i bring you this lesson in anatomy to point out specifically which muscle i don't believe i've EVER exercised in my entire life until the other day...
i started lifting weights and that little tricep, that's the one that's a-hurtin'... when i was using the 5 pounder, it started burning an inordinate amount then cramped up and i could barely move!!
it was horrible.
i need a 1 pounder. why don't they make those?
on the up side, i will soon have sleek triceps the likes of which will rival even this bony/muscley picture.
just a few more paralyzing days and i'm sure it'll be whipped into shape.
(right?)

the homestead girls

i forced all the girls to succumb to my photographing addiction despite protestations of bad hair and fatness (??)...
here's the four of us that live in my little compound these days...

.....................kate, maren, erica & drea.........................
it's very rare for us to all be home at the same time, so it was an opportunity not to be missed! have i mentioned that erica & drea are sisters? it's true. one of them was adopted, we just can't figure out which.

there's only so many arrangements of people that can happen with a timer shot. we either need a bigger porch swing or smaller people.
if only we were little leprechauns.

wedding date

no, we've not set a wedding date, but we went on a wedding date!
nick's roomate jon got married on saturday and we had so much fun! the reception was at a hotel/restaurant called the hotel seville and it had a very spanish feel to it. super cool place. we had some fun eating and dancing and general revelry.

don't we look spiffy?

nick and jen (nick's best friend tim's girlfriend) were especially entertaining with their dancing antics -- i wish i could have videotaped them! they were hilarious. i'm working on having less inhibitions, but i'm not quite up to this level yet. someday maybe.

i loved the architecture of the building -- it was so cool!
we had the whole run of the place, so we got to explore all the coolness.
i'm not always a fan of spending a saturday at a wedding, but this was a fun one.

nama rococo

i've discovered the most gorgeous wallpaper of my life!!!
not that wallpaper's all that high on my list of priorities, but this is truly beautiful.
my favorite is the french dot style.
a 25" x 38" sheet costs $180 so it's never going to be an actual part of my life, but at least i can enjoy the visual.
i think i'd frame a sheet of it and hang it as a painting more than i would wallpaper a whole wall with it.

my little blue bird

remember how i made a little clay bird and it was perfect?
well i finished it and here it is in all its panoramic glory.
i do indeed love it.
i saw a blue bird in my backyard tree the other day. i stared at it for as long as it stayed in that tree, then it flew away for some unknown birdy reason.
it didn't look much like this one. maybe this is the inner spirit of that blue bird.

christmas in february

because it's so almost spring i can taste it and it's driving me crazy because it's NOT yet spring, i think it's time for a little distraction -- a hearkening back to christmas time perhaps. there's nothing like thinking about cold blusteriness to get your mind off wanting buds on the trees and green grass.
i never posted pictures of our fun-tastic small group christmas party! eric bolger was the camera man for the evening and took some great candid shots of facial expressions. people are so funny when they're not trying to be sometimes.




the hat/scarf combo made the rounds during our white elephant but ended up staying with a smug sandy.




papa eric and mama janet were the hosts for the part-ay.



casey's thrift store find was the hit of the evening -- we dubbed the lovely figurine 'june cleavage' and i tried my best to emulate her demure look, but somehow i was missing something... cleavage perhaps?




emily's plotting fingers and devious expression are classic -- i think she was contemplating stealing my june cleavage. thankfully i still have her. she graces a shelf in my dining room.




this was the party after which i commented to eric that i had a feeling nick was starting to like me and i wasn't sure how i felt about that...
nick remembers it as the party where he kept finding himself staring at me then looking away real fast when i'd glance his way, then turning beet red. :-)
i don't remember any furtive starings.
good thing.

so did it work? am i pining less longingly toward spring?
not really.
oh well.
maybe the grass will sprout out soon and my longings will be enjoyings. hey, remember daffodils?!
i can't wait!

swedish buns

i've been told that i'm too boring with my hair styles, so i've been trying to spice it up -- here's the latest effort. one of my students said i look swedish :-)
i think it's rather teeny-bopper-ish, but at least it's something different, eh?

my hero

this is the ditch that my car somehow ended up in the other day... i won't go into the details of how that happened, as it would probably end up sounding like a long rambling description that would only make sense to me, but i'll sum it up by saying it was night, very muddy, and i'm a dork.
to give you an idea of the depth of that seemingly innocuous ditch, the top of my trunk was level with the edge of the road. those little mudpuddles are where my front wheels were spinning out.

thankfully for me, i have a heroic boyfriend with a handy 4-wheel drive!
nick saved me. just like in the movies.
all except for the lack of crescendoing music in the background.

