taking over already

Not only has my body been invaded by TWINS?!, but they’re already taking over the fridge:

recent developments

Because my reading list is massive…

just a portion of my masters reading list, scored at a used book sale

And because I’m apparently an old fogey at the ripe old age of 26… I now have these:

Luckily my reading buddy looks like this:

Tinycat.

8 years of summer lovin’

8 years ago, I got a call from the summer camp where I’d been a camper, saying they were short on counselors, and even though I was technically a year too young to be a counselor (they want college freshmen, I had just graduated from high school and wasn’t eligible til the next summer), and I hadn’t even applied for a job, did I want to work there for the summer? I jumped at the chance for a summer of fun, and my first day there, met the hottest guy I’d ever seen, no lie. It turns out he thought I was pretty cute, too, and within 24 hours, we were smoochin’ and smitten. 8 years later, he’s still the hottest guy I’ve ever seen. I’m so glad he’s mine.

Summer 2003.

 

These days.

Hands for Haiti, and how you can help

Image via Flickr user Edyta.Materka under a Creative Commons license.

It seems a million new disasters have happened since an earthquake devastated one of the world’s poorest countries about a year ago– Japan’s earthquake looms large in our recent memories, and the destruction wrought by tornadoes and floods ravaging my Southern neighbors is always on my mind. But over 220,000 people were killed in Haiti’s disaster, and, lacking any real government to take the lead in picking up the pieces, recovery has been slow. Cholera continues to devastate the people there. And my big-hearted husband and some of our friends are trying to do something about it.

Next month, Jon will be joining a team to go to Haiti and help. He’ll be working with established clinics to treat cholera and other diseases, and a nurse is also a part of the team. I’m excited for him to have this opportunity, and honestly a little worried about what he’ll encounter there. If there’s anything I covet more than your donations, it’s prayers for their work and their safety.

In addition to prayers, this trip needs FUNDS. The team has organized a fundraising event next Friday, May 20th, at the Clinton Center here in Little Rock. The event kicks off at 7:00 with classical performances from members of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra. These performances will be followed by a desserts reception, and then the music takes a slightly different turn at 9:00, with performances by local artists Bonnie Montgomery and Chris Denny. Tickets are $40 for the entire event, or you can come for Bonnie and Chris’s performances at 9 and make a donation at the door. Call Thomas Hudson at 501-412-7144 for tickets.

If you can’t make the event and would like to donate and support the Haiti trip, you can contact me: erniebufflo@gmail.com, or you can give online via our church, Eikon, which is sponsoring the trip and processing donations in order for them to be tax deductible. (Just go to the Giving section to donate via PayPal.)

I’ll wrap up with some of Jon’s words about his expectations of the trip:

I expect to be challenged, to look in the face of a suffering people who are crying out to God “why us!” I hope to be Jesus to them, to love the poor, the suffering, to cry with them, to hurt with them and to rejoice with them. I humbly ask you to be a part of this.

Image of Haitians waiting in line for aid via Flickr user UNICEF Sverige under a Creative Commons license.

help turn on the TAPs

I was supposed to have this post up hours ago. But, two days ago, I somehow dropped my mug of coffee onto my 4 year old MacBook. It just fell right out of my hands and landed right on the keyboard, coffee seeping everywhere. Jon immediately suspected that I’d done it on purpose, as I’ve been talking about wanting a new laptop for weeks, as the old lapple was getting slower and less reliable, and in one spot was held together by duct tape. Of course, had I tried to sabotage the laptop, I probably wouldn’t have dumped hot coffee on it, and myself, while sitting on our ivory sofa. Thank God for ScotchGuard. Though it had already survived Jon spilling a mojito on it last year, the coffee proved to be too much for the lapple. It turns on and still works, but the keyboard doesn’t. Because I have a million and one things to do for school, freelancing, and am teaching at church on Sunday, we needed a new computer ASAP. Jon’s desktop happened to have died a few weeks ago. So, we went out and bought a 13 inch MacBook Pro at Best Buy.

We are so incredibly privileged. So crazy freaking incredibly privileged.

I can go out and get a new, fancy schmancy laptop, and yet 4,000 kids die every day because they lack access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s just unacceptable. And a major barrier to clean drinking water for people all over the world isn’t a lack of wells, it’s simply broken pumps. And there’s a group of people doing something about it. They’re called The Adventure Project, and they’re raising money to train hand pump well mechanics and to repair broken pumps, to give people life-saving access to safe drinking water. My friend Alex asked me to join the cause and share it with the folks who read this humble blog. It would be amazing if 10 readers could donate $20 to help TAP reach their goal of raising $10,000 in one day, an amount that could provide 300 people with water every month. I’ll be chipping in my $20. Please consider doing the same. Click here to donate.

