Jamie and I have recently gotten a little bit attached to the TV show "The Office". It is slightly ironic since many of my coworkers at my last job really loved the show but I had never seen it. Thanks to Jamie's sisters (and their husbands) that changed though.
So recently we were watching the episode where Dwight turns the family beet farm into an agri-tourism destination (complete with table making demonstrations and manure fights). This blog really isn't about the TV show though, it is about Natalie. The day after watching that episode, Jamie and I were still laughing about it a bit. As we were talking, Natalie walked up to us babbling her own words and deep in a conversation that we could not interpret. So when she stops, we said, "Oh really. Do you want to be a beet farmer Natalie?" Natalie then cocks her head slightly to the side looking thoughtful and replies "yeah" in the cutest 16 month old voice you can imagine.
I admit, we may be the only ones amused by that, but but it is just one of the many ways that having a young child can be so fun, funny, and entertaining. Thanks for the laughs Natalie!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
This Magical Wonderland...
A few weeks ago, we embarked on a journey to a faraway magical land near the north pole called "Spokane". We left Redding, California as summer was trying to secure it's gentle choke hold on the area by producing days in the mid 70's with a lot of sunshine. the magical land of Spokane, on the other hand, has been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to fight off winter's icy grip. Yesterday, wonderful little white flakes of snow fell like small bundles of white cotton candy from the circus in the clouds above us. Almost May? Yes, it is almost May, yet the weather here has lately made us think of trading in our front wheel drive car for a dogsled. But the weather hasn't been the only shock...
Our move to this glorious wonderland has brought back some of my youthful fantasies of being race car driver. It's just something about the roads here. My blood begins to pump faster, my sense seem to grow more sensitive, even the hum of the engine seems like music lifting me into the sky! The cars near me swerve and I react with ninja-like quickness to gently guide my racing machine on the safest route. But then...reality hits. Oh wait, we don't call that "reality" we call it really big potholes! As the cars in front of me disappear into the crater of another gigantic pothole, I find myself swerving to avoid the same imminent destruction, yet my car resists me. I grab the steering wheel more firmly and fight with it as if it had a mind of it's own. Is my car possessed? No, that is just the deep grooves worn into the asphalt from months and years of studded tires traveling the same path. It is as if the tire grooves and the potholes are scheming against all cars as the grooves slowly suck you in and direct you straight towards the bone jarring jolt of a pothole. Now for many people this experience may not be that significant, but when you drive a racing machine like mine, you must avoid these potholes at all costs. When I do hit them inadvertently, my driver side door jolts and partially opens, the muffler rattles, the front end of the car feels as if it will disintegrate, and on the rare occasion - my seat belt pops out leaving me completely vulnerable to the onslaught of crash inducing potholes. I guess that's why people around here say that there are only two seasons here - winter and road construction. Speaking of traffic...
The condition of the roads aside, traffic here flows in a rhythm like a great beautiful dance. It is an ebb and flow like the ocean's tide as one wave of cars surges while another recedes. It is a splendorous myriad of colors as dirt covered red and green cars intermingle with the grays, blacks, and dirty-supposed-to-be-whites. An ever changing rainbow that seems to follow some unwritten rule for left turns. But then you realize that there is a piece of the puzzle that is missing...yes, a piece that is common in many other places but only seems to pop up here about as often as a local sighting of Bigfoot/Sasquatch. That missing piece is the green left turn arrow. Jamie kindly pointed out to me that it actually isn't all that normal to have to sit in the middle of the intersection waiting for the oncoming traffic to break for a brief moment so that you can accelerate hard into the left turn to reach your destination. Maybe we have been spoiled in Redding, but there just doesn't seem to be many left turn arrows here. Instead, each stoplight is accompanied by a sign reading "Left turn yield on green".
I realize that I was a bit dramatic in this email, but I just felt like recording a few of the changes we have noticed since moving here a few weeks ago. But now I must go and chase down that elf I just spotted darting through the trees in the candy cane forest across the street...
