Summer is here

The longest day of the year.
Last night, driving back from the coast, the light lasted and lasted. A thin red-gold ribbon on the western horizon. After hours spent leaping from rocks and roasting dinner over an open fire, our hair smelling of woodsmoke, the golden light slanting long across the waves, the sand, the driftwood piled high in forts, we returned; but not before we ate cherries, drank wine, made s'mores, and watched families leave and teenagers arrive. Finally we went, reluctant, lingering. The light trailing us. The light, the light.

We moved in June.
We moved to a house on a historic treelined street where bikers ride by in droves, and kids rule the sidewalks. It took all month to put our lives back together. Paint rooms. Unpack. Find the mixer and my favorite collection of short stories.
I have a fifth grader now and a first. Two boys, in full-on elementary school. Sprout still feels at the edge of little, but barely. Bean, in between in his own way. Gangly limbed and sensitive. He still comes to our bed on the weekend demanding snuggles and acts betrayed if we've gotten up before him.
I hold my breath. Time is flying.
We play at the park, evenings. Or walk the dog under 100-year old trees, sometimes carrying wine, other times espresso or a handful of cherries. The boys zoom out ahead on wheeled things, yelling. They spend their days with the nanny: at the pool, making lemonade stands, reading, swim lessons. Finally, both of them are becoming real swimmers. Coordinated arm movements. Coordinated breath. In ten years, Bean will be out of the house. So much else to learn by then. He's currently on the cusp, dipping in and out of maturity, flickering between the kid he's becoming and the younger kid he his.
For my part I'm trying to find new routines. Leaning into summer and the long, long light. Waking earlier. Writing more. Adventuring more.
What does summer look like at your house?

Like magic

Today I found myself standing in various rooms, having walked there from other rooms without knowing why, on auto pilot. I opened the bathroom cabinet, then shut it again, forgetting to take out the hair dryer. I opened too many browser tabs and crashed Chrome. I forgot obvious words in the middle of sentences. Basically I ran out of words. Every single word squeezed out into sentences for presentations in which every word must be the exact right word. It's been a doozy of a week.
On Monday I gave away my cat. Bean is allergic, terribly. I stayed up with the friend I gave the cat to, drinking wine until nearly midnight. When I left the cat followed me to the door. We had her since our first apartment together, T and I. We had before 9/11. We had her from the advent of Web 2.0. Remember when email was a novelty? Remember when we had Hotmail accounts? Remember Ask Jeeves? My friend who took the cat is gorgeous and smart and loves brass figurines. Together with her husband I think they may love the cat more than we collectively did, seeing as T never really loved the cat, only grew accustomed to her. Still, to look back and remember getting her from the shelter together, baby faced, just out of college, and then to see our lives now? Time flies like magic.
On Tuesday I stayed up till nearly midnight, at a Guster show. I remember how much a friend in college adored their band, though I never listened to them much. Turns out, one of my sweetest writer friends in VT is married to the lead singer, and our families became friends. It was a kind of surreal to watch him perform. He was so exactly himself, and yet so much larger than himself, and then after the show, hugging him, he was just regular again. Like Magic.
On Wednesday I stayed up until midnight, working on a presentation for work. As a strategist, I basically start with the broadest and most complex challenges, or ambiguous data sets, and then distill them gradually. Often pages upon pages end up being a single page, so obvious that it doesn't look like it's anything at all. This, in fact is the mark of good strategy: to distill to the point where something is self evident. Where it's so straightforward and intuitive, there can be no mistaking. The work to get there is often arduous, but invisible once the answer becomes evident. Strategy is all about process. Thinking about that this week, I thought of the Tibetan monks I once watched making sand mandalas. They bent over their work for an entire week with intention and focus, creating something splendid, and then sat back to let the wind blow it away. Magic.
On Thursday before I collapsed into bed the minute the kids were in bed, which is late these days because of spring vacation. My mother in law is to watch the boys for the two weeks they have off which is a boon. She makes soup and takes the boys on adventures, and her love, unconditional and abundant, is a gift. Yesterday they did tie dye. So far all I have seen as an outcome is that my ten year old's hands are somewhat permanently dyed blue. His grin when he announced he was a Smurf was perfect.
Today I missed two coffee dates with two different sets of people because of the work. I said goodbye to one of my favorite designer friends who's moving on to a rad new show. He is one of the zen travelers I know. I had the fortune of taking a trip with him to Chicago for a conference last year. He forever changed how I think about travel. Worry less. Just show up. That's basically his approach. Its good for life too.
Now, looking ahead to Saturday, there will be Easter egg dying and coffee drinking and bike riding and writing.
I write every saturday, slowly but surely on my next book, or more realistically, on a single story that will be in my next book eventually. Each weekend I wrestle the piece back from a feral state. I write sentences. I delete them. I grapple with the way everything seems to come back to my mother, even though the story isn't about my mother at all. I sit in a cafe a few blocks from my house and I write, and in between I watch people come in. One couple comes every weekend. They spend the entire time taking selfies, and photos of their coffees. She wears incredible stilettos. He wears one of those baseball caps with a flattened bill. Another is a guy who is also writing. He takes smoke breaks out in front and fiddles with his wait length dreads. So far we haven't said hello. It seems like a matter of time.
Tomorrow, the weekend. How grateful I am every week for the interlude. It's like code switching. Right brain left brain. On the weekend I exhale. Sometimes I fall apart. Sometimes we argue. Sometimes we fall harder in love. Whatever happens there always magically seem to be enough moments to reconstitute me for another week. Magic.
Happy weekend, friends!

