Today I asked my students what the greatest gift they ever received was.
The Greatest Gift I ever Received:
Watching Whales Leap Through Washington Water.

Lynchburg spoiled me with December snow, frosty ground.
and now there is no December snow,
only December heat wave and dew on grass.
December snow, where art thou?

It is quite possible that my boyfriend, former All-American baseball player & Major League Baseball draftee who hits fifty home runs a season, is more domestic than I am.
Tonight he tells me about how he irons his clothes and does his laundry every night.
I stare at the worn clothing accumulating in the corner chair of my room.
This morning he tells me about the pepperoni and egg omelet he made, all before 6:45 am.
I scarfed down a pop-tart before running out the door at 7:43am.

Currently, he is cleaning his house for company.
Currently, I am allowing a mess to exist.

I tell myself that, despite my best efforts, I will never be an immaculate housekeeper.
My socks will not match.
I will not fold my underwear.
There will always be a corner for clothes classified in the "not quite dirty and can still be worn category."
I will always leave cabinet doors open.
I will always put dishes back in a different place.
The comforter will always be crooked.

After all, it is what it is.

Fashionista-ing

Van Gogh admired fashion, too. I find her outfit very inspiring.

I am sitting in a seat in our sun room and I got to thinking about what I wear: Now, black leggings and my dad's over-sized flannel shirt and gray socks, and I am comfortably in bum-mode (I'm usually in bum-mode when I write, actually.)
But, I like clothes, regular-fancy clothes almost as much as my bum-mode clothes.
Then I thought about my clothes-wearing philosophy.

1) If you like it, it does not matter what somebody else thinks, and you shouldn't think about what someone else thinks anyways. Don't stifle yourself by thinking about others' opinions.
2) If you like it, you can probably find it cheaper somewhere.
3) If you like it, it will probably eventually be on sale.
4) Don't be afraid to wear color.
5) Don't be afraid to wear neutrals, either.
6) It's always a good idea to balance color & neutrals.
7) Who says stripes & patterns don't go together? You can get away with harmonious clashing.
8) Textures are cool-- lace is great.
9) Textured tights are even cooler.
10) Scarves: yes please.
11) Different shades of the same color= always lovely.

12) Be not afraid of thrift stores.
13) Be not afraid of Modcloth, Tulle, H&M, Anthropologie, Chelsea & Violet, and J.Crew in moderation.
14) I like long sweaters & cardigans.
15) I like stripes & flowers.
16) Wear a flower or a feather in your hair.
17) Life's too short for boring shoes.
18) Invest in good boots. Invest in a good coat with detailed buttons.
((Once I spent 220 dollars on boots and I was nervous, but they are worth every penny. When I was crossing the street in Seattle, some woman called out of her car: "I love your boots!" See, totally worth it.))
19) Think of your clothing as tangible poetry. "A poem to be worn."
20) Dichotomies work in clothing, too. Refer to #7 and harmonious clashing.

Maybe I'll think of more later.


musthaveshoes.com
Never have I ever regretted these boots.

Irene's weakened weekend fury looms near, and we sit & wait for what she brings. What an unwelcome house guest she is, but what can we do?
Wait.
I've never liked the name Irene. When I was a little girl I was dreadfully scared of a cafeteria monitor named Irene. She was work-weary and intolerant. She stole our retainers if we accidentally threw them away. (I never threw mine away.)
I wish I could terrify students. Maybe I'll start stealing their retainers.
Irene. Ugh.
The cat snuggles his fuzz blanket as I read-- and the world seems a little less boring with all of this natural disaster talk. I didn't do anything today besides read Jane Eyre and plan a lesson for school next week. School next week. Summer and her laissez faire leaves us; Irene and her grumpy, boisterous self barges right in.
Sounds about right.
You within earshot of this blog, please pray for we east-coasters who have decided to wait out the storm under our own wind-battered roofs.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
-Carl Sandburg

No wonder I love it. (it being poetry)

Sigh, I'm boring.

What I don't like:
Finding grammatical mistakes in previous posts . . . grr! Grammar makes me feel like a failure on a regular basis.

There are "do" shoes and there are "don't" shoes, and I will follow up on this post soon because I have an idea.

