5 reasons why I have the romantic dexterity of a 10-year-old boy

I find the male/female dynamic to be very problematic. I think I must have had my head in a book when my high school offered the course that taught everyone how successfully interact with the opposite sex because I plunged head-long into college without a freaking clue. A few semesters in, okay about six semesters in, I finally pulled my head out of my studies and realized that there was a whole world around me of romantic interactions that I was completely oblivious to. Not liking to be behind in anything, I decided to try a hand at flirting and after a few disappointing months, I’ve realized something rather awful about myself: I have the romantic dexterity of a child, not just any child, a 10-year-old boy.

Like a good English student, having decided upon my thesis, I spent some good time soul-searching to find arguments and evidence to support my thesis. They are as follow:

1.) When a cute guy is nice to me, I react with violence.

I’ve never taken compliments well. When I was seven, I took a swing at a gentleman who told me I sang nicely. Seventeen year later, I still haven’t mastered the art of taking compliments and I really, really don’t take compliments from guys well. For example: When a guy tells me I’m sweet, I scream, “liar!” and list off reasons that prove, irrevocably (it took me three tries to spell that word right), that I am not sweet. When a guy tells me I’m pretty, I ball my fist and take a good hard swing at his shoulder. Afterwards, while he’s rubbing his arm, I scuff my foot on the floor and then say something intelligent like, “Aw shucks, that was sure nice of you.”

2.) My idea of a pick up line is to mutter something about football and then abruptly change the subject to literature.

I’m attracted to guys who like sports and I know nothing about football. Correction: I know nothing about what’s happening currently in football. Oh sure I know that there are large men in tight, shiny pants that hurtle their bodies at each other and I know that the 49ers were a big deal in the 80’s, but after that, I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for any tidbits I may have heard on my way to my bi-monthly Twilight bashing meeting. Literature, on the other hand, I know. Though I must say that guys who will engage in a conversation about the how well Psychoanalytic Theory works when applied to “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” generally creep me out.

3.) I think I’m smarter than 97% if the guys I meet.

I shouldn’t have to explain why this causes problems.

4.) My idea of flirting is as follows: “You think George Clooney was a better Batman than Adam West? Oh, you’re so dumb.” ::blink::blink::

I have watched many women my age successfully flirt; it’s really incredible. A guy could tell them that Avatar was the best movie of the century and they would smile, giggle and nod along like word vomit wasn’t being spewed all over them. AGGGGGHHHH! AVATAR WAS NOT THE BEST MOVIE OF THE CENTURY! ::deep breath::  When a guy tells me that, I whip up a solid 3 point rebuttal complete with visual aids proving that: 1.) Avatar is basically Dances With Wolves meets Pocahontas. 2.) Visual effects do not make up for it having the most predictable storyline ever. 3.) Just because something’s pretty, doesn’t make it good. (And then I pull out a copy of A Picture of Dorian Gray to illustrate my point).

And finally...

5.) I may still believe that guys have cooties. ;-)

Butterbeer? Yes, please!

If you're anything like me, (I am terribly sorry, but it does get better) you've been in the middle of a book and run across a beautiful description of food and felt the awful rumble in your stomach as you mentally picture each item the author describes. You read on because you can't stop yourself and mentally curse the characters, who are obviously enjoying themselves, and look woefully over your own meal of Top Ramen and ice water.

When I was younger, I was absolutely certain that mead was the absolute last word in drinks. Not because I'd ever had it (or knew what it was-thanks "Robin Hood" for clearing that up), but because every single good character had a glass of mead at the local inn (bad characters drank spiced wine - boo, hiss). Another tortuous series was the Redwall series by Brian Jaques. Those little critters ate better than anyone I knew and enjoyed it more than should be allowed. Every book had at least one feast, which was basically a food orgy. It didn't matter that I hated turnips, I wanted a Deeper N'ever Turnip Pie. It didn't matter that I had no idea what marzipan was or even that I didn't have the dental anatomy to handle honeyed chestnuts, I wanted it all.

All that said, you can imagine my dismay when, prompted by my little brother, I read the Harry Potter series and came across one word: butterbeer. Now, I'm not a drinker by any means, but EVERYTHING about butterbeer reads appealing. It's sweet, a little salty, warming, creamy, and cheap enough that even poor Ron Weasley can indulge in a glass or two. In fact, this drink is so yummy that the little Hogwartians will brave rain, snow, Mr. Filch and dementor attacks for a glasst at the Three Broomsticks.

Despite how badly things went for those characters, I envied each and every one for those trips. My little brother would lean over my shoulder and read along, talking about "how bad" he wanted to drink butterbeer. A semester and a few google searches later, I stumbled across a recipe that looked like the product might live up to the book. The ingredients were pretty straight forward, the only one that gave me problems was the rum extract (due to budget restrictions). Thankfully, the local discount grocery store carried it and I made away with my last ingredient for a steep 50 cents.