The place where things happen

All morning I work at the kitchen table. The boys have off (first day of summer vacation!) and I do not.
Eventually when they've settled into a project, I head out to the backyard to my little studio. I always push through the door with a certain relief; glad for the fact that though it is small, it is just mine. (Virgina Woolf had it right.) The walls, bare on purpose, ready for for whatever I want to tack up. A place to spread out and make things, which I do, though not today.
Today I bring a summer peach with me, and later espresso to keep me fueled through the afternoon. Then I sit, contorting at ridiculous angles in my chair. One knee up. Then both, perching. Then I'm spread out on the floor. I love the work I'm doing, but my body isn't made for sitting still. No one's is, but mine, with my spring-loaded legs feels particularly ill equipped for sitting still, and I'm hankering for the run I hope to get on the beach, Sunday morning.
Today, five minutes of attention happens as I am lying on the floor waiting for my colleague to send me edits. I simply breathe. Feel the way my shoulders are holding on to the stress of a tight deadline. Look up at the way the room is framed anew with my upside down perspective.
Outside the window, day turns to dusk, and dusk to night.
Day 8: #the5x5challenge

A few things I've been up to lately

Hello friends! I've been so busy lately I haven't had nearly as much time as I would like to stop in here and share stories.

Here are a few things I've been up to lately:

:: Writing on Medium
:: Creating a new series of art pieces (this giraffe is one, in progress)
:: Planning a studio sale for the end of March (sign up if you'd like to get first dibs.)
:: Working on a few very cool client projects. I especially loved helping to launch this shop into the world.
:: Reading the Little House series out loud to Bean (and feeling very glad I'm not that kind of pioneer.)
:: Watching Sprout become an amazing artist.
:: Reading this book, and this one.
:: Listening to new music on Beats.
:: Writing every morning in a notebook (I've loved responding to these prompts though I haven't had time to share much here.)
:: Doing a 20 minute vinyasa routine every morning
:: Drinking tea (instead of coffee), skipping alcohol, going to bed earlier, and taking a zillion supplements... and feeling like my adrenals are saying thank you. {Hello energy! How I've missed you}
:: Walking out onto the icy lake with the boys (it still feels bizarre and precarious, but I love all the wide expanses.)
:: Making big plans.
:: Really hankering for spring (and we have many inches of snow in the forecast this week!)
What you've been up to this March? Crazy how time is whirling by these days.

Eventually you will make a decision (or reminders to myself)

