We got back from our beach vacation late last night. It seems to be a theme with Jaime and me to drive to places late in the evening. It was much better in the long run, to drive late last night than to drive in today. It meant that we got an entire day to catch up on things, do all our laundry, and Jaime can connect back with his video games.



If I tried to retell the past week's events we would be here for a very long time. Basically we went to the beach. Edisto Beach in South Carolina. A vacation spot that I've been to a few times as a little girl (we actually found the beach house we stayed in almost 20 years ago). I think this will be one of those vacations that is better the more I look back on it. It didn't seem to really sink in while we were there. It could have been that Jaime didn't like the beach so I never got to lay out in the sun with him, but I didn't want to put him in misery.


We all rode bikes. Took the dogs to the beach. Churchill got to swim. Played a mean game of Axis and Allies, turned some tricks in Spades. Jaime and I spent an evening in Charleston. I found out that I like crab but still don't like shrimp. We ate at a local dive called Whaleys and had drinks at the Pavillion listening to a live band with a very effeminate lead guitarist/biker who's only dance move was to shimmy... We went crabbing, Jaime almost got hooked by a fisherman with little control over his pole. We ate at the local fireman's fish fry.





There were lots of things that we did but the best part was simply being with my family. The hardest thing of all is driving away from my mother and father as we head back home. I cry almost every time we leave (not in front of them, but quietly on our way out of town. It's such an intense part of the trip for me and I hate having it come so soon. But it's a good thing I cry isn't it? It's good because it means that my parents are that important to me.

We got home and I had yellow squash and zucchini waiting for me. My first squashes yet! We're going to eat them tonight.. there might be too much :)



My Mom and I are talking about getting into cleaner eating. She was reading the book In Defense of Food, and I thought it might be a good idea to eat less processed stuff so we might start a project this summer, or part of it. I mean, what am I going to do without mac and cheese? Candy? I'll go into more detail as I research it. I think this week will be devoted to researching and getting ideas. Food food food. Food!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpMIFtdeOSU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBFfTUW1df4


Those are some videos of Churchill swimming in the ocean and Huxley eating some crab legs.

Jaime and I drove into Anderson around midnight on Friday night. The dogs and I were exhausted and went to bed by 1am. Jaime, on a recent stunt to drink caffeine again, stayed up later with Mom and talked. Speaking of talking, it's been a more fulfilling joy than expected to hear Jaime stay up and talk with my Mother, also to hear him relating stories to my family of his point of view on some joint family memory. I never thought that I would take pleasure in those things, never thought they would mean so much to me but they do. Jaime is beginning the long process of becoming as much my family in memory as my own family I grew up with.

The dogs woke me up at 7:15 this morning and they are still wide awake. I went to bed last night with a migraine and dreamed of ways to get rid of it including drinking water that my dogs poured for me in these long tall glasses. I just woke up and took some medicine which I'm sure is what my dream intended for me to do.

Last night I went on a walk with Dad around the new neighborhood. Floods of homesickness came rushing back to me only this time it wasn't for people or places or even things. It was for how Anderson "feels". We walked around and talked about houses and Dad told me who lived where etc. I suddenly realized that walking around Birmingham would have been sitfling in the humidity. Walking around Anderson, however, was like walking in a dream. I'm not even kidding here so don't laugh! It was the perfect temperature outside, plus!, there were like.. NO bugs. It was my favorite time of the day, when the sun gets ready to go down but it's not quite dark yet. Everything glows in that light you know. Everything is surrounded by a halo, a southern halo. In that moment I really missed what Anderson offered me my entire childhood. I began to remember running through my old neighborhood playing with friends. We stopped to talk to some friends and a grandfather said to his grandson, "Tonight I'm gonna build a big fire and we're gonna sit up and watch for fireflies". I forgot all about that, but as I walked around outside with my Dad I remembered. I don't wish I could move back to Anderson, I've really and truly begun to enjoy Birmingham, but I miss those summer nights in the upstate. Not to throw back to Grease or anything but I do miss them.

So today we're packing up and getting ready to drive down to Charleston. I wish I could say that the forecast looks better today than it did yesterday but that wouldn't be true either. I really REALLY hope that it doesn't rain every day that we're there. And that if it does it would at least give us a few hours of sunshine. It's not a lot to ask. It really isn't, I mean, we are sacrificing hours of saved vacation time here to the vacation gods (so to speak, no this has nothing to do with my "faith" talks) the least they could do is give us some quality sunshine by which we can go crabbing. That's all I'm asking for really.

