Chicken Shit

I should be making dinner right now. I promised the girls I'd attempt some eggplant parmesan... but it's just not going to happen. I made chicken cutlets (big Italian family thing,) last night... all on my own, sans recipe. Everyone actually liked them.... (which reminds me Mr. SB... if you come down here I'll cook you dinner.) So anyway, I felt the need to call my dad and tell him all about it. (I'm coming down with my third pre-season cold... so I'm unusually attached to the parents.... it's that whole "I want my mommy" syndrome.) I'm all excited and call up and "guess what" my father. Being my dad he automatically thinks I either wrecked the car (again) or found a scholarship. (His greatest worry and greatest hope for me, sequentially.) He actually laughed (odd sound from him,) when I mentioned the chicken. Luckally he put my mother on the phone before he could go into his tirade about grades/scholarships/the car. (Ironically, some woman wrote an editorial that was in Reader's Digest talking about how her father asks about her car... but he's really asking about her. I'm wondering if all dads are that way....)

On the topic of chicken, my new quote lately has been: "This is no time to be chickenshit." It's from the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. Frances, the main character is at a crossroads in her life and is being... well chickenshit about making any changes or big decisions. Her friend advises her to stop being chickenshit before her life passes before her eyes and she ends up an empty shell forever wandering.

I'm not quite sure how that translates into my life, I'm at no mid-life crisis, I'm not quite an empty wandering shell... but I do occasionally feel that I tend to act like chickenshit. (The whole, "let's please everyone instead of creating any type of conflict... which includes letting them walk all over you" attitude I often posess.)

Anywho, the anti-chickenshit motto of mine led me to the library. (Amazing.) Lately I've been taking along my CD player and listening to my new christian music. (Impulse buy... I haven't listened to Christian since FUS.)

Like a hammer to the head, (I won't start talking about CSI... promise...) Stacie Orrico's More to Life song finally had meaning to me. It goes along with the chickenshit motto... when you realize something is missing in your life and you begin to notice what it is... don't just ignore it, right?

Well that led to me doing something I've never done before, offering up my frustrations and anger and pain to God. (In the shower with my arms wildly flapping above my head like that motion would somehow make my offerings better recieved.)

Okay, most people are sane and controlled. They go pray, kneeling by their bed or in some overly incensed chapel. We all knew I was different.

So maybe it's unusual to have a motto that talks about "chickenshit." (Which, by the way, do chickens have shit? I'm confused on that one.) And I know it's really strange to be wildly waving your arms in the air thinking that it does something. (Let alone in the shower while belting the words off-key to your new favorite song.) But I've been to the one extreme. (FU.) (S.) And I've tempted with the other extreme. (::Guilty chuckle::) So now, perhaps I'm swinging towards the middle.

Tarzan and Jane style.