The Snorkel//May 2021
Another month in the bag! I’m so happy to be in winter, the meals and coziness and reasons for hot chocolates and warm clothes are some of my favorite days. Back home, winter slowed everyone down (literally and figuratively… ice will do that to ya) and we’d fill the long dark hours with lots of family time.
Currently, a lot of our evenings revolve around planning the move to Northland, and Luke doing some of his own contracting work in the evenings. Recently while he was upstairs creating farm maps (he maps soil types and fert levels in paddocks so farmers know what the paddock needs), I played the ice hockey movie Miracle in the background as I sewed suede patches on his wool sweater’s elbows. This article gave me a good rundown, but I used a backstitch instead of a blanket stitch. I saved the template I’d cut out of cardstock so I can reuse it again in the future. Miracle is one of my all-time favorite movies and is pretty much required-watching for Durans when the weather is wintery.
I also spent quite a few hours designing and making a case for my apple pencil - and no sooner did I finish it, I whipped out the pencil to show Luke how nicely the case fit, and promptly dropped the pencil, cracking the top of it😂 typical.
This month has been the op shop SCORE month, with finding a ton of the bedding stuff we’ll need very inexpensively (but good quality), as well as a bluetooth keyboard to replace my little dying one. (I’ve used an ipad and mini keyboard the entire time I’ve been in NZ, only occasionally using Luke’s laptop). AND for $30 I got a Macpac hoodie, tags on, which showed me it sold for $150 originally! Fits me perfectly and is so warm.
Here’s a collage of some of this month’s moments:
Had a “date” with Luke at Mitre 10 (Home Depot equivalent - I am becoming my parents😂) and got a new Stanley paintbrush; the fall weather; got my van backed into and a torn envelope saying “sorry” on my windshield (fortunately dents are the van’s aesthetic lol); my desk in the middle of a leather project; two fat leather journals made with friends; the beautiful light in our little house; my new watch next to my old one (I made the leather band for my new one); and little miss Bonnie recently marched off with her 2 yr old friend’s stuffed monkey, so I got her a stuffed elephant which I named Butter. Why “Butter”? Because I put butter on its head so that she’d accept it as her own. She hasn’t quite figured out tug-of-war but we’re getting there.
Speaking of Bonnie, I’ve been thinking of some things that she has made me contemplate since we got her on January 7th.
In the same way that Luke and I encourage Bonnie to “run, have fun, be free”, so also God is towards us. When we first got Bonnie, she would stick almost to our legs on walks, horribly afraid of “doing the wrong thing”. But we kept loving her, encouraging her to explore, and being patient when her confidence would break. She now happily runs ahead of us on walks with her tail held high instead of cowering next to us, and our relationship is based on love and trust, not fear. Do you view God as a hard taskmaster, one that you have to stick to His side so as to not be yelled at? Or do you rest in the fact that God loves you, and trusts you, and that through the power of the Holy Spirit you can “run, have fun, be free” without falling into sin? If this view of God and the Christian life sounds foreign to you, I challenge you to read The Grace Awakening to know what real freedom is.
Whenever Bonnie relapses into hypersensitivity, or reaches her emotional threshold for the day, and I want to get angry or frustrated at her, I remember that *I* am also Bonnie, and the people around me don’t get angry or frustrated at me because of my limits. They are instead patient even at cost to themselves. As a receiver of such grace, the last thing I’m going to do is not extend it to my dog.
I enjoy telling stories, and Bonnie provides a lot of them through her antics. But recently I caught myself saying things like “I love that dog, but… “ and then telling a very negative story about her. It occurred to me that if I ever have kids someday and talk about them that way (or even if I do it with Luke now!), they won’t hear “I love them”, they’ll hear “she is telling a negative story about me just for the entertainment of others.” This was very convicting for me, and a good reminder to keep tabs on what comes out of my mouth. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”, and even when it’s my dog, I want to speak life. It’s an opportunity to be faithful in little, so I can be trusted with much.
I’ve also been soooooo homesick after hitting the I-haven’t-seen-my-family-besides-Autumn-for-two-years milestone. I glimpse my mom and dad smiling away in their frame on our bookshelf and I just cry. Please don’t feel sorry for me, or try to fix it/help (unless you can teleport my family here. Or are someone directly walking with me in “real” life. Then go for it!) I write about tough things in these newsletters while also having processed it before writing a word of it. It’s quite tiring to field the sympathy of others, in part because there are other things I’d like to dwell on, and especially because sympathy is NOT why I write about these things. My point is to say - you can be THE ABSOLUTE HAPPIEST EVER and still long for something. And that’s okay. Those things can coexist beautifully.
That being said, NZ doesn’t have winter as I know it and I miss it deeply with all of the Duran traditions and vibes, so please enjoy the Canadian artist Richard Savoie’s perfect capturing of what Michigan looks like in a good snowy winter before Christmas (because after Christmas we want the snow to go away!😂)
There’s just not the mystery and quietness and beautiful glow of warm house windows on snow, or flakes falling in a streetlamp’s umbrella of light, or the cushy muffled trudging on a pillow-soft sidewalk. And being warm in your winter clothes while everything is very cold - a small victory over nature every time you dress properly for the outdoors. Also snowball fights instigated by none other than ~me~😏.
Now, a quick roundup of favorites!
my van. Its name is Turley and it takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.
Luke’s ways of making me laugh even when I’m exhausted and thought I was too tired to laugh
the color red
fog in the mountains
pretty much New Zealand’s constant epicness (when it’s not bogged down by road construction😂)
poached eggs
A massive project of mine was just received by its recipient in the States, so stay tuned for a special newsletter just devoted to it!!
In the meantime, enjoy one of my favorite photos, my red-bearded husband with my red-headed nephews.
