19-26: the bread of life

I made some bread for the first time in my new house. It made me very happy. Baking bread is one of those things that works like therapy (along with singing, reading, and working in the sunshine). I love baking any time, but it seems like I usually endup doing it most late at night when I want a break from my reading or just feel snacky. :)

This bread has no recipe. It's a very basic thing to make, though, and if you have practiced doing something for long enough, and give enough love and care to it, you are sure to get by just fine without directions and lists and persnickity rules. That is how life is, whether it is in writing a letter or getting a baby to fall asleep or sewing a dress. The same goes for driving a car, and grocery shopping, and raising a garden. You do it again and again until you could almost do it in your sleep.

It is Monday, and in this world, there are millions of miracles to be thankful for.
I'm thankful for a kitchen which has all of the neccesities for cooking.
I'm thankful that if you pour yeast and a pinch of sugar into warm water, it will foam up and keep on swelling even when you add other weird things to it.
I'm grateful for whisks with their little webs of silver wires and the clack they make against the side of a bowl.
I'm thankful that bees have factories to make honey, and that I can get mine in little plastic bottles shaped like a bear.
I'm glad that grapeseed oil is green and weird looking, but that it doesn't change the flavor of the food.
I'm grateful for the sun of an egg waiting in the white shell, and the salty little rocks stored in cardboard shakers by my stove, and that they make tangy yeasty water taste good.
I'm thankful for flour and the way it whisks into the bowl, flouffing like dry snow all over the counter, and how it thickens and tightens into stretchy white dough.
I'm thankful for my hands and the way they tell me how taut or soft the dough is beneath my fingertips, how done the loaf is when I tap it, hot in the oven.
I love how these things combine to make bread. Bread which strengthens man's heart, which represents the broken body of our Lord, which makes my toast and my sandwiches and the lovely warm buttered treat for during a movie at night. The life that was nurtured in wheat, then broken down and given to death, and battered and ground and completely changed, changes form into the order of bread loaves, and returns to life again as man takes it into him. It returns to greater life as it becomes, now, part of the Temple of God, part of this person which images the true Bread of Heaven.

encouraging folks

For Famous Authors Writing Weirdly

Emily Dickinson, thank you –
you always make me feel better –
that it is legitimate, forgivable –
writing these phrases – that never become sentences –
letting long em-dashes chop my conversation.

Thanks, Billy Collins,
for writing about everyday
and becoming famous,
because now I'll never have to hesitate
before putting a toilet into a line that needs one.

And thank you, Victor Hugo, for Les Mis.
You make me feel better for digressing
for pages and chapters on details that interest me
and no one else on the planet –
but I'll always steer clear of sewer plans.

This week...

I have been settling in to my new home. It has been a lot of work and a lot of fun, and I've been far too busy to do much writing, and conspicuously lacking internet at my house, so it's impossible to do writing in the evening when I often feel like it. :) But I am alive and well. Sunday I unloaded boxes and bags, and Monday I started training for my job. It has been a full week of cleaning and de-spidering, sorting kitchen supplies belonging to us 5 roommates and the ones left at the house by previous renters, working with a wonderful family and learning to instruct their daughter, seeing old friends as they trickle into town for the beginning of school, volleyball and movies and even a bit of baking. I was hankering to bake and since we were missing yeast in our supplies, I made some Molasses Crinkles - one of our family favorites back at home. So good.
Since I missed it on Monday, I want badly to write a thankful list right now. But I am short on time here at the library and need to take care of several more errands downtown. I'll be back. And perhaps I'll have some pictures to post of my new abode.

Packing (again), and Plans

It is early August, and I am packing up belongings and clothes. Four years in a row I have boxed and bagged and suitcased my life and bundled it all off to Moscow - and this is the fifth. It feels the same, yet all different, too.

Four years ago I was moving away from home for the first time. I was headed for my first real classroom experiences, having been home schooled. I was going from country living at the end of a dirt county road where I'd been all my life to spending long days in town - a town larger than anything around here for 30 miles. The next three years, the moves were easier, and adjustments simple.

This time, I'm not headed back to school, but to work. I will be part of the same church, and have some of the same roommates, and go to the same grocery stores and haunt the same coffee shop, but this is no longer me being a kid in college. This is me with my own bills. This is me as the college graduate in a house full of younger students. This is me deciding how to spend my evenings (because now they exist, and not just as a five-hour time slot to finish homework for the next day). This is me being a grown-up with real responsibilities in the real world.

Two days from now, I'll be settling into a new house, and starting to put my ideas into practice. Budgets. Schedules. Work. More job searching. Grocery shopping. Housework. Friendships. Decorating. Meal preparation. Connecting with the community. Two days from now, I'll be putting myself to the test. Much has been given me; will I give back in a worthy manner? The world waits for me to discover and shape and beautify it; will I love it as earnestly and gladly as I should?

I anticipate it all. This will be me living, and the grace of God alive in me.

Making your home beautiful

I love Lindsey Tollefson's blog. Her variety and creativity are fantastic, and her color schemes always inspire me.

11-18

11. The quilt on my bed that is always needed around 3 AM (even in summer when the house has cooled down completely).
12. Running shoes. It is amazing how good it is to have well-supported feet!
13. Gasoline
14. The lovely Wilson ladies at feminagirls.com and the wisdom they share.
15. My family is watching the Lord of the Rings series bit by bit. The extended versions. Sometimes I love what PJ and others did with a portion of the story. Sometimes, not so much. But the watching experience with running commentary from all of my siblings is the best.
16. The opportunity to give glasses of water.
17. Feeling like a kid - again (this time, it was a scraped knee, and it felt as bad as it looked, but made me sympathize a bit more with Seth's bike wreck and bloody knee yesterday).
18. The trampoline springs arrived in the mail today, and the kids were thrilled to have a new yard toy! This is a first for our family and has already been the cause of a couple falls and sore spots, but much more laughter and fun.