Crab, Interrupted

I woke up on the crabby side of the couch this morning. Perhaps because the weather has been relentlessly grey and cold for what feels like months. As you Bay area people know, when you make the deal with the devil (move to the East Bay) and agree to a ridiculous commute you're supposed to get cheaper rent and better weather. I've been holding up my end of the deal by diligently sitting in traffic every day, so where's my sun at? A resentments builds.

But, fortified by many cups of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal, I forced myself out the door to run some unexciting errands, and a quick stop at the library where I picked up Anne Lamott's new book Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith. Since the weather stunk, there was no incentive to dawdle, and besides I had Haagen Daz coffee frozen yogurt that needed the freezer, so I went back home and made myself a fabulous lunch: three rounds of moroccan olive bread, lightly toasted and dabbed with mayo, with cheddar and peppered turkey, a side salad and a glass of Trader Joe's low sodium Garden Patch (it's V-8 but without the tinny taste). Heaven. Then I curled up on the couch with Anne's book and devoured that, along with some dark chocolate.

I haven't been a huge fan of Anne Lamott's fiction, and have felt scared off of her non-fiction books about faith, fearing they'd be too Jesus-y for my taste. But I heard her on NPR a few weeks back, reading an essay from this book (called Nudges), and she was hilarious and honest. I don't even know what to quote, since I laughed out loud so many times. How about this, from The Muddling Glory of God.

I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things; also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the dark.

I suppose that if you were snatched out of the mess, you'd miss the lesson; the lesson is the slog. I gew up thinking the lessons should be more like the von Trapp children: more marionettes, more dirndls and harmonies, But no: it's slog, bog, scootch.

This I can get into. Lamott captures so beautifully the neurotic messes we all are, loves herself and us in spite of it, or because of it. Two thumbs way up, as they say.