7ToF: North to the Future

1. Remember I told you I had one more trip planned? It starts today. I'm flying to Seattle this afternoon and, after spending the evening with my beloved Seattle friends (Hi Laurel and Kami!), I'll be joining up with my mom for .... are you ready for this? ... a week-long cruise to Alaska. With my mom's seniors' group. From her Southern Baptist church. Oh, lordy. It should be quite a week.

My mom attends the same church we attended when I was in high school, but it's so huge now (eight thousand-ish members) it doesn't really seem like the same place. When she first asked me if I wanted to go (it took me about six minutes to say OF COURSE I DO), I assumed it was a huge group going. I was fascinated by the idea of a cruise ship full of Southern Baptists, because they're supposed to be teetotalers. Is it possible to cruise with no alcohol?

But it turns out there are only about 35 of them, so  I suspect no one will care how much alcohol is consumed. Mom went to their first meeting last week and she says she's the youngest one. Again I say: oh, lordy. But at the very least I will get to spend a week sitting on the deck, watching gorgeous scenery, and reading a stack of books, so I think it's a no-lose proposition. Stay tuned for the post trip report from Mom and me, the Party Girls.

2. My original plan was to pre-write a couple of posts for next week--trying to avoid taking another blog break so soon after the last one--but I ran out of time. This week has been a bit crazy. So no posts from me next week. Sorry about that. There's an outside chance that I'll be able to post along the way, but I've gone on vacation before thinking I would write blog posts while traveling, and it never happens. So probably not.

3. I really, really want to see the Northern Lights. Sadly, the weather forecast looks like it is going to be gray and rainy the entire week, so it may not happen. If you think about it, send up a small northern lights prayer for me.

4. A couple of nights ago on a recommendation from a FB friend, we watched an old Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn movie called Charade. I'd never even heard of it, but it was pretty fun. A romantic mystery story that manages to be both silly and (slightly) suspenseful. Recommended if you can keep a sense of humor about the sexist stereotypes. And while I'm collecting movies for my Netflix queue, let me know if you have any good ones to add.

5. Did I tell you I missed the deadline for submitting continuing ed courses to teach this fall? I was having a really hard time thinking of something new and interesting to teach, and the courses that the CE people wanted me to teach weren't really all that interesting to me. And then suddenly I realized that the deadline had been the day before. So I'm taking a semester off. But I decided that I could still take classes, so I signed up for a knitting class. Yup. Go ahead and laugh. It started this week, and I survived the first meeting. I'll let you know if I manage to actually knit something.

My entire output from a TWO HOUR knitting class. Yup.
I have no idea where the hole came from.

6. I wrote and wrote and wrote in my last blog about how I am a Christian AND a supporter of gay rights. This is not an issue for me--in my theology, those two beliefs are not even slightly in conflict. I've avoided commenting on any of the recent flap about same-sex marriage not because I don't strongly support it (I do), but because I know many of you disagree, and if you'll forgive the overly complicated grammar, I know you know what I think and you know I know what you think. I just don't get the point of alienating each other over it. Sadly (to me), in some circles opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage has become equated with being a true Christian, when--at least in my opinion--at most it is one of the side, peripheral issues. They'll know we are Christians by our love, not by our moral code.

7. So although I've considered doing a detailed description of what I think about the few verses in the Bible that address homosexuality, I've always ended up deciding not to, because there's no point--I'm not going to change any Evangelical's mind because I read the Bible in a way that would be irrelevant to what an Evangelical reader believes. I read the Bible as a historical document, the seriously important founding document of my faith, but not as the perfect, inspired word of God that requires obedience in every particular from contemporary readers. Some of you disagree.

However--finally I'm getting around to the point, and the reason why I'm bringing this up in a 7ToF post--this week I found a fairly long analysis of what the Bible says about homosexuality by John Shore, a popular progressive Christian author and blogger whom I've mentioned before. He does read the Bible as the inspired word of God, so he argues differently than I would, but we end up in the same place. It may not change your mind, but if you're curious what at least one progressive Christian thinks about the Bible and homosexuality, it's worth a read. I have some reservations about recommending that article because I know back in the day when I believed in the inerrancy of Scripture, his arguments would not have convinced me. But I still find him interesting. Caveat lector.

