Archive | September, 2010

wkend of procrastination.

19 Sep
The first reason for my weekend trip home was to return my mother’s vehicle and regain mine.  I was happy to do the exchange.  While my mother’s SUV aided well in the initial moving stage, I’m not such a fan of driving the vehicle in the city traffic.  I’m quite content with my small Corolla, thankyouverymuch.
So we did the vehicle exchange.  Check.  Then I kinda shrugged my shoulders.  What else was I to do?  I brought homework home with me, the 300 or so pages I’m assigned to have read for tomorrow.  I could do homework … or … I could find other ways to procrastinate.  This is what I came up with —
Five out of the seven Dancing Bananas (the high school crew) were reunited as Allison visited from Texas for one night only.  We pride ourselves in staying in touch and getting connected whenever we are home, eight and a half years after we graduated from high school and went our separate ways.
Sister Emma, cousin Molly, and I took a shopping trip.  Crazy to think, but Edgerton homecoming is this week already so my sister was in need of proper clothing (from an animal print jacket that, according to cousin Connor, probably has mice living in it, to the perfect jewelry to complete the homecoming dance dress).  We drank coffee, shopped, and ate lunch with Jimmy John.  And Molly picked out her Halloween costume.
For some reason, I can’t save this picture rotated.  Please rotate your head instead.
Other procrastination adventures included enjoying a few games of slimy fetch with Jetta, a movie and pizza night with a few of the cousins, and church with Aunt Kari and a few of those cousins.  I brought my best procrastination techniques back to St.Paul with me.  Since arriving back at my apartment early this evening, I have hosted a friend for dinner, washed the dishes, pounded a few nails, made myself a mug of tea to combat this scratchy throat, and now updated the blog.  Those hundreds of pages to read for tomorrow?  Starting now.  I promise.

I love fall.

19 Sep
I love fall.  But don’t tell spring.  I feel that every season has its own value and unique character but fall and spring are my babies.  When I’m in the midst of fall, I say I love fall the most.  In the middle of the muddy, rainy spring, I’ll say spring is my favorite.  I guess you could say I’m a fair-weather fan.  (har har)  I’ve been loving the weather recently.  The chance to wear my long-sleeved cardigans.  To sleep with heavy quilts weighing down upon me.  The crispness of the air.
The black-eyed susan in need of dead-heading (which, really, is a terrible verb in every sense of the word).
Autumn sedum doing its fall transformation.
The corn nearing harvest and the wood, stacked and prepared to warm the house for winters ahead.

haircut.

15 Sep
Seriously, you’re thinking.  Lindsay is going to blog about her haircut?  This blog sure has gone downhill …
Yes.  I am blogging about my haircut.  I went to a new place today to get a trim, a place on Snelling recommended to me by one Jenna G.  I called, found a time that worked, and my appointment was set.  Wednesday at 9:45.  With Brent.
I honestly can’t think of a time in my life when I went to get my hair cut and there was a male working.  I’ve never seen a guy working in a hair salon, let alone cutting my hair.  I was skeptical.  It’s not that I have a problem with it in general.  As a woman in a historically male vocation, I take no issue with crossing gender lines to pursue a career in an area that is typically associated with the opposite sex.  But … still.  
At 9:45 this morning I went and I left smitten.  Not smitten in the romantic sense of the word but in a different way.  I always hate the awkward small talk between the one cutting the hair and the one whose hair is being cut.  The person I went to in Stillwater was notorious for asking me if I had a boyfriend.  Um, none of your business?  Brent and I had awkward small talk for a while … until we got the conversation going.
He found out I’m a seminary student studying to be a pastor.  That can be a tricky addition to a conversation, never quite knowing how the other will react.  There was a pause in the conversation.  Then Brent said, “Well, if you want someone else to pray for …” and continued to tell me how that morning he had found out that his dad needed open heart surgery.  Like soon.  Like this week.  How Brent would be leaving work this day and booking a flight to fly home to Arkansas.  How scary it was.  How his parents had sent him to a drug and alcohol treatment facility in MN when he was in high school and he’d never really returned home after that.  (He said the hair cutting and styling opportunities are very limited in Arkansas.  Not too much for creativity.)  
I feel like we somehow connected on a deeper level.  I will be praying for his dad and for his family and hope that when I return for another haircut in six weeks, I’ll hear from him that everything went well and was successful.  On a lighter note, Brent was also awesome at giving me tips to manage my unruly curls.  (At the very beginning, when I sat down so we could talk about what I wanted him to do, he was feeling out my curls and said, “It seems your hair tends to go big.  Does that bother you?”  I said no.  I like it big.)  
One Lindsay stereotype overcome – men can be hair stylists and I’m okay with them being mine.  I like Brent lots.  Like I said, I’m smitten.  (But, to clarify, smitten strictly in a hair stylist sort of way.  Whatever that means.)

note-taking.

