{pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}: Cheer Up Or I’ll Have You Executed Edition

It's been a week so far (in my mind the week should more than be over, and yet the biggest portion is still yet to come) of irrational stress and anxiety; the kind where you have to hide all the Facebook poster and bible verse admonishments to not be anxious about anything and to cast your cares upon The Lord 'because he cares for you' because they just make you more mad and anxious. Or is that just me? Maybe I'm the only one. In reality, as Matt daily and irritatingly reminds me, all the anxious toil of June is pretty well behind me, and many small potential crises and troubles have been resolved, and everyone is leaving town for July anyway, so there shouldn't be any more need for me to be on constant high alert.

“I know, I know, I know,” I've been saying.

“Besides,” he goes on, unhelpfully, “its a sin to be anxious. You're supposed to trust God.”

Yeah, thanks. I'll totally just do that right now. Maybe I should stop reading Jeremiah for a day or two and read the New Testament. This did happen last time to me when I went through the Bible chronologically. A steady unrelenting diet of the Old Testament does make the New Testament into an overpowering relief when you get there, but that's because you get more and more depressed, and more and more burdened by your sin, and more and more despairing of your own abilties as you go. By mid Jeremiah the landscape is pretty bleak. Even Wodehouse as I'm falling asleep has not penetrated through the gloom.

{pretty}

You might be exhausted by the endless pictures of my cosmos, but every day they are more amazing, so forgive me. They dance in the breeze, and nod their heads, and butterflies of all kinds come and flitter about them, and if I was a different kind of person I would write a poem.

{happy}

This is a terrible picture I snapped last night of July on my calender. This is what I wish I was doing all the time. I wish I was wearing that, and sitting in that chair on that rug, with that amazing door, reading. I look at her while I shout at the children to go to bed or clean up or stop pouring milk out on the floor like water. Then I look down and the dog leers at me with his teeth and his grin. Then I look over the vast array of dishes and know, in my heart, that if I sat in that chair in that dress on that rug, I would immediately fall asleep.

{funny}

This was how Marigold arranged herself to watch the France, Nigeria game several days ago. It took her several minutes to get settled and the pillow perfectly arranged and then she sat there most of the time. Occassionaly she would climb out and wander off and then come back and resettle herself. And me thinking I had put all the winter hats away.

{real}

Baby Elspeth is slowly coming to the end of her Afternoon Naps. She has napped steadily and happily for her whole little life, enthusiastically even, getting her pillow and death blanket off my bed and settling herself on the floor of the office day after day after day, driving us all crazy because we can't go anywhere or do anything once she collapses, her wide mouth open, snoaring gently. But the last few weeks she's been forgetting every few days, and then sometimes falling asleep suddenly in the middle of something important, like covering lots of paper with pink crayon. It will be the end of an era.

Have a lovely day, if you want to, and go read Like Mother Like Daughter, a poster of real pictures.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}: cheer up or I’ll have you executed edition