paper bags and lipstick [at The Mirror]

In case you missed it last Friday, I've written another post for The Mirror Magazine:

On one end you have the prevailing message we know so well. A body is meant to display, to manipulate others with. Work it, girl. One the other end you have paper bags; if we assume that godly people should aspire to the world's exact opposite, we all end up in shapeless sacks.

Go here for the rest.

some nights . . . some mornings

Some nights I put all the food away after dinner and wash the dishes, and tidy up Ellie's toys and fold the laundry that was left in the dryer, and all the time Jared has been sitting on the couch with a book. And I think Why isn't he working too? This is no fair.

Some mornings I crawl out of my sleepy cocoon of goose down and fleece, and look out the wind-chilled window to see this:

Suddenly I don't feel like complaining anymore.

I am glad that we have different work, and that we each get to rest too, even if at different times. I'm not sure it all shakes out to "fair" in the end, but it's good.

(He does help an awful lot with housework, by the way. However, I gladly take the bulk those responsibilities when it means that he takes on the sunrise snow-shoveling and all the other things I can't/won't do. "Equality" isn't exactly the guiding star of operations around here.)

four years

That's a whole presidential term! No re-elections on this one, though-- we're like swans-- together for life.

Happy anniversary darling.

Well, she said, he's who he is and he always will be. That's why I married him.
But you aint heard from him in a while.
I didnt expect to hear from him.
Were you all havin problems?
We dont have problems. When we have problems we fix em.
Well, you're lucky people.
Yes we are.

-from No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy