Glimpses from around here lately:

I wanted to share a few glimpses from around here lately. Life is finally starting to have the tempo of summer: friends for breakfast on the weekends; running; time with the boys. I relish the weekends more than ever now. They are my time to defragment, to settle, to find the pulse of now among the blooming peonies, or sitting on the couch with Bean as he sounds out words, or watching the goldfinches and rose breasted grossbeaks at the feeder.

This week I'll be in the NYC for a few days at Blog World (for work) and the Book Expo (I finally get to meet my wonderful editor, Mary Norris in person!) That should be an adventure. I'll be tweeting quite a bit, if you're into such things and would like to follow along. And I'm sure I'll be posting photos left and right to Instagram (@christinarosalie). I'm always so inspired by the pace and colors and rhythms of the city after spending time meandering down dirt roads that are lush with green meadows on either side, and the frothy constellations of blackberry bramble blossoms, sweet now, and blooming more than I remember from any other year.

What are you up to this week?

A parenthesis in time:

All week I've been wanting to tell you About how I slipped away last Friday night with T and my beautiful friend Hilary. We went North on a road marked with farm houses and fields, the land as flat as a tucked sheet. We saw snow geese, hundreds of them, and remarked about the solitary trees that stand like sentinels in the middle of wide fields; their branches some small haven for wild birds and wild winds.

We crossed the river at the blue hour Across the wide metal bridge into a city Where the syllables are soft, and the consonants luxurious.

And found our way to our hotel, among cobble-stoned streets Where the cathedral towers were making love to the fat crescent moon.

We had dinner at Holder: mussels with cream and white wine, duck confit with arugula and garlic, white wine and red, chocolate ganache, and espresso.

And then found our way to the Corona theater, which is truly lovely and just the right size place to hear Gotye play, up close and intimate his music still new and experimental and sweet in the way that it wasn't utterly rehearsed. Kimbra played first. So much soul in that small slender body in a crumpled champaign dress; and then the drums of Gotye, making our hearts thrum.

It was good, so good to get away. To slip out of my mind for a night; to be with two people who I adore; the easiest of combinations.

The next morning we had breakfast at Olive & Gormando which quite possibly has the most lovely pastries in Montreal... And then we wandered around taking photographs.

I can't help myself: I must share them all. They make me happy. Even now, as I'm in the thick of one of the hardest weeks; with too little time. Far too little, to finish all the work that I must for my thesis to be done in two short weeks.

Here's to parenthesis! To moments stolen. And to trying to let the be enough.

xo!

A call to action + a call to wonder: A Guest Post

Hello friends!I have a guest post to share with you by a true kindred spirit who believes, as I do, that instead of ending the life of adventure you may have once had, children can actually enhance it. Anyone who has ever dreamed of traveling Europe...but then had kids and gave up the dream (at least temporarily) needs the book that Bethany Basset is writing. And she needs you're help over on Kickstarter, where the deadline is closing in and some big-time dreams are on the line. Go back her project! Re-tweet this story. Share the love. Spread the word. I'm saying this selfishly. I want her book, so that in another two years from now T, Bean, Sprout and I can descend on Europe like I've always dreamed we will... and not only survive, but have an amazing time.

Following is a guest post written by Bethany. Enjoy!

* * *

Room For Wonder

We are in Venice, a land of fairy-tale opulence—gondoliers and palaces, masks and museums—but we stop for the honeysuckle. My barefoot Texas days come flooding back in muscle memory as I show the girls how to ease out the stamen and catch the tiniest drop of nectar on our tongues. It tastes like July. Natalie and Sophie are enthralled; drinking from flowers is a purer magic to them than St. Mark’s Basilica would be, so we linger off the tourist path to pick summer, and this is it: motherhood, nostalgia, travel, joy, LIFE.

My mind delights in the details, so if I were to organize our yearly road trips around Europe, I would map out an agenda for every minute. I’d research the top recommended things to do in every city and the best routes to get there, and we would be such efficient travelers that we’d never even see the honeysuckle. We would never tumble out of the car beside an unnamed waterfall in Wales or splash the heat away at a neighborhood creek in Munich or collect wildflowers on a sleepy mountainside in Austria. We would end up with pristine vacation photos and impressive souvenirs, but we would miss out on so many of the spontaneous moments we now treasure as family memories.

