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‘naners.

25 Jul
You know about my ‘naners, right?  [Dancing Bananas/high school friends/ring a bell?]
I was so grateful that three of them were able to celebrate with me yesterday.  And herein is the only group photo I took of the day –

[Krissy, right, insisted that she stand there and her twin sister, Kim, stand on the left so it would be a Poff sandwich.  I argued that the Poff girls should have stood in between the bread of Lynn and I because who has a wheat sandwich?  Rye?  No.  You call a sandwich by what’s on the inside.  Oh well.  One battle I lost, obviously not influenced or helped by the magical powers I received earlier.]
Many of you were snapping away and for that I am grateful!  It would be super awesome if you could email me the photos you have so I can blog, facebook, and print them off to share!  [Please and thank you?]

crying and smiling.

25 Jul
There’s that Dr. Seuss quote that gets around – “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.”
That’s not working out so well for me in regards to [whispers] the ordination.
It’s not all tears – I am smiling.  I’ve been smiling since guests began arriving yesterday.  My friend, Sara, arrived to my house early afternoon yesterday, followed by Cassie.  Dawson folks arrived at church shortly after [including a wonderful surprise as Sharon walked into church!], and then congregation members, call committee people from Austin, family, and more friends.  I smiled when Keith, the custodian from Grace, greeted me with a smirk, a hug, [note: oxford comma] and a “Sunshine!”  I smiled when Miss Molly Bea [my 6th grade cousin and goddaughter] conquered her public speaking fear to read during the service.  I smiled when my mom put the stole around my shoulders, and felt great moments of support and comfort through the hands that were laid upon me.  I smiled when Kendall said, “I’ll be right back,” dipped down into the pulpit, and came back up with three gnomes to teach us lessons.  [More on that to follow.  I will share the gnomes and the lessons with you!]  I smiled during the special music and when I handed bread to my cousin, Sam, during communion as he giggled.  I smiled at how lovely the ladies of the church set up the reception that followed, complete with fancy coffee servers and a quilt/prayer shawl gift for me.  And many hugs.  So many hugs.  I love hugs.  It was a good day.  [More stories certainly to follow.]
But now this morning, I’m crying too.  I cried in the days leading up to the ordination, causing me fear that I wouldn’t be able to remain dry-eyed during the service.  Miraculously, I did.  [I recall this from my last Sunday in Dawson, too.  It’s not because I’m a rock and have no emotions – I think my body holds out on me and keeps me pretty level-headed when I’m in front of people.]  I’m crying because it’s over and because of all the people who traveled and supported me on this day.  I felt so incredibly loved yesterday!  I’m crying because for the last few weeks I’ve been able to say to many of my geographically-distant friends, “I’ll see you soon!”  Now I don’t know when I’ll see them next.  I cry at the wonderful notes that people wrote in the cards I received [“Lindsay, You have been on my daily prayer list for years and you will continue to be on that list.”], and cry at how wonderfully my friends from home and family [some of whom are not so favorable towards church] tell me they’re proud of me and support me.

It was a big day.  A good day.  An emotional service and wonderful celebration.  A ginormous thank you to all those who came, who hugged, who participated, and who were thinking about me yesterday!

I felt the love.  Thank you.

[want to hear a rap about the ordination?  of course you do and my rapping friends, Joel and Melissa, provided!  it’s awesome.  as usual.  “so/ the sun is setting as I write this rhyme/ can you believe it’s almost time/ four years at seminary/ a couple interviews/ hey/ did you hear the great news?/ Lindsay Stolen gettin’ ordained on Sunday afternoon/ near the end of July/ the month after June/ with joy we dance to a little tune/ your feet hit the floor/ the plans have been made/ cold oatmeal with almond milk/ is your breakfast of trade/ a robe called an alb/ a stole/ you’re a pastor/ how the time flies much faster/ how do you feel? … well we’ll just ask you/ you’re a firework/ a dance party rocker/ blogger extraordinaire/ a tight rope walker/ so what we’re trying to say/ through all these words and phrases/ may God bless you this day and always/ for new trails you blaze/ peace and love to you.”

AND if you weren’t able to attend, here’s a section of the service, lovingly prepared and taped by my soon-to-be southeastern MN colleagues.  they’ve already invited themselves over to my house for dinner on sept. 12 and much shenanigans will ensue.  thanks to Lauren, jD, and Paige for this creative greeting!  I am blessed with such awesome friends, all around.  seriously.]

[the sound?  the baptismal font.  love it.]

bulletin: complete.

