some things

maybe today is the first chilly day of autumn.
maybe i spent thirty minutes this morning taking phone pictures of myself.
maybe i went on a date to the symphony and remembered that i want to listen to debussy all of the time.
maybe my desire to bake bread will go away soon.  probably not.


p.s. i am simply dying to go to a farmers' market. anyone else?
also,
i have been reading lots of this (don't judge) and loving this.

destination : north austin medical center

apparently there were some experiences i needed to have before i entered my thirties.  so, i spent the eve of my thirtieth birthday in the emergency room, being tested for brain and heart damage and getting stitches on my chin after a strange fainting spell.

lesson here: my thirties demand blood sacrifice.

lesson there: i am a victorian waif afterall.

autumn project I

i spent most of the day yesterday with j + v who have been hard at play learning the ins and outs of brewing their own mead.  apple pie mead, strawberry mead, pina colada mead, mead mead! part of their operation follows a low-tech process that has been dubbed "macgyver mead," as the materials used in the brew itself and the storage and implements used to facilitate the process can be found around the house or at the market. we sampled apricot and blackberry mead and discussed how one would go about brewing mead inside of a pumpkin.  take that macguyver. autumn project number one?  yes!

lost + found post

Creative Creativity: Inspiration and Tools for Creativity
David Wahl

Everyone remembers being afraid of dark spaces as a child. Even the shadowy space under your bed was a potential monster hideaway. The bigger your imagination, the worse the monsters you imagined.

A friend of mine posted her 7-year-old son Chester's school project on Facebook. To celebrate their one hunderth day of school, his teacher asked each student to bring in a hundred of something. He decided to bring a list of one hundred monsters.

At first, as with all scary things, it seemed like there were an infinite number of monsters. So many monsters, in fact, that he decided to group them into tens. Ten dragons, ten cryptoids, ten movie monsters... Also, it wasn't enough to just have the name, he had to look up each one and learn about it. He then painstakingly wrote each one, learning how to spell even the Kaiju monsters. With each step the list got more and more manageable until, toward the end, it was hard to even come up with enough monsters to finish.

It struck me how helpful it would be when you are faced with completing an impossible, scary project to list your monsters. Sometimes just a blank piece of paper is the terrifying dark closet that contains everything that scares you into inaction.

Instead of letting yourself get overwhelmed by fear and inertia, why not list out all the things that are stopping you from starting? Get a piece of paper and write them out. Break them into sections if you want, anything to make them more manageable.

In fact, try and list a hundred things preventing you from moving forward. It's not easy to do. I bet it's hard for you to get past twenty. You can start with the teacher in the fifth grade who told you that you'd never amount to anything and then move on to that nasty commenter on your blog that tells you that it's hard to read your writing because there are so many grammatical mistakes and run on sentences.

Once you see the monsters all laid out neatly on a piece of paper, I bet they're no scarier than Spongebob Squarepants. Who, if you look carefully at the picture above, you'll see in the Sea Monster category between the Gloucester Serpant and Gill-Man.

Image copyright 2011 ampersand duck

remember the tooth! (and a road trip)

after having my wisdom tooth (#32) pulled out on friday afternoon, the handsome man gave me chocolate pudding and we got back in the car for a road trip to dallas for the weekend. i was loopy on medication, frustrated by only ingesting sweet flavored liquids, had dozens of creative ideas sparked off by the training during the day, and much love and laughter the whole time. - although i had trouble opening my mouth very wide, so i had to giggle through mostly closed lips. also, i had a fabulous mango smoothie at denny's, of all places.

thank you dallas + see y'all again soon!

xo

an unexpected turn

impacted wisdom tooth: excruciating, writhing pain. as i am not usually in pain, this vantage point has offered up some interesting observances. namely, that all of my senses are heightened when i'm in extream pain. everyone seems to be yelling (or meowing very very loudly,)sleepy but can't sleep, just want to feel better soon.

invention

this evening i'll be leading one of my first, of hopefully many, art and design workshops. a truly exciting way-point on my map, and one that i am passionate about.