He will bring us goodness and light

(I wrote this one before heading to Florida for Christmas so I could lazily - uh, I mean easily - post it on the appropriate day.  I got sick and obviously I'm a little bit late here!  Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!)


The following text is from a sermon at church about a month ago.  I enjoyed the priest's message and I wanted to write it down so I won't forget it. 

Some days it's difficult to get out of bed in the morning.  We think about all the things we have to do that day and we think about all the things that are troubling us.  Maybe we're having a tough time with family members, with our jobs, or with illnesses.  That's why Christmas is a perfect time to think about and reflect on why Jesus came to earth for us.  What is Jesus offering us?  Is he offering us a life without pain?  A life without any form of suffering or hurt?  No.  Jesus is offering us Love.  When he came here as a man, he experienced our ailments, our hurts, betrayals, and sufferings.  He knows what it feels like.  It is a very important distinction to remember that he is offering us Love and not a guarantee of painlessness, and he wants us to experience his love.  Having love is more vital than having a pain-free life... keep that in mind anytime you are feeling discouraged.

If you want to be a true disciple of Christ, you must take up your cross and follow him.  No one ever said this life was going to be easy.

Unfortunately though.... for as much as we might like this to be true some days..... certain things are not for us to decide.  We cannot choose for our cross to be made with styrofoam!

Merry Christmas!!  :)

Can you give me a hand here?

I just had another extremely productive Sunday evening.  I must have gotten too much sleep this weekend, because I am fighting off an overabundance of energy.  The Steelers game was a good opportunity for me to wave some of it off and lift my (little) hand weights while watching, but even that wasn't enough to reduce the high energy level.  After the game was over, I literally ran around my apartment and later jumped/danced like a maniac to the radio for a few minutes  (It is a sad evening since the Steelers lost; I had to push myself through the silly motions). 

Then I thought, "OMG, how awesome would it be if I could do a handstand?!!?".  Doesn't everyone think of stuff like this?  I unsuccessfully tried to do it a few times before I had the ingenius idea of looking up instructions on the internet.  I swear to you that I am a 29 year old female and not a 13 year old boy, although I can identify with them... Breakouts?  Check.  First-kiss jitters and sweaty palms on a date?  Check and check.  Moustache slowly growing?  Check.   

Anyway, for those of you who are married with children or even just married, you're probably wondering 1) why the hell would she try to do handstands in her free time? and 2) what is free time?   The answers are relatively simple.  1) I am supercool.  2) Free time = this is what single people have if they have already cleaned the apartment, done all the laundry, talked to the folks, and caught up with friends on the phone.  Yes, there are things I could and should do such as volunteering or a part-time job, but I'm working on those.  In the meantime, I am supercool.

On one episode of Sex And The City (SATC), the characters are discussing their "Secret Single Behavior" (SSB).  In a way, attempting handstands could count as one of those except for the fact that it is not a secret and it is not something that I routinely do (until next Sunday night, of course!).  On the show, they didn't want their boyfriends finding out about the SSB they do when said boyfriends are not around because they were worried it would scare them away.

Back to the point - so after I watched some experts online and got some tips, I decided it would be smart to clear a space in front of a wall so that I wouldn't flip over.  Good idea?  Yes!  Was it a tip I learned from the internet?  No!  I awkwardly slid/crumpled on my first attempt which caused my wrists to crack in a bunch of different places and made my neck feel funny.  Undeterred, my second attempt was so bad I'm not sure what really happened... it was a blur.  There was a loud thud against the wall, my hair was disheveled more than it normally is, and I decided to wait until there was another person around for fear of getting hurt.  See, this proves I'm not a 13 year old boy.  The boys would just do it anyways and then damage something.  I am much more sophisticated/mature than that (read: I really don't want to drive myself to the ER to explain how I broke my wrist and then have to explain all over again at work on Monday.  Not everyone understands the plight of the brave).

