Tag Archives: Mike Reph

December 16, 2009 · 3:00 AM

Mas! Mas!

If I were a cheerleader, I’d cheer for Christmas.

Christmas has always been huge in my family — tons of decorations, celebrations, feasts, presents and Christmas Eve church services. This year is the first Christmas I will spend apart from my family, and we’re a little sad about it. We know it will be hard to be apart, but we’ll see each other several times before that day.

I’m using this time to examine my thoughts about Christmas, since Mike’s family’s traditions are very different from mine. I’ve learned a lot about the history of Christmas through them and it’s given me much to consider. I’ve learned that Christmas shouldn’t have anything to do with Jesus or his birth, based on the fact that in the Bible neither Jesus nor anyone else says that we should remember His birthday (conversely, we are told to remember his death and resurrection) and in fact, we don’t even know His real birth date.

We can love and honor Christ apart from anything to do with popular holidays. Rather than try to focus Christmas on Christ, they’ve explained, we should accept that the two have nothing in common and just celebrate it for what it is — good cheer, festivity, presents, family. In essence, let’s take the Christ out of Christmas and let’s just have…mas. In Spanish, that would be MORE.

And I’m always all for more.

In fact, I think I’m well on my way to more. This December has already been decorated with several events that are indeed mas but have absolutely nothing to do with Christ. Years ago (even last year) I would have felt a twinge of guilt for celebrating without focusing completely on Jesus, but now? Bring on the mindless merriment!

Christmas Tree: To start our season, we got a tree. Yes, it’s alive, and yes, it’s the same height as me: five feet five inches. We love our tree because it makes our home cozy and cheerful, it holds meaningful symbols (baby ornaments, second grade pictures of Mike, gifts from friends), and it delays us having to buy a new chair to fill the space it occupies. (If you look closely, you can see a cross ornament…so I guess I haven’t figured this out quite yet.)

After all, Christmas trees were virtually forbidden by our colonial leaders in 1659, when a law was enacted that made any “heathen traditions” such as Christmas carols, decorations and trees a penal offense involving a fine. We Rephs enjoy setting up our tree without paying a fine.

White Christmas: The same night that we got our tree, we attended “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas” musical at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater. Two other couples invited us to dress up and go out on the town, and we thought nothing could be more Christmasy than the stage version of the Bing Crosby movie (which I had only seen once and Mike had never seen). It was uncomplicated, plump, shiny and almost too cheesy to bear — and that was entirely the point. “May your days be merry and bright” indeed!

Tacky Themed Dress-Up Party: Every year we are invited to a number of parties that require an ugly sweater, santa hat, or this year, 80’s ski gear. The only thing 80’s ski gear and Christmas have in common is snow, I suppose, but we went with it. The results speak for themselves.

Cirque de la Symphonie: Certainly the highlight of the Christmas season so far was attending the mind-boggling circus acts performed in front of a full orchestra playing classic Christmas favorites. Mike took me and my sisters to Benaroya Hall and we all gasped our way through this stellar performance. Previous to this evening none of us had seen a man in a handstand on another man’s HEAD with only ONE HAND.

The champagne at intermission didn’t hurt, either.

White Elephant Gift Exchange Parties: Two of these are on the calendar this year, one of which happened at my workplace — I arrived with a bathrobe and departed with two bags of candy. Lame. And what could be less Christ and more mas than giving gifts that are utterly random? Myrrh and gold are not random; those gifts were intentional, I assure you.

I totally respect those who see Christmas as a holy holiday, because I do too, to some degree. After 25 years it’s virtually an innate response. But I love examining why we do what we do, and seeing if we can do it differently and still be honorable.

After all, when it comes to Christmas carols, for every “…the glories of His righteousness, and wonders of His love, and wonders of His love,” there are just as many “…oh bring us a figgy pudding, oh bring us a figgy pudding, and a cup of good cheer.”

As for me? This Christmas I’ll ponder the wonders of His love — while sipping a cup of good cheer.

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Filed under UpWORD (Beauty)

Tagged as Christmas, Mike Reph, music, Seattle, Society, symphony

November 25, 2009 · 4:00 AM

So We’re a Little Melvin Udall…so what?

Last Thursday, November 19, we moved into our new home.

Four faithful friends and one mom helped us move, without which we might still be swimming in a sea of cardboard. My mother firmly grabbed my shoulders as she made her departure.

“Do not finish unpacking tonight,” she advised. “It is too much. Don’t let your compulsiveness make you think you need to do it all.”

Apparently she knows me pretty well. She also knew, even as she spoke, that I was incapable of following this advice.

I’m not one of those people who has to lock and unlock a door seven times before I can walk away from it. I don’t wash my hands with a fresh bar of soap every time I approach the sink. I don’t have Melvin Udall-brand OCD. But I do feel completely suffocated and unable to sleep knowing that my kitchen is only half-unpacked.

Add to this that I can’t resist surprising people, and I was doomed. Mike had to go to work immediately after our full day of moving (poor guy), so I felt compelled to wow him with what I could get done before he got back home. He’s as much, if not more, freaky as I am about organization, so before he left he looked around at the boxes and said he couldn’t look any longer without developing a twitch.

So I dove in.

I have discovered that Mike and I both have an insatiable need for order. Despite the midnight hour, despite barely being able to walk from exhaustion, I still relentlessly unpacked boxes and organized, as if pounding my gavel and hollering “order in this house!”

It’s as if we are transition-averse. I seriously thought Mike was going to break out in hives when he couldn’t find his shaving cream the day after the move. There’s nothing to make you homicidal like the rush of the morning coupled with lacking all of your essential tools.

So I grabbed my proverbial sledgehammer and started knocking down the walls of disorder. It’s truly a good thing I was in workout pants and a hoodie, because the effort was not without perspiration.

But I did it. And when Mike walked through the door to find he could see the floor and the countertops, it was like his shoulders descended from their perch near his ears to the more relaxed location near his chest, where they should be. Though I hardly noticed since I was beaming the special glitter-glow that organization creates.

What’s funny is I always translate my work skills into my home skills (since my home skills are limited). As an example, I made a three-week “moving” work-back plan that mimicked ones I used to make while at Microsoft. Excel kept us in line with tasks, details on what to pack each day, which walls to paint, when to clean, errands to run, forms to turn in. So on the actual move-in day, everything was streamlined and we finished in less than five hours.

But I’m not going to pretend all is as it should be. We only painted two areas of our new place, so we are going to have to go back through and move things around next weekend to paint more extensively. The den is not put together at all. The curtains are not up.

…which is why we both feel the need for self-imposed denial of every social opportunity until the task is complete. Even as I write that I realize it’s absurd; people take years to fully furnish and decorate — why should we try to do it in two weeks? The truth is, we won’t. Unless you’re on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, who on Earth could accomplish such a feat?

And who would want to when there is a cozy couch, lit fireplace and glass of wine beckoning?

Next week, I am excited to debut two new guest bloggers, who will tell us about the completion of their first half-marathon (coming up on Nov 29)…both of whom, before training, had never run more than three consecutive miles.

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Tagged as Mike Reph, moving

November 18, 2009 · 4:00 AM

Sold!

A few weeks ago I wrote about our painstaking process of deciding where to live. I say painstaking only because I caused Mike a lot of pain.

Headaches. High demands. Histrionics.

He estimates that he spent 13 hours a week canvassing Redfin, Windermere and Zillow to find us the perfect place to buy. He obsessed. He compared. There were spreadsheets, listing print-outs, and saved “Favorites.”

Guess how many hours I spent each week? Hint: it’s the same number of hours I spend watching Star Trek.

To me, online research holds the same appeal as voluntarily attending a life insurance seminar. To Mike, online research is like crack cocaine laced with ecstasy. So, we agreed it only made sense for him to handle that part of the process.

Now imagine the ensuing scenario when Mike has filtered through hundreds of listings to bring me to two condos/houses that pass his intense selection process, and I walk in the door and the first thing out of my mouth is, “Oooh, I don’t know if I can live with that light fixture.”

For the rest of my life I’m not sure I will be able to match the look of apoplectic frustration on my husband’s face.

The truth is that he and the realtor only showed me beautiful places to buy, all of which were entirely livable (except one glaring exception, which I will only say was inhabited by a creature who had no desire to see the floor, dispose of food or empty the litter box…but I digress).

I think that was the problem, actually. I trusted that Mike’s standards were the same as mine, so differenciating the potential places really came down to details.

I ended up trusting him so much that when he said “Let’s make an offer” on a condo I had only spent five minutes inside, I said “OK.” And when that offer was unexpectedly accepted, and I realized I was going to own something that had not been validated by my control-freakiness, I didn’t panic; I celebrated.

I hadn’t relinquished my control to Mike, entirely; I had more privately given control to God, saying, in essence, “Please figure this out for us because I am going to have a minor heart attack or a major stroke before it’s over if You don’t.” And He did.

Just like when I committed to Mike and felt the finest freedom of my life, I had that same rush of release when we committed to buying the condo. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes of all time, and I’m not at all embarrasssed that it’s from a Starbucks cup:

“The irony of commitment is that it is deeply liberating; in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrior to your life.” Anne Morris

So…we’re commited. Last Thursday, November 12th, we closed on a condo in Kirkland. Yes, the location question has been answered and the Reph’s will soon be Eastsiders.

…with a pretty kitchen. Any woman worth her salt knows the kitchen is the heart of the home, so if that doesn’t make you happy, it doesn’t matter if the rest of the place is gilded in gold.

kitchen

While we will ache for Seattle in more ways than we even know, we are sure that Kirkland is right for us, right now. My commute to work reached nearly 20 miles each way recently, and from Kirkland it will only be eight. Mike loves his job in Bellevue and wants to create more community in an area where both our work and church reside.

Of course, downtown Seattle is still only nine miles away. It’s not as though we moved to Yakima.

And do we care that we’re cheesy? Do we care that most people probably don’t still carry their wives over their thresholds? No, no we do not.