Job Volcano

I need to vent.

Issue #1: The crazy ex-secretary. Our secretary began losing her sharpness and love for working with us about 2 years ago. We finally encouraged her to retire a week ago. The craziness is a mixture of ongoing physical pain, jealously of a retired husband, loss of cognitive abilities (probably due to the pain), and general anger at the world.

Now we have an ex-secretary who "retired" while threatening to sue the church. We have all been walking on eggshells for 6 months now. To make things worse, she broke her leg while walking to the car drunk from her own retirement party. The angry disabled and now injured secretary in a small town....t-r-o-u-b-l-e.


Every time a church member takes her food, we cringe and pray. Our staff should really throw a big party, check on her daily, and send out multiple prayer requests but we are still a bit shell shocked and tired of her shit.

Issue #2: The un-wise and irreplaceable children's minister Our children's minister really needs to quit her job and go work somewhere full time. I call her "un-wise" because she keeps putting faith in a husband who cannot and will not get a real job to support their 5 children. Neither of them want to give up their happy $12K/year jobs to grow up and earn real money for their children. Multi-millionaire grandma covers their butts.
I call this picture "Lazy Husband"

This sucks because our children's minister is utterly irreplaceable. She is awesome, gifted, beloved, and a GREAT co-minister. She will leave a huge hole in the ministry staff because she knows everyone and is in touch with everyone's needs. We are silently waiting for her to quit. She needs to quit. He idiot husband will never get a real job.

Issue #3: The new secretary Our Personnel Committee found a new secretary. Unfortunately, this person is a church member, the wife of the university provost (who fires our church members on a regular basis), a perfectly pious Christian, and a CHURCH MEMBER. In the world of church dynamics, you never hire a church member. It is unethical and simply a waiting time bomb. How do you go to worship while knowing everyone's secrets, knowing how much money the person next to you gives, and having fought with the pastor on Friday afternoon?

We told them not to interview church members. They did. We told them this is a problem. They don't care. We had a nice condescending meeting in which they tried to practice damage control with me and the children's minister...making sure that we understood their decision and were on the same page. I practiced self-control and did NOT punch the head deacon when he repeatedly accused me of being overly cautious and saying that it "can't be that bad." Talk to the secretary at home who is thinking about suing us, jackass.

Since this is something that I can't change, I've adapted my attitude and will make the best of this. I will work with her and love her. Now it is a waiting game for Wednesday when they present her to the congregation for vote and the shit may hit the fan. I will also continue walking on eggshells and will save all candid conversation for the safety of my office.

Issue #4: The pastor, retirement, and my career I recently made my profile active with the ministry search program. I realize that if I want to find a wonderful church to pastor (as the head pastor) or ANY church in Texas, I need to search for a few years. My plan is to stay until the pastor retires, help with transition, and then move on.

The pastor just added onto his house and improved his kitchen. He's talked about needing to work on the kitchen for years now. I sat down with him to frankly ask what it meant. If he is going to be here for another 10 years, I can't stay that long. Lock-ins and youth ministry are killing me. If he is about to sell the house, I need to know. He said that he plans to retire in a year or so. Okay. It is good for my profile to be active. (I haven't told him my profile is active...no one in North Carolina can know these things)

Then he threw a curveball at me. He thinks that they will look "internally" for the next pastor. Essentially, he said that I am already in the running for his job. Now that is out there. Can't take it back. He's leaving and he thinks I might be his replacement.

First, I've heard hints of this from other people over the years but even from his mouth I do not have a lot of hope of being the next pastor. They love me now, but it will be pretty impossible to hold up against a 40 year-old PhD with a lovely family and actual experience as a pastor (a lot of people will apply and at least 3 will be as described). I do not at ALL expect to be offered his job, but now it is out there and I am paranoid that he will think I am trying to prove myself.

There is also the awkwardness of some people wanting to offer me the job and then a lot of people wanting someone else...I would have to leave REALLY shortly after that. It is kind of like continuing to date someone after a refused marriage proposal.
Awkward. Once rejection is out there, things just need to end.

Issue #5: The Music Minister is a close-minded ass There isn't a lot to say here. He is excellent at leading worship with a choir but refuses to even attend our contemporary service, more or less help to plan or lead it. He hates contemporary music and has gotten away with ignoring that half of his job for 3 years now. It all came to a head last week when early service was HORRIBLE and we had literally 50 visitors to experience the agony. He wouldn't even enter the room because he knew that what he offered us was crap. Asshole.

