first saturday.

i’m pretty sure it’s been, like, a thousand years since i’ve done a saturday evening blog post, mostly because i don’t normally post on saturday, so i forget about it. but alise’s tweet reminded me, so i thought i’d join up today. it’s always a fun way to meet new bloggers. plus, our hostess? elizabeth esther? is one of the first bloggers i ever followed and she’s one of the coolest girls i (don’t really) know.

while the posts about the anniversary of my dad dying were the most viewed posts in october, the post that was most important for me to write was this one. enjoy!

life & times.

 

blank walls and empty pages and my ceaseless mind wonders locked-up words with nowhere to go when there are no words at all, i stare

and life anew and life afresh and this life of mine is no life at all

waiting, wishing, wondering

moving fluid in this heart-space deep

concrete feet in miry clay

where, what, when

just say

longing, lingering, loving you

only you

just say

sleep lost in early hours to the void of useless thoughts

and still i run

away and toward

push and pull

lost and found

the dichotomy of all that is and ever will be

but you are sure and steadfast

you who do not waiver or lean or blow over

you remain

blessed be

and i am thankful

{anxious text from mom-to-be, my sister-beauty, joyfully received here in this quiet god-moment, now}

headed to the hospital

and little life goes on and so i pray

and this is why sweet slumber’s kept

and, still, my heart is full

totally random tuesday.

i’m not even sure what one does on a tuesday when one doesn’t have a regular job anymore and doesn’t have free time at work to write her daily post. today i’m keeping Sweet Baby C, my co-spouses’ baby. Sweet Baby C is napping now, as is Princess Poops-A-Lot and Sam, their black lab who, bless his heart, is old and ailing.

i don’t even have enough randomness to speak about but here are a few:

a.) i couldn’t even watch the bachelorette last night. anything exciting go down? ashley is adorable, but…her voice? and the guy with the mask? and bentley? i’m just not sure how much of the drama i can handle this season.

b.) speaking of a bunch of men, i had four dates last week with four different men. FOUR. (i told you, someone’s been drinking the potion.) i had a great time with each of them, all different, and if i’m going solely on the three variables i mentioned in that post, well…that’s all i’m going to say about that.

c.) i’m going gluten-free. i had eczema growing up, mostly in my joints, and then it broke out around my eyes when i lived in new york. when i went to see my cuckoo-brains doctor over thanksgiving that fall, after asking my body a bunch of questions, it told her i was allergic to wheat and gluten. that was a bajillion years ago and now it’s sort of trendy to be g-free. i have a family member with celiac disease so i just figure it’s time to get it under control. anyone else out there with a restrictive diet?

d.) i received my first ever paypal payment last week for the final payment of a wedding i’m doing in a few weeks. did you know there’s a service charge for receiving payments that way? and then it takes a few days to transfer the money into your checking account? well, now you know. and so do i.

e.) pray for the compassion bloggers who are in the philippines until june 4. shaun groves, who heads up compassion bloggers, sent out this specific request in an email:

Please pray for the health and safety of our team. Please pray against apathy, skepticism and other barriers to readers in need of open hearts and minds. Pray for words as our bloggers must process very busy and challenging days into blog posts late into the night.

well it’s a good thing i’ve run out of things to talk about because Sweet Baby C is in his room cooing now.

so, we’re going to spend the rest of the day doing things that, you know, things that people with normal jobs don’t get to do during the day.

you know, things like…

and…

i know. it’s a rough life.

what’s random in your world today?

what fun and exciting things did you do over the holiday weekend?

a loving spoonful.

here is my big ol’ pile of randomness on this-here hump day.

in fact, let’s start right there.

number one: i get why it’s called ‘hump’ day. but does it make anyone else slightly uncomfortable to call it that? anyone? no? oh. me neither.

