Things I wish I liked...

1) oatmeal
2) downhill skiing
3) housecleaning
4) cottage cheese
5) improvising (aka, flying by the seat of my pants... i'm scared to call it that. someone might defenestrate me using my beltloops...)
6) stove-top cooking (see immediately preceding item)
7) small talk
8) large groups
9) 48hrs> leftovers > 12hrs
10) mornings

I'm making efforts... particularly regarding item #5.

Anyone care to mentor me in fine art of dealing well with chaos?

Still breathing...

Just a note... I haven't fallen off the face of the planet.

Since my last post, I have:
- finished my 4th semester of grad school
- started my last semester of internship
- spent some sweet time with my neighbors and other neighborhoody-folk
- gotten quite a few decent rides in, including a 60-miler on Tuesday
- begun to appreciate the work of physical therapists
- decided that my goal for the summer is to become a morning person

We'll see how that last one goes...

Two Funnies

While I'm busy avoiding a paper for school,* I thought I'd share two funny exchanges from today.


Intentional Bad Joke #1: On the way home from out-of-town, we passed a sign that said something to the effect of:

"Welcome to Superior, CO" (to which I chuckled and said, "Just know we're better than you...")


Unintentional Bad Joke #2: I've been sneezing all day. I managed to live 27 years of my life with no particularly pesky allergies. Then we moved to Denver. While gearing up for a particularly annoying sneeze, I proceeded to make a series of funny faces...

Jeromie: "Wow, you're making some rather Calvin-esque faces there..."
Me: "What do you mean, Calvinist faces?!"
Jeromie: "Calvin-esque. Like Calvin & Hobbes."
Me: "Oh."

Also... we got some fun toys yesterday. :-)

Kahtoola Micro-spikes

We took them for a short spin on the Gregory Canyon & Saddle Rock Trails in Boulder. Now I'd much rather be back out & hiking, but alas... papers call. I should get back to them.

* Hey, now... it's spring break AND a Saturday AND I'm in the library.

J. & Silent Liz

Oh, goodness... I haven't watched any of those movies in years. Maybe I should remedy that this weekend while Jeromie's away at a weekend class. :-)

I admit, I've been silent around here lately. Some weeks the ol' blog is just not at the top of my priority list or, alternatively, I have nothing of substance to say. Sometimes I just feel like being quiet, and I'm alright with that.

The last few weeks have been a jumble. A combination of under-the-weather or injured, stressed, and busy has dominated Casa del Rand, but we're alive.

We're alive, and actually laughing quite a bit. :-) Sometimes we get so busy that we forget how to be light-hearted with each other. No more of that... my newfound goal for this next year is to find plenty of (healthy) opportunities to laugh and smile and invite others to do the same. I discovered it in the middle of last night's Fishes meeting, but it makes sense in hindsight... I've become quite the fan of "comic interludes" lately.

Aside from laughing, meetings, paper-writing and internship, I've finally hit a good pattern for training. Like I mentioned a few posts back, I'm training for the CO Bike MS ride in June. I'm also hoping to run the Denver Marathon in October. Right now, barring injury, they both look doable. Either way, it's so good to get out and move around.

Anyway... just felt like checking in.

Got anything to add to my barrel of laughs?

Little things

Here are a few "little" (read: maybe not so little) things that have been bringing me a lot of joy lately...

- crisp, cool days
- running on slightly crunchy snow
- running at all
- cranberry-apple juice
- good conversation
- hearing or reading poetry from friends
- God's presence in the community of His people
- home-cookin', a la Susan
- colorful, noodley stews that create plenty of leftovers
- Monday's bus commute
- Theology 501 with Dr. Buschart
- comic interludes in serious meetings

I'm sure there are more...

I know I've got at least a few readers out there... what are some of these little things for you?

Um.

I'm pretty sure that knitter/artist/photographer/designer Jared Flood (of Brooklyn Tweed) is an evil genius.

I've been reading his blog for about two years now, but I've only managed one project that he had a hand in, Smariek's Cap Karma. Granted, I've completed that project about 10-12 times.

