Oh, there is just so much right now. Last night, as we were falling asleep, Jesse and I agreed we needed a summer. Not just the warmth, the reprieve from this awful winter, but a summer. We’re living semester lives, with no spring break, with no Martin Luther King Jr. day, with no summer.

The blog I thought I was going to write today was full of enthusiasm, my typical gushing, my typical excitement. Because things really are going quite well. Another draft of the book is finished. I watch several lovely children who are growing and learning things. I lead a group of amazing women I absolutely love, and they are going to change the world. Against all odds, the checkbook stays balanced, and we are in the black. I’m going back to Congo in t-minus ten weeks and four days.

But, right now, everything is just so heavy. I’m not doing anything that I can let slide. Everything is important, and everything has implications that affect other people. This is going to sound stupid, and probably painfully lazy, but I wish I had something I could just slack off on. Not because I want to do a so-so job at something—but because I feel, especially after last night, the weight of what I’m carrying, and there are days when it feels particularly heavy.

Last night I stood in front of a room full of people—of advocates, leaders—and told them I believed that small group leaders are the leaders of the church. Which makes us—the advocates—the leaders of the leaders. So, it’s our ship. And it’s either going down, or it’s going to sail. And I don’t know if anyone else heard it louder than I did, the level of responsibility and authority in that. I’m not even twenty-seven yet! I can’t lead a church! I don’t know Greek! (Actually, wouldn’t it be kind of cool to know Greek? But unfortunately I don’t think that gets you any closer to understanding, because most of us can barely understand things written in modern English, so I’m not even sure that knowing Greek really means as much as we think it does.)

I posted on Facebook a line about pod stuff, and I think some context is appropriate. Our church has groups called “small groups”—they’re meant to be little communities where people can love each other and challenge each other. They’re supposed to make a big church feel small. And each small group leader is put into a “pod” with other small group leaders. And those pods are led by advocates. I’m an advocate, so I’ve got a pod, four women who lead groups, and my job is to make sure they’re the best leaders they can be, that they’re constantly growing, and that their groups are as healthy as possible.

We meet once a month as a group; we eat together, we listen to a message, we talk about the leadership book we’re studying. If it’s someone’s birthday month, she wears a tiara (a real one—no plastic tiara for my girls! Okay, but they are rhinestones, not diamonds, but I’m going to say that’s not because I’m poor but because I don’t want to put a bunch of conflict diamonds on one of their precious heads. Ha!) and the rest of us wear birthday hats and bring her presents. Everyone else looks at us like we’re crazy, but we know they’re secretly jealous. (Is that okay in a church environment? Probably not. Well, I’ve never claimed to be a role model.) One of the things that works best is we have a group identity. The pod is its own character, and we love the pod. We’re committed to the pod.

I’m currently doing evaluations on their groups and their leadership, something I’ve never done before, and I think it’s going to be another game-changer for our group, because we’re about to get real specific, real intentional. The proverbial rubber will meet the road. I’m excited because I’ve never felt like I had the authority to come into their groups and intentionally observe them as leaders. But that’s changed in recent months, and here we are. And I think it will work because I think they know I’m on their team. I so desperately want them to succeed, and when that means telling them the truth, no matter how brutal, that’s what I’ll do. Because I want their success as leaders above everything else, including my popularity or “nice girl” image.

And I told the group of advocates that I spoke to last night that I feel I have yet to reach the level of “bare minimum” of what an advocate should do and be. Heavy. But that’s how big I feel the job is, and I slacked off on this job for a year and a half, and I’m not going back, not ever. I’ll quit this before I go back to not really leading the group, to being a “facilitator.”

Which brings me back around. Look at that. There really isn’t anything in my life that I can slack on. Part of that is because I’ve jettisoned—or am in the process of jettisoning—the commitments I could slack on. The outliers, the ones my heart wasn’t in. But the unintended result of that is a night like last night, a morning like this one, where I feel the weight.

I’ve got the day off today. I’m going to write. I’m working on an essay I’d like to start shopping around (if it goes well, which we’ve yet to determine). I’m going to do yoga in my living room. I’m going to make biscuits. I’m going call Simona and lie around in my PJs and maybe watch a Rob Bell video. And I’m going to pray and read and just be at home, with my cats, with no audience but Oliver and Gracie, who love me no matter what…as long as I’m on time with their dinner.

