thanks, don!

a couple side notes before i get into my ramblings...
1) i bought one of those cinnamon brooms tonight. it was $5 at old time pottery (and made in the USA!) we've talked of getting one for years and i finally did it. i was flipping through my nov. issue of real simple magazine and was wishing for the warm smells of autumn/the holidays. it's hidden in a corner..it's to be smelled, not seen.

2) i made chocolate chip pumpkin cookies with alena's help. that's one main thing i've been looking forward to. when you say "kids" i think "make cookies with". it was lots of fun. the sugar rush she had from eating some dough and 1/2 cookie was not. yes, i do believe the complete meltdown that's not a part of our regular bedtime routine was directly related to a small amount of sugar since she's used to having none.

3) i had leftover pumpkin puree, so this morning we made pumpkin pancakes. also delish. however, i want to know why weight watchers gives 1 point per pancake made from a box mix, but 3 points per pancake made from scratch? (which mine was since we were out of bisquick.) my true ingredients are way healthier than anything in a shelf-stable box. no fair.

ok. *********************************************************************************

i read donald miller's latest book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years last week. it's a very fast read and got through it during airport/flying time alone.

basically, steve taylor (a fav of mine) came to don wanting to make a movie out of Blue Like Jazz. however, don's writing is rambling and his life was too boring to make an interesting movie, therefore they pretty much are taking the basic idea of a couple scenes in the book and changing everything else. (personally, i think i would've told steve that if my book wasn't interesting enough, he didn't have to make a movie, but i guess everyone has a price...)

it was during this re-write of donald's life that got him to thinking "what would make my life interesting enough to be a movie in and of itself?" he studied the characteristics of story, the structure of what makes something interesting to others. then he compared it to his own life and tried to see changes that could be made.

i guess the basic theme is the same old tale of live like you were dying, or fulfilling your bucket list or whatever email forward you got most recently. we need to live like every moment counts, live every day with purpose.

but the truth of the matter is, life gets boring and mundane...that's part of life. you wouldn't appreciate an adrenaline rush or a calm vacation as much if every day of your life were like that. life falls into a routine of going to work, paying bills, cleaning house, grocery shopping and mowing the grass. some days you would feel good if you actually got any of those things done.

i've been signed up for living with purpose for a while now. i've long known that i want to live life fully and not just run in the rat race toward a mirage of cheese. i guess this is maybe working against me, as i end up spending time worrying about my life being non-mediocre rather than actually getting out there and doing it.

anyway, donald miller's book is about his pursuit of getting off the couch. he mentioned something about the setting of our story that jared also pointed out to me. a guy could kiss a girl. or he could kiss a girl on a bridge by a waterfall under a sky full of stars. the setting makes all the difference.

that's it. he totally put into words what i haven't been able to. all the external things of nashville i like. but there's something about the setting that's not doing it for me. or, maybe more accurately, it's my attitude toward the setting. it's not that florida is some magical place, and we certainly had to pay bills and clean house and go to work every day there too. it's just that the setting was different. i didn't care about the mundane things because, at the end of the day, i was always a short walk from the Indian River and a 10 minute drive from the Atlantic Ocean. so now i guess i need to figure out what i really want my setting to be. if my setting is nashville for a while, i want to be able to embrace it and love it, not waste it wishing for a different setting.

nashville will probably always be a strange place to me. it's kind a love/hate thing. i'm not sure where i would truly rather be at this moment. i guess none of us will really ever be completely comfortable with the setting until we're finally Home.