If you look closely, you might notice:

a) that our five stockings belong to Mitchimus, Theamus, Albus (code name for the little one, mainly because my parents made me swear we wouldn’t name the baby Gandalf), Gunner and J. Sparrow.

b) that our “tree” is, in fact, a Christmas cactus decked out in leftover origami ornaments from last year. Moving provides no incentive whatsoever for setting up a tree only to take it down twelve hours after the holiday is done.

(There is no explaining the Sax Playing Santa.)

Merry Christmas! We’re off to celebrate the holiday several times in quick succession before hopping a plane to Hawaii with my family. I expect to return with lots of stories for you and photos of this year’s homemade gifts, and I wish you all the merriest of Christmases. ‘Til next year!

Bookworm

Lisa at Books on the Brain tagged me for a meme. Hooray! It’s about books and everything! Here goes:

1. Whatcha reading?

I’m re-reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Small Wonder, as well as reading J.I. Packer’s Knowing God and Tell is Slant, by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola. I’m also partway through Unceasing Worship, by Harold Best. For the sake of the meme, I’ll stick to Small Wonder.

2. How much of it have you read so far?

Previously, the entire book, but this time through I’m on page 14. This means I’ve completed the introduction and am partway through the first essay, “Small Wonder.”

3. What’s it about? (in a nutshell! A sentence or two is enough.)

Small Wonder is Kingsolver’s response to 9/11 spread out over several essays, most of which have nothing to do with 9/11 literally, but deal with aspects of the event either practically or abstractly.

4. What does the title refer to?

Miracles. Certain instances that seem to fly in the face of the darkness, violence and hate that seem to saturate the world at times. A bear who nurses a small boy, rather than devouring him. Little hopes. Small wonders.

5. Would you recommend it?

I would. Upon re-reading the book, I realize that I read it initially at a time when Kingsolver was exactly what I needed to hear. Sadly, this means that some of the power has gone out of her essays as I read them again at a very different point in my life, but they are still very good, and I would still recommend them.

I, in turn, tag Morgan (Morgan in Chile), Veronica Mitchell (Toddled Dredge), and Sarah (Wannabe Inkling). I can’t remember exactly how many people I’m supposed to tag, but three sounds about right to  me.

Have I created my very own symptom? Possibly.

Pregnancy has done funny things to my nose and throat. For some reason, every time I eat these days, I sneeze.

Oddly, I haven’t had to sneeze when I wasn’t eating for the last twenty weeks – to be exact. This means that I have not had a decent sneeze in months, because a mouthful of food definitely prevents a girl from letting it all out, though there have been a few memorable, awkward moments when a sneeze has caught me off guard and…well, it was memorable. And awkward. You get the picture.

The strangest part of all is that nobody seems to have any idea what I’m talking about.

The sleepiness, the restless nights, the aches and pains, the delightful flickering of a baby kicking around in there, the hunger (oh, goodness, the hunger), the blindingly bright moments when it dawns on me just what, exactly, is happening here – other people nod in sympathetic agreement and tell me their own stories of napping/beaming/puking/celebrating when I mention mine, but when I mention the sneezing, noses wrinkle and brows furrow and people ask, “Really? I’ve never heard of that.”

Have you?

A deadline! How delightful.

Today I have the pleasure of guest posting over at Deep Muck Big Rake, so if you’re looking for content, why don’t you mosey on over there? I might have written my longest book review ever, just because I was so excited to be a guest blogger.

The fun of posting on somebody else’s blog is that it: a) gives me a deadline, and b) inspires me to edit and rewrite my post several times before pushing that big, scary “publish” button. Perhaps these are tactics I ought to employ more often on my own blog, eh?

Baby’s first rock opera

Now that little Albus’s ears are on their way to full development, Mitch and I thought it high time to expose the child to some rock. We spent last night at the Mount Baker Theater, watching a killer production of Jesus Christ Superstar that has spawned some stellar (no, make that awful) outbursts today, as we butcher the show’s highlights.

Examples include my hideous attempts at Caiaphas’s bass: “He is DANgerous…”. Mitch had a great moment with Judas’s wail, “Jeeeeeeezus!!”, while my mom called me at work to chime in with “I-i-i-i don’t know how to L-O-O-O-ve him…”.

The poor baby can apparently hear us all, muffled though we may be.

(Note: As I was typing this post, my step-dad called and belted out “JESUS CHRIST, SUPERSTAR, do you think *mumble mumble* SAY you are!” with nary a greeting. He then informed me that this was his second performance of the evening, as he’d just mis-dialed my number and serenaded a complete stranger.)

I feel safer already.