And so I step back to make room for wonder. Perfectionism has always chipped away at my capacity for marvel, but my girls have more than enough to go around. They don’t need a brochure to show them how to appreciate a new city, the curve of an unfamiliar leaf, the way each mile of landscape shapes the sky. They simply greet life as it comes with their full array of senses and a penchant for adventure, and I—the perfectionist, the planner, the mother-student—gain far more than souvenirs in return.

I am currently raising funds through Kickstarter to spend the next five months writing a book based on our unconventional trips to help families reconcile the dream of European travel with the challenges of parenthood. Life is too short, too deep with possibility to keep deferring adventure until the children are older or the 401K is filled, and I’m thrilled to work on a project I believe so sincerely in. However, I can’t do it on my own, and with only eight days left to raise the funds, I’m asking for your help.

First, would you back my project? Even if you don’t have young children or have never dreamed of Paris, would you help make it possible for me to write a book I believe in with all my heart? A simple $10 pledge will help in meeting the goal while pre-ordering a copy of the book, so I’m asking—earnestly and gratefully—for you to give what you can.

Second, would you spread the word? Every new person who hears about this book increases the likelihood that my project will succeed, so would you share this post or the link to my Kickstarter site with everyone in your social networking circles?

Whether traveling or writing a book, the most convenient option is to do it alone. However, the richness of shared adventure trumps convenience. Always. Thank you in advance and from the bottom of my hopeful heart for being a part of this one with us.

Big Wonder

We are at sitting at the butcher block kitchen island. There are jammy knives and the remnants of scrambled eggs on cream colored plates in between Ball jars of markers, snippets of paper, and an Elmer’s glue bottle without a cap. We are making things, or more accurately, he is. Specifically, he is making a chart for what he needs remember before heading out the door in the morning to first grade. (Did you catch that? FIRST. GRADE. !)

Now he looks up from coloring, and sees that I’m looking at a slideshow of photos from Hurricane Irene. The damage in the southern part of my gorgeous state is devastating. Roads entirely washed out, dairy barns under water, the corn stained with mud up to its silken ears, businesses destroyed. His eyes grow wide as he leans on his elbows across the table, looking at a picture of a road that looks like it is made of fondant icing instead of asphalt, rippling and soft where it isn’t under water.

“I wonder why God decided to do this,” he says, with the same thoughtful tone he uses to ask about why or how something is wired, or engineered; as though there has to be a perfectly rational reason behind this too. And then he says,

“I thought when God made the first rainbow it was a promise that he wouldn’t wash the whole world away again.”

I stop clicking through the images and look up, straight into his beautiful big-eyed face. His eyes are green and brown like the late summer fields. He has glue on his fingers. He wants answers.

Bible stories aren’t something that come up around our house much. While I am deeply spiritual, I find religion hard to share with my sons: the boxes of formal religion feel too narrow, the definitions too finite for the inexplicable, glorious forces that make this green earth, this miraculous universe, these complex human beings that we are with tendons and marrow and breath and the capacity to torture and make love, to hoard and meditate, to pray and kill and consume. How can there possibly be a single story that is big enough for this?

Still, in this moment I want to say something to him that makes sense. That reassures. That explains. That offers something tangible to this sweet boy of mine who has somehow heard the beautiful story of Noah’s arc and held it in his heart, lightly, gently, as truth. And maybe it is. Who am I to say? I have only been here on this earth a very brief while. Thirty three years doesn’t feel long enough to make any kind of claims.

I shrug slightly, and say, “I wonder too.”

I can’t explain global warming, or how we’re all directly a part of this picture. I don’t tell him how there are worse things than farms with roads torn out by floods. Lybia, Sudan, Somalia. What I know is this: That to love this greenly leafing earth matters. And this is how I know how to pray, outdoors, touching the ground, running barefoot down our newly graded road, which is what we do, eating wild grapes that stain our fingers, and gathering pinecones, each with its miraculous Fibonacci spiral. Yes. This is wonder. This is the only way I know to make any sense at all of anything: to be right here, touching the ground, finding quarts pebbles that sparkle like stars.

