Half-Season

You know those days that are neither spring nor summer ... neither summer nor autumn ... neither autumn nor winter ... neither winter nor spring? These are the half-season days, the magical twilight between change and change.

Today, and the last few days, have been such. I wear a long-sleeved shirt to work, but I wear it with shorts. Going to Starbucks for coffee to get me through an evening of extra work, I step up to the counter and order hot coffee... and it seems right. Socks feel good; my feet are no longer happy to be bare to the night breezes. The skin on my arms and legs grows shivery sometimes.

I love every moment of it. During the dog-days that we had earlier this month I was miserable, hounded by the panting heat---licked up with sweat and daily headaches. But the aurae grow sweet and cool. Suddenly the opaque whiteness of thin sheets seems too thin, too translucent. The silent, mood-receptive part of my mind dreams in rich colors. It craves flame-orange and russet and a blue like plums drowned in wine.

My thoughts become more nimble each day. My imagination is sharpening to the taste of approaching fall. I want to crisp forth in frost-edged crimson words. Fairies throng the halls---I walk in amber light and sleep on greenness. I am a gay careless smile; I am a whisper; I am the memory you forgot one day when you bent down to tie your shoe.

This season fills me with images. I tasted your laughter yesterday, O Green Tree. It tasted like rain. How many bits of bits are you, gentle reader? How many parts of parts? Have you ever been in love with a whole? I have. I am.

Oh, God, I'm so happy! Is this what you made me for?

It Just Keeps Getting Better...

“Hi! It’s cuteness defined!” – Casey, greeting Charity, who is apparently cuteness defined.

“I gasp like a koi out of water!” – Casey

“Well, I look cute, so I don’t really care about the rest of it.” – Marjorie, grinning.
“Marjorie!” – Casey

“I’m pretty sure the aforementioned hugging didn’t happen…” – David following Charity (who apparently didn’t hug him enough the first time) into the room.

“I had to walk to school barefoot…. Upstairs both ways!” – Dad, giving his rendition of a homeschool kid’s memories.

“You, Casey, are safe from marrying a guy named Beerwagon. The rest of us, however, are sitting ducks.” – Christy
“I think I can venture to say that I will never marry a man named Beerwagon.” – Laura
“Don’t say that, Laura! You’ll be the first to go!” – Casey (paraphrase)

Typos: the Laura Collection---The Things We Could Have Published...

"Human pride and willful disobedience will not go unpunished, as noted in the Background Information."

"It was a scandalous to think"

Leonardo da Vinci painting: "Virgin on the Rocks" ["of" would sound a lot less alcoholic, and would be correct]

Erasmus "giving fodder to Luther's fire for reformation"

"Decide as a group that validity must be measured in light of God's Word." [Can't give someone a command to "decide," definitely can't command a group opinion, and validity is the only part of argumentation that is not governed by its content, being a question stricly of the form.]

"We have highlighted key examples from our previous studies of the struggle people have had all through history to focus attention on the temptation to worldliness that is normal in our fallen world." [try diagramming that!]

"Their beliefs haven't changed mush." [reported by the boss herself]

Scholarly Renaissance plays "like the Greek plays (only with less good language)"

"Adulterers are not condemned to slavery" [in Utopia; actually they are]

"From a comgination of two World Book articles" [typo for “combination”]
Curricular Rhyme Week:

"dense with intensely meaningful events" [three times!]

"highlight God's amazing foresight, grace, and glory in this small part of the story" [this one scans, too]

alliteration is also good: "the church suffered several serious setbacks" [WB's fault, in all fairness]

Luther "caused a (hitherto) permanent split between the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant churches."

"The eyes in one self portrait peer proufoundly" [for “profoundly”]

"even though we went through six wives" [actually "he"]

"Armenius" [and the Armenians! :-)]

"The greatest master of European sculpture in the 1600's was sculpture for the Tomb of Pope Gian Lorenzo Bernini of Italy. Bernini was a superlative craftsman and also an outstanding architect. His Alexander VII shows the wide range of his talent." [what the WB article said originally, before some really weird scrambling made the artist the pope: "The greatest master of European sculpture in the 1600's was Gian Lorenzo Bernini of Italy. Bernini was a superlative craftsman and also an outstanding architect. His sculpture for the Tomb of Pope Alexander VII shows the wide range of his talent."]

