I lost my marbles so I borrowed some from my bartender

This is NOT Louis.

My title makes sense I swear to Chocolate it will make sense.

My mother decided to take me out for drinks on Black Friday with our favorite bartender who now works at a place where drinks are so expensive, we plan our trips and look forward to it. It's one of those restaurants local doctors and hoity toity's brag about going to because they are so outrageously priced for the area (not that bad for New York City).

Anyway, the bartender, Louis, has been a favorite. Not only can he make the best martinis, ones I can actually drink without it being too sweet or too alcoholly, but he's like therapy. I call him my therapist. One who has no license and we do hug and kiss, so ethics is kind of out the window too on that. Really we do. I tell the husband. He's stuck with it. We don't make out. We just greet each other with a big hug and a good smack on the lips. People in Europe do that.

Last night, we get there, and Louis talked a lot about his real therapist. He has PTSD like I do. We've talked about it before, and this therapist is a good one. Actually, I've not gone to therapy for my PTSD because the therapeutic choice of all choices is to ask you a bunch of questions about the trauamatic incident making you relive it over and over again, and that made my PTSD worse, not better. I think I have PTSD from the therapy of my PTSD because seeing a shrink makes me all kinds of I want to throw up. This therapist, however, does not use that therapy. That, I would go to.

At some point in the conversation, Louis hands me 2 marbles from his pocket. He said that one marble is, "Everything is going to be ok," and the other marble is, "I'm going to be all right." Put them in your pocket and you'll be amazed how many times you reach in your pocket and can feel these marbles reminding yourself that everything is going to be ok and you are going to be all right.

Well, being female, I don't have a pocket most of the time, and if I do, well let's just say i frequently find 20 dollars I have no idea where it came from last year in a pocket... My purse is also a bad idea. It hoards pieces of chocolate and what nots that I wouldn't tell the difference between a gumball and a marble while fishing for that cell phone. But my wallet, now I go into that baby too many times a day. So, that's where I'm keeping my marbles. My wallet.

Now I don't think Louis is aware that I actually lost my marbles and went to the farm. That totally gives this an angelic God appeal to it, like the Lord, He works in mysterious ways. Louis followed his instinct and it was exactly what I needed when I needed it.

And to make it more special, the marbles were made by Louis's father. He made marbles for a living.

So this black friday, I'm thankful for marbles. I'm thankful for awesome bartenders too. I left that bar with a good buzz from a good martini (my mom was driving) and some replacement marbles. Now their prices don't seem that extreme afterall.

Happy Easter or Hump Day Preachy Keen Soapbox

Let's talk about sex baby, let's talk about the Easter bunny, let's talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be, let's talk about Spring.... Yeah I'm dancing as I type. I am the sexiest nerd with this right now let me tell you. Don't let this silliness fool you because this is a very serious topic, a religious one, or a spiritual one, you decide whatever role this shall play in your life, and if you aren't religious, that's okay. You can get something from this too.

So I started off writing this as a profile status on my facebook, and then I decided it was too risque for my profile, so I put it on my friend's page that was designed to post things we wouldn't post on our profile. It's called "Oh No! Did I Offend You?" No, I'm not asking you if you are offended yet. That's the name of the page. But I'm realizing a lot of Christians reading it totally missed the point I was trying to make in between the lines. I don't know why I keep trying to do this metaphorical coded Shakespearean Classic Literature attempt because the minds of today misses some obvious shit without Cliff's Notes. I bet you many will still miss it. It's because we are spiders. I'll get to that in a minute.

Anyway, the status...

So basically, Easter/Spring time was a Pagan deal about fertility. That time of year where we plant seeds outside like carrots and inside like loin fruits. It's the humping time of year, a holiday following one about love (Valentine's Day, which also had roots in fertility stuff), with symbols like eggs, bunnies, baby chickens, chocolate (aphrodisiac)… And then we got the Passover where we celebrate how God killed the first born of the Egyptians, then the Crucifixion where we celebrate how we killed God's first born, and then the Resurrection where God's first born was like haha, can't touch this, and came back to life… conveniently forgiving all our sins in the process, and by conveniently, I mean well played Christians. Some of you may act all holier-than-thou, but I see through it now. The timing of Jesus related celebrations was no coincidence. Y'all needed Jesus to forgive you for all the foul acts you did in the name of the Fertility gods, so that you may hump away guilt free. And for that. Thank. You. Thumbs up. You rock.

