My lil' sistah

Ain't they cute? This is my sister Beth, her husband Brian, and their daughter Ava. I took this pic in my parents' backyard on my birthday.

My birthday supper was phenomenal. Of course, we had my traditional carrot cake (which was exceptionally moist and tasty this year, and I have no idea where my mom bought it, but I've been meaning to ask her because it might just have been the best-tasting carrot cake I have ever had), but we also had Thai takeout that blew my mind (and pegged my heat-o-meter... doggonit, that stuff was hot and spicy and yummy).

All in all, it was a very happy birthday weekend. On Saturday, my bestest co-worker girlfriends Andrea and Leslie took me out for a birthday lunch and then we went to Leslie's for a while for some beer and gossip and to meet her new Basset pup Nellie (who is just the sweetest, floppiest, lovey-est thing ever). I work with some of the awesomest folks in the whole wide world.

On a more serious note, I have a very dear friend who lives a long way away and who is battling some major health issues right now. I'd give my right arm to be able to be there and help run errands and clean house, and it's killing me to know that I can't... but I'd appreciate it if you'd pray anyway. For privacy reasons, I can't talk about it any more than that, but it's really important to me.

Time... time... time...

Here's Isaac with his best friend Nathaniel (my BFF's youngest). On the left, March 16th, 2010. On the right, August 11, 2005.

[sigh]

All was right with the world for just a few minutes this evening

Because I got to hug my BFF:



She and the Boys were here visiting family and spared a moment out of all the wandering-the-vast-state-of-Texas to stop at a restaurant in Denton and meet us for supper:



Of course, it's never quite enough. But it'll have to do... for now.

Got any...

Resolutions?

Mine:

1) Laugh about something every day.
2) Every day, tell someone that I love them -- and mean it.
3) Cook something new at least once a month (thanks, Anata, for the subscription to Cook's Illustrated -- that will figure heavily in this resolution, and you rawk for doing that!).
4) Get out of debt. And stay out.

How about you?

A mystery solved?

A few days back, my husband brought this little iron doohickey in from the front porch. "What is this?" he asked me.

"I dunno. Maybe one of my students thought it was funny and left it for me. They all know how much I despise skwerls."

I have kept it by the computer in hopes I'd eventually find out whodunit. Looks like maybe my benefactor has finally broken her silence in my comments section. :) Umm, thanks... I think. The two skwerls look just exactly like the ones in that horrid insurance commercial. You know the one, where they're high-fiving each other because they just sent a car careening off into the ditch. Rotten little tree rats.

Hehehe!!

Merriest of Christmases to you all!

This is a Christmas card I made for a couple of new friends who I love with all my heart and who I hope to see again someday soon. T&E, y'all rawk!

I pray that each of you is able to shake off despair and find the joy and beauty that is all around you. There may be much to be discouraged about, but there is so much more to rejoice in... for we have a Savior, born to us this day in the City of David... a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

This is NOT at my house in Texas

This is at my BFF's house in West Des Moines, Iowa, where they just got - what? - fifteen or so inches of snow. Can somebody 'splain to me why she still has to live there? Just looking at this makes me feel miserable.

I'd head for Tahiti, but I hear they're having environmental troubles in Micronesia.

Smile and the world smiles with you? You bet.

Who fills you up?

If any of the people I encounter on a daily basis -- whether it's strangers, friends or family -- are less than welcoming to me or do anything that I perceive as rude, whether I'm correct with that perception or not, it impacts the level of love I am able to show them.
...
What I've learned from all this is that having the desire to show Christ-like love to the world around you isn't enough; to actually do it, you must first stop needing the world to give you something -- anything -- first. I don't think there's anything wrong with appreciating the good feelings that come with pleasant social interactions, or even kindly letting people know when they have done something hurtful, but it's when we ("we" meaning "I") start deriving our strength from other people that it becomes a problem.

This idea is actually something I concluded a few years back as well. I tended to withdraw and reject others based upon what I presumed was a rejection of me. What I began to realize was that, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, those people were just experiencing their own troubles and weren't rejecting me at all. In fact, I figured very little in their world. Even people who I spent a lot of time with, these people also had lives and issues and things they were feeling and dealing with -- things that I had absolutely nothing at all to do with, nor was I even aware of them.