OK, that was kind of scratching for seven things, but there you go, seven things. Have a great week!

and sometimes we're as dumb as a box of rocks

One of my trips this summer was to a wedding attended by many of my beloved cousins, the children of my dad's siblings (the cousins on my mom's side are also great, but I don't see them very often anymore). We spent lots of time together growing up, and they are some of the dearest people in my life.

With some notable exceptions (like my cousin Anne, with her beautiful dark hair), we all kind of look alike, and we seem to look more alike as we get older. Put us in a row--and we did, for wedding pictures--and we're blond with pale blue or green eyes, horribly near-sighted and endearingly (I hope) nerdy. The most noticeable difference among us is that my dad and his sister generated fairly tall children, but their brother's kids are pretty dang short.

We have other things in common, too. For the most part, we are introverted, opinionated, intelligent, and a bit on the prickly side, socially speaking. You sometimes have to know us pretty well before you find the soft underbelly beneath the porcupine quills. And oh yeah, we're socially inept. We want to be part of a group, but we don't really know how.

It's not true of all of us-- my younger sister and at least a couple of my cousins are highly social and move gracefully in and out of various groups in a way that make the rest of us envious. But for the most part, we're a pretty introverted, socially awkward group.

We know that from life experience, though, not from hanging out with each other. Because when we're together, we act like extroverts. We talk and talk and talk. Often loudly. We tease each other--mercilessly--we argue, we tell stories. Our spouses refuse to play when we start Rook, the card game we played endlessly as children (double deck, call your partner, in case you were wondering). It can get a little fierce.

It doesn't feel introverted. I didn't know I was an introvert until I was in my twenties--partly because I'd never heard the term, at least not in any way that seemed relevant to me. It wasn't something we talked about back then. But also because when I'm with a group of people I know well, I function just fine. 

It's not until I'm thrown into a new group or a social situation that requires schmoozing that I suddenly remember that I'd rather stick needles under my fingernails than stand around and chat with people I barely know. One or two social functions a month are about as many as I can handle. I need to get out so I don't get stir crazy, but most of the time I'd rather be at home.

Wow, I am so far off track. This post was going to be about something else entirely. OK, so the original idea that I was going to discuss is different kinds of intelligence, what is now called multiple intelligences. 

My cousins and I are smart. We are really smart. But we're a particular kind of smart, the kind that is good at school and does well on standardized tests. We're the kind of smart that can memorize facts and read teachers and play the game of school. The kind of smart that heads into a test thinking bring it on. 

But we're pretty dang dumb when it comes to social situations and dealing with emotions--what is now known as social intelligence and emotional intelligence. When my generation was young, and for the two or three centuries before that, the kind of smart that I am--school smart--was the only kind of smart. If you were good at school, it was supposed to be a guarantee of success. If you made bad grades, you were dumb and your future was dim.

It's pretty clear these days that that isn't true. The idea of multiple different types of intelligence just makes sense, because there are plenty of people who may or may not have been good at school who are geniuses at throwing a party, or hitting a golf ball, or taking a failing business and turning it around. Or making millions of dollars.

I am really having a hard time getting back into the swing of writing blog posts, because this one is all over the place. The reason for this post is primarily as background for another one sitting in my drafts folder, about being smart--I didn't want you to think I'm bragging. I may have been good at school, but I'm dumb as a post at a whole bunch of other things. In the grand scheme of things, being good at school is a pretty pointless superpower--I'd much rather be able to fly. As I was explaining that, it turned into its own post.

The other thing I wanted to tell you is along the lines of celebrating midlife, because at least in some ways, my cousins and I have aged well. We're a whole lot more patient and understanding than we used to be. Those analytical brains mean we can be pretty hyper-critical and sharp-tongued, and in our younger days, we really were.

But I noticed at this wedding that we seem to have moved past that phase. We've all been through difficult times. Few of us are where we thought we would be if you had asked us 30 years ago. Time has softened us, made us more sympathetic, more supportive of each other.