"Mary was a Roman Catholic queen who had been reared in France and freshly widowed." [is “fresh widow” anything like “fresh fish”?]

"This is also another week in which Catholics and Protestants are tightly divided."

"Excerpted from a combination of three World Book articles entitled Baroque, Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting."

"Many resources about Henry VIII explain or illustrate how he chopped off the heads of his wives and chief ministers. Additionally, they describe how he divorced and remarried numerous times. Our chosen resource, Brilliant Bits: Henry VIII, by Richard Brassey, provides a light-hearted look at these and other aspects of this king's life. However, flip through it to make sure that it is suitable for your student." [“Light-hearted”??? And how do you “illustrate” chopping off a head while remaining “suitable for your student”?]

Fun Facts to Know and Tell:

Michelangelo is said to have memorized the entire Divina Comedia of Dante.

Charles V had an overgrown jaw so large that it was hard for him to chew.

Charles V was only twenty years old when he sat in judgment on Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms.

The Pieta owes much of its power and novelty to the fact that it is simple, almost plain, compared to the over-dramatic poses common in sculpture of the time (which sacrifice their realism).

Martin Luther invented the concept of congregational singing.

Katarina von Bora was the one who first proposed marriage in her relationship with Martin Luther.

The Rhine and the Rhone rivers rise 15 miles apart in the Swiss Alps and run in opposite directions.

Global warming would flood the Netherlands. (Of course, WB doesn't feel the need to note that they were flooded to start with!)

Some parents are cruel: for instance, those who would produce the names "Plantagenet Somerset Fry," "Deborah Mazzotta Prum," or "Charles Coffin" (to simply read across one row of authors named in the RACs).

Mary Queen of Scots had a full coronation ceremony when she was only nine months old, including miniature scarlet-and-ermine robes and a full-size ceremonial sword.

Elizabeth I enjoyed robust health.

Cortez, intrepid adventurer and ruthless warrior, survived all his battles only to die of dysentary.

Balboa, NOT Cortez "silent upon the peak of Darien," was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean.

Sir Isaac Newton was the posthumous son of a Lincolnshire farmer.

Mom objecting that someone took her swimsuit and didn't return it: "I didn't do it! I don't even bathe!" --Christy
“You don’t?” – Laura
“I mean, I don’t go swimming much. Of course I bathe.” – Christy

"If life gives you lemons, make lemonade--that's what I always say." --Mom
"What if life gives you lemmings?" --Christy
"Follow them off the cliff, of course!" --Mom

"We almost never say always." --Mom

"My boss loves me. She has to." --Christy

"Cheer up--you'll be dead soon!" -- Mom

“You may not be aware of this, but I feel like being brilliant today. I just need to figure out how.” – David to Mom

“….before I get my hands dirty with the blood of the planning list…” – David on the phone with who-knows-who

“Are you planning to do third person limited omniscience and stuff in this…?” – Brittainy to Christy
::Christy grins at Brittainy::
“Oh.” – Brittainy
“Yup.” – Christy
“You mean, I need to do them.” – Brittainy
“I love it when roommates get to the point where they can communicate with a look.” – Christy
“Well, the batting eyelashes said a lot.” – Brittainy

"So, if you think about it, classical education is based on the conquest of indigenous peoples" – Christy, to Mom and David, during an informal planning meeting

“Entropy speeds up when Brittainy is not present.” – Christy

“Your eyes are speaking again!” – Brittainy to Christy

“Well, I’ll be dead in a month because you’re dead now. Let that comfort you.” – Casey to Mom, Dad, and Christy

The Other Side of "Love Never Fails"

I don't know whether you've ever spent time contemplating a certain aspect of the phrase "love never fails." I certainly hadn't until about mid-way through my junior year of college, when the phrase "I love you" suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

No, I didn't fall in love. Quite the contrary. A situation arose in which it became extremely difficult for me to go on loving a particular friend. It was then that I learned the other side of "love never fails."

You probably know what I mean, gentle reader, if you belong to a family. It's that moment of "I feel like braining my brother, but I still love him." It's the cost of loving. It's a soul-deep conviction that, try as you might, you will never be able to get rid of a fundamental commitment to that other person---that you can't get out of loving your brother. It's about faithfulness. It's a commitment, at many times a great comfort .... and sometimes it's the hardest thing in the world.

