Fall Constitutional

I've started my own morning constitutional. Webster's defines 'constitutional' as, "a walk taken for one's health". For most of my childhood I thought the word had a different meaning. That's because each summer when my family would go camping, my father would leave our campsite first thing in the morning like clockwork. If we asked where he was going he would reply, "I'm going for my morning constitutional!" Hence, I thought a constitutional meant taking a dump in the morning.

The dangers of learning a language the natural way.

Anyway, my own constitutional adheres much more closely- exactly, in fact- to the denotation of the word. I've started walking a mile each morning right when I wake up. It's fast and easy and starts my day off right. I feel like I've accomplished something and it's a good time to pray.

Considering the joy with which I embrace each extra minute of sleep in the morning, I am quite proud of my accomplishment. But there are a few good reasons to set my alarm clock a bit earlier...

I love to be out in the world while it's still shaking the sleep off of itself. The sunlight making diamonds out of the dewdrops on spiderwebs. The birds reminding each other of the business of the day. The void which is the pre-rush-hour traffic lull. The cool, fresh air. It's like the deep breath before the day hits.

This morning the air was so cold that I could see my breath, which is exciting news because fall is my favorite season. I think I like it best because of the way it smells. Fall starts out smelling like hot sun beating down on the ripening wheat. Next it smells like greasy fair-food. Then it slides into re-paved parking lots and new crayons and sneakers. And the finale: crunchy leaves and bonfires.

How can you not love a season that smells like that?!

The Bathroom Door

Today at work I was walking down the hallway, past the rows of beige steel lockers, when I rounded the corner to see a tiny little person trying to push the girls' room door open. Let me emphasize 'tiny'. Like, maybe 40 pounds, soaking wet. Definitely a kindergartner. She was braced against the door like the human hypotenuse of a right triangle, pushing with all her little might in hopes of gaining entrance into that sacred sanctuary. By this time I had walked up to where she was. I was just about to ask if I could help when she suddenly stopped struggling with the door. She took a step back, looked up at the barrier in her path, and recalculated. I could almost see a little white thought bubble above her cute little head.

Noticing the metal piece on the left side of the door which indicated that the door opened in that direction, the little girl tried again, this time focusing her strength on the left side, rather than the right. As she pushed, the door slowly opened, allowing, at last, our hardy adventurer to pass through.

As I continued on my way I couldn't help but share in the girl's satisfaction. I pondered the deep things of life reflected in this common occurrence.

Sometimes even the simple things in life can seem beyond us. We're not big or strong enough to do some stuff alone. In those times we're blessed to have others around to help.

But there are challenges that we can conquer alone, if we take a minute to back up, think it through, and try again; attack the problem from a new direction. The door may still open slowly, but the point is, it will open. And we will be better off for having opened it ourselves.

Ah, the family photo session...

While I was home last weekend I forced my family to pose for a photo session. I have discovered the keys to a smooth home photo shoot:

1. do it AFTER you eat
2. pose the group in the direction of the tv, and leave the tv on, so that during the 15 minutes of obligatory aiming, arranging people, and figuring out how to use the timer (which hasn't been used since the last family photo session), everyone else can watch tv.

Why didn't we try that sooner? Anyway, I wanted to share a couple of the pictures in hopes that they will bring you a bit of the joy that they bring to me. Thanks to Tom (my brother-in-law) for taking and forwarding the pictures to me! Please note how adorable my adorable nieces are.

What's rounds on the ends and "hi" in the middle? Ohio!!

It's interesting to me that I seem to be incapable of titling an entry before I write it. I go into the "create a new post" part of the site and at the top is the title box, followed by the text box. So I automatically want to write the title first, which never works. By the time I finish writing and proof-reading (yes, contrary to popular belief, I do actually proof my posts...sometimes) the title is all wrong and I have to re-write it. So here I am, writing post number...10?...and I have finally caught on- write the title last. Check.

Custodial matter: I find it QUITE amusing that my all-time highest comment-gathering post was the one about prunes giving me diarrhea! HIL-arious! I HATE spelling diarrhea. What kind of a spelling is that, anyway? Are you TRYING to make us spell it wrong? Maybe it's French...French spelling is almost as ridiculous as English...

I'm home!! Oh, God bless the great state of O-hi-o! I write it that way because I think the phrase like that: "the great state of O-hi-o!" Today as I drove out of the bustling, asphalted chaos of the suburbs and into the lush, green farmland of Indiana, my little heart sighed. A sigh of joy. Yay for fields of corn! Yay for rolling farmland and cruise control because the traffic is light! Yay for guys with farmer tans and seed-corn baseball caps in old, well-loved, rusty pick-ups! Yay for flipping through the radio stations and every-other one being country music! I mean seriously; what's not to love about the country?

Yesterday I was sorting through the teachers' manuals at my job, and I happened to be working with the "exceptional student reports". Now, I would have thought that an exceptional student was one that excelled in academics. Au contraire, mon amie. At this particular school an exception student has ADHD or a speech impediment or had trouble focusing on the task at hand in 3rd grade. Anyway, lots of the students at the school seem to have been deemed 'exceptional' due to their asthma. Did you know that studies show that kids to grow up on farms and/or with pets have a lower incidence of asthma? It's amazing to me that the whole world hasn't moved to the country by now. These poor suburban kids! Their hyper-clean environments are crippling their own bodies! America, enough with the sanitization! Enough with the lysoling-to-death of our world! Dirt isn't all bad! Tolerance is key! (note: the spell-check doesn't recognise "sanitization" or "lysoling" as words. Can you believe it? Speaking of tolerance...)

Huh. Well, that was odd and passionate. Oddly passionate. As I was saying...I'm home for the weekend, and quite excited about my line-up of visitations! Tomorrow my dad's joining me for a road trip that will take me to visit all three of my grandparents and an aunt & uncle. Then in the afternoon I hope to visit some friends of the family, and my evening shall be a big, soft ball of Lima-friend game night fluff. Then Sunday it's off to Union Chapel, my favorite church family of all time, then a nice day-of-rest nap before I head to my brother's place (aka the house where I grew up) for a family dinner and swim-party.

Before I go I want to leave you with this thought. On Park Street in Glen Ellyn, between Roosevelt and Hill, there is a road that "t"s into Park that involves a stop sign for north-bound traffic on Park, but not for southbound. It's a two-way stop for three routes of traffic. There is no curve, or hill, or anything that inhibits visibility from either direction. There is very little traffic in general. Without a doubt, this stop sign is the most oddly-placed stop sign I've ever seen. Why is it there? Superfluous, I would call it. Definitively unnecessary. And confusing. Today I was headed south on Park, whipped through the intersection and as I passed a car that was stopped at the sign going the other way I had a moment of panic- DID I JUST RUN A STOP SIGN!?!? Nope. Just the weirdo "two-way stop".

Beware The Power of Prunes

Today I came home from work and sat down to check my email. As I was waiting for the page to load I happened to glance to my left, where we have a small shelving unit to store food. I was pretty hungry, and I saw a container of prunes on the shelf. Now I like prunes, but...you know...it's not exactly something I normally crave. But at just that moment the prunes sounded fantastic, so I grabbed the can and started munching as I looked at my email (note: Sarah Jones, I think they're your prunes, but I'll replace the can before you get back).

It's actually quite dangerous to eat while you're distracted by some other occupation. You run a substantial risk of eating more than you had intended. So before I knew it, my email was all read and the can of prunes was about half gone. I checked the nutritional value, just for kicks, and saw that I had eaten about four servings of prunes. Oh well, I thought. Prunes are good for you.

Fast-forward about two hours.

I'm in the basement watching a movie with Laura, one of my roommates. I've been noticing that my stomach has been growling a lot. Odd. Then suddenly I HAVE to go the bathroom. As in, NOW. I'm thinking, hmm, that's odd. I didn't eat anything that was old or anythi- ah-HA! The prunes!

About this time I have a very vivid memory from my childhood. It's of my father, happily munching away on a bowl of cooked prunes. "They'll keep 'ya regular!", he says with great enthusiasm.

Mm-hmmm. Regular indeed. Beware the power of prunes...

The Glory of a Good Storm

It's Monday night. I should be writing an 8-10 page reflection paper on my practicum experience. Or shopping for new car insurance. Or possibly cleaning my room. But instead here I sit, typing a blog which may or may not be read by...well, anyone. Except Brooke. Brooke will definitely read it. She's stuck in Mozambique and is desperate for comm of any sort, so she's almost certainly my most faithful reader. Perhaps there are more of you. It's hard to know, though, in this oh-so-anonymous virtual world of blogging.

My aforementioned friend would like it to be known that it was she who introduced me to Totino's Party Pizzas (see my profile on the right side of the blog). This was indeed a significant turning point in my life. I will forever be indebted to Brooke for this good deed.

In other news I think I might be allergic to the chair I have to sit in on Mondays at my summer job. I only sit in that chair on Mondays because that's the day I'm filling in for the secretary. And I seem to get headaches a lot on Mondays. Weird, huh?

It's been swelteringly humid in the greater Chicago area lately, and today we've had scattered thunderstorms. Now I will be the first to admit that I'm pretty hard on the suburbs, and here's an excellent example of why that is: the suburbs don't even know how to do a good storm! When you live in the sticks, you see a storm coming from miles away. You alert the family, close all the western- and southern-facing windows, perhaps stop in the kitchen for a snack, and still have plenty of time to head out to the porch to watch the show. The cool breeze brushes your hair back, cooling your summer-heated body as you point at the dark, ominous thunderhead approaching.