Last night, we watched It Might Get Loud and I thought about art and what it means to struggle and then about important things like sentences and how pretty a black suit can be when set against a backdrop of grass so green it verges on neon. I thought about what it meant to play a guitar so hard your fingers bleed. I have finished (another) first draft of the book. I am taking a few weeks off, to give my brain a break, to try and get some distance, before jumping into heavy revisions.

Oliver has been impossibly cute these days. In the mornings, while Jesse showers I sit on our sink so we can chat before he rushes off to work. Oliver picked up on the pattern and now sits on my lap. Gracie sacks out on our bed (which is nice when I’ve already made it up, but poses a dilemma if I haven’t—do I move her to make it up? Oh, but she’s just so comfy!). I sit between our sinks, and Oliver sits on my lap, and Jesse showers, and we talk. The other day, I was getting ready to go somewhere and was putting on makeup while talking to Jesse. Oliver sat on the sink and meowed at me until I finished and sat down, at which point he quickly climbed into my lap and immediately began purring and licking his paws. He’s on my lap right now, as I type this. Making up for the fact that he was on the kitchen sink this morning, checking out the pan I’d left soaking from last night’s dinner, trying to see if he could find any morsels to supplement his diet-food breakfast.

I dreamed of Congo again last night. Jesse was there too, and we were eating Mama Lily’s cooking and I was showing him how to brush his teeth without using the tap water. Yesterday, I was thinking about electricity, how I have it whenever I want it, how it felt to sit around a living room with flashlights and candles, talking in the dark, about candlelit dinners that were born out of necessity rather than romanticism. Only ten percent of Congo’s population has access to electricity. That kind of blows my mind. And even the ones who do… Every day, we lost power at least once, and our compound had a generator. Bishop goes for days without power. He loves ice-cold soda. He apologizes to us when he has to serve it warm. Some days, it’s not war, it’s not rape, it’s just this—it’s just Bishop, looking embarrassed, handing his guests bottles of warm soda.

For days, I’ve been trying to write about Haiti, but it keeps coming out Congo. I have a friend who is tirelessly campaigning to get tents to Haiti, and she asked me to blog about it, and I’ve tried, I really have. I care about Haiti, and we’ve given money to relief efforts. But it’s not the same. Congo is more than a cause now. But what is it? I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that I can’t write to you about Haiti right now, not with any real conviction or passion, you’d see right through me, you’d know my heart was saying Congo all that time, and while it makes me feel a little heartless, a little guilty, not to have enough room for both, what I really believe is that everyone has their Congo, whether they’ve found it yet or not, and we’ve all got to latch on and fight like mad to do something.

And there it is, the man who plays guitar until his fingers bleed, because he’s trying to say something. Something about life and about art, the way we couldn’t paint without dark colors, and there is a beauty about Bishop and his bottles of Coke and Sprite and Fanta that I will never find the words for. But I will not stop trying.

(If Haiti is your Congo, here’s one way to help: www.ahomeinhaiti.com. The rainy season starts soon.)

Yesterday, I spent the morning, as I do every Monday, watching Story. Monday was gorgeous in the morning. I walked to Sharon’s place, the sun shining and the air warm enough for a light sweater. Spring seemed inevitable, which made me feel relaxed and excited all at once.

After Sharon left for her mom’s group, Story and I went outside and played in the wind. A series of pavers led from the porch to an aboveground pool, and Story “jumped” from stone to stone—which meant, really, that she stepped from one stone to another, then paused, then kind of bounced while saying, “Jump! Jump!”

I thought, this is life for her. This is life—a backyard on a day when spring seems inevitable, a series of pavers to “jump” on, the wind. And I wanted to surround her and protect her from everything else, from everything that is not a backyard on a day that feels like spring.

She’s not yet two. She won’t remember these mornings with me. She won’t remember running in the yard, she won’t remember the time I picked her up and spun and spun and spun. But I hope that when she’s older she’ll have a sense, somewhere deep within her, of being loved, of being protected, of being cared for. That when she sees me she will know, even without an image, that we spent mornings together in between seasons, when it was not quite winter and not quite spring.

My favorite expressions these days is “through the wringer.” As in, “You’ve been through the wringer lately,” or, “Jesse and I have been through the wringer together.” As in, this sucks. Or, that sucked. Today I feel exhausted and, well, flattened. Yesterday was one of those wringer days.

