Author: jenzug

Grace, as given by a four year old.

I just gave Ruthie a time out for ignoring me (a frequent happening in our relationship). After her time out, when I spoke to her about what she’d done, she seemed flippant and more concerned about getting back to Dora than she was about repenting and telling me she is sorry.

So I sent her to her room.

After THAT time out was done, we had another talk. Well, it was more like I lectured her. But the end of my lecture we dialogged, and she said she was sorry.

We hugged and kissed, and as she walked away she turned back and said, “Mommy, can you smile at me?”

And I did, and she skipped happily down the stairs.

I look forward to the day when I don’t have to go into robot mode while disciplining my children – when I can let my emotions run freely because they are healthy emotions, when I can switch more readily from a righteous anger to a loving forgiveness, when I can take myself less seriously and offenses less personally.

S… S… Oh bother, I just can’t say it.

It’s been a crazy weekend, but it’s time to get back to some respectable blogging again.

Now that summer is ending and preschool starts next week, I’m entertaining that nasty S word again: STRUCTURE. I figure maybe I’ll add things into my week slowly – like one new thing each week – that way I don’t experience the depressing crash after the manic high of organization. I’m hoping to be more successful that way.

So this week I added in Library Day. This morning we donned our rain slickers and rain boots and walked four blocks to our local library where the kids picked out new picture books and I chose some yoga videos. I also checked out Winnie the Pooh with the intention of reading a chapter each day to the kids – so I guess that’s actually two things I added this week.

I’ve tried having a Library Day in the past, and only ended up incurring high fines for overdue books because I never managed to make it back again. This time I made a commitment to the idea by putting the event on my calendar, and for some reason this is more like marriage to me instead of just living together.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

If you thought the drunk blogging debacle was bad, you should have seen all the LUSTING tonight.

I will not name any names to preserve the integrity of all participants, but several desperate housewives gathered in my basement tonight for a big screen HD viewing of Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex/LoveShow on HBO.

O-my-ga. The man has some moves.

One of my friends came downstairs at one point and said, “There was a huge streak of lightening outside!”

“That’s God trying to find me right now!” shouted another as she fanned her lusting eyes.

Highlights from an eight year old’s birthday party

1. Margaritas

2. Corn fritters with cilantro lime dressing

3. So much homemade Mexican food I had to be rolled down the driveway

4. Margaritas

5. Thomas throwing a fit because he didn’t get to open any presents

6. Twenty kids and two pinata’s

7. Friends I haven’t seen in months

8. My friend sending his four year old son to the beer cooler with his toy pickup truck to haul Corona’s back to the circle of adults, then sending him back for the bottle opener. The four year old then makes repeated trips to the cooler and back until he declares, “That’s the last one!”

Highlights from our adventures on the Seattle waterfront and Bainbridge Island Ferry

1. Said loudly on the ferry –
Ruthie: Thomas! Where’s your bus?
Thomas (thinking she said ‘butt,’ he grabs his ass): I put my butt wight hee-ah! (And grabbing his crotch) And my pee-pee’s wight hee-ah!

2. Bryan and Ruthie leave to get a table at Red Robin while Thomas and I wait ten minutes in the car at a meter (don’t ask). While I’m trying to pay the meter, Thomas continues to break loose and run straight for the teriyaki restaurant we parked in front of. Each time I drag him back to the meter he wails and throws a fit about how he’s hungry and wants to see his daddy. Despite my repeatedly telling him that daddy is at the OTHER restaurant, i still have to drag him across the street kicking and screaming, and looking looking like a child kidnapper as he screams, “NO! I WANT TO SEE DADDY! DADDY IS BACK THERE!”

3. Thomas attempting to steal an apple out of the hand of a homeless man as he eats it while panhandling on the street corner. I drag Thomas away from the homeless man as he screams, “I WANT AN APPLE! I HUNGRY!”

4. The parade of bicycles that swarmed down First Avenue toward Pioneer Square. Ruthie is mesmerized, and thankfully doesn’t notice the two men who are riding buck naked.