This today:

Today:

Honey comb + lemons from Los Angeles in the mail (thank you sister!)

This food blog. Oh my. So inspired by the photos + eating seasonally.

Summer rain and crickets.

Finding the perfect place folded into T's arms and dreaming for a half our putting the boys to bed.

Planning my thesis.

Prepping postcards for illustrations for my book.

The ache in my heart for London and for the way inequality and unrest is becoming, more than ever, the story of our collective culture.

Feeling like the work I am doing for my book: about bringing intention and bravery and creativity to the ordinary moments of our small lives is becoming more and more important.

Your turn:

elsewhere + back

Hi friends. Missing this space, but feeling too overwhelmed to be able to share more than a few images from my week with a conference in the middle of it in NYC and two huge deadlines met.

I am exhaling into the memory of a different skyline: everything manmade, geometric, gorgeous, crowded, teaming with people and their endless urgent need to produce and create.

And I am breathing into the moments today of kissing my boys and making Mexican tortilla soup and eating apple chips and holding hands, and trying to be patient with my need for rest and with all the things that are uncertain and that must be accomplished.

Also: I'm feeling a little shaky of late in my niche here. I'm so different now than when I began blogging six years ago as a new mamam. I'm wondering how to make this space change to fit the work and life I'm growing towards, and I'm wondering: Why do you visit? What do you like about this little space? What do you want me to share more of, or differently?

Community + belonging: online vs.offline

// Good morning. Here are a few glimpses of my favorite (new) place to get coffee. Bikes + bright, bold lattes and big reclaimed wood tables. A place to collide, connect + get work done... which has me wondering about a topic we've been discussing in class lately: what is the value of online communities vs. real world communities. How are they different? How are they the same?

Not social networks... but real communities that have similar functions and values to real world communities: places where like-minded people connect, share, participate, and exchange value.

I'm so looking forward to your thoughts.

What do online communities look like in your view? Where do you go online to share? To participate? To collaborate? Do you have a voice there? What about influence? Are you recognized? So curious to read what you think.

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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.

The Unnamed

I keep thinking of the people, unnamed who wake up in the morning, leave their houses and return to the Fukushima plant wearing frail protective gear and thicker prayers to protect their bodies soaking up more radiation than is reasonable, sustainable, possible.

Do they say goodbye in the morning? Do they kiss the kids and women and men that they love? Do they wail uncontrollably in their cars driving towards the reactor, or are they convinced, confident and cool?

What does it feel like to be a civilian volunteered up for this enormous task: insurmountable and devastating both now, and in years from now when their white blood cells drop or tumors spread, when their hands quaver and their minds grow dim? What does it feel like to go unnamed so long, to return day after day, failing, hopeful, frantic, resigned?

I keep picturing them standing in their kitchens in the morning eating bowls of steaming broth, but their kitchens have likely been destroyed. Their homes, neighborhoods, all of it. So where do they go at night? And where do the others go, also unnamed, the thousands without shelter, food, heat?

My hands flurry across the keyboard until they end with the sentence above and then they stall. I start, stop, delete, start again.

I can't think of words that fill the gap in my chest; the ache; the way my heart is filled with everything: hope, promise, prayer, sadness, wonder.

Outside snowflakes are falling from a clear sunny sky, like crystals, weightless and glittering. The sun has risen, and the sap is rising, and the earth, tilted a little farther on its axis, is turning here towards spring.

What we can do.

A kind of prayer

Today I want to remember the way the orchids turn to the light; how heat waves rise from woodstove; and how cat’s purring vibrates up through my thin ankle bones where she has curled against my foot, the rhythmic whirring of her content traveling up my shin bones into the soft muscle of my calf.

Today I want to remember how tiredness makes me fragile; how I feel like something insignificant and slight, like paper tossed to the wind, and how I want to fold hope around my heart like a paper shield; a fleet of fluttering cranes.

What can anyone say now? What can we do except offer up what we have, and feel the way the urgency and tragedy as it fills up our own small lives with poignancy and grace and devastation?

Here, the world is softening; the swelling buds make the stark silhouette of twigs less distinct and edgy, and the hillsides are dappled with snowmelt and mud, and I’ll take hope wherever I can find it.

