artykins

And so
Here we are
Again

Love
Like
Dislike

Maybe like again
I don't
Know

First in secret
Then in suffering
Dead

Then in hope
Resting in
Unknowing

Are you sick of it?
Are you of
It

Deleting
Adding
Deleting

Never sure
Of what you
Want

Of what
You
Know

Is it what
You
Feel

Is it true?
Will is last?
Her?

Or are you
Like I believe still
Lost

Torn between them
Lost all past, lost
Present

The only light
Cast by a shade
Difused

Dim
Lost in
Darkness 

So be happy
Delete me
Her

Us
Them
Yourself

You'll always be this way
Bending to whim
Others

Believe yourself
It's all you can do
Believe

Just know that I see you
As you are
Been

Fickle
As
Flame 

So a few days ago I was over at the house and noticed that my grandmother apparently had a moment where she thought it would be alright to buy six full bunches (we're talking five to six per bunch) of bananas.  Now, my grandmother has always liked fruit.  It's part of her childhood.  After all, she grew up on a tropical island where fruit was abundant and readily available, but six bunches of bananas...come on.

Naturally I asked if I could klepto some and she said yes.  Now, I'm not a big fruit eater.  I'm a veggie eater.  And I probably should eat more fruit (and I say this as I munch happily on some prunes [and don't even begin to judge me for it because they're yummy, okay?])  So given that I'm not a big fruit eater, I put all the bananas into a plastic bag and dropped them off on the floor next to our sideboard so they could ripen up.  You see, the plan all along was to let them get completely (or at least almost) black so that I could eat them the best way I know how...in banana bread.

So as we speak I have two loaves of freshly baked banana bread sitting atop my stove cooling off.  It really is the best way to eat the stuff, in my opinion.  What's not to love about flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, bananas and walnuts all baked up into bread form?  That's right.  I didn't think you'd be able to come up with a reason.  That's because it's one of the very right things in the world.  I feel as though God could look upon the banana bread and see that it is good.

That said, tomorrow morning's breakfast is sorted out.  Some coffee (for Matt, of course, not me...I'll stick to milk, thanks), some butter and some bread.  Perhaps sliced and toasted.  Mmmmmmm.

I have some extra zucchini in the fridge drawer...perhaps I'll make some zucchini bread later this week.  That's another very right thing in this world.

I've been in a funny mood as of late.  I've not been my blissfully happy self.  I've been more reserved, but I still perk up when I do something I like.  Perhaps it's still carry-over from Connor's death.  I don't know.

I've been married nearly a year now.  In about three weeks Matt and I will celebrate our first anniversary.  This first year seems to have gone by really quickly, but it's been a very good year to look back upon.  We'll be going on holiday for a week to celebrate.  We'll be heading up north to the Fort Bragg area to relax, etc.  There's lots of really cool stuff up there.  Botanical gardens that stretch on for acres, there's Glass Beach, which for those of you who aren't familiar with California history, is a beach that was used as a dump way back at the turn of the century.  The rubbish floated away, but the bits of all the broken glass bottles ('cause Prohibition was in full swing up there in the boondocks at the time) stayed behind and the ocean tide has tumbled the pieces to create sea glass.  Well, there's a whole beach that's nothing but this sea glass.

There are tidal pools, which I'm very much looking forward to.  I've always liked observing marine wildlife.  I'll bet you I'm the only girl you know who's fed a stingray too.  I like starfish and hermit crabs.  Even regular old crabs amuse me, although I can't say I'd be brave enough to pick one up without a mesh metal glove.  There are also anemones and squid/octopus creature things to look at.

Still waiting to hear back about whether or not grad school has accepted me.  If they do I have no idea how I'll be able to pay for it, but God is good and is sufficient enough for me.  I trust He'll provide the funds necessary for me to go to school, if I get accepted.  I might not, in which case there's not much to consider at that point.

I have with me a ginger beer at the moment and I think I'm in love with it.  Oh!  And I handled a raw chicken tonight.  A WHOLE raw chicken at that.  Bella, be proud of me!  I took all the nasty bits out of the inside...well, I more like held the chicken in the air and shook it a little until the insides came out into the sink.  But I handled the chicken with my bare hands.  And I rinsed it, dried it, rubbed it with lemon and then gave it a short massage with some sea salt, olive oil, garlic and oregano.  It's now sitting in my fridge, all covered up and awaiting its fate in the oven on Monday night.

