Friday, May 29, 2009

what's better than sliced bread...?

…the sliced bread notebooks!

 

I came across these today on the {layers of meaning} blog and tried to look for where I could buy them…

I was just curious how much they were…because, you know,  I do have a mild obsession with notebooks and journals…

But, I can’t find them anywhere.

All my searches came up with, were other blog posts featuring them, so I don’t actually know if they are for sale.

If anyone finds out, please share…

 

Happy weekend!

 

 

Thursday, May 28, 2009

opening up the door...


this was taken verbatum from the about page at the {mytopography} blog

i quote:

"PS:
If you know me in “real life” and have come here by way of spending far too many hours surfing google…enjoy. But do me the courtesy of letting me know that you’ve found me here—and know that the reason I haven’t told you about {my blog} is because I want to be able to live with the illusion that I don’t have to sensor what I write."

end quote.

i read this and i thought to myself, "yeah, i get that."

On one hand i like thinking that i write my blog into the abyss of the world wide web...on a site that only a few people read...and that's okay, because it's more for me than for anyone else.
On the other hand i like thinking that my blog is read by more people than i realize, and that i'm reaching far beyond my corner of world...
but i'll never know unless you tell me...
if you would be so kind, leave me a comment and let me know you're reading...
not because i will sensor what i share, but so i know i'm not alone.

{my photo taken in Toronto this weekend}

kate's cups



I didn’t get very many gifts for my birthday this year…which I’m absolutely fine with…
It was all about quality, not quantity as I ushered in my 27th year…
Can you tell I’m growing up, getting wiser with age?
Everyone chipped in to help me purchase my long-awaited, highly-coveted new digital Cannon Rebel camera.

One gift that I did get, however, was from {kate}

let me start by saying she knows me…very well,
but with this gift I don’t think she really had to rack her brain too much.

A few months ago I “hinted” at a line of products at Target by Orla Keily…
I never ended up buying myself any of it and had forgotten about them,
so when a box showed up on my doorstep holding these cups,
I squealed with delight.

So, …thank you kate…
For your friendship and your talent for giving just the right gift…
…even when I don’t give not-so-subtle hints!

(photo via target.com)

{color-coded}

My love of books has been made clear before…

But I don’t think I’ve ever proclaimed, via the blog, of my love for all things color-coded…

Closets, bookshelves, shoes, magazines…

This is a habit that I admire but have yet to employ except for the rare occasion that my closet is organized.

So, when I saw this post on the {beach bungalow 8} blog, I was literally drooling onto my laptop.

What’s better than color-coded bookshelves…?

This is what I aspire to – that is, when I have my at-home library, complete with a rolling ladder and leather reading chair and reading lamp. {a girl can dream can’t she?}

 

Here’s a taste, but to see more incredible images, visit {here}...i promise, you won’t regret it.

 

{my topography}

last night I re-stumbled over this blog and wanted to share…

                    {my topography}

She has a great way with words and has also

scattered some lovely poetry and prose throughout her blog…

actually, most of it is poetry and prose I guess, with a scattering of other things…

 

Today is a muggy day,

the air is thick and humid and hot

and right now I am wishing I was in shorts on my sun porch,

a condensating glass of iced tea on the table next to me,

dripping with the sweat of ice cubes, rings on glass tables,

finishing the poem I started two days ago.

 

Maybe tonight,

in between grocery shopping and tanning (a birthday gift, bad for me, I know)

and dinner making and bill paying

I will finish that poem and post it on here…

Maybe, or maybe not.

 

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

not there yet, but we're getting there...







grass is still growing,
flowers have yet to be planted,
but we're getting there...

a far cray from where we were a month ago!

canada oh canada






It was a drive in the sunshine with a camera to break in
It was a breakfast burrito at the halfway point
It was holding a baby named London and watching her sleep
It was laughing as two year old Ryen showed me how she breast feeds her baby doll like mommy does
It was getting reacquainted over salmon and salad
It was sharing in the boredom of Saturday synagogue
It was a luncheon of bagels and lox
It was a subway ride away from the suburbs
It was a quaint café in the middle of yorkville
It was a dinner of asian affair
It was late night chocolate martinis
It was small beds in big houses
It was brunch with babies and eggs
It was talks of philosophy and different religions
It was shop after shop of gladiator sandals and roots
It was pictures of bikes and capacinos and library staircases
It was a portugese feast of roast chicken and wine
It was a torte with a candle for 27 years
It was a night of little mermaid songs with dramatic interpretation
It was a morning of beds stripped and regretful goodbyes
It was a quiet drive home with a headaches and headphones
It was a bright welcome home to family watering lawns
It was a weekend ended fast with the preparations of a new week
It was unloading, unpacking and unwinding
It was buying milk and lettuce and strawberries
It was eating peanut butter and jelly for dinner
and wishing Toronto would have kept us for longer

a beautiful mess

I want a studio like this…

oneday…

maybe in my next house…

hmmm…

a girl can wish, right?

