"Now, This will be the Last Bitter Song About You..."

Well, I, in my infinite wisdom, broke my glasses into two pieces to-day. At church! By the way, let me digress for a moment, we had Father Harmon guest-preaching at church to-day. He is the warmest, nicest, huggingest man who ever existed, and he remembers all about us even though he hasn't been with us in over a year. He asked me how was work and school, and gave me squooshy hugs of love. He's working in a broken parish in a diocese of New Jersey right now, says it's hard work and very sad sometimes, but he likes it and he's doing his best.

I love Father Harmon. His sermons are always amazing, and he has a great delivery, like story-telling, so personal, and he acts out parts of them--to-day's reading was the bent woman Jesus heals, and every time he talked about her he bent himself--and he used to make us celebrate all the church holidays we had forgotten or didn't know existed, like Saint Nicholas' Day. He's just--makes everybody feel special, and obviously is special himself. Father Harmon is a good example of how Christianity is when it's done right. So bwee. ♥ So good to see him again.

--Anyway, glasses! At the moment they're badly stuck together with half a roll of masking tape, but they keep falling off and when they're on they feel weird as anything. I need to see Dr. Platypus again, it seems.

Mama says he must be really, really, really tired of seeing our family, and I imagine that is so. Maria was in to see him last week because she broke her glasses off at the earpiece while we were in the Adirondacks, but they were somewhat easier to stick back together, and also Maria is not legally blind without glasses. She actually sees fairly decently.

This is making my tendency to walk into doors about twofold. XD

Nevertheless, I went to the gym, and while I was driving back everything was gold and sunlight and easy-warm, and I went the long way home off Morris Road, through the farm country we don't usually visit. Here people planted their corn early enough that the drought didn't take it out or stunt it at two foot high, and it was tall and tasselled and very beautiful. There were houses and soft noises, and kids out, and wild turkeys running across the road, and almost all the humidity had gone out of the air, so it was just warm, not choking-thick, the way it was yesterday.

I think I live, I think sometimes, in the most beautiful place in the world. It just isn't like this anywhere else, not exactly. It's all farm families, acres of planted land, and the smell of cows and chickens and pigs--and oh, if you see the pigs. The hog farm on the way home has the biggest pink pigs I swear I ever saw in my life, they're huge, and they lie out in the sun and they are beautiful. We think we might have one of our own once we get moved, if Maria promises not to turn it into a pet (she will have to weigh her love of pigs against her love of bacon).

I love this place. This is why I'm going to college in Juniata. Juniata is right in the middle of Big Valley, the biggest Amish community in central Pennsylvania. It'll be exactly like home, I know it will be. If I get lonely or homesick, I can just drive or bicycle out into Big Valley and it'll smell and it'll look just like everything I've ever grown up with, and I'll feel whole again.

And then I got home and had ice cream, because I'm taking all the endorphins I can get. Mmm, ice cream. With cocoanut! ^__^

"I Get Up in the Evening and I Ain't Got Nothing to Say..."

Part One of a Series: Photographs from Vacation of Gorgeous.

The first bit is entitled Photographs I Stole Off the Family Camera. There are a hundred or so more on mine, not all of which, naturally, will be any good, and I will continue to post them in installments whenever I have time. Because I know you are all desperate to see my vacation pictures. This batch is mostly of me, Maria, Daddy, and the girls--none of Mama because she is always cameraperson. There are ones of her on my camera.

So--yes!

( onward ho! )