return

Some people I know were sharing their handles on ravelry, so I did too. Which prompted me check out my ravelry profile. Which has a link to this blog. (I can't remember why I did that.) Which is how I came to return here after an absence of almost five years. 

It is nice to return here. To spend a few minutes mulling over just a few words and thoughts, to put them down here, in my own personal space but  not secreted away. I have few secrets these days. I have few new things to report. Not much has changed everything has changed not much has changed. This glorious wonder happened almost four years ago:

it was almost 4 years ago and i still can't even deal.

Among many wonderful virtues that cause me to gush and beam, this magnificent person absorbs as much time and energy as I have to give. Things that fed my ruminations, turning them into fears that I'd squirrel away from others or myself. Without extra time and energy, it is hard to manufacture new secrets. Without extra time and energy, I find it difficult to imagine things I want to put out into the void of a blog rather than share with the other people who have a direct hand in supporting us.

So, I don't know if I will continue here, but if I can fall out of the habit perhaps I can fall back in as well. Maybe the blog habit is like an elastic snap, you can return but not to the same degree, the energy has been mainly spent. Maybe it is like a snap bracelet, no real difference from the first time but it smarts a bit. Maybe it is like a last tryst after a breakup, full of hope that things will be bright and new but really it flickers and finally burns down low and out.

saturated

in between and threaded in and out of all the wet cool weather, all sorts of unusual goings on around these parts. i've been spring cleaning the crap out of various corners of the house, replacing and dusting and updating and organizing. my friend's band played on our front porch yesterday afternoon as part of a city wide free music event, and i learned that i need a literal house band to come play all the time because it's just so much fun. this past week i worked a conference at the parker house hotel in boston and learned it's packed full of interesting little historical sidebars: dickens wrote there, ho chi minh was a busboy there, malcolm x was a waiter there, guess where boston cream pies were invented? i learned good and bad news this week and connected with some friends i've been missing for some time. bike rides and car rides in the rain can be just as good or even better in the mist and rain as they can in the sunshine. i transplanted some shoots and planted some seeds after the deluge strengthened some of my plants and flooded some others. and nate bought his first pair of jeans. ever. this coming week i've got dancing, dinnering, celebrating, and reconnecting to do before the holiday weekend. if a spot of sun decided to come play, too, that might be nice.

spring is here again

dusk, and i can hear conversation on the street and birds in the trees, wind through leaves and blossoms, and cars going by.

earlier, i dug around in the dirt and caring for flowers in the front patch of ground outside the house. this afternoon was a take-care-of-the-house kind of afternoon, for us and our housemates.

got some reading done, for a class i'm taking and also some completely unrelated fiction, both reminding me that there is so much to read up on that i can hardly stand it.

i took a nap, i wrote to some friends, i enjoyed the breezes coming in the open windows. this past week it felt like spring arrived and plans on hanging around a little while. welcome, i say.

habit

home again

back home again after a weekend away, continuing the celebration from the wedding last month. saw family and loads of family friends this weekend. it had been years and maybe more years since i saw many of these folks, and reminded me of the wonderful love and friendship given to me by so many of my parents' friends. although i am an only child from a relatively small family, i have a large unofficial family far and wide. it was a joy to introduce nate to many of these people who have been present for so many other parts of my life. and i hope it's not so long until the next time i have the chance to see them again. this weekend was a good lesson in the value of old friends, the special bond that forms over years and between generations, and reasons for putting effort into remaining a part of my own friends' lives despite the forces that pull us deep into our own lives. sometimes i miss the time in my life when catching up with friends meant only traveling a few minutes and learning only about a day or two worth of news. bonds are easily strong when you share so much of your life as you experience it. the true test has been in integrating friends into our lives more set apart. balance never is easy for me - i tend towards extremes. to have several occasions recently to reunite and celebrate also reminds me that those old small pilot lights of bonds can often be rekindled into stronger forms. and that those flames of friendships don't have to remain at a constant intensity in order to survive the years.

and now, back to home. i'm in the process of officially changing my name and navigating that process should take some weeks. i hope to get through a lot of it before the holidays, and should be known everywhere and by everyone as mrs. nate before the new year. returning from warmer lands means we really noticed the chill in the air in the house. we turned on the heat for the first time tonight, and locked the windows to avoid drafts, and if all goes well, will remember to bring in the deck furniture before too many more days go by.

