Happiness is in...

time spent walking around in books...





places where people share things that make them happy like...
-Oh Happy Day and
-The Happiness Project {thanks to my friend Transactionista for sharing this link of another attorney/writer}


eating delicious food that makes you feel good inside...
-like minimalist Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything recipes.


friends, virtual or otherwise, with whom we share our hobbies...
-a friend to knit with



finishing something...



things that make us laugh...



everything if you look for it.

Weathering Storms

Funnel Cake
I keep thinking about the way confectioner sugar covers funnel cake at the fair: powdery on top and crunchy just under the dusty surface. It's everywhere. Particularly so under your feet.
Crunch crunch.




Our trees {at least those left standing} are in suspended Seussical animation.


The cherry tree has bloomed for the last time.



Having been through an ice storm once before, we are saying "thank you" every time we turn on a light switch and still have power. We rush to finish each task and put things away so that they can be easily found with a flash light just in case. Looking around the neighborhood and reading the wind forecasts for tonight, we know we are on borrowed light at this point and that power could go at any time. Even so, the time we have had with light and heat has been such a gift.

The last time we had a big ice storm that knocked out power for week, we lived in a different neighborhood, one that we chose because of all of the mature, sweeping trees. Those trees seemed to explode that night: popping bones and a long tumble to the ground. I didn't realize how much that experience -watching trees fall into homes and on cars- stayed with me until today when in the yard, I heard that familiar pop and practically took cover over my daughter. A large limb tumbled down and split over the fence. We were about 10 feet away, but still, I made a joke about the snapping trees and promised hot chocolate if we go inside. Like when I smile through airplane turbulence to help both of us think it's all supposed to happen this way.



I think about what it must be like to be a mom in Gaza tonight as the cease fire is broken, where parents have grown accustomed to taking cover over their children. When those photos come in on the AP wire, I wonder how the editors feel about the images and if they feel called to pray for the people in them, like I do. When I see them, I don't think of them as far away, I think of how I would feel as a mother, trying to protect my baby, in a place that once felt safe to me.

Someone who helps us with the house told me a few weeks ago, "Sarajevo is my city. I wonder sometimes, did I dream it all?" It was once beautiful to her, then like a hell on earth with entire families killed in front of her, and now as she returned this Christmas, it is a place where people are happy again. "I see people laughing and in the market and I keep looking for ghosts. I wonder if it is real the happiness or real what I remember." Her stories are haunting, particularly of the threats she felt for her babies and their safety. We both decided after a cry one morning that the economic worries we are all having in this country are nothing in comparison to living in war. She said to me, "Imagine what it is like to have money in your hand, but it is worth nothing. You cannot buy food for your children." I think about her stories every time I am able to buy food for my child and when I hold her until she falls asleep. We all want the same things for our children.

I feel so thankful for warmth tonight, for a dry place to sleep, for bread, for my family. I pray for moms everywhere as they try to keep their babies safe and warm.

Ice Day & Working From Home

I keep thinking about scenes from Snow Falling On Cedars as the water drips down the roof.

I bribed her to take a nap with the promise of snowflake-shaped brownies.





We worked on spelling her name - which she can now do - and unfortunately, she practiced on more than paper when I was drafting a response to a settlement offer.



That's my couch.


Everything is encased and stopped in time, some looking like shiny encrusted jewels and others like Pompeii victims.





I picked up a few things at the grocery last night in preparation including a tiny set of valentine cookie cutters, perfect for playdough.


The tree behind my husband this evening is now in the street.


My tulips sing softly their promises of Spring.

Warmth for Snowy Weather

Valentines Past

the bottom said
"For You"

but my scanner
wasn't big enough
to capture it all.

Five Links Friday

1. If you don't want to receive a phone book any more, complete the Opt Out form on the Yellow Pages Goes Green site.

2. Umbrella Today.com will send you a text at the time you choose on days when you should take your umbrella.

3. Consolidate to-do lists in one place at Jott.com. You can even dial in on their 800 number and the program will convert your voice note to text. This is really handy on the way home when you think about something you needed to do at the office or vice versa.

4. I just found this helpful post on one of my favorite blogs, Stephmodo, about how to enlarge photos when posting on Blogger.

5. Sign up for Gwyneth Paltrow's online newsletter Goop.com and get great tips on food, books, places to visit and even a little private session with her trainer, Tracy Anderson.

Air & Simple Gifts

This post is... well...it's for me really.

I want to be able to scroll back from time to time and re-visit my favorite moments in the inaugural coverage. I want to remember how proud I am of my country.