Oh and I forgot to tell you, I found my bikini at Target after all and no I don't look like a whore, I look like a respectable fashionable hot person.

We're leaving this evening for Anderson. Sometimes it seems like such a long difficult thing to go home and other times it feels like we could just hop in the car and be there in no time. Today it feels like the no time time. There are so many things that need to get done before we leave and I'm thankful that I have at least 3 hours between when I get off work and when Jaime gets off work to do them by myself. I work harder when I'm home alone. When my husband is around I get easily distracted for better or worse. Cleaning is one of the things I really look forward to if I ever get a chance to stay at home and raise a child. On my Wednesday's off I've been able to clean almost the entire house and I've found such pleasure in doing so. I want to vacuum every day. Dusting.. maybe that one is not my favorite thing to do but don't you feel so much better when your bed is made and there are those straight vacuum lines in the carpet? Dogs don't help it stay that way. Every evening around 8-9 they start their final run down where they chase each other around the house until they are exhausted and finally ready to go to bed. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we didn't crate Huxley during the day time. Would they have a similar romp before the great afternoon nap?

The weather forecast for the beach looks sad but not quite grim. What exactly does 30% chance of rain mean when you're at the beach? I'm starting to think that my family vacations are always rainy. Last year's wasn't too rainy but now that I think about it, it did start raining while we were in a boat on the lake. That wasn't very nice at all. Nothing quite beats getting rained out of your tent in the middle of the night though. This time we'll be in a house, not a tent so I guess it couldn't be too bad. As long as we get to try and catch some crabs that's all I care about. And my dogs, I want them to do the whole beach thing. I've been trying to get them psyched up about it but I'm not sure how much they understand so far. We have been practicing walking on a doubler on the leash, you know, where one leash splits and holds two dogs. It's a lot more difficult than the dog whisperer would have you believe.

I think that my parents are concerned that I haven't been going to church on Sundays for the past year. I decided to take a break after being a church pianist for the better part of this decade. Despite participating in mass twice a week (I don't take communion but that's another story) my parents still feel that I need to be part of a congregation. To fellowship with believers. I feel like I've been tiptoeing around this for a while now so I figured I might as well write about it because that helps me "release". I feel confidant saying that I have grown more spiritually this past year apart from church than I ever have in my entire Christian life. There was that time in middle school and high school where I was learning all the great theology of John Calvin, but this beats that.. not by much, but it still beats it. I've been absolutely amazed and inspired by the things I've come to question and understand deeper through this break from church. I am in no way advocating "not going to church". I think that this is a season that I'm going through and I'm going through it for a very good reason.

This past year I've been trying to focus on very very basic beliefs. Perhaps it's that I'm living in Alabama which I believe is more stereotypically "Christian" than South Carolina and perhaps that has a small reason why I'm thinking through the things I'm thinking through. I've just noticed a lot more people are doing and believing things simply because someone else told them to, or because it's just what you do, going to church on Sunday mornings, it's just what you do. I know lots of people are angry with the "church" because there are a lot of Christians out there who don't really act like Christ. That's not my beef at all. In fact, I don't really have a beef. I just don't want to become someone who only believes what she believes because Mom and Dad believe it. I think my church upbringing has been wonderful and I wouldn't change it for the world. I think my parents are loving parents and that the congregation that they belong to, which helped raise me, is a beautiful group of people (minus the strange lady with one glove and the funny hat). Lately, however, I've found myself wanting more. I think it's probably one of those "growing up" things that you have to go through. I could go to a church and sing on Sunday and take notes during the sermon. I could have debates with my husband over theology and I could attend Bible Studies where I discuss my prayer requests. Or I could stay at home and think really really hard about how if I were born in Eastern Europe would I truly believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins, and despite what my upbringing might have me believe, He is the only way to Heaven, that I'll go to Hell because I'd never heard of Him. I know some Christians believe that they were just not "chosen" and that in some strange way it glorifies God to chose some and not others. Heaven, which is it's whole lifetime of discussion. I've spent time pretending I'm an atheist just so I'll know what it would feel like to have no hope of Heaven. To die and simply not exist anymore. Some people believe this just as much as I believe there is a Creator of the universe.
I've thought through a lot of different things and I know I'm not nearly done thinking or making my mind up about any of it yet. I don't understand why gay people can't get married. I really honestly truly don't understand why they can't. As liberal as that might sound, I still think that abortion is killing a baby. It's the issue with homosexuals that has really stirred my religious questions because it seems to me that the Bible says that's wrong. But I don't understand why it's wrong, and I know other Christians can wiggle their way around the Bible and pick and choose what they want out of it. Which then (rabbit trail) led me to think about what I personally wiggle around in the Bible, and what lots of people wiggle around. I just don't know what to do with all this wiggling.
There is an Islamic center just down the road from my house and they put up quotations from Muhammad or the Qur'an. They seem pretty decent. So do the people who believe in the Qur'an rather than our Bible.. are they the ones that are wrong? And what about the Catholics and their other books? They must be wrong because MY Bible doesn't have what theirs does. But do they think that I'm the crazy one? I doubt that my brain would have had the free time to question these things had I been learning about the same things I've been learning about since I was a small girl. (not that there aren't plenty of things to learn about in Christianity, I just want to know more about the things around it)