+++

Another way to pray.

Things stay the same even while they change.

At the window:: a morning poem

I am at the window eating oranges sent from a friend of my mother-in-law’s from Florida: the only place now in our country without some fringe of snow,

and they are sweet fire.

I suck the juice off my fingers, sticky and grateful as fat white snowflakes fall again toward the earth beyond the glass.

I am still not tired of watching.

Still not tired of the way the world is now, like a line drawing in graphite, all gesture, all movement, all white on gray on white;

and so I watch until I feel things settle within like snow, softly

I watch, till the blue jays arrive in the lilac bush for the oily seeds I put out at the feeder and my soul drinks up their color: blue on gray on blue,

and the sweet round fire of the orange,

and I am sated.

Everything is invented

{Maria Kalman}
I love this. Oh yes. How true it is. The opportunities we make for ourselves; the parameters we define, achieve, exceed.

How many times do you find yourself circling in the small circumference of your day: your world defined by the limitations of work, by small children with sticky hands; by whatever it is that you see as the perimeter for what is possible?

“There are so many things that you’re told you can’t do. So many things that can stop you. You can either be like the elephant that is hobbled it’s whole life—so it doesn’t know that it is free once the hobble is removed, or you can do things your own way. You cannot live a life of fear.”

The woman telling me this is the flight attendant on the last of my three flights. She is beautiful, in her late forties, with milky chocolate skin and sparkling eyes. She wears a flower diamond ring on her finger, and her eyes light up when I ask her if she’s ever been sky diving.

“No,” she says, “but it’s something I’m thinking of doing. I’m afraid of heights.”

Then she tells me, “I went parasailing in Mexico and it was incredible. The air was fresh, and the world was so quiet up there above the water. It was like I was an angel.”

I can’t help grinning. I love that every single assumption I’ve had about this woman has just been shattered into a million pieces.

“Hang gliding has always been on my bucket list,” I tell her.

And she looks at me then, head tilted to the side, and in that moment we both get it. We’re two of a kind. The kind of women with bucket lists; with wanderlust; with adventure bursting from the drawers of our hearts.

“What is the number one thing on your bucket list?” she asks.

“To publish the book I’m working on,” I tell her and her eyes light up.

“I’ve always wanted to write,” she says.

So I say, “Tell me. Tell me about your life.”

And so she tells me how until two months ago she worked as a successful registered nurse. How she climbed the rungs of success in her field; spent her career traveling: starting a hospital in Nicaragua, bringing medical supplies to villages in Africa; exploring the streets of Rome.

“Resilience is about being able to change,” she tells me, when I ask her how she got from that to this; to being a flight attendant.

“Change is what makes people thrive. It’s when they get stuck in the same patterns for too long, when they’re afraid to change that they become unhealthy.” And because she wanted more wanted more balance in her life, she quite nursing and became a flight attendant.

I want to ask more, but the plane is already in its descent. We exchange email addresses, and she smiles as she presses hers into my hand.

When the plane hits the runway with a thud, I'm still smiling.

Yes for resilience. Yes for adventure. Yes for living your life without fear.

+++

What do you believe is possible? What would you do if limitations didn't exist?

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.

Early sundown

It's always so bittersweet, setting the clocks back and waking to light slanting across the frosty grass; the sky pale with a lemon colored dawn. Then, when the day seems just to be really getting good, the shadows are already long and night arrives before I'm ready: starry skies, the temperature falling, pitch black by dinner.

I like the way time is malleable on this day though. The way we all collectively agree to say that on this day we have another hour. (It makes me wonder: what else could we collectively agree on? )

It's this time of year that I always end up wanting to do some redecorating; change my blog theme; organize my bookmarks; put candles on the windowsills; pull out my warm boots and pretty scarves.

I'm craving new sources of creativity. What is inspiring you lately? ...your favorite piece of clothing for late autumn? ...new music have you found recently? ...blogs are you crushing on? ...books you are reading?

