Ice cream.

Last week, I made up a new batch of music flash cards for my younger students. I drew cards for all the usual stuff: quavers, semibreves, crotchet rests, treble clefs, various notes on the stave. Then, on one of the cards I drew an icecream, a yellow cone with a pink scoop and blue sprinkles. I don't even really know why I did it; it was just a random moment of whimsy to surprise the kids, I guess.

This week I've been trialling the new cards and the kids have been enjoying it. Anything that's a bit new is a little surprise all of its own. But the first time I took one of my students through the new flashcards, I was the one who was surprised. "Minim," my little student said. "Bass clef. Mezzo forte. Ice cream. Middle C." She just sailed right on by the ice cream cone without skipping a beat.

She wasn't the only one. It's happened with every single student so far. Some of them grin. Some of them laugh a little as they speak the word. But not one of them blinks when the unexpected thing appears. That to me is itself unexpected, and it's delightful.

I think this probably wouldn't happen with adults. I think that, if I showed the flashcards to my friends, they'd say, "Why'd you put the ice cream in there? What's that got to do with anything?" At the very least, they might say, "Ice cream?" with their voice sliding up on the end to suggest the question. Not the emphatic and certain "Ice cream" I've heard from each of the kids.

It feels like there's a metaphor in there somewhere. Something about hope or miracles or even having the faith of a little child. Something about not yet being so programmed to think that everything must make sense, that there must be a proper order for everything.

But I'm just gonna let it sit and simmer for a while. And I'll keep grinning as the little ones go through their music terminology and without skipping a beat shout out "Icecream!" every time.

The Sunday Currently

I'm stealing the format for The Sunday Currently from Carina, who in turn found it somewhere else. I like the idea of a simple check-in, a way to orient one's heart- and head-space at the end of one week and the beginning of another. It's also the perfect chance to switch gears from my last two kind of heavier/more analytical type posts (and thank you all for your really thoughtful and affirming comments, by the way). Here's what's current in my world:

Reading
As always, I'm deep in too many books at the same time. But the two I've spent time with most recently (hello, Sunday afternoon; today you were made of wonderfulness) are Fredrick Backman's A Man Called Ove and Anna Funder's All That I Am. Ove is my local book club's pick for this month and, to summarise it super briefly, it's about a grumpy old Swedish fellow who nevertheless has some endearing redeeming qualities. For the first thirty pages I hated it -- hated his constant grumbling and his almost cartoonish old-mannish ways. Then on page 31 something happened and I suddenly loved this character. I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest of the story develops. And I literally only started All That I Am today, but already it's proving wonderful. Anna Funder's non-fiction work Stasiland was amazing, and I feel confident her fiction will be just as good.

Writing
I'm working on a short story at the moment. It's been in the works for most of the year, and I keep pulling it out when it forcibly impresses itself on my memory. I'm also dipping a tentative toe back into journalling. I haven't done it for so long that I confess I'm quite scared by the whole process.

Listening
I'm all about putting my iPod on shuffle these days. To my shame, sometimes I discover stuff I haven't ever heard before. I'm also not above skipping tracks I'm not in the mood for. Current/always/forever favourites are Josh Garrels and The Civil Wars (who are, sadly, officially disbanding), while Citizens & Saints are my newest favourite. Musically, their stuff is like gentler hard rock, if that's even a thing. Lyrically, their songs are exquisitely literary contemporary Psalms. So good.

Thinking
Oh, what a wide brown land that word encompasses. I'm thinking a lot about being faithful in the little things, about reconciling the present with the future, and the interesting dynamics of share-housing (I've only ever shared with my sister; I'm so intrigued as to how people share a living space with someone they're either not related to nor in love with).

Smelling
Bushfire smoke and a cool breeze.

Wishing
[withheld, because] 

Hoping
...to get better at hope; to find the delicate space between idealism and cynicism; for more cool breezes; to ignore the chocolate cake in my fridge; to connect with people I need to connect with.

Wearing
Post-church, Sunday night daggies. If only I'd written this a half hour ago, when it was a black sheath dress, gladiator sandals, and a diamante collar necklace.

Loving
The feeling that life is maybe finding a rhythm again after several months of really intense busyness.

Wanting
A little more job security, perhaps.