What I realized was that they were also basing their "love" on what they were receiving from ME... and that if I adopted the old bromide of "bring a smiling visage to the glass," I would be further along in developing positive relationships with others. If I smiled and said complimentary things AND MEAN THEM, even to people who might be behaving rudely, it might just turn their day around and cause them to feel better about themselves. This, in turn, would make my own life more bearable.

It works. If I walk into the school office and say, "Hey gorgeous!" to the secretary, she smiles and says something self-deprecatory, but down deep it matters to her. And it makes a difference. People who feel appreciated can then give appreciation... kind-of like back when I read The Five Love Languages and the book talked about "filling up a person's love tank," meaning that if someone felt truly loved, they could then effectively GIVE love back.

I made up my mind that even though I didn't always "feel" loved, I knew that I was, and that I wanted others around me to know that they were, too.

One reason this is so easy for me, though, is that I am a classic attention-deficit personality, and I can't remember if you were rude to me earlier. I couldn't hold a grudge if I tried, because in about thirty seconds I will forget what you said or did. Hey, having ADD isn't all bad, let me tell you.

Look! A skwerl!

A spiffy lil' gift

A friend of mine sent me a nifty little thang this week: a "flowering tea" pot:

Looks like an ordinary glass teapot, right?


But what is that little funky ball thing down in it?



Whoa... that's just weird:



Hey! I really can boil water:



You boil the water, then let it sit for five minutes to cool a wee bit, then you pour it into the teapot:



Wow... what's it doing? Blooming?



Well, yeah, kind-of:



See, that ball thingy is tea leaves surrounding some lovely flowers, and in hot water it "blooms" into a funky flower:


It also comes with that awesome glass insert with thin slits in the bottom which you use as an infuser for loose teas (which I use pretty much exclusively these days). Those slits in the glass are miraculous in and of themselves and probably make up the bulk of the cost of this item -- do you know how hard it is to make thin little cuts in glass that don't make the vessel crack in two? I'm sure there's some great machine that does it up snip-snap without issue, but still! As someone who has worked with cutting glass, I'm fascinated by those little slits. Hey, I guess I'm easily entertained.

Anyhoo -- what a nice gift! I will use it daily to make my pot o'tea now, replacing the old plastic thing that's tea-stained and gross-looking that I've been using.

UPDATE: By the way, the tea pictured in that photo? It just might be the nicest jasmine tea I have EVER drunk, and I've had lots and lots of jasmine tea. It's perfect... not bitter... everything that truly excellent jasmine green tea should be. From now on, all other jasmine teas will be measured by this batch, because it's just wonderful. WONDERFUL. Good jasmine tea is akin to a spiritual experience for me, anyway. This might be nirvana.

Cute little boys

This is one of my very favorite pictures of Isaac, with his pal Nathaniel in Iowa. I think they were about four years old here, on the playground at the elementary school where we had church services. The photo has been on the fridge this whole time, so it's a little messy-looking now, which is why I went ahead and scanned it to make sure I had it in a more permanent form.

Late-night partying

One fish...





Two fish...





Red fish...





Blue fish...

But no blenders tonight. We had to drive, you know.

The PurpleFishGuts family was on their way back to Iowa from visiting family in New Mexico, and we met them in Oklahoma City for a nice little meal and a swim in the hotel pool.

I miss them so much.

It's always a good day when...

...when I get to hang out with my BFF.



She's down in this neck o' the woods visiting family, and we took the opportunity to meet in the middle at a McD's for some face time. We're already plotting another girl-vacation since I absolutely HAVE to use up the rest of my airline miles by the end of the summer. We'll probably go back to see stuff we didn't get to do the first time around in the Great Sweltering Swamp-Confluence on the Potomac. I'm hoping to catch a little more local history type stuff.

