My life is a bit overstimulating at the moment.  I’m wrapping up one job, just signed a letter of agreement for another job (I KNOW, exciting!  More to come after that church announces to the congregation.), we are selling furniture right and left, we’re planning our trip to New Zealand, etc, etc, etc.

A Monday off came at just the right time.  I’ve been able to slow down, regain some of my sanity, and even start packing for my trip to St. Louis and then New Zealand.  Today, I sorted out my toiletry situation and I must say, putting lotions and potions into little tubes and then labeling them was incredibly satisfying and calming when the rest of my life is in this super-emotional limbo.

I’m still in total denial that this is my last week doing regular church work in the office.  I come back for a week in June for VBS, but that will be fun chaotic time, pretty unconnected from my “normal” schedule.  (If there is such a thing in parish ministry!)  I’ve been getting lots of last minute requests for lunches and meetings, which I’m trying to honor, but I also need to carve out time to write my final sermon here and pack my office.  Ugh.  Taking the frames off the walls and putting boxes in books is going to feel VERY final!

I scheduled a lunch with my parish administrator and boss for June so at least I can postpone those goodbyes!  (And hopefully bring back fun presents from New Zealand.)

What I’m finding particularly difficult is leaving people in the middle of their stories.  I’m not sure what I expected!  Ministry is not a television show.  This is not a season finale–even if the transition is happening in May!  I guess I thought people who are in love would get married, sick people would die or get miraculously better, unhappy people would find joy, dramas would be resolved all in a satisfying one hour conclusion.  Instead, I am realizing that I don’t get to be here to find out how all these stories end.  I’m sure I’ll hear through the grapevine, but that is not nearly as much fun.

I think the two weeks in New Zealand, halfway across the world, will be really helpful in terms of me letting go and being ready to move on to new things.  Even if that doesn’t happen, at least I’ll still have a package of TSA friendly, very well labeled toiletries.

I got an email with this attachment today. . .

I don’t know who wrote the song or organized all these Sunday School teachers, moms, students AND our treasurer and bookkeeper to sing, but I’m deeply grateful. Whenever I feel blue, this will be my new pick-me-up!

So, I’ve been checking out a lot of books from the library of late.  A couple books ago, I noticed a woman (just my impression from the handwriting) had made a correction to the book in pencil, which I thought was funny.

Well, today I started the Booker-Prize winning book The Sea, by John Banville.  When I got to page 30, I noticed that it, too, had corrections marked in pencil!  (Pictured above.)

In my imagination, these marks were made by the same woman.  She sees herself as the defender of grammar, spelling and facts and reads books not to get lost in the story, but to “helpfully” ferret out flaws and correct them so future readers will not be taken in by the bad information so abundant in our society.

I’m pretty confident that the spelling “errors” she found in the Booker-Prize winning novel I’m reading are just English English to American English interpretations, but what do I know?

The Sea is really, really good so far, by the way.  I came to Banville through the back door of reading the mystery novels he writes under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.  I enjoyed those, but this book is at a whole other level–really beautiful prose.  Well, at least I think it is beautiful, not-necessary-to-correct, prose!

For Christmas, Matt and I gave ourselves a strict budget for each other.  I interpreted that pretty literally and got Matt X number of presents that added up to  that amount.  My husband got all creative-like, though and bartered with our mutual friend and matchmaker, D, who also happens to be an incredible artist.  He traded her his wiring/computer services for three water color classes for me.

Since D and I are such good friends, I thought we would end up mostly drinking wine and gabbing, whilst holding paintbrushes in an adorably arty manner, but it turns out that D was pretty committed to actually teaching me and now we are seven classes in!  (And only one glass of wine down.)  Our mutual friend K, who is another bona fide artist, also joins us for most sessions.

I am a pretty spectacularly literal person, so I’ve always found drawing/painting frustrating because the picture on the paper never looks like the picture in my mind!  With fabric or yarn, I find it much easier to create what I imagine.  D keeps laughing at me during class, because she’ll give me an instruction and I will just stare at her blankly.  I need very. specific. and. clear. instructions. (Like, put your brush HERE and then move it HERE.)  At first I thought watercolor–with all its leaky, painty, messy uncontrollableness would be just too abstract for me, but with D’s help, I’m starting to actually enjoy watching the paint run and fall where it will.  I’m enjoying layering pain on top of each other.  I’m enjoying looking at landscapes and objects in new ways–observing where the light hits and seeing the multiplicity of browns and greys and green in one tree.  (I really, really, really like using bright green, but D insists right-from-the-pallette green is not found in nature. Sigh.)

I’m nowhere NEAR to being any good, but I am having FUN, which I think was the whole point in the first place!  I find it a really helpful way to get out of the writing-studying-thinking about giant transitions and all the packing involved-part of my head and into a looser, more creative place.