a blank page.
creativity starts with a blank page. today i stared at one for a long time seeking inspiration, clarity & simplicity. while i am sure that there are hundreds of way to present the information at hand, i wanted this to stand out. i desire the “a-ha” moment.
as the day progressed and the page filled up with data points, it occurred to me that there can be joy in starting with a blank page, because that is what give the filled up page value.
i still have another day or so to finish the project. at the end i hope that my team will have a roadmap to work off of for this ministry year. that this tool will enable us to minister more effectively to our volunteers and our service recipients. that the time and energy spent now will be leveraged and extended.
on the surface it was just a team calendar, but on the next layer down it is an expression of the time spent to clarify and create.
but they are both stripes!
this was our first morning with mommy in canada. i figured it would be no big deal, since i do most of the morning routine with sally anyway. i sort of discounted just how calming mommy’s presence is to our little scrap. she woke up pretty happy, but when it came time to pick clothes, we had a lot more drama than usual. she had definite idea of what she did NOT want to wear, but we had trouble getting to what she DID want to wear. we finally landed on the pretty pink/brown striped dress. the brown shorts to go under it were clean too… so I thought we had a pretty good score!
then it was time to put on the socks.
usually there is no debate or discussion about socks. i grabbed a typical pair of plain white socks and started to put them on her. she freaked out and kicked her feet away. she “suggested” that she would really prefer wearing the hello kitty socks. a brief conversation ensued about the color of the hello kitty socks and the dress she was wearing. i urged her to understand that they were no where near a match. close to the end of my rope, i realized that the mommy factor was coloring this conversation, so I relented. we wore the hello kitty socks.
wanna know what argument finally won? she said, “but daddy they do match. both have stripes!” how could i resist. when she came downstairs she said she wanted to show mommy. when I explained to her that mommy was still in canada and could not see her socks she said, “well can you put them on your blog?”
sure.
an evening in the park
the family (minus my beautiful wife who is currently in canada) hit central park this evening for a picnic dinner and a jazz concert. grandma sharon provided a lovely spread of sandwiches, chips & cookies. the band was great. click on the photo above to visit the full photo gallery.
