suds on the roof

i love talking in songs (listen to "have you seen her" as a prime example).

i'd love to become friends with a fiddler, a chef, a webmaster, and a carpenter.

i tried, but i'm not really a big fan of either u2's how to dismantle an atomic bomb or coldplay's x&y.

i wish i had really curly hair or really straight hair. one or the other. not a weird combination that you can't even call wavy.

i love how it was still light outside when i came home today.

i wish i had a restaurant right on a lake somewhere, a two-story wine bar/coffeehouse/restaurant that was all about the white tablecloths on the second floor and all about the chill factor on the first. the second floor would be the kind of fancy where people get engaged and the first floor would be the kind of chill where people get together to discuss the movie they just went to see.

let's go back to the fiddle. that's an ingenious instrument. last night, one of my alums fiddled at an event at which he was being honored. i love the sound of something sounding just a little off. it's perfect.

speaking of good music, the shawshank soundtrack is still one of my favorite albums of all time. it reminds me of madison during the spring of 2001, of opening my windows to see the red evening sky battling the approaching rain clouds. it reminds me of two conversations that spring which i can never forget to this day: of allison calling to say hello and me telling her shallowly that everything was fine and her saying calmly, like only allison can do, that she was praying for the exact thing i couldn't admit i was even thinking about. and of bible study with my girls, confessing and crying all that had been on my heart, but inside, feeling like no one could ever know how trashy and used up i felt, and then wendy praying for me and using the word "pure" to describe me. and how at once, i felt like maybe all my s*** wasn't going to get the best of me.

the best movie i have ever seen was not titanic, although i have certainly watched it more than my fair share. one scene i didn't like was when kate winslet's shoe slips as leonardo is trying to help her back aboard the ship. duh. of course her shoe was going to slip. we ALL saw that coming.

ecclesiastes is my favorite book of the bible and i'm interested to read again what matt wrote on his blog about job the other day. i love that kind of discussion.

i am scared to make mistakes. most especially with my heart. i know it sounds awful, but this fear is the thing that makes me most wish god would return already. it's why my heart aches so much when i see films like shawshank and legends of the fall and the mission and cold mountain. the wrong people always die. and because i get so scared, i feel like the easiest lesson would be never to take risks.

i don't know whether to live in the city or the suburbs or the country. i feel hungry for the country right now.

sometimes i come home and stare at myself in the mirror until i imagine i can see my soul.

i wrote 3 papers in college for language classes on the same subject - the last day of my junior year of high school.

i think in songs. whenever i hear something, i imagine the moment in the movie, in my life, in any imagined situation that i think the song was meant for. i once heard a song played at a wedding that, when i closed my eyes, seemed a better fit for the rather fugitive-esque scene i had running through my mind. i have inescapable memories attached to songs. someday, when jared gets too old to keep up the pace of his masterful moviemaking, i'll ask him to help me piece together all these songs in some sort of movie fashion. even if it's just something i end up passing down to my grandkids. and even if they think grandma's a loser, i'll force them to watch it while i eat peanut brittle and smoke cloves and play with the heavy fake jewelry around my neck.

i've never had my ears pierced. this is what makes mennonite men think i am also mennonite.

the best day ever, i think, will be when god heals everything.

and these are my thoughts on tuesday afternoon.