Underwear thieves (no, really)

I am pretty certain someone swiped some of my underwear last time I did laundry.  I used to have a match between socks and underwear, and all of a sudden, it's way skewed.  This is the first time that's happened in over 13 years of shared laundry room life. It's hardly something to celebrate . . .

Once upon a time, I would have been intensely creeped out and offended and outraged.  Now I just feel sad.  I mean, if someone is so desperate that they can't afford to buy underwear and need to steal it, they're going to be ticked off when what they stole falls apart soon.  I am super-cheap, and I do not like to buy new clothes unless I have to.  That is some old underwear.  Steal from someone less cheap next time, underwear thief.

Also, ewwwww.  Had to get that out of my system . . .

Ditching the Slacker Voice, an odyssey

In the immortal words of Relient K, "I so hate consequences."

Once upon a time, I adopted a more, shall we say, relaxed speaking voice. You see, I was a graduate school student in a choir full of undergraduates, and I was working a retail job, and my height and confidence, coupled with a somewhat precise speaking voice, large vocabulary, and decent diction seemed, shall we say, threatening at most and not very friendly at least to people I had to interact with every day.

My sister puts it this way, "You make people feel stupid sometimes."

I decided that since a lifetime of slouching hadn't really helped my height be less intimidating, maybe I should try to change my speaking voice, so I did. I adopted a lazy sort of tone, reduced my vocabulary outside the graduate program, and tried to sound more relaxed. Now I'm paying for it.

My voice has been getting more gravelly, and it takes an inordinate amount of time to warm it up for speaking or singing, and I thought it was because of being allergic to the Midwest. I went to see an ENT, and he prescribed some additional thankfully cheap things for the allergies. During the exam, he asked me five times, "Do you strain when you talk?"

Five times I answered, "No?"

After the fifth time, he said, "You strain when you talk. Want to go see a voice therapist?"

"Sure, " I said. It took a while, but I finally saw one. It turns out that I strain when I talk (shocker). After some discussion, it turned out that the main culprit is my slacker voice.

Sigh. You try to be less threatening to others and only hurt yourself. What a strange life lesson.

Because I'm a singer, the therapist told me I might be able to straighten out some of the damage on my own, especially since I knew what was causing it and since I don't need it for those reasons anymore (working a professional job and thus not able to participate in that choir anymore).

I can go back to sounding like an intelligent, professional person again. Hooray! So now, my goal is to ditch the slacker voice before it does any irreparable damage to my vocal cords and my singing voice. Welcome back, diction.

The thing is, after 8 years of the slacker voice, my vocal cords don't really know what the correct way to work feels like, so my throat is tired and still hoarse most of the time.  I don't really know if I'm actually making progress.  Also, I don't always think before I talk (a problem since birth, I think), so I'm not sure how long it will take to reprogram my speech patterns. (I pray not as long as it took to make them a habit.) Wish me luck!

Maybe I'll get an essay out of this someday . . .

Did he just say that? Seriously?

Have you ever met someone who made you wonder, "Why did he say that?" every time he opens his mouth?  Someone you want to present with a shovel because every sentence is just digging him in deeper?

It's torturous. There's really no way to tell him what he is doing to himself, but you feel bad just walking away in the middle of his talking even though you know he's not trying to actually communicate and is just babbling because there are people trapped in chairs around him during this getting-to-know-you time.

He holds the entire table captive, making everyone uncomfortable with tales of all his past girlfriends who dumped him and married the next person they dated, which seems quite reasonable the more he talks because anyone would seem like a prince after him. He complains about being invited to the weddings and the ones he's still acquainted with and how much he loathes their children (he refers to them as "disgusting little rats").  He composes crass poetry and uses foul language liberally.

He is genuinely oblivious to the fact that every minute his mouth is moving is making the people around him dislike and eventually hate him even more. It's horrifying and fascinating at the same time . . .

Even Allie can't seem to figure out a way out of this kind of awkward conversation . . .

Somehow I want to get this in a story someday

A friend of mine lived in a house with a bunch of roommates.  They had to install a second kitchen, though, to comply with zoning laws.  Because of the number of young women inhabiting the house, they would have been considered a brothel if they hadn't put in that second kitchen because there has to be a kitchen for every four women. 

Yeah.  I wish I could have sat in on the city council meeting where they decided that zoning law . . .

Sometimes my story goes like this

pain
increasing clumsiness
pain pain
disturbing inability to concentrate
pain pain pain
ruining a pair of contact lenses because you forget to put in the contact solution
pain pain pain pain
almost walking out the door without a necessary garment on
pain pain pain pain pain
more of the same

Who wants to read that?  I sure don't.

And that's why I'm so glad there are so many more stories to read and immerse myself in when I just can't stand to live my own anymore.  :)

Stories for children (lies)

I sang with my choir at a homecoming service recently, and the children's sermon kind of made me gag, though I was professional enough not to let it show.  The gist of it was that if you put Jesus first, everything else will fall into place, and your life will be perfect and happy.

Riiiiight.  I just don't think that's biblical.  I know they dumb down sermons for kids, but that's not a story I've really seen in the Bible (and I've read it more than a few times) literally or figuratively.  Why do we lie to our kids by telling them stories that are not only not true but are completely false? 

If this is the kind of story we want to build the foundations of their faith on, should we be surprised if they grow up and out of this "faith"?  Basically, the first storm that comes will wash these lies away and leave them with . . . what, exactly?  They will have no true stories, and that seems sad to me when there are so many true stories out there.  We seem to avoid the true stories because we think we are helping our children by "protecting" them from realities they will face some day.  Shouldn't we instead be equipping them to deal with a harsh, fallen world?  Why don't we?


Do we really have to dumb down our faith stories to children until they become lies?  Is there a better way to teach true stories of faith to kids?  Have you seen this done well somewhere?  (Or poorly but in a way that can give us constructive suggestions?)

Interesting quote from a writer

"Reactionary people without critical thinking skills aren’t really my target audience."

"There’s actually a pretty large and growing contingent of Christians out there who embrace all kinds of art and its capacity for delving into the gray areas that make up most of our lives. Anyway, I’m not really about making other Christians happy by being inoffensive. Life is offensive. If we, of all people---Christians, who claim to be offering some kind of hope for mankind, in Jesus---can’t grapple with that, then the claims of hope are pretty much empty. If we can’t deal honestly and authentically with the smaller heartbreaks of family and identity and friendship, how can we even open a newspaper? Christians who seek a squeaky-clean, inoffensive version of life are, in a way, denying that we might possibly need help with some of this, thereby rendering faith, well, pointless. That said, I do think there is a place for the good and beautiful and uplifting and clean, as long as it’s not sentimentalized and does not replace an at least occasional head-on stare into the world as it is."

- Sara Zarr (national book award nominated author [also a believer])  

I thought of this quote again when I heard the morning show hosts on the radio talking about some American Idol singer who chose a country contract  instead of one within contemporary Christian music (CCM) because he didn't want to exclude anybody with his music. 

The radio hosts did not like that at all, which doesn't change the fact that much CCM excludes a huge percentage of potential listeners because of its sometimes limited range and its associations with church and people's bad experiences with Christians and Christianity.  I say that as one who listens to "Christian" music almost exclusively.  It's true that it's nice to have uplifting and positive things on the radio when you're snarled in traffic, but sometimes you need other things, too, and it seems that CCM doesn't always have room for those things.


How do you feel about what Zarr and this American Idol guy seem to have to say on this particular topic?