You know how I mentioned another “Theology Girl” site? Upon perusing it further, I noticed that it now says--in numerous places--that it is the “original” and “official” Theology Girl site. Official? There is an official Theology Girl? Eh? I thought that the term blanketed all those fool enough to be interested in theology. And those fortunate enough to be a girl. And apparently it is the “original” “circa 1994.”
I don’t mind this. Whatever. I’ve had theologygirl.com since January 2005 (and theologygirl.blogspot since then too, actually). But this whole “official” and “original” bit I see as silly. I’m Theology Girl circa 1978. I declare myself equally official and original. Oh, and I do not support McCain, Palin, Ann Coulter, Fox News, or GOP Bloggers. Not that I’m so hot on Obama, mind you. But I just wanted to mention that since the other Theology Girl endorses them, lest we be confused with one another.
But I’m with you on Groban, ladies.
Can’t we all just be theology sisters in that?
Speaking of things I do that probably go against certain Christian viewpoints, this past weekend I went to a psychic. My current institution of employment had a fall fest and one of my enthusiastic coworkers whisked away my baby saying something about “cute little feet,” and Peter was waiting to pick up the personalized street sign the vendor was making for the baby’s room. So I sat myself in line as part of a scientific experiment to see if said psychic could get anything right.
While in line, several people commented, “Adrienne! You can’t be there! Isn’t this against the Lord our God?” The woman next to me agreed, “Yes, this is of the devil.”
“Then why are you in line?” I asked. She shrugged. Then another former RA of mine told this story about how her boyfriend’s crazy grandmother visited a psychic in Portugal and he told her that the devil was with her and she was doomed, devil, devil, devil, etc. The girl next to me bolted from line.
“What did I say?” said my former RA.
I calmly explained that I viewed this divination akin to reading fortunes in a fortune cookie. This is how much stock I put in what I would find out. I doubted the powerful psychics would be wasting their time at a college fall fest. The good ones are all shopping pilots to SciFi network and such. (Now, obviously, I wouldn’t touch those sin-factories with a 666 foot poll. Well, unless it was Saturday night. There’s nothing else really on on Saturday night.)
And I think I was right. My psychic first prayed to God for guidance and to bless what she was to tell me, which brings up the interesting point of what exactly she was doing. Maybe she was just casting lots, umin and thummim, determining God’s will? No, probably not at a college fall fest. Anyway, apparently I have a baby, a husband and I might possibly leave the country sometime soon. The last bit provoked a raised eyebrow from me, so definitive was it in its unlikelyhood. The first bit, I think, came from me mentioning that I have both.
Alas, I will just have to muddle through life without help from a second sight.
"So, anyway, it’s some sort of roommate conflict about religion.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, one of them is Christian and one of them is Catholic.”
“Catholics are Christian.”
“Whatever. Anyway, the Christian girl is too loud for her roommate.”
“It’s too bad she’s not Quaker. They value silence.”
“And apparently the girl’s boyfriend is there all the time. You know, sowing his oats and all.”
“Too bad he’s not Quaker. Then they’d be Quaker Oats! HA!”
“Is there someone else I can talk to about this?”
Sometimes I sit down, determined to make a schedule of when I will go to the gym, when I will blog, when I will finish, well, work on, start my great American novel, and when I will work on my dissertation. Then the baby wakes up from her 10 minute nap because the swing has run out of battery power and I am forced to shove a handful of stale crackers in my mouth for lunch and then run and tend to Infant Screamerton.
Alas, living the dream leaves me little time for such schedules. Or the activities I seek to schedule. Or for putting on clean pants, actually.
But sometimes in the wee hours of morning, I Google things for the heck of it. Last night I googled “Theology Girl” for fun. Just, you know, to see if the poor blog even registers any more. And it does, though it appears there are several other Theology Girl websites now. There is theologygirl at wordpress, and then a new branch of that, Theology Girls. And--get this--they blog about theology! What fool hardiness is this? People voluntarily do that? Write about theology? For fun? On purpose?
I wonder if anyone of them are writing a dissertation. My money is on “no.” The single biggest way to want to avoid writing about theology--be graded on it.
