wednesday slice of life

i just ate this (in apple). i had these impressions simultaneously:
"oh my gosh, what is this white stuff? gross!"
and
"wow, but kinda good. i think i'll eat the whole thing."

also- i realized today i have been using the same hairbrush since the summer of 1998. i remember buying it - i had to pick one up in london because i had forgotten to pack mine.

let's all smile and enjoy today.

may sarton

i am currently devouring May Sarton's "Journal of A Solitude." i love it so much and have to read it with pen in hand, underlining as i go. its been a singular help to me, too, as i've been dealing lately with what might be a depression of sorts. (big moves and life changes do that to people, i assume). her writing reminds me of the Emerson I read in college- Emerson always revealed a truth about the world, sometimes a sad truth, but bolstered it with some positiveness. she does that for me. here are some May Sarton quotes- i hope you enjoy them as much as i have. she was a prolific writer and i can't wait to read more.

Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help.

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

birthdays

today my best friend from eighth grade turns 29 years old. it is rainy here in dc but she lives in new york. i've been thinking of her all day and hope she's having a special day that she'll remember for a long time. especially if it's raining there.

there's something so solid-seeming about the fact that one of my oldest friends is 29 years old and lives in new york city and works as a photographer for a major fashion magazine. like it somehow means i must have turned out okay too. when we were younger we'd always wonder who we would become, where we would live, who we would marry. and on her 29th birthday, we now know at least more of the story.

but while i feel connected to her success and happy in it, i also feel very far away from her today. it's just strange that october 17 used to be such an important day in my life - a day that i always circled on my calendar and filled up with plans - is now just a normal day, even though i'm thinking of my friend and i sent her a card and will call her tonight.

so- i'm going to go ahead and celebrate her birthday tonight, make today special again. i think i'll try to make that weird meat-and-rice-ball dinner she loves so much: hedgehogs!

on my mind today

is having a dishwasher changing me? i know that sounds like a dumb thing to be thinking about but, during the last five years when i didn't have a dishwasher, i really enjoyed telling people that i didn't have one. it was like being a stubborn old person unwilling to accept new-fangled technology. i liked being like that- it reminded me of how i'm like my dad sometimes.
so now that i have one, i feel that i've become less interesting. it's not that i love doing dishes by hand, i just loved having something different to say about dishwashers. now i have a clean new apartment that was not built in 1910 and has a working dryer and garage door opener and garbage disposal and it's making me feel really ... regular.

(actually, i'm lying- i did have a dishwasher in my old house- i just never learned how to use it. partially by choice, partially because it was the size of a toaster oven.)

i guess i just feel like the modernization of my home life is eroding some of what makes me captivating and/or weird (however you'd like to define it), which is something i like about myself. it's not that i want to start pretending like i don't know how to work my dishwasher. but maybe i will start writing poetry about the joys of not having one.

it's beautiful in austin i know it

look at that face. i wish i was in austin this weekend with my mom and sister and this beautiful baby. she looks like her daddy in this picture but i can see my sister in that attitude. isn't it funny how much you can love someone who can't yet talk? it changes your life, it really does.