Yet Another List

1. Dallas was great. I spent time with a lovely friend and her endearing daughter. Sometimes you just need to get away and see different faces and breathe different air. I'm grateful for friends who allow you to do that.

2. I learned how to make cake balls. I'm so going to make some. They're decadent bon-bons of icing-moistened chocolate cake formed into balls and then dipped into melted chocolate. In the process, I learned the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt never waste chocolate.

3. A cat with a French name inspires one to speak to it in French.

4. I now know what a horse apple is, and I'm aware that worms can crawl out of them with perfect timing. Here is a picture of one for your enlightenment:



5. God can use anybody anywhere anytime to tell you anything. Picture this: You're slipping out of the tail end of an Israel and New Breed concert because your friend's daughter needs to be picked up from the babysitter's and you're in the parking lot when a person you don't know and that your friend doesn't know runs out after you, introduces herself and tells you that God impressed upon her to pray for you. At first you're kind of stunned, but then you consent, planning to just be nice, pray and go on your way. But then you end up basically having a personal Day of Pentecost in the middle of the parking lot.

6. Imagination is definitely an asset in dealings with imaginative 9-year-olds.

7. I must work on seeming less awkward and dumbfounded when I am the target of an unexpected mack.

8. If you're me and have a connecting flight, you will have a flight delay that will cause you to miss your connecting flight. And then you will buy McNuggets with a meal voucher and spend the night in a king-sized bed.

9. You know the song "Home On the Range?": "Where seldom is heard a discouraging word/ And the skies are not clouded all day?" I used to think that 'seldom' was the discouraging word that is heard. As if it were written like this: "Where 'seldom' is heard, a discouraging word, and the skies are not clouded all day." What a difference punctuation makes.

10. I ate a green apple on the way to work today that was the Platonic ideal of a green apple. It was large and firm and crisp and tart, and was the most beautiful green apple green. It looked like it belonged on the cover of Green Apple magazine. But there was a small bruise. I guess even the most perfect things on this earth are still somehow flawed.