It was meant to be you

I removed the original post that was here even though the guy I like still hasn’t asked me out. I figured my chances of a blog-discovered romance were like, nihl. Though I am pretty sure there are lots of people who should be in love with me but aren’t. I don’t think they read The Real Pretend.

As I wrote in my journal (okay, call it a diary if you want) “My words are all I have. If they don’t work, then it’s back to the drawing board. Without a pencil.” Which is pretty much true. I am more me through written words than I am in spoken conversation. My words are the only thing on my side. But I’m not sure they are enough to convince a person they should like me. Especially when I'm too late.

I still have a tiny shred of hope that someday a man will read my words and fall in love with me. I will write him love letters that pull at his soul. And he will realize that when I write "I love you," what I mean is "I want to be yours forever."

Christmas Traditions: The Tree

This launches my Christmas series, where I will be sharing with you stories of my childhood Christmas traditions. Check back weekly for new posts.

Growing up, I never thought my family was poor, and maybe the reason we weren’t poor was because my dad was such a cheapskate even when he didn’t need to be. Take for example, the acquisition of a Christmas tree.

When I was at church last Sunday, the woman behind me was telling me all about how her family had already gotten their Christmas tree. They always make a really big deal of it, bundling up for the cold, singing songs in the car, searching for the perfect tree, cutting it down, taking it home, and drinking hot chocolate. Oh, the bliss of a tradition that will never be mine.

As a kid, my dad’s strategy was to find the best looking and cheapest tree possible. Back then, $20 was an outrageous amount to spend. $15 was not good either. Ten bucks was acceptable, and $5 was a deal. I guess my dad was just not that into buying something that grew by the hundreds in the acres behind our house.

In fact, when I was about five years old, my dad planted like, 12 little fir trees in a section of our backyard. I think his hope was that they would grow tall and robust, and all he’d have to do in the years to come is hack down a tree right out his back door.

My father was typically very obstinate about going to find a tree. Usually my sister, me, and my mom would drive around in the car and look for tree farms with hand painted U-Cut signs. When we found a good place, we would rush home, drag my dad into his pick-up, and make him go with us to get the tree.

My dad’s favorite place to get Christmas trees was Lone Pine, which is an intersection about ten minutes from our house. There is a white barn at Lone Pine, and the farmer sells berries and produce on a cart there. Most of the time it’s on the honor system. If you take a carton of strawberries, you put a dollar in the tin can, because there was usually no one manning the area. The farmer at Lone Pine took this same lax approach with his trees. He’d prop them up next to the barn, advertising 5, 10, or 15 dollars for his trees. My dad liked this place because it was on the way home from work, so he could just throw it in the back of the pick up. I know what else you’re thinking, and yes, he put the full price that was tagged on the tree into the tin can.

When we got lucky, Dad would drive us up the twists and turns of the hillside and find a really good tree farm. We lived out in the country, the boondocks really, and there were many tree farms near us. The hunt was a bit difficult, as we are a picky family and do not like Noble Firs. We’ve got so many ornaments that my mother has always insisted we get the bushier type, which has more branches to hang things on. Of course when we got to the tree farm, my dad would negotiate with the farmer, trying to jew the price down. This was a new phrase that I learned as a kid. Let me tell you the etymology. The term “jew down” comes from the noun Jew, and it is considered offensive, as it is based on the stereotype that Jews are stingy or miserly. If you asked my dad though, I’m pretty sure he’d just tell you that Jews are smarter than the rest of us, because if you pay full price, you’re an idiot. As a child though, I always thought the term was “chew down.” I think it was about middle school that I figured it out.

One year my dad was really dragging his heels about the whole Christmas tree thing, so my mom and us girls had to find a tree that would fit in the trunk of the car. We ended up getting one for $15 at Hi-School Pharmacy, of all places. It was probably five feet tall and we stuffed it in the back with the trunk bungeed down.

When I was 14, my dad insisted that some of the trees planted in the backyard must be ready. So my sister, being 16 and handy with a saw, went out and cut one down. The tree was very gangly, as no one had ever pruned the thing during its adolescence. There were many holes that even ornaments could not fill up. Plus, it didn’t smell right.

The best tree we ever got was the one my dad picked up on the side of the road. He surprised us one evening by dragging in a tall, bushy tree. He said that he was driving home, and he just saw the thing lying in the ditch. Must have fallen off some truck or something. He was really pleased with himself for picking up a free tree. I have to admit, it was beautiful.

