A Year in the Life of a White Oak

I got the bright idea to take a picture of the fabulous tree in our back yard at about the same time of day one day each month. I made a (very) rudimentary video, which I can't figure out how to preview, so we'll just see what happens when this posts 😳!

In Which Goldilocks Gets a Chair of Her Own

Except I don't actually have gold locks, and I didn't break & enter to try out different chairs. Dr. M called me on his way home from school & asked if I wanted him to stop & pick up the chair we'd decided to get. Of course I said yes - no more shopping for me! So I went from this...

To this (with my wigwam as a chair cover)...

To our first new piece of furniture since 1997!

Oh! Oh! And I didn't even notice in the store - it's a recliner too!

So even though I didn't really want a recliner, I have one & I'm sitting in it right now with my feet up & I love it. Sweet!

Now I'm going to see how it works as a crochet chair...

Riches Such as These

Last night Dr. M posted pictures from our back yard. As I was scrolling through them (go here to see for yourself) I kept thinking about how very fortunate we are to have this little house in our small town directly in the middle of our two jobs (40 miles south for me, 35 miles north for Dr. M). Yes, we spend too much on gas (maybe someone could give me a Prius for Christmas?), and our car insurance rate is higher because of the number of miles we put on the car, but being able to do work we enjoy and still be able to pay our bills makes it worth it.

I’ve been reading The Great Emergence (how Christianity is changing and why), by Phyllis Tickle. I’m only about 33% done (according to my Kindle), but I’m fascinated by all the things (& people!) in history that have been (literally) world changing: the printing press, Galileo, the automobile, Freud, Einstein, Marx – just to name a few. Each of those people rocked the core of what people believed about themselves, God, and society. It’s really interesting to me to consider that impact, sitting in my 2013 back yard hundreds of miles from where I grew up. It makes the idea of returning to some mythical golden days seem nonsensical to me. Would those be the days just before or just after Luther nailed his theses to the door?

Yesterday was the first day that I seriously thought about trying to figure out how to get my bike to the bike path for a ride. A couple of things are stopping me – we haven’t put the bike rack on the car yet, and I’m averaging less than 2 miles a day so far. Not really worth the bother to drive over there when riding in the neighborhood is fine for now. And also, there’s the delay factor: what seems like an excellent idea at 3:00 dims considerably after two more hours of work and an hour drive home. Ha!

I’m rambling around because I wanted to write a poem today. I’m letting my mind drift in the hope that it will get snagged on a creative branch & stick long enough to put some non-prosical words here (ooh – maybe it’s working – I just made up a word!). Hmmm…

Bees flowers birds
Tomatoes on the vine
A bicycle in blue
Your hand in mine

Who needs the seven seas
With riches such as these?

Wordless Wednesday

The Commute

Driving home from work

on a glorious day

makes me appreciate

the journey

almost as much

as the destination