5. Killing time in the Magic Mouse Toy Store, hearing Thomas’ voice in the next room even though he’s standing right next to me. We discover there is a toy parrot that repeats everything you say, annoyingly, and seemingly from far away rooms and around corners. Bryan and I brainstorm who we can buy this parrot for… just for kicks.

6. Ruthie and Thomas pretending to drive the race car video machine –
Thomas: We ah home, baby!
Ruthie: Okay daddy!

7. Thomas entertaining the ferry crowd with his rousing interpretation of giving Ruthie Time Outs, which then turn into wrestling matches filled with giggles.

8. As we approach the ferry dock at Bainbridge Island, I tell the kids we are going to crash. Several heads turn, and grown ups gasp that I would scare my children so. But I know my children. And I smile smugly as they jump up and down with delight, screaming, “WE’RE GOING TO CRASH!” over and over again.

yard sale

baby shoes 1When I first moved here from Minnesota, my friend kept going on and on about how much fun yard sale-ing is. I’m a bit slow to begin with, but I really did picture some sort of bicycle or go cart rigged with a big sail on it – as in Yard Sailing – because in Minnesota we had Garage Sales. It was one of those embarrassing misunderstandings I never ever told anyone.

Until now. Blogs are good for that.

That same friend is having her own yard sale this weekend, and she said I could bring some of my stuff to sell, So finally I went through the tubs of Ruthie’s old baby clothes that I just haven’t been able to part with. I’m much more sentimental about her baby clothes than I am with Thomas’ clothes. She’s a girl. She’s my first. She has clothes picked out by Gordy.

She had an amazing shoe collection.

I sorted and resorted about three times into different piles. Sell, consign, keepsake, next baby. WHAT?! I kept shifting outfits around into various piles, and somehow everything that wasn’t a sock ended up in the ‘next baby’ pile. I’m not even sure who intervened in this process to create a ‘next baby’ pile, because I have said from the first puke of Thomas’ pregnancy that I am DONE with babies coming out of my body.

(Maybe.)

Regardless, I can’t afford the space all these clothes are taking up, so I filled four paper grocery bags with clothes to sell, one bag of clothes to consign, and one filled with clothes I can’t bear to part with because I can still see her cute little evil face up to no good wearing that ridiculously adorable pink and red Ralph Lauren sweater from my dad.

If there ever is a ‘next baby,’ she’s screwed.

Open Letter to Classmates.com

Dear Classmates.com,

Please stop sending me emails telling me that so-and-so is trying to contact me, when I can’t access so-and-so’s message until I give you forty dollars. I am not going to give you forty dollars. I am not going to give you one penny. And frankly, I haven’t thought about so-and-so in seventeen years, but now that I know there is a secret message for me from so-and-so that I am not allowed to access until I give you forty dollars, I am now thinking about so-and-so all. the. time.

So, thanks for that.

Sincerely,
Jennifer (Anderson) Zug
Edina Class of 1990

Happy Blog Birthday to me…

I was looking through my archives yesterday and noticed that tomorrow is the two year anniversary of blogging at my own domain! Yea me!

I was also reading through some of those old posts, which was both fun and enlightening. I was seriously depressed back then. And angry. And Bryan and I were not having fun being married to each other.

Yet, some of my writing was so funny! That was an era in which I wrote much more often, and wrote more stories about the funny, every day stuff. It wasn’t all just depression and marital strife here.

I miss that a little bit. While I think I’ve balanced myself out a bit more offline and actually act like a mother, there is a lot of hilarity in this house that I would love to write about if I only had the time.

So maybe from time to time I’ll dredge up an oldie but goody to share. Here’s my favorite from August 2005:

——

This post is going to be ALL ABOUT BRYAN, and what a great husband he is.

I do not give compliments well, that’s all there is to it.

Bryan told me that should be the first line of my very next post because I keep neglecting to mention all the fantastic, thoughtful things he has done for me this week. Not to mention all the fun we’ve had.

He has a point.

I tend to use my writing as a voice for the angst within, and there’s nothing very interesting about resolution: no suspense, no climax, no tension, nothin’.

So this post is dedicated to the one I love.

