todays mail.

a letter to elsie dinsmore.

Slow Saturdays

The beginning of fall at Forsyth Park for a lovely afternoon.

New Hair Thus New Life

I always feel like getting a good haircut signifies a change in lifestyle. My lifestyle has changed a bit and I feel like I need a good signifier. Check it out. Hair appointment scheduled...12 days from today. Prepare yourselves.

October 17th, 2010

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Newest Obsession: Throws

I want to have the time to make all of these or have the money to buy them all. Sadly, they are time consuming little projects and are way out of my price range. I just want to feel them all.

Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home. I find myself in a state of limbo. I am searching for that next home, literally and not so literally. Wherever I go, a sense of dissatisfaction seems to follow. My friend, Julia and I, were talking about how nothing that we do seems to go easily (i.e. anything with the word KROGER). A sad thing happened the other day. I put too much hope in future college housing that seemed too good to be true! It was a beautiful home on the edge of a park in a wonderful family friendly neighborhood. My friends and I had everything planned out- how much money we would save, baking cookies for the neighbors, future babysitting opportunities, the minute by minute "commute to school" (five minutes), etc. What a dream. And then, even more perfect house number two made its way into my view and next thing I know- that did not work out either. The thing is it didn't work out, but it is a good thing there are always more places. Trying to find my next future home, but trying not to make it so fantastical in my head...even though it will be wonderful being able to cook, bake, decorate, paint, sit on the porch, the list goes one... I might of had the slightest bought of homesickness this weekend, but know that with time I will find this place to be more and more my home. Rest easy, Frances. Things aren't easy sometimes. I am not talking about having hard times at all. I am talking about being in a place where there isn't the highest of highs. Rest easy, weary souls. Find delight in the small things...I am here. The fact is, I am in limbo. I am supposed to be learning and growing for what comes next. Let it begin!

"An old believer remarked, that cheerfulness in religion makes all its services come off with delight; and that we are never carried forward so swiftly in the ways of duty as when borne on the wings of delight; adding, that Melancholy clips such wings; or, to alter the figure, takes off our chariot wheels in duty, and makes them, like those of the Egyptians, drag heavily."

"Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."

As Dying and Behold We Live

My grandma sent me a book that she has had for sometime. This is the first entry and it really got to me. Beautiful imagery. "I had a bed of asters last summer, that reached clear across my garden in the country. Oh, how gaily they bloomed. They were planted late. On the sides were yet fresh blossoming flowers, while the tops had gone to seed. Early frosts came, and I found one day that that long line of radiant beauty was seared, and I said, "Ah! the season is too much for them; they have perished"; and I bade them farewell.

I disliked to go and look at the bed, it looked so like a graveyard of flowers. But, four or five weeks ago one of my men called my attention to the fact that along the whole line of that bed there were asters coming up in the greatest abundance; and I looked, and behold, for every plant that I thought the winter had destroyed there were fifty plants that it had planted. What did those frosts and surly winds do?

They caught my flowers, they slew them, they cast them to the ground, they trod with snowy feet upon them, and they said, leaving their work, "This is the end of you." And the next spring there were for every root, fifty witnesses to rise up and say, "By death we live."

And as it is in the floral tribe, so it is in God's kingdom. By death came everlasting life. By crucifixion and the sepulchre came the throne and the palace of the Eternal God. By overthrow came victory.

Do not be afraid to suffer. Do not be afraid to be overthrown.

It is by being cast down and not destroyed; it is by being shaken to pieces, and the pieces torn to shreds, that men become men of might, and that one a host; whereas men that yield to the appearance of things, and go with the world, have their quick blossoming, their momentary prosperity and then their end, which is an end forever." -Beecher.

"Measure thy life by loss and not by gain,

Not by the wine drunk, but by the the wine poured forth.

For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice,

And he who suffers most has most to give."