there's blood in the water

Not much to report on today, buddies

So here's a video of me getting my nose pierced. Enjoy.

sometimes Christians are stupid

"We tend to like our Christianity weird. The weirder the better. May I suggest that there is enough weird stuff in the bible to keep us going for a very long time? Don't go looking for anything more...Sometimes Christians are stupid."
--Mike Pilavachi

show us how you really feel

This is a blog about my deep appreciation for male displays of affection and emotion, and it all starts here:

My talented friend Amy took this photo of our friends Ryan Cork (sound engineer extraordinaire, dedicated husband to Claire) and Noffy (lead singer of The Sailor Sequence, dedicated boyfriend to Lisa). When I first saw this picture, I was simultaneously chatting with Cari, who was telling me about a scene she saw on a reality show (read: the Bachelorette) where a father called his son "my love".
"That's the sweetest thing in the world", Cari said, "I love confident men."
I could not agree more.

I hate the social pressure imposed on guys to not be able to show emotion about as much as I hate the social pressure imposed on girls to be as thin as possible. Those two characteristics are simply not the essence of masculinity and femininity: girls have curves, and boys have feelings.

I grew up with a father whose heart is so soft toward the Lord that he can barely pray to bless the meal without crying, and he DEFINITELY can't pronounce his love for me or anyone else in my family without coming close to real weeping. Do you have any idea how deeply that affirmed me and my other family relationships growing up? I love it! There's nothing wrong with it!

So to any guys reading this, for whatever it's worth: show us how you really feel. It's fine.

Just go ahead and die laughing

He is Nathan Johnson.

unaccompanied error

When I was 11 years old, my parents put me on a plane with my 13 year-old sister and 6 year-old brother bound for the United States. We were in the process of moving from France to Holland and my folks decided it would be easier for everyone if they sent us to our grandparents to play with our cousins in the summer sun while they stayed behind and packed up our old house and moved everything to the new house, and then joined us when the big job was done. Effective thinking, for sure, but it required us 3 to buck up and make the long trip without them, left under the care of the airline officials. We had to wear these big pouches of paperwork around our necks with U.M. in huge letters on the front to declare to the world that we were unaccompanied minors. It wasn't so bad, really. We got to ride on the cart with the old people through the terminal. We got to spend our layover in a big playroom with tons of toys.
When said layover ended, a flight attended dropped us off right between two gates and told us to have a nice trip. Megan and I looked at each other and slowly guided our little brother into one of the lines, unsure if we had picked the right one. The gate attendant quickly took our boarding passes, ripped off his portion, handed us back the stub, and we boarded the plane. Shortly after take-off, a highly pixelated screen showed our little airplane leaving a diagram of France and headed toward a target in the United States labeled "Memphis"...we were supposed to be going to Atlanta.
Megan and I started whispering frantically to each other that we must be on the wrong plane. As scared as we were of this happening, we were too shy to ask the attendants such a silly question. So we bribed our baby brother with candy to confidently proclaim that he was wondering if this plane was going to Atlanta or not. The attendants laughed, the nearby passengers smiled at the quizzitive little boy, and Megan and I chided our little Benji for even asking. Of course we were on the right plane.
It's been a family joke for years, but today I feel vindicated: because a destination-sized mistake really could have happened. It happened to these kids. Way to go, Delta. You needed some good PR.

the woes of wednesday

Kaytlyn: "What day is today?"
Amy: "Wednesday."
Kaytlyn: "It's ALWAYS Wednesday!"

Blakely: "Happy Tuesday. It is Tuesday, right?"
Me: "Was that a joke?"
Blakely: "Nope. Not a joke. Who am I? Where am I? Is this gonna be forever?"

WHAT'S IT GONNA TAKE, GUYS?!?!

At work, I sit in front of a big window. An aquarium window. I’m the fish. As grateful as I am for this opportunity to watch the weather, there is a major downside to this seating arrangement that breaks my little heart at least once every other day.
The kamikaze birds.
On a typical day, I will be sitting at my desk, working on my computer, stopping every so often to look upon the outside world and smile, then go back to my computer screen and check on accounts and write emails and answer the phone and WHACK!!! I look up just in time to see a fresh smudge against the aquarium glass and a lifeless bird fall from the window into the landscaping on the front lawn. Then my heart sinks and I jump up and run over to the window, look down, and see a gasping bird with its neck bent at an unnatural angle, wings spread wide against the dirt, eyes darting back and forth for about 5 minutes, until it slowly dies.
It just kills me. I know it’s because of the dark window tint that the birds see a reflection of the sky and trees, but what can I do about it? I’ve tried closing the blinds, thinking that might cut the glare, but then I sit in darkness and hear the thud, which is even creepier.
It’s just that birds are so trendy right now. They symbolize freedom. They can fly as high as they want, anywhere they want, so why do they keep flying into my aquarium window? Lord, make it stop!
I don’t want to have to watch them die anymore. I don’t want to scoop their little carcasses off the walkway on my way in to work every morning. I don’t want to notice the absence of said carcass the next day, and know for sure that some evil cat has come along and devoured the pour little thing.
On the bright side, not every bird dies. I can generally tell by the loudness of the sound it made upon impact coupled with my rough estimation on body size whether or not it will survive. Some birds are just stunned for a good ten minutes and lay on the ground regaining their composure before standing, and then flying away. Some birds make it out alive, but will never fly again. So tragic. My life.

For another story by another Boatwright on saving birds, go here. She's cooler than me.

that whole home thing

If you've known me well at all in the past 4 years, you've witnessed my constant argument with this word and what it means. I've gone nine rounds with "home", and I'm no closer to walking into my current front door and throwing my keys on a little table in the hall under a framed cross-stitch reading "Home Sweet Home" and feeling at peace with the phrase.
What is a home? Does everyone have one? Do I have one? Do I need one? Why do I want one so badly? How do I make one? Is 'home' some sorry human excuse for what only heaven can satisfy? Is it a place? Is it a feeling? What the crap!

The only idea that quiets me down when I'm clawing for answers is thinking about heaven, and singing this song.



"I realized then that home is not some familiar place you can always return to, it is the rightness you feel, wherever you are, when you know that you are loved."
--Maria Housden

that's pretty good for a first memory, right? 18 months?

I recently broke my own record for earliest memory. For the longest time, my earliest memory was of sitting on my new white steel-framed bed, watching my mother stencil paint a scene from Little Bo Peep, including her un-lost sheep. I was two years old at the time and had just graduated from the crib. I slept in that white steel framed bed until I was 11.

My record-breaking memory came back to me a few weeks ago when my mom and I were visiting Children's Mercy Hospital. If you ever think it will be a small thing to visit a pediatric hospital like I did--be forewarned. It takes guts to sit your grown up able-bodied self on a bench in the lobby of such a place and watch suffering children come and go with smiles on their faces and laughs in their bellies. I needed to get my bearings for about 3o minutes before I could keep going on the tour of the facility.
Suddenly I remembered being strapped to a bed in hysterics with orange walls all around me and big big people leaning over me. I turned to my mom and asked what that was all about. She looked at my incredulously and recounted that when I was 18 months old, I had a terrible ear infection that spiked a dangerously high fever. My grad school dad and typist mother took me to the hospital where the mean doctors put an IV first in my hand and then, after I pulled that one out, in my head. I was so terrified and agitated that they had to tie down my arms and legs to the crib for the second IV attempt and Mom couldn't handle watching the awful scene so she stepped out in the hall and cried until it was over.
It was somehow easier to stand back up and walk through that place after realizing that I'd a similar experience to some of those kids, but then lived for 21 years without remembering the incident.