passing the peace

so last sunday i went to st. andrew presbyterian church in marin city. for those not in the know, that's where anne lamott goes to church. yeah. it was kinda stalker-y. whatever.

the church i usually attend is on the medium to large side, so it was good to be in a smaller community. it's pretty much as she described in her writing. only the regular pastor was on study leave; i'd like to hear her preach sometime. my friend lauren and i went last summer in hopes of seeing both anne and pastor veronica. so cross anne off the list. it's getting to be an annual trip to for me and lauren.

we kept our groupie status under our hats, tried not to stare and paid attention to the service. lauren and i even went so far as to introduce ourselves when they invited the new people to do so, which was out of character for both of us. we got a hearty, "hello lauren, hello audrey. " then came the greeting and passing of the peace part of the service. you know: shaking hands and saying, "the peace of christ be with you." and responding "and also with you". since we were trying not to act like adoring fans, we did not approach anne. but she popped up behind me in the center aisle and gave me a strong handshake and "welcome." awesome.

sidebar: the church i attend doesn't do the passing of the peace of christ during the contemporary services (it's been a while since i've been to the more traditional one, but i don't think they do it there either). instead it's called community time. like go say hi to someone new or someone you don't know time. as a fervent introvert, i HATE community time, and usually force whatever friend i sat with to talk to me until the 3-5 minutes are over. seriously. i think i have even resorted to going to the restroom during that time, maybe just once or twice. okay. back to story.

but the pastor encouraged us to extend christ's blessing to each other in this time, and knowing that he works in us to be a blessing to each other. or something to that effect. now, THAT is something i can get behind. because then that time of greeting is more than just small talk. Jesus is in that interaction and it gets me out of my own little comfort zone. plus church is so small, that you really can greet everyone at church. (the same thing happened when i went to another friend's episcopal church a few weeks ago - that's something else i'll probably write about soon) it just went on for like 10-15 minutes. hard to do that when there's like 100 people in a service. or not i guess if you want to shape a service that way. i digress.

anyway, that's what i've been thinking about since church yesterday. peace of christ be with you.

the happiest place on earth for some people

i'm on a non-profit organization mailing list and i got this today.

Beau Bonneau Casting is immediately seeking fun and fit, real families of 4 or more (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic and ethnically ambiguous) that are SF Bay Area local and enjoy amusement park rides for a Non Union Disneyland Commercial.

Only traditional nuclear families consisting of a married Mom and Dad, ages 30 – 50, with at least 2 biological kids aged 5 – 14yrs can be considered. If Grandparents are local that is a plus but not required. Must be related, camera friendly and in good physical shape. No cousins, aunts/uncles or family friends, etc.

let's start with "ethnically ambiguous" - what? i'm sorry disneyland, do you not approve of interracial marriage?
and "traditional nuclear families with a married mom and dad" - does that rule out, say, the brady bunch? seeing as how they were a blended family and all. i don't know that they ever actually admitted to being divorced on the show though. what about single parent families? never mind gay or lesbian couples with children - the horror! i bet gay or lesbian money is welcomed at the disney gates. but don't make them feel any more welcome beyond that.
"camera friendly" - no ugly people.
"in good physical shape" - no fat people.
"no cousins, aunts/uncles or family friends, etc." - it ain't the 1950's anymore. we're a ways from traditional upper middle class nuclear families these days.

how webmd just scares the hell out of you

so i went to the emergency room last night.

since i am now blogging about it, you can assume that it was not all that serious. but still freaked me out pretty good.
i was just sitting on the couch and rubbing my eye absentmindedly and when i stopped, my eye felt weird. like not good weird. i looked in the mirror and it seemed there was stuff on my it. since i had had a routine eye exam that morning to update my glasses prescription, i was kind of thinking about my eyes anyway because my doctor had wanted me to go back for another appointment to get my eyes dilated to check on my retina (since i'm getting to be an old lady).

i jump on webmd of course to try to figure out what's with my eye since i wasn't in any pain besides my eye looking red and crazy and watering. it wasn't really helpful besides listing a lot of crazy things that could be wrong with my eye. i called the nurse helpline and tried to describe what was going on. she recommended some home solutions, but also if i was concerned to go to urgent care or the emergency room. since i only have 2 eyes and i kinda need both of them, even if they are crazy nearsighted, i drove to the emergency room.

on the way there, i thought to myself this figures that my mom who's a nurse would be out of town when this happened. i suppose that might have been a blessing in disguise because even if she is a nurse, she's also my mom and might have just freaked out. i also tried to calm myself down from all the worst case scenarios that go spinning through your head in these situations. i figured that since my vision hadn't changed and my eye wasn't hurting that it couldn't be that bad and even might have a bit of an entertaining time wearing an eye-patch. such is my coping strategy, people.

when i got there, it was almost 11. it didn't seem very busy, but when you tell the triage nurse that you are 0-1 on the pain scale, you are not a high priority. so i lay on the bed and watched some conan o'brien and simpsons reruns. basically what i might have done at home on the couch anyway, if i didn't have work the next day. the nurse practitioner thought maybe i had scratched my eye, or something had gotten into my eye that i had inadvertently rubbed in, even though i don't recall being bothered by anything- it just came out of nowhere. she said it looked like my eye was allergic to something, even though i don't have any allergies. her test showed that i didn't have any scratches, so then i just waited around for them to irrigate my eye. which is basically having sterile water squirted on my eyeball. it sounds terrible but actually felt really good afterward. had to go the pharmacy to get the prescription for my eyedrops and Allegra and got home at 3 am. i was partly exhausted and partly wired from the adrenaline of freaking out. and kind of hungry. i guess having a minor medical emergency works up an appetite.

needless to say, i did not make it to work today. happily my eye has now returned to a more normal appearance. i mean, for a little while there i thought i had somehow rubbed off the surface of my eye - i know that sounds physcially impossible, but it really looked like that in the mirror. yeesh.

what a wednesday/thursday.

i'm almost 70

so i turned 35 last weekend. the hell? 35. three-five. 35. damn. it sounds old. fortunately, i am emotionally stunted, so i think i'm really like 27. age ain't nothing but a number, anyway.

for this birthday, i actually wanted to have a party. maybe because it fell on a saturday. or that 35 seems like a nice round number to have a party. but i also think i'm kind of settled enough here to want to have my friends around on this day. the last time i had a party was in vancouver, 6 years ago. it was kind of about time to have a shindig. so i just went for it, as you can see by the pictures.

i wanted to do something big and little kid friendly, so we hung out at the park for the afternoon. invited friends from all different friend groups which usually stresses me out, but i just decided not to sweat it this year, since all the people i know are really cool.


my friends and i have long admired the hamburger cake at this bakery in oakland. it truly is a thing to behold! when i ordered the cake, i picked vanilla cake, with chocolate butter cream filling. so it looked hamburger like inside when sliced. SO AWESOME. no other words necessary to describe this cake.





i also decided to have pinatas. why two? because one is for my grown up friends, and the other is for my kid friends. the only real difference was that i put little bottles of booze in the adult one, i forgot to buy some lottery tickets and cigars. there was also some nicer chocolate options in the grown up one. but the kid one had pop rocks and squirt guns and little shark erasers in it. mmm... pop rocks. i love shopping at the dollar store.

anyway, it was a great afternoon. if you want to see more pictures, you just have to get on facebook and check it out.