summering.

Happy Father's Day to my love. Thank you for embarking with me on the greatest journey.

thinking.

morning Lego's.

It's been a strange few weeks. We're adjusting to the summer-groove, and trying to come up with a bajillion activities to keep Hayden busy when he'd normally be at school. Our town yard sales are happening later this week, and I plan to be out in a sundress, walking around with my boys, looking for jewelry.

My internet has been completely wonky--loading and loading a page but never actually loading it. I've had ample time to clean and rearrange and purge, to spend time in my studio sewing up dresses for me and pants for the boys. My sister-in-law gifted me with a whole bag of fabric, yards and yards of gorgeous florals, one especially beautiful one in white with black and yellow flowers.

Despite all this business, I've been a bit depressed. I'm pretty honest about these things, and I feel that hiding them only creates more desperation for the depressed individual. And it's probably more than a bit. It's more along the lines of "maybe mood-stabilizing drugs wouldn't be a terrible idea". But I don't know. I don't even know what the problem truly is...I can't say that I'm all that dissatisfied with any area of my life...it's just that general "cloud" of fogginess and disinterest and sadness that you hear the commercials talk about. I am extremely reluctant to pursue any sort of drug therapy, not because I'm adverse to drugs as a whole, but because I'm already on so damn much medication for other issues. And I'm irritated at the thought of adding yet another pill to my day.

Having said all that, I'm not without hope, so I suppose that's good. We'll see if it blows over, as it usually tends to do. I'll wake up one day and, for no real reason I can discern, the light will seem a little brighter, my mind a little sharper, and I'll find myself smiling again.

tea towel tote bag

I found this enormous, Pennsylvania-Dutch inspired tea towel at the thrift store, and had to have it. It's made out of really strong linen. It's been sitting on my shelf of found fabrics for a few weeks now, waiting for the proper idea to form. Finally a realized that it would make a perfect tote bag, which I really needed anyhow.

Sometimes, the way I limit my work to what I can find, either in the garbage or at thrift stores and flea markets, kind of bums me out. The temptation to just go to the fabric store and get everything new is so strong...especially when I'm looking at some of the beautiful sewing books out there, and every project calls for such-and-such yards of such-and-such type fabric. But I'm reminded of how much creativity resides within me, within all of us, if we just make do with what we already have. The compliments come pouring in, and I realize I've got to be doing something right.

this is just to share...

...that I am now a pirate. Not by choice mind you, but by chance. I was all geared up to take Hayden for a walk yesterday, when a car drove by at considerable speeds and managed to kick up dust and gravel, some of which must have hit my left eye. Yes. My eye. As in eyeball. Behind my glasses. My glasses are perfectly fine by the way. (This is the sort of thing in life that makes me laugh my ass off. I mean, how did nothing hit my glasses, but a little piece of gravel somehow swooped in behind the lenses at exactly the right angle to hit and damage my eye??? Hilarious!)

So of course, I (sort-of willingly) was driven to the emergency room by my sister-in-law, where I sat for a few hours dripping cold water from a compress. The docs numbed my eye, then put dye in it, and then peered into it with some special contraption, which determined that my cornea was indeed scratched by something-or-other.

So it'll be a week or so of antibiotic eye drops, cold compresses, and sunglasses. Speaking of which, I was super disappointed that I didn't get to leave the hospital with a pair of those enormously bug-eyed sunglasses that the elderly and eye-surgery patients get to wear. But I did swipe a pair of lavender-colored latex gloves, because they were lavender, so I had to have them.

In short, I'm fine. Sun and wind hurt (a lot) and I feel rather squinty and moleish, but other than that, I'm okay. I'm sincerely glad that it wasn't Hayden's eye. Seriously.

gardening, Ellis, and an anniversary.

There are only a handful of things that succeed in slowing down my churning brain. Walking or running, painting, cooking, reading, sex, gardening. I spent all this morning with my bare hands in the dirt, planting rosemary and chamomile, tomatoes, purple peppers, basil and watermelons. I squeezed the dirt into wet clumps, like clay, then broke them apart by rubbing my fingers together. I did not have a single thought in my head, good or bad. I just was.

This past weekend I was in Philadelphia with my husband, visiting my artist friend Nina. We met up at Burlap and Bean Coffee, and eventually was able to hear an amazing musician and songwriter, Ellis. As amazing as her music was (is), what I was really struck by were her words, her conversation with the audience. She talked a bit about a song she wrote called "Let's Go to Yoga", and described the obvious difficulty in learning the poses and disciplines of the practice. But she also talked about how spacious she feels at the end of a class. How we do all these things, our computers and screens, and everything is right up in our faces. How often do we allow ourselves to stretch out, to take up a bit more space for just ourselves? I just loved that she touched on that, loved how she did it.

Important bulletin: Vince and I will be married seven years this Sunday. Seven. I mean, it isn't a lot compared to fourteen or twenty or fifty, but still. It's a lot for us, for how hard we've fought to be together.

Dear Hayden,

Thank you for changing my life forever.

Love,
Momma