So many questions! So many things to worry and wonder about.

Right now I'm going to worry about these things. Get your laundry done, clean the kitchen, pack your bags, walk the dogs, feed your husband, get us all in the car, drive home to Mom and Dad (the favorite part of my day, that and when Jaime comes home from work).

It turns out that my yellow squash was not pollinated well enough. I guess that's what I get for being a rookie at squash growing. We have a lack of bees, back porch or front porch, so I've been pollinating by hand. I've googled some videos about it and feel much more prepared this time around. I'm learning so much about veggies though. It's really amazing. I mean, who knew that female squash actually look like a substantial veggie BEFORE they are even pollinated? Who knew? And who knew that bell peppers don't need that? Or do they? Oh my oh my. Tomatoes.. apparently they are pollinated much easier than squash.
I'm making myself crazy here. However, I learn by doing.

I'm reading Madeline L'Engle's book A Circle of Quiet and it's so inspirational. This book is by far better than any devotional book I've ever read. I was reading through Streams in the Desert devotional and it got to the point where I felt like it was pushing an agenda on me. God is bigger than agendas. He is bigger than all things except himself :) Madeline L'Engle is such a balanced person and I find myself understanding more about my personal ideas and opinions as well as the world around me than I ever have by simply reading her books. She is also making me really want to have an old house in the country. My vegetables are also making me want an old house in the country as well.

Last night Huxley and Churchill (though I expect mostly Huxley) ate an entire bowl full of little biscuits. I thought they were up to no good and when I called them Churchill simply looked adolescent while Huxley had an entire biscuit in his mouth. We leave for the beach in a few days and I couldn't be more excited to see what the puppies do with the ocean and the sand. I have a feeling that they will enjoy running around on softer things than hard ground but will not enjoy the water. I will have to take lots of pictures. Lots of pictures. And I will also have to bake cookies, lots of cookies! And eat fish :) Seafood! I don't even like seafood and I'm excited. Maybe it's just time for lunch!

I have an hour and a half left of work to do for the week. I still have one and a half cups of broccoli left that I should eat and a cup full of runts sitting beside me. I do it to myself really. My husband hates it when there is candy in the house and probably hates me eating it but as long as I'm not around him when I do the blow is softer. Yesterday I was at Party City buying supplies for goodie bags for my piano students. How I've never been inside a Party City is beyond me but I feel like if I were a millionaire I would throw parties for every occasion and I would furnish them all with things from that store. I was pleased to find pencils for 23 cents instead of the 55 cents they cost where I work (how does that figure?) and I bought several marble maze games for the boys. I also happened to pick up this plastic jug of runts and brought them home with me. It's been a long week I deserved them.. yeah right. My love of sweets is probably the closest I'll ever feel to that tug an addict feels. That's embarrassing to type now isn't it! Let me go heat up my broccoli and then I'll finish this post. Maybe that will save some face.

