little cheeps!

Look who's herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre!....

 

14 little babies.  Oh my word sweet sweet sweet cuteness.  They make me gush like your crazy aunt Betty. Their teeny feet and little chirp and soft feathers and blinking eyes.  Oh my heart.  And that I get to set them down and walk away and have a normal night's sleep.  There's that too.

They are slowly getting named according to their personalities.  The blond in the back is Ellen.  She is pretty and has a real affinity for the ladies.

Her sister Pink is blond too, with true light pink highlights on her tail feathers, which she keeps flipped just so.

Penguin is the proud one in the front.

That's Tipsy on the right.  She falls over allllll the time.  And she's the tiniest one of the bunch.
River has taken her under his care and she sleeps in his lap.

Her twin Feisty isn't pictured because she was truly too feisty for a photo.

They have great meal-time convos. 

Oh my worrrrrrrrrd cuteness.

Nadia!!!

We've talked about Nadia Bolz-Weber before. 
She wrote the book, Pastrix: The Cranky Faith of a Sinner and Saint. 
Have you read it yet?  Oh my word hurry UP!!

If you don't have time for the book, read her sermons HERE.

I got to go hear her speak on Friday night!  It's been on my calendar for almost a year.  Up close and personal - there were only maybe 200 of us there, and she talked to us as though we were having a conversation for two hours.

 And then...

 

Ahhhhhh!!!!!

She is an ordained priest in the Lutheran church, and a straight-forward, hilarious, depressed, sober alcoholic who is in love with God and serious about grace.  She puts SO much of what I know in my heart to be true about love and the human condition and beauty and God's great bigness into such clear language.  She exposes that Jesus is a rascally one when it comes to loving yourself, saying no to shame, and extending your arms wide for truly one and all.

I've been digesting her words for the last 24 hours and thinking about something she said about how  in the Jesus-business, healing always includes community.  It's made me wonder how much the communities of which I'm a part honor the process of healing.  Big Stuff healing (like death and divorce and all that) and also the Everyday healing it takes to just get vertical every morning.  Healing seems to be a nasty gig.  It includes people who are not at their most tidy and kept.  People who need.  And it means being so real about whatever went down to put us in this spot in the first place.  Hmmmmmmm.  I wonder....do I make room in conversation for people to be real about whatever they are healing from?  Do I name the places I see it?  Do I yammer my mouth about the kids and the details of life instead of paying homage to the big picture which always has been and always will be that life is a mess and thank God that God is so big that this mess of ours is tolerable for today and tomorrow bears hope if for no other reason than Love is free?  Hmmmmmm.  I want to give more space.  I've grown more and more intolerant of small talk every day for the last few years.  This reminds me why that's a good thing.  Let's cut to the chase and not waste breath on the weather.  You know?!

It's a rascally notion alright.  But she makes rascally look and sound OH so good!

me and Ed bring it on home

Ready?? Ok, here we go..............

 

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 

Here's the old:

 

 

Here's the new:

 

 

I absolutely love it!  Light just bounces everywhere now.  I feel like my whole life got a facelift.

 

Despite appearances in this picture, we did not also bring home a headless cat.  Tybalt wanted a bath on the new rug.

Speaking of new rug.  I bought it over a year ago and put it in the basement for "someday when I finally paint the kitchen."

I'm walkin on sunshine oooohooooh I'm walkin on sunshine ooohhhh ohhhh and don't it feel good!!

 

Getting from the last post to this one was more than just a hiccup.  It rained crazy for a good 24 hours, just like was predicted.  It started with this:

 

 

He is in kindergarten and that is a very very very VERY sharp brand new hatchet.  It's tricky to tell this story without throwing his very well-meaning dad under the bus.  So suffice it to say that when I got home Saturday morning, the girls were playing upstairs, Ryan was screwing in cupboard doors, my brother-in-law was under the sink in the completely torn-up kitchen, and River literally RAN to meet me swinging his hatchet.  I not so calmly suggested that he needed supervision and training.  I invoked that Oklahoma scene where Judd Fry falls on his ax and dies.  No one seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation and River ran again to chop more sticks.  STICKS, people.  Little sticks...with a big life-threatening hatchet.  That was the moment when I lost my shit, slammed the door, and went for a drive.  I ended up in one of those falling-down-out-in-the-country cemeteries and had myself a good cry over dysfunctional families and unfinished kitchens and my horrible parenting and the complete idiocy of the republican party.  My hair also no longer looked good.  And then.  Then I realized that I'm not six feet under.  I'm precisely five feet, 11 inches above.  And that is a truly no small thing.  Kitchens, hatchets, and my cluster of a self took it down a few notches and started to breathe again.  And not long after, I got to leave and go to work with the addicts.  Which every single time, takes me down even a few notches more.

 

And side note, which really isn't a side note because it so matters....The hatchet is safely stored OUT OF REACH.

 

And now, the kitchen is done.  D.o.n.e.  And it is blissssssssssssssssssss!

 

Ryan washed bottles to inaugurate it with a homebrew bottling.

 

 

And the kids played like rockstars (sans hatchets) while I made curried carrot soup. 

 

 Peeling and slicing and dicing in my happy new sink....while Ed took us all on home.  (click on it....he'll do the same for you!)