It actually starts on Thursday night, when Jesse showed me this short film about a three-legged dog who dies. The film (“Last Minutes with Oden”) was well made, and I was fine in the beginning, before I realized that Oden was a dog. The dog who loves and accepts everyone, no matter how outcast they are. The dog who loves his tattooed owner and his balding friends, who doesn’t care who you are or what you’ve done. A dog who has cancer and is in pain. I lost it when Oden stood, revealing one front leg missing. One thing you must know about me is that I will instantly bawl upon seeing an animal of any variety that is missing a limb. You know that two-legged dog they parade around on talk shows? Yeah. I cry like a baby.

“But why?” Jesse asks. “It’s happy! It’s triumphing over adversity!”

That’s just it. I don’t think I can fully explain it, but there is something about a creature who has never hurt someone, never been obnoxious or rude, who (probably) cannot understand what is happening to it, there’s something about a creature like that, who shouldn’t even have lived, hopping around the stage of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. There’s something about it.

So you can imagine my state as the tattooed man carried the three-legged Oden to the car, as his friends said goodbye, asking the dog to tell Jesus hello for them, as they drove to the vet’s office. As a grown man covered in ink, his hands looking worn and his face gently lined, sobbed on the floor of the vet’s office, sobbed as the needle went into one of the remaining legs, sobbed as the dog closed his eyes, as his head sunk in the man’s hands.

I was a mess.

That was Thursday night, just before bed. Friday started early, because I had the Pampered Chef party to prepare for. The day was normal for about twenty minutes. The sun wasn’t up, not because it was too early for that, but because the sky was a stubborn mess of clouds. I got a phone call with some bad news and spent the rest of the morning a complete mess again. Finally I pulled it together and went to my babysitting job. At which I whimpered again, looking at a precious blond two-year-old and telling him he didn’t need to know about the sad parts of life yet, that he could wait longer for that, knowing he wasn’t understanding what I was saying.

At naptime, I took the boy upstairs and we went through the nap-rituals, and I sang “Old MacDonald” to him as I rocked him, as his head fell back onto my shoulder, heavy and tired. I sang until I ran out of barnyard animals, and then I kept singing, adding things like monkeys and, when I became really desperate, cheese. Finally, I put him in his crib and went downstairs.

The house is a lovely older home, eclectically decorated, with a large window in the kitchen that overlooks the backyard and a series of birdfeeders and squirrel feeders, which are densely populated in the mornings. The neighborhood is nice—no, more than nice. But a couple weeks ago, the boy’s father told me to keep the doors locked if we left for a walk, as there’d been some incidents of people looking for open doors, looking for easy targets for a burglary.

So, after the singing and the sleepy baby, I tiptoed downstairs, a dirty diaper in my right hand to throw into the trash can on the back porch. I walked into the kitchen. Where the back door stood open.

I instantly freaked out, spinning around, sure I would see someone standing behind me. No one was there, so I spun back toward the open door, and then stood frozen in the kitchen, the diaper raised like a weapon. If I were in my own house, I would have grabbed a kitchen knife or a broom or something. But, there, in a house that wasn’t foreign but also wasn’t my own, I just raised the diaper and turned back and forth, from the open door to the rest of the house. The sky outside was still a slate gray, the sun hidden, and the house was dark, except for the weak light from the windows. I listened for a moment, then finally became conscious of the diaper, which I quickly threw away before searching the downstairs for the intruder I thought was surely there.

But the dog was in the playroom, asleep. And I found no one in the house. I pushed the door closed, and locked it, hoping it had opened because of the wind. And for the next two hours I stayed very still and very quiet, listening, watching.

After that, the day was a shocking flurry of errands, which I performed without excitement or drive, my mind preoccupied with the news I received that morning, with the open door, which seemed like an omen. The sky never brightened, the sun having given up at some point in the afternoon, the clouds staying the meanest shade of gray, so that the whole day felt like the morning had never ended, that time was not really passing.

Little things that would normally be annoyingly amusing got under my skin. In the Wal-Mart parking lot, the trunk of my car kept slamming shut, so that by the time I turned to my cart to get another bag, it would blow shut, and I would have to open it again. I finally propped it open with one hand and loaded it with the other, which given my back injuries, the weight of the my trunk lid, and the fact that the remaining purchases were cat litter, soda, and other heavier items, meant I could add a backache to the festivities of the day. When I unloaded the groceries at home, a two-liter tore its bag and landed on my foot. When I went to move a bag of cereal to the pantry, it came open and spilled generic Golden Grahams all over my clean kitchen floor. Oliver took the opportunity to jump onto my clean kitchen counters, and when I chased him to put him into the master bedroom to keep him out of trouble, I skidded onto the carpet next to the dining room table he had run under. Only then did I remember the jeans I wore had holes in the knees. (Knees which, therefore, were rug-burned.)

