the schmoot

well the other day, Daniel bit the hand that feeds him. yes, he bit it literally and figuratively. it only took the few teeth that he's got and a naughty streak the length of his little body.

Daniel is 20 months old and already burning bridges. shamefully really. you see, the hand he bit was mine! the hand that feeds him was mine!!

i have given to the little man. i have given and i have given until there was little left to give. and then i gave some more. i feed his greedy little mouth. i wipe his nose when it snots. i give him his milk when he's ready for bed. i put him in his bath. i get his toys out for him. i put his toys away for him. i carry him. i push him. i hold him upside down and tickle him till tears run down his chubby little face. i get him out of trouble. i save him from his sometimes bossy older sister. i rock him when he's crying. i pull him out of the toilet when he manages to get the lid open. i buy him gifts. i give him food off my own plate, even when he's already stuffed his own two helpings down his throat. i take him to the park. i put videos on for him. i give him juice when he's thirsty. I GIVE THE LITTLE MAN MORE THAN HE COULD EVER NEED!

and what does he go and do? he bites the hand that feeds him.

in both the literal and figurative sense.

what are we to do with the scoundrel?

see it happened that he was left alone for the briefest of moments. and not a moment more. when supervision left he was sitting on his little butt in the lounge playing with his little truck, mouth wide open. not but the smallest of time frames later, when supervision returned, he was found, still on the floor, but this time with cds, taken out of their cases and spread everywhere. under his schmoot (where left hand would be) was one of the cds, BEING PUSHED across the tile floor, sensitive side down! not only that, but the little guy had his mouth WIDE OPEN and a grin stuck on his cheeky face. RASCAL! in open defiance he continued to push cd across the room, thoroughly enjoying the scratching sound that came from below. it was not even below him to emit several squeals of delight at this new sick game he had discovered!

i could continue to describe the situation but you should have the picture.

what is more, and not but half an hour later, my hand was literally feeding that same open mouth, when he decided to bite it! not once, but twice! so, the small man in the end, bit the hand that feeds him three times. once figuratively, and twice literally.

i shall leave you to be the judge. does the squirt deserve to still be fed from that same hand?

(rumors are circling that the two literal bites that took place after the figurative bite were actually actually forced into happening by the writer in order to expound on his own story. daniel claims his innocence, but no proof has been found as of the moment.)

who's looking at who? and what are all the buildings bowing to? maybe it's simply introspection...

pues, mis padres. son muy buenos... in chicago as well.

aye mi hermanitos y yo. it was a summer's day in chicago. a hot summers day. and if you look closely, my little brother has thick-soled shoes. oh wait you can't see his feet, but he's standing on his tip-toes...

nunca llueve a guste de todos

so its been raining here for the last two weeks. pretty amazing really since last year they went about nine months without a real rain. it doesn't take one long to forget what it is like to live in sunlight. i can only imagine what it must be like for those who live in England or Seattle.

a quick update on my likes and dislikes:
im on a big greek-yogurt high. try the stuff, beats normal yogurt.
bananas have been tasting rather nice recently.
dark chocolate. mmmm.
long sleeve shirts.
listening to the rain crash onto my cieling.
brushing my teeth thrice a day.
talking on skype.
riding my loaned bike everywhere. i get there faster than you would believe.
i dislike walnuts as much as ever.
same goes for celery.
i did ride a horse the other day- it was real nice.
what isn't nice is when my spanish prof doesn't show and i wait 45 minutes before i give up.

recent indifferences:
washing the dishes.
breezes. well, they'd nearly make my likes. there's been some good ones lately.
jeans being muddy at the bottoms.


so there is always good and bad with the rain, and as they say here "nunca llueve a guste de todos" meaning it never rains to everyone's pleasure.

zzzz

what a rainy sunday. it would have been a rainy anyday, but today happened to be sunday. what a good sunday though. and i was going to write a real blog but i've been blindsided by tiredness and must retire to my bed. for tomorrow is monday and another week dawns. buenas noches...

los tres, durmiendo

si quieres saber como es la siesta

choice and santification

what my man Buechner says:

