I have never seen so many crazy people out and about in my town. Doing errands today was like being in NYC.

First, exiting a shopping center was a man who was certain he was a Dragonball-Z character. He was walking with his hand stretched out in front of him like he was casting a spell and almost ran right into me. Then he jumped out in front of us with his arms clenched in an action figure position and yelled “See you later!” Sadly, we was not acting, but was completely off his rocker. Greg noted that this guy was the only schizophrenic person he’d ever seen who was happy, though.

Next, a ridiculous crazy thing happened. Greg and Sage were following me through a department store, and Greg was telling a story, at the end of which he loudly exclaimed, “Aiiiii, I have no eyyyyyes!!” in a falsetto voice.

As he said this, he looked down, almost tripping over a older BLIND gentleman who was sitting on the floor underneath a rack of clothes. (Waiting for his daughter as it turns out.)

So we are all feeling horrible about what the man must have thought, and trying not to laugh uncontrollably at the same time. I mean, what are the chances? That was some serious weirdness there.

Then we went to Wal-Mart, where such encounters are perhaps more to be expected. In the sporting goods section, a young man walked up to Greg and said, “I like your shoes.” Greg thanked him, and then the man asked, perhaps a tad flirtatiously, “Are you wearing socks?”

Apparently some people haven’t used up their crazy quota for the year and are making up for last time. As for Greg’s chance encounter with the blind man, I’m still having a difficult time believing that even happened.

Have a happy New Year y’all.

This evening, I attended a party by myself. To get there, I had to drive out of town a little bit and then down an unlit country road to find a house I’d never been to before. I briefly lost my way, but got my bearings pretty quickly. Some of you guys know this is a big deal from me. My chains get looser all the time.

Once there, I had a fabulous time. I heard a song called “Rudolph the Redneck Reindeer.” I saw lots of people I knew and all that, and now somewhere on Facebook there is a video of me doing a spastic dance trying to win a contest called “Junk in the Trunk” that involved a box of ping pong balls being strapped to my butt.

I didn’t win. The guy I was competing with must have been a stripper or something. He was a jive contortionist. Hopefully the video is focusing much more on him than me. Fortunately, it won’t be tagged, and hopefully, we have few friends in common.

Greg and I are considering getting into foster care with the goal being adoption. Sage is excited at the mere thought. I’ve wanted to do this for years, and with Sage being older, it’s a good time. Greg is such an awesome dad, too. Sage’s friends envy our family life, and I’d like to share it with more kids. I’m hoping it all works out, and that getting the house ready isn’t prohibitively expensive or anything like that.

Next weekend, we’re taking off for Houston, where we’ll stay in our favorite hotel (the Hotel Derek. We’ll go to the Galleria and the Asian part of town, and might fit in The Menil Collection while we’re there.

Sage’s best friend AJ is going with us, and they’re both really excited. Sage in particular likes to lay up in the bed watching movies and ordering pizza while enjoying the view of downtown Houston.

This Christmas is going to pretty much be an experiential Christmas. I spent a grand total of $50 on Sage’s gifts and I told Greg not to buy me anything expensive. I think we’ll have more fun living the high life for a couple of days than getting “stuff” anyway. (Keep in mind that from my perspective, the high life means the opportunity to go to Central Market, check out a museum and take a break from cooking and laundry. Works for me!)

So I was driving Sage and AJ home from the park. We passed my neighbor, who was walking with a lady from our church and a 16-or-so-year-old girl.

Sage asked me to roll down the window. I did, thinking he wanted to ask our neighbor about some chickens she might be getting.

Instead, Sage looks at the teenage girl, says, “What’s your name?”

She tells him. He nods his head slightly and says, “Sweet,” then rolls up the window.

He was smiling all the way home after rollin’ up on that fine chica.

I definitely have a new favorite piece of jewelry. Actually, it was my favorite necklace years ago when I lived in Austin. I used to wear it every day until I got worried that I was showing too much anger to “represent.”

I’m hard on things, and one day I did something that bent the silver back of the cross and cracked the front of it, rendering it quite fragile. You could see a crack, and if you picked at it with a fingernail, you could see how part of the front of the cross was literally about to fall off of the back part.

