The spaces in my brain are full of fluff. There are so many things bouncing around my brain at the moment. Things I'm thinking about, want to talk about, need to write about. Not a stampede of ideas really, because that implies a force of motion that I'm not sure I've got. Maybe a swarm... tiny little thoughts that don't stay still and buzz around, getting in my way and annoying me. There are so many changes going on along the peripherals of my life while things essentially float on apace at our house. A new house, a wedding, a baby all on the doorstep of the season of holiday entertaining. These are the times I wish for the ability to focus with clarity instead of multi-tasking myself into a mess. But, this won't be a post about the things I want to post about, because that seems pointless beyond the level of pointlessness I usually promote here.


So, some moments of joy and peace amongst all the frenzy around me:

I have a new niece. She is a week old, not quite 8 lbs, and precious. I was lucky enough to meet her on day 1, and her very trusting mother even let me hold her when she was just hours old. (I think this being her 6th baby, she’s not quite as nervous about the handling of newborns as I am, who has only ever held 3 fresh babies.) She has blonde eyelashes, and what I could see of her hair poking out of the ubiquitous blue-and-pink stripped hat looked to be in the strawberry blonde range, which keeps all things even at that household when it comes to kids: 3 boys, 3 girls. 3 blue-eyed redheads, 3 brown-eyed brunettes. Anyway, darling niece #3 is tiny, precious, and has already learned how to scare the crap out of her aunt with only a sneeze. It seems like babies shouldn't sneeze for at least a couple of days, but no one told my niece that. Suddenly, this tiny, warm, adorable, squiggly mass of baby went from cute & cuddly to making a noise I didn't think possible from something that size. I'm sure my face must have been quite the sight as I tried to figure out what I'd done to break the baby...

One of my Nebraska Girls* is getting married on Saturday. All the planning is coming together as the sheer momentum of events keeps things moving forward. We assembled favor boxes last week, and last night—as her things are being transferred from her current home to her new home—prepared the thank-you gift bag things for out-of-town family, including a personalized Christmas ornament. I have to say, I’m rather pleased with the way those came out, and our little bride was such a trooper! The original idea was a complete failure, and yet, she never even batted an eyelash at it. She just picked up and kept going, trusting in the shared knowledge of her friends and family to make it all come together. So, I put my craftiness to work and that’s one more thing for her to cross off her list. Now, I've got an outfit figured out for the rehearsal dinner, but I've changed my mind at least fourteen times about what to wear to the wedding. Black, because the bride doesn't think black at a wedding is tacky. Red, because it's Advent at a Catholic church, so it's the primary wedding color. Khaki, because together with black, it's the bride's favorite color... Or a black dress that has a khaki ribbon trim at the empire waist with something to cover my bare arms and red shoes... or try to fight holiday crowds to get a new cocktail dress that I can then wear to my husband's swanky work party... oh, the decisions!

Moving isn’t fun. Last in the lengthy list of friends who have moved this year are some of my oldest friends here in Dallas. New houses can be fun, but the process of going from one to the other is rarely fun. Add into that the purchase of the new home, holiday travel, bank rules and regulations that seem arbitrary at best, and perhaps the cutest nearly-8-month-old baby I know, and you get a lot of stress. I subscribe to the “one less thing to worry about” club, in that if there’s ever anything that I can do to have one less thing to worry about, I love to delegate that responsibility out. So, now I can add house-sitting to my pet-petter and animal-feeder resume. While my friends were off trotting the globe (or at least the country), I had the pleasure of getting to see the new house, check the mail, play with the thermostat and faucets, and some other stuff… like stand in the kitchen and look into the other rooms and imagine making jam there with the lady of the house, or picture where the man of the house would be fixing me a killer Manhattan… I can’t wait for the settling-in process to start and see how they make that amazing house into an amazing home.

So that’s the life of the Bean, on this day.

*Nebraska Girls being my fabulous friends who attended UNL with me and then let me talk them in to moving to Dallas with me