Today…I cleaned the house even more. My parents are coming tomorrow, and it’s finally clean–the dogs sure did their best to bring in more mud as we were trying to get rid of the mud that was already there. PL did more cleaning than I did-she vacuumed and mopped everything. She says near the top of her “Things I’m Thankful List” is the pet hair Dyson that we got earlier this year. Sometimes I think the Dyson might be higher on the list than me, but she reminded me that without me she wouldn’t even have dogs or a house full of dog hair–I’ll take that as a compliment.

Then PL and I baked Fruitcake cookies for my dad, using my grandmother’s recipe. I’m not really patient enough to bake, and this recipe is easy but uses lots of bowls and can get messy. I was already frustrated after having to run out for one item we forgot to buy this weekend for the cookies, and the store was a total zoo. So baking was frustrating more than fun, but PL came and helped me finish the cookies. While the cookies were baking, we watched a couple of our favorite tv shows–among the only shows besides Grey’s Anatomy we ever really make time to watch regularly–How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory.

Today we went to Sunday school and church, and then stayed for a potluck and a little bit of the Advent Festival. It was a really rainy and cold day, so almost as soon as we got home we lit a fire in the fireplace and enjoyed it all evening. We were smart enough to start pea soup in the crockpot that morning, once again somehow picking the nastiest of days to get to come home to soup–I had planned to do that last Tuesday, not knowing at the time that it would be pouring down rain. We just relaxed on the couch in the afternoon, reading, playing on the computer, and snuggling the dogs. That evening, we just sat around even more, did a tiny bit of pre-Thanksgiving cleaning, and watched several episodes of Criminal Minds on tv before going to bed.

When I was getting ready for bed, Oliver went with me to the bedroom, and when I came out of the bathroom, he had made himself comfortable.


Yer bed. I made it warm for U.

Today I got up early, but not early enough, to get to the DeKalb Farmer’s Market to do Thanksgiving shopping. It was crowded but people were generally friendly and patient. We decided most of the people there were regular shoppers like us and knew how to behave and deal with the crowd. Then we went to Kroger to finish up the Thanksgiving shopping. I actually have a longer story about that…


The List.


The parking lot at 9:30am. FYI-they open at 9am. Fun times.

One of our Thanksgiving desserts is going to be Ginger Pumpkin Cheesecake. It’s a Cooking Light recipe and it combines fat free cream cheese with reduced fat cream cheese to make it a little less bad for you. At our Kroger, the dairy section is the last section you come to before reaching the end of the store. So we had a cart nearly overflowing, and just needed the cream cheese and one or two other things before we were totally done shopping. We get to the section where the cream cheese is located, and they only have the regular kind–no fat free, no reduced fat. We look around a bit more and still can’t find any, and realize we’ll have to go to another store.

Then a guy who was behind us restocking the ice cream asks if we need help. We ask him about the cream cheese, he goes to check some of the other cases since sometimes they have things on sale in other cases. There’s none there, but he tells me to wait and he’ll check in the back. PL goes to get our last items, while I wait. He comes back a few minutes later, apologizing that he couldn’t find fat free but that he found the reduced fat kind. We thank him several times for being so helpful, and I make sure to look at his nametag to tell a manager on the way out how much we appreciated his help. When we were on the last aisle, he tracks us down with a box of fat free cream cheese that he found after looking some more through other cases in the back. He asks what we were planning to make, does an adorable swoon (we were 90% certain he was family already, 99.99% after that). As we were leaving the store, we see him going out of his way to help another customer as well. On perhaps the busiest grocery shopping day all year, he took the time to help us find what we needed, saving us a trip to another store and being incredibly friendly the whole time. Later that afternoon I called the store and told them how helpful and nice he was and that I wanted his supervisor to know he was an excellent employee. He said they get thank you calls about this particular guy quite often. So thanks, Robert in frozen foods at the DeKalb Industrial Kroger, for being the awesomest employee ever.

