the power's back!

Irene blew in Sunday morning, fierce and strong. We went to bed Saturday night (after we threw a hurricane party!) just waiting for her, the air humid and heavy and strangely warm. Sunday morning I awoke to the thunderous noise of a tree crashing down amidst rain and wind like you wouldn't believe and then the power was sadly gone. (Before I could wash my face! And brush my teeth! Darn.)

I stayed in pajamas far too long and played card games for hours as the storm raged on. We worried for our grandparents, who live on the coast of North Carolina. I never realized how LOUD the storm would be, the wind shaking the house and pelting rain against the windows. Photos couldn't really do it justice (I should have taken a video!) but I managed to get a couple.





This is what my parents' yard looked like later that afternoon when the storm was pretty much gone:



Two full days of no power was starting to wear on me. And I was just trying to start week two of Leonie's Creative Goddess e-course, too! My parents do have a generator (luckily!) but those really only go so far, and I couldn't take the long, hot shower I really wanted to. Finally, at 5:00 this morning, the power kicked back on and I was so excited I couldn't fall back asleep. Thank you, Connecticut Light and Power!

Doesn't losing power always make us feel so grateful for how easy things seem when there is power?

creating my lunch hours

My lunch breaks have become my very favorite part of the weekdays. One day I decided I no longer wanted to sit in empty classrooms wandering around blogs and Twitter on my phone for an hour while I mindlessly ate my lunch, and so I set out to find a new lunch spot. I've experimented with the library and with hiking trails, but nothing has compared to this spot: a tiny state forest just down the road, with a beautiful river running through it. I pull in and park my car in a tiny little clearing at the water's edge, then take my lunch, my journal, and my camera down to the river bank and settle in. After being in a cramped daycare classroom all morning long with eight one-year-olds, sitting and breathing and just being for an hour feels like heaven.

I wanted this space and time for myself, and I searched it out and found it.

We can always create time for ourselves, we can carve out little pockets in space to fill with exactly what we need.

bachelorette weekend.

A bachelorette weekend at my aunt's cabin in Vermont was just what we needed before Lauren's wedding. There was pizza on the grill and a "happy bachelorette" cake, lots of wedding-related movies, a morning waffle-fest (thank you, Laura!), floating in the lake and talking for hours, lunch at Amy's in Brattleboro, perusing vintage shops, painting our nails and trying out face masks, a surprise appearance by the groom (it was very welcomed), and a lazy Sunday morning that seemed to go on for hours.

It was pure love, and now we can't wait to go back.

Two more weeks, and this girl will be walking down the aisle! Love you, Lauren :)

getting to a good place.

I'm trying to remember what it feels like in these moments, like when the bright light of the moon spills through my open window and onto my bed, calling to me to rouse myself and take silly pictures with a long exposure and sleep with my head at the wrong end of the bed so as to be bathed in milky moonlight as I sleep.

I'm trying to remember, in the darkest of moments, what it is I create in order to find myself in places like that.

working with what you have.

I bought the most beautiful canvas-covered journal, open and empty and waiting for words.

Then I painted the cover with oil paints, didn't make the colors I wanted, smeared it around messily, ruined it--and a week later it still hadn't dried. I was ready to give up, scraping away at it and preparing it for the trash, when I realized--I could just cover it with fabric.

It's now my favorite journal, ever.

we only have to remember.

I spread myself out on a mossy spot beneath a towering oak and put in my ear buds. By the time the meditation was over, my hands were shaking and tears were in my eyes.


I only had to remember.

what i would like to remember about this day (well, yesterday)

The eye doctor turned to me and told me that my right eye was just a little blurry, that it really only depended on if I wanted the glasses or not. Or will you be disappointed if you don't get the glasses?

He wrote me the prescription. And I was so happy. I almost hugged him.

everything is already all right.

I suddenly found myself sitting by a bonfire beneath a summer's full moon, listening to Bob Marley on the guitar, shaking maracas in my favorite dress and making enormous efforts to introduce myself to strangers, and I wasn't able to stop smiling when I realized this was the life I was creating for myself.

She had changed the words to, "Every little thing is already all right."

sister date.

We decided on a sister date to the mall, complete with pizza and root beer from the food court and making fools of ourselves trying on silly hats.

I wish she could stay 11 forever.

and the light shall shine.

"Thou shalt decree a thing,

and it shall be established unto thee:

and the light shall shine upon thy ways."

~Job 22:28

the soul's duty.

"It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion."

~Rebecca West

what i would like to remember about this day.

This evening, I laid atop the grass and let the rain fall over me. It was cold, and wet, and refreshingly lovely.

summer skies.

These summer dusk-times, sun setting over the front yard and the street I grew up on,

 rain subsiding and driveway steaming and sunbeams appearing in gold and pink, 

these are what I want to keep imprinted on my heart forever.

seek within & find it.

"All you need is deep within you waiting to unfold and reveal itself. All you have to do is be still and take time to seek for what is within, and you will surely find it."

~Eileen Caddy

loving my phone.....

.....and the new sense of on-the-spot, whip-my-phone-out-of-my-purse photography it's giving me. Hurray!

(And hurray! for no editing, too!)