Needing
To go through my walk-in-robe-slash-storeroom-space and overhaul everything.

Feeling
Grateful to be on the mend and getting my energy back after a really prolonged flu. 

Clicking
Here for adorable German words translated into adorable line drawings. Here for cute Israeli cops lip-syncing to The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Here to watch the latest episodes of Doctor Who. And here because there's always something good to read.

You?

The warrior virtue.

I got home from work today and just wanted to cry. It was nothing particularly to do with work and nothing particularly to do with home. I just felt tired from the inside out, and it suddenly caught up with me. Everything I had to do felt too difficult and too awful, and the few things I’m looking forward to over the next little while all seemed so wrapped up in other things that terrify me that it felt/feels impossible to separate the yay from the unyay in order to really enjoy them.

While the physical reality of this hit with a fresh intensity, the vibe wasn’t exactly new. I’ll admit it: a certain sense of cynicism has crept into my soul lately. I didn’t notice it happening. I didn’t intentionally stamp out the flames of optimism. Suddenly I just realised: I’m not such a hopeful person anymore. I’m more skeptical. I’m more doubtful. I have less of a sense of anticipation about the future. And every time I watch the news, I regret it.

 I used to be Pollyanna, but these days I feel more like Daria. Without the funny bits.

 As it turned out, my teaching appointment was cancelled for the afternoon, and I was able to collapse onto my couch instead, shutting my mind to the million other things I’m supposed to be doing this week. I put my iPod on shuffle, and Mumford & Sons’ Thistle and Weeds came on. It’s not my favourite of their songs, so I hadn’t given it as much attention as some of the others that caught at me from the very first listen. Today, though, the words made me stop:

Plant your hope with good seeds / Don't cover yourself with thistle and weeds

I was arrested by this image of hope as a garden, a garden that requires cultivation, energy, pruning, and watering. I thought of how cynicism and snark can spring up like thistles and weeds, and how once the weeds take over a patch, it’s so much harder for the good seeds to grow there.

Then came the chorus:

But I will hold on / I will hold on hope.

Hope is such a small word. A slight word. A simple word. I equated it with Pollyanna before, and sometimes I suspect that is how we think of it: as the sunshiny stuff of children’s stories from last century. But there’s a reason the image of the anchor has come to represent hope: hope is the weight that can keep the soul from being dragged away by the rips and currents that yank it off course. Hope strains under its own strength. Hope pulls, hope catches, hope preserves, and hope keeps alive.

Hope saves us from shipwreck. Hope is fierce. It has guts, and it has muscles. Hope is the stuff of warriors.

Last week, I got a text from a friend I rarely see or talk to, but who is one of those steadfast, true, and excellent people in my life. She reminded me that the last time we’d caught up was for New Year’s Eve. We danced and sweated our way into 2014 in my tiny Housie living room, and we talked about Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s resolutions from 1943. The one that stood out to her was the call to action, Wake Up And Fight. The one that leapt up and smacked me on the nose was this: Keep the Hoping Machine Running.

I loved it so much that I painted it on the front of my moleskine planner. That way, I’d see it daily all through 2014. But after my friend’s text, I saw those words anew, with a jolt. My hope machine hasn’t been running at full horsepower. In fact, I think I’ve let the fuel tank run low. My little hope machine has been coughing by on mere fumes. Time for some jumper cables, I think.

Considering hope as this thing that can be fed or starved, fuelled or run dry, may seem oddly contradictory. After all, we can’t just magic our way into joy or click our red-shoed heels and find ourselves there. So is hope fake?

I can’t believe that it is. Jesus notched its importance up there right alongside faith and love. And through humanity’s long history of messes and flaws, it has been the thing telling people to walk on. So it makes sense that sometimes we have to tell our hope itself to hope on, too. The Psalmist literally told his soul to keep hoping. And Dory did the same thing when she sang that magical phrase, “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.”

If hope is a garden, we must weed it. If hope is an anchor, we must cling to it. If hope is a machine, we must keep it running. Just keep swimming.

All the things we don't say:

Do you ever imagine what your life would be like if you gave voice to all the things you only think? Do you wonder what kind of person you'd be? I do. There's so much that goes unspoken in our world, and I don't even mean the deep, dark secrets of the soul that only ever get shared with one or two safe people (or a listening God). I mean the ordinary observations that run through our minds that are never sounded because they'd label us as weird or presumptuous or just too real. No one wants anyone to be too real, right? It just gets awkward.

