we had a gig, flute and cello, at a local event on saturday, called Art Walk, you know people walking around, seeing art and music all down main street. Joelle and I got our names in the program and were the only people playing classical rather than folk music. It was fun and from it we have another potential gig and someone wants me to teach cello lessons, sweeeet.

we also had a 'sex in the city' marathon...overload for real.


and i am really sad we lost.

a day in the life of christa...

I decided to go hiking for a much needed day of and lots of quiet time with myself.....here is a sum up of my solo hiking trip:

wildlife tracks identified: two, dog and deer
wildlife seen: two birds
near death experiences: 1 (lost my footing, slid down a hill until i caught a tree)
snow: lots
moments confirming i have to live in the mountains: 5, 432

March never seems to do well by me. March, I don't like you. We are breaking up...nope...no arguing, its over. Fin. The End. For Always. I rename this month un-march for I cannot even utter your name, March. blech. it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. bring on the showers of April, for surely they will soothe my heart that has been so bruised by M***h.

so i am sick again, yes, again. i have never been sick this much since second grade when i had to have my tonsils pulled out. thankfully in this moment i only have a yucky cold, no flu disaster aka the vomit disease. but it still stinks. especially since i cannot just sit in bed. alas. so it goes. There is just a vicious cycle of illness in this community, floating around the office, floating around the shelter, you cannot escape it!

a friend has a quote that i like, but i don't know the exact wording...but i will paraphrase....

Technology brings people closer together, allows communication over distance,

but nothing can recreate a person's actual presence.

there is a game i really like called set. there is a deck of cards and you find patterns according to four different categories and try to identify sets. the game is different every time. i don't have the deck, but there is an online version at setgame.com, a mini version where you find six sets from 12 cards. it used to take me over three minutes, but i have been slowly decreasing my time to under two minutes. but today, today i did the puzzle in 39 seconds. it was probably a really easy puzzle today, but that does not diminish my sense of accomplishment.


i just watched the departed, it may have bumped the sound of music out of my top five favorite movies of all times. well, that's not possible, really, to bump out the sound of music, but it came awful close.

I can neither confirm nor deny that i am seriously considering blowing off church tomorrow. i am supposed to play music, but they can do it without me. i just have found the whole process very exhausting the past few weeks and i just don't know if i can go. i feel like i should want to go, but i don't. i have become that outsider non-committed church person, i have been telling this gal i will go to her bible study for two months now and haven't made it yet. and probably won't. why do i feel like i have to pretend i will.

Christa's trip to the Bakery...

Christa loves to Bake.
Christa has a friend named Keirsa, who also loves to Bake.
Together they make lots of cookies, cakes, and pies and give them to all their friends.
In the town where Keirsa and Christa live, there is a Bakery called Jezemel's.
The lady who runs Jezemel's is named Melissa and she also loves to Bake.
One day Christa and Keirsa asked Melissa if they could help her make all the treats for her Bakery.
Melissa said yes.
So early one morning, at three am, Christa and Keirsa woke up and met Melissa at the Bakery.
Melissa has to get up so early in order to get all her baking done before the customers come.
Melissa gave Christa and Keirsa aprons and showed them the list of things to make that morning.
Christa made carrot zucchini bread while Keirsa made pie crusts.
Keirsa made cookies while Christa made pecan frosting.
Together, Kerisa, Christa, and Melissa made wheat bread, rye bread, multigrain bread, and danishes.
Danishes were Christa's favorite, after the bread. She carefully folded the butter into the dough and rolled it out. Then they put three fillings in the danishes: Chocolate ganash, cream cheese, and blueberries. The danishes are topped off with a lemon glaze.
Christa got to eat the extra blueberries.
After five hours of baking, everything was ready to open.
Keirsa and Christa left the bakery and then went to work.
It was a very long but fabulous day!
The End



Postlude: I could totally open a bakery, I loved being up before anyone else, kneading the bread, making icing, its all very zen. Maybe someday, when I am done with all my adventures and am ready to stay in one place.

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

-----------

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)