Friends

What on earth would ever induce me to get out of bed early on a Saturday morning, pull my hair back, and go running – running! – in the 26 degree weather? I remember running “The Mile” in elementary school. Mile day was the most terrible, foreboding event known I could think of – worse…

Quick status update: I am still a temp worker. Over nine months have passed, and I am still… not sure if I’m even employed. I don’t know if it’s good news or bad news that they have started giving me tasks. Good news because it keeps me occupied, and gives me something to think about…

I did. Or at least one. I let the dog out. While the Handy Graham is in Pennsylvania with his family for Thanksgiving, some of us Nashville stragglers are splitting dog-duty. It seems that this boy cannot turn away a stray, and last week, he found a delightful little red mutt that we are all…

I am an introvert through and through. I love silence and solitude and being totally reclusive, blocking out the world and screening my phone calls and reading and writing and thinking, nesting and organizing and never saying a word. If I’ve had a week in which I’ve had too much going on or too many…

I cannot remember the last time I went trick-or-treating. When I was in 8th grade, I stopped celebrating Halloween in favor of the all-church Harvest Festival – since that was around the time that I entered my semi-fundamentalist, evangelical apologetics phase (Colorado West Christian School will do that to a child). Not only was Halloween…

In July of 2007, I took a ferry from Seattle across the water to Bainbridge Island, and drove to the beach where I met one of my best friends, Carin, and her 2-year old son Ben. We walked along the water, and threw rocks into the waves, and looked for little sand crabs, and ate…

My friend Matt is in his second year at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, and the other day, he emailed me saying, “I miss Seattle more and more. Yet, sadly, it’s becoming more of a memory than an old reality.” What an unfortunate truth – and one that has been sneaking into my own…

Last week, I did something that I am not proud of. I went somewhere that I try to avoid at all costs – except, of course, LOW COST. Where else am I going to get my toiletries and gum (and wire, as it were) at a fraction of the price? But if there ever comes…

Last week, the stars aligned. First, my friend Debbie dropped me an email, seemingly out of the blue, asking me if I read any Annie Dillard. My reaction: does Rick Astley shake his groove thang? Annie Dillard is breathtaking – one of my favorite writers. Her “Living Like Weasels” makes me want to throw a…

“How are you doing, Annie?” A simple question – it could be passed off as small talk if it hadn’t been so intentional, so perceptive. And immediately, a few of the tears that had been hanging in the corners of my eyes for weeks just… let go. She knew – she had sensed it. And…