going away

Now Playing: An MP3 recording of the Renwick House Psalm sing on 1 May 2008.

Tomorrow we leave for the international conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We've all been busy getting ready today. Laura just finished cleaning out the guinea pig's cage. While she was cleaning it, she let the guinea pig run around the schoolroom, where I'm sprawled on the floor with my laptop. Once it worked up enough courage, the wee animal took a rather over-enthusiastic interest in my laptop, which is now embellished with some little tooth marks round the edges.

Thus far this week I've fixed tea twice. Despite my siblings' and friends' slagging, I insist on that name for the last main meal of the day. We've been trying to eat up all the food, as usual before going on a trip. Of course, it didn't help that Laura and Anna went peach picking with Stephanie and her little ones on Tuesday, returning back here with a big plastic bucket full of peaches. They have been really good, though, fresh and ripe and juicy. I ate two at lunch after work today.

Philip, Anna, and I have been sharing music. Or rather, they two have been sharing theirs with me. Philip insists that I listen to Louis Armstrong. I'm skeptical, not having much of a taste for jazz beyond Norah Jones. Appreciating the technical acumen and actually liking it are two completely different things.

On Tuesday, I ended up talking with both Catherine and Emmaline. Catherine and I were in a Facebook chat for about an hour-and-a-half; Emmaline and I talked on the phone for a solid two hours despite her need to go to bed and my need to eat my tea. (According to her, she already was in bed; she just wasn't asleep.) Wonderful to talk to them both--but hard, too, because afterward, of course, I just missed them more.

It reminds me of the Mississippi kites haunting the skies right now. When the wind is strong and variable in the morning and afternoon, they veer and shiver, their wings and tails constantly shifting and tipping. Later in the evening, when the air is more still, they catch steady updrafts and glide motionless in long ascending arcs across the blue sky. I prefer the second, an equilibrium between the images pushing against my eyes and accents echoing in my ears and the actual scenes and voices around me, but only the Lord can maintain that.

Anna has been living with us this week, which has been good fun. With her here and Philip and Laura back from their trips, the house has actually been full for a change. We haven't done a whole lot so far, work schedules keeping things crazy. Yesterday we went down to visit Stephanie for awhile, though, and on Tuesday we went to Aspen with Philip and Laura. One night we discovered that she's allergic to relativism (it makes her cough). Speaking of her, she should be back from work soon, which means that I ought to go and be sociable.