The Ever-Rising Tide

In reading about the writing process for Away We Go, I learned that the married screenwriters of the film {Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida) don't have internet at home.


Dave Eggers was quoted in this interview as saying, "For us, to be able to concentrate, we don't have internet at home, for example, because we had to put a levee up against that ever-rising tide. That's the way for us to control our intake. There's a lot of media really affected by all these changes, but what's funny is that the book world has kind of stayed constant. Sales are about what they always were, we've found."

Wow. I admire their discipline and it must be working based on their success and quality of their work. And it's not like he's a ludite or something. He hosts a website himself.

While we are not good candidates to give up the internet, there is a larger message I can take from his point about how important it is to limit media consumption when you are trying to create. Everything I produce creatively as a photographer or writer or attorney is certainly affected by all of the media changes. For the most part, it has been a good thing. I am accustomed to creating with the short hand convenience of hyperlinking so that the reader can easily hear the song, see the film clip, read the case I am referencing, etc. But this sensory supplement does make it more difficult for me to make things quiet. Sometimes I wonder as a writer if it is lazy to just show the thing, whatever it is, rather than find a creative way to describe it.

Over the past couple of years, I have tried to quiet the house and streamline. I canceled the home phone, redirected email addresses to one in-box, cut off cable, canceled TiVo, unsubscribed to most newsletters and junk mailers, and yet, it still feels like a constant barrage of information: texts, emails, mail, voice mails, updates.

I will work on how to do more, just after I check my email.

Pop-Up Time

The shelving system collapsed in my daughter's closet last week, thankfully without anyone under it. After doing an inventory, it appears that it was the holiday book collection that put us over the weight limit. Even still, you can't have enough holiday books. Right? We are really enjoying working our way though our collection of holiday books, movies and music.


This week, we're turning the pages of:
Christmas At The Zoo.
You Are My Miracle
The Sweet Smell of Christmas
The Grinch
The holiday pop-up books from Robert Sabuda
The Berenstain Bears Trim The Tree
If You Take A Mouse To The Movies {aka The Popcorn Book in our house}
A Snowy Day
The Little Drummer Boy
Snow
Olive The Other Reindeer
Little Tree inspired by the sweetest poem by ee cummings

"The little tree had found his own special place that was waiting for him all his life." Chris Raschka

Here's a lovely list of holiday reading recommendations from SouleMama and another even better one here.

What are your favorite holiday books?

Feeling Grateful About The Details

1. Lit books courtesy of Ikea and my dad's handy work when he was here in September.
2. A turkey painting from my girl.
3. My husband writing his dissertation as the sun comes up.
4. Catching snow flakes on her tongue last night.
5. A turkey day card I picked up. I love the composition.
6. The happy holidays sign I picked up at Michael's.
7. My girl's hands.
8. The puppers with a pink sunset-pink-sky behind her.
9. A new lamp for our girl's room. I've been eying this one forever.

Coming Up For Air

-I've started writing several posts for this blog in one sitting and scheduling the publish dates so that there should be new material even on days when I'm away for work. Plus, it is such a gift when I check bloglines and see that I have a new post that I've forgotten about. A little piece of sanity back.

-The 29 gifts in 29 days project is so much fun and so easy. Give it a shot if you have the slightest interest.

-I'm in love with Bento boxes and have had the most fun searching for the perfect one for each of us to use for our lunches.

-Why is it that some hotel rooms are so peaceful? The good ones have figured out how we live and also, how to have closed storage and clean surfaces. I am working on creating more of that in my home. It has become a bit of an obsession.

After doing some research and finding this great post: zen habits: a guide to creating a minimalist home, my new project it to ask myself in every room and every drawer, "what is essential?"

I love the suggestion in this article that, "the key is to remove the unnecessary stuff." It is a life philosophy.

I have trouble keeping my head above water in the small house. Putting things away and cleaning is a full time job for all of us. My husband is even more diligent about it than I am, and still, so much of our time is spent trying to find homes for things loose about the house. I think I have figured out the problem. We have no storage space and yet, I'm keeping things as though I do.
No more.

It is so so liberating.

What's more, I realized that I was "storing" every emotion that I associate with each object as well. Freeing up space is literally helping me feel there is room for more good things to come into our lives.

Paper Product Obsession #456

Hallmark somehow knows about me.
They know that I love to smell scotch tape, obsess about stationary and freak out over a beautifully wrapped package.
Either they know or it's just a coincidence that they came up with this OMG self adhesive wrapping paper.
I admit that I've watched the demo video of how it works more than once.
Love it.


I know. Dork-town, party of one.

Passages

It begins slowly.

We put away the tiny socks, the mobile, the gemini. I folded up the onesies. The bottles and black and white patterned toys go to Goodwill.

Then the pace of everything escalates: the boppies have no more use, the baby tub, the high chair, the things I tied on the crib rails that sing, the pack-n-play.

