Gracious.

Fleur.
Yesterday was the first day of winter term. I am in some really good classes. The one downfall is that I am out of bookstore credit and am going to have to fork over $100+ for my special needs teaching textbook. O well. The perks of being a student right? Empty wallets and sleepless nights. But coffee. Coffee is a real perk, no sarcasm at all.

I've decided that I need a scraper for my car windshield. Mittens and a spatula don't work the best.
Also, I think I might go buy myself a pair of black wellies. I need some muckboots for in my coop.
In other news, I have new tires on my car and we get one blue egg and a brown egg now. Only thirteen more hens need to lay. And I found my Bible. Let's celebrate.

I took Fran to school this morning.
[Then I proceeded to search every store in Redmond for "Voss" water. Apparently it's nonexistent. According to all the courtesy clerks at least. But Mandy really wants it. So I guess I'm going to Trader Joe's this week.]
On the drive back, I thought for a really long time about a lot of stuff. Actually I was talking to myself about stuff, but we'll pretend I don't do that. I have been bored in Ezekiel ever since I found my Bible (Which I just discovered is currently lost again). This morning I determined to sneak into a different book. I read James. I think James is a very heartfelt book. And hard. It says in Chapter 4 though,
"He giveth more grace."
And that satisfied me. Grace is a really good thing. Kind of like blue eggs, 4-wheel drive, wedding dreams, and silk dresses. It's one of those blessings. I've really been toying with the idea of what it means to actually be gracious. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but I will. I think if there's one thing I have discovered so far, it's that grace walks hand in hand with perseverance. They might even be married. Also, I think all these thoughts on grace have something to do with a little piece I scribbled down the other day that hardly makes any sense, but it had a preacher named Persimmon in it and a prostitute named Temperance.

The other day, I bought myself 14,000 Things to be Happy About.  This could have something to do with my overwhelming sense of optimism right now. I even started making my own list of things that I'm happy about. Then I made a list of things that made me angry lately and compared it to a list of good things that happened to me lately. But then I just sat and counted my blessings with tally marks--which, if you've never done it I highly recommend it. Things are really put in perspective when you have to stop making tally marks because you can't use your whole spiral notebook for blessings when you need it for homework. After all that, you really don't care how much your new tires cost you and that you don't have a windshield scraper. You just feel joyful.

I think this blog post makes no sense. That's okay though. I have to go build a fire because my hands are freezing and then write a cultural biography and study French. And lots of praying today. I have been praying a lot lately and I like it.

Love, Bells.