Eventually you will make a decision to stay indoors or to venture out, not letting the rain stop you. Pull on a rain. Rain pants for the kids. Boots. And go out into the smudged world, with its falling sky and imperfect roads torn loose with too much rain.
Eventually you will make a decision to give in to the sudden way the PMS creeps up and everything comes toward you like a thinly veiled jab, and the entire world seems to be making it personal; or you shake it off, pull on running clothes reluctantly, make a new running mix, and hit the treadmill hard. It will takes a while for the tempo to change you, but eventually it will. Your grateful pulse will remind you what it means to be alive, lungs raw with breath, feet pounding.
Eventually you will make a decision keep pushing yourself past your limits, or take care of yourself by asking for help. By drawing boundaries. By saying no even after you said yes, because in the moment that was easier and now you're faced with letting yourself down or letting someone else down. Because the truth is other people's disappointment isn't your problem, even though you've programmed yourself very insidiously to think that it is.
Eventually you will make a decision to forget your craft, or to zero in what you love most about it, truing to it fiercely above the urgent, the insistent, the loud demands that are yelling like a bully in your ear. Eventually it will be up to you to decide to turn a blind eye on the other things, and just pick this one thing. This one thing that feels important to you. That feels like the work you love, and just do it for an hour. Imperfectly. Even if it means you'll be up a creek later. Even if it means there will be hell to pay. Even if it means the sky will fall.
Because eventually it will. It will pour, and eventually roads will wash away. Eventually moods and hormones will catch up with you, or sleep deprivation will bring you to your knees. People will invariably be needy needy and self serving and impatient, and eventually to-do lists and deadlines and must-dos and should-dos will pile up like a angry, thumping, insistent mob inside your head.
Eventually you will make the decision: to let circumstance define you, or to define your circumstance.
And the thing is?
It's up to you to give in, or head out.

---

What will you decide?

Off for some weekend adventures in NYC!

           Happy Saturday, friends!
We're off on some weekend adventures, seeing family in NYC for a very brief slice of time--just today and tomorrow in fact. And even though my friend Dan asked, "Why are you driving 6 hours just to turn around and do it again?" there's no explaining what spring fever does to a girl living at the end of a long dirt road with wanderlust in her bones this time of year. I miss the city with it's non-stopness and hum of creative making, and I'm so excited to share a little glimpse of it with the boys. They've never been.
Bean wrote the Easter Bunny the dearest note yesterday-- he was worried that he wouldn't find them at the hotel in the city. The Easter Bunny confirmed he knows his way around the city, and is fond of elevators though, so I think we'll be fine. Bean read the note carefully and asked me to read it to confirm, and then took the Easter Bunny for his word and started packing for the trip: an eclectic assortment of things including a Go Fish game, a magnetic locking spy kit, and a set of colored pencils.
The combination of practicality and pure magic that coexists in their minds right now is what I love most about their ages. They're transportable, easily delighted, curious, sensitive, and more or less self sufficient. They are also always up for an adventure. All week long Sprout would ask, "Is it tomorrow yet?" Meaning, is it time to leave on our adventure yet?
So we're off. I'll likely take heaps of pictures over on Instagram, and probably post a few of my favorites here come Monday. If there are any places in the city that we absolutely shouldn't pass up with kids--ours, and our twin almost 4 year old nephews, do leave a note.
xo, Christina

Glimpses from our weekend:

An evening spent:

There is Peterson’s Guide To Fishes and Barry Lopez’ book, About This Life that I have not read, and also the heater ticking on beside me. A small oil-filled upright space heater. The temperature still keeps flirting with negative numbers.
The walls are cut open, drying. The floor is buckling more. Little uneven peaks and valleys; so many hours of sweat and effort to lay it all in place. It makes me bite my lip to thinks of what's ahead; ten days living somewhere else. Some other floor put down.
Now T brings up up chai with frothed milk and sugar, and on the windowsill there is a candle, shining its light from a mason jar, and fame burns steadily and low. Ben Webster plays "That’s All” on the sax so perfectly I want to dance and laugh and cry, all at once, those tremulous notes saying more I can ever do with just these words.
The dog shows up, her yellow tail wagging temporarily at my knee, before she goes to find the softness of her bed (I am always ending up with pets like her: too outspoken, too independent, too much like me.)

All kinds of fun & crazy

The past four days have been wild, in that snow-flurry, family-intensive way that only Thanksgiving vacation can produce. Pomegranate seeds in salad. Cousins chasing each other around the house. Fooseball between brothers. Red wine. Sleeping late. Snow flurries. A fractured foot. And vomit.

See how I snuck those in at the end?

That part goes something like this: The day before Thanksgiving Bean wound up at the hospital for x-rays. The night before in a moment of pure giddy flail he'd leaped (and fallen) over the space heater in his bedroom ("I should have listened to you, Mommy" he said with regret later) and still wincing and hopping about in the morning T brought him to the doctor's while I was at work. Of course, Sprout went along too, and the three of them spent much of their day in one waiting room or another while Bean was x-rayed and fitted for a boot/brase with the prognoses of a "buckle fracture." And then... wait for it... just as T was leaving the hospital, Sprout suddenly declared his stomach hurt, and then proved it, in a vibrant display in the parking lot.

