I was TRYING to post this with the POST about SUNBURNS but stupid BLOGGER is doing that thing where it SAYS it posted the picture and then it DIDN'T. Anyway. I'm in pain. If you look closely at the side of my face, you'll see a fine, thin white line. It's not blow, it's the line from my goggles. Sexy. Oh, I'm so freakin' sexy.

How will I ever be thought of as a bad-ass with those chubby cheeks? 

Not only have I re-developed my stutter, I've also forgotten that I am a natural blonde with fair skin. That makes me 'Phototype I' (ie: a weak link in the human species, subject to skin cancer and vast amounts of fuzzy body hair). It seemed only appropriate that I start 'tanning' in order to prepare my thin, papery skin for the Caribbean heat.

I also have this idea that being tan makes one look thinner. I know it doesn't, just shut up and allow me to dream.

I was behaving myself in the tanning salon, going for three to five minutes. I got brave and worked up to seven minutes, comfortably frying with little to no pain. Why did I get so far away from my Goth-vampire-I-can-see-veins-through-my-skin roots? Why?

I'll tell you why--those little hoochies who work the tanning salon counter did it.
"Oh, yeah, like you so look darker! It's so awesome! You should try some new lotion--it's totally going to make you bronze!"
"Oh, no, you can't like get REAL skin cancer when you're in there--that's just a marketing ploy the scientists use because you get magical POWERS when you tan--and they don't want that!"
"Oh my God! Your boobs look bigger and your butt looks smaller! Tanning is SO awesome!"

Forgive me. I, too, can fall victim to driveling societal measures encouraging women to kill themselves, one tiny molecule at a time. I went in yesterday for ten minutes.

Ten minutes in a stand-up tanning booth is equivalent to thirty four hours of sunlight while standing on Planet Venus. If you shine a bright light at my face right now, you'll be able to read your future in mercurial colors. I'm bright friggin' red from head to toe.

My breasts are burnt, my nose is burnt, my thighs are burnt, my armpits are burnt, my toes are burnt, my eyelids are burnt, my lips are chapped, and my stretch marks are--not burnt.

The good news is that all of my contortionist efforts in the tanning booth are paying off. There's hardly a spot that isn't evenly burnt. Well. There's a few, but I don't think anyone will see those.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall of a tanning booth--watching what silly things humans do all in the name of vanity. Of course, if a fly really DID sit on the wall of a tanning booth, he would burst into tiny flames (POP! Whiiiiiizzzzzzzzzzz) and die a horrible death.

The good part about my tanning salon is that each booth comes equipped with loudspeakers. This tells me that should a fire alarm go off while I'm baking my ass off, I'll be able to escape (right after I put out my skin and drag on some clothes). The other neat thing about loudspeakers in the tanning booth is that I can listen to the radio, holding one leg up and hopping on the other. Why, just the other day, that stupid "Get Jiggy With It" song came on and I started dancing.

Dancing. Naked. In a Tanning Booth.

It's kind of weird, sure, but it's also fun. Liberating. I'm in public, naked, dancing! Okay, okay, so no one can SEE me, but still--I'm naked in a public place!

Hmm. I think that dancing exposed more of my skin than I'm comfortable with--I haven't been able to sit correctly for a day, now.

Anyway, the madness of tanning should soon cease once I make it to the beach. Then, I'll just slowly allow myself to bake in the natural light of the sun. Ah. To be blonde on the beach. I should just admit it to myself:

I'm gonna shrivel up into a raisin on my honeymoon.

My stutter has come back.

Firstly, the word 'stutter' is really quite indicative of a stutter, isn't it? Like a fast, capitulation of consonants, delivering themselves in rocket infusion of sound. If that sentence is any indication of what is going on with me, then I leave it to you, dear readers, to imagine Fritz stuttering through the days.

I had a stutter at the beginning of my career with the GA. Dept. of Corruption. It had to do with a total lack of ability in communicating with career felons. Pretty soon, I got the lingo down and the stutter went away--well. It changed, manifesting itself in bitterness, cynicism, and a desire for fast food. Then, I went to therapy and everything improved, including the job situation. I got canned and that was that.

So now I've got the stutter again. It just reappeared after two years of dormancy. Michael will tell you I stutter when I am trying to get a point across or have had too much sugar, but these incidents are fairly rare and have more to do with general excitement, not a complete psychological meltdown. Unfortunately, my new job and pending marriage have elicited the Original Stutter, and it is all the fault of a particular parent of a client.

He's got the Stutter, too.

I was just on the phone with him, explaining how the State of Georgia does not seem to think his daughter's needs are as important as funding more artillery for our country, and so she was not granted the Day Supports Waiver she so desperately needs in order to fulfill her life with actualization, independence, and eventual employment. Nope. Georgia can't help the hapless children who suffer from epilepsy. What Georgia can do is hire me as a completely ineffectual caseworker with little to no ability to help these people in need. Yay for me.

He started to stutter, and once he got going, I was swept into the stutter, as well. Both of us were babbling incoherently at each other over the phone, and while the words were far from understandable, the grunts and underlying tones could not be mistaken: disgust, frustration, anger, disappointment. And I'm not even a parent. I'm just a stupid social worker.

While I stutter along today, trying to get words out (be they verbal or typed, they're all coming out like gobbledy-gook--I typed that at least five times before my fingers found their routine), I have to remind myself of certain facts:

My stutter will go away, but I will never understand how terrible and frustrating life is for someone with a developmental disorder.

My wedding will come and go, and hopefully I won't stutter through the ceremony, but when I return from my much-needed respite, there will be at least another fifteen people on my caseload, all needing services, all badly misunderstood.

My stutter is hard to listen to, but more importantly, my clients talk every moment in a different language, and their message is completely clear: "Help me."

My stutter will go away, but my clients' problems never will.

How I wish I could be more eloquent. Right now, all I can do is stutter. And it simply isn't enough.

My mother occasionally asks when I will go back to church. We’re Episcopalians, so it’s not my soul she’s concerned about. Episcopalians are tepid Christians with a great deal of tolerance for all people and faiths. I think my mother is more concerned about me joining a community of people who think like me. This is kind of my mother; she means well.

I’m not going back to church anytime soon. I don’t want to consciously be a hypocrite. I commit hypocrisy enough without blatantly shoving my fist in God’s face.

In his book, Following Christ in a Consumer Society, John F. Kavanaugh writes: “It is the Christian, the church-going believer, who must face the words of Christ and then try to continue in conscience ignoring the poor, the dispossessed, the hungry, the imprisoned, and the homeless.”

I know a young lady who hears the voice of God. Several weeks ago, God commanded her to go to Israel, and God provided the means for her to get there. This young lady and her husband, along with their ‘Home Church’ pastor, went to Israel to pray with the Jews, to give items to the soldiers, and to testify about God’s love. The young lady showed me videos, and while I was struck with her earnestness, I was shocked to view the video of her pastor and followers praying in a field above an Israeli military camp. The sound of katyushas exploding could be heard. The pastor raised his hand in holy supplication and prayed aloud, “God, send these rockets where they need to go.”

I do not presume he meant for God to send rockets out into open water, where the explosions would spare human life. I can only presume he meant for the rockets to hit the bodies of the enemies of Israel, and hurt them. I can only presume he was praying for the death of Hezbollah members.

I was angered and shocked by this prayer, but kept my mouth shut. Now, I wish I hadn’t. I have been thinking too much, and after watching a video of the Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, I am solidified in my thinking: Christians have got it ALL wrong. We stand and yell about ‘jihad’ and the terrors of extremist Muslims, but we have failed to see our own terrorism. We are using Jesus as an excuse to wage war, and this is a slap across the face of God. We’re breaking the first commandment, and we’re doing it with the blessings of our church leaders.

