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.

The morning begins like this:

The morning begins when I am less awake than dreaming, and with shut eyes I shift my body, truing towards the warmth of my husband beside me; pressing my nose against the warmth of his bare shoulder. I pat the edge of the bed when I hear my littlest come in, carrying his bear, a pacifier in his mouth. He climbs up and burrows in next to me like a puppy, finding the curve between my neck and shoulder where little head fits just exactly so. Then we all doze, until his brother starts to call from their room down the hall; ever the bright eyed one in the morning, Bean wakes up curious, eager, effervescent, loud. Sprout props himself up on an arm, then sits off, shoving the warm covers back. “I’m coming,” he calls, then trundles off. The morning begins like this: I am between sleep and waking, sitting at the edge of a mossy dock. Below me the water is warm, and when I slip into it I discover amethysts sparkling below the surface. Then I am here, with the cat purring at my hip, and I roll over so that I can run my hand along her apricot fur, her purr vibrating up through my finger tips, into my palm, my pulse. In the kitchen below me, the boys sound like herd animals. They make the wood floor thunder. They shriek and laugh and yell. The house smells like woodsmoke and bacon (two of my favorite things) and soon I push back the covers and stumble toward the shower, my vision blurring suddenly to stars. Head rush. I hold the door frame and pause.

The morning begins with all four of us around the butcher block island in the kitchen on stools. There are white bowls of oatmeal with butter and maple syrup, seedy toasted baguettes with butter and raspberry preserves, fried eggs, bacon, flat whites. There are greasy little boy fingers. There is a scuffle over the last slice of bacon. Both boys ask for milk, then water. T and I look at each other over the table and smile.

The morning begins with this: I am sitting beside the wood stove, this mix is playing and the sun is out. It makes shadows fall in bright contrast across the un-vacuumed floor. I sit with my new notebook (I’ve filled the last one up) and a pencil with soft lead, and find my pulse. I watch wild turkeys run across the far meadow, and settle into the steadiness of my hand moving across the page, scrawling careless, messy script. “What chu doin mama?” Sprout asks within minutes, his face right at table height, his cheeks rosy, his bangs in his eyes.

The morning begins like this.

// Things I want to remember

So busy this week, back to school, back to being in a hundred places at once. Still, it's summer and I'm trying to be in it. At the dinner table watching our boys run out across the grass holding hands to look for sticks for roasting marshmallows, T says: "Oh love, I want this to last forever."

I nod, knowing exactly what he means. Them, as they are with shaggy summer hair, scraped knees, berry stains on their fingers. And us. Our lives full to the brim right now, but in good way.

Things I want to remember:

// Dinner tonight: flatbread baked on a stone on the grill along with summer peaches + a hint of vanilla, chicken with olive oil + thyme, and a salad of summer's brightest: new plump blueberries, arugula from the garden, baby lettuces in a mustard maple balsamic vinaigrette.

// The way morning gallops in, with my boy's on it's back. They're wearing capes and wielding swords. It's before 7am. They are whirring with elbows and energy and laughter.

// The laundry whirring in a quiet house while the babysitter takes the boys on a bug-catching walk. They bring back crickets in a plastic egg box with holes poked in the top. It stays on my counter over night: some wells filled with water, others with grass. In the morning the insects are all alive still, and I make a plea for their release.

// Impending angst about my book deadline. So much to make a book. So many words. Picking the right ones seems feels daunting some days.

// Returning from an afternoon run just as thunder breaks the sky open. Then sitting in a circle of pages, blue post it notes scattered about like the petals of some sacred offering to the writing gods while the thunder rolls about like a bowling ball above me in the sky. Rain falls through the open windows onto the sills bringing the scent of earth and green.

The end of a really good week

We made chocolate chip cookie dough just for eating after dinner tonight; then wandered along the paths T just cut through the meadows. So many flowers. Grass up higher than the boys' heads. Bats swooping low above us. Sundown making everything golden and lavender.

This week was good. It was beyond needed: to have some time with my three boys. To write. To rest. To run. To recalibrate a little.

++

Sprout is suddenly, finally, talking in sentences. "My hands are filfy, Daddy!" he said tonight, holding up flour covered palms after rolling dough out for chapattis with me. Unlike bean who talked in sentences at about 18 months, sweet Sprout has taken his time. But now, in just the last week or two is words are tumbling out nonstop. He makes all of us happy. From the day he was born he's had this buddha presence: he is calm and centered and joy-filled and it rubs off on everyone around him. Bean adores him, even though they fight endlessly over ownership of insignificant objects: long sticks, particular crayons, certain books, matchbox cars.

