reverie

Yes. A building can't jump at all. haha have I mentioned that I love stupid jokes? Thanksgiving has snuck up on me this year. I sort of saw it coming & sort of didn't. I mean I always knew it was there, but I didn't really think much about it. This marks Nicole's & my 4 th year hosting the holiday so a lot of things nearly plan themselves & those that didn't got ignored for awhile. Early on I pared down my cooking list as much as possible, having recently realized that it's okay to let someone else make the biscuits even if they're not what I'd make. It's even okay if the cranberry sauce is from a can as no one seems to eat it anyway. It's okay if when I go to Ralph's on Tuesday night, at nearly the last minute, they don't have 2/3 rds of the items I need to make pumpkin pie so I buy one premade rather than playing Greater LA Metro area grocery store scavenger hunt. It's okay and probably even good if Martha St...

I am pretty impressed with myself that I have taken on a project and been really dedicated to bringing it about--not to toot my own horn. Sometimes I get easily excited about a new project in the beginning stages & start to dive into it until life or something else gets in the way. So I'm proud of myself and pleased that tonight I published The Daybreak Project website . Right now it's mostly a lot of reading, but I suppose that's necessary for people to know what it is. If any of you faithful & beloved blog readers have any feedback I'd really appreciate it. As I've been thinking about it over the weekend, I feel this is a ministry that God has been growing in me since college and I'm really excited to be working on this. Marriage is something I'm deeply passionate about. With the exception of those with a specific call toward celibacy, men & women were designed for marriage, a design our culture tends to get in the way of a lot, which I f...

Last week a friend brought up the story of Jacob wrestling with God and how Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." She said, don't let go, don't give up until you receive your blessing. Jacob wrestled til daybreak. I think that's metaphorically significant--the night will end, the sun will rise, and God will bless you, just hang on long enough for it. (Genesis 32:22-32) I've been struggling with God lately. Strangely I feel my faith is at a strong point, but so is my frustration. And I realized this afternoon that I'm not just frustrated for myself, but I'm frustrated that there are several women I know whose hearts ache in the exact same way that mine does. We long to be married; we feel called to it; we hope for it; we dream of it. The thing that's most difficult about it is that most if not all of the women who come to mind right now are amazing women of God and all of them are strong & beautiful & fun people. A...

This has been cracking me up lately. Mind your volume; the sound quality isn't great. The song is originally from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, but I think the random humor stands on its own & in fact I did not really begin to appreciate the song until I heard this cover by Of Montreal. I have an mp3 of it that's better quality, so if anyone finds it as amusing as I do let me know & I'd be happy to share the love. -------------------------------------- In Ben Hur there's a scene where the titular character is a slave on a Roman ship & he's referred to by his slave number, 41. For some reason the way one of the Roman dudes shouts out 41! has stuck with me since I first saw the film. It came to mind today as I thought, 41 days til Shauna comes to visit! Shauna has been mentioned several times here. She is in fact the one who got me started in this whole crazy world of blogging--you can visit her blog with the link over there on the right. ...

Sunday nights are my least favorite as they mean Monday is once again right around the corner. But instead of having a bad attitude about Monday I thought I'd reflect on a few good things from the weekend. Cheesy movies--I watched Made of Honor and Center Stage 2 this weekend. Both are about as good as they look, which means they can't really be categorized as good in any cinematic sense, but they are both amusing & were good for a little weekend escapism. Sometimes it's good not to be a movie snob, one of my favorite movie going experiences was to a film I had little desire to see, but the company was worth it and it ended up being a really fun experience. Pumpkin pie--I bought one at Ralph's tonight. I haven't really been excited enough about fall (nor has fall really existed much) to do any pumpkin baking yet this year, so store bought pumpkin goods are a happy substitute. 2:15--I finished cooking for cafe tonight in a record 2 hours and 15 minutes! This...

I had a revelation tonight. One that would have been fantastically more helpful a year ago or even 6 months ago. Not that it isn't useful now, just would have been more immediately applicable then & who knows what might be different. But for whatever reason it didn't come til now and I have to trust in God's perfect timing and trust that when the chance does come to apply it even if it's not the chance I want right now, that I will remember well what has been uncovered in my mind. I have a deep misunderstanding of the hows and whys of this world and of my God. The world is broken so I get that things aren't often as they should be. And when it comes to God I guess if I really got Him then he wouldn't be God. Sometimes though it'd be nice if things were a smidge easier. I can only hope that looking back on this and how it will shape the future course of my life that I will be able to say that it was well worth it.

red-kissed leaves fluttering about in the autumn breeze branches bow giving sight of the rain in the distance bathing the mountains change has claimed its place waiting once again nearly too long

don't be alarmed when the wound begins to bleed cause we're so scared to find out what this life's all about so scared we're going to lose it not knowing all along that's exactly what we need I got halfway to church tonight before I turned around and came home. Tears were too close to the surface & even though that's the one place I should feel safe to just let it out, I do not. And a part of me knows that I should have gone & not cared at all about being a crying mess in front of friends & strangers, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Life is at an extremely difficult point right now. I made a decision this week that was necessary but very tough. Even for all the difficult times I faced over the past year, this is currently the hardest part. I only pray that it does not get any more difficult because in truth I do not know how much more I can withstand. I know that God does not give us more than we can handle, but the past wee...

As the potential for rain was too high for my liking for hiking on Saturday, my friend Jodi & I instead ended up walking the path by the beach away from which she lives about a block. On our walk we saw a paddle boarder, scuba divers making their way back to land, and a guy (who knew what he was doing) throwing a boomerang. It was all very out of the ordinary for my expectations of California beaches, so it was very cool. And yesterday at The Americana which is the Grove's somewhat inferior cousin, we saw them putting up the Christmas tree. This would be one of those trees that's about 2700 feet tall. The interesting thing about these giant Christmas trees that most people don't know is that they don't come as full and pretty as they are when you see them at Christmastime. Many extra branches are somehow installed to give the tree that perfect, full Christmas tree shape. There were hundreds of branches laying all about the ground yesterday just waiting to take...

So I finally went through and uploaded a bunch of photos from the past 6+ months that for whatever reason never made it onto my computer & I thought I would share a few with all of you lovely people! Sunset in Auburn, CA The Burger King "walk-thru" apparently. What I most love about this though is that he's walking a dog. Things like this are why I try to always have a camera on me. In Coronado. This pelican outsmarted these guys. They dropped the net they were trying to catch or shoe him away with. It was hilarious. Coronado is a great place except for the horrible bridge you have to drive over to get there . . . I still want to puke thinking about it. Somewhere in Korea Town. This squirrel watched me for several minutes on my lunch break one day. Calabasas Pumpkin Festival (We didn't buy any pumpkins, just took photos with them. haha) Halloween with my friend Dan dressed as a "douche bag," wearing the most hideous hat ever. (Would be just as hideous...