Autumnal

I am sleeping under blankets again. Weather is so fluxiuary in Texas (take that Steven Colbert or G.W. Bush). It was 80 degrees at 2pm today and then by 4:30pm it was 61. It is the season of multiple light layers or a change of clothes constantly on hand.

There are a lot of small things happening. Joyful dances, good dinners, intentional communing, harvests, funerals (a raccoon got one of our chickens), homecomings, blossoms, bees, bounty, color, space, laughter, children, and wind. Lots of small things. My life is an obvious sum of its parts. I am very glad. I think a lot of people strive for that sort of life.

I am finding a lot of joy in freerice.com. They have several trivia type pages which allow you to donate rice through the UN by your right answers. One of the trivia pages is on artistic masterpieces. It may sound silly but even this small addition to my life makes me deeply joyful. These paintings have been speaking to peoples souls for hundreds of years. They speak to mine now. I am learning.

Roommate Kris is home from California finally. I missed him. We are still working our research job for Baylor with very little enthusiasm. Its a disheartening project. We will keep on, I suppose.

All of the sudden I see myself with adult friends. I know this sounds silly. I am twenty five. My friends have three, four, and five year old children. We quite obviously have been adults for a while. It is just recently that I feel like an adult in my church, and adult in my work (at least one of them), and an adult within my friends.

I'm not going to talk about politics, though I feel like I could. There is a lot of dissension amongst the people that I love. I am voting early, voting strongly, feeling very content in my choice, but I am hoping that, once this is all over in a couple weeks, we wont have to talk about it anymore.

Octubre.

Do you ever befriend someone and then get disappointed when you realize they have other friends? Like, another group of friends? That their life was complete and probably awesome before they met you? I think I live to much between the covers of books, or the credits of movies. They teach you expect concise, uncomplicated lives. No old friends from high school who crop up occasionally. No guy that you sat next to in freshman comp who you still sort of know. I always get this ridiculous pang of disappointment when I glimpse someones other life. Like when they are making plans on the phone with someone you don't know. Such a silly response.

I have a pretty good life plan at the moment. My parents expect a new one from me every few weeks (and I am happy to oblige) but this one has stuck for a while. I think that is because this is a sound, good, responsible, possible plan. Most are not. I still want to live on a house boat and make chocolates. I still want to live in a Bronco in a National Park. I still want to sail the world (maybe learn to sail first). And maybe I will do all these things. In fact, I think I will make a point of doing all these things. But first I will take advantage of the MCC University Center, I will get a degree, then I will take advantage of Mission Year/Easterns lovely masters program and I will get one of those as well. Then I will do these other things.

We called an exterminator. Our house has many non- human inhabitants. Rats, mice, roaches. And we have lived side by side for the last four months. Only, last week, a rat waddled into our bedroom (slowly so as to allow us a nice glimpse of him). We called an exterminator. He came to day and sprayed poison all over our house (we are not fans), tossed bait in the attic and under the house, and left sticky traps in a few pertinent places. We are not fans of sticky traps. One caught a mouse a few mintues ago. Jessica couldnt leave it there, flayling as it was. I whole heartedly agreed but am unfortunatly not very brave. It was a fairly traumatic experiance, ending with an injured mouse being put out of his misery under the wheels of a car. We do not like sticky traps.

The weather is changing. I am looking forward to this.

Yellow house by the sea

I keep saying things about our house to my housemates that I think give me away. I am a sentimentalist. I am also a future-obsessor. I have trouble with the now. I like to think about my children and how they are going to tell about their "hippy mom" and how she lived in an old house when she was in her twenties, how she lived with boys (!) and girls together in something that they tried to call community. How we had a garden and a clothes line and (hopefully someday) chickens. I love my house. I love sitting around in our living room filling each other in on our days. I love Jessica being frantic to use all of her free time to its absolute maximum potential. I even love TJ playing that same James Callihan song over and over and over, even though I may never get it out of my head.

I don't like the rats or the cockroaches or the rodent slaughter that is currently taking place in our house. (I do like Kris and TJ who dutifully empty the rat trap every time. Thanks guys.)

On another note, my starbucks is closing two weeks from today. This is one of those sad things that makes me a little nauseated. How... well. Never mind. It will work its sorry way out, I suppose. I do so like my job.

I always feel like the process of blogging removes all interesting thoughts from my head. Too much pressure, too much effort, etc.

Also, I don't like heavy interactions and I don't like change. But I do like reading the Russians and I do like Park Rangers, in idea and in praxis.