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a two-part rant.

21 Apr

It seems I’ve been on an impromtu blog hiatus.  Don’t worry – it wasn’t you.  It was me.  I’m back now. With two-part rant.  You don’t have to tell me twice – I know you’re excited.  Who doesn’t love a good rant?  Let’s get started.
First.  Nicholas Sparks is the man I love to hate and hate to love.  I used to read every Nicolas Sparks book like it was no one’s business.  I’d eat every new one up.  I read my favorite one, A Bend in the Road, at least three times.  I loved him.  But then The Notebook got so much attention.  The Notebook – not one of my favorites.  Besides Ryan Gosling and the well-played scene in the rain on the pier [see note on rain in chick flicks below], I didn’t care overly for the film either. gasp.  I know.  I started to only love Nicolas sometimes.  Once in a while, I’d allow myself to get sucked back into his stereotypical genre of plot lines with wounded men and the women who fall in love with them [and the other way around].  We had a mediocre relationship going, Nicolas and I. The kind where I wouldn’t bring him home for dinner but, sure, I’d meet up for a drink if I had no better plans.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was listening to a Nicolas Sparks audiobook on my Alaskan drive last summer.  I listened to it and remember laughing.  I remember thinking it was dumb.  It was cliché.  And then I remember calling myself a severe girly girl [the kind I never want to be] for ever liking him.  I slapped my own fingers in shame.  I hid all of my Spark’s novels behind another line of books on my shelf.  But then The Lucky One was released as a movie and Zac Efron looked pretty dreamy in the previews.  Yes, I read the book a while back when I was in my Spark’s phase.  And yes, I loved the movie.  Oh, Nicolas Sparks.  I can’t make up my mind.  I love to hate you.  I hate to love you.  It’s like I’m in one of your novels; I’m the wounded girl and the novel itself is the guy.  How metafiction of you, Nick.
Second.  Chick flicks are bad for my health.  I saw The Lucky One this afternoon with Paige.  We seem to entertain ourselves a lot lately by meeting up at the Owatonna theater and seeing whatever we can lose ourselves in for two hours.  [We love to escape reality, ie I love to forget that I still have a sermon to finish.]  My sister always accuses me of being super critical of movies.  Well, Emma, I loved it.  I was sucked in and had no power against its storyline or the definition of muscles in Zac Efron’s back.  Even the giggling row of junior high girls behind us laughing uncomfortably at every sign of affection on-screen weren’t enough to distract me.   I would totally see it again.  But I shouldn’t.  Chick flicks are bad for my health.
While a genre I enjoy, it’s a genre the reminds me, in one more way, that I go home to an empty house.  It’s a genre that raises expectations that will likely never be met [meet lindsay the pessimist] and that, given enough other outside circumstances, could only potentially fuel a spiral into depression.  Plus, we all know such well-timed thunderstorms and getting caught in the rain is pure creative fiction.  Rain doesn’t work like that.  Rain comes instead when you’re out running errands in canvas flats and pants a half-inch too long. [Welcome to my Thursday.]
Anyways.  Now I must move on with my evening.  I thought about creating a clandestine second blog – one where I could somewhat secretly just ream on the dangers of chick flicks to women [I’m sure there are studies somewhere.] but I won’t.  Instead, I’ll finish my sermon for tomorrow and then likely do what I do best – watch a movie I’ve already seen five hundred and three times.  Something like 27 Dresses, or Pride and Prejudice, or Pretty in Pink.
I’m doomed.
Pretty much.

a mug routine.

27 Sep
I’ve determined that I’m rooted in routine.  I need routine.  I like routine.
Maybe that’s part of why transition throws me for such a loop.  My routine gets all messy and unknown and mixed up and Lindsay goes loopy.
As I went through my morning routine this morning, I opened the cupboard above my coffee maker and, being the dork that I am, I smiled to myself.  Want to know one of my favorite part of my morning routine?
Deciding which coffee cup I’ll use that day.  

Is it an Office mug day?  [“I *heart* Jim” or “Employee of the year.”]  A Dawson day?  [Preacher gnome or painted gnome scenes.]  A mustache mug or fireworks mug?  [Half of the mustache came off in the dishwasher.  opps.]  Corny/awesome souvenir mugs  from Alaska and Korea?  Choices, choices.  And I love them all.  
There is something about the mug fun and something about the Starbucks french roast [I learned to drink my coffee dark and bold from the best, a la Emily.] that goes inside of it that makes my morning happy.  I love my morning routine.  [Except for that part when I need to wake up and climb out of a cozy bed.  But after that.]

happy birthday!

31 Aug

Happy birthday to you/happy birthday to you/happy birthday dear BLOG/happy birthday to you!

