Too Much for Words

I'm not even going to try to encapsulate this week's visit with the gorgeous, lovely, beautiful Kirsten. Oh, what a rich visit, so blessed in so many ways. I'm trying not to think about the morning, when we will have to say goodbye.

Yesterday was the day of tears and deep conversation. Today was pure fun: our StoryCorps interview (oh. my. goodness.) and a fun day out at the beach, playing in the waves with our bare feet and with Kirk, our paparazzo. In a little bit, we're heading out for some last-minute girl-time over yummy cheesecake dessert.

Thank you, Kirsten, for the gift of your presence and conversation and deep friendship. I love you from the place in my heart only you can ever inhabit. And thank you, God, for your overwhelming goodness and creativity and grace.

What Kirsten Didn't Know . . .

(I tried to get this post written before I went to pick Kirsten up from the airport yesterday, but was not fast enough because of hunting down all the links. The fun outcome of not getting it written in time is that I can provide some follow-up pictures to go with the initial post idea!)

Our beautiful friend Kirsten is flying in the air right now. Her flight will land in just over an hour, and I'm leaving to pick her up after I finish this post. I thought, while she's in midair, it would be fun to let you all in on a little secret I've been preparing for her stay.

Some of you have followed Kirsten's story for a while and know that she had intense stomach issues last year. For others of you newer to her journey, I'll give you the skinny. She landed in the ER. She saw a gastroenterologist. She had an endoscopy and was diagnosed with a hital hernia and gastric mucosal atrophy. She still didn't get any better, nor did she feel she was heard, so she stopped trusting the status quo. She saw a naturopath instead, who put her on an intensely strict elimination diet. And she (finally!) got lots, lots better.

Because she felt so much better with that strict elimination diet, Kirsten decided to stick with a modified elimination diet long-term. She now lives a gluten-free life and is very careful about everything she puts into her body. I so respect that girl for this.

As you can imagine, for someone not keen in the kitchen (I'm talking about me here), plus not acquainted with the ways of the gluten-free world, this posed quite the quandary. What to feed this special girl while she's staying in our home? Of course, Kirsten was so gracious in every interaction we had about this subject, graciously assuring me that she was sure to find something she could eat no matter where we went. But still, I wondered about those meals we would share at home . . .

Enter a divinely inspired brainstorm! Up to the front of my mind came the memory of many elimination diet-related posts from Kirsten's journey through this process in which she shared many zany tales as well as favorite recipes she'd concocted out of her own ingenuity and creative, experimental spirit for this new experience in the land of food. I scoured all the posts she had labeled under "health" on her blog, and found a number of delicious-sounding meals we could create. All it took was a trip to the grocery store, special ingredients list in hand.

Voila! Here we have cubed, extra-firm tofu, sea salt, organic free-range chicken, crushed rosemary, limes, lemons, green beans, tomatoes, avocados, ground turkey breast, green peppers, rice vinegar, rice noodles, and much, much more. Some of these ingredients are a first for me!

Four recipes on the docket for this week . . . Turkey Pow, Mexican a la Kirsten, Southwest Chicken, and Thai Dish with Peanut Sauce. Sound good, huh?

Fun in the kitchen together. Isn't that girl on the right totally gorgeous?! I think so, too.

Ahhh, the delight of the prepared meal, complemented by a great bottle of wine. (We both got a little tipsy, which was a hoot. Kirk was our designated driver when it came time for dessert. Just kidding -- it wasn't that bad. Okay, it was. Kind of.)

Awaiting Kirsten

Here in sunny, crisp Florida, everything and everyone awaits with happy expectation beautiful Kirsten's arrival on the morrow . . .

The neighborhood and the light filtering through its

tropical hanging moss trees are hushed in expectation . . .

The lake waters are calm, reflecting the sky that

boasts blue for you, beautiful girl . . .

The sun peeks around trees and through wispy clouds

and off reflective waters in its joy to show off for you . . .

The house sparkles clean and stands ready

to show off its snug cuteness . . .

Solomon sits in my lap and asks,

"Will this girl let me lounge on her bed?"

Diva says, "I'm sleepy from my catnap,

but will she let me sleep next to her?"

Watch out! Kirk's got his party on . . .

And I've got my thrill on, big time!

Medium-Boiled Eggs, Properly Done

By request, for Rebecca, I'm posting here my mom's surefire recipe to perfect medium-boiled eggs. Yum, yum, and enjoy!

* Place eggs in pan with enough cold water to just cover the eggs. Place pan on stove, covered, and bring to boil.

* Once water begins boiling, reduce heat to medium and time for 3 1/2 minutes more.

* At conclusion of 3 1/2 minutes, scoop each egg out of the pan with a spoon and run under cold water for several seconds.

* Tap with a knife to crack shell and then peel. (Watch your fingers on this part! Ouch, it can sometimes burn if you haven't cooled the eggs under cold water long enough.)

* Once the eggs are peeled and placed in bowl, mash up with a fork.

* Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. You may also enjoy melting a pat of butter on the eggs for extra flavor.

* Then eat and enjoy!

Silly Stuff

It gives me so much joy to share that this week has been filled with much lightheartedness. It began toward the end of last week, when the difficult season I've been walking through got a little bit easier, saw a little bit of light, which has felt so, so good. That was perfect timing, just before my birthday, which, as you know, was also a great gift. And since then, my heart has just been lighter. Less frightened. More space-filled. More light.

Which means that rather than anything profound, tonight I just feel like sharing fun stuff. Up for it? :)

First, I couldn't be more pleased that I am composing this post on my MacBook Pro in my little library nook . . . at home. This may seem like no big deal on the surface, but believe me, it's a big deal. It means that Kirk and I finally got hooked up with wireless internet access in our home.

We did this for our Macs. We also did this for our sanity. Up til now, we've been operating our internet access through a mobile broadband card that fits only into our ancient PC laptop. It was actually Kirk's birthday present to me last year, before our Macs were in the picture, when we'd been operating without internet access at home for about six months. However, since then, we've gotten new computers for school that can't use the broadband card. Plus, the card that only works in one computer also means that only one of us can be online at a time when we're at home. Which has become quite inconvenient for the reality of our daily lives.

Mostly, we've just been too cost-conscious to invest in an additional monthly bill for wireless access after we already pay $60 per month for the broadband card, for which we had signed a two-year contract. When I decided to call and see if there was any way to waive the cancellation fee on the card (thinking that would allow us to then channel the $60 payment into wireless access instead), the customer service rep said there was no way to waive that fee. But then she proceeded to tell me that she could reduce my monthly bill (which includes my cell phone) to basically what I pay for the cell phone by itself . . . meaning the broadband card payment would disappear. Which basically meant we could now afford wireless internet in the home for our Macs while still having the broadband card for use on the PC, all of it costing the same exact amount we've already been paying. Crazy, huh? Crazy cool, that is.

So the guy came today to set it up, and now Kirk and I are flying high and fast across these wireless internet highways. And the great news is, we can work across from each other at the table while both getting done what we need to do. No more of this, "Um, honey, can I get on there when you're finished?" stuff. We're stoked!

As I type this, I'm crunching on homemade popcorn, sprinkled with salt and drizzled with melted butter. Yum. I'm also drinking Pepsi. And I'm in the middle of watching Pieces of April (which I reviewed here, if you're curious). Sigh. I love this movie. And I still adore Katie Holmes. (I know, I know, most people don't. But I am not one of those people.)

Those of you who remember my fiasco in the kitchen that was an attempt to make soft-boiled eggs for breakfast will be happy to learn that I have finally mastered this skill. Just this week, I tried it out and succeeded. Score! (This was due in large part to my mom's detailed instructions in the comments section of that original post. Thanks, Mom!) Doesn't this bowl of eggs look yummy and much better than the last attempt?

And speaking of cooking, many of you are aware that I Do Not Cook. However, last night (probably surfing on the confidence wave of my soft-boiled egg success!), I tried my hand at a bona fide meal. I served up literal meat-and-potatoes: top sirloin steak cooked medium to medium well, boiled fingerling potatoes with butter and salt and pepper sprinkled on top, and juicy corn on the cob. Oh yes, and lemonade. Doesn't this meal look well-rounded and splendid? I'm moving on up in this kitchen scene!

