Very Sad News

Our church rents space to a preschool, which has a tight-knit community of parents and kids. That community needs our prayers this week as they mourn a child who died after being hit by a car. Lots of guilt and grief all around.

There will be a prayer vigil on Friday night 4-7 pst. If you're the praying kind, you might want to light a candle for a sad sad sad family.

Going parking

Goofing around on the internet tonight, I found these two signs. The first one is of cards that were actually passed out to disabled people by the city of Brussels, so that they could post them on offender's cars. The other is just found art, I guess.

Found here and here, respectively.



And now for something completely different....

Dog Blog

Hank Hound came to be at our house today.

Other people just go to the pound and pick out a dog, but because its us, it got all long and complicated. He was at the city shelter and I saw this wonderful photo at Petfinders, so I called. They told us he was in foster care and couldn't get out, since for some reason that the shelter couldnt explain he wasn't actually UP for adoption, but we could go meet him. He was unusually unafraid of both Jeff's wheelchair and Eli's prancing and he leaned right on me and gave me the old sweetie pie eyes and we were all pretty much captivated. Then we waited a week for whatever they couldn't explain to be resolved and today we got to go get him.

They think he's one year old and some kind of beagle/lab mix. He's about 30 pounds and keeps his nose the ground when he's outside.

So far he's as nice as can be, real friendly and playful but not rough with Eli, real snuggly with all the grown-ups. Fetched a ball 429 times this afternoon. Went for a couple of walks with me, and we're getting the hang of the leash.

He barked at his reflection in the glass back door until I covered it with a curtain.

We've had him about eight hours so far. He has not pooped. Is that usual?

He has, however, eaten a lot. Two big bowls of food, two medium sized Newman's snack treats, three hot-dog pieces we threw in his crate thinking it would help him love it (wrong about that), one piece of frozen sweet potato, one slice of cucumber and uncounted number of cheerios, popcorns, crusts, blueberries, playdoh rounds and other floor detritus of summer.

The landlord was a little worried that a dog might ruin the floors, but sir I can assure you that this is the shiniest those floors have been since we've lived here.

Now I'm off to bed to ponder this question: How do you sleep with a dog in the house?

Book Meme

1. One Book That Changed Your Life: Watership Down, because it was the first really big book that I read, and it taught me the joy of entering completely the world of the story.

2. One Book That You've Read More Than Once: The Horse and His Boy. I still read it every time I'm home sick in bed, just like I've done since I was eight years old.

3.One Book You'd Want On a Desert Island: Oh boy, just one? Well, probably a really huge and comprehensive poetry anthology of some kind. On a desert island I figure I'd be too busy knocking coconuts out of trees and catching fish with my bare hands to have time to really delve into an absorbing plot, otherwise I'd probably choose something else. Either that or a guide to dreams. Don't you think that if you were stuck on a desert island, you'd have really crazy dreams? There's a slight possibility that I'm thinking too much about this one. Let's move on to an easy one....

4. One Book That Made You Laugh: Traveling Mercies.

5. One Book That Made You Cry: See above. Also, Housekeeping, which I just finished. Did you still want to talk about that one, Songbird?

6. One Book You Wish Had Been Written. A book that had only these two sentences on every page. "You will not learn anything useful about being a parent from reading about parenting. Put down this book and pick up your child."

7. One Book That You Wish Had Never Been Written: I can't remember why I hated it so much, but I distinctly remember throwing Portrait of a Lady across my college dorm room after I finished it. (And then Julie, the smartest girl I know, blew my mind by saying, "It's JAMES! Nobody reads JAMES! Get the Cliff Notes!")

8. One Book You’re Currently Reading: Dogs - The Ultimate Care Guide. "You will not learn anything about dogs by reading about them. Put down this book and pet the dog." Did I mention the dog? We're bringing him home tomorrow!! I'm waiting to say any more about it until I get to know him a little. More soon, I hope.

9. One Book You’ve Been Meaning To Read (for the last 12 years): Jazz

Just call me Non Sequiter Boy

Overheard over tonight's bedtime snack:
"Cows have shampoo, right? To wash their hair?"

One day this blog will have some content besides cutie-pie sayings.
But today will not be that day.

Elijah-logue

Backstory: Elijah and Dad have been studying astrology. It crops up sometimes

E (getting into his car seat on the way home from the grocery store): We are on planet Earth, right?

Me: Right.

E: I want to get off Earth, ok?

Me: Um, ok. Where do you want to go?

E: My favorite planet! Saturn!

What Peacebang Hath Wrought

I think I've been just a little too attentive to Beauty Tips for Ministers. When this month's Sun magazine came, my first thought at looking at the cover was "Wow. Great shoes."