Baby bath night time

So I bought lulu some target brand nighttime bath soap.  I decided tonight I needed it more than she did. After a harrowing battle with the drain (gay men and single men have such an advantage when it comes to drains and hair)  I got my wine and my baby nighttime bath suds and it was pretty glorious.  I am soooo ready for bed now.  I asked samm if he would swaddle me but he just laughed.  Oh well.

Had a great exhausting weekend...sang in a lovely local talent concert, met some new friends at the uniterian church and had a great morning in the chapel at acac.  Also had my first fight with samm in a while.  Hate those but also...now I feel a lot closer to him.  Team hodges!  So hard to imagine there could be other ways to see the world that are legit than my own.  I can be so selfish and vain.  I would rather have strangers like me than think about my Love. What kind of person does that? 

One who has a serious addiction to being liked.  Well...here comes a new week and a new chance to live better and love better.  Thanks God for baths and wine and patient husbands.

Let My Favorite Half of the Year Begin!

Spring is great.  I know.  BUT.  Now as the days take on a golden feel and the farmers market begins to swell with new produce and the leaves begin to deepen into darker green, I cannot help but feel we have just been preparing all year for this.  For wine on the porch.  For backyard parties. For watermelon and lighting bugs and the coming of harvest. And harvest of course turns into Thanksgiving and Christmas. So, yes, far superior to the first half of the year. 

We celebrated my grandma's 85th birthday this week. Isn't she cute? 

Lulu looks awfully large on her!  

Luke and Lizzy got her these flowers:  

And I've been bringing Lulu to work with me a lot. 

She chills under my desk.  Sometimes I put her in the closet to nap.  Don't worry, it's a nice large closet with a window.  She causes quite a stir. Has old wise men just eating right out of her hand.  I am so thankful that we have friends who are old and young and black and white, and she might think it's all quite normal for everyone to love and respect each other. 


Lulu gets to spend more time in less clothes now that it's summer.  She is thrilled. 

She prefers even less clothes, actually.  

I'm ready to ease out of the the stress of birth and a newborn and adjustment to a new stage of life.  Ready to just completely embrace this stage.  It's summer, my baby is growing so fast, and it's time to meet up with the neighbors and go for a walk.  

Some people should be less into skirts, and I should be more into them

Honestly, with a name like Weiner, you think this guy would be a little more careful where he posted his pictures of his crotch.  Ohhh it's just so frustrating to imagine one more politician having to apologize to his new wife  about the national embarrassment of his transgressions.  And this guy's wife appears to be  pretty AND smart.  And exotic.  And interesting.  What kind of addictions are we dealing with that he was willing to risk his career and his relationship with an amazing woman to chat online and exchange photos?  What was he thinking!?

In other news, I made some  summer resolutions.  They are eerily similar my New Year's ones.  

• Wear skirts and dresses more .
• [ attend city wide Frock Swap Saturday Whheeeee!]

• Make more huge, creative, healthy home made meals and have lots of people over for dinner!  
• [ummm.    Farmer's Market is back, check.  lots of awesome people live on the northside for the summer, check.  But meal ideas???  What's easy and awesome? Or at least easy.  I need to make lists. I need help.]

• Get my "office" in order.   I use the term loosely.  Currently it is a wild stack of important papers I'm avoiding in the corner of our bedroom. 
•  [... Lizzy Cahill, please help me decorate it so I have incentive to be productive.]

So I could go on for a while but I'll try to be realistic about my resolutions (lame.)  Two out of three have pretty iffy courses of action, so that's plenty to work on for now.  As Mum says, I feel a list coming on...

I'll save my last goal for another post.  But it has to do with the end times and my back yard.  And it's too emotional to get into in a blog right before baby wakes up.

Cafe Hodges

Baby is napping and I am having my favorite kind of Monday morning...the kind where you gently regroup.  Where you make lists and reflect on the busy weekend and the coming week and let it all hang suspended in the distance as you sip coffee and eat a bagel.  This weekend I attended a symposium on rob bells Love wins.  It was the most exercise my mind has had in a while... promised book review still coming

. I felt like I was attending a gathering of the wizards... A la order of the Phoenix...

My imagination is a very consequential part of my theology.

One of my favorite (mis)quotes was,

"hell is paved with people with good intentions."

Ha ha. Wonderful mental image...

No, I suppose it is not a funny subject really.

 I enjoyed the range of conversation, the openness but seriousness with which the book and its questions were treated, and the time being with my dad and people from Trinity.   Got me thinking about bringing heaven to earth - doing my part - having dreams...

 I've started dreaming about opening ...for lack of a better title... A Sex Center.  Ok, it really does need a better title.   Something between a school for sex ed, a church/counseling refuge for people wrestling with some aspect of their sexuality,and a clinic for women in need of obgyn and contraceptive and prenatal and postpartum care. Basically a place to talk and to be heard, to learn and be cared for at the intersection of faith and gender. Something holistic and welcoming. Doesn't it sound awesome?  Needs some "tweaking."  T-w-e-a-k-i-n-g."

....