Christianity

Getting To Mexico

Posted on September 12, 2009 by Debora

In my last post I mentioned the wonderful sermon Pastor Bill gave last Sunday and how it reminded me of why I love this little fellowship and its Pastor so much. I want to add a link to the mp3 recording of that sermon, since I know that some of my out-of-town friends might enjoy listening to it.

I feel like I should…prepare them first, though. Most of my out-of-town friends were raised in “high church” religions, and are very comfortable in traditional Catholic/Episcopalian/etc settings. Backcountry Christian Fellowship is exactly as casual and nontraditional as it sounds; we are a VERY laid-back bunch. Folks come to service wearing shorts and sandals and that’s completely fine. Pastor Bill comes from a traditional Catholic background himself, but I think he’s come about as far from that environment as it’s possible to come and still be a preacher. This is not going to sound like what you are used to, is what I’m saying.

Check it out anyway. It is awesome.

So without further ado, here is my favorite man of the (hawaiian-printed) cloth delivering my favorite sermon to date:

The Real Jesus, Part 2

Enjoy!

Categories: Christianity, Humor, Life, Love | 2 Comments

Reboot

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Debora

A few weeks ago a strange stillness settled over my whole internal landscape. Everything in my head became very quiet. The hush soaked all the way into my bones; I felt…still. Like I had coasted to a stop.

My little guiding voice whispered to me that a chapter was closing, and something new was coming.

“Wonderful,” I thought with a sort of muted relief. “What is it, what’s coming?”

But the little guiding voice had no further comment on the matter. The hush remained, and I waited quietly for…something new.

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My church, like probably all churches, has its share of dramas and melodramas. For the most part I’m able to remain uninvolved in them, because I have no personal ambitions in the going-on there. I come, I sing with the worship team, I listen to Pastor Bill’s wonderful sermons, I say hello to friends, and then I go home. I help with other projects if I am asked to. A ladder-climber I am not.

Even so, it was only a matter of time before other folks decided to drag me into their own melodrama. I declined to engage in the conflict; I figured all I had to do was go about my business and let events run their course, and eventually things would resolve themselves and settle back down. It was that sort of drama. But their efforts, combined with certain other frustrating issues, began to have a toxic effect on the morale of my entire worship team. The quality of our music suffered badly. The practice meetings went from being a time of joyful fellowship to something that…wasn’t. One of our drummers left the group. At one point I was tempted to leave myself, but I know a Learning Experience when I see one and I didn’t want to walk away in mid-lesson. And then in the midst of all this that quiet stillness settled over me, and the little voice said that change was coming, and I waited in silence to see what it would look like.

About a week later I felt a nudge: “It’s time to get back to your artwork.”

This wasn’t what I’d expected. That whole “art” part of my brain still seemed to be soundly sleeping, and I felt absolutely no desire to draw or paint anything. I tried to sketch a few things, but there was no stirring of inspiration or even basic competence there.

Over the following week two things happened: the church situation escalated to mildly ridiculous levels, and the internal nudging about the artwork got more insistent. I handled the church stuff with as much grace as I am capable of, and I started thinking about how I would put my artistic talents to use if the ability and desire did return to me. I remembered that almost a year ago an old friend had suggested I buy a Wacom drawing tablet for Elizabeth, so she could create digital artwork directly on my computer instead of using up reams of paper for her comic books. I had agreed that the tablets looked really cool, lamented that they were out of my budget range, and promptly forgotten all about the idea, until now. Now I started thinking about the ways a person could put digital artwork to practical use, and maybe even generate a modest income.

And then one day last week I sat down at my dining-room table and began to draw. A human figure, and then a deer: the images flowed effortlessly from my pencil to the paper, elegant and lifelike and fairly resonating with artistic potential. I could FEEL the little doors clicking open again in my head. That very night I hopped online and ordered a Wacom Intuos3 Tablet.

Meanwhile the church situation reached such a crescendo that Pastor Bill, who generally prefers to let his flock sort these issues out amongst themselves, saw that the time had come for him to step in. He spoke to the worship team as a group, and then (I assume) spoke to each of us separately over the next few days. The Pastor commands great respect and love in our fellowship, and once he made his feelings known the turmoil ceased almost immediately. (It helped that the original primary source of frustration had been more or less resolved while all the rest of the drama was going on.) The following Sunday he delivered a sermon that reminded me all over again why this church and this Pastor mean so much to me.