Bean is all elbows and long legs. He rides a his new bike with gears and hand breaks like a pro, and gets up with aplomb and bravery when he takes a spill on uneven terrain, blood often running down a knee. He's decided wants to grow his hair long. For now we're kind of rolling with it. We lovingly call him mop-head. He wakes up with a tangled shock of semi-curls, and lures Sprout out of bed, and then the two of them come find us. It's still one of my favorite times of day, then, in those first moments of morning when we're all there together, still sleep and warm and trailing dreams.

++

The manuscript is now a complete draft. There are some rough chapters, but everything is there now, in place, in sequence, and my mind can hold it all at once. That's been so hard: I can't really explain it. There is something about the linear medium of the computer that makes it really challenging for me to see all the parts as a part of the whole. I went to UPS today and printed the whole thing at 1.5 spacing with wide margins for marking up. It's about an inch thick, and made things feel real in a way that they haven't until now:I'm writing a book. Really. Truly.

Now, if only I can stay in the groove when I get back into the swing of things at school + work.

+++

PS: I'm craving some new summer tunes. Do you have any suggestions?

Wednesday + Thursday { only this }

Last night gail force winds + ground lightening took our power out right at dinnertime. We went to my in-laws, made pizza and put the boys to bed there, then came home late to a still-dark house. Above us, stars, and in the woods so many owls. We followed a single flashlight up the stairs, and then we found our way to each other in the dark.

Tuesday {in pictures}

Hello friends.

I'm finding this so restful: to notice the small things of daily life and to share them here with you.

We've been keeping a jar of markers and fresh paper at hand for quiet times, and today had many moments where the boys just sat and colored. I love the way Sprout is learning to draw: circles first.

I made some fresh peach preserves yesterday with some not-so-great peaches. Just a little sugar + water + a hint of vanilla and they cooked down into something lovely to have on biscuits this morning.

Today was all dappled with sun and shade. I love the way the field grasses blow in the wind.

While I was writing Bean and T made a sign for our nightly visitors. Bean has since observed that perhaps he needs to add a checklist to clarify exactly what makes a skunk a bad one. We have several this year. We always do. T has twice encountered them in the coop, though they've yet to spray anyone. Still. Bad skunks take note.

Manuscript progress today for sure. It is wild to be working on something this big. It terrifies and thrills me in turns. I've decided to focus on just finishing the manuscript. Once it's in, all my backers will be rewarded (with a little extra surprise in addition to what they signed up for) for their patience. Until then, I imagine I'll be pretty quiet on that front: creating beautiful chapters.

What are you up to this week?

Sunday in pictures

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A few glimpses at our Sunday. How was yours?

These are some moments: full velocity, full of mess, full of grace

It's been a wild tumble of spring-turning-into-summer around here. I'm in the thick of a full, full summer semester. The deadline for my manuscript is looming in early fall. Everything is converging in a miraculous, glorious mess. There isn't enough time. I'm exploding with ideas. The Kickstarter rewards are still waiting for finishing touches that require more than a handful of free moments to complete.

Bean graduated from kindergarten last Friday afternoon with scratched knees, hair in his eyes, and big beautiful grins. Sprout is potty training and asking "why?" and exploring just how much dramatic effect a super cute pouty face can have on us. Our washing machine broke (I overloaded it.) I never manage to put all the laundry away: it sits on the back of the couch, or in laundry baskets and the boys have grown used to rummaging through them for fresh underwear or unmatched socks.

We're all doing the best we can: full velocity, full time. It's an epic, glorious, silly, catastrophic choreography every single day. Some days we barely make it out of the house. Yesterday a tractor trailer flipped on the our road just before where I needed to turn: it set me back by an hour; made me late to a meeting; and yet those long moments waiting in traffic with windows down were moments of gratitude and grace.

Morning comes early now: 4:30 a.m. and the birds are calling. A salt and pepper chicken has gotten broody. We're letting her sit on a nest full of eggs. Beside the coop another poplar fell last week. This spring has been all about thunderstorms and floods and windstorms that keep tearing things up. Our driveway is a mess of ruts. The garden is just barely dug. Dandelions are going to seed everywhere. Dishes wait in the sink.