Example. Say, "I love some one. I am utterly in favor of him (or her). I find him (her) amazing, marvelous, a work of God that I could not believe possible, except he (she) actually exists, and so I must believe. I ask nothing better in this life than to spend it helping him (or caring for her) as he (she) seeks to glorify God in all he (she) does.

"What I love most about him (her), I think, is the way he (she) loves God. When I see him (her) adoring my Lord beside me, or near me, my heart could burst for joy. It is a pleasure beyond imagination simply to know that the same Holy Spirit indwells both myself and such a person. I cannot contain my gratitude to God for the gift of this friend, who exhorts, encourages, and draws me along the pilgrim path to Heaven.

"I am swept away in awe, and I would do anything, even lay down my life, to help him (her) become even more enthralled with Jesus Christ, because that is what would make him (her) ultimately happy, and would bring still more glory to my Savior."

That's the way you feel when you're thinking about it rightly. It's a total commitment. But the total commitment implies a total value that you have for the object of your love, and total value (as we learn in economics classes) implies cost---value is "what you are willing to pay".

What I am asking you to consider is that there is a great price to be paid. When God gives you love for someone, that love doesn't fail. Or, put another way, it never quits. It never goes away. It doesn't know the words "give up" or "let go," as pertains to it's hold on your heart. If God gives you someone to love, as far as I've ever understood or experienced it, you have to go right on loving that person until you are released... which means, I guess, forever.

Have you thought about that? I mean, really thought about it? I hadn't until a situation came up in which I wanted to walk away from my friend, wanted to stop loving, and found to my shock that I had been tossing around "I love you" as if there was no cost attached. When it came to paying the price of love---in humility, in bearing my friend's burdens, in admitting my own sin, in asking forgiveness, in forgiving her wrongs against me, and in committing to work towards reconciliation together---I found all at once that I was strongly inclined to run away. But love doesn't give up, and now, years later, I still can't rid myself of that love for my friend (who was almost like a sister) and my desire for her good.

Relationships can turn sour so quickly, with such heartbreaking ease. What was yesterday childhood's easy friendship is today's live-and-die dependence on one another. The strain is great. The need for grace is great. I'm grateful that love never fails, because otherwise it surely would fail under such a load. Still, the fact that it never fails means that you can't ever say "I've sinned enough against you, and I've hurt you, and I'm terribly sorry about it, and I think we should just call it quits. I can't love you properly, so I'm going to try not to love you at all."

No. Sorry. A Christian can never walk away from loving another Christian, particularly if God has put those two Christians together in some meaningful way (as roommates, as friends, as siblings, as parents and children, as husband and wife, etc.). As long as God keeps you with that person, you need to be pleading for grace to love them appropriately (by "appropriately" I mean 1 Corinthians 13, not selfishness, a crush, a manipulative relationship, etc.).

And even if God does release you from daily interaction, you still have to love from afar, not in bitterness or self-righteousness, but with a sincere heart for God's best in the other person. Love is for life, both for living it and for the entire duration of it. And I just want to ask, "Have you thought about that? Have you really considered it? Do you know what you're committing to when you say 'I love you' to another person? Do you realize what you're promising?"

That's the solemn part, but here's the flipside that makes it wonderful. When you do find out---as I did---about the cost of loving, you may find as I did that paying a price makes love and the object of your love far more precious. My family, each member of it, is more to me than anything else on earth. I sometimes think that my brothers, sisters, and parents are my very lifeblood. If even one of them died, my tears would be my food indefinitely. Similarly so with my friends.

As to my God, I have paid the uttermost price for loving Him. I have renounced the world in which I was born, the pleasures of the flesh, the pleasures of the eyes, the pride of life, endless moments of sensory gratification in a variety of categories, and the option of living for myself. I have paid with my soul. Granted, my soul belongs to God already, for He made it---but because God gave me free will (while yet retaining full sovereignty, a mysterious paradox in which I believe without understanding) it is nevertheless a true cost to me to freely offer my soul and life back to Him.

This great cost contributes (though it is not the sole contributor) to the fact that He is more precious to me than anything in this or any universe. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend. This is the strength of my heart and the delight of my eyes, my portion forever. Whom else have I in Heaven? No one. There is nothing on earth that I desire more than His person, presence, fellowship, and what gifts of grace He is pleased to give me.

