a good time was had by all.

And then you tell me that it’s about time I took off my kid gloves and replaced them with a pair of gortex gloves. Oh, and a shovel.

But see–and maybe because, admittedly, I’ve never done it at all before and therefore haven’t had the chance to grow sick and tired of it–I actually quite enjoyed it.

But I’m thinking that had something more to do with the company I kept while shoveling–

the snow didn't stand a chance.

rather than the actual act of shoveling itself.

And aren’t we adorable, all bundled up, daring the cold to even try it with us? There’s Christian, there’s my brother Jonathan, and of course, I’m the one who’s a girl. And I only had to be told once to not dump the snow into the spot that we needed to shovel once we were finished with this one. After I had done it a couple times, of course, proving to Christian that it was no longer just a one time mistake on my part.

Oh.

Good point.

Forgive me; I’m a nube.

But a nube with a unique perspective. One that seemingly colors everything right now. Even as I was shoveling snow, I was thinking about it.

You know, the encompassing it. And it’s funny, there are a couple different ways people can ask me how I’m doing. Like this weekend, I was snowed in with some wonderful friends and family and a lot of the hours were spent in jolly good times with kids that know nothing else. But then there’d be a lull, the kids would be somewhere else, and someone would ask me, How are you doing? and they’d say it with the kind of inflection that let me know that they were thinking about it and it was okay for me to think about it too. Aloud, if I want.

Cause it’s always there.

Which makes me think of something else. That scene from Harry Potter with slightly batty Luna Lovegood, discussing why both she and Harry can see the creatures who pull their carriages, while others cannot:

And I thought about how the price feels too high to be in such a club. And how yes, you end up seeing more than you ever thought you would, but maybe you become a bit of a loon in the process. Maybe you’re at a party and you look around and everybody seems happy and normal and wow, their life looks generally good, and here you are blinking because while everybody else is looking at the tv, you can’t stop seeing the Thestrals.

And if you could be writing songs all of the time, you think you would be just fine with that. And actually, if you could choose, maybe you’d become a musical note anyway. You’d just make your little sound, hit it like a hammer whenever you’re needed, and there’s no confusion in that. There’s only a great big, deep breath of fulfillment in that.

And you’d be an E, you think. And depending on your mood, you’d either hang out with your minor friends or you’d hang out with your major friends but either way, you’d still be an E. You’d still be you; no guessing in that, snuggled right between a D# and an F natural, right where you belong.

And maybe the Thestrals wouldn’t bother you so much anyway, cause remember? You’re just an E. You just keep doing your thing, striking your note, and let it all happen around you.

Oh, but you’re not an E. You’re a complicated person who wakes up surprised all over again at the landscape around you. And you’re feeling crazy because you still want to write love songs, despite it. And yes, you might have a stronger urge than ever before to throw in an occasional curse word into the song, but you’d still like to write about love and wow, you still believe in it.

Thestrals and all, you still believe in it.

OMG is right.

How do you think I feel about it?

Because see, it’s right outside my door. In my parents’ basement. Because, although I am not living in a van down by the river, thank God, I am living in my parents’ basement.

Which is actually very nice.

Minus the scary little hand.

Actually, there are two of them. My mom puts them in each of the dogs’ crates at night. I guess it’s a real treat.

But when you’re innocently doing your laundry at one in the morning and you happen to glance down and see a severed hand right by your foot–albeit, behind bars, but still–it’s a bit disturbing.

Okay, a lot disturbing.

So disturbing that I had to snap that picture and text it to my brother Jason out in California. Which he then shared with Darby, my sister-in-law. To which she asked, Why are mom and pop teaching the dogs to chew hands?

Good question, Darby.

And then when I told my friend about it, he had yet another take. He seemed to think that they are alien hands and that they are what’s left of an alien attack. The thought is intriguing but even more frightful, I think.

Because that would mean that there is now an alien where the dogs sleep at night. And where the dogs sleep at night is the basement and remember? I also sleep in the basement. And now he is not just your every day alien, he’s an angry alien because he has no hands. Perfect.

But at least he has no hands.

Meaning, at least if he attacks again I will be up against an alien with stumps instead of hands and since I have two perfectly good hands, that totally gives me the advantage.

Plus, I doubt the alien knows ballet.

I could so take him.

But still, I hope it doesn’t come down to that.

Fingers crossed.

But what you do is go to where the love is real.

Where it piles up deep like snowdrifts after the plows have had their say.

And you take off your wraps so you can really feel it.

piled up love.

You take your time there.

Pose for a picture.

Cause you don’t want to forget the time when you were mermaids. When the water was warm and soft and innocence looked at you from big brown eyes.

mermaids for a day

Just like yours were.

And you wonder if you’ll ever be again.

Innocent, I mean.

But you can’t sit around and wonder all day long.

Not when there are adorable little faces to kiss.

Not when there are pink striped sweaters to be worn.

and this. this right here, this is good.

Not when you’ve got hair that looks a lot like your nephew’s.

the best kind of monster is a two-headed monster.

