august break {№14}

i love it when marketers get it right.  thank you boden, for my personalized uppercase-magazine-esque fall catalog.

august break {№11}

sometimes the ugliness of my work overwhelms my heart and my life and there is no room for light and joy.  sometimes i have to stand in others' trauma and chaos and i struggle with maintaining my own sense of goodness.  working on this...

august break {№10}

today is the day i start yearning for autumn.  every.  single.  year.  farewell summer!

august break {№9}

august break {№8}

upon reflection it appears i am indeed one lucky girl.

and quite grateful.

{for bella's 52 photos project.}

august break {№7}

needed:  less nap, more pep.

august break {№6}

it's going to be a crazy week.  sometime around 2pm today, i'm going to be missing sunday afternoon naps with luca.

august break {№5}

a band of merry girls wishing you a happy happy weekend.

august break {№4}

today i am misty.

august break {№3}

old and long forgotten:  a girl's dream of being a writer.

for bella's 52 photos project.

august break {№2}

tuesday is a good day to manifest it.

august break {№1}

the humble beginnings of an art studio.

see you in september

um, i'm going to need another break. 

a few weeks ago, a little brown bat snuck in my house.  he hid for a few days then reappeared with random fly-bys while i was in bed reading.  bats are sneaky little mofos...he'd swoop and flutter over me (see me frozen with fear clutching my book) then retreat to some unknown makeshift bat cave in the casa.  i slept with the covers tightly secured around my neck, just like when i was eight and certain dracula was making nightly rounds on castro lane.  i couldn't find him until the next day.  as ken was out of town, i was left no choice but to suit up and be all bad ass bat hunter myself.  i knew i couldn't go another night with his shenanigans, so i put on my big girl pants and caught him.  then, animal lover that i am, i let him go in the great outdoors.

i was pretty darn proud of my fearlessness and told the saga with bravado and joked that my little brown bat looked nothing like edward cullen. 

then the rabies stories started showing up on the evening news and in the paper.  who knew that bats are primary carriers of rabies?  and you can't feel it when they bite you?  i didn't even know that if you get rabies, you are almost guaranteed a quick and horrible death. 

i don't know if i was bitten.  but he did have a few nights of stealth access to my bod.  and because i let him go, there was no way to test his little bat brain.  given this, my doctor has ordered rabies shots.  friends, you have no idea how i am so not looking forward to this.  i hate going to the doctor.  i hate needles.  i hate substances in my body that are intended to kill. 

trying to look on the bright side here:  i'm grateful that there is a way to prevent my death, that i have health insurance and i know the series of shots (the thick syrupy burning one with the long needle being the first) will be over before i can say "holy immunoglobulin batman".  i am also grateful for any prayers and sweet mojo you can send my way.

see you soon.

***

update:  eight needles down, four to go.  it actually wasn't so bad.  thanks for the sparkly calm thoughts and prayers friends, i felt them.

a bit of restraint

autumn catalogs, you're killing me here.

paris

a mosaic monday full of little wishes.  please honor the artists here.

romantic summer nights

the superpower to see

abundance in the ordinary.

graceful exits

hello friends. 

last week i mentioned that i'm not so good at asking and set about to make a month of practice, of prayer.  my instinct told me, "be careful what you ask for" and "others need more than you" (i.e. "you don't deserve what you want").   but i believed i could overcome years of conditioning and learn to trust that i was in a place of safety, a place where risk and dreams and prayer cohabitated nicely.

clearly, i am a beginner, a prayer novice.  eight days has yielded more than enough material for me to sort through.  so i'm taking a break from the august break.  i love visiting your blogs and seeing your augusts unfold and will continue to do so.  thank you for coming here and leaving nice comments that always make me smile.  my break will be temporary.

my camera is a happy extrovert, a celebrator of life and beauty and love.  she is not at all interested in the grunt work it requires to help those things manifest.  there is a need right now for me to cocoon and protect and (let's be honest) wallow in the grunt work, so my camera has to take a break from me.

impermanence becomes vivid in the present moment; so do compassion and wonder and courage. and so does fear. in fact, anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness. that’s when our understanding goes deeper, when we find that the present moment is a pretty vulnerable place and that this can be completely unnerving and completely tender at the same time.

-pema chodron

good things in the post

{the squam journal available here.}

space