ah-ha

Spring is sprung
The grass is riz
I wonder where the birdies is

The bird is on the wing they say,
but that's absurd,
I always thought the wing was on the bird!

A favourite rhyme of my papa's. For some reason, right now, I find myself thinking of him, and missing him so much it hurts. I guess it is with milestones that I miss those I love but see no longer, even more. First time driving, first kiss, first job, first home, and now the first time I've sold my home. I wonder what he would say? I'm happy about it - so I guess I do know what he'd say - he'd be happy for me, and I get one of those patented winks.

By the way - I have dirt... I have conditionally sold my condo. Just have to have the lawyer verify the status certificate and were golden.

I plan on not making my bed and leaving dishes on the counter - just because I can - and I don't have to show the place tomorrow from 10-11am, like was booked! Yippee! I can sleep in!

It is really interesting to sense the emotions that have been coursing through my body today. My cousin brought up something on her blog about when do you cry. I really had to think about it, for it had been a long time since I had a real good cry. I should have waited to respond to her - I would have had a much better point of reference after this afternoon. I was shocked by the first offer - absolutely dumbfounded that she could start off so low! I didn't believe it. Then furious with the response to my counter offer. Then I came to the conclusion that it is my first home and I'm overly sensitive to everything about it - I have loved this place immensely. I wondered what I was doing. I have not been accepted by any diocese yet. I only have my interview on June 5th - why am I taking this step without the certainty of knowing the next step? Then I was ranted and raved and cried and prayed and shook my fists in utter frustration. I thought of my spiritual director and of my course on prayer and hauled out my journal. I wrote feverishly on the pages in messy, writing with the occasional explicative thrown in there in BLOCK CAPITALS, just for emphasis. And as I wrote, I gained a wonderful perspective. You can actually see when I began to relax into a decision. My writing is not so fevered and the letters stay in the lines. Then as quickly as it began, it was over. A wave of contentment began to slowly grow over me. I called my real estate agent back over, and we signed the deal, and that feeling, like warm honey, filled me and gave me a great sense of peace and a wonderful release. I think it was the word "Chattel" and having to sign them over to someone else that I enjoyed the most. Sounds to me almost like the stages of grief - grieving the loss of my first home, the loss of this piece of my life, the change in circumstances and the prospect of becoming a student again.

Whatever it was - wow. What started out as a day I dreaded, became one that I have enjoyed immensely. Thanks be to God!

Offer number one!

I got home from class to see sticky notes on my door and a business card shoved into the door jam... my real estate agent (my friend from church, and fellow acolyte...) came by with the news that there was an offer on my condo coming through! My mind starts to race and my heart begins to pound... this is really real! I tear open the door and rush to the phone to call Jon. He picks up in the middle of the first ring, we exchange pleasantries and he comes over to take a look at the contract. I look at the first page... scanning to find the offer price, and before I realize it, the words escape my lips...
"Really... well they can just kiss my ass!" Perhaps not the kindest thing - but neither was the offer! It was a full 16,000 less than my asking price. So instead of getting angry (or angrier I should say) I thought - let the games begin! There is a very good reason that I was a mediocre sales rep - and precicely deals like this show why...

However - good news - they have until tomorrow at midnight to accept or counter again, if their counter is as insulting, I'm making some changes to the structure of the deal that they won't like! Hmm - that sounds more like a threat than I mean - but it's been on the market for 15 days - and one exactly like mine (but with a park view) sold for my asking price yesterday! So I'm definately fairly priced!

On to other things. Class is interesting, the intersection of politics and religion (specifically the rise of the religious right in Canada and the US) is an interesting point of discussion. The influence of the Christian right can be summed up in a comment on the prospects of the Conservative Party by the Edmonton Journal (December 5, 2003, p. A16): "The [social conservative] bogeymen won't go away just because they'll be hidden from public view inside a new Conservative Party. They'll still be there, under the bed, waiting for a chance to spring up and spout their offensive anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigration, pro-gun, pro-death penalty views." Perhaps this seems a bit harsh, however the recent censoring of media coverage as dead soldiers are returned from abroad, and from the clearing of the press gallery outside the legislature, and only allowing certain reporters to ask certain questions, there seems to be a lot of secrecy surrounding the Prime Minister’s actions that give reason for concern.

