Fairfield

“A guy I used to know — he taught me all about the sky.”
Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra

I wanted it depressed, one dusty road
and two cafés both with ‘help wanted’ signs.
Where I ate, the waitress was too in love
with the cook for the things I wanted to say.
The canal passed through town ripe green
and grain, I had to admit, grew assured.
A dog slept fat on warm gravel. No trouble foreseen
raising funds to build the new gym.

I’d expected hurt, the small town kind everyone
knows and ignores, a boy who tried and tried
to leave home, sobbing his failure alone
at the mirror back of the bar, still wearing
his ’39 letter sweater, still claiming
the girl who moved to Great Falls will return.
I wanted to honor him in this poem,
to have the sky turn dark as I drove off
the town in my rear view mirror
huddled with fear white in black air.

The drunk I saw seemed happy. I drove empty away.
What if Fairfield sent signals to Mars
and signals came back saying all weather is yours
no matter how vulgar? I imagined cruel sky
left every bird orphan. When I passed
Freeze Out Lake I saw herons accepted that refuge
as home, and I knew the water was green with sky,
not poisoned green with resolve.

—Richard Hugo, from White Center

(Freezeout Lake photos taken by me last March)

But, in fact, the opposite happened. I made valentines with my sister over the weekend. I dressed up, wearing some of my favorite red shoes and a cardigan of my grandma’s. I got a fun box in the mail and a heart cookie from a friend (and one, um, anatomical cookie that made me laugh). And lots of nice little things happened.

gettin' crafty

ready to mail

one of my favorites

We used the Printable Tattoos from Fifth and Hazel, but since they were reversed for tattoos, and we didn’t have the paper, we flipped them to print. And then we hauled out my somewhat absurd collection of stamps, pens, tapes, vintage Letraset, and all the rest and I carved us a little heart stamp. 90s rom-coms seemed required (Hope Floats, Sliding Doors).

Yesterday at work, I was pleasantly surprised by all of these little signs posted around the building in random spots.

(excuse the crappy camera phone quality)

The signs’ pro-love messages, and not specifically of the commercial, heteronormative V-Day variety, were such a nice surprise.

Love, Love, Love. Love is all you need.

(all photos by me)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKVcQnyEIT8

And what did I buy?

Photoshop! InDesign! Illustrator! Acrobat Pro!

Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

Turns out I had a fair amount of gift card credit, plus a University staff discount, which meant that the balance was $84.90. Seemed fated.

I’ve spent the majority of the day playing around in Photoshop, using some of the Pugly Pixel templates I bought forever ago, and generally setting up preferences and nesting. Exciting!

The timing was just about right, since I’ve finally gotten past some big deadlines and have spent the last few months thinking about photography, why I’m feeling less creative, why my Flickr is 5 months behind and I’m rarely posting images here anymore. I think I have a few answers.

In the meantime, my first little project: the many faces of Lucas. Remember that baby shower I threw a little over a year ago? Well, meet Lucas:

I was greeted by this cutie on the morning I landed in Madrid. (oh yeah, remember how I went to Spain and then never really talked about it? that’s upcoming too, I think.)

Having been there for the baby shower and on the day he was born, both of these things back here in Montana, it was so hard saying goodbye to him (and his parents, who had become dear friends) just four months after he was born so they could start anew in Portugal. But it did make the reunion a few months later pretty sweet.

So now it’s time to pull myself away from my new toy for a little while and re-enter the Land of the Living. But expect the occasional pimped out blog post, now that I’ve got a few more tools. Hooray!

(Any favorite Photoshop references or sources to share?)

But I don’t care. Nothing even close has come around since. And because I just saw this and I AM PSYCHED.

Magazine hoarding be damned, this will join my old stashed away issues!

So, Domino fan? Do you also hoard magazines? Which are your favorites, or the hardest to get rid of?

Somehow, I managed to post 99 times in 2011. That’s kind of incredible to me. And I spent most of the time thinking that I wasn’t getting around to posting often enough, feeling that nagging blogger impulse to start off a third of my posts with an apology.

But those are boring, so I’m going to just skip it this time around and chime in for only the fourth time this year.

Life is nutso. Again. (Still?) I’m never home in the daylight to take any of the many pictures I’ve been wanting to take. Ideas that spark in the few open moments, mostly when I’m roaring through the quiet streets of this town from one appointment to the next, mostly go unwritten.

But I do zone out more than occasionally via Pinterest, pinning and liking my way toward a total fantasy life, full of inspiration and quotes and rainbows. It’s like a drug.

But then I file them away into boards and rarely get a chance to go back through them. Kinda pointless.

So I thought I’d pull a few of my recent favorites. Shall we fall down the rabbit hole together?

I vote yes.

Mmmm. Ok, that was a nice little mini-vacation. No rhyme or reason, just a little departure from the day.

Are you on Pinterest? Do you use it as a way to step into fantasyland for a few minutes a day, or do you use it for actual real-life planning?

Many summers ago, my dear friend had a mix among his many burned CD mixes called “My Martin.” I burned it, tacking on my friend’s camp name to the mix, so that, to this day, my iTunes reads “Rumble’s My Martin.”

And so I was introduced to Martin Sexton.

When I heard he was coming to town again, I was quick to buy a ticket (ticket #21). Long before I knew whether anyone else would come.

Because I’m tired of trying to rile the troops. He’s wonderful in concert and I didn’t want to miss out.

For a while, a friend was going to meet me. But her work plans changed, last minute.

And so I went to dinner alone and ordered my new favorite pizza. I read a bit from “Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in That House” (recommended by Holly from Nothing But Bonfires). I had a couple of beers, beers that really hit the spot (kind of like the mystery of super-clean showers). And then I reveled in being alone in a crowd.

Alone in a singing, clapping crowd. Feeling a sense of community I haven’t felt in a while, even in a city where people throw around the “c” word like it’s, well, candy. Singing along to some of my favorite songs. Singing backup when he asked the crowd to “sing like angels.” Clapping and snapping and tapping my toe. Yelling out the request for my favorite, “Hallelujah,” something I never would have done had I known the person sitting next to me. But my seatmate and I made friends after all. Her boyfriend loved “Hallelujah” just like me. And even though he didn’t play it, I left feeling really content. Pleased I came.

So here it is, Hallelujah, but a couple of other favorites. If you get a chance to see Martin Sexton, alone or with others, I highly recommend you go.

Martin Sexton, Hallelujah
Martin Sexton, Angeline
Martin Sexton, Beast in Me

As far as I’m concerned, all of these are from “Rumble’s My Martin,” the album.

I didn’t get glasses until high school, even though I started failing eye exams much earlier (and hiding the results from my parents…) I knew I wouldn’t be able to get contacts right away, only dorks wore glasses, so I just ignored the blurriness. Which is shocking to me now, the idea of going through life not seeing any leaves, just green blobs for trees.

I only got them because my high school algebra teacher with the wicked coffee breath used to write pop quizzes on the chalkboard in his tiny handwriting. One day I couldn’t read any of it, panicked and started to cry, and a kid I didn’t especially like figured it out, subtly asked my teacher if he could copy the quiz for me, and placed a copy of the problems on my desk. I decided it was time. And from then on I was a lot nicer to that kid.

For years I wore contacts, but they never really suited me. I’m not one of those people who only feels awake once I put my contacts in – they make me feel tired, give me headaches, I get the dreaded halos and my eyes guzzle tons and tons of eye drops. Anymore, I really only wear them when I’m playing sports or getting really dressed up. And I’m all about the dailies so I can pluck them and chuck them once they start to drive me nuts.

Which leaves legally blind me as the glasses girl. And I’m cool with that. They’ve become a big part of my identity. But deciding on a pair, the first thing people see when they look at you every day, is a big choice. I’ve had a couple of pairs I really loved. And a couple that were just so-so.

After a multi-country search, I finally found a pair I really like. Kinda scholarly, kinda artsy, not too mannish/Teutonic. Tortoiseshell, which I always dig. But also purple. They’re even called marbled lilac. Ooh la la.

I’m a fan, even with the silly logo on the side of my face. They suit me.

Do you wear glasses? Are you one of those people with perfect vision who wishes she wore glasses, kind of like how straight-haired girls always wish they had curls? (figures.) Do you agree with my grandma, a woman who probably wore 50 pairs of glasses in her life, that boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses?

(all photos by me except the product shot)

Hope 2012 is treating you well thus far. Did you buy a new calendar? I’m still contemplating my options, but would love hearing which ones others chose. I thought about skipping a calendar this year, but now I’m having second thoughts. There’s something really pleasing about the monthly ritual of flipping a beautiful calendar to a new, seasonal page.

If you’re wanting to make some goals for the year ahead, I highly recommend Susannah Conway’s free Unravelling the New Year download. I’ve never done it before but sat down the other night to fill it out, think about last year, make plans for this year. And, finally, made the big step and chose a Word for the Year for the first time.

So what’s my word for 2012?

Fresh.

It’s all about fresh starts. Looking at the world with fresh eyes and stopping to appreciate what’s around me. Taking risks because every morning is fresh and new again. Staying on track. Eating better. Not beating myself up too much.

I’m excited when I think about what lies ahead.

What does 2012 hold for you?

(photo by me last night before hitting the town)

And it was just OK.

If I got really into a TV series (hello, True Blood!) I’d be getting discs one at a time for weeks, hardly ever seeing anything else. Seemed kind of silly. I don’t have cable, so my only non-Netflix options are Redbox (pathetic) or five versions of PBS (occasionally great, but extremely hit or miss. Way too many Holocaust documentaries for me this year.)

But now, I have but one word for you: Roku.

I got the TINY purple Roku LT for Christmas from my brother. Set up took less than ten minutes. It has a dedicated red Netflix button on the remote. And all of a sudden I feel like I have the best TV options ever. (not so much the TV, which despite being called TruFlat is anything but and has a weird green spot on the screen which generally corresponds perfectly with people’s faces…it was abandoned at my house for a reason…but I digress)

So many movies! So many TV shows! Plus Pandora and Amazon Video on Demand and Spanish TV channels and who knows what else since I’ve only had this thing hooked up for a few days! It’s awesome.

So I’m looking for some TV recommendations. I’ve heard good things about Friday Night Lights but have never seen it. Apparently it has amazing music? Think I’m going to start watching The Office – should I start with the UK version, or just go straight to Steve Carell and Co.? I’ve seen two seasons of Mad Men but might need to take a little break, since it’s a little depressing to me. What’s your favorite thing to watch on Netflix Streaming?

This sort of echoes my general, near-constant state of attempting to “catch up,” but seeing as how the majority of my most recent posts have been random updates, and random updates aren’t all that interesting, I’ve decided to go with one of my very favorite themes: organization.

There’s a grand irony to be found in my obsession with organization, out in full force every January with the coming of the “clear the clutter! solutions for small spaces! get organized at last!” magazine covers. Although I am organized as far as knowing where things are, at work, paying my bills on time, and so on, I am also sort of a huge mess, basically all of the time. When I travel, my suitcase has exploded within one day of arrival. My house has no shortage of piles. All of the time. And I have way, way too much stuff.

All of this organizational stuff is completely aspirational for me. I get that. It’s one small part of my love for IKEA and the Container Store. I fantasize that, someday, when I’m more settled and life is less hectic and I can actually build in storage, I will be less of a train wreck. Every January, it seems less and less likely.

And there’s something so silly about the fact that this push to organize and clear out comes right after Christmas, the root of so much stuff. And I love stuff, don’t get me wrong. I know I’ve written about this phenomenon before. I’m totally giddy with my new presents. I’m excited to have enough wine glasses to have friends over. I am wearing new earrings here as I type, new wool wrist warmers were perfect for my walk to work this morning, hot coffee in hand.

And that doesn’t even count the (many) things I buy for myself.

If all goes as planned, 2012 will be a year of great change. Everything is still uncertain; I’m feeling both excited and really, really freaked out. But, just as I’ll never be a minimalist, I also don’t want my stuff weighing me down. This is the year of use it or lose it. All of that stationery I’ve been saving forever? Trying to actually use it as part of my 52 Weeks of Mail challenge. The “fancy” paper napkins? Seems like a good excuse to have people over, or a way to spice up a solo brunch. I’ve been burning candles like nobody’s business, almost every night. The time to do it all is now.

So I’m going through some clothes and clearing out some of the clutter, as the magazine gods tell me to do. I’m scrolling through my Organization board on Pinterest more often than normal as the new year approaches. And I’m trying to jump on the new year, new (organized) world bandwagon one more time.

Wish me luck!

(ok, fess up: do you derive strange pleasure from images of organized spaces, even as you sit among total clutter? any tips that were promised to be life-altering actually have an effect on your everyday life?)

(ALSO, I would like to take this moment to remind everyone that paper goods are spelled STATIONERY. It’s not an unmoving, stationary anything, y’all. I see this typo all of the time and it drives me batty. And now the WordPress built-in spell check tells me stationery is not a word. False! 2012 resolution, paper people: spell stationery correctly. That is all.)

My mom bought it for me. I’m a big fan. It needs a little more crack-filling and a fair amount of sanding.

Then comes the fun part: painting.

It’s been sitting, propped up against the non-functional fireplace in the living room, for a long time as I’ve debated what color to paint it. (ok, I’ve also been putting off sanding, as I hate sanding).

One part of me wants to paint it chartreuse. Because I love chartreuse.

Another part of me wants to use the sort of goldenrod paint I have in the basement, which was the result of the dude at Lowe’s claiming he could wing the color combo and come “pretty close” to what I wanted. Which was totally false. But the resulting color is bright and cheery, but best in very small doses.

And then a voice in my head says, “Stop making everything another random color. Paint it white.”

White would match the trim in my house right now and look good against the light gray walls, but might look dingy against not-quite-white walls in the future. Although seeing this similar mirror on Design*Sponge a few weeks ago might be moving me slowly into the white camp:

So, what color should I paint this mirror, keeping in mind its rather large size but thin frame? Do you typically stick to neutrals or are you like me and let a rainbow explode all over your living room? Any tips on making sanding less lame?

(first photo by me. second one from Design*Sponge: Sneak Peek: Samantha Hahn and David Moldawer.)

Why I’m Here

Because my mother was on a date
with a man in the band, and my father,
thinking she was alone, asked her to dance.
And because, years earlier, my father
dug a foxhole but his buddy
sick with the flu, asked him for it, so he dug
another for himself. In the night
the first hole was shelled.
I’m here because my mother was twenty-seven
and in the ’50s that was old to still be single.
And because my father wouldn’t work on weapons,
though he was an atomic engineer.
My mother, having gone to Berkeley, liked that.
My father liked that she didn’t eat like a bird
when he took her to the best restaurant in L.A.
The rest of the reasons are long gone.
One decides to get dressed, go out, though she’d rather
stay home, but no, melancholy must be battled through,
so the skirt, the cinched belt, the shoes, and a life is changed.
I’m here because Jews were hated
so my grandparents left their villages,
came to America, married one who could cook,
one whose brother had a business,
married longing and disappointment
and secured in this way the future.

It’s good to treasure the gift, but good
to see that it wasn’t really meant for you.
The feeling that it couldn’t have been otherwise
is just a feeling. My family
around the patio table in July.
I’ve taken over the barbequing
that used to be my father’s job, ask him
how many coals, though I know how many.
We’ve been gathering here for years,
so I believe we will go on forever.
It’s right to praise the random,
the tiny god of probability that brought us here,
to praise not meaning, but feeling, the still-warm
sky at dusk, the light that lingers and the night
that when it comes is gentle.

by Jacqueline Berger, from The Gift That Arrives Broken.

Whenever I come home from seeing my friend Anna, which isn’t all that often as she’s typically living in Sweden or Spain, I come back and have found new ways to I emulate her. She’s fashion-forward and Swedish, so I get a lot of my Scandi-fix from her. We can communicate in IKEA-ese, no problem, and there aren’t too many people who know their BENNOs from their BILLYs and completely understand my interest in weighing the pros and cons of what are, in the end, cheap bookcases. The perfume I wear most often is the same as one she wears, and I bought it both because I like it and because it reminds me of her. I consulted her a while ago about my dark corners above my built-in bookcases problem, which we solved with a KNUBBIG. We spent a lot of time in Barcelona talking about clothes and wandering H&M and Zara, Anna giving me tips on the newest and the best.

I’ve done a lot of shopping since I’ve returned. But this time around, the main takeaway was the power of candles.

I have this clear memory of arriving super early at the Göteborg train station when I was visiting her five years ago – something like 6 a.m. The station was quiet and I was early, so I stopped in for a latte and a cinnamon roll (they are everywhere in Sweden). All along the bar where you order, there were tealights lit. In the windows facing out to the main station terminal, there were small candles in shallow bowls of sand. In every other way, it was a typical train station cafe, indistinguishable from any other. I remember thinking “This is it. These little touches are what define Swedish style.”

It’s dark around here. Really dark. Sunset tonight is at 4:47 p.m., and I rarely leave work before 5:30 or 6. It’s nothing compared to winter in Sweden, but I’m inside during the fleeting light of day, so it feels similar. Dark. Closed in. A little heavy.

And so I’ve been lighting tealights in the windows almost every night. I got this simple 6 slot glass tealight holder for Christmas a few years ago, and then I found almost identical versions, both 4 and 6 slots, a few months ago at Ross. I love their simplicity. I love that I don’t have to watch them as closely as tapers (although the holder next to the [real] tree is taking a little hiatus). I love how they flicker and how the windows reflect the light back into the room. Cozy. Mysig. One of the highest compliments a Swede can give you.

Following her lead, I’ve even started lighting candles during the day. I don’t have her IKEA scent combination concoction down quite yet (apparently it’s common knowledge that certain kinda funky IKEA candles smell good in conjunction…) but I’ve been lighting one good-smelling candle along with my tealights when I’m home on weekends. Why reserve candlelight for special occasions or romantic rendezvous? Maybe I’m not quite Swedish, because I have to admit that I still feel like candles make things feel special. I’ve just decided that special can happen every day.

Are winters dark where you live? How do you cope? Candles? Tea? Gobbling down mass quantities of Vitamin D?

I’m sitting in my living room, listening to “Linus and Lucy” for one of the first times this season, a little transfixed by the Christmas tree, finally decorated. It’s my first tree (and I even wielded the saw!) and is mostly covered with my parents’ castoff ornaments and a bunch of FIMO fruit ornaments I made a couple of years ago but never had anywhere to hang. It’s a little motley, I guess, but it has tons of lights and so far it hasn’t fallen over (it’s threatened it, more than once, and two of the stand’s legs are propped up with books should you happen to lift the white sparkly tree skirt…). Did I mention this same tree also slid off the top of my car and had to be re-attached in 40 mph winds on the side of the highway? It’s been a trial.

But now it looks pretty good. Cozy.

It’s sort of a weird reflection of how things have been going for the past couple of weeks. Stressful. More complicated than seems necessary. And with a couple of frantic moments to keep me on my toes.

But everything is going to be alright.

Beef stew is simmering in the crock pot. A load of laundry is humming in the basement. I’m finally unpacking two suitcases – one from Spain, the other from Thanksgiving weekend. One has summer dresses and ballet flats, the other is stuffed with fleece and wool and capilene, the necessary Montana tree cutting armor. The storm windows are in place, and there’s snow on the ground.

I’m going to catch up on my letter writing this evening, get back on track with 52 Weeks of Mail. I’m excited to send out Christmas cards in a few weeks – letterpress cards I bought on sale last spring.

I’m not caught up. Not even close. I’m not even sure what that might mean anymore.

But things are good. Everything is going to be alright.

How are things with you, friends?

(photo by Brian W. Ferry, used with permission. If you like dreamy photography and artful everyday moments, his blog is probably for you.)

(Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive, via the thinking tank)

So much swirling in my head so I’m not quite ready for any Spain posts. Still need to download photos to my computer. Still need to unpack my suitcase, bulging everywhere in the middle of the living room. Whoops.

I had a great time, as you probably might have guessed. Saw lots of important people in my life. Took some photos. Ate lots of good food. Watched an entire season of True Blood on my computer, mostly at night and wearing headphones while I was wide awake and everyone around me slept. Turns out True Blood is totally not the show to watch on planes or trains or in public places – mortifying, really, like watching super sexy scenes with your parents. Plus blood.

It also gave me nightmares about people coming up from behind me and grabbing my neck..and then pickpocketing me. Still worth it, though. Such a guilty pleasure, that show.

I also read Prayers for Rain, one of Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie and Gennaro detective novels. Have you read any of them? Gone Baby Gone is probably the most well-known thanks to the Affleck brothers. Really quick, well-written, funny but dark reads, if you’re looking for a little change of pace and a trip into Southie. And I had to love the two main villains’ names. So, so perfect.

(speaking of everyone’s favorite blue collar Boston neighborhood, did you see Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are going to make a Whitey Bulger movie? Ought to be an interesting trip down Boston lane, no?)

Now that I’m looking at this I’m realizing that my carry-on entertainment consisted almost entirely of blood and torture. Go figure.

A (much lighter!) fashion post coming this weekend. I’ve been sort of sartorially obsessed since my return.

- Bill Bryson, At Home

I’ve been reading At Home for quite a while now. I’m actually really liking it – how things have found their way into our homes is sort of incredible – but I’ve just been short on reading time lately, and flipping through magazines is about all my brain can often take. I’m looking forward to finishing it on a train somewhere in the rain on the plain in Spain.

It has me taking a closer look at some of the things around my house. The macro lens I borrowed for a while this summer helped, too. I want one so, so desperately.

 Are you a detail person or a big picture person? Guess which camp I fall into?

“Yesterday. I use the mail. I use the mail. I don’t pay any bills online. And it would be terrible for the Postmaster General to be paying bills online.”

It made people laugh, but it also made me think. “I use the mail.” (repeated for emphasis!) If I love the post office, and I want the postal service to continue to be a part of my life, I need to use it. I can’t be one of those people bemoaning the state of the universe when I’m contributing to it just as much as the next person.

The thing is, I love writing letters. Sure, I love receiving letters (any mail, really, which may be why I get about 12 magazines via subscription) but really I just like writing and sending them, whether or not I get a reply. It’s reaching out to someone you care about. It’s a way of showing friends that they are on your mind. It’s a pause for gratitude. It’s a longer than normal break from the go, go, go lifestyle. It’s stepping away from perfection and allowing cross-outs and missing words and realizing “this should be four paragraphs and not just one.” It’s an excuse to use my massive pen collection.

And I have yet to meet someone who isn’t pleasantly surprised to receive a handwritten letter in the mail. It’s a day maker.

So I’ve decided to write more handwritten letters. And as a way of keeping track, I signed up for 52 Weeks of Mail, a plan to send one handwritten letter or postcard per week. Although the challenge started in early October, I have sent out about a card a week in the past few weeks, and with postcards from Spain starting very soon, I think I’ll be on track. Writing weekly is going to be sort of difficult, I’d guess, as far as remembering and planning and making time, but I’m also really excited about it. It’s not a chore – it’s prioritizing something that I really love to do and that brings happiness to other people, too. Plus, it will assuage some of my guilt. Ha!

So I’ve decided not to do November Blog Posting Month this year. I spend plenty of time online. I’m going to start writing more letters instead.

Did I tell you that I’m starting a calligraphy class in November?

I can’t wait to join one of the letter writing clubs around the US and Canada.

Send More Mail is a blog full of inspiration.

Do you write letters? Have a love of postcards? A favorite calligrapher?

Do you let world events influence you personally to the point where you sign up for ambitious projects so you feel less guilty?

(image from the portfolio of Mary Kate McDevitt, found via Pinterest)

Playing in the background right now? When Harry Met Sally. Always makes me giggle. As my sister said today, “This movie is so perfect. A movie that can make me want Billy Crystal? Quite the feat.”

So, as a bit of a Ryan Gosling follow-up, I’ll confess that I’ve been waiting patiently for Crazy, Stupid, Love. to come out on DVD, with high hopes for a legit romantic comedy for once (despite the stupid punctuation and name I can never seem to remember). It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a killer romantic comedy – smart enough to make you forget just how unrealistic/cheesy/over the top they can be. Or enough of a guilty pleasure that you’ll willingly suspend all disbelief. We all want a little romance and a little comedy in our lives, right? And even more on rainy fall days.

I love it when people list recommendations. And I’m in need of some, since I’m in rom-com withdrawal lately. So, in no particular order, a list of key romantic comedies:

Before Sunrise+
Before Sunset
Love Actually*+<
Bridget Jones’s Diary*+<
The Holiday*+<
Maid in Manhattan*
10 Things I Hate About You+<
Love and Basketball (comedy? not sure. still love it.)+<
Mamma Mia!+
Sixteen Candles+<
Princess Bride<
Sleepless in Seattle*
Notting Hill<
My Big Fat Greek Wedding+
Dirty Dancing+
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights*+<
Serendipity*+
Say Anything
He’s Just Not That Into You<
When Harry Met Sally*+<(here you go, Billy!)
Two Weeks’ Notice+
Brown Sugar+<
The American President+
Kate and Leopold+
Away We Go<
While You Were Sleeping*+
Knocked Up +
Father of the Bride (I have to confess a preference for Part 2)
Sex and the City (the original, part 2 was atrocious)<
13 Going on 30 +
My Best Friend’s Wedding+<
You’ve Got Mail*

*includes Christmas scene
+ includes dance scene
< includes particularly hot guy
*+< Ultimate Romantic Comedy

Any favorites I’ve forgotten? Any recent rom-coms make your list?

I actually met him way back when while he was filming The Slaughter Rule in my hometown. He’s gotten hotter. And the feminism helps, along with his dog.

(From Feminist Ryan Gosling, the funniest Tumblr I’ve seen in a long time.)

So to the girl who shouted “Love your shoes!” while riding her bike by in the rain, thank you.

To the guy who saw me through the window with my hands full and went way out of his way to hold the door open for me, even though he was going the opposite direction, thank you.

To the girl who came up to me while I was attempting to wheel a cart consisting of heavy AV equipment, my laptop, and my dinner (frozen Tai Pei dinner I had microwaved…yep), all shielded with an umbrella, across a very long brick walkway and said, “I saw you were struggling. I know what that feels like. How can I help you?” thank you.

No really, thank you.

Even on the not so great days, the world can be a really wonderful place to be.

Their readings were quite wonderful. Some poems were funny, some were poignant, some were intense.

But more than anything, what stuck with me was the poets’ courage. Their exposure.

I am not a risk taker. And I’m a really private person, despite posting thinly veiled emotions here, relying on some strange sense of anonymity I can’t quite put my finger on.

He read in a language not his own, despite an almost impenetrable accent made stronger by his limited hearing. He was shaking and sweating – so nervous after having written almost 20 books, after countless readings in his native tongue – and there was something so endearing about his discomfort. I don’t mean endearing as in cute, but as in humanizing – he seemed like any other guy, except that he was reading his funny and sometimes really beautiful poems, poems few could write. All of this from a man who intimidated me so much at first that I almost dropped his class. I wanted to hug him.

The next readings have stayed with me this week. She read from a couple of books, her newest about a breakup, and so many people in the room knew just who she was referring to, her former love who is well-known around town. She spoke of loneliness and disappointment and longing, emotions we’ve all felt, sometimes in the same combination, but are ashamed to admit for fear of seeming weak. She seemed, at times, weakened by all that’s come to her in recent years. But in being so honest, so out there, sometimes seeming almost on the verge of tears, she also appeared so strong, so gutsy, steely at her core. Someone not to be trifled with. I was sort of in awe of the whole thing. It’s not easy in a small town to speak about love and loss, about homesickness and isolation.

I was totally inspired.

After not putting myself out there for a long time, I’ve been trying to be a bit braver lately. Walk up and talk to people who pique my interest. Express how I’m really feeling to friends. Admit to my weaknesses, my exhaustion, my fear. And I’ve fallen on my face a couple of times. It’s sucked. But I’m OK. A while ago, I read somewhere “I’d rather be fearful than regretful” and that has sort of stuck with me lately. There’s a strange power in vulnerability.

In the next months, I’m going to need to be brave, to be open to new experiences, to see where new adventures may take me. I feel like a bird, scared but ready to leave the nest, just looking for the next branch to which I’ll fly.

A work project that has been ongoing since about May is finally starting to wrap up – in a few short weeks, the whole ordeal will have ended. Finally. And I can start unburying myself from emails and unfinished projects.

Despite my mostly last minute GRE prep, I think the test went pretty well. I took the new GREs, but was given a score range at the end of the testing based on the old scoring scale, so who knows how it will all shake out. The score range seemed good. Better than expected. Mostly, it is over and I can stop lugging around this beast:

And then I’ve been devoting a ton of time to admin stuff for the community arts center where I’m a board member. Lots of good things upcoming, important changes being made. But I’m exhausted at the moment.

I haven’t been home for much more than sleeping and changing of clothes in what feels like a really long time.

The dishes just sit in the sink. One more frozen meal after another. Sleeping on a flat sheet because I need to do laundry and wash the fitted one (!). It’s pretty bad.

Two weekends ago I finally spent a little time tinkering around at home. Made a huge stir fry and used a bunch of veggies from the farmer’s market. Put together the IKEA cabinet I bought over a month ago:

(was convinced I had taken a picture in my living room, but…yep. Can’t find it.)

Unpacked and sorted another box from my parents’ house, as I’m slowly trying to get everything in one place so I can actually assess how much I have and how much needs to go. A long and sort of overwhelming project.

But the upside? I found my favorite quilt, a high school graduation present.

And I’m not the only one who’s a big fan.

I’m finally ready to welcome you.

Celebrating with quilts and peppermint tea, quiet evenings listening to Adele. Leaf collecting has officially begun. Pumpkin muffins on this week’s agenda.

So, pull up a chair and tell me: what are your favorite fall rituals? Who’s playing on your stereo these days?

Adele, One and Only from “21″
Adele, Lovesong from “21″
Adele, Someone Like You from “21″

(photo via hier houd ik van on flickr, first seen on Pinterest)

“The idea of having travel in your future is like having a book that you haven’t read by an author who you love.” – Paul Theroux

One month til takeoff.
(from NPR’s Talk of the Nation)

So I had to laugh (ok and kind of shudder!) while studying GRE vocabulary words a few weeks ago, at Kaplan’s definition of “engender.”

ENGENDER: to produce, cause, or bring about
His fear and hatred of clowns was ENGENDERED when he witnessed the death of his father at the hands of a clown.

I kid you not.

Apparently I’m not the only one with clown issues.

(direct quote from Kaplan New GRE Practice, Strategy and Review)

(also, the book misspells eulogy. Pretty much spells it like Zoolander says it.)

The “Vintage Wood Office Chair” from Restoration Hardware:

$495. Shipping starting at $95.

Cost of my chair? Nada. Given to me. And I like mine more.

I can’t express how happy these kinds of things make me.

(chair image from restorationhardware.com, via houzz)

Moonlight blank newsprint across the lawn,
Three-quarters moon, give or take,
                  empty notebook, no wind.

When it’s over it’s over,
Cloud crossing moon, half-clear sky, then
                  candle-sputter, shadow-crawl.

Well, that’s a couple of miles down the road,
                      he said to himself,
Watching the moonlight lacquer and mat.
Surely a mile and then some,
Watching the clouds come and the clouds go.

Citronella against the tiny ones, the biters,
Sky pewter-colored and suddenly indistinct now—
Sweet smell of citronella,
             beautiful, endless youth.
The book of moonlight has two pages and this one’s the first one.

Foresake me not utterly,
Beato immaculato,
          and make me marvelous in your eyes.

—Charles Wright, from Bye-And-Bye: Selected Late Poems

Yes, this is odd.

Perhaps it was driven by my too little too late attempt at buying some Missoni from Target bath towels. I’m not super in love with the chevrons, necessarily, but I’ve accumulated a somewhat random assortment of bath and hand towels, but they just happen to be in a palette of colors pretty much encapsulated here:

So I thought, throw in a little zig and a little zag and I almost seem to have some method to my madness.

Of course, they sold out immediately. So much for my bath towel fantasies.

Growing up, we lived five blocks away from my grandparents’ house, a big rambling brick house on two and a half lots with three stories, plus a basement, plus a super creepy cement basement below that. One of the strange features of this big old house was the single bathroom on the main floor – a half bath tucked under the stairs. To adults, I’m sure this space was sort of claustrophobic, especially to the mostly tall members of my family. But to kids it was just the perfect size – a secret space.

Like many (many) of the walls at this house, the walls of the bathroom under the stairs were covered in green large-scale floral wallpaper. Additionally, there were a few paintings my uncle did, which I’ve always loved. Simple watercolors, one of a group, one of a single man.

And then some literary art.

In front of the toilet, nestled in the weird little alcove made by the slant of the stairs, was a framed excerpt from a John Donne poem. And behind the toilet, art with Ahab and an excerpt from Moby Dick.

You don’t really think about the time you spend in the bathroom every day over the years, but when my grandma died and we moved everything out of the house, it seemed that most everyone could recite that Donne poem from memory. I can do it right here:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s, or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Fixed a couple of punctuation marks, but otherwise, it’s lodged in my brain to stay. Only the guys really know the Moby Dick quote…since it was hanging behind the toilet.

Anymore, the bathroom is one of the few places where we stop for a few minutes with very few distractions. That might say something about the state of the world.

So maybe I shouldn’t be advocating for any kind of multitasking. But isn’t there something kind of beautiful about this wallpaper? And wouldn’t you get really good at identifying small areas of the globe, after a while?

Do you ever find yourself deep in thought about things like bathrooms, topics you’re sort of embarrassed to admit fill the empty spaces in your head? (please say yes.) What does your perfect main floor bathroom look like?

(photos from target.com and the Sept/Oct. 2011 issue of Lonny magazine, found via Pinterest)

When one is faced with studying for an exam one does not wish to take, at least new paper products provide a little relief.

GRE. On Monday. Wish me luck.

(back to re-learning algebra)

Dave Matthews Band, The Gorge, 2004

All but one of these yahoos will be joining me to relive our youth at the Caravan this weekend. Four nights, three days of concerts, flying and driving in from Chicago, L.A., and all corners of Montana, with a couple of new people (sisters, wives, fiancees) added along the way.

These will be my 7th, 8th, and 9th Dave shows – small potatoes – especially since I haven’t been to one in forever. A couple of people in our group have passed the century mark, pretty sure.

Should be epic.

Ordering purple suede shoes is the answer.

Did I miss out on some gene for an internal Ann Taylor Should Appeal To You Now clock? Loud music and socially inappropriate hair colours still seem infinitely more worth my time and attention, and I don’t get what all the fuss is about.  I don’t see anyone wagging accusatory fingers at JD Salinger while crying “Peter Pan complex! What about your Adult Life! Why do you keep Talking About Teenagers!” to the high heavens, and frankly, I don’t see why I don’t get to play with the boys, too.  And besides, I pay my bills on time.  I’m a great cook.  I have dental insurance.  I’m a Reasonably Functional Adult. “

-  from The Rayanne Project, a smart blog I discovered via nogoodforme.com. My So-Called Life, you still know no equal.

(this Rayanne Project post was also pretty great)

I often get asked what I’m doing when I’m taking pictures of food. People find it quite odd, all in all. But this video hints a little at the beauty to be found in the food we prepare and eat. So many colors, so many textures – and a little strange alchemy in all of these ingredients coming together and forming something totally unique.

Don’t you wish every recipe was like this?

(via Little Upside Down Cake, but created for Kinfolk magazine, the top e-mag on my long To Read list)

After months and months of talking about it, thinking about it, planning a trip and then having to reconsider, daily Kayak email alerts about rising and falling fares, I finally bit the bullet and bought a ticket to Spain for this fall. It took a bonus at work (in about September), putting $30 or $40 per paycheck in a savings account, and a bit of my tax refund, but when I thought about the seemingly ever-growing list of things I want to buy, and the guilt that comes with that, I realized that nothing will make me as happy for as long as ditching this place for a while in favor of friends, food, photography, writing, and relaxation in my surrogate country.

My little jaunt will take me to Madrid for a few days, Barcelona to see a dear friend, back to my old stomping grounds in Córdoba to catch up, meet new babies, see old friends, and spend at least one quiet morning in the shadows of the Mezquita’s arches, and then back to Madrid, where I’m hoping to squeeze in time with friends now living in Portugal before I get back on the plane.

It’s never enough time. But still, I’m going.

Y no puedo esperar.

You know those roads you’ve driven a million times? For me, it’s the 200 miles between where I live now and my hometown. It’s a quick drive in the summer but a pretty beautiful one, with dramatic changes in scenery and a hop over the Rocky Mountains. There’s one section with rolling hills, about 60 miles outside of town, where the clouds are always dramatic, making you understand where the Big Sky Country motto comes in.

It’s so familiar and yet always surprising, too. I had a smile on my face when I merged from state highway to interstate, seamlessly, in contrast to the first time I ever merged on the highway, ever, at that same exit, driver’s ed teacher in the passenger seat as I clutched the wheel and looked over my shoulder over and over again.

So…my heightened stress levels last week may have made me vulnerable, but when I saw the Omiyage Surprise Pack featured on the Send More Mail blog…it was inevitable. To quote Janet (Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty), I was like a moth to a flame, burned by desire. (that’s the way love goes.)

The Canadian exchange rate is doing me no favors right now, but I don’t care. When I opened my door last night after another very.long.day and saw a pink shiny package, I actually squealed. Despite a desperate need to pee, the package had to be opened. Immediately. Bodily functions be damned.

And inside: so much freaking kawaii goodness. The perfect counterpart to a long, grueling day when not a single person said things to me like “What a sweet honey,” “take a rest,” “always thanks for you,” or “Good Lcuk” (actual spelling). These stickers said all of those sweet nothings, and did so with style to spare.

It’s funny that my last couple of posts were about having a homebody weekend, things being crazy, because they’ve only become so much more so. In some strange way, that weekend was less about rejuvenation as it was about gearing up for the next challenge, as it turns out.

Huh.

Sometimes we get what we need even when we’re unsure of what we need. A comforting thought.

And so tonight, I’ve earned a little time to wander my house. To put on some mellow music. To drink a PBR or two. And to bring order to a very small space, inspired by an article,”The Art of Arranging,” in this month’s Real Simple decorating issue.

Back in the next few days with Before and Afters.

Even so, it’s mid-July. I think I’ve eaten a total of two meals involving the barbecue. And now we’re going through this weird afternoon/evening thunderstorm phase that is even further preventing me from being outside when I get home from work. Time feels like it’s slipping away.

And so even though it’s not June anymore, summer feels like it’s just begun. This song has been on my mind, and spinning in my stereo, quite a bit lately. The Decemberists will be in town this coming week, and I finally decided to bite the bullet and see them again. This song is a big part of what tipped me into the “yes – go for it” category. That, and the use of “panoply” and “barony” in this song. Get a couple of beers in me (the concert’s at a brewery, after all) and I just may find myself shouting “Colin Meloy! I love your vocabulary!”

The Decemberists, June Hymn from The King is Dead

I’ve just been feeling worn down by all of the running around like a crazy womanness.

So I’m really relieved to be having a productive, at home weekend. Trying to minimize the errand running. Checking a few things off my ever-growing to do list. Cleaning. Organizing. Putting away. Because at this point, leaving town and coming back to things the way they are wouldn’t feel very rejuvenating. There’s no way out but through. (Did you guys sing the Going on a Lion Hunt song when you were kids? Reminds me of that. “Got to go through it!” But I digress…)

It’s also been a long time since I did a house-related post, so I thought it would be fun to come back on Sunday (or even Saturday? I’m on a roll) with some photos from around the house, a little glimpse into my quiet weekend.

But for now, the back patio is calling me. Happy weekend!

ast night, after plans changed slightly from what I was anticipating, I came home and watched Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens. Within a few minutes, I was reminded that I had seen it before. But as an unabashed Annie fan, it was fun taking it in again, watching her eye and her style and her confidence grow through film over the years. It’s not a balanced portrayal of her strengths and flaws, as it is written and directed by her sister, but I’ve heard the horror stories – how demanding she can be, how poorly she can treat her assistants, how her shoots balloon way past their budgets. That doesn’t really interest me as much as the central question: with millions of people toting cameras, how does a photographer develop such a unique and recognizable style, and all while evolving and changing with time? I would argue that no photographer makes work as recognizable as hers. And it is so striking and so often so lovely.

I loved this line from one of the interviews: “I remember sitting down and looking at that book [The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson] and seeing that you could travel the world. The camera gave you this license to walk out and be alone in the world but, you know, you were there with a purpose. It was a very important discovery.”

I did a presentation about her in high school and I knew the (apparently very low-res) photos I used for it were still lurking somewhere on my hard drive. I thought it would be fun to see what my high school self found and decided to highlight.

I own and highly recommend her massive book A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, which I bought used at Powell’s in Portland a couple of years ago. I flip through the photos, ranging from family snapshots to high-end Vogue cover shoots, when I’m looking for some new photography ideas, especially as I try to improve my portraiture. Trying to edit down her massive portfolio is one of the storylines of the documentary, actually, shots pinned up all around the room in her massive barn/workspace in New York. She’s such a master of portraits that I just ordered her book Olympic Portraits – because, come on, Annie and Olympians? What more could a girl want?

(drop cap by Jessica Hische; all photos by Annie Leibovitz)

And it wasn’t even super deep or fascinating, just thoughts that had come to mind over the course of the day.

For whatever reason, lately I’ve been having publish block. I start writing a post, I add some photos, but something seems to be missing and I don’t hit “publish” – and isn’t one of the perks of blogging that it’s supposed to be low pressure? Off the cuff? I need to keep that in mind, get back into winging it and seeing what comes along. Actually publish a few of the many posts I have saved.

Save fewer drafts, publish more posts. Good mantra.

There’s actually a lot to be told these days. Good things, mostly.

Bloggers out there, have you tried the new WP full screen Zen mode? I think I like it. I could use a little more Zen in my life.

This MacBook is nice and all. I’m not Mac inept, but I still find the “use two fingers on the trackpad to right click” to require way more coordination than just right clicking. I’m feeling a bit Goldilocks about it, I guess – the keys are a little too far away from one another, the keyboard a bit too small. And if I’m using a Mac, I’d like the Dashboard and move the windows out/see everything don’t know what it’s called function shortcuts, please.

But one big perk of this particular model: Photoshop. I may not have my fonts at hand, but surely I can knock out some projects I’ve been needing to work on, right?

So, wrapping things up, here are a few photos from the last couple of days:

God, moving sucks. And I wasn’t even the one doing it.

Things have gotten away from me a bit lately, in general as well as in terms of this little June project. Life is in flux, in so many ways. And, in wanting to talk about it while also maintaining my carefully curated semi-anonymity here, I’ve found myself feeling stuck.