I decided to wear the cross anyway to church last Sunday. Later in the day, I was fiddling around with the chain and took a good look at the cross. There is no more crack. All of the silver on the front is adhered to the back. It’s like nothing ever happened, until you turn it over and see a dent on the back which I likely put there by leaning over and closing a drawer on it or something like that.

The front is like new.

Some things that come to mind:

The cross heals.

God can make me like new.

The cross is a miracle, always has been and always will be.

I won’t have any problem wearing the cross these days, because I’m not angry anymore. Not even at our really horrible political situation. I feel as though I’m standing outside it, somehow.

It’s a good feeling.

Here is a beautiful Christmas song for you. It’s “Angels We Have Heard on High” by Sixpence None the Richer. Beautiful voice AND graphics.

Just testing my feed — made some changes. Singingthesky.com will no longer redirect to this page. Rather, singingthesky.com/writing will have to be typed in. Wondering if the feed still works…

All is good.

Thursday, Sage mowed the yard at the family business. Yesterday, he was helping a friend of mine get some chairs set up for a performance. I don’t remember what happened to elicit this remark — perhaps my friend mentioned she was tired — but Sage said, “You know, I get my paycheck this evening. I can hire someone to do this for you tomorrow.”

My 12-year-old is thinking he’s the Big Man.

I found this prayer at an Orthodox Christian site. I’m fascinated by Orthodox practice. My town even has a congregation, although I think the incense would be awful for my allergies.

O merciful Lord God, Thou hast commanded and enjoined me to honor my father and mother, and Thou Thyself hast shown even until death humble obedience to Thy Father. From the depth of my soul I fervently beseech Thee, O gracious Jesus Christ, my God, hear my prayer and have mercy upon my parents, who have given birth to me and brought me up in Thy grace and love. Protect them from all evil, harm and sickness; grant them health, and mercifully pour forth Thy bountiful blessings upon them. Bless their efforts and deeds; have mercy on them according to Thy great mercy. Amen.”

Am off to read Psalm 23 so as to be reminded of quiet waters…

So I reread my last post and it sounds weird — like, look at me, I help the poor of my neighborhood, blah blah. Yuk.

I’m in an awful mood right now. My Dad is now in the intensive care unit, having underwent the same procedure that my mom had done a couple of weeks ago. He had a significant blockage in an artery, and they put in two stents.

His procedure did not go as smoothly as my mom’s did. About a pint of blood leaked out from the site where they had the incision before my mom noticed, which was scary. Then, they didn’t give him his blood pressure medicine or something, and it got dangerously high. There was talk of “stabilizing” him during the surgery, and my mom was a nervous wreck. During the surgery, a couple of pieces of plaque broke loose, posing another problem. Now he is on a liquid diet and hooked up to all this gear in the ICU and it is scary.

I hate the freakin’ panic attack crap I deal with. I just hate it. I haven’t been able to eat, which is probably making things worse, but my throat is really tight, which makes it difficult to swallow. I took some extra Ativan (more on my withdrawal progress later) and instead of helping, I think it caused me to have vertigo.

Greg went to the hospital with me, and when we got out of the elevator, it was so bad that I had to close my eyes and hold onto his arm and walk down the hall. There were too many windows and there were diagonal lines on the floor, and things that were close looked far away and in general were seriously jacked up.

The lady keeping track of people in the ICU was a dragon and wouldn’t let Greg go inside with me. My sister-in-law was working, and she came and walked me through the maze-like hallways. Fortunately, the dizziness let up enough so I wasn’t hanging onto her! My legs felt like jelly, though.

Here’s the thing that is really getting me right now. My dad was scared, I could tell. He seemed very vulnerable, and old. I kissed him on the head, and his hair is as fine as a baby’s, snow white and thinning. The feelings that actually SEEING this elicited helps me to understand why we as a culture fixate on youth. Old age definitely brings questions we feel uncomfortable asking. We had a good conversation for a while that I think helped to distract him. I think I was pretty successful in hiding the anxiety. I let him know that I had just cut the meds back to the point where I’m almost off of them and that is why I was having some problems today.

