Ten...Nine...Eight...

We are in the last 10 minutes of my thirties. I've been up late tonight finishing up a few stray things...straightening up the office closet (the last of the closets to get cleaned), reading one last chapter of Systematic Theology, nailing down the last verse of Galatians 5...

Oh, and finger painting. Somehow I never did the finger painting. So twenty minutes ago I did this:
I'm calling her Tallulah. Because it's a good name. Tallulah my birthday fish.

What a ride it has been. I have LOVED working on this list. It has made this year such an adventure.

Tomorrow, and for the next few weeks, I will be asked whether I finished everything on the list. The answer is no. I changed a few things when I was sure I wouldn't get to them, but I'm not even counting those. If you look at the page where each item is listed and crossed off, you'll note that one item...the very first one...is left uncrossed. I could have dumped it and replaced it with something more doable, but I decided to leave it. It's good for me to leave some things undone. I'm too concerned with perfection anyway. And my life's not over...what I did not accomplish in my thirties I have the rest of my life to work on.

God has done so very much in my heart during this decade. I am more grounded than I was ten years ago, and wiser, and more fit...and happier, I think. Or maybe more joyful. Or maybe both.

Also more tired. It's hard to put sentences together. But I want to stay up for...one more minute.

I'll elaborate on some of these things later. And tomorrow I'll probably wax philosophical about the whole rolling over of the odometer. Right now, though, I am content. I am grateful.

And I am forty. :)

Geocache Me If You Can

Most elements of childhood storybook tales will stay in the realm of the mythological in my life. I am unlikely to meet talking animals, pirates, mermaids, dragons, or princesses here in Piscataway. But it turns out that treasure hunting has been happening all around me for years, and it just took me forever to figure it out and get in on it.

A week ago our friends Alan and Melissa and their kids took us geocaching. For the uninitiated out there, geocaching is a worldwide treasure hunting game that makes use of the web and GPS technology. People hide little containers with treasures in them, go to the internet (see geocaching.com), and post the GPS coordinates of their cache, sometimes with helpful hints or puzzles. Others can find the coordinates and hunt for the treasure. When they find it, they sign the log book in the cache, and they can take one of the treasures inside as long as they replace it with something of equal or greater value. Below, a few of our party investigate the very first cache we found.



Alan and Melissa have found over 60 caches with their four kids, and when Melissa saw my list, she offered their services in helping us navigate this new adventure. I found this prospect exciting, partly because I'm in favor of having help, and partly because I like Alan and Melissa and don't spend enough time with them.

We had a blast. Our kids love their kids, and it was a big, noisy outing. Joy got to hold the GPS thinger, Will got to wrestle with boys his own size, and Jack got to follow other kids around like a shyly over-excited puppy.



We hit three parks, found three caches, and acquired (among other things) a 1" Blue's Clues figurine, a plastic skeleton, and a marble. And it really is gratifying to get to the spot where you're supposed to be and actually find the thing you're looking for.



The kids are in a hurry to try it again, and I have to say I'm with them. If you're reading this, Melissa, thanks for showing us the ropes! I'm not sure I would have tried it without you, and it was a great time.

Have I mentioned that I'm turning 40 the day after tomorrow? Have to run...much to do...

Grownup Party

Three days and counting!!

I had such a really fabulously fun time on Friday night, and I really want to relive the whole thing and meander through it and give you every little detail. But I have three more days, and I want to knock out a couple more items on this list tonight, so I'm going to force myself to be brief. This will be a Herculean effort, and I hope you appreciate it.


On Friday night Mark threw me a birthday party here at the house. We decided to make it a low-key event...just a few friends and some takeout food. I, however, am unable to leave such a thing alone. Therefore, when I say Mark threw me a party, what I mean is that he had the idea, he began the execution of it, and then he graciously didn't fight me when I stuck my nose in and started doing things, but instead worked hard at carrying out my various schemes.

I'm an expert at over-complicating things, but this time I think it actually worked in my favor.

My amazing in-laws agreed to take our kids overnight, so we were child-free. Child-free! I had a grownup party!! Don't get me wrong. I love my kids, and I love to celebrate with them. But I can't tell you how long it's been since I hosted an event without having to think about chicken nuggets or juice boxes or waking up sleeping children.