The evening went on. The house was cleaned, the kitchen prepped, the carpets vacuumed. The party was fun. It wrapped up late and a few girlfriends stayed and we talked some more, and the conversation turned to child predators, and it felt fitting somehow that the day would end there, that the sun would not in fact ever show itself.

And today the sun is out, and all I want to do is go outside in a bathing suit and soak it up, all I want to do is be in warmth, to be internalizing the sun. But I know it’s far too cold for that. I know it will be months before I will warm up. But I also know that summer will come, one day when I’m not expecting it, and I will go to the beach by myself, and I will lie flat, face-up, and spread my arms and feel relief.

Today, I spent several hours at two different occasions on the phone with two of the smartest, kindest, most creative people I know. I feel charged up and inspired. Funny, it just struck me that they are both writers, and they’re both blonde. If there were any two women to slaughter the stereotypes of the ditzy blonde, it’s Simona and Visha.

Simona’s hair is light and wispy, wavy in just the right way, and it always looks perfect, like a halo. I once saw her after she’d spent the day at the beach, and her hair had taken on a windswept look that stylists spend hours creating for movie stars in movies about coastal romance. When I spend the day at the beach, my hair stands straight on end, the frizz propping up the rest of my hair in what I can only describe as Wind Tunnel Chic (well, without the “Chic” part). Simona speaks in an almost-whisper, with such a calming voice I always feel like everything will be just fine, if only because she is in the world. She talks about spirituality, about reality, about Congo and Darfur, and she quotes literature and tells me about philosophy, always having the decency to pretend that I already knew the complex concepts she’s outlining for me, listing off philosophers as if I know exactly who she’s talking about and might chime in with a reference to the philosopher’s third book, which I just happened to have read last week (when she talks about Kierkegaard, however, I do get rather animated). And in return for her brilliance, I tell her about my book, the fits and starts and endless rewrites, and she does not think my existence invalid because I don’t have a full-time job with benefits.

Visha’s hair is straight and strawberry blonde, and she’s got this wonderful radio voice, distinctive, a little husky, memorable. She’s spunky and fiery, but incredibly and unfailingly reasonable. She knows how many female directors have been nominated for Best Director in the Oscars, and she has trained two very large dogs into thinking that she—petite, adorable Visha—is bigger than they are. I think she’s magic. And funny, dear heavens, have I mentioned that Visha’s hilarious? If you know her, you already know she’s got a sharp wit, but you also know that she’s unendingly kind. Though I’ve given her plenty of ammunition, never once has she used that humor to make fun of me or to make me feel anything other than entirely good and happy. She cries for people with Alzheimer’s, and she pulls off the side of the road to care for dying dogs hit by cars that long ago sped off. She works at a bookstore, has read probably more books than said bookstore has in its inventory, knows all about experimental film, rails against injustice, defends the defenseless.

How lucky I feel today, not only to have such friends, but to have hours to run down my phone batteries with them, to listen to them and to talk about writing with them, to find out what they think about plot and beginnings and the plight of the MFA workshop. The three of us are trying to do the same thing, really, to struggle with the words on the page, to find the balance between art and life, to find where the line is and to cross it.

So, the year in review, twenty-ten so far: Watching kids who are growing faster than I realize. When they’re this size (“this size” being dangerously close to age two), I don’t perceive that very much is changing on a week-to-week basis, but I have a feeling that the year will breeze by and in January of ’11 I’ll think back to now and murmur to myself, My, how fast they’ve grown. Or something else suitably nostalgic and maternal.

Also, The Great Calendar Hunt of Twenty-Ten. I thought I’d be clever and wait until after New Year’s to get my calendar. Thought I’d get a good deal. Ha. Apparently, in a recession, everyone waits until January for their new wall calendars. The selection at Barnes and Nobel consisted of Betty Boop, Playboy, and Twilight. None of which I want on my kitchen wall. So, after a day of searching in what apparently were all the wrong places, I went home calendar-less. Which, for me, means: disoriented and slightly panicked, with no idea what she’s supposed to be doing the next day.

After much lament, I decided to give my computer’s calendar program another whirl. In the past, I just haven’t warmed to the digital calendar. But this year might be different. Twenty-ten, you know, it’s the future. Right? And of course, since deciding this and taking the time to set up my recurring appointments and obligations, I found plenty of calendars, all half-off, just lying around waiting to be bought by me. But I still want to give the (free) iCal a chance, a really fair shake this time. And paying six bucks for a wall calendar when January is practically over (okay, fine, almost half over) makes me feel I just won’t be getting my money’s worth. You don’t just get those two weeks back.

