Independence Day

So I've been having a blogger's identity crisis lately.  What should I write about?  With so many blogs out there, so many good, is there anything I have to say that isn't just adding to the noise?

I started the blog eight (?) years ago or so, wanting to blog about songs, and that's what I did.  Now life is a little more layered, and I feel like I have diverse things to write about.

Speaking of layers, today, for Independence Day, I attempted to make a delicious, patriotic dessert.  I would say that I succeeded, if I were a Mexican patriot.  The blue food coloring I used mixed with the essentially yellow cake batter, and no art student would be surprised by the resulting hue.

Here is my resulting green, yellow, and red dessert.

On my DIY kick still, I had planned this morning to wake up, make the cake and pudding from scratch, and make hamburger buns from scratch.  After I finished making the cake - I chose a "busy day cake" recipe similar to this one - I shared with my husband the realization that it was probably worth the $3 to just buy hamburger buns and pudding mix at the grocery store.  He laughingly agreed, and my guests were no less pleased with the results.

I found it somewhat ironic that I was making pudding on Independence Day.  Isn't that quite a British dessert?  I realized lately that sometimes the French and English are battling it out in my psyche.  The British part of me wants to be quite regimented, methodical, definitive.  The French side of me wants to digress, experiment, and complicate, in everything but language.  So I love having a method; I love order and definitions, but I also like to take little trips off the beaten path, combine ideas in interesting ways, and find a slightly new angle.

I've recently watched a two-part miniseries on Elizabeth I.  I LOVED it.  I love all things Elizabethan.  In fact, I think if God gave me another daughter, I would  name her Elizabeth, both after Elizabeth I, and Beth Moore, my mentor-from-a-distance.  I just recently began her newest study.  I have been doing her Bible studies since college, and wrote a quick note to her ministry to let her know I had great joy in embarking on another.  A few days ago, I got an unexpected reply card in the mail.  It was a form reply, but still!  It was was from Beth!

I will keep it forever.

So, back to the matter of what on earth I think my blog is about.  Well, it is about the little things, about combining them in new ways to see new things.  There is nothing new under the sun.  Nothing I say is truly original.  But today, July 4, I am declaring the freedom to write about whatever I fancy.

One quote from the Elizabeth miniseries that stood out to me was, "There is but one Jesus Christ.  The rest is trifles." The most famous Elizabethan playwright wrote a comedy called Much Ado About Nothing.  In the parlance of the day, it would have been equivalent to say "the rest is much ado about nothing."

Trifles, and Much Ado.  Writing about all the rest of life that happens.