20 Jul
It was a big day in the world of ordination planning for this girl.  Knowing that the bulletins need to be printed tomorrow meant buckling down on the project that has consumed my life.  Picky and particular about spacing, layout, and fonts, I spend way too much time on things like this.  But I was also able to add something to the bulletin today which was quite thrilling for me –
Special music.  With word this morning that the entire staff of Grace in Dawson is coming [enter jumping up and down, a three-fold amen, or something to signify the excitement], I realized I had both a talented piano man and strong voice to put to use.  Last minute, I know, but I’m super excited that Chris and Jon agreed to do a music piece for the offering.  [Likely another moment I’ll cry during the service.]
I made lots of detail phone calls today.  I spoke with the woman of the church who is putting together the reception that follows.  She wondered how many to plan for at the service.  75?, she asked.  I said, well, with my family and friends from outside the church alone, I bet we’re looking at fifty.  [Fifty?!  I’m so excited!]  I spoke to Red Oak Grove [check out this strange looking girl on their website] to learn if they were or were not coming to present me.  [Answer still unknown.]  Facebook messages, emails, and texts were sent and received, all leading up to a fairly concrete and appropriate service, neatly arranged on four sheets of folded paper.  To the printer tomorrow and then I won’t look at them until Sunday for fear of finding a typo.
It was a great check-things-off-the-list kind of day and simply a day to get extremely emotional about what is to come.  I spoke to Tammy on the phone and she told me, “I’m so excited I can hardly stand it!” Me too!  My red stole [sewn by my mother] hangs on the door to my bedroom and as I look at it, I realize I’m trapped in a glass case of emotion.  One minute, it’s tears.  The next, pure unhinged excitement.  I can’t stand it!
[I also went to Madison for a haircut.  Baked a batch of cookies.  Went swimming with the cousins whom I picked up from daycare.  Made cakepops with Aunt Kari and cousin Connor for his grad party on Saturday.  Long day.  Exciting day.  Time for night-night.  Sleep well.]

we do weddings.

18 Jul
My home congregation is currently in interim and the interim has been on vacation for the last couple weeks.  I had a few clergy/wedding questions that I found no answers to online so I decided to visit my grandparent’s church in town and speak to their pastor.  
Pastor Jim was willing to sit down with me and answer my questions.  [Turns out, as a member of the clergy, I don’t need to register with the county/state in order to facilitate weddings.  Weird.]  We then began talking about what was coming up for me and for him, which led to ordination talk and more wedding talk.
My friends, Lynn and Kyle, are getting married at this church in September by Pastor Jim with me in some sort of assisting role.  I’ve done it before.  My friends, Kim and Mike, were married there a few years ago.  I assisted and preached the message.  [Kim is always quite thrilled to tell people that I blessed her.]
And so Pastor Jim and I talk about Lynn and Kyle’s wedding.  He mentioned that he spoke to Kyle earlier that day about pre-marital and beginning to make final decisions for the big day.  Kyle brought up my role in the service, reminding Pastor Jim that both he and Lynn want me to be a part of it.  
Pastor Jim said, “Oh, sure.  No problem.  Lindsay and I do weddings.”

Love it.

I wish –

18 Jul
I’ve been away.  There has been much blogging delay.  
I wish I could say that I’ve been busy hanging out with the hopeful new friend whom I emailed last week but nope.  I think he found me creepy and has yet to respond.  [I’m a wee bit bummed about this.]
I wish I could say that I’ve been busy replying to all of you who have written me emails.  But that’s not true either.  [Responses will come, I promise!]
I wish I could say that I was finishing up the final touches on the latest Cooking Pastor episode but that’s not the case.  I’m working on editing it but this one is taking me a bit longer.  It will be here sometime soon!
I wish I could say that I spent a couple hours at the theater watching the final installment of Harry Potter. I haven’t seen it yet but hope I will find time/friends to see it this week.
I wish I could say that I’ve been steadily focused on ordination and now all of those pieces are in place but that’s just silly.  If everything was ready, what would I have to do/stress about this week?  
Those are the things I have not been doing.  So where the hay have I been?
Playing a healthy and therapeutic dose of Apples to Apples and CatchPhrase with a picnic table full of cousins.  

Celebrating Tobacco Heritage Days in Edgerton.  It’s our summer festival and my way of celebrating included participating/helping at a family rummage sale on Friday, going out with friends on Saturday night, and watching the parade on Sunday.  Perhaps some of you know about my history of stripping [tobacco].  This year, the parade featured a series of floats [read: tractors] that explained the growing,  harvesting, and stripping processes of tobacco.  This is how I used to strip: [you can kinda see the dry-leafed plants hanging upside down.  remove leaves.  put in tobacco presses shown.  press.  bundle.  done.]
Catching up with old friends.  Twins Melanie and Megan joined Kim, Kay, and I for the parade in this lovely 90+ degree day.  Melanie and Megan were two years younger than us in high school but we became friends when they hosted an AFS student, Oksana, whom we all dearly loved.  Seeing Melanie and Megan, sitting at the parade with them, and catching up on each others’ lives seriously warmed my heart today.  
Following the parade, I celebrated with Marj, the mom of another high school friend, Jenni, at her birthday open house.  It was great to see Marj, other friends, and Jenni, who now lives in Indiana with her husband and foster children.  So wonderful.
Rolling, dipping, and decorating 250 cakepops.  Friend Krissy is getting married in three weeks and I said I would help her make cakepops for the reception.  We began at 4pm and I returned home after 11:30.  [My feet hurt.]
That’s where I’ve been.  I hope to be a more consistent virtual friend for you this week as the icky humid heat keeps me indoors.  I’m also fairly certain I’ll need the therapy of writing as my emotions grow out of whack in anticipation of [whispers] the ordination.