Stephen Harper - a sheep in wolf's clothing - even he would appreciate that analogy! Harper and Bush make strange bedfellows (and strangely enough - that notion would make them both cringe... even if only on principal!)

Mud... glorious Mud

I had an interesting weekend. I spent Saturday playing in a friends garden - pulling weeds and getting covered in mud - hey - people pay a lot of money for mud treatments... OK, so it isn't usually combined with dandelions - but my way is much cheaper! After church on Sunday I took my parish commendation and priest assessment with me for a drive and dropped them off at the Diocesan office in London. I went to my friends new (actually only new to him... it's very far from being new!) trailer in a campground just outside Petrolia. He and his 3 kids and I spent the night in the conversion trailer. We had burgers, roasted marshmallows, sat around the campfire and sank into... you guessed it... more mud. It was a lot of fun though!

It's LUCAN, not LUCKNOW!

So... Classes have started for the summer. Religion and Politics, interesting combination, it's a really small class of 5 with two professors - the Dean and a former NDP MP are teaching it. Only two of us did our preparation for the second class, so I was forced into doing much more talking than I am used to - I know... it's good for me - doesn't mean I don't miss my fly on the wall impersonation that I do in other classes! I also got confirmation for my other class at the end of June. I'm off to Huron College in London Ontario to do a course through Queens Theological College - yes, the red tape and university bureaucracy was fun to get through! It's a course on Rural Ministry and taught by a priest in the Diocese of Huron who has spent the past 15 years or so in rural two or three point parishes. It should be interesting - classes start at 8:45am and go until 8:30pm with breaks for lunch and dinner. I will also be living on campus with my classmates (and the prof). She has suggested that our first outing on Monday night be to buy some communal groceries for breakfasts and lunches for the week - sounds like small town community to me already! We then have a field trip to a local rural parish. She gave an outline of the course and in her note, also named her home city as Lucan Ontario, and in doing this she unwittingly solved a mystery for me! I had never heard of Lucan Ontario before. Now, I have the bible from my great grandfathers ordination to the priesthood on Whitsunday June 8, 1919 at Holy Trinity Church, in a town that I had always been told was Lucknow (since that is where my great uncle said they once lived...). The writing is in old calligraphy pen ink, I had a hard time understanding how this could say Lucknow - no matter how I tried, there was no "k" in the city name. There is also no Holy Trinity Church in Lucknow - it's St. Paul's Trinity - so I just assumed perhaps that there had been a name change and they kept the Trinity part.... it was after all almost 90 years ago! But it turns out it wasn't Lucknow, it was Lucan and there is a Holy Trinity Church in Lucan! Ta Da! I'm going to see if we are going to go to Lucan on our field trip - it's not that far from London about 24 kilometers - I would love to see another church he served in!

MLS magic!

So - it's for sale... anybody wanna buy a condo? Kidding (kinda!)
What an exhausting thing this has been. It is now de-cluttered, dusted, washed, vacuumed, scrubbed and polished! This will be one of the few product endorsements you may see on this blog... that Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is truly Magic! It got rid of 15 year old dried on sticker glue, a scuff on my paint and it whitened the tile grout on my bathroom floor (actually reminded me of that tooth whitening grid you see on tubes of toothpaste now... I think I've gone from an 8 to a 1... it's just sparkling!)
Jon is planning an agent open house on Saturday, so hopefully it will go well - average days on the market is around 30...

(P.S. I have still forgotten the punch line of my joke from the last post. I'll get it soon - patience young grasshopper!)

survival of the fittest...

