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Yeah, so the electricity in my house almost killed me last night.
My good friend Suzie is staying with me for the next several days. She got in last night and after we’d talked for a while, I decided to be a good hostess and make lemon-poppy seed muffins for us to enjoy for breakfast this morning. And you know when you’re dumping the batter into the muffin cups and the batter can splash a little and not end up in the cup? Well, I tried to wipe most of it up but apparently didn’t succeed because after 10 minutes in the oven, you could smell a little burning. It wasn’t anything serious, just a smell. No smoke anywhere in the house, but then I heard this very loud beep. One I am unfamiliar with and hadn’t heard since I moved in here. But it doesn’t take long for me to realize it was the smoke alarm. It only beeped once, and as there was no smoke in the house, I thought maybe it was the battery warning me it was getting low. No big deal, right? I am a self sufficient woman who can take care of herself.
So I drag out the step ladder, twist and pop off the alarm from it’s holder and begin to look for the battery. (Why I did this instead of hitting this test button I’ll never know.) Mind you, Suzie is simply watching me up on the ladder, curious to know if her friend might burn the house down with her lemon poppy seed muffins. Then I notice the alarm has two wires attached to it. At the same time I notice this, they come off.
Hm. Logic, at this point, has failed me because I am still searching for the battery not even really wondering why there are TWO COPPER WIRES HANGING OUT OF MY CEILING. But it gets worse. I then notice the test button and realize the stupidity of what I’ve just done. I read the instructions on the under side of the alarm that tell me where to put the WIRES THAT ARE HANGING OUT OF MY CEILING. So I pull the wires down so I have more slack to attach them to the alarm.
See, this is where it got bad. Sparks flew into my hair, all over and in front of me, landing on crocheted round thingy (a gift from my mother years ago) that’s on top of the cabinet that sits just below the alarm. And all the ceiling lights go off. It all happens in slow motion as I see the sparks land on the cloth and my heart stops. Just for a little bit. And all I can think is Isn’t it ironic that my smoke alarm is what’s going to cause this fire?
There was no fire. The alarm could hardly be blamed if there was. My goodness, I work for a lighting company. I’m not an electrician but I know enough to switch a breaker off whenever wires are being touched by stupid humans.
Because the ceiling lights in the vicinity went out, I check the breaker box and it thankfully flipped (knowing someone like me would someday move in). Ceiling lights restored, I decide to take the alarm to work and talk to one of our electricians to make sure I was reading the instructions correctly. I didn’t trust anything I was capable of at this point. I tuck my tail between my legs, grateful I didn’t kill myself or Suzie (who at this point isn’t remotely concerned because she was looking for her contact case, only to realize she’d left it at home.) I am happy she is as laid back as I am, and had something to distract her. Or she may never come stay with me again.
What really sucks? The muffins weren’t even that good.
What I’m listening to: Shawn Colvin’s A Few Small Repairs (And no, I’m not kidding. The irony is not lost on me.)
The article I linked to below is of the kind I’m seeing a lot of in the last year or so. Maybe they’ve been out there longer, I just never noitced. I don’t know. Here’s is something I feel compelled to point out:
“I don’t have a problem with Christianity or with Jesus. Those are good things. But people who act uncaring and intolerant? That’s what I can’t stand. People who talk about love and then act with hate.”
I attended a church in college that when the pastor spoke about God’s love, he didn’t see it as being all roses and chocolates (that’s the girl version of love I’ve just inserted, not his, btw.) Love isn’t just about being nice, he would say, sometimes being nice is showing truth. Sometimes God’s love is tough. Sometimes his truth makes us feel unloved or condemned, but it’s never that way. God’s love is there when we see our sin, it’s spilled all over the floor, and he and only he is able to mop it up.
The tough part about accepting all this is that God’s truth – and revealed in his Word – is subjective. It’s open to interpretation – not because he is (he is the same “yesterday, today and forever” – but because our minds don’t work that way. God made us to question things, to search. There are pros and cons to that. It’s hard for a person to wrap their minds about a loving God who hates the things that destory our hearts. He cherishes our hearts and knows what is best for us. And when that includes a big “no-no” we turn into children who’ve just had our blankie taken away. We like it, so we don’t want it taken away, but mom and dad knew it was better that we don’t suck our thumbs curled up in said blanket when we are 15 years old. We don’t want hate in our lives. Ever. It seems wrong somehow. Without hate, is there love? And who am I to hate what isn’t mine?
But the thing that gets me about the article is what it says about listening. How many times have we tried to share our faith with someone and not listened to their point of view? How many times have we turned someone away angry because of this? How many times have we (and when I say we I’m talking about any heartful and passionate child of God who loves all that God created and just like him, doesn’t want anyone to live a life less abudant than he intended) fulfilled the stereotype we have for being fire-and-brimstone hate-mongers? I know it’s too many.
