What being a man is all about...apparently

Happy Birthday, Love

There was a gift for each of us left under the tree of life 2,000 years ago by Him Whose birthday we celebrate today. The gift was withheld from no man. Some have left the packages unclaimed. Some have accepted the gift and carried it around, but have failed to remove the wrappings and look inside to discover the hidden splendor. The packages are all alike; in each is a scroll on which is written, “All that the Father hath is thine.” Take and live!

—Anonymous

I love You, Jesus! More than a rampaging soliloquy on my love for Your love that makes my heart sing and dance like a bird, I know You appreciate the little words that actually do more to convey the human frailty of my love--the reason that I love Your love so much. Rather than profess the heights and depths of heaven, I bring to You my shallow heart that is sufficient to explain the heights and depths of my need for You.
This is me, Jesus, not proud about myself and hardly humble, not bad and not good--really neither hot nor cold without You, the gold that tips the scales. This is me, always discovering new reasons to love You, new ways to love You. There are as many different ways to love as there are different people in the world, but You are all of those ways, so this is me, feeling like I may have discovered about ten ways, at best, and breathless to discover more.
Thank You for coming to earth for me, Jesus. As rehashed and duly-beaten as that sounds, if I think about it for long enough it takes on a new meaning with every time that I repeat it in my head. You came to earth. You came to earth for me. You would have come to earth if it was only me, still nothing but a tiny heavenly wood-whittling somewhere in your workshop, breathless and foolish, that you had to come to earth for. You not only came to earth for me, You died for me.
Thank You for every Christmas that I've enjoyed as a result of the first Christmas, as a result of You. Not only because, had You not been born, there would be no Christmas, but even if there were a "Christmas," there would be nothing worth enjoying about it if I wasn't able to live for You, to do what I am weakly attempting for you. Thank You for giving me Your hand to hold.
Happy Birthday, Jesus, the best Love I will ever know.

The First Thing About Christmas

If Christmas isn't keeping you busy, then you don't know the first thing about Christmas.
You can't really love Christmas if you've never had a Christmas that was so busy that you thought you would probably just die of a fever that was so hot that it exploded your thermometer because of all the nights that you did five different projects that you would usually like to spend an entire day focusing on in one day and you came home and felt like you would like to just relax and succumb to the feelings of tiredness and sickness that are making you shiver from head to toe and burning the little nerves between your eyes, but did not because you knew that you could not because there were more projects to be tackled and more duties to be done and more horses to be beaten, mostly ideas that you're just desperately trying to prove to yourself were not "biting off more than you could chew" when you first had them in your Christmas planning meeting. So you're there with a room that is a wreck and a live wire bouncing throughout your brain that spazzed off because of all the overload of electricity going on in the cranial district, and a pile of costumes that "probably" should be sorted and washed before the next show (something that somehow became your responsibility), and all the minor home things to think about like the dishes that you're on in five minutes or the pile of laundry that, like a pregnant woman is slowly expanding in the corner of the shower room (and has long had a "please take care of me" sign attached to it), and you somehow still have the time to stand up on your two wobbly legs and yell "IT'S CHRISTMAS!!! Have you noticed, friends? Christmas is HERE! Christmas is in my BONES! Yaaaaa!"
Have yourself a hot cup of eggnog (just don't spill it as you run through the halls in warp speed) and sing a merry merry Christmas song with tonsils that are tired and abused like Michael Flatley's legs.

Blog drafts

I'm finding that I have quite a few half-finished blog-posts saved as drafts lately. I never used to do that. I'm usually quite realistic about the fact that I will never get back to something so insignificant as a blog post if I haven't managed to finish it in the first go. What is this sudden untrue-ness to myself? I must be losing my edge.

It's Christmas It's Christmas

I love me some good trance

Amazing

The Sniffer

There is one little dark and dusty closet inside my brain that I sometimes creep into and feel like a complete and total pervert in. I sometimes alarm myself with how much I like smells.

I swear to God, if I meet you and your clothes smell fresh like a faithful cycle of fresh laundry soap, or you crawl into bed with me and your hair smells like shampoo, or I give you a hug and you smell like sweet sweet aftershave, I love you more than double. I'll probably even associate that smell with you forever and ever, even when you start using a different cologne. I'll lend you my pillow and be so happy that it comes back smelling like you. I'll stop on the road and try to figure out where the smell of you is coming from, if it's from some other person walking around me. I just love to smell you. And it doesn't really matter who you are, if you smell nice, I'll like thinking about how nice you smell. And THAT is the alarming thing.

I still associate certain smells with certain people very distinctly. Givenchy Insense is Gabe, Sculpture is Aika and Tomoki, Sexy Boy is Nao, Downy Softener is Masa, Herbal Essence shampoo is Mash...okay I could go on and on. Oh, every time I use my cologne it reminds me of Jonie and the time that Tomo and I sprayed alarming amounts of it all over his favorite shirt.
I love you, my pretties, and all your smells.