Our move to this glorious wonderland has brought back some of my youthful fantasies of being race car driver. It's just something about the roads here. My blood begins to pump faster, my sense seem to grow more sensitive, even the hum of the engine seems like music lifting me into the sky! The cars near me swerve and I react with ninja-like quickness to gently guide my racing machine on the safest route. But then...reality hits. Oh wait, we don't call that "reality" we call it really big potholes! As the cars in front of me disappear into the crater of another gigantic pothole, I find myself swerving to avoid the same imminent destruction, yet my car resists me. I grab the steering wheel more firmly and fight with it as if it had a mind of it's own. Is my car possessed? No, that is just the deep grooves worn into the asphalt from months and years of studded tires traveling the same path. It is as if the tire grooves and the potholes are scheming against all cars as the grooves slowly suck you in and direct you straight towards the bone jarring jolt of a pothole. Now for many people this experience may not be that significant, but when you drive a racing machine like mine, you must avoid these potholes at all costs. When I do hit them inadvertently, my driver side door jolts and partially opens, the muffler rattles, the front end of the car feels as if it will disintegrate, and on the rare occasion - my seat belt pops out leaving me completely vulnerable to the onslaught of crash inducing potholes. I guess that's why people around here say that there are only two seasons here - winter and road construction. Speaking of traffic...
The condition of the roads aside, traffic here flows in a rhythm like a great beautiful dance. It is an ebb and flow like the ocean's tide as one wave of cars surges while another recedes. It is a splendorous myriad of colors as dirt covered red and green cars intermingle with the grays, blacks, and dirty-supposed-to-be-whites. An ever changing rainbow that seems to follow some unwritten rule for left turns. But then you realize that there is a piece of the puzzle that is missing...yes, a piece that is common in many other places but only seems to pop up here about as often as a local sighting of Bigfoot/Sasquatch. That missing piece is the green left turn arrow. Jamie kindly pointed out to me that it actually isn't all that normal to have to sit in the middle of the intersection waiting for the oncoming traffic to break for a brief moment so that you can accelerate hard into the left turn to reach your destination. Maybe we have been spoiled in Redding, but there just doesn't seem to be many left turn arrows here. Instead, each stoplight is accompanied by a sign reading "Left turn yield on green".
I realize that I was a bit dramatic in this email, but I just felt like recording a few of the changes we have noticed since moving here a few weeks ago. But now I must go and chase down that elf I just spotted darting through the trees in the candy cane forest across the street...
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Diversity
A friend recently wrote in her blog that being in a place "where people all around us speak a different language, live through a different worldview, and everyday is a new cultural adventure is like air in our lungs and blood in our veins". I know a lot of people that might say she is a bit crazy, or at the very least, that they could never feel the same way. After having lived overseas for several years, and traveling to many places at other times, these words do not sound crazy to me at all. Rather than crazy, they seem very true.
While moving from Redding , California to Spokane, Washington may not necessarily seem like a move to a more culturally diverse place, it has actually been quite interesting already. My job with the community colleges here allows me to frequently interact with ESL students who have moved to this area for various reasons. Maybe Spokane is not the most culturally diverse place, but my job is wonderful because it allows me to interact with what diversity there is around here - and that excites me.
Yesterday, I helped a Mexican, a Serbian, and a Rwandan set up email accounts so that they could email their ESL instructor. They were all asking similar questions in different versions of broken English. The task of trying to understand them each and communicate effectively with them may seem overwhelming to some, but it gave me a strange sense of happiness. It was also fun to know that just behind me, there were Russians, Moroccans, Burmese, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, and several other students working on their assignments at the computers.
The reality is that spending time overseas, especially living overseas, will ruin you. While I blend in here and I can understand almost everything around me, it doesn't quite feel "right". To many people, this is strange, and I admit that it must sound strange for me to say that I miss the days when I could hardly understand any of what was said around me, or why certain things were or were not happening, but it is true. I miss the experience of being enriched by the culture of others. So I guess that is why I am really appreciating the small bit of diversity and culture that I get to experience here. It is limited, but it is wonderful. I guess that is just one of the reasons to be thankful that the door was opened to pursue this new job.
I apologize if this was really random, but I know that there are a handful of people out there that will understand what I am trying to communicate. Since it has been random, I will say that I really want to learn another language someday. Ok, that's all for now.