Determined to get the ingredients he'd set out to get for the stuffing he was on the line to bring for Thanksgiving dinner the next day, he hauled both boys into town, arriving an hour before I usually leave work with two ashen boys and a very fragrant car. Needless to say, I left work early and drove them home, and we spent the rest of the night on the couch, Sprout clutching a bowl, and Bean muttering about his foot, while I read to both of them.

Thanksgiving day we awoke to milky sunlight, having slept late, and to the sounds of two very chipper boys playing contentedly in their room. Neither seemed the worse for the wear and Thanksgiving day passed serenely with all the usual delights of family and feasting. Friday was a blur. We cut a tree that recently fell across our driveway. We had dinner at the inlaws. There was even a nap. And then Saturday brought round two of vomit, that occured shortly after the most acrobatic lunch of the weekend, with inlaws and twin nephews at a noodle house. Roadside noodles for Bean. Sigh.

Sunday Bean was bright-eyed and bushy tailed as is his usual manner, and both boys painted for a while in my studio, where I holed up for most of the day--painting four canvases all told, and making this video for the Squam Art Workshops blog--which is the most fun I've ever had doing an interview with someone remotely.

Sunday was also the day my dear friend Jessica had her baby boy--and that news set me to wondering (at the fact that when Jessica has an an almost 8 year old, like my Bean is now, I'll have an ALMOST 16 YEAR OLD, and holy moly, that is pure craziness) and also to remembering the birth stories of both my boys.

I am exited beyond words to be heading out to California this weekend see her, and Willow and, fingers crossed, a stop at Teahouse and a peak at my gorgeous Pacific ocean too. Oh California. I'll never stop loving you.

So, there you have it. The most rambling of updates. It's been far too long. I keep waiting for the perfect opportunity to slip back in and get all caught up, but the perfect opportunity is never, and so here you are. Rambling. Update.

How was your Thanksgiving? What are you looking forward to this December?

Soon and now

Soon. I keep saying that word. I like the way it rhymes with moon, the way it has a a softness in the middle--that holds the milky belly of a promise of time to come. Soon, like a an elastic band: the hope of it expanding and contracting with each passing day, the target always moving. Soon, like pebbles look under water: the way they appear closer from the surface, than they do from beneath it. Soon snow. Soon lovemaking. Soon holidays. Soon sudden laughter. Soon time off. Soon air travel. Soon the streets of unfamiliar cities. Soon a feeling finishing. Soon starting other things. Soon running. Soon paint. Soon night.

It's a word that belies the present. It's a word that moves like a mirage. It's a word that's full of home. It's a word that makes the skeletons and sweet bread of dreams.

I'm here, at the cusp of soon now, feeling how that word is an excuse, a target, an arrow, a pair of wings.

* * *

  You tell me: Soon __________________________________________________. What?  

The beginning of wonderful things:

Hello friends!

Do you see what that is? My book! In the real. My wonderful editor shipped me a half-dozen advanced copies because I'm heading out today to the amazing World Domination Summit in a few hours and am excited to be able to share them with some creative souls there.

I'm also giddy to share with you my almost finished new digs here under my new name. It feels grand to have finally arrived. Welcome. I hope you'll stay a while. So many good things are in the works...

I'd tell you more, but I'm leaving on a jet plane for the west coast in a couple of hours and can't stop grinning about what a wonderful time #WDS is going to be. I'll be tweeting up a storm, I imagine, and posting like crazy to Instagram... so peak over there too!

xoxo,

Christina

From Instagram, with love.

Hi. It's been a busy handful of days. There has been catching tadpoles, and picking apple blossoms; meeting my twin nephews and watching my boys play with their cousins; birthday cake and deadlines; air turbulence and taxi rides; an end of the week business trip to NYC; then riding the train up to CT to the wedding of one of my oldest friends.

There's more to that last story for another day. So much more.

But for tonight there are a handful of photos from what I've been up to since graduating. (Thank you for all your awesome comments and appreciation for the big work of my thesis. I so adore you all.)

Small rituals :: Holding steady

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Toast with honey + almonds, and a cappuccino for the road.

Kissing my boys before we part ways for the day (all three of them.)

Stopping in a parking lot by the lake on the way to work to watch the gulls, just for five minutes, and to breathe.

Having lunch with good friends often.

Calling the people I love on my commute home from work.

Counting the days until I finish (22).

What are the things you do, in the eye of the storm, in the midst of momentum, when urgency dictates only the slightest room in your day to linger or pause?