Just as these items trickled into my home one-by-one, their names new to me like learning the vocabulary of a new language, they rapidly outlive their usefulness for my once very tiny soft baby, who now tries to stand on them or use them to build forts.

The gear in the storage area begins to talk to me at night: asking me why I'm holding on to it.

Someone else could be using me.

Are you sure I will be used again?

Will I be outdated when you turn on my switch next time?

I ask myself the same question.

The smaller gear is not as pushy about leaving.

The pacifiers went away in February.

The diapers in May, and with them, the changing table.

The crib is coming down this weekend.

It is the last vestige of the way her room looked the day we brought her home from the hospital.

It's exciting to watch her (and her room) evolve from baby to young girl. And it is a reminder at how fast it all happens.

I once came home from College (753 miles from home) unnannounced. I was the last to go away to school, and the last to leave an empty room behind. When I opened the backdoor by the kitchen, my mother was standing at the end of the long hallway, carrying a laundry basket into the guest room where she folds clothes. She stopped and glanced up at me and continued walking. When I said her name, she ran back into the hallway saying, "Oh my God! It's really you!"

"But, you just looked at me," I said.

"I see you girls here all the time. I didn't think you were actually here."

I know what she means now.

I walk into my little baby girl's room now and I still see her learning to crawl, pulling up on things, even when she walks past me to put on her clothes

all by herself.

Summer Recipe

• add salt
• chips
• salsa
• mango
  
• cold beverage
• a sunkissed afternoon
• and my new favorite song (If I Had Eyes, by Jack Johnson)
  
• repeat if necessary
  

Welcome Summer! We've missed you.

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
-Anais Nin.

Quote discovered in Ali Edwards's wonderful collection of quotes archived here.

This morning in my yard...a new addition. I hope I can keep her happy here.


Morning dew in morning light.


My husband (in the watch) buying vegetables at the Farmer's Market today.


The first pant of Summer. It's good to be warm.

"Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." -Henry James.

Discovered in Laura Stoddart's beautifully illustrated, The Sweet Life: Reflections on Home and Garden.

Unlikely Inspiration

I found these post-it style vocabulary cards on the bargain table of a local bookstore in both French and Italian.


The graphics, fonts and color combinations are really great.


I've had these awkwardly shaped frames from Target without anything to go in them..until now.


It's a fresh summer day just passing them in the hall.

Tiny Living

This site looks like an endless source of creative ideas for living in small spaces.

Heaven=art+books+music+the beach

Painter Faye Christian Phillips told me about Karin Jurick's work featured in this slideshow below.

The music, I believe, is by Stan Getz who is played so often in our house, I feel like he lives with us. The work is great, but the presentation is even better. It feels like a rainy Sunday afternoon.
ps- my favorites are The Sari and Refresher Course...and Boston Books too!
**per request, the song featured is "Tonight I Shall Sleep with a Smile on My Face" which can be found on this record, Getz/Gilberto #2 Recorded Live at Carnegie Hall.

Shiny Sparkly Treasures

I bought this Cold Toes, Warm Heart print from Emily Martin's Store, The Black Apple, on Etsy a while back and have since followed the creative blog kept by the artist.

(The quilt reminds me of one my husband's great-grandmother made. The girl reminds me of my sisters and my favorite Little House books from my childhood. Remember that story in Little House in the Big Woods -I think- about the outdoor bath tub under the stars over warm coals with a quilt hanging just over the top of the bath to keep that warm water in? Just me? Okay, nevermind...)

Things are really starting to take off for this artist with an upcoming March 11, 2008 appearance on Martha. Her post today about a collection of buttons is absolutely lovely and reminds me of an interview I once read with Minnie Driver where she said that she is like a magpie filling her home with shiny things. I love that treasures can come in many forms.

This morning, my daughter sat on my dresser going through my big chunky beaded necklaces (most of them Target and flea market purchases over the years). She is at an age where rocks and marbles, and large beads are precious gems. It's all about texture and color for her. She pitched an expensive item on the floor to get to cheap stuff that feels better in your hands. I want to get back to that. I think I need to take her jewelry shopping. Or maybe go for some buttons.

Snow Water

Yesterday's snowflake reminded me of a Michael Longley poem called Snow Water. In the poem Longley, a "fastidious brewer of tea, a tea Connoiseur as well as a poet, " asks the reader to bring him the gift of snow water to make his tea on his 60th birthday.

You can listen to him read it here. I love the quietness of the poem, like the gorgeous camera work in Snow Falling on Cedars of melting water droplets from leaves and pine needles.

We heard Longley read this poem in Sligo on his 64th birthday. The next day he gave an interview and talked about how his writing is changing as he ages:

"...I'm interested in getting simpler. I think that's the real challenge: to be polite and graceful and simple. The drift is towards being less and less “artistic” and simpler, and rising to, you know, the directness of the late self-portraits of Rembrandt or the last string quartets of Beethoven. I don't mean to say they aren't complex, in their conception and execution, but the effect is direct and simple."

