fusion cuisine

so there is a rule in the weekends that you can eat anything you want for breakfast because, you know, it's been a whole week. but it still does unimpressive things to your reputation when your daughter feeds the guest kimchi for breakfast.

the final lap

and so it begins. the immigration applications the school documents the dorm choices the excitement and hassle and painful sweetness of preparing to send J2 off.

what i want to know is, how did people do this before we had websites faq's unlimited broadband connections online processes and payments so that you could organize a military exercise from your home office? i'm guessing there was a time education consultants were gladly paid for a thankless job no parent wanted to tackle. 

fancy that!

creative capitalism 

meets diligent piety.
fide reflexa. ad absurdum. i daresay.

living and learning

and to think all these years i thought

they were called dog collars.

easter wish

[hold] fast the word of life, so that i may rejoice in the day of Christ that i have not run in vain or labored in vain.  - phil 2:16

to run with the wind in my face and glad striving in my heart

to put one foot before the other in doggedly painful labor

to know that the flight and the toil belong together

in that most secret place, a parent's heart.

letters from prison (1953, 1970) - bonhoeffer

stifter once said 'pain is a holy angel, who shows treasures to men which otherwise remain forever hidden ...' ... we shall not and need not talk it away. but it needs to be overcome every time, and thus there is an even holier angel than the one of pain, that is the one of joy in God. 
(letters, 21 nov 1943)

once in a while you read about failure futility and dashed hopes and are somehow inspired to live responsibly, fully and freely in a world that is broken.

replay

well what do you know?

right after the cherry blossoms peak and HOM persuades me that we skipped spring and got to summer and i launder the bedclothes and put away the winter blankets and stuff we get a freeze watch and i have to turn the heater on again. that pennsylvania rat wasn't that far wrong after all.

congratulations! or not!

i win a consolation prize! it's a photo submission to the category of "my favorite foods". the prize is a copy of a book by the patriarch of my nation.

except. my submission was not to the category of "my favorite foods". and it's not my name. although it's my email address. also, the prize i wanted was the hotel stay. this surely gives a new spin to the whole consoling concept.

spring chicken's mama

i stay up really late waiting for J2 who catches a play and a late dinner with her youth group. the empty nest beckons bright this morning through the fog that blankets me.

seasons

i will wait on the LORD, who hides his face... and i will hope in him. 

here am i and the children whom the LORD has given me!

- isaiah 8:17-18

my times are in his hand,

who gives one cup as well as the other.

shame

before thee we are sinners.
afraid of suffering and poor in deeds, we have betrayed thee before men.
we saw the lie raise its head, and we did not honor the truth.
we saw brethren in direst need, and feared only our own death.
we come before thee as men...

and that which burned in our hearts, remained silent and unnamed;
we quenched our fiery blood and stamped out the inner flame.
- night voices in tegel, bonhoeffer (1944)


stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted... wounded... bruised...
- isaiah 53:4-5

drinking to the dregs

my times are in your hand;

- ps 31:15

my triumphs and failures that have passed

my present cup of joy and cup of sorrow

my future enshrouded in mystery

and my final glory.

so that my living can be in the here and now

with less fearfulness and more courage

because he holds my times.

for E, J, and Y, alphabetically.

it is an inestimable privilege to be allowed

a glimpse into the heart of a newly opening flower.

thank you.

perspectives

the cross and the resurrection - the most glorious demonstration of a most extravagant love by a most powerful deity.

easter church celebrations, with all the trappings, on the other hand, can be tiring.

limited options

i want to join a contest. the prize includes a hotel stay in new york city for singapore day. don't book our hotel stay yet, i tell HOM, we may get lucky. here's the contest entry form:

something amiss here, surely. not to mention a tad impolitic. 

what if one day a welfare bum named steve living off his parents returns

to singapore to start a company called, say, orange?

rachael ray, take 2

a young man, living away from home, teaches himself how to cook. his first meal is mostly boiled. i remember my first meal away from home too, cooked in my dinky slow cooker back in med school. it was chinese soup herbs slow boiled with fish. i have never been tempted to repeat the combination.

isaw

whatever your personal opinion about her skills her hair or her nationality you've got to admit her new blog has an unbeatable name. also, for a blog that started this month she currently has 13,211 hits. it fair boggles the mind.

easter thoughts

just let me live my life/ let it be pleasing Lord to thee/ and if i gain any praise/ let it go to calvary

-  andrae crouch

what things were gain to me, these i have counted loss

... that i may know him and the power of his resurrection, 

and the fellowship of his sufferings

- phil 3:7-10
it is my most tremendous privilege.

secret ingredient

today we discover that the secret to the pasta with that elusive al dente bite is good old fashioned sweat equity. the electric mixer was not invented to knead pasta dough and get away with it. period. it's a good thing it's only taken us several batches of dough to find out.

in the garden

and he walks with me and he talks with me/ and he tells me i am his friend/ and the joy we share as we tarry there/ none other has ever known.  - c. austin miles

one of those embarrassingly mushy overly simplistic old hymns, and it only it takes you long years to move past the saccharine sweetness of the words to get to the truth of their proclamation.

diamond ring

HOM buys me a can opener on his business trip to replace my old faithful.

it's a nice old fashioned type of can opener

that goes straight to my heart to tug at the strings. 

the can openers you get in the stores here, you see, are

the complicated ones with gears or electrical connections.

