I'm having a pretty hard time with just about everything right now..... so if you think of me, feel free to pray.

I don't know what happened.

I went to bed feeling tired, but fine. I woke up stiff, headachey, unable to breathe and even less able to walk a straight line. I leaned on the wall while getting ready, because the floor kept tilting and weaving.

I went to work for a while, then gave it up and came home. Feeling sick like this brings me face to face with things like..... well.... mortality. Combined with last night's news, and I'm thinking about one thing..... death.

Two people died last night. Friends of a friend. It's not supposed to affect me because I don't know them, but I can't help it. Two girls died last night in Saskatchewan, but thousands of other people died, all over the world, no less important, no less beautiful, no more expendable. All of a sudden I'm aware of death all around me.

It stalks me at every step. It feels unnatural. Humanity wasn't created to die. I used to think I'd like to die, I thought that I'd welcome the day I could leave this tired earth..... at a young age I prayed for death on a regular basis, but as I get older I know this..... Death is not my friend.

It's my belief that life as we know it is in fact death, working it's slow poison in our lives. If it can't get us through some tragic means, it will wear us down until we succumb to it in old age. But life, life abundant waits beyond, and in fact we are not born to die, but rather we die to live. I yearn for the day I pass into life .... but Death is not my friend.

It strikes with cruelty and malice, and there is no tale of death that doesn't seem to me to be tragic and terrible, despite the life that comes afterward. It fills the world with pain and rot, and as much as I long to see heaven, I will fight death till my last breath.

I remember walking home as a child, up a hill on a gravel road. I must have been about 7. There on the shoulder of the road lay a gopher. Dead. Mouth open, stomach bloated. Legs splayed stiffly in the afternoon sun. I began to cry. I picked up the gopher and took him home, buried him in the pet cemetery beside Runty the Rabbit. I mean, why can't it live? It's not missing any parts. If I fixed it, would it get up and run away? What is missing from this animal, that it can't be repaired and recharged and sent on it's way? The absence of God given life smells like rotting flesh, and I have always hated that smell. It's an obscene thing, an intruder on this planet which was meant to be paradise, and I have no grid, we have no grid with which to process that which we were never meant to experience.

Which is perhaps why we never really know what to say, what to do, how to respond.

I can't help but think of what I've read about refugees in other countries, children who are orphaned and alone, people who hid amongst the corpses of their loved ones until death went on it's way. You see them on TV, their faces are sad stones, their eyes are well acquainted with death. Do they accept it? Do they attribute it to the will of God? Do they know that death is an unwelcome vagabond we will soon be rid of?

One thing they do know.... that the worst cruelty of death is not that it takes the ones we love, but rather that it leaves us behind.

Please pray for Rachel who has just lost two friends.

I'd been hearing about this show "The O.C" for quite some time so tonight I finally watched it. There were these people....... they were all beautiful. They had girlfriends and boyfriends and went away to Palm Springs for a weekend, where they played golf, drank alcohol and slept in each other's beds. It wasn't until I saw the preview for next weeks show that I discovered that they were all teenagers.

A high budget soap, really...... HOLY COW I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING!!!

Joan of Arcadia....... whenever I see a commercial I think "Who's that girl? Where have I seen her??" and just now...... like JUST NOW I figured it out. She's Elizabeth, from General Hospital. Back when I worked the night shift, I watched General Hospital every day while eating my breakfast.... at about 2pm. I followed Elizabeth's story, but when she "went away to boarding school" and wasn't on the show so much, I became bored with the scheming of the grown-ups and started sleeping in till 3...... grabbing breakfast at McDonald's on the way to work.

So she thought she could hide from me, but I found her.

I'm tired now, and I've accomplished nothing tonight. Try again tomorrow. Note to self: find out when Joan of Arcadia is on.

Do you remember watching those cartoons as a kid where the hero was pursued by a big snarly monstrous beast? The critter, be it a dinosaur or a bear or a wolf or sea serpent, would foil all their plans and try to eat them and get in the way in every possible circumstance. Almost invariably, you would find out at the end that the monster had a splinter in its paw..... or foot..... or hoof..... or something painful caught in its teeth.

Our hero, let's say Astroboy, would then remove the splinter or other distressing implement, and the monster's eyes would soften, growling would turn to fond affection, and the threat would become an invaluable ally.

Tell me you remember. That you felt sorry for the monster, that you were suddenly gripped with understanding and compassion, and celebrated the happy ending. I loved those stories, I expected them. I believed that they were true in my life, and so I feared no living beast (lucky for me, I encountered few beasts)

But why do I forget to apply it when it comes to the humans I come into contact with. I mean, don't we always find it true, that the people that lash out the most are merely reacting to some painful injury that no-one has yet cared enough to heal?

So many people are being eaten away from the inside by the poison of anger and bitterness..... and aren't they the ones who seem so hard, unapproachable, quick to strike....

Can we give them a reason to soften? Can I? Am I willing to invest in the healing of my peers?

Hmmm....

and it snows......

and snows.....

little more snow......

not quite enough snow.....

just having a snack whilst reflecting on the wondrous weather of winterpeg.

I'm kinda cooking. Shocker. Waiting for the meat to thaw out is more like it. Then I'll make some tacos. well...... wraps containing ground beef and veggies is more like it.

Then I'll do some homework. well..... poo-work is more like it.

And then I'll slide into a coma for about 10 hours and do it all over again tomorrow.

I've got a lot of half baked thoughts running through my mind. I'm not sure I want to say much about any of them.

I will make a note of the fact that I have been desperately in need of sleep. Two nights in a row now, I've slept 11 hours solid. That's uncommon for me. I'm going to bed as soon as I'm finished with this blog...... for another 10 hours tonight. Being tired makes me cranky. I don't want to be cranky anymore.

I miss Chimwemwe. Lately I miss her so much.