I guess that's about all for tonight. Gotta get back to my movie now! :)

Jumping Into My Bookbag of Tricks

I recently finished three books that completely knocked my socks off, all for the same reason: they are superbly written stories that unveil the beauty and fragility of the human heart. Although one's fiction, one's spiritual autobiography, and one's a social work memoir, these books transcend genres by demonstrating that a well-told story that dignifies the spirit in us and others has the power to not only captivate but also help us better embody our own humanity.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner is the story of two boys, Amir and Hassan, who grow up in Afghanistan. Although they come from two very different social classes -- Amir's father is wealthy, and Hassan's father is a servant in Amir's home -- the two boys are best friends. However, where Hassan is as innocent as a dove, Amir is watchful and possessive, particularly of his father's affection, which does not flow down to him freely. And on one particular afternoon, when Amir has an opportunity to rescue Hassan from one of the most vulnerable circumstances a young boy could possibly endure, Amir chooses to run away and leave his small friend alone.

It is a decision that haunts Amir the rest of his life. And when we meet him in adulthood, he is presented with an opportunity to atone for his sin. The only question is, does he yet have what it takes to take a stand, to be loyal, to exert himself beyond his own pain, even if it will ultimately cost him his life?

I don't know how to communicate with enough force the importance of this book. Not only is it a masterpiece in the art of storytelling, with layers upon layers folding and unfolding upon themselves with such skill and dexterity that it makes you gawk in amazement, but it tears your heart open at what we as humans have the power to do to one another, and how utterly vulnerable are the innocents. Hassan's innocence and loyalty and trust, in particular, captivated my heart and made me love him deeply; I felt the same tender affection and protectiveness toward his son, Sohrab, later in the book. But there were other times I wanted to throw the book as far across the room as possible, either because of Amir's despicable actions (or inactions) or because of the positive ugliness of human evil. This story maintains a constant tension between the delicate and the forceful, the beautiful and the ugly, the redemptive and the damned, with a final culmination that builds with greater and greater intention into events positively heartbreaking and full.

I'm kicking myself for having waited so long to read this book, because it is one of the finest novels I have ever read in my life. I mean that sincerely. It will get inside your soul and eat you up. It will make your heart explode. It will make you weep again and again and again. It will spend you. I do hope you decide to read this book someday, if you haven't already. And I would love to hear your thoughts on it when you do.

The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong

As I shared in a previous post, Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness is a book that found me, quite unexpectedly, in a Borders bookstore. In my original post, I shared that I thought this book might be important for me at this time in my life, and I believe I now know why.

Armstrong's story is many things. It is the story of someone who wanted to find God so badly that she went searching for him inside convent walls, only to learn that God was not found in strictures and the flagellation of the self. It is the story of someone learning how to live outside convent walls and outside the life of faith. It is the story of someone who thinks academia can save her, only to find herself eventually cast outside its walls, too.

It is the story of someone searching for a life. It is the story of someone finding a life. It is the story of someone struggling for many years through a misdiagnosed illness, and it is the story of someone eventually moving back toward the idea of God, though from quite an unconventional vantage point.

I really resonated with many of these searches of Armstrong's life, but what struck me most forcibly about this book is that it is also the story of the tenderness of the human heart and why it must be treated with care above all else -- why it must be given room to breathe and have full life or it will die. Much of Armstrong's painful experience of the Catholic convent concerned the rigidity, the rules, the fastidiousness, and the uncompromising obedience she was forced to give in questionable circumstances without being given the privilege of a question. She makes repeated pleas for love, for affection, for understanding, and for God, only to receive in return closed doors, closed lips, and closed hearts. She is dismissed as dramatic and dangerous. She is left completely alone.

My own heart broke for Armstrong many times as I saw the many instances where the opportunity for true life was there, right within reach, and could have been had through the simple attempt of another human being to understand and receive and love her, right where she was, and yet how each human being chose instead to turn away. There seemed to be a treacherous fear of reality behind the eyes of each of those people.

I read this book while staying at a monastery in Santa Barbara, California. It was a quiet space to contemplate these themes concerning the human heart, honesty, and understanding. As I read, I felt a tremendous roar welling up inside of me to protect and defend the hearts of other human beings, to allow them room to speak their truth, no matter how scary they have feared that truth may be, even if such truth has been hidden for years behind masks and rage. It is my conviction that the love of Christ is found in such unguarded moments and in such merciful places. I guess you could say that my compassion for Armstrong and my rage at what harm she received from so many different outlets was simply a confirmation of my own calling.

This book was also a teacher for me. Many times I watched Armstrong reach a crossroads in her life, either through circumstance or relationship, and then watched her look introspectively inside herself to decide who she was going to be, separate from anyone else's dictation. Sometimes, when accused of wrongdoing or exaggeration, she went deeper inside herself to consider ways she may have been wrong, or what part was hers to own in some mishap. I really respected these qualities in her, the willingness to carve her own path and the openness to consider her own fallacy, especially in a time when I am learning to speak my own truth and to own my own life. This book, probably without the author's intention, taught me much about personal boundaries.

And finally, this book challenged me. When I spoke of it in my previous post, many of you indicated an interest in learning where Armstrong lands spiritually by the end of the book. The book is very much an excavation of her own appraisal of that question through an approximately 30-year journey. After leaving the convent, she stands on the fringes of Catholicism, simply because it is all she knows. Then she brazenly rejects it for a very long season. Religion becomes an intellectual pursuit only, and she finds much to criticize in the Christian faith. But slowly, slowly, she begins to contemplate God and His real presence again.

For those looking for a final-page conversion story back to Christianity, I'm sorry to say you will not find that here. Armstrong embraces the Abrahamic faiths -- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam -- as equals and more symbolic than true. What you will find, however, is something somewhat remarkable in its own right. Because Armstrong met with so much personal injustice in her own life, saw the effects of hard-heartedness and an unwillingness to listen and receive vulnerable pilgrims in their quests for love and understanding through the unfolding of her own story, the momentum of this theme builds through the book until it makes perfect sense that she ultimately embraces something which she calls the science of compassion: a so-high regard for the dignity of other human beings that it asks for our sincere attempt to get inside their skin, to see the world from their eyes so that we can truly understand and receive them where they are.

I found this idea marvelous on one hand, because I think it is the true spirit of Christ. It also mirrors much of my own conviction about the need for compassion and the dignity of the human heart. However, it also lands Armstrong eventually at her own conviction that no human being can proclaim to have knowledge of any supreme truth of one religion above another, which challenges me because I subscribe to the Christian faith as a true representation of reality. Her movement from compassion to this rejection of any overarching religious truth forced me to consider how my own zeal for compassionate love does not land me where she does. This is a complicated question I have not fully wrestled to the ground. Even so, hers is a superbly told story that is very real and worth reading, and which ends with some strong roots shooting down into true and beautiful places, even if not fully mirroring my own perspective on reality.

One Small Boat by Kathy Harrison

I picked up One Small Boat quite by accident two weeks ago when browsing the bargain racks at Borders. I was drawn to the cover (isn't it cute?) and then to the title and subtitle: One Small Boat: The Story of a Little Girl, Lost Then Found. Wow. Compelling.

It didn't take much more to hook me. The jacket copy described a five-year-old girl named Daisy who showed up on the author's doorstep in need of care. Harrison, who with her husband is a long-time foster care parent, has seen almost everything in her twenty-year tenure, yet Daisy's case is unique. She barely eats. She doesn't speak. She flaps and spins. And what's more, her family doesn't fit the usual demographic.

Yet what happens under Harrison's roof in the name of Daisy's healing is nothing short of miraculous. Here, she learns to eat real food. Here, she begins to smile. Here, she starts to communicate. Here, she begins to shine.