For example: I am so unintentionally uptight about taking liberties that I will rarely use a person's nickname if I am not directly related to them or unless I have known them forever. But that doesn't stop me giving them nicknames in my mind, affectionate little titles that reflect how warmly I think of those people. What if I used those invented nicknames? Like, actually out loud? Would the sky fall?

And what if I actually, calmly and in an extremely measured fashion, told that woman at the florist the other day that she was being rude and unprofessional, and really had not earned any of the massive sum of money that we just handed over to her?

What if I told the checkout guy at Woolies that I was having a really pathetic afternoon and was feeling exhausted and fragile, and then his chirpy smile -- and 1950s hairdo and the way he laughingly watched my brother ride off through the mall on the shopping trolley -- all made things feel about 68% better?

What if I told that father that the way he treats his son is cruel, that it's bullying and there is no justification for that kind of behaviour?

What if I let the guy at the video store know that he is my favourite shop assistant there because he asks "How has your day been?" and then seems genuinely disappointed if I don't immediately go on and actually detail what's been happening? What if I told him that people don't usually care about strangers any more and that it's a remarkable thing that he does?

What if I said to the person I am only just getting to know, "I have never met anyone like you and I am intrigued by the way you experience life."?

Maybe I'll never be the kind of person who can offhandedly say these things. Maybe I won't ever use someone's nickname unless expressly requested to do so. Maybe the world isn't ready for all of us to become manic pixie dream girls.

But there are a few small ways I am trying to say the things that remain unsaid. I am trying to answer honestly when people ask, "How are you?" I am learning to be more bold in saying, "I'm sorry; I don't know what that is," when of course I'd rather sit tight and seem smart (even if it means shocking all the older women in the room because I haven't remembered who Prince George is, for goodness' sake). And I'm trying to be more confident about saying various incarnations of, "I am really glad I know you," even if I'm not certain we're 'at that level' yet. But I am really glad for the people in my life, and I want to be bolder about expressing that.

How about you? What would happen if you started speaking out the things you don't say?

----------

Conversations:

• Emily Dempster -- it's so much fun when someone digs out a past blog post and interacts with it. I loved your list of book that have shaped who you are! Thank you so much for sharing <3 li="">
• Asea -- how I wish I could be a fly on the wall during one of your days. Your work (and study and social) life intrigue me so much!
• Meaghan -- ha ha, I'm not brave; I'm a wimp! And my fear of heights seems to get worse as I get older. Now I'm at the point of closing my eyes when there are scenes shot from great heights in a movie, for crying out loud.

Digging deeper:

When I was considering my undergraduate degree and excitedly discussing it with whoever would listen, an older friend said to me, “They say if you want to hate literature, you should study it.” Oh.

This friend is someone I generally consider to be pretty wise, but in this case he turned out to be wrong. Here I am, almost at the end of nearly five years of study, and I love literature more than ever.

I have certainly had to read stuff I didn’t care for. I’d say about 50% of the texts set for my classes were ones I wouldn’t naturally pick up for myself, mostly because it seems that many tertiary texts highlight the bleak and the gritty. Yes, I have had to wade through postmodern criticism that desperately seeks out phallic symbols in the most unlikely of places and brings everything -- yes, everything -- back to Oedipus. I have read stories that gave far too much information and stories that gave far too little. I’ve been called upon to dig out meaning I really didn’t even think was there. I do have a few choice things to say about certain bits of convoluted postmodern literary theory but I can honestly affirm that none of it has made me hate literature. Even when I hated where a novel went, I couldn’t hate the novel itself. There is always some spark of wonder and I think that studying a piece of writing will draw that out -- for me, at least. And as for the stuff I already loved and had to revisit? Plumbing the depths of these works didn’t drain them of all joy. Rather, I got to see nuanced sides of the works that I’d never considered, delicate layers of meaning and artistry that I didn’t even know were there. Far from making me hate literature, studying it only enhanced my appreciation for it.