well you were all none-too-helpful with the name suggestions, but i went ahead and thought of one anyways... wait, i apologize, dad was very helpful -- he suggested randy to go along with the simon, then to get a girl cat and name her paula so we could start gathering bransonians and staging our own american idol.
now we know what show dad's into :-)

despite that lovely idea (thanks dad), i went ahead with my first gut instinct. the gray kitty shall forthwith and forevermore be known as garfunkel. since it's kind of a mouthful, i figure i'll probably call him things like funky and garfer and funky chicken and chicky and...
hmm, that's all i suppose.

did i mention they're cute?

new kitties!

i'm so very excited! these kitties are completely and irretrievably cute.
the black one's name is simon, in honor of all the black cats i've ever known of or owned (even the fateful south carolinian simon), but i'm not sure what the gray one's name should be. any suggestions?
he makes me think of comfy coziness, but that's not much of a name.

he's pretty mesmerized by the computer and the little mouse arrow moving around the screen -- his whole head was darting back and forth.

i will now take them home and buy them food and build them a little house and love them forever.
they'll be outside cats this time around. maybe then we'll avoid some roomate issues.

design!

i happened upon a whole new world that's going to consume way too much of my time, i can tell already... did you know there's an entire sub-culture of design blogs?! these people spend large chunks of their day finding cool things and posting about them... things like this:



































i'm probably breaking some kind of law by showing you these snippets of things from the handful of blogs that i browsed without even telling you who designed them or where you can go to buy them... let's just consider it a little commercial break where i encourage you to check out some of those artsy links and find out for yourself!
that's covering all the bases, eh?

my absolute favorite is this one with the lounging girl growing a tree out of her midsection...
i've been doing a lot of thinking about roots lately and brainstorming ways to visually articulate some of the ideas in my head...
this image is just cool.
it will definitely influence some of my random musings on the whole idea.
i LOVE looking at these kind of blogs and anything visually stimulating, like anthropologie design, for one, or anything that's cool because of how it makes my brain spin off in a hundred different directions of things i could do and make and how i could translate that color or shape into my already existing ideas...
it's inspiring, that's what it is.
i've already been inspired to make a clay bird, so i did by golly, and it's just perfect.

in conclusion, on a totally different topic, i have a secret that's just making me very happy. one of my students is looking for a home for two little kittens and i told her i'd adopt them! every time i think of it, i get a little jolt of joy! but don't tell erica, drea or maren, okay? okay.
they'll be outside kitties. i'll make them a little house.
there's a gray one named polly because she likes to sit on your shoulder like a little parrot, and there's a black one that i can't remember the name of. i've always had a real weakness for gray kittens. okay, for any kittens in general.
i'll probably get them sometime next week.
:-)
hurray!

i finally converted erica to the blogging world!!
yes!
not only that, but she's growing her hair out!!!
double yes!!

sometimes i just feel so powerful.

day o' love

hidy ho good neighbors!
it's been quite a while -- i realize you're used to a more daily update on my goings-on. i got to thinking you were taking me for granted and thought i'd hold out for a while to make you truly appreciate the branson news for all its worth...

actually it's just been uneventful around these parts.
well, until i got these lovely pictures from nick to share with you all!

we had our small group get-together on valentine's day -- jennifer cooked the most amazing lasagna in the WORLD, and we enjoyed several varieties of sugar-infused delicacies... most of the people dressed up pretty fancy-shmancy, then took prom pictures of themselves -- you know, the turned in stance, the heads leaning... nick and i didn't dress up (but magically ended up matching) so we figured we were the chaperones who don't get as gussied up as the young bucks. so we took a prom picture too...


nick has this fun little game he likes to play where he pretends to be my mentally challenged brother...
it's so ... cute... (?)

he's really quite normal though, don't get too worried.

i wish i had other pictures of the other people to share, because they were indeed quite beautiful looking. especially sandy and nate -- they were the shmanciest.


i think i've put a picture or two of maren on, but here she is up close and personal -- she's the new roomy in the homestead and i do indeed like her a lot. she's a good one. she's moved out of my bedroom and down into the dungeon basement now -- she's turned her little room into a moroccan marvel! the colors are so cool.

well, have the greatest of fridays, filled with surprises and unexpected happenings. :-)

faith vs. logic

this is from today's 'sacred space'...

"Almost a hundred years ago, the philosopher Friedrich von Hügel described how we progress towards God. He wrote of an initial institutional stage, followed by a critical stage, and culminating in what he called a mystical stage. By 'mystical' he didn't mean magic or heavenly voices, but rather this: age makes us realise that we have seen it all, and brings us to know that good and evil, like the wheat and cockle of the parable, coexist not merely in countries and institutions, but in each of us. Pitch darkness and pure light are seldom the order of the day, but we learn to live with both, light emerging out of darkness. We do the best we can, and are ready to renounce the seductions of having the perfect formula for everyone's life."

