House on the Rock

The day has finally dawned: down time. Our travels have concluded, conferences ended, swim camp is closed, and I can just simply sit. and rest. and read! and occasionally, when there's a little extra brain juice, write.  I would be remiss to not reflect on the first year of teaching. It is notoriously the hardest year of one's teaching career - a seemingly ceaseless journey of "figuring things out." Of learning what to do in hard situations. Of planning lessons that best usher young minds into cognitive dissonance so that they may grow. Of saying no. But, also, of saying yes. Year one was unbelievably joyful. Once the hellish hump of October was in the rearview, I genuinely looked forward to going in every day. Thank you God for the gift of this vocation that feels like vacation!!! Not always...but often. So to reflect - so that I always remember the moment Noah shattered a Goodwill glass vase and I convinced him it was my grandmother's (worth 14,000 dollars). So ...

Disclaimer: This is the conclusion of an ESPN-Top Ten-Style Ranking List of Mundane things in my Life that I Have Ranked From Worst to Best. For the initial explanation, click here . For items 10-2, start here .) I can't believe it's finally here. The grand reveal of the #1 ranked perfectly mundane and normal part of my life that I have, for some reason, chosen to put in numerical order. This has been a project three months in the making. It has forced me to think deeply. Ask questions. Write and revise. Reflect. Consider where my time is spent. Consider what brings me joy.  And here we have it! I'm going to try to first describe this number one thing, only to reveal it at the end. If you skip to the bottom, you're a cheater! If you stick with me, you're a hero.  I remember the first time we went. By accident, I believe. It was a Thursday. We were on that side of town. Despite living right next to a similar facility, it was worth a shot to swing by while we were clo...

My husband was absolutely aghast upon reading that I dubbed "book recommendations" #3. And I don't exactly have a lot of evidence to back up why that came out as high as it did. I'll even confess that there are times I much prefer an Olive Garden breadstick over someone telling me what to read. But I'm making it up as I go, and I'm trying. And in that season, during that week, book recommendations was warming my heart. I can't justify it with any more solidity than the ESPN Top Ten Ranker who put a half-court sinker over a Stanley Cup buzzer beater. To be honest, I've watched ESPN Top Ten Rankings almost every day for a year, thanks to the Planet Fitness treadmill I keep happening to choose at the time I keep happening to go with the TV happening to be on that channel. Sometimes, #8 feels even more impressive than #1. Now, I understand why. But I have to press on. I can't quit now. I certainly think my husband will agree with me more on this one. A...

Man it has been a long time since I have written. I surely thought that being out of school for summer would lend itself to more blog time. I probably even intended on writing some sort of summary of the year with lessons learned, mountains climbed, and memories made. I still intend to do that, I suppose. It just feels…far off. Not as urgent as rest. So I’m closing out the countdown – the build-up – the slow and suspenseful reveal of my top-ranked thing on a completely unsystematic ranking scale. And I’m at number 3. Which means my next one has to be the second best. And this one has to be just slightly less best. The pressure’s on. And to be frank, I'm tired. I'm coming off a crappy work conference which turned my brain to mush: one of those forced-enthusiasm teacher carnivals where they teach us the same strategies people have been doing for decades; they just label it with their latest-and-greatest multi-thousand dollar branding. AVID, this time. "Engaging Students....

My original title was “Measuring How Much Longer Your Conversation Will Continue By The Amount of Burnability Left in Bonfire Logs.” For the sake of brevity, we’ll call that the abstract. I remember working as a student ministries intern at Rock Point. We had a weekly Bible Study which was typically well-attended but seldom fronted much depth of conversation. Pastor Jeff suggested hosting a meeting at my house, hinting that maybe a bonfire would instigate better conversation than weeks prior. I wasn’t totally sure what he meant, until sixteen sweaty students encircled an inferno that would miraculously externalize the hills and valleys of their young lives. Something about staring into flames broke down barriers: kids began to talk about sin and struggles, loneliness and loss, and we blazed (not literally) through pages of Scripture as the Holy Spirit consumed us.  All of a sudden, I was sold. I still don’t know what it is about bonfires that allow the deepest parts of our souls to...