2.) have you heard of search bombing? it. is. hilarious. i was introduced to it by tamara (just yesterday, actually), but leanne and clay are the originators of the mindless but highly-addictive and hilarious time-waster of a game. go read all about it and then search bomb someone you know. or don’t know. whatevs. it cracks me up. have you search bombed anyone? which ones have you dropped? bombs they dropped on me?

dear “mary kathryn tyson”: this is your conscience calling. or not.

mary kathryn tyson likes to bathe in mint sweet cream and cookies

mary kathryn tyson puts the fab in fabulous

mary kathryn tyson has a kick ass sister

uh oh. mary kathryn tyson is a red haired blogging hottie*

3.) on a more serious note -and this really is serious, actually- would y’all please pray for my friend amber’s family? her mom had been having headaches and she collapsed over the weekend. turns out she has a brain tumor and is having emergency surgery this morning. please, PLEASE pray. her mom is 51. amber is due to speak as the president of her nurse anesthetist class at their graduation next weekend.

4.) when people write ‘rotfl’…do you ever wonder if they are literally rolling around on the floor laughing? i mean…really? you are? it was that funny? because i just can’t imagine anything being funny to the point that i’m thrown on the floor in hysterical fits of laughter.

5.) jess, one of my oldest friends in the world (that is to say, we have been friends for a very long time, not ‘this is my 107 year old friend, jess’) suggested we do a book study here of rob bell’s book, ‘love wins’. what do y’all think about that? it has 8 chapters, we could read a chapter together a week. if you’re interested in reading it together and/or you’d be willing to write a guest-post one week, let me know that. (i may decide to lead the discussion myself, though, and just facilitate questions, so don’t take it personally if i decide to do it this way instead as a matter of convenience.) as sunday is may first, i’m thinking next week would be a good time to get this party started. if there’s a contingency of yay’s, we’ll discuss the preface and first chapter next wednesday. i know what i’ve heard about it, but i haven’t read it so i haven’t formed an opinion about the book and have been a fan of bell’s til now. so, let’s be fair, read and discuss it by chapter, and we can talk about what we agree and areas we disagree as we go before we draw any conclusions about bell himself, mmkay? we’ll just go into it free of judgment or preconceived notions. what do y’all think? are you in?

6.) (am i a complete fool for agreeing to do this?)

7.) my bff-new jersey had her first baby last weekend. my bff-durham left me a message last week that she is expecting her fourth child. two of my bff’s in greenville had their first babies in the last 6-8 weeks. my older sister is here visiting and she’s expecting her first bebe, dubbed ‘boi noodle’ for now. i have been content and am fairly decided that i’ll be okay to have or not have children, either way…and i know this is entirely selfish and i do love and will love their children as my own…but i kind of miss my friends. please don’t judge me. i’ll get over myself, i just had to say it out loud first.

8.) there. over it.

9.) (i’m so annoyed with myself for telling you that now.)

10.) (okay, now i’m not. done. over it. everyone can go home now. thanks for attending my pity party.)

11.) i had a fantastic visit with karen last week, in case you were wondering, which maybe you weren’t but i’m sure that you were. i hadn’t been feeling like myself for a while and she helped set me straight. she pointed out that i had had three pretty significant triggers since we had last met that sent me spiraling into gross, familiar territory where old tapes were my soundtrack. my gosh, i love that woman. pulled me right back out with reminders of how far i’ve come and the truth of who i am and, once again, i could breathe and settle back into my skin.

12.) oh! this post? by tony? ADORE. read some of his other posts, too. he is prolific and profound and a great guy to boot.

13.) and this one by tamara? awesomesauce.

14.) (i can’t believe i just used the word ‘awesomesauce’. first time ever.)

15.) did y’all watch ‘the voice’ last night? i just flipped it on in the last hour last night and was really impressed. the judges were hilarious together and there was so much talent! did you watch it? what did you think?

16.) ever since my accident a few weeks ago, i have noticed my spelling and grammar skills have been a little off which is nothing IF NOT A TRAGEDY.

17.) it’s a widely-known fact that i turn into a pumpkin long about 10:00. but this week i’ve been going to bed around midnight. i can’t even tell you why. just because.

18.) BUT ALL THESE LATE NIGHTS ARE MAKING ME A LITTLE DELIRIOUS.

19.) AND I KIND OF LIKE IT.

20.) our friend amanda has started a blog. go read yesterday’s post. and i say that with no amount of shameless self-promotion at. all.

21.) AT ALL.