I say that I don’t want to get Dooced, but that’s a small part of things – sort of a cop out. I know that. I’ve been surprised to find how private I am, in a lot of ways. Maybe it’s smart. Or maybe it’s personal preference or paranoia – not wanting any random person to know the ins and outs of my life. Or maybe there’s more to it.

In the world of Facebook, we broadcast our whereabouts, our relationships starting and ending, our frustrations and happiness, our lunches. It has a tendency to make things that really matter seem on equal footing with all of the banal bullshit. Or at least that’s how it feels to me. I’ve heard about countless engagements and divorces, even deaths, via the status update. And I can’t help but resent that.

Recently I spent a little time with someone who has no qualms about telling everyone what he loves and hates. He has a tendency to express himself so openly that he sometimes looks kind of pathetic. Kind of angry. Kind of a lot of things we all are, sometimes, when we’re not just showing the PR version of ourselves.

I know the same level of honesty or bluntness, the total lack of filter, whatever you want to call it, isn’t me. And I’m thankful for that, in a lot of ways. But I’m also kind of in awe of it and trying to learn a little something from that acceptance of vulnerability. It’s so goddamned refreshing. Somehow it’s different from the unfiltered broadcasting of big and little, good and bad. And that’s something I’m still sorting out: how to respect the importance of how we feel, be honest and authentic, even in cyberspace, while still maintaining my own sense of boundaries and what feels right to me.

“The heart of authenticity is the courage to be vulnerable.” – Brené Brown

OK, so blah blah – what does all of this have to do with creativity, you ask?

I’ve been reading a bit of Brené Brown’s blog after watching a TED talk she gave about vulnerability. And I came across this post about living a creative life. This thought really resonated:

“I had the creativity scars that many of us have; the ones that come from not being able to draw a still life in middle school and being told that I better stick with writing and reading.”

Yep. Because my grades were all-important for so long, I grew to dread art class – the one class that would get in the way of my perfect report card. Not only was I, along with others, given the impression that I had no talent, no ability, but we were also graded A-F dating back to grade school art classes. Maybe the kids who couldn’t carry a tune dreaded music the same way? I have no idea.

I spend a lot of time now pointing out that “I’m not artistic, just kind of crafty.” Because anyone can be crafty. Crafty just relies on the willingness to try, to buy random supplies, to not get your feelings too hurt if it doesn’t turn out the way it looked in the magazine photo.

But isn’t the same true for so many aspects of creativity?If you’re just willing to try and not be embarrassed and practice, you can do it, at least kinda. I won’t pretend I have innate drawing ability or painting ability or musical talent. I could work at all of those for a long time and not create a single masterpiece. Or a single thing that didn’t look like a fourth grader was involved. I’m not foolish.

But there are things, creative things, I do pretty well. Writing is one. Photography is another. And there’s no shortage of crafty projects!

But there’s also the unsung creative heroes: Problem solving. Curiosity. Wandering. Decorating. Fantasizing.  Cooking.

And so, in honor of some of those, a few things that have been inspiring to me in the past couple of days, in the midst of moving chaos and carpet cleaning and furniture stacked up in the kitchen and to the rafters in the garage.

• My garden style pinboard on Pinterest
• The Empire State building looking like this
• Bon Iver cover songs

Bon Iver, Your Love (The Outfield cover)
Bon Iver, I Can’t Make You Love Me/Nick of Time (Bonnie Raitt cover [with a little Leon Russell intro] live on Jimmy Fallon) (two of my favorite B.R. songs mashed into one!)

• 29 Ways to Stay Creative video on Vimeo
• Coffee can lanterns
• Vision and Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (just arrived yesterday!)
• The Hairpin
• my journal
• The book I’m trying to read (more on that soon)
• The homes in Brothers & Sisters reruns (ok, and Dave Annable)
• Sunshine on my shoulders and walks to nowhere
• Also, walks to get ice cream

A few photos coming tomorrow.

Do you feel creative? Artistic? Crafty? Inspired? When? Where? Why not?

Not a bad place to have a couple of drinks with family and watch the sunset from the patio. A good Monday.

We got rained on in cycles throughout the afternoon. But got rid of a lot of junk! Sometimes cleaning some things out makes room for thinking, and occasionally even for creativity.

Sunday dinner: Vegetarian pot pie stew, served over Caulipots. Both from Appetite for Reduction: 125 Fast and Filling Low-Fat Recipes.

Not the most photogenic subject, but quite tasty.

Cooking is one of my favorite Sunday afternoon activities, hands down.

But not so long ago I was remembering the best msn.com feature – the Week in Pictures. Every Friday, MSNBC pulls together about fifteen photos taken that week around the world. They come in from the big dogs – the AP and Reuters and AFP, but also from some small town papers. As the headlines have flown by in the past few months – Japan, Egypt, Libya, flooding in the Midwest, volcano in Chile, to name a few, and always Iraq and Afghanistan – the Week in Pictures has made each tragedy seem real. Has made the people who live in these places seem like individuals, crying into the shoulder of a husband because a tornado took the roof off the house and left nothing inside. The sheer number of identical cars, stacked like blocks in a coastal parking lot in Japan, has given a scale to the suffering that reading articles full of statistics will never be able to do.

But the Week in Pictures isn’t just about tragedy. Each week, there are truly lovely photos – from NASA, of festivals, the seasons unfolding north and south of the equator. There are charming moments and scenes to make you laugh, too. I love the peeks into everyday life, photos that would never make most newspapers because they aren’t directly related to a news item. They are what happens, all of the time, just outside the frame of the images that normally make it to our pages and to our screens.

And after looking through the week’s photos, you can vote for your favorite. Or which you think is best, which is different than a favorite, really. I guess the criteria is unclear, which, to me, is another level of fascination – each week I choose what I think is the best photo and then I guess what will come out on top in the voting. Then I click submit, and I am so rarely right. There are certain themes that are more likely to rank highly – anything involving the US military, cute kids, dogs – but I can’t seem to put my finger on any sort of algorithm to explain why people are drawn to what they are. And the photos I choose almost always land in the middle of the pack, and occasionally toward the very bottom. Apparently what attracts me is different from the norm (but I guess I could have told you that after having read so many women’s magazine articles!)

Now I subscribe to the RSS feed, so spending a few minutes looking through what happened in the world this week has become a bit of a Friday morning ritual. As I walk to work, I wonder what corners of the world might enter into my frame that morning. I reflect a bit on what it would be like to have tragedy come to your front door. I delight in the small changes that signal the start of a new season. And I smile as I think about how different we all are, how different our desires and preferences are, but also how photography can make so many exotic locales and customs seem not to different from our own.

In the meantime, these caught my eye.

I am so, so incredibly tired of the rain and semi-darkness at this point. Flowers help.

I know that some of this is a middle class luxury, one of omission more than actual disdain, like not knowing how to change your oil or being blissfully unaware of coupons or something. But, unlike canning or knitting or other semi-forgotten generational knowledge that one can learn, be relatively sure one is doing correctly, and not risk losing any limbs, there’s something a little intimidating about power tools. It’s hard to teach yourself, to my way of thinking. Maybe that just shows the extent of my ignorance.

At the local home resource center, they’ll not only let you use their woodshop for as little as two bucks an hour, depending on your household income, they’ll also teach you how to use their tools. Safely. And so with a fair amount of excitement and a healthy dose of trepidation, I enrolled in a four hour Intro to Power Tools course. Figured, if nothing else, it totally counts as a creative activity worthy of a blog post!

It was actually pretty bad ass, to my way of thinking. I was the least experienced by far (one guy was “building a small house” while another came with a sketchbook full of furniture drawings….) but I walked away feeling pretty OK about operating a jointer, a planer, a drill press, a chop saw, a belt saw, and even the dreaded table saw. When I walked in this evening after work, I didn’t even know half of those things existed, what their names were, let alone how to use them and keep all of my limbs. And already I’m thinking of projects, which is pretty empowering. I’d like to build a small bench for my back patio. I think I could cut mitered corners to frame a basic mirror. And now I’m going to look at all of those Before & After projects with a whole new set of eyes.

Do you know your way around a shop, or do you hammer nails in crooked (um, guilty as charged)? Any projects you’d like to tackle, either with tools you have or if only you knew how to use the tools you need? Any advice on where to begin building a basic toolbox with more than hammer/screwdriver/wrench/drill?

Yes. Most certainly.

Getting back into the real swing of things, I thought I better include another photo of flowers. Weekend, here I come!

Lately I’ve been rescuing a lot of random stuff from the curb or the garbage. I figure that if I don’t revamp them soon, they can just go back on the curb, no harm done. Basically no one I know shares this mindset and they all think I’m crazy, but that’s OK. One man’s crazy is another man’s creative? Maybe.

This was in the garbage at work, since no one else could see removing all of the many generations of tape (Scotch, masking, remnants of masking long gone).

Others saw junk, I saw a project! Popped in a movie and went to town with my razor blade. Now I just need to wipe it down and paint that sucker. I need few things in the world like I need paper organization.

And then to the retail therapy. Started off the morning on Sunday by buying a midcentury dresser on Craigslist. Ended the day knee deep in homewares at Ross/TJ Maxx. Bought plenty of useful things, some less so. And then there’s the cast iron apple pot. It looks like this, and is about three times the size of an actual apple:

And it was THREE DOLLARS. I said to a friend that it’s either going to be one of those dumb purchases you made because it was cute and cheap OR it’s going to be one of those things you never knew you could live without. First I’m going to try baked apples with cinnamon and maybe nutmeg and maybe ginger. Then, I might try roasting garlic. Or peppers. Or pears! Don’t worry, these are all going to be done separately. Decided it would give me a creative cooking outlet and be weirdly cute, to boot.

And then today was busy and Monday and … still raining. So my creative move of the day was contributing to someone else’s creativity. Amy Martin is a local musician who is attempting to fund her work via a Kickstarter-esque campaign. She writes pretty hippie songs and led a kids choir with a repertoire of songs about science. They opened for Ani DiFranco a few years ago and I was totally smitten. So, about the campaign: though I didn’t have much to contribute, I have a CD of hers I really enjoy and thought I could at least chip in. “Green Valley” is my favorite song written about the city in which I live (I think The Decemberists’ “The Apology Song” might be number 2). Also, for whatever reason, her political satire song “It’s About Oil” pops into my head sometimes in the shower. Listen to this song and you’ll see it’s really quite an image.

So, how was your weekend? Any exciting recent purchases? What would you roast in a weird little apple pot (if only you were so lucky to have one)?

Amy Martin, Green Valley (live)

Amy Martin, It’s About Oil (live)

(apple photo from amazon.com, other photos by me, Amy Martin’s music available on Amazon and iTunes)

This morning, pre-magazine lunch break, I was thinking about my Day 9 post and about the various mediums at my disposal. Still photos. Video, if I get less self-conscious about it. The written word. Expressing my thoughts through music.

But what about smell? Aren’t smells some of the most evocative in terms of nostalgia, in terms of memories?

Because we’re here among friends, and I don’t have a background in biochemistry, I’m going to tell you the best idea I have in terms of a future invention: a smell capturer. (copyrighted, as of right now!) I envision it looking a bit like a Flip cam or something, where you could stick it out and capture a smell – churros frying late at night, the smell of their accompanying chocolate mixing in (with a splash of drunkenness, just to capture the entire experience of waiting in line). That untouchable smell of chic in high end boutiques. The smell in the spines of old books. Hell, libraries in general would work for me. Would smells not be some of the best memories to bring home, from places near and far?

And we’re not talking those cloying, fakey fruity smells that come out of candles. This is the actual smell of fresh cut grass, the smell of electricity and earth before a thunderstorm. I have a feeling this library candle might not soothe me the same way a walk in the stacks does, because it wouldn’t smell quite right:

Just in case there are any lingering doubts about the power of smells, and to get back to that New York magazine, today I was looking at this page:

and found that all of a sudden, I was thinking of my friend Anna. She just popped into my head. And of course, she has nothing to do with “What to Buy Your Gardening Grandparent.”

Well, then I saw this ad on the facing page, which I swear I had not looked at up to this point:

Light Blue is the perfume she wears, but just some of the time. But ironically, it’s also what I often wear. And when I smelled it, I didn’t think, “There’s my perfume,” or “Light Blue.” I thought of my dear Swedish friend, now living in Barcelona, and getting ready to go out when I was visiting her in Pamplona. One specific night of trying on clothes and shoes and listening to Fito y Fitipaldis and pre-gaming in her apartment, where we had to be kind of quiet and keep the door closed because we didn’t want to disrupt her roommates. I have photos from this specific night.

much later that night (and the elusive author shows her face!)

But the smell brought me there, to that very room on the outskirts of town, to a moment I wouldn’t have even thought about photographing. And there was something kind of wonderful about it all. An entire creative walk down memory lane, all brought on by a perfume strip in a six month old magazine.

So now the obvious question: if you had one of my magic smell capturers, what would you capture?

But this damn ad just evoked the most disgusted response from me. I saw it in the back of an old New York magazine I was reading over lunch.

Here goes. Brace yourself.

1. Gross and ugly and totally nonsensical (rain boots that CAPTURE all of the rain in a tray-like sole, making your feet especially squishy? no thanks.)
2. If you’re going to cut up rain boots for your stupid ad, do you really have to use $125 Hunter Gloss rain boots, the same ones I’ve been coveting (in violet) for years?
3. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d hesitate about putting my feet in the hands of someone who so clearly has no respect for shoes.
4. I would comment on their lame photoshopping of the tag, but then I went a little crazy with the smudge finger.
5. Apparently they use dull implements at this place, because if you look closely, their hacking off of the toebox is all janky and crooked. Confidence booster.

These are the kinds of things that stick in my head all day. Do with it what you will.

I was thinking yesterday about the little ways we insert creativity into our lives, especially day-to-day. Do you doodle during meetings or when you’re on the phone? Do you read a novel over your lunch break? Watch a thought-provoking show or movie in the evening?

I subscribe now to the Writer’s Almanac emails. Once a day, a poem lands in my inbox. It’s a bit like how I drink coffee – sometimes I want to start my day off on the right foot and it’s the first thing I do in the morning; sometimes I save it for the mid-morning slump. But whenever I decide to read the daily poem and a bit about literary history, I look forward to it. I never know what kind of poem might come my way – nostalgic, melancholic, funny, traditional, modern, short, long – and part of the joy is in the anticipation, the daily surprise. Whatever it is, it just might be a poem I like. One that sticks with me. One that inspires other musings and creative thoughts throughout the day.

