The SWAP party

Last night I gathered with a group of chic and very hip gals to partake in a SWAP party...so fun! My sweet friends, Kelly and Becky, decided to host this little shindig and it was sparkling in every way!!! Food, friends, free stuff - ingredients to make a very fine evening. (all displayed in high fashion if I might add)

You can swap anything you want, but this round was all about accessories. They invited gals with similar fashion sense and we all dug out jewelry, belts, glasses, purses, scarves, etc. in lovely, but slightly used condition, which we no longer wanted. There were rules (of course there were rules!!), but basically you could walk away with new bling you didn't have to pay for and that.....that is very satisfying!

I scored!!! Lime green, Tommy Hilfiger purse, dangly beaded bronze earrings, very cool silver bracelet, and some other shiny what-nots.

Here's the deal - I thought I wore some decent jewelry before I moved to these here parts, but since running with the likes of Kelly and Becky, I have been inspired to step out of my accessorizing comfort zone - mainly with LARGER baubles. They both seem able to wear anything and pull it off with panache'. Reality is they could wear a red vine around their necks and others would applaud it as a fashionable signature mark.

OK - so I mentioned the loot, but the food - oh man the food was so, so tasty. There is something deeply satisfying about eating food you have not had to prep or clean-up for. But... when the food is gourmet it just takes it up a notch (BAM!...sorry had to say it)

Artichoke Bisque (I didn't even know artichoke could be bisqued), venison sausage with a cream cheese spread layered between wafer thin, light as air, crackers, slices of ciabatta bread stacked with brie cheese, pear and dark chocolate wine sauce drizzled on top. OH - and apple cider ala mode drinks. WOW!

It is was intimate, it was fun and we are going to repeat the process in a few months, only this time with household decor. Eventually we will move on to linens, kitchen wear, shoes, cars...(OK just joking with the cars - although I have a really sweet RV I'd trade :) )

If you are interested in hosting your own SWAP party all you need to do is Google the term for ideas. The great thing is that a SWAP is not gender limited. Think of the swap arenas left to be unfurled...power tools, books, office supplies, crafts, hats, sports equipment.

On a deeper scale, think about how SWAP parties could revolutionize the ministry. Churches could swap people like they trade players in sports. Pastors could swap sermons. Ministries could just trade whole conferences; including the personnel to run the things.

The ideas are limitless really - just think about it.

Andy Warhol would be proud.

My son was given a digital camera for Christmas and this is the outcome.

I am not sure how we got orange, but it is actually a very artsy look.
Andy Warhol would be proud (and no I don't particulary like his art - but still).

If I could be anywhere right now

I'm sitting in my very cluttered office listening to a FolkAlley livestream. I know I am wasting time, boy do I know.... but the listening is causing me to slooooowwww down for a moment and just enjoy.
I don't do enough of that.
Heck - with 3 small children I never really sloooooowww down; I just carve out time by putting something else on hold.

In my slow-down moment I had an "if I could be anywhere right now" thought. I think it was a self asking self a question and really the answer is always the same:

I'd be sailing or looking out on the Pacific Ocean.

Oh man; I can almost taste the salty tang, feel the wind and hear my heart better.

It makes me want to listen to something like Cool Change (Little River Band), Sailing (Christopher Cross) or The Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot).

I grew up next to the Ocean. Not right on top of it, but about a mile away. Most of my coast friends moved after college and my family re-located inland in the mid-90's. Suddenly all the easy ways to visit were gone and each year of marriage has moved me farther and farther away from the ocean until I've landed about smack dab in the middle of the US. I don't want to offend, but it ain't pretty!

The correct term on the Pacific Northwest is "the coast" - not "the beach". A BEACH is the Keys or Jamaica. It's body surfing in warm water. It's a place you bring a picnic and suntan lotion and plan to hang-out for the day just soaking it up. The COAST is wind, sand-dunes, frothy surf, glorious sunsets, and massive logs rolled in from some storm. It's visits full of dashing in and out of the c-c-c-coooold waters. Surfers on the coast are a whole different breed who come equipped with full-body wetsuits, long-boards and guts enough to brave the elements (including sharks).

I spent a lot of years walking the coast line and I miss it. I don't mean the "golly gee that'd be fun to go back there sometime" kind of "miss it". I mean an ache in my soul. Truth be told sometimes I even cry when I think about how much I long for it. The coast and I have a history. I've worked out some my greatest tears and best ideas walking her shoreline and she has embraced me in my loneliness and my joy.

Vivid memories of growing up near the water are easy to recollect; family walks in the mist, my Great Dane, Jylan, chasing down Agate Beach after Mr. black trench-coat man, incredible float & shell finds, parties I shouldn't have been at and ones I wish could have gone on forever. Moments which indelibly marked me such as the bonfire when the guy jumped out of the tree into the bushes and the twig went directly into his hiney - still makes me wince, midnight dock crab-boils or the deep-sea fishing trip with Scott and dad where I caught the most fish.

I was made for the water. I've loved it from the time I was about 9 months old and took to the swimming pool like a tadpole. Comfort always comes in the form of a hot bath with a good book and no interruptions from children. I even labored in water for 14 hours with my firstborn; staring at a painted water scene in Holland - the water just kept going on and on in that picture and it was both the water I was in and looking at (intensely) that helped get through that drug-free.

I want to move back to the ocean and I still haven't figured out why I don't. Since I am married that kind of decision would have to be 3 -way...God, me and Scott. Don't get me wrong; the coast is not an easy place to live. Good paying jobs are tough to come by, house prices are out-of-control, and the spiritual atmosphere is congested with tons of new-age wacko's.

Still... it is near the ocean that I feel the smallest and the largest. Looking out onto the horizon, hearing the surf crashing and gazing on the brilliant colors of a sunset is something powerful. It is an awe-filled moment of worship where I recognize with great clarity the grandeur of God. It's one of the best places to be.

Mr Ganja - put some funk on that stank!

The other day I was in my local, large-chain, variety store. There was a guy in front of me buying clothes. 30ish, handsome in a disheveled, "I was good-looking and something back on the football team", sort of way. What drew my attention was not the fact that he kept vying for 30% off on a shirt with the sales clerk, but the constant state of motion. He could not keep still! The thought "he is tweaking" ran through my mind and as I got closer my nose filled in the details. Odiferous wafts of pot has such a distinct smell.

If my brother had been with me he would have said something like; "dude - put some funk on that stank!" (and I would have laughed like I do every time he says it).

Maybe I am different. I know that some of you wouldn't know what a doobie looked liked if it walked up and smacked ya up the backside and ya know....that is just okey-dokey. That type of innocence is refreshing. It reminds me of how things could have been. You see, I grew up with parents of dichotomy. They were business owners, on the PTA, etc., but we had a family secret and that was D-R-U-G-S and that just spelled a whole lot of craziness through the years. Some of my most vivid memories are of watching my dad sift the seeds out of the mar-eh-juh-wanna he had grown and dried, or the weekend family shroom picking outings; The faster we filled our buckets, the quicker we'd get our berry shake treat. And dang if I wasn't like white lighting.

A digression: Did you know that the receptor neurons in the nose are particularly interesting because they are the only direct recipient of stimuli in all of the senses which are nerves? Yah - I didn't know that either. I guess you could say that when I smell marijuana, pot, wacky weed, burnie, grass...whatever you call it, it stimulates & sets off a lot of neurons in my memory caches.

Music does that too. Scientists call it word power. You can test the power of a song right now. Beware... one of these could ruin your day:

• "The Theme from Gilligan's Island"
• "Mission: Impossible"
• "We Will Rock You"
• "The Macarena"

These ditties have been cited as the most common to get stuck in people's heads and create a cognitive itch. During the family drug days my dad was really into music. Whenever there was a drug party at our house, music could be heard through the smoke haze. When I realized that America's Horse with No Name was not about a literal horse, that gave me a pain.

OK - sheesh - back to the main point.
wait....is there a main point....oh yah....it's this piece of brilliance

We all have a little bit of the Mr. Ganja in us.

Invincible moments where we don't care what people see and smell.

Invalid moments where we feel unseen and unnoticed.

