Hello

So I am really not blogging much, am I?

It's not that there's nothing going on...just that most of it is very internal. I am struggling, but not in a bad way, I don't think. Since I miss blogging and all, I thought I would take a clue from Rob and just share tidbits.

1.) In my thrilling life I have nearly weekly dates with the dentist. After years of no insurance, I'm finally wrestling what's left of my teeth back under my control. I keep having this reccuring image of my mouth as a monstrously expensive, prodigiously ugly Faberge Egg, all enamel and porcelain and precious metals. Just wanted to share that.

2.) I am taking a class on evolutionary anthropology and it is HARD! I thought I would mostly be looking at pretty fossils and chimps and coming up with neat explanations for why humans do this or that. Instead I am soaking my head in terms like Australopithecus habilis and trying to write a paper that is due any minute now. Instead, I am sort of blogging. With zero deep thoughts. About protohuman hominids or otherwise. In fact, this is the scariest paper I have ever had to write, since it's not really asking for my opinion. In the past every paper I have ever written was only asking for my opinion. Me = Big on Opinions, Small on Facts. Ay.

3.) Much of my inward work has been in the arena of opening myself up to fellowship and friendship. While in moments of social desperation and an excess of company I can look like an extrovert, I'm really not. Sometimes laying an army of insecurities down one at a time feels like a fulltime job, especially since they often spring back with little warning. I would rather be lonely than risk ridicule or rejection, and not a lot gets accomplished from that place of fear. This is a slow process with lots of backsliding that is complicated by things like depression and stress, both of which tend to trigger the isolating reflex.

4.) I love to knit. I really do. This is the best thing that's happened to me in a while, this learning to knit.

5.) My family is having a really tough time, and it's hard for all of us. Please pray for them. And me, that I can be supportive and loving and helpful from so far away.

6.) I read some good Quaker fiction, for the first time: Impassioned Clay by Stevie Davies. I found it a beautiful, painful book that caught me into its world and kept me there even when it was an uncomfortable place to be. I have a small stockpile of Quaker Nonfiction near my bed too, but cannot seem to pick up anything but the bible (not exactly non-fiction, but you get the point), so I am letting that be for the moment. I have zero pangs of conscience about continuing to read good novels even when I cannot bear to so much as blink at Bownas et al. It is amazing, some of the soul-snarls that I have had worked out me in the past, just by the reading some good, life-filled fiction.

7.) And poetry:

It dropped so low in my regard
I heard it hit the ground,
And go to pieces on the stones
At bottom of my mind;

Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less
Than I reviled myself
For entertaining plated wares
Upon my silver shelf.

--Emily Dickinson

8.) Jeff is home from the FWCC Section of the Americas Gathering. I managed to go to pick him up at the airport twice. For one trip. Because I do not do well with details. Or itineraries. While he was gone it was cold and dark and windy and it even snowed. Now it is sunny and warm. Coincidence? Well, probably. But welcome home, Jeff! He said I could share his pictures with you. They are pretty great.