Free from the need to kid-proof the house, I gathered inexpensive glass containers from thrift stores, popped candles in them, and placed them all over the house. We augmented them with several strands of Christmas lights (white, unblinking...I am unyielding on this point) draped across curtain rods, banisters, and furniture. And a couple of times I actually did a happy little dance because the house looked so glimmery and great.



Note: if you were here on Friday and have better pictures...or any pictures, really...please send them my way. I'm posting literally everything I have here.

"Some takeout food" became "Asian fusion". We ordered from a Chinese place, an Indian place, and a Thai place. EVERYTHING was yummy, which was good, because I honestly didn't know what half of it was going to be when I ordered it. There was too much, especially because my friend Sara, whom I love, brought enough naan (Indian bread) to feed the entire population of Mumbai. We ate a lot of Asian food.

Oh, and there were grownup drinks there! That's a first for us. Kind of funny that we served our very first alcohol at my birthday party, seeing as I don't drink it at all ever. (Not because I have a moral objection to it--just because I stink at moderation, so alcohol seems like a bad idea for me.) But Mark loves Mike's Hard Lemonade and its variants, so we had a little cooler of those. I found their presence sort of satisfying primarily because they were so very not juice boxes.

Then...THEN...came dessert. Common sense would have dictated that I should just enjoy the party and let my husband buy a birthday cake from a local bakery. Common sense, however, is sometimes not a strength of mine. Especially when pitted against recipes like these.

We started with a hot cocoa bar. I used a from-scratch cocoa recipe (substituted vanilla extract for the vanilla bean) that turned out really fabulous...rich and creamy and not over-sweet, which was good considering what came next. There was a little spot in the kitchen stocked with the following things to doctor up your cocoa:

• mini chocolate chips
• butterscotch chips
• chopped dark chocolate
• chopped white chocolate
• chopped dark chocolate with chili peppers
• crushed peppermint candies
• homemade marshmallows (fun, though kind of time-consuming)
• vanilla syrup
• hazelnut syrup
• caramel syrup
• cinnamon
• cayenne pepper (for Mexican hot chocolate)
• cinnamon sticks
• candy canes
• peppermint schnapps
• whipped cream
• homemade cinnamon whipped cream
• sprinkles
• pirouline cookies

I think that's it. People came up with some really outstanding combinations. My own personal concoction was cocoa with crushed peppermints, white chocolate, and vanilla syrup stirred in, topped with whipped cream, which: wow.

To complement the cocoa I made cinnamon vanilla cupcakes (a wedding cupcake recipe filled with cinnamon whipped cream and topped with cinnamon-vanilla frosting). I also tried a recipe I've had bookmarked for a while, called "Knock You Naked Brownies." To my knowledge no one actually disrobed, but the brownies were indeed ridiculous in the best kind of way. I left out the nuts and added a little sea salt on the caramel layer. I'll go easier on the salt next time, but they were still outrageous.


We had about twenty people, I think. (I wish we could have fit more...there are a bunch more I wanted to invite, but our house isn't all that big...) I was worried that people would be bored, as I wasn't really providing anything to DO besides come up with creative ways to ingest calories. But people seemed to really enjoy hanging out and sampling Asian food and combining chocolates and talking and laughing.

I think my mistake was that I didn't take into account how wonderful my friends are. They're smart, funny, engaging people, and when you mix them all together, they enjoy one another. The last guests didn't leave until about 11.

I would have kept going until morning. And not because of the food, the lights, or the sugar rush: those were all wonderful but peripheral. My greatest joy is being with the people I love. So...take twenty of them and put them in my living room for the whole evening? This is like a drug to me.

I will be tucking these memories away someplace secure and special.


"Throw a dinner party" was an item on my list. I don't think I can really count this as a dinner party, seeing as dinner came directly out of plastic take-out containers. But a grownup party is kind of a first for me, and it was a blast and a stretch and all the things the list was meant to encourage. So I'm making the switch and crossing it off.

I didn't do so well at being brief here, but I'm not editing it down. I'm going to try to finish my FlyLady journal tonight and knock out the rest of the Systematic Theology chapters. And I have three verses left in Galatians 5, and the office closet is the last one, and...

