Caterwauling

I wish sometimes to have a schedule of which pastor will be speaking at church, because I would probably opt to skip certain sermons. Today would have been one of them.

Don’t get me wrong — I dig the lessons. I like the atmosphere. I even think the guy’s a good speaker. But the only time we start hearing about hellfire and brimstone is when this one gets his hands on the microphone, and it always manages to turn me off more than it manages to scare me.

Today we talked about lying and all its various forms, such as breaking promises, insincere flattery, withholding the truth (or half-assing it) for whatever reason, exaggeration, etc. I’m certainly guilty of all of the above. I want to be authentic, but I’m also not going to make somebody cry when I can use the opportunity to make them, if not feel better, then at least not let them dwell on stuff.

Besides, doesn’t everyone in this world need a little more encouragement? Positive reinforcement works wonders. Believe me — I’ve been at the receiving end of enough “constructive criticism” and guilt trips to know.

Part of today’s lesson is that lying is not conducive to your spiritual journey. They used a Bible quote about taking off your old self (i.e., your heathen ass) and becoming someone God would approve of. The analogy was “like taking off your Wal-Mart clothes and going shopping at Hollister.” And that irritated me for some reason. I like the occasional item I pick up from Wal-Mart. Hollister isn’t my style or my budget.

It reminded me of an old job full of people to whom I would NEVER look for inspiration or advice, and yet they felt the need to convey to me that I needed some sort of makeover. Yeah, like any of them had room to talk. And hey, you want me to be different — feel FREE to pay for it. *kick*

Where was I? Grr. Anyway. Basically everyone who even tells so much as a white lie to spare someone’s feelings is destined to burn in hell, and yet, even if you don’t say a word when you supposedly should, you’ll be in the pit of burning sulfur with them. So, essentially, all of us in middle management know where WE’RE ending up!!!

You know, I tell the truth at home all the damn time. And all it gets me is aggravation. I’m well-aware of the repercussions of saying EXACTLY what runs through your mind not only the second it appears, but also how much FUN it is when you bottle it up and something else sets off a torrent of “oh and BY THE WAYs.”

One last thing that got stuck in my craw was the reading of one of the Proverbs, that “Give me neither poverty nor riches; but give me only my daily bread.” That conflicts mightily with the Law of Attraction. That’s why when you get on a suck streak, things continue sucking because you’re attracting the status quo because you can’t see far enough beyond it.

I think others’ little black clouds have impacted me too much over the years. I think I’m happy. I want to be happy. Fuck it, I want to be happier. I want to be so fucking happy that you can whack me with a pinata stick and a whole shitload of sunshine and rainbows comes out.

But therein lies the eternal challenge — keeping all eyes on the sunshine and being able to look beyond those little dark clouds. Not just peeking at the sun — fixating on it full-force and not even acknowledging what’s blocking your full-on view of it. Feeling the warmth even when you can’t see that giant yellow orb. Envisioning it shining on you even in the black of night.

I guess I’ve gotten into a suck streak for the past few weeks. Per the law of vibrational energy, I’ve attracted it and continue to attract it. At this point, all I want for Christmas is a strong hopeful vibe. Just one good — nay, fucking AMAZING — thing to happen so that it will generate more of the same.

In any case, one thing I TOTALLY agreed with in the service was that we need to get rid of the liars and the soul-suckers and the assholes in our lives — that we need to pursue relationships only with authentic people. And sweet Jesus and holy mother of God, I sing hallelujah to that one. Attracting great people usually attracts MORE great people who are leading good lives and that goodness can rub off. So, if anyone out there is having a success streak, would you let me rub you (heh — I really didn’t mean it THAT way) for good luck of my own?

I might has well have just gone “out” out yesterday, for all the money I ended up spending.

Fuck you, Montgomery County “Safe Speed,” for the ticket and the late fee. You’ll get it even later now. I’d like to issue you a cordial invitation to eat me. 😉

Speaking of things that make my crotch twitch, I went to Toys R Us to get a gift for a kid who has the misfortune to be under the care of Human Services. And what a clusterfuck that turned out to be. Not just the rude people in the toy store who bang into you with their carts and can’t control their children’s screaming (why take the fruit of your loins, for whom you are shopping for Christmas, into the toy store? Leave them home. Or at least, leave them in the car. Or in front of one), but have you ever tried shopping for a kid you don’t know?

I mean, I had all kinds of educational sugar plums dancing through my head — LeapFrog and the like. But these sorts of things count on the gift recipient being in a house with a TV or a computer. And you can’t count on that. Hell, it’s not even like you can buy them a DVD of whatever popular kids’ movies there are out there because they may not have a DVD player, either.

One thing I knew going into this, you don’t want to give toys that have a lot of parts to them. Like the awesome kits with cars or dinosaurs or robots that have 20 billion tiny bits that a kid can choke on, but more importantly, if this kid is getting moved a lot between foster homes and/or between foster parents and birthparents, then you really need to focus on one bigger thing that they can take and it will sort of be one of their “constant” items as they leave old homes behind.

That said, I went with a big remote-control truck. And I bought the batteries, too. Because it’s rude to give a kid (or a woman) a product that requires lots of batteries but they can’t play with it until someone runs to the store. Have you ever turned on a toy and had no functioning batteries in the house? Gah. My grandmother always used to talk about women who “rode the bathtub rim.” Shit, I can see where that might be an option in a moment of desperation!

What I find odd about this toy drive was that we’re expected to wrap our gifts, but we can’t put a gift tag on it. Which is bizarre because when I was in human services, you didn’t want people wrapping things because you didn’t want to give little Timmy what you THOUGHT was a Magic 8-Ball and then find out that it was a delicious 8-ball of CRACK that his mom certainly enjoyed. 😉

But even though you can’t put a gift tag on it, you’re supposed to indicate who the gift is for. The hell? I bought red sparkly paper with glittery presents on it — no place to write on that. Besides, the only marker I have is RED.

Anyway, against my better judgment, I went shopping for me afterward. And I found a suitcase that matches a weekender bag and a laptop bag that I already have. I was so flippin’ annoyed, because I have been looking for this particular suitcase for more than a year. And yesterday, I found it. Yarr.

Of course I bought it. Food for the next week? Fuck it — I’m going away in February and I will be able to use my new suitcase!

And you KNOW if I didn’t buy it when I saw it (and it WAS the only one on the shelf), I’d be regretting it. So yay, I finally have a matching set of luggage again, and one that’s NOT black, because it’s nice to know I won’t be fighting with people that, “No, that really IS my bag — who the hell else has hot pink tags and purple ribbons all over their stuff?”