 

via elsie at {a beautiful mess}

                                

Sunday, May 24, 2009

the 26th year


...to me!


the 26th year…

Year 25 was marked by big changes in my life, in our life together, a new house, a new job, a new puppy…and on and on…

It seems from the outside that year 26 was much more mellow, less going on, less changes, more peace.
But that might be a little less like the truth than I’d like to admit.

While year 25 was all about getting the outsides of our life clean and kept up, year 26 marked a year of great inner workings…

It was marked by immeasurably more lessons than I ever thought possible to squeeze in 12 short months.
It marked the beginning of new things – new dreams, new plans and a new outlook on our future.
It was marked by a new dedication to become debt-free.
It was marked by the difficulties of being intimate with a new church plant.
It was marked by nurturing new friendships and deepening the roots of older ones.
It was marked by a growing commitment to strengthen our marriage in new ways.
It was marked by hard lessons of patience and timing and sovereignty and peace.

It was marked by so many things that I don’t have the words for…
Things that go deeper than words and blogs and sentences strung together, trying to make sense of a year in the past.

“There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.”
- Dostoevsky

26 was a good year.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that 27 will be even better.


Via {something’s hiding in here}

Tuesday, May 19, 2009



"And the day came when the risk to remain in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom."
-Anais Nin

{rewind}




This past Saturday I finally woke up feeling like myself again. After an almost two week long sinus infection that felt more like the flu, I was ready to kick life back into high gear and start the landscaping in the backyard.

Saturday was a chilly/ rainy day, but I was determined to make a dent in the backyard.

Luckily my mom was just as motivated as I was, so after uprooting some of her hastas and wart worth we drove them over to my house to do a little re-purposing.

Wet and muddy, we spent over an hour planting a few small beds with a nice mix of the two. Then, even more energized and possibly on an adrenaline high, we decided to dig up all of my leftover hastas that were lining the driveway and replant them so they would be in a pattern.

The normal side to us knew this was crazy, but our anal sides that love symmetry and patterns did it anyways.

Green then striped, green and striped, and on and on. We set them all on the driveway, rearranged them, then re-planted – all within a half hour I think. By that time, my energy was used up and I was suddenly feeling lightheaded and dizzy. This probably wasn’t the best task to do straight off my deathbed, so I sat for a minute then was back to work, hosing off the driveway, sweeping dirt and putting away tools and hoses.

It was a productive afternoon, that’s for sure – and hopefully the backyard grass will grow as fast as the front yard is…this is going to be a good looking yard if I have anything to do with it!

{more "after" photos to come}

Friday, May 15, 2009

let's fly away


i liked this. i would like to jump inside this image. fly away.

Via {this is my heart. It is a good heart.}
via {from me to you}

better...together...

I like this…good reminders on rough days…kinda like today…minus the frosty

 

saw {here}

from {here}

sweet things on a friday afternoon

this is a sweet little poem…

just about as sweet as the wendy’s frosties that katie and svetti brought us back from lunch today.

 

Via {this is my heart. It is a good heart.}

i want...

those jeans…

and those legs while I’m wanting and wishing for things…

it might even clear up this stupid sinus infection that I’ve had for…sniff…the last 12 days.

jeans have a healing way about them I do think.

 

find at {mike&chris}

via {this is glamorous}

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

happy national tulip day



miranda july



i don't know much about Miranda July, but i read some snippets of her writing today and i think i'm going to try to get her book of short stories out of the library. it's called "Noone Belongs Here More Than You Do"

I'm not sure if these selections are from that book or not, but they loved me, so i will pass them on...

"Don't wait to be sure. Move, move, move."

"There was no apology in her eyes, no love or caring. But she saw me, I existed, and this lifted the beams off my shoulders. It takes so little."

"Live ivy, we grow where there is room for us."

"He reached around and pulled me down onto his back and I lay there, like on the warm sand of a beach. Just that. That is all there is. That is the whole point of everything."

"I was never good at jumping in, letting go of one element and embracing another. I could stand there all day, letting the other kids go in front of me forever."