Three days.

If I Can Make It There...

Nine days to go! I'm moving at lightning speed now, folks. I'm tearing through the end of this list. Feels pretty good, actually.

So in the absence of a dinner party last Friday night, I ended up going into New York to meet my friend Sarah for the evening. Sarah is awesome. She loves truth and loves Jesus and loves me, and she has a way of seeing right through surface circumstances to the heart of the issues that lie beneath them. Not only that, but she's a woman of both vision and action, and that's a relatively rare combination. She inspires me to dream big, and then she asks me questions like, "What steps could you take in the next six months to help make that happen?" Also, she still loves me when I take none of those steps. :)

I don't get to see Sarah nearly often enough, a fact that was once easily attributed to her living in Orlando. But she's been in New York since January, and until Friday I had yet to visit her. I don't go into the city much. It's expensive. And scary.

In my new spirit of adventure, then, I tossed one of the items on my list that I won't be able to finish (my abdominal muscles aren't going anywhere...they'll be on the next list) and added "Go into New York City by myself."

I wish I had time to go into all the little details...the silly stuff that made me feel grown up and independent and happy...the unexpectedness of feeling SO FREE without little ones to tote around the city...the people-watching and the introspection it inspired...but alas, time is pressing. So here are the basics.

We met at Penn Station and walked down Broadway in the direction of Gramercy Park. It was just about rush hour, and the streets were crowded. Go figure. It's New York. We managed to make our way, though, to a stretch of 23rd Street that had a bunch of vintage clothing stores. (Lightning-fast! Look at me go!) The first one we tried, Vintage Thrift, had closed at dusk, but I'd love to go back in and hit it again sometime. We tried a Salvation Army store, but there was no way I could justify calling any of their stuff vintage, so we moved on.

The next place we went was "A Cause for Paws," a vintage/thrift store benefiting New York City's homeless animals. They had a fabulous beige lace gown that I'm assuming was vintage on a mannequin at the entrance. If it had been a) not $100 and b) made for someone who looked less like the mannequin and more like me, I would own it now. As it was, Sarah and I poked around the racks in the back, and I bought a wacky, gauzy, voluminous, capey blouse and a cool necklace at $8 each. Nice. And...check. Vintage clothing.

Afterwards we found a couple more vintage spots, the most interesting of which was "City Opera Thrift Shop." (Pic at left was lifted from the web...we were there after dark.) I wish I'd had a couple of unhurried hours to check this place out. It was slightly pricey, but their stuff was gorgeous, and some of it had to be opera costumes. Wild. I did see a dress for $35 that I absolutely would have bought if I were about two sizes smaller. I hear their furniture is fantastic, too, but it was getting late and we were hungry, so we tore ourselves away and continued on toward the East Village.

I figured this was my opportunity to finish off my ethnic food journey...if I couldn't find an ethnicity I hadn't tried in New York City, something was wrong. We were heading toward a Venezuelan Arepas Bar, but before we got there we happened across Khyber Pass, an Afghani restaurant that Sarah had been to before. She pointed it out, I was totally game, and in we went.

Khyber Pass had some awesome ambience. It was dark and intimate-feeling, with low ceilings and an air of mystery probably fueled by the lingering scent of hookah. I have zero idea what an Afghani accent sounds like, but all the servers had great, exotic accents, and the whole experience felt ultra-authentic. Sarah asked our server to choose a dish for her and ended up with "Kabuli Palow With Lamb: brown basmati rice topped with raisins, slivered carrots and almonds; served with tender chunks of lamb." The rice was surprising and fragrant and sweet. So nice. I ordered "Fesenjan: sweet and sour pieces of boneless chicken flavored with walnuts and pomegranate juice; served with white rice." It was tender and sweet and savory and I ended up showing no restraint with it at all. If I cared less about appearances I might have licked the bowl. The pics below don't do the food any justice, but the top one is a nice shot of Sarah. The bottom pic makes me think I need to wear more makeup. But I'm posting it anyway. :)
And so...check. That makes Persian, Hungarian, Turkish, Ethiopian, and Afghani. I would never have tried even one had it not been for this list.

