there's no place like gnome.

1. Downton Abbey premiere.  Season three.  Tomorrow night.  I printed off paper dolls.  Don’t judge.

2. Rice noodles.  I’m not much of a pasta person, but for this Asian food staple, I go a bit crazy.

3.  Ruzzle.  It’s a new word game my sister introduced me to – one you play on your phone.  Find me and let’s play; I can almost nearly certainly guarantee that you’ll win.  [I’m not very good.]

4.  The Bachelor begins on Monday night.  Again, please don’t judge.

5.  Dreaming up service projects for Lent.  Health kits, anyone?

6.  Haircuts.

7.  Clean sheets and a freshly-made bed.

8.  Epiphany crackers.  [I ordered cracker snaps to make Christmas crackers but they did not come in time.  Instead, I will make them to celebrate the visit of the magi.  Quite appropriate, actually, as they traditionally come with crowns.]

In addition, favorite things are not: organizing my bedroom closet, preparing the newsletter for church, laundry, feeling absolutely overwhelmed at work, Saturday sermon writing, how boring mail becomes after Christmas, and red delicious apples.

I am thankful for trips home.  For as close as I live [four hours away is the closest I’ve lived in four years] I don’t get home very often.  It’s good when I do.

I took a sanity day last Wednesday and headed for southern Wisconsin.  For this trip home, I slumbered at my grandparent’s house in Edgerton along with my mom and my sister.  [My mom’s new house is slated to be done right around Christmas time.]  Cousin Molly practically lived there too [even though her real bed is just one house down the street].

This trip home consisted of thanksgiving deliciousness, movie nights and shopping with sister Emma and cousin Molly, Target runs with Mom, a girl’s night out with high school friends, and family visits.  Oh, and I helped Grandpa Sid cut his pills in half.  He asked when Emma and I stopped by for a visit.  And he handed me a pliers to do the job.  All in all, a pretty great and exhausting time. 

It’s also a year to be thankful for technology.  My annual Thanksgiving Day Bake-Off cousin, Connor, is currently studying abroad in Ghana.  No plate of mashed potatoes with his name on it.  No bake-off this year.  [Rescheduled for Christmas.]  But we got to skype with him!  How crazy is it that you can see and talk to someone across the world in real time?  Technology is great.  [Know who else loves technology?  Kip.  From Napoleon Dynamite.]

This trip home was good.  And one thing that makes coming back to Austin not quite as hard is checking the mail after I’ve been gone for a few days.  I love mail.  I subscribe to a lot of magazines just so I have something in my mailbox.  I’m just waiting for the Christmas card season to start!  I got a surprise this time around – two, actually.  One – a card from my friend Amanda with a gnome magnet inside!  Two – an anonymous letter with a magazine clipping inside about how women shouldn’t be pastors.  Yay!   I love mail … most of the time.  Welcome back, Pastor Lindsay.

This is no thankful november post.  Don’t hate me –

But I’m bored.

I’ve felt this coming on for the past couple weeks.  Work has been … slow [knock on wood].  Slow as in I’ve been able to get my work done during the work day.  No long nights.  No weekend work.  

Hurray!  It’s what I’ve been striving for all along.  

Yesterday Mabel and I went for a walk and I went to Rochester to get an oil change and I watched a movie and I cleaned and I baked a couple cakes for future cakepops and I resisted spending $80 on Christmas cards.  Today I cleaned some more, read in the hammock, wrote snail mail, quilted, went for a walk, watched television, wrote a sermon, la di da.

One can only quilt, watch television, and walk so much.  I need some excitement in this life, otherwise this winter is going to be a long one.  New hobby?  More friends?  I don’t know.  Something.  [I realize it’s almost a luxury to feel bored.  I shouldn’t complain.  I know I shouldn’t.  But I think I just did in the tiniest bit.]

Me.

I feel like I’m living in wacko-dreamland lately.  I wake up with odd inclinations towards obscure storylines that were reality to my dream self.  I figure some of these dreams – dreams of hostage situations, spying on people, trying to access information off of another’s laptop – are induced by my joy in rewatching the television show Alias.  All Alias-like situations.  Other dreams of long-lost friends contacting me, joining parties, and shopping together I figure are all indications that I miss my long-lost friends!  It’s been an odd combination of waking up at 2am freaked out and lovely dream conversations with friends.  Strange indeed.