It’s not just books that work like this. I remember being set a very complex Bach prelude and fugue back when I was studying piano. The movement of the voices -- four of them, spread amongst two hands -- was immensely complex and interwoven, and I pretty much despaired of playing it with any fluidity. I groaned as I picked apart the work note by note, dragging and fumbling my way through. But as I gained a little proficiency (it was never wholly easy for me, let me be clear), I actually began to love it. Of course, the work did not change, but I did. I got to know it better, and in knowing it better I was more able to see its beauty. More recently, I see this happening for one of my music students. “I hate this!” she moaned, staring at a new song which included some unfamiliar techniques. “This is the worst song I’ve ever had to play!” I tried to tell her that maybe it would become her favourite; that’s how it often worked for me. She was frankly disbelieving. Two weeks later, with her fingers moving deftly over the notes, she confessed that it was now her favourite. And because she is eleven years old and entirely unselfconscious, there was no sheepishness. She just grinned widely.

I wonder if the process is the same for learning to love people? In my teens and early twenties, I craved that instant connection with new friends, the undefinable “click,” so difficult to explain but so easy to recognise when it’s present. It’s the sort of feeling that has you laughing with someone and showing them your truest self even though you’ve only known them an hour -- because something about them, or the way you and they are, together, says it’s okay, it’ll work. I used to think friendship needed those click moments, but now I’m not so sure. There are friendships in my life that started off very slowly, awkwardly, brokenly. There are people I know with whom I had to make a concerted effort to reveal parts of my heart, taking a risk and putting it out there in a clunky fashion because it was never going to happen organically. Some of these people are my dearest friends now. With some, I’m still my quietest self, my most hesitant self, but they are true friends and real friends because I have known them long enough to see the intricate layers of the notes and the melodies that criss-cross and compete but somehow come together to make something amazing.

Perhaps studying something will make you hate it. But I don’t think so. I think that if you really want to learn to love something, looking a little closer is the best way to do it.

Dear you all:

Does it seem to you that the rotation of the earth on its axis has been a little fast lately? My ears are ringing and I want to get off. Or at least, I want it to slow down so the view isn't just a blur.

It's autumn here in Queensland, has been for more than a month, but tonight is the first hint that Brisbane will embrace its fall identity. There's a cool breeze, just a little bit of a nip in the air. I'm still wearing sandals, but I have a light cardigan on, too. It could all disappear again tomorrow -- yesterday was ridiculously hot -- but at least I know that autumn is possible. Summer in Queensland tends to make me stop believing.

March was a rapid cycle of work, uni, writing deadlines, a trip to Sydney for my gnome's engagement party and bridesmaid dress shopping, more work, more uni, more writing deadlines, a family getaway to Coffs Harbour to celebrate my grandparents' combined 80th birthday parties, more work, breathing, packing and unpacking, you know it. All that stuff.

This week brings with it the school holidays, so I have two weeks off from one of my part-time jobs. My thoughts lately have been preoccupied with post-university wonderings, burdens about money (alternately hating the stuff and then pretending I don't care), feelings of missed connections, regret over not being able to fit more into my days. There are so many people who should know how much I care about them. In the midst of it all, writing a bunch of essays on children's media (it's a lot of fun) -- and then my hard drive decided to turn up toes and die. Most of my writing was backed up (I hope; I think; I am trying not to consider it too much) but goodbye to four years of photos. I am oddly empty about all of this. I don't know whether it's denial or I have somehow achieved some higher plane of acceptance thanks to some special measure of grace. We'll see what transpires.

Last weekend I got to take a ride on the Brisbane wheel. I'm not fond of heights (she said, severely understating the fact) but it's not a big ferris wheel by world standards. I was not prepared for the very marrow in my legs to twitch and shiver in complete and utter fear. There was no logic to it. I knew that the wheel was safe, I was entirely enclosed, but with all my being I wanted to make myself as minute as a flea so the tiny glass cosmos I was enclosed in would seem huge and secure. I screwed my eyes closed in an attempt to trick my body into thinking I was on the ground. It didn't work, and all I could think was "Twelve minutes of this. TWELVE MINUTES."

The weird shivering inside my legs faded a little after the second revolution. I could open my eyes a bit on the third. I could stare straight out of the window on the fourth. I could actually look to the side on the fifth. By the time the wheel slowed to a stop on the sixth cycle, I was surviving. So maybe things are never going to slow down, but perhaps eventually we acclimatise to them. And if we survive the velocity long enough, maybe there's even a really good view.