Issue #6: The lesbians Two of my best friends at church are a lesbian couple. They got engaged a few months ago. Recently, another lesbian couple started visiting (who got to know our church when we hired them to babysit during choir for 3 years on Wednesday night). This new couple is also engaged. At VBS, another church member invited a new family whose mothers were not just lesbians but interracial lesbians with 3 kids. Everyone loved them and the kids.

We are quietly welcoming and loving these lesbian couples. We are empowering them to lead in ministry and worship. When they get married, things will be less quiet. It will be ugly and the pastor, who finally admitted to me that he doesn't support gay marriage, refuses to do anything preventative or educational. He just wants to retire before it gets ugly. When it comes out and gets ugly, we could lose half of the church no matter what decision we make...half will leave if we support a wedding and half will leave if we don't. Tick, tick, tick. Things are heating up just below the surface. This volcano may do irrepairable damage if it erupts while we are unprepared.

These are just the big issues that I am processing EVERY day.

On a better note, my friends and I discovered a Mexican restaurant next door to the movie theater that serves awesome and very strong margaritas. They help a lot, especially since I can't talk to my friends about most of this. Get drunk, walk to a movie, sober up before I drive home. Tequila is God's gift to stressed and confused ministers.

deep thoughts...

Indian food is like a man worth keeping...much hotter the next morning.

seasons for singles

"When Harry Met Sally" was on TV yesterday and Harry said something that I've known for a few years now. It was clearly fall in NYC and they were walking through charming scenes with falling orange leaves. Harry mentions how much the holidays suck for single people. Of course, it was written in some funny way like "I often want to go to bed in November and just not wake up again until after the New Year."

That. Is. So. True.

I am looking at the last 2 months of my best season to be a single woman. It makes sense that I always want to fall in love in October but never in July. Why?

My birthday is in October. It usually falls on the weekend of my family reunion, which I can never attend 1100 miles away. All alone for my birthday and missing family.

Thanksgiving is sad (although less sad now that I have friends to share it with). That is a holiday for family recipes, arguing over the TV remote, and cooking with my mom for 3 days. Again, family is 1100 miles away! I get an awkward pity call from family instead.

Christmas lasts for an entire month. Even when I go home for Christmas, it doesn't make up for the previous 3 weeks of having no family and no date for countless Christmas parties. There is nothing more depressing than decorating my house for Christmas and no one ever seeing it.

New Years. Enough Said.

We recover from New Years and begin to settle into the comfortable cold of winter. I enjoy hiding my holiday fat under layers of clothes and go months without shaving. All is well!

Until Valentine's Day. Fuck you, Valentine's Day.

Yes, fall and winter are horrible seasons for single people. Last year, I had an emotional breakdown when the man I thought might lead to a charming family Thanksgiving dinner quit calling at the beginning of October. My crying fits and self pity lasted for 5 solid days. Why? I'd put all my holiday eggs in one basket and the basket turned out to be a self-absorbed ass.

Fall may be around the corner, but today is August 2nd! Summer is wonderful and exciting! I don't have energy for dating right now! I am happy with meaningful friends and a busy job! My dog is awesome! This is a good season to be single, even if I know that October will eventually come back around to bite me.

I hate PMS

I would like to write a poem called "I hate PMS."

I

hate

P.
M.
S.


(I am weepy, horney, lonely, anxious, and lovesick for someone that doesn't exist. Oh, and my face is broken out even more than usual. How do you deal with emotions that you know will go away when your body just starts f*cking bleeding? Stupid hormones. )

sad, sad bat

I hit a bat on my way home tonight. Actually, the bat flew into my windshield, so it hit me. I watched it hit the top and then slide down to get tangled in my windshield wipers, which seemed impossible at 55 mph (the sliding DOWN part, not the hitting part).

Poor bat. Sad bat. I drove my last 2 miles home watching the unmistakeable bat wing flap in the wind while hoping that it was just knocked out.

At home, the mag flashlight and a straw proved to me that it was dead. I felt sad. I also hope that an animal eats it in the night so that I don't have a rotting bat at the end of my sidewalk in the morning.

I've always loved bats the same way that I love frogs, turtles, lizards, and snakes. Maybe more the way that I love snakes...I like to see them and think they are awesome but don't want to touch them. Bats look like cute little diseased mice with wings. In my mind, that statement turns out positive.

This is not the bat I killed. I don't actually touch bats. This picture does show how cute and small and innocent they look to me.

People...

People.

You should read that in an exasperated voice, as in "PEO-ple...arrgh."
Tonight gave me a little reminder that people are the same everywhere and at every age. It seems that the drama that we began practicing on the playground in the 4th grade doesn't really go away. We just change the language. This isn't news to anyone who is even slightly involved in society.


