summer thursday

that's a photo i took in a car wash.

it's been a tired week. dan and i have been time traveling a bit which has lead me to pulling a lot of old journals out of storage. this usually sends me into a strange vortex.

tonight tashi and i went to see kit kittredge. i felt wary of it, but was ultimately moved. it did a fine job of capturing a time and a place. pleasing in the way i found because of winn-dixie, the story line had good heart and the roles were well executed. garment makers & vintage junkies will love swimming through the sets. there was exquisite detail and rich colors in costumes and scenes. everyone else in the cinema might have been grooving on wal*e, but this story of a spunky girl in difficult times was just the right thing for tashi and i this evening.

times being the way they are, and all.

monday update

tashi and i venture out for brief spells in between eye drops and meals. yesterday we checked out the artisan market, where i purchased a pair of dangling earrings for tashi. she can't wait to put them on. afterwards we stopped at people's food co-op, my old workplace, and enjoyed a beverage at cafe verde.



i have driven by the old homeplace a couple of times, kind of like a stalker. above is the house we lived in from 2001 to 2005. the house sits at the edge of two magical acres and faces woodlands full of trails. tashi started preschool while living in that house. i trained to be a doula. tashi started grade school while living in that house, and lost her first teeth. dan landed a managerial position at a dot com while living in that house, after driving a cab for too long. i had four miscarriages in that house but also acquired our two cats. we had several notable parties in that house. in the yard is a pond that, every spring, became an orchestra of frogs. tashi built fairy huts in the woods, we took walks down to the huron river, loki got stuck in tall trees, and i planted herbs & flowers that continue to flourish.



i was happy to see my nettles and mugwort growing tall in the middle of the yard. it's not a great photo, but you can see them in the middle, in front of the wooden bench swing. i'm dying to take a walk around the place for a closer look.



tashi started off our week in ann arbor with a visit to dan's brother's family. her cousin will and her hit it off as if they'd never been apart. they baked a carrot cake from scratch, precariously perched on the table in the photo. it was half covered with coconut and half covered with walnuts and was incredibly delicious.

we've also been watching some movies. i watched the other boleyn girl, which was fascinating, and a visual feast. now i want to read the book. tashi and i watched mr. magorium's wonder emporium, which seemed kind of awkward and poorly executed, yet fun enough.

today my mother has an eye check up, so we'll see if progress is being made. perhaps tashi and i will sneak off for a dip in the lake later. tomorrow we are looking forward to seeing like water drum and dance at the top of the park summer festival. one of the dancers was a preschool teacher of tashi's.

and then on thursday we meet dan at a crazy family friendly music festival in ohio where there will be camping, swimming, and dancing to many bands, including george clinton and parliament/funkadelic!

domestic bliss

so far it has been a fine weekend. enough indoor, outdoor, family and alone time for a perfect balance. it started off with a friday dinner on the deck (brats, homefries, salad, guacamole, chips). it is hard to believe that we have not yet had a meal on the deck this season, but we finally launched ourselves outwards, and enjoyed eating amongst leaf song and squirrel chatter.



emma bean joined us as well. tashi has had emma bean since she was four. we found her in a thrift store, after reading this very lovely story.

on saturday morning i arose and walked to the farmer's market. once again, i am trying to incorporate regular walks into my week. its immediate affects on my mental and physical well being are extremely positive. there are many interesting things to gaze upon while walking to the farmer's market, not the least of which is the mosaic on 5th street.









flowers spilling from gardens. . .




and tires tied to a fence. . .



the crowded farmer's market is a welcome site. i just wish it was located under cover, because in the blazing heat of high summer it can sometimes be intolerable.



but i love the mint ice tea, the organic greens, the juicy english cucumbers and bright red tomatoes, the colorful aisles of seasonal produce, the occasional fresh donut, and currently, strawberries. oh delightful strawberries.

in the middle of the day tashi had a baseball game.



and in the late afternoon i finally cleared my little plot-in-the-works. i raked the thick piles of leaves off, the cardboard had disintegrated, the grass was gone and i was left with a nice strip of soil in which to plant my future cottage garden. sheet mulching works!