Circles and lines

A trip to Boston and back in two days. Too many hours in the car; rain pelting, pummeling; grey, on grey, on grey. Mist hanging low among the pines and oaks, their leaves brown now, the last deciduous trees to loose their leaves. The boys in the back seat eating fig newtons and building things with legos. Four hours, then traffic, then dinner with dear friends and bedtime for little guys in unfamiliar sleeping arrangements, and wine and in the morning, the penguins, as promised.

Now, post workout, headphones on, I sink into the quiet circle of my thoughts. It's a slow descent. Like a plan landing. I circle around myself, procrastinating, getting the runway in order. Some nights the runway is obscured with mist; with rain; with memories; with gulls circling; other's it's a quick hard landing, and then I'm in it, fingers flying, QWERTY, and blink, an hour is gone.

Question

What web host service do you recommend/love? Please share. Need feedback on this asap. Happy Thursday! xo!

an unexpected rescue

It wasn’t the way I expected it might happen; in fact, I didn’t expect it at all. In the back seat the boys were eating peanuts and chocolate graham crackers, on the way home from picking Bean up at kindergarten. I was thinking absently about school projects; about this book that we are reading this week, and about how it’s maybe true: you do know. Yes you.

And then we were on the dirt road, going around the corner and I could feel the way the mud grabbed at the tires of the car. I wasn’t driving fast. Slow enough that I could slam on the breaks and the tousled maple-syrup scented head of Sprout barely tugged forward at all.

“What, mommy, what?” Bean asked.

But I was already out of the car. Like that: like instinct, my body moving before I could think about what to do next.

In front of me: a car entirely flipped over, roof to the ground, in a ditch, on a rock, windows shattered. Smoke threaded its way from the broken windows.

There was a girl inside, alive, and I felt my heart want to explode with relief. Alive, and secondly, her neck wasn’t broken. She was dangling from her seatbelt, her feet were stuck, her face smooshed into the roof of the car. She had already called 911 (I am guessing here—but I am pretty sure she was on her cell or texting when she crashed—because she wouldn’t have been able to locate her cell phone if it hadn’t have been in her hand—everything was strewn everywhere among the broken glass.)

She was shaking, and I could feel my own body quiver with adrenaline and empathy. I asked her if she could move. I asked her if her head hurt. And then I carefully, carefully pulled her legs free. And she was totally unable to help me—she just shook and sobbed. She hung upside down until I reached around her and unclipped her seatbelt and then she collapsed into my arms.

She was 17. Gorgeous pale skin, freckles, smudged mascara. I held her until she could stand.

And all she could say over and over again was: “My parents are going to kill me.”

No, sweetie. They will be happy you are alive. I wrapped her in an animal print blanket we keep in our trunk for impromptu picnics and I brought her to my car. Other people stopped. One man had stopped while I helped her to get out. He was too scared to help. Afterwards he said, "You should have a medal." But it’s really not like that at all: I am a mother. There wasn’t anything else I could do.

So I kept her warm and kept her from hyperventilating, which she was slipping towards several times as she panicked about her parents. She called her work first. Then her mom, lastly her dad, who came, tall, thin, without a smile and stood beside the state trooper answering questions before he finally turned to me and said, “thank you for stopping.”

He didn’t hug his daughter. He didn’t reach for her or stroke her hair or tell her he was happy she was alive.

How does this happen? How?

My boys meanwhile were so good. They sat in their carseats for 45 minutes—because the first responders and then the EMTs treated her in my car before finally taking her to the hospital. Bean watched everything quietly, unafraid, wide eyed. He was in heaven watching the firemen come and clear the way for the car to be towed. (The smoke was from the airbag, thankfully.)

One fireman, seeing Bean, went and got both boys Junior Firefighter medals from their truck. Bean was over the moon proud.

I drove home slowly, grateful, grateful. And it was a peaceful, mellow afternoon of story books and me doing design work and Bean drawing next to me at my big long desk (while Sprout slept.) Oh how I love them, my sweet, sweet boys.

Also: What is with texting while driving? Why do people—and particularly teenagers do it? Also: her seatbelt saved her life. I have no doubt about that at all. If you have teens or know some, tell them.

August 14:: Country Fair

Still on the August Break and posting every day over at flickr.

Yesterday we went to a country fair. Fun. Sun + sun, livestock, lemonade, maple cotton candy, ribs, tractor + truck pulls, pig races and rides. Sprout's first carousel ride = total glee. An awesome day, except: my gimpy ankle and the long drive home.