He is exquisitely beautiful. He has such a sense of humor! He works tirelessly, but always knows how and when to play. He teaches me about everything. It doesn't matter what we do together, so long as I'm with Him. No one laughs at my silliness with me as He does; and no one cries for my self-caused suffering as He does. No one knows me better and no one loves me more. No one ever paid so great a price for loving me, far greater than I could offer---but no one can ever tell me that He doesn't deserve all I can give to love Him. This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend.

Do you see, gentle reader? Do you understand? The very costliness of love is part of what makes it so sweet, so rich, and so powerful. When you think of the daily price you pay to love the people whom God gives you to love, rejoice! It is making them precious to you. And dearest reader, whatever else you do, when you think daily of the price Jesus paid to demonstrate that He yearns over you, may it make Him so precious that the tears rush to your eyes and your heart bursts for humble joy. For, you know, it works both ways. Love is more precious both when we pay and when someone else pays for us. Both enhance it to a white-hot brilliance.

Beloved, beloved, do you not know? Have you not heard? We live in the season of singing, and it is God who sings over us.

The Anti-Beard-Speech Big Leagues

In college, I specialized in elaborate arguments against beards for young men. I honed my phrases and syntax. I worked to discover new appeals, new means of persuasion. I labored over the anti-beard speech, and thought to make it my own.

In a single day---today---I have been forced to admit that I'm simply out of the big leagues. No matter how I work at it, I will never equal Dad in the delivery and execution (and sheer maleness) of his anti-beard speech.
I did not know that my father had this little gem stored away among his lawyer-crafted stock. I had no idea. But as I stood there hunting for the stuffed-crust pizza amid a herd of teenagers, I caught out of the corner of one ear my father's voice and paused to listen... and then forgot the pizza and stood enthralled.

I must set the scene. Dad was lounging nonchalantly against the warehouse wall on Packing Day, a festival held at Lampstand Press whenever we have mass shipping to be done, on which teenagers from all over the church gather to be paid for packing our boxes and eating our pizza. It was lunchtime, hence the pizza, and Dad had a piece of melted-cheese goodness in one hand. Every so often he would gesture with it towards the three or four people in front of him. One was a small boy, perhaps ten years old. Another was Nate, my 26-year-old eldest brother. The third was a boy-man aged 20, on whose chin sprouted the dubious growth of adolescence.

I only caught the tail end of the discussion, and can only quote it imperfectly:

"Now, a man," my father was saying, with a wave of his pizza towards Nate, "might not shave. And if he doesn't, his beard-bristles are thick enough and dark enough that he will only look more manly that way. And a boy," here the pizza gestured towards the little round-eyed fellow, "won't find any difference between shaving and not shaving." My father glanced at me, "Same thing for girls." He went on, and here leveled his twinkling blue eyes on the 20-year-old, "But the one person, if you think about it,"---pausing for effect---"the one person who really benefits from shaving, is the person between the ages of 16 and grown-up, who, without shaving, simply looks like a downy chick."

"Ouch!" said the boy-man, not offended but definitely feeling the jab.
"Score!" I thought, adding that it was a nice touch on Dad's part to say "grown-up" rather than setting a definite age.
Nate merely smiled, and the little boy's eyes perhaps grew a little rounder, thus illustrating perfectly the different between a man and a boy.

Now I have grown accustomed and even jaded to downy adolescents during my years in college. "Boys will be boys." But today, watching a master at work, I feel persuaded that boys will not always be boys, and that eventually some of them may become men capable of arguing with as much poise, cool logic, and twinking, uncondescending compassion as my splendid father.

Rainy Day Dreams

I love rain. On a day like this I could ask nothing more than to curl up in a leather chair, preferably in a garnet-red velvet bathrobe, with cello concertos pouring out of really good speakers, and read Proverbs or Spurgeon or Pilgrim's Progress or The Valley of Vision or the Song of Songs.

Or I could spend the day illuminating a space of parchment, using jewel-tones of ruby, amethyst, sapphire, topaz, emerald, and black, to enlarge a single capital letter---to inscribe and adorn a single line of life-transforming wisdom. What line would I choose? Perhaps "And the trumpets sounded for him on the other side" from Pilgrim's Progress. Perhaps "This is my beloved and this is my friend" from the Song. Perhaps "There is a time for all things."