Tonight's example of people being people came in the form of the good ole' who should date whom. Me being the who and the only other single person in the church being the whom.

Me: Charming offhanded joke about people not asking me out when I walk around in public dressing tacky. This was appropriate to a conversation about a man and woman who met in Wendy's when he commented on her homemade straw necklace.

Them: "We were just talking about this. I think this is taken care of. Someone is just waiting for the right time. That is what we (whoever the hell "WE" is) think. In a year, we will be looking back at this conversation and laughing."

Me: "Um, okay. I'm not going to ask."

Now I have to change how I talk about being single. I thought I was making a funny joke that related to wearing tacky clothes. They hear such jokes as a cry for help and apparently spent quality time talking about my love life (a love life I'm not interested in right now) and deciding who is in love with me.

The "who" in question is not, in fact, in love with me. They are not waiting to ask me out because they are in love with the pretty little blonde girl at work who flirts with them daily. I am excited for the "who" and give the "who" advice on asking out the little blonde girl. There is a right moment being waited for, but I am not involved.

I did not explain this. I did not call out my friend and her "people." I allowed her the mystery and hope for something that doesn't exist.

Why? Because people will be people. Adding to the conversation adds to the playground drama. I'd rather just walk away and mutter "PEO-ple...argh."

I'd like to think that such wisdom is a perk of being in my 30's. Yes, I am a fountain of wisdom and self-restraint.

p.s. To be fair, I found myself feeling just like I did in the 4th grade with playground drama. I felt important because people were talking about me and special because they thought a boy might like me...even if it wasn't true. For other girls to THINK that a boy would like a certain girl means that the said girl must be somewhat cool. Right? Right.

if I could only change...

I've recently been reflecting on turning 33 in 3 months. Dan Brown made me feel better about this by writing several paragraphs in his last book about the number 33. It is a magical, powerful number in the Bible. I feel excited and empowered! Kinda. It WAS Dan Brown, which means that most of it is bullshit.

33 seems to be a daunting age for me. This is mostly because of my lack of husband and quickly aging eggs. It is difficult to remember how young 33 is in the grand scheme of life when every six months without a date takes me a step closer to the back-up plan of being a single adoptive mom (which will, in turn, solidify my lack of marriable qualities).

These things are going on in my head while I ponder career choices and the housing market....and then yesterday Julie Roper added me on Facebook.

Julie Roper was the mean popular girl at church from the 3rd grade all the way to graduation. Julie Roper didn't actively hate me. She didn't tease me or spread rumors. She just ignored me and did the best she could to never sit near me, speak to me, be associated with me, or recognize my existence. She ignored me every week at church for 10 years. Her friends, which made up most of our Southern Baptist Sunday School class, followed suit until late in high school.

Julie started to say hello to me in the 10th grade because she learned that I would hug her in front of people if she did not recognize my presence first. It was a mean game on my part, but the only way that I could enjoy the seeming disdain that she had toward un-pretty overweight badly dressed girls with awkward social skills (aka me).

(Julie and the other popular girls were "bowheads." This is what we called pretty little preppy girls in the 80-90's who wore big bow clips. We also used the word "preppy." There was a mean song about bowheads in the same sense that you make fun of cheerleaders. Which all of those girls were. Damn them)

Time eases biases. Facebook is also a great way to see who got fat and who is a loser. That is only reason I can think for her to add me as a friend. I accepted.

Julie Roper opened a porthole to my past. She is a good Texan woman who stayed in North Texas, married in her early 20's, and is raising Texan babies with her very Texan looking husband. She is still friends with all of the other good Texan girls and boys from my Southern Baptist upbringing. Her page allowed me to spy on people that I haven't thought about in 10 years.

Spying led to memories. Spying led me to realize how different I am (being childless, single, and NOT in Texas). Spying brought back all of my awkward mixed feelings from high school. I've looked at my Facebook page and wondered what they would think about me. It is all about work and shows that I am still fat and single. What do they think about me being a youth minister? Do they think or care at all? Am I sad in their eyes? Wierd?

Now Julie Roper and Facebook have turned my normal 30-something confusion into a 30-something confused need for approval from people that I haven't seen in 10 years. People who, for the most part, barely liked me to begin with.

I wasn't in their cool club when we were teenagers and I've just been hit with the harsh reality that I will always WANT to be accepted by them. I don't want to actually reunite with them, just to know that they think I am awesome and that they are jealous of my glamorous life of youth ministry in a tiny town.

Damn it. Maybe I'll spend less time tomorrow worrying about these people who were happily faded into the background of my life story before yesterday.