Oct. 30th, in NC

welcome to the end of october in north carolina! the high today is 76, with a high tomorrow (for halloween trick or treating) a balmy 71! the sun is shining, and The Girls are playing outside in their bare feet. tomorrow night, "cleopatra" will have bare shoulders, and the "princess" will be able to twirl (in whatever dress i cobble together) and show off her finery... this is still very novel to me! i am used to dressing them up in variations of the princess/ballerina theme, only to cover the whole get up with snow pants, boots, coat, scarf, mittens and sometimes a toque (look it up), leaving only the glittering, overly made up faces of my little candy-hungry darlings exposed. in our previous experience, the question "what are you supposed to be?" was genuine...no one could tell underneath snowsuits and the rest of the winter defenses. halloween candy was never restricted by having visited all the houses, or having it get too late. it was determined by how much cold we could stand. one particularily cold year, we were done after about 6 houses. needless to say, this is infinately preferrable!

so, tomorrow night, i am going to wear my wedding dress. instant costume! it's not like i'm saving it for anything special, really. it's been in my closet in a clear plastic drycleaning bag for 12 years. not even a zip up one...but the kind you get men's shirts back in. i usually dress up as a man, it amuses people,

but this year, i am going to get my "pretty" on, dangit! although i'm pretty sure i lost my veil... maybe i will wear a princess tiara, too!

the list....

here's a little something i saw at the mall that intrigued me... i wouldn't be opposed to it for the upcoming festivities! Click Here!

do you believe?

it is sunday morning - the sun is shining and i am about to hop in the shower for church. but i don't really want to. there already is curtis - who is really, really sick, leading worship and being brave. and there's nothing i can do to help him. and i have and am praying that it will 'break', but so far nothing. last night he slept in the guestroom, and he left before i got up, and i am worried to see what state he is in. how's that for lack of faith? i guess you could say, in the words of my friend lu, 'i'm having trouble scraping up a mustard seed'. sigh. poor boy. maybe i'll get there and it will be a miracle. do you believe?

the plague

it is friday - i roll out of bed to be greeted with the words, 'i am really, really sure i have strep throat' from my husband. we are supposed to be having dinner tonight...i made a pie! so he is going to the "minute clinic" at cvs this morning. sigh. i really hope he just has a horrible sore throat. isn't that horrible of me?

but on the plus-side, he came home from rehersal last night with these:



not only did he bring me flowers, but they are my favorite kind! starburst lillies! hooray, curtis! you have to know that i can count on my fingers the number of times in 12 years of marriage that he's brought home flowers... so this is a big deal! he recently wrote out a 'life list', and among the items were 'become a jogger' and 'become a master gifter of my wife'. now, in the last 3 weeks, he's bought new shoes, found running buddies, and been out even alone on cold mornings to run. but gifts? nada. i was beginning to feel forgotten... but look! flowers! and they were even wrapped with ribbon and bright tissue paper...so pretty! he definately gets a cosmic gold star for that!

happy friday!
(only 31 sleeps til my birthday!)

reflections on blogging

blogging is weird.

the blogger traipses down a gossamer line between private and public, and it is, at times, unsettling. i opened my profile recently to look at it, since it's been months since i started this, and i didn't even remember what i put in it. and over in the left corner is a tiny line of text that says, "profile views - 129". ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE. there are really only 8 or 9 people who ever leave me comments, but 129 people have looked at my profile. what the heck!? i was going to add some stuff, feeling pretty confident that i was isolated among friends i know and love here in the "blogosphere", only to find that i am not! and so, i definately did not add new stuff to my profile. if i am going to err, i'd rather err on the private sign of the gossamer line!

oh, and i finally figured out how to fix the links in the sidebar so they actually connect to stuff! victory! click them! :) only 34 sleeps til my birthday! (unless you are reading this wednesday morning, then there's only 33!)

in addition

ooo - i was at target and saw this! i am officially adding it to my birthday list...in red! it is soooooo soft! and fuzzy! and warm! and red! it will look FAB in my living room!

hop to, people! :)

hooray, me!

the countdown is on!! only THIRTY FIVE MORE SLEEPS til my birthday! hooray! although, this is the year i will be "in my thirties", as opposed to "thirty". but i also have 35 sleeps to come to grips with that! last year we had a killer party...i don't know what i'm going to do to celebrate this year. i definately couldn't outdo myself... for my birthday, not that anyone who generally buys me presents reads this blog (except perhaps sabrina, who doesn't usually require suggestions! and now that i think of it, it's rather odd that people who love me enough to remember my occasions and buy me gifts, don't really care enough to check in and read my blog for all the 1.63 mintues it requires. not even curtis. and they all know it's here, waiting for them. huh.), here is the beginning of my birthday list!

