family update

this is the "here's what's happening" regular update -- target audience: people who care alot; lonely parasocial lurkers, beware. tedious cataloguing of the mundane follows:

i'm enjoying my semester much more at malone this semester. i'm teaching my two favorite classes (only), & having time to *almost* get all the work done that i'm supposed to...

i've got a couple of stories i'm scripting right now -- they're at the stage of newness that i can be purely excited about them still...

lynn is teaching a normal load & also partnering with the local urban school district in a number of ways. the work she's doing is very rewarding and difficult -- trying to equip overworked, under-resourced teachers to develop literacy strategies for under-under-resourced student-populations.

one of the school districts has made some *huge* cuts in the past few weeks -- maybe more if a second levy is defeated this month. that whole bleak reality has been saddening and disheartening...there were a few days that lynn de-celebrated as the: "death of idealism"...

we LOVE: our babysitting coop. Our friends Jeff & Linda & Brian & Jenni have an arrangement which results in a date night two out of every three weekends and a housefull of two-through-four year olds every third weekend. It feels like a really solid way to share life and invest in each other's vocations and families. It's also really fun to have so many dates with the woman I love.

jaelyn's sick. not that that accounts for most of who she is and is-becoming, but it certainly occupies a front-ish burner right now. It's a recurring theme throughout the winter particularly....

Last night was a humdinger though. Between Lynn and I together I'm sure we got eight hours of sleep. Well. Almost. Vomit, not breathing through stuffy nose, fever, achy neck, sore throat...

BUT IN GENERAL ~ Jaelyn's delightful. She loves to play imaginatively with little people, dolls & animals; she can do so for hours with her brother uninterrupted and unsupervised. Okay for one half of an hour. But given the (st/)age we're emerging from -- a half an hour feels like a lifetime... She loves to care for sick, sad, or little people. It seems to be a part of her that's pretty unique and just - her. I admire that quality in her....

she really likes preschool & visits to the local YMCA --

as does ADDISON ~ who apparently deferred the terrible twos (because he was sweet, gentle, generous, kind, funny) until this week. He's ornery this week. In eastern-ohio-culture -- the personality trait of "orneriness" in children is celebrated -- particularly in male children (but occasionally a girl, too). It's a part of the cultural milieu that i'm still puzzling about.

He loves cooking. Seriously. Real or play cooking. Trains. Balls. Stories about (as he calls them) ROARS. (the most recent incarnation of said "roars" is a plea to include at least a guest appearance of Simba in any story you tell him...yes, i'm galled at the triumph of the disneyfication of the universe even in the lore of family and history...

we've been trying to sell our house for five months.

we want to move into a more diverse school district, a more urban environment & closer to work (eliminate a car) -- but we can't seem to sell our house.

we've been showing it more than once a week for the past three weeks, which is great right? Wrong. After 5 months, you're just resigned to the fact that whoever is looking at it is *not* going to put an offer on it. So you punctuate your day with a mad dash home in the hour you have between classes and meetings and you once over the bathroom and swiffer the kitchen and stuff all the brightly colored plastic toys into the large, someone less cluttered looking, but also brightly colored rubbermaid containers. it gets tiring.

But its one of our definitive rhythms right now. a recurring motif.

i'm using the term "post-evangelical" to refer to my faith journey right now...and feel disheartened by most of mainline American Christendom -- particularly all of the ways it gets commodified, represented & politicized -- BUT curiously, in light of all that -- I really love the church we're going to now...

as always, i miss my friends, miss time with my friends, and enjoy most the few opportunities there seem to be in life for true communion...

peace~