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I’ve caught a ride to work with Lloyd the past couple of days, and I like it because I’m walking home again in the evenings. Monday night I stopped by Beth’s to visit the kittens and borrow her ukulele. Tuesday night I walked through downtown and enjoyed the lights all over the square. Peggy, I even took a few shaky shots for you.

This is the little house on the courthouse lawn where children can visit with Santa. (Santa keeps banker’s hours here, so you better check the schedule if you want to place an order.) The children are always telling me about it, but I’ve never done more than drive by. Tonight, though, I stopped for some pictures.

And then I looked inside.

Oh!

This is a tiny house! A tiny house! The chairs are nothing special, but that tiny fireplace threw me into a full-on Rich Inner World experience. I could live in this house! Or at least sit in my jammies, drink cocoa and pretend to roast marshmallows.

It would be heaven, if it weren’t for all the kids banging on the door.

I hope this comes across as well as I want it to. Some background:

1. It’s parent-teacher conference time at school. I am a little tired, so no drawing for this story.

2. I haven’t been sleeping terribly well lately due to the cats. 4 a.m. is giant-paw-on-the-face time. Seriously, Ralph, back off.

3. This morning I woke up with a headache, and we had a walking field trip in the rather cold weather, So I put on a bright shining brave face and was as sunny and cheerful as possible.

Now here’s the story: Once we got back to school I was a little fuzzy headed, and sat quietly during lunchtime. The children however were amped up and busy. Brycen sat across from me and ate very little as he wiggled around in his chair. Near the end of lunch he said, “Mrs. Sommerer, there’s something wrong with the lights.”

“Great,” I thought to myself. “One more thing I have to do afterwards – change lightbulbs.”

Then Brycen told me, “They keep going off and on. Watch.” and – dead serious -he went blink blink blink blink.

It was everything I could do not to bust a gut. “Yes. Yes, they do.” I calmly responded. No reason to burst his bubble.

Thanks Brycen, for helping my head feel better.

That calendar in the hallway at work is talking to my soul again. This time it’s not shaming me – I actually agree with it. (See how fickle I am? When it’s bossing me around, I hate it. When I agree with it, it’s not bossy at all – it is wise, like me.)

This current round of hammering-it-into-the-ground advice-giving has to do with contentment. It says you should stop after an accomplishment to appreciate what you have just done – not rush onto the next thing. Savor life and all that. Yeah.

i like these calendar pages. They affirm me. I am heavily Type B. I can’t fathom how Type A’s function without having some sort of stroke. All that perfectionism and ‘goals’ and organization? I can sit back and appreciate an accomplishment all day long. Heck, i’ll write a post about it!

Then again, I am sure Type A’s can’t fathom how I can be content sitting on my sofa typing a post in a messy living room with a smelly cat leaning on me.

How Type B am I? So Type B that I’m pretty sure I have one of those calendar pages upstairs in my pants pocket (I put on my pajamas at 7), but I’m too lazy to go up and get it. There’s a cat on my lap, you might remember. I’ll look for it in the morning.

I don’t want to be disrespectful and make fun of a church’s decor, but I have to share this weird painting from this past weekend.

Ignore the statue. That is a different topic.

I couldn’t figure out if this was a religious painting or not. it was tough to decode the theme. See those crazy animal eyes? It’s like Noah’s Ark was going to be populated with demon-possessed creatures, which would kind of defeat the whole purpose.

But wait – there are the …. angels? Maybe this is a Creation painting and the animals are just super-surprised to be spoken into existence. “Hey, weren’t we nothing a little bit ago?”

But then…… There is the left side of the painting.

What the what? Is that Columbus?!? Is this painting some sort of flash mob???

I will feel badly if this turns out to be some classic and I am an ignorant idiot. It will be like the time Kathryn and I went to the museum in Munich and were snickering at the paintings, then we read the plaques and realized that they were real paintings by the masters. To be fair, we were young and stupid.

The City of Lincoln Lutheran Choir (not to be confused with the Lincoln Lutheran School Choir) had its fall concerts this weekend, and they were both lovely. The theme was giving thanks, and they sang a wonderful selection.

The first concert was in Fremont on Saturday and went very well. I made notes on my program, as is my custom, and had nothing bad to say! I know, right?

The second concert was Sunday in Lincoln, and instead of making notes, I sat in the balcony and recorded songs with my iPad so Lloyd could listen to them on the way home. (So really, I attended this concert 3 times.) Points to me for not dropping my iPad and making a scene.

You can listen to my favorite one here. Lloyd is not the soloist.

Oh, and just for Brad, I did a 3-D panorama of the church. 😀