nobody wise enough
May 31, 2011 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
we went to the farm for the weekend. it’s a most beautiful place. my sons are crazy for it. i only see them when they are hungry, when i make them bring their pond water bodies into the house for baths. we come home with a car full of dirty clothes, special sticks, a small turtle, bags of pecans, two stacks of polaroids, sunburns. jude cries when we leave, every time we go and leave again he mourns for the farm and i wish i could give him his own pond, a cow dotted meadow, woods and fish and chickens and a smooth long driveway that circles around the house.
sky blue sky
May 19, 2011 | Filed Under ordinary | 3 Comments
i had some depressing days last week and couldn’t write over here. this isn’t the place for depressing things, i suppose. sometimes i wish i’d been more anonymous with this blog, that i didn’t know so many real people who may or may not read over here. or maybe even a place that is less of myself, a page of art and garlands and houses and gardens, something easy enough to be detached and impersonal.
so posting every day in may is not to be. i’m okay with that. i’ve been busy at night, after dinner and baths and bedtimes, running and throwing punches and kicks at invisible people with exercise dvds. growing stronger, i hope. drinking more water, maybe a little less coffee. finishing the school year slowly and easily. rearranging furniture and giving things away. little else is happening here, and maybe that’s why i’m in a funk. it’s not a fun place to be. tonight as i pulled grass and tiny, perfect weeds from the dirt of the garden, lola in the sandbox, the boys happy together under the trees, i felt good and light in my heart just for a golden minute. and sometimes a minute is all a body needs to make it up and out again.
nests where they letter and draw
May 11, 2011 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
this was a lost day.
sparking along the road
May 10, 2011 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
evening, just after dark. max and i take a walk after a day buzzing with an undercurrent of child noise. houses blink with lamplight, someone slides open a window, other windowsills have cats looking out into the cricket chirruping darkness. where i live the night is quiet, far away the train moans along a track, cars on a busier road than this blow by. someone has cut their grass. someone has new mulch. a few stars shine bright enough through the orange haze of city lights. there is a girl on rollerblades, a man with a flashlight, looking for his keys, a cigarette being smoked on a porch.
snap!
May 9, 2011 | Filed Under extraordinary, lover | Leave a Comment
my husband spoiled me supremely on mother’s day! apart from the lovey handmade cards and letters and collages and drawings my sons made for me all week long, ernie surprised me with my own (as opposed to “can i borrow your….”) film camera. isn’t she so pretty? he also got me 8 packs of polaroid film for my sx70! and if these amazements were not enough, he’s spending a lot of time on something awesome that i’ll have to reveal later. it’s good to feel so loved. not that i ever really wonder, i’ve got a pretty good heap of loving people in this house with me. i wish i were as good at gift getting/giving/surprising as ernie is. he’s got the knack.
mother
May 8, 2011 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
my mother, me, long, long ago. happy mother’s day to all you mamas out there. having a mother is good.
straight line of green, a pillar stem
May 7, 2011 | Filed Under ordinary | 2 Comments
small, but strong, the cucumber plants smell of cucumbers just as mint smells of itself, rosemary of herself. we worked in the garden, tilling with a tiller big and unwieldy, too big for our space, but what we have on hand. henry, lola and i buy straw for pathways, new plants to go with the seedlings wiry and small in their pots. planted, watered, a little thrill in green and black. i feel the soil, loose from the tiller, the sun slanting sideways at the end of the day. i love burying earthworms back under after turning them up with the shovel, sprinkling the water from the hose in long arches, my thumb pinched in at the end of it. everything new and neatly spaced, no one touching each other, the straw yellow and fresh underfoot. i am working the whole thing this year, big dad tired too soon, done with it for life. i hope i can stick with it when the day goes hot and long, when everything is in a tangle, when the okra is high, the tomato plants weighted down in red, the lettuce wilted and bug bitten.
slashes of light
May 6, 2011 | Filed Under inspired | 1 Comment
these pics are from the house of the eleanors. there are two eleanors, one older, one younger. they live a few minutes away a great little house packed with curiosities and kitties. i want to go with a real camera and take real photographs but as i am camera lazy these days, my phone will have to do. eleanor thought i was sitting in her house texting but i was really taking pictures. i would never sit in her quaint little house and text people, FYI. but shamelessly photograph her stuff? of course.
eleanor the elder also makes some amazing sweet tea. you can watch a video of her making it here. i’m sure you can tell from these pictures that the tea will be all that it should be.
the weekend is here at last. ernie is playing his bass in evita last weekend, this weekend, next weekend. garden work, shrimp and grits, last minute shipping of a mother’s day gift for my mother that i made but did not make out of paper. jude’s last choir concert is on sunday night. he’s very glad to be done with choir. maybe there will be a nap! thrifting? maybe double nights of movies with my love. weekends, the best.
i was high, but she was the sky
May 5, 2011 | Filed Under lists | Leave a Comment
weekday
finishing books
cleaning out closets
attempting to make yogurt
night out at a friend’s house
sucked further into pinterest
frying tortillas
smashing avocados
bath for a dog
bath for dirty summer feet
lego magazines
dishes in piles
sewing stitches
taking pictures
watching the lantana grow
limeade
oatmeal
coffee again
plans for taffy pulling
plans for long weekends
staying up late
getting up late
running late
new freckles
easy to get right next to you
May 4, 2011 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
perfect day, the best kind with wind and sun and nothing hot about it. jude rolls somersaults across a soccer field. henry makes friends that play the way he likes to play. lola swings high into sky and back down again. we don’t go to the park enough. i have a hard time leaving the house at all. even when i want to be somewhere, to see someone, it’s still hard for me to go. we need to do it more, take the sun spilling in streamers over us, take them and run.