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Munchies, Vegetarian Friday

Vegetarian Friday: Subway cookie overnight oats

A large black-and-white pit bull/heeler mix and a small black-and-white Chihuahua mix with similar markings sit on a couch, surrounded by plushies, and look into the camera.

Critters, Cuteness, Dog training, Fond memories, Happiness

Stupid Pet Tricks

ADHD, Annoyances, Little things, Neurodivergence, Projects

A snapshot of ADHD

ADHD, Art projects, Creative outbursts, Creativity, DIY, Neurodivergence, Projects

BuJo reveal 2026

Blessings, Critters, Dog training, Nature, Route 66

Chilly morning.

Kitchen sink with white powder-coated metal shelf mounted above it between two cabinets for use as a dish drying rack.

Creative outbursts, DIY, Projects

Christmas present to myself.

Autism, Faith, Geeking out, Neurodivergence

Disability theory: Was Jesus autistic?

January 23, 2026 redforkhippie Leave a comment

NOTE: This is the first in an occasional series of posts applying literary theory to the Bible. It is an invitation to think, but it is not an invitation to a debate, because I simply don’t have the time for that.

In recent months, I’ve been dismayed to hear horror stories about churches making neurodivergent parishioners feel unwelcome. That’s pretty audacious behavior for people who claim to worship the most autistic-coded character in all of literature.

Consider my ~~info-dump~~ evidence:

John 8: Jesus ignores everybody and avoids eye contact while writing in the dirt with his finger. He responds only after repeated attempts to get his attention, and once he’s said his piece, he goes right back to ignoring everybody and writing in the dirt while he waits for the neurotypicals to figure out that he’s completely outmaneuvered them. Iconic.
Luke 2:49-52: Jesus, age 12, goes missing for three days (elopement?hyperfocus? time blindness?) but is eventually found expounding on the Torah at a precocious level that suggests savant syndrome and/or hyperlexia. When his mom chastises him for scaring his parents, he seems baffled, because they should have known where he’d be: gleefully info-dumping about his special interest to a group of like-minded adults.
Matt. 9:11-12, Luke 6:1-10, Luke 7:37-47, and John 4:7-9: Jesus routinely offends the uptight neurotypicals in charge of Hebrew society by disregarding their arbitrary social rules about who is allowed to sit at the cool kids’ table and when people are allowed to eat.
Luke 8:1-3: His followers include several women, but the Gospels all heavily imply that he is ace/aro. Autism shows up at elevated rates in this demographic.
John 18:28-19:11: He talks in circles, seems wholly unimpressed by titles, and shows a high degree of emotional detachment in the face of an existential threat.
Mark 4:11-12: He shows zero interest in dumbing down his parables so the normies can understand them.
Mark 4:13 and Matt. 7:15-17: He seems downright impatient with people who don’t understand him or can’t keep up with him.
John 2:14-17, Mark 11:15-12, and Matt. 21:12-13: He starts literally flipping tables when he catches the moneychangers ripping people off in the temple. Perceived injustice is a pretty common trigger for meltdowns.
Luke 23:39-43 and John 19:25-27: He manages to carry on meaningful conversations while being physically and psychologically tortured. The ability to dissociate in painful situations is another fairly common autistic trait.
Luke 5:16: This is one instance of a recurring motif: When the crowd gets too thick, Jesus dips, which seems like odd behavior for a celebrity preacher.
Matthew 4: Jesus takes off on a camping trip and doesn’t eat for 40 days. Intentional fast, or just dodgy interoception exacerbated by hyperfocus? This scene occurs immediately after he is baptized by his cousin John, who seems about as neurotypical as Rain Man. Neurodivergence runs in families, so that tracks.

I’m sure I’ll get blowback from people who insist that the perfect Lamb of God couldn’t have been autistic, but given the nature of his mission, I don’t think autism is a blemish so much as a necessity.

Emily

Faith, Geeking out, Literature

Theoretical lenses

January 22, 2026 redforkhippie Leave a comment

When I was in grad school, I was required to take a class on literary theory. The readings were incredibly dry and dense and generally more work than they were worth, but the application was fun. Example: One week, the professor told us to apply a Marxist lens to a text we were working with and write a brief report to share with the class. I was teaching children’s lit at the time, so I gave a Marxist reading of Green Eggs and Ham, in which I posited that Sam-I-Am is essentially the Costco sample lady from hell. I also noted that Sam foreshadowed the rise of fast food, as he eventually wore his target down through ubiquitous marketing and impressed him with convenience rather than quality. The whole class ate it up with a spoon like it tasted good.

