Cardigans and Carolina

So my parents commented on the last blog and it really made my day. Now I feel like I should be waving frantically: Hi Mom! Hi Dad! 

They're nice parents. I like them a lot.

***

Today: was hard. As in, doing too much thinking and not enough living in the moment. This is my struggle: I am an ideas person. I get excited about ideas. And I want to sit and talk with you about them all day and think about how WONDERFUL this idea is and then I forget about the whole carrying it out part. So theory is important. Reality is important. How to reconcile the twain? That's what I'm asking. 

And that's why today = struggle. Along with a few bouts of stumbling into a whirling vortex of I'll-never-get-better and I'm-so-afraid. But I managed to pull out of the tailspins pretty quickly, and that is good. 

Also good: RUF tonight, which I should be on my way to right now. Because there I will be surrounded by friends who love me and who I love, and sing good songs, and still my soul with truth for a while. And since I had to write a list poem for class, I've been in a list-y mood, so here's a recital of gifts that have fallen into my open hands:

-my brown cardigan. Trivial? Ha, no. I've longed after it for so long. And it makes me feel older. I don't know why. But it is good to feel twenty-two instead of twelve. I think I will wear it every day this week. Or - not. 

-RALPH STANLEY on Friday night who was AMAZING and I want to go live in the North Carolina mountains and have twelve children who will sing harmony and play the mandolin and banjo and guitar around my husband and me as we sit on the front porch in the starlit evening on quilts and rocking chairs with the most adorable babies crowded in my lap and hours and hours and HOURS of sweet bluegrass music. 

-my British Lit paper which is behaving itself so beautifully. I want to beam: Good boys, Yeats and Auden! You make mother so proud. I love it when you play together so nicely. Maybe I won't have to deal with you at ALL over Thanksgiving break.  

-good church and Sunday School with wise women and random deep conversations with my roommate about actually trusting God instead of knowing glib answers

-my new black and cozy fleece which I plan on living in for the rest of the winter, thank you very much.