The whole process took about an hour, much of it waiting. I used that down time to clean up and make the filling for another Harry Potter favorite: Pumpkin Pasties. The end result was amazing. Even more amazing was the look on my brother's face when he got to try it. Both of us felt that it met and exceeded our expectation and even my youngest brother, who scowls upon anything Potter, spent the night with a butterbeerstache.

Here's the recipe as it's found on foxnews.com and the link if you want to read the article:

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2010/07/02/harry-potters-butterbeer-recipe-uncovered/

This is a NON-alcoholic version. Though there are versions online that are made with butterscotch schnapps. Read on because I have comments and suggestions for short cuts.

BUTTERBEER

Start to finish: 1 hour (10 minutes active)

Servings: 4

1 cup light or dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons water

6 tablespoon butter

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar

3/4 cup heavy cream, divided

1/2 teaspoon rum extract

Four 12-ounce bottles cream soda

In a small saucepan over medium, combine the brown sugar and water. Bring to a gentle boil and cook, stirring often, until the mixture reads 240 F on a candy thermometer.

Stir in the butter, salt, vinegar and 1/4 heavy cream. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Once the mixture has cooled, stir in the rum extract.

In a medium bowl, combine 2 tablespoons of the brown sugar mixture and the remaining 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Use an electric mixer to beat until just thickened, but not completely whipped, about 2 to 3 minutes.

To serve, divide the brown sugar mixture between 4 tall glasses (about 1/4 cup for each glass). Add 1/4 cup of cream soda to each glass, then stir to combine. Fill each glass nearly to the top with additional cream soda, then spoon the whipped topping over each.

Ok, it's super important that you temper the sugar correctly. I find candy thermometers highly suspect due to some bad experiences, even though my grandma says that work. Instead, I used the traditional way to make sure my sugar was at the correct temperature; the ball test *snicker*.

At 240-250 degrees, the sugar mixture will form a hard but pliable mass (ball) when dropped into cool water. While you're tempering, drizzle a bit of the mixture into a cup of water and use your fingers to test the pliability of the sugar. It should be resistant to pressure but still malleable. Thanks to Grandma for this tip!

The waiting is the hardest. Once it's cooled and/or you can no longer resist dipping your fingers in the sticky mess, you'll notice that you've essentially made butterscotch sauce.

After you make the whipped topping, the instructions tell you to divide the rest among four glasses, dissolve the butterscotch in 1/4 cup cream soda and then fill the glasses with the rest of the cream soda. I'll tell ya-those are huge portions and none of us were able to finish. My suggestion is to use 1 cup of cream soda and stir it directly into the sauce pan to make sure that you get all of it dissolved (you spent all that time making it, why not enjoy all of it!) *Another tip I would suggest is to pour the dissolved mixture through a strainer. The foam created from blending the soda with the syrup isn't very tasty and it doesn't have an appealing texture. The whipped topping however, is delicious. Pour the cream soda into a punch bowl and add the mixture slowly while you stir. Serve from there with the topping OR use a funnel and pour it back into the bottles. We all found that we liked it better from the bottle (we're not crazy! I swear the taste changed significantly!)

Curl up with a favorite book and/or movie and enjoy the looks on everyone's face as they drink. If you think ahead to bring a mirror, you can even enjoy the look on your own.

As a final word, I haven't tested out this theory but since most of the time is spent making the butterscotch, I assume that to save time, you would be able to substitute in a butterscotch ice cream topper. Like this one from Smucker's. Just take about 1 1/4 cups of the topping, stir in rum extract, parcel out 2 tbsp for the topping and proceed as before.

If you have any questions, feel free to post. I'll be making it again this weekend as a birthday present so the experience will be fresh in my mind!

Job's not a whiner, he's just at the end of his rope

Lindsey said that I need to update my blog, so I'm updating my blog. I'm such a bad blogger.

Hrm, what's new? Well I was reading in Job the other day and there was a verse that said:

"What I have feared most has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true." (Job 3:25)

I've never really connected to Job. For pages and pages he's telling his friends, his wife and anyone who will listen that he curses the day he was born, his mother's womb, his father for impregnating his mother, his grandparents for... ok, the last two aren't true, but you get the picture. I mean, the dude had a right to complain-things were not going well for him but it always seemed too much for me, just like Song of Solomon is just too... well sexy I guess. I don't really want to read about Solomon's lady-friend's special parts and I don't usually want to read Job cursing everything that wasn't nailed down.

I've always connected Job to being in a really bad place (I know, I'm a genius) but that's not an easy place for me to go. I haven't lived a charmed life by any means, but back when I was dealing with depression, the last place I wanted to look for answers was the Bible. Bring it up to the present: I'm not depressed, but I'm not in a great place and for some reason, I was flipping through my Bible, landed on Job and found a connection.

