(xaris and shalom)

I'm living in a state of counting down the days and adding up a lot of joys here.  (Also of not sleeping a lot, despite my best efforts -- I think there is way too much going on in my mind and heart.)  There are so many people who I want to spend time with, and yet -- I'm surprisingly less sad than I thought I would be.  I think that having a year to process and to prepare to leave has been incredibly helpful for me.  It wouldn't be for everyone, I know, but it's been a blessing to me. family photo! There's still some packing and paper writing and random other jobs to take care of. Mostly, though, there's this little bit of time left. Tyler's duties include stealing my camera to take pictures. My duties include making ridiculous faces in every picture possible. Anastasia's involve being pretty excited to get my books.  ^_^ Parts of my heart resonate with Jon Foreman's words in Before Our Time  -- January, February, March T

Two and a half weeks left in Btown this summer. My feelings swing back and forth, from excitement to sadness and a whole range in between. But overall, I am deeply content. Days like today are so very ordinary (isn't that wild?  that such a glorious day can be basically normal ?) On Wednesday night, my desk looked like how my mind felt. My tagline for this summer is from Mumford & Son's song Ditmas : A life lived much too fast to hold onto.    My summer playlist consists mostly of their album Wilder Mind,  the soundtrack from Home , Jon Foreman's The Wonderlands , and the musical Hamilton.   My main problem with this playlist is that I cannot listen to all of them simultaneously. Today began at 3:45 and was a long but very satisfying day at Crumble.  It is hard for me to believe that I only have a week and a half left of working there, the coffee shop that brought me to Bloomington.  On the way home from work, I swung by Kroger (with four gue

One of my favorite descriptions of a character, brief though it is, is of Celia Davies in So Brave, Young, and Handsome  by Leif Enger. I don't know her story, for she was an adept evader of questions, but her life would be a giddy crossword, working down from some clues and across from others. I love getting to know people.  I love the game of putting the clues together, figuring out which questions to ask, what makes them tick, and piecing their story slowly together.  It takes a long time, sometimes, to even begin.  With coworkers I have the excuse of hours spent on quiet shifts together, and a captive audience, so I toss hypothetical questions at them.   What would you do with a million dollars?  If you had a superpower, what would it be?  If you were going back to school to study something completely different, what would you choose?   Questions lead to stories, and often I get to know them more deeply than I would otherwise. With others -- customers, neighbors -- the pr