A Fambly Member

It has taken me a while to pull out the camera and photograph our newest family member, Nanook (of the North, as christened by Sir Peter on the hottest day of the year. He has since rechristened her "Turd Face" for his private venting purposes.).

She is a long, lanky thing, scrawny and feisty and completely incorrigible. She came to us very tiny, only four or five weeks old, I think, and quite full of fleas. The fleas are gone now, but she hasn't lost those wonderful white whiskers over her dark face as she has grown.

Mia is a kinder, sweeter cat now that she has company. Nanook has replaced Piper as the recipient of Mia's playful urges, and most mornings we wake to the sound of the cats running from one end of the house to the other, having jolly great fun. I think Mia was homesick for her sister, and she is happier with a friend. She is also about three times Nanook's size, which made her skittish antics around the kitten down right hilarious when we first brought Nanook home.

I've been meaning to post something about the kitten for a while, but I am just now getting my steam back to return to normal. Just in time for a very busy month of travel and processing and shooting and appointments. This is me, hoping I will find time to rest!

Summer Blush

It never ceases to amaze me how little I interact with my feelings for my husband. I'm really a terribly emotional person, but in this one area, I tend to be extremely pragmatic. I am very shy when he talks to me about his love for me. It is something that is still so new, and though its depth has been tested by time and circumstance, I find I don't respond easily to his heart.

Most days, I feel like a very slow learner, but some days, I feel like a schoolgirl with my first crush. I suppose the first new excitement of our love has worn away, but I can't help feeling there is something more, especially after long hours to talk and share what we love and who we are with one another.

I can't imagine being in a relationship where both people chose to settle for the status quo and stopped pursuing the other's heart. Stopped wondering about it.

There is a creeping separateness in marriage, I think, ever-so-subtle, driven by time and interruptions and children and work and the dailiness of what we do in our often-separate lives. Fighting to maintain that oneness (or keeping current, as Pete and I like to call it) is really hard sometimes. We're so dependent on God to join our hearts through the misunderstandings and frustrations we both face.

So the other day, Pete bought me flowers. He'd intended to buy them on Saturday when he went out (I didn't know this), but there weren't any. So he bought flowers for me while I was with him, grocery shopping at Sam's. And they are the sweetest-smelling lovely pink roses I've had in a long time.

I always love the pretty, but I love these just a little bit more than I usually do - they come to me at a time when we've been very close, during a period in our lives where we don't have answers or goals or long-term plans, only trust and what God gives us where we are. Somehow, it is easier to stop and smell them, to look at them and feel just a little bit like we've made a home here where we didn't think we would. And it is nice to realize that my love for Pete is a little deeper this week than it was last week.

Hallelujah!

Thank you to those who have been praying about the missions trip for which I requested prayer yesterday. I am not able to give a lot of details, but I can say that God is working to accomplish the impossible with a government leader in the country where the team is going!

Short Post, Big Prayer

My husband's boss is leaving on Sunday for a missions trip, and just found out that the medical supplies the team was planning to take now require a license that takes a minimum of a week to procure. Anyone want to pray for a miracle?

Oh Gosh....

I can't get over this feeling of happy when my baby moves... Button is quite wiggling this morning while I'm trying to meet a deadline, and it's so distracting in the best, best way! I'm actually glowing today.

Just thought I'd share. :-D

Happy Tuesday!

The Best Part

Having cable television (an add-on expense justified only because we can't abide the thought of paying so much per month ONLY for Internet) has inevitably brought me into contact with more commercials. I have been fascinated to watch the ad attempts at selling highly-priced products in our current down-time economy.

Evidently things aren't going so badly for some companies. Walmart, for instance, is doing quite well, running ads about how much you can save on everything by shopping at Super Walmart. (I hate to say we've bit on this ad, but we did it before they started running.)

The one that has had me grinning happily lately, however, is the absolutely wonderful commercial about the Irish dancer, waking up to Folgers coffee, with a re-tooled theme that includes a Celtic underpinning. That song alone made me want to drink coffee in the morning when I was growing up. It gives me the nicest, safest, most familiar feeling in the world.

Folgers was on its way out of business when Smuckers bought them out as the economy was skyrocketing toward the gourmet. Smuckers was smart, buying out the cheapo companies, and now they're making a nice profit on the products people are returning to buy since the bottom dropped out of the market.

Why am I happy? I'm pregnant. I don't drink coffee. And Pete is still splurging on his gourmet coffee (except for his Dunkin' Donuts Coolatta cravings). But I'm happy (and thanking God for this really, really random thing - wow, He puts up with me and my humanity, doesn't He?) because my daughter gets to experience something I experienced and loved as she grows up too.

So here's to memories that get lived in today. It makes me feel like the end of the world is less imminent, anyway. ;-)

Reflections: A Sequel to Yesterday

sweet service born early
on a bright day
in which I hoped for clouds
and I open sleepy eyes knowing
I am loved
and I listen to love undoing all
my brave intention

I rest
and feel for soft, butterfly movement
and hear my baby breathing quiet
so peaceful
and wonder how daily time
feels eternal sometimes
I am grateful
and shy

gifted stolen moments
bathed in necessary candle-scent
whispered desire that is real
breakfast prepared in time
for strength
and a little late for work

the wheels of time that
slept last night
do not begin to move
at once today

time pauses
I find me waking into forever
where anything - everything
beautiful
is possible
and dreams come true
are where I live
in this house I don't like
with messes and bugs and heat and no roses
with love that is solid and hopeful and wonderful and

more real than real

oh it is sunny when I wanted
rain
and I am loved