"What I have feared most has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true."

You may laugh, but where I am right now is the place I've been fearing. I'm through college and making no forward progress. No progress with a career, no progress writing, no progress in my personal life and right now, just being real, no progress in my spiritual life. I have always feared stagnation, even more than I fear failure, even though that's a close second. When God told me to get a degree in Creative Writing, I thought He was nuts - still do sometimes, but I did it. Even after getting the degree that I loved, after 4 years at a college I loved and getting to do amazing things and meet amazing people, I'm questioning the wisdom of that decision. My degree choice has been one of the few things I've done in blind faith. I tried to be smart about it, do things along with taking classes that would give me experience, connections and did it well so I would have great references once college was through, but the decision to get a degree in Creative Writing was based on an encounter with God.

So what's all of this saying? What's my point? I'm not sure yet.

To be real, I'm struggling with taking what I know about God and embodying that knowledge. But I know even more that I have to struggle, struggle implies effort and effort means I haven't given up. I guess it's exciting because I know that I can't remain here. I can't stand stagnation and while I may not have the ability to control anything else in my life, I can turn to God during this, lean into Him and find progress there.

Dream Interpretation

I have epically wonky dreams and I dream often. I'm pretty sure that after having it, I've never repeated a dream. After spinning out a crazy dream, my brain destroys the mint and starts working on a new one for the next night. Basic themes reoccur but each dream that I've had is unique and strange in its own right.

My brother's all time favorite is a dream I had a few years ago. Sean Penn was MCing the Oscars when munchkins, straight out of the Wizard of Oz, took over the ceremony wearing tuxes and held the city of L.A. hostage with a weather machine. Apparently in my subconscious, there is nothing L.A. fears more than snow. The real tragedy is that I can't for the life of me remember what the munchkins wanted in exchange for leaving the mild Southern California weather alone.

As weird as that one is, I don't think it compares to when I dreamt that my plane crashed on an island. While my friend searched frantically for water, food and basic survival gear, I was searching equally as frantically for a bra. Even the appearance of his brother, my friend, bruised, battered and sunburned on the island only briefly deterred me from the hunt.

It's to these kinds of dreams that I like to pull out the ole dream interpretation book to try and figure out what on earth is going on between my ears when I'm asleep. The second seems pretty straight-forward; I'm stranded and searching for er, "support." But munchkins? Weather machines? Sean Penn? I don't even like Sean Penn!

I gave up trying to interpret the munchkin dream but I want to take a stab at a dream I had the other night ...The Submarine Building Dream... It looks so much more ominous when it's capitalized and bracketed in ellipses; don't you think?

Here's the premise: There is a three man team submarine building contest. There are strict rules that have to be obeyed and three submarines have to be completed in three days.

Rule 1: 20 minutes a day have to be spent in the adjacent canal dodging bombs

Rule 2: At least one person in the team has to be working on the submarine 24 hours a day

Rule 3: A submarine has to be completed at the end of every day.

So the dream begins with me and two friends navigating a canal in a submarine. Dodging bombs from below and a searchlight from above, we cross to the other side where out submarine building station is waiting. We immediately get to work and crank out our first submarine in record time. (I'd like to mention that we are doing things like cutting out strips of paper and these become legit, working machines. A little "Puff the Magic Dragon" magic working here). End first day and we sleep, two members sleeping, one member working. I'm sleeping and the guy on my team is supposed to be sleeping but he keeps talking, so in order to keep himself from talking, he attaches his face to the back of my shoulder and that's how we spend the night. This whole segment is punctuated by the sense of urgency we all feel and the danger from the bombs and the people looking for us.

Half way through day two, we're still making good time when the submarine contest turns into an interior design competition and we're debating how to hang our centerpiece from the ceiling when all we have is toilet paper. Really the only thing noteworthy in this segment is that the danger we felt dodging bombs carries over to hanging toilet paper.

Even though I felt I was in danger, it was a fairly happy dream and when I woke up, I laughed at the team my subconscious put together for the task. Friend A: is very by the book and organized. Friend B: Is by the book, fun-loving but not at all organized. I float somewhere in the middle.

Weird, right? So just for funzies, I perused some dream interpretation sites for some insight into the key parts of the dream. Here's what the portable dream dictionary has to say about submarines:

All vehicles appear to symbolize the way that we maneuver, or get through, a segment of our life's journey. A submarine is a powerful moving machine that travels through deep waters. Deep waters represent our emotions and our unconscious. A submarine could represent the way in which we are navigating through our emotional waters and deal with the materials that are coming up from our unconscious. A submarine can have negative or positive connotations. It could suggest that you are feeling strong and are prepared to aggressively deal with whatever issues and emotional concerns that arise in your life. On the other hand, the submarine as a dream symbol could be suggesting that you are overly guarded and defensive and are currently not open to airing of personal issues.