My Wacom tablet arrived yesterday. Actually it arrived about an hour before I had to leave for worship practice — talk about a temptation to skip practice last night! Yerg! Anyway, after I got back home I installed all the drivers and software and whatnot and then eagerly sat down to create my first fully-digital masterpiece.

Yeah. About that? Art programs have apparently become very complicated in the past few years. There’s a steep learning curve here…it may take me weeks just to master all the doohickies and whangdoodles. And that’s not even counting the basic disorientation of drawing on one surface and seeing the results on another.

But! I am having a blast playing with my new toy, and I’m pretty confident that in a month or so I’ll be producing some actual artwork.

And I gotta say, it’s really good to be back.

Categories: Artwork, Christianity, Life | 3 Comments

Life And Stuff

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Debora

We’ve been having some glorious sunsets lately. This is also the kids’ favorite time of day to play on the rope swing, when it’s not so hot outside.

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Wednesday we went to the Ingalls* homestead for a playdate. They live pretty close to us, a ten-minute drive away, so I was hoping the kids would have lots of fun and we could start doing that more often, at least until school starts. (The homeschooling idea was nipped in the bud by Steve; I think my mistake was telling him that I know the Ingalls from church.)

Luke had a blast at the playdate. He and the two boys closest to his age spent hours playing manly games with forts and such, and every time I asked him if he was ready to go home yet he responded with a definite “No!” I never get tired of watching him frolic happily with his own kind, after spending the first seven years of his life so distrustful of other people in general and males in particular.

Elizabeth was a little off that day. At our urging she hung out here and there with various Ingalls children, but she kept gravitating back to a half-grown black kitten, one of two litters there, and when it was time to go she got very adamant about bringing it home with us. I sympathized, because her own black cat disappeared last May (the attrition rate to owls and coyotes is very high around here), but we need another kitten like we need an outbreak of swine flu, and I told her so. It turned into a Whole Thing, and when we left without the kitten she was Vexed and Sulky. I suspect that we’re rolling into that adolescent phase everyone’s been warning me about, because Elizabeth’s temperament swings between “Affectionate and Agreeable,” “Distant and Secretive” and “Vexed and Sulky” like a three-way metronome these days.

*Not their real name; they’ve asked that I give them an Internet pseudonym.

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Friday I captured photographic proof that while childhood is temporary, immaturity is forever.

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(Yes, that’s the male “kitten” of Stripes’ litter.)

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Saturday there was a party at Oceanside Beach in honor of Geoff’s girlfriend’s daughter’s birthday, and most of the worship team went to that. It was a lot of fun.

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The ocean was very warm this time; nothing like the icy waters of last fall. I guess that means a warmer winter this year. I can totally live with that.

There was another near-death experience on the same jetty that Elizabeth nearly met her demise on last October, but at least it wasn’t one of my kids this time. The worst part was that I saw it coming and got there too late to avert it but just in time to see a giant wave slap down on a group of boys and actually wash one of them off the rock he was clinging to. He snagged on another rock on his way down though, so no fatalities. But the four of them had actually had to walk past a “Jetty Closed Today” sign to get out there, so while I was very glad that the kid hadn’t died, I considered the big scrape on his leg to be a useful reminder about respecting warning signs in the future.

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Since that last hearing three weeks ago Steve has been more courteous and friendly to me in our brief interactions than he has ever been before at any point in our entire relationship. I’m sure it’s some sort of ruse to lull me into a false sense of safety or somesuch, but whatever. It’s easier than dealing with Hostile Steve. Pretty much my only complaint on that front is that Elizabeth has started coughing all night after visits with him, because Steve and the woman that’s moved in with him smoke in the house. That is irksome.

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I’ve gotten a few fall crops planted in the garden. I’ve discovered that some stuff actually does better here in the fall and winter than in the heat of summer, but the trick is to plant them early enough that they really hit their growth stride before the first frost when everything slows way down. So far I’ve planted snap peas, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and radishes. I’ve also started digging up garlic bulbs and replanting the cloves in new beds, because for once I actually planted enough to have a surplus this summer. I’ll need to do the same with my shallots and bunching onions soon, but I’m running out of garden beds to transplant into. The perennial section of my garden needs to be enlarged, but alas, I’m having a hard time finding the motivation to do that since I’m just waiting for the chance to move out anyway. And there are signs of that all over: the weeds are running rampant in the orchard and my house hasn’t had a really good cleaning in weeks. I have lost my desire to tend to this place. I really want to move on, but this is apparently where I’m supposed to be for now, because events keep conspiring to keep me right here. I can accept that, and even plant a fall garden to prepare for another winter here, but I can’t CARE about this property anymore, and it shows.

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There are other things that I’d like to write about, but I can’t. Those of you who have been reading here for a while may be astonished to learn that there are people in this town who Do Not Mean Me Well (I know, hard to believe, right?) and I think some of them read this blog. There have been too many times that I’ve posted about some plan or prospect or new friendship only to have it fall apart within days after hitting the blogosphere. I think I might need to fire up a new private, password-protected blog for journaling all that stuff so I can keep my venting outlet without compromising my security.

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School starts in less than two weeks; I can hardly believe the summer’s gone already. Elizabeth will be starting middle school this year and I think she’s looking forward to being on a different campus than Luke. The events of the past few weeks have had the side effect of making him cling tightly to her as the one stable feature in an everchanging landscape, the one person who’s always with him no matter whose house he’s in or who else he’s with. I understand that and sympathize, but now it’s time for him to start developing his own inner strength to sustain him when she’s not around. And frankly, Elizabeth needs a break from the little barnacle.

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I think that’s everything bloggable. The heat wave has broken and the air feels like autumn, at least for a little while. I wish it could be just like this until November or so, except with some rain thrown in. And as long as I’m putting in requests, I wouldn’t mind meeting some nice heterosexual single guy who likes kids, has mastered basic communication and relationship skills, and lives at least a few miles away from Silkotchland.

That would be swell.

Categories: Birthdays, Christianity, Family, food, Friends, frugality, Gardening, kids, Life, Love, Self-Sufficiency, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

On A Dime

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Debora

This past week has been very…um…I’m searching for an adequate adjective here. Eventful? Taxing? Mind-blowing?

Let’s just say challenging.

So after Wednesday’s bit of vandalism at Trinity, the owners understandably decided that they didn’t want to deal with the liabilities of this little range war anymore, and they said that The Mighty Herd would have to go. This was a rough blow, because my friend the Doc and I had just been about to start fencing off the second, much greener pasture there on the same property and gradually expand the empire from six mother cows to about thirty. This would have been my first big step in achieving financial independence. Alas, now it is not to be. But if it was Steve’s plan to keep harassing my cows until I got discouraged and sold out so that he could move back in, it has backfired on him, because now nobody gets to keep any cows there.

I called the Doc and he said he might be able to help a little, and to just sit tight for now. Within a few days folks were coming out of the woodwork saying that they’d heard I had beef calves to sell and that they’d like to buy one. I also got a potential offer from someone who has a relative who has hayfields in Aguanga that have just been harvested and who would most likely let my cows come and graze the stubble for as long as it lasted. A temporary solution, but a good temporary solution. The next time I spoke to Doc he said he had a buyer who would immediately take every cow that I wanted to sell, if I wanted to sell any, so that I wouldn’t have to haul them to the auction. I do love that man. (In an appropriately platonic manner of course, since Doc is happily married to a sweet and lovely wife.)

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Saturday afternoon while the kids and I were getting everything packed up for their trip to camp, a strange truck pulled into the driveway and a skittish-looking fellow stepped out, holding a sheaf of papers. I instantly knew that I was being served with Something-Or-Other by Steve in response to The Blizzard Incident. I stepped outside to have a look and the poor guy started babbling a bunch of soothing platitudes. I smiled reassuringly at him and assured him that I wasn’t upset or anything and took the papers. The top of the stack was a request for a restraining order, but that part already had DENIED scrawled across it. So I dug deeper into the stack and found…that Steve was filing for physical custody of Luke and Elizabeth.

I stopped smiling.

