Title: Monday keeps on happening
Reading: Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, Florence King
Feeling: Hungry. The free teryaki bowl from lunch isn't lasting as long as it
should.
Woo Hoo!:
Okay, kids, we're all going to link hands now and sing "Kum-By-Yah." No, really. Know why? 'Cause we're celebrating today. Yes, we are. I know this space is usually reserved for bitterly judgemental sarcasm, and don't think I'm going soft on you here, but I have definite cause to break out of character and be cheery today. Would you like to know why? Of course you would. Let's all sing together now, as the birds chirp and the breeze blows, and the sun shines on us warm...
"MARCIE HAS A CLOSING DATE ON HER HOUSE!!"
Yes, it's true. Some lovely soul is going to plonk down a decent amount of cash for my little hole in the wall and walk away with the keys on the 24th of August, God willing and the creek don't rise. I'm crossing every appendage I have -- I'm even putting my hair in cornrows, if necessary -- for this sale to go through. If it does, it'll save me $1200 at the beginning of September, which is how much my mortgage and housing association payments are together. (Yes, ouch.) I am so thrilled, you can't even imagine. My house is a monkey that's been living on my back, clawing at my ears, pulling my hair and bouncing and screeching on my lower back since March. And I'm FINALLY shoving the damned thing off. Goodbye, little townhouse. We barely knew ye. Good riddance.
What I Did Over My Weekend:
(Because you know you want to know. You people love reading about the mundane details of my life... that's why you stick around. It has nothing to do with my scintillating wit and deathless prose; you just want to read about someone with a more boring life than you. It's okay to admit it.)
Anyway. Cynthia and I have perfected the art of slackitude on weekends. Being broke helps that, but these are mundane details. We went all-out and ordered a couple of Papa John's Hot-N-Steamy Circles of Yummy Goodness(tm) yesterday when we finally dragged out of bed at 2 PM. It was pretty much downhill from there. I'm nurturing this geek gut carefully, cultivating it one greasy slice of pizza and 20-ounce Coke combo at a time.
It takes effort to get this gut, you know... you can't just assume it'll happen on its own. You have to make it happen.
Other than going over to the old house to inspect the garage for cleanliness, or lack thereof, the weekend was blissfully boring. The highlight was rummaging through old boxes and finding half my CDs that had gone missing months previously. Ian took them all home to add them to the house mp3 collection. I hope to have them back in my hot little hands in a couple of days.
Cynthia is reading my Stealing Jesus book now, after me hounding her for three weeks to check it out. (I've been pimping this book to everyone I know. If you're interested in how far the fundamentalist church I grew up in has fallen from the original, give it a shot. It's fascinating, particularly if you have issues with the church like I do.)
Cynthia is a Westerner and a liberal, two characteristics that lend themselves to a healthy skepticism of organized religion to begin with. Watching her read this book is like watching a Martian trying to make sense out of the Rosetta Stone: she's utterly baffled. I don't mean to imply that she's not smart enough to understand; Cynthia is one of the smartest people I've ever known, which you realize if you've ever read her Web site. But Cynthia is not Southern, nor did she grow up hearing the rhetoric of the Southern Baptist church, as I and my siblings did. What's old hat to me is puzzling to her, at best. It's news to her that fundamentalist Christians believe that every word of the Bible is the inerrant word of God himself, dictated through the ages to the writers of the scriptures; that every verse is as applicable to modern times as every other verse, and that the Bible should always, without exception, be taken literally. Symbolism and poetry and metaphors are not allowed.
"Do people actually believe this, Joy?" she asks me, with genuine puzzlement. They do indeed, I inform her.
She ponders this. "Do your parents believe this too?"
"They certainly do."
She pauses again. "No wonder they think you're going to hell for being gay."
I laugh at that, because she's right. I think she's going to understand my family yet.
-- marcie.