… so LightHusband created himself and I am pleased to introduce:

Reginald Bean:

Then I got a little silly in the head and created the LightChildren. I’d let them create themselves, but they are with their grandparents and don’t have internet access. So they’re stuck with what their horrid old mother did. This is why we don’t have a college fund … we have a psychiatric fund for them. So here are Rosalie and Scooter Barnaby-Bean:

I found this all over yesterday, but it started with Mak. I almost got in trouble because I was multi-tasking at Bro. M’s when I should have been just talking. But here’s me … as a Simpson … and the funny thing is I have never, no never, not even one time, watched an episode of the Simpsons … not really sure why …

In any case, without further adieu, I am pleased to introduce you to, Olive Barnaby:

The other day I unwittingly wrote a post about the significance of 07.07.07 to the world … or not. Then I was browsing through my blog (her)story and came to the rather startling discovery that whether or not this date is significant to God, life the universe or anything … it’s significant to me. It’s my blog anniversary. My second. So, happy 2 to me.

I’m in a different place this year, than I have been the last two years. Both in physical and emotional space. The last two years as I wrote here, I was back in steamy Virginia anticipating my trip north to Vermont. To sit on the porch and hear the waters of Lake Champlain lap up on the shore. Today, I’m on the porch listening as I write. It is a balm to my weary soul.

I do so love it up here. My mother and my favorite aunt have been here too. We’ve been out gallivanting together. We did lunch and shopping (a first for all three of us together). We worked out together, found a quilt store together, jaunted off down curvy, hilly dirt roads to find strawberries together … all with me driving (and my mother directing 😉 she knows the roads better after all). It’s been a grand adventure. And I’ve been soaking it up to remember down the years.

We’ve been retelling the old family stories from when I was a child and from their childhoods as well. Stories I’ve heard at least a million times, but now I’ve heard them a million and one. Funny, though, there are one or two I haven’t heard and this time I’ve told a few of my own from my childhood that LightMom hadn’t heard, or added my own perspective to a well known story that brought gales of laughter, or in one case a sense of relief. It made me think of this quote (which I first saw over at Mak’s place, but later read myself in Relevant magazine, by the grande damme herself, Anne Lamotte):

One of my deepest beliefs is that every single thing that happens to you is yours. You get to own it, and you don’t have to keep others’ awful secrets for them anymore. You don’t have to be such a good son or such a good daughter that you can redeem their lives…If people don’t want you to write about them, then they should behave a lot better. It’s amazing when someone tells the truth.

All of which brings me back to my blog anniversary. The italics in the above quote are mine. I added them because I wanted my readers to pay attention to those words. Which, in the end, is why any writer adds italics to a bit of writing.

This is also a good day, three days after the celebration of the anniversary of our national Declaration of Independence, for me to celebrate my own declaration of independence. In a very small way. So here it is …

This blog is mine. It’s all mine. I write what I think about. What I write is public. I never, no never, write with the intention to hurt or threaten any one. But, as you might recall from my post last night, the truth is only threatening to those who wish manipulate it for their own ends. If anyone who reads this blog doesn’t like what they read, they can not read it … they can move along to another blog or another website.
But … if people don’t want you to write about them, then they should behave a lot better. I’m just sayin’ … that’s all.

Tuesday we spent the day on an island in the middle of Lake Champlain. We were neither here, nor there. Not in Vermont. Not in New York. We were in international waters! Well … not exactly. We were in sub-national waters. Or something. But we were on an island that was not subject to any state law. Very interesting. We didn’t break any laws, so it didn’t matter.

We spent the day with LightHusband’s sister, her husband and their blended family. There was fishing, swimming, hot dogs, hotdogs, wet dogs, a temporary aquarium for the caught fish, an adventure on a tube, and sundry other activities … all law abiding.

I got to have several really good conversations with LightSIL. We re-connected again. It was good. But something she said has been rattling around in my head for the last couple of days. We were talking about some of her interactions with her first husband and working out custody arrangements. Things get dicey sometimes. She mentioned some boundaries she needed to set that were entirely for her children’s safety.  Her ex-husband is a practicing alcoholic and the court has set some stringent standards for his behavior that she needed to remind him of.  She said, “I didn’t want to threaten him, but he needed to remember what would happen.”  I reminded her that she wasn’t threatening him; if he broke the standards set by the court, it was the court which would take action against him, not her.

