Interview with a Cake

(Pre-Script: For the sugary sweetness of this post to fully saturate your bloodstream, please read it as the song, "Going the Distance," by Cake plays in the background. It's number 53 on the playlist. Please go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. Notice I said "please;" I am being sweet today. I'll wait.) (...still waiting...)

Yesterday I read a magazine article that said "Cake is not your friend." Since I had taken my "Duh" and "What's What" pills that morning, it was immediately clear to me that the magazine article was not my friend, and that whoever wrote it had been eating the wrong kind of cake.

Blink blink.

Obviously. Gosh.

Think about it.

Who else comforts me when I am sad about turning another year older on my birthday? I mean, let's face it, I have never been sad about the new number I am turning on my birthday, but I am being facetious here to make a point. Cake is my friend, my very dear friend, who comforts me in a time of need. Who makes my heart gladder by it's presence. Who understands me more than any other. Who sticks with me closer than a brother. I know this is true because I have 3 brothers, and none of them have ever gotten stuck to my thighs.

Ahem.

When I eat cake, I become what I have eaten, which is sweet, sweet, sweet, and hyper, too, but mostly just sweet, and light, and fluffy, and happy. Because cake is a happy food. It really is. If you could interview a cake, "Hey cake, how do you feel?" and get an actual answer, the cake would say "I am happy. Happy and sweet. So will you be if you eat me. Come on, eat me eat me eat me." This is what cakes say in their minds, it is a telepathy power that they have over humans. They do not speak in an audible language that a human ear can detect, but they probe deeper into your mind and there they speak their mantra over and over until you fulfill the words the cake has commanded you to fulfill. This cannot be helped. It is the law of cake telepathy*. No mortal man can escape it's power. Well, some men will say incomprehensible things, like, "No thanks, I'm full," as if fullness has anything to do with it. I say "Men" because in my extensive research I have found that 78% of cake rejectors do indeed tend to be men, who are lacking the sweetness they do not even realize they are so desperately in need of. The other 22% are dieting women. Neither are fun to be around during cake time at a party. I would much rather hang out with the cake.

Blink

Blink

'cause it is my true sweet friend after all. But now I see I am getting cyclical in my logic, (Hello, Duh and What's What pills!) so the only thing left to say is
Amen, let's eat.

-XOXO,

*For more about the laws of nature and of physics, please read the previous post, "Spinning around in a miracle."

Spinning around in a miracle.

(Pre-Script: This post spins and shapes you when read while listening to the song, "The End of the Innocence," #41 on the playlist, so go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

Have you ever had the realization that the world is still, and you are the one who has been spinning and spinning? This happens when you finally stop spinning and are still, and for a few seconds you can see the world spinning all around you. Have you ever spent so much time with your head upside down that only after having flipped back over you realized you had been right side up all along? Talk about a head trip. What a rush!
You may find this hard to believe, but I am not an Astro Physicist, nor even have I ever been a Physics Major in college. Yet I can toss around terms like "Centrifugal Force" with deftness of equal parts dexterity and defiance. Take that, Physics professor, with love, who may never realize that I didn't just read my Physics text, I studied it until the foreign sentences written therein sounded like the words of my unconscious dreams. I studied until I felt I had a workable grasp on the concepts being expressed therein. Then I would attend class, the one in which the professor would give us pop quizzes that were supposedly on the material we had been assigned to read that week.

Blink.

Blink.

But this was definitely not the same material. What I had been studying in the book the week before was like Spanish, but the test in front of me was like Portuguese or something. How's a girl to get ahead in that situation? She cannot. I spent hour after hour in the tutoring center, attended class and lab, and all I got for it was a D- from the prof, and a red rose and date offer from my lab partner.

(It never happened.)
Blink.

Physics makes more sense to me in real life settings, where I can make up my own theorems and rules of...well, Physics. Like maybe I will never understand Astro Physics, but then my two year old mishears the word "merry go round" as "miracle" and says something like what she said yesterday, "We need to go spinning around in that miracle." and I completely understood that, right away.

So I said,"Yes, we do."
This is one of my new laws of Physics: to go spinning around inside whatever miracle in which I happen to find myself. There are 2.6 million a millisecond, yet I am lucky if I perceive of 5 in a week. So maybe I am too busy trying to spin my own circles that I need to just stop and in stillness see what has been spinning around me all along.

