After a really tough time when we lost a baby, he wrote me the most beautiful love letter that said he would love me in sunshine and shade. This is our 12th year together and I hope he always feels that way. Maybe that’s why this video really resonates with me, as all love does.

These two have entered a contest via Snippet & Ink to win fabulous engagement photos with ABryan Photo in New York. You can click here and vote for Lauren if you want them to win. I love this so much.

Listening to: So Post All ‘Em by Yacht from the album – I Believe In You, Your Magic Is Real which may be the best Valentine message of all time.

-If Valentine’s Day is something you have been dreading, take an artist’s date! Julia Cameron writes about these in The Artist’s Way. Time for YOU to do something that fills up the well. If you don’t think you are an Artist, can I gently tell you …actually, you are.

-Longest Married Living Couple Herbert+Zelmyra Fisher, married 82 years, have been taking questions about marriage via Twitter @longestmarried and will answer them tomorrow here on Valentine’s Day (14th).

-Moomah is one of those discoveries that makes me thankful for the interwebs.

-Papa John’s Pizza will deliver heart-shaped pizza to your house upon request. I sent one home to my little girl yesterday and it was a hit.

-Watch and/or record love stories on Drop Everything for Love.com. The graphics on this site are awesome.

-The Crying Wife website that I found via @Soup_Lady is hysterical.

-I pick up film from the developer today for the first time in 10 years. I’m excited.

-Perfect dresses from Shabby Apple which I found via Stephmodo.

-Watching this teacher talk with her class about these paintings made me remember how exciting it can be to both learn and to share what you know.

This one, too…

He doesn’t hold grudges. He loves me, even when it’s really hard to do. He turns off lights when I have a migraine. He never rolls his eyes.

We are no model for greatness. Neither of us is perfect. I hope we stay together forever, but I don’t take for granted that we will. But at least I can say that I am much closer to becoming the person I would like to be because I’ve spent eleven years with him.

When were were planning our trip, we noticed there’s a restaurant in New York called Insieme. Insieme, italian for “together,” is one of those important words for us for reasons that are too dear to share, but sufficed to say, it’s one of two words that we would have had engraved inside our wedding rings, had we sprung for that. When he read to me the review of Insieme from the New York Times, I thought it was the perfect description for our marriage: “Its setting lacks magic, its kitchen can be inconsistent and a few of the dishes fall well short of the others. But when Insieme is good, it’s outstanding.”

Listening to: You Are My Everything – Miles Davis {click play below if you want to listen with me while you read}

It’s a rainy, Parisian kind of day today which has me thinking of Valentines. Here are some heart-shaped links for you:

*Chocolate. Chocolove chocolate bars are my favorite and even come with a poem inside. I have not received any freebies, but I welcome them with open arms.

*Pack Your Bags. Here is a honeymoon packing check-list from Real Simple which I thought might come in handy if you are leaving town for Valentine’s Day.

*Here’s a link on how to tie a bow tie.

*Music. A link to the most romantic album of all time: Ella & Louis.

*Movies. Catch a good love story. {Here are some ideas…Shakespeare In Love, Four Weddings & A Funeral, When Harry Met Sally, Only You, Pride & Prejudice, Amelie, Say Anything, Sense & Sensibility, Emma, An Affair To Remember, The Notebook, Sliding Doors, Moonstruck, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones, Fools Rush In, Stranger Than Fiction, The Wedding Date, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Up at the Villa, French Kiss, Pretty Woman, The Holiday, Mansfield Park, Roman Holiday, Love Actually, and so on.}

*Love letters. I love the Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (1845-1846) vol 1 which you can read online for free here if you can’t find a copy. I searched for years for the correspondence of George Bernard Shaw & Mrs. Patrick Campbell. I searched bookshops in Sligo and Galway and Dublin and finally found one upstairs in the attic at Poor Richard’s Books in Frankfort, Kentucky for $11. Go figure. Whenever I have anything for work in Frankfort, I swing by Poor Richard’s. They have a coffee shop, too. Though not love letters, I do have my eye on this collection of letters between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Speaking of letters, I’m eagerly awaiting the DVD release {because I can never make it to the theater} of Bright Star, based on John Keats and his love letters to Fanny Brawne.

*Poems of course. There are so many to choose from on the topic of Valentines. Nikki Giovanni’s Love Poems are old faves. Though not a romantic poem, wanted to share A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal, by Billy Collins, from Picnic Lightning. {I think about this poem sometimes when I write here as I often don’t know the people, 2,000 this month, who are reading on the other side. It’s a curious thing and sometimes makes me feel very shy.}

A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal
Every morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun all over the breakfast things—
curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,
a dish of berries—
me in a sweatshirt or robe,
you invisible.

Most days, we are suspended
over a deep pool of silence.
I stare straight through you
or look out the window at the garden,
the powerful sky,
a cloud passing behind a tree.

There is no need to pass the toast,
the pot of jam,
or pour you a cup of tea,
and I can hide behind the paper,
rotate in its drum of calamitous news.

But some days I may notice
a little door swinging open
in the morning air,
and maybe the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour—

then I will lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you will look up, as always,
your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.

*A novel about crazy love like Love In The Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My copy is marked up and I’ve underlined passages like these:

“It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and the omega, an end in itself.” p. 293 Penguin Press.

“… marriage ends every night after making love, and must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.” p. 209

*Photos.
Fuji Instax film cameras is the Fuji answer to Polariod.  I have not tried one, but aren’t they the cutest?

Listening to: Empire State of Mind - Alicia Keyes Jay-Z
{An aside: recently, a witness’s phone rang during their deposition with this song as the ringtone and I had to lean over at the next break and say, “I’m sorry, but was that Alicia Keyes & Jay-Z?”  Kind of funny}

I have to go to New York City for work soon.  It will be a quick trip with little time to explore, but I have a few things I’m excited to check out like Purl and The Strand and hopefully bump into some friends there.  If I had more time, I would hit up The Moth or lectures at the 92nd Street Y or the Guggenheim.  It’s just fun to daydream. Anyone have a favorite restaurant to recommend for dinner? Midtown-ish? Or near BAM? Is it too cold to check out The High Line?

In my research in New York Magazine, I stumbled upon this link: 50 Steps to Simple Happiness which inspired me to post a list of some things making me happy today:

1. The PS22 Choir’s version of  Empire State of Mind.

2. YOU! Your comments and emails mean a lot to me. I started this blog in 2007 and since posting daily it seems there are more of you stopping in than ever.

3. My new home office chair.

4. The turquoise Aeriel 7 chopper headphones I got for Christmas from one of my brothers.

Lifechanging. My husband and I have partner’s desks set up and he is so thankful not to have to listen to The Go Gos streaming from my mac.

5. Reverend Run’s Twitter Feed @RevRunWisdom

6. Knitting with some really soft yarn made from milk that I picked up at Magpie Yarn.

7. Roasting Marshmallows

8. My daughter‘s choreography while watching Mary Poppins.

9. Coatless weather

10. Dry erase 2010 calendar for my home office to post both depositions and photo shoots for at-a-glance year planning.

11. These locker baskets that I picked up for $8 a piece at Scout Antiques. I hesitate to even post about this place because it is such a find. I’m trying to grow here and share. 
12. Reading Ayelet Waldman’s book Bad Mother:

“There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always wish you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature. It’s hard to separate your remembered childhood and its emotional legacy from the childhoods that are being lived out in your house, by your children. If you’re lucky, your kids will help you make the distinction. They’ll look at you, stricken, and beg you not to harangue the coach, not to harass the mother of the boy who did not invite them to the birthday party, not to intervene to rescind the lousy trade of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards they made. You want to protect them, but sometimes what you have to protect them from is the ongoing avalanche of your own childhood-crashing down on you like a hail of dodgeballs.”

This is such a moment-to-moment challenge for me.

13. Giving up reading other photography blogs. I’ll check in from time to time to keep up with the industry, but I’m going back to the sources of every good, inspired thought I’ve ever had: love letters, poems, books, films, music, paintings, stories, this book of wedding day photos my husband mailed to me 11 years ago with a note that life is only as beautiful as I make it.
My favorite photograph from the book, which he xeroxed and taped on the outside of the package was and still is this one by Bob Willoughy:

14. I bought Glee Season 1 on DVD but made a rule that I can only watch it while on the treadmill. Yeah…I’ve had it for 4 days. It’s still in the shrink wrap.

15. Being finished with another 70 hour work week.

You know I have to ask, what’s making you happy today?

The most inspiring thing about it for me was one of the last scenes when Elizabeth and Darcy meet at dawn and there is the most amazing sunflare behind their faces.  Something about that sunlight hit “refresh” on all of my pages.

You can’t tell from this image, but it is this scene:

I think I’ve probably blogged about this before, but what I took from it is that I really need to do an engagement shoot at dawn. Maybe when it’s not 4 degrees out, but in winter. Fabulous blue and gold light. Very exciting. I loved being behind the camera just after sunrise for this shoot.

The other thing I love is the last scene, which I won’t give away just in case you haven’t seen this version. But it reminded me that I want to do more shoots and essays this year about marital love. Not just new love.