All along we'd been having a great conversation. We caught up on things like ministry, family, kids, marriage, and church. We learned about what God has been doing in each of our hearts. We grieved and rejoiced and laughed and gasped with each other. And Sarah spurred me on, as she does, toward not settling for "what if"s.

Leaving Khyber Pass, we walked back through the still-crowded, neon-studded streets toward the train. She showed me some great little spots I'd love to check out in the future, including a restaurant with a chocolate focus and the flagship "Fresh" store, where their sugar-based body scrub left our hands sweetly scented and unbelievably soft. You should look at that link. It's an amazing store.

We did eventually make it back to Penn Station, and we continued our conversation until the moment they posted the track assignment for my train and I made my way through the throngs of people who needed to get back to New Jersey.

It was way, way fun, you guys. I need to do this again sometime.

Bear Hunt

My husband loves football. Between his deep devotion to the Chicago Bears and his zeal for his fantasy football team, it seems that nearly every televised game is crucial for his life in some way.

I, on the other hand, could not possibly care less about football. I am one of those people who, at Super Bowl parties, talks through the game and watches the commercials. Despite the fact that I was in the marching band and went to every one of my high school's football games, I still only have the most basic grasp of how the game is played.

We're used to being different, Mark and I. We're opposites in nearly every other way, too. But when I was writing my list, I thought for a while about how I could move toward him in some of the things he really loves. Football, which consumes so many Sunday afternoons and Monday nights in our house, seemed like a promising choice.

The easiest way to pique my interest in a sporting event is to teach me something personal about the players. So I set out to learn about some of Mark's beloved Chicago Bears. I grilled Mark about them, and here's what I learned from him and from the web.

Jay Cutler, #6, is the quarterback. He's 28 and has been playing for the Bears since 2009, when he was traded to Chicago from Denver amidst some drama. He's also occasionally engaged to reality star Kristin Cavallari, so...more drama. Cutler has diabetes, which he treats with insulin shots, and he has to check his blood sugar levels multiple times during each game. He works with diabetic kids, and the "fan of the week" on his website is often a young Chicago fan living with diabetes. He also volunteers with developmentally disabled youth.

Brian Urlacher, #54. I knew this name already because Mark has a couple of jerseys with "Urlacher" on the back of them. He's a well-respected middle linebacker who pretty much runs the defense. Earlier this fall he left for a few days because he lost his mom, whom he had once referred to as "my heart." When that happened, his teammates were interviewed about him and had nothing but nice things to say..."he's the heart and soul of this team," "he's everybody's friend in the locker room," "one of the greatest guys in this league."

Devin Hester, returner and wide receiver, #23. Another popular number around our house, but not because of Devin Hester. :) Last year Mark spent a lot of time yelling "Go! Go! Go!" at the television thanks to Hester, who had a recurrent habit of returning kicks for touchdowns. Wikipedia tells me he brings a Bible to every game. He turned 29 last week. He's married and has a son, and he feels so passionately about being present in his son's life (after seeing the effects of so many absent fathers in the lives of those around him) that he's started writing a column for Chicago Parent magazine. He had the misfortune of being pantsed during a game a while back, so be careful if you google images of him. I'm just saying.

Julius Peppers, #90, has a fantastic name and should absolutely open a restaurant. He's a defensive end. Mark tells me that he's not only a talented player but is HUGE (he's 6'7" and weighs 287) and therefore occupies more than his fair share of opponents on the field. He seems reluctant to open his life to the world, and one of his former teammates from North Carolina said of him, "The people who think they know him don't. The people who do, don't say." The article called him "an intentional mystery even to those who worked with him daily." Interesting. Great smile, don't you think?

Matt Forte, #22, is a 25 year old running back who is pretty amazing. At the moment he's in the last year of his rookie contract and is mad because the Bears haven't yet offered him another deal, especially because he's proven himself to be worth a lot more than he was as an untested rookie. Mark says he's special because he can run AND catch, which: it sounds odd to me that someone would be good at only one of those and still be in the NFL, but I know that I'm clueless. I did just see another website that called him "one of the finest young backs in the NFL." So there you go. He likes playing shoot-em-up Xbox games, but besides that and some baby-mama-drama from last year, it's hard to find interesting Matt Forte info online due to the copious coverage of the contract thing.