There is a time for all things, and today is not the day to fulfill my rain-sweetened dreams. I have work to do. But my work is good; it is craftsmanship of its own kind. I love to labor over "the cathedral," which is my name for the Redesign project.

Meanwhile, just the dreaming of rainy-day dreams makes me happy. :-)

Delirious

Praise God Almighty I'm FREE AT LAST!!!!!!!!

Fire the cannons! Ring out the bells upon this joyous day! Somebody please bring me sparkles, fireworks, suns, galaxies! I want to light up the universe! Oh happy, happy, happy me! I finished "Poetry Analysis"!

Okay, well, technically it's a draft, and technically there's still a lot to be added to it, and technically I still have four equally-dauting documents to go, but I don't care about all that. I have something to put up for the natives so that they won't be restless any more. I can sleep tonight! Oh glorious, wonderful, bliss-crowded moment! Oh the kindness of God and the gladness of me!!!

The New Austen-World

It is strange, but up until very recently I somehow managed to miss the fact that the whole world (speaking hyperbolically) has gone Austen-happy. Austen spinoffs such as Austenland (a recent book by one of my sister's favorite authors) and Becoming Jane (a movie which I will not see, because I have read and heard some reviews that indicate it to be rather regrettable) are coming out in droves. I was shocked to find an entire rack of Austen-derived novels in Borders. Today I spent the morning and early afternoon doing catch-up office work while my sister-in-law worked the CD-producer and watched the new Pride and Prejudice. I caught part of the last third of the movie.

All this adds up to some thoughts, which I want to turn into comments. It will probably take me a few posts to get through all of them, but I'll begin with Mr. Darcy because he seems to be an icon of the Austen spinoff world.

I don't know how to describe the attitude taken towards Darcy in this Austen-world---not because I can't, but because the most appropriate words are... shall we say... distasteful. Let me attempt to express it by saying "Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot" and, almost as an afterthought, "hard-to-get."

I'm not really surprised. I am merely pained. Though Darcy is not my favorite of Austen's male characters (that honor goes to Mr. Knightly), Austen achieved in him a real personality. Her triumph lies in the fact that I think of him as "him" rather than "it." And, truthfully, I hate to see him trampled.

Why, I wonder, does popular culture operate by taking beautiful, complex things and reducing them to a simplicity that has but one (or at most two) dimensions of appeal---and that appeal made only of the crudest stuff? The new movie is visually stunning, I grant freely, but it has reduced Austen's characters and especially her language to a pale shadow of their former splendid brightness.

I am perhaps especially aware of this because I spent a great deal of time revising the script and coaching for a production of Pride and Prejudice once. Possibly I am also more aware of it because Austen's collected works have been my primary pleasure reading during five years of college. On Sunday afternoons I would take my volume of Austen and go find a place in the sun, eventually thereby coming to the point where I can say I have read each of her works (including the posthumously published epistulary novel) at least five or six times.

I have the greatest possible respect for Austen precisely because her works are intricate enough to hold my attention for so long, even after so many readings. I believe that she provides valuable wisdom in her stories, and I know I have learned a great deal from them. It has been especially interesting to me to note how my tastes have changed over the years. As a freshman, Pride and Prejudice was my undisputed favorite. By the middle of my junior year, I loved Mansfield Park best. Now, Emma is my beloved Austen work. Each has contributed something to my life. The first taught me that pride, hasty judgments, and a conceited opinion of one's own intelligence are destructive, but that humility brings joy. The second showed me that patience and self-control are beautiful. The third revealed that there is redemption, love, and the possibility of change, even for girls who don't see their own faults.

These lessons are well worth learning, but in the Austen-world they have vanished. The new Pride and Prejudice movie teaches that passion, a sharp wit, and a good deal of feministic principle (not to mention the occasional disrespect and rudeness) will win one a good-looking, inexplicably attractive, but otherwise moody and distant husband. Delightful. Austenland satirizes the common women's fantasy about Mr. Darcy, but also fulfills it. Mixed messages. Becoming Jane I will not evaluate because I have not experienced it. My reviewers, however, lead me to believe that it is more of the same stuff that went into the latest Pride and Prejudice.

I will say nothing about such new novels as Darcy's Daughters or The Second Mrs. Darcy, because I know nothing more of them than the fact that their prose is clumsy and starkly imitative, lacking not only charm and ease but also basic believability.

