wordless.

wednesday.

roadtrip.
on the weekend, i made a mad-dash roadtrip up the coast and back with friends. we drove. we talked. we laughed. we feasted. we listened to music. we magically arrived everywhere at exactly the right time. we witnessed everything from horrific to incredible live music. we browsed bookshops. in short, we had a perfect three days. the details:

1000 miles: the oc to l.a. up the grapevine and through the central valley to mountain view. to san jose and palo alto. into the city (the city being san francisco). across the bay bridge to berkeley. through oakland and back to san jose. down the 101 to san luis obispo. on to santa barbara. back to l.a. and home to the oc.

gastronomic hedonism: singaporean dinner at the spice islands cafe in mountain view. the roti prata was divine and everything else yummy. brunch at country gourmet in mountain view. pumpkin pancakes with cranberry syrup and ginger butter. french toast (made with cinnamon streusel bread) topped with banana, almonds, and caramel rum syrup. an omlette with bacon, cheese, tomatoes, and roasted tomatillo salsa with sour cream and avocado. it was a flurry of shared dishes and expressions of delight. i've never had a more delicious brunch. i'm already planning a girls trip to the bay area just so i can take my mom and sisters there. brunch at yank sing for dim sum. i'd never done dim sum before and it took all of two minutes for me to fall in love with it. probably because we started with soup dumplings (another first for me) which were amazing. everything else was delicious, too, but i'm determined to find somewhere in so.cal to get soup dumplings. yummy. and we capped off the culinary indulgence with fabulous mexican food at a shack with a tent attached in santa barbara. i loved its quirky blue and white structure and its three-car parking lot as soon as i saw it. and the food was amazing. i envision driving to santa barbara for dinner in the future. it's that good.

music: the reason for the trip was the bridge school benefit concert organized annually by neil and pegi young. eight artists in seven hours. regina spektor, tegan and sara, my morning jacket, john mayer, tom waits, neil young, jerry lee lewis, and metallica. that's right. i can now say i've seen metallica live--something i never aspired or hoped to say. but it's humorous. they were horrific. it was, however, entertaining to watch. both them and their fans, who were sorely disappointed (the metal-head next to us called out "come on, metallica! make it worth my money!" i think the rest of the line-up left him cold). jerry lee lewis looked stiff--like if he moved too much he'd keel over dead on the spot. but that didn't keep him from being a dirty old man. and his penchant for putting his name into his songs was endearingly humorous. in spite of his obviously advancing age, he was fun. i had to leave during john mayer, who elicits an almost viscerally disgusted reaction in me (even if he is a good guitarist). and tegan and sara were only okay. but i loved regina (who i'm seeing again on wednesday). it was fun to see neil young, who has this very low-key but compelling stage presence. my morning jacket was fantastic--i'll be listening to more of them in the near future. and tom waits stole the show. the man is brilliant--as a lyricist and a performer. and i took a secret pleasure in all the teeny-bopper (whether actual teenager or older) john mayer fans being forced to listen to him.

bibliophilia: a quick trip to green apple books in the only unclaimed twenty minutes we had in the city. a drive-by of city lights books en route to dim sum. and a detour off the 101 to visit leon's in san luis obispo. can you tell we were a carful of book nuts?

college tour: some of us went to visit stanford (not me; i went to the airport to pick up george). we took a quick walk around berkeley. and we did a drive-through of cal poly san luis obispo's campus (the other reason for our detour there). there was also a bit of pointing out various schools from the road. because the big dangerous and our scapegoat (he really is unnecessarily blamed for too much) are looking at college options.

it was a wonderful weekend. i didn't want it to end. i've spent my day dealing with the let-down, wishing i was still immersed in music and laughter and conversation and friendship (with an occasional argument), driving through california's beautiful valleys and along the coast with occasional stops at bookshops and eateries. but i suppose every day can't be so perfect. i'm glad i had the ones i did have--they make mundane daily living much easier to deal with.

