And That's How I Found Bird Seed In My Underwear...

Weddings. The very word stirs different emotions in different people. I have already written a blog about why I don’t hate weddings. Let me tell you something that I do hate: strapless dresses. Sure I know that most of them come with those little bitty straps that you can attach in, but they are for all intensive purposes completely useless. Bra straps are not that tiny (which kind of defeats the purpose of having straps at all). Now apparently guys find strapless dresses and tube tops “sexy”. Sure, if shoulders are your thing (I happen to think I have very pretty shoulders) but here is my real problem with these items of clothing: I am not small chested. Maybe you cute little A and B cups can pull off the look, but I don’t care how great your strapless bra is, gravity will always always win. As much fun as constantly having to pull everything up is, I am awkward enough without having to worry about my dress pulling a Janet Jackson (an old reference I realize, but you understand what I mean, so it’s still valid if outdated).

It is wedding season in case you are not aware. The wedding in question was that of my younger brother this past weekend. I was wearing a (you guessed it) strapless dress and in all fairness the bride was kind enough to let me choose my own dress. This is awesome for so many reasons. Firstly, sometimes in an effort to match the wedding colors colorful monstrosities the shade of which should never be on a girl as pasty as I am. Secondly, one dress does not fit all. I am rather…curvy and the matron of honor was pregnant and the other bridesmaid was a lean and fit athletic girl. Yeah…that wouldn’t work if it were one single dress style. So I brought it on myself really. I know this and I will come to terms with it. Thank God for Victoria’s.

I have now been a bridesmaid a total of five times. Yes five. At my now sister’s (and I say that because I hate the term in-law. I love her like a sister and she is a part of my family, ergo, sister’s) bachelorette party one of my friends, I dare say one of my best friends said, “So Alicia, are you working on 27 dresses?” I love her, please don’t misunderstand that, but I wanted to punch her in the mouth. Yes, I am one of those “always a bridesmaid…” girls right now. While we’re at it, this weekend I have caught six, yes six bouquets. Used to be I wouldn’t try, they would just seem to come to me or I would catch it before it hit the ground because the other girls avoided the silly thing. I couldn’t even sit it out because inevitably I get called out and dragged up there. Yes, thank you so much for that wonderful reminder ladies. I somehow have brides that throw it practically right at me, but I didn’t really want to catch it. Now, my competitive drive takes over and I just want to beat everybody else at one of the suckiest games ever invented. By the way, do you know why they throw the bouquet? In medieval times a bride was considered to be especially lucky on her wedding day. This was so strong a belief that at the end of the ceremony the single women of the crow would rush her and try to rip her dress off of her. So the tradition of throwing the bouquet to the single ladies to appease them so they wouldn’t rip the bride’s dress to shreds/ trample her to death (which happened rather frequently back then). So I must be extraordinarily lucky by now or something like that. I’ve kept a few. I think I’ll burn them on my wedding day.

Ah yes, to the title of this whole thing. There is the tradition of throwing rice (which has been changed because apparently birds will blow up if they eat it, which is totally not true and has been proven to be a myth because birds eat that stuff in the wild, but oh well) and now we throw birdseed. I personally prefer blowing bubbles. Why? Bubbles don’t hurt. Birdseed does. (Rice/ birdseed was thrown for luck and to represent fertility in the marriage…in case you were wondering.) So the tradition goes that the friends/ family of the couple makes a tunnel to the car the couple will be taking and the birdseed is thrown. There is one very crucial flaw with this: there are people on the other side of the couple and most people have no aim/ believe it is a practice for MLB. So as these stinging little shards started hitting me, I batted them away and I’m sure I looked a bit like Raoul Duke in the desert. Now batting away birdseed is ridiculously ineffective and inevitably (another curse of strapless dresses and big chests) a decent amount went down my dress. How did it end up in my underwear? Well, I’m not quite sure on that one to be honest. I suppose a combination of most of it getting caught in the top of my dress and perfect timing as the seeds fell had something to do with it. Oh well.

Daddy, can you get me a green apron?

Children say the darndest things. Though I suppose that could be said about anybody, but it pertains particularly to children. "I just wanted to let you know you are such an inspiration to me," the voice that spoke to me now was not a child at all, but a woman in my Zumba class. I stood there in warm leggings and a skirt I use as pajamas most of the time. I was in the middle of grabbing my belly skirt and putting on my hoodie as her soft voice spoke. I did what anybody would do in that situation, I looked around for the person she was talking to. "Me?" I questioned with doubt edging in my voice. This girl, or rather this woman had been in this class nearly as long as I had and while uncoordinated as a three legged dog, she tried so hard. You could tell too, she was shrinking, slowly, but if you'd seen her as many times as I had, you'd notice significant change in her body, she was shrinking and I am in awe of how well this class was working for her. "Yes, you," she continued, "you are so good at this, you are an inspiration to me."