Let me spell out some things I mistakenly thought was obvious with this...

First of all, this really is a time of year where people naturally believe in new, birth, fertility, LIFE. After the cold harsh deaths of winter, we are followed with a resurrection of Spring, and yes I'm using these choice words on purpose, Resurrection meaning Jesus came back from the dead and this is a time of year where natural cycles show a new beginning, like the trees resurrected from winter, and getting knocked up. Research it. Every freaking folklore legend of the pagan beliefs that existed before Christianity are about fertility and fucking.

Second, there's a lot of coincidences going on here. Or are they? God didn't proclaim these holidays. These dates where we celebrate them are not anniversaries of the events. We chose these dates. It's just weird how it worked out, and I can't tell if it was a Freudian thing or an intentional one, and by Freudian, I don't mean sex or the psychosexual stages, I mean was this an Id deal? or a super ego one?

What is strange coincidental...

1. The story line of killing the first borns. Out of all the stories of the Old Testament, why the Passover during this time? I know the Jewish people celebrated it around spring? But why? The OT is full of stories where some awful suffering was going on, God intervened, people died, and then boom, new happy life, like Egyptians slaving Hebrews, God intervened with Moses, kids died, and slaves were freed, and it was followed with another tale where the slaves were travelling and starving, suffering, for a very long time (another winter) before hitting the promised land (another Spring). We have oodles of stories to pull from for that Winter/Spring theme to celebrate during this time of year, but why the one story where God killed the first born? So that we can then also follow it days later with the Crucifixion where karma comes back and we kill God's first born... Basically the same story, people being redeemed by the blood of a lamb... Note: New Testament dictates we turn the Passover celebrations, I guess, into eating bread and drinking wine and maybe washing feet depending on who translated the English translation for you, but me personally, I like bread and wine and try to incorporate that into my daily life regardless :)

2. Resurrection and Spring's renewal are very common themes. Out of all the stories in the Bible, nothing says Renewal and new birth and new beginnings better than the story of Jesus Resurrecting. This one has to have be intentional timing, much like fertility festivals were very common this time of year before the onset of Christianity. It all goes in line with Nature.

3. But even better than resurrection, with that story comes the concept of Grace. By Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Just funny timing when we hit a new beginning, fresh start of Spring with a clean slate by grace during a time where procreation and the acts involved in procreating are at their peak. Many Christians of today seem to think they are immune to sin. That because they didn't have homosexual anal sex anytime recently that their sex is somehow less sinful than everyone else's where I'm sure it's not, and I mean this metaphorically. The sex can be metaphorical to any act where sin is possible and probable. I just don't think it's a coincidence where we celebrate grace at the same time of year we celebrate sex.

To continue my preaching... it's not a high horse thank you, this is my unicorn. 

A lot of Christians have fucked up this Easter story. At least as it's told in the Bible. Nothing in the Bible was intended to be literal without a metaphorical value while soaking up the context. Again, I think it's a Freudian thing, the ego this time, making sense of the super ego and the id. Anyway, the real story... We killed Christ. Our ancestors did. He died in the hands of human beings, and that would be us, unless you don't think you are human, and if you are not human, well then you must be an alien or a dog or some animal which all would be super awesome interesting, whether you are intelligent life people claim does not exist or you are a dog capable of reading a blog. Either way, the fact that maybe we aren't Roman or wasn't alive during the time does not mean we didn't do it. When you are talking 3 main forces in this world from a Biblical standpoint, God, Satan, and man, the one force that killed Christ was Man. Not Satan. Not fallen angels. We did it. Satan actually warned God about that which started the whole fight according to Catholic sources. When we crucified that man (which is a huge step beyond just killing someone), we proved Satan right for a second. God knew we would. He planned for it.