Maybe we're learning a little social intelligence after all.

blog names and why I'm dumping them (plus a note about my posting schedule at the very end)

I've decided to stop using blog names for my family members. Here you go: PellMel is really Melanie (Mel), MadMax is Sam, and Dean is, and always has been, Doug. You already know that I'm Barb. If you're curious why this is happening, keep reading, but if that's all you need to know, off you go to your next activity.

When I started blogging a dozen years ago, I was freaked out about publicly over-sharing. My first couple of blogs were shrouded in secrecy. Other than Doug, I don't think anyone in my "real" life even knew about my first blog. So I came up with cute blog names for my people to shield them from Internet Notoriety.

But times have changed. For one thing, I don't think any of us believes in the illusion of internet privacy anymore. It would take you two minutes of digging, if you even cared, to find out more about me and my family than I've ever shared in a blog post.

For another thing, my blogs have never generated much traffic. Everyone who blogs both fears and longs for their blog to go viral, but twelve years later (I wrote my first post in October of 2003), that's never happened to me. A couple of posts on my old blog have over a thousand page views, but that's the most traffic I've ever had. Most of my readers (you) are people I actually know, either in real life or because we've met in some internet forum. I think I can stop worrying about exposing my kids to the glare of the paparazzi.

And also, they--my family--don't really care. I'm a privacy freak, but none of them are. Sam, who is a bit on the introverted side, might care if he hadn't grown up in the internet age where everything any of his friends does immediately shows up on Instagram. But Doug and Mel have always thought it was a little odd that I didn't just use our real names. So now I am.

Coincidentally, and a little off topic, just last week I was reading a book (One Plus One by JoJo Moyes) which has a teen character who starts a blog. By and large the book is down-to-earth and relatively realistic (given that it's a fictional work with a plot and a number of common tropes of current fiction), but one thing was absurdly not real. This kid starts a blog, writes a few posts, and without doing any promotion at all--as far as the reader knows, he's never even told anyone he was blogging-- suddenly he has hundreds of readers and dozens of comments.

Right. Not happening. My times of highest reader traffic have all been when I was telling people I had something for them to read. Speaking of, thanks for reading this one.

And while we're discussing blog issues, about my posting schedule: I've been keeping a Tuesday-Friday schedule for awhile now and for the most part that works well for me. But I have a couple of multi-part posts coming up that will be posted all in one week, so there will be some in-between posts, too. Scroll down or check over on the calendar to find anything you might've missed. Thanks.

7ToF: The how the heck did it get to be Labor Day end of Summer Update

1. I've been to South Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Indiana, Idaho, Washington, and Texas this summer, and I still have one more trip (to Alaska!) scheduled. Lots of traveling, and all of it was fun. But traveling that much always makes the summer seem like it goes by in a flash. Huh. It's already Labor Day Weekend. How the heck did that happen?

2. I know it's boring to discuss the weather, but seriously-- our weather has generated front page headlines all summer. It's been hot and dry, and then hotter and drier, in record breaking ways. We had the least amount of rainfall ever for June-July-August. And you could tell, because the forest fires started weeks ago. The smoke was so bad here a couple of times that we weren't supposed to go outside, and of course for me, like any good migraineur, that means feeling rotten. Ugh. The gorgeous warm, dry weather in June and July almost wasn't worth it. But the good news is that we've had pretty good rain two days out of the last three, so things are getting better.

3. OK, done with the weather report. Several much loved friends and family members have been dealing with serious health issues recently. So here is the obvious: it is impossible to be grateful enough for good health. It's such a crapshoot. I could be in a car accident tomorrow and not be able to walk for the rest of my life (or worse). Or one of the kids (speaking of worse). We're so lucky. I've been thinking about this a lot, there may be a future post on this topic.

4. Jazz, our elderly mutt, continues to deteriorate, but she is amazingly cheerful. She sort of wanders around in her own private sensory deprivation tank, pretty much oblivious to everything except food. At some point over the summer, she stopped going on walks with us--which she could only barely do before. But she's still hanging in there.