I was stuck dumb as my friend Brittany who was standing with me, smiled and nodded. "Wow, thank you," I managed to stammer out. The large blond woman, pushed her glasses back up her nose and walked away. I, in the meantime, was suspended in a momentary state of disbelief. Nobody had said that to me since I'd had cancer. This woman said it now and why? Because I happen to find a niche in dancing as a form of exercise and I am pretty good at shaking what my Mama gave me? I love Zumba class, while the changes in body are not nearly as noticeable, they are there. My friend Brittany it would make sense to be called an inspiration. She inspires me because she has worked hard and is losing weight so quickly and I'm so glad that I dragged her to try the class with me. Now her siblings come too and having people I know there makes me happy. Zumba is something I've found that I'm good at, good enough to be an 'inspiration'? I don't think so. To be honest, I don't know why she said it. Personally, it makes little if any sense to me. I was flattered and honored, don't get me wrong. It struck me as...well, odd and to be honest, it was a little frightening. People notice me. The very notion is strange. People watch what I do and whatever I do, it causes a response in them, whether that is positive or negative, it is a response. It reminded me that we have eyes on us all the time. Our attitude, the way we carry ourselves, the light that either shines from within us or is dwindling in the dark echoes in the lives of people we never knew we affected.

This brings me to Lily. Lily is the young daughter of a friend of mine that used to be in a small group with me. I adore Lily. She is the embodiment of a precocious little girl. Her Dad, my friend Daniel stood over next to his beautiful wife Samantha as I was arranging the drinks in the case below our pastry case at good old Starbucks. Lily runs over to me. "Hi Alicia," her little voice pipes. It's one of the only time she has managed to remember my name. "Hello Lily," I respond with a smile, remembering the time she looked at me with sleepy eyes as dinner was being made. "Are you tired Lily?" Lily nodded and looked up at me with a question in her eyes that I'm not sure she was sure she could ask, but I knew that look. "Do you want me to hold you for a little bit?" Lily nodded and I picked her up and held her, feeling her little heart beat through my shirt and her breath slow as she fell asleep in my arms. Lily was not tired now, she was full of questions, "What is that?" Lily points to a glass container. "That's green tea." "What's that?" "That's orange juice." "What's that?" "That's chocolate milk, like what you had earlier." "Oh...I like chocolate milk." I chuckled as Lily ran back to her Dad.

I grabbed two trash bags and went to change the trash in the cafe. Picking up the outer container, I noticed Lily look at me in an odd wonder and Daniel, spotting me, came over to talk. Lily snuck up behind him and started to try to lift the trash can on her own. After nearly falling over and several tries she asked, "How'd you do that?" Lily's voice was strained as she was trying to lift up something taller than her. "I eat my fruits and vegetables and I got strong enough just to lift it right up," I replied. The good old eating that stuff will make you strong. Classic. Daniel chuckles. "Do it again," Lily requested. I lifted it up and her eyes get big. Lily stays there as I talk to her Dad, but it is the conversation that happened next that put such a smile on my face that it...inspired me to write this.

"All right, I have to go now. I have to put the trash up," I declared to Lily in a sing song voice. "Where you put it?" Lily asked and I caught Daniel shaking his head. "You see that space back there?" I pointed to our back room and getting on tippie toes to see the door frame, Lily nodded. "That is a special back room you can't go in and in that room at the very back we have a big trashcan that we put all of our trash in," I explained. Of course, like any child she caught the one rule in the whole statement. "I can't go back there?" Lily asked sadly as though I had denied her access to Disney World. "No ma'am," I replied with an odd smile, "only people who work here and have a green apron can go back there." Lily looked at my apron, looked at that back room and smiled as she turned to her Father. "Daddy, can you get me a green apron?"