22.) katy and i figured out on the twitter that we have a mutual aversion to odd numbers, except for multiples of 5. she’s a fan of the number 3 because of the trinity but not other numbers that end in three. but she’s holier than i am because i don’t like numbers that end in 1, 3, 7 or 9. i prefer any even number and numbers that end in 0 or 5. please and thank you very much. do you have any weird number quirks?

23.) leigh, het, and het’s (and my new) bloggy-friend suzannah and i figured out that we have a mutual affection for ethan hawk’s character in reality bites and jordan catalano from what is perhaps the best teenage angsty tv-show of my (our?) generation, my so-called life. and so now we are planning a trip to watch all of these together. (amazing, that twitter.) do you have a favorite bad boy (or girl?) what tv show did you never miss growing up?

24.) if you were hanging out at all around the twitter or the fb last thursday evening, you might have caught wind about my hair fiasco. {to catch you up, i was DESPERATE for a haircut and hadn’t been able to coordinate my schedule with my hairdresser in chapel hill since, you know, it’s a TWO-HOUR DRIVE.) so i went to see my sister’s friend. he did a great job. i would recommend him, FOR SURE. he gave me a great cut. just not my cut. i can’t help it. when you’ve been with someone as long as i have been with my hairdresser, you get sort of…spoiled. she just knows me. and my hair.} well. i also walked out of there with a new shampoo, which was also a temporary lapse in judgment seeing as i send my four empty shampoo bottles back to chapel hill to be refilled with what i refer to as liquid gold. and it should come as no surprise to you that i like this new shampoo only slightly less than i like my haircut, which is to say not much. it leaves a film on my hair, whether i blow-dry it or not. (but it is worse when i don’t.) i’ve had scheduled and have kept my appointment in chapel hill in a few weeks, so i’ll wait and do my birthday bucket post on the entire experience next month on what is now known as the ‘something drastic’ i have done with my hair.

25.) i don’t have a number 25. but, when possible, i prefer to round up (not down) to a zero or five. (see number 22.)

y’all have a happy hump day.

or wednesday.

*i guess my hair looks red in my avatar? but, for the record, my hair is dark brown. i know that has been keeping you up at night. now you know. you’re welcome.

women tell all.

 

my thoughts on last night’s episode of the bachelor: women tell all.

it cuts off before i finished my thoughts.

which, maybe if i didn’t say ‘um’ and actually completed a thought before starting a new one, or -you know- had written a script or practiced at all, i might have gotten through before the card in my sister’s camera before it ran out of memory.

because evidently ‘um’ takes up a lot of space on a card’s memory if you say it a few hundred times.

anywho, i didn’t get to ashley s., whom i call the ‘displaced southerner’ because she lives in nyc but is from nc. i was trying to tell her last night that there are some things that don’t require closure.

competing for the attention of one man with 30 other women is one of those things.

because he didn’t say you wouldn’t make a great wife -in fact, he said that you would. he just said, in essence, you and he weren’t the best fit for one another. stings, yes. but wouldn’t you rather know than not know? poor girl.

she didn’t hear me, by the way. you know, talking to her.

and i hope i don’t make it sound in there  like i think it was okay for the girls to gang up on michelle. rather, she kind of brought that on herself and didn’t seem remorseful saying, ‘we all said things we regret.’ um…really, michelle? because i didn’t hear anyone else behind your back say even closely the mean things that you said about them. and maybe you were just being sarcastic, like you said.

OR MAYBE YOU WERE JUST TRYING TO COVER UP YOUR CRAZY.

i mean, i don’t know. just saying. but, my point is, none of the bullying in either direction was okay but i’m glad the girls stood up for themselves toward her because that’s what you do when you’re bullied.

and then there were the girls whose names i still don’t know.

and since i don’t know their names, i can’t say much about them.

moving on, did you notice brad’s sort of far-off glance when our host chris harrison said chantal’s name and then he had to keep himself from smiling when our host chris harrison said emily’s name?

also? he didn’t say nearly the same loving things about chantal as he did emily. you actually hear him say he wants to marry her.

dear jesus,

let it be.

amen.

and amen.

a little bit of extra-crazy.