I think that I get this sweet tooth from my mother. Now that I look back on it she seems to have had plenty of sweet snacks around her. One Easter she confessed to me that she almost ate an entire bag of those sweet tart chicks ducks and bunnies. On road trips to Northern Illinois she would hide Twizzlers in the glove compartment of our Volvo. So I'm going to blame this on her. Not entirely.. but partly. You hear that Mom? I'm blaming you for something! What a horrible mother! The only thing I can think of that you did wrong was introduce your addict child to candy. Gah. Well.. you also introduced me to broccoli and it is doing wonderful things for my insides I'm sure; making me grow strong and healthy. I do try to eat healthy (ish) so don't think that I'm totally ruining my life. I eat vegetables every day. I pretty much only drink water (throw some coke zero and black coffee in there every once in a while.. ok the coffee is everyday) and I workout on a regular basis. Pretty good. I brush my teeth with vigor and I floss regularly. At my last dentist visit I had no cavities. I don't smoke cigarettes (anymore) and I enjoy taking my dogs for long walks. :) Look how wonderful and healthy I am!

At my piano lessons if the students are good and do what I ask them to I will give them candy. A small piece. The other day one of my students was looking through my bag of candy and commented that she couldn't find Butterfingers. I have to confess that it's possible I contributed to the lack of Butterfingers (yes I eat my children's candy) but I know for a fact that I did not eat the last one. I told my student that they were my favorites as well and I was sorry that they were all gone (it really was a travesty). Last night after the recital I received several presents from some of the families I teach, I'm particularly interested to see how far I can make my target gift card go! This child had given me an entire bag of Butterfingers. When I opened it at home I stood there holding the bag and laughing and laughing. It was the perfect ending to the evening. I also had Moe's again last night so that didn't hurt the perfect evening either.

I have really great students. I was so pleased with their work at the recital and more than anything I actually enjoyed telling them each how well they had done. I usually get nervous about the whole, talking to parents ordeal, but the more years I have under my belt the more comfortable I get. This year I really enjoyed telling the parents how pleased I was with their children. I can honestly say that not one of the students in my recital were a pain to teach. I can't think of a more eloquent way to put that right now so I'll leave it at that. Usually when you teach a big group of students you find a few that really frustrate you. You find some that make you think that there is absolutely no hope.. or you teach the ones that do things like... lick their hands and rub them all over your keyboard. That happened to me once. I wanted to kill myself. I can say for the first time in forever I think that I really cared deeply about each one of my students. I cared that they did well, I cared that they knew I thought they did well, and I cared that they had a desire to continue learning. I also want each and everyone of them to not only keep taking with me for their entire lives but to never grow up. Especially my little four year old that began my students recital. I never want him to grow up. Well.. I only want him to grow up to play hands together but that's about it.

I'm amazed at how quickly the year has gone by. It's summer break already. I looked at the calendar this morning and realized that a week from tomorrow we'll be packing up and leaving for SC and then to the beach. A week long vacation at the beach. Wow. Already? Where is my summer going? Not just where is my summer going but.. I don't have a swimsuit. *groan* I know what I'll be doing tomorrow. Is it possible that all swimsuit manufacturers want you to look skanky instead of sexy? I would very much appreciate a swimsuit that covers more than the lingerie that I received at my bachelorette party while still allowing for minimal tan lines. It's really not too much to ask. Lets go for sexy-classy not sexy-slut.

Interesting things are happening and will happen. My townhouse neighborhood is having a garden contest. I know I won't win. I don't have a garden. I have VEGETABLES. But my front yard is a mass of weeds and I don't have the energy to dig them all out and plant something else. I have thought of spraying the entire yard down with round up but then I realized that it might kill whatever I planted after the weeds died. It could be interesting though. Either way the community is going to be beautiful this week and I really look forward to seeing who will win.

My mother is coming into town on Wednesday (which happens to be my coveted day off!) and I'll get to visit and have lunch with her and some of her lady friends :) I'm so excited about this. I used to get really really homesick when we first got married, however, I'm gradually adjusting to calling Birmingham home which I think is an ok thing to adjust to. BUT I leap at any opportunity to visit my parents. They did such a good job raising me that I just can't stay away! It's crazy! Crazy awesome!