I laughed outright at the little girl's question and her Dad laughed with me. I don't remember what I said after that, but as I told Lily goodbye and walked into the now slightly more magical feeling back room, what just happened hit me. I looked around me, this little back room was nothing to me. I pass through it every day I work, it was profane at best. However, to that little girl, the room was sacred. It was a place that was special and somewhere she wanted to go if only for the sake that somebody told her she couldn't. Aren't our dreams like that? Isn't Heaven like that? We wear green aprons where I work to identify us as someone who belongs there, someone who supposedly knows what we're doing. Lily wanted to have that identity, of course she could have no idea of what that entailed, of the hours we spend wishing we were somewhere else, of how difficult the identity of the green apron can be to us. Lily could care less about that, Lily wanted to take on our identity so she could go into that back room. I wear the apron and in explaining that the apron is the key to my entry into the room, Lily sees me. Lily wanted what I had. Can I say the same about Christ in my life? Is my light something people notice? Is it something they want? Do I explain with my life how to get where I am going? While our back room at Starbucks is nearly the polar opposite of Heaven, it was the vehicle of my understanding. As much as this was about Lily, it was also about the little girl inside of me.

Some time ago, I reached that point in my life where I realized something was...off. I was missing Heaven by the eleven inches between my head and my heart. I knew what it was to be a Christian, I could do all the motions, say all the right words. Unlike Lily, I knew exactly what my new identity would be, what came with it, I knew what I wanted and I knew how to get there. So I looked up at my Heavenly Daddy and asked Him a question in the same fashion that Lily asked her Father. I asked for the identity of belonging. I wanted to put on the symbol to show the world who I belonged to. The eleven inch gap was closed. I remember feeling like a little girl and I couldn't stop giggling. It was an odd and beautiful freedom. I got to go home at the end of my life and I knew it, for the first time in my life, without a doubt.

Maybe I read far too much into a conversation with a little girl who isn't even as tall as our trash can. Maybe. I tend to do that. God uses weird things like that to teach me the greatest lessons. Maybe it was because I identify with God most as a Father. God is Daddy to me, it is my favorite facet of Him and the one I suppose I cling to the tightest because until the day I die, a part of me will always be the little girl asking to crawl into His lap so He can hold me and I can hear His heart beat. Even when I've made a mess of things, completely botched situations that do not come without their consequences, I can run back to Daddy like the prodigal I am. Daddy takes me in His arms and holds me close and we talk. God is the provider, God is the healer, God understands my every quirk and oddity, He hears the cry of my heart when I too often let it weep in the silence. I am just the little girl that needs her Daddy.

It is that little girl I see reflected in Lily as she lovingly looked up at her Father. "Daddy, can you get me a green apron?"

How a Room Full of Nerds Made My Heart Feel Home

There are certain situations, certain places, certain people that make you sigh, "My heart is home again." The family reunion I recently attended was definitely one of those. However, one of these situations came in a way that I did not expect remotely. Thursday night was the midnight premier of "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" a movie that is based off of a graphic novel series, the sixth and final of which just came out. (You sneaky and clever publicists!) A while back upon viewing a trailer I got excited about this movie. It combined some of my favorite things to watch; graphic novels, fight scenes, video games and nerdy boys. So Tim found the graphic novels and I started looking at what all the hype was about. These graphic novels were clever, they were funny, they were well written. A fellow nerd that I met in Poetry class last semester put together an event: let us gather and watch this movie at midnight.

Through a strange turn of fortunate events, I was able to get hold of tickets to an exclusive pre-screening. So, rushing to finish the newly purchased final book, I met my friend Matty Iden and his brother, surprising my brother with a ticket and we saw the movie...which is awesome by the way. I felt like a bit of a traitor seeing it before the person who had set up the entire get together, but I only had one extra ticket. Seeing the movie only made me more excited for the premier, after all, the tickets I had got for the pre-screening were handed out as a promotion. The midnight showing was for the people who wanted to be there, the people who wanted to see this movie first because they were so excited about it. Then it would be fun, then it would be people who would get the jokes that I was getting and laughing seemingly alone at. So that night after closing, I decided to dress up as a character. The outfit was simple and luckily something I had, after a bit more makeup and some colored hair spray, there I had it. Driving with a smile in my face and a rather disdainful brother in tow, we headed for the meeting place. When I arrived I was welcomed...by the one person at the large table that I actually knew.

Pulling up a chair, I was quickly introduced, including to a girl who, like me, had dressed up as a character. This instantly put me at ease and as conversations buzzed all around me, I found that it was so easy for me to join in. "2011 is going to be a disappointing year in movies? Well the Deadpool movie is coming out." Look of surprise, "You know who Deadpool is?" I can't help but smile as we talk about movies, comic books, anime and a variety of anime and comic books that are being turned into movies and exactly how we felt about it. It was strange for me to be so comfortable around people I had never met before. Despite my typically outgoing nature, I am by nature quite shy. Yet here I was talking to strangers, better yet, guys without a hint of a stutter. It was a strange comfort that I was not used to, but it brought a smile to my face. The theater was quiet when we got there, and getting our seats, more and more people piled in. Then something beautiful happened.