And not when your face looks a lot like a whackadoodle.

Sometimes it’s more like, Thanks for reminding me about how bears sometimes eat you if you tease a bald man, God, but couldn’t you have given me a word that was a little more, ah, relevant?

But I guess I don’t regularly tease bald men, so the lesson was not lost on me.

But still, pertinent words are so nice. Like a key that unlocks something deep in your heart you didn’t even know was there, let alone locked and beyond reach. Or like that feeling you get when you finally relax your shoulders and they drop about two inches with an accompanying tangible loss of tension; you feel better and then you wonder how long exactly you had been living your life with jacked up shoulders. You wonder why you didn’t think to relax a lot sooner, the difference is that much better.

So remember this season of hard times I’ve found myself right smack in the middle?

It’s the kind of season in which the story of bears eating people who tease men is just not gonna cut it.

And I’ve also recently felt a little better, sometimes bordering on a lot better, despite the fact that nothing has outwardly changed.

And I wonder why.

Not why nothing has changed so much–I actually stopped wondering about that a while ago–but why I’m feeling better now. And I’ve even wondered if it indicated that there is something wrong with me. Like how sometimes I can laugh when someone tells me semi-bad news, only way worse because there’s nothing semi about the bad news this time.

And so the other day I opened my Bible and I knew God knew that I was going through something a lot deeper than the debate as to whether or not I should tease a bald man (I shouldn’t). I knew he got it cause I read this:

But the gloominess shall not be upon she who is distressed.

Isaiah 9:1

And then I was like, Oh.

Oh, it’s okay if I don’t feel totally gloomy all the time.

Oh, it’s alright to start feeling through the darkness with my hands and begin to hope that the darkness will give way to coats. And not just any coats, but thick fur coats, and suddenly I will be stepping through snow drifts and then there will be talking animals and even a centaur and…

Oh, sorry. I got lost for a moment in Narnia. You know I always wanted to go there. I even got my parents to get me a wardrobe when I was younger, but the dull thing never worked. Where has all the magic gone, I ask?

But my point was that Oh, it’s okay to hope. To feel through the darkness until I find something good.

To feel a lot like I look in this picture, actually.

Oh, no--see, I like being at the end of my rope. Cause see? I'm smiling.

Cause, yes, I am still hanging at the end of my rope, but at least I am smiling now.

Not all the time, sure, but a lot more than I used to.

The fact that there are some things that I can just count on, I mean.

For instance, no matter what color my hair is, there are a few consistencies to my life.

Like how my hair often goes unwashed.

x

gimme some sugar

And how dogs like to nibble on me.

no really, that means he likes you

Come to think of it, perhaps the unwashed hair is why dogs like to nibble on me.

*I am using some hyperbole here. I do shower. Mostly.

We talk while we hunch over our pictures, trying to make the world better I guess, stroke by stroke.

This is what came out tonight.

write it down and see what happens.

The inspiration is a photograph I love.
My friend Erin and I are in ballet class. We are hard core, in pink tights and point shoes and just as serious as the buns we wear in our hair.

But we’re flying.

Or at least getting close.

The picture was taken during grand allegro, which was always my favorite part of class. It’s when you get to really move. You take up space and get to jump the way you do when you’re a kid and there is only sand or grass or something wide and lovely under your feet.

Only now the jumps are turned out and landed in fifth position or something close.

But still, it’s more like flying then I’ll ever feel in the 10th row of a plane, sandwiched between two people who are just as grumpy about the time their alarm went off that morning as I am.

I think that’s part of the reason why I love dancing so much. It’s transcendent. It’s being told that people stay close to the ground as a general rule and then getting let in on the secret of flying. It’s spending so much time listening to music and then being told you get to be the music. It’s thinking that life, more than anything else, is hard and feeling the pain of that; but then being told to dance till it hurts and nobody thinking it strange that this new kind of pain is so much better than the pain you left at the studio door.

So go on and fly, I guess.

Or at least keep trying.

catatouille

One could say that it might have something to do with the fact that the cat couldn’t quite reach the counter, but there was some question as to what he would do if he actually could.

I try to give others the benefit of the doubt, but come on. I think it’s pretty safe to say that he’d probably use his paw to shovel more of it into his mouth than onto a cookie tray.

Perhaps like Puss N Boots he’d be pretty good at swordplay or something, but cooking is just not his forte.

And then there are the large beasts who currently take up residence in my parents’ house.

sometimes we just need to sit and squeeze each other and that's okay

And they get presents.

On Christmas.

A pillow and a pig knuckle, respectively.

Have I mentioned lately that I am grateful to be me?

To not receive pillows and pig knuckles on high holy days?

Okay, so I guess I’d take a pillow, if pressed.

But the pig knuckle? No.

And have I also mentioned that my nieces and nephews are some of the coolest people around? Not even just taking into account all the kids I know, either; I am talking some of the coolest people.

Today Lyric and I took a long drive in a car together and sang the whole way.