fire.
tonight as i drove home the sun blazed redgold in the west, infusing the sky with warmth and light. it was stunning. but that beauty was born of the disastrous fires blazing to the east. which were in turn caused by my beautiful santa ana winds. this symbiosis between beauty and destruction haunts me. i look at my world and it is so beautiful. but it is so devastating. not just the physical world, but humanity, too. i believe community is unavoidable--that human beings are naturally social creatures who form bonds of beautiful intimacy and love. but i also believe that the very actions and words that forge those bonds isolate us. we use the gestures and actions of friendship to turn inward, to hunker down, and avoid the pain that interaction demands.

i do not know how to navigate that paradox. and today it has me feeling tired, eyes heavy with tears i do not want to shed, wishing i could take refuge in misanthropy. but i can't. because despite the destruction, the beauty is there--glaringly unavoidable. like the sun in the west, reflecting the fire in the east.

junkie.
i am addicted to npr. or public radio, if you'd rather be generic (i do, after all, love some non-npr programs--this american life and the world, for instance). every single morning i wake up to one of l.a.'s two public radio stations. and i generally listen for at least half an hour before i drag my body out of bed. then there's the listening while getting ready in the morning. and the listening while driving every time i drive anywhere. and the listening while cleaning. any day without a healthy dose of public radio is just incomplete.

like i said: i'm addicted. and here's why. this morning's dose included the following:

strikes in france in response to sarkozy's efforts at labor reform.

the status of the new u.s. command in africa, with an account of china's burgeoning influence there. which highlighted yet again the way in which limited natural resources dictate foreign policy.

the ongoing debate over bush's veto of the recent schip bill.

the u.s. (non-)response to iraqi refugees.

just a sampling of the various u.s. and world news stories, covered with npr's usual evenhandedness. but that's not all. i also got:

an account of the hannah montana phenomenon ($2000 for a ticket to a hannah montana concert?! crazy parents and damn scalpers).

a report on anthropological discoveries of evidence of human civilization from 160,000 years ago.

in other words, interesting stories about culture and society in all their incarnations. and that's not all. npr coverage is eclectic and interesting and intelligent.

now i realize i could get most of these stories elsewhere. but internet news irritates me. too many banner ads, too much visual distraction, and most of it is poorly written. television news is a travesty of playing to the audience and mindless repetition. and other radio news just gives me a headache with all its bells and whistles and grating newscaster voices. plus none of them give me the other stories npr gave me this morning:

the woman arrested by her cop-neighbor because, when her toilet backed up, she cursed in her own home. never fear--the aclu has taken up her cause asserting a constitutional right to curse in one's own home. hilarious. especially when you stop to wonder what the hell went through that neighbor's head. all i can assume is there was a pre-existing tension; because really--how could you arrest your neighbor for swearing in her own home and not realize it is not a neighborly thing to do? not to mention the ridiculousness of turning cursing in one's own home into a constitutional matter (it is constitutionally protected speech, but did we really need to involve the law in order to determine that?).

and (my favorite) the woman who was minding her own business, washing her hands in her bathroom, when a 7-foot python popped its head out of the toilet next to her. she screamed. then called the plumber (the plumber?!) to take care of the problem. apparently the plumber helped her out, but i can't help but wonder about that. do all plumbers have to deal with large reptiles showing up in toilets? or is that just a new york city phenomenon? is there special training plumbers get for how to deal with large, potentially dangerous sewer critters? and how exactly does one extract a 7-foot python from the plumbing through a toilet?

and now you know why i'm addicted to npr. wouldn't your day be better, too, if it started with hearing such stories?

wordless.

wednesday.

