I believe

When I was in my pree-teen/early-teen years, I was kind of a religious nut. It's somewhat unfortunate, because I'm pretty sure I missed out on some good pop culture during that time when I was up to my eyeballs in Only Pure and Approved Evangelical Christian Godly Media. Uh. I mean, I didn't believe in evolution. I believe every word of the Bible was literally true. I was thinking about that time, and this song, which was pretty much me:

"I Believe" by Wes King

I believe
In six days and a rest
God is good
I do confess
I believe
In Adam and Eve
In a tree and a garden
In a snake and a thief

Chorus:
I believe, I believe
I believe in the Word of God
I believe, I believe
'Cause He made me believe

I believe Noah
Built an ark of wood
120 years
No one understood
I believe Elijah never died
Called fire from heaven
On a mountainside

I remember when I first started doubting some of that song. Like, "six days? That's not very long..."
I also remember the song "Affirmation," by Savage Garden (did I have some pretty questionable musical taste?) Also, this post is getting long:

I believe the sun should never set upon an argument
I believe we place our happiness in other people's hands
I believe that junk food tastes so good because it's bad for you
I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do
I believe that beauty magazines promote low self esteem
I believe I'm loved when I'm completely by myself alone

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love 'til you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality
I believe that trust is more important than monogamy
I believe your most attractive features are your heart and soul
I believe that family is worth more than money or gold
I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair
I believe the only ones who disagree are millionaires

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love 'til you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

I believe forgiveness is the key to your own unhappiness
I believe that wedded bliss negates the need to be undressed
I believe that God does not endorse tv evangelists
I believe in love surviving death into eternity

I believe in Karma what you give is what you get returned
I believe you can't appreciate real love 'til you've been burned
I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side
I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye(Repeat 2)
Until you say goodbye

This song made me really uncomfortable at one point, but I've gotten over that. Why am I posting all this? I've been thinking about my own personal affirmations, maybe because I'm really not sure what they are anymore. Here are some. Maybe I will have more someday:

I believe that whoever or whatever God is, God is not male or female or the exclusive property of any religion.

I believe that all human beings bear a responsibility to each other and to all living things on this planet, and however we may be capable of living up to that responsibility, we should.

I believe that people are capable of causing the greatest possible evil and the greatest possible good, and it's mostly up to us which we do.

I believe that change is inevitable and often good.

Like Savage Garden, I believe that we can't (entirely) chose our sexuality, and we should be allowed to make safe, adult decisions about our sexualities.

I believe that women should have equal rights as men, including the rights to chose our employment and be paid equally, chose what we want to do with out bodies, and chose when and how we want to have sex.

I believe that hard work is one of the most rewarding things a person can do, but that work is not the whole point of existence.

I believe that being thin is not worth a world in which chocolate is not available.

I believe in the power of education to change the world, and the enduring beauty of books (regardless of what format they eventually take).

I am sure I have more beliefs, but I'm already amazed by how many I've thought of. Enough for now!

Things I want for the Kitchen

I am lusting after kitchen supplies. Specifically, I want:

A mandolin
An electric teakettle
A teapot with a strainer for loose-leaf tea
A stainless steel frying pan (I ordered one from Amazon but they apparently don't actually have it.)
Better cupcake tins
A pizza stone

I can't really afford any of this though.

EDIT: add to that:
A candy thermometer
A kitchen scale
A tart dish

Sad Post

When I was 11, my parents sent me to stay with my grandparents in Kentucky for a week or two in the summer. It was a tradition that some of the grandkids would stay for a while each summer, and I was the one who had yet to do my time. My cousins often stayed for months at a time, but I was awkward and shy and didn't want to be gone for that long.

Looking back on it, I'm still not sure if I had a good time that week in Kentucky. My grandparents were very particular people who had gotten used to not having children around a lot. Not to say that they weren't wonderful to be around and incredibly good to me. They just lived in a very different way than I was used to. They were thrilled to have me visit though, and I have a lot of awkward pictures of skinny, eleven-year-old me all over the place in Kentucky. My grandma made me take swimming lessons at their country club (even though I could swim already, kind of) and I seem to remember visiting some sort of petting zoo.

Unfortunately, my trip was deep in the middle of my terror-of-thunderstorms time. As it turns out, this past year I discussed my tendency to develop intense, irrational fears with my therapist, and she suggested it might not be something I can entirely control, and might relate to my predisposition to anxiety. She suggested I work to control it through medication, and my gosh, life is better now. I didn't know this when I was 11 though, and was horribly terrified of things like wind, rain, and dark clouds. It was exhausting. One evening there was a thunderstorm, which isn't uncommon in Kentucky, and I completely freaked out. My grandmother was baffled and frightened by my fear, but managed to calm me down.

But none of that is actually why I started writing this post. One of the many things we did when I visited was visit Bernheim Forest, an arboretum and research forest my grandparents loved. While we were walking I saw a tree that looked like it had a huge rabbit face on the side. This wasn't just an eleven-year-old's imagination - there really IS a rabbit face on the side of that tree - some sort of growth deformity caused several large bulges that look like a nose, big cheeks, and two even rabbit ears. The tree henceforth became known as the Rabbit Tree, and my grandparents pointed it out to everyone. They even told the park guides, who agreed, thought it was great, and started pointing it out on tours.

I never went back to Kentucky for a visit on my own again, and if I saw the Rabbit Tree after that I don't remember. Eventually my grandparents moved back to an assisted living apartment in Ohio, because my grandmother was sick. She died last summer while I was in Chicago, and on some level it was a relief. She'd been sick for a while, and she wasn't herself anymore. For someone who was so strong, intelligent, vibrant, and in charge it was hard to watch her fade. I miss her more than I expected to, since we all knew the end was coming. She was amazing in a way eleven-year-old me never really understood, and I feel cheated that she had to go just as I was realizing that.

Last weekend was her memorial service, because she had donated her body to science and we had just gotten her ashes back. She had a very definite idea about what she wanted done after she died, and that included no funeral. She wanted her ashes scattered in Bernheim Forest. My grandfather decided to have a bench put below the Rabbit Tree in her memory. I wasn't able to go to the memorial, because the flight would have been too expensive and it's close to graduation. I could have gone, I suppose, but part of me didn't want to deal with it all. On Saturday my mother called me from the park to tell me what the dedication on the bench said. It had "In Memory of," her name, and "She loved the forest, and [my name]'s Rabbit Tree."

I wish I had been there.