Note to self: Start wearing makeup and stop wearing leggings to the market.

For the record, the show is truly, truly awful. Check it out.

I got 6 or 7 hours of sleep in a row the last two nights, and I kinda feel like superwoman. This amount of sleep used to constitute my bare minimum. I slept at least 6 hours a night even in the busiest times during grad school. Babies are more disruptive than grad school (though the tests they give are easier: “I just pooped. True or False?”). Ten weeks of 3 hours of sleep at a time turns me into the incredible hulk — less green and muscley, but notably irritable. Today I feel like Bruce Banner — human. Also, how distant do the 80′s have to get before I forget rubbish like the name Bruce Banner?

The baby is sleeping — if this is possible — even more during the day. More regular naps to go with those nice long blocks of nighttime sleep. He “talks,” grabs stuff (me), smiles, laughs and does all this cute stuff. He’s already more charming than both his parents put together. Any day now and he’ll be smarter than we are too.

One of the main reasons (aside from some ill-defined patriotic indignation) I enjoyed the celebration of George Washington’s birthday was that he and my Grandmother shared that birthday, February 22. Washington got it in 1732, my grandmother in 1919. I never knew my great-grandparents, but I know a few things about them and the things they did. One of those things is to have a daughter on George Washington’s birthday and to decide to name her Georgia in consequence. Maybe they had another name picked out but switched to Georgia given the day her birth occurred. Maybe they didn’t have any ideas at all, and the birthday of the founding father led to their choice. In which case, let us all be glad she wasn’t born on Lincoln’s birthday (2/12/1809). Georgia is perhaps uncommon, but Abrahama does not have a nice ring to it.

Grandma Georgia would have been 93 this year. At the time of her passing she had survived her husband for more than a decade and was by far my longest-living grandparent. I always knew her as a woman of song (she was a self-taught organist and had a beautiful voice), sunny disposition, substantial hugs, and faith. Her daughter, my mother, is like her in many ways, including her love of hymns and hugs for grandkids. So here’s to mothering in the best traditions of our grandmothers!

The only reason I’m writing this is because I had a dream a weekend or two ago that I made a blog entry. That doesn’t seem like much of a reason, but maybe this is: With a newborn at home, I’ve gotta start working on hobbies that are easy to do at home. Also, it would probably be good if those hobbies could involve something aside from counting poops. There will be no poop counts here. That’s not a guarantee–more like a guideline (you should hear yesterday’s count. geez.).

We went to hear some excellent music recently. The gentleman’s name is Josh Garrels and you may enjoy taking a listen. His newest album is free to download, so why not? The recordings don’t capture the absolute power his voice possesses live, but are still worth a listen. Without griping about modern music or, worse still, modern “Christian” music, let me say that Mr. Garrels is an amazing songwriter/singer/musician. He gave me a boost during a long week and reminded me Whose i am. He made me proud to be a follower of Christ (instead of making me cringe when His name cropped up in a song). We took tiny Paul with us and he slept through every moment of the amazing concert–his soul found the music so uplifting and soothing, it soothed him to sleep.

I hear live music so seldom that I forget how badly (how hands-down, absolutely) it beats recorded music. I’m very grateful for recorded music, but after a good live show, the recorded stuff seems to dribble a little sadly out of earbuds. Nothing compares to living voices and instruments. My itunes rarely gives me the shivers, but live music most always does. I think it is actually good for me, and seems to feed me something I’ve neglected to realize I’m hungry for. Okay, enough of that. Go take a listen.

I’m so used to teaching Ballroom! But this music!…It’s just…so…so…

I’m sure she loves ballroom dancing, but I’m also sure that, at that moment, she realized that ballrooming at its best is no lindy party.

Every month or so, a lindy buddy asks when I am going to try ____________________ (fill in the blank: salsa, blues dancing, tango, ballroom, west coast swing). Depending on my mood, I make a sour face and say either “Never” or “When pigs fly.” I bet they’re fun dances, but the thing they all have in common is the music. That is, none of them are danced to 30′s and 40′s big band swing jazz. It’s the happiest darn music I’ve ever met, and if I ever meet a happier, I’ll start doing its dance too.

