Beauty

So, a day or six ago*, I came across this post by Betty Beguiles called The Value of Image. And then, today, I came across a blog called Empowered Traditionalist. And I'm wondering if God is trying to tell me something again.

If you had to pick one or three steps to make me look better, what would they be?

(For the record, what you cannot see because of the hat and the angle of the camera is that I have hair that is literally long enough for me to sit on. I keep it braided; I usually only let it down long enough to brush it and wash it before braiding it again.)


*I cannot for the life of me figure out how I came across this post. I don't usually read Betty Beguiles, perhaps because I'm too lazy/tired to make any noticeable efforts regarding how I look, and reading about people who do just makes me feel guilty. But I do read some of her stuff when Jen @ Conversion Diary or Simcha @ I Have To Sit Down (both of whom I am currently following) link to her. I thought that had been how I came across this post, but looking back at their blogs, I see no such link to this post specifically, not since the post was written on the 23rd. The mystery of this makes me wonder all the more if God is telling me something.


UPDATE: Pictures of my hair.

(I had Kyrie take these pictures. When I saw the result on the camera, I was like "What is that white streak down my arm? There's nothing on my arm." I had to laugh when I saw that it was Savi, determined to be in the picture somehow.)

Travel

So I was thinking the other day about how my Grandpa, years ago after a trip to Europe, told me that I should travel while I was still young enough to enjoy it. And I was thinking that it looks as if I will never travel, because I will never be able to afford it. And because I will, for the indefinite future, have little kids who need me to take care of them.

Now, mind you, not travelling isn't necessarily a tragedy. I was never one of those people who planned trip after trip to take some day. I have enough "outside my comfort zone" experiences just doing all the things that God pushes me to do here at home.

But then, within a few days of thinking this, I find out that two different gals I know are both taking major trips - one to Europe and one to the Holy Land. And I'm reacting emotionally and wondering if it's all some sort of sign from God that he will be putting a trip in my future, or what? It's not something I usually think about much, and here it just seems to keep coming up. But I don't know.

(It may also be slightly ironic given the issues I am having with the van, that make it hard for me to even get across town to see my friends.)

Ah, kids.

Kyrie, holding a paintbrush: "Mom! Gabe put this in paint and then put it in his mouth!"

Gabe comes running in a moment later, crying, and says: "Da da da Teerwee."

(The 'da da da' thing is just something he usually says before he says whatever word he's actually thinking.)

So, yes, my two year old son is trying to tell on his big sister for stopping him from eating paint.

Yogurt Update

Yesterday morning, the second and third batches of yogurt had gotten a little bit thicker, so I put them in the fridge and tried the second batch on my salad for lunch. (I always use yogurt as a salad dressing, because it's the only thing that makes it taste reasonably good to me, by masking the bitter taste of raw vegetables.) It wasn't completely horrible, but it was definitely too milky. I could probably have achieved the same effect by mixing yogurt and milk in equal portions and pouring it over the salad. In fact, that was probably what it amounted to. I think the yogurt strains didn't really grow at all from the starter yogurt into the heated milk, probably because I didn't insulate it well enough to keep it at a temperature that it would grow well at. Hopefully Ken will be able to go grocery shopping tonight. (My van is at the dealership for repairs, so I can't go grocery shopping myself). We drank the last of our milk this morning; when I get more, I will make another attempt, this time trying to insulate it better.

Links

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/13/world/asia/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html

For before/after photos of the tsunami. Click and drag the blue thing in the middle to see the area before and after.



http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20040163-1.html

This robot is eerily realistic.

Ken is Home

Yay, Ken is home. Well, he's off to work now. But I got to see him. :)

Photo Albums

So Kyrie was not feeling well this morning, had no appetite, and was running a temp of 99.0.  If Ken was home, I'd have just left her home with him and gone to church myself. But he's out of town visiting his Dad in Hawaii (his dad is in poor health); Ken gets home tonight. So I opted to stay home from church and not expose people to whatever bug Kyrie has, mild though it may be. (Just a bit ago, I discovered a huge wad of Kleenex where she had been sitting on the couch, so I think it was probably for the best.) For the same reason, we didn't go to the Parents Meeting (as in, parents of kids in Kyrie's First Communion classes) that we were supposed to go to today.

With my day suddenly looking more open, I ambitiously decided to start sorting my photos. The last time I put photos in an actual photo album was, apparently, just after Kyrie was born in 2003. I have a shoebox and a shoebox-sized basket full of random miscellaneous photos. And when I say random, I mean that it appears as if someone took my entire lifetime's worth of photos so far (at least up to when I switched to a digital camera) and shuffled them like a deck of cards. I'd find a photo from my high school years, followed by one of Kyrie's baptism, followed by one from when Elijah was about one, followed by one from my wedding, followed by one from when I was 10, followed by one from my time in Seattle, followed by one from Kyrie's birth.

I sorted them into:
"From before Ken and I got married"
"Wedding"
"Kyrie's babyhood"
"Everything after Elijah was born"
"After we moved to Oregon" (That was about when we switched to a digital camera, so there aren't too many of those.)

Most of the first three categories are backups of photos that I already have in my albums, so it wasn't *too* hard to get them sorted into the little photo envelopes - and I labelled them with sticky notes so that I hopefully won't ever have to do this again. I got some, but not all, of Kyrie's baby pictures into the album.  But the "after Elijah was born" stack is about a foot high, covering two years worth of photos (including duplicates - duplicates, I may add, which are NOT next to their copies, but are shuffled just as randomly).

There are several baby photos in there which I cannot for the life of me decide which baby it is. I threw out a number of photos that basically showed nothing at all. (There's this one photo where the top half - or the bottom half, you can't tell - is red, and the other half is black. I believe I found FOUR identical copies of this completely useless photo. The fact that I still have them is proof that I used to be a pack rat, I guess.) There was also one or two photos of people who I didn't recognize, and wasn't even sure if I was *supposed* to recognize them or not. Egads. :)

Progress is being made, though, and I'm looking forward to whenever it might be done. I'm motivated to do this now, because a friend gave me a code for a free photobook from Shutterfly, and I want to figure out what photos to put in there. (Good till the end of the month, I think... Shutterfly is also offering me a 50-free-prints deal, which I want to use to print off some of the better digital photos from the post-Oregon years, and add them to the albums too. Also good only til the end of the month.)