Mired in the 20th Century.

Here is Blessing, looking a little pixilated, in the modern sense if not the traditional one:



If you look at her wig carefully, you may see subtle red stripes in it. They’re there, a nod from Fourthborn to my crazy-wild hair and my love of all things red.

Here is a shot of Secondborn (with Firstborn in the background), taken after BittyBit’s piano recital. She [Secondborn] got her hair cut and colored yesterday. There are gorgeous crayon-red stripes in it.



I told her she looked like Blessing. Not sure she was flattered by being compared to one of the resin kids, but each is lovely.

Yesterday was a mostly-wonderful day. I printed off directions to the recital, left in good time, was stymied by a wreck they were clearing at one of the intersections, and drove past my turn. I knew I’d gone too far when I saw the turn for Trainman’s house, on the south side of town, so I drove a little farther (by this time I was on a state highway, and turnarounds were few and far between) and found what I thought was the right street. I went down it, turned right as the directions said, and found myself on a different street than I had expected.

Fortunately, there was a mail truck turning onto the next street over. I caught up with him and asked if he could tell me how to find the address. He smiled, said to go to the corner, turn left, go three blocks, and turn left again.

The street which leads off the highway is a big loop, with a north half and a south half that connect somewhere east of where I was.

I got to the church fifteen minutes late. BittyBit was the first pianist. Thankfully, Secondborn got it all on video, and I will watch it later, when I am feeling less frustrated with myself.

It wasn’t until several hours later that I remembered that I could have put the address into my phone and gotten driving directions via GPS. I’ve used that function two or three times since getting the phone.

But I almost never get lost. I have a good internal GPS which rarely lets me down. It sure did yesterday.

The church was lovely, very simply designed, with stained glass windows forming the lower side walls of their chapel, and more stained glass above the altar. Their hymnal was red, and larger than ours, and I’m afraid I am suffering slightly from hymnal envy. I found several of my favorites in there, while I was listening to an accomplished young woman play Chopin [not my favorite composer, sorry, but she played it magnificently]. “Guide Us, O Thou Great Jehovah”; “The Lord My Pasture Will Prepare”, which is not in our hymnal but which I have sung in choirs in a somewhat different arrangement; and others.

There wasn’t time for a thorough exploration. It was a Chopin piece, after all, and not something by Beethoven or Rachmaninoff. [I wonder if Chopin is the quarter horse of classical music, with Bach and Beethoven as Percherons or Clydesdales, and Mozart and Telemann and Paganini as thoroughbreds?] But they have over 500 hymns in that hymnal, all divided up by theme. And the binding is red.

Seriously cool.

The Primary lesson today is all about how Heavenly Father answers prayers in the best way. As in, sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it is no, and sometimes it is not now. The timing of this lesson is not lost on me, nor the irony. If I were teaching teenagers, we could discuss that briefly, but I think irony is lost on the typical four year old.

I bought two bags of M&M’s and have divvied them up by color: the reds, yellows, and greens are going to church with me. The others are set aside for another lesson, but I had a vague inspiration of using the M&M’s like stoplights to represent the three classifications of answers to prayer. Red = stop, don’t do it. Green = that’s a great idea, go ahead! Yellow = yes, but not now, be patient.

Ironically, there are far fewer yellow M&M’s in that bag than there are in my life.

This is all you get from me, today. I have my Primary bag packed, and I need to fix breakfast and finish getting myself ready.