would y’all mind if today’s post is just a stream-of-consciousness flow with no real point in the end? i have no plan for this – i just need to get some thoughts out that i’ve been having this week. you probably won’t be encouraged. maybe you will. maybe i will. i don’t know. i’ve just had a flurry of craziness in my brain this week that i need to just sort of vomit. ew. um…let’s just say i need to get it all out. but none of it is extremely meaningful or important. i just need to dump my brain is all. haven’t had a chance to process very much or decompress from the weekend.

still with me? this is more for me than for you today. feel free to stay or go. hopefully you’ll stay.

wednesday, my birthday, was a really hard day for me. i wasn’t expecting it to be, but it was. you probably won’t be surprised that it was hard because it was my first birthday without my dad. i was expecting his phone call that morning. i haven’t said anything this week to you about it because, honestly, do you get tired of hearing me lament over my dad being gone? i sort of do. but i had a sad morning and the sweet 12-year old receptionist who i get to look at from my office and spend my days with said i could cry with her because it’s just me and her. she is so precious. i cried a little bit but then i went about my day and smiled and said thank you and was gracious because, really…? who wants to see the birthday girl cry? not me. i was listening to my messages that day when i ran errands for work and before i got to the post office (shout-out, j-dub!) i unintentionally landed on the last saved message i have from my dad…which was my birthday message from last year. he sent me a card that i never received and when it came back to his house torn up with an apology from the post office, he mailed it back to me so i would have it and so i would know that he really had sent me a card. i just remembered that part just now.

when i got home that afternoon, the new man in my life had just gotten to town and instead of being excited to see him, i just had to have a good cry. he never knew my dad and was trying to say the right things but i couldn’t be consoled. poor guy. i’ve been so disconnected. he said that i have. i know that i have.

last weekend i went on a much-needed women’s retreat with my best girls at windy gap, which is the young life campgrounds in the beautiful mountains of north carolina. paula rinehart was our speaker and drew & ellie holcomb led the worship there. and when you go to their website, you will hear the song when I LOST IT BECAUSE I MISS MY DAD, even though it was written for his niece and nephew and so i immediately thought of hg but then at the end it turned into a song about my dad and i know everyone around me was worried about the girl who was heaving and had the ugly cryface and don’t you know my dad?

there are people talking around me right now and i just need to be quiet. just be quiet. please. i just need a quiet place. but i know that has nothing to do with the people talking around me.

i just haven’t had a quiet place or a quiet moment this week and maybe that’s all i need. it doesn’t count when i’m at work because, well, i’m at work. i just. need. my quiet. place.

or maybe i need to call karen.

i think a quiet place would do me.

okay, so, paula. and ellie. ellie is my bff caroline’s new girl-crush, and for good reason. she is super-cute, has great style and such a unique voice and is an incredible songwriter. plus, girls with guitars just look hot, which is why i ever wanted to play the guitar in the first place – because of jennifer nettles, whom you now know from sugarland, but she used to be in a little band called soul miner’s daughter and my friend annya and i would follow them around when we were in college. and she played guitar and was hot. and, by the way, ellie’s dad is brown bannister, who is the number one christian music producer since the days of amy grant and michael w. smith. as soon as she said her dad’s first name, i knew exactly who he was.

but, so, ellie’s husband, drew, was there playing back-up. they travel with their band, though, as ‘drew holcomb and the neighbors’.

do you ever just need to not be needed?

anyway, at one point – and i know i will butcher this story but i’m going to try and tell it the best i can – ellie told us a story that goes a little something like this. she and drew were bff’s for, like, four years in college. they didn’t start dating until after college. on their second date, he said to her, ‘i want to love you well. but i am a man. and i am going to hurt and disappoint you. and so i need for you to run after jesus with your whole heart. because he will not hurt or disappoint you.’ i mean, really…? really? swoon. sigh. love. thank you, drew holcomb. {by the way, guys – drew was quick to remind us that they had had a long friendship and if you were to say this on a real second date, it would just be weird.}

have i ever told you that i’m a make-up artist? i’m a make-up artist. i used to work at a counter full-time, until i just couldn’t handle the retail end of it and wanted to have my life back, which is when i came back to an office. but i love the company i worked for and the products, and doing make-up is just so fun, so i stayed on as a make-up artist and work weekends at events and such at different locations. {shameless plug: i’m for hire.}

so, there’s an event this weekend in my own town at my old counter, where i still have wonderful relationships with the women i used to work with there. i haphazardly found out about the event last week. only, no one called me to work it. and then i get a call last night about it. i mean…? anyway, it was just a little bit annoying. okay, you know what…my feelings were hurt and i was somewhat offended. the backstory is that i’ve been asking for a schedule for the last several weeks, it hasn’t been ready, and i thought i answered to one person and now i’m told someone else has laid claim to me, which of course i appreciate but THEN YOU HAVE TO CALL ME IF YOU WANT ME TO WORK.