Every Sunday, millions of American Christians go to church and get a message from a pulpit. After the sermon and a couple of hymns, Christians deposit millions of dollars into the tankards of the churches. They go home in luxury vehicles, or stop at overpriced restaurants to order food high in fat and calories. They bypass the ‘bad’ parts of town for their own tree-lined suburbs. They never encounter the poor, the dispossessed, the homeless, the imprisoned. American Christians have no need to see the faces of injustice; after all, that’s what tithing is about. But I ask these Christians: when have you seen your church fund a drug treatment program, or feed the hungry, or house the homeless, or shelter the abused? When was the last time you, dear conservative Christian, wandered next door to your neighbor’s home and broke bread with them, regardless of their economic background or ethnic culture? When did you look a starving child in the eyes and contribute to her well-being?

Every nine seconds, someone dies of starvation. And while the deaths of 09-11-01 are tremendous, the devastating effects of starvation far outweigh the number of casualties of that monumental day.

Before the War on Terror, Americans could not find any room in their pockets for better education. To this day, we ignore the needs of our children. Yet, we manage to find 200 billion dollars in the budget for a war on a land that posed no imminent threat to us. Yet, we find monies to destroy and kill innocent civilians. Yet, we find excuses for the thousands of dead American soldiers. While we persist in defending our ‘righteous’ war, the blood of millions of people are running all together, and the color of the blood is the same, and the effect on our nation is the same, and the death toll signifies only one thing: Americans value War over Jesus.

Christian churches tell us about Jesus’ words, and then order us to support the idea of Holy War. But there are many of us that believe this to be the ultimate offense to God. For walking the path of Jesus is about sacrifice, charity and love. It is not about gas prices, vengeance, and profit. But the Conservative Christian is convinced that Jesus would condone violence as a Biblical measure—a tool for preservation.

A sign in Atlanta read “JesUSAves”. This is idolatry. This is the worst culmination of our greed, our egotistical philosophy, our consumerist violence. To think that Jesus defends the national interest of America is disgusting. I don’t hear the voice of God like many Conservative Christians do, but I feel certain God doesn’t like this kind of sign. And the worst of these Christians quote the Bible to defend their works. They find passages in the Old Testament and the New Testament to justify their wealth and misdeeds against others. Yet, I rarely hear the words of Jesus. I rarely hear the Good News.

Consider these passages:
“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..” Matthew 5:44.
“Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” Luke 13:30.
And most descriptive of Jesus’ teachings:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”(Matthew 5:3-10).

These are not the words of a vengeful, blood-thirsting Christ. These are the words of a communist, a pacifist, and a humanist. And we ignore these teachings in order to bend the will of God to the will of greed.

And so, Mom, I will not return to church. While the Episcopalian church doesn’t condone the War on Terror, it is not making a forthright stand against it. Therefore, it has failed its people and Jesus. By not making a stand, the Episcopal church has joined the ranks of secular Christians who deny the truth about Jesus— he is against any and all violence. He didn’t drive a Hummer, he didn’t care about money, and he wouldn’t support this war or this government. Jesus’ teachings transcend wealth, greed, and violence. I don’t want the label of ‘Christian’, because Christianity is now synonymous with economic injustice, murder, and a sense of empirical inheritance of the world.

I am an angry woman. I only hope God will remind me of forgiveness. I only hope I can see God’s face amongst the victims of ‘holy’ wars. I can only pray that the ‘Christians’ of America realize that Jesus is being misused for the purpose of profit and gain, and we have unwittingly made him the mascot of violence.

i am suffering from blog boredom. or guilt. blog guilt.

blog guilt is what happens when you disappear for awhile from the blog scene and then come back and see that everyone ELSE has been blogging relentlessly and you have not been. it then snowballs; you don't know what the point is, and no one is begging you to come back, anyway. so blog guilt becomes blog depression and you think about taking your blog out back and shooting it--a mercy kill.

and then you try to breathe some fetid blog life back into the blog by posting about your lack of blogging. there is something very corporate and consumerist about all this. there is a cycle, here.

