Discovery

Someone has discovered that cardboard boxes make the best toys in the whole entire world:

Napkins are pretty fun, too:

Haaaappy Sunday!

Cheering for ya, Skillets,

Sarah
© by scj

Growing

The Child was roughly the size of an adult running shoe when we first got her. Since then, she has almost doubled in size. Though she is cuter than ever, I am just dismayed at the speed of her growth. Soon, our girl will be all growed up, and her puppy days will be in the distant past. I wish she would stay small forever.

And this is why I love bathing her, because, without all her fluffy, dry fur, she shrinks for just a few minutes:

Oh tiny girl, I sure love you. How am I ever going to leave you in a few weeks?



Happy Saturday, friends.

Cheering for ya,

SJ

P.S. Girlfren's hair dried as pictured above:

She's our woodpecker baby.

© by scj

Prayer

My friends!

I'm lying here alternately watching YouTube videos and listening to the wind rush through the tree outside my window. My eyelids are heavy, and a Nap is trying to convince me to take her, so I think I will. But first, a few prayer requests as we move into August:

1. Endurance as I do the challenging work of retraining my brain; regular health victories to inspire me onward and upward.

2. Encouragement and hope in the face of my challenges. 

3. Complete and total healing sooner rather than later.

4. Patience.

5. Protection from the Enemy.

6. A sense of God's presence and peace; sensitivity to and confidence in the work of the Holy Spirit in my life.

7. Wisdom regarding the best way/time to reintegrate food and activities. Balance — I don't want to push too hard, as I'm prone to do.

8. Discernment regarding which medicine, supplements, and treatments to try as I do DNRS, if any. 

9. Physical, mental, and emotional readiness for work and school when they start in three weeks. 


Thank you my friends.

Shoot me your prayer requests. I think of and pray for you all regularly.


Love,

Sarah



© by scj

Missing

Dear Dad,

If you are wondering where your Nike compression pants and flip flop are, I found them:

Love,

Sarah


© by scj

Happy Monday

"Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities;

Forget about your worries and your strife."

("Yeeaah, yeeeeah")

I hope you were able to kick back and relax this weekend and are rearin' to go today, friends!

Happy Monday,

Sarah



© by scj

Sneaky Sneakster

Somebody — and I'm not naming any names, mostly because she deserves a christening post all her own— likes to sneak into my bedroom and climb onto my bed when I'm not around. She knows she's not supposed to be in my bed, but the Golden Princess loves luxury, and she's got pluck, so she sneaks.

She's a Sneaky Sneakster Extraordinaire.

Case in point: I was jumping on the trampoline one toasty day this week, and Girlfren was hard-pressed to find comfortable shade. There was shade on the patio, but the patio is made of concrete, and Golden Princesses are not fond of sleeping on concrete. So she found a sliver of shady grass and stretched out:

After I'd jumped awhile, I noticed Girlfren's head had disappeared, and a bit later, half her body disappeared:

And then, awhile after that, she had disappeared completely:

The sneaky little sneakster's a smart cookie.

Happy Sunday, folks!

-Sarah


P.S. My sister and I introduced The Child to hula hoops this weekend, with high hopes we'd turn her into a hoop-jumping circus dog.

Our attempts were not successful.



© by scj

Limbic system retraining update: Exercise

Yesterday I jumped on the trampoline for one hour. Yep, you read that right: one HOUR. I broke my jumping into two sets, but the second set was 45 minutes, so: HALLELUJAH.

This is the first time I've sweated (I love sweating!) and had endorphins (I love endorphins!) from exercise in ages. And there's this: the day before yesterday I spent much of the day adventuring, and when I woke up the morning after my adventures, I'd recovered!

I've also been up more the last few days, cooking, baking, cleaning, and conversing, and it's felt good — Hurrah!

Thank you, dear Jesus, for this progress.

And thank you, dear pray-ers, for supporting this process in prayer.


© by scj

Progress and Adventure

Yesterday Girlfren and I decided we wanted blackberries for lunch, and since I felt good — better than I'd felt in a long time — we went a-pickin in the woods near my folks' house.

When we had picked to our hearts' content, we looked up at the blue sky and said, "This day is too lovely to spend inside. Let's go for a drive through the countryside with all the windows down." So we climbed in the car and drove through fields of green with grazing horses and tidy red barns.

I'm not sure if it was the Queen Anne's Lace lining the country roads, or the gusts of summer wind blowing through the car, or the sun shining through the sun roof, but adventure began to tingle in our bones and we said, "This day is too alluring to spend in the car. Let's go find a river and romp in it."

So we drove up into the mountains, through forests of towering pine, until we found a lazy river laughing its way through the forest. We followed it for awhile, winding our way through the damp shade of the trees along the river. And then, when we were far from any farmland, we looked over at the river and saw frothy, churning white water tumbling over river rocks. "Ah," I told Girlfren. "This is where we stop."

Click on the photo for a bigger version

We parked and walked up the river a ways before settling on a large rock on the river's bend. I peeled off my socks and shoes and draped my legs in the clear-water current, and though Girlfren is not fond of baths, she marched like a seasoned pro into the shallow water pooling to one side of the rock, before climbing up beside me to sunbathe.

We spent the afternoon perched on that rock, my legs dangling in the water. I tried to drink in all the beauty around me — the thirsty ferns at the river's edge, the sun skipping across the water, the swarms of riverflies gleaming in the sunshine, the slippery red rock covering the river's bottom — but my eyes felt too small to hold it all. So I sang. Through the years I have learned to sing when my eyes are too small to hold the beauty around me. Singing is another way of seeing and holding the sacred.

I like to think Girlfren was moved to baptism by my rendition of "How Great Thou Art," but it's more likely she tired of my warbling and eventually thought, "Enough is enough; what can I do to escape this noise?" so she marched into the deep, swift current, and if I hadn't leashed her, she would've gotten much more of a swim than she bargained for.

"You know," I said, as I pulled Girlfren back onto the warmth of the rock, "you have the right idea. Let's not sit around anymore; let's go swimming." So I swam while she tanned, and then she and I forged the river and explored its opposite bank.

Before long, the sun sank closer to the tips of the trees, so we crossed back to our rock, gathered our things, and climbed into the warmth of the car.



© by scj