"Cuttin' capers puttin' papers in the bag..."

Gotta remember to try to sing this song more these days. Maybe it will make me think cleaning my house is fun.

Anything is possible.



Hope this makes Michael laugh; I think we used to do this dance in the family room sometimes :)

Why Do I Love It So Much?

I am almost 40 and this cartoon still makes me laugh out loud, squinch up my eyes in a little girl grin and say, "Ohhhh!", and wish I had a dog this heroic and sweet. Too cool.

And almost makes me wish I had a kitten. But not quite.



Looney Tunes can solve many things after a hectic day. Happy Wednesday, I say :)

Who's a Cookie?

Who knew?

If you bake brownies to take to a work dinner the next night, and you have to pull them in and out of the oven like four times to check them, head hovering over them, and then it takes you forever to cover the brownies with foil, head hovering over them some more...

and then you fall into bed later and wake up around 3:00 AM, not quite all there, you will groggily think...

"Mmrrmphh. Too hot. Too many blankets. And...what the heck? Why do I smell like a cookie?"


Of course, I am also the girl who, as she turned off the water in the shower this very morning, heard a "beep-beep" sound and, honest to goodness, the first thought in my head was, "There's a road runner in my house?"

Yeah, that was the start of the traffic report on the radio.

*sheepish grin*

Inspiration

Lisa's post this week is encouraging me to post about a few life transitions I am experiencing, too. Good ones. Interesting.

Rebekah's post is encouraging me to type out a beautiful, inspiring poem a friend (Miss Arnila the Amazing) gave me about a year ago, that is tacked up on the wall of my office.

The poem is easier to post tonight. So here. By Luci Shaw.

if you care for me

speak to me without words
in a spiral of starlings
thrown into a bank of wind, scarves
of an invisible dancer
making the sky a stage

Make a negligent gesture like
the drop of a chestnut at my feet
the glossy nucula bounding out of its spiky casing
rolling to me, a gift round
and brown as a chocolate cream

Caress me with a curtain of dew
on my moonlit skylight, or boulders
shining under their clear skin
of rain. In the rock garden
a crimson cosmos articulates
its bright, small world. Speak
to my eyes in syllables of light
and color, if you care for me

Remind me about space as
I watch the finches
peck at the wind in the balsams. The doe
cleaves the air current over
the ribbon of creek. The great
blue heron elbows it way up
through gaps wild with branches
and you are opening
for me, too, a new passage
between the trees

By the way you breathe dead leaves
into a small whirlwind of fire
show me, if you care for me, how you can
lift me from the dust,
light me like tinder

Hmmm. Looks like the poem leads nicely to talking about being lifted from the dust and lit like tinder. Hmmm. I'm kinda there over the past couple of weeks. Cool.

More later on Jesus and dust and tinder and passages through the trees.

Pinned

I said in the last post that I don't mind so much anymore being pinned to the mat in the wrestling match.

I don't mind, but that said, I'm not a chipper girl at the moment. Haven't been for a bit, and don't know when the chipper will come back, but whatever.

Without sounding like a broken record (is that possible?), I miss people. And for this moment, I want to say I miss my nephews. Hmmph.

I am watching National Geographic's Kingdom of the Blue Whale, and it occurs to me how much the boys would love this and it would be a ball to watch it with them. The heart tug is a little too much, so I flip the channel.

I land on some car commercial that shows little Cub Scouts making Pinewood Derby cars, which is what the boys were doing with Dad and Grandpa this past week. Big, fat help that was. Hmmmph.

It's not just missing people. I have fantastic friends here that God has provided and I AM SOOOOO GRATEFUL! Truly, truly. I have dear sisters and families here that make this place home now. I am not led to pack the car.

And I get to see them frequently. But it has to be scheduled, planned. We all have lives, commitments, work. You know the drill.

And, yes, I love my alone time, and yes, I know I am blessed to be single and free to serve God with my whole heart and life, and yes, I know I am fortunate not to be married to or living with someone who steals my joy, and yes, I know, I know, I know...

and I don't plan to run out and arrange my own fix or solution with either a human or a cat or a dog or a bird or a fish or any other creature that needs tending to...

but the truth remains...

I miss the serendipitous moments of someone treasured in the house or family down the street. I miss having someone to dote on. Someone who knows me thoroughly and loves me anyway, lets me shower them with ridiculous affection because I know them thoroughly, and they can stand 100% of me as me. I miss that as part of daily life, mornings and evenings, breakfast and grocery shopping and weed pulling and coffee sipping.