I am not a parent, nor do Kirk and I have plans to ever be. So why was I so taken with this book? Why did I carry it with me everywhere I went in this past week? I finally realized that it came down to this: the sheer vulnerability of a life, how it can be broken in such young places, and how healing is found in love, in safety, in trust, in strength, in softness, in grace, in the arms of a human touch. This book will break your heart and make you laugh. It will amaze you and astound you. It will make you shake your head and it will make you yell out loud. You will wish to God the story wasn't true. But you will also give great thanks that it is.

You're Talking to the Birthday Girl

Getting ready for my big night out!

Last night, as the clock struck midnight, Kirk broke out the vanilla bean ice cream with gobs of chocolate sauce to begin the celebration of my special day. We sat at the table in the farmroom with candles flickering around us, chocolate covered yumminess in bowls before us, the contents making their way to our mouths quite quickly, and a few Deb Talan songs playing on my iTunes. (I finally discovered her yesterday after Kirsten's great recommendation, and I played "Comfort" and "Big Strong Girl" to give Kirk a sneak peek, too.)

When we turned in for bed, Kirk said he wanted to pray a birthday blessing for me. I was willing to receive that, but asked if he would also pray that I would feel the specialness of my day all day today. In years past, it has been hard for me to really embrace the fullness of my birthday when it happens. This might be because I shared the same birth date with a longtime significant other in my life for ten years; birthdays were spent as a shared event, rather than a unique focus on one or the other of us. This wasn't a bad thing, but it did have the effect of keeping me from experiencing the fullness of a special day just for me. And even in the years since then, I've felt disconnected from my day. The residue of long habit, I suppose.

This year, I wanted that to be different. I wanted to drink it in, allow myself to receive all the love from those around me, believe that today is special because I am in it, because I was born and my life is a miracle created by God.

When the morning came, it crept in slowly. We slept in because Kirk didn't have his morning class, and that felt like luxurious goodness. I dressed for the day in a layered outfit that made me feel girlie and pretty, and tied a spun-gold glass heart necklace around my neck that Kirk had given me for Christmas. It was a cloudy, cool day -- like English weather -- which is just the way I love it and would have it be every day if I could control the skies.

And then I proceeeded to freely tell people it was my special day all day long. I had an appointment this morning; I told the lady at the desk and the person I was meeting with that it was my birthday. Instead of hello when I answered the phone, it was, "You're talking to the birthday girl!" And when the waiter at dinner tonight approached the table to introduce himself and ask how we were doing, I told him we were doing great because it was my brithday. He said, "All right!" and knocked fists with me (even though it was a classy joint). All of this was fun.

But back to the chronology of the day. After lunch at my favorite Thai restaurant, Kirk dropped me at school. I was running a few minutes late because of lunch and my earlier appointment, and someone from class text messaged me, asking, "Where you at, girl?" Turns out she had baked me a cake, complete with a personalized birthday message on top! They were hoping I hadn't skipped out on class because I wasn't there yet, but I hadn't, so we enjoyed some yummy butter-pecan-cake richness together as a class when I arrived. I felt vervy in class today, hamming it up during a somewhat spontaneous presentation my group had to give about a made-up product we had to create for a pretend product launch. My phone continued to buzzz with birthday calls and text messages, so I felt enfolded in love even as I sat through this afternoon class.

But what's really special about today is the secret plans Kirk made to take me out. I had received an e-mail from Kirsten yesterday, asking about our plans for the birthday weekend (since Kirk's birthday is tomorrow, the day after mine, if you can believe it), and I had told her a sketch of what we might do, though nothing had been set in stone yet. When I mentioned this to Kirk yesterday afternoon, to get a feel for how his own thoughts on the weekend had developed, he said matter-of-factly, "Oh, there are plans." Really?! He's quite the secret planner guy, and I felt all amazed and special inside to learn that he had made plans to take me somewhere I'd never been before tonight. It made my day to anticipate the evening outing all day long, without having to know what it was. I love surprises.

But before we got to the special plans, we came home from school and took a nap. I pulled on flannel pajama bottoms and a comfy t-shirt and crawled into bed. It was cozy on a cloudy day, and we slept soundly for an hour. We were tired!

And then he took me to dinner. Kirk told me the place would be hip, not formal, and he was right. "Z," a restaurant and wine bar in downtown College Park, has dim lighting, red walls, and original artwork hanging everywhere like a gallery show. All of the artwork is for sale, and new artists get shown every two months. Pretty cool revolving decor concept, we thought.

My handsome hub perusing the wine list

So happy to be enjoying the special evening

At our quiet table by the window, we enjoyed soup and salad, a full-bodied bottle of Merlot that the general manager recommended to us himself, and their famous filet mignon that really is famous for a reason. Yum! Of course, we are dessert people. Kirk got sorbet, but I couldn't resist ordering four chocolate-covered strawberries to enjoy with the rest of my wine. Yum-yum! And of course, great conversation centered around art and faith.

Yummy desserts!

Afterward, we stopped by Borders to purchase a CD by the Weepies, another new band we wanted to hear because we now love Deb Talan so much (she's one-half of the Weepies group with her husband), and we drove home listening to our new tunes.

Except the night wasn't over. I still had to read my birthday card, and Kirk said there was one more gift. As he set up the front room for the final gift-giving, I went into the bedorom to read the card and proceeded to be moved into a whole other galaxy. Can I just say my hub is so deep and feeling in the way he expresses himself to me? Inside the card, he had written me a poem of sorts. It reads so beautifully and lyrically and contains so many images of how he sees me in the world, and I felt so held and cherished and seen and loved as I let those words wash over me.

When Kirk invited me back into the front room, I found he had lit candles and turned the Weepies way up on the player, and that he had settled on the mantle shelf, so subtle that I had to really notice it was there, my gift: the one original print of Kelly Rae's that I've always, always wanted, called "Tell Your Story." When I noticed it sitting there, I squealed so loud and jumped up and down and threw my arms around him before hopping up on a chair to study it more closely. I just stood there and stared, taking in every single word of this gorgeous piece of artwork that this gorgeous woman created. Every single word on this brilliant print is my heart's deepest song, the words I want to remember as I live in the world every day, the words I am learning to live for real and for true right now.

Gazing at my Kelly Rae print

A closer view of "Tell Your Story"

Thank you all for your words of love and birthday well-wishes on my last post. In all, it was such a wonderful day. I feel like I truly embodied the fullness of its specialness in a way I never have before, just like I asked Kirk to pray that I would. Your love was a part of that specialness for me, carried so close to my heart.

Making the Day More Sweet

Early this morning (around 4 a.m.?), Kirk and I woke up at the same time and proceeded to stay awake for a slow, meandering conversation in the dark about many things: how to find the deepest meaning out of life, whether dying to self means losing our unique personhood along the way, what we think America most needs right now, and, finally, how to make each day a little sweeter.

Kirk asked me, do you think it's possible to make the day more sweet?

And I said yes. I think it's about being present in the moment. Taking the time to appreciate the beauty of what's right in front of you. Not rushing by in a frenzy to get to the next good place but taking in the goodness and the sweetness of what is right there already.

Today, because Periwinkle honored me with this award yesterday, I turn around and honor those who make each day a little sweeter in my world. The ones whose names I look for first when scanning my Bloglines account through the day. The ones whose blogs I revisit multiple times, just to catch up on the comments. But most of all, the ones whose words betray their own determination to drink in the full sweetness of each day by reflecting, making words out of their hearts, and offering themselves fully to others.

Kirsten and Terri, you two sweeten my every day for being the ultimate embodiment of these truths listed above.

Nathan and Tammy, I've only known you each about a week, but already you are often on my mind, and just the thought of you brings a smile of gratitude to my face.

I carry each of you in my heart each day, which means whether your blogs have new posts or your posts have new comments, you are always with me, bringing secret smiles to my face and blooming wild in my heart for the love of you. Thank you for offering true and safe community to me and to others, and for the companionship of your friendship in my heart.

A Swollen Toe, a Bruised Tailbone, a Pinched Elbow, and a Discombobulated Bag

After about nine hours of travel through the night, in which Kirk did not sleep at all and I only slept one hour, and during which I attracted all of the above-mentioned maladies, we are finally home.