surely i should have cleared this off much earlier in the season. seedlings should have been started and planted by now. but i've been battling with a rather irritating case of low-energy. it wasn't until yesterday that i finally got to work. i will probably turn and break up the soil some more, add some compost, purchase some flowering plants from the store that are well on their way, nestle them in, and see how it goes. i'm pretty much winging it, as i tend to do. any advice would be appreciated! my goal is to have thick strip of tall mixed flowers: foxglove, echinacea, shasta daisies, fennel, snap dragons, etc. a lovely colorful border to our yard.

for dinner, i came upon a quick and easy recipe from real simple magazine: baked rice and chicken. you basically mix in a big bowl: rice, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, orange juice, onions, parsley (we had no parsley so i used swiss chard), cumin, red pepper flakes, salt & pepper. pour into a baking dish. nestle in some chicken breasts (i had some organic chicken strips, which worked out fine). and bake for 35 minutes. easy and very delicious. i don't think the photo does it justice, but you get the idea.



after dinner we watched the emma thompson version of sense and sensibility with tashi. i enjoyed that film when i first saw it, and it was my introduction to the lovely kate winslet. but i think i prefer the recent masterpiece theater version. i'm still reading the book by the way. it's a book i read before bed, meaning, i fall asleep about two paragraphs in and never get anywhere with it.

talk about falling asleep, you probably have done just that with this post. do have a good day. or a good nap.

wordsy thursday

sorry for the lack in posts. it's been a busy, sleepy week.

on full moon monday i assisted as doula in an amazing natural childbirth. it was such an honor to be there to witness the strength of the laboring mama as she sounded, danced, breathed and floated through her contractions and then pushed with pure womanly power until her beautiful wee child slid into the world. i have never before had a job that promotes such feelings of awe, joy and deep respect. i feel so fortunate and rewarded each time i fill the special role of doula in the childbearing process and i thank the goddess for leading me to this work.

i didn't get home until 5:30am the next day, so tuesday is a bit of a blur.

last night dan and i watched sideways for the first time. it made me want to incorporate the word quaffable into my vocabulary.

yesterday and today i spent the mornings watching tashi's class play, the death of baldur, a norse tale. so lovely, set in a grove at the back of the school yard. a few committed parents cleared it of tall weeds, poison ivy and debris. the kids sang and danced and projected poetic lines. quite entertaining indeed. tashi played the goddess freya. here she is with dan, who is giving her a high five.



thanks to tifanie for leading me to this site where you can round the edges of your photos and do other fun things. this particular blogger template adds the thin border to the photos, which i like for sharp angles, but interferes with the rounded affect.

sew fun

the above picture was taken last week. charlottesville is just bursting with color, even on a rainy day like today. the abundance and diversity of blossoming trees is astonishing. and the leaves are unfurling in a newborn lime green splash.

and since i have no new photos to show you, here is one i took a few weeks ago of yet another bend the rules blanket i made for a mama and her sweet girl who is four months old today!!!! surely they have received it by now. i quite like the design on the flannel, though sadly it became all beaded up when i washed it. blah. nothing like sending a gift of a brand new beaded up blankie.



yesterday i asked tashi what sort of crafting she would like to do. sewing was the answer. she pulled out her DIY Kids book and picked out the stuffed animal pillow. she did much of it, and i helped too. it was a great mother daughter bonding project. since my camera is on a journey through india with my husband, i made some little flip videos of our project. i tried to make it into one film, but it seems like that can't be done on a mac? wtf, i say!







after tashi went to bed with her new flopped-ear-bunny-looks-like-a-puppy-pillow, i watched la vie en rose. wow. i had no idea edith piaf had such a tragic life. it was quite a good film i thought, perhaps mostly because the actress was so awesome. she definitely deserved the oscar for that performance. the back and forth through time made it difficult to really put together piaf's life in a chronological continuum; i couldn't quite keep track of which event happened when and what followed. maybe i'm simple that way.

too late for much of anything now, but more dvd geeking.