The server guy literally backpedalled away from me with a look on his face that I might have found funny if my brain hadn’t just seized up.

“That’s just not going to happen,” I said quietly to myself after a moment.

With one hand on the door of his truck, the server guy said I should fight it. As if there were any question.

We exchanged a few more words that I don’t really remember because my head was in a whole other place by then — although I do remember him thanking me quite sincerely for my courtesy, so I must have been nice — and then he drove off and I came back in the house and read every word of the stack of papers.

Steve was requesting physical custody of the kids from Thursdays at 4pm through Sundays at noon, every other week. He was also requesting overnight visits on the Thursdays of my week. Thursdays are their Youth Group meetings, of course. He’s trying to do to them what he did to me all those years: isolate them from social interaction with anyone outside of his own bottom-feeding social class.

The court had denied the restraining order but approved the custody request, and there was a hearing date set for July 22 so that Steve and I could hash it out in court. If I wanted to contest the matter I had to file a response no later than July 20.

This had been filed way back on the 9th, but they had waited to serve me the papers until the last legal minute. I had to get my response filed first thing Monday morning. I typed up a response and emailed it to my friend Jenny, who printed it out for me (my printer’s out of ink) and brought it to church the next day.

Church was…kind of an effort for me that day. Up till then I’d been walking around in a sort of suspended state of combined disbelief and shock, but actually telling the Pastor about it out loud made it suddenly real and sharp-edged and twisty. I cried a few tears and he reassured me that this was God at work and that when all the dust settled things would be better than ever for the kids and I. And then the service started and I had to sing with the worship team and I was really afraid that I might throw up all over my mike and I was really glad that Susan was gone this week and we had a guest worship leader that sings so loud and strong that no backup is really needed so I could just whimper along and it wouldn’t matter a bit. But the songs themselves were very comforting, and by the end my voice and my spirit had revived quite a lot. There is true power in that music, I think.

After the service I talked to Doc, and practical soul that he is, he sat me down and gave me a wonderfully long list of reasons why it would make no sense for a court to give Steve that custody schedule. Right now Luke and Elizabeth have a full, rich social life and a place in the church community and Steve has nothing to offer them but isolation and video games and late nights at Casa Gamino. And he works on Thursdays, Fridays and sometimes Saturdays, so they’d be stuck in some sort of child care situation during the day. And if he couldn’t even get through one night without drinking, how is he going to get through four days at a time? AND, the kids don’t WANT to go live with him every other week. The list went on and on. The sharp twisty thing in my stomach softened into something dull and manageable and my brain chugged back into something pretty close to normal function.

My friend the Doc is a treasure beyond price.

That afternoon I drove the kids up to Camp Wynola in beautiful Julian. We signed them in and found their cabins and they picked out their bunks and we unpacked their stuff and I put a few dollars into a spending account for them so they can buy juice and snacks at the camp store and then it was time for me to go.

And suddenly it seemed absolutely ridiculous to even think about abandoning my little boy there for a whole week.

I didn’t worry about Elizabeth, I knew she’d enjoy the break from home. And the camp itself looked wonderful and safe and fun. But…my boy! My snuggly Luke! What would he do without me?

I gave him one last hug and watched him skip happily back to his cabin with a careless smile on his little face.

And then I reminded myself that he’s going to be nine years old next month and if he can’t spend a week away from home by now then I have done a poor job of raising him.

Then I went back to the camp office and let the staff know that my friend Michelle would be bringing Luke and Elizabeth home on Friday along with her kids. Because part of the divorce process in California is that both parents have to attend a Parent Orientation Program to help them properly guide their children though the divorce process and Steve and I have to go to ours on Friday and won’t THAT be fun!!

After I got home I sat down and completely rewrote my response to the custody thing, this time bringing all of Doc’s advice to bear on the matter. Then I emailed it to myself. First thing Monday morning I drove to Temecula, went to the library, checked my email on the web, and printed out copies of the rewritten version.

Oh. I missed a part of my story.

