At least there will be plenty implied

This month has been a wonderful blog month. I began NaBloPoMo which has initiated a love affair and a growing respect for my blog and for habit.

1. I discovered Today's Letters, which has taken me by storm.

Emily and Tim Loerke are a couple from Dallas, Texac. Her bio makes me die it is so adorable. It reads, "Mr. Loerke and I have been married for 5 years. We like to dance in our jammers, sleep late in the biscuit, build forts, write each other love letters, and spend lots of time in the kitchen experimenting with food. We also get to ask each other for forgiveness each day. Holla." Seriously, oh my goodness. They are incredible God loving couple who love small groups, ice cream and calling the things in their life by funny names. They call their car a fart box and their bed a biscuit. AWWWWWESOME! My favourite posts (at the moment -they seriously get cuter and more awesome every day) would be their Halloween post because they drew her beard on with those smelly marker and the post where they talk about how they met and fell in love because honestly who doesn't love those stories. And the posts are back to back! They. Are. Great.

2. I love Bluebird Baby. She is a photographer out of Maine and even just the photos of her house are mesmerizing. She's a big antiques person (so is Emily Loerke actually! There's a mathematical equation here waiting to happen) but she did a reno on her kitchen that I can't get over. The open face cabinets are beauuuuuutiful. Krasivaya! She does every monday, these links pages that are so great. Get's you listening to new music, looking at new pictures, and seeing new sites. Gweat! She has the cutest little daughter who dresses herself like a total champ and she has the cutest love ever too. She has a whole category called, "I love Sasa". Ummms yes.

3. I will put Smitten Kitchen on here because I truly spend an inappropriate amount of time on food blogs. Which is crazy because I don't even really like cooking that much. Or eating. But on every blog I've ever been on in their link tab they have Smitten Kitchen listed. Everyone loves her. And she's Jewish, which means I love her. She also has a surprise me button which is every browsing web surfer's nemesis because it keeps you there longer than you ever intended to stay. But if you really wanted to invest your time in meaningful things you wouldn't be surfing the net. :) This looks delish and many a Casa del Dempsey staple in it. I want to eat far more sweet potato because I'm a tuber hound. Cheers.

Prompt!

P.S~ I've been trying to resist until December 1 but the Christmasness is working itself into my mind. I have a Christmas playlist on my iPhone now. And we got a Yankee Candle. Merry Christmas!

"I have to be careful...you're a bubble in my hand."

Last night was the first meeting of the Regent Spouses' Network which is precisely that: women at the end of their ropes because their husbands are working on their Masters. I kid but it was very cool to get around other women who are at such unique parts in their lives. One is in her mid forties with grown children. One was mega-pregnant. One had four boys. There were a couple of us newbies first years who all shared a similar sentiment that we were "so very very not ready for babies and if God is ready for that for us he has some preparatory work to do". Some are American, some were from South Africa.

Sitting around in a circle, sipping coffee and mowing on these bars that were miraculous wadges of chocolate and shortbread and this gooey, melty-mouth centre filling that somehow made me understand why it must be so hard to wean yourself off crack. I could introduce myself to so many girls my age who are married and have husband's studying and that is one thing that I have struggled to find since I got married. I find that Christian circles are like breeding pools for women like that but they can sometimes be...well lets be honest, they can be kind of weird. These ones though ('these ones' makes it sound like they're playing cards), were so sweet. Great senses of humour and really eager to get involved with each other. Conversation did stray at the end, guided by an adorable girl from Cape Town, to the bunk driving in Vancouver. Not only is it a steering wheel on the other side but it's driving on the other side of the road. She and some of the other International girls agreed that it was a hard transition. I made sure they knew that I've been driving on the right side of the road since I started to drive and Vancouver still makes me apoplectic. We shared cheap grocery stores and tips on cool places to go and great places to shop. I'm not local but I live in an easy part of the city to live in. A couple of the girls live very south so it's a train and two buses to get anywhere. Oy. The Americans were very excited about the free health care. I didn't want to ruin by telling them to look at their health care payments on their next paycheck. It only looks free.

We played a nice, simple, Christian-y game of get to know you questions involving Smarties. It made me realize that there are overwhelmingly inane questions associated with getting to know someone. Some of the questions were fine like 'where's your favourite place you've visited' which people are fairly content to answer and 'favourite food' which got a unanimously positive feedback but then questions like "what's your husband studying' and 'what's your favourite thing about being married' that are to the one totally whatever questions and for the second, a question that I don't mind answering but it's just such a vapid question. Whether you're in your first year of marriage or your twentieth year of marriage, the answer to something like that can't be encompassed in seconds or in any situation where it's followed by "Can I eat my Smarties yet?". You want to know someone and trust someone before you can really get into the meat of that question. I also don't think that some people ever think about that. It's something in their hearts that they own but they've never put it into words for someone else before. And sometimes there is no reason to. There are fun, conversational questions that you can ask when you're meeting new people and trying to get a conversation moving. Like something about a hidden talent or favourite joke. Everyone wants to tell something about eating with chopsticks using their feet or their favourite 'why did the chicken cross the road'.

I've been so blessed to see and understand God's presence in our marriage this past week. Coming back to Vancouver this summer after our holidays, I felt apprehensive about the social aspect of our lives. I've learned a lot about myself in the past couple years just about how I operate as a social animal. Namely, I'm not an animal about it. I am timid when it comes to introducing myself and I am shy about sharing things about myself. If I am with someone I know, it is slightly easier but alone I have to consciously prep myself not to be self-loathing and nervous. Moving to a new place always brings to focus this struggle and I have to be careful not to extrapolate that and read it into my self-worth.

