"Well, believe it or not, I invented the Post-It" -- Romy

**Reader beware: This is a non-profound post.**

Reasons I love making lists:
1. You can scratch things off
2. You can always add more items at the bottom
3. You can recognize kindred spirits by their similar lists (like my cousin's STDT -- Shit To Do Todays....or STDs for short)
4. You can compartmentalize, visualize, organize, and itemize your life
5. gubb.com
6. Post-Its

Movies I've Seen This Summer:
1. Hairspray
2. The Legend of Bagger Vance
3. Mission Impossible
4. My Cousin Vinny
5. Catch Me If You Can
6. 50 First Dates
7. Radio
8. Harry Potter (the new one)
9. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
10. Thank You For Smoking
11. Talladega Nights
12. Surf's Up
13. Some horrendous movie with Lindsay Lohan and what's-her-name Fonda


Local South Bend Places I Like
1. Macri's Bakery
2. Chicory Cafe
3. Rocco's
4. Fiddler's
5. Macri's Deli
6. Indulgence Pastry Shop and Cafe
7. Mazatlan Mexican

Top 5 Songs Played on my iTunes
1. Gabriel's Oboe (Vaulted to the top after a binge-listen while writing a paper)
2. Light in Your Eyes
3. Find Love
4. Collide
5. Bless the Broken Road

Top 9 Things I'd Take To A Deserted Island
1. Blistex
2. Charmin
3. Post-its
4. Rubik's Cube
5. Southern Pecan Coffee mixed with Community Coffee's New Orleans Style Chicory Roast
6. Catechism
7. New York Times Tuesday Crossword Puzzles
8. Dark Chocolate
9. Matt Lucci, Alpha Male

Reflections on a Bean

A recent trip to Millennium Park got me to thinking about our obsession with faces -- our reflections and others'. Think about it. You get to the park and the first thing you see when approaching from the South is a giant stack of bricks that has a video of a huge face on it. People stand there for the longest time just looking at a face -- blinking, twitching, and apparently every 12 minutes spitting a huge stream of water onto the squealing children waiting excitedly below.

And then you walk a little to the North and there's the Bean. It's so shiny and pretty. You just want to touch it. But the very first thing everyone does is spot themselves in the reflection. And not only that, but then you walk up right under the bean with about 75 other people you don't know, everyone craning their necks up, staring, moving, waving, smiling, taking pictures. If you didn't know what was going on, it would look like some sort of alien ship waiting for everyone to get in.

What really struck me about the bean, however, is the distortion in the reflection. It’s your classic fun-house mirror amusement: you walk up closer at just the right spot and your head gets small and your legs begin to stretch – or underneath, just the right position can make your face distort to be almost un-recognizable.

And it seems that often in our lives – or at least my life – I’m approaching the bean looking at myself, and it’s a consistent image, not stretching too much out of control, and then one more step and suddenly I’m looking at a face I barely recognize. Who is that? Is that me? When you’re standing 5 feet over from me, who do you see? Do you see the person I thought I was, or do you see the distorted image, or can you just look into my eyes on my real face?

Obviously, my face that’s reflected in the bean is the true me, the fully-human me that God is calling me to be, the one He’s known from the beginning. But sometimes I can’t see that me. I see the me people tell me I am, I see the me I sometimes want to be, but most frequently, I see the me other people want me to be, that me that I want to be because it will make others (and thus myself) happy. And sometimes, I see a face that neither I nor anyone I know recognizes – which scares me beyond belief. I’d like to be able to stop being fixated on the bean and turn to look right into the eyes of the people in my life and stop looking at their reflected eyes in the bean, scared of letting them see my real face.

Maybe I’m just scared that my real face will spit gallons of water every 12 minutes.

But that might be kinda cool.