Paul and I are heading out of the country today for London and Paris! I'll be taking a break from blogging until we return, so look forward to lots of pretty pictures from our trip in about two weeks. Happy Friday!
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I recently rectified a great mistake of my childhood: never reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I saw the book on a must-read childhood books list and picked a copy up from the library. After I finished the book, I noticed a copy of A Wrinkle in Time on the bookshelf in my old room at my parents' house. Turns out I had access to the book the whole time, I was just too silly to read it! Most likely because the flying centaur looking creature on the front cover looked nothing like Nancy Drew, the Babysitters' Club, or the Boxcar Children.
A Wrinkle in Time was well worth the short time it took to get through it. I love young adult books like this because the plot is usually engaging yet simple, the characters are interesting and likeable, and the themes are profound while still being easily understand. L'Engle has a great sense of humor and wonderful imagination that comes across in her writing, and best of all, she's missing the condescending moral tone that a lot of children's writers from her generation had (I'm looking at you C.S. Lewis). She even manages to tell a compelling story while also teaching lessons about the importance of our imperfections, the falibility of adults, and the power of love. In an extremely quick synopsis: A Wrinkle in Time tells the story of siblings Meg and Charles Wallace's adventures through space and time to rescue their father who has been captured by IT. Also: they're rockstars (maybe just in my mind). I would love to write a story like this some day. Until then, I'll borrow a cop this and make my way through the rest of L'Engle's books to see what becomes of Meg and Charles Wallace and their friend Calvin. This week marks our last week living in community. Our last roommate has taken a job working with the Franciscan Action Network in Washington, D.C. which means when we come back from Europe, we'll be living on our own. Tonight we're celebrating our final community night dinner with the extended members of our community.
Tonight brings up lots of mixed feelings. I still question whether or not we were successful with this community endeavor. I wonder if our community was "good enough." With the bumps we had a community I wonder if Paul and I were failures as community starters. I don't know if my heart will ever resolve answers to these questions. I do know that I've put my blood, sweat, and tears into this community, and the past two years have taught me a so much about community, myself, my relationships, my marriage, conflict, and commitment. It would take too long to go through all the ups and downs, joys and challenges of the community so I'll just leave it at this: being in this community has made me a better, more confident, more patient, more loving person. I'm glad Paul and I had the crazy idea to start this community, and I'm glad we were crazy enough to stick with it this long. Even though it was difficult to be in community as a married couple, I believe it ultimately brough us closer and made us a better couple. Living in community as a couple helped me realize the importance of being connected to a community (though not necessarily a live in one) for the continued strength of our marriage - and our growth as individuals. It's difficult to know what affect our community had on other people, and ultimately I don't think that's what's really important about a community. The real secret to community life is that by being in relationship with others, you are transformed and grow to so much more than you could be on your own. I'm excited that our extended community will continue even though it will just be Paul and me living in the community space. We've made some great friends through this community, and I want to continue to grow in our relationships. We intentionally set up our community to have connections between live-in and live-out members of the community which turned out to be one of the community's greatest strengths. Now the Casey Sister-Brotherhood will be more of a network of young people which will be a good fit for where Paul and I are right now. We're ready to step into the next stage of our marriage together, and we are both so excited to be able to focus on each other as the main priorities in our lives. Ah the joys and pains of community life. I have learned so much, and I wouldn't be the person I am today without it. helped pick paint colors... imagined what the new repairs in my parents' house will look like... experienced garden envy... helped my mom plant baby tomatoe plants grown from seed... reminisced about my wedding day here... practiced taking pictures of pretty churches... celebrated with my family... and watched my brother graduate high school! Look at that giant! I can't believe how tall he is.
Another wonderful trip to St. Louis. Bam!! ... the first seedlings of the season (the only reason I plant radishes) ... a bus that takes me from my house to the airport and back again ... seeing my baby brother and Liberian brother graduate from high school ... time spent with my family ... packing for Europe ... beautiful sunny weather ... having time to cuddle with my pups and my husband ... looking forward to a friend's weddings ... friends becoming aunts ... borrowed books ... rainstorms ... journaling ... new favorite tv shows ... pedicures with libby ... looking forward to great adventures
I was reading through some old blog archives at Today's Letters and came across this post that begins "the average life span is 25,550 days." Which got me thinking, how many days have I already lived? I calculated it and realized that oddly enough today is approximately by 10,000th day on earth!
