Today

So today I had a traditional YAV experience in that I met face-on the overwhelming effects of poverty and I had no idea how to deal with it but to be totally emotionally steamrolled. I helped hand out food from church to lots of homeless folks under the I-10 underpass near St. Charles Street.

I've been attending a church that is (gasp!) not Presbyterian. This is for myriad reasons, most of which include a visceral reaction to and against church and spiritual-y things lately. I've almost had to get up and run out of church services several times over before finding the place I'm currently attending. It's been a strange phenomena that I'll probably try to tease out more in detail at some point for all you faithful readers out there, but for now I'll just say I've been attending a Metropolitan Community Church (MCC for short, goobers) that is progressive, the most friendly and welcoming place I've ever been, and mostly geared toward the queer community.

We had a potluck lunch today and they have started the tradition of boxing the leftovers and taking them around town to those who need/want it. Here's where I'll say that the single-handedly largest reason in this weird world that I'm still a Christian is the idea that God's love is for everyone, regardless of anything. And God is especially in it for the downtrodden and oppressed. This is exactly counter to our capitalist society that gives each person a value (i.e. rich person = very valuable, homeless person = no money, no contribution, totally useless, only saps resources). Therefore, no matter how many doubts I have about God's existence, the Bible's sometimes crazy misogynistic admonitions, and religion acting purely as a safety blanket, this crazy idea that every single fucking person in the world having the same enormous worth is too beautiful and perfect for me to resist. 'Cause it's all about me, goobs.

Anyways, I can't stop thinking about this one woman who drove up in a small SUV and beckoned me to her window. I was standing there next to the opened back of my friend Bob's (who is the Chief of Finances for the Loew's hotel downtown so we obviously stood out a wee tad) car, talking with other people who had seen us handing out drinks and styrofoam boxes. I walked over, slowly realizing that this woman was a hoarder. Like straight out of the A&E show. There was shit strapped to the top of her car, boxes and bags and other crazy things, and inside her car the only open air was where she was sitting (with a jittery dog in her lap) and about a square foot of airspace from the top of all the shit in her passenger seat to the roof of the car. The rest of it to the very back of the car was totally crammed with trash bags, and an inordinate amount of stuff. I asked her if she would like something to eat and she said she did. Then she beckoned me closer and I could sense that something was way off.

"I seem to have soiled myself earlier. I was wondering if you have a spare pair of pants?" She was holding her dog in her lap and I made no other reaction to this than but to sincerely apologize that we didn't have any pants but that I would look for napkins and anything else that I could find to help. As providence, or God, or coincidence would have it, Bob has prostate cancer and had adult diapers in his backseat. I put one in a plastic bag beneath her napkins and handed it to her through the window. Then she drove away.

I've been driving around the city on various trips today - coming home from church, to help a friend moveand I remember her face and I'll fall into tears. Last night, I went to a bar for the Saints game, went to an Ani Difranco concert, and spend several more hours at a bar on Frenchman listening to a band and getting drunk. The contrast is stark and is not lost on me. This woman has, to my knowledge, no feasible connections to getting help. I have a family, a strong support network, loving friends, and expectations for me that I will succeed and live a long and prosperous life. This woman has serious emotional and mental issues and is driving around New Orleans with soiled pants and a car full of garbage. Coming face to face with your privilege is a tough thing. It happens to me pretty much every single day, so don't think this is my first time meeting someone without all of my fancy conveniences.

I don't really have a point to this story except to say love each other and be grateful for your ties in life to people who can and would help if a real shitstorm ever blew over all of your life structures. I'm thankful for a God that says she is worth loving too.

Because she is.

Christmas Songs That Don't Suck

I've made a list of non-traditional ones for you guys. Some of these I think are amazingly beautiful while others are so ridiculous that I really just need someone else to hear this weird shit. And of course there are others somewhere inbetween.

1. Brandi Carlile - The Heartache Can Wait
2. Herbie Hancock ft. Corinne Bailey Rae - River (yep, the Joni Mitchell song. I prefer this version, and I'm not sorry about it)
3. Run D.M.C. - Christmas in Hollis
4. Tegan and Sara - The Chipmunk Song (ok, so you really just need to hear the first 30 seconds of it -  The rest is kinda terrible)
5. Rachel Yamagata - Baby Come Find Me At Christmas
6. Rufus Wainwright - What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
7. Sufjan Stevens - That Was The Worst Christmas Ever! and Get Behind Me, Santa! (I mean these are honestly both for the titles. The second wins all awards ever for everything)
8. Ella Fitzgerald - Christmas Island and Good Morning Blues
9. Dean Martin - The Things We Did Last Summer
10. Wham! - Last Christmas (I mean this isn't a revolutionary pick, but come on. George Michael and other guy, this is the best Christmas song of all. Also, this video. The flashbacks are heart-wrenching. And they all packed so lightly for a weekend at the mountains! Maybe that's metaphorical for the light baggage he's carrying around for this woman that he's so obviously not attracted to. You can rest easy for a while, other guy)
11. Destiny's Child - Platinum Bells (oh hellz yes)
12. The Beach Boys - Melekal Ikimaka
13. Kem - A Christmas Song for You
14. Straight No Chaser - The Christmas Can-Can
15. Il Volo - Notte Stellata (The Swan)
16. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Christmas All Over Again (This song just reminds me of being a little kid when my parents would have Christmas parties...warm fuzzies, y'all)
17. Reba McEntire - The Christmas Guest (This song has so much dialogue and is probably the gouda-est thing ever, so be prepared. Also, "sit at the table and sup" is a real lyric in this song)
18. Elvis Presley - If Every Day Was Like Christmas Time
19. Norah Jones - Peace
20. Coldplay - Christmas Lights (don't you dare judge me)
21. Jeff Dunham - I Hate Christmas (Walter) and Jingle Bombs (Achmed)
22. Afroman - 12 J's of Christmas (this whole album is so offensive and ridiculous - this was the least incendiary one to put on my YAV blog - but so, so good. Don't listen to this one if you aren't okay with a little profanity)