My blog baby – there’s no place like gnome at gnomepreacher.blogspot.com – turns two today!  Two!  Put on your 3D glasses and party hats and you could come celebrate with this dork on the left!

[I forgot to remember to celebrate her birthday last year.  what a bad blog host am I.]

Two years ago to this day was the summer night that I arrived in Dawson for my year-long internship.  [Here is the first ever post on gnomepreacher.]  The intern committee had helped me move into my apartment and taken me out for dinner.  I returned to my home-to-be for that year – oh, parkview apartments – and [dramatic pause] began to blog.  Gnomepreacher was born out of dreams to communicate with family and friends in Wisconsin while I lived on the prairie for a year, but she’s grown into a lot more.  
Since then, the blog has been with me through thick and thin.  It has shared with you joys and sorrows, losses and gains; many corny videos and even more gnome stories.  A trip to Alaska, friendly tales of polar plunges, and transitions aplenty.  Cakepops, macarons, and hamballs. The blog – through story and the infinite interweb – has connected me to people in strange and really wonderful ways.  
Blogging is never a chore for me.  It’s not unusual that when I’m away from my computer, I’ll write posts in my head, some of which are published, others of which are not.  I feel grounded in my writing and in the sharing.  If there is a day or – gasp! – three when I don’t blog, it feels like something is missing.  I love doing this.
Once more, I thank you for reading.  Even when I forget to say thank you, know that I’m grateful that you share in this with me. You share in and take interest in the stories I live and write.  If I were not in the middle of moving and packing, I might have yelled cakepops for all!  But I am moving and packing [or at least am supposed to be]… so not really.  Cakepop false alarm.  
Happy birthday, blog.  To many more.

a love letter to autumn.

30 Aug
Honey baby,

I can’t wait to see you again.
I’m so excited to be embraced in hooded sweatshirts, long-sleeve cardigans, and have scarves wrapped around my neck.  I want to wear socks to bed and be kept warm by a stack of quilts that have been given to me in love.  
I want to sit in an adirondack chair and sip coffee in your crisp mornings.  I want to open the windows of my house and not close them until there is a chill throughout the rooms.  I will simmer stove-top potpourri and make orange pomander balls.   
I long to watch the leaves change and bake any and everything with pumpkin and cinnamon apples.  I want to invite friends over to carve pumpkins, play with other red, orange, and yellow crafty-goodness, and eat soup that has simmered on the stove for hours.  Oh, and the squash.  How could I forget the squash?
I’ve missed you so much and can’t wait to be reunited.  The days will be sweet and wonderful and lovely in so many ways.  You’re my favorite.

Love,
your schmoopsie

The Pioneer Woman.

13 Aug
I’m on a blogging roll.  Something about spending so much time in the car by myself thinking.  Read them all, skim them a bit, or throw your hands up and yell, “It’s too much, Lindsay! I give up!”  Whatever your reaction to the overabundance of posts tonight, I understand.  [Have I told you lately I love you?  I do.]
Seeing the cattle alongside the road, the endless sky of Montana, and the fields that go on forever make me think about someone I’ve been meaning to write to you about for the last couple months –
The Pioneer Woman.
She’s a real person.  Really.  Ree Drummond is her name and I think I idolize her.  I want her life.
The Pioneer Woman is a blogger extraordinaire.  She’s terribly witty.  She has published cookbooks [Her recipes always include loads of butter.] and has a kick-butt iced coffee recipe [Okay. That doesn’t include butter.].  She’s an awesome photographer, home schools her four children, and married the Marlboro Man.
That’s not his real name either and he doesn’t smoke.  But she’s a city girl who was swept off her feet by a country man.  She moved to the ranch and makes her living there, battling between the suburban roots and her current love of the country.  You can read about her life here in her own playful words.
Driving through Montana makes me want her life even more.  I could marry a cattle-rancher-truck-driver and live here.  It honestly wouldn’t take much pull on my end.  I want to buy a fancy camera and blog ridiculous stories about horses and how I try to love them.  [That’s the one piece that needs convincing on my end; horses are not my favorite.  Well, and are there snakes in MT?  I don’t do well with snakes.]
Maybe southeastern Minnesota will become like a Montana for me but at this point, I need convincing.  Something like this would convince me.  Seriously.  

literary creation.