The Southern Girl Academy

 

image via the Google LIFE photo archive.

Have you heard of the Southern Girl Academy? If not, well, bless your heart. A couple of my fabulous friends, Kerri and Savannah, created the SGA to share the sass, style, and charms of what it means to be a Southern girl with natives and non-natives alike. Each week, SGA features a new post from a fun new board member about some area crucial to “what it means to be F’ing Southern: Foundations,  Fixing Up, Fine Arts, Festivities, Fellowship Halls and Foreign Integration.” They’ve featured posts about food, fashion, football, the fine art of swearing, and more. I’m proud to be a board member, and this week, you can find my post on Southern literature, which is chock full of freaks, prophets, and ghosts, and is deeply rooted in the South as not just a place, but practically a character.

 

For folks who have landed here via the SGA post: welcome! You might be interested in a post I wrote recently about Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and the idea of beauty vs. ugliness.

You can find anything on Etsy, even Memaw’s Treasures

So, yesterday I shared with you some of the beautiful things my Memaw gave me as she downsizes and moves in with my parents.  Last night I hopped on Etsy, wondering in particular if they had more of a certain set of dishes that my mom received and I covet in particular, because there aren’t very many of them in her set, and it might be nice to fluff it up a bit.  Sure enough, I found a set of the “Dixie Dogwood” dishes for sale on Etsy:

So then I started poking around some more, to see if I could find any of the things I received for sale.  Remember the commemorative plate for FDR’s Warm Springs, GA “Little White House”?  I found one of those:

And what about the beautiful set of plates my grandfather sent home to his mother from Europe while he was serving in WWII? It turns out you can find those on Etsy as well:

There’s a set of the same milk glass bakers that I received:

Even the little lime green citrus juicer has a twin on Etsy:

And if you liked my super retro footed teacups, you can find a close match on Etsy too!

While it’s sort of crazy to realize that a bunch of things that are, to me, priceless treasures actually sell for $10 or less on the internet, what I am reminded of is that the value of a thing is not its objective value.  The things my Memaw gave me are treasures to me because they belonged to her, and because they have stories behind them.  I’d never sell them on Etsy! However, I think I might need to set up a shop for all the things we decided to “yard sale,” like some of the mismatched Depression glass that didn’t have mates, or the random pieces of Fire King peach lusterware, because I’m pretty sure Etsy prices are better than we’ll get at a yard sale!

do fun stuff

Pacing the Panic Room is one of my favorite places in all of the internets. Ryan Marshall takes amazing photos and makes gorgeous videos set to lovely music tells incredibly honest stories about life with his wife Cole and kids, Tessa and LB. LB has a rare genetic disorder called Smith Magenis Syndrome, and Ryan has rounded up a bunch of awesome artists to help raise awareness about SMS and funds for case studies to help parents and families who are dealing with SMS. These artists have created Do Fun Stuff (Vol. 1) (If you click that you can preview the album and read more about it. I really wanted to put the widget at that link onto my site, but WordPress doesn’t allow iframes, boo hiss), which is a kid’s music CD guaranteed not to suck or make you want to stab your eardrums out with a rusty nail. I don’t have kids, and as such, I’m not forced to listen to crappy kid music on a regular basis. I don’t have to buy kid’s music if I don’t want to. But this album is good stuff, and I don’t hate it. In fact, I like it. A lot. I have a feeling you’ll kinda like it too. So, buy it on iTunes, jam out with your kids or your dogs or your own bad self. Help some kids and their families. Do Fun Stuff.

I’m back! Sorta!

As you notice below: I’m posting to this blog again!

We’ve moved from South Carolina to Little Rock, Arkansas. We’re starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel of boxes.  Jon’s already working. The dogs are finding new napping spots and interesting things to bark at, including the elderly basset hound next door and the cat who seems to belong to the neighborhood– we hear her name is Princess– and the Highland Cow hide our neighbor has hanging over our fence, looking like the pelt of Chewbacca.

Posting may still not be regular, as the internet won’t be hooked up at our house until the 12th and for some reason, all of our neighbors have password-protected networks.  Right now I’m posting from a Starbucks. I came here for the free wi-fi to apply for a job with a very cool nonprofit (fingers crossed), and decided to post that rambling thing below about Independence Day, which I wrote sort of for myself this morning but decided to go ahead and publish.

I’ve missed you, Internets!

this is just to say

This is just a quick post to say there might not be any posts for a while.  Saturday is move day, and it might be a while after we get settled in before I can resume posting.  Please think happy thoughts and send up prayers for a smooth move, if you’re so inclined.

As a random bonus, I totally got this post’s title off a poem by William Carlos Williams:

by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold