having cable unfortunately causes me to periodically get sucked into watching hours of really mind-numbing shows. this is not helped by the “marathon” phenomenon, where… just as if you bought the season on dvd… you can watch hours upon hours of the same show as it travels through the whole season in a day. with the added bonus of the same commercials cycling over and over again.

currently, as i’ve come back from being in colorado with my soon to be in-laws, and i’m taking a vacation from my vacation, i’ve flipped between two marathons that are happening right now… “say yes to the dress” and “the deadliest catch“. both reality shows, one about buying a wedding dress, another about deadly crab fishing on the bering sea.

as i’ve been planning my wedding lately, the dress show of course grabs my attention. at some points, it causes more shock and fear than the deadliest catch. i have to keep reminding myself that only a very slim percentage of the population has their wedding dress shopping experience filmed at a high end bridal store in new york. but still.

one funny side affect to watching a lot of discovery channel reality shows is that i find that doing everyday tasks suddenly becomes narrated with the same voice overs that explain the minutia of the wedding dress industry or the crab-catching business. and as i’m making my bed, in my head i’m explaining how i hate folding corners to an imaginary camera. that’s the joke about reality shows. they have stuck cameras and commentary into the mundane and private and made it into a cable tv show. and somehow, if it’s on the tv (especially if it’s a marathon), it’s entertainment.

so when while brushing my teeth i find myself looking into the imaginary hidden camera in my mirror, i know it’s time to turn off the tv, grab a book, and try and regain some conscious thought.

or cream, or ivory, or some other color. but whatever color my wedding dress will be, it will probably come from the cutting floor of a sweatshop in a poorer country than my own. “…[O]ne person’s luxury is produced by another’s labor.”

that’s a quote out of one of my favorite, most painful books that i’m currently reading. it’s called one perfect day: the selling of the american wedding, and it will take your breath away… and not in the seeing-the-bride-walk-down-the-aisle way, but in the what-the-hell-are-we-doing-way.

how about this food for thought.

“what does all this wedding industry hype mean for the woman who turns to the bridal magazines for guidance adn inspiration? One of the things it means is that an expectation that getting married is going to be a very costly endeavor has been drummed into her head will in advance of the start of her wedding planning. If a bride has been told, repeatedly, that is costs nearly $28,000 to have a wedding (the average amount spent by americans getting married in 2006), then she starts to think that spending nearly $28,000 on a wedding is just on of those things a person has to do, like writing a rent check every month or paying health insurance premiums. (Or, she prides herself on being a budget bride and spending a mere $15,000 on the event). She is less likely to reflect upon the fact that $28,000 would cover an awful lot of rent checks or health insurance payments…The bride who has been persuaded that $28,000 is a reasonable amount of money to spend on her wedding day is less likely to measure that total against the nation’s median household income–$42,389 in 2004– and reflect upon whether it is, in fact, reasonable for her or for anyone to spend the equivalent of seven and a half months of the average american’s salary on one day’s celebration.”

which should then only horrify us more as we think about the majority of the world, where $28,000 could be the equivalent of 121 years salary to half the world’s population living on 2 bucks a day.

but the most frightening thing about that week, was learning more about blackwater. these guys are s o s c a r y. and they are coming our direction.

man, i’m proud of the christian right, out of which we are blessed with pat, jerry, and now erik prince: the founder and owner of blackwater.

so, the most frightening thing (for san diegans, i suppose) is that they are trying to build a training camp here in san diego county. they are also at work along the border as well. and they have had suspicious activity involving the san diego fires (just google the two to find the conspiracies.)

here’s a video that gives a brief rundown on the sitch.

all in all, it causes a deep cry to well up inside me… Not In My Back Yard!!

until then, i’ve joined the 20-gallon challenge.

it all started with my roommates’ shocking discovery of a large iguana on our back porch. i was on the road, coming back into town with my fiancé, the resident reptile expert, so we had to brainstorm over the phone about what to do about the stray lizard. we thought that perhaps he was an evacuee from the fires, or simply a run-away from one of our neighbors.  we definitely knew  he wasn’t a wild iguana, as they are not native fauna of san diego (although great would be the day when iguanas roamed wild here).

so my roommates captured him… well, actually they managed to shoo him into the house, where he promptly crawled under our oven and got his head stuck. When we finally arrived home, my fiancé had to pry him out of a very uncomfortable spot, and then put him in our bathtub.

then we had an iguana living in our only bathtub.

here’s where this situation helped us get to know our neighbors. during the day, in between shooing the lizard inside and wondering if he had suffocated in the oven, my roommates went door to door around our block asking people if they had lost an iguana. A great way to meet our new neighbors.

we made some signs, posted a message on craigslist, and went without showers for a few days. eventually, i called animal services and they kindly picked him up.

today is halloween, and our neighborhood was full of power rangers, pirates, and other costumed creations. my roommates and i were walking around our block, and amazingly, another pet had escaped and run in front of us. it was a fluffy, brown spotted rabbit. convinced that we shouldn’t let it become roadkill, we divided up and tried to catch it. after a few unsuccessful attempts at capturing peter rabbit, we managed to chase him under a fence. only after he had disappeared to the other side did we see the ominous beware of rabid dog sign on the fence.

hopefully, we didn’t send both of these animals to their death. but we are beginning to feel like part of our job as being a good neighbor is to care for all kinds of living things. hopefully, it will also connect our lives with the lives of those around us.

as long as we don’t have to adopt any stray pit bulls. i personally am very thankful for animal control services.

the God that I follow asks us three things… to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with him. and as life would have it, those three things seem awfully difficult.

so, i’ve decided to try and figure some of it out in a blog. it took me awhile to make the leap… but i’ve finally arrived into the next century, where we talk and write to an unknown audience. i’m still unsure my thoughts deserve to be in print, but i suppose you can choose to read or not. i hope that if you do read, you join in, and write back. it’ll be like a conversation, and we can pretend that we’re facing each other.

so what does it look like to live an ordinary life, in an ordinary city in the most outrageous country in the world, trying to follow jesus, and not let the most important parts of me float away with the consuming current of our society? how do you live a life of justice and mercy and humility while doing laundry and commuting and listening to itunes?

oh, and i’m also getting married in 7 months. all of these questions intensify for me as i battle the all-consuming, life-sucking monster called the wedding industry. so you might hear a little more on that, at least for a few more months.