The August Collection
:: a book giveaway, reminders to chill, and a plant named Loretta ::
Some of my favorite posts from others are collections of what they’re discovering, so I’ve curated a few of my own for you. The whats may change as I evolve in this venture, but I’d like to always share things that are important to me. Check out past collections if you missed them:
The past month has been one on the road—a week away from home to donate stem cells to my brother, lots of last-minute bookings at our event venue, and many trips to The City to dine with our kids, grandkids, and parents (so many birthdays—a 7th, an 11th, a 31st, and a 47th—so much cake!). But even in the frenzy, life is good and I find reasons to be thankful each day1.
Feel free to jump around to different sections:
Printed pages (there may or may not be a reference to a book giveaway!)
What I’m Cooking
The answer to that is: not much, and I have to get a handle on this madness. The problem is a combination of this crazy season of life and pure procrastination and laziness. I’m like a 9-year-old who cries for two hours about cleaning her room rather than spend 15 minutes just cleaning. Please give me your tips to initiate the cooking or your quickest and healthiest meals. I lack motivation.
Even though I’m not cooking much, I am finding this recipe on repeat in my kitchen so I’m sharing the love: Broccoli Rubble Farro Salad from the Smitten Kitchen. It’s lemony, cheesy, healthy, and perfect for summer! I love it with a fried egg on top, and I never liked fried eggs until I united one with this goodness.
And I tried a new recipe this week that exceeded my expectations—Zuppa Toscana. I was wary because it seemed a bit too simple and I must be out of my mind cooking soup in the heat of the summer, but it was delicious (and cheap!). My subs included diced zucchini and spinach instead of kale, a can of evaporated milk instead of half and half, and a whole pound of hot Italian sausage.
What I’m Reading
Printed Pages
A Sea Between Us by Yosely Pereira and Billy Ivey
I discovered this book because I’ve been following Billy Ivey on Instagram, where he is known for his “napkinisms”—funny notes he writes his kids on…you guessed it!—napkins and paper towels.
When I saw he had a book coming out, I was like…wait, what? The napkin guy is a writer?? So I preordered it. I just finished it this week and totally agree with this sentence in the author’s note: “Everyone needs to hear [Yosely’s] story.”
“A Sea Between Us is the harrowing true story of Yosely Pereira, the love of his life, Taire, and their incredible fight to escape the brutal bonds of communist Cuba. Ninety miles lay between their island prison and their dreams. But crossing those miles was only the beginning of this gripping journey. After building a boat and enduring the Florida Straits, Yosely secured his freedom, but his own escape was not enough. Taire and their two young children still needed to be rescued.”
»»» I’ll be giving away my extra copy of this intensely moving story (that I won in a giveaway from the author) to a randomly selected commenter of this post, so be sure to comment! «««
On the Web
A couple of posts that seemed to go hand-in-hand landed in my inbox the other day.
S.E. Reid wrote about her dog Finn in The Wildroot Parables:
"On Saturday, as we swam, the whole experience made me thoughtful. Watching Finn’s at-first frantic swimming, going back and forth between me and husband, checking to make sure we were okay as we attempted to reassure him. And then, little by little, he started to adjust, to venture out away from us, to snap at leaves floating in the water and explore further from our swimming spot.
It makes me think: how many times do I spend spiritual and emotional energy flailing, worrying, panicking? Ignoring the voice of God attempting to calm and reassure me, ‘This is good. This is normal. If you just relax, you might even enjoy this process.’
As always, God sees the whole tapestry, the whole board. He knows that the water won’t hurt me, and I’m safe, that I can just enjoy. Like Finn, I don’t always understand or acknowledge His reassurance. But I feel it.”
And Sara Hagerty wrote To be watchful, not vigilant…, a post on how we allow dread and fear to occupy "the same space where our God-given imagination was meant to reside....dread is the killjoy of our imagination. And vigilance is dread’s carrier through our minds and into our deep hearts."