Everyone wants to be heard – it’s part of human nature. I’ve learned unless I know where I person is coming from, I will never understand their heart, and I can only get there by listening. When I am blessed enough to catch a glimpse of their heart, I can see what God sees. I can share from my own heart, not about what’s right or wrong but about how I’ve been changed from inside out. Over and over again, each day. That’s more true to most people that any law in Leviticus.
What I’m listening to: Passion’s Everything Glorious
If you thought Christians would listen
I had to share it now. It’s too good. More thoughts on it later.
I went to see a production of Macbeth a while back. (A line of which this blogger takes her blog name – this isn’t a reflection that I ‘m obessed with the play. I do think it’s a masterpiece of literature, but the quote is much more about where I was at in my life when I started this thing than about the play)
It was in this really great old building that used to be a church. They converted it into a community theatre back in the 80s, put amazing stadium seating in and it made the whole place feel a little like the beautiful Orpheum Theater in Omaha (but on a much smaller scale).
What was so interesting to me was that they set the play in post-apocalyptic times. Whenever is comes up in conversation I get this strange look from people who cannot believe someone would dare to do Shakespeare in anything other than Elizabethan times. Which is crazy… the themes in his work are timeless so why bind them to a particaular time in history just because that’s when they claimed to have been
written? And why people would think that Macbeth is an odd choice to do that with obviously hasn’t read the play.
The main theme in Macbeth is how destruction occurs when power and ambition isn’t accountable to any moral absolute. Hello – what do people think it’s going to be like after the apocalypse (and before Christ’s reign, obviously)?
Power is a strange thing, isn’t it? It’s living and breathing, can take on life and take over a life. Every day we all try to exhibit power over one person or another in ways so small we might not even notice. But why do we do it? In the end, what does it really get us? Do we gain happiness? High self-esteem? Love? Riches? Or any other thing that the American culture might deem fighting tooth and nail for?
Or we simply let it take control until everything and everyone in our path is demolished and we have gone quietly insane?
Just some food for thought.
What I’m listening to: Chris Tomlin’s Live from Austin Music Hall
I’ve got this friend who grew up in South Carolina. She’s hilarious. Probably one of the funniest people I’ve ever known; my sides ache when she tells her stories, they are so funny. Maybe it’s the accent, maybe it’s her laugh, I don’t know, but I enjoy it nevertheless.
Her landlord (which used to also be my landlord before I moved out in February) raised the rent $110 and only gave us 27 days notice. I had already planned to move out for other reasons; I also had a strong feeling he would raise the rent because I knew what my old landlord was asking for the building. I began looking for new places in January and just in time for the rent increase he planned for March. I was no longer under a lease, so it was not a problem when I moved out, but my friend still was. The landlord agreed to her moving out a month early because May is an easier month to rent out. College kids are usually moving after classes are over and he had another apartment open at the same time, so it saved him putting two separate ads in the newspaper. Seemed like a good thing, right?
Well, he didn’t rent the place in time for June. So he’s threatening to sue.
So here’s the confusing thing to me: It was okay for her to move out if he had the place rented but if he didn’t it wasn’t okay? Legally, he could sue her for June’s rent and her deposit because she broke the lease, but he wouldn’t be threatening this if he had it rented. So I don’t understand where this guy is coming from. Raising the rent that much is something he had to do, but not giving proper notice is completely illegal. No one in the building fought him on it (it affected five of the six people living there because our leases all ran out years ago) because we all just chose to move out. My friend is the last one remaining and she is, I believe, just catching him at the worst time possible. He’s stressed out over having that many empty apartments all at once and I have no doubt it’s strapped him financially. But I cannot feel sympathy for a guy who lied to us (in writing) about the average rent in this town, a guy who took a week to fix my neighbor’s heater in the month of December , a guy who enters the apartments without notice and looks around enough to notice mail you have on your desk, a guy who rents a two bedroom to four college girls in a building that doesn’t have enough parking spaces for their cars, doesn’t tell them that so their neighbors continually come home and have no place to park (Man, I’m glad I moved out when I did, just writing about it is making me mad and I fortunally didn’t have to endure any of it.)
I just won’t feel sorry for this guy. I believe you reap what you sow. This guy had six responsible renters – all but one of whom had lived there no less than three years – who took care of their apartment, paid their rent on time, and didn’t cause trouble. We were almost all all career professional and now he gets to rent to college kids (the apartment is close to the University) and have them move out every year or so. He is getting what comes to him. I’m sooooo glad we all moved out.
What I’m listening to: Grant Lee Phillips’s Mobilize
Stephanie Nelson 