I think in order to combat the looming despair that I can’t actually ascribe measurable value to this list, maybe I’ll conclude with a thorough justification of why certain items beat out others. Or maybe I won’t, and that will have to be okay with you.  That is what I say to myself a lot when composing Sticky Note To-Do Lists. My school laptop has a perfectly suitable place for such a list, so I can keep it on hand at all times and regularly celebrate both the triumphant victory of crossed-off items and also acutely aware of the items yet to accomplish. I love to-do lists. I get it from my mom. It’s surely genetic that we both will write things that we’ve already done simply for the pleasure of crossing it off. You wouldn’t believe the mundane and meticulous tasks I have written simply because I know that once they’re crossed off, I’ll feel like a champion: Shower Play Wordle Read paper Wash stain  And the list goes on. I love lists. But the specificity of sticky note to do l...

Joe (the crushing but cute statistical analyst I married) has found a flaw - not fatal but probably close - in my method. How are these rankings legitimate? How can I prove that Friday Night Lights truly are better than Olive Garden Breadsticks? And my answer to that is that I can’t. Not really, anyway. Subjectively, with words, I can probably try. But there’s no mathematical algorithm to express why one surpasses the other. Much to the dismay of my number-loving husband, you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.  The sixth-place item is a 27-mile rail trail that extends from downtown Indianapolis to the cornfields and horse farms of Sheridan, Indiana. It is a paved trail that crosses creeks, subscends highways, and traces walkers and bikers from the bustle of Broad Ripple to the serenity of golden-grass plans up north. It’s a path that Joe and I have regularly traversed -- to Chipotle in our dating days, multiple runs during our wed-shred engagement, and now (farther north) a...

  I’ll not deny it: I suffer from seasonal depression. Winter brings the blues and I struggle with the early darkness, constant coldness, and overwhelming trapped-insideness that consumes the winter months. January was especially hard as it was accompanied by not only a stressful start of the semester, but also the Whole30. Any joy I might have found from baking cookies or going out to eat was pretty much reduced to dates and green peppers. So it was a beautiful gift, one dreary winter night, to be walking on our apartment complex treadmill (the only treadmill, mind you, which had to be shared by every exercise-striving resident) and to stumble across the TV show Friday Night Lights. I had the place to myself -- it was so cold and slushy that I didn’t anticipate having to hammer out a 20-minute sprint before having to share with the next person in line. I hit play. I had time. 30 minutes in, I couldn’t have been more thankful to be the only person in that workout room. (Spoiler ale...

My dad, though adopted, is the biological grandson of an Italian immigrant, I believe, named Fredrich Sabatini. I feel quite certain he has died, on account of the Fred Sabatini Memorial Scholarship I found online, but can’t seem to locate any sort of obituary. Perhaps it’s like the summer I worked at our city pool - the same city where they just built a downtown plaza and relied on the community to help name it. Our entire lifeguarding staff voted on the name of our boss at the time, followed by Memorial Plaza. She wasn’t dead, and we didn’t even mean it as a bad omen, but she cut our hours and the plaza is called Pike Place.  Anyway, I have many questions about the Fred Sabatini scholarship, but all I can gather is that he was a Logansport lawyer, and maybe he’s not dead after all. What I do know, however, is that whatever trace of Italian blood flows through my veins has left me with a semi-permanent pasta craving, remedied only by America’s favorite inauthentic Italian bistro: ...

I still remember my first bunion. It came after a trip to Belize, when I had taken over a month off of exercise and then jumped right into daily running and lifting. The shoes I had at the time were ill-fitting, which shaped the bones in my foot into a pointy and painful “protuberance” as Michael Scott would say.  I tried numerous remedies for said bunion: ice, rest, open-toed shoes, breaks from running…but the pain persisted, and the bump became a boulder. Brooks were no longer cutting it as running shoes. It was time to try something New.  So I got a pair of New Balances. I always heard that if you see something at the store that you like, don’t buy it right away: see if you can’t stop thinking about it, and then buy it. Such proved to be true with my shiny gray cushioned-soles that expanded wide enough for my blooming bunions to do their morning stretch. I thought about them for four months before finally going back and making the purchase, and it was almost as though I fin...