and the real issue is that i’m broke and am too old and have too much professional experience to be broke.

i know what happened in this situation. not because anyone has told me but because i just know what used to happen in those situations. it was not personal, even though it is hard not to take it personally. it just is what it is.

i think i’m going through an early-to-mid-thirties crisis. is that what happens when you reach the same age that jesus died and realize that you are still single and not moving in any particular direction and have a heart for ministry but wonder if and when and how and where you’ll ever get paid to do it?

i need to send off for seminary applications. can i tell you…there have been two times in my life when i heard an audible voice that did not belong to me that i could only take to be the lord. one of those times i heard ‘go to seminary’. specifically i heard, ‘go to duke’. this was in 2oo6. i turned in my application on the thursday before i got sober that sunday, which was the day before we officially changed hands over to the new owners of aqueduct.

i turned it in early because there are three acceptance periods and i needed all the help i could get. i didn’t get accepted the first go-round. i was wait-listed. which was sheer torture for me. and confusing. what do i do with being wait-listed? god, you said to go, didn’t you? did i miss it? and DON’T YOU KNOW THAT EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY WENT TO DIVINITY SCHOOL THERE? and oh, crap…everyone in my family went to divinity school there…and who cares that everyone in my family went to divinity school there…and, fine then. i’ll just make my own plans because hrmph.

and then i went from being wait-listed to being accepted and so now what do i do?

i said ‘okay, i’ll come.’

and then i deferred, which means i would have been a student in the fall of 2008.

only then i said ‘no.’

i hate what i’m wearing today, mostly it’s the shoes, and my hair is just too long for my too big body but i don’t have an appointment until a month from tomorrow. ugh.

i tried again for seminary last year, so i would have been a student this fall. as in, right now. i applied to asbury. they said ‘yes’. i said ‘yes’.

and then i said, ‘no’. and so here i am.

and i just need to commit and quit trying to figure out my resistance and what i’m afraid of because i have justified and rationalized and made excuses and, the truth is, i just need to get the education and be done with it because i am only prolonging the inevitable.

are you disappointed that i’m not as spiritual as i pretend to be?

i feel like i’m unsatisfactory these days. like a disappointment. do you ever feel that way? like i can’t make anyone happy WHEN I KNOW THAT’S NOT MY JOB. and, as i’m thinking of it…no one has expressed their dis-

oh, wait. yes. my mom. ugh. my mom. she has the power. why is that? our relationship will ever be my greatest…i don’t know what. i adore my mom. she is so precious. but we do not have an easy relationship. we had made plans to go out to dinner the day after my birthday. but then she called the morning of my birthday and wanted to come to town that afternoon to bring me presents, but he was coming in to town and the girls want to take me out to dinner before bible study and i’ll be in a meeting all day long until probably after 5:00 and, ‘that’s fine, darling.’ and we were going to try to make it work but it just didn’t work and i should have just said, ‘it’s just not going to work.’ and so we were going to have dinner last night at her house instead of going out and she wasn’t feeling well but i already have plans tonight so we can’t switch our night and so i’m living with the guilt-trip that i’ve let my mom down and that she’s a little bit sad now and THAT IS NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY.

please, please stop talking to me. won’t you just be quiet?

i had a great post written for today after having some thoughts from reading lynde’s post about her new adventure. it was all about how i love gay people. and i had permission from my gay cousins to reference them if need be but i didn’t publish it because i thought it just wasn’t necessary…like it would perpetuate scandal and why do i need to do that? so i didn’t publish it. it was nonetheless helpful for me, though, to realize where i stand with it all. maybe i’ll still post it. maybe i won’t. why won’t i? fear? or just don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable? that’s not fair to anyone.

so, we’re having dinner on sunday night at my mom’s.

and i’m tired of the seminary dance.

but i’m not even going to church right now and so what seminary will accept the girl who doesn’t like church?

and i realize i sound crazy.

and i will probably wish i hadn’t published this.

but there will probably be more days like this when i just need to unload and, honestly, that’s fine with me.

and maybe i’ll post the post about gayness after all.

and, drew & ellie holcomb, will you marry me? but first marry caroline.

do you ever have days like this? please tell me you do. days when you just need to decompress and process? or days when you just feel a little bit extra-crazy?

sheer genius.

when my parents were my age, i was four (almost five) about to start kindergarten. at this time that year, my dad would have been 33 and my mom 32, almost 33.

molly anne would be starting the third grade and sarah hope would have been in nursery school.

the story goes that one day, not soon before the first day of school, my mom found me reading the newspaper. line by line, word for word. i was suddenly just…reading. by myself!

on another day, i realized i could tie my own shoes. alone!

no one taught me how to do either. i just…i could just…do them. both! i simply just…knew how!

i know. you don’t have to say it.

i can’t believe how brilliant i was either.

as the offspring of my proud parents and the prodigy of mrs. jackie hines’ kindergarten class, i would sometimes be excused from ‘centers’ to go read clifford books and amelia badelia books and books about the berenstain bears to my sister’s third grade class, where mrs. butler was her teacher. i was SO proud of myself and wanted so badly for molly to be proud of me, too. after all, i was really only showing off for her.

(it’s tough being so humble.)

one day i brought in the clifford joke book. i would ask the third graders questions and they would deliver the punchline. i’m not sure what the joke was, but i once replied to a boy named waylon farrington with, ‘i’m going to shove this book up your butt.’ i can still see the look mrs. butler gave me when she looked up from her desk.

…now that i think about it…i don’t remember being invited back after that. huh.

anywho, i was in three spelling bees when i was in elementary school, my first one in kindergarten. i got out on the third round when i was presented with the word ‘does’ because what child thinks of that word outside the context of a sentence and, in that case, who wouldn’t spell it ‘d-u-z’?

and that’s where the genius ends, folks.

ah, the good ol’ days…

have you ever been humbled by your own genius?

p.s. i’m totally doped up on cold medicine and high off of disinfectant this morning. forgive me.

books.

i love to read. i don’t read all the time but at any given moment, i have about 5 or 12 books next to my bed. it takes me anywhere from 2 months to 2 years to finish reading one book because i swap through them all at once.

currently on my second-hand hand-me-down bedside table that i pulled from my sister’s give-away pile, messy faith and silent savior by my bff-amy. she wrote silent savior first but messy faith was the first to be published so i’m trying to go in that order but i really can’t wait to read silent savior because i know that one is her child. (i do receive an honorable mention in messy faith, although i wouldn’t let her put my name in there for the story that she tells…even though now it wouldn’t even matter. i’m sorry, ame. ) also there: one of my precious friend brennan manning’s latest books, the furious longing of god; and the year of magical thinking by joan didion that my bff-annya lent me this spring. she read it after her dad died tragically exactly a year ago yesterday, which was before mine died in october. this is the one i keep picking up for now.

on my other bedside table, i have a collection of about 73 bibles. even so, i still just carry around my little non-threatening evangelistic tool in my purse, which is the one i usually draw out to study.

my all-time favorite, life-changing, i-could-pick-them-up-at-a-moment’s-notice-and-not-put-down books (in no particular order) are:

traveling mercies by anne lamott: her raw, gut-honest, potentially offensive essays of her life tell the story of how she came to faith. so refreshing to my soul and hilariously funny (also good for the soul).

blue like jazz by donald miller: his was probably the first memoir of his kind that i couldn’t put down. just candid story-telling about life and faith. he’s been compared to anne lamott…which i get why folks say that, but…i don’t know, their lives and styles are still different. at one point before i got sober, i was reading it on my couch at The Big House (which is what we called my grandparents’ home where i lived, by the way; not talking about jail here, people) while i drank four some bottles glasses of pinot grigio and ate a lot of cheese and olives and decided i would write him a letter. which i did. on the back of a paper bag. which i never sent.

captivating by john & stasi eldredge: the best book for women (and the men who love them) i’ve ever read ever. i read it at least once a year. i would recommend any of their books. love all of them. for a while, i wanted to read wild at heart but just felt like god didn’t want me to (one of those weird things i can’t explain, i just knew i wasn’t supposed to read it yet). and then, one day, i just felt free to pick it up. only i was going to test it first by reading the ‘beauty to rescue’ chapter before delving into the rest. i just wanted to be sure i could relate to that particular part before deciding if it was worth my time to read any more. read the whole thing in a matter of hours.

ragamuffin gospel by brennan manning: i can only read little bits and pieces at a time in order to wrap my mind around and soak up with my heart his raw understanding of jesus.

most of these have a spiritual or inspirational bent to them. while you won’t find any harlequin -or other, really- novels on my bookcase, i love reading all kinds of books (and trashy gossip magazines).

what about you? what are your favorite books?

fyi, i’m not getting anything for promoting these reads. i just thought we’d talk about books today is all.

dogipot.

this will probably be the most mindless, unimportant piece of literature you set your eyes on all day. no, really. i promise.

these are some of The Most Random events/thoughts/ideas i’ve had over the last day or two.

one of my favorite parts about my work-day is our receptionist, who is 12. seriously, 12. okay, not 12. but, like, 14. anyway, our general sales manager just made a comment about punky brewster and i giggled like a little school girl. omg, PUNKYYYY! i.heart.PUNKYYY! when we were little and our parents went on a trip to new york city, they came back with “punky clothes” for each of us. i would wear a bandana tied beneath my knee and roll up one pant leg and wear stripey socks and mismatched-but-cute clothes just like she did. she.was.my.IDOL! and cherry and margaux and her curmudgeon-but-really-soft-on-the-inside-like-a-roasted-marshmallow-adoptive-dad-but-not-really henry and we all remember Brandon the Wonderdog who punky used to dress up in costume, oft-times like a wizard. don’t you remember!? LOOOVE punky! pun-ky, pun-ky, pun-ky! punky for president!

only. our 5 year old receptionist had NO IDEA who punky was. so i had to school her. the 8 year old got it. sort of. but not really.

by the by, yesterday i was singing along with taylor swift at the top of my lungs in my car. i was so into it that, while i was on my way to bible study which is at leslie’s house, i realized i was actually heading to karen’s house instead. at the same time i caught this, i also became aware that i was singing -loudly (if not repeatedly)- “…’cause when you’re sixteen…”

(the title of the song is ‘fifteen’. whatevs.)

i “twittered” this to my friend dustin, (which really means i just sent him a text message because i only “twitter” in my mind). uh, but not while i was driving. uh, i pulled over to text him. okay, i was at a stoplight. but that’s beside the point.

so is the fact that he didn’t text me back. huh. wait…

anyway, long about the time the (ahem) light changed, i started thinking, “now that i’m a blogger (because i blog, you know), perhaps i should also twitter”. matt leroy threatened told me he was going to make a twitter account for me and not tell me and just twitter on my behalf which, if you know matt, you know that would be the funniest thing ever.

last but not least, take a look at that random dog picture (above) that was on the back of a catalog i received yesterday. nevermind the part that i received a catalog for major office supplies (park benches, industrial-size trash cans, bike racks, cubbies -you know, the usual.) – this picture is what made me bust out laughing. you tell me what you see.

and please, please tell me you are as random as i am.

please.

Not found.

“Sorry. What you’re looking for isn’t here.”

This is what my page has read since I re-opened it last week. It sort of makes me laugh on about a thousand different levels. For now, I just was tired of seeing it and wanted to put something else up here lest you think I really have not been paying attention to my own page. (Because, really, I have.)

I’ve been racking my brain and heart trying to decide what to write about in my first official post (since I deleted my original and only one from two years ago because it was just.so.DEPRESSING!)

I will return but it may take a few days. In the interim, I really encourage you to visit any of the blog sites I have posted to the right. They have been my inspiration to starting up my own page again (because I was getting annoyed with myself for taking over their blogs with my “comments”). I read each of them every day. So should you.

Tell me: What are some of your favorite blogs? Who are your favorite writers in general?

xo