like cake.

Listening To: Homeward, These Shoes by Iron & WineI like: the sound leaves make when they rustle together. I miss that in Winter. I'm glad I don't realize how much I miss it until the leaves are back.


I just tried to re-heat some Starbucks in the microwave ... and ended up melting the cup.

Necessary tangent: a few years ago my bffMelanie and I took a trip to Kentucky to see a Broadway tour (was it Millie? How do I not remember which play we saw?!). We stayed overnight. We stayed on the top floor of a hotel. While we were there, the hotel caught on fire.

Normal people would scream. Or freak out. Or, ya know. Run.

My reaction? I woke up to the blaring fire alarm and said, quite calmly, "Rats." (... that's the essence of what I said.) (Then we ran.)And yet! When I found my Starbucks melted, gone, nearly-ruined? I shrieked.

At that point, I did what any caffeine-addict would have done:

I found a spoon and scraped my bubbling, boiling Starbucks spew into a new mug.
Then I wiped up the rest with a paper towel and wrung that out into the new mug as well. Good thing my head wouldn't fit in the microwave or I probably would have licked up the rest.

I'm kidding about those last two sentences. Sort of.

But I am not kidding about this: my coffee now tastes faintly of buttered popcorn. And as my drink was a caramel macchiato to start, I would compare this experience to drinking a carnival. A little pink cotton-candy foam on top and I'd be good to go. (Dear Starbucks, you are welcome to steal that idea. I do not ask for recognition, or payment ... but I would like free coffee for life. So there's that.)

So.How you been? :)

I have a mini-micro-giveaway coming up on Wednesday. I hope you like it. Just don't get your hopes up because it is most definitely on the teeny-tiny side. (I find it quite adorable. But I'm weird that way.)

Today, I mostly just wanted to pop in and say hey. Let's talk about weekendings, shall we?

My weekend contained all of the following:* Champagne and Blueberry Pancakes. My parents took me out for brunch at my favorite brunchy place. My parental units are super sweet like that. Also, they are very funny and fun to hang out with. Also, the blueberry pancakes were the size of the super moon.* Storms. Love how the skies are three shades of grey but the grass is bright, Spring-green.


* Sunlight. Days flip back and forth this time of year; rage and roar. Calm and steady. Steady on, I go.


I got a little windblown.


(Do not worry. I wasn't driving when I snapped this ego-shot.) (And in an unrelated note, I adore those sunglasses.)* Wishes.
*Fuzzywonders.


* Stories. I didn't write much this weekend. I hadn't planned to. I wanted to get lost in somebody else's story. So I read some of Clare Vanderpool's Moon Over Manifest: Never being in Kansas before, I wouldn't know for sure, but I imagined they said things like y'all and up the road a piece and weather's coming on. "Are you hungry?" Shady asked. "My place is just up the road a piece." There it was. Funny how people who know exactly where they are can talk so much about directions. I guess those who don't, just keep moving straight ahead. You don't need much direction for that. (From Moon Over Manifest, p. 12-13, Delacorte, 2010)

And I wholly recommend it. That book is packed full of gorgeous writing. Abilene Tucker is entirely lovable; so sweet and tough. I like how she goes at the world.

I also read some of Francis Chan's Forgotten God. I'd actually planned to just read a bit before I fell asleep and ended up reading, like, half the book. Francis Chan is a wonderful communicator: there's a great momentum to his writing but also (and this is important to me) such clarity. This book is about the Holy Spirit. If you're looking for a new read, give this a try. Plan to get roped in quick.* Cake and Prince Edward Island. First, cake.