I realize this story makes it sound a bit like I was a poor, underprivileged child who never got a proper Christmas tree. I assure you, we managed to get one every year. That’s sort of the tradition that I appreciate now--the challenge. It was always “what do we have to do in order to get a tree this year?” You never knew where it was going to come from, what it was going to look like, or how you’d get it home.


But man, once that tree was standing in the living room, colored lights glowing and decked out in ornaments, well, that was a feeling of satisfaction.

Check back next Sunday for a new Christmas Tradition tale.

Conversations with my sister

While in the car, when talking about the new detective story I’m writing

Jess: Could you put ninjas in it?

Me: Well, I haven’t. But I could if I wanted. Though so far it’s been pretty realistic fiction.

Jess: Ninjas aren’t exactly imaginary, you know. They do exist.

When asked to help come up with a motive

Me: This guy hires the detective because he suspects that someone in his nanotechnology company is leaking secrets to foreign countries.

Jess: Nanotechnology, huh? Maybe like, there could be a microchip. And you implant it into people’s brains to make them not feel hungry. Like a weight loss technique. Only the suspect’s trying to use them for the greater good and he wants to send the microchip to people in Africa so they aren’t starving. That would be a twist.

While at the store choosing fleece fabric to make a dog bed

Jess: What do you think of this brown?

Me: I like it. It’ll be good, because it will hide the dog fur.

Jess: But is it an ugly brown?

Me: No. It’ll be perfect. It’s the exact same color as your dog’s fur.

Jess: My dog is black.

Me: Oh.

While at my house, cutting fabric for her dog bed

Jess: Do you have a yardstick?

Me: No. But I have a ruler.

Jess: Do you have a long ruler?

Me: Jess, all rulers are the same length. 12 inches.

Jess: No, at my work we have some rulers that are 18 inches.

Me: Clearly they are overcompensating for something.

While at my house, looking at piece of artwork I’m creating

Jess: How did you do that? Put the words on top of the picture?

Me: It’s called PowerPoint. You just save it as a JPEG. I put a text box over the image.

Jess: No, but how did you get that flavor of text?

Me: You mean font?

Jess: Yeah, whatever.

Me: No, I like that better. Flavor of text, like you can taste it in your mouth when you're reading it.

While looking at a lomography Polaroid at my house, of a little girl in the rain

Jess: Who is this? Is this you? I know it’s not me.

Me: No, that’s you. You don’t remember that pink jacket?

Jess: But that’s not our house in the background.

Me: That was at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

Jess: Seriously?

Me: No. That’s a photo of a complete stranger.

How my sister likes to displace me

This is completely fictional, so that you know. It's from a dream I had. And okay, I know sharing dreams is super lame, because nobody cares, but whatever. I thought it was funny. It also explains why I didn't feel like eating breakfast when I woke up.

Dream:
We're sitting in my family's old camper, getting ready to go to bed. When I was little, I got to sleep on the table after we folded it down, and my sister slept on the pull-down bunk above. But now Travis, whom I refer to as my fake brother (he's my brother-in-law), is with us, and Jess and him want to sleep on the table.

"I'm not sleeping in the bunk. The table is mine. It's been mine for years. This is my spot," I argue.

It made a lot of sense while it was happening, but I typically am not one to volunteer to sleep on an eating surface, especially one made of laminated wood. And okay, I sound really unyielding, but let's just keep in mind how Christmas Eve went down last year.

True Story:
For years and years, my sister would snuggle into my bed with me on Christmas Eve. We even continued this through my college years, because what happened was my sister was living in an apartment, and I was living in a dorm room, and we would both return to my parents' house for Christmas. The only bed left at my parents' house was my old bed in my room, so my sister was forced to snuggle in next to me even when she was 22 years old. And then Travis came along.

The first Christmas he spent with us, he drove over in the morning. The second Christmas he spent with us, my mother made him sleep on a roll-out mat in the sitting room (which no one ever sits in). The third Christmas, he was married to my sister. The two of them wanted to sleep in my bed in my room, and they wanted me to sleep on the roll-out mat in the sitting room.