I’ve really been thinking about that interchange for the last couple of days.  I’ve been thinking about how truth appears to people.  Some people see truth and it’s clean and clear for them.  They welcome it into their lives as a measure with which to measure themselves against.  They face truth without fear.  Others, see truth walking toward them and they pull out the fun house mirrors in an attempt to bend it and manipulate it and make it into something they can control for their own purposes.  If they cannot bend the truth, if they are faced with a truth they cannot manipulate, then they manipulate those around them.  But in the end I’ve come to realize that the only people who are threatened by the truth are those who want to manipulate it for their own ends.

So … the glove was thrown down. I was asked to play with the boys. Doug tagged me to play a music game that guys usually only play with other guys. They don’t do this to be exclusive. It starts when they are early teens and it’s difficult to talk to girls. So they talk to each other and create their own language around music. Girls never quite get included in this club. They also never quite develop the love affair in quite the same way that guys do. But most of us do love music, so I was glad to get this tag and share my shuffle with y’all.

Here are the rules. Just write down the first 10 songs that your iPod plays when it’s on shuffle. No sweat. So. Here are my first 10:

1. “O, The Deaths We Would Have Known If You Had Not Been With Us” by Seth Woods on Songs from the Voice, vol 1 – Please Don’t Make Us Sing That Song

2. “Truganini” by Midnight Oil on 20,000 Watt R.S.L.

3. “(Nothing But) Flowers” by Talking Heads on Naked

4. “Praise Him” by Burning Spear on Jah Kingdom

5. “Yahweh” by U2 on How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

6. “The Pink Panther Theme (Dance Club Mix)” by Dream Chaser on The Pink Panther Theme Remixed

7. “Psalm 114: B’tseth Israel (When Israel Went Forth from Egypt)” by San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble on Ancient Echoes: Music from the time of Jesus and Jerusalem’s Second Temple

8. “It Is Well With My Soul” by Audio Adrenaline on Underdog

9. “Quiche Lorraine” by B-52s on Wild Planet

10. “Somewhere I Belong” by Linkin Park on Meteora

This was a welcome respite from the other processing I’ve been doing of late. So I’m grateful to Doug. Now, to spread the love … I’m going to tag Mak, Julie, Erin, Scott, and Paul(ie).

… but I used it for good!

Imagine my dismay when I saw this in the space where my blogroll used to be …

… as I was scrolling down through my blog one day last month. It was horrifying. Not so much in a real gut-wrenching “your daughter has just been attacked” kind of way, but more in the “oh no … I don’t know what to do now” kind of way. So I did the kind of thing I’m really good at … I ignored it and hoped it would go away all by itself. But it didn’t.

It mocked me every time I scrolled down to check. It laughed in my face and giggled at my incompetence. Waggled its ears at my consternation. Pheh. So I took all the wind out of its sails and stopped checking. Hah! That’ll fix it’s wagon … that dreadful code.

I mulled it over and thought for a while. Then I decided to take my links (blogroll) out of my sidebar altogether. I’ve moved them you see to their own page. I called the page, Beacon Hills after the mountain top signal fires in the Lord of the Rings. It seems fitting, given the name of my blog. Then I thought, “I’d love to have a dynamic blogroll. I wonder how hard that would be.” So I did a Google search. I found a way to hitch up my GoogleReader to a widget in my sidebar (HT to ZeroBoss) . So the links that are listed on Beacon Hills are providing the sustenance for the posts listed in my sidebar as “beacon hills” via sonja. It’s so Web 2.0 I can hardly stand myself. You probably can’t stand me either 😉

Grace tagged those of us who read her blog (so now it’s dangerous 😉 ) to tell the world what books we’re reading … just so that she can get a sneak peek into our libraries. Well … since she kindly gave us a sneak peek into her reading list, I thought it only just that I comply.