In this time.

Here's a link to the transcript of President Obama's Inaugural Address.

I loved this performance of Air & Simple Gifts.


Cried my eyes out listening to it. It captured everything about the day for me and I've always felt that Aaron Copland figured out what it sounds like to be American, so I love that they sample from him too.

This interactive goes through Obama's Team which for me seems like The Super Friends, The Dream Team, political fantasy football. I am so excited to see this collection of brilliant American minds and hearts. I am not a sports fan, but seeing this interactive makes me understand the enthusiasm of sports fans. I want to be on their team, wear the jersey, storm the field. Sign me up! I keep hearing echoes of my constant prayer, "how may I serve?"



And I loved this moment when we can see how important it is to have leaders who know how to love deeply. As my daughter said, "That's our prince and princess!"
At last.

Aged to Perfection

My work as an attorney takes me into long term care facilities quite often. I love getting to know the residents, particularly the seniors, who feel like my lost tribe. My favorites have zero tolerance for BS, are engaging, wise and funny just like this caller on Ellen.
I love it.

New Definitions of Greatness

and my favorite Dr. King quote:

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?'
Expediency asks the question, 'Is it polite?'
But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right."

--Dr. Martin Luther King

Both of these messages are challenges for me this year to do better and to be better.

In Love with: When You Give A Girl A Camera

Have you heard about this project? They describe their site as a mother-daughter photography duet. The work is inspired and I love the play on Laura Numeroff titles like If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, If You Give A Pig A Pancake, etc. Freak out. I love this. A must-add to my bloglines.

I Will Remember This

My new post for Skirt!

Painter/Animator Jeff Scher posted this video on the NYTimes today called, "You Won't Remember This Either," about his toddler and it is so sweet. I love the Amelie-like music he chose, particularly in the background of his words about parenting. God, I love this quote.

"What continues to amaze me about parenting is how it simultaneously expands and condenses time. The days can seem long, but the months fly by. The kids seem to get older in spurts. One day you notice that he isn’t the same guy he was two weeks ago, he’s someone older and new, but he still wants you to unwrap his cheese stick.

It’s hard to believe they won’t remember any of this in their rush to grow up, but I know they won’t. This film is a collection of fleeting glimpses and little moments that would otherwise escape forever."
--Jeff Scher.

If there is one consistent theme in my storytelling {as a photographer, writer, attorney and mother} it is in trying to collect the details that might otherwise escape forever. Some days, it feels like trying to keep snowflakes: impossible to catalogue it all, or even just the salient details.

At home lately, I am learning that the details that matter most to me are distinguishable from those that matter most to my daughter. Of course her details are different. But now that she can tell me what she loves, fears and enjoys, but is still too young to remember, I feel like I should be double historian, trying to get down on paper or otherwise, what she loved about a day that is separate and apart from what I thought about it. Ultimately, when she gets older, there is part of me that wants her to know both: what she thought and felt at the time, and what I thought, neither of which can completely be contained. We could have a court reporter and film crew follow us around and we could never get back to this place. There would never be one complete and accurate re-telling. No amount of cataloguing can capture it all. In some ways, it is a futile endeavor.

In the opening sequence of the 1998 Great Expectations adaptation, Finn {the Pip character} says:

"There either is or is not a way things are. The color of the day, the way it felt to be a child, the feeling of saltwater on your sunburned legs. Sometimes the water is yellow. Sometimes it's red. What color it may be in memory depends on the day. I'm not going to tell the story the way that it happened. I'm going to tell it the way I remember it."

I love everything about that quote {and the amazing Francesco -that's-fun-to-say- Clemente paintings in the film}. I can only write as I remember it from my point of view which is not the whole picture. But I am coming to believe that there never is or is not a way things are, there is only how each of us remembers it, a million different realities. Now I've started thinking about it in relation to the oral tradition of family storytelling. It's all subjective. Who we were as children and how that information shapes us as adults depends on the storyteller. It seems like another example of how important it is to tell ourselves stories a. in order to live (as Joan Didion describes) and b. to tell ourselves about goodness in ourselves and others.

Doing laundry last night, I saw the stains of our break together: syrup from pancakes and little drops of hot chocolate on shirts. They came out in the wash. Gone. I am not so sentimental that I miss the stains, but I do wonder how I will feel folding up these 3T shirts to give away when they no longer cover her arms. They already seem enormous compared to those 3-6 month onesies that were all over the laundry room just seconds ago. So I write about it here. Or I take a photo. I try to keep them somehow even as the souvenirs are washed away.