5. People ask me fairly frequently if it's difficult to raise chickens. I always say, no, it's easier than any other kind of pet we've owned, as long as nothing goes wrong. You feed and water them every day, clean their coop once a month or so, collect the eggs. Easy. Until one of them gets sick, and then who knows what you're supposed to do? If we had a big flock or a money making venture, it would be worth it to track down a poultry vet, but for our tiny group, it's just not worth it. We had one come down with some kind of dread disease about ten days ago, and in a week she was gone. I have no idea what she had or if there's anything we could have done about it. So we're down to seven again. Still getting lots of eggs, which is both good and bad.

6. Summer Reading Report: I'll spare you the stack of books I read that weren't worth the time and recommend The Martian (especially for science geeks) and One Plus One, JoJo Moyes' latest. Also, just so you know, if you share a Kindle account with family members, apparently you also share a Goodreads account. A couple of books that Dean read and I didn't have showed up in my Goodreads feed. I'm obsessive enough that I had to ask him to stop doing the Goodreads rating that pops up automatically when you finish a book. It's a wonder he puts up with me.

7. We got a new washing machine. Our old one was only about five years old, but it was becoming increasingly temperamental until finally it just refused to function (less than a month after we'd spent about $135 getting it repaired, the same repair it had needed twice before). The next step was replacing the motherboard, which would cost about half as much as a new machine and I'd still have a machine I never really liked and would have been happy to donate to Mythbusters so they could blow it up. Maybe a sparkler bomb or something.

Anyway. After spending a couple of days researching washing machines online, I came to the realization that there is no perfect machine. All of them had prominent negative reviews. So I just picked the highest rated top-load that was in our price range and went with it. Turns out I love it. At least so far. Who knows about long-term. It is a vast improvement over our old one.

Made it through seven things! Since I haven't really written a blog post in six-ish weeks, it was kind of hard to get this one written. It occurred to me for the millionth time that maybe I should just quit doing this--I guess I had a little too much time to think about blogging. It's an odd thing to do, and in the grand scheme of things it's hard to believe that a small blog like this matters. But between what's in my head and what's sitting in my drafts folder, I do have a pile of half-written posts. So I will slog on. I guess it matters to me. I had to force myself to do this one, maybe the next one will be more interesting. Happy holiday weekend if you're here in the states, and if you're elsewhere, have a great weekend, too.

later (updated)

EDITED TO ADD: I might as well just go ahead and announce it will be a couple of weeks before I post again. I have half a dozen half-written posts but I've been travelling too much to finish any of them. It's all I can do to get the laundry done, because SUMMER. For those of you who are following my mom's story, she's doing great (I went and stayed with her last week after her knee replacement). We're headed off to visit PellMel this weekend, then a 4-day camping trip the following weekend, etc. Happy August. I'll probably be back the last week in August or the first week in Sept--MadMax starts his senior year on the 31st.

Greetings and Salutations. We got back from the airport about 2 a.m. last night and have spent the day catching up on laundry, grocery shopping, etc etc. The half-written posts I have in my drafts folder aren't anywhere close to being ready. So I'm bagging on you. And since I'm leaving on Saturday to go stay with my mom who is recovering from a knee replacement, I probably won't post again until the week of August 10th. Hope you are having a great summer!

7ToF: These are a Few of My Favorite Cheap Things

I'm writing this several days in advance since I'll be out of town the rest of the week and I have no idea what will be happening with us by the time you read this. This is a post I've had in the back of my head for several months. We so often gripe about how expensive things are ($30 for a hardback book! $5 for a loaf of bread!), I thought maybe I'd pay homage to a few things I love that are under $10.

blonde and proud

After not writing a new "real" post in almost a month, I had several ideas for this week's Tuesday blog post. But they were all about ISSUES, and I'm sure that you (like me) are sick of hearing about ISSUES. So I will tell you a story instead.

A couple of times a year, I round up various tchotchkes and run them through the dishwasher--the green glass bottles I use as bookends, a cup and saucer from my grandmother's dishes, a decorative plate my mother-in-law brought us from France, etc. They get cleaned up shiny and new without me having to dust. Because HOUSEWORK. 

So this afternoon I decided to do that and breezed around the house gathering stuff. Loaded it all in the dishwasher and fired it up. A couple of hours later, I came back to unload and saw this when I opened the door: 

ewwwww! what is that???

I had no idea why a sticky, semi-solid brown substance was coating the floor of the dishwasher. It was nasty, though.