The Fritz Self has decided she's just too bored and lazy to do the blogging thing for awhile, and that's distracting, because Fritz writes like nuts. Fritz is also getting married and trying to iron out details and knit a bag and plan music and work on the shower and lose another ten pounds and convince Michael to turn off the thrash metal and figure out what swimsuits look the LEAST bad on her ever-bulging curvy self and how fast money can get spent when one isn't looking and where the cat last puked.

All right. I give up. Should I just put a bullet through this thing's head? If no one comments, I'm doing it. Seriously.

Michael sold his motorcycle yesterday. It happened so fast; he put it in the paper two weeks ago--he didn't think it would sell because it's a rare one in a bright color. People who buy these motorcycles are few and far between; Kermit is in between a cruiser and a sport bike. Kermit didn't always fit in. So, when a man came over yesterday to look at it, the last thing we expected was him driving off into the sunset on Michael's bike.

During the two weeks between yesterday and the day Michael put it up for sale, we were both in denial about having to sell it. After all, Michael only had the bike for under a year--I think I wrote an entry about the day he bought it. It truly was something to have two motorcycles under one roof; we'd go for rides together, Michael on Kermit, me on my Bumble Bee. We'd take the long roads home and flick off assholes simultaneously. We would race each other on some twisty roads, and Michael would always win, because he's a far better rider than I and Kermit was a much faster bike. Obviously, selling Kermit was a tough decision Michael made. I cried as Kermit rode away.

I'll tell you why Michael sold Kermit. He sold Kermit for me. Now, he would tell you that's not true--that he sold Kermit because it made sense, and it was a logical decision. He would say that we want to buy a home soon, and the best way to do that is prioritize needs and wants and expenses. He would say that a day will come when he will buy another bike, and then it will be extra-special because he will have a two-car garage to park it in. Michael will say all of these things because Michael is one extraordinary man. But I assure you: he sold that bike because of me. Thanks to some of my income/debt problems, Michael has to help me out a lot. Sure, I know that's what couples do--make sacrifices for one another. And I would make the same sacrifice a thousand times over for Michael. It still hurts to know that I led to the departure of Kermit. Michael loved Kermit. He put a lot of work into Kermit, and while we think Kermit went to a good home, it just isn't the same as knowing Kermit is snug in our own, small garage.

And it's true--he did sell Kermit because one day in the near future, we would like to own something, and call it ours, and paint or knock down walls, or landscape or build a new deck or simply sit in the filthy squalor of OWNERSHIP. We can only do that if we buckle down, liquidate assets, prioritize needs, filter out unnecessary luxuries.

Kermit and my Bumble Bee are two of those luxuries, and they have and will fall victim to the consequences of Michael and I BEING MATURE. It's scary, growing up. It's scary realizing how important a home has become versus the newest after-market motorcycle parts or a three hour facial at a good salon. And it will also be worth it to see the results of these mature decisions.

As the buyer of Kermit rode away, I couldn't help but think about how much fun Michael and I have riding together. Had I known that last Friday was the last day we would take a ride, I would have savored it that much more. I would've demanded a longer route with more curves and quieter roads. I would have taken a photograph of the two of us and our two beautiful bikes. I would have crystallized the memory of Michael's big, handsome frame on his bike, twisting through a curly-que road with me some safe distance behind. But that opportunity is gone, now. We stood in the driveway and sighed, and as we sighed in the hot, hot heat, a thought occurred to me.

Whether we be on two wheels or on four, whether we walk or run, whether we rent or own, or have children or not--whether we squirm in middle-class poverty or breathe openly in comfort, whether we continue our educations or move to Michigan or re-settle in Katmandu, I know this--we are together. And while that does not lessen the sting of Kermit's departure, it nurtures the soul. After all, that's what Michael and I are--soulmates. We should live our lives as nothing less.