Well, I started Koolhaas tonight (sweet hat pattern, check it out), and I'm certifiably addicted. I don't want to put it down, but I really should because it's 1am and I have an early class in the morning. Ah, sweet irresponsibility!! Maybe??

One day, I shall get up the guts to start this or this.

One day, I shall also dust off my camera and take pictures of the projects I've finished lately.

Study Tactics

I'm sure this won't work so well for the longer papers that I have due in coming weeks, but for now I'm enjoying this approach to studying:

Write a section.
Knit a few rows.
Write a section.
Knit a few rows.

Thanks to some rest and the prayers of a few good friends, I think I might be able to fend off Cold #3, which was threatening earlier this week. Whatever it was knocked me out for Tuesday, but I refuse to be knocked out any longer... but I'm still moving slowly.

And writing a section,
Then knitting a few rows.
Repeating repeating
til this assignment is done.

At this rate, Shalom could be done by the end of November. You know what... I need peace AND a warm sweater, so that works out well. :-)

Absence makes the heart grow...

Fonder, right?

(By the way, that's a really funny looking word. Fonder.)

Actually, it doesn't. Just for the record.

I mean, my fingers miss Facebook... every time I open my browser I start down the familiar path of check email, check Facebook, check blog-reader, check news (yes... in that order, it's sad, i know) & I come to a screetching halt on the second step.

But the rest of me has been breathing a great big sigh of relief and diving into the rest of life.

In lieu of Facebook & far too many hours of internet-based procrastination:
- I've begun to deal with some skunkiness in my own heart that I would've put off at least until Thanksgiving & possibly Christmas
- I've finished and sent off a paper two days before it was due
- I've done some much needed apartment cleaning
- I've been considering painting projects again (and actually done a little one!)
- I've gotten to work more on my sister's baby blanket

...and I've gotten up the courage to talk to God again (at least once)

These, my friends, are very good things.

Just sayin'...

I am having a really really hard time understanding how it's already the end of October.

Some things I have loved about this autumn so far:
- crisp, cool weather
- pumpkin chocolate chip muffins & caramel apple cider
- visible snow behind the front range of the Rockies
- french press coffee more mornings than not
- itchy fingers: as in, i want to knit A LOT (where's more yarn?!)
- a smaller, possibly deeper vein for Fishes as we meet inside the church
- the Denver Half-Marathon
- 3 (maybe more!) snows before Halloween
- lots of sweet lunch dates with new & old friends
- leading my first group, and not being utterly terrified
- meeting and doing some good work of my own with a counselor

Some things I have not loved about this autumn so far:
- 2 major colds in less than a month!
- major bucks toward long-needed car repairs
- 3 (maybe more! snows before Halloween, with the awareness that I know far too many people who either do, or may have to, sleep out in it

Autumn is not over, but October nearly is... and I'm going to see how many more hours of sleep I can fit into it. :-) I've already missed a few too many!

toot toot.

So... one Amy Sawyer has demanded a "randish" blog post about the half, and she shall get it, unfortunately sans photos.

This past Sunday morning, Jeromie & I downright conquered the Denver Half-Marathon. I say conquered because we both had a pretty bum few weeks leading up to it. I got sick. Jer got busy. We both felt beat AND we made the (possible) mistake of eating PIZZA as race-fuel. Not even delicious BlackJack's BBQ Chicken! Not even McKinner's many delicious awesomes! Dominoes, I tell you! We ate Dominoes!

With good friends, of course.

But that still does not make up for the fact that pizza is not always runner-friendly the night before a race/run/event/whatever.

That said, we were both planning to just settle for finishing.

So. The Half. I will definitely be doing another one, and hopefully another after that.

Looking back on the morning, the Denver course was an excellent place to attempt my first actual half-marathon. I'd run the distance many times in high school, just to get away from life, but I hadn't ever done a formal half-marathon, and I hadn't run that far in YEARS (like 10 of them). The course was fairly flat (except for fun little hill early on, and another one between miles 9 & 10 in the Cheeseman Park area), the race was not huge participant-wise, and the weather turned out to be amazing.