Tonight we saw The Violent Femmes play at Zoo Tunes, which is a great outdoor venue on a green lawn with blankets and picnic baskets and wine smuggled in tinted water bottles. Kids are running around everywhere, because kids under age twelve get in for free.

FREE, I tell ya.

In the words of Bob the Tomato, What more do you need to be happy?

There I was, sitting on my blanket, leaning against my picnic basket, listening to great music, reading the book Bryan bought me last week – the book he gave me as a sweet, unprompted gift; the book which he found while browsing Barnes and Noble because I was late picking him up for LAST week’s Zoo Tunes concert (Patty Griffin – talk about musical diversity!); the book which I LOVE and can’t put down – so I was sitting on my blanket enjoying the evening with my husband who was so gracious to me after I forgot the tickets and we had to drive all the way home after I had picked him up from work so we could theoretically get to the zoo early for a good spot, and we actually didn’t get there until ten minutes before it started and had to sit way in the back… and I was content.

The evening could have gone very very bad.

Jokingly, Bryan said, “You have the tickets, right?

Dramatically, I slammed the steering wheel and growled, “FUCK!”

I guess he thought I was kidding, you know, like “Oh no, I thought you had the tickets, ha-ha-ha,” but no, I really meant FUCK!

For the next hour as we made the round trip-and-a-half through evening rush hour traffic to get the tickets I said “I’m so sorry,” with, I believe, twenty-six different inflections and nuances because ONCE could never be enough in Zug Land when you’re an hour late for a show.

But darn it if that Bryan didn’t just blow my Keens off when he says to me, “Don’t worry about it, babe. I’m just enjoying the time I get to spend with you.”

And here’s the best part: HE DIDN’T SOUND LIKE A COMPLETE CHEESEBALL WHEN HE SAID IT! He really meant it. He wasn’t saying it through clenched teeth as he really thought to himself, “I need to set up a color coded charted and timed system to ensure this doesn’t happen NEXT week….”

He was very sweet, and I finally relaxed, and we had some of our best conversation of the evening during that drive.

It was pretty surreal to see Gordon standing there right in front of me as he sang (well, not RIGHT in front of me, more like at the other end of a football field, but still, it was surreal). He just has one of those distinct voices that you think is make-believe – kind of like Elmo or Grover – and to see that a real person makes that sound was, well, surreal.

I had the same experience the first time I saw Stevie Nicks sing.

The climax of the evening came during ‘Add It Up,’ the song that was The Femmes’ greatest – their paramount, if you will – which of course they saved for the last song of the evening, at which point all bodies leaped (leapt?) up from their picnic blankets to dance.

Tattooed bodies, magenta hair, average thirty-somethings with kids: they all danced. Children danced hand in hand with their parents, doing the jitterbug, or the twist, or some such dance.

Have you ever heard the words to ‘Add It Up?’

Watching the children dance with their parents, Bryan says, “I think I’m scarred.”

The Hard Work of Waiting

Why I ever thought it was a good idea to quit working out I will never know. Running (on the elliptical or otherwise) has always been a cathartic, meditative experience for me. In that space of breathing and following a rhythm I am more focused than at any other time, except maybe during the contractions of labor.

After nursing a back injury last week, I jumped back on the elliptical each morning this week for 30 minutes. It is during this time – ALWAYS – that I am able to shut out everything but the sound of my music and the voice of God. At the end of a workout I find myself centered, at peace, and usually running for my computer to jot down some revelation that came to me.

I listen to the same mix of seven songs during my workout:

Quiet Place – Sheri Youngward
Invitation Fountain – The Violet Burning
Clean (My God has Rescued Me) – The Violet Burning
Forty Weight – The Violet Burning
Lord Raise Me Up – Matisyahu
King Without a Crown – Matisyahu
Shalom – Matisyahu

Yesterday, during The Violet Burning’s Forty Weight – my arms and legs burning, and sweat dripping – I found myself bearing down into a difficult interval, pushing harder and harder into the resistance. Momentum was building. I was sprinting. Out of breath. And wailing over and over into the silence outside my iPod earbuds, “I WAIT FOR YOU…” In my tiredness and out of breath-ness, it was a pleading call, a reaching out.

