p.s.
some co-volunteers went out of town, for a funeral unfortunately, and had to borrow Carman and I's car for the trip (in true La Puente style, theirs is out of commission...again). In exchange for this favor, they gave us a half gallon of their organic milk they receive weekly. This is no ordinary organic milk. I know the name of the cow this milk came from (its naomi) and its from a local farm (the Kretzingers farm) and is unpasteurized and is the best milk in the world. i do not exaggerate. Muck and Kelsea can keep the car, I want more milk.


reason # 467 why I will one day have my own organic farm: fresh milk from cows like Naomi.

Dude, cleaning my room is so theraputic, i get everything in order, i remember where i put my W2 forms, I find my cell phone, i put away my clean laundry. i am in control again.

I found an old notebook while looking for a new notebook and on the front page was a to do list from over a year ago, a list from the days of camp. It took me a second to decipher the frantic handwriting, but there it was, a time capsule from the past: so and so cannot come to camp today, we did all we could for him but he is continually disruptive; whats-his-name is being fired, more staff coming at 7.30; need more details, CALL LIZ. and then some doodles.

Then I found, a few pages later, a journal-esque entry. (sometimes i just need to write and i will write anywhere) and i think, while reading it, wow, i haven't changed much. i mean i have, but, it seems that my most comsuming concerns are not that different. hmmm. I had to laugh as I kept turning pages, messy, overwhelmed journal entry, list of things to do, journal entry, scheldule of a day in hourly slots, journal entry, list of possible jobs, another schedule...not that anyone is surprised, but here was and is distinct evidence against me. I am a control freak, lamenting the fact i can't have control in one journal entry and on the next page, trying desperately to reign in the unknown. sigh. and so i continue on, dancing to the never changing refrain of my life 'I am a fool, I am a fool' Its a great dance, you should try it sometime.

and I spent $40 on lotion. LOTION. please remind me to move to a tropical, humid climate. I should be freakin sponsered by Eucerin.

oooo brother brother brother i know you've been hangin' on a long time but i love you love you like no other...

...I 've been watching everything you do and I've been wishing only good for you.

1. Please go to Josh and Katrina's blog and witness the first beautiful, perfect pictures of Baby O. Ten weeks and a day old. I am counting down the days until Kat and Josh are back.

2. Please go read the re-opened blog o' Danny, really just because he is cool.

3. Happy pre-birthday Dan, you make my day everytime I talk to you or think about you really, you are a treasured friend and I am so proud of everything you have accomplished and will accomplish, but more importantly I am proud of who you are. I love you.

i miss you all so much that it hurts.

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied...but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing. John Berger

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A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Albert Einstein

Wake up to see the other souls around you.

Let them affect you. Live in the center of your life.

Anonymous

you know how everyone has their guilty pleasures....peanut butter, kelly clarkson, boy bands, what have you....my latest is dance reality shows, any kind, any channel, though specifically, wait for it, you should be glad we are such good friends that i would confess this, ashlee simpson's dancelife. sigh, cable is a curse.

the border

i am back from a whirl wind trip...too much to talk about right now, but i have lots to say.

my new address is 929 state ave, alamosa, co.

i just bought a plan ticket home, from june 1 to june 7th. real cheap too.

i am going to mexico, i will be back in week...

does it really take a month for a body to defrost?

I just heard a story of the death of a man's grandfather here in alamosa. His grandfather had been drinking and froze to death because he did not have enough sense to get himself indoors. They could not find him for two weeks and when they did find him, they had to cut him out of the ice. It took a month for him to thaw before burial. His skin was black and they had to tear off his clothes, because they were all frozen to his body.

One of the six dogs staying in the shelter yard (their owners are guests) died this week. It jumped over the fence while still tied to its chain, hanging itself. And then it froze. Poor John had to take him down and bury him.

There is an old drunk man who I should throw out of the shelter. I have been assigned to his case for three or four weeks now, I don't even know how long but I cannot throw him out, though he abuses the rules and doesn't shower and sometimes even pees on himself. Because he has no place to go and I am afraid that if I make him leave he will die.

This is my testament to screwed up things and I am learning to mourn them. I live in gray.