All this, I know, will pass. Ten years hence there will be another fad, and twenty years hence I will not longer have to flinch at the casual lusty reference to "Mr. Darcy in a wet shirt." For now, however, permit me a moment of aching regret. A moment is all I ask. After that, in the spirit of Austen (though certainly not of Austen-world), I will try to laugh at my discomfort and cheerfully endure what cannot be helped.

Dear Austen, if I could apologize to you for what my contemporaries have done to your exquisite works---if I could speak to you across time and space and find a way to say "I'm sorry for it," I would. Since I cannot, and since I imagine it will be a matter of little importance when I first meet you in Heaven, I will push away these painful thoughts and fix my imagination on that day. Oh, how I shall enjoy taking your hand and claiming you for a sister!

Have you ever considered, gentle reader, how great a gift it is that, by divine adoption, we can claim a great number of the world's best writers as our kindred?

Wellsir, Black!

Wellsir, she did it. One morning about ten days ago I come down to find Mama bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, measuring round the kitchen and the office/den.

"What's up?" I asked, cautious-like. I knew that particular gleam in her eye.
"Daddy and I," she says, sort of shimmering in excitement, "think that we can set up three fishtanks and punch some holes in the walls for tubes and have it all on one system!"
"Aha," I said.

Wellsir, ten days later they are on their way. They tore out all the cabinets and counters in the office/den, and painted it black. I mean pitch-black. Not navy, not gray, and definitely not mauve. Black. Black like the inside of a cow at 12:00 AM on the longest night of the year. There isn't another dark-colored room in the house, but they painted that little ten-by-ten room off the foyer black. B-L-A-C-K.

Three-quarters of the household just sort of sat stunned---all agog, you know---when she told them what color she was going to paint. But they didn't have long to be stunned. Dad said "go ahead" and twenty-four hours later it was done. My Mama can paint a blue streak (and lots of other colored streaks, too). I've known her to redo three or four rooms in a single weekend.

I had hurt my ankle (took a wrong step on the one that I sprained a year and a half ago, so I spent a few days treating it gingerly) and couldn't really paint. I lay on the floor instead and watched the black creeping up the walls around me. It was like being swallowed by a giant spider. I think I made more jokes about funeral homes that night than in the five years previous.

Wellsir, once Mama had it good and black, she bought a sharp new rug of black, pale green, and browns. Then she got black strip-shelving with mahogany shelves and brought in mahogany furniture. The trim she left white. The new fish take (80 gallons) is on an all-black stand, and the 30-gallon hexagonal is mahogany, so she got it figured pretty well.

They set up the family TV on the shelves and surrounded it with the family VHS and DVD collection. Mama's been wanting a place for all that media awful bad. The other wall is lined with the fishtanks. They figure the tanks will have settled down and filtered through and cleaned out enough for fish by Christmas (salt water tanks are awful tricky business, but they've had 'em before and been crazy about 'em ever since that Hawaii trip twelve or fifteen years ago, so they know what they're doing).

There's a futon couch comin' in from World Market, too... only that's later. Backordered. Meanwhile there's talk of running a world of tubes to the basement for filtration and refugium and half a dozen other technical terms---looks like the laundry room is a goner, if not the mudroom too.

The black room (the parents want to name it "the Grotto" 'cause that's a sort of underwater cavern) has become the most popular place in the house since Mama painted it. She sure does know how to decorate. No one ever used to darken its door, but now its dark inside they can't hardly stop comin'. And just like she said, the new fishtank sorta blends into the walls, and the water and lights and TV screen pop out, and it's gorgeous.

Wellsir, wouldn't you know that she'd do something brilliant? She always does.

In Honor of Laura's Last Day...

I present the latest collection of quotes. Let all and sundry mourn the passing of Laura, friend to yours truly since age 16, employee of Lampstand Press for the past six summers, and now off to be a Hilldale senior and a who-knows-what-but-it-will-be-marvelous after that.

Laura, dear, I salute you. :-)

“Why don’t you just call them ‘super-friends’?” – Mom on the notorious difficulty of defining Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship.