After our shopping adventures, I picked up my cousin Dee and took him with me to the GT Women’s Basketball game. We had a great time, GT won (but who knew Florida Gulf Coast a) existed; b) had a basketball team and c) had several great 3-point shooters). I’m sure he’s still talking about how Buzz sat down with us, hitting me in the head with his tail and then knocking Dee’s drink out of the cupholder.

Today I worked incredibly hard, getting so many things crossed off my to-do list. It felt really good.

My in-box.

Then we had a nice evening at home, watching a strange but excellent movie, Lost and Delirious. It was a teenage, lesbian coming of age film that takes place at a boarding school, so you can imagine how dramatic and angst-filled it was. At the end, I commented, “that was a really good movie until the last minute and a half.” PL replied, “no, it started getting strange when she stopped washing her hair.”

Today…I didn’t go to Eddie’s attic to see Jill Andrews of the Everybodyfields. Funny story. But we did eat dinner at Raging Burrito in Decatur Square, go home and light a fire in the fireplace and watch Grey’s Anatomy.

Today…I read my story “And I Believed” for the St. Mark Wednesday night supper program. We had a coffee house where we all shared things we had written during the class. It would have been nice to have a photo of that, but here’s a photo of my story, in lieu of having a photo of the only thing I did besides work today

In some of my daily blog reading, I came across a 30 Day blog project by a guy in California. He noticed that we spend much of our time and energy focused on big things–graduation, weddings, vacations, etc…that we often forget to make note of the really fun and important (and sometimes boring and unimportant) things we do everyday. He’s posted a picture and a really short sentence about something he did that day.

I thought it was a great idea, and a great way for me to blog more, starting with very small things, and hopefully thinking of other things to say. I have my iPhone with me pretty much all the time, so I can document as I go. Tuesdays are usually particularly dull, I’ll try to document something interesting at some point.

Tuesday November 17, 2009



Today I gave blood. I enjoyed my post-donation nutter butters and spilled some of my grape juice on my khaki pants.



Once I got home, I watched part of the first televised Duke basketball game of the season. The first of many.

I mentioned my Theology on Tap writing class in an earlier post, and this is our assignment for week 1. Take one specific memory about going to church during the holidays—where you didn’t hear anything said because you were thinking of what Santa might have brought. Or, write about what your family did to prepare for Christmas, and what those traditions looked like. How have they shaped you? Your understanding of what you believe?


Here’s what I wrote (editorial note: I’m torn in wanting to add a whole second section where I unpack the story, but I also kind of like the mystery of just ending it without theologizing or sentimentalizing about what it all means).

And I Believed, A Christmas Story

I was by this time too old to believe in Santa. I had heard the rumors. I had friends with older siblings—siblings who teased us for still hoping that Santa was real. I even had some concrete proof: Santa didn’t like egg nog, and surprisingly, neither did either of my parents. But I couldn’t quite not believe. Not yet.

So that year, I devised a plan. Santa’s reindeer—if they really did have to get Santa all around the world in a single night—might get hungry. But everyone just leaves out food for Santa. The reindeer are normally forgotten, relegated to a single carol and even then it’s really just Rudolph who gets most of the attention in that song. But not that year. Not at my house. Beside Santa’s milk and cookies I left a plate of carrots out for the reindeer. I didn’t tell anyone about my plan, not even my parents. I knew that if Santa and his reindeer were truly real, the reindeer would eat the carrots on Christmas Eve.

I woke up early that Christmas morning, but like every other Christmas I remember, my parents were awake before me. I rushed to the front of the house and headed straight for the fireplace to inspect the remnants of milk and cookies—and carrots. The carrots were gone!

Much later that day, after the stockings were emptied of their candy and the paper removed from the presents and was burning with flashes of red and gold and green in the fireplace, I was playing outside with what is now a long-forgotten toy. Then I saw something in the grass. Little bits of carrot everywhere. By the chimney, in the grass and down the driveway.