So I’m wondering, what’s your favorite creativity booster on days that can sometimes feel a little…beige?

So walking to work this morning on another kinda gray day, I looked down and started laughing.

I was wearing my orange trench coat, which is quite bright and quite orange. Along with my yellow purse (which a friend recently described as a beacon, saying she could pick me out from blocks away…)

and red flats…

and the purple nails I mentioned yesterday.

I’m like freaking Rainbow Brite.

Too bad I don’t have a white horse (of any variety, including the Nice and Smooth kind) or a weird fuzzy friend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkl_Vq1SWKg

But I do have a closet with plenty of gray day solutions.

(Rainbow Brite image from an 80s cartoon webpage. Representing, like my friends above.)

Bastard. This means war.

But since it was raining when I got home from work, war will have to wait a day. In the meantime, purple nails are going to be the most creative painting of the day.

Pretty impressive since I spent about two hours being stalked by this same goddamned squirrel. I am held hostage in the house by this stupid thing – no fear of humans, deep desire to sneak into my house all of the time.

Dream on, buddy.

Take that, stupid deer.

I think that it probably has more to do with figuring out creative acts “good” enough to post.  Recognizing the little creative choices we all make every day and deciding that it doesn’t need to be elaborate, it doesn’t even need to be visual. The little moments of creativity are what make mundane days livable, enjoyable even.

One nice result of this focus on creativity is that I’m letting my mind wander throughout the day, figuring something creative might result. And I’m finding connections where I might not otherwise. Today, I was walking across campus when I heard a man whistling. I recognized him. He’s an administrator, fairly high up the University totem pole, but his background is in music. He has this lovely, booming voice when he sings on stages, wearing a tux. Performing. But walking today on the quiet grounds, he was whistling to no one but himself. Although he might not spend as much time in front of classrooms and auditorium audiences as he once did, music is a part of him. It’s in his head, in his heart, all day long. No tux required. And I just found it so wonderfully inspiring. What a blessing to have a job that’s an extension of something you’d do anyway.

Creativity clearly comes naturally to him; he would probably self-identify as a creative person working in a creative field (or with a background in a creative field, at least). But I doubt he’d recognize his whistling as a creative act. Sometimes creativity comes less from big gestures, tuxes on stages, than from the music that fills an otherwise silent, rainy sidewalk on a Friday afternoon.

Do drinks with friends count? A creative look at drinks with friends?

(photo by me)

“30 Days of Creativity” might be another way of saying “30 days of me taking pictures of flowers.”

Still, I carried my camera around. I had my eyes open. Even in the rain. For today, this is what I saw.

(photo by me. clearly.)

Hello, June! This may be a fool’s errand, but I’ve decided to try 30 Days of Creativity, starting today. The whole idea is to make something, anything, every day for the month of June. And since it’s still rainy here and not especially summer-y, I thought I might give it a go.

In March 2009, I took almost 800 photos. In March 2010, 725. March 2011: 55. Time to pick things up a little bit. Hopefully what they say on the 30 Days of Creativity website is true: “Your brain is like a muscle. When you exercise it, it gets stronger.”

I’ll be posting here, on Flickr, and on Pinterest. Wish me luck!

OK, I feel relieved. And refreshed. And really sick of tagging photos. But now I’m ready for tomorrow – when a new project will begin! Stay tuned!

(all photos by me)

Whatever it is, quite a few of my musical cravings were soothed last night by the show I saw at my favorite historic theater – The Head and the Heart opening for Iron and Wine.

To be honest, the Iron and Wine set was really different from what I expected. As NPR so nicely put it, “On his latest album, Sam Beam’s whispery folk has morphed into a many-tentacled colossus of a band.” He had two drummers. Three backup singers (including Markéta Irglová of Once/Swell Season fame). A horn section. It was way more rock/funk than the very mellow music I’ve come to know. Despite Sam Beam’s total lack of stage charisma last night, it was an excellent show, helped immensely by the ultra-talented backup musicians and the energy of one in particular, who rocked out in a linen jacket and pink shirt (and braved questioning looks from his trumpet-playing neighbor) while nailing flute, clarinet, an instrument I didn’t even recognize during the haunting encore of “He Lays in the Reins,” and more than one amazing sax solo. Just watching his excitement and joy and talent was worth the cost of admission.

A live version of “He Lays in the Reins” with the band Calexico:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoAnnbxMkGg

Sam Beam

I won’t pretend to write eloquently about music. I’ll leave that to all of the blogs (one in particular) and radio stations gushing over The Head and the Heart, but they were fabulous as the opening band. It’s always fun to watch a band early in their rise, when they’re still figuring out their style and their stage presence. When the quirks haven’t yet been ironed out. They alternated between lovely ballads and stomping and clapping, sometimes within the same song. They harmonized beautifully. And here and there one of them stepped up to bust out a solo singing moment that actually gave me goosebumps – these moments of shocking loveliness – singing on tiptoes, one step away from careening off course and hitting the wrong note but keeping it just at arm’s length, in a way that was really mesmerizing.

A sextuplet of attractive, talented young musicians bringing clapping back into the mainstream? I’m all for it. We will be hearing more from them in the months to come, I’m sure. I was pleased just to hear a bit of them, in all of their dancing and singing and stomping and clapping glory, last night.

The Head and the Heart, Lost in My Mind
The Head and the Heart, Down in the Valley (I also liked the YouTube video of this song live in Seattle)
The Head and the Heart, Josh McBride (from the beautiful Fuel/Friends Chapel Sessions)

Tip: If you join their mailing list, you’ll get two of these songs to download, Lost In My Mind and Down In The Valley, for free!

(all photos by me)

We seem to be continuing with the OCD theme this week, but I am weirdly excited to tell you about TuneUp, a plug-in for iTunes or Windows Media Player. I saw an ad for it on 8tracks.com and was curious about whether it would really work – it claims it “automagically” cleans up track names, adds album art, artists, even genres in iTunes. Plus it says it gets rid of duplicate tracks, of which I have many. MANY. Plus it’s supposed to tell you about upcoming local concerts for any artists in your iTunes library, and I like knowing those kinds of things.

I downloaded the free trial, which allows for 50 cleaned tracks, 25 album covers added, 25 duplicate removals, and access to concert alerts (plus artist bios, music videos, things like that).

I started simple, adding artist and track info to pretty well known songs. No problem. Then I picked some Spanish music – sin problema. Even got the accents right, which made me weirdly giddy.

And then I really tried to trick it.

I looked all over for the weird stuff. Lithuanian music from a former roommate? Had no trouble finding Jūratė ir Kastytis. OK…

SNL clips? Figured out the “The Chanukah Song” (not Hanukkah) is from Adam Sandler’s Thanksgiving & Chanukah Songs album.

Obscure live acoustic version of Mr. Big’s “To Be With You?” Nailed it.

Punk rock cover of Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now?” Easy.

Bad reggaetón song I only had listed as “Toma, toma?” All over it. And even put the accent on the genre.

You can choose the fields it updates, so I can keep the compilation name Fish Magic is Birthday Magic (thanks, Rhiannon!) but update the tracks and artists, all within a minute or two.

I am smitten.

So then I tried cleaning up duplicates. I wanted to keep Ani DiFranco’s “Both Hands” from her self-titled album (but not all three copies) but also have the live version from Living in Clip. Yes! Yes! Yes!

Not only did it show concerts in town from now until September, it let me know when bands I like are opening acts or are even playing in small, basement bars. Crazy.

You can buy the various tools a la carte- Clean for artists and track names, DeDuper for duplicates, Cover Art – or you buy the whole package, either as a one-year subscription (with new settings NOT reverting at the end of the year) or lifetime membership, even allowing one license switch if you get a new computer. And right now they’re offering 25% off any of the products using the promo code CLEANSE.

Initially, even the $37.50 sale cost seemed like a high price for my anal retentiveness. But it’s making me so happy. SO HAPPY. Best money I’ve spent in a little while, really. It’s like the computer version of getting your teeth cleaned, but with no excessive drooling or judgmental questions about flossing. I’m so psyched that I set up a referral link. If you are catching my drift and want this same OCD high, use this link: http://tuneup.tellapal.com/a/clk/6BXcD and I’ll even get a kickback. Or just go directly to TuneUp’s website and have a look around. I don’t even care – I feel like I was just handed hours of my life back.

Give this a try if you’re a detail freak like me. Then let’s talk about how fresh and so clean, clean (that’s Outkast, not OutKast, y’all) we feel!

(Update: I’ve now been using this for a couple of days and am still very pleased. It’s not 100% perfect – it’s recommended a couple of songs that have nothing to do with the ones I’m looking for [though I guess they must have similar "musical DNA"] – but I just skipped over those. I think it’s been wrong about 5 times, and I’ve cleaned up about 4,000 tracks so far. And my library was a lot more in line than most people’s I know. It’s sometimes a little slow, but still 100x faster than trying to do this by hand – easy to sit down with a movie and power through approving them. I’ve removed about 500 duplicate songs from my library, and hope to have everything in order by the end of the weekend. And now newly added albums and mixes are going to be perfectly labeled, with cover art. I never thought this day would come!)

When you open many tabs, favicons are visual clues for finding the page you’re looking for. They also add that final touch to a site – as a detail person, I really appreciate the power of a good icon and the polish it adds.

Just to be clear, mine looks like this:

And the good news is, they are really easy to create and upload, even if you’re tech clueless. There are plenty of ways to go about creating one, but I’m going to go the easy route here.

Important note: if you are running a free blog, such as anything on wordpress.com, you might not be able to change your icon. Apparently, you can change it in Blogger, but I don’t know much about it, so I’ll refer you here since this person seems to know more.

First of all, you need to create your icon. I’ve generally started with an image cropped down to 200 pixels square or smaller. Sometimes it takes a little playing around to get the crispness you’re looking for, and to figure out what is recognizable at 16 pixels square, which is the most common favicon resolution. I’ve used this generator before and have been happy with it. Save the finished version to your computer as favicon.ico.

Now, using your favorite FTP program (I use FileZilla since it’s free), upload your favicon.ico to the main directory (not in wp-content or any other folder, at least for the sake of simplicity in this tutorial). You can check that it’s there by typing your site into a browser: yoursite.com/favicon.ico – mine looks like this: www.endlesslycreatingmyself.com/favicon.ico.

Score! Only one more step to go.

In the html of your site or header php file (nothing that ends in .css), look for the <head> tag at the top. (In WordPress, you get there by going to Appearance/Editor/___. That last part depends on your theme, but look for header.php.)

Look for the </head> tag. Right BEFORE it, paste in:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://www.yoursite.com/favicon.ico” />

making sure to update the yoursite.com so you don’t pull a “your name here.”

Save and open your site in a new tab. It might take a couple of refreshes or a few hours to appear (and you might need to delete your browser’s temporary internet files), but no more searching for you and finding a blank piece of paper. In just a few minutes you’ve added one more level of personalization to your site. Nice work!

Any questions? Let me know if you add one to your site – would love to check it out.

Last week, this little corner of the internet turned 4! Hard to believe I’ve spent as long writing here as I spent in high school – luckily, far less drama here!

I was actually tipped off to the anniversary when reading this post about the blog TravelingMama turning 4. Made me realize that my time was about to come up, too – and then I realized I missed it by a week. Welcome to my life.

It’s strange sometimes reading blogs that feel really established and realizing that they’ve been posting as long as you have or for less time (sometimes much, much less). Sometimes I wonder about increasing my readership, social networking, “linky parties,” all of those things, and I’m not above them – I just don’t seem to make them a priority. It also comes down to realizing that I am an inherently pretty private person until you get to know me well, but I enjoy posting here and am very thankful for the connections I’ve made. Readers: thanks for sticking with me. I really do have good intentions when it comes to updates, more photos, more frequent posts and all of that. In the meantime, dear blog, I’ll take a cue from Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones’s Diary and say, “I like you very much. Just as you are.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS8UffaEf60

Photo credit: cohdra from morguefile.com

For me, it’s scrapbooking. Or travel art journaling. Or whatever it is I decide to be comfortable calling it. I’m wary of the Midwestern mom scrapbook stereotype, lots of “embellishments” on your “layouts,” even as I wander down the Michael’s rabbit hole just like anyone else.

Inspired by this post, aptly titled “How to Make Things Harder and Do Nothing,” I got to thinking about the round and round I do in my head sometimes. I’m totally guilty of a lot of her examples (particularly “I can’t wash the dishes because the sink is too full of dirty dishes”) but one that really got me thinking again was about all of the pamphlets and ticket stubs and photos galore I have from my travels. Boxes and boxes. I’m a very sentimental person, especially about traveling.

At my grandparents’ house a few months ago, my siblings and I flipped through lots of old scrapbooks kept by my grandpa. Isn’t it funny how scrapbooking has become an almost female-only world? And yet it makes sense that my grandpa, the “collector” of the two, would be the best at keeping track of memories. They were nothing fancy – photos and newspaper clippings stuck to kraft paper pages with ballpoint pen captions. I’m sure they’re super acidic. I’d like to scan them and create Blurb books at some point, but who knows when that will be. But the point is – it didn’t matter. There they were, gathered in one place for the next generation to peruse. It was fun seeing photos from my mom’s 4th birthday, or snapshots taken not long after my grandparents were married. There my grandma was, sitting on the grass and watching a baby boy in a swimsuit and high heels. There my grandpa was, so tall and skinny and handsome. The photos weren’t artistic masterpieces. The layouts weren’t anything fancy, no Cricut cartridges required. But they served their purpose perfectly – a space to keep memories.

I’ve gone through so many cycles with my memory keeping. In January 2004, I took an art history class in London. It was fabulous – mornings spent in London’s amazing museums, listening to an art historian, taking notes, talking about technique and history and symbolism and what art means to all of us. We’d buy postcards of the art on the way out, break for lunch, and spend the afternoons at one tourist destination or another – sometimes Westminster Abbey, sometimes a pub featured in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, where we’d have a pint and talk about European longevity, a thrilling concept to Americans used to our own adolescent sense of history. At night we’d alternate between going out – riding around drunk on double decker buses or hitting a pub or a club or something – and staying home, shopping at our neighborhood store and then buying Strongbow ciders to drink back at our flat, where we’d work on our art journals. We had to hand them in at the end of the class, a few days before leaving London, so that Hilary, our teacher, could look through them, leave us sticky note messages, and assign us a class grade.

