Susanne Collapses on Marriage Bed as soon as she finishes screwing down the platform.

Busy Bees Before a Spring Wedding, and the Incredible Growing Duckie

It seems like it's only been a day or two since my last post here, but it has been ten days. I gotta watch that. Susanne Herfurth and I will be married in just ten more days. Nine days and a wake up till the wedding. if you can believe that.

I certainly didn't think it was likely that we'd end up married when I met her back in the fall of '06 in one of my graduate English classes. We were both involved with other people back then, but we did become friends. Now I can't imagine ever wanting to be married to anyone else. This is the one I have been looking for all along. Just goes to show ya that God works in mysterious ways. Hell, it wouldn't have done anybody any good If I'd met her sooner. When I was 20, she was only 10. But I'm 44 now, and she's 34, and that's a good fit.

Anyways, what with getting ready for the wedding, raising a duck who eats about 20% of his weight a day, and grows nearly that much, doing a small research project for capitol, and dealing with my new computer with Windows 8 installed crashing repeatedly, I've been a bit preoccupied.

 

The top two pictures were taken 10 days ago, the bottom two a few minutes ago. The scale is not as clear as I'd like, but the duck has doubled in size over that period. It is the same pan in all three shots. Duckie is not only eating and growing, but he's shitting up a storm as well. I hope we can move into a house before too long, so we can turn him loose in the yard as a fertilizer machine. In addition to the progress of his growth and the fluidity of his bowels, Duckie is learning to play soccer with us, though he cheats and pushes the ball around with his beak. Hmmm...I guess that's not cheating, you can use your face in soccer. The little booger also dramatically increases the number of passerby we chat with every time we take him for a walk. You'd think they'd never seen anybody walking a duck before.

I got caught up to date on that research project yesterday, and got terminally fed up with Windows crashing at about the same time. So today I installed Ubuntu in parallel with the Win 8, and I have been tuning it and downloading applications all day. Hopefully that will take care of most of the computer hassle. I'll work out of Ubuntu and only use the Windows when necessary. I hate Microsoft  in principal, and have never much liked Windows in particular. Corporate anything sucks.

For the next week, I will just cruise into the wedding, taking care of stuff as it comes up, but remembering to pray and meditate in order to keep sane. It's been more than fifteen years since I said I'd never get married again. Susanne changed my mind about that, but this is the last time. Ever. For real, so we'd better just make it work. The cool thing is, I'm pretty sure that we will be able to have fun doing it.

Susanne Self Centered?

I made a comment tonight like, "Wow, you're really going all out on that stuff." re: some stuff Susanne is preparing for the children who will attend our wedding.

She replies, "I'm making up for lost time. I used to be self centered."

I laugh. "Compared to whom? Mother Theresa? Jesus? Ghandi?"

What's in it for God?

Wake up People: God Wants Your Company.

It is as simple as that. He doesn't really need gifts, or slaves (in the way we understand those words), the whole sacrifice and tithing thing are about supporting a priesthood—call them what you will, priests, pastors, ministers, reverends, basically all the professionals supposedly representing God on this Earth. Intercessors, teachers, confessors and so on. Whether God actually cares about that or not is another topic, and I would argue that he doesn't. He wants a personal relationship with each and every one of us. He wants to share joy and sorrow with us. He wants to have friends, lovers, and companions.

My mother in Law to be, Linda Herfurth, gave a sermon yesterday at The Carpenter's House here in Modesto. It is not the Church I usually attend (Susanne and I go to New Hope Christian Fellowship), but Susanne (my blushing bride) and I went yesterday to support her mother, and to hear her preach. Her sermon topic was on prayer, and the fact that most people (herself included) find excuses not to pray. Too busy, too tired, too distracted to give it your full attention, and so on.

She also said that there are three levels of prayer life that people can evolve through. The first is monologue: where the person talks to God, asking for help, or giving thanks, or telling God about their day, without expecting a response. That is beginners prayer I guess. Next is a dialogue: When a person talks to God, expects answers, and gets them. God talks in all sorts of ways, sometimes he actually speaks to a person, sometimes answers come from another person, or in the guise of coincidence, and in various other ways. The third way is continual prayer: this is when a person has developed such a close connection with Jesus that he is always there with them. The dialogue is ongoing and is reflected in the persons every moment and action.

