120. I Am Job's Wife

When Jobed's house fell, I thought my heart would burst. All of my children, gone, without warning, without reason. How is a woman to bear such a trial? My children were my life, my purpose. No matter that I did not bear each one in my womb. They became mine the moment my father promised me to Job. His children became mine, and I ached for them as sorely as the ones that grew in my belly. 

But then they all were lost in one agonizing moment. I know they are safe in heaven now where nothing can harm them, but I am here, left behind to feel the hollow in my heart. 

I still have Job, and he does try to assuage my pain, but he feels the loss differently. And he has been distracted. The fire, the thieves, the plague on our flocks. I feel God is testing us, and we must be failing. Our neighbors say we are cursed. They will not speak it, but I know they wish us miles away. When I go to the well, all eyes avert and the silence becomes deafening. In the market, a path clears around me, and I am able to buy fish at the price I name for no one wishes me to linger. 

And so I sit alone, finishing the weave for my little Daniel's blanket, though he will never feel its warmth around him. I cannot leave it unfinished: it would only serve as a token of the life he left too soon, a life unfinished. I fear the sight of it would drive me to madness. 

I know, in time, if our Lord does not take me to join my children, the sharpness of this grief will dull. But my heart can never truly heal. Each of their souls took a part of mine with them when they fled to heaven. These wounds may heal, but the scars they leave will forever keep my heart from becoming whole.

119.Not An Alligator

Gender by a matter of two degrees. 

Growth by the warmth of the air.

Reproduction determined by length of your bod, from about to the tip of your tail.

Wouldn't it be simple

If all our choices were made

By science?

But then we wouldn't be human.

No emotion

No fear

No love

Just instinct and science

How boring that life would be

I am glad I am not an alligator 

118.Jessa and the Beanstalk (7)

Mother never seemed to notice or care when I disappeared. She was too busy with the farm and with my brothers and sisters. She assumed that I worked alongside the others and took my lunches with the other village children as I used to. To her, there was no change in my routine.

But Walter Rund noticed.

On those days when I was trapped on the ground he would seek me out. He asked me where I had been, but I never told him. How could I? The sky was my paradise, no one else's. It was my haven, formed from the whims of my imagination. I couldn't share it with anyone. 

I was Jessa, creator of the Sky Kingdom. I had a whole world, waiting to be born under my fingertips. What need did I have of others? How could they possibly understand me? No one had seen the world the way I had. 

And yet, Walter continued to sit with me in my days of earthly-captivity. He told me stories that he made up as he spoke, trying to coax my mind back into the world in which my body resided. Why did he care?

For three weeks there was not a cloud in the sky. Walter stayed by my side, a glimmer of light poking into the darkness that was the ground in my heart. It was as if he were a pin, pricking around the walls of my blockade, trying to find a weakness. I hated being on the ground, away from my white world of wonder, but there was no escape. The clouds simply would not form, and my pillar of freedom would not rise without them. And so I let Walter in. 

I knew he could not pull me away from my creation, but I needed something to keep me sane while I waited anxiously for any sign of my kingdom's return. He filled my ears with tales of adventure and soon I discovered that he, too, craved a life outside of this small, cramped village. Perhaps he wasn't so bad after all, I began to think.

117. Stay Small

Why are you growing so fast, little boy? 

Why can't you just stay small?

All I want is more cuddles and hugs

But soon you'll have grown too tall.

Why are you growing so fast, little love?

Why can't you just stay little?

Soon you'll grow up and become a man

And I'll only reach to your middle.

116. 33rd Time's The Charm

I love Dreamworks (animation) movies. Seriously. I adore them. Over the Hedge? Hilarious. Monsters Vs Aliens? Marvelous. Kung Fu Panda? Practically memorized it. How to Train Your Dragon? High-flying fun. Turbo? Tubular. The Road to El Dorado? Golden. (See what I did there?) In fact, of all the Dreamworks films I've seen, I can count on one hand the ones I did not thoroughly enjoy. That's a pretty good record. 

That being said, I can only think of two Dreamworks films that I actually wanted to see before I saw them. Two. There are thirty-four. That's a pretty BAD record. See, as much as Dreamworks is doing right in their films, they are terrible at previews. Every single time I see a preview for a Dreamworks animated movie I think "oh my goodness that just looks terrible." Seriously, every time (except those two mentioned above, but I'll come back to those). I mentioned earlier that I have Kung Fu Panda practically memorized, but that happened only after I was bribed to go see it after many, many invitations and much cajoling. Honestly, the only reason I went was because someone else paid. And oh my goodness I love that movie ("Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose Kung fu skills were the stuff of legend!"). 

The same thing has happened with pretty much every Dreamworks movie I've seen since then. I watch the preview, roll my eyes at how incredibly dumb the movie looks, finally spend the minimal amount of money necessary to watch it simply because there is nothing better to watch, and wonder where this film has been all my life. 

It's gotten to the point where if I see a preview for an animated film that looks awful I can pretty much guarantee that it'll be Dreamworks. And yet, I still roll my eyes and wonder how anything that looks THAT dumb can possibly come from the same writers who made Prince of Egypt and Madagascar (I'm looking at you, Boss Baby). And (nearly) every time I am reminded of how much Dreamworks just needs to fire their preview-maker guy (team? I don't know how that works, but they need a new one).

Now, there have been a handful of exceptions to this formula. There are the few Dreamworks movies that I don't really care for, but those are all within the first few years of the company's existence or sequels, both of which I find acceptable reasons for not-quite-so-fabulous-work. And then there are the (again counted on one hand) ones I haven't actually seen.

But, there have been, in fact, two cases in which I saw a Dreamworks preview that did not turn my eyeballs backward with disgust. The first time this happened I was 13 and had not yet recognized the greatness of Dreamworks or the disparity of their previews. And, to be totally honest, I didn't even know it was a Dreamworks movie until tonight when I looked up the complete list for number accuracy. And this movie which I actually wanted to see, I hated. Go figure, huh? It wasn't the MOST boring movie I've ever seen, but it's definitely in the top five.

The second time this happened (tonight, by the way), I also didn't realize it was Dreamworks, but that's because it actually looked good! So I popped it in the DVD player and saw the logo and was a little worried (because of my last experience). Could it be good, I wondered? And guess what--- it was! For the first time in the history of my relationship with Dreamworks, they actually made a preview that accurately reflected the movie it was presenting! Hooray! I am so proud of you, Preview-maker guy! 33rd time's the charm, I guess. 

115. A Close Encounter of the Awkward Kind

You know those times when you're walking and someone is walking toward you directly in your path and you both try to move out of each other's way but you go the same way and then you have that awkward pause where you're staring at each other like "okay, are you going to move or am I going to move? Okay. Oh wait. Gah!"?

That happened to us yesterday, in a way, except we were in cars. See, we got in the suicide lane to turn left into Walmart, at the same time that this other car also got in it. Now, the other car got in way down the road, so we figured he'd turn left at one of the three driveways between us and him. He didn't. While we waited for a clearing in the oncoming traffic, this car just kept slowly coming up toward us. And then they just stopped in front of us. 

So there we are, staring down this old couple, awkwardly trying not to look into each other's windows, but trying not to be obvious about how awkward it was. See, there was no driveway to our right. The next place he could turn was the stoplight, several fee behind us. And by several I mean the stoplight is past one end of Walmart and our turn was at the other end. So not only were we laughing at how absurdly early this guy got into the turn lane, and how awkward it was that we were stuck staring each other down, but then the poor guy's wife starts I-told-you-soing him. Seriously, I didn't know where to look. But then, not looking was awkward, too, because we all knew that we weren't actually interested in what was outside our windows but that we were purposely not looking at each other. So we'd look back in an effort to play it cool, but then we'd awkwardly be staring at each other unable to actually communicate because of the two windshields and engines between us. It was awkward (did I say that already?) and highly amusing. And the traffic just kept coming past.

After about a minute and a half of this awkward "do I look at them or out the window or at my kids behind me" we were finally able to turn and break the tension. 

Moral of the story: listen to your wife.

114. Cough

Cough cough

Hack hack

Choke on my tongue

Cough cough

Hack hack

There goes my lung