I still can’t believe I got away with that.

There are all sorts of theoretical lenses you can apply to a text. For instance:

Queer theory: How are LGBTQIA+ characters portrayed in this text?
Disability theory: How are disabled characters portrayed in this text?
Feminist theory: How are female characters portrayed in this text?
Race theory: How are characters of color portrayed in this text?
Psychoanalytic theory: How do Freud’s ideas about the human psyche apply to the characters in this text?

Put all those lenses together and apply them to the villain in a fantasy or horror novel, and you have monster theory, which gives you a pretty clear snapshot of how Othering functions in a given time and place. (Try it with the Harry Potter series if you want to understand why we really shouldn’t have been surprised when J.K. Rowling turned out to be an incorrigible bigot.)

If you want to dig deeper into a text, you really can’t go wrong by picking whichever theoretical lens floats your boat and applying it to whatever you’re reading at the moment.

I mention all this because I have spent the past few months reading parts of the Bible through various theoretical lenses, and it has been very illuminating. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to do a series of occasional posts along those lines. I expect this will delight some readers and enrage others. Either way, if it forces people to think, I’ll consider it a success.

Stay tuned.

Emily

Baseball, Nature

Biding my time

January 21, 2026 redforkhippie 2 Comments

Have I mentioned that I loathe winter?

It is exactly three weeks until the Cubs’ pitchers and catchers report to spring training. As far as I’m concerned, winter ends the day spring training starts. It’s right in the name: SPRING training.

The ancient Celts had an even better idea: They marked the beginning of spring on Feb. 1, a.k.a. Imbolc, a.k.a. St. Brigid’s Day. According to their religion, that was the day the Cailleach either handed the reins back to Brigid or transformed into Brigid, depending on who was telling the story. I like the latter story; the idea of Brigid aging into the Cailleach, then regenerating into her youthful aspect with the return of spring, just feels right to me.

Either way, if you follow the Celtic calendar, we’re just 11 days from spring.

I can live with that.

Emily

Annoyances, Nature

Winter

January 20, 2026 redforkhippie 1 Comment

The weather has finally remembered that it is January. It is obnoxiously cold. I hate it. That is all.

Emily

Critters, Cuteness, Dog training, Teaching

Good dog!

January 19, 2026 redforkhippie 1 Comment

Honey is learning a new trick. I am training her to come over and rest her front paws and the front half of her body on my lap when I flap my hands. Once she’s gotten the hang of it and will come running as soon as she sees that signal, I’m going to add rocking, covering my ears, and maybe crying.

The goal is for her to recognize signs that neurodivergent students are getting overwhelmed and offer her reassuring weight, soft fur, and grounding presence to help them re-regulate in time to avoid a meltdown, because a meltdown can ruin a kid’s whole day.

I’m not sure what you call a task-trained therapy dog. The term “service dog” doesn’t really apply, because Honey isn’t going to be attached to one specific person all day; she’ll just hang out in my room like she usually does, but if somebody happens to get overstimulated during my class, she’ll run interference. I don’t know whether anybody else has ever done this, but it seems like a natural progression, given Honey’s existing work and her aptitude for learning new tricks.

Emily

Fond memories, Kids, Little things, Teaching

Quiet weekend

January 18, 2026 redforkhippie Leave a comment

I didn’t get to go to the prison in Clayton on Saturday because I had game duty at school. Normally, I’d try to arrange for my two mandatory game-duty days to be on weekdays so I wouldn’t have to miss my weekly trip to Clayton, but when it was time to set the schedule this fall, I noticed we were playing Santa Rosa a couple of times and signed up for those dates so I could see some of my friends and former students.

The kids split a pair of games — Santa Rosa won the seventh-grade game, and Tucumcari won the eighth-grade game — and everybody played well. I was proud of all of my kids from both schools.

I wound up going back to school after lunch to spend a few hours working in my classroom. The quiet in an empty school is strange but oddly soothing, and it’s always satisfying to walk out into a crisp winter evening knowing that I’m ready for the coming week.