Drumroll, please … here are seven books that I am currently wending my way through (in no particular order):

>> Cry Of The Soul (How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God), by Dr. Dan Allender & Dr. Tremper Longman III – an excellent book about emotions that our culture has deemed negative but that can bring us closer to the heart of God if we will embrace them with a heart that is seeking after Him.

>> The Artists Way, by Julia Cameron – for anyone seeking to find their inner artist, or give it a nudge. A really wonderful book.

>> The Places In Between, by Rory Stewart – a great book about a historian walking across Afghanistan during the current war. But it’s also about how we humans view one another and get along.

>> Healthy Congregations (a systems approach), by Peter L. Steinke – a good solid piece on how people in churches actually work together in healthy ways, and how to build on that.

>> Desire of the Everlasting Hills (The World Before and After Jesus), by Thomas Cahill – the third in his “Hinges of History” series (the first two were How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews). I’ve read the first two and am now thoroughly hooked. Cahill has a fascinating perspective on history and is a great story teller.

>> Exiles (Living Missionally In a Post-Christian Culture), by Michael Frost – required reading for those in the emerging conversation and I’m behind.

>> On Writing Well (The Classic Guide to Writing Non-Fiction), by William K. Zinsser – LightMom gave me this book recently and I’m really enjoying it. It’s helping me to think about how I write, and why. Perhaps you, dear reader, will even see a difference here and there as a result of this book.

Bonus … arrived yesterday and I can hardly wait – Organic Community (creating a place where people naturally connect), by joseph r. myers.  I often just throw books in our familial shopping cart on amazon.com, sometimes LightHusband places an order, then I get a surprise.  Yesterday was such a day.  I think I’ll be reading this while we’re in Vermont.

As far as tagging people … if you read this and feel inspired, please let me know in the comments. I’d love to see what books you’re reading.

That’s the new favorite line in the LightHouse. It comes from the latest in the Shrek series. Shrek the Third. This movie lives up to the series potential. We saw it as part of the Father’s Day package given to LightHusband. I’ll spare you the details so that you’ll have something to enjoy when you see it. BUT … there is a scene in which Shrek, Donkey, and Puss In Boots visit a high school. As Shrek passed a snotty high school babe type, she looked at him, turned her nose in the air and said, “Like … ewweth.” and we all fell out of our chairs laughing. It’s stayed with us and become our familial exclamation of grossness, badness, horribleness, etc.

So it was last night when LightHusband unveiled the bad news. The horrible news. The Washington Capitals are changing their jerseys. They are reverting from the very cool black, blue and gold of now, to the oh-so-not-cool red, white, and blue of the 1970’s. This news was met with a chorus of, “Like … Ewweth!!!” around the table … again and again and again.

But see for yourself. It really is … well … horrible.

We’ve been busy here at the LightHouse and my blogging time has suffered. Summer hit. With it came some new adventures that have taken me away from my blogpost. Let’s see …

Hockey … yep … there’s still hockey. I’ve taken on the role as Team Manager for LightGirl’s team in the coming season. I attended a team managers meeting for the league a few weeks ago. Wow. It’s been a couple of weeks now and I’m still processing the culture shock. The world of travel hockey is definitely a “third space” for many of these families. It also seems to be a “second language.” O my, o my. One thing I did learn from that meeting (led by the league registrar and financial officer) is that the players must fill out forms. I felt a veritable blizzard in July coming on during that meeting and the temperature of the ice rink did nothing to dissuade me. Paper … my very favorite renewable resource. I do get to organize it all into a three-ring binder and carry it neatly to games. Swell.

On the other hand, this is a role which will give me greater interaction with the girls. I’m excited about that prospect. I love this age group and working with young women of this age again will be good. LightGirl is none too pleased, she is certain that all of my faults as a mother will be on display. I reassured her that I save those mistakes for her and LightBoy. She was somewhat mollified. Hah!