it's not right, but it's okay.

okay, maybe i don't feel quite that bad. but i am looking forward to being sniffle and sneeze free. i've spent the last four days hydrating frequently, sleeping longer than usual, conserving energy where possible, eating healthfully (minus a few extraneous apple cider donuts), standing in the steamy shower a few extra minutes, and although i am feeling better i'm not quite breathing easy yet.

more than that, of course, i'm looking forward to seeing my far-flung family and farther flung friends in just a few days. there is nothing that will feel better than being surrounded by all that love and support on saturday while nate and i marry each other.

sidebar: yet another reason nate is the one for me: he aims for balance in his life. like, right this minute, he is simultaneously stretching and eating from a big bag of potato chips.

96 hours

this work week, these past 96 hours, has been full of days of exhaustion. i've come home, followed my normal routine (change, knit, eat, read) and then passed out cold before nate's even come close to the bedroom. it's more than high time to recharge my batteries. and i couldn't be luckier: my last minute request to take a day off tomorrow has been granted, and leads me into two days in maine to relax with friends and go white water rafting for the first time in years, and then the holiday off to enjoy a leisurely morning and then a bike ride with friendly folk.

besides considering how the immediate future will far outweigh the immediate past, today i was able to make headway with some work tasks and wedding tasks. take that, thursday. and suck it, work week. i am done with you.

although my erratic presence here won't be much affected, i'm going offline starting tomorrow morning and i'm looking forward to the separation. it will be nice to get away, and really get my brain away, too.

back groovin'

it was a good day at work, nate and i met afterwards at a local jewlery shop and ordered our wedding rings (holy moly!), i enjoyed some knitting and a sandwich, then went off to dance class, my first since the muscle tear on march 19th of last year. and honey made my return all the sweeter by having us get down to prince, michael jackson, and some old funk. now i've got a plate full of fruit and a bed ready and waiting, and soon the weekend will be calling my name.

file under: can only handle my own generation's mistakes

kids and their music these days... justin bieber was enough to make me feel old. but i just heard some news that makes me feel even older: i am two years younger than his mom. yowch.

couple that with the question my friend fielded as a guest teacher at some workshop this morning ("does 'fo shizzle' count as slang?") and i am about to wave my little white flag and ask for mercy.

best remedy may be to go hang out with some friends from childhood and revert to immature jokes, nicknames, drinking habits, etc. that might be enough to make me forget how old i am, and forget how to act my age. good thing i have a high school friend's wedding to attend tomorrow. i hope there's really good-bad 80s music at the reception.

sick dream

after a successful mid-distance bike ride on saturday, i felt crummy the rest of the weekend. i thought it might be allergies because air quality was supposedly pretty nasty. but symptoms kept piling on and i was feeling quite bad by sunday late afternoon.

monday morning i dreamt dad took my temperature with an old-fangled mercury thermometer (don't tell - but i never traded mine in for a new electronic one), and the mercury steadily rose and rose and rose until it hit the very tip of the thermometer, and in anxiety i clenched my jaw and my teeth bit through the thermometer end leaving me fragments of broken glass and rivulets of mercury in my mouth. "that's it, i'm taking you to the hospital," dad said. i quickly swabbed at my tongue with a paper towel before we left for the ER.

i woke from the dream, and went to bathroom to take my temperature, careful not to tense any facial muscles. although it wasn't high, i did have an elevated temperature. that information coupled with my other symptoms and lack of vivacity, i made the decision to stay home from work and rest.

last night i slept almost 9.5 hours and, according to nate, sweat myself silly. but i did not have another sick dream, thankfully. what's worse than a dream that gives you no relief of your reality? like dreaming you are waking up late only to wake from that dream and find you are late. it's like being kicked before you even realized you were down to begin with.

it's bike to work week here in massachusetts. and by golly, i biked myself to work today. i'm now questioning the wisdom of my choice as my self-rated energy/overall wellbeing percentage started this morning at 87% and dropped to 65% by the time i got here. i've already attended to the most pressing tasks and am fighting the urge to put my head down. lunchtime may become naptime. a peaceful dream-free naptime, i hope.

