The devil may smile on a day like today, but God always beats him with His pearly whites.

"So I crawl underneath my blanket

Where I can hide away

I know I can't take it

‘Cause I see now

It's just one of those days."

-Joshua Radin, "One Of Those Days"

Okay, I know it sounds depressing, but that is SO how I feel today. Crawling underneath a blanket and snuggling up with someone, or even all alone sounds really enticing right now. It's just been one of those days that seems to never end, like when you look at the clock several times and your thought seems to echo itself every time: "It's only been three minutes?!?" Time seemed to turn into a metaphorical slug today during school. I sat in bewilderment as the clock slowly ticked by, which made it seem like all my teachers had more time to remind me of important upcoming due dates and assign even more due dates for me to stress over. Only now, when I'm at home working on all of these crazy-detailed projects does time seem to speed by at an abmormal rate.

Now, let me redeem myself from my venting.

It's times like these that God always finds a way to slow me down. Just one question from my mom made me step back and actually look at what I've accomplished:

"Have you gotten any homework done so far?"

It took that to make me stop and see: I have at least half of a project finished. It doesn't sound like much, but any accomplishment after a day like this seems pretty grand to me. Sometimes stopping and stepping outside of your busy world helps you see what you're truly doing with yourself and your time.

This reminds me of a very short but helpful reminder from the bible:

"Be still, and know that I am God." -Psalm 46:10

Sometimes we need to stop for a while to remember who is behind everything, and to remind us that he is always there. Even when we feel like we're being enveloped by our busyness, there is someone bigger there holding out His hand to pull us out of it. We just have to be willing to take it.

It smells like pumpkins in our house :)

Wow. Today is wonderful. It's warm, but not hot. All the leaves are changing. There is one tree in particular that is an absolutely beautiful shade of orange outside my window.
Something about fall just makes me want to procrastinate even more than I already do (hence the blog). The light breeze that immediately makes you want to get a scarf and some hot cider, the beautiful colors that make even the least artistic kind of people want to be photographers, the sound of family all gathered around either an amazing HD television or a very small one (depending on their location) watching a Saturday football game...its all just so...comforting. That's what I like about fall: the comfort. Anytime I have a day such as the one earlier described, it reminds me of one day from my childhood. I was so extremely happy, and to this day I have no idea why. But, over the years I've narrowed it down. It was a fall day like the earlier described. We had carved pumpkins recently, so we were baking the seeds, just as was tradition in our house. It was a beautiful day. I was wearing a sweater that had a teddy bear on it. Like I said, I don't remember exactly why I was so happy that day, but I've boiled it down to one simple statement: I love fall.