We were zombie-eyed as we shuffled from the terminal to the baggage claim, just hoping the discombobulated bag made it here safely. Thankfully, it did. (This was an issue with an oversized duffel that we purchased for carting our Christmas goods home, the zipper of which chose to break in the baggage line at the airport, forcing us to leave it in the hopefully capable hands of the baggage officer to fix for us after she sifted through it for any no-no items.) And then we dragged ourselves to the taxi line at the curb, thankful to let the cabbie load our bags into the trunk as we fell into the back seats and let him drive us home.

Now that we are home, we and the cats have spent the day piled on the bed in sleep and reacquantaince. After I post this, I'll be heading back to bed, resting my body, resting my mind, resting my heart.

Thank you for all your kind and tender comments on my last post. It has been a difficult seventy-two hours, starting with one of the most difficult conversations I have ever had in my life with someone I love very much. I carried the conversation with me to the monastery and pretty much carted it around with me everywhere I went. It was always on my mind. It was always plaguing my heart. I was trying to see my way through it. I still am, and probably will be for a while. For now, I alternate between a slow, leaden feeling in my heart and in my gut that makes me feel like I can't breathe and that I'm going to be sick, and a lighter reprieve that tells me this step was important and will be gotten through. The periods of reprieve are less frequent, but I think they have much to teach me. Perhaps in the coming days and weeks and months, their place in my life will grow larger and more representative of the place I will henceforth call home for my heart.

I realize much of what I'm writing here may not make sense, is rather vague, and quite unexpected. Some of that is intentional. Other parts of it are simply the truth of where I am: in vague, unexpected, unsensical-ness. But I trust that I'm making slow progress, and I'll be faithful to watch and learn as I go, and to share what I can, when I can.

For now, it's back to bed for me. Love to all of you. And thanks for your care and your love and your prayers. They mean more to me than you can know.

One Happy Girl

Well, the camera fiasco has been resolved, but not anywhere near in the way we thought it would be.

After working for three days with Fedex on the phone and getting no information, Kirk finally settled into detailing the situation to the vendor in an e-mail. (He had tried to reach them by phone yesterday, but for some reason they were closed.)

While he was composing the e-mail, I noticed there were gardeners working in the yard next door.

"Hey, maybe one of them knows something," I said to Kirk. "Maybe one of them is G. Ramirez. Should we go out there and talk to them?"

Of course, by "we," I meant "him."

So Kirk went outside on a mission. When he came back, he looked dazed and said it was kind of strange. He had asked the men if anyone there was named G. Ramirez, and they all pointed to one of the older guys. Kirk approached the man and asked if his name was G. Ramirez, and the man said yes. Then Kirk asked if he had signed for a package last Saturday, and the man said no.

"Well, we have a signature for G. Ramirez on file for a missing package," Kirk said, "and you happen to be G. Ramirez. Are you sure you didn't sign for anything?"

"No, no . . . no package," the man said in broken English. "I no sign for package. When I sign for package, I put on front door."

"Okay, well, don't worry about it," Kirk said, and then casually mentioned that since my dad was a cop we were sure to get it resolved. And then he came back to the house.

When he relayed all of this to me, I couldn't believe it. Here was a man who said he was G. Ramirez, and he was right there in front of us, and yet he denied having signed for it, meaning we couldn't do anything more. I just couldn't believe the craziness of this situation, and neither could Kirk. We stood there at the front window, staring at them.

A few minutes later, Kirk got on the phone to call Fedex again. He was hoping to get more answers than the call us back tomorrow line he had continued to get every time he called.

I went in the other room to unpack some of our bags. Suddenly, right outside the bedroom window, it sounded like someone had started up a lawnmower. I looked outside, and sure enough, the same men working next door had now moved into my mom's yard . . . which means not only does G. Ramirez do the yard for the lady next door, but he's also one of my mom's yard men! Even more proof that he was probably the same guy who signed for the package. Who else could have been at my mom's house with that exact same name when she wasn't here??

I wanted to confront the man again so badly, but really, what could we do? Force the guy to bring the package back from his house? No. Call the cops? That seemed a little extreme, especially since he denied having done it. And would any of that hoopla have been worth it? Probably not, especially since we were likely to get a claim resolved between Fedex and the vendor, even if it took a long while to do it. I just kept thinking about that man's daughter, how happy she would probably be to get such an extravagant gift from her dad on Christmas morning, something totally unexpected and beyond what he would normally be able to give. It made me sad, but it also drove me crazy.

So I did the only thing I knew to do: I called my mom. (She had left earlier to clean out her classroom at school.) When I told her what happened with the yard men, she said I should try to talk to the main guy, Alex, who owns the business and is in charge. She said he speaks good English and is very nice. And since she had a question about her bill that I could legitimately ask him, it would be easy to break the ice.

I took a printout of the Fedex signature with me and went outside to talk to him.

Alex was so kind. Very honest. I could tell within ten seconds that he knew nothing about the situation. He said they hadn't even been in the neighborhood on the day the delivery happened. He also said he didn't have an employee by the name of G. Ramirez and proceeded to point out the names of everyone there. No G. Ramirez among them. (It turned out that Alex was the one Kirk had talked to before, and he had somehow misunderstood the question about his name being G. Ramirez.)

I showed him the printout of the signature, but he didn't recognize it. Besides, most of the guys who work for him don't know how to write. And since the question I needed to ask him on behalf of my mom required that he write something down for her, I was able to see his penmanship, too, which was nowhere close to matching the signature on file for the package.

During this time, the lady next door had stepped outside and was standing in her driveway watching us talk. She's somewhat eccentric and not altogether friendly, so I waved to her from the curb to let her know I wasn't there to do any harm. She yelled something at us in her usual crabby way.

When I was done talking to Alex, I decided to go up and talk to her. Who knows? Maybe she received the package by accident. Sinec she's not the most friendly neighbor in the world, I wouldn't have put it past her to refuse to deliver it to my mom, to just wait my mom out until my mom came calling around the neighborhood looking for it.

Turns out she remembered a Fedex delivery truck stopping by last week. They had parked right in front of her house, she said, and then walked over toward my mom's house. No, she didn't remember seeing anyone at my mom's house when this happened. And "oh crap," she said in response to my telling her about the missing package. "That's ridiculous," she said, standing there in her nightgown and her oversized glasses. She was quite the character.

So I trudged back to the house with no further clues as to what had really happened to the package but at least the knowledge that it wasn't the lawn guys after all and that my mom's neighbor hadn't received it by accident.

When I got home, Kirk had good news. He had finally gotten through to a Fedex representative who was helpful. She said no one had even yet looked at the trace on the package, so she did it for him right then. Said the package had been left with a cleaning lady at a home with a wheelchair ramp.

Well, that was certainly not my mom's house. In fact, the house across the street has a wheelchair ramp.

The lady said she would contact the driver, who would need to be the one to retrieve the misplaced package if Fedex was going to continue being involved in the proecss. Meaning, if we tried to retrieve it ourselves from the neighbors across the street but something went wrong and they refused to give it to us, then Fedex would no longer be willing to work with us on a claim. We would have taken them out of the loop.

So all we could do was wait. And stare at the house across the street from the window in the front room. And tap our fingers. And wonder how long it would take the driver to come around.

Ten minutes later, there she was on our doorstep.

"You're here!" I cried, so glad to see her. (At this point, Kirk was on the phone with another company about yet another package we discovered had been delivered with a problem.)

"Hi . . . I'm your driver," she said. "I was just around the corner when I got the call, so I decided to come right over. Can you help me understand what happened because I'm almost positive I delivered a package to this doorstep last week."

I explained about my mom's leaving town with the first notice in her hand, about the signature being required but the person who signed for it not being anyone we knew. I told her about the wheelchair ramp and the house-help comment that the representative had mentioned on the phone. Then I showed her the copy of the signature.

All of this started to bring the driver's memory back. She snapped her fingers and said, "I'm on it. Just give me a few minutes while I go down the street. I think I know where I left it." (Turns out it wasn't the house across the street after all.)

