for such a time as this.

The sky is monotonous these days, typical of a lazy, steamy Ohio summer. The sky is a calm blue, hazy or clear depending on the weather, often painted with cotton candy clouds that fade into a blushing sunset at dusk or a dull gray when blessed with rain. There are apple trees with small, firm green apples on them and cornfields tall and yellow and Queen Ann's lace literally everywhere. These sights are extra special to a girl stuck living in a housing development "with a scope for imagination". Nature in general does that to me. One of the best ways to refocus and breath a little is being among creation. Just the other day I was dreaming of country life, and how fun it would be to make homemade candles, own honey bees, and tend to a huge garden. My feelings about country life have changed drastically over the years. But now, I actually desire it. I want an old worn cow path snaking beneath a canopy of trees and burnished by the sun to walk on in the evenings; an orchard, or a hayloft to retreat to when I'm angry or just blissfully sentimental. The older I've become, the stronger to finally escape to the country becomes, bringing with an idea that is repeatedly confirms itself to my mind: marry a country boy. Not a farm boy, just a country boy. Not someone who's career consists of mucking stall and shearing sheep, but someone who just lives in the country, and does country things (some hay bales and chickens wouldn't bother me at all.) That's novel sounding, isn't it? 

It's been a simple summer - my eighteenth summer - which means I've doing a lot of thinking about life and figuring out all the strange, ever changing challenges and wonders it brings. It seems like my year is just starting, yet fall will be here next month. So much has happened, so much has failed. Days fly by, days drag by, yet time never stops. Yet something seems alive in me again. Since last year something has seemed dead, missing, unhappy. Often I find myself in new stages of life, and they usually rotate into a new stage year by year, or by long chunks of my existence. Now I've attained this this "feeling"of not knowing where I am going or life or what do to, who I am or what I want or who I wish to be. But I am learning to be happy in Him; learning the promise and truth behind the words "all things work together to them that love God."

There's so much in my heart. So much I want to say, yet can't sort out my feelings or can't find the words to explain them, but I can say in clear English that "it was happiest when I longed the most... the sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing... to find the place where all the beauty came from". That haunting, plaguing feeling of being so dead for so many months may not have been something ugly after all. It may have just been life itself, and the growing-up process. The longing, to find the place where all the mystery and drama and dry spots and exhilaration and beauty came from, winding and weaving and threading themselves together into one thing: life.

A little bit of advice. Don't try to grow up fast. Don't try to be an adult, to prove your adulthood to your friends, your family, the world. Stay young as long and as much as you can. For me, the journey into adulthood is just beginning - I am not arrived, I have no wisdom - but this time of freedom, of imagination, of singleness, will vanish before your eyes someday. By wishing so hard for our dreams to come true, we forget to live. And that frightens me.

Yes. It's been a simple, quiet summer, not necessarily un-busy, but just with the normal comfortable (albeit sometimes mundane) routine I've always been familiar with. Between the times of our nanny job ending, seeing The High Kings again in concert, and the upcoming homeschool alumni get together my family hosts each September, the gaps have been filled with reading-the-bible-in-a-year, running madly at my to-do (er, must-do) list yet seeming to accomplish nothing (I've realized that trying to make things happen in my timing is unrealistic-- but hey, at least I'm willing to let them happen if they want to....), drinking frozen mochas, remembering that purposefully, intentionally choosing to be happy just because can transform your outlook on everything, and practicing photography on every intricately-crafted, gorgeous flower I came across (awesome bokeh results without knowing much about bokeh = WIN). I love walking into my room at night after the window's been left open to the sound of crickets outside and the smell - so keen, so real, it's almost more like a feeling - that is either of dusk or a summer's night or both wound together. So beautiful. 

Today I have an urge to make homemade peach pie. Or a ruffly pink apron. To pick lavender and berries. Visit Texas. Or more realisticly, go to Amish Country again with my family, because it's been ages and ages since we last went. I'm thinking about huge lolipops as I type. Lace and ribbon for my hair. Being in a play someday. The talent show next month (eek). Trips and places I want us to go. 

But for now . . . 

. . .I am sewing. 

Yep, it's true. I hardly know how, yet somehow, by some miricile, am constructing a Civil War gown. It's insane and fun. The fabric is a delicious gold satin and very Scarlett O'Hara-ish. Later on this week I have to hem the thrifted dress I bought recently and do a photoshoot in it - and do a photoshoot with Michaela when her sample eShakti dress arrives in the mail (out comes the wicker chairs and blue cloche hat from Charming Charlie).

   

I love reprises. 

photo #1: 2009 | photo #2: 2011

I had a collosal reading list this year that hasn't really gone anywhere. So far I've only read A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Scarlett Pimpernell, Cranford... and a couple others, I think. I'm supposed to be reading Ivanhoe right now, and was dragging my brains along through the monotonous, archaic, and just basically unimaginative first few chapters when I threw it down and decided to read Anne of the Island instead. Ah, much better. It's a perfect summer read, people. I love the prettiness and freshness of Lucy Maud's Montgomery's novels. They sweeten my life and warm my heart. 

It's county fair season. Our county fair is five minutes away from our house-- so close, we can hear the rev of the motor cross, so far I haven't been in about five years. It's over now, and as we skipped another year of going, I'm banking on a different one instead coming up next month. It's on my bucket list to ride a ferris wheel, and my almost 14 year old sister Julia and I are dying to do it together. We did drive by the fairgrounds one night recently, and the smells of diesal oil and dust mingled with the booming voice over the loud speaker at the grandstand and the glinting, spinning lights of the rides thrilled and inspired me to the point of a new story idea. It's amazing how the smallest things can often be the most sensational. 

I'm getting hold of the true meaning of blogging. I want to be a serious blogger, but it's hard work. Harder than it seems, hard to keep up with. Let's insert here, on the subject of blogging, that I've have written a new about me and have fixed up and revised my blog tabs. Go take a look!

-anna