The dogs got table scraps of pork chops and mashed potatoes (and garden salad from MY GARDEN). Huxtables stole off with a pork bone and hid under our bed with it. He thinks under our bed is his den. Churchill never was much of a den animal, he spends most of his time sleeping on the couch, but since Huxley has been crate trained I think he prefers dark quiet.. "under" places. Jaime and I got on the floor and watched him defend his bone from us which really was adorable. He does this really cute thing where he'll army crawl towards you and roll over and put his paws on your face. Anyway. Dogs should never be fed pork chops. Ever. The next day I found several small piles of vomit that didn't look like vomit more like a pile of little pieces of bone (that must have felt nice coming up). Yesterday while I was eating my runts and packing little baggies of goodies I experienced the gas that comes with puppies who eat pork. Then later. The pork came out the other end. Poor little baby. Huxley was covered in it. I thought about blogging about this yesterday. I spent a good deal of time thinking about it actually. I finally decided that the only way to describe what happened in Huxley's crate is to simply call it shit. It was shit. I know I don't really cuss on this blog because who knows who's reading it. But there is no other way I can put this. It was worse than anything I've ever seen. It was.. a big deal. It wasn't just like.. the four letter word that people say in surprise or something like oh shit! It was the four letter word that people say when they are disgusted. I looked over at Jaime and said.. babies are going to be so much easier, so much easier. I know those of you who have had babies want to interject here and say something like, Carrie, you're totally wrong, you don't even know what you have coming your way. Well this is me laughing in your face. You feed your baby porkchops and lock them in a cage without a diaper on.

I also have a tiny baby bell pepper and I'm super excited about that. I'm also ready to start vining the cantaloupe up the railing on my front porch :) What a nice welcome. Welcome to my house, check out the cantaloupe!

I always seem to have lots of pictures of my plants. I'm usually really bad about taking pictures and posting them to facebook or blogspot. I'm usually really bad about taking pictures period. But plants don't really go anywhere and they aren't an event that I forgot to take my camera to. So I suppose that it's easiest for me to take pictures of them instead of people or places. Besides, most of these guys I started from seed so they're my big project (besides quilting) that I'm working on this summer.
This one up here is supposed to be Okra. I'm not sure if that's what Okra looks like in it's beginner stages or not but I planted Okra seeds and this is what came up. I've had an infestation of aphids and worms lately and the Okra has suffered a bit. I'm hoping that it won't stunt their growth. Lauren came by and lent me some of her organic bug spray for veggies. So I'm pretty sure that they are all dead (I checked today and yeah, they're gone) I just hope that it doesn't slow them down at all.



Some people are supposed to come by this week to power wash the back porches where all my veggies are. I got nervous and moved half of them to my front steps. These are my four pots of Cantaloupe. I don't need four pots of the stuff but when you buy the little baby plants at the store they come in sets of like.. nine! So I planted these and gave the rest away to a friend. They are supposed to vine up so I'm thinking that I'll leave them here if they're happy and they can climb the railing.




This monster has grown double over night. It is really really amazing how quickly it grows. Now if it will only give me some beans that I can eat! I don't quite know what to do with it now that it's grown over the top of my teepee. I'm hoping that it will double back down? Or just hang out? I'm not sure.
The car in the background is the car of our new neighbors. It's scary to me that they have an identical sunflower wreath on their door. I don't know if Austin and Sarah left theirs or our neighbors are just.. twins of theirs.. And even if they left it behind. It's strange to see it up there. Also the new guys are from TN and on their plate it tells the county. Campbell county. No joke. Some people have different ways of coping with loss. Mine is spying.




Someday soon I hope to have Zinnias. Whatever those blue flowers are they took over the red pot. I'm fine with that I just wanted some color up near our door. And some strawberries but that was just a shot in the dark. No strawberries just lots and lots of leaves. Leaves wilting in the day time heat. Alabama heat.



This little guy was a really pretty flower like these guys below. I'm hoping that underneath those petals is a tiny baby bell pepper.





Thanks to Lindsey I have Basil in a Boot. It was from the Dirty Santa party we had, Black Christmas. I put water in it this past winter and it slowly emerged. Now it's finally getting big enough for me to actually consider putting it into a legitimate pot. Not that the Christmas boot isn't cute. It's just that it's May. Can you believe we're almost half way to another Christmas? Time really does go by faster when you get older.



We're going to be feasting on Yellow Squash soon! I can't wait! I check this guy out every single day. Sometimes three or four times a day. I make Jaime come outside and look at him too. I have the dogs come by and check him out. I'm so excited that I have a largish edible thing growing on my back porch.


This is I think the biggest "Zucchini" that I have right now. Not looking too hot. I don't know if Zucchini take longer to develop than the Yellow Squash but it doesn't seem to be in any hurry to get here. Too bad squash is one of my favorite veggies. Too bad.


