7 Quick Takes

1.  Happy Birthday to Me.  It's been a good week, complete with a completely indulgent trip to the bookstore with 120$ in gift cards to run amok spending.  Ahhhh.  A brand new stack of books on the dresser to read.  I feel sooooo much better, I'll go work on reading the book I already started, The Life of Pi.   Then I can tackle Dad is Fat, The Writing Life, Elegance of a Hedgehog, the latest by Terry Pratchett and The Night Circus. 

2.  Prayers for a friend's child who isn't a child, but who suffered a horrible accident this week and today, will lose his leg as  a result.  This is a hard thing for anyone to face, so I ask for all of you to pray for this young man, his sister, his parents, his friends, as they help him through this trial that will affect the rest of his life.   The family has the gift of faith, and they need their friends, both known and unknown, to pray for his healing.

3.  Today, I heard a young man playing a Cello as we walked from the bookstore, it is like the difference between a loaf of French bread you buy in a supermarket, and a loaf you find waiting for you at a bakery.  We forget in this age of saturated stimulation, the beauty of clean clear notes that are simply themselves.  May have to go plink on the piano a bit.  Then I will be reminded that all art is hard until it is easy. 

4. My daughter came in from a walk, she'd caught a boxer turtle.  Thus I spent the morning explaining why we were not going to own a reptile. My son caught some fireflies.  We could not keep them either.  I may have to stop encouraging them to go outside. 

5.  She can't read, but she knows the important things.   I had fallen asleep reading on the couch that always makes anyone who lies down on it fall asleep. She woke me by placing a can of cake frosting on my chest and saying, "Mommy?  I like chocolate."   I have only myself to blame. 

6. Yesterday, to celebrate the 4th of July, I put on some Kate Smith.  Didn't know God Bless America was arranged by George Gershwin.  My younger children gathered around just to listen, they got that this was something special. 

7.  Then I hit them with John Phillips Sousa, and I had a pantomime band going for an hour while we fixed dinner, listening to She's a Grand Old Flag, Stars and Stripes and the Washington Post. 

We topped it with barbecue, fireworks, looking for fireflies and constellations.  All in all, a perfect 4th of July.  I'd thought about writing a post about what we need to consider, discuss, fight and address in this country, but the 4th is a day for counting our blessings, all the rest of it can be tabled for another day, not as a means of ignoring our problems, but as a recognition that we are still, the freest people in the world, with the greatest opportunity, and a proud tradition of overcoming even our own worst impulses after trials.