We took the light rail into downtown so we wouldn't have to worry about parking, and managed to get to the Civic Center Park (starting line area) by about 6:30am. As is almost always the case before a race, we ended up spending most of our time before the start waiting in the lines for the restrooms. Bah. Anyway... we managed to get through the lines, check our gear bags, and make it to somewhere near our pace-marker by a few minutes before the start. Of course, at that point I realized I'd forgotten my little snack-gel thingies, but oh well. I think it took about 4-5 minutes to get to the actual starting line after the race began, and that time basically served as my warm-up. Next time... I'll get there earlier.

We'd agreed the night before to just run our own paces, so we parted ways within the first quarter mile. I spent the first mile or two weeding my way through the crowd and trying to feel out how my calves would behave for the day. I wasn't paying much attention at all to time or pace and thus missed hitting my watch until the 3 mile marker. After that, I hit my watch joyfully at every mile because I was that much closer to being done AND I was kind of interested to see what pace I had settled into.

I don't remember much about the running part itself except the silly, quirky thoughts & lovely "runner's high" that strike me on good days. I remember being utterly blown away as I approached City Park (somewhere in mile 5?) and saw the front-runners fly past in the opposite direction... they were several miles ahead of me and booking it. I remember cheering for the first & second women I noticed in that pack. I also remember getting passed at about that same time by a boy running a leg of the relay who looked like he was maybe not even ten. Oh yeah... and I remember loving the fact that I was running down the big fat middle of the road, with no worries about drastic camber or much of anything else!

Somewhere around mile 7, there was a station for grabbing GU, and I gladly grabbed one. My last experience with chocolate-flavored GU (about 10 years ago?) was NOT a good one, but I figured I'd shot my own self in the foot by forgetting my stuff and I was not about to risk crashing later. Surprisingly, whatever I grabbed was actually palatable... almost like chocolate frosting. So... I hung onto that for about 2 miles & ate it whenever I could see water up ahead.

Mile 11 was probably the hardest mile of the run... my knees were aching and my ears were doing this weird popping deal from the cold I had a few weeks back. At this point, I just decided that there was no quitting and no complaining and off I went.

Somewhere around Mile 12, the marathon and half-marathon courses parted ways. I knew that my internship site was just a block past the split, so I was maybe-just-a-little tempted to add a block to my run, but when it came down to it I was just glad to head for the finish.

The end was unremarkable, but at the same time SUCH a relief. My official time was 2:01:59, which works out to an average of 9:19 per mile. All I can say is that I was (and am still) pleasantly surprised.

Since Sunday morning, I have taken A LOT of ibuprofen. I've also cursed at the two flights of stairs that I must go down to leave the apartment. Today, I commuted in to campus on my bike (+ a few extra miles for good measure), and that was a HUGE help in taking the edge off the soreness in my quads and calves.

So... that was the half. I'm already plotting and scheming for running a whole in May - the Denver Colfax Marathon. I may even have a training partner! :-D


(P.S. The post title is because I wasn't planning on writing about this... it just felt a bit like tooting my own horn. I was going to let Jer do the posting, but he told me to write my own...)

Lost for words...*

In the past year or so, I've become accustomed to relative silence. I say relative because the rest of the world is usually bumping around & full of ceaseless sound.

For me, this silence has taken a few different forms, such as choosing not to accompany most of my actions with portable music. (Relatively) silent car trip, bike ride, run, study-time, cleaning sessions, etc. Nano has gone dusty for extended periods of time, and laptop has spent most of its time on mute. (At least with that last one I can ignore the fact that my computer has pretty awful speakers.)

Since the beginning of this year, I've been trying to be attentive to how I listen: as a friend, as a wife, as a family member, as a follower of Christ & journeying soul, as a counselor, as an artist,** as a being-in-the-world-at-large.

It's been an interesting time (to say the least!) and I am still learning.

One area that has remained painfully silent for a while is the time I've spent in Scripture... and I've responded poorly by spending less time in it. And intermittently connecting with the sadness behind it all, then honestly wrestling with my responses to Truth. So much more going on around this... ask if you want to know.

So imagine my surprise when I'm driving home today, listening to Snow Patrol (which we just recently got an album of because we just recently found out they were awesome because we've been hiding under our grad-school-seminary rocks (boulders? mountains?) for the past year (and other rocks before that) and haven't added to our music library out of laziness or lack of funds or just being fine with what we had. did i mention the fact that i don't usually listen to much of anything in the car anyway?! Strange afternoon.).