Of course, the third level is where we would ideally all live. That reminded me of an Orthodox mystical book my brother Nick introduced me to, The Way of The Pilgrim, which told the story of one mans quest for and discovery of that state of continual prayer. I'm not going to go any farther with that right now, but I would recommend the book to anyone who is earnestly seeking God. It's quite interesting. Anyway, Linda's sermon ended with the idea that God wants our company more than anything else. And that is an idea I developed separately a couple of years ago as I went through my own trials and tribulations before coming to understand that Jesus is the way. I still don't much like the category “christian” because of the behavior of far too many people who claim that moniker, but I have become a follower and friend of Jesus.

Here I'm going to discuss my reasoning for the claim that God wants your company.

In Genesis 1:26-27, God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

So, what does this tell us about God? The “us” is the trinity of God, I'm sure, and we can assume that the image he was speaking of wasn't his physical image, or not only his physical image. What are some of the most prominent traits of humans? Particularly the best and the brightest of us? The “good” qualities, but also the troublesome ones, the parts of our personality that make us volatile and vulnerable?

Intellect, curiosity, and creativity are some obvious ones to start with. Without these God would never have come to create the universe in the first place. From the Bible itself we know that he feels Love, also anger, jealousy (ouch, that's an ugly one), essentially all of our emotions except for maybe hate, yet it is said that he hates sin.

One thing that people don't often mention, but that is an intrinsic part of being human, is the loneliness of God. Can you imagine how lonely he must have been before he started creating companions for himself? I AM, the only thinking, feeling entity in all the void before the universe existed?

I believe that he created the Angels, and then Humanity, for the company. For some reason, the Angels weren't enough. Even though they have to have free will, or they would have never been able to rebel. Perhaps because being immortal and living with God, they never sufficiently differentiated themselves from their creator. Were never able to surprise him, or bring something new into the conversation. So, he created humanity, and set us loose in the world to develop in our own way without too much direct interference. Of course, I could be wrong about all that, but I think I'm at least in the ballpark, and I'll find out one way or another in the end.

Why are we different from angels, aside from our mortality that is? I don't know exactly, but I suspect that our being mortal, and our having families so we have to worry about the welfare of our dependents, give us a lot more motivation to learn, grow, and change things than the angels would have developed. Maybe that is exactly what God wants.

The Church is spoken of as “The Bride of Christ.” That means that humanity, or at least everyone who makes the final cut, will be wife to the Lord God almighty. Something tells me that it is not the sexual union of marriage that is meant here. Rather the companion, partner, sweetheart, confidant that a good spouse is. One person in all of creation you can relax and be your true self with, the one you can be vulnerable with, the one you can let see your weaknesses.

That part of all this kinda scares me because it implies that all of us will be one at that point. Parts of the “body” that make up the bride. That implies a loss of individuality, and that is something that scares me. Nonetheless, I expect that it will work out ok, its just that we don't have the language to describe what is coming.

In any case, we are here now, and if we would be closer to God, talking to him like a friend, or even a beloved father might be better for both us and him than treating him like some high king and groveling at his feet. He made us in his image, so perhaps he is a lot like us, and wants to have real give and take relationships with us. What can we each give him that no one else can? What does he need from us?

It's obviously not our labor (he made the universe on his own hook, what could I do that could top that?), he doesn't need us to pick up his socks, or clean his house. Angels would be much more efficient at that sort of thing than any person one would assume. He doesn't need any Thing from us. It has to be something that he doesn't have already, or at least didn't have when he decided to create us.

I could go digging through the book and find a bunch of references to support this thesis, but then others would drag out other references as to why not (and the arguments are both in there), so why bother.

If God indeed exists, and has gone to all the trouble of creating us, and raising us, and finally decided to even forgive us all our excesses, for nothing more than the cost of belief and repentance of sin. Then why? Why are we worth the trouble? I am pretty well versed in the history of the species, and I am human, and I am just about ready to write us off as a bad job and wipe the slate clean, so why hasn't God? What does he want from us?

The only thing that I can think of that any human (or every human) could give him that he couldn't get easier somewhere else is simply our company. Someone to talk to, someone to walk with, someone with a different perspective on the problems of life, the universe and everything. Maybe I'm crazy, or blinded by hubris, or just an idiot. But maybe I'm not.

It would explain so much, and I know that if I were alone in the void, I would do everything within my power to get some company. Being alone sucks. Loneliness is worse than any physical ailment, it hurts deep down and flavors everything with ashes. So that is my considered answer to the question of what God wants out of us. What's in it for God?

Your company, so be a good host, invite him in, and have a chat. You might learn something.

What Susanne has done for me.

