a day full of goodies (and lots of pinks and reds)

buttons i bought while thrifting today.

my adorably wondrous teacup i received in the mug swap. thank you turquoise cro!!! i love it...and can't wait to enjoy a nice cup of tea in it. she also included a delightful creamer/small pitcher, tea, and a beautiful collage...which you can see in the photo below (it is hanging on the bottom left). can't wait to find out what next month's swap will be.

just a little snippet of the magnetic board in my little room.

my new (eBayed) strawberry shortcake lunchbox. i had one when i was a kid and i have been looking for another one for years. found it. had to have it.

my package from purlsoho arrived...

i am up to something with all this new fabric...and plan to share in a couple of weeks.

i am going to make something just for me (and, of course, something that goes in my little room) from these.

it's late...it's still the weekend...so here's a photo of my couch companion...

millie enjoys the snow last week

just a little

it has melted.
all of it.
and i have to admit something.
i miss it.
just a little.

inspiration in a line {poetry thursday}

This week’s prompt is a fun one. All the different lines people shared in the comments on this week’s (completely and totally optional) idea post over at Poetry Thursday inspired me quite a bit. In a way, I wish they would have each posted a blog post about why they chose that line of their own poetry.

I borrowed a line from Megan (you can read her original poem here). I decided to wait to read her poem until I was ready to share mine. And I was delighted in the serendipity of both of us finding inspiration in fruit. Megan, thank you for sharing this line...I appreciate the places it took me with this poem.

I am still trying to write shorter poems with few adjectives/adverbs…though this one was a bit longer than the other ones I have been playing with lately. It is a draft, but I will share it all the same.

portraits

leaning against the counter,
cup of tea in hand,
looking at the apples
resting in a clean white bowl:

when I am down the hall or
at the store or
when my back is turned
as I stand at the stove,
do my grandmother,
her mother,
and her mother’s mother
talk to one another,
share secrets, and
peek in on me
as though their portraits exist
in Rowling’s world?

last week,
after I poured the slices
of fuji, jonagold, and granny smith
and watched them simmer,
did my grandmother pause their conversation and say,
“she is adding the spices now”
and then appear over my shoulder
as I tossed in the sugar,
sprinkled in nutmeg, and then
tapped the jar of cinnamon against the side of the pan,
so that I could hear her whisper,
“don’t you think that’s a bit too much?”

bringing in ritual: gratitude {self-portrait challenge}

the ritual of pausing to spend a moment alone drinking tea, pausing to think about ways in which i am grateful.

this year, i am making it part of my day to spend time thinking about what brings happiness, excitement, joy, laughter, calm, truth, color, peace, light into my life. what makes up this life i lead. what resonates deeply and what just brings a little sparkle.

each day i am pausing to have a moment alone, usually with a cup of tea, and then i am capturing that moment with a polaroid. i then write a little paragraph about this moment in a journal, followed by a list of things i am grateful for that day. if this moment alone is earlier in the day, i add to the list before i go to sleep.

i am collecting these snippets, the polaroids and my words, over on my not-so-secret blog called seek gratitude.

i have always thought of myself as someone who is always just a tad bit lonely and often just a wee bit melancholy. pausing to really notice the good stuff, this is one way to shift this perception of myself a bit. to really see what this life i lead is truly filled with.

the good stuff.

(see more self portraits over at self-portrait challenge)

begin

a stream-of-consciousness blog post.
also known as a morning-pages-like blog post.
also known as a dumping-the-brain-before-going-to-bed blog post.
also known as a welcome-to-the-world-of-me blog post.

*******

sleepy. so excited about my little room. trying to figure out what to do with the last bits of things. can’t wait until i can get my work done and play in here. just have a bit more to do. i want to put up my initials on the wall. figure out what to call my bulletin board inspiration thing. need to get a chair. i want a brown leather chair but i don’t know where to go to get one. hopefully this weekend we can look for one. i am sleepy. i can’t believe it is almost midnight. i should be in bed. why have i been staying up so late. my brain isn’t ready for bed lately. though i haven’t been all that tired during the day so that is good. feeling good. well. it is a good thing. i am so tired i don’t even know what i want to write about. i think morning pages that are really midnight pages might be better written out. i can’t help but use the delete key just a little bit (not counting when i make a mistake). kelly gave me the idea to just start using the morning pages as brainstorming. and this is how i fell in love with them again. i just started writing down words that make me happy. words that trigger all the good stuff i have learned in the last two years. has it been two years? i cannot believe that in a few weeks it will be the anniversary of traveler’s death. two years. i miss him. and then two years since my grandmother’s death this april. i miss her every single day. i was telling jon today that all my poetry is about her. and the reason i think it is always about her is because it is the most real thing in my life. the fact that she is dead. it is tangible and real and yet unbelievable and crazy and not at all tangible at the same time. but it is the most real. i have never felt more real in all my life as i have felt since she died. everything is different. every single fucking thing about it all is different. all of it. i am sleepy and don’t really want to be so focused on this as i get ready to head to bed. i miss her. getting her windbreaker in the mail and some other things has been a good thing. but the missing crept back to the forefront since i opened that box. that is okay. but it is still so very painful. but real. i think of the velveteen rabbit a lot. the wise skin horse. the truth, the truth, the truth. yes. only when you are rubbed off in parts and all that stuff. only then are you real. what i love about blogging is that i really believe some people come to the page and come from their real place. not everyone i suppose. but that is not for me to judge. i appreciate that blogging has helped me to know that this search for real is not something i am doing alone. oh this makes me even more tired though. all the work. and it is work. this living. i bought these little tiny glass jars today and i cannot wait to fill them with the smallest of bits i use to create. of course, i have been creating more in my mind lately. but soon, i will be creating again. stuff that is tangible. i spent the last few days brainstorming potential names for a little business i would like to create where i might sell my creations. hmmm. so many fun words out there. so many possibilities. it is great fun to brainstorm like this. i told jon that sometimes i laugh in my head that i am one of those people with all these great ideas for things to sell and create. the good thing is that i don’t create businesses for each one of them because then we would be living in a little teeny one room place. but at the same time, i wish i took the leap. stopped the excuses. today, we were at a store also known as the paper source also known as a place where i want to spend a million dollars also known as the place i left without spending a dime, and they had these delightful lowercase letters i could put on my wall. and i decided what i wanted to spell: begin. that is the word. begin. BUT. of course. they didn’t have any e’s. not one. though the nice woman told me that michael’s has the same kind of letters. will be funny to compare prices. they were hollow cardboard letters that i can decorate. this is the reminder. begin. when i don’t know what to do. begin. when i don’t know what to make. begin. when i am scared. begin. when i am overwhelmed. begin. begin. do not be afraid. stop with the excuses already.
begin.

a bug wrapped in snow

we still have snow
(and ice)
we haven't left the house since we got back from my yoga class wednesday night
(jon had two snow days)
we are reaching into the depths of the cabinets for food
(though so far that has been a good thing because we have plenty)
and we are now out of bread and eggs
(and izze sparkling apple juice)
so tomorrow
(well, today really)
we will try to drive
(skate)
to the store
(and starbucks)

short poems and stafford {poetry thursday}

Another Thursday filled with poetry!

We are having a snow day here out in the Tacoma area. Those of you in snowier parts of the world might think that means we have a foot or more of snow. Nope. Not here. It just takes a few inches to close down schools. It is nice having my husband home though as I work.

Speaking of work, I am finding clichés everywhere as I edit this week! My cliché radar is in full force after this week’s (completely and totally optional) idea. It looks like people have had fun with this odd prompt. I can’t wait to spend some time clicking around to Poetry Thursday participants’ sites later today.

I have been working on several poems lately, but I find myself getting stuck. I was on the phone with Dana last evening and was telling her how I think I need to write short poems for a while. I explained how I keep getting stuck in the wordiness and my own amateurishness (which, I guess, is a word).

I thought about this conversation today and decided to just write a few short poems. Here is one of them:

Where you live

Though you sit on a mantle
in the house you lived in
for almost 40 years,
all that you were is folded
into this windbreaker
resting upon my lap.

This is where you live.

This feels like the beginning of a poem, but maybe it is just a thought I have been having wrapped up in the form of a poem.

I have started reading The Answers are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life by William Stafford (edited by Paul Merchant and Vincent Wixon). It is a collection of his essays, interviews, writings, and so on. As I struggle with my writing, he finds a way, as he always does, to remind me to keep going. In an interview, when asked if he has an audience in mind when he writes, he said:

No, it’s just for myself. I’m very indulgent at the time of writing. I’ll accept anything, any old trash; it can never be low enough to keep me from writing it. You know, the process of writing is kind of a trusting to the nowness, to the immediacy of the experience. And if you enter into the artistic endeavor with standards, already arrived-at ideas of what you want to do, you’re not entering creatively into the immediacy of encountering the materials.

It’s almost as if an artist who enters into the process with this determination to meet standards, achieve quality, is not trusting the self that’s doing the writing. That’s what led me to say once, writers ought to let themselves write bad poems. Not bad from their point of view, but unacceptable from another’s.

I read Stafford’s words.
I read my own.

I keep writing.
I keep writing.
I keep writing.