Where was I? Ah, yes... Listening to Snow Patrol & more specifically, "Run."

I wasn't listening closely to the lyrics (that's the next step in my music-processing processy-type, well... process) and was blown away when, clear as a friend in the passenger seat a snippet of the words from the chorus stood out to me:

"Even if you cannot hear my voice, I'll be right beside you dear." (Run - Snow Patrol)

Yeah. I broke down in tears. (Which, thanks to a sweet & wise friend, I now know I should listen to.)

The rest of the song doesn't really seem to fit as the voice of God, but those words blew me away and are consistent with what I know to be true.

Snow Patrol is not a substitute for encountering my Savior in the pages of His story, but those perfectly-timed words are an encouragement to me as I open the pages again & listen anew.


- - - - - - -
* What I was this afternoon, obviously not anymore as I just spit out a whole bunch of them.
** I'm still wrestling with applying that label to myself...

Oh, sweet mercy.

This...



...is approximately what the past 6 months of grad school have made me feel like, more often than not. Note the hair-on-end and buggy eyes.


Now, that's not completely a bad thing. I've been learning A LOT, and (as usual) the brain-frying level of stress has a lot to do with me taking things a little bit *too* seriously at times, not getting any real time for rest, & the rigor of grad school reading requirements. You know there's a lot of reading when someone who LOVES to read is sick of it.

But... my first year of grad school is now officially OVER. :-)

Still to come:
- a year of internship
- another 30-something credit hours
- a lot of prayer & listening
- much, much hope

But first, 37 days of mostly non-academic awesomeness! I discovered yesterday that I have more summer left than I thought, and I'm going to savor it. :-D Hopefully these 37 lovely days will entail a some creativity, cool water, mountain roads & trails, time with friends, and a trip back East amidst the work & site visits I still have left to do.

Just wanted to celebrate. :-) And now... popsicles!

Humor & the House of God

I guess I'll start at the bottom of my list of possible topics... after all, I finally have some pictures to share. Mildly amusing ones, too. :-)

So.

At least for the summer (possibly longer), I have one of the least fun jobs I've ever had... BUT it's also been one of the best in a lot of ways.

What do I do??

I clean our church building.

It's really not bad or difficult or anything... it just way larger chunks of time spent with chemicals than I'd prefer! I spent the first week or two gagging as I faced the prospect of cleaning 8 toilets & 2 urinals, but I am now patently unafraid of whatever surprise may greet me AND I have a newfound respect for janitorial staff everywhere! :-) Hmmmm. I'm blogging about toilets... I'll move on now.

I've actually begun to love the time I have each week doing this... once I finish balking at the whole hours-with-chemicals thing, of course. That aside, it's actually some beautiful time for any number of things: singing, thinking, just being quiet, listening for where or how God is stirring in or around me, praying, lamenting, laughing out loud, incurring minor injuries... oh wait, that last one's not a good thing. :-)

This week has been a particularly lovely time, and it began unassumingly with some new-to-me music (The Autumn Film... thanks Rob!). Their song, "Enough" had tears streaming down my face while I was scrubbing toilets - "my heart's been ripped wide open by all the things I didn't need; Your heart's been ripped wide open 'cause I keep chasing other things..." An apt description of my journey with Jesus. Perhaps more on that later.

After processing through that bout of tears, I moved on to some different music... Dave Smith's Two Cities. I knew there was the possibility of crying with this one, but I didn't expect to mop up my own weepy mess!! Okay... slight exaggeration. I don't cry often, and it usually takes a lot to get me there so to find myself crying twice in a day is quite a feat... but it's a very good thing when it happens. Tears are welcome now, and they're an opportunity to find out what has been stirring unknown in my soul.

Anyway... on Two Cities Dave shares a cover he recorded of Genesis's "Take Me Home." His rendition is beautiful and it reminds me of the handful of times that the DCF band played it on a Sunday morning. I'm pretty sure that this song has become one of those hooks that I hang memory and meaning on... I am forever learning what it means to pray for home.

Initially (and sometimes still), the song held for me a longing for my home with God - when I die or He returns, whatever it may look like. Not that I've stopped longing for that, but this earth-ball is where I'm travelling right now and I might be travelling on it for quite a while longer so I'm pretty sure it'd be wise to consider what God has called me to here.

When Jeromie and I left Clemson to move to Denver last August, I'm pretty sure we were both bawling along with the song as we left town in memory of the beautiful family and place we were leaving. A week or so later driving north into Denver from New Mexico, we found ourselves crying tears of joy to the same exact words because we knew that God was all over the move and was bringing us to a new and different home. Over the past few months, unbeknownst to me, my soul has been stirring along with the thought of home as a people. When I sang and cried yesterday, I was not longing for a physical place but loving on and missing and praying for my scattered family... and I was loving on and praying for and rejoicing over the family I have begun to gain here.

I miss my DCF family. I miss our house church there more than I can describe. I miss the connection and the honest tears and the difficult questions and the authentic love of that band of Jesus-followers. But at the same time, God is weaving together an amazing family here too. It does not look the same, and I don't want it to. I want to throw myself in unabashedly with the brothers and sisters I have here. I want to be open and anticipating something amazing, because Jesus is doing just that among us.

And I want to laugh. :-)

So I do.

Part of my family here is the incredible mix that is Wellspring Anglican Church... this is the one whose building I clean. I'll have to write another post sometime soon to talk about Wellsping more, but this post's already gotten longer than I'd planned and I still haven't gotten to the humorous part. We are a diverse pile of people from a bunch of different backgrounds with a shared love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We also know how to have fun... just wait for pictures from Sunday's Block Party & small group cookouts!

Apparently we also know how to make one 5'5" cleaning-lady laugh every time she opens her closet door:


This is my twice-a-week companion.
He's a vacuum cleaner.
I'm pretty sure he needs a name.

Also, today I spent about an hour and a half scrubbing out the baptismal tub and I found this little guy:



I might clean the Wellspring building, but the building's not the house of God... we are as a part of His body, and I want to live in THAT house. :-)

P.S. That strange-looking platform? It's a dock. We're turning the sanctuary into a SWAMP this week for Vacation Bible School. Told you we know how to have fun! :-D

:-D

I know this is already on Justin's blog (that's how I first saw it!), but I figure I might have a few readers that he doesn't and I want to share the love too. Cause the world is just awesome!




Some things I particularly love today:

* the mountains (blue ridge & otherwise)
* Clemson sunsets
* brilliant lightening storms
* the human body in motion (we can do some pretty cool stuff!)
* spoken and written language
* the fact that all creation attests to God's glory, & that He's redeeming it (!!!)

Life at the Bookedy...

Some days, I swear I want to bring home every book in the store. Today is one of them. But I'll restrain myself... and only bring home one. Maybe.

It helps that I've been steadily digesting a stream of good books lately... What is the What (Dave Eggers). The Once and Future King (TH White), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers), The Way of the Heart (Henri Nouwen), to name a few. Kind of like with running, the more I read the more that I want to! If I had more time, I'd ramble on about all of them. But I'll restrain myself... and only ramble about one. Maybe.

This morning, I finished The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I'd originally checked it out from the library on CD for the trip down to Alabama this past weekend, but couldn't finish it in that format because one of the CDs was badly scratched. (Grrr... of course it stopped at a really crucial part.) Upon arriving home Tuesday night, I promptly borrowed the book from my good friend Juli and am now done. Oh, it was so good. Very well written. Very good story. I feel like I made a whole slew of new friends! Though our stories are in no way identical, I see parts of Lily's story in mine. The sheer telling of the story watered seeds of God's truth in me that the soil of my heart always seems to want to choke out. Looks like I've got some digging to do. :-)

I'm thankful that I'm not a particularly fast reader. Reading & writing are how I learn, so I tend to ruminate on the things I read. I take the words & story in and I feel like I literally digest them... I invite them to dwell in me and root around. Unless it's a textbook... that's a different story - you know, study mode. Unfortunately, this is the way I learned to take in Scripture too. Study mode. That's good in its time, I think, but Scripture is also story. God's story, and now my story too. I want to digest God's story the way I do with books. I want Him to dwell in me, to root around and find a home, to change me from the inside out. I know that He does dwell in me now in the person of Jesus (my Savior and Friend), but something's been missing. I think that perhaps it's been Jesus as the Word. I pray that that will change soon!