Before night falls we walk out together to the chicken coop, T and I. Twilight hums with crickets, frogs, fireflies. The sky is already gathering stars. We wrap our arms around each other's waists: this is the first time, close, skin to skin all day. We kiss, we close the coop, we walk back, stumbling over the army of muddy boots, flip flops, sneakers tossed off at the tile by the front door. Later, as I sit at the kitchen table with the windows open, I hear our neighbor banging on a metal garbage can lid: bears, most likely. Last night, it was a luna moth that came, with enormous pale green wings, beating at the screens.

So this is life, now, this month. These are are my moments.

What are yours?

certain things keep on in their own fashion without us

I don’t know how to reclaim any kind of balance now and so this is what I do instead: I list the day, one thing after the next.

The white herons, a pair, that fly overhead as I drive on a flood closed road, water licking at the front door of a white house the whole first floor a marshland spilling across rugs, abandoned furniture, things left as the water continued to rise.

The lake is engorged, spilling across the causeway washing over the sand bags that are stacked like prayers heavy and hopeful in the hands of men.

After the herons a V of geese confuses me, flying northward several dozen in formation, their long necks like compass needles while elsewhere geese have goslings now; grey and yellow like the tornado threatening clouds that came and went, lightening splitting the sky like an over-ripe fruit, and thunder that made the picture frames clatter.

I’m always on the lookout for the way things will turn out next: the yellow dog, Butters, bounding to greet us; the cat who waits at the door bringing mice; the grasshoppers starting to saw away at their summer song in the fields where grass grows taller than ever, taller than a two year old child’s head, even though the corn still waits, and the garden waits unplanted save for last season’s volunteers: tomatoes always find a way back, and lettuces without explanation; certain things keep on in their own fashion without us.

These are things that happen

These are things that happen when I circle back into this present that is mine: sunburn on unaccustomed cheeks; blisters on my palms after an afternoon in leather gloves raking lawn debris; the unexpected delirium of forsythia and daffodils; bumblebees; wet marks on my knees from kneeling to look among the clover.

I cannot help myself: I slip into a neighbor’s yard and pluck a handful of daffodils, carrying them in a closed warm fist up the drive, pulling the boys behind me in the red wagon with the other. I grin secretively the whole way. I smile rinsing dishes; but am near to tears when the red-winged blackbird swoops low across my path. These ordinary things stun me. The way my life folds back around me, and this is where I am: in the thick of spring, at the end of a dirt road, with a restless cat, two boys, and a writing deadline waiting for the evening.

All day the sky was blue; all day it was just me and them; two changeable constants. Mood swings, bare bellied tickles, cookies and milk, sand at the backdoor. Five loads of laundry; sun dappled sheets; jumping on the bed; exercise.

It will be this way all week: just me and them the sky. T is out of town on a business trip so it will be us, making the best of allergies and hilarity; less urgency, but no less full throttle: “look mommy, look! Did you see, did you see?” So this is what I’ve been missing.

what it's like :: midweek

The day slips by outside.

Dark to light, then light to dark: a filigree of shadows on the windowsill, a spattering of rain on the outside of the glass.

I spend the day mostly in doors, watching the world from windows, focused, determined, tired, anxious, triumphant, moody, and delighted at once. I look toward the near future of concurrent deadlines and feel the way my heart pummels my ribcage for more breathing room, more time spent doing little, but that’s not what this time is about. This time is about passion and pushing through: when the hours are fractions, the minutes precious, and the outcomes hopeful.

I leave in the morning carrying fried egg sandwiches; drink too much coffee; and spend the first half of every week mostly sitting, creating things in abstractions: in pixels, in code, in words.

I drive down the muddy road, navigating ruts so deep they suck the wheels in and cause the underbelly of the car to scrape. I drive past feels burgeoning with runoff, past new grass starting to be green, past the trees fluffy with buds, past the coltsfoot like a thousand small suns blooming at the side of the road.

Some days I drive in silence. It’s the most I can do to true to some kind of center: following one thought after the next, listening to my heartbeat, finding my breath.

Other days I’m too exhausted, and I need a different kind of force to make my inner compass stay the course. I put on bon iver, white hinterland, adele, and turn the volume up until I can feel it in my pulse.