What is interesting about the one web site is that it has “Theology Girl Favs” sidebar on it and who should be there but--you guessed it--Josh Groban. Oh, Josh. You seduce so many of us theology girls, I suppose. After 60 year old women, we are your fan base.
Josh Groban aside, I am still int he All But Dissertation phase. Or, rather, the All But Time to finish the Dissertation phase. And I tell people that I’m writing about eternity so obviously it’s going to take one to finish it, but this is running out of street cred. People eye me a little sadly in the halls. They cast furtive glances in my direction, avoiding eye contact, lest I rub off a little nongettingdoneness onto them. And I know it’s my own fault. But the baby! She wants! She needs! And did I mention the stale crackers!
But it’s my own fault. I really need to get some motivation to finish. You don’t need to put on clean pants to finish a doctoral program. Really, the pursuit is aided by inattention to details like these.
But I will definitely blog more. Because, like it or not, a Theology Girl am I. Or at least a Theology Mama. And I’m up at 3am anyway. I might as well put my incoherent ramblings out into the ether. Since the ranks are growing as they are. I need to be a part of the movement.
So then. It’s been a while, no?
I have said before that this usually means an existential crisis.
Ah, existential crises are for other people now, I’m afraid. I just don’t have the time. Or the energy. In fact, I have not written because our house is in quite the opposite of an existential crisis. It is full of life. No, actually, it is full of LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE! It is bursting to the brims with LIFE! If you try to ignore the LIFE here, it reaches out and smacks you around a little bit, it is so vibrant.
TheologyBaby made her way into the world a day before she was due, proving that she and I are indeed intrinsically linked, as I complete pretty much everything the day before it’s due. Why should gestation be any different? And one day, when I am organized again and I post over at TheologyMama, I will tell the tale of TheoBaby’s entrance into the world. A long story short: I didn’t think I was in labor, so my husband and I walked over to the hospital to check. (No, really. Secretly I walked because in case I was in labor, I wanted to be able to say I walked to the hospital to give birth. Because, dude, how bad ass is that?) Turns out I was! I kept trying to talk them into letting me go home, but the baby wasn’t responding to non stress tests. A conversation between me and the nurse:
Nurse: “Here, drink this sugary drink to get her moving.”
Me: “Uh, yeah. Gonna take more than apple juice to get her to wake up.”
Nurse: “No, this does the trick. Unless you eat a lot of sugar, tee hee!”
Me: “Let me put it this way--you know that gestational diabetes drink? The one that makes most people throw up because it’s so sweet? Yeah, I slammed that bad boy back and kind of wanted more.”
Nurse: ?
Needless to say, TheologyBaby was all, “Yeah? Apple Juice? Sister please, not worth my tiny fetal . . .zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”
Then I proceeded with my unmedicated childbirth. Because I attended a good 50 hours of woman spirit rising hypnobirthing classes and, so help me, I was going to use them because insurance only reimbursed me for 90 dollars of them. Apparently only one percent of women who give birth where I did actually choose to go unmedicated, because everyone there kept saying how I was this warrior goddess for doing it. The epidural guy walked in while I was pushing and asked that I sign a consent form. I heard Peter say, “Uh, she doesn’t want one.” He was confused, thinking he had really screwed up, because he heard that I was giving birth and he hadn’t gotten that form signed. So I guess he figured better late than never? I will never know.
Then I returned to work two weeks after giving birth not out of badassness, but because I did not want to lose the roof over my head. This is not something I would recommend, friends. It leads one to go through one’s work life with a sort of raw honesty that doesn’t really please people. Raw honesty that does not translate well into memos OR emails. Go figure.
And finally I am returning to dissertation writing because theology is more interesting when written by a person who does not sleep and is covered in another person’s excrement. I write keeping in mind the Apostle Paul, as I have learned to be content no matter what the circumst . . . WHAT IS THAT STAIN ON MY COUCH?
Yup. I’ll be writing moral wisdom for the ages. Hopefully some of that will end up here as well. Many thanks to those 8 people a day who come here despite my hiatus. I write for you. And for Travis, who drops by for new entries via RSS or something similar.