Another ten minutes later, and she was back, package in hand. I jumped up and down and let Kirk do the honors of signing for it. I wanted to hug the girl, I was so happy. We were so relieved!! She even said the lady who received it had placed a call with Fedex to come and pick it up, since she was too frail to walk it down to my mom's house herself. Isn't that nice to know that she had tried to right the situation, too?

Of course, as soon as the driver left, Kirk opened the box and handed the camera over. "No need to wait until Christmas on this one," he said. "You deserve to receive this gift right now."

And you know what? The camera is perfect. It's a metallic pale pink, just like my phone. It's super-cute in its tiny pinkness, the perfect size to carry around in my purse, and has all sorts of features that will help me develop my creative photographic chops beyond the mere point-and-shoot method. It even has a surprisingly large LCD screen, despite its tiny size.

Want to see?

Crummy News

I hate speaking of crumminess in such a wonder-filled holiday season of love and joy, but this is just plain crummy.

For months, I have been wanting to get my very own digital camera. Kirk has one, but it's more professional than I need and bulky to tote around. I've been dreaming of a sleek, streamlined, easy to use camera that I can carry around in my purse, as I catch myself in so many candid moments where I'm thinking, "If I just had a camera in my purse, I could pull it out and capture this great moment!"

Knowing this would be a big investment during a modest financial season of our lives, I held off expressing the fullness of this desire out loud too much. But it just kept growing. Finally, I told Kirk that this is what I would really love to receive for Christmas, in place of any other gift at all.

So, he did it. He got a sense for the features that were most important to me and went to town looking for a suitable fit. He landed on what he says is the perfect one, and he purchased it. He walked around for a few days after that with a smile on his face, so pleased was he with what he had found, and he shared his excitement about watching me open it for Christmas.

Because we'll be in California for the holiday, we decided a couple weeks ago to do all our Christmas shopping online and have everything directly shipped to my mom's address. The gifts started showing up on her doorstep. Then we got the news that my aunt in Minnesota passed away; she had been battling cancer for many years, but took a quick turn for the worse at the end. My mom packed her bags and headed out to be with her sisters for a few days. She arranged to have her neighbor pick up packages left on her doorstep each day.

Just before she left for the airport, she found a notice on her door for a Fedex delivery. She decided to take the notice with her so that she could call and have it held until she got home. Except that when she did make the call, she learned the package (which, of course, turned out to be the package with the camera in it) had been delivered and signed for by some unknown "G. Ramirez" shortly after she had left for the airport.

Who in the heck shows up on the doorstep of other people's homes to sign for and steal special packages intended as gifts for actual loved ones? Who does that? Crummy jerks, that's who.

We're having the package traced and also put in a request to talk to the Fedex driver about his recollection of what happened on that day. Who knows if we'll somehow track it down or receive any information that's actually helpful or makes us feel any better. More likely we'll file some claim with Fedex for reimbursement or struggle to some agreement with our credit card company. Or else we'll try these routes and get nowhere, eventually (maybe) purchasing a second camera that ends up costing us the price of two when all is said and done.

I'm bummed. Kirk's bummed. My mom's bummed. We're all pretty upset, too, both at the jerkiness of people and at the irresponsibility of Fedex leaving the package with someone for whom the package isn't named. It's so frustrating, too, that it happened in a situation already charged with such emotion and that could not have been avoided at all. We're praying, though, both for G. Ramirez and our own angry hearts not to be overcome with that anger in a season that's not about gifts anyway.

Short Film: All About My Dog, Marimo

For anyone who has ever loved a dog, this video will no doubt make you cry. So beautiful . . .

(Video runs about 11 mins.)

My Life with Bloglines

About two months ago, I signed up for Bloglines. Have you heard of it? You probably have; I'm usually behind the times on most tech stuff. For instance, just last week Kirk and I had a conversation that went something like this:

"Do you think we should get iPods?"

"I don't know. It seems like the thing to do these days, doesn't it? Like, the way to keep up with music?"

"Yeah."

Silence.

"Seems like a lot of work, though, too. Downloading, syncing, memory space."

"Yeah."

"Hmmm."

With no decision made, whatsoever. Oh, except for on Thursday, when Kirk reluctantly shared that he might like an iPod for Christmas . . . only to change his mind by evening's end.

So it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that most of you have been on Bloglines for years. But for me, it's a relatively new thing. (For those who don't know, Bloglines is an online service that tracks all your favorite blogs and news feeds in one place, so you don't have to visit each individual page to find the new content yourself.) And with two months of experience behind me now, I'm ready to share what I've learned.

I signed up for Bloglines for three reasons.

First, now that I have the lovely Mac to go along with our ancient and crotchety PC machine at home, it was becoming quite discomfiting to keep blog bookmarks current on both computers, especially as I continued to discover new blogs. Then factor in the additional challenge of keeping all those bookmarks in the same order on both computers so that my blog-browsing experience was consistent from computer to computer. (Anyone else out there feel strongly about reading blogs in a certain order? And changing this order as your interests change, even in the most subtle of ways?) I so appreciated that a Bloglines account would allow me to access all my favorite blogs in one place through an internet connection, no matter which computer I was using.

Second, I was becoming painfully aware of my world events illiteracy. Perhaps this awareness has heightened since we've gone without a television for six months, although I'll confess that I've never been good about keeping up with the news or reading the printed newspapers, even though I know I should. Or perhaps it was due to my finance class, where I showed up each morning only to realize that I had nothing to contribute to the daily discussion about current events in the financial sector. And with an election year upon us and the ever-increasing interplay of globalization on the economy and our daily lives, it seemed pretty lame to just keep sitting in the dark. I knew all the major news services provided free RSS feeds for their content, and Bloglines was a way for me to easily turn the lights back on.

Third, and probably most importantly, it was becoming just too time-consuming to run through every single bookmark on my toolbar several times each day to discover new content. The seconds it took to click on the bookmark toolbar, scroll to the next blog in line, wait for it to load on my screen, then check for any new content or any new comments, only to repeat the process again and again times the length of my bookmark blogroll really began to add up, especially, again, as I continued to discover new blogs to add to my list. I was becoming increasingly aware of just how much time I was devoting each day to checking my bookmarked blog lists.

Something had to be done. Enter Bloglines. Signup is free; all it requires is an e-mail address (which is your sign-in -- I've never gotten any actual e-mail from them). Once you sign up, you can subscribe to all the major newsfeeds already indexed by them. You can also download a button that gets installed on your bookmarks toolbar; anytime you visit a blog that you want to add to your Bloglines feed, you click on the bookmark button once you are on that blog's page and it automatically gets added to your feed.

The cool thing about Bloglines is how much time it saves. No longer must I visit each and every one of the blogs I love several times a day to check for new content; now I just wait for Bloglines to let me know when my favorite bloggers have posted. So easy!

Having this new system in place after a year and a half on the "old system" has made it easy for me to determine other highs and lows of this new Bloglines life.

First, the lows.

One downside is that when it comes to subscribing to news feeds, it is easy to fall way behind, way fast. I made the mistake of signing up for a variety of news feeds that Bloglines offers when you first open your account: I started with the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, and the BBC, not to mention Slate, Salon.com, and about ten pages of feeds within the New York Times itself (such as international news, business, technology, art, movies, literature, and opinion). I wanted to get as broad a spectrum of perspectives on the news as I possibly could, since I know each news service has its bias. But all of this was a mistake, at least for me.

Here's how it finally dawned on me: by thinking it through. I mean, news is breaking all the time, right? And in the electronic age, this means that news now gets transmitted instantly. That's why every time I checked my Bloglines account, it seemed my news feeds had ballooned like the Pillsbury Doughboy. And instead of simplifying my life, this part of the Bloglines experience began stressing me out. It made me feel constantly behind and like I was doing something wrong, not to mention revealing that what I really wanted to see when I opened my Bloglines account was not news updates but whether any of my favorite people had written anything new. If you ever take this route and discover yourself feeling the same way, I suggest that you do as I finally did and unsubscribe from those unending strings of feeds. I decided it was more worth it to check the news pages directly, at my own volition, rather than having it foisted on me the several times each day I checked Bloglines for a personal blog fix.