I go, say yes, do, create, ask, answer, appease, promise, push, pull, question, stumble, fall down, get up, try again. And then again, all over, and again.

When I come home some days under a twilight sky, and I find the full throttle mess of the house. I can’t win with the laundry. I never could, but now I don’t even try. A clean pile is better than a dirty pile; forget about matching socks. I come home to the prospect of dinner: sometimes made by T, sometimes an abstraction I must dream up from the bare shelves of the fridge when neither of us have had the time to stop and replenish.

It’s an underfoot, all at once, messy, strenuous, silly, glorious time: dinner, with my three guys. Teaching the boys ones manners at the table is an endless, often hilarious uphill battle. They are primal: they want to eat with their hands. They want to make us laugh. Blowing bubbles into milk never gets old. Stuffing cookies into their mouths whole seems to be the only way to eat them. Then teeth brushing straight way; snuggles; books; pajamas; bed.

I sing to them in the dark, and it’s often then that I get a glimpse of the long view: how this time is so perfect and fleeting, how they’ll be teenagers in an instant, and I’ll be so much farther on my path. And I grin, looking forward to it, and grin being in it, even when there isn’t enough time to pause, or hesitate, or linger for but a moment. Then I turn the lights out, kiss their soft cheeks, and return to the brightly lit corner of my studio where projects are waiting to unfold.

closer now

Hunger brings them close, but I don't see them at first; I'm at the sink filling a water jug for the chickens, watching the water spill across the dirty dishes left for later and then I glance.

The sunlight moves, and in the shadows they're there. Six deer, maybe more. They move like quiet trees, they move like shadows. Their fur is dappled with the sun. They cannot know that inside, on the windowsill the branches I've brought in are blooming now. Forsythia, yellow and urgent with what's to come.

Outside I walk across hard packed snow, the mud turned back to ice; my breath rising in clouds, my nostrils flaring in the cold. 14 degrees and it's nearing the end of March.

This is when I forget everything (dandelions, the smell of lilacs, the song of the peepers): just before it happens

+++

Some inspiration I've been finding:

This gorgeous painting (and all of her paintings really).

My Heart Wanders. Don't you just want to pick this book up and thumb through it?

This poem. You simply must go read it.

And these words. So true.

Where are you finding inspiration? What are your days like now in early spring?

What I see when I blink

Last night I came home late from working on a collaborative project and slid beneath the covers to find the embering heat of my guy, dreaming. Now the morning is here again, too soon, jostling, clattering, and filled to the brim. I blink, and when close my eyes I see my life in snapshots, like sunspots, the minutes compressed to just these instances, mid air, mid action. My big boy with a voice that sounds like the bark of a dog who woke up at 3 am feeling like he couldn’t breath.

Blink.

The little one in a pointy Hannah Anderson hoodie and his brother’s Sambas running around with jam on his face and a paci in his mouth.

Blink.

Squirrels that have figured out how to leap from a stack of broken wooden lawn chairs through the gravity of air to the bird feeder, where they twirl with fat furry bellies exposed, eating seed with their dainty little paws.

Blink.

The startled chickadees who fly down to find these furry beasts their tails whirring, their cheeks chock full.

Blink.

Out the window the icicles taller than me; the sky bluer than the ocean; the clouds gathering over the mountain tops like the breath of dragons; the floor that has not been vacuumed in days.

Blink.

Everywhere I turn there are things: to be done, held, watched, waited for, unraveled, sorted, replied to, invented. This is life, mid motion, captured.

Blink.

More glimpses of winter moments captured here.

Right This Instant

Reason #921 why we haven't even considered buying a new couch yet.

Flight + Fruition

It was fascinating to start the new year in the sky. To watch the curve of the earth appear below, as the plane lifted off, at once heavy and weightless as it cut the clouds and traveled upward improbably into the wide expanse of atmosphere above the earth.

It’s a wonder to feel the way anything is possible this very instant, always and again.

Right now.

Today.

In this new year.

I left before dawn, after the requisite security line removal of belt and shoes, jackets, laptop and toiletries laid bare for the world to see, and then no coffee because the kiosk was closed, I was off. The sky was ink, the runway lit by lamplight, the cabin dark.

