

HOLD UP! Does this mean that people evolved from herbivores to omnivores? Well, yeah, with the green light from God. I don’t really see evolution and Creation at odds, because I think they happened at different times. I think that Creation was how everything got here, and after the Fall things began evolving from the way they should be (as God made them), and strayed toward what they are now. And things are still changing.

Now, I don’t think it’s wrong or a sin or something to be vegetarian or vegan. This is just something I got to thinking about, how once upon a time, everyone was vegetarian.