Thursday, April 29, 2010
I Am Learning...
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Salty Tears and Caramel Hearts
Of course you have. Fat, salty tears are dripping down my cheeks as I type. The folks who hang out at this blog are the best in the world. I'm honored to share my life with you. Thanks for encouraging. Thanks for giving. Thanks for being who you've turned out to be. Thanks, thanks, thanks. We're off to an amazing start.
Jessica from Preemptive Love Coalition sent me several emails overnight. One included this link to a video she voiced about Leah. It's short and will melt your heart into warm, caramel-like goo, so please do take a second to watch it: click here to watch Leah's video.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Little Leah (No Small Thing)
Everyone, meet baby Leah. Isn't she beautiful?
Do you remember me telling you about my college friends who decided to make a difference and founded the Preemptive Love Coalition? Well, Leah is a little friend of theirs. Leah is from Iraq, a place where "Saddam Hussein’s 281 chemical attacks and experiments on the Kurds of northern Iraq contribute to the high rate of life-threatening heart disease among children in the region today". (That's what the Preemptive Love Coalition found when they got all Erin Brockovich in Iraq.) Leah also has Down's Syndrome, which makes her a tough case and an otherwise low-on-the-list recipient of a surgery that can save her life.
Leah needs heart surgery. Soon.
So? you say. (Yawn.) Lots of people in lots of places needs lots of things. Don't bother me with this today.
But what if today's THE day you go from being ordinary to being a life saver?
Here's the deal. Over 3,000 people read this blog every day. As much as I try not to bombard you with ads, sponsors, frantic support requests, etc., I do have a favor: if you've ever read and enjoyed this blog... if My Messy, Thrilling Life has ever made you smile... or think... or sob... or crack up... or introduced you to a good book or site or adventure, would you consider helping? Kinda by way of saying thanks?
You'll be saving a life, after all. Leah's life. That's no small thing.
So. We need to come up with $3,000 to pay for Leah's heart surgery through the Preemptive Love Coalition. The surgery would be slated for July... and who knows. I may even head over there and introduce you to her myself. In the meantime...
Give $1. One dollar. You'll hardly miss it. And if all the folks who hang out here will do that, together we can give Leah a new heart - we can give this helpless baby girl a hope and a future.
Donate $1 by clicking below. It's handled by PayPal and is private, secure, and super easy. Also, feel free to check out my friends and their organization, Preemptive Love Coalition, by clicking here.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. -Brin
Just a note: donating via PayPal/ChipIn means you automatically get a pretty receipt for your records. If a write-off receipt for tax purposes is important to you, consider donating directly to Preemptive Love Coalition. Visit their site here and be sure and let them know it's for Leah. Thanks!
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Travel (vicariously) on. -Brin
Monday, April 19, 2010
Rusty on My Cast Iron
Friday, April 16, 2010
Cottage Dreams
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| Cusato Cottage KC 1200 |
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Creamed
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Artist
Monday, April 12, 2010
Mental Vacation
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
If We Didn't Know How Old We Are
Monday, April 5, 2010
Happiness Designed... and Not Postponed

My old strawberry patch at Freeman House. I'm trying not to look back... trying not to be wistful... trying not to be a smidge sad... especially as gardening season gets underway.
It's hard to be sad, anyway, when thinking about strawberry patches.

I bought pots. A few. And I got strawberry runners from a nursery. I'm watching, eagerly, as the berries begin to blush.

It may be awhile before I get this sort of bounty from a little garden again. That's okay.
For now I have my pots. My strawberry patch pots. After all: "Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present." (Jim Rohn)
Here's to happiness designed - and not postponed.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Happy Easter
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. -John 11:25-26Happy Easter Sunday. -Brin
Friday, April 2, 2010
Good Friday
The Creator took the fall for the created. The Innocent accepted punishment for the convicted. And one Friday night, a many, many years ago, Jesus looked into the face of His Father and cried, "It is FINISHED." I have made the way. The Holy and the guilty need not be apart. I have bridged the gap.
And by His wounds... through His love... I am healed.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Um. Yeah.
I signed an exclusive contract with AOL some weeks ago to write for them. The idea was a "mood food" type column filled with recipes, food pics, stories from my life, the like. I gleefully jumped into the challenge of being a paid food columnist. Are you kidding me? I was ecstatic. But I did have some reservations about submitting my work to editors with full creative control and license over my writing. That was a big deal for me. They can change things up and publish them however and wherever they wish, I told my parents. They'll own the rights to my writing. But maybe I'm just a control freak. I'm sure it will be okay.
If anyone's read the article(s) coming out with my name on them, please know: they have been edited. You know me. And I hope you'd know I didn't write some of the things, titles or comments that are out there. We live and learn.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
To Do List

Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Mingling Souls
Saturday, March 20, 2010
My New, Old Thing
My Grandfather wrote letters to my Grandmother during WWII; letters I found bundled in her garage last year. The tightly-tied parcels were like paper presents, the writing unfamiliar to me... the stamps and markings both foreign and strange. The crinkled pages inside the envelopes told of feelings and promises that exist now only in my Grandmother's fading memories. And in the significant memorial my wonderful Grandfather left.I decided after reading the lot that I would become a letter writer. A dying art form, to be sure. But an entirely lovely one. I mean, how often do you get a handwritten letter? A card, maybe, with a line or two penned at the bottom. But a letter? Rarely. I miss letters. I want to send and receive letters. And I wonder: in an era of email and text and Facebook, what are we leaving behind for our grandchildren to find fifty years from now?

So I write. I write people I love, people I've met, people (like a daughter?) I have yet to meet. I have a new, old thing: letters. Stamps. Stationery. Ink. I'm snatching up creamy, heavy pages... old, beautiful postage... and cork-capped bottles of liquid inks. And I'm writing.
With each bundle that leaves my hand bound for someone I love, I realize: my letters aren't just chaining souls; they're building my memorial.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Perfect Pool and Pattern
Photo credit: Anna Maria HornerThis afternoon is gorgeous. Perfect, even. Sunshine and fluffy clouds and spring breeze perfect. Millie and I are sitting by the open door some 15 feet away from the rippling hotel pool. I adore watching the light-and-water dances in pools. Mesmerizing, like fire.
Have you seen Anna Maria's new dress pattern? As soon as I find a second I'm ordering this pattern... ordering this material... and not getting up from the sewing machine until I have this dress. I want to paint my toenails pink and call a friend and sip on a glass of lavender lemonade and sit by the pool in this dress.
This weekend. (Maybe this weekend.) It's on.
P.S. If you're an Agatha Raisin mystery fan, I have five of my M.C. Beaton books up for auction to help benefit To Write Love On Her Arms. Check them out here.)
Monday, March 8, 2010
To Write Love on Her Arms
I found it in a bin in a dusty store in Kansas. Useful Drugs. A book that made its way into this world in 1936 and was, that very year, chosen. Read. Marked. Studied. Consulted. As I thumbed through, papers fluttered to the floor: a 70-year old note, a card, and an old, old prescription from the Stanford School of Medicine.An amazing find. I bought it, wishing I knew a Stanford grad, a doctor, pharmacist, drug rep, or medical or pharmaceutical student who would get a kick out of it. I mean, wouldn't this make the best gift or material for a scrapbook or artist-dreamed keepsake for someone in the medicine world?
It's time to pass it on, so there's an auction over here, part of the proceeds to benefit To Write Love On Her Arms, an organization that's on the front lines helping people who struggle with depression and substance abuse. And there will be other items added throughout the week, all to help the same folks.
I wonder: how many could put down the bottles... the pills... the Useful Drugs... if only someone would write love on her arms? -Brin