I am reading a collection of Charles de Lint stories right now, just started this collection today, and in the very first story I came upon a bit of dialogue that really hit me where it counts. Here it is.

"Hell Staley, Some days I'm afraid of everything. Why do you think I spent half my life looking for oblivion in a bottle?"

"What Made you Change?"

I don't even have to think about that.

"Malicorn," I tell her, "Nothing she said or did--just that she was. I guess her going away made me realize that I had a choice: I could either keep living in the bottom of a bottle, and that's not living at all. Or I could try to experience ordinary life as something filled with beauty and wonder--you know, the way she did. Make everyday something special."

Staley nods. That's not so easy."

"Hell no. But it's surely worth aiming for."

Yes, it is. And that is what I learned from Susanne, Nothing she said or did--just that she is. Just by being, she's taught me more about living than anyone else, and it's cool, because she seems to think that she's learned a bit from me as well. We're a fair match.

Ordinary life is filled with beauty and wonder--if you take the time to look.

The Duckie Chronicles: Volume 1

 People are wondering, Where did this mysterious duckling come from? Or, as Aaron Alford asked, "What the heck is with this duck? How in the heck did you guys end up with a duck??"

It isn't all that complicated, just one of those Grace things. Either coincidence (for those who actually believe that random chance guides the workings of the universe), or God decided that we needed a duck. It happened like this.



The guy downstairs in Apartment 1 is named Ace, he's a very small old man (I think he's 88, but he could pass for 68) of mediterranean extraction, and a nice guy who has always got different sons, daughters, grandkids, cousins and the like visiting him. So, about a week ago one of his granddaughters came up from Visalia with her new baby to show her off to granddad. She came up to say hello the first day she was here because she saw all of the art on the walls from the parking lot downstairs, wanted a closer look, and wanted to meet whoever was responsable for all that painting.

So, she introduced herself and got to talking with Susanne. Susanne is great like that, she'll make friends with anyone who stands still long enough. I get to meet more interesting people that way than for any other reason. Anyway, this woman is named Lisa, I think, and Susanne told her that if she brought her baby upstairs, she (Susanne) would be happy to draw or paint the little tyke. She also discovered that this lady had brought a duck with her, and it was funny to see this duck following her around the parking area over the course of the next several days.

Lisa's baby was not feeling well, so she didn't get around to bringing her up until the day before she left town, and Susanne wasn't here at the time, so I took a couple of pictures of the baby for Susanne to work from if she ever gets around to painting the baby. Here's one of them.

 

After that, we didn't see her again, but the day after she left, Ace came up (again while Susanne was out) and told me that Lisa had left the duck behind because she was afraid some kid woiuld kill it and asked me if Susanne would want to adopt it. I told him I didn't know, and that I'd tell her he asked. I wasn't going to commit to any duck, but I knew damn well she was going to want it. Sure enough, when I told her Ace asked if we wanted to adopt the duck, she went downstairs and came back with the duck in short order.

Here you see me meeting the duck for the first time.

So that is where the duck came from. Where it is going I have no idea. Susanne has already decided she loves it, and the little bugger is growing on me like moss, so we are now proud parents of a duck a month before our wedding. Odd, but no one seems scandalized.

Duckie Bed.

We have determined that the duck does not like being alone. If one of us is not within about five feet it will come closer, and if it cannot see either of us it will start cheeping at max volume, and continue until one of us comes back in sight. Duckie follows on one or the other of our heels wherever we go if given the chance. Duckie followed us to the park and back the first night we had him. Duckie imprinted on both of us quickly, but favors Susanne because she dotes on the little booger.

We have also discovered that Duckie is no Beethoven (i.e. the pianist = peeingist), as it doesn't seem to urinate, but it sure is the poopinest thing you ever did see. BTW, I keep calling Duckie "It" because it is impossible to tell its gender until it grows up, and difficult with Peking Ducks anyway, because they are all white. Most of the time we are keeping him walled up in the kitchen where there is hardwood floor, so it is easy to clean. Thankfully it doesn't shit on people, so far. We are hoping to be able to potty-train Duckie, but aren't holding our breaths over it. Might be impossible.

 Today Duckie got to come to dry creek with us. We borrowed our other downstairs neighbor's car, another cool old guy who we've gotten to know, name of Jerry, and took his dog Salt, and the duck with us to hang out in the sun. First time duck ever met a dog, but Salt is a mellow old fellow, so it worked out well.