So this concludes my recent binge of blog posts that come with a numerical list. I hope a couple of these songs will make you hate Christmas music a little less. Or at least you can imagine what Afroman would want for the last 2 days of Christmas that he didn't get to!

Deep Thoughts

Here are the things I spend most of my time thinking about (these aren't in any particular order):

1. How consumerism and large corporations are destroying both the planet and all living creatures.
2. That humans believe that we are inherently greater than and masters of every corner of the earth. Things like killing bugs because they're a nuisance and plowing interstates through beautiful natural environments all come from the same horrifying, entitled place.
3. I'm always insatiably hangry these days, so what da eff am I gonna eat next?
4. I should put this cool experience I'm currently having in my blog.
5. In 5 years, in 10 years, in 20 years, I'm gonna be...
6. All of the people I've known throughout my life and how relationships wax and wane. How some crawl inside my heartspace and set up permanent little hammock-type situations in there. Others look in the window, say "meh," and keep swimming around looking for other heartsystems. The people I've allowed inside and the ones I've tried to give the boot.
7. Nonviolent Communication
8. I've worked so hard on being true to myself and how I feel while also bearing out that representation in how I look. I get shit for this on occasion. Read: I'm not very feminine and this is okay.
9. The Wood Brothers have a new album out! Check it.
10. I get to create whatever kind of life I want to. Guys, this makes me so giddy sometimes that I can barely stand it.
11. Who is God? Jesus? The Holy Spirit? How should I approach the Bible? What about omniscience, omnipresence, grace, salvation, judgment, and sacrifice? Sin? Eternity? The personhood of Christ? If he hadn't been a man, would he have mattered? A calling? Is that real?
12. If I fall off this scaffolding, I will be a pretty mangled mess of human.
13. Lots of FOMO about my time in New Orleans. I wanna experience it all, y'all.
14. How comfortable and warm and happy I feel at my YAV house with all my YAVmates.
15. That I should be better at keeping up with friends/acquaintances. I suck at it.
16. My parents and siblings.
17. How much I love beer. I really love beer. All kinds of flavors and hops and colors and yeastiness and alcohol contents and ingredients from all places of everywhere. One of my roommates just brought down her homebrewing kit!
18. Dating. Lez be honest - it's on the list.
19. I should be working out right now.
20. Money. I put this one next-to-last because I care to think about it the least but I probably think about it the most. And I had to end on a good note ya know, so next-to-last it is!! How greed is a gateway to depression and constant unfulfillment but how nice it would be to have juuuust a little bit more. Being financially independent. How am I going to go back to school and also be able to live?
21. How I can exist in this world without hurting anyone or anything and how I can change something in a good way.

Bringing Sexy Back

Interior painting using a paint sprayer may be my most favorite thing I've done yet this year. It also works as the best hair gel that money shouldn't buy.

Halloween

What's up, little monsters? It's Halloween time!

If Lady Gaga can call her followers that, then I can too. Because that's what you all are, my little monster followers. So it's been a while! I hate it when I read blogs and people spend the first paragraph apologizing for not blogging in a long time. I even used to apologize to my diary like it had feelings and missed me.

Life has been so wonderful this past month and a half! I built a deck, repointed 3 massive chimneys on top of a very tall house with a silly steep roof, dropped my phone off of a balcony, fell off of a bucket on top of that same damned balcony, led 4 awesome volunteer groups, went to a beer and dogs festival in City Park, saw the Lumineers, went (several times) to a clothing-optional bar with a pool (I wore clothes), drove 3 hours to pick up flooring from two old Cajun men who gave me a jewelry box made of 1000 year old Cypress wood, got another haircut (no more rat tail!), carved pumpkins on the north shore, listened to the new Willie Nelson album of duets obsessively, worked at a pumpkin patch and missed meeting Will Smith by 5 minutes, gotten concrete in a wound, bruised almost every square inch of my legs at one point or another at work, seen lots of Saints games, driven to Nashville and Pensacola, cat-sat for my boss (is there a past tense way to say that?), tried all sorts of gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice and other delicious New Orleansy things, seen a Halloween parade in the French Quarter, and had entirely too many Abitas.