Lovie Smith is the Bears' head coach. Lovie is his real name--he was named after his great aunt Lavana. Awesome. He seems like a pretty terrific guy. He still gives regularly to his home church in TX even though he lives in IL. An ardent supporter of the American Diabetes Association (his mom lost her eyesight to the disease), Lovie donates ten tickets to every game to children suffering from diabetes. Also, he and his wife set up a foundation providing college funds for impoverished kids. He's not shy about using his platform for good, saying, "God put me with a franchise that is visible. And He wants me to be a certain way. There's a message that He's trying to get out through me.''

There are more. A lot more. Football teams are bigger than I realized. I could tell you about Roy Williams, the big-time wide receiver who's recovering from a ball-dropping period. Or about Gabe Carimi, first-round draft pick who got sidelined by injury, like, right away. Or about Earl Bennett, the wide receiver who went to school with Jay Cutler. But I won't. Takes too long, and frankly, my attention span re: football has just about run out. I have to do this in small bites.

I will say this, though. If I were looking for some kind of internet venture, I might set up a centralized site with these kinds of details. I can't be the only non-fan out there who is motivated by personal information. And if I could sit on the couch next to Mark, reading on a laptop about the players on the tv in front of me, I'd definitely be more motivated to pay attention. Who's a nice guy? Who's a jerk? Who's been in highly-publicized trouble? Who's a hero in his small home town? Who's been making the world a better place?

If someone could get on that ASAP, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Go Bears.

Update: Bright Lights video

So no takers for this Friday night, huh? OK...that's all right. I'll shift gears, and it will become a New York City adventure extraordinaire with my good friend Sarah. Maybe I'll take pictures and subject you to them. :)

Meanwhile, I thought maybe you'd enjoy this link. I've been keeping my eye out for it, and I just found it today. Remember the performance at the Mid-Autumn Festival that I raved about several weeks ago? It was recorded (the whole festival was) by a Chinese TV station, and they posted the video this week.

It's a LONG video, even though it's only the last quarter of the show. They start introducing us at 6 minutes and 40 seconds in, so if you don't want to watch the rest of the show, let it buffer and start it at 6:40.

I have the following things to say about the video first, though.

First of all, the expression on my face (which would not have been discernable to most of the audience) looks a lot more fearful than I remember feeling. I'm not sure which is more accurate: my memory or my expression.

Secondly: I'll be a little vulnerable here. If you're a boy who knows me and who is intimidated by girl junk you might want to skip this section.

They say the camera adds 10 pounds. I hope that's true. In the last few years I've lost a lot of weight. I don't know exactly how much right now. Certainly 80+ pounds. But one weird thing that has happened in the process is that I no longer have an accurate mental image of what I look like. Some days I picture myself exactly like I used to be 80+ pounds ago. Some days I picture myself...I don't know. Slimmer. Maybe slimmer than I'll ever be. I should probably buy a full-length mirror, but I don't know that it would help.

What I do know is that watching this video sort of makes me cringe, and I find myself wondering what in the world made me think that dress was flattering. I have no idea whether the camera is adding poundage or whether this is what I really look like.

I found myself hesitant to post this link for that reason. But that brought out my inner brat ("Take that, society, with your unrealistic body-image standards!") and, thankfully, the voice of reason. (The latter sounds suspiciously like Jesus.) The voice of reason reminds me that my value does not lie in my appearance, that I cannot stake my self-worth in the number on the scale regardless of what that number is, and that my Savior loves me...LOVES me...even with every errant curve I currently possess.

OK, that's the end of the girl junk. Enjoy the song. I'd forgotten that the sound guys had Rick's guitar cranked WAY up at the beginning, but that didn't seem to rattle him at all...see why he makes me calm? And watch Joe's eyebrows during his lovely piano solo--the more he's concentrating, the higher they go. Not to mention our other Joe, who was behind me through the whole song, so until today I didn't get to see him standing there being absolutely solid and unflappable.

So great, these guys. All of them. For serious.

And the music...well, if I start in on that...just watch the video. :)

http://www.icepn.com/tv/channels/events/local-events/2011/10/31/rutgers-2011-mid-autumn-concert-part-4.html