When I got home, I put in 27.1 miles on the bike, which is the longest ride I’ve ever done. I didn’t even break a sweat, although I was starving by the time I finished. (Granted, I had the tension turned down to the lowest setting and maintained a pretty sedate pace so I wouldn’t wreck myself, but I’m still surprised it was that easy.)

I hope your weekend was as productive and enjoyable as mine.

Emily

Blessings, Christian Science, Faith, Healings

The years the locust hath eaten

January 17, 2026 redforkhippie 1 Comment

This week’s Lesson included a Bible verse I’ve always liked:

“I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.”
— Joel 2: 25

I hadn’t thought about that verse in a long time, but it seems especially fitting in this season of my life. In the past few weeks, several things have happened that I wasn’t sure I’d ever witness.

The first: Despite daily workouts, I have not had a single day of soreness in my legs, hips, or back.

The second: All of my Long COVID symptoms, which have been a pain in the arse for five years, have gone AWOL. The brain fog started lifting at the beginning of Christmas break, the arthritis in my hips f*cked off on command on New Year’s Eve, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a migraine.

The third: Four times in the past week, I have gotten away with eating IBS triggers that normally make me sick. (Forget the locusts; let’s restore the years IBS has eaten so I can get back to porking down Reese cups and Girl Scout cookies with total impunity.)

Oh, and I did my first three-miler on the treadmill last night. Predictably, it was easier than the two-mile runs I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks. For some reason, the first two miles of a run are always a slog, but after that, I feel as if I can go forever. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been that way.

If I had any doubts about whether I was on the right track, having that verse fall into my lap this week took care of most of them.

Happiness, Blessings, Projects, Little things

Update on my latest projects

January 15, 2026 redforkhippie Leave a comment

I am now two weeks into the new bullet journal I set up when my old one started to run out of paper at the end of December. By the numbers, here’s how I’m doing on some of my challenges:

14 miles on the treadmill or trail.
88.4 miles on the stationary bike.
14 reasons for gratitude.
14 nature notes, with tiny illustrations to accompany them.
13 endurance workouts.
14 consecutive days of spiritual study.
13 days of keeping my phone time below two hours.
12 days of sleeping six hours or more.
1 small home-improvement project completed.
1 small improvement made to the mudroom.
$63.25 worth of impulse purchases re-evaluated and rejected.
35 pieces of clutter jettisoned.

I’ve also managed to blog every day since Christmas, and I’ve been eating a lot better without really trying; I just have fewer cravings for junk food and more cravings for nutritionally dense foods.

I feel better right now than I have at any point in the last five years. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to go through a day without Long COVID symptoms. The last couple of weeks have been an absolute delight. Here’s hoping I can keep it going indefinitely.

Emily

Challenges, Fond memories, Long, strange trips, Running

A jog down Memory Lane

January 14, 2026 redforkhippie Leave a comment

The first time I ran a half-marathon, back in the spring of 2005, I was using it as a training run on my way to my first full 26.2. I finished in something like 2:18, which is a decent time but not really anything to write home about, and was completely baffled when someone congratulated me and handed me a medal at the finish line.

A medal? For a training run?

It took me a minute to remember that for some people, a half-marathon is a goal unto itself, because for me, it was just the halfway point on my way to my real goal. I’d already logged 14- and 16-mile runs by that point in my training, so 13.1 was just another Saturday morning. I certainly couldn’t imagine driving more than 100 miles or so for a half. Full? Sure. Half? Pfft. Why bother?

A lot can change in 20 years.

The Golden Driller Marathon is April 18. It is organized by Fleet Feet, which was where I bought all my shoes and got all my coaching when I lived in Tulsa. Like most marathons, it includes a half-marathon option. And the entire course is at River Parks.

I lived in Tulsa for nearly nine years, and during that time, I logged literally thousands of miles at River Parks. That trail — flat, fast, and pretty — was my favorite place to run. It was the first place I went running in Tulsa. It was where I ran my first marathon. It was where I took Scout and Songdog when they needed to blow off a little steam. It, more than just about anywhere else in Tulsa, was home, and it’s one of the things I miss most when I think about the time we spent living there.

A full marathon by April 18 is a completely unrealistic goal. A half-marathon, though? That’s doable. That’s adding less than a mile a week to my long runs. And I’ll be running at River Parks with some of my old friends.

How can I resist?

Emily