Listening to: The Nest – Jose Gonzalez

I started this blog in 2007, but I never thought I would make it to 100 consecutive days of blogging. Day number 365 seems so far away. Today, The NYTimes has a cool article and interactive called A Writer Get’s A Home Office of Her Own. While the budget they used is out of my price range, it is inspiring.

Love this post from Dooce about her participation in the White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility…

…and this image from Habit which is the perfect explanation for why it’s so important for our world to embrace Workplace Flexibility.

Listening to: Dear Companion – Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore
{100% of the proceeds go to ilovemountains.org}


To me they are weeds, to her beautiful bouquets. I suppose it’s all in the naming of things.

Last night, the email and voice mail notifications kept pinging well into the evening. I was trying to just be present with my daughter. I felt the stress starting to climb up both sides of my neck. I started drafting email responses in my head. This client needs this, this case needs that, this issue needs research, I need to respond to this when she goes to sleep and on and on and on. I’m supposed to be giving her a turn. I’m supposed to be focused on coloring Belle’s hair the appropriate shade of brown. I turned off the phone, but then began to worry. And then something clicked. It was in the swish of a yellow skirt on an old episode of Dancing With The Stars that we were watching. There was this swish and then the smiles on the faces of the dancers and the word “Joy” popped into my head. In that moment I decided, “today, I choose joy.” Not stress, not worry, not sadness over things I can’t control. Today, I choose joy. It comes so easily with cookies and crayons and silly songs about pirates. The voice mails will wait until I start all over again tomorrow.
But today, I choose joy.

Listening to: this very happy cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s Cecilia by Local Natives

For my Nashville readers, Local Natives will play The Basement in Nashville on Apr 30 2010 @ 8:00 P. I discovered them via Arrow & Arrow, the blog home of Spartan Shop where I ordered these Postalco Notebooks for my husband for Valentine’s Day.

They look like something from a Wes Anderson movie, no?

We drug the hammock out of the basement yesterday. It’s a nice changing of the guard – the firewood basket and shovel is exchanged for the bubble maker and sidewalk chalk.  I am ready. Love this challenge from NPR: What would be your at-bat theme song? I have spent much too long thinking about this on the rare occasion that I am in a ballpark. It varies from year to year. Today, it would be Gwen Stefani’s What You Waitin’ For.

What’s your at-bat song?

Regardless of your religious affiliation, Max Lucado’s piece on writing called The Write Stuff is uplifting. He writes:

“Well-written words can change a life. Why is this? Words go where we never go—Africa. Australia. Indonesia. My daughter was in Bangalor, India, last summer and saw my books in the display window of a shop. Written words go to places you’ll never go.…and descend to depths you’ll never know.

Readers invite the author to a private moment. They clear the calendar, find the corner, flip on the lamp, turn off the television, pour the tea, pull on the wrap, silence the dog, shoo the kids. They set the table, pull out the chair and invite you, ‘Come, talk to me for a moment.’ The invitation of a lifetime.” -Max Lucado

Literal Boost

We used the One Step Ahead Cooshee Booster Seat at the pottery painting place and immediately came home and ordered one.

We’re at that age where she’s too big for most baby boosters, but not quite tall enough to reach the table. It’s made out of the same material you see on those foam pool floats, but doesn’t tip easily like the plastic boosters you find in restaurants.  I don’t get any kickback from these guys or anything. It just really works – no straps, fits most chairs, fits varying kiddo heights. She moves it around the house to fit different seats so it’s pretty lightweight.