That is all about the duck for now, but stay tuned for more episodes of the Duckie Chronicles, random Batty Time, same Batty Station. Peace out to y'all.

Talking about Concetta is not food porn; Concetta is Food Erotica

A friend from church (New Hope Christian Fellowship) gave Susanne Herfurth (my lovely fiance) and I a gift certificate "Dinner for two" at Concetta in downtown Modesto (1205 J st).

When she called and said she had won this certificate and a bottle of wine in a raffle the night before and wanted us to have it as a Valentine's gift, I replied that it seemed a bit excessive. She then informed me that she felt that God wanted us to have it and that she had won it for us. What could I say to that? I said thank you., and thanked God as well because Susanne and I haven't been able to afford going out to nice restaurants much.

Well, tonight we went downtown to have dinner at Concetta, and I am here thanking both God and Sarah Stone Keath publicly for gifting us that opportunity. The atmosphere is bistro casual, the service was very good, and the food is fan-fucking-tastically fabulous. 

Concetta is locally known for using fresh local ingredients, and having an ever-changing menu (tonight's is pictured here). Also, I have heard good things about their food and service whenever the place has come up in conversation which it does from time to time. I am always interested in restaurants because I am a foodie, and because I worked in restaurants for better than twelve years when I was younger.

I gotta say, Concetta is as good as any of them, and that IS saying something. I have worked in several very good fine-dining establishments in Monterrey, CA, and Ft. Lauderdale, FL, among other places. 

This evening, our table was set and waiting when we arrived for our 6:30pm reservation, including ice-water that the ice hadn't had a chance to melt in. We ordered iced-tea to drink, and it arrived momentarily. The waitress answered our questions easily, and consulted with the owner about our gift certificate since there was no dollar amount on the paper and we wanted to know where we stood before ordering. The answer was perfect. "Dinner for two, not including alcohol" is what the certificate said, and what it meant was that we could order whatever we wanted off the menu with no price cap. Awesome.

We started by ordering two Appetizers: Lamb Meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce, and Marinated Olives. There was a wide variety of olives in the dish, oil cured, brine cured, green, black, brown, and in all sizes from pinky-nail sized up to thumb sized, and everything in between. Yummy, but the meatballs stole the show. I do have to appologise in advance for the pictures, the food was so good that I forgot to take a picture before digging in each time something new arrived on the table.

I had been told they were good, and that was an understatement. The sauce was delicate and mildly spicy, the meatballs tender and juicy. While we ate those, we perused the menu further, and decided to order the rest all at once which suits the style of the place just fine as they are pretty much a "tappas house."

We ordered two salads: Wild Greens and Goodies, and Pear and Gorgonzola Salad with berries, marconas, and honey.

And two Entrees: Pork Scallopini with polenta and mustard cream, and the Pan Seared Flat Iron with wild rices and arbequina oil. 

We began eating them as they arrived, so we tried the Scallopini first, followed by the Pear and Gorgonzola salad, then the Steak, and finally the Wild Greens, but don't get me wrong, they all arrived within a very few minutes, and we were sharing each item as it showed up, so everything was groovy in our book. After thouroughly enjoying it all, even bringing home the few bites of the Wild Greens we couldn't finish to share with our Duck (pictured here helping Susanne wash dishes) who agreed that it was indeed a fine salad. 

Susanne and I discussed the finer points of the meal at length and came to the following conclusions.

1. Everything was Great!
2. You can't hardly compare meatballs to olives, so they were individually excellent, and complimented each other well.
3. The Pear and Gorgonzola salad was unbelievable. The only way it could have been any better would be if there was a bit more Gorgonzola in proportion to the other ingredients. The marconas are toasted almond bits, and the berries are big juicy blackberries...Awesome.
4. The Wild Greens with Goodies were good, a solid example of that kind of salad, with the Goodies being slivers of red pepper and little green beans, romano cheese and so forth in a very light dressing, probably just misted with oil and balsalmic, and topped with a couple of crustini with a yummy hummus like spread on them.
5. The Pork Scallopini was lovely, but the polenta and the mustard cream sauce stole the show on that plate.
6. The Pan Seared Flat Iron steak was awesome, cooked perfectly without having to tell them anything. If you like to cremate your steaks you should probably make a point of letting them know, but you'll be missing out. The wild rices were nice, but the polenta stole that show also.

We didn't have room for dessert, but plan to go back after our wedding and Honeymoon next month, so we'll just have to save room then. Tonight was just right for tonight. Thank you again Sarah.