"I was actually just standing there in love. I was not even really standing; if she had walked away suddenly, I would have fallen."

"You seem incredibly far away to me, like someone on the other side of a lake. A dot so small that it isn't male or female or young or old, it is just smiling."

{home}

A friend and I were just discussing this concept yesterday.

After a long trip her and her daughter took to accompany her husband on a business trip, she told me pretty much the same thing.

Being home is always great, but as long as we’re together, I’m okay.

So this one is for you, {kate}.

Seen at {this is my heart. it is a good heart.} via {here}.

i *heart* paisley

It’s been referred to as outdated, or grandma-esque, but my heart belongs to paisley… always has, always will.

Today I stumbled across an artist on flickr that shares my fondness for the pattern & the print that is paisley…

What she does for paisley is what I wish I could draw when I sit down and doodle…

but I just don’t have it in me…my sister, on the other hand, used to draw and doodle very similar to “definatalie”…

for which I will always be jealous.

 

I urge you to visit her flickr site {here} to see what I mean…

(for some reason I’m not able to copy and paste any of her images to give you a taste, so you’ll have to just trust me)

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, May 11, 2009

tulip love







on friday i stayed home sick from work.
i don't know if what i'm suffering from are allergies, a cold or the swine flu that's traveling the globe, but by friday i had had enough and needed a break.
by the afternoon i was feeling decent and it was a beautiful day outside so i grabbed my camera and the leash and took mea on a walk.
it was so nice out a walk around the block turned into a couple mile walk to my mom's house in the next city over.
mea was a a great companion as we strolled down the walking path to shaker road.

i'm so glad i brought my camera, because no one has believed me that there is a house on my mom's street that is amazing. with a full time crew working in her yard daily, the fruits of their labor are sure paying off.
a little over the top i admit, but parts are reminiscent of english gardens from far across the pond. my mom even told me that she's even rented out her backyard for wedding ceremonies...

i *heart* tulip season

the bread was still warm on their plates

the bread was still warm on their plates.

cups full of tea
steeped in history
still steaming
from kettle to cup.

lips still moist from first sips
and last words.

The bread was still warm on their plates.

Dust swept off rugs
laid for late arrivals.
meals waiting in heated pots
lids heavy, careful not to let steam escape.

The bread was still warm on their plates.

Infants nurse and children learn
from womb to walking
that history repeats itself.

The bread was still warm on their plates.

Sandals slung over bare shoulders
infants cling to gorged breasts
no time for feeding,
footprints in the swept earth
dust pointing to repeated destiny.

The bread was still warm on their plates.

Tea steeps strong
grows cold,
steam escapes through cracks and quiet.

The bread was still warm on their plates.

Lips grow dry,
cracked
from final kisses
and last
goodbyes.

The bread was still warm on their plates.

poem

There is little to be said
about the beginning of the summer,
or the opening of the mouth.

With little victories and failures
quiet kisses saying I am sorry for me.
Molecules begging for some forgiveness,
and all the blood in the veins
reaching out for some kind of contact,
something

The way clothes fit against the body.
The way memory sticks out,
like a belief in something,
worth forgetting.

This skin,
soft oil and skimpy scent of peach.
This body swallowed,
whole,
in no time at all.
Maybe all this lighting in our palms.

With you so close now.

The softness of open-eyed dreams
running against,
the thunderstorms of our lives.

Every so often I'd like to have my own funeral
just to see

who would show up.

read {here}



i wouldn't.

Seen {here}



i just thought this was cute...although i don't have to miss his familiarity, because we never had to say goodbye.

find {here}
via {here}

"How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her?
How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present?"
-Milan Kundera

find + joy update

It’s been less than a week since I made my may find + joy resolutions…

And I must say – once you put a goal out there for all of the blogosphere to see

It’s as if there’s no turning back now…

And actually it’s been good, really good –

Although the alarm did get a couple love-taps on the snooze button this morning…

I’ve been journaling nightly – it’s been wonderful and reminded me how much I’ve missed the days where I used to sit up in bed, alone, writing about my single days…

But somehow along the way journaling evolved into pillow-talk and now I think I write less because I talk more to my main man.

It’s healthy, I’m sure, but I still miss it, and hope that this month helps bring the old routine back again.

I’ve also been {trying} to wake up earlier to give me time to slow down in the mornings, eat breakfast, read for a few minutes…it’s been easy because it was the weekend but this morning came fast and I found myself rolling over and hitting the snooze, not once, but three times.