play day.

11 Jul

As I blogged late last night, I was certain today would be a good day.  Oh, it was.  Because I did nothing but play.

Well, wait.  I can say that I mailed out a pile of ordination announcements to family and close friends [but that’s fun for me – I love paper and snail mail].  I also chose texts for my ordination service and emailed those to my preacher [the preacher whom I am hands down thrilled he accepted and was willing to preach].  I asked my cousin to be the lay reader and the sixth grader shot me down.  And therein ended the ordination planning for the day because then I started playing.
I visited my grandma at the tv store [my uncle owns a tv/appliance store in Edgerton.  my grandma mans the phones when he and grandpa are out on service/installation calls.] and then just stopped by my aunt/uncle’s to see what the cousins were up to.  Nothing.  That’s the answer there.  Nothing.  So I did nothing with them.

[this photo is meant to be hideous.  this is not how molly typically looks.  promise.]
We drove to our house and baked home-made pizza.  We drove to our other cousin’s house and waited for them to get back from shopping.  We went prepared and waited in their pool.  nbd.  [no big deal.]  We swam, hid from Logan and Drew when they showed up, and then swam more.  Connor, Sam, and Molly came back to our house for cakepops and hammock time.  Laughter was aplenty and more is planned for tomorrow.
Perk #63 of being home: Impromptu cousin adventures.

Here’s my problem.

8 Jul
[well.  just one of the many.]
Not being employed often means I have a full day to complete stuff.  This stuff ranges from a quilting goal, to watering my mom’s flowers, to planning an ordination service, to needing to make a phone call, to needing to take a walk up and down the Aarback hill five times.  Most nights I go to bed with a list in my head of what I want to accomplish the next day.  But the problem is that I have the full day to do it.
I wake up.  I make myself wake up before 8. [I feel lazy if I sleep past that though I realize, for many of you, even 8 is late!]  I eat breakfast and often one of three things happens.  While I eat my cold oatmeal, I either turn on the television, jump on my macbook, or start in on the kindle.  [Hello, electronics.]  And then I get sucked in.  Today, it was the television and the movie Easy A.  We have these movie channels and they are the death of me.  First, The Proposal is on at least three times a day.  [I also already watched the last ten minutes of that movie today.] Yesterday, Lord of the Rings was on.  Sometimes Death at a Funeral.  I’ve seen these movies a million times, folks.  But it’s on tv and I get sucked in.  Easy A was a new one for me today but by the time the movie was over, it was 10:30 and I had nothing to show for my day so far.
But I have all day, right?  I still haven’t watered my mom’s flowers or done the dishes.  I have frozen cakes waiting to be rolled into balls that I haven’t touched.  I bought more gray fabric to complete quilt squares that is still uncut.   I need to call my aunt about ordination things and a birthday package to wrap.  I have all day.
Until suddenly, it reaches that point in the day where I think, “Sh*t!  I still have all this stuff to do still!”  I had all day but suddenly after pinning on pinterest, stalking on facebook, and watching How I Met Your Mother, my day is gone.  Gone.  I just reached that point. It’s almost noon and I have plans that take me away from the home at 3pm.  But instead of doing something productive about it, I’m blogging.  Eh.  I have a full day tomorrow to do stuff.  [And there is the problem.]
[Would you like to hear a second problem?  Pond swimming and weed pulling was great fun but it seems I’m now breaking out in itchy red bumps from the excursion.  And what’s that?  Oh, right.  They’re starting to blister.  Darn you, pond weeds!  *shake angry fist*]

project pond scum.