Meeting a new bride today for coffee and going through art books for inspiration.

Like Nina Simone sings, “it’s a new dawn. It’s a new day. It’s a new life for me and I’m feelin’ good.”

Check back at 4:00 for the regular tea time post. What’s inspiring you this new year?

Though I’ve kept up with NPR over the years on road trips for work, since turning off cable again, it feels like my old roommate has moved back in with me. It lingers in the kitchen as my husband leans over the counter reading or chopping. It echoes in the bathroom when the shower is running. {My parents got us a shower radio that has been a lifesaver.} This time though, I only get to hear 5 minute snippets of what my roomie has to say before I am pulled away and have to return to the online version later to find out what happened. I don’t know about you, but since becoming a parent, I’ve noticed that {on a good day} I have at maximum 15 minutes to complete any given task. Each of these posts I’ve been writing here since 2007 has been written in multiple sittings. But for the “save draft” button, I would never post anything. This post, for instance, was written in 28 separate sittings. I kept count. The shower radio is essential.

This morning I heard bits and pieces of two different stories that I hope to return to online later tonight. The first one was Michael Chabon talking about being a father and husband. He has written a new book of personal essays called, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son. The featured excerpt essay, The Hand on My Shoulder about his relationship with his ex father-in-law is so well written. I’m eager to read the rest. He says that though writing nonfiction can sometimes be uncomfortable, “the ultimate sign to me that I am on to something is if I’m squirming a little bit as I’m writing about it.”
SO true.

I’m also interested in Ayelet Waldman’s memoir Bad Mother {Waldman is married to Chabon}. You may remember her from the controversial article she wrote that ran in the New York Times a few years ago where she said she loved her husband more than her children. Oprah interviewed her about it at the time and I remember feeling like I missed the point of it all, so I’d like to give her the benefit of the doubt and try to get where she’s coming from. I love my husband and my daughter completely and in different ways and I can’t quantify one love as being anything other than a different kind of unfathomable love than the other. My daughter has begun saying, “I love you all the way to outer space,” the longest distance she can conceptualize and I feel that way too. For both of them. Still, I’m interested in reading what Waldman to say.

The second NPR piece I heard this morning was an interview with Rosanne Cash performing songs from her new album The List.
Here’s the story behind the album:

CASH: When I was 18 years old, I went on the road with my dad after I graduated from high school. And we were riding on the tour bus one day, kind of rolling through the South, and he mentioned a song. We started talking about songs, and he mentioned one, and I said I don’t know that one. And he mentioned another. I said I don’t know that one either, Dad, and he became very alarmed that I didn’t know what he considered my own musical genealogy.

And I was very steeped in pop and rock music, and I grew up in Southern California. So he spent the rest of the afternoon making a list for me, and at the end of the day, he said this is your education. And across the top of the page, he wrote 100 essential country songs. The list might have been better titled 100 essential American songs because it was very comprehensive. He covered every critical point in Southern and American music: early folk songs, protest songs, Delta blues, Southern gospel, early country music, Appalachian. Everything that fed into modern country music was on that list. So his overview was really of a musicologist but formed by his instincts, you know, and just the rhythm in his own blood.

So I realized when he gave me the list at the age of 18 that this was an important document, and I set about learning these songs. But it took me I think until know to realize that he was really giving me himself, a part of his heart and soul.

How powerful. She is so thoughtful and articulate. She mentions a few of my favorite writers in passing {like Joan Didion and Malcolm Gladwell} and I kept thinking that I wish I could sit on a creaking porch with her with rocking chairs and quilts and have hot tea and talk about stuff that moves us. She would be, I imagine at least, that kind of friend.

On religion she says:

“I adhere to the religion of art and music and small children.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. CASH: The pronouncements of small children. You know, I’m not the type to turn to religion in that way. I’m not the type to turn to drugs and alcohol, but I do have a profound devotion to art and music – and children. And those three things, as well as the love of my husband, who is an amazing partner and, you know, if you ever have brain surgery, you want to call him up to do all of the vetting of the neurosurgeons and all of that business because he makes a great patient advocate.

On advising her 27 year-old daughter who just made an album and asked, “how do I have a successful career as a musician without having a public life?” she said, “And it kind of broke my heart because that was the exact question I asked at her age. And I said, I don’t know because, you know, songs are not complete until they’re heard, you know, you can’t just do this for your living room.”

I love that sentiment. I feel that way about all kinds of art. It’s not really complete until it’s shared. I always feel that contradicting tug of living very privately on one end but feeling disconnected if I keep everything to myself.

So, I have to ask, what would top your 100 list?