Not a dream?  The phone call I just received from Los Angeles.  Hi, this is so-and-so from MasterChef.  Just checking in – we still haven’t received your home video.  Um, hi.  I thought I had only those first three days to complete it.  That was two weeks ago.  Please just disqualify me.  If you were to get it in today, it could still be in time.  What?!  There was a twinge of excitement … but then I realized I had a full slate at work, that I still didn’t want to cook and plate an impressive meal, and I still don’t want to be a MasterChef.  I told him I was bowing out.  He seemed really confused by it.  Oh, okay. Have a nice day.  You too, sir.  You too.

Did I mention I was on vacation this past week?  That meant that I drove home to Aarback Road on Monday evening [not until Monday because of official MasterChef business – a story I will tell in due time, due time] and stayed the duration of the week.  It’s always crazy how busy vacations at home are; I feel like I come back to my Austin home just to catch up on sleep.  But when I’m home, I don’t even open my computer.  I take it with me, but it pretty much stays off.  Computer closed = no blogging.

Right now, I’m polishing the sermon for tomorrow but I’ll update you soonly with tales of home, family, showers [the baby kind], and bunneeps.  Yes, bunneeps.

1. I painted an upstairs bedroom palm leaf.  It was a gross green.  A new color and four coats of paint later, now it’s painted asparagus.  

2. I painted an upstairs bedroom because it will become my craft room.  Former craft room is now exclusively a spare bedroom.  Come visit!

3. My mom was here.  She brought me a bed for the now aptly named spare bedroom.

4. Mom and I spent a full day in the cities.  We went to the Junk Bonanza and IKEA and spent much money.  My list of current household projects is now very long.

5. I’m on vacation this week.  Thus far I’ve painted, done laundry, cleaned, watched too many episodes of White Collar, and slept.

6. I leave tomorrow morning for a two-night stay in northern WI at a resort in the woods with my friend Kate.  It shall be fun.

7. I tried the pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks again, really feeling like I should like it.  Verdict?  I still don’t.

I was in my kitchen last night, fixing this for dinner.  It had been a shitty, shitty day.  I won’t even pretend that it was nice; I cried pretty much all day and in front of all sorts of people.  But then, in the midst of dinner –

knock, knock.

Someone was at my front door.  I grabbed Mabel by the collar, opened the storm door, and began to push open the screen door.  The mystery knocker was standing kinda off to the side and as I pushed open the door, bent over holding onto Mabel’s collar still, my eyes gradually sized up this man in front of me.  Around my age.  Spandex shorts.  Tight biker shirt.  And off-sided grin.

His name was Eric and he is biking across the country.  He wondered if he could sleep in his tent in the church yard.  

Living in a house in the middle of nowhere by myself, I’m always skeptical.  My inner voice wondered if this would be a good idea.  I nearly sent him to the open field next to the cemetery but then decided that wasn’t very hospitable of me.  He didn’t seem like a creeper; he appeared very innocent and kind.  [The murderers always do, don’t they?]  I told him to go for it – sleep under those oak trees.

All night, I would casually glance out the windows that faced the church and wonder what he was doing.  [At one point, I looked out and he was half naked.  eek.]  I called the church president to let her in on the loop, and called Marilyn just in case he was still there when she arrived to the office in the morning. 

Then, this morning, I woke up and looked outside.  He was still there, apparently asleep.  Really, I wanted to talk to him.  I wanted to know why he was doing this crazy thing and where he was from and all of that.  Ate breakfast and checked.  Still there.  Walked to the office and positioned my office chair so I could see out the window.  Still there.

Finally, he was up and I went outside to say good morning.  I apologized just a bit for being so skeptical and skiddish the night before; he said he gets that a lot.  I asked him where he was from [Palmer, Alaska] and how he came to be biking like this [at 18, he decided his goal was to bike around the world].  He’s done his European leg, as I understood it; is heading for Nebraska to stay with friends for the winter, and then next spring will bike from Niagara Falls to Alaska before doing the Asian leg of his goal.  Crazy.

I told him he could use the bathroom in the church if he wanted and that he did.  On his way out, he paused in front of our offices and said, Thanks for the hospitality.  

Hospitality, not horror movie.  Thank you, Jesus.

Look at me, not writing on this blog again.  

I know I say it all the time but life is crazy.  

I hope to be back soon.  In the meantime, off to an overnight confirmation retreat!