Then I started pulling things out of the dishwasher and they were all coated with this weird, gummy substance. I was starting to get seriously grossed out because it was icky and it was all over everything.  

Had there been some weird food thing still stuck to one of the dishes?? had the coating melted off the brown utensil holder I almost never wash?? what in the world would do this??

Then I found this:

Seriously, HOW DID ONE OF THE DOGS CRAP IN THE DISHWASHER? I was so grossed out I could hardly bring myself to touch it.

Except then I noticed IT HAD A LABEL. A Crate and Barrel label. And it was suspiciously solid. And then it dawned on me that I had PUT A CANDLE in the dishwasher. 

A brown candle. A candle shaped like a pine cone that had dust in between the pine cone bits, because how in the world was I going to get it clean? why, put it in the dishwasher, of course. LIGHT BULB! I even remembered to put it on the top shelf! Because if I put it in the bottom rack, it would MELT!

Seriously, y'all. Dumbest blonde moment ever. I pulled out the, um, turd-like object and ran the dishwasher again just to see if the mess would disappear so I could pretend this never happened. The wax does seem to have melted off all the dishes, but that waxy brown coating on the floor of the machine? Apparently that's going to have to be scrubbed off by hand.

Oh, yeah. A frickin' genius, that's me.

7ToF: it ain't all good baby but it's all right

1. Hilton Head report: We'd never been there before. It's a nice place, but the week of the fourth of July it is really, really crowded. Maybe it's like that all the time, not sure. We had a great time with Dean's family, though-- we always do. It was hot and humid, but that was no surprise. Here's a beach shot for you, and I will spoil the effect by telling you that in order to get a deserted beach shot, I had to a) aim the camera veeeery carefully and b) wait for a timely wave to come along and cover up the people who were out in the water.

2. Next week I'm flying to Detroit for Cheery-o's son's wedding. Then the week after that, I'm off to Texas to help out with my mom who recently had a knee replacement. I'm just a travelin' fool these days. That means lots of time in airports and on planes, so if you have any good, non-depressing books to suggest, I'm in need. I underestimated on my summer reading list-- I've already read all of them except two, and one of those I decided not to read and the other one (Kavalier and Clay) I'm saving up until after I get back from my trips.

3. Cute things around the internet: Oddly, the first time I saw this commercial, I'm pretty sure different music was playing (Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein"), but it's cute no matter what the music is.

4. Remember I told you that MadMax was in the midst of his summer obsession with golf, and we were totally sucked into watching the U.S.Open? It turned out to be well worth it--the finish on Sunday was a nail-biter that came down to the very last putt.  Even the world's worst golfer (me) was sitting on the edge of her seat.

Now we've moved on to the British Open, which I've learned this week is just called THE OPEN. Apparently no other designation is needed when you are playing in the home of golf. MadMax has had lots of time on his hands this week, which has meant the Golf Channel has been on more than I care to admit, and even just being in the same house without really watching I feel like I know more about THE OPEN than can possibly be good for my brain. Anyway, we're sucked in again. Thank god it finally started today so they could quit talking about it and actually play some golf.

5. We finally made it to see Inside Out last night. It's cute, and it goes off in a more intelligent direction than you expect based on the way it starts. Well worth seeing, even if you don't have kids to see it with. It's pretty funny, but there's a two-hanky moment at the end--you've been warned.

6. Laurel sent me a link to this great 21-day meditation series from Deepak Chopra and Oprah, which started this week. I've only done the first one so far but it was really interesting, and will possibly be the topic of a future blog post. You have to register, but each day's recording is free for five days. Check it out: Manifesting Grace Through Gratitude.

