Lately I have...

-made a good number of salt scrubs and other kinds of unctions for Christmas presents; -made pumpkin creme brulee;

-decided Pinterest should have a point system, much like a credit card company, whereas the currency with Pinterest would be pinned projects you actually did, like make salt scrubs or pumpkin creme brulee, and you would earn points toward gift cards to Williams-Sonoma from whence you first got the pins in the first place;

- felt happy at work;

[showmyads]

- thought heavily upon moving to Australia;

- got my second Stitch Fix - this one was just as good as the first except most items were higher in pricepoint;

- asked Loverpants if we could take the kids on a staycation locally, hotel and cable TV and pool and all, fully expecting him to say no, not that he is a big naysayer but I didn't think he'd embrace the idea, but he was all about it!! So that's what we did on Turksgiving Eve. Awesome and cray. Cray Cray Awesome;

- helped a prospective student with her college essay, from reading and editing drafts to having a sitdown brainstorm sesh. I think that's what I want to be when I grow up. A college application essay coach;

- had a fun visit with my mum and her hub.

- been amazed by Little Man's colloquial and inventive vocabulary;

- missed my sister;

- contemplated another baby, which I do probably every other day, but only hypothetically, and only because I like to think about what we would name a Wee Lee 3.0;

- read the 1992 version of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace;

- obsessed about budgeting and debt-busting;

- sold some excess stuff;

- bought a lamp at Goodwill for $3 that is totally perfect for my purposes;

- gave up on telling God how I was going to be more devoted and just plain asked God how He wanted me to have a better relationship with Him and He said plainly that I should strive to always have my Bible with me. So that's what I'm gonna do;

- realized that I am entirely soft about winter cold and would not choose to endure another Northern winter full-on;

- festooned my home with Christmas, and for the first time ever, my kids legitimately helped and made it a pleasant experience. Gloria! In excelsis Deo!

This post was inspired by Chiara. What about you? If you write an inventory post, be sure to link up below in the comments, hey?

New Laws in Kendraspondence, USA

Howdy, all. As the mayor of Kendraspondence, USA, I'm proud of our city council for enacting the following laws. Please take note of any tax consequences as even without prior offense, we will be taxing indiscriminately.

I. Under no circumstances may any citizen or visitor of the municipality begin a sentence, verbal or written, with "Him and I/Her and I/Me and Him/Me and Her." Penalty will be total banishment for 14 days or until proper use of pronouns reinstated.

II. Under no circumstances may any citizen or visitor of the municipality use "I" as an indirect object, such as "It was important to him and I." Penalty will be standing with one's nose in a corner for 45 minutes, or until proper use of direct/indirect objects reinstated.

III. Citizenry who find out the sex of their baby and announce the name of the baby before the baby is born to the world will be given their Christmas presents without any wrapping paper since they are incapable of enjoying surprises. And the mayor will laugh haughtily, as if that were even a punishable crime.

IV. Patrons of restaurants who take calls or text on their cellphones in lieu of showing courtesy to waitstaff will be ejected from their seats and catapulted into a bin of bellybutton lint.

V. Parking in a handicapped spot anywhere in the municipality when no physical handicap restricts a driver in any way will be punishable with a fine of 43,000 hours of community service, assisting handicapped drivers/passengers enter and exit their vehicles in the pouring rain.

We shall keep the new legislative measures to five for the present. In the meantime, we will continue to celebrate weekly hammock days and eat as many antioxidants as our diets and budgets will allow.

I thought I was just changing the sheets

Ya think about changing your sheets. Whether you do it as a disciplined thing or you wait until the sheets peel themselves off your bed and beg you PERMA PRESS ME, STAT, you are so glad when change comes. The clean sheets feel so crisp and fresh. But then the cycle repeats itself and you are rolling around in bed wishing the Snuggle bear would just do you a favor and toss you some new linens. Change happens again, exchanging the dirties for the cleans.

The thing about moving from Boston to Tennessee for me was that I naively thought I was just changing a set of sheets. It was time. The city living, I was ready to wash ourselves clean of the endless traffic, the population density, the high priced everything, the pollution. And so we did. We not only changed the sheets, we moved the whole bed and caboodle to the South wherein we were no closer to family and were now without friends. The soft scent of the new sheets wore off quickly as we battled real estate woes back in Boston for well over the first year.

Had we not experienced what we believed was a very specific calling to change our sheets at the appointed time and to come live with some new ones in an appointed place, I think the experience would have been much more fraught with doubt and fear.

And now, here we are. We have changed so much more than our sheets. My children pull bricks from their driveway to find potato bug colonies, they sing sabbath school songs in the car, they know about cherry limeade at Sonic, they chase butterflies on our acreage like a couple of Smurfs for crying out loud. They are Southerners. They have no concrete memories of the urbane streets we strolled everyday in their former city, splashing in the Frog Pond on the Boston Common, riding the T from Shawmut Station to Harvard Square.

These memories are becoming faint for me, too, like illustrations of someone else's enchanted life who was able to do the unthinkable: walk to get a chai latte on her way to work.

I thought I was only changing the sheets, you see. I thought I got to retain all the things I still liked about my life as I traded the excesses of the city for the simple pleasures of the country.

Not so. I just exchanged all the maladies and woes of my former geography for a new set in my new geography.

I am still uncomfortable in the South. I am still the weird girl in social circles. I am still too direct in most settings, and totally uninterested in pleasantries. I am intense, honest, generous, clumsy, and self-deprecating. I have a flair for brightly colored fabrics. I am a product of a Midwestern upbringing, a MidAtlantic education, and a New England professionalism. I cannot disinherit these sheets that have wrapped me up for twirtysomething years. I can only clean them and make them presentable.

My one comfort, other than the amazing Mr. Loverpants who should win a best supporting role in the play about my yammering, is the promise from Psalm 46:

God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.

Can I get a li'l 'Bless her heart' from y'all?