When you're cute...

...there's no such thing as a bad-hair day.

A walk on the beach

The anticipated ice storm and snow didn't come, so we were able to make it out to the Coast from Portland without any problem last weekend. And then the sun shown all day. And at evening, the cloud bank stayed just enough to the south and east that the sun was able to peak out before setting. And the tide being out made the beach all shimmery with reflections. And this is what happened:

These colors are all as captured by my camera. I made no changes. Credit goes to the Creator.

'Tis the season

....to write so many lists you need a list to keep track of your lists.

....to be thinking of so many disparate things that you forget one very most important thing.

....to stand in line at the post office and the grocery store and the photo lab and tell yourself that this is all part of the season you're happily sharing with those really slow people in front of you.

....to wonder how you were ever busy before, when you didn't have wrapping and shopping and decorating and sending to do -- just cleaning and cooking and picking things up at the store and volunteering and working.

'Tis the season to turn on the holiday music really loud and sing along with whoever's singing and remember that everything you do at Christmastime is going to make someone happy. And that will make you happy too.

Here's a happy picture:



Here's a happy verse I wrote some years ago and attached to a Christmas cookie cutter, to help my friends, similarly yoked, with their holidays:

I can shape the holiday, I've all it takes to start
The decor, lights, the treats and gifts are only just a part

I also have a family whose joy I want to feel
And faith to know the Savior's birth makes celebrating real

The shape of every busy day is largely up to me
I'll start with prayer, set steady goals, remember He taught peace

I know the Savior knows my needs, to follow is my choice
That on this holiday to Him, I can, with all, rejoice.

Love to all!

When they're down

The only way to get noticed is to mess up.

I first noticed this at church with organ music.

Organ music is just there, like light fixtures and carpeting, until something goes wrong. Hit a sour note and everybody looks up to see who's playing. Even if you've played 239,647 notes right, the one's that's wrong gets the attention.

This, I would tell a friend organist commiserating over a goof, is why it's OK to mess up on the organ now and then: To get noticed.

But there's messing up and there's messing up. There's accidentally messing up and there's stupidly messing up and there's intentionally messing up.

And the news has been full of all manner of messing up lately.

Take the local quarterback, whose post-game tirade has sucked all the glory out of hard-won victory. It was stupidly messing up and it's what people are talking about and remembering more than his game-winning touchdown.

Take the party-going interlopers who thought it would be a lark to crash a White House dinner. Their intentional mess-up is probably not bringing in the kind of attention they'd sought.

Take Tiger Woods, who messed up in all three ways, and do with him what you will. I can't look anymore.

The rhetoric is tiring. The ugliness depressing.

It's a kick-em-when-they're-down culture we've become.

If everybody could just all go through life and not mess up....

But since we can't apparently, maybe we should just let people fix their own messes without our nosy interventions and maybe we should just admit that sometimes we mess up too and maybe we should try and remember where possible, those other 239,647 notes.

I hear the White House dinner really was quite nice.