1. a jill scott cd
2. gift certificates for any lovely spa service
3. the new christina aguilara 2 disc set (don't judge me!)
4. shoes...anything fierce (and black) in an 8 1/2
5. a dell notebook computer...if wishes were horses, beggars would ride...
6. healthy hoof - a 3$ nail cream available at trade secrets/sally's beauty supply

i will add more things as i think of them...remember...only 35 sleeps! start planning now!

who wants to be rich?

don't get me wrong - i love my life. i love my dsl & my dvr & my suv. i love my 17 lipsticks and 22 pairs of shoes. i love my lunches out and my movies in. i love the giving and recieving of all manner of christmas, birthday & "just because" presents.

but ...

i saw the ad for 'the rich list'. have you seen this ad? "we don't stop at a million...this is life changing money". and i thought to myself that indeed it was life changing money. so why isn't it being used to change lives rather than just bump someone up a tax bracket or two? why, if there is all that money to give away on the merit of whether or not someone is lucky enough to choose door number 3, or answer the triva correctly, is that money not going to actually help someone? even if all you care about is improving the lives of american's, how many children could have school supplies or health care or safer neighborhoods with that money? how many single mom's could get job training? how mnay homeless people could be fed? or give the 'life changing money' to aids orphans in africa. to refugees from the genocide in darfur or somalia. build deep water wells for villages in ethiopia. educate girls in china. there are organizations and people who want nothing more than to give us the opportunity to do those things and more, but we 'want to be rich'. i felt sick when i saw that ad. how dare we treat the world and it's people so callously?

as for me, i don't want to be rich - not anymore. i want to take what modest resources i have and change someone's life. cause it doesn't take more than a million to be 'life changing money'.

%$#%^$#%^!

i am having one of those evenings. you know - when you really, REALLY want to put your fist through the wall and curse at your children and smash things and tell everyone that you can't take care of every damn thing yourself and would it kill them to stop talking to you all at once expecting you to miraculously be able to keep a cool head, find things, answer questions and admire school work all while serving dinner and answering the phone. i am this close...

wish you were here

ahhhh, monday. i know the rest of you glare at monday on sunday night, pretending it doesn't exist - or angrily curse it under your breath when you have to leave early to get to bed so when the alarm goes off you've had more than 2 hours of sleep. well, that's how i feel on saturday... but monday eve is glorious for me! monday brings, finally, a day of rest to our home. the girls go to school, and the day moves in a slow motion pace. i go back to bed, or watch tv i've dvr'd while i drink my coffee, i sit for long periods staring into space petting the cat, i have a leisurely lunch with my husband, i usually indulge in good book and a hot bath, and generally engage what has become after 12 years of monday's off, my sabbath. there may be occasional grocery getting, but even that is laid back...i stroll the aisles, i don't march to conquor them. i read the propaganda of the various makeup companies, i read recipes on the backs of soup cans. groceries are secondary to a lovely trip out... alone. that's one of the best things. because the rest of the world 'hits the ground running' (or crawling) on monday, there is no pressure to fill the day with "people i ought to ..." no one is free. it's just me (and sometimes curtis - although he tends to spend a good bit of mondays fishing or recording...his own version of the sabbath). it'a quite lovely, and i really don't mean to rub it in, i am just revelling here for a moment. i rarely remember to soak it in, and be thankful for it. but right now, i am. very thankful. i feel a great "ahhhhhh" in myself, as my stress slowly deflates and "monday" kicks in. lovely.

TGIF

happy friday!!

brrr! it got cold here in sunny north carolina last night! for the fisrt time in many moons, my backyard is silent this morning...no birds on the feeder, no squirrels leaping around. they must all be curled in little balls somewhere, trying to preserve body heat! but the fun of all of that is.... hello, fun winter clothes! when you live in such a warm climate most of the time, the chance to pull out that cute sweater for the first time in a year, it's lovely! i personally have a new black one...mmm... i love to wear it! it's that cozy-fireplace-sweater-and-hot-chocolate feeling you get from snuggling up in your clothes, pulling the sleeves over your fingers and the neck up to under your nose. ok, ok...it may not be that cold today, but it's coming!

this week i shaved off all my hair - i had been trying to grow it out. while you may see this as a failure, i got considerably farther than i have in the last 6 years, so i think it's a success! and i was reminded again why i never get too far...i am not a long hair girl. i am a short hair, sassy girl! :)

have a mah-vellous weekend!

one more reason

this is why i love where we live! you may think i am being sarcastic, but i promise you i am not!! meg and i each found one of these in the backyard yesterday!





