it's the great pumpkin!

happy halloween everyone!! i hope you all caught the great pumpkin last night on tv!

have a great day :O) eat some candy.

argh

so this time when mom called at 8:30am to tell me they were coming home it was because the liver was too small. sigh. i really really hope there's just one more time. this is exhausting and just emotionally strenuous each time. i'm going to lay in the papizan chair and watch 'murder,she wrote' and cry for a while.

play it again sam...

hey kids, it's take 2 with the liver. dad got a call at 9:15ish and he and mom are at the hospital now. we're just waiting to hear. i'll mass email and repost when i know anything.
prayers are always welcome :O)
love and hugs, rach

have a great weekend!

hey kids, i have lots of work to complete in the next 90 minutes, so i thought i'd take a short break before i start. it's a dreary fall day today, lots of drizzle and clouds. i've only been outside for about 2 minutes since 9am so i'm not sure how cold it is, but it looks like it would be the kind of day to open your curtains and look at the dreariness from the comfort of your own bed and your fantastically wonderful flannel comforter :O) anyway. a few friends are coming into town for the big PSU/OSU game. that should be fun, hopefully dad doesn't get his liver right after the game, traffic is already hell. epsn gameday is broadcasting from beaver stadium tomorrow, check it out! it's supposed to be gross, just like today, so i'm not venturing out for the show, but i'll watch it from the aforementioned comfy bed. i'm going to an 'oktoberfest' dinner party tomorrow so that should be fun my housemate and i are making apple strudel. so that should be an adventure. ummmm, nothing else exciting planned for the weekend. if it doesn't rain on sunday i am going to ride my bike back into town from my parents house. it's so fun to ride a bike again!
hope you're all planning super fun weekend adventures!
jess hope you're having fun with the mouse!
*r

musings on the walk back from therapy

my therapists office is about a 3 minute walk from my office. that makes it nice because i can go during the day and not worry about parking or traffic or anything. so today on the way back from the therapist i was struck by the wonder that is october in the northeast. the sky was that cold slate gray that means you aren't seeing the sun today. and against the clouds the leaves on the trees just popped, drenched in yellows and reds and oranges. the colors defying the gray sky and the drearyness that it inspires. as i was walking i noticed the leaves on the ground, each one different and yet the same. they reminded me of the miracle that is nature. i find that in the fall with its bright colors and drastic changes i'm more aware of my environment. i see the leaves changing and falling, i hear the rustle of the dried up corn stalks in the fields, i taste the squash and cider that are abundant, and i cozy up in sweatshirts and sweaters and slippers. i love fall. and as the leaves fall off the trees and i am able to see each branch doing boldly standing out and showing its form i see a hint of winter.

it's the most wonderful time of the year

i'm torn. on one hand, i LOVE christmastime. it's my faaaavorite season, and i firmly believe it should last from the day after thanksgiving till new years eve. i love that church is more festive, people focus on what they can do for others, there is just music everywhere, and there are little white christmas lights in the trees downtown, there's SNOW! it's cold so you can wear scarves and gloves and your black pea coat and sweaters. it's just fantastic*

now, i went to the grocery store tonight, and there are already christmas trees there. um. excuse me. it's october 22. not even halloween yet! in fact at this grocery store the kids were running around in their costumes because it was halloween night. so, how come we can't just enjoy halloween, and then enjoy thanksgiving, and THEN enjoy christmas? why does christmas surpass the other two? sigh. is it because you don't get presents for halloween and thanksgiving? i mean, really christmas isn't about the presents anyway, but try telling mainstream america that. oh well. i guess i'll just have to enjoy the extra weeks of fake christmas tress. oooh if it means starbucks has the 'peppermint mocha' early i'm all for it ;O)


*yes. i realize not everyone agrees with me, and that for some people, like natrizzle, christmas isn't exactly your holiday, but work with me here people

false alarm

so after staying at the hospital and getting prepped for surgery and getting a time for surgery, the transplant guy decided that the donated liver wasn't in good enough condition for dad. i guess it's good because i want dad to get a super wonderful liver, but it's exhausting. none of us got more than 2 hours of sleep last night and it's emotionally drianing too. i'm off to bed for a bit. it's a beautiful fall day today and i'll try and post on something else later. thanks for the happy thoughts. love, r

to amish country

i'm off to visit the lancaster theological seminary tomorrow! hopefully it will be a good trip and i'll write about it either tomorrow night or saturday :O) have a good friday everyone!
hugs, r

yup.

