and if you could see what it is that i see

whew. what a week since i last posted.
i sing for joy at the work of Your hands
just some food for thought, and what i was thinking about myself on a walk i took today. i havent done too much- dropped the kids off, did some light grocery stock-up, came back home, walked to rob's for a change, cleaned, and took the long way home. it took me about an hour to get home, as opposed to the 15 minute walk i had on my way there. today began in a bitter-cold spurt, and as i waited outside a classroom in the chilled morning air so i could talk to a teacher, i thought to myself.....

boy, my toes are cold.

and no, mom, i wasnt just wearing birkenstocks. actually, i was wearing the smartwool socks grandma got me, and sneakers! hah.

Over the weekend, julia came for a night. on saturday mandy and the kids and i went into auckland to visit mandy's brother dirk, and then went to Victoria Park to look around the shops and see if the vendors were packin anything worthwhile. Julia met us there and we squashed into the car to drive across the bay and back to whangaparaoa, singing and laughing almost the entire way back. J handled it pretty well :) When we got back, Mandy took the kids to rob’s for the night, so J and I had the house to ourselves! Quite an unexpected surprise, but it was nice. We made spaghetti-meat-sauce and rice. Then we decided to scope out Whangaparaoa’s nightlife, and headed down the road to check out 3 bars in all for the night.

Mind you, these bars were anything but city-type bars. The first one we went to was called Kinja, and is a Japanese restaurant and bar. The first thing we noticed upon arriving was that we were the only people under 50. But Julia saw that they had a beer on tap that she likes- Monteethes or something to that effect- and so we decided to have a drink. She ordered at the bar, but when the bartender asked me what I wanted, I said I’d like to see a drink menu. In response, he said in a rather agitated, condescending tone which was neither necessary nor becoming of him, “I’m too busy to make drinks right now…” and something else snide which I’ve pushed from my memory. I was a bit stunned, because it was my first time approaching a bartender… and their job is to serve people and NOT be too busy for customers… and he was just plain rude! Needless to say, I did not become a patron of Kinja that night. We sat down and had a chuckle about it, and Julia drank her beer. A waiter-type came and set two plates of neatly-cut fruit in front of us (mandarins, kiwi, nashi pear, pineapple) and we thought, well, the fruit is redeeming at least, even if the attitudes of the employees are lacking. Just as we were about to leave, the bartender was clearing tables a bit (oh yes, so busy right?) and came over to take J’s glass since he could see she was almost done. Then he saw the fruit plates and in a passive-aggressive way informed us, smiling and faking playing nice, that he could see we got fruit, and that that fruit wasn’t meant for us, and then even had the gall to remark something about how I got free fruit while I bought nothing. Hah, I would have bought something if you’d have waited on me! Enough said.

We continued into the center of Whangaparaoa where we checked out Babalu’s and Imbibe. We spent the most time at Babalu’s, where Julia bought me a drink and I had my first-ever encounter with a bouncer- which went smoothely enough, because we weren’t doing anything wrong. He just checked our IDs. When we entered the building, everyone was watching the All Blacks rugby game (vs Ireland… All Blacks won) on a huge screen against the wall. Once that was over, The lights went out, the music came up, and most people drifted over towards the three pool tables at the far end of the place. J and I took issue with the fact that Babalu’s (and Imbibe as well) was way too big- there was so much empty space which gave both venues an air of deadness. I think of bars as packed places whether the actual room has lots of or very little space. They’re exciting partially because of spatial reasons- people or tables or this or that fill the area and make it seem like it’s the place to be, give it intimacy. Babalu’s, especially, was like a local concert venue- pretty large, leaving room for potential packed houses… but inevitably poorly attended. However, set up near the entrance to the place was what looked to be an inflated, fair-type attraction- along the same vein as the big blow-up gladiator ring you might find at a fair or at Gordon’s Harvest Fest ;) Only, this intrigue had a bucking bronco theme. Can you imagine people who have been drinking clambering up onto the blown-up rubber platform, straddling a cow-spotted mass of...??... and fighting to hold on as it increases in speed? At full velocity it threatens to inflict whiplash, I’m sure of it. The…. thing itself was an hour’s worth of entertainment, but the guy running it- New Zealand’s very own 60-year-old cowboy- was almost as good in his tight, belted pants, tucked in denim shirt, snowy white handlebar moustache and sideburns, and (of course) straw cowboy hat.
We lasted at Imbibe for all of 10 minutes. We walked in, pushed through the crowd: there actually was a crowd at this one right up near the bar, and this was encouraging, but in the grand scheme of the entire room it was still quite pitiful-looking. But we decided to get waters, sat in front of one of those fake fireplaces (Julia was freezing), and soon headed for home. She made us white russians and we chilled out in front of the tv watching “The First $20 Million is the Hardest…” or something like that- one of the worst movies I’ve ever sat through. I also recently viewed A History of Violence with Viggo Mortensen, because I wanted to check out something with an actor from Lord of the Rings- that is, I watched until I could take no more. It was neither compelling nor appropriate to be seen by these eyes; even if it hadn’t been graphically sexual, I wouldn’t have had much desire to continue on after a while. Enough was enough.

Church the next day dealt with Hell. As I’ve told some of you, I have never heard a more straightforward, honest, gentle yet firm sermon or talk given on a more taboo topic. To put it simply, Hell is a taboo topic among humankind- we ridicule it in our movies and media, simplify it to this place with fire and a funny looking red demon hopping up and down and cackling, waving a trident and thrashing his tail. In Whangaparaoa, there’s even a pizza place called Hell, and as you might imagine all of the items on the menu have “something to do” with “Hell”... the phone number even has 666 at the end of it. But the reality is that it exists, and that most people are going there. The sermon convicted me, really deeply got to me, because never have I wished for someone to go to Hell, no matter the differences we might share. But through Tim’s talk I realized that most of the people in this world will end up there. We didn’t discuss much about the physicality of Hell, what it’ll look like and such, but we did read some scripture in which Jesus talks about Hell. In the Bible Hell is described as a place of torment, anguish… and ultimately, persisting loneliness. In Hell you are eternally separated from God, let alone other people- but the God part is all that matters at that point. Before and after services, the church was abuzz with approval of the topic at hand, and both the service before the one I went to as well as my own service seemed to appreciate the discussion. I bought a recording and will hopefully be able to share it with some of you. I know listening to a sermon for an hour or so can be boring but you should ask me about it and give it a listen, at least for a little bit.

Today in the grocery store, the song that goes, “Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance; I’m gonna praise You, I’m gonna praise You”. Interesting that American Christian music not only makes it over here, but into the music rotation at major grocery store chains.

oh! i meant to inform the public before, but now that i've remembered...: i was by myself in shakespear park last week, and i was walking along the path after about 3.5 hours of hiking and exploring when i came up to a flock of sheep milling about. i stopped in my tracks, eyeing one that was standing and staring blankly in my direction, made doubly sure that i was alone, and recited the bah-ram-ewe chant.. you know, just to make sure i wasnt missing anything. if sheep really can talk and that's all we have to say to cue them, it's worth a try.

Ooh, they’re selling bags of golden kiwis (8 or 9 in each) for 49 cents!! That’s amazing! In the US that’d be like 30 cents!

Aright, I’m going to leave it at that. In a word doc, this is about 3 pages long.
Love and blessings!