Sunday we take LightGirl to Penn State for hockey camp. She’ll stay there for a week and play hockey, hockey, hockey with her friends. She’s going to die. It’s going to be like hockey boot camp. They have breakfast and room check at 7 a.m. This alone will kill her. Then she’s going to have to work like there’s no tomorrow. And then work some more. It’s going to really test how much she loves the sport. She will either thrive … or die. I’m betting on thrive … with a lot of pain for good measure. However, the anticipation is going to drive me to the hoosegow. I’ve had the opportunity to overhear several conversations between LightGirl and a couple of her teammates that are also going. The teammates have also not been to this camp before. The speculation and giggling are hilarious. They are also ruining my ability to concentrate on preparation.

LightGirl has a new “do” now. She has a bob. Think 1920’s Flapper girl and you have a good picture. It completely suits her and frames her sweet, sassy face. She’s so funny though, she keeps calling it a “bobbin.” Because her mother is a quilter, so it’s a bobbin. Like the thing you put in a sewing machine. I struggled to keep a straight face. After the hair cut, we went shopping and out to dinner. It was a fun “girls” afternoon and evening. She grilled me on whether or not I would miss her while she was gone. I had a hard time with that question. She won’t be gone long enough for me to truly begin to miss her. I am excited for her. I think she’s going to have a wonderful time; she’s going to be learning and engaging with people in a whole new way. I will miss hearing about that daily. We’ll catch up at the end of the week. But this is a new stage of her life. One where she is beginning to pull out from the dock and do things without us. I’m thrilled to be sure. There is a small part of me that is sad. But most of me is just looking ahead to all the possibilities … the horizon is broad, the choices are popping up like daisies. Adventure is calling … where will it take her?

LightBoy is going to be busy next week too. He’s going to a hockey camp of his own. Day camp here at the home rink. I’m relatively certain that staying home with mom and dad is going to include going to a movie or two and maybe a favorite dinner or dessert. Something fun here or there.

In the midst of all of this, I have been continuing to go my place of exercise regularly. I’ve not been doing laundry regularly so there is now a large pile of unfolded but clean clothes in my livingroom. The piles of unclean clothes are much smaller now. I am attempting to declutter our house a little at a time. “A little” being the key phrase in the previous sentence. So little, that in fact, it is imperceptible to the human eye. I believe that our “stuff” reproduces in the night when no one is awake. It does the hoochy-koochy with each other … the nasty as it were … and makes little stuffs to grow and live in the dark corners until they can assume proper adulthood in my closets. I think I’ve discovered what the origin and purpose of dust bunnies are. Hmmm …

So … yeah … we’ve been busy. Running around. Doing school. Chasing life. Wondering … laughing … crying … all the regular stuff.

P.S.  I just noticed that my linky-thingy in my sidebar is broken.  And I have no idea how to fix it.  No, that’s not entirely true.  I noticed it about 5 days ago.  But I’ve been involved in getting our finances installed in Quicken.  And … I have no idea how to fix said linky-thingy.  So, if anyone has any ideas, please throw them my way.  I’d love to hear them.

Really … it’s what Kievas said …

He said (and I quote):

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

3.At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

So … that’s what I’m doing. It’s meme time again!

1. I love coffee (love, love, love it). And I love chocolate (the darker the better). BUT … I do not like to mix them. I don’t even like to have coffee with chocolate dessert. Those two tastes cancel each other out somehow.

2. I used to drink Diet Coke by the bucket. But I don’t anymore. Now I’m trying to kick a vicious rootbeer habit.

3. The annoying thing about all this hockey in the LightFamily now, is that I hated it when I was growing up because my brother always got to watch Hockey Night in Canada which came on right in the middle of the Waltons.

4. The only kind of music I won’t listen to is country … but I’ll even listen to country if it’s got some kickass bluegrass in it.

5. I don’t like pasta with marinara sauce. I think we ate it too much for several years there and now, I just don’t care for it.

6. One of my goals in life is to learn to play the bagpipes.

7. I’m excited that I get to teach the LightChildren a unit on anatomy and physiology next year. That was one of my favorite subjects in highschool.

8. I find it very amusing that some of LightGirl’s favorite songs now, were some of my favorite songs … way back when. She is always shocked and then dismayed by this. Which I also find even more amusing.

I cannot possibly tag EIGHT whole people … it would make my head blow up. So I’m going to double tag four people: Makeesha, Jamie, John and Scott. Har …