While moving from Redding , California to Spokane, Washington may not necessarily seem like a move to a more culturally diverse place, it has actually been quite interesting already. My job with the community colleges here allows me to frequently interact with ESL students who have moved to this area for various reasons. Maybe Spokane is not the most culturally diverse place, but my job is wonderful because it allows me to interact with what diversity there is around here - and that excites me.
Yesterday, I helped a Mexican, a Serbian, and a Rwandan set up email accounts so that they could email their ESL instructor. They were all asking similar questions in different versions of broken English. The task of trying to understand them each and communicate effectively with them may seem overwhelming to some, but it gave me a strange sense of happiness. It was also fun to know that just behind me, there were Russians, Moroccans, Burmese, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, and several other students working on their assignments at the computers.
The reality is that spending time overseas, especially living overseas, will ruin you. While I blend in here and I can understand almost everything around me, it doesn't quite feel "right". To many people, this is strange, and I admit that it must sound strange for me to say that I miss the days when I could hardly understand any of what was said around me, or why certain things were or were not happening, but it is true. I miss the experience of being enriched by the culture of others. So I guess that is why I am really appreciating the small bit of diversity and culture that I get to experience here. It is limited, but it is wonderful. I guess that is just one of the reasons to be thankful that the door was opened to pursue this new job.
I apologize if this was really random, but I know that there are a handful of people out there that will understand what I am trying to communicate. Since it has been random, I will say that I really want to learn another language someday. Ok, that's all for now.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Confessions of a recovering pack rat
This weekend, we unpacked some more boxes and moved some more to our garage. Though our apartment here in Spokane is larger inside, it has less storage room, so our garage is currently serving mostly as storage. I don't know about anyone else that has moved several times, but as we were unpacking our moving truck, I realized there were several boxes worth of stuff that we haven't unpacked for years. We stored it at one place, moved it, and we are storing it again. I have to admit, that is more a result of my hoarding tendencies than Jamie's more organized personality. But after several moves, it is time to get vicious and say goodbye to some stuff that once seemed so important to save for some reason...
The truth is that much of what I have had a hard time parting with is stuff that is sentimental to me for some reason. Things like a practice football jersey from high school, plaques from competing in the pinewood derby in Cub Scouts, medals from grade school spelling bees, and even notebooks I doodled on in high school and college. I am realizing though, that having them in a box that I never open doesn't really serve the sentimental purpose of saving these items. The rest of the stuff is made up mostly of items that I save mainly because they interest me and I have this nagging fear that if I throw them away I might "need" them someday in the future. Included in this category are things like notes from my college classes (at least the ones that I thought were actually interesting), books that I have never read and don't really plan to but that have intriguing titles, and clothes that I haven't worn in years but who knows...maybe I will want to again.
Moving itself is not something I would recommend incredibly highly, but it does force you to confront the amount of "stuff" that you accumulate. My honest confession is that it kind of makes me sad that I have this much stuff, but at the same time, it may actually be difficult to part with some of it. Oh well, it must go. Is that why I hang on to some of my emotional "stuff" from the past too? Do I think it might come in handy some time? I don't know, but I think that is the topic for another time...it does make me think though...
The truth is that much of what I have had a hard time parting with is stuff that is sentimental to me for some reason. Things like a practice football jersey from high school, plaques from competing in the pinewood derby in Cub Scouts, medals from grade school spelling bees, and even notebooks I doodled on in high school and college. I am realizing though, that having them in a box that I never open doesn't really serve the sentimental purpose of saving these items. The rest of the stuff is made up mostly of items that I save mainly because they interest me and I have this nagging fear that if I throw them away I might "need" them someday in the future. Included in this category are things like notes from my college classes (at least the ones that I thought were actually interesting), books that I have never read and don't really plan to but that have intriguing titles, and clothes that I haven't worn in years but who knows...maybe I will want to again.
Moving itself is not something I would recommend incredibly highly, but it does force you to confront the amount of "stuff" that you accumulate. My honest confession is that it kind of makes me sad that I have this much stuff, but at the same time, it may actually be difficult to part with some of it. Oh well, it must go. Is that why I hang on to some of my emotional "stuff" from the past too? Do I think it might come in handy some time? I don't know, but I think that is the topic for another time...it does make me think though...
