Can I charge that, please?

In the midst of our country's incessant talk of economy, two icons of our spending obsession--the Visa and Mastercard--have become symbols of my life's current non-work/non-sleeping occupation.

The VISA
After months of telling person after person, "We're waiting for a few more documents," I finally carefully clipped together all those documents and an I-129f fiance visa application, slid them into a manila envelope and put it into the hands of the United States Postal Service. My faith rests in their promise, rain or shine, to make sure it lands in the hands of the United States Citizen and Immigration Service post in California. And my faith rests in the Lord Almighty to guide the eyes and minds of the good folks down there to review the application and put their swift stamp of approval on it and bring my significant other to me.

MASTERS
I've spent the last few weeks feasting on brain candy. I've started an online program for my Master's degree in Early Childhood Education. I love it. I love interacting with professionals who are so passionate about helping children. I love the wealth of information that I now have to read in order to make the doubling of my student loans worth it. But, just like any candy, it gives me a belly ache when I spend too much time with it... I need to work up to this. I was to use the night I had off this week to work on the little baby assignment that my first teacher gave me of finding 10 scholarly journal articles on one issue. I slept 10 hours during the day (after a night shift) and woke ready to conquer the whole wide world. But ten hours later all I wanted to say was"Fie, fie on the internet and keywords and advanced searches" when the dawn broke and I had not found but one article. Alas, this is just the beginning of learning to exercise the ol' cerebrum.

So I'm officially waiting for the visa now. And I'm officially a fumbling academic again. And my cuticles creep up my nails, the birds feed on our feeder and winter weaves in tighter around us.

And the glories of God remain.

Playing rhythms on icicles--an idea inspired my Master's
program cohorts and their insistence that we should bring nature to the classroom. Eleven preschoolers have been coming to my house on Monday mornings for a little music--Katie is picture above and Emily and Austin are in the bottom picture.