I have been feeling very overwhelmed, like my list of things to do is never ending, like my obligations are sapping my energy. I didn't go to bible study again last night, the third time I said I would be there and didn't show, like a kid with stage fright. Because as much as I excuse my absence with the defense of Tuesday being my only night to myself, the only opportunity to hang out with people I don't usually see, I think I am really just afraid of what God is going to tell me, or that these people of God will see through me, draw me out, make me see what I have been avoiding. I haven't been able to sleep all week, with no success. I mentioned this when to a girl in the worship team (the one who leads the bible study actually, I really like her a lot, she always seems to be listening to exactly what you say) she replied that maybe, in a casual, not criticizing fashion, like it is just the way things are, God is laying something on my heart I should be praying about. I was so struck by this, because it was not something I had thought about at all. I do know that I have been avoiding God like I have never done before in my life. and I think the reason why is pride. Over the summer I discovered that my whole life I have been worshipping religion, not God, not that God hadn't been guiding me, drawing me to Him, but that I had not been looking for God but how to fit in, how to get it right, how to figure it all out, my perfectionism becoming a plague of the soul. And in my attempt not to be taken in again, not to be made a fool again, I am avoiding religion and God. But it was always me who was in the wrong, I am a fool, to accept something less than what is true, to try and be content with boxed solutions rather than letting an indescribly powerful God be the guide of my life. One of the reasons I like Living Water so much (the church I have finally started attending, after four months of hem-hawing, finally using my cello as a source of commitment and accountability to make myself go) is that Jeron, the pastor, always talks about the inevibility of change from simply being in God prescence, putting all the control in God's hand. What a relief, this reality of God that I need pounded into my head daily. So I am making baby steps, slowly being drawn back towards God, though I am ever so reluctant to relinquish my pride, because who really cares if I am a fool, it is true, and if my stubborness is preventing me from finding out whats really going on, that is ridiculous. All this to say, on the other hand, by not going to Bible study, I spent some quality time with a friend and slept a lot, feeling much better this morning than I have in a while (I actually slept through the night). and its snowing this morning, beautiful.

I have no expectation of anyone reading all of this spouting. i don't really know what I am talking about, I am just thinking out loud, a bit distraught. but God does not do things neatly, or at least not from our perspective, life does not come out neat in the end. You may never know why a particular year is awful, why someone dies, why things simply do not work out, why your heart is broken, there is no clear label for each stage of your life, it is just messy. and I think this, though hard, is also a relief.

I apologize again for my rantings, I don't usually talk about real things because I am afraid I will be transparent and all my pride and self-righteousness will shine through the ridiculousness of my words. but so it goes.

You know that Christa is settled in when....she starts alphabetizing her magnetic poetry!!

That's right folks, the world realigns for me when I alphabetize those glorious little magnets of eloquence. It is dazzling.











My favorite poem from my old fridge is this, ahem:

if love was pure

your black heart would crack

with the promise

of my kiss.

(I forgot, briefly, the golden rule: never refer to yourself in the third person, a misstep only topped by referring to yourself in plural. It sounds ridiculous and we apologize)

Sanctuary

living room and kitchen, though they hardly capture the house

I am officially moved in and my new house is great, only minor things yet to fixed, like my room has no door knob, my bathroom has no hot water, (I am sure the maintenance man just likes Carman better, so his stuff is done and mine not, don't worry, I am baking mr. maintenance a nice batch of cookies to coax him along), no house phone, among other things. But my bedroom is beautiful, I just finished making curtains, which will be hung tomorrow (they are really not picture worthy, though my closet curtains are my pride and joy)

christa = freaking out

its been one of those kinds of days and I feel so out of place and I hate everything, everything, I hate everything, but you.

Today is worthy of a song to describe it. Let me sketch out for you the harrowing events of the day. No single occurrence is really that bad, but each one, in combination with my already crazed state of mind, has just about pushed me over the edge.