-XOXO,

Yo Dawg

(Pre-Script: This post wags tale when paired with the song, "Sweet Pea," #23 on the playlist, so go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

We found out the hard way that our neighbors don't like the sound of a barking dog. Oops. Did you know that there are a million and twelve ways to get your dog to stop barking? 47% of those are scientifically proven to work. We tried several. We even invented some of our own. But I just couldn't help thinking that sometimes, a dog needs to bark, and to force it not to must psychologically damage the dog. I do not want to be responsible for the psychological damage of my dog. I already have children, and anyway, I don't think dog psychology was covered in his puppy package. Oh yeah, they forget to tell you when they show you the cute snuggly pictures and tell you that fill in the bank breed of dog is the most family friendly, sweetest breed of dog around, that the dog will cost you far more than you ever knew you could pay for a stuffed animal with needs of it's own that often coincide and clash with yours, and actual working parts. They also do not tell you that there is a whole world of dog and animal specialities specifically tailored to any real or imaginary thing a pet could possibly ever conceivably need to experience. High Tech X rays after being hit by a car is just the tip of the very large iceberg. Also, when looking at the smooshy so cute you just want to cuddle and love on it forever pictures, you tend to forget that once you bring your adorable looking pet home, it has a tendency to ooze from both ends. Oh, did I say ooze? Yes, yes I did.
Babies also ooze, but it's different. Babies grow and turn into children, and eventually adults. Dogs are always dogs. You have to decide if this is worth it to you. In our case, it was not. The dog went the way of the baby accoutrement's...which, being interpreted, means that we gave it away. Dog who once was ours now lives with a nice woman and one other dog of the same breed. They frolick, often attend the dog park, eat the cushiest of dog foods available in this day and age, and are always up to date on their doggie vitamins and vet appointments. In other words, we did the best thing we could, as dog owners; we gave him a better life. Lest you fear we will ever forget him, though, you need not worry; we could never forget him; some of the furniture still has chew marks, and several of the neighbors still hate us.

-XOXO,

Bone Rattle

Are you ever just weary of the bone rattle space
do you know that place where the water kisses the shore shyly
or with a fierce and sudden passion
lifeguards warn, "Do not go in the water" "Strong undertow"
(it will sweep the small and unsuspecting out to sea)
do you know that place between your skull where sound bounces
where you can hear the rush of air like a seashell
far from the sea but always you can hear the rush,
you can feel the rush, it flows through your bloodstream,
is carried like cell memory
there it bursts like a sweaty tidal wave
out of defective tear ducts, no longer dammed shut
the pipes no longer clogged with regretful grime
the water and salt wash, purify and preserve
(the sweat, the tears, the sea,)
even acid rain can cleanse the ground beneath it.

-XOXO,

Gummy in spots

(Pre-Script: This post cleans up if you read it while listening to the song, "Landslide," #19 on the playlist, so go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come backa nd resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

It's been a week and you still haven't called but today I am mopping the floor. You still haven't called, and mopping is not a difficult chore, and you still haven't called, but on a paricularly gummy spot, I stop and scrub longer than the rest of the floor, I even bend over to get into it, because I really want that spot on the floor to be clean already, to be free of the gummy substance that got stuck there. I mop in barefooted feet, barefooted feet are better at feeling where they are in the world, on the floor in my kitchen where you are not and where you are not calling me, either, but oh what, another grimy spot, and isn't it funny all the gunk you can step in or step over day after day and never notice until you are trying to scrub it, trying to scrub it away and having a difficult time of it. It is not a crime to mop the grunge away, to work the sponge with my hands and arms and put my back into it, and every muscle I can feel, until my heart is pounding and my floor is shining. When I am finished mopping, I rinse out the mop; you may never call again, but I put the mop just outside the back door to dry out in the sun, and when it is dry, I will bring it back in and put it away.

-XOXO,

The order of things

(Pre-Script: The most loving way to read this post is while the song, "She Will Be Loved," #12 on the playlist, plays in the background, so go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

The opposite of fear is love.

The first thing is to love God.

But we can't love God until He loves us first. He loves us, we have to receive it, we have to know that we are constantly being saturated in it, it causes us to grow and be healed. Then we can love Him back.

