I'm Not Dead Yet! I'm Getting Better!

I was informed last night that internet Stephanie is dead. That's what happens when you don't post to your blog in four months. Well, then. I most certainly am not dead. I've just been a bit mute.
I should be more communicative, so I take last night's comment as a challenge. The gauntlet has been dropped and I must respond.

Since my last post I've begun participating more in the musical life of Manito Presbyterian Church. Not only did I join the choir, but I also started playing flute and guitar on the praise team. It's nice to be involved in music again and many people in the congregation have commented that the flute descant really adds to the music. I didn't realize how much I'd missed playing my flute until I picked it up again.

Jon and I put together a small group focused on discussing different topics in the realm of Peacemaking through Manito's small groups program. We've been a very small group, comprised of Jon, his mom and sister, another member of the congregation and myself. We've discussed so far: environmental justice, womens' rights, racial justice, and poverty issues.

That of course, is not ALL I've been up to, but all I'm posting right now is a tidbit. More later.

1516!!

According to an empty can of "Berliner Kindl" pilsener bier I brought back from Germany, the Reinheitsgebot (German beer purity law) was enacted in 1516. I know two people who will find that information important.

In Chelan

There's something about long road trips alone that is sorta fun. But it's even better to road trip with a friend. I'm in Chelan this week. Since I don't want to retype this entry, you'll have to go here to read it.

Prayers please.

Please pray for my mom. Yesterday while taking advantage of an unseasonably warm day on which to paint the house, her ladder slipped and she fell and broke her shoulder. Dad took her to the local small hospital and found that surgery ws required to repair the damage which was to the ball in the shoulder joint. Dad had to drive her two hours to Bismarck so that she could have the surgery and on the way they hit a deer, damaging the front headlight of their car and pushing in the front fender so the passenger door no longer opens. Please pray for them. I wish I could be there right now.

Marching with Zombies

We met at Jon's apartment, armed with assorted shades of pale makeup and blue and red bruise shades. Jon, his sister, and I caked our faces in the palest shade of makeup possible, shadowed under our eyes and cheeks, mussed our hair and added some fake blood at the corners of our mouths for effect. Then we shivered in the park with a bunch of white-faced strangers for at least an hour. Finally we stumbled and moaned through downtown at the back of the zombie horde. The rest of the horde was younger than us, with faces too pale and eyes too blackened to be realistic looking (in my opinion) and they kept throwing themselves against store and restaurant windows and walking way faster than any self-respecting zombie would shuffle. Especially across the street against the light. Although if you're dead I suppose it doesn't matter if you get hit by a car.
We ended at the mall, where a middle-aged man held the door for Jon and me as he told the toddler in his arms, "We better hold the door for these nice people. Otherwise they might eat our brains!" Jon replied with a "Nnnggggnhhh" and I moaned "Thhaannk yooouuu."
All in all it was a ghoulishly good time.

twilight and tractor engines

On Sunday Jon and Christopher and I joined Jon's church family at Greenbluff for a late afternoon of pumpkin carving and tractor driving, carmel apples and hot dogs. This event was hosted by a retired farm couple, one of whom collects antique International letter-model tractors. There were at least 6 tractors, the oldest dating back to 1934. I asked to drive his model M Farm-all because it reminds me of my dad's tractor. He helped me get it started and showed me the shifting pattern and how to adjust the choke, then sent me off across the field. As I puttered along in the twilight, across the wide open close-shorn meadow I listened to the sputtering growl of the engine and inhaled the exhause fumes that came back at me from the smokestack on the tractor's top. It reminded me so much of home. The sounds and smells took me back to riding on the tractor while mom and dad made hay or helping pick rocks or even later getting to rake hay and cultivate by myself. There was nothing better than riding home on the tractor at dusk, pleasantly tired and just starting to drouse to the sound of the tractor engine, looking forward to the glowing kitchen windows, washing the field dirt off your hands and face and out of your ears and then a warm supper before bed.

How it started....

I just want to send out a "thank you" to Katie, who introduced Jon and me over a year ago.
It's nice to have a hand to hold at lunchtime.

One, two threefourfive, six seven eight nine ten, ELEVEN, TWELVE!!

The title of this post should be sung, Sesame Street style.
Twelve months. That's how long it's been since one sweet young man, somewht girl-shy due to an oft-broken heart and a very shy young woman who thought she wouldn't get another chance at love finally figured out that the signals we were sending one another weren't all in our heads.
We've been a couple for one year. Happy Anniversary Jon.