But, as a rule, don't do flip flops unless you are at the beach, in the shower post-workout, or at Wal-Mart, or, if you must do flip-flops, they have some sort of unique adornment to them, otherwise they are a mediocre addition to a possible stellar outfit. I do not intend offense to flip-flop lovers everywhere; I only wish to inform people that life is just too short to wear boring shoes.

Loved this.

DATE A GIRL WHO READS by Rosemarie Urquico
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

Detroit, MI

Norfolk airport with morning coffee in hand, unceremoniously tossed in the trashcan: a last sip of home before two flights, soaring through a garden of clouds, the Sears Tower & Great Lakes dwarfed from above, and a frenzy of (belligerent) Detroit drivers, a wedding to chronicle with the only thing I brought with me besides two sweaters and Harry Potter: a camera.
Photography requires active observation. You have to see things not just as they are, but how
they could be.



A scary task before me: to commemorate the union of two lovers' separate lives: their marriage.
I have no education when it comes to holding the camera. I am comfortable teaching English; I've a Master's degree in this field. I am comfortable with nouns and adverbs and commas and semicolons. I know the technicalities of my language. I know criticism & theories. When it comes to the camera, I don't even know the rules. I've tried to learn them, but they elude me. Maybe one day I'll understand, but maybe there is a freedom in not knowing, a learning to love the questions.


I dropped a camera two Octobers ago, dashing it to bits. I received a new camera for Christmas, a camera capturing colors & grace the beauty of things. I didn't know I could do that. Taking pictures became a therapeutic escape from reading & books & academia. Thus, I didn't want to learn the rules, the technicalities. I just wanted to see the world around me differently, capturing the bits of beauty God in His graciousness provided along my path.
Now, in July, a call to create not just for me but for others: a call to photograph a wedding. A beautiful church, enough light but dark, orange tinged walls, and blue, purple, green, yellow, pink, brilliant stained-glass. Candles glow and guests gather. I gulp; this sanctuary is big and I don't know where to stand. I should know the light but I don't. I should know how to pose people but I don't. All I've got is reliance on God to see what I need and a finger to press a shutter button.
Reliance on God through travel & doing something out of your comfort zone is rest and vitality eclipsing fear. Do not let fear shape who you become. Set the following statement on repeat and hope it seeps into the brain. Clicking the shutter brings comfort when fear invades. God has not given us a spirit of timidity. His plan was in place long before I gave it a thought; He taught me it's okay to fall away from my own plan & trust the one eternally engraved by Omniscience.
Back home, looking at the lessons He taught this weekend. I sit back and think about the airport and the rental car and the wedding and Detroit: a beautiful weekend of trust & obedience, the warmth of others, gratitude and patience, provision and prayer. Not just "Dear God let me have this; let me be safe" praying. A deep abiding prayer to the One who wrote even this journey into my book to let be what is, and to accept help from He who willingly gives it, and to accept help from strangers who also can give. I pray to give in the manner in which I have been given, and this weekend was a blessing and a chance to overcome the choking fear that holds us back.

A day to stave off summer storms with breakfast for dinner & oreo rice-krispy treats. A day to turn up the music in the kitchen, sing to Adele at the top of our [my] lungs and pretend to dip & sway as though we [I] were in the middle of a grand ballroom somewhere in European mountains.

I always dream when I bake.


No longer in a kitchen, I am halfway around the world where color swirls on an open-aired dance floor: castles in the air sprinkled into mashed Oreo crumbs.

.

I never fret when I bake. No thoughts of future, only thoughts of now. Marshmallows & butter melt together in the microwave; fears of tomorrow melt away, too: it's just me & the music, my out of tune voice trying to reach crescendoed mountains it will never know; my heart no longer sputtering as it tries to hide the strain of doubt.

When it is finished, the air is changed, even just for a little while: the smell, the smiles, the peace, the gratitude. Baking is completion and creation: both are difficult to come by in a place of fragment and frenzy.




Here you see that it was good.