Worms ate through lots of my Brussels. Thanks to Laurodauro they are all dead. I just don't' know if my Brussels can make it through. All the holes in their leaves.


Tomatoes! And yes I am using pipe cleaner to hold the tomato to the steak. I'm a genius.

Today I'm trying to get things done but I've been totally wiped out due to a migraine. Why migraines come on your day off I'm not exactly sure but I think it's just more proof that evil exists. It's gone due to Rx and Moe's. Moe's should probably be a prescription in and of itself. So now that it's almost 4:00 and my husband will be home soon I'm ready to get started on some general cleaning up. Laundry most importantly!

Ciao!

This weekend I was a visitor at a church. I had a mix of feelings about it. When they took up the offering they talked about who they would donate it to (unless the check was marked as tithe). I've never been to a church where the money was directly donated to an organization or relief aide or something. I think there are so many churches in Birmingham who don't need all the fancy things they have and here is one that is giving money away instead of building a room full of PS3s or something.

Jaime and I were driving to Nauvoo this weekend and as we drove through some of the poorest parts of the state we past countless churches. BIG churches! Fancy signs and large parking lots. Even in parts of Birmingham where things aren't quite so poor looking the churches are huge. I know of not one but two churches in Birmingham that have large yellow slides inside them for the children to go down on their way to Sunday School. Why do people spend so much money on things that don't really matter when other people are obviously suffering?

Giving money to help people in Chile after the earth quake. That seems like a pretty good thing to do. You don't need a slide. You don't need a game room with tv's and pool tables and video game systems.

I was so pleased with the giving and the donations that would be made to a cause I thought was worthy. And then the sermon. I had such a difficult time during the sermon. So did a lot of people, he went over by about 45 minutes. It was uncomfortable to sit for so long and listen to someone who was very very passionate but perhaps not very knowledgeable. His entire sermon was about the rapture. I'm not very sure where I am on the topic of the rapture which is why I think I was uncomfortable. I'm still working my way through lots of different ideas and rapture just wasn't up there on my list this weekend. The man who was preaching, who was a visiting preacher not at all the regular pastor of this church (we can give them some grace for this unfortunate choice), was very insistent upon us not wasting our lives in sin and filth but living for God. He was sure that most Christians felt like they could sin away their lives and then at the last minute ask God for forgiveness (before the rapture) and then everything would be ok. His reason for why the Bible says that Jesus will come within the disciples lifetime was because he knows that God's people are procrastinators.

I'm not sure where his logic came from but what I deduced from listening to him was this. I'm struggling with things on a religious level. (which I think is important) I'm questioning things about God about Jesus and about the Bible. Deep things. If Jesus were to rapture us all right this minute and I was called up to stand before God I doubt very much that I would feel like I've wasted my life. I do not think that I would be ashamed for having doubt (another thing I've heard "Christians" aren't supposed to do). Because of this I felt a large disconnect about what the pastor was talking about. Why would I want to go out and sin my life away just because I have the time. It seems to me that people who want to go out and sin their lives away aren't really believers in the first place.

I could be wrong. But then it also brought up lots of different questions. The Devil left Heaven and took with him angels. Lots of angels. What must God be like if these angels left his presence? In all my days of learning TULIP I never once heard that angels had free will. I always heard that angels were jealous of us for having free will. Then how did these angels "fall away". I know the answer to this is probably very clear and obvious and possibly dangling in front of my face but for right now I just don't get it. It's probably something like "it pleased God to have them leave His presence" or something like that. The man that was speaking at this church obviously meant for us to think... wow that devil must be a very good deceiver because he even got angels to follow him. He must have meant for us to be afraid that the devil was going to trick us somehow. But instead all I could think was.. how come the angles wanted to leave God's presence? Am I the only one that thinks things like this? After the sermon was over I went home and laid out in the sun (I'm working on that base tan for the beach trip later this month) and I wondered about what I believe and how listening to the sermon today made me think of the Bible as a lot more like Greek and Roman mythology than what I've always thought it to be. And is it that different? Would it be more interesting? More exciting?

Jaime said that the way the Bible actually explains the end of the Earth is that there is a great war between good and evil. I like that idea much much more. He also says that I should read Issac Asimov's Guide to the Bible, which I should. And that I should have taken his BP class at Samford, which is probably true as well. I figured I should write Samford a letter and say that the BP class I took was horrible, I learned nothing, and I remember nothing. So can I audit another class for free?