we've reached a new level in our relationship,

i think, when the way to my heart is

paved with simple household appliances.

my new flowers

i fancy there is something wrong with these.

i know tulips have no backbone, but these

are totally lacking self respect.

the last knight - cantor (2004)

considering the title and the stuff at the back of the book, i think cantor is remiss not to introduce him right at the start and i have to figure out gradually who John of Gaunt is. in any case, two words: (fairly) educational. (relatively) organized. he does have his idea about what he wants to say, which appears to be some version of plus ça change etc.

but i have to say this. this guy is not a writer in the sense daniel yergin is, or thomas friedman, or even in the sense that my university friends are, and cantor is a history professor. his is a loosely cobbled together undemandingly informal style that lacks drama and pulse. history for the masses deserves more.

verdict: my run of misses continues.

product review

i can't decide whether New iPad's moniker 

is a brilliant stroke of the adman's art

or just a tad amiss. 

what i mean is, there's a fine line between

a smart name and a not so smart one.

what i have decided however is that the kindle fire

was a miss.

what spring means to me

daffodils

tulips

birdsong

flitting cardinals

thunderstorms

weeds

mud

you win some you lose some.

tech blooper

my finger hits the cellphone restore button in a rash moment of misguided empowerment, after which it takes me the better part of the morning to restore it to a semblance of the 'phone i had up until yesterday. i blame J2 for instigating me to unlock the potential of my devices.

let it snow!

everyone who is due home is home. Dog has had his walk. the soup's in progress. dinner's all settled. bring on the flurries!

thank you, son

J1 is away on a military attachment at a location that is not covered by his cellphone plan, so he gets himself a 'phone-card. i'll just call you from time to time to say hi, he says. i'm not sure exactly why, but hearing him say that is really nice. this comes under the category of stuff a mother treasures up in her heart. 

modern life

HOM boards the 'plane stateside on saturday and lands in asia on monday. i completely lost my birthday on sunday, he tells me sadly. 

so he did. to think the only birthdays people used to miss were due to leap years or plain old forgetfulness. what is this world coming to?

stupid Dog

we have our first spring thunderstorm. Dog whines his way into the bedroom across the area rugs and, following a fresh thunderclap, onto the bed.

Dog is soooo banned from our bedroom forevermore.

unfortunate books

girls in white dresses - jennifer close

when you get one third of the way through a book and still have no idea what the premise is, it's time to be done with it. a pity, because i do like female bonding stories, and this book has a really pretty cover.

good enough mother - rene syler/karen moline

mostly a self congratulatory ode to her successfully brought up kids who you quickly discover aren't even teens yet. plus i dislike humor that tries just too much.

it's getting hard to find an angst-free entertaining read these days.

lenten reflection

one consequence of a first generation protestant tradition is that the church calendar remains defiantly intellectual where it is not brazenly commercialized. which is where easter and lent fall, discounting the bunnies. protestants don't really do self-denial and reflection at all well, so i often feel a guilty twinge that the period before easter feels no different from the period before christmas or the period after independence day or whatever.

i have an epiphany of sorts this year. the veil, i remember, is rent. the stone is rolled away. i live in the light of the power and triumph of the resurrection, which alone gives meaning to the shame and defeat of the cross, and by God's grace i live in this through all portions of his calendar.

254-467-8558

do the people who make unsolicited and unwanted calls have any idea how truly unwelcome they are? what i mean is, what kind of deformed personality gets a kick out of repeatedly calling unsuspecting telephone numbers just to hang up on them?

i mean to say, telemarketers are bad enough, but at least you get to be cuttingly rude to them, and you at least have the prerogative of hanging up on them mid-spiel. these spoofing calls on the other hand are like receiving a series of haunted house calls from an idiot phantom.

note to self. remember this website: www.donotcall.gov

pasta attachment 2

it is unexpectedly simple to use.

it even looks like the iron chef pasta.

Dog loves the bits that drop down to him.

i don't think i could go back to store bought boxed pasta.

the only problem is the clouds of flour on every counter and on the floor.

pasta attachment

here is HOM with his new toy.

what i say is, give a man his work-life balance,

with a dose of food network,

and he gets ideas.

he gives my song

come to the water stand by my side

i know you are thirsty you won't be denied

i heard ev'ry tear drop when in darkness you cried

and i strove to remind you that for those tears i died.
- marsha j. and russ stevens

sometimes a stray memory wanders by and blindsides me.

customer service

the ol' mixer is in agony again, perhaps in protest. i call customer service and a nice lady in tennessee (not india!) answers. she needs to transfer me to ohio, she says, but not to worry, she will stay on the line to make sure i connect. the nice lady in ohio listens to me (it's the same problem that we had in december, i tell her, and it's back again after your guys fixed it) and crisply arranges a pick-up for assessment and repair.

i tell HOM there is something wonderfully healing about cheerfully non-defensive* adult-level customer service. it almost makes you glad to have a malfunction just so you can talk to those lovely ladies in normal english** that both sides can understand. kitchenaid. what's not to love?

*defensive customer service, best exemplified by the are you sure? i'm certain we did a great job. did you allow anyone to misuse it? school, is the type that sends customers running for the hills and to competing brands.
**as opposed to the incomprehensible rhotic version that results from outsourcing to the other side of the world.

trifecta du jour

one confesses one is by now heartily tired of these.
darling, it's time to move on, as the politicians say.