My halloween costume

I work in early Elementry and so halloweeen is a lot of fun and I love that I get to dress up too. Last year I was a bowl of M&M's I attached multicolor balloons to a shirt and wrapped it in Saran Wrap. This year I am a Big Gulp. My job can be so fun!!!!

Anyone...anyone...Bueller, Beuller

Just want to say I know that last post was long and disjointed, kind of stream-of-consciousness or internet like(you know start on one thing and when you are done surfing you are somewhere completely different) and so if you don't end up reading it that's ok. I have so much rolling around in that noggin of mine and sometime I just have to get it out and it so happens this is a great forum to get it out. So there may be a few long and winding roads that lead to your door....so please have some grace. Oh and if you do read these and you have anything to add or want to say something please comment. Also sign my guestbook and put yourself on my map.

So I have been reading a lot about how God created us to have the desire to belong and to have something outside of ourselves validate us and of course that something is Him. None of this is really new to me but seeing how I am a slow learner when it comes to God I still need to hear it. I realized that all my attempts to belong, to fit in, to be cool (I mean really who determines cool...Besides Miles Davis) et al. were not wrong in and of themselves it is just what I was desiring wasn't quite right, my aim was off. It is like C.S. Lewis writes, "we are half hearted creatures fooling about with sex and drink...our desires are not to great they are too small"(I don't know if that was word for word but you get it). The smaller catechism of Westminster abbey says "what is the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever." This seems to me to be the cry of everyone that has ever lived.

Unfortunately not everyone knows what their souls are weeping for, so they attempt to fill it with relationships of all sorts, books, movies music, endless drivel about the lives of celebrities(celebrity..such a strange phenomenon). I would like to tell you that once you have discovered a God who always has his arms open and pursues you like a person crazed with love and has infinite grace and kindness for you that all of those other things would pass away in importance. I would like to tell you that when God has revealed himself as a being who is intimately aware of every detail of your existence and yet is still gentle and non-manipulative in His attempts to build a friendship with you that things like coolness and celebrity would not matter as much. I would like to tell you that but it isn't all true.
Christians create their own celebrities and hierarchy of coolness and I am talking about myself here. Christians battle with each other and with those not like us because it adds to our status in our particular group, often in ways that go unnoticed by the ones doing it. And the reason I believe this is, is because We have failed to really let the truth of what God has done and who he is permeate to our hearts. We have failed to work on our friendship with God. We have failed to see God as a being with emotions and feelings and as a lover.

Now not all of this is a bad thing. In the book I was reading the writer pointed out that even though God and Adam were on a first name basis with each other and were tight, Adam was still lonely. This is really cool because it tells me that even in a state of perfection and a face to face relationship with God that it wasn't complete, there had to be more. We needed companionship (I believe this means Platonic and romantic) we were created for it. God himself shows it by his own essence (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). And that makes me feel less stupid in how much stock I put in friendship, I value it highly and it is a sacred thing to me. I also as I said earlier realized that the most important relationship is mine with God and that if my relationship with Him is disfunctional then my relationships with anyone else will be too. After Adam and Eve screwed it up the world turned to crap and relations between people became mired in it. Mankind had a disfuntional relationship. This is important to realize when you work in the field I do. My friend Mike and I were saying that we have heard things, because of our line of work, about the darkness of mankind that will forever scar our psyche and it is all because we are disfunctional in our Relationship. I attended a conference regarding children who are behaviorally challenged and we went through some theories and all of them were attempts to understand how to reconcile man to each other and all of them boiled down to healthy relationships. One presenter had a study that showed that if a child doesn't receive love and nurturing in a consistent fashion within the first six months of their lives they will have a lifetime of struggling to maintain any relationship and that this is often a precursor to Anti-social Personality Disorder (formerly known as Pschopathy). And it hit me like a ton of bricks, this importance of relationship and I began to understand why we are called to become Ministers of reconciliation. We need to reconcile man to God and then mans relationship with himself and others will make more sense.

The other reason this isn't such a bad thing, the whole failing to get it thing, is because this whole thing is a journey. I went hitch hiking many a year ago and I had the chance to see and experience some of the incredible nature of God but I was focused on getting to my destination and would often lose sight of the fact that I was walking down the highway through the mountains, seeing little brooks and streams, or through the prairies and seeing the wind move the grasses like a velvet sheet and that I could hear the breeze throughout the trees; all these things could not be experienced from a car and if God had given me non-stop rides then I would not have been forced to stop and experience and enjoy. Failing allows us to do just that it allows us to stop, experience God's love and grace and mercy and enjoy it. Failing allows us to see who we truly are and the beauty of others. Failing allows us to see the beauty in harsh circumstances and say "I count it all joy..." I love the title of a CD by Joy Electric called Five Stars for Failure. When I begin to understand this I begin to understand the paradoxical nature of Jesus and things he said. I begin to realize that I am most useful to God when I am myself failings and all.

Something I read

Some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual...There are times, then, when in order to keep ourselvesin existence at all we simply have to sit back for a while and do nothing. And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act he can perform.
-Thomas Merton

A rant

I have been thinking about it and I know what bugs me about Avril Lavigne and Ashlee Simpson. It is not just that they call themselves punk and aren't , it's that they push or have pushed that label so ceremoniously and religiously and aren't. If they were just honest and said they were girl pop/rock stuff or even better yet just did what they do and let the music stand for itself I don't think they would bother me as much. Like Avril's boyfriends band they don't run around saying "we are punk grrrrr" . Sure they are labeled that by music critics (like it or not) but they just did the music. With both of those girls it is a label that is just so obviously used to separate themselves. When Avril came out she wanted to make sure she wasn't lumped in with all the other girls so.... "I am a punk grrrrr.." and released horrid pseudo-punk songs about SK8er Boi's ad nauseum. Some of her new stuff is decent but so removed from punk and so cozy with other pop. Ashlee wanted to be distanced from her sister and the quickest way "I am punk grrrr...." and anyone listening knows this is quasi-rock and if she so doesn't want to be in her sisters shadow then why always bring her up if the interviewer doesn't.
There got that out

Ann Coulter Watta jerk

I was watching this show on CBC Newsworld called Face to Face which is basically just a one on one style interview show usually dealing with politics. The interviewee this time round was a woman named Ann Coulter. I don't know if any of you are familiar with her but she is a Conservitive pundit/columnist/author, and the best way I could describe her is a more attractive Rush Limbaugh. Anyway she was being interviewed by the host and she was just rude. CBC is a bit of a left leanning media group, but let's face it, even our Conservitives here in Canada are often more left of center than some of the liberals in the States. I digress, since it was the CBC it was obvious that might cause some sparks but the host was being calm and asking fairly intellegent questions based on studies and such and she would just cut him off or mock the studies ("That's just a stupid study....what study is that anyway...well what ever it's stupid....") as long as what he said didn't reflect her veipoint. Then she has the audacity to say she is fair and unbiased. Ha! She had these conspiricy theories that made no sense and then she did it. She made my blood boil SHE MOCKED CANADA. She said"What happened to you guys what happend to Canada. You used to be so cool and now you are like a bunch of old people. You used to do things....send troops to Vietnam, why not....now ....nothing but trouble from you guys." The host said "Well we have troops in Afganistan keep ing the peace (quotes the number) and in fact four of our troops were killed when an American bomb dropped on them" The whole time he is saying this she is just repeating "Nothing but trouble...must be the french influence." And when he said that about the bomb she just kinda snorted and said with her body language "whatever". Watta Jerk.

Guilty as charged... the post that was never meant to be

Ok This is the last and I mean last time I am going to attempt this post. This will be like number 5 or 6 and frankly I am sick of it. It has been erased everytime I have done it so you better FREAKIN ENJOY THIS PEOPLE.
So here is a list of sorts of some guilty pleasure music.

Queen Makers of such songs as "We will rock you" and "We are the champions" and that rhapsody one (you know the scene from Waynes World). There are some who would argue my inclusion of them on a guilty pleasure list (ie Bobbie, the teacher I work with) but I feel a certain amount of embarrassment at the amount of pleasure I derive from listening to them. Now I don't know if it is Freddies voice or the orchestration or simply the grandiosseness(is that even a word??) of it all but when I hear them it just moves me to sing along and just rock out (the aforementioned scene from Waynes world.....not a stretch).

Billy Joel now I don't know what to say here. The man can just do so many styles of music so convincingly and I love that. Plus it just releases the inner geek trying to get out. I have my wife to thank for encouraging and expanding this enjoyment

Some of the girl pop(Hilary Duff Britney etc.) Say what you will but some of this music is just darn catchy. Don't get me wrong this isn't a hands down love of all things "girl pop" or anything, I'm only saying some songs. It's just fun, ya know. Whatever.......you guys know that I'm right. Admit it You catch yourself singing along.

Some of the 80's hair band stuff. For example Stryper, Poison, Bon Jovi, etc. The heavy emphasis here is on SOME. There is great joy to be found in just rocking out and quite often this works out well with the genre in question. I guess the rising popularity of bands like The Darkness and Velvet Revolver proves my point and is my justification. Now please understand this is not an endorsement of the clothing/fashion statements of said genre because really it was gross.