Bombs:

Unexploded: A fear of a negative future event. Exploded: Recognition that things or a situation has fallen apart.

Competition:

To dream that you are in a competition, represents your need to grow and expand. Learn the value of endurance and perseverance. You also need to be more assertive. Alternatively, the dream may reflect your anxiety about some real life competition that you are involved in.

I'll leave you to draw whatever conclusions you'd like.

I'm a Christian-a feminist Christian

Feminism is like any political party, there are extremes on both ends. The more sane and balanced feminists tend to gravitate towards the middle, understanding that there are multiple sides and valuable views on both sides. Instead of choosing either extreme however, they take what is good from both, working out their personal stances in accordance with their beliefs and values.

Ever since I decided that I was in fact a feminist, I've had some interesting responses from both Christians and non-Christians. I'm feeling a bit like Martin Luther today (German) and if I get a bit ranty, forgive me-I'm still working some things out.

To start, I believe whole-heartedly that a woman can be both a strong Christian and an ardent feminist. I don't mean the feminazis-no man hating and bra burning in my future-but women who understand that there has been a history of mistreating and undervaluing women and who want to move forward, not by blaming and hating men, but by self-evaluation and improvement (ie:better education, better jobs, roles in the home etc...).

Some people that I've spoken with have a real issue with this. I think they struggle with the male/female dynamic without attributing blame or responsibility to current behaviors. So here's what I think: Men and women will never be equals because God has made us different. Apples cannot be equal to oranges because they aren't comparable. However, God has given women strengths and giftings that make us equally as valuable as men and we should be treated as such. Feminism, moderate feminism, acknowledges that and also acknowledges the history of the devaluation of women by patriarchal societies and chooses to move beyond that pattern. It's slightly more involved than that, but that's the cliff notes version.

Here's where I'm running into some frustrations: My acknowledgment and interpretation of the past and my decisions now as a feminist do not, in any way, disqualify me from being a Christian. In fact, I see myself as a Christian first, feminist secondary. But as a feminist, I struggle with Christians (both men and women) who use scripture to, as I see it, devalue women. The problem that I see is that many base their entire view of women off of 1 Corinthians 14:34-women should be silent in the church. Now, I'll be honest, I'm still working out with Paul how I truly feel about that statement, and I may die never having made peace with it (Paul and I may have an animated conversation in heaven). However, if you broaden the scope and take a look at some other areas in the Bible, specifically the life of Jesus, you find that that single scripture, can in no way be the final say on feminism and Christianity.

John 11 is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Most people who speak on this chapter focus mainly on the miracle of Lazarus being raised from the dead, and rightfully so. However, what I find interesting as a feminist is the interaction between Martha and Jesus. Martha approaches Jesus and says "Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask."

When I read that, I see her reacting with emotion. "If only you had been here," is an accusatory statement. She was addressing a friend, someone she trusted and she accused Him of not being around when they needed Him. Instead of silencing her, telling her to submit to Him as a man, He understood her need and moved to meet it. I think it's also important to note that He didn't dismiss her emotion, He didn't validate it by telling her it was right to feel that way, but He didn't reject it either. He did the same with Mary, while he became angry and troubled, He didn't silence her or dismiss her reaction.

What I find troubling is seeing people dismiss the emotion without moving to meet the need from which the emotion stemmed. I'd also like to note that it is Martha and Mary's need He is meeting when He raised Lazarus. I could be wrong, but I don't think that Lazarus much cared wether he was alive or not This story is one of many in which I see Jesus valuing women. Others, like the woman at the well, Mary Magdalene, his mother, etc...are also examples.

This isn't just a woman's issue, if anyone in the church comes to us, as Christ's representatives on Earth, we should reach out to meet the need and not dismiss them. But since the story is about women, I think that it's a very compelling example of how Jesus felt about the value women have.

Again, this isn't conclusive; and it's obviously something that I'm still working through, but what I'm hoping to express is that the role of women in the church and as Christians, cannot and should not be limited to one scripture when there are so many notable women in the Bible: Abigail, Rehab, Ruth, Esther, Deborah and Jael to name a few.

I am and will continue to be a Christian feminist. I am and will continue to wrestle with how I feel about Women's roles in the church and then in the world. But I would like to challenge my friends to think about this with me and decide against the false assumption that a woman has to be either or. If Martha could be honest with Jesus, why can't women be honest with their male counterparts without fearing that their thoughts, emotions and opinions will be devalued or dismissed? And how, now with the freedom of an equalizing society, can women grow into the roles that, I believe, were always meant for them?

Sooo...

I'm now a believer that there is nothing sexier in the world than a 300 pound man revving his vespa at me in the parking lot.

Ya, it's been that kind of day already.