Of course, I'm your grand-daughter, so I burned my hands scrubbing my hands with hot water and soap, washing the sink down with hot water and soap and then scrubbing my hands again with lots of hot water and soap.  I then took a shower and scraped the bar of soap with my nails to make extra sure I got everything clean.

All that said, I don't think I'll handle a raw chicken again without the proper layer of latex glove between me and the inside of the little beastie.  I can't say I enjoyed the experience, but I'm going to roast the bird on Monday and it'll mark the first time I've ever roasted a whole chicken by myself.  

You might be getting a phone call at some point Monday evening from me...

Let's see...changed the sheets tonight, so I have clean sheets to look forward to when I head off to bed in a little while.  Talk about something right in life!  Clean sheets are a little slice of heaven.  It's glorious.  I've got the apple green sheets on this time.

And now, I think I'll stop here and head over to the sofa.  Matt's there listening to jazz music and he looks kind of dejected or something.

More later!

- A

So the last few days have been really tough.  It's not so much the news itself anymore.  I think people are coming to accept that part of it.  What's hard is seeing everyone react in different ways and at different times.  My uncles, who never say 'I love you' to me or my brothers (there's no real need for it because we just inherently know for sure that they do) have both verbally said that they love me and both times I started crying.

I suppose in the midst of so much sorrow people realize that they're glad of the people around them.  Priorities change.  You find yourself thinking about what you would do without a certain person and I suppose it comes down to this: you'd cry, mourn, get angry with God or other people, spend sleepless nights wondering over things, but there's nothing that can be done to bring that person back.  And at that point, I think the healthiest thing to start doing is celebrating life.  Not just your own, but that of the person you've lost.

I've been blessed my entire life with a family that puts laughter at the center of anything.  And I have some freaking hilarious family.  I remember very vividly all the laughter at Nana's (the true matriarch of the Solero family) funeral.  We all loved her.  Some of us knew her longer than others, but Nana was a lifetime full of fodder for a good laugh.  It helped when the end came and she went home to be with a Jesus she loved so much.  And to see Bello again, oh I can only just imagine the kind of laughing that went on in heaven that day.

Granted, things are a little different this time.  Nana had lived a full life.  Connor, though, was still a young man.  And it seems to go against nature for someone so young to die.  It's natural that a child bury a parent and while not terribly uncommon, there's still something wrong about a parent having to bury a child.  And there's nothing right about this.  There's nothing easy.  There's nothing redeeming about his parents having to go through this.  There's nothing okay with his grandparents having to go through it.  And there's no understanding that any of us can grasp.  It's just wrong.  Plainly.  Simply.

But there is something to be found in the midst of this.  I'm not sure I have a word for it, but it kind of feels like hope.  Connor comes from good family, good believing stock with a long history of being involved in church.  Bello was a pastor.  His children were raised in a loving Christian home and their children were raised the same.  Great-grandchildren were raised going to church, knowing nothing of the concept of seeing the weekend as a two day break from school.  It was just a part of life, getting up on Sunday mornings and gathering together to worship.

And in many ways, we're just gathering once more to worship God, who had Connor's days numbered from before time knew him.  he is home with Jesus, with Nana and Bello, Uncle Robert and grandpa.  And while we will miss him terribly here with us, I can't help but rejoice that he is with God and with all those we love that have gone before us.  What's not to find comforting in knowing this?  And I know the pain and grief is still very much present.  I can testify to this myself.  I'm still shaken up over the whole ordeal, but I can find solace in knowing that Connor is in the presence of God who has promised that he is feeling no sadness and no pain and no fear of anything.

So I like to think that Connor is just sleeping until the day when he will be given a new body, one that will not fail him and one that cannot be taken away from God or from us when we join him.  Others might not be at this point of finding this joy worth celebrating, but I am at the beginning part of this.

So I hope that people will remember the good things about Connor.  His unique quirks, his habits that make us laugh.  I hope we will remember who God made him to be here on Earth and how God is seeing him in heaven, not as we can see him now.

So the date Matt and I were supposed to go on (as you can probably gather from my language) never materialized.  We didn't have a fight or anything like that.  I just got up Saturday morning after he let me sleep in a little, took a shower and I was finishing the process of taming my unruly hair when Matt came into the bathroom and told me that my mom had called with bad news about my cousins Noe and Connor.