I taught her an audition song from my book. She taught me some songs she learned at camp this summer. And then we finished it off with singing through the Christmas musical that the kids in church just performed. All in all, it was awesome.

And too bad that the rain was pouring down like God was draining his bathtub. Otherwise, we totally would have rolled down the windows and let the songs out into the world. Well, except for the fact that’s it’s winter. That kept us from letting the songs out too, I guess.

But before we started our sing-a-long, we took a picture.

Because we love each other.

so gangsta

And because we’re too cool for school.

*and for any of you who might be concerned as to whether or not my pop is actually still alive after seeing the second picture posted here, let me assure you: he is.

Enjoy.

puckered lips have proven to enhance thumb dexterity

Ollie was hard at work, probably helping Luigi set free a princess whose name escapes me at the moment. What he wasn’t hard at work doing, but was accomplishing with ease and aplomb nonetheless, was looking absolutely adorable. And it’s those lips that get me. So scrunched, so pink.

And just wait till you help him with his activity book. One moment you’re thinking that life maybe lost some of the magic since you haven’t seen it since at least last Wednesday and then Ollie’s trying to answer the very important question, Which animal would you take on a walk? while being given an array of animals to choose from, one being a spider.

He looks at the spider on the page and then he looks at you before he says, Who would take a spider for a walk?! Only his lisp makes it sound more like, Who would take a thpider for a walk?! And he’s saying it with the same level of preposterousness one would ask concerning taking the devil himself on a walk. As in: it’s. not. done. And you both laugh and then you both see the magic, though he had most likely never stopped seeing it. But since you’re that much further from the day you were born, you miss it now and again.

And a spider? On a walk? Who, indeed.

Oh and my sister just walked into the room with very cold hands because she was outside and it’s Christmas Eve and I made her do this with me, cold hands and all. I know, I am very demanding; just ask my sister.

hug it out

And now you see that I am wearing a pink sweater. That I love. Given to me by a lovely and wonderfully spirited friend of mine named Mindy.

But the sweater, it’s pink. And that is interesting only because for a while when I was younger and my mom would say that my brain was less developed, I was under the impression that I was definitely too cool for pink. I guess it was partly because I had three brothers who certainly weren’t wearing pink and I just thought that it was way too girly a color for me. I stuck to darker colors. More earth tones.

Which, I guess would have been great if I went out to hunt on a regular basis. But I didn’t. Not once.

But then I don’t remember when it was, exactly, that I just decided that I was a girl anyway and so it was okay to wear pink. Bright pink, even. But I did. I woke up one day and put on that color and the world seemed brighter even if it was just for a moment when I caught sight of my own sleeve.

And I wonder if the way I suddenly liked pink will be a little bit like the way we can wake up and suddenly feel better. Like maybe I will be walking around and all of the sudden realize that I haven’t thought about something that hurts for at least since breakfast. Now if it were only teatime, that would be something I guess, but we’re talking it’s all the way to dinnertime and hey now, that’s great.  And then I will take a deep breath and not feel such a pinch at the end of it and the world will seem brighter even if it’s just for a moment when I catch sight of the slight pink light that comes at the beginning of a new day.

And maybe that is just one more reason to like the color pink for me.

And would you like to have hair that stays when you run your fingers through it?

Or rather, would you like to look like you were in the movie, Girl, Interrupted?

Cause here’s how:

Color your hair really dark. Like if you’re reading this while it’s nighttime glance out your window and match the shade of the sky. And then dye it that color again the next month. Oh, and do that for a good year and a half so your hair is nice and saturated. And then go to California and decide that you want blond hair too. Spend $500 on getting it blond again and then send the receipt to A Chorus Line because they are the ones who made it so dark in the first place and you can’t afford $500 on your hair after you bought the plane ticket to get to California in the first place.

Good.

Now it’s maybe not the healthiest it’s ever been, but it’s blond, right?

Good.

Okay, last ingredient: don’t shower. Don’t even think about showering. You don’t need to anyway; that’s why God made headbands. But take the headband out and run your fingers through your hair and voila! you totally look crazy.

shower now, please.

santa never looked so good

Something about sentimentality keeps him resurfacing every year.
And something about my brother relentlessly searching through the box of Christmas ornaments until he finds his Santa that he made when he was little.
And then settles it on the tree in a place of honor.

Look at that pride he has in his craftsmanship.

homemade? I could hardly tell.

Can you believe that he decided to write for a living instead of continuing to craft these babies for Hallmark?

Some people just want a challenge I guess.

And I have to admit I have some attachment to this little ornament.

it's not christmas without this

I’ve had it forever I think. And it doesn’t hurt that my name is etched into it. In gold, no less. Who doesn’t love a tiny kitty in a stocking with the added bonus of their monogram? That’s what I thought.

But I definitely saved the best for last.
There’s one ornament that makes us all laugh. It’s all face and curls and a smile for days.
And look–

cheese.

Not much has changed.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

*please note that you can also see Jason in action, placing Santa on the top of the tree (much to our chagrin).