I love the feeling of rain on my skin, so getting wet isn’t a problem either. I love seeing lightning light up the clouds. I love seeing breath-taking lightning bolts attack the distance, illuminating the clouds, rain, and world with a strobe of blinding light. I love feeling the building rumble from the thunder. I love remembering when Mommy and Daddy telling a little 6-year-old Lindy that I shouldn’t be afraid of the thunder because it was just God bowling with the angels (sometimes thunder sounds just like a strike!). I love seeing amazing photographs of lighting, like the one I saw recently where the photographer caught on film lightning striking an active volcano.

The last two years we lived in Springfield, we had a west-facing sliding glass door, and I would open the blinds and the door and just lay on the couch to watch approaching storms.

It rains a lot in Germany, but I have yet to experience a real thunderstorm here. I can’t wait.

I finally felt totally normal with this little personal care fascination of mine when Sarah told me about her point system for pimples.

I’m not sure why popping a good pimple makes me happy, but it does.

“Ladies” don’t like farts (or burps), and neither do “moms.” I don’t think I was raised to be a True Lady, but if Moms don’t like farts, I might not be a good Mom.

Because I think the sound of most farts is hilarious! Some are deep and vibrating, some are squeaky. Some are musical and some aren’t. Some you know are coming, and others just sort of surprise you. I have some funny stories about particularly embarrassing farts from my past, one of which I deny to this day, and another of which makes me remember some funny times at the end of my 7th-grade year.

Nevertheless, they make me laugh. So much so that I got a farty birthday e-card from Sarah for my first birthday 4,700 miles away from my family and friends. It was perfect! (Sorry, the videos don’t work anymore.)

Sometimes Rob laughs with me, and sometimes I laugh alone. I look forward to being an old granny who can fart whenever she wants because she’s old.

Here’s one of my favorite fart jokes.

Betty, an retiree, visits her doctor. “So, Betty, what’s wrong with you today?” the doctor asks politely.

“Doc, I’ve got this terrible problem! You’ve gotta help me!” Betty pleaded, “I fart all the time, I mean, I’ve farted at least 10 times since I walked in the room. But,” and she paused, looking down at her hands, “they are always silent and they don’t smell.”

The doctor looked a little confused, but after considering the problem for a few moments, wrote a prescription. “Here, Betty, take this and make another appointment in a month.”

“Oh, thanks, doc!”

[One month later]

“So, Betty, how’s your condition?” the doctor inquired when Betty showed up in his office again.

“Well, doc, it’s a little better. I’m still farting continuously, but now at least they smell like a proper fart. They’re still silent, though,” Betty explained.

“Well, Betty, now that we’ve fixed your nose, let’s see what we can do about your hearing.”

Edit: Many thanks to Sarah, who alerted me to a fun fart-related word at Urban Dictionary: “farticles.” Definition 1 is my favorite.

He laughs like that every time he hears something real funny, and every time, my heart skips a beat, and I fall in love with him all over again.

I found uni-ball Visions in high school, and they’ve been my favorites ever since. The ink flows consistently and no matter which color you use, the color is dark and strong: I prefer the green for grading, the black, blue, orange, or red for making notes, and the purple for personal fun. I can use a thicker 0.7mm Fine or the thinner 0.5mm micro, depending on my needs. My only complaint? No comparable retractable. I’ve found a good rollerball RT that will work, the Jetstream RT. But the quality of the ink just isn’t as smooth and regular as I’m used to with the Vision

I didn’t buy my first Moleskin until sometime in college. The first attraction is the smooth leather-like hard cover with it’s rounded corners. (Although they have just recently become available in soft cover. I have yet to try it!) It has an elastic band to hold it shut, and an ever-handy pocket on the inside of the back cover.

All those things are nice, but they are not what sets Moleskines above other notebooks for me.

I love the paper. It’s strong and yet flexible. It smells wonderful.It holds the ink of a uni-ball so nicely. (Well, it holds the ink of any pen nicely.) It is the combination of the two that make me really happy.

Just like it is the pairing of two delicious flavors that creates happiness in my mouth, the pairing of two fine writing implements makes happiness in my fingers, eyes, and mind.

Writing with a uni-ball on my Moleskine makes me feel professional. It makes me feel like what I’m writing is important, even if only to me. It is a muse, for according to the history booklet that accompanies every Moleskine purchase, greats like Van Gogh, Picasso, Hemingway, and Chatwin, have poured their masterpieces out onto Moleskines. I feel creative, I feel empowered. I feel happy.

A truly good steak cooked rare makes my mouth happy. (Or is that Twizzlers?)

Luckily, I sort of got to escape the insanity by moving off to college. I didn’t go far, but it was far enough. I think that move helped me to deal with the divorce better than my brother, who was somewhat stuck in the middle of it.

At first, I really liked the reprise I had found by being away. But then birthdays and the holidays rolled around. While my friends would have wonderful visits from Mom and Dad, who would spoil them rotten for a weekend (which usually meant taking them grocery shopping and eating out) to celebrate, my situation was a little different.

Thanksgiving and Christmas were really hard. Instead of celebrating with Mom, Dad, and Daniel at one of the grandparents’ houses, Dad wasn’t there. I felt his absence very sharply. It was so strange.

