Category Archives: Musings

Our wedding and the Whore of Babylon

You may not have known this, but it’s Embarrassing Story Monday today! Aren’t you excited? On the menu today: a classic tale of love, embarrassment, revenge, and a dueling death.  Minus the revenge and dueling death parts.

Overall, our wedding—almost 5 years ago!—went smoothly. It was cheap, which was a plus since we had no money at the time, and a ton of people came together to help out and make it happen—bless your hearts fruit-chopping, church-cleaning members of Eagle Creek!

My husband and I didn’t care enough about the details to really supervise anything— we were just interested in the soon-to-be-had marital freedoms. Of the bedroom persuasion. Just kidding! Or not. Hey, it had been a long courtship, OK? And hormones were raging. Raging, I tell you.

The 70's effect, via many Photoshop maneuvers.

Here we are, looking quite calm—but raging inside.

Anyway, to this day I’m surprised it all actually happened. I don’t remember organizing half the things that went down. I was 22 (21 during most of the planning) and just couldn’t bring myself to care about flowers, or colors, or logistics, or my hairdressing arrangements (hence the “plastered hair” look), or really anything except tying the actual knot. This lack of focus on my part led to an interesting situation during the ceremony.

We had 4 Scripture readings, 1 for each of my current roommates.  For your edification and to set the record straight for posterity, here is the reading from Hosea that was supposed to happen. It’s not your typical wedding reading, but to this day those last couple verses give me the chills (Hosea 2:14-23):

Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

“In that day,” declares the LORD, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master. ‘ I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety.

I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.

“In that day I will respond,” declares the LORD—”I will respond to the skies, and they will respond to the earth; and the earth will respond to the grain, the new wine and oil, and they will respond to Jezreel.

I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one. ‘ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.’

We thought it was beautiful because it shows that marriage is a reflection of God’s relationship with his people—God wants to be a “husband” instead of a “master”, and gives them a place of peace and safety where they are reconciled to him perfectly, and where they sing for joy. Aaaaah.

Alackaday, there was a hefty miscommunication about the stopping point in the above passage—and yes, I take full responsibility since my mind was occupied by “other things”. My roommate—bless her heart—sailed right past the end of chapter 2, diving headlong and with no regrets into the following:

The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you.” For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.

My extended family cackled in the pews. My raucous male cousins cackled in the pews.

My brain started overheating. The flush that comes when a woman is called “prostitute” to her face spread across me like the Red Sea. I briefly considered wrenching the microphone from my uncle (our pastor) and sobbing “I swear I’m not a prostitute! I’ve remained pure for my wedding day despite the raging hormones! Anyway, how can I be an adulteress if I’m not even married, guys! Come on, I don’t even like the sacred raisin cakes!” Plus, I wanted to ask if anyone in attendance knew what a homer or lethek of barley was, and where one could obtain such a thing in modern times.

I like to remember the ordeal as the “whore of Babylon incident”. And so does my extended family.

I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can laugh uproariously crack a smile at this memory. Aren’t you glad I’m making progress? I have a special drawer just for my therapy bills.

On a side note, those raisin cakes must have been something all right.

Happy Monday, one and all!

The Cooking Disaster Chronicles, Part 1

It was called “Summer Garden Delight”. It was summer time. We were bored. I was young and innocent. The kitchen seemed like a great place to do something highly amusing. We threw some vegetables in a pot. We threw in some chili powder. We added water. We threw in some more chili powder. Did I mention that I was young and innocent?

Thank you, Mom, for letting us go at it with no instruction or guidance. It was an important step in our maturing process.

The perpetrators of the Summer Garden Delight

Look at the blond one. It was all her fault! She led me down the primrose path! She instigated the chili powder debauchery, I swear!

Years later: a more mature approach to the kitchen

(please disregard the leopard print underwear hanging from my belt)

Our concoction was completely inedible. I wish there were a “lick and taste” option on the computer screen so that y’all could understand exactly how inedible this was. Then again, I just got an image of people in offices across America dragging their tongues over their computer screens—OK, bad idea. At least that mental picture is saving me a trip to the patent office.

Also, can anyone explain why I just said “Y’all”? I’m not Southern. The blog made me do it!

Back to the point: since that fateful day, I prefer to cook edible things. I generally abstain from heaping in tablespoons upon tablespoons of chili powder, for example, which my husband appreciates–I just know he does. So in the spirit of human progress, and to celebrate my personal and culinary growth between ages 9 and 27, tomorrow I am posting a recipe called “Mush”. Just as “Summer Garden Delight” was a poetic name but a hideous substance that only an alien freak would consume, “Mush” is a hideous name for a delicious dish that no alien would ever consume. Are you confused? Well it’s kind of like one of those “this is like that” questions on the SAT. Right? Right. OK, try not to get hung up on the name and instead envision a very simplified form of ratatouille, in a skillet. I’ve even thought of re-christening it “simple stovetop ratatouille” … but it’s been “mush” for so many years that renaming it might throw the universe off its orbit. Its simplicity makes it the perfect work night meal. And the garlicky flavor … out of this world (not literally “out of this world”, because that would make it alienesque, which as we have already covered, it is not).