so in therapy i've referred to my house as a 'suck it up household.' and my therapist gets this and takes it into consideration when we're talking about how i feel with regards to dad's surgery. yesterday's analogy was like a fireman at the station waiting for the alarm to go off. all by myself. so that was hard. and then today i get this email from my grandmother.
Dear Rachel: Mom told me that you are making yourself sick worrying about and thinking constantly about your Dad's surgery. Honey, worrying about it is not going to change a thing. It may be another month or two before he gets word that he is scheduled. it is most important that you remain strong in your faith and be a source of encouragement and support for both him and your mother. We all must take it one day at a time. If you get sick your mother will be the one that will have to take care of you and she does not need that. And she does not need to be worrying about you not functioning well at work or while driving around. Look forward to your trip to Lancaster and concentrate on that experience and have a good time. I know that you are capable of taking charge of your life.
Love you, Grammy

basically saying. suck it up. have your feelings, but don't let anyone know. is it any wonder that i don't tell them i go to therapy? sigh.


on a totally different note, there's a book out called 'a year of living the bible literally.' and it looks pretty interesting and kinda funny, and there's an email dialogue going on at slate.com between the author and another religious writer guy. pretty funny stuff and really interesting.

hope you're all having a great wednesday!
r

shocking, i know

A Penn State football player has been charged with sexual assault. According to the local paper, he told the police "she told me she wasn't going to have sex with me" when they were on the way back to his place, but "you know, in the heat of the moment they change their mind." So lets forget for a moment that I'm a sexual assault counselor, and just examine the he said/she said of the incident (or at least what's being reported in the paper, allegedly taken from the police report). He says, she changed her mind and it was consensual, she says she passed out on his bed and woke up with him on top of her, she moved he punched her in the kidney and she laid still untill he was done, waited for him to fall asleep and then tried to sneak out of the apartment. He woke up, she said she had to go and he gave her a hug and she left. She later got a text message from him saying "R U OK?" During the police interview he repeatedly referred to her as "This girl" even though he said he'd known her for a few months.
So that's the big news in Happy Valley. Being a sexual assault counselor I'm inclined to believe the woman. Rape is falsely reported about the same percentage as other crimes in the United States, and is frequently not reported at all. Things like media coverage, internalized shame or guilt and the knowledge of who your perpetrator is or isn't all play into that decision of reporting. Your life will be changed forever, and in a small town with a big football team, that's not always a good thing.
So this story broke online Friday afternoon and was in the paper on Saturday. I was sitting in my living room with my housemate and her kid and two of my housemates friends (both men). So they see the headline about the football player being charged and start to make comments like "well what did she expect" and "she knew what was going to happen when she went home with him" and "she knew who he was."
I am tired and feel that any statement I make is going to be futile and their reactions will only piss me off, so I don't say anything. My housemate argues with them a little bit, and eventually we both just tell them to shut up. One of the guys was starting in on the whole "personal responsibility" piece and the other just kept agreeing.
Ugh. It's been so long since I've been around men who actually a- believe that shit, and b- will say so around women. I was a little in shock at first, I mean, really? you go home with a guy you're obviously going to have sex? You walk through that door and all choice is taken away? Kinda makes you wonder about someone who feels that way. On a lot of feminist blogs many commenters will say that they've never met a man who has seen women as fully human. I've never understood that, thinking that all the men I know see me as fully human. But these two guys, if they actually believe what they are saying, can't really see women as fully human. I mean, if they did then it wouldn't matter who you went home with, you could say you didn't want to have sex and it would be respected. Or you could pass out in your friends bed and wouldn't have to wake up to him having sex with you. I feel like that's such a base understanding I just don't get how other people disagree. Sigh.