So many things

I've decided that to just roll with the fact that this post is going to be disjointed and full of juicy tidbits and no real rhyme or reason because it is the only way to get everything down on the digital page, so that I can start fresh again before my brain explodes. Because so many things. Are happening. Right now. Oh my.

I keep thinking/hoping/wishing that I'll wake up one morning with more time, but instead, I woke up one morningcame back from my trip to California to find that T had taken out a wall in our living room. Yeah. So. That goal of painting a corner of our house aquamarine that I made for my 35/35 list? Check. Flexibility as a personality trait? Check.

I'll totally post pictures just as soon as there is some semblance of semblance. My entire house has a new wide-open floor plan. Removing the wall caused all sorts of re-painting to take place. The dining room is a different color. So is the living room. The kitchen remains, for now, the same. That it will persist that way is doubtful.

I love my new job. It excites me. It uses all the parts of my brain: strategic, creative, emotional, practical. It challenges me in all the right ways. And the days pass in a blink. I watch the light move across the sky from my office window; head out for a run at lunch, and then drive home, eat dinner, put the kids to bed, and hit my thesis. Or at least, intend to.

And oh, hey! I have two birthday boys next week. When did that happen?

Exhibit A & B:

They are pretty much the coolest. They're funny and full-tilt and totally, completely different. I intend to write each of them a love letter, or at the very least, share snippets of their Birthday Interviews that I always conduct. Of note: Bean is almost as good as me at snowboarding now. I can still beat him down the mountain, but I have a sneaky suspicion it's just because I'm heavier. The kid was born to ride. He has a sort of effortless grace that I can't help but be a little bit jealous of.

This past weekend we also put Sprout on a board for the first time, and wouldn't you know, he didn't fall at all. He had crazy balance. Rode perpendicular to the slope, laughing his head off. The only problem: He had no clue how to stop.

"When you tell him how to stop Mommy," Bean told me while riding the lift, "He doesn't believe you because it just looks like magic."

"Is that how you felt when you started?" I asked him.

"Yeah, but then my body learned the magic."

Exactly.

Somehow, the days fly by. I do as much as the hours allow, and am learning to let the rest go. I've started running again and it is definitely a key sanity and wellbeing. Today I hit my 3mi/25minute goal. Another thing on my 35/35 list. I think I may need to revise that one.

Did you see how I tossed that link to twitter in there? Yeah, I'm on twitter a lot, and it's one of my very favorite places to share, and find insight and be inspired. It's also a place where I've been sharing little in the moment updates, at the speed of life as it's happening right now. Won't you join me?

Hello January! {A post of updates}

What a blur, this new year has been! Full of the most exciting things: a trip to Boston with just T last weekend, the start of the snowboarding season, a new job that has the very best job description I could imagine, and a trip to California to see my best friend before she has her baby!

I loved reading your responses to my PART 1 post on CREATIVE PROCESS. It's such a wild ride, to be in the thick of creating, and it made me so satisfied to read about how the process is the same across all mediums.

This week I'm resolved to write here daily. To just show up with a few photographs and some notes. I've been recording glimmers in my notebook lately: snippets of conversations overheard, or details observed, and I think I'll share a few of those here too.

Coming up this week I'll share PART 2 of the CREATIVE PROCESS, a post about that job that I so casually mentioned (though inside I'm still doing a giddy happy dance about it) and some news about this here blog. Cool news. Exciting news. Stay tuned.

* * *

What is in store for your week?

I'd love to know the following: 1. An album you're loving listening to... 2. A magazine that strikes your fancy... 3. A cold-weather beauty secret you rely on... 4. And a fav food that is getting you through these mid January days.

xoxo! Christina

some glimpses from the week

Here are a couple Instagram snapshots from the week. Since my semester ended on Fiday, I've been soaking up time with my boys. Doing silly, delightful things like making marshmallows from scratch + lovely salt dough ornaments + playing with catch with the dog + reading stories to the boys.

Tonight night we are having a solstice gathering at our house. Potluck + lots of good friends + a big bonfire. I'm hoping to take a few pictures to share. I'm so looking forward to it, in spite that currently my house looks entirely less than presentable and I have yet to make anything other than said marshmallows (which are entirely questionable) to offer my guests. Sigh. Somehow it will all likely come together.

What are you doing for solstice? {PS: thanks to everyone who supported Bethany! She is a light + an inspiration.}

The beauty of the light

The light's been catching my eye lately. I can't help photographing it.