Since we were under deadline, everything was fresh – we pasted postcards and pamphlets and wrote about our morning and afternoon adventures within days of experiencing them. We had Paperchase (the flagship store on Tottenham Court Road, my very favorite store in the world) as our supply base. And Daler & Rowney for lovely bound journals with just the right kind of not quite white, thick paper. Even now, so many years later, looking through that book brings me great pleasure.

It’s a pleasure I hoped to replicate with my travel journaling and scrapbooking. I knew I wouldn’t always be quite so prompt, but I went to Spain planning on coming home with a nearly completed book. Let me clarify, I went to Spain, TWICE, hoping to come home not with half a suitcase of paper schnipsels and a million digital photos, but with a nearly completed project.

It didn’t happen. Clearly. For different reasons each time.

And so now I’ve moved some of these boxes three times. I’ve bought books and rejected them. I’ve bought other books with removable pages. I’ve purchased a wide variety of acid-free adhesives. I’ve ordered some of the photos printed online, only to be fairly disappointed with the resulting prints. I’ve set up spaces I thought would be dedicated to this project (in many houses, including a couple of house sitting gigs). And still, these photos and mementos are no closer to being organized and laid out the way I’d like them than they were years ago.

Perfectionism is holding me back, making things harder while I’m getting nothing done. I’m weirdly obsessed with getting chronology right, something that gets harder and harder (and honestly, less important!) as the years go on.

What’s my problem?

And as I start taking more and more photos (even if they are noticeably better than photos I took even a couple of years ago), this process gets more complicated. Travel is a passion, when I feel most alive and most aware and appreciative of my surroundings, so it makes sense to try and keep track of those memories, those joyful excursions. But what about the photos I took around my house last week? Aren’t those really just as important in the long run, maybe even more so because they are so quotidian and so simple and real – actually showing what my life is like at this point? What to do about those? I hate to break it to you, but those facebook albums we all spend so much time curating won’t be around for our grandkids to peruse.

Kind of a travesty, right?

I need a plan, a kick in the pants, something to make me just START SOMEWHERE and stop thinking about all of the details, what I could miss, what doesn’t seem quite right.

(it’s also a good time to mention that I started writing this post in March, but decided I needed to add photos. I’m telling you – how to make things harder and do nothing is like my mantra.)

I get connected to my tabs. They get way, way out of control and eventually cause Firefox to crash. And even before that point, they slow down most of my other tasks, and I’ve grown accustomed to the weird delay caused by leaving open 10, 20, 30, more tabs at the same time. Some are my go-to tabs, the ones I check all day long, almost every time I log in, and those I’m happy to close at the end of the day and bring back the next – Gmail, Google Reader, Flickr.

With the rest, well, there’s where I get myself into trouble.

The rest represent things on my to do list, inspiration, ideas. There’s recipes to try, blog improvements to check out, ideas for posts. There’s random things I want, ideas and dates and sites I want to remember. There’s the reminder that I need to get a different parking permit downtown.

It’s really inefficient.

I’ve tried online bookmarking tools. I’ve installed ReadItLater. I star things in Google Reader, I pin photos to Pinterest. I’m all over the place.

I’m not sure of a solution, really, so I thought I’d ask how others categorize, organize, remind, decide, and generally set themselves up to be able to handle the rush of information, good and bad, that comes from spending a lot of time online. Do you multitask like I do? Do you have a magical formula for making it all make sense?

(coming later this week: the power of the favicons and why your site should have one to help out an addict like me)

Awkward but true fact: people are more likely to find my blog via Google using some reference to Kate Middleton’s boots, once mentioned in a post I wrote on her style and now a big topic of conversation online for whatever strange reason, or some combination of the term “mukluk boots” (a long-ago reference to wack Spanish fashion) than any other words. That, along with reading the totally vague and generally nonsensical spam comments I receive every day, makes me realize that I might need to be working on my SEO skills. Oh well.

Since I live and die by the clearance rack, I often make purchases when the season is drawing to a close, ie I bought winter snow boots in late February, after a very snowy winter, and have only had the chance to wear them a handful of times. But I got them on sale. And they will be in high demand next winter. It all works out, generally speaking.

As such, when everyone is giddy about sundresses, bathing suits (these people I find especially perplexing) and strappy heels, I’m thinking about boots. Namely, I’m sad to report that my favorite black boots are falling apart, letting in water, and generally looking a little bedraggled. I’m realizing that they are probably not long for this world.

The thing is, I bought them 2? 3? winters ago at Old Navy. I think they were $20. Or maybe $35. They are not real leather. They are black and leather-esque (I refuse to use the term pleather!) and look like this, but less ugly and fake suede-y:

I like that they are flat. And comfortable. Vaguely riding boot-looking, but a bit more modern. They can be dressed up or down, worn with skirts or pants.

And, if I’m being honest, I also like them because people consistently think they are much fancier than they are.

I recently went through a similar situation with a Botkier for Target clutch I bought a long time ago. It was gunmetal and looked like this:

Worked for brown, black, silver, whatever. I don’t want to spend a lot on a clutch, since I’ll inevitably be leaving it in the dark corners of bars. This one was small enough to be “night-worthy,” big enough to hold my point and shoot camera. Wrist strap. Perfect. Until it was so hot on the rooftop of Caesar’s Palace one (very) late night in Vegas that the finish on one whole side literally came off in my hands. Ah, the wonders of not-leather goods!

After lots of searching, I ended up replacing it with this bag from Forever 21: vaguely gunmetal, “leatherette” (thanks for that one, F21!), smallish and good for going out. It’s fine. But it won’t pass as being high end, like the one I replaced.

And I’m still on the hunt for some flat black boots.

What are your favorite sources for cheap fashion? Do you care if your clothes seem nicer than they are? Any recent steals you’re dying to recount?

(and any genius ideas for me in the boot department….?)

A manifesto by Terry Tempest Williams, from a book on creative non-fiction:

I write to make peace with the things I cannot control.

I write to create fabric in a world that often appears black and white.

I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue.

I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change.

I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends.

I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure.

I write against power and for democracy.

I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams.

I write in a solitude born out of community.

I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that make me complacent.

I write to remember. I write to forget. I write to the music that opens my heart. I write to quell the pain.

I write with the patience of melancholy in winter. I write because it allows me to confront that which I do not know.

I write as an act of faith. I write as an act of slowness.

I write to record what I love in the face of loss. I write because it makes me less fearful of death. I write as an exercise in pure joy.

I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt.

I write out of my anger and into my passion.

I write from the stillness of night anticipating — always anticipating.

I write to listen. I write out of silence. I write to soothe the voices shouting inside me, outside me, all around me.

I write because I believe in words.

I write because it is a dance with paradox.

I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in sand.

I write because it is the way I take long walks.

I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness.

I write with a knife, carving each word from the generosity of trees.

I write as ritual.

I write out of my inconsistencies. I write with the colors of memory.

I write as a witness to what I have seen. I write as witness to what I imagine.

I write by grace and grit.

I write for the love of ideas.

I write for the surprise of a sentence.

I write with the belief of alchemists.

I write knowing I will always fail. I write knowing words always fall short.

I write knowing I can be killed by own words, stabbed by syntax, crucified by understanding and misunderstanding.

I write past the embarrassment of exposure.

I trust nothing especially myself and slide head first into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it into shreds — and then I realize it doesn’t matter, words are always a gamble, words are splinters from cut glass.

I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.

I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love.

–Richard Avedon

I came across this quote in a photography magazine a few weeks ago and, like some things are prone to do, it has lodged a place in my brain. I kept moving this magazine around the house and kind of out of the way, but still flipped open to this page, knowing that a wire had been tripped and that a blog post was likely to result, that I needed a little time to marinate. When I read Richard Avedon’s words, I really realized how long it’s been since I’ve done much with my camera, since I’ve gone on a wander with no agenda other than to see where I end up, to take some pictures along the way. I’ve taken some photos this winter, but not many. Snowshoeing here and there, a couple of beautiful snowy mornings on my way out the door, frantic, sleepy, and running behind as with most mornings. When I first read the quote I thought, in my typical cynical fashion, “Well shit, apparently I’ve been asleep for quite a while then.”

But there’s a little bit of truth to that. Winter is the hardest for me for photography, with its darkness and the white snow that I never seem to get quite as white as I’d like, knowing that it’s a lot about exposure and maybe a bit about Photoshop. And the house where I live doesn’t really have the Good Light Spot like most houses – at the kitchen table, or in the living room in the afternoon, or on the front porch. Do you have one favorite place to photograph in your house? Looking back on the photos I’ve taken in recent years at various houses, at my houses and apartments and housesitting gigs and at my parents’, location themes arise among the images taken at each place – there’s pretty good light in the early afternoon at the dining table at my uncle’s house, where I spent a few weeks, with a great blind that acts almost exactly like a scrim. It practically creates a lightbox effect, inviting studio-esque play. The dappled backyard light comes to mind at one house; the (sometimes glaring) light streaming through the bedroom blinds in the morning at my old apartment occasionally was just the right intensity. I took quite a few shots of my bed in that room, generally in some state of disarray, because the light made everything look warm and cozy, clean and comforting, like an old but well-scrubbed farmhouse table.

Spring has always been my most creative time, even as I love, truly look forward to, and appreciate the other seasons. And so the photography lecture I attended tonight, on craft and process, came at a good time. It’s hard to hit a sweet spot with photography instruction or lecturing – it swings too technical, it’s too gear-heavy, it’s too basic. Or, talking about creativity in general, I find that I’m hypersensitive to some of the kinda pretentious clichés so often relied upon when not so much new is being said. But tonight’s talk, given by local photographer and instructor Elizabeth Stone, really hit the mark for me. I’ve been trying to figure out why it seemed so Goldilocks “juuuust right,” and realized it’s a question of extremes.

To put it another way and draw a comparison with the many house magazines and blogs that cross my path, the House Beautifuls of the world are inspiring, but way out of reach. They suit their purpose, are fun to flip through, but not all that applicable, at least directly and until I win the lottery. The Family Circles, Women’s Days, more “down to earth” options are more affordable and more specifically “how-to” but a bit bland. It’s rare to read a “small space solutions” or “renter-friendly decorating” article, of which there are many, that is actually useful, actually strikes a balance between dorm room-iness and “just paint and sand and refinish floors, the landlord won’t notice!” It’s obviously a niche to be filled, or there wouldn’t be so many (mostly uncreative) attempts to write something that appeases, and in the same way, I’ve read a fair amount about creativity and the creative process, about how artists find space in their homes and heads to do what they want to do and love to do, but it’s mostly been too flighty and ephemeral or too hardcore. Quit your job! Join an artists’ colony! Commit to your vision!

At the beginning of the workshop (it was called a lecture, but was way more interactive than any of the other lectures I’ve attended over the years in the series), she handed out a questionnaire to each of us, with questions identifying our photographic interests, our life passions in general (and whether we’d explored them through photography, which I have in some instances but haven’t yet across the board), if any recurring themes or types of images arise in looking through our collections. And it made me made me kind of smile to myself, thinking of all of those people who’ve said, with some sense of hesitation, thinking it’s a little suspect as a subject, “Well, you sure do take a lot of pictures of food.” Or the weird looks I get in restaurants, at home and abroad. And yet it’s something that interests me, something I don’t tire of – seeing food like real people eat, not cereal with Elmer’s glue in some photography studio. The swirl of steam from a coffee mug, the glisten of a spring strawberry, the just faintly visible stickiness of white rice in a stir fry. What pleasure there is to be found in these little moments. And just so you know I’m not a wacko or making it up, see what you think. Do these images make you feel calm, or energized, or just hungry? I would love to think so, or that it’s a point I might eventually reach, to have that ability.

At this moment, though, it’s not so much about making you hungry as it is about me waking up, about making photography, seeing, shooting, making time, looking at the world creatively, more of a priority. My favorite photos are natural light, small quotidian moments, no super fancy equipment required. Sure, I’m still saving for that macro lens, the B&H wish list never get shorter, but there’s so much to be explored in the meantime.

It’s kind of like figuring out how to live in a rental and still have some style. Figuring out how to work with the camera and lenses I have, how to work my full-time not very creative job and still make the time and find the energy to explore my interests – even, dare I say it – passion.

Even if it means lots of pictures of food, and the curious looks that so often accompany them.

This “cozy” and “newly remodeled” “newly updated” (wha?!) basement studio rents for $575, not including any utilities except water and trash.

I have no words.

And this in a city with an estimated per capita income below $22k. What’s the rental sitch like where you live? Please tell me that this is not normal.

But white really is the color of spring cleaning. I’ve come to realize in recent years that, for the home, I do not like beige – I like the crisp, clean modernity of white. It’s hard to do well, to not it feel crisp but not icy – but it’s the perfect neutral. Maybe this has something to do with my Scandinavian design bent, or maybe it’s because I’ve lived in a series of houses with (yellowy, dingy) beige walls, carpets, floors, cabinets, everything. I want a fresh start! I want clean! I want to throw open the windows and let the sun shine in – on white walls! Or, at the very least, white trim! (can’t set the rental standard too high…more on that one of these days)

So here we are: a collection of mostly entirely house-centric white dominant photos. Because it’s time to lighten things up around here.

So…what did you think of Spring Colors Week? I had fun walking down Flickr favorite memory lane and finding a few new favorites, too.

Any spring cleaning or other seasonal fun on the weekend agenda?

(photos by decorology, KatjaR., homebug, Jan Charles Linus Ekenstam, ethanollie, ly ly ly, Lillian Day, J.E.N., xJavierx, ooh_food, Chez Larsson x2, h4ndz, and robgiampietro.)

Pretty heavy on the jewel tones. So when I saw that today’s color for Spring Color Week is lavender, I thought, “Cool. No sweat. It’s basically just purple.”

Yeah, I don’t exactly have a lot of pastels in my Flickr favorites, and lavender is among the underrepresented.

So I found a couple of pics with lavender. And for the first time this week, I went looking for some more favorites, too. Looking specifically for colors is a really different way to browse images – but kind of fun, too. And in deciding to go looking through the Explore pages, I discovered that my old friend Flickr Leech is up and running again. Hooray! Talk about a dose of inspiration. Plus, I came across this gem. Love you, Lionel.

So, without further ado/blathering, lavender!

