Bikes!

Ian and I used part of our tax return to buy bicycles for ourselves. I didn't have a bike, and Ian's was really old and he had to leave it in Reno when we moved. So we got new ones. His is a mountain bike, since he likes to bike on trails and do stuff that I would consider scary, and mine is something that's a cross between a mountain bike and a street bike (see how little I know about them, I can't even remember what they're called), because I'll probably do most of my riding around Winterset, though it would be nice to ride on trails every once in a while.

So I rode five and a half miles from our house to Clark Tower this morning. It was very fun, and a good workout. Let's just say I am very out of shape, thanks to my wimpyness about getting out in the cold over the last few months.

There is also something satisfying about riding short distances on your bike instead of in your car. It makes me feel like I'm exercising and saving fuel at the same time, and as my friend Cory would say, provides a "false sense of moral superiority--the best kind of moral superiority." (Sorry, Cory, I used this quote without permission. I thought it was funny.)

One More Thing...

Oh yes. And cleaning. That's one more thing I forgot to mention when I was speaking about my new glamorous lifestyle.

Now that Ian has a full-time job and I do not, I do most of the cleaning, and washing dishes by hand, since we don't have a dishwasher.

Lest you think my life too fun...

Life Update

Different people have asked me if Ian and I like Iowa, if we miss Reno, if I have found a job yet or am worried because I haven't. I was thinking about that this morning, about how God has been taking care of us and has done a lot of unexpected, new things since we came to Iowa.

I am the kind of person to freak out and stop trusting pretty much as soon as things don't go according to my plans. As soon as there's any kind of snafu, or if I have to wait on God more than, oh, a day, I become impatient and start worrying. This has happened a few times in Iowa, like when I first started looking for a job, but in the meantime, God has provided in a lot of ways, and so I just wanted to share with you all how good to us He's been and how many things He's done since we got here.

Here in Iowa, I am doing exactly what I wanted to do for the last year. It never happened because of school, work, being busy, the crazy life we had in Reno. But God has taken away a lot of things that were really important to me, yet replaced them with opportunities I don't think I would otherwise have.

So this is what I am doing in Winterset, for all of you who wonder how I spend my time:

-I am writing stories again.

-I am translating documents from Spanish to English, and making money at it.

-I am reading for fun!

-I am doing a lot with our church; I help with high school and junior high students on Wednesday nights, Sunday nights, and Sunday mornings; I lead a women's small group (meaning I study and prepare Bible verses/topics, and then facilitate discussion when we all get together).

-I am giving piano lessons.

-Occasionally I interpret for the police station here.

-When I run into someone I know at the library or at the store, I actually have time to have a conversation with them.

-I am spending more time with Ian.

-I have time to take a short nap most days.

-Most days I can drop everything if I want to and go to Des Moines with Mrs. Terri or Adrienne. (I'm not saying this happens very often, but if it does, I can!)

-I have applied for different jobs teaching Spanish in the fall, and have put together my dossier for easy assembly every time a new job opportunity comes up.

-I have time to observe, and to think, and to watch Lost, The Office, and Lie to Me every week.

In other words, I have the life I wished I could have for a long time, especially the writing part. I just never had any time to spare. It probably sounds kind of boring to some of you, but I like it, and I'm able to make just enough money to pay for what I need every month. We were so busy in Reno, especially the last few months we were there, that it felt like my life was spinning out of control and everything else was controlling me, instead of me having any kind of control over my life.

I do look forward to having a real job in the fall, and to being a little bit more occupied. But for now, I am amazed at how good God has been, especially since at first all I could notice was all the things He wasn't giving me, like a job. So He didn't give me a full-time job, but He gave me everything else I had been wanting for the last year. That's so amazing!

Windy and Music

So, the weather here turned cold again and then warmer yesterday and today is rather cold, cloudy, and windy (but the grass is still green!). I am sorry to talk about the weather so much, but I honestly find it fascinating here. Having never lived in the Midwest before, I have no idea what to expect.

In my last post I said I had not posted for a while because I was busy, so I thought I should explain why. I had taken a job playing the piano for recitals at the high school here. So every morning I went to the high school for a couple hours and practiced along with the students, and I also spent a lot of time practicing at home. Since I was paid based on how many hours I was at the school, and I have not yet obtained full-time employment, I was greedy and asked for many hours, not realizing that I would then have three weeks to learn twenty songs of varying degrees of difficulty.

I did not realize until I started trying to learn these songs how much of sight-reading and learning a piece is (at least for me) based on intuition, muscle memory, and sound. Some of the songs were very old Italian or German songs, and the chord progressions and melodies were unlike anything I had ever heard before. This made sight-reading very difficult because what my ear would want to hear next and my fingers want to play would not be what the notes said to do. And, because a lot of playing for me is muscle memory, it was hard to train my fingers into twenty new songs with their own patterns in just three weeks.

So I had to spend a lot more time practicing than I had expected. But the recitals seemed to go well, and now I have a binder-full of new music that I am capable of playing. This is exciting, even though I am sure that I will never play some of the songs outside of a high school music recital.

Magic

Hello everyone,

Sorry it's taken me so long to post. I was actually kind of busy the last week in February and the first two weeks in March, and then I was just so out of the habit that I didn't post anything for a while. Plus, nothing terribly exciting has happened, so I wasn't sure what to write about.

But now I have a story to tell you all...

I remember spring days in Reno, when the weather would finally become consistently warm enough that people with lawns would decide that it was time to make them green again. So you'd go out and water, or turn on your sprinkler system, and maybe do some fertilizing or aeration. And you would carefully and consistently work at it until, hopefully, your lawn was revived. If you didn't care you might not put quite as much work into it; however, the bottom line was that if you wanted to make your lawn look nice, you had to make the decision and put in effort.

Well, I have discovered that here in Iowa, lawns turn green on their own. It's like magic!

The weather has been warming up quite a lot. It's been a few weeks since our high was below fifty for more than a day, and many days it has been in the sixties or even as high as the low seventies. And, in the midst of all this warmth, I noticed that the lawns (including my own, to which neither Ian nor I have done anything) were slowly starting to change color. Then, the other night, we had an amazing thunderstorm and heavy rain for a few hours, and the next morning the lawns were noticeably greener.

They look so healthy and happy and alive, and all this without any effort from anyone! I realize that if you are from Iowa this might not be quite so thrilling, but I spent a lot of my life in deserts. When you live in the desert, you have to work to make things grow.