The Blog With No Name

I just threw it away. No one on eBay wanted it, not even for replacement parts (the screen was still in pretty good shape, for a four- or five-year-old unit). So into the garbage with what was a $250 device. Sigh.

So we signed our wills, durable powers of attorney, and living wills today. Ya think we’re done? NOT EVEN CLOSE! Now, we have to make copies for our doctors, and get signatures of the power-of-attorney people, and change all our insurance policy beneficiaries, and put all these pieces of paper in the safety deposit box, and fill out this by-God nightmarishly long form that our lawyer MADE UP TO TORTURE US, with all sorts of spaces for info like hymns and lessons for our funerals, insurance policies, funeral home arrangements, misc people to notify in case of our death, page after page after PAGE. Good thing I had started something similar a long time ago, or I think I’d just KILL MYSELF. I wish he’d given that stuff to us after our first meeting – my feeling of having FINISHED this crap was totally blown away. Oh well. At least now, we have an “estate” instead of a big mess if we both buy it in a car wreck next week.

I have end-of-school, beginning-of-school (only five weeks apart, tee hee), birthday party, lots of photos. Time for me to start SHARING! Here are some more:

spiderweb

This was my fault (of course) – we do not possess the proper Lego container, one that is flat and wide, so that it’s easier to sift through to find that ONE 3mm PIECE OUT OF 10,000,000. So of course, when searching for that ONE PIECE, all Legos must be dumped out on the floor. Of course.

My aunt, who it appears is quite likely to get her license back, has a high-school reunion coming up in a few weeks. She claims that she’s going to drive down to the central Illinois town where it’s taking place, license or no.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo……………….

That would be just dandy – get caught driving with a revoked license, or worse yet, FALL ASLEEP AGAIN! Permanent loss of license, not to mention Ghod knows what could happen if they had an accident.

Of course, this is on the same weekend that I am already committed to something. Charles suggests driving down on a Friday in two cars, so that they can have one car to tool around in locally, and have my brother the doctor take Monday off and go down and get them with his wife and two small children. The likelihood of his being able to get the day off is quite slim, but I didn’t say that to Charles.

Phil, if you are reading this, here is a golden opportunity for you to step in and make a difference!

The Girl Party went swimmingly (hahahahahahahahahaha! It was at the local pool) except, Bad Bad Mother that I am, I was rather negligent with the sunscreen. The kiddies, and I, are all crispy critters tonight. Let’s hear it for aloe vera gel!

My number one child is nine years old – HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN?!

At least she acts like a “normal” nine year old, not like most of the adolescent-wanna-be Drama Queens who came to her party. I did not exercise the control over the guest list that I should have. Lesson learned for next year (note in Palm for late July…)!

Our daughter’s birthday party is Saturday. We’re having it at the local pool (so of course it will rain…) and I am NOT looking forward to it. Four hours of trying to keep my eye (well, not all by myself of course) on ten little kids, feed them, make sure they have sunscreen on (for four hours!!!). Yuck. But after that, the summer is done. Our summer is bracketed by the kids’ birthdays, which is better than having them in the dead of winter I suppose. At least we have a good chance of being able to do something outside in nice weather.

I’m also not looking forward to the crap she’s going to get – half the fun of our son’s birthday party was LEGO! We are all mad for LEGO. But The Daughter likes weird Yu-Gi-Oh (WHY did he let them start watching that?! WHY didn’t I insist they NOT?!) crap, and silly comic books, and such GIRLY crap that it makes me nuts. Hair beaders, and some weird thing that puts dye in her hair, and, and, and I could go on. So I got her a small digital camera, and I’ll find some freebie graphics program with which she can play, that ought to keep her amused in a more constructive way….(I say hopefully). At least we have a shiny new art museum with LOTS of neat-sounding classes – I know what we’ll be doing this fall…

I just listed my first Palm on eBay. It probably won’t sell, and I will have wasted the past fifteen minutes of my life. It’s hard to throw a thing away when you can still remember standing in the store, shelling out $250 for it. Still, not a good use of my time. I have a few old John Deere tractor sales flyers from my mom’s house that would probably give me a slightly better return on my time investment, but I haven’t researched them sufficiently to know how much to ask for a Buy It Now! price.

Well, I guess the church didn’t self-destruct. But I don’t think anyone is very happy. It’s very disappointing. More later, when I’ve read the amended stuff.

ELCA

Our neighbor came to dinner tonight; she attends the church where I work, and has been watching the ELCA Assembly. She is dismayed, as she seems to feel it likely that the proposals to maybe-kind of-sort of allow “gay marriage” and ordination of non-celibate homosexual people will fail. Charles, who has read a great deal about the vote and also on early church history, went off (I mean that in a nice way) on the early Church, the Gnostic Gospels, Mary Magdalene, the Council of Nicea, etc etc. and how women and gay people were not demons in the early Church. I’d like to know why.

Furthermore, at some point, a bunch of bishops sat down and decided which books were going to go in the “Bible,” and which ones were going to be left out, and in what order things should appear. I’d like to know why they picked what they picked, and omitted.

This leaves me with what is to me the complete mystery of US religious life – why do people believe that the Bible, in exactly the form they have it (in English!) is the INERRANT WORD OF GOD ! ? Never mind that it was written in bits and pieces over the course of five thousand to fifteen hundred (not totally sure of the date…) years ago, in societies so completely different from ours as to be unimaginable, translated from who-knows-how-many original languages into who-knows-how-many others, by FALLIBLE HUMAN BEINGS, edited, hacked apart, put together again, argued over, voted on, and for all I know covered in lavash crumbs and wine stains. Yet it has NO ERRORS, and each and every word in it is absolutely and literally THE TRUTH.

I don’t believe that (“really?” I hear you say). I don’t know whether that makes me a Bad Bad Lutheran, but I don’t buy it for one second. I would like to understand why people who DO believe that, believe that. That’s why I checked out some books on the “Left Behind” phenomenon, but I think I’m jumping in halfway – I need to go back in time, maybe the Puritans, maybe the Revolutionary War, I don’t know. Even farther – Greece might be the place to start.

Well anyway that’s my rant for the evening. If you know of any good books on the position of women in the early Christian Church, I’d be glad of the recommendation.

(*funny coincidence – I have had since college a copy of my uncle’s PhD dissertation, on theological hermaneutics, and haven’t had the foggiest idea what it meant. Started reading the introduction – it’s about text interpretation in a historical context, more or less [it even mentions Lutherans!]- how APROPOS! How SPOOKY!)