In "Beauty and the Beast," its is only when the Beast discovers that Beauty really loves him in all his ugliness that he himself becomes beautiful.
In the experience of Saint Paul, it is only when we discover that God really loves us in all our unloveliness that we ourselves start to become godlike.
Paul's word for this gradual transformation of a sow's ear into a silk purse is sanctification, and he see it as the second stage in the process of salvation.
Being sanctified is a long and painful stage because with part of themselves sinners prefer their sin, just as with part of himself the Beast prefers his glistening snout and curved tusks. Many drop out with the job hardly more than begun, and among those who stay with it are few if any who don't drag their feet most of the way.
But little by little- less by taking pains than by taking it easy- the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person starts to become a healing person, the loved person starts to become a loving person. God does most of it. The end of the process, Paul says, is eternal life.

of note

it must be said that one of the greatest pleasures in life is the wearing of brand new socks.

Choice re-examined

"Life is a journey that we are all making... Or maybe being taken on... But perhaps the older we become the more we are being taken and the less we actually making..."
-Choice


Anonymous said...
hmmmm

Bex said...
I conker

Mom said...
Maybe when we get old we are just living out the journey of our making from ones youth. The other choice would mean I'd have to believe in fate.

Anthony said...
or that we are shaped by our choices and eventually we become them..?

Ashley said...
I guess this brings up the question of whether we can actually do the making. Maybe life is just a serious of choices of how to respond?

Brooks said...
Much to my chagrin, It seems the choices I make (or am led to make) have consequences. These consequences seem to compound over the years to form a broad road that narrows upon the horizon.
With the Quote in mind my question follows: This increase of frequency with which we surrender to our previous choices, is it caused merely by age? or are we in fact not surrendering at all, but rather continually affirming our previous decisions however distantly made by daily choosing to continue a little further down the path, each step drawing us one closer to our end; Each consequently weighing on us with the strangely comfortable baggage of predictability or releasing us into the discomfort of freedom experienced through following God into the unknown.

Anthony said...
CS Lewis is quoted as saying we become our choices. So choice by choice, consequence by consequence we eventually become less distinct from the decisions we make. The further along down a road we go, the harder it is to turn around as perhaps something like momentum gradually takes hold.
Denying oneself is not easy. Following God into the unknown is not easy. Loving in the face of hate is hard.
Living selfishly is easy. Selfcenteredness comes naturally. Giving back what you've been given, good or bad, natural.
Consistently choosing the latter, choice by choice, day by day, brings about a slow but sure change that is not easily reversed. The tainted human instinct becomes stronger and more engrained. Until you are dangerously close to not simply being a selfish, selfcentered person, but rather simply selfish and selfcentered, and not as much of a person.
Consistently choosing the former, choice by choice, day by day, brings about a slow but sure change that is not easily reversed. While perhaps I am not old enough to speak so far down the road, but looking at what Lewis said, eventually the latter loses its place as primal instinct. Instead love, patience, faith, kindness, take their place and you become more human than ever.

on the bus 2

by Ashley...

I have my own experiences taking public transit on the poor side of Bloomington to go to the chyropractor a couple of times a week. The other day, I was sitting at a bus stop and this guy came and sat by me... kind of rough looking. After mentioning the weather we fell silent and I sat debating whether to try and talk with him a bit more or to just continue reading an article for class. Deciding that it would be a good thing to do since he seemed to want to talk, I decided to strike up a conversation again... Hard be it to find something to talk about though. My inquiry of where he was heading went no where... So I sat pondering what I could talk about and feeling kind of awkward that I could sit there sporting my IU shirt, knowing how different the direction my life was headed in compared to this guy's 9-5 job which probably didn't pay enough to let him afford a car. We were on the bus for very different reasons... I would probably earn enough one day to have a car while the bus was just a fact of life for him. I fell silent again racking my brain for a common topic to chat about... should it be that hard? The usual college banter about majors and such wouldn't work...
And then he spoke up. "Do you like art?" This was probably the last thing I expected him to say. And I felt ashamed... because this guy could humbly relate to others regardless of his life situation. I could tell from our conversation that he was someone that would probably thrive at college and I almost wished I could offer him my opportunity of going to college.
I haven't quite processed it yet but sitting at that bus stop I was disgusted with how hard it was to talk to others whose lives were so different and how I could actually talk to them out of sympathy and pity. Do they deserve that? This guy would go to the art gallery openings at IU and here I had the audacity to assume that we didn't have much in common. I have seen the community that the regular bus riders have created among themselves... greeting each other with a friendly hello every morning and discussing the local coming and goings... where I sit and complain about having to take a bus and when I do step on a bus, I sit there and zone out thinking about the million other things I have to do. Is what I have so much better?... Or are some people finding a beauty and community amidst the harsh, rawness of life that I am missing out on?