I held my breath: waiting for the feeling of air catching under the wings. I used to love airports. They meant adventure and freedom: Italy, Germany, New York, Puerto Rico. I loved the bustle, and energy I felt at airports, the way everyone was coming and going, the expectation and possibility that was almost palpable in the air. But now the world of airports is defined by orange alerts and leaving. Leaving my two sweet boys and T, who woke with me and carried my bags to the door and kissed me softly on the lips before I left for a week to visit my sister and her new sweet little baby boy.

In the air the earth grows small and spectacular at once. The land stretches out in an intricate pattern of rivers and mountain ranges overlayed with the persistent geometry of human life: grids of roads and fields and buildings that look, before dawn like twinkling circuit boards; light bordered by dark, by deserts, by lakes, by the black of pine forests and mountain ranges, white-capped volcanoes rising up above the clouds.

Three flights later I was in Oregon, circling then landing next to a field of grazing sheep. Live oaks, and mossy sycamores; hills steep and rolling under wide West Coast skies. I walk out into the bright afternoon sun disoriented by the time change, and hug my sister who looks beautiful and tired and happy all at once.

It stuns me to realize how I’ve already forgotten how newborn time is alternate to the reality of the rest of the world. How time is defined by the moments of feeding, and the moments of sleep in between. How life exists entirely within the circumference of doing nothing but holding the baby, and doing small things: running the dishwasher, or righting coats on the rack; the world soft and quiet and wrapped in the cocoon of a now that the rest of us forget, caught up in the plummet and pull of a faster pace.

I’ve already forgotten the way this is everything. Small sighs, milk down your shirt, toasted cheese, and the gift that is five consecutive hours of sleep. It’s a time out of time: the moments of falling in love and being split open. It is the beginning of everything.

I sit with my nephew in the crook of my knee and write; body memory returning, time traveling backwards to that newborn time with Sprout, new and warm and dreaming.

I try to explain how this is now and then it’s over, forever.

+++

Last year my word was action.

And it was fulfilled again and again with steps taken and decisions made towards a life more fulfilling, sustainable, and full.

It was an incredible year: T quit his job and found new work that he loves; I went back to school and launched A Field Guide To Now (still holding my breath on this....More (good) news and rewards—finally—to be sent out in February!) and my boys learned to play together: moving through the house in a tornado of action, transforming couch cushions into forts and blocks into castles.

This year my word is fruition.

Fruition (n.) 1) attainment of anything desired; realization; accomplishment: 2) enjoyment, as of something attained or realized. 3) the state of bearing fruit.

Yes.

+++

I loved reading your comments in your last post; loved to feel the force of your intention being put out into the world. I'm so looking forward to what this year brings. To the adventures, the discoveries, the things that will come to fruition.

here in this life

It’s snowing hard from a pale sky, the kind of snow that makes me grin and want to cry at once: it’s so beautiful, white on white on white.

And I’m back in my life again, after a hiatus of days, weeks, the intensity of a semester behind me and in a few days, Christmas. Family, and plans to make croissants from scratch, and bleary eyes on Saturday morning at 5:30AM when the boys will inevitably wake, eager and wide-eyed with wonder.

The past two nights we’ve watched old movies: Miracle on 34th Street and It’s A Wonderful Life. I’ve never seen either one, and oh, how I love them both. Nostalgia is a funny thing, isn’t it? It’s something inherently human, isn’t it? To want and long for what’s gone by. It’s maybe one of the things that defines our humanity. Our awareness of the past tense, just like our awareness of the future plant’s us squarely in the very fleeting, very mortal moment of the present.

In this moment I’m wearing torn, paint spattered jeans instead of a carefully fitted dress. I’m here in this present of my life, and out the window blue jays and cardinals gather in the lilac hoping for seed. Streaks of blue and read against the landscape of brown and white and gray. By the end of winter their colored plumage is something I cling to in a monochrome world; everything drawn out: the time it takes to leave or arrive an almost endless choreography of outerwear.

Today it’s the solstice. The wondrous darkest day, half a year away from when the light lasted until nearly ten and the fields hummed with crickets and danced with fireflies at dusk.

Tonight we’ll light candles at dinner and sing. We’ll hang the prisms that the Advent Fairy brought in the windows to make the light dance on future sunny days, and maybe we’ll go sledding, all of us on the toboggan hurtling down the driveway in a flash of laughter.

Unwind

Oh hello!

What have you been up to?

The past few days have been my very own Alice in Wonderland gone awry: coding and building a website from the ground up--using all new (to me) tools has made my brain ache and my body long for movement. It's still in it's demo phase, but I'm excited to share it. Go take a peak around.