The irony of ‘waiting’ for God as a motivator to run harder struck me.

There is an illustration I hear often in the church that describes a man who crashes his plane in the wilderness and survives. And he prays that God would deliver him from the wilderness he is in. Then a hiker walks by and offers to guide him out of the wilderness, and the man declines, insisting that he is waiting for God to deliver him. Then a helicopter flies overhead, the pilot offering to airlift him out of the wilderness, but the man declines and says he is waiting for God to deliver him. The man then dies in the wilderness. And when he faces Jesus in heaven he is angry and bitter and says, I prayed for you to deliver me from the wilderness, but you did not hear me. And Jesus says to him, I sent you a hiker to guide you out, and a helicopter pilot to carry you out, and you did not see that it was me delivering you from the wilderness.

I don’t want my waiting to be like that. I don’t want to be standing around waiting for God to zap off my ass like a good liposuction surgery. I don’t want to be sitting in my chair waiting for God to suck the anger vapors from my body like a fancy Ghostbusters trick. I want my waiting to be a running toward God, a desperate seeking of his presence. Not because he can heal me or fix me or make me feel better, but because in his presence there is a peace that passes understanding.

Fashion Statements

lookin good

I actually have an entire slide show I’m compiling of Ruthie’s public fashion statements, but I just couldn’t resist this one from the other day. Temps were in the 70’s, but she insisted on wearing the fuzzy winter tights. Notice, also, that she is watching her feet as she walks because her shoes are ‘so beautiful.’ As we walked through town on our way to get hair cuts, at least five people commented on what great tights she was wearing. She was very proud.

Quote

Sometimes I even feel equivocal about claiming the evangelical label. For, theologically, I am right in line with the evangelical mainstream, but what people want to know when they ask me whether or not I’m an evangelical is rarely theology. What they want to know is whether I vote for Pat Robertson, listen to Amy Grant, and believe the Earth is only five thousand years old. In fact, I’ve never voted for Pat Robertson, I prefer Mary Chapin Carpenter, and I think Darwin might have been on to something.

So, when one of my gin-swilling, scratchy-jazz listening Columbia comrades asks me the e-question, my impulse is to temporize, to hem and haw, to split hairs and explain that my theological orientation is certainly evangelical, but culturally, intellectually, and politically, I am much more sophisticated than his stereotype of evangelism. I’m too insecure and worried about how I’m being perceived to risk correcting my interlocutor’s presuppositions – by pointing out, for example, that 38 percent of Democrats in America are born-again Christians, never mind suggesting that not all Republicans or home-schoolers are numskulls. I simply want to correct his impressions of me, No, no, I’m not on of them. I’m one of you. I believe Jesus Christ is Lord, but I also wear fishnet stockings a drink single malt Scotch.

– from Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winner.

Time for the obligatory essay on the process of writing.

For the last few weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time writing in the evenings. Aside from a couple blog posts I’ve made, I’m mostly working on drafts of other essays to clean them up for third parties. I thought this would be tedious and frustrating, but I’ve actually found it to be quite exhilarating to see what can happen to a little idea once I give it two, three, or even four tinkers.

So far I have passive aggressively bullied Bryan in to reading all these essays (“Here’s another one to read when you get a minute, of course), despite the fact that he probably doesn’t have time. But he’s just so good at making me sound fantastic! He has this amazing ability to draw out of me the right images. “Take me into the room of that conversation,” he says. “I want to hear more about that moment.” “It sounds too formal here,” he said another time. “Show me, don’t tell me.”

I keep telling him that when I’m famous and have a book deal with cash advances, he’s the only editor I want. Which brings me to the fact that I keep day dreaming about getting published. Recently Bryan was acknowledged in Scott Berkun‘s book, The Myths of Innovation, because he read and reviewed a few chapter drafts.

This, of course, got me thinking about who I would acknowledge in the notes of my first book. I have a mental list of friends, blogger friends who can say they knew me when, my favorite waitress at the wine bar where I write…. Probably not unlike the actor who practices his Oscar acceptance speech in front of the mirror – only he’s actually made the movie.

I haven’t acted this silly since I was practicing my signature with every boyfriend’s last name.