Today I moved into my new office. My first ever office. Prior to this week, I have used my home (no internet), various coffee shops (great, but not a single decent one open year round in the towns I live or work in most often), my car (no room for a file cabinet...also no mailing address) and various hiking trails throughout the Black Hills (tough to explain to the boss) as office space. So, though it scares me a bit to have a single, designated location at which I am expected to be much of the time, (I had a job like that once before - I'm so over it) it will probably be good for me. It will hopefully help me structure my time a bit more. And, save me about $30/week in coffee money.

After we got all my stuff moved in - which is not much, at this point - I sat down (in a wooden, kitchen table-type chair, because I don't have a desk chair yet) and...wondered, "What do I do next?" Since I'm not really sure what people with my job actually DO with their offices most of the time, I decided to start with the obvious. Decorate.

And then I remembered that I don't really have a budget for decorating an office right before Christmas. So I just sat there for a bit and looked out the window - which happens to look right out on the Mickelson trail - and realized that I might need to board up the window...or I'll just end up back on the trail, calling it my office again...

I know the sun's still shining when I close my eyes...

Yesterday, in an effort to cure my cabin fever, I decided to run around in the snowy woods with an old friend and a new friend all afternoon. So I was in a cave...literally, in a cave...when my grandmother had a heart attack, and I missed multiple phone calls of varying urgency from family members. When I came back into town and they were finally able to reach me, I met my parents and my sister and brother in the hospital cardiac cath lab waiting room.

After they moved my grandma out of recovery and into a room in the ICU, I stood by her bed, making dumb jokes about the terrible decor and watched while they hooked and unhooked wires and tubes and pumps and electro-sticky-tabs from her tired, slight body. Then I had to leave her there, because they had to remove a pressure device from her artery, and I would have been in the way.

So I went to the store to buy eggs. On the way there, I was rear-ended. The lady that hit me said she was very sorry. I got her phone number, but I don't think I will ever call her. It's barely a scratch. I bought my eggs and went home and watched my friend make brownies in my kitchen, since I don't really like to make brownies. And I drank coffee while another friend tuned my guitar, since I'm not very good at tuning my guitar. And when it was tuned, I hummed harmonies while my friends played my bongos (I'm not so hot at the bongos, either) and my guitar and my tambourine and it made beautiful tribal-sounding worship music.

After they left, a different friend called to tell me a funny story about his blind date and an almost funny joke that I can't remember at all. And my mom called to tell me that my Grandma was already looking better than she had looked when I saw her. Then I crawled in bed under my down comforter (God bless the man that invented down comforters) lined my face up just right with the slanty slice of moonlight pouring across my pillows and prayed for my Grandma. I prayed that she would heal up fast and not have any complications, but mostly I prayed that she would know how valuable she is, and how loved she is, and how much grace is still to be had in life, just when it seems we must have used it all up.

Red Beans & Rice...

I am sitting on the kitchen counter next to my stove. In my sweats. Reading Anne Lamott and listening to Flogging Molly, and stirring my red beans and rice every once in a while so it doesn’t stick to the pot while it simmers. It is the day following a snow day. I hate the day following a snow day. It’s like the day following a sick day from work, when you wake up and realize that your throat still hurts, but not as much as it did, and you still have a headache, but it is not quite a legitimate one to justify another day off. So it is with the day following a snow day. You can’t, with a clear conscience, curl up in the papasan and watch 6 more episodes of The Office on DVD. If you want to at least be up to par with the rest of productive humanity in your area, you need to go dig your car out of its snowy cocoon and get with the program. Which doesn’t really explain why I’m still in my sweats at two in the afternoon…

My two-cents about todays election...

I am far more disturbed by the way I see the Church in our country handling this election (and most elections, for that matter), than by the thought of any one candidate taking over the presidency.


“How we need to be freed from the illusion that we’re doing anything kingdom by voting a certain way every couple years! How we need to wake up to the truth that we vote for or against the Kingdom every day of our life. We vote by how we spend our money and time. We vote by where we live, who we hang out with, the kind of car we drive and the kind of clothes we wear. In the Kingdom, we vote with our lives, not in a booth expressing our opinion about what Caesar should do.” - Dr. Gregory Boyd