Okay, baaack up to earlier in the week. I had found a website that carefully detailed the entire divorce process step by step and form by form, and I realized that I had Made An Error. I did not know that the divorce could not move forward until a Proof Of Service Of Summons form had been filed. And here’s the thing. Steve and I had still been on civil terms a month ago, so I had served him the divorce papers myself. Well. It turns out that that’s a no-no. Someone ELSE who is over 18 and NOT ME has to give him the papers and fill out the Proof of Service Of Summons form. Gaaaahhhhh.

So on Sunday Jenny had served the divorce papers to Steve all over again, and filled out the form, and I took that with me on Monday to get filed along with the other thing.

And this post is going to have to be written in many parts, because that was JUST THE VERY BEGINNING of what is shaping up to be one of the craziest weeks of my entire life.

But here’s a nicer note to part on: a post from the Camp Wynola blog!

Categories: Cats, Christianity, Friends, Horses, kids, Life, Love, Ranching | 4 Comments

It’s Too Hot For Good Composition. I’ll Just Use Lots Of Asterisks.

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Debora

I’m in another one of those bloggy dry spells where there’s a bunch of stuff going on that I can’t write about. It’s not bad stuff this time though, it’s good stuff that I don’t want to jinx!

After much thought and examination of my Moving Forward options, I finally (and somewhat reluctantly) decided that I was approaching things from the wrong direction. I need to break my financial dependence on Steve first, and THEN get out of Dodge. Most of my MANY plans for immediate departure basically boiled down to “…and then I’ll probably be okay until I can find work.”

That’s wishful thinking in this economy. What if I CAN’T find work? Lots and lots and lots of people are out of work right now. People are losing their homes all over the place, and I was making plans to just blithely walk away from mine, with two kids in tow, trusting that God would provide.

He HAS provided. Right here. I just need to tough it out until I know for sure that when I leave it’ll be a step up and not a step down.

Job opportunities are about nil in Anza right now, but I am not without prospects. I don’t want to say too much about that now. Further updates as events warrant.

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Those of you who have known me for very long, and those of you who know me IRL, know that I am all about the communication, the problem solving, the win/win solution. In general philosophy I am something very close to pacifistic. I certainly do not endorse violence as a viable means of resolving issues. The occasional incident when my head explodes and I do something…non-tranquil…always comes after my very best efforts at respectful and amicable communication have utterly failed.

That said, if I had known how many annoying issues I could resolve with one well-aimed Blizzard, I would have lofted one at Steve’s head MONTHS ago.

I’m just saying.

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Filing for divorce in California is a bureaucratic labyrinth. The upside is that if you’re church-mouse poor like me they let you wander through the maze for free. I keep telling myself that it’s a Learning Experience.

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It turns out that a single parent cannot have a social life, happy children, an orderly garden, and a clean home all at the same time. Best I can do at any given time is three out of four, and usually it’s more like two out of four. Most of my corn plants burned up in a sudden heat wave during which I forgot to water the garden for something like four or five days straight.

Learning Experience. I’ll get the juggling act mastered eventually.

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My new grooming budget goes like this: I let my hair grow out until it becomes a nuisance, and then I go to this great-but-expensive salon in Temec to get it bobbed up to my chin and highlighted. I tried going to a cheaper haircutting place in hopes that I could then afford to get it cut more often, but both the cut and the highlights were of unacceptably low quality, and also the chemicals burned my scalp and then my hair started breaking off. So…I keep plunking down the $150 at the good place every four or five months. It’s about that time again. This week or next, I think.

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Luke just wandered in from his bedroom, where he’d been trying to invent a Wallace-And-Gromit-esque “getting dressed device,” and sadly announced that things had not gone as well as he’d hoped.

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I call it a good effort, anyway.

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I’m fattening a steer, but he’s refusing to fatten. I don’t know if it’s the heat or the flies or the solitude or what, but he just picks at his food and looks all grouchy. From now on I will only fatten steers in the wintertime, and if possible I will fatten two together so they won’t be lonely. Not sure what do to about this guy though, other than hope that this heat wave breaks soon (and hope that that’s the problem).

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I’ve been feeling the need for another pilgrimage to Mt. Rubidoux, but it’s way too hot to plan one now. Fall seems like too long to wait. Sigh.

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It’s HOT.

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Okay, that’s everything.

PS: It’s hot, folks.

Categories: Christianity, Family, frugality, Gardening, Life | 1 Comment

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