(photos by romanlily, Janesdead, jek in the box, seanomarachain john Markham, Julian Kaesler, and Sylvia Rueda)

All that being said, there’s no doubt that there’s a certain spring feel to pink, especially light pink. Maybe because Easter is all about pastels, or maybe because pink seems fragile, like those little buds slowly emerging from the just-thawed ground.

To prove to myself that pink isn’t so bad, I not only found some pink photos in my favorites – I found some pink photos in my own photostream to share, as well.

When I thought of pink, I thought of the Flamingo, where even the ice buckets are pink!

(photos from {Twiggs}, me, Ohh… Mhh…, afewthingsfrommylife, me, and me. would have also liked to include a few photos that aren’t available for sharing, but so it goes.)

(photos from dawn521, amy~ homegrown, only because mushroom asked me to, simply stardust, loveitaly, Die Frau im Haus, bonjour celine!, and KatjaR.)

Actually, although I can’t deny a break would be nice, I’m taking this time when things are moving a little bit more slowly around here (at least in theory) to catch up on some of the organizing and cleaning, physical and mental, I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. And yes, spring helps. It is peeking its head out, even in the heavy, wet snow we got yesterday morning, clumping in my eyelashes as I was running.

I’m also slowly catching up on my Flickr uploading, which was on hiatus for some time. I know that I always say that, but, well, so goes life. And in getting back on the scene, I was thinking about how many wonderful images I have in my favorites.

So when I saw this morning on Design is Mine that another Poppytalk Color Week has come and I didn’t even miss the first day, I decided to join in the fun and post a few of my Flickr favorites every day this week. First up, green!

(photos via bonjour celine!, Lillian Day, Lisa Congdon, beckster740, alexsk, and phitar.
thanks for the inspiration!)

“1970 knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.”

– Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

A beautiful passage, no? Do you agree, or do you find the constant possibility of “connection” even more isolating than living alone in a remote canyon like the book’s protagonist? Are our expectations so different as to open up a greater chance of disappointment, and thus loneliness?

I haven’t had much time for the actual cleaning I never seem to get around to, but I’ve been going through my belongings and clothes, adding more all the time to the garage sale bin. As I plot my next step, it’s nice to feel like I’m working to lighten my load. I finally bought a shredder and have been plowing through lots of old papers and receipts. Trying to streamline and organize, at least a little bit. Get ready for some of my warm weather projects.

I am not a naturally tidy person. Far from it. Music is in order.

Music for spring cleaning is different than normal upbeat get-your-ass-in-gear music, at least for me. This may have to do with the fact that hippie culture is out in full force here once spring rolls around – people walking around barefoot, playing Ultimate, slacklining, a ton of pot lucks and talk of community gardens. Hemp Fest must be right around the corner. People start acting like every day is Aber Day. As we shed all of those winter layers, there’s always one day, the first decently warm day of the season, when skin is out, libidos are high, and every college student in town (plus some just wanting to hit on aforementioned college students) is sitting on the Oval, the campus’ version of a quad, neglecting responsibilities and classes in lieu of a few hours in the sun. The message is clear: spring has come.

So I put together a little playlist of what I’ve been rocking out to over the last few weekends. It’s random, sort of like the crap I keep unearthing in various boxes around my house! It’s posted in 2 parts on 8tracks (part 1, part 2) because they limit you to 2 songs per artist per playlist and Old Crow plays too big a role in my cleaning to be so limited.

(it’s funny. I seem to post a lot of sort of hillbilly music here, even though it makes up a small proportion of my total listening preferences. I guess these kinds of songs just seem especially Montana to me.)

So…what’s on your spring cleaning/general enjoyment playlist? Leave me links in the comments!

UPDATE: 8tracks keeps screwing up my mixes, so they are appearing to be identical. This is not the case. Working on a fix – will post another update when it get them working, hopefully with playlists embedded here directly.

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: Think they’re working now. Had to delete and recreate. Let me know if they seem eerily similar, ie the same, and I’ll do a bit more triage.

Now I really need to know what you people are listening to, since I’ve been cycling through these same songs trying to get these playlists to work!

I’m sorry, New York Times, but if a job seeker’s biggest concern is whether to become someone like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, or whether to take career advice from one billionaire or the other, I think they’re doing alright.

Get a grip. On Monday, getting suckered into clicking on this type of absurdity will count toward my monthly 10 article limit. Yikes. Going to have to stick to the Style and Home sections, with an occasional foray into actual national or international news. I feel like I’m spending more time than ever online and reading, but that I’m becoming ever less aware of important issues in the world. Perhaps because any length of time thinking about what’s going on nationally on the political scene makes me want to bury my head under the sand and/or move to another country. Perhaps a sandy country.

The overwhelming responses to the new New York Times online subscription plan announcement were that people were completely unwilling to pay or (even more common and way more important for the bottom line) people were willing to pay something but not $15-$35 per month.

Do you read the New York Times online, even if they are sometimes way off the mark of reality? Do you plan on adding another subscription to your life? Are you slightly perturbed that you’re more willing to pay for Netflix than for news? How much would you pay for an online NYT subscription?

For months, I’ve been putting off posting photos from this baby shower I threw for some friends because I felt like, in comparison with the sea of every single perfect detail party photos out there, mine just looked kind of silly.

This was not a super elaborate party or an especially traditional one. The couple is Spanish and this was their first baby shower (well, and baby!), so they weren’t sure what to expect and didn’t have any unreasonable expectations. Those were all mine.

I finally decided to stop being silly and celebrate the day. We had a nice time. People had fun. It was a good little shindig to get ready to welcome an adorable child. My Flickr stream is now about 4 months behind and the baby was born in January. He and his mohawk keep getting bigger.

Somehow I managed to neglect to take a photo of the crepe paper pom poms, which I taught these guys to make and they expertly strung together into a lovely little festive pouf in the corner. The baby loves staring at them now.

I would imagine that this whole comparing and not stacking up business is tenfold for weddings. I feel a lot of the same shyness when it comes to my house – it does not have massive windows, lovely light, and shining hardwood floors like every single place you see on inspiring blogs. It’s a rental with crappy carpet like so many places, although it has its charms. And it’s real. It’s where I live.

It’s OK to celebrate those not-so-perfect things, too, and feel pretty happy about it all the same.

– Richard Hugo, from White Center

This is a pretty good illustration of how the past few days have gone: I have literally left bed for less than 15 minutes a day, just long enough to pee or to go to the fridge for something and then back under the covers. Finally today I’m not wheezy, my ears aren’t burning, I slept for 12 straight hours and had dreams of Spanish food (this may have to do with the paella some friends dropped by yesterday…and those DVDs I’m about to start watching). The dishes are stacking up next to the sink as I need to pour boiling water over them prior to returning them to normal use (this is after washing them…still needing to be done). Today I can finally stand up long enough to shower.

It’s interesting, taking things back to the basics. (and not even the real basics, since after the first day of lying around and kind of hallucinating, I’ve been able to do a bit of reading, watching movies, and some writing here) More than one person’s first reaction to hearing I was quarantined for the week was, “Now maybe you’ll finally get a chance to get some of the things done you’ve been wanting to do!” I shook my head to them on the other end of the line, glimpsing just how worn out I was going to feel. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” came to mind. Because I love a good project (or ten or fifteen), love to check things off the list and feel productive.

This week, I was really unproductive. I finished a season of Weeds. I finished The Lovely Bones. I finished a couple of magazines. And that’s about it.

And yet every day, even when I was feeling the worst but especially since then as the fog lifts a little, nagging “things you could be doing” pop into my head all of the time. Many of them are benign, even sort of fun. Work on my running playlist. Research more about cars. Burn a disc of photos for a friend. And make them a scrapbook. And go through more magazines, clipping out pages. Do my taxes. Edit more photos. Get back in sync with Flickr in time for spring. (I’m months behind. Again.) Flip through my new cookbook for recipes for when I’m feeling better. These are just things I can do from bed.

That doesn’t even touch on some of the bigger projects, some of the things still waiting to get checked off my JANUARY to do list, plus the ongoing “clean my room” “clean the living room” “clean the kitchen” “clean the bathroom” tape on repeat (which, well, I mostly manage to ignore).

But isn’t there something a little strange about a culture in which, even lying in bed and feeling sick as a dog, we feel like we “should” be doing something else, multitasking, getting things done? No wonder we aren’t having any fun. Because even when we are doing something enjoyable (no, I don’t mean getting the flu, but spending time with family, watching a movie, going for a walk, reading, sleeping in) we sort of wonder whether we’d be feeling better, less guilty, if we were being productive. Because unproductive=lazy. And efficiency is king.

It’s a question worth asking, I think. How efficiently are we actually using our minds and our time, our thoughts flitting from one obligation to another, while actually procrastinating and watching the movie and spending the weekend not really enjoying the fun we think we’re having because we know Sunday afternoon regret looms large? When was the last time you were really happily unproductive, no strings attached? Did it take you getting quarantined and bedbound?

I hope not. And I hope that in not so long, I can look back and say, “Nope, me neither.”

— Charles P. Pierce, from the interview with Chris Jones on Son of Bold Venture

Did you watch it when it was on PBS?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKsyRL-vd_o

If Spain isn’t so much your speed at the moment, these travel videos have also caught my eye recently (mostly via Google Reader):

Iceland, highly influenced by the Where the Hell is Matt? phenomenon:

Inspired by Iceland Video from Inspired By Iceland on Vimeo.

(a friend’s dad went through a bit of a midlife crisis when we were in middle school, so, in addition to building a wooden boat and a few other things, he took his whole family to Iceland. My friend described it as “actually a lot like Montana, but blonder.” I could see that.)

I’ve also been really liking these EF videos (which have been all over the web lately, but originality is not my highest priority at the moment):

Beijing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr3gdVkkWzc

Paris:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_QO8LoGNpc

London:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLluxHOOXSw

and what the hell, let’s conclude our adventure in Spain after all.
Barcelona:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9isboDgxMM

Wish me luck, and that Tamiflu does what it’s supposed to do. Time for another nap.

It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about this little corner of the internet. I have. I’ve been mulling around in my head how to write, where to start. Sometimes it feels like the blog world, at least the part of it where I think I fit, is all happiness and rainbows. Positivity and shopping tips. And on most days, it’s a nice change of pace from the news, watching my state’s laws and the basic framework of so many important American institutions picked away every day. Tracking one political upheaval after another, a natural disaster here and another one there. In the face of so much injustice, so much unhappiness, so many things happening on such a huge scale, it’s hard to make room for your own personal sadness.

And yet, if high school studies of existentialism taught me nothing else, it’s that you can’t measure grief. You can’t compare your emotions to someone else’s.

After eighty-eight and a half happy and pretty healthy years, my grandma, who we called Mimi, died on Valentine’s Day. It’s not a coincidence that it happened on a day devoted to love, as that was how she spent her life: loving her husband of sixty seven years, raising seven children, keeping an eye on fourteen grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. She didn’t leave much unfinished and knew her time was coming. As she came back from the hospital a few times in the short weeks leading up to her death, she said to my mom, “I wish I would have just died.” It wasn’t defeatist or dramatic. She was just ready. She’d lived a full life. It’s the rest of us who didn’t quite feel ready. Not cheated, relieved she seemed to go swiftly and peacefully, but also not ready. I’m not sure you can ever be really ready.

It wasn’t until I came across this article yesterday in the New York Times online, “Why We Write About Grief,” that I felt like I could sit down and write something without feeling this huge weight to pen something on par with my emotions. As Joyce Carol Oates says in the interview about writing about her husband’s death, “The act of writing – of even trying to write – of imagining to write – seemed meaningless, vain and silly.” How does one write a blog post about grieving? How can it even matter?

“Grieving has always been a public as well as private act,” the article’s intro states – and in some ways, that’s been the hardest. In the past few weeks, from the time when my mom called to let me know they had administered the last rites, my mind has been playing tricks on me. I’ve felt extremely creative, my normal journal jottings turning into pages and pages of writing, but also foggy – unable to concentrate even on the TV, on flipping through magazines, on following a basic recipe. If someone puts food in front of me, I’ll eat – but my normal grocery list-making has gone out the window, as nothing looks very appealing. I spend all day not very hungry, trying to eat but not wanting to, and it takes me getting lightheaded to spur some kind of action – cooking or, more likely, picking up some crappy fast food or some variety of comfort food. I’m like a pregnant woman: potato salad and a chocolate chip cookie for dinner? Don’t mind if I do.

I took a week off work to be with my family, to help with some of the pre-funeral errands and be with my mom. I’ve been back more than a week now, but still I find I can’t really concentrate. I’m having vivid dreams and not sleeping very well. All of the normal banalities of the day seem especially pointless now. I’m emotional and more than a little impatient.

Which is ironic, I guess, since in all of my memories of Mimi, she was never cross, never impatient with us or with anyone else (other than the occasional grumblings at my grandpa, which I figure she had earned after half a century together…) So often we remember only the good characteristics, but really, truly, I have racked my brain trying to come up with some dirt on her, trying to tell myself that she wasn’t always friendly and upbeat – and haven’t come up with anything. If that’s not a legacy, I’m not sure what is.

What she was was stylish, subscribing to Vogue and Vanity Fair well into her eighties, getting new glasses all of the time, always carrying fancy purses. She grew up in a notable family in Lincoln, Nebraska – as we paged through the old scrapbooks, we loved seeing the family grow in each of the articles (with photographs) published in the newspaper every time she went home to visit, “a guest at the home of her parents.” She graduated from college at nineteen, was published in The Prairie Schooner the year of her graduation. Somehow, she saw through their first date (sitting in the car at the dump while my grandpa shot rats…I kid you not) and married Gramp, a geologist from Wyoming. He won $400 on a $10 bet to be able to buy her a diamond ring and went off to war not so long after they were married, and only a month after their first child was born. But, as she was quick to point out, he had impeccable grammar (and a slew of other wonderful characteristics) and passed her test. She wasn’t prissy – she loved Nebraska football and spent a day on a fishing boat in Canada just a few years ago. But that didn’t stop her from laying out her husband’s clothes every morning for most of their marriage. She wasn’t going to let him out of the house in the shredded pants and mesh shoes he liked best, and he knew that that was part of the deal. I think he liked it, someone watching out for him, even if he liked to grumble.

