Gone baby, gone

Hi there. If you're looking for me today, I'm over here at Little Fish's place doing a guest post while she's off gallivanting in Europe.

I am a little jealous. But mostly happy for her, because she deserves the joy of Europe.

Besides, I'm about to do a little bit of gallivanting of my own. I'm heading off for the weekend to sunny California to visit some of my favorite people.

Woo!

Have a very Happy Fourth!




Oh, for all of you who asked about the bed in the last post, here it is. Unfortunately, that is not my bed, since I do not have a spare $15,000 laying around to purchase it. Um, yeah.

And if I did, I'll be honest, it would go into my dream of building a tree-house library. I've been on a bit of book buying binge lately. I really need to stop. I am absolutely out of space to store everything and now I just have boxes of books in my room. I need to spring for some new shelves.

I love lamp

The other night I got into bed and thought:

Dear Bed,

I love you. I love you to the depth, and breadth, and height my soul allows.

Sincerely,

Katie


Hmmmm.

Before you ask. Yes, I really do walk around writing letters to things. Usually they're addressed to fashion disasters.

Apparently my brain thinks its a good idea to quote poetry to my bed. In my defense it was the middle of the night, and I was super excited to get to bed. And my bed is very, very lovable and super, super comfy.

But we're just friends here.

It's long been one of my quirks that when I get really tired all my million dollar vocab words start flying. Kind of a weird quirk. (But useful since I do my best writing in the middle of the night.) Now, I can add random poetry verses to the things I'm likely to let fly in the middle of the night.

That's not normal, right?

Funny though.

Disquiet

{via TwentyThree}

The situations in my life aren't right.

Or maybe I'm just not right in the situations.

There's something that's missing from them or from me. When I try to put my finger on what it is, the feeling disappears into smoke and laughs at me as it drifts out some hole in the ceiling.

The hole, which is letting out the smoke, is also letting in the sun that burns me and the rain that drowns me. Only rarely does it ever let in the wind which brings promises or the light that illuminates but doesn't burn.

And instead of running to look for a new place or a new time, I am stuck in one place and one time. Stuck pounding out some tune--that I used to love--on a piano, that, while perfectly in tune, sounds off-key to me.

But if I play the tune right, you'll never know. I don't want you to know.

When you know, you want to fix it. Or fix me. And the very last thing I want is to be fixed. Or even really to talk about this. I would rather sit under the hole which is letting out the smoke and keeping in the burns and the water (now sloshing around my ankles) and continue trying to remember a new tune. Which maybe I didn't even know in the first place. Or maybe I haven't yet written.

Soon the piano will be out of vogue anyway, and I'll be granted my freedom. Until then I'll keeping praying for the light and the wind.

Art in life

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
-Bernard M. Baruch

{via}

One of my new favorite websites is Things We Forget. Whoever runs this makes awesome post-its like the one above and leaves them around for people to find. Genius. It's worth a few minutes of your time.

Close to my heart

The fabulous Katie (I love her name!) over at Can I Just Say... gave me the Keepsake Blog award. And can I just say that there must be something in the name that connects, because I always say "Can I just say." It's one of my favorite conversational segues. No, not like GOB's . Ba da bum, I'm awesome.

Anyway.


Here are the rules:
1. Post a funny or sweet keepsake that tells something about you.
2. Pass award on to ten other bloggers you think are keepers.


For my birthday last year my Grandma asked me what I wanted. She told me that I could choose anything in her house. My grandma has some amazing and cool things, but after thinking about it I chose the two porcelain cats pictured above. I had loved those cats for as long as I can remember. Are they the most tasteful things? Mmmm, probably not. Do I care? Not a lick.

One of my favorite memories as a child was laying down to take a nap in my Grandma's living room and staring at these cats while she rubbed my back.

Of course, I used to want to play with those cats more than anything. But neither my mom nor my grandma would let me near them while they were in the room. But I was three, and no one was not going to stop me. After all, you can't monitor a three year old every second. They're like perpetual motion, and perpetual sneakiness.

Well one day, I was playing with the two cats, I think I was holding them by the neck and making them talk to each other. I've never been the coordinated person (except when doing ballet, but that's really another story) and the little one slipped from my hand and it's neck snapped. I froze, heartbroken.

Here I had broken one of my favorite things in the whole world doing something I knew I wasn't supposed to be doing. I remember going to find myself the nearest corner and tucking myself in as tightly as I could so that I could cry out the heart break. Because part of my world had broken with the cat.

Pretty soon my Mom and Grandma came to find me. They also found the broken cat. I remember just sobbing "I'm sorry" over and over again. I couldn't say it enough. Finally, my Grandma took me in her arms and said,

"Don't you know that I love you more than any of my possessions? Besides, I think this cat can be fixed."

That's what I remember when I look at these cats. Being held, and being told that I was loved more than any possession. What a gift.

Even though I lost my Grandma last Fall, her love lives on with me in a million ways. And I'm so glad I have these two little reminders.


I think you all of you who read this are beyond fabulous. Seriously. It's not just my late night euphoria talking. But in the spirit of this, I will tag ten of you:

Hazelnut
Just a Small Town Girl
Bubblegum Diaries
Sciolist
Blonde Blogshell
Adventures in China
I Totally Forgot You Go Here
J.
MelThoughts
Lost in Lobsterland

Awesomeness via YouTube

Yup, pretty sure this is what advertisers are telling us.

Amazing how every fix comes in a handily-packaged, readily bought product that's just waiting to fix our crumbling lives. Now if only they could market self-confidence.

What? These products are a substitute for self-confidence? Hmmm.

Bringing Haiku back

{via We Heart It}

Through one of my favorite tumblr sites, TwentyThree, I stumbled across a guy who writes haiku. If you're like me, writing haiku was an exercise in futility. I have lots and lots of words, and trying to cut them was torture. Don't get me wrong I love haiku. It's just that I am not short on words. (Well except when I actually need them. But don't get me started on that phenomenon that's plaguing me right now.)

Which is why I enjoy reading haiku so much more than writing them.

And this guy can take 17 syllables and create the most amazing feelings. These are meltingly wonderful. Here are two of my favorites so far.

Electricity
when your hand's behind my neck
and you kiss my lips.

I get chills just reading that. But let's not stop here.

You are everything
I have always dreamed of
but never woke up to.

Um. Wow. If he didn't have a girlfriend (who he's apparently crazy about, lucky) I would be emailing him my undying fandom. *sigh* I'll probably do that anyway, but with a definite different tone to the email.

As if the ability to write weren't enough, he's also an amazing photographer. Go and check out his corner of the world here.