Sweetness

This fantastic debut novel enraptured me, making my Friday morning quite enjoyable. Bradley's eleven-year-old heroine, Flavia de Luce, is admirably intelligent. Her deducing stream of thought, extensive grasp of chemistry, and delightful attitude in tricky situations had me cheering, "Yeah, Flave! You ROCK!"

Read it.

He's Home

So...this is LOVE.

Sunday morning, the bell rang, I opened the door and IT WAS HIM. Tangible, crooked-smile, I-could-reach-out-and-touch-him, HIM. He squeezed me sooooo tight when I hugged him--how did I survive two years without hugs like THAT?? He took me to church, gave me presents from Mexico, held my hand when we went on an afternoon walk. We sat on the curb and talked and talked and laughed and took this picture.

He kept his arm around my shoulder through dinner. He ate icecream with Nana, who told me later that he was "handsome and confident" and "our children would be beautiful." He danced with me on my doorstep before he left. He looked at me--and my knees got that hollow-boned, weak feeling--and he said, "Hey. I love you."
He fit right back into place in an instant, as though he was never an ocean away from me. His voice makes my heart cartwheel, especially when he's listening to my stories and he says mm-hmmm. I went to work the next day humming songs from Golden-Era Broadway songs and my cubical-neighbor Ilze said, "Please tell me why you are on top of the world today." Why? Because, you know what? I love him! I do. And he loves me! I'm not going to over-analyze or think too much or stress about the future. I'm just going to enjoy this sweet, charming man's pure heart, sexy smiles, and adorable train-of-thought (I could lay in his arms and listen to him talk to me all night long). And I'm going to love him back with reckless abandon.

Sleep is the only thing I can't do while I have my mind on something else

I have problems going to sleep. No, not the typical can't-get-my-brain-to-turn-off problem or I'm-so-stressed-out-I-am-gonna-eat-my-pillowcase problem. My problem involves an unwillingness to allow my consciousness to go away somewhere for the night, and hope it comes back to me in the morning.


Sleep is important, I know. My last year of college, I had mono and weird purple goose-egg lumps down the front of my shins (can't remember the long and strange medical term), due to a lack of slumber. I was busy writing papers, attending early-morning class, and squeezing in the occasional date. Sleep took a low spot on my priority list.


Now, don't get me wrong. I LOVE plunging into my pillows and crashing comatose-style for nine and a half hours, until I can awake refreshed and endued with energy, occasionally to the sounds of birds chirping outside my balcony, if it’s spring. But all too often I face the four to six hours before the alarm clock’s ridiculously early ring (actually, chime—thank you, BlackBerry) with reluctance. Reluctance to wrestle with my pajama pants under the sheets and comforter. Reluctance to admit one more day is going away. Reluctance to place myself in that moment—the moment that I lie in bed and feel an accounting of reality: where I am, what I’m doing with my life.

A few years ago, I usually fell asleep with my cell phone squished between my face and the pillow. My boyfriend lived seven hours away, and I waited up for his calls at night. We’d talk for a few hours, until my responses slowed and slurred. “You’re tired, Sweetheart. I’d better go,” he’d say.


“No, no, no, I’m awake,” I’d argue, and then promptly fall back asleep. I frequently awoke the next morning with no recollection of how our conversation ended.


The first night I went to bed in Korea, on the floor, I felt very somber. I had flown across an ocean in an airplane, literally sprinted around the streets of Pusan in order to complete “Training Day” when all new missionaries met their training partners, and then lugged my luggage a few hours south to the old apartment where I’d be living. I closed my eyes as I lie in the unfamiliar place and prayed, “Please, please help me not to freak out.” I was a brand-new volunteer missionary in a foreign country. That mission evolved into the most joyful 20 months of my life. I believe I went to sleep that night clinging to the faith that everything was going to be just fine.


Last night, I stayed up reading next to the fireplace in Nana’s library, all set to procrastinate bedtime(note: Nana is my very stylish grandmother). The book was alright. I’ve been reading about one novel a night since I’ve been home from Korea, so for three weeks. It takes my mind to another story, someone else’s life all neatly wrapped up in words and sentences. My time home has been great, filled with family and food and unpacking. But bedtime is the worse. It feels a little lonely, and a bit anticlimactic.
Yesterday after everyone else had gone off to bed I realized, sitting there, that I was skimming the pages so skimpily that I couldn’t follow the story. I was swapping precious beauty sleep for a book in which I wasn’t even remotely interested! Enough, I sighed and closed the book. I turned the fireplace off (note: gas fireplace), brushed my teeth, knelt by my bed to say a prayer. Pulled back the covers, turned off the light, took my glasses off and set them on the nightstand.


Then I considered abandoning this plan and going back to the library to try reading a different book.


“No, no, no,” I told myself. I got in bed, closed my eyes, and waited for morning.




to the readers: my new living arrangements are quite nice, including an incredibly soft mattress and at least fifteen squishy pillows (read: princess bed). So, really, I should love getting in that thing. Any suggestions? What do you do to have a good night's rest?

my neice, sleepin like a baby