I just spent the last half hour listening to various songs on YouTube to see if I could come up with one with lyrics to create a theme for this week's post. I failed. Well, I enjoyed myself, but I couldn't find the perfect song to encapsulate the belly laughs I had this week. There's just not space for the context of why the senior baking cookies in my house yesterday told me, "I have pretty white boy hair," or why one of my sophomores in advisory got a consolation package of soup mix after his brother inadvertently withheld an invitation to Taco Tuesday.[...]

"If you were an ice cream, what flavor would you be?"

Our student body president asked the audience this at our opening ceremonies Wednesday. He went on to emphasize the importance of getting to know people as individuals - unique and flavorful - in his fabulous speech. Today during his study hall, he elaborated more with the yearbook teacher and I. "It's not just your favorite flavor - it's something more than that that determines what flavor you would be if you were ice cream." [...]

My legs are still figuring things out as I prepare to start the school year with students this week, but Virgil and Beatrice are getting more used to longer days of work. I'm super fortunate to still have a measure of flexibility in my schedule, and I did my best to take care of my tight calves last week without slacking off. Anja worked me hard at physio Wednesday by helping me with makeshift candlesticks. I had flashbacks to middle school PE where we had to lay down in rows and stick our feet straight in the air. I'm not able to make the motion on my own, but Anja held my legs up as I worked my core to lift my butt in the air. [...]

I started work last week with some meetings and all staff conference where I got to hear some awesome testimonies of the new staff members. Four years ago I stood in front of the BFA staff and shared the miracle of my own journey to BFA. Now I'm sharing this journey to walk again as I get ready for students to return in less than two weeks. [...]

Let me first say, I'm amazed people pay any attention to me. I mean, from my perspective, sure, there is loads going on with me, but from a global scale, there is madness demanding attention elsewhere. It's really hard for me to write this update in light of the heartbreak in the news, and yet, I can't avoid the longing to keep people praying for me and up to date on my ongoing recovery. [...]

I honestly did very little this week, so feel free to reread last week's entry and remember the extreme exhaustion I was recovering from. I had minimal social interactions, kept my feet up most of the week, and did my best to return to a semblance of physical routine. I successfully managed to walk around the fire house each day except for Wednesday when I went to therapy and Anja found my body had become one giant stiff mass from lack of movement. [...]

"I wish I had the money to pay my way past the lines in security," I once heard a snarky lady comment as my family trouped through the frequent flyer line at the PDX airport when I was a kid. My thirteen or fourteen year old self wanted to turn around and tell her we didn't fork out cash for this privilege but rather I'd paid with years of my life spent having my dad fly across the country each week and spend only the weekends with me and that this was hardly fair compensation that on our single week together as a family we got to cut a security line before flying to whatever destination we had where my dad also had business meetings to go to but we called it a vacation.[...]

"I go to seek a Great Perhaps" is a much quoted line attributed as possibly the last words of the poet Francois Rabelais and coopted by John Green's protagonist in his debut novel Looking For Alaska. The idea in the novel is that we best not wait until our dying breath to find the wonders in the world. I live similarly, though I'm anticipating great wonders beyond this world as well.[...]

We joke at BFA that if you do something more than once, it's a tradition. Since I did a "Life Playlist" in both 2016 and 2015, it's a summer thing I do now. Here's a link to the 2017 playlist all together on YouTube if you want to follow along. Plus it makes me nostalgic, so my first song is nostalgic.[...]

"I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely." 

In the iconic scene in The Princess Bride, Wesley optimistically tells Buttercup they have learned the secrets to survive the fire swamp by the warning signs of the sparking sound before the fire spurts and the lightening sand is avoidable as well. He next wrestles and roasts an ROUS before they meander out victorious where he again voices his belief they could live there happily for some time. [...]