dear melter of smurfs,

Really, what on earth was that gak-like substance melted in your stove? Bet it smelled awesome!

Well so here I am. Right eye twitching and occasionally leaking out the far corner. It's Set Up for Vacation Bible School week. Which does tap into my crafty spirit, although the marble wall did thwart me. Yesterday we made a well out of a table wrapped in last year's paper brick wall, and I rimmed the top edge in sand and thinned-out glue.

I'm in that phase of feeling like Facebook is impossibly stupid, full of inconsequential drivel, so I either need to change whoever's showing up in my feed or stick to the short-short list (because I don't want to miss out on gak, that's the good stuff) or just not check it so much at all.

There's a very good chance I'll finish the book I'm reading, which is not even the usual fluff-fare. Amazing. I feel all bookish again. And I'm excited that we've picked another book to read together!

Three weeks without satellite dish and I miss it not at all. Hulu and Netflix together are more than adequate (I say until ProRun premieres. How did you access that??)

I've painted my toes two weeks in a row and have been wearing borderline cute clothes, maybe to make up for my complete lack of chutzpah. It's raining a lot, so as to invite children's loudness and puppy's boredom and also garden soil's fungus gnats. J.Lo is having an especially bullshit time at work, fixing an impossibly long list of broken things. And let's not forget that terrible daily puzzle of tingling limbs and lost words and whether or not I'm actually losing my mind. That'd be nice to solve. But right now I could really use some pretzels.

Retreat Crafts, by M

So the theme was, "putting on the armor of god" and i was asked to come up with a craft in that light. It was between luminaries and quasi industrial - washer ring necklaces, bracelets... luminaries won. I struggled for like months with the lameness of my idea and how the execution would suck and the budget was too little- but tissue paper even in its frailty and and a 50c glass from the 99c store seemed a god send. As I am all about literary analysis- just imagine the intersection of the candle and the flame is God and the Soul and the glass, though equal parts strong and fragile, impermeable but incomplete is our whole being ... and meditate on what we chose to surround ourselves with... deep eh? I know. Totally.

10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.