dino friends

Recently dinosaurs have been on my mind. I don't know why. Things like that just come to me sometimes. And I don't mean I've been thinking deep thoughts about them or their demise; I mean there actually are cartoonish pictures of them floating through my brain - mostly the large, long-necked, slow and gentle herbivore-type. It all started last week when I was painting with my friend Andrea. She was finishing up this amazing, firey flower, and I was pondering what to put on my own blank paper... and after only a few minutes I knew it had to be a dino. It just seemed right. The scene became quite complicated, involving a bear and a spewing volcano. But anyway, I thought that would be the end of such thoughts. Then two days ago I was looking through a National Geographic magazine that had come in to the Timothy House and I opened to a two-sided poster of more amazing extinct reptiles! I couldn't have been more pleased.

squash

I decided it was time I face my fears and see what spaghetti squash is all about. The main problem with spaghetti squash, it would seem, is in the name: it tastes nothing like spaghetti. Kind of like how soy milk tastes nothing like milk - so if you go into it expecting some sort of resemblance, you're in for a big disappointment and probably won't like it at all. I knew this and was eager to experience this squash in all its natural squashiness. So I baked, I forked, I cooked it up and put onions with tomatoes and rosemary on top and some cheese... it was great! I think squash and I are becoming great friends.

the good crazy

It's about 7am and I've been awake off and on for the last 3 hours. Great. I seem to have this ongoing problem with sleeping... I finally went out on the couch and had a strange dream that combined major people and situations from the last 8 years of my life. Entertaining at least.

Well my dad and I have this tradition (meaning, we did it last year and a second time makes it a tradition) of walking/running together on Thanksgiving morning. Which is great, but right now I'm feeling particularly unmotivated and ready for my first of hopefuly several naps for the day. My sisters Rach and B (Em isn't home yet) are in bed, and will be for a while I think. We all slept in one room last night and it was a bit riotous... lots of tickle-monster attacks and shrieking by Beka, while Rachel kept on singing a few lines from some song she heard on her independant radio station called "the perfect crime" or something like that. They bring out the crazy in me - the good-crazy. More to come...

green and purple

Yesterday at the farmer's market I got a vegetable I've never had: tak choy, some sort of "asian green". I like bok choy, so I figured I'd probably like this too. So last night I pulled it out to cook some and found it had partially frozen! What?! My refridgerator still has problems, apparently. I cooked it anyway and put it in a corn tortilla and it was delicious, in its greenish way. Moving to the other side of the globe and the southern hemisphere... I also purchased some purple peruvian potatoes which reminded me so much of one of the many kinds of potatoes we ate in Bolivia: very small and dark, quite purple. One of the hundreds of varities you can find down there. I loved the potato section of the mercado central - so many potatoes! All colors and shapes! I'm glad someone up here thought to grow some.

different and good

Some friends reminded me of joy last night. How could I forget? We pasteled with bright colors and it was great. My picture kind of ended up looking like a swirly blob, but it felt good making it. And I especially liked the blue colors around the edge. If I had a picture-taking machine I would put it here. It was also great and mesmorizing watching my friends put colors and shapes on their canvases. All different and all good.

stuff of life

I've been thinking a lot the last couple months about this business of loving people, what it really means to love. Sometimes there's part of me that wants to draw back, to distance myself from involvement and feeling and entering into a person's life and suffering more. To just say "No more, I'm done" and they move on and I don't think about them anymore. Because it's just HARD and messy and there aren't solid rules. And it takes a lot more sacrifice and effort than I sometimes want to give - much more than just having good feelings toward someone. And it means possibly failing. And it means my own heart my suffer in the process. Jesus suffered greatly in loving us. Shouldn't our loving look similar to that? I read that "Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken," and also, "Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer." If loving people becomes easy, is it really love? If there is not struggle and suffering, is my compassion genuine or merely a good feeling?

explosions

Sometimes there's so much to say that it must either all come out at once, or not at all. Seems like I usually get stuck with the not at all part. But I suppose that's my own fault. I have an ongoing fear that when I speak it is not valuable or worth hearing and that others are uninterested. I know that's silly. But still real.