WAY better than my new shoes!!

do you ever get frustrated by the fine print associated with good causes? the sign says, "proceeds go to ...." but the fine print at the bottom of the poster says, ".1% of sales..." or some other ridiculously small donation. it makes me crazy.

but this i love!

tom shoes - a shoe company that gives away a pair of shoes for each pair you buy! one for one, nothing in the fine print! last year they gave 10,000 pairs to children in argentina, and this year they are taking an estimated 40,000 pairs to africa, and plans for a shoe drop for needy kids in the US in 2008!

i think i'll buy toms for christmas presents this year... toms and goats!

just one more reason of thousands why i love my mom.

i love that don miller...

"the very scary thing about religion, to me, is that people actually believe God is who they think he is."

he's right, you know? in many ways we form our own image of God from our experiences, politics and how we were raised, and you end up with people truly believing God wants them to kill abortion doctors, or make the homosexual an outcast, or doesn't care if they cheat on their spouse or their taxes. we turn God into a religious formula of our own design, making him in our image, rather than letting ourselves be made into his image. we think we've got God all figured out... but donald miller has something to say about that, too.

"...one of the things you notice about Jesus (is) that he's always going around saying you have heard it said such and such, but i tell you some other thing. if you happened to be a person who thought they knew everything about God, Jesus would have been completely annoying."

night air makes me wax philosophical

i was sitting outside on the porch last night in the dark, looking up through the sprawling leaves of the trees to the stars, drinking in the evening. until i moved here, i didn't know that air really could be "soft" - i'd read it in books, but figured it was poetry, not fact. but the air was so soft last night ... velvety on my skin and smooth somehow. there was no traffic, only crickets and the occasional rustling in the bushes of some small creature waking up. it was really beautiful - and rather than make me feel my 'smallness' in the scope of creation, it made me see that i am part of the largeness of life...made for a reason by the same hand that made the stars and critters that rustle; not a tiny cog in a big wheel, but my own piece of a glorious puzzle. like davy crowder says, "you make everything glorious - what does that make me?"

a conversation with meg...

(meg) "... but why not????"

(me) "because i am the most horrible mother in the world."

(meg) "i am going to go to the mom store and get a new one."

(me) "good idea. what is she like?"

(meg) "she looks like you, and she is like you."

(me) "oh - so basically you're just going to get me for a mom?"

(meg) "yeah - all the other moms are too dull."

(really. that's what she said. my finest moment.)

i'm a grown up now - part II

i recently had a revelation that made me feel, for the first time, like i may actually be a grown up. it was definitely a shock to my system! it was, perhaps, not what you would expect - not how old my kids are, or that i am a homeowner, or that i have grey hair (just a few, but that's enough. trust me.) rather, it was that for the most part my friends have real, grown up jobs. they are psychiatrists & anesthesiologists, microbiologists & vaccine developers, lawyers & teachers! we all used to be kids playing at "grown up" - i knew a bunch of students & wanna be musicians & young moms who read college brochures. but not anymore. i realize that none of them really feel like grown ups, themselves - and i have included photographic evidence of that here for your viewing pleasure! :)

it was just weird - and vaguely alarming - to realize my generation has actually become, or at least is becoming, the generation that is making the world go round.

what a grownup thing to do!

we are closing on our morgage refinance this morning - what a grown up thing to do! this has been fraught with hassles, largely due to our status as visa holding non-citizens, but our morgage broker - (yay, erika from corporate investors morgage!) - worked the system for us like crazy. and technically, to be fair, curtis did all the work on this one...i just have to sign the dotted line. it's kinda nice, actually...