My Dad is an ardent supporter of Bluebell ice cream. He's a homemade vanilla kind of guy, but he sometimes picks up other (FUN) flavors for me. I like ice cream with lots of stuff in it. Because I figure, if I'm eating ice cream anyway, why not put as much unhealthy chocolate stuffs in there as possible? The "cake and ice cream" flavor of Bluebell contains vanilla and a fudge swirl and, and this is the kicker, little pieces of chocolate covered cake. It's a long process, getting my two scoops out of the bucket. I spend lots of time mining for the cake chunks. (That's perhaps the most unintentional metaphor about my life that I've ever written. ;)

This weekend, I ate ice cream while I watched Avonlea. Judge me if you must, but it is still one of my favorite shows ever. I remember watching it when I was a kid. I watched it with my mom, my granny, and my granny's dog, Little Bit. The show is still beautiful. The setting and the story and the characters are all so easy to love. There's a character - Hetty King - that I've always been particularly fond of. Hetty King was played by an actress named Jackie Burroughs who embodied the character so completely: every mannerism, every elegant and proper enunciation of a word. So tough on the outside but such a big heart. Wonderful character. Must be a wonderful actress to absorb the character so completely.

The Avonlea series, as you Lucy Maude fans know, is based mostly on the novels The Story Girl and The Golden Road. I haven't read The Story Girl in years, but I remember a paragraph about the main character; an imaginative little fireball named Sarah Stanley. The narrator of the book talks about how Sarah Stanley wasn't really any prettier than any other girl. She was normal looking. Didn't stand out. Until she told a story. He said when she told a story, she became the most beautiful girl in the world. People couldn't help but lean in and listen and try to hold onto her words. They all became bewitched by her.

I loved reading that when I was a little girl. I still do.

Blooming roses.

Shadows. Love how spring makes all the shadows look like lace.

Skirts.

Stained glass.

Pretty books.


Pink + White.

On Sunday morning, I wore a dress that looks like spilled paint. I listened to my pastor talk about what it means to endure - how we all want BIG moments and we want to do BIG things for God (insert exclamation points) ... which is fine. Finer than fine. But he talked about how so much of the Bible talks about enduring. Just being faithful. When you try and don't succeed. When you do your best work, hard work, but you get no accolades for it. When God's promises don't come to pass overnight.

He said sometimes the whole "I gotta be more! Do more! Be the best!" attitude keeps us dissatisfied. Or convinces us God isn't working in the now-part - the little snapshots and smiles. Glimpses and glimmers and hellos and good-byes. (He didn't say that last bit. He's not the type to say "glimmers." :) Be faithful, was his point. I liked remembering God isn't just waiting at the finish line, checking His stop watch because I keep getting off course. I like knowing He's in this moment too. Faithful even when I'm not. Closer than my pounding heart.


On Sunday night, I drove. I drove with the windows down and I listened to Glen Hansard. I like how he screams over some of the lyrics and barely whispers the others. I watched the sun slip low and the moon creep higher; high up to the place where it could stare at its lonely-old reflection shimmering on the water. (I wonder if the moon worries about its wrinkles?)

I thought about a line in a Rilke poem. He writes: "I'd like to walk out of my heart." Or something like that. I probably messed it up.

But I feel that way sometimes - when the world presses hard on my shoulders and I can't sleep and my mind won't stop spinning. When the fear of failing is a little bit more intense than the rush of the jump. I think about how I'd like to walk out of my heart for a while. No worries. No regrets. No fear of the future. None of that. But I don't think I could ever do it, completely. I'd probably keep my heart on a string and drag it along behind me. I can't seem to disconnect, no matter how hard I try. That's a good thing, I think.

That's what I thought about last night while I drove; the moon and the stars and my heart on a string. Today, I thought about how to scrape coffee out of the microwave and back into the coffee cup. : )

Would love to hear about the moments that made up your weekend. I'll be back Wednesday(ish) with a mini-micro-giveaway. Till then, keep mining for cake chunks ;)

{Post Script: This is my favorite Cake song. When I first heard it, I hoped maybe he was saying, "I want to love you Natalie." Alas ;) When Biscuit hears the first pump of the trumpets on this song, she cranks her head around ever so cutely.}