But Jesus didn't die for our sins. No our sins killed him. And on the brink of death, his dying words were, "Forgive them for they know not what they do," which that dying wish is what started the Grace process. That dying wish followed by coming back from the dead, resurrecting, that is what He did for us. And not only did we kill the man, we not only tortured him, we not only crucified his beliefs that were different than our own, we not only feared him because he loved us all and his idea of charity and communism would interfere with personal gain, not only are we closed minded murderers, but we are also stupid closed minded murderers. We are that lower life form, and Jesus is the guy who doesn't blame the poisonous spider for biting him because the spider is a stupid creature acting on instinct.

Should that concept insult you? Not if you have Jesus in your life. With Jesus in your life, you are SUPPOSED to be humbled.

And that's the point of the story. Our sins are our venom. We bit the Messiah out of fear and stupidity. He resurrected so we wouldn't suffer consequences beyond our understanding. This didn't just happen a bunch of years ago. This is a cycle, much like winter and spring, and it repeats itself perpetually. Like the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, we killed Time. We Killed Christ, and we are sentenced to a perpetual tea party with a broken watch. If you are unfamiliar with that part of Alice in Wonderland, there's Cliff's Notes on the subject. But the point is, we still crucify Christ every day when we crucify a man for his beliefs. When we decide we hate homosexuals, we are crucifying Christ. When we decide atheists suck, we crucify Christ. When we decide we are holier than thou to every being who walks in your church, we are crucifying Christ. When we deny starving people food, we are crucifying Christ. When we picket funerals of soldiers, we are crucifying Christ. I could go on and on. But we all do it, somewhere, someway, somehow. All of us including myself. We all crucify him still, and we are forgiven still.

BUT, while Grace saves our asses, part of the Grace deal is what? Accepting Christ in your life. Now when the Bible says that, or maybe I should say when Christ said that, He wasn't referring to walking into a man-made structure called a Church and saying, "hey, I accept Jesus in my life" and then go there every Sunday and put on your Puritan costume living in a delusion that you are saved giving you every right to judge people and damn them to hell. How the hell people get that from that is beyond me and totally proves the stupidity point even further. Jesus Christ is a dead guy who came back from the grave. How do you accept a dead guy in your life? You accept His spirit, what he stood for, his beliefs, his LOVE for humanity. That acceptance doesn't siphon out the poison of sin from your body. You are still full of sin and possibly shit. There is no way to make a turd clean to touch. Nope, you are still a product of both good and evil, and by working with your goodness every day to overcome evil, to over come temptations, to LOVE instead of hate (both of which are passions), you are accepting Christ in your life. You are allowing him in your heart. You are permitting him to dictate what you do without fear. And the more you do it, the more you will recognize him upon your death because I assure you he will not look like the white guy with facial hair in all the paintings. You will have to recognize Him by what he stood for. Noah Webster once said the righteous will see God, and he's right. They will. But by how they actually live, not the facade they present.

So when I say, "Accept Christ in your life," I mean anyone could be doing that. Just because they don't go to your church and live exactly the way you live and believe exactly what you believe doesn't mean they don't. I have seen atheists live a life more in line with Christ's teachings than some Christians, and I would say those atheists in that case know Christ better, and have accepted Him more so, than the Christians. Christ is not a label. It doesn't matter what you call Him. If He's there, He's there. And just because they sin doesn't mean they are not allowed Christ or have to change to your ways. You sin all the damn time. Everyone does. It's unavoidable because we are stupid. We are equally flawed. Of course, we all try to reduce sin as much as possible, but the process of that is something between the sinner and God (trinity) and is nobody else's business.

Now I am reading a lot about Easter and it's history. Here's some of the comments from that status...


