that September in the rain

It’s almost my birthday.

The night before I turned eighteen, I lay on the bathroom floor listening to the first fifteen seconds of “I Saw Her Standing There” by the Beatles over and over again.

Well she was just seventeen, if you know what I mean….

Well she was just seventeen, if you know what I mean….

Well she was….

I did not want to turn eighteen. The idea of being legally able to sign my own important documents without my parents was pretty terrifying to me. Next you were going to tell me that I could call and set up my own dentist appointments. WHAT? Let’s not get crazy.

Now I’m getting ready to turn twenty-four. Isn’t that the age that Paul McCartney wrote “When I’m Sixty-Four”? My future ahead is so bright, it’s blinding.

To celebrate my birthday, I plan to bake these vanilla chai cupcakes. Then I plan to eat them. My plans do not extend further than that, except maybe a trip to Barnes & Noble, because, most of the time, if you want to bring me to pure delight, take me to Barnes & Noble, and let me just smell the books at my own leisure. When you have come to please me in this way, you have secured a place in my heart forever.

I'm at Panera Bread right now, and there is a woman sitting at the table beside me with another woman. I tuned into their conversation just in time for her to say that, when given lemons, “It’s an old adage: You can make lemon cookies, lemon bars, lemon meringue pie, lemon muffins….”

Wow, usually people just make lemonade. Obviously this woman has more culinary knowledge than the rest of the world.

Also, happy football season.

2 more weeks till Heather's birthday.

hail to thee, Mayberry

I remember being a little girl and walking into the living room while my brothers were watching football. I asked them, "Who are the bad guys?" Translation: Which team are we wanting to win? My brothers less-than-patiently (supposedly I asked this question more than once) told me that "there are no bad guys." That's just how my little mind, fed on Disney movies, interpreted things. Good guys, bad guys. Aladdin, Jafar. We want the good guys to win, to ride away on a magic carpet with a woman wearing a very fluttery pant-suit made of sheer Arabian fabric. Just tell me who the good guys are so I can appropriately pray for them to succeed. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it! Amen and amen.

Since then I've learned a tad bit more about football (though there are still bad guys...at least, that's how my mind, still fed on Disney movies, interprets things). I also pretend to know more than I do. I'll teach you a good strategy: The less you say, the more it appears you know. Maybe even keep a notepad near you during the game, so when you have comments to make, you can jot them down and read them over later to yourself, and either agree or disagree with them. That way it seems like you're having a conversation with somebody, but it's really just yourself. And that way nobody else really has to know that you still don't really understand the differences in neutral zone infraction, encroachment, and off-sides, but you like the first one the best because it sounds more technical and complicated.

"Ohhhh neutral zone infraction! That's because his neutral zone has been infracted. Don't infract his neutral zone, buddy!" (These are the kinds of things you will write in your notepad.)

I still love football, for all I do understand. And for the first time, I got to be in the state whose team went to the Super Bowl.

the G stands for Greatness

My Monday morning breakfast prayer (featuring Dad):
"Dear God, thank you for Mom for making these pancakes--"
"Mm-hmm."
"--thanks that I got to be home for a little while--"
"Mm-hmm."
"--please provide me with a job--"
"Mm-hmm."
"--andthankyouthatthePackerswontheSuperBowlamen."
"MMMMMMMMMMM."

And it just so happens I had scraps of fabric in green and yellow lying around:

this G stands for Gosh this took me a long time

This pillow says, "I watched Sports Center in between A Little Princess and The Secret Garden." Which I did.

Congrats, Super Bowl XLV champs.

Oh Sunday afternoons, how will I spend thee now?

more than auld lang syne

I think I only wrote my grandmother two letters while I was in college, but she loved them. She told people who came to visit her that they were beautiful letters. At my grandfather's funeral, one woman I'd never met told me that my grandma was so proud of me.

I wish I had written her more letters.

I realized in her last couple of years that I had wasted so much time I could've spent with her. And I tried to make up for it in the few visits I had with her, sitting at the feet of her recliner and asking her questions about growing up, meeting Grandpa, and the Great Depression.

I wish I had started a lot sooner.

When my grandmother died in 2009, the part of history that was her life was buried next to my grandfather in a cemetery in Ohio. Nobody felt with her heart or saw with her eyes. Nobody experienced the joy, pain, fear, and triumph she experienced, because nobody lived her life but her.

I wish I had gotten to know her better.

I don't know what good writing about history will do. I don't know how it'll help further the kingdom of God, or how it will bring people to Jesus. I struggle with the intense desire I have to write the stories of those in the past - in an attempt to hear a heartbeat that ended before we had the chance to know its rhythm - and the intense desire I have to follow Jesus into the present world of hurting people who need His light and truth.

What do you do with two so completely different desires?

How do you tell people that, while you got your degree in Creative Writing & History, you'd rather go to seminary than write a novel?

And how do you tell yourself the same thing, when suddenly you realize you want both?

So I begin my 23rd new year just as confused as ever about what I'm supposed to do with my life. Though these things I cling to for stability, that the Lord will fulfill His purpose for me (Psalm138:8), and that tomorrow there will be football.

happy first day of autumn

In the following paper, I will prove that it is, indeed, autumn.

First, the leaves are changing. Leaves do not usually change unless it is autumn. Or unless they're dying. Which is what they're doing during autumn, only first they turn pretty red, yellow, and orange colors. That is what they're doing now.

Secondly, some nights I have to wear my bed socks. My bed socks are orange and thick, and they sit by my bed because I often have trouble sleeping when my feet are cold. During the summertime, sometimes I saran wrap ice around my feet so I can sleep. But I can always tell it's becoming winter when my feet get cold on their own. Just kidding about that first part.

And speaking of bed, thirdly: I put my penguin flannel sheets on. You know it's getting cold at night if I pull out the flannel sheets - and the ones with penguins on them, no less! (They're drinking hot chocolate and ice fishing. It's adorable.)

Fourthly, I have the intense desire to watch movies like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. If you've never listened to the Little Women soundtrack, you must. I'm pretty sure Thomas Newman took the music from falling leaves to create the first track.

I consider The Family Stone a precursor to the Christmas season, and I usually have my first viewing (I say "first" because I have many viewings in the last few months of the year) in October, and it's almost October. So, fifthly, it's almost time to watch The Family Stone, which means it's almost the Christmas season, and what comes right before the Christmas season? Autumn.

Sixth: Tea. Drinking tea makes me think of sitting in literature classes and wearing scarves. My favorite teas right now are Good Earth's, because of their fragrance, flavor, and inspirational quotes in each tea package. I recently had one that said, "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. Rodin (1840-1917)" God speaks through tea.

And finally, on the seventh, God rested, because it's football season. The word "autumn" in Nflese roughly translates to "pig skin sailing through crisp blue skies." There is no greater feeling than sitting in one's pajamas in front of a football game on a Sunday afternoon. Wrong; there are several greater feelings. But this one is really good.

In conclusion, it's autumn. You may not feel it wherever you are, but the calendar says it is, and so do I.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. - George Eliot