And then those "For the love of all that is Holy, I hope no one saw me"....I WISH I WAS invisible moments. (like the time I went nuts and sped up to re-pass someone - on the wrong side of the road - just before a curve because their driving ticked me off. (don't worry that was like months ago)

There is One who does see....and not in an all-seeing eye sort of way the Hindu's would propagate nor in a stern "I see your crap you little failure" way the ultra religious would preach.

No - the ONE I am talking about is Jesus.

And His word says that He was a Man of sorrows; acquainted with grief —Isaiah 53:3.

Frankly...I need to hear that.
I need to know that He sees me even when I cover up my stank and convince myself no one else smells it. Jesus even sees me when I have reached the place where I just don't care what I smell like to others.

Not only does He see me, but He loves me in the midst of it and that is better than any other high!

It's a Sassafras Lemongrass Kinda Year!

I have a blog confession to make right from the start. I had another blog....Friends Dine Free....on that other popular blog site, but I never used it.

I had one friend read it. Yep, count it...ONE! I guess that may have been because I only invited one friend to even see it.

When I started out blogging I toyed with several titles, but they were either in use or seemed lame. I liked Sassafras Lemongrass right out of the gate. It was a bit eccentric with a whimsically off-beat undertone. Tangy with an underbite of zing. I asked my guy what he thought of the name and as much as he gets me - he just couldn't wrap his male cerebral-ness around it - so in a moment of title desperation I typed in Friends Dine Free and it was forever sealed in blogdom. Friends Dine Free seemed catchy. It was kind-of quirky and hey, I love to have friends over for a bit of nosh and a cuppa'; so it all seemed good.

The deal is...I NEVER wrote on that blog. Outside of the first entry, I do mean N-E-V-E-R. Not for not trying....I'd open my account and fiddle about with the look. Really... I just wanted an outlet. A place to let my brain and heart get out for a little jog around the block. Instead I felt pressure. You'd think I was trying to win a Newberry Award or that I needed to create a dissertation to save my soul with all the pressure I felt. It just killed the joy! Pretty soon the blog was like a symbol floating out there in megabyte world that said "great start - poor follow through".

When 2009 rolled around I made a stellar decision...I do want to blog. So...it's time to let the cat out of the bag, let the laughter roll, let the silly be OK ....I like Sassafras Lemongrass. I am not sure how a nonsensical bit-let of a phrase can make me giggle, but it does; so Sassafras it is.

I think the title is symbolic of where I am at internally these days. Sorting out so I can define the last half of my life. I am 40 this year and I feel like I am in a Robert Frost moment standing at a merge trying to figure out which road to dance down. Frankly; sometimes this makes me agitated! Looking forward sometimes requires looking back. It means staring at my choices and conceptions, missed and accurate, about me, my skills, my dreams, my relationship with God and either own em' or chuck em'.

For too long I viewed myself as a "type A" personality (not the highly obsessed, anal, incapable of relaxation part, but the highly driven part). In about the last 4 years it has been dawning on me that I don't really fit the script. I became a "type a" in order to survive my childhood.

In college I was part of a small, but elite group know as Dorm Supervisor. I am not joking when I say elite. Outside of jockdom this was "the" group to be in. The application and interview process was intensely personal and somehow I fooled em' all and got the job. We'd meet once a week as a group and call it class. We did all sorts of feel good type activities and got credit for it. Meyers-Briggs was a popular test in the day so we took it at as a group. When we got the results we broke into types.

I stood alone in my group.
My best friend stood alone in her group.

I think I was a ENTJ and she was a ENTF or visa versa. All the others - NOT JOKING -ALL were clustered into about 4 other groups. It was the first time I felt justified in feeling just slightly off center and a little different. I wanted to pull my drum out and beat it loud.

I've taken that test several times since as I've metamorphised into adulthood and I am not an ENTJ anymore. The best way to describe me is" type M" - Just Me. When I have that completely figured out I'll be walking on the other side of eternity and not really care. What I am most aware of is that typecasting can land a person in a whole lot of assumption about who they need to be and act. Great for the movies, not so good for dreaming and living authentically.

SO - join me, enjoy me or think me ridiculous, but Ms. Sassafras is here to stay (well for as long as I decide that I want to write).