Ten on Tuesday

1. My parents came for my Installation a couple weeks ago. I really love this picture. Ben looks so handsome in his new suit, doesn't he? My dad got a new (velour) sport coat for the occasion, my mom is wearing her Allison Sattinger necklace, and Juliette is in a hand-me-down Laura Ashley dress.2. We experimented with pigtails this afternoon. I'm a fan.

3. It never ceases to entertain me to ask Juliette to give me a dirty look. Maybe when she starts giving them uninvited they will not make me giggle so much.
4. I read this book for the children's message on Sunday. Who told me about Sandy Eisenberg Sasso? Mary Allison? This is the only one I have, but if they are all as good as this they will be worth their weight in, um, board books.
5. I just finished Take this Bread by Sara Miles. I don't know why I dragged my feet about reading that book; for some reason, I thought it was going to be very different than it was. I didn't expect it to be so beautiful or so challenging. It's one of those books I would put in the same category as Traveling Mercies - the kind that everyone should read, but perhaps especially people who are skeptical of Christians/Christianity. Thanks so much to Melanie at Lit*Chick for passing it along (coincidentally, on the same day I'd heard a passage read aloud along with a big recommendation).

6. The Race for the Cure was on Saturday. I'd taken a week off of running thanks to a cold, and man, did that time on the bench not serve me well. I thought I was going to run it comfortably, if slowly. I ended up struggling through the whole thing. The results were posted today and I finished... drumroll... 850th out of just over 1000. The best part, other than the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised for breast cancer research, was seeing Ben and Juliette cheering along the route.

7. Unfortunately, I've been hobbling ever since. I can't bear any weight on the arch of my left foot without wincing mightily. High heels actually feel better than my Danskos, as the arch support is torturous. I'm really, really hopeful I just overworked the muscles and it isn't the dreaded stress fracture. Pretty please don't let it be the dreaded stress fracture.

8. I am tired of all these aches and pains. First my back, then my wrist, now my foot. The wrist thing isn't even resolved; first I was told we should do an MRI because the smallest cysts could cause significant pain, and then, after the expensive MRI, I was told that the cyst was too small to cause pain. Uh, thanks.

9. A couple weeks ago, one of my colleagues at church donated this swingset to our family. We've already spent many, many joyful hours out there. Tonight I made Juliette laugh hysterically by letting her baby doll swing on one of the rings and go down the slide.

10. All the Southern Californians are talking about 100 degree weather. Meanwhile, it's beginning to feel a lot like fall in Illinois. Or rather, it's beginning to feel a lot like February in Los Angeles, only it's only September. I should probably start panicking about now.

Aww

Juliette watches Veggie Tales in my office for a little bit after preschool gets out. My colleague stopped by and commented to Juliette that she likes Veggie Tales, too. "Who is your favorite character, Juliette?"

And Juliette replies, shyly, "My mommy."

Ten on Tuesday

1. It took Ben an hour and forty minutes to get home from work last night. He's hopeful he can find a better route, but driving thirty miles in the Chicago area during rush hour can realistically only get incrementally better.

2. It really is a fantastic job. Really.

3. Cue I Will Survive.

4. The new job necessitated a second car. Hello, Honda Fit:
We did a lot of research, and are pretty confident that it's going to be a great car. We intended to test drive a Fiesta, but the inexplicably rude salesman failed to counterbalance the loads of previous bad experience we've had with Ford. So the only other car we tested was a Mazda 2. In green. Is this thing not adorable? (Keep in mind that it is tiny.)
Sadly, it felt like a coffin inside. A cheap, tiny coffin. Somehow the Honda manages to be a subcompact without feeling like one on the inside.

5. Clearly, we have a thing for hatchbacks. Blame the Tercel, which, in my mind, is the quintessential car that every other car merely approximates.

6. I'm reading The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan. Something about the way she writes - and, of course, what she writes about - evokes so many tears from me it's almost ridiculous. Same thing with Lift. I read every sentence with a knot in my throat. Ben went to go get a snack the other night, and I had tears streaming down my cheeks by the time he got back.

7. Juliette is doing well in school, though drop-offs are still tearful for both the mama and the kid.

8. Kudos to the local Honda dealership for providing free WiFi, as it gave me something to do during the long wait for our turn in the business office. I was scrolling through Facebook, and just as I was about to leave some comment regarding the excellence of GoogleReader, our name got called. I ended up accidentally leaving a comment that read Goo. How to look crazy on Facebook, exhibit A.

9. My sympathies to the people who are scrambling to find a replacement for Bloglines, which is shutting down shop at the end of this month. Having jumped ship a year or so ago, I assure you that you really will learn to love GoogleReader, too. Possibly even more.

10. Last but definitely not least... I was formally installed as the Associate Minister this weekend. It was a beautiful service, complete with many of my favorite hymns and anthems, the presence of both the UCC conference minister and the DoC regional minister, a moving sermon and liturgy, a "View" style interview during the children's message (it went over SUPER well when I 'fessed to liking Barbies and Hot Wheels as a kid), and a lovely arrangement of the hymn I wrote for the worship service I lead for the search committee. I'd added another verse to reflect the fulfillment of our discernment together:

When at last our feet find pathways lit by your sovereign design
Hand in hand we journey forward, hearts and hopes fully aligned.
What a joy it is to trust you! What a grace we now perceive!
Let us sing of all the blessings we are grateful to receive!