My lunch just showed up, Happy Monday everyone!
hugs, r

ok

so, let me condense the last post and also explain myself because i kind of just stopped and it didn't all make sense. so the quote thing- it says 'your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding' and so that related to the whole dad thing because the illness and the risks and just having to acknowledge his mortality in any way is really hard, and thinking about that puts me into a world i don't get and i'm scared of.
and the therapy thing- no one else in my family is talking about this whole surgery thing as something that's at all scary. and it scares the shit out of me. and i think that makes me feel really alone and sad. and i just realized tuesday at therapy that it was an issue, i mean, i knew it scared me but hadn't really talked out the fact that no one else in the fam is talking about it. or that if they do start they just dismiss it as nothing to worry about. and that's hard for me.

see. i could tell you guys things in just 2 short paragraphs. but when i'm all emotional it's like a big run on sentence :O)

happy fall! the cool weather has arrived here in state college! it's homecoming weekend! someone thought it would be a good idea for penn state to play wisconson for their homecoming game. sigh. maybe we'll pull it off, but i'm not so sure. so have a great weekend! i plan to sleep and sew and hopefully eli will come home and i can sit at a bar and watch football with him.
love you all
r

yo yo

I'm exhausted. Babysitting is tiring. I'm sleeping on a waterbed. Who has a waterbed anymore? I'm sleepy. Still working on something else to post,but not quite done yet. It involves a metaphor that made sense when I first thought of it, but I'm having trouble articulating. So someday it will be finished and you'll all be underwhelmed by the buildup,but in the meantime I wanted to share a quote and a revelation from therapy yesterday. The quote is by Kahlil Gibran: "And a woman spoke, saying, tell us of pain. And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your job; and you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief."
I've loved that quote for quite a while. I have had it printed out and taped to my monitor from the day I got my full time job. I've never really understood it, never thought about it more than to acknowledge that pain is a necessity if we're ever to fully live life. I just really liked the the words. In therapy yesterday we talked about dad (which happens every week) and I talked about how it's weird that our family is focused on two things. We're all focused on living our daily life, and then we're focused on how things will work after dad is out of the hospital. No one talks about the actual surgery. It's just understood that everything will be fine and that the surgery will be a success.
The day that dad got diagnosed with cancer was a Thursday. I remember because I didn't go to Otto's that night, I just didn't feel up to being around people. So I stayed home and watched "Gray's Anatomy." So it turns out that this was the night when George's dad dies. He'd had some sort of surgery and it didn't work out so well. and George is outside talking to Christina and he says "I don't know how to exist in a world where my dad doesn't." And she says "Yeah, that never really changes." I feel like that possibility isn't something that anyone in the family is acknowledging. I know that it's likely that everything will go as planned and he'll have his surgery and recover and be spectacular. But there's part of me that needs to at least acknowledge the risk that's involved, and that part of that risk is that he could die. Is that probably going to happen? no. But could it? yes. I think if I just pretend it isn't even an option then it would be harder to deal if something adverse did happen. Does that make sense? I don't know. I'm really not trying to be melodramatic or doomsday-like, but I guess I just need the whole spectrum of outcomes to be part of my reality. That way no matter what happens I've at least thought about it before. Then it's not out of the blue. I think I'm just really scared about the surgery. It's a huge deal I think and it's really hard to wrap my head around it. I started thinking about the time at the hospital, within 45min-1hour after he gets to the hospital dad will be in surgery. And then we wait for 6-8 hours for him to be finished. That's such a long time. I have to pack my bag for the hospital and I'm going to include a book so that maybe I can read. At least if it's during the day I can call people and talk on the phone. Sigh. I just am ready for it to happen. I seem to cycle between feeling really positive and like we're doing things to prepare, and then feeling really strung out like I can't deal with anything because it hasn't happened yet. I'm exhausted and I want a vacation.

hey

i'm working on another longer post, but i'm babysitting till thursday so if i finish it tonight i'll try and take my laptop to church and post it tomorrow before FISH (high school youth group.)otherwise it will be thursday.

so i'm watching a 4th grader and a 2nd grader (i think 2nd grade, i'm not positive)and i know them and their parents and they're great kids. but last night 'high school musical 2' was on. and it wasn't starting till 8pm and their bedtime is 8-8:30pm. so grandma was watching them all last week(their parents are in europe for work/anniversary) and i don't think she enforced any rules. so the 4th grader is a boy and i've known him for awhile and so he was like, throwing a fit about watching it and i had to threaten to unplug the tv till their aunt gets there on thursday. which got them upstairs. then i had to drag him out of his parents room and list off the other friends of his parents that we could call who would all tell him that he had to go to bed. and that's what finally got him to bed. sigh. so i'm hoping tonight goes more smoothly. i don't have to put them to bed on wednesday, so that's not an issue. oy. i'm sooo not ready to be a parent. i like to think that if they were MY kids i'd have more control, but i don't know that for sure. sigh. anyway. they're both gone for dinner tonight so just homework and bed when they get home. hopefully tonight isn't as bad as last night. oh no. there's a disney hallween movie on till 9:30. and you know they're going to want to watch that. maybe we can just keep the tv off all night and they'll never know it's even on! hey i can dream can't i? ok. off to the land of elementary schoolers!
hugs
r

cool idea!