5 Aug
How in love am I with this idea?
Very.
Thank you, npr.
“… the world [is] more than a place.  
Life [is] more than an event.  
It [is] all one thing, and that thing [is]: story.”
photo credit due here.
The author continues to write that if life is all a story, then we are the narrators.  But in order to be narrators, we must be attentive.  We have to wake up and listen.  To look for a story in unlikely places and then take the time to share what we saw.  He compares the world to a library, lending and sharing stories to those who take the time to check them out.
That’s one thing this blog does for me.  I see stories and deliberately take the time to narrate them.  It’s my virtual scrapbook and journal.  I take note of the things that happen and write them down to share.  I find joy in rereading the stories from weeks, months, and years past but also find happiness in knowing that these stories are shared and enjoyed by others – by you.  But now I must ask – how are you being attentive and sharing your stories?  Blogs, raps, haikus, letters, napkin notes and posters on the wall.  Be creative in your sharing and live your own life as an act of literary creation.  Eyes open and pen at the ready … ready? set? live.

write a letter.

2 Aug
Last month I challenged myself to send a piece of snail mail for every day of that month.  I sent balloons, old knitting magazines, a magical wand, lots of ordination information, a letter accepting a call to a church, and pictures I cut into a puzzle.  Oh, and wooden chickens.  I didn’t walk to the mailbox or go to the post office everyday, but there were many days when I put in two, three, or forty pieces of mail.  I easily used thirty-one forty-four cent stamps.  Plus some.  
I’ll admit though – some days it felt like a chore.  Some days I dragged my feet or made myself get up extra early to write a postcard to get in the mail.  I think I’m happy to return to the casual sending of snail mail.  [Not that any of the mail I sent was void of care and love.  Not true.]
I wrote a letter tonight.  A real letter.  I sat down at my sewing table, pushed the sewing machine to the side, and filled a lovely piece of textured cardstock front and back.  I love writing letters.  I think there is something so sacred about snail mail.  Not about the bills we put stamps on or the invitations where will fill in the party information – but true letters.  There’s something special about the words crafted and the person who reads them upon arrival, hopefully sensing the love and care and time that went into the letter.  A letter has to be pre-meditated.  It takes supplies and a little thought.  I think it takes me more time to actually write than to type; many times I fight the urge to type and print a letter, signing only my name.  I fight it because handwriting and handwritten letters are just that much cooler in my eyes.
Write a letter to someone you love.  Put a stamp on it and put it in the mail.  Go 1980s on your communication.  Do it.  I think you’ll like it, and I think the person on the receiving end will love it.

love.

26 Jul
You think to yourself, “Could this girl blog any more than she has in the last few days?!”  
[Don’t challenge me!]
Here’s what I think: I’m still processing that day when that one thing called ordination happened.  As I process, I blog.  Not to mention, now that the ordination planning is behind me, what else am I supposed to do?
In the process of it all and in talking to the call committee chair at Red Oak Grove [hereafter to be called ROG], I will not move until Labor Day weekend.  I will begin work that week and lead my first worship service on September 11.  [Sounds like a great idea, right?  On the tenth anniversary of Sept. 11, I will preach to a church of people I have yet to know.]  That means one more month at home.  One more month to … shrug
So there’s that.  And then there’s the fact that I feel a little … sad that the day is over.  There was so much build-up [um, four years?] to that day and now, it’s over.  In the past.  Behind me.  I knew that on that day I would see friends and family and we would celebrate.  Celebration over.  As my favorite resident in my CPE nursing home would say in her raspy voice, “Now what?”  [“Push Margie?  Feed Margie?”  She would also tell me on occasion, “You talk too much.”  That may apply here as well.]

That being said, let’s talk a little bit about this word love.
This word has been a part of the last few days in many different ways.  I had written earlier that I felt so supported and loved on that day.  [True story.]  Whether the word was said verbally or not, I felt it.  Then I started to say it and hear it in all sorts of places.
From my college roommate, who has taught me a lot about saying “I love you” aloud, something I have always been timid to do; now it’s how we end our phone conversations.  I yelled it to Cassie as she left that night.  “Love yous!”  [She responded with a “I know.”]  In the card I received from my tweeds.  [Tweeds: pet name for Sara.  I call her that and she calls me Schmoopsie.]  At the end of an email from a Dawson friend and in the text message I sent to another Dawsonite [and meant to be shared with the whole sixteen hour crew.  she’s just the one I normally text.].  At the end of a message, combined with a “God loves you,” and at the conclusion of my video ordination greeting from friends.  A “love ya” that was signed with a “ME” in a facebook message, and a “We love you, Lindsay” from the Bananas.
As Hugh Grant says in the beginning voiceover of the movie Love Actually, “If you take the time to look, you’ll discover that love is, actually, all around.”
I’m looking.  I’m looking to name it already present and to grow into it.  It’s still a tricky thing to say, and it can be a tough bridge to cross.  It’s something I still hope to discover in one sense of the word, but also something I feel my life is filled with in another sense.  It’s found on tip-toes and shouted from roof tops, and it’s not an easy thing to always talk about …
And …
… I end this post, having confused myself, forgetting the point I initially wanted to make, and for fear of getting a little too sappy.
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