harmony.
about a month ago, i helped run a training workshop for grad students teaching literature for the first time. my cohort was out of town for a wedding the two days immediately before the workshop. and my parents, who i had been counting on to take me to costco to get some materials, were also out of town. all of which resulted in me running around on my own, begging favors from friends, and left me generally a bit frazzled. on sunday afternoon my right foot started hurting and by the end of the evening my foot was swollen and hurt so badly that i was limping. this was A Bad Thing, as i had to be on my feet much of the next two days, not to mention hauling all kinds of stuff between my car and the classroom. in tears i called seymour and asked if he would come give me a blessing. which he did, along with mbn. and then they helped me wrap up the last minute details i still needed to finish. i actually ended up in bed before 1 in the morning.

monday was a long day and my foot was aching and swollen by the time i got home. but i had to do some prep for the workshop the next day. and my parents were coming home, so i needed to do a bit of cleaning. my time was limited and i knew my foot couldn't handle too much, so i made my list of tasks in my head and set about accomplishing them as efficiently as i could. no movement was wasted. every trip from one room to another served multiple purposes. complete economy of motion. i was in that mode where mind and body and purpose flowed together so smoothly that the only way to describe it is harmony. i have these moments occasionally and they feel like perfection. everything fitting together to make a whole that is more than merely the sum of its parts. there's a feeling of grace, of blessedness, that comes, leaving me feeling like life makes sense, even if the work i'm doing is as menial as dishes and laundry and taking out the trash.

as i reflected on that feeling, i thought back to the morning i spent at fallingwater in august. the building is such a work of absolute harmony that it seems wrong to call it a building. everything, from the glorious design to the building materials, works together to manifest perfection. there was absolutely no detail too mundane for wright to consider so that it would add to the being of his creation. this is true of all of wright's work. for instance, at the pope-leighey house, wright used long horizontal lines to reinforce the design and to add a sense of spaciousness to what is a very small building. in laying the bricks, the mortar that ran horizontally was recessed a good half an inch inset from the front of the bricks, while the mortar that ran vertically was flush with the bricks, allowing the shadows cast by the bricks into the recessed horizontal mortar to create long lines. wright even dictated that the screws used in the building be flathead rather than phillips and they were to be turned so the groove on the head of the screw formed a horizontal line.

fallingwater is full of gorgeous details that contribute to its harmony. the boulder around which wright built the house jutting up to form a rough hearth in the primary living space of the house. the stone floors inside polished so they look like the stones of the terraces when they are wet. the glass corner of the house opening out so the corner disappears altogether, breaking the box of the room, the house refusing to inter its occupants in a living tomb. the low ceilings and vast stretches of glass directing the eye out to the beauty of the forest. how could anyone live in such an environment and not find herself existing more often in that state of harmony that i find only so rarely?

in my mind, wright's magnificent masterpiece is akin to the gorgeous perfection of beethoven's symphonies--beings in their own right, full of life and beauty that can make the world better. when i left fallingwater that day, i resolved to go back. as often as i can. to immerse myself again in a place where all of the best of humanity and nature work together to manifest god's glory.

woman.
being a byu alum, i get the byu magazine every so often. sometimes i pick it up and peruse it. occasionally i read an article or two. usually it just sits in my pile of mail until it gets thrown away. tonight i started sorting through my pile of mail (i always have a pile of mail; i hate mail; i wish people would just not send me stuff; unless they're people i know and love; then they can send me stuff) and ran across the byu magazine. and when i read the cover blurb 'jane clayson lands her dream job: mother,' some sick masochistic part of me turned to page 22 to read the article.

it's all about jane clayson who becomes jane johnson. perhaps that's reductive, but the article's attempt to represent rhetorically the shift from single to married by referring to the single jane as clayson and the married jane as johnson does call attention to that shift. it was a bizarre editorial decision--one that caused more confusion than anything. and it made the difference between unmarried and married sound almost jekyll-and-hyde.