To look up from work and see how the world has changed; how the light has moved across the room, or walk the woods and find the shadows falling differently there.

To see with my painter's eye, the way there is more yellow now, more cobalt in the shadows.

The dog keeps helping me to remember the rhythm of the day. The morning sun, the late twilight gold, the long shadows.

What are you up to this week? Say hello!

Field notes: A small collection of beautiful things

The quality of light just here, on the plate where the yolk from the egg has spilled into a small river of gold against white enamel; light falling through the big south facing window before noon, while at the feeder chickadees scatter the sparks of millet hulls onto the grass beneath.

In the woods, the leaves are decomposing, the moss still verdant green, and punky wood good for kicking, or digging at with eager puppy paws. We walk the boundaries now, daily taking inventory of every bit of quartz, each trampled path, each wild raspberry bramble, and listen as the piliated woodpecker makes waves in the air with its drumming.

With their saws buzzing like angry bees, the men arrive from the power company, to fell trees for wires to pass through unhindered when the storms come, and though I’m sad about the spruce they take, leaving only the shorn trunk marked with scars of sticky sap, I’m grateful too, for the light that I turn on.

After dinner, the night is still soft and new and we go out, all five of us now; the dog at my side on a slack lead, picking up scents among the wet leaves while the big colored lights twinkle around the tallest pine and we start singing every carol we know, one after the next our voices lifting into the gathering night.

The best & Worst: Notes from the weekend

Hello friends! How was your weekend? Mine was, like weekends often are around here lately, a mish-mash.

The high notes:

Rambling in the woods + fields with Clover.

Watching her run off leash through the high grass in our meadow.

Putting up colored lights around the big pine tree + house. (I am completely crushing on the big fat colored ones this year.)

Finally, finally building a fenced enclosure for the chickens: no more poop on our front steps!

Holding hands with T on a walk.

Being reminded by a beautiful friend that I need to share my silly side with the world more.

Singing Christmas carols at the top of our lungs in the car everywhere we went.

Nutella.

The way that new possibilities keep flooding into my life right now.

Running every day again.

And the low notes:

Staying up until 2:30 last night to finish (and then not finishing) an assignment for a class I don’t dig at all.

Clover rolling in poop and getting it all over her ear.

Not having enough hours to hit all the deadlines.

The way that I catch myself hunching all the time. Stupid sitting at a desk posture.

Feeling my breath catch in my ribs when I think of my to-do list for the next two weeks until my semester ends.

+++

How about you?

The secret to perfect timing, and the sweetest Clover

Call me irrational.

And maybe I am. But when I get an idea into my head, sometimes I can't shake it.

This time the idea I had was a dog. A partner in crime. A studio buddy. A reason to be out doors infinitely more than I am right now. An excuse to take rambling walks. A reminder to be in touch with my animal self, hair blowing in the wind among the dry November grasses.

The idea came from a feeling: that the balance has been off in my life for a while. I've spent too much time at my desk, indoors, consuming stress and carbohydrates while the world changes seasons beyond the glass. And also, the boys are at the just-right age for a pup to grow up with. To remember as their first dog, as the one who accompanied them on wild rambles, napped with them, rode in cars with them, shared ice cream and afternoon swims.

Life slips right by.

Gallops full tilt even, under the twirling heavens. The days gather with twilight, spill into starry nights, turn blue before dawn, then spread the world with milky early morning sunlight. Crows fly over head. They fly in a murder of many, their dark wings beating as the sky turns pink and gold at sundown. Geese keep arriving to overwinter along the waterways where beavers made their summer homes. Life passes this way: one season slipping into the next. The fields are brown now; the road muddy; the leaves frail and wind tossed in heaps at the back of the house.

If not now, when?

We've already waited a year for the timing to be right. And what I've learned from every bold action I've ever taken; from every leap of faith is this: There is no right timing.

The timing is always what you make of it.

Always right, if you choose it to be, if you let the universe align.

And so last weekend I started looking. Rather obsessively, actually.

And then I found her.

Clover.

The most perfect, droll, calm, affectionate puppy in the world. She is gentle and super-duper smart, and a rescue from the Mississippi hills. We think she's part black mouthed cur, part golden retriever, but who can be sure?

What we are sure of is that she's stolen all of our hearts. And also that she's better behaved than either of the boys. *grin.*

And right now as I write she's asleep under my feet, her tail whippity-whapping every so often with dreams.