now we're having fun

i have been plagued by a series of extremely boring dreams lately. a dream in which i drop my cellphone on the ground and a smiling police woman hands it back to me. a dream in which our car is making a funny noise that makes us very nervous. a dream that we are out of wood pellets for the stove. and so on.

please watch the video below and let's pretend that this is my dream instead:

 
 
Let’s walk together 
Let’s run together 
We’ll ride on the back of an elephant 
I’ll hold its tail you hold the tears back 
I’ll hold its tail you hold the tears back 
And we’ll go somewhere warmer 
And we’ll go somewhere new.

he exceeds even the tallest grass

granted, he made me stand half a step behind him for this photo. but still, i think my boy grew bigger and taller while i was away over the weekend.

which is fine with me as long as he stays sweet. isaac and i made a wonderful discovery this week, which is that our immersion blender (a new year's gift from my bruddy) does a nice job of foaming milk. we have been making all kinds of lattes together. isaac's favorite is a chocolate tea latte, made either with chocolate chai from a southern season or red velvet tea.

 






































the history of mothers of sons by lisa furmanski

rabbit rabbit

"And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars."

from Lines for Winter by Mark Strand

i like slow things, the way they happen again and again

scenes from my perfect weekend in cambridge, massachusetts.







































mom and dad have a pied à terre in this lovely old house, under that pretty blue sky.







































we went to the isabella stewart gardner museum, which was packed with people but so much fun to see. it's full of art, luxurious silks and velvets and leathers, (wall coverings, furniture) faded tapestries and books and paintings and crumbling sculptures. it's a wonderful combination of grand and cluttered-eclectic. plus, you can get so close to everything (which makes for some high-strung security guards, not to mention the history of thefts there). also, no photography is allowed, but i snuck this one picture of the lush courtyard at the center of the house.







































here are two of many many delicious foodstuffs we shared this weekend. boston cream pie and banana cream pie (both vegan) at veggie galaxy. so good, i can't even tell you. we also had amazing meals at red lentil and thaitation.







































oh, wallace. he held my ring for me whilst i was receiving a paraffin wax hand treatment from my maman, and despite the fact that i took this picture, i forgot to put it back on. so here i am in portland, maine, sans wedding ring. in addition to the wax museum hands (i wish i'd taken a photo of them--they looked so weird, but felt so good), i also had a massage and was generally spoiled in every conceivable way. we walked in the sunshine and met up with my sweet old friends scott and michael for coffee and watched 30 rock and i got to read books and sleep in and see a great movie. see what i mean about perfect?


trees, their legacy of green, by paavo haavikko

your humble and silky life

emily came over yesterday for a little tea party. also, she taught me how to crochet!

 



































































note emily's gorgeous (gorgeous) blanket (above and below) and my humble (and very first ever) granny square.* she is an extremely patient teacher, and i was pretty proud of my square, even though i'm dubious about my ability to make another one on my own. but that's okay--it's a great excuse for another tea party.

  





































*i bought yarn in melissa crowe blue!

 peonies, by mary oliver

a little birdhouse in my soul

don't mind me, i'm just messing around with my blog template a little bit. i want to make my pictures bigger, maybe. especially the following, which should be entitled, "well hello! and welcome to my bathroom."

ugh, don't ask. well, okay, since you ask: we have one of those house issues that i think of as a twisted kind of rube goldberg machine, all impossibly interconnected. there are pipes in the bathroom that are leaking a bit into the kitchen ceiling. they are old, made of lead, and basically dissolving. and in a tricky place to get to, so we need to rip up the bathroom floor to deal with them. meanwhile, the bathroom, which was "redone" in a really sloppy way right before we bought this house, needs to actually be redone. here's where it gets boring, so let me just wind this up by saying we needed to scrape off all the old floral wallpaper, and we did. and beneath that are walls of utter weirdness. story to be continued.*

below, i present exhibit a, me at work in the wintertime. i don't think i've ever actually taken a photo of my beloved hot bag of corn, made for me years ago by my maman. november through may this thing is my security blanket, constant source of warmth, and pretty much the only reason i can't get along without a microwave. i made isaac and mark each their own hot bags of corn this year for christmas, because they were both stealing mine all the time.

  





































ah, the birdhouse in my soul. have you ever seen a more gorgeous thing? this was a christmas gift from my sweet (absent) brother and sister-in-law. i don't know if it will live here permanently--i keep moving it around trying to find the perfect spot. it is way too gorgeous to go outside, by the way.









































*this story might involve paint. or it might involve beadboard. or tile. or all three! it might involve happy hours of working together to make our (only) bathroom lovely, or it may involve the wringing of hands and great cries of despair. i'll keep you updated.

yes i'm cold

this is my official song of january. i love it so much.

and now for a dream i'm going to call semi-lucid, since at one point i looked around (i was sitting on the hood of my car in my driveway in the sunshine with mark), and said, "hey. hey. is this a dream? seriously, is this a dream?" (mark shrugged.)

i saw some far-off birds in the sky, and said, "if this is a dream i'd like one of those birds to fly down here and land on my finger!" i kind of mentally manipulated a bird-like thing to hop up to me on the ground, but it wasn't quite...right. "that's more like a dog than a bird," said mark. it sort of had fur, and it was remarkably minnow-colored. "that doesn't count."

just then, a bird, a very real bird, tiny and with blue and gray feathers, landed on my finger.

but later, having proven to myself that it was a dream, i forgot. isaac was in fifth grade, and i kept counting on my fingers trying to figure out how many years he'd been at his (elementary) school. the kitchen was full of weird-looking leftover baked goods. there were several squares of a beige-colored birthday cake isaac had brought home from school (the birthday kid's name, he told me, was lucid jonathan*) there was some kind of spun-sugar decorative stuff on top that shattered like glass when i put a fork into the cake.**


*my subconscious was trying so hard to remind me that we were dealing with a dream here! also, i've been listening to bbc radio too much, on which they're constantly talking about the president of nigeria.

**i'm a little embarrassed about how often my dreams involve baked goods.