hey if you have extra time on your hands and you like to write and you enjoy the month of november, i have found the opportunity for you!

there is something called national novel writing month. where you write a 50,000 word novel in a month (about 175 pages) the goal is quantity, not quality. check out the website,www.nanowrimo.org, and think about it. i'm going to decide if i have the time to do it or not. it would definitely take some time commitment. i mean 50,000 words in 30 days is what? about 1700 words a day, which is 3.5 pages? oh it sounds so fun! i'm a huge geek, but it sounds like fun to me. i think i'm going to check out my schedule and see what i can figure out. you should all join me!

you're getting sleepy

i'm so freaking tired. i haven't slept all night since saturday. the receptionist said to take some tylenol pm or something tonight just so i can sleep. sigh. so today you get quotes. one from my starbucks cup (which is apparently not big enough to wake me up) and one from my quote book that's on my desk.

"You can learn a lot more from listening than you can from talking. Find somenoe with whom you don't agree in the slightest and ask them to explain themselves at length. Then take a seat, shut your mouth, and don't argue back. It's physically impossible to listen with your mouth open." John Moe (coffee cup qoute)

"Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart." Myla Kabat-Zinn

have a good wednesday. get some sleep for me.

why live a life of faith?

According to Wikipedia a Crisis of faith is a term commonly applied to periods of intense doubt and internal conflict about one's preconceived beliefs or life decisions.
I don't think I've ever had a crisis of faith. I've never had a period of time where I didn't believe in God. I've had times where, to quote a movie I can't remember*, "I'm not mad at God, I just don't want to talk to him right now." That line stuck with me because it's so true of my life. It was at the time and it is now. When things happen that suck, I think my first response is to wonder why, and then because I am a person of faith I move to knowing that it's part of a plan that I'm not in charge of. I have to take comfort in that or I don't know how I'd get through the day. I know that's not a sentiment that's shared by everyone, and that's fine, but for me it's a fundamental part of who I am. I was thinking about this last night and then today because a friend of a friend committed suicide over the weekend. I really didn't know her, I had met her once at a party and had a great time talking to her, but that's really it. And yet I find myself wondering why, why she felt like she needed to go. It is similar to how I felt when grampy died suddenly, when we found out dad had cancer, when 9-11 happened, every time I talk to a client, everytime someone is killed in a battlezone, when I watched the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It's a question that I think any person of faith struggles with, how can you still believe in God when all these terrible things are happening? For me the answer is both simple and complex. The simple answer is that I know that God exists because there's something else there; in the silence, in the trees, in the conversations with friends, in shared pain and shared celebration. Psalm 46:10 says "Be still, and know that I am God." When I'm sitting, thinking, praying, crying, trying to figure out why things are happening, I know I'm not doing it alone, and that I don't have to do it alone. For me I couldn't do it alone. This life and this world are too complex, too dangerous, too heartbreaking to go it alone. I need all the help I can get to make it through and to understand it. Friends, family, strangers, nature, community and faith are what I need to keep going. The easy part is seeing God in the community I've created for myself. The hard part is seeing God in the pain and suffering that some members of that community have to face. To use an overused phrase 'Everything happens for a reason.' I would interpret that as 'Everything happens according to God's plan.' Someone once said "You want to know how to make God laugh? Tell him your 5 year plan." Because you can plan every nanosecond of every day, but you don't really know what's going to happen. People come and go from our lives and we may not know why until years later. We have chance encounters with people all the time and never know what impact we make on their lives. There's a neat book called "Einstein's Dreams" that talks about the ways that our lives are all interconnected. It's a really neat little book that(if you're a person of faith who overanalyzes) can really point out how intricate God's plan really is. How nothing, good or bad, happens out of pure chance.

I guess that's all for today. I've rambled long enough. I'm hoping it was coherent rambling and I apologize if it's not. Enjoy your Tuesday nights. Love you all, hugs, r




*if anyone recognizes the quote, please tell me what movie (maybe tv show?)it's from! It's driving me crazy that I can't remember it.