The Spectacular Ordinary: Day 1
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. . . this happens.
And no, I don't mean me standing around in my big, poofy red coat holding a snow shovel.
Look behind me. Mounds and mounds of white stuff that we woke up to this morning. Granted, some of it was already there, but this morning we got about seven inches on top of the foot that was already there. And, hey!, more to come!
About all I can say about that is it's been a winter.
But around these parts we don't let a mere seven inches of snow stop us. Before we even got shoveled out of our driveway, we were front wheel driving it down our unplowed street to our church because Rosaria Butterfield was speaking this morning, and I had been looking forward to hearing her ever since I heard she was coming.
No little seven inches of snow was going to stop me.
In case you haven't heard of Rosaria Butterfield, she's a crazy-intelligent woman who has a Ph.D. in Literature from THE Ohio State University who used to teach Feminist Literature and Queer Studies at Syracuse University. So what was she doing at my church?, you're probably wondering. Well, she has this completely amazing story about how she used to be an atheist and a lesbian and how God got ahold of her heart and changed her completely.
You can read about it in her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.
I took a lot away from the morning, but what I mostly took away was that the Bible has a lot of power for people who actually read it, which is what she did--over and over again--until it completely changed her life.
Convicting, that's for sure.
You'd think that after that excitement, my day would be complete, but you would be wrong. Never one to let a little snowstorm stop me from shopping, I picked up Kate at school and drove to Nordstrom to help her look for a dress.
Because my little girl is going to a kind of big event this week.
I'm not sure if I should tell you or not. I think I'll keep you in suspense for a few days. But I'll give you a hint: it's happening on Thursday. And she gets to go back to her last semester's stomping ground.
That's all.
Oh, and we found a gorgeous dress for her to wear--the first one she tried on!--and it didn't take all day. Whew!
After I dropped Kate off at her house--new dress in hand--I visited three different grocery stores looking for semolina flour for the pizza dough I'm making for the Super Bowl tomorrow.
(For those of you who live in my area, don't bother looking for semolina flour at Trader Joe's or Jewel. You have to head to Village Marketplace for all of your semolina flour needs. And it might help just a little if you spoke Russian or Belarussian or something like that because the only English words on the package are "semolina" and "Product of Belarus." Don't say I didn't warn you.)
You would think that after all of that excitement--church, Nordstrom, and three grocery stores--that my day would be complete. But no! We got the most exciting news (and I'm really not being sarcastic here) later in the day.
While I was scouring the shelves of my third grocery store desperately looking for semolina flour, I got a text from B: "Julia champed!"
For those of you who have never had a kid on the speech team, that probably doesn't mean much. And I guess if you know Julia, you already know she's a champ, but that's not what I'm talking about. In speech lingo, "champing" means she won! She came in first in her event (oratorical declamation, and don't even begin to ask me what that means) for the first time all season. She's been close--she's come in 2nd at least three times this year--but she's never champed. So, needless to say, we're all pretty excited around here.
And more good news--she's going to the regional competition next Saturday. If she does well there, she moves on to sectionals and then to state.
It's kind of a big deal.
So, all in all, I'd say that this ordinary day, this ordinary week, this ordinary month is starting out pretty spectacularly.
I'll keep looking for more spectacular ordinary. And I'd love to hear about yours! Comments, please.