While researching carry-on regulations for an upcoming plane trip, I learned that:

• I cannot carry on my billy club, stun gun, throwing stars or brass knuckles. I can, however, check them in my luggage.
• Unfortunately, hand grenades are right out.
• Scissors are fine, so long as they are under 4 inches in length and have blunt tips, but I’ll have to check my cattle prod and spear guns.
• Tear gas is also right out.
• The government is kind enough to allow “toy Transformer robots,” eyelash curlers and walking canes, but snow globes? I’ll have to check those.

Everything is better.

Last night I came home in what would have been a foul mood, had I mustered the energy to be actually foul. Instead, I was merely overwhelmed, standing in the middle of our dismantled apartment (which looks like we took every drawer and cupboard in the place and upended it in the middle of the living room, because this is more or less what we’ve done) dripping rainwater on the wood floor, sighing.

Eventually, the sighs gave way to frustrated tears, at which point Mitch was good enough to shuffle me off to bed and lay there with me, listening, while I divulged all of my worries and concerns for the next three years, wiping my nose often and sniffling.

A few years ago, he would have tried to reason with me, but he knows enough now to let these things run their course – my mind, when it is in such a state, cannot be turned to appreciate the finer points of logic, and we both learned the hard way that attempting to make it do so only results in me becoming furiously, irrationally angry.

After many hugs and crumpled tissues, I banished myself to bed with a book and Mitch’s promise that “Tomorrow will be better.”

And do you know what? It is.

I woke up this morning after a remarkably restful night to find a card from Mitch (that I almost missed – he had to subtly direct my groggy, disoriented self to where he’d hidden it, since I was too sleepy to catch on), saying in the sweetest of ways that he loves being married to me, which is wonderful, because today is our fifth anniversary.

A few weeks ago, a recently married friend asked the guys in Mitch’s study group, who have been married slightly longer than he has, what it is about marriage that’s just better. If you’re single, he said, you’ve got the freedom with your money and time to do what you like – you don’t have to consider anybody else when calculating what to do with your day. So, he asked for some tangible examples of what it is that’s, well, better about marriage.

After a pause, the other guys thought and thought and then said, Everything. Everything’s just better.

At a loss for anything obvious to share, one husband piped up finally and said, “The food. The food is definately better.” And everyone launched into descriptions about all the awesome meals their wives had prepared lately, how their freezers were stocked with soups and sauces and cookies, and how they never went to bed unfed – if they forgot to eat, their wives remembered to feed them.

When Mitch told me this story, my response was exactly the same – everything is better. But also, the food is notably better. Cooking for somebody else always trumps cooking alone, just as sharing a meal with someone always beats eating alone, particularly when that someone is as entertaining, appreciative and all-around great as Mitch is.

(That said, while Mitch off taking his last final for the quarter, I’m procrastinating on making the fabulous anniversary brunch I promised, mainly because the kitchen also looks as though every dish in it has been dumped on the counter, dirty.)

Bump!

Advent is upon us!

I know I’m a week late in acknowledging this, but I actually forgot about Advent last week and declared last Sunday a Pregnant Nap Day. After getting up and showering and packing my things, I announced to Mitch that I would not be going to church after all but would, in fact, be staying home to sleep, but when he came back from the service I remembered about Advent and felt like a well-rested schmuck.

This week, fortunately, we both made it to church. We were this morning’s candle-lighters, a post I enjoy immensely, even after a mishap last year that left me awkwardly clicking a lighter over a candle that, for some unholy reason, would not light, while Mitch read a gorgeous passage and led the congregation in prayer.

I appreciate the stillness of Advent (“the silence before the Lord speaks,” I once heard a pastor describe it), because it points clearly to Christ in a time when all the noise of our culture seems desperate to turn our attention away from him. Advent somehow puts Christmas in its place – not as a holiday unto itself, but as the culmination of a period of waiting, when we rejoice in the coming of Christ in the flesh, to do the will of his Father.

This is particularly poignant to me now, as we are in our own period of preparation and waiting for a birth.

Because it is nine o’clock and I am exhausted, I leave you with the verse that I read this morning as Mitch lit the second candle on the Advent wreath:

And I will lead the blind

in a way that they do not know,

in paths that they have not known

I will guide them.

I will turn the darkness before them into light,

the rough places into level ground.

These are the things I do,

and I do not forsake them.

- Isaiah 42:16

What’s Up! Awards 2007

Guess who’s positively giddy?

Me. I am.

Do you know why?

Because I just found out that I’ve been nominated for a What’s Up! Award for 2007, under the category of – get this – Best Axes of Folk.

I’m not sure what that is, but I love it.

So, please, if you can find it in your heart to vote for me, head on over to the What’s Up! website and click the little dot by my name to place your votes. Also worth voting for, in case you’re not hip to the B-ham scene, are Bug Jerome, Go Slowpoke, Murder Mountain, The Braille Tapes, I Love You Avalanche, Captain Seahorse and The Gallus Brothers.

Not that I’m trying to sway you. I’m just trying to help out.