I went hiking with my sister and her two dogs today, under a lazy blue sky, a sky with no particular commitments. Some summer skies are serious, at least, about their blueness; this one was sort of a pale hazy blue, sprinkled with clouds which trickled away at their edges rather than definitely ending.

We debated whether to go up to the marsh (no shade), or to the Kettle Moraine forest (too far a drive), or a nearby park where you can swim in the Rock River (no place to walk, and the younger dog has just been spayed and can't get her stitches wet). We finally settled on Pike Lake, where we could both hike and let the older dog swim (though it would be horribly crowded on a Saturday, as indeed it was). The beach and picnic areas were swarming with people talking boisterously in Spanish and English, grilling, playing volleyball, dancing to music played on scratchy boomboxes, and most of all eating. But the trails were not nearly so crowded, and anyway the congestion gave us a chance to practice such important dog skills as Continuing to Walk Nicely Even Though There Are People Over There, and Calmly Greeting Overly Rambunctious Fellow Dogs.

On the way home, we stopped to get a raspberry shake for the people and an ice cream cone for the dogs. (Ice cream is, for some reason, the only exception to my sister's rule against sharing people food with dogs. Yuck!)

3 weeks until the wedding. (Or 15 more packing days until we leave, as my mother informed me this morning.)

I actually enjoyed giving a wedding shower, by the way. Hosting a party has distinct advantages over attending one, for the introvert: as long as I have something useful to do, I never feel awkward. The bride and groom flew in for the weekend and were unbelievably cute. We played only one game, in which only the guests of honor had to answer the questions, and the rest of the guests got to laugh at their attempts to guess each other's answers. The chicken salad wilted, and the aunt who was bringing the decorations didn't arrive until half an hour before the party was to begin, but what fun would a party be without some minor crises to overcome?

I'm sure that all crises attending the wedding itself will also be resolved in the nick of time, as is common practice. I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to deal with them. All I have to do is fuss about helpfully during the last few days, smile delightedly at everything, and appear in due bridesmaid attire at the appropriate time (having returned the previously selected shoes and bought the new ones the bride has now decided upon).

The Joys of Soup

It is a damp, drizzly day, and I am making soup. The making of soup not only provides consolation for the weather's inhospitability, it almost makes one glad of it. Therefore, I shall devote this post to the glories of that useful food.

The great thing about soup is that one can make it out of anything. Well, anything edible, anyway. One can dump in yesterday's leftover casserole, a bunch of bones that have too little meat on them to be good for anything else, and the dried-out rice from last week's takeout Chinese, and somehow it still ends up tasting good. One can even make an entirely different soup out of leftover soup. Soup-making is very creative. You can experiment with mixing flavors in different ways, and if your first attempt fails, you just pour in some more water and keep adding flavors until you get it right.

In our house, we have refined this process to its ultimate extreme: The Never-Ending Soup Pot. You start with a good basic soup, like potato or tomato-vegetable. Whatever's left over from the first time you serve it, you use as a base for the next night's soup; then you use the leftovers from that as a base for the next, and so on. The challenge is to make each soup as different as possible from the last, while blending in the last soup's flavors. On Friday, we had a tangy tomato soup with vinegar and corn. For Saturday, I made it into a really spicy southwestern soup by adding chili spices, more corn, and black and garbanzo beans. Then today, I mellowed it out with creamed corn, leftover Ragu sauce, spinach, green beans, and lots of sour cream; now it's a creamy tomato-vegetable soup.

Once one's family threatens to revolt if fed soup any more times in a row, one pours the remaining soup into a half-gallon pail and freezes it; any odd leftovers you have in the meantime can be thrown in with it. A few weeks later, you can defrost it and start over. This process can continue indefinitely, or until you miscalculate the amount, and your family eats all of it, leaving you without leftovers.

It's a beautiful thing.

I know, strange things make me happy.

Symbol of Glory

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13011

I just had to link to this column by Andree Seu; it made me feel unalone, which is always nice. I myself generally respond to inquiries about the doilie I wear to church with, "It's just a personal conviction," accompanied by the sort of dismissive smile that indicates that is all I have to say on the subject. I have sometimes thought it a rather cowardly response, as if I am afraid to defend my own convictions, not wishing to appear too fundamentalist, or - horror of all horrors! - legalistic. And yet, it is a thing so utterly not worth making an issue of.

The truth of the matter is that I wear it because it makes no sense to me. And I am not good at obeying things I do understand. Perhaps those who are more mature have no need to pin their symbols to their heads; but I so easily slip into self-sufficiency. If I dismiss I Cor. 11 as an obscure and indecipherable passage, really only related to first-century culture, how can I say others are wrong for doing the same with the passages they don't like, such as the ones about homosexuality? Either God is the authority or my own understanding of him is. So I pin lace to my head, at the risk of appearing the pious, submissive homeschooled girl I have never been, in order to remind myself that I don't make the rules about how I approach God.

Is it really worth explaining that to the fellow churchgoer who politely inquires whether I'm a Mennonite?