a dapple of my weekend

Perhaps the most important thing I did this weekend: string Christmas lights around my bedroom. Since they're white, they don't technically have to be Christmas decorations, right?

Perhaps the most boring thing I did this weekend: rake leaves. As a kid, I always hated it. And you know what? I still hate it. I lasted half an hour.

Perhaps the most exciting thing I did this weekend: went shopping. Leisurely. I wanted my weekend to be plenty quiet, and it sure was. Long shopping trips were the most exhausting thing I did all weekend. Perfect.


I thought some about blogging this weekend, too. Lately, I just can't think of the words to write or even the sentiments I want to evoke and just end up completely frustrated and hating the posts I do put up. I thought it was just a mood and I'd get over it, but I can't shake it. Sometimes, I think maybe I just need a blogging break.

Do you ever feel the same?

braving it

Yesterday during my lunch break I finally braved it and went to the park by myself. There was only one other car when I pulled up and I tried to quell any imaginative fears and just walked. I was there for the exercise, after all. I slung my camera bag across my side and stopped only for the important photo ops.

I've never been so scared of walking in the woods by myself. Maybe I've just grown too spoiled having acres of woods in my backyard, but it was a strange feeling, being in this beautiful wildlife preservation and wanting to get the fresh air and stopping to take pictures, but being so fearful of what might happen. I'm sure it's all just imagination-getting-the-better of me, but in the moment--it feels so insanely real.

But I did it, and had a glorious lunch break before I had to go back to wiping snotty noses and changing poopy diapers and reading board books to toddlers. Carmella and I talked recently about knowing the difference between unhappiness and fear--something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

At least being scared out of my mind and having limited time for my break made me power walk, though.

thoughts

::I'm sick. So sick. My head feels like a brick and I can't breathe through my nose and my throat hurts from all the coughing and I'm pretty sure my swollen glands must be protruding from my neck. And you know that terrible, horrible feeling you get when you're about to sneeze but can't? ALL DAY LONG.


::Since I've quit my second job as a barista, I've taken on more hours at daycare (see above for a glimpse of my working conditions this week). This comes with a daily one-hour break during which I've got to find a way to entertain myself (there's no break room and I'm half an hour from home). Yesterday I found a series of walking trails winding up hills and around ponds about ten minutes away from work, but I turned back five minutes into the pond loop after a chilling remembrance of stories like Chelsea King's came to mind. I was too scared to go back today. Isn't that weird? I don't usually let my imagination get the better of me like that. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow, and bring my camera with me.


::I have no plans this weekend, besides babysitting on Sunday night. I think I'm going to keep it this way.


::I went into the grocery store today (on said too-scared break) and, although I came out with $15 dollars worth of food, all I really wanted was the bottle of tonic water I need to balance out my bottle of gin at home. (And now it's 8:30pm, and very well worth it.)

my birthday

My birthday has come and gone and I feel it hardly stayed at all. The day itself was wondrous though, and I wanted to share it with you.

In past years, my birthday has almost always been a let-down. At first it just seemed that birthdays were no longer exciting, not like they were when you turn ten and get a special cake for double digits and loads of presents and the whole day feels like you're on cloud nine. No, as I've gotten older I've found that birthdays are hardly as exciting. Lately though, people I'd counted on to be there for my birthday (both literally and energetically speaking) seemed to be letting me down all-too-often. My birthdays always ended up feeling more depressing than uplifting.

So this year, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I saved up my money (I have been working my butt off!) and took myself to the spa for the day. I wanted nothing more than to be completely by myself for the day--at first I thought this strange, but then realized it was exactly what I wanted for my birthday, and decided to honor that. The dark, rainy weather on Thursday was a bit dismal, but I didn't let that get in my way. I drove leisurely through the back woods of Connecticut and found myself at the most amazing spa I'd ever seen. (A body temple, they call it--how much do you love that?) I stayed for hours and was practically in a zen-like state from the moment I stepped in the door. And, I tasted the most delicious tea I've ever tasted and bought a whole canister to bring home. It was truly the best idea I've ever had.

After the spa, I went home for a family dinner and birthday pie. We listened to music that always reminds me of my thirteenth birthday and opened presents by candlelight. It was just right.

And I got a new lens! I'm still figuring it out, but it's so much fun to have something new.

Thank you all for your birthday wishes and making me feel special on such a hyped-up day. I'm sending you all positive thoughts as well!

halleluiah

Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!

And have you been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.

-Mary Oliver

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas...

This is what I woke up to this morning:

I'm seeing plenty of Christmas carols, twinkling lights, sledding parties, dark evenings, gingerbread-baking, and snow days in our close future.

But perhaps prematurely. It is only November 8th. That's too soon to be thinking about these things.....right?


I'm thinking maybe this is the year to not feel guilty about indulging in these things far too early.....

sunny days and birthday parties

This weekend was filled with lots of babysitting, birthday parties, running errands, and celebrations. Two nights of babysitting, one day of running errands, one night on the town for my birthday (!), one ten-year-old's glamorous beauty birthday party (I was the hairdresser), and one semi-leisurely morning.

Even though a lot of this weekend was really busy with running around and hurrying up, I didn't mind it. Weekends suddenly seem so much more free when you don't have a job to get to.

Time suddenly seems so much more.....happy.


I hope your weekend was happy too!

happiness

My Google Reader is filled to the brim with hundreds of unread blog posts.

This poor blog is shamefully ignored as of late.

There are clothes and bags and half-finished crocheting projects flung all over my room.

I just very-irresponsibly quit my job.

There's food going bad in the refrigerator.

I haven't bothered to properly make my bed in weeks.



But I don't even care. Because it's my birthday today and none of that is important now.


I don't even care that one year ago I made a list of things I'd like to accomplish and I didn't do everything on the list. I don't speak Spanish fluently, and I never watched the sun rise, and I haven't entirely mastered my camera, either.

But I'm doing a lot more than that, on the inside, learning to support myself, slowly but surely.

And you know--I made it all the way here, better than okay.


So cheers to that :)

november

The turkeys know just about when to arrive, strutting around the backyard beneath the kitchen window, welcoming November and the end of all that Halloween business.

.....and playing in the leaf piles, too.

a dapple of my weekend

This weekend was about birthdays and sisters visiting and soaking up the last of fall and finding out what I want. Or rather, don't want. Remember that new job? It's not what I want. I suppose that clarity is a good thing, but in the meantime--I'm miserable. I'm trying hard to come up with a plan and act on it bravely. But this whole grow-up-and-decide-what-you-want-to-be-and-live-happily-ever-after thing is not nearly as easy as I thought it'd be. If you told me when I graduated from college over a year that this is where I'd be in November 2010, I'd have laughed in your face.

People have got it way more figured out than that, haven't they?

Nevertheless, we managed to have ourselves a pretty awesome weekend.

Rachel's birthday went by in a flash. But I'm glad she was home to celebrate it!

My itty bitty babysitting-baby turned one this weekend. But wasn't she just born?

Mary's final softball game came not a moment too soon. We were almost frozen solid by the end of it.

The Halloween party I hosted with Lauren was so stinkin' cute. We made mummy hot dogs and witch's brew and orange rice krispie treats. She was a Greek goddess, I was Betty Draper.

And Sunday morning we finally got to the huge corn maze that opened in town, on it's very last day open. I'm afraid fall really is coming to an end.



And now that that long weekend of family and parties and miserable work is over, I look up and realize my birthday is right around the corner.....


Have a lovely week!