This is the deck I built! It's for an AC unit; it's not just the smallest wooden situation in the universe

So, I have been thoroughly enjoying myself here. I get this warm feeling like I am supposed to be here right now doing this and the rest of my life will come when it comes. When I'm not feeling the warmness, I'm feeling the intense panic crazy anxiety insanity over what my next step will be and what I want to do with my life. I also feel lots of other things, just like my diary does.

Anyways, there will be lots of Halloween festivities this week! Bob the Builder will be back out in full force. It's amazing how handy having a screwdriver and 14 pockets is when you're out and about!

Trend of the World

There's a lot going on these days! America is still in the throes of deciding its course of action (or hopefully, diplomacy) with Syria, Congress is dealing with (well, hopefully at all) a possible government shutdown, Seaside Park in New Jersey is in flames, and the whole world feels like it's all going to hell in something decidedly larger than a handbasket. Maybe an armbasket?

google imaged "arm basket" and "basket of arms" before trying "huge basket." would not recommend.

But then again, I'm pretty sure that's what every generation says when crazy things start happening.

"The Spanish Inquisition is here! These blockheads are killing lots of folks and trying to force me to give bizarre confessions about my private life!" "I'm a plantation owner in the South! It's 1866 and I can't own humans!" "World War II is over! Communists are trying to destroy America! Things are red and scary!"

google imaging "world is ending" is much more successful

I intended to write a post tonight about all of the cool things that I've learned at my job the past few days - how I've learned how to change and patch a tire, install windows, nail on house wrap and sheathing, set up pump jacks, and that walking on a rooftop is emotionally easier if you crabwalk but that you will lose all professional credibility if you do so.

I wanted to write about all of these cool and interesting things that make me come home exhausted and sweaty at the end of another training day during which I learn how to build things. One day soon I'll be managing my own worksites and I'll be taking volunteers to houses so they can help rebuild a small part of a broken but beautiful city in a brilliant but butchered world.

I don't have answers to the world's problems and sometimes it's hard to even come up with a rationale behind the chaos (e.g. this is God's will; sometimes things just happen; this world is messed up; it's all random and there is no meaning). I think all of these responses are valid in certain contexts. Mostly, I think that crazy things have been happening to people for millennia and to the rest of the universe for eons.

It's tempting at this point to formulate a response to all the craziness: we must try to fix everything while we're on this earth; we should look forward to heaven instead - the world is too far gone; we should focus on the good things in life; we must trust more fully in God; we must increase our love and decrease our hatred; we must each work in our own way to do more good than harm; we need to give more to non-profits; we should blame the government, etc.

Again, all of these have merit in certain situations. I'm not going to advocate a single one for fear of oversimplifying.

And that gives me great peace. I get to be one little confused and unsure piece of a much larger impossibly complicated 7 billion piece puzzle that has definitely lost a few of its edges.

But then again, maybe that's both my rationale and my response. I said I wouldn't and then I did. Sorry, y'all!

Starting Work!

So, I had my first day of work yesterday.

And it was awesome. Also, I cut about 10 inches of hair off and have a sweet new pixie cut. Gotta make it to the end to see it! Until then, here's a quick breakdown of what I'll be doing this year:

I'll be working for Project Homecoming, which is a New Orleans non-profit that grew out of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) response to Hurricane Katrina 8 years ago. We build houses for people who have been victims of contractor fraud or who have been subject to other terrible things as a result of Katrina (and by that I mean the levees breaking. The city flooded in the days after the hurricane when the levees were ripped apart). Anyways, I'm going to be a work site manager, which means that I'll be in charge of taking volunteer groups to worksites each week. The thing I love most about Project Homecoming is that it's centered on community building. We don't just jump in and build houses without consulting with the people. Their opinions and needs are paramount to our mission. I'm gonna be so handy, y'all! Since you've made it this far, I'll give you a preview to my new hair as a prize.

Haha just kidding. I didn't get new glasses.

I'll have about another month of orientation learning how to actually do my job before they unleash me on a house (still with much supervision).

Last weekend, we got to visit the bayou. It's pretty sad to see how the oil companies cut swathes in the marsh for pipelines that start out about 5 feet wide, but after 2 or so years, they are over 60 feet wide. This brings in huge amounts of extra salt water from the gulf which leads to huge amounts of erosion. People are getting displaced, y'all! There are lots of Native American tribes in the area (22 of the 29 in Louisiana aren't recognized federally for stupid reasons) and lots of them will lose their homes in the next 10 years due to the wetland erosion. Nothing like adding a little more poop onto the huge dungpile of American relations with native peoples.

After that downer, here's my new hair!

 

 HAHA I couldn't resist. I promise I didn't get any new glasses, guys!

Have a great night, everybody!