Another downside to the Bloglines life is that blogs can easily become "out of sight, out of mind." Once someone publishes a new post to their blog, a live link for that blog shows up in the left-hand column of your Bloglines page. When you click on that link, a new pane opens in the main section of your Bloglines screen that shows that blog's name and the new post's title. Then the live link in the left-hand column disappears, never to reappear until the blog author posts a new post. Out of sight, out of mind.

This can be particularly disorienting if you have been used to tracking not only new content but also comment threads, especially on blogs where the authors like to leave tagback comments for each commenter. I've had to adopt a hybrid system, making mental notes of the blogs I must remember to revisit once I leave a comment and then scrolling through my (woefully un-updated at this point) blog bookmark list on my hard drive over the next few days to re-check those blogs. This is quite an inefficient system on the back-end of the blog experience that doesn't entirely eradicate the problems at the heart of the first and third reasons I signed up for Bloglines in the first place.

Incidentally, Blogger has recently added the feature to request e-mail updates on comment threads for their blogs, but I've personally found this option cumbersome to my inbox when I've tried it. Another way to address this problem is within Bloglines itself. Bloglines offers the option to either display your entire list of feeds in the left-hand column (highlighting the blogs with new content in bold) or only the list of updated feeds that actually have new content. I've found that I prefer to list only the updated feeds because one of the reasons I subscribe to Bloglines is to save time. I like being able to see which blogs have new content in one split-second glance instead of having to scroll through my pushing-50 list of blog subscriptions to search for the boldfaced ones myself. In other words, I want Bloglines to work for me, not me for it. So for now, to keep my favorite blog authors from disappearing from my peripheral vision, I stick to my hybrid approach.

Another thing to expect when signing on for the Bloglines life is the learning curve of figuring out how you best like to experience each blog on your subscription list, and that's because you always have three options. First, you can choose to expand and read each new post right there on the Bloglines screen. This is great in a pinch and also works well for those blogs that don't foster an emotional connection for you. I tend to read news and business blogs this way because I subscribe to those feeds for information, not personal connection.

But when you do want a personal connection with the person via the look and feel of their blog, you have two choices. As I said earlier, clicking on the live link in the left-hand column will refresh your main Bloglines screen with that blog's name in large type and the new post's title below it. Both the blog's name and the post's title are live links, too. If you click directly on the post's title (instead of the plus sign right beside it, which is what expands the text within the Bloglines pane itself), a new window opens to display the static page for that post on the person's blog. Alternatively, clicking on the large type of the blog's name will open a new window that takes you to the main page of the blog itself.

It took me a while to realize that I almost unilaterally defer to this latter option of opening the main blog page on personal blogs because doing so allows me to feel like a continual part of the ongoing conversation that person is carrying. I can scroll down to check for updates on previous comment threads at the same time, and I feel a greater expansiveness by participating in the whole experience of the blog, rather than being limited to one post's static page. However, the static-page link can be a great option for those blogs that require you to scroll through quite a bit of information before getting to the new content, as it allows you to bypass that extraneous information completely. It's also great when it's a blog would normally choose to read in expanded form on the Bloglines screen but the blog author has selected not to make the full content of their posts available this way.

Another downside I've experienced, which may or may not be an issue for you and which really says more about my personal insecurities than any deficiency in Bloglines, is that living the Bloglines life makes you more aware of your own blog-related shortcomings. For instance, you begin to notice how frequently and faithfully certain bloggers post new content . . . and how infrequently and unfaithfully you do. Also, every time you look at a particular blog's newest post information in the main Bloglines screen, you are also presented with the number of subscriptions that blog currently carries. And if you subscribe to your own blog (as I do), it's tempting to feel a growing sense of your own insignificance when comparing your own blog's subscription base (2??) to that of others (36 . . . 51 . . . 456 . . . 5125?!).

One cool thing about Bloglines that I didn't expect is the way it helps you clarify your true blog-reading preferences. For instance, there are a number of blogs that have been sitting in my Bloglines feed for two weeks. I haven't clicked on them once. The number of new posts on those blogs just keeps growing, and still I do not click. It's revealing: I don't actually care what those bloggers have to say. Or for another example, I subscribed to a few new blogs that I thought I would really enjoy, only to discover that every time I got an updated feed for their blog, I dreaded clicking on it. Or I walked away from reading the new post feeling worse. At some point, I just get tired of feeling that initial dread or that bad feeling afterward. And guess what? Unsubscribing from those "boo blogs"* is just one painless click away. Bloglines makes it easy to wipe painful or discouraging blog-reading experiences out of your system entirely: just click on the latest live feed from that boo blog, click "unsubscribe" on the main Bloglines screen page once for that blog it loads, and you're done. Bad feelings, over.

I've listed a lot of up-and-down considerations from my personal Bloglines life, but I hope they will take some of the sting out of your own fledgling experience, should you decide to try it yourself. Really, I'm glad I switched over. It has simplified my online experience of life considerably, most especially with regards to saving time. I love that it does the hard work of combing the internet for me. I love that all the new content gets delivered to my doorstep, letting me choose the new blog content I would most relish reading first but keeping the other ones live until I'm ready to read them later. And I love that it has made the ongoing growth of my blogging life, as I discover new blogs to gather and follow along, so very easy to do.

*I've been planning to write this Bloglines review for some time, but Penelope Dullaghan's recent post in which she coined the term "boo blogs" lit my fire to finally get the review written and posted. Thanks, Penelope! I really enjoyed reading your perspective, and also discovering that I'm not alone in the way I experience blogs sometimes!

Hold the Phone!

My dear friend Kirsten is coming all the way from Washington for a five-day trip to Florida to visit yours truly next month. Can it possibly be?! I am so, so excited, I'm pretty much doing a little dance as I type this news. You should have heard the squeal, the shout of joy that burst from my mouth when I heard the for-sure confirmation. She already made the reservation, and we were just exchanging tentative e-mails about dates this morning! And this on the heels of some light banter back and forth in recent e-mails about our need to sit across from each other for hours in a bookstore or a coffee shop and just share, share, share to our heart's content. Oh, dear girl, the beauty of this tree is just a glimpse of what you'll see while you are here.

Ahhh, Kirsten, how thrilled I am at your coming. We will sit down beside each other, across from each other, over coffee, over sushi, over Thai, and on a walk, and we will talk and talk and talk until our mouths fall off our faces, just like you said. Thank you for this gift, the bountiful gift of your presence.

And to think all this transpired because of the marvel of technology in blogland. What a gift!

Giving Thanks

Meet Brownie (right) and Snap (left), two beautiful horses who live next door to Kirk's mom and whom we look forward to meeting again this weekend. As a sidenote, Brownie and Snap were self-named by me. I have no idea what their owners actually call them. But that is part of the fun, now, isn't it? :)

* This year I am thankful for my sweet, my love, with whom I never cease to feel wonder, whose thoughts and perceptions astound me every day, whose love buoys me up so I am cherished and held exactly where I am, who makes me laugh real hard, especially when I need to the most, and who fills my days with so much joy. I love you, sweet.

* This year I am thankful for my family, for renewed connections with sister and brother, for an ever-expansive and love-filled relationship with mom, for an engagement in the family, for a new and just-right life for older brother, sister-in-law, and new baby Ava, and for renewed hope and the gift of time and greater security for dad and stepmom.

* This year I am thankful for a season of expansiveness, exploration, creativity, expression, and heart.

* This year I am thankful for Sara and Kate and Hannah and Rebecca and Kirsten and Sarah and Laura and Erin and Charity and Lauren and Cyn and Amy and Heather and Danielle, and all the many more beautiful women who fill my life and heart and make my world go round.

* This year, too, I am thankful for the astounding depth of relationship that e-mail and long-distance late-night phone calls and these bloggy spaces bring into my life, maintaining old relationships and nurturing tender, young, new ones, which my heart craves because it is still learning how to live and thrive and be known in this new place (meaning, an entirely new state, across the country from my long-time, real-life community).

* This year I am thankful for Solomon and Diva, two cats I never knew I could love so much, who really are like funny little kids, who make us laugh with their antics and innocence, and who break our hearts with their vulnerability and the precious gift of caring for them each day.