But even still, I took it slow and did sit in the kitchen, and ate a bowl of life cereal and enjoyed the smell of fresh flowers on the counter.

This weekend also found me weeding through some books. I am not one to give away books. I can give away most things quite easily, but I hoard books like some hoard money.

So when I sat on the floor of my office, looking for a particular book, it started me on a book purge that took the better part of Saturday morning.

Three target bags later, my bookshelves did not look nearly as cluttered and books were back where they belonged. A shelf of writing, a shelf of poetry, a shelf from my English-literature studying school days…a shelf or two of spiritual books and even a whole shelf dedicated to books I have yet to read.

Confession: I have a problem with books.

It’s been documented before that when I was in Africa, Kate sent me a whole host of novels, of which I shipped almost all back with me upon my return. Well, yesterday, I decided to pass along many of the novels that have been read long ago. They were just collecting dust and I knew that my mom and others would find hours of enjoyment from those bags of books.

So, off I went, to Mother’s Day brunch with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and two bags of books in another…

I think secretly she wished that she could hold off on brunch with her family to sort through all the good reads that had just bestowed on her…

But she didn’t and she set them aside until a moment with more time…

But I think she liked it –

A woman after my own heart…

Or is it the other way around…?

May 1K

May’s 1k over at {1,000 Words} is good,

there are sentences that drip with imagery –

egg yolks and sun rises…

but to be honest, it’s not nearly as memorable as previous months.

but you gotta give it to him – the guy can write.

 

Enjoy and have a happy Monday –

 

…updates to come on the progress of {my find + joy challenge} for the month of May

 

 

 

Sunday, May 10, 2009

moomers day





this month almost 27 years ago, my mom became a mother herself.

i think she would agree that i changed her life.

now today, i honor her and all the ways she's changed mine.

happy mother's day moomers!

i love you

Saturday, May 9, 2009

dinner with the douglas'






last night we enjoyed a nice dinner with some good friends of ours.
although the rain was sporadic, it held off long enough to make our gourmet pizzas on the grill.
after one broken wine glass, a little bit of melodrama over a few drops of blood, some easy conversation and some smores over stovetop, the night ended early enough for me to finish a hemingway book in bed, staying up by booklight until almost 2 am.

it was a good night with good friends.
the ideal end to a not so ideal workweek.

a moveable feast



last night, after dishes were cleared, friends had departed and husband was sound asleep, i sat by book light in bed, finishing A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.

As i read through the book over the last week or two, i've been taking notes on passages that spoke to me as a writer, an observer and a lover of foreign soil...
and here is what has stuck with me even past the last page...

"All of the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of winter, and there were no more tops to the high white houses as you walked but only the wet blackness of the street and the closed doors of the small shops, the herb-sellers, the stationary and newspaper shops..."

"I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." So finally i would write one true sentence and then go from there."

"I was learning something from the paintings of Cezanne that made writing simple true sentences far from enough to make the stories have dimensions that i was trying to put in them. I was learning very much from him, but i was not articulate enough to explain it to anyone. Besides, i was a secret."

"When i was writing, it was necessary for me to read after i had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing that you were writing before you could go on with it the next day. It was necessary to get excercise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read in order not to think or worry about your work until you could do it again. I learned already never to empty the well of my writing but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it."

"I thought of [...] egotism and mental laziness versus discipline and i thought who is calling who a lost generation [...] I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be [...]"

"Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed."

"When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. [...] People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself."

"But them we did not think ever of ourselves as poor [...] we ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other."

"[...] There are so many sorts of hunger. In the spring there are more. But that's gone now. Memory is hunger."

"When i woke with the windows open and the moonlight on the roofs of the tall houses, it was there. I put my face away from the moonlight into the shadow but i could not sleep and lay awake thinking about it. We had both awakened twice in the night and my wife slept sweetly not with the moonlight on her face [...] life had seemed so simple that morning when i had wakened and found the false spring [...] But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong, nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight."

"By then i knew everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itslef. If it was good, you could only fill it by finding something better."

"There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. i learned to understand Cezanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when i was hungry. i used to wonder if he were too when he painted; but i thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsaid but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later, i thought Cezanne was probably hungry in a different way [...] hunger is good discipline when you learn from it."

"I said that i did not believe that anyone could write any way except the very best he could write without destroying his talent."

"[...] but it was very difficult, and i did not know how i would ever write anything as long as a novel. it often took me a full morning of work to write a paragraph."

"I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life i was leading, and already i missed not working and i felt the death lonliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life."

 
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