The Inspiring Dress

and....here it is! (see previous post)

Big thanks goes out to my soon-to-be sister-in-law Melissa for picking out such a gorgeous gown AND one that can easily be reworn. I love this color.


Some (slightly jealous :) coworkers have asked sarcastically if I've practiced my pose to wear the dress. They claim I need to be strengthening my back so I can lean back in disdain, instead of my arms.

Charleston

Wow, three blogs in three days. I don't know how I've managed it. Especially when I pull up my "favorites" menu and I see the ominous new link to "exercises" that my roommate kindly sent me when I told her I wanted to get sculpted arms and shoulders. The link reminds me that I am blogging and not exercising. I already have pretty good arm/shoulder muscles, but not enough to do a chin-up and roomie can do at least two (but who's counting? :) 'Course, she does play flute all day, and other instruments that require arm strength. But now that I've seen the bridesmaid dress I'm wearing in my brother's wedding (a gorgeous strapless form-fitting chocolate brown/purpley tinted satin) I'm inspired.

I'm going to Charleston tomorrow. Not Charleston, SC, sadly, but Charleston, IL which is just slightly less exotic. But there are hills! Hallelujah! Flatness is, of course, my complaint about the Chicago area, esp. since there's a lot of the Arizona girl still in me. (I think she will always be there).

My aunt, who lives there along with my uncle and let me count ... I think 7 of their 10 kids, all 7 being teenagers and some college students who come and go, has warned me to expect excitement. That's because cousin #8 (actually #3 in the birth order) has just moved there with his very pregnant wife and she's due anyday. And he's about to be shipped out to Iraq for the second time, if he hasn't left already. And they have 3 other kids from her first marriage. I've lost track of how many potential kids will be there. And I didn't even mention the family across the street, who are very good friends, but they have a crowd, too. Ah, those Irish Catholics! (but hooray for adoption and blended families, for these two methods have contributed greatly to the aforementioned numbers).

Thomas and Jack

"They're 2, they're 4, they're 6, they're 8
Shunting trucks and hauling freight,
something something something do,
They're the Really Useful Crew!"

I just read some posts on my friend Jamie's blog (http://roominroppongi.blogspot.com/) and in one of them she quotes lines from a Thomas the Tank Engine song to which (I assume) her 2-year-0ld son listens incessantly.

I don't know that particular song, but reading the blog reminded me of the bits of the song I do know, which is the theme song. Jack, a 2-year-old for whom I frequently babysit, adores Thomas and engines. As you'll see above, I don't remember all of the lyrics. It's a catchy little tune, though, sung by English children with charming little accents. The thing I don't get, though, is that it's narrated by an American. And some of the books use English jargon and some of them use American jargon. Trust me, I've read enough of them (to Jack, who can probably recite them from memory) to notice.

What is it about Thomas? And engines? And trucks? Jack loves them all. When he wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, all he wants to do is "play engines." As you can imagine, that doesn't fly very well with me at midnight. He sure is cute, though, puttering about in his mini-Tevas (he loves to wear shoes!) and chanting in his husky 2-year-old voice, "shunting twucks and hawing fweight!"

I haven't seen Jack for awhile. I usually watch him on Wednesday nights but the last two weeks I've had work events. Last Wednesday was a seminar on rain gardens and tonight I was at a foodie event in Lincoln Park. 20 big-time chefs grilled at the Green City Market. It's a tough life, suffering for Jesus and changing the world through journalism!

A Good Day

I got up at 6 (more or less) and had a lovely worship time, though I keep having such weird "images" during my listening to God stretch that I'm sure I keep almost falling asleep.

Then I enjoyed breakfast and the newspaper. Made a healthy lunch and even cleaned up the kitchen and chatted with my roommate before heading off to work. I was on time and didn't fret about traffic.

I worked well and accomplished a decent amount, although there's always more to do! Then I drove north to Lake Forest for a story on rain gardens and then, miracle of miracles, it rained! And rained and rained. It was wonderful. It was the first real soaking rain we've had in the worst drought on record and the hottest summer since 1928. My only downfall was buying a bag of Fritos and a Diet Coke with lime and consuming much of both while driving, but they were good so I am not remorseful.

After work I stopped by the Doos' house to take Abby out for a run. The family is on vacation in England and I promised to look in on the dog ("my" puppy) since the current lodger, Ollie, is a renter and it's not really his responsibility, though he promised to take care of her. As I pulled up, Ollie was walking up with Abby on her leash as it was starting to rain, so I went in and as we chatted and waited for the rain to stop, I decided, for old times sake, to start cleaning the house. Ollie called his girlfriend in England and then told her, in amazement, "And there's an ex-housemate here who's cleaning my floor!" Soon he was helping me, and we did a tolerable job of cleaning up the main floor while Abby wandered about, happy as can be to have me there while the rain poured down. The rain didn't show any signs of stopping, so I decided to take Abby out in it. Unfortunately, during the car switch, as Ollie pulled the van forward and I opened the gate, the gate blew back in the wind and smashed against the bumper and blew off. It was horrible! But he's hoping to get it fixed very soon. The other nasty thing was that when I took out the trash to the garbage can, I saw the plastic bag where I'd tied up the wild rabbit that I'd found completely and inexplicably dead on the driveway on Sunday, and there were maggots crawling all over the inside of the sealed bag. How did they get in there? That poor creature. Well, so that was unpleasant.