It's HOT today. Even for me. The girls and I are going to head down to my mom's, since they're off on a gulf fishing trip with my son. It seems a pity to waste that lovely air-conditioned environment down there, as well as the free wi-fi. tee hee

A nice diversion for a Saturday

My pal Joy, who lives in Minnesota, was traveling to Texas for a reunion with some of her college buddies, but she also wanted to see me (yay!), so I got to pick her up at the airport and spend the afternoon with her. I needed to get something nice to wear to tomorrow's baccalaureate service, so we went shopping. I had never been to the Stonebriar Center Mall over in Frisco and wanted to see what the fuss was -- wow, it's nice!

We ate lunch at a little Japanese place and I had a lovely plate of sashimi... very delicate-tasting. I also had some hibachi scallops, which were perfectly done and not the least bit rubbery.



I realize that Texas RoadHouse is a national chain these days, but we wanted to make her husband jealous, so we stopped there and I set up the little gorillapod with the camera on the hood of my van.

Yay! I made it!

I chose to drive my own vehicle down to Arlington instead of riding on the school bus with the senior class, since there was a very good possibility that I would need to leave and come home if my, er, condition warranted. I had been up numerous times during the night, and at three a.m. I had just given up and I went upstairs to sit in the bathtub again for a while. So it didn't look promising.

I was never really what I would call "comfortable," but until about five p.m. I was in a bearable state most of the time. Instead of drifting among all the different groups of students during the day, however, like last year, I spent the day with the other three teachers that went along as chaperones. They're my three best friends from work, so it was a natural thing, and the company was extremely pleasant all day long. And they were all just fine with riding the "big" rides like the Titan and the Batman (my favorite, the rollercoaster that dangles you from above rather than seating you). I would much rather ride the big rides than waste time on the dinky yuck rides that just spin you around and make you sick to your stomach. Plus, you have lots more to brag about when you're done.

At the very end of the day, while waiting around for all the groups to converge again, I became unbearably uncomfortable and excused myself to my vehicle to wait alone. I wanted to stay with them because they were going to be stopping for supper and I didn't want to miss it.

I had a wonderful day despite my physical discomfort, and I'm really glad I didn't decide to stay home.

The Best Weekend EVAR

I went somewhere absolutely awesome and cool this past weekend.



You just WISH you were me.



That gorgeous babe sitting on the stone wall next to me? That's only my bestest friend in the whole wide world. My bestest friend who I almost never get to see in person anymore because we live hundreds of miles apart.





Still thinking about where my bestest friend and I met up? Just look UP.






No, I mean go OUTSIDE and look up. Way, way UP.






Yep, you got it now, I'll bet. We went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC.

Believe me, if you've never seen DC at cherry-blossom time, you are missing out. The pink-white trees are phenomenal... and the numbers of people are astronomical... which drove us inside to my favorite building on the mall, the National Gallery of Art... where I once again got to see my favorite marble sculpture EVAR:



That's Carpeaux' "Girl With a Shell." I want to take Shelly-Girl home with me. If she ever turns up missing, it might be a good idea to check my living room.

There's also this wonderful painting by Mary Cassatt:



"Little Girl in a Blue Armchair"... isn't she just deliciously bored?

But WE weren't bored. Oh no, sirree. Not even once.

Okay, there was this once, but it was because we decided to go to a Palm Sunday church service and picked the wrong church -- that place was D-E-A-D -- but it was okay because it only lasted a little while and then we got to leave and go eat lunch.



Eat!



O frabjous day, callooh, callay, did we ever EAT. We ate some fantabulously scrumptious things like Burmese beef in coconut cream gravy, Chinese pork dumplings, scallops with roasted garlic, and Russian cabbage rolls. That's just a small sampling, believe me. I love food and so does my bestest friend. Food, glorious food! And the DC area is a super-fantastic place to sample many, many cuisines, even on a budget.

We also visited the National Cathedral, a place I'd never had the opportunity to see:





What a spectacular place:





A choir was rehearsing Bach with a period-accurate orchestra while we toured the interior, and the sound was heavenly.



We also visited Arlington National Cemetery and saw the Eternal Flame on JFK's gravesite:





Arlington is a beautiful, somber place.