5 Jul
the pond – with Aunt Peggy & Uncle Brian’s in the background
Growing up, my summers were spent at the pond.  You know – the pond.  The same pond in which my dad and his siblings grew up swimming.  The pond that sits on my neighbor’s property [that neighbor being  my aunt and uncle].  The pond that was probably a 12 minute walk through corn field paths, along the creek, and past the hornet’s nest from our farm.  Or a five minute tractor ride.  Maybe three in the bed of the truck.
The pond was where my brothers, cousins, and I lived in the summers.  My aunt works at the high school so she, like us, had her summers off and spent those days as lifeguard, swimming instructor, and freezie pop provider.  The place where we cooled off and cleaned up after a day in the tobacco fields, and the place where we made each other filthy with muck and pond scum fights.  The pond was one of my happiest places as a child.
It was where I learned to swim and tread water for hours.  My personal feat as a little girl was performing summersaults and handstands just off the pier.  [I believe it was thirteen summersaults in a row – and in one breath – that was my final and best record.]  It was where I learned to hold my own with four boys named Matt, Ben, Mike, and Kyle.  
It’s been years since I’ve been swimming in the pond.  Being away for summers and simply with the brothers and cousins growing in age, the pond isn’t our natural gathering place anymore.  In the years away, the pond has changed.  The middle pier/diving board is now gone, along with the pier on the western edge that no one used but for fishing.  The remaining pier is a bit saggy in places and the fish population has grown.  As have the weeds.
When we swam in the pond nearly every day for many summers in a row, the weeds were never much of a problem.  We would clear them out in the beginning of the summer and feel them no more for the rest of the season.  It’s likely been many years since the weeds were cleared from this swimming hole.  That, my friends, was the project for today.
Cousin Connor encouraged us to take back our swimming pond.  [I think he’s just as bored as I am since he returned from his two weeks in Kenya and as he waits to begin his first year of college in the fall.]  Emma and I responded with a strong, “Huzzah!” and the weeds had met their match.  It’s just not so much fun to swim out to the middle of the pond and have the seaweeds graze your body as you paddle past.  It can be a little disturbing, and maybe a little eerie.  The weeds had to go.

The ones closest to shore were raked.
The best method for weed removal?  Spaghetti-style.  As a fork winding spaghetti off a plate, so becomes your leg winding and pulling the weeds from the bottom of the pond.  Connor and I pulled all the weeds we could reach with our legs, twisting and twirling until the weeds came up on our foot.  We’d pull them off our feet and Emma would take the canoe paddle and bring them up to shore or onto the pier.  We had a system and it worked fairly well for us.  [Not so well for the weeds.]
Does this gross you out?  The weed-pulling spaghetti-style?  [I’m sure a few of you might just be grossed out at the thought of swimming in a pond.  You have my mom’s company.]  In a weed fight fought later in the afternoon, it was discovered that it certainly grosses my sister out.  She made gagging noises as Connor threw weeds on top of her head.  Sure, the weeds make you a little itchy, and pulling them from the bottom makes the water all sorts of murky and dirty.  Connor attempted to nail me with a paddle of weeds from the boat as I treaded water in the middle.  He missed, but I hit him square in the back upon retaliation.  Best line of the day?  As he jumped in the water to clean off and yelled, “I have weeds in my pants!”
A majority of our catch.
Connor and I with our spaghetti.

happy fourth wkend!

2 Jul
[Have you seen the California tourism commercials about Prince William and Kate’s visit to the state?  Here’s my version for the three-day weekend.]

Three days to assemble my ordination announcements.

Three days to share patriotic cakepops.  [actually just at a cookout on the actual 4th.  how do we feel about the straws as sticks?  I think I might make that “my thing,” a way to distinguish my cakepops from the rest.  yes?]

Three days to help Lynn-baby put together her wedding invites.  [actually just this afternoon]

Three days to play with sparklers and watch fireworks.

Three days to eat grilled food and sit around campfires.

Three days to write some snail mail.  [two letters have already gone out this July!]

Three more days to just do a lot of what I already do – relax, sleep, and watch Friends.

that kind of day.

30 Jun
It’s a I-miss-the-Cities-a-lot kind of sad day.
It’s a I’m-having-lunch-with-a-friend-in-Madison kind of happy day.
It’s a I’m-super-stoked-to-check-out-this-speciality-baking-shop-I-heard-about kind of excited day.  [Vanilla Bean // I’ll let you know how it is.  It opens at 9:30 and I’m currently two blocks away at a Starbucks.  I’ll wait a reasonable amount of time after they open; don’t want to seem too eager to explore their edible confetti and sanding sugars. *cough* crazy lady *cough*]
It’s a humidity-go-away kind of complaining day.  [aka a-big-hair kind of day.]
It’s a learn-to-protect-yourself kind of drill day.  [What if they come at you with a garden trowel?  Steal your socks?  Climb in your window?  What will you do?  Not all gnomes are as kind as Dawson gnomes.]
It’s a I-have-nothing-on-my-calendar-until-July-10th kind of whining day.  [which leads to a I’m-going-crazy kind of day]
It’s a I-really-really-really-miss-my-seminary-friends kind of sad day.
It’s a I’ll-think-about-getting-my-oil-changed-but-won’t-actually-do-it kind of procrastination day.
What kind of day are you having?
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