The good news is that my Madeleine L'Engle books arrived on Friday and I'm about to start A Circle of Quiet.

This is one of my Bell Pepper plants. Green or Yellow, I'm not sure which. But it's sprouting some tiny baby flowers which will probably become peppers.. or maybe peppers don't even flower. What do I know.



Every one of my squash plants has blooms like this one. I have four large pots each one with two to three squashes in them. I thought about transplanting but they look so happy that I figure we're doing alright. I also have a few yellow squashes coming out :) I was really excited about that. They are so small and fuzzy. Which I guess means that the phallic symbol I found from last weeks post really is a zucchini :) I can't wait until I have actual female flowers and not just males. I'm ready for some veggies!



My favorite picture so far. My beans :) I don't even know how I'm going to cook them or what they will taste like. I'm just so excited that they wound up the little tee pee I made for them.


Isn't it amazing how they do that? They started winding up the supports within hours of my putting them there.
Jaime and I were having a conversation about God the other day. I have decided that no matter where I grew up or what religion or lack of religion I was raised in, that I would believe there is a Creator. There has to be. I can't look at these beans and not think that it's amazing that they grow like that, and that they had to have been created. Designed for a purpose. To wind up my little tee pee.


Jaime and I purchased this iron thingy that we put up on the wall. We had candles on it before all the rain came and it was very very pretty. Very relaxing. I'm trying to find ways to make the porch a comforting place to be and spend time. Not just a vegetable garden, but a place to calm down. You can grow veggies and relax at the same time right?



Over the weekend we had some storms and Monday morning I went out to walk the dogs and found this right outside our door! The dogs were curious of course. People were outside in no time taking it down limb by limb so it was cleared in a few hours. Then the dogs were really freaked out. The smells! The random pieces of wood lying around. They barked at the stump that was pulled out of the ground. The poor red bridge will never quite be the same again and I'm still not sure if it's safe to walk on.



We bought a rug from an Antique Gallery in town. Jaime said it's always been his dream to play guitar on a rug like on the stages at rock concerts and jam sessions. I was excited because I love old rugs like this and have always wanted one. Win win for us! The dogs are thrilled because it's so much fun to roll around on it. Just one more place for them to battle out their dominance. I think Churchill always wins but lately I've found him on his back with Huxley at his throat. Maybe he's just getting older. I do worry about Huxley a little bit, sometimes he's just too excited. We don't walk them enough. Yesterday he was so excited saying hello to Jaime that he bit his lip. He does that. Not bite, but he has his mouth open a lot and things happen. He also like to "hold" you with his mouth.. like.. your fingers or your wrist. Strange dog. But sweet and precious as well.. and as of today, the Beta doggie.



Jaime's trying to teach me how to drink whiskey. It's vile. It really is. I don't know how people enjoy it. But I want to be one of those people. I want to drink with the boys. I want to order something impressive at a bar and not look like I'm going to gag when I drink it. Drinking whiskey in my mind is sophisticated. Something every well learned person should learn to do. Besides you can't keep drinking Smirnoff Ice for the rest of your life can you? So on Monday night I had a shot of Drambuie, but I sipped it. I have to savor the taste. I learned that if you breath out after you swallow it gets the vapors out of your mouth. Gahh.. get the vapors out of your mouth. Can you imagine? Horrible. Last night I had Johnny Walker Red.. it was way worse. Jaime only gave me a few sips of it. Thank goodness!



We watched Julie and Julia last night. We were both disappointed. What a boring movie. The Julia Child part was interesting and I thought that it was done pretty well but still.. boring. It was like there was no arch to the story. Sure Julie's husband leaves her for a night but I didn't feel to bad for her. And sure it took Julia a long time to publish her book but.. really it wasn't suspenseful or captivating in anyway. It did however make me want to live in France. For four years at least :)




Jaime started his new job with mice so has no need for the stuffed monkeys that he had at his office. Huxley has found one to cuddle with. The other I haven't gotten a picture of, but he likes to drag that one around with Churchill. What a sweet little doggie he is. Did I tell you that he's sleeping under the covers with us? Well he did last night at least and on my side where Churchill usually sleeps. Churchill ended up between us which is just as nice. I have always heard people say that it's not good for your dogs to sleep in the bed with you, especially if you're a couple.. it's bad for sex or something. I think those people are bogus.