a lovely week

[warning: i am link-happy today]

this is turning into quite a lovely week. it started out with completing the final assignment for my developmental psychopathology course, and the rushing wave of relief that accompanied my submission of it to the course dropbox. although my work schedule meant i wouldn't be able to make it to the confirmation of olivia, nate's cousin, i had the good luck of making the guestlist for a taza chocolate tasting/marketing event in cambridge last night, and took katy as my plus one. katy and i made plans to meet up again tonight at diesel so i can benefit from her help while i start working on a new knitting project: calorimetry. i've been listening to great free music from the npr music website, from a short playlist by johnny rotten, to live performances by the emerson string quartet and charlotte gainsbourg. i've had delicious and lovingly prepared food at home, worked and stretched my muscles out of complacency, and am about to dive deep into a new book. we had extra hand soap under the sink when i though we were running low, and we have a new houseplant.

this is a week worthy of using as a standard. all other weeks please take note: you will be expected to live up to this one, so go ahead and make any appropriate adjustments so i will not be disappointed. thank you.

(and, button jar - you, too, should pay attention. make your location known to me or suffer a downgrade in my estimation. thank you.)

picking and choosing

i gave myself a hiatus from ffv in order to focus more laser-like on my out there in the world responsibilities. and my experiences over the last month have re-taught me the same lessons i learned in middle school: procrastination is not about using specific and familiar tools to distract myself but about an ever-flowing and imaginative stream of ideas in which i cast my net wide, catching all sorts of interesting flotsam and jetsam that i let distract me. and i hardly ever throw anything back. i can and will distract myself using anything i can. fortunately, all the things i needed and wanted to do have been done. and there were no all-nighters. i'm taking that as a step in the right direction.

apparently it's spring weekend on tufts campus. last night there was a posse of sturdy looking dudes in a backyard nearby playing a very loud drinking game that appeared at times to be a riff on baseball, or just organized chugging. unclear. the good news is that nobody puked on our yard, and nobody slept outside all night. the partying, actually i'm assuming it's partying when all i know is people are yelling a lot, started up again around 10am this morning. nate and i stayed up late last night entertaining ourselves with tv we normally don't watch (jimmy fallon and carson daly - yes, really) and i was kind of hoping to wake up around noon. these damn tufts kids. isn't college supposed to keep them all up partying late so they can amble out of bed in the midday sun looking for fried breakfasts? i now have an entire academic year's worth of evidence and proof that tufts kids don't know how to party.

it's a beautiful may morning and i'm thinking it's time to pot the bulbs i bought the other day, get some fresh air, test out my knee at some physical activity, maybe clean the house a bit. with the warmer and more hospitable air there's no end of things i want to do, places i want to go, and chores i'd like to accomplish. my interests and energies are coming out of hibernation, slowly but surely.

before i go out into the beautiful day, let me share a small slice of life from the dojo:
[late night, living room at the dojo. windows are open and fresh air is wafting through. the tv is on and nate and sarah are sprawled on the sofa after eating dinner and large portions of chocolate ice cream and strawberries.]
sarah: [farts]
nate: do i have to marry that part of you?

to do list

- stop messing around
- start taking things seriously
- get 8 hours of sleep each night
- eat more protein
- take multivitamin every day
- scrub behind my ears
- thank katy for lending me her hoopty on tuesday
- also find out which cd of hers i was listening to
- drink more water
- tell family i love them, even when we don't see eye-to-eye
- tell friends i love them, even when we don't see each other often
- tell nate i love him, even when he has stinky breath and steals the covers
- give myself more reading time and less noodling on the internetz time
- start online pet-naming business
- have some strawberries

pictures from andalucia: focus on moorish architecture

oh heyyyyy...

so i finally made a tabblo with some pictures from our time in andalucia. nate and i spent 8 days in southern spain, and enjoyed it all. we were particularly taken with our visits to alcazar in seville and alhambra in granada. most of the photos in the following set are from our visit to alcazar. we managed to stumble upon a marketplace for creche figurines as well as a marching band competition, a balloon-animal producing bunny, and a lady pirate. it was a good trip.

the preview is below. click to see all:

See my Tabblo>