Not Living in the Real World

I do still exist, though it's been a while since I've posted. I'm back living at my parents', have a new job, and am working on acquiring friends. The friends are largely elusive, though, and will have to be tracked to their regular haunts, flushed out, and tranquilized... Oh, wait, no. But they are elusive. I have been catching up on almost four years of family relationships, though, so I'm not dying of loneliness.

Pictures and daily thoughts to follow, maybe. Since I started this blog for my mother it may be hard for me to keep it up now that I get to see and talk to her every day.

If you're lucky, I still might post my story about Sheep (specifically Lambs).

In Which My Plans are Thwarted

So... This post was supposed to be about Sheep (specifically Lambs), but as often happens in this life, my best-laid schemes have "gang agley," as Robert Burns so deftly stated. Instead, this happened!

How, might you ask, did I come to be in New Jersey? Let's just say that the Dutch authorities are adamantly against foreigners overstaying their visas (long story, misunderstandings abounding between my Dutch employers and their government). It's quite an experience, starting the day as usual, then packing up your whole life and leaving a country in less than eighteen hours.

The Positive Side of all of this is that I got to come home early and spend almost a week in New Jersey with my sister, brother-in-law, and favorite nephew!

As a side note: NEVER travel with a guitar or more than two bags (neither of which should weigh more than 30 pounds), and I think one of my shoes is flying around on a Southwest airplane.

My Next Post....

....will be about SHEEP! And more specifically LAMBS. My new favorite thing.

Dancing Daffodils

Yes, it's finally here, ladies and gentlemen. Spring. It's funny how after two days of sun and warmer weather it's so easy to forget that winter lasted weeks longer than I thought I should have, and that spring was delayed by snow in April. Now I have a lovely pinkish tint on my forehead and nose from sitting in the sun, and all the flowers are blooming, and the grass is greener than any grass I've ever seen and the sky is bluer than any sky I've ever sat under. Overnight it seems that the world has thawed and burst to life. Truly I live in a beautiful place!

Jaardag

I receive peanut M&Ms for my birthday every year. My mother, a sympathetic chocolate lover, started giving them to  me a long time ago and has kept up the tradition even as I've moved away. Somehow it's even better now that I'm not home for my birthdays.

This has been my fourth birthday away from home. The first one was very strange. Birthdays in my family aren't celebrated by inviting a bunch of people over to party, they are celebrated with a family dinner, cake & ice cream, and present opening--in that order. Presents are never opened before dinner! Between dessert and presents someone always says, "Well, I guess it's time to take out the trash," and we pretend for a moment that there aren't any presents for the birthday person. I realize now that this takes the focus of the birthday off of the gifts, and on the person, and the givers. I always felt extra good on my birthdays. It was easy to be sweet to my siblings because they were all sweet to me. There was no demanding attention and favors (i.e. the doing of my chores), they were lovingly, freely given and gratefully received.

My first birthday away from home was a very special experience. I was out late and when I got home my wonderful roommate had made a cake on which she had piped "Happy Birthday, Abby!" and left it out on the kitchen table with a bunch of flowers and her gift to me. A few days later I was taken out to dinner with a group of good friends, then we went back to someone's house and had cake and sangria that one of them had made for me. The next weekend my family visited and the birthday celebrations continued.

My first birthday out of the country was also very special. Birthdays are a big deal here in the Netherlands! When I walked into the house that morning all three girls sang three different birthday songs to me, and I was given my gifts (chocolate!) and told to open them immediately (the girls aren't big on patience).

This year is much more low-key. I didn't remind them it was my birthday until it happened to come up in conversation. In a couple weeks I'll go out to dinner with a couple with whom I've become very good friends.

I don't really have a point to this post. I suppose I've just been reflecting on how birthdays have changed for me over the years. Each year I think, "Well, it's not a big deal," but something happens and I end up feeling exceedingly loved by the people around me.

Story: A Dream

I’m experimenting with writing dreams. Here is one I wrote the other day:

I was on the train one morning, when the man sitting next to me began telling me about his dream.

He was walking through the city at night, under a big overpass bridge. Under the bridge was a group of homeless people, dressed in all sorts of crazy outfits and gathered around a metal trashcan fire. He started walking faster to avoid them, but then one of the homeless people, an old man, was walking next to him. They started talking, like it was the most natural thing in the world, all about music and books. He was saying all sorts of stuff about the importance of reading being overrated by the chauvinistic media and that view being accepted by the angry mob. It seemed perfectly reasonable to the man on the train and he invited him to his house for tea as payment for his enlightening conversation. They ended up at the White House, because for some reason the man on the train lived there. There was a big state dinner going on and all the people there were wearing tuxedos  including the women, because that was more qualitative. When the two men walked in, the dreamer could tell that everyone was wondering why he had brought along such a disintegrated old man along to a fancy dinner, but the man on the train said, “It’s OK, everyone, I invited him for tea.” At that everyone immediately began applauding and giving each other expressive looks to show how excited they were to hear from such a prominent speaker.

The speech began well enough, but turned into the homeless man presenting his dissertation exploring the similarities between soap operas and the Bible. A woman sitting next to the man on the train leaned over to him and said, “You forgot to tell him this was a government dinner, didn’t you? Not a rational one?” At that moment the after-dinner entertainment of a traveling circus streamed into the room through the big double doors. Jugglers on unicycles were followed by dancing bears, who were followed by a group of clowns in a little clown car. Through the chaos the speaker continued, merely raising his voice a little to be heard over the noise. Then the man on the train remembered that he had forgotten to go to the grocery store on the way home. “I’m sorry, everyone! You’re all going to have to leave; I just realized that I forgot to buy tea this afternoon. Please forgive the inconvenience. We’ll try again another day.” And then he woke up.

I sat and listened to the dream, laughing at all the right places, but not really sure why the man felt compelled to share it with me. When I got to my stop I politely thanked him and stepped off the train. I stopped and watched the dancing bear drink tea on the platform for a moment before leaving, and as I crossed the street everything got hazy and I woke up.

Paasfeest

"Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." Mark 24:5-6

"O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" 1 Corinthians 15:55