The room was abuzz with laughter and smiles. There were so many groups but people from one group knew the people from another group. I myself knew 5 people who were not a part of the group I came with, which in a theater that size and in a town I don't live in is uncanny. There were shouts of recognition all over and there was even another girl who was 'cosplaying' like myself and the girl who came as Roxie. Yet, despite my slightly strange appearance, I was not stared at like a freak (like the other times I have been to midnight premiers, which I have almost always dressed up for) I was smiled at and given a knowing nod, even winked at...by guys. Oh yeah. There was an overwhelming camaraderie and as the trailers were about to start I leaned in to my friend Jonathon, "I am amongst my own people." He smiled, "It's a good feeling, isn't it?" The trailers started and a thriller came on, a movie that seemed halfway decent until it stated, "From the mind of M. NIGHT SHYMALAN". The echo of boos was not only amusing but unanimous. "Give us back Avatar!" one particular patron shouted. The theater erupted in laughter. Then as the movie itself started, the Universal theme in 8 bit animation, complete with theme music, the whole theater erupted into cheers. I smiled until it hurt. Then Jonathon leaned into me, and what he said struck a chord with me so strong that it inspired this entire blog. "There is SO much love in this room," he said to me. I gasped in the darkness at the sheer truth of it.

Jonathon Hash was right. I looked around in the glimmering light of the screen and it was true. We were all nerds or significant others of nerds. We had that one underlying factor. We were the unpopular kids who at some point had been made fun of at school. We were the weird ones who went to conventions and dressed up as our favorite characters, who knew more about the Marvel and DC universe than how to be in a social situation without being awkward. As we looked at each other, laughing at the same parts, it was understood. As cheesy as it was, this was a safe place, we were among friends, people who understood. Our hearts were home here.

The movie was awesome...again. It really was so much better with people who actually got the jokes. As the credits rolled, there was applause and joyful laughter. Our group (who stayed until after the credits) came out of the theater with smiles on our faces. The ladies who had dressed up with me were gathered and pictures ensued. It was a strange thing to have a large group of people in front of you taking pictures. It is likely one of the closest things I will feel to being famous. Johnathan came in with us and had his friends take pictures. "What's taking so long?" "Well Jonathon, I'm sending you the picture I just took of them and it's taking a long time, see?" The phone was flipped to show a 'sending' bar moving like a snail. "You see how long it's taking, you see it?" We chuckled. "Besides," the picture taker, Aaron continued, "you're surrounded by three hot chicks, I don't know what you're complaining about." Every member of the picture blushed. "All right, get out of the picture, I took yours," another picture, "this is so going to be the background for my phone." I giggled, I was in a picture that was a background on a cute guy's phone.

I walked out of that theater with an inexplicable feeling of joy. I couldn't remember the last time feeling like that around people that weren't my family. Not at work, not at school, not at places where that should be precisely the way I feel. Thursday night was such a beautiful picture of Heaven for me. My heart felt at home and it thrilled me in a way that is hard for a person of my verbosity to explain. I know that there were hearts there that felt the exact same way. "There is SO much love in this room," he had leaned over and said to me.

Reunion of Hearts

This past month I went on a vacation, yes me, I went on a vacation. I went to a family reunion which happened to coincide with my gradparents' 50th anniversary. Fifty years together, the very thought boggles my mind, but it is so beautiful to me. It is very encouraging as well. I know people my age who have already been married and divorced and these two people have been together twice as long as I've been alive.

This trip to Colorado was by far my favorite. It just felt...different. I think it is due, in part, that I have finally forgiven myself. The time that I spent with my family in the mountains is something that I will treasure for a long time.It was wonderful to see my cousins who have grown so much since I saw them last and it was nice to know, that I too have grown...ok, perhaps not physically, but in some ways. The Rocky Mountains have always been a sort of soul solace to me I think. They are comforting to me in a way I can't describe. Mix that with people that I love deeply and it was a very wonderful situation. We laughed together, we played games and we celebrated being a family. It was something I needed more than I realized. I feel continually distanced from the people in my life, usually by my own doing. I need more affection than I know, more perhaps than I can admit to myself. So to span that distance and connect with people whom I love so much, it was a blessing I can't exactly put into words.