Outside it keeps snowing: gorgeous dreamy flakes and our Christmas will be white, white, white. In the tree out the dining room window a red cardinal waits, wondering when I'll put the bird feeders out. Things have been on hold around here as the semester came to a symphonic end. Everything colliding with many unexpected technical failures: the learning curve is steep when you're a novice.

Of course, I love every minute: I'm like that. But honestly, this last week was really hard. I really started to miss all the things that define the day to day of my life: wrestling on the floor with my boys; exercise; painting my toenails; making out; going out with friends; decorating for the holidays. Everything was temporarily abandoned as I hunched at the table and produced create a website; two essays; and three art projects.

Now: I'm a free girl for a few days--but I have some serious (and super exciting!) book business that must be attended to, and how! Cannot wait to share--but can't yet. Just grin with me & keep your fingers crossed. And thank you, thank you for your patience with getting rewards and all the rest. I haven't forgotten. Oh no, not at all. It's just: I never do things half way. It's going to be awesome. Oh yes.

Today we are heading out to cut a tree and tonight our neighbors have a Christmas nativity that they've been putting on with the neighborhood kids in their barn for twenty years. It's magical: warmth and caroling and kids with halos and angel wings and donkeys and lamas and lambs all acting out the story of the birth of Jesus. I love it. It's one of my favorite things about the holiday actually: this simple, old fashioned celebration that speaks to the heart and the truth of this holiday. Peace and goodwill and community. And also cookies and sledding after.

Speaking of... we're having some friends for some cookie decorating fun tomorrow and I'm wondering: what is your absolute favorite holiday cookie recipe?

where I've been:

The craziest storm ever. Extremely localized. 75mph winds. Trees snapped everywhere. Needless to say, no power. We're at the inlaws, waiting it out. Likely no power until Sunday. Just in time for three major deadlines. Oh yes.

Tell me something to cheer me up! What tradition are you most looking forward to for the holidays?

Thankful*

I took these pictures yesterday, out my front door. Like heaven, the way the storm came through spreading the arc of a double rainbow and then left the world golden and blue and vermillion with the setting sun. I'm so thankful for this place that I call home--and also this place here, where I can connect with all of you ( hit m 1,000 post here just last week!) Also today I got lovely, really super awesome news about my book--that is still not in stone enough to share details on, but enough to grin about big time and to be thankful for.

I've spent the last three days working intensely on digital projects: Flash, After Effects, video. By this afternoon I felt a little like a wild animal, and when the golden afternoon light filled up the sky again I pulled on running close and fled the house for a long run while the shadows grew long and blue across the road.

Tomorrow I'm taking a digital break to be with family... I'm craving that: a reason not to check in and be in front of the screen for a day.

Happy Thanksgiving! xo, C

big messes + small deceptions

Today was all about getting things ready for winter: tossing our fat ghoulish pumpkins into the compost and raking up piles of wet leaves, mostly to be jumped in by Sprout and Bean. It was cold and our cheeks were pink after an hour spent outdoors, mowing the lawn a final time for the season and gathering up the stray bits of bark left from the wood that we stacked. Inside, after pulling off muddy boots and wet gloves we made hot chocolate: unsweetened cocoa and sugar melted with a bit of boiling water, then stirred into frothed milk with a touch of cream. Little boy moustaches, happy grins, and only one spill. “Uh oh, uh oh” Sprout exclaimed as his drink pooled into his lap.

By the end of every day my boys are covered head to tow with the evidence of their days: mud and chocolate, paint on their shirts, pasta sauce on their elbows. Are all little boys messy, or are mine particularly so? Reckless in glee and sensory delight. They’ve both grown this month; a late autumn growth spurt. One of my favorite things about our house is the corner wall between the kitchen and the den where we mark their growth with stubby pencils or whatever pen we can find.

“Let’s see if I grew!” Bean will exclaim gleefully after eating a particularly enormous serving of pasta or a heaping plate of blueberry pancakes.

Once we were a little overzealous and recorded his growth: a remarkable half inch in a month. The following month we discovered our error: he’d shrunk. Or so it seemed. The line made from his head to the square edge of the book was below the mark we’d already made.

“Did I really shrink?” Bean asked wide eyed.

“You did,” I lied without blinking. “That’s what happens when you don’t eat your veggies.”

Oh yes I did.