Fast forward about three years of unwhole holidays and celebrating birthdays with Mom and Dad and his new wife separately. I had met the man of my dreams and we were planning a wedding. Until this time, I had not really made any effort to get to know my step-mother.

And I didn’t want to because she was not my mom.

But with a wedding coming up, I wanted familial harmony more than anything. I wanted everyone to get along on my wedding day, myself included. And that meant that I needed to find peace with my new family situation.

I am still not quite sure how it happened, but Traci, my step-mom, and I started to get closer. I finally starting to see her as Dad did, and more importantly, I was able to see that it was not their affair that caused my parents to end their 22-year marriage, but problems Mom and Dad had in their own private relationship long before Traci entered the scene.

Fast forward just a little bit more to my first Christmas as Mrs. Robert Mueller. We were planning to celebrate this special, one-time event alone to celebrate our new family, but due to some fortunate auto break-downs, Dad and Traci ended up at our place for the holiday, and a tradition was born.

So basically, over the past five years, I have found my place in the new arrangement of things that is my family, and Rob has too. Dad and Traci, whom I’ve taken to calling “Mutti,” the German equivalent of “Mom,” would surprise us for an afternoon visit, and most of the time, we’d just end up sitting around talking. It happened when we’d visit them too. Just a normal evening, sitting in the living room, maybe playing some poker, drinking Diet Cokes and Dr. Peppers, and being a normal family. Traci isn’t my real mother, and she can never take Mom’s place, but she has earned a special place in my heart that I am enriched by every day.

There’s something about that feeling of normalcy, feeling completely accepted, the closeness that can only be shared by family, that makes me deeply happy, and I look forward to the day when Rob and I can pass it on.

When I first started blogging, it was a journal for me. I even had a password-protected blog so that only my closest friends could read my rantings. I loved writing that wasn’t related to my school work (except for the complaining that occasionally happened, well, okay, more than occasionally). I loved sharing my inner thoughts with my friends. I loved getting their feedback and responses.

Then, we moved to Germany for my job. And I found myself over 4,700 miles from my friends and family. In the age of the Internet. What better way to keep in touch than a blog? Email works, but it’s essentially a conversation between two people, even if you send an email out to 60 people. Blogs, on the other hand, are open for free conversation. As your readership grows and people become familiar with the format, the conversation gets better and better. So I opened my blog up so that anyone could read it, and I started writing about our life here.

And I started writing about interesting products I found on the internet, like IWantSandy and Meebo. Then a series of posts on Google Analytics for bloggers. And I got visits from people that I don’t know. The conversation was getting bigger, and I started to realize that I don’t only have to journal in my blog, but that I there are people out there who want to read some of the non-personal posts I write.

So I started reading what one of my writer friends was reading: all sorts of articles about being a better writer and blogger. I started publicizing my blog more. I started paying attention to my analytics results and writing to my audience.

In the end, I found a hobby that helps to build a skill that I am teaching my students, albeit in a different genre, and I found a hobby that not only keeps me connected to the people I love, but that also connects me to people with similar interests and needs. And those are the reasons why writing a blog post makes me happy.

When we first started running, I really enjoyed how much Sarah knew about health, and I think she liked my encouragement. I remember the day she mentioned that she’d like to run a 5k eventually. We had been running 2 miles that week, so I told her that a 5k is only 3.1 miles. I added, “Why don’t we just see if we can do 3 today?” And we did. The rest of that semester, we ran our miles, talked, and she showed me how to use the weight machines. (You all know what it’s like to be the only person in the gym who can’t figure the machine out, while all the buffed beauties walk by and snicker at you as they add more weights. Sucks.) We didn’t stay in touch during the summer, but she ran her first 5k and even took second place in her age category.

When school started back up in the fall, we started running and lifting together again. Our desks were next to each other, so we talked a lot, plus we took a web design class for tech writers. We spent almost every Friday together doing homework for the class, checking for typos and sytax mistakes.

It was the next spring semester that our running became very serious. Sarah mapped out our road to the marathon, thanks to the great support and publicity running has in the Springfield area: a 5k during spring break, a 10k in the June, a half-marathon in November, and then a full marathon in spring 2009. With the exception of a week off here and there for illness, injury, and vacations, we ran together four days a week from the middle of January until I moved away in late September.

When you find a good running partner, you will learn a lot about her. You don’t just plod along those miles silently! You talk. And you tell her things you didn’t think you would because you have four more miles to go and you need to talk to fight that pain in your knee. You listen and learn about her as she does the same thing.

And your running partner sees you at your weakest. When you feel like every muscle in your body is going to snap, your running partner tells you you can go on. When your mind is screaming that you are an awful runner, that you’re slow, that you’re tired, that you really want to walk, she says no, you can’t walk, “Push it, Linden. I know you can. We’re runners, not walkers.”

We ran that 5k, we did the 10k in the hot June heat, but that is where our paths diverged. I moved half a world away about 3/4 through our half-marathon training. Luckily, I found a half-marathon in mid-October and I ran it. Sarah continued on with an awesome showing in the Cohick Half-Marathon in early November.