It's weird and crazy to think of life in terms of how many days I've lived, but I found that it gave me a little extra motivation to make the most of today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Being reminded that life is finite has a funny way of making me want to live more fully. I was reminded of the song Seasons of Love from the musical RENT that says something along the lines of "525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year in the life? How about love?" Hopefully I have lots more days to keep practicing living and to keep living in love. Hope you do too. My morning walks have been so beautiful lately. It is full on Spring and colorful and wonderful. Thanks to Pedro and Diego I have to get my butt out of bed every day and enjoy the outdoors. Kind of makes up for the howling and accidents and all the other inconveniences.
WARNING: an overwhelming amount of nerdiness and awesomeness are contained in this post. Proceed at your own risk.
I am proud to say that I finished all 1000+ pages of A Storm of Swords, the third installment of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series (and I only had to renew it twice from the library to do so). For those of you unfamiliar with Game of Thrones/Song of Ice and Fire, it is the fantasy series recently turned into a TV show by HBO. It's Lord of the Rings with more complex characters, more political intrigue, and of course, way more boobs and beheadings. The series takes place in a universe stuck in the Middle Ages; the trade off for lack of indoor plumbing and electricity is that they get to play with magic and dragons. The story can be confusing at first because there are so many characters. Martin introduces over 1000 characters in the series (not this book alone), and the main characters are part of seven different kingdoms. I had to write down a cheat sheet at first so I could remember who everyone was. Once you're acquainted with the basics of the story line and the characters, these books are so good. The books are broken up into chapters told from different characters' points of view. This makes the "goodness" and the "badness" of the characters less distinct- which makes the story way more fun in my opinion. A Storm of Swords tells the story of the battle at the "Wall," the dragon queen's conquests, and the War of the Five Kings (see - even that is complicated. Why couldn't it have just been two or three kings?). One of the biggest plot twists of all the whole series takes place in this book and left me saying "Why George R. R. Martin?? Why would you do that? Do you hate your characters?" This book also left me wondering how Arya could have such a boring story line when she is such an amazing chracter. And when Sansa will grow up and stop acting stupid. And what Tyrion is going to do now that he ... well you'll know if you read the book. Now that I've finished the book, I can finally start watching the third season of the TV show - which correlates with the first half of this book. Season 4 will take on the second half. And in case you're worried what people will think of you if you start reading this book, just know you're not alone. In case you didn't realize how hard core I am, here's proof: derby has become my favorite sporting event. Friends and I went to the championship bout - the final bout of the season - Saturday night. After buying our tickets we took some pictures with ladies from the Maiden Milwaukee team, who came so close to pulling out a champtionship win! The lady on the left is Kimberr, one of my favorites (1, 2, 3 KIMBERRRR!). Besides the overwhelming girl power of derby, I also love the randomness of the events. The National Anthem was played on an accordion thing - no words, just the strange accordion. This father and son duo could not keep it together for the accordion song and had to sit down so no one could see them laughing. Physical fitness at it's finest. The champtionship bout between the Crazy Eights and Maiden Milwaukee (not shown here) was probably the best I've seen - it was edge of your seat entertainment! Now I have to wait several long months until the start of the next season. Maybe I'll have to rent Whip It to get my derby fix.
We have a tendancy to pick cold, windy, rainy days to work on our garden. Luckily we still had a great turn out for our kick off event this season, and there was a whole lot of weeding going on. We scraped off the top layer of protective mulch, pulled out a whole lot of grass that had found its way into our plots, and topped them all off with some fresh organic soil. Voila! Plots ready for planting! A nice before and after shot. Planting some pretty lettuce. The finished product! Noticed how the sun came out after all the work was done. I put my seeds in the ground (plot number 1 is mine) and am excited to see what comes up. I noticed I've been a lot more sluggish this garden season, but getting my hands dirty helped me catch a little gardening spirit.
Check back in for more updates throughout our season and watch our landscape develop. |