anyway. back to the regularly scheduled programming. here's the reader's digest version: jane goes to byu expecting to graduate and get married. jane graduates but doesn't get married. jane becomes award-winning, nationally known television journalist. jane realizes that 'real life' has begun, even though she's not married. jane gets married. jane quits working. jane has babies. jane has epiphany: 'mothers matter.' (yes, that's the epiphany: 'mothers matter.')

it's a lovely story. really. i'm happy that this talented woman had the opportunity not only to find such professional success but also to fall in love and marry and have children.

but dammit. don't tell me i'm a mother simply by virtue of the fact that i have breasts, a vagina, a uterus, and ovaries. i am a woman. i am not a mother. and i don't care how much mental gymnastics you do, you're not going to convince me otherwise. but clayson (or should it be johnson?) tries: 'i want every woman to feel in her soul that among the many important things that women do, mothering is the most important thing, whether a woman biologically bears a child or not.'

i appreciate the sentiment. i feel all warm and fuzzy that jane (and sherri dew and numerous others like them) recognizes that the church's emphasis on motherhood for women leaves single and childless women feeling inadequate on some level. but has it ever occurred to them that perhaps the answer is to authenticate other life paths for women? to acknowledge that women have incredible contributions to make outside of motherhood?

i am a nurturer. i love children. i'm patient and kind and loving towards all of my nieces and nephews. i adore them. but i spend very little time with them. and while i know for a fact that they love me and that i have helped shape their characters in some ways, i also know that i'm not much of a presence in their lives. am i to understand that mothering is the most important work i do, when easily 90% of my time is spent completely apart from children? what does that mean about the rest of my time? is it really all that much to ask that the value of my work and life be acknowledged without trying to shove it through a mother-shaped hole?

please, jane clayson johnson (and anyone else who's made the error of trying to convince themselves and others that every woman is a mother)--please have enough decency to honor all the work women do, not just the work they do as mothers. don't tell me i am a mother in some misguided effort to make me feel better about the fact that i'm unmarried and childless. instead, look me in the eye and see me for who and what i am: a woman of god who is using the gifts she's been given to make as much beauty and goodness as she can.

enough.
about six years ago, i spent an evening sitting outside a friend's room on UVA's campus, talking with him as the sun went down. we'd taken a study break, ostensibly to watch the sunset, but our break lasted long after dark as we talked. for some reason our conversation wandered onto the topic of girls and beauty and before i knew it i was crying. because of the painful knowledge i had as a girl of 8 and 10 and 16 and every age in between that i was ugly. skinny yes. but ugly. because even six years ago, at the age of 25, i still only felt beautiful in flashes. but mostly i was crying because of my beautiful nieces and knowing that they, too, would experience that pain. being told in every way imaginable that they were not beautiful enough. that if only they could poke and prod and cut and snip and paint and dye and conceal and smooth and style enough, maybe--just maybe--they would be beautiful enough to be loved. it starts when they're so young. and it never stops.

i've blogged before about my perception of my own beauty. i am mostly comfortable with my appearance. i don't spend a lot of time trying to conform to preconceived ideas of what it means to be beautiful. but the pain of not being beautiful enough still lurks. mostly it has to do with the fact that i don't date. i can't help but think, in some of the dark moments when i wonder what's wrong with me, that if only i were beautiful--more fit, more striking, more sexy--then maybe men would be interested. i don't know why this thought process happens. maybe i really haven't accepted my body the way it is. maybe that awkward, gangly eight-year-old is still trapped inside me, looking in a mirror trying to figure out how to smile with a mouth that's just too big. or maybe it's easier to believe it's my body, and not my mind and my soul, that is unattractive. maybe wishing i was beautiful enough to attract some interest is just a defense mechanism meant to stave off the infinitely darker pain of wondering what's wrong with my self, rather than merely what's wrong with my body.

my tears six years ago ended happily, with my friend taking my hand and telling me how beautiful he thought i was. an articulation of an attraction that we had both felt since the day we met and which had been growing for months. a beginning of a relationship that left me happier than any other i've ever had. but i wish the cause of those tears didn't exist. i wish somehow we could let our girls simply be without cramming a beauty myth down their throats at every turn. so take a moment and watch a bit of what i'm talking about.