Thursday, April 3, 2008
The Love Of My Life
Marriage is a wonderful thing. Somehow our culture has managed to get pretty mixed up, and marriage is often viewed as a burden, or something to be dreaded. Don't get me wrong, marriage has its hard times for sure, but it can be such a place of life and love too if we work at it. But before I get caught up divulging my thoughts about marriage in general, let me get to the real reason for this blog post - my wife.
Jamie is an amazing woman! We have been married for 3 years, 8 months, and 17 days now. In that span of time, we have lived 6 different places, been in three countries whose governments were being threatened or overthrown, finished our Master's degrees, had our first child, had several illnesses and hospital visits (I have any way), and I have had four different jobs. We are still in the midst of another major move and job change, while she is pregnant with our second child! Honestly, that is enough to keep 8 or 10 years of marriage interesting, but we have packed it into less than 4 years!
In the last 15 months (since Natalie was born) Jamie has probably had 5 nights of good sleep - no exaggeration. Usually she probably sleeps 4-6 hours, and sometimes more, but not all at one time. Yet she still manages to love me, encourage me, and love Natalie like crazy!
Jamie is a gentle woman with great strength and courage. She might not tell you that, but one has to have great strength and courage to live the life we have lived and to marry a guy like me. Jamie is caring and incredibly intelligent. I honestly cannot ever remember her being rude to someone or mean to someone.
Maybe the most important thing for me is that she loves me. I don't mean that she has strong emotions for me, but that she chooses to love me. She has shown me love in some of the most challenging and painful times of life and she chooses to see the good in me. What I am trying to say, is that I REALLY love and appreciate my wife!
Questions about people
So what is it in humans that they feel compelled to insult, belittle, and attack complete strangers? I am "dog sitting" my parents' dog while they are in Redding helping Jamie get ready to move up here to Spokane. While I was walking him around the neighborhood this evening, a couple of guys working on a house nearby started making "interesting" comments directed at me. Why? What is the point? Why do a couple of guys decide that it would be entertaining to hurl insults and taunts at an innocent passerby?
Instantly, my mind started filling with painful, witty comebacks that I wanted to throw back at them like lightning bolts. Why? Why is that my initial response? Is it conditioning? Nature? My culture? When I was in high school it seemed like those with the best comebacks and the best witty insults were the ones who were "on top" of the social order. That is what I felt like when all the comebacks were flooding through my thoughts.
The truth is, I think a lot of people don't really know how to love others. All we are used to is attacking others and separating ourselves from others. I guess it really isn't that odd if you think about it. God created us to connect with others in relationships - and to connect with him in relationship. Therefore, the best way to attack God's purposes would seem to be by attacking those relationships. Yet Jesus shows us that we don't have to attack and belittle others in order to be "on top". A life like his truly was, and is, an amazing thing. It completely reverses the "natural" order of things that we are used to.
In the end, I guess I just hope that I can gradually change even more. I was glad that I didn't blurt out any of the comebacks that I was thinking, but hopefully one day my mind will be filled with thoughts of how I can love someone like that in a practical way. One day at a time I guess.
Instantly, my mind started filling with painful, witty comebacks that I wanted to throw back at them like lightning bolts. Why? Why is that my initial response? Is it conditioning? Nature? My culture? When I was in high school it seemed like those with the best comebacks and the best witty insults were the ones who were "on top" of the social order. That is what I felt like when all the comebacks were flooding through my thoughts.
The truth is, I think a lot of people don't really know how to love others. All we are used to is attacking others and separating ourselves from others. I guess it really isn't that odd if you think about it. God created us to connect with others in relationships - and to connect with him in relationship. Therefore, the best way to attack God's purposes would seem to be by attacking those relationships. Yet Jesus shows us that we don't have to attack and belittle others in order to be "on top". A life like his truly was, and is, an amazing thing. It completely reverses the "natural" order of things that we are used to.
In the end, I guess I just hope that I can gradually change even more. I was glad that I didn't blurt out any of the comebacks that I was thinking, but hopefully one day my mind will be filled with thoughts of how I can love someone like that in a practical way. One day at a time I guess.
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