* This year I am thankful for a little English cottage that is exactly what we need and makes us feel closer to our artistic and dream-filled hearts.

* This year I am thankful for student loans.

* This year I am thankful that Zoey, my spunky white Jetta, has made it one more year.

* This year I am thankful for the gift of words, for the ability to grow in my ability to express them, and for the space to do so faithfully, with ever-increasingness, on this blog space.

* This year I am thankful that God never lets me go and always bears me up and teaches me more and more of His love each day, who gently ushers me into the space He has for me to inhabit, which is always, always safe in the center of His will and always in the comfort and surety of His very own arms.

The Case of the Mysterious Nighttime Visitor

Okay, when I really think about what I'm about to tell you, I get totally freaked out and scared. So I'm going to tell it either matter-of-factly or with a light touch, just to keep myself sane. Agreed?

Last night I was home alone. I was exhausted after a very long class. Kirk needed to go out to get some stuff done for his class, but I just wasn't up to leaving the house again, so he ventured out on his own. I stayed in bed, propped up by pillows, my trusty laptop on my lap and, of course, the kitties lounging beside me. A cold front had begun to move in, so before Kirk left he raised the blinds and cranked open the facing casement windows in our bedroom. I sat there feeling very cozy under the bundle of covers, cool air brushing against my face and the sound of wind creaking through the trees outside the window, and started making my way through this wonderful English girl's blog archives.

About an hour into this quiet and blissful night, I heard a noise. Crunch, crunch, crunch, went the sound of footsteps on autumn leaves behind our house, in the little crop of space wide enough for one person and which ultimately ends at our bedroom window.

When I heard the crunching of leaves (by two feet, not four, which would have indicated it was a dog), I went still. I heard the footsteps approach, getting louder, until they stopped just outside my big open window. Since the warm light from the nightstand lamp was inside the room with me and it was dark outside, I couldn't tell if anyone was standing near the window, looking in.

"Hello?" I called out, leaning forward and straining my eyes. I thought (hoped! hoped!) maybe it was Kirk, returning from his classwork and sneaking up to say hi to me in a creative way. No dice.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, went the sound of footsteps retreating.

Now, this is scary enough, right? But then I remembered that our bathroom window in the next room over was broken. Just this past weekend, when we tried to crack it open for the first time since the outside of the house was painted in summer, the hinges got bent and we couldn't re-close the window. Since that small window doesn't have a screen, we've been living bathroom life with a wide open window for this past week.

Put that together with this stranger walking along the backside of our house, and I was really scared. What if they decided to climb through the bathroom window and into the house? What would I do then -- throw Solomon at them? Solomon wouldn't even know what to do; he's a big roly-poly cat, and he prefers males to females anyway.

The first thing I did was get up and screw the casement windows closed, and then locked them and lowered the blinds. (I can't believe I was so brave, but I was shaking as I did this.) The second thing I did was step into the hallway and listen for sounds. The kitties seemed alert, like maybe they'd heard a sound in the house coming from the direction of the bathroom, so I put my ears on high alert too and moved stealthily against the wall. I couldn't hear anything unusual. I got to the bathroom, peered around the doorway to look inside, and found it empty. Phew.

Then I went back to the bedroom and picked up my phone to call Kirk.

"Hi. Where are you?" I asked when he picked up.

He said he was on a street near our own.

"So you're in your car? Coming home?"

"Yes. What's wrong?"

I told him what had happened. He asked if I was okay. I told him I was a little shaken up and could he please hurry and get home. And when he got home, I was a basketcase for about 30 minutes.

Thankfully, all the windows in our house are either sealed shut or have locks on them, and all of them are now locked and will remain that way unless both of us are home. I always keep the door locked when I'm home alone as it is. And the handyman came by this morning and fixed the bathroom window. So hopefully that means all will be okay.

We can't, of course, live like two basketcases together in the house, only going somewhere if the other person goes too, but in times like this I kind of wish we could.

How Not to Soft-Boil an Egg

Normally I relish the morning routine that allows me to drop Kirk at school (we gave up our second car when we embarked on grad school life together) and then come home to the quiet house to immediately power up my Pride & Prejudice soundtrack and get the hot tea brewing.

This morning, probably because I was still hungry when I went to bed last night, I wanted something of substance for breakfast. Something besides my old standby of hot tea and a small bit of chocolate, which I usually take as I read at the table.

Mmm, eggs, I thought as I was driving home. Soft-boiled eggs. I wonder how you make them?

I tried calling Kirk to get instructions, him being our resident chef, but when he didn't answer his phone I had to figure an alternate plan. Google! I thought. Of course, Google. You can find anything on Google.

Into the search bar went the phrase "how to make soft boiled eggs," which returned a gazillion hits, on down even to the details of how Julia Child herself likes them prepared, and I figured I could handle what seemed like a simple formula:

1. Boil the water.

2. Ease in the eggs.

3. Time for 3 minutes.

4. Remove.

Easy enough.

Many of the recipes said to watch the timer diligently, to even use an egg timer if you didn't trust yourself, so by the time three minutes were up, I was hovering over that boiling pan of water like a mom hovers over a new baby.

Except they didn't look done. They were tapping on the bottom of the pan in the heat of the boil, and the tapping still sounded quite fragile. I decided to give them another minute or two.

About a minute and a half later, I eased the eggs out of the water and into a tupperware bowl. One attempt at peeling back the first shell was enough to remind me that it's probably a good idea to run them under cold water first, in order to save your fingers. Okay, done.

Now it was time to really peel them back. But as soon as I began, I knew it was a failed experiment. The egg whites were too malleable. I felt like I would puncture them with the slightest inadvertent jab of the shell's sharp edge.

Carefully, I peeled the shells off two of the four eggs anyway (I had made two extra as a backup, and I'm sure glad I did -- two of them exploded upon entry into the scalding hot water). Once shelled, I plopped the eggs in a ceramic bowl. Except one of them broke in half in the process of shelling (you can see its lonely other half sitting in the tupperware bowl of shells in the photo above), and that one's yolk went streaming into the bowl.

These eggs really weren't done.

But what's a girl to do? Put the other two eggs back in? I doubt it. Besides, those other two casualties were already gushing guts through cracks sustained the first go-round in the pan.

Instead, I seasoned the shelled eggs in the bowl with some pepper and salt, grabbed a fork to mash them down -- really, it was more like stirring at this point -- and sat down at the table to eat them. I'd wanted eggs, right?

Now, probably this was all psychological, but I swear the eggs tasted . . . organic. Not in an "I bought organic eggs at the supermarket" kind of way, but in an "I don't think I cooked these eggs enough and they still feel alive" kind of way.

Gross. I ate only as much as I could stomach but eventually tossed everything out.

There really is a reason I don't cook, and this morning's experiment goes to prove once again why that is so. Thankfully, I've still got a stash of hot tea and chocolate waiting for me in the pantry. I'll stand by that option any day. Hot tea, I can handle.

My Bro-ham

This is my brother Bobby. He grew up setting fields on fire and stalking trick-or-treaters in camo gear with his best friend. He grew up mouthing off at teachers and skating by with Cs and Ds, even though IQ tests scored him as a genius (and way smarter than me, I might add) when we were tested for the gifted student program. It was probably no surprise to anyone when I, the overachieving, people-pleasing one, jumped at the chance to study with the smart GATE kids but Bobby spurned the notion.

When I caught up with him in high school, a genius of a different sort emerged. We found out Bobby is a musical genius. He picked up and mastered the bass guitar and drums in something like a week, flat, each. Then, when he moved on to the acoustic guitar shortly afterward, his genius accelerated him to pulling sounds out of the body of that musical soundboard within weeks, when it would have taken someone much older many years to even approximate those techniques.

Bobby then moved on to writing his own songs, spinning them out of his soul like they'd been lodged in there for a lifetime, like they'd been waiting with bated breath for a key that would turn a door and set them free. One of my fondest memories of high school is falling asleep many nights to the soft strumming sound of his guitar and the lyrical words falling from his lips in the room next door.