I made it. wow.
Had a great time at Carolyn's, we BBQ'ed, drank g&t's, chatted, laughed, and watched some ever irreverant 'family guy' episodes... i'd never seen it, but enjoyed the off colour humour! Jesus and Moses make some interesting appearances...
This morning came way too early, but I made it for the 8:30 BCP service and by the end, the tylonol kicked in and I was good. I stayed for the 10:30.
St. G's will never be the same...
I hadn't heard, but apparently there was a fire last weekend at Christ Church Mimico, so they are going to other parishes until it is repaired - thank goodness that is possible! They came and brought their praise band - into our smells and bells and kneeling and canting - what a truly amazing mix. It was so wacky it worked. Electric guitars and keyboards played by teenagers in jeans and t-shirts, next to the white clad acolytes lighting candles.
There was a little girl in one of the front rows who asked (in a voice that only little kids can get away with) "Mommy, why are they lighting candles - it's not dark in here?" I love kids!
I'm not sure which was more surprising the band for the St. G's crowd, or the incense for the Christ Church crowd. I have to admit, when the Thurifer was censing everyone, my eye was drawn to the mother of that little girl, who was staring in wide eyed amazement (mouth actually hanging open) and unsure what kind of a place she had walked into. I hope she felt comfortable, but I also hope it opened her eyes to the many ways in which people worship. I know their presence did that for many of the Kingsway crowd!

I took back the mitre box and saw to Uncle Bert tonight, and sat at the kitchen table, as is our custom, and put the world to rights over tea and cookies. Don't think we solved anything, but we did get in a few good jokes - I have to tell you his addition to the joke that has been circulating for a few years: How many (insert denomination here) does it take to change a lightbulb? For reference, I think the Anglican one was 10. 1 to change the bulb, and 9 others to form a committee for the preservation of that bulb. And so on. Well his was this:

How many Christian Scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
Stay tuned... answer to follow...

...

Hate to say it, but nerves are setting in. I promised the Diocese that I'd be sending in my application by mid May so that they could get it out to the "Applicant Discernment Committee" before my interview on June 5th. I still have one essay and one long-ish question to answer... So I should do that today, but instead, I'm taking a lady from church to the store to buy some new spring clothes (wheel-trans is so slow in this city!) and then I'm off to Carolyn's to celebrate her birthday - backyard BBQ and a bit of wine - she's the shooter guru, so I'm mildly afraid since I'm the only acolyte on for the 8:30 tomorrow... bells can be difficult to ring with a hangover... so I'll have to be good!

Elevators....

Elevator conversations are always interesting ones. If you're the one having it, it often involves veiled attempts to conceal the true meaning of the conversation in order to obscure it from the others standing in the 5 foot square box as you travel from floor to floor. If you are the one on the outside of the conversation you do one of two things.
Ignore it - the harder of the two options.
Or - Try to inconspicuously figure out what the others are talking about, while hiding your smile when you make the connection so that they don't know that you have understood what they were talking about. (this is particularly fun when another language is being spoken)

Don't know about you, but I'm the curious type and often fall into the second category - partly because - I've been in the uncomfortable position when trying the first option and having someone ask me a question - and I'm not paying attention - but it truth be told, mostly because I'm a bit nosy!

But then there are the conversations that are not actually conversations but jokes that the punch line is spoiled when one person gets off the elevator. This morning I came to work to hear "You gotta here this joke... Ok... so there was this guru standing in the middle of a desert, he was older, and his skin was leathery from all of the exposure to the sun. The wind was whipping around him, picking up sand as it swirled up and all around him. You could just see his face, then all of a sudden the wind stopped and you saw him standing there naked, except for his really long hair...." then they got off the elevator. I'll never know the end of that joke (and I'm sorry to say that neither will you!). But it is interesting - we see and hear snippets of things all day long. Sometimes we talk plainly, but more often it is in veiled tones, innuendos, jokes or analogies. It's frustrating when we don't get to hear the end of the story, but more often than not - you learn less from plain speaking than more epxressive, analogies and poetic forms!