At the time, I was battling with a bout of overthinking, which turned into the flailing Reid described so wonderfully. And then God sent me a rainbow (He seems to do that when I’m dealing with the unsettling things in life, which I recently wrote about).
That arc of color against a stormy sky reminded me to chill. He’s got this.
What I’m Noticing
For my birthday, a couple of weeks ago, Mike and I headed over to a brick and mortar Barnes & Noble to pass time between lunch with the kids and dinner with his parents2.
Fun fact: I quit restaurant management when I had my first child but found I was a terrible stay-at-home mom. So I went to work part time at B&N. I came in early before customers arrived and
readshelved books for two hours. »» Bliss ««
Back to the story—what I noticed at this particular B&N was something terrible and something genius.
The Terrible
All the comfy reading chairs have been removed. Except for the café chairs and those little stools short people (me—I am short people) use to reach the higher shelves, the only place to sit is on the floor3. Maybe this is all B&Ns, but it makes me sad because how can one really make a book’s acquaintance while standing?
The Genius
Someone removed all the toilet paper dispensers (well, I can only speak to the women’s room) and remounted them at the top of the stall. This is genius? Yes. Yes, it is.
Let me explain something to those of you unfamiliar with a woman’s plight in a public restroom:
Unless you are the size of Twiggy or using the accessible stall, things are a tight squeeze in those cattle chutes. You must balance your body while hovering mere inches over the throne that is usually sprinkled with someone else’s pee. Add to that keeping the purse you’ve hung ‘round your neck (because the door hanger is MIA) from touching the the germ-infested floor. Do you have that mental image? Good. Now imagine having to reach below the dispenser that is already touching your healthy-girl thigh (ah! don’t let the purse touch the floor!) to fight with the 1-ply toilet paper that only comes out confetti size one pull at a time.
I vote yes to moving all dispensers to the top of the stall. Someone make a hashtag for this movement and let’s blow up the Internet with it.
That seems like a silly thing to notice, but when something strikes me, I snap a photo to remind myself what to share with you. Some months I’m noticing deep, thoughtful happenings, and other months it’s just quirky stuff. And we could all use more quirky in our lives.
Speaking of quirky, while we were in Little Rock, Arkansas, recently, we hopped over to Petit Jean State Park where we found breathtaking views, a wonderful restaurant in the lodge, and a plant named Loretta. For you writers out there, perhaps this can be a prompt for you today:
What in the heck is Loretta’s story?
I’m not sure why I’m noticing plants lately, but how about this one…
“Abutilon striatum (Red Vein Indian Mallow, Redvein Abutilon, Redvein Flowering Maple, Red Vein Chinese lanterns, Abutilon pictum)
Spectacular-looking, Abutilon striatum is an evergreen shrub bearing a profusion of showy, orange, bell-shaped flowers…adorned with crimson veining. Resembling Chinese lanterns, they dangle like porcelain earrings from extraordinarily long stalks…”4
Whatever you want to call it, my daughter5 is enjoying one of these plants on her patio, and the blooms are mesmerizing. Sometimes we complicate life by attempting to fabricate or purchase something beautiful when so often all we really need to do is look at what the Creator of the world has so intricately designed.
What are you noticing in your world?
I used to regularly record these thanksgivings in a gratitude journal but somehow stopped. Randall over at Thanks For Letting Me Share posts his daily gratitude lists, and it’s got me thinking I might start the practice of gratitude journaling again.
See…told you I haven’t been cooking much!
I saw at least two people sitting on the floor. Hello, B&N! Are you seeing what is happening in your own stores?!
https://www.gardenia.net/plant/abutilon-striatum
If you follow my posts long enough, you may question how many children I actually have. Let’s just say that God has given me more “kids” than I am worthy of or qualified for. We are a blended family (a little shaken, a little stirred) where there only sons and daughters. No “steps-.”
That soup looks amazing.
On a different note, I am not above sitting on the floor in Barnes and Nobel.
This is fantastic! I mean that, I'm going to try the recipes and will let you know how I do. Also, I'm a big fan of your footnotes, too!