While I have watched Bobby with admiration much of my whole life, I have often watched him from afar. When we were younger, this was because he was larger than life, both in body and temperament. As we got older, this distance became more subtle. Although we would talk over coffee or on the phone quite extensively about his love life or his career, I kept my own self at a distance, much to my own shame and sadness. As has been the case with many of my relationships, I have always found it much easier, not to mention natural and invigorating, to ask questions, to probe, to encourage and to cheer, while finding it excruciatingly painful to put my own heart on the line. I have always been afraid to find out someone doesn't understand me or, worse yet, doesn't care.

This morning, something about that pattern broke in my relationship with Bobby. I had woken with a feeling of "down-ness" that had been descending for about a week, and I wanted someone to talk to but didn't know who that could be. Kirk was alseep, having finally gotten there after a night of restless wakefulness himself, and it was too early to call my mom or my friend Sara or my friend Kate. When I checked my e-mail and found a note from Bobby, who was answering the family e-mail chain about our plans for Christmas, I saw that he had posted the message just five minutes earlier. Hmm, I thought, then picked up the phone.

I'm so glad I did. We spent the first part of the conversation catching up on his work news, what he and his lovely girl Ana have been up to, and all the silly fun they've been having with their dogs. When he turned the tables and asked how I've been doing, I could have demurred or begged off as fine, saying that there was not much news here. Except that wasn't true, and I had called him for a reason, believed perhaps even God had arranged the moment (since I had cried out a frustrated prayer to God earlier about not knowing what to do with all these feelings in this place, nor how to make any sense of them). And besides all that, I wanted to just plain trust my brother with my heart in a way I'd never done before.

So I plunged in. I told him about my ambivalence this week about my life's work, how I feel straddled between the business and my writing, how I'm not sure where the business idea is going or if it's even good anymore, how I want with all my heart to just write books for a living but worry that it's a self-absorbed or bastardizing process to write about my own life, which is what I really want to do more than anything.

Bobby was amazing in that place. I have to say he impressed me, that he really stepped up when I actually gave him a chance to do so. He got so excited for me, sidestepping the business questions completely and jumping right into my writing life. "What do you mean by self-absorbed," he asked. "And did you really just say 'bastardized'?"

He told me that he could hardly contain his excitement for me to write, that he had goosebumps just thinking about a book I needed to read that might encourage me in this place. He said he thought I was trying to compress too much, that I was trying to write my whole life in one book instead of breaking it up into chapters, and how the chapters could form whole books in and of themselves. He told me I didn't need to apologize for my life or my experiences, that I didn't need to answer to anyone else about my take on things and the way I've perceived the world through my experiences in life, and that maybe all this could be of some encouragement to someone else, the same way some books I'd been telling him about have encouraged me.

Finally he said, "If you decide that writing books is going to be your bread and butter, the way that you put food on the table for the rest of your life, I don't ever want to hear you apologize again about making money for doing it or calling it a bastardizing process. Chris, I hate to say it, but you just need to get over yourself. This is so not about you."

It was so, so great to talk with him like this. Even when I was getting schooled by his lecture. :)

In other news, he called back later to tell me he and his girl Ana had gotten engaged! This is so funny because he had been talking me about her this morning in such a lovey-dovey way, and afterward Kirk asked me when we would likely hear about the engagement. It turns out that when I called Bobby this morning, he had just been putting the finishing touches on a letter to this lovely girl, and our two-hour conversation had stalled him back a bit. Even still, it worked out beautifully for him to ask her to marry him at just the perfect moment a bit later in the day, and now they are happily engaged. I couldn't be more thrilled!!

Congratulations, Bobby and Ana. I'm so proud of you, bro-ham. And a great big welcome to the family, Ana. You so belong here with all of us. That is due in great measure, of course, to your kookiness, which so perfectly matches all of ours. :)

Aren't they a beautiful couple?!

Meeting Lauren Winner

Lauren Winner came to RTS Orlando yesterday to speak about her book Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. (This is the same seminary Kirk and I happened to visit last week, which we decided was excellent timing on our part, as we hadn't visited the campus in quite some time and only happened to learn of her visit when we stopped to purchase some books at the bookstore!)

I first came to know Lauren Winner as most people did: about five years ago, with the release of her first book, the spiritual memoir Girl Meets God. I love this book for so many reasons, some of which include her honesty, her love for books and learning, her facile use of language, her transparency about her foibles as a young twentysomething, her deep exploration of spiritual territory, and, of course, how she translates a greater fullness to our faith through the medium of our Jewish heritage. I particularly love that this integration is delivered through the story of her own personal journey into Judaism, out of Judaism into Jesus, and her consequent struggle to understand Christianity in light of the Jewish faith.

It had been some time since I'd read Real Sex, having skimmed the entire book while taking a leisurely afternoon at the local Barnes & Noble Cafe back home a couple years ago, so I looked forward to a refresher talk on her perspective about sex, chastity, and our relationship to our bodies within Christianity.

More than that, though, I just looked forward to hearing her speak -- seeing how her personality on the page translates into real life, given the ideas you tend to gather about a person as you hear them share about themselves inside a book.

To the extent that you can gain real glimpses of a person through a one-hour lecture and a book signing, I will say that Lauren Winner appears to be one of the most articulate, thoughtful, intelligent, studied, feisty, yet down-to-earth 31-year-olds I have ever met. My respect for her increased by the minute as she shared with great candor about how she came to write the book and with even greater candor about what she would do differently if she could write the book all over again. I was particularly moved by her genuine grief that the book does not include any discussion about sexual violence, which she shared was a complete and grievous oversight. I also loved hearing her riff extensively on the many subjects that were raised as she fielded questions from the audience.

I could have listened to her talk all day long.

All of this would have been thrilling enough, but then I got to meet her. I confess I was nervous. Wouldn't you be nervous, too, if you got a few minutes of face-time with an author who has influenced you tremendously and with whom you feel a one-sided kinship when you read their books? I hemmed and hawed in my head about what to say. Should I say her book changed my life? Should I confess that I wrote and mailed her a letter back when I finished Girl Meets God for the first time? Should I dare ask to take a picture? Should I just let her sign the book and move on?

Thankfully, I was fifth in line, so I got to watch what other people did and then how she responded. Yes, she was gracious about taking pictures. Yes, she would listen to what individuals wanted to share. Yes, she would respond to new questions, and even extensively, settling back into her seat and gesticulating with her hands as she gained momentum in thinking about a new idea. She was adorable.

So, I braved it all. I told her that Girl Meets God changed my world, that along with Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott it was the first book to help me settle more into my own skin as a writer sharing about my spiritual journey. I told her about that letter I had written many years ago, how I had sent it care of her publisher without knowing if they would even forward it on to her, and how I had been compelled to write it because her book had raised so many thoughts and feelings in me about questions I'd already been asking myself about pursuing an academic path. This last part caught her interest, so we talked for a few moments about it.

And then to top it off, when she agreed to take a picture, she noticed my purse. It's a small vinyl magazine bag with classic leather books printed all over it. I get so many comments about this purse, and people are amazed when I tell them Kirk found it for me at Borders for something like ten bucks. But a comment on this purse from Lauren Winner? Nothing quite like it.

Here's Lauren, listening to me regale her with stories about my life. As you can see, she is a most gracious and present listener.

This is me, just plain happy to be sharing a moment with the amazing Lauren Winner.

Sparkly Lip Gloss Sure Helps

I found two lip gloss sticks in an old purse I haven't used for a while. Both of them are sparkly and shiny, and one of them even has a yummy smell and faint yummy taste! The other one has a thicker consistency and is great for dressing up the oh-so-serious lipstick . . . perfect for making you feel like a doll even when you're all grown up. What's even better is that I think I scored one of these lip glosses in an Estee Lauder free gift package and the other one for a buck at Target. I think I'll be trolling soon for more $1 lip glosses at Target.

The other thing that helps bring on the girl these days are cozy red sweaters. It's been cool like fall here finally, so out came my thick, knitted red cardigan from the Loft that I haven't worn since last winter. With the bulky red cardigan paired with my tan khakis and some sparkly gloss, today I feel wrapped in cozy, girlie love.