"In the mystical phase we still carry with us the institutional phase: we still love the sights and sounds of worship well carried out, and the sense of participating in a great body of believers. We have not left the critical phase behind, but carry it with us: we use our heads about our religion, and have no illusions about the weaknesses of Jesus' followers - after all, Peter, the first Pope, had to live with the memory of denying the Lord publicly, again and again. But when we have argued about all the great questions of human existence, especially the mystery of evil, we realise that we rely more on the gift of faith than on clear-cut reason."

every day i'm understanding a little more the idea of intuition vs. logic. at first i thought it was just about personalities, that i'm more intuitive than logical, and i don't tend to trust that very much -- i tend to wait until i understand what's going on before following the path that my intuition was nudging me toward. that process of understanding what's going on seems to take me a LOT of introspective thinking though, and i get bogged down in the muck of all the ins and outs of a situation before coming up with what i like to think is the logical reasoning behind it...
but then i started thinking that those intuitive thoughts are probably more about the way the holy spirit guides me THROUGH my personality. that was exciting, to think about being directed so tangibly. i have nudges all the time that i overanalyze and pick to death before following... but now that i see them as more from the spirit, maybe i'll be quicker to follow and avoid a lot of angst in the process.
then through this reading today, i realized another facet of it -- that 'intuition' or 'spirit nudging' is all a part of faith, and it's a gift to be relied on, not ignored until we have clear-cut reason on the matter.
(whatever that matter might be)

now don't get me wrong -- i'm not saying there's no place for logic and reason! it's just for me, i tend to count logic as the only valid way of thinking, and discredit intuitive faith. this last week, i'm beginning to get a more balanced understanding of the two.

i really like that 'sacred space' link over there -- it's so good to be led through turning toward jesus with truth.

i hope you have time to turn your thoughts toward him in some way today.

you have to go check out this blog -- it's so good! these are a few of her cards. they make you think, laugh or scratch your head, depending on how good you are at reading graphs.
(math was not my biggest success in school...)

2 cor. 12:9-10

but he said to me, 'my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' therefore i will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that christ's power may rest on me.
that is why, for christ's sake, i delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. for when i am weak, then i am strong.


let me just boast about one weakness here -- i truly stink at financial management!! i'm really really bad at it. i have a budget, i try to live by it, but invariably i screw it up. this last month's screw up is sending me into a downward spiral that i may not pull out of...
well, so i think.
but then i read that section of 2 corinthians and i remembered that whole backwards thing that seems to be a theme with god. i don't see the logic of it, but maybe my logic isn't something to be trusted.
i don't see how i can be strong by being weak, but it's worth a shot.

here's to being really really weak.

this one's dedicated to laura 'the wingo' tyler for her inspirational bang cutting -- i always did follow her fashion trends.

now i need some input -- do they make me look younger, older or the same?
since most of my students think i look about 12, i really can't handle shaving any more years off my appearance.
since i'm going to be THIRTY in a mere year and a half, it's time to start finding styles that make me look that old already!
i could just jump straight to the old lady blue poof style... that's a sure bet for looking older.

the infamous yellow fire trucks strike again!

if you can believe it, our small neighborhood has once again called upon the city services to come to our rescue -- we're just the happenin' place, i tell you what! this time the road was so backed up, i guess they decided my front yard was the best place to stow extra fire trucks and other assorted volunteer firefighter vehicles.
how nice for us. not that i mind the ruts in the yard -- maybe it'll kill the grass in those little areas and i'll have less to mow this summer!
yes!!
as they were leaving they kindly said they'd be back after the ground was less frozen to fill in the ruts.
those firefighters. they're good folk.

drea was especially excited to get up close and personal.



saturday night we saw the glorious community theater production 'the sound of music' and casey was the best sister margareta i've ever witnessed!! she was so great. i especially enjoyed her ear holes in her wimple.


i won't break open the entire scandal, but apparently there's some funny business between the sister and the captain that the general public aren't privy to...


p.s. laura's bang-cutting urge was contagious... well, combined with my friend allison randomly saying, 'kate, you need bangs' yesterday. i can't decide if they make me look younger, older, or the same. pictures soon to come then you can vote.

more snow days...

well, we had another good ole missouri weather spell that knocked us out of school for 2 1/2 days!
here's the funny part. i think we got about 3 inches, tops. lord spare us from any sort of blizzard -- we'd be out of commission for MONTHS!!
it sure is pretty though. today the sun's shining bright and the dark trees against the white snow are SO beautiful.


can i just state for the record that this was a POSED shot to get our happiness in the snowiness, but in fact, i was the sole sidewalk shoveler.
it was such a perfect day for it though -- still, cold brightness, and a sense of accomplishment from the exertion and manual labor...
now for the traumatic part -- while getting the shovel down out of the shed, a rake fell on my head and i had cauliflower ear!!
well, not as bad as some of those boxers get, but it hurt like none other and my poor little ear got swollen and sad.


here's a visual -- focus on top back quadrant.
okay, so i'm a little bit of a pansy.
it didn't help that a squirrel was 2 feet from my head right before the rake fell on me. they look like cute woodland creatures from a distance, but up close they're just freaky.