Too many cooks in the kitchen

While all of Saskatchewan huddled together with hot cocoa under fleece blankets over Christmas, I got to sip chilled wine on the patio amid cacti and desert heat. Not hot, hot heat mind you, but warm enough to wear bare legs outside. Our family has become so anti-traditional that it didn't even seem odd or amiss to be surrounded by nativity scenes displayed proudly in rock gardens; Santa and his reindeer making their way effortlessly over barren rooftops and dry decks. Strange. No white Christmas. No rosy cheeks, save those procured from one glass too many.
And it was there, in the beautiful kitchen of my mother's new home in a gated retirement community just outside of Phoenix that it became painfully obvious, there are far too many cooks in the kitchen. We are a family of cooks. Mom and Mark and I all fighting for head chef status, so unwilling and incapable of compromise. Fortunately maturity has tamed the insults and quelled the offense. in fact we even found it in ourselves to have a very lovely time.
Tonight, returning home to the frigid tundra I find myself deeply melancholy yet again. Only 2 weeks and 6 days until i get on a plane again. This time the destination will be so mysterious, the circumstances so out of my control, all my little cooks so far behind me. What am
I going to do without all my little cooks?

36 days

the money came
the date is picked
the renter confirmed
the contract finalized
the documents gathered
it's like this was all meant to happen.
I have 36 days until departure. I'm sort of crapping my pants at the thought of what awaits me on the other side of the world. But, as I grasp at straws, trying to make sense, I must confess these musings do me no good. Better to have patience, to wait and see.
In the meantime, I have enough to preoccupy me. I can't believe this is actually happening!

good day

The city is wrapped in a beautiful white coat. For the time being the wind is quelled and the air is so still, sun so warm, all of life feels like a movie set. Great flakes of snow land on hats and scarves and windshields and people are acting out the verses of silver bells on every corner. There's this feeling of anticipation and calm Sunday bliss that floats around town and settles into cozy, steamed-up coffee shop windows.
I feel like doing nothing but smiling or napping or seeing people I know today. I feel known today. I feel hopeful. I feel unworthy of the peace and the blessings and the hope, but I'm too tired to over analyze it. I just want to take them in, the blessings and the hopes, and rest. I want to extend it over to you. I want to give you this little piece of my cozy bed, this perfect line in a mindless novel, this sense that there's someone controlling the shmoz that's thumbing his nose just behind this sunset, waiting menacingly on Monday morning. And so we don't have to worry because it's all being taken care of.
Today I got to deposit $8,930 into my bank account. I had to shake my head at the girl who wondered how this money could possibly appear. I had to ask that girl where her faith is. It's coming, she tells me, it's building. And I hope for her sake, that she's right. This trip into the insanity, poverty, sadness, hopelessness needs to be laced with faith.
I can't consider it today. I just have to sit here. Glowing from an evening spent with old friends who bless my heart with their words and their love and their support. Smiling from the warm embrace of family that I now always seem to feel at church. Giggling that my friend Carissa has finally come home and Callie doesn't have TB and not everything is doomed. No, we've got a God who loves us very much indeed. Time to live loved.