I knew it was good when I had it, the nearness of family, friends who had lived years and years of history with me, and a friend who was so much more than a roommate. It's no less painful now for the appreciation I had for it then.

I am not angry. I am fine. I am better than coping; I am growing and learning. But there is a hole in my heart. I don't think it's wrong. I agree with John Eldredge and plenty of others who don't believe that God satisfies our every whim, and in fact, most people who know Jesus intimately seem to have one thing that is a significant unmet desire, a longing that is unanswered. We never know how God will play out the longing in each person's life specifically (we are all uniquely fearfully and wonderfully created, after all!), and I have no idea what the rest of my life holds (you have NO IDEA how much I have no idea), but for now, in this phase, living as I do, it feels like the lesser version of me.

I know that's not the truth, though. So continue to listen, seek, and love my Jesus I will. He is enough. More than. He will meet me. He will continue to change me for the better and the more beautiful and the more satisfied and the more loving. For now, I am called to this moment as it is.

And I miss my boys.

Wrestling

Can I just pop in here to say that I am wrestling with a bunch of conflicting desires and wishes, having one of those stretches where I am being stretched and at moments feel I'll-do-anything cooperative and then downright heels-dug-in resistant? I could break it down into categories, and I may well do so in here at some point, but suffice to say I am a fussy girl these days.

The cool thing, I think, is that the fussiness is different than in years past. My trust level in Him is much higher. I know who wins the wrestling match, but I also know it's okay to wrestle. I didn't used to believe that. It felt like any engagement with God (or non-engagement and avoidance, in my case) about things I didn't care for or didn't understand was some deeply unholy lack of contentment and thus disobedient and evil. Now I believe that through the wrestling he shapes me. He still wins the match, but frankly, I want him to. His plans are ALWAYS better, and always have more love and joy interlaced into them than I deserve or would have arranged for myself.

Which is the other thing I am trying not to do: arrange things. If you want specific examples of how my impatience can manifest itself, go knock on Liann's blog (she could write a book), but I can at least tell you that I find it a challenge to sit in the fuzzy unknown, in desires that I don't know how to solve and that I can't seem to get to shut their yaps. I don't care if the indecision is solved with a less than exemplary choice; I just wanted it solved. I learned that about myself in college when my mom pointed out in a certain situation that it would not be wise to cut off my nose to spite my face just to have an issue that I was wrestling with settled. A very important conversation in the halls of Cal State San Bernardino that I never forgot.

So, I am not arranging my world. Or trying not to, at least. I catch myself taking matters out of his hands and into mine. No, no, no. Don't want that. No matter what, it's better back in his hands. Okay, here you go.

Still a wrestling match. But I don't mind being pinned so much anymore. His outcomes are written with a for love me I can't begin to plumb the depths of, so he's welcome to be the beautiful winner.

Wanted: 90 Minutes of My Life Back

See this penguin? And the mischievous little grin underneath it?


That's my pilot pal Amber. She lives in Indonesia but was stateside for some training for the past few weeks. We always catch a movie together when she's here. So far, it hasn't been a bad streak: National Treasure 2, The Forbidden Kingdom. She's even picked out some decent DVDs.

However, our most recent choice means she owes me 90 minutes of my life that was completely frittered away. And she has been trying to hang some of the responsibility for the failure on me. Whatever. I tried for Slumdog Millionaire. She hadn't heard of it (she lives overseas, you know) and claims I failed to do a decent sell job on the plot (I hardly knew what the plot was; I just knew we should see it!).

So what did we see instead?

Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Um, yeah. The whole thing.

On the positive side, it's very family-friendly clean. On the humor side, if I was twelve I probably would have sat there heh-heh, heh-hehing, my way through the thing. As it is, I am almost 40, so I confess to a few snorts and snarfs of laughter here and there (watching a chubby guy ride a Segway with pride and grandeur like it's a Harley Davidson is kinda funny, actually), but mostly I was wanting to lean over and smack Amber for shooting down my movie suggestion. She claims no fault since I technically agreed to the Blart viewing, but seriously...what do you do with an out-of-town guest? You let them have their way! Sluss wins the argument.

On the brighter side, we had dinner before the movie at a steak place near the theaters. Since neither of us had been there before, and we didn't know anyone who had, we used our "Take a hit for the team" rationale and ordered appetizer through dessert so we could review it well. The food was fine, nothing to write home about, but like any meal with Amber, it was not without its moments of hilarity, including her shooting an edamame bean past my ear and out into the walkway. I suppose I equaled the hilarity by dripping chocolate and caramel from the mud pie pictured below across my cell phone in a rush to answer a text message.

Don't worry; I licked my cell phone clean :)