I told you I'd be back today.

Today has been a fantabulous day, I tell you.  After getting the book from my friend, I decided to have a quiet day of cleaning and reading.  It was great.  I've read both the new book and the vampyre book, and I packed a few boxes, cleaned the kitchen & bathroom AND mopped.  AND went running with a friend AND made dinner- including a side salad.  Look at me go! 

This book, bittersweet, is really good.  It's very small chapters describing tiny pieces of her year/year and a half of brokenness.  She sees the times when she focused on the wrong thing and, like Lewis's house of cards, she realizes that her faith was never really there.  All she ever wanted was to get what she wanted, not to be molded by God. 

As I go through this tumultuous time in my life, I'm pleased to see that I'm not quite in the same place she was.  I do trust God and want to float on his waves more than I want to fight them.  This book is speaking to my heart, but it's also helping me to stand up and claim that vibrant faith I've been praying about.  I know that everything in my life right now is very good, so I need to stop moping. 

One of the most powerful chapters so far is one in which she addresses the poisonous command she once gave herself:  DO EVERYTHING BETTER.  She took each word apart and realized how she was (and many of us do) beating herself down with them.  I was happy when I realized that this was my own book and I could write in it.  I starred this section:

There is work that is only mine to do:  a child that is ours to raise, stories that are mine to tell, friends that are mine to walk with.  The grandest seduction of all is the myth that DOING EVERYTHING BETTER gets us where we want to be.  It gets us somewhere, certainly, but not anywhere worth being.

 I really love what she says are her jobs.  I love it.  I love the idea of fully inhabiting your life and seeing all parts of it as a unique vocation- not comparing yourself to others because they cannot do what you are supposed to do.  

I've been lax in my writing exercises

But not in my physical exercises, I can assure you.
Nor in my homework duties.
You see, I've just been burnt out these past 2 weeks from class.  30 hours of class in two weeks + 1200 pages of reading + my other class reading & homework + figuring out paper topics + searching/buying/checking out books for said papers.

Thus?  My brain is mush when I get home and I haven't felt like turning the computer on and blogging at night.  I'm sorry.  I don't apologize to you, because I know you're cool with it, but I apologize to my future self and its writing abilities.

To celebrate diminished brain powers and lack of writing finesse, I shall pretend that this blog is my twitter feed and just blurt out some of my thoughts.  Enjoy!

• I'm reading Chi Running and worked on my form a little bit yesterday.  Well, a lot.  A planned 30 minute, light run to work on form turned into an hour and a half or so of being lost, being hot, having to poop, worrying about the dog, backtracking, resting in a park, and finally asking for directions.  My time was still pretty good, though, and I'm not very sore today, so I think the form worked.
• I think I'm going to do my first paper on Manifestations/Representation/? of the Trinity in The Chronicles of Narnia. So, I'm kind of skimming my way through them right now.  
• My right butt cheek hurts.
• I'm glad to be back in Sonoma County after being away for all of this week and most of last week.
• We didn't have the DVR set to keep more than one episode of So You Think You Can Dance, so we have to watch Wednesday's ep online, but I already know who went home on Thursday.
• You know what my 4 bookcases look like, yes?  Well, I currently also have 7 books on the back of the couch, one on the end table behind me, one pile of 13 on the kitchen table, another pile of 5 on the table, 6 on top of the bookcase in the kitchen, and I returned 8 to the library earlier.  Almost all of the books mentioned were/are for school.  
• I'm really really in the mood to go to Southern California.  Hmmm...one more...
• I love my life:  being in school, being in ministry, being in California, being in love, being in shape.  It's all good.

Random Swedish Words

Or are they made-up Swedish words?  We wandered Ikea for a couple hours tonight, which, as always, started out lots of fun and ended up kind of like a death march.  Or at least an exhausted, "Oh, I don't care anymore, can't we just go?" march.  Your pick.

As always, I get lots of ideas at Ikea, very few of which we can actually implement, being that we don't own our home.  We did get a couple CD/DVD storage boxes and racks, so that should make life a little neater.  Not necessarily space-saving (at least the boxes), but nicer-looking.

Now I shall go to bed and read a little bit of Mere Christianity, which I guess I should have had read by Thursday, but oh well.  It'll happen.

Fantastic!

Today, I read 3 things: the end of Redeeming Love, which was nice; Hosea, which is in preparation for teaching tomorrow; and the credits at the end of Toy Story 3.

It was lovely.  I woke up after sleeping for 12 hours, and I went straight to my book and finished it.  It definitely is a Christian book, but it is well-written and not afraid of dark places.  I did roll my eyes a couple of times, because it always annoys me in books when people hold onto grudges or cockamamie ideas longer than they need to just for the book to go on longer.   But I would still recommend it.

Then I got to work on the yard, which was a sweatier job than I expected it to be.  I tied up the little dog in the front and let Underwood wander while Seth put up the front screen door (yeah!) and I raked, picked up piles, and praise the Lord- cut down our yellow rose bush.  I wasn't sure if there would be room in the greens bin for it, because it was so freaking tall, but I was determined and it is GONE! 

I puttered around the back yard a little bit, picking up weeds and a little poo, hosing off the clothes line, and just getting a move on. 

Seth and I then walked into town and saw TS3, which was good.  Yes, I like the Toy Story movies, but I'm not in love with them.  I probably like the first one best.  We laughed a bit and I cried a lot at the end, though I was fighting it, so I got a headache.  I enjoyed the fact that the Gipsy Kings sang "You've Got a Friend in Me" in Spanish, and, although it wasn't in the credits, one of the pieces of music in a sad part definitely sounded like "A Heart Full of Love" from Les Mis. 

We walked to the post, office, split a burrito at the mall, I got a decaf coffee with a Starbucks gift card, and we played in Brookstone.  Lovely.  We played Rock Band, but only for 3 songs, because I was much more tired than I thought, with a bit of a headache. 

Tomorrow is church, helping friends with a luncheon they're having after church to talk about their missions in Mexico (enchiladas!), and teaching tomorrow night.  It will be a great day.  Smooches!