I absolutely refused on two accounts: 1) It was my freaking room, and 2) the sitting room is actually very eerie at night, because it is a room full of windows, specially designed to enjoy the view of Mt. Hood. And here, they want the one single person to sleep alone in a creepy room with creepy windows, so creepy elves can peer in at me during the night? Hell no. So what happened was, Travis and Jess slept on roll-out mats in the sitting room together. You might be like, why didn't they just sleep at their own house and come over in the morning? My friend, they didn't because my sister and I are desperately clinging to our childhood tradition of waking up at 6:30 in the morning to see what Santa brought. If they had to drive 40 minutes in the morning, they wouldn't have arrived until 11am or something. It's totally different when the presents aren't at your actual house. You don't want to wake up then.

Anyway. Back to the fictional part of this story, the part about me refusing to give up my place on the table. You can understand better now. I give an inch, she takes a mile. Well, the next morning, I wake up in a sleeping bag on the table, and my sister is next to me with a paper sack from McDonald's. She's munching on fries. For breakfast.
"Where did you get that?" I ask. Because, you know, we're camping in the wilderness and everything.
"From McDonald's."
Duh. "But when?"
"Last week."
VOMIT! My sister is eating fries out of a bag from McDonald's that she bought days ago. So disgusting. What I do next is wake up in real life and not eat anything until 2:20 in the afternoon.




P.S. I have no idea what is going to happen this year on Christmas Eve. My mother has turned my old bedroom into a guest room, on account of how I don't live there at all any more. She re-painted, made me clear out all my stuff, moved in new furniture, and hung up new artwork. There is one full-sized bed in there. What I want to have happen is I sleep in it with my sister on Christmas Eve, and Travis sleeps on the roll-out mat in the sitting room, where he can battle the creepy elf eyes peering in through the windows by himself. But my sister will be pushing to put me on a mat by myself so I can cry my lonely tears at night. I'd sleep in the living room on the couch where it is all cozy and Christmasy, but then you know, I'd wake up when Santa comes. Maybe I'll have to fill the bathtub up with pillows and sleep in there, because at least there is only one window, and it's frosted.

My own personal Philistine

Maybe you're familiar with the story of David and Goliath. Giant taunts the Israelites daily, morning and night, saying "Who will come out and fight?" Kid knocks the over-sized bearded bully out cold with the help of God.

I feel like I have my own personal Philistine. He's been following me around for years, mocking me. "Who will come out and fight?" I've pretended like I didn't hear him. I've been afraid. It took so much courage for me just to go to the stream and pick out the rocks. I am not David. My faith and trust in God is not as strong as his was. But I've got my rocks now. I'm putting them in my slingshot, because I'm ready to take this Philistine down. This is a battle, and it's one I must win. My Philistine is not called Goliath. No, he goes by another name. But his head is about to be cut off just the same.

1 Samuel 17:45-47
David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

Soul Strings

My soul is made of strands all tightly woven together. Some are thick, some are thin. Some are short, others are long. I wind my soul strings tightly up into a messy lump.

My threads used to be more orderly, like an actual design. They were perhaps like the snowflake sweater your grandma knitted for you the Christmas you were ten. But what I found was this: one thread came loose, I pulled it, and the whole sweater unraveled. Everything fell apart. So what I did was gather my soul strings up and wad them tightly into my fists. I wound them and knotted them so that if anyone pulled on them, nothing would come loose. Now my soul strings are safe--a big messy ball that no one can untangle.

This is a really bad first impression

I realize that this could be the very first time you've ever read this blog. Welcome! Thanks for reading. Too bad you chose to read this during the week I've lost all my marbles. Seriously, they've all rolled away into a drain grate or something where I can't reach them.

I've decided that I need to take a week long writing break at the minimum, because I'm afraid that if I don't, I'll reveal to you all my deepest, darkest secrets, and like your brain or heart needs that right now. Plus, how mortified would I be in two weeks? What I need to do is lock up all my old journals in a trunk and throw the key into the pile of leaves sitting outside, so I'm not tempted to share every revealing thought I've ever had. Because some of them are pretty pathetic.

I know my week long absence could be really heartbreaking to you and everything, on account of how you'll gain ten minutes of your life back everyday by not having to read the sap I put on here.  

I decided I needed to take a leave of absence after writing two paragraphs. One's called "Everything I Hate About Who I've Become," and the other is called "Everything I No Longer Believe." I decided to keep them hidden in my journal because, as you might imagine, neither one is filled with uplifting, beautiful, or funny things for you. And I don't want you to have to read things that bring you down. Because I care about you, I really do. Even though no one cares about me <-- whoops, see, that's why I need to take a blog break. I start writing things that are probably not true. They're all fictionalized in my head.