A note about time:

Sometimes I dread the passing of time because it takes me closer and closer to the things that worry me, terrify me, or make me sad. I wake up in the morning, not excited because a new day is here, fresh and unspoilt, but because the new day says, "We are one day away from the doctor's appointment that makes you nervous. We are two days away from that deadline being overdue. We are one week away from that uncomfortable conversation you are going to need to have with someone. We are a month away from you trying that new thing that makes your very fingertips shake with trepidation and the muscles of your arm feel limp and weak. We are one year away from you being exactly the same person you are right now, unchanged, not developed by the life you are supposed to be living."

Time can be such a hard taskmaster.

But it is worth remembering that time, the very same passing of seconds and minutes and hours and days that pulls nearer the things we dread, also pulls nearer the things we cherish the most. Some of them are big things. Some of them are small. Some of them come intertwined with the things we fear. Some of them stand alone. But they are good things. Like new people you don't even know, just waiting to be met. Like new accomplishments. Like your best friend marrying the love of her life. Like your brother marrying the love of his. Like new books written by your favourite author. Like new discoveries. Like getting to see your grandparents with all their children gathered around them. Like the sequel to your favourite movie coming out at the cinema. Like Autumn, followed by Winter.

Each day that passes is a day closer to the thing that makes your stomach curl up in knots. But it is also a day closer to the next time your little niece and little nephew get to meet each other and twine their fat little hands together.

Time is not always cruel. Sometimes it is the friendliest thing in the world.

the little like list:

Little things I'm loving this week:

1. Queensland sunshine. She sure knows how to turn it on.
2. Getting to watch friends make ridiculous movies.
3. Expired film that my mother picked up for me. I can't wait to try it out.
4. Best potato scallops in the land.
5. Reading Dawn Wind by Rosemary Sutcliff, one of my favourite authors of all time.
6. Listening to evening:morning by The Digital Age. Best worship music.
7. New haircuts.
8. Glancing at the pile of birthday cards still hanging out on my bookshelf.
9. Handing in assignments that took far too long.
10. Crying at a good movie.
11. Phone calls and face-to-face chats with my sisters.
12. Talking to strangers.
13. Feeling that uncomfortable mix of nervous and excited about writing again.

What's on your list?

Like falling off a (b)log.

I just complained to my mother -- whose dining table I am sitting at right now -- that it feels like so long since I've blogged that I've actually forgotten how to do it. She replied, "I'm sure it's just like falling off a log." Thank you, Mum, for your oh-so-convenient post title inspiration.

It's the Christmas end of the year; the warm end, the sunny end, the end that is packed full with plans and dates and shopping and hopes for tying up all the loose threads of the dreams that were anticipated at the beginning of the year and now stand won, lost, fulfilled, or forgotten. Last week at the grocery store, I bought peaches. Today, I bought apricots. Stonefruit packing the shelves and Jingle Bells playing over the radio: just another sign of approaching Christmas.

Last night, we sat among twinkle lights and sailor's knots and, if we were artists of some kind, tried to embody the hope of what Christmas means by exploring it in some form of creation. If we were the recipients of that art, we tried to lay hold of what the artist was doing, what the artist in all of us is doing whenever we try to look past the dirty glass of the temporal and see the lasting thing that is hidden just beyond it. I was privileged to have some of my short fiction read publicly for the first time ever and, contrary to expectations, I didn't die of awkwardness while I sat there and listened. Rather, I felt the honour of seeing words I had chewed over, crossed and uncrossed, come to life in another person's voice and inflection and lovely enthusiasm. It was pretty special.

One of my little students enlisted my help to write out his Christmas list a few weeks ago. He didn't need my help determining what should go on the list; he just needed some pointers on how each item was spelt. He had all the big guns up there -- the latest branded toys I can't remember the names of, a Wii (or whatever the newest version of a Wii is), stuff like that -- and when he felt happy with the list, he pushed it forward on the table and left it there as a sort of offering for all of us to approve. I had already moved on to something else and was marking the work of another student. The little guy glanced at my hand moving over the page, and snatched his list back. "What are those pens called that are actually pencils and they click the lead out?" he asked, looking at the one in my hand. "Pacers," I said. He licked his bottom lip and picked up his pencil again. "How do you spell pacer?"

