Awake

Pictures posted of Kylia's 2nd birthday (finally!!)

Kylia's 2 now! Oh how the time flies!

April made this awesome flower pot cake. The "dirt" was chocolate pudding with Oreo cookies and had gummy worms inside. Very creative.

More pictures of Kylia's 2nd birthday party

The Contemplative Chic (or My New Amazon Store)

Just got word today of a new amazon associates beta program in which you can build your own little store -- kind of a more organized way to build links and get subsequent referral fees. Checkout is through amazon.com. I thought I'd give it a go. (It only took a few minutes to set up.)

So here's my little store:

The Contemplative Chic

Happy shopping!

Transcript of Bono's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast

I know, I know, I'm slow. I'll use my faithful scapegoat, "School" to take the blame (even though I hadn't even started school yet when this was posted). ANYWAY, for the record, here's a link to Bono's quite prophetic remarks to the attendees of the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year.

Bono's remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast via DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa).

Commuter Reading List

This week's commuter reading list reflects a tired soul looking for adventure as well as an overachiever trying to hold her 99.2% in A&P ;-)

• The Riddle (The Second Book of Pellinor) by Alison Croggon in which Maerad and Cadvan seek the Treesong. An epic journey complete with maps, a guide to pronounciation, a special language, poetry, songs, and a note on the translation, all of which give it that Lord-of-the-Rings-esque feeling that this might be some long lost piece of human history. Another gem from the "Teen Fiction" aisle. (Why should teenagers get all the good books?)
• Facilitated Stretching—chapter 6 for tonight's Massage 2 class. So far the book has been a little too incongruently technical for the class. The class itself is technical in its own nice friendly way, but the book leans a bit too far into the esoteric side of things. It might help if the instructor bridged the gap a bit. Anyway, gotta read it for tonight...
• Anatomy Coloring Book (various pages). For this, only a haiku can express the depth of my feelings for the ACB. If you please:

  green hypophysis
  bright orange hypothalamus
  color. remember. reflect.

Thus endeth the Commuter Reading List. Go back to your lives, citizens.

On Awakening

Ever get that feeling that you are about to change in some deep significant way?

Me neither.

Ever really really want to?

Me too.

This summer, I had classes five nights a week and worked full time. On the positive side, I stayed on a fast-track to getting my license. On the negative side, I put volunteering at the dispute resolution center on hold until October; I could never get started with a new small group bible study; and I won't be able to volunteer at AWANA this Fall. In the gray area is all the resulting feelings...feeling isolated, struggling with loneliness, feeling a bit more tired than usual (not too much, just a bit). So what am I gonna change as a result? First of all, my class schedule. Instead of a 5-nights-a-week schedule, I'm splitting up my 2 classes, one in the morning (Tu/Th), one in the evening (M/W). I'll have a spectacularly extravagant 3 evenings free...until I put back mediation and bible study. Ok, so one night free. And Friday, to boot. I'll take it.

But more than changing my schedule, what I really want to change is my heart. A bit more passion would do nicely. A bit more compassion wouldn't go amiss either. A dash of activism and a pinch of righteous indignation would savor well in my soul I think. I've been there before. It's a good place to be, but this time I'd like to take along my whole self, body included. I want to be transparently awake and ready and watchful and prayerful and loving and compassionate, ferociously pursuing justice — from skin to spirit, guts and all.

But I just keep coming back to that island of me. I'll change in private and show you later, when I'm ready, when I'm perfect. Hogwash. Ridiculous. Perfectionism. Ick.

What I dream of is a hand to hold. Someone to gently guide me from the island to the community. It seems preposterous to me (so strong! so willful! so capable!) to need such a thing. (Pride, when swallowed, can make such a painful lump in one's throat.) But I do want that. Don't know if I really need it. (I probably do.) But I definitely want that. It's mushy, but I don't care. I could use a little mushiness in my life.

Sentimentality aside, I do sense a change of tides signaling more than just the every-minute wave tumbling toward the shore. It's no tsunami, just a rip tide — hopefully strong enough to pull me into the deep.

Toys

Ahh toys.

I've added a little toy to this blog: a "cbox." (I think that's supposed to mean "chat box.") Which means....yes! You TOO can leave me a message, chat with others who are also visiting this blog or WHAT HAVE YOU. Amazing. Look to the West (left) to see what I'm talking about.

Currently my favorite toy at home is my TiVo. I love my TiVo. The only I don't like is that doesn't play well with my Mac. Well that will change. I am planning on partitioning my G4 tower and installing XP on it so that it WILL (oh yes) WILL play nice with my TiVo, allowing me to record DVDs and other such goodness. After all I can't really be expected to record stuff to VHS tapes, can I? I mean, isn't that some form of geek sacriledge or something? Not sure about that, and admittedly it is a little sickening to think about trying to install XP on my Mac, when TiVo is already connected to my VCR and I just have to run down to Freddy's for some blank tapes to get rolling. But that's a little too simple, isn't it. (Just say "Yes, Amber. Yes it is.")

I also got a Roomba on Woot for cheap. But I haven't let it come out to play yet. Soon, though. Very soon.

Exciting times, we live in. Very exciting.

August?

Apparently it's August 8th. My brain is still somewhere between July 15 and the 23rd-ish. (I guess that's what happens with a 5-night-a-week class schedule and a full-time job.)

We celebrated Kylia's birthday the last week of July. She's 2 now. She says "happy bur-day whah....ME". It's very cute. She's very cute. She likes her new baby sister Zoie. She can't quite pronounce the "Z" so "Zoie" comes out "Howie". How cute is that.

Adalie (almost 4 now) informed me over the phone the other day that Zoie was crying that day because she wished that she was big enough to play with her and Kylia. I'm not one to disagree with her analysis. I mean, all of those girls speak Secret Baby Language (SBL) fluently. (It is their first language after all.) So I really have no doubt that Zoie told Adalie in SBL that she wished she had the motor skills to keep up with her big sisters. Really.

In other news, classes are going well. Midterms are next week. I can hardly believe how fast this term is going. I'm so glad that this is the last term that I'll have class on Friday night. So all you eligible-Jesus-loving-bachelors out there that have been just dying to ask me out on a Friday evening need only wait for the onset of October. I'll be waiting by the phone. ;-)

Ah yes, and pictures. Yes, I do have pictures of Kylia's birthday. Hopefully I'll get them posted before Adalie's birthday (September 4).