“The Bookshelf is now officially in its pumpkin coach.” – David

“My life is haunted by dentists.” – Christy
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” – Casey

“Just so you’re clear about being smitten. Unclear smitten-ness is the cause of half the misery in the world.” – Christy
“I tend to agree with that.” – Laura
“Though it’s also the cause of half the humor in the world. Look at romantic comedies.” – Brittainy

“Okay, good. Then I’m going to unplug myself.” – Yvonne
“Don’t do it, Yvonne! Hang on to the life-support!” – Christy

“We are good like yellow.” – David
“Yellow?” – Mom
“Um… ‘good like jello’?” – David
“Ooo-kay.” – Mom

"Diet of Worms. The 'diet' comes from a Latin word 'dies,' meaning 'day.' So a 'diet' is basically just a 'day of proceedings.'" - Dad "In some small way, knowing that, I feel my world is more at peace now." - Laura. (What makes it funny is that she was part-way serious.)

“We came to a conclusion. My standard for murder is higher than hers. And I feel good about that.” – David on his conversation with Mom

Another Brainstorming Session: Mom and Dave
“Your Share & Save ‘native land’?” – Mom
“Um…” – David
“Share & Save Mother Ship! I like it!” – Mom
“Wow.” – David
“How about ‘your Share & Save Garden’?” – David
“How about ‘your Share & Save spinning stool’?” – David

You Know That Moment...

.... when you are IMing someone across a room and throughout the conversation you are both pretending the other person isn't right there, and then, in the middle of saying goodbye, you zing them... and then you glance up and grin, covered with glory, sparkle, and mischief?

It's a wonderful moment. <:0)

Somebody Brought A Baby to the Office...

.... and as a direct result, my water bottle lid has been christened with baby drool.

I am deeply honored. :-)

Donne and Mr. Chuckleford: Rivals for My Affections

I permit myself a weird post every so often. This is it. Hang on to your hats. ;-)

I believe I have mentioned somewhere or other that Brittainy and I have our beds set up in an L-shape so that we sleep toe-to-toe catty-corner, but can have head-t0-head talks. This morning we had one of our propped-up-on-pillows-head-to-head-pre-work-day chats. We usually reserve these for Saturday mornings, but today there was too much to tell.

"I dreamed," I said, "that I was pastry-cook to a bunch of seventeenth-century English poets."
"Rageneau!" she cried, meaning Cyrano.
"I hadn't thought of that," I said, "but it wasn't like Cyrano. It was like a prison camp... well, actually, it wasn't a prison camp so much as a tavern and a shop and someplace where I lived and some building over here"--I gestured--"where the poets lived, and there was this atmosphere of political intrigue. I guess that's from all the reading I was doing this week about John Bunyan for Pilgrim's Progress. Anyway, one of the poets was actually the explorer Frobisher, and he kept suspecting me of trying to poison John Donne. Oh, and I think I was half in love with Donne, whose wife (first or second?) had conveniently died sometime before the dream started... or maybe this was before he met his wife. It's all very confusing."

She laughed. In fact, she laughed hard and at considerable length. So did I. When we finally got to the office, however, I found that I was not the only one with strange nighttime visions...

"I dreamed that I was in this war where I and my band of lost boys had to defend this house against an attack by one of my best friends and his minions," David told us, wide-eyed. "This is the second time I've dreamed I was in a battle to the death with a friend, but at least I always wake up before we actually get down to the death duel."

Strange times. Then I sat down and discovered that my desk fountain, Mr. Chuckleford (with whom, according to Casey, I am in love), was not working properly.

"Mr. Chuckleford!" I cried. "You are not your own merry self!"

I finally managed to resuscitate Mr. Chuckleford by judicious addition of water (some had evaporated over the weekend, leading no doubt to his somber and trickling mood). Soon he was bubbling along as chuckly as ever. I found myself crooning to him. "Aw, there's a happy Mr. Chuckleford.... is he happy again?" Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Brittainy giving me one of those "what in the world?" looks.

"Um..." I said, "I guess I forgot that this isn't Children's Ministry and Mr. Chuckleford is my suitor, not one of my kids."

So today I learned:

1) Don't mix babytalk and romance.
2) It's weird to be in love with a fountain and a dead poet at the same time.
3) I don't ever want to be a pastry-cook to starving artists in the middle of a politically-charged climate in England. By the way, I think the "pastry-cook" part came from the fact that I made a pie on Saturday.

Life is amazing. I'm enjoying the adventure like all get-out. :-D