and yes. i realize the irony of that being a product of the very beauty industry it critiques. but honestly i'm desperate enough for something to change that i'll accept any consciousness-raising tool no matter where it comes from. even if it comes in the shape of advertising...

finished.
i finished the third book in the saga of bella and edward this morning. which is probably a good thing, since reading them made me adopt a somewhat vampirish existence. i ate brunch on thursday at 10:30 and a snack about 2:30. but then i started reading before eating dinner and i just read and read and stayed up all night (til 6:30 friday morning) to finish new moon. and of course after my four or so hours of sleep friday morning (wearing an eye mask to keep out the light--first time and it worked great), i had to start the third one. i didn't eat again until a snack around 4:00 and dinner around 6:30 on friday. and after my eight hour trip to l.a. (to see pink martini in concert, which was fabulous), i stayed up til 3:30 reading more. apparently i was obsessed enough with edward to adopt his sleepless, foodless lifestyle...

they're not great literature. but they were great reads. if you want a little vampire romance (and even if you're not sold on the whole vampire thing), they're definitely fun. a more extensive review to come (when it's not 12:45 a.m. after two nights of little sleep).

bitten.
i'm in love with edward cullen. yesterday, before my five hours of poetry, i picked up stephanie meyer's twilight and read the first chapter. i liked it. but i had to read poetry. today, after working all morning and then an afternoon appointment, i decided to go back to barnes & noble to read more poetry. but first i thought i'd read one more chapter in twilight. five hours later, i finished the book head-over-heels in love with its undead hero. and now it's 11:41 p.m. and i have a drive to and from l.a. to make tomorrow and work to do in the morning. and i really shouldn't start new moon. but edward's kiss beckons...

denial.
this afternoon i read poetry. all afternoon. working on the syllabus for a class i've never taught before. shakespeare. donne. marvel. finch. keats. bradstreet. wordsworth. shelley. coleridge. wheatley. emerson. behn. among others. (tomorrow i get to do the 19th and 20th centuries--yay!) i love it. and it intimidates the hell out of me. i fluctuate between excitement and feeling terrified. but mostly i'm excited.

i made a point of reading poems by george herbert today. i've always loved herbert, but before today it was an academic kind of love. it was the way he made the shape of his poems and their meanings coincide. i've long been fascinated by texts which use their physicality to create layers of meaning, so discovering herbert was one of the highlights of the rather boring early british lit survey course i took as an undergrad (the other highlight was my professor, who regularly wore suspenders with pigs on them and who did a spot-on thomas s. monson impression).

today i loved herbert for much more than his form. "prayer (I)," in which he describes prayer as "the soul in paraphrase," "Christ-side-piercing spear," "Heaven in ordinary," and "something understood." the image of man as "brittle crazy glass" given, through the grace of god, the "glorious and transcendent place, / To be a window" in god's temple. herbert's poetry is achingly beautiful--full of a spiritual insight so pointed it pierces through layers of obscuring fear and self-delusion.

i particularly loved "denial." i'll type it here, but you should follow the link to see it's format (if only i could figure out how to format things better through blogger).

Denial

When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent ears,
Then was my heart broken, as was my verse;
My breast was full of fears
And disorder.

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow,
Did fly asunder:
Each took his way; some would to pleasures go,
Some to the wars and thunder
Of alarms.

'As good go anywhere,' they say,
'As to benumb
Both knees and heart, in crying night and day,
Come, come, my God, O come!
But no hearing.'

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To cry to thee,
And then not hear it crying! All day long
My heart was in my knee,
But no hearing.

Therefore my soul lay out of sight,
Untuned, unstrung:
My feeble spirit, unable to look right,
Like a nipped blossom, hung
Discontented.