And there’s the Pampered Chef party I’m having next Friday. (If you’re in town, come over. If not, order kitchen stuff here: http://www.pamperedchef.biz/amydegler — just put in “Erin Bond” and buy stuff! I want free kitchen accessories! I’m poor!) Sending postcards and setting up online invites and realizing I really have to have my house cleaned up by then. Just tonight I finally did the last load of laundry from the holidays. Said load is still in the dryer and must be put away, but I’m nearly there…

Tonight was nice—easy, calming, a late dinner of bone-in chicken breasts roasted in garlic butter, and one or our favorites, corn maque choux, a creamy, buttery, tangy mess of deliciousness. Corn maque choux is comfort food at its ideal—even making it is comforting. Chopping the onion and the red pepper, slicing the kernels off the corncobs, stirring in the cream. While the chicken roasted, I prepped everything on the enormous butcher block that came home with me over the holidays. It’s so nice and big that I could push each veggie off to the side while I chopped the next one. When it was time to make the dish, I just scooped each new ingredient into my hands and dumped it into the waiting pan. Like a cooking-show host, just without the cool glass bowls.

The slow evening was the perfect follow up to a blissfully productive day. I had a meeting with Sue, who has agreed to mentor me in leadership, and she’s just a brilliant woman. Girl knows her stuff. I’m doing this for the pod, because I want it to be incredible, because I want us all to grow, because I want twenty-ten to be transformative, to have an unstoppable momentum. And Sue was perfect; I left her place charged up and ready to go. We talked about vision, about leading with the end in mind, about scheduling, about communication, about flowers. (More on that later.) I came home and made a master task list and got to work, not allowing myself to get on Facebook until this evening. Tonight, before bed I’ll make my “six things” list for tomorrow, the six things that must get done (and no more, so I won’t get frustrated if I don’t finish the list).

Until today, twenty-ten has felt busy without being particularly productive, freezing cold with no snow, time passing both quickly and slowly. Is January not over yet? Memories of a rough January last year. But it’s supposed to be sixty-four on Friday, and tomorrow I’ll have six things that will get done, and disappointments will eventually fade into memories, and there’s a whole year of changes still in this story.

Last week, I went to Harris Teeter for some after-vacation grocery shopping, and I had a freak-out moment in the freezer section.

See, it’s triples week. Which means any coupon up to 99 cents is tripled (unless it happens to be a “DO NOT DOUBLE OR TRIPLE” coupon, which a surprising number seem to be, at least the ones I find). Which means all the people who are really into couponing come out en masse. Now, I’ve been rather fascinated by the couponing movement lately. It can be a lot of fun. But there I was, walking by the frozen pizzas, and I’m watching these severe-looking women with carts brimming over with on-sale super-cheap foods, and I just felt a little panicked. There were groups of them, even, several ladies walking together with lists, fists clutching stacks of clipped coupons. And then there’s me, a couple printed coupons in hand, freaking out about—what? Growing up? Becoming too suburban?

Allow me to sincerely apologize for this, because I know several fantastic, non-severe, totally glamorous people who do the whole couponing thing. It seems to work well for them. And they save heaps of cash.

But there was something about watching the people in Harris Teeter that slightly terrified me. I don’t know if it’s my growing apprehension about how quickly thirty is coming, or anxiety over the mounting pressure to have kids, or the deep-seated worry that I may never ever live in a big city. Like, if I went there, if I really got into this whole couponing thing, that would mean something, that would signify something, something I’m just not ready for.

Behind me in the checkout lane was a woman in a faded black shirt, her hair pulled into a loose ponytail. A little boy was with her, and the lady had a couple coupons in her hand. She motioned to my cart and asked if organic milk was on sale (I had two half-gallons). Considering my earlier reaction to the other women in the store, I should have been disconcerted, but I wasn’t—something about this lady was comforting. She was just buying groceries. She was just doing life. Wondering if milk was on sale, not because she was obsessed with getting the lowest price, but because she drank organic milk. I smiled, told her it wasn’t, but mentioned that if she went to Stonyfield’s website, she could print out coupons. I’m not going to be one of those people who can get $500 worth of groceries for thirty bucks. But I can find a coupon for some organic milk. And that’s fine by me.