7. Both our kids have had milestone birthdays this summer--PellMel turned a quarter century, and MadMax turned 18. Which has made me horribly nostalgic. They really were adorable. So I'm subjecting you to pictures. I would apologize, but I'm not really sorry. :-)

I need to take more pictures--
this is the most recent one I could find
of the two of them. Summer 2014.

p.s. the lyrics in the post title are from my new favorite C&W song, "Real Life" by Jake Owen, here's the video: Real Life music video. For the record, I used to love to eat at Waffle House (I probably still would but there's not one around here). I wonder how many takes it took to get the shot where the waffle drops on his plate? 

further thoughts on marriage at midlife

We had a really nice vacation last week, so of course I'm having a bit of trouble getting back into the normal routine. I thought about skipping yet another post, but I have this one that I wrote a long time ago--before the first one on long-term marriages, as you'll be able to tell. I've had second thoughts (and third and fourth) about posting this (that's why it's been sitting in my drafts folder so long), but I'm sure I've told you worse before, so here you go.

This is a story I'm a little embarrassed to tell you: about a year ago, I discovered what I thought was incontrovertible evidence that Dean was having an affair. Actually, I had discovered it several months previously, but Dean is such a solid guy that it took me that long to suddenly realize, OHMYGOD, what is going on here?

So, I won't keep you in suspense--he wasn't, it was just a remarkably odd series of coincidences. But I didn't know that at first.

I had to figure out what to do, and that took awhile. In fact, it was several months before I said anything to him. Which surprised me. If you had asked me ahead of time, I would have told you in no uncertain terms that if my spouse had an affair, that would be the end of our marriage right then and there.

But when it happened to me (leaving aside for the moment that it really didn't), I had remarkably mixed feelings. A long marriage is a complicated thing. It's being tangled up with each other's families, knowing what it was like when you got your first real job, house-hunting together, inside jokes, taking vacations, changing diapers and going to seventh grade band concerts, making mutual friends, and a million other little ways that your lives get tied up together.

It seriously occurred to me that maybe I should just let it go. If I'd been that much in the dark about how he felt about me, and I didn't really want our marriage to end, maybe I'd be better off just continuing to act like I didn't know. It turns out I wasn't quite as adamant about monogamy as I thought I would be. Once I finally talked to Dean, and realized he wasn't having an affair, I still had a lot to think about.

It was after all that had happened that I read Dan Savage's book American Savage several months ago. The first chapter, it just so happens, is about monogamy, about how much our culture prizes it even though human beings aren't very good at it.

It's a very complicated topic, and Savage does a great job detailing all the ways that we are hypocritical about our ideas of what marriage "should" be like. It's thought-provoking reading, and if it's a topic that interests you, I highly recommend it.

Unusually for Savage, he comes down on the side of conservatives in this one area--he thinks marriage is really important, and that preserving marriages, preserving families, is worth doing, even if it is at the expense of strict monogamy. Is someone who has had one brief affair in 30 years of marriage bad at monogamy? Maybe not. Maybe letting that go is better than tearing a family apart.

Savage goes one step further, though, and says that in some cases, maybe it is OK to cheat if doing so will "save" your marriage. I just can't wrap my head around that. I mean, if both spouses have agreed up front that they're OK with this, I'm not going to argue--everybody gets to set up their marriage the way they want. But like most couples, Dean and I don't have that agreement, and I just can't see that all the lies, deception, and manipulation involved in cheating on your spouse can possibly be a good thing.

It's an argument that's far too complex to deal with in a blog post, but it's an interesting topic to bring up with your spouse. If you're like us, we'd never talked about the basic idea of monogamy, it was just a given in our marriage vows and in the way we thought about our marriage. Neither of us has ever been unfaithful, but it was good to actually talk about it, talk about how hard it has been at times, and how much it means to us that neither of us has ever had sex with anyone else.

So there were two reasons I never posted this--one was because it's probably TMI, and the other was because it didn't really go anywhere. Really it's like shooting fish in a barrel to say that hey, I'm opposed to cheating on your spouse. So, I don't have any wisdom to impart. Just stuff I've been thinking about. I will try to be more interesting next time.

p.s. It's occurring to me a day later that talking to your spouse about monogamy might lead to information you'd rather not know (see above). So, a la Hill Street Blues, be careful out there, people.

7ToF: only worry in the world, is the tide gonna reach my chair

1. Last week was the unplanned vacation, but next week is the planned one. We're headed to the Carolina coast for a week at the beach with Dean's dad and siblings. We do this every year (although the location is new this year) and it's always fun--Dean's family is great. So no posts from me next week.