So instead of sharing paragraphs that make me cry, I will instead tell you this: in place of my heart, something as tiny and black and shriveled as a raisin now rests. 

The thing about having a raisin-heart is that it's full of anger and bitterness and not-funny stories, and it loves to think mean things about the person it dwells in. Raisin-hearted people often wear stonewall expressions, and it looks like they feel absolutely nothing, except maybe sadness or hate, but in truth the raisin heart feels everything, except when it is numb, which is often.

I'd pray for a miracle to happen inside of my heart, but that's on the list of Things I No Longer Believe. So maybe you could pray for a miracle instead. If you're into that sort of thing.

Hopefully I'll see you in a week or so, if I find a way to get rescued in the meantime.

Joelle

The Legendary Homework of 100

I warned my students that parent-teacher conferences were coming up, and that they better start turning in their homework, because I would be talking to their parents about it. This kid never did turn in the homework that was assigned, but he did write this. I was so enthralled, I'm thinking about giving him credit anyway.

Click on the photo to enlarge for readability.

and then of course you must read the back.

My favorite reason is in the middle, near the apparent bite-mark. "I will not be a secret-agent if I don't do homework."

Paper Facebook

Last week I had to confiscate a laptop from one of my 4th graders. It was distracting her. What was she doing in class instead of reading? Facebooking. This is what her self-made computer looked like. Notice she didn't X out fast enough before I caught her. That button must be stuck.

 What you need to do is click on the image so you can view it in full size. This piece of paper was folded in half so that the screen was standing up and the keyboard was flat on the desk. These are the things you might notice:

She's on Facebook, of course, but her other open tab is YouTube.
She's listening to You Ain't Gonna Tie Me Down.
She looks a bit disgruntled in her profile picture.
She has 8 friends.
Her status is "I'm so bored," but I stole her computer before she could click share.
The friends who showed up in her news feed were Kelley and Melissa.
Two friends are online.
She's Facebook chatting with Marsha. The conversation reads:
hi.
hi.
what are you doing.
nothing, why.
just asking.
oh

Now let's take a look at her innovative keyboard. It has the numbers across the top, of course, along with Bakespace, which is a lot like backspace, except that you bake tasty cupcakes when you push it.
She has a non-qwerty standard keyboard. Instead, the keys are in alphabetical order.
There are arrow navigation keys.

My verdict? Facebook has its grips on even our youngest youth. They're thinking about it even when they aren't near a computer.

When Chandeliers Break and Heaven Falls

I kept thinking about this, about how I could forge Beautifully Broken and Crescendo together. When a chandelier meets a music note, I wondered, what happens? And what does this have to do with me? And where does God fit into this? Sadly, most people who write poetry on blogs run the risk of sounding like a sappy goon. But I figured it didn’t really matter. 

When Chandeliers Break and Heaven Falls

I’m in a room where the ceiling is lifted

It’s lifted so high it seems like heaven falls

Down around me.

I see marble pillars, gold, and velvet

The floor below is black and white.

We’re all chandeliers

Suspended in the air

Made of crystal glass

Refracting rainbow light.

I am a chandelier

Hanging above this ball room.

Below the music plays.

The notes echo

The tempo quickens

I can feel it reverberate in

My soul.

Adagio, Legato, Staccato

I listen to the measures.

I am waiting for

                                        o

                     d

                 n

              e

            c

         s

      e

    r

C

The moment that takes them all.

When the burst of music blooms

When the rumble fills the room

It seems like heaven falls.

I forget

I’m made of glass.

I love the sound of crescendo

But it does something to me

That changes me.

Fortissimo!

I shatter

I fall.

Ten-thousand sparkling bits

Lying broken on the floor

Waiting for Him.

Waiting for Him to sweep me up.

The accumulation & loss of cool points

Maybe you remember reading "Nobody does detective work like I do," where I told you about how some major jerk backed into my car in the parking lot and fled the scene of the crime without leaving their contact info. So then I had to do extensive detective work, which I am quite proud of, though I had to stop my investigation due to lack of access to Walgreen's computer system and the refusal of Knife River Construction to hand over their employee roster.

