Bubbles of bliss

I have a ton of stuff I want to blog about, but I also have a ton of English exams to mark. Sigh. Watch this space!

In the meantime, here are just some tiny happy bits from this past week, which made me feel helium-balloonish instead of lead-bootish:

A crested barbet sat on our washing line for minutes and minutes, only a metre away, watching me.

The first jasmine is out in my folks’ garden, which means the first jasmine has found its way to a vase on our kitchen counter and the house smells like hope.

Scotty is saying ‘Bye-bye!’ when he waves, and calling ‘Mama!’ and clapping his hands elatedly and chortling hysterically. And he didn’t even cry when he got his vaccination jab on Wednesday. (He has, however, developed a weird and unnatural fear of bath time, which is not blissful at all.L)

I took Lola and the boys to St Alban’s on Friday afternoon, so that Lola could get herself riotously excited and covered in blackjacks on her old stamping grounds. Cammy climbed up the grandstands – and Scott followed! He (Scott) is always on a quiet stealth mission of his own. He seems to know exactly what he wants, and he crawls after it with single-minded focus. To my great delight, at the moment, I am usually his object of resolute devotion, which I'm enjoying unspeakably, because I know the time of being in this privileged position is fleeting.J

Lola snuck guiltily onto the couch one night this week. She knows it’s highly illegal, but it’s as if somewhere in her golden retriever brain she has figured out that we really love her, and so it’s probably ok to take the risk. It made me happy to know she feels safe enough to manipulate us emotionally.J

Other bubbles of bliss:

Coffee with my sisters.

Kitchen chats with Murray while waiting for the kettle to boil late at night.

Amazing latte art on my cappuccino at Karroo Café on Saturday morning.

Hearing about how a small army of strangers and friends worked tirelessly for hours to salvage things from Derek and Denise’s burning house.

And, paradoxically and amidst the tears, the deep tremors of feeling that have moved with Richter scale intensity through the body of Christ, in response to Dave Crewe-Brown’s recent cancer diagnosis and surgery. How astounding that beautiful, godly lives – Dave and Sam’s – have an unbelievable, far-reaching, prayerful effect on so, so many people. But that’s another whole blog post.