In the meantime, I will continue reading & digging & hoping & living.




"Really, it's good for all of us to hear it again. Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here."

August Boatright from The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd

Today...

Today's plans:

- sew sew sew (sew sew sew sew sew sew)
- run
- house church!


Update:

Music for today's endeavors...
- Deathcab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
- Delgados - Great Eastern and Universal Audio
- Sandra McCracken - The Builder and the Architect

Thankful

- - <> - -

I am a much happier creature when I spend time outside in the woods. I think I've let myself forget that over the past year, to the point where I am utterly blown away by the joy of it all when I find myself on a trail, even if it's just on Paris Mountain. I need to get out more, back to the woods that are my home.

Thanksgiving, I was not so thankful. I was congested & half-asleep. Today, God has helped me to be a little more awake and alive to His presence & movement in this world and in my life. (And not just by chucking me out into the woods! :-) )

Too tired to write anymore.

Loose Ends

It seems like a lot longer than a week and a half since the last time I posted anything here. I don't think I realized just how busy things have gotten lately. Between work & community & Christmas-present-crafting & wrestling with school apps & normal daily life, I feel like I've been going non-stop. All the going-going has been good and bad.


Good: I haven't really wasted any time. Most waking hours have been productive in some way.

Bad: I've let my priorities get out of whack. I've found myself to be much less mindful of Jesus and my daily need for him. I've let myself lose touch with where my heart *really* is most days.

Good: I've gotten a lot of Christmas presents finished!

Bad: My fiddle's a bit neglected. I have NOT been busy keeping the house particulary clean. But I'm okay with that. Until the dishes growl at me. But they haven't started doing that... yet. (I'm kidding... my disgust level is far more sensitive than that, but the thought of growling dishes reminds me that there's some really gross moldy, mossy stuff growing on the astro-turf behind the Open Book. I'm sure everyone wanted to know that. I just noticed it today... it looks like a miniature forest. Might be a good location for a science experiment.)

The first set of bads are not worth any amount of "productivity" in the world, so I'm trying to slow down. Slowing down without wasting time is an art (science?) that I haven't mastered.

* * * * * * *

I can't post pictures of most of my finished sewing/knitting because they're Christmas presents, but I can post these:

Kategirl Messenger Bag

Source: Kategirl's post on craftster.org
Materials: brown canvas, mary englebreit (sp?) print canvas, some ribbon, and a stupid zipper that punked out on me after the project was finished
Thoughts: I thoroughly enjoyed making the bag and it may be my all-time favorite of any I've ever owned.

Blue Cafe Bag

Source: sewtakeahike... (thanks, I think I will!)
Materials: brown canvas, light cotton fabric with a flower print, reversible pink/brown ribbon
Thoughts: A birthday gift for a family member. Seems to be the perfect size for a small knitting project. Next time I make this bag, I'll use a lighter fabric for the outside... the canvas was a bit stiff for the structure of the bag.

* * * * * * *

P.S. Our cars seem to be tree magnets. A rather large limb fell on Jeromie's car a few weeks ago causing only minor damage. THEN yesterday, a dead tree fell across the road in front of a friend's house while we were parked there and came within inches of my car. I think our cars need personal bodyguards!

Alas

My Bernina is brokened.

It just stopped in the middle of a stitch run like the needle had hit something, but it hadn't. There are no visible obstructions or disconnected parts & the problem seems to be with the upper mechanics, so off to the bernina doctor it goes. I guess.

And I was about 2/3's done with my project for Winn's gallery on Friday.

On a slightly happier note, however, the inner workings of a sewing machine are incredibly COOL.

Restlessness

Today, I've been plagued by a strange restlessness in which I find myself in constant motion, but not really getting anything done. There are plenty of things I want to be doing (knitting, sewing, reading) and plenty of things I should be doing (laundry, dishes), but I can't seem to settle into any of them.

Maybe running will help. :-)

Off I go.