But, then, I took Abby for a very exhilirating run and she was happy and I was happy, and then I came home and made a healthy dinner and Kim's boyfriend Dave was here working and kept me company while I listened to the new Corrs album (more pop than Celtic, but still very lyrical and catchy). Then I did more work, editing an engineering paper for a graduate student, very boring but a good source of extra income.

And now I am getting ready to read and then sleep.

All in all, a good day. Not momentous, just ... good.

-except for the maggot part. I have *got* to forget about that. It's making the memory of the fresh cherries I just ate seem very unappetizing.

the new Harry Potter

What to write? I don't want to give anything away, cuz even if I post a spoiler people will read on and then yell at me.

I just finished about an hour ago, and I'm exhausted. I spent 7 hours total, though I took time to sleep and make breakfast and go to church and have friends over for lunch. The spell is ... slowly receding. But it's not a spell unique to Harry Potter. It's the spell that comes over me whenever I am really into a book, particularly a series book where you have to wait long interludes between installments, and so the characters live even more freely in your brain during the between-times. Then, the next installment does come and you read read read read not really taking time to appreciate the nuances of plot and character, just needing desperately to know what comes next, even though you realize you should be treasuring these moments because the pleasure of a new fresh read will not come again for a long time, years probably. And each time you reread the book you will wonder to yourself why you hurried through it so fast the first time, and tell yourself you ought to have savored it, for you will never get to read it for the first time again.

But wow. What a book. What a way to build up to a thrilling and fulfilling denouement. Now that I've finished, it all makes sense. The storied "major character" that we've all known was going to die, now that I know who it is, I wonder why I didn't see it before. I'm relieved to, for all of my favorites that survived the cut. I'm sad, because of the incredible sadness of the story, not least of which is the sad sacrifice Harry must make at the end, the pushing away what he treasures to do what must be done.

Yet as I said, the spell is wearing off, two hours later. I'm starting to feel that it perhaps might not be such a betrayal to let these people go, to let them fade into the temporarily-disused part of my mind. Perhaps I can turn on some music now. Before it seemed a desecration to forget them so soon.

And yet, I must, for I have a singularly awful task in front of me tonight: bill paying and finance untangling. Now that's scary.

Words from Christy

My "email friend" Christy has now become a blog friend. Christy and I have never met in person, though we attended the same conference three years ago. I made another virtual writing friend, Dan, as a result of that conference. Dan emailed all of the attendees a couple of weeks afterwards (it was for young adult leaderly types in the Vineyard church) asking if there was anyone else interested in *good* Christian writing. I responded, as did Christy, and the three of us began a stimulating email dialogue that lasts to this day and has spanned the country as the three of us have moved around. Both of them have broadened my horizons in wonderful ways.

I am a big fan of Christy's poetry. I snatched this gem from her blog.


Friday, July 01, 2005

untitled (fragment)

love
will rip your heart out hand it back to you
like a totalled car and still you sign up for it
the next time the clipboard passes you by
I don't know why

it's like
the tenderness that feeds the fragile you
to life again and stays the darkness of the world
for 3 bright seconds then leaves again

I don't know why
for once
I wish that we could get it right but bungling
is what our talent's in; in cherishing we rub
the magic from the wings - we touch too much
I don't know why

http://palecitystars.blogspot.com/

So here I am learning CPR. I picked the most shadowy photo out of the bunch Jason (the photographer) took, because I had no idea my picture would be taken that night. I had told the other CPR attendees that a photographer would be coming, and they all gasped and exclaimed, "You didn't warn us!" I laughed at their reaction. Then, as the long night got longer, I put a bandana over my crazy humidity hair, I washed all traces of makeup off my face, and then walked out to see Jason and hear him say, "So Carol (the editor) wants me to take your picture tonight." Figures.

I actually had it better than most, though, because I got to choose which one I wanted to use. It's cute, though I'm not used to seeing myself from such an angle. Once again, I realize I am fixated on how I appear. Aren't we all? I remember a Walker Percy novel (The Thanatos Syndrome, I believe) in which the characters lost their sense of self. The protagonist, Tom Moore, realized this when the affected people looked at photos in which they figured and didn't bother to first find themselves. That's when he realized the townspeople were being insidiously drugged to "make them happy." It's funny I don't remember much else of the novel (though it is on my reread list) but that point stuck with me. There is something very important about seeing ourselves through the eyes (or camera lens) of others. Should it be so? Would it be possible to change this? Is there anyone on earth, no matter how unselfish, who wouldn't first look for his or her own image in a photograph? After all, I am the most important person ... every person would say that. Another reason why Jesus was so difficult and so contrary. He tells us to decrease so that He may increase.