resfriado

its like it builds without you even realizing it. slowly it moves in. you are aware of it subconciously long before you ever put name to it. maybe in the back of the throat or a tickle in the nose. when suddenly its upon you and you realize that you are sick.

well i was laying in bed two nights ago when it suddenly hit me out of no where that my throat was sore. one second it wasn't sore and the next it was. or at least one second i wasn't aware of it and the next i was.

well after launching a full attack of vitamin C I seem to have vanquished the sore throat but am left with the tedious task of cleaning up the carnage. namely a runny nose and dry eyes. these seem to hang on that little bit longer after the main battle is won. so i diligently drag some toilet paper/kleenex around with me, dabbing, blowing, sniffling, etc etc every ten minutes it seems. then comes a sneeze and there is some real cleanup to be done. but enough detail. here's to horse size pills stuffed with vitamin C and immuno-start to get one on the road to recovery!

facelift

new blog look! well not much has changed but its now in beta format, how exciting. as well check out new font on titles and an exciting new blog archive. it's like having more than one birthday in a year! maybe they'll even be a new profile updation coming soon. and yes, updation was used on purpose.

bulls in seville

on the bus

Today I got on the bus and there was Jesus sitting in back, all alone. There were three or four people clustered up near the front, but no one sat near him. I wondered towards him and sat down one row in front of just opposite him. His face was white, nearly a milky white in fact. His face was permanently twisted in a grimace with his lips pulled back slightly revealing brown and decayed teeth.

I sat there just able to see him out of the corner of my eye. He sat leaning forward, his hands clutching the back of the seat in front of him. His shoulders hunched over and I could hear him breathing and softly talking to himself just over the headphones were pouring music into my ears.

I wondered if maybe I should talk to him. I already regretted not having made a point of smiling at him as I watched an older man at the front of the bus stare back at us. What must it be like to know that everytime you leave your home, if you have one, that you will be different than every single person you pass in the street? That most of the people will stare and the ones that don't will avoid you like the plague. That particular expression hurts because the disease that disfigures your face is much more real than the expression taken from the Middle Ages...

I wondered what his reaction would be if I turned and said hello. Why was I pondering talking to him anyways? Was it out of pity? Did I think that by me talking to him I would be helping? All week I had been thinking about the kingdom of God as I am to talk on it shortly. The last are truly first. The weak are really the strong. The small are the truly great. And I hadn't been on the bus more than 45 seconds when Jesus got on at the next stop while the phrase whatever you do to the least of these was running through my head.

She nearly sat down with a friend two seats in front of me when she saw him out of the corner of her eye and swung around with a big smile on her face. ¿Que nos encontramos? She exclaimed cheerfully, and swung herself down beside him. For the next 15 minutes she steadily chatted away with him occasionally grunting a response, and the bus slowly filled up.

The bus emptied at the first university stop and I was one of the last to get off at the following stop. I was thinking about how God´s kingdom grows bit by bit. Decision by decision made by little people, by normal people. I was thinking about how that girl hadn't talked to him out of pity, but out of love and friendship. I never did see either of them get off the bus but I would have liked to have walked behind them for a few blocks, listening to the conversation banter back and forth, slightly one-sided on the talking end but completely equal in their appreciation for the other presence walking alongside them, taking joy in simply being with.

sleepy

was going to make a post but couldn't think of anything. a sign i need to go to bed. but instead i'll sit here for a few more minutes comtemplating...

i wonder what its like to consistently go to be before one gets tired. almost always when i tumble onto my mattress im quite sleepy and only a couple of minutes away from dreams.

if a man is trilingual- equally, evenly, and without advantage, and he uses all three equally as much each day, and just before bed reads a little in each tongue.... which will he dream in?

if as humans we didn't need to sleep, i think then that time would move a lot slower.

and lastly, how do they know that everyone dreams in black and white?