O cheer and tune my heartless breast,
Defer no time;
That so thy favors granting my request,
They and my mind may chime,
And mend my rhyme.

so many times i've felt this. the frustration. the anger. the sorrow. of asking and seeking and begging. 'but no hearing.' but i always come back. because when i am 'unable to look right,' i know the only answer is to go to god and ask him to mend me. to 'cheer and tune my heartless breast' so that in granting that favor--the favor of re-tuning my spirit--i can align my will with his, rather than continuing to let my imperfect vision control what i seek.

herbert captures this perfectly. the anger that masks the anguish. and, when neither the anger nor the anguish gets me anywhere, the quiet turning back to god. and, god willing, for a time it's peace not denial that colors my relationship with him.

obsession.
my first obsession is with books. i think i've spent some time in a bookstore everyday for the last week, with the one exception of sunday. it's been hot as hades here, so when my upstairs room and office reach the point of sweltering, i abandon the house and relax in the cool comfort of a bookstore cafe to read. with an occasional foray into the aisles to browse, of course. because i couldn't sit in a bookstore and not browse. sometimes to buy (a great introduction to prosody by stephen fry; a new blank book with a black and white cover with just the right flexibility; a novel by a new author that promises to be delightful). other times just to look and think and soak in all the promise of books.

but books are not my only obsession. i also have a thing for shoes. and this year, my birthday has been an exercise in podiatric indulgence. a pedicure, since i missed out on one when my sisters were here and ever since i've had a hankering to have flowers on my toes. i stopped painting my toe nails a few years ago. i'm not sure why. i've always loved painted toe nails. they look like summer. so this year, i started again. mostly red. occasionally pink. and now with flowers.

and then, a few hours after my first indulgence, i wandered into a t.j. maxx to look for a new bookbag that would handle carrying a computer. i found the bookbag (it's going to save my back this year). and then i found my next indulgence: green, orange, and gold flats with birds on them. just the right splash of color to make jeans fun. and good for hurrying across campus to make it to my class on time.

that was last week--a little pre-birthday anticipatory indulgence. and then my parents gave me cash, in a card that advised i kick off my shoes for my birthday, and then go buy more. so i did. i've been needing new tennis shoes, so i headed to nordstrom rack where i'd seen good tennis shoes for good prices and found a pair. the problem with the rack is that i have to browse all the shoes to find what i'm looking for. which of course meant i found more than just tennis shoes...

my first pair of blue suede shoes--a bit reminiscent of my sister's blue suede docs, which i always loved (and really, this post is dedicated to her; i know she understands this particular obsession of mine). so comfortable i could be on my feet for hours and not feel it. i now understand the taste for keen shoes.

and then there was the real indulgence. the cole haan distressed blue leather sling back platform 4-inch heels with peep toes to show off those gorgeous nails. it was love at first sight. and luckily (for me? for the shoes?) they are comfortable. comfortable enough for me to wear them when i dress up. because love at first sight and fabulosity notwithstanding, i won't buy shoes if they're not comfortable enough to wear.
happy birthday me.

so i've been trying to think of a word. one word to describe how i felt five minutes into the T ride into boston two weeks ago. lust occurred to me, but while lust captures the strong desire of the feeling, it's too superficial. maybe need. because there are things missing in my life that i think i could find there. which also made me think of longing. but even that doesn't really capture the comfort of the feeling. which takes me to

belonging. because all it took was sitting on the T, riding towards the city, to feel right. like i was back in a place that fit. the funny thing is that i didn't live there long--less than a year. and i wasn't happy for two-thirds of the time i was there. but even when i was unhappy, boston felt good. like a home waiting for me to build it. a place that spoke to me and where i could exist without fighting to find myself.