The second thing is to love our neighbor (aka "anyone who is not self") as ourselves. In other words, it is already assumed that we love ourselves, because we have received and reciprocated the unconditional love that God has for us. In other words,we will only be able to love other people to the degree that we already love ourselves. In other words we can only love ourselves to the degree of the love we have received from God. God wants to lavish it on. I believe this. When we receive it, we are complete and whole, and wholly effective. It's not possible to love without having received the unconditional lavish love of God, loving Him back, and loving ourselves fiercely, since He loves us so much, and we are just agreeing with His assessment of our own worth and lovableness, not because of anything we have done, but because God made us that way and decided it was so. If I have not received this from God, then Anything else I do that looks like love is really just an attempt on my own part to receive and fill my own empty void where I am lacking. These actions may look or feel loving to someone else for a time, but soon they will start to rub the person wrong, and make him or her feel drained. They will start to make ME feel drained, then bitter that I am still so empty, then more desperate than ever. Real love is freeing.

What do I fear? Whatever it is, it represents an area of my heart where I am not free.

And I want to be free.

What do I do as a result of my fear or insecurity, for any action I do out of fear or insecurity is not done out of love. so any action I do that is fear or insecurity based is not freeing or healing to myself or anyone else, it is instead harmful to myself or anyone else.

Insecurity is pride.

It is saying that my bad opinion of myself is more true than God's opinion of me. True humility is in agreeing with what God says is true of me.

So what am I afraid of, and why am I not letting God's love be the antidote to it, and how do I do that, and what does that look like?

"There is no fear in love, But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us."

I John 4:18-19

"Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the law and prophets hang on these two commands."

Matthew 22:37-40

-XOXO,

You are where you are

(Pre-Script: This post looks greener and bigger when paired with the song,"Sweet Pea," #23 on the playlist, so before proceeding any further, go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

There is a sensation currently sweeping the nation that you may have heard of, you may even have gotten caught up in it. It's called Basements and Brick Buildings. Actually these are two different sensations, and you can indeed get caught up in both if a tornado happens to be occurring. But both of them are foreign to me, because I live in California, where Basements and Brick Buildings are illegal. Actually, so are tornados. Earthquakes are totally legal here though, and this is why Basements and Brick buildings are illegal.
As far as brick goes, if you like the look of it, you can totally go faux. Hooray for faux. Or you can contain your brick love in a real brick fireplace; your probably-unnecessary-but-cute looking fireplace with some stacked up wood in a cute little wood holder that sits next to the fireplace to give visitors a sense that you have just emerged from the forest where you felled a tree and neatly chopped these cute wood pieces, so they think you are much more rugged than you actually are. Never mind that the wood was purchased at the Home Depot and will never actually be used. But it will now look like if you were to light the precious hard won (imaginably) wood that you could cook a hearty stew over the fire you lit there and hovered over, lovingly.
Blink
blink
A basement is not as easy to "Faux." It is much harder to "faux" a basement. But in California, garages are not always necessary for their intended purpose of being a home for vehicles, since our weather is practically perfect in every way, so a garage space can be used in the same way that people in the basement parts of the country use their basement space. But the Basement and Brick Building set have garages,too, so it's totally not fair.

Blink.

Blink.
Except for maybe if you consider that the land locked basement tornado watching set really do need a garage home for their vehicles due to more extreme weather conditions such as snow and things like 'sleet" that I have only heard rumors of. I know what snow is because we drive there to go skiing for the day, but sleet? I have to look that up. Hold on...
So the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. I say the grass is always greener on the other side of the state line. And from where I stand, this is true, possibly because on that side of the country, besides the snow and sleet, there is a major thing called humidity which I think helps them keep their lawns green. I never said that green grass was my ultimate highest life calling. Just that it's greener over there. I have seen pictures.

But even without the greenest of grass, brick buildings, basements, people pay an arm and a leg more to live here than they do for five houses with basements in another state. You pay 2x as much for half the property. This is where the term "Less is more" comes from.

WHY would someone do this, you ask?

(For I can hear you, you may not be asking it out loud, but you are asking it in your mind.)

It's simple.

Because our houses are in California,

and when you step outside your door, guess what,

you are in California.

'nuf said.

Amen, let's eat.

"...but Michelle,"

I hear my imaginary reader now,

"Michelle, you are forgetting that many of those land loving land locked state dwellers are afraid of California"

Afraid, gentle reader?

"Yes, Michelle, afraid."

How so, Gentle Reader?

"Well, Michelle, they are afraid that an earthquake will occur and that the entirety of California will fall off into the Pacific Ocean."

Well, Gentle Reader, then let's just let them have and enjoy their reasonably priced homes and tornado warnings in peace, shall we?

"Michelle, I am so with you on that."

Well, Gentle Reader, that is such a relief, since you are only imaginary, anyway.
-XOXO,