We got to watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns:











I can't even begin to tell you just how great this was. I *so* needed to spend time with her, and we both desperately needed to get away like this. It was an unforgettable trip, and my companion was infinitely compatible. We shared breathless laughter, awesome wonder, and a couple of tears as well. Friends like her just don't come along very often; I pity people who never find one.




I love you, Cindy!!! Thank you for coming with me!!

P.S.: Thanks, JoeMama, for picking up the kids at school and taking them for part of the time, and thanks to hubby Rick for nursing vomiting children Sunday and Monday (yuggh -- I confess I'm not sorry to have missed THAT).

Wow... that's really, really nice

Our church does the Angel Food Ministry each month, and today was the distribution day. I was, as I wrote previously, out of pocket and not aware of the goings-on, but apparently they called Rick to tell him that we had a couple of boxes of food waiting for us. Some good, kind, anonymous soul provided us with lots of frozen meat and vegetables.

The Lord is really good, and He always knows when we need stuff.

It's nice to have friends...

...nutty friends who send you skwerl books:




The illustrations in this book are high-larious!! "Old Man Fookwire was so old that when he sneezed, dust came out." Heh!!



And did you know that skwerls were good at math?



One of my favorite pages in the entire book depicts the skwerls staying up all night, drinking cherry coke and eating salt & vinegar potato chips and devising a plan to get to the bird feeders:


GUFFAW!! Thank you, Shel! [snickersnicker]

Fortune Cookies feature is returning

I'm going to start having a daily Fortune Cookie again, like I used to do a year or two ago.




I LOL'd when we got this one at the Chinese buffet in Denton. We were with BlueFish and RedFish and the IttyBittyFishes, and RedFish opened up the cookie that had this one in it.

She showed it to me. I said, "Oh, that's awesome! Finally, someone encouraging me to treat myself once in a while!"

She laughed, and said that she had taken it in a completely different way. "My first thought was -- only three times a week?!?"

Heh. There's a REASON I love that girl so much.

A Visit From The PurpleFishGuts Family!!

We got to visit with BlueFish and RedFish twice this week; once on their way down to the family wedding, and once on their way back. There are definite advantages to living right on Interstate 35!!

It was absolutely delightful to spend time with them. I grieved hard to see them go, too... I tried to make it as difficult as possible to leave, though. I made eggs & bacon & toast for breakfast and let them watch all the HGTV they wanted to.

In the end, though, they did head back north. Red said it was just as well that it had gotten cold again this morning, because if it had been as warm as it was yesterday (80 degrees! Notice the girls' shorts in the picture above!), it would've been MUCH harder to leave. I think, though, that their allergies were giving them severe fits. Probably didn't help that we have a dog and a cat and an ancient house full of who-knows-what!

Blue informed me that I'm "in the band" though -- he and another guy I know are part of a band, and they don't have a keyboard player. Unfortunately I had to remind him that the commute would be prohibitive, but he didn't seem to be bothered by that minor detail. "Just give us a little lead time when you're on your way up here and we'll set up a gig or a jam session."

[sigh]

I miss playing. I had gotten so spoiled, living in Des Moines and having so many musical connections.

Actually, I just miss having so many CONNECTIONS, musical or not. It was deeply satisfying to hug Red & Blue again and listen to their kids and my kids squealing and playing throughout the house.

From me to you

My hope for 2009 is that you might experience true peace... in your heart, in your family, among your friends, and even in our society... and that you will discover the source of this true peace, that it cannot be bought or conjured up or even fought for.

And I give you a humble smile, from a pale freckled middle-aged girl, because even in the midst of chaotic and often unpleasant family trials, I *can* smile.



I can smile because I have a supernatural peace in my heart.

How do I know it's supernatural?

Because it doesn't come from the approval of those I love (that's not always reliable), from my innate strength of character (ain't got it, never have!), or from material abundance (pshyeah, right).

I lay down and slept,
yet I woke up in safety,
for the LORD was watching over me.
I am not afraid of ten thousand enemies
who surround me on every side.
Psalm 3:5-6

Peace be with you... and you... and you... and you over there, too. Peace, and a nice nap from time to time. Thank you so much for your friendship and love and support.