In the country, a storm is like a story- it has a beginning, and middle, and an end. You watch it approach with anticipation, like the slow and almost giddy trip to the top of a roller coaster's first drop. You relish the glory of it as it rushes past you, the lightning flashing close enough to give you goosebumps; the thunder making you jump in spite of yourself. You stay just close enough to the edge of the awning to get sprinkled on without getting soaked. Then you turn to watch it pass by, on its way to refresh the next county with its energy and its rain.

In the suburbs you get none of this. You get an advance thunderclap or two, and then you get the rain. If it's a really good storm, maybe there's some lightning. But the drama of the whole thing is missing. It's just...limp. Anticlimactic. Disappointing.

Hmm, well that was just depressing. Sorry, kids. I hope that you get to enjoy a robust, climactic storm sometime soon- a storm the way God intended storms to be- excitement and all.

My Best Friend's Wedding...and other things worthy of note

I really scheduled my month well. One of my two closest friends, Joy, got married on Friday, August 3rd, just four days after I returned from Spain. The reason this was a good plan (besides the fact that she is goofy-in-love with her groom and they have to go back to China soon so Friday was an ideal time for them to get married) is that it provided something for me to look forward to as I got ready to leave Spain.

Ah, looking forward. 'Tis something I do very well; too well, sometimes. In fact, Joy (who was my college roommate) was the first to introduce me to the concept that perhaps I look forward too much in my life. I'm always thinking ahead to the next fun thing, the next exciting trip or long weekend or holiday break. I suppose that's human nature to a certain extent. But on the other hand, if you're always looking ahead, you're always missing the journey, and the journey should not be missed.

Anyway, the wedding was great. Joy looked STINKING BEAUTIFUL and Richard was as dashing as one can be while looking all googly-eyed and smitten. Maybe that makes one more dashing, even...

And speaking of more dashing, what IS that fascinating transformation that takes place when a guy puts on a tuxedo? It's very close to magic. I don't care where a guy ranks on the Easy-On-The-Eyes-O-Meter, in a tux his number doubles. How does that work? Whatever it is, it seems to work for uniforms, too. And while we're on the subject, allow me to say that the whole black jacket/blue slacks thing that the Marines have going on is a puzzle to me. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT YOU DON'T WEAR BLACK AND NAVY BLUE TOGETHER! (even me, and I know a grand total of about 6 fashion rules) Clearly the designer was a single man, because if he had been married, his wife would have fixed that fashion faux pas long before it hit the ground. Fortunately for the Marines, their cool swords, white gloves, and reputation help them recover from such a uniform misfortune.

But I digress. I was going to tell you all that on my way home from Spain I had a 12 hour layover in London. I had reserved a hostel room for the night but on arriving in the city I realized that it was far, far away from the airport and that the whole system was a little messy and obtuse. I hate that. Anyway, I bought a ticket for the train which would apparently take me to the subway which was supposed to take me to the hostel, and I stopped a girl about my age who looked local to me to ask about platform info. This girl turned out to be my own personal South African angel. Jess, who was born and had lived in S.A. until she moved to London all by herself at 21, happened to be on my train (and when I say happened to be, I mean, thanks God for your help) and so we ended up riding the whole trip together. In that time she gave me directions for getting to the other airport (I flew into Gatwick and out of Heathrow) and we each talked about ourselves a bit. It was a really fun blessing.

And then I got to the hostel. Due to funding considerations I had reserved the cheapest room I could find- a bed in a 20-bed dorm room. Yes, that's right. 20. It was not my best night of sleep ever, particularly because I was a little paranoid about oversleeping and missing my flight so I kept waking up. But the trip to the airport on the tube was fun. The last line I rode is actually mostly above ground, so I could watch the scenery and think about scenes from Mary Poppins and Peter Pan. :) Even though I got to see almost nothing of the city, it really made me want to go back to the UK to visit. Not just London, but the smaller places, too, and also Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

But anyway, back to the wedding. I was so blessed to have three friends from Grace come to stay with me this weekend for the wedding. Julie, Jessica and Liz (and Liz's adorable 6 week old baby, Margot) kept me laughing for three days. It was SO GREAT to visit with them.

I've recently realized that I'm moving into the baby stage in life. Back in mid-college I hit the marriage stage, and it took a while to adjust to all the weddings I found myself attending. But now it seems my group has started to transition out of the marriage stage and begun to procreate. It's all a little odd for me. I like babies (especially other peoples') but they do have a certain knack for changing everything. Lucky for them, they're so darn cute and squishy.