You can hear the whole thing here, if you like. There's a little bit of silence and clapping at the beginning.

Happy Tuesday.

Monumental Shift

Five weeks after Juliette was born, I went back to work.

Five weeks after Juliette was born, Ben quit his full-time job to become a stay-at-home-dad. (His high school alma mater even featured him in a story about SAHDs.)

He did other things, too. He finished his bachelor's degree, and worked as the church secretary. But his primary vocation for the past two and a half years has been caring for Juliette.

Today is his first day of a full time job. It's a great job, though it comes with a very long commute. I'm happy for him, and proud of him. He is incredibly excited about this work. I can see it in his eyes.

But man, are we going to miss him.

Transformation

This week a spiritual mentor encouraged me to meditate on the word "transformation."

It didn't take me long to make the connection between the word and the title of my blog. any day a beautiful change has become such a motif in my life. So often I'll consider a new development in our lives and think: Oh, look! Another beautiful change.

That being said... sometimes I'm a cynic. A realist. In the midst of a particularly idealistic conversation last spring, I said to Ben, "You know, we'll still be the same people when we live in Illinois." And it's true. We still don't sweep the floors enough. We still eat out too much. Et cetera.

But one huge change for me: I've been waking up early several times a week (sometimes even on Sundays!) to run. Run! At six in the morning! The first few jogs I couldn't go two miles without stopping to walk. Last week I hit four miles - and at a good clip. Ben can hardly believe that I have been waking up at 5:45am. He recalls how I was in seminary, hitting snooze over and over and over again. But there are people who are expecting me to show, so I do.

To celebrate, I'm going to do something I haven't done in ten years: run a race. I ran the Race for the Cure in Cleveland back in 1999, so it seems like the perfect race to revisit in our new city. On September 25th, I'll gather with the masses at Grant Park and run 10k through the streets of Chicago.

(The jury is still out as to whether I will have beautifully changed enough to run a 15k in November.)

If you'd like to make a donation toward my fund raising efforts for breast cancer research, click here. I am profoundly hopeful that one day, that research will engender an infinitely larger, infinitely more beautiful change. A cure.

Ten on... Wednesday Night

1. This week, Juliette started full-day pre-school two days a week. Since it was the same place she attended a morning summer day camp, it was a relatively easy transition. For some of us. Me, not so much. There is a big difference between a morning program and all day. The only time she's struggled is the same time she struggles at home - after nap. I spent both days fretting, but all in all it seems like she's really enjoying it.

2. What a difference a year makes. First day of school 2009/2010:

3. Next week, she'll start her other two-day program, at the church pre-school. It's two hours each day, and while she's going to have to spend some time in my office before and/or after, I'm flexing my schedule so as to take those two afternoons off instead of taking one full day. I love that she'll be right down the hall from me on those mornings. Love it.

4. The stained glass in the front door of the education/office wing of the church campus:

5. Which reminds me, I plan to check these books out of the church library:

Elmslie was the architect who designed the sanctuary. The beautiful sanctuary, I should add.

6. From roughly 1982-1998, I obsessively drew people - mostly just their faces, though an occasional shoulder found its way into a few portraits. Juliette seems to have inherited the people-drawing gene.
7. We have such abysmal television reception that we've pretty much given it up, save for Juliette's morning dates with Sid and George. (For the life of me, I can't figure out when Sesame Street airs, but the science kid and the curious one suffice.) That being said, we did just discover that we can watch the most recent episodes of Project Runway online. Starting midway through the season is less fun than starting at the top, but two episodes is enough to know that Gretchen is craaaazy.

8. I fried plantains for dinner tonight. They were okay. I think I'd rather find a good Peruvian place and let other people do the plantain frying.

9. Last night's dinner will go down in the family history books. Juliette's imagination has exploded recently, and her play has developed accordingly. She started playing with her cashews (not standard dinner fare, but I usually reach for the nuts when serving her dinner on a tray, as something has to be in each compartment). Instead of being good parents and telling her not to play with her food, we proceeded to listen in awe as she went on... and on... and on. I started writing down the dialogue between Juliette and her two cashewpeople:

This is my friend, Bubba.
Hi. Hi!!!
This is my friend Ody.
Hi!
How's your day?
I help you. [Helps Bubba jump off the rim of her milk cup onto the table.]
Bye! [Eats Ody.]
Hi Mr. Daddy.
Yes, this is my friend Sally.
Hi!!
Hide and seek. [Hides Sally under her plate.]
4 6 7 Here I come!
6 7 8 9 are you running?
Yes. Uh Oh!

We laughed so hard at Ody's untimely demise we were afraid we were going to disrupt the show, but Juliette was so completely engaged in her play that she didn't even notice us hiding our faces in our cloth napkins.

10. A certain Mr. Daddy and Mrs. Mama went on their first date nine years ago yesterday. We'd never have known then that it would be the start of so much goodness. Happy everything, my dear husband.