the one meg found, the smaller of the two, was still pliable and tacky, as though the snake had just wrigglged out of it! they are really quite remarkable - intact from the tip of the tail to the rim of the mouth...how is that even possible? every scale accounted for, even the eyes are a glossy sheath of skin. wow.

i sent pictures to Vincent - my naturalist brother - and found out:

"They're both from the same species of snake -- the black rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta obsoleta), a subspecies of the common rat snake . It's a male and a female. The female is the longer, larger one, and her man is the shorter one. These two are making sure that there are no mice in your house. They are incredibly efficient hunters. And from the looks of things, they're probably both full grown... probably 5 or 6 years old. They're called black rat snakes, but they're rarely black -- they're usually a grey/yellow mottled colour. The reason that they live at your house is because:

You have bird feeders... birds are messy eaters... birds fling seed all over the place... mice come at night because there is free food (bird seed) laying all over the ground... the snakes follow the mice that follow the bird seed... and therefore you have snakes!

Rat snakes belong to the family Colubridae which are a family of snakes that kill their prey by constriction and crushing their prey. If you were a vole, you and your family should be terrified. As it stands, black rat snakes are totally harmless, totally neat-o, and they're diurnal (awake during the day), so you should be able to see them out and about on warm days. They're generally docile and probably won't bite if handled, and if they do bite, they have no venom. "

he is a handy brother to have around!

my pogo stick

hello out there! after painting sabrina's great room 2 lovely shades of green - don't worry, purple will be represented in the hall! - i came home to 3 unique things.

1. my heels hurt. not my feet, my heels. possibly from using them to balance on the steps of the ladder?

2. a dead female goldfinch directly under my kitchen picture window. so sad. maybe i shouldn't have windexed it yesterday.

3. a silver snake slithering (good alliteration!) across meg's foot while she stood in the grass of the backyard! not a small one, either. (the snake, not the foot or yard.)

busy bee

i will be spending the first half of this week painting my friend sabrina's house - pretty much the whole lower floor! i love to paint, and i love sabrina, so it's not a big deal, but it does mean that i probably won't be posting...when i get home, i will definately be resting! :)

i'll talk to you later - wednesday?

the doctor is in

after many months of talking about it, i finally got my sheep tattoo yesterday! hooray! and a certain doctor (who shall remain nameless) helped me out with a numbing patch so that it wouldn't hurt so much! hooray! i know, i know... you all think i'm a wus.. .well, surprise surprise! of course i'm a wus! :) so thank you, nameless doctor!

it is a beautiful rainy day here in durham, and my husband is taking a much needed personal day to recover some of his altitude...so he is going fishing in the rain. good for him! i hope he catches many fish, and does not catch pneumonia!

happy friday!

the sunny side of the street

hello out there! for the first time in many, many days, i woke up to inner sunshine this morning. i feel like there's been a shift in my inner landscape, and it's a good one. i have been trying to walk out of darkness for a long... long... long time, and maybe this is the first day in the clear blue of the sky! oh, God, may it be so!

i hope your inner landscapes have sun in them today, too!

final draft

many thanks to my baby brother, who emailed me all the sheep pictures he and i had looked at months ago in a search for the perfect sheep tattoo! they caused me to call curtis back to the 'drawing board' (or in his case, macromedia fireworks) and finesse my sheep until it was a little less dog-like. so, for the second time in as many days, how do you like my sheep?

bees!!

ok - this shouldn't make me happy... but it does. there are a group of 4 young, burly type guys out surveying behind our house. they do this every fall, and every fall i hate it. i feel infringed upon. this morning, as i have been drinking my coffee, i've noticed something...those 4 big boys are running away from what i can only assume is a hive of bees! i also assume that these are the bees that drained my hummingbird feeder repeatedly this month, so they are strong and mighty from all the sugar! these foolish boys have cut down a small sapling and are waving it at the bees from, oh, maybe 6 feet away? keep going! that will help, surely! oh! there they go! run, boys, run! i wish they would take the bees as a sign from God and leave the whole thing alone. go away! i realize they are not here to bother me (the boys, not the bees), but they carry machetes! and they are scruffy! and they are hanging around, basically, my backyard. it offends my girlish instincts for self-protection. needless to say, i am rooting for the bees this morning.

on a different note, 'it's not like painting a wall'. these are the wise words of advice from my husband, after i came home from a night of ministry feeling somewhat unsure. he reminded me that it's not a concrete effort. oh, how i wish it were! :) i did not see the wall change it's color last night, but God speaks even when i do not hear it. and it's about his satisfaction, not mine. so... c'est la vie. i will leave it to God.



on yet another different note - meet sparkles, my sheep. this is the tattoo curtis designed for me, and i am going on thursday to get it! hooray! those of you who know me well will know what sparkles is for... those of you who don't, well, you can just appreciate the cuteness of the sheep!