And I believed.

I do my best to resist posting photos of my dogs on facebook and my blog every day, but sometimes I can’t help it. Without over-sentimentalizing anything, I think I learn a lot from my dogs–and not just how they force me to learn patience. They show us how to be loving and devoted, and how to be excited by small joys in life. (We’ve also learned how to clean red clay out of everything, how to dispose of dead rats, and how to fit 2 adults and 2-40 pound dogs in a queen size bed.) When we first got both of them they would startle fairly easily, but they’ve become less fearful and more trusting the longer they’ve been with us.

Last night, I looked over at Oliver sitting in one of our chairs and saw this: (we actually see this pose quite often, here’s O’Malley doing it too)



That’s such expectant hope. He knew if he waited long enough someone would come along and rub his belly. He was also prepared–legs up in the air and his big turkey-like chest sticking out–so when someone did notice him and walked by, he’d be ready.

What if we took that own posture? Figuratively of course, although I’ve had days where literally seems like a good idea too. Expecting good things. Being prepared for good things to come our way. Trusting that we are safe. Knowing that we are loved.

Over the weekend I had a chance to meet and spend some time with a hero of mine, Walter Brueggemann. He is an Old Testament scholar, all around nice guy, and the author of 62 books. 62, can you imagine?! His book The Prophetic Imagination did whatever the theological equivalent of rocking my world is. It showed me how things could be different than they are, and gave me hope that we might be different. I brought my copy of this book with me to the conference, and in a quiet moment I asked him to sign it. While the two of us were there alone just chatting about politics and his new home town of Cincinnati, I asked if I could ask him a question I’d always wanted to ask him. Of course, he replied.



“How do you write so much? Tell me more about your work habits and how you seem to get so much done.”

I know from my seminary friends and colleagues that we’ve all wondered about this. He’s prolific, to say the least, and not only has he written a lot of books, he’s written a lot of really meaningful, insightful, thought-provoking and well-written books.

His reply? Just do a little bit everyday. As he elaborated, he shared that the always writes longhand since he doesn’t type fast enough to keep up with his thoughts. Then, he said if you write 8 pages every day, over time you’ve written a lot of pages.

On one hand, that sounds pretty simple. 8 pages a day seems manageable, right? But wait, I just spent 30 minutes writing a single paragraph! I’ve learned over time that when I write I average 2 pages an hour, so 8 pages would be 4 hours, of if you consider he writes longhand, that’s closer to 4 typed pages for 8 handwritten ones–a mere 2 hours a day, everyday I would need to spend writing. Yikes. (I definitely spend 2 hours most days either watching tv or goofing off online, I don’t need anyone to point that out).

It’s also clear that Brueggemann is also incredibly well read–ask him a question and he’ll answer with a book you need to read. There have been times when I felt like a really good writer, but it was an intense process, never sustained over a long time. Let’s be honest, mostly done between the hours of 11pm-3am in coffee shops the day before a paper was due. And in addition to the time set aside to write, it also took a lot of time to read and prepare. But to do that everyday? Over 40 years? So maybe it’s not so simple after all.

What I do know is that it gets easier the more you do it. My brain thinks faster, my hands move on the keyboard more accurately (that was real cute about WB writing longhand–but I can’t read my own handwriting, and no one else can either), and it’s easier for nice sounding phrases to come the more I work at writing. I think I have some talent for writing and this gift has been affirmed by teachers and professors over many years, but I certainly have less skill at doing something useful in my free time without a grade-imposed deadline (Hulu anyone?).

So starting tomorrow I will be intentionally cultivating my interest and ability for writing a little more by working through Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird with my friends in St. Mark’s Theology on Tap class. We’ll be writing, blogging and sharing our stories with one another through this journey. I thought about starting a separate blog for this but decided against it. So, whatever comes from those exercises will be posted here, and whatever else ends up here will get shared with them. I hope they like pictures of my dogs and are dying to know what I cooked for dinner.