The real reason for the anxiety has nothing to do with the meds or how many of them I am taking, of course. I’m almost off and I have been feeling great most of the time. For the first time in years, I am able to see what things really upset me, instead of hiding everything under a layer of drugs. Stupidly, I actually don’t think things like this should upset me, as I’ve hidden under the protection of artificial strength for a while. I have not learned the coping strategies that I should have to deal with these things. (I’m giving myself the benefit of the doubt here, because what I actually tell myself is that I’m just not a very strong person.)

I’m scared and sad. I feel really helpless. I wish there was something I could do for my dad, and there’s really not anything, other than my presence. It’s difficult for me to offer much of that, because of the nonstop panic of being at the hospital. I need to GET A GRIP. Now, how to do that…

This morning the weather permitted a decent walk that didn’t involve me feeling as though I was going to pass out after ten minutes! A.J. spent the night and he and Sage were up at the crack of dawn wrestling and generally being (almost) teenage boys. So we took Wile. E. and walked to the farmer’s market so that Greg could get some sleep.

The first thing we saw was a red velvet ant, also known as a cow ant or carpet ant. I’ve heard it’s the “hurt’s like hell if it stings you ant.” Actually, it’s a wasp. It crawls in the grass so that you can step on it if you’re barefoot. It is red, though, so if you (and it) are lucky you’ll see it before you place your foot on its stinger.

We walked along the creek underneath the overpass, and saw this graffiti. It is some of the only graffiti I’ve seen around here that is anything besides tagging, which I hate.

I was so thrilled with all of the tiny wildflowers we saw. In Texas, your house is your prison in the summer unless you are waaay tougher than I am. It’s been over a hundred degrees for two months now, and this morning, it was 80 with a breeze from Tropical Storm Lee. It felt indescribably good to be outside.

When we arrived at the farmer’s market, I kicked back on the banks of the creek with Wile E. while the boys explored. I tried not to think about red velvet ants. (The market has a no dog policy — reasonable enough.)

On the walk home, we saw a tree stump in a sidewalk.

We stopped and sat on a bench for a while eating freshly baked banana nut bread from the market. We dropped some crumbs and watched the ants carry them off. We must have watched those ants for 15 minutes. I could write a story about those ants.

I love it when life is in slow-motion.

I’ve been resisting my natural urge to be a hermit lately, which has definitely resulted in a richer life — not only for me, but for Sage as well. Everything doesn’t always come up roses, though. Although the second book club meeting went well — one guy even invited Sage over with a group to jam out of the guitar — the homeschool park group wasn’t so great.

Here’s a comparison. The book club, which is made up of a very diverse group of people, had lots of people show up last night at the coffeehouse where we meet. Everybody was really cool and shoved over to make room for each person, many of whom did not know one another.

Today, when I took Sage to the Christian homeschool group, which is the only such game in town, everyone was sitting around a picnic table. Sage joined the kids and I went to introduce myself to the moms at the table. No one offered to scoot over or anything! My choice was to either leave and go sit on a bench by myself, which is what I did the last time I tried going to this group a year or so ago, or stand there.

I chose to simply stand there. After about ten minutes of this, one (kind) lady sent her kid to the parking lot to bring some canvas chairs. So I sat down and talked for a bit, although the lady who was sitting closest to me literally turned her butt around on the table so that I was looking at her back.

Then my homeschooling neighbor showed up. By that time, there was room at the picnic table, and she sat down. No one welcomed her either. We talked to a woman who recently moved to town who was also being (blatantly) ignored. Meanwhile, there was a little clique clustering together that was headed up by a queen bee type whose husband owns a car dealership here in town. When I asked her last name, she looked down her nose and said, “Norton,” like it should be the most obvious thing in the world. I guess I’m not up with who’s currently famous in our town.

I could go on. The bottom line is that I’m really aggravated. When professing Christians behave this way, I see why so many people have such an antipathy for the religion. As a Christian myself, I don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of that hatred.

People need to keep it real.

Sage and I want to start an inclusive homeschoolers group that doesn’t discriminate on the basis of religion. (You have to be a professing Christian to be part of this homeschooling group, and it’s the only one in our town.) When I told Sage this fact, he exclaimed, “THAT’S WRONG!”

I will need courage, but I think remembering how I and other people not part of the local Christian in-crowd were treated will help me find it.