Six months passing doesn’t change some things, like not having a lot to say when sitting down to write a blog. Maybe the process of whittling all the interesting (or deadly dull) facts about life down to one sentence on FB is a great way to lose the desire to say more about what’s going on in life and thought. Or maybe my life just isn’t that fascinating.

Blogging on MRI used to be a combination of two things: Little slices of life, and theological ponderings. I started blogging in grad school, a time when there was always plenty of academic rigor to promote bloggy thought, and plenty of stress to motivate an outlet.

Two years ago, I graduated.

Life got easier (and better…much much much better).

Instead of dense academic texts, I read all the James Bond novels. Instead of SITTING (every day, all the time, at a truly Olympic level), I started dancing.

If you (and by you, I mean Nathan. Hi!) know me well enough to be reading this, then the dancing business (understatement alert) doesn’t come as news to you. (On the contrary, you are likely to be presently muttering something to yourself like, “What, you dance?” with not a little bit of ironic tone in your sotto voce remarks). Funnily enough, it still comes as news to me. I’ve spent my whole life in school, and my abilities are almost exclusively limited to the scholastic. I write, read, think, therapize, analyze, etc. I can’t cook or sing or garden or play an instrument or paint or manufacture my own smoked bologna or do ANYTHING fun. Except play Trivial Pursuit. You want me on your team.

Even though I’ve been dancing for two years, I still can’t believe I do it. I’ve never tried anything like this before, much less been any good at it. There are about five (possibly really boring) blogs to be done about what dancing has done for me, but in short it has been a blessing. And a blessing is a thing which has a habit of never ceasing to feel new and surprising and exciting. Blessed are the lindy hoppers, for they shall inherit kick-ass good times, late nights resulting in swing hangovers, and a lot of stinking joy.

Sorry about the kick-ass bit. But it really is kick-assy.

Freedom. I believe it can be conceived of in two primary ways. Firstly, there is “freedom from.” We may conceive of freedom as the state of being free from a variety of perceived encumbrances: commitment, responsibility, rules, limits, norms, morality. Secondly, there is “freedom for.” In this manner, “encumbrances,” such as commitment, limitations, etc., are seen as an opportunity to focus our energies on being completely and unreservedly free for devotion to a beloved object, be it God, a spouse, friend, or calling. I consider it no accident that the word “love” crept into that last definition. Love, when defined not as a fleeting feeling or attraction but instead as an act of lasting commitment, must be freedom for…devotion to the beloved, commitment to vows, sacrifice of self, and denial of those things which compete with love for the beloved. Love driven by “freedom from” will eventually find commitment a burden and, as indeed it is, a limitation, and the desire to be free from the beloved eventually asserts itself and commitments dissolve in favor of freedom for whatever the almighty self desires.

A wise professor once discoursed on the subject of Adam and Eve’s choice in the garden. They could live at the center, seeking to live within the confines of God’s directives and love, daily choosing not to leave him, not to know firsthand the choice offered by that seemingly wise and tempting fruit tree. Or they could live at the periphery, seeking to push limits and experiment with what life free from the love and direction of God felt like. In the end, they experimented with being free from God. They ate the fruit, they crossed the outer boundary of the garden, and they never returned. They broke faith, and lost a degree of love and closeness with the Creator God which men and women will never again experience in our earthly lifetimes.

Likewise, we daily choose how to use the freedom we possess. Are you freed for something, or seeking to be free from something? Seeking to live as deep inside love as possible, or seeking to experiment with its boundaries?

For Angelo: Where can I get Illy coffee cheaper than at the market? $14 for 8oz. Who am I, Rockefeller?

Cory and Tommy: No TV this Thursday. We go dancing that night before we leave for HS winter camp.

Tommy: Did you eat all those Oreos yourself?

Girl in the bathroom #1: I wanna go on Thunder Mountain.
Girl in the bathroom #2: What? Magic Mountain?
Girl in the bathroom #1: No Thunder Mountain.
Girl in the bathroom #2: I don’t know that one. Where is it?
Girl in the bathroom #1: Um, Pioneerland.

Conversation the second, overheard on the tram ride back…

Mom (to chubby kid): You’re gonna need a Slurpee on the way home, aren’t you?