Another student was filling time while her sister had a piano lesson. From across the room, she interrupted a song to ask, "How do you draw a major?"
"Like, C major or A major? Like in music?" I asked.
"No!" she said.
"Like, in the army?" I offered. "A general or a captain or a major?"
"No," she said, getting frustrated. "Like, away in a major."
"Oh, that. Right. Yeah, that's called a manger."
"Okay. Can you show me how to draw one?"

A(nother) Meaghan weekend:

My weekend spent with excellent friend and laughter-buddy Meaghan was so lovely. We didn't seem to do very much at all, and yet we also did a lot. We watched an unusual array of movies (the Mormon Pride and Prejudice was a rewatch must), lazed and chatted on a rug with a view of sky and sea, ate Fudge Sundae pop tarts (which were far less impressive than they sound), hung out with Lauren and her adorable bubs, face-timed our sisters who couldn't be there, chatted about life and families and growing up.

We went on a shopping trip that turned into an iPad purchasing experience, and then we ate Thai food and established an extremely precious and heartwarming love triangle between the three iPads. This in turn led to laughing ourselves hysterical over photobooth pictures and playing some silly iPad games, one of which (and I'm not kidding) consists of a race to be the last person to hit the reactor button before the clock counts down -- very quickly -- past zero. We live in a world now where we are all Pennys and our kindly Inspector Gadget uncle, aka Steve Jobs, plies us with amazing technology. It's incredibly funny to me.

Meaghan (perhaps to her regret) got me hooked on these adorable Kid History videos, and now our friendship vocabulary consists largely of phrases originally coined by four-year-old American children. Also on the popular culture front, K-pop star Psy was like a demented guardian angel hovering over our weekend for, once we realised we could teach ourselves Gangnam style moves thanks to YouTube tutorials, we kept finding reasons to practice them. We even pulled Mum in on the act.

So, we kind of didn't do anything and yet we didn't really stop doing things*. Most of all, I just enjoyed hanging around this precious friend for a whole weekend. She is the sort of friend you don't really have secrets from, the sort you say dumb things in front of because you're so comfortable that you don't employ the usual filters. Then, when you feel stupid about saying dumb things, she makes you forget both what you said and the fact that you felt stupid about it. It's cool to know people like this.

*I said that twice, which is what happens when you write one blog post over two days.

Life, lately:

I'm pressing pause for a moment on the backlog of posts I have lined up, in order to spend a second focussed on the now rather than the then.

This handful of pictures is a fair representation of the happy spots in my days lately. School is out for the summer (yes! I have a ridiculously long summer break, which is amazing) and even work has slowed down a little, too. In unoccupied moments, I've been doing lots of spring cleaning, which makes me feel old because I actually feel kind of satisfied and accomplished about it. If that doesn't make me old I don't know what does. I've also been revelling in the freedom to sit up late reading in bed -- reading fun things that I really want to read (though I've paid for it with too many nights of minimum sleep). Relatedly, I have a bunch of little book reviews to share when I can get them removed from brain and transcribed onto page.

I've been relishing getting to know my shiny new nephew, and watching his big sister become suddenly precisely that: a big sister, full of toddler quirks and hilariousness and one-and-a-half-year-old dorkiness. She's super entertaining. I've also enjoyed the laidback vibe of my dad's recent work leave visit, which meant things like going out for coffee or spontaneously eating dinner down by the water on windy dark evenings. And I'm loving getting better acquainted with a bunch of young people from my church at a new Bible study group. Don't worry, Thursday night guys: you are my longtime group and my best (just don't tell anyone else, okay?).

And tomorrow -- tomorrow I get to pick up one of my very best friends from the airport, for what has become a vaguely yearly tradition: a Meaghan weekend!* I realised this week that I have known Meaghan and her sister Carla for fifteen years now, which is basically amazing. The fact that Meaghan still wants to hang out with me after all this time is even amazinger. She is a true friend, full of grace and fun, plus she is hilarious. Our mutual hatred of phone calls means that we have lengthy text conversations and... I think that's a pretty cool way to conduct a long-distance friendship.

*You may visit events from previous Meaghan weekends (plus one Meaghan AND Carla weekend) here, here, here, and here.