Today I feel nostalgic for summer, even though it's here still. I hate that it's ending. I'm not ready for the yellow leaves that are already on the ground; the cricket songs; the shooting stars. I want the live long light and languor of July a little longer. Although the peaches now are making me smile, and the promise of apples soon. Today the sky is pale, pale. The color of sun on cement; the color of white with shadow. The color of a day slipping by with wind in the trees. I want to nap. There are things I must do: two chapters, an InDesign project, always a to-do list. Two weeks more of summer and then who knows. Everything upended, likely. Everything different. I don't remember how to be in class. Don't know, yet, still, if I will be. So it goes.

How are the last weeks of your summer being spent?

A studio glimpse + a way cool anthology

Here are a couple snapshots from photo booth earlier when T. interrupted me unexpectedly. I had just finished this update. I often use photo booth for editing actually. I read to myself out loud, then play it back, while following along and making changes. It helps me focus on the text, especially if I've been working on a piece for a while. I also hear the little things that I slip in as I speak; the subtle nuance of an added word, a phrase, an emphasis. I like catching that ephemera. Especially for this book, where the pieces are almost prose poems, and images--both painted and imagined, mean as much as the words.

+++

Mostly, I wanted to share this with you tonight ~ three of my pieces will be published in Milk & Ink this winter. I am so honored to be among this group of incredible authors. Go take a peak at the Facebook page...there are some profound, delightful, heartbreaking and wonderful stories being shared over there. And the very best part? All the proceeds of the book will be going to the charity, Mama Hope supporting women and children in Africa. Awesome, right?

The way things go + some current crushes

Hi! I have so many things I want to share with you today. First, some crushes:

These luminous folder icons have completely revamped my desktop and seriously upped both my cool factor and organization.

These fabulous planers are also rocking my organizational world. I am so not an organized girl when it comes to creative projects. I see BIG PICTURE and details sometimes get sidelined. This in particular has really helped me to narrow my focus and get things done.

And I've been wanting to share this glorious camera bag that arrived in the mail a few weeks ago (I was the Shutter Sister's giveaway winner) and oh man... I can't even begin to tell you how lovely and awesome it is. It's big enough to fit my camera and everything else I schlep around, and pretty enough to make me look put together even when I'm not. (THANK YOU Maile!!)

These photos (swoon) and this blog.

Some news:

I was interviewed here and here this past week by two of the most amazing, inspiring women in the blogosphere.

Last night I put some new prints up in my little shop!

And at this moment: the weather is all over the map still. Rain, sun, wind, rain.

Everything is exuberantly green in the same way that kids color the grass in their pictures: GREEN EVERYWHERE. And while I love what green stands for (summertime picnics, gardening, bike rides, bonfires) I wish the apple blossoms could stay longer. In a single afternoon they exploded into full bloom with bees everywhere, each tree its own secret universe of pollen and petals, and then today, just a few days later, there are already as many petals on the grass as on the trees. So fleeting. So fleeting. Everything is this.

We hung out with the very first friend we made here last night. He was sitting on the porch across from our new apartment as we backed over the curb repeatedly with an enormous moving truck. I remember feeling utterly out of place among the scads of college kids with 7 month old Bean in tow and actual real furniture instead of futons, but M. walked over and said hello, and Bean thought he was the coolest person ever and we've been friends since. Now Bean is five and M. is moving to Austria for an unbelievably awesome job, and wow. Time. There it went.

There is no more of a tangible way to notice time's passing than to watch a child grow. This, and then this. SO FAST. I'm carrying on about this today because I get it this time. I get that these moments right now are the ones I'm going to look back on and say, oh, that was when it started. That's when we had no idea. (Sprout is still small-ish, but the next time I stop to think about it he'll likely be riding a bike. )

I've gotten the most wonderful emails from some of you about being at similar points of transition--and I so love them. I think it is incredibly helpful to tell each other these stories about how things begin. About the moments before beginning when all we're doing is imagining and waiting and things feel scary and at large (because they kind of are.)I want to hear more about these moments in your lives. What is beginning right now? What are you on the brink of?