In praying a lot about it, I found that the Lord has been bringing me opportunities to push myself in that respect. Westside has been such a wellspring of nurturing community and then being at school I have the opportunity to interact with people that will profoundly shape and challenge me in these coming years.

Scott and Jo got a dog which is so adorable and wonderful. He's a poodle but like a dude poodle not one of the froofy gay poodles. He's all shaggy and his name is Hendrix. We went over the night they got him to see him and he had been so excited earlier that he had thrown up.

~ This is a super cool song.

~ And so it this. This song always makes me think of painting last summer. Such a crappy job but the actual painting was pretty. I was caught by the owners of the house shaking my booty to this up on their roof a couple of times.

~ And this is a massively wonderful song. She totally blisses out at the end but whenever we sing this at church I sob through the whole thing.

Do Svidanya!

P.S ~ Russian is still totally awesome and it will be totally awesome until I have to actually do something with all of those letters. I will let you know how much I cry when I have to conjugate a verb.

One thing I appreciated about a small University was there was always a place to sit

Day one of Brianne vs. hugeness population.

"I not only want to sit. I want an entire table to myself."

UVic improperly prepared me for this. So did Mount Royal. Maybe since this is round three and I am experiencing a rude awakening, the common denominator is me...

Altogether a good time though.

I have dunked my head in the boiling, thick water that is the Russian language and have found it's not too bad. I have a good handle on the most useful facets of learning a new language like, "Hello", "goodbye", and "No, I'm sorry I'm from Canada". My teacher said we shouldn't bother learning "excuse me" because they never say that in Russia anyway.

One of my creative writing courses this semester is Writing for Stage and Radio. Whenever I think of a radio play, I think of those hilarious ones from the forties (this is first hand experience obviously) where they would do murder mysteries and dramas and there would be hysterical crying, gunshots and shrieking orchestral strings. I don't know, kind of like this. Then I thought of Stuart McLean. He is the KING of radio monologues. But that's the thing. Stuart McLean is awesome as Stuart McLean. People send him in stories and then he Stuart McLeans it and suddenly the most inane story of a man getting a flat tire on the side of the road makes me stop in the middle of the sidewalk and squish my cheeks together in a fishy face because they are sore from laughing so hard. The man has a gift. But we don't want Stuart McLean to be merely the voice, no one wants the pressure of writing for Stuart McLean and then listeners sitting in their cars/living rooms/back rooms wondering "whoa what happened to Stuart McLean?", we want him to be Stuart McLean. So in the small and admittedly monopolized world of radio drama has yet to really be tapped into. But when it has, UBC has a class for that. And has for a while.

I'm part of the Regent Spouses Network (there is no joiner-ish activity possible that I'm not signed up for this year). The kick-off is tonight. Everyone has to be baited with coffee and doughnuts in order to do anything but signed up on FB and all. Time to make friends! Everyday of classes last week I was on the Regent campus (even though I don't even go there) which I think was slightly misleading for people who actually go there because they associate me with people they for some reason need to know and remember the name of. Which is so very sweet. But I'm not trying to remember their names. I bought a bible at their bookstore and then returned it and then bought another one and then bought cards and then saw my husband and then stood around looking awkward and therefore...I am someone to know.

We had a wine and cheese party at our place on Saturday which was...amazeballs. Super fun. Everybody brought and wine and a cheese that would go well with it. We had chocolate and grapes and all of this stuff that people say goes well with wine when really it takes good with wine because it tastes good period. And then we played this game called "Things" which is kind of like Balderdash and was likewise very funny. And then we played Cranium which is an outrageous game. Do you know the names of two Governor-Generals from before Confederation? Well we needed to know that. Seems...obscure. But it was so fun. Scott and Jo are mega game people. And then Jesse, Jo's brother, is a mega games person and then we had some 'undecideds' and 'strongly agrees' so it made for a great game. Most of them were from church and are such great people. And then Matt had a friend from Prairie who now goes to Regent as well that is hysterical. You know the fishy-face thing? Anytime around BJ is like that. She should meet Stuart McLean. So they stopped by. And great cheese and wine and assorted hilarity ensued.

It has been so great being home and being in our community. Small group starts up this week. There were so many great ones and we prayed a lot through two in particular and we felt the Lord was leading us to support Scott and Jo in theirs which is going to be so great. We have kick ass conversation even when we're not in a small group setting so I think when everyone comes really focussed for Jesus time it'll be so good.

We're hitting the rainy season here. But I have so many wonderful scarves and boots and sweaters and fall is my favourite time of year so needless to say I am, yes, very excited about this too. The 12 Project that I'm doing with Lacey is so much fun and our theme for September is take a picture in your favorite coffee shop. I'm really invested in a piece that I'm working on right now that's not a school project but it's a story I came up with during the summer. I take one night a week and I get out of the house and write. I get myself some tea and chill out in a good spot (preferably by the plug in) and then just sink into it. If I can make a habit for myself I can actually begin to see growth and change in my writing. That will make it so that when I am writing for school and for a deadline that I don't feel like I'm drawing up squeaky wheels.

Baka!

-Bye (In Russian!)