14 Sep
The preferred method of note-taking has changed a lot in my last years of post-high school education.  I’ve done the binder method and the notebook method and the loose-leaf paper in a folder method, all trying to figure out what works best for me as a learner.  After I bought my MacBook and fell in love with its sleek titanium look and function, I became a computer note-taker.  The number of computers in classes has increased a lot since my first years in seminary.  [ My fellow Office-watching friends and I always liken it to the episode where Michael goes to Ryan’s business school as a guest speaker.  He tells the students, “Real business is done on paper.  (pause)  Write that down.”  The camera scans the lecture hall where all of the students are not writing it down, but typing it on their notebook computers. ]
I’m very excited about Pastoral Care: Care of Self and Care of Others.
Forget all of those.  I’m studying hard and I’m using my magnetic doodle board.  This was given to me on my last Sunday at Grace along with other very necessary school supplies.  And a bat in a jar.  That’s me in class, surrounded by computers.  All I need to know I can fit on my doodle board.

To be a senior.

13 Sep
I think I’m finally adjusting to the fact that I AM a senior.  As part of my Children, Youth and Family degree concentration, I attended the CYF retreat this past Friday into Saturday.  Suddenly, I was in the leading group that was facilitating a discussion about how to navigate graduate school.  The other seniors and I were the ones that were called upon to lead closing worship.  In our internship debriefing session last week, the academic dean called upon us – the seniors – to be leaders.  To set an example for the juniors and middlers.  I AM a senior.
I’ve been back in classes for nearly a week.  One more three hour class this evening on youth culture and consciousness and then I’ve been through each class at least once.  I’m slowly adjusting to the idea of being back in class and can say honestly that, as a senior, it’s different … in good ways.
My preaching lab group met for the first time today.  (Preaching lab is the time in which the larger preaching class is broken down into groups.  It’s in this group – this lab – that we will preach and receive feedback.)  In this first lab, we decided who was preaching when, what type of sermon we wanted to preach, and then had a chance to talk about our preaching experiences on internship.  It was helpful to exchange experiences, to talk about the way this one thing worked and see your neighbor nodding his/her head because he/she had experienced something similar.  Class is a great opportunity for us to come back together and debrief, share, and grow from each other.
It’s also great to be a senior in classes with internship behind you because you can better guide your learning.  I think I have a better lens to recognize busy work, assignments that I know won’t be helpful for me when I am out in the parish.  I can better take control of my own learning, knowing what assignments/readings I should focus on and those on which I know (err, at least think) have little value to me as a pastor.  My classes – a few of them – are more practical, more hands-on, more experiential than the theology/hypothetical classes of previous years which were hard for me to place on a grid of ultimate value/importance to ME as a learner and as a pastor.
All that being said, I think this will be okay.  I’m still not in favor of spending my nights doing homework and reading but so far, classes are going well.  I know I’ll enjoy some more than others but here’s hoping it will be – here’s hoping I make it be – an educational semester.

drive-in church.

13 Sep
I spent my Sunday morning with three seminary friends, sitting in the car and worshipping.  We attended Trinity in Stillwater’s drive-in worship service.  Trinity, the church where I used to work in children’s ministry, has held drive-in services at an abandoned drive-in movie theater across the St.Croix in Houlton, WI for many years.  Recently, Trinity acquired the property which means even more Sundays at the drive-in.  You arrive, find a place to park, tune in your radio, and worship in your car.  And I love it.
My seminary friends were skeptical.  Other people I’ve talked to are skeptical.  How can this type of church service build community?  You sit in your car?  Weird.  Truth is, I see more community at this service than many others I’ve attended.  This is how it works – we sit in our car.  Sometimes we sing.  Sometimes it’s just awkward to sing.  So we don’t.  My favorite drive-in song?  If you’re happy and you know it, honk your horn.  (Seriously.)  After the sermon, after the prayers, after the offering, the words of institution are given and the mass exodus from vehicles begins.  Everyone leaves their cars and finds one of the stations to receive communion.  And here the service basically ends.  Because after sitting in your car for the prior part of the service, you begin talking, greeting, and connecting with the other worship attendees you haven’t yet seen that morning.  Here is the community.  There have been many Sundays where I’ve been one of the last cars to exit because the conversations, the hugs, and the community that continues long after the service as ended.
After the service, we parked the car in Stillwater and went antiquing before grabbing lunch at Nacho Mama’s.  As a child, I hated antique stores.  I hated the way in which my parents built antique store detours into our family vacations.  My brothers and I waited in the car or followed our parents around the mazes of antiques, thinking about how old this weird stuff was.  My view has changed.  I love antique stores.  The old stuff.  The possibilities.  I came away with nothing, aware that I have no employment and will be moving again in eight months.  Cassie however bought some peacock feathers.  Why not.

the difference in –

9 Sep
Grocery shopping.
There are pros and there are cons to both the Dawson-style of grocery shopping and the St.Paul version of grocery shopping.
Tonight, I was very annoyed by the St.Paul version.
It’s impossible to run out and grab anything.  First, drive through approximately ten stop-and-go lights.  Ten minutes if you’re lucky and they’re green; fifteen if they’re red.  Second, wait to check out in lines at least four customers deep.  Third, it just takes too long.  I had a list of ten, maybe fifteen things to grab and it took me an hour.  Gross.
And I kept looking up at people as they passed.  Do I know that person?  No.  Of course not.  If someone cut me off suddenly with their cart, no acknowledgment or apology.  Just a continued run to where they were headed.
I’m disenfranchised with city grocery shopping.  Months ago, I would have told you that I disliked shopping in Dawson because of the lack of options.  And the fact that you couldn’t go in and out without finding someone you know and have a five minute conversation with the traditional Minnesotan goodbye would sometimes get to my introverted self.  But a run to Tim’s now sounds very favorable.  (Even better if they would carry hummus.  Because I bought good hummus tonight.)  After my hour outing for Craisins, coffee necessities, and a few other things that ended up taking an hour of my night, I think I prefer the Dawson version at the moment.

agreed.

8 Sep
I agree with each and every one of these which were posted on a blog I regularly follow —

Ten Important Things I’ve Learned About Blogging

In style with #10, I love you.  Thanks for reading my blog.
(insert high five or hug depending upon our real-world relationship)

new year.

7 Sep
From this point on, it’s a new year. 
First, the blogging will continue but in a different way.  I’m no longer in Dawson (still crying about that one occasionally) and no longer on internship but in blogging throughout last year, I discovered that I like it and many people told me they like reading it.  It’s pretty darn narcissistic – hey, Lindsay, write about yourself and people will read it.  In many ways, in many posts, this blogging thing is helpful to me in processing and working through life.  It’s therapeutic (and something tells me I’ll need lots of therapeutic writing time this year).  Even if no one read it, I would continue.  So I’ll keep writing and if you want to keep reading, you are more than welcome.  
Second, a new school year.  Today was day number one.  My roommate and I decided we should take the traditional first-day-back-to-school pictures to show off our first day outfits and eager smiles.  Eager?  Well.  Something like that.  My family always took back-to-school pictures in front of the fridge; Jeanette said hers were taken in the birch tree.  We’re doing ours in the hallway because, frankly, the rest of our apartment is still unorganized and chaotic.  (Little by little the boxes are unpacked!)  It will be the last first day of school I have.   Ever.  (leap of joy)
Pretty in pink.
A cardigan, of course!
I only had one class this afternoon – a three-hour pastoral care class in which I will learn to communicate nonviolently and take care of myself and others (because all of those go together).  In the midst of this three-hour class, I bet I heard comments start with, “When I was on internship -” or “Being a senior -” at least ten times.  That’s the kind of language I hated as a junior and middler.  But now it’s me.  That’s how I start sentences.  I’m a senior?  Whoa.  I’m a senior!  
… a wee bit of height difference.  She can reach the top shelves!

babies and blankets.

7 Sep
Remember this little guy born back at the end of January?  I made Gavin a quilt when he was born.   It was my first baby quilt, my second-ever completed quilt.  Gavin is the son of a Dancing Banana, the silly name for the closest of all close high school friends.  The Bananas and I have called ourselves that since our sophomore year of high school.  (The seven of us are still friends, stay in frequent contact and will buy anything banana-themed for one another.) Before that, we were the Oatmeal gang.  (It’s best if you don’t ask questions.)

I was tickled pink when Gavin came over with his daddy, Mat, of whom the baby boy is the splitting image.  Gavin came, roll-y thighs and all, with his baby quilt in tow.  So incredibly cute this eight-month old is – I didn’t want to put him down or hand him over to anyone else.  Gavin makes Lindsay feel maternal.  

My second-ever baby quilt was gifted to my cousin, Marissa, while I was home.  Marissa is due with her third child but first girl!  There is no baby yet.  Baby Girl Hanson is due to arrive on October 3rd.  I thought the pink might be a bit lacking in the hand-me-downs from Drew and Logan and I knew another baby quilt project would be fun to tackle.  
I had promised to show Karen this quilt before I left Dawson … and forgot.  Here it is for show-and-tell in photo form.  Know that it is soft, flannel and the backing is made from pink minky fabric (like this) … and that I’m short and unable to get the whole quilt in the picture.  But you get the point.  
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