A quiet summer day, the only noise is the tin pitter-patter of where water hits the roof and the click-clack of computer keys. Four hours in front of a screen, creating more screens which will become ink-stained on paper, trying to remember what predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives are, trying to make them all sound somewhat interesting to eleventh-grade students, trying to sort out my soul all at once. Something about the nitty-gritty details of grammar makes you want to grapple with your own run-ons, fragments, comma splices, misplaced modifiers, split infinitives. The study of grammar forces you to name what you know intuitively. The study of grammar forces you to clean up your messes, whether they're in the form of sloppy prose or otherwise. Grammar teaches me organization: I can declutter a paragraph, but what of a heart? Strunk & White recommend omitting needless words, stripping a sentence to its essentials, making your verbs sing, doubting the extraneous: are those adjectives necessary in stating your purpose? Are the adverbs only going to muddle your path, distracting you from what's important?
I imagine myself taking the podium this fall, hair back, pale cardigan, nutmeg lipstick, a kind smile that oft invites mischief: "See kids, your life is a sentence in which you want to fill strong, active verbs. Read. Write. Sing. Befriend. Smile. Give Thanks. Prance. Pray. Seek. Guide. Love. Omit all the fancy stuff: declutter your words; declutter your life. Understand the functions of words so that you can live more fully."
I imagine blank stares, 20 of them: "So why do I need to know what a split infinitive is?"
"To not know would be tragic," I answer them, sarcasm leaking from my words.
The only answer I know is that grammar is spiritual and to know its structure is to know an attribute of a God who creates Order from chaos. A friend once whispered to me that God is His Giver of Structure. I didn't really understand what he meant. Now I do.
Grammar gives us boundaries; it structures language.
God gives us a life, sentence by sentence. He punctuates our path, sometimes with a period, sometimes with a comma, sometimes with a question mark. We must choose our words carefully, asking for guidance from the One who etches the letters of our story onto eternal paper, trusting the One who gracefully gives structure.
"The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." Psalm 16:6

July 4th: red, white, blue, baseball, and kitten.

A Screen Room

A wooden room was built by hand; some rustic wreaths were woven with ribbon; a window opened to a green forest-world; a sanctuary was created for morning coffee, moonlit laughter, summer thunder, and reading books. I decorated it, some of it--
Mason Jars spray-painted (I managed not to get paint everywhere for once); wreaths (from Michael's) purchased on sale; ribbons, feathers, and birds were not on sale, alas!

Lynchburg Weekend

Cotton Southern Bistro on Cedar Road where I ordered 4 side dishes on accident.

First, let's get one thing straight: I'm not a "crafty" person in the sense that I can make really retro-chic jewelry holders out of vintage silverware (though I do admire those people). I am not a painter, an illustrator, or anything of the sort. I often lack the precision necessary to execute effective crafts; in fact, normally when I attempt to "execute" a craft, that's what typically happens--
it is executed (as in . . . it dies).
However, I often tell my students that "lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Today I had a brief lapse in the planning department yet manged to assuage the emergency with . . . a craft. I thought I would share because, while it is not the most technically perfect piece, I thought it was salvageably clever and unique. So, I give you,
"The Wedding Card Silhouette." (Because Anne was too forgetful to buy a wedding card in advance.)
Materials:
I used white cardstock
I used a magenta sharpie
I used facebook to (creepily stalk) find a picture of my friends
I used a printer to print the photograph (nothing fancy here!)
I used scotch tape & scissors to well, tape and cut . . .

Process:
1) Find picture. I purposely chose one that would make a good silhouette, meaning I looked for a shot that showed their features without a great deal of detail.
2) Cut outline of picture out.
3) Tape picture to cardstock.
4) Color cardstock. (You could also use paint; this might make your project neater & fancier.)
5) Remove outline
6) Voila!


7) Now write stuff . . . Joyfully Wed!

Up next: painting vases . . .

Brief thoughts from reassembling my room:

I have lots of memories squashed into this little place, a small room in a big house in a small neighborhood in a medium-sized city in upper-middle class suburbia that was set aside just for me when I was five. First I had white furniture and a canopy bed, then I had brown furniture and red curtains, now I have clutter-junk heaped on my floor. If only those clutter-junk heaps didn’t mean anything to me, but nostalgia sweeps away the dust and memories seep out of the “things.”
Memories piling on the bottom of my closet, memories emerging from underneath an antique poster bed that takes up too much space, memories stashed in boxes--some things are stashed in closed boxes for a reason. (Lessons learned far too late and still so many to learn too late.)
Memories etched by gel pens in bright-colored journals. Memories drawn by colored pixels hanging on the walls. Memories aroused by all sorts of clothing.
Memories of my grandmother in the canary music box; memories of my first kiss in the New York & Co. halter top with orange flowers; Memories of Wyoming rain in a Turkish scarf; Memories of life abroad and Shakespeare’s dust upon my silver sandals, English gum still stuck to the bottom of them (how did I ever traipse around the UK in those sandals?); Memories of a thesis proposal defense in a gray dress, memories of a first date in another gray dress. Memories of spunky students who said they would miss me and always remember me found in a yellow folder; Memories of Niagara Falls soaking my shoulders in a dingy navy blue tank-top; Memories of baseball games in dilapidated ticket stubs (I was so excited about those ticket stubs, once); A scarf that saw the Rocky Mountains & a scarf (or 6) purchased on a San Francisco street; leggings that were washed by the Pacific Ocean; jeans that were rarely washed the year I wrote my thesis; a hat that hiked down into the copper Grand Canyon; an ODU sweatshirt worn during movie nights with my college friends; those platform sandals that clicked-clicked-clicked down the dorm hallway (the ones I wore with sweatpants, sometimes). Memories of my cousin’s wedding in a bouquet of silken purple; memories of thrift-store shopping with mom in a stained-glass lamp. Memories of my first (and last) college party in a black, lacey top; memories of weddings in swishy, pastel dresses; memories of the excitement of high-school softball games in a royal blue jacket (how proud I was of that jacket once); memories of middle-school basketball in a fading certificate that says “D.O.B.”: distributor of bruises (what a lovely title that was). So much life found in this little room. It was on my floor I prayed to God for the first time and it was in here when I had the hardest conversation I’ve ever had in my life. Some memories I’ve tucked away in a small corner drawer and others I’ve given away; some I’ve thrown into plastic bags never to be seen again. I've been through some changes and so has this little place-- the place where God calls me and where I answer Him, and these four walls contain the memories with which He’s shaped my soul—and now we’re making it new.

In baseball, I believe a hitter's confidence is key, and that sometimes his thoughts are mightier than his bat.
Some fall victim to the "dark cloud": believing you've failed before you actually have. Sometimes this is also called "stinkin' thinkin'." I stand guilty of this mentality.
But,
I have a sweet friend who, after I strike out in slow-pitch softball, gently tousles my hair after I mutter an ugly word on accident because I am mad that I swung at bad pitches.
There was a runner on third base and we were down by two runs and a base hit would have changed the whole game (in theory) . In my uncharacteristic fury, he tells me that, in the morning, this momentary failure will be inconsequential, and he tells me not to listen to the voices in my head that say I'm an easy out or that I am terrible at this game or that I am nothing that a disappointment. This friend tells me that I am worthwhile and that I should stop comparing myself to others and that I should stop comparing myself to the softball player that I was ten years ago when I was a decent athlete with resolute determination.
That athlete once wanted to catch a foul ball so badly that she ran into a fence with all of her might, thus smashing her metatarsals to fragments.
That aforementioned friend still took me to prom that year despite my transient handicap, so I hobbled around a hotel ballroom in an ivory gown-- I decorated my crutches, even. I still remember a teacher asking me if I wanted to go to prom because of my injury. In my head I thought, "of course"; out loud I said "I guess so." Sometimes I don't speak aloud the extent of what I am thinking.
That broken foot and prom date was 9 years ago, in May.
Some things I thought I had left far behind in my past have actually met me in my present.
I didn't think the determined, hustling athlete remained in me; I didn't think I was capable of that competitive fierceness anymore; those voices of self-doubt on the playing field had long since disappeared (until that moment last night).
I also didn't think that sweet person who befriended the girl with the broken foot would set his gentle hand on my head, tousle my hair, touch my cheek, and tell me that strikeouts don't matter and that they'll be long-forgotten in the morning. With that, he hands me my glove and I run to the outfield (staying clear of any fences that can apparently break feet).
The dark cloud dissipates for now, but I try to talk to God in the outfield so that I don't screw up anymore.
He tells me that screwing up in softball does not equate to screwing up in life.
So then I decide to talk to God about all of my other recent and not so recent screw-ups.
He tells me, "as far as the east is from the west."
God forgets our strike-outs too:
Imagine that.

Tonight,
Scrutiny scares me,
Stevie Nicks comforts me,
Silent thoughts intrigue me,
Sorrows sober me,
Stories sustain me.

Helpful & pretty . . . say . . . cheese!