someday i hope one of the many colleges and universities there will have a job for me. and then i'll move back and live just far enough from work that i have to ride the T. so i can start my day with a brisk walk and half an hour of reading. and i'll walk to 90% of my destinations. and my world will be full of history and trees without having to search them out. and while i know that a place can't guarantee happiness, i also know that being somewhere that fits can make building happiness a little bit easier.

thanks to my sister for making a six-hour roundtrip drive in a day so i could get a little taste of boston.

superhuman.
tonight i went to a movie. alone. (honestly, why do people refuse to go to a movie alone? it can be a social outing. but in the end, it's sitting in a theater watching a film. where's the need to have someone sitting next to you while you do it?)

i sat down in the middle of a preview. it was a bit violent. and then watched four or five more previews, all of which were violent. i was particularly disturbed by the preview for a new kevin bacon pic called death sentence, which opens tomorrow. all about a man who sees his son get killed in a gas station, identifies the killer, and then--when the killer gets off cause the case against him is too weak--takes matters into his own hands by killing his son's killer himself. which in turn starts a gang war, only it's just against him not against another gang (one man against all that is evil; it's like the quintessential american story in some ways). what bothered me so much about it was the way it justified a normal person turning into a crazy-eyed, butched-up, super-killer (three hyphens in a row; pretty nice, huh?) in the name of vigilante justice.

now, i wasn't really surprised by the violent previews. i was there to see the bourne ultimatum, after all (yes, i do actually go to the theater to see action flicks). but as i watched all the murder and mayhem on the screen during the previews, i wondered to myself why it is we go see such violence over and over.

well i got my answer when i left the theater after the movie...

i walked out of the theater energized. got in my little honda civic and the minute i was behind the wheel, shifting gears as i headed down macarthur towards home, i just knew that if necessary i could slam the car into reverse, spin wildly out of control only to reassert control in order to weave through head-on traffic. or drive my car at high speeds off a roof, jump out, trick a few people into shooting each other rather than me, steal a police car, and survive a deadly crash. just so i could jump off...well, i suppose i won't spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

and i don't even have all that much testosterone in my system.

rundown.
so here's the reader's digest version of my last month (longer bits about some of this to come):

a week spent with family. 15 to 20 people staying with us. wall-to-wall sleeping arrangements. lots of laughter and fun.

a niece being stung by a sting ray complete with a trip to the life guard station and an infection that developed a week later.

late nights talking.

flying cross-country with my sister, brother-in-law and their two girls. M and B sharing the seat next to me on the plane to watch a movie.

rescuing a small frog from sure death by lawn mower.

delicious desserts from mrs. london's in saratoga springs.

babysitting so J & R could celebrate their anniversary. complete with "pat pat" and playing with friends.

a picnic in a park complete with visiting (and surreptitiously feeding) the ducks, riding the carousel (twice), and making wishes in the pond.

exploring the hyde collection (a local art treasure only about 20 minutes from J & R's house), where we fell in love with works by degas, rubens, picasso, rembrandt, among others.

discovering rock hill bakehouse cafe, home of the best chicken salad sandwich i've ever eaten. and, to top it all off, the best cookies i've ever eaten. (and then there was the boylan's diet creme soda--so tasty). have i mentioned that i love bakeries?

a day trip to boston, with stops in concord, at the isabella stewart gardner museum, faneuil hall, the north end, and harvard square.

a roadtrip south to visit our brother and his wife and family.

two days in deep creek, maryland, full of fun and rainstorms.

an excursion to fallingwater. which confirmed to me frank lloyd wright's absolute genius.

a couple of days in virginia with children playing and action movies.

finally finishing a school project that i let hang over my head for way too long...

a horse and buggy ride through saratoga springs on an absolutely gorgeous summer night.

a meandering drive through glens falls in an effort to retrace our steps to the rock hill bakehouse only to be thwarted when we got there and discovered they were inexplicably closed for the day.

a long trip home to the tune of wilco in anticipation of their concert (which i went to last night).

and throughout it all, lots of laughter and conversation and beautiful little children.