Unlike the SATC characters, I'm not afraid to share this SSB with anyone and this is exactly the reason why having a boyfriend around would sometimes be useful.  I'm sure I would be a shoo-in at the pierogi try-outs if I could do a handstand.  The Pirates staff would exclaim, "Oh look, how novel!  That pierogi is upside-down!  Just what the crowd paid money to see!"...Even though an upside-down pierogi probably doesn't look much different than a normal pierogi, assuming there is such a thing as "normal" when a person is standing in a pierogi costume.

I better get to bed and rest up... my social calendar is surprisingly free tomorrow night, if you can believe it, and there are all kinds of fun I could end up having.  And no, shaving/bleaching/waxing off my moustache isn't one of them... at least not yet.

Look at how much fun this is, especially the nineties clothing.

Just say it

Just say it - throughout the course of a day, there are probably eleventy-billion thoughts we think to ourselves that we'd like to say (or shout) but instead we keep our mouths shut.  (Sidebar: Thank you Saturday Night Live, for many years ago giving the world the number eleventy-billion...the amount of which no one can fully comprehend yet I'm guessing it's more than ten billion.)  In my case, I've decided to just write it.  Unbeknownst to some, I do not always blurt out everything I think and that very limited censor will remain intact...except for these few things.  In no particular order:

• Stop licking the pages!  I think everyone I know does this except for me, so that would make me the outlier in this case.  Close friends, family, respected coworkers, professors, classmates, even people on TV do it.  They try to quickly flip through a stack of pages and then...they run into stuck pages...and they lick a finger or two and touch it to the page to continue flipping.  Yes, technically they are licking the finger and not the page, but the saliva still remains .....on ......that.....page.  I have tried this once to see what the fuss is all about and I didn't find it effective, but maybe it's because I don't practice.  Really, it's gross when you think about it.  Unless you washed your hands five seconds ago and then decided to find one piece of paper out of fifty, how clean could your hands be?  Are you the only person who has to touch those pages today?  I love many of you who do this, but I don't love this behavior.  Please, just stop.  Struggle through those pages, you can do it!   
• Learn how to drive!  This sentiment is said in a variety of words and phrases to all of the cars around me, because apparently I am one of the chosen few who were taught how to drive properly (thank you Mom, Dad, & Brother).  Unless you are lost or new to the area, you really don't have a valid excuse for not staying in your lane or going slow in the passing lane or going half the speed limit or not using turn signals or braking at green lights or letting four people go in front of you (and in front of Me!) instead of taking your proper turn.  I'm all for being nice, but being fair is a form of kindness too.  I'm also pro-cautious driving  particularly as weather, road conditions, and visibility permits.  The driving problem that irritates me the most is when people drive way under the speed limit and ride the brakes for no reason.  (Long Sidebar, Prepare Yourself: Once I had a very strange guy friend who was interested in dating me.  I told him no, and we remained friends.  My mom wanted me to date him, because "what could be so weird about him?".  I told her that he is a good friend, but he's just...you know...weird.  She didn't understand until he came over one day for dinner.  As we were all eating our spaghetti, as people were talking to him, as he was chewing his food... he was literally not paying any attention to the people or the conversation.  His head was doing slow turns upwards and around, taking in the bare sight of our dining room ceiling, as if he was contemplating the meaning of life and the concept of eleventy-billion Skittles thrown into a bouncy ball gym.  "Would the Skittles get lost among all the other colors?  Would pandemonium break loose and would the children "swim" to the bottom to eat them?  What else would they find down there?  How could you know if you found them all if you don't know what that number represents?"  After he left that evening, my mom said to me - "You were right, he is weird".)  Anyway, there was a point to that ridiculously long sidebar and it is this: Under the speed limit driver with your foot on the brake - I picture you as my very strange guy friend - looking around at the sights in bewilderment while gripping your steering wheel, instead of focusing intently and thus safely on your driving task at hand.  You are thinking in a Patrick the Starfish voice from Spongebob (Click here if you don't know his voice.) - "What is this I see?  What is this road before me, what are these trees and what is this blue sky?  Oh no, what are these other cars doing around me?  Why are they here?  What is this pedal next to my brake?  Where am I?"  And you continue to ride the brake while I fume helplessly behind you.  As my brother eloquently states, "You should always drive fast.  You never know when the person driving behind you is in a hurry because he has to go home and take a crap."  Well said, elder one.  Other drivers, please take notice.
• Men - trim your nose hairs if they extend past your nose.  This is a sad and defeated plea of mine.  No, I'm not criticizing and yes, I feel terrible that you have to shave your face most days.  I really do feel for you on that one, but please take care of business before I succumb to the thoughts in my head and ask you to do so in a tone that I think is perfectly reasonable and calm but you would think sounds like a mouthful of pure crazy that hurts your feelings.
• Stop saying like, like every single sentence.  This one plagues me because I myself am a struggling-to-recover like girl.  I try not to use it when recounting conversations, but it's a hard habit to break.  The word comes spewing out like a baby who spits when she doesn't want to eat any more pureed peas and it makes a mess everywhere.  Like the baby, I don't know whether to laugh at the ridiculous goop on you or cry because the taste is horrific.  Yes, I realize I just used "like" in the past two sentences, well three if you count this one, but these examples are not indicative of the incorrect usage.  As awful as it is to realize you're saying it against your own will, it's even harder to listen to when it comes out of other people's mouths.  Example from a friend of mine: "I was like 'what?'... And then he was like 'whoa'.... And then I was like, I was like....".  Yes, that example was totally pointless.  My point exactly.  Imagine if we showed our speech patterns in written form to someone from a hundred years ago.  Example: The man entered through the doorway and shook the snow off the top of his hat.  He brushed more snow off his shoulders as he wiped his feet on the mat before removing his shoes.  He was like, "Damn snow."  Aside from the quotation marks giving it away, the person from a hundred years ago might ask... "He was... like?...damn snow?  Meaning he was cold like the snow?  Or does he like the snow?  If so, why would he swear about it?"  Oh, you mean that he muttered "Damn snow", or he said or he stated or he cursed or he scoffed or he sighed or he declared or he shouted or he cried or he joked.  It's bad enough when anyone rocking in the free world can write as poorly as they wish on a pierogi blog about nothing at all....please do not contribute to the English language's downfall by continually saying and abusing like, a word which can mean so much when a certain someone whispers in the correct context, "I really like you".
• Stop using comic sans font!  In case you haven't realized just how atrocious this font is and you think I've officially gone over the edge....check out this website here.  It's not just me.  Seeing the font makes my eyes hurt and my face scrunch up like I just bit into a lemon when I was expecting a banana.  My understanding is that it was created for use in comic books, which actually makes sense.  Ergo, it was NOT created for people to use as an everyday font in the workplace.  Its proliferation makes zero sense.  One of my former coworkers was a very smart man; his emails carefully dissected GAAP and FASB complexities in clear language that made commoners like me comprehend.  His words were authoritative but his font was comic sans....which blew the whole tone.  It was difficult to take the man seriously.  Maybe he thought he would finally fit in with all of today's cool kids since he was using the coolest font from 1994, and they would forget that he was the leader of the bookworms back in high school.  Any other font, even webdings, is a vast improvement.  There is an amusing video regarding the font at the website given above, but I've attached a direct link to the youtube video here.  The video is rather crude and long, so viewer beware.
• Who do you think you are?  Is your time more important than anyone else's?  Are you too good to respond in kind when someone says "Hello" or "Good morning"?  Do you take yourself too seriously?  Are you a "taker" instead of a "giver" type of person?  Some people do not realize how good they have it... the lives that we lead, the freedoms we have, the jobs that keep us housed and clothed and full.... the opportunities and basically the beautiful life and world that is out there for us to explore and experience in our time here.  Yes, I'm complaining today about minutia... but I realize it's just that and not important at all, which is why I remain quiet most days.   I don't have any more answers than anyone else, but I do have a modicum of perspective!

So there you have it.  A few of my unspoken thoughts that you wasted your time reading.  I'm sure some of you are wishing you had the five or ten minutes back into your life that it took you to peruse this post, but for the overwhelming majority of you (that's three of four followers, people!)...I think you should come right out and just say it already....

You missed me.