6.30: drive to pick up my work out buddy.
6.40: Arrive at gym, lock keys in car (I am without credit cards or check book; I locked my keys in the car a week and a half ago, that time because I had three bags and a cello I was hauling and the keys did not make it out. This time, as I was swinging the already locked car door shut, my mittened hand looses its grip on the key and I essentially throw it into the car just as the door slams. brilliant.)
6.45: I begin walking home, in -10 degree weather, in my unlined workout pants, in order to get my checkbook and call the all too familiar locksmith.
7.20: I get home, have lost all feeling in legs.
7.25: call locksmith, who is rude because I do not know the name of the street I am parked on, I quote "You dumb kids are all the same" Thanks. I know.
7.30:Carman, best house mate ever, drives me back to gym.
7.32: Carman's car stalls, because it is so cold.
7.33: Carman's car starts again.
7.45: waiting by my car until 8, when it is 15 dollars cheaper to get car unlocked. Call mom for comfort. Phone dies.
8.00: car is opened, PTL. I pay 30 dollars which I can't afford to pay.
8.10: I am home, climb in bed to get warm.
Nothing exceptional happens for the next four hours, I bake a cake, I make scones, I read, I meet a friend for coffee. The day begins to look up.
1.00: at work.
2.00: Make a flier for Josephine.
2.30: Begin dinner, am excited about menu, bean and corn salad, Jambalaya, and biscuits.
3.00: Make bean salad wrong, forget to cook beans. Debate whether Rachel and I should pick all the corn out of uncooked beans, toss it, or start over. Decide to cook whole darn thing.
3.15: discover indecent pictures of someone we know in a bedroom.
3.30: Jambalaya already starting to burn.
3.45: Creepy guys, must avoid.
4.00: Make biscuits.
4.30: Jambalaya, still burning, rice not cooking, I transfer to a new, hopefully better, pot. Beans suspicious.
5.30: Kitchen filled with smoke, Jambalaya completely burned. Rice still not cooked. Beans, interesting and incredibly spicy since they have been brewing the past two hours in a mixture of corn, onions, and jalapenos.
6.00: serve dinner, cringe as I watch people try to eat it. only biscuits turned out.
6.15: non-shelter affiliated volunteer shuts locked office door with keys inside.
6.30: dish washer flaked out on the job, I have to wash dishes as all my coworkers leave.
6.35: as I am running around, someone (a local really annoying person) asks for a can of beef stew. I look in pantry. we have none. I tell her. She asks me to look for something with beef in it. I go look again. She rejects two choices and finally settles on beef barley stew. Do I have time for this, no.
6.45: office unlocked after calling in back up.
7.00-7.30: running around doing night duties that I am behind on. Everyone wants a bottom bunk, there are none left, everyone grumpy, including me.
7.45: Way too happy church group is here leading Bible study, I pray they are not proselytizing. I think they are playing big bootie right now.
8.00: finally sitting, writing this, in an attempt to debrief, and frankly, because it feels good to complain.

I have no patience left to spare. I just want to go home. My bedroom is currently all boxes, we move Friday, I just want to go sit in bed until Monday and it is all over. As it is, I have to haul my cello over to someones house after I am off work at nine. Great. And I hate when cooking goes wrong, it is usually the only thing I can depend on doing right. I need a hug.

In case anyone was wondering about the excessive amounts of blogs in such a short span of time, well, i am at work, i am by myself for five and a half hours, i have cleaned the kitchen, organized the storage room, swept the office, and there is nothing left to do but, well, what is essentially talking to myself.

i figured it out.

um, i changed my blog background. feelings, reactions? and i, in the process, lost all my links to other blogs, who can remind me how to put them back in again? Becca? Laura?

I am battling the fear of the unknown again, the abyss of life that I must face and fill, Lord help me. What employment will I have next year? What will I do after next year? What do I want to do? What should I do? What color should I dye my hair next? What if I end up alone forever? Should I go to school, travel, or do something equally beneficial that I haven't thought of yet? The list of questions goes on indefinitely... Ack!! Will this ever get easier? Shoot, another question! I have so much to learn still, so much I don't even know I don't know. The only thing that is keeping me from keeling over in a fit of convulsions is the mantra that keeps running through my head from the lyrics of Derek Webb, unoriginal yet profound, Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. These words compel me forward into the future, compel me to have a little bit more faith, a little bit more trust, and a little bit more contentment in the place I currently occupy.