Listening to: Regina Spektor – On The Radio

Regardless of how many cds and mp3s I collect, there’s no replacing the radio. Even Pandora {while very helpful} isn’t the same. During National Public Radio’s pledge season, I start to believe their messages of why I can’t live without radio. But I like more than just NPR. Michael Chabon cracked the code on the allure of radio in his book Manhood for Amateurs, p.272:

“No medium is a sensuously evocative of the past as radio. No other medium deploys that shocking full-immersion power of random remembrance….The song has to take you by surprise, catch you when your guard is down, when you aren’t expecting it–ideally, when you aren’t even listening to the radio at all. A bright little piece of your life passes you by in a car with the windows rolled down, wells up in the pain-relief aisle of a Rite-Aid. That kind of a chance encounter can’t happen as readily on an iPod you’ve programmed yourself.” -Michael Chabon

So true. There’s an entire era of music {Oh Sherrie by Steve Perry, Refugee by Tom Petty, Babe by Styx, Rio by Duran Duran} that puts me back in Paddock Pool, a place that is now filled with cement, feeling sunburned and waiting for my swim meet to begin. While the iPod is not the same, I have made a new discovery in iTunes Genius Mixes that help me feel surprised by the next song. In your iTunes application on the left-hand column you can select a Genius Mix. ITunes automatically prepares several mixes of your music based on categories. It’s a much more stylized mix than just a random shuffle setting. It always seems to find songs on albums that I have overlooked and matches them up nicely with others. It’s the closest thing I can find to a really good radio station when you are out of service area, or when the pledge drive drones on and on.

One of my sisters is working on a genealogy project, so I scanned these in to send to her of the great great grandparents, but I love thinking about family photographs and how the purpose of taking them has changed in so many ways and yet stayed the same in others. I’m thankful that someone ordered these prints so that I can have them generations later. I love to study the clothes and expressions, the peek into their lives. I have to wonder what they would think about me in my pjs, working on an imac while my daughter twirls around to a song about phones that are with you all of the time.

Would they be surprised that I vote, own property, argue with men, go to court or cuss like the sailor that I am? Looking at these ladies, {are those gloves leather, Minnie?} I have a feeling they did their share of kicking doors down that paved the way for me. If so, I thank you ladies. Wonder what my great great grandchildren {lord willing} think about images of us?

Louis & Minnie Sch. – photograph by Jos. Sprauer.

When I see this one of Minnie as an elderly person, I can’t help but wish I could have photographed her face closely, like portraits I have seen of Georgia O’Keefe.

This lady below is her daughter. {And then my grandmother is her daughter, and so it goes.}

Corella & John M.

Listening to: The Bird & The Bee – The Polite Dance Song

*I stared at these carafes for a while at Wine + Market here in Lexington earlier this week, but ultimately decided that my house is not ready for thin glass objects. They are so lovely, though.

*New discovery: this link from Oprah Magazine Extras of easy tutorials to clean up your web browser. I am noticing my computer is running faster after cleaning house a bit.

*If we finish the Saturday morning clean up chores, we are taking our girl to the park to fly her new princess kite which reminds me of this day with my new kite:

Proud as punch. Peaceful Saturday morning to you!

Long before I became an attorney or a wife or a mother, or a writer, or a sailor, I made paper boats and hats with my grandpa.

So, should we take the boat out today?

…even her little hand writing at the bottom is so precious to me.

*for more on my kind-hearted late Grandfather, here’s an essay I wrote a while back for Skirt!

Listening to: Telephone – LADY GAGA

Just one more day until the weekend and, in the words of Beyonce in the above-mentioned song, “Sometimes I feel like I live in Grand Central Station. Tonight I’m not takin no calls ’cause I’ll be dancin.”

Lawd, it’s been a week. You, too? For your weekend bag, a few CD recommendations for Spring music rotation:
1. Patsy Cline – The Definitive Collection. Every time I see her photograph, I think about how I wish I could have photographed her. She was so beautiful and, if I’m honest, I think I could have captured her in a way that made her see how pretty she really is. It takes another girl with some shape to know.

2. & 3. Lady GAGA - The Fame Monster & The Fame. Like Madonna’s debut album, these are records that will still be relevant 10 years from now.

4. Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore – Dear Companion. This is one is the perfect love letter to Kentucky for me. When I listen to it, I feel like I am 6 and in a canoe listening to my dad paddle against the quiet water and I feel at home.

5. St. Vincent – Actor …this one was an accidental discovery.
Happy listening to something other than telephones and pinging emails.