2. I put myself on the waiting list for several books at our library's ebook site. I've been waiting for some of them for months. Then FOUR of them became available practically all at once (actually, five, but I cancelled one because I do have one or two things I have to do besides sit and read). Since we only get a two week loan on ebooks, I had to read like mad to get through them all.

By the time I was done, I was tired of reading. That has never happened to me before in my life. I've read until I could hardly hold my eyes open and I've read until my hands and arms were numb from holding the book up, but I've never been tired of reading before.

3. Since on average I read a couple of hours a day, it left me with some time to kill. Did I use it wisely, to complete household tasks that have been piling up? Well, maybe a few. But mostly I watched movies: Avengers 2 at the theater one afternoon, Jurassic World one evening with Dean and MadMax, and Monsters University on Amazon Prime while I was folding laundry the next afternoon. All three were fun. By then I was ready to start reading again. :-)

4. A freelance editing job for a local business fell in my lap this week. If I like them and they like me, there's a possibility that it will turn into something long-term. OMG, I might actually earn some money.

5. We inherited more chickens from a friend of a friend of a friend, so now we have eight--the most we've ever had. The new ones are a year old. They've only been here for two days, so they're not laying yet, presumably because they're traumatized from the move. Five of them are black astrolorps, the same kind we've had for awhile now. Then there are two Rhode Island Reds and what we think is a Wyandotte. Here's a picture of some of them hiding behind the coop:

They're beautiful, aren't they?

6. So a couple more thoughts on meditation, which I can tell bores most of you to tears, but it's what I've been thinking about--skip to #7 if you want. I left out a couple of quotations that I meant to put in. "Meditation is a chance to feel what you're feeling": in the name of being polite or socially acceptable or whatever, I often push away emotions I don't want to deal with at the moment. Meditation gives you a chance to process that stuff. Next--believe it or not, Hugh Jackman practices meditation and he said in an interview I read a couple of years ago "Meditation is sitting in the presence of God" or something like that, which reminded me of all the verses in the Old Testament about waiting on God. My soul wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from him (Ps 62.5). They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they shall mount up on wings like eagles (Is 40.31). 

And finally, I wanted to mention that I often don't like meditation while I'm doing it. I get frustrated, or I feel stupid for how bad I am at it, how rarely I am able to maintain that calm distance between my inner self and my monkey mind. It's not until later in the day that I will suddenly realize that I have more inner resources and a better perspective because I took that 3/5/20 minute break. So, that's all. I promise I'm done with that for awhile now.

Random peaceful summer scene

7. The reading report, from all that reading: People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (3 stars out of 5): beautifully written story of a book restoration expert who gets the chance of a lifetime to work on an ancient Jewish manuscript. Fascinating stories of the history of the book are mixed in with scenes from the book expert's life. Great read but it fell apart for me in the last third. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (4 stars): I'm late to the party on this one, I think everyone has already read it. Pulitzer Prize-winning book tracing the history of a couple of people who end up living through the siege of St. Malo at the end of WWII. The Liar by Nora Roberts (2 stars): the latest from the grand dame of romance novels. If you're not a Nora fan, this one won't change your mind. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (4 stars). Strange, fantasy/fable about a middle aged man who returns to the home of his youth and recovers a surreal set of memories. Its great value is the reminder that childhood is not always the carefree, innocent time our culture wants to believe--and that is not a bad thing. The stresses and worries of childhood make us who we are. I thought about giving it five stars--it is that beautifully written--but I was pretty sure I wouldn't think about it again after I finished it (one of the signs of a truly great book imo is that you think about it for days afterwards), and that has been true. Do or Die by Suzanne Brockmann (4 stars). Former Navy Seal Ian Dunn is released early from prison (where he is serving time for a crime he didn't commit) to solve a problem the feds are having. Not great literature, but as a summer page-turner, it is just about perfect. There's a baby who is always conveniently asleep--more of a prop than a real baby--and there's way too much dialog (but you can skim over that). Other than that, it is a great read.

There. I did this whole thing without complaining about the weather, are you proud? I've complained about it so much I'm starting to feel a little guilty. Suffice it to say that it has been cooler in the Carolinas than it has been here. Have a great week and I will post pictures when I get back.