Of course, my first question was 'were they in an accident?' which is pretty bad news for any family member because if it's an accident and you get a call about it, that usually means it was a substantial crash.  But that wasn't the case.  For an instant I was relieved until Matt told me that it appeared that Connor (who was 14 years old) had committed suicide Friday night.

I felt lots of things at once.  I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach and then that feeling was followed by one of getting ready to throw up.  I didn't, thankfully, as that would have just made the day a tiny bit worse.  

I called my mom right away and she cried as soon as I said, 'Mom, Matt just told me.'  Of course, that set me off, but the two of us pulled it together long enough for my mom to explain things to me.  At that point our cousin Diana got to the family house, looked at my mom on the phone and broke down into a puddle of tears, which set my mom off again, which started me going again.

I just don't understand.  I try to wrap my brain around what's happened, but I can't.  I just simply don't understand.

So for those of you asking about my Facebook status' the last couple days, checking in to see if I'm alright, my answer is no, I'm not.  But the good news in this is that I have an amazing family, an amazing husband and an even more amazing God to help me and those who mourn with me cope.  And this is comfort enough for me.

I've never been one for dating.  And by that I don't mean that I don't enjoy it, or that I didn't ever enjoy it either.  I quite llike dating.  It's just that Matt has been the only guy I've ever dated.  And I ended up marrying him.  Besides, it's not like we could have dated those four years before we got married anyway.  By virtue of us living a continent and an ocean apart it was impossible.  Instead, our dating consisted of daily chats with one another via Adium and the last couple years of that time saw the addition of lots of camera time as well via iChat and the wonderful iSight cameras we had.

I've been reflecting on our 'dating' for a couple days now.  Matt has been uber busy with getting a website finished to go live either today or tomorrow, so I've had a lot of time to myself.  I've been thinking about it because a couple weeks ago he asked me if we had anything planned for this coming Saturday.  I told him we didn't, so he then proceeded to ask me out on a date.  I couldn't help but smile, especially knowing that he'd be really busy and consumed with work because I knew this website he was working on was going live the end of February/early March.

Naturally, I said yes.  Except there's a bit of a twist this time with him.  He refuses to tell me where we're going or what we're going to do, except to say I'm going to like it.  In fact, I think he told me that on purpose because he knows I like doing so many things.  To be honest, though, I'm hoping part of my date on Saturday is sleeping in.  I had a really busy weekend this past weekend and I didn't get much rest, so I'm exhausted.  Besides, Jeff and Jeremy are coming over Friday and we're going for some sushi.  Well, Matt, Jeff and I are going for sushi.  Jeremy is going for the bento box with teryaki chicken or something of that nature.  He doesn't do raw fish, but I'm working on him to try some!

Anyway, the place we're going Friday night is a really popular place here in town.  It's one of those places that no matter what time you drive by during their business hours, they're always busy.  I mean, the place is hopping non-stop from the time it opens to the time it closes its doors.  It's kind of insane.  But at the same time, it's a sign of quality.  And it really is a great place.  We've been countless times.  One time, Matt even got a sushi boat, which was a lot of fun except for the fact that we didn't get to choose what kind of sushi was on it.  I wasn't too pleased with the tuna sushi or the mackeral.  The unagi (fresh water eel) was alright.  I absolutely laid claim and then waste to the California rolls because crab makes everything better.

The last time we were there it was just me and Matt.  We had something called a Lion King Roll, which he got because it sounded good.  I was skeptical simply because of the salmon on the top of it.  You see, I'm not a huge fan of salmon.  Maybe it's because of the smoked salmon my dad would eat growing up.  I tried it a couple times and couldn't stomach it, so I gave up.  I was feeling a little adventurous that day, though.  Perhaps it was the name of the sushi that made it so.  Maybe it was just that it looks so freaking tasty.  The point is I tried some and it was muy delicioso.

We'll probably order some Friday night.  I want to try some other stuff on the menu as well, so we're most likely gonna have some edamame, some seaweed salad, some soup and rice bowls and then the sushi.  I'm really looking forward to it.

Well, the office is starting to crawl with kids, so I better get going.  I'll let you know how my hot date on Saturday goes.

- A