So many of these little details, fragments of stories we’ve heard so many times, were clarified the night of the funeral, when my grandpa, eighty nine and with a memory matched by none, held court in the living room with a few of my cousins and me until 3:30 in the morning. There was laughter and some tears, plenty of imbibing punctuated by my grandpa slapping his knees and telling us all “just how much fun” it was staying up late and talking to us all as adults, when the real adults were long asleep. When he told us some of the details of their meeting and getting together, that they both arrived late to an hour dance (mixer) and that’s what brought them together, it made me realize just how much is out of our control, just how much the little stops and starts every day shape our lives. Had either of them been able to be on time, they might not have met. Without them, none of the rest of us would be here. There’s something kind of magical about it all.

And so, in the upcoming weeks, my guess is that I’ll get back into posting with some regularity. I’ve come across plenty of ideas, images I’ve liked, articles and books worth commenting on. (sorry Mimi, I know, ending a sentence with a preposition is a punishable crime.) And most of them will be lighthearted, upbeat. Because the snow was beautiful this morning. Because my birthday is this week. Because, in all of this, what’s really been reiterated is that we are so damn lucky in so many little ways. And yet, still, as I tromp through the bright white snow, as my mind wanders at my desk, as I notice a pair of red shoes with above-average panache, I think of her. And I might occasionally write about her. We are all walking around with so many things below the surface, so much complexity that make us the weird, fascinating, and sometimes contradictory people we all are.

But in all of the fog, I’ve also been thinking about the things with which we surround ourselves. It’s part of a much larger conversation, something I’ll file under “developing interest,” cross-referenced with “excuses for consumerism/desire.” But the things in our lives, and the things we leave behind, say a lot about who we are. What mattered to us. How we spent our time and money and energy.

I’m never going to be one of those people who decants everything into lovely glass bottles, Lord bless them. But I won’t deny that there was a pretty serious sense of gratification when I labeled (most) of my spices last month with these Martha Stewart labels. (even if it did result in a font search to be able to label those slightly more obscure spices and have the fonts stay consistent. What the Font, one of my favorite resources, couldn’t really help me out. I’m worried it might be custom. {damn you, Martha, for sucking me into this black hole!} If anyone knows, please leave a comment or email me.)

My sister made fun of me when I bought a translucent ketchup bottle for dishsoap, but I love it – it dispenses right, it fits nicely on the edge of the sink, it’s easy to refill from the huge bottle of Dawn lurking below. It’s form and function.

But sometimes I just wish the functional things would be less ugly.

That’s where Lovely Package comes in – a site devoted entirely to product packaging around the world. It’s one I subscribe to but only check out once the posts have stacked up – there’s something really calming but also weirdly energizing about scrolling through the lovely, witty, and creative takes on something as simple as packaging design. To one degree or another, we surround ourselves with things – some purely form, mostly function. But they don’t have to be ugly. They can be little moments of color and creativity, bursts of excitement on a not-so-interesting day. They can be luxurious or soothing or just pleasant to the touch. We shape the space we inhabit, in ways both big and small.

And then there are those over the top luxuries. Maybe not suited for everyday, but pretty damn fun for just the right occasion.

Anything in your life that just works the way it’s supposed to? Sometimes the best design is something you hardly think about after a while – I have the same alarm clock I’ve had forever, with dual alarms and an adjustable light, radio, CD, alarm, you can set the starting volume and, if you sleep like me, set it to escalate. You can set the time up or down and not have to go all the way around the horn to get where you want. It’s not the most beautiful, but it’s the perfect alarm for me, really. And it’s only when I’m in hotel rooms and I skip past 6:00 and my OCD self can’t settle for 6:01 that I really come to appreciate it.

But then there are the things that are just packaged right. Where form and function meet, with maybe a bit of panache. I wish my alarm was a bit more aesthetically pleasing. I hate wrangling blister-wrapped plastic packages. But I love the mixture of brushed and shiny metal on my (overpriced) Clinique lipstick. Black Honey just wouldn’t be the same in plastic.

(all photos from lovelypackage.com)

An afternoon in Fremont:

Flights are back down to just around 200 dollars, so I’m looking forward to being able to make it back there in not too long. Nothing fuels wanderlust like more travel, right?

Been anywhere interesting lately? If money and time were no object, what U.S. destinations would top your list? What about international? Let’s chat about travel (one of my favorite topics!)

My Welcome to Seattle kit, prepared by my dear friend and host:

Gas Works Park (home of the paintball scene in Ten Things I Hate About You. Love that movie.)

Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park:

We were lucky to have wonderful weather and mostly blue sky days. I’ll be back tomorrow with the last few images.

Did you have a good weekend? Mine was great – fun and relaxing, with a good dose of happy surprises.

(all photos by me)

]]> http://www.endlesslycreatingmyself.com/2011/02/07/seattle-flashback-snapshots-from-our-wanderings/feed/ 3 http://www.endlesslycreatingmyself.com/2011/02/07/seattle-flashback-snapshots-from-our-wanderings/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EndlesslyCreatingMyself/~3/tHPbOBwJ8mM/ http://www.endlesslycreatingmyself.com/2011/02/02/gobblers-knob-such-a-gross-name/#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 04:30:40 +0000 Emily http://www.endlesslycreatingmyself.com/?p=1464

But it is from ‘ol Gobbler’s Knob that our friend Punxsutawney Phil decided spring is on the way.

Tell that to people in the Midwest. Or Northeast. Or anywhere in the South. Or here, where it was -5 or -10 this morning, depending on who you talked to (through chattering teeth).

But Phil seems to be the expert. The expert vermin.

I say that it’s time to buck up and appreciate the last of winter! This year, I’ve been trying to ride out and appreciate all of the seasons (especially decorative gourd season). When spring comes, it will be lovely and fresh and I will be psyched and camera-happy. Few things make me happier than tulips, really.

But for now, a slew of winter scenes. To be viewed with coffee or hot chocolate or peppermint tea in hand. Under a down blanket. With wool socks on. To remind us that this can be one truly beautiful season, too.*

(can’t help but think it might be made more beautiful with these boots keeping my feet toasty:

I’ve only been talking about them for months, but haven’t yet taken the plunge. I’m hoping my tax refund comes through for me – big money, big money!)

{Phil photo from groundhog.org. All the rest by me, minus the amazon.com boot screenshot}

Like so many people, I was feeling good vibes from the whole 2011 thing.

Feeling like this year, I’m going to focus on doing a lot of the things I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Like this is a year for change. To feel challenged. To pay more attention to how and with whom I spend my time. To have fun and (eek!) take some risks. (this does not come very naturally to me. at all.)

Although I didn’t set any specific resolutions, per se, I’ve been focusing on some things in January, more than I have in a while. A lot of those changes involve my health. And of course a fair number of them involve my house.

Since I was home alone for most of the month, it seemed like the perfect time to jump start some of these changes around here. And so I created a huge to do list and stuck it to the side of the fridge, where I would see it every day.

Nope, I didn’t finish everything. With some of the longer projects (sort through magazines, go through paper in a huge pile by the TV), I made some notable progress. Anything in the basement, I decided to put off until it’s a little warmer and the days are longer. In the meantime, I’m bringing things like magazines and random boxes from my last move up from the basement box by box, sorting through them when I get home from work or during commercials when watching TV. When all else fails, I set my new pear timer for 15 minutes and accomplish what I can during that time.

The movie/crock pot series has been awesome, with good food and good company (and mostly good movies).

As for what I did do, here are a few highlights:

Snowshoeing. It was nice to get outside and wander around in the snow in early January:

Saw some snow dinos:

Finally got around to taking a photo for my mom of this little corner of my house, to thank the woman who gave me this chair, from the newsroom of a Montana newspaper:

I also got a little crazy with the window frosting. The front window now looks like this:

Still debating whether to go up one more row or not. It might make the room seem smaller/more closed in, or it might just look right with the window frames. Can’t decide.

Oh, and the Volvo got a little love – oil change, fixing the defrost, important things. I like to call this Phantom of the Volvo.

A few projects are soon to come. After emailing my mom, I think I might finally have some clue how to get linen (relatively) wrinkle-free. I’ll hope to post on that soon. And my LP project has officially begun – more things coming up from the basement while trying not to overly clutter our little living space on the main floor.

But hey, it went pretty well, my month-long push. I did a lot of things not on the list – sorted through my computer desktop at home and at work, did a big spice overhaul and label project, worked on getting my room back into shape, frosted the windows at work while I was in the mode. Plus lots of cooking and shopping and general relaxing.

I’ll take down the list this evening without too much regret. After all, February is just about to begin. Time for a fresh start! And lots of good things coming in March.

Then have another pulled pork sandwich.

And make some curry chicken salad to bring to work this week (although the bowl takes up too much space in the ever-exploding fridge).

What are Sunday afternoons for if not for strange drinks and adventures in cooking?

The Thursday night root beer pulled pork experiment went swimmingly. I got the idea from this allrecipes.com page, but did a little altering after reading through the comments. I bought two boneless pork shoulders (can’t remember how many pounds total…7? more?) for about $1.50/pound. Way better/cheaper than the tenderloin the recipe calls for. I put them in the crock pot, fatty side up, and poured a decent amount of root beer in with them (maybe 1/2 way up the pork). And then I closed the lid. Since I was a little worried about the liquid that would boil off, possibly having something to do with my recent scorching of a pan while steaming broccoli incident and my minimal crock pot knowledge, I put it on low for 4 hours and asked my roommate to switch it to high when she left the house, so for a total of about 5 more hours. When I got home, I was supposed to pull the pork out to shred it on a cutting board. No chance. It was already falling apart nicely. So I took out the fatty part on top, used a fork directly in the pot to do some shredding, and then spooned off a bowlful of root beer, since I had really overestimated how much would evaporate. Rather than mixing the barbecue sauce in, I decided the massive amount of leftovers (remember, exploding fridge syndrome?) would be more versatile if they remained sauceless. Put Kraft Original and Sweet Baby Ray’s on the table next to the hamburger buns and totally cheap and freakishly tasty dinner for 6 (or 8 or 12) was served.

So here’s the recap:

Root beer infused pulled pork

boneless pork shoulder or pork butt, maximum amount depends on size of crock pot
root beer (I bought a 2 liter because it’s cheaper, but a can or two would do)

Put pork in crock pot fatty side up. Pour root beer over top.

Close crock pot lid. Place on high for 5-6 hours or low for 8ish hours, or some combo of the two.

An hour or so before serving, take fatty parts out and shred the rest with a fork. If it’s too soupy, spoon out some root beer. Add barbecue sauce now and allow to simmer in crock for a while, or let people add their own sauce. Serve on toasted buns.

This would be awesome for the Super Bowl, if you’re into such things. (just had to Google whether it was this weekend or next…)

(I’d like to note here that this was crock pot week around here – bison stew at a friend’s on Tuesday, root beer pork on Thursday, some kind of Mexican elk dish last night at my cousin’s. All really tasty. Hello, comfort food!)

As for the chicken salad, I did my normal lazy winging it as I go along and it turned out pretty well.

Here goes:

Curried chicken salad (adapted from Core Balance Diet cookbook section)

About 1 lb. cooked boneless, skinless chicken breasts, diced (I might have used less?)
1/2-3/4 c. sour cream, depending on how creamy you like things
1/2 apple, diced (I used a Pink Lady, since it was cheap and, let’s be honest, I like the name)
1-2 ribs of celery, chopped
10 or so grapes, halved lengthwise (these I added because I accidentally bought them, thinking they were part of this recipe)
1/2 tsp. curry powder
salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients in medium bowl (or whatever might fit in your fridge). Allow to cool before serving. Good for 3 days or so in the fridge.

Seeing as how tomorrow is the last day of January, I’m spending my day trying to finish up a few last minute things on my January to-do list. My to-dos are very segmented – things one can do when it’s dark outside and things one can do when it’s light outside and you’re home (aka weekends before 5 pm). I won’t finish everything, but at least I can make some progress.

Then it might be a good night for leftovers, as tempted as I am to make something fun while the snow swirls around outside. Just realized that I have a crock pot Fix It and Forget It cookbook, otherwise known as about 45 recipes with 100 variations. The massive bag of tater tots in the freezer might just be calling out for the Tater Tot Casserole…

Just wanted to take a quick minute to thank Jenn and Kelly for thinking of me and my little blog experiment when they were handing out Stylish Blogger Awards a few weeks back. Look, there’s even a sparkly button:

Ooh la la. Makes me want to put on my red suede heels and get down to blogging. (or maybe the navy blue stilettos? Or the teal satin heels with the bows in the back? Ok, I digress…)

I realized that doing what’s actually “required” to receive the reward was only going to lead to further delay in thanking them (sort of like when I feel the need to emboss something on an envelope flap, or cut out envelope liners…ok, enough with the letter writing metaphors) so I just decided to stick to the basics. Plus, talking directly about myself, another reward requirement, always freaks me out a little bit.

At any rate, I realize that me apologizing for being way behind on everything has become a bit of a theme lately. Perhaps when you see my January to-do list, you’ll have some sense of why. But it’s also in my nature, to take a while to get around to things. And it’s also about not wanting to get home after 8 hours in front of the computer and plop down in front of the computer every night. Just some nights. So bear with me.

Basically, I just wanted to thank the people who read this thing consistently, and to people like Kelly and Jenn who comment and engage in a conversation I never really found in social media. If you are new around here, or want to finally make that commitment, you can subscribe by email or Google Reader via the sidebar. I’m also toying a bit with Blog Catalog and Blog Lovin’ – two other ways to follow along. And since we’re feeling all fancy around here, I’ll even include the fashionista Blog Lovin’ button here too:

Follow my blog with bloglovin

OK, time to head on out of here. I have pork crockpot simmering in root beer at my house! Will let you know how weird/scrumptious/awful/amazing it turns out!

No tourist-y trip to the market would be complete without going around the corner to the Gum Wall.

{backstory: in November, I went to visit a bunch of friends in Seattle. We all worked together as camp counselors in NE Washington for a number of summers and most of the crew migrated to Seattle for college or post-college. It had been way too long since I’d seen them. We had a wonderful long weekend, reconnected and laughed and danced and ate lots of good food. And went to Pike Place Market one Saturday. When I got home, I got Lightroom, which I’m still trying to organize just right (hmm…kind of like my house) and so everything is now behind schedule as far as photo uploading goes. But what’s new. So far, I’ve written about my Seattle IKEA trip and The Seattle Public Library. A few Seattle food photos also made it into my year-end roundup.}