I never caught the culprit, but my car is in the shop getting fixed. For 9 days. My insurance policy doesn't cover rental cars, so I sweet talked my sister into letting me drive her car. I normally drive a '98 Toyota Corolla, so I gained a lot of cool points driving this:

What I didn't realize is that this car has like, twelve blind spots. You literally see nothing but seat and black frame when you turn your head to look over your left shoulder to switch lanes. It's a miracle I didn't side-swipe anybody. When I drove this car, I parked as far away from other people as I could, because I knew backing up would be an issue. But I looked cool, right?

I was supposed to get my car back on my birthday last Friday and pay my $300 deductible to the shop. Happy Birthday to me, right? Well I called the body shop and they told me it wouldn't be ready until Tuesday. I informed my sister of the situation and she was getting upset since she was driving her husband's truck 40 miles to work everyday and it was being a gas hog. So what I did was call my mom to see if she could help me out somehow. She kindly suggested I drive my grandma's old station wagon, which my father recently acquired for $1000. Nobody was actually driving it, so it would work out great. So now I'm driving this:

I call it The Wagon, of course, and any cool points I racked up from driving the silver coupe disappeared when I sat behind the wheel of this thing. At first I was like "No problem, I've got loads of disguises I can wear while I'm driving it." Then I realized that all my disguises are still in the glove box of my car, which is still at the shop, along with both pairs of my sunglasses. Everybody should really keep a few disguises in their car, in case they need to elude creepers or mafia members. Or in case you're trying to get really close to Robert Pattinson when he visits Seattle, which I have personally never done. 

So now I'm driving The Wagon, which has like, zero blind spots because it's all windows, which means everybody can see who is driving it. It's like a fish aquarium on wheels. I'm trying to just embrace it. I drove it for the first time on Sunday afternoon. It was all dusty inside, and the lights on the dash don't work, so I never know if I'm putting it into drive or reverse because I can't see. Thanks a lot, daylight savings. Also, you should know that I heard rumors of a mouse nest in the radiator or something (but my dad cleaned it out).

But the really great part about driving this station wagon is that my grandma left her Swiss polka cassette tapes in there. So I'm currently listening to "Echoes From Helvetia," which is fine, because my dad's side of the family has a very strong Swiss heritage. In fact, Echoes From Helvetia was copyrighted in 1998 by the Grossen Family Band and The Helvetia Alphorn Trio, who are my dad's cousins. No wonder that yodeling sounded so familiar.

The actual alphorn trio. I found this image on Google, not the family photo album.

These people are fully my relatives. They're getting ready for the Swiss Parade.

 Another feature of this vehicle is the blue handicapped parking window hanger that came with it. If I'm ever in a pinch to park, I can display that. It doesn't even expire until 2016. 

There I am, feeling a bit goofy sitting behind the steering wheel, mostly because it is as large as the wooden wheel that a sea captain might stand behind. Plus, I could fit like, ten people in the station wagon if I tried. Probably more.

I was driving to school and I thought to myself "I wonder if this is what my boss feels like everyday," because he totally has a white station wagon. We're like twins right now. Except that I'm not over 40 or balding. But I'm wondering if he gets as big of a kick out of driving his station wagon as I do. He probably doesn't, because he's not listening to Volksmusikanter while he's driving.

Crescendo

¹cre·scen·do  noun  \krə-ˈshen-(ˌ)dō   the peak of a gradual increase

 As the cold November rain falls outside my window, as it hits the pavement in my driveway, I think to myself, "I need my life's crescendo to be here." Because my life's been a piece that's been played way too slowly and way too softly. I want that excitement of a crescendo. The anticipation is killing me.

There's nothing like the drums beating loudly, the piano echoing through the room, and all of the strings playing at once. It's a burst of beauty. You cannot describe crescendo accurately with words, because there is something that happens inside your heart when you hear it. But the more I think about it, the more I think "what happens after the crescendo?" Usually after the peak, things start to slow down and soften again. And then it ends on a coda.

I'm not sure crescendo is the right thing at this moment. It will be lovely and beautiful when it happens, but maybe I still need to practice for it. A bit of more time spent reading the music, you know? But I'm ready to move forward, past these measures I've been stuck on. This is where the tempo quickens. I can hear the metronome ticking. I'm going to start playing faster now. And louder. The 24th measure has been completed.

The crescendo has been composed, I know. It has been written. I'm getting there. I guess I just need to keep listening.