Gingerbread houses!

Tonight my kids' school had a fundraiser where we showed up and got to decorate our own gingerbread houses. We had a wide assortment of candies, a tube of icing per house, and cookies and cocoa to snack on in hopes of keeping the candies for the decorations. There was also someone playing Christmas music (and general nice sounding piano music) on the piano over to the side. My kids really wanted to do this and I had my doubts, but it ended up being a lot of fun. I was Will's appointed helper and icing-putter-onner, while he handled the design and creative elements. His house is pretty cool, as is Alisdair's. Maybe this Christmas I can end up getting a digital camera so I can show them off here before we all grow old and die. :)

While I enjoyed the evening, it brought home to me again how different things are here. It's sorta subtle, at least to me, but there is a whole different culture here that I'm having a small amount of difficulty adjusting to. For instances of what I mean, see the following:

1) There were lots of daddies helping make houses. Not as many as mommies, but still quite a few. In Oklahoma, sports were the only childhood activity the fathers participated in with any regularity.

2) The thing was put on by the PTA (specifically, to raise money for scholarships for the school's Montessori program). Now, while I think this is cool, it also means that... well, put plainly, I make a lot less money than most of these folks, and have for most of my life. It isn't especially evident on the surface, but any extended proximity brings it out in spades. The clothes, while not too fancy, are obviously not from Wal-Mart. The kids are in Gap sweaters and Levi's rather than T-shirts and no-brand jeans. The moms all have really good hair, well-chosen make up, and nice clothes. They aren't lacking for baby stuff if they have babies, and everything's in really good repair. And I'm not entirely sure they all realize that this isn't the way it is in the rest of the world.

3) People cared about helping someone else send their kid to a Montessori program. Sounds cruel, but for all of OK's virtues, I've never seen a community as willing to give as the one here. There are charity things all over the place, and a surprising number of people take part in them. Maybe it's because there's a lot more excess money floating around here, so there's more to give, but it's still a radical change from the "charity? What's that?" outlook to which I've been accustomed.

I've never exactly been concerned with keeping up with the Joneses. I've always been in the fringe, and material things were not really a part of the dynamic in the groups in which I most easily found inclusion (aside from "have you seen this cool game yet"). Hell, the Joneses didn't even live in my neighborhood, or near anyone else I knew. Even when my brother got into the silly-amounts-of-extra-money category, we were so far removed in income as to make competition a non-factor. Envy was there a bit, especially when I saw what he could give his daughter that I couldn't even dream of for my boys, but not competition. Now, however, I suddenly find myself in a whole other world. I've got an income. I'm making all the bills. We have health care. We can do things like give to charity and support the school and go to movies now and then and visit cool places and buy new clothes when we need it. It's heady, this sense of not having to scrape by any more. It's like I'm suddenly in a dream, only instead of waking up at the end of two weeks, another dose of dreamwine shows up in the form of a paycheck, and the whole things starts over again.

That feeling of unreality marks me, though. I still have to scrape for quarters for the coke machine. I still only have two pairs of pants that I have to wash really often. I started working out, but it took me two months to buy a new pair of athletic shoes with tread and support to replace the $10 Wal-Mart shoes I'd had for 4 years. Ihave a nice haircut, but I can't bring myself to set aside the money to get any product to put in my hair, much less a fancy diffuser hairdryer and such like. I'm still using the shampoo I took from Mom's store before I left, because buying the sort I really like seems far too extravagant. My blush broke into a jillion pieces the other day, but I don't replace it because it costs $4-$7 at Wal-Mart -- and forget about buying the stuff in Macy's or Nordstrom's.

I don't know how to feel at ease in this world of plenty. I can't shake the feeling that I don't belong here. And now that I am here, I feel both blessed and cursed with the knowledge that no matter how I try, it's never going to seem any more natural -- at least not for me. It might become more natural for my kids, though, and that's really probably the best I can do anyway.

All about the good love, baby: eynowd

I met Geoff online, which is to say we've not met properly yet, but that doesn't matter a tremendous amount anyway. It will come in time.

Geoff impressed me from the first as a really creative, out of the box thinking kind of guy. I enjoyed listening to his opinions and thoughts as they so often reflected my own feelings on the matter (whatever that matter happened to be). He was always coming up with the coolest kind of stuff, including the games he ran and played in and even the activities he enjoyed doing. It was just all there. The worst I could ever say about him was that his life seemed to be stuck in a rut that made him very unhappy, and for reasons I dared not inquire into too deeply, there was nothing he could do about it.

Boy, did that change.

At a time when I was dealing with upheaval of my own, Geoff's life suddenly did something very similar. We were mirror reflections of one another in a way, and I know at least that I was able to draw comfort from that, from seeing his strength in the face of adversity. The rut I had seen suddenly turned into a landmine that sent him hurtling off the field and into brand new territory, and although he's stumbled on occasions, he's finding his way through it with amazing alacrity. He's taken a situation that is never easy and rarely positive, and turning it into a new beginning with a world of opportunity in front of him. Even his difficulties inspire me to find courage and strength within myself, and his successes leave me amazed. If I could handle life's vagaries half as well as he has, I should be doing quite well indeed.

Geoff is a kind, sweet, smart, thoughtful man, from whom I sometimes feel as though I must have been separated at birth. If he were nearby, I'd be first in line to ask him to dinner and see if we could get a gaming session going. :) Being a couple or three continents away, though, I have to content myself with merely admiring him froma distance and reading his journal whenever possible. Love ya, man.

All about the good love, baby: Christopher McGlothlin, aka "the lurker." *grin*

I initially was introduced to Christopher at the Big Bar on 2, so this makes him an anomoly among my friends in that I met him in person before I ever saw him online. :) He was there with his charming wife, Tanith (She of the Uber-Cool Name), getting drinks for her and others and generally being funny and charming. He was talking with Adam Jury, who introduced me to this cool, funny, really intelligent guy who went out of his way to make sure everyone around him was as comfortable as possible. I was feeling rather overwhelmed by my surroundings, so I stuck around for a while despite the fact that I didn't say much of anything most of the time. He never failed to notice me or try to include me in conversation, and he was always incredibly gracious. I liked him at once.

Of course, it helps that he's an amazing writer. And that we're evidently related somewhere back in the mists of time, or Scotland, or both (my grandmother's maiden name was McGlothlin, same spelling and all). But mostly he's just so damn funny, and caring, and smart that it's impossible not to enjoy his company and look forward to seeing him again. He is the most loyal person it has ever been my good fortune to meet and befriend. He never fails to let me know he shares my joys and sorrows, to comfort me when I'm down, to let me know he's thinking of me and wishing me well. He even wrote me up in a Mutants and Masterminds book, so now I know I've arrived in the industry at last. *grin* He is wise, thoughtful, and just amazingly good. I'm especially fortunate to count him as a friend.

Thank you, Christopher. Your friendship is one I will always cherish. May God hold you in the palm of His hand for all your days.

*hug*