The next one is tied to the last the POWER BALLAD ("Bed of Roses, November Rain", "Every Rose". yadayadayada.). The power ballad is the mother of all ballads and was not contained by 80's hair metal but has continued right on into today. But the bulk of them were found in the 80's by such people as the aforementioned hair bands but also by groups like, Chicago, and Boston, and Toto. So just sit back close your eyes and fall in love...with the power ballad.

Last and not least is Sir Elton John. I can hear the outrage of some with the fact that I have him here on this list (Mike I am looking at you) but I just can't help feeling silly liking him. There really is nothing to say here either you feel him or you don't. I mean it's not like he's Rod Stewart.

So I was planning on making a list of guilty pleasure cds/songs as my next blog, however due to an unfortunate series of events it will have to wait. You see my fellow rrrantlings my son got very sick last night and threw up all over his bed right at bed time. We bathed him brushed his teethand gave him some water and easily digested baby food. About 15 minutes later it came out with a violence unseen in these parts of the world. This started a chain of events which went like so..... Any liquid in his tummy came out 10 mins. or so after ingesting it then when nothing was there it tried to come out too. In all Gavin was heaving and wretching most disturbingly. So we went to Emerg. While we were there the did all these things to Gavin that really upset him(needles and the like) and everytime it happened right as he was drifting off to sleep. They discovered that Gavin in deed has a virual infection otherwise known as a flu. To top it off we were there from midnight until 6:45 am and worked at 830 am ouch. Things like that really test what I wrote about the boy. Well next blog will be the aforementioned guilty pleasures among other things I am sure but right now I need sleed er I mean sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepppppppppppppppppppppp *er ah* Goodnight

I just got the new Green Day cd and I gotta tell ya, it freaking rocks. It is one of the best Cd's I have purchased in a while. It is just a good straight up rocker, not to heavy on the punk stuff (not that that's bad) just lots of punk tinted rock. It tells the story of a boy who grows weary of life where he is and decides to hit the road with his girl. He soon realizes life doesn't get better by running away, maybe it does at first but after a while things tend to fall apart if you don't deal with you. There are very few if any songs that fade out and most if not all actually transition into one another with no break creating a strong sense of a story/rock opera. In fact word is that they are making a movie based on the cd a la Pinball wizard (tommy) by the Who. Keeping with that theme there are a few songs that go well beyond the 7 min mark using different movements(as seen in Classical music) to break it up. Very cool. Green Day seem to have really come into their elemnet with thid disc.
Also check out Velvet Revolver for some guilty pleasure music. They totally sound like Gun N' Roses meets Stone Temple Pilots. Hmmmmm.... wonder why. But it is so fun to rock out to.

On a different completely unrelated note I am absolutly in love with my son. Having a child changes so much about ones perspective on living and introduces such a different kind of love into ones life. It doesn't diminish the love I have for my wife nor is it more important then the love I have for her or my friends or my students, its just different. It consumes you but not in a way that puppy love does, it is more like you think about your child and all the ways you want to make sure they have the best life possible and how you can further that or hinder it. You also find yourself being reminded of them in many things in everyday life.

The other week I was home from work sick and Gavin was asking LoraLee (my wife) "Daddy?" over and over so she said "In the bedroom" and waltzes in saying "Daddy? Daddy?" Upon seeing me he says "I love you" only in his ways it's " i wupfv woo" and then walks out. I started to cry that was the first time he ever said it without any prompts. On Sunday he was playing a game while I was getting ready for church that consisted of running up and hugging me . Or sometimes when he sleeps he looks so sweet and angelic and squeezable that it is hard to not go in and pick him up and hug him and hug him and hug him. He also loves cuddles especially with both Mommy and Daddy, he puts out both arms and smiles and says "Nuggle Hamily (trans. snuggles Family). He also loves to cuddle with his aunty gradmas and his Uncle Mike. Then there are the ways he says things which I will leave for another time. While these in and of themselves are sweet they in no way can explain the way or the how I can love him as much as I do.

Well if that wasn't disjointed I don't what is but those are the two things on my mind today. Tune in next time when you will hear me say.....

Well well well I guess I should start by introducing myself, My name is Kimbal and I am married to LoraLee. We have one boy named Gavin who is almost 2 years old. I work as a T.A. with kids who have special needs. I love music and movies and books so these things will make it into my posts very often. My freind Mike has a kick ass blog at www.dublinsomeday.blogpot.com and I highly suggest ou go there. Like I said at the outset of my blog this will bassically be my thoughts so sometimes they will be inane like this