Eat This

The hubs read a book about food processing or eating organically or something and decided to experiment with a meatless life style for 30 days. With the exception of a couple of of times when I just couldn't say no to the meat cravings, I've been a willing accomplice.

There are definitely times when eating meat seems easier, like this one time when we were having people over for dinner. An unexpected meatless meal seemed be difficult to explain or expect other people to agree to try but we have wonderfully supportive friends who just went along with us.

The totality of my menu planning is fueled by Real Simple recipes and regularly they offer great looking vegetarian meals that I usually don't bother to make. Since we aim to cook dinner at home at least twice a week. This has been an opportunity to try out lots of different things I have never considered before.

This week I picked the potato-leek-flatbread (below, left) because I like potatoes and leeks and cheese. The hubs picked the polenta pizza (below,right) because...well, I don't know, I guess he likes polenta.

The flatbread was Monday night's dinner and it tasted as good as that photo looks. I went heavy on the Gruyere cheese and could have gone lighter on the leeks but definitely worth a repeat.  tonight, the polenta pizza gets a turn.

Palm Sunday

Lent Day 34: The Book of 1 Thessalonians

God says, only in unplanned, unarranged, unwelcomed, unmanageable, and thoroughly unenjoyable dark nights will My plan for your maturity unfold.

Listen to what an offbeat follower of Mine, Tim Farrington, wrote in A Hell of Mercy:

"You will be graced with the disaster your soul requires to find its way home."

John of the Cross put it this way:

"No matter how much an individual does through his own efforts, he cannot actively purify himself enough to be disposed in the least degree for the divine union of the perfection of love."

Your frustration with everything, including yourself, makes it possible to turn in deeper dependence to Me. Your weariness requires the strength of supernatural love to continue serving Me. Your haunting sense of futility shuts you up to a kind of endurance that can be sustained only with hope in My Son's return.

You are in a good place.

(from 66 Love Letters: A Conversation with God that Invites You into His Story by Dr. Larry Crabb, ©2009.)

Connectivity, Connectedness, Connections

This is where I work.  I first crossed this part of Hitt Street my first semester at Mizzou almost 15 years ago. Since then, especially now that I attend weekly staff meetings in Memorial Union, I have crossed it hundreds of times.  Its to the point where I don't even think about it anymore.


Now, this is also where I dance. This weekend stood in that crosswalk and busted a move. I danced in front of Memorial Union for the first and lets go ahead and say last time.  Walking across the crosswalk to go to staff meeting will never be quite the same again.

You know that feeling?

Sometimes I leave the house in such a tizzy in the morning that I forget to turn off something, like the Chi. Or I forget to grab something, like my lunch. A number of times I've been saved from causing a house fire by a funny feeling I get in my gut while I'm walking to my car (sidenote: when I live in a house, my car will be safely tucked away in a garage). 

This morning there was a complete and total ID10T error. A SNAFU. A FUBAR.

I'm not sure what led the hubs to step from the front door into the kitchen but he did and there it was, the open refrigerator.  The open refrigerator that had been open so long that the light bulb had burnt out.

I'm going to have a class of milk now. Maybe scramble some eggs and throw some cheese on top.

When I live in a house

This morning I pulled up to my apartment complex and there was a dude, with green hair, smoking a cigarette, and shuffling to his 1985 power blue Oldsmobile Cutless looking like he had only recently stopped drinking. I look forward to when I live in a house and don't have consider the most strategic way to get out of my car, upstairs and in my front door all while avoiding eye-contact with weird friends of unknown neighbors.

Time keeps on tickin', tickin',tickin'

I have this sense that April will be here before I know it. In my head I was going to blog a couple of times last week, but I'm not even sure what I've been doing with myself, not a lot to show for this past week.  If someone did a productivity study they would find that I have managed to spend a lot of time hanging out at Woodcrest singing and dancing which, as far as church activities go, does not suck. But that will all end in a week and I predict that I will spend the rest of the month holed up at the local watering hole watching as much basketball as possible. Just like I did last year, and the year before that.

Just typing the words, I get all giddy about it. I will do brackets, that is right, mutiple brackets and I'll write about them because the what ifs, upsets, the drama and the glory suck me in like a new episode of Jersey Shore. Its unavoidable. I will shamelessly conduct daily appointments with basketball on in the background thanks to CBS Sports.  I will wholeheartedly root for any an all teams that play again Kansas. Now, I have to go prepare for Big 12 Championship tourney starting today. Mizzou v. Nebraska will require my full attention.

Sunny Disposition

I'll admit it. I have a Negative Nelly side of me. Although lots of good things happen in my life, I tend to cautiously celebrate while waiting for that one bad thing to happen. I only wait for it because time and experience have taught me that its going to happen but I also know that I can loose track of whats good by focusing on the bad.  One of the most useful skills I've acquired in my 30s is the ability to fake positivity long enough to trick my psyche.  

Take the weather in the middle of Missouri this week.  The weather gurus said it was going to be 50 and sunny by the end of the week. Since I have been particularly desperate for temperatures above freezing and  for enough sun that sunglasses were required, I initially got really excited about the prospect of that kind of forecast.  That excitement could have been short-lived because that's exactly when Nelly shows up reminding me that its Missouri, in the spring, and weather offers no guarantees. But this week, because I wanted sun SO badly, I told Nelly to bite me. I want to look forward to warmer days, especially a nice Friday. Each day has been increasingly sunnier and warmer than the day before and I let the excitement that comes when you wake up to sun pushing through the blinds in the morning overtake me. Although Nelly is still there, this time, positivity wins.