Lately:

I have fallen into the provoking habit of leaving insistent little comments on my sister's blog telling her to do a "blupdate". But I've stumbled into the pit that I have dug, for now she's turned the comment back on me. To prove that I'm listening, Andrea, two posts in one evening. How's that for obedience?

It's a weird season -- incredibly full with occasional startling blank moments when it feels as though the sky is about to crumble. September comes tomorrow, bringing with it Spring, and extended stays with houseguests (some of whom are already here), and a series of local workshops that my wee little writing group has pulled together, and the end of my first postgrad semester, and maybe even a new niece or nephew. Boy, September, you be crazy.

In between all that, I'm thinking about lots of things -- the promises of Scripture, how I need to be writing in my journal more, the greatness of Him in us so much greater than just plain us, and my awful tendency to discuss absolutely everything that enters my head. I am writing imaginary letters and thank you notes while I'm brushing my teeth. I am buying too many gifts for Andrea's thirtieth birthday (am I allowed to talk about your age on my blog, A?). I am saying no to things I need to say no to, but it still isn't easy. I am feeling deeply affectionate and appreciative of the little Bible study group I'm part of. I'm thinking my mother should be beatified. I'm reading bits of good books here and there. I'm grieving for friends walking hard and dark roads. I'm clinging, tired, hoping, crying, laughing, praying, biting my lip, and marvelling at cloudless skies.

How about you?

[Conversations on hold while things are busy, and there might be more pictures than thoughts for a wee while. I'll reply to your words directly in the comments section.]

Just another manic Monday:

Sometimes it's fun to document a day in pictures and just see what happens. Last Monday I decided to do exactly that. I chose Monday because it's my standard 'normal' day each week. No music students, no English students; the goal is study and errands. I attempted to take a photo an hour, but sometimes I forgot or was late. This is the result! Above, about 8am, I think.

After breakfast, I duck next door into my Mum's kitchen to say hi.

Then I'm into homework -- a project analysing the print serial market in Australia, particularly special-interest publications focussed on writing, editing, and publishing. It was a big job, due the following Friday. And you did not really need to know all those boring details.

Final undergrad results are in which means I've officially completed my Bachelor degree. Wahoo!

Snaaaack time!

A phone call from my sister Andrea, who was reading The Hunger Games -- which we desperately needed to discuss with one another, of course.

An errand trip into town with the little bro. Tain took this photo and I think it's pretty cool. I've never really noticed how insistent that row of pedestrian crossing signs is. And look at that Queensland winter sun!

A library study date.

Here, have a photo of a fourteen-year-old eating a ham-and-cheese toastie with his mouth open. Relatedly, how cool is my local library?

Back home again (now sometime around 3 or 4) and back into the books.

I head into the family home to say hi to my sister Lauren, who has unexpectedly dropped by while James goes off fishing.

Abby's pretty excited about hunting down the cat.

At about 6pm, it's a dinner production line!

Spontaneous sister/mother/daughter time (plus Tain) means watching the season final of Downton Abbey together. Abby is amused.

I discover that I can't watch tv guilt-free when I have a hefty critical book review due in a week. I read some Dickens with one eye on the tv and one ear on the conversation.

James returns a little after 7.30.

More study!

And my wee kitchen needs some attention. I usually wash up about 11pm, which is kind of a dreadful habit.

Downtime -- with ugg boots.

Ablutions. I took a self-portrait brushing teeth, but I decided to protect Laura's anti-teeth-brushing sensitivities and post this shot instead.

Bible and bed at 12.40am. 'Night!

What's a Monday look like for you?

* * * * *

Conversations:

Andrea -- :D

Staish -- I'm not cut out to be a plumber, though. There was gagging involved.

Asea -- mesh covers sound super smart!

Carla and Alastair -- I suspect that the reason you've never thought to write a letter to your vanity drain is because you're normal.

Katie -- huzzah indeed!

Domesticwarriorgoddess -- your comment made my day! Thank you for enjoying my weirdness :).

Rebecca Simon -- haha, you're lovely!

Jess Axelby -- HARD TIMES foreverrrrr! I have to confess I'd forgotten how it ended though. I wasn't ready for the sadness :'(.

Meaghan -- I DID gag. *shudder*