This poem is great too about a family retreat home. "Home is a hollow between the waves..." is my favorite part.

Though Distance & Duties Divide Us

Photojojo is a great resource. Yesterday, they posted about another blog 3191: A Year of Evenings that is so enchanting. Two friends now live 3191 miles apart, so every night, each friend takes a photo and they post them side-by-side in a shared blog. Check it out here 2.15.08.

Potpourri Continued

I was thinking about some old Trisha Yearwood lyrics this morning, "Don't even want a drink. Give me some chocolate and a magazine..." Truely. Few things rival.

I hope that all of you are blessed with one moment a week that is yours - just yours. I'm still working on it. I am thrilled that substantial house cleaning cannot go on in the cottage while my daughter is asleep. This blog would never exist, I would never edit photographs, or bill any time outside of my office if the house was big enough that it wouldn't wake her for me to clean. I look around and there are a million things that I should be doing right now, but it is supposed to be quiet in the house, and that necessity forces me to take some time. This is a great gift to me.



Why is it that we can't just be without guilt that we should be doing something else, absent extraneous factors forcing us to take a breather? I personally put too many contradictory expectations on myself. If you can find a moment, I recommend spending it in one of these super cozy jackets:

.
with a packet of Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate in your coffee and some magazines. Speaking of which, did you hear that Blueprint will not be printing regularly anymore? This is the last issue for a while:


However, their blog, bluelines, is asking for reader feedback. Victoria is back, but the jury is still deliberating on whether it has the same charm as the last run.

Bedside Table Fodder

This lovely image is from a new-to-me favorite blog devoted to finding and recommending good books. Stop by before cashing in the bookstore gift cards for some thoughtful recommendations that might not otherwise be on your radar.

I heart Etsy

Twice this month, I found something for my daughter for the holidays that was promptly recalled because of lead paint (a Curious George tool bench and a Fisher Price Medical Kit). This has me thinking about a trip I took to Munich in December and how all of the toys sold in the square seemed like they were made in Santa's workshop: wooden parts, hand-painted without chemicals. If you ever get the chance to go to Munich during their Christmas market, GO!






Photos courtesy of the Munich Christmas market site. I'll try to post some of my own closer to Christmas.

So, in search of thoughtful, hand-made goods that support artists, I've found some beautiful, affordable things for her at Etsy.

For example, at this lovely little Etsy boutique called Robin's Egg Pink (how sweet is that) I found these pretend cupcakes...



...and a precious apron


to go with the wooden pastel kitchen that Santa has indicated he will be bringing. I bought them late Friday night and they were at my door in the most adorable robin's egg blue and brown decorative box with pink ribbons on Monday morning. I just love it. I may have to go back to her shop to get one of her toddler afternoon tea jackets.



Etsy has gifts for everyone. Where else can you get a shirt like this?



I keep an Etsy link in the right hand column of this blog year-round to search for items by color which is so much fun. This time of year, searches like "mittens" "christmas cards" and "scarf" yield great results. Happy searching!

Gratitude on Veteran's Day

Special thanks to my dad for his service. Safe return home and sincere thanks to the men and women serving today. On my last flight back home, I saw a large group of soldiers in Dallas waiting for a connection. It was all I could do to not go up to each one and thank them. I probably should have.

Seaworthy Living

About once every 6 months or so, our 1300 square foot stone cottage starts to swell. You can almost see the house's pulse from the street. I re-arrange and re-organize and purge clutter and try to set up new play areas for my daughter's toys, the dog's toys, the cat's neuroses, my husband's books and my bags. And then, I start feeling antsy under the pressure, and before I know it, I'm wandering over to the local Realtor website of area listings.

Of the thousands of listings, there is usually only one that peaks my interest and then I obsess about it, decide that ultimately it won't work for some reason or another, and then re-commit to the cottage, promising to be a better resident, devoted to finding new creative solutions to the challenges of a small space. I have always dreamed of living at sea, and this is a nice trial run at togetherness. We just need those nautical cabinets in the house with latches to secure everything and clean off the surfaces.

A year ago, we found the perfect house for us and it sold within 5 hours of going on the market. But in retrospect, we were secretly relieved that it sold so fast, because if it hadn't, and we were actually confronted with all of that space, it would have been a difficult decision.

For all of the challenges of a small house, I am comforted that no one is ever alone in the cottage, that one load of laundry can make the entire house smell like clean cotton, that cooking in our kitchen is always done elbow to elbow. You can't stay mad at anyone in the cottage because, like being on a boat, there's just not space to walk away. Music is shared. Dancing is encouraged. Cuddles are sometimes accidental. But it's home.

I just have to remind myself, each time I feel an impluse to take on more of a mortgage, how wonderful it is to have a cozy English cottage that we can fill up with books and tea and brio trains.