Tim says, " Truth...Easter is the season of Easter/Oaestre, the Greek goddess of fertility. This is the season when the Greeks had large orgies while dressing in pastel colors. The symbols used to celebrate were fertility ones such as:
Rabbits (multiply voraciously)
Eggs (symbol of the womb)
Chocolate (aphrodisiac)
Where the Christ resurrection comes into play is the Celestial cross...
During December 22-25th the SUN OF GOD stops moving forward and starts to move backwards for 3 Days, then starts to move forward again on the 25th. The location of this occurrence and the location of the planet's form a celestial CROSS. Thus, the SUN OF GOD DIES ON THE CROSS AND RISES AGAIN IN 3 DAYS. This is also how the LIE of a Jesus was born on December 25th occurred. The SUN OF GOD was born when the SUN moved forward on the 25th.
A CRAZY ASS CRUSADER (CHRISTIAN WHO KILLS IN THE NAME OF HIS RELIGION AND TAKES OVER LANDS TO SPREAD THE WORD -BS!) named Constantine(Sp?) AND THE KNIGHTS OF TEMPLAR (Modern day KKK) was commissioned by the Pimp, oh I mean Pope, to spread the word and the papacy indoctrinated these pagan rituals into its religion for financial gain and to spread the MYTH of EUROPEAN Jesus (which was really a MASTER MASON NAMED CAESAR BORNINE (Sp?), Son of the POPE.)
The fable get more entertaining...
Look it up, do not BE-LIE-EVE anyone."

Theresa gave this link: http://rcg.org/books/ttooe.html

Susan says, "Actually, Easter is another of the many pagan holidays adopted by Christianity. It's a celebration of rebirth. It was a time when the days began to grow longer and plants began to grow again, it was also the time when fields were planted, animals were born and the time of the New Year celebration before the Gregorian calendar was adopted. It's a celebration of fertility and hope for prosperity. The egg has long been a symbol of fertility. When Christianity began spreading, the people were hard put to discard their celebrations, so they were adapted to Christianity. Christmas is another celebration adopted by the Christians. Jesus had nothing to do with either of them."

Basically, in a nut shell, Easter is a tradition based on tribal tales where we can't differentiate between fact and fiction of what little of the story is left. We have no idea where the fuck (punny) this holiday came from or what it means. I can't tell you if you are going to burn in hell for celebrating it, even with the focus on Jesus Christ, or not. I can't speak for God. I can't speak for you. All I can say is Christ taught Love. That's the gist of the Bible. It says God is Love. Jesus did nothing but show an example of Love. Even when Jesus disagreed, He was still all about Love.

So analyze what you want to analyze, but the important thing is it's Easter. Go love your lover in ways that justify Christ's resurrection. Happy Hump Day, I mean Happy Easter. Frolic and don't forget the bread and wine WINE WINE did I mention WINE.

Donna's Day

About 7 years ago, I was on the phone with my best friend and sisterwife. "Jamie, I have something to tell you." and she responds, "I have to tell you something too." We argued about who was going to go first for a few minutes, she telling me to go first, and me telling her to go first, and she did. It was about her two year old.

"Deziray is not going to make it. We have just decided to unplug the machines keeping her alive." She tells me the whole story, and in the middle of me apologizing profusely, she asks, "What was your news?" I was like, "I can't tell you. Nevermind it." She was like, "Tell me," and I'm like, "I have to tell you but I can't now." She's like, "You're pregnant." There I am wailing in tears, "I'm so sorry, yes. I'm sorry." The day I found out I was pregnant with my first child was the day my best friend found out she was going to lose her youngest.

Deziray was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was 6 months old. They performed a surgery and removed it. According to the autopsy, she had fully recovered from the cancer. She was a cancer survivor. But, with all that cancer involved, she was prone to infection. She went to the ER sick, and they transferred her from her usual hospital to another one. We don’t know exactly what caused Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, but we have suspicions. It's possible the nurse gave her too much oxygen regardless of my friend challenging the levels of oxygen. It's possible a nurse at the other hospital complicated the infection trying to use a less than sterile trach tube. It's possible the body organs just shut down from infection causing the ARDS, and it's possible the ARDS caused the organs to shut down one by one. Either way, that girl survived cancer.

I do feel guilty for being away when my friend experienced all this. I feel guilty for never really knowing Deziray. This was probably the most ultimate sacrifice I made by joining the military.

I don't do well with feelings. I don't really like having them. I hate sorting through them. I hate trying to identify them, and even worse, I hate finding words to describe them. Love is an easier topic to discuss than sadness, regret, understanding, acceptance… Between losing my father to cancer and losing my niece to post cancer treatment, I really don't know how to respond when I read stories of other people who experience anything similar. My heart wants to jump through whatever obstacles the internet might bring and just hug the person and tell them everything I feel and tell them everything is going to be okay and how awesome they are and how amazing their children are, but then the other part of me wants to bury all those feelings. What if I insult? What if I say something wrong? What if I add to their hurt by accident because irony is a bitch like that?

And now as a parent, when I read stories about pediatric cancer, my heart can't take it. My kids. I just want to hug my kids and hold them because some day, I might not get that luxury, and it's not fair that I get to when other people out there don't. I should not feel guilty for hugging my kids. I don't want to think about any of it. I don't want to think about a child suffering. I don't want to think about parents losing their child. I WANT to think about DIY crafts and how I need to clean the house. I want to laugh at internet memes of cats wearing glasses and unicorns farting rainbows.

But today is Donna's Day. Her mom wrote out the events of Donna's story one September ago, and it needs to be read. Yes it will make you cry. Yes it will make you want to jump in the internets and hug the pictures of that baby. Yes you will embark on an emotional rollercoaster in a matter of hours. But it will also give you hope. Amidst the fears of death, this story inspires you to truly live. She will make you feel. 

Not only is Mary Tyler Mom, Sheila, one of the best writers I ever had the pleasure of reading, but she is also one of the kindest people I have ever had the pleasure of cyber meeting. She thinks like a poet, and she describes the things we never think to describe. No better person can tell Donna's story than her (no offense to Mary Tyler Dad), not just because she's Donna's mother, but because she is who she is, a very beautiful person on the inside and out.

READ DONNA'S STORY

Donna left more behind to her family than memories. She left a legacy. Hope. Her love shines through the tragedy and reaches out beyond the grave to others facing the same fight. Donna's Good Things is a nonprofit organization with the following mission statement

"Our mission has grown and is guided by Donna’s approach to life. We aim to:
Provide joyful opportunities for children facing adversity, be it economic, familial, social or health related;
Encourage your good things by providing an online community where folks can share in words or photos something they've done influenced by Donna's inspiration.

Donna was in treatment for cancer for two and a half years, from the age of 20 months. Much of that time we spent in worry and anxiety. Donna herself, though, was a happy little kid. We played through her fears, delighted in her growth, and loved her. During that time, Donna taught us the value of finding joy in the dark moments, and finding hope in even the most hopeless times. To those who are facing dark and hopeless times, we hope to help you find that joy. And for those of you with health and happiness, we want to help you reach out too."

Donna's Good Things is totally involved in an event to raise money for the St. Baldrick's Foundation. You can get involved too. You can donate. You can join in and shave your head (that takes more courage than I have). You can also share Donna's story and links to the event. Giving 10 dollars to help fund the fight against cancer is awesome and the world needs that, but if you can touch someone like Donna has, you are contributing something more valuable than money. If you are in Chicago, you can attend the event in person at the Candlelight Restaurant on March 30th.

From Sheila,

"The purpose of the Donna Day campaign is to raise $ for our head shaving event on Saturday, March 30 in Chicago.  It is our second event.  Last year's started with a goal of $20K and we raised $79K!  This year we have many fewer heads to shave and have set a goal of $30K.  Our oldest shavee is 89 years old and she is doing it with her daughter, a returning shavee for us.  WOW!"

DONATE

I thank you Sheila, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing your story with such grace and beauty. I thank you for all the good you do in this world. You are one of the reasons God has yet to smite us all into pillars of salt. Your light gives me hope about the world we live in. Donna inspires me to be bigger than my problems. She has taught me that no matter how fragile our bodies may be, our spirit can remain strong.

To all you readers out there, you can go beyond hoping and become part of someone's hope. Now go be awesome. LIVE and GIVE. Ha, Dr. Seuss watch out, I'm starting to rhyme. We going to battle like rap artists some day, me and Dr. Seuss.