One of the things I most appreciate about my husband is his sense of adventure. Which doesn’t necessarily mean grand trips or scaling mountains. We adventure to the grocery store. We adventure to find the right light bulb for our weirdly-sized kitchen overhead. We adventure on the castle-esque playground at the nearby church.

But at the moment, we both have bigger adventures for March. David is finishing up his last day at his current job, and starts next week creating the new position of Marketing Director for AMTC. Tricky to explain just what said entity is, but you can check out the AMTC site. In a lot of ways, you might say that they are for actors and talent what Act One is for writers.

David created the “Be the Light” video on the home page, and they’ve been chasing him down to work for them every since.

And speaking of Act One, I discovered last week that I’ll be jaunting out to L.A. for several weeks next month for the start of an intensive mentorship program through Act One (where David and I originally met!). This round is called, appropriately, Act Three.

More on both ventures soon!

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When we registered for wedding gifts, we had a terrible time finding silverware. We checked all the usual suspects, and then started elaborate online searches – finally locating the perfect set at a store that doesn’t even exist in the midwest. Dave’s folks kindly bought them for us, and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed their exactly-right aesthetic: simple, with just a subtle touch of curve and shaping, substantial without being bulky or awkward. Understated elegance.

Our dishes…well, we couldn’t find anything that fit our undefinable aesthetic. So we decided that we were just fine with a classy set of stoneware from our local IKEA for a mere $30. (After all, who doesn’t need an excuse to stop by for some Swedish meatballs with ligonberry sauce?)

And now, I am unutterably grateful we did not register for fine china.

Our current cabinets sport those handy little pegs to adjust shelf height. But said pegs don’t lodge tightly in their assigned holes, and invariably a front one slips out without our knowledge. The next one starts working itself free, and then I happen to exhale while setting dishes on the shelf, and the whole thing falls apart. Yesterday, I set a stack of three bowls just a millimeter off on an already full shelf – and the entire thing collapsed in a hail of stoneware dishes.

I screamed, the dog panicked, and the final body count was something like five bowls beyond all hope of return to this life.

Time for some Swedish meatballs.

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I transcribe this wonderful note verbatim from my Grandmother. (She would be the “J” – Janet. The “M” appears to be my Grandfather Morris, and the “H”, his sister, my Great Aunt Helena.)

“Several of the nieces of Helena and Morris have recently heard of the Famous Yoder Family Game known for 75 years as PIGGIE HOGGIE and they want to know how to play it. Helena still has the original home-made game and no other cards can carry the nostalgic thrilling excitement of their childhood! (I must admit I thought it sounded pretty stupid until I tried it and it is fun! — Aunt J.)

PIGGIE HOGGIE, played by 3 or more players

BOOK, a set of four cards with the same number on them.  Have one book for each player.

TOKEN, buttons or small objects.  Have one less than the number of players.

To Play:
MIX and deal four cards to each player. Place tokens in middle of the table equally accessible by each player.

OBJECT of the game:  Trade cards in hand, one or two at a time, with other players until you have a book. Then you may pick up a token.  When one token is removed all players are free to  grab another one and the player left without a token adds one letter of PIGGIE HOGGIE to his name on the score sheet.  The first person receiving all twelve letters is in disgrace!

To trade cards, each player offers a trade of one or two cards at any time to any other player.  This becomes a free-for-all so that the first player with a complete book tries to remove a token from the table without being noticed. (Maybe still asking for trades).  As each player grabs a token which is left one player is left without and gets a letter added to his score.

Morris thinks the one with the least letters is the winner.

Helena says, “No one wins!”

“A simple game made by simple people”  –M.

“The more the merrier”  –H.

May you all enjoy it as the original Yoder children did!–J”

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We thought it was remarkably cute when we trained Nina to pick up her little metal food scoop and bring it to us when it was time for dinner. When it became slightly less cute, we put that up between meals – so she resorted to bringing around the frisbee David occasionally feeds her in. That had to go away too.

This evening, her active doggie brain came up with a first rate solution. She managed to get her jaws around her food dish – which is larger than her head and quite heavy. She’s been carting it all over the house, her large liquid eyes pleading for an end to this cruel famine.

Clearly, we are unfit parents, unable to provide our pup with the barest of necessities to fill her little belly. Anyone want to step into the gap and sponsor a child?

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I live on a mental agenda. It’s not something I intend or anticipate. My brain simply processes all the possible options of things-to-be-done and slots them up in time frames. And if something throws my agenda…well, ask my husband what that looks like.

Which is why I was keenly struck by this piece. I have no idea who Annie Keary is (aha. Nineteeth century English novelist. Thanks, Google), but she knows me.

“I think I find most help in trying to look on all the interruptions and hindrances to work that one has planned out for oneself as discipline, trials sent by God to help one against getting selfish over one’s work. Then one can feel that perhaps one’s true work – one’s work for God – consists in doing some trifling haphazard thing that has been thrown into one’s day. It is not